foreword: the final installment current issues in education, 22(1) 1 volume 21, issue 2 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age foreword: the final installment samantha adams becker arizona state university sean m. leahy arizona state university abstract: this final installment of the shapingedu special issue was inspired by the concept of a “sibling” body of work to compliment the first publication installment. the themes of both bodies of work overlap in their calls to action, yet each article stands solidly on their own. educators, learning designers, and education leaders have felt the responsibility of helping to usher in the right solutions that will spur student engagement, inclusion and success. eleven articles unpack the various intertwined journeys we must embark on together to bolster digital equity and inclusion, to recognize all forms of learning and to spur an even more harmonious connections between our institutions and the workforce of the future. keywords: shapingedu, humanizing, learning citation: becker, s. a., & leahy, s. m. (2021). foreword: the final installment. current issues in education, 22(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1974 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 1/5/2021 introduction 2020—the year of the covid-19 pandemic, of course, but also the year taylor swift (2020) released two surprise albums: folklore and evermore. not only that, but she characterized them as “sister” albums—sonically similar with intersecting narratives and themes. so when it http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/xxxx foreword: the final installment current issues in education, 21(2) 2 came time for us to compile the second and final installment of our shapingedu special edition of the cie journal, we felt inspired by this concept of sibling bodies of work with songs in both installments that overlap in both themes and calls to action. and yet, each article stands on its own solid footing on the forest floor. the criteria for articles in this edition are the shapingedu actions (shapingedu, n.d.) that help us to understand and advance the futures of learning in the digital age. and, as we escaped further into the brush-filled woods that covid propelled whole education systems into, we have been enthralled by the new possibilities—afforded by untethering ourselves from traditional learning paradigms. our first installment centered us as it delved into how we can humanize learning experiences during a time in life where we are all realizing just how human we are, as discussed in the special issue introduction (becker et al., 2020). educators, learning designers, and education leaders have felt the responsibility of helping to usher in the right solutions that will spur student engagement, inclusion and success. with new territory to chart, many of us have had the opportunity to create our own folklore when it comes to shaping the future of learning. what does utopia look like? how do we get there? eleven articles unpack the various intertwined journeys we must embark on together to bolster digital equity and inclusion, to recognize all forms of learning and to spur an even more harmonious connections between our institutions and the workforce of the future. we’re pleased to share with you our own track list that both concludes this special edition and points at next steps toward the future as we continue to shape education together—forevermore! track list 1. designing learning experiences for the future of learning in the digital age thurber 2. inclusive access for all – dority baker, lindburg 3. an untapped resource for fostering student success whitmer 4. helping stem students thrive: adult learning pathways prusko 5. the digitization of white women’s tears messmore 6. innovatively preparing the teacher workforce reinking 7. self-mapped learning pathways crosslin 8. a collective case-study on navigating faculty bilingualism geringer 9. catalyzing a culture of care and innovation through prescriptive and impact analytics to create full-cycle learning kil, baldasare and milliron 10. thinking backward haymes 11. the castle and the paths berman for the first track, derek thurber opens the journal installment by grounding us in what is practical. we already have hundreds of years of pedagogical research and best practices to build upon, so how do we get started? the article focuses on designing learning experiences that build on existing instructional design models but also incorporates a deep understanding of humans, how we learn, and ultimately what motivates us. track two reveals the major hook—the lynchpin of shaping the future of learning: inclusion and access. a duet from authors marcia dority baker and jaci lindburg for this article share firsthand how their oer (open education resources) and inclusive access pilots are helping students save money and gain access to vital learning materials. learn how the approach to service is being iterated in an agile manner thanks to a growing chorus of stakeholder feedback. https://shapingedu.asu.edu/10-actions https://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/announcement/view/35 foreword: the final installment current issues in education, 21(2) 3 track three, authored by susan whitmer, strikes a utopian chord, envisioning an education system that honors every learner’s unique lived experiences and supports the expectations of learners for their individual life goals. principles of universal design for learning (udl) provide a framework for creating this caliber of digital and physical environments. we reach a crescendo in our installment as we arrive at track four. patrice prusko illuminates three women’s reactions as they have been surrounded by stories of underrepresented and first-generation students who were lagging behind or dropping out. they launched an online series dedicated to helping stem students thrive, leveraging the women in stem cooperative—56 institutions, eight organizations, four countries, and 23 states. talk about backup vocals! look at how these tears ricochet. it’s worth noting that track five historically represents what ms. swift considers to be the most vulnerable track on every album (bain, 2020). in our track five, author and poet niki messmore gets candid on how sometimes the higher education practitioners and scholars discussing social justice across social media may unintentionally perpetuate the same systems of oppression they detest. the sixth track in the installment is from anni reinking that explores the innovative practice of virtual training for teachers in an effort to reduce stress, and increase success of the educator workforce. this paper looks at a small study of novice and preservice educators, and the use of virtual professional development to address the challenges of the profession in an effort to reduce professional burnout. in the seventh track matt crosslin highlights the effectiveness of self-mapped learning pathways that cut through the traditional (perhaps outdated) paradigm of a single predetermined pathway. crosslin’s paper explores course design leveraging instructivism and connectivism modalities, and offers design considerations based on practical application and research findings. the eighth track in this anthology from laura geringer explores the relationship between research and reflection around faculty experiences navigating bilingualism. the research study examines faculty experiences of native french speakers working in an english-language university and academic setting. through a thoughtful reflection, geringer highlights the first hand experience of embarking on a research process and her thoughts on the relationship between research and field practice. david kil, angela baldasare, and mark milliron raise the beats per minute (bmp) as we hit the ninth track. the authors explore the central tenet of student success to the mission of higher education, and examine the gap between the idealized synergy of people, processes, and machine learning (ml) and what is often not the case. their paper examines how ml can be used in promoting a culture of care and innovation through full-cycle learning. the tenth and penultimate track on this installment is tom haymes’s thought piece challenging us to look backwards and understand the implications of the newtonian-rooted paradigm of our current educational information exchange, so we can be better prepared for the future of information. this paper posits the needs to shift from the aforementioned information exchange schema and transition to an einsteinian (or relativistic) model to intentionally facilitate the augmentation of human knowledge. haymes provides a vision for what this information exchange might look like, and how it might be able to be built. the final track crafted by michael berman, is an engaging story that takes place in a village setting where the townspeople look to the mysterious castle upon a craggy rock imbued https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2020/11/26/track-5-meaning/ foreword: the final installment current issues in education, 21(2) 4 with intrigue and exclusivity. a king working to limit the number of villagers who could enter this prestigious castle and earn their “badge” of honor and prosperity. as the villagers increase their demand for access to the castle, the king has to make decisions—this story has two endings for you the reader to choose. does this story end happily ever after for the king and townspeople? or does it end on a darker cautionary tale of greed and exclusion that leads to the ruin of the castle? that will be up to you. references bain, e. (2020, november, 26). taylor swift’s track 5 meaning explained: fifth song on every album has a hidden message! hitc. https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2020/11/26/track-5meaning/ becker, s. a., leahy, s. m., flintoff, k., & scragg, b. (2020). introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age. current issues in education, 21(2). retrieved from: https://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1946. shapingedu. (n.d.). 10 actions to shape the future of learning: our origin story. shapingedu. https://shapingedu.asu.edu/10-actions swift, t. (2020). evermore [album]. taylor swift. swift, t. (2020). folklore [album]. taylor swift. author / guest editor notes sean m. leahy, phd arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications, university technology office; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff peter carnley acs, tides coordinator kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2020/11/26/track-5-meaning/ https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2020/11/26/track-5-meaning/ https://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1946 https://shapingedu.asu.edu/10-actions mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au foreword: the final installment current issues in education, 21(2) 5 volume 21, issue 2 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari executive editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stampler melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age current issues in education, 21(2) 1 volume 21, issue 2 june 18, 2020 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age samantha adams becker arizona state university sean m. leahy arizona state university kim flintoff curtin university ben scragg arizona state university abstract: the shapingedu community was established in 2018, with a call to action for a global gathering of dreamers, doers and drivers. this diverse group came together and began to form a new vision for the pathways to the future of a more connected and relevant global approach to education. emerging from this group was the vision that learning and teaching are inherently human activities, and that even in an increasingly digital and regulated world, all learning should support and enhance our development as people, communities, and societies. this brief introduction outlines the driving factors that brought forth the call for proposals, and provides a contextual grounding for the first selection of papers to be included in this first installment of the special issue. keywords: shapingedu, humanizing, learning citation: becker, s. a., leahy, s. m., flintoff, k., & scragg, b. (2020). introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age. current issues in education, 21(2). retrieved from introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age current issues in education, 21(2) 2 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1946 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 6/15/2020 shapingedu is a community of dreamers, doers, and drivers shaping the future of learning in the digital age. the vision is for changemaking individuals from a wide variety of learning-focused organizations across the world to collaborate on big ideas for transforming education. by deliberate design, shapingedu is action-oriented and believes the future is what we invent it to be. (https://shapingedu.asu.edu) introduction the shapingedu community was established in 2018, with a call to action for a global gathering of dreamers, doers and drivers. in april of that year, 129 leading practitioners, theorists, and thought leaders came together at skysong in scottsdale, arizona. behind the call was a small team of inspired and inspirational educators based at arizona state university. with the vision of asu’s chief information officer (cio), lev gonick, and the dynamic community-building capabilities of samantha becker guiding the mission, the dreamers, doers, and drivers came together and began to form a new vision for the pathways to the future of a more connected and relevant global approach to education. the resultant neighbourhoods began to focus on the primary concerns for the future of learning that became the inaugural 10 actions to shape the future of learning in the shapingedu skysong communique and represents our origin story. the 10 actions that were identified are as follows: 1. promote access and equality 2. connect education and the workforce of the future 3. build constellations of innovation 4. recognize all forms of learning 5. personalize learning 6. humanize learning 7. bolster intergenerational leadership for learning futures 8. foster immersive learning 9. innovate artificial intelligence applications 10. embed data-driven approaches for student success (shapingedu, n.d.) underpinning the ideas that emerged from that first meeting was a unified vision that learning and teaching are inherently human activities, and that even in an increasingly digital and regulated world, all learning should support and enhance our development as people, communities, and societies. these ideas were aggregated in our 2019 shapingedu memorial union communique, and they represent our commitment to human values, innovation, and action. it was after the 2019 event that the call went out for this special issue, which was to be launched when we met again in 2020. at that time we were unaware of the looming relevance of http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1946 https://shapingedu.asu.edu/home https://shapingedu.asu.edu/10-actions https://shapingedu.asu.edu/10-actions https://shapingedu.asu.edu/sites/default/files/2019-shaping-edu-communique_0.pdf https://shapingedu.asu.edu/sites/default/files/2019-shaping-edu-communique_0.pdf introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age current issues in education, 21(2) 3 our commitment: education leaders must continuously explore and anticipate possible outliers that will impact every facet of teaching and learning (shapingedu, 2019). as we came together in 2020, the early influences of the covid-19 pandemic were being felt. some of us had been excluded from travelling, and preparations were made to accommodate virtual participation with those collocated at our regular meeting site at asu. over the course of the three days of activities the entire gathering transitioned to a fully online event. that set the scene for the global experience over the months following. as an editorial team we were affected. as founding shapingedu members within the original 130 dreamers, doers, and drivers, we were all intending to put the final touches to this special issue so it could be launched at the 2020 shapingedu gathering, we were all profoundly affected by the rapid changes in circumstances and ways of working that we suddenly faced. our regular work, and family responsibilities took on an urgency as we began to mitigate and adapt to the effects of the pandemic; our priorities shifted to ensuring we could work, communicate, and support others; our working days became a flurry of missions and responsibilities that saw us all working extended hours, and meeting at all hours of the day and night. like the rest of the world, we were coming to terms with a rapidly reimagined way of living and working. in many ways, it was because this group comprised of people who were used to working at the bleeding edge of educational technology in practice, and were adept at community engagement, and had the lived experience of being innovators and early adopters that we were able to not simply ride out the storm but to set new goals and new questions that would carry us well beyond the crisis we were experiencing. now, as institutions and schools around the world are diving into their new normals, we are able to return to the task of launching this special issue of current issues in education. the submissions selected for this edition are unintentionally prophetic. they were all created prior to the realisation of the covid-19 interruption to our lives. and as such, they highlight the foresight and vision of our community in relation to global priorities in education. when we launched the call for proposals for this special issue, we were living in another world – one that predominantly viewed online learning as experimental – or second class. what happens when the alternative choice becomes the mainstream reality, nearly overnight? for starters, we leverage the extensive body of research on effective pedagogy. next, we consider new visions for ideal future states for education, especially from the people who have been living and doing that research. the global asu shapingedu community of practice is brimming with education changemakers. our shared vision for the future of learning is a framing for the new normal we need to create. the articles submitted by these changemakers resonate today more than ever as they reflect the shifts that need to happen – from small steps to seismic efforts. special issue summaries over the coming months, we will be releasing the special issue articles in installments that capture specific calls to action for shaping the future of learning in the digital age. this first installment underscores the vitality of humanizing learning, no matter what form it takes. making learners feel welcome, embracing inclusive practices, and leading with authenticity are core to helping learners thrive. it is in this same spirit that we welcome you, special issue readers, to dream big with us. the first contribution of this installment entitled “humanizing online teaching to equitize higher education” by michelle pacansky-brock (foothill-deanza community college introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age current issues in education, 21(2) 4 district), michael smedshammer (modesto junior college), and kim vincent-layton (humboldt state university) addresses the gaps in traditional online learning and presents a model for humanized online teaching based on a theoretical framework that draws from culturally responsive teaching (crt), social presence, validation theory, and universal design for learners (udl). this paper discusses real teaching examples that explore a range of humanizing strategies to promote non-cognitive components of learning, and also addresses the identification of meaningful professional development around humanized online teaching. the second contribution from tom haymes (ideaspaces), entitled “the stac model: rethinking basic functionality of informal learning spaces” explores the realm of the “third space” and the role these often-underutilized spaces can play in student success, and argues that these spaces can be identified as a key facilitator for student success. in this paper haymes provides the stac (stickiness, toolsets, adjacencies, and community) model that can be used as a framework for prioritizing design and technologies within any contextual space to retain students into said learning environment. third, karen costa presents a multimedia exploration entitled “the value of imperfect videos” in which she shares her philosophy of creating imperfect videos as a tool for humanizing learning. costa explores how this strategy is aimed at connecting with new and traditional learners. this contribution to the special issue also stands out as a unique video-based contribution, which by its own nature explores contemporary ways of engaging with our diverse and talented shapingedu community. fourth, heather mccullough, and kim buch, university of north carolina at charlotte present the work and recent findings of their center for teaching and learning on a recently implemented micro-credential option for faculty and graduate students. in this paper mccullough and buch explore the increasing role of micro-credentialing in higher education, and discuss the outcomes and implications on professional development through the lens of the teaching certificate program at unc charlotte. this paper offers a contemporary look into the observations, and identification of future challenges of higher education institutions moving towards or adopting micro-credentialing strategies. the fifth contribution to this first special issue installment is “spatial computing: creating the future of learning” by emory craig (digital bodies) and maya georgieva (the new school). in this article craig and georgieva position spatial computing as the fourth paradigm of the digital revolution and discuss the potential to change the landscape of learning. the authors position the reader to think beyond the simple use of the underlying technologies (as interesting and complex as each of those may be) and to think about the deeper connection to learning, and development of social interactions in a truly virtualized environment. the paper presents a critical line of inquiry that explores the potential to leverage new and emergent technologies to transform the human experience. these pieces, and the ones that will follow over the next couple of months, also explore the futures landscape and raise thought-provoking questions and scenarios that challenge the reader to think critically and openly about the anticipated journey we are collectively embarking on. as the editors of this special issue, we would like to thank everyone who has contributed to the realization of this publication. not just the courageous and hard-working contributors but all those who have travelled with them through our community. every idea, every thought in this issue was informed and influenced by the relationships, the discussion, the commitments to action, and the considered, critical evaluation of all the work of all our community. introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age current issues in education, 21(2) 5 the authors of the works presented have courageously challenged us to reconsider our purpose and practice in education, they offer new ways of seeing, and alternative pathways to the outcomes we all hope for. they have set about to highlight the way markers, and the emerging shifts that will be required to ensure that the digital age of learning also serves as an amplification of our collective humanity, connectedness and responsibilities to our future; they shed light on the pluralities of our dependence upon each other and the planet that supports us; they unify us while accepting all our differences and nuances of being. references shapingedu. (n.d.). 10 actions to shape the future of learning: our origin story. shapingedu. https://shapingedu.asu.edu/10-actions shapingedu (2019) dreaming, doing, and driving the future of learning the 2019 shapingedu memorial union communique. shaping edu. https://shapingedu.asu.edu/sites/default/files/2019-shaping-edu-communique_0.pdf author/guest editor notes samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu sean m. leahy, ph.d. arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu kim flintoff, m.ed macel curtin university, learning futures advisor k.flintoff@curtin.edu.au ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu https://shapingedu.asu.edu/10-actions https://shapingedu.asu.edu/sites/default/files/2019-shaping-edu-communique_0.pdf mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:k.flintoff@curtin.edu.au mailto:bscragg@asu.edu introduction: shaping the futures of learning in the digital age current issues in education, 21(2) 6 volume 21, issue 2 june 18, 2020 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari executive editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf cie template volume 19, issue 1 march 14, 2016 issn 1099-839x examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students chanut poondej and thanita lerdpornkulrat srinakharinwirot university, thailand abstract: in the literature on motivational goals, there has been an increase on the interest of a concept of the 2 × 2 achievement goal framework. however, evidences supporting the reliability and validity of this framework are still needed. the study reported in this paper was to validate the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale by conducting a confirmatory factor analysis. items in this framework were intended to measure student’s motivational orientations toward learning achievement. participants were 518 undergraduate students in thailand. descriptive statistics and reliability estimates were reported. the results revealed the validity of the four-factor structure of achievement goal orientation scale. this study contribute the empirical evidences and cross-cultural validity of the 2 × 2 achievement goal framework (mastery-approach, mastery-avoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goal orientations). keywords: goal orientation, confirmatory factor analysis, construct validity, 2 × 2 achievement goal framework, thailand apa-style citation: poondej, c., & lerdpornkulrat, t. (2016). examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students. current issues in education, 19(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1418 accepted: november 12th, 2015 over the past two decades, achievement goal theory has been evidently used to understand how individuals approach and engage in academic activities related to achievement situations. initially, achievement goal theory has used a dichotomous framework in which mastery and performance goals represented contrasting orientations. a mastery goal orientation has been theorized to correlate with a focus on mastering tasks, developing competence, gaining knowledge, and intrinsic interests of learning whereas a performance goal orientation has been defined as a focus on demonstrating competence, outperforming others, avoiding incompetent situations, and the extrinsic values. performance goal orientations were considered as maladaptive when compared with mastery goal orientations (ames & archer, 1988; dweck & current issues in education, 19(1) 1 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1418 poondej & lerdpornkulrat: examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students leggett, 1988; elliot, 2005; nicholls, 1984). however, there have been some evidences to support that performance goals are beneficial in some situations (harackiewicz, barron, & elliot, 1998; pintrich & garcia, 1991). theorists suggested to replace the traditional masteryperformance goal framework with the trichotomous framework by dichotomizing the performance goal into approach and avoidance dimensions. the approach-performance dimension refers to the desire to demonstrate ability and outperform others, whereas the avoidance-performance refers to the desire to avoid failure, and not being inferior to others (elliot & church, 1997; elliot & harackiewicz, 1996). more recently, according to a further revision of achievement goal theory, elliot and mcgregor (2001) proposed a 2 × 2 achievement goal framework by applying an avoidance dimension to a mastery goal. therefore, this framework consisted of four goals: masteryapproach; mastery-avoidance; performance-approach; and performance-avoidance. in the mastery-avoidance goal construct, competence was defined as “the absolute requirements of the task or one’s own pattern of attainment” and incompetence was defined as “the focal point of regulatory attention” (elliot & mcgregor, 2001, p. 502). students with mastery avoidance goal orientation focus mainly on avoiding a failure to develop competence, avoiding misunderstanding, and avoiding not to learn or master the task. however, despite the four-factor conceptualization (2 × 2 achievement goal framework) was introduced by elliot and mcgregor (2001) over the past decade, there still have been much more studies applying a trichotomous model than a 2 × 2 model (van yperen, elliot, & anseel, 2009). one problem mentioned in the literature on applying the 2 × 2 achievement goal model to the study was that some constructs of this framework were still quite difficult for participants to understand and interpret when they were responding to the items of self-reported questionnaires. in particular, the concept of mastery-avoidance goal has been still under debate and needed to be more clarified (ciani & sheldon, 2010; marzouq, carr & slade, 2011, as cited in carr & marzouq, 2012). in quite a few countries, this 2 × 2 achievement goal model has been validated and used, nevertheless, most studies were done in the western countries (e.g., baranik, barron, & finney, 2007; conroy, elliot, & hofer, 2003; elliot & mcgregor, 2001; wang, biddle, & elliot, 2007). therefore, emerging research studies conducted in other parts of the world on the construct validity of 2 × 2 achievement goal model can help obtaining a full understanding of the crosscultural use of achievement goal orientation theory. therefore, the purpose of this study was to establish the construct validity of the thai version of 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale by using a confirmatory factor analysis technique. we hypothesized that our data will support the construct validity of the four-factor structure of achievement goal orientation scale. methods participants our samples were 518 volunteer undergraduate students in a university in thailand. we employed convenience sampling method. more than 98% of the responses to the survey were complete. female students comprised the majority of the final sample of our analysis (392 participants or 75.7%). in our sample, there were 42.5% of social science, 17.4% of humanities, 5.2% of health science, 17.6% of economics, and 17.4% of nursing students. instruments the first section of the survey asked for general information (e.g. gender, faculty, major, gpa). the second section of the survey measured students’ achievement goal orientation current issues in education, 19(1) 2 poondej & lerdpornkulrat: examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students (consisted of 15 items of the 2 × 2 achievement goal framework). the achievement goal orientation items were composed to reflect four goal orientations: mastery-approach (e.g., ‘i feel satisfied when i learn new things in my class’); performance-approach (e.g., ‘the most important thing is that other people should think of me as excellent’); performance-avoidance (e.g., ‘i avoid asking questions because i don’t want to look stupid’); and mastery-avoidance goal orientation (e.g., ‘i worry that i may not learn all that i possibly could in this class’). items in the thai version measuring mastery-approach, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance were brought from prior research completed in thailand (poondej, koul, & sujivorakul, 2013) whereas mastery-avoidance items were adopted from elliot and mcgregor (2001)’s study. we employed a standard research technique of translation/back-translation (see behling & law, 2000) to develop our mastery-avoidance items which were initially in english language. two bilingual researchers translated each item into thai and reviewed them for the consensus then translated each item back into english to check whether they measured the same ideas. finally, english and thai versions were found to be conceptually equivalent. we used a 5-point (likerttype) response scale from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5), which larger values indicated a stronger endorsement of goal orientations. data analysis to determine the internal consistency reliability of the instrument, the coefficient cronbach’s alpha was performed. alpha coefficient values were above the acceptable threshold of .60 (george & mallery, 2002; kline, 2000). we tested the achievement goal orientation scale by using a confirmatory factor analysis (cfa). maximum likelihood estimation methods were derived from covariance matrices. model fit was evaluated using the following indices: 1) the chi-square (c2); 2) comparative fit index (cfi); 3) goodness of fit index (gfi); 4) normed fit index (nfi); and 5) rooting mean squared error of approximation (rmsea). c2, the original fit index for structural models, is a test of differences between the observed and expected covariance matrices. non-significant value indicates that the hypothesized model fits the data. however, one problem with the chi-square test of model fitting is that it is sensitive to the normality of the data and to the sample size; it very readily reaches significance with large sample size (barrett, 2007; bollen, 2005; tinsley & brown, 2000). due to these drawbacks of chi-square test, therefore, we considered alternative fit statistics which were rmsea, cfi, gfi, and nfi. the cutoff criteria for these fit indices recommended by baumgartner and homburg (1996), and hu and bentler (1999) should fall between 0 and 1. the values which are greater than .90 (for cfi and gfi), and .95 (for nfi) are considered as a good fit between the model and the data. good fit index of rmsea value should be at or less than .06. moreover, ratio of the change in chi-square to degrees of freedom (c2/df) should be at or less than 2 or 3. results table 1 shows results of descriptive statistics, means and standard deviations of the measure of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation model. the reliability values (cronbach’s alpha) for the measurement of ‘mastery-approach’, ‘mastery-avoidance’, ‘performanceapproach’, and ‘performance-avoidance’ as sub-scales for the model were .66, .85, .84, and .76, respectively. after using the cfa technique with the observed data, the c2 value was significant in a model (c2 = 281.258, df = 84, p < .01, c2/df = 3.35). although this model had a statistically significant c2 value, it was not surprising because the c2 is sensitive to the normality of the data and to the large sample size (barrett, 2007). other fit indices showed the acceptance of the model current issues in education, 19(1) 3 poondej & lerdpornkulrat: examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students (cfi = .927, gfi = .932, nfi = .900, rmsea = .067). factor loadings of the items and intercorrelations among the four achievement goals are presented in figure 1. table 1 descriptive statistics for outcome measures males (n=126) females (n=392) total (n=518) m sd m sd m sd mastery-approach 3.88 .58 3.82 .55 3.84 .55 mastery-avoidance 3.47 .90 3.57 .80 3.55 .82 performance-approach 3.42 .82 3.31 .76 3.34 .78 performance-avoidance 2.70 .97 2.45 .85 2.51 .88 figure 1. confirmatory factor analysis of the achievement goal model. current issues in education, 19(1) 4 poondej & lerdpornkulrat: examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students discussion and conclusion although the 2 × 2 achievement goal framework has been introduced in the literature for over past two decades, most studies still used a trichotomous achievement goal model. one of the reasons is that there are not many studies on the construct validity and reliability of the 2 × 2 scale. this study was proposed to contribute to the body of knowledge on the validity of achievement goal orientation based on the 2 × 2 framework by testing constructs’ reliability, and further evaluating the construct validity for the cross-cultural validity in the non-western context. two notable findings of the current study supported and/or extended prior researches. firstly, as expected, the results from confirmatory factor analysis showing an adequate fit with the data support the original hypothesis of the four-factor structure (mastery-approach, masteryavoidance, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance). our results are entirely consistent with prior researches measuring goal orientation using four-factor conceptualization in the western countries (e.g., baranik et al., 2007; radosevich, allyn, & yun, 2007). thus, the emergence of the four-factor model of the achievement goal orientation indicated that undergraduate students in our sample understood our accurate explanations of the behaviors of a character pursuing these four types of achievement goals. in particular, we included the masteryavoidance goal orientation in this study when most prior studies in the achievement goal literature have not included this construct in the measurement of the goal orientation. secondly, the internal consistency values indicated the reliability of this instrument with the smallest value of .66 and the largest value of .85. hence, our findings indicate the good evidence for employing the 2 × 2 achievement goal framework to the future studies on achievement goal orientations. especially, mastery-avoidance construct can be added to the achievement goal orientation survey. however, the present study contains some limitations. in cfa, although most fit indices of the four-factor model of achievement goal orientation indicated an acceptable model fit with the data, but these values did not reach the level of a good fit which should be above .95 for cfi, gfi, and nfi, and less than .05 for rmsea (see baumgartner & homburg, 1996; hu & bentler, 1999). secondly, as the limitation of using self-reported questionnaires, the results may not reflect the truth of participant’s manner. the results may be exaggerated because participants might be too embarrassed to reveal private details. in conclusion, the present research provides further evidences that support the independence of the four achievement goal constructs (2 × 2 framework), and also shows empirical evidences that demonstrate the validity and reliability of achievement goal orientation scale of the thai version. we also again encourage researchers to use this 2 × 2 framework for the future achievement goal orientation studies. furthermore, future research ought to examine the validity of this instrument in other contexts as well (e.g., high-school contexts). references ames, c., & archer, j. (1988). achievement goals in the classroom: students' learning strategies and motivation processes. journal of educational psychology, 80(3), 260-267. doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.80.3.260 baranik, l. e., barron, k. e., & finney, s. j. (2007). measuring goal orientation in a work domain: construct validity evidence for the 2 × 2 framework. educational and psychological measurement, 67(4), 697-718. doi: 10.1177/0013164406292090 barrett, p. (2007). structural equation modelling: adjudging model fit. personality and individual differences, 42(5), 815-824. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2006.09.018 current issues in education, 19(1) 5 poondej & lerdpornkulrat: examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students baumgartner, h., & homburg, c. (1996). applications of structural equation modeling in marketing and consumer research: a review. international journal of research in marketing, 13(2), 139-161. doi: 10.1016/0167-8116(95)00038-0 behling, o., & law, k. s. (2000). translating questionnaires and other research instruments: problems and solutions (book 133). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. bollen, k. a. (2005). structural equation models. encyclopedia of biostatistics. hoboken, nj: john wiley & sons. doi: 10.1002/0470011815.b2a13089 carr, a., & marzouq, s. (2012). the 2 × 2 achievement goal framework in primary school: do young children pursue mastery-avoidance goals? psychology of education review, 36(2), 3-8. ciani, k. d., & sheldon, k. m. (2010). evaluating the mastery-avoidance goal construct: a study of elite college baseball players. psychology of sport and exercise, 11(2), 127-132. doi: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2009.04.005 conroy, d. e., elliot, a. j., & hofer, s. m. (2003). a 2 × 2 achievement goals questionnaire for sport: evidence for factorial invariance, temporal stability, and external validity. journal of sport & exercise psychology, 25(4), 456-476. dweck, c. s., & leggett, e. l. (1988). a social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. psychological review, 95(2), 256-273. doi: 10.1037/0033-295x.95.2.256 elliot, a. j. (2005). a conceptual history of the achievement goal construct. in a. j. elliot & c. s. dweck (eds.), handbook of competence and motivation (pp. 52-72). new york, ny: guilford press. elliot, a. j., & church, m. a. (1997). a hierarchical model of approach and avoidance achievement motivation. journal of personality and social psychology, 72(1), 218-232. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.72.1.218 elliot, a. j., & harackiewicz, j. m. 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(2000). the handbook of psychological testing (2nd ed.). london, england: routledge. nicholls, j. g. (1984). achievement motivation: conceptions of ability, subjective experience, task choice, and performance. psychological review, 91(3), 328-346. doi: 10.1037/0033295x.91.3.328 pintrich, p. r., & garcia, t. (1991). student goal orientation and self-regulation in the college classroom. in m. maehr & p. pintrich (eds.), advances in motivation and achievement (vol. 7) (pp. 371–402). greenwich, ct: jai press. current issues in education, 19(1) 6 poondej & lerdpornkulrat: examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students poondej, c., koul, r., & sujivorakul, c. (2013). achievement goal orientation and the critical thinking disposition of college students across academic programmes. journal of further and higher education, 37(4), 504-518. doi: 10.1080/0309877x.2011.645463 radosevich, d. j., allyn, m. r., & yun, s. (2007). goal orientation and goal setting: predicting performance by integrating four-factor goal orientation theory with goal setting processes. seoul journal of business, 13(1), 21-47. tinsley, h. e. a., & brown, s. d. (2000). handbook of applied multivariate statistics and mathematical modeling. san diego, ca: academic press. van yperen, n. w., elliot, a. j., & anseel, f. (2009). the influence of mastery-avoidance goals on performance improvement. european journal of social psychology, 39(6), 932-943. doi: 10.1002/ejsp.590 wang, c. k. j., biddle, s. j. h., & elliot, a. j. (2007). the 2×2 achievement goal framework in a physical education context. psychology of sport and exercise, 8(2), 147-168. doi: 10.1016/j.psychsport.2005.08.012 current issues in education, 19(1) 7 poondej & lerdpornkulrat: examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students author notes chanut poondej srinakharinwirot university 114 sukhumvit 23, bangkok 10110, thailand chanutp@g.swu.ac.th chanut poondej is a lecturer in innovative learning center, srinakharinwirot university, thailand. his research has focused on innovative learning, online teaching and learning, critical thinking, student motivation, learning approach, classroom learning environment, and general education. thanita lerdpornkulrat srinakharinwirot university 114 sukhumvit 23, bangkok 10110, thailand thanital@g.swu.ac.th thanita lerdpornkulrat is a lecturer in innovative learning center, srinakharinwirot university, thailand. her research has focused on student motivation, student engagement, classroom learning environment, innovative learning, stem education, and general education. acknowledgments: we would like to thank assoc. prof. dr. ravinder koul from penn state university for his timely advice and help which was a constant source of inspiration. current issues in education, 19(1) 8 mailto:chanutp@g.swu.ac.th mailto:thanital@g.swu.ac.th poondej & lerdpornkulrat: examining the construct validity of the thai version of the 2 × 2 achievement goal orientation scale among undergraduate students volume 19, issue 1 march 14, 2016 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editor lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera evelyn concepcion baca james cunningham darlene michelle gonzales colin kavanagh laura beth kelly tomé martinez priyanka parekh bethany richmond lydia ross olivia stewart joseph sweet lori talarico faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers current issues in education, 19(1) 9 volume 3, number 4 march 3, 2000 issn 1099-839x ethos and pedagogical communication: suggestions for enhancing credibility in the classroom william a. haskins mckendree college whether at the conscious or unconscious level, a student's perception of the teacher's ethos, or speaker's character, has an important impact on how he or she will react to the teacher and how effective the teacher will be in the classroom. erosion of a teacher's ethos can quickly spell disaster in the classroom. this article looks at the critical relationship between ethos and pedagogical communication. the analysis will explore the definition of ethos, its various dimensions, and suggestions for improving it in the classroom. it was john's first day as a new science teacher at a middle school in illinois. he dreamed of this day; he grew anxious at the thought of how his students would respond to him. would they like him? would they respect him and his knowledge? would they trust him enough to feel comfortable in asking him questions or confiding in him? the questions that john raised are related to one of the main traits teachers must demonstrate in the classroom: ethos. as with any teacher, john needs to be perceived as having high ethos (i.e., one's character or credibility) in the eyes of his students. ethos, then, is the perceived degree of character or credibility that a person believes exists in another person or object. how john helps to develop his ethos, or credibility, in the minds of his students will play a significant role in his success as a teacher. today's teachers face a variety of reactions from their students and other constituencies: from simple praise to national awards, from insults to dismissal, from pushing and shoving to physical violence. no matter what the reaction, at the core of the response is the person's perception of the teacher's credibility. whether at the conscious or unconscious level, the individual's perception of the teacher's credibility has a tremendous impact on both how he or she reacts to the teacher and on how effective the teacher will be as an educator and communicator (frymier & thompson, 1992). erosion of a teacher's credibility can quickly spell disaster in the classroom; worse yet, violence may quickly erupt in a climate where the student has little respect for the credibility of teachers or other individuals. but to develop one's ethos, a teacher must communicate effectively with his or her students in the classroom (frymier & thompson, 1992). part of the teacher's pedagogy must exhibit itself through a pedagogical communication process that helps the teacher to be perceived as credible by the students (mccrosky & richmond, 1992; nussbaum, 1992). for purposes of this paper, pedagogical communication is defined as a process of communication used by teachers to advance educational subject matter. such behaviors as vocal variation (e.g., changes in rate, inflection, volume, movement) or visual variation (e.g., change in facial expressions, eye contact, gestures) teachers use to help communicate subject matter are examples of pedagogical communication. and more, research suggests that these behaviors may increase students'cognitive and affective learning (gorham, current issues in education vol. 3 no. 4 1988; richmond, gorhan, & mccrosky, 1987). this article looks at the critical relationship between ethos and pedagogical communication. the analysis will explore the definition of ethos, its various dimensions, and suggestions for improving it in the classroom. definition of ethos the concept of ethos received considerable attention from the ancient greeks, especially by the great philosopher and teacher, aristotle. in his work the rhetoric, he stated: the character [ethos] of the speaker is a cause of persuasion when the speech is so uttered as to make him worthy of belief; for as a rule we trust men of probity more, and more quickly, about things in general, while on points outside the realm of exact knowledge, where opinion is divided, we trust them absolutely (aristotle, 1960, p. 9). additionally, he claimed that the speaker's "character [ethos] is the most potent of all the means of persuasion" (p. 9). more contemporary scholars view ethos as primarily the perception of credibility one has towards a communicator or his or her message or both (hamilton, 1998; johnson & coolen, 1995; booth-butterfield & gutowski, 1993; burgoon, birk & pfau, 1990). such scholars frequently use the term source credibility to describe the perception audience members have of a speaker's credibility (trenholm, 1989). a speaker, for instance, may be extremely knowledgeable in a certain subject area, but if audience members fail to perceive the speaker as knowledgeable, the speaker's level of expertise will not enhance his or her credibility (redmond, 2000). likewise, the speaker may view himself or herself as being honest and a person of good character. however, if the audience doubts this, the speaker's credibility diminishes in their minds (redmond, 2000). clearly, what becomes critical in this dynamic communication exchange between a speaker and the audience is the audience's perception of the speaker's traits and ultimate judgment of the source's credibility (trenholm, 1989). as stated earlier, ethos is defined as the perceived degree of character or credibility that a person believes exists in another person or object. stated differently, how much trust and belief one has in a communicator or in his or her message or both will have an important bearing on how persuasive the communicator will be in the mind of the listener. for teachers, then, their credibility can play a significant part in how effective they will be in the classroom. suggestions for improving ethos and its dimensions through pedagogical communication before starting with suggestions, one needs to realize that a communicator's ethos does not occur in isolation from other important factors occurring in the environment. this is particularly true with the classroom environment. factors such as "timing, context, content, and student ability" (nussabaum, 1992, p. 179), can quickly affect a teacher's ethos in ways not predicted. with this in mind, the following dimensions, suggestions and examples for improving a teacher's credibility through his or her pedagogical communication are presented. the topic of credibility, has received significant attention in the fields of communication and psychology (hamilton, 1998; johnston & coolen, 1995; larson, 1992; mccroskey & young, 1981; berlo, 1961) . variables that have emerged as salient factors of credibility are trust, competence, and dynamism (mccrosky & young, 1981). a more recent factor receiving notice by scholars is that of teacher immediacy, which "refers to the use of communication behaviors [e.g., movement, enthusiasm, use of gestures, humor, vocal variety] that reduce both the psychological and physical distance between two individuals" ( myers, zhong, & guan, 1998). teacher immediacy has been found to be an important variable for influencing teachers' effectiveness and for helping students to diminish their apprehension in the classroom (mccrosky & richmond, 1992). the first dimension explored is trust. trust appears in many communication relationships between friends, family members, doctors and patients—and especially between teachers and students. verderber and verderber (1995) define trust as "placing confidence in the other" (p. 143). clearly, in a classroom, both student and teacher need to operate in a climate of trust where each can place confidence in the other, as is the case when a student elects to confide in a teacher. the student may trust the teacher to refrain from disclosing particular information or may trust the teacher to provide sound guidance on personal or academic matters, for instance. trust must be earned through the pedagogical communication process that teachers display with their students. any violation of this trust can potentially rupture the professional relationship that teachers need to maintain if honest dialogues are to occur. suggestions for improving trust through pedagogical communication include: 1. adapting messages to listeners by being genuinely sincere and honest in the presentation of information (haskins & staudacher, 1987), 2. identifying strengths and weaknesses in information (e.g., reliability, biases) to demonstrate the speaker's honesty in presenting messages (larson, 1992) , ethos and pedagogical communication: suggestions for enhancing credibility in the classroom 3 3. introducing sources (which may be trusted by students) used to develop class material (lucas, 1998), 4. explaining the soundness of the analysis, arguments, and evidence that can help to reinforce trust between teacher and student (haskins & staudacher, 1987), and 5. earning trust by showing trust towards students in the educational process (haskins & staudacher, 1987). when presenting messages, teachers, then, may want to tailor their messages to relate to the level of understanding of their students. this needs to be done in ways that convey sincerity and honesty. for example, a teacher should not be afraid to say "i don't know" if he or she lacks information asked by a student. that in itself is an honest answer. certainly an "educated guess" or a response that suggests a willingness to seek out such information can further enhance a teacher's sincerity and honesty. whenever possible, teachers need to point out the strengths or weaknesses that exist in their messages and sources and why they exist. this may further enhance trust between teachers and students in the believability of teachers' messages. additionally, teachers need to encourage active learning by inviting students to engage in dialogues with them on issues related to class topics. students can learn from these types of exchanges to evaluate messages and sources for honesty and accuracy. the next dimension of ethos discussed is competence. but competence involves more than simply being knowledgeable. it involves a perception that others have of people concerning their degree of knowledge on topics, abilities to command such knowledge, and abilities to communicate this knowledge clearly. teachers constantly face being evaluated and tested by others, especially by students, concerning their level of knowledge on a variety of subjects. moreover, a teacher's command of the subject, as well as how he or she communicates this information, bears heavily on a student's perception of the teacher's competence. being perceived as competent communicators by students holds the potential for significant advantages (e.g., student interest, participation) for teachers. but, again, being perceived as competent means more than being perceived as intelligent. with this dimension of ethos, then, a teacher needs to demonstrate an excellent command of the subject matter. unless otherwise noted, the suggestions come from the author's personal educational experiences. suggestions for doing this through pedagogical communication include: 1. appearing highly organized in the presentation of subject matter (lucas, 1998), 2. delivering the message as free as possible of errors (e.g., grammar, pronunciation, enunciation) while maintaining strong eye contact with students (kearney & plax, 1999), 3. preparing thoroughly for class by being in control of the subject matter, key issues, sources, evidence, arguments or differing viewpoints on the subject (brydon & scott, 2000), 4. having lesson plans that are organized and detailed which can help teachers gain greater confidence and control of their subjects, and 5. using relevant personal experiences that can provide greater insights for students on the subject. teachers want their students to view them as being competent instructors. preparation is the key for establishing an organized, well developed message. for instance, the lesson plan needs to contain sound evidence, arguments, and current material that can gain and hold the attention of students. teachers can practice presenting their messages to allow for greater command of the subject and familiarity with their delivery of it. when appropriate, teachers should let their feelings help demonstrate both their interests as well as command of the topic. and more, if teachers feel uniquely qualified to address the subject (e.g., special training, awards earned), they can alert their students to these qualifications. for example, teachers may suggest that in high school or college they won awards in their fields of study. teachers must be careful not to brag, but to present this information as additional facts which help underscore their competency on specific subjects. a third dimension of ethos focuses on dynamism (lemert, 1963; berlo, 1961). simply put, this "is the degree to which the audience admires and identifies with the source's attractiveness, power or forcefulness, and energy" (larson, 1992, p. 226). this dimension correlates strongly to a person's level of charisma. certain teachers, for example, may exhibit a high level of energy in their presentations; they may display "a flair for the dramatic" that moves and excites listeners. dynamism, however, does not necessarily mean that a teacher must always display a high level of energy. as larson (1992) explains: "dynamic speakers don't necessarily move about or wave their arms to give off dynamism cues. they just seem to take up a lot of psychological space. they enter a room and people expect them to be in charge" (p. 226). dynamic speakers appear to be in charge of current issues in education vol. 3 no. 4 the situation. people expect them to know what their discussing and to lead them in the discussion. in the classroom, teachers need to appear not only in control of their environment but energized by it. to look bored or distant invites communication disaster. such impressions can quickly evaporate any feelings of excitement students have for their teachers or class content. some thoughts for enhancing classroom dynamism through pedagogical communication include: 1. developing a powerful style of speaking that uses few verbal or vocal hesitancies, such as "okay" or "you know" (hostman, 1989), 2. varying physical movements (e.g., gestures, meaningful movement, facial expressions, eye contact) to complement the message and to avoid a monotonous communication style (redmond, 2000), 3. varying vocal characteristics (e.g., rate, pitch, inflection, tone) to add to the variety and interest of the delivery (redmond, 2000), and 4. using a variety of evidence, stories, visual aids, computer programs, powerpoint, etc. that add interest to the teacher's message (larson, 1992). flexibility in both visual and vocal aspects of pedagogical communication becomes critical for enhancing dynamism. a less dynamic pedagogical communication style risks making both instructor and course content appear boring to students. to increase dynamism, for example, teachers can use a powerful speaking style to express their thoughts by reducing "ahs," "ums," or "okays." additionally, teachers can videotape a practice presentation of one of their lessons. they can critique how they sound and look. they can tape themselves again , but this time allowing for some flexibility in their voice, movement, or use of visual aids. they can also let others critique them in this process. such exercises can help teachers to develop a more confident, dynamic pedagogical communication style, allowing for the possibility of enhancing their credibility in the minds of students. the last dimension of ethos for examination involves the teacher's immediacy behavior. utilizing some of the traits of dynamism, such as physical movement, eye contact, etc., immediate behavior suggests that a teacher uses a more direct style of teaching. that is, the teacher displays behaviors that reduce physical and psychological distance between himself or herself and the student. kelly and gorham (1988) operationalize high immediacy as "the teacher . . . sitting on the edge of the chair, leaning forward, placing nothing between himself and the subject, and utilizing head nods" (p. 203). richmond, gorham, and mccrosky (1987) further suggest that such behavior may also include "[v]ocal expressiveness, smiling at the class, and having a relaxed body position" and that these last three behaviors appear to be the "most important " for predicting student learning in the classroom (pp. 586-587). the following suggestions for improving immediacy of behavior through pedagogical communication include: 1. allowing for a relaxed body position when presenting material by looking comfortable when standing or sitting in front of the class (mccrosky & richmond, 1992), 2. establishing eye contact with the entire class by periodically scanning the entire class (mccrosky & richmond, 1992), 3. smiling to disarm and relax students (frymier & thompson, 1992; mccrosky & richmond, 1992), 4. attempting to reduce distance, when possible, between teachers and students by moving or moving away from barriers (e.g., desk, podiums) that often separate teachers from students (frymier & thompson, 1992; mccroskey & richmond, 1992), and 5. allowing verbal expressiveness to help establish immediacy in teachers' behaviors by attracting the attention of students and by reducing the psychological distance between teachers and students mccroskey & richmond, 1992; gorham, 1988). teachers can improve their use of immediacy of behavior with their students. for instance, teachers can practice this type of behavior with friends and colleagues. they can reduce their distance to a comfortable zone when communicating with them. teachers can then transfer this type of behavior, if they believe it appropriate, to the classroom. in the classroom, teachers need to remember to maintain good eye contact, smile periodically as they address their students, and maintain a relaxed body position when sitting of standing. at times, teachers, for example, may wish to bring their chairs closer to students or reposition students' desks (e.g., in the form of a circle or semicircle), helping to reduce both psychological and physical distance between themselves and their students. teachers need to move comfortably and meaningfully in the classroom, pausing periodically to maintain eye contact with their students. these examples of immediate behavior can not only help to reduce distance between teachers and students but possibly increase greater cognitive and affective learning by students (gorham, 1988; richmond, gorham, & mccrosky, 1987). ethos and pedagogical communication: suggestions for enhancing credibility in the classroom 5 summary a critical key to teaching effectiveness focuses on the concept of ethos. how educators develop their credibility through pedagogical communication may greatly influence the perceptions of students toward teachers' abilities in particular and the learning process in general. this article has provided a working definition of ethos as the perceived degree of character or credibility that a person believes exists in another person or object. definitions for pedagogical communication and immediate behavior were also provided. practical suggestions for improving ethos and its related dimensions through pedagogical communication were given. finally, examples were provided for applying the suggestions that may help teachers to improve their credibility in the classroom. no form of pedagogical communication can ever substitute for preparation and knowledge of a subject. a teacher's credibility, must be earned in the classroom. allowing for the union of pedagogical communication and ethos, then, may help teachers be perceived by their students as being more competent, dynamic communicators in the classroom. references aristotle. (1960). the rhetoric of aristotle (l. cooper, tran.). new york: appleton century-crofts, inc. berlo, d. k. (1961). an empirical test of general construct of credibility. paper presented at the annual meeting of the speech association of america, new york. booth-butterfield, s., &gutowski, c. (1993). message modality and source credibility can interact to affect argument process. communication quarterly, 41, 77-89. brydon, s. r., & scott, m. d. (2000). between one and many: the art and science of public speaking (3rd ed.). mountain view, ca: mayfield publishing co. burgoon, j., birk, t., & pfau, m. (1990). nonverbal behaviors, persuasion, and credibility. human communication research, 17, 140 169. frymier, a. b. (1994). the use of affinity-seeking in producing liking and learning in the classroom. journal of applied communication research, 22, 87-105. frymier, a. b., & thompson, c. a. (1992). perceived teacher affinity-seeking in relation to perceive teacher credibility. communication education, 41, 388-399. gorham, j. (1988). the relationship between verbal teacher immediacy and student learning. communication education, 37, 40-53. hamilton, m. a. (1998). message variables that mediate and moderate the effect of equivocal language on source credibility. journal of language and social psychology bulletin, 21, 109-143. haskins, w. a., & staudacher, j. m. (1987). successful public speaking: a practical guide. glenview, il: scott, foresman and co. hostman, l. (1989). the evaluative consequences of hedges, hesitations, and intensifiers: powerful and powerless speech styles. human communication research, 15, 383 406. johnston, l., & coolen, p. (1995). a dual processing approach to stereotype change. personality and social psychology bulletin, 21, 660 673. kearney, p., & plax, t. g. (1999). public speaking in a diverse society (2nd ed.). mountain view, ca: mayfield publishing co. kelly, d. h., & gorham, j. (1988). effects of immediacy on recall information. communication education, 37, 198-207. larson, c. u. (1992). persuasion: reception and responsibility (6th ed.). belmont, ca: wadsworth publishing co. lemert, j. b. (1963, august). dimensions of source credibility. paper presented at the annual meeting of the association of education in journalism. lucas, s. e. (1998). the art of public speaking (6th ed.). new york, ny: mcgraw-hill. mccrosky, j., & richmond, v. p. (1992). increasing teacher influence through immediacy. in v. p. richmond & j. c. mccrosky (eds.) power in the classroom: communication, control, and concern, 45, 200-211. mccrosky, j., & young, t. (1981). ethos and credibility: the construct and its measurements after two decades. central states speech journal, 32, 24-34. myers, s. a., zhong, m., & guan, s. (1998). instructor immediacy in the chinese college classroom. communication studies, 49, 240 254. nussbaum, j. f. (1992). effective teacher behavior. communication education, 41, 167-180. redmond, m. v. (2000). communication: theories and application. boston, ma: houghton mifflin co. richmond, v. p. gorham, j. s., & mccrosky, j. (1987). the relationship between selected immediacy behaviors and cognitive learning. in m. mclaughlin (ed.), current issues in education vol. 3 no. 4 communication yearbook 10 (pp. 574-590). beverly hills, ca: sage. trenholm, s. (1989). persuasion and social influence. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall. verderber, r. f., & verderber, h. s. (1995). inter act: using interpersonal communication skills (3rd ed.). belmont, ca: wadsworth publishing co. ethos and pedagogical communication: suggestions for enhancing credibility in the classroom 7 2000 article citation haskins, w. (2000, march 3). ethos and pedagogical communication: suggestions for enhancing credibility in the classroom. current issues in education [on-line], 3(4). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume3/number4/. author notes william a. haskins mckendree college lebanon, il 62254 whaskins@atlas.mckendree.edu william a. haskins is a professor of communication at mckendree college. he has published numerous articles in journals of communication, law, engineering, religion and education. he is co-author of the book entitled successful public speaking: a practical guide. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 25, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation haskins, w. (2000). ethos and pedagogical communication: suggestions for enhancing credibility in the classroom. current issues in education, 3(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1616 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2000,%20vol%203,%20%231-8/number4/index.html mailto:whaskins@atlas.mckendree.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1616 cie template 1 volume 17, number 3 november 23, 2014 issn 1099-839x secondary pre-service teachers' perceptions of an ideal classroom environment frederick j. bartelheim and daniel r. conn university of northern colorado the classroom environment can impact students’ motivation and engagement, and can influence students’ academic learning. in some cases, pre-service teachers’ influence on the classroom environment may not always be conducive for student learning. this exploratory study investigated pre-service teachers’ perceptions of an ideal classroom environment. specifically, this study focused on the effect of a 16 week initial field experience, and the school level (high school or middle school) of the field experience on secondary pre-service teachers’ perceptual changes of an ideal classroom environment. as a means of collecting data to address the focus of this study, the participants completed the classroom environment scale (form i) on three different occasions during the initial field experience. results of the data analysis revealed that the participants’ perceptions of an ideal classroom environment remained consistent but were focused on attributes that contribute to a classroom environment conducive to academic success. keywords: classroom environment, secondary pre-service teachers, classroom perceptions, field experiences the classroom environment is often considered a predictor of students’ academic achievement and school satisfaction (pickett & fraser, 2010; fraser, 2007). as patrick, kaplan, and ryan (2011) note, the classroom environment impacts students’ motivation, engagement, and achievement. efforts of reform in teacher preparation programs have focused on the need to address classroom environments as part of pre-service teachers’ training. generally, this need is addressed through initial, intermediate, and advanced field experiences that focus, in part, on pre-service teachers’ observations of classroom practices conducive to academic and social learning. initial field experiences can represent a viable means of gathering information about pre-service teachers’ perceptions about classroom events (montecinos et al., 2011; clift & brady 2005). the initial field experience was used in this study to investigate secondary pre-service teachers’ perceptual changes of an ideal or preferred classroom environment. in this study, an ideal classroom environment was defined as a classroom environment that maintains such attributes as student involvement, positive relationships between students and teachers, planned activities, organized functions, varied class activities, creative thinking, and the use of new and/or varied instructional techniques. these attributes have been found to contribute to academic success by various studies that have investigated classroom environments (allodi, 2010; meece, anderman, & anderman, 2006; patrick, kaplan, & ryan; 2011; zedan, 2010). as a means of gathering information about the perceptions of an ideal classroom environment, the participants in this study completed the classroom environment scale (form i) (moos & trickett, 1986) on three different occasions during a 16 week initial field experience. the classroom environment scale (ces) was selected because form i of the instrument addresses value orientations by measuring perceptions of an environment ideally liked or preferred (fraser & fraser, 1986). current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 2 results of the data analysis revealed that the participants’ perceptions of an ideal or preferred classroom environment remained consistent during the initial field experience. however, their preferences focused, for the most part, on attributes that contribute to a classroom environment conducive to academic success. review of the literature research has shown that the classroom environment can be a predictor of students’ academic achievement and school satisfaction (evans, harvey, buckley, & yan, 2009; larocque, 2008; fouts, 1990) and that a positive classroom environment will encourage students to be more excited about their school experience and their learning (evertson, emmer, & worsham, 2006). others have found that the classroom environment can strongly influence affective, behavioral, and cognitive learning outcomes, and that the environment of the classroom is a teaching construct that consistently influences academic learning (fraser & tobin, 1991). if teachers positively impact the classroom environment, they positively motivate students’ academic success (evans et al., 2009). classroom environments can affect teachers as well. grayson and alvarez (2008) found that the classroom environment can contributed to teacher burnout, especially with regard to emotional exhaustion. negative events in the classroom and/or school setting are likely to impact a teacher’s decision to leave the profession (martin, sass, & schmitt, 2012). high rates of teacher turnover can affect a school’s effectiveness (darling-hammond, 2003) and have a detrimental impact on student learning (guin, 2004). as such, supportive and friendly classroom environments are critical for retaining effective teachers (pickett & fraser, 2010). given the complexity of the classroom environment, pre-service teachers are often uncertain about how to mentally process and make decisions about classroom events. studies that have investigated preservice teachers and classroom environments have found that pre-service teachers’ impact on the classroom environment may not always be conducive for student learning. in some cases, a classroom environment established by a pre-service teacher may tend to be low in academic achievement, low in objective thinking, low in practical applications of a skill or subject matter, and high in authority problems (larocque, 2008; phifer, 2007). additionally, some university field supervisors and mentor teachers report that pre-service teachers, who are unsuccessful in their practicum, or field experiences, are not able to create a classroom environment conducive to academic, emotional, and social learning (moore, 2003; skrobola & knowles, 1992). phifer’s (2007) study of unsuccessful student teaching experiences found that classroom climate factors, over content knowledge factors, were cited as the primary reasons pre-service teachers were removed from the classroom. often a gap exists in teacher preparation programs between what teacher educators tell pre-service teachers regarding “life” in the classroom and what actually exists. as such, field experiences represent a component of teacher preparation generally focused on assisting preservice teachers in connecting theory and practice (fletcher & luft, 2011). however, field experiences can have different intentions with regard to their purpose, objectives, and settings (wilson, floden, & ferrini-mundy, 2001). some field experiences tend to focus on procedural concerns and routine tasks (e.g., lesson planning, management) (fletcher & luft, 2011), while others focus on teaching as an inquiry-oriented practice (moore, 2003). kagan (1992) notes the importance of changing pre-service teachers' beliefs during their field experiences, as effecting personal beliefs makes effecting teacher behavior possible. for example, ng, nicholas, and williams (2010) found a significant shift among the preservice teachers in their study from an initial belief that good teaching means being in control, to a belief in good teaching means building relationships with students. as allodi (2010) and zedan (2010) found, the climate in educational environments is often shaped by the relationships between teachers and students, and among students themselves. many research studies on field experiences tend to focus on the student teaching phase, moderately on intermediate field experiences, with fewer investigating initial field experiences (montecinos et al., 2011). research focused on the effect and impact of field based coursework in teacher preparation needs to be broad-based, inclusive of all phases of field experiences (clift & brady 2005; wilson, floden, & ferrini-mundy, 2002). in this study, the initial field experience was used to collect data on the participants’ perceptions of an ideal or preferred classroom environment. specifically, this study investigated the effect that an initial field experience and the school level of the field experience had on the participants’ perceptions of an ideal classroom environment. research questions two research questions were investigated in this exploratory study: 1. what changes, if any, in secondary pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the ideal classroom environment changed as a result of an initial field experience? 2. what effect, if any, does the school level (high school or middle school) have on secondary preservice teachers’ perceptions of an ideal classroom environment? method participants this study took place at a mid-size university in a western state whose primary mission is teacher education. thirty-six secondary pre-service teacher education secondary pre-service teachers' perceptions of an ideal classroom environment 3 students, 16 males and 20 females, participated in this study. the participants ranged in age from 19 to 26, with a median age of 20. at the time of this study, all of the participants were sophomores or juniors enrolled in the university’s secondary teacher education program. also, the participants were completing a 16 week initial field experience in either a public high school (grades 9-12) or a public middle school (grades 7-8). twenty-four of the participants were completing the field experience in a high school setting, and twelve of the participants were completing the field experience in a middle school setting. all of the schools in this study are located in a mid-size suburban school district with over 20,000 students. sixty-five percent of the students represent various cultural backgrounds inclusive of hispanic, asian/pacific islander, and african-american. the median household income for families in this district is approximately $52,000 with over sixty percent of the students qualifying for free or reduced lunch programs. procedure each participant in this study completed the classroom environment scale (form i) (moos & trickett, 1986) on three different occasions during a 16 week initial field experience. specifically, the participants first completed the classroom environment scale (form i) during week one of their field experience, again during week eight of their field experience, and again during week sixteen of their field experience. at the time of each administration, all of the participants were completing a field experience in a high school or a middle school setting. the overall goal of the initial field experience in the university’s secondary teacher education program is to provide teacher candidates an authentic school environment to observe everyday teaching practice. teacher candidates are placed in classrooms with certified teachers in their area of content. at the beginning of the field experience, teacher candidates observe the classroom setting and instruction being provided. as the semester progresses, teacher candidates participate with the classroom students under the direction of the classroom teacher. generally, this participation includes providing individual, small group, or large group instruction based on the teacher candidate’s comfort level. instrumentation in this study, the classroom environment scale (ces) form i (moos & trickett, 1986) was used as a means of gathering information about the participants’ perceptions of an ideal classroom environment during an initial field experience. since its development, the ces has been widely used in studies to capture perspectives about educational environments. for example, raviv, raviv, and reisel (1990) used the ces to investigate teachers’ and students’ perceptions of an actual and preferred classroom environment in 78 sixth grade classroom settings. also, baek and choi (2002) used the ces to measure the psychological characteristics of the classroom environment. mceachron, baker, and bracken (2003) investigated the relationship between academic disciplines and teacher/student interactions using the classroom environment scale. the ces (form i) was selected for this study because the instrument addresses value orientations by measuring perceptions of an environment ideally liked or preferred (fraser & fraser, 1986). the ces (form i) is divided into three conceptual dimensions of the classroom environment; relationship, personal growth/goal orientation, and systems maintenance and change. the relationship dimension addresses student involvement in the classroom, as well as feelings of friendship between students, and teachers’ support of students. the personal growth/goal orientation dimension emphasizes completing planned activities, as well as students’ competition for recognition and grades. the systems maintenance and change dimension addresses organized and coherent functions in the classroom and the amount of variety in class activities. the higher the mean on a conceptual dimension indicates a preference for this classroom dimension in an ideal classroom environment. the lower the mean would indicate that this classroom dimension is least preferred in an ideal classroom environment. the mean on each conceptual dimension of the ces (form i) can range from 1 to 10. the ces (form i) contains nine subscales (involvement, affiliation, teacher support, task orientation, competition, order and organization, rule clarity, teacher control, and innovation), each containing 10 true/false items representing the three conceptual dimensions (figure 1). examples of items on the ces (form i) are: “students will put a lot of energy into what they do here.” (involvement), and “the teacher will explain what will happen if a student breaks a rule.” (rule clarity), and “students in this class will get to know each other really well” (affiliation). the nine ces subscales internal consistency range from .67 to .86. test-retest reliabilities range from .85 to .95; content validity was established by independent raters’ agreement of the items for the three conceptual dimensions (moos & trickett, 1974; trickett & quinlan, 1979). the higher the mean on a subscale indicates the participants’ preference for this classroom component in an ideal classroom environment. the lower the mean would indicate that this component is least preferred in an ideal classroom environment. the mean on each subscale of the ces (form i) can range from 1 to 10. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 4 ces dimensions and related subscales subscale definitions relationship involvement affiliation teacher support the extent to which students are attentive and interested in class activities (i.e., participate in discussions, completing work on their own). level of friendship students feel toward each other (demonstrated by peer assistance, working together). the help, friendship, and interest the teacher displays toward students. personal growth/goal orientation task orientation competition emphasis on completing planned activities and staying on the subject matter. the degree that students compete with one another for grades and recognition. system maintenance and change order and organization rule clarity teacher control innovation emphasis on students behaving in an orderly and polite manner; the overall organization of assignments and classroom activities. establishing and following clear classroom rules; the extent students know consequences of not following rules. the degree the teacher enforces the rules and the severity of punishment for rule violations. student contributions to planning classroom activities; the extent to which the teacher implements new techniques and encourages creative thinking. figure 1. ces dimensions and related subscales. adapted from the first and second editions of the ces manual (moos & trickett, 1974, 1986). data analysis and results when using the classroom environment scale, means and standard deviations are commonly reported; means are examined for any statistical significance (for example, see raviv et al., 1990). the data in this study was generated by the completion of form i of the classroom environment scale (ces) on three different occasions during the participants’ 16 week initial field experience. means and standard deviations for each of the three ces conceptual dimensions and the nine subscales within each dimension were calculated for the total participant group. in addition, the calculated means and standard deviations of the ces dimensions and the related subscales were categorized based on the school level field experience setting (high school, middle school). in this study, differences for the means in the aforementioned cases were analyzed by the use of a onefactor repeated measures anova (p<.05) to detect any overall differences between the related means. this statistical test was used because this study investigated perceptual changes of the participants over three points in time and employed the same instrument each time. the statistical analysis revealed that no significant changes were found in the perceptions of an ideal or preferred classroom environment for the total participant group. this would suggest that the initial field experience did not necessarily influence their perceptions of an ideal classroom environment. however, an examination of the means and standard deviations on all ces dimensions and related subscales did reveal a consistent preference of an ideal classroom environment among the total participant group. in other words, the participants remained comparatively consistent on all three dimensions and the related nine subscales of the ces and were focused mainly on attributes that contribute to a classroom environment conducive to academic success. as table 1 indicates, the participants’ of this study relatively prefer a classroom environment that supports student involvement, a feeling of friendship between students, and teacher support of students (as measured by the relationship dimension). an emphasis on completing planned activities, as well as a moderate level of competition among students for recognition and grades (personal growth/goal orientation dimension), appears to be preferred by the participants of this study. finally, organized and coherent functions in the classroom, and a variety of class activities as measured by the system maintenance & change dimension indicates a reasonable preference for these participants. table 1 means and standard deviations of the ces dimensions for the total participant group (n = 36) ces dimension week 1 of the field experience week 8 of the field experience week 16 of the field experience m sd m sd m sd relationship 7.17 2.12 7.33 2.24 7.54 2.18 personal growth or goal orientation 6.68 2.05 7.21 1.77 7.06 1.75 system maintenance & change 7.22 1.97 7.11 2.10 6.94 2.02 means and standard deviations for each of the nine ces subscales were also analyzed for the total participant group. as table 2 indicates, six of the nine subscales, secondary pre-service teachers' perceptions of an ideal classroom environment 5 (involvement, affiliation, teacher support, task orientation, order & organization, and rule clarity) represent a relative preference of these components in an ideal classroom environment. in other words, the participants prefer classrooms where students participate in classroom activities, have a sense of friendship among class peers, experience teacher support, complete planned activities, maintain a level of order and organization, and have established rules and procedures. three of the nine subscales (competition, teacher control, and innovation) represent a more or less emphasis on these components in an ideal classroom environment. as such, the participants prefer a classroom with moderate levels of student competition for grades and recognition, teacher control, student contribution in classroom activities, as well as the teacher’s use of new techniques and encouragement of creative thinking. table 2 means and standard deviations of the ces subscales for the total participant group (n = 36) ces subscales week 1 of the field experience week 8 of the field experience week 16 of the field experience m sd m sd m sd involvement 7.39 2.31 7.67 2.70 7.92 2.49 affiliation 6.36 2.70 6.86 2.47 7.31 2.30 teacher support 7.78 1.35 7.47 1.54 7.39 1.76 task orientation 7.53 2.31 8.08 1.79 8.00 1.87 competition 5.83 1.78 6.33 1.74 6.11 1.63 order & organization 8.28 2.06 8.36 1.81 8.11 1.86 rule clarity 8.64 1.55 8.22 1.76 8.31 1.79 teacher control 5.42 2.06 5.58 2.37 5.06 2.19 innovation 6.56 2.20 6.28 2.46 6.28 2.24 data in this study was also grouped and analyzed based on the school level experience (high school and middle school). the statistical test revealed that no significant changes were found in the perceptions of an ideal or preferred classroom environment based on the school level experience (table 3). as such, the participants remained somewhat consistent on the all three ces dimensions. table 3 means and standard deviations of the ces dimensions by school level of field experience* ces dimension by school level week 1 of the field experience week 8 of the field experience week 16 of the field experience m sd m sd m sd relationship high school 7.33 1.95 7.32 2.16 7.46 2.08 middle school 6.83 2.44 7.36 2.44 7.69 2.36 personal growth or goal orientation high school 6.67 2.09 7.15 1.88 6.96 1.93 middle school 6.71 2.02 7.33 1.54 7.25 1.39 system maintenance & change high school 7.09 2.00 7.08 2.07 6.88 2.01 middle school 7.48 1.87 7.17 2.13 7.06 2.07 *high school n = 24; middle school n = 12 table 4 means and standard deviations of the ces subscales by school level of field experience* ces dimension by school level week 1 of the field experience week 8 of the field experience week 16 of the field experience m sd m sd m sd involvement high school 7.75 2.05 7.75 2.83 7.71 2.69 middle school 6.58 2.68 7.50 2.54 8.33 2.06 affiliation high school 6.38 2.48 6.79 2.45 7.13 2.11 middle school 6.33 3.20 7.00 2.63 7.67 2.71 teacher support high school 7.88 1.33 7.42 1.21 7.54 1.44 middle school 7.58 1.44 7.58 2.15 7.08 2.31 task orientation high school 7.42 2.39 8.08 2.04 7.88 2.07 middle school 7.75 2.22 8.08 1.24 8.25 1.42 competition high school 5.92 1.79 6.21 1.72 6.04 1.78 middle school 5.67 1.83 6.58 1.83 6.25 1.36 order & organization high school 8.21 1.98 8.13 1.92 7.88 1.92 middle school 8.42 2.31 8.83 1.53 8.58 1.73 rule clarity high school 8.42 1.82 8.25 2.03 8.38 1.97 middle school 9.08 0.67 8.17 1.11 8.17 1.40 teacher control high school 5.25 2.05 5.63 2.20 5.04 2.14 middle school 5.75 2.14 5.50 2.78 5.08 2.39 innovation high school 6.50 2.17 6.33 2.14 6.21 2.00 middle school 6.67 2.35 6.17 3.10 6.42 2.75 *high school n = 24; middle school n = 12 finally, the data in this study was also examined in regards to the nine subscales of the ces based on the school level field experience setting (high school and middle school). as table 4 indicates, the participants current issues in education vol. 17 no. 3 6 were somewhat consistent on the subscales of involvement, affiliation, teacher support, task orientation, order & organization, and rule clarity indicating a relative preference of these attributes in an ideal classroom environment. the three subscales of competition, teacher control, and innovation indicate a preferred classroom with moderate levels of these components. the analysis of the data based on the participants’ content major and gender did not yield any significant and/or statistical differences. discussion the focus of this exploratory study was to investigate the effect of a 16 week initial field experience, and the school level of the field experience, on secondary pre-service teachers’ perceptual changes of an ideal classroom environment. although relatively consistent throughout their initial field experience, these perceptions, or preferences, focused mainly on attributes that contribute to a classroom environment conducive to academic success. the analysis of the data regarding the three dimensions of the ces for the total participant group indicates that the perceptions of an ideal classroom environment includes preferences for a classroom that supports student involvement, a feeling of friendship between students, and teacher support of students. this finding is similar to allodi’s (2010) study on the climate in educational environments and zedan’s (2010) study on classroom climate. both studies’ results revealed that classroom environments are influenced by relationships among students, the relationships between teachers and students, and a sense of involvement. additionally, completing planned activities, organized and coherent functions in the classroom, and a variety of class activities indicates a reasonable preference of an ideal classroom environment for the participants of this study. the analysis of the data regarding the nine subscales reveals a more in-depth view of the participants’ preferences of an ideal classroom environment. these preferences include classrooms where students participate in classroom activities, have a sense of friendship among class peers, experience teacher support, complete planned activities, maintain a level of order and organization, and have established rules and procedures. one additional finding based on the nine subscales indicates that the participants prefer a classroom with moderate levels of student competition for grades and recognition, teacher control, student contribution in classroom activities, as well as the teacher’s use of new techniques and encouragement of creative thinking. two of these preferences, student competition for grades and recognition along with teacher control, may not necessarily be optimal for student success in the classroom (nichols & zhang, 2011). since these preferences emerged during an initial field experience, intermediate and advanced field experiences may influence these preferences. as kagan (1992) states, field experiences represent an important opportunity for changing pre-service teachers' beliefs that may lead to more effective teaching behavior. however, students’ contributions in classroom activities, and new techniques and encouragement of creative thinking have been reported as classroom components for student success (patrick et al., 2011; meece et al., 2006). as with any research endeavor, the findings of this exploratory study should be considered in light of some limitations. first, the sample size (n = 36) in this study may limit the generalizability of the findings. future research could increase the participant number as a means of presenting a broader view of pre-service teachers’ perceptions of an ideal classroom setting as measured during an initial field experience. second, data was only collected during an initial field experience. although a viable level of field experience to investigate, additional research in this area could follow and collect data as the participants complete intermediate and advanced field experiences. this may provide useful information regarding the effect these levels of field experiences have on pre-service teachers’ changing perceptions, or preferences, of attributes that contribute to a classroom environment conducive to academic success. finally, the initial field experiences that the participants in this study completed did not represent an even distribution among the school settings. this may also limit the generalizability of the findings. future research could focus on just one school level which may provide a more extensive view of pre-service teachers’ perceptions of an ideal classroom environment at that particular school level. since research has shown that a positive classroom environment affects students’ academic achievement, the classroom environment is an important issue to focus on during initial, immediate, and advanced levels of field experiences in teacher preparation. in this study, the participants’ perceptions of an ideal classroom environment focused primarily on those attributes that contribute to academic success. this suggests that teacher education programs design field experiences that assist prospective teachers’ in establishing classroom environments that positively motivate students’ academic learning. field experiences are a critical component of teacher preparation and can benefit pre-service teachers in multiple ways, including the opportunity to connect the conceptual and theoretical knowledge gleaned from teacher preparation coursework. given the level of the field experience, the focus for the pre-service teacher may vary. however, field experiences must be carefully structured to provide the learning desired and the learning that encompasses all aspects of the professional role (hanline, 2010). secondary pre-service teachers' perceptions of an ideal classroom environment 7 in addition to procedural concerns and routine tasks, field experiences that address aspects of the classroom environment will better prepare prospective teachers for their future classrooms and schools. as fraser and tobin (1991) have found, the environment of the classroom is a teaching construct that consistently influences academic learning. references allodi, m. 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(2001). teacher preparation research: current knowledge, gaps, and recommendations. seattle: center for the study of teaching and policy, university of washington. zedan, r. (2010). new dimensions in the classroom climate. learning environment research, 13, 7588. human-computer interaction factors in designing educational video games 9 article citation bartelheim, f. j., & conn, d. r. (2014). secondary pre-service teachers' perceptions of an ideal classroom environment. current issues in education, 17(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1267 author notes frederick j. bartelheim university of northern colorado school of teacher education mckee 284 greeley, colorado 80639 frederick.bartelheim@unco.edu frederick j. bartelheim is a professor in educational foundations and curriculum studies in the school of teacher education at the university of northern colorado. he is the coordinator of the masters of arts in teaching: curriculum studies program. his research interests include teacher preparation, educational foundations, curriculum, and web-based teaching. daniel r. conn university of northern colorado school of teacher education mckee 216 greeley, colorado 80639 conn0906@bears.unco.edu daniel r. conn is a doctoral student in the school of teacher education at the university of northern colorado, pursuing his ed. d. in educational studies: curriculum, innovations, and education reform. his research interests include teacher preparation, curriculum, rural education, and web-based teaching. manuscript received: 07/19/2013 revisions received: 05/07/2014 accepted: 05/07/2014 mailto:frederick.bartelheim@unco.edu mailto:conn0906@bears.unco.edu current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 10 volume 17, number 3 november 23, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editor anna montana cirell authentications editors lisa marie lacy tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson tray j. geiger section editors rikkilynn archibeque tray j. geiger niels piepgrass evelyn concepcion baca darlene michelle gonzales kevin j. raso isaac lamont bickmore megan hoelting faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers 1 volume 8, number 8 march 12, 2005 issn 1099-839x school reform through a school/university partnership jerry l. waddle and kathleen d. conway southeast missouri state university this is a study of a reform effort to improve mathematics achievement in an elementary school through a partnership with a university. the partnership involved collaborating with university faculty to provide and plan research based professional development. the purposes of the study were to determine if the instructional practices of the teachers changed, if the delivery of staff development changed, and if student achievement improved over a six year period. the research methods used to answer these questions were both qualitative and quantitative. the qualitative methods utilized were: interviews, pre and post classroom observations, and observations of grade level meetings. the quantitative components were the pre and post administration of the “missouri teacher survey of classroom practices: mathematics” and the analysis of test scores on the statewide assessment from 1999-2004. the results indicated some change in instructional practices, significant increases in staff development and collaboration, and increased student achievement in mathematics. this study investigated the results of a five year elementary school/university partnership in an effort to improve the teaching and learning of mathematics in the elementary school. the intent was to contribute to the understanding of the extent to which school/university partnerships can meet the professional development needs of schools as they strive to meet the requirements of state and federal accountability standards. this study was directed by two definite trends in the literature: (a) the school reform literature of the last several decades has advocated for expansion and redesign of professional development for teachers and school leaders (collinson & ono, 2001; darling-hammond & mclaughlin, 1995; fullan, 2001; mclaughlin & marsh, 1978; parker & golden, 1957; showers, joyce, & bennett, 1987; and sparks & hirsh, 1997); and (b) the suggestion by many that a redesign of professional development should be some form of partnership between schools and university teacher education departments (center for educational renewal, 1994; sealey & robson, 1997). peel, peel, and baker (2002) also stress the importance of partnerships where schools and universities work together in a collaborative environment, with shared leadership, common vision, support of top leaders, respect and trust, open communication, flexibility, and adequate financial support. additionally, essex (2001) cautions that “school-college partnerships hold significant promise for renewal and improvement in education but must be vigorously supported and advanced by top leadership at public school and college levels” (p. 736). the partnership in this study was supported by the university department chairs, the superintendent, and principal of the school. the goals, vision, and activities were collaboratively planned by stakeholders from both the university and the school. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 8 the professional development school (pds) is one model of a school/university partnership. although this study does not include a pds, there was an attempt to include key components of the pds model. research on pdss has concluded that effective communication networks that foster collaboration, honesty, and empowerment are vital to effective partnerships. “educational partnerships that were well received and successful involved real empowerment, collaboration, and trust by all stakeholders, as well as shared power by the leadership” (peel, et al., p. 320). the partnership between an elementary school and university in this study was an effort to bring about school reform that would result in improved math performance through staff development. the intent was to improve the instructional practices of teachers and school leaders through research based instructional methods, improve the delivery of staff development as reflected in the research, and improve student achievement in math. literature review “for many years the dichotomy between the ivory tower of the university and the trenches of the public school have been both an ideological perception and a reality” (rakow &robinson, 1997, p. 64). the whole issue of school improvement has focused a great deal of attention on the renewal of both k-12 education and higher education's role in the training of educators. according to goodlad (1994), school-college partnerships offer significant promise for simultaneous educational renewal. in an attempt to eliminate the barriers between teacher preparation programs and the continuing education of practicing teachers as well as to bring about renewal, there have been many forms of school-college partnerships emerge with varying degrees of success ( essex , 2001). however, if partnerships between higher education and public schools are to be successful they must follow certain tenets that a variety of writers and researcher have identified as necessary for successful partnerships. these characteristics are as follows: (a) clearly defined purpose and direction; (b) supported both with active participation and adequate resources by top leaders in schools and colleges; (c) trust among partners; (d) open communication; (e) mutual respect among partners; (f) mechanisms to assess progress and measure outcomes; (g) true collaboration; and (h) school-wide representation at the beginning (essex, 2001; peel, peel, & baker, 2002; rakow & robinson, 1997). since many of the school/university partnerships are designed for school improvement/ renewal, most of them have a significant professional development component. much of the reform literature advocates for the expansion and redesign of professional development for teachers and school leaders (collinson & ono, 2001; darling-hammond & mclaughlin, 1995; fullan, 2001; mclaughlin & marsh, 1978; showers, joyce, & bennett, 1987; and sparks & hirsh, 1997). this redesign has been described by many researchers to have key components such as: (a) significant collaboration; (b) job embedded; (c) extend over long periods of time; and (d) significant involvement of school leadership (sparks & hirsh, 1997). unfortunately, it is one thing to identify components and another to act on them. lieberman (1995) stated: in the traditional view of staff development, workshops and conferences conducted outside the school count, but authentic opportunities to learn from and with colleagues inside the school do not. the conventional view of staff development as a transferable package of knowledge to be distributed to teachers in bite-sized pieces needs radical rethinking (p. 591). unfortunately, much of what teachers are exposed to continues to be one-shot or one-day workshops with no support and no follow-up (lewis, 1995). fullan (2001) states that “over 20 years ago i conducted a review of inservice, as it was then called, and concluded that one-shot workshops were ineffective, topics were selected by people other than those receiving the inservice, and follow-up support for implementation was rare” (p. 255). dufour and eaker (1998) indicate that many schools take pride in offering a large variety of staff training. they quote one principal as proudly announcing, “this year we trained all our staff in the seven habits of highly effective people, assertive discipline, cooperative learning, portfolio assessment, and integrating technology into the classroom” (p. 266). this unthinking and unconnected presentation of multiple innovations with little or no attention being paid to the existing research on educational change, at best, perpetuates mediocrity over mastery. interestingly, in discussion with many of those responsible for initiating and supporting change, it is clear they understand this dilemma; they simply fail to act on it. the mastery of any new methodology takes time and a commitment must be met for continued training. sparks and hirsh (1997) wrote, “staff development's success will be judged not by how many teachers and administrators participate in staff development programs or how they perceive its value, but by whether it alters instructional behavior in a way that benefits students” (p. 5). the national staff development council (nsdc), in cooperation with eleven other educational organizations, has identified standards school reform through a school/university partnership 3 for professional development. these standards are organized into three categories; content, process, and context . the nsdc recognizes that successful staff development pushes for the intersection of these three categories. it pushes beyond content to include the actual skills or knowledge that educators need to acquire for the content to come alive; the process or means by which educators will acquire the knowledge and skills; and the organization, system, or cultural context that supports staff development initiatives (national staff development council, 1995). fullan (2001) argues that change involves the incorporation of three areas: curriculum, process, and beliefs. over time, change in all three must occur if the innovation is to be considered successful. purpose of study the purpose of this study was to investigate the results of a five year professional development partnership between southeast missouri state university and a rural elementary school in southeast missouri with a primary emphasis on improving mathematics achievement. the purpose was three fold: 1. to determine if the instructional practices of the teachers changed since the beginning of the project in 1998. 2. to determine if the delivery of staff development changed in the school since the beginning of the project in 1998. 3. to determine if mathematics achievement on the map improved since the beginning of the project in 1998. at the beginning of this project, the elementary school had an enrollment of approximately 450 students in grades kindergarten through five and was not performing well on the missouri assessment program (map), with student achievement being particularly poor in math. the map is a statewide test used in the accreditation process by the state of missouri and is comprised of three types of items: multiple-choice, constructed response, and performance events. the organizations within the university that were directly involved in the grant funded project were the regional professional development center within the college of education and the linda godwin center for science and math education in the college of math and science. the two organizations formed a team known as the improving mathematics in missouri (im) 2 success team. this team was composed of faculty from the college of education , the college of math and science, and some highly successful public school teachers from area schools. the goal of the project was to assist the school in the improvement of mathematics achievement. this was proposed to be accomplished through significant collaborative planning with the teaching staff, high quality job-imbedded professional development that becomes a part of the school culture, and a high level of involvement from the school leadership (the building principal). the success team initially met with the staff and leadership of the school in the fall of 1998 and a district action team was formed. the success team worked with the district action team to identify school needs and target focused areas through the development of an action plan for the district. the success team visited the school in the fall of 1998 for classroom observations and informal discussions with teachers and administrators regarding district mathematics education practices. the results of the map testing were also reviewed. during the same semester teachers completed a revised form of the missouri teacher survey of classroom practices: mathematics, developed by the center for learning, evaluation, and assessment research (clear) at the university of missouri – columbia in conjunction with math educators from missouri and other states. the survey was designed to help teachers and schools improve curriculum and support math education. after reviewing the results of classroom observations, discussions with teachers and administrators, responses on the survey, and map data, the success team helped the district action team identify possible activities for the next phase of the project. this collaborative planning resulted in offering staff development activities that focused on analysis of map data and needs of the school. these staff development activities were conducted throughout the 1998-1999 school year. a second round of classroom observations and informal discussions with teachers and administrators was conducted in the spring of 1999. discussions were conducted with representatives of the district action team during the fall of 1999 and additional staff development activities including family involvement, teacher collaboration, examination of the curriculum, use of hands-on materials and math journals, and writing performance tasks were planned and conducted. during the spring of 2000 the focus shifted to math textbook adoption during which the success team facilitated the organization and process for selection of a new math textbook series. some success team staff development activities continued during the 2000-2001 and 20012002 school years even though the administration and faculty of the elementary school chose to focus on reading. in addition to the activities offered at the school, some teachers from the school participated in the summer math academies offered by southeast missouri state . throughout the planning of the staff current issues in education vol. 8 no. 8 development activities, the success team made a determined effort to incorporate the latest research on effective staff development. research design and studies the research design selected for this study was a mixed-methodology design, both qualitative and quantitative (creswell, 1994). this design was chosen because we were examining research questions that required different research methodology. the use of both methods in this study is intended to have several additional purposes: “triangulating and converging findings, elaborating on results, using one method to inform another, discovering paradox or contradiction, and extending the breadth of the inquiry” (greene, caracelli, & graham as cited in creswell, 1994). qualitative the qualitative components of this study included interviews of teachers and administrators, classroom observations, and observations of grade level meetings. those interviewed were selected by purposeful snowball sampling beginning with the initial information-rich cases being suggested by the assistant principal and others being suggested by those being interviewed (patton, 1990). the sampling of people to interview was terminated based on redundancy of information (lincoln & guba, 1985). several grade level meeting observations were conducted to triangulate with the interview data. standardized open-ended interviews were used as the dominant strategy to gather data in the teachers' and administrators' own words. this interview technique was chosen to “minimize interviewer effects by asking the same questions of each respondent” (patton, 1990, p. 285). at the beginning of each interview, the participant was informed of the purpose for the interview and assurances were made that the content of the interview would be treated confidentially (bogdan & biklen, 1998). interviews ranged from 30 to 40 minutes and responses were scripted by the interviewer. shortly after the interview, the interviewer's notes were transcribed. the interviews were conducted in the building where the teachers and administrators worked and included 19 elementary teachers, the building principal. data were analyzed using tesch's eight steps to consider when coding (as cited in creswell, 1994). in addition, the research questions helped to define the coding categories. all of the transcriptions were read thoroughly to get a sense of the complete picture. some ideas were recorded during this initial reading. one transcript was then read and notes were made about possible themes. when this was completed the key words and phrases from the initial reading were examined to determine if there were clusters of themes and trends. nine clusters were identified and each cluster was assigned a number code. at that point, each transcript was read in detail and number codes were assigned to statements in the interview transcripts. the data belonging to each category were listed on a single list for each category and the lists were examined. additional clusters were identified within each category and the findings are discussed in a later section of this paper. notes about classroom and grade level meeting observations were also coded during the analysis process. quantitative the quantitative components of this study are the pre and post administration of the missouri teacher survey of classroom practices: mathematics and the analysis of map scores from 1999 through 2004. this was accomplished by comparing the classroom practices of teachers in 1999 to those in 2002 as measured by the survey and examining trends in the map scores over a six year period. presentation of the data the data analysis includes the data gathered from interviews, classroom observations, surveys, and examination of missouri assessment program (map) test data and is organized below based on the three research questions. changes in instructional practices the first research question dealt with whether or not the instructional practices of the teachers changed since the beginning of the (im) 2 project in 1998. the interviews indicated the teachers are still using worksheets and tests to determine grades in math. one teacher commented, “i would like to think i am going to switch away from worksheets.” however, some did mention they were beginning to use more performance assessments and a few even commented they were beginning to experiment with portfolios, particularly in grades 1 and 2. most of the teachers interviewed said they were using more cooperative learning activities, on the average of 1-2 times per week. the assignment of homework varied from never to 3 or 4 times a week. generally the earlier grades did less homework. most teachers said they do not use computers in teaching math. however, they did indicate considerable use of the overhead projector. they only had one computer lab in the building and one computer in each classroom. therefore, the computers were not very accessible. when asked about integrating math into other content areas, the teachers indicated they do considerable integration with reading, science, and social studies. the teachers indicated their colleagues were very supportive of new ideas for teaching math. a lot of this was accomplished through weekly grade level school reform through a school/university partnership 5 meetings that were lead by the assistant principal. the weekly grade level meetings started during the success team work were still being held. the principal now prepares the class schedule to allow for common planning time and therefore opportunities to schedule these grade level meetings. teachers commented on these meetings and how they provided an opportunity to share information with other teachers. they were seen to be very productive and helped reduce the isolation many of the teachers felt before this project began. the teachers also indicated good support from the administration, both the principal and the assistant principal. the principal tended to agree with most of the interview data from the teachers. he stated that the teachers were using a lot more variety of teaching strategies than before and were using a lot of cooperative learning, but not as much as he would like. he agreed there is some integration of math into other content areas and believes there needs to be more. he also believes the teachers have more opportunities to learn than some of the other schools in the area. “they have a lot of inservice.” he stated the map and the textbook have the most influence on the math content being taught in the classrooms. he believed the jury was still out on the new textbook. “teachers really liked the previous book.” he stated, “teachers are definitely more collaborative. (im) 2 began the collaboration and it has been enhanced with the grade level meetings.” it is important to note that the assistant principal was a third grade teacher prior to 20012002, when she became the assistant principal. therefore, she was in the classroom when the (im) 2 partnership began. as assistant principal, one of her major responsibilities is to prepare the agenda and meet with the grade level teams. during her interview it was clear that she believed the teachers and the administration were both very supportive of trying new ideas in the classroom. she said they had a lot of staff development in their school and believed the textbook had the most influence on math content. she also agreed there was definitely more collaboration among teachers than before the project began. one of the authors of this study was a member of the original success team and conducted the classroom observations in 1998, 1999 and again in 2002. the teaching observed in 2002 contrasted with the teaching observed in 1998 and 1999 where in some classes the teacher read through the script provided with the book while the students listened and then worked on the assignment. although direct instruction was observed in 2002, there was a change in the direction of more interaction over previous observations when the previous math series was being used. it should be noted that during observations on each date there were some teachers who used a format of active engagement and exploration that required the students to solve problems and go beyond their beginning level of understanding. the 2002 observations revealed that the more engaging teaching strategies had increased substantially. in the view of the observer there had been a transition in the way lessons were conducted and the new book was providing a foundation for these changes. although many teachers were comfortable with the script of the previous series and some would like to return to that format, they are moving away from the scripted format to one based on student understanding and increased student interactions. many were uncertain about what choices of activities were best to improve student understanding, but as they moved away from a scripted lesson and tried new ideas, it was anticipated they would become more confident in the effectiveness of their teaching. the data from the missouri student survey of classroom practices: mathematics were examined to identify differences between the teacher responses in 1998 and those in 2002. teachers responded to this survey by ranking each item on a likert scale of one to five. the percent of teachers responding to the survey questions with strong agreement (score of 4 or 5) was compared. the comparisons are reported when changes from 1998 to 2002 were greater than 10 %. the first area reported is that of the relative importance of different factors in determining math grades (table 1). the data revealed several important shifts. three shifts that are considered to be more desirable changes in instructional practices were that a higher percentage of teachers indicated performance tasks and portfolios were more current issues in education vol. 8 no. 8 important in determining math grades and fewer teachers selected individual seatwork in 2002. however, two items that are considered less desirable changes were the increased use of objective tests and worksheets. the increased importance of performance tasks may have been influenced by the new textbook that contains suggestions for these tasks, thereby making them easier to incorporate. it is possible that the decrease in seatwork may reflect a more active environment; however, the increase in the importance of worksheets is not necessarily consistent with this change. table 2 indicates that in the area of instructional activities in math there was an increase in the frequency of reading about math from a textbook, and using portfolios for assessment purposes. however, among the teachers who reported the frequency to be once a week or more, there were several decreases including: (a) reaching conclusions about math data; (b) making tables, graphs, or charts; and (c) applying math concepts to everyday life. additionally, there was an increase in the number of teachers reporting students doing individual seatwork on at least a weekly basis. the changes in reading from the math book are probably explained by the change in textbook. the new textbook series has more material for students to read and therefore this increase is understandable. the increase in use of portfolios was only by some of the k-2 teachers who reported during the interviews that they were using portfolios as a means of assessment. it is possible that the decrease in the use of math data to reach conclusions as well as applying math concepts to everyday life was a consequence of the teachers' lack of familiarity with the new textbook. if this is the case, it would be expected they will be better able to make these connections as they become more familiar with the book. part ii of the survey examined teacher attitude toward instructional style. to aid in the interpretation of the data we have divided the statements into four groups: student centered classroom (table 3), teacher centered classroom (table 4), statements about assessment (table 5), and a statement about technology. in the area of student centered classroom (table 3), there are four positive changes of more than 10 percentage points. these include statements supporting imbedding subject matter in authentic experiences, the use of cooperative learning, student responsibility for learning, and preparation time and hands-on activities. all of these changes reflect a shift toward a more student centered environment. in contrast, it must also be noted that three statements received responses indicating less support than previously. these include the: encouragement of novel solutions, students creating their own learning strategies, and the use of projects and centers for instruction. these responses reflect a shift away from student centered learning. six responses of the survey identified as “teacher centered” received a lower percent of teacher support in 2002 than in 1998 (table 4). this may be interpreted as a decrease in teacher centered instruction. the statements in this category include: teachers should impart knowledge, students learning basic skills before participating in higher learning, teacher control of instruction, curriculum decisions, student progress, and the relationship between instruction and assessment. the decrease in agreement with these questions strongly supports a shift away from a teacher centered approach. school reform through a school/university partnership 7 in the section on assessment, the teachers' agreement increased on statements viewing assessment as more than a test for a grade (table 5). also, the percent in agreement declined on the value of a test. this section also reflects a positive change in the teachers' attitudes. the final section relates to technology. unfortunately the teachers' response to the role of technology indicates a decreased level of support (73% in 1998, and 38% in 2002). however, the teachers' use of overhead projectors increased dramatically. in 1998 only 33% reported frequent use while 91% reported using them frequently in 2002. overhead projectors were scarce in 1998, but have been purchased for all rooms since that time. this was supported through the observations that were made in 2002. however, the teachers are not making use of other forms of technology as reported in the survey and confirmed through the interviews. this is a result of having little or no other equipment available for their use. project influence on staff development the second research question sought to answer whether or not the delivery of staff development had changed since the beginning of the (im) 2 project in 1998. an attempt was made by the success team to design staff development that was consistent with the latest research on effective staff development. the key components of effective staff development attempted by the success team were: (a) significant collaboration between staff members; (b) job embedded staff development; (c) staff development that extends over long periods of time; and (d) significant involvement of school leadership. an example of the use of significant collaboration was the process used in the selection of the new math series by the district action team composed of faculty members and involving consultation with the entire faculty. this process required numerous meetings to organize the process. the entire faculty was involved in piloting materials and the final decision was made at a meeting of all faculty members. this level of decision making was new to the school and resulted in a feeling of ownership. one important indicator of improved collaboration was the teachers' response to an item on the survey. in responding to the statement that most teachers in the school contribute actively in making decisions about the math curriculum, there was a dramatic change from 47% in 1998 to 71% in 2002. one of the more significant findings was that even though the faculty and administration decided, during the second year of the (im) 2 program, they wanted to concentrate on literacy, elements of collaboration evident in the (im) 2 work carried over into the balanced literacy project they began in 2000-2001. when asked if there was more collaboration among faculty members than before the project started, the answer was a resounding yes. they indicated the things that had stimulated this collaboration were the collaborative development of the math curriculum, their involvement in selecting the new textbook, and the weekly grade level meetings. they indicated they collaborated on such things as strategies for teaching, pace, sequence, and instructional materials. one teacher said, “the collaboration learned during the math project has carried over into the balanced literacy program.” another said, “i feel less isolated than four years ago.” significant involvement of school leadership was evidenced by the employment of one of the third grade teachers to be an assistant principal with primary responsibilities in the area of student assessment, staff development, and the scheduling and facilitation of weekly grade level meetings. these meetings were scheduled during the school day as a result of common planning times scheduled by current issues in education vol. 8 no. 8 the principal. although teachers did not seem to consider the weekly meetings as staff development, they did consider these meetings important for the sharing of new instructional ideas and methods, planning for instruction, and discussions of student assessment. these weekly grade level meetings are evidence of staff development that extends over a long period of time. the teachers indicated their colleagues were very supportive of new ideas for teaching math. a good deal of this was accomplished through the grade level meetings. they also indicated good support from the administration, both the principal and the assistant principal.overall the teachers stated they have many opportunities for teacher learning. they cited the training they received in 1999 and 2000 through the (im) 2 project and the balanced literacy training they were receiving in 2001-2002. some said there was too much encouragement for teacher learning and one said there was not much. however, most teachers indicated there was the appropriate amount of support for teacher learning. student achievement in math the third research question addressed the changes in student achievement as measured by the map. we examined map test data from the spring of 1999 through the spring of 2004 for mathematics. the map tests are administered statewide in missouri with mathematics being administered in the fourth, eighth, and eleventh grades. there are five levels of performance: step 1; progressing; nearing proficient; proficient; and advanced. step 1 is the lowest level and advanced the highest. table 6 indicates the percent of fourth grade students in each level for the six years since the (im) 2 project began. limitations of study this study was restricted to a partnership between only one elementary school and a university, as such, the generalizability of the results can be questioned. however, patton (1990) makes an argument for extrapolation rather than generalization. he defines extrapolation as “modest speculations on the likely applicability of findings to other situations under similar, but not identical conditions” (page 489). another limitation of this study is that one of the authors was involved in the project as a member of the team that carried out the partnership with the elementary school. although their desire for the project to be successful could bias their interpretation of the data, a desire to discover information that would lead to improving future partnerships should mostly negate the influence of researcher bias. a third limitation is that there are many variables affecting student achievement making it difficult to establish a cause and effect relationship between the partnership/staff development and any increase in math test scores. conclusions there is considerable evidence in tables 2 and 3 that teachers' attitudes moved away from a teacher centered attitude toward a more student centered attitude during the period 1998-2002. the pre and post survey of teachers also indicated considerable change in their attitudes about tests with a 15% increase in the number of teachers considering assessment as being more than a test for a grade and 22% fewer supporting the value of a test for assessment purposes only (table 5). overall there is a strong trend toward a classroom that is student centered and using multiple forms of assessment. two other prominent findings in the surveys and the interviews are that after working collaboratively to select a new textbook for math and re-writing the math curriculum as a part of the (im) 2 project, the teachers increased substantially in their view that most teachers contribute actively to making decisions about the math curriculum, from 47% in 1998 to 71% in 2002. during and immediately after this partnership project there was substantial improvement in the map test scores in mathematics. in addition to the improvement of test scores there was considerably greater emphasis on staff development and a change in the delivery of staff development. the staff development became more job-embedded through weekly grade level meetings and greater teacher involvement in needs assessment and curriculum decisions. as a result of the (im) 2 success team work, the school made a significant commitment to teacher collaboration through the assignment of an assistant principal for the purpose of monitoring student assessment and facilitating weekly grade level meetings. teachers indicated a substantial increase in the amount of collaboration since the beginning of the partnership. the principal school reform through a school/university partnership 9 also modeled the emphasis on instruction by planning time in the schedule for grade level meetings and making it possible for faculty to participate in numerous staff development opportunities including summer institutes sponsored by the regional professional development center at southeast missouri state . findings from the data indicated that some of the more positive changes in teachers' instructional practices were: an increased use of performance assessments; experimenting with portfolios, especially in grades k-2; more cooperative learning activities; considerable integration of math into other subject areas; and more teaching based on student understanding and interaction rather than reading through a script to the class and having them do individual work at their seats. the data indicate that these changes can be attributed primarily to the selection of the new math textbook, increased collaboration, the increased amount and ongoing nature of staff development, support by the administration, and the weekly grade level meetings facilitated by the assistant principal. this project makes a strong case for partnerships between institutions of higher education and k-12 institutions in the area of school improvement, not so much in the roll of an outside expert to tell them how, but rather as an outside facilitator to help create a culture of learning and collaboration. as stated earlier in this article the success team's goal was to assist the school in the improvement of mathematics achievement through high quality professional development, significant collaborative planning involving the teaching staff, and a high level of involvement from the school leadership. the results documented in this article provide significant evidence that: (a) the teachers increased their use of student centered instructional methods in their classrooms; (b) the school leadership made a significant commitment to ongoing staff development and collaboration with the teaching staff; and (c) student achievement in math, as measured by the map, has improved substantially in the six years, since the beginning of the project. even though the scope of this partnership limits the ability to develop a cause and effect relationship between the activities of the partnership and the improved math achievement, one could argue that the activities of the members of the success team and the district action team were a catalyst for a new focus on student achievement and through this focus and the staff development provided contributed to the upward trend in mathematics achievement over the last six years. one could also reason for patton's (1990) theory of extrapolation rather than generalization, “likely applicability of findings to other situations under similar, but not identical conditions” (page 489). there is certainly opportunity for further study of the impact of schooluniversity partnerships and research based staff development on student achievement. references bogdan, r., & biklen, s. k. (1998). qualitative research in education: an introduction to theory and methods (3rd ed.). boston: allyn and bacon. center for educational renewal. (1994). better teachers, better schools. seatle: university of washington . collinson, v., & ono, y. (2001). the professional development of teachers in the united states and japan . european journal of teacher education, 24 (2), 223-248. creswell, j. w. (1994). research design: qualitative and qualitative approaches. thousand oaks , ca : sage. darling-hammond, l., & mclaughlin, m. w. (1995). policies that support professional development in an era of reform. phi delta kappan, 76 (8), 597-604. dufour, r., & eaker, r. (1998). professional learning communities at work: best practices for enhancing student achievement. bloomington , in : national educational service. essex, n. l. (2001). effective school-college partnerships, a key to educational reneswal and instructional improvement. education, 121 (4), 732-736. fullan, m. (2001). the new meaning of educational change (3 rd ed.). new york : teachers college press. goodlad, j. i. (1991). school-university partnerships. education digest, 56 (8), 58-61. lewis, a. c. (1998). teacher development. education digest, 63 (6), 70. lieberman, a. (1995). practices that support teacher development: transforming conceptions of professional learning. phi delta kappan , 76 (8), 591-596. mclaughlin, m. w., & marsh, d. d. (1978). staff development and school change. teachers college record, 80 (1), 69-94. national staff development council. (1995). standards for staff development: high school edition. oxford , oh : author. parker, c. j., & golden, w. p., jr. (1952). in-service education of elementary and secondary teachers. review of educational research, 22, 193-200. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 8 patton, m.q. (1990). qualitative evaluation and research methods (2 nd ed.). newbury park , ca : sage. peel. h.a., peel, b.b., & baker, m.e. (2002). school/university partnerships: a viable model. the international journal of educational mangement, 16 (7), 319-325. rakow, s., & robinson, l. (1992). public school/university partnerships. education digest, 63 (3), 64-68. sealey, r., & robson, m. (1997). school and university partnerships: some findings from a curriculum development project. asia pacific journal of teacher education, 25 (1), 79-90. showers, b., joyce, b., & bennett, b. (1987). synthesis of research on staff development: a framework for future study and a state-of the-art analysis. educational leadership, 45 (3), 77-87. sparks , d., & hirsh, s. (1997). a new vision for staff development. oxford , ohio national staff development council. school reform through a school/university partnership 11 2005 article citation waddle, j.l. & conway, k.d. (2005, march 12). school reform through a school/university partnership current issues in education [on-line], 8(8). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number8/ author notes jerry l. waddle, ed.d. southeast missouri state university associate professor of educational administration former science teacher, high school principal, and superintendent of schools jwaddle@semo.edu http://cstl-coe.semo.edu/waddle/ kathleen d. conway, ph.d. southeast missouri state university associate professor of elementary, early, and special education former middle and high school mathematics teacher kconway@semo.edu http://cstl-coe.semo.edu/conway/ note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber august 22, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation waddle, j. l., & conway, k. d. (2005). school reform through a school/university partnership. current issues in education, 8(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1678 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number8/index.html mailto:jwaddle@semo.edu mailto:jwaddle@semo.edu http://cstl-coe.semo.edu/waddle/ mailto:kconway@semo.edu mailto:kconway@semo.edu http://cstl-coe.semo.edu/conway/ http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1678 volume 5, number 2 may 6, 2002 issn 1099-839x a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone jun-chae yoon, miri park, and michelle commeyras university of georgia this article investigates the interplay of cultural knowledge, symbolic language, and interpretive reading comprehension, focusing on the role of culture in symbolic understanding of text. eight graduate students from two different cultural communities read and discussed a korean folktale. data were collected in the form of initial written responses and discussion transcripts. thematic interpretative qualitative analyses are reported on initial reading stances, symbolic understandings, and efforts to identify the moral of the tale. overall the analyses show that korean readers focused mostly on discerning the morality being communicated symbolically through the story, whereas the american readers focused on individual values and freedoms to make sense of the story. our findings indicate that there will be diversity in symbolic reading comprehension both across cultural groups and within cultural groups. we propose that when readers from several cultures come together in classrooms to talk about symbolic texts it is important for them to reflect on how they use their own cultural reference points to form similar and dissimilar understandings and interpretations. heightening this awareness of diversity within cultural knowledge provides exciting and beneficial experiences for readers in today's multicultural classrooms. (reading comprehension, symbolic reading, multicultural, literacy research, cross-cultural study) once upon a time a salt peddler stopped to rest at the foot of a mountain pass. a nearby bone on the ground caught his eye. he picked it up and muttered to himself, "this looks like my shinbone." he put it back on the ground. then, he put his aframe carrier on his back and left. after a while, he noticed that the bone was following him. he did not like this and tried to be rid of the bone. this went on for several days. one afternoon when they came near a village the salt peddler made a promise to the shinbone that was actually a lie that allowed him to escape the bone. several years later when the salt peddler happened to pass by the same village, he was reminded of the bone. he went to the spot where he had last seen it. there was no trace of it only his rotten a-frame carrier. what he did find was a small tavern that had not been there before. since it was already late afternoon, he went to the tavern to stay the night. the old landlady served him a meal and some wine. after he finished his meal, she asked him to tell some interesting stories. he told her the story of the shinbone that had followed him. she listened to his story. when he finished his story, she suddenly shouted, "i'm that bone!" then, she killed and ate him (summary of the salt peddler and the shinbone in crowder han, 1991. see appendix for full text.). how does a reader make sense of folktale such as this one? how does he or she make sense of a current issues in education vol. 5 no. 2 shinbone that follows a man and an old woman who kills and eats a man? when we, an intercultural group of two koreans and one u.s. citizen, read the salt peddler and the shinbone (see appendix for full text) folktale we had a lengthy discussion during which we considered different symbolic interpretations. we were intrigued with the differences in our thinking-not differences that neatly drew lines between nationalities or ethnicities but differences among the three of us as individual thinkers. we thought it would be interesting to pursue the possibility of heterogeneity of thought within two groups of readers. how would korean readers versus american readers symbolically construct meaning for a folktale that was for koreans culturally congruent and for americans culturally unfamiliar? the purpose of our study was to investigate the thinking of two groups of adult readers about a korean folktale in order to learn about the interplay of cultural knowledge and symbolic reading comprehension on individual readers within a cultural group. to do so, we invited a group of four adult readers from the united states to read and discuss the story and four korean adults (living in the united states) to do the same. before conducting our empirical inquiry we consulted the literature to see what other relevant research had already been conducted. to situate our work we begin with what others have studied and learned that seems pertinent. literature review how does a reader comprehend text in which the symbolism of words, expressions, or actions seems unfamiliar or bizarre? research has demonstrated in a variety of ways the role a reader's prior knowledge of the world plays in the process of constructing meaning from written text (anderson, hiebert, scott, & wilkinson, 1985). in particular, the reader's knowledge of culture and language play an important part in symbolically making sense of multicultural literature (davis, 1988). symbol(ism) can be defined as "any mode of expression which, instead of referring to something directly, refers to it indirectly through the medium of something else" (chadwick, 1971, p. 1). however, literary symbol(ism) here is defined not as "static entities given in the text, but as images selected by the reader as representing extended and nonliteral meanings" (davis, 1998, p. 147). symbolic meaning can be conveyed by an object, a gesture, an incident, a person, a plot, a color, a sound, a number, a context, a pattern or sequence of action in a given text-everything is suggestive of meaning for the reader. however, the significance of symbols in a literary text are never explicitly explained or determined. rather, they are reconstructed within the readers' thoughts about contexts and cultures (vygotsky, 1978). thus, symbolically interpreting text is heavily dependent on the readers' experiences and interactions with the world. then, how does a reader understand nonliteral or symbolic language? one research approach has been the study of comprehension of figurative language. searle (1979) proposed the stage model or pragmatics approach. in this model of comprehension nonliteral meaning is computed only after the failure to ascertain literal meanings. conversely, if a literal sense is successfully comprehended then figurative meaning is not considered. but, if literal meaning is not obvious, then nonliteral meaning must be considered. however, few empirical studies have provided support for the stage model (see clark 1979; clark & lucy, 1975; ortony, schallert, reynolds & antos, 1978). for example, clark's (1979) study showed that the literal meaning and the inferred meaning are simultaneously understood as parts of a single package. this finding indicates that literal understanding of figurative language does not always underlie the comprehension of nonliteral language. as ortony (1984) pointed out, the stage model represents a limited rather than a general account of the understanding of figurative language. in the comprehension of figurative language schema theory is presented as a more powerful explanation of the process of symbolically understanding text (ortony, 1984). in this view, context activates an interpretive schema as a conceptual framework of making sense of figurative language. in other words, context requiring a figurative interpretation accesses a network of prior knowledge as scaffolding to aid in encoding information from target language, then the nonliteral language is integrated with background knowledge, and finally it is understood. if not, understanding falters or fails. this view has been popular as an explanation not only for general language comprehension but also for figurative language. a few empirical studies have provided strong support for the schema theoretic view (see baldwin, luce & readence, 1982; ortony, 1979: ortony, 1985; ortony, schallert, reynolds & antos, 1978). in the study of the effects of context on the comprehension of figurative language, ortony, schallert, reynolds and antos (1978) showed that participants spent longer time comprehending metaphorical language than literal language in the short context whereas no significant difference was found between metaphorical sentences and literal ones in the long context condition. their findings indicate that the activation of appropriate background knowledge plays a major role in comprehending figurative language. file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2002,%20vol%205,%20%231-6/number2/index.html%23appendix a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone 3 when the reader shares with the writer certain cultural conventions that sets up a network of prior knowledge that serves as a conceptual framework to aid in symbolically interpreting textual information. if the interpretation does not satisfy then the reader defaults to a more literal understanding of the text. a text rife with symbolism based on a particular culture presents a challenge for readers who are reading out of culture. a symbolic dimension of the text may be interpreted differently depending on the prior cultural background knowledge of the readers. a variety of research studies have indirectly supported a schematic view of the comprehension of nonliteral language (see droop & verhoeven, 1998; lipson, 1983; reynolds, taylor, steffensen, shirey & anderson, 1982; steffenson, 1987; steffenson, joag-dev & anderson, 1979). for example, reynolds, taylor, steffensen, shirey and anderson's (1982) study showed that white students from agricultural area tend to interpret a reading passage as a fight while black students from working class area understood it as verbal play. in a similar vein, steffensen (1987) found that children for whom english is a second language were influenced in their reading comprehension according to differences in their religious affiliations. children with a christian background appeared to have higher comprehension scores on a reading passage about a christmas celebration. what we wanted to consider beyond the existing research was how cultural knowledge figures in understanding figurative language. even though there is little research available on the effects of cultural knowledge on the comprehension of figurative language, except for ortony's study (1985), it seems reasonable to assume that cultural background knowledge plays a critical role in understanding what is nonliteral. with respect to figurative language comprehension ortony's (1985) study found that those children who frequently participated in a cultural game such as "sounding" comprehended figurative language better than those children who did not. the study indicates that frequent exposure to that particular cultural game facilitated the comprehension of the use of figurative language. these studies directly or indirectly support the significance of cultural knowledge on the comprehension of figurative language. does cultural knowledge play a crucial role in constructing meaning from text that is rich with symbolism? there have been a few studies of figurative language comprehension, however, except for a prior study documented in a reader' designation and use of symbolic content (e.g., davis, 1988), there is little research available on the process of symbolically constructing meaning from text. in particular, research on the role of culture in symbolically understanding text has been relatively neglected. this comparative study was performed in an effort to understand more about the interplay between cultural knowledge and symbolic reading comprehension on individual readers who are either culturally familiar with the text or culturally unfamiliar with it. method participants eight graduate students participated from the university of georgia. all of them volunteered for this study. no effort was made to achieve gender balance because we relied on voluntary participants. there were two groups; each group consisted of four participants sharing a national and cultural identity. one group was at least third-generation u.s. citizens who were pursuing doctoral degrees in reading education. all four were european american women ages 31 to 38 and none of them expressed a strong identification with their ancestors' former cultures or nationalities. the reason we selected at least thirdgeneration american citizens was to try and get a group that could be thought of as sharing cultural knowledge typical of americans in the united states rather than of americans with more recent mixed cultural and ethnic backgrounds. the other group was korean-born graduate students who are studying in the united states. they are in fields other than reading education. in the korean group there were two males and two females ranging in age from 27 to 32. all had completed their undergraduate education in korea before coming to the united states for their graduate study. within each group the members were known to one another so there was a certain degree of comfort with regard to discussing the folktale. we chose college students for this study because they are more likely to be consciously aware of their cultural knowledge and also are accustomed to thinking critically and are able to express their thinking articulately. materials each group of participants was presented with the korean folktale titled the salt peddler and the shinbone. this is a folktale that is part of the oral tradition in korea, which means it does not have a title from the past. it has been passed down from generation to generation. nobody knows where, when, and by whom it was told for the first time. it might be as old as 500 years. the reason this particular folktale was selected is that it is highly symbolic and can be interpreted in many ways even though it looks easy to understand on the surface level. to our knowledge this particular folktale is not current issues in education vol. 5 no. 2 well known in korea so we were particularly interested to see how the korean participants would use their cultural background knowledge in the process of comprehending and interpreting it. each group read and discussed the story in their first language. with the exception that korean students sometimes used english to restate or elaborate their thinking. procedure and analysis all the participants were asked to read a story thoroughly and then asked to write an initial response regarding the general meaning of message of this folktale. the initial essay included not only their understanding of the folktale but also questions they wanted to discuss with their group. then they had a discussion with their group. the first two authors (jun and miri) were present at both discussions and served as facilitators and observers (crotty, 1998). most of the time they listened to the discussion and only spoke when asked questions by the participants or when they wanted to probe the participants' thinking. they did ask both groups to talk about the symbolic meanings that could be drawn from this folktale. toward the end of each discussion jun and miri also asked the participants if they could come to an agreement about what moral message this folktale intended. the discussion sessions were recorded on audiotapes and transcribed. for the korean group's discussion, jun and miri first transcribed the tapes in korean and then translated them into english. the analysis of the transcripts focused on identifying themes related to understanding the interplay of cultural knowledge and symbolic reading comprehension as expressed by individual readers. findings initial reading stances literacy theorists (e.g., rosenblatt, 1983) have debated the locus of meaning in reading yet all recognize that reading must involve a process of using cues provided by the author in a given text and in doing so the reader makes use of his or her prior knowledge of the world. such a process of making meaning influences the reader's stance toward reading. in terms of reading stance there were differences between the two groups. readers from korea. the comments of the readers from korea indicated that they regard reading as a process of finding the author's intention. all four readers expected that the author intended a moral because the genre was obviously a folktale. they launched their discussion by focusing on two questions: (a) why did the shinbone follow the salt peddler? (b) why did the old woman kill and eat the salt peddler? they all focused on what occurred between the salt peddler and the shinbone as they searched for the moral. in pursuing their questions they used cues such as story structure, writing style and word choice in their process of constructing meaning. they found it difficult to quickly discern the moral or lesson. sook, hoon and wong wondered if there was anything meaningful intended by the author. sook said, "the story isn't meaningful." hoon stated, "on the surface it did not seem to have any lessons." hoon thought that whatever lesson was intended, "it seemed too far-fetched." wong explained at length his view that "this story did not send any message." due to the structure and contents of this short story, it is somewhat difficult for readers to understand this story, and it is somewhat tedious of them to read it. i have no idea about the story as to why it was written. the construction of sentences is not coherent and the writing style is not terse, it is too diffuse. as a consequence these things exert a harmful influence and do not support the contents of the story. . . . if someone wrote this story then this story must give lessons. my feeling after reading this is that this story does not send any message. i could not feel anything, though i was a little frightened of the appearance of a shinbone and the fact that the old woman killed and ate the salt peddler. even with these feelings the structure of the story is not coherent and very weak. the korean readers' initial stance toward the folktale was to use author cues to name the lesson or moral. when that was not obvious they faulted the author for the difficulty they experienced in constructing a meaningful interpretation of the text. american readers. the american readers began their discussion trying to identify the genre. like their korean counterparts they were not told before the reading that this was a korean folktale. leslie offered, "my first guess was that this was a fairy tale like hansel and gretel." alison said she did not know why but "it reminds me of one of the canterbury tales." and elizabeth thought it looked like a traditional fairy tale until the first "damn" and then she wondered, "why is this word in a fairy tale? fairy tales are for children and have a moral or lesson." the readers came to terms with the word "damn" by recalling that in the original versions of many known fairy and folk tales there was violence and elements that are shocking to people today who view these tales as primarily stories for children. leslie remembered that, "at the end of the original cinderella story the stepsisters and stepmother get rolled down a hill full of nails or something." a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone 5 the americans pooled their prior knowledge of fairy and folktales to situate the text with regard to genre and other texts they were familiar with. apart from the fact that the american readers are reading specialists, one possible interpretation of the difference in initial reading stances comes from a consideration of each group's educational experiences with reading. the korean readers' have been schooled to focus on finding the author's intended meaning as opposed to focusing on constructing their own meaning of text. an american schooling experience probably places more emphasis on personal response (many, 1994) and in this case the readers focused on situating the salt peddler and the shinbone among their prior reading experiences. another possibility is that the americans readers needed to do some preliminary thinking about genre and context to ready themselves to think about the moral whereas the korean readers did not need to do this. symbolic understandings symbolism can be conveyed through an object, a gesture, an incident, a person, the plot, a color, a sound, a number and even a pattern of action in any given text. symbolism requires that the reader draw upon his or her experiences, observations and intuition in making meaning. the identification and interpretation of symbolic elements is always influenced by the reader's background knowledge of the world and prior reading experiences with symbolic texts. sometimes symbolism is interpreted similarly within a community of readers and other times individual readers diverge in their interpretations. texts where symbolism is prominent such as folk and fairy tales call for a dimension of reading comprehension or constructing meaning that is intellectually sophisticated. while the shinbone was often at the center of discussion with regard to reading the symbolism, there was also attention to several other dimensions in seeking the moral or lesson of the tale. readers from korea. in the korean group, byung used the plot of the story to begin searching for the moral. first, a salt peddler met a shinbone by chance; second, he cheated and dumped it and he went to another banquet which means a return to meet other people; and third, he came back to encounter the shinbone (an old woman). he got killed and eaten by the shinbone that he cheated and dumped. i understood the meaning of the story as-do not make anything less of a relation even though it is a trivial one. through a focus on plot byung implies that the shinbone is symbolic of the most casual of relationships. and that the lesson to readers is that we should accord due respect to all manner of relationships from those that might seem trivial to those that are profoundly important to us. byung elaborated on his interpretation by drawing on his cultural knowledge. in traditional korean society a salt peddler is a person who always wanders and has lots of chances to contact many women. when the salt peddler said, "this is just like my shinbone," he endowed the shinbone with a sense of homogeneity. therefore the shinbone followed him....there are many stories in korean folk tales about a woman waiting for her man, and after all she becomes a stone. a woman is a being who waits for someone. a man is a being who wanders. in this story, a salt peddler symbolized a man who wanders. i am sure. hoon viewed the shinbone as the salt peddler's guilty conscience for his immoral actions. hoon also draws on her knowledge of traditional society in a different way to develop her interpretation. in a traditional society, a dead person's bone lying down in public is a serious problem. so he should have had the courtesy to bury it, but he did not. instead he even played with it. from traditional values his behavior is not right. from my point of view, what followed him was not the shinbone itself but his own guilty conscience...this story seems to tell that after all, his own guilty conscience brought down death on him. hoon also thought that there was something sexual occurring that needed to be considered. again her thinking offers something different from the other korean participants. this story can be interpreted from a sexual perspective. if we think of what playing with the shinbone symbolizes-that too is sexual....a shinbone out of human bones may have any peculiar characteristics. for example, human ribs have a special meaning in the bible. hoon's thinking was picked up by byung and led him to think about the shinbone from an umyang theory of taoism as reflected in korean folk religion beliefs. based on the dual principal of the negative (um) and the positive (yang), the male is positive and a sky and the female is negative and the ground. in terms of human body structure the bones of the lower part of the body pertained to the ground, therefore the shinbone may represent the female. hoon's focus on the sexuality followed a comment by wong that the word hag seemed a current issues in education vol. 5 no. 2 strange choice for the old woman. byung offered that hag means a faded woman in terms of sexuality. wong did not view the salt peddler as morally wrong in his actions. as a salt peddler he had to come and go to sell his salt and if the shinbone follows him it will hinder his business. therefore he lied to dump it. he is a person who had a thorough outlook on his job....this story is about a rancorous relation. the old woman unfairly died with a grudge and as said before if the salt peddler had buried the shinbone then she should have worked off her own grudge in her mind. later in the conversation wong offered that in korean folktales an old woman appears as a ghost. this provides some cultural information for thinking about the title the salt peddler and the shinbone. american readers. the american readers initially regarded the salt peddler and the shinbone as the two major symbolic references in the folk tale. they proposed a variety of interpretations regarding the symbolic significance of the shinbone. at the outset readers accepted the shinbone as belonging to the salt peddler in some fashion. at first i thought it was his bone. somehow his bone got separated from his body and it is trying to follow him around to get back in there. (leslie) elizabeth said, "i think the shinbone is part of him" and soon thereafter suggests that the bone might be his wife whom he has neglected. thinking of the shinbone as symbolic of a woman was discussed at length. this bone is like his wife or woman. she is obedient, follows his footsteps. does what she is supposed to do and then at the end after he abandons her she eats him. i thought that is pretty typical of men's fear of being swallowed up by women. (leslie) leslie then wondered if she was bringing too much of a feminist interpretative perspective. elizabeth thought the concept of a woman eating up a man might represent a wife that takes everything of material worth from a man after divorce. alison said she purposely did not mention her thinking that the story was about "rejected love" because that came out of her "feminist" thinking. they found the story definitely "not predictable" and considered the shinbone a symbol of something mysterious like a woman. steffanie offered that the bone represented something mysterious because it was "cold, dark and hard." another interpretative theme for the shinbone developed from thinking literally about how getting knocked in the shinbone hurts. steffanie likened the shinbone to an "achilles tendon....a roman's weakness." elizabeth supported this by saying "you never talk about your shinbone until it hurts." steffanie worked out the interpretation that the shinbone symbolizes weakness. when people are strong they can avoid it but when they become tired like the salt peddler did then the weakness comes out. the lesson drawn was that people can live in denial of their weakness but they cannot do so forever. in searching for symbolic understanding the american readers frequently made reference to their cultural knowledge. they referred to european folktales (aesop fables, canterbury tales, hansel and gretel) and to american popular culture in the form of scary songs and campfire stories. midway through their discussion steffanie wondered, "if it changes our interpretation knowing it was a korean folktale." elizabeth's response was that she had forgotten about that. "i just thought about it being a folktale. i knew it was korean but the peddler in my mind was not korean. it is more european." the readers accepted that there was "a lot of hidden meaning" and that they were "guessing" and "throwing out ideas." they considered far more story elements as potentially symbolic then did the korean readers. in addition to the shinbone they discussed the symbolic possibilities for the a-frame the salt peddler carried on his back, the salt, the hag and the tavern. even the word "damn" was considered for it possible symbolic intent. but most of the discussion time focused on the shinbone's symbolic significance. the repetition of certain words such as "a-frame" led to speculation that this might indicate that they are of symbolic importance. moral or lesson a folktale is intended to communicate an important virtue to readers, particularly to children. most of the korean readers viewed this story as a lesson about responsibility. for example, sook stated, "take responsibility for even small and trifle things and don't lie." and byung commented, "i understood that the meaning of the story is don't make nothing of a relation even though it is a trivial one." to draw such conclusions the koreans depended on their cultural background as influenced by buddhism and confucianism. sook's response, "even a chance meeting is due to the karma in previous life" reflects buddhists' causal and effectual way of viewing the world. among buddhists, relationships are highly valued. byung's interpretation of the shinbone as symbolic of the female is based on um-yang theory in taoism. hoon's comment that it is wrong to ignore a bone lying in public is indicative of the importance of courtesy reflected in confucian ancestral worship and ideas about proper human relationships. so while they both used cultural knowledge they differed in a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone 7 what they drew upon and how they applied it to symbolic reading comprehension. the american readers arrived at a consensus regarding the moral of the folktale, weaving together individual and personal responses. they agreed that the moral was do not turn your back or mistreat others or yourself because it will come back to haunt you. in looking at their dialogue it is interesting to trace how they co-construct the meaning of this tale. each speaker barely completes a thought but all together they weave something overall that satisfies them, as the following dialogue illustrates: stephanie: there's an element of being careful of the thing that might get you. elizabeth: yes, it will come back to haunt you. allison: you cannot really turn your back on. elizabeth: yes, turning your back is definitely rejecting leslie: mistreatment steffanie: of yourself or others elizabeth: if you do that it would come back to haunt you or eat you. discussion we observe that for the american readers there was awareness that knowledge of korean culture was relevant to interpreting the folktale but that it was difficult for them to make use of that given their lack of knowledge. they relied often on perspectives that must be viewed as coming directly from their cultural experiences as americans. there was a gender perspective at work in both groups but in very different ways. women's power and autonomy is stronger in the united states than in korea. the old hag killing and eating the salt peddler was given a gendered interpretation. the old woman was using her power to take everything from a man who had wronged her and had left her. it is not uncommon to hear talk about the possibility that a scorned and vindictive wife might take everything from her former husband through divorce as adjudicated. this is different in korea although times are changing with regard to women's rights. it is important to acknowledge that both koreans and americans readers found the tale too odd to be for children because of the content and language (e.g., damn & hag -halmanggu). they both thought the story easy to understand at a surface level with regard to story events and progression. but both groups of readers engaged in a more in-depth discussion to consider the symbolism of the shinbone and the moral of the story. it was here that we found individualistic thinking within groups that eventually accrued to some collective thinking. the korean readers focused somewhat more on the moral aspects of the folktale. they spoke of the salt peddler's lie and his ignorance of his relationship to the shinbone and later the old woman. the american readers thinking emphasized a general social norm such as the good treatment of people. korean readers come from a society where moral virtues such as responsibility are more important than other virtues such as honesty and individual freedom. for korean readers the essence of the salt peddler' fault lies with his irresponsibility to the shinbone and later to the old woman but not in his lying or mistreatment. this may result from korean's effectcentered way of thinking in their daily lives. in contrast the american readers have lived in a society where individual values and freedoms are highly valued. for them the salt peddler's mistreatment is of utmost concern regardless of his responsibility to the shinbone. this may represent america's causecentered way of thinking in their daily lives. we have learned from our qualitative analyses that the korean readers as individuals and as a group eventually made moral sense of the salt peddler and the shinbone. the same is evident for the american readers. of significance are the variations in symbolic reading comprehension that occurred within groups as well as across groups. prior quantitative research on cultural schemata in reading comprehension gives the impression that reading comprehension is singular across groups of cultural readers. our qualitative analysis of korean and americans reading the salt peddler and the shinbone supports those earlier findings, but goes further by revealing some variations that occur in symbolic reading comprehension within a cultural group. in both of our cultural groups there was the phenomena of readers making use of each other's thinking to seek some kind of collective understanding of the shinbone's symbolism. we propose that there is a danger that cultural affinity will be treated monolithically in education and in teaching reading as a process of constructing meaning through the dynamic interaction among the reader, the text, and the context of the reading situation (anderson, hiebert, scott & wilkinson, 1985). our analysis reminds us to look for and appreciate the dynamic interaction among cultural references and individual readers as they work collectively to achieve symbolic reading comprehension. implications and recommendations symbolic reading is not a single way of constructing meaning from text either for an individual or a cultural group. rather, it is a process of exploring words, expressions, actions, customs, and beliefs evoked by or brought to text. symbolic current issues in education vol. 5 no. 2 reading comprehension is interesting reading particularly when shared with others. while it may be important to experience and feel able to do individually we have found it to be a richer experience through our own initial discussion of the salt peddler and the shinbone and from our analysis of adult korean and american readers. symbolic reading can become an aesthetic way of making sense of the world expressed in the text. in comparison with literal reading, it provides greater potential for richer and deeper experiences with text. srivastava (1997) states that it helps a reader reach a higher level of understanding of the invisible profound world of a work of art. in schooling, symbolic reading comprehension of multicultural literature would offer rich experiences, with text, self and community for readers learning to live in a multicultural ethically conscious world. it would also encourage readers of differing ethnicities to be aware of their own cultural heritage as well as other people's as they seek meaning. therefore, symbolic reading comprehension of multicultural texts seems imperative for those educators teaching for social justice in the age of globalism where people can engage in self-expression within and across cultural contexts. admittedly, the current study is limited. first of all, the educational implications of the study may not be directly generalized to young readers in multicultural classroom because the study used a group of adults as participants, and because the story is more appropriate for adults than for children. to provide more convincing implications for teaching children in multicultural classrooms, further study is encouraged with children on symbolic reading comprehension of multicultural texts. references anderson, r. c., hiebert, e. h., scott, j. a., & wilkinson, i. a. g. (1985). becoming a nation of readers: the report of the commission of reading. washington, dc: the national academy of education. baldwin, r. s., luce, t. s., & readence, j. r. (1982). the impact of subschemata on metaphorical processing. reading research quarterly, 17, 528-543. chadwick, c. (1971). symbolism. london: methuen. clark, h. w. (1979). responding to indirect speech acts. cognitive psychology, 11, 430-477. clark, h. w., & lucy, p. (1975). understanding what is meant from what is said: a study in conversationally conveyed requests. journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 14, 56-72. crotty, m. (1998). the foundations of social research: meaning and perspective in the research process. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications inc. davis, s. n. (1988). a reader's structuring of symbolic content. metaphor and symbolic, 3, 147-156. droop, m., & verhoeven, l. (1998). background knowledge, linguistic complexity, and second-language reading comprehension. journal of literacy research, 30, 253-271. gee, j. p. (1996). social linguistics and literacies: ideology in discourses. philadelphia, pa: falmer press. han, s. c. (1991). korean folk & fairy tales. new jersey: hollym. lipson, m. y. (1983). the influence of religious on children's memory for text information. reading research quarterly, 18, 448-457. mnay, j. e. (1994). the effect of reader stance on students' personal understanding of literature. in r. b. ruddell, m. r. ruddell, & h. singer (eds.), theoretical models and processes of reading (pp. 653-667). newark, de: international reading association. ortony, a. (1979). beyond literal similarity. psychological review, 86, 161-180. ortony, a. (1984). understanding of figurative language. in p. d. pearson, r. barr, m. l. kamil, & p. mosenthal (eds.), handbook of reading research (pp. 453-470). new york: longman. ortony, a. (1985). cultural and instructional influences on figurative language comprehension by inner city children. (eric document reproduction service no. ed 255 907) ortony, a., reynolds, r. e., & arter, j. a. (1978). metaphor: theoretical and emprical research. psychological bulletin, 85, 919 943. ortony, a., schallert, d. l. reynolds, r. e., & antos, s. (1978). interpreting metaphors and idioms: some effects of context on comprehension. journal of verbal learning and verbal behavior, 17, 465-477. reynolds, r. e., taylor, m. a., steffensen, m. s., shirey, l. l., & anderson, r. c. (1982). cultural schemata and reading comprehension, reading research quarterly, 17, 353-366. rosenblatt, l. m. (1938/1983). literature as exploration. (4th ed.). new york: modern language association. searle, j. (1979). metaphor. in a. ortony (ed.), metaphor and thought (pp. 92-123). cambridge: cambridge. a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone 9 srivastava, r. k. (ed.). (1997). symbolism in indian fiction in english. jalandhar, india: abc publications. steffensen, m. s. (1987). the effects of context and culture on children's l2 reading: a review. in j. devine, p. l. carrell, & d. e. eskey (eds.) research in reading in english as a second language (pp. 43-54). washington, dc: tesol. steffensen, m. s., joag-dev, c., & anderson, r. c. (1979). a cross-cultural perspective on reading comprehension. reading research quarterly, 15, 10-29. vygotsky, l. s. (1978). mind in society. cambridge, ma; harvard university press. . current issues in education vol. 5 no. 2 appendix the salt peddler and the shinbone once upon a time a salt peddler stopped to rest at the foot of a mountain pass. he was weary and his legs and back hurt from carrying his heavy load from one secluded village after another. carefully he propped his aframe carrier on the ground and slipped his arms out of the shoulder straps. he sat down with his back against a tree and was soon dozing. after a while he awoke and glanced around. something on the ground nearby caught his eye. it looked like a human bone. the thought sent tingles up and down his spine. but his curiosity overcame his fright so he picked it up for a closer look. "this is just like my shinbone," he muttered to himself and put it back on the ground. he rested a while longer and then put his a-frame on and left. hearing something behind him, he looked back and was frightened to see the bone standing in the path. he walked faster, thinking it couldn't go fast. but it went fast as well. then he slowed down to let it go past. but it also slowed down. then he stopped, thinking it would go on by. but it also stopped. he didn't know what to do. at sundown he stopped at a tavern to spend the night. the bone followed him into-his room and when he lay down to sleep, it lay down as well. the next morning, it got up when he got up and followed him out the tavern. this went on for several days. then one afternoon when they came to the top of a ridge, the peddler noticed that a house in the village below seemed to be having a party. when they came near the village entrance, he told the bone, "there's a feast at one of the houses. you wait here with the salt while i go get us some meat and rice cakes and wine." he quickly removed his a-frame and walked toward the village. he looked back after a few steps and was delighted to see that the bone had not moved. he went into the village and left by another route. several years later when he found himself in the vicinity of that village, he was reminded of the bone and decided to visit the spot where he had last seen it. he went there but there was no trace of it, only the rotten remains of his old a-frame carrier. he looked around and saw a small tavern that had not been there before. since it was already late afternoon, he went there and asked to stay the night. the old woman who ran the place took one look at him and said he could. "here, have some wine," the old woman said, after he finished his meal. "you must be bored. how about telling me something interesting. being a peddler, you must have lots of stories." "not really. but you must have heard lots of interesting things yourself. you tell me something." the old woman talked for a while and then she said, "why don't you have anything to say? going from place to place you must have seen and heard all kinds of interesting things. and you must have had all kinds of interesting experiences." "well, just the other day i was thinking of something that happened to me. you see, i had been going from village to village selling salt and, being very tired, i stopped at the bottom of a pass to rest. i was leaning against a big rock when i noticed something that looked like a shinbone. i looked at it and said to myself, 'this looks like my shinbone.' and after that, that damn bone made every move i made." "well?" said the old woman. "well, i was scared. if i walked fast, it walked fast. if i went slowly, it went slow. if i stopped, it stopped. the damn thing just kept following me," the peddler took a drink and was quiet. "well, what happened?" asked the old woman excitedly. "i just couldn't shake that damn thing. that night when i went into a tavern to sleep, it lay right down beside me. and the next morning when i headed out, it was right behind me. it followed me for i don't know how many days." he drank down a bowl of wine. "so, what did you do?" "well, one day i happened to come upon a village where some kind of celebration was going on. it was the village just down the road from here. so i said to that bone to wait here with the salt and i would go down and get us some food and drink. i headed down the road but the bone didn't follow. i was so happy to be free of that damn thing. i left that village by a different route and went straight home. that was quite a few years ago. then, just the other day i found myself near here and, remembering that bone, i came here to see what had become of it. but it was gone. i wonder what became of it." "i'm that bone!" shouted the old woman and killed and ate the peddler. a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone 11 2002 article citation yoon, j., park, m., & commeyras, m. (2002, may 6). a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone. current issues in education [on-line], 5 (2). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume5/number2/ author notes jun-chae yoon university of georgia department of reading education 309 aderhold hall, athens, ga 30602, usa. yoonjunchae@hotmail.com miri park, university of georgia department of reading education 309 aderhold hall, athens, ga 30602, usa parkmiri@coe.uga.edu michelle commeyras university of georgia department of reading education 309 aderhold hall, athens, ga 30602, usa michelle@coe.uga.edu note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 25, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation yoon, j., park, m., & commeyras, m. (2002). a comparative study of symbolic reading: salt peddler and shinbone. current issues in education, 5(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1618 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2002,%20vol%205,%20%231-6/number2/index.html mailto:yoonjunchae@hotmail.com mailto:parkmiri@coe.uga.edu mailto:michelle@coe.uga.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1618 volume 5, number 1 may 1, 2002 issn 1099-839x editorial – the evolution of current issues in education: building upon a solid foundation ildiko i. laczko-kerr and marina gair arizona state university since its inception in 1998, almost five years ago, current issues in education has endeavored to develop into an innovator in creating democratic access to research in education. the journal, designed to provide free access to scholarly research via the internet, commenced by inviting a diverse group of researchers to dialogue about current issues in education. a simple enough endeavor so it would seem, one that may appear to have been taken up by other journals as well, but looks can be deceiving. over the course of this journal's life; through the careful crafting and vigilant efforts of editors, associate editors, and advisors current issues in education has continued to evolve into a journal whose mission is focused around establishing and fostering dialogue relating to a broad range of education related topics. it is our great pleasure and honor to be the current stewards of current issues in education (cie). we follow in the footsteps of many others who have laid a solid foundation for the continued evolution of this journal. it is our hope that we can help to further this process. leslie poynor, in the first cie editorial address (1998) reminds us that cie is committed to "establishing dialogue between areas of education that are rarely brought together." this continuing interest in a variety of topic areas is due in part to the realization that educating human beings is a complex undertaking, one that cannot be rushed by technology, time, or political ideology. our early development as an electronic journal (e-journal) came with the understanding that "the internet makes e-journals an opportune global mode of communication for scholarly exchange in which national and international boarders are erased. the appeal of e-journals is enhanced by the power of the electronic medium to open up possibilities hitherto impossible" (ganesh & jennings, 1999). utilizing this awareness, our predecessors took actions to develop the medium in which we publish. the use of hyperlinks and multimedia i.e., audio and video clips within published articles continue to be supported by the editorial staff; yet, articles that make use of these unique aspects of electronic publishing in a manner that enhances the research account are seldom encountered. leavy and ganesh (2000) note that "scholars may not have access to the power the medium offers and expertise in use of cutting edge technology may rest with a few." while this is certainly true, advances in technology and training have made access and learning more available. our most recent predecessors remind us "many of the current issues in education are those same issues that educational researchers have been wrestling with for years" (dicerbo & darcy, 2001). current issues in education must continue to be a source of quality educational research that meets the diverse needs and interests of a global community of scholars, practioners and recipients of educational research. in addition to continuing to publish articles that explore enduring topics in education, we want to bring together academics and researchers with diverse theoretical perspectives and disciplinary interests to provide provocative editorials on more contemporary and emerging themes in education. over the course of the year, current issues in education seeks submissions that have dominated public debates, fueled referenda campaigns, and current issues in education vol. 5 no. 1 legislative reforms in the recent past. this year, it is the goal of cie to reflect the spectrum of actors, range of competing discourses, and ongoing processes of change in education. references dicerbo, k. e. & darcy, m. (2001). current issues in education: meeting the challenges of our times. current issues in education [on-line], 4(1). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume4/number1/ ganesh, t. g. & jennings, t. a. (1999). ejournals today: forerunners of the unrealized potential of the digital medium. current issues in education [on-line], 2(1). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number1/ leavy, a. m & ganesh, t. g. (2000). the nascent promise of ejournals: instances of pioneering use of technology. current issues in education [on-line], 3(1). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume3/number1/ poynor, l. (1998). editor's notes — current issues in education [on-line], 1(1). available: http://cie.asu.edu/volume1/number1/ http://cie.asu.edu/volume4/number1/ http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number1/ http://cie.asu.edu/volume3/number1/ http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume1/number1/ the evolution of current issues in education: building upon a solid foundation 3 2002 article citation laczko-kerr, i. i. & gair, m. (2002, may 1). the evolution of current issues in education: building upon a solid foundation. current issues in education [on-line], 5 (1). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume5/number1/ author notes ildiko i. laczko-kerr arizona state university ilaczko@ade.az.gov ildiko i. laczko-kerr, ph.d. is a graduate from the division of psychology in education at arizona state university. her research interests include teacher quality, training and certification, specifically emergency teacher certification and its effect on student achievement. she holds a ba in psychology and a ma in educational psychology from the university of arizona. marina gair arizona state university marina.gair@asu.edu marina gair is a doctoral candidate in the division of educational leadership and policy studies at arizona state university. her academic interests include sociology of education, educational anthropology, and visual ethnography. her current research focuses on the socialization of preservice teachers, specifically investigating the ways in which elements of hidden curricula function in teacher training practice. she has recently contributed an introductory chapter entitled "hiding in plain sight" to the edited volume, the hidden curriculum in higher education by eric margolis (routledge, spring 2001). the work is based on ethnographic interviews with leading scholars in education on the topic of socialization and the reproductive functions of post-secondary schooling. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 25, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation laczko-kerr, i. i., & gair, m. (2002). the evolution of current issues in education: building upon a solid foundation. current issues in education, 5(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1617 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2002,%20vol%205,%20%231-6/number1/index.html mailto:ilaczko@ade.az.gov mailto:marina.gair@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1617 volume 8, number 13 june, 2005 issn 1099-839x literacy teachers' interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits gary alger university of bridgeport this paper examines the interactions between literacy teachers and instructional leaders and their effects on students’ reading achievement gains. the results of this study have implications for how instructional leaders work with colleagues and how these relationships may impact student achievement. forty-two suburban elementary and middle school literacy teachers reported the frequency and helpfulness of interactions with their instructional leaders. findings indicate that curricular and assessment interactions occurred more frequently and were more helpful than instructional interactions. students of these teachers who reported the most frequent and helpful interactions had significantly higher reading achievement gains than students of teachers who reported the least frequent and least helpful contacts. leadership is a critical component of all school improvement efforts. the evidence from the literature supports the position that effective leaders have an indirect but powerful influence on a school’s capacity to enhance student achievement (muijs and harris, 2003). effective leadership builds and sustains an organizational culture that focuses on continual improvement of educational programs, teachers’ capabilities and skills, and student learning. (fullan, 2001; sergiovanni, 2001). traditional school leadership places this authority and influence in the principal or a small team of administrators in the main office and this ‘great man’ theory of leadership continues to be the norm (day, et al., 2000). however, the challenges facing schools today, particularly the legal mandates to improve student achievement, seriously question traditional approaches to school leadership and the principal as the primary instructional leader. as a result, educators are proposing the dispersal of leadership authority within a school and that teachers assume significantly greater roles in school improvement efforts (e.g., harris, 2003; fullan, 2001; lambert, 1998; leithwood et al., 1999; sergiovanni, 2001). such dispersal has the potential to build a professional learning community, motivate teachers, improve the quality of teaching in the classroom and positively impact student achievement. although schools are beginning to develop teachers as leaders, little is known about their interactions with peers and the impact of those communications on student achievement. in a recent review of the literature on the benefits of teacher leadership, muijs and harris (2003) cite only one study that investigated the effect of teacher leadership on students; that study found a positive effect on student engagement (leithwood and jantzi, 1998). therefore, by using data collected from one school district that implemented a teacher leadership program, this study identifies the nature of interactions between teachers and their peers with instructional leadership responsibilities. more importantly, the study analyzes the effects of those current issues in education vol. 8 no. 13 interactions on the reading achievement gains of their students. this paper will provide empirical data regarding the working relationships between literacy teachers and instructional leaders and how those interactions impact student outcomes. after a review of the relevant literature review, the research methodology will be discussed in considerable detail including data sources, procedures, and data analysis techniques. the findings are presented followed by a discussion of the results and implications for current practice and future research. literature review the literature review focuses on four major topics, including the definition of teacher leadership, the role of teacher leadership in developing a professional learning community, distributed leadership theory and teacher leadership, and barriers to teacher leadership. defining teacher leadership experts vary in their definitions of teacher leadership because they have different conceptual perspectives of the roles and functions of such individuals. katzenmeyer and moller (2001) suggest that teacher leaders may assume one of three roles. they may lead by participating in decision-making processes, by managing operational tasks, or by facilitating teacher and student growth. some teacher leaders work as partners with school administrators in the decision making process. they serve as members of site-based management teams, school improvement teams, committees, or other groups that make important decisions for the school and/or district. other teacher leaders assist school administrators with the managerial operations of a school, serving in middle management roles such as department heads or members of a task force. however, the third function of teacher leadership, facilitating teacher and student growth, is of particular interest to this study. teacher leaders who facilitate the growth of their colleagues and students assume roles such as mentors, coaches, trainers, and curriculum specialists. these individuals interact with their peers both in and out of the classroom to improve pedagogical knowledge and skills and to help them transfer that to classroom practice. the ultimate goal of these interactions is to promote student learning. day and harris (2003) described four dimensions of teacher leaders and these have application to individuals who assume roles as facilitators of peer growth and student learning. the first dimension involves working with teachers so they are able to understand principles of school improvement and transfer new knowledge into classroom practice. teacher leaders may serve as a personal coach to a teacher, providing individual consultation and working side by side in the classroom to assist a peer with the implementation of a specific strategy related to a school improvement effort. the second dimension entails participatory leadership so that all teachers feel ownership and commitment to change. the teacher leader may build support among peers for specific school improvement initiatives and foster collaborative working relationships to accomplish the school goals through study groups or team discussions. the third dimension is the mediating role of teacher leaders. these individuals are experts in their field and sources of valuable information or other resources. teacher leaders are able to draw upon their own knowledge, the expertise of peers, or network with others to seek external assistance related to school improvement initiatives. the fourth dimension is building close, professional relationships with individual teachers which results in mutual learning. the collaborative, collegial relationships which teacher leaders help forge can significantly contribute to the formation of a professional learning community. schools that operate as a professional learning community are more likely to accomplish school improvement goals and improve student learning (hargreaves, 2002). teacher leaders and professional learning communities school leaders can initiate improvement, accomplish goals, and sustain a process of continuous development more efficiently and effectively if the school functions as a professional learning community (morrissey, 2000). according to hord (1995), these communities have five characteristics, including shared decision-making, common school vision focused on student learning, shared learning and guided practice, peer review and feedback, and supportive school conditions. the supportive conditions include time for staff interactions, open communications that support the improvement efforts, and collaborative relationships among staff . collaboration with peers is at the heart of the professional organization and teacher leaders can play an important role in encouraging and sustaining these interactions among colleagues (harris, 2003). frequent and meaningful exchanges between teachers build a climate of cohesiveness in which effective working relationships are established. teacher leaders can be empowered by school administrators to facilitate the development of these relationships. master teachers who assume these roles can lead and coordinate professional training programs, chair group problem solving sessions around instructional problems, lead discussions about best practices in the classroom, coach individual teachers, and generally literacy teachers' interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits 3 encourage staff interactions that focus on issues related to the teaching and learning process (frost & durrant, 2003). according to lambert (1995), these interactions enable staff to construct meaning and knowledge together, rather than relying on outside pressures to change. although collaborative relationships are essential to the professional learning community, another characteristic proposed by harris and lambert (2003) is that teachers accept joint responsibility for the outcomes of their work. related to this concept of accountability within the professional learning community, teacher-researchers have proposed that monitoring and evaluating student achievement and teaching behaviors are essential components of school leadership (copland et al., 2002). these activities include regularly reviewing student work and achievement data, observing teachers in the classroom on a scheduled basis, facilitating discussions and leading professional development to promote best instructional practices, establishing student performance goals, and developing annual plans for improvement. teacher leaders who assume roles as instructional coaches, mentors, and curriculum specialists can facilitate activities, which promote accountability of the professional learning community. distributed leadership theory and teacher leadership distributed leadership theory is a democratic and collective form of leadership that proposes the decentralization of the power and authority of the school principal. according to muijs and harris (2003), distributed leadership is helpful in clarifying the meaning of teacher leadership and how it functions within the school environment. first, distributed leadership engages teacher leaders in a process where they work together to guide and mobilize their peers in the instructional change process. they participate actively with peers, supporting and coaching them in order to accomplish school goals involving pedagogical improvement. second, because distributed leadership involves multiple individuals in leadership roles, the work is accomplished through the interactions of several teacher leaders and school administrators. finally, it suggests interdependency rather than dependency in terms of responsibility. the teacher leaders and principal assume different kinds of roles and rely on each other in order to accomplish the organization’s goals. the engagement of teacher leaders as central players in the change process, the increase in interactions and the interdependency between teacher leaders and administrators cause traditional lines of hierarchical authority to blur and prompt the formation of new relationships. “whatever specific definition of teacher leadership one chooses to adopt, it is clear that its emphasis upon collective action, empowerment and shared agency is reflected in distributed leadership theory” (muijs and harris, 2003, p. 440). barriers to teacher leadership although the theoretical foundations for developing teacher leaders are sound, implementing these changes in practice are quite difficult with many barriers to overcome (e.g., barth, 2001; hargreaves, 1999; little, 1990; smylie, 1992). there are strong cultural forces in schools that are counter to the development of teacher leaders and make it more difficult for middle leaders to assume new roles. teaching is often viewed as an independent, autonomous and private profession. teacher leaders who attempt to engage peers in collaborative activities such as discussing and sharing instructional strategies, reflecting and offering feedback on classroom performance, and training on best practices may find resistance to such efforts from staff who want to maintain control over their professional practice. teacher leaders are often hesitant to engage in such activities unless they are invited to do so by team members (mcgarvey and marriott, 1997). teacher leaders may be perceived as assuming positions that differentiate their roles within the organization and this can create conflict with some peers, particularly those who believe in equality of professional status (hart, 1990). teacher leaders often hesitate to monitor the work of peers and their students because it challenges the professional norms of equality and privacy and may even be viewed as an abrogation of trust. lieberman et al. (2000) found that egalitarian ethic of colleagues was one of the main barriers perceived by teacher leaders, and often left them feeling isolated from colleagues. although adey (2000) indicated growing acceptance for teacher leaders who assume roles as subject area specialists to focus attention on monitoring and evaluation activities, some do not want to get themselves into a position where they appear to be judging the work of a peer (glover et al., 1998b). these teacher leaders acknowledge that collegiality is an aspiration rather than a reality. they experience conflict between their need to monitor teacher performance and the desire to promote collegiality and trust among unit members (wise, 2001). teacher leaders also indicate that there is not enough time to fulfill these additional job responsibilities. individuals in these positions report they lack the time to monitor and evaluate student achievement, support teacher efforts in the current issues in education vol. 8 no. 13 classroom, facilitate reflection on instructional practices, and generally work with staff to improve teacher and student performance (brown et al, 2000; glover et al, 1998a; wise and bush, 1999). ovando (1994) found that time for teacher leaders to perform their work was a critical factor to the success of teacher leadership programs. research methodology data sources four data sources were used in this study. participants included the literacy teachers in a suburban k-12 school district in the northeastern region of the united states and the students assigned to them. instruments included the teacherinstructional leader interaction questionnaire and the degrees of reading power (drp) test (touchstone, 1995). participants. forty-two literacy teachers, grades two to eight, and the students assigned to them over a two-year period constituted the subjects of this investigation. teachers and students in grades kindergarten and first grade were not included because of the lack of reading achievement data at these levels. characteristics of the participants are presented in table 1. the participants were all full-time teachers in a suburban k-12 school district in the northeastern region of the united states with an enrollment of approximately 3,000 students. the district consisted of two elementary schools, one middle school and one high school. this particular district was selected for study because it recently implemented a teacher leadership initiative to facilitate the development of a professional learning community and to improve the reading achievement of students. in 2001, central office administrators, school board members, building principals, teachers and parents participated in a strategic planning process. an outcome of that process was the establishment of a teacher leadership role, curriculum resource teacher (crt), as part of a district-wide goal to increase teacher collaboration and to improve student achievement. the crt was a subject leader position but routine administrative and managerial tasks were minimized. one crt was employed in each elementary school and one in the middle school to help the teachers understand and implement the district’s literacy curriculum, to promote the use of best practices in literacy instruction, and to utilize student assessment data to monitor and improve student learning. the crt had no assigned classroom duties so that the individual would have adequate time to consult with peers on literacy matters, work within their classrooms, monitor student achievement, and research and develop curricular, instructional and assessment-related strategies. instrument one: the teacherinstructional leader interaction questionnaire. i developed the teacher-instructional leader interaction questionnaire (see figure 1) to collect data regarding the frequency and helpfulness of the interactions between the elementary literacy teachers and the instructional leaders. the drp was used to measure each student’s level of reading achievement. the teacher-instructional leader interaction questionnaire measured three types of interactionscurricular, instructional and assessmentrelated. the nineteen items on the questionnaire were based on the responsibilities of the crt as outlined in the district job description and were categorized as either a curricular, instructional or assessment-related interaction. the items and their category were validated by the instructional leaders. each type of interaction was defined as follows: literacy teachers' interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits 5 curricular interactions: reviewing student performance standards; selecting materials for the literacy program; coordinating the literacy program within each grade and between schools; and reviewing the literacy program philosophy and major components of the program. instructional interactions: reviewing how to implement a balanced literacy program in the classroom; planning literacy lessons, units of study, or long-range plans; developing and sharing strategies to improve student achievement; assisting teachers to fulfill responsibilities related to their teacher evaluation plan; obtaining input on planning district professional development activities; obtaining feedback on professional development activities conducted in district; discussing needs of specific students; visiting teachers’ classrooms and giving feedback on instructional practices; discussing and sharing conferences or workshops outside of the district; and informing staff about regional professional development opportunities. assessment-related interactions: developing and revising literacy assessments to evaluate student achievement; reviewing student performance data of the school; reviewing student performance data of the students in the classroom; educating staff regarding the content of state-wide assessments; and sharing/discussing ideas how to improve student performance on mandated tests. teachers rated how frequently they interacted with their crt using a 5-point scale including: (1) never, (2) at least once a year, (3) at least once a marking period, (4) at least once a month, and (5) at least once a week. subjects were also asked to indicate how helpful those interactions were to them on a 5-point scale, including (1) not helpful, (2) somewhat helpful, (3) not sure, (4) helpful, and (5) very helpful. a frequency score and a helpfulness score for each type of interaction was obtained for each subject by averaging the appropriate item responses. a combined frequency/helpfulness score was computed for each type of interaction by totaling the appropriate frequency and helpfulness means. the internal reliability coefficients for the curricular, instructional and assessment-related items for this sample are displayed in table 2 for frequency and table 3 for helpfulness. cronbach alpha reliability coefficients for frequency ranged from .79 for curricular interactions to .89 for instructional interactions. regarding helpfulness, reliability coefficients were .91 for curricular and assessment interactions and .95 for instructional interactions. based on these analyses, the instrument was considered adequately reliable for purposes of this study. instrument two: the degrees of reading power (drp). the degrees of reading power (drp) was used to measure reading achievement of students. the drp is a test of reading comprehension using the cloze technique. it assesses a student’s ability to comprehend the meaning of increasingly difficult text; the ability to analyze, evaluate and extend the ideas that are presented; and the size of the student’s reading vocabularies (touchstone, 1995). each student’s raw score was converted to a normal curve equivalent (nce) score. procedure after gaining the approval of the senior administration of the district, i asked the principal’s secretary in each school to distribute the teacherinstructional leader interaction questionnaire to all 52 literacy teachers in grades two to eight along with a letter explaining the purpose of the study. before distributing the questionnaire, the principal’s secretary coded each instrument to conduct multiple follow-ups. the codes were also used to match reading achievement data and demographic data to each teacher’s questionnaire when it was returned. the reading achievement data consisted of each student’s nce score obtained on a fall and spring current issues in education vol. 8 no. 13 administration of the drp test. two years of student data were collected for each teacher. the principal’s secretary attached the reading achievement results and teacher demographic data based on personnel records to the appropriate coded instrument of each staff member. only the principal’s secretary had the list of codes and this individual destroyed the list once the data collection period ended to ensure the anonymity and confidentiality of all respondents. data analysis all data was entered into spss v. 11.0 for analysis. for each teacher, demographic data and responses to each item on the teacher-instructional leader interaction questionnaire were entered. for each student, fall and spring nce scores on the drp, the code number of the teacher, and the teacher’s scores from the teacher-instructional leader interaction questionnaire were entered. three types of analyses were conducted. first, descriptive statistics were employed to describe the frequency and helpfulness of the interactions between the teachers and the instructional leaders. second, the paired-samples t-test was used to analyze differences in the curricular, instructional and assessment-related frequency and helpfulness means. third, in order to examine the effect of teachers’ interactions with instructional leaders on reading achievement gains of their students, teachers were ranked by their combined frequency and helpfulness scores on the teacher-instructional leader interaction questionnaire. subjects were then assigned to one of four quartiles for each type of interaction to indicate an overall level of contact with the crt. the top quartile included those teachers who reported the most frequent and most helpful interactions. the bottom quartile consisted of the staff members who reported the least frequent and least helpful contacts. an analysis of variance for repeated measures was used to examine differences in reading achievement between the two groups of teachers, to analyze differences in reading achievement between the fall and spring administrations of the drp, and to ascertain if there was a significant interaction between the two variables. the interaction indicates differences in the reading achievement gains between the two groups of teachers. an alpha level of .05 was used for all statistical tests. findings the analyses that are reported on in this section include descriptive statistics for the frequency and helpfulness of teachers’ interactions, pairedsample t-tests to determine differences in the teachers’ interactions, and analysis of variance for repeated measures to examine the interactions between reading achievement and teachers’ interactions. frequency and helpfulness of teachers’ interactions the distribution of scores, means, and standard deviations for frequency are displayed in table 4. the descriptive data suggests that teachers vary widely in their interactions with the instructional leaders. average frequency scores are highest for assessment related interactions (2.63) and lowest for instructional contacts (2.24). mean frequency scores are all below 3.0, suggesting that contact between crts and the typical teacher on any given type of interaction average between at least once a year and at least once a marking period (four marking periods per year). approximately one-third of the teachers report interacting with their crts on an average of between once a marking period and once a week on curricular issues and approximately 38% report the same frequency for assessment-related contacts. less than 20% report that level of contact on instructional matters. teachers also varied in their perceptions regarding the helpfulness of their interactions with the crts. as shown on table 5, the mean for assessment-related interactions (3.05) is highest and the mean of 2.45 for instructional interactions is the lowest. approximately one-third of the teachers report that the curricular and assessment-related interactions are helpful or very helpful but only literacy teachers' interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits 7 14.29% indicate this level for contacts on instructional matters. differences in teachers’ interactions differences in the frequency and helpfulness of teachers’ curricular, assessment-related and instructional interactions with the crt were analyzed using a series of paired-sample t-tests. the first series of these tests determined if teachers interacted more frequently about curriculum, assessment or instruction. the second series of paired-sample t-tests determined if teachers found some interactions more helpful than others. as shown in table 6, the first set of results indicate that teachers have significantly more contact with crts on assessment-related matters (t = 5.29, p < .001) and curricular issues (t = 4.67, p < .001) compared to instructional topics. the second series of paired-sample t-tests (see table 7) reveal that their curricular interactions (t = 5.88, p< .001) and assessment-related interactions (t = 6.58, p < .001) with the crts are more helpful than their instructional exchanges. reading achievement and teachers’ interactions to examine the possible effect of these interactions on students’ reading achievement gains, each teacher was assigned to a quartile for each type of interaction based on the sum of the individual’s frequency and helpfulness scores. the demographic data for the teachers in the top and bottom quartiles for each type of interaction are shown in tables 8 to 10. the two groups are similar on these personal variables for each type of interaction. the combined frequency and helpfulness score means and standard deviations for the top and bottom quartile teachers are displayed in table 11. the means for the teachers in the bottom quartile are less than half of those in the top quartile, ranging between 3.93 to 4.55 points lower. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 13 table 12 summarizes the mean fall, spring and gain nce reading achievement scores and standard deviations for the students assigned to the top and bottom quartile teachers for each type of interaction with instructional leaders. for all three types of interactions, the students of the teachers in the top quartile have higher nce gains than the students of the teachers in the bottom quartile. for curricular interactions, the students of the top quartile teachers have a mean nce gain of 7.22 points; 7.33 for instructional interactions; and 8.40 for assessment-related interactions. the nce gains of the students of the bottom quartile teachers are much lower for the three types of interactions, 4.17 for curricular; 3.46 for instructional; and 3.11 for assessment-related. tables 13 to 15 display the results of the analysis of variance for repeated measures of reading achievement by teacher quartile group for curricular, instructional and assessment-related interactions. the analysis of variance for repeated measures determines differences in student reading achievement between the two groups of teachers and between the fall and spring administrations of the drp test. it also analyzes the interaction between teacher quartile group and reading achievement or, in other words, if there is a difference in the reading achievement gains of students between the two groups of teachers. for curricular interactions (see table 13), the analysis indicates no significant difference in student reading achievement between the two groups of teachers (f = .02, p>.05) and the students have significant gains from the fall to spring testing session (f = 156.45, p < .01). the results of the interaction are also significant (f = 11.20, p < .01). students of the teachers in the top quartile have more significant gains in reading achievement from the fall to the spring testing session than students assigned to the bottom quartile staff members. literacy teachers' interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits 9 for instructional interactions (see table 14), the analysis indicates a similar pattern. there is no significant difference in student reading achievement between the two groups of teachers based on instructional interactions (f = .22, p >.05) and the students have significant gains from the fall to spring testing session (f = 122.91, p < .01). the results for the interaction indicate that the students of the teachers in the top quartile have more significant gains in reading achievement (f = 15.76, p < .01). as shown in table 15, there is a significant difference in student reading achievement between the two groups of teachers based on assessmentrelated interactions (f = 98.05, p<.01). students assigned to the teachers in the bottom quartile have a higher nce mean in the fall (65.50 vs. 58.93) but this difference narrows on the spring test (68.60 vs. 67.33). the analysis indicates students have significant gains from the fall to spring testing sessions (f = 179.23, p < .01). again, the results of the interaction suggest that the students of the teachers in the top quartile have more significant gains in reading achievement than the students assigned to the bottom quartile teachers (f = 37.91, p < .01). discussion the findings of this study suggest that literacy teachers vary in terms of their interactions with instructional leaders. as shown on table 4, current issues in education vol. 8 no. 13 descriptive statistics indicate that about one-third of the teachers interact with their peer leader on an average of between once a marking period and once a week on curricular issues and assessment-related matters. however, another 30% report they rarely interact with their instructional leader, averaging between never to less than once every quarter. instructional interactions are even less frequent, with average contacts occurring between at least once a year and once a quarter for the entire sample. approximately one-fifth of the teachers indicate their average instructional contact occurs between once a quarter and once a month. however, almost half the teachers report they never interact with the crt on instructional issues or their average contact happens less than once a marking period (four times a year). a similar pattern occurs when the helpfulness of these interactions are examined. as shown on table 5, curricular and assessment-related interactions are more helpful to the teachers compared to instructional contacts. nearly one-half of the teachers report that their instructional interactions with the crt are not helpful. when paired-sample t tests were employed to test for differences between the three types of interactions for both frequency and helpfulness, curricular and assessment-related interactions occurred significantly more frequently and were significantly more helpful to the teachers than instructional interactions (see tables 6 and 7). these findings support the beliefs of several experts that teachers who assume leadership positions face unique challenges as they attempt to interact with their peers, especially on matters that the peers consider to be within their private domainhow they teach in their classroom. more than a decade ago, lazzara et al. (1989) reported that teachers’ relationships with colleagues may change substantially after their appointments to leadership positions, interacting with them less frequently and with more apprehension and suspicion. the problem appears to be persistent as barth (2001) noted. after working with more than one-hundred teacher leaders in the state of rhode island, he concluded that the greatest obstacle to these individuals was from their own colleagues. he suggested that schools are congenial, but not collegial. teachers are not comfortable discussing their practice, sharing their craft knowledge, encouraging or celebrating the success of others, and observing one another in the classroom. this uneasiness about discussing pedagogy appears to be interfering with the work of the teacher leaders in this school district. smylie (1992) also suggested that opportunity to meet is a necessary condition for teachers and peer leaders to establish a working relationship but that it alone is insufficient. the findings of this study support this conclusion because the crts in this district have no assigned teaching duties and are assigned to only one school. even though there is ample opportunity to interact with the peer leaders, contacts vary widely within each school. smylie further proposed that when conflict exists between the psychological orientations and the roles and rules of a particular social context, interaction is less likely to take place. when teachers are committed to the norm of professional equality, they tend to interact less frequently with peer leaders because their actions could be interpreted to condone the new status of these individuals. teachers are also less likely to establish working relationships with peer leaders if they believe they are somehow obligated to follow their advice or that their professional independence and autonomy will be compromised. this particular district expended considerable effort developing and coordinating the literacy program and this may account for the higher rates of contact in the curriculum domain. crts report they were attempting to define student performance expectations, were coordinating programs within grades and between schools, and were disseminating information to more clearly define the district’s balanced literacy program. the accountability movement may also explain why assessment-related interactions occurred more frequently and were more helpful than instructional contacts. governmental testing requirements, the publication of test data in local newspapers and the comparisons between schools and districts is creating a climate of greater accountability. this district is relatively affluent within the state and expectations are high among community members regarding performance on statewide tests. some teachers with lower performing students may have viewed the crt as a valuable resource to assist them in their efforts to improve student achievement on these mandated assessments. the district also implemented a teacher evaluation program that required staff to focus on the analysis of achievement data and the establishment of student learning goals to address areas of need. in the beginning of the school year, the students of the top quartile teachers for assessment-related interactions were performing significantly below their classmates who were assigned to the bottom quartile staff members. this may have prompted the top quartile teachers to seek more frequent consultation with the crt. the most significant results of this study involve the achievement growth of students in the literacy teachers' interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits 11 classrooms of the teachers. as shown on tables 13 to 15, the analysis of variance for repeated measures reveals a significant interaction between reading achievement gain and teacher quartile group. students of teachers who report the most frequent and most helpful interactions with their peer leaders have greater achievement gains than students of staff members who have the least frequent and least helpful contacts for all three types of interactions. their growth is approximately twice that of their peers in the classrooms of the bottom quartile teachers. this finding supports hargreaves’ (2002) belief that “…professional learning communities lead to strong and measurable improvements in students’ learning” (p. 3). however, there is a small body of research to support this belief. in a recent review of the literature on the effects and benefits of teacher leadership, muijs and harris (2003) only cite one study that investigated the relationship between student outcomes and teacher leadership. in that study, leithwood and jantzi (1998) found that teacher leadership had a significant effect on student engagement. furthermore, they concluded that if school principals distribute a larger proportion of leadership activity to teachers, it would have a positive impact on teacher effectiveness and student engagement. the results of this study suggest that implementing a teacher leadership initiative is a difficult endeavor for a school district. although these restructuring efforts hold potential for improving schools, it will require time to change the culture of the organization so that teachers interact more openly and frequently on matters of curriculum, instruction and assessment. after the first two years of the teacher leadership program in this district, staff members vary in their levels of interaction with peer leaders. however, for those who did make the connections, the experiences appear professionally rewarding and beneficial to the academic growth of their students. limitations it is important to note several limitations of this study. first, it is limited by the instrumentation used, particularly the teacher-instructional leader interaction questionnaire. although the crts served as a jury of experts to validate the instrument, i may have inadvertently omitted important curricular, assessment-related and instructional interactions that did occur between the teachers and the teacher leaders. second, teachers may not have been completely honest with their responses on the questionnaire. some subjects may have responded in socially acceptable ways rather than reporting their actual interactions with the teacher leaders. third, there are limitations in the generalizability of this study due to the size and homogeneity of the sample. the elementary and middle school teachers and students in this study were located in a small, suburban district within the northeastern region of the united states. future research additional research is needed to confirm the findings of this study in other settings, particularly the effect of teacher leadership on student achievement. future studies might examine the relationships between teachers and peer leaders and the specific nature of their interactions in an effort to further explain how they impact student learning. also, i suggest that future research go beyond the self-reporting of interactions by the classroom teachers. teacher leaders need to be included as data sources so that they may describe interactions from their perspective and the barriers they face in their attempts to engage teachers in collaborative work. references adey, k. 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(2005, june 23). literacy teachers’ interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits . current issues in education [on-line], 8(13). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number13/ author notes gary alger university of bridgeport carlson hall room 122, bridgeport , connecticut galger@bridgeport.edu the author is currently an assistant professor of educational leadership at the university of bridgeport. he completed thirty-one years of public school service, holding positions as an elementary teacher, building principal and central office administrator. his current research interests focus on the unique contributions of teacher leaders to improving schools and student achievement. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation alger, g. (2005). literacy teachers’ interactions with instructional leaders: students reap the benefits. current issues in education, 8(13). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1601 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number13/index.html mailto:galger@bridgeport.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1601 volume 10, number 2 december, 2008 issn 1099-839x use of the transcendental meditation technique to reduce symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) by reducing stress and anxiety: an exploratory study sarina j. grosswald sj grosswald & associates william r. stixrud william stixrud and associates fred travis maharishi university of management mark a. bateh university of phoenix this exploratory study tested the feasibility of using the transcendental meditation® technique to reduce stress and anxiety as a means of reducing symptoms of adhd. students ages 11-14 were taught the technique, and practiced it twice daily in school. common adhd inventories and performance measures of executive function were administered at baseline and three months later. results showed statistically significant reductions in stress, anxiety, and improvements in adhd symptoms and executive function. attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) is now among the most prevalent chronic health conditions affecting school-aged children. almost 4.5 million children between ages 4 and 17 are diagnosed with the disorder, and almost half of these children are on adhd medication. the majority of those on medication remain on it in adulthood (center for disease control and prevention [cdc], 2005). seventy-five to 85% of the time, adhd is complicated by other emotional or behavioral disorders. an anxiety disorder is present in as high as 40% of adhd children (costello, mustillo, erkanli, keller, & angold, 2003; pliszka, 2000). side effects of the adhd medication can further compound the problem by causing or exacerbating emotional disorders. consequently many children on adhd medication are taking multiple drugs that include treatment for anxiety or other mood disorders, though most of those drugs are not fda approved for use with children. the long-term health effects of adhd medications are not fully known; however, evidence suggests risks of cardiac disorders and sudden death, liver damage, and psychiatric events. the side-effects and long-term health outcomes associated with adhd drug treatment potentially have important health implications for the millions of children (cdc, current issues in education vol. 10 no. 2 2005). in 2006 the fda required manufacturers to place warning labels on adhd medications, listing the potential serious health risks. most recently the british national institute for health and clinical excellence issued guidelines stating that first-line treatment for adhd should be training and behavioral interventions, with drug treatment being reserved as a last resort for severe symptoms or impairment (national institute for health and clinical excellence, 2008). this statement may be the first signs of reversing the approach of drug treatment as initial standard of care. further, recent long-term follow-up studies of the original studies (the mta cooperative group, 1999) concluded that medication alone or medication in combination with behavior therapy was superior to behavior therapy alone. the follow-up studies found that after three years of treatment there were no significant differences in behavioral symptoms among any of the three treatment groups (jensen, et al., 2007). the authors concluded that the earlier advantage seen with medication treatment was no longer apparent 36 months later. follow-up also showed that children in the medication study groups had significantly higher rates of delinquency, substance use, and stunted physical growth (jensen, et al., 2007; molina, et al., 2007). in light of the growing concerns about the safety of adhd medication, their actual effectiveness, and potential long-term health risks, the need to find effective non-drug interventions is becoming paramount. the purpose of this exploratory study was to obtain pilot data to assess the feasibility of using the transcendental meditation technique to reduce stress and anxiety as a means of reducing the symptoms of adhd. the primary hypotheses were the following: 1) children with adhd could learn and regularly practice the transcendental meditation technique, and 2) regular practice of the technique would reduce stress-related problems and symptoms associated with adhd. the secondary hypothesis was that tm practice could potentially enhance executive function. stress, anxiety, and adhd adhd is associated with impaired executive function, specifically brain circuitry governing behavior (bush, et al., 2005; durston, et al., 2004; zametkin, et al., 1993). dysfunction of these circuits leads to impulsivity and lack of normal social inhibition. it also leads to impaired working memory, inability to focus attention, and impaired temporal organization. stress interferes with executive function and behavior regulation (mcewen, 1998). stressimpaired executive function is associated with impaired working memory, impaired impulse control, and lack of mental flexibility and coping strategies. stress also dramatically compromises selective attention and the ability to sustain attention (lupien, et al., 2005). recent research sheds light on the relationship between stress and adhd. vance, et al., demonstrated dysfunction of the right prefrontal regions of the brain in adhd children (2007). this region is responsible for developing coping strategies, influencing the ability to handle stress. chronic acute stress damages the body's ability to return to non-stress levels, leading to chronically elevated levels of cortisol, a biochemical marker of stress. in children with adhd high cortisol levels impair executive function, self-regulation, and letter knowledge (blair, grange, & pazza, 2005). chronic stress can originate not only from emotional causes but can also result from physical origins. a study of premature birth and birth weight showed an association between physical stress and risk of adhd. danish researchers found that babies born prematurely had up to 70% greater risk of adhd. similarly, babies born of low birth weight had 50-90% greater risk of adhd, depending on the weight at birth (linnet, et al., 2006). early experiences of stress are believed to affect the level of responsiveness of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the autonomic nervous system. young children exposed to chronic stress can become conditioned to higher levels of adrenaline. this raises the “set point,” making these children more vulnerable to stress, resulting in situations more easily triggering stress responses. stress management as a treatment option there has been little investigation of effective stress management techniques for children with adhd. most research on adhd and stress management focuses on parents and their interaction with the child. one study of a stress management program for adhd children examined its effectiveness in improving self-concept, locus of control, and acquisition of appropriate coping strategies. the study compared a therapist-led, group, stress management program; stress-management techniques taught by the parents using provided workbook and videotapes; and a control group with no intervention. in acquisition of coping skills, there were no significant changes in any of the three groups. children in the therapist-led group did report more appropriate coping strategies (gonzalez, 2002). meditation meditation is becoming common as a means of coping with stress and improving psychosocial factors. although there are many forms of meditation, researchers generally classify them into two categories: techniques of concentration or use of the transcendental meditation technique to reduce symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) by reducing stress and anxiety: an exploratory study 3 techniques of contemplation (shapiro, 1982). each of these techniques uses different processes, and thus has different effects (orme-johnson, & walton, 1998). in meditation practices involving concentration, such as zen meditation, the practitioner focuses on something specific such as an event, image, or sound, trying to direct all of his or her attention to a single focal point. contemplative techniques include mindfulness meditation practices, a secularized version of vipassana or insight meditation. the goal is to be aware of any and all thoughts and sensations while trying not to judge or become actively involved in the thoughts (shapiro, 1982). this type of mindfulness-based stress reduction (mbsr) technique can be practiced throughout daily activity. coupled with cognitive behavioral therapy, mbsr treatments have been studied for depression relapse, borderline personality disorder, and anxiety disorders (segal, williams, & teasdale, 2002). recent research of a mbsr technique showed decreases in perceived stress and symptoms among a clinical population with stress-related problems, illness, anxiety, and chronic pain (carmody & baer, 2007). there is a growing body of research on the beneficial effects of meditation not only as a stresscoping mechanism, but also in improving brain function. research suggests that meditation can change neural activity (newberg et al., 2006), alter dopamine levels in the brain (jevning, 1978; kjaer et al., 2002) and change eeg patterns (travis, 2001; travis & wallace, 1999). researchers are just beginning to explore the use of meditation for attention and adhd symptoms. a study of sahaja yoga meditation as an intensive family treatment program with children with adhd found improvements in children’s adhd behavior, self-esteem, and relationships with their families (harison, manocha, & rubia, 2004). in non-adhd subjects mha, krompinger and baine (2007) found that mbsr may improve attention-related neural responses. a recent feasibility study of adhd adults and adolescents using mbsr noted improvements in adhd symptoms based on self-report and improvements on performance measures of attention (zylowska, et al., 2007). the transcendental meditation technique the transcendental meditation (tm) technique is neither a technique of contemplation or of concentration. it is a technique of “effortless transcending” (travis, et al., 2002). it does not involve directing the attention or controlling the mind. the technique is practiced sitting with eyes closed, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, for 10-20 minutes each session depending on the age of the practitioner. during the meditation session the active mind settles down to a silent yet fully awake state of awareness; transcending conscious thought to experience consciousness itself (travis & pearson, 2000). the mind is alert while the body gains a unique and deep state of rest and relaxation, creating a state called "restful alertness" (roth, 1994). deep rest is reflected by markedly decreased metabolism including heart rate, respiration rate, and blood flow to the limbs (dillbeck & orme-johnson, 1987; jevning, wallace, & beidebach, 1992; orme-johnson, 1973; wallace, 1970). at the same time mental alertness is maintained, as measured by eeg and pet (travis & wallace, 1999; yamamoto, kitamura, yamada, nakashima, & kuroda, 2006 ). transcendental meditation is characterized by activation in frontal and parietal attentional areas of the brain responsible for attention, executive function, and emotional stability (dixon, et al., 2005; fergusson, 1993; gaylord, orme-johnson, & travis, 1989; newberg, et al., 2006; so & orme-johnson, 2001). meta-analyses comparing the transcendental meditation technique to other relaxation techniques found that for reducing trait anxiety in adults the tm technique had an effect size almost twice that of any other technique (ormejohnson & walson, 1998; eppley, abrams, & shear, 1989). the use of the transcendental meditation technique for stress reduction in adolescents showed improvement in school behavior, decreased absenteeism and rule infractions, and reducted suspensions due to behavior-related problems (barnes, bauza, & trieber, 2003). middle school students practicing the technique showed increased emotional regulation, and improved well-being (rosaen & benn, 2006). the practice of the transcendental meditation technique in elementary and secondary schools is associated with improved academic performance (nidich & nidich, 1989). the technique is also associated with accelerated cognitive development, improved concept learning, and improved focus and attention in children (dixon, et al., 2005; warner, 2005). the predominant theory of adhd holds that adhd is a disorder affecting multiple executive functions, with poor inhibitory control being the most important executive deficit (barkley, 1997). stress compromises all of the major executive functions, including behavioral and cognitive inhibition, working memory, and flexible shifting or transitioning. it is likely that the improved behavior of adolescents practicing the transcendental meditation technique reflects, in part, increased inhibitory control secondary to normalization of the stress response. current issues in education vol. 10 no. 2 this study was the first systematic exploration of the effects of transcendental meditation on the specific neuro-developmental disorder of adhd. given the effect of stress on executive function, attention, mood, and selfregulation, it is reasonable to explore non-drug approaches to stress reduction as a means of improving adhd symptoms. transcendental meditation’s reported effects on factors associated with adhd (e.g., stress, cognitive function, behavior regulation) makes it a potentially useful technique for managing the disorder. the fact that the technique does not require concentration, controlling the mind, or disciplined vigilance of the thought process makes it especially suited for adhd children. additionally, it is learned quickly and easily. the practice is effortless and only involves two 10-20 minute meditation sessions each day. methods overall study design a private k-12 school for children with language-based learning disabilities with 235 students agreed to participate in this study. thirtytwo students were in middle school grades, and 11 of these were diagnosed with adhd. a randomized controlled study would have only 5-6 subjects in each group. since this was an exploratory study, we chose to use a pretest-post test design with a single cohort. the subjects served as their own controls. because adhd most often involves not only attention problems, but behavioral and executive function problems, we selected a number of instruments to identify the variables that might be influenced most by the intervention. subjects participation in the study was restricted to students ages 11-14 with pre-existing diagnoses of adhd made by a physician or psychologist. information about the study and about the transcendental meditation technique was presented to the parents and students. thirteen students volunteered to participate. parents or guardians were requested to complete a brief history form indicating diagnoses, comorbidities, and medications. eleven of the volunteers had a current adhd diagnosis. all eleven were entered into the study. one month after the start of the study, one student indicated that she preferred to meditate at home rather than at school. due to the inability to reliably monitor compliance, she was dropped from the study. the final cohort was 10 students ages 1114, nine boys and one girl. four students were caucasian, six were african american. all had a diagnosis of adhd, six with inattentive-type and four with combined-type. six students had comorbidities including general anxiety disorder, dysthymia, obsessive compulsive disorder, pervasive developmental disorder, sleep disorders, and tics. eight students were taking stimulants (e.g., concerta, ritalin); three of those were also on other medications such as mood stabilizers (e.g., zoloft, welbutrin, risperdal). by virtue of attending the school, all students had language-based learning disabilities. half of the students were private-pay, and half were on financial scholarship provided by the district of columbia for students needing assistance that the district school system does not provide. procedure six weeks before the start of the intervention, two teachers and two administrators at the school were instructed in the transcendental meditation technique in order to lead the students in twice daily meditation sessions at the school. following completion of baseline assessments, students were provided the standard course of instruction in the transcendental meditation technique (see below). over the 3-month study period, subjects participated in customary follow-up checks of correct meditation. students meditated at school in a group for 10 minutes twice each day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. parents were encouraged to have students continue regular meditation at home on weekends and holidays. home compliance was not rigorously monitored. instruments data collection was divided into two categories to correspond to the primary and secondary hypotheses: 1) measures of stress, anxiety, adhd symptoms as reported by parent, teacher, and student inventories, 2) measures of executive function as measured by parent and teacher inventories, and by performance tests. anecdotal information was collected by informal video interviews at preand post-test times. measures of stress, anxiety, and adhd symptoms. teachers and parents completed the achenbach child behavior checklist (cbcl) inventory, which is validated as diagnostic of adhd based on the dsm-iv criteria. the cbcl is one of the most widely-used measures in child psychology, assessing behavior and social competency. it is composed of 112 items, each differentiating clinical from non-clinical children (α = .78-.97, r = 0.95-1). summarized in two categories: syndrome scales and dsm-oriented scales, the cbcl provides eight symptom subscale scores and a total problem score. students completed the self-administered achenbach youth self-report (ysr) and the revised children's manifest anxiety scale (rcmas) to assess overall behavioral and emotional use of the transcendental meditation technique to reduce symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) by reducing stress and anxiety: an exploratory study 5 functioning. the ysr is a companion to the cbcl, providing parallel measures from the teachers, parents, and students. like the cbcl the ysr has 112 items measuring eight subscale symptoms categorized under syndrome scales and dsmoriented scales, and a total problem score (α = .71.95; r = .47-.79). the rcmas is a 37-item self-report instrument assessing the level and nature of anxiety in children and adolescents (α = .83, r = .60-.88;p < .01). measures of executive function. teachers and parents completed the behavior rating inventory of executive function (brief). the brief consists of 86 items in eight non-overlapping clinical scales. these scales form two broader indices: behavioral regulation and metacognition. these two indices are combined to create an overall global executive composite score. the brief assesses behavior regulation and executive functioning (α = .80-.98, r = .82 for parents, r = .88 for teachers). four performance tests were used to measure different aspects of executive function. the cognitive assessment system (cas) expressive attention, delis-kaplan executive function system (d-kefs) verbal fluency test, tower of london (tol), and connor’s cpt ii. the cas expressive attention subtest is a color-word interference test similar to the stroop. it measures higher level complex attention and ability to inhibit (r = .83-.93). names of colors are presented in ink colors of either the name of the color or a different color. when the color of ink is different from the color name the task requires attention, inhibiting the reflexive response, and cognitive processing (switching) to say the correct color. the d-kefs verbal fluency subtest measures the ability to generate words fluently, generate words in categories, and shift attention by switching from one category to another (r = .54-.73). the student is asked to list as many words as possible starting with a certain letter, to name as many items in a category, and to name items switching from one category to another. the tol measures higher order problemsolving, and is used to evaluate executive function difficulties (move score r = .80, p = .001; correct score r = .42, p = .06). subjects are shown a configuration of colored balls stacked on pegs. the subject executes a sequence of moves that transforms his or her board to match the displayed configuration with the balls arranged on designated pegs. the connors' continuous performance test (cpt) ii is a computerized test that measures sustained attention. the subject is presented stimuli on a computer screen (e.g., a letter or asterisk) and is asked to respond by pressing a button only when detecting a specified letter after seeing another specified letter. intervention: the transcendental meditation technique during the course of instruction in transcendental meditation the student learns how to let the mind move from the active focused levels of thinking to silent, expanded levels of wakefulness at the source of thought, without concentration or effort (travis, 2001). the practice of the technique involves two components: a suitable sound (“mantra”) specifically chosen to facilitate the process of settling the mind; and a precise yet effortless technique for using the sound which leads to the experience of quieter and quieter aspects of his or her awareness. the technique is taught by certified transcendental meditation teachers. the course involves one meeting of individual instruction followed by a meeting each day for the next three days to verify correct practice and provide additional information. each meeting is approximately one hour each day. all 11 children in the group were able to learn the transcendental meditation technique, and practice it successfully, as evidenced during the morning and afternoon meditation sessions and by responses to tm course assessment questionnaires. the transcendental meditation teacher observed group meditations several times a week for the first two weeks. over the rest of the study period the tm teacher met with students individually an average of three times. during these meetings the teacher used a standard procedure for assuring correct, effortless meditation. during the study period students meditated in a group at the beginning of the first period in the morning and the beginning of the last period in the afternoon each school day. meditation sessions were led by school faculty instructed in the tm technique. three months after instruction, post testing was administered. statistical analysis to reduce the number of statistical tests, the variables were grouped into two conceptual categories to correspond to the hypotheses. one grouping was stress, anxiety, and adhd symptoms. this group included the relevant variables from the ysr, rcmas, and cbcl. the second grouping was measures of executive functioning, which included the responses from teachers on the brief and the data from the performance tests. analysis was conducted on measures for which we had complete data (n=10). parent inventories and cpt scores were not included because fifty percent of the parent posttest inventories were not returned, and thirty percent current issues in education vol. 10 no. 2 of students had already left school for summer break at the time of cpt post testing. we used raw scores for all analyses except performance tests, which were converted to standard scores using look-up tables provided in the test manuals. standard scores were used for the performance measures in order to change all variables to a common direction of improvement. we applied repeated measure manovas to test for significant pre-posttest differences in the two data groupings categories. since these findings are considered exploratory, we used manovas to avoid conducting multiple t-tests. additionally, since stress or anxiety was part of multiple instruments, manova analysis was determined appropriate. because we had directional hypotheses, all tests of significance were one-tailed t tests. results stress, anxiety, and adhd symptoms from the ysr the variables selected for analysis were anxious/depressed, withdrawn/depressed, affective problems, anxiety problems, attention problems, adhd problems, and total problems (table 1). added to these variables was the single result of the rcmas. the analysis yielded significant improvement of symptoms from pre-test to posttest as reported by student inventories, f(1,9) = 4.7, p = .0285. the same measures analyzed from the ysr were selected for analysis of the teacher reported cbcl. teacher results corroborated student reported reductions in symptoms, f(1,9) = 6.5, p = .0155. table 1 stress, anxiety, and adhd symptoms student teacher pre-test post-test pre-test post-test symptom mean sd mean sd es mean sd mean sd es anxious/ depressed 5.7 3.6 2.7* 3.7 .8 10.2 6.4 5.6* 3.6 .7 withdrawn/ depressed 4.8 2.7 3.9** 3.0 .3 4.3 3.8 3.6 4.0 .2 affective problems 5.8 3.4 4.1* 2.5 .5 5 3.7 3.6 3.6 .4 anxiety problems 3.2 2.0 1.6** 1.9 .8 3.7 3.5 2.1 2.4 .5 attention problems 7 4.0 5.2* 3.5 .5 23.6 10. 5 22 11. 0 .2 adhd problems 5.4 2.9 4.3 2.7 .4 12.4 5.7 11.7 5.7 .3 total problems 52.5 25.6 40* 27.4 .5 63.1 24. 8 56* 31. 2 .3 * p ≤ .05. **p< .005. executive function the brief includes 3 composite measures: behavioral regulation index, meta-cognition index, and general executive composite. the global executive composite is composed of the behavioral regulation index and the metacognition index. a repeated measures manova of the general executive composite indicated significant improvement in executive function from pretest to post test, f(1,9) = 5.5, p = .022. thus, repeated measures manova were conducted on the scales comprising the two indices. these manovas also were statistically significant: behavioral regulation index (inhibit, shift, and emotional control), f(1,9) = 23.7, p < .00001; and metcognition index (initiate, working memory, planning, organize material, and monitoring), f(1,9) = 13.7, p = .0025. table 2 presents the preand post-test means, standard deviations, and effect size for the individual scales associated with each index. table 2 teacher behavior rating inventory of executive function (brief) * p ≤ .05 the performance measures analyzed were the cas and the d-kefs (table 3). the cas scores of expressive attention and accuracy ratio were combined with the d-kefs scores for category fluency and category switching. a repeated measures manova yielded a significant improvement in scores on these performance measures from pre to posttest, f(1,9) = 5.0, p = .026. since all of the subjects had language based learning disorders, the letter fluency trial of the dkefs verbal fluency test and the tower of london were omitted from analysis. performance on the letter fluency condition is dependent on vocabulary knowledge and spelling ability. a review of measures of executive function used for assessing adhd suggests that tests of letter fluency are not reliable for distinguishing adhd from controls because of the confounding presence of learning disorders. pre-test post test effect size scale mean sd mean sd behavioral regulation index (bri) 54.1 16.9 46.4* 13.2 .5 inhibit 19.0 6.9 17.1* 6.5 .3 shift 18.5 5.3 15.5 3.9 .6 emotional control 16.6 6.7 13.8* 4.3 .4 metacognition index (mi) 94.8 32.1 85.3 23.2 .4 initiate 15.1 3.7 13.2* 3.2 .4 working memory 22.8 4.2 20.1* 5.3 .6 plan/organize 21.8 4.4 20.6 5.5 .3 organization of materials 14.6 4.9 13.2 5.0 .3 monitor 20.4 5.9 18.2* 4.5 .4 general executive composite (gec) 151.6 37.7 131.7* 33.1 .5 use of the transcendental meditation technique to reduce symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) by reducing stress and anxiety: an exploratory study 7 similarly, the tower of london has been found to be less consistent than other measures in distinguishing specific effects associated with adhd from those related to learning disorders (sergeant, geurts, & oosterlaan, 2002). table 3 performance measures * p ≤ .05 discussion even though the majority of subjects in the study were taking medication for adhd and comorbidities, they were still experiencing cognitive and psychosocial symptoms extensive enough to present problems in school and at home. an effective non-pharmacolcogical option that can improve these symptoms would provide a valuable treatment option, whether alone or as an adjunct to medical and behavioral interventions. because the transcendental meditation technique does not require focus or concentration, it seems well suited for children struggling with adhd. this study indicates that children with adhd can successfully learn the transcendental meditation technique and practice it on a regular basis. we hypothesized that the transcendental meditation technique would have a positive effect on stress, anxiety, and adhd symptoms. results support to this hypothesis, showing significant pretest-post test improvements. the student ratings of positive effects were corroborated by the teacher ratings with high levels of confidence. our secondary hypothesis was that the transcendental meditation technique would improve executive function. statistically significant improvements were noted on both the teacher rated brief and on the performance tests. stress and anxiety can overwhelm and lessen the effectiveness of the individual. anxiousness contributes to poor impulse control, inability to sustain attention, impaired working memory, and lack of cognitive flexibility. this raises the question as to whether, in some cases, it is the symptoms of stress and anxiety that are being diagnosed as adhd. whether these problems are a result of adhd or are the cause of adhd-like symptoms, this study suggests that reducing stress and anxiety by the transcendental meditation technique can potentially improve adhd symptoms and executive functions. these results are consistent with previous research on the transcendental meditation technique showing reduced anxiety, increased emotional regulation, and improved social behavior in non-adhd students. improved executive function noted in our study is also consistent with research on the tm technique showing increased frontal brain coherence, which is associated with more effective executive functioning, improved attention, greater emotional stability, and decreased anxiety. compared to other meditation techniques, the transcendental meditation technique may be particularly suited to children with adhd. it is easy to learn and is learned in less than an hour. the technique does not involve controlling the mind; and it requires no other time investment than the 10-15 minute sessions twice a day. yet changes in the brain are seen within a short time (travis & arenander, 2006). different meditation techniques have different effects. a study of the effects of mindfulness meditation in adults and adolescents with adhd (zylowska, et al. 2007), showed improvements in attention and inhibition among the adolescents. however, that study did not show improvements in anxiety or depression. in contrast, these improvements were seen in our study of the transcendental meditation technique. in addition, the tm practice was associated with improved executive function. the current findings suggest that tm may be a beneficial intervention for students with adhd, and that it can be practiced comfortably within the typical school day. studies on student learning have emphasized the importance of “downtime” for integrating new learning. therefore, two periods a day of deep mental rest would be expected to improve learning and retention in all students. the findings of this study also have promising implications for what is commonly referred to as the “epidemic of student stress,” which manifests as affective disorders, problems with behavioral control, substance abuse, and self-injury. since students with adhd experience higher levels of stress than typical students, a technique that can help normalize their stress response and provide increased self-control would be extremely valuable. moreover, studies on aggression have consistently found that states of deep relaxation are incompatible with anger and aggression. therefore regular periods of “de-stressing” can potentially improve the ability of adhd students to inhibit the tendency to act impulsively, and enhance their ability to think before they act. measure pre-test post test effect size mean sd mean sd cas expressive attention 36.10 10.63 44.70* 13.59 .8 cas accuracy 37.70 2.21 39.40* 1.27 .8 d-kefs category fluency 25.10 7.83 28.70 7.61 .5 d-kefs category switching 8.30 3.19 9.60 2.63 .4 current issues in education vol. 10 no. 2 the transcendental meditation technique can be done anywhere one can sit and close the eyes. therefore it is portable, and a personal means of selfregulation for adhd children. to maximize the benefits, the recommended routine is one meditation session in the morning and one in the late afternoon, every day. incorporating the tm program in a school setting, as was used for this study, provides an excellent means of maintaining regularity, benefiting not only the students but also the school. teachers’ anecdotal comments revealed that teachers were able to teach more and students were able to learn more because they were less stressed and anxious. with recent research showing reduced ability to cope with stress and slower brain development in adhd children, a technique that can positively affect both of these factors can be a valuable resource for treatment of adhd. the technique does not conflict with other cognitive or behavioral approaches, or with medication. with less stress and anxiety, the child may be more responsive to other interventions, potentially increasing their effectiveness. as in most studies of adhd, our subjects had comorbidities and learning disorders. adhd rarely appears in isolation. seventy-five to 85% of adhd diagnoses include one or more comorbidities, and 20-30% exhibit learning disorders. therefore, an argument can be made that the sample reflects a common adhd population. this was an exploratory study, with a small number of subjects and no control group. also, there was no control for differences in medication. therefore we cannot propose a cause and effect relationship. however, we administered objective performance tests of attention and executive function to support self-report inventories that are commonly used to diagnosis adhd. the data showed withinstudy corroboration of results. these results suggest that further research is warranted to assess the impact of transcendental meditation practice as a potential treatment option for adhd, either alone or as adjunct treatment. it would be most important to replicate these results with a control group. further study of improvements in brain coherence and brain development could provide insight into the underlying mechanisms of observed changes. conclusions medication for adhd can improve the symptomatology of the disorder for some children, or be marginally or not effective for others; and it can cause life threatening complications. even for those children who have improvement in symptoms, the improvement is often insufficient. additionally, it can be hard to obtain consistent drug action throughout the day and into the evening for homework. importantly, medication does not treat the underlying pathophysiology. the transcendental meditation technique is an easily learned and practiced technique. this research suggests that the technique has potential to improve attention, behavior regulation, and executive function by naturally reducing stress and anxiety and improving brain functioning. this research was the first systematic study of the effects of the transcendental meditation technique on the symptomatology of adhd. the results of this exploratory study indicate that transcendental meditation practice 1) can be learned and successfully practiced by children with adhd, 2) has the potential to reduce stress, anxiety, and stress related adhd symptoms within three months, and 3) may contribute to improved behavior regulation and executive function. this research provides encouraging indication that the transcendental meditation technique may have potential as an effective nonpharmacological intervention for managing the stress and anxiety associated with adhd and impaired executive function, and may have a positive impact on behavioral symptoms associated with the disorder. references barkley, r.a. 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(2007). mindfulness meditation training in adults and adolescents with adhd: a feasibility study. journal of attention disorders [epub ahead of print] retrieved december 21, 2007 from http://jad.sagepub.com/cgi/rapidpdf/108705 4707308502v1 http://jad.sagepub.com/cgi/rapidpdf/108705%094707308502v1 http://jad.sagepub.com/cgi/rapidpdf/108705%094707308502v1 current issues in education vol. 10 no. 2 2008 article citation grosswald, s. j., stixrud, w. r., travis, f., & bateh, m. a. (2008, december). use of the transcendental meditation technique to reduce symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) by reducing stress and anxiety: an exploratory study. current issues in education [on-line], 10(2). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume10/number2/ author notes sarina j. grosswald, ed.d. sj grosswald & associates 714 19th st. s., arlington, va 22202 sarina@grosswald.com acknowledgments the authors would like to thank robert a. cohn, jd, the chelsea school, and the abramson family foundation for providing major funding for this project. we would also like to thank phyllis greer and kelly munley for assistance in data collection, alarik arenander, ph.d. and elizabeth rice arnold for consultation during the planning stages, and the institute for community enrichment and for its support. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation grosswald, s. j., stixrud, w. r., travis, f., & bateh, m. a. (2008). use of the transcendental meditation technique to reduce symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) by reducing stress and anxiety: an exploratory study. current issues in education, 10(2). retrieved from: http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1569 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume10/number2/ mailto:sarina@grosswald.com http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1569 volume 8, number 2 february, 2005 issn 1099-839x elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity john l. nietfeld north carolina state university angela a. hunt state university of west georgia this study investigated the types of interventions that elementary school teachers and pre-service teachers choose to employ when working with students displaying hyperactive behavior. the extent to which beliefs systems, namely entity/incremental theories, showed relationships with the selection of particular types of interventions was also examined. participants were presented with fictional scenarios of students that varied according to the level of adhd-like behaviors exhibited and were then asked to provide appropriate interventions. overwhelmingly, the teachers in this study chose behavioral interventions (e.g., reinforce appropriate behavior) over more clinical or medical options (e.g., refer for adhd diagnosis). however, the teachers did not differentiate their interventions in a manner consistent with the qualifications of adhd as described in the dsm-iv. in addition, entity/incremental beliefs revealed an inconsistent relationship with the choice of intervention. within the field of education there exists a fascination with a clinical or medical model of treatment for students who display hyperactive behavior or who have been diagnosed with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (adhd). this fascination has led to a disproportionate number of studies that examine the effectiveness of clinical treatment versus behavioral techniques (maag, 1999). a clinical model places a high degree of efficacy on the process of diagnosis and subsequent use of medicine to curb disruptive behavior whereas a behavioral approach relies upon adjustments in the learning environment or a reinforcement-based behavior management plan. unfortunately, acceptance of this model from an educator's standpoint may lead to a general feeling of helplessness when working with a student who exhibits hyperactive behavior. this study sought to examine what regular education elementary school teachers and pre-service teachers believe to be the most effective solutions for students who exhibit hyperactive behavior. in addition, another aim of this study was to examine the relationship of pre-existing implicit beliefs with the choice of intervention strategies that are chosen. adhd has been estimated to affect approximately 3% to 5% of school-age children in the united states (american psychiatric association, 1994), although studies have shown that this estimate might be conservative (lefever, dawson, & morrow, 1999; roland, et al., 2002). other industrialized nations such as england have not kept pace in the current issues in education vol. 8 no. 2 number of diagnoses (less than one percent) with the united states (barkley & murphy, 1998). this disorder is dealt with inconsistently within and across teachers, parents, and physicians. according to many pediatricians, both schools and parents commonly over refer students for adhd (hailemariam, bradley-johnson, & johnson, 2002). some of the confusion associated with the disorder is that a child does not necessarily have adhd if they display one of the behavioral symptoms. in fact, jacobson (2002) argues that most children would be labeled as having adhd if observed when they display their maximal adhd-like behaviors. according to the diagnostic and statistical manual-iv (dsm-iv), in order for a child to be diagnosed as having adhd the following evidence must be present: 1) six out of nine symptoms for hyperactivity-impulsivity have to be present for at least six months at a maladaptive level, 2) maladaptive symptoms have to have been present before the age of seven and 3) some symptoms must be present in two or more settings (e.g., school and home) (apa, 2000). these guidelines, while necessary for diagnostic purposes, have little impact upon the everyday interactions and assumptions made by teachers when working with hyperactive students. evidence from recent studies is mixed in support of a clinical model approach versus a behavioral intervention approach. one of the largest studies conducted on the topic, the national institute of mental health (nimh) multi-modal study (jensen, et al., 2001), found the medical approach to be superior to behavioral treatment. the study was conducted with six teams of investigators and included 579 children. for some cases the study found that a combined approach (medical and behavioral) to be slightly more effective than single treatments. the nimh study garnered much attention yet it has not gone without criticism. breggin (2003) points out that findings from the nimh study are limited because of serious methodological flaws such as the failure to use a placebo-controlled, double blind clinical trial, the lack of a control group of untreated children, and the failure to emphasize that blind classroom raters found no differences between any of the treatment groups. other research has reported advantages of a behavioral approach such as the meta-analysis conducted by dupaul and eckert (1997) in which they concluded that school-based interventions, particularly behavioral interventions, have significant effects in changing behavior. reid and maag (1998) emphasized the use of functional assessment as part of a multimodal model by teachers. the multimodal plan includes the use of behavior modification, medical management, psychological support, and educational accommodations (barkley, 1990). in particular, physical accommodations, task-materials, and curricular-instructional adaptations are recommended. while this evidence seems practical it may be more challenging to implement in the classroom. glass and wegar (2000) have found that teachers and administrators find it easier to adopt an emphasis on diagnosis and the clinical model approach than to implement behavioral adjustments. as a result, they have found that teachers' perception of the incidence of adhd is higher than the accepted 5% rate. if this is the case, an important step is to begin to find out what teachers believe to be the most appropriate interventions for curbing hyperactive behavior. thus far, studies focused on the perspective of teachers have been limited (glass, 2001). limited evidence has reported that special education teachers are more successful and less resistant to accommodations for students with hyperactivity (zental & stormont-spurgin, 1995). also, a study by stormont & stebbins (2001) found that pre-school teachers who were presented with a list of behavioral interventions (e.g., give verbal compliments for improved behavior) viewed the interventions as important and reported that they would feel comfortable implementing the interventions. a related issue to this problem is the individual difference factors that contribute to teachers making different judgments related to misbehavior. one area of promise might be found within the domain of implicit beliefs. dweck and leggett (1988) have described two major types of implicit theories of intelligence that individuals hold. the first is an incremental theory of ability that views learning and intelligence as malleable and a product of effort and effective strategy use. subsequently, incremental theorists tend to adopt learning (ames & archer, 1988) or mastery goals (elliott & dweck, 1988) where the emphasis in the learning process is placed upon gaining competence through persistence. the second implicit theory is the entity theory of ability that views learning and intelligence as relatively fixed and unchanging and a product of stable factors such as inherited ability. entity theorists tend to adopt performance goals where the emphasis in the learning process is in performing well relative to peers, seeking recognition, and ensuring that others view them as “intelligent.” recent research in this area has focused almost exclusively on the perspective of students and outcomes associated with holding particular implicit beliefs (pintrich, 2000; church, elliot, & gable, 2001). little attention has been paid to the consequences associated with teachers who hold varying implicit beliefs. teachers who make daily decisions involving misbehavior make implicit elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity 3 judgments about their students' ability to change their behavior. the extent to which the teacher views themselves as having an influence over this change and the extent to which they believe change is possible at all may be determined by the implicit theory that they hold. incremental theories may lead to the belief that misbehavior is malleable while entity theories may lead to the belief that misbehavior is a stable characteristic of the student. this pattern of beliefs has previously been found with students making judgments about other students with regard to academic performance and behavior (heyman & dweck, 1998; erdley & dweck, 1993). in summary, there are numerous implications for educators regarding the preference of clinical versus behavioral approaches to reduce hyperactive behavior. first, it is important to get a baseline understanding of what types of interventions (clinical or behavioral) that teachers with various levels of experience prefer. second, given the rising percentage of students label as adhd, it is important to test whether teachers discriminate between casebased scenarios that give sufficient evidence for a student having adhd versus those that do not. third, it is important to develop an understanding of the various consequences associated with teachers holding either incremental or entity views as they relate to classroom practice and issues of behavior management. variables such as beliefs that reveal important individual differences in approaches by teachers may yield important advances in understanding the likelihood of any given teacher reacting in a particular way when encountering hyperactive behavior. finally, this research is important for educators in order to test whether documented approaches that have been shown to be effective in working with hyperactive behavior in the classroom is considered are considered as viable options by educators. present study this study was conducted in two phases. participants in the first phase included regular education elementary school teachers with varying levels of experience, while those in the second phase included pre-service teachers. the aim of this study as a whole was to investigate 1) what strategies teachers and pre-service teachers are most likely to adopt when working with a hyperactive child given hypothetical situations 2) do intervention choices change with varied levels of adhd-like behavior present and 3) how do implicit beliefs relate to the interventions that teachers adopt. our research questions for the first phase of our study included the following:  what types of interventions do elementary school teachers recommend when presented with scenarios of students who exhibit hyperactive behavior?  do elementary school teachers choose different actions when working with children who meet the diagnostic qualifications for adhd versus children who do not?  do elementary school teachers who score high on dweck's (1999) entity scale tend to select clinical interventions for hyperactive students? with regard to the first question we predicted that teachers would provide a greater proportion of behavioral interventions than clinical interventions. yet, we expected the clinical options to be represented by a significant portion of our respondents based upon the estimates over-diagnosis provided in the literature (glass & wegar, 2000; hailemariam, et al., 2002). we also expected to find that the teachers in our sample would discriminate, to some extent, between the interventions they would suggest for students who displayed more versus less adhd-like symptoms in the hypothetical situations. finally, we expected to see a relationship between entity-based beliefs and the selection of clinical interventions. likewise, we expected to see a relationship between incrementally-based beliefs and the selection of behavioral interventions. phase-i method participants. the participants in this study included 78 teachers (76 women and 2 men, mean age 44.7 years) from three different elementary schools from a large metropolitan area. two of the schools were considered mid-level ses schools ( n =21 & 21) and one low ses ( n =36) based upon their placement within their county for receiving free or reduced school lunches. sixty-eight of the teachers were white, seven were black, and one asian. two teachers did not provide their race. the teachers were all regular education teachers with an average of 15.75 (sd =10.18) years of teaching experience. a breakdown of the number of teachers representing each grade level was as follows: kindergarten n =11, first grade n =11, second grade n =12, third grade n =18, fourth grade n =10, fifth grade n =13, and three who did not provide their grade level. materials. participants were asked to complete a survey that was comprised of three parts. the first part was demographic information. the second part was an eight-item inventory comprised of two factors developed by carol dweck (see dweck, 1999). four items measured “theories of intelligence” and four items measured “the kind of person” one is (see appendix). the items measured the extent to which a person adopts an entity-based theory versus current issues in education vol. 8 no. 2 an incrementally-based theory. higher scores on each scale are based upon entity theories and lower scores on incremental theories. the third part of the survey included three different fictional scenarios, developed by the authors, that described a child with hyperactivity (see appendix). the scenarios were systematically varied according to the number of adhd characteristics exemplified by the child. according to the dsm-iv-tr (american psychiatric association, 2000) a child must meet three requirements to be considered for adhd diagnosis. they include 1) six out of nine symptoms for hyperactivity-impulsivity have to be present for at least 6 months at a maladaptive level 2) some maladaptive symptoms were present before the age of seven and 3) some symptoms present in two or more settings (ex. at school and home). according to these qualifications scenario 1 is the only scenario presenting enough evidence to suggest the child may have adhd. in scenario 1 the child displays the following symptoms: fidgeting, difficulty waiting turn, talks excessively, blurts out answers before questions complete, interrupts others, and leaves seat. in addition, the child’s symptoms were present before the age of 7 and are present in more than one setting. in scenario 2 the child only displays the symptoms of fidgeting and squirming. it is unknown if the symptom occurred before the age of 7, or if the symptom occurs in other settings. in scenario 3 the symptoms include: difficulty waiting turn, leaves seat, interrupts others, and talks incessantly. it is unknown if these symptoms occurred before the age of 7, or if the symptoms occur in other settings. each scenario was followed by eight options that included possible actions the child’s teacher could take to deal with the child’s hyperactive behavior. the directions were as follows: “please read the following scenario and then rank order all of the options that follow, in the order that you feel is the most appropriate, from 1 (most likely) to 8 (least likely). please do not add any additional options or change existing options when ranking your preferences.” four of the options were behavioral options (e.g., set up a system for reinforcing the child’s appropriate classroom behavior) and four were clinical options (e.g., refer the child for adhd diagnosis). the options remained the same for each scenario. procedure. survey packets were delivered to each of the schools and picked up one week later. each teacher at the three schools received a packet and were asked to complete the survey independently within one week. an overall response rate of 72% was obtained from the three schools (21/30; 21/32; 36/46). results in this section descriptive statistics will be reported followed by correlational and inferential statistics. composite scores were used in the analysis of the rankings from each scenario that included one score for an overall behavioral ranking and one for an overall clinical ranking. the two dimensions of the dweck scale were analyzed separately. coefficient alpha reliability indices indicated that both the intelligence scale (alpha=.947) and kind of person scale (alpha=.894) showed a high degree of internal consistency. descriptive statistics. descriptive statistics for phase i of the study are shown in table 1. table i descriptive statistics for phase i condition mean sd scenario 1 behavioral 10.36 1.07 scenario 1 clinical 25.72 1.20 scenario 2 behavioral 10.52 1.33 scenario 2 clinical 25.48 1.33 scenario 3 behavioral 10.56 1.84 scenario 3 clinical 25.56 2.00 intelligence 18.33 3.66 kind of person 18.67 3.74 years of experience 15.75 10.18 note. the means for the behavioral and clinical scales represent a composite score of the ranks (1-8) from four items. the lower the overall mean the higher the rating. scores on the intelligence scale and kind of person scale had a possible range from four to 24. the means reported for each scenario include a composite score from both the behavioral intervention options and the clinical intervention options. lower scores indicate a higher preference for that type of intervention. the participants overwhelmingly rated behavioral interventions higher than clinical interventions across all three scenarios. separate mean ranks for each of the eight intervention options are shown in table 2. using a behavior monitoring plan was the highest rated option across all three scenarios while suggesting that the child take ritalin was the lowest rated option across the three scenarios. correlational statistics. correlational statistics are provided in table 3. teachers with more experience tended to report that basic attributes about a person can change as evidenced by the positive correlation between experience and kind of person. an inconsistent pattern of correlations developed between beliefs about intelligence and responses to elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity 5 the scenarios. significant correlations were found in scenario two for both the behavioral and clinical ratings revealing that teachers choosing more behavioral options tended to support a more malleable view of intelligence. for scenario 3 the tendency to select behavioral interventions was correlated with the malleable view of intelligence but the tendency to select clinical interventions did not correlate significantly with a static view of intelligence. no significant correlations were found between intelligence and behavior management strategies for scenario one. in addition, no significant correlations were revealed between the kind of person variable and strategy selection on any of the scenarios. table 2. means for the eight intervention options in phase i. intervention scenario 1 mean rank scenario 2 mean rank scenario 3 mean rank behavior monitoring plan 1.70 1.75 1.74 reinforcing appropriate behavior 1.99 2.04 2.12 refer for adhd 5.76 5.52 5.60 refer for special education 7.06 7.13 7.13 restructure classroom environment 3.55 3.49 3.44 school psychologist 5.25 5.15 5.19 daily report cards 3.11 3.24 3.26 suggest ritalin 7.64 7.67 7.63 table 3 correlation matrix for phase i variables variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1. years experience ____ -.02 .24* .09 -.16 .18 -.18 .19 -.17 2. intelligence ____ .49** .02 .00 -.25* .25* -.14 .25* 3. kind of person ____ -.08 .12 -.18 .18 -.06 .14 4. scenario 1 clinical ____ .91** .32** -.32** .38** .38** 5. scenario 1 behavioral ____ .34** .34** .41** .41** 6. scenario ____ .48** 2 clinical 1.00** .48** 7. scenario 2 behavioral ____ .48** .48** 8. scenario 3 clinical ____ .88** 9. scenario 3 behavioral ____ note. *p<.05; *p<.01. inferential statistics. in order to address our first two research questions we conducted t-tests and repeated measures anova procedures to examine differences in intervention preference for each scenario and the level of consistency in the ratings across the scenarios. a comparison of the preference for behavioral interventions versus clinical interventions revealed significant differences in favor of the behavioral interventions across all three scenarios (scenario 1: t (66)=56.62, p <.001; scenario 2: t (66)=46.03, p <.001; scenario 3: t (67)=33.31, p <.001). repeated measures anova revealed no differentiation between scenarios in the ratings provided by the teachers for either behavioral interventions, f (2, 132)=.514, p =.589, or clinical interventions, f (2,132)=.996, p =.369. therefore, manipulation of adhd-like symptoms had no effect upon teachers' selection of interventions. phase-ii pre-service teachers served as participants in the second phase of the study that employed somewhat different procedures. an attempt was made in this phase to avoid influencing the participants' response by first asking for open-ended response for each scenario before ranking the intervention options. in addition, an attempt was also made to get at what interventions the pre-service teachers viewed as ultimately having the most impact on the behavior rather than what sequence the interventions should be employed, therefore the instructions were changed for the ranking process. the following research questions were investigated in this second phase:  what types of interventions do pre-service teachers recommend when presented with scenarios of students who exhibit hyperactive behavior?  do pre-service teachers choose different interventions when working with children who meet the diagnostic qualifications for adhd versus children who do not?  do pre-service teachers who score high on dweck's entity scale tend to select clinical interventions for hyperactive students? in the second phase we hypothesized that pre-service teachers would show a similar preference for behavioral interventions that the elementaryschool teachers showed in the first phase. similarly, current issues in education vol. 8 no. 2 we hypothesized that they would differentiate between the scenarios in the interventions that they selected. with regard to our third question, we expected to see teachers with more entity-based beliefs to select clinical options more frequently than teachers with incrementally-based beliefs in both their open-ended response and in their ranking preferences from the intervention options. method participants. the participants in this study included 93 pre-service teachers (73 women and 20 men, mean age 24.4 years) from three different sections of an educational psychology course at a medium-sized university in the south. the course was taken during the junior or senior year after admission to the teacher education program and at the beginning stages of their practicum experiences. seventy-nine of the teachers were white, 13 were black, and one hispanic. the students came from a mix of specialty areas within the college of education . participants were offered extra credit for their participation. materials. participants were asked to complete a survey that was comprised of four parts. the first part was demographic information. the second part was the eight-item inventory by dweck used in phase i. the third part of the survey included the same three fictional scenarios that were used in phase i but with different requirements for participant responses. procedure. the participants first completed the demographic sheet and dweck's entity scale before reading the scenarios. after the participants read each scenario they were asked to provide an open-ended response to the question, “if this student were in your classroom, what would be your initial response in dealing with their behavior. please list only one response.” upon completion of their openended responses for each scenario the participants were shown a powerpoint slide asking them to rank order the same options used in phase i. specifically, the instructions asked them to, “ rank order all of the options listed below, in the order you feel ultimately will be the most successful in changing the students' behavior, from 1 (most successful) to 8 (least successful). the wording of this statement was intended to emphasize what variables the participant felt would actually be most likely to correct the misbehavior rather than asking what sequence of actions they felt they should employ. participants then rank ordered the options for each of the three scenarios. results. in this section descriptive statistics will be reported followed by correlational and inferential statistics. composite scores were used in the analysis of the rankings from each scenario that included one score for an overall behavioral ranking and one for an overall clinical ranking. the two dimensions of the dweck scale were analyzed separately. coefficient alpha reliability indices indicated that the intelligence scale (alpha=.902) and kind of person scale (alpha=.849) showed a high degree of internal consistency. descriptive statistics. descriptive statistics for phase ii of the study are shown in table 4. once again, the participants overwhelmingly rated behavioral interventions higher than clinical interventions across all three scenarios. approximately ten percent of the total responses to the open-ended question were first reviewed to examine trends in the responses and to develop an initial list of 13 categories. both authors then independently coded all of the responses within these categories. these categories were eventually collapsed into the four categories shown in table 4 due to overlap between the categories. table 4. descriptive statistics for phase ii openended response behavioral ranking clinical ranking intelligence kind of person scenario 1 m sd m sd m sd m sd behavioral 11.84 3.36 24.28 3.41 17.38 3.80 16.12 3.90 parental 14.29 3.50 21.71 3.50 20.07 2.20 17.21 3.87 punishment 14.33 2.31 21.67 2.31 18.33 .58 14.67 1.15 clinical 17.89 3.64 18.00 4.23 17.28 4.65 16.39 3.74 total 13.48 4.12 22.58 4.29 17.80 3.82 16.29 3.79 scenario 2 behavioral 12.73 4.00 23.37 3.98 19.91 3.79 16.09 3.61 parental 12.57 4.83 23.43 4.83 17.71 5.41 19.14 5.08 punishment 10.50 .71 25.50 .71 17.50 3.54 17.50 2.12 clinical 17.25 4.49 18.75 4.49 17.38 3.54 15.75 3.83 total 13.46 4.43 22.62 4.43 17.80 3.82 16.29 3.79 scenario 3 behavioral 12.29 3.82 23.71 3.82 17.98 3.61 16.53 4.03 parental 12.33 3.55 23.67 3.55 16.08 3.90 16.75 3.08 punishment 16.92 5.20 18.92 3.60 18.92 3.60 16.17 3.59 clinical 17.95 5.13 18.35 5.45 17.70 4.32 15.50 3.85 total 14.13 4.93 21.96 4.89 17.80 3.82 16.29 3.79 any discrepancies were discussed until coming to agreement. initial coding discrepancies occurred in less than four percent of the cases based upon the final categories. behavioral responses included teacher/student interactions, changing the child's location in the classroom, adjusting classroom activities or tasks, or developing a behavior chart or reward system. clinical responses included suggesting the child take ritalin, referring the child to be tested for adhd, or referring the child to a school counselor or other special services such as special education. parental responses included anything related to parental involvement or a parental elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity 7 conference. in table 4 the means are broken down by open-ended responses for each scenario. open-ended behavioral responses comprised 62.4% of the total responses for scenario 1, 19.4% of the responses were clinical, 15.1% were parental, and 3.2% suggested using some form of punishment. openended behavioral responses comprised 73.1% of the total responses for scenario 2, 17.2% of the responses were clinical, 7.5% were parental, and 2.2% suggested using some form of punishment. open-ended behavioral responses comprised 52.7% of the total responses for scenario 3, 21.5% of the responses were clinical, 12.9% were parental, and 12.9% suggested using some form of punishment. the scenario that included the least amount of adhd-like indicators (scenario 2) had the highest percent of behavioral intervention responses. scenario 3 had the lowest percent of behavioral intervention responses even though it was in the middle with regard to adhd-like indicators. it appears likely that the participants perceived the student in this scenario to be the least controllable based upon the description given in the text even though evidence of hyperactive behavior was not described from multiple contexts or before the age of seven. mean ranks for each of the eight intervention options are provided in table 5 below. table 5. means for the eight intervention options in phase ii. intervention scenario 1 mean rank scenario 2 mean rank scenario 3 mean rank behavior monitoring plan 2.50 2.65 2.68 reinforcing appropriate behavior 2.92 2.93 3.12 refer for adhd 4.60 4.48 4.47 refer for special education 6.87 6.96 6.84 restructure classroom environment 4.32 3.86 4.57 school psychologist 4.53 4.67 4.43 daily report cards 3.74 4.01 3.76 suggest ritalin 6.58 6.51 6.22 the two most preferred options across scenarios by students were utilizing a behavior monitoring plan and reinforcing appropriate behavior. the two least preferred options across scenarios included referring the child for special education services and suggesting that the child take ritalin. not surprisingly, there was consistency between the open-ended responses and the ratings for the intervention options. as in the first phase of the study, there was no differentiation between scenarios in the ratings provided by the teachers. pairedsamples t-tests were conducted and revealed no significant differences between means for any of the scenarios. therefore, manipulation of adhd-like symptoms had no effect upon teachers' selection of interventions. correlational statistics. correlational statistics for phase ii variables are provided in table 6. the kind of person variable was related to responses on the third scenario. no significant correlations were found though between the kind of person variable and intervention options for scenarios two or three. students rating behavioral interventions higher also tended to hold incremental views on a person's attributes. the intelligence variable did not show a relationship with any of the scenario variables. table 6. correlation matrix for phase ii variables 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. intelligence .45** -.11 .07 .07 -.06 -.07 .07 2. kind of person -.21 .17 -.16 .17 -.26* .26* 3. behavior scen. 1 .98** .35** .37** .53** .52** 4. clinical scen. 1 .34** .38** .51** .50** 5. behavior scen. 2 .98** .52** .51** 6. clinical scen. 2 .52** .52** 7. behavior scen. 3 .99** 8. clinical scen. 3 note: * p<.05; **p<.01 inferential statistics. in order to address our first two research questions we conducted t-tests and repeated measures anova procedures to examine differences in intervention preference for each scenario and the level of consistency in the ratings across the scenarios. a comparison of the preference for behavioral interventions versus clinical interventions revealed significant differences in favor of the behavioral interventions across all three scenarios (scenario 1: t (91)=-10.43, p <.001; scenario 2: t (91)=-9.98, p <.001; scenario 3: t (91)=7.66, p <.001. repeated measures anova revealed no differentiation between scenarios in the ratings provided by the teachers for either behavioral interventions, f (2, 182)=1.25, p =.289, or clinical interventions, f (2,182)=1.15, p =.319. therefore, manipulation of adhd-like symptoms had no effect upon teachers' selection of interventions. these results found with pre-service teachers replicated those found with the teachers in phase i. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 2 discussion this study sought to examine what teachers believe to be the most effective interventions when working with students who exhibit hyperactive behavior that disrupts the classroom. we investigated the extent to which 1) teachers chose behavioral versus clinical solutions when working with hyperactive children; 2) whether teachers differentiate between scenarios that have varying levels of adhd-like behavior as reflected by their choice of different interventions; and 3) whether implicit beliefs such as entity/incremental theories show relationships with the choice of interventions. the elementary school teachers in phase i of the study and pre-service teachers in phase ii of the study overwhelmingly chose behavioral rather than clinical interventions as appropriate strategies to deal with the disruptive child. this is an encouraging finding from a pedagogical standpoint. the teachers in phase i ranked the behavioral strategies as the “most appropriate” options and pre-service teachers in phase ii considered these strategies to be “ultimately the most successful” of the available options. the four most highly rated intervention options for the scenarios in both phases of the study were all behaviorally-based strategies. this indicates that teachers, in general, have efficacy for making positive environmental changes in the classroom that will curb misbehavior with hyperactive students. this finding also dispels the notion that teachers, at least from this sample, see a “quick fix” clinical or medical model option as the most appropriate means of curbing hyperactive behavior. finally, these results show alignment with studies suggesting the need for more balanced approaches to working with hyperactive behavior (dupaul & eckert, 1997; reid & maag, 1998). the teachers in this sample did not, however, differentiate in their suggested interventions across the scenarios despite having different levels of adhd-like symptoms present. this finding may be due to the lack of knowledge that teachers have about the technical qualifications related to the diagnosis of adhd. it might also be that teachers would maintain their selection of strategies regardless of the diagnosis and/or adhdlike symptoms displayed by the student. teachers may consider their actions as independent of the clinical diagnosis choosing instead to focus on interventions intended to alter classroom behavior. surprisingly, dweck's entity/incremental scales did not show any consistent pattern of relationships with the choice of intervention selected by the teachers. we predicted that teachers adopting an incrementally-based perspective on intelligence and person attributes would tend to choose a greater proportion of behavioral to clinical strategies than their entity-based counterparts. this hypothesis was only partially supported through correlational findings. in the first phase of the study the teachers did show this pattern for the second and third scenarios. no such pattern was revealed for the intelligence variable. in the second phase of the study this hypothesized pattern was found only for the kind of person variable on the third scenario. these findings appear to only partially replicate findings from other studies in education conducted by dweck and her colleagues (dweck, 1999). it is possible that the teachers, including those with entity viewpoints, answered in a way that they perceived to be socially acceptable. it could also be that personal experiences in the field of education have led them to feel obligated, to some extent, to respond in a certain way (i.e., present a behavioral strategy). it is also possible that the instrument is not sensitive enough to reveal any meaningful relationships that may be present. hyperactivity may possess enough domain-specific variance associated with it as a unique facet of behavior to warrant more specific items in the inventories. finally, an interesting finding in the first phase of the study was that teachers with more experience tended to report a more malleable view about the kind of person one is. it is possible that it is the more experienced teachers possess a greater reservoir of experiences seeing changes in student behavior and how individual attributes can be changed in an educational context. also, this finding may indicate the need for teacher education programs to place a greater curricular emphasis on incremental beliefs by emphasizing evidence-based research that shows the positive benefits of specific behavioral strategies and interventions. limitations of the study the overall findings of this study are limited somewhat by the nature of the task that the teachers completed. first, the scenarios were of fictional students rather than actual students in a classroom. we cannot expect to fully approximate the intricacies of working with real-life students through case-based scenarios. in real-life contexts the teachers would most likely make decisions regarding students with hyperactive issues or adhd-like symptoms in conjunction with a team of other teachers and administrators. this study hoped to measure the general reactions of teachers when posed simulated behaviors. second, due to the nature of the study and time constraints the scenarios were limited in their length and amount of detail. ideally, one would prefer to allow each teacher to get a rich description of each student with the opportunity to observe actual behavior. future studies could make important gains elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity 9 by examining the interactions of teachers with students in their natural contexts over extended periods of time. future studies this study leads to numerous questions for future research. one avenue might involve delving more fully into the tendency for teachers to adopt differential classroom strategies when working with adhd versus non-adhd students. in this study teachers did not suggest different interventions even when the adhd symptoms varied by scenario but one variation to that approach might be to indicate to teachers that the student in the scenario has been professionally diagnosed as having adhd. it would be possible to systematically vary this information to see if this leads to a different selection of interventions. if findings were to reveal that educators maintain consistent classroom strategies across adhd students and non-adhd students alike there would exist a schism between their beliefs and summary findings and recommendations by the national institute of health (1998). in their summary statements they report that a combined intervention program of behavioral treatments with medication have added little to strictly medical interventions alone. this examination of intervention selection might be furthered even more with a comparison of special education and regular education teachers. finally, the exploration of implicit beliefs systems and their relationship interventions and strategies for working with disruptive students is still in its infancy. this study was a first attempt to look at the basic relationships between entity/incremental theories and intervention strategies. from these preliminary findings it appears that measurement instruments need to be developed with a greater focus on the domain specific aspects of working with disruptive students. furthermore, greater understanding might be gained by the observation of teachers holding various beliefs in their interactions with students in the classroom over extended periods of time. references american psychiatric association. 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(1995). educator preferences of accommodations for students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. teacher education and special education, 18 , 115-123. . elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity 11 appendix survey please respond to the following statements using the scale below: 1 2 3 4 5 6 strongly agree agree mostly agree mostly disagree disagree strongly disagree _____ 1) you have a certain amount of intelligence, and you can't really do much to change it. _____ 2) the kind of person someone is, is something very basic about them and it can't be changed very much. _____ 3) people can do things differently, but the important parts of who they are can't really be changed. _____ 4) your intelligence is something about you that you can't change very much. _____ 5) to be honest, you can't really change how intelligent you are. _____ 6) as much as i hate to admit it, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. people really can't change their deepest attributes. _____ 7) everyone is a certain kind of person, and there is not much that can be done to really change that. _____ 8) you can learn new things, but you can't really change your basic intelligence. scenario 1 a student in your classroom is causing you some difficulties. in the past two weeks you have made note of the student's behavior to better assess the situation. you have noticed the child fidgeting in their seat during the lessons. the student has cut in line on more the one occasion. the child also has trouble staying quiet. the child either tries to engage classmates in conversation at inappropriate times or blurts out answers out of turn. as a result of the child's talkativeness you have observed the child butting into other student's conversations during recess. your friend and colleague was the child's first grade teacher. she stated she observed and struggled with many of the same behaviors from this student when the child was in her class. in addition to what you have observed in your classroom you have been privy to see the child and family at the local park. you were about to approach the mother, but noticed she seemed occupied with trying to keep her child from running off. scenario 2 after returning from winter break you are still having difficulty with one particular student. you thought after the break from class the child would return more relaxed. it still seems though; the child just cannot sit still for any length of time. it has turned into a daily routine for you to ask the child to stop fidgeting at their desk. the child's constant squirming during lessons has become disruptive to your teaching. you are worried all the movement the child makes is, or will become, a distraction to the other students in your class. you are also concerned that all the attention you give this student to relax in their seat is taking quality education time from the class as a whole. scenario 3 a month ago a new student was placed in your classroom. the new student is full of energy. you have tried to allow the child some time to adjust, but you are getting worn out trying to keep up with the student. other students in the class have complained that during recess the new student cuts in line quite often. similarly, you have noted during class activities the child has difficulty waiting for their turn. and last week you marked down seven occasions when the child got out of their seat during a lesson. in addition, you have never observed the student to remain seated throughout lunchtime. finally, the most wearisome characteristic is the child's incessant talking. it seems no matter how many times you tell the child to stop talking the chatter continues. intervention options: (a) a behavioral monitoring system established between the teacher and the student. (b) reinforce the child's appropriate classroom behavior. (c) refer the child for adhd diagnosis. (d) request the child be placed in special education classes. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 2 (e) restructure the classroom environment to alter the child's behavior. (f) send the child to school psychologist for evaluation. (g) use a daily report card system for the child. (h) the child takes ritalin. elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity 13 2005 article citation nietfeld, j. l. & hunt, a. a.(2005, february 05). elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity, current issues in education [on-line], 8(2). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number2/ author notes john nietfeld north carolina state university 602d poe hall, raleigh, nc 27695 john_nietfeld@ncsu.edu john nietfeld is an assistant professor of educational psychology at north carolina state university . his research interests include metacognition, motivation, and adult reading. angela hunt state university of west georgia angie hunt is a graduate student in counseling & educational psychology at the state university of west georgia. her interests are in teacher perceptions and training related to behavior management. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 24, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation nietfeld, j. l., & hunt, a. a. (2005). elementary and pre-service teachers' strategies for working with students with hyperactivity. current issues in education, 8(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1613 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number2/index.html mailto:john_nietfeld@ncsu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1613 is consistency possible? course design and delivery to meet faculty and student needs current issues in education, 23(3) 1 volume 23, issue 3 december 12, 2022 issn 1099-839x is consistency possible? course design and delivery to meet faculty and student needs taralyn mcmullan, david s. williams, yolany lagos ortiz, & jackie lollar university of south alabama abstract: as online learning continues to rise, students find educational value in consistency of instruction and technological support. with the significant increase in faculty designing courses, success lies with faculty education in instructional design. additionally, students need support to navigate through the lms and course elements to achieve success and increase their knowledge level. determining the needs of nursing students and faculty is essential to the process of developing an effective course design for students leading to valuable content delivery and achievement of student outcomes. the purposes of this study were: (1) to measure attitudes toward online course design, (2) to compare online course delivery with instructor involvement, and (3) to determine changes to online courses. a significant finding is consistency within the lms in course design and increased use of technology in content delivery. keywords: instructional design, nursing education, outcomes, blended and fully online learning, technology citation : mcmullan, t., williams, d.s., ortiz, y.l., & lollar, j. (2022). is consistency possible? course design and delivery to meet faculty and student needs, current issues in education, 23(3). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss3.2092 accepted: 10/21/2022 introduction blended and fully online learning has been a cornerstone for many colleges and universities as today's students face challenges causing in-person learning to be cumbersome. although instruction varies by institution, degree, course, or even faculty, student mastery of content remains the primary goal and serves as a foundation for curricular development. according to the national center for education statistics (n.d.), over 7 million students were enrolled in some form of distance or online learning in 2019. hence, students are faced with many options when it comes to their learning pathway, and delivery of instruction is just one facet that facilitates their decision. https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss3.2092 mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 2 accrediting bodies such as the american association of colleges of nursing (aacn) developed a standard of principles that each program could deliver, mimicking those of a traditional classroom environment. as such, the importance of consistency among student outcomes in relation to the institution's mission, goals, and objectives of the program, while establishing a measure of student and program success serves as a core element. furthermore, faculty must facilitate appropriate technical support, clinical competence, professionalism, and resources while engaging in ongoing faculty development (aacn, 2021) to support teaching practices. with the increase in online learning being offered, it is of no surprise that the number of students reported to take an online course has increased from 37% (fall 2019) to 51.8% (20192020) (hill, 2021). while many different platforms exist in the development and execution of learning, most rely on pedagogy as a foundation to the instruction. therefore, it is essential for faculty to be supported with technology and instructional design theories that support the construction of courses while enhancing the student's experience. martin et al. (2019) found that faculty teaching online may need a variety of professional development support in terms of administration, personnel, technology, and pedagogy. as blended and fully online teaching becomes more of the norm, it is important to measure if learning outcomes are being achieved and how the selected instructional technology is used to help achieve those outcomes. therefore, the need to measure success of learning is necessitated by whether technology gaps exist, thus influencing student achievement. we must be cognizant of demographics impacting students and faculty, experiential learning, instructional design properties of the learning management system (lms), self-efficacy, and the tools used in the classroom as important variables. the purposes of this study were: (1) to measure attitudes toward online course design, (2) to compare online course delivery with instructor involvement, and (3) to determine changes to online courses. for the purposes of our study, we draw a distinction between technical requirements and technology. technical requirements refer to how to find assistance in using required computer software and hardware. the use of technology refers more broadly to using the tools needed to complete the required course instruction and learning activities. course design is built on the needs of the learner and should begin with transparent learning outcomes, along with intentional and strategic design rooted in evidence-based practice (bradshaw et al., 2021). the theoretical knowledge of malcolm knowles postulates learners must: (a) be aware of why they must learn; (b) learn by experience; (c) learn through problemsolving activities, and (d) perceive an immediate value (knowles, 1990 as cited in bradshaw et al., 2021). similarly, it is of equal importance to allow faculty who design the courses to be wellversed in instructional design methods to allow for proper dissemination of the course material. likewise, learners also rely on previous experiences and potential outcomes of their learning to affect their future as an incentive to pursue education. therefore, learners may be more inclined to be self-directed in learning, but consistency may not always be present in the content delivery (spies & botma, 2020), minimizing users' ability to access resources and materials to enrich their overall learning experiences. educational developers often rely on evidence-based design frameworks when collaborating with instructors. one of these frameworks is quality matters (qm) which is a set of rubric standards that focus on alignment of course objectives to assessments to help foster quality assurance in online course design (quality matters, 2021). likewise, the online learning consortium's quality scorecard suite is a series of design rubrics based on best practices and mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 3 principles for online course development to help educational developers and faculty implement accessible and quality learning environments (online learning consortium, 2022). in course development, alignment of objectives, activities and assessments must be threaded throughout the course (markari et al., 2020; smith & kennedy, 2020). applying standards-based design frameworks like qm criteria and the online learning consortium's quality scorecard framework can strengthen design consistency among learners, course developers, and instructors (king & nininger, 2019; lancaster et al., 2019). khamis et al. (2018) found that among medical students, information technology was instrumental to the perceived learning experiences. positive outcomes included improving work speed, relevancy, extending learning/knowledge outside the classroom, connections, and accessibility which are essential in the college experience. interestingly, their study also revealed that male and female students would like to see even more technology usage via email, videosharing, web portals, medical wikis, and even through online educational games. these findings may help faculty to ensure the design incorporates methodologies and platforms which can be readily accessible through a variety of devices (cobanoglu, 2018; mackavey & cron, 2019) both in the classroom and in the field. actively engaging learners provides for a perception of social presence, yielding more positive results among students while supporting learning (chung & chen, 2020; olson & benham-hutchins, 2020; smith et al., 2019) and retention efforts (serembus & riccio, 2019). while surveys do exist to measure student engagement, other factors, such as analytical measurement through the lms platforms, also provide capabilities to determine how much time students spend viewing different areas of the course leading to better academic performance. this information is paramount when considering course design (serembus & riccio). similarly, faculty satisfaction with using a lms can be highly influential to the student's perceived learning and actual utilization of the system. perceived usefulness and quality of service are additional variables reinforcing instructor and student satisfaction (almarashdeh, 2016). faculty self-efficacy and personal competence serve as fundamental building blocks to instructional effectiveness and can be influenced by other concepts such as: ability to control the environment, technology, lms platform, and the ability to create successful strategies for students' learning outcomes (hampton et al., 2020). programs should be based on evidencebased principles that guide the learner through the process of learning rather than instruction (sinclair et al., 2017). method our research occurred within a regional public university in the southeastern united states, with the college of nursing (con) serving as the targeted site. the university enrolls an average of 14,000 students, with the con being the largest college within the system. average enrollment in the fall/spring semesters is 3000+ students and includes undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students. a concurrent triangulation mixed methods design was used to answer our research questions (creswell, 2013). to investigate the research questions, we developed a set of questionnaires administered to faculty and students in the con that included quantitative and qualitative questions. the online learning consortium's quality scorecard suite (olc, 2021) was used as a theoretical framework to develop scale questions measuring online course features like consistent design, instructor involvement, learning activities, grading, feedback, use of video content, and technology requirements. the wording of likert scale question items was adjusted between the faculty and student versions of the questionnaires to accommodate each audience. mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 4 the following scale was used for the likert items: 1) strongly disagree, 2) somewhat disagree, 3) neither agree nor disagree, 4) somewhat agree, and 5) strongly agree. open-ended and demographic questions were also adjusted based on each audience to allow for the strongest comparisons. we were also interested in investigating additional issues related to online course delivery from faculty and student perspectives because of institutional changes in the learning management system and other instructional technologies. we anticipated that data gathered from the study could inform continuous improvement to both training programs for faculty and potential changes to college-level course delivery policies to support a stronger student experience. the following table shows the alignment between the research purposes and questionnaire items to provide context for the various terminology used in the study. it also shows specifically where in the results section details about the questionnaire items are located. table 1 alignment of research purpose to questionnaire research purpose questionnaire items results section measure attitudes toward online course design items measuring elements of course experience table 3 compare online course delivery with instructor involvement items measuring elements of course facilitation table 4 items measuring instructor involvement table 5 items measuring technical requirements narrative following table 5 items related to video content table 6 determine changes to online courses. open-ended items tables 7 and 8 additionally, we included demographic-type items for faculty and students to investigate if any notable commonalities or trends would be found in the data. sample after obtaining institutional review board (irb) approval, the pilot version of the questionnaire was administered in october 2019 via qualtrics online survey tool to faculty and students from four undergraduate and four graduate online courses that were implemented in the institution's previous lms. we hoped the pilot questionnaire would provide a benchmark regarding online course experiences in faculty and students that would serve as a comparison point once the change in lms was completed in additional courses. we originally planned to mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 5 make any adjustments to the questionnaire and then implement it again in spring 2020 and fall 2020 as the lms migration commenced. the impact of the covid-19 pandemic redirected the focus of this research project and caused a shift in our data collection plan. we were able to resume this research project in april 2021, toward the end of spring term, and well after the migration of all courses to the new lms was complete. because of the amount of time that had passed and the impact of covid-19 on the institution, we became most interested in how students and faculty felt about their online course experiences now that a new system had been implemented. we made only slight updates to the questionnaires, including asking faculty and students to identify specifically how the use of the new lms could be improved. we also included openended questions regarding the most positive take-aways taking or teaching the course as well as suggestions for improvement of the course. we did not change the likert scale questions or categories. the updated questionnaires were approved by the irb, and all college of nursing faculty (full-time and part-time) and students were invited to complete the survey via qualtrics online survey tool in april 2021. the response rate of the 2021 implementation is detailed below in table 2. table 2 participant response rate questionnaire version faculty student n response rate % n response rate % spring 2021 questionnaire 58 53.21% 107 3.10% the response rate for students was low, with busy schedules, timing of the administration at the end of the semester, and survey fatigue being possible explanations. the results of the 2021 survey implementation are addressed in the next section. results in order to compare attitudes and experiences of nursing faculty and students, an independent sample t-test was conducted on the questionnaire items measuring elements of course experience (e.g., syllabus, expectations, clarity of assignments and resources, online course facilitation, instructor involvement), technical requirements, and video content. mean differences between faculty and student scores on relevant items are reported below. homogeneity of variances, as assessed by levene's test for equality of variances, was found on some question items; for question items that violated the assumption of homogeneity of variance, the welch (1947) method to adjust the degrees of freedom was used. table 3 shows the mean differences from items measuring general online course experiences. the words in parentheses are the word adjustments to the items for the faculty version. nine question items were included to measure online course experience. the two items in the table reflect mean differences between faculty and students larger than .6. mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 6 table 3 items related to course experience. question faculty student t df p m sd m sd your (the) workload throughout the course was evenly distributed. 4.59 .747 3.90 1.207 -3.769 62.248 .00 course activities were appropriately paced and evenly distributed. 4.57 .742 3.92 1.193 -2.750 141 .007 note: there was homogeneity of variances for "course activities were appropriately paced and evenly distributed" (p = .098). these questions were the only items with statistically significant mean differences, which indicated a slightly stronger view among faculty that the schedule of the course and the pacing of learning activities were evenly distributed. in terms of practical significance, the mean scores for faculty and students in the 2021 data for all items measuring course design factors were near or above 4.0, indicating fairly strong agreement in perceptions among faculty and students. table 4 shows the mean differences from items specifically measuring online course facilitation. nine question items were included to measure this construct. the eight items in the table reflect mean differences between faculty and students larger than .6. table 4 items important to online course facilitation question faculty student t df p m sd m sd having consistent order in left bar navigation among different courses. 3.35 .915 4.15 .914 4.288 143 .00 having a "start here" module that is similar among courses (you facilitate). 3.26 .930 3.99 1.243 3.055 142 .003 mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 7 table 4 (continued) question faculty student t df p m sd m sd having (recording) a welcome video for the class (from the instructor). 2.97 .912 3.68 1.358 3.435 70.571 .001 having (recording) a video to introduce new content. 3.03 .875 4.19 1.065 5.535 142 .00 having synchronous web conferences during the term (to give student) opportunities to ask questions or to attend live lectures. 2.73 .907 3.78 1.299 5.061 64.539 .00 having weekly modules or lessons that follow the same sequence through the course. 3.45 .768 4.10 1.069 3.145 142 .002 having weekly modules or lessons that follow the same sequence among different courses. 2.81 .980 3.79 1.184 4.231 142 .00 having (providing) the same process for accessing resources across all courses (you facilitate). 3.30 .877 4.38 .869 6.041 141 .00 note: the homogeneity of variances assumption was only violated on "having (recording) a welcome video for the class (from the instructor)" and "having synchronous web conferences during the term (to give student) opportunities to ask questions or to attend live lectures." for these items, the values for equal variances not assumed are presented here. the mean scores of students for each of these questions were higher than the faculty scores, likely because of the larger n of students. still, in terms of practical significance, items related to recording video content, providing web conference sessions, and consistent module sequencing among different courses were at or just below 3.0. student scores on these same items reflect a much stronger desire for more use of video and module consistency. data on these questions from the 2019 pilot were used anecdotally by college of nursing faculty and staff for course design planning in preparation for the new lms. mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 8 table 5 shows the mean differences from items specifically measuring instructor involvement. seven question items were included to measure this construct. the two items in the table reflect mean differences between faculty and students larger than .6 table 5 items related to instructor involvement question faculty student t df p m sd m sd instructor (i) provided timely feedback on your assignments. 4.55 .850 3.81 1.381 -3.706 78.217 .00 instructor (my) presence was notable throughout the course. 4.61 .803 3.72 1.379 -4.614 83.209 .00 note: there was homogeneity of variances assumption was violated on both of these items. the values for equal variances not assumed are presented here. interestingly, the mean scores of students for each of these questions about the instructor's involvement in the course were lower than the faculty scores. in terms of practical significance, all mean scores for items in this question block for faculty and students were closer to 4.0 on the scale, indicating broad agreement on instructor activities. the next block of questions in the instrument measured technical requirements, such as the following: providing information about where to find technical assistance; information regarding computer, hardware, and software requirements; and netiquette with appropriate online behavior guidelines. none of the three items measuring technical requirements had differences in mean scores larger than .6. though there were statistically significant differences for items on finding technical assistance and information about computer requirements, there was no practically significant difference among students and faculty. further, the mean scores for each group were near or well above 4, indicating consistent agreement that technical requirement information was provided in their course sites. table 6 shows the mean differences from items specifically measuring video content. six question items were included to measure this construct. the four items in the table reflect mean differences between faculty and students larger than .6 mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 9 table 6 items related to video content question faculty student t df p m sd m sd the course videos were useful. 4.60 .770 3.96 1.332 -3.42 80.264 .001 the course videos were well presented. 4.67 .606 3.91 1.293 -4.592 102.51 3 .00 the course videos had good audio quality. 4.63 .615 4.12 1.204 -3.195 93.065 .002 i find the (recording) course videos overwhelming. 2.83 1.605 2.09 1.359 -2.504 138 .013 note: there was homogeneity of variances for "i find the (recording) course videos overwhelming" (p = .069). the values for equal variances not assumed are presented here for the remaining values. though there was no statistically significant difference in "the videos were no longer than 15 minutes," there is practical significance here in the similar mean scores about how to improve the use of video content in online nursing courses. the difference in mean scores on these items reflects a slightly stronger agreement among faculty in the use and presentation of video content. the use of video content was not viewed as overwhelming. the qualitative data presented below further confirms the desire from students for consistent, high-quality videos provided by their instructors. qualitative data qualitative data was collected from two open-ended items in the faculty version of the questionnaire and three open-ended items from the student version of the questionnaire. response summary table 7 shows the number of responses to the three open-ended questions in the student's instrument. mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 10 table 7 students' responses to open-ended questions question n what suggestions would you make to instructors about ways to improve video content in this course? 66 what are your top 3 most positive feelings about your experience in the course? 79 what are your top 3 suggestions to improve the use of canvas in the course? 69 table 8 shows the number of responses to the two open-ended questions in the faculty instrument. table 8 faculty responses to open-ended questions question n what are your top 3 positive take-aways from teaching your courses? 24 what are your top 3 suggestions to improve the use of canvas at the college of nursing? 25 coding process we used inductive, open coding to create codes and then categories of codes for the faculty and student responses. one researcher open coded responses for both faculty questions and the student questions related to video content and suggestions for course improvement. a second researcher open coded the responses of students’ positive feelings about the course. these researchers met to review each other's data set and present the list of codes that had emerged from each of the questions. the researchers reviewed the codebook and then resolved any disagreements in how the codes were applied to come to consensus on the larger categories of codes to represent participant meaning and achieve intercoder reliability (johnson & christensen, 2017). subsequently, the researchers met to specifically review the coded themes in the faculty responses to the top three positive takeaways and top three suggestions and the coded themes in the student responses to the top positive feelings and suggestions for improvement. we coded the individual faculty/student responses separately to get more saturation of themes, as each group of participants had themes that were inherently linked to their characteristics as faculty or students. moreover, we used the themes that emerged from the faculty response to analyze where similar responses from the student data sets could be found to present overlapping thoughts or ideas to present meaningful comparisons. the coding process and categories of codes were shared with the remaining two researchers, who also agreed with the analysis of these questions mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 11 results when selecting which themes to report, we decided to report those that had relevance to the research purpose and objectives. the categories of codes, or themes, are presented in the following figures. figure 1 shows the top themes extracted from student suggestions for improving video content in their online courses. figure 1 student suggestions to improve video content figure 2 shows the top themes extracted from student responses when asked to list their top three positive take-aways from teaching their course (faculty) and from their overall experience in taking their courses (students). the results for each group are presented here together for ease of comparison. figure 2 student and faculty positive take-aways from their course experiences mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 12 figure 3 shows the top themes extracted from student and faculty responses when asked to list their top three suggestions to improve the use of the lms in their courses within the college of nursing. figure 3 student and faculty suggestions to improve the use of the lms in their courses discussion measuring attitudes towards online course design and comparing experiences we sought to measure the attitudes and experiences of nursing faculty and students about blended and fully online learning and course design to allow for meaningful comparisons of their experiences. the olc quality scorecard suite (olc, 2021) framework that organized our instrument helped highlight where faculty and students had consensus and where notable differences could point to improvement in the design and delivery of online courses. our study participants indicated that flexibility in blended and fully online learning is crucial to their ability to adapt to an environment that is ever-changing. course experience faculty and students overall expressed strong agreement on the items measuring course experience. these results were positive and indicated that faculty and students agreed that elements such as clear expectations listed in a syllabus and ease of accessing needed resources were present in the blended and fully online delivery. the notable difference in the quantitative results between faculty and students was found in perceptions of workload distribution and pacing of course activities; this finding relates to qualitative data gathered from the student and faculty positive take-aways from their course experiences. the theme of organization was the largest, with the most coded responses from the open-ended question about course positives from faculty. in terms of organization, one faculty participant stated that "having a consistent format in each module that includes the unit resources, the assignments, and the content" was an important course feature. the theme of organization was the largest theme in the data from student positive take-aways and may help explain student feelings about workload, design, and pacing. similar to the faculty participant, students commented that their course was "well organized" and "digested." another student expressed, "canvas use should be standardized. mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 13 instructors should be required to put assignments in the same place and be consistent." this sentiment may explain the lower agreement from students regarding workload and pacing. tables 9 and 10 show the largest selected codes from the faculty and students regarding their top positive take-aways and suggestions for improvement with representative comments for each. table 9 codes for faculty responses code positive or suggestions n representative comment organization positive 11 "i love my other course coordinator's organization of the class" speedgrader and rubrics capabilities positive 8 "in addition to annotated feedback, video and audio recording are the best tools available to support student success" videos positive 6 "short, precise videos" consistent design template suggestions 13 "organization of content needs to be improved to facilitate finding everything in one place" canvas orientation suggestions 3 "students may need more orientation to use in general v. just training" standardized assignments and rubrics suggestions 2 "have all assignments with a similar template and make sure the instructions match the rubric" table 10 codes for student responses code positive or suggestions n representative comment organizatio n positive 36 "well organized", "easy access to modules" instructor support positive 24 "the instructors were excellent at keeping students informed" flexibility positive 20 "flexibility to read material on my own time" mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 14 table 4 (continued) code positive or suggestions n representative comment course content videos suggestions 33 "record a lecture for each section and post it to canvas" course design consistency suggestions 27 "canvas use should be standardized. instructors should be required to put assignments in the same place and be consistent" more instructor engagement suggestions 7 "instructors should be more responsive to students by replying to emails and answering questions and clarifying information" online course delivery and instructor involvement students had overall stronger agreement on items measuring online course facilitation, but faculty had overall stronger agreement on the significant items measuring instructor involvement. the data indicate reasonably strong student preference for consistent course navigation throughout the course and for some design consistency within and across their online courses. faculty indicated moderate disagreement in module consistency among different courses, and this could be related to the different types of courses facilitated within the degree programs (e.g., clinical courses, didactic courses, orientation/information sites). despite some of the differences noted here, the qualitative responses further illustrate student and faculty experiences. one faculty participant emphasized, "organization of content needs to be improved to facilitate finding everything in one place," while a student participant similarly expressed that "canvas use should be standardized. instructors should be required to put assignments in the same place and be consistent." students agreed (more so than faculty) that having a welcome video from the instructor to the course, having a video from the instructor to introduce new content, and having synchronous conferences facilitated by the instructor were important course features. the feedback on the use of synchronous web conferences stood out. synchronous web conferences have been used by nursing faculty intermittently and with varying degrees of success given the nature of student schedules and the fact that courses are delivered asynchronously. while unlikely to be adopted more uniformly at the program level, faculty may consider ways to incorporate some synchronous sessions for check-ins, content review, or other ways to connect students to the course, the instructor, and their peers. in terms of instructor involvement, feedback from the instructor and overall presence in the course emerged as points of comparison between faculty and students. still, the mean scores for items in this question block for faculty and students were closer to 4.0 on the scale, indicating broad agreement on instructor activities. one faculty participant commented, "students feel more confident with frequent faculty involvement." the following student comments further highlight their feelings about the importance of faculty involvement and interaction. mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 15 ● "the instructors put a lot of effort into providing information and communications about the course" ● "instructors should be more responsive to students by replying to emails and answering questions and clarifying information" ● "loved the video feedback" ● "instructor was positive with feedback" video content students and faculty overall believe that effective use of video content is important to the course experience. in addition to student preferences for course welcome videos and content videos, the difference in mean scores on these items reflects a slightly stronger agreement among faculty in the use and presentation of video content. the use of video content was not viewed as overwhelming, in either recording videos for the faculty or viewing the videos for the students. the qualitative data about use of video provided further insight into how nursing faculty can continue improving their creation and curation of content in their courses. contentrelated video instruction was the largest theme in the student data regarding how to improve online videos, as noted by the following quote. "i feel there should be more videos with the course to present content. the material is quickly presented with little to no explanation of key concepts. rarely do the instructors provide "real world" examples that allow the student to apply the knowledge to actual examples. i feel the online experience should somewhat emulate the classroom experience; providing more than a topical outline/discussion is key." faculty training that is focused on how and when to best use video tools within the lms may serve as one way to maximize the use of multimedia to help students achieve their learning outcomes. another student commented that "video lectures were very helpful and very important in helping me to learn." on the faculty side, one participant noted, "videos introducing assignments with the instructor's face included seems to drop stress levels of students." technology was also incorporated into the design of the college-level course template by including prompts for faculty to upload videos. creating opportunities for different types of technology can also assist all students, empowering them to self-regulate (sinclair et al., 2017; wu et al., 2018). providing feedback using technology is another distinct way to engage students (decelle, 2016). thus, course design helps to maximize course structure impacting overall navigation by faculty and students and alignment to universal standards, as seen in meeting the quality matters rubric (lancaster et al., 2019). faculty can also participate in additional training sessions and courses to enhance their use of video technology, but they are not required. we can affirm that our participants positively responded to any form of video content provided. in fact, our survey indicated the desire for more videos throughout each course across the curriculum and among the various degrees. this point is further exemplified in the literature but is more highly discussed among those courses offering acquired skills ranging from mathematics to pre-licensure nursing programs (beisiegel et al., 2018; hadi, 2019; stone et al., 2020). faculty can use this information to improve their own technology needs to incorporate in future assignments or coursework. as faculty transition curriculum to online learning or simply enhance their instruction with more technology, the creation and use of video content should be a priority competency in professional development. beisiegel and colleagues (2018) suggest that faculty who are selfmcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 16 aware of their own teaching strategies and analyze their video instruction are more likely to increase their knowledge and student learning opportunities. furthermore, it increases the probability that a variety of learners will critically think through the material, thus asking more questions with challenging concepts, thereby increasing overall engagement (haidi, 2019) and student-centered approach (decelle, 2016). while most of the literature focuses on the application of video content in a clinical or applied skill circumstance, assumptions can also be applied to theory courses as clinical skills are typically influenced in part by theory or concept-based applications. therefore, all courses, even those with assignments predominantly centered around writing or testing, could equally benefit from video content. while video content is highly encouraged, the integration of this technology is solely reliant on the faculty development itself. determining changes to online courses personal background or professional training can affect how faculty design and deliver their online courses. it is important to provide a format that intentionally demonstrates consistency for both faculty and students alike. our college of nursing implemented an ad hoc committee to assist in creating a basic structure and consistent course design path. our goal was to determine whether the course design was easy to access given that it was built using a standard canvas template and how important the tools in the course were for students and faculty. while faculty can still incorporate personalization into the course, the basic structure includes a universal start here module across sites in the lms that incorporates fundamentals needed for any course, such as college of nursing and university policies, writing assistance, access to student service faculty contact, the syllabus and course schedule. creating a consistent approach to the design helped reinforce survey results that consistency among courses was still a priority among students and faculty. the ability to offer course design in a consistent manner can help ensure various quality matters standards are met, but when course material is presented consistently over time, the efficacy of the course may also be positively influenced (baker et al., 2020). navigating courses that are all different may thus have a negative impact on the student's ability to learn and the faculty's ability to teach if approaches are haphazard in design (ralph et al., 2017). delivery of assignments is a high priority among students. variation in learning strategies that appeals to multiple learners and desire to have prompt feedback on assignments is highly representative of our student cohort. the top themes of course design consistency, clear instructions and expectations, and more instructor engagement underscore this ideal. mahasneh et al. (2021) found that the transformation of information is best applied when the instructor develops an initial assessment of student learning at the beginning of each course to ensure faculty gather information to better serve students' needs. progression through the nursing program (mahasneh et al., 2021), advancement in degree (gonzales et al., 2017), and generational differences (blevins, 2021) are factors that impact students and the different ways they approach learning. creating a culture of lifelong learning is best achieved when a variety of methods match the needs of the learners (angeline & ranadev, 2018). limitations with the switch to remote and online learning that occurred across the nation and at our institution, students who were already in an online learning program felt little impact with course changes. however, we did send this study to students at all levels of the curriculum (fully online courses, blended courses, in-person courses) to determine any significant differences. the lack of mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 17 undergraduate participation in our study makes it difficult to determine specific changes needed in courses tailored to undergraduate nursing students. therefore, undergraduate students may not have felt compelled to answer the questions related to a survey since their courses are not exclusively online. likewise, distribution of surveys was also near the end of the term when other course evaluations were due, possibly contributing to the lack of participation by this cohort. due to the large nature of our program enrollment, course design is managed by one coordinator, while many faculty members facilitate the daily interactions and grading of course sections. specifically, in our study we know that in 2019 21 of 29 faculty respondents held a coordinator role. therefore, our organization of coordinator structure limits deviation from overall course design or technology implementation, thereby maintaining more consistency in format and design. this finding is significant as it may limit the lack of consistency felt among faculty (coordinator) respondents because their priority is to maintain course consistency among multiple sections of the same course. transferability of results to other smaller colleges of nursing may be limited if individual sections are designed independently of a course coordinator overseeing course duplication. when inquiring about the timing of feedback received, there was some drastic variation in responses, causing us to evaluate the wording and perspectives. while we assume that most faculty and students would consider feedback in regard to assignments and grading, there is an uncertainty that it might also be related to addressing questions either in the course or via email. if administered again, this question would need to specifically address this issue due to the variability in responses. another limitation noted relates directly to the lms training prior to taking the survey. the initial training orientation to the learning management system is an additional contextual factor that differentiates faculty and students. basic training on the lms is required of anyone teaching a course at the university, regardless of instructional modality. faculty learn the basic features of the lms as they perform required practice activities assessed by staff at the teaching and learning center. part of this basic training includes how to work with suggested course templates, which are designed to help faculty become confident in using the lms tools. although students are highly encouraged to participate in a self-paced lms orientation training, accountability of training is self-regulated. students are provided with resources and guides within each course site for how to use the lms and are provided access to the 24/7 help desk from canvas should they encounter issues needing assistance. our survey data may be indirectly affected by these differences between faculty and students in lms training and familiarity. thus, required training for students may be something to consider prior to the first day of class. conclusion our survey demonstrated that consistency and use of technology should be of the utmost importance when designing curricula for all students. as we navigate our way through a highly advanced, technology-driven world, faculty must embrace this need with creative ways to engage students, encourage critical thinking and empower students with the tools to successfully master learning outcomes. course layouts should incorporate consistency in structure, high standards of transferability semester to semester, course to course, and offer a variety of teaching strategies appealing to reach and engage all learners. additional areas of need expressed by students include the use of video technology throughout the learning process. offering instruction using multiple strategies will create opportunities for learning for a variety of learners. in a world where technology is moving at a fast pace, it is imperative that students can access learning from mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? 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(2018). a systematic review of online learning programs for nurse preceptors. nurse education today, 60, 11-22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2017.09.010 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f1044207319826219 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2020.102834 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2019.104230 https://doi.org/10.1093/biomet/34.1-2.28 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2017.09.010 mcmullen et al.: is consistency possible? current issues in education, 23(3) 22 author notes taralyn mcmullan https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6182-946x university of south alabama tmcmullan@southalabama.edu david s. williams https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4457-2505 university of south alabama dwilliams@southalabama.edu yolany lagos ortiz https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0172-7888 university of south alabama yll1721@jagmail.southalabama.edu jackie lollar university of south alabama jmlollar@southalabama.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6182-946x mailto:tmcmullan@southalabama.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4457-2505 mailto:dwilliams@southalabama.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0172-7888 mailto:yll1721@jagmail.southalabama.edu mailto:jmlollar@southalabama.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ video content “it’s not my fault”using neutralization theory to volume 13, number 3 issn 1099-839x “it’s not my fault”: using neutralization theory to understand cheating by middle school students nicole zito boston college patrick j. mcquillan boston college citation mcquillan, p. & zito, n. (2011). “it’s not my fault”: using neutralization theory to understand cheating by middle school students. current issues in education, 13(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract according to neutralization theory, to justify unethical behavior delinquents often embrace strategies that deflect personal responsibility for their actions from them and toward other persons or contextual factors outside their control. drawing on neutralization theory, this case study explores how middle school students endorsed comparable strategies to justify cheating. participants included six faculty members from an 8th grade teaching team and eight of their students at a competitive, private middle school in northeastern massachusetts. based on interview and focus group data, we found that students adopted three of the five neutralizing strategies to rationalize what might be seen as unethical behavior: (1) denying responsibility; (2) condemning the condemner; and (3) appealing to higher ideals. specific recommendations for schools include promoting supportive student-teacher relations and creating an academic environment in which students value course work for its inherent value, rather than solely as a means to gain admission to an elite high school. keywords: cheating, neutralization theory, middle school, student-teacher relationships, assignments c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 2 about the author(s) author: nicole zito affiliation: boston college email: nicolealisazit@gmail.com biographical information: nicole zito has taught both locally and internationally; this year she served as an 11th and 12th grade english at beaver country day. she completed her ph.d. in k-12 school administration in the lynch school of education at boston college. she has an article coming out in middle school journal entitled, “cheating themselves out of an education: assignments that promote higher order thinking and honesty in middle school.” (middle school journal, 2010, co-authored with patrick j. mcquillan). author: patrick j. mcquillan affiliation: boston college email: mcquilpa@bc.edu biographical information: patrick j. mcquillan, a cultural anthropologist, is an associate professor in the lynch school of education at boston college. his current research interests focus on educational change, with an emphasis on small school reform in urban contexts. his publications include reform and resistance in schools and classrooms: an ethnographic view of the coalition of essential schools (yale university press, 1996; co-authored with donna muncey) and educational opportunity in an urban american high school: a cultural analysis (suny press, 1998). u sing n eutralization t heory to understand c heating 3 in a survey of 4500 american high school students mccabe, trevino and butterfield (2001) reported that more than half admitted to plagiarizing from the internet, 74% admitted to cheating on exams, and 97% admitted to cheating on homework. according to eisenberg’s (2004) survey, out of 3000+ “high achieving” high school students, 80% self-reported cheating.1 in its 2008 biannual report, the josephson institute of ethics, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization based in los angeles, disclosed that of the 30,000 high school students surveyed, 64% admitted to cheating on a test during the past year, with 38% of students sharing that they did so two or more times, and 36% admitting to using the internet to plagiarize an assignment. at odds with such behavior, 96% of these same students maintained, “it’s important to me that people trust me,” and 84% believed, “it’s not worth it to lie or cheat because it hurts your character” (josephson, 2008, p. 13-14). furthermore, on the josephson survey 93% said they were satisfied with their personal ethics and character, and 77% agreed with the statement, “when it comes to doing what is right, i am better than most people i know” (p. 5). given these apparent contractions and tensions, the following case study aims to explain how students purport to value honesty and take pride in their own integrity, while simultaneously cheating in school. theoretical overview: kohlberg and neutralization theory to date, most analyses of students’ moral development and its relationship to academic integrity and honesty in school view these issues in terms of kohlberg’s stages of moral development (miller, murdock, anderman, & poindexter, 2007). according to kohlberg, moral reasoning progresses from the lowest pre-conventional level in which individuals obey established laws in order to avoid punishment to the highest post-conventional level at which point individuals make moral decisions because of an internalized universal ethic (kohlberg, 1 “high achieving” refers to students who have an a or b average and intend to go to college. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 4 1984). yet moral reasoning and cheating behavior have never been definitively correlated in the literature (miller, murdock, anderman, et al., 2007). while research in some cases has substantiated the progressive evolution of moral thinking, there has been no subsequent link to specific actions, as various classroom characteristics can impact students’ moral reasoning and thereby confound efforts to link students who have internalized higher levels of moral development with fewer incidences of cheating (corcoran & rotter, 1987; hartshorne & may, 1928; miller et al, 2007). even kohlberg acknowledged that his research attended to general reasoning about moral decision-making rather than specific decisions people had made. as such, cheating could, in theory, be viewed as ethically appropriate at any stage of moral reasoning. students’ reasoning about the acceptability of cheating depends to a greater extent on situational variables rather than a particular stage of moral development (murdock & stevens, 2007). as aron (1977) summarizes, “[i]ndividuals at a higher stage are not necessarily more moral than those at a lower stage; they are only more advanced in terms of the principles they espouse and the justifications which they give for their judgments” (p.18). while a relationship exists between moral development and cheating, it is theoretically possible, even according to kohlberg, that an individual at any stage could advocate either side of the dilemma (kohlberg, 1977). because kohlberg’s stages of moral development do not sufficiently explain students’ cheating behavior, researchers must turn to other theoretical frameworks to understand student dishonesty in their academic work. neutralization theory, as applied to the interplay between the beliefs and actions of delinquent youth, offers one way to understand why individuals might violate ethical codes they otherwise endorse. specifically, sykes and matza (1957) proposed that delinquents avoided personal responsibility for unethical actions by deflecting disapproval from the conforming u sing n eutralization t heory to understand c heating 5 social order before actually committing the deviant act. when justifications precede deviant behavior, such rationalizing helps offenders ignore social controls. the actor can still embrace the normative system but simultaneously qualify prohibited behavior as acceptable, though not necessarily ethical. in such instances, delinquents typically portray themselves as caught up in a dilemma that must be resolved, often at the cost of violating some existing moral standard. in applying neutralization theory to student cheating, a number of researchers have found that a student’s likelihood of cheating derives not from an absolute sense of right or wrong, but by the degree to which individuals can rationalize cheating in a given context (eisenberg, 2004, diekhoff et al., 1996; micheals & miethe, 1989, lanza-kaduce & klug, 1986; whitley, 1998). if students can convince themselves that a given situation is unjust, unreasonable, or somehow exceptional, they can apply a personal sense of morality to validate actions which may violate school rules. in accord with neutralization theory, individuals use five strategies to deflect responsibility for deviant behavior from themselves, though we found that three most aptly apply to the cheating-related beliefs of middle school students: denial of responsibility, condemning the condemner, and appealing to higher ideals.2 although researchers have applied this theory in school settings, few studies address middle school learners (evans & craig, 1990; murdock & miller, 2003). denial of responsibility. sykes and matza (1957) contend that denial of responsibility entails not only that the actor perceives the behavior as an accident or unintended but also that external forces, beyond individual control, constitute the cause for cheating. students may draw on this rationale when they consider aspects of the system of schooling as unfair. as mccabe (1999) found, a student may believe that without cheating he or she will fail a class, be excluded from a higher track in 2 the two additional strategies are “denial of injury” and “denial of the victim.” c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 6 school, or miss out on elite higher education opportunities. in other studies, students rationalized cheating when they were assigned overly difficult material or received excessive amounts of work (daniel, blount, & ferrell, 1991). other studies reveal that both cheating by one’s friends and parental pressure to receive high grades can serve as justification for cheating (michaels & meithe, 1989, p.876). together, these studies suggest that students may deny responsibility for their actions when, in their view, they can reasonably blame external factors for creating a situation where they must cheat to avoid unreasonable negative consequences. condemning the condemner one primary neutralization strategy involves shifting attention from the delinquent’s actions and onto the motives and behavior of those who disapprove of those actions. in deflecting attention from one’s deviant behavior to the ostensible shortcomings of others, those behaving outside accepted ethical standards can more easily repress, conceal, or deny any offense. students, for example, may cite a teacher’s perceived failings as a pretext for cheating (mccabe, 2001). various studies associate students’ judgment of teacher knowledge and pedagogical skills with increased acceptability of cheating behavior: when teachers are perceived as incompetent, unknowledgeable, or not committed to their work as teachers, students more frequently justify cheating (murdock, hale, & weber, 2001; schraw, et al., 2007; szabo & underwood, 2004). in a focus group made up of students from an ap calculus course, mccabe (2001) found that students validated cheating behavior by alluding to poor instructional methods. specifically, mccabe documented student anger toward teachers who give tests that include material not discussed in class or covered in homework assignments and how such feelings tie to the ease with which students then justify cheating (mccabe, 2001). these practices could be interpreted by students as a lack of caring, weak pedagogy, or both. when students sense they u sing n eutralization t heory to understand c heating 7 exert little control over their learning, cannot explain what they are expected to do, do not feel prepared or supported by the teacher, and do not value the task at-hand, they are more likely to cheat (koch, 2000). appealing to higher ideals deviating from accepted norms may occur not because an individual rejects specific norms per se, but because these standards are superseded by alternative priorities, held to be more pressing or involving a more valued ideal. with cheating behavior, this may occur when students feel they should cheat to help others, often to maintain friendships (jensen, arnett, feldman, & cauffman, 2002). similar tensions may arise when students weigh the value of honesty with the importance of attaining high grades as a means to gain admission to elite colleges and thereby secure a prestigious job. in such cases, a decision to cheat derives from an ethical tension between competing priorities in which students feel compelled to sacrifice one value for another. when students decide to cheat they may not be acting immorally as such; rather, they have prioritized competing ideals and decided the benefits derived from high grades exceed those derived from honest behavior. summary of neutralization theories individuals justify cheating when they view societal rules as flexible and not binding in every situation. though murder is a crime, for instance, during war or under laws of capital punishment, society condones killing. likewise, dishonest students may believe that alternative decision-making factors—such as social conventions, peer norms, and school rules—may justify dishonest behavior. with this possibility in mind, neutralization theory posits that students’ likelihood of cheating increases when they find themselves in a context they feel will excuse dishonest behavior and may even necessitate such action. drawing on the three strategies derived c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 8 from neutralization theory, we address the question: what do students believe are school-based characteristics that influence cheating in middle school? methods northwest school is a private, non-denominational, coeducational day school in northeastern massachusetts. blending a strong academic reputation with an advisory program, the school focuses on the holistic development of its students. average class size for grades 6through-8 ranges between 13 and16 students, with an overall student-to-faculty ratio of 8-to-1. nearly 30% of students and 18% of teachers and administrators identify as non-european americans. typically, students are assigned two-and-a-half hours of homework each night. there is no tracking although accommodating student math programs limits classroom heterogeneity. two eighth grade advisories participated in this study, and eight of the 16 students in those advisories were actively involved, five girls and three boys. all four core teachers in the advisories (math, english, history, and science) participated along with two of the four world language teachers. data were gathered during spring 2008 and included, semi-structured, onehour interviews with all participants, and two focus groups of four students each. sampling & data analysis for the purposes of this study, it seems fortuitous that the northwest school mission aligns with the aims of our study, which includes examining links between academic integrity and thoughtful pedagogy while raising student and teacher perceptions about quality schoolwork. as middle schools cluster by team level, an important characteristic of our study is the willing participation of all four core teachers from the eighth grade team and the two world language teachers. student participants came from two advisory groups and their involvement derived u sing n eutralization t heory to understand c heating 9 largely from a willingness to openly and honestly discuss issues of academic integrity. students were de facto representative of northwest students in general because the school intentionally organizes advisory into diverse, well-balanced groups of ten to twelve students. focus groups and individual interviews were conducted so students could both hear what their peers believed and clarify their own beliefs on these matters. to analyze our data, we relied extensively upon six analytic strategies outlined by miles and huberman (1994): open coding of data from interviews; sorting data by similar codes; writing reflections on the data; looking for commonalities and differences among the data; reducing codes to a concise group of generalizations, themes, and tentative theories; and analyzing these generalizations in light of extant research. for example, after reading interview transcripts multiple times, we applied line-by-line in-vivo coding to our data. we then kept a separate running list of in-vivo codes (eaves, 2001). after reviewing multiple transcripts, we reduced these codes by grouping similar codes and compressing some disparate codes into more encompassing categories. this list of preliminary codes was then applied to the remaining transcripts, adding new codes when data did not fit existing codes (hsieh & shannon, 2005). next, we generated patterns and regularities derived from these codes. upon completing this step, we identified tentative themes, generalizations, and theories regarding these data (coffey & atkinson, 1996). we continued this process until we had reviewed all data sources and used them to test and further refine our emerging insights. results based on our study, a correlation seems to exist between academic cheating and eighth grade students’ contextualized attitudes about dishonesty. consistently, students’ reasoning about the context for cheating tempered any judgments they made about those who acted c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 10 dishonestly. in so doing, they drew upon three aspects of neutralization theory: denial of responsibility, condemning the condemner, and appealing to higher ideals. denial of responsibility when denying responsibility, students typically attribute what might be seen as unethical actions to factors outside their control. along these lines, in a focus group one northwest student rationalized copying another student’s homework: “if you get a lot of homework in one day, if you were not to cheat, it would be four or five hours of homework. so you are just not going to do that much. so, i think it would be acceptable.. . .” another student justified getting help from a friend, even though in this focus group scenario the teacher expressly prohibited such help. as he explained, “[e]ither i work with someone else and understand what i was doing because of their help, or i do not do the assignment because it was too hard.” providing further justification for such behavior, students claimed that cheating would be minimal and their action would be somewhat altruistic if it helped other students better grasp course material. much the same, when asked, “do you think your teachers would prefer that the assignment to be done collaboratively [so that] everyone has the correct answers, or for kids who are having difficulty to have not done the assignment?” students as a whole, both in interviews and focus groups, said they did not see anything morally wrong with helping one another understand an assignment, even if that meant giving others some answers. the english teacher sought to clarify such thinking: “there are those [northwest students] who are good at the class and those who are not good at the class. and everyone knows who they are. the more empathic ‘haves’ feel compulsion to even things out, to be a middle man between the instructor and the u sing n eutralization t heory to understand c heating 11 ‘have-nots’ in class.” further, students believed the consequences of not helping or receiving help from others would be far worse, as their teachers would be upset at them for not completing the work, even if they did not understand it, and they would be penalized for doing it incorrectly. in such situations, students viewed getting help from other students, tutors or parents as the only option available if they did not understand the assigned homework. they were not responsible for their ultimate actions. in agreement, the history teacher said that students may fear the consequences of failing to complete their work: “teachers that are extremely rigid might invite more cheating. students [who] are scared of the teacher, think, ‘okay if you don’t turn it in on [this particular] day you get a zero.’ well, then the incentive [to cheat] is greater.” this teacher felt that students need to realize that teachers are not their enemies and may be quite understanding of their individual situations. he added that some students lose sight of the fact that missing one assignment is not going to mean failing a class. condemning the condemner at times, students violate a moral standard they might typically honor because a teacher has, in their view, compromised the educational process. thus, in some classroom contexts cheating may seem acceptable, though perhaps not right. the history teacher offered a classic example: when teachers have students exchange papers to correct one another’s work. as he explained, “kids, i think, are sophisticated enough to recognize that one reason a teacher might be doing that is to save themselves the trouble of correcting each paper individually.” therefore, students may “allow themselves a lower degree of respect for the content as a result. so [cheating] might not seem as serious an offense, to change something here or there. . . . the [integrity of the work] is not really being protected by the teacher who has the power to protect it.” c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 12 in a related instance, a student explained how one might justify cheating if a teacher failed to thoroughly explain a concept: “in the last five minutes [of class, our teacher] explained these really hard math terms, and no one really got it. and you are not supposed to work in groups, but sometimes they help.” although students recognized that the teacher considered it cheating to work in groups and had given clear directions about this issue, students still engaged neutralizing attitudes to distance themselves from moral responsibility. moreover, if students do not understand assigned work but have been told not to work with others, some may still justify doing so because, as one student contended in a focus group, “it is not really cheating, if you are learning to understand it. it is ‘not following directions.’” in this same focus group, a fellow student agreed, saying that a student could either fail to do any homework individually or complete it all wrong. in either case “the next day the teacher is probably going to be mad at you.” or, as the same student continued, “[y]ou can do it with a friend. then you will get there the next day and you will have it done. you have it understood. which one sounds better?” offering a comparable explanation, another student shared: [when] a student has so much work because the teacher is just laying it on, having someone else help you get something done faster, which might be considered cheating, [but] i guess you could consider it okay in this [situation]. you could [somewhat] cheat by asking someone to help you do it faster. if you are doing the problems really slow, a person might help you, show you one of their problems and give you a shortcut or something, which could be seen as cheating. but it is that versus not doing the assignment at all.” the science teacher offered an additional point of view on the matter, saying that students don’t like to see their classmates or friends looking dumb or feeling inferior . . . and so . . . oftentimes they are legitimatelywanting to help their friends. but what i then u sing n eutralization t heory to understand c heating 13 think is important to do is to let students know that if assignments are only being done to help them to become better [at a particular skill], that by stopping them from doing their own work, they are preventing their friends from becoming better. students can also find grounds to modify ethical standards when they feel overwhelmed by the amount of work they face—when they get home from music recitals, lacrosse practice, and art lessons. here, too, students may sense that the educational process has been undermined. in particular, students object to teachers who assign excessive amounts of homework. echoing a common sentiment, one young woman remarked, “sometimes i don’t think they realize that there are other subjects. if i had the same amount of math or spanish homework as i did in other subjects, then i would be up all night.” another student recalled a time when “i had a science paper, an english paper, a math test coming up and then a spanish paper. it just sometimes feels that you are drowning in work. you start to get really desperate then.” a third student explained how such predicaments could lead to cheating: “if you have a lot of homework . . . in one night, you are going to cheat, because one, you feel cheated, and two, you don’t have time. so you are going to copy someone’s answers.” a fourth student agreed, portraying cheating as virtually inevitable when teachers assign too much work: “i think . . . it is almost required [to cheat in this context] because [teachers] are just giving you so much homework. it is not right to do that much homework and [they] act like you don’t have other assignments to do.” students, in general, felt that teachers did not appreciate how much work they did each night and how little time they had to complete it, given their commute and extracurricular activities. although most every teacher mentioned the pressure students feel regarding schoolwork and expressed compassion for them, no teacher noted that students receive excessive amounts of work, either for their class or cumulatively. in fact, teachers mentioned a daily study c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 14 hall, their efforts to coordinate due dates of major tests and projects with other teachers, and their consistent efforts to break large assignments into smaller, more manageable parts as efforts they made to keep student workloads reasonable. to some degree, perceptions of being overworked provide a complementary rationale to help students justify what may seem unethical, as students often link their decisions to cheat to the type of teacher they have. a teacher who is unfeeling towards student needs will generate resentment that may justify behaving dishonestly. in the words of one female student, “the teacher has something to do with [cheating]. if [teachers] are insensitive, there is going to be more cheating. ‘oh yeah i heard you have a math test but i am going to assign you two hours of homework’ [said mockingly].” this student followed up her comments by acknowledging, you could communicate with your teacher, ‘hey, i really haven’t been getting enough sleep because you have been laying our assignments so much.’ [but] it is sort of hard to say that to a teacher. some of the teachers are almost in their own world just because they are so old. we can’t really go up to them and tell them what they are doing is bad. although their remarks, aside from a few, derived largely from hypothetical scenarios presented in focus groups, students could articulate clear and consistent rationales for deviating from accepted standards, even though they recognized the standard as a valid moral guideline. in contrast, just realizing that a favorite teacher would be disappointed to learn you had cheated would devastate some students: “i would never ever even think of like cheating with [one teacher]. it would never go into my head. you wouldn’t want him to find out. he is such a good person that you don’t want to disappoint him.” another male student shared, “i would never cheat for my seventh grade english teacher because if he ever caught me i would be miserable.” much as students validated unethical behavior with teachers who didn’t care, u sing n eutralization t heory to understand c heating 15 students expressed utmost loyalty to teachers who students believed cared about them. in looking at student thinking regarding when they would and would not cheat reveals that student views of what kind of teacher a person is can notably impact student honesty in the classroom. appealing to higher loyalties in “appealing to higher ideals,” students recognize that cheating is morally wrong. however, when negative consequences are likely to arise if one does not violate this standard, students may consider such potential outcomes valid rationales for deviating from what is generally considered ethical. thus, in certain contexts students may view cheating as the better option when failure means the loss of valued extra-curriculars or future academic opportunities. for example, one student shared, “if your mom says, ‘if you don’t get [good grades], you are not going to be on the ski team anymore.’ i think that is a pretty good reason. i know that happened at northwest.” other students shared this point of view, linking such decisions to school climate. as one girl remarked, “this is sort of an athletic school, so people might think it is okay to cheat a little bit to a lot if it is going to get in the way with their sports.” she further maintained that even though teachers say that if you are having problems with your classes then you can skip sports, if you make a varsity team and miss practice, there are consequences. a similar rationale could be adapted and applied to academics. when students feel overwhelming pressure to earn high grades to gain entry to select high schools, as is the norm at northwest, cheating may become a viable option. offering a sense for what her peers may be telling themselves, one student explained: “i know if i did this assignment without cheating, then i am going to get a bad grade. and then i am not going to get into a good school.” she continued, “then you could see it as affecting the college you get into and your job and your success later in life.” along the same lines, another student shared, if you are at risk for academic probation and c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 16 the possibility of expulsion, then cheating may seem reasonable: “i see it both ways. i see it as a really bad thing, as cheating. or you could see it as a sort of a thing done out of desperation, to prevent something worse from happening.” clearly, these students could envision how the negative impact from certain difficult circumstances might adversely affect their lives. every teacher did mention the pressure on students to earn high grades. the following comment from the spanish teacher exemplified this point of view: “the work all of a sudden becomes important when students don’t necessarily get a good grade and that is going to affect the secondary school [they attend].” the history teacher talked specifically about the pressure students on the edge of a b+/agrade experience: “[s]ome are on the border line, especially in our situation. they are leaving this school and their grades really matter, because they are basically applying to elite secondary schools.” in addition to concerns with getting admitted to elite secondary schools, parents were most often cited by both students and teachers as a source of academic pressure, although participants acknowledged that pressure also originated from teachers and students themselves. discussion as sykes & matza (1957) suggested in their theory on delinquent deviance, students often viewed decisions to cheat as a reflection of factors beyond their control. comparable to mccabe’s (1999) findings, this allowed students to divert blame from themselves to the situation as a means to lessen feelings of guilt and shame. in particular, northwest students may consider cheating acceptable, though not “right,” when cheating compensates for perceived unjust treatment, such as excessive amounts of work or when hard-working students do not have the time after school, given other extra-curricular commitments, to complete the work assigned (daniel, et al., 1991). u sing n eutralization t heory to understand c heating 17 as other studies have found, students also will more likely commit to an educational program if they believe their teacher “is personally interested and emotionally invested in [their] success” (collier, 2005, p.4). as shraw et al. (2007) found on their survey, the single variable most cited as decreasing cheating behavior was an effective teacher. comparably, in this study every student pointed to teacher caring and mutual respect as pivotal in shaping students’ perception toward their course work, including the possibility of them cheating. in what seems a related development, various scholars claim students are more likely to cheat when they suspect their teacher either does not care about them, the quality of instruction, or they judge the teacher as somehow incompetent (evans & craig, 1990, murdock et al., 2001; schraw et al., 2007; szabo & underwood, 2004). in such instances, students draw on this perception to justify completing work dishonestly (pulvers diekhoff, 1999; mccabe, 2001; evans & craig, 1990). as various studies have found, students are most invested in the course goals when they trust that the teacher cares about them and their individual success (collier, 2005; murdock & miller, 2003). moreover, students often view values as in competition with one another and can therefore justify cheating by framing a decision to cheat as choosing some other esteemed value over honesty. in this regard, students and teachers acknowledged that in some circumstances students feel that completing work honestly may jeopardize peer friendships. if sharing answers with a friend could help students maintain a friendship, some may choose the stability of the friendship over any concern that such collaboration constitutes cheating. likewise, in some instances, students viewed maintaining sports eligibility as justifying cheating behavior. were they to become ineligible, their self-esteem, friendships with teammates, and relations with the coach could all suffer. further, students often feel significant parental pressure to earn high c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 18 grades, which they may occasionally feel they cannot achieve without cheating. consequently, they may seek to honor their parents’ aspirations, but do so in dishonest fashion. implications often, as educators, we ask children to rank competing values by unintentionally placing one in tension with another. for example, we emphasize the importance of grades as well as honesty. students therefore may, at times, need to weigh two competing values, as an assignment or exam completed honestly may threaten their chance of obtaining a high grade and consequent selective school admission. in addition, we tell students to report when their peers cheat. but again, a tension may arise: students should value loyalty and friendship but also be honest and truthful. while we don’t propose a simple answer to such dilemmas, we do believe schools should explicitly acknowledge that students at times may embrace one value and thereby violate another. we need to discuss with students how to consciously grapple with these tensions as a means to help students clarify their values and begin to resolve what may for many be enduring tensions. advisory groups, such as those at northwest, seem ideal for this purpose. they are relatively small, so they provide opportunities for teachers to know students well. there is also a commitment to respect and confidentiality, which allows students a safe space to interact honestly with both peers and a teacher. and this seems precisely where students could explore the contextual factors, contradictions, and conflicts many encounter when they confront issues linked to academic honesty: as a student, do you have to share your hard work with a friend to preserve that friendship? is a teacher’s perceived lack of commitment to your success in the classroom grounds for cheating? if, as a student, your schedule leaves little free time, how do you respond to a teacher who assigns considerable homework? exploring such issues would u sing n eutralization t heory to understand c heating 19 provide students with an opportunity to articulate their position on tensions that seem inherent to a school such as northwest, and thereby address some likely scenarios in a way that is thoughtful, reflective, and includes more of the school community rather than being a spur of the moment judgment made by an individual student. moreover, this approach allows faculty working on the same team to engage in dialogue with students about important matters, air their concerns, and thereby begin to consider how they might address these matters of importance. in addition, teachers should acknowledge the links among good teaching, teachers who care, and student engagement and honesty in their work. in turn, faculty should consider how they might signal to students that they care about their personal and academic well-being. what does this look like in terms of routine classroom interactions, and how should teachers design lessons and assessments so they embody both rigor and concern for students’ academic growth? as we found, when teachers ask little of students, students respond in kind, and honesty may easily be compromised. teachers who invest little effort in developing respectful relations with their students and authentic learning opportunities in the classroom, may create alienated students who willingly cheat in a context where they care little for anyone’s well-being but their own. schools can’t be amoral institutions. they cannot ignore the link between good teaching, respect for students, and honesty. finally, our research suggests that northwest teachers and administrators, as well as those in similar schools, may want to think about how they might help students deal with pressures linked to high school admission. presently, many northwest students view eighth grade as preparation for high school rather than as equipping them with skills and knowledge that are innately interesting, personally relevant, and applicable beyond the classroom. consequently, it seems that some students rationalize cheating behavior because they sense little inherent value to c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 20 some school work and therefore cheating seems benign. with this perception in mind, teachers might reevaluate their instructional practices and work they assign to avoid involuntarily reinforcing cheating behavior on the part of alienated students. limitations this case study included teachers and students from a single, rather exclusive middle school in the northeast, resulting in little generalizability. to the extent that these students and teachers represent typical eighth grade students and their core teachers requires the reader to recognize particular elements of relevance to another context. in addition, because of the sensitivity of the topic, interview protocols did not ask participants about personal cheating behaviors. rather, they focused on their general attitudes on the acceptability of cheating and the perceived likelihood of cheating of their peers in particular contexts. thus, this study generally explored student perceptions of cheating behavior rather than the actual behavior of the students interviewed. students therefore may have felt a need to provide socially desirable responses and not been fully candid in their remarks. references american psychological association. 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(2004). cybercheats: is information and communication technology fuelling academic dishonesty? learning and teaching in higher education, 5, 180-199. whitley, b. e. (1998). factors associated with cheating among college students: a review. research in higher education, 39, 235-274. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 24 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain jeffery johnson seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen u sing n eutralization t heory to understand c heating 25 jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo students’ first amendment rights and demographics volume 13, number 3 issn 1099-839x students’ first amendment rights and school district demographics: gauging school board responsiveness to student speech policy mario s. torres jr. texas a&m university, college station virginia s. collier texas a&m university, college station homer tolson texas a&m university, college station citation torres, m., collier, v., & tolson, h. (2010). students’ first amendment rights and school district demographics: gauging school board responsiveness to student speech policy. current issues in education, 13(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this study examined the extent to which texas school boards of education made efforts to locally modify student speech policy. using online policy manuals provided by the texas association of school boards, speech policies for 91 school districts were gathered using a purposive stratified sampling procedure and examined for local modifications to student speech policies under school-sponsored publications, expression, distribution of non-school literature, use of school facilities, and harassment. the geographical location of the district, district percentage of minority students, and total district student enrollment were employed as explanatory variables. the results of a chi-square statistic indicate geographical location and c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 2 student enrollment were significantly related to whether school boards made changes to its speech policy. although not entirely surprising, the more pertinent issue is whether an over reliance on school board associations for policy development curbs meaningful discussion of critical issues such as free speech. keywords: first amendment, student speech policy, school board policy, student civil liberties, school leadership students’ f irst a m endm ent r ights 3 about the author(s) author: mario s. torres affiliation: texas a&m university, college station email: mstorres@tamu.edu biographical information: mario s. torres, jr. is an associate professor in the educational administration program at texas a&m university, college station. dr. torres obtained his ph.d. in educational administration from penn state university, university park in 2003. his research interests include elementary and secondary school law and policy. a substantial part of his legal scholarship is devoted to examining the administrative, political, and demographic dimensions associated with students’ fourth amendment rights, while his policy research has focused largely on the ethical and political implications of school reform. dr. torres has published in the field’s premier journals including the educational administration quarterly, journal of educational administration, the journal of school leadership, and education and urban society and recently co-authored a book with john hoyle entitled six steps to preparing exemplary principals and superintendents: leadership at its best through rowman and littlefield education press. he also serves on the summer faculty at teachers college, columbia university and is a research fellow with the mexican american and u.s. latino research center. author: virginia collier affiliation: texas a&m university, college station email: vcollier@tamu.edu biographical information: virginia collier is currently a clinical professor at texas a&m university. dr. collier served as a teacher, principal, and superintendent in texas schools for 35 years. governor george w. bush appointed her as a member of the texas state board of educator certification. she served as the first female president of the texas association of school administrators and is active in the american association of school administrators. she is co-director of the administrative leadership institute and co-authored a book entitled the superintendent as ceo: standards based performance in 1995 through corwin press. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 4 author: homer tolson affiliation: texas a&m university, college station email: htolson@tamu.edu biographical information: dr. tolson is currently a senior professor of human resource development at texas a&m university. he served as the program chair for human resource development for 2006-2007and again in 2009 to present. he also serves as departmental coordinator of research courses in the educational and human resource development department. as for his scholarly contributions, dr. tolson has published in the several high profile journals including human resource development international, the journal of college admission, and the journal of research in science teaching. students’ f irst a m endm ent r ights 5 gauging school board responsiveness to student speech policy1 the legal principles surrounding student speech are becoming increasingly complex. as student difference in racial and ethnic distribution, family structure, religious identity, and wealth increases, school leaders will surely face a much broader array of viewpoint and perspective (hodgkinson, 2002). what is more, current and future leaders are expected to make sound legal decisions and choices. take for instance, the orange unified school district school board’s decision to deny club status to the gay-straight alliance (folmar & martelle, 1999; folmar & richardson, 2000). while the school board presumed its actions were justified, a federal district court ruled the club’s exclusion violated the federal equal access act under the first amendment, which protects students from prohibited viewpoint discrimination. under the equal access act, it shall be unlawful for any public secondary school which receives federal financial assistance and which has a limited open forum to deny equal access or a fair opportunity to, or discriminate against, any students who wish to conduct a meeting within that limited open forum on the basis of the religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech at such meetings… (equal access act, 20 usc 4071, 1984). the reality is that while school officials feel their decisions reflect the children’s best interest, a lack of legal awareness may potentially result in costly litigation. for this reason, this study examines the degree to which school boards address speech concerns within their school districts. school board responsiveness is measured according to the degree to which boards modify, adapt, or revise speech policy to meet the particular needs of a school district. this study 1 the authors extend their appreciation and gratitude to tse-yang huang from texas a&m university for his contributions to the manuscript. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 6 investigates speech policy using a purposive/stratified sample of traditional texas public school districts (i.e., no charter schools) by geographical setting (i.e., urban and rural). assuming changes to speech policy reflect a level of discernment on the part of school boards, one may anticipate diverse school districts tailor speech policy in a manner different from that of less diverse school communities. to be sure, little is known about the influence of local context on legal matters related to student free speech, which makes this exploratory study significant. to begin, this study explores literature addressing the legal complexity of student speech protection and school governance of policy issues which is subsequently used to sketch a framework for probing the nexus between student speech rights and district decisions to locally tailor policies. the methodology is explained in turn followed by a discussion of the results. conclusions and implications for school leaders and policy makers are offered in closing. framework the legal contours of permissible speech the role of the first amendment of the u.s. constitution in public schools has been extensive. as the first amendment reads, “congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances” (u.s. constitution). while clear and direct, the amendment has been at the center of many legislative, judicial and administrative controversies. its purposeful inexactness has created difficulties and challenges as far as its applicability in practice. fortunately, case law, state constitutions, and school board policy together have forged a more thorough and practical understanding of student speech. while case law has been illuminating alone, the courts’ scope of influence is fairly constrained. as horowitz (1977) notes, students’ f irst a m endm ent r ights 7 courts are in large measure “backward looking” in that “they are well equipped to see the past and present fairly clearly, and ill equipped to gauge the future” (p. 284). recent opinions indicate the u.s. supreme court is consistent in upholding forms of speech diverse and extreme in political, religious, and philosophical character. cases such as r.a.v. v. city of st. paul (1992) and virginia v. black (2003) serve as prime examples. in r.a.v., a city ordinance making certain types of speech unlawful because of their emotive impact was ruled unconstitutional because it discriminated against viewpoint and content. citizens were charged with misdemeanors if symbols or objects were placed on public and private property that “[aroused] anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender..." (p. 380). the court would conclude, “the ordinance [was] facially unconstitutional in that it [prohibited] otherwise permitted speech solely on the basis of the subjects the speech addresses” (p. 381). similarly, in virginia v. black (2003), the high court struck down a state statute prohibiting all forms of cross burning. justice o’connor writing for the majority acknowledged the “hypothetical” association (p. 357) between cross-burning and violent threats, but stopped well short of categorically condemning cross burning as an unprotected classification of speech. while the court has accorded considerable speech protection to the ordinary citizen, the speech rights of students have been treated somewhat differently. considered by many to be the watershed case in student speech jurisprudence, the u.s. supreme court in tinker v. des moines (1969) ruled that forms of student expression should be protected by the first amendment but limited at the occurrence of material and substantial disruption or when the rights of others are infringed upon. per tinker, the court upheld students’ right to passively and symbolically express their disapproval of the vietnam war on school grounds. as the tinker court surmised, c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 8 schools “may not be enclaves of totalitarianism” (p. 511) nor suppress speech solely upon the “mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint” (p. 509). in sum, the school failed to justify its actions in prohibiting the speech. fifteen years later, the court would further clarify the contours of student speech in favor of school official discretion. in bethel school district v. fraser (1986), the court ruled that student speech is subject to censorship when it violates standards of civility. shortly following bethel, the court in hazelwood v. kuhlmeier (1988) would determine that schools may regulate content of school-sponsored student newspapers. two recent cases however, saxe v. state college area school district (2001) and morse v. frederick (2007), epitomize the present day complexity of student speech. in saxe, the u.s. circuit third circuit court reversed a district court ruling holding that a district “antiharassment” policy was unconstitutional because it violated the student’s first amendment right to “speak out about the sinful nature and harmful effects of homosexuality” (saxe, p. 203). according to the district policy, harassment was defined (in part) as: verbal or physical conduct based on one’s perceived race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or other personal characteristics, and which has the purpose or effect of substantially interfering with a student’s educational performance or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive environment (saxe, p. 202). the third circuit court found the language overbroad and inexact, as it “[prohibited] a substantial amount of non-vulgar, non-sponsored student speech” and would further inappropriately classify forms of speech as materially and substantially disruptive (saxe, p. 216). furthermore, it concluded that “emotive impact” alone was insufficient grounding. the court was not persuaded by the district’s contention that the policy suppressed a form of speech that students’ f irst a m endm ent r ights 9 would by its very nature create a material and substantial disruption.2 while the implications of saxe are far reaching, the case itself serves as a cautionary tale to school agencies that policies governing speech must be carefully developed and implemented. the u.s. supreme court ruling in morse v. frederick (2007) reveals a similar complexity. a high school student, joseph frederick, displayed a banner with the message “bong hits 4 jesus” at a school-sponsored event. when the principal asked the student to remove the banner, the student refused and was subsequently suspended for violating the school district policy prohibiting “any assembly or public expression that … advocates the use of substances that are illegal to minors…” (p. 3). the u.s. ninth circuit found in frederick’s favor holding the “banner expressed a positive sentiment about marijuana use” (p. 4) and that his entitlement to speech protection was “well established” (p. 5). in reversing, the u.s. supreme court concluded that the while the expression may be interpreted as “meaningless” or “gibberish,” it contains an “undeniable reference to illegal drugs” (p. 7). the court relied on two factors from its prior speech ruling in bethel v. fraser. first, the level of constitutional protection students enjoy in schools is less so than the ordinary citizen due to the unique function and context of schools. second, other factors besides whether a material and substantial disruption had or would have manifested should be considered when assessing the suitability of student speech, which in the present case, was not seen as an appropriate analysis. the majority was narrowly interested in the policy violation of speech that encourages illegal drug use, not whether the content of the speech should be interpreted as “plainly offensive” (p. 14). the court states in conclusion that the “first amendment does not 2 see tinker v. desmoines (1968), 393 u.s. 503; bethel v. fraser (1986), 478 u.s. 675; hazelwood v. kuhlmeier (1988) 484 u.s. 260 c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 10 require schools to tolerate at school events student expression that contributes to those dangers” (p. 15). beyond whether the morse ruling signifies a victory for schools, both courts were cautious in avoiding language that connoted banning any speech considered “offensive.” in other words, the courts issued no ultimatum on what forms or types of speech should be made permissible. in spite of unclear criteria, schools must still make legally appropriate decisions regarding expression and be keenly aware and sensitive to religious, social, and cultural change. the extent to which school boards attend to speech and other relevant issues is not well understood. neither is the impact of politics on decision-making regarding speech policy. research demonstrates that particular factors predict greater board involvement in issues. leadership responsiveness to issues while demands intensify for board members to acquire an increasingly technical expertise of educational issues (e.g., examining test data), little is known about board engagement in student speech policy. much research, however, has examined board engagement in general policies and affairs. for instance, greene’s (1990) study of board responsiveness to constituent and policy issues found board members preferred to approach their policymaking duties as technical rather than political responsibilities. factors identified included the competitiveness of an election, opposition from a candidate, district student enrollment, and whether the district was involved in a controversy in the past year. a later study by greene (1992) revealed a greater number of students served in the district predicted greater board member political involvement while socioeconomic status was not a factor. other studies reveal similar findings. hess (2002) in a national study of school board members found board members in large school districts engaged more often in political affairs students’ f irst a m endm ent r ights 11 (i.e., campaigns, political platforms, interest group activity, formalized community input) than board members from smaller school districts. newman and brown (1993) found board members from larger districts were more interactive with the community on issues and were less disposed to accepting recommendations from the district superintendent. with respect to policy development and diversity, findings by hess (2002) suggest racial and ethnic concerns rate low in importance among factors school board members use to assess superintendent performance. results from hess’ survey indicated board and superintendent relationship (86%), system morale (81%), and student safety (80%) rated as most important while only 40% of members surveyed considered racial and ethnic concerns as most important. when district size was used as factor, the largest disparity existed in the racial and ethnic concern category. fifty-six percent of large district school board members compared to 32% of small district board members considered racial and ethnic concerns very important. in sum, the governance literature as a whole suggests leadership responsiveness may correlate to a fair degree with district size and diversity. in the present study, student speech policy was purposefully selected as an issue in which to evaluate district leadership action for two reasons. first, student speech policies are usually low visibility policies, which typically fail to capture widespread interest. because student speech garners less attention compared to other more pressing concerns (e.g., accountability and finance), it typically is regarded as a low stakes issue. in view of local control, the manner in which speech policies are developed and implemented hinges largely upon local educational agency policy and to some degree individual schools. minimal policy discussion afforded to speech usually results in school personnel serving as the ultimate arbiters of policy. second, increasing ethnic and cultural diversity calls for practitioners and policy-makers at every level to give added attention to difference. as the c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 12 orange unified school district example illustrates, board member misgivings in granting club status to a gay group violated civil provisions under the equal access act. boards can potentially face legal challenges if their stance toward a protected viewpoint appears indifferent and discriminatory. unprecedented social and cultural change demands an appraisal of leadership responsiveness to this largely unattended area. in this study, leadership responsiveness to student speech is measured according to whether districts locally tailored any of the five standardized speech policies issued by the texas association of school boards (tasb) as of october 2004 (a further explanation of tasb and its policies will follow). the researchers assessed leadership responsiveness to speech policies by probing the following two questions: (a) to what extent are school boards locally addressing student speech policies?; and (b) to what extent do district student enrollment, district minority percentage, and the geographical location of the school predict whether school boards are tailoring speech policy to meet local needs? method sources of data information regarding student speech and harassment policy was collected via a stratified random sample of school districts in texas in october 2004. approximately 10% of the 1,039 independent texas school districts were randomly selected and stratified according to district geographical indicators gathered from the common core data through the national center for education statistics (nces). the texas education agency’s academic excellence indicator system (aeis) provided data for minority representation and student population for the school district (tea, 2004). a stratified purposive approach was selected to gather a larger sampling of urban districts. this sampling method was crucial in light of the sizable disparity in number students’ f irst a m endm ent r ights 13 between urban and non-urban school districts in texas. in total, there are 1,039 school districts in texas and only 28% of the school districts come from “large central city” and “urban fringe of large city” metropolitan statistical areas (msa). all other districts are situated in mid-sized cities and below. to ensure an adequate amount of data, larger school districts were over-sampled. thus, 33% out of the 183 large city and urban fringe of large city school districts yielded a subsample of 61 while 6% of the 856 cases in all other geographical cases generated a sub-sample of 57. to ensure a more balanced data set, a purposive sampling technique was used to offset the large number of smaller school districts as well as to explore the urban effect more broadly. purposive sampling, according to kerlinger (1986), involves the “use of judgment and a deliberate effort to obtain representative samples…” (p. 120). of the 118 selected school districts, speech policy information was not available for 27 districts thus resulting in a final sample size of 91. treatment of data three independent variables (i.e., district geographical location, district minority enrollment percentage, and district student enrollment) were utilized in the study. note that due to sample size limitations, variables were coded into binary form. geographical location a core objective to the study was to assess responsiveness of school boards to policy under the realm of speech by district type (e.g., urban v. rural). for the variable “geographical location of the school district,” the common core data (u. s. department of education) provided locale identifiers for each district in the sample. each district was assigned to one of two geographical groups one designating urban and the other mid-sized town, small town, and rural. in the sample, 55 districts were identified as “large central city” and “urban fringe of large c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 14 city” while the remaining smaller districts including “mid-sized city,” “urban fringe of mid-sized city,” “large town,” “small town,” and “rural” were categorized as mid-sized and smaller (n=36). minority enrollment percentage the study also examined whether school boards serving higher concentrations of minority students would be more inclined to alter speech policy given greater diversity. the “percentage of minority students” for each school district was collected via the texas education agency website (texas education agency, n.d.). districts were then classified into one of two clusters. two reports issued by the nces were consulted to construct categorical minority school system variable. a report entitled contexts of elementary and secondary education: school characteristics and climate (wirt, j., rooney, p., hussar, b., choy, s., provasnik, s., & hampden-thompson, g., 2005, defined high minority schools as schools having minority enrollments 50% or greater (u.s. department of education, national center for educational statistics, 2005). fifteen percent of the sampled districts met this criterion. a second nces report entitled efforts by public k-8 schools to involve parents in children’s education: do school and parent reports agree? (xianglei, 2001a) identified high minority schools as having minority enrollments greater than 75% (xianglei, 2001b). only 4% of the sampled districts fit this definition for high minority district. to minimize bias, both operational definitions were utilized in the analysis. school district size a third objective was to examine whether school district size measured by student enrollment influenced district responsiveness to speech policy concerns. a report issued by the nces entitled characteristics of the 100 largest public elementary and secondary school students’ f irst a m endm ent r ights 15 districts in the united states: 2001-2002 (sietsema, 2003) indicated that a cumulative percentage of 52.1% of students were enrolled in 5.6% of school districts in the u.s. that served at least 10,000 students (sietsema, 2002). thus, a district size of 10,000 was used as the dividing point because of its close distance to the midpoint. based on this criterion, 21% of the districts were assigned to the large category while the remaining 79% represented the small district category. school board engagement in speech policy the present study required that student speech policies of various types be assessed for local changes or adaptations. the online policy manuals provided by the texas association of school boards (tasb) provided the most efficient means to accessing district policy. tasb develops policy manuals for most school districts in texas. nearly a third of member districts post their policy online (texas association of school boards, n.d.). online manuals utilize a standardized delivery format. thus, the presentation and organization of policy is virtually the same for every member district. policies are assigned by type to one of seven different policy categories which include “basis district foundations,” “local governance,” “business and support services,” “personnel,” “instruction,” “students,” and “community and governmental relations.” student speech policies are found in the “students” policy section. these policies include (a) school sponsored publications; (b) student expression; (c) distribution of non-school related literature; (d) use of school facilities; and (e) harassment. as a service, tasb additionally develops standardized local policies, which school districts can choose to adopt word for word depending on the policy area (see table 1 for examples of standardized policy versions retrieved). school districts have the discretion to locally modify policy if they so choose. policies are coded with a letter “x” or “w” if the policy c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 16 has undergone a local revision. tasb’s online localized policy manual provides information pertaining to local adaptations, which reads as follows: local policy versions have been created to reflect language common to many districts and determined by the board to be appropriate for the district. local versions have the code in the lower left corner with the designation (local) followed by a letter (or letter/number combination) that identifies the version. a unique local policy developed by the district can be distinguished from the standard local versions by the designation (local)-x or -w in the lower left corner of the page (tasb, n.d.). board engagement in student speech policy is evaluated by whether districts have locally modified the standardized versions offered by tasb. for the purposes of this study, local changes to the policy signify school board engagement in student speech issues. for instance, departing from the standardized local version of the “school sponsored publications” policy, one school district added the following to more accurately reflect its stance on student speech: student participation in the publication of school newspapers, yearbooks, literary magazines, and similar publications is encouraged by the district as an educational experience. student publications shall be directed by faculty advisors and shall strive to meet high standards of journalism (texas association of school boards, 2005). efforts at tailoring the policy to accommodate local conditions were perceived as school boards giving added attention to societal issues and perhaps a shift in board governance roles and responsibilities as well. table 1 tasb local speech policiesstandardized version a policy policy description (excerpts) students’ f irst a m endm ent r ights 17 school sponsored publications all publications edited, printed, or distributed in the name of or within the district schools shall be under the control of the school administration and the board. all publications approved and issued by individual schools shall be part of the instructional program, under the supervision of a faculty sponsor, and shall be carefully edited to reflect the ideals and expectations of the citizens of the district for their schools. the principal shall be responsible for all matters pertaining to the organization, issuance, and sale of such publications and any other publication procedure, subject to the superintendent's approval. student expression* students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. at school and school events, students have first amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment. student expression that is protected by the first amendment may not be prohibited absent a showing that the expression will materially and substantially interfere with the operation of the school or the rights of others. distribution of non-school literature for purposes of this policy, "distribution" means the circulation of more than ten printed copies of material from a source other than the district. the district's classrooms during the school day are provided for the limited purpose of delivering instruction to students in the courses and subjects in which they are enrolled. hallways in school buildings are provided for the limited purpose of facilitating the movement of students between classes and allowing access to assigned lockers. classrooms and hallways shall not be used for the distribution of any materials over which the school does not exercise control. each school campus shall designate an area where materials that have been approved for distribution by students in accordance with this policy may be made available or distributed. campus principals may develop reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions regarding the distribution of materials at designated areas. use of school facilities for purposes of the equal access act, the board has created a limited open forum for students attending the district's secondary schools. district secondary schools shall offer an opportunity for noncurriculumrelated student groups to meet on school premises during noninstructional time. each principal shall set aside noninstructional time before or after actual classroom instruction for meetings of noncurriculum-related student groups. students wishing to meet on school premises shall file a written request with the campus principal. the request shall contain a brief statement of the group's purposes and goals, a list of the group's members, and a schedule of its proposed meeting times. requests shall be approved by the principal and superintendent subject to availability of suitable meeting space and without regard to the religious, political, philosophical, or other content of the speech likely to be associated with the group's meetings. notices of meetings may be posted in a manner determined by the principal. harassment students shall not engage in harassment motivated by race, color, religion, national origin, or disability and directed toward another student. a substantiated charge of harassment against a student shall result in disciplinary action. * tasb provides only a “legal’ not ‘local’ policy for student expression c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 18 method of analysis a chi-square analysis was employed to measure the association between two categorical variables. using a 2 x 2 contingency table format, the researchers gauged the strength of the association between the one dependent variable (i.e., whether any of the speech policies were locally modified) and three independent variables by computing phi. the statistic phi is useful in assessing a relationship’s strength in a 2 x 2 table format (healey, 1999). the following relationships were examined in order: test 1: is district minority enrollment related to whether school boards are locally modifying speech policy? x= district minority enrollment y= whether any of the speech policies were locally modified test 2: is district student enrollment related to whether school boards are locally modifying speech policy? x= district student enrollment y= whether any of the speech policies were locally modified test 3: is district geographical location related to whether school boards are locally modifying speech policy? x= geographical location y= whether any of the speech policies were locally modified limitations and assumptions to the study because tasb school district policy was not retrievable for every school district in the original sample, the reduced size may have resulted in sampling bias. lack of available information for smaller school districts resulted in uneven representation, which may students’ f irst a m endm ent r ights 19 inadvertently bear on the accuracy of the findings. in all, speech policies for 91 of the 118 districts originally sampled (77%) were gathered and reviewed. also, the researchers assumed for exploratory reasons that policy modification may be a direct or indirect consequence of effort on the part of school boards to adapt speech policy to meet local needs. in other words, local changes of any sort to the speech policies developed by tasb might suggest greater attention to students’ speech rights. the researchers concede that while changes may occur in the absence of substantive school board discussion and deliberation, it is nonetheless important to specifically identify factors that lead districts to become more active in student speech governance. the possibility critical events or patterns of undesirable activity prompt more intense board engagement deserves greater scrutiny indeed and is beyond the scope of the current research. furthermore, it is important to acknowledge the data could largely reflect the inevitable outcomes of socioeconomic and cultural difference as opposed to a greater or lesser commitment to address student speech concerns. with more diversity in urban areas, there is likely greater conflict. this factor alone could be a fairly strong predictor of board engagement and responsiveness. results in all, 23% of the school districts opted to locally tailor versions of their speech policy. the remaining 77% chose to adopt standardized versions of policy created by the texas association of school boards. when the dependent variable was cross-referenced by school district geographical locale, 86% of the 23% (18/21) of school districts modifying policy were situated in large central city and urban fringe of large city school districts. of the 18 small town and rural school districts examined (outside the msa), none had locally modified their speech policy. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 20 to test the association between minority student enrollment (percentage of minority students in a school district) and the district’s modification of the speech regulation, a chi-square statistic was used. two cut points, 50% and 75%, were used as low minority student enrollment or high minority enrollment of the school. the pearson chi-square results are shown in table 2 and table 3 and indicate that both cut points for minority student enrollment of the school are not significantly different on whether the schools modified the regulation (χ2= 1.489, df = 1, n = 91, p = .222, for 50% cut point; and χ2= 1.255, df = 1, n = 91, p = .263, for 75% cut point). table 2 summary of chi-square analysis for local modified by minority student enrollment (50%) locally modified? variable n yes no χ2 p minority (50%) low 77 16 61 1.489 .222 high 14 5 9 totals 91 21 70 note. minority: low < 50%; high >=50%. phi= .128. table 3 summary of chi-square analysis for local modified by minority student enrollment (75%) locally modified? variable n yes no χ2 p minority (75%) low 87 21 66 1.255 .263 students’ f irst a m endm ent r ights 21 high 4 0 4 totals 91 21 70 note. minority: low < 75%; high >= 75%. phi= -.117. a chi-square statistic was also employed to investigate whether district size (total student enrollment equal to or greater than 10,000 considered as large, less than 10,000 considered as small) was related to the district’s modification of speech regulations. the pearson chi-square results in table 4 indicate that small and large district size are significantly related to speech policy modification (χ2=7.982, df = 1, n = 91, p = .005. phi = .296). large districts are more likely than expected to make modification to the regulation than are small schools districts. phi, which indicates the strength of the association between the two variables, is .296 reflecting a small to medium effect size. table 4 summary of chi-square analysis for local modified by district size locally modified? variable n yes no χ2 p district student # small 72 12 60 7.982 .005** large 19 9 10 totals 91 21 70 note. total district student #: small < 10,000; large >= 10,001. phi= .296**. **p <.01. again, a chi-square statistic was used to examine the association between geographical location of school (urban and other) and whether districts modified speech policy. as the pearson chic urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 22 square results suggest in table 5, urban and schools in other locations are significantly different on whether the district modified the regulation (χ2=7.294, df = 1, n = 91, p = .007. phi = .283). urban school districts are more likely than expected to make modification of the regulation than are school districts in other locations. the strength of the association (phi) between the two variables is .283 thus reflecting a small to medium effect size. table 5 summary of chi-square analysis for local modified by location locally modified? variable n yes no χ2 p geocode urban 55 18 37 7.294 .007* * other 36 3 33 totals 91 21 70 note. phi= .283**. **p <.01. in sum, the findings suggest the geographical location of the school district and size of the district student population have significant influence on the decision of school districts to make local adaptations to student speech policies (see table 6). these two factors, student population size and geographical location, proved influential in prior studies in the area of school governance (hess, 2002; newman & brown, 1993). table 6 summary of all chi-square analyses students’ f irst a m endm ent r ights 23 variable χ2 p minority (50%) 1.489 .222 minority (75%) 1.255 .263 district student population 7.982 .005** geographical location of school district 7.294 .007** **p <.01. discussion a review of school board policy indicates texas school districts vary little with respect to student speech policies, which may suggest minimal attention to speech. because most school districts are members of the texas association of school boards (tasb), member districts, as a service, are issued policy in standardized form reflecting yearly changes in federal and state law. this is an important development because school districts may not be independently engaging in conversation and dialogue about critical legal issues. tasb describes itself as a “voluntary, nonprofit, statewide educational association that serves and represents local texas school districts” (texas association of school boards, n.d, about tasb). it serves 1,042 school districts and represents the “largest group of publicly elected officials in the state” (texas association of school boards, n.d, about tasb). the membership fee includes services in the areas of training, legislative and regulatory information and support, legal services, timely publications, risk and cash management services, and cooperative purchasing (texas association of school board, n.d., products and services). in addition, the organization markets paid services such as policy development, personnel c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 24 administration, and superintendent searches. there is a tacit overlapping of the free and paid services. for example, free legal advice is available as part of the membership but only in order to answer questions and review policy. there are also paid legal services. the result is a large organization with a large number of employees. given the deference to tasb, it is not surprising that school boards generally prefer to abstain from modifying policy in general. however, the results from this analysis suggest to some degree that context may be influential. the findings suggest districts in urban settings as well as districts serving high student enrollments modified speech policy to a significantly greater degree. this could be interpreted as greater board attention and responsiveness, which would be consistent with prior research on urban boards (hess, 2002; newman & brown, 1993) and boards representing districts with high student enrollments (k. r. greene, 1990; kenneth r. greene, 1992). the non-influential impact of district minority representation was also consistent prior findings (kenneth r. greene, 1992). for the large urban school district, issues naturally attract greater public attention and require school board members to address political implications. urban board members, as the research suggests, seem to be more oriented to serving as “politicians” and “negotiators” (kenneth r. greene, 1992; lutz & gresson, 1980; merz, 1986; tucker & zeigler, 1980) especially in circumstances where greater social volatility exists and when policy in inherently values laden. but what is noteworthy from the findings is that not a single small town or rural school district within the sample locally modified a single speech policy. perhaps, such issues are trivial in relation to other pressing demands facing rural schools such as meeting accountability requirements and balancing district budgets. if such issues truly generate minimal responsiveness in small town/rural school districts, administrators become the final arbiters of law and policy. students’ f irst a m endm ent r ights 25 should anyone in a district be responsive to speech concerns, it should be the superintendent. working with the board on policy is one of their major responsibilities. while superintendents are immersed in the day-to-day operation of the district, their involvement relates to the “big” issues, such as managing the budget and their role as communicator to the community at large. boards are dependent upon campus administrators to tell them when free speech issues arise. whether or not they are informed will depend on the sensitivity of campus administrators to this issue. consider the following scenario: a student appears on campus wearing a confederate flag t-shirt, a teacher notifies the office that this might be a problem, a vice-principal quietly talks with the student whom he or she knows well, and the shirt is replaced with another one without incident. the entire episode may take no more than 15 minutes early in the morning and is not ever reported to the superintendent. the result is that the educator responsible for the policy is unaware of the need until a significant incident involving free speech occurs. even in small schools where the superintendent may be the only district level administrator and serve as the principal of one or more campuses, there are pressures that work against addressing free speech issues in policy. in these districts, reliance on a policy service is seen as a necessity. since the board hires and fires the superintendent, there is also a need and obligation to address the board’s interests and needs. the superintendent is aware of the obligation to protect the democratic rights of students through policy, but this issue is rarely, if ever, brought to their attention to the board or the public. it is therefore, rarely addressed by the superintendent and is likely not to be brought forward as an issue without a critical incident that makes addressing the issue compulsory. prior research has uncovered a similar form of role “variety,” “autonomy,” and informal “power” in decision-making within rural and small schools c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 26 (pearson & sutton, 1999) as well as a considerable amount of role “socialization,” especially for rural school leaders, in terms of role expectations and problem solving (hurley, 1992). conclusion although dependence on external policy services may be a necessity, school districts could face challenges to speech policies if content and viewpoints are being censured inappropriately. actions such as those taken by the orange county unified school district are likely neither isolated nor uncommon and serve as cautionary examples of minimized board involvement in systematic legal education and policy development. increasing diversity in the form of race/ethnicity, wealth, political thought, and religious faith, to name a few, demand school leaders reassess policy domains and perhaps in some instances issue clarifications or render substantial revisions. the need for greater responsiveness, particularly in rural communities, is further substantiated by a report issued by the rural school and community trust policy program (johnson & strange, 2007), which indicates a considerable increase in rural student enrollment as a percentage of the national enrollment along with massive increases in minority populations (i.e., american indian/alaskan native, asian pacific islander, black, hispanic) in rural areas nationally -an increase of 55% between 1995 and 2005. clearly, the issues of administrative discretion and policy attention/implementation warrant further scrutiny. future research should more closely examine factors that lead to greater school board involvement in policy/legal areas, particularly in circumstances when school districts outsource policy development. for instance, one might examine whether critical incidents (e.g., crises) or board member level of education impact the level of board engagement in developing local policy. studies may also broaden their analysis of district codes of conduct relative to speech to include a greater geographical diversity of school districts or explore the impact of poverty on students’ f irst a m endm ent r ights 27 board involvement. a future study may also explore school board member role types (i.e., political v. professional) and their relationship to various forms of policy. in sum, the findings of this exploratory analysis suggest that while district leaders in urban communities and districts serving large student populations may be locally tailoring student speech policy to a greater degree, a considerable number of districts seemingly do not. cases such as saxe and morse illustrate the evolving complexity of speech litigation and student protections and serve as reminders to school leaders at every level that continuing legal education and substantive conversations around diversity and civil liberties are fundamentally important and necessary to sustaining an effective government. whether over-dependency on external policy-making organizations leads school government to be less responsive to student speech policy is a question beyond the scope of the study. yet, the findings seem to suggest that this dependence could be inhibiting thoughtful deliberation of important topics to some degree. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 28 references american psychological association. 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(2001a). efforts by public k-8 schools to involve parents in children's education: do school and parent reports agree? (u.s. department of education, nces 2001-076). washington, d.c.: u.s. department of education. xianglei, c. (2001b). efforts by public k-8 schools to involve parents in children's education: do school and parent reports agree? (u.s. department of education, nces 2001-076). retrieved on march 7, 2006 from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/quarterly/vol_3/3_4/q21.asp wasby, s. l. (1973). toward impact theory: an inventory of hypotheses. in t. l. becker & m. m. feeley (eds.), the impact of supreme court decisions (2nd ed., pp. 214-217). new york: oxford university press. students’ f irst a m endm ent r ights 31 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain jeffery johnson seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo volume 9, number 2 february, 2006 issn 1099-839x education: misunderstood purpose and failed solutions paul a. wagner and lillian benavente-mcenery university of houston – clear lake there is so much quarrelling surrounding education today it seems people have lost sense of what needs arguing about, where there is a need for more research and where there are grounds for general agreement. grounds now exist for shared agreement on matters of educational purpose. moreover, there has in fact been much agreement on such matters over the years. with one flag to salute, people in education should be in a much better position to strategize on those tactics most likely to achieve our common pragmatically issued goals. will the bickering ever end? recently, martin bickman (2003) tried to sum up much that is wrong in education. he describes public education as a battleground wherein traditionalists such as diane ravitch and e.d. hirsch expose the nonsense of the “self-expression” curriculum as advocated by opponents (kohn, 1999) of standardized curriculums and standardized testing. bickman believes there is a cycle wherein subject matter is emphasized in the schools at the expense of personal expression and then at other times personal expression predominates at the expense of subject matter. bickman’s battleground metaphor is meant to underscore the severity of the tension that exists between the two competing sets of true believers. moreover, for thinkers such as bickman, the battle never abates. as one group dominates current educational practice the other side busily lays the groundwork for its surge back into fashion. writers such as bickman are so convinced of the inevitability of the debate, readers come to doubt any possibility of a synthesis emerging from the previous thesis and antithesis. the debate since this is not a review of the recent work of bickman, subsequent remarks will speak more generally to the alleged competing needs between rigor of subject matter mastery on the one hand and the need for social and personal development on the other. anyone familiar with the educational theorizing of western and middle eastern antiquity will recognize the stirrings of such distinctions even then. 1 however while the distinctions were acknowledged, there were no appearances that the two themes stood in opposition to one another, at least not in the minds of theorists. 2 for example, talmudic writings more than two thousand years ago, made the distinction between becoming educated in order to address the world as an adult and becoming trained for some occupation. 3 indeed this distinction underlies much of the rationale for the religious practice of bar mitzvah. similarly, the greeks during the golden age of athens, saw the purpose of education to be self-actualization, to use aristotle’s term, and identified other training as something one was led to through prudential reason and acquired wisdom. specifically it is through the effective use of prudential reasoning that each learns what excellencies each may have. subsequently it is up to the learner to learn how to use those “excellencies excellently” – again to borrow language from aristotle’s the politics. consider too, the example of spanish jews in maimonides’ time. maimonides reports that advances in medicine, science and even current issues in education vol. 9 no. 2 religion kept apace as complimentary parts of a great conversation benefiting both individuals and community (herschel & neugroschel, 1983). 4 under such a worldview there is no reason for such an unwarranted dichotomy to arise. evidence of successful programs agencies such as the hamilton fish national institute on school and community violence as well as the safe and drug-free schools expert panels have sought to identify programs as having “demonstrated” success or to be “promising” based on a rigorous examination of the research. for example, the latter identified elementary schoolbased intervention and prevention programs such as second step: a violence prevention curriculum as “exemplary.” programs such as peacemakers and peers making peace and aggression replacement training and others were labeled as “promising.” the former identified such programs for elementary programs as teaching students to be peacemakers, kid power and i can problem solve as having demonstrated success. there are research articles available from the websites and program directors of these programs. (more information is available from the safe and drug-free schools and hamilton fish national institute websites). there is a trend toward requiring schools receiving funding to use programs that have had demonstrated success or are at least promising. with this trend has come an increased urgency for programs to “prove themselves worthy” and an increase in the number of research and evaluation studies on programs and their effectiveness. did such cultures get it wrong? should education really be about self – esteem? in the contemporary united states things seem on the surface at least, to be quite a bit different. there is an evident dichotomy between those who champion personal development and those who champion an understanding of the world within which we live. notice the difference between the nodding heads and weeping eyes of those in the audience of a standard self-help television show and compared that vision to the wide open eyes and critical commentary of say, nova series viewers on public television. the first group cares very much about mastery over psychological forces while the second hopes to understand the world of physical forces. there are no absolute grounds for preferring one subject over the other. nevertheless, the two audiences and their respective subject matter interests seem worlds apart. however, in the highest reaches of the ivory tower there are many who understand this apparent chasm need not exist. for example, there are non-reductionistic biologists such as stephen rose (1998), richard lewontin (2000) and stephen j. gould (2001) and spiritually inspired physicists such as henry schaeffer iii (2003) and sir john polkinghorne (1994) who believe the forces of the world all need explaining and the life of inquiry doesn’t require one to choose between in the words of william james’ (1982), “soft-mindedness” and “hard mindedness” or c.p. snow’s (1964), the two cultures. it is possible to read diane ravitch (2003) as someone far from conservative in curricular matters but committed instead to intellectual responsibility. similarly e.d. hirsch is no adversary of self-esteem. 5 rather his quest is simply to show that subject matter competence is the most reliable path for developing student confidence and… selfesteem. neither ravitch (2003) nor hirsch (1999) express hostility towards the idea that education can and should lead to personal development. indeed, to that end, both ravitch and hirsch argue roughly that by instilling in students a full acquaintance with the great conversation of humankind, intellectual skills and a passion for truth, they will likely develop both confidence and personal understanding. for ravitch and hirsch, participation in the world of the humanities, arts and sciences develops student understanding of the external world as well as an understanding of the social skills to deal with self and others. though the expression “the great conversation of humankind” is not one used by either ravitch or hirsch the spirit behind the idea seems common to both. 6 the term “great conversation of humankind” had become common parlance in america at least since the time when the encyclopedia britannica began publishing its great books series back in the 1950s and great book clubs began springing up around the country’s urban centers. at present the idea has fallen into some disrepair among some american educators, not because it lacks substance but rather because like so many other ideas it has been bundled together with a set of uncompromising and sometimes offensive ideologies. this bundling of ideologies has unfortunately led to the downfall of many otherwise good ideas in america’s current and ongoing “culture war” and so it is with the concept of the great conversation. it has been weighed down not so much by defaults of its own but with ancillary conceptual baggage with which it has often been tied. for example, the great conversation is not inherently tied in with the alleged elitism of mortimer adler’s (1998) paidea proposal of the 1970s. 7 nevertheless, those who for good reason object to elitism may instinctively protest the perennial notion of a great conversation as well. the minimalist notion of the great conversation (mgc) advocated herein is not a education: misunderstood purpose and failed solutions 3 carrier of any elitism. it is, in a sense, not father’s sense of the great conversation but something much closer, dare one say, to great grandfather’s notion. by avoiding the distractions posed by ancillary conceptual baggage such as adler’s paidea proposal and focusing instead on what is most central to the notion of a great conversation the idea can still be reasonably persuasive as establishing a universal goal or purpose for education (as distinct from training, schooling or socialization). at its crux, the idea historically behind the great conversation says that all humans are naturally engaged in pursuing on some level, big questions such as what is the world made of, how do things come into being, what is happiness, what is the best form of organization and so on (bass, 1997; gale and densmore,2003; sobol, 1997). these big questions are cross-culturally relevant and they bring participants in the conversation together. think about it. what separates people more than anything is a refusal to join with others across cultures or to reach across historical epochs and participate earnestly in the conversation. participation in the great conversation leads to a bringing together (eads and wells, 1989). it is difficult to imagine anyone who does not agree with at least this minimalist notion of the great conversation (mgc) and recognize its benefits for all. the gist of the idea of a great conversation arose a multiplicity of times in human history when local cultures recognized that both truth and the search for truth could not be constrained by local jingoism. the great conversation of humankind is not a technical term designating a single way of looking at education. and, more specifically, the mgc identifies simply that realm of learned discourse where together and in non-exclusionary fashion, humans attempt to answer big (and perhaps some not so big) questions of physics, religion, mathematics, happiness, engineering, prudential reasoning, morality, architecture, the nature of formal and informal languages, evolution and development, love, the purpose of social systems and so on. to deprive students the information and skills needed to participate in the great conversation isolates them from full participation in community immediately and the world community generally. mgc focuses attention on the central educational goal of bringing everyone together to participate in dialogue to seek some form of shared truth and to avoid error or unnecessary grounds for fundamental divisiveness. to be isolated from participatory interaction with community and the intellectual tools ranging from math and logic to heuristics, symbol and metaphor that make mgc possible is certain to impair any individual’s personal development. indeed, what could be more destructive to personal understanding and expression in the long run more than an inability to see both self and the world as others see each? bickman (2003) correctly distinguishes alfie kohn’s (2004) approach to instruction and testing as quite different from that of say, e.d. hirsch (1987). note however that while kohn and hirsch may differ on means of instruction and assessment it is not at all clear that they differ with regards to the purpose of education. 8 indeed a careful reading of each shows that there is little difference between the two when questions pertain to the purpose of education. for example, kohn, as much as hirsch, recognizes the need to bring students into the mgc. kohn explains that by teaching students to treasure good questions, to seek truth and most importantly to not settle for conventional answers to test items students develop skills that truly equip them for life long learning or in other words life long participation in mgc (kohn, 1998). 9 admittedly, hirsch (1999) has more confidence in standardized testing than kohn for insuring the acquisition of necessary intellectual tools but this does not mean that there is sharp disagreement between he and kohn on what those intellectual tools are (o’neill and tell, 1999). again whether one compares diverse cultures or historical epochs there is ample evidence throughout for the centrality of mgc as the defining purpose of education. note, the focus here is on education and not on associative notions of schooling, training and socializing. the latter three all have legitimate roles in a community. each though also has purposes distinguishing it from education. for example, consider that in early talmudic writings of the ancient jews, the idea of mgc is essentially expressed as participation in derashah, a process of unending homiletic sharing. this process of unending homiletic sharing is very much like the experience of high table discussions that often occupied the time of oxford and cambridge dons in a sharply different culture. questions that precipitate discussion in the two environs may differ but, the focus on dialogue and the passion for truth and destruction of error are preeminent in both venues. and to that extent, both are equally legitimate exemplars of mgc. to return to the fleeting and apparent differences between writers like kohn and hirsch in matters of educational purpose, it is instructive to remember that kohn and hirsch both praise the intellectual skills encompassed by doubting and subsequent contribution to the mgc. in short, these authors, to the extent that they are said to represent current issues in education vol. 9 no. 2 distinct entrenched personal interests each seemingly want the same thing in the end: namely, a level playing field wherein all students can learn to contribute to the intellectual well being of both self and community. similarly, in working toward a common conception of the related notion of schooling (at least in the united states), williams (1989) reminds educators that it is wise to keep in mind that it is not the content that constitutes the entirety of the curriculum but the very process of democratic deliberation over what should be taught. many authors are adversarial when it comes to assessment methodology, strategies of classroom management, responsiveness to the community’s social concerns and preferred subject matter (apple,2001, p.325) but this does not necessarily carry over to an equally diverse array of visions for educational purpose generally. 10 battlefield metaphors such as bickman’s distract from the common goal all educators share or at least should share, when designing teaching/learning strategies. if educators do not agree on purpose, if there really is some perennial battlefield afoot on that then, educators are destined forever to talk past one another. and, in the end it will be the students who suffer in the wake of such disharmony. fortunately, things are not as bleak as all that. battlefield metaphors, at least with regards to educational purpose are at best, anachronistic. if there are any outsiders to this shared vision of the purpose of education they come not from the ranks of the intellectual community but from the ranks of politicians. politicians from both side of the aisle who use educational accountability as a rallying cry to induce voter support (mitchell and boyd, 2001). there are also those die-hard behaviorists who see in education nothing more then a set of strategies for securing predictable behavioral patterns in witless students. the politicians, anachronistically minded behaviorists and bureaucrats are the ones who have created a battleground atmosphere surrounding public education. their obsessive focus on techniques and measurable outcomes mutes discussion of educational purpose. nevertheless, the country’s intellectuals seem to remain generally of one mind when it comes to purpose. the consequences of divergence of opinion in matters of purpose even when a sense of purpose is agreed upon as it is within the community of leading educationist thinkers, if the people in power namely politicians, school board members and the courts are in disarray on such matters, little can be accomplished (woodbury and newsome, 2002: cuban, 1988). an inability to achieve minimal agreement between thinkers and power-brokers on matters of educational purpose leads to conceptual chaos when deciding on matters of pedagogical style, tactics, methodologies, featured studies and so on (mitchell and boyd, 2001; stallings, 2002). the most distracting concern for the country is not whether a perennial battle exists between advocates of self esteem on the one hand and subject matter mastery on the other but rather the ineffectual grasp of many power brokers in the matter of educational purpose itself. in educational studies, whenever in doubt, it never hurts to return to the work of john dewey to reestablish one’s conceptual moorings. as long ago as 1902, dewey showed that the pull between rigor and erudite self reflection should cease as experts recognize that education is meant both to teach students “stuff” as well as when and how to use that stuff, or as dewey once said, “intelligence becomes ours in the degree to which we use it and accept responsibility for consequences” (dewey, 1957). in this sense dewey, as philosopher william frankena (1965) points out, is echoing aristotle who thought that schools should teach students both theoretical reasoning as well as prudential reasoning. it is not much of a reach here to say that aristotle, the classicist and dewey the progressive are each urging attention to personal development as much as to subject matter mastery. the two ideas are seen as flip sides of the same coin. here there are at least rudimentary grounds for agreement on the purpose of education even though the historical span involved is over two thousand years and half a world apart. admittedly, aristotle is more willing to identify subject matter in the fashion of knowledge silos than is dewey but that does not mean that either he or dewey discounted the full flourishing of the individual in every imaginable way. 11 again, rather than a battlefield reflecting perennial and inevitable tensions dewey and aristotle in relative agreement on purpose every bit as much as apparent adversaries such as sykes, ravitch, hirsh, noddings, kohn and jane roland martin are today – again at least as far as the big matter of educational purpose. 12 the consequence of bringing students into the mgc is that students can subsequently live personally and socially effective lives as a result (kierstead & wagner, 1992). techniques for getting to mgc remain controversial but the destination rests secure. as immanuel kant observed summing up the spirit of mgc long ago, “education includes the nurture of the child and, as it grows, its culture” (kant, 1960). the controversy that troubles current educational practice occurs not within the lofty thoughts of major intellectual theorists but within the incommensurate mandates created by bureaucratic education: misunderstood purpose and failed solutions 5 fiat and the self-seeking priorities of classroom engineers. in particular, programs like “no child left behind” have failed to create an atmosphere of shared purpose but have instead fostered a survivor mentality (easley, 2005; dagley, 2002). in this enterprising “every person for him or herself mentality” that is created by “no child left behind” any alleged focus on shared purpose drifts into oblivion as each actor in the educational system does whatever is necessary to save his or her job. where once teachers and educators manned the helm of a system for educating students, now a new breed of social engineers is emerging and tensions between the two are increasing. for example, as hirshland and steinmo (2003) point out that there has long existed a struggle between “…the country’s basic democratic and egalitarian principles on the one hand and its localist and republican institutions on the other.” the result they contend, “…is that american policy at the national levels ends up characterized by a type of national schizophrenia.” as a result, there is now much to be gained by hired guns willing to adopt any and all manipulative strategies that promise to produce whatever results those in power seek. in this new enterprising atmosphere is the goal of mgc diminishing in importance? and if so, is this to the betterment or the detriment of the nation’s students? is education for the state and by the state? a host of questions have emerged with fresh vigor in the wake of “no child left behind” and other similar ill-advised programs (thomas, m.d. and bainbridge, 2002). issues of social engineering, institutional control and personal accountability are eclipsing any previously shared understanding of the purpose of education. in contradistinction to this conceptual ethos, russian novelist count leo tolstoy (1967) who once ran a famous school on his own estate wrote in sympathy with what we are calling mgc as follows, “…the purpose of our educational institutions lies chiefly in the dissemination of understanding among all classes, and not in the conservation of understanding in some one class which has taken exclusive possession of it.” the masters of social engineering excuse their preoccupation with control by pointing out that without control there can be no effective education. true enough. but when the focus becomes control itself rather than education, the means becomes the end and the end becomes neglected. educators exist primarily to develop minds and not orchestrate behaviors. it is worth recalling that nearly two hundred years ago, german philosopher immanuel kant (1960), himself a very self-disciplined personality, cautioned educators, “but on the whole we should try to draw out from their own ideas, founded on reason, other than to introduce such ideas into their minds.” this notion drawing out reasoned thought appears again and again in the literature still today(cahan,1994,p.158) to tolstoy and kant both the notion of a hired gum approach to education would be an anathema. there is as robin barrows (1984) explains a sharp difference between principles of classroom management and control and principles concerned with developing the mind. in an educational institution, all principles should be subordinated in the end to those which develop the mind. classrooms and schools are best thought of as sanctuaries and temples of learning. they should not be thought of, even metaphorically, as laboratories for social engineering or some sort of relatively civilized battlefield. social engineering focuses on control of outcome in the tiniest detail. in contrast, the academic freedom central to education necessitates allowances for individuality in material and skills acquired. moreover, teachers must understand, as australian john passmore (1980) remarks, that they are drawing out from students (rather than driving in) much of what is said to be learned. students need to be educated by teachers; neighbors need to be informed by teachers of the purpose and practice of education (hatch, white, & faigenbaum, 2005) and finally, teachers need to participate in the training of school board members in policy management and resource development. together all stakeholders in education should begin with an understanding of the nature of mgc. teachers must reclaim their rightful voice in all of this (weiner, 2003). as argued above, in the case of dewey and aristotle, the ancient jews and oxford dons, intellectuals of all stripes from around the globe and dating back darn near forever, have been largely of one mind when it comes to discerning the purpose of education. in contrast, those (usually from outside the school system) with a far less intellectual turn of mind see schools principally as tools for socializing, training, civic architecture, control over possible sources of community unrest and a host of matters at best only remotely related to education. an overemphasis on these schooling issues can distract from student subject matter acquisition as much as they do from matters of self – esteem and personal development. the issues which set schooling objectives against mgc have a more deleterious effect on educational practice than any dialogue among true educational theorists about the proper balance between self-esteem and personal current issues in education vol. 9 no. 2 development on the one hand and subject matter rigor on the other. though john dewey died fifty some years ago, he continues to be the leading educational thinker that nearly every serious student of education in the united states turns to in order to find some pragmatic spin on the truth of what ails education today. though a philosopher of considerable note, dewey wrote about education neither as an intellectual, a bureaucrat, a social engineer or a person of political ambition. rather when it came to education, dewey wrote to the audience that mattered most, teachers and the lay educated public. in his educational writings, dewey combined his epistemic insights with his enthusiasm for progressivism and democratic practice (dykhuizen, 1973). this intellectual foundation led dewey (1961) to conclude that in the end it was not specific subject matter that should determine the manner and course of instruction but rather the need of each individual to flourish as an individual within some sort of participatory democracy. in short, education for dewey “…means supplying the conditions which foster growth (dewey,1916, p.56).” for dewey, the individual’s potential and the instructor’s experience should dictate subject matter, assessment, and instructional and management strategies. 13 attention to the student’s future contributory role in a participatory democracy prescribes the necessary coherence for fulfilling educational purposes in a world of diversity (dewey, 1941). in short, for dewey what was needed for the fulfillment of educational purpose is for each person to get on with others in a life of collective flourishing “…as an affair of civilization not of individual intellect” (dewey, 1957). to grasp dewey one must grasp his academic philosophy as well as his more ideological works in education. to see dewey as an ideologue alone is to sell dewey short. one cannot understand dewey by reading only his thoughts on the curriculum. for dewey the philosopher, the curriculum should be driven by the society people collectively want and by the intellective tools people need to share in order to shape the world around them (dewey, 1902). even though dewey is co-founder of a unique approach to philosophy, namely pragmatism (along with c.s. pierce (1986) and william james (1997) and continuing into the present through the works of w.v.o. quine (1995) and hilary and ruth putnam), there is also something of an aristotlean (as well as kantian) commitment in dewey as commentator william frankena (1965) has aptly pointed out. 14 the apparent agreement between dewey and aristotle is important to note since it underscores the consistency of vision of educational purpose across national boundaries and historical epoch, argued for throughout this discussion. like aristotle, dewey recognized that the state existed for some purpose. that purpose can be simply re-stated in a recent motto from the us army, namely, to help each and every individual “become all that he or she can be.” for dewey and aristotle alike, human flourishing is the end to which the state and its educational practices must aim (frankena, 1965). for both dewey and aristotle, humans are rational or better yet, intellective beings who possess a capacity to figure out how to engage the world rather than merely grope their way through existence. however, dewey in contrast to aristotle, is less convinced that the concept of human flourishing could be defined in a one size fits all manner as frankena (1965, p.191.) explains, “dewey advocates… unifying method and subject-matter and adapting both to the child…” whereas aristotle thought that certain subject matter was necessary for intellective development, dewey through his emphasis on experiential learning was an early champion of diversity in learning styles and immediately relevant experience as the principle means for fulfilling intellective development. despite these differences between aristotle and dewey each seems nevertheless to aspire to a common goal overall, namely to bring about the flourishing of the individual through something herein branded as mgc (frankena, 1965).for example, dewey emphasized that the state and its educational resources should be mustered to help each individual participate as fully as possible in a democratic state. this in turn would result in the flourishing of the state as much as that of the individual (dewey, 1936). in what initially may appear to be a contrast between the two, aristotle saw the flourishing of the state as preeminent as a means for insuring the flourishing of an optimal number of citizens and dewey saw the development of the individual as preeminent in bringing about the flourishing of the state. but having acknowledged such an apparent contrast the question remains whether it represents a distinctly different notion of educational purpose between the two. scholars may quarrel whether aristotle or dewey was more willing than the other to sacrifice the educational well being of the few to secure the flourishing of the many, but in fact, each shows a sincere commitment in principle to doing the best for all (frankena, 1965). for dewey it was to do the best for the individual through the state and for aristotle it was to do for all individuals what can only be achieved by individuals contributing to the state (one cannot help recalling john f. kennedy’s words when reflecting on this aspect of aristotle, “ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country”.) in short the apparent contrast on education: misunderstood purpose and failed solutions 7 matters of purpose between dewey and aristotle is as illusionary as the contrast bickman alleges exists between contemporaries such as kohn and ravitch. for both aristotle and dewey, as well as kohn and ravitch, mgc designates a template of educational purpose albeit roughly but not inaccurately. mgc identifies educational purpose as extending student vision beyond the limits of any jingoistic horizon and thereby taking the student a step further away from error and unsuccessful engagement with the world. it must be acknowledged prior to concluding these remarks that dewey deliberately avoided the phrase the great conversation of humankind. a close reading of dewey reveals that while his commitment to democracy underscored the ideas of universal commitment and respect for all who participate in the great conversation he was wary not to use any language that would identify him with the teaching techniques or subject limitations espoused by the likes of his contemporaries robert maynard hutchins and mortimer adler. 15 nevertheless, as this portrayal of mgc shows, dewey and aristotle are seen as very close in matters of educational purpose each espousing a form of mgc, just as frankena (1965) explains. egalitarianism and the great conversation it is not much of a stretch to claim that mgc constitutes at least one end or aim of education generally. mgc excludes no one and entertains the possible meritoriousness of every imaginable lifestyle within the context of relevant conditions. focus on participation in mgc makes irrelevant combative metaphors. it is not a fight teachers wage when hosting the great conversation it is rather an invitation to share with others the search for truth and techniques for minimizing error. what could be more fulfilling of personal purpose and intellectual authenticity? the focus on respect for all participants, universality of participation, passion for truth of some kind and appreciation for big and meaningful questions (yeh, 2001; weiner 2000; woodbury and gess-newsome, 2002) is what makes mgc the touchstone for all educational thinkers in matters of purpose. the conceptual contours of mgc unite ravitch, hirsh and kohn with the likes of aristotle and dewey and nearly all other serious students of educational purpose from the dawn of written speculation about education. mgc evolves. throughout the evolution of mgc a principle of natural selection operates. this principle of natural selection, initially discussed by richard dawkins (2004) and susan blakemore (2000), determines whether or not stuff learned (“memes” is the technical term currently in fashion for such all such stuff) constitutes knowledge and the utility of such knowledge now and in the foreseeable future. mgc leads inevitably to the adoption of socially constructed facts and skills (memes). this process of reason-governed evaluation leads mgc to ever more reliable evaluations of whether or not the stuff being learned should constitute knowledge specifically in immediate problem-solving contexts. finally, the mgc leads to a continuing re-evaluation of itself just as it does to all intellectual commitments freely embraced and tentatively held. equally as important as learning any stuff or how to use such stuff, there is a moral element inevitably emergent from full participation in the mgc. the moral element is intellectual integrity. authentic participation in mgc demands dissatisfaction with anything less than truth. this dissatisfaction or, to put things more positively, this passion for truth compels participants to always keep an open mind and not settle for a facsimile of truth (dewey, 1929). 16 the practical upshot of this moral commitment in the schools is that students must ask again and again two questions namely: “how do you know?” and “what do you mean by the term x?” these two questions are at the heart of mgc. without those two questions participation in the great conversation of humankind amounts to no more than collective and often contentious efforts at propagandizing. without the active utilization of these two questions self-expression becomes nothing more than winning at all costs. without the active utilization of these two questions standardized curriculums and testing become little more than measures of successful propagandizing. in 1929, john dewey declared at a national meeting of the progressive education society that, “the challenge for america in the future is the moral, not the technological” (kierstead & wagner, 1992). questioning how one knows or what others mean by this or that term are, for dewey, moral imperatives. the asking of such questions is not just an effective teaching technique. (and again this commitment to questioning was equally important in the streets of ancient athens.) so in declaring the centrality of the moral, dewey was underscoring that education is neither about simply learning stuff nor even about self–expression alone. rather for dewey, education is a venue wherein we learn to advance our shared interests and common bond. all this occurs under the auspices of a gathering and common understanding of the world’s furniture, how it is arranged and some idea of whether or not we humans should be in the business of rearranging this or that object, force or current issues in education vol. 9 no. 2 process. it is through the traditional academic disciplines as well as through new research protocols and speculative reflection that insights and intellective tools become available to participants in mgc. this is as true in kindergarten classrooms as it is in the great research laboratories of the world. if there is a battlefield mentality surrounding our collective sense of public education, it exists only because we have forgotten that the technological means for measurement and management must forever remain subservient to the moral. techniques of instruction and assessment must never be allowed to overshadow the purpose of education (weiner,2000; sobol,1997). education itself is ultimately about making a better world. to borrow again that well-known platitude from the united states army, education is about making each person all that he or she can be. or as sobel writes (1997, p.635) “…a true education makes people competent, wise and just.” the stuff each learns and uses in a classroom must be seen as subservient to this much larger goal. this vision is what continues to unite most educational thinkers in what we have herein described as mgc. education, genuinely understood as mgc, leads inevitably to an appreciation for both democracy as well as to a respect for others. inasmuch as education prepares each person for a life of excellence it leads as well to a better shared community. when education is seen as bringing people into the great conversation of humankind, the role of active participation looms large. understanding the potency and responsibility of genuine participation in the great conversation leads participants to further understanding of the responsibilities involved generally when participating in a democracy. the two sets of responsibilities go hand in hand. 17 in search of truth curriculums focusing on self-expression alone lead students away from a sense of cooperation, mutual respect and a sense of personal responsibility for insuring the well being of others. curriculums focusing on standardized content and testing foster a totalitarian understanding for the purpose of education and isolate students one from another (boaler, 1997). truth and further shared understanding are not the products of standardized approaches to education. rather in a standardized approach often the best one can hope for is acquiescence to whatever is declared true by those in power (apple,2001; mitchell and boyd, 2001). no one ever won a nobel prize by acquiescing lock, stock and barrel in the truths downloaded by those in power. nobel prizes in the sciences are awarded to people who learn how to participate in the great conversation and who know how to pursue a line of questioning more successfully than anyone previously. in short, focus on either a personal development curriculum or a sterile and homogenous subject-focused curriculum is guaranteed to fall short of the ultimate of bring students into the great conversation of humankind and perhaps more importantly, effective participation in democracy. as dewey (1938) concludes in experience and education, “i am not… in favor of any end or methods simply because of name… the basic question concerns the nature of education.” through mgc students learn that education is a venue where they are to learn both stuff and skills and yet most importantly, respect for the accomplishments of the human spirit – accomplishments in both their individual and collective manifestations. with each new individual understanding of some phenomenon, the mgc itself advances. footnotes 1 for further examples, see christopher j. lucas, our western educational heritage, (1972) with special emphasis on chapters 1 – 3, and w. t. s. gould, people and education in the third world, (1993). 2 for example, philip birnbaum, a book of jewish concepts (1964, pp. 223-224), suresh chardra gosh, the history of education in ancient india: c. 3000 b. c. to a. d. 1192, (2001), and henry schmidt, education: pt. i history of education ancient and modern, (1842). 3 phillip simpson’s translation aristotle’s the politics, (1997, ch. 1 & 5). 4 see also arbel’s maimonides (2001). 5 see for example hirsch’s cultural literacy , (1988, p. 29, pp. 98 – 102), and the schools we need and why we don’t have them , (1999, pp. 100 – 104). 6 see also a. kohn’s beyond discipline, (1996), and what does it mean to be well-educated? (2004). 7 see also m. adler’s, the paidea program (1998, 2 nd ed.) and the paidea program (1984). 8 for example, see hirsch, cultural literacy (1987, p. 18) and kohn’s what does it mean to be welleducated? (2004, pp. 2 – 10). 9 confucius’ the great learning in w. bachin’s (ed.) classics in education anticipated almost word for word the mgc when he wrote, “more study without thought is useless, but thought without study is dangerous…mind should be set on the search for truth…illustrate virtue, regenerate the people…from the emperor to the people all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of all else.” (1966, pp. 163 164. the natural and universal access of all peoples to the “great learning” confucius speaks of is underscored by ibn khaldoun’s remarks on the possibility of people achieving what has been education: misunderstood purpose and failed solutions 9 achieved by the “oriental peoples.” see ibn khaldoun’s historical prolegema to the history of the berbers” in three thousand years of educational wisdom (1947, p. 200). 10 for example, as long ago as 1970, hero to student radicals, paul goodman dismissed the standardized testing minded writing, “…it is authoritarian to manipulate people for their own good and incidentally expend them for the cause by somebody else’s strategy” in his new reformation (1970, p. 152). see also paolo friere’s education for critical consciousness (1974, pp. 32 40). 11 see for example, randall curran’s aristotle and the necessity of public education (2000, ch. 2), and jerome papp’s naturalizing philosophy of education: john dewey in the postanalytic period (1998, p. 20). 12 see frederick kierstead and paul a. wagner’s the ethical, legal and multicultural foundations of teaching(1992, ch.2). 13 see for example, dewey’s discussion of the two fold path constituting the map prepared by the instructor and the student’s grasping of the purpose of maps generally and the use of a particular map in a given case in his the child and the curriculum and the school and society (1902). 14 see hilary putnam’s pragmatism: an open question (1995), and hilary putnam and ruth putnam’s dewey’s logic: epistemology as hypothesis and education for democracy both found in hilary putnam’s words and life (1995). 15 the personal animosity between ??? on the one hand and ??? on the other can be seen in ???’s (january 1937) rant against the two in his president hutchin’s proposal to remake higher education,” the social frontier, and see to hutchin’s re??? 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(2006, feb). education: misunderstood purpose and failed solutions. current issues in education [on-line], 9(2).available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume9/number2/ author notes paul a. wagner, ph.d., director, project in professional ethics professor, educational foundations school of education and philosophy school of humanities and human sciences university of houston – clear lake houston, texas, 77058 wagner@cl.uh.edu the author is former executive secretary of the philosophy of education society, former vice president of the association of philosophers in education, president of the texas educational foundations society and member of the ethics committee for the american association of public administration. lillian benavente-mcenery ed.d. assistant professor university of houston-clear lake houston , texas 77058 281-283-3539 mcenery@cl.uh.edu the co-author is an assistant professor in the literacy, language, and library science department and co-director of the university reading clinic in the center for educational programs at uh-clear lake. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation wagner p. a., & benavente-mcenery, l. (2006). education: misunderstood purpose and failed solutions. current issues in education, 9(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1594 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number2/index.html mailto:wagner@cl.uh.edu mailto:mcenery@cl.uh.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1594 volume 9, number 4 february, 2006 issn 1099-839x e-journaling: a strategy to support student reflection and understanding frederick b. king and diana j. larocco university of hartford journals can be defined as the permanent records of thoughts and ideas that an individual has processed and clarified through the act of writing or otherwise recording their experiences (killion, 1999). while journaling has existed almost as long as man has been writing, the use of journaling as a pedagogical strategy is a relatively recent phenomenon that has steadily increased over the last 30 years (koontz, 2004). early on, teachers used journaling primarily as a method for improving a student’s writing skills. more recently, however, teachers in disciplines such as social studies, mathematics, engineering, sciences, and education have integrated journaling into their classroom practice (duerdan, et al., n.d.; inspiring teachers, n.d./a&b). the use of journaling across a variety of disciplines is related to the fact that constructivistoriented professors have found journaling to be a valuable strategy for checking students’ understanding of core concepts, promoting reflection on the connections between theory and practice, enhancing insight, and promoting critical thinking (andrusyszyn & davie, 1997; halva-neubauer, 1995). watkins and marsick (as cited in cyboran, 2005) stated in 1993 that “. . . people need to bring what they are learning into conscious awareness. they learn more effectively through a process of questioning, reflection, and feedback from others that permits a deeper understanding to emerge from these otherwise everyday activities” (p. 35). in the past, using paper and a writing instrument was the primary mode for journaling. nevertheless, the increased popularity and use of technology in classrooms and by individuals, the rise in distance education courses, and the changing nature of students (e.g., part time, fully employed) have given rise to a variety of technological approaches to journaling. the technological approach to journaling can take many forms and includes, for example, e-mail, web logs, and electronic discussion boards. cyboran (2005) also noted that “using technology can make reflective journaling much easier” (p. 34). additionally, electronic forms of journaling can overcome resistance, at both the individual and organizational level, because no additional resources are required or need to be purchased. moreover, technologically linked methods are particularly attractive to both instructors and students because they naturally lend themselves to allowing learners to ask asynchronous, individualized questions and seek specific feedback about assignments or their understanding of core concepts (longhurst & sandage, 2004). developing reflective practitioners through journaling “at the heart of learning through journal writing is reflection” (kerka, 2002, p. 1). reflection, and its importance in our lives, has been stressed by educational theorists and philosophers, adult educators, and cognitive scientists such as dewey, knowles, schön, and vygotsky (cyboran, 2005). “meaning making, according to constructivists, is the goal of learning processes; it requires articulation and reflection on what we know” (jonassen, davidson, collins, campbell, & haag, 1995, p. 11). reflection, aimed at developing reflective practitioners, forms the core of the conceptual framework for the departments in which this exploratory study took current issues in education vol. 9 no. 4 place. specifically, this framework was derived from the writings of schön (1987). “schön calls his model ‘reflection in action’ and describes a progression from rote following of rules to questioning, criticizing, and reforming assumptions through a continuous process he calls a ‘reflective conversation’ with the situation” (university of hartford, 2005). sometimes, schön suggested, we act, unique situations (i.e., problem or opportunity) arise, and we are surprised, for good or for bad, by the results of our actions. we may respond to the surprise by either ignoring or reflecting on the various elements of our actions. schön further contended that our reflections typically take two forms—reflection on action or reflection in action. “we may reflect on action by thinking back on what we have done to in order to discover how our knowledge in action may have contributed to an unexpected outcome” (schön, 1987, p 26). he posited that reflection on an action after it has occurred is passive and has no real direct connection to actions in the present. on the other hand, reflection in action “ . . . is thinking that serves to reshape what we are doing while we are doing it” (schön, 1987, p. 26). reflection in action is thinking about the thinking that led to the unique situation (i.e., problem or opportunity), inquiring further, deepening understanding, and discovering answers. reflection in action, as described by schön (1987), is considered by many to be the cornerstone process of journaling. “a form of dialogical learning, journal writing has been espoused as a means of facilitating reflection, promote personal growth, and precipitate change since ‘simply to record our behavior is to interfere with it’” (simons, 1978, as cited in andrusyszyn & davie, 1997, reflection through journal writing, ¶1). “reflecting through journal writing gives learners the opportunity to shape their ideas, create new ideas, and connect them to what they already know” (killion, 1999, p. 37). by its very nature, journal writing adds energy and synergy to the learning process. moreover, it provides the instructor with a permanent product that is produced by the student in his or her own “voice” and is a representation of the student’s thinking. benefits of journaling killion (1999) stated that journaling at its simplest is “writing to learn” and unlike “thinking about” ideas, which eventually evaporate, journals are permanent records of those thoughts or ideas. the process of transferring an idea into language forces the mind to process and clarify the idea. when a learner is required to apply language to an idea, the idea takes shape and form. (p. 36) similarly, other authors have duly noted the power of journaling as a pedagogical tool. they have described journaling as “ . . . taking a tour inside each students’ head” (inspiring teachers, n.d./a, ¶2), “ . . . an incredibly flexible instructional tool, useful across the entire curriculum” (kelly, 2004, ¶1), “ . . . a crucible for processing the raw material of experience in order to integrate it with existing knowledge and create new meaning” (kerka, 2002, ¶2), and “ . . . a tool to aid learners in terms of personal growth, synthesis, and reflection on new information that they acquire” (hiemstra, 2001, p. 19). the literature contains many references to the benefits of using journaling in classroom environments (duerden, et al., n.d.; hiemstra, 2001; kelly, 2004; kerka, 2002; killion, 1999). these include, but are not limited to: (a) explicating connections between new knowledge and previous knowledge; (b) examining relationships between what is being learned and the rest of the world; (c) reflecting on personal goals; (d) sorting out experiences; (e) solving problems; (f) enhancing reflective thinking; (g) enhancing metacognition; (h) improving problem solving and critical thinking; (i) facilitating self-exploration, personal growth, and values clarification; and (j) synthesizing ideas, experiences, and opinions after instruction. according to hiemstra (2001), most students and instructors employ journaling to extend learning beyond the knowledge and skills that students may have acquired in daily classroom activities. “by careful choice and judicious working of the journal assignment, students are led in a very natural way to deeper conceptual understanding of the subject at hand” (duerdan, et al., n.d.). some drawbacks to traditional journaling when instructors require students to keep paper journals and collect them for regular review, the logistics of passing them among professors and students within a given time period (a week in most classes) can be a formidable task. the journals themselves can be cumbersome to tote back and forth and they may be forgotten or not picked up. also, while the journals are in the instructor’s care the students are not journaling. phipps (2005) believed that one of the biggest obstacles to journaling was trying to read the writing, both the students and the instructors. journaling also takes time and time management. some students have been noted to wait until the day before the journal is due and then write numerous entries to the journal in an effort to catch up. as phipps (2005) notes, the journal then becomes more of a memory exercise than a true reflective learning. “with online journaling, however, student can compose their daily or weekly entries as assigned while the instructor has access to their journals to check individual progress and offer feedback on a e-journaling: a strategy to support student reflection and understanding 3 continuous basis” (phipps, 2005, problems with traditional reflective journaling, ¶2). considerations when using journaling several authors have highlighted important issues that instructors should consider before they deliberately adopt journaling as a teaching strategy. first among them is selection of the type of journaling to be used. hiemstra (2001) delineated a variety of journal types and formats. for instance, instructors can select a learning journal format in which students record thoughts, reflections, feelings, personal opinions, hopes, or fears during an educational experience. in a second type, the professional journal, the specific purpose is to have students record professional growth and development (hiemstra, 2001). second, instructors should consider possible negative effects of journaling. kelly (2004) postulated that there are at least two. she suggested that journaling in class leads to the loss of instructional time needed to teach course material. technologically based approaches are asynchronous by nature and they virtually eliminate this potential drawback. kelly further posited that some students’ might perceive instructor feedback as criticism. teachers should therefore provide journal feedback that is free of criticism, is formative in nature, and focuses on the process of learning. third, questions have arisen as to whether an instructor should even read students’ journals. those against teacher involvement have cited the perceived lack of freedom for expressing opinions and emotions (kelly, 2004). in this case, the learner “may need to be convinced of the safety of expressing what could be critical comments to someone who has the power to award a grade to their overall performance” (orem, 1997, findings ¶ 1). on the other side of this issue, those who advocate that instructors review journal entries believe that a comment on an entry will help establish a relationship between a student and the instructor. the instructor may also choose to use the journal for academic topics, thereby trying to reinforce the learning that is taking place through classroom interaction, readings, and activities. andrusyszyn and davie (1997) believe that “journals shared between student and teacher were perceived to narrow the distance between the two, providing a form of security valued by the adult learning returning to school” (reflection through journal writing, ¶8). finally, another debate in journaling is whether the instructor should assess journal entries. those against assessing journal entries cite such reasons as: the power relationship between the instructor and student will inhibit thought, assessment will encourage self-censorship, and the writer may “play the game” (kerka, 2002). those in favor of assessment state that: reflection will be more highly esteemed for development, reflection can be guided by the instructor, review of the material gives instructors data on students’ learning process, and, finally, it is necessary to ensure participation (kerka, 2002). ”it is generally accepted that journals themselves should not be subject to grading, although participation or nonparticipation in the process may be evaluated” (andrusyszyn & davie, 1997, interactive journal writing as a design tool, ¶6). whether the journal is formally assessed or not, english (as cited in kerka, 2002) offered some guidelines instructors: “(a) respect—making confidentiality and boundary setting essential; (b) justice—providing equitable feedback; (c) beneficence—guarding privacy, focusing on learning rather than therapy; (d) self—awareness-practicing the reflection you preach; and (e) caring—providing clear expectations and guidelines” (p. 2). e-journaling journaling in the classroom has traditionally been a paper process. e-journaling eliminates some of the drawbacks of journaling mentioned above. additionally, this “intellectual exchange allows faculty members to encourage, guide, and engage student in an academic venue” and “builds a rapport between faculty and student that contributes to positive learning experiences and successful outcomes” (phipps, 2005, ¶ 1). consequently, some instructors have turned to electronic media for journaling. the type of media used varies, but longhurst and sandage (2004) stated that “choosing pedagogically appropriate technology with the lowest support requirement and the simplest learning curve encourages faculty adoption and student learning alike” (p. 69). they noted that the appropriate technology does not feel disruptive or intimidating. for this reason longhurst and sandage (2004) chose email as their method of transmitting journal entries. another group (duerden et al., n.d.) chose to use webnotes™ as their technology for journaling. in both of these studies, the authors found that the use of an electronic means of transmitting journal entries: (a) simplified the entire procedure, (b) was easier and more timely than using paper, and (c) provided more opportune feedback to the students. in sum, based on the research and our personal experiences, we firmly believe that the deliberate practice of journaling is, perhaps, the best instructional strategy for promoting student and instructor reflectivity. first, the use of journaling can provide the opportunity, for both novice and experienced practitioners, to reflect on their practice, thereby better understanding their own epistemology, current issues in education vol. 9 no. 4 which could then inform, and even transform, their practice (orem, 1997). second, when instructors review and comment on student journals they set the stage for their own reflections by creating a window’s view of their teaching from the student perspective. this view provides qualitative data that the instructor can then use to make formative changes in course pace, assignments, and content. third, we appreciate the need to update the act of journaling through appropriate technology. therefore, we deliberately set out to explore e-journaling as the technology of choice for student journaling in two separate courses. finally, we believe that e-journaling supports recommended practice espoused by chickering and gamson (1987). in particular, we feel that e-journaling: encourages contact between students and faculty, encourages active learning, provides prompt feedback, increases time on tasks, and respects diverse talents and ways of learning. the purpose of this research was to explore the utility of e-journaling as a means for promoting student and instructor reflectivity in two separate graduate courses (i.e., educational leadership and instructional design). specifically we were interested in understanding the phenomenon of e-journaling from the student and the instructor perspective. the following questions drove the data collection and analysis. how would students adjust to using technology (e-journaling) as the means for journaling and what challenges would they face? how, if at all, would students use e-journaling to reflect on their understanding of core concepts and make connections between theory and practice? what, if any, benefits would instructors gain from using technology as a strategy for supporting student reflectivity? methodology an exploratory case study design (yin, 2003) was used to answer the research questions. exploratory case studies are typically undertaken before launching larger scale investigations (u.s. general accounting office, 1990) . according to yin (2003), the case study is an appropriate research design when the researcher is interested in investigating “how” and “what” type questions that are focused on describing a contemporary phenomenon. the contemporary phenomenon under study was e-journaling; we took a constructivist approach in seeking to answer the research questions and describe this contemporary phenomenon. two separate graduate-level courses constituted the cases. after reviewing the literature, both collaborating instructors chose a course that they felt would benefit from the journaling experience. the first case, which is described in more detail below, was an educational leadership course that was conducted in one of university’s educational leadership programs. the second case, also described below, was an instructional design course that was a component of a masters program in educational technology, which targets pre-service and in-service teachers. student ejournals, e-mail, and course evaluations constituted the data set for analysis for both cases. as instructors, we actively aimed to create courses that embodied the tenets of reflection in action set forth by schön (1987) and contained in the departments’ conceptual framework. we did this by using a variety of instructional strategies, primary of which was e-journaling. each instructor used the ejournals in a manner to fit their individual pedagogies. however, in consultation, we determined that blackboard® would be the appropriate technology to use for these courses and this research. the blackboard® course management system was widely used at our university and all of the students were familiar with its operation. this met the non“disruptive or intimidating” criteria established by longhurst and sandage (2004). additionally, we agreed that journal postings would be private and collaborative (i.e., between the student and the instructor). this position was supported by phipps (2005) “course management software also provides useful discussion-board capabilities that can be configured for private rooms used exclusively for personal journal entries and instructor responses” (journaling with technology, ¶4). both instructors required that students complete a journal entry at least once weekly. reflective journal entries were a part of their homework, therefore, no class time was expended. the instructors then reviewed the entries, provided feedback in accordance with english’s guidelines (above), “encouraged, guided, and engaged students” (phipps, 2005), and used the journal entries to modify the upcoming face-to-face classes to address issues/questions raised in the journal entries. using ejournaling to modify courses and curriculum prior to holding classes was used as a form of just-in-time teaching (jitt) (novak, n.d.; rozycki, 1999). in jitt web-based interaction on study assignments, this case e-journals, were submitted to the instructors prior to the next class. the instructors read the ejournals “just in time” and adjusted the lesson to fit with the feedback/questions/dialogue of the ejournals. as novak (n.d.) pointed out “the students are expected to develop the answer as far as they can on their own. we finish the job in the classroom” (the web component, ¶ 2). this scaffolding deepens student understanding and ensures a much more student-centered, active classroom. it doesn’t really matter if the student was on the right track, or not. “in fact, partially correct responses are particularly useful e-journaling: a strategy to support student reflection and understanding 5 as classroom discussion fodder” (novak, n.d., the web component, ¶2). we used the group discussion function of blackboard® for student postings of weekly journal entries and instructor comments. we separated all of the students into private groups. each group was comprised of two individuals the student and their instructor. no other individual (student or otherwise) had access to the e-journaling that took place in these private discussion groups. students were given broad guidelines on the information that should be covered in the weekly e-journal postings. this included reflecting on the required readings, course assignments, and classroom discussions. once the journal entry for the week was posted, the instructor would respond with his or her comments, insights, or reflections. though not required, the student could then reply to the instructor’s comments, and so on. the journal entries were not graded per se, but weekly postings were a course requirement. if a student did not post in a given week, a deduction was made from the participation grade for these courses. case 1: the educational leadership course description the students in the educational leadership course (n = 13) were matriculated in one of the university’s educational leadership programs. the particular program employed a cohort model. it was designed to prepare aspiring school leaders for a number of different roles (e.g., supervisor, department chair, assistant principal, principal) within both public and private schools. twelve of these 13 participants were employed full-time as teachers in a variety of urban, suburban, public, and private schools and one student was not working outside of the home. the content of the educational leadership course focused on leading change within the context of current federal and state educational reform initiatives. the course design was founded on the instructor’s beliefs the best way to learn was by doing and knowledge and skill can be built through reflection-in-action (schön, 1987). further, to be effective change agents and manage the complexity of school improvement, educational leaders must understand change as a process. therefore, classes and assignments were intentionally designed to serve as a practice field where students worked in teams to examine the notion of change as a process and develop knowledge and skills in relationship to leading change (i.e., being a change agent). the course had three interrelated assignments. students were to: (a) create and implement personal change plans, (b) work in teams to develop a scholarly team presentation on change as a process, and (c) keep an online journal (i.e., e-journal) account of their weekly activities as those activities related to their progress on their personal change plan. the goal of the primary assignment, constructing and implementing a personal change plan, was intended to provide students with first hand experience with managing a self-selected change initiative. using a model for planning change, as set forth in pearpoint, o'brien, and forest (1995), students worked with a self-selected team of their classmates and created an individualized change plan or "path". each student’s personal change plan was to focus on his or her skills as an educational leader and one or two areas in which he or she wanted to build knowledge and skills. the instructor modeled the development of a path with a student volunteer during class; then students were given two class periods to work with their self-selected teammates to develop their individual path. these teams met once a week for the remainder of the semester, during class time, to review their path progress and to provide mutual support and critically helpful feedback. the e-journal assignment had two goals: promotion of reflection-in-action and provision of multiple asynchronous (participate “any time, any place”) opportunities to individualize and respond to student learning needs. each student was to keep an individual online journal account of his or her weekly activities. students were asked to reflect on their thoughts, feelings, and insights in relationship to personal change, progress on their individual change plan, their work with their teams, and the larger issues of change that educational leaders, as change agents, face in their schools on a day-to-day basis. the following open-ended questions were provided as a guide: what happened this week (as it relates to my path)? what did i do? how do i feel? what did i learn? how can i use what i learned? results concerning the act of journaling, a review of email correspondence and journal entries revealed that students’ were tentative at first about the ejournal assignments and expressed concern about never having kept a journal before, finding the time to journal, and deciphering instructor expectations about the journal content. evident in most of the students’ initial e-mail correspondence (first two weeks of classes) were the frustrations and struggles that they had with the technology. examples included the loss of written material while trying to post it or posting to the blackboard® system when it was unavailable (i.e., on fridays from 5:00 pm to 5:15 pm) and occasional problems with internet failure. as the semester progressed, however, all but one of the students regularly completed the e-journal current issues in education vol. 9 no. 4 assignments. this single student had a history of being remiss in completing assignments in general. in reviewing the content of all student ejournals for the semester, it is apparent that students used their e-journal to reflect on their needs and those of their teammates as they created their personal change plans. they routinely described the progress they were making on their paths and their feelings about working with teammates to create the final project. further, students’ e-journal entries revealed how they understood themselves in relationship to the ways in which they approached change and their role as educational leaders and change agents. finally, most of the students incorporated ideas from their readings and the class lectures into their entries. upon reviewing the content of the instructor’s responses to students’ e-journal entries, it was apparent that they most often took the form of social support as defined by house (1981). house summarized social support as “ . . . an interpersonal transaction involving one or more of the following: (1) emotional concern (liking, love, empathy), (2) instrumental aid (goods or services), (3) information (about the environment), or (4) appraisal (information relevant to self-evaluation)” (p. 39). specially, the support offered was either emotional or informational and was in response to students’ expressed apprehension, triumphs, and challenges. the e-journal excerpt below and the instructor’s response, which follows, are a typical example of a student’s entry and the instructor’s reply. during the second week of the course, student a had an opportunity to work with teammates and create his/her individual change plan. student a reflected on his/her initial concerns about the assignment and the process: first, i must say that being the pathfinder was a much more enjoyable experience than i had first anticipated. i really thought it was going to be a painful process of trying to come up with things to say for an ending that seemed a little overwhelming. when i first chose "my path", it felt like an impossible thing to accomplish in a short period of time . . . . however, when it was all out on a colorful chart, broken down into achievable time frames, it all seemed possible. in response, the instructor reflected: “we often find it difficult to share our dreams aloud; it is always amazing to see how once we do that, the dreams don't seem quite so impossible.” similarly, student b wrote about his/her initial apprehension and realizations: (italicized words in all of the quotations were substituted by the instructor to protect confidentiality.) before i start my journal about my path, i wanted to say how apprehensive i was feeling in regards to this project. while on one hand i immediately saw the importance and power of such a process, i could not envision myself as the focus of such a process due to my sometimes-obsessive quest for privacy. i initially wanted to propose to the class (jokingly-well, maybe not so jokingly-no i do mean jokingly) that since i do not need to change anything about myself or my life, that i would write a list of things that everyone else could work on changing. . . . needless to say, i was not excited about the assignment or the grueling exercise of picking teammates to work with. however, the two partners i ended up with by default . . .were awesome! student c really opened up and shared some very personal information . . . student d is hysterical [funny] and asked many good questions that make student c and myself look at our quest from angles we had not previously thought of. in response the instructor reflected: the process of understanding your purpose and building a vision for yourself is a critical first step in becoming a skilled leader. being able to reflect, as you did, on your hesitancy to open-up is a wonderful first step toward learning about the importance of understanding others. we ask teachers, families, and students to share in so many ways and yet, we may not be willing to do the same. a skillful leader recognizes who he or she is and is open to sharing that with others. instructor comments in the form of informational support (house, 1981) were aimed at individualizing instruction, directing students to resources that might help them with their change plans, and answering questions about the assignments. in the case of either emotional or informational support, the instructor’s reflections ordinarily prompted further student reflections and this contributed to a synergistic dialogue between the instructor and individual students. this excerpt from student a is one example of how students further engaged in reflection based on a previous instructor comment that was a direct response to his/her expressed learning need. additionally, it shows how students were generally able to link their experiences with path to readings from this and other courses and, more importantly, to practice. e-journaling: a strategy to support student reflection and understanding 7 per your posting, i gave some thought to my path and tying it in with fullan, [bolman and deal], etc. of course, fullan came to mind immediately since the "framework for leadership" is now committed to memory. in fact, i have copied the chart and handed them out to various people. i've had such positive feedback when i have explained the ideas behind the 'framework'. in fact, one woman has it posted next to her desk. student b’s e-journal excerpt, from week four, shows how the instructor used the content of journals to guide and adjust instruction from week to week. at this point in the course, a majority of students began to write about their evolving understandings about: the process of change as described in the literature (e.g., beckard & pritchard, 1992; fullan, 2001), what it takes to develop a shared vision for how the group might accomplish the final assignment, and the overall challenges of working in teams. i really appreciate the time you gave us to discuss the assignment at the beginning of class. i liked what you had to say about the process and hearing other students voice the same frustrations as me was beneficial to me-i thought i was the only one who was having a hard time. . . i think i can learn more than how to "change" in this class. . . . in reflecting back to this student the instructor wrote: while it might seem that you are not progressing on your path, it appears that you are thinking about it and that is senge's (1990) using the subconscious. it also seems that you are thinking about leadership and what it takes to create and share knowledge. it is critical that leaders take the time to hear. think about: "when have i experienced good listening?" (wheatly, 2002, p. 88). in sum, students’ perceived that the course and the act of journaling to be beneficial in helping them learn and reflect on the course content. additionally, they were able to make connections from theory to their practice. the overall end of semester students mean ratings for the educational leadership course were high and on a five-point, likert-type scale (5 = strongly agree; 1 = strongly disagree) they ranged from 5.0 – 4.5. of particular note are students’ high ratings for the item “assignments helped me understand the course material” (x = 4.8). a sampling of related written comments from the end of semester evaluations showed similar positive perceptions: “we experienced the content being taught.” “an interesting way to look at our goals!” “the [team work and] group presentations really helped us to understand concepts in the course and helped us work together . . . ”. finally, what was perhaps the most compelling experience for this instructor were the ongoing opportunities to reflect with students about the nature of personal change and its relationship to the larger issues of change that educational leaders, as change agents, face in their schools on a day-to day basis. this excerpt from student a’s final ejournal entry exemplifies those of other students: as our final class approaches, i am reflecting on how much i have changed my thoughts about change!!! often, change seems so insurmountable. between getting all parties on board, implementing the change, riding the "dip" and continuing forth (even through the distractions of others who disagree), it is obvious why many people abandon change even if it is for the better. through the tools path, fullan, [bolman and deal], etc. offered through the course, i can see how change is possible. case 2: the instructional design course design the students (n = 6) in the instructional design course were matriculated in the educational technology masters program. instructional design (id) is a survey course where the students learn fundamental instructional design concepts and processes. a number of instructional design models are examined in the course covering the period from the early 1900 to present day web-based course design. the course content focused on the big picture of instructional design and not on the day-today lesson preparation that teachers complete. the class and the assignments were designed to serve as an authentic practice field where students worked in teams to explore the various id models and choose one that would form the basis for their instructional design project. case studies were used in the beginning of the class to give the students a feel for the overall design process. students were divided into two project teams. each team interviewed prospective “clients” in one of the member’s schools to determine an instructional design project. once the project was chosen and approved by the instructor, the team members completed all of the steps of the id model that they had chosen. the final project was web-based, beta tested by the “customers”, burned onto a cd, and posted to the class web site. this course design was founded on the instructor’s beliefs that the best way to learn was by hands-on, authentic activities. current issues in education vol. 9 no. 4 in addition to the major project, each student was expected to keep an online journal in blackboard®. this e-journal was intended to promote reflection-in-action (schön, 1987). the students were given instructions concerning the requirements for the journal and some of the broad questions that they should address in their postings. additionally, each student was given an article about how to accomplish journaling and the benefits of keeping a journal. they were asked to reflect and comment on the readings for the week, that week’s class, their progress on the project, and anything else that they would like to talk about in the e-journal entry. the instructor read each posting within 24 hours of its due date and commented on each entry. it was my intent to use these e-journal reflections in two different ways, neither of which was explicated to the students. first, i wanted to further the breadth and depth of student learning through dialogue between the instructor and the individual student, prompting them to re-reflect on what they were learning and what its practical application might be in their own academic activities and classrooms. second, i wanted to use the journals as a form of jitt (novak, n.d.) where the e-journaling was a “feedback loop formed by the students outside-ofclass preparation that fundamentally affects what happens during the subsequent in-class time together” (¶1). i would modify my lessons to accommodate student requests for further explanation, clear up confusion and misconceptions that arose in the reflections, and keep track of how students were doing with their project. in terms of the objectives i had in mind when assigning e-journals, the following student e-journal entry synthesized what i was trying to accomplish through personal reflection and collaboration, hands-on activities that expanded the classroom experience, and application of learned material to the student’s own classroom. this article put a whole new slant on my ideas of journaling. truthfully, i thought journaling was assigned merely as a "check up" to be sure we were keeping up with our reading assignments for the course . . . i found the first part, reflection as part of personal learning, to be the more interesting part and also more applicable to being a teacher. . . . in thinking of terms of elementary school, i wonder if it could be taught and used well enough to be timeeffective. results none of the students began this course with this level of understanding. as the literature suggested, each of the students was unsure of journaling in the beginning and their postings were reflective of the tentativeness, confusion, and initial orientation to learning new content. some examples of this confusion manifest in the e-journals were: “many of my thoughts are still somewhat confused at this time and i am hoping that our discussion in class will shed some light on this.;” “i felt as if i had been dropped into the middle of a conversation or argument that i knew very little about.;” “basically, i am in a quandary;” and “well, this is my first reflection and i’m not quite sure what to say.” as the semester progressed jitt and class discussions based on journal entries helped clear this confusion and addressed most of the “voiced” student concerns and questions. the resultant student postings showed an increased depth and breadth of reflection. the following excerpts were taken from the same students’ journals about two-thirds of the way through the semester “my limited knowledge in this area has forced me to do some research on my own so that i can feel more comfortable writing and designing on this topic. this is not a bad thing and is definitely a learning process for me. sometimes it is the initial steps that are the most difficult.” this student contemplated the final project and his/her need to deepen understanding and make connections. this next student provided a view of reflection-inaction and bridging theory to practice as reflected in some lessons that he/she taught in their own classroom. what i did was prepare a powerpoint presentation to re-teach these concepts. my presentation did not include text, so i used my graphics to model the concepts i wanted the students to learn and i explained them audibly. i lessened the cognitive load by not having the students take notes, but rather i gave each student a printout of each slide. i had the students concentrate on the graphics. at each layer, we discussed the characteristics of a particular layer. the whole lesson took me longer, but the results were worth the time it took and the extra effort i had to put into creating the presentation. the next student expressed emergent comfort with the course material and content: “i must say i like case based reasoning. it is a very interesting and very logical concept. i gotta admit, between this and rapid prototyping, i am finding two approaches that i could see myself diving into more.” the last student described an expanding awareness of the depth and breadth of the content and possibilities for application: my interest in multimedia learning has spiked and i am planning some multimedia "modules". i'm planning on reading the book and then using some principles from our books and class readings to design some e-journaling: a strategy to support student reflection and understanding 9 simple video instruction modules and web pages. the living systems model was very good and talking about it in class enforced some ideas i had about multimedia learning. at the end of the instructional design course, students were asked to critique of the journaling assignment. the student responses were overwhelmingly positive and exemplified the many benefits of journaling as found in the literature and noted above. some of sample comments follow. “ i actually found the reflective journal a valuable part of the course. journal entries are something i 'love to hate'. . . . i found it provided structure to my thoughts on the reading. the journal forced me into a very regular routine for the class.” another student wrote about the benefit of the individualized instructor student interaction: one great thing about the journal was that it provided an opportunity to dialogue with you. although this class was face to face, the journal still provided another dimension to the class dynamics and the professor/student relationship. i found this to be a very positive aspect of the course. you asked me questions that led me to further reflection, especially about our project . this student reflected on journaling as a means for thinking about his/her thinking: i have to admit that at first i was hesitant about the prospect of coming up with something insightful to say each week. however soon i found that i had new thoughts and ideas that warranted more insight and thought. once this happened i found the journaling to be a helpful way to question my own thoughts and think about what i was experiencing. as i wrote, it forced me to define my thoughts and feelings which helped me to understand what i was thinking. one student did express that s/he did not like journaling. nor did the individual believe that it improved her/his understanding of the course material. this student wrote: personally, i don't like to write in a reflective journal. when it comes to my own learning, writing in a journal is for me a real waste of time. in this class for example, writing in this journal has not taught me anything new or different, nor has writing in the journal enriched my understanding of the material interestingly, this individual was a teacher who required her/his students to use journals and he/she acknowledged, in his/her entries, that journaling was an impressive tool for learning. furthermore, this individual wrote that s/he would like to know more about journaling so that s/he could use it to better effect in his/her classroom. overall, the experiment with online journaling in this instructional design course was considered a success. five out of the six participants found that journaling added clarity, depth, and understanding to the course. these electronic journals demonstrated reflection, synthesis, and dialogical interaction (andrusyszyn & davie, 1997) additionally, they understood instructional design theory and were able to apply it to their classroom practice. the overall end of semester students mean ratings for the educational leadership course were high and on a five-point, likert-type scale (5 = strongly agree; 1 = strongly disagree) they ranged from 4.3 through 4.8. the instructor also used another, self-developed, course evaluation which was rated on a 10 point likert scale with 1 being unacceptable and 10 being outstanding. question 17 “was accessible to students both in and out of class” received an overall grade of 9.8. question 18 “demonstrated interest and concern for students” was graded 9.6. question 20 “challenged you intellectually” and question 21 “encouraged you to ask question and/or express opinions” were graded 9.3 and 9.5 respectively. overall, these were the highest ratings that this course had ever received. discussion “e-journaling remains underused as a teaching and learning tool” (phipps, 2005, conclusion, ¶1). taken as a whole, the results of these two exploratory case studies show promise for ejournaling as a tool that instructors can use to enhance student reflection and learning. the results also indicated that the interactions that take place between individual students and the instructor have the potential to support students in their learning and in meeting their individualized learning needs. the students in these two courses made relatively seamless adjustments to using technology (e-journaling) as the means for journaling. while some of the students reported initial challenges with e-journaling, because blackboard® was familiar to all of them they did not perceive the technology to be overly disruptive or intimidating (longhurst & sandage, 2004). furthermore, as the semester progressed the students not only posted their initial reflections, but also posted further comments in response to instructor comments. the students enrolled in these courses clearly used e-journaling to reflect on their understanding of core concepts and make connections between theory and practice. for the most part, students’ journal entries followed a pattern current issues in education vol. 9 no. 4 explicated by orem (1997). the first journal entries showed that these students were unaccustomed to journal writing. these early entries revealed little exploration of the subject to any depth, nor did they reflect to any great extent on what impact the journaling was having on their learning, thoughts, motivations, and pedagogy. nevertheless, the continuing dialogic exchange between the instructors and the individual students aided the students in using their journaling to deepen their learning and reflection. as the students became more comfortable with the act of journaling and reflection-in-action, they demonstrated a greater depth of learning and a more positive affinity for the subject matter ( orem, 1997) as evidenced in the journal content. additionally, the interaction between the students and the instructor took on a more collaborative tone as the semester progressed. the end of course student evaluations and reflections attested to the efficacy that the students perceived e-journaling had for them. students and instructors perceived several benefits from the use of technology as a strategy for promoting student reflectivity. students and instructors alike perceived that reflection in action through e-journaling appeared to provide students with a routine structure for thinking about their readings and classroom discussion and a forum for voicing the challenges they faced in bridging the theory to practice gap. the students in this study perceived that they were getting a better understanding of the course material, that it was more real to them, and that they could then apply what they had learned in more situations and in a very constructive manner. e-journaling also supported a synergistic dialogue between instructors and individual students. specifically, it provided instructors were with multiple asynchronous (participate “any time, any place”) opportunities to individualize and respond to student learning needs. students overwhelmingly reported (formally and anecdotally) that the e-journal experience afforded them a greater depth of learning and satisfaction with the course. both instructors found that the e-journaling experience, though creating more work for them, was beneficial. we benefited from the e-journal experience by gaining insight into students’ reports of their problem solving and application of learning outside of the classroom. moreover, we believe that the use of technology contributed to our learning, professional growth, and enhanced our teaching. in particular, the speed with which we could provide feedback to the students aided both instructors. students could read comments from the instructors within hours of their postings, reflect on these comments, and re-comment if they chose. student entries and their follow-up comments provided direction for the next week’s lectures, activities, and adjustments to readings, for example. with all of the interaction that took place the instructors felt that they could formatively change lessons based on previous feedback and better address, in these lessons, the individual needs of each student. a method of “just in time” teaching (novak, n.d.; rozycki, 1999). though it was hard to determine if the regular interaction of student and instructor was a cause of the results we found, or whether it was solely the individual reflection contained in the students’ journaling, we believe that the preponderance of benefit accrued to the act of reflective journaling. our basis for this belief is the feedback we received, as explained above, from the end-of-course surveys, and from anecdotal information garnered through in-class discussions. future directions these initial experiences appear to hold promise for e-journaling as a valuable pedagogical technique in the constructivist oriented classroom. one apparent advantage of e-journaling that needs further exploration is the asynchronous opportunity for instructors to respond to students’ individual learning needs and work with them to bridge the gap between theory and practice. larger scale and longer term studies should be conducted to identify specific advantages of e-journaling. based on all the evidence gathered and the feedback we received through these exploratory case studies, we have continued to use ejournaling in classes that we conduct. to better quantify and qualify our student experiences with ejournaling, we have developed a short questionnaire that is being administered, pre and post, in each of the courses where e-journaling is currently employed. we hope to report the results of these courses and the pre/post questionnaires in a future manuscript. references andrusyszyn, m., & davie, l. 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(2000). turning to one another. san francisco: berrett-koehler. yin, r. k. (2003). case study research (3rd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage. e-journaling: a strategy to support student reflection and understanding 13 2006 article citation king f.b. & larocco d.j. (2006, feb).e-journaling: a strategy to support student reflection and understanding. current issues in education [on-line], 9(4). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume9/number4/ author notes dr. frederick b. king hartford university rking@hartford.edu dr. king is an assistant professor of educational technology, education and human services department, university of hartford. his primary research interests include the integration of technology to enhance and improve learning across the curriculum, asynchronous distance education, metacognition, and student self-regulatory skills. dr. diana j. larocco hartford university dlarocco@hartford.edu dr. larocco is an assistant professor in the department of educational leadership at the university of hartford. before coming to the university, she worked in the field of developmental disabilities for 29 years and has extensive experience as a special education teacher and administrator. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation king, f. b., & larocco, d. j. (2006). e-journaling: a strategy to support student reflection and understanding. current issues in education, 9(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1596 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number4/index.html mailto:rking@hartford.edu mailto:dlarocco@hartford.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1596 cie template 1 volume 18, number 2 august 19, 2015 issn 1099-839x using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument lorraine dagostino 1 , james carifio 2 , and qing zhao 4 university of massachusetts at lowell jennifer d. c. bauer 3 middlesex community college nor hashimah hashim 5 universiti sains malaysia though the designers may claim otherwise, the vast majority of reading comprehension instruments measure a student’s mastery of specific skills, such as decoding or phonological awareness, rather than their ability to extract meaning from text. this article is the third in a series in which the researchers examine two specific malaysian reading comprehension instruments developed by a team of researchers at the universiti of sains malaysia. these tests were developed for the purpose of evaluating reading comprehension abilities of students in the primary grades (test i for grade 1-3, test ii for grades 4-6) in malaysia (hashim, 2006). in the previous studies, we established that the english version of the test was comparable to the malay version, and that bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001), could be used to classify the test items. in this study, we extend our prior work by comparing the malay classification scheme with bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). they found that rarely did questions classified by the malay structure as testing higher-order reading skills, such as evaluation, actually do so. instead, most questions merely identified students’ reading skills, rather than comprehension. thus, more work is needed in order to develop an instrument that actually measures the evaluative abilities of students’ as they interact with texts. keywords: reading comprehension; cultural background; cognitive process; bloom’s revised taxomony for decades researchers in the field of education (and beyond) have attempted to define the term “reading comprehension,” as well as isolate the skills needed to extract meaning from text. in conjunction with this research, models of reading comprehension were (and continue to be) developed, and subsequently tests were designed to assess the reading comprehension skills of students of all ages. however, do these tests actually measure what they purport and reflect models of reading comprehension? with the amorphous definitions of reading comprehension found within reading research literature, is it possible to develop a test that accurately measures a student’s ability to extract meaning from text? previous work prior to this study, we completed two studies using the same series of reading comprehension tests current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 2 developed by a team of researchers at the universiti of sains malaysia. the reason we selected the malay tests is because these tests were constructed using the dagostino and carifio model of reading comprehension (2004), which was developed for the english language. in the first study, we evaluated the comparability tests with their english translations on the basis of skills and levels according to a conceptual framework of reading comprehension developed by dagostino and carifio (2004; dagostino, carifio, bauer, & zhao, 2013). the results of that study showed strong correlations across the malay and english versions of the test on the classification of reading skills and levels of reading comprehension. the second study examined the english version of the test to see if there were any correlations of bloom’s classifications of cognitive dimensions of thought with the classification by reading skill and level of comprehension as determined in our previous work. to accomplish this task, three raters classified the test items using bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). the results demonstrated high-levels of rater agreements among the classification for each test item, indicating that bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) could appropriately be applied as a classification scheme for the tests. these findings were reported at the 2013 annual eastern educational research association (eera) conference. present work after analyzing the results of the first two studies, we felt that more work needed to be done. the primary purpose of the present work was to draw upon the results of the previous studies, and compare and analyze the relationship between the malay tests classification system and bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). with this purpose in mind, we set out to explore the following research question: what relationship, if any, exists between the original malay classification system and bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001)? organization of the paper with this research question in mind, we will begin with a description of the malay tests, followed by an overview of their development and content. next we will describe bloom’s revised taxonomy of the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) and explain its application to the present study. next, we will outline this study, including the parameters and limitations, methodology, procedures, results and subsequent data analysis. finally, we will discuss our findings, their implications, and possible future research. the next two sections of the paper, describing the malay tests and bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension, were originally published as part of the author’s previous studies (see dagostino et al., 2013). the malay tests the description and construction of the malay tests the original two malay tests, constructed by a team of researchers at the universiti of sains malaysia, were developed for the purpose of evaluating reading comprehension abilities of students in the primary grades (test i for grade 1-3, test ii for grades 4-6) in malaysia (hashim, 2006). the following section of this article describes the process for the development and the content of these tests. steps for design and content of the malay instruments using the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension (1994) as a theoretical basis, the development of the test focused on three components: a) defining and selecting the category of the comprehension level as well as of the comprehension skill, b) selection and development of the reading texts, and c) the development of the test questions and the answers. the two tests were designed by conducting a preliminary table 1 specifications for malay reading comprehension tests with this general template being the same for test i and test ii reading comprehension category reading skills reading skills literal (l) l1a, l1b, l1c identifying meaning of word/ phrase/ sentence l2 identifying main idea l3 identifying important point l4 making comparison l5 identifying cause-effect l6 identifying sequence of ideas/events inferential (f) f1 interpreting main idea f2 interpreting important point f3 interpreting comparison f4 interpreting cause-effect f5 making a conclusion critical creative (k) k1 evaluating k2 making a conclusion k3 internalizing k4 identifying the moral of the story/lesson using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 3 survey that included a discussion with malay teachers, a review of teaching learning materials and observations of teachers teaching in a classroom. once the survey was completed, a first draft was developed for test i and for test ii. the writing of the first draft was accomplished through a series of workshops with malay language teachers, experts from curriculum development center, administrators from the district education office and state education department, lecturers of school of educational studies from the universiti sains malaysia (hashim, 2006). as a result of this work, the researchers established the following table of specifications (table 1), which outlines the relationships between the reading comprehension levels and reading skills underlying the construct of both tests. defining the reading comprehension levels and the reading comprehension skills the reading comprehension levels and the reading skills determine the difficulty and the nature of the reading texts and the test items. the malaysian tests have three comprehension levels defined as follows (hashim, 2006): a) literal (message extraction) reading comprehension, which refers to the memorization of facts in texts where information is explicitly stated at a basic level of thinking; b) inferential (message interpretation) reading comprehension which refers to the ability of students to interpret meaning where they need to use overt information along with intuition, reasoning, and experience to attain the higher level of thinking assessed by the malay tests; and, c) critical/creative (message evaluation) reading comprehension, which refers to the student’s ability to do an overall critical evaluation of certain information or an idea that has been read in terms of the precision and/or suitability of the given information of a new idea, encountered. this critical evaluation may require some divergent thinking and depend to some degree upon the knowledge and personal experience of the student, but it focuses mostly on convergent critical thinking being done by the student. reading comprehension skills. there are ten reading comprehension skills that are assessed by the malay tests (hashim, 2006): (a) identifying meaning of word/phrase/sentence; (b) identifying the main idea; (c) identifying the important point; (d) identifying the causeeffect relationship; (e) identifying the sequence of ideas/events; (f) making a comparison; (g) drawing a conclusion; (h) evaluating; (i) internalizing; (k) identifying the moral of the story/lesson. these ten skills range from simple reading comprehension to what is called deep or deeper understanding, which is a first step towards what is called evaluative reading. these skills are the ones that usually constitute the classification of items assessed in most reading tests. types and contents of reading texts there are several types of text that make the text broad in scope and representative of various types of reading of non-technical materials that are encountered in daily reading situations (hashim, 2006). there are essays, fiction, reports, letters, poems, biographies, speeches, dialogues, and news reports. there are 12 texts for test i and 12 texts for test ii. there are various subjects (literature, history, etc.) the individual texts are 100 words or less for test i and 100 words or more for test ii. the passages in the test for grades (1-3) are simpler in structure as well as expectations for level of reading comprehension than those used for grades 4-6. a research group, three expert teachers, teacher trainers, psychometric and experts from the university developed the texts, with ideas for the texts coming from books and magazines. development of the test items the question and answer formats for the tests took various forms such as a) sentences from text that needed completion with a choice of answers, b) items that needed a choice of answers in multiple choice form, and c) instructions and blanks to be filled in with multiple choice form. an item specification table was developed to categorize the types of items in the test (hashim, 2006). each test consists of 50 multiple choice items designed to evaluate reading comprehension with consideration given to reading skill ability and reading comprehension level. some specific things were considered in the item development. they are as follows: a) arrangement of each item was based upon reading comprehension skill (forms, style, pupils’ existing knowledge), and b) implicit information and inferential definition. in the case of implicit information, the text considers information in the text and students’ background. in the case of inferential definition the test considers an integrated synthesis of literal with existing knowledge, intuition and reader’s imagination. the following table of specifications include the classification by reading comprehension level and reading skill for each test item. both malay tests were built from the same general table of specifications, but classification by reading skill varied for each test (table 2 and 3; see appendix a). design and choice of answers and distracters a multiple-choice format was used because it was considered as most objective. each answer had four options (a, b, c, d for each item with each option coded a=1, b=2, c=3 and d= 4). the correct answer was scored 1, and the wrong answer was scored 0. the design of the answers and distracters required a) the suitability of choice of answers relative to the cognitive task that was related to the content and the texts, and b) syntax and semantic forms needed to be different from the texts so current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 4 that students could be assessed on how well they understood the context of the meaning (norhashim, 2006). reliability measures of the two malay tests the malay researchers examined three types of internal consistency reliability estimators for both tests with the results being almost identical for both tests. the first internal consistency (of test-taker overall performance) reliability estimator computed was the cronbach alpha coefficient, which was r = +.66 (n = 2763) for test i and r = +.61 (n = 4101) for test ii. as is well known, test length, sample size, and test content and item type heterogeneity affect and limit the size of the cronbach alpha one will observe in any given context. as test content and the cognitive levels and operations assessed are so heterogeneous for both tests, the cronbach alphas observed for each test are quite good to excellent given that test lengths (50 items each) and sample sizes (n = 2763 and 4101+) and are in the range that one would expect given the qualitative characteristics of both tests. the second internal consistency reliability estimator the malay researchers computed was the guttman reliability coefficient, which assess the degree to which students’ performances on the test are hierarchical in character (i.e., students who do well on low level items are not doing well on high level items and vice versa), which performances should be for test i and test ii given how they were constructed and their qualitative characteristics. the guttman reliability coefficient for test i was r = +.77 (n = 2763) and for test ii was r = +.72 (n = 4101), which are excellent to outstanding and indicate that this particular qualitative characteristic of both tests are as hypothesized and purported. the third internal consistency reliability estimator the malay researchers computed was the kuderrichardson odd-even items reliability coefficient, which assesses the degree to which items types and their characteristics are evenly balanced across the test, as well as students’ performances on the items on the test. for example, the kuder-richardson reliability coefficient would be low if all of the odd items were easy (or recall) items and all of the even items were difficult (or skill) item, or if all of the poorly constructed and nonfunctioning items were easy items as opposed as opposed to this characteristic being evenly balanced across both the odd and even items. the kuder-richardson odd-even items reliability coefficient for test i was r = +.77 (n = 2763) and for test ii was r = +.73 (n = 4101), which are good to excellent and indicate that the various types of items and their various characteristics were evenly balanced across each test as were student performances. as one-administration internal estimates of various types of consistencies in student performances across each of these two tests and thus internal consistency reliabilities estimates, the results obtained by the malay researchers of the three different indicators of internal reliabilities estimates were excellent. high oneadministration internal consistency estimates of reliabilities, however, are no guarantee that test-retest reliabilities will be equally high as they could actually be lower or higher which is why the malay researchers are currently collecting the data to generate the test-retest reliability coefficients as these coefficients are key in the assessment of change across time on these measures. but to date, the reliabilities estimates for each test that are available are excellent and particularly so given the internal complexity of each test, and each is also initially supportive empirically of specific aspects of the construct validity of each test, although not as direct or strong evidence as other analyses might indicate. bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) and its application to the present study bloom’s original taxonomy was designed to help teachers establish objectives for instruction, learning and assessment. this revised taxonomy has served to guide the design and the implementation of accountability programs and standards-based curriculum. the revision of the original taxonomy that was used in the present study has been refined to incorporate new knowledge into the original framework. this revised taxonomy gave us a good conceptual framework for determining the cognitive levels and ability reflected in test items on the reading comprehension test that we expect to use as an assessment instrument in subsequent studies. the test already has been examined for general levels of reading comprehension and reading skills. what we hoped to accomplish in the present study was to compare the classification system developed by the malay test writers with a table of specifications developed using bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). this taxonomy was chosen from other ways to evaluate cognitive abilities because it is most applicable, familiar and understandable to the classroom teacher, yet detailed enough to give valuable insight into cognitive processes that are considered necessary to learning and to the assessment of success in instruction and learning (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). further work is planned to compare bloom’s revised taxonomy with other classification frameworks for measuring cognitive abilities as they may manifest themselves in tests of reading comprehension. using bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) gave us a standard, well-recognized classification system for our immediate goals, and it also indirectly should be useful for guiding instruction and curriculum guidelines that may be generated by our present work. this consistency across these tasks should simplify the work of the classroom teacher and the researcher. in sum, bloom’s revised taxonomy gives us definitions for classifying the learning, teaching and assessing of the cognitive dimension of thought that is using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 5 central to instruction in most subject areas, and in relationship to our work in reading comprehension as an aspect of assessment of literacy in a way that differs from most current measures of reading comprehension directly. it should be noted that although our classification process focuses on the categories of the cognitive process dimension of the taxonomy, it also takes into consideration two categories of the knowledge dimension, that of factual and conceptual knowledge, but not procedural and metacognitive knowledge. however, categorizing test items using the two categories of knowledge (factual and conceptual knowledge) was not part of the present study. in sum, bloom’s revised taxonomy gives us objectives for classifying the learning, teaching and assessing of the cognitive dimension of thought that is central to instruction in most subject areas, and in relationship to our work in reading comprehension as an aspect of assessment of literacy in a way that differs from most current measures of reading comprehension. in table 4 (appendix b) is a chart of the bloom’s revised taxonomy and descriptions of each categories as found in a taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessment (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). methodology procedures the malay version of the test was translated into english, and in a previous study, three expert raters completed the inter-rater judgments of the answers, levels and skills of each test item. in a subsequent study, the raters applied bloom’s taxonomy as a method of categorization for each test item. the raters had either a ph.d. in language arts and literacy, or were completing work for that degree. one of the raters spoke both english and chinese, and another works with young children from several cultures and language backgrounds. previous ratings by these same raters had judged the items for skills and levels as described earlier in this paper with good results (dagostino et al., 2013). the raters first made a comparison between the malay table of specifications and bloom’s revised taxonomy and then derived a ‘cross-walk” from the first malay classification system to the other (bloom’s rt). using the definition of levels and skills as outlined in the malay table of specifications, the raters assigned each individual test item to a level of bloom’s revised taxonomy using the definitions of the levels, which essentially estimated the overlap, intersection or “correlation” of the two classification systems as a results of the 50 items so classified for each malay test. the resulting “cross-walked” joint table of specifications is presented in tables 5 and 6 (see appendix c). next, the raters evaluated each test item from both malay tests and classified them using bloom’s revised taxonomy of cognitive abilities. the three expert raters completed their individual judgments by first reading each item of test i and test ii independently, and then determining the bloom’s revised taxonomy level of cognitive ability they felt best applied to the dimension of reading comprehension being tested. the categories for classification are as follows: 1) remember, 2) understand, 3) apply, 4) analyze, 5) evaluate, 6) create. (as a reminder of each category, see table 4.) after independent readings and ratings of the test items using the revised taxonomy were completed, the raters compared their judgments for all of their ratings. there was not a need for a reconciliation process among the raters based upon this discussion because of the high level of agreement among the three raters. after the quantitative analysis of the ratings was completed, the raters met again to discuss the results to evaluate the meaning of the raters’ agreements on the item ratings. results and data analysis the analysis and results section of this paper presents the data and its interpretation for the following research question: what relationship, if any, exists between the original malay classification system and bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension (anderson & karthwohl, 2001)? to analyze the data, we compared the crosswalk tables of specifications of test items by malay levels/skills and bloom’s revised taxonomy (tables 5 and 6), which predicted the bloom’s revised taxonomy classification of each test item based on the malay table of specifications, with the actual bloom’s revised taxonomy classifications (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) the raters assigned to each test item. table 7 (see appendix d) represents the comparison between these expected results and the actual results for the evaluation of the test items. as can be seen from table 7, there was a major discrepancy between the predicted results and the actual results. according to the original malay table of specifications, there are three levels of reading comprehension for each test, literal, inferential, and critical/creative. these levels correspond to bloom’s revised taxonomy cognitive processes of remember, understand, and evaluate (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). however, when we sorted each individual test item for both test, they found that only 40% of the items for test 1, and 38% of the items for test 2 matched the predicted results found in the cross-walk tables of specifications of test items by malay levels/skills and bloom’s revised taxonomy (tables 5 and 6). additionally, 22% of the items on test 1, and 16% of the items on test 2, were sorted into categories of bloom’s revised taxonomy that were not on the cross-walk tables of specifications. furthermore, though the malay table of specifications indicates a mix of literal, inferential, and current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 6 critical/creative test items for each test, when we applied the bloom’s revised taxonomy framework (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) to the test items, we found that the majority of the test items fell into the category of understanding (62% for test 1, 58% for test 2 – see the full results in figure 1). figure 1. reconciled answers for each malay test. this figure illustrates the reconciled answers of the three raters when evaluating the individual answers of the two malay tests using bloom’s revised taxonomy: the cognitive dimension as a framework. findings and discussion based upon the results of the analyses, we have found three categories of concerns and questions that should help us focus our discussion. the first category focuses on the comparison of the malay classifications and the bloom’s revised taxonomy classifications (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) by addressing two questions. the two questions are: a) why did the predicted bloom’s and the actual bloom’s classifications not match as we hoped that they would? b) does the bloom’s classification more accurately describe test items than the malay classification, or does it simply refine or transform the malay classification in some way? in response to these questions, we wish to suggest that the mismatch may be attributed to the fact that the predicted classifications are drawn from the malay classification system, whereas the actual classifications were based upon an evaluation of the individual test items using the bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). in this case then, the malay classification of the test items may reflect something quite different from the cognitive processes that we believe are at the heart of reading comprehension and understanding as they are identified bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson & karthwohl, 2001), or that the taxonomy intends to do. this discrepancy in the two classifications suggests that each system may actually represent a different view of reading comprehension and point to strengths and weaknesses in these two views. we propose that bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) be considered as a construct for transforming the malay system or levels, as the bloom’s revised taxonomy classifications challenge the malay classification system as a way to measure reading comprehension. we also believe that the bloom’s classifications (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) reflects the dagostino-carifio model (1994) model of reading comprehension, as described in their original work, better than the malay system does, raising questions about how the dagostino-carifio model (1994) was actually applied in the original malay work. what we believe is that this discrepancy reflects the idea that what the malay classifications are doing is reflecting readers’ behaviors rather than the readers’ understanding of the text, where understanding means getting meaning and showing cognitive level of thought. this notion of reading comprehension is part of the substance of the dagostinocarifio model (1994), and will direct our future work. this thinking in addressing the first concern and questions leads us to the second category of concern, which is the question: is the skills model, as reflected in the malay classifications, adequate or too limited for the needs of the reader in today’s world? that is, is looking at behaviors, as has been done for years in the assessment of reading comprehension, rather than at meaning and cognition, misleading us about the readers’ optimal performance in comprehending a text? we believe that it is, and that changes need to be made in the model used for assessing reading comprehension so that it reflects the reader’s understanding (ability to get meaning and cognitive level) rather than the skills reflected in the reader’s behavior. we believe that our data challenges the perception that assessing skills assesses reading comprehension adequately, and raises the question: do we need a different way to test reading comprehension? and what then is the goal in doing so? if we consider the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension (1994), we find the answer that the ability to evaluate a text is a reasonable, attainable and necessary goal for the kind of assessment that we seek. implicit in the dagostino-carifio model (1994) is the principle that evaluation runs constantly throughout the reading comprehension process, and that without evaluation, understanding of the text is incomplete and the reading process quite limited. and it is this dimension of reading comprehension that is missing from the present assessment of reading comprehension, particularly in the instruments like the malay tests, for the primary and intermediate grades. we think that the omission is based upon a limited view of the cognitive abilities of young readers as well as the difficulty of assessing this dimension of reading comprehension with psychometric 0 10 20 30 40 t o ta ls categories of bloom’s revised taxonomy – the cognitive dimension test 1 test 2 using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 7 certainty, particularly given the formats for measurement that are presently used. our belief is that when the content of the passages of a reading comprehension assessment instrument is familiar and relevant to the young reader’s background that they can do the higher-level thinking required to evaluate a text. we also believe that using a classification of test items like bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) will give a better profile of how well a reader understands a text and gets meaning rather than simply reflect the skills applied to processing the text. we acknowledge that some assessment instruments may include items that claim to require some critical or evaluative reading, but we do not believe that, in general, most instruments do it adequately. in turn, instruments do not tell us a reader’s optimal ability, or inform educators as to how well the reader will meet the demands of today’s world. we believe that the results of the present study point in the direction that we need to go to accomplish this goal; that is, to measure higher-levels of thinking as they apply to reading comprehension and find a good format to do so. the third and final category of concern has to do with the possible limitation of our work and whether our analyses of the data gives adequate support to the above discussion and final conclusion about the difficulty and present inadequacy of assessing reading comprehension as we do today. however, if we are correct in our analyses and in concluding that reading comprehension can be better assessed by using bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson & karthwohl, 2001) for item classification and profiling student reading ability, we will be challenging many of the instruments as well as frameworks such as the common core that are presently used to guide instruction and assessment of reading comprehension. in general, we believe the testing industry needs to shift from a simple behaviorist paradigm to one that reflects the cognitive view as it is reflected in the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension (1994) and subsequently in the bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). our thinking and conclusions do not necessarily mean that the items in this malay test are bad, but that the test does not go far enough in its assessment of a reader’s ability, and that a different classification system may give a better profile of the reader’s optimal performance and ability. further work the next step in our work and our series of studies is to establish a table of specifications that reflects this added dimension of reading comprehension so that such an instrument, or section of an instrument, may be developed. next comes the development and validation of items that can be added to the malay test with their classifications according to bloom’s revised taxonomy (anderson & karthwohl, 2001). this work then can be used to test children in the primary and intermediate grades with an instrument that aims to reflect the goal of assessing higher-level thinking, such as that found in evaluative reading, as it is reflected in reading comprehension assessment instruments. doing this will not only extend educators’ ability to assess optimal performance, but also test the applicability of the dagostino-carifio model of reading comprehension (1994) for primary and intermediate grade readers. references anderson, l. e., & karthwohl, d. (eds.). (2001). a taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessment. new york: longman. cain, k., & oakhill, j. (2006). assessment matters: issues in the measurement of reading comprehension. british journal of educational psychology, 76(4), 697–708. dagostino, l., & carifio, j. (1994). evaluative reading and literacy: a cognitive view. boston: allyn and bacon. dagostino, l., carifio, j., bauer, j., & zhao, q. (2013). cross-cultural reading comprehension assessment in malay and english as it relates to the dagostino and carifio model of reading comprehension. current issues in education, 16(1). dagostino, l., carifio, j., bauer, j. d., zhao, q., & hashim, n. h. (2014). assessment of a reading comprehension instrument as it relates to cognitive abilities as defined by bloom’s revised taxonomy. current issues in education, 17(1). harman, h. h. (1976). modern factor analysis. chicago: university of chicago press. hashim, h. n. (2006). reading comprehension in malaysia primary grades 1-6. penang, malaysia: universiti sains malyasia. mcnamara, d. s., & kendeou, p. (2011). translating advances in reading comprehension research to educational practice. international electronic journal of elementary education, 4(1), 33-46. storch, s. a., & whitehurst, g. j. (2002). oral language and code-related precursors to reading: evidence from a longitudinal structural model. developmental psychology, 38(6), 934-947. winstead, l. (2004). increasing academic motivation and cognition in reading, writing, and mathematics: meaning-making strategies. educational research quarterly, 28(2), 30-49. current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 8 appendix a tables 2 and 3 table 2 malay table of specifications including test items by classification for test i test item malay classification level skill 1 literal (l) main idea 2 literal (l) important point 3 literal (l) cause and effect 4 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 5 literal (l) main idea 6 literal (l) important point 7 literal (l) cause and effect 8 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 9 literal (l) main idea 10 literal (l) comparison 11 literal (l) cause and effect 12 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 13 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 14 literal (l) comparison 15 literal (l) comparison 16 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 17 inferential (f) important point 18 inferential (f) comparison 19 inferential (f) cause and effect 20 inferential (f) conclusion 21 inferential (f) main idea 22 inferential (f) comparison 23 inferential (f) cause and effect 24 inferential (f) conclusion 25 inferential (f) main idea 26 inferential (f) important point using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 9 27 inferential (f) cause and effect 28 inferential (f) conclusion 29 inferential (f) main idea 30 inferential (f) comparison 31 inferential (f) comparison 32 inferential (f) cause and effect 33 critical creative (k) evaluating 34 critical creative (k) conclusion 35 critical creative (k) internalizing 36 critical creative (k) moral of the story 37 critical creative (k) conclusion 38 critical creative (k) conclusion 39 critical creative (k) internalizing 40 critical creative (k) evaluating 41 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 42 literal (l) cause and effect 43 inferential (f) main idea 44 inferential (f) conclusion 45 critical creative (k) evaluating 46 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 47 literal (l) main idea 48 inferential (f) important point 49 inferential (f) comparison 50 critical creative (k) moral of the story current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 10 table 3 malay table of specifications including test items by classification for test ii test item malay classification level skill 1 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 2 literal (l) important point 3 literal (l) cause and effect 4 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 5 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 6 literal (l) comparison 7 literal (l) cause and effect 8 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 9 literal (l) main idea 10 literal (l) important point 11 literal (l) cause and effect 12 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 13 literal (l) main idea 14 literal (l) comparison 15 literal (l) comparison 16 literal (l) cause and effect 17 inferential (f) main idea 18 inferential (f) important point 19 inferential (f) cause and effect 20 inferential (f) conclusion 21 inferential (f) main idea 22 inferential (f) important point 23 inferential (f) cause and effect 24 inferential (f) conclusion 25 inferential (f) main idea 26 inferential (f) important point 27 inferential (f) comparison using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 11 28 inferential (f) conclusion 29 inferential (f) main idea 30 inferential (f) important point 31 inferential (f) comparison 32 inferential (f) cause and effect 33 critical creative (k) evaluating 34 critical creative (k) conclusion 35 critical creative (k) internalizing 36 critical creative (k) moral of the story 37 critical creative (k) conclusion 38 critical creative (k) evaluating 39 critical creative (k) conclusion 40 critical creative (k) conclusion 41 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 42 literal (l) main idea 43 inferential (f) comparison 44 inferential (f) cause and effect 45 critical creative (k) moral of the story 46 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 47 literal (l) important point 48 inferential (f) comparison 49 inferential (f) conclusion 50 critical creative (k) evaluating current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 12 appendix b table 4 table 4 definitions of the categories of bloom’s revised taxonomy – the cognitive dimension (remembering, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create) remembering recognizing involves retrieving relevant information from long-term memory in order to compare it with presented information. also identifying recalling involves retrieving relevant information from long-term memory when a prompt is given. the prompt often is a question. also retrieving. understand interpreting occurs when a student is able to convert information from one representation to another representation. also translating or paraphrasing. exemplifying occurs when a student gives a specific example or instance of a general concept or principle. also illustrate. classifying occurs when a student recognizes that something belongs to a certain category. it is a complementary process to exemplifying. summarizing occurs when a student suggest a single statement that represents presented information or abstracts a general theme. also generalize or abstract. inferring involves finding a pattern within a series of examples or instances. the student abstracts a concept or a principle that accounts for a set of instances. also extrapolating or concluding. comparing involves detecting similarities and differences between two or more objects, events, ideas or situations. also contrasting, matching. explaining occurs when a student is able to construct and use a cause-effect model of a system. the model may be derived from a formal theory or may be grounded in research and experience. also constructing a model. apply executing occurs when a student routinely carries out a procedure when confronted with a familiar task. also carrying out. implementing occurs when a student selects and uses a procedure to perform an unfamiliar task. it is carried out in conjunction with understand. also using. analyze differentiating occurs when there is a determination of the relevant or important pieces of a message in relation to the whole structure. organizing occurs relative to the way the pieces of a message are organized into a coherent structure. attributing occurs when the underlying purpose or point of view of the message is related to the entire communication. evaluate checking involves testing for internal consistencies or fallacies in an operation, product, or communication to see whether data support or disconfirm hypothesis or conclusions as well as the accuracy of facts. critiquing involves judging a product, operation or communication against externally imposed criteria and standard. create generating occurs when a problem is represented and alternatives and hypothesis that meet certain criteria are produced. using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 13 planning occurs when a solution method is devised that meets a problem’s criteria for developing a plan for solving the problem. producing occurs when a plan is carried out for solving a given problem that meets certain specifications. current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 14 appendix c tables 5 and 6 table 5 cross-walk table of specifications of test items by malay levels/skills and bloom’s revised taxonomy – test 1 test item malay classification bloom’s revised taxonomy classification level skill 1 literal (l) main idea 1. remember 2 literal (l) important point 1. remember 3 literal (l) cause and effect 1. remember 4 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 1. remember 5 literal (l) main idea 1. remember 6 literal (l) important point 1. remember 7 literal (l) cause and effect 1. remember 8 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 1. remember 9 literal (l) main idea 1. remember 10 literal (l) comparison 2. understand 11 literal (l) cause and effect 1. remember 12 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 1. remember 13 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 1. remember 14 literal (l) comparison 2. understand 15 literal (l) comparison 2. understand 16 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 1. remember 17 inferential (f) important point 2. understand 18 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 19 inferential (f) cause and effect 2. understand 20 inferential (f) conclusion 2. understand 21 inferential (f) main idea 2. understand 22 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 23 inferential (f) cause and effect 2. understand 24 inferential (f) conclusion 2. understand 25 inferential (f) main idea 2. understand 26 inferential (f) important point 2. understand using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 15 27 inferential (f) cause and effect 2. understand 28 inferential (f) conclusion 2. understand 29 inferential (f) main idea 2. understand 30 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 31 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 32 inferential (f) cause and effect 2. understand 33 critical creative (k) evaluating 5. evaluate 34 critical creative (k) conclusion 5. evaluate 35 critical creative (k) internalizing 5. evaluate 36 critical creative (k) moral of the story 5. evaluate 37 critical creative (k) conclusion 5. evaluate 38 critical creative (k) conclusion 5. evaluate 39 critical creative (k) internalizing 5. evaluate 40 critical creative (k) evaluating 5. evaluate 41 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 1. remember 42 literal (l) cause and effect 1. remember 43 inferential (f) main idea 2. understand 44 inferential (f) conclusion 2. understand 45 critical creative (k) evaluating 5. evaluate 46 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 1. remember 47 literal (l) main idea 1. remember 48 inferential (f) important point 2. understand 49 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 50 critical creative (k) moral of the story 5. evaluate current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 16 table 6 cross-walk table of specifications of test items by malay levels/skills and bloom’s revised taxonomy – test 2 test item malay classification bloom’s revised taxonomy classification level skill 1 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 1. remember 2 literal (l) important point 1. remember 3 literal (l) cause and effect 1. remember 4 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 1. remember 5 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 1. remember 6 literal (l) comparison 1. remember 7 literal (l) cause and effect 1. remember 8 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 1. remember 9 literal (l) main idea 1. remember 10 literal (l) important point 2. understand 11 literal (l) cause and effect 1. remember 12 literal (l) sequence of ideas/events 1. remember 13 literal (l) main idea 1. remember 14 literal (l) comparison 2. understand 15 literal (l) comparison 2. understand 16 literal (l) cause and effect 1. remember 17 inferential (f) main idea 2. understand 18 inferential (f) important point 2. understand 19 inferential (f) cause and effect 2. understand 20 inferential (f) conclusion 2. understand 21 inferential (f) main idea 2. understand 22 inferential (f) important point 2. understand 23 inferential (f) cause and effect 2. understand 24 inferential (f) conclusion 2. understand 25 inferential (f) main idea 2. understand 26 inferential (f) important point 2. understand 27 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 28 inferential (f) conclusion 2. understand using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 17 29 inferential (f) main idea 2. understand 30 inferential (f) important point 2. understand 31 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 32 inferential (f) cause and effect 2. understand 33 critical creative (k) evaluating 5. evaluate 34 critical creative (k) conclusion 5. evaluate 35 critical creative (k) internalizing 5. evaluate 36 critical creative (k) moral of the story 5. evaluate 37 critical creative (k) conclusion 5. evaluate 38 critical creative (k) evaluating 5. evaluate 39 critical creative (k) conclusion 5. evaluate 40 critical creative (k) conclusion 5. evaluate 41 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 1. remember 42 literal (l) main idea 1. remember 43 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 44 inferential (f) cause and effect 2. understand 45 critical creative (k) moral of the story 5. evaluate 46 literal (l) meaning of word/ phrase/ sentences 1. remember 47 literal (l) important point 1. remember 48 inferential (f) comparison 2. understand 49 inferential (f) conclusion 2. understand 50 critical creative (k) evaluating 5. evaluate current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 18 appendix d table 7 table 7 comparison of the predicted bloom’s revised taxonomy classification for each test item with the actual bloom’s revised taxonomy classification for each test item. item number predicted classification actual classification item number predicted classification actual classification 1 1. remember 2. understand 1 1. remember 2. understand 2 1. remember 1. remember 2 1. remember 4. analyze 3 1. remember 4. analyze 3 1. remember 4 1. remember 4. analyze 4 1. remember 4. analyze 5 1. remember 2. understand 5 1. remember 4. analyze 6 1. remember 1. remember 6 1. remember 2. understand 7 1. remember 1. remember 7 1. remember 2. understand 8 1. remember 2. understand 8 1. remember 4. analyze 9 1. remember 2. understand 9 1. remember 2. understand 10 2. understand 2. understand 10 2. understand 1. remember 11 1. remember 11 1. remember 2. understand 12 1. remember 4. analyze 12 1. remember 4. analyze 13 1. remember 2. understand 13 1. remember 2. understand 14 2. understand 1. remember 14 2. understand 2. understand 15 2. understand 2. understand 15 2. understand 2. understand 16 1. remember 2. understand 16 1. remember 4. analyze 17 2. understand 2. understand 17 2. understand 2. understand 18 2. understand 2. understand 18 2. understand 4. analyze 19 2. understand 2. understand 19 2. understand 2. understand 20 2. understand 2. understand 20 2. understand 2. understand 21 2. understand 2. understand 21 2. understand 2. understand 22 2. understand 22 2. understand 1. remember 23 2. understand 4. analyze 23 2. understand 4. analyze 24 2. understand 3. apply 24 2. understand 2. understand 25 2. understand 2. understand 25 2. understand 2. understand 26 2. understand 4. analyze 26 2. understand 2. understand using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 19 27 2. understand 2. understand 27 2. understand 2. understand 28 2. understand 2. understand 28 2. understand 5. evaluate 29 2. understand 2. understand 29 2. understand 2. understand 30 2. understand 1. remember 30 2. understand 2. understand 31 2. understand 4. analyze 31 2. understand 32 2. understand 2. understand 32 2. understand 2. understand 33 5. evaluate 4. analyze 33 5. evaluate 5. evaluate 34 5. evaluate 4. analyze 34 5. evaluate 35 5. evaluate 2. understand 35 5. evaluate 5. evaluate 36 5. evaluate 2. understand 36 5. evaluate 2. understand 37 5. evaluate 2. understand 37 5. evaluate 2. understand 38 5. evaluate 6. create 38 5. evaluate 5. evaluate 39 5. evaluate 4. analyze 39 5. evaluate 5. evaluate 40 5. evaluate 40 5. evaluate 2. understand 41 1. remember 2. understand 41 1. remember 2. understand 42 1. remember 2. understand 42 1. remember 2. understand 43 2. understand 2. understand 43 2. understand 2. understand 44 2. understand 2. understand 44 2. understand 5. evaluate 45 5. evaluate 2. understand 45 5. evaluate 2. understand 46 1. remember 2. understand 46 1. remember 2. understand 47 1. remember 1. remember 47 1. remember 2. understand 48 2. understand 2. understand 48 2. understand 2. understand 49 2. understand 2. understand 49 2. understand 5. evaluate 50 5. evaluate 2. understand 50 5. evaluate current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 20 article citation dagostino, l., carifio, j., bauer, j. d., zhao, q., & hashim, n. h. (2014). using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument. current issues in education, 18(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1379 author notes lorraine dagostino mail university of massachusetts lowell o'leary library 519, 61 wilder st., lowell, ma 01854-3047 lorraine_dagostino@uml.edu lorraine dagostino is a professor at graduate school of education in the university of massachusetts lowell. her research interests include literacy, critical thinking and evaluative reading, theoretical issues in reading and literacy, and literature issues. james carifio university of massachusetts at lowell o'leary library 527, 61 wilder st., lowell, ma 01854-3047 james_carifio@uml.edu james carifio is a professor in psychology and research methods at the university of massachusetts lowell. he has done extensive research and publishing in the respective fields jennifer d. c. bauer university of massachusetts lowell jennifer_bauer@student.uml.edu jennifer d. c. bauer is an assistant professor and communications department chair at middlesex community college. additionally, she is a doctoral student at the university of massachusetts at lowell, pursuing her ph.d. in literacy studies. her research interests include visual arts and literacy, digital/new literacies, language variation, urban education, and culturally responsive pedagogy. qing zhao university of massachusetts lowell o'leary library, 61 wilder st., lowell, ma 01854-3047 qing_zhao@uml.edu qing zhao recently earned her ed.d. in language arts & literacy from the graduate school of education, university of massachusetts lowell in 2013. her research interests currently include the study of teaching and learning english as a foreign/second language (efl/esl) and development of efl/esl learners' language proficiency in both north american and asian learning context. nor hashimah hashim universiti sains malaysia shimah@usm.my nor hashimah hashim is a professor of education at the universiti sains malaysia her research interests include preschool education, primary school education, and curriculum studies correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to jennifer bauer at jennifer_bauer@student.uml.edu. http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1379 mailto:lorraine_dagostino@uml.edu mailto:james_carifio@uml.edu mailto:jennifer_bauer@student.uml.edu mailto:qing_zhao@uml.edu mailto:shimah@usm.my mailto:jennifer_bauer@student.uml.edu using bloom’s revised taxonomy to analyze a reading comprehension instrument 21 manuscript received: 09/02/2014 revisions received: 11/30/2014 accepted: 01/22/2015 current issues in education vol. 18 no. 2 22 volume 18, number 2 august 19, 2015 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor constantin schreiber assistant executive editors anna montana cirell niels piepgrass authentications editor tray j. geiger layout editor constantin schreiber copy editors/proofreader lucinda watson section editors earl aguilera rikkylynn archibeque evelyn concepcion baca tray j. geiger darlene michelle gonzales megan hoelting dani kachorsky laura beth kelly tome martinez priyanka parekh kevin j. raso faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers cie template current issues in education, 22(3) 1 volume 22, issue 3 december 8, 2021 issn 1099-839x becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times: valuing compassion and care above productivity and performance grace i. blum seattle pacific university leah m. dale central washington university abstract: this qualitative inquiry presents a duoethnographic reflection by a pre-service teacher and teacher educator on their individual and collective experiences navigating teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. emails of gratitude exchanged between both authors serve as the beginning of their inquiry and analysis. their narratives reveal the ways in which they experienced humanizing pedagogies, received compassion and care, and engaged in culturally sustaining pedagogies within their teacher preparation program. implications for reimagining teacher preparation embedded in humanizing pedagogies are explored. keywords: teacher education, humanizing pedagogy, culturally sustaining pedagogies, pandemic citation: blum, g. i., & dale, l. m. (2021). becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times: valuing compassion and care above productivity and performance. current issues in education, 22(3). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1992 accepted: november/1/2021 june 13, 2020 dear dr. blum, i apologize for not responding to your check-in email earlier. this quarter has been overwhelming, and even writing an email seemed like a task on a never-ending list of things to do. my mom is home and healthy, thank you for asking. she received the treatment she needed that was originally being denied because of a ban on june 16, 2020 dear leah, over the last few days, i have read your email over and over again. in fact, i have it printed out and posted on my wall so i can gaze over to it while i work. what a kind, generous gift you have given me through these words. i cried when i first read it… and to be honest, i needed these words. i have second-guessed some of my instructional https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1992 blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 2 elective surgeries in wa. i am also happy to share that my 90-year-old abuelita has fully recovered from covid even though she has an underlying health condition. incredible news! i want to thank you personally for your support this quarter. you are the only professor of the five total professors i had this quarter that i believe responded appropriately to courses post-covid. by removing the textbook from being a required purchase, to making assignments complete/incomplete, to accepting late work without penalty. this all made a huge difference, not only for me, but all in my cohort who are tesl minors. when i and others reached out to our other professors, our suggestions and requests were deemed not possible, and my cohort was told that we would do well to distract ourselves from covid by focusing on our studies and better managing our schedules. i found this statement inappropriate and offensive, and i found the minimal "support" that other professors provided to be greatly lacking. the other professors provided "support" on a case-by-case basis, only if they deemed our individual trauma was worth supporting, instead of considering the unprecedented levels of stress, anxiety, and economic instability we are all facing post covid. among my cohort are several students with children home full-time, an essential worker putting in 12-hour shifts, two students diagnosed with covid, one classmate with four family members who have passed away, one student with unreliable access to wifi, and several classmates who were laid off/furloughed. this was all before protests began in the streets. you are the only professor who said the names breonna taylor, ahmaud arbery, and george floyd. know that i noticed this, and that i also noticed that my other four professors remained silent. you are the only professor of the five who showed solidarity with ascwu's resolution to make finals optional. when i read these two announcements back-to-back, mentioning their names, and your decision to show solidarity, i cried. out of relief, but mostly to know that at least one professor was modeling what they teach us to do as teacher candidates, provide education that is rooted in equity and compassion. thank decisions this quarter as some of my colleagues have made differing choices… but your email was such an encouragement to me and an affirmation that i need to continue to pursue humanizing pedagogies in my work and attempt to model that to my own students. i haven’t always gotten it right, but i’m vowing to do better. be better. i really can’t say enough about what your kind words meant to me. truly, your email is one of the greatest gifts i’ve received in my time at normal state university. many thanks, grace blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 3 you. know that making your final optional lifted a weight off of those in my cohort in tesl. dr. x contacted us to let us know our final was mandatory, and after i emailed them both asking if they'd support the resolution, dr. y and dr. z both refused. after the hardest quarter of our student careers, and after some of the hardest months many of us have ever faced, this was disappointing to say the least. despite choosing not to complete your final, know that i learned so much from your class, and i will continue to learn more about siop. i'm also passing on what we learned in your class to others in my cohort who are not tesl minors. today i marched in the seattle children's march, inspired by the 1963 children's march in birmingham, al. walking alongside these children, their families, their teachers, and their neighbors as we chanted, "no justice, no peace," i was reminded why i decided to become a teacher. know that because of professors like you, i think about what is possible, not what is impossible. know that i think about the american education system critically, that i analyze my place within it, and that i will decide not to sit idly by like too many of our professors did this quarter. instead, like you, i will use the power i have to provide an education that is rooted in equity and compassion. thank you for being an example of the kind of teacher i hope to be. kindest regards, leah introduction shortly before the start of the spring academic quarter of 2020, as the covid-19 pandemic spread rapidly throughout the united states, our university along with higher education institutions across the world, swiftly decided to shift all instruction to virtual, online settings. with only a few weeks to prepare, faculty across campus moved quickly to pivot and redesign their courses to be delivered in a virtual environment. both faculty and students made significant adjustments in terms of procedures, plans, and pedagogical approaches. in addition to the challenges of teaching and learning amid a global pandemic, we were simultaneously dealing with the “racial reckoning” that communities were experiencing as a result of the public killings of black citizens including george floyd, ahmaud arbery and breonna taylor. the collective trauma, stress, and unrest that we both experienced as a student and faculty during this time were unlike anything we had previously experienced in our years at our institution. blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 4 although initially unwarranted, the challenges of this quarter catalyzed a time of deep reflection upon our shared pedagogical approaches and experiences that i (grace) had established through my years of work as a teacher educator. as i privately wrestled with coming to terms with my own pedagogical tensions and contradictions, i received an unexpected email from leah, a teacher candidate enrolled in one of my courses, sheltered instruction for linguistically diverse students. uncertain as to whether any of the pedagogical decisions i had made in spring quarter were of any significance to my students, leah’s email spoke directly to the impact of the accommodations i had made for the students during this challenging quarter (blum & flores, 2021). in the correspondence and conversations to follow, we began to engage in dialogic introspection (rose & montakantiwong, 2018) of our respective experiences as teacher educator and student navigating the challenges of the pandemic. our informal discussions evolved into a duoethnographic conversation in which we collectively examined our teaching and learning practices, pedagogies, and praxis (norris & sawyer, 2012). drawing upon the theoretical lens of critical humanizing pedagogies in teacher education (bartolomé, 1994; freire, 1970; salazar, 2013), a set of structured questions (fontana & frey, 2000) were developed. we responded independently in written reflection to each structured question. this qualitative inquiry describes several emerging themes that surfaced from our collective reflections upon this letter and the subsequent narratives and conversations. we organize the paper as follows: first, we provide the theoretical framework of humanizing pedagogies that inform our findings; next we describe the emerging themes in the form of a dialogic reflection to consider the ways in which certain pedagogical moves, from the perspective of the teacher educator and teacher candidate provide insight into humanizing practices that allow for meaningful teaching and learning opportunities for both students and faculty. our paper culminates with several implications for further examination considering the emergent themes of this paper and an invitation for educators to critically examine their own pedagogies and practices. theoretical background originating in freire’s (1970) conceptualization of humanization and pedagogy, humanizing pedagogy counters dehumanization in education (salazar, 2013). humanization is defined as “the process of becoming more fully human as social, historical, thinking, communicating, transformative, creative persons who participate in the world.” (salazar, 2013, p. 126) in order to become more fully human, individuals become increasingly conscious of their presence in the world as a means to both individually and collectively reimagine their social world (freire; 1970; salazar, 2013). freire’s framing of pedagogy as inherently political requires a radical reconstruction of teaching and learning experiences where all pedagogy must be meaningful and connected to social change so that students can engage in the world to transform it (giroux, 1988). humanizing pedagogy, therefore, is a revolutionary approach to instruction that “ceases to be an instrument by which teachers can manipulate students, but rather expresses the consciousness of the students themselves” (freire, 1970, p.518; also see osorio, 2018). central to humanizing pedagogy is the development of “conscientização” or critical consciousness which is “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality” (freire, 1970, p. 17). to enact humanizing pedagogy, educators must work towards “mutual humanization” with their students through dialogue and problem posing education that leads to action (freire, 1970, p. 56). blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 5 in her comprehensive review of the literature centered on humanizing pedagogy in education, salazar (2013) identifies five core tenets of humanizing pedagogy: 1) the full development of the person is essential for humanization; 2) to deny someone else’s humanization is also to deny one’s own; 3) the journey for humanization is both an individual and collective endeavor toward critical consciousness; 4) critical reflection and action can transform structures that impede our own and others’ humanness, thus facilitating liberation for all; and 5) educators are responsible for promoting a more fully human world through their pedagogical principles and practices. (p.128) bartolomé (1994) further clarifies the freirean definition of humanizing pedagogy beyond a technical methods-focused approach towards instructional programs and strategies considering the “reality, history, and perspectives of students as an integral part of educational practice” (p. 173). a humanizing pedagogy “values the students’ background knowledge, culture, and life experiences, and creates learning contexts where power is shared by students and teachers” (bartolomé, 1994, p. 190). specific to humanizing pedagogy for teacher education, carter andrews et al. (2019) call for social justice-oriented teacher education programs to commit to “critical self-reflection, truthtelling, radical honesty, resisting binaries, demonstrating activism, and enacting ontological and epistemological plurality” in program structure, curricular alignment, and instructional practice (p. 24). the authors describe how humanizing pedagogy is a process of becoming for both teacher educators and their studentsin that becoming is an ongoing process where we can never be fully culturally competent or fully human (p. 6). carter andrews and castillo (2016) describe the teacher educator who enacts humanizing practices as one who continually works towards facilitating preservice teachers to create and cultivate learning environments in which the needs of the whole student are considered and addressed. they posit that the enactment of humanizing pedagogy in teacher education is a project of humanization for both the teacher educator and the students. further, carter andrews, bartell, and richmond (2016) state “if the teacher educator does not possess a humanizing pedagogy, it is difficult to cultivate this pedagogical stance with preand in-service educators” (p.171). camarotta and romero (2006) extend the scholarship on humanizing pedagogies in education by bringing together three interrelated ideas: critical consciousness, authentic caring and the enactment of social justice curriculum. they call for critically compassionate intellectualism to guide educators in attending to students’ overall well-being, to demonstrate compassion for the dehumanizing experience students of color encounter and situating learning and social issues that are relevant to the experiences of marginalized communities. adding to the literature on humanizing pedagogies, camarotta and romero (2006) weave together the scholarship on authentic care (valenzuela, 1999) as a critical element of the critically compassionate approach to education. the social justice curriculum component of the critically compassionate curriculum can be found in approaches towards culturally responsive (gay, 2018), culturally relevant (ladson-billings, 1995) and culturally sustaining (paris & alim, 2017) pedagogies. building on important asset-pedagogies including culturally relevant/responsive teaching (gay, 2018; ladson-billings, 1995), culturally sustaining pedagogies offers a “2.0” version of culturally responsive teaching (ladson-billings, 2014). culturally sustaining pedagogies “seek to blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 6 perpetuate and foster-to sustain-linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of schooling for positive social transformation” (paris & alim, 2017, p.1). it exists to sustain the communities who have historically been and continue to be damaged and erased through formal learning environments (paris & alim, 2017). methodology duoethnography is a collaborative methodological approach in which “two or more researchers of difference juxtapose their life histories to provide multiple understandings of the world" (norris & sawyer, 2012, p. 9). duoethnography is a qualitative methodology that allows for two or more individuals to bring together different lived experiences, ways of knowing and being, and perspectives to shared phenomena (norris, 2017). in our case, our shared experience as faculty and student in our teacher preparation program, and more specifically, in our experience participating in our class during the spring of 2020 at the height of the global pandemic. as duoethnography is a relatively new, evolving form of inquiry, researchers are reluctant to provide a prescriptive procedure to this form (breault, 2016). nonetheless, norris (2017) outlines four central tenets critical to the implementation of a duoethnographic study: 1) the dialogic nature of the research where the narratives of the researchers are juxtaposed to each other; 2) the examination of past experiences and stories; 3) differences are crucial to exploring a larger shared experience; and 4) the methodology must be open and flexible, not restrictive in terms of procedure. the duoethnography allows individuals to re-examine their narratives and challenge the perspectives in which they viewed their previous experiences. it is a collaborative methodology that allows for researchers to share their histories in both oral and in written form to make sense of experience, generate reflection, and deepen understanding (norris & sawyer, 2012). in our approach to duoethnography, we initially began with an informal phone conversation regarding the emails sent to one another in june. what began as an informal chat, quickly morphed into a series of more structured conversations around our shared yet divergent experiences around the events of spring quarter, both in and out of our classroom. as we began to discuss the themes that emerged (strauss & corbin, 1997) from our initial emails to one another, we developed a series of structured questions (fontana & frey, 2000) to further extend our reflections. our data includes our email correspondence, excerpts of written transcriptions of our phone conversations, and our written narrative reflections on the structured question prompts (fontana & frey, 2005). our data analysis was collaborative, participatory, and iterative (corbin & strauss, 1990). duoethnography provides the opportunity for critical, dialogic reflection, but it also allows for opportunities for transformative action (monzó & soohoo, 2014). in sharing our juxtaposed narratives, we aim to not only revisit our histories, but reflect on the ways in which we can work towards a more humanizing approach towards teaching and learning within the context of a teacher preparation program. positionality grace is a korean american woman working as a tenure-track teacher educator within three programs at her university: early childhood education, elementary education, and bilingual/ teaching english as a second language (tesl). she is the daughter of korean immigrants and mother to two biracial school-aged children. prior to her work as a teacher educator, she was an elementary school teacher having worked in both bilingual and mainstream classrooms in public blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 7 schools in the greater chicagoland and los angeles areas. her primary role at the university is teaching pre-service teachers at the university satellite centers. leah is a mexican american woman from a bicultural family. she recently graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in elementary education with a minor in tesl. she brings experience from her work in primary and secondary public schools in the czech republic and spain, as well as american preschools. she credits paulo freire and john dewey as the primary influences on her pedagogical ideology. she is currently pursuing a graduate degree in instructional design. context we work and study at a satellite campus of normal state university (pseudonym), a large public institution proudly acclaimed as preparing the largest number of educators in the state. students majoring in elementary education are enrolled in a 7-quarter program. at the university centers, students enter the teaching program having received their associate degrees at local community colleges. university center students are largely considered “non-traditional” (hussar et al., 2020) in that they often work full-time, and have family caregiving responsibilities while attending to a full academic course load. during the spring quarter of 2020, all courses were abruptly shifted to a virtual online environment. some courses met asynchronously in a traditional online format where students accessed their course at their convenience, while other courses met synchronously via various platforms such as zoom and blackboard ultra. the sheltered instruction for linguistically diverse students course met asynchronously and was designed with a variety of instructional activities that students could engage with on their own schedules. synchronous class meetings were scheduled for students that wanted to meet in “real-time”, but they were entirely optional for students. there were 27 students enrolled in the class spring quarter. findings in attending to the tenets of duoethnographic research, our inquiry centers on both authors using ourselves as the research site via dialogic introspection. our inquiry examines our lived experiences as a teacher candidate (leah) and teacher educator (grace) navigating the pandemic. in the following section we present the themes that emerged from analytic discourse of our correspondence to one another, and our subsequent conversations. humanizing pedagogies in practice to deny someone else’s humanization is also to deny one’s own. (roberts, 2003, p. 178) leah in january 2020, our state reported the first confirmed case of covid-19 within the united states. case numbers quickly rose, resulting in the decision for all k-12 schools to close and move to remote learning. likewise, our university took swift action to transition all subsequent courses to an online format. by late march, our governor issued a state-wide stay at home order. in early april, an unprecedented spring quarter commenced. repeatedly, teacher candidates were asked to be patient, told that information was developing in real time, while knowledge of the virus itself was also developing in real time. no one knew precisely how the virus spread, how dangerous it was, or all the symptoms one could expect if infected. our state’s economy was at a standstill, with all non-essential workers unable to transition to remote work blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 8 laid off or furloughed. within my own cohort of 14 teacher candidates, four were laid off and left scrambling to apply for unemployment benefits in an already overwhelmed system. four candidates, students themselves, now doubled as teachers aiding in their children’s at-home learning as statewide k-12 teachers transitioned into first of its kind remote instruction. one classmate, categorized as an essential worker, began working 12 hour shifts while also attending classes full-time, taking on the burden of a community that was terrified and lashing out. it was not long before two teacher candidates and members of their households were diagnosed with covid-19. our cohort was also not spared from the death of loved ones to the virus. it is in this backdrop, that our university’s courses resumed. we received many, “i hope this email finds you well,” acknowledgments, but little to no questions about how we could best be supported by our professors, the educators aiming to produce the future’s educators. the university decided to provide students with the option to receive an emergency pass/fail grade for most courses to avoid effects on students’ overall gpa. this decision provided professors with a choice. they could be inspired by the changes made by the university and support students by making changes within their own classes, or not. regrettably, most professors instructing my cohort chose the latter. as the quarter continued, it became clear that we would be expected to function as if our entire world had not just dramatically shifted. our cohort of 14 consists of a diverse group of teacher candidates. ages range from 19 to 40 with multiple races, ethnicities, languages, and religious affiliations represented. the majority of candidates work part-time, full-time, and on occasion 60 hours per week while being enrolled in courses full-time. four candidates have young children living within their household for which they are primary caregivers. as a relatively small campus, many elementary education courses are taught by the same group of professors. this provides the opportunity for professors and candidates to learn about each other over the course of the seven-quarter teacher preparation program. regarding spring quarter, four of the five professors had taught our cohort in the past, and as such knew many of the details of our lives outside of the university. for this reason, it is particularly disappointing that, in my opinion, of the five courses i was enrolled in only one professor appropriately catered to the needs of teacher candidates post covid-19. grace’s response to the university’s transition to remote learning provided insight into the many actions that are within a professor’s power to adapt within their own classrooms. premeditated adaptations adopted by grace were comprehensive. she began with the distribution of an online survey before the start of the quarter to assess candidates’ access to internet, devices, and software. candidates were asked to describe their learning environment, availability for office hours and meetings, and to rate their level of confidence with technological platforms. additionally, space was provided to communicate pronouns, pronunciation of names, and to inform the professor of any information of a personal nature they wished to share. prior to the course start, she sent an email informing candidates that the previously required textbook had been removed and would be replaced with open access sources. further accommodations made to the course included switching to a complete/incomplete grading system, acceptance of late assignments without penalty, and no mandatory meeting requirements. learning modules were concise and accompanied by purposeful assignments that could be completed within a short amount of time. all of grace’s office hours were recorded to allow for future viewing by students needing extra support without requiring a set appointment. after receiving a resolution from the university’s student government requesting all professors make their final exams optional in support of an unprecedented academic quarter, grace chose to show solidarity with the resolution. it is in this professor’s example that i began to understand the power that blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 9 professors have within their institutions to alter their courses to better support students. it also then became glaringly clear that the other professors with this same power chose not to use it. in an email, grace stated, “whatever path our learning takes this quarter, we will move forward in centering your health and wholeness during this time.” this statement was proven true by all the actions taken to modify her course. it was clear from the beginning that she understood the totality of our experiences as university students in the middle of a pandemic, and through all the actions taken she succeeded in centering our health and wholeness. this served as a rare example of a professor’s adoption of humanizing pedagogy within the teacher preparation program. a more common response was the lack of any truly impactful modification or adaptation to curricula. on several occasions, i and other teacher candidates advocated for a reduction in what we perceived to be repetitive assignments that functioned only to keep us busy for several hours while in no way enriching our learning. mandatory meetings were extremely difficult for teacher candidates with young children at home, and for those without access to consistent internet. feedback was encouraged or even required by professors, yet requests for changes were rarely acknowledged, discussed, or considered possible. grace’s decision to make the final exam optional prompted me to request that two other professors show solidarity with the university’s student government resolution. both professors declined while another preemptively informed us that the final was mandatory after news of the resolution began to spread. meaningful accommodations, a willingness to sincerely consider candidates’ suggestions for improvement, and a show of solidarity with student government’s resolution would have communicated to teacher candidates an understanding of, and compassion for the unprecedented levels of stress we were enduring all quarter. yet only one professor chose to acknowledge our humanity and take seriously the grave realities affecting us all. that examples of humanizing pedagogy are rare leads me to question the metrics by which our university counts itself a successful preparer of future educators. grace all the “unprecedented challenges” that we were experiencing afforded me the opportunity to reflect on my own pedagogical practices and consider the ways in which my courses reflected my commitment towards implementing a humanizing pedagogical approach towards teacher education. during the spring quarter, i was teaching four courses across three different programs: early childhood education, elementary education, and the tesl/bilingual education program. even prior to the pandemic, i was already feeling uneasy preparing for four very different courses in terms of content and delivery, one of which i had never taught previously. while i would have liked to think that even during normal times that my pedagogical decisions were driven by my own vision of humanizing education, the pandemic and its implications, made visible the many ways in which some of my policies and practices were in conflict with my own moral and ethical commitment to preparing educators in humanizing ways. during the first days of course preparation, i scrambled to find resources to redesign my courses. i quickly joined several professional social networks that were created to support faculty online. i found a varying set of resources, voices, and differing perspectives on how to engage learners during this time. these spaces became places where ideological lines were clearly drawn. one position in these online communities held that faculty should operate “business as usual” with policies and practices mirroring those of pre-pandemic times. the rationale here being that providing students with stability and consistency was what students would most need. blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 10 the counter-perspective erred towards extending compassion and care to students during these “unprecedented times” and to adjust classroom policies and practices accordingly. as i reflected on my own practice, i found that my pedagogical convictions aligned most closely with scholars who publicly charged their communities to express generosity and care in pedagogical decision-making. i was heartened and encouraged by the public messages on twitter by drs. django paris (2020) and pedro noguera (2020). dr. betina hsieh’s (2020) tedxtalk during the pandemic, which centered on the possibilities of humanizing approaches to teacher education, resonated so deeply within me. while i largely felt disconnected and disjointed from colleagues at my own institution, i found mentorship and wise counsel in the public voices of scholars whom i deeply admired. in many ways, these public declarations affirmed and eloquently articulated what i knew to be true. in many ways, the voices of scholars, of whom i deeply respect, gave me permission to shift and pivot in both small and significant pedagogical moves to align the work i was engaging in towards more humanizing ways. i chose to pare down learning tasks and assignments to only what i considered essential to the learning outcomes and consider the ways in which i could foreground issues of access and equity. in reviewing assignments and expectations, norms, and policies, i realized the many ways in which i had “inherited” policies and practices that i felt were arbitrary and unnecessary and to a great extent, dehumanizing. being a junior faculty member, given pre-developed courses, i had adopted previously established course assignments and practices, without applying a critical lens towards whether these facilitated a deeper sense of critical consciousness among my students. my syllabi revealed the many ways in which i had not modeled humanizing pedagogies in my own instructional practices and policies. one policy, for example, that i re-examined and in turn, did away with, was my policy on “late work”. prior to the pandemic, i had a policy in most of my courses where students were penalized a certain percentage of their grade for failure to submit work by a certain deadline. in light of the pandemic, and the challenges of access and equity, penalizing students for failure to meet arbitrary deadlines seemed no longer comprehensible. deadlines were reimagined as targets and students were no longer penalized for submitting work “late”. this is a practice that i have continued to implement in my subsequent courses. compassion and care dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people. the naming of the world, which is an act of creation and recreation, is not possible if it is not infused with love… because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is a commitment to others. (freire, 2000, p. 89) leah: compassion and care were largely absent. despite the existence of multiple concurrent nationwide crises including covid-19, economic instability, and racial violence, we were expected to perform in the same manner as quarters passed. this was by no stretch of the imagination a typical quarter. the president of the university released a statement in acknowledgment of the unprecedented times we found ourselves in, and students received communication alerting of mental health services available at any time of the day or night. it was unquestionably understood by the university that what we were experiencing was deeply traumatic. yet our productivity was expected to remain at the same level as quarters pre-covid, or in some cases to increase. worse still, it was one professor’s opinion that our studies should serve as a distraction from the grave events taking place and that we were more than capable of blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 11 committing several hours each day to our learning and “growth”. yet a brief consideration of events would have shown that returning to “business as usual” was impossible. we were expected to carry on as if we were not isolated in our homes in a state-mandated shutdown, afraid to even touch produce at the local grocery store because modes of transmission were still unknown. we were expected to carry on as if the lines at food banks that some of our families relied on were not growing in size and decreasing in provisions, or as if we were not concerned with how to pay rent after being abruptly laid off. we were asked to perform as if we had been provided sufficient time to grieve family members killed by covid-19, whose bedsides and funerals we were not permitted to attend, thereby postponing the natural grieving process. these expectations, lacking in empathy and compassion and far removed from reality only served to further dehumanize us at a time when we needed compassion and care more than ever. personally, i was struggling through the worst cases of anxiety and depression i have ever experienced. there were days when i did not have the strength to brush my hair, let alone attend to my studies. i would often find myself sitting in front of my laptop for hours, blankly staring at deadlines that i could not physically complete, accompanied by feelings of extreme guilt and shame at my lack of productivity. i was not alone in this experience. several classmates privately confided in me about their struggle with anxiety and depression during this time. i chose not to inform any of my professors of my struggle with depression because i did not believe that i should be forced to. to what extent must we require students to perform their trauma before they are granted support? i reached out for support many times and was largely denied while others were granted support only after providing specific details about the event(s) that were occurring in their personal lives warranting additional support. why was no premeditated plan for support in place, motivated by an interest in prioritizing empathy and compassion for the students those professors claim to care about? verbal expressions of care without action are meaningless. the lack of compassion displayed by professors was hypocritical. repeatedly we are reminded of the importance of fostering personal relationships between teachers and students. we are shown data lending to evidence of the relationship between positive teacher-student relationships and high academic achievement. we know that building relationships is the most valuable tool a teacher can wield, that care must come before content, and compassion should never be compromised. professors were provided with an opportunity to model that which they teach holds precedence above all else and failed to do so. of my five professors, grace is the only one that repeatedly displayed compassion through action. as mentioned earlier, through both premeditated and real time responses to unfolding events, she drastically modified her course to reflect our new reality. the field of education requires constant reflection and modification, yet too often the status quo is upheld within institutions of higher education without justification. whether out of fear of not meeting syllabus requirements, or out of an attitude of apathy towards change, the resulting negative effect on students is the same. alternatively, it is because of all the modifications that grace made that i was capable of being successful in her course. by focusing on the most important content material, not establishing arbitrary requirements (e.g., page length minimums), and removing stress inducing deadlines, she ensured that i was able to perform at a capacity that was suitable to my current reality. by being aware of her students’ realities, she not only proved her compassion through action, she also raised the likelihood for our academic success. blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 12 grace as a tenure-track faculty member, mother-scholar, i found that navigating my own personal and professional challenges of adjusting to the pandemic to be at times overwhelming. caring for my two school-aged children, grieving over the death of a close family member, all the while trying to maintain my teaching and scholarship agenda was incredibly difficult. at the start of the pandemic, faculty received various generic emails from university administrators expressing concern for our overall well-being. these were not personal or individualized in any way. often, these emails focused solely on faculty resources for online instruction. while this display of concern was more than anything offered before the pandemic, it still felt short of an adequate response. the only practical demonstration of it came in the form of an offer to extend the tenure promotion timeline. during this critical time, i realized the ways in which my own experience working for this large institution over the years had been de-humanizing. concurrently, while i felt the need to experience care, i felt the tension and responsibility to extend compassion and care to my own students. the shifting of the instruction online, being invited into students’ homes, in many ways removed this pre-existing invisible barrier of work and home and in our case, school and home. an unintended result of this made the teaching and learning experience much more personal and intimate. in turn, this expanded the ways in which i chose to engage my students and overall, i felt the education was a more holistic, humanizing experience. this became clearer as i learned of the challenges students were experiencing. as i learned of specific challenges that my students had been experiencing because of the pandemic including increased caregiving responsibilities, illness, grief over covid-related deaths, coupled with the collective trauma that all of us were experiencing, it seemed unimaginable to prioritize as valenzuela (1999) describes, aesthetic care over authentic care. where aesthetic care is largely characterized by concern in academic achievement as narrowly experienced in the formalized schooling environment, authentic care considers students’ whole being (valenzuela, 1999). where the home/school divide was no longer, their overall well-being was of greater importance. culturally sustaining pedagogies csp [culturally sustaining pedagogies] seeks to perpetuate and foster linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling and as a needed response to demographic and social change. (paris & alim, 2017) leah throughout the teacher preparation program, culturally sustaining pedagogies are frequently referred to, but rarely modeled at the university level. candidates are rarely asked to share their cultural and linguistic backgrounds, the same information that we are taught should always inform our own curricula so that is based on a deep knowledge of our future students. our individual cultures, countries of origin, linguistic diversity, and socioeconomic statuses inform not only our learning styles, but also our developing pedagogical ideologies. as a small campus with candidates organized into cohorts, and with professors teaching multiple courses to the same cohort, the opportunity to know us is well within reach. literature on the topic of culturally sustaining pedagogies is required reading throughout the preparation program yet candidates see few concrete examples of this modeled by their professors. candidates are expected to have a deep knowledge of their future students yet are largely unknown themselves. additionally, the space and time provided for creation of these practices, scaffolded by professors, is absent. a prime example of this during spring quarter 2020 was the rise in protests blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 13 across the country. the murders of breonna taylor, ahmaud arbery, and george floyd posed an opportunity for a broader discussion on systemic racism, including its presence within the american education system. mass protests were occurring every day in multiple cities within the counties neighboring the university. this was not distant news from a far-off city but occurring daily right in our own neighborhoods. in fact, myself and others within the cohort attended several of these protests and relied on each other as first contacts in case of an arrest. those of us in attendance witnessed acts of violence by our own police department in the form of rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, and beatings. it is no surprise then that conversations occurred frequently between teacher candidates during our personal time, reflecting our deep desire to engage in broader issues of racial violence and systemic racism. even though nationwide black lives matter protests had broken a record previously only held by the assassination of martin luther king jr., no space was provided within the teacher preparation program to discuss this movement. in fact, only one of my five professors, grace, even mentioned the events. an opportunity to briefly pause normally scheduled curricula and engage future educators in a topic that will inform the rest of their careers was neglected. that it was not even mentioned in passing, by four of my five professors is astounding in its absurdity. carter andrews et al. (2019) argues that “schooling ideologies and teacher practices have always been—and will continue to be—shaped by the continually changing sociopolitical and sociocultural landscape in a society, in addition to policies and practices that foreground particular types of oppression” (p. 4). as a racially, linguistically, and religiously diverse cohort, teacher candidates bring unique perspectives and lived experiences to the classroom. providing the time and space for such discussions could have served as a powerful model for future educators in how to develop critical consciousness among their future students (freire, 1970). witnessing repeated acts of racially and politically motivated violence both from afar and personally served to further trigger a group of university students already experiencing multiple crises linked to covid-19 and the subsequent economic collapse. being particularly traumatic for black students within the cohort, professors should have made an effort to foster culturally sustaining pedagogies (as they have taught us, we must do) within their own classrooms by providing students with a safe space to communicate their collective trauma. by avoiding even a discussion of the sociopolitical events that were currently unfolding, professors in turn avoided acknowledging systems of oppression that students within the cohort themselves experience. grace implementing csp has been an ongoing epistemological tension that i have had in my work as a teacher educator. driven by the imperative to prepare pre-service teachers to be social justice oriented, critically conscious educators, i have grappled with how to effectively implement culturally sustaining practices in my own pedagogical practices within a program designed not to support this. the paradox of preparing culturally sustaining educators in culturally dispiriting ways has been characteristic of our institutional approach towards teacher preparation. students in our program take standalone courses in culturally responsive teaching or multicultural education, but rarely do they authentically experience culturally responsive teaching within their own teacher education programs. this is a common critique that i have heard from frustrated students and advisees throughout the last several years in our program. as i mainly teach content-based methods courses as opposed to theoretical foundations courses, i have worked to intentionally approach these courses with an equity, asset-based framing of content-based instruction. i have tried to center students’ “funds of knowledge” (moll blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 14 et al., 1992) and cultural wealth (yosso, 2005) to inform instruction and co-create the curriculum in order to develop critical consciousness (freire, 1970) and facilitate culturally sustaining experiences without directly teaching the subject matter of “culturally responsive teaching” as course content. as an asian american teacher educator, i have often reflected on the many ways in which disrupting norms, speaking out, and going against the grain of the systems surrounding me has been extremely uncomfortable, and at times countercultural to my own patterns of cultural norms situated in conformity and assimilation. my entire life, i have worked towards assimilating and accommodating the dominant culture. yet, while i had been conscientiously working through my own internal cultural tensions, i realized how my lack of speaking out could be perceived as indifference, especially in spaces, i.e., my classrooms, my home, in which i was uniquely situated with greater power and positionality. my silence in speaking out about inequities and injustices committed against minoritized communities was antithetical to my values and commitment to living and learning in culturally sustaining ways. i had to press through the discomfort, the fear of not stating things perfectly, and my own inner critique of being performative to break the silence around allowing students to grieve, mourn, process, and protest the killings and ongoing injustices committed primarily against the black community and other minoritized communities of color. in the context of an online, asynchronous teaching environment, the silence was broken largely through email exchanges and discussion board conversations, which often felt impersonal and imperfect in many ways, but choosing to press into my own personal discomfort and choosing to speak out publicly was a small step into more authentically teaching and learning in culturally sustaining ways. discussion several important themes emerged from our duoethnography that are important to consider in the work of humanizing teacher education. freire (1970) describes the process of humanization as one of becoming. in the process of becoming an educator, carter andrews et al. (2019) describes the role of the teacher educator as “consistently and continually working to help psts [pre-service teachers] develop and maintain mindsets and practices that foster learning environments where the needs of whole students are considered and addressed” (p. 6). both narratives reveal the ways in which the teacher educator, grace, was working towards “becoming” more humanizing in her practice, and in turn, how leah experienced a learning environment where her needs were considered and addressed. our narratives also reveal the ways in which we failed to experience humanizing pedagogies in our respective roles within the teacher education program. experiences of authentic care during the pandemic were infrequent while performative actions of aesthetic care were abounding. expressions of compassion were generally missing. students were expected to function and perform in the same manner as previous quarters and encouraged by faculty to “use your studies as a distraction” which was not a viable option. productivity was expected at a time when it was nearly possible. the overall culture of compassion was absent, rather, students were shown compassion on a case-by-case basis. the requirement to “prove their trauma” provided individualized moments of caring, but the overall acceptance that these were unprecedented times did not inspire universal compassion that should have already been present. whether that feeling was expressed in words, it was not expressed through action. lastly, spring quarter of 2020 revealed considerably the disconnect in our experiences of culturally sustaining pedagogies in teacher education. teacher preparation programs aim to blum & dale: becoming humanizing educators during inhumane times current issues in education, 22(3) 15 instruct teacher candidates in the recognition and adoption of best teaching practices. practices that are rooted in the creation and sustainment of an equitable classroom environment, and the use of diverse methods to reach diverse learners. the overarching goal of our teacher preparation program is to instruct teacher candidates in use of the constructivist model. it is explicitly stated on every syllabus for every course within the program. the aim is to empower our future students to be active participants in their own learning. the constructivist model requires teachers to acknowledge that students, however young, arrive in classrooms with prior knowledge and a variety of personal experiences that inform the way they learn. it is these best practices that teacher candidates study throughout the preparation program and are required to demonstrate evidence of in their own teaching in order to graduate. what happens then, when the classroom that prepares future educators, is not itself modeling best practices? when the personal experiences, prior knowledge, and diverse identities that teacher candidates bring to the university are ignored, or worse, silenced? how can future educators be expected to create and maintain classroom practices that are humanizing, when their own experience has been dehumanizing? these are the questions that arose through our experiences in a teacher preparation program during spring quarter of 2020 at the start of the pandemic. conclusion the pandemic revealed the ways in which, and to what extent we, individually and collectively, experienced humanizing practices in teacher education. our duoethnography contributes to the growing body of research focused on humanizing teacher education and the emerging scholarship on the impact of the pandemic on education. while we have yet to see what the full implications of this pandemic will be on institutions of higher education and teacher education programs, we hope that these “unprecedented times” can lead towards a re-imagining of humanizing teacher education spaces where both teacher candidates and teacher educators are engaged in humanizing practices, culturally sustaining pedagogies, and critically compassionate intellectualism with and among one another. references bartolomé, l. 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(2020, september 22). learning from one another: lessons in (educational) excellence | dr. betina hsieh | tedxcsulb https://youtu.be/_0wbdch9jum yosso, t. j. (2005). whose culture has capital? a critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. race ethnicity and education, 8(1), 69-91. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006 author notes grace i. blum seattle pacific university blumg@spu.edu leah m. dale central washington university leahmardale@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8425-4689 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732x12464032 https://youtu.be/_0wbdch9jum https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006 https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/orcid.org/__;!!ikrxdwav5bmarq!niyih5dgb8biotoidwa0k5sltpwipel9l2wpayc-xzw-1adf4lenufhg5ivhfhe$ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 9, number 6 may, 2006 issn 1099-839x mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter andrea dixon rayle. veronica bordes, angela zapata, patricia arredondo, marie-christine rutter, and christina howard arizona state university this exploratory study focused on the mentoring experiences of women faculty members and graduate students within a counseling psychology graduate program. results from semi-structured interviews and focus groups identified the women’s contextual mentoring experiences in higher education and highlighted several factors that contribute to mentorship experiences unique to women in graduate higher education. findings demonstrate the importance of relational mentoring relationships and investment by mentors. implications for building upon mentoring theories for women and future research are discussed. since the late 1970s, female-focused literature has emphasized that women’s gender socialization in the united states influences their relationally-focused approach to interpersonal interactions (gilligan, 1982; liang, tracy, taylor, & williams, 2002). this process of gender socialization has led women to seek out and enact horizontal (relational) versus vertical (hierarchal) connections in their relationships with both men and women (gilligan; liang et al.). although women may be more comfortable with horizontal, relational approaches, hierarchical/paternalistic models prevail in most u. s. educational institutions (kram & isabella, 1985; schwiebert, 2000; tannen, 2001). the purpose of this study was to explore the subjective mentoring experiences of women faculty and graduate students within a counseling/counseling psychology academic program, who were involved in informal mentoring relationships. the study’s objectives were to begin to understand the women’s mentoring experiences in higher education independent of their age, role, and status; to identify factors that contribute to mentorship experiences unique to women in graduate education; to explore the costs and benefits of mentoring relationships for women; and to examine the women’s familial and professional role models. the roots of mentoring models and stages the construct of mentoring has multiple meanings that may be described as uni-directional, reciprocal, and/or hierarchal (tannen, 2001). traditional mentor-mentee relationships include: a) giving rather than receiving; b) sharing and giving that brings joy, inspiration, and vitality based on expertise; c) incorporation of another’s attitudes and thinking about mentees’ work and career benefits; and d) a role modeling process at its best (arredondo, 2001). reciprocal mentoring involves a relationship between two individuals to which both contribute and derive mutual benefits for personal and professional growth (kram, 1988). according to sweeny (2001), mentoring is a “tool to…increase openness to professional feedback, learning, and the power of seeing oneself through another person’s eyes” (p. 7). sweeny purported that mentees derive benefits for growth and learning in a supportive and friendly relationship, thereby enhancing self-esteem and selfconfidence. because of their experiences, mentors current issues in education vol. 9 no. 6 also assist in negotiation of organizational barriers, enabling career advancement for the mentee (kram, 1988). in traditional male-to-male mentoring relationships, there appears to be an acceptance of organizational hierarchy. in fact, the hierarchical model seems to complement men’s gender-role socialization experiences, whereas for women, a web-like model is more complementary (tannen, 2001). according to kram and isabella (1985), women seemed to value reciprocal, peer relationships, perhaps seeking the emotional support that is lacking in hierarchical and patriarchal organizations. however, schwiebert (2000) cautioned individuals not to make the mistake of interchanging the constructs of mentoring and role modeling. she indicated that role modeling allows the mentee to identify with and emulate the mentor’s most desirable characteristics. in the current study, mentoring was defined as a reciprocal process that occurs in women’s vertical (faculty to student) and horizontal (peer to peer) relationships in a higher education setting. multiple definitions of mentoring within higher education settings exist. sweeny (2001) described mentoring as, “one of the best tools there is to promote the creation of better norms of collegiality and collaboration . . . and consistently improving student learning” (p. 7). cunningham (1999) suggested that educational “mentoring provides, first, an instrumental or career function (e.g., sponsorship, coaching, instruction), and second, an intrinsic or psychosocial function (e.g., serving as a model, a confidant, a friend)” (p. 443). finally, gates (2003) stated, “we must continue to develop people as they progress through the ranks if they are to be effective leaders” (p. 104). thus, the theoretical understandings of mentoring in higher education aid in the understanding of the complex relationships involved in the process. kram (1983) outlined four stages of the mentoring relationship: initiation, cultivation, separation, and redefinition. these are developmental stages through which mentees or protégés theoretically move in relation to the mentor. in the first stage of initiation, the protégé develops a strong positive fantasy, admiration, and respect toward the mentor. the protégé also begins to feel cared for, supported, and respected. the second stage of cultivation occurs when the protégé’s expectations are constantly tested against reality and the psychosocial functions of the relationship are at their peak. a growing sense of competence occurs when the mentor challenges or coaches the protégé. in the third stage of separation, the protégé experiences independence and autonomy. the mentoring relationship no longer remains a central part of both members’ lives, which is typically characterized by feelings of loss. in the final stage, redefinition, a new relationship is developed between the mentor and the protégé. typically both members are on equal footing and the relationship takes the form of a friendship. kram (1983) stated that the mentoring relationship has the potential to enhance the development of both the mentor and mentee. this suggests the importance of determining those characteristics of the mentoring relationship that contribute to the mutual development of the parties involved. more specifically, limbert (1995) discussed two models of mentoring that focused specifically on women faculty members. the first model is that of mentoring between a senior female faculty and a junior female faculty member. limbert indicated that an advantage to this model is the shared experience of having gone through the ranks in academia. however, a disadvantage is the reality that there are “too few senior women to help junior women” (p. 87). in addition, a female who feels she has not been integrated into the male networks that dominate academia, is not in a position to mentor another who is entering the system (johnsrud & wunsch, 1991). the second model limbert (1995) discussed is a peer-mentoring model between women in academia. limbert reported one disadvantage of this model is the time it takes to develop trust. however, she also identified several advantages: 1) flexible time commitments in relationships among women, 2) less of a tendency to become overly dependent on one another, 3) opportunities to exchange external networks to build on one’s own network, and 4) the opportunity to feel safe to fail. mentoring women in higher education women have been increasingly represented in graduate higher education programs during the last two decades, with a recent report indicating that nearly half of the doctorates awarded in the year 2000 went to women (hoffer et al., 2001). because female graduate students report significantly less social support from family and program faculty than their male counterparts, the gender-specific mentoring of women in higher education appears to be of utmost importance (limbert, 1995; mallinckrodt & leong, 1992; schwiebert, 2000). specifically, effective mentoring in higher education involves the transmission of skills, knowledge, and attitudes, and allows for level of trust and communication which permits mentees to risk making mistakes and to develop personally and professionally (schwiebert). in order to achieve success, female students and new faculty must be socialized to the world of higher education (arredondo, 2001), a process in which mentors are vital. mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter 3 past literature suggests the positive effects mentors can have for female students. students who have professional and personal mentors feel more committed to their work, have greater career aspirations, and report higher self-esteem (gilbert, gallessich, & evans, 1983). in a study of women doctoral recipients at stanford university, participants overwhelmingly responded that an active advisor facilitated the completion of their program. in fact, this response was most frequently given by those who were classified as “early finishers”; completing their degrees in less than 4.25 years (maher, ford, & thompson, 2004). because academic programs have become more aware of the advantages mentoring provides for students, programs have sought to make mentors more accessible to women and people of ethnic/racial minority groups (packard, 2003). even if mentors who share characteristics with these students are not readily accessible (due to under-representation in their programs), formal mentoring initiatives have been implemented that are quite different from traditional serendipitous mentoring relationships. female students and faculty in the life sciences have begun to seek out each other through web-based mentoring programs such as mentornet and other networking groups (kasprisin, boyle single, single & muller, 2003; packard). additionally, the western interstate commission of higher education's (wiche) doctoral scholars program was designed to provide mentoring for racial/ethnic minority counseling psychology students (hill, castillo, ngu, & pepion, 1999). margolis and romero (2001) suggested that planned mentoring of underrepresented students in higher education can grant access to positions of power in the academic social structure. this type of mentoring “…assumes an expanded role, that of addressing the needs of the organization, racial and ethnic groups, students, faculty, and, ultimately, society” (redmond, 1990, p. 191). although students have been encouraged to find mentors they can relate to, academia has been comprised of euro-american males historically (moyer, laovey, & casey-cannon, 1999), thus making it difficult for female and ethnic/racial minority students to find faculty members of similar genders and racial/ethnic statuses. in a study of female doctoral students, women reported that they appreciated their female professors because of their ability to demonstrate confidence and competence as a woman (bruce, 1995). these professors also modeled the balance of personal and professional life (bruce). female faculty members also increase the likelihood that young female students will join them in academia: “…as the role and status of these women change the discipline—as they take their place in the hierarchy—they will be in a position to aid those who come after her” (margolis & romero, 2001, p.95). it seems that women faculty in higher education are in a position to lessen opposition for female students and facilitate their progression through higher education. studies on mentoring with college-age women (liang et al., 2002), multicultural female pairings (kalbfleisch & davies, 1991), and with women in the workplace (spreitzer, 1995) suggest the effects of positive mentoring on self-esteem, relationship-building, loneliness, and persistence in primary tasks. focusing on the mentoring of women in academic environments, gilbert et al. (1983) found that women who had female mentors ranked higher on self-esteem, work commitment, career aspirations, and satisfaction with student roles than those women who had male mentors. however, men did not have any significant differences on these variables whether or not they had a sex-matched mentor. on the other hand, in a replication of the gilbert et al. (1983) study conducted by mcquillen (1992), it was found that women who had female mentors reported greater levels of stress and conflict than those with male mentors. although an explanation for these stress differences was not offered, it is possible that emotionality, a component of mentoring relationships, differs in cross-gender matches. thus, this exploratory study examined mentoring experiences of women faculty and graduate students within a graduate program in higher education. method research team and participants prior to collecting data, the researchers, who consisted of four female graduate students and two female faculty members, who all acted as reviewers, met to discuss the purpose of the study and the questions that would be asked during the interviews. based on theory and previous research, the researchers discussed their expectations regarding themes of mentoring relationships that could emerge from the focus groups and interviews. all researchers were authors of the study. twenty-eight female graduate students in a counseling/counseling psychology program at a major southwestern university participated in focus groups designed to study mentoring relationships. the seven focus groups consisted of female graduate students (ph.d. and master’s level) usually ranging in size from two to six participants. six female faculty members participated in individual interviews. the researchers of this study were also included as participants when they were not facilitating the focus groups or interviews. the following demographics include both students and faculty. participant ages current issues in education vol. 9 no. 6 ranged from 23 to 59, with the mean age being 33.52 (sd = 11.46), and the median age being 29. of the 28 student participants, there were 19 doctoral (67.86%) and 9 master’s (32.14%) students. participants included 18 (54.5%) euro americans, 4 (12.1%) latinas, 3 (9.1%) african americans, 2 (6.1%) asian americans, and 6 (18.2%) biracial/multiracial individuals. in addition, 18 (56.3%) of the participants self-identified as single/unmarried, 12 (37.5%) were married or had a life partner, 1 (3.1%) reported being separated, and 1 (3.1%) reported being divorced. the majority of participants did not have children (n = 26, 78.8%). demographic information was not available for one of the student participants. demographic forms. the demographic forms requested the following basic information from participants: age, race/ethnicity, marital status, if they had children and how many, if entering the counseling/counseling psychology field was a significant career change, terminal degree (i.e., m.c., ph.d., ed.d.), year in the counseling/counseling psychology program, when and where they earned their undergraduate degree, if they had mentors, and the sex of their mentors. procedure participants were recruited via email listservs. any person answering the call for participants was included in the focus groups and faculty interviews. follow-up attempts were made on two occasions in an attempt to recruit more participants. focus groups comprised of individuals from the same cohort in their doctoral or master’s program (i.e., individuals from the same year in their respective program). all focus groups were conducted by two of the reviewers or faculty supervisors and lasted one to one and a half hours. the six faculty interviews were conducted individually by two students. interviews lasted 30 minutes to one hour. based on the research ideas to be explored, the research team, in order to provide structure to the interviews with faculty members and to facilitate discussion and data collection in the focus groups, designed a set of open-ended questions. the first part of the focus groups and interviews focused on current and prior mentoring relationships. the middle portion of the focus groups and interviews focused on similarities and differences between that of the mentors and mentees, and how those similarities and differences might have affected the mentoring relationships. the final portion of the focus groups and interviews focused on suggestions for mentoring guidelines. upon completion of the first focus group, the research team met to revise the set of questions to include in the focus groups and interviews (see table 1). based on the direction of the discussion and dialogue, the facilitator would ask questions to gain clarity and understanding. a second researcher recorded the responses using paper and pencil. additionally, the researchers took active-memberresearcher roles (adler & adler, 1998) in that they were each members of their own cohort focus group and the faculty participated in individual interviews. in this sense, the researchers took roles as active participant observers who, as mentioned by adler and adler, were able to be members and not researchers so that the flow of the interaction was not altered unnaturally. upon completion of the focus groups, the recorded responses were typed and independently analyzed by four student researchers. using grounded theory, the researchers coded for main themes that emerged from the transcripts. according to strauss and corbin (1998), grounded theory allows the data to drive the themes that emerge. this is a more accurate representation of “reality” than the arbitrary selection of themes from one’s own experience. “grounded theories, because they are drawn from the data, are likely to offer insight, enhance understanding, and provide a meaningful guide to action.” (pp. 12). thus, given the purpose of this study (i.e., to identify factors that contribute to helpful and positive mentorship experiences unique to women), grounded theory appeared to be the most appropriate approach to data analysis. data analysis. in order to analyze the data, the researchers used open and axial coding (strauss & corbin, 1998). open coding was conducted first. this is a method whereby themes and their properties emerge from the data. in order to do this, the researchers individually analyzed the transcripts for emergent concepts. after the initial coding, the research team reconvened to reconcile the list of mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter 5 concepts to compile them into themes with definitions. reconciliation occurred through discussion of the concepts that emerged and independent meaning assigned to each theme. subthemes were also identified. upon reconciliation, the researchers again individually analyzed the transcripts using axial coding. this is a process whereby sub-themes based on the level of properties and dimensions of the themes emerge. the team met a second time to reconcile coding records. an identical process of data analysis was applied for the faculty and graduate student interviews. results seven major themes emerged from the data (summarized in table 2). recurrent themes throughout the focus groups and interviews suggest that female graduate students and faculty members share common views regarding mentoring relationships in higher education. this is especially true regarding what women desire in their mentoring relationship. however, students took the perspective of mentees whereas faculty, with the exception of a junior faculty member, took the perspective of the mentor. the junior faculty member presented both perspectives. this difference in perspectives can be seen by differences within each theme. empowering relationships discussion about empowering relationships included comments referring to encouragement, support, motivation, trust, pride, self-esteem, collaboration, well being, and personal growth. an example of this is exemplified by vanessa, “mentoring relationships are very supportive, nurturing and encouraging. they provide the opportunity to pass down knowledge and network. they teach you how to maneuver in an academic world without giving up your identity.” faculty also emphasized empowering relationships. this is exemplified through the following statement by julia: as a mentor, i try to treat students as colleagues and provide resources to gain power. i also provide resources for research, and i help my mentees to achieve a sense of meaning and purpose to what they are doing. i affirm their dreams. another faculty member, kathy stated, “seeing what my mentors have done as professional women gives me motivation to succeed. i think, look what they’ve done. here we are in the 21 st century – let’s see what i can do.” dynamic of the relationship the dynamics theme included comments about a sense of obligation, a power differential, feelings of stress, comfort/discomfort, evolution of the relationship, and ambivalent feelings regarding the relationship. this can be seen through a comment made by wendy: the relationship with my mentor started out by being an advisee. if i felt a connection, then it developed into mentoring. shared experience, connections, shared goals, and wanting to follow a similar path. the questions change. in the beginning, it was more academic, now more long-term. boundaries are looser, but they are still there. another student named joy also stated, “mentors should be aware of the power differential and their amount of influence. they should be respectful of mentees and recognize their research contributions, remembering that they are developing future colleagues.” faculty members’ views of current issues in education vol. 9 no. 6 dynamics include similar perceptions and observations. susan said: faculty-faculty relationships might be defined through being co-researchers and being on committees together. there is less difficulty with dual relationships with colleagues. you have to be aware that no matter how egalitarian you are with students, you still need to be aware of the power of the role. dynamic of the relationship the dynamics theme included comments about a sense of obligation, a power differential, feelings of stress, comfort/discomfort, evolution of the relationship, and ambivalent feelings regarding the relationship. this can be seen through a comment made by wendy: the relationship with my mentor started out by being an advisee. if i felt a connection, then it developed into mentoring. shared experience, connections, shared goals, and wanting to follow a similar path. the questions change. in the beginning, it was more academic, now more long-term. boundaries are looser, but they are still there. another student named joy also stated, “mentors should be aware of the power differential and their amount of influence. they should be respectful of mentees and recognize their research contributions, remembering that they are developing future colleagues.” faculty members’ views of dynamics include similar perceptions and observations. susan said: faculty-faculty relationships might be defined through being co-researchers and being on committees together. there is less difficulty with dual relationships with colleagues. you have to be aware that no matter how egalitarian you are with students, you still need to be aware of the power of the role. investment of the mentor four sub-themes emerged under this particular theme: personal/emotional, professional development, time/availability, and financial investment. personal/emotional. students discussed the personal/emotional investment that their mentors provided for them. lisa said: mentors should get to know mentees on a personal basis. where they want to go, what their personal interests are, their goals, more than just academics. it is long-term. it shows when they are committed to a student. mentors should know what is going on because they are making an investment. faculty members also discussed the personal/emotional investment on the part of the mentor. this is exemplified by elizabeth, “i believe that the task of the mentor is to listen, help address concerns and problems, interpersonal and professional problems. however, i do not provide therapy.” professional development. statements from students also included the investment of the mentor regarding students’ professional development. this can be seen in the statement by ashley, “mentoring relationships have an official status. mentors should provide professional experiences. mentors should monitor professional growth and development and mentors and mentees can do personal things together. currently, i only have an advisor.” faculty echoed the sentiments made by students. one faculty member, rebecca, spoke of her own mentor: my relationship with my mentor began the moment i entered the program. then it began to develop professionalism. i had to do presentations and my mentor provided opportunities for me. he encouraged me to follow his lead and then encouraged my independence. he made sure that there were opportunities and spent time with me in networking. he would introduce me to people that he thought i should get to know. this relationship was more like an apprenticeship. he encouraged me to make sure that doors were open so that i could go into whatever field i chose. time/availability. students addressed the need for mentors to be available to their mentees. farrah stated, “my mentor is more available than other professors and is quick to welcome me into her office.” jenny also stated, “i used to be hesitant to call my mentor at home or on the cell phone late at night. now i feel more comfortable doing those things.” faculty members also addressed the availability of the mentors to mentees. elizabeth addressed this as a cost in the following excerpt: one of the costs is the time and energy spent on mentoring. i engage in several hours of student-focused work every night. this is a choice that i make in order to get the students their feedback quickly. it takes away from private time. however, julia describes this as a process of the relationship. for the first year i am not very available to my mentees. they might have difficulty in getting an appointment with me and in their fist year may feel like i am a phantom. in their second year, when students blossom into their research and service interests, i mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter 7 begin to see them a lot. by the last semester of their program, my students and i see each other all of the time and there is not a lot of boundaries. over time, there is an escalating amount of involvement and moving into private space. financial. some students suggested that mentors should assist their mentees in finding financial assistance. wendy stated, “the perks of the mentoring relationship include taships, travel funds, research opportunities, and opportunities to co-teach a class. we need something to show for being someone’s mentee.” bertha added to this by saying, “it shows when a mentor is committed to a student when they offer research projects. mentors should know what is going on. they are making an investment. dishing out money for a conference, is that asking too much?” another student, elena, echoed this sentiment in the following statement, “mentors should assist mentees in finding financial assistance.” faculty interviews did not echo this subtheme, as faculty members did not make mention of personal financial investment on the part of mentors. shared experiences the shared experiences theme was defined as having a sense of common experiences that helped the women relate to their mentors, brought the women and their mentors together, and/or maintained the mentoring relationship. the participants related four sub-themes that emerged within this theme: ethnic/racial match, being women, having common academic or research backgrounds, and having similar personal experiences. ethnic/racial match. this is exemplified through a statement by isabella: i came from a mentoring relationship in which there was an ethnic match. the university i came from was a white man’s club, even the women acted like men. therefore, having an ethnic match meant that someone was taking an interest, especially in the sense that others who were not of my ethnic/racial group did not validate my goals of going to graduate school. women and minorities face more hurdles. there is a shared experience in having a mentoring relationship with someone of an ethnic match. they want to promote ethnic inclusion. faculty echoed sentiments, exemplified by kathy, i sought out my mentor because we were both women of color. this woman exudes professionalism that i admire and would like to emulate. this mentor has been able to role model ways in which she dealt with barriers being both a woman and non-white. women. this shared experience can be seen in a quote by cynthia, “i always go to women for advice and we work collaboratively together. when men are around, there is a new power differential. because of this, i am more comfortable with women mentors.” one faculty member, rebecca, stated, i am non-discriminating in mentoring males and females. there are more females in the program, so i have a propensity to make sure female students connect with people. males, because of socialization are already seeking out opportunities. i think that female students need to be pushed more to seek out opportunities such as fellowships and scholarships. academic/research. this shared experience was mentioned frequently. jennifer stated, “faculty have the experience of going through what we are going through as students. they can lay out a path for us and point us in the right directions. they can share the stories of their own academic experience.” faculty also addressed the issue of similar research interests. cecilia stated, “the relationship begins out of my desire to work with that student. i may even advocate admitting a student into the program due to similar interests.” personal. one student, keisha, mentioned, “one of my mentors had similar religious traditions as myself and so we would talk about those. i think it helped the relationship, but it had little to do with my professional development.” faculty mentioned personal history as a shared experience. rebecca stated, “i was the first person in my family to go to college. i think this may parallel what ethnic minorities who are the first to come to college are experiencing, rather than from coming from an advanced degree family.” balance of personal and professional life within oneself this theme emerged through the comments participants made about how to balance their personal and professional life, rather than balance personal and professional roles. students had differing opinions on how this was modeled. jo-anne stated, “my undergraduate mentor provided me a model of striking a balance between work and family.” however, sherry stated, both of my male mentors maintain a private practice, which has shaped the idea that i can go into academia and still have a private practice. however, i have not received any advice about how to balance family with a career. current issues in education vol. 9 no. 6 data from faculty interviews did not reflect the same sentiment that emerged from the student focus groups. this can be seen through this comment by elizabeth, “for beginning professors, it is important to remember to balance personal time with time spent with students. you won’t make it if you don’t have appropriate boundaries for mentoring.” male mentoring relationships three sub-themes emerged for this particular theme: a grandfather/familial role, a less personal connection, and slower relationship building. although students spoke to these themes, no faculty members addressed them. for the grandfather/familial role, charlotte’s quote addressed this, “my dad was the disciplinarian and wasn’t often home. the way i feel about my male mentor is the way i feel about my dad.” in the sub-theme of lack of emotional connection, one of the students, linda, mentioned, “i only have male mentors. the relationships are impersonal and serve mainly to make sure my academic needs are met.” finally, for slower relationship building, a quote by alisha illustrated the sub-theme: i had a male mentor and felt intimidated at first, but it was partly due to his credentials. now i feel more comfortable, like a friendship. we have respect for each other. though there are still times when i feel uncomfortable and think, ‘do i want to go there with him?’ peer mentoring the peer mentoring theme consisted of experiences and views relating to peer mentoring including the importance of it, the dynamics of the relationship, and shared experiences. laura stated, “i get advice about the program from other students. i feel that they are more forthright than the faculty regarding the program. i go to the older students for questions and concerns because they can empathize with my concerns.” when discussing student-student mentoring, cecilia said, “i like the idea of teams. here students can be mentored by both faculty and other students.” when talking about faculty-faculty mentoring, rebecca stated these relationships “might be more defined through being co-researchers and being on committees together. there is less difficulty with dual relationships with colleagues.” discussion it appears that women in higher education create unique mentoring experiences and relationships that meet their specific mentoring desires, and are consciously aware of additional components they may need. the purpose of this study was to explore the subjective mentoring experiences of women faculty members and graduate students within a counseling/counseling psychology program, who were involved in informal relational models of mentoring. what can the current women's views about their mentoring experiences teach us about future successful mentoring of women in higher education? the current findings indicate that notwithstanding age, levels of professional experience, or perspectives of the mentoring relationship (faculty member versus graduate student), women in higher educational counseling psychology settings are similar in the themes they experience and desire in their mentoring relationships. specifically, the preliminary themes that surfaced in this exploratory study include:  empowering mentoring relationships  dynamics of mentoring relationships  investment of mentors  shared experiences between mentors and mentees  need for personal balance of personal and professional lives  experiences with male mentoring relationships  peer mentoring (see table 2 for further detail). overall, t hese preliminary themes describe the multi-dimensionality of the mentoring needs of women suggesting a relational, web-like process through which women travel to experience successful professional and personal mentoring. in addition, congruent with past research, this study’s thematic findings highlight several factors that matter most to women when engaging in mentoring relationships that differ significantly from men’s needs (allen & eby, 2004; dreher & cox, 1996; gilbert & rossman, 1992 ). through the themes that surfaced, it appears that women share similar, unique needs and desires for relational approaches to mentoring relationships versus more traditional, male-appreciated hierarchical models (allen & eby; dreher & cox; gilbert & rossman; gilligan, 1982; liang et al., 2002). in their discussions of each of these themes, the women revealed a number of factors that are important to them as women in mentoring relationships. first, the theme of “empowering relationships” surfaced in several manners; the women expressed their needs for encouragement, support, and motivation, within any mentoring relationship. consistent with past research, they reported that their female mentors are personally, educationally, and emotionally supportive, and effectively able to provide the relationships mentees’ desire, as was reported in an earlier study (allen & eby, 2004; dickens & sagaria, 1997). mentoring as collaboration is a common practice among female scholars (dickens & sagaria) and it appears that mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter 9 female mentors reportedly provided relational, psychosocial approaches to mentoring relationships that offer the empowerment and trust the women participants desire (allen & eby; limbert, 1995). contrary to more traditional, hierarchal mentoring models, female mentors were reported to impart opportunities to succeed and flourish in the academic setting and created atmospheres in which to grow (allen & eby; dreher & cox, 1996; limbert). the participants in this study described empowering relationships as crucial to successful mentoring, thus offering the possibility to inform future approaches for mentoring women in higher education. second, the current findings point to multidimensional “dynamics in mentoring relationships.” these dynamics were viewed as being both positive and stressful. participants stated they often felt a sense of obligation to their mentors, both to impress them and to live up to their expectations, and similar to past research, this sense of obligation motivated as well as burdened them (moyer et al., 1999). in addition, the women reported recognizing power differentials in their relationships that often lead to comfort as well as to discomfort and ambivalent feelings regarding the relationships. at times, the mentees and/or mentors wanted to be friends as well as colleagues, but stated that it is complicated to navigate this while honoring the power differential that exists. faculty mentors stated that as students progress to graduation, they become colleagues and the mentoring relationship should mirror this evolution. in addition, the faculty members stated that when mentoring relationships evolve, the dynamics of the relationship with women mentors often led to long-term friendships more easily than with male mentors. these findings align with past research with women; women view their relationships in the long-term (gilligan, 1982), thus mentoring relationships are assumed to be a longterm commitment that will evolve and go through numerous stages (kram, 1983). the dynamics highlighted by the participants illustrate the sense of emotional and ethical vulnerability that mentors and mentees may feel, the possible emotional risks they take, and the multi-dimensionality of mentoring relationships for women. as past research has indicated, the “process” of mentoring appears to be of utmost importance to women (allen & eby, 2004; dreher & cox, 1996) and results in dynamics that these women consider important for productive mentoring relationships. third, the findings illustrate these women’s expectations of their mentors’ investment in them as mentees and as persons. the participants described having expectations that their mentor would invest in them on a personal and emotional level, would be available and devote time to them, and should assist them in finding financial assistance for professional development opportunities. mentees openly discussed the personal/emotional support their mentors provided for them. again, this theme lends voice to the importance of the relational model of mentoring for women (schwiebert, 2000); this sample of women in higher education prefer their mentors to support them both personally and emotionally by knowing them well enough to walk beside them during some experiences and to lead them through others. the women agreed that mentors invest in mentees on multiple levels and aid in their professional and personal lives by investing personal and emotional support. congruent with past research, mentees added that this appears to come more freely from female versus male mentors (dreher & cox, 1996). although the majority of the current data describes women’s mentoring relationships, “shared experiences” can be conceptualized as possible predictors of mentoring relationships. frequently the women reported seeking out their mentors or mentees according to shared research interests, gender, or ethnicity. the identification of the commonalities, by either mentor or mentee, appears to precipitate a deliberate choice to begin the mentoring relationship. schwiebert (2000) suggested that shared experiences may be the quality that differentiates a mentor from an advisor or role model. as one faculty member stated, “true mentoring is very rare—it grows out of shared perspectives.” the identification of shared experiences and perspectives within the mentoring dyad appears to provide mentees the sense that their mentors have experienced, and can anticipate, obstacles that they will encounter during their academic, personal, and professional progression. the women participants had expectations of their mentors’ abilities to ameliorate these personal and professional hurdles, thereby enhancing their professional experiences. if shared experiences enhance mentoring relationships, then this is likely one of the contributing factors to the satisfaction and commitment reported by females that have benefited from having female mentors (gilbert et al., 1983). further, participants reported that the balancing of personal and professional roles is a salient issue for females in higher education. the women in this study felt similar to those female graduate students in a past study, in which over onethird of the participants reported the balance of personal and professional lives a “most pressing” concern (moyer, et al., 1999). women with families who take on additional roles (i.e., student) typically add these roles without making changes to lessen current issues in education vol. 9 no. 6 their familial responsibilities. role expansions and expectations put unique stressors on women (gilbert et al., 1983) and the current results indicate that mentees want more guidance from mentors in this area. from the perspective of the female mentors, participants stressed the importance of keeping time spent with students from bleeding into personal time. many mentoring relationships are considered onesided, with the mentor giving far more than receiving (tannen, 2001). however, the female faculty members in this study admitted that they gave their time and emotion with, generally, only satisfaction in return, meaning that their academic mentoring dyads may be more uni-directional than reciprocal (arredondo, 2001). because this imbalance has the potential to be taxing on mentors, future research might focus on the creation of formalized higher education mentoring guidelines to prevent possible mentor burnout. further research may reveal that female mentors are more susceptible than male mentors to burnout due to the unique emotional aspects of female-to-female mentoring relationships (kram & isabella, 1985). in higher education, where female faculty members are in the minority, the question of the dynamic of male mentoring is a significant one. because this study was designed to focus on the mentoring experiences of women-women relationships, the women participating in this study focused the majority of their attention on the impact of female mentors in their lives. however, although some women mentioned receiving positive and empowering mentoring from male faculty members, the discussions consistently came back to the lack of personal connection with men and the fact that male mentors often took on a patriarchal role, which is a congruent theme with past research (allen & eby, 2004; dreher & cox, 1996). it would, however, be remiss to imagine that male mentors have not held an important role in the lives of women who have arrived at the graduate level in their academic careers. although they experienced a less personal connection with male mentors, the women in this study gave examples of their male mentors believing in them and encouraging them to apply to graduate school. nevertheless, the women described the process associated with male mentors as different from the process that occurred with female mentors. perhaps gender differences impeded the process of initiation, cultivation, separation, and redefinition as outlined by kram (1983). when there is a gender difference with male mentors, it is possible that socialized roles and expectations affect the relationships, influencing possible stages of development for female mentees (allen & eby, 2004; dreher & cox, 1996; nykodym, freedman, simonetti, & nielsen, 1995). finally, the findings of this study inform future mentoring with women in graduate training settings for the value of peer mentoring. as expressed by the participants, the main tenants of peer mentoring were that students gave each other forthright advice and peer relationships were safe and without expectations. as such, peer mentoring seemed to foster the intimacy needed to share fears and worries while still receiving key information toward successful achievement. kram (1988) discussed how peer relationships provide information, career strategizing, and feedback. psychosocially, peers help with confirmation, emotional support, and friendship. lastly, mutuality is one of the most unique attributes among peers. the shared experience of being on the same path, especially in academia where there are defined trajectories, appears to be a powerful dynamic. the more advanced students and faculty members pave the way for their female peers, who are then able to pave the way for others. the participants did not mention any of the negative traits of peer mentoring; instead, as past research has indicated (kram, 1988), peer mentoring showed to be purely helpful, encouraging, and a safe haven. finally, the faculty participants seemed consistently aware that the ways in which they were/are mentored influences their mentoring of others and that the depth of their commitment allows the next generation of professional women to thrive in higher educational settings. limitations as is the case with all research inquiries, this study included several limitations that should be noted. the researchers intended to elucidate themes around women’s mentoring needs and experiences with a small sample of faculty members and students in a counseling psychology graduate program . the qualitative and interview nature of the study provided rich information about the impact of mentoring in the lives of these particular women in higher education; however, because the focus of the study was on female-female mentoring relationships, the women participants spent less time describing their malefemale mentoring experiences. future studies should focus on women’s perceptions of both female-female and male-female mentoring relationships in higher education in order to further define women’s perceptions, needs, and wants for mentoring. the ideas and experiences collected in the current study confirmed the notions that mentoring is empowering and engendering of success; however, due to the small and homogenous sample, future studies might focus on female and male students’ mentoring mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter 11 experiences in higher education. the current researchers’ plan is to follow up the current study with additional research focusing on multiple disciplines and professional positions in higher education with both women and men. further, there is the potential impact of social desirability in qualitative studies involving interviews and focus groups that may likely affect the manners in which participants respond in order to “please” researchers or “fit in” with other participants. in fact, social desirability may have contributed to the current participants’ heightened attention on the importance of mentoring relationships in their personal/professional development; they may have been more reluctant to discuss their negative experiences. however, without specifically asking for positive and negative perceptions, the women participants offered both perspectives from their mentoring experiences. the methodology used in the analysis of these data also deserves attention. the formats of the interviews and focus groups may have inhibited participants with unique mentoring relationship experiences to share. however, social scientists agree that semi-structured and focus group qualitative studies are intrinsically subjective processes that are shaped moment-to-moment by culture, context, the particular relationship between speakers (e.g., interviewers and interviewees), and by the identities and locations (merrick, 1999; rennie, 1999). finally, studies with multiple forms of data collection are needed in future studies of this kind to solidify themes for women’s mentoring experiences in higher education. concluding thoughts and future directions this study raises important points for reflection regarding the factors that matter in the mentoring of women in higher education. with the growing number of women in higher educational professional roles and the increasing number of female students in higher education, the ongoing research into the specific mentoring needs and wants of women promises to add greater depth to the existing knowledge about how women succeed and grow in mentoring relationships. this study serves as a foundation for the current research team members, who are interested in broadening this particular study with numerous other professional women, and ultimately working toward outlining specialized guidelines for mentoring women in higher education settings. it would be especially useful to conduct a similar study in other areas of the country within counseling psychology programs, as well as within other higher education disciplines to compare the findings that emerged in this study. it would also be informative to examine the mentoring process among women along isolated racial, ethnic, or regional lines, as this study was not able to capture how these unique factors contributed to all of the women's cultural, personal, and professional experiences. further, studies of this nature should be conducted with male faculty members and students in order to allow for gender comparisons in higher education mentoring experiences for males and females. in addition, quantitative studies should be planned that build upon these findings. studies might focus on mentoring as a career and professional development enabler and esteem builder. future studies might investigate the role of mentoring in workplace settings where relationships for women and men still appear to be stratified. another area in need of focus is to develop a mentoring survey instrument that measures specialized multidimensional mentoring experiences among diverse groups of women, which could be coupled with a version for specific use with men. finally, theorists and researchers can use these data to raise awareness of the profound influence of contextual parameters and 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(1995). psychological empowerment in the workplace: dimensions, measurement, and validation. academy of management journal,38, 1442-1465. strauss, a., & corbin, j. (1998). basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. thousand oaks, ca: sage. sweeny, b. (2001). ask the mentor of mentors: a collection of answers to frequently asked questions. retrieved october 14, 2003, from http://www.teachermentors.com/rsod%20 site/askmom.html tannen, d. (2001). but what do you mean? women and men in conversation. in j. m. henslin, (ed.), down to earth sociology: introductory readings (11th ed.) (pp. 168 173). new york: free press. http://www.teachermentors.com/rsod%20site/askmom.html http://www.teachermentors.com/rsod%20site/askmom.html current issues in education vol. 9 no. 6 2006 article citation rayle a.d., bordes v., zapata a., arrendondo p., rutter m., howard c. (2006, may). mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter. current issues in education [on-line], 9(6). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume9/number6/ author notes andrea dixon rayle arizona state university division of psychology in education po box 870611, tempe, az 85287-061 andrea.rayle@asu.edu andrea dixon rayle, ph.d., is an assistant professor of counseling at arizona state university. she received her ph.d. in counseling and counselor education, and her primary research interests include ethnic identity, acculturation, and spirituality among minority and nonminority persons; mattering and purpose in life, and adolescent development and wellness. she teaches group, school, and multicultural counseling and is the school counseling program coordinator at asu. she enjoys needlework and bicycling. veronica bordes arizona state university division of psychology in education veronica bordes, m.ed. is a ford fellow and a doctoral candidate in counseling psychology at arizona state university. her research interests include academic persistence, mentoring, and a focus on adolescent and latina/o populations. she is working on her dissertation focused on the second point in a longitudinal study of latina/o college academic persistence. she is also a pediatric neuropsychology intern at a local teaching hospital. she enjoys golf, dancing, running, rock climbing, and playing with her dog to provide some fun and relaxation. angela zapata arizona state university division of psychology in education angela zapata is a doctoral student in counseling psychology at arizona state university. her research interests include women's and gender issues, mentoring, multiculturalism, the relationship of religion and spirituality with physical and mental health issues, as well as other health and wellness issues. she is currently a practicum counselor at asu's counseling center and is involved in a cultural adaptation of a manualized prevention program designed to teach recently divorced mothers how to help their children adjust to the transition of divorce. she is a co-creator of a health and wellness program for other students in the counseling/counseling psychology program at asu. angela enjoys spending time with her family and dogs, and she finds peace and revitalization in nature. patricia arredondo arizona state university division of psychology in education patricia arredondo, ph.d., is senior associate vice president with university undergraduate initiatives and professor of psychology in education at arizona state university (asu). she serves as president of the american counseling association (aca), 2005-2006, and was recognized as a "living legend" by the aca, for her contributions to the development of multicultural counseling competencies, dedication to latina/o issues and her leadership in promoting organizational change through a focus on diversity. she has published widely on these topics including co-chairing the taskforce for the "guidelines on multicultural education, training, research, practice and organizational change for psychologists." she is a fellow of divisions 17 and 45 of the american psychological association and recipient of an honorary doctorate from the university of san diego. prior to going to asu, she was president of empowerment workshops, inc., based in boston, an organizational consulting firm primarily focused on multicultural organizational development. when she is not collecting air miles, she enjoys yoga, reading murder mysteries and chicana fiction, beating men at golf, and riding with her convertible top down. file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number6/index.html mailto:andrea.rayle@asu.edu mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter 15 marie-christine rutter arizona state university division of psychology in education marie-christine rutter, m.a. is a doctoral student in counseling psychology at arizona state university. her focus in all areas of her work has been on ethnic minorities and health. her current research interests include mentoring, caregiving, and community research on health and ethnicity. she is also a psychology intern at a local teaching hospital and teaches educational psychology at the university. she enjoys running, hiking, and international travel. christina howard arizona state university division of psychology in education christina howard is a first year doctoral student in counseling psychology at the university of wisconsin-madison. she is currently researching the retention of undergraduate alana student in the math and sciences. her other interests include academic identity and talented and gifted children. in her spare time, she enjoys taking her dogs to the dog park and practicing sailing. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation rayle, a. d., bordes, v., zapata, a., arrendondo, p., rutter, m., & howard, c. (2006). mentoring experiences of women in graduate education: factors that matter. current issues in education, 9(6). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1598 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1598 cie template current issues in education, 23(1) 1 volume 23, issue 1 may 9, 2022 issn 1099-839x more than strength from within: cultivating teacher resilience during covid-19 harriet b. fox george washington university heather l. walter george mason university abstract: significant added stressors during the covid-19 pandemic are likely to compound and exacerbate historic concerns about burnout and turnover within the teaching profession. this study used a convergent mixed methods design to investigate experiences of teacher well-being in the beginning months of the covid-19 pandemic. specifically, quantitative surveys investigated relationships among stress, school connectedness, and teacher efficacy among 146 teachers. interviews with 16 teachers explored their qualitative perceptions of well-being, how they personally navigated the challenges of teaching remotely, and what their school and/or districts did to support teacher well-being. interviewed teachers could be classified as growing, coping, or discouraged. findings suggest that both individual and environmental factors contributed to a sense of well-being among growing and coping teachers. keywords: teacher well-being, resilience, covid-19 citation: fox, h. & walter, h. (2022). more than strength from within: cultivating teacher resilience during covid-19. current issues in education, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss1.1978 accepted: march 14, 2022 introduction under normal circumstances, teacher burnout and attrition are systemic problems, with significant numbers of teachers in the united states experiencing pervasive symptoms of psychological distress, stress, and burnout (jennings et al., 2017; roffey, 2012). burnout affects teachers’ physical and mental well-being and ultimately impacts the academic and socialemotional experiences of the students they teach (fleming et al., 2013; jennings et al., 2017; roffey, 2012). within the context of a worldwide pandemic and great economic uncertainty, teachers’ physical and mental well-being is at risk, with many experiencing heightened levels of stress or anxiety (bushweller, 2020; hamilton et al., 2020; kraft et al., 2020). additionally, https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss1.1978 fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 2 exacerbated inequalities have led many teachers to struggle to meet the needs of all students (bushweller, 2020; reich et al., 2020). yet, in spite of the great challenges facing educators during this time, some teachers have exhibited incredible resilience and maintained a sense of workplace well-being. recent literature has investigated not only why teachers leave the profession but also what makes teachers stay and what factors contribute to teacher well-being (mccallum et al., 2017; walter, 2020). protective factors at the individual and environmental levels, such as high levels of teacher-efficacy or strong connections with peers and colleagues, can support wellbeing (jennings et al., 2017; renshaw et al., 2015). increased school support and connectedness can serve as a buffer for morale (kraft et al., 2020; ladd, 2011), which may be all the more critical during the covid-19 pandemic. thus, the current study investigated protective factors at the individual and environmental levels that may have been associated with teacher well-being in the beginning months of the pandemic (i.e., spring 2020). literature review in this study, we address several factors associated with teacher well-being, including teacher stress, teacher efficacy, perceptions of school connectedness, and teacher resilience. we review the literature related to teacher stress, efficacy, and connectedness and how these constructs are associated with various levels of teacher resilience and well-being. teacher stress over the past few decades, there has been considerable interest in teacher stress as an indicator of subjective well-being. stress is broadly defined as strain (physiological or psychological) experienced by a person when striving to meet changing demands from one’s environment (carson et al., 2000; renshaw et al., 2015). in educational contexts, changing demands related to instructional standards, accountability, and evaluation have placed considerable stress on teachers (renshaw et al., 2015). work-related stress among teachers has been associated with burnout and a number of other negative outcomes, including low job satisfaction, poor student outcomes, and attrition (skaalvik & skaalvik, 2009; grayson & alvarez, 2008; spilt et al., 2011). during the covid-19 pandemic, teachers were expected to transform their classrooms virtually overnight, often with limited support or preparation. changing demands from school and district administrators likely led to increased stress among teachers, and there has been considerable concern that many teachers would choose to leave the profession as a result of such heightened demands (edweek research center, 2020). teacher well-being despite growing interest in factors associated with teacher well-being, most research has relied on targeting negative indicators (e.g., stress and burnout) at the exclusion of positive aspects of teachers’ work (renshaw et al., 2015). positive indicators of teacher well-being—such as efficacy, positive affect, or relationships with students and colleagues—have been associated with a number of critical educational outcomes, including teacher effectiveness, student wellbeing, classroom climates, and retention (collie et al., 2015; renshaw et al., 2015). among these indicators, teacher self-efficacy and prosocial relations, including connectedness to one’s school, have repeatedly demonstrated strong predictive validity of teacher stress and burnout (de biagi et al., 2018; mankin et al., 2018; renshaw et al., 2015). these factors may also be critically fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 3 important to maintaining a sense of well-being during significant crises or periods of stress, such as teaching during the covid-19 pandemic. teacher efficacy teacher efficacy is the degree to which teachers believe they are able to effectively support student engagement and learning (bandura, 1977). teacher efficacy has been associated with many significant educational outcomes, including teacher retention, job satisfaction, and student achievement (tschannen-moran & hoy, 2001). teacher efficacy has also been linked to greater levels of persistence and resilience when faced with challenges or setbacks (kraft et al., 2020). levels of efficacy vary according to teachers’ levels of experience, school setting, and student population (podolsky et al., 2019). teacher efficacy is also impacted by crises (e.g., natural disasters). in a crisis, teachers may experience a feeling of “role overload” from responding to multiple demands and supporting the well-being of their students and impacted communities. this can decrease their sense of efficacy (seyle et al., 2013). given the abrupt transition to remote teaching in spring 2020 and related reductions in school morale (edweek research center, 2020), it is possible that teachers experienced a decrease in efficacy. prior research indicates that low levels of efficacy are associated with higher levels of burnout and attrition and lower levels of student achievement and engagement (wong et al., 2017). school connectedness feeling connected to and supported by colleagues at work has been found to contribute to general workplace well-being and satisfaction, and this appears to be the case for teachers as well (renshaw et al., 2015). teachers who reported collegial support and a good atmosphere at work tended to have stronger occupational well-being (renshaw et al., 2015). those in negative atmospheres, such as schools experiencing friction in their community or a lack of leadership, reported lower levels of well-being (bower & carroll, 2017; kern et al., 2014). recent studies of teacher experiences during the spring of 2020 have shown that factors associated with school connectedness, such as the principal’s leadership, collegial relationships, and the school’s organizational culture, mattered most to teachers (kraft et al., 2020). schools that experienced the greatest success with remote teaching and learning relied on flexible, teamoriented cultures to navigate uncertainty amidst the global pandemic (greenberg, 2020; kraft et al., 2020). when teachers feel disconnected from their students and colleagues and increasingly isolated, as may have been the case for many during the spring of 2020, they are more likely to leave the profession (johnson & birkeland, 2003). ensuring teachers feel supported and that they are part of a team is critical under any circumstance but may be particularly important during periods of crisis or transition. teacher well-being and resilience resilience has typically been used to describe individuals’ capacity to adapt or even thrive despite adversity (beltman et al., 2011). resilience in the face of adversity may not be a response to a specific traumatic event but can also include one’s daily response to accumulating challenges (clara, 2017). more nuanced understandings of resilience have suggested that resilience is a complex process resulting from the interplay between risk and protective factors at both the individual and environmental levels (beltman et al., 2011; ungar, 2012). those who do fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 4 exhibit resilience are more likely to experience professional engagement, motivation, satisfaction, and well-being (beltman, 2015; mansfield et al., 2012). at the individual level, teachers who exhibit resilient traits, such as a sense of efficacy and accomplishment, flexibility, a sense of purpose, or use of coping strategies, may be more likely to persevere in spite of challenging circumstances (mansfield et al., 2012). in contrast, teachers who have greater difficulty coping with the emotional demands of their work are at higher risk of stress and burnout (mansfield et al., 2012). social-ecological perspectives of resilience emphasize the significant impact of the environment in which individual teachers are situated (beltram, 2015; unger, 2012). environmental contributors can include new teacher support (e.g., mentors, pre-service experiences), positive relationships with colleagues and school administrators, a positive school culture, and positive experiences while working with students (ainsworth & oldfield, 2019; howard & johnson, 2004; mansfield et al., 2012). critical perspectives of teacher resilience (e.g., johnson & down, 2013; price et al., 2012) also emphasize the importance of context, questioning whether the term “resilience” has become a “means to enable overworked teachers” to cope with the intense pressures of capitalism and globalization rather than attempting to resist or change toxic systems (price et al., 2012, p. 84). resilience and well-being are arguably related but distinct constructs (harms et al., 2018). the relationship between resilience and well-being is likely bidirectional, and it may also be the case that under duress, resilience serves as a moderator between stress and well-being (harms et al., 2018). resilient individuals may be more likely to maintain a strong sense of wellbeing when confronted with stress. it is also likely that individuals with a strong sense of wellbeing may be more likely to exhibit resilient behaviors (harms et al., 2018). as described above, resilience involves both individual and contextual factors. thus, cultivating teacher resilience to support or maintain workplace well-being during periods of high stress should involve attention to the structure and institutional nature of teachers’ work (including school management and culture) as well as individual teacher dispositions (ainsworth & oldfield, 2019). given the challenges associated with teaching during the covid-19 pandemic, researchers were interested in how teachers experienced stress and well-being and if their individual actions and those of their schools supported resilient responses to facilitate well-being. research purpose the purpose of this study was to investigate teachers’ perceptions of their well-being and stress during the first few months of the pandemic (i.e., spring 2020) and the extent to which their personal actions and school or district leaders facilitated resilient responses. specifically, this study asked the following research questions: 1. what were teachers’ levels of perceived stress according to the perceived stress scale (cohen, 1983) and teacher well-being according to the teacher subjective well-being scale (renshaw et al., 2015) during the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic in spring 2020? 2. what individual and environmental factors contributed to teachers’ resilient response and subsequent well-being during the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic in spring 2020? fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 5 methods this study used a convergent mixed methods design (creswell & plano clark, 2017) in which quantitative and qualitative data were collected simultaneously, followed by separate analyses of each data set. for logistical purposes, teachers participated in interviews after taking the surveys, but quantitative analyses did not inform qualitative data collection methods. following analyses of each data set, quantitative and qualitative data were then merged for interpretation. the integration of quantitative and qualitative data allowed for a more complete understanding of what factors contributed (i.e., individual or environmental) to teacher wellbeing during covid-19 than either data set alone (creswell & plano clark, 2017). data collection a team of two researchers collected quantitative and qualitative data over the course of two months in the spring of 2020. participants were recruited using snowball convenience sampling. all participants (a) were at least 18 years old; (b) held a teacher licensure in the united states (c) were teaching full time; (d) were teaching remotely due to mandated physical distancing and school closures at the time of the study; and (e) taught in grades k-12. this study was approved by the university’s institutional review board (irb). surveys were completed online, and interviews were conducted via video call (e.g., zoom). sample the full sample consisted of 146 participants. a majority (85%) of participants were female. participant age ranged from 20s (n = 18) to 60s (n = 13), with most teachers in their 30s (n = 53). most participants (n = 85) had over ten years of experience; 55 had 3 10 years of experience, and six were in their first or second year of teaching. most teachers worked in a public school (n = 110), though some were in private settings (n = 25) or in a public charter school (n = 10). most participants reported teaching elementary school (k 5th; n = 93), 22 reported teaching middle school, 22 reported teaching high school, and six reported teaching grades k 8. sixteen participants from the quantitative sample opted into an interview. among the interview participants, seven self-reported that they were special education teachers. interview participants represented a range of ages, settings, and years of teaching (see appendix a for additional details). quantitative data collection teacher participants responded to two survey instruments measuring stress and wellbeing. researchers administered the perceived stress scale (cohen, 1983) and the teacher subjective well-being scale (renshaw et al., 2015). teacher participants also self-reported demographic information (e.g., gender, school setting, years of experience, grade level). perceived stress scale the perceived stress scale (pss; cohen et al., 1983) is a widely used 10-item instrument that measures participants’ perceived levels of stress over the past month (e.g., “in the last month, how often have you felt nervous and stressed?”; vallejo et al., 2018). participants responded on a 5-point likert-type scale (0 = never, 4 = often). four items are reverse coded, and then an average score is taken across all items. high scores indicate high levels of stress. in this study, the pss showed strong internal reliability (𝛼 = .89). fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 6 teacher subjective well-being scale the teacher subjective well-being questionnaire (tswq; renshaw et al., 2015) is an 8item instrument that includes two subscales related to teachers’ well-being: (a) a teacher’s efficacy (e.g., “i am a successful teacher”) and (b) a teacher’s sense of school connectedness (e.g., “i feel like i belong at this school”). teacher efficacy and connectedness have consistently demonstrated strong structural properties, and there is evidence of strong external validity for these constructs among diverse populations of teachers (arslan, 2018; de biagi et al., 2018; mankin et al., 2018; renshaw et al., 2015). on the tswq, participants respond to items using a 4-point likert-type scale (1 = almost never, 4 = almost always). scores on each subscale were calculated independently; high scores reflect high levels of connectedness and efficacy. internal reliability estimates on the tswq school connectedness and tswq teacher efficacy subscales for this study were high (𝛼 = .80, 𝛼 = .88). qualitative data collection participants had the option to participate in an interview at the conclusion of the survey. two researchers, who were special education teachers and now pk 12 university special education and teacher preparation researchers, conducted virtual interviews that lasted 30 60 minutes. interview questions were semi-structured and asked teachers to describe their experiences related to well-being during the spring of 2020 (e.g., “how has your well-being changed as a result of remote teaching?”). this method was chosen so that we were able to elaborate on questions and probe participants further if necessary. teachers were also asked to talk about factors that supported their well-being at the individual and school level during the pandemic. interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed by the authors. several measures were taken to establish trustworthiness throughout the study, including member checking and triangulation. interview questions were checked by content experts, and participants were asked to review interview transcripts for accuracy and clarity (lincoln & guba, 1985). data analysis quantitative descriptive statistics were analyzed using microsoft excel and spss v. 27 to identify trends across participants. qualitative analysis included a three-cycle coding process. first, participant interviews were open-coded by two researchers using maxqda 2020. based on the emergent codes, researchers created a codebook that included individual and environmental factors affecting teacher well-being. the codebook was then applied to all interviews. finally, researchers assigned participants profiles according to their perceptions of well-being during the spring of 2020. specifically, researchers examined the level of support received by participants (e.g., school, colleagues) and classified the level of professional support as low, medium, or high. researchers also examined participants’ personal disposition toward work (e.g., positive versus discouraged), coping strategies (e.g., effective versus ineffective), and sense of professional efficacy (e.g., believed they could be successful versus did not think they would be successful). participants were then coded according to one of three categories. those with generally low support and a pessimistic outlook, ineffective coping strategies, or low professional efficacy were identified as “discouraged.” participants who reported low support but expressed a positive outlook, effective coping strategies, or strong professional efficacy were identified as “coping.” finally, participants who expressed strong support and a positive outlook, effective coping strategies, or strong professional efficacy were identified as “growing.” fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 7 when conducting qualitative analyses, it is important to consider how researchers can ensure that findings are trustworthy. one approach for supporting validity in qualitative research is peer debriefing (creswell & miller, 2000). a peer debriefer reviews the research and analysis process, challenging the researchers to justify their research decisions and pushing their next steps methodologically (lincoln & guba, 1985). in the current study, a third researcher initially served as a peer debriefer after qualitative and quantitative analyses were complete, then remained engaged in the research process to support integrated analyses, interpretation, and writing. the three researchers integrated quantitative and qualitative data for the purpose of triangulation and expansion (greene et al., 1989). participants’ quantitative scores were compared to participants’ qualitative profiles using a data matrix and visual display (see figures 1 and 2). the integration of quantitative and qualitative data allowed for a more complete understanding of what factors contributed (i.e., individual or environmental) to teacher wellbeing during covid-19 than that provided by either data set alone (creswell & plano clark, 2017). results quantitative results researchers calculated descriptive statistics for all participants (n = 146) as well as among those who participated in interviews (n = 16). mean, standard deviation, median, and range were calculated for each scale and subscale across all participants. teachers’ reported stress levels varied from 0.20 (low stress) to 3.10 (high stress) and, on average, were moderate (m = 1.85, sd = 0.61). school connectedness levels as measured by the tswq ranged from 1.50 to 4.00. average connectedness was 3.23 (sd = 0.61), suggesting that most participants tended to feel positively about their level of school connectedness. teacher efficacy levels as measured by the tswq ranged from 1.75 to 4.00. on average, efficacy levels were also high (m = 3.45, sd = 0.54). mean, standard deviation, median, and range were also calculated among interview participants and compared to the larger sample. independent samples t-tests confirmed that there were no significant differences between the full group and the interview group. pearson’s correlations between scales were also analyzed. school connectedness and perceived stress were significantly inversely correlated (r = -.35, p < .01); efficacy and perceived stress were also significantly inversely correlated (r = -.32, p < .01); school connectedness and efficacy were significantly positively correlated (r = .44, p < .01). this suggests that individuals with higher levels of school connectedness and teacher efficacy tended to have lower levels of perceived stress. although the average levels of teacher well-being and stress indicate that many participants appeared to cope well in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, the wide range of responses suggests that some participants may have coped better than others. qualitative results teachers’ well-being was affected by factors at the individual and environmental levels. using response patterns based on these factors, researchers identified three groups, including teachers who were (a) growing, (b) coping, and (c) discouraged. individual factors individual factors influence how one copes with environmental factors and persists in response to stress or adversity. individual factors as defined by the current study included positive dispositions, confidence, coping skills, self-care strategies, and desire for professional fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 8 growth. having a positive disposition, including a commitment to student learning and the ability to reframe challenging situations, was important for teachers’ sense of well-being. many teachers with a positive disposition talked about how they tried to see the “silver lining” in challenging situations or focus on things that were going well, such as improved parent relationships, rather than on everything that was hard. for example, one teacher stated that they could “accept that i am doing the best that i can and adopt a growth mindset” (pid 2624). teachers also talked about gaining confidence over time and that this helped them feel better about their job, especially when working with colleagues. one participant shared how feeling that “we are all rowing in the same boat” helped her have a positive attitude (pid 5518). as they got used to new technological tools and online teaching, they felt more efficacious. others discussed specific coping strategies, including setting boundaries around their work. additionally, motivation to learn and grow through professional development opportunities came up as an important contributor to wellbeing. lastly, self-care was mentioned by many teachers who tried to manage their stress and well-being by taking lunch breaks, talking with friends, asking for support, or exercising. environmental factors teacher participants also described environmental factors that contributed to their wellbeing. environmental factors included teachers’ interactions with others and the availability of resources, including district interactions or support, school administrator and peer support, family and friends, and working with students. these interactions ranged from very positive to very negative depending on the individual teacher and school environment. district supports included free resources, professional development opportunities, empathetic superintendents, acknowledgment of physical or mental health needs, or flexibility with work schedules. school administrator support included tangible support (e.g., technology) as well as emotional support. some teachers described very “aloof” administrators, whereas others felt their school leaders were working around the clock to protect teacher well-being and support learning. one participant, for example, felt relief when she received “weekly emails from my superintendent” (pid 2715), while another thought administrators “were forcing them to teach in a one-size-fitsmost approach,” which was not the way she was used to teaching (pid 2622). many teachers also brought up the role of peer support—either socially connecting with colleagues online or collaborating with other teachers to adapt to online teaching. participants discussed the importance of relying on friends and family for emotional support as well as for household needs. finally, teachers discussed working with students. for some, the move to virtual learning ruptured student-teacher relationships; for others, it encouraged more one-on-one time and fostered a sense of meaning or purpose. teachers who generally felt more supported by their environment tended to report better overall experiences during the spring of 2020 than those who felt less supported. growing teachers six of the 16 teachers interviewed were identified as “growing” or having high levels of social and school-based support as well as strong individual coping strategies that allowed them to learn and grow as professionals. this group of teachers tended to describe their experiences more positively than other participants. they felt that teaching remotely may have presented challenges but had not been an entirely negative experience. growing teachers had a more optimistic outlook than others, some sharing that this experience helped them improve as individuals or professionally. for example, one teacher specifically stated that her health fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 9 improved because she was able to eat better and get outside for walks more frequently (participant id 2002), and others shared the virtual classroom helped them learn new skills. growing teachers spoke about environmental factors that contributed to their well-being, such as positive administrator and district support. teachers described administrators as “awesome” (pid 7461), highly effective, and understanding of what teachers needed during a crisis. strong social networks and school connectedness amongst family and friends were major themes that growing teachers focused on. these teachers relied on others in their school community for support. one teacher specifically talked about how colleagues helped each other through virtual formats: “[we] really were there for each other and there was a lot of conversation, and it was great. if someone was overwhelmed it was like, we can work this out” (pid 1164). another described frequent team check-ins as beneficial, sharing, “we have a group meeting where everybody just checks in every day and says, good morning, [and] makes sure everybody is okay” (pid 1686). many growing teachers found comfort in their family and friends. one teacher explained that “even though we were doing it remotely, i’m still staying connected with my church. so, i think that’s probably what really helps me to get through” (pid 7461). another described leaning on her family to help with household responsibilities and taking care of elderly parents (pid 2002). lastly, growing teachers mentioned how working with students in new ways provided opportunities for learning and growth. for many in this group, teaching in new online formats was a “silver lining.” teachers found opportunities to connect with parents more frequently or to work more closely with some students one-on-one. others loved the chance to try online tools and improve their pedagogical practices. growing teachers saw silver linings in their work, were able to use productive coping mechanisms and self-care strategies, and often reported high levels of school-based and social support to help them adjust to remote teaching. coping teachers five teachers were identified as coping, including one outlier. these teachers tended to have positive mindsets, good coping mechanisms, and used a variety of self-care strategies. however, unlike growing teachers, they felt less supported by their school and administrators. thus, while coping teachers persisted despite challenges associated with remote teaching, they also tended to feel more isolated and relied more heavily on individual coping strategies. the participant outlier reported strong school connectedness and administrative support but faced significant obstacles with childcare and thus also reported very high levels of stress. coping teachers tended to share greater frustration with school-based administrators or their district. one felt “dissonance and disconnect” between what the district was asking and what was feasible (pid 7653). others felt “a lot of anxiety” because the “school hasn’t really told us anything” (pid 1686). this differed significantly from the growing group of teachers who commonly reported high levels of school-based support. although they felt less supported by their school or district, teachers in the coping group spoke of having a few (one or two) colleagues they could turn to or family members they felt connected to. despite many frustrations, this group of teachers found ways to manage uncertainty even without school or district support. they tended to have very positive attitudes, high levels of selfefficacy, and found ways to cope to do their job. like growing teachers, coping teachers also saw the “silver lining” in a crisis and were able to verbalize positive moments and learning experiences. fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 10 some described excitement over “delivering content in a whole new way” and providing “way more personal assessment and feedback to kids” (pid 7653). others similarly found students’ reflections on their learning to be deeply moving (pid 8542). another teacher shared that she gained “a lot more confidence [in] things i would not have done” and was “more comfortable [teaching remotely] to the point where i kind of liked being at home” (pid 6132). one teacher discussed how in a virtual learning environment she gets “to completely reinvent [the] job… i feel a sense of urgency around that. like how can i do that so i can set my kids up in a way so that when they come back, school will never look the way it looked” (pid 7653). this group of teachers also reported communicating more frequently with parents, sending “positive notes” home, or helping parents support their students who had learning differences (pid 6132, 1686). coping teachers found ways to take care of themselves, either by starting a yoga practice (pid 1686), taking regular walks (pid 6132), or making dog walks “sacred” time (pid 7653). some also talked about the importance of keeping schedules and thinking in smaller chunks of time to get to the end of the year (pid 1686, 7653). teachers in this group also reported that they found a lot of joy and meaning from student interactions. some described hosting social “hangouts” with their students. they provided students opportunities for unstructured time during lunch or breaks to play games and talk to one another informally (pid 7653, 1686). these moments cultivated a sense of meaning and purpose that teachers felt was often lacking from remote instruction. another teacher found meaning from seeing students who “struggled in the classroom” do “so much better at home” (pid 6132). she shared that “seeing that was kind of motivation for me to just keep going, i learned every day for them.” one teacher found promise in the idea of forming relationships with students in a very personal and private way that may be deeper than relationships formed in a traditional classroom (pid 7653). there was one outlier in this group who, unlike others, had very high levels of school support but also very high self-reported levels of stress. she shared, “we are being given more tools and being asked to do more” in comparison to most schools that are asking teachers to do more, with less. however, she had a very challenging time teaching remotely because of a lack of childcare for her pre-school-aged daughter. balancing teaching and parenting made the spring of 2020 incredibly challenging for this teacher. had she had child support, she may have reported growing, but without it, she relied heavily on her colleagues to get through. thus, her resilience stemmed from strong school support rather than simply relying on individual coping strategies. apart from the outlier in this group, coping teachers spoke more negatively about environmental factors such as low school and district support than growing teachers. they did, however, speak very positively about working with children and found individual coping mechanisms to be effective. discouraged teachers the third group of teachers had a much more difficult time navigating remote teaching than other participants. these “discouraged” teachers reported far less support and tended to have lower levels of confidence and more negative outlooks on their situation. discouraged teachers spoke of the lack of support they received from their district and school administration. one teacher shared that her administrators were not adequately addressing teacher needs during this period. she stated: fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 11 i feel like they said that a lot but there was no actionable [steps]… like i thought about what if someone needs to take a day off?...there was never any mention of what would happen....and so there was a lot of like, these emails that would come and say things like “in these unprecedented times, etc., etc.” and “you need to care for yourself first,” but it was like, what does that even mean? (pid 5695) another teacher similarly shared that her school had a counselor to check in if needed but said, “did she really provide any services to the teachers? no, not at all” (pid 5130). this group of teachers also felt there was too much “back and forth” from the district or administration about expectations, making it difficult to plan because “no one really knew what to do, it was really confusing” (pid 5130). one teacher shared, “i just felt like their plan was… haphazard… they need to have a more structured plan moving forward” (pid 2624). another described a “disastrous” rollout after ten weeks of missed learning time, feeling the district could have had a better plan in place without losing so much time (pid 5695). these disparate standards made some teachers feel like there were wide interpretations of how teachers should spend their time, with some going “above and beyond” and others “not doing anything at all” (pid 5103, 5695), which created a feeling of resentment among some staff. many teachers in this group also expressed their concern about equity of access for students and their families. these teachers stated that they couldn’t assure equity of access to online materials, could not get computers to families, or software was not updated. even if these issues were solved, discouraged teachers worried that their students had not been seen or provided with services in weeks. discouraged teachers also spoke of how stressful it was to keep students engaged and motivated online and how hard it was to teach when some students did not even have their basic needs met (e.g., food, social services). all five teachers in the discouraged group also happened to be special educators (although not all self-identified special educators were classified as “discouraged,” with one classified as coping and one as growing). many discouraged teachers reported concern that they were unable to provide services to students and feared future legal battles (pid 5695, 5130). one teacher shared, “just knowing that they’re not being serviced in the way that they should” impacts “how effective you feel as a teacher” (pid 5130). another felt her job became very compliance-driven, sharing, “once we actually started teaching… it felt very legal… like there wasn’t anything really as a teacher i was contributing” (pid 5695). similarly, a participant said, “our role really changed… like we weren’t really just teachers anymore—we were more like government representatives” (pid 8630). some teachers spoke of peer support, but many said that as special education teachers, they often felt isolated in their role. this group did talk about some positive coping and self-care strategies such as relying on family members, venting to friends, trying to exercise, or working with private therapists. unlike other participants, this group did not speak of positive professional growth or report any particular “silver linings” associated with teaching remotely. integrated analysis and results after analyzing quantitative and qualitative results independently, results were integrated into joint displays (guetterman et al., 2015), which combined qualitative and quantitative findings in a visual illustration for analysis and interpretation. first, researchers organized scores on measures of stress, school connectedness, and teacher efficacy together with qualitative responses to overarching themes in a meta-matrix by participant (miles et al., 2014). participants were sorted by their qualitative profile of growing, coping, or discouraged. visual analysis of the fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 12 integrated joint displays triangulated qualitative and quantitative results, revealing overlapping and distinct patterns in quantitative scores among the different qualitative profiles. first, we compared mean scores of perceived stress, school connectedness, and selfefficacy by participant profile (figure 1) to explore patterns among each teacher profile group. the results showed that all three groups reported similar stress levels, m = 1.85, 1.74, and 1.92 for growing, coping, and discouraged participants, respectively (range = 0.7 2.5, 0.9 3.1, 1.2 2.3). however, differences emerged in the school connectedness and teacher efficacy scores. consistent with qualitative findings, growing teachers reported the highest levels of teacher efficacy (m = 3.83, range = 3.5 4.0) and school connectedness (m = 3.79, range = 3.5 4.0). teacher efficacy scores for coping (m = 2.9, range = 2.25 3.25) and discouraged teachers (m = 3.0, range = 2.5 3.75) were slightly lower than the growing group. reports of school connectedness diverged further, with coping teachers reporting levels of school connectedness that were strong (m = 3.5, range = 3.25 4.0) but lower than that of growing teachers (m = 3.8, range = 3.5 4.0). consistent with qualitative reports, struggling teachers reported the lowest levels of school connectedness (m = 2.4, range = 2.0 3.0). figure 1. participant profile group by average score note. stress = average score on the perceived stress scale (scale of 0-4) for participants in the growing, coping, and discouraged groups; school connectedness = average score on the tswq (scale of 1-4); self-efficacy = average score on the tswq scale (scale of 1-4). because using mean scores for each group can mask individual participant variability, we also visualized integrated profiles for each participant by mapping each participants’ reported score of school connectedness and perceived stress (figure 2). the results suggested that fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 13 although stress levels varied across all three groups, measures of school connectedness differentiated among teachers’ reported experiences of well-being; teachers who described experiences of growing reported strong school connectedness (3.5 or higher), while teachers who were discouraged reported lower connections to their schools (3.0 or lower). coping teachers generally reported levels of school connectedness between the discouraged and growing groups, with the exception of one coping participant who indicated school connectedness of 4.0. however, the interview with this participant suggested that she felt less support from her school than suggested by the quantitative scale. figure 2 individual participant perceived stress by school connectedness note. stress = average score on the perceived stress scale (scale of 0-4) for participants categorized as growing, coping, and discouraged; school connectedness = average score on the teacher subjective well-being questionnaire (scale of 1-4) discussion the results of this mixed-methods investigation indicate that teacher responses to remote teaching during the spring of 2020 varied, with some teachers embracing opportunities to grow professionally and others feeling discouraged by their role. more specifically, integrated findings suggest that feeling connected to one’s school community served as a protective factor for many teachers. however, special educators had unique challenges and were more likely to describe feelings of isolation or frustration than general education teachers. additionally, findings suggest that despite heightened stress, individuals with communities of support and strong individual coping mechanisms can still find ways to thrive. fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 14 school connectedness as a protective factor this study found that individual experiences of well-being during the pandemic varied according to levels of environmental support, specifically school connectedness. it is possible that connectedness allowed teachers to be more resilient in the face of stress and thus experience higher degrees of well-being during the pandemic. school connectedness may have served as a protective factor against the stress associated with remote learning and covid-19. teacher participants who felt supported by their school had colleagues with whom they could collaborate or problem solve and had networks of support outside of school tended to report better overall well-being. those who felt they were a part of a team tended to report relying less on individual coping mechanisms in response to stress. feeling connected to their school community may have bolstered feelings of belonging and reduced anxiety associated with remote teaching. teachers reported many ways they stayed connected during remote learning. supportive school leaders created intentional opportunities for collaboration among pairs or teams of teachers and held regular staff meetings, including informal opportunities to connect online. teachers also felt a deeper sense of community and connection when provided with professional development opportunities and appropriate technological tools to adapt to online learning. finally, teachers felt more connected when school leaders embraced an attitude of empathy and flexibility. although schools prioritize the needs of students and families, it is equally important to consider the needs of teachers during a pandemic. flexibility in teaching approaches or work schedules, for example, can make teachers feel supported and cared for. special education teacher resilience while the focus of this study was on teachers’ well-being in general during the pandemic, one auxiliary finding from the qualitative interviews was that all teachers who were classified as “discouraged” also self-reported that they were special educators. these teachers expressed feelings of isolation, limited support, and mixed messages from administrators. under normal circumstances, special education teachers experience higher levels of stress and burnout than their general education peers (haslip & gullo, 2018). special education teachers in this study similarly described higher levels of stress and feelings of discouragement than the general education teachers in this study. discouraged special education teachers particularly struggled with online service delivery, confusion around compliance with individualized education programs (ieps), and feeling professionally isolated from their general education colleagues. in a traditional classroom environment, teachers can rely on multiple visual and verbal cues with ample opportunities to check for understanding, redirect students if they are on task, and work one on one. remotely, few of these strategies were viable, and for some students with disabilities, learning from a computer screen for hours each day was not developmentally appropriate. special education teachers also reported mixed messaging from administrators regarding iep compliance and service delivery. many of the interviewed teachers were the only special education teacher in their grade level or specialty area. even teachers who collaborated with general education teachers for push-in support were unclear as to what their role was in an online classroom. confusion and isolation likely contributed to feeling discouraged among this group of special educators. when considering the needs of special education teachers, particularly during remote learning, it is important to provide clear and structured guidance in terms of compliance obligations. support for special education teachers can also include greater opportunities for fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 15 collaboration with general and special education colleagues and professional development specifically targeting special education teachers’ needs, such as effective online accommodation tools, strategies for student engagement in a virtual environment, or clear guidance for iep compliance. stress study findings also raise important questions about teachers’ experiences of stress and how feelings of stress are related to teachers’ perceptions of professional well-being. the perceived stress scale measures general stress, not stress specific to teaching during the pandemic. however, stress experienced in other parts of one’s life can impact an educator’s professional well-being. for example, most interviewed participants did not have children at home, either because their children were old enough to self-monitor their own online learning, were adults, or because they did not have children. teachers who are parents may experience additional stressors as they juggle teaching and parental responsibilities. future research should investigate how other life stressors impact teacher well-being at work. additionally, this study raises some questions about the use of stress as a measure of well-being. despite responding to a survey during a time in which teachers were arguably experiencing significant stressors, both the larger sample and qualitative sample showed moderate stress levels. as expected, school connectedness and teacher-efficacy were negatively correlated with stress, but these correlations represented a small effect. furthermore, integrated findings suggested that teachers’ reported stress levels were not strongly related to their qualitative perceptions of their own well-being. in other words, integrated findings suggested that it was possible to experience high levels of stress while still feeling that one was growing or coping as an educator. such findings suggest that general measures of stress may not fully or accurately reflect teachers’ perceptions of well-being. future research should make use of multidimensional measures or methods to understand the relationship between stress and teachers’ experiences of well-being. limitations it is important to recognize several limitations to this study. first, the quantitative scales were designed to address general stress and teacher well-being; they were not specifically worded to address participant experiences during the spring of 2020. for example, our survey did not ask teacher efficacy questions as they specifically related to remote teaching and learning (i.e., we did not revise the tswq). had we designed the survey to target efficacy more intentionally towards remote teaching, our findings may have been different. the pss also asked participants about their stress levels in general, not specifically related to teaching. thus, teacher stress levels may be related to external stress associated with the pandemic. second, participants were recruited through snowballing and were not randomly selected, which means that results cannot be generalized to a larger population of teachers. additionally, because some demographic information was not collected (e.g., race/ethnicity), it is not possible to understand how this sample compares with characteristics of the general teaching force. although interview participants’ scores on quantitative measures did not differ significantly from the full sample, interview participants self-selected, and their views may not fully capture all participant perspectives. additionally, the interview protocol did not define “well-being” for teachers. thus, participants may have had differing ideas of what well-being is as the construct is often not fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 16 consistently defined (mccallum & price, 2017). finally, it is important to note that the survey and interviews were conducted either during or immediately after the 2019-20 school year. this was a period of emergency instruction at the beginning of the pandemic when teachers across the us found themselves in the unanticipated situation of teaching remotely. teachers’ experiences of resilience may shift under prolonged pandemic conditions as “emergency” teaching scenarios become a long-term reality. conclusion although media outlets have painted a grim picture of teaching and learning during the pandemic, teachers in this study shared incredible moments of innovation, adaptability, and community. in cases where schools cultivated teacher resilience by providing adequate emotional support, teachers were able to maintain a sense of well-being and excitement about their work. although these individuals may have been more “resilient” in response to covidrelated stress and thus experienced higher levels of well-being, they also reported greater levels of support from administrators and connectedness to their school communities. unfortunately, in places where teachers felt isolated or disregarded by their administration and school community, self-reported well-being suffered. teacher resilience during covid-19 was not just a story of individuals exhibiting great strength to overcome obstacles but rather one that included strong community connections and holistic support. these findings suggest that fostering teacher resilience, and thus well-being, during periods of undue stress must include strategies at the individual level but also 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(2017). too stressed to teach? teaching quality, student engagement, and iep outcomes. exceptional children, 83(4), 412–427. https://doi.org/10.1177/0014402917690729 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f0143034312446889 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2008.12.006 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-011-9170-y https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0586-3_2 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0586-3_2 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00037 https://doi.org/10.1177/0014402917690729 fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 20 appendix a table 1 teacher interview participants scale scores demographics pid pss sc te gender age years setting grades group 6132 low avg. avg. f 50s 10+ public 3rd – 5th coping 1164 high high high f 60s 10+ public 3rd – 5th growing 5130 age. low low f 30s 5 10 public k – 2nd discouraged 5518 avg. high high f 50s 10+ private 9th – 12th growing 5695 high low high f 30s 2 5 public k – 2nd discouraged 7653 age. avg. avg. f 50s 10+ public 3rd – 5th coping 8542 high avg. avg. f 30s 5 10 private 9th – 12th coping (outlier) 2624 high avg. avg. f 40s 10+ public k – 2nd discouraged 1686 avg. avg. low f 20s 0 2 charter k – 2nd coping 9136 low high high m 60s 10+ public 6th 8th growing 8370 low low low f 20s 2 5 public 3rd – 5th discouraged 3310 low high low f 40s 0 2 public 6th 8th coping 1886 high low age. f 60s 10+ public k – 2nd discouraged 2378 high high high f 30s 2 5 charter k – 2nd growing 7461 avg. avg. high f 50s 10+ public 3rd – 5th growing 2002 high high avg. f 30s 10+ public k – 2nd growing note. pss = perceived stress scale (scale of 0-4; low < 1.6, average = 1.6 2.0, high > 2.0); sc = school connectedness on tswq (scale of 1-4; low < 3.0, average = 3.0 3.5; high > 3.5); te = teacher efficacy on tswq (scale of 1-4; low < 3.0; average = 3.0 3.5; high > 3.6). fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 21 appendix b teacher semi-structured interview questions 1. in general, how is your well-being as a teacher? 2. in what ways has your well-being as a teacher changed as the result of the global pandemic? 3. how has teaching remotely impacted your well-being as a teacher? 4. what personal strategies have you found helpful to improve your well-being as a teacher and reduce stress during this time? 5. what has your school or district done to support your well-being as a teacher during this crisis? 6. what do you need from your school or district right now to improve your well-being as a teacher? 7. *if you are going to teach remotely next year, what ideas do you have to support teachers’ well-being at your school? 8. what is giving you meaning right now in teaching? 9. what have you/your school done to forge connections with other staff/students? fox & walter: more than strength from within current issues in education, 23(1) 22 author notes harriet b. fox george washington university halliefox@gwu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7381-7677 heather l. walter george mason university hwalter2@gmu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7390-2051 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . mailto:halliefox@gwu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7381-7677 mailto:hwalter2@gmu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7390-2051 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice: current issues in education, vol(number) 1 volume 22, issue 2 may 18, 2021 issn 1099-839x curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice: from the common to the exceptional alicia brianna saxe university of denver jodie l. wilson university of denver abstract: the unique capacity of aesthetic methods to provoke a variety of consequential educational outcomes has attracted considerable scholarship. less developed, however, is an exploration of teacher perspectives and implementation of six aesthetic themes of teaching: connections, risk, imagination, sensory, perceptual, active engagement (crispa). using an educational criticism and connoisseurship inquiry method, we asked two questions: 1) what are the intentions and practices of a high school teacher as he teaches english? 2) what are the intentions and practices of the same teacher as he teaches english incorporating crispa? we present an analysis that spotlights uncovered themes observed from applying crispa to teaching literature. we discuss the connection between crispa and the complementary curriculum; the capacity of crispa to enhance curriculum development and implementation; and add to literature that links aesthetics to social justice pedagogy. we include implications for educators seeking to enhance their practices. keywords: curriculum, aesthetics, social justice, complementary curriculum citation: saxe, a. b., & wilson, j. l. (2021). curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice: from the common to the exceptional. current issues in education, 22(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1963 accepted: month/day/year introduction in moments where the objectives of education are convoluted by standardization, corporate interests, and political polarization, it is essential that researchers and practitioners challenge highstakes and high-stress environments with pedagogical practices that honor educators’ present realities and promote deep engagement and learning. aesthetic approaches to education have been supported by a number of influential scholars who emphasized perceptive, creative, and sensorial aspects as vehicles for engaged learning experiences for both teachers and students (barone, 2000; http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1963 saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 2 dewey, 1934; eisner, 1972, 2005, 2017; girod & wong, 2002; greene, 1988, 1995, 2001; huebner, 1962; meng & uhrmacher, 2017; moroye & uhrmacher, 2018; sinclair, 2009; uhrmacher, 2009; uhrmacher et al., 2016). less developed, however, is an exploration of the impact of aesthetically derived pedagogical approaches and their relationship to teacher beliefs and practices, particularly at the secondary level. one such pedagogical approach is a perceptual mode of teaching, which emphasizes the use of the senses as both a source of knowledge and more pragmatically as an aesthetically informed heuristic for lesson planning and teaching (uhrmacher et al., 2013). our study is concerned with the aesthetic themes—a research-based method of enacting a perceptual orientation to teaching (uhrmacher, 2009). we employed educational criticism and connoisseurship (eisner, 2017; uhrmacher et al., 2017), an arts-based approach grounded within the interpretive paradigm to explore and understand the impact of the intentional incorporation of six aesthetic themes on the curricular and instructional experiences of a high school english teacher. our research was designed to address the present gap in the extant literature regarding aesthetically-informed methods of teaching—specifically, how this pedagogical approach influences teacher beliefs and practices. to achieve these objectives, we asked two questions: 1) what are the intentions and practices of a secondary teacher as he teaches english, and 2) what are the intentions and practices of a teacher as he teaches english using the aesthetic themes? in this essay, we analyze and synthesize the role of six aesthetic themes in supporting a high school teacher’s personal beliefs and his intentions for his students. we conclude by outlining implications for educators and the larger field. approaches to education analyses of modes of teaching have historically focused on behavioristic (hunter, 2004; taba, 1962; taba, 1962; hunter, 2004; tyler, 1949), or more recently, constructivist (bruner, 1966, 1977; marzano et al., 2001; wiggins & mctighe, 2005) frameworks. rooted largely in john dewey’s (1934) ideas about art and experiences, aesthetic approaches to education have been theorized and implemented to invite innovative alternatives to traditional frameworks. dewey (1934) distinguishes ordinary experience from aesthetic experience, emphasizing incoherence, indistinction, and distraction in the former and unity, satisfaction, and completeness in the latter. more contemporary scholars have applied dewey’s ideas to aesthetic approaches in the classroom. for example, eisner (1994) expands on dewey’s emphasis of sensory stimulus, defending that “one of the major aims of education is the development of multiple forms of literacy,” which are fostered through, “a variety of forms of representation that humans use to represent the contents of their consciousness” (p. x). maxine greene (2001) describes aesthetic experience as “concerned about perception, sensation, imagination, and how they relate to knowing, understanding, and feeling about the world” (p. 5). conrad et al. (2015) portray aesthetic experience as “being fully present and riveted in the moment, when one’s senses are heightened, and when one might describe his or her experience as having been ‘consummated’ or fully complete” (p. 5). aesthetic approaches to education include the role of perception, imagination, and creativity—often via artistic means—in developing, implementing, and experiencing aesthetic curriculum and instruction for teachers and their students. several studies have specifically explored aesthetic teaching practices including the perceptual (uhrmacher et al., 2013), and deep aesthetic engagement (uhrmacher et al., 2016). other scholarship has applied qualities of aesthetic education within specific content areas such as science and math. as one example, mark girod and david wong (2002) explored aesthetic experience in a fourth-grade science classroom, emphasizing qualities of anticipation and saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 3 imagination. nathalie sinclair’s (2009) work called for a conception of aesthetic awareness in mathematics as a “connective force” (p. 45), arguing that “school mathematics offers few opportunities for the kind of mathematical inquiry described by dewey” (p. 52). mark faust (2001) conjoined literary theory with aesthetic education and argued that the experience of reading can be considered an ‘in-the-moment’ aesthetic process that has the potential for personal transformation for the reader. this scholarship, to which the present study aligns, provides evidence that aesthetic approaches to education can exist across a variety of conceptual and practical contexts. the impact of aesthetically designed curricula within the pragmatic realm of the secondary classroom, however, remains an area for further exploration. the aesthetic themes of education: crispa uhrmacher (2009) conceptualized a pragmatic approach to engaged learning distilled from both john dewey’s (1934) theories on art and aesthetic experience and from empirical research with teaching artists and educators at the aesthetic education institute of colorado. from this research, uhrmacher delineated six aesthetic themes, known by the acronym crispa, that educators and others may draw on to cultivate aesthetically engaged learning experiences: connections, risk-taking, imagination, sensory experience, perceptivity, and active engagement. uhrmacher maintained that although teachers seeking aesthetically engaged learning experiences for their students should strive to incorporate as many of the themes as possible, the core themes of connections, sensory experience, and active engagement are foundational. the first core theme, connections, is characterized by relationships between a person and their environment (uhrmacher, 2009). how people actively engage with ideas, literature, media, or other materials in a learning environment (conrad et al., 2015) can manifest through intellectual, emotional, sensorial, communicative (csikszentmihalyi & robinson, 1991), or social connections (conrad et al., 2015). teachers who can facilitate these various types of interactions encourage genuine and elongated engagement in the classroom. the second foundational element, sensory experience, refers to the use of one’s senses to experience an object or place. a sensory-rich learning environment fosters aesthetic experiences by inviting students to interact with and investigate subtle qualities in objects and places (conrad et al., 2015). active engagement, the third foundational element, necessitates student agency and active participation in the learning process (conrad et al., 2015). teachers who collaborate with students and integrate physical activity, choices, and/or personal meaning can cultivate a learning environment abundant in meaningful learning experiences. conrad et al. (2015) describe the concept of imagination in crispa as concerned with the manipulation of qualities or ideas: imagination may be intuitive, in which a person has a sudden insight; fanciful, in which a person combines unexpected elements such as with a dancing tree; interactive, in which a person works with materials to yield a product; or mimetic, in which a person mirrors or mimics the creative work of another. (p. 5) risk-taking refers to opportunities for students to engage in novelty—“a venture into the unknown” (uhrmacher, 2009, p. 624). research focused on risk-taking suggests that these experiences may increase students’ cognitive development, as well as their creativity, selfmotivation, and student interest in subject matter, such as science (uhrmacher & bunn, 2011). the next component, perceptivity, relates to sensory experiences in that a student develops a more nuanced understanding of an object’s particular qualities or context through their senses. saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 4 this involves closely examining subtle qualities that may normally go unnoticed in order to see or re-see for the sake of learning something new (conrad et al., 2015). creating an environment that invites students to remain open to new possibilities and “re-seeing” increases the potential for meaningful and aesthetically engaged learning experiences. in contemporary literature, scholars examining the aesthetic themes have theoretically and practically associated this approach with curriculum disruption (conrad et al., 2015), ecological educational experience (moroye & uhrmacher, 2018), perceptual lesson planning (uhrmacher, et al., 2013), and a tool to analyze chinese pedagogical methods such as chan teaching (meng & uhrmacher, 2014, 2017). emphasizing that aesthetic experiences are fundamentally sensorial, connective, and engaging, and that incorporating the aesthetic themes can engender enlivened classroom experiences, uhrmacher (2009) noted several potential outcomes of aesthetically engaged learning: an increase in student satisfaction and joy, long-term memory, perceptual knowledge, and personal creativity and meaning-making. this study aims to extend previous research on aesthetically oriented modes of teaching through an analysis of a teacher’s pedagogical choices and actions, both with and without the incorporation of aesthetic themes, in his lesson planning and classroom teaching. methods our study pursued two questions: 1) what are the intentions and practices of a secondary teacher as he teaches english? 2) what are the intentions and practices of a teacher as he teaches english using the aesthetic themes? to answer our research questions, we employed educational criticism and connoisseurship (eisner, 2017), an empirical, qualitative approach derived from the interpretive paradigm (guba & lincoln, 1994). similar to other qualitative approaches, educational connoisseurship and criticism seeks to discern and express the nuanced meanings of the educational situation through thick description (geertz, 1973) and critical analysis of patterns derived from multiple lines of evidence, including in-depth observation, interviews, and artifacts. although connoisseurship implies a certain degree of skilled knowledge, in this particular sense, it also speaks to the ability of the researcher, or critic, to seek and attend to the often subtle and unexpected qualities of the educational environment, including curriculum, pedagogy, and/or structure. while connoisseurship denotes the appreciation of qualities, criticism aims to disclose those qualities in a public form (eisner, 2017). widely aligned with aesthetics and the arts (conrad et al., 2015), the structure of educational criticism and connoisseurship is organized according to four interrelated elements: description, interpretation, evaluation, and thematics. the goal of description is to portray a vivid account that will “enable readers to get a feel for the place or process and, where possible and appropriate, for the experience of those who occupy the situation” (eisner, 2017, p. 89). interpretation involves explicating description by illuminating meaning, exploring consequences, and providing a discussion of the reasons for educational events. in short, description and interpretation within an educational criticism work simultaneously to enable vicarious participation (uhrmacher et al., 2017). evaluation accounts for the major function of educational connoisseurship and criticism—to improve the process of education (eisner, 2002)— by providing a vital link between interpretation and appraising the educational significance of the saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 5 specific educational context being studied (eisner, 2017). thematics allows for the generalization of findings that may extend beyond immediate settings and participants: educational critics provide the reader with an understanding of the major themes that run through the educational matters being studied. in turn, these themes provide the reader with ideas or guides for anticipating what may be found in other places. (uhrmacher et al., 2017, p. 3) taken together, the dimensions of description, interpretation, evaluation, and thematics enable the educational critic to “focus on the perception of qualities, interpreting their significance, and appraising their value, all toward educational ends. in short, the educational critic helps others see and understand what may otherwise go unnoticed” (uhrmacher et al., 2017, p. 22). theoretical framework we paired the methods from educational criticism and connoisseurship with the theoretical lens of the instructional arc (uhrmacher et al., 2017, p. 25). the instructional arc delineates three aspects of the curriculum: the intended (the planned for and anticipated); the operational (what actually happens), and the received (what students “take away” or experience). the instructional arc informed the entirety of the study from inception to analysis. site of study and participants participants included mr. marlin, a thirty-one-year-old white male high school english teacher, and his seventeen 12th-grade students from his advanced placement1 (ap) english literature course at an urban, independent high school in the western united states. in addition to observing mr. marlin’s students, we collected survey data from eight students and conducted an in-depth, semi-structured interview with one student. however, these data are limited and are beyond the scope of this particular article. mr. marlin was selected to participate in this study due to his prior training and experience using the aesthetic themes. in particular, we were interested in the intended and operational (uhrmacher et al., 2017, p. 25) aspects of the curriculum—what is planned by the teacher as well as what is actually enacted in the classroom. informed consent was secured from all participants. our role as researchers was informed by several perspectives. although both researchers had prior familiarity with the aesthetic themes, we were not acquainted with the teacher participant prior to the study. further, our perspectives as public and private school educators with over 15 years of combined teaching experience were managed to the extent possible so as not to interfere with the objectives of the study. finally, we engaged our reflexivity throughout data collection and analysis through written personal introspections and several mutual debriefing sessions (finlay, 2002). research design we investigated mr. marlin’s intended and operational curricula over four weeks through three data sources: interviews, in-person classroom observations, and artifacts. we began by 1 the advanced placement program offers 37 high school courses across 22 subject areas, which are standardized by an end-of-year exam. the exam is scored on a scale of 1–5 with many us colleges and universities awarding course credit for scores above 3 and often acknowledging students who have done ap coursework as having pursued greater academic challenges (schneider, 2009). saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 6 interviewing mr. marlin before he taught a unit—a novel study of the grapes of wrath by john steinbeck—seeking to reveal answers to our first research question regarding his intentions and practices. during this initial interview, we asked the following questions: what are your intentions for your students? what personal beliefs, if any, play a role in these intentions? do your personal beliefs affect your practice? if so, in what ways? do you make your intentions clear to your students? if so, how do they respond? to answer our second research question, we intensively observed mr. marlin teach the ap english curriculum for approximately four weeks, both in tandem and separately, using the same observation protocol. this protocol (see appendix) was specifically designed to capture the various elements of the aesthetic themes, the quality and form of the content being taught, the incentives employed by mr. marlin, and the quality and form of student engagement. during the first two-week observation period, mr. marlin taught a traditional ap english literature curriculum, and during the second period, he intentionally incorporated the aesthetic themes into his lesson planning and teaching. we conducted a concluding interview with mr. marlin where we asked him to reflect on his experiences both with and without the intentional incorporation of the aesthetic themes through the following questions: please tell me about your experience planning and teaching using the aesthetic themes (crispa). in what ways, if any, did crispa influence your intentions and practices? what metaphor would capture your crispa-influenced vs. non-crispainfluenced lesson planning? we collected observational and survey data from eight students and interview data from one of those eight students in an effort to investigate the received curriculum, however those data are addressed in a separate article. consistent with a qualitative paradigm, observational and interview data were iteratively analyzed for emergent themes throughout the process of data collection and analysis. consistent with educational criticism and connoisseurship methods for analysis, data were initially annotated (an arts-based perspective analogous to ‘coded;’ see uhrmacher et al., 2017) for emergent themes independently by each researcher and subsequently in tandem for consensus. our overall strategy was to analyze these data holistically, with an eye toward emergent relationships grounded in the data that perceptively illuminated relevant features within this particular context (uhrmacher, moroye, & flinders, 2017). these emergent relationships and subt le qualities were advanced toward thematic categories and frameworks which served to inform our interpretations and evaluations. additionally, we employed member-reflecting (tracy, 2010) during our concluding interview with mr. marlin, which is defined as “sharing and dialoguing with participants about the study’s findings and providing opportunities for questions, critique, feedback, affirmation, and even collaboration” (p. 844). findings the primary objective of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of one teacher’s intentions and practices with a specific interest in the potential impact of six aesthetic themes (crispa) on his curriculum and instruction. three salient findings emerged from our interpretive analysis of mr. marlin’s intentions and practices, both as he taught using a more traditional saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 7 pedagogical approach and also by implementing crispa. first, mr. marlin possesses profound beliefs in developing his students’ orientations towards social justice and he views literature as the vehicle through which he can accomplish this. second, due to these personal beliefs, professional tensions exist as mr. marlin encounters obligations to teach through more traditional methods that do not explicitly emphasize social justice. third, incorporating the crispa elements appears to enhance the pedagogical expression of mr. marlin’s embedded social justice beliefs. in the following section, we contextualize these findings by narrating descriptive vignettes of mr. marlin’s beliefs and classroom practices. we then synthesize how incorporating the six aesthetic themes enhanced mr. marlin’s curricular and pedagogical strategies. we conclude with the contributions of our research to the larger field, including key points of departure for educators who desire to explicitly surface more meaningful aspects of their own beliefs and classroom practices through the incorporation of the aesthetic themes. prioritizing social justice if you’re going to read literature, it should have a purpose toward ends that you believe in, and justice and social justice are ends that i want to bring about to my students. i think the big question of the course is what power does literature have? what can it do for us in our lives that is relevant to helping us think about the world today? (mr. marlin) as part of the specific design for this inquiry, mr. marlin adopted two different pedagogical approaches: a traditional program guided by the a priori objectives of the ap literature curriculum and a more aesthetically centered approach informed by the six elements of crispa. our interview and observational data of the different approaches revealed evidence of a seemingly inextricable intent to infuse themes of social justice into the ap format. in terms of the intentional curriculum, the quote at the beginning of this section demonstrates mr. marlin’s priority of embedding social justice themes into his literature curriculum to help his students “think about the world today.” he makes content choices that differ from his colleagues with the “purpose toward ends” that he believes in, contending later that conventional ap english curriculum often fails to emphasize “bigger more important questions” which has the potential to damage students’ sense of satisfaction by “dissecting every line and word and phrase.” he chose literary works as “vehicles” that can both address structural inequalities and create opportunities for students to “apply [them] to their own lives.” while mr. marlin emphasizes social justice themes in his intentional curriculum, he concurrently acknowledges the importance of preparing the students to succeed on the ap exam and expressed sincere intentions to do so. he spoke about different techniques he would employ, many of which he learned by attending a national ap “boot camp” for ap literature teachers. he included spotts literary analysis, poetry analysis, and even a review of previously submitted ap essays in his lesson plans. these lessons, along with his participation in the extensive training, demonstrate an intention and commitment to guide the students to succeed on the ap exam. beyond the intentional curriculum, mr. marlin’s operational curriculum—what we observed in the classroom—aligned with his intentions to prepare students for successful performance on the end-of-year ap exam. however, mr. marlin found ways to simultaneously prioritize themes of social justice as he implemented his daily lessons. the scenario below portrays mr. marlin’s multitasking style, where he ensures that the students are engaging in an analysis of literary symbolism, while also attending to his social justice priorities. saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 8 “how do these characters interact with the world?” mr. marlin asks the class as he paces alongside the brick walls in the back of the room. “what does this say about steinbeck’s view of women?” the space fills with examples, anecdotes, and brave statements shared between peers regarding the depiction of women in the text. one student imitates her grandmother; shaking her index finger, “…it’s like we need two strong men around here!” a male classmate shares his perception with a different group, “the man here is incredibly stereotypical, don’t you think?” “what is the symbolism of the chrysanthemums?” mr. marlin poses after bringing the discussion back to the whole group. youthful voices embark on a short, fluid discussion of femininity, societal expectations, and gender roles. what does this story and our novel say about steinbeck? was he a feminist? conservative? how do you know? mr. marlin looks at the clock and abruptly shifts to reminding the class about upcoming assignments while the students rustle with their belongings and head out the door. mr. marlin made curricular choices and actions, such as reading chrysanthemums—a short story by steinbeck with deep symbolism regarding femininity and a woman’s identity—to explore the literary concept of symbolism. hence, while students “dissected” the text, they also engaged with social justice topics. personal tensions and professional diversions mr. marlin’s creed imbues his intentional and operational curricula with social justice, although not without a sense of conflict. although he is acutely sensitive to the fact that he must prepare his students for the ap exam in the spring, he worries about the more lasting implications of their learning experiences: mr. marlin elucidates conflicts around his implementation of the ap curricula and reveals that infusing justice themes into his lessons offers a way to navigate and resolve these tensions. “it’s a conflict that i’ve not had to negotiate previously… do we talk about choices that authors make with respect to syntax or symbolism? yeah, but they’re secondary, i would argue, significantly, to the larger themes that we’re trying to get at.” the following vignette depicts his seamless negotiation of ap needs and social justice priorities in his operational curriculum. ‘what is the role of the individual in confronting injustice?’ is written in maroon on the long whiteboard that stretches the entire width of the room. seventeen students sit at long wooden tables arranged in a large rectangle, heads peeking over the top of their macbooks, their spiral notebooks open, hands furiously writing. mr. marlin darts toward the board and draws three vertical lines down the front, separating it into sections. he calls for volunteers. one group of students congregates near the whiteboard while a second group moves to the hall to work on two additional whiteboards that are screwed into the burnt green wall. temporarily distanced from the sensitive ears of mr. marlin, a tall, brownhaired boy quips sarcastically: “the injustice was that this book was 450 pages.” a few students giggle but refocus quickly. with dry-erase markers in hand, students quickly begin answering the question by drawing out their ideas on the role of the individual in confronting injustice. one student draws stick figures with dialogue bubbles while another watches. another group is carefully drawing arrows connecting large boxes. after fifteen minutes, students are reconvened in the saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 9 classroom and mr. marlin asks them to reflect on and share their drawings with the rest of the class. “the role of the individual is to create power for the masses,” a girl responds astutely, pointing to the drawing in front of her. “one thing i noticed in all of our drawings is that they’re showing action, and i think that’s something we need more of,” gestures a boy with shaggy black hair. a tall boy in a grey hoodie resolutely declares, “i don’t think at this time we can have any faith in our elected leaders. it’s up to us.” another girl chimes in: “i personally have faith that our government is founded on principles we all can believe in. if we come together and protest or write letters, we can create change.” mr. marlin deftly moves to turn on the projector where “the phalanx theory” is showing on a slide. he elaborates on notions of groupthink as a student interjects her thoughts on the women’s march and other rallies happening across the nation. “how do we see this play out in the grapes of wrath?” mr. marlin asks. “here’s a counter to the phalanx theory,” he says, intensely darting behind the rectangular tables as he distributes excerpted copies of steinbeck’s the vigilante. the scene depicts the class in action, using different modes of expression (drawing, writing, talking) to communicate their ideas regarding a theme from their novel study. the students are able to connect the novel to their lives and the current context, and then they artistically link those connections back to another piece of writing. their abilities to analyze the texts in profound ways is evident, all the while they are grappling with large themes pervading the world around them. after observations were completed, mr. marlin confirmed his belief in the centrality of social justice in the curriculum. he describes his responsibility to teach through a lens of social justice in order to “...help students understand their place in the world and their privilege in the world and how it relates to their identity— race, wealth, and gender." beyond pedagogical choices, it appears that mr. marlin possesses a sense of moral and social obligation that resides at the core of his perspective about what is needed to make the world a better place. the conflict he experiences may never be completely resolved, but by diverging from the ap curriculum just enough, mr. marlin tries to meet the expectations of the students, who want to pass the ap exam, while simultaneously developing knowledge and skills around large issues of justice that they are bound to encounter long after the national exam in the spring. apples and cherries: the fruit of aesthetics during our investigation of mr. marlin’s intended and operational curricula, we observed his acute beliefs in social justice come alive. unexpectedly, we witnessed an intensified manifestation of these beliefs when he deliberately incorporated crispa into his lessons, as compared to when he was teaching with a more didactic and heavily prescribed ap curriculum. the vignette below depicts an intricate entanglement of crispa and social justice within the operational curriculum: students trickle into the classroom on a glorious fall morning, sunshine gleaming through the south-facing windows, illuminating the time-worn grains of the heavy wooden tables. “did you get a haircut marl?” asks a tall dark-haired girl after noticing the recent trimming. “is that crispa?” she teases. mr. marlin and the saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 10 other students break out in laughter in response to her cleverness. he composes himself and instructs the class. “please write the five senses in your notebooks and then circle one of them.” the students write swiftly in their spiral notebooks. mr. marlin takes four bright green apples and one equally vibrant green pear out of a brown paper sack and places them on the rectangular table in front of him. he asks the students who circled taste and smell to close their eyes. “if you chose sight, describe what you see with as much detail as you can.” the students with their eyes closed suppress giggles as they explore the items with the sense they selected. mr. marlin asks students to describe their experiences through the sense they have chosen. “what did you see? who got to eat? what did you hear?” he jots their comments on the whiteboard and then directs them to open their books to page 340 of grapes of wrath. “so... we’ve just continued this scene,” mr. marlin says. “i want you to look at all the sensory detail steinbeck provides. which senses are coming to life? how do authors create meaning?” two boys sitting side-by-side identify “the scent of decay” and eagerly take note of it. a few minutes pass before mr. marlin asks, “do we have any examples?” a student directs us to a passage describing fruit and furthers the classroom dialogue regarding the power of sensory details to foreshadow an underlying feeling of despair that all of the fruits are going to rot. the class calmly transitions into a daily routine of following along as one student summarizes the previous night’s reading assignment. as part of the task, the student is expected to send mr. marlin some sort of connection they made to that chapter. the students demonstrate creativity with this task, often presenting newspaper articles, historical pictures, or popular songs. this morning an image of beautifully ripe, red cherries is projected on the whiteboard as the student narrates the report of farmers dumping out over 30 million pounds of ripe cherries. surprised, the students begin debating the rationale of these actions and attempt to make sense of the situation, which mr. marlin seamlessly connects with another digital article. this one reports how a popular clothing brand instructed employees to tear holes in and throw out clothing that was not sold. “why would anyone do this?” mr. marlin asks. the discussion on literary uses of senses effortlessly transforms into a heated examination of the morality of wasting products for profit. “it’s just greedy,” remarks one student. “they’re just protecting their company,” replies another. “would you have given away the cherries?” mr. marlin poses to the class. an array of fervent standpoints zooms around the room, ranging from a business owner mindset to an altruistic stance of giving to those in need regardless of profits. in this example, mr. marlin leverages the six aesthetic themes of crispa— connections, risk, sensory experience, perceptivity, active engagement, and imagination— to propel his students to think differently about objects they are familiar with in order to flavor the recognizable with a sense of freshness. first, he orchestrates a sensory experience with the apples and pear that enables students to attend to more subtle qualities of the familiar fruits and enhance their perception of these familiar fruits in a new way. next, he connects these experiences directly to the text, prompting students to invoke their imaginations to engender new meanings from steinbeck’s intentions. finally, mr. marlin creates conditions for active engagement by encouraging his saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 11 students as they delve into an ethics-centered debate of industrial food and material waste practices. by inviting students to use their senses to understand literary content, mr. marlin creates aesthetically derived conditions that enable them to explore critical perspectives in ways they had not considered previously. mr. marlin later admitted that he was a bit nervous about this lesson, as he had never incorporated this particular experience for his students. likewise, the students also appeared skeptical in the beginning, suggesting that both the teacher and the students took risks in engaging in this experience. the lesson concluded with meaningful conversations that represented students’ complex contemplations surrounding sensory experiences, literature, and ethical industrial practices. crispa afforded mr. marlin the opportunity to create a dynamic learning experience that successfully attended to more traditional ap literature objectives while also amplifying his belief in the importance of teaching for social justice. the final assignment for the class is a further example of the intensified expression of his commitment to social justice. designed with the crispa elements in mind, mr. marlin asked the students to represent their learnings and takeaways from the novel study through any mode they wish. this kind of freedom on a task that is more commonly assigned as an essay involves students being able to connect with the text on a level of their choosing; take risks to express their learning (considering the unconventional format); apply their imaginative capacities to work with mediums other than essay-writing; engage their senses through artistic expression; spark nuanced thoughts through creative expression; and actively engage with the text in a new way. mr. marlin’s complementary social justice curriculum manifested itself throughout his intentional and operational curricula—what he planned to teach and what he actually taught. interview data illustrate his profound beliefs around social justice and concomitantly illuminate tensions mr. marlin experiences when emphasizing the ap curriculum rather than prioritizing themes of social justice. additionally, we witnessed a dance between the ap curriculum, themes of social justice, and crispa as mr. marlin waltzed through the mechanics of ap objectives while seamlessly twisting and spinning in lessons on justice and aesthetic experiences using crispa to choreograph the traditional and personal priorities of his curricular ballroom. discussion in this study, we ventured into the nuances of a teacher’s practice to expand what is known about six aesthetic themes of education and their potential to enhance the meaningfulness and vibrancy of teaching and learning. our analysis provides us with three prominent points of discussion. first, in support of previous research on the complementary curriculum (moroye, 2009), teacher beliefs play a significant role in what and how they teach. second, for educators teaching a heavily prescribed curriculum such as ap, crispa offers an alternative way to not only adhere to the former with fidelity, but to elevate the curriculum for themselves and their students. third, our data aligns with scholarship connecting aesthetic modes with various objectives in social justice education, and bolsters potentiality to foster empathy and critical thinking through crispa. we elaborate on each of these points below. complementary curriculum moroye (2009) delineates the concept of the complementary curriculum as the manifestation of an educator’s deeply held convictions, representing “the kind of experiences teachers provide for students, as well as in the ‘pedagogical premises and practices’ that result from the teacher’s beliefs” (p. 791). the complementary curriculum directly and indirectly saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 12 influences the way teachers approach their practice, often revealing aspects central to their identity. drawing from the work of parker palmer (2007), who argues that integrity is integral to a teacher’s selfhood and, therefore resides at the core of a teacher’s greatness, moroye (2009) notes that the complementary curriculum can be viewed as the “manifestation of a teacher’s wholeness or completeness of his or her integrity” (p. 805). as previously described and illustrated through the vignettes in our findings section, we observed the expression of mr. marlin’s complementary social justice curriculum across his intentional and operational curricula as well as augmented representations when realized through the six themes of crispa. social justice is integral to mr. marlin's identity and beliefs and this complementary social justice curriculum is explicitly woven into his pedagogical choices, both in his selection of literature, prose, poetry, and other texts as well as in the choices he makes in structuring learning experiences for his students. commenting on another teacher’s literature selection, he states, “it’s not my comfort level and i don’t think that it gets at some of the different, bigger themes that i’m hoping to get at.” he reiterates the need for his teaching to connect students with relevant issues related to justice, ethics, and morals. in addition to curricular and instructional manifestations, mr. marlin’s complementary social justice curriculum further materializes through his relationships and classroom management style. two principal elements in the social justice literature involve fostering an environment for the development of liberatory thinking and actions (carlisle et al., 2006) and building relationships of trust and reciprocity by listening to concerns and taking them seriously as part of a social justice agenda (gorski, 2013). in mr. marlin’s classroom, this takes the form of an open seating chart, no hall passes, loud and improvised large-group discussions, and grade contracts. as students arrive, they sit with friends and continue conversations until he makes a request for class to begin. we observed several students get up and leave the classroom and then return a short time later, all without any conversation or acknowledgment between teacher and student. mr. marlin creates grade contracts with each student, where each course begins with students signing an agreement for the grade they want based on predetermined measures of attendance, participation, and work quality. the students then receive a grade based on how well they fulfilled their contract. these pedagogical choices highlight mr. marlin’s commitment to socially-just learning experiences, which align and complement his intended and operational curricula. moroye (2009) found that when teacher beliefs reside within ecological perspectives, they will naturally bring those unique perspectives to bear on the curriculum, in both subtle and overt ways, regardless of the content focus of the class. moroye contends that the complementary curriculum may also be applied to other teacher beliefs and perspectives, including the arts or social and emotional learning. understanding one’s own complementary curriculum and applying it to their practice may offer educators a way to teach more authentically across curricular obligations. crispa as a curricular amplification a second discussion point from our analysis revolves around the opportunity crispa may provide to educators who seek to enhance their curriculum. our data suggest that crispa offered mr. marlin a mechanism through which he was able to enrich his intentional, operational, and complementary curricula. the intentional curriculum is what a teacher plans to do, therefore lesson planning can help reveal the intentional curriculum. a previous study of the impact of crispa on lesson planning found that crispa provided teachers with a means to “rethink the aims and processes of lesson planning itself.... a transformational tool that shifts lesson planning from writing down a linear saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 13 sequence of state-approved lessons, to a process that inspires teachers in their teaching (conrad et al., 2015, p. 14). when we asked mr. marlin to compare his two different approaches to lesson planning, both with and without crispa, he explained: the non-crispa teaching—getting definitions of various poetry and writing in a prescriptive way for the ap and things along those lines—the skills that are needed—it almost feels like a really simple rhythmic song, just like clapping. we just have to do this, and we just have to stay on pace and beat. as long as we hit all of the right notes, then it may not sound amazing, but it's gonna sound good enough to get by. teaching with crispa is like jazz music… you never know where it's gonna go. there are so many different possibilities with it. it’s an ensemble, there’s lots of different sounds, and plays, and unexpected turns and it’s not objectivebased, there's these—you know the eisner idea of expressive outcomes—it can have such an important influence and it can change mood, it can bring people to— i really like jazz music, so maybe that's why i am thinking about it that way, but it's not boring, it activates and makes you want to hear more. his analogy demonstrates that applying crispa to lesson planning (e.g., the intentional curriculum) has the potential to transform the process, supporting conrad et al.’s (2015) assertion of crispa as a transformational tool within the intentional curriculum. crispa also had an aggrandizing impact on mr. marlin’s operational curriculum. greene (1980) explains the holistic nature of aesthetic education as, “integral to the development of persons—to their cognitive, perceptual, emotional, and imaginative development. we see it as part of the human effort (and so often forgotten today) to seek greater coherence in the world” (p. 7). in this sense, she promotes aesthetic modes as a means to attend to a multitude of learning objectives. in our vignette, apples and cherries: the fruit of aesthetics, we witness a sensory experience providing the means to explore, fruit, literature, and justice simultaneously in what developed into a critical analysis of real-world social issues. we observed mr. marlin’s efforts to “seek coherence” in his intentional and operational curricula by not only infusing social justice, but by enhancing social justice ideals through the six themes of crispa. further, we defend that mr. marlin’s integration of crispa not only enhanced his operational curricula, but simultaneously brought to life his complementary curricula. as witnessed in the same example, mr. marlin used crispa to intertwine ap and social justice. this discussion is aimed toward educators who teach a prescriptive curriculum such as ap, with a resource that could exhilarate the more rigid program without diminishing the learning outcomes. we expand on this notion in the subsequent section. aesthetics and social justice while we maintain that crispa has the potential to amplify the articulation of various curricula, our research supports previous literature that underscores the specific capacity of aesthetic methods to catalyze learning in social justice education. sleeter (2014) synthesizes recent social justice education literature, extracting from it four common dimensions. social justice education: 1) situates families and communities within an analysis of structural inequities; 2) develops relationships of reciprocity from student to community; 3) teaches to high expectations by building on students’ backgrounds; and 4) develops and implements an inclusive curriculum that integrates marginalized perspectives and addresses themes of inequity and power (sleeter, 2014). saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 14 maxine greene (1980) advocated for aesthetic education experiences that urge for the development of “more active sensibility and awareness in our students” (p. 8). her extensive scholarship demonstrates that aesthetic methods can empower students to know and understand enough to make sound choices through critical judgments, imaginative projections, and transformative actions. these fundamental skills provide pathways for students to develop empathy and compassion through “the capacity to see through another’s eyes, to grasp the world as it works and sounds and feels from the vantage point of another” (greene, 1995, p. 102). young (2019) draws from the work of greene (1995) and other curricular giants (see tom barone, 2000; wolgang iser, 1978; pinar et al., 1995) and her own experiences to argue that aesthetic curriculum methods evoke the senses. she defends: ...that by evoking the senses learners are also evoking the imagination, which in turn evokes an empathetic emotion toward others. by empathizing with others, learners may move toward social change or at least begin to conceptualize a theory and practice of social change because the senses enable learners to experience (even if only briefly) a different perspective and begin to act on their empathy. (p. 46) other research examined urban english language arts teachers and found that integration of aesthetic theories and methods of education in the curriculum provided opportunities for teachers to explore critical perspectives and issues of social justice and democracy within a neoliberal, test-based accountability educational system (costigan, 2013). this literature suggests that aesthetic approaches to education can facilitate social justice education goals as put forth by sleeter (2014). our data corroborate the work of greene (1995), costigan (2013), and young (2019) as we observed mr. marlin’s deep-seated beliefs in teaching for social justice reflect the four dimensions of social justice education that sleeter (2014) outlines. for example, he expressed his sense of responsibility to teach through this lens in order to “...help students understand their place in the world and their privilege in the world and how it relates to their identity—race, wealth, and gender.” it became clear that mr. marlin’s beliefs in social justice materialize in his intentional curriculum. he explained, [the grapes of wrath] has these chapters that are just narrative… they’re highlighting symbols or motifs. those sorts of things are what i’ll want to highlight. additionally, some big essential questions. this is a book that’s really about justice and how does an individual judge right from wrong? the cross-sections of social justice and aesthetics in mr. marlin’s curricular choices and actions are evident and we propose that expanding teacher capacities to connect social justice themes through aesthetic learning experiences may provide teachers with guidance to foster the skills and knowledge endorsed by both lines of study. implications we defend that our research has implications that extend across various contexts and stakeholders in education. first, gaining a deeper understanding of one’s complementary curriculum can elucidate the relationship between beliefs and practices (moroye, 2009). this awareness paired with the intentional implementation of crispa can allow teachers to better integrate their complementary curriculum to connect their selfhood to their teaching. while we don’t have evidence that crispa is a conduit for any or all complementary curricula, teachers saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 15 wishing to coalesce their complementary curriculum (whether that be social justice, spirituality, peace education, tolerance, environmentalism/conservation, etc.) into their daily pedagogical practice should consider crispa as a viable prospect. for instance, a science teacher with a complementary spirituality curriculum could integrate audio clips of different heartbeats during an anatomy lesson and ask students to engage with different mediums as they explain what they learn about the heart from hearing it. a math teacher with a complementary tolerance curriculum could apply native american basket-weaving techniques to their geometry lessons and encourage students to empathize with teachings from different cultures through mathematics. in this way, the aesthetic themes can invigorate a teacher’s complementary curriculum to encourage more meaningful teaching and learning. in a similar vein, our data aligns with the scholarship that links the power of aesthetic modes to meet various objectives in social justice education and reinforces the potentiality to foster empathy and critical thinking through crispa. as barone (2000) notes: “success in leading students out from where they are requires that the teacher offer stories or suggest other aesthetic projects that first speak to students in their present locations” (p. 130). just as mr. marlin demonstrated, educators can use personal, political, and historical stories, along with aesthetically designed assignments and projects to connect with students’ own narratives to lead them “out from where they are” and create the conditions to foster empathy. finally, as part of the current high-stakes environment, teachers frequently use (or are forced to use) curriculum giants such as common core and ap to inform and/or dictate their teaching. regardless of one’s stance on these standardized approaches, there are data suggesting that many teachers value the arts and wish to incorporate alternative, arts-based pedagogical practices (gulla, 2009; pinhasi-vittorio & vernola, 2013). aesthetics, and crispa specifically, offer a vehicle to enhance lesson planning, learning experiences, and a teacher’s deeply held beliefs. overall, crispa is not presented here as an alternative to the varying curricula the teachers engage with, but rather a mechanism through which they can expand, heighten, and enliven the curricular experience from beginning to end. future research this study offers further evidence and ideas about aesthetic modes of teaching; however, it looks very specifically at one teacher and one classroom. further research should involve formal and informal educational contexts across regions, demographics, and content areas. a second area to investigate involves the third component of the instructional arc: the received curriculum or what the students experience. while we collected data on student perspectives and experiences with crispa, that analysis goes beyond the scope of this particular article. future research must investigate youth perspectives and the impact of crispa, and other perceptual modes of teaching on p-16 students. finally, a deeper dive into aesthetic modes and social justice pedagogy could offer educators tangible tools to creatively foster empathy and attend to real world issues, regardless of their course content. conclusion research on pedagogical practices that emphasize the human experience is more needed than ever. much of the contemporary research effort contributes to the high-stakes system that prioritizes large sample sizes and (over)generalizations to further prescriptive practices. these meta investigations largely fail to encapsulate the vehicles available for teachers that humanize and inspire teaching and learning that “activates and makes you want to hear more.” saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 16 by intentionally incorporating crispa, teachers may explicitly connect how their deeply held beliefs—their complementary curriculum—are infused into their pedagogy. thus, we maintain that teacher identity and integrity may be enhanced through implementing crispa. additionally, for teachers who take seriously the important work of educating for justice, crispa provides teachers a means to not only facilitate such priorities but also as an entry point to overlay prescriptive curriculum with personal beliefs and values to invigorate the lesson planning experience. last, while we seek to preserve the fidelity of moroye’s (2009) original definition of the complementary curriculum, we also wish to provide shading that might illuminate another contour of the term. we offer a concomitant way to conceptualize the complementary curriculum as not only an expression of a teacher’s embedded beliefs, also as an empowering force that ripens deeply held passions brought to bear in the classroom. references barone, t. 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(2005). understanding by design. ascd. young, k. (2019). exploring a curricula of visual and poetic aesthetics. canadian review of art education: research & issues, 46(1). saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 19 appendix observation protocol date: classroom: school site: duration: dimensions of educational connoisseurship & criticism description interpretation evaluation thematics open observations (e.g., wide-angle, multi-sensory, single-sensory, episodic, lens-specific, visual2) instructional arc intended operational received crispa: aesthetic themes connections risk-taking imagination sensory experience perceptivity active engagement quality of the content quality and forms of student engagement forms of representation incentives employed 2 adapted from uhrmacher, p. b., moroye, c. m., & flinders, d. j. (2017). saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 20 author notes alicia brianna saxe university of denver aliciasaxe7@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0526-311x jodie l. wilson university of denver https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5550-0166 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 8, number 7 march, 2005 issn 1099-839x a typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks anthony j. onwuegbuzie university of south florida nancy l. leech university of colorado at denver and health sciences center this paper identifies major errors and myths perpetuated by educational research textbooks. the most pervasive errors and myths advanced by methodology textbooks at the following eight phases of the educational research process are described: (a) formulating a research problem/objective; (b) reviewing the literature; (c) developing the research purpose/research question(s) and hypotheses; (d) selecting a research design/method; (e) collecting data; (f) analyzing the data; (g) interpreting/validating the data; and (h) communicating the findings. second, the implications of these errors and myths are provided. it is shown how research textbooks can be reframed to break down the barriers between quantitative and qualitative research. setting the scene virtually all graduate students from the field of education are required to take one or more research methodology courses as part of their degree programs (mundfrom, shaw, thomas, young, & moore, 1998; onwuegbuzie, slate, & schwartz, 2001). typically, an immediate goal of these courses is to prepare students to complete their theses and dissertations. more long-term goals of educational research courses include helping students to possess research consumer skills (i.e., the ability to read, to interpret, to synthesize, and to utilize research) and research production skills (i.e., the ability to design and to implement original research studies) (onwuegbuzie et al., 2001; ravid & leon, 1995). educational research textbooks play a vital role in achieving all of these goals by attempting to “provide a down-to-earth approach that helps students acquire the skills and knowledge required of a competent consumer and producer of educational research” (gay & airasian, 2003, p. iii). although many of the leading educational textbooks (e.g., ary, jacobs, & razavieh, 2002; best & kahn, 2003; charles & mertler, 2002; creswell, 2005; fraenkel & wallen, 2003; gall, borg, & gall, 2003; gay & airasian, 2003; gliner & morgan, 2000; gravetter & forzano, 2003; johnson & christensen, 2004; langenbach, vaughn, & aagard, 1994; leary, 2004; liebert & liebert, 1995; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001; punch, 1999; rosnow & rosenthal, 2005; salkind, 2003; wallen & fraenkel, 2001) generally are well written, we contend that each one contains statements that are flawed, thereby permeating myths that lead to poor methodological practices. for example, most research methodology textbooks attempt to introduce educational research within the first two chapters. unfortunately, these chapters are often filled with current issues in education vol. 8 no. 7 inaccuracies. in particular, in these chapters, many textbooks discuss the philosophical underpinnings of quantitative and qualitative research paradigms. however, with the exception of a very few textbooks (e.g., creswell, 2005), no mention is made of the mixed methods paradigm; giving the impression that only two major research paradigms exist. yet, mixed methods research represents an established third paradigm with a long tradition (johnson & onwuegbuzie, 2004; tashakkori & teddlie, 1998, 2003b). similarly, when discussing the emergence of the quantitative (e.g., positivism) and qualitative (e.g., interpretivist) paradigms, no mention is made of the impact of pragmatism on research methodology, even though pragmatism can be traced back to 1861 with the writings of charles s. peirce, the “father of pragmatism” (fisch, 1982); and even though pragmatism had “a profound effect on the conduct of scientific and social scientific research, and it accounts for the ready acceptance of ‘qualitative' methods today” (maxcy, 2003, p. 75). with this in mind, the purpose of the present paper is to identify the major errors and myths perpetuated by educational research textbooks. specifically, the current article presents the most prevalent and pervasive errors and myths advanced by research methodology textbooks at various phases of the educational research process. second, the implications of these errors and myths are provided. in particular, many of these errors advance the myth that research method as a technique (i.e., research design) and research method as logic of justification (i.e., research paradigm) are synonymous. in fact, research designs are presented in educational research textbooks as if only specific types of data can be collected and analyzed for each research design. for example, in outlining experimental designs, virtually all research texts give the impression that only quantitative data can be collected when these designs are used. yet, there is no reason why qualitative data (e.g., interview responses) cannot be collected as part of the experimental design. also, experimental and control groups can be compared with respect to qualitative information. similarly, quantitative data (e.g., test scores) can be collected in qualitative studies (onwuegbuzie & leech, in press-a; tashakkori & teddlie, 2003a). finally, using onwuegbuzie and leech's (in press-a) framework, it is shown how research textbooks can be reframed to break down the barriers between quantitative and qualitative research. as such, instead of presenting research as representing a dichotomy of methodological choices that fall strictly either into the quantitative or qualitative research paradigm, it is contended that research should be presented as a holistic, reflective, and integrative process that helps students become both consumers and producers of educational research. the current article is unique in at least two ways. first, it appears to be the first published paper that has critiqued all of the leading educational research textbooks simultaneously. second, this article appears to be the only published work that has identified and documented errors made in both the quantitative and qualitative research sections of these textbooks within the same framework. as such, the present essay appears to represent the most wideranging discussion of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks to date. errors found in research method textbooks a review of commonly used research method textbooks identified many of the major errors and myths reported and perpetuated. only textbooks written for graduate education introductory research methods courses were included. we define “educational research” as research in any area (e.g., elementary education, curriculum and instruction, educational psychology) related to education. the most prevalent and pervasive errors and myths advanced by research methodology textbooks at each of the following eight phases of the educational research process was analyzed, including: (a) formulating a research problem and research objective; (b) reviewing the literature; (c) developing the research purpose, research questions(s), and hypotheses; (d) selecting a research design/method; (e) collecting data; (f) analyzing the data; (g) interpreting/validating the data; and (h) communicating the findings. the myths and errors in each of these areas are outlined below. formulating a research problem and research objective many textbook authors discuss the sources of research problems as including personal experiences (e.g., ary et al., 2002; creswell, 2005; gay & airasian, 2003; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001), casual observations (e.g., mcmillan & schumacher, 2001), theories (e.g., gay & airasian, 2003), related literature (e.g., gay & airasian, 2003; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001), practical situations, current social and political issues (mcmillan & schumacher, 2001), and replications (e.g., gay & airasian, 2003). however, few textbooks discuss the important role of the research objective in the educational research process. yet, this is a very important step in the process because it leads to the determination of whether the study is exploratory, confirmatory, or some combination of both. the vast majority of research textbooks gives the impression that quantitative research methods are associated with deductive reasoning and a typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks 3 qualitative methods are associated with inductive reasoning (tahsakkori & teddlie, 2003a). for instance, gay and airasian (2003) state: “an inductive research approach is typically qualitative in nature, while a deductive research approach is typically quantitative in nature” (p. 4). however, this creates a false dichotomy between the quantitative and qualitative research paradigms because both quantitative and qualitative research studies can involve both deductive and inductive reasoning, depending on the research objective. as noted by onwuegbuzie and leech (in press-a), the research objective in both quantitative and qualitative studies can be classified as falling on a continuum from exploratory to confirmatory. exploratory studies often involve the development of theories surrounding how and why a phenomenon exists as it does. conversely, confirmatory studies involve testing hypotheses that arise from new or existing theories. moreover, exploratory research objectives center on theory initiation and theory building, whereas confirmatory research objectives focus on theory testing and theory modification. therefore, as contended by newman and benz (1998), exploration and confirmation are linked by theories. thus, instead of emphasizing deductive/quantitative and inductive/qualitative combinations, as often occurs in the opening chapter of introductory-level research texts, we recommend that authors make it clear that (a) the reasoning process does not dictate the research paradigm and (b) research objectives drive the research methods used. reviewing the literature most research texts include a chapter or a specific section on reviewing the literature. as noted by gay and airasian (2003, p. 16), a traditional literature review, which is undertaken in the overwhelming majority of studies, “involves systematically identifying, locating, and analyzing documents containing information related to the research problem. these documents can include articles, abstracts, reviews, monographs, dissertation, books, other research reports, and electronic media.” in other words, “a literature review is a written summary of articles, books, and other documents that describes the past and current state of knowledge about a topic” (creswell, 2005, p. 79). although many purposes of literature reviews have been provided, such as to plan for a study, to establish the importance of the research problem, to provide a rationale for the study, to reframe a body of literature, and to identify research strategies and specific data collection techniques that have been found to be effective/ineffective (ary, et al., 2002; creswell, 2005; gall et al., 2003; fraenkel & wallen, 2003; gay & airasian, 2003; johnson & christensen, 2004), the most common purpose of a literature review is to synthesize the body of literature in a topic area of interest. as such, traditional literature reviews are inherently qualitative (onwuegbuzie & leech, 2003). unfortunately, the discussions of literature reviews contained in introductory-level research methodology textbooks typically contain several errors of commission and/or omission that can lead to misconceptions. in particular, this discussion often gives the impression that qualitative literature reviews can provide a neutral representation of the body of literature. however, as noted by dellinger (2003), neutral representation is not possible because the “review of the literature is inherently an interpretive and value-driven process…[reflecting] the researcher's own story about what is deemed valid, worthwhile, meaningful and valuable in a set of studies” (p. 4). in addition, introductory research textbooks fail to inform readers that literature reviews have a number of limitations. most notably, the appropriateness, comprehensiveness, and representativeness of the literature cited in a review are affected by (a) selective inclusion of studies, often based on the reviewer's own subjective assessment of the quality of the underlying studies; (b) failure to examine the characteristics and attributes of the studies as potential explanations for consistent and contradictory findings across studies; (c) failure to consider the context under which each of the investigations took place; (d) differential subjective weighting of studies in the interpretation of a set of results; (e) misleading interpretations of study results; (f) confirmation bias, (g) over-reliance on findings from either quantitative or qualitative studies, and (h) failure to examine moderating and/or mediating variables in the underlying relationship (onwuegbuzie & leech, 2003; wolf, 1986). similarly, some or all of the following nine errors identified by dunkin (1996) emerge from qualitative literature reviews. we contend they should be mentioned in research text: (a) vague study selectivity, (b) arbitrarily assigning equal weight to each study, (c) double-counting study results, (d) incorrectly summarizing the details of one or more studies, (e) attributing findings to a study that are not justified, (f) failing to identify invalid interpretations and inferences, (g) failing to include contradictory findings, (h) generating misleading inferences in the research synthesis because of the aforementioned errors, and (i) failing to include all of a study's results relevant to the synthesis. introductory textbooks also do not make it clear to readers that summarizing a subset of findings without a cumulative, systematic, current issues in education vol. 8 no. 7 and rigorous analysis of the entire set of results provides the reader with no information as to the confidence that can be placed in conclusion coherence (onwuegbuzie & leech, 2003). also not discussed by textbook authors is how literature reviews often do not place the readers in a position to ascertain whether procedural or context variation affects study findings because the relationship between procedure/context and study results is not examined formally (cooper, 1989). the problems associated with literature reviews can culminate in inadequate and invalid syntheses of the extant literature. this, in turn, not only can adversely affect the quality of a single study, but also “can have cumulative effects on a body of literature that may manifest in a lineage of poor conceptualization, design, measurement, methodology, and ultimately, inferences” (dellinger, 2003, p. 2). thus, literature reviews contain flaws that affect the validity of ensuing inferences, thereby leading to a failure to represent accurately the accumulated body of knowledge. another error of omission that is apparent in virtually every textbook is the lack of encouragement for researchers conducting literature reviews to report indices of practical significance (e.g., effect sizes) corresponding to each statistically significant finding. such a practice would facilitate the use of metaanalyses, in which the mean effect size across the studies is estimated and the variance in effect sizes across studies is examined as a function of selected design variables. related to this concern, textbooks also should encourage researchers to cite metaanalysis studies in the literature review sections. developing the research purpose, research question(s), and hypotheses stemming from the research problem, objective, and, in many cases, the review of the literature, the research purpose, questions, and hypotheses delineate what will be researched. some research textbooks (e.g., gall et al., 2003) frame research questions in a way that is compatible only with quantitative research studies. furthermore, these authors do not include research questions in qualitative sections; instead, the impression that is given to readers is that the nature of qualitative research is so open-ended and exploratory that specific questions are not necessary. in every textbook, hypotheses are presented as belonging exclusively to quantitative research studies. this gives the impression that hypotheses are never tested in qualitative research studies. yet, as several methodologists contend (e.g., onwuegbuzie & teddlie, 2003; patton, 1990; tashakkori & teddlie, 1998), qualitative data can be used to test hypotheses. thus, hypotheses also should be discussed within the qualitative section of textbooks. selecting a research design/method many researchers believe that there is a direct relationship between research paradigm and research technique (bryman, 1984; onwuegbuzie & teddlie, 2003). yet, the research paradigm used does not dictate what procedures should be used (onwuegbuzie & leech, in press-b). this is a myth that is perpetuated by textbooks in multiple ways. first, most authors do not make a distinction between research paradigm and technique; research techniques are described as being either quantitative or qualitative. in fact, research designs are presented in educational research textbooks as if only specific types of data can be collected and analyzed for each research design. for example, all textbooks reviewed give the strong impression that only numeric data are collected in experimental studies and that only nonnumeric data are collected in qualitative research studies. in so doing, these textbook writers are confusing the logic of justification with the research methods. yet, there is no reason why qualitative data (e.g., interview responses) cannot be collected as part of the experimental design. also, experimental and control groups can be compared with respect to qualitative information. similarly, quantitative data (e.g., test scores) can be collected in qualitative studies (onwuegbuzie & leech, in press-a; tashakkori & teddlie, 2003a). another misleading aspect of the research design section of virtually all textbooks stems from the use of the term “causal-comparative” to denote quasi-experimental studies in which two or more groups are compared with respect to one or more quantitative outcomes. the writers of this article have found from personal experience that the phrase “causal-comparative research design” leads some students to believe that this design can result in the determination of causal relationships. as such, we recommend that this phrase be removed completely from textbooks. exacerbating this confusion is the misleading definitions of causal-comparative research presented in textbooks. for example, gay and airasian (2003) stated that “causal-comparative research produces limited cause-effect information” and that “a causal-comparative study…approximates cause-effect results without harming the participants” (p. 12). both of these statements are extremely confusing because it is not clear what it means to obtain “limited cause-effect information” and to approximate “cause-effect results.” these statements appear to suggest that causal-comparative research nearly facilitates the identification of cause-andeffect relationships. gay and airasian also state, a typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks 5 “causal-comparative research…attempts to determine reasons, or causes, for the existing condition” and that “the researcher attempts to determine the cause, or reason, for preexisting differences in groups of individuals” (p. 337). similarly, best and kahn (2003) incorrectly define causal-comparative studies as “suggesting causation for their findings” (p. 132). gall et al. (2003) incorrectly state “causalcomparative research design[s] … allow us to study cause-and-effect relationships” (p. 298). another confusing statement appears in charles and mertler (2002): “causal-comparative research is done to explore possible cause and effect, though it cannot demonstrate cause and effect as does experimental research” (p. 341). moreover, such statements give the false impression that causal-comparative research designs enjoy a higher status than do correlational designs. this is not the case because causalcomparative designs are essentially correlational, with the only substantive difference between two types of designs from an analytical standpoint being that in causal-comparative designs the independent variable (e.g., treatment group, gender) always represents the nominal scale of measurement (johnson, 2001). indeed, it could be argued that attributes that are categorized (e.g., gender) could be included either in a causal-comparative study (as a major independent variable) or in a correlational study as one independent variable in a set. in this respect, we applaud ary et al. (2002) for making the following statement: “despite its name, causalcomparative research does not establish a simple causal relationship among the variables of a study” (p. 25). johnson and christensen (2004) also should be acknowledged for including the following discussion: despite the presence of the term causal included in the term causal-comparative research , keep in mind that causal-comparative research is a nonexperimental research method, which means that there is no manipulation of an independent variable by a researcher. furthermore, techniques of controlling for extraneous variables are more limited than in experimental research (in which random assignment may be possible). because of the lack of manipulation and weaker techniques of controlling for extraneous variables, it is difficult to make statements about cause and effect. in short, do not be misled by the word causal in the name of this type of research. (p. 41) [emphasis in original] collecting data there are many myths perpetuated in textbooks in relation to collecting data. nearly all texts indicate that the research approach determines the type of data collected. specifically, these authors incorrectly state that quantitative research exclusively involves the collection of numerical data, whereas qualitative research exclusively yields non-numerical data (e.g., words, observations). for example, gall et al. (2003, p. 25) state that quantitative researchers “generate numerical data to represent the social environment” and that qualitative researchers “generate verbal and pictorial data to represent the social environment.” these statements are misleading on at least two levels. first, while researchers sometimes generate data, this is not always the case. indeed, in many instances, the data of interest already have been generated, and the researcher's goal is to extract them, organize them, analyze them, and make sense of them. in quantitative research, it is very common for archival data to be used that were not generated by the researcher. with respect to qualitative data, the idea of the researcher generating the data runs completely contrary to the interpretivist belief that phenomena should be studied as they occur naturally (lincoln & guba, 1985). second, although a quantitative researcher might be primarily interested in collecting, analyzing, and interpreting numeric data, non-numeric data also might provide valuable insights. interestingly, in experimental designs, considered the apex of quantitative research, side effect data (i.e., qualitative data types) are routinely collected, analyzed, and interpreted. similarly, qualitative research can involve both numeric and non-numeric data. for example, in interviews and focus groups, both data types can be collected. related to this issue, many research texts give the impression that observation is a research method instead of a data collection technique (tashakkori & teddlie, 2003a). two other main issues concerning data collection are instrumentation and sampling. in sections involving these two components of the research process, misperceptions abound in textbooks. the major misperceptions are now described. sampling. in most texts, sampling is described for quantitative designs as being probability or non-probability (ary et al., 2002; gay & airasian, 2003). this is misleading for readers because there is no reason why both these types of sampling could not be used in qualitative studies. some authors (e.g., charles & mertler, 2002; gravetter & forzano, 2003) do not even include a discussion about sampling as it relates to qualitative studies. yet, sampling is as much of an issue in qualitative research as in quantitative research. specifically, as noted by onwuegbuzie and leech (in press-c, in press-d), in qualitative studies, one or more of the following generalizations nearly always are made: from the sample of words to the voice; from the sample of observations to the truth space; current issues in education vol. 8 no. 7 from the words of key informants to the voice of the other sample members; from the words of sample members to those of one or more individuals not selected for the study; and from the observations of sample members to the experience of one or more individuals not selected for the study. consistent with this assertion that sampling permeates qualitative research, lincoln and guba (1985) advocate that the techniques of prolonged engagement and persistent observations be used when collecting data in order to increase the researcher's chances of understanding the underlying phenomena. both of these techniques clearly represent sampling issues. further, some qualitative researchers find it difficult to refrain from generalizing their results (e.g., thematic representations) beyond their samples to the underlying population (onwuegbuzie & leech, 2005a). as such, not only should purposeful sampling techniques be discussed in relation to qualitative research in textbooks, but authors also should make it clear that random sampling should be seriously considered in qualitative studies that lead to findings that are generalized beyond the study participants. describing sampling designs as either representing probability sampling or non-probability sampling is misleading for another reason. specifically, it might give the impression that sampling takes place at only one stage; yet, some studies involve multi-sampling designs (e.g., twostage sampling), in which sampling is undertaken at more than one stage. in fact, while some textbooks discuss multi-stage sampling designs very briefly (e.g., creswell, 2005; gall et al., 2003; gay & airasian, 2003), the majority of textbooks (e.g., ary et al., 2002; best & kahn, 2003; charles & mertler, 2002; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001; punch, 1999) do not discuss it at all. disturbingly, the relatively few authors who discuss multi-stage sampling invariably give the impression that multi-stage sampling belongs to the domain of random sampling. yet, as noted by onwuegbuzie and leech (in pressd), multi-stage sampling can involve random sampling at every stage, non-random sampling at every stage, or a mixture of random sampling and non-random sampling designs at different stages of the random sampling process (i.e., mixed methods sampling strategies). indeed, it is usual for mixed method studies to utilize mixed methods sampling strategies (kemper, stringfield, & teddlie, 2003; onwuegbuzie & collins, 2004). with respect to qualitative research studies, patton (1990) identified the following 15 purposeful sampling strategies: extreme/deviant case sampling, intensity sampling, typical case sampling, maximum variation sampling, stratified purposeful sampling, homogeneous sampling, critical case sampling, snowball/chain sampling, criterion sampling, theorybased/operational construct sampling, confirming/disconfirming case sampling, purposeful random sampling, political important sampling, convenience sampling, and opportunistic sampling. miles and huberman (1994) identified 16 purposeful sampling designs, adding a sixteenth sampling design, combination/mixed sampling to patton's 15 sampling schemes. these lists of purposeful sampling techniques provide a useful framework for qualitative researchers. yet, some textbooks (e.g., best & kahn, 2003; gravetter & forzano, 2003) do not even discuss qualitative sampling designs. of those who do provide a summary of purposeful designs, none of the introductory research textbooks examined discussed all 16 purposeful sampling designs. yet, at the very least, all of these designs can be summarized in only 16 paragraphs, which would take up less than six pages. for example, to their credit, gall et al. (2003) presented patton's (1990) 15 sampling schemes in four pages. it should be noted that qualitative research studies also can involve multistage sampling schemes, as can happen when the researcher returns to the site multiple times to select additional data. thus, multi-stage sampling also should be discussed in the context of qualitative inquiry. choice of sample size also is presented in a misleading way in virtually every research methodology textbook. some textbook authors do not even discuss sample sizes (e.g., gravetter & forzano, 2003; punch, 1999). when providing sample size guidelines in quantitative research, most authors provide arbitrary minimum sample sizes. typically, for correlational research designs, minimum sample sizes of 30 are recommended (e.g., charles & mertler, 2002; creswell, 2005; gall et al., 2003; gay & airasian, 2003; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001). however, this recommendation is extremely unwise because it represents a statistical power of only .51 for one-tailed tests for detecting a moderate relationship (i.e., r = .30) between two variables at the 5% level of statistical significance (erdfelder, faul, & buchner, 1996; onwuegbuzie & leech, 2004). this level of power does not represent any significant improvement over flipping an unbiased coin, suggesting that, if this guideline was followed, approximately one-half of all statistical tests in correlational designs involving one-tailed tests of bivariate relationships would be statistically nonsignificant. for two-tailed tests of bivariate tests, the guideline of 30 participants has even more dire consequences, yielding a statistical power of .38. onwuegbuzie, jiao, and bostick (2004) suggest a minimum sample size of 64 for one-tailed tests and a typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks 7 82 for two-tailed tests to attain .80 power for a moderate correlation. for causal-comparative designs, a few textbooks (e.g., gay & airasian, 2003) suggest minimum group sizes of 30. unfortunately, this represents a power of only .61 for one-tailed tests (i.e., independent samples t -tests) for detecting a moderate difference (i.e., d = .50) between two groups at the 5% level of statistical significance (erdfelder et al., 1996) and .48 for two-tailed t -tests. even more disturbingly, many textbook authors (e.g., charles & mertler, 2002; creswell, 2005; gall et al., 2003; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001) recommend minimum sample sizes of 15 for both causalcomparative and experimental designs. with respect to the former designs, this represents a power of only .38 for one-tailed tests and .26 for two-tailed tests. (onwuegbuzie et al., 2004 calculated group sizes of 51 for one-tailed tests and 64 for two-tailed tests.) with such sample size recommendations in textbooks, it is no wonder that the “the average [hypothesized] power of null hypothesis significance tests in typical studies and research literature is in the .40 to .60 range (cohen, 1962, 1965, 1988, 1992; schmidt, 1996; schmidt, hunter, & urry, 1976; sedlmeier & gigerenzer, 1989)…[with] .50 as a rough average” (p. 40). the current trend of only a few authors (e.g., ary et al., 2002) discussing the role of power in quantitative research clearly needs to be reversed. with respect to qualitative studies, rarely is there any discussion of sample size in introductory research methodology textbooks (onwuegbuzie & leech, in press-a). yet, such guidelines have been provided in qualitative research textbooks (e.g., creswell, 1998). for example, creswell (1998) recommends that 20-30 persons should be interviewed in grounded theory designs in order to “achieve detail in the theory” (p. 113). for phenomenological designs, creswell (1998) recommend interviews with up to 10 participants. onwuegbuzie and leech (in press-d) provide several rationales for systematically selecting sample sizes in qualitative research studies. instrumentation. instrumentation is the other main issue that arises in textbooks when discussing data collection. across the board, with a very few exceptions (e.g., creswell, 2005), textbooks we reviewed only included discussion of instrumentation in the quantitative research chapters. furthermore, most of the texts described tests as being reliable and valid. that is, they assign properties of reliability to quantitative measuring instruments, even though reliability is a function of scores and not of instruments (onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2002a, 2002b, 2003, 2004; thompson & vacha-haase, 2000; wilkinson & the task force on statistical inference, 1999). for example, ary et al. (2002) refer to "reliability of a measuring instruments" (p, 249); gay and airasian (2003) include sections they call “validity of measuring instruments” (p. 135) and “reliability of measuring instruments” (p. 141); gall et al. (2003) use the phrase “test validity” (p. 191) and “test reliability” (p. 195) ; and mcmillan and schumacher (2001) describe “components of test validity” (p. 243). such statements can give the impression that because an instrument's developer reports a large reliability coefficient for scores yielded by the normative sample, it can then be assumed that the instrument will continue to yield large reliability estimates in all subsequent studies, regardless of the sample selected. this issue likely explains why the vast majority of quantitative researchers do not report reliability coefficients for data from their samples (onwuegbuzie, 2002b; onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2002a, 2002b, 2003, 2004; thompson & snyder, 1998; vacha-haase, ness, nilsson, & reetz, 1999; willson, 1980), even though it has been recommended to report reliability coefficients by authoritative and influential sources (e.g., american educational research association, american psychological association, and national council on measurement in education, 1999; wilkinson & the task force on statistical inference, 1999). indeed, only a few textbook authors (e.g., johnson & christensen, 2004) use phrases such as “validity of test scores” (pp. 132-133) and “reliability of test scores” (pp. 132-133). however, even these statements can be misleading because they suggest that score reliability is only an issue for tests, and is thus not an issue for other types of quantitative measures (e.g., affective scales). therefore, we recommend that words such as “instruments” replace the word “test” when the latter is being used in the generic sense. further, in none of the textbooks examined was reliability discussed in relation to qualitative studies, even though reliability is important to consider with qualitative data (daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2002; madill , jordan , & shirley, 2000). at best, some components of reliability that are pertinent to qualitative research, such as interrater reliability and intra-reliability, are discussed only in the quantitative sections of textbooks (e.g., creswell, 2005; gay & airasian, 2003). similarly, few textbooks (e.g., mcmillan & schumacher, 2001) mention validity issues in qualitative research, even though as many as 50 components of validity in qualitative research have been identified (onwuegbuzie & leech, in press-e). current issues in education vol. 8 no. 7 another important misconception promoted by research textbooks is that quantitative data methods are objective. yet, as contended by onwuegbuzie (2002a), in quantitative studies, many research decisions are made throughout the research process that precedes objective verification decisions made. for instance, in developing instruments that yield empirical data, subjective decisions are made as to what items and how many items adequately represent the content domain. these subjective decisions prevent the measures from being objective. the only objective aspect of quantitative measures is the scoring; however, the ensuing scores are not objective. moreover, when constructing quantitative instruments, items are selected that are believed to represent the underlying the behaviors. yet, these behaviors stem from observations, which, in turn, stem from qualitative data collection techniques (i.e., observations, interviews). thus, the role of qualitative research in the development of quantitative measures should be acknowledged. unfortunately, this is not the case in research methodology textbooks. the lack of discussion of instrumentation in qualitative research by the majority of textbook authors can give the impression that qualitative researchers do not use instruments to collect data. yet, many instruments are used by interpretivists to collect data, including the following: observational schedules, interviews schedules, documents (newspapers, personal journals and diaries, official memoranda, letters, jottings individuals write to themselves, e-mail messages, minutes of meetings, records in the public domain, archival material stored in libraries), and audio-visual materials (e.g., photographs, digital images, videotapes, pictures, paintings, physical traces of images) (for a discussion of each of these instruments, see for example onwuegbuzie et al., 2004). another misconception promoted by textbooks is that every instrument produces only one data type, with quantitative instruments, for example, only generating numerical data. however, this line of thinking is contradicted by the proliferation of instruments that contain closed-ended and openended items, which generate quantitative and qualitative data. such instruments that can incorporate a mixture of closed-ended and openended items include questionnaires, interview schedules, standardized tests, and documents (cf. johnson & turner, 2003). another source of misunderstanding perpetuated by some textbook authors stems from their treatment of observations as a research design or method rather than as a data collection technique that can be used in both quantitative and qualitative research (onwuegbuzie & leech, in press-a; tashakkori & teddlie, 2003a). for example, gay and airasian (2003, p. 293) define “observational research” as a form of descriptive research in which “the current status of a phenomenon is determined not by asking, as with a survey or through an interview, but by observing.” yet, observations not only can be collected in descriptive research designs but also in correlational, causal-comparative, and experimental designs, as well as in all qualitative research designs (e.g., case studies, phenomenological research, grounded theory, ethnographic research). similarly, some authors refer to content analysis as a research method or research design instead of quantitative and qualitative data analysis techniques (tashakkori & teddlie, 2003a). analyzing the data all introductory research methodology textbooks give the impression that there is a one-toone correspondence between research approach and data analysis technique. specifically, statistical analyses are associated exclusively with quantitative research, whereas qualitative analyses (e.g., thematic analyses) are associated exclusively with qualitative research. for example, the chapter on descriptive statistics usually follows the chapters that discuss quantitative research. this maintains the myth that statistics should only be used with quantitative designs and not in qualitative designs. similarly, when a discussion of qualitative analysis is included in the book, it invariable is placed near the qualitative chapters; thus, giving the impression that qualitative analysis should be used only with designs that fall under the qualitative paradigm. although quantitative data are more likely to necessitate statistical analyses and qualitative data are more apt to justify qualitative data analyses, yet, both statistical analyses and qualitative data analyses can be used to explore and to confirm phenomena (onwuegbuzie & leech, in press-a). moreover, onwuegbuzie and teddlie (2003) have demonstrated how quantitative and qualitative data analyses can be integrated within the same analytic framework (i.e., mixed methods data analyses) either sequentially or concurrently. these methodologists discussed how quantitative and qualitative data could be transformed to the other data type. in particular, tashakkori and teddlie (1998) used the term “quantitizing” to refer to the conversion of qualitative data (e.g., focus group responses) to quantitative data (e.g., frequencies) and the term “qualitizing” to denote the conversion of quantitative data (e.g., attitude scores) to qualitative data (e.g., profiles). onwuegbuzie and teddlie also described how quantitative and qualitative data could be correlated, consolidated, compared, and integrated. a typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks 9 when discussing inferential statistical techniques, textbook authors tend to discuss the role of statistical significance. however, many writers (e.g., charles & mertler, 2002) fail to mention the other three types of significance that have been identified, namely, practical significance, clinical significance, and, most recently, economic significance (leech & onwuegbuzie, in press). practical significance indices provide information about the size of observed difference or relationship (e.g., effect size). clinical significance measures provide data regarding the extent to which the intervention makes a real difference to the quality of life of the participants or to those with whom they interact. economic significance indices represent the economic value of the effect of an intervention. these errors of omission occur despite the problems associated with null hypothesis significance testing, which include (a) its over-reliance on sample size, (b) the fact that it does not indicate whether a result is true for a population, and (c) the fact that it does not indicate the strength or size of an effect (i.e., the belief that a p < .05 is less important or significant than a p < .001) (fan, 2001; kirk, 1996; thompson, 1993). although an increasing number of textbooks discuss practical significance (e.g., ary et al., 2002; creswell, 2005; gay & airasian, johnson & christensen, 2004; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001), few textbooks, if any, discuss clinical or economic significance. yet, these concepts are not too advanced for beginning researchers. in addition, when discussing inferential statistics, textbook writers do not discuss them within the framework of the general linear model. this might give the impression that each statistical analysis represents an independent technique rather than a procedure that subsumes or is subsumed by other inferential procedures. errors of omission also occur in qualitative data analysis sections of textbooks. in particular, authors do not discuss how obtaining counts of observations can provide more meaning to narrative descriptions (onwuegbuzie, 2003b; onwuegbuzie & teddlie, 2003). onwuegbuzie (2003b) refers to these counts as effect sizes. further, as noted by onwuegbuzie and leech (2005b), virtually all research methodology textbook authors (e.g., ary, jacobs, & razavieh, 2002; creswell, 2005; fraenkel & wallen, 2003; gall, borg, & gall, 2003; gay & airasian, 2003; johnson & christensen, 2004; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001; wallen & fraenkel, 2001) present their discussions of statistical analyses in separate chapters from their discussions of research design and other stages of the research process. as such, in these statistics analysis chapters, there tends to be little or no reference to research questions, research design, or the like, giving the impression that statistical analyses occur in a vacuum. . interpreting/validating the data the quality of result interpretations (i.e., inference quality) is a function of how valid the underlying findings are. thus, validity represents the most important stage of the research process for both quantitative and qualitative research studies. thus, it is not surprising that all research textbooks examined contain a discussion of validity in relation to quantitative research, including information about campbell and stanley 's (campbell, 1957; campbell & stanley, 1963) threats to internal and external validity. however, as noted by onwuegbuzie (2003), these threats are only discussed in relation to experimental and quasi-experimental designs, giving the impression that validity is not an issue for other types of quantitative designs (e.g., descriptive, correlational). yet, validity is as relevant for these designs (huck & sandler, 1979; mcmillan, 2000; onwuegbuzie, 2003). moreover, the seminal framework provided by campbell and stanley for experimental research is too restricting for nonexperimental quantitative designs. consequently, huck and sandler (1979), mcmillan (2000), and onwuegbuzie (2003) have expanded campbell and stanley's framework, with onwuegbuzie's (2003) presentation being the most comprehensive to date. disturbingly, only a few textbook writers (e.g., ary et al., 2002; gall et al., 2003; gay & airasian, 2003; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001) discuss validity as it pertains to qualitative research, even though much literature exists in this area. with 50 components of validity or legitimation identified in the literature (onwuegbuzie & leech, in press-e), at least some of these deserve mention. for example, maxwell's (1992) conceptualization of validity could be summarized in introductory research methodology textbooks. specifically, maxwell identified five types of validity in qualitative research: descriptive validity (i.e., factual accuracy of the account as documented by the researcher), interpretive validity (i.e., the extent to which a researcher's interpretation of an account represents an understanding of the perspective of the group under study and the meanings attached to their words and actions), theoretical validity (i.e., the degree to which a theoretical explanation developed from research findings fits the data), evaluative validity (i.e., the extent to which an evaluation framework can be applied to the objects of study, rather than a descriptive, interpretive, or explanatory one), and generalizability (i.e., the extent to which a researcher can generalize the account of a particular situation or population to other individuals, times, settings, or current issues in education vol. 8 no. 7 context). with respect to the latter, maxwell differentiated internal generalizability from external generalizability; with internal generalizability pertaining to the generalizability of an inference within the setting or group studied, whereas, the latter refers to generalizability beyond the group, setting, context, or time. according to maxwell, internal generalizability is typically more important to qualitative researchers than is external generalizability. another misconception advanced in some textbooks (e.g., best & kahn, 2003) is that aspects of the research design or data collection procedure can be assessed for validity. for example, best and kahn (2003) refer to “validity and reliability of the interview” (p. 324). yet, it is not the interview that should be assessed for validity and/or reliability. rather, it is data that emerge from the interview(s) or the resultant inferences made that should be examined for legitimation. communicating the findings in a variety of the literature provided by the nbpts the final step of the research process is to communicate the research findings. with respect to quantitative reports, perhaps the biggest misconception promoted by textbook is that interpretations of results are value free. this can lead to the impression that it is not essential for the context to be provided when reporting a relationship. that is, explanations of phenomena should be undertaken at a high level of abstraction such that the role of culture is ignored, thereby allowing “universal generalizations that encompass the broadest domain of the phenomenon in question” (moghaddam, walker, & harrj , 2003, p. 123). indeed, as stated by tashakkori and teddlie (2003a): “we are struck by how much some of the ‘quantitative' papers are void of any reference to the cultural context of the behaviors/phenomenon under study” (p. 19). yet, ignoring the role of culture likely leads to noninteraction-seeking bias, in which the nature of reality of interest is not honored in the optimal sense (onwuegbuzie, 2003). thus, all quantitative findings should be contextualized. with respect to writing qualitative reports, a common weakness of this section in textbooks is a failure to emphasize that qualitative findings should not be generalized beyond the sample unless the sample size is adequately large (onwuegbuzie & leech, 2005a). not making this recommendation explicit likely explains why some qualitative researchers find it difficult to resist the temptation to generalize their results to the underlying population. instead, they should focus on attempting to obtain insights into particular educational, social, and familial processes and practices that existed within a specific location and context (connolly, 1998). implications of errors the implications of the textbook errors outlined above are immeasurable. on the simplest level, the fact that research method textbooks continue to relate myths and errors about the process of research to students keeps the myths alive; many researchers do not understand that what they learned from the textbook is incorrect. thus, researchers continue to perpetuate errors within their own research projects, presentations of their research, and published articles. more specifically, many of these errors advance the myth that research method as a technique (i.e., research design) and research method as a logic of justification (i.e., research paradigm) are synonymous. moreover, many of these myths tend to promote the incompatibility thesis, which suggests that quantitative and qualitative paradigms cannot coexist, and cannot and should not be mixed in any way (howe, 1988). indeed, by separating quantitative and qualitative approaches, research methodology textbooks read as if they contain two books in one. additionally, as noted by onwuegbuzie and leech (in press-a), separating discussion of quantitative and qualitative approaches in research textbooks, “students may form the impression that research represents a dichotomy of choices rather than an integrative, interactive, and systematic process for the purpose of generating new knowledge or validating or refuting existing knowledge” (p. 15). such a narrow view of research might dissuade them from learning to conduct “bilingual research” (tashakkori & teddlie, 2003a, p. 64), believing that they have to choose one paradigm over the other. yet, in recent years, the incompatibility thesis has been usurped by the compatibility thesis, whereby the relationship between the quantitative and qualitative paradigms consisted of isolated events lying on a continuum of scientific research (howe, 1988; tashakkori & teddlie, 1998). unfortunately, the majority of research textbooks do not presently reflect this trend. using onwuegbuzie and leech's (in press-a) framework the framework suggested by onwuegbuzie and leech (in press-a) demonstrates how research textbooks can be reframed to break down the barriers between quantitative and qualitative research. in essence, this framework calls for the integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches at each stage of the research process. at the stage at which the research problem and research objective are formulated, rather than linking deductive reasoning with quantitative research and inductive reasoning with qualitative research, textbook authors would a typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks 11 describe research objectives as lying on an exploratory-confirmatory continuum. the extent to which the research objective is exploratory or confirmatory would then determine the reasoning process. once the research objective has been established, the purpose of study, research question(s), and hypotheses (if the research objective is confirmatory) are determined. however, rather than presenting these elements as falling under the quantitative/qualitative divide, they would be discussed in the context of the exploratoryconfirmatory research objective continuum. the next major section of the book would describe a typology of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research designs. however, it will be emphasized that the design does not dictate the data type collected. the section on data collection would provide information about sampling and choice of instruments. in the discussion on sampling, instead of presenting the sampling schemes as belonging to either the quantitative research and qualitative fields, all 24 sampling methods outlined by onwuegbuzie and leech (in press-a) would be described and classified according to whether they represent probability or non-probability sampling. in addition, to these 24 sampling techniques, the following additional 4 mixed methods sampling strategies would be included: (a) multi-stage mixed methods random sampling (in which all phases of the sampling are random), (b) multi-stage mixed methods non-random sampling (in which all phases of the sampling are non-random); (c) multi-stage mixed methods random-purposive sampling (in which the first phase of the sampling is random and at least one of the subsequent phases is purposive); and (d) multistage mixed methods purposive-random sampling (in which the first phase of the sampling is purposive and at least one of the subsequent phases is random). these mixed methods sampling schemes would provide researchers with at least 28 sampling methods at their disposal, regardless of paradigmatic orientation. with respect to the instrument section of the textbook, burke and turner's (2003) mixed methods data collection framework would be used. here, it would be made clear that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between paradigm and data collection method. the section on data analysis could incorporate the framework of onwuegbuzie and teddlie (2003). here, it would be emphasized that the analyses selected would be a function of the research objective and purpose. in particular, the data analysis tools discussed would be classified under exploratory and confirmatory techniques. in the section on interpreting and validating data, information about threats to internal validity, external validity, and legitimation would be provided under the headings of inference quality and data quality, as recommended by tashakkori and teddlie (2003b). finally, discussion about quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research reports would take place within the same chapter. recommendations for authors, instructors, and students based on the analysis of textbooks, the following are recommendations for authors of textbooks, and instructors and students of research methodology courses. for authors of textbooks, it is important to update and revise the texts regularly to keep up with recent trends and changes. because research and analysis techniques are constantly transforming and emerging, keeping up with these changes is important. one avenue to assist with this is for textbook authors to attend national and regional conferences, and to read recent literature in the area of research and analysis techniques. furthermore, it would be beneficial to have textbooks rigorously reviewed by leading methodologists in the field. instructors of research method courses using these texts should keep up with recent trends and changes in research and analysis techniques. using a critical eye in reading and choosing texts would increase the chances of using texts that contain fewer errors. finally, instructors should not make the textbook the sole method of information; instructors should supplement the assigned readings with recent articles which outline controversies and the latest developments. for readers of these textbooks, it is imperative to read critically and point out discrepancies. conclusion evidence has been provided that a significant proportion of published studies, theses, and dissertations are seriously flawed, containing analytical and interpretational errors (daniel, 1998; keselman et al., 1998; onwuegbuzie, 2002b; thompson, 1998; vockell & asher, 1974; ward, hall, & schramm, 1975; witta & daniel, 1998). onwuegbuzie and daniel (2003) presented the following five reasons for this trend: (a) graduatelevel instruction in which research methodology is taught as a series of linear steps, rather than as a holistic, interactive, and reflective process; (b) graduate-level curricula that severely limit students' exposure to quantitative and qualitative research approaches; (c) the endorsement of various misperceptions about the nature of research; (d) research methodology instructors teaching out of their specialty areas; and (e) failure, reluctance, or even refusal to recognize that methodological techniques that were popular in previous decades no current issues in education vol. 8 no. 7 longer represent best practices and may now be considered inappropriate, invalid, untimely, or obsolete. however, the present essay has demonstrated that an additional reason likely prevails for the vast number of published studies, theses, and dissertations that are seriously flawed. specifically, it is likely that the errors and myths perpetuated by textbooks also play an important role in the proliferation of research inquiries that involve questionable practices and, consequently, invalid findings and inferences. thus, it is imperative that research methodology textbook authors exercise much more caution in what they write. references ambach, g. 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(2005, march 10). a typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks current issues in education [on-line], 8(7). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number7/ author notes anthony j. onwuegbuzie university of south florida department of educational measurement and research, college of education 4202 east fowler avenue, edu 162, tampa , fl, 33620-7750 tonyonwuegbuzie@aol.com nancy l. leech university of colorado at denver and health sciences center note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 20, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation onwuegbuzie, a. j., & leech, n. l. (2005). a typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks. current issues in education, 8(7). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1604 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number7/index.html mailto:tonyonwuegbuzie@aol.com http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1604 403 forbidden<br> teacher collaboration and instruction for social-emotional learning: a correlational study current issues in education, 23(3) 1 volume 23, issue 3 december 12, 2022 issn 1099-839x teacher collaboration and instruction for social-emotional learning: a correlational study ann m. leonard, ph.d. independent consultant teacher collaboration international consulting rebecca h. woodland, ph.d. professor, department of educational policy, research, and administration college of education, university of massachusetts amherst abstract: teacher collaboration and social-emotional learning (sel) are extant school improvement strategies intended to have a positive effect on student learning outcomes. the purpose of this quantitative, ex post facto study was to examine possible correlations between degree of teacher collaboration and use of instructional practices that support student sel among lower secondary teachers (grades 7-9) in the united states (leonard, 2021). correlational analyses were conducted using a secondary dataset of the 2018 teaching and learning international survey (talis) sponsored by the office of economic cooperation and development (oecd, 2018). results showed strong, statistically significant relationships between frequency of teacher engagement in higher-intensity “student-facing” collaborative actions such as peer observation, and the enactment of instructional approaches that contribute to student sel, such as helping students believe they can do well in school and having them work in groups to come up with a joint solution to a problem. implications for research and for the advancement of teacher collaboration and sel in p12 schools are discussed. keywords: social-emotional learning, developmental relationships, teacher collaboration, student-facing collaborative actions citation: leonard, a. m. & woodland, r. h. (2022). teacher collaboration and instruction for socialemotional learning: a correlational study. current issues in education, 23 (3). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss3.2053 accepted: 11/29/2022 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss3.2053 leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 2 introduction teacher collaboration and social-emotional learning (sel) are extant strategies related to school improvement and enacted with the intention of improving student outcomes. teacher collaboration takes many forms but is frequently operationalized in p12 schools through the establishment of a professional learning community (plc). membership in a high-quality plc, characterized by shared purpose and interdependent practices that are sustained over time, can enable educators to engage in constructive, reflective dialogue and action-taking to improve student academic learning. other forms of collaboration within a plc can include peer observation, team teaching, and the sharing of materials. social-emotional learning (sel) is the domain of student learning that includes student understanding and managing of emotions, goal setting, feeling empathy for others, establishing positive relationships, and making responsible decisions. sel content is increasingly understood as a critical aspect of a school’s curriculum that should be attended to in tandem with traditional academic areas. however, despite the recognized value of teacher collaboration and sel, these two phenomena remain largely disconnected from each other in educational research and practice. 1 the publication of a nation at risk (gardner, 1983) initiated a burst of national conversation among educators, community members, policy makers, and politicians about how to improve p12 public schools. the central aim of these improvement efforts was to combat the perceived “rising tide of mediocrity” through a renewed commitment to educational standards and achievement as the basis for global competitiveness. however, the report largely neglected the social and emotional aspects of learning. while enumerating recommendations for academic content, expectations, time, and teaching methods, a nation at risk did not acknowledge that social and emotional competencies play an integral part in academic learning and achievement. driven by a nation at risk, the last three decades of p12 public education improvement work have been dominated by achievement and accountability-driven reforms such as the adoption of common core state standards, high-stakes testing, and using student test scores in school and teacher evaluation. the 2015 every student succeeds act (essa) which authorized the expenditure of federal funds on evidence-based sel programs, and the publication of the aspen institute report (berman, 2018), from a nation at risk to a nation at hope, are two further milestones in the national education conversation that mark an emerging recognition of the role that social and emotional learning plays in student achievement and school improvement. the aspen institute’s report establishes sel as a fundamental domain of schooling, integral to student learning and development. although u.s. public schools have always been charged with a civic purpose, and awareness of the importance of socialization in education can be traced at least as far back as dewey’s democracy and education (1916), these recent publications revived interest in the social, relational, and emotional dimensions of the educational process. while from a nation at risk to a nation at hope may not match a nation at risk in terms of policy influence, it is indicative of a growing understanding that schools need to attend to students’ acquisition of not only knowledge and cognitive skills, but also social and emotional competencies needed in adulthood such as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making (casel, 2015). importantly for the work of school improvement, 1 this paper is based on the research conducted for ann m. leonard’s dissertation study but has been revised and updated after the peer review process conducted by cie’s editorial team. these revisions have been made collaboratively by leonard and woodland. leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 3 meta-analyses have found that progress in the development of cognitive, social, and emotional capacity happens when these domains are integrated together, not compartmentalized into discrete programs or lessons (durlak et al., 2011; taylor et al., 2017). this implies that all teachers need to understand the linkages among students’ social, emotional, and academic strengths and challenges in order to create conditions to maximize student learning across these domains. they need to know what constitutes culturally and developmentally relevant socialemotional learning, how to effectively enact sel-supportive instructional practices in their classrooms, and how to analyze and act on sel-related problems of practice. for the purposes of a study that is fundamentally interested in classroom teacher practices that are supportive of student sel, it is appropriate to utilize a framework for sel that is not specialist-delivered or contained in a free-standing course, program, or lesson, but rather one that is grounded in instructional strategies that can be infused into existing teaching practices, curricula, and activities, school-wide. such an approach is found in li and julian’s developmental relationships model, defined as “reciprocal human interactions that embody an enduring emotional attachment, progressively more complex patterns of joint activity, and a balance of power that gradually shifts from the developed person in favor of the developing person” (li & julian, 2012, p. 157). scales et al. (2020) used li and julian’s model to study sel-supportive instructional practices at the middle school level and found that the quality of student-teacher relationships, as reflected in the kinds of instructional practices teachers employ and how they establish classroom norms and climate, predicted student academic motivation and sense of belonging directly, and through motivation indirectly predicted gpa. teacher-student relationships that extended beyond warmth and high expectations and included providing support, sharing power, and expanding students’ sense of agency and possibilities were key to the formation of developmental relationships that had the potential to “substantively affect the trajectory of young people’s growth in a sustained manner over time and across contexts, and in particular, to stimulate, maintain and grow the kind of academic motivation needed for students to exert full effort and persevere in the face of struggle” (scales et al., 2020, p. 651). the instructional practices that build developmental relationships are (1) stealthy, or woven into normal school practices, so less likely to feel controlling or provoke resistance in students; and (2) recursive, or made up of small, repeated actions that can activate large changes over time (yeager & walton, 2011). instead of seeking to directly alter students’ internal characteristics and competencies, as some sel approaches do, the developmental relationships framework aims to alter relational contexts and instructional practices so that social-emotional competencies emerge and flourish. yet, as is true of other frameworks for systemic, integrated sel, the scholarship of li and julian and scales et al. does not explain how teachers learn to initiate and sustain developmental relationships with their students. purpose of the study while teacher collaboration and sel are prominent school improvement-related strategies, their enactment is varied, and their implementation is complex and fraught with risks to undercut their purported benefits to teaching and learning. little work has been done to examine the potential intersections between teacher collaboration and student sel. given the known power of teacher collaboration to promote teacher learning and the quality of instructional practice in general (e.g., vangrieken et al., 2017; vescio et al., 2008), the field would benefit from a deeper understanding of the ways that teacher collaborative action-taking may advance or be related to sel-supportive instructional practices. this study contributes to leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 4 discourse in the fields of study of teacher collaboration and sel through an ex post facto analysis of u.s. teacher responses to the 2018 administration of the teaching and learning international survey (talis), a five-year cyclical survey sponsored by the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd, 2018), specifically targeting survey items related to collaborative action-taking and instructional practices supportive of sel. it provides a descriptive snapshot of specified professional and instructional practices among u.s. lower secondary level teachers (grades 7-9) and an analysis of correlations between types of collaborative action-taking and instructional practices supportive of sel. it points to productive directions for further research, including investigations of other salient teacher-level and schoollevel factors, and other approaches to studying teacher beliefs and practices related to collaboration and sel. it may also help guide school leaders’ reflection and decision-making related to efforts to improve in the areas of teacher collaboration and sel, thereby enhancing the efficacy of teacher time and effort and indirectly leading to better and more equitable learning outcomes for students. statement of the problem existing frameworks for systemic, integrated sel (e.g., jennings & greenberg, 2008; jones & bouffard, 2012) do not sufficiently attend to teacher learning needs; they place responsibility for continuous improvement in the hands of district and school leaders and give limited consideration to available means to improve teacher sel knowledge and instructional skill through teacher collaboration. professional development related to sel is insufficient and not always effective (jennings & frank, 2015). while a growing body of evidence suggests that integrated sel implemented on a continuous basis by all school staff is related to the most durable and beneficial outcomes for students, many schools rely on discrete lessons or specialized-staff-delivered programs to support sel. the work of li and julian (2012) and scales et al. (2020) explains how instructional practices that build developmental relationships are an essential ingredient in the effective promotion of positive social-emotional and academic outcomes. although educator collaboration is known to be a catalyst for contextualizing complex issues and developing strategies to address problems of practice, leading to beneficial outcomes for teachers and students, little is known about whether and how teacher collaborative actiontaking and sel-supportive instructional practices may be related to each other. to investigate this gap, secondary analyses were conducted on the talis 2018 dataset to provide information about current collaborative action-taking and instructional practices supportive of sel across u.s. schools among lower secondary teachers (grades 7-9) and initial findings about possible relationships between the independent variables, types of teacher collaborative action-taking, and the dependent variables, specific instructional practices known to be supportive of sel. research design the study employed secondary data analyses in a correlational design to examine the naturally occurring variations in the independent variables, sel-supportive instructional practices, as they relate to the dependent variables, and types of teacher collaborative actiontaking. the following research questions were addressed in this study: 1. in which types of collaborative action-taking do u.s. teachers most frequently engage? 2. in which sel-supportive instructional practices do u.s. teachers most frequently engage? 3. what is the relationship between teacher collaborative action-taking and teacher instructional practices that support sel? sub-question: which types of teacher leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 5 collaborative action-taking relate most strongly with specific sel-supportive instructional practices? because the intersection of sel and teacher collaboration is a new line of research, it was appropriate to conduct an ex post facto examination of existing data gathered through the talis 2018 survey of 2560 u.s. lower secondary level (grades 79) teachers from 165 mainstream (not primarily serving hospitalized or adjudicated youth) schools (oecd, 2020b). an ex post facto study indicates that the data have already been generated, so the variables cannot be manipulated by the researcher (silva, 2012). none of the published talis documentation indicates plans to study possible relationships between collaborative action-taking and sel-supportive instructional practices; the intent of the talis is to describe the current state of teacher practices, attitudes, and beliefs (ainley & carstens, 2018). this study was a novel utilization of talis data to conduct secondary analyses using a correlational design to examine the naturally occurring variations in specified independent variables, sel-supportive instructional practices, as they relate to specified dependent variables, and types of collaborative action-taking. to examine the possible relationships between collaborative action-taking and sel-supportive instructional practices, it was necessary to choose statistical methods for bivariate correlation of categorical data. in a correlational study, there is: only a single group of subjects rather than two or more groups. in addition, each of the subjects has a score on two different variables. also in a correlational study, we do not seek cause-and-effect relationships between independent and dependent variables. rather, we simply want to know whether or not the scores on the two variables are related (steinberg, 2010, p. 417). the research questions outlined above were addressed using quantitative (descriptive and correlative) statistical methods applied to the talis 2018 dataset. the independent and dependent measured variables in this study were teacher-level, describing teacher professional and instructional practices. the independent variables were drawn from the talis 2018 items describing the frequency of teacher collaborative action-taking (items 33 a-h; see figure 1). figure 1 talis item 33 leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 6 talis 2018 employs a conceptual framework which distinguishes between two levels of collaborative action-taking. the lower exchange level is associated with items 33 d, e, and g, and includes engagement in discussions on teaching materials, common assessment standards, or the learning of individual students, and attendance at team conferences. the higher professional collaboration level, associated with items 33 a, b, c, f, and h, represents action-taking that demands more commitment and collegial interdependence, such as team teaching, peer observation, interdisciplinary or multi-age projects, and collaborative professional development (ainley & carstens, 2018). this study used the specific collaborative actions itemized in item 33 a-h to evaluate possible relationships between teacher collaboration and sel-supportive instructional practices. findings about collaborative actions, i.e., the specific talis items, are more informative to researchers and practitioners who may be engaged with a variety of approaches to teacher collaboration. the construct validity of these items is established through the studies cited in ainley & carstens’ conceptual framework, and the literature on effective teacher collaboration. for example, item 33b, observe other teachers’ classes and provide feedback, references peer observation practices known to be an effective collaborative learning method (city, 2011). item 33h, take part in collaborative professional development, broadly describes what is known about the characteristics of effective educator teams (louis et al., 1996; vangrieken et al., 2017; vescio et al., 2008). the teacher-level dependent variables for this study were based on items describing the frequency of teacher enactment of instructional practices known to be supportive of student sel. as noted above, the talis 2018 was not constructed with the intent of measuring teacher selsupportive instructional practices. to make inferences about sel-supportive instructional practices through secondary analysis of the talis 2018 dataset, the linkages between the talis items and empirical findings about instructional practices that support student sel, (operationalized in this study using li and julian’s developmental relationships framework and the findings of scales et al. about what teachers need to be able to do to build and sustain developmental relationships with their students) must be explicated. as with the independent variables, this was done by selecting specific items for descriptive and correlative statistical analysis, rather than utilizing predefined indices. figure 2 shows talis item 34, which the talis 2018 technical manual identifies as a subscale for teacher self-efficacy in student engagement. within this subscale, items c, d, f, h, i, j, l, and m can be conceptually linked to the more general construct of student engagement, but not directly to instructional practices that build developmental relationships. for example, items d, f, h, and i address classroom management using the lexicon of behavioral management (control student behavior, get students to follow... rules), not social-emotional development. by contrast, items a, b, g, e, and k align precisely to elements of the developmental relationships framework. items 34a and b, get students to believe they can do well in school work and help students value learning align to the developmental relationships element of expressing care, which focuses on teacher practices that demonstrate warmth, encouragement, and dependability. item 34g, help students think critically, aligns to the developmental relationships element of challenging for growth, which focuses on teacher practices that express high expectations and build a growth mindset. items 34e, motivate students who show low interest in schoolwork, and k, provide an alternative explanation, for example when students are confused, align to the developmental relationships element of providing support, which focuses on teacher practices that support student persistence toward task completion and goal achievement in the face of challenges (scales et al., 2020). leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 7 figure 2 talis item 34 further connections from talis items to instructional practices known to build developmental relationships were established by including in the dependent variables data from talis item 42 (see figure 3) on the frequency of enactment of specific instructional practices in a target class. talis identifies this item as a subscale for cognitive activation, a construct defined as setting learning tasks that ask students to evaluate, integrate and apply knowledge in a leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 8 figure 3 talis item 42 problem-solving context to stimulate cognitive processing and established as predictive of student motivation and achievement (ainley & carstens, 2018; seidel & shavelson, 2007). to yield insight into instructional practices that align more precisely with the developmental relationships framework and support student sel, this study utilized items 42 e, f, and g. 42e, i present tasks for which there is no obvious solution, is related to the developmental relationships element of challenging for growth, which focuses on teacher practices that express high expectations and build a growth mindset and confidence in students’ abilities to face challenges. items 42 f and g, i give tasks that require students to think critically, and i have students work in small groups to come up with a joint solution to a problem or task, are related to the developmental relationships element of expanding possibilities, wherein teachers offer engaging experiences that help students learn to navigate obstacles, express their preferences and passions, and amplify their voices (scales et al., 2020). the design for this study was not predicated upon the existence of an as-yet-to-berecognized subscale in the talis that matches li and julian’s developmental relationships framework, nor is it arguing that the selected independent variables from talis items 34 and 42 fully encompass what is known about sel-supportive instructional practices. it did assert that the specified instructional practices identified in the talis are sufficiently aligned with identified elements of the developmental relationships framework, which is known to be an approach through which teachers can effectively integrate support of student sel into classroom teaching and learning (ainley & carstens, 2018; scales et al., 2020). hence, correlations leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 9 between these items can yield valid insights into this study’s primary research question: what is the relationship between teacher collaborative action-taking and teacher instructional practices that support sel? this study could not and did not assume that the dependent variables capture a dimension representing sel-supportive instructional practices. measurement models such as confirmatory factor analysis are useful for confirming a theory about how many factors are part of a dimension, which was not the aim of this study. knowledge in the field regarding selsupportive instructional practices is emergent and unsettled, and so this study attended to the potential relationships between specific teacher-reported professional and instructional practices to contribute to an emerging understanding of how teachers may learn instructional practices that develop and sustain developmental relationships and, through this pathway, support student sel. data collection & analysis sample demographics the data set for this study included a total of 2560 u.s. teacher respondents from 165 different schools. demographic analyses indicated that the sample was 67.23% female and 32.77% male. respondents reported a mean experience level of 13.9 years in teaching, and a mean of 8.1 years teaching at their current school. 59.74% reported their highest level of formal education completed as isced level 7, master’s or equivalent, and 38.1% reported their highest level of formal education completed as isced level 6, bachelor’s or equivalent. these demographic data are similar to that of the 2017-18 nces national teacher and principal survey for gender, experience, and education levels in public middle schools (taie & goldring, 2020), indicating that the talis sample is accurately representative. talis instrumentation and analysis methods this study employed an existing dataset from talis 2018, released in 2019 and available to download and analyze using a statistics software package. statistical procedures were chosen according to the sample characteristics and item structure of the talis. the sample size of 2560 u.s. lower secondary level teachers is large enough to use procedures that assume a normal distribution. the actual number of surveys used in tabulating the descriptive analyses of the independent variables, and types of collaborative action-taking, ranged from 2419-2427 across the eight items analyzed. the actual number of surveys used in tabulating the descriptive analyses of the dependent variables, instructional practices supportive of social-emotional learning, ranged from 1966-2425 across the eight items analyzed. the actual number of surveys used for chi-square testing of the dependent variables against the independent variables ranged from 1958-2419 across the 64 tests. to address the variances associated with estimating population statistics from a sample, replicate weighting was used in analytical procedures conducted on the data. the replicate weights allow the single sample to simulate multiple samples, generating a more informed standard error and enabling more accurate inferences about the population to be drawn from analyses of the sample data (steinberg, 2010). the variables in this study are categorical and ordinal, not numerical: the responses are arranged in a logical order expressing categories of frequency (e.g., item 33: never/once a year or less/2-4 times a year/5-10 times a year/1-3 times a month/once a week or more), but the spacing between those levels of frequency cannot be assumed to be equal (kremelberg, 2014). correlative procedures were therefore employed that are appropriate for the selected variables; chi-square testing is the appropriate measure of possible associations among categorical/ordinal leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 10 variables. chi-square testing was used as a measure of possible associations between items composing the dependent and independent variables as indicated by the presence or absence of statistically significant relationships between the variables (frost, 2020). chi-square tests are highly sensitive to sample sizes under 50 and over 500, so with more than 2000 surveys under analysis, it is unsurprising that statistical significance was found in almost all the tested potential associations. data visualization and analysis of the chi-square test results were conducted to compensate for this hypersensitivity and determine similarities and differences between observed and expected matrices. p-values, chi-square statistics, and response percentages were calculated for each of the 64 possible associations between types of collaborative action-taking and types of sel-supportive instructional practice. p-values are one measure of the strength of the evidence against the null hypothesis; lower p-values represent stronger evidence. if the p-value is higher than 0.05, the sample data do not provide enough evidence that the association exists (kremelberg, 2014). given that these chi-square tests are a bi-variate analysis, without controlling for an additional variable such as a school-level characteristic, it would be expected to find statistically significant relationships among many, if not all, of the tested associations. therefore, this study’s analytical approach looked beyond the presence of statistical significance as expressed in p-values and examined response percentages in detail to assess the strength and describe the nature of the relationship between the two tested variables. summary of research design the study described here incorporated research questions, research methods, and an analytical approach that built on a review of bodies of literature related to teacher collaboration and social-emotional learning (leonard, 2021). the research design offered a way to begin to examine possible relationships between sel-supportive instructional practices and teacher collaborative action-taking, while demonstrating regard for prior theoretical and empirical achievements in the field. results the study’s hypotheses were predicated on the idea that greater frequency of teacher engagement in higher level, more interdependent types of collaboration would positively relate to more frequent use of instructional practices supportive of sel. considering that underlying the theoretical conceptualizations of both teacher collaboration and sel is a fundamental assertion that relationships and emotional processes affect how and what we learn, it was reasonable to posit that frequency of participation in more interdependent, collaborative, peer-topeer interactions would be related to the frequency of use of sel-supportive instructional practices. this section will present the findings that resulted from the descriptive and correlational analyses enacted to answer this study’s research questions. research question 1: in which types of collaborative action-taking do u.s. teachers most frequently engage? rq1 was descriptive and required quantitatively describing the talis data for selected items 33a-33h, the independent variables related to teacher self-reported frequency of enactment of eight specified collaborative actions. statistical procedures were employed in stata and excel for organizing, summarizing, and displaying the data. to address the core concern of rq1, which collaborative actions u.s. lower secondary teachers most frequently engage in, summary leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 11 tables and graphs were constructed to display data regarding which collaborative actions u.s. 7th-9th grade teachers report engaging in once per month or more, aggregating the two highest frequency response categories, 1-3 times a month and once a week or more. this level of frequency is relevant to this rq based on previous studies (yoon et al., 2007), which indicate that any professional learning experience in which teachers engage for an average of less than 810 hours per month will likely have little or no impact on instructional practice and student learning. while the talis item response choices cannot readily be converted to hours per month, it is reasonable to assume that only the highest two levels of frequency response possible, 1-3 times a month and once a week or more, may reach an average of 8 hours per month or more. these data are graphically presented in figure 4. figure 4 percent of more frequent responses on collaborative action items wide variation in teacher participation in different types of collaborative action-taking is illustrated in these data, with a range from 6.52% to 67.79% of high-frequency responses across the eight selected survey items. item 33e about discussing the learning development of specific students was the most frequent action that teachers reported engaging in, with 67.79% saying they took this action at least once a month, followed by item 33d regarding the exchange of materials with colleagues (56.07%), item 33f about how often you work with other teachers in the school to ensure common standards in evaluations (48.31%), and item 33g, how often you attend team conferences (46.26%). it is noteworthy that the four most frequently reported collaborative actions include the three types which are categorized in the talis conceptual framework as lower-level exchange actions (items 33d, e, and g), and only one of the higher-level, more interdependent actions (item 33f, work with other teachers in this school to ensure commons standards in evaluations for assessing student progress). the lower-level actions are distinguished by being typically leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 12 episodic and informal in nature, as contrasted with higher-level actions that involve more depth of commitment and interdependence between teachers. professional collaboration activities that are considered higher-level, such as observing other teachers and providing feedback, teaching jointly as a team in the same class, and engaging in joint activities across different classes and age groups (e.g., projects), were the four least frequently occurring practices. the lowest-frequency collaborative actions were: teach jointly as a team in the same class (33a: 6.52%), observe other teachers’ classes and provide feedback (33b: 6.98%) and engage in joint activities e.g. projects (33c: 10.12%). the number of contact hours devoted to professional learning needed to show a positive and significant effect on student achievement has been found to range between 30-100 hours, averaging 49 hours, spread over 612 months, whereas professional development offering 5-14 hours of contact had statistically no significant effect on student achievement (yoon et al., 2007). teacher perception of the usefulness of professional learning experiences has also been found to be related to the duration and intensity of the experience; the more hours of participation that teachers report, the more highly they rate the usefulness of the professional development (wei et al., 2010). although there are no well-established empirically-grounded guidelines regarding the amount of time needed for specific collaborative actions to be effective, the yoon et al. metric, when applied to the findings about participation in collaborative action-taking in the 2018 talis, suggests that very small numbers of u.s. lower secondary teachers are participating in these higher-level types of collaboration at frequency levels high enough to have any significant effect on student outcomes. of the higher-level items, the only two in which u.s. lower secondary teachers report engagement at a level of frequency close to the lower-level items are 33f) work with other teachers in this school to ensure common standards in evaluations for assessing student progress and 33h) take part in collaborative professional learning. regarding the nature of these two items, note that they differ from the other three which all involve students being present during the professional collaboration activity, whether in classroom observations, team teaching, or joint activities; neither meetings about common assessment standards nor other forms of collaborative professional learning typically involve the presence of students. item 33h) take part in collaborative professional learning (39.43%) contains broad and confusing terminology, with responses dependent on teacher interpretation of the terms collaborative, professional, and learning, highlighting the analytical challenges inherent in the use of the talis typology for collaborative actions. overall, the descriptive analyses conducted on talis 2018 data to answer rq1 showed that teachers participated more frequently in the lower-level exchange practices, which are less likely to positively influence student learning. conversely, the higher-level, more interdependent practices that are known to positively influence instructional practice and student learning, happen infrequently and thus are not likely to have a positive effect on student learning. research question 2: in which sel-supportive instructional practices do u.s. teachers most frequently engage? rq2 required quantitatively describing the talis data for selected items 34a, b, e, g, k and items 42 e, f, g, the dependent variables representing teacher self-reported frequency of enactment of eight specified instructional practices associated with the developmental relationships framework, this study’s model for operationalizing sel-supportive instructional leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 13 practices. statistical procedures were employed in stata and excel for organizing, summarizing, and displaying the data. summary tables were constructed to display data regarding which selsupportive instructional practices teachers report engaging in once per month or more, aggregating the two highest frequency response categories, quite a bit and a lot for items 34 a, b, e, g, k, and frequently or always for items 42 e, f, g. these data are presented in figure 5. figure 5 percent of more frequent responses on sel-supportive instructional practices as with the collaborative action-taking responses previously reported on, considerable variation in the frequency of teacher enactment of sel-supportive instructional practices is illustrated in these data, with a range from 29.82% to 94.18% of high-frequency responses. overall, however, teachers’ self-reported levels of confidence in their enactment of all but one of these instructional practices are high. in examining these results, u.s. teachers appear to be most frequently enacting instructional practices associated with the elements of expressing care, which focuses on teacher practices that demonstrate warmth, encouragement, and dependability: items 34a get students to believe they can do well in school work (85.36%), and 34b help students value learning (76.3%). the two items associated with challenging for growth, which focuses on teacher practices that express high expectations and build a growth mindset, are split, with item 34g, help students think critically, showing high confidence (82.31%), and item 42e, present tasks for which there is no obvious solution, showing much lower confidence (29.82%). the two items associated with providing support, which focuses on teacher practices that support student persistence toward task completion and goal achievement in the face of challenges, are also split, with item 34e, motivate students who show low interest in school work, showing lower confidence (64.18%) than item 34k, provide alternative explanations e.g. when students are confused (94.18%). a split in response percentages is also visible in the two items associated with expanding possibilities, instruction that offers engaging experiences that help students learn leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 14 to navigate obstacles, express their preferences and passions, and amplify their voices: higher confidence is reported in item 42f, tasks that require students to think critically (79.42%), and lower confidence is reported in item 42g, have students work in groups to come up with a joint solution to a problem or task (65.46%). recalling that the design for this study intentionally set out to examine specific instructional practices associated with support for student sel, an as-yetundefined concept that is outside of the empirically-tested constructs that inform the writing of the talis items, it is unsurprising to find these split responses; one would not expect to find internal structural validity on items that are linked to a specific developmental relationships element. rather, the split responses are affirming of the findings of this study’s literature review regarding the lack of theoretical and practical consensus in key areas, such as how to define sel and whether and how sel competencies are teachable. research question 3: what is the relationship between teacher collaborative action-taking and teacher instructional practices that support sel? sub-question: which types of teacher collaborative action-taking relate most strongly with specific sel-supportive instructional practices? rq3 and its sub-question necessitated the identification and use of correlative statistical procedures suited to categorical data and the application of analytical techniques to ascertain the presence and nature of any identified relationships between independent collaborative actiontaking variables and dependent sel-supportive instructional practice variables. the chi-square test was selected because it compares observed and expected distributions of categorical data on two variables. if there is no relationship between the two variables, then the chi-square test should find that the frequency of reported sel instructional practice use is evenly distributed across the various levels of frequency of collaborative action-taking. if there is a relationship between the variables, the chi-square test will identify it via a level of statistical significance (pvalue) of 0.05 or less, and the nature of the relationship can be described through close examination of the response percentages to determine if the observed frequencies follow a pattern. sixty-four chi-square tests were conducted in stata to measure possible associations between independent variables, collaborative actions, and the dependent variables, selsupportive instructional practices. other studies of the talis data (e.g., brandt, 2015) took the approach of creating composite variables out of sub-items and conducting regression analyses to characterize the relationships between the composite variables. that approach was deemed illsuited to this study given the unsettled state of understanding in the field about what might constitute a composite construct for sel-supportive instructional practices and given our interest in conducting a more granular examination of specific types of collaborative action rather than generalizing multiple types of collaborative action in a composite variable. statistical significance was found in all but one of the relationships between the independent and dependent variables. this finding supports the hypothesis that a higher frequency of collaborative actiontaking correlates to a higher frequency of enacting instructional practices that support sel. for the sub-question of rq3 regarding which types of collaborative action-taking relate most strongly to specific sel-supportive instructional practices, close examinations were conducted of the row percentages of each chi-square tabulation to test the hypothesis that stronger relationships would be present between the higher-level, more interdependent collaborative actions and sel-supportive practices as compared to the relationships between lower-level collaborative actions and sel-supportive practices. to enable meaningful leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 15 comparisons to be made across the eight sel-supportive instructional practice variables, row percentage data for teachers who report they are engaging in collaborative actions at the levels known to be influential on student outcomes (1-3 times/month and once a week or more) for each sel-supportive instructional practice were tabulated. row tabulations enabled an understanding of which types of collaborative action-taking relate more strongly to selsupportive instructional practices. to illustrate the responses of teachers who report they are engaging in collaborative actions at the levels known to be influential on student outcomes (1-3 times/month and once a week or more), summary tables and bar graphs were constructed to display this data, grouping the collaborative actions into three categories. the three categories displayed are: student-facing, higher-level collaborative actions, composed of teaching jointly as a team in the same class, engage in joint activities across different classes and age groups (e.g. projects), and observe other teachers’ classes and provide feedback; non-student-facing higher-level collaborative actions, composed of work with other teachers in this school to ensure common standards in evaluations for assessing student progress and take part in collaborative professional learning; and lower-level exchange collaborative actions, composed of exchange teaching materials with colleagues, engage in discussions about the learning development of specific students, and attend team conferences. the division of the higher-level category into student-facing and nonstudent-facing diverges from the two categories of the talis conceptual framework to highlight differences in the row percentage data between higher-level, more interdependent collaborative actions by teachers that occur in the presence of students (team teaching, joint activities across classes/age groups, and peer observation) and those that typically involve only adults (meeting to work on standards and assessments, and collaborative professional learning). the subsequent series of bar charts (figures 6, 7, 8) illustrates a subtle but discernable pattern of higher row percentages in the 1-3 times/month and once a week or more columns for one or more of the student-facing collaborative actions, as opposed to the non-student-facing actions, both higher and lower level. the sel-supportive instructional practices represented in these bar charts encompass both those that teachers report enacting with relatively low frequency (42e, i present tasks for which there is no obvious solution had 30% of respondents report they do this frequently or always) and relatively high frequency (34a, get students to believe they can do well in school had 85% of respondents report they do this quite a bit or a lot). they also encompass sel-supportive practices representing three of the elements of li and julian’s (2012) developmental relationships framework: 34a, get students to believe they can do well in school maps to the element of expressing care; 42e, i present tasks with no obvious solution, maps to the element of challenging for growth; 42g, i have students work in small groups to come up with a joint solution to a problem or task, maps to the element of expanding possibilities. leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 16 figure 6 types of collaborative action-taking that relate most strongly with item 34a: to what extent can you get students to believe they can do well in school work figure 7 types of collaborative action-taking that relate most strongly with item 42e: i present tasks for which there is no obvious solution leonard & woodland: teacher collaboration & instruction for social-emotional learning current issues in education, 23(3) 17 figure 8 types of collaborative action-taking that relate most strongly with item 42g: i have students work in small groups to come up with a joint solution to a problem or task the response percentages presented in figures 6-8 show that one or more of the studentfacing, higher-level collaborative actions taken by teachers (the blue bars on the left-hand side of each chart) have higher row percentages in the two highest frequency response categories than the non-student-facing, higher-level collaborative actions, and the lower-level exchange collaborative actions. in figure 6, the student-facing collaborative action of peer observation has the strongest relationship with the practice of getting students to believe they can do well in schoolwork. in figure 7, peer observation has the strongest relationship with the practice of giving students tasks for which there is no obvious solution. in figure 8, the student-facing collaborative actions of peer observation and engaging in joint activities or projects have the strongest relationships with the practice of having students work in small groups to come up with a joint solution to a problem or task. these stronger relationships are present between studentfacing, higher-level collaborative actions and sel-supportive instructional practices that u.s. teachers report engaging in with low, mid-range, and high frequency, and across the elements of li and julian’s developmental relationships framework. these data visually demonstrate how student-facing, higher-level collaborative actions correlate more strongly with sel-supportive instructional practices. summary of results this study investigated u.s. lower secondary teacher engagement in collaborative actiontaking and sel-supportive instructional practices. quantitative analyses found that u.s. lower secondary teachers engaged more frequently in lower-level, exchange-type collaborative actions, and engaged less frequently in higher-level, more interdependent collaborative actions. teachers reported high overall confidence in their enactment of sel-supportive instructional practices and current issues in education, 23(3) 18 reported more frequent engagement in practices linked to the developmental relationships element of expressing care, and mixed engagement in practices linked to providing support, providing challenge, and expanding possibilities. chi-square testing found statistical significance in the relationships between all but one of the independent variables (teacher collaborative action-taking) and dependent variables (sel supportive instructional practices). statistical significance was present, as hypothesized, in the relationships between higher-level collaborative actions and sel-supportive instructional practices but was also present in relationships between lower-level exchange actions and selsupportive instructional practices. close examination of row percentages of the chi-square test results indicated that a subcategory of student-facing, higher-level collaborative actions may correlate more strongly with sel-supportive instructional practices. teachers who reported more frequent participation in one or more of the student-facing, higher-level collaborative actions reported more frequent enactment of sel-supportive instructional practices. limitations to the study limitations to this study are related to the sample and the instrument. the 2018 talis in the u.s. was administered to a sample of the population of lower secondary level teachers, which suggests that responses may be influenced by the structures, schedules, roles, and practices of grade 7-9 educators such as grade-level or subject-area teams or departments that may not exist in the same forms at elementary or upper secondary levels (brandt, 2015). findings drawn from this sample may not be generalizable to other levels of p12 education. the study only examined u.s. teacher survey responses and explored teacher practices which may be influenced by external factors such as national or local policy or culture, and thus may not be generalizable to education systems outside of the united states. the independent variables for this study were measured by items that have been part of the 2013 and 2018 survey instruments. they were subject to extensive review as part of talis survey development (ainley & carstens, 2018); they are grounded in decades of studies using a variety of methodologies, including multiple systematic meta-analyses referenced in this paper. still, the talis items did not ask respondents to evaluate the quality or the results of their collaborative action-taking or to identify with whom they collaborated. the dependent variables for this study, as noted above in the explanation of the research design, were based on conceptual connections from talis items to instructional practices known to build developmental relationships, but the study could not and did not assume that the dependent variables fully capture a dimension representing sel-supportive instructional practices. the validity of this study’s findings – whether its results represent the actuality of educator beliefs, experiences, and behaviors is dependent upon the authenticity and accuracy of teacher responses to the talis instrument. teacher self-reports on the survey may vary from actual teacher practice, leading to inaccurate inferences. furthermore, this study’s findings of statistical significance may indicate a relationship exists among the variables or may result from the mediation of other unknown factors. the choice not to examine school-level factors in this study leaves open questions about whether and how any relationships identified between teacher collaborative action-taking and sel-supportive instructional practices may be influenced by those school-level factors. current issues in education, 23(3) 19 discussion a concise restatement of this correlational study’s central finding is that the more frequently teachers engage in collaborative practices, the more teachers will enact sel supportive instructional practices. student-facing, higher-level collaborative actions seem to have stronger relationships with teacher enactment of sel-supportive practices than either nonstudent-facing higher-level actions or lower-level exchange actions, but student-facing, higherlevel collaboration is the least common type of collaborative action-taking among u.s. lower secondary teachers. what remains absent from research, policy, and practice is a robust dialogue about how teachers can best learn about sel and improve their sel instructional capacity. this study’s findings offer a starting point for that dialogue, by establishing that there are meaningful correlations between how often and deeply teachers work with one another to examine and deliver instruction and their use of sel-supportive pedagogy. implications for research the finding that strong, meaningful relationships do exist, and that a subcategory of higher-level collaborative actions that are student-facing have the strongest relationships with potentially sel-supportive instructional practices, leads to the formulation of new research questions. these include questions that would extend beyond the finding of correlation to explore directionality and causality, such as: • what is the directionality of influence in relationships between teachers’ collaborative practices and their sel-supportive instructional practices? • what other teacher-level factors (e.g., teacher reports of their level of self-efficacy or cultural proficiency or of the faculty’s level of innovativeness) might explain some of the variance in findings about relationships between teacher collaboration and selsupportive instructional practices? • what school-level factors (e.g., resource sufficiency, school climate, or distributed leadership practices) might explain some of the variance in findings about relationships between teacher collaboration and sel-supportive instructional practices? it might be fruitful to investigate these questions using data from a future administration of the talis, especially if the survey designers prioritize improvements to items so that they better align with the emerging understanding of what constitutes equitable, effective sel-supportive instructional practice, and if it becomes feasible to readily control for other teacherand schoollevel factors that may act on the variables studied here in ways this study could not consider or control for. another possibility would be to utilize data from the oecd-sponsored insight video survey. the insight survey uses the same conceptual framework for teacher collaboration as the talis teacher survey, but its conceptualization of quality teaching includes supporting social and emotional relationships between and among teacher and students, supporting student experiences of autonomy, and using interesting tasks as domains of sel-supportive instruction (oecd, 2020a). the data collection modalities include video, artifact collection, student and teacher surveys, and preand post-assessments of student cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes to assess what teacher practices are related to these outcomes. the u.s. was not a participant in the first iteration of this study, which studied 700 teachers, drawn from nationally representative samples across eight countries, but if it did participate in the future, the dataset would enable current issues in education, 23(3) 20 inquiry into relationships between teacher collaboration, sel-supportive instructional practices, school characteristics, and student-level outcomes. the present study did not attempt to control for other factors that are known to influence teacher sel implementation, such as school-level data regarding resource sufficiency, school climate, or distributed leadership practices (ainley & carstens, 2018). while it is possible to cross-tabulate talis teacher survey data with the corresponding school’s principal survey data, the item phrasing is not favorable to controlling for factors that might explain some of the variance in findings about relationships between teacher collaboration and sel-supportive instructional practices. for example, rather than asking about a school’s fiscal resources, item 17c asks principal respondents to estimate the percentage of students from “socio-economically disadvantaged homes” (oecd, 2019). future studies continuing this line of inquiry in the talis dataset might examine whether relationships exist between this study’s variables of interest and a school’s level of resources (as reported by the principal) or teacher reports their level of self-efficacy or of the faculty’s level of innovativeness as a way to broaden the emerging understandings of how teachers become effective supporters of student sel. given access to school-level data beyond what is available in the talis, a future study could examine whether teacher collaborative action-taking and instructional practices supportive of sel vary in relationship to a school’s implementation of mtss or another tiered model for student support. the talis teacher survey data is not linked to data on student performance, so this study did not attempt to make direct linkages to student academic outcomes, nor could it consider student perception data. the talis survey collects teacher and principal data, and thus cannot provide insights into student perception of teacher sel-supportive instructional practices, although questions about this arise when examining data showing teachers’ relatively high confidence in their implementation of sel-supportive practices. how would students rate their teachers on the sel support that teachers seem so confident they are providing? would there be concordance or lack of concordance between student and teacher views on these questions? what kinds of research could yield valid insights into teacher-student concordance, especially given concerns about sel assessment validity? these questions could provide direction for future scholarship. conclusion in the 21st century, and especially considering the national movement for racial justice and recent pandemic disruptions to schooling, how to raise all teachers’ capacity to equitably support the social-emotional development of all their students has become a pressing priority for p12 public education. social-emotional competence has been shown to be more strongly associated than test scores with beneficial life outcomes for students (jackson et al., 2020). teachers recognize the importance of sel yet doubt their readiness to successfully address the social-emotional needs of the students in their classrooms. school leaders also recognize the urgency of addressing these needs, but attempts to bring about schooland district-scale improvements have encountered a variety of challenges, including a lack of effective structures and practices for teacher learning about sel. this study offered initial findings regarding a novel question: is there a relationship between the kinds of collaborative actions teachers undertake and the sel-supportive instructional practices they enact in their classrooms? many productive lines for further research into other dimensions of this question remain open for scholarly exploration. nonetheless, the findings show that the more frequently teachers engage in collaborative practices, the more current issues in education, 23(3) 21 teachers will enact sel-supportive practices, and that some collaborative actions that are directly student-facing (e.g. peer observation, team teaching, joint projects) have stronger relationships with selsupportive instructional practices than other types of collaboration suggest near-term district and school leadership actions that could be implemented to improve teacher sel instructional capacity. principals and superintendents exert influence on classroom instruction through multiple pathways, including that of communicating and modeling district priorities, and that of decision-making about local systems and practices for teacher collaboration. both of these levers of influence could be used to create conditions to strengthen teacher sel instructional capacity within the complex ecosystems of p12 schools. references ainley, j., & carstens, r. 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(2007). reviewing the evidence on how teacher professional development affects student achievement. issues and answers report, rel 2007-no. 33, 62. retrieved from: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/southwest/pdf/rel_2007033.pdf author notes ann m. leonard, ph.d. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9803-023x independent consultant, teacher collaboration international consulting anniemleona@gmail.com rebecca h. woodland, ph.d. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6350-4412 professor, department of educational policy, research, and administration college of education, university of massachusetts amherst woodland@umass.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://10.0.3.248/j.tate.2016.10.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2007.01.004 https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/professional-development-united-states-trends-and-challenges.pdf https://edpolicy.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/professional-development-united-states-trends-and-challenges.pdf https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311405999 https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/southwest/pdf/rel_2007033.pdf https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9803-023x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6350-4412 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ purpose of the study figure 2 talis item 34 data collection & analysis summary of research design research question 1: in which types of collaborative action-taking do u.s. teachers most frequently engage? figure 4 percent of more frequent responses on collaborative action items research question 2: in which sel-supportive instructional practices do u.s. teachers most frequently engage? figure 5 percent of more frequent responses on sel-supportive instructional practices research question 3: what is the relationship between teacher collaborative action-taking and teacher instructional practices that support sel? sub-question: which types of teacher collaborative action-taking relate most strongly with specific sel-sup... limitations to the study implications for research conclusion volume 8, number 12 june, 2005 issn 1099-839x teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories marjorie hall haley 1 and amanda seewald 6 george mason university allyson midgely, 2 judy ortiz, 3 teresa romano, 4 and lisa ashworth 5 as a profession language educators are paying more attention to teacher-driven research to help clarify and explain those phenomena occurring in our classrooms. the purpose of this paper is to explore the following question: what happens when teachers apply a teacher action research (tar) strategy for improving their classroom practice? i will start with a definition and then outline a set of steps for conducting this type of research. next, the four teachers tell their own “stories” and share reflections on growth and development. finally, i posit the importance of this kind of research in making contributions to language teaching and learning inquiry. for many foreign and second language teachers professional development opportunities take place at once-a-year conferences and sometimes during a one day staff development. is it any wonder these “try it out on monday!” workshops are limited and quickly fade from memory? as a profession language educators are paying more attention to teacher-driven research to help clarify and explain those phenomena occurring in our classrooms. the purpose of this paper is to explore the critical question: what happens when teachers apply a teacher action research (tar) strategy for improving their classroom practice? i will start with a definition and then outline a set of steps for conducting this type of research. next, the four teachers tell their own “stories” and share reflections on growth and development. finally, i posit the importance of this kind of research in making contributions to language teaching and learning inquiry. the concept of action research can be traced back to the early works of john dewey in the 1920s and kurt lewin in the 1940s, but it is stephen corey and others at teachers college of columbia university who introduced the term action research to the educational community in 1949. teacher action research is referred to in the literature as action research, practitioner research, teacher-as-scholar, practical inquiry, interactive research, classroom inquiry, or practice-centered research (downhower, melvin & sizemore, 1990). this type of self-driven, individualized research is a tool teachers can use to develop, reflect, and improve their teaching styles and pedagogical practices. the authors of this paper feel that many teachers fear that this type of work would require too much additional time that they do not have. examining more closely exactly what tar is and discovering how it can be a part of your daily routines as a teacher can minimize this fear. in order to reveal the facility with which one can implement a tar project, to demonstrate the crucial value of results obtained from such work, and encourage more teachers to view themselves as researchers, four current issues in education vol. 8 no. 12 foreign language teachers, as a part of a graduate course i teach on foreign language methods, participated in teacher action research projects with elementary and middle school students. the tar project was a requirement for all in-service teachers enrolled in this course. there were four in-service teachers (in a class of 18) and all four projects are presented here. as part of the course agenda, i helped students identify and conceptualize the puzzlement they wished to investigate. they were initially told to “look” at their teaching and make a list of phenomenon that occurred that might be interesting to investigate. throughout their research projects the four teachers provided weekly updates to me both electronically and during in-class discussions. further, i met individually with the teachers to discuss data analyses and provided assistance with interpreting results. these studies were subsequently presented as poster sessions at the northeast conference on the teaching of foreign languages. their research findings as well as their methodologies depict the type of valuable information that teacher action research can provide to benefit teachers and their students. the results and subsequent reflections by each teacher can ultimately help them modify their daily teaching methods and strategies to create an optimal learning environment in their classrooms. the names of the teachers and school identities have been changed in order to insure anonymity. some of the most beneficial things about teacher action research are that it is small scale, contextualized, localized, and aimed at discovering, developing, or monitoring changes to practice (wallace, 2000). therefore, every project can take on the needs of the specific situation while following a relatively similar format as a guide. what differentiates action research from other types of social study is that it results in concrete actions that can be implemented. each of the following teachers’ projects began with a set of guidelines that can be used in any teaching situation to open a research process. these are the guidelines typically used in teacher action research:  identify a puzzlement/inquiry  decide in a systematic way how to go about answering that question  develop a timeline to carry out the project – one week, a month, a grading period or even a full academic year.  decide how data will be collected and analyzed  implement study – data collection and analysis  report and share findings literature on teacher action research and language teachers while the literature contains a respectable amount of studies conducted in foreign and second language classrooms, clearly there is a need for additional research. a few educators have discussed the possibilities of teacher research for foreign and second language education (johnson, 1992; nunan, 1992; nunan & lamb, 1996) but very little has been published in journals on teacher action research, i.e., teacher as researcher. richard donato (2003) reported on a one-year-long, innovative professional development project for texas’ languages other than english (lote) in which teachers explored action research as a tool for deepening professional knowledge and improving foreign language instruction in the context of their own schools and classrooms. all the studies maintain an area of focus on learners and the relationship of the learner to a particular teaching or assessment practice. in some cases, the learners became co-researchers with the teacher during the action research project and were asked to self-assess, provide input on lesson content and assessments, and rate instructional strategies for overall effectiveness (p. 18). marjorie hall haley’s (2004, 2001) work examined foreign and second language teachers engaged in action research to explore the impact of multiple intelligences-based teaching. in the first two phases of this ongoing research, hall haley enlisted the help of primary and secondary language teachers from around the country and from australia, hong kong, and germany (2004: 167-169). these educators collaborated with each other and with hall haley to develop ways to apply mi theory to both instructional strategies and assessment practices. data showed that “learner-centered instruction from the perspective of multiple intelligences…. demonstrated students’ strengths and weaknesses can be affected by a teacher’s pedagogical style” (2004: 171). the following four investigations were conducted in the fall of 2002. the individual cases demonstrate how action research can be used to improve teaching instruction in the foreign language classroom. these teachers undertook the studies in an effort to improve methods of classroom management, address student attitudes, and augment impact on learning. it is important to note that these teachers are attempting teacher action research projects for the first time. the four studies presented each address a particular phenomenon that was occurring in the teachers’ classrooms. these four teachers are not only the subjects of this paper but also collaborators in analyzing the impact that this work had on their teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories 3 teaching and growth as reflective practitioners. specifically, these four teachers examined (1) effective ways of working with heritage language learners; (2) cooperative learning and peer tutoring in a foreign language in elementary schools (fles); (3) homework; and (4) attitude and motivation toward studying a foreign language. foreign language teachers often find themselves with a heterogeneous group of students. terry richards is a high school spanish teacher in a suburban school in an area that has a large hispanic population. because most of her educational training and previous teaching efforts centered on students who were focused on learning a new or foreign language, the placement of heritage language learners (hlls) in her regular spanish iii classroom presented unexpected opportunities and challenges. richards was faced with the new task of managing and meeting the needs of two very different student populations in the same classroom. she used an action research study to find instructional strategies and approaches that would best serve heritage students who are placed in regular spanish classes and to develop curricula and activities based on the specific needs and motivations of these students. note: in order to distinguish between the teachers’ stories and the methods’ professor’s narrative, the sections of the text have been identified accordingly. teacher # 1 working with heritage language learners terry richards high school spanish teacher introduction my research was conducted with native speakers of spanish (called heritage language learners (hlls) who were placed in my regular spanish iii classes. to my surprise, spanish native speakers were placed in two of my classes in a school that offers a special program for spanish native speakers with classes such as native speakers i and ii, international baccalaureate for native speakers i and ii. this program was implemented at the school due to its large hispanic population. when asked to switch classes, my students requested to stay in my classes to improve their writing skills. puzzlement as a first year teacher, i found myself dealing with a series of questions about how to make my own teaching career meaningful, how to best reach students and how to keep them focused and engaged in the process of second language learning. since i had a few spanish native speakers in class, these reflections and questions became even more difficult to resolve, since this specific group of students was challenging. i am latina and have great empathy for my heritage language students. i knew that their speaking and listening skills were highly proficient but their reading and writing skills were lacking. and i also knew that i needed to provide activities that were relevant and interesting. therefore, i decided to concentrate my research on answering the question: how can ireach my heritage students and keep them motivated?i wanted to effectively keep heritage students engaged in my regular spanish classes and needed to customize the learning experience for their special needs and areas of weaknesses and strengths. methodology i collected students’ scores from previous years and their current writing samples to examine their language proficiency. i began to tailor lessons and activities as well as to develop alternative curricula to better fit their individual language needs. during this time i kept the regular program of studies for the rest of my students. i learned soon enough that i needed to adopt and change some approaches to fill gaps in the native speakers’ grammar and spelling. to fully understand the goals and challenges of teaching spanish to spanish speakers, it was important to understand the diverse backgrounds of students who participate in spanish courses and their motivations for studying a language they appear to effectively use for communication. heritage students can be divided into several groups:  thirdor fourth-generation u.s.-born hispanic students considered to be receptive bilinguals: they are english dominant and understand almost all spoken spanish, but they have limited speaking skills in spanish and do not read or write it.  firstor second-generation bilinguals possess different degrees of proficiency in english and spanish. in most cases, these students have received their education in english and have developed few if any literacy skills in spanish.  recent immigrants to the united states are spanish dominant : their level of english proficiency, the amount of formal education they have had in spanish, and their literacy skills in spanish vary (valdes, 2001). my students were all third-generation u.s. born hispanics with advanced speaking skills, but very limited writing skills. data collection i collected the following data: performance on oral presentations based on rubrics, posters, multiple intelligence surveys, videos, journal entries, essays tailored for my hll students, and grammar current issues in education vol. 8 no. 12 and reading comprehension activities for hispanoblantes (spanish speakers). i began recording my thoughts and reflections about my students on post-it notes, loose paper, anywhere i could find space during my class with them so i would not lose momentum. i did not keep a record notebook but i did transcribe my small notes into an electronic file at the end of the day during the entire school year. data analysis i used the data to determine answers to the following questions:  what instructional strategies engage my heritage language learners?  when do they feel motivated to learn and participate?  what approaches are helping fill in their grammar gap? my hll students practiced several writing strategies to improve areas such as spelling, grammar, and syntax. first, they created pre-writing maps or “brainstorming webs”, as they liked to call them. this helped them facilitate their flow of vocabulary, generate words, and shape their thoughts before they started writing. secondly, they worked on different drafts in class. they were given different writing prompts to practice and to start developing their maps into more complex sentences. this part of the process is my favorite, because it gives me a chance to truly assess students on a daily basis thru informal observation, as they display their train of thought in paper and interact with their partners for feed-back. the topics were developed for them using situations that they could relate to, such as living in bilingual homes, facing migration status, being second and first generation americans. once students completed their drafts, they worked in pairs to edit each other’s work and make corrections on grammar, punctuation, and spelling. this helped them improve their own proofreading skills and be more acute in realizing their mistakes. i noticed that this practice built independent learners and self-esteem. after getting feedback from peers, i collected their draft papers and revised them. i provided them with constructive feedback to improve their skills in grammar, spelling, and mechanics. i used an analytic rubric (appendix a) which i discussed with them ahead of time. i also provided them a checklist that “mirrored” the rubric in friendlier vocabulary. this was done to insure comprehension. this way, students were able to review their writing prompts and quickly check if they met the required criteria or not. i created a simple rubric in the target language with four domains: task completion, vocabulary, grammar and mechanics. results throughout their various writing samples, it was clear that they possessed solid cultural understanding of ideas but they lacked grammar knowledge, spelling and literacy skills. they also had limited colloquial vocabulary. for example, i found out in their journals that they constantly exchanged the “c” for “s” and they did not use “z” at all. sometimes they wrote sentence fragments without verbs or subjects. in some cases, they even wrote english words if they lacked the spanish vocabulary. by providing them with materials that tap those grammatical and syntactical needs, through practice, they were able to improve their writing. they also became more engaged in class discussions because they felt their experiences were valid and that they had a voice in class that students respected. it seemed to me that once my hll students achieved a certain level of confidence in their reading and writing, they were more willing to participate in open discussions because they seemed to feel that their opinions were respected by their classmates. conclusion as with all students, hll students respond well to environments that draw them into constructive learning. in my classes, i found that music, laughter, and positive feedback help all students respond better to learning. this was especially true with hll students who responded to this teaching style with great enthusiasm. during my study, my hll students changed their negative attitudes and responded more often and favorably to oral and written assignments when they felt more confident and self assured of their abilities . any time we learned a new colloquial term, for example, i would ask them what term they would use in their countries. they enjoyed making contributions and sharing experiences with the class when the learning environment was safe and supportive. they shared their music preferences; they brought lyrics to class so other students could learn some special songs. they brought pictures of special holidays in their countries and shared them with the class. they felt that they could explore the language and enrich their lexicon and grammar through analysis of language, literary readings, and essay writing. from the data collected, i noticed a developmental improvement in their essays. the more they read their literary pieces, the better lexicon they adopted in their own writing and speech. sometimes teachers feel intimidated to teach native speakers or they just segregate them from the learning core and make them feel unwelcome. implications teachers can provide critical strategies for success for heritage students by recognizing and teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories 5 welcoming the varieties of language. heritage learners can share their cultural connections to the language to enrich the learning experience for all students. furthermore, it is pivotal to acknowledge differences of speech, to ask students to share colloquial terms, and to keep them engaged in cooperative activities. reflections a direct result of my research was that i learned that heritage students can benefit from being in foreign language classes if activities and strategies are tailored to them. by using teaching strategies that engaged heritage language learners’ prior knowledge and experience, the entire class benefited. in addition, i feel that my future research will give me more information as well as additional ideas to continue developing and better organizing my data collection and analysis methods. end of story for teacher # 1. methods professor i wanted this experience to provide terry the opportunity to differentiate instruction for her hlls. she clearly understood their strengths and weaknesses in linguistic proficiency but at the outset was not certain as to how to address them. because terry is so purposeful and deliberate in her planning, her data collection was effective and provided her with evidence for modifying instruction to meet the needs of her hlls. terry’s teacher action research project gave her the opportunity to clearly assess and adjust her instructional strategies to meet the needs of her heritage language learners. the benefits of this type of reflection have helped broaden her understanding of her role as a teacher and the impact she has with all learners. further, as a reflective practitioner, an integral part of tar, terry was able to contemplate and fine-tune the classroom environment in an ongoing way to meet the needs of the learners within it. lita ashley is the second teacher who wanted to develop strategies for teaching two distinct student groups in one classroom. this challenge is common to today’s classroom and is one for which tar can provide compelling information to teachers. in this scenario, the teacher focused her study on the use of cooperative learning groups and peer tutoring activities to address the diversity of learners in her classroom. teacher # 2 cooperative learning groups and peer tutoring: can they unite students with different language experience in the same classroom? lita ashley french fles teacher introduction my foreign language classroom is located in an elementary school in the northern section of virginia. i am a french fles teacher who teaches first through fifth graders three times per week for thirty minutes each. my classes contain students of various levels of experience in learning french. the use of cooperative learning groups and peer tutoring can provide opportunities for students who are more experienced in the language to help those students who are less experienced. how can these two instructional strategies unite a classroom of differing language experiences? my research was conducted in a french fifth-grade fles class. the class is designed to be taught in the target language with a large number of interactive activities to promote a greater understanding of conversational french. there are twenty-eight students (ages ten to eleven) in the class. eighteen of the students are in their third year in the french program while ten of the students have never had any french before. these students are on very different language levels based on their experience in french. from the very first day of class this school year, these two different groups of students have displayed marked differences in their ability to respond in class. the students who have never had french before often display behavior problems and disrupt the learning process. they will sometimes misbehave in class when they do not understand any or most of the french language that is being spoken. on the other hand, the students who have had french before appear bored as i am forced to stop many times and catch up the other students. this classroom situation provided a question for me to find ways to help both groups of students effectively learn in the same fles classroom. this fles classroom is in an elementary school of approximately five hundred and sixty-five students. the majority of the students live in a middle-class neighborhood, comprised of culturally, linguistically, and racially diverse families. puzzlement what types of classroom activities best engage the entire class when students are at two different language levels? how do i keep the 18 experienced students interested and challenged in class while bringing up the 10 inexperienced ones to the level of the others? current issues in education vol. 8 no. 12 methodology i enlisted all 28 students in the classroom to participate in this research. i received parental permission for the students to participate in this research. i used a variety of interactive activities in french as well as four exit slips (a simple survey/questionnaire that allows students to self assess their progress; usually done at the end of the class before students exit the room) in english during this research project. two cooperative learning methods employed were peer tutoring and think-pairshare. in peer tutoring, classmates taught each other simple concepts in the content areas such as math, science, or language arts. think-pair-share was an activity in which students first listened while i posed a question, and then the students were given time to think of a response. next, they were paired with a classmate to discuss their responses, and finally they shared their responses with the whole class. exit slips, three to four short questions that the students were asked to respond to in writing, were collected at the end of each lesson to find out what they had learned and how they liked it. i tallied the results for all the students in a notebook to compare their reactions and abilities. data collection i planned interactive activities during two 30-45 minute classes each week. exit slips were given over a period of six weeks at the conclusion of each interactive activity. i gave written assessments and exit slips to evaluate how the students were performing these interactive activities. see figures 1, 2, and 3 for three examples of surveys that were given to the students. figure 1. question #1: why would you want to study a foreign language? data analysis i tallied the results of the surveys to compare and contrast the progress of the students. i was looking for data that would show that the interactive activities were improving the students’ knowledge and performance in the language. i also wanted to evaluate the students’ attitudes towards learning another language during this process. figure 2. question #2: what are examples of where you might see the french language used in your daily life? figure 3. question #3: do you like working in pairs? why? why not? results throughout this research project, i found that using cooperative learning strategies enhanced the learning process in this fles classroom. i also found that this classroom strategy helped encourage participation in the classroom, thereby making a more relaxed and comfortable learning environment for all students. conclusion two types of cooperative learning activities that were used with this research project included peer tutoring and think-pair-share. in each of the classroom activities used in this study, i found the students demonstrated greater classroom participation, greater language retention, as well as a reduced level of anxiety when speaking the target language in class. by keeping a journal each day about behavior in the classroom and the students’ responses to the lesson (as well as recording notes teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories 7 after each class), i noted a reduction in classroom behavior problems. after reading and analyzing the exit slips from this research project i discovered that the students expressed an overall positive experience from working with the cooperative learning groups and activities. their reactions were positive when they were posed the question, “did you like working in groups and pairs?” this teacher research action project has shown that the use of cooperative learning strategies can begin to unite a divided classroom of differing language experiences. implications with our society and student populations becoming more and more diverse in background and academic experiences, it will become increasingly important to use cooperative learning strategies in foreign language classes. the part of the state in which the study took place is made up of a large percentage of transient families – often moving for enhanced job opportunities. there are students from a variety of educational backgrounds who enter foreign language classrooms at different times during the school year. as educators we need to find techniques and instructional strategies to help these students smoothly transition into an environment that encourages and enhances their academic success. reflections this research project has validated for me the importance of trying new and varied activities in my foreign language classroom instead of a traditional lecturing style of teaching. students enjoy helping each other learn as they work together in groups. it is clear to me that students have the ability to have a major impact on their own learning and that of their peers when they work together. i learned a great deal about my teaching from this experience: i plan very carefully and i am aware of the need to accommodate a wide range of learners on a daily basis. i am also aware of being critical about my teaching and examining what and why i do what i do. as a result of this systematic feedback, i feel that i view planning and assessment with a broader lens. being aware of what works best for my students has deepened my awareness of being experimental and fluid in seeking a variety of ways to reach all learners. end of story for teacher # 2 methods professor i realized that lita’s puzzlement was one that many fles teachers undoubtedly face. once lita completed a quick review of literature on cooperative learning, she realized that this might be an effective instructional strategy given the linguistic backgrounds of her students. this enabled the current emphasis in foreign language learning to provide a communicative context. a systematic approach to data collection is an essential element in tar. lita was very purposeful in organizing and assembling her data. by closely examining the results from her data collection, lita was able to determine that cooperative learning and peer tutoring made her diverse class more united and more able to work together in a productive and stimulating learning setting. the research she completed allowed her to focus in on a need and construct a way to address that need to benefit both the teacher and students involved. the previous two cases have demonstrated how action research can benefit and improve teaching strategies or approaches. according to lita, “i never regarded myself as a classroom-based researcher. for me, doing this research was very empowering and i am a more confident teacher.” teacher action research can also be used to improve and direct student behavior, thus possibly closing the achievement gap between students. ally milner, a french teacher at a large urban middle school, sought to discover how action research study could be used to improve student responsibility and homework completion in her classroom. teacher # 3 what happens when students and parents are included as partners in the learning processes of language learning? a closer look at homework! ally milner middle school french teacher teacher background i graduated from brigham young university in 1994. although i studied to become a biology teacher, i have never taught that subject. my experiences have led me to my current position as a french teacher. i have been teaching french for three years. introduction this teacher action research project included all four french classes at a large urban middle school in virginia. the students come from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds. for most of these students both parents work outside the home. the student population is also one of the most diverse in the county: 34.5% white, 27.9% african-american, 21.9% hispanic, 5.7% asian, 10.4% other. the foreign language program in our county is a specialty program. students who are accepted into this program start learning a foreign language in sixth grade. all students in the program sign a contract stating that they will maintain at least a “c” in both language arts and foreign language as well as an “s” (satisfactory) in conduct. students’ placement current issues in education vol. 8 no. 12 in the program is reviewed if they are not meeting the contract requirements. many students come into the program because they think it will be fun to learn a new language. sometimes, however, their work habits need refining. my primary objective of this research project was to explore an alternate way of addressing homework. puzzlement how can i get my students to do homework and make it more meaningful so they will want to do it? i started by making a list of a few of the more-common responses i have heard regarding homework. do these excuses sound familiar? “what homework?” “you didn’t tell us we had homework.” “it’s due today?” “it’s in my locker.” “i did it but i left it at home.” “can i bring it to you later?” this year i took a new approach to homework. no specific homework was assigned on a daily basis. i simply asked the students to practice the material learned in class that day for at least fifteen minutes each night. i encouraged them to be creative and have fun with their practice. the time spent in class was used to practice and prepare students for friday’s quizzes. i encouraged students to supplement the practice we were doing in class with practice at home, but emphasized that it was their own responsibility to be prepared for the quiz on friday. i quickly noticed an interesting pattern in my classes. one half of each class consistently scored an “a” or “b” on the weekly quizzes while the other half consistently scored a “d” or “f”. i wanted to establish a homework program to help students who needed more structure and accountability without penalizing those who were successful with the flexibility of choosing their own homework tasks. would students who score below an 84% on the weekly quiz do better on the next week’s quiz if they had a homework sheet containing daily homework assignments aimed at practicing both the current as well as the past week’s material? these were the questions i addressed in my research project. methodology i created a homework sheet, which contained carefully selected assignments for students to practice the current week’s as well as the material from the past week (see appendix b). i wanted parents to be involved monitoring and encouraging their children in their foreign language studies. many assignments on the homework sheet would be to practice out loud for just a few minutes with a parent or to show a parent their written work. parents would then sign-off for that day. having parents directly involved helped me know that their children were making the effort to practice at home. data collection all students received the homework sheet, but only those who scored below an 84% on the previous week’s quiz were required to do it. i checked their homework daily for errors and offered them the incentive of retaking a past quiz if they achieved an 84% or higher on the next quiz as well as a 100% on their homework sheet. data analysis i kept a record of the students’ quiz scores and how much of the homework sheet they completed. i also had students write anonymous opinions about the homework sheet at the end of each week after they had taken the quiz. results i monitored the students’ preparation for quiz 1-3 (first quiz) in class only. no other homework was assigned to these students to help them prepare. i monitored the students’ work the following week using the homework sheet in preparation for quiz 1-4 (second quiz). the data on the graph below compare the students’ quiz scores between their first quiz (quiz 1-3) and their second quiz (quiz 1-4). student opinions below are some specific statements made by the students regarding the homework sheet. i chose these particular quotes because they represent responses that were given more than five times. “i feel that the homework sheet is helping me do better and i feel that i’m learning more.” “i like knowing my homework in advance.” “assigned homework forces me to study.” teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories 9 “the homework sheet is helpful. i did better on the quiz this week. i felt more confident and the quiz seemed easier.” “i want more homework. it helped me a lot.” “ i like having the homework sheet as an option.” results overall, students were very receptive to the homework sheet and in almost all cases there was a direct correlation between how much of the homework they completed and how they performed on the following quiz. parents were also very receptive to the homework sheet. i received many e-mails from parents thanking me for this homework program. they were supportive, encouraging, and grateful. they were happy to know exactly what homework was assigned each day and to be able to monitor it. conclusion the homework sheet has proven to be an effective tool in helping close the achievement gap among students in my class. the more the students practice the language, the better they perform. more importantly, i feel that this tar helped my students develop as independent learners, in charge of their own learning. how much and what kind of practice is needed depended on the individual. some students were able do what it took to succeed without specific homework assignments, but there were many students who needed teacher-directed structured practice, either to get ideas of how and what to study or to help them discipline themselves. offering the practice sheet as an option for those who were scoring at 84% or higher on the quizzes had been very positive. students did not feel like they were doing busy work. requiring students who scored under an 84% to complete the homework has proven to benefit them in their achievement, self-confidence, and attitude. implications this research project presented the idea that seemingly drastic changes to the educational norm of homework can dramatically alter student enthusiasm and achievement. additional research projects could examine the types of homework assignments developed by the students and how their own home learning methods can inform classroom instruction. this is further evidence that student-centered and constructed learning can be a successful approach to teaching. reflections i have learned from this research project that some students need homework and some do not. students who are doing well like the freedom of choosing what and when to study. i plan to continue with this principle; however, i am going to make some adjustments to the design of the homework sheet so it is easier to use. instead of writing all the homework assignments on the sheet in advance, i will leave blank spaces for the students to fill in the homework assignments themselves. this way i have more flexibility and allow my students the opportunity to build their learning in creative individualized ways. i felt that what is most critical in this work is the fact that my students have developed a keener sense of becoming independent learners, a life-long skill that they will take with them beyond my classroom. end of story for teacher # 3 methods professor why do teachers give homework? do students need incentive and motivation to complete homework tasks? clearly, homework should be connected to in-class instruction and at-home work can provide additional “practice.” homework in foreign languages is usually a reading/writing exercise. in this case, students responded favorably to having a choice about homework. through her action research study, ally was able to conclude that the homework sheet proved to be an effective tool in helping to close the achievement gap on the weekly quizzes. by giving students a choice, she was able to collect data based simply on what the students decided to do and how that decision impacted their grades. as ally discovered, tar can yield unexpected benefits as well. in this case, ally found increased support from parents who welcomed the opportunity to know exactly what homework was assigned each day and the chance to monitor it. the research here created a foundation for not only methodological change, but also for student responsibility and choice which can lead to a more fulfilling and successful learning experience. while the previous examples demonstrate how action research can be used to modify specific activity in the classroom, the following study demonstrates how one teacher sought to examine how her students regarded her as an effective teacher. this teacher was particularly interested in enhancing her skills as a reflective practitioner and thinking deeper how her own teaching practices. reflective teaching practices (richards & lockhart, 1996) create multiple opportunities to investigate teaching strengths and weaknesses in a comfortable, yet efficient manner. julia ortega wanted to discover more about her sixth grade language students to improve her teaching and become more effective in the classroom. reflective teaching practices (richards & lockhart, 1996) allow educators to evaluate their teaching current issues in education vol. 8 no. 12 strengths and weaknesses in order to build a strong teaching philosophy and identity. by conducting the following research in her classroom, julia hoped to develop her reflective skills and construct a more positive learning environment by adjusting her teaching style. teacher story # 4 helping my students build a learning community julia ortega middle school spanish teacher introduction this research took place in my spanish i sixth grade class in a northern virginia middle school. these students take spanish i for two years. in sixth grade, they take half of level i spanish and in seventh grade, they complete the other half. they are awarded high school credit (carnegie unit) at the end of two years. this group also takes spanish ii as eighth graders. puzzlement: do my students feel that i create and support a learning community? i believe by understanding what motivates and concerns my students, i can be more effective in the classroom. my research was simply motivated. i wanted to know more about my students so i could improve my teaching and yield more positive student attitudes and outcomes. i set out to discover if there was a relationship between their responses to simple questions and factors such as gender, age and participation in class. i wanted to give my students a chance to talk about their feelings regarding spanish class and give them an opportunity to talk about anything of their choosing. methodology i focused on gaining information from my students through the use of a survey, figure 4. i wanted to understand the perspective of my sixth graders and to reflect on their concerns as students in my classroom. some questions that motivated my research were:  am i too difficult or easy?  am i perceived as mean or fair?  how do students feel about my class?  how can i improve my teaching strategies? after administering the survey, i planned to analyze the results by synthesizing common themes. i used the results to compare and contrast student responses according to males and females because i was curious about perceptions of middle school-aged learners. using the information obtained, i hoped to be able to make decisions about how to improve my teaching styles and affect immediate change in my classroom. data collection all of my 6 th grade students, a total of fifty in spanish i (two periods or classes), were anonymously surveyed. the survey was administered once in the school year. students were asked to omit their names on this one-time survey. students were assured their answers were confidential and they would not have to fear repercussions. the survey took about 7-10 minutes to complete. i told students that i would give them as much time as needed to complete the survey. students were told not to look at each other’s papers and not to discuss their answers with each other. they were asked to think about their answers and be as honest as possible. i also asked if they had any questions prior to conducting the survey. use your own paper and answer the following questions to the best of your ability.  what do you like about my class? why?  what don’t you like about my class? why?  do you participate in class? if yes, why? if no , why?  are you involved in any clubs or extracurricular activities? if so, what are they? you are not required to sign your name on this survey. if you choose this, please identify yourself by male or female. thank you! figure 4. mrs. ortega’s survey students completed the survey and were asked to place their surveys on a desk near the door. i didn’t want them to have to walk up to my desk to turn in their surveys. i wanted to reduce or minimize any possible intimidation factors. data analysis a total of 31 females and 19 males were surveyed. the data presented here are a sampling of all data collected. individual student responses are verbatim (italicized) and when applicable, the number of students with the same response is provided. each single italicized item is an individual response unless otherwise indicated. what students like about my spanish class. male responses. 53% answered “ watching movies.”other responses are listed below:  i like learning spanish(4)  i like doing the work(3)  i like spanish because it is fun ( 3)  i like speaking spanish (3)  spanish projects (2). teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories 11 female responses.  spanish is fun (9)  i like learning spanish (8)  i like spanish projects (7)  movies (7)  games (6)  speaking spanish (5)  i like learning new spanish words (3)  write on chalkboard (3)  i like writing in pen (2). additional responses cited by females included: love everything, role-play, homework passes, like listening to the teacher’s jokes, teacher doesn’t put you on the spot, i like oral work, working in the spanish web, i like señora ortega and the way she teaches, it’s like having recess but you are also learning. what students do not like about my spanish class. male responses. 50% of the males surveyed don’t like tests or homework. other dislikes are: the class opener spanish conversation ( 2), i don’t like looking up words in thedictionary (2), i can’t think of anything i don’t like (2). female responses. tests and homework were also on the top of the list for females in terms of dislikes about my class. when females were asked what they don’t like about my class, they answered: translations (3), class is boring, too much work (2), spanish words that are hard (2). results the survey yielded some interesting results. my student participation rate was over 95% as indicated by the students and i believe this is a reflection of what students thought they should write in answer to the survey question, “do you participate in class?” also, in terms of gender differences, the females wrote much more than the males. the girls were openly critical and dealt with broader issues. the girls were more concerned about classroom justice and fairness. boys’ concerns were practical such as classroom temperature or concerns about the work (translation, vocabulary, content). in terms of class participation, both males and females had equally high participation rates (ninety percent or more). i was surprised by the responses from my third period class. this class has seen more of the disciplinary side of me because of some student conduct and work habits, but their surveys did not contain more negative responses than the less difficult 4 th period class. essentially, i discovered that students like my class and they believe that learning spanish is fun. the rewards of learning appear to be intrinsic for these young learners. i do have external rewards such as homework passes, bonus points, stickers, but the students did not mention these motivators on the survey. conclusion the results of the survey affirm my personal feeling that nothing goes unnoticed by students and that, as a teacher, i truly am on stage. comments made by students on the survey about my hair and my personal appearance supports this idea. the survey also presented some interesting sociological patterns. females were much more articulate about their dislikes than the males. they also had more criticisms. it isinteresting to note that females viewed me more critically than the males or they were more open about discussing their opinions. i’m glad to know most of my students are happy with me. i am strict at times and demand a lot, but i believe expectations have a lot to do with how students perform. i expect the best from my students and they give me their best. the survey allowed me to get in touch with my students and to appreciate their perspectives in the classroom and in their lives. i believe this survey has made me a more compassionate and caring teacher. implications this classroom based research project proved to be a powerful way to gain insight into my own teaching. i feel that surveys are a useful tool for all teachers who seek honest feedback from students. by asking the right questions and carefully reviewing the responses from the surveys, teachers are in a better position to improve the classroom environment and their teaching methods. administering anonymous surveys is essential to obtainrealistic and concrete information that can be valuable and instrumental in creating optimal learning experiences. future use of surveys could assist me in improving other aspects of my teaching including classroom management. reflections after carefully reviewing the data from the survey, i decided to make a few changes in my attitude and procedures. i realize i have to be more flexible with my 6th graders. they are making a transition from elementary to middle school. high school spanish can be overwhelming for 6th graders. the survey answers remind me that these children are dealing with all kinds of pressures from parents and peers. i don’t want to add to that. i hope to be a positive influence in their lives and not a negative one. as a result of the survey, i also try to release my sixth graders a minute early so they won’t be pushed or harassed by seventh graders in the hall. i never knew this was a problem until the survey. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 12 also, in retrospect, i should have used a more objective way of measuring student participation other than posing the question: do you participate in class? for instance, if i were to count the number of raised hands during a given period, my participation rate would have been more accurate than what the students indicated in the survey. while the survey was effective, modifications to it could have yielded more useful results. overall, i feel that the reason for my research was satisfied. i learned more about my students, made changes in my attitude and procedures, and learned about the teacher action research process. i hope that this new and deeper knowledge of my students will ultimately translate into better teaching strategies and improved student outcomes. end of story for teacher # 4 methods professor this study clearly highlights the complexity of tar. this teacher began her study asking a question with four sub-questions. the end result was a survey that emphasized what julia’s students’ thought about her as a teacher. what is particularly noteworthy about this study is that it highlights the notion that research is multi-faceted and is not always straightforward. the researcher may start with one goal in mind and then be moved in other directions. the survey used in julia’s research allowed her to discover affective feelings about her students and to appreciate their perspectives. through the process, she was able to see expected and unexpected outcomes both of which can assist in informing pedagogical choices. julia noted, “i now realize these kids have a lot to juggle and after i conducted this interview i became more aware of what it’s like to be their age. also, i was really impressed at how grateful they were that i thought enough of them to ask their opinions.” it is clear as well from this study that although tar can begin with a specific series of questions, not all may be answered and some new ones can arise. julia’s research discoveries gave her practical information that she could apply instantly. this research also pointed out the teacher’s need to become more receptive to change, a task that can never be understated in the process of teaching as well as when conducting research. conclusion as the methods professor i guided and supervised these 4 in-service teachers as they conducted their research projects. my objective throughout was to empower these teachers to begin regarding themselves as researchers – to take ownership of their ability to question, analyze, and reflect on the teaching and learning process. the use of tar allowed all four of these teachers to actively engage in classroom-based research. each of the teachers faced similar challenges: providing appropriate instructional assistance for heritage language learners, choosing effective teaching strategies to reach a wide range of students’ language proficiency levels, and student behavioral problems and motivation. once the teachers identified the puzzlement, they set out in an organized methodical way to investigate, gather and analyze data and then make informed decisions. during the time of the research projects, i witnessed each teacher examining and questioning their own assumptions about what was occurring in their classrooms. these were evident in weekly email communications as well as in-class discussions. each continued to examine their own beliefs and all were critical with regard to ways to improve and/or do things differently in both teaching and assessment practices. here we have clear examples of how teachers acting as researchers can create thoughtprovoking environments that allow the teacher to become the learner by constructing an individualized informative study that often yields powerful results. the teachers in this paper were supported by the methods professor in the course. topics such as working with heritage language learners, cooperative learning, multilevel classes, etc. were all covered as part of the course syllabus. when will we debunk the myth that teacher action research is “scary” and not for the faint at heart? more and more the tide is changing as we see larger numbers of classroom teachers actively engaged in research. mills (2003) defines action research as: … any systematic inquiry conducted by teacher researchers to gather information about the ways that their particular school operates, how they teach, and how well their students learn. the information is gathered with the goals of gaining insight, developing reflective practice, effecting positive changes in the school environment and on educational practices in general, and improving student outcomes. (p.4) the common denominator in the many terms used to describe teacher action research is the teacher as an “active constructor of knowledge rather than a passive consumer of it” (miller & pine, 1990). i am heartened when i read the breadth and depth of current research being undertaken by both novice and experienced educators. what is particularly encouraging is that we clearly see the professional development of reflective practitioners. educators examine a particular phenomenon that is indigenous to their respective classrooms. teachers conducting research are empowered. the four teachers cited in this article have all learned not only teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories 13 about the tar process but also about the profound effect this type of research can have on teaching. teacher research treats teachers as autonomous, responsible agents who participate actively in directing their own work and their own professional development (zeichner & klehr, 1999). tar is transformative in its ability to scientifically display the dynamics of a classroom and present the teacher as a professional with an individual research base. finally, of primary importance in teacher action research is sharing findings, i.e., what one learned. teachers engaged in classroom research typically become leaders in their schools. often their work is shared within the school district and many go on to present their findings at local, state, and in some cases, national conference settings. these are sometimes presented as workshops or poster sessions. the relationship that forms between the classroom teacher and the university academician provides a very fertile ground for additional work. such was the case with the four teachers who told their “stories” in this article. they are not only school leaders but continue to collaborate with the university methods professor in on-going professional development projects. additional resources for teacher action research can be found at: http://gse.gmu.edu/research/tr http://www.ericsp.org/digests/teacherresearch.htm references donato, r. (2003). action research: reseeing learning and rethinking practice in the lote classroom. languages other than english communique. vol. 8, 1-6. downhower, s., melvin, m.p., & sizemore, p. (1990). improving writing instruction through teacher action research. journal of staff development, 11(3), 22-27. ej430614. hall haley, m. (2004). learner-centered instruction and the theory of multiple intelligences with second language learners. teachers college record. vol. 106, no. 1, 163-180. hall haley, m. (2001). understanding learner centered instruction from the perspectiveof multiple intelligences. foreign language annals. vol. 34, no. 4, 355-367. johnson, d.m. (1992). approaches to research in second language learning. new york:longman. miller, d.m., & pine, g.j. (1990). advancing professional inquiry for educational improvement through action research. journal of staff development, 11 (3), 56 61. mills, g.e. (2003). action research: a guide for the teacher researcher. upper saddle river, nj: merrill/prentice hall. nunan, d. (1992). research methods in language learning. cambridge: cambridge university press. nunan, d., & lamb, c. (1996). the self directed teacher: managing the learning process. cambridge: cambridge university press. richards, j., & lockhart, c. (1996). reflective teaching in second language classrooms. cambridge: cambridge university press. valdés, g. (2001). introduction. in l.a. sandstedt (project director), the aatsp professional development handbook series for teachers: spanish for native speakers, vol. 1, greeley, co: american association of teachers of spanish and portuguese. wallace, m.j. (2000). action research for language teachers. new york: cambridge university press. zeichner, k., & klehr, m. (1999). teacher research as professional development for p-12 educators. national partnership for excellence and accountability in teaching. washington, dc. http://gse.gmu.edu/research/tr http://www.ericsp.org/digests/teacherresearch.htm current issues in education vol. 8 no. 12 appendix a fairfax county public schools pals: performance assessment for language students spanish for fluent speakers level 1 writing tasks analytic rubric criterio de evaluación para el discurso escrito ejecución de trabajo indicado 1 -ejecuta el trabajo en lo mínimo; el contenido es inadecuado e ilegible 2 -ejecuta el trabajo parcialmente; cumple con algunos requisitos adecuadamente, pero sin desarrollo 3 -ejecuta el trabajo completamente; cumple con todos los requisitos adecuadamente con cierto desarrollo 4 -ejecuta el trabajo superiormente; cumple con todos los requisitos, con ideas bien desarrolladas y organizadas comprensión 1 -el texto es incomprensible. 2 -el texto es comprensible, pero requiere que el lector descifre el texto 3 -el texto es comprensible; requiere un mínimo de enmiendas por parte del lector 4 -el texto es comprensible; no requiere clarificación por parte del lector nivel de discurso escrito 1 -usa oraciones completas, algunas redundantes con pocos o sin mecanismos coherentes 2 -hay uso predominante de oraciones completas, poco redundantes con uso apropiado de mecanismos coherentes 3 -surge una variedad de oraciones completas y creativas; párrafos con cierto desarrollo; uso apropiado de mecanismos coherentes 4 -usa una variedad de oraciones completas y párrafos desarrollados con ideas creativas; uso apropiado de mecanismos coherentes vocabulario y gramática 1 -uso limitado de vocabulario básico y/o de estructuras gramaticales básicas 2 -uso adecuado de vocabulario básico y/o de estructuras gramaticales básicas 3 -surge el uso de vocabulario nuevamente adquirido y/o de estructuras gramaticales complejas 4 -uso adecuado de vocabulario extenso y/o de estructuras gramaticales complejas ortografía 1 -la escritura de las palabras es incorrecta y carece de acentos; la puntuación y/o el uso de la mayúscula son inapropiados 2 -la escritura de las palabras es a veces correcta; el uso de los acentos; la puntuación y/o el uso de la mayúscula son a veces correctos 3 -la mayoría de las palabras están escritas correctamente; la mayoría de los acentos, la puntuación y/o el uso de la mayúscula son correctos. 4 -las palabras están escritas correctamente; los acentos, la puntuación y/o el uso de la mayúscula son correctos también teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories 15 appendix b sample of homework sheets nom:______________________ period:_______________________ ib homework sheet 1-6 10/14/02 – 10/17/02 i am providing this homework sheet as a way for you to have structured practice which will help you bring up your quiz scores. if your next quiz score is an 84% or higher, you may retake 1 of your past quizzes. i know that you can do it. i am confident that this practice will help you accomplish your goals. instructions for homework sheet: you are to do each of the assignments on the day it is assigned. all assignments are due the following day. please have the homework as well as this sheet in class everyday. i will stamp your sheet if you have completed the assignment. at the end of the week, you will turn in this stamped sheet. homework assignment day assigned teacher stamp lundi 10/14/02 write a sentence using each of the possessive adjectives: mon, ma, mes, ton, ta, tes, son, sa, ses, notre, nos, votre, vos, leur, leurs. make flashcards for the new vocabulary learned this week – refer to phrase list 1-6 (16 flashcards). mardi 10/15/02 write a sentence using each of the possessive adjectives: mon, ma, mes, ton, ta, tes, son, sa, ses, notre, nos, votre, vos, leur, leurs. go through all the new flashcards 1-6 and pull out the ones you don’t know. study the ones you don’t know with your parents for 10 minutes and have them sign in the teacher box. mercredi 10/16/02 write a sentence using each of the possessive adjectives: mon, ma, mes, ton, ta, tes, son, sa, ses, notre, nos, votre, vos, leur, leurs. go through all the new flashcards 1-6 and pull out the ones you don’t know. study the ones you don’t know with your parents for 10 minutes and have them sign in the teacher box. get a picture or pictures from the internet for the front of your postcard. postcard due jeudi le 17 octobre. jeudi 10/17/02 write a sentence using each of the possessive adjectives: mon, ma, mes, ton, ta, tes, son, sa, ses, notre, nos, votre, vos, leur, leurs. go through all the new flashcards 1-6 and pull out the ones you don’t know. study the ones you don’t know with your parents for 10 minutes and have them sign in the teacher box. take careful notes about the quiz for tomorrow and check the items off, when you feel prepared, as you study. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 12 2005 article citation haley, m.h., midgely, a., ortiz, j., romano, t., ashworth, l., & seewald, a. (2005, june 23). teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories . current issues in education [on-line], 8(12). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number12/ author notes marjorie hall haley, phd george mason university mhaley@gmu.edu marjorie hall haley, phd, is tenured associate professor in the center for language and culture in the college of education and human development at george mason university in fairfax, virginia. allyson midgely is a middle school french teacher in prince william county, virginia. judy ortiz is a middle school spanish teacher in prince william county, virginia. teresa romano is a middle school spanish and heritage language learner teacher in fairfax county, virginia. lisa ashworth is a foreign language in the elementary school (fles) french teacher in prince william county, virginia. amanda seewald george mason university amanda seewald is a graduate research assistant for professor haley. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 21, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation hall haley, m., midgely, a., ortiz, j., romano, t., ashworth, l., & seewald, a. (2005). teacher action research in foreign language classrooms: four teachers tell their stories. current issues in education, 8(12). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1606 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number12/index.html mailto:mhaley@gmu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1606 cie template current issues in education, 23(1) 1 volume 23, issue 1 may 9, 2022 issn 1099-839x school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships: what’s missing and what matters? kristan n. russell prairie view a&m university melissa m. burnham university of nevada, reno sarah a. trescher university of nevada, reno victoria a. knoche youth justice institute, the university of albany abstract: reports of sexual relationships between teachers and their students have risen across the country. this study qualitatively examines existing school district policies in nevada to determine what the existing policies cover, how the potential consequences are outlined, whether the policies give teachers guidance on how to navigate tricky ethical situations, and lastly, what information is not covered within these policies. our findings indicate that most districts use required boilerplate language about sexual harassment but lack specific guidance for navigating complex situations where boundaries seem to get crossed (e.g., social media). we conclude with recommendations for policy reform and continued education. keywords: teacher-student relationships, teacher sexual misconduct, ethics training, policies, nevada, school districts citation: russell, k. n., burnham, m. b., trescher, s. a., & knoche, v. a. (2021). school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships: what’s missing and what matters? current issues in education, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss1.2027 accepted: april 4, 2022 introduction sexual relationships between teachers and their students are on the rise across the country (abbott, 2015). reports indicate that approximately one in every ten students experiences sexual misconduct by a school district employee (department of justice, 2017; 9.6% of all students’ 8thhttps://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss1.2027 russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 2 11th grade shakeshaft, 2004). the texas education agency (2018) found that the number of investigations of inappropriate relationships between teachers and students increased 42% between 2017-2018 and increased by 249% in the past decade. although there appears to be a clear uptick in cases based upon the media attention nevada schools have received in the past decade, it is difficult to ascertain specific rates of educator sexual misconduct without a systematic reporting system. accurate estimates of educator sexual misconduct rates can be difficult to obtain for two reasons. first, there is no federal-level database or collection system to track reporting (u.s. government accountability office, 2014). second, many of our prevalence estimates are based upon cases that made it to the legal system; however, it is possible that many cases would not be included in these estimates because they go unreported (irvine & tanner, 2007; wurtele et al., 2019) or in some cases, teachers move school districts to avoid disciplinary action or legal repercussions (reilly, 2016), also known as “passing the trash” (irvine & tanner, 2007). several high-profile cases (e.g., mary kay letourneau, debra lafave) covered in the media have increased the public’s awareness of educator sexual misconduct (abboud et al., 2020). a number of teacher sexual abuse cases that have occurred within the state of nevada have received considerable media attention in recent years (see ford, 2021; mcandrews, 2019; shoro, 2019; and sonner, 2019, for a few examples), raising concerns for students, parents, school district employees, and legislators (whitaker, 2015, 2016). these mainstream media outlets often question why these relationships are happening and why teachers cross ethical boundaries with their students (see bradshaw, 2016). one thing that could contribute to this apparent rise in inappropriate teacher-student relationships is a disparity of research evidence assessing school district and state-level laws and policies that are aimed at preventing, intervening, and responding to cases of sexual misconduct of educators (grant, wilkerson, & henschel, 2018). the increase in arrests for sexual relationships between teachers and students is particularly concerning to parents as they expect schools to be safe learning environments (national coalition to prevent child sexual abuse and exploitation, 2012) for their children, and the risk of sexual abuse by teachers jeopardizes student safety and learning (u.s. department of education, 2017). teachers might utilize the power imbalance between themselves and their students to target their victims (knoll, 2010; sullivan & beech, 2002). sexual offenses, particularly offenses committed by an authority figure, can cause long-term trauma to the victims (knoll, 2010; sullivan & beech, 2002). further, social media and online communication platforms may be where many of these relationships are initiated and fostered (texas education agency, 2016). it is evident that inappropriate relationships with teachers and students are a concern for many school districts, yet there does not appear to be a large focus on preventing these relationships from happening in the first place. thus, the focus should be shifted from reactionary responses to these crimes to preventative measures to stop these relationships from occurring. in order to elicit these changes, policymakers, school personnel, and researchers must understand the current legislation and the role of school-district-level policies on teacher sexual abuse. this present research is a case study of nevada school district policies and is a first step in better understanding existing policies regarding relationships between teachers and students, as well as identifying areas that need to be better outlined within these policies. nevada was chosen for this study due to the researchers’ connections to the education system, which ensured russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 3 access to all necessary documents for analysis. further, by focusing the analysis on one state, we are better able to draw connections between the legislative and school district policy language. state laws and repercussions in the state of nevada, the age of consent is 16 years old (nrs 200.364; adopted in 1997 and most recently revised in 2017; see appendix a for a full description of laws). thus, children ages 15 and under cannot legally consent to sexual intercourse. this law includes a ‘close in age’ or a ‘romeo and juliet’ exception in which adults can have consensual sex with children under the age of consent (16) if they are less than four years apart in age. if charged, a person who engages in consensual sexual intercourse with someone under the age of 16 risks up to 10 years in prison, up to $10,000 in fines, and will be mandated to register as a tier three sexual offender on the nevada state registry. if the person being charged is under the age of 21, they can still be charged with statutory rape but with reduced punitive sanctions: up to one year in jail, up to $2000 in fines, and tier one sexual offender registration. nevada state law (nrs 201.540 & nrs 201.550; adopted in 1997 and most recently revised in 2017; described in appendix a) prohibits all sexual contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, physical contact of genitals) between school teachers and their students, even if the student is older than the age of consent (i.e., 16 years old). in other words, all sexual contact is prohibited between school employees and students at that school, regardless of the student’s age. this law does not apply to teachers or school employees under the age of 21, though almost all teachers and employees exceed this age. another exception to this law is if the student and teacher are legally married. if convicted, a teacher can face up to five years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines. further, teachers will be guilty of a category c felony. the nevada legislature rationalized their expansion of sex offense laws to include teacher/school district employee-specific legislation by stating that students should be free from influence by individuals who have power and authority over them. in addition to the legal ramifications of inappropriate conduct between teachers and students, school districts and licensing agencies can also impose punishments on the teachers. if accused or found guilty of sexual misconduct toward a student, school districts retain the right to impose hefty penalties, including suspension and termination. teachers might also face the loss of their teaching license for violating the ethical policies set out by their license granting agency. in the state of nevada, this agency is the nevada department of education. why district level policies matter with one in every ten students experiencing sexual misconduct by a school district employee, identifying potential issues within existing policies is critical (department of justice, 2017). the most common recommendation in the literature is that each district should have written policies prohibiting any inappropriate relationships between educators and students (shakeshaft, 2004). further, they recommend that behaviors that could be considered misconduct should be clearly defined, with examples, to ensure there is no ambiguity (shakeshaft, 2004). most school districts have incorporated sexual harassment policies adhering to these recommendations; however, teacher violations of these policies appear to be continuing to rise (abbott, 2015). research shows that early career teachers are more likely to engage in inappropriate sexual relationships with students (robert & thompson, 2019), highlighting the importance of ensuring district-level policies are clear to those entering the profession. existing policies cannot russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 4 be effective if teachers and staff are unaware of them. many school districts provide their policies or handbooks on their school website; however, anecdotal reports from case law and media demonstrate that many teachers are unaware of the policies or potential consequences of their relationships with their students (see quinn, 2018 for an example). this raises concerns about the orientation process and expectations of teachers to read, understand, and abide by existing district policies. additionally, studies show that school staff who read and understand the policies regarding their own behavior may remain unaware of how to identify such behaviors in others and how to report them (grant, 2011). this highlights the need for comprehensive policies that not only outline expected behavior but also provide steps for responding to suspected violations (shakeshaft, 2013). social media and online communication platforms might be where many of these relationships are initiated and fostered (texas education agency, 2016; whitaker, 2016). a recent investigation determined that approximately eighty percent of educator sexual misconduct cases involved private communication between a teacher and a student, such as texting or messaging over social media (whitaker, 2016). despite this, many school district level policies do not comprehensively cover appropriate use of social media and online communication between teachers and students. in 2015, clark county school district in nevada had no explicit policy forbidding online communication or texting between teachers and students, despite having more than thirty employees arrested for sexual misconduct in the previous decade, many cases of which involved private communications (whitaker, 2015). mainstream media outlets have also identified social media and online communication as a potential ‘gray area’ in the districts’ policies and ethical guidelines, which may be contributing to such relationships occurring, as teachers do not have clear rules on how to navigate these online settings, particularly with regard to student interactions (e.g., abbott, 2015; fleming, 2014; jimenez, 2019; mcneil, 2016). in a recent study of school sexual misconduct cases, 71% of offenders used technology to communicate with their victims (henshel & grant, 2018). in response to increased reporting of sexual misconduct and increased concerns, clark county school district (ccsd) in the state of nevada implemented a new social media policy in 2018 to regulate communication between teachers and students over electronic channels and to educate students on what to do if these boundaries are crossed (ortiz, 2018). however, ccsd teacher arrests for sexual misconduct have continued to be highly publicized (e.g., lupiani, 2019; shoro, 2019; torres-cortez, 2019), drawing attention to whether these policies are sufficiently comprehensive to prevent such misconduct. laws and school district policies are important as they clarify the law, set the stage for what types of behavior will be accepted within that school district, provide specific examples of violations, and indicate what the repercussions will be for misbehavior. policies can also be useful in reminding teachers or even making teachers aware of what behaviors are illegal and can lead to legal ramifications and/or licensure removal, not just consequences within their job at the school district. however, researchers have posited that existing policies are not sufficient to set clear guidelines in a changing world. for instance, is it appropriate for teachers to ‘friend’ their students on social media? the teacher’s union in nevada indicated that they are open to policy changes, while the s.e.s.a.m.e. (stop educator sexual abuse misconduct & exploitation) advocacy group supports a no-tolerance policy to prohibit this type of behavior and activity (whitaker, 2016). some experts have suggested guidelines for reforming policies which include recommendations such as (1) being clear and explicit regarding what constitutes sexual abuse and (un)acceptable russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 5 behaviors; (2) detailing how to report and prevent educator sexual abuse; and (3) explaining repercussions for violations (shakeshaft, 2013). it is important to also note that the push for district policy reform does not appear to coincide with any comprehensive analyses of existing policies to identify what topics are and are not covered. in fact, some policies have already been amended but offending continues to persist, indicating a need to assess existing policies more comprehensively to identify what is already included, whether language about social media and/or electronic communication and other potential ‘gray areas’ for boundary-crossing are missing altogether, and if the existing language regarding these specific topics (e.g., social media) is too vague and might be a source of confusion. we believe that having a more comprehensive understanding of the existing state of school district policies in nevada will allow for a more strategic approach to reform and can also provide insights into whether efforts need to be made beyond reform (e.g., better training to ensure teachers are aware of the policies). current study despite the laws, district-level policies, and ethics training many teachers receive – inappropriate relationships between teachers and their students appear to be on the rise (abbott, 2015). the state of nevada has been highly publicized for such relationships (e.g., lupiani, 2019; mcandrews, 2019l; shoro, 2019; sonner, 2019; torres-cortez, 2019). given the substantial repercussions of these inappropriate and illegal relationships, it is critical that school districts shift their attention from reactive to preventative measures (e.g., education and training, policy reform) so that the relationships do not occur in the first place. in this study, our primary goal is to comprehensively examine the school district policies in the state of nevada to determine what aspects regarding these ethical boundaries are comprehensively covered and also to identify potentially important elements that are missing from these policies. we anticipate that policies will address explicit sexual relationships (e.g., no sexual contact with students) but may lack language around more contemporary issues such as how to navigate whether to ‘friend’ a student on social media. as such, this study addressed the following research questions. rq1: what are the current nevada school district policies on school personnel relationships/interactions with students? rq2: are the consequences of inappropriate relationships with students clearly outlined in the current nevada school districts’ policies? rq3: do nevada school district policies provide explicit guidance to school personnel across various potential circumstances that they might have to navigate (e.g., social media use)? rq4: what is missing in the policies? (e.g., ‘friending’ students) method there are 17 independent school districts and 678 schools operating within the state of nevada (state of nevada department of education, 2019). district information is summarized in table 1. complete policy handbooks1 were acquired for each of these districts between december 2018 and april 2019.2 most of the policies were posted online for public access; all remaining policies were obtained through email by contacting the district administration. each policy was then read and reviewed by the researchers in this study. all policy sections that were 1 of the policies obtained, 15 were complete handbooks with all policy sections, 1 district only provided the personnel policy section, and 1 district provided only the student and personnel policy sections. 2 we attempted to obtain the most recent copies of all policies from each district. it is possible that policy sections have been updated since the time of data collection. russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 6 related to teacher-student relationships and personal interactions with students were selected for analysis. a preliminary coding scheme was developed by one of the researchers via an initial reading of the policies to gain familiarity with the content, in combination with reading the literature regarding boundary crossing and policy ‘gray areas.’ our inquiry into the policies was two-fold. on the one hand, it was critical for our analyses that we captured what is present in the existing policies so we can determine what level of guidance is already being provided to teachers. if the districts are providing clear and comprehensive guidance in all areas, perhaps the issue would then lie within training, lack of reading and understanding the policies, or in some other explanation. on the other hand, we also wanted to determine if any of the key areas highlighted in the media and literature as being potential boundary-crossing areas (e.g., friending on social media) were missing from the guidelines, providing further evidence that there may be ‘gray areas’ that need further elucidating. thus, in the final coding scheme, the codes were generated by both the researchers’ familiarity with the content and knowledge of factors the previous research deemed important (e.g., technology-based communication; henschel & grant, 2018). we conducted a content analysis of the policies for all 17 school districts in nevada. there were 19 primary themes, mostly related to broad policy sections and the inclusion of language around specific topic areas (e.g., sexual harassment) with a series of subthemes to code for more detailed intricacies within these policy sections. the policy documents were subjected to a systematic, line-by-line coding. an iterative approach was taken so that the coding scheme was flexible to allow for new codes to emerge. table 1 district descriptions district district size* district type district 1 small rural district 2 medium rural district 3 large urban district 4 very small rural district 5 medium rural district 6 small rural district 7 small rural district 8 small rural district 9 very small rural district 10 large urban district 11 small rural district 12 very small rural district 13 very small rural district 14 medium rural district 15 medium rural district 16 very small rural district 17 medium rural note. districts were sorted to be large, medium, and small. large districts have over 50,000 students. medium districts have between 49,999 and 5,000 students. small districts have between 4,999 and 1,000 students. very small districts are all districts with less than 1,000 students. russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 7 next, the documents were examined and coded by two external coders. this coding was completed in dedoose, which allowed us to examine inter-coder reliability (dedoose, 2018). our initial test of 25 excerpts yielded a cohen’s kappa statistic of .73, which indicates sufficient inter-coder agreement (cicchetti, 1994). coders then underwent a second training to examine the current coding scheme and address any differences in coding. the bulk of the errors occurred for excerpts that needed multiple codes but were instead only given one code by one of the coders. all disagreements in coding were resolved through discussion and consensus between the raters. further, definitions were revised to be more specific for future coding. ethical approval by an institutional review board (irb) is not always necessary for qualitative assessment of existing records. however, since several school districts had to be contacted directly to acquire the policies, we sought and received irb approval prior to data collection and analysis. findings what is covered in the policies? rq 1. what are the current nevada school district policies on school personnel relationships/interactions with students? of the 17 districts, 100% had policies on general sexual harassment for the district and for student-specific sexual harassment. these policies were specific not only to teachers, but all persons employed with or volunteering for the school district. we also assessed the content covered within these policy sections. we found that 11 (64.71%) of the districts provided a definition for what ‘sexual harassment’ is, while 15 (88.24%) of the districts provided examples of sexual harassment. (district 14) sexual harassment is generally defined as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for favors and other verbal, non-verbal or physical conduct of a sexual or genderdirected nature when: 1. submission is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of the student’s education or educational opportunities; 2. submission to or rejection of that conduct or communication by an individual is used as a factor in decisions affecting the student’s education or educational opportunities; or 3. that conduct or communication has the purpose or effect of substantially or unreasonably interfering with the student’s education or educational opportunities, or of creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive educational environment (district 6) examples of behavior which constitute sexual misconduct include, but are not limited to: making sexual advances or gestures toward a student; coercing, forcing, or attempting to coerce or force sexual intercourse or any sexual act with a student; engaging in sexual intercourse or any sexual act with any student; touching oneself sexually or talking about one’s sexual activity in front of students; spreading rumors about or discussing students’ sexual activity; and sexually motivated or inappropriate touching, patting, grabbing, or pinching a student’s body, whether that student is of the same or the opposite sex. fifteen (88%) nevada school districts outlined general instructions for all individuals on how sexual harassment should be reported to the district. thirteen (76%) districts had specific instructions for students on how to report sexual harassment if they have experienced it themselves or know of someone who has experienced sexual abuse. (district 3) sexual harassment or misconduct directed at a student may be reported by any individual using the district’s online reporting tool (website …); to a counselor, administrator, teacher or any other district staff member; to (…) the district’s civil rights russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 8 compliance director/title ix coordinator (email: …); or to a school police or local law enforcement officer. while all of the policies referenced nevada law, only 10 (58%) explicitly described nrs 201.540, which indicates that it is a felony for a person over 21 years of age, who is/was an employee or volunteer of the district to engage in sexual conduct with students 16 or older. (district 11) the district acknowledge[s] the applicability of criminal statutes relating to sexual conduct toward a student, including nrs 201.540, which indicates that it is a felony for a teacher, administrator, coach, volunteer or teacher’s aide or auxiliary nonprofessional employee who assists with instruction or supervision of pupils, to engage in sexual conduct with pupils ages 14 through 17. next, we examined districts’ network policies because many media assessments of teacher misconduct identify online and technological outlets as being where a lot of inappropriate behavior takes place or where illegal relationships can start (e.g., abbott, 2015; fleming, 2014; jimenez, 2019; mcneil, 2016). sixteen (94%) of the school districts had a network policy, which dictates what is/is not permitted on the school district networks, for example, the prohibition of looking at or sharing obscene imagery (14 districts; 82%). (district 8) technology protection measures, installed and in continuous operation, that protect against internet access by both adults and minors to visual depictions that are obscene, child pornography or, with respect to the use of the computers by minors, harmful to minors; rq 2. are the consequences of inappropriate relationships with students clearly outlined in the current nevada school districts’ policies? we explored if and how consequences are described in each district policy. we implemented several codes to capture whether the school district policies clearly outline the consequences of sexual harassment of students. the first of these captured if any general mention of consequences was made within the specific policy section itself; ten districts (58%) did mention consequences. further, we implemented a code to capture whether the policy had specific language around possible termination of employment if sexual harassment of a student takes place. nine (53%) of the school districts mentioned termination as a possible consequence. (district 13) any employee who is found to be in violation of this sexual harassment regulation will be disciplined up to and including termination. although all policies reference the nevada law with regard to consequences of engaging in sexual harassment of students (and some of the policies describe the law), the descriptions tended to be vague, and none emphasized the legal and professional consequences of a relationship with a student, even if that student is of the legal age of consent. teachers can not only lose their jobs but can lose their teaching license and be charged criminally. only one school district policy, district 17 (6%), indicated that employees can have their teaching license suspended or revoked if they are in violation of the sexual harassment policy: “if the employee is the holder of a license issued pursuant to chapter 391 of nrs, may recommend to the board of trustees of the schools [sic] district that the board submit a recommendation to the state board for the suspension or revocation of the license.” fifteen (88%) of the school districts had a broad statement that outlines or explains the potential consequences for violating the sexual harassment policy. rq 3. do nevada school district policies provide explicit guidance to school personnel across various potential circumstances that they will have to navigate (e.g., social media use)? of russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 9 the 17 districts, 11 (65%) had specific policy language about social media use. however, the content of these policies typically pertained to either the district employee using social networking during working hours or specific social media use as it relates to the district. social media policies were vague and indicated that the school district does not take a position on employees’ social media activities. (district 4) the district takes no position on an employee’s decision to start or maintain a blog or participate in other social networking activities. however, it is the right and duty of the district to protect itself, its employees, and students from unauthorized disclosure of information. the district’s social networking policy includes rules, guidelines, and best practices for districtauthorized social networking and personal social networking. the district will not request user names and passwords for personal social media accounts. this policy applies to all board members, administrators, management, employees, and volunteers. blogging or other forms of social media or technology include, but are not limited, to video or wiki posting, sites such as facebook and twitter, chat rooms, personal blogs, or other similar forms of online communication journals, diaries, or personal newsletters not affiliated with the district. unless specifically instructed, employees are not authorized and, therefore, restricted to speak on behalf of the district. employees are expected to protect the privacy of the district, its employees, and students. only three school districts (18%) had explicit policies regarding “friending” students on social media accounts. of those three districts, only two school districts (12%) had specific policies prohibiting “friending” or “following” students on their social media. (district 3) staff should not “friend”, “follow”, or otherwise interact with students individually or personally from social media accounts. for example, a teacher should not “friend” a former student of the teacher while that student remains enrolled in the district. the third school district strongly discouraged “friending” but did not prohibit it: (district 14) employees are strongly discouraged from texting messaging using a personal phone number, and “friending” students on social media. rq 4. what is missing in the policies? research notes that missing or ‘gray areas’ in district policies may be a source of confusion or may foster misbehavior among teachers. to determine if any of these ‘gray areas’ existed within nevada school districts’ policies, we utilized media reports and the literature to inform our coding scheme development to ensure all areas of potential boundary crossing were included in our codebook. there were several items in our original codes (e.g., friending; sexual harassment consequences – authorities, license, suspension; power as a factor of sexual harassment pertaining to students) we had hoped to see present that our analyses revealed were largely missing from the existing policies. thus, the discussion below regarding the findings of research question #4 is uniquely situated around code absence rather than presence. ten (58%) districts made specific mention of consequences that would result if they violated the sexual harassment policy, with nine (52%) of those school districts mentioning termination as a possible consequence. however, we also had codes to capture two other important potential consequences: (a) language letting the teacher know that if they violated the policy, they would be reported to the authorities and (b) letting them know they would be reported to the state board and potentially lose their license to teach. for each of these, only one district (6%) mentioned these as potential consequences. russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 10 (district 17) if the employee is the holder of a license issued pursuant to chapter 391 of nrs, may recommend to the board of trustees of the school district that the board submit a recommendation to the state board for the suspension or revocation of the license. only three districts (18%) had a policy specific to home visits. surprisingly, the language within most of these policies encouraged home visits. these policy sections had vague guidelines and did not appear to have any additional information about ethical considerations to be made when making home visits. one school district did provide some detail about potential situations the teacher may have to navigate when conducting home visits, but they centered on interactions with parents and potential conflicts. the other districts provided reasoning for why home visits are encouraged. (district 5) home visits by teachers are encouraged by the board in order that better communication between home and school can be realized. the board believes that home visits yield a better understanding of the relationship between the classroom teacher and the student, so that a better educational experience will result for the student. further, only six (35%) of the districts had clear policies regarding the transportation of students in personal vehicles. the policy language within these sections was clear and consistent – transporting students in personal vehicles is prohibited in all situations unless under exceptional circumstances or prior approval by the districts. the only exception was one district whose policy stated that: (district 1) under no circumstances should students be transported in personal vehicles except during off-duty times. last, despite many districts having social media policies and almost all districts having network policies, only two (12%) of the districts had policies specific to social media use with regard to interacting with students. similarly, two (12%) of the districts had language about whether a teacher is able to ‘friend’ their students on social media, both of which prohibit this behavior unless under special circumstances. (district 2) employees must not “friend” or otherwise connect current students to their personal blog or social networking site. exceptions may be approved for employees with parental responsibilities. (district 14) employees are strongly discouraged from text messaging using a personal phone number, “friending” students on social media. discussion and suggestions for improvement the purpose of this study was to examine existing nevada school district policy, identify important areas that are missing or vague within the current policy content, and make recommendations for policy reform to address the identified issues. many of the school districts included identical, general sexual harassment and student sexual harassment policy language. these policies generally defined sexual harassment, provide examples, mention potential consequences of policy violation, and reference relevant state law. however, most of the policies lacked any guidance or specific rules regarding how to navigate certain issues (e.g., social media ‘friending’ of students). this is problematic, as research and anecdotal reports point out that these ‘gray area’ situations (e.g., communicating through technology) are those in which boundaries are more likely to get crossed and where these relationships may begin (henschel & grant, 2018). without clear boundaries outlined in the policies, teachers are left to operate under their best judgment in these situations. given the rising rates of teacher-student sexual misconduct, letting teachers use their best judgment in ‘gray area’ situations does not appear to russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 11 be the best approach. moving forward, school districts should aim to set clear rules within their policies surrounding social media and contact with students outside of the classroom, both in person and online. nevada legislation could also require this language to be included within school district policies to explicitly state what is expected of district employees. though most district policies mentioned that violations of their sexual harassment policies will result in consequences, many lacked language specifying the nature of potential consequences, such as termination or being banned from employment within a district. beyond school district-level consequences, the teacher may also lose their license, incur fines, be sentenced to jail time, and be mandated to publicly register as a sex offender in the state of nevada. media reports covering the cases of teachers who have been charged with sexual offenses often indicate that they were unaware they were breaking the law and of the potential consequences. moving forward, school districts should clearly describe all potential consequences in district policies that may be experienced as a result of violating the policy–both as a result of school district action and from the criminal justice system if the offense is reported to authorities. with the constant advancements being made with regard to electronic communication, revisiting policies regularly is necessary. some school districts utilize apps outside of the classroom as teaching and tracking tools. these practices became even more common with the shift to remote learning during the covid-19 pandemic. while these might be effective tools to promote learning in both traditional and remote-learning environments, clear rules must be established regarding their use to ensure that boundaries do not get crossed. for instance, new jersey school boards have all banned teachers from “friending” students on their social media accounts and prohibited any electronic communication between teachers and students unless through district computers or phones (abbott, 2015; mcglone, 2014). our results show that all districts within nevada do not have similar policies (only 2 out of 17 school districts in our study had a similar policy). following new jersey school boards’ lead might be beneficial in limiting teacher-student sexual relationships. further, school districts should implement routine ethical training and assess teacher knowledge regarding existing policies to ensure that they are familiar with the policies and are prepared to navigate situations that can pose potential ethical dilemmas. in 2015, the national association of state directors of teacher education and certification (nasdtec) published the model code of ethics for educators (mcee). since then, many states, including nevada, have adopted this code of ethics. the mcee could be used to develop specific trainings for educators on appropriate, and inappropriate, conduct with students. in the summary section of nasdtec’s rationale for developing the mcee, the authors note: “by establishing the mcee, nasdtec provides a model of best practice which jurisdictions can adopt or adapt to help ensure states, epps, and leas are effectively equipping educators in ethical understanding and decision making so as not to violate the boundaries of professional practice. this critical work will lead to a more intentional emphasis, at national, state, and local levels, being placed on ethics and ethical preparation. ultimately, not only will ethical violations in education be reduced, children will be safer in classrooms.” (https://www.nasdtec.net/page/mcee_rationale) within principle iii: responsibility to students, the mcee specifically notes that the professional educator should “acknowledg[e] that there are no circumstances that allow for educators to engage in romantic or sexual relationships with students” (p.3). several webinars and podcasts are linked on the mcee website to assist with teacher training. https://www.nasdtec.net/page/mcee_rationale russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 12 in addition to in-service training, educator preparation providers should strive to infuse the mcee into their coursework leading to teacher and administrator licensure. this practice would help to ensure that all future educators have a deep understanding of their ethical responsibilities as professionals. adopting the mcee into coursework at the state level is a good start, but as mentioned earlier, a substantial portion of educator sexual misconduct cases are perpetrated by early career teachers. thus, we also recommend that states should strive to include knowledge of the mcee in their educator licensing and re-certification regulations. incorporating additional ethical leadership content into the teacher certification exams would hold educator preparation and professional learning providers accountable for covering the content of the mcee. limitations and future research directions there are several limitations of the current study that need to be noted. first, this study was limited to the state of nevada and, therefore, cannot be generalized to district policies across the country. further, this study was limited to assessing the content of existing policies and did not assess supplemental materials and trainings the teachers may receive from the school district. additionally, this study did not examine the dissemination of or teacher familiarity with the policies, which is important in understanding not only if the policies are lacking important information, but also if the existing policies are being distributed to teachers in a way that promotes long-term retention and comprehension. even if policy language is very clear and all potential ethical situations are covered, they are only effective if accessed, read, understood, and followed. existing policies are already very lengthy and dense. for example, districts that provided their handbooks and policies to us often sent hundreds of pages. policies are typically broken down for students, parents, employees, trustees, and the community. however, even the policies and regulations specific to employees only can be hundreds of pages in length and cover a range of topics from sexual misconduct to requesting time off. as such, it may be difficult for teachers to read and retain all relevant policy information. future research needs to better examine how teachers receive training on the policies and if they are assessed in any way to ensure their familiarity. if research demonstrates a disconnect between the policy content and what teachers know, it would be beneficial to examine various methods of distribution (e.g., required reading of handbook, media/visual based distribution, etc.) to determine which method results in the most retention. further, research should examine teachers’ ethical training background and continuing education specific to ethics. this will allow researchers to identify potential targets for better training (e.g., college-level courses). researchers should examine what teachers currently believe about navigating ethical issues (e.g., friending students on social media) and their perceptions of the existing policies which address these scenarios. this will allow for a better understanding of how boundaries get crossed and how policies can be improved to address the issues. a final limitation is highlighted by the teacher-shortage crisis, which was exacerbated by the covid-19 pandemic. understaffed schools are turning to desperate measures to cover classrooms, including the use of emergency contract teachers, increased use of substitutes, using administrators to periodically cover classes, teacher residency programs, and providing alternative and accelerated routes to teacher certifications. these various pathways to the classroom may complicate the training and education-based solutions proposed in this article. we recommend that every person serving in a teaching role, regardless of prior training and path russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 13 to the position, is held to the same expectation for knowing and abiding by professional teaching ethical standards and district ethics guidelines. references abbott, 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[gao]. (2014). federal agencies can better support state efforts to prevent and respond to sexual abuse by school personnel (gao-14-42). http://www.gao.gov whitaker, i. (2015). 5 charged in 3 months: school district battles history of personnel violating students. las vegas sun. https://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/aug/24/5-charged-clarkcounty-school-sexual-abuse-child/ whitaker, i. (2016). arrests prompt ccsd to study policies on contact between teachers, students. las vegas sun. https://lasvegassun.com/news/2016/apr/05/arrestsprompt-ccsd-to-study-policies-on-contact-b/ wurtele, s. k., mathews, b., & kenny, m. c. (2019). keeping students out of harm’s way: reducing risks of educator sexual misconduct. journal of child sexual abuse, 28(2), 160-186. https://doi.org/10.1080/10538712.2018.1486933 https://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/aug/24/5-charged-clark-county-school-sexual-abuse-child/ https://lasvegassun.com/news/2015/aug/24/5-charged-clark-county-school-sexual-abuse-child/ https://lasvegassun.com/news/2016/apr/05/arrests-prompt-ccsd-to-study-policies-on-contact-b/ https://lasvegassun.com/news/2016/apr/05/arrests-prompt-ccsd-to-study-policies-on-contact-b/ https://doi.org/10.1080/10538712.2018.1486933 russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 16 appendix a nrs 200.364 definitions. as used in nrs 200.364 to 200.3788, inclusive, unless the context otherwise requires: 1. “forensic laboratory” has the meaning ascribed to it in nrs 176.09117. 2. “forensic medical examination” has the meaning ascribed to it in nrs 217.300. 3. “genetic marker analysis” has the meaning ascribed to it in nrs 176.09118. 4. “offense involving a pupil or child” means any of the following offenses: (a) sexual conduct between certain employees of a school or volunteers at a school and a pupil pursuant to nrs 201.540. (b) sexual conduct between certain employees of a college or university and a student pursuant to nrs 201.550. (c) sexual conduct between certain employees or contractors of or volunteers for an entity which provides services to children and a person under the care, custody, control or supervision of the entity pursuant to nrs 201.555. 5. “perpetrator” means a person who commits a sexual offense, an offense involving a pupil or child or sex trafficking. 6. “sex trafficking” means a violation of subsection 2 of nrs 201.300. 7. “sexual assault forensic evidence kit” means the forensic evidence obtained from a forensic medical examination. 8. “sexual offense” means any of the following offenses: (a) sexual assault pursuant to nrs 200.366. (b) statutory sexual seduction pursuant to nrs 200.368. 9. “sexual penetration” means cunnilingus, fellatio, or any intrusion, however slight, of any part of a person’s body or any object manipulated or inserted by a person into the genital or anal openings of the body of another, including sexual intercourse in its ordinary meaning. the term does not include any such conduct for medical purposes. 10. “statutory sexual seduction” means ordinary sexual intercourse, anal intercourse or sexual penetration committed by a person 18 years of age or older with a person who is 14 or 15 years of age and who is at least 4 years younger than the perpetrator. 11. “victim” means a person who is a victim of a sexual offense, an offense involving a pupil or child or sex trafficking. 12. “victim of sexual assault” has the meaning ascribed to it in nrs 217.280. (added to nrs by 1977, 1626; a 1979, 572; 1991, 801; 1995, 700; 2009, 231, 1296; 2013, 2426; 2015, 2234; 2017, 2316, 2887, 2888) https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-200.html#nrs200sec364 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-200.html#nrs200sec3788 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-176.html#nrs176sec09117 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-217.html#nrs217sec300 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-176.html#nrs176sec09118 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-201.html#nrs201sec540 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-201.html#nrs201sec550 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-201.html#nrs201sec555 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-201.html#nrs201sec300 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-200.html#nrs200sec366 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-200.html#nrs200sec368 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-217.html#nrs217sec280 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/59th/stats197707.html#stats197707page1626 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/60th/stats197903.html#stats197903page572 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/66th/stats199104.html#stats199104page801 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/68th/stats199504.html#stats199504page700 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/75th2009/stats200903.html#stats200903page231 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/75th2009/stats200903.html#stats200903page231 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/75th2009/stats200913.html#stats200913page1296 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/77th2013/stats201315.html#stats201315page2426 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/78th2015/stats201521.html#stats201521page2234 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/79th2017/stats201713.html#stats201713page2316 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/79th2017/stats201716.html#stats201716page2887 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/79th2017/stats201716.html#stats201716page2888 russell et al.: school district policies regarding appropriate teacher-student relationships current issues in education, 23(1) 17 nrs 201.540 sexual conduct between certain employees of school or volunteers at school and pupil: penalty; exception. 1. except as otherwise provided in subsection 2, a person who: (a) is 21 years of age or older; (b) is or was employed by a public school or private school in a position of authority or is or was volunteering at a public or private school in a position of authority; and (c) engages in sexual conduct with a pupil who is 16 years of age or older, who has not received a high school diploma, a general educational development certificate or an equivalent document and: (1) who is or was enrolled in or attending the public school or private school at which the person is or was employed or volunteering; or (2) with whom the person has had contact in the course of performing his or her duties as an employee or volunteer,  is guilty of a category c felony and shall be punished as provided in nrs 193.130. 2. the provisions of this section do not apply to a person who is married to the pupil at the time an act prohibited by this section is committed. 3. the provisions of this section must not be construed to apply to sexual conduct between two pupils. (added to nrs by 1997, 2522; a 2001, 703; 2013, 2098; 2015, 1445, 2242; 2017, 2320) nrs 201.550 sexual conduct between certain employees of college or university and student: penalty; exception. 1. except as otherwise provided in subsection 3, a person who: (a) is 21 years of age or older; (b) is employed in a position of authority by a college or university; and (c) engages in sexual conduct with a student who is 16 years of age or older, who has not received a high school diploma, a general educational development certificate or an equivalent document and who is enrolled in or attending the college or university at which the person is employed,  is guilty of a category c felony and shall be punished as provided in nrs 193.130. 2. for the purposes of subsection 1, a person shall be deemed to be employed in a position of authority by a college or university if the person is employed as: (a) a teacher, instructor or professor; (b) an administrator; or (c) a head or assistant coach. 3. the provisions of this section do not apply to a person who is married to the student at the time an act prohibited by this section is committed. 4. the provisions of this section must not be construed to apply to sexual conduct between two students. (added to nrs by 1997, 2523; a 2015, 1446; 2017, 2321) https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-193.html#nrs193sec130 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/69th/stats199717.html#stats199717page2522 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/71st/stats200105.html#stats200105page703 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/77th2013/stats201313.html#stats201313page2098 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/78th2015/stats201513.html#stats201513page1445 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/78th2015/stats201521.html#stats201521page2242 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/79th2017/stats201713.html#stats201713page2320 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-193.html#nrs193sec130 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/69th/stats199717.html#stats199717page2523 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/78th2015/stats201513.html#stats201513page1446 https://www.leg.state.nv.us/statutes/79th2017/stats201713.html#stats201713page2321 current issues in education, 23(1) 18 appendix b table 2 example codes, definitions, and excerpts definition example policies frequency of theme n (%) general sexual harassment policies any broad policy language regarding the prohibition of sexual harassment within the district. statements usually relate to all members of the district; teachers, staff, students, volunteers, etc... in compliance with title ix, [this] school district prohibits sex discrimination, including sexual harassment. no student on the basis of sex will be excluded from participation in, denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity conducted by the district. the district will treat its students without discrimination on the basis of sex as this pertains to admission, course offerings, athletics, counseling, employment assistance, and extracurricular activities 17 (100%) definitions specific language defining “sexual harassment.” “sexual harassment” is defined as sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that: g. explicitly or implicitly bases an educational decision on the student’s submission to such advances, requests and other conduct; or h. that is sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive to create a hostile or abusive educational environment for the student 12 (70.6%) examples specific examples provided for what “sexual harassment” is. examples often talk about inappropriate behaviors, unwanted sexual advances, request for sexual favors, etc…. “sexual harassment includes, but is not limited to: a) making unsolicited written, verbal, physical, and/or visual contact with sexual overtones. (written examples: suggestive or obscene letters, notes, or invitations. verbal examples: derogatory comments, slurs, jokes, or epithets. physical examples: assault, touching, impeding or blocking movement. visual examples: leering, gestures, display of sexually suggestive objects or pictures, cartoons, or posters.) b) continuing to express sexual interests after being informed that 14 (82.3%) current issues in education, 23(1) 19 definition example policies frequency of theme n (%) the interest is unwelcome. (reciprocal attraction is not considered sexual harassment.) c) making reprisals, threats of reprisal, or implied threats of reprisal following a negative response. for example, either implying or actually withholding support for an appointment, promotion, or change of assignment suggesting a poor performance report will be prepared or suggesting probation will be failed. d) engaging in implicit or explicit coercive sexual behavior which is used to control, influence, or affect the career, salary, and/or work environment of another employee. e) offering favors or employment benefits, such as promotions, favorable performance evaluation, favorable assigned duties or shifts, recommendations, reclassifications, etc., in exchange for sexual favors.” reporting statement that includes instructions for how to report suspected/experienced sexual assault or who to report to. sexual harassment or misconduct directed at a staff member may be reported to the staff member’s first level supervisor who is not involved in the alleged harassment; the district’s civil rights compliance director / title ix coordinator; the department of labor relations; or a school police or local law enforcement officer. ii. staff complaints may also be filed with the nevada equal rights commission (nerc) or the u.s. equal employment opportunity commission (eeoc). 15 (88.2%) student reporting policy language specifically directing students how to report sexual assault they have experienced or how to report if one suspects that a student has been sexually assaulted. sexual harassment or misconduct directed at a student may be reported by any individual using the district’s online reporting tool [website name]; to a counselor, administrator, teacher or any other district staff member; to [name], the district’s civil rights compliance director/title ix coordinator [email address]; or to a school police or local law enforcement officer. 17 (100%) current issues in education, 23(1) 20 definition example policies frequency of theme n (%) sexual harassment – students policy language that specifically refers to sexual harassment of students by staff, employees, etc. these codes are not used when it is just a broad review of sexual assault regarding district employees but rather, must be specific to the sexual harassment of students. the district prohibits and will not tolerate any form of sexual misconduct (including sexual abuse, sexual molestation, and sexual harassment) toward students on the part of district employees, administrators, officials, volunteers, or third parties. 17 (100%) age policy language within the sexual harassment policies that mention age or minor-status of students staff and volunteers are prohibited from soliciting a romantic, intimate, or sexual relationship with a current district student or a graduate of a school within the district for one (1) year after the student’s graduation, regardless of the student’s age. 12 (70.6%) power policy language that mentions the power differential between teachers and students or the authority that teachers have over students. it is unlawful for a person employed in a position of authority (teacher/instructor, administrator, coach or paraprofessional or auxiliary non-professional employee who assists licensed personnel) by a public or private school from engaging in sexual conduct with a pupil. 2 (11.8%) law describe anytime the policy describes or explains specific laws that may relate to sexual misconduct of a student including those preventing lewdness against a child under 16, etc.. (examples: nrs 201.540, nrs 201.230, nrs. 200.366, nrs 200.368, nrs 201.560) any conduct or communication that is immoral conduct within the meaning of nrs391.311(4) including but not limited to sexual assault, statutory sexual seduction, incest, commission of certain sexual acts in public, open or gross lewdness, indecent exposure, and lewdness with a minor. 10 (58.9%) laws reference this is coded for anytime the policy see nrs 201.540 8 (47%) current issues in education, 23(1) 21 definition example policies frequency of theme n (%) refers to laws that may relate to sexual misconduct of students. (examples: nrs 201.540, nrs 201.230, nrs 200.366, nrs 200.368, nrs 201.560) teacher law describe specific statement indicating that relationships between teachers and students are a violation of the state law. use this code if they specifically outline the illegality of this type of relationship (not just reference the law itself without explaining it). (nrs 201.540) the district acknowledges the applicability of criminal statutes relating to sexual conduct toward a student, including nrs 201.540, which indicates that it is a felony for a teacher, administrator, coach, volunteer or teacher’s aide or auxiliary nonprofessional employee who assists with instruction or supervision of pupils, to engage in sexual conduct with pupils ages 14 through 17. 10 (58.8%) teacher law reference this is coded for anything the policy refers to the law regarding relationships between teachers and their students by policy name (nrs 201.540). see nrs 201.540 8 (47%) sexual harassment – consequences this is any statement that broadly outlines or explains the potential consequences and/or punishments one might incur for violating the sexual harassment policy. if it is determined that illegal harassment has occurred, the district will take remedial action commensurate with the severity of the offense. this remedial action may include, but is not limited to, verbal and/or written reprimands, counseling, transfers, suspension without pay, and/or termination. action will also be taken to defer any future harassment 15 (88.2%) authorities mention that sexual harassment of students will be as required by nrs 432b.220, in situations where there is reasonable cause to believe that a child has been abused or neglected, a 1 (5.8%) current issues in education, 23(1) 22 definition example policies frequency of theme n (%) reported to the appropriate authorities by the school. school administrator, teacher, librarian, or counselor must report this to child welfare services or a law enforcement agency within 24 hours. license policy language indicating that employees and teachers will experience potential loss of teacher license if they violate the sexual harassment policy. if the employee is the holder of a license issued pursuant to chapter 391 of nrs, may recommend to the board of trustees of the school district that the board submit a recommendation to the state board for the suspension or revocation of the license. 1 (5.8%) suspension policy language indicating that employees and teachers may experience potential suspension if they violate the sexual harassment policy. any school district action taken pursuant to this policy will be consistent with requirements of applicable collective bargaining agreements, nevada revised statutes and […] school district policies. the […] county school district will take such disciplinary action it deems necessary and appropriate, including warning, suspension, or immediate discharge to end sexual harassment and prevent its recurrence. 4 (23.5%) termination statement indicating that employees and teachers may experience potential termination if they violate the sexual harassment policy. subject to discipline, up to and including dismissal. 10 (58.8% retaliation statement regarding the prohibition of retaliation against someone who reports sexual harassment. the district will not tolerate any form of retaliation toward any person who reports alleged sexual misconduct in good faith, assists another in filing a complaint, or provides truthful statements during an investigation 11 (64.7%) network policy policy language specifically around network policy (e.g., using resources for school related purposed only). this code is specific to the it shall be the responsibility of all staff to educate, supervise and monitor appropriate usage of the online computer network and access to the internet in accordance with this policy, cipa, the neighborhood children's internet protection act, and the protecting children in the 21st century act. 16 (94.1%) current issues in education, 23(1) 23 definition example policies frequency of theme n (%) network/internet of the district. this also includes use of district devices (which usually use the school district network) including cellphones, laptops, etc.. bullying statement about the prohibition of bullying on district networks specifically. using a district technology resource to actively engage in procuring or transmitting material that is in violation of district policies and regulations and/or applicable state and federal laws and regulations, to include those related to bullying, cyberbullying, harassment, discrimination or hostile work environment 11 (64.7%) obscenity statement about prohibiting the sending/receiving obscene language and/or images over district networks specifically. parents/legal guardians are encouraged to provide proper guidance to students regarding electronic communications, including the use of the internet, and the importance of internet safety, as well as discouraging improper conduct such as: sending or displaying offensive messages or pictures of themselves or others and/or linking them to teachers, other staff or students; using obscene or vulgar language toward teachers, staff or students; 14 (82.3%) social media policy policy language that generally refers to appropriate use/behavior of social media. access to social media for individual use during working hours is prohibited. this policy extends to student teachers and substitute teachers. 11 (64.7%) friending specific language around whether or not the teachers & staff may/may not “friend,” “follow,” or “add” their students over social media platforms. employees may be flattered when students ask for access to social network sites or other personal information; however, employees are strongly discouraged from text messaging using a personal phone number, “friending” students on social media or contacting students or parents/legal guardians with personal email addresses. fraternization between employees and students via the internet is prohibited except for legitimate email exchanges pertaining to 3 (17.6%) current issues in education, 23(1) 24 definition example policies frequency of theme n (%) educational matters (such as class assignments). friending permitted statement that encourages and/or allows “friending,” “following,” and “adding” of students in certain scenarios. n/a 0 friending prohibited statement that prohibits “friending,” “following,” and “adding” of students regardless of the situation. employees must not “friend” or otherwise connect current students to their personal blog or social networking site. 2 (11.8%) electronic communication specific statement regarding electronic communication between teachers and students outside of class. may relate to communication over emails, texts, apps, etc… the district recognizes that technological advances fast outpace the district’s ability to keep up. the district also acknowledges that boundaries may be blurred between acceptable and inappropriate behavior between employees and students in this arena, particularly for young teachers who may have become accustomed to the use of the latest technology to communicate with professors 2 (11.8%) personal transportation specific language around the transportation of students in school district employees’ personal vehicles. under no circumstances should students be transported in personal vehicles except during off-duty times. 6 (35.3%) home visits policy language regarding the visitation of students in their homes. in order to maximize parental involvement and participation in their children’s education, arranging school meetings at a variety of times, or conducting in-home conferences between teachers or other educators, who work directly with participating children, and with parents who are unable to attend those conferences at school. 3 (17.6%) current issues in education, 23(1) 25 definition example policies frequency of theme n (%) home visits encouraged statement that encourages home visits with students in certain scenarios. home visits by teachers are encouraged by the board in order that better communication between home and school can be realized. the board believes that home visits yield a better understanding of the relationship between the classroom teacher and the student, so that a better educational experience will result for the student. 3 (17.6%) home visits prohibited statement that prohibits home visits with students regardless of the situation. n/a 0 current issues in education, 23(1) 26 author notes kristan n. russell, ph.d. prairie view a&m university knrussell@pvamu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6256-8879 melissa m. burnham university of nevada, reno mburnham@unr.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2570-0092 sarah a. trescher university of nevada, reno satrescher@gmail.com victoria a. knoche youth justice institute, the university of albany tknoche@albany.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1352-9339 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . mailto:knrussell@pvamu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6256-8879 mailto:mburnham@unr.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2570-0092 mailto:satrescher@gmail.com mailto:tknoche@albany.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1352-9339 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ this study analyzed the responses of masters and doctoral counseling students to two domestic violence scenarios couples counseling in domestic violence 1 endorsement of couples counseling in a domestic violence case as a function of training mona bapat and terence tracey college of education arizona state university biographical information: mona bapat is a doctoral candidate in the counseling psychology program at arizona state university. her primary research focus is on issues of intimate partner violence. terence tracey is a professor in the counseling and counseling psychology programs at arizona state university. his research efforts have focused on the topics of client-therapist interaction in psychotherapy. correspondence should be addressed to: mona bapat, division of psychology in education, 302 payne hall, mc-0611 arizona state university, tempe, az 85287-0611. email: mbapat@asu.edu. mailto:mbapat@asu.edu.� couples counseling in domestic violence 2 abstract reactions of students in helping professions to domestic violence were examined with respect to whether or not the students had any training in domestic violence. one hundred, four students read one of two vignettes describing a domestic violence case and responded to statements related to treatment options. the vignettes differed only in education level and occupation of the target of the violence. students with training in domestic violence evidenced less willingness to endorse couples counseling as a treatment option than those without the knowledge or training. this main effect held across both ses conditions. couples counseling in domestic violence 3 endorsement of couples counseling in a domestic violence case as a function of training domestic violence is an extremely prevalent problem and one that is important for mental health professionals to understand. kragh and huber (2002) summarize that “over two million united states women are abused each year by their husbands or partners and as many as four thousand women are killed during these batterings” (p. 290). thus, it is probable that every mental health worker will at some point in his or her career work with a client who has been involved in a violent relationship (hansen & harway, 1993). therefore, knowledge and training in the area of domestic violence appear to be needed in order for mental health professionals to help targets of violence most effectively. however, there has been little research evaluating the relation of training in domestic violence and interventions used in domestic violence cases. the focus of this study is on the relation between reactions to a domestic violence situation and the level of training in domestic violence of the mental health professional. we were most interested in endorsement of different treatment options, specifically couples counseling. in addition to our assessment of the relation of training to intervention endorsement, we also focused on the potentially confounding variable of socio-economic status (ses) of the target. although males can certainly be targets of domestic violence from female perpetrators, we will focus on trainees’ reactions to a domestic violence scenario with a female target in a heterosexual relationship, given that females are more likely to seek help for the abuse (graham-kevan & archer, 2005; koopmans & lamers, 2006). in working with domestic violence, the potential of increased harm can quickly arise and requires attention. domestic violence involves the perpetrator’s effort to control his partner (azcadv, 2000; mcmurran & gilchrist, 2008); therefore, there is the potential for violence to increase, especially if she attempts to leave. in other words, the possibility of her leaving his couples counseling in domestic violence 4 control could lead him to use greater violence in an attempt to get her to stay. further, challenging times for families, such as the current financial crisis, could contribute to an increase of harm to targets of domestic violence. the national domestic violence hotline reported a 21% increase in calls in september of 2008 (beginning of the financial crisis) compared to the same month in 2007 and callers reported the financial stress as a factor associated with the violence in september of 2008 (sotelo, 2009). however, the literature documents that the focus of practitioners on decreasing harm to the women is not always a primary focus. in a survey of 362 therapists conducted by hansen and harway (1993), 40% of the practitioners failed to address the issue of violence in a hypothetical case and 91% of those who addressed the conflict inappropriately considered it to be mild or moderate. in a second study conducted by hansen and harway (1993), the single most common response by psychologists when presented with a rather extreme case of violence was focusing on the couple’s marital problems. furthermore, with knowledge of the lethal outcome of the case, only 50% of the participants indicated that their intervention of choice was to seek protection for the wife. so it is important to recognize these dangerous situations and choose an appropriate intervention that decreases harm to the target. use of couples counseling in domestic violence cases anecdotal data have shown that mental health professionals believe couples counseling can be the solution in domestic violence (montreal men against sexism, 1995); in addition, the us air force family advocacy program provides various services in response to spousal abuse, of which marital therapy is most frequent (o’leary, 2001). however, marital therapy it is not a recommended intervention in the literature, particularly when the partners are engaged in physical violence. both mcmahon and pence (1996) and hansen and goldberg (1993) suggest couples counseling in domestic violence 5 that couples counseling can be effective; however, only when the couple is no longer engaging in violent transactions. montreal men against sexism (1995) conducted a study in which at sixweek follow-up, half of the couples with domestic violence that received conjoint therapy reported violent incidents, and at six months, all couples that were in conjoint therapy reported further violence. while there was no control group in this study, it does provide some support for the treatment recommendations noted above. regardless, couples counseling as an automatic treatment recommendation needs to be carefully considered. couples counseling involves helping the couple to identify and reach goals, just as in individual counseling. in order for couples counseling to be effective, one partner cannot feel threatened by the other, and in general there would need to be an agreement on the problem for which the couple is seeking help. in cases of domestic violence, there will likely be a disagreement between the partners on the nature of the problem. domestic violence is one partner trying to control the other so abuse perpetrators often blame their partners for issues, or do not acknowledge that a problem exists (azcadv, 2000), and out of fear women may not openly express themselves in the presence of their partner. montreal men against sexism (1995) state that one result of conjoint therapy with domestic violence is that “therapy can end up mimicking the batterer’s rationale for his violence.” williamson (2000) also recommends that couples counseling be avoided and to instead work with the woman to improve her situation. there are a number of possible outcomes if couples counseling is recommended or used when a woman seeks help for domestic violence, and we will list some of the main ones. one, the couple may not return for another session due to the perpetrator’s lack of acknowledgement of any problem. hansen and goldberg (1993) state that some research shows that helping the perpetrator develop insight into his responsibility for the violence fails to reduce the violence or couples counseling in domestic violence 6 change his behavior. two, the perpetrator could become more abusive because his partner has exposed their situation to an outside party or three, the couple may continue to attend therapy and the perpetrator, given his desire for control, will attempt to control the sessions and misuse guidance provided by the counselor to further abuse at home. o’leary and murphy (1999) state that in cases where the violence has become more severe and more male perpetrated, couple therapy may perpetuate a severe imbalance of power. finally, there exists the possibility that the perpetrator will not agree to go to counseling at all. consequently, attempting only to work with the woman in individual counseling is the preferred intervention because it gives her time for herself in a safe environment to deal with the situation. as a side note, in working with male perpetrators of partner violence or when identifying a strategy for reducing partner violence on a macro scale in our society, batterers intervention programs (bips) have shown to have a significant impact in alleviating abusive behavior in intimate relationships (bennett et al., 2007). however, “50% of the participants never complete the program, regardless of whether or not they are court-ordered” (bennett et al., 2007, p. 42), which further supports the importance for mental health professionals to focus on targets of violence who ask for help and what they can do to deal with the situation. training of mental health practitioners we expected that the presence of training in the area of domestic violence would be related to mental health workers reactions to domestic violence situations. we define training in this study as technical training, as received in a formal course. the literature has demonstrated that there is an absence of training in working with domestic violence cases among mental health workers. campbell, raja and grining (1999) found that of 14,119 licensed counselors, social workers, clinical social workers or clinical/counseling psychologists they surveyed, only 59% of couples counseling in domestic violence 7 them had training in domestic violence. such lack of training could lead to responses to domestic violence situations that are not in the best interest of the client, or could even cause her harm. we hypothesized that these results of hansen and harway (1993) could come in part from a lack of specific training. we thus sought to examine if the presence of formal training resulted in treatment endorsements that may be more protective of the woman, specifically a decreased tendency to endorse couples counseling. socio-economic status and domestic violence in addition to the presence of training, we examined the factor of socio-economic status (ses) of the women in the vignettes. although the literature does not provide any information on mental health professionals’ perceptions of domestic violence in relation to ses of targets, one misconception is that domestic violence only occurs in lower ses populations. shapiro (1984) states in his chapter about working with people experiencing domestic violence that, “frequently there was a need to hide the abuse from public view. secretiveness was strengthened by concern with public opinion and fears of damage to social standing and occupational status” (p. 116). shapiro (1984) goes on further to say that some therapists can “reflect a customary middle-class abhorrence of violence” (p.118), implying that there can be a denial of the existence of family violence by and within the middle-class population. nevertheless, for shapiro (1984) the family violence that was seamless to outsiders was the most frequent type in his clinic, and adragna (1991) has found that 22% of the divorces in middle-class marriages are attributable to domestic violence. therefore, even though domestic violence exists in all ses classes, it is possible that the perception of a relation between domestic violence and social class could affect decisions of practitioners. mental health professionals may use different interventions with targets of a higher couples counseling in domestic violence 8 ses than with those of a lower ses. because a woman is of a higher ses and possibly in a stronger financial position to be on her own, a mental health worker may view her situation as less grave than that of a woman of lower ses. the professional may expect this woman to be more intelligent and to be able to leave the relationship more easily. therefore, if the client remains in the relationship, the helping professional may believe that the couple is simply having marital conflict that can be alleviated with couples counseling. however, her situation can be just as severe as that of a woman of a lower social status, with various factors hindering her ability to escape. furthermore, contrary to a misconception that domestic violence only entails physical abuse, it also entails verbal, emotional and financial abuse (tolman, rosen & wood, 1999). examples of financial abuse include the target’s partner taking her money, or putting more financial responsibility on her, so she may still not have complete control of her financial resources (azcadv, 2000). however, given the potentially greater financial wherewithal of women in higher ses groups, we expected that study participants would recommend couples counseling more highly for the woman of higher ses. in summary, given the lack of education in domestic violence received by mental health professionals, and the amount of controversy in utilizing couples counseling as an intervention in domestic violence cases, it is important to empirically measure the perceptions held by students in helping professions and to determine the extent to which they would endorse couples counseling. we expected those with no training in domestic violence to more highly endorse couples counseling for the couple in the vignettes than those with training in the area, and that this endorsement would be greater for the woman of high ses. we have examined the relationship between these two factors and the students’ level of endorsement of the following couples counseling in domestic violence 9 treatment options: going to a shelter, group counseling, individual counseling and couples counseling. method participants the study participants were 104 male and female undergraduate and graduate students taking classes in the education college of a large southwestern university. these classes included counseling, counseling psychology and various education classes. eight-three percent were female and 17% were male. our sample included individuals ranging from 20 to 60 years of age with a mean age of 30 years. sixty percent were graduate students and five percent were undergraduates; 35% did not report their year in school. further demographic details of the participants are presented in tables 1 and 2. table 1 has participants’ religious affiliation in addition to gender and major. table 2 has ethnicity and marital status. table 1 study participant gender, major and religious affiliation _____________________________________________________________________________________ gender school major religious affiliation _____________ ________________________________ _________________________________ male female psychology unidentified christian none other unidentified grad undergrad _____________________________________________________________________________________ 17 83 59 1 40 38.2 13.2 15.2 33.4 ____________________________________________________________________________ note. vales are percentages based on 104 total participants. couples counseling in domestic violence 10 table 2 study participant ethnicity and marital status _____________________________________________________________________________________ ethnicity marital status _________________________________________________ _______________________________ white hispanic asian black other unidentified single married unidentified _____________________________________________________________________________________ 66 9 6 4 10 5 50 18.4 31.6 ____________________________________________________________________________ note. percentages based on 104 total participants. instrument each student completed a survey that we created. the survey included a two-paragraph description of an abusive scenario adapted from wise and bowman (1997), five statements that were rated on a likert-type scale, and a demographic section. the two scenarios were identical except for the manipulation of the educational level and occupation of the target. the text of the first vignette was: josephine smith has contacted your agency. she requests help after an incident with her husband that left her with a cut on her right hand. ms. smith, a 35-year-old college instructor with a master’s degree in chemistry, tells you her story. she had arrived home in the evening after teaching a late-afternoon class, spent some time with her 10 year-old and 15 year-old daughters, and started preparing dinner. approximately ten minutes later, her husband, mark smith (an engineer), arrived home from work and became angry because dinner was not yet ready. he walked into the couples counseling in domestic violence 11 kitchen yelling that he has things to do and that dinner should be ready on time, then picked up a knife and threw it at her. as josephine started crying and treating her wound, mark left the house. the following morning, she called the “life help agency.” for the second scenario, “college instructor” was replaced with “cashier in department store”, “master’s degree in chemistry” was replaced with “who has never attended college” and “after teaching a late-afternoon class” was replaced with “after working late.” after reading the vignettes, the participants rated five statements on a likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). these statements were related to the treatment recommendations that the participant would give to the woman in the vignette as though they were an employee of life help agency, specifically: individual counseling, group counseling, couples counseling, and going to a shelter. for example, one statement read “i recommend couples counseling for josephine and her husband.” in addition, to test the validity of the ses manipulation, study participants responded to the question “josephine is intelligent.” if participants are attending to the two conditions, then they should rate the intelligence of josephine higher in the college instructor condition than in the cashier condition. the treatment recommendations and validity check statement are presented in table 1. in addition, we asked each participant the question “have you had any knowledge or training in partner violence?” to which they were to respond yes or no. procedure students taking various counseling and education courses were recruited to fill out the survey and the surveys were administered in the classrooms with minimal instruction. the first author attended classes with instructor permission and explained to the classes in a general way that the study would be surveying students’ reactions to a hypothetical domestic violence couples counseling in domestic violence 12 situation. the first author attended the classes toward the end of class time and explained that participation was voluntary. this way those students who chose to not participate were able to leave while others stayed to complete the survey. some instructors participated in the college’s research protocol that facilitated undergraduate participation in various research projects for extra credit. the first author also attended these classes to announce the study and, according to protocol, arranged times in a reserved classroom in which students could come to fill out the survey for extra credit. each student read only one of the two possible vignettes. the first author attended the classes with a stack of the surveys with the vignettes alternating, and randomly passed out surveys to each student from the top of the stack. the students were simply told that they would be reading a short vignette describing a situation of domestic violence and answering questions in response to it. the informed consent letter only told the students that the study will help determine domestic violence-related education needed, and did not indicate the factors to be analyzed. this letter was placed on top of the surveys so that the author could not match faces with handwriting, to ensure anonymity of the participants. to ensure independence of the participants’ responses, the first author was present in the classrooms and observed that students did not discuss the survey with each other and completed it on their own. study results were not purposely shared with participants but they were encouraged to approach the authors if they were interested in seeing them, or if they had any questions regarding the study. analysis we first conducted a univariate analysis of variance at an alpha level of .05 to test our ses manipulation. then, given that we expected students’ responses to the four statements of treatment options to be related to each other, we conducted a multivariate analysis of variance couples counseling in domestic violence 13 test with the four treatment options as the dependent variables. the two fixed factors of training and ses had two levels; target ses was either “instructor” or “cashier,” and training in domestic violence was “yes” or “no.” given that we found the manova analysis to be significant (indicating a difference between levels of endorsement of the four treatments), we conducted post-hoc individual univariate analyses so that we could compare the significance of the level of endorsement of the four different treatment recommendations. this allowed us to see how participants’ level of endorsement of couples counseling differed with respect to training and ses versus the other treatments of individual counseling, group counseling and shelter. results with our first univariate test as a manipulation check at an alpha level of .05, the effect of ses was significant, f(1,103) = 23.04, p < .001. the observed power of this test was .99. effect size of the difference between the two conditions was measured with eta-squared (η2) and was found to be .18, a large size in the social sciences. thus, participants very highly perceived the college instructor as more intelligent than the cashier, so they seem to have recognized the intended difference between the two conditions. these results are summarized in table 3. twenty-six percent of our sample reported having some training in domestic violence, 43% reported no training, and 32% of the respondents did not report their training level. with our manova analysis, the training effect was significant, f(4,97) = 4.59, p < .005. this test had an observed power of .94 and another high effect size of .16. this indicated that the level of endorsement of each treatment recommendation was significantly different from the others. thus we conducted post hoc univariate analyses given that the manova showed a difference in level of endorsement between the four treatments. the results of the post hoc univariate analyses are couples counseling in domestic violence 14 summarized in table 3. the interaction effect between training and ses was not significant, f(4, 97) = .94, p > .05. table 3 univariate anova results across participant training and target ses effects ______________________________________________________________________________ target ses training statement _________________ ________________ df f η2 df f η2 ______________________________________________________________________________ recommend going to a shelter. 1,103 4.66 .04 1,103 4.10 .04 recommend group counseling. 1,103 .04 .00 1,103 4.97 .04 recommend individual counseling. 1,103 .01 .00 1,103 4.60 .04 recommend couples counseling. 1,103 2.03 .02 1,103 13.92* .11 she is intelligent. 1,103 22.36** .18 ______________________________________________________________________________ *p = .001, **p < .001 the only significant training effect in our post-hoc analyses pertained to the degree to which the participants endorsed couples counseling, f (1,103) = 13.92, p < .001. this test had an observed power of .96 and an effect size of .11. participants without training were very much more likely to endorse couples counseling than those who had training. the mean and standard deviation for those with no training were m = 3.62, sd = 1.31, and for those with training were, m = 2.62, sd couples counseling in domestic violence 15 = 1.35. again, the likert-type scale on which participants responded was from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). discussion conclusions as we expected, training in the area of domestic violence was related to how highly students recommended couples counseling for the wife and her husband in our vignette. those without training in the area more highly recommended couples counseling than those who had training in the area. these results indicate that domestic violence education succeeds in making mental health workers aware of the potential ramifications of couples counseling in domestic violence cases. as we described in the beginning, couples counseling is not an uncommonly recommended intervention in these cases; however, it is counterindicated, particularly in instances where the couple is engaged in violent transactions or the woman feels unsafe in the presence of her partner. there were no significant results related to ses of the target. in other words, participants did not treat the women of high and low ses differently, and the difference due to training held across both ses conditions. this is a positive result showing that these students did not treat the women differently based on ses. these results can probably be explained by a greater awareness of domestic violence in our society today, and people in general understanding that no ses level is immune to domestic violence. implications and recommendations given the significant relationship in this study between training in domestic violence and level of endorsement of couples counseling, it would be appropriate for mental health worker training programs to provide more education in domestic violence to their students. campbell, couples counseling in domestic violence 16 raja and grinning (1999) found that most mental health professionals receive training in childhood sexual abuse, but they receive less training in domestic violence, and they recommend that training needs to be required in graduate school. they recommend that this training include therapy strategies, referral sources for targets, and legal and medical consequences. in addition, we attest that more comprehensive training would give students the needed formal knowledge of the area in order to more clearly understand the dynamics of domestic violence, the abuse cycle and thus why couples counseling should be considered cautiously. domestic violence involves the perpetrator’s desire to control his partner and this could be done in various ways, such as through physical abuse, verbal abuse, controlling her interactions with friends and family, or controlling her money (azcadv, 2000). thus we recommend that the training include the important factor of control in abusive relationships, a description of the abuse cycle, the above-mentioned ways in which the control is executed and why a target of domestic violence may not be safe in a couples counseling situation. other factors that are related to domestic violence are alcohol use and issues of anger on part of the perpetrators (mcmurran & gilchrist, 2008). it is also important that training include these factors that can often coincide with domestic violence. such comprehensive training could allow mental health professionals to help a target avoid increased harm, and help them to understand why couples counseling could be counterproductive. in table 4 we summarize more specific items that training curricula could include, provided by payne (2009) through his survey of mental health professionals’ supervisors for their input on training needs. we organized the training topics extracted by payne (2009) into categories for parsimony in the presentation in the table. table 4 couples counseling in domestic violence 17 possible topics for domestic violence training programs category topics basic information the basic dynamics of domestic violence theoretical perspectives on domestic violence victim-related issues indicators that may identify domestic violence victims documenting domestic violence in the victim’s record talking with victims of domestic violence the critical complications involved in domestic violence, such as posttraumatic stress disorder and depression designing a safety plan for victims and children obtaining a protection order for victims the availability of community (local) resources for victims the special needs of victims of elder abuse working with community-based services to get needed services to victims (e.g. shelters) obtaining needed medical care for victims obtained needed mental health care for victims family-related issues assessing a family for the risk of domestic violence talking with child witnesses of domestic violence the effect of domestic violence on employment the effect of domestic violence on children table 4 (continued). couples counseling in domestic violence 18 possible topics for domestic violence training programs category topics developing a rapport with families living in domestic violence situations perpetrator-related issues intervening with perpetrators of violence (abusers) communicating warning signs of abuser lethality legal issues legal options and laws available in domestic violence situations accessing law enforcement or legal options in domestic violence situations assisting victims in overcoming barriers to legal options testifying in court hearings working with the police to assist victims working with the court system to assist victims health professional-related issues coping with frustrations and emotions encountered when working with victims of domestic violence planning for own safety when working with victims note. adopted from payne (2008). working with a target of domestic violence is not unlike working with clients on other issues. the role of the counselor is to help the client be safe from danger, help her identify her couples counseling in domestic violence 19 goals for counseling, and facilitate progress toward those goals. this role does not include being directive and insisting on couples counseling. it is not uncommon for targets of domestic violence in individual counseling to ask the counselor if their partners should attend sessions with them. in such a situation, providing psychoeducation to the client on the possible outcomes of couples counseling would be appropriate. a thorough assessment of the client’s situation can help to determine if she is in an abusive relationship. o’leary and murphy (1999) provide instruments including self-report questionnaires and interview techniques that can aid the assessment process. moreover, these tools can also help to determine the amount of physical danger the client is facing. safety planning, a harm reduction method, will most likely be a part of the counselor’s work with the client, whether or not she chooses to leave her abuser. the therapist would want to cater to the woman’s requests, and if her goal is to stay with her partner and she asks the therapist to help them improve their communication, couples counseling could be appropriate. the results of this research are limited in several ways. first, only one training program was studied and the results cannot be generalized to students in other programs. second, the participants were novices to the clinical setting. it is possible that the study would yield different results if the participants were experienced clinicians who had worked with more domestic violence cases. third, there is the possibility that demographic differences of therapists can be related their reactions to domestic violence, such as gender, level of schooling, ethnicity and religiosity. the literature does not provide information on why such demographic differences of therapists would be significant in their attitudes toward domestic violence, but further research could be done to explore any differences between the reactions of males versus females, undergraduate versus graduate students, whites versus ethnic minorities, and religious versus couples counseling in domestic violence 20 nonreligious therapists. further research could also be done in surveying more experienced clinicians. it is plausible that value differences between groups could lead to different attitudes, in turn leading to different treatment recommendations. nevertheless, the power of our analyses show that training in the area of domestic violence is a factor in how these students responded to the scenarios presented to them. couples counseling was recommended significantly less strongly by those students with some training in the area. therefore, training in domestic violence could be useful in allowing helping professionals to guide clients in as safe and effective way as possible. couples counseling in domestic violence 21 references adragna, m. 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(1997). comparison of beginning counselors’ responses to lesbian vs. heterosexual partner abuse. violence and victims, 12, 127-135. possible topics for domestic violence training programs possible topics for domestic violence training programs centering love as the foundation of a racially just and decolonizing student affairs current issues in education, 23(2) 1 volume 23, issue 2 october 28, 2022 issn 1099-839x centering love as the foundation of a racially just and decolonizing student affairs dian d. squire loyola university chicago rachael blansett oyster river cooperative school district raquel wright-mair rowan university abstract: in writings on humanizing pedagogy, the concept of love is often presented as the core principle grounding all action. however, love, as it is currently conceptualized, leaves much room for interpretation (hooks, 2000; levinas, 1998; matias & allen, 2013). therefore, it is critical as educators and student affairs professionals we challenge the idea of how we commonly think about love as an abstract notion (“fight hate with love”) and, rather, reimagine what love means within a movement that challenges oppressive structures within student affairs. by not recognizing or taking actions to correct higher education’s past acts of indifference (noting the gross injustices against indigenous populations and the exploited labor and enslavement of africans rooted within the history of college campuses), we are perpetuating the protection of a historical lie and continuing the legacy of settler colonialism and dehumanization within the profession. in this manuscript, we provide an overview of settler colonialism and its impact in student affairs, review how love is academically and culturally defined across fields, and present an alternative framework for building love as an actionable "skill set" that allows educators to move the field toward racial justice and humanization. keywords: love, racial justice, decolonization, dehumanization, settler colonialism, student affairs citation: squire, d., blansett, r., & wright-mair, r. (2022). centering love as the foundation of a racially just and decolonizing student affairs. current issues in education, 23(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss2.2033 accepted: october 16, 2022 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss2.2033 squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 2 love as action over the last seven years, the american college personnel association (acpa)-college student educators international has grappled to fully understand what it means to be a truly socially just field. after much conversation, feedback, and wrestling with the realities of the field in relation to the value of social justice, acpa leaders penned the document, a bold vision forward: a framework for the strategic imperative for racial justice and decolonization (quaye et al., 2019), that laid out a powerful approach to work in student affairs. the framework is focused on equity, inclusion, and transformative change, which student affairs educators can utilize to (re)imagine their work and its impact. the framework centers love as the “core” (quaye et al., 2019, p. 10), the groundwork from which all other transformative action should stem and which guides the underlying principles of humanization, radical democracy, and critical consciousness. the document moves beyond the commonly held conceptualization of love as amorous (hooks, 2000) and extends love to the community as a whole. additionally, the framework notes that “we must not only resent and be angered at injustice; we must simultaneously be in love with justice” (quaye et al., 2019, p. 11). but what does it mean to be in love with something? to articulate love in this way is to recognize that love is not simply a non-critical display of emotion, affection, or care. it is not an ethic but rather an actionable concept which can spread throughout a community in tangible ways. in relation to reconstructing a racially just and decolonizing field, we argue that love acts upon the call for justice, which requires particular outcomes and a set of skills, knowledge, and behaviors; we must become competent at love, especially in a field that so heavily centers transformation and development of self and others (patton et al., 2016). here we attempt to help expand upon the framework’s call for building love as an actionable philosophy in student affairs and for student affairs educators. for the purpose of this paper, we will be using “educator” as an all-encompassing term to embody practitioners, scholars, graduate students in student affairs preparation programs, and other professionals who are actively engaged and involved in student affairs work. noting that educators should be striving to cultivate love as the foundational groundwork for humanization and decolonization in student affairs (quaye et al., 2019), we first explore our understanding of settler colonialism and how it impacts higher education broadly. next, we review how the notion of love extends throughout seminal texts on humanization partially by understanding dehumanization. although love shows up in many texts, its articulation of purpose and utility varies widely from simple notation (tuck & yang, 2012) to described behavior (hooks, 2000). extending the arguments of “love scholars,” we then create a bricolage of skills necessary from those who work from a framework of love that moves from idea to reality. if educators want to use love as a concept to forward justice in the field of student affairs, then we must build our capacity to love. following an examination of how love is currently defined in multiple disciplines and society versus how the term could be (re)envisioned, we articulate moments in which student affairs may have acted from a place of indifference, a term we are borrowing from author elie weisel (1986). in doing so, we do not indict anybody involved with purposeful indifference, but rather come from an analytical place of impact. bell hooks (2000) argues that we only know love when love is absent; therefore, this exercise may allow educators to imagine possible ways forward when acting from a place of love (quaye et al., 2019). finally, we make the argument that love as a skill can be used to fast track the trajectory of racial justice and decolonization praxis within the field of student affairs, a project that is ongoing and unending (dotson, 2018). squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 3 situating settler colonialism to uphold indifference is to engage in dehumanization. and to understand dehumanization is to understand settler colonialism and its impact on student affairs. this understanding proves important as we move through this argument and juxtapose acts of indifference and their relation to settler colonialism to cultivating a skill-set of love as an action within student affairs. the dark history of colonization and settler colonialism continues to enact violence upon oppressed peoples that negates their humanity (la paperson, 2017; levinas, 1998). freire (2000)1 writes that “dehumanization, which marks not only those whose humanity has been stolen, but also (though in a different way) those who have stolen it, is a distortion of the vocation of becoming more fully human” (emphasis original, p. 44). afropessimist scholars argue the idea of social death (patterson, 1982) in reference to the specific and perpetual condition of [black] people not being fully accepted as human or offered opportunities for humanization in larger society. this notion is especially emphasized by frank b. wilderson iii (2020), stating, “human is not an organic entity but a construct; a construct that requires its other in order to be legible” (p. ix). therefore, within an educational setting, one who is not able to bring their full selves to the university, or have had their selves stolen, by way of oppressive forces such as ongoing settler colonialism/indigenous erasure, anti-black racism, whiteness’ technologies, sexism, ableism, etc., has been dehumanized (la paperson, 2017; stewart & nicolazzo, 2019). these dominating forces, supplemented by imperialist capitalism, lend themselves to the eradication of humanity (levinas, 1998). in our view, the conditions that facilitate dehumanization draw upon settler colonialism and its intertwining sinews of capitalism and neo-imperialism (wolfe, 2006). these core philosophies, policies, and progressions of society are to blame (harvey, 2007). student affairs must find a way to identify and engage in reparative action to battle these historic and ongoing wrongs (steinman, 2016). the sinews are not gossamer but heavy and weigh on the spirit of student affairs. one way forward is actionable love. technologies of domination as australian scholar wolfe (2006) professed, “the structural complexity of settler colonialism could sustain libraries of elaboration” (p. 392). therefore, we attempt to paint a broad picture of settler colonialism for us to imagine student affairs, where settler colonialism is not ubiquitous or opaque. in short, settler colonialism is an ever-present and changing technology of domination (la paperson, 2017). in thinking of settler colonialism in this way, the project of decolonizing higher education does not reach a completion point until colonization, along with capitalism and imperialism, are destroyed. there is much work to do, and the analysis is complicated. 1 we do want to acknowledge the benefits and problematics with citing freire here within the scope of discussing settler colonialism. author 1 has read and taught this book at least a half dozen times. each time, he returns to some of the questions that we cite in this paper and which this paper hopes to answer as well as some contradictions and opaque statements freire makes regarding humanizing pedagogy. without belaboring the point, there are a few limitations. these are also supported by tuck and yang (2012) in their seminal manuscript decolonization is not a metaphor. specifically, we are interested in their critique of freire’s liberation which they define as a liberation of the mind; indigenous erasure includes stealing of land and exploiting nature. therefore, there is no rectifying a disconnect between his epistemic liberation and decolonization. this critique helps to ground this manuscript’s analysis as we attempt to provide a possible way forward. we do not mean that there is no benefit to understanding his text, but rather that there is a distinct limitation regarding teaching it ahistorically and apart from context. squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 4 settler colonialism is the process by which land and people become property (la paperson, 2017). it is the movement of native life and lifeways to production, consumption, exploitation, and destruction. current settler colonialism is a set of technologies, rather than a particular set of actions, meant to alienate, separate, and subjugate peoples through the turning of people and land to property (la paperson, 2017). for example, the recent battles taking place over the enbridge line 3 pipeline in minnesota provide a prime example of the federal government’s failure to honor an 1855 treaty by stealing and poisoning ojibwe land and decimating areas of hunting, fishing, and farming. the pipeline would also create 190m tons of greenhouse gasses per year and carry tar oil to the great lakes damaging the ecosystem and making pipeline 3 a problem for all people (the years project, 2021). this example demonstrates how settler colonialism can impact us all because, as previously noted, it is not a particular set of actions against a certain people, though the genesis of settler colonialism was the attempted destruction of indigenous peoples/societies that continues to be a key feature. clearly evident, those technologies are the intersection of whiteness, indigenous erasure, and anti-blackness. by noting these as technologies of domination, we mean to say that they are ever-changing, providing never-ending opportunities for exploitation and colonial rule. thus, settler colonization is always happening, as is decolonization (dotson, 2018). dotson (2018) noted that in order for decolonization to happen, a project of remembering and locating one’s self and historicity in relation to settler colonization must also occur. in this way, relationality is built and maintained between the colonizing and potential decolonizing self. people who engage in this liminal, yet material space, may be what la paperson (2017) called scyborgs. for instance, a thorough history of how enslaved native and black bodies were used to build both the first physical universities in the u.s. and catalyze a scientific racism that permeates university life today (wilder, 2014), is not common knowledge. the ways colonial logics, embedded within slave plantations, continue to organize epistemologies and action on college campuses today (squire et al., 2018) is unconscionable. the property rights of white people (i.e., whiteness) over enslaved black people (i.e., anti-blackness) continues in multiple forms today in institutional reliance on, for example, chief diversity officers as plantation drivers, campus cultural centers as underground railroad systems, and black student bodies as entities from which to profit. wilderson iii (2020) highlights slavery (much like settler colonialism) as an ongoing and adaptive process rather than a moment in time, noting “blackness and slaveness are inextricably bound in such a way that whereas slaveness can be separated from blackness, blackness cannot exist as other than slaveness” (p. 42). therefore, student affairs educators, particularly student affairs educators of color who hold subordinate social identities but are not indigenous, must engage in a (re)membering of their past colonial history in relation to their decolonizing present desires and actions (tengan, 2008). to be clear, when we say that land and people are turned to property, what we mean to say is that land and people are made into property that can be utilized to forward whiteness and anti-blackness, both enacting various forms of violence on indigenous peoples and communities of color. the concept of whiteness as property (cabrera et al., 2017; harris, 1993; smith, 2012) means law, treaties, and rights are the government’s vessels (technologies) of continued subjugation of “land and nonhuman life to deathlike states” (la paperson, 2017). in understanding whiteness as property, we understand that not only was land stolen from native people and black folx made into property, but that only white people could then own land, and almost all slaves were not white (harris, 1993; john, 1999; squire, williams, & tuitt, 2018), thereby creating a racial hierarchy and encoding in u.s. law what it meant to be white and the squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 5 rights associated with white people based on the “nature” of their whiteness (smith, 2012). this re-encoding of racial privilege/property rights linked to the law continues to permeate u.s. socio-cultural milieus today. one can see this currently in the challenge of affirmative action and the clashing understandings of who deserves the right to enjoy “tangibly and economically valuable benefits” (harris, 1993, p. 280), including access to higher education (poon et al., 2019). the belief that one has a right to a community good or that a public good can be privatized for one’s personal gain at the exclusion of others is the definition of white privilege (and settler colonialism) (harris, 2020). whiteness is the “embodiment of white privilege” and becomes “usable property” when it is codified in law, as anti-affirmative action proponents hope to complete (harris, 1993, p. 282). the affirmative action battles are a modern-day manifestation of what is known as the right to use and enjoyment, and the absolute right to exclude in the conceptual understanding of whiteness as property. when, and if, educators teach about affirmative action in student affairs, if it is not linked to a discussion on settler colonialism and property rights, then it is void of important historical context and has the potential to reproduce harmful systems that reinforce anti-black racism (poon et al., 2019). property is a legal construct which is inherently contradictory to indigenous knowledge systems. even in the case of arguing that native tribes have sovereignty, sovereignty is still based within a colonial legal system; it is not necessarily inherent to native lifeways in the way it is described constitutionally. with this brief example, we hope to help the reader understand how settler colonialism is linked to property and, consequently, whiteness. disconnection from land in this section, we focus on the importance of land to decolonization. we believe this requires special attention because the discussion of land can often be lost behind the liberal inclusion of land acknowledgments. there is a mental block that disconnects a person not just from the land, but what the land provides. in a system where many can access anything they need at any time (e.g., a slew of food delivery services available at our leisure), society forgets the source of that nourishment in the first place. land is a valuable resource and therefore fought over and required to survive. universities sit on stolen lands, expand on stolen lands, and profit from stolen lands (i.e., land grant universities; historically black colleges and universities) (lee & ahtone, 2020; wilder, 2014). every time a new residence hall is built, the university expands on stolen native land without consideration of past histories and current relations. every time university students engage in service trips to build homes on colonized lands for non-native peoples, student affairs engages in settler colonization. however, the use of land in unnatural ways does not have to be so visible; the extension of settler colonial land abuse can also run through intermediaries toward what vendors a division uses and how they respect the land and in what their vendors/partners invest. for example, the university of texas’s endowment hit $31b in 2018, making it the second biggest endowment in the u.s. (mcdonald, 2018). this boost in funds came because of oil rights on the traditional and ancestral lands of the comanche and mescalero apache in what is now west texas. universities are settler colonial projects and terra nullius, a term meaning “nobody’s land,” is a false doctrine that must be reckoned with by each institution (wolfe, 2006). it should also be noted that there is a persistent narrative of indigenous erasure in the form of once being. that is, through narratives of settler exceptionalism and modernity, there is a belief that the indigenous peoples who once lived on the lands that universities are situated are no longer there. squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 6 as somebody who worked at a university that is situated upon multiple traditional and ancestral lands [author 1], in a town that was once a logging community, with the mascot of a lumberjack, we can confidently say that indigenous peoples have never left these lands and continue to have a significant presence in multiple communities. therefore, even with a compulsory mission to “serve the community,” a university cannot and must not neglect indigenous peoples in their missions, goals, and educational visions. the existence of native peoples on these lands and the continual erasure of their bodies points to the unfinished processes of settler colonialism. settler colonialism is not a finite process; it is a kind of shapeshifter, an ever-bending, enduring understanding that history is the present and continues to inform how we think about and honor indigenous communities (kauanui, 2016). similarly, this disconnection from the land lends itself to define generational traumas and identity dissonance of the black diasporic experience. wilderson iii (2020) positions that the antagonism between the postcolonial subject and the settler cannot be mutually exclusive with the violence of social death in that “slavery is a relational dynamic…and that relational dynamic can continue to exist once the settler has left or ceded governmental power” (p. 41). as such, the ongoing process of slavery has yet to lament the loss of indigeneity and the trauma of black people being abducted from the lands that would define their identities which has resulted in legacies of “‘de-culturalized’ africans, denied knowledge of language, clan, family, and land base, denied even knowledge of who their nations are” (amadahy & lawrence, 2009, p. 127). with this, sexton (2014) posits that this loss of indigeneity can only be acknowledged abstractly with its recovery being lost to the historical violence of enslavement. however, this process of de-culturalization is foundational in the narrative of black-native solidarity as one of the defining characteristics of colonization is the “systematic disconnection (and dispossession) of indigenous peoples from [their] homelands” (waziyatawin, 2012, p. 72) which ultimately situates black and indigenous peoples in kindred positions within settler colonialism. current theories of love often, theorizing love in decolonizing work occurs by understanding it as an amorphous, differentially understood, and liberal notion. this is not to say that love is not a useful tool for interactions with other b/beings, but rather to say that love, as it is typically defined, is often misunderstood within student affairs and may be too narrowly characterized to be valuable in the move toward racial justice and decolonization. with this, we assert that evolving love from its current indeterminate form and definitions towards a more action-oriented ideal will operate as a tool in dismantling settler colonialism and dehumanization within the field. finding a singular definition for the concept of love may prove elusive, particularly if it is only defined through an amatory lens. often as humans, we find comfort in the ambiguous nature of love because it then places the onus on the individual to seek self-meaning rather than bearing the weight of being held accountable to a collective definition. this “self-meaning” generally allows one to mold the idea of love into an incorporeal, inherent feeling with which one is born as human that typically extends itself into either a romantic, monogamous experience between one partner, the platonic joy of friendship and kinship, or the enthusiasm one possesses for general passions and hobbies. simultaneously, the non-defined term of love is at times weaponized as a form of liberal ideology that is expressed as the solvent to structural violence (i.e., “fighting hate with love” or the one love movement). hooks (2000) noted, everyone assumes that we will know how to love instinctively” (p. xxvii) ...our confusion about what we mean when we use the word ‘love’ is the source of our squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 7 difficulty in loving. if our society had a commonly held understanding of the meaning of love, the act of loving would not be so mystifying” (p. 3). in the literature, authors theorize love in multiple ways, all leading to a somewhat confusing amalgamation of the term. for instance, in loving whiteness (matias & allen, 2013), an examination of love’s unconsciousness is a treatise on how true love can be understood in relation to how a mother loves the child she birthed and how love cannot exist if abusive power relations are present. clearly articulated is the notion that there exists a “problematic relationship between two types of love: romantic and humanizing” (matias & allen, 2013, p. 288). in short, a woman who experiences childbirth experiences a humanizing love because the woman experiences both the “pain and struggle that positively binds the humanity of one person to another” (matias & allen, 2013, p. 289). like fromm (1956), love requires a mutuality of growth and development between two beings and in that loving relationship between two humans both can love the whole of humanity. basically, a neo/liberal notion of the connection of individuation, competition, desire for acceptance/conformity, and relations for the purpose of tangible outcomes (matias & allen, 2013), characteristics of whiteness (cabrera et al., 2017; gusa, 2010; la paperson, 2017) and perhaps what boggs (2012) would call the “shadow side” of love (p. 33), all create an inability to love in this context. at the same time, love that extends from these social realities, noting that this unconsciousness becomes the love that grasps onto power in whiteness, begs for challenge. while we agree that this notion of love can exist, it still falls short of understanding how to love in a communal context like student affairs and how love can instruct social change, namely racial justice and decolonization. understanding the power dynamics between two loving individuals in a humanizing loving relationship is important to dismantling whiteness; however, we are not sure if recognizing the power of love moves us in a decolonizing way. in examining other humanization/ontological scholars, such as bell hooks (2000) in all about love and grace lee boggs (2012) in the next american revolution, one begins to understand why love is operationalized inconsistently across contexts. specifically, bell hooks writes that “there can be no love without justice” (p. 19). for hooks, love is a combination of care, commitment, trust, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and it is unconditional, meaning that it is non-transactional. love is an action. love turns to selflessness. for boggs (2012), love is a precursor for justice. are these perspectives incommensurate? hooks (2000) drew from fromm’s work and her own lived narrative, as do matias and allen (2013), when they noted that “love and abuse cannot coexist” (p. 6), perhaps leading her to this conclusion which is informed by her experience as a black woman. boggs (2012) instead drew from martin luther king, jr., where love “is based on the willingness to go to any lengths to restore or create community. practicing this concept of love empowers the oppressed to overcome fear and the oppressors to transcend hate” (boggs, 2012, p. 95). perhaps the answer lies in the backgrounds of these two women, their experiences extending from interactions with anti-blackness, one directly (i.e., hooks) and one through the filter of her relationship to antiasian racism, radicalization within leftist politics, and her solidarity work embedded in the detroit black community (i.e., boggs). this means that how one understands themselves in relation to the world around them may determine how they conceptualize love. to complicate the matter, levinas (1998), a french existentialist who is known for his work in ontology, wrote that love forgives injustice and injustice is the limitation of freedom. in this case, his thinking aligns with boggs, who does not believe that one needs justice to have love. hooks (2000) extended this idea in all about love, writing, “when love is present the desire squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 8 to dominate and exercise power cannot rule the day. all the great social movements for freedom and justice in our society have promoted a love ethic” (p. 98). while it may be unnecessary to explicate which came first, justice or love, one can clearly see the implication of the relationship. therefore, the application of love as an analytical tool for understanding social justice movements becomes unclear when one does not understand the personal and social context and applies the tenets of love in discretionary manners without completely understanding the intent and impact of such prior analysis. or perhaps, love can exist in one venue (a place where love exists before justice, i.e., boggs), but not another (a place where there is injustice and no love, i.e., hooks), thereby weakening the theory of love as a holistic answer to injustice while at the same time providing hope for love as a mediating factor in an unjust world as people can apply it at will; love is a choice, a “transformative force” (hooks, 2000, p. xix). perhaps this brings one to a place where there is an inability to decide upon one theory of love in the sea of possibilities of the concept, and perhaps that is okay because settler colonialism indeed asks us to continually choose one way of being over another. the art of love in the next section, we provide the tenets of love that are critical in practice if student affairs educators are ever to adopt the art of loving properly as the framework within the field. incorporating love as a core value within student affairs allows educators to begin to own their historical truths of colonization and enslavement (responsibility), address and reconcile the ongoing legacies of genocide and settler colonialism (care), position indigenous, black, and brown people’s ways of knowing as the foundation of educational practices (knowledge), and include indigenous, black, and brown people’s values and perspectives within policies and operations of the institution and specifically within student affairs (respect). ultimately, a community built on supporting each other and building a more human world full of love is what student affairs should work toward being (boggs, 2012). with this, the infrastructure of student affairs operations and functions should be working to incorporate the framework of love as a form of creating justice within the community. learning and mastering the art of love is a requisite skill in the toolkit for student affairs educators in their work and praxis. the propositions listed to theorize breaking the cycle of abuse are a nonexhaustive list and an ever-going process requiring educators to build the capacity to love as a collective. love is a skill, and the skill becomes a form of art; the field of student affairs owes it to its legacy and future to commit to this art (fromm, 1956). love as skill in the exploration of love and the absence of love within student affairs, it becomes clear that creating the idea of love as an actionable framework within the field is critical. love resists power over another and instead asks both people to understand themselves as inseparable from the other and the self (fromm, 1956). the totality of human relies on the relationship between individuals and the freedom that exists among people (levinas, 1998). love is non-transactional, but still requires accountability and responsibility (levinas, 1998). hooks (2000) noted that when one loves somebody, they see the world the way it is. from this, in thinking back to the question of humanization, what this means to say is: “i see you existing in the world in the way that it is.” that is, since i understand the ways that systemic oppression, racism, sexism, ableism, genderism, transantagonism, and classism impact your life, i will act in a different way and therefore see you as human and love you as such. therefore, love demands knowledge of the squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 9 other and love of the other demands knowledge (levinas, 1998). lastly, love is an act, so when one “risks an act of love” (freire, 2000, p. 50), they get to the core of what love can do for justice. love is often seen as “the great intangible” (hooks, 2000, p. 4). thus, how can educators begin to reimagine and transform this idea into an actionable practice that can be utilized as a tool to achieve justice in student affairs? first, this requires that “love” be reframed as an ontological philosophy and decolonizing project that humans can adopt within their worldview and how they shape themselves in relation to others and the land. that is, one must understand all beings as being human and human beings from the start, not as something one must prove to gain respect. furthermore, we need to re-envision love as a skill-set that one would continue to learn and aspire to master over time; as such, we would begin to view the act of loving as a multi-faceted and dynamic process that would also consider the overarching goals of humanization, racial justice, and critical consciousness and ultimately, the field of student affairs. from this, it can be argued that the skill-set of love becomes a core value that student affairs educators embody and incorporate into practice and field. incorporating a core value of love ultimately redefines the ways one will think, operate, and currently evaluate our mastery within the field and educators’ future vision for student affairs work. love as a core value embodies the tenets stated by fromm (1956) as care, knowledge, responsibility, and respect (later to be extended and modified by hooks (2000) to also include “commitment” and “trust”). to accomplish the art of love fully demands educators to incorporate these tenets into their daily work and overall vision of the student affairs profession. in addition, all these tenets must be taken into consideration and practiced in a holistic sense for love to truly operate and exist within our field. in this way, student affairs professionals must make the conscious choice to love. treating love as intentional practice rather than a form of nature defaults to the human assuming accountability by identifying past and present acts of indifference, committing to unlearning relational forms that do not center love, and working towards repairing harm and healing. by not recognizing or taking actions to correct higher education’s past acts of indifference (noting the gross injustices against the indigenous and the exploited labor and enslavement of africans rooted within the history of college campuses), educators are perpetuating the protection of a historical lie and continuing the legacy of settler colonialism and dehumanization within the profession. however, educators are purposefully socialized to fear the truth of indifference. when one buys into the lie of history as the past and denies the envisioning and creation of a loving world, “we are all potential victims” (hooks, 2000, p. 47) of indifference. when the field of student affairs has decided to love the lie more than justice, it has sealed the justice and humanity of the profession within a tomb of continued colonization and abuse. without reserve, we must be able to build the “capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other” (boggs, 2012, p. 47). in order to survive, it is time for the field of student affairs to embrace the tenets of love (i.e., care, knowledge, responsibility, and respect) as the basic elements that encapsulate the concept of love as a skill and actively embed these principles within their institutional practices. we default to the document, a bold vision forward: a framework for the strategic imperative for racial justice and decolonization (quaye et al., 2018) additionally to explore the tenet of trust and commitment. squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 10 care the concept of care is shown as being interwoven into the idea of loving through the evidence of familial ties and relationships. “love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love” (fromm, 1956, p. 26) and as such, if active concern and care for fellow brethren and human life are absent, then love is not present. for example, drawing upon her upbringing, hooks (2000) highlights that though she was raised in a household where basic necessities (i.e., food, shelter, water) were met, the action of love was not present in the home because “aggressive shaming and verbal humiliation coexisted with lots of affection and care” (hooks, 2000, p. 6). she and her siblings grew up in a household where they did not feel love, but they did feel cared for; however, this lack of feeling loved ultimately did not “positively nurture the growth of [their] spirit” (p. 7). though this example is shaped within the confines of familial experiences, these actions are shown within the work of student affairs. if college campuses choose not to address and repair harm and abuse that was caused during the initial birth of higher education, then institutions are fundamentally showing a lack of care and concern for the marginalized populations in which they now serve. care requires intent and an awareness of impact. a care that is intentional removes itself from the confines of neoliberal whiteness; that is, it removes itself from considerations of efficiency, competition, and individualism and places decisionmaking in the scope of community and communal justice. knowledge knowledge proves to be a crucial factor in one’s ability to love in that it emphasizes the idea of continually learning about oneself and deepening a connection, learning, and understanding of others. this idea of knowledge stems from knowing a person for their true, authentic self rather than through a distorted picture that a person has painted of the other. humans have two routes for obtaining this truth: (a) having complete power over another person or, (b) in the act of love (fromm, 1956). with this, “only if i know a human being objectively, can i know him in his ultimate essence, in the act of love” (fromm, 1956, p. 31). the idea of objectively knowing another extends itself to the student affairs profession because educators actively need to engage all students critically who hold a complex set of identities and experiences. if student affairs educators do not uphold and learn about these different cultures and perspectives and allow space for them within our institutional practices, then these professionals will continue to subjectively paint a picture of humans in a way that does not align with their truth. the idea of knowing a person (e.g., a student, staff, or faculty member) objectively is difficult. love requires all of us to engage in the hard work of figuring out how to live inquisitively. levinas (1998) spent much time writing about the idea of betrayal and eliminating the occasion for betrayal in the transactions in which humans engage. student affairs educators betray each other when we have no knowledge of each other; student affairs educators betray ourselves when we do not recognize that we are betraying our own humanity when we do not know those around us. to love is to know a person in relation to the oppressions thrust upon them (hooks, 2000). to know love is to engage in a critical examination of the world as it is, full of oppression and opportunities for liberation. squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 11 responsibility often, the idea of responsibility can denote a task or a duty that is generally imparted onto a person by someone else. however, an alternative definition of responsibility allows a person autonomy in participating in the choice: “...responsibility, in its true sense, is an entirely voluntary act; it is my response to the needs, expressed, or unexpressed, by another human being” (fromm, 1956, p. 28). responsibility is at the heart of student affairs work as educators have an inherent duty to the student. thus, if student affairs educators are not accountable for the historical racial projects of colonization and settler colonialism, then ultimately, they absolve a responsibility to the indigenous land they occupy and the black, indigenous, and other racially minoritized communities with whom they work alongside and serve. the field of student affairs, and the reader as an educator in the field, has a duty to engage in the action of responsibility and, therefore, the act of love. in the example of self-care being utilized as a tool of exploitation and commodification, the project required an education in knowing what settler colonialism is and how it exists today, caring enough to examine a dehumanizing issue impacting the field, and engaging the duty to be responsible for the field, for those in the field, and for the students served. student affairs educators cannot absolve their duty not only to serve students but must take responsibility for how they reproduce oppression in service of students and responsibility for the liberation of all humans. respect if it were not for respect, responsibility could easily turn into domination and possessiveness (fromm, 1956). respect is “not fear and awe; it denotes...the ability to see a person…, to be aware of [their] unique individuality” (fromm, 1956, p. 28). even though student affairs has a responsibility to every student, educators must also recognize that every student harbors their own individual spirit that deserves growth and nourishment with the absence of exploitation. within the art of loving, the idea that respect is sought through the nonexistence of exploitation makes it paramount for student affairs [educators to “grow in [their] own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me [i.e., the student affairs professional]” (fromm, 1956, p. 28). respect is integral to building a skill-set of love in that it centers the most vulnerable and marginalized ways of knowing at the heart of the institution and the field of student affairs. indifference in student affairs in this section, we provide two examples of indifference in student affairs (weisel, 1986). as one reads these examples, attempt to note how the tenets of love were or were not present and what applying a loving logic would achieve. while engaging in this sorting activity and thinking through what love looks like, hooks (2000) suggests that by tracking a history of indifference, one might come to a clearer understanding of love. we have chosen to analyze two distinct (yet non-exhaustive) acts of indifference in student affairs that showcase the continual pattern of settler colonialism, dehumanization, and white supremacy and have ultimately asked ourselves what can educators potentially learn from those moments? we describe two scenarios below, knowing that these are not complete accounts of the events but understanding that an examination through a love framework may illuminate some ways forward. the first case is a recollection of an event that occurred at an acpa-college student educators international convention (acpa), a student affairs professional association, with information drawn from publicly available blog posts and articles related to the case. the second is based on an article squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 12 written by two scholars in the field relating to their experiences teaching in a student affairs program. analysis of these cases in relation to the proposed love framework is situated at the end of this manuscript. t*circle at acpa tampa convention in 2015, acpa held their annual convention in tampa, fl. the scheduled keynote speaker was laverne cox, a black transwoman, actress, activist, and star of the netflix show orange is the new black. due to unforeseen circumstances, cox canceled her trip. searching for a replacement, the convention team asked a group of queer and trans* association members to supply the names of potential replacements. paying attention to the intersections of race and gender identity, the members provided a list that included an extensive register of racially minoritized trans* educators, but the association chose none of the names on the list and instead chose to invite michael sam, a black gay athlete who recently came out and was in popular media for being the first gay football player to be drafted to the national football league. sam eventually canceled two days before the event, and the association invited two black cis-men to engage in a dialogue instead. a group of trans* members had already organized a session called t*circle 2: a dialogue on intersectionality among trans* and gender non-conforming educators, which extended previous work done by t*circle, a group of trans* student affairs professionals, graduate students, and faculty making a space for collectivism and solidarity around identity against the genderism, transphobia, and transantagonism present in the field broadly (jourian et al., 2015; simmons, 2016). once the events transpired in tampa, the group decided to kick off t*3: trans*form! trans*cend! trans*gress! where the group used the space to act against the genderism, transphobia, and transantagonism present in the association and within its membership at the intersections of race and racism, as was evidenced by the erasure of black and brown trans* bodies in the association’s most recent decision. the purpose of the space according to a poster hung up in the area read: “t*3 is a counter-space where trans* and genderqueer people regroup and heal as well as gather to talk about and enact a resistance against genderism and intersecting oppressions in higher education and student affairs.” the space, held for only trans*-identifying members, was centrally located in the convention hall so that trans* members could be visibilized and so that they could have a space of solidarity. important to the context was the fact that genderism, transerasure, and transantagonism had been present in the association from some of the highest leadership positions despite the association’s values of social justice and inclusion (simmons, 2016). an unauthored acpa convention blog post following the convention noted, some members felt that we did not do the right thing in doing so (selecting non-trans* speakers). they protested at convention. some members protested their protest...some felt negatively impacted and we grieve that reality while feeling excited about the extraordinary ‘push/pull’ mobilizing force that was present in the stories of the speakers. (acpa, 2015, para. 9-10) in the context of love and loving, this incident, to us, serves as a potential moment of indifference. these moments exist in all aspects of educators’ lives. educators often describe them as intent v. impact, but love extends beyond the incident into the space of healing that is opened or precluded from happening. squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 13 initial analysis it is not that the association leadership did not react without some level of concern for the situation, but rather that the actions neglected a historical understanding of the situation and any ongoing subjugation of the trans* community within this context. specifically, the reactions to the real-lived experiences and emotions of the trans* communities in this context and within the field at large were largely dismissed (simmons, 2016). in the block quotation above, one can see that some association members were not able to see and know the trans* community at that moment. that is, to love people within the context of both them as individuals and their space within an interlocking system of oppression (hooks, 2000). the association members who “protested the protest” did not see the world the way it is (hooks, 2000) and to see the world the way it is and the way it impacts individuals and groups is to engage in love. additionally, educators must “let beings be, to understand them as independent of the perception that discovers them and grasps them” (levinas, 1998, p. 6). in this case, the perceptions were of trans* members who “felt negatively” rather than “were negatively” impacted – an impact that discovered them and grasped onto them through the eyes of dominating cis-identifying leadership within the association. this grasp centered the trans* members as the problem, as disruptive to the convention and association rather than the convention or association as disruptive to full trans* humanity. in the context of t*circle being an intersectional space for trans* members (jourian et al., 2015), the action of “racializing assemblages provide[s] visual modalities in which dehumanization is practiced and lived” (weheliye, 2014, p. 6). importantly, it must be remembered that not only did trans* erasure occur, but it was black trans* erasure specifically. the racializing of the body both compounded the importance of laverne cox as the speaker (a black trans*woman) and elucidated the fact that the association believed replacing cox with a black gay man, and then two black men (one gay and one heterosexual) to “appease” trans* members would make everything okay. ironically, this elucidation was a move away from intersectionality. ultimately, the world will “emancipate itself only by constructing a world in which it eliminates the occasions for betrayal” (levinas, 1998, p. 30). justice presents itself as an opportunity in each transaction and each person has the choice to “naively choose injustice or even present injustice” (levinas, 1998, p. 30). perhaps, in this case, the association did both; it betrayed its members and its values in the name of injustice rather than love. self-care as a settler colonial logic next, we must examine settler colonial logics that underscore the field’s move toward self-care rhetoric as the antidote to neoliberal moves in student affairs (squire & nicolazzo, 2019). utilizing a settler colonial framework, the notions of production, competition, quantifiable outcomes, and individualism underscore an ontology of dehumanization, particularly of graduate students and other marginalized groups on college campuses. instead of student affairs divisions shifting the norms of work, they rely on individuals to engage in selfcare as an incremental relief to stress and burnout while divisions ratchet up work demands. congruent with settler colonialism, graduate students, and others with minoritized identities are utilized as property and their labor extracted for the benefit of the university (la paperson, 2017; squire & nicolazzo, 2019). as noted, “‘productivity,’ ‘consumption,’ and ‘profit’ are all settler colonial concepts reinforced by an ever-evolving capitalistic system, of which u.s. universities are a reproducing component” (squire & nicolazzo, 2019, p. 8) squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 14 at the same time, student affairs leaders utilize coercion as a tactic to socialize graduate students into the hegemonic notions of work that are being perpetuated in the field: in this perspective, self-care rhetoric attempts to soften the harsh realities of capitalism that works to turn people’s livelihoods, mental health, and social well-being into quantifiable outputs and institutional profit. it maximizes the amount of labor that a graduate student puts out while minimizing the need to authentically care about the ‘humanness’ of a person. (squire & nicolazzo, 2019, p. 5) initial analysis in this possible articulation of indifference, one can draw back to matias and allen’s (2013) articulation of the negative, power-driven notions of indifference that are grounded in neoliberal ideas of engaging in relations for the purpose of competition, desire for acceptance/conformity, and tangible outcomes (matias & allen, 2013). because love and abuse cannot exist simultaneously (hooks, 2000), and self-care rhetoric is an abuse of humanness, an argument exists for an articulation of indifference. applying a loving framework to the cases in harkening back to the examples of the acpa convention t*circle protests and the idea of self-care tied within settler colonial ideology, we choose to re-examine how these examples of indifference could be transformed into acts of justice utilizing the proposed framework of love as an actionable skill set and core value within student affairs. in reference to the tampa convention protests (and the response to these protests), it was evident there was an inability to see the harm and pain that was placed upon the trans* community within this context. although the original space was provided for the trans* educators to engage their voices, in this case there was little love present because, based on the manuscripts published by the trans* educators, there was little intent of nurturing growth, understanding the spirit of their concerns, and to know those who were identified as “the other.” if choosing a loving approach that embodies the four tenets (i.e., care, knowledge, responsibility, and respect), it is argued that this harm could have been avoided by examining acpa’s intent in providing specific replacement speakers within the context of the history of the association, the field, and the world. utilizing a love framework within this scenario would have allowed for the association to have used the absence of its originally planned speaker, as an avenue for reflection and a pathway for a replacement presenter who identified similarly; the association could have also used the opportunity to provide a space for visibility and healing, listening, and developing. given the detailed background of society’s trans-erasure rhetoric and practices within cultural mediums, policies, and higher education institutions, it proves to be a significant statement when dedicating spaces and platforms for trans-identified individuals to exist authentically and be represented. the association, choosing to substitute a black, transwoman keynote speaker with less regard to the recommendations of queer and trans* association members, displays a lack of care. in distinction, acpa convention leadership supplanting the keynote speaker with someone who would have also been living within the critical intersections of race and gender, epitomizes this core tenet. in examining the whole of actionable love, care proves to remain only one aspect as an act toward justice. in fact, “care is a dimension of love, but simply giving care does not mean we are loving” (hooks, 2000, p. 22). within this example, if the convention leaders would have squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 15 supplemented another speaker using the suggestions prompted from queer and trans* individuals, this would have demonstrated an understanding of the intention behind recommendations offered (care), allowed for alternative representation and visibility of some of the most marginalized identities within acpa and society (knowledge), prioritized space for racially minoritized queer/trans* to share their truths and narratives (respect), and actively showed a deep commitment as an association by centering the voices and epistemologies of the universally disenfranchised (responsibility). though acpa’s choice of replacement for the keynote speaker could be argued as a misstep, the response that followed the t*circle protests further perpetuated the harm caused. alternatively, the association centering a love foundation, could have allowed healing around the impact of the actions. however, the justification of the counter-protests in relation to the original dissent displayed by members of the t*circle and the lack of radical validation and acknowledgment of the group’s outcry shows an unethical response on behalf of the association in that it continued to center an act of indifference. there are widespread misinterpretations of ethical behavior, but, in actuality, “living ethically ensures that [we].... nurture our spiritual growth” (hooks, 2000, p. 17). when those who are harmed choose to address their wounds, others may belittle or mock these efforts, which is a form of psychological terrorism (hooks, 2000). if seen through a loving lens, the protests displayed by t*circle could have been viewed as an act of “accountability and responsibility both from themselves and from those who were the agents of their suffering as well as those who bore witness” (hooks, 2000, p. 23). as addressed, educators can use love as a tool of constructive confrontation which can aid them in healing and promotion of justice within institutions and organizations embedded in the foundations of structural violence and disenfranchisement. centering settler colonialism in student affairs’ rhetoric of self-care punctuates production and capital over one’s holistic self and becomes a dehumanizing practice perpetuating acts of colonization (squire & nicolazzo, 2019). since global capitalism is built and structured alongside the creation of higher education (wilder, 2014), the foundations of student affairs work, rooted in exploitation of labor (physical, emotional, intellectual), further promotes power dynamics, neoliberal ethics, and settler colonialism. typically, this exploitation lands in the fate of graduate students and other subjugated individuals on campus, which gives legacy to the ontology that the most marginalized are coined as property on behalf of institutional white supremacy. to reframe the work of student affairs through a love context that situates the humanity of the person in relation to the land they occupy would require substantial transformation and reconstruction in the ways one envisions the field. in applying a loving approach within the previous two examples, it begs the question: are we ready or able, as educators, to decolonize student affairs? first, the ever-rising productivity standards within the field allowed student affairs to fail in “[appreciating] the importance of work resistance, not merely as a weapon of class rebellion, but as an essential element of sustainability for the planet” (kivel, 2018, p. 21). this highlights how a societal obsession with constant expansion and production of labor inherently remains a detriment to the maintenance of the person and survival of the land. additionally, due to the lack of resources, sustainability, and the pervasiveness of oppressive systems, “the outcome is that student affairs professionals with marginalized identities are often left responsible for their own care and healing” (sambile, 2018). the idea of individualism upheld against the disconnection of the other allows individuals to view healing as a solo pursuit rather than a communal goal. from this, the capacity for self-care to actualize the capacity for one individual to escape burnout and exploitation in the squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 16 face of exponential labor and production proves paradoxical and the antithesis of decolonization praxis. as it stands, self-care rhetoric “attempts to soften the harsh realities of capitalism that works to turn people’s livelihoods, mental health, and social well-being into quantifiable output; it turns people into property to be used for institutional profit” (squire & nicolazzo, 2019, p. 5). this argument shows that the institution encourages the maximization of labor from the graduate student and other marginalized individuals while actively attempting to minimize their humanity. in maintaining the norm that time, work, and labor is tied to humanity is to further the settler colonial goal of turning “people and land into property, a property that can be utilized for the benefit of the capitalist gains to reproduce whiteness” (squire & nicolazzo, 2019, p. 4). framing self-care through a context of love requires several transformative changes within the field of student affairs. in particular, colleges and universities need to work towards identifying and diagnosing the structural influences that are creating this amount of unsustainable labor and then proceed to disrupt and transform this function (care). however, this cannot be done without viewing student affairs’ work as a tool to resist neoliberalism, decoupling the notions of productivity tied to self-worth (knowledge). the institution must shift its connection to the capitalist state and dismantle the settler colonial concepts of productivity, consumption, and profit because universities currently serve as a mode of reproducing these ideals (responsibility). and lastly, institutions of higher education and their student affairs units need to reposition their hegemonic culture of domination and redistribute structural power with equity towards its labor force (e.g., graduate students and others oppressed within institutional settings) (respect). self-care utilized through a love framework emphasizes divesting from extraction practices geared towards the “purpose of transformation into property to be used for the benefit of capitalistic endeavors” (squire & nicolazzo, 2019, p. 3). this divestment must center the reimagining of work for the person, the institution’s abusive relationship to the land they occupy, and the dying spirit within the field of student affairs. conclusion: are we ready to love? “knowing love or the hope of knowing love is the anchor that keeps us from falling into that sea of despair” (hooks, 2000, p. 78) offers the optimism student affairs professionals need to rock transformational change. with this manuscript, our desire is not to replace love with some other form of foundational principle, but rather to help us know love and have hope of knowing and executing love as an actionable and definitive concept within the field of student affairs. the question “are we ready to love?” operates as an invitation for student affairs educators to adopt a loving skill set—which should go beyond the material and individual and instead be communal and authentic. love has been touted as the basis upon which all justice work is done; however, love, as an amorphous and liberal notion, then falls short of fully engaging in racial justice and decolonization. by fully explicating how love acts and, therefore, how student affairs educators, as purveyors of a field, act, there is hope for moving toward true racial justice and decolonization. as difficult as it sounds, “awakening to love can happen only as we let go of our obsession with power and domination” (hooks, 2000, p. 87). to fulfill the imperative for racial justice and decolonization, one must analyze how the field of student affairs engages in acts of power and domination daily and then replace those with the proposed loving tenets of care, knowledge, responsibility, and respect. to do so moves student affairs toward decolonization and engages the field in “more humanizing love” (matias & allen, 2013, p. 302). student affairs educators squire et al.: centering love current issues in education, 23(2) 17 can engage as “scyborgs” (la paperson, 2017) within their institutions. as scyborgs, student affairs educators act as both machines of the university replicating its parts, and decolonizing agents deconstructing and indigenizing it. the call for this paper is to become decolonizing student affairs educators by centering love, to love the field enough to recreate student affairs in a vision of justice, and 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(2006). settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. journal of genocide research, 8(4), 387-409. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240 author notes dian squire, ph.d. loyola university chicago dsquire@luc.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3455-4936 rachael blansett oyster river cooperative school district rachaelblansett@gmail.com raquel wright-mair rowan university wrightmair@rowan.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6744-371x more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240 mailto:dsquire@luc.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3455-4936 mailto:wrightmair@rowan.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6744-371x https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ love as action situating settler colonialism to uphold indifference is to engage in dehumanization. and to understand dehumanization is to understand settler colonialism and its impact on student affairs. this understanding proves important as we move through this argument and juxtapose acts of ... current theories of love love as skill indifference in student affairs applying a loving framework to the cases conclusion: are we ready to love? microsoft word 1240_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 3 december 15, 2013 issn 1099-839x why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? yi-lee wong chinese university of hong kong this paper seeks to address why in-grade retention rates are so high in macao by examining the operation of its education system. to this end, i shall draw on data from a qualitative research project on educational inequality in macao, referring specifically to criteria for in-grade retention set by different schools, the related practices of schools and teachers, and the schooling experiences of students. this examination leads me to argue that in-grade retention rates of macao are so high mainly because its education system is a system of private schools without effective state governance. this argument, then, urges us to rethink the belief that a privatized schooling system allows competition between schools and thus provides more parental choices; therefore it is efficient and effective in providing quality education. the case of macao suggests that competition does not necessarily guarantee more school choices for parents or the provision of quality education. keywords: education system, in-grade retention, macao, private schools, quality of education, school regulations in-grade retention rates of macao are one of the highest among organisations for economic co-operation and development (oecd) countries: the percentages of repeaters at primary and secondary levels are 6% and 12% respectively for the year of 2009 (unesco, 2011). these figures echo macao official statistics: table 1 shows that over the last decade, in-grade retention rates at primary level have been consistently above 5%, ranging from the lowest 5.2% in 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 to the highest 7.3% in 1999-2000; in-grade retention rates at junior secondary level have been roughly around 15%, ranging from the lowest 13.8% in 2009-2010 to the highest 16.7% in 2001-2002; and, in-grade retention rates at senior secondary level are on average about 7%, ranging from the lowest 5.9% in 2003-2004 and 20092010 to the highest 8.2% in 2000-2001. the accumulative effects of such high in-grade retention rates at different levels are that over 40% of 15-year-olds in macao participating in the programme for international student assessment (pisa) 2009 have been retained and about 15% of them have repeated more than once (oecd, 2010), and that about 76% of senior-secondary-form-three students (students doing the final year of three-year senior secondary education in macao) of a local secondary school are found to have been retained (yuen, 2012). in short, in-grade retention is a rather common experience for students in macao. then, why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? and, what can we learn from the case of macao? this paper seeks to address the issue of why ingrade retention rates are so high in macao from a sociological perspective: situating this inquiry against a post-colonial period of macao, i shall examine the operation of the education system in order to identify structural reasons for such high rates of in-grade retention. to this end, data of a qualitative research project will be used for illustration. in what follows, i shall first provide a brief account of the history of education in macao so as to enable readers to have a better grasp of the context against which this inquiry is situated. i shall, then, discuss the design of the qualitative research project and some of its data used to address the current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 2 table 1 in-grade retention rates in macao, 1999-2010 (%) academic year 1999/2000 2000/ 2001 2001/ 2002 2002/ 2003 2003/ 2004 2004/ 2005 2005/ 2006 2006/ 2007 2007/ 2008 2008/ 2009 2009/ 2010 primary level 7.3 6.9 7.0 5.9 5.7 5.5 5.5 5.6 5.9 5.2 5.2 junior secondary level 15.6 16.3 16.7 15.7 14.7 14.9 15.3 15.6 15.4 13.9 13.8 senior secondary level 7.6 8.2 8.1 7.4 5.9 6.5 7.0 7.3 7.1 6.6 5.9 source: chan (2010; table 4.10, p. 230) issue here. and i shall go on to discuss the operation of the macao education system by referring to some specific data: the criteria for retention set by different schools, the relation between such criteria and the practices of teachers and schools, and the schooling experiences of students. i shall argue that in-grade retention rates are so high in macao largely because its education system is a system of private schools without effective state governance. against this context, schools and teachers are encouraged to retain students for non-academic reasons in general and for administrative reasons in particular; this thus boosts up in-grade retention rates in macao. and finally, i shall conclude this paper by using the case of macao to urge us educators to rethink the following belief: a privatized schooling system allows competition between schools and thus provides more choices for parents and their children; therefore, such system is efficient and effective in providing quality education. education in macao: colonial legacy basically, the education system in macao is a system of private schools. there are 75 schools in total in macao; all except 11 are private schools and the share of students in private schools is over 95% (the website of macao dsej). the fact that most students are studying in private schools could be seen as a colonial legacy: the colonial neglect of education for the local chinese by the portuguese. macao was a portuguese colony but was returned to the people’s republic of china (prc) in 1999. true, during the colonial rule there were government schools in macao; but, they were meant to provide education for the children of the portuguese in macao. at the time, the provision of basic education for the chinese in macao essentially fell on the shoulders of the civil society; private schools for chinese students were funded and managed by a variety of organizations: individuals, religious institutions, trading associations, and civil organizations (such as neighborhood associations, lineage associations, or the federation of labour union) (clayton, 2009). during the colonial period, basic education for the chinese in macao was not free or compulsory but was provided by private schools, run by different organizations. private schools had to rely on donation and school fees for survival. because of their different missions and political orientations, two major types of schools could be distinguished: religious schools and nonreligious schools. religious schools were basically run by the catholic church, although there were one or two schools run by the christian church or the buddhist organization; their missions were to spread a particular religious belief in macao through education. schools in the non-religious sector were basically organized by individuals, trading organizations, and various kinds of civil organizations. before 1966, this sector of schools could be seen as a battleground for the prc and the kuomintang (kmt) to compete for their political influence in macao through education. after 1966, schools run by kmt-related organizations withdrew from macao; from then on, schools of the non-religious sector were organized by so-called traditional organizations and they were basically pro-prc. in addition to their different missions, the management of private schools and their quality of education varied tremendously. there was simply no coordination among different schools or educational institutions in macao; the education system was rather chaotic. as shown in table 2, there were four educational models in macao during the colonial period, each consisting of primary and secondary education with various differentiations of different numbers of years: a modified portugal model (4+2+3+2+1), a modified prc model (6+5), a modified taiwanese model (6+3+3), and a modified hong kong model (6+5+1). as a consequence, schools of the education system did not follow any common standards nearly in every aspect, from administration – like school calendar (including school holidays), criteria for retention and its consequences, and policies of teacher hiring (e.g. the entrance requirement of teachers) and student recruitment – to educational practices – like educational model, curriculum, and assessment. ironically, not until the preparation for the 1999 why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? 3 table 2 different educational models in macao before the 1999 handover model description a modified portugal model (with reference to the portugal model in the 1980s) 4 years of primary education + 2 years of preparatory secondary education 3 years of junior education 2 years of senior education + 1 year of matriculation a modified prc model 6 years of primary education 5 years of secondary education a modified taiwanese model 6 years of primary education 3 years of junior education 3 years of senior education a modified hong kong model 6 years of primary education 5 years of secondary education 1 year of matriculation handover, the colonial portuguese government did not make any effort to provide education for the chinese. basic education finally became freely available right before the 1999 handover: the act of seven-year free and compulsory education (decree no. 29/95/m) and the act of ten-year free and compulsory education (decree no. 34/97/m) became effective in 1995 and 1997 respectively. since the 1999 handover, basic education has become more and more institutionalized in macao. since then, the macao special administrative region (sar) government has invested a great deal of resources in education, such as giving subsidies, of various types, to private schools so as to provide school-aged students with a better basic education, and also has made attempts to govern and standardize the practices of private schools. at present every student in macao is entitled to a fifteenyear free and compulsory basic education. however, the basic laws guarantee private schools in macao the freedom of running themselves in their own style; consequently, the attempts of the macao sar government to change the old practices or to standardize some diverse practices have been resisted against by schools in the name of defending such freedom. true, with some progress, instead of having a multi-track system of schools (e.g. bray, 1992), as summarized in table 2, the educational model of all schools in macao has been standardized since 2006 to become a system of six-year primary education, threeyear junior secondary education, and three-year senior secondary education (6+3+3). however, this move does not change the fact that the majority of schools in macao are private schools and that their right to design their own curriculum and assessment is guaranteed by the basic laws. up until now, there are still no standardized curriculum and common/public examinations in macao. schools in macao could still follow a prc or taiwanese or hong kong curriculum using corresponding textbooks and have students sit their own school examinations at the end of six-year secondary education. put simply, despite investing a lot in education, the macao sar government still could not effectively monitor and/or assess the quality of education provided by different schools. research design and data: a qualitative research project in order to address the issue of why in-grade retention rates are so high in macao, i shall draw on data from a qualitative research project on educational inequality in macao that i have been conducting since 2009. in addition, i shall also supplement the data with some clippings from a major local newspaper and my personal communications with teachers (while teaching the courses ‘sociology of education’ and ‘youth culture’ of an educational program for in-service teachers in macao) so as to provide readers with a view of opinions from different stakeholders on the issue. the qualitative research project consists of three parts: school regulations, secondary-school students, and teachers. the first part is to collect school regulations and carry out content analysis so as to examine the qualities that schools intend to cultivate in students and investigate the roles of school regulations in the operation of the education system in macao. school regulations of all 75 day schools in macao are collected (consisting of 64 primary schools and 43 secondary schools and 9 evening schools). the number of schools is calculated by referring to the number of licenses for running school; even with one license, schools could run separate sections of primary and secondary education and also “recurrent education” (see below). the second part of the qualitative research project is to recruit senior-secondary-form-three students and conduct interviews with them individually so as to examine school effects on their schooling experiences and investigate how they make choices for higher education. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 4 table 3 composition of the student sample of the qualitative research project school number of students top-ranking secondary school 19 middle-ranking secondary school 13 low-ranking secondary school 16 evening school 18 (6 in junior secondary form three) total 66 in recruiting secondary-school students, i first selected three day schools (out of 43) according to their ranking – each from top-ranking, middle-ranking, and low-ranking schools – and an evening school (out of 9). in macao, nearly all secondary schools are day schools that are designed for students of the relevant age group; in contrast, evening schools are designed to provide a basic education for students of any age who have missed an opportunity for education but would like to return to education – i.e. called “recurrent education” in macao. after selecting the schools, using quota sampling, i aimed to recruit 15 senior-secondary-form-three students from each school. finally, 66 students in total were recruited (only 6 of them were junior-secondary-form-three students): 48 senior-secondary-form-three students from the three day schools (19 students from the top-ranking school, 13 from the middle-ranking one, and 16 from the low-ranking one), and 18 students from the evening school (12 of them from senior secondary form three and 6 from junior secondary form three), as summarized in table 3. interviews were conducted between july 2010 and december 2011. in each interview, the 66 students were asked to talk about their schooling experiences and relationships with classmates and teachers, their relationships with parents and parental support received, their educational aspirations and educational plans, and their views on the macao education system and social competition in macao. the third part of the qualitative research project is to recruit teachers and conduct focus-group interviews with them so as to examine how they view the regulation of teachers and students by schools in general and school regulations related to in-grade retention in particular. four types of schools are distinguished according to the similarity of school regulations, as summarized in table 4. to repeat, schools run by traditional organizations (i.e. trading organizations and civil organizations) are proprc; they make it explicit that the teaching of patriotism is their educational mission. schools organized by the catholic church make it clear that their educational mission is to transmit the teaching of catholicism. the educational mission of government schools could somehow be seen as colonial legacy: it is in line with the stance of the former portuguese government. the educational missions of other schools (e.g. schools organized by the christian church, 1 buddhist school, and 1 international school) are set by their respective funding organizations. it is certainly important to investigate how the respective educational missions of the four types of schools influence the design of school regulations but this is not the main focus of this paper; the point here is that the school regulations of the same type of schools are similar in many aspects. using quota sampling, i sought to recruit 5 teachers from each type of school for focusgroup interviews. however, given the small number of government schools, as shown in table 4, it was very difficult to recruit teachers teaching in government schools. in the end, only 13 teachers were recruited but none of them were from government schools: table 4 reports that 5 teachers are from schools run by traditional organizations, 4 from schools organized by the catholic church, and 4 from other schools. two taped focusgroup interviews were arranged for teachers from schools of the same type so that they could share and discuss their views on in-grade retention and their practices related to retention at school. in total, six focus-group interviews with teachers from the three types of schools were conducted between march and june 2013. this qualitative research project is designed to examine a number of issues related to processes underlying educational inequality in macao rather than investigating the issue of in-grade retention only. for the present purposes, i shall focus on examining criteria for in-grade retention set by different schools, and refer to the relevant practices of schools and teachers and the related schooling experiences of students to substantiate my argument. before moving on to our discussion, i shall first take a brief look at how in-grade retention is generally viewed in macao. in-grade retention in macao the issue of high in-grade retention rates has been hotly discussed in macao: while some local teachers sought to defend the practice of in-grade retention, others attempted to criticize it (e.g. several clippings from macao daily, 2009-2012). but, serious examinations or debates over the issue are rare in macao. nevertheless, two viewpoints could be derived from such general discussion. first, in-grade retention is viewed as a common practice of some use. the logic behind is rather circular: in-grade retention has been practiced for a long why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? 5 table 4 four types of schools in macao and composition of the teacher sample of the qualitative research project school type number of primary schools number of secondary schools number of teachers recruited schools organized by traditional organizations 23 15 5 schools organized by the catholic church 23 16 4 government schools 5 3 0 other schools 13 9 4 total 64 43 13 time, so it must be of some use; otherwise it would not have been practiced for so long. second, in-grade retention is viewed as a useful practice that allows students to repeat a grade they have not adequately mastered and thus helps them to strengthen their academic foundation. the reason is that with a weak academic foundation, students will find it hard to keep up later on even if they get promoted to the following grade; so, it is better to retain them sooner than later. in short, the practice of in-grade retention is seen as a means for quality assurance of education. in fact, many teachers and students of this qualitative research project also share these two viewpoints; the following quotations are two examples. in-grade retention is practiced for students’ benefits; this practice makes sure that students are up to the standards. otherwise, macao would have been like hong kong, where all students automatically get promoted grade by grade. (male teacher) we’ve practiced retention in macao for a very long time. there must be some uses; otherwise, it wouldn’t have been practiced for so long. … i think, this practice is good for students. for example, if students fail to live up to the standards of secondary form one, why should they get promoted to secondary form two when their foundation is so weak? can they handle it even if they get promoted? so, we’re doing this in students’ interests. (female teacher) in short, the general public in macao, especially many local teachers, as will be further discussed below, do not question but support the practice of in-grade retention; many even believe that the practice is synonymous with quality assurance of education. but, academically speaking, do macao students really perform much better than their counterparts in other regions/countries? their performances at the pisa do not seem to support this view. true, as summarized in table 5, the average scores of 15-year-olds at the pisa-macao in mathematics and science in 2003, 2006, and 2009 are all slightly higher than the international averages. but they do not seem to perform exceptionally well; besides, their average score in reading at the pisa 2009 is only 487, even lower than the international average. in other words, with the practice of in-grade retention, macao students do not seem to be doing extraordinarily well. regardless of students’ academic performances, such prevalent positive attitude towards in-grade retention is, however, not sufficient for explaining such high rates of in-grade retention in macao. let us now turn to the operation of the macao education system. a system of private schools to repeat, even after the 1999 handover, when basic education has become free and compulsory, the education system in macao remains a system of private schools without much centralized state governance. what this means is that despite getting subsidies from the government, schools could still set their own criteria for retention. so, perhaps unsurprisingly, although there are only 75 schools in total in macao, more than 100 systems of retention could be distinguished (opinions of parents in macao, 2011), meaning that criteria for retention differ not only between schools but also between different sections – primary education, secondary education, and “recurrent education” – of the same school. table 6 provides several examples of some major criteria for retention adopted by 43 secondary schools. in deciding whether to retain a student, secondary schools differ in at least three aspects: first, whether to take into count students’ conduct grade; second, setting their own academic standards (including setting different passing marks and deciding whether to differentiate core and periphery subjects or give extra weightings to the core subjects); and third, having their own specific concerns (such as setting the maximum number of subjects or weighting units students could fail without being retained and the maximum number of retention allowed). let us discuss in turn how each of these three criteria could play a role in contributing to such high rates of in-grade retention. conduct to reiterate, the practice of in-grade retention is generally supported because it is believed to strengthen students’ academic foundation. despite such concern, some criteria for retention set by 10 (out of 43) secondary current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 6 table 5 performances of 15-year-olds at pisa-macao subject pisa 2003 pisa 2006 pisa 2009 average score of macao international average score average score of macao international average score average score of macao international average score reading 498 494 492 492 487 493 mathematics 527 500 525 498 525 496 science 525 500 511 500 511 501 source: chan (2010; table 4.13, p. 232) table 6 examples of criteria for in-grade retention used by 43 secondary schools criterion for in-grade retention remarks conduct poor conduct (e.g. below grade b or c) could lead to in-grade retention in 10 schools. academic standards 1. passing marks 2. weighting schools set different passing marks, ranging from 40 to 60 out of 100 marks. all except 8 schools differentiate core subjects from the others or give more weighting to core subjects (e.g. core subjects are usually weighed with a greater number of units). chinese, english, mathematics are usually three core subjects or subjects with double weightings. specific concerns 1. the maximum number of units/subjects students could fail without being retained 2. maximum number of retention allowed this number ranges from one unit of a core subject to six peripheral subjects. 7 schools require students to repeat a grade if they fail the same subject in two consecutive years. all except 7 schools do not set the maximum number of retention. 6 schools allow students to get retained only once; when asked to be retained for the second time (not necessarily in the following year), students should quit the school. about half of the schools ask students to quit the school when the students are to repeat the same grade again in a consecutive year. schools are, however, irrelevant to academic performance but are about students’ conduct. for example, table 6 shows that in 10 secondary schools, students will be retained if their conduct grade is below grade b or c. there are no elaborations on how students’ conduct is evaluated and thus graded, and there are also no descriptions about what each conduct grade represents. what is puzzling is how in-grade retention could improve a student’s conduct. regardless, what is at issue is what constitutes a so-called well-behaved student from the perspective of schools and teachers. we could probably get some ideas about this issue by taking a brief look at school regulations concerning students’ behavior in classroom. to repeat, four types of schools are distinguished according to the similarity of their school regulations. table 7 lists a sample of school regulations from the four types of schools. it is not my intention here to analyze the qualities of students that are to be cultivated by dissimilar regulations designed by the four types of schools. why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? 7 table 7 examples of school regulations from four types of schools in macao school type school regulations about students’ behaviour in classroom government schools respect and obey teachers be attentive and obey classroom rules in classes and submit assignments on time keep the same seat after being assigned by the form teacher schools run by traditional organizations be quiet in classes, respect teachers, work hard get into classroom immediately after the recess and wait quietly for the next class queue up quickly, quietly, and orderly to get off school schools organized by the catholic church respect and obey sisters and teaching staff no sleeping and talking in classes be attentive, polite, self-discipline, and cooperative in classes other schools be cooperative in classes should not read other books or assignments in classes should not disturb the class table 8 responses to questions on lessons: ‘how often do these things happen in your [test language] lessons?’ pisa 2009 – a comparison of macao and oecd average question response macao (%) oecd average (%) there is noise and disorder. never or hardly ever some lessons most lessons all lessons missing 24.23 61.09 11.66 2.53 0.49 20.48 47.25 22.23 8.97 1.06 the teacher has to wait a long time for students to quieten down. never or hardly ever some lessons most lessons all lessons missing 26.93 56.34 13.01 3.2 0.52 28.53 42.58 19.68 8.02 1.19 students do not start working for a long time after the lesson begins. never or hardly ever some lessons most lessons all lessons missing 23.51 55.61 16.12 4.24 0.52 32.53 41.38 17.62 7.52 1.13 nevertheless, table 7 seems to suggest that what qualities constitute a well-behaved student in most schools in macao are compliance and obedience, which are seen as crucial to making a disciplined classroom. indeed, many teachers of this qualitative research project also expressed that they made a lot of effort to exert strong control over their classrooms. this finding is actually consistent with what is reported for macao in pisa (2009) concerning students’ perception of classroom after such strong control is exerted over students. table 8 reports a comparison of the percentages of students in macao selecting each of the four responses to questions concerning their classroom with the corresponding averages of the valid percentages of students in oecd countries participated in pisa. compared with other oecd countries, greater proportions of macao students choose the options of ‘never or hardly ever’ and ‘some lessons’ to such questions as ‘there is noise and disorder,’ ‘the teacher has to wait a long time for students to quieten down,’ and ‘students do not start working for a long time after the lesson begins.’ such responses indicate that classroom seems more controlled and disciplined in macao than in many oecd countries. regardless of the genuine intention behind cultivating such qualities in students, how to define compliance and obedience could be rather subjective, if current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 8 table 9 responses to questions on teachers: ‘how much do you disagree or agree with each of the following statements about teachers at your school?’ pisa (2009) – a comparison of macao and oecd average question response macao (%) oecd average (%) i get along well with most teachers. strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree missing 2.45 14.11 69.43 13.78 0.22 3.71 11.49 59.55 24.38 0.87 most teachers are interested in my wellbeing. strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree missing 4.28 31.61 56.46 7.34 0.30 6.83 26.30 54.12 11.49 1.27 most of my teachers really listen to what i have to say. strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree missing 7.93 38.39 48.21 4.96 0.52 6.20 26.28 55.51 10.79 1.22 most of my teachers treat me fairly. strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree missing 7.58 21.48 61.74 8.85 0.36 5.12 15.87 61.35 16.39 1.27 not downright arbitrary. yet, despite such ambiguity in defining compliance and obedience, operationally speaking, by compliance and obedience many schools actually mean that students should not challenge the authority of teachers. as such, this could leave room for teachers’ abuse in enforcing such subjective or arbitrary school regulations (e.g. willis, 1981; bourdieu, 1984; aronowitz & giroux, 1985). indeed, the schooling experiences and observations of some students of this qualitative research project confirmed that this was the case; as were implied in the following quotations, teachers had absolute power to decide which students were misbehaved and thus should be graded poorly in conduct. i don’t understand what’s wrong with boys having long hair? actually my hair wasn’t long; my hair just touched the collar of my shirt. but a teacher insisted that i didn’t look like a decent boy, and threatened to give me a demerit if i didn’t have my hair cut. … when i asked the teacher to explain why i had violated school regulations, she didn’t explain; she just said that i shouldn’t have talked back. … and that was why i got retained for the first time – because of my poor conduct. (male eveningschool student) i’m so scared of teachers. … you just don’t know when they’d give you a hard time. … i remember an instance: a student was warned by a teacher that his hair was too long and should have it cut; otherwise the student would get a demerit. … the following day, that student had all his hair cut – a skin-head like style. but he still got a demerit. the teacher said that although he didn’t violate the school regulation concerning hair length, his action itself was a challenge to teacher’s authority. … so, you see, teachers are the law – they decide what should be punished even if there is no such regulation in black and white. (female middle-ranking day-school student) that is, some students of this qualitative research project consider that some teachers are coercive imposing their subjective judgments on them and some even do not treat them fairly. such views of teachers are consistent with some findings of pisa (2009) for macao with regard to students’ perception of teachers. table 9 reports that when compared with their counterparts in other oecd countries, a higher percentage of students in macao strongly disagree or disagree that ‘i get along well with most teachers’ (16.56% vs oecd 15.20%), that ‘most teachers are interested in my well-being’ (35.89% vs oecd 33.13%), that ‘most of my teachers really listen to what i have to say’ (46.32% vs oecd 32.48%), and that ‘most of my teachers treat me fairly’ (29.06% vs oecd 20.99%). the discrepancy between macao and oecd average is particularly great with regard to the proportion why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? 9 of students consider that their teachers are not really listening to them and that their teachers are not fair in treating them. in other words, students in macao seem less likely than their counterparts in many oecd countries to see their teachers as someone who cares about them and are therefore more distanced to their teachers. in short, it is unclear why some schools take conduct into account when considering whether to retain a student; and, it is also unclear how in-grade retention could improve a student’s conduct. but, in the existing education system in macao, without effective state governance, schools are not required to provide rationales for such practice. what is crystal clear is that such criterion for retention is a punitive threat that puts students’ future at the mercy of teachers; this, then, leaves much room for teachers’ coercive control of students (raby, 2012). this finding also lends support to the view that schools are an oppressive institution (holt, 1969; giroux, 1981). i argue that taking conduct into account in deciding whether to retain a student could leave much room for teachers’ discretion, thus manipulation, in grading students’ conduct, and hence would somehow contribute to high rates of in-grade retention in macao. academic standards to reiterate, the practice of in-grade retention is widely seen as a synonym of the quality assurance of education in macao (leung, 2011). but, when there is no commonly agreed academic reference, it is unclear what academic standards that schools in macao seek to uphold through the practice of in-grade retention. given the colonial legacy and the freedom of schools to run themselves with their own style guaranteed by the basic laws, curriculum and assessment of different schools in macao are not standardized. besides, there are no common examinations or standardized assessments in evaluating and thus comparing the level of academic standards of students across schools. rather, each school arranges their own graduation examination for their senior-secondary-form-three students at the end of a sixyear secondary education. in addition, as summarized in table 6 above, each school sets their own passing mark and decides whether to differentiate between core and peripheral subjects giving more weighting to the former. furthermore, in many schools in macao usually the same teacher teaches the same subject to students of the same grade (personal communications with some local teachers), meaning that this teacher not only sets but also grades all assignments, tests, and examinations of students of the same grade. and, in operation, oftentimes the academic standards of the assessments, of all kinds, set by this teacher and the quality of this teacher’s grading are not subject to any professional review or evaluation. given all these practices, the academic performances of students are simply not comparable across schools. under the macao education system, it is rather difficult to make sense of the meanings attached to even the same passing mark set by different schools. a sense of arbitrariness is involved. needless to mention, it is next to impossible to compare the academic standards represented by different passing marks. in addition, some schools would retain students who fail even only one unit of a core subject (e.g. in some schools there are several units of the english language, including writing, reading, listening, and speaking), although it is not clear why students should demonstrate that they are equally capable of handling all aspects of the subject in order to get promoted to the next grade. and, the validity and reliability of assessments of each subject that are done by the same teacher without being subject to professional review are in serious doubt (lam, 2011). besides, the practice of having the same teacher teach the subject for all students of the same grade without being subject to professional review implies that teachers could grade students unprofessionally but would not necessarily be noticed. it is not unheard of that some teachers could abuse such practices so as to retain students they do not like, as a student recalls: you never know how teachers grade us. … for example, my classmate sitting next to me and i got the same answer in a test; but he got 3 marks and i got zero. and there is no way you can argue with teachers why this is the case. … i’m so scared about being picked on by teachers; so, i keep a record of all tests and examinations to check if the final scores are accurately calculated. … i remember, a classmate of mine was quite sure that she passed a subject (60 marks or above) but the final score in her report card was 59.4; and she had to be retained. this kind of thing indeed happens. (female middle-ranking day-school student) put simply, without effective mechanisms for assuring academic standards within each school, and without any common standards serving as a professional reference to evaluate all schools in macao, we cannot be sure of what sort of academic standards each school seeks to uphold; there are simply no objective standards, however defined, in deciding whether students are not up to the academic standards and deserve retention in macao. consequently, although many local teachers consider ingrade retention to be a necessary mechanism for upholding decent academic standards, what actually constitutes such academic standards could involve a measure of arbitrariness: a student is judged to deserve retention in one school could well have got promoted in another school. i argue that this measure of arbitrariness would leave room for teachers to judge students’ academic performances unprofessionally and could current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 10 somehow contribute to such high rates of in-grade retention in macao. apart from the possibility of teachers’ abuse of some leeway in the education system to treat students unprofessionally, in-grade retention could also leave room for schools’ manipulation for administrative purposes. true, since the 1999 handover, the macao sar government has invested a lot in education, particularly giving a considerable amount of resources to schools in the form of subsidies, of various kinds. however, to repeat, this move does not change the very fact that most schools in macao remain private schools and their survival depends very much on student enrolments. schools are still required to compete for students, or more accurately their parents. academic reputation of schools is of utmost importance in such competition. but, without any common standardized examinations that could be used as a professional yardstick, on what basis could schools claim that their academic standards are higher and thus make themselves attractive to students and their parents? in-grade retention rates are then viewed as an important indicator of the academic standards of schools to students and their parents. many parents in macao, as well as the majority of students and teachers of this qualitative research project, believe that schools with high in-grade retention rates are upholding higher academic standards and are thus more competitive and desirable for their children (opinions of parents in macao, 2009). for instance, a male student of this qualitative research project, as with the female teacher quoted above, has a similar view on ingrade retention. i think in-grade retention is good for us. it makes sure that every student who gets promoted is up to the standards. … this practice could differentiate the capable and the industrious from the incapable and the lazy. (male middle-ranking day-school student) what is also suggested by this male student is that in-grade retention is viewed as a device for social selection: differentiating the capable from the incapable. such view is confirmed by the following male teacher: he makes it crystal clear that when there are no standardized examinations, some school principals actually use ingrade retention as a means of social selection and a device for boosting up the market reputation and visibility of their schools and thus for increasing student enrolments. most schools are private schools here and their survival depends on student enrolments. then, how could schools attract students, actually their parents? no one wants to admit it, but it’s an open secret that many school principals use in-grade retention as a device to get rid of socalled poor students. … some years ago, when a principal increased drastically the retention rate retaining a great number of students who would’ve been promoted in many other schools, the principal was severely criticized for sacrificing students’ futures for the sake of building up the school reputation. just a few years’ time, this school has become one of the top schools in macao that many parents desperately want to send their children there; now, who else still remember those severe criticisms? … many schools actually follow suit in the hope that they could boost up their school reputations. (male teacher) in addition, currently, nearly all schools join the so-called school-net whereby schools could get class subsidies from the macao sar government (decree no. 21/2010); the amount of the subsidies depends on class size: at present, the amounts of annual subsidies for every class of 35-45 students in junior secondary forms and in senior secondary forms are 730,000mop and 840,000mop (1us=8mop) respectively. it is not unheard of that some school-net schools would retain students purely because of their administrative concern about having at least 35 students in every class so as to get the class subsidies (personal communications with some local teachers, the following quotation is an example). in order to get the class subsidies, the principal has to make sure that there are at least 35 students in each class. but, such thing won’t happen naturally. sometimes, manipulation is required. … for example, when there are only 34 students in secondary form two in the coming year, the principal would manipulate the marks of the student who is ranked the last in existing secondary form two so that the student has to repeat a grade staying in secondary form two in the following year. (male teacher) without effective state governance on setting common academic standards as a professional reference, schools in macao could decide their own academic standards. and, it is apparent that many schools in macao do not rely on any reliable and valid yardsticks to assess the academic standards of students and decide whether they deserve to get retained. rather, in the name of upholding academic standards, some teachers could treat students unprofessionally and cover it up with the practice of in-grade retention, and some schools could manipulate in-grade retention for the sake of boosting their school reputation or getting subsidies from the government. either teachers or schools are using the practice of ingrade retention for their own purposes but at the expense of the students’ interests. i argue that without effective state governance, the practice of in-grade retention in macao is actually not meant for assuring the quality of education, and that the ways in which the practice of ingrade retention is implemented in macao could leave why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? 11 much room for teachers’ unprofessional acts or schools’ manipulation; and, such unprofessional acts and manipulation would boost up in-grade retention rates. specific concerns even if we accept that in-grade retention is practiced for the sake of upholding academic standards, what remain puzzling are why some specific criteria for retention listed in table 6 above are set. some schools require students to be retained if the students fail the same subject in two consecutive years, and/or to quit school if they are to be retained for the second time. what schools in macao owe the public is an explanation for such practices (opinions of parents in macao, 2011). such practices are actually defended. with regard to the practice of making students repeat a grade when they fail the same subject in two consecutive years, some teachers somehow believe that this practice could strengthen the academic foundation of students as to mastering that particular subject (personal communications with some local teachers). however, no one ever elaborates on why failing the same subject in two consecutive years deserves retention and how ingrade retention could help students to do better in that subject. put simply, it is unclear what academic purpose could be served by doing so. but what is clear is that such criterion for retention makes it easier for students to get retained and thus could boost up the rates of in-grade retention. with regard to the practice of making students quit the school when they are to be retained for the second time, some local teachers assert that when students do not do well, a change of environment may help students to do better (opinions of parents in macao, 2009). the reasoning of such teachers is this: students who have been retained do not do well because they cannot change their bad learning habits in a familiar learning environment (i.e. their familiarity with the practices of their teachers and classmates); a totally new learning environment may alert students to the fact that they have to turn a new leaf. and, given that schools in macao are so diverse in terms of academic standards, it is believed that students should go to a school with an academic standard compatible with that of the students. therefore, some teachers believe that this practice is actually designed in students’ interests providing them with additional assistance. however, there are no examinations of how effective are such two specific practices related to retention in terms of improving students’ subsequent academic performances. nevertheless, from what has been reported for the west, in-grade retention could hamper students’ subsequent academic performances and damage their self-esteem (e.g. weis et al., 1989; eccles, 1990; beru et al., 2007). indeed, as reported in table 10, the pisa (2009) for macao shows that the mean achievement scores of students who have been retained are much lower than those of students who have never been retained, and that the more often students get retained the lower their scores. for example, let us take a look at students’ score in reading shown in table 10: students who have been retained once would score about 52 marks lower than those who have not; students who have been retained twice would score about 95 marks lower than those who have not; and, students who have been retained thrice would score about 122 marks lower than those who have not. such dramatic drop in score is statistically significant. similar stories could be seen for their scores in mathematics and science. i suspect that the academic setback of being asked to quit the school may have a similarly negative effect on students’ self-esteem and subsequent academic performance. true, whether hampered performance and damaged self-esteem would lead to further retention should be open to further empirical scrutiny; but, it is doubtful if the practices of asking students who fail the same subject in two consecutive years to repeat a grade and of asking students who are required to be retained for the second time to quit the school could really be seen as additional assistance for students. despite the finding reported for the west that ingrade retention would hamper students’ subsequent academic performances, many teachers in macao believe that in-grade retention could strengthen students’ academic foundation. some teachers and students of this qualitative research project even assert that in-grade retention has become necessary for motivating students to study hard, as articulated in the following quotations: somehow i think free and compulsory education isn’t good for students. you know, not every student values the opportunity for education. … when students don’t work hard, retention would do them good. (female high-ranking day-school student) nowadays every student is entitled to a free and compulsory basic education. these days students just don’t cherish the opportunity for education any more. they don’t work hard for they don’t need to pay for education. no matter what, they could stay on at school for 15 years. i take in-grade retention as a trump card that could make students work hard. (male teacher) again, it becomes apparent that in-grade retention is practiced not for the sake of upholding valid and reliable academic standards. rather, some teachers take in-grade retention as their trump card to make socalled lazy students study; and many students, including those having been retained, buy this idea very much. this confirms further my view that the practice of in-grade retention could leave room for teachers’ unprofessional acts, including an abuse of power coercing students to yield to teachers’ authority. indeed, it is not uncommon to hear that students who have been retained would be labelled or picked on by teachers in classes; the schooling experiences of some evening-school students of this current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 12 table 10 the mean achievement scores of students who have been retained and those who have not in the pisa (2009) for macao experience of retention mean achievement score reading mathematics science students who have never repeated 516.66*** (1.28) 558.75*** (1.31) 539.43*** (1.25) students who have been retained once -52.28*** (2.11) -58.39*** (2.37) -50.03*** (2.31) students who have been retained twice -95.16*** (2.84) -106.57*** (3.20) -88.65*** (2.91) students who have been retained thrice -122.76*** (7.48) -133.90*** (8.33) -117.14*** (7.22) standard errors in parentheses; *** p<0.001 qualitative research project illustrate how that happens. life at day school is stressful. ... i’m seen as a lazy bone. … (t)eachers … would pick on me for no reasons. … for example, i got the same answer as my neighboring classmate in a test; but, the classmate got a mark deducted and i got three marks deducted. … so, i asked the teacher about that; he said that was how he graded. … this kind of thing happened to me nearly in every test and examination for two years. then, i didn’t argue with teachers anymore. … i felt that however hard i tried, i wouldn’t succeed. … in the end, i was required to repeat another year for i failed english – i needed 1.5 more marks to get a pass. (male evening-school student) i have repeated four times. … i repeated for the first time in primary form four. that was because of my poor conduct. i was too naughty as a boy. … then, in primary form five, i repeated because of my poor academic performance. … and then i was seen as incapable. … in junior secondary form one, i found schoolwork very difficult and i couldn’t cope; so, i repeated another year. … one year after, i was promoted to junior secondary form two, but many teachers already saw me as hopeless and always assigned me to sit at the corner of the classroom. … teachers just ignored me and i wouldn’t get any academic help. … finally, i didn’t do well and had to repeat again. (male evening-school student) in brief, it is unclear what academic purposes, if at all, could be served by the two abovementioned specific criteria for retention. and, without effective state governance, schools in macao again are not obliged to provide rationales for such practices. but, it is clear that such specific criteria make it easier for students to get retained and leave room for teachers to treat students unprofessionally. the schooling experiences of these students, together with those quoted above, are consistent with what is discussed in the literature concerning student-teacher interaction in relation to the labelling effects and self-fulfilling prophecy operating within the classroom in two ways (e.g. sharp & green, 1984; jackson, 1990; metz, 2000; rothstein, 2004). the first is labelling leads to retention and self-fulfilling prophecy. initially, students deviated from the teachers’ expectations of what a well-behaved student should be like; and therefore, teachers saw them as not merely incompliant or disobedient, but also incapable. after being labelled as such, the students were then evaluated (actually graded) as such in their examinations and in the end got retained and/or fulfilled their teachers’ prophecy. the second is retention leads to labelling and self-fulfilling prophecy. after being retained, students were then seen as incapable or hopeless; and graded as such in subsequent examinations and may get retained and/or fulfil teachers’ prophecy again. given the possibilities for teachers’ unprofessional treatment of students, i argue that teacher-student interaction of such kinds somehow plays a role in explaining the high rates of in-grade retention in macao. the future of retained students? then, what are the educational outcomes of retained students vis-à-vis those who have never been retained? although data about the final educational outcomes of retained students are not available, the experiences of the evening-school students of this qualitative research project could somehow shed lights into this query. all eighteen except three evening-school students are actually students who fail to stay in a day school (i.e. they were retained and finally got kicked out why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? 13 of day school) and resort to studying in evening school. this observation suggests that ‘recurrent education’ actually serves as the last resort for those retained students being pushed out of day schools. this speculation is consistent with the following official statistics that over the last five years the majority of evening-school students are actually not mature students but students of the relevant age group (the website of macao dsej): from 2007 to 2010, over 60% of eveningschool students are aged between 15 and 24 (two categories: 15-19 and 20-24); and from 2010 onwards, because of different age categories used, nearly half of evening-school students are aged between 15 and 20. and, it is generally observed that evening-school students are more likely not to make it to the completion of a senior secondary education and thus to fail to obtain a high-school diploma (personal communications with a number of teachers teaching in evening schools). what these speculation and observation seem to suggest is that not only are retained students likely to score lower at pisa, as already shown in table 10 above, but some of them are also likely to be retained again and finally get pushed out of day school first and the system of formal education altogether. if the practice of in-grade retention is intended to strengthen students’ academic foundation and thus provide additional academic assistance for them, then retained students would be somehow directed to an educational success of some kind. but, what seems happening is that retention does not lead students to an educational success but the following educational path, as pointed out by some teachers of this qualitative research project: retention in a day school is likely to lead to further retention in the same school, then to studying in another day school of a lower ranking (if lucky) and then probably having retention there, and eventually to studying in an evening school, and finally to an incompletion of a secondary education. it certainly requires more empirical work and data to demonstrate how statistically representative of this educational path to retained students in macao. but the observation of this educational path for some retained students suggests that contrary to the view that the practice of in-grade retention helps students academically, retention could be seen as a device of screening off students leading them towards an educational failure. conclusion in-grade retention is generally accepted and commonly believed to be synonymous with quality assurance of education in macao. but such prevalent attitude towards in-grade retention alone cannot fully explain why the rates of in-grade retention are so high in macao. in this paper, i seek to argue that the main reason is that given colonial legacy the education system in macao is a system of private schools without effective state governance, albeit with lots of government subsidies. as private schools operating in such a context where their freedom of running the school in their own style is guaranteed, schools could decide their own criteria for retention and are not required to provide the public with any rationales for the criteria they set. this setup also leaves much room for teachers to treat students unprofessionally without being caught. in order to survive in such a context, private schools are required to compete for students so as to get class subsidies from the government. academic reputation is thus of utmost importance to private schools. but there are no common academic standards serving as a professional reference to assess students from different schools. in-grade retention rates are then treated as one significant indicator of the academic standards of schools. in order to increase their market reputation and visibility to students and their parents, many schools would actually manipulate in-grade retention rates. and, in adjusting the class size in order to get class subsidies from the government, many schools would also manipulate the operation of in-grade retention. put simply, against this setup, with these purposes irrelevant to the quality assurance of education, many schools could and would set up their own criteria for retention, however arbitrary or unreasonable they seem, in the name of upholding decent academic standards. meanwhile such criteria for retention could somehow leave room for subjective interpretations in enforcement, and thus room for teachers’ unprofessional treatment of students. in sum, this setup of a system of private schools without effective state governance allows schools’ manipulation and teachers’ unprofessionalism; this plays an important role in explaining why in-grade retention rates in macao are so high. the case of macao could actually provide an opportunity for us to reflect on the neoliberal discourse currently dominant in education. it is believed that a national schooling system is inefficient and ineffective and should be replaced with a cost-effective privatized schooling system. the keywords for such advocacy are market, competition, parental choice, and the quality of education. under a national schooling system, the practices of all school are governed by the state and thus standardized; all schools are by and large the same, meaning that there is not much choice for parents and their children; and without competition, the quality of teaching of schools would not be improved. in brief, with much state governance and standardization, such system of school is neither efficient nor effective in the provision of education; the quality of education is simply not guaranteed. by contrast, in a privatized schooling system without much state governance and standardization, schools could have much room for innovation and individuality in materializing their different missions, in that they could design their own curriculum and assessment that they consider work well to meet the needs current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 14 of their targeted student bodies. the room for innovation and individuality makes it possible for private schools to run themselves in their own styles. consequently, schools with their different styles could compete freely and openly for students and their parents with different needs in the market of education. given such a variety of schools, students and their parents could have many choices and ultimately could choose a school that fits them best. besides, competition between schools is believed to be conducive to boosting the overall quality of education. put simply, in a privatized schooling system, schools offering a high-quality education would win out attracting more students and schools failing to do so would be forced to leave the market of education. ultimately, not only do students and their parents benefit individually from competition between quality schools and poor schools, but the society as a whole would in a long run benefit from an increasing quality of education resulting from such competition. however, the case of macao urges us to rethink the potential benefits of a privatized schooling system where education is seen as a market and students and their parents are viewed as customers. contrary to what neoliberal discourse would have us believe, in order to increase their market visibility and reputation so as to attract more students, schools and teachers do not necessarily make effort to be more innovative in teaching or to develop their niches to meet different needs of students. rather, different schools and their teachers could still be doing the same thing: they could and would resort to manipulations of various kinds wherever and whenever necessary to promote students’ academic achievements and to boost their academic reputation so as to make them look attractive to students and their parents. to this end, it is the in-grade retention rates that are manipulated in the macao case; such manipulations and related practices are not necessarily beneficial to individual students or conducive to improving the overall quality of education. on one hand, when all schools are doing similar things to promote students’ academic achievements so as to boost up their academic reputation, schools do not seem to cater different needs of parents and their children and therefore parents do not seem to have much school choice; and on the other hand, given schools’ manipulations regarding their in-grade retention rates, it is difficult for parents to make an informed decision of school choice for their children. in sum, the case of macao suggests that in a privatized schooling system the practices of schools and their teachers could actually cause damages to students and such practices per se could be the very reason for a low quality of education. i do not mean to say that a privatized schooling system is all wrong or to defend that a national schooling system is the only way out. rather, my point is that letting the practices of schools be regulated by the market of education rather than the state and emphasizing competition between schools do not necessarily guarantee more choices and efficiency and effectiveness in the provision of education, let alone the provision of quality education. references aronowitz, s., & giroux, h. a. 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(1984). social stratification in the classroom. a. hargreaves and p. woods (eds). staffrooms: the sociology of teachers and teaching, london: open university press. unesco. (2011). global education digest 2011: comparing education statistics across the world. unesco institute for statistics. weis, l., farrar, e., & petrie, h. (eds). (1989). dropouts from school: issues, dilemmas, and solutions. new york: state university of new york press. willis, p. (1981). learning to labour: how working class kids get working class jobs, new york: columbia press. yuen, k. s. (2012, november 12). roots of students’ disaffection in macao (in chinese). macao daily. retrieved from http://www.macaodaily.com/html/201211/12/content_749693.htm. current issues in education vol. 16 no. 3 16 article citation wong, y. (2013). why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? current issues in education, 16(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1240 author notes wong, yi-lee assistant professor department of educational administration and policy faculty of education chinese university of hong kong shatin, new territories hong kong yi-lee.wong@graduate.hku.hk or wongyilee@cuhk.edu.hk yi-lee wong is a sociologist with research interests in social inequality, social stratification and mobility, education, and the youth. over the last few years, i have been doing research projects on educational inequality in contemporary hong kong and macao. the project in hong kong is about the institution of community college and its students. referring to in-depth interview accounts of community-college students in hong kong on how they make educational decisions in order to stay on in higher education and how they evaluate their educational careers and achievements, i seek to examine the roles of emotions in the reproduction of educational inequality and the roles of self-evaluations in the legitimation of a system of educational inequality. there are various concerns of the projects in macao; for example, one is about school regulations and regulations related to in-grade retention, another is about how high-school students make educational choices, another is about the narratives of evening-school students and dilemma facing them, and another is about the schooling experiences of school-dropouts. this paper is a piece based on the data of those projects in macao. i have been using such rich data to address a number of issues against the context of post-colonial macao. manuscript received: 0517/2013 revisions received:10/30/2013 accepted: 11/12/2013 why are in-grade retention rates so high in macao? 17 volume 16, number 3 december 15, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis thomas elizabeth calhoun reyes assistant executive editors bonnie mazza constantin schreiber recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik ayfer gokalp laura m. gomez darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell nichole hugo sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker bonnie mazza kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers peer functioning in children with ad/hd and new directions in the application of interventions peer functioning 1 peer functioning in children with ad/hd: a review of current understanding and intervention options selda ozdemir, phd gazi university, turkey address: gazi university, gazi education faculty special education department teknikokullar 06500 ankara turkey email seldaozdemir@gazi.edu.tr peer functioning 2 abstract this review critically evaluates the existing research literature on the peer relationship problems of children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. empirical evidence suggests that children with the disorder are severely impaired in the social area and strongly rejected by peers. the purposes of this article are to provide a review of key contributing factors to the peer relationship problems of children with ad/hd and to outline intervention options that have been supported as beneficial for children with the disorder. finally, the article provides a framework to understand and address the complex social problems of children with the ad/hd. key words: attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; peer relationship problems; peer rejection; social skills; emotion regulation; interventions. peer functioning 3 peer functioning in children with ad/hd: a review of current understanding and intervention options attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder is the most commonly diagnosed childhood disorder characterized by symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and/or impulsivity (dsm-iv; american psychiatric association, 2000; blachman & hinshaw, 2002). international epidemiological studies using standardized diagnostic criteria suggest that 3 % to 7 % of the school-aged population is affected by the disorder (barkley, 2006; peterson, pine-cohen, & brook, 2001). this prevalence estimate means that almost 1 in every 20 children, or at least 1 child per general education classroom, is likely to be identified as having ad/hd (barkley, 2001; barkley, 2006; mcgoey, eckert, & dupaul, 2002; peterson, et al., 2001). in addition to the primary symptoms of the disorder, increased rates of comorbid psychiatric conditions including oppositional defiant disorder (odd) and conduct disorder (cd) (barkley, 2006) and secondary impairments such as academic underachievement and learning problems are commonly reported in ad/hd (dupaul, 2007; farone et al., 1993). social deficits in peer relations including social skills and social performance deficits (maedgen & carlson, 2000; wheeler & carlson, 1994) have been widely noted, as have difficulties in aggression (hodgens, cole, & boldizar, 2000) and emotion regulation (southam-gerow & kendall, 20002). empirical evidence suggest that long term effects for some children with ad\hd include attending fewer years of school, achieving lower overall occupational status such as being ranked significantly lower than control groups (mannuzza, gittelman-klein, bessler, malloy, & lapadula, 1993; weiss & hechtman, 1993) and displaying worse job performance (weiss & hechtman, 1993), and experiencing greater range of social maladjustment and personality problems such as lower self-esteem depressive symptoms, antisocial and criminal status (barkley, 2006; treuting & peer functioning 4 hinshaw, 2001; young, 2002). even those children with ad/hd who are monitored into adolescence and found to be free of psychiatric disorders appear to have some social problems, such as significantly less community and school activity involvement (mannuzza, klein, bonagura, konig, & shenker, 1988). although earlier research has focused primarily on the attentional, academic/learning, and behavioral problems associated with this disorder (dupaul, 2007; farone et al., 1993; treuting & hinshaw, 2001), the social domain is being increasingly accepted as one of critical importance for these youngsters (blachman & hinshaw, 2002; hinshaw, & melnick, 1995; mikami & hinshaw, 2003; stroes, alberts, & van der meere, 2003). the difficulties in the social domain are so common that some investigators have claimed that the phenomenon of disturbed social relations itself should serve as a classifying characteristic of the disorder (landau & moore, 1991; whalen & henker, 1991). indeed, erhardt and hinshaw (1994) argued that social problems of children with ad/hd might be central to an understanding of the psychopathology of these children. the interpersonal behaviors of children with ad/hd are often described as more impulsive, intrusive, excessive, disorganized, engaging, aggressive, intense, and emotional (bagwell, molina, pelham, & hoza 2001; mikami & hinshaw, 2003; stroes, alberts, & van der meere, 2003). thus, they are disruptive to the smoothness of the ongoing stream of social interactions, reciprocity, and cooperation, which is an increasingly essential part of the children’s social lives with others (barkley, 2006). problems caused by inattention and impulse control effect negatively the social performance of children with this disorder in a number of areas. first, they may enter ongoing peer activities in a sudden, disruptive manner. second, their communication style often differs than their typically developing counterparts. children with peer functioning 5 ad/hd have difficulty in following the implicit rules of good conversation (stroes, et al., 2003). they are likely to interrupt others, talk more during spontaneous conversation, pay minimal attention to what others are saying, and respond in an irrelevant fashion to the queries or statements of peers (landau & milich, 1988; stroes, et al., 2003; zentall, 1988). further, studies of language fluency and discourse organization indicate that children with ad/hd are likely talk less and be more dysfluent in response to confrontational questioning (tannock & schachar, 1996).third, these children frequently approach interpersonal problems in an aggressive manner, lose their temper, and become angry quite easily (blachman & hinshaw, 2002; hinshaw, & melnick, 1995; mikami & hinshaw, 2003). thus, arguments and fights with peers are very common among children with the disorder (dupaul & stoner, 2003). being inflexible if another child appeals, having a need to take control of play situations, becoming intimidating, and being stubborn about having things occur the way they want them to happen are other common observable behaviors of children with ad/hd (barkley, 2006). it is not surprising then, that children with ad/hd are rejected at higher rates than are their non-ad/hd peers (blachman & hinshaw, 2002; guevromont & dumas, 1994; johnston, pelham, & murphy, 1985; mikami & hinshaw, 2003). although peer rejection does not, in itself, indicates an externalizing behavior disorder, it is well known that low social status with peers significantly predicts a host of negative outcomes in later life (parker & asher, 1987) and covaries positively with disruptive and particularly aggressive behavior. it is essential to note that, when tracking children diagnosed with ad/hd into adolescence and adulthood, those who ultimately experience the most serious clinical problems (e.g., substance abuse, criminal arrests and incarceration, psychiatric hospitalization) were previously identified as having difficulties with aggression or social relations (mannuzza, klein, bessler, malloy, & lapadula, 1998; parker & asher, 1987; peer functioning 6 young, 2002). researchers have shown that from 45% to 84% of children and adolescents with ad/hd meet full diagnostic criteria for odd alone or with cd (barkley& biederman, 1997; pfiffner et al., 1999; willens et al., 2002). thus, most of these risks seem to be increased further by the coexistence of hostile, conduct disordered behavior patterns, or oppositional defiant disorder (odd), with early onset hyperactive-impulsive behavior (anastopoulos, guevremont, shelton, & dupaul, 1992; barkley, 2006; barkley, fischer, smallish, & fletcher, 2004; stormont-spurgin & zentall, 1995). to make the case worse, researchers have found that children with high ratings in kindergarten on hyperactivity and aggression were more likely than those initially rated average or low on hyperactivity and aggression to have third and fourth grade outcomes of peer rated aggression and self-reported delinquency (vitaro, tremblay, gagnon, & pelletier, 1994). studies reveal that the early onset and persistence of cd symptoms such as lying, stealing, truancy and physical aggression are the hallmark of the later ad/hd+odd/cd (barkley, 2006). overall, evidence suggest that impaired peer relationships is already set into motion by the early years of elementary school and is evident across various measures of peer functioning (hoza et al., 2005). further, impairment in peer relations has been found to persist into adolescence (bagwell, molina, pelham, & hoza, 2001) and young adulthood (murphy, barkley, & bush, 2002). in general, extant data suggest that social problems of children with ad\hd are pervasive and put these children at heightened risk for future social maladjustment (barkley, 2006; landau, milich, & diener, 1998; young, 2002). such children are more likely to develop conduct disorder, to participate in more delinquent or illegal acts as adolescents, and to engage in greater substance experimentation and eventual dependence and abuse than are purely hyperactive or impulsive children (barkley, fischer, edelbrock, & smallish, 1990; biederman et peer functioning 7 al., 1996). indeed, follow-up studies suggest that early peer problems not only indicate concurrent difficulties for the child, but also represent a significant "at risk" marker for later emotional and behavioral disturbance (landau & milich, 1990; macdougal, hymel, vaillancourt, & mercer, 2001). even if the long-term outcome measures did not reveal subsequent adjustment problems, one is left to wonder if children with ad/hd experience the same quality of life as other children (landau & moore, 1991). given protracted nature of the disorder and the attendant long-term risks for a large percentage of children with ad/hd, there is an emerging consensus that peer relationship problems of children with ad\hd should be a crucial target for interventions. this article review the research relevant to the peer relationship problems of children with ad\hd including, emotion regulation deficits, social performance and social knowledge deficits, and aggression. following section provides an overview of the various interventions that have been supported as beneficial for children with the disorder. finally, this paper proposes a system perspective as a framework to understand and address the complex social problems of children with the disorder. emotion regulation deficits cole, michel, and teti (1994) define emotion regulation as processes or strategies used so that successful interpersonal functioning is possible. the construct of social competence is inexorably tied to emotion regulation (saarni, 1999) and emotion regulation skills are essential to healthy social adaptation (eisenberg, 2001; gross & munoz, 1995). eisenberg (2001) argues that more important than having the cognitive ability to understand others’ expression of emotion, social competence involves the ability to adequately manage one’s own experience of emotion while interpreting signals from another. accordingly, children who regulate emotion constructively are rated by their teachers as socially competent and by their peers as attractive peer functioning 8 playmates (eisenberg, fabes, bernzweig, karbon, poulin, & hanish, 1993). the social behaviors of children with ad/hd are suggestive of underlying difficulties with emotion regulation (maedgen & carlson, 2000; melnick & hinshaw, 2000; southamgerow & kendall, 2002). children with ad/hd frequently exhibit increased emotionality, displaying greater degrees of explosive, unpredictable, and oppositional behavior (dupaul, mcgoey, eckert, & van brakle 2001; hinshaw & melnick, 1995). over reactions to minor inconveniences are common, and such children may seem overly aroused when in stimulating situations (guevremont & dumas, 1994; waschbusch, pelham, jennings, greiner, tarter, & moss, 2002). cole, zahn-waxler, and smith (1994) found that levels of negative affect were significantly correlated with symptoms of ad/hd. likewise, peers tend to view these children as more aggressive, inflexible, intrusive, disruptive and annoying (taylor, 1994). in an experimental design, maedgen and carlson (2000) examined emotion regulation problems of children with ad/hd along with their social skills problems. the researchers used an emotion control task that assesses children’s expressive responses to receiving a disappointing prize. findings from the study indicated that children with ad/hd were more intense in their emotional displays (positive and negative) and displayed more positive behavior than children in the other two groups displayed during both a nondisappointing and disappointing period. interestingly, melnick and hinshaw (2000) found that impairment in emotion regulation in children with ad/hd was related to comorbid aggression rather than simply ad/hd symptomatology alone. the researchers reported that children with ad/hd in the highaggressive groups used a less constructive pattern of emotional coping, including overresponsive emotionality and diminished problem solving, than ad/hd children in the low-aggressive groups or non-ad/hd diagnosed children. while more research is needed, the apparent peer functioning 9 differences in emotion regulations skills between aggressive and non-aggressive children with ad\hd has led to the hypothesis that there may be an important distinction in underlying emotion regulation deficits (sandstrom & cramer, 2003). specifically, children characterized by aggression display a distinct profile of social information processes (sandstrom & cramer, 2003). studies have consistently found support for deviant social information encoding, response generation, response selection, and enactment in children with aggressive behavior (dodge & feldman, 1990; dodge & pettit, 2003; sandstrom & cramer, 2003). these distinct social information processes appear to be linked in transactional fashion with problems with emotion recognition, emotion regulation, and aggressive behavior. in a comprehensive review of both biological and psychological factors contributing to aggressive behavior, dodge and pettit (2003) noted that deficient social information processing (sip) likely develops from a series of additive life events that gradually shape a child’s mental representation of the world. early harsh and negative interactions with parents and peers might result in the amplification of social cognitive difficulties. consistent negative interactions with parents and peers, coupled with the gradual alteration of the child’s environment lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby emotional disturbances and aggressive behavior result from biased social cognitive processes and biased environmental factors (dodge & tomlin, 1987). overall, deficits in emotion regulation signify one of the primary areas of impairment in ad/hd which eventually result in various problems in peer relationships (barkley, 1997; hinshaw & melnick, 1995). even though a link has been demonstrated between deficits in emotional competence and the presence of social problems in general (eisenberg, et al., 2001; lemery, essex, & smider, 2002), less work has been done addressing the emotional functioning of children with specific types of psychopathological difficulties (southam-gerow & kendall, peer functioning 10 2002). according to barkley (2006), most children with ad/hd have a disinhibitory deficit, which causes secondary impairments in domains of self-regulation such as emotion. barkley (2006) emphasized that children with the disorder display greater prepotent emotional reactivity to “charged” events and less capacity to regulate emotion/arousal states in the service of goaldirected behavior. certainly, there is a great need to move forward in our understanding of how emotion regulation develops in normative populations and how this process may become atypical in children with ad\hd (southam-gerow & kendall, 2002). information generated by research on children’s emotion regulation strategies eventually may yield reformulated interventions for children with the disorder. such interventions could foster children’s abilities to reinterpret situations cognitively, build awareness of their acts on the negative or uncontrollable aspects of situations, and teach helpful ways of signaling distress (melnick & hinshaw, 1999). social knowledge deficit versus social performance deficit social relationship problems of children with ad\hd can results from two types of deficits: social knowledge and social performance deficits, either of which may be accompanied by inferring problem behaviors such as anxiety and aggression. social knowledge deficit refers to whether an individual knows the appropriate behavior that is called for in a given social situation (landau, milich, & diener, 1998). in contrast, social performance deficit represents the presence of the social skills in a behavioral repertoire but failure to perform these skills at acceptable levels (landau, milich, & diener, 1998; maedgen & carlson, 2000). social performance deficit in children with ad/hd-combined subtype is based on research findings showing that children with ad/hd interact with other people as much as their peers (wheeler & carlson, 1994). because children with ad\hd frequently interact with peers, they arguably have similar opportunities to learn appropriate social behaviors (whalen & henker, 1985; wheeler & peer functioning 11 carlson, 1994). evidence also suggests that children with ad\hd are able to initiate appropriate prosocial behavior. further, according to dupaul and stoner (2003) children with ad/hd-c are able to state the rules for appropriate social behavior as well as their typically developing peers. however, what makes them have problems in social situations is that they often do not act in accord with these rules. this performance deficit is consistent with the hypotheses that children with ad/hd-c are impaired in delaying responses to the environment (barkley, 2006). in his theory, barkley (2006) proposes that children with ad/hd act before they have a chance to think. in fact, studies have found that children with ad/hd-c engage in higher rates of unmodulated behaviors that are often inappropriate in the given context and insensitive to social expectations (e.g.,yelling, running around, or talking at inappropriate times) both as verbal (teasing, commanding) and physical (hitting) (barkley, 2006). evidence suggests that impulsivity and hyperactivity can be the reasons that obstruct a child with ad/hd-c from displaying social knowledge properly (maedgen & carlson, 2000). specifically, impulsivity may effect the social interactions of children with ad/hd negatively by causing them to act without thinking and to have a difficult time waiting their turn in games. consequently, this behavioral style is expected to meet with dislike and subsequent peer rejection (wheeler & carlson, 1994). although it appears that children with ad\hd-i have less severe social problems than children with ad\hd-c, they do present difficulties in social relationships (bachman & hinshaw, 2002; faraone, biederman, weber, & russell, 1998; maedgen & carlson, 2000). rather than being rejected by peers for disruptive or aggressive behaviors, children with ad\hd-i are more likely to be socially isololated, neglected, ignored, and teased by peers (hinshaw, 2002; hodgens et al., 2000: mcburnett et al., 1999). according to wheeler and carlson (1994), children with ad/hd-i may have deficits in both social performance and peer functioning 12 knowledge, whereas children with ad/hd-c type have performance deficits. the researchers further argued that these deficiencies might be differentially mediated by the symptoms typically co-occurring with each subtype. impulsivity and hyperactivity may prevent a child with ad/hdc from using social knowledge appropriately, whereas the anxiety and disorganization that characterize children with ad/hd-i may limit social interactions and thereby restrict acquisition of adequate social knowledge (maedgen & carlson, 2000). if such a pattern is the nature of children with ad/hd-i, they may be too fearful to experience social interactions and therefore have fewer opportunities to learn appropriate social behaviors than children with ad/hd-c (landau, milich & diener, 1998). overall, the distinction is important because it suggests that different interventions may be necessary, depending on whether a child presents with knowledge or performance deficits. if a child lacks competency in the basic skills necessary for social interactions, remediation approaches will focus on skill acquisition. on the contrary, if one finds that child knows, but is unable to judge when to or what specific skills to apply, interventions will emphasize performance. in general, direct instruction, modeling, coaching, and behavioral rehearsal frequently are used to remediate social skills deficits whereas contingent reinforcement, token economies that manipulate antecedents and consequences are beneficial for children with social performance deficits (landau, milich, & diener, 1998). interventions targeting social performance deficits are designed to increase the frequency with which children display the appropriate social behaviors typically by manipulating antecedents and consequences. providing immediate feedback to children with social performance deficits is an especially important part of intervention design. to sum, the distinction between children with ad\hd’s social knowledge and social performance deficits can directly address the risk factors of social failure and rejection peer functioning 13 by peers before children become attached to deviant peer groups that promote antisocial personality disorders (landau, et al., 1998; ozdemir, 2009). aggression aggression has been a popular focus of research for developmental psychology and special education (melnick & hinshaw, 1996). researchers have shown that children with ad/hd display social behavior that is described as disruptive, controlling, trouble-making, and frequently aggressive (melnick & hinshaw, 1996; reid, 1993). the primary features of ad/hd combined with aggression often interfere negatively with a child’s ability to interact effectively with peers, family members, and others (bagwell, molina, pelham, & hoza 2001; dupaul, mcgoey, eckert, & van brakle, 2001). temperamental and behavioral deficits observed in young children with ad/hd interfere with typical social interactions. they demand a great deal of attention from others, with their behaviors often being more intense or forceful than the situation requires (sheridan, 1998). researchers have found that at least one-half of all children with ad/hd are known to have comorbid problems with aggressive conduct (hinshaw, 1987; hodgens et al., 2000; maedgen & carlson, 2000). these children are more likely to propose aggressive solutions to a problem situation and are less able to anticipate negative consequences when compared to non-ad/hd peers (matthys, cuperus, & van engeland, 1999; waschbusch et al. 2002). they frequently misinterpret neutral behaviors as hostile and confrontational, which may prompt an aggressive response (hinshaw, 1987). similar self-distortions were also found in aggressive rejected children (dodge & pettit, 2003). sandstrom and cramer (2003) proposed that aggressive rejected children are particularly prone to engage in biased encoding processes that “protect” them from negative peer feedback. moreover, research has described that children with aggressive behavior not only misinterpret intent but also the degree of aggressive behavior in a peer functioning 14 social situation (dodge & feldman, 1990; hubbard et al., 2001). for example, when involved in an aggressive interaction, children with aggressive tendencies are more likely to underestimate their own level of aggression than are other children. these results suggest that aggressive children misjudge their level of aggression possibly because they over-attribute hostile intention to their peers’ actions thereby justifying aggressive behavior. to make the case worse, aggression is one of the most pervasive social problems for children with the disorder (landau, et al., 1998). researchers showed that 67% of preschoolers at risk for ad/hd with aggression at age 3 continued to have behavior problems when they reached 9 years old (campbell & ewing, 1990). it is also important to note that in various studies, children with ad/hd were rated by their peers as starting fights and arguments more than non-ad/hd children (hodgens, et al., 2000; maedgen & carlson, 2000). in fact, research documented that children with ad/hd tend to be aggressive without an obvious aim except to inflict harm on a peer and are also more likely to be aggressive to obtain something valuable for them, such as to come first in a game (atkins & stoff, 1993). the overlap of ad\hd with oppositional defiant disorder (odd) and conduct disorders (cd) has probably received the most attention of all in the literature on comorbidity in ad\hd (barkley & biederman, 1997; pfiffner et al., 1999; wilens et al., 2002). the comorbidity of odd\cd with ad\hd is often associated with a poorer outcome than either disorder alone. this comorbidity is also a marker for increased levels of symptomatology within each of the disorders making up the comorbid group, and with increased levels of impairment in functioning. for example, individuals with both ad/hd and odd or cd have higher levels of cd/odd symptoms than children with pure cd (hinshaw, lahey, & hart 1993; maughan, rowe, messer, goodman, & meltzer, 2004), greater levels of parental psychopathology, conflictual interactions peer functioning 15 with parents, peer rejection, school problems, and psychosocial adversity (fletcher, fisher, barkley, & smallish, 1996). overall, research suggests that the majority of children with ad/hd experience either social incompetence or aggression, or a combination of both problems (barkley, 2006). it is important to note that the more a child exhibits aggressive behavior or related comorbid disorders, the more challenging the treatment will be (barkley, 2006). although medications may decrease aggressive behavior, children with ad\hd need interventions that promote social competence because medication does not “normalize” the behaviors that lead peer rejection (landau & moore, 1991). hence, practitioners need to understand these comorbid conditions to plan and implement effective interventions. interventions improving behavior in children with ad\hd depends on addressing a range of interrelated issues at the family level, in the classroom and in relation to individual children. in general, most current evidence based treatments for ad\hd include: behavior modification procedures, stimulant medication, the combination of behavior modification and stimulant medication (american academy of pediatrics, 2001), parent training, and social skills training (stormont, 2001). various intervention programs exist but all strive to promote more positive, compliant, and generally prosocial behavior while decreasing negative, defiant, and disruptive behavior in children (shelton et al., 2000). these programs typically include antecedent modifications, skill development, and consequent strategies and focus on peer and family relations, classroom conduct, and school achievement (arnold et al., 1997; bierman, miller, & stabb, 1987; dupaul & weyandtb, 2006). in general, evidence suggests that most of these approaches appear to be acutely effective interventions for children with ad\hd in reducing the peer functioning 16 symptoms of the disorder (dupaul & eckert, 1997; pelham & fabiano, 2007; pelham, wheeler, & chronis, 1998). however, for the majority of children, a long-term intervention that requires the support and commitment of all people who have a close relationship with the children is crucial (dupaul & weyandtb, 2006). despite the increased understanding and awareness about the nature of the disorder, many professionals face the challenges of designing programs that can be easily integrated into children’ life and are practical in use. there remains, therefore, a pressing need to further develop long-term multimodal interventions that are intended to address the complex problems exhibited by this population. behavior modification interventions behavior modification interventions is probably one of the most commonly used interventions in ad\hd (dupaul & eckert, 1997; dupaul & weyandtb, 2006; pelham, wheeler, & chronis, 1998). these interventions focus on manipulating the environment to decrease inappropriate behavior and increase appropriate replacement behaviors (reid & maag, 1998). behavior modification interventions typically involve a functional behavior assessment to determine the target behaviors, training parents and\or teachers in behavior management techniques, reinforcement contracts for home and school, and daily reinforcements and consequences. token reinforcement and response cost procedures are the most universally employed set of classroom management techniques in reducing disruptive, off task behavior and enhancing work productivity (fiore, becker, & nero, 1993). token reinforcement involves awarding or removing tokens or points to children contingent upon specified desirable behaviors. these tokens or points are collected and exchanged later for activities, objects, or privileges (carbone, 2001). a token economy may or may not include a response cost procedure (barkley, 2006), which involves the loss of privileges, tokens or points contingent upon inappropriate peer functioning 17 behavior. it is widely accepted that behavior modification interventions can be of great value for children with ad\hd because children with the disorder need more structure, more frequent and powerful reinforces to act appropriately, more consistent and immediate negative consequences to avoid a fine, and accommodations of school work to address slow work style (dupaul & eckert, 1997; dupaul & stoner, 2003; maag, 1999; pelham, et al., 1998). pertinent to this point, existing empirical support for token programs and the practical use of these programs with a wide range of problem behaviors have led to their widespread use in school settings (rowland, umbach, stallone, naftel, bohlig, & sandier 2002; mcgoey & dupaul, 2000; dupaul & eckert, 1997). according to barkley (2006), behavioral interventions can be effective in managing the ad\hd symptoms, because the severity of the symptoms and that of comorbid conditions are very sensitive to environmental variables. medications in addition to behavior modification interventions, pharmacological interventions with stimulant medication are also widely used to treat ad\hd. it is estimated that over 1.5 million school age children in the u.s. annually may be using stimulants for behavior management (zito et al., 2003). interestingly, research suggests that adolescents and adults meeting criteria for ad\hd are being increasingly prescribed for stimulants due to the persistence of the symptoms across multiple domains of life into adolescence and adulthood (conner & steingard, 2004). not surprisingly, the use of medication in children with ad\hd has been the subject of some controversy and increased public concern. despite remarkable popularity of pharmacological treatment of the disorder, not all children benefit from medication, and even those who do still do not “normalize” in their social relationships (barkley, 2006). in fact, many professionals are hesitant to medicate young children and often remind that the use of psychostimulant drugs for peer functioning 18 the treatment of ad\hd symptoms in young children necessitates serious consideration of risks relative to potential positive effects (kern et al., 2007). supportive of this view, some data suggest that the nature and severity of side effects may vary and be more intensive in young children (kouins & greenhill, 2006; wigal et al., 2006). a related concern is that little can be said about the effects of medications on the developing brain as well as long-term side effects (rappley, 2006). although, serious concerns raised by many practitioners and parents remain to be addressed about medicating children with ad\hd, it is particularly challenging to design interventions that will effectively control the symptoms and treat the disorder without using stimulant medications. some practitioners wisely discuss that behavioral interventions, structured preschool experience (kouins & greenhill, 2006; rappley, 2002) social skills training, and parent education are attractive alternatives to medication (dawson, 2007). clearly, this is an area that requires considerable attention and further research. social skills training one of the most widely used psychosocial interventions that directly targets peer relationships is social skills training (sst). social skills training was originally developed for the purpose of enhancing the peer relationships of rejected and neglected children. it is based on the social skills deficit model, which posits that a child’s lack of social skills results in less positive peer interactions and lower social status (bierman & greenberg, 1996; durlak, 1997; grossman et al., 1997; kavale, mathur, forness, rutherford, quinn, 1997; mrug, hoza, & gerdes, 2001; pfiffner, calzada, & mcburnett, 2000). although short-term effects of sst are positive, longterm outcomes reveal discouraging results on social, vocational, and academic measures when it is applied to children with ad\hd (carlson & bunner, 1993; kavale et al., 1997; pfiffner et al., 2000). apparently, the nature of the disorder requires certain changes in both the content and the peer functioning 19 form of the interventions (mrug, et al., 2001). in particular, evidence exists that children with ad/hd-c display performance deficit rather than a skill deficit. in other words, children with ad/hd-c are able to express the socially appropriate rules and behaviors, but they often do not act accord with these rules (dupaul & stoner, 2003). it is important to note that social performance deficits are more complicated to ameliorate than social skills deficits. first, existing sst’s focus on deficits in skills rather than deficits in performance. second, because social performance problems exist across settings, interventions addressing performance problems must be carried out by different individuals in a child’s natural environments (dupaul & stoner, 2003). the other main problem is that most sst programs are designed for children who are apparently rejected without considering the unique topography of each child's performance in the social domain. as hinshaw (1992) noted, social skills problems of children with ad/hd are quite heterogeneous and are not likely to respond to one-size fits all approach. for example, social needs of children with ad/hd-i who are withdrawn and isolated are different than children with ad/hd-c who display hyperactive and impulsive symptoms (wheeler & carlson, 1994). thus, a social skills deficit approach may be applied to the children with ad/hd-i whereas both skills and performance deficit approach may work with children with ad/hd-c when conducting any sst programs. another important area to review is related to the structure of social skills interventions. social knowledge and the acquisition of prosocial behaviors are thought and practiced generally in group therapy formats. however, research indicates that traditional group therapy format do not lead to stable changes in social relationships of children with ad/hd in “real-world” environments (dupaul & eckert, 1994; gresham, 2003). the lack of maintenance and generalization of social skills training become a major problem because of the fact that peer functioning 20 appropriate social behaviors are not essentially prompted by adults and peers on a consistent basis (dupaul & weyandt, 2006; gresham, 2003). indeed, the generalization of the newly acquired skills to other contexts requires their reinforcement across different settings in the child’s natural environment for an enough period of time (mrug, hoza, & gerdes, 2001). essential components of environmental programming may involve teaching parents and teachers to reinforce children to perform the behaviors trained in the social skills sessions and developing contingency management programs at home and at school to prompt trained skills (dupaul & eckert, 1994). therefore, it is critical to accomplish the inclusion of parents, teachers, and peers as crucial members of the “social skills treatment team” for generalization. however, individuals within the child's natural environment such as parents typically have not been involved in intervention programs. providing parents with necessary knowledge and training not only increases the continuity of the program but also, the intensity. indeed, parents are generally with their children more than are teachers; this puts parents in the top position to create difficult behavior environments, or, more constructively, to provide long-term interventions. overall, research supports that parents who are educated in the description, causes, prognosis, and treatment of ad/hd are better able to facilitate behavioral change in their children (dupaul, guevremont, & barkley, 1991). likewise, interventions can be more effective especially with respect to generalization of improved behavior across settings, when parental involvement is combined with social skills training programs. in addition, inclusion of parents in the sst program establishes consistency between the school and home environments (dupaul & stoner, 2003). discussing behavioral strategies, rewards, and limits with parents to ensure continuity of approach to dealing with challenging behaviors between home and school is crucial. in that way, parents can encourage the same skills peer functioning 21 and performance at home and in different peer groups. indeed many children with ad/hd appear to need very strong and intense levels of reinforcement to produce appropriate behavior in certain settings (barkley, 1997; landau & moore, 1991). parents must learn to identify the specific behaviors they want to substitute and then by giving rewards for the new more appropriate behavior, teach the child how to control his actions and reactions (barkley, 2006). this is particularly important for children who have difficulty with anger management. an anger management program focused on adaptive ways of managing anger in children with ad/hd and a behavioral skills training program focused on both social skills and motivation can be used to help children with ad/hd experience more positive social outcomes (stormont, 2001). the other considerable problem is that once a child is rejected, peers cognitive processing of the child behavior becomes biased. in other words, the peers may develop a negative stereotypical perspective of the child, and as a result of their view, the peers may selectively perceive and respond to the stereotype-consistent behaviors (mrug, et al., 2001). thus, social skills interventions not only should work on changing the negative social behaviors of children with ad/hd, but also the interventions should attempt to increase peers awareness of positive changes in a child’s behaviors (mrug, et al., 2001). in order to do that, peers should be allowed to play active roles in every phases of social skills intervention (ang & hughes, 2002). specifically peers can participate in the social skills training sessions as role models and encourage the enactment of positive social behaviors of children with ad/hd (dupaul & stoner, 2003). indeed, research supports that including diverse peer group rather than using only children with disturbed behaviors increases the success of social skills training (ang & hughes, 2002). parent training peer functioning 22 another most widely used form of psychosocial interventions for young children is parent management training (barkley, 2006). studies have shown that parent management training alters parental disciplinary practices, including reducing the frequency of coercive exchanges between parents and children, reduces parenting stress, enhances parental confidence, and improves family relationships (anastopoulos, shelton, dupaul, & guevremont, 1993; bor, sanders, & markie-dadds, 2002; chronis, chacko, fabiano, wymbs, & pelham, 2004). in addition, parents are encouraged to consistently monitor their children to prevent antisocial behavior (e.g., physical aggression) and to prevent accidental injuries associated with impulsive behavior (dupaul & stoner, 2003). positive future outcomes for all children has been associated with stable family environments, consistent discipline, positive parental expectations for their future, positive parents-child relationships, perceptions of competence perceived by parents, and low rates of parental criticism. research indicates that behavioral treatment that teaches parents to modify their reactions to the child’s primary symptoms, should directly alter parental negative responses, and also train parents to increase their positive responses to children (barkley, 2006; wells et al., 2000). however, it is also important to recognize that the use of family relationship as a positive corrective experience in changing the relationship patterns of the child requires insight and support over time (dupaul et al., 2001; podolski & nigg, 2001). family members should learn necessary skills to apply behavioral interventions in a supportive environment and gain knowledge to identify indicators of emerging negative manifestations that will need assessment and intervention modifications (barkley, 2006). observing the child/parent interaction and then coaching parents in providing corrective behavioral interventions can be used via home visits while utilizing an empathic approach to the child and parents. even though extensive research documenting the importance of positive parenting practices in remediating peer functioning 23 children with ad\hd’s social relationship problems (barkley, 2006; dupaul et al., 2001; podolski & nigg, 2001), there is undoubtedly more to the etiological chain. in fact, research has shown that despite the success of training programs for parents of children with ad/hd, improvements in child behavior within the family do not significantly transfer to school or to other environments (anastapoluos, barkley, & shelton, 1996). anastopoulos and colleagues (1996) posit such programs work because they lower parental stress by teaching them to regard disruptive behaviors as less severe than previously thought. for example, the teaching of skills to ignore minor missteps is a common element in parental training programs (barkley, 1997). furthermore, parent training only treats one of the many environments of which a child is a part. research suggests that the key to change is connecting conduct at home with conduct at school while creating a system of communication between the two (goldstein & goldstein, 1998). discussion from an ecological perspective, behavior inextricably interviewed in the complex network of persons and environment (cook & plas, 1984). interventions are most effective when key players from each ecology of the child’s world are involved in the treatment team. according to noam & hermann (2002), an important dynamic in selecting an intervention for at risk young children is that we specifically need programs placed directly in the natural ecology and developmental context where children grow up and that bridge the different worlds that children inhabit. therefore, a key to developing effective interventions for children with ad\hd may be to adopt an ecological perspective, collectively addressing all of the factors that impact a child’s life. within this perspective, it is viewed that three major dimensions of a child’s life may likely to determine the degree of ad\hd symptoms. these dimensions include family, school, and child related characteristics and risk factors. indeed, many researchers strongly argue that the peer functioning 24 use of multiple treatment modalities in ad\hd produces therapeutic benefit greater than the sum of each modality’s contribution (barkley, 2006, stormont, 2001). for example, ozdemir (2006) have examined the effectiveness of the first step to success program on decreasing social emotional and academic problems of turkish children with ad\hd. her findings are particularly important for the current paper because of the focus on implementing a multi-component early intervention program with children with ad\hd. study results revealed that all participant children displayed increased levels of academic engagement behavior and decreased levels of social emotional problems with the introduction of the program and at three months and two years follow-ups. the results of this study indicate compelling evidence that implementing a multi-component early intervention program can yield important benefits for children with ad/hd. in general, research supports that some current treatment approaches, if rigidly applied, could dramatically decrease certain symptoms of ad\hd in short term (barkley, 2006). a multicomponent approach, however, would result in an overall remission of the ad\hd symptoms which could serve as the basis of positive social emotional development (ozdemir, 2006). such an approach would remind us that risk factors to peer relationship problems of children with ad\hd are by no means simple or linear. bowen’s concept of triangles (bowen, 1978) can be used to articulate the dynamic shifts of alliance and discordance that occur among persons and systems. the systems theory implies that all the interior angles of the triangle will influence and be affected by transactional relationships within the triangle. specifically, peer relationship problems of children with ad\hd appear to be in part mediated by family relational variables, school variables, and child related variables and the dynamic relationships between these elements. thus, interventions that link different variables in the family-school-child triangle will peer functioning 25 benefit from a focus on the interactive nature of child problems. conclusion various intervention approaches to ad\hd are reviewed in this study. even though these treatment approaches are all evidence based treatment approaches for treating ad\hd in different settings such as classroom and home, the research findings establishing these interventions generally contrast one of the treatment against a control group, rather than comparisons of their combination. thus, critical questions remain to be answered regarding how different treatment approaches might be best combined into a more meaningful package. furthermore, there is a compelling argument in favor of an increased emphasis on primary prevention efforts because of the heavy burden of suffering of ad/hd and the short-term effectiveness of the interventions (kern et al., 2007; mcgoey et al., 2002). unfortunately, until recently, minimal research has been conducted to help practitioners in identifying and supporting young children at risk for this disorder. it is essential to note that these two critical research gaps emphasize the importance of continuing program of research to develop interventions that better meet the needs of children with ad\hd. further advances in helping children with the disorder in having relationships that are more satisfying with peers depend upon the continued research efforts to address these critical research questions. finally, consideration of a systems perspective may lead to refinement of current intervention models. narrow conceptual models miss the complex nature of the disorder. in contrast, the systems perspective emphasizes that the systems interface and what happens in one system is likely to affect the child’s behavior in the other from such a perspective, interventions would be implemented most effectively with reference to a wider family, school, and child framework. without intervention, children with ad/hd will likely remain frustrated, angry, peer functioning 26 stressed, unmotivated, and unsuccessful in school and they will carry these problems to their future. thus, interventions need to offer an ecological and certainly longer-term enterprise 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(1988). production deficiencies in elicited language but not in the spontaneous verbalizations of hyperactive children. journal of abnormal child psychology, 16, 657-673. zito, j. m., safer, d. j., dosreis, s., magder, l. s., gardner, j. f., & magder, l. s., soeken, k., et al., (2003). psychotropic practice patterns for youth: a 10-year perspective. achieves of pediatrics and adolescent medicine, 157, 17-25. students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 1 volume 22, issue 3 december 8, 2021 issn 1099-839x students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings sarah k. guffey, christopher w. parrish, david s. williams university of south alabama abstract: the benefits of team learning include increased achievement, increased motivation, and greater retention of concepts learned. while team learning has been implemented since the early 20th century, instructors in higher education settings may still experience challenges managing implementation, such as unmotivated students and a lack of accountability among group members. one team learning pedagogy is team-based learning (tbl), a structured course design that combines individual preparation with collaborative problem-solving. given the benefits of tbl in face-to-face settings, including student learning and improved attitudes, educators have also adapted tbl to online settings. this embedded mixed-method study examined students’ perceptions of tbl in face-to-face and online teacher education courses. we found that students in tbl courses, regardless of delivery method, reported positive perceptions of tbl, and commonly identified the course structure and teams as the most effective aspects of the course. keywords: team learning, team-based learning, teacher education, online instruction citation: guffey, s. k., parrish, c. w., & williams, d. s. (2021). students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings. current issues in education, 22(3). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1960 accepted: october 13, 2021 introduction faculty and educational developers have been faced with the need to implement innovative teaching strategies to foster active, collaborative learning. some of these innovative strategies incorporate students working together to complete an assignment or task, which has been referred to as cooperative learning (bruffee, 1995; johnson & johnson, 1978, 2009); collaborative learning (dillenbourg, 1999; gokhale, 1995; meijer et al., 2020; panitz, 1999; vygotsky, 1980); problem-based learning (hmelo-silver, 2004); and team-based learning (michaelsen, 1983; michaelsen & black, 1994)—which are collectively hereafter referred to as team learning. the idea of students working together and learning from each other was first introduced by dewey (1940), who believed that learning should be an interactive and dynamic https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1960 guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 2 process that allows students to interact with their classmates (gillies & ashman, 2003). as a result, students learn “socially appropriate behaviors and they understand what is involved in cooperating and working together” (dewey, 1940, 1966, as cited in gillies & ashman, 2003, p. 1). generally, there are benefits when students work together in learning environments, including increased achievement and motivation, greater retention of concepts learned, and social development (johnson et al., 2000). a foundational theory in team learning is vygotsky’s (1980) social constructivism, which suggests that students construct new knowledge from prior experiences and while working with peers and teachers. he stressed the importance of social interaction and community of students in the process of learning and cognitive development. while team learning has been around since the early twentieth century, instructors in higher education settings may still experience challenges managing implementation, such as unmotivated students (i.e., social loafing), difficulty with communication among the group, and a lack of accountability among group members (hall & buzwell, 2013; kerr, 1983; koh & hill, 2009; meyer et al., 2016; mulvey & klein, 1998). in addition to implementing team learning in face-to-face settings, enrollment in online courses has consistently increased, with even faster growth in recent years (seaman et al., 2018). furthermore, universities—nationally and internationally—have transitioned instruction to online settings for the safety of students and faculty as it relates to covid-19. given these shifts to online instruction, ways in which to implement successful team learning in online courses is of need. one specific team learning pedagogy is team-based learning (tbl), which is a structured, collaborative learning framework that combines individual preparation and accountability with team problem solving, and the application of course content. tbl has primarily been implemented in face-to-face settings (e.g., clark et al., 2008; lewis et al., 2019), with fewer reports detailing the implementation or effectiveness of tbl in online settings (e.g., franklin et al., 2016; parrish, guffey, & williams, 2021; parrish, guffey, williams, estis, & lewis, 2021; parrish, williams, & estis, 2021). although tbl was first developed and implemented by michaelsen in a college of business (sibley & ostafichuk, 2014), tbl is commonly implemented and studied in medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and some stem disciplines (haidet et al., 2014). in these settings, tbl has been shown to improve students’ content knowledge, attitudes, and team interdependence (fatmi et al., 2013; haidet et al., 2014; liu & beaujean, 2017). the examination of tbl in teacher education is sparse (nicoll-senft, 2009; parrish, guffey, williams, estis, & lewis, 2021; parrish, williams, & estis, 2021). as such, the purpose of this study is to examine students’ perceptions of tbl in face-to-face and online teacher education courses. we more specifically examine two research questions: 1) what are the effects of course delivery in face-to-face and online tbl teacher education courses on students’ perceptions of tbl? 2) what do students identify as most effective and least effective in face-to-face and online tbl teacher education courses? conceptual framework in the sections that follow, we discuss our conceptual framework for the study, beginning with a discussion of team learning pedagogies and the benefits and challenges of team learning, in both face-to-face and online settings. we conclude with an overview and evidence of tbl as an effective team learning framework. guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 3 team learning pedagogies team learning pedagogies in higher education often range from students informally working in a team to students having defined roles within the team to solve open-ended, inquirybased problems (blumenfeld et al., 1996; tadesse & gillies, 2015). while there is no prescriptive outline for the various team learning pedagogies, an overview of cooperative learning, collaborative learning, and problem-based learning are discussed in this section. an additional team learning pedagogy, tbl, is discussed in a separate section as it is the focus of this study. the main goal of cooperative and collaborative learning is to help students successfully work together to learn new information (bruffee, 1995). although the two terms are often used interchangeably by instructors, a main difference is that cooperative learning was developed for teaching students in primary schools or novice learners and collaborative learning was developed for teaching adolescents and adults or learners with more content knowledge (bruffee, 1995; panitz, 1999). additionally, while there has been extensive research on both cooperative and collaborative learning, it’s important to note that both have theoretical underpinnings of social constructivism. in social constructivism, learning is dependent upon students engaging in content specific discussions with one another (kalina & powell, 2009; krahenbuhl, 2016; prawat, 1992; vygotsky, 1980). given the context of the study is higher education, we focus our discussion on collaborative learning. collaborative learning is defined as “a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together” (dillenbourg, 1999, p. 1). students are grouped in teams to solve problems or achieve an academic goal (gokhale, 1995). as students communicate with each other during the problem-solving process, they are “exposed to and draw on the expertise” of their team members (blumenfeld et al., 1996). additionally, it’s important for learners to build consensus through the cooperation of group members (panitz, 1999). problem-based learning (pbl) is an instructional method where students work together in collaborative groups to solve problems that do not have one correct answer, through self-directed learning (sdl; hmelo-silver, 2004). the teacher acts as a facilitator, providing scaffolds for students rather than providing knowledge through direct instruction (hmelo-silver, 2004). although students are working in teams in this experiential learning process, team members do not have identified roles. the main goals of pbl are to help “students develop: a) problemsolving skills; b) sdl skills; and c) flexible knowledge” (hmelo-silver, 2004, p. 235). benefits of team learning since dewey’s (1940) research on teamwork, many scholars have studied the benefits and challenges of students working with each other to learn. studies have found that group work allows learners to develop higher orderand critical thinkingskills while building content knowledge (conrad & donaldson, 2004; palloff & pratt, 2005). davies (2009) also found that teamwork “promotes deep as opposed to surface learning and active as opposed to passive learning.” additionally, he found there were several practical advantages for instructors such as: a) reduced time in grading; b) ways to manage large numbers of students; c) ways to help students develop 21st century skills for the workforce (teamwork, leadership, project management, communication skills); d) foster social membership in large enrollment environments which can be alienating and confusing for students; and e) provide an informal forum in which new ideas can be discussed and assimilated (davies, 2009). while there are guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 4 many benefits to team learning, studies reporting the specific examination of team learning in teacher education are sparse. challenges of team learning alternatively, if not implemented effectively, group work can be challenging for students and instructors (bravo, 2019; davies, 2009), particularly regarding the motivation of participants (kerr, 1983; morgan, 2002). some students may be reluctant to participate in their group and apathetic to the goals or objectives of the group and class assignments (kerr, 1983; morgan, 2002). examples of motivational issues have been referred to as “social loafing” and “free riding,” which means the group member does not contribute or participate in group assignments (hall & buzwell, 2013; jones, 1984; latane et al., 1979; meyer et al., 2016; ruel et al., 2003; strong & anderson, 1990; watkins, 2004). as a result of “social loafing” and “free riding,” capable individuals may take on the role of the “sucker effect,” which is identified as capable students minimizing their effort in group assignment or projects (kerr, 1983; meyer et al., 2016; mulvey & klein, 1998). these students would rather fail as a group than to be a sucker and complete the work individually (kerr, 1983; meyer et al., 2016). alternatively, there are motivated team members who successfully encourage their less motivated peers to engage in and contribute to team assignments by planning and coordinating activities (curseu & pluut, 2013). however, there are instances where the motivated team members are also highly competent in academic settings and when grouped with team members that are viewed as less competent, the highly competent student doesn’t accept or rely on information from that person or persons (andrews & rapp, 2014). managing the social aspects of small group learning is also challenging. students with dominant personalities may steamroll discussions, pressure group members to agree with their perspective, or force decisions on the group (blumenfeld et al., 1996; curseu et al., 2019). other students may purposefully dismiss group members or disregard their contributions, which may cause the rejected students to withdraw or feel embarrassed (blumenfeld et al., 1996). as one aspect of our study examined team learning in online courses, it’s important to expand on the general challenges with team learning and specifically highlight challenges in online courses. studies have found that when working in teams in online courses, students have difficulty communicating with their team members and understanding group assignments and course objectives (abdous, 2019; koh & hill, 2009; phirangee, 2016). students also experience feelings of isolation or a lack of community and feel there is a lack of accountability among team members (phirangee & malec, 2017; roberts & mcinnerney, 2007). in online courses that utilize team learning, students work with many technologies such as learning management systems and video conferencing platforms for synchronous meetings. students have reported experiencing feelings of frustration when managing the various technologies (gillett-swan, 2017). each of the team-learning pedagogies described above provide flexibility in when and how often team activities are completed within the course. as such, the frequency in which team learning is implemented in higher education courses—as well as the associated benefits of team learning—likely varies from course-to-course. in contrast, tbl is a structured course design that embeds team learning in a consistent and regular manner. team-based learning the tbl course design combines individual preparation with collaborative problemsolving. at the start of the course, students are assigned to permanent, diverse teams of three to guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 5 seven students. each module then consists of the same sequence of instruction: (a) individual preparation, (b) readiness assurance process (rap), and (c) team application of course content (michaelson & sweet, 2008, 2011). each module begins with individual preparation, where students engage with various module specific learning materials, such as readings or videos, to gain the foundational or prerequisite knowledge needed to successfully complete problem-solving activities later in the module (michaelsen et al., 2004). instructors often provide preparation learning objectives that detail what students should know and understand following engagement with the learning materials, and in turn, helps guide students reading or viewing. the rap is designed to gauge students’ levels of preparation for the module and includes four parts: the individual readiness assurance test (irat), the team readiness assurance test (trat), appeals, and the clarifying lecture. students begin by individually taking the irat, a short, multiple-choice, formative assessment on the content of the preparation materials. following, they take the same assessment, the trat, but as a team, thus requiring students to engage in discussion and to reach consensus for each answer choice. the trat also provides teams with immediate feedback for each question, allowing teams to continue discussions until the correct answer is reached. discussions during the trat have been identified as key learning opportunities as peer instruction often includes language more accessible to students than that of their instructors. if teams get a problem incorrect on the trat and believe there was ambiguity in the reading or question, a team may submit an appeal. an appeal includes declaring the source of ambiguity in the reading or question, as well as a justification and evidence from the preparation materials. the instructor reserves the right to grant or deny team appeals. the rap concludes with a clarifying lecture by the instructor and targets the content of those questions missed on the readiness assurance test (rat). the majority of class time is spent with students engaged in application activities. within the tbl framework, application activities must follow a 4s format. the 4s format includes: application activities that are a [s]ignificant problem, teams are required to make a [s]pecific choice (among clear alternatives), all teams work on the [s]ame problem, and teams’ choices are [s]imultaneously reported. once teams have reported their choices, inter-team discussion ensues as teams justify their reasoning. the number of implemented application activities will vary by course and module. peer evaluation is often completed at midand end-of-semester and provides students an opportunity to evaluate each of their team members’ contributions within the course. opportunities to evaluate peers is particularly important as tbl includes multiple team activities and provides accountability amongst team members, especially as peer evaluation is calculated in students’ course grade. in completing peer evaluation, students assign their teammates numerical scores, as well as comment on each student’s strengths and areas for improvement. there are multiple methods for conducting peer evaluations, some which force students to rank or assign varying levels of points to each team member (e.g., michaelsen method). for an overview of various peer evaluation methods, see sibley and ostafichuk (2014) and szatkowski and brannan (2019). research related to tbl in considering the effectiveness of tbl across all post-secondary fields, authors of systematic reviews of literature and meta-analyses report that tbl has been shown to improve content knowledge, team communication and awareness, course participation, attitudes and selfguffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 6 efficacy, and transfer of learning to job performance (fatmi et al., 2013; haidet et al., 2014; swanson et al., 2019). while tbl has been shown to positively benefit all students, it is those students at the lower-end of performance that have been shown to consistently benefit the most (haidet et al., 2014). in a meta-analysis of 38 studies examining the course learning outcomes, liu and beaujean (2017) found that the academic outcomes of students participating in tbl courses was almost 0.5 standard deviations higher than other methods of instruction. similarly, swanson et al. (2019) conducted a meta-analysis of 17 studies reporting the effects of tbl on content-knowledge outcomes. the researchers reported a mean effect size of 0.55 (p<0.001), indicating a positive, moderate effect of tbl on post-secondary students’ content-knowledge. specific to teacher education, nicoll-senft (2009) conducted a study examining the effectiveness of tbl in the context of a graduate-level, special education course. it was found that within the course, students often scored higher on their trat (98.21%) than their irat (90.95%). in comparing student achievement on quizzes between students participating in tbl and students which completed the course in a previous semester in which tbl was not used, students in the tbl course scored significantly higher on individual and team quizzes than those students who completed the non-tbl course. nicoll-senft (2009) concluded that tbl, “increased student learning, enhanced student-to-student discourse, and an overall improvement in students’ self-directed learning” (p. 37). brannan and colleagues (2019) also posited that tbl would provide regular opportunities for preservice teachers to engage in and develop critical thinking skills, an important characteristic for the in-the-moment decision-making required in teaching (griffith & lacina, 2017). the authors noted that the demand associated with diverse teams having to consistently make a specific choice (e.g., trat and application exercises) would provide regular opportunities for preservice teachers to engage in critical thinking as varying perspectives and justifications would be shared in the process of reaching a negotiated decision. team-based learning in online settings given the benefits of tbl in face-to-face settings on both student learning and attitudes, instructors have begun to adapt and implement tbl in online settings. past efforts to adapt tbl to online settings have remained primarily either fully asynchronous or fully synchronous (clark, et al., 2018; franklin et al., 2016; palsolé & awalt, 2008). given asynchronous courses lack realtime interactions, the tbl components often completed in a single class session are stretched over multiple days. for example, students are provided between 1-2 days to complete the irat, followed by 2-3 days for teams to complete the trat. a similar structure is provided for teams to complete the application activities, with multiple deadlines across multiple days. palsolé and awalt (2008) found that in implementing tbl asynchronously, student learning outcomes were similar to those of tbl in face-to-face courses, and that students perceived a significant satisfaction with teamwork when compared to their other courses that implemented team learning in a less structured manner. although activities are extended in time, the course maintains the flexibility students desire within an online course, and students still perform similar to those in face-to-face tbl courses. tbl has also been adapted to synchronous settings, where students experience real-time interactions, but do so remotely. in a synchronous setting, tbl is implemented using the traditional tbl methodology, but through video-conferencing platforms (clark et al., 2018; franklin et al., 2016). for example, students participate in class sessions using web-conferencing software that allows for whole-group meetings and the use of breakout rooms. breakout rooms provide opportunities for teams to collaborate on various activities, such as the trat and guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 7 application activities. students participating in a single synchronous tbl module reported positive team competencies and interdependence (franklin et al., 2016). more recently, the integrated online–team-based learning (io-tbl) model was developed to include elements of both asynchronous and synchronous engagement (parrish, guffey, & williams, 2021; parrish, guffey, williams, estis, & lewis, 2021; parrish, williams, & estis, 2021). the goal of the io-tbl model is to maintain the flexibility desired in online courses, while also providing the connectedness available in synchronous meetings. each module begins with a synchronous session that includes the irat, trat, clarifying lecture, and one or more application activities. following, teams spend the remainder of the module—the next two to three weeks—engaged in one or more application activities, as well as an opportunity to submit appeals from the trat. if two application activities are to be implemented outside of the synchronous sessions, the application activities are completed concurrently, with multiple deadlines across the weeks. for example, teams may be given four days to create a product or deliverable, another three days to view the other teams’ products, leave feedback, and to make a specific choice. following, teams’ choices are revealed, and students are provided two to three days to individually share justifications and defend their team’s selected choice. to complete these application activities, teams are provided both asynchronous and synchronous means of collaborating to ensure the flexibility of an online course remains. io-tbl was the model of online tbl examined within this study. parrish, guffey, williams, estis, and lewis (2021) used midand end-of-semester feedback to examine students' perceptions of io-tbl through the community of inquiry framework. effective aspects of the course included synchronous meetings, increased learning, teamwork, and the instructor; ineffective aspects included a heavy workload and a significant time requirement. in considering the community of inquiry framework, effective and ineffective course aspects most commonly aligned with the teaching presence, followed by social presence and cognitive presence (parrish, guffey, williams, estis, & lewis, 2021). while team learning has been implemented in higher education for decades, and with numerous benefits to the learner, a number of challenges still exist. namely, social loafing, a lack of accountability amongst group members, and within online settings, an absence of community. likewise, without a prescriptive framework for when and how often instructors should implement team learning, the associated affordances will also likely vary across courses and students. given the affordances of tbl in face-to-face and in online courses, tbl may serve as one team-learning course framework to meet many of these challenges. lastly, as studies examining the implementation of team learning pedagogies, as well as tbl, in teacher education are sparse, understanding students’ perceptions of tbl in teacher education courses is of particular need. method as the purpose of this study was to examine students’ perceptions on tbl in face-to-face and online tbl teacher education courses, an embedded mixed method design was employed. qualitative data was used to further explain and interpret the quantitative data collected through the team-based learning student assessment instrument, tbl-sai (mennenga, 2012). the collection and analysis of complementary quantitative and qualitative data allowed us to make sense of these students’ perceptions (creswell & clark, 2017). this section provides an overview of the participants, followed by a description of both the quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis. guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 8 participants two sampling procedures were used to identify participants from a mid-size regional public university for the study. first, convenience sampling was used to identify tbl courses within the college of education—face-to-face tbl and online tbl. all instructors in the college were sent a survey that stated the purpose of our study, asked if tbl was used within each course, how the course was offered (e.g., face-to-face, online), and for a roster of each course in which they would allow us to conduct the study. instructors were encouraged to send as many of their tbl courses as they deemed appropriate. students in tbl courses, both face-to-face and online, were emailed the link for the tblsai survey (mennenga, 2012) during the last two weeks of the course, with a follow-up reminder emailed a few days later. for each semester of data collection, students were incentivized to complete the survey with a drawing for one of four gift cards to the university bookstore. this sampling procedure was completed for three consecutive semesters (fall 2018, spring 2019, and summer 2019); note that online tbl was not offered fall 2018 and only those students in online tbl were surveyed in summer 2019. also note that io-tbl was the sole model used for online tbl courses. across all three semesters, we had a student response rate of 16.4%, with 28 of 171 students completing the survey; see table 1 for an overview of courses and students surveyed for each semester. the gender of the participants were 79% female and 21% male. the race of participants were 93% white, 4% african american/black, 3% from multiple races. the majority of participants were between the ages 21 and 29 (70%), followed by ages 30 to 39 (19%), ages 40 to 49 (7%), and ages 50 to 59 (4%). with regard to the degree sought, 50% of participants were seeking an undergraduate degree and 50% were seeking a graduate degree. table 1 number of students surveyed, responded, course type, and semester face-to-face tbl online tbl courses students response courses students response fa ‘18 3 45 6 sp ‘19 4 91 6 2 26 11 su ‘19 1 9 5 totals 7 136 12 3 35 16 note. online tbl was not offered fall 2018 and only those students in online tbl were surveyed in summer 2019. quantitative data data collection the team-based learning student assessment instrument, tbl-sai (mennenga, 2012) was administered online and accessed by participants through qualtrics. the 32-question tblsai measured three subscales: (a) accountability; (b) preference for lecture or team-based learning and (c) student satisfaction. the instrument included a five-point likert scale with responses of strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, and strongly agree. the total scores of the tbl-sai ranged from 33 165. mennenga (2012) defined neutral scores as follows: guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 9 accountability, 24; preference for lecture or tbl, 48; student satisfaction, 27; and total score, 99. scores that fall above neutral scores are categorized as positive experiences or attitudes. the accountability subscale had eight questions with scores ranging from 8-40 and addressed students’ preparedness for class and/or contributions to their team members (mennenga, 2012). the preference for lecture or tbl subscale had 16 questions with scores ranging from 16-80 and addressed students’ preference for tbl or lecture, with an above neutral score indicating a student’s preference for tbl (mennenga, 2012). the student satisfaction subscale had eight questions with scores ranging from 8 40 and “included positive feelings toward either tbl activities or traditional lecture” (mennenga, 2012, p. 169); an above neutral score indicated positive feelings towards tbl. data analysis a cronbach’s analysis to measure the reliability of the instruments and a correlation analysis between the three subscales was conducted (field, 2013; huck, 2012). descriptive statistics were calculated for the two student groups: face-to-face tbl and online tbl (johnson & christensen, 2019). levene’s test was used to test the assumption of homogeneity of variances (field, 2013; huck, 2012). to compare the mean scores of the two student groups, an independent samples t-test, was conducted (field, 2013; huck, 2012). a one-way t-test was conducted to determine if the mean scores of each group were significantly different from the neutral score for the tbl-sai (mennenga, 2012), as well as the neutral score of the subscales (field, 2013; huck, 2012; johnson & christensen, 2019). qualitative data data collection students were asked three open-ended questions at the conclusion of the survey: (1) what did you feel were the most effective aspects of this course; (2) what did you feel were the least effective aspects of this course; and (3) do you have any other comments or thoughts about this course? data was organized into data sets, effective course aspects and least effective course aspects. for the third open-ended survey question—other comments—responses were assigned by the first two authors to either the effective course aspects data set, or the least effective course aspects data set, as determined by the nature of the comment. data analysis all responses within each data set—effective course aspects and ineffective course aspects—were independently open-coded by each of the first two authors (corbin & strauss, 2008). following, the first two authors met to discuss and compare their open-codes and inductively developed themes for each data set, effective course aspects (see table 2) and ineffective course aspects (see table 3). the authors then recoded each data set, assigning one or more corresponding themes to each unit of analysis; each student response was considered a unit of analysis. lastly, the authors met to compare how themes were assigned and were able to reach a consensus in all instances of disagreement. guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 10 table 2 themes for effective course aspects theme description assessments responses relate to assessments, assessment strategies, or means of assessment (e.g., online). assignments responses relate to assignments and assignment details, such as resubmissions, student-led presentations, lecture-assignment alignment, and extra credit. course content responses relate to the content of the course, such as reading materials and access to in-class presentations. course structure responses relate to the organization, inclusion and sequencing of course elements, such as team-based learning, lecture followed by group activities, synchronous meetings, and course schedule. teams responses relate to teams and team organization within the course, such as permanent teams, group assignments, diverse teams, and peer relationships. instructor responses relate to the characteristics of the instructor (e.g., flexible, understanding, personable, etc.,) and timeliness of instructor feedback. lecture/instruction responses relate to techniques included withinor elements of lecture and instruction, such as teacher questioning, instructor explanations, application of content. student perceptions responses include students’ perception of the course (e.g., enjoyable, applicable learning, etc.,). technology responses relate to the technology used to facilitate learning within the course (e.g., zoom, peardeck, intedashboard, etc.,). guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 11 table 3 themes for ineffective course aspects theme description assessments responses relate to assessments within the course, such as readiness assurance tests (rats), accessibility of assessments, final exams, or quizzes. assignments responses relate to specific assignments, assignment feedback, assignment alignment, assignment frequency, or out-of-class assignments. course organization and expectations responses relate to unclear deadlines, confusion of expectations, content alignment, class length, course difficulty, workload as related to course credit hours. teams responses relate to team assignments, peer review, group make-up (differing content areas within the same team), unmotivated group members, or out-of-class group meetings. instructor responses relate to the instructor’s lack of feedback, lack of instruction, inability to provide explanations, or management of in-class discussions. lecture/instruction responses relate to the powerpoints, presentations, and synchronous lectures. nothing responses indicate “nothing” (theme was not applied for a no answer). findings our results are reported in two sections. we first report the results of the tbl-sai with respect to method of delivery (face-to-face or online). second, we report what students identified as effective and least effective course aspects, also by method of course delivery. quantitative: students’ perceptions of team-based learning a cronbach’s analysis was conducted to determine reliability on the tbl-sai and the three subscales (accountability, preference for lecture or tbl, and student satisfaction). it was found that the scale’s alpha levels were .745, .824, .914, and .900, respectively, which indicates that the scale and three subscales had an adequate level of inter-item reliability. a correlation analysis was conducted between the tbl-sai subscales. it was found that the preference subscale was positively correlated with the satisfaction subscale, r (22) = .760, p < .01. additionally, it was found that each subscale (accountability, preference for lecture or tbl, and student satisfaction) was positively correlated with the tbl-sai in its entirety, r (22) = .445, p < .05; r (22) = .946, p < .005; r (22) = .829, p < .005. the descriptive statistics associated with the tbl-sai and subscales for the face-to-face and online tbl courses (accountability, preference for lecture or tbl, and student satisfaction) are reported in table 4. guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 12 table 4 means, standard deviations, and standard error means on the tbl-sai and subscales measure group mean sd se tbl-sai face-to-face tbl (n = 11) 133.73 13.02 3.92 online tbl (n = 11) 125.45 13.32 4.02 accountability face-to-face tbl (n = 12) 35.17 4.06 1.17 online tbl (n = 16) 34.56 3.945 .987 preference for lecture or tbl face-to-face tbl (n = 12) 58.50 7.47 2.16 online tbl (n = 16) 55.94 7.07 1.78 student satisfaction face-to-face tbl (n = 11) 39.45 5.39 1.63 online tbl (n = 11) 34.00 5.24 1.58 the independent samples t-test results associated with the tbl-sai and individual subscales (accountability, preference for lecture or tbl, and student satisfaction) are reported in table 5. results showed that the effect of course delivery on the tbl-sai was not significant, f (2, 20) = -1.473, p = .156. the assumption of homogeneity of variances was tested and met using levene’s test, f (2, 20) = .001, p = .970. there was not a significant difference in the accountability subscale mean scores for face-to-face and online tbl courses, t (26) = -.396, p = .696. the assumption of homogeneity of variance was tested and was not violated using levene’s test, f (2, 26) = .032, p > .05. there was also not a significant difference in the preference for lecture or tbl subscale scores for face-to-face and online tbl courses, t (26) = .927, p = .362. the assumption of homogeneity of variance was tested and was not vio lated using levene’s test, f (2, 26) = .151, p > .05. there was a significant difference in the student satisfaction subscale scores for face-to-face and online tbl courses, t (20) = -2.407, p = .026. the assumption of homogeneity of variance was tested and was not violated using levene’s test, f (2, 20) = .066, p > .05. guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 13 table 5 independent samples t-test comparing tbl-sai mean scores of face-to-face and online tbl 95% ci of difference measure t df p md sed lower upper tbl-sai -1.473 20 .156 -8.273 5.616 -19.98 3.441 accountability -.396 26 .696 -.6042 1.527 -3.742 2.534 preference for lecture or tbl -.927 26 .362 -2.563 2.764 -8.244 3.119 student satisfaction -2.407 20 .026* -5.454 2.266 -10.18 -.7282 *p < .05 comparison of the groups’ mean scores to the neutral scores are reported in table 6. the one-way t-test results show that the face-to-face and online tbl means scores on the tbl-sai and its subscales were significantly higher than the neutral scores. table 6 one-way t-test comparing tbl-sai mean scores and neutral scores measure group mean neutral score p tbl sai face-to-face tbl (n = 11) 133.73 99 .003 online tbl (n = 11) 125.45 99 .003 accountability face-to-face tbl (n = 12) 35.17 24 .002 online tbl (n = 16) 34.56 24 .000 preference face-to-face tbl (n = 12) 58.50 48 .002 online tbl (n = 16) 55.94 48 .002 satisfaction face-to-face tbl (n = 11) 39.45 27 .003 online tbl (n = 11) 34.00 27 .007 guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 14 qualitative: students’ perceptions of team-based learning to report students’ perceptions of instruction across and within each course delivery method, themes specific to effective and least effective aspects are shared. for each theme, the percentage of participants within each course delivery method that discussed that theme is also reported. effective course aspects the themes, theme frequencies within each method of course delivery, and representative quotes specific to effective aspects are reported in table 7 and include: assessments, assignments, course content, course structure, teams, instructor, lecture/instruction, student perceptions, and technology. when considering how students’ discussion of effective aspects were similar across the delivery methods, almost half of the students in each type of tbl course discussed course structure and teams. discussions of course structure—face-to-face (46%) and online (48%)—related to how elements of the course were organized or sequenced, and in many cases, students explicitly mentioned the tbl framework; “i really enjoyed tbl to learn materials!” (spring 2019, face-to-face tbl). in other cases, students described specific elements of the tbl framework, such as: “meeting face-to-face [synchronously], challenging team tasks aligned with course objectives, working with the same group all semester, diverse team member specialties'' (spring 2019, online tbl). additional aspects of the course structure included opportunities to engage with the course content during the time typically reserved for lecture; “i liked the scenario questions for the lecture and having my team to discuss what we should do next” (spring 2019, face-to-face tbl). a last aspect of course structure was specific to onlinetbl as students valued that the synchronous meetings allowed them regular opportunities to engage with their instructor and peers. for example, one student stated the following: “it was my first tbl class and i was surprised how much i learned from it! definitely liked the zoom meeting layout” (spring 2019, online tbl). in this particular course, zoomtm was the web conferencing platform used to host synchronous meetings. the theme teams–face-to-face (38%) and online (48%)–related to the benefits of working with other students. across students’ responses, it became clear that the permanence of teams in a tbl course provided students the opportunity to establish trust and comfort with the students on their team: “working with the same group all semester made me comfortable to ask questions to peers” (fall 2018, face-to-face tbl). further, students reported multiple benefits of getting to work with a team, such as seeing others’ opinions and ideas, opportunities to leverage the strengths of teammates, and increased learning. for example, consider each of these students’ comments: “building relationships with colleagues and leveraging each other’s strengths to be successful” (spring 2019, face-to-face tbl) and “if i couldn’t remember something from the material or discussion, one of my teammates usually did and that made working on assignments easier. it also helped me remember the material later because i could recall who knew it” (spring 2019, online tbl). a last element of teams was the effect of accountability in promoting course engagement as students perceived that their team was counting on them; “team-based learning provided me ways to see others’ opinions. it also encouraged me to do more because i had a team counting on me” (fall 2018, face-to-face tbl). in considering where students in face-to-face and online tbl courses differed in what they perceived as effective aspects, students in online tbl (33%) discussed assignments more often than those in face-to-face tbl (7%). students in online tbl courses stated that they enjoyed writing lesson plans, as well as completing the classroom management plan, as a team. guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 15 there were also effective aspects discussed in both face-to-face and online tbl course settings–assessments, course content, instructor, lecture/instruction, student perceptions, and technology–but by only one or two students. see table 7 for a representative quote within each of these aspects. table 7 themes identified as effective aspects for each course delivery method theme course modality n representative quote assessments face-toface tbl 15% (2) “i think the trats following the irats helped me personally to understand and get explanations for any mistakes made or misconceptions had” (spring 2019, online tbl). online tbl 14% (3) assignments face-toface tbl 7% (1) “i liked doing the lesson plans and management as groups before we did them on our own. working in a team helped me remember what to do on my own” (spring 2019, online tbl). online tbl 33% (7) course content face-toface tbl 7% (1) “…i also found information read before class and the irats were great resources for the future” (spring 2019, face-to-face tbl). online tbl 0% (0) course structure face-toface tbl 46% (6) “the team-based learning made my learning and retention of information better! i loved getting to work with peers to find out solutions and effective ways to teach social studies” (spring 2019, face-to-face tbl). online tbl 48% (10) teams face-toface tbl 38% (5) “i liked doing the lesson plans and management [plan] as groups before we did them on our own. working in a team helped me remember what to do on my own” (spring 2019, online tbl). online tbl 48% (10) instructor face-toface tbl 23% (3) “i loved ____ and i look forward to taking more classes with him as an instructor. it is clear that the team-based learning that has been put together for this class was well thought out” (spring, 2019, online tbl). online tbl 5% (1) lecture/instruction face-toface tbl 0% (0) “immediate application of material covered” (spring 2019, online tbl). online tbl 10% (2) student perceptions face-toface tbl 23% (3) “i overall really enjoyed the class. it was hard and a lot of work” (fall 2018, face-to-face tbl). online tbl 10% (2) technology face-toface tbl 15% (2) “one of the most important aspects of this course was the technology implemented to conduct class. it allowed an online class to be more interactive and allowed me to be better acquainted with my professor and classmates” (summer 2019, online tbl). online tbl 5% (1) guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 16 ineffective course aspects the themes, theme frequencies within each method of course delivery, and representative quotes specific to ineffective aspects are reported in table 8 and include: assessments, assignments/activities, course organization and expectations, teams, instructor, lecture/instruction, and nothing. when considering how students’ discussion of least effective aspects were similar across delivery methods, students commonly identified teams, assessments, and the instructor. table 8 themes identified as least effective aspects for each course delivery method theme course modality n representative quote assessments face-toface tbl 20% (2) “i feel that i did not learn much during the irat and trat. even though i went over the learning objectives and read the chapters, i feel the test questions were off. maybe i just didn’t comprehend the material well enough” (summer 2019, online tbl). online tbl 35% (7) assignments face-toface tbl 20% (2) “all of the individual and team lesson plans that were due every single week” (fall 2018, face-to-face tbl). online tbl 5% (1) course organization and expectations face-toface tbl 0% (0) “amount of time in team meetings needs to be addressed in course description” (spring 2019, online tbl). online tbl 25% (5) teams face-toface tbl 30% (3) “as often happens with group work, it is difficult when team members are not pulling their weight. peer evaluation at some points during the semester could help address this problem, although honest feedback on these could damage team relationships” (fall 2018, face-to-face tbl). online tbl 45% (9) instructor face-toface tbl 20% (2) “some individuals in the class dominated discussion and class time, which prevented us from accomplishing as much as we could have otherwise. more regulation from the profession would help move things along and balance out those concerns” (spring 2019, face-to-face tbl). online tbl 20% (4) lecture/instruction face-toface tbl 0% (0) “…the lack of direct instruction seemed to cause more problems for me throughout the semester” (summer 2019, online tbl). online tbl 10% (2) nothing face-toface tbl 20% (2) “there is nothing i think of as least effective. i learned different things from each aspects of the course that i believe will help me later” (spring 2019, online tbl). online tbl 5% (1) similar to the effective aspects, students in face-to-face (30%) and online (45%) tbl courses identified teams as a least effective aspect of the course, namely about team members not pulling their weight and peer evaluation. in some cases, team members did not feel that other guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 17 team members were contributing equally to team activities or attending out-of-class team meetings: “i do not like team-based learning when all the team members do not participate. there were several times when i felt like some team members were not productive in the activities or beneficial in the learning” (spring 2019, face-to-face tbl). specific to online tbl, some students indicated that it was not fair when a team member did not show up to an out-ofclass meeting. in other cases, teams appeared to function well and students expressed a dislike for having to differentiate numeric scores among their team members during peer evaluation, especially as this was calculated in students' course grade. although peer evaluation provides a means of providing team members with feedback on their performance, one particular student feared that honest peer feedback would damage team relationships. regardless of method of delivery, students in tbl courses–face-to-face (20%) and online (20%)–identified specific aspects of the instructor as least effective. these critiques primarily related to wanting feedback directly from the instructor, and not necessarily from the other teams in the course. for example, one student responded with the following: “i do not feel that each team should choose the best representation of other team’s work...it would be better if the instructor indicated which product they felt met the criteria and why, so that we could all learn from their expertise” (spring 2019, online tbl). a last critique of the instructor centered on managing whole-class discussion as it relates to more dominant, vocal students. some students in both face-to-face (20%) and online (35%) tbl courses identified the assessments, specifically the readiness assurance tests, as a least effective aspect of the course. students stated that they did not feel that they helped them learn, or that regardless of how they prepared, they struggled to perform well. other comments were critiques specific of the final exam. there were two least effective aspects that appeared in online tbl, but not face-to-face tbl–course organization and expectations (25%) and lecture/instruction (10%). specific to course organization and expectations, students in online tbl desired that the required meeting day and time be clearer at the time of registration, while one student did not feel the required meeting time was even necessary. another student comment did not appreciate the course only being offered online and the university fee associated with online courses. specific to lecture/instruction within online tbl, some students expressed a desire for more explicit instruction, while another student felt that what little lecture was provided within the course was ineffective. specific to wanting explicit instruction and explanations, one student responded with the following: “it would have been much more effective for the professor to directly explain how to lesson plan and create classroom management plans rather than have us look at past examples and review them as a team” (summer 2019, online tbl). the last two aspects identified least effective included assignments and nothing. both comments specific to assignments related to either the frequency or type of lesson plan required within the course. and lastly, nothing represented those comments where students explicitly expressed no least effective aspects of the course. discussion in this study, we examined students’ perceptions of tbl in face-to-face and online teacher education courses. specifically, we explored how method of delivery (face-to-face and online) affected students’ perceptions of tbl, as well as inductively identified what students reported as effective and least effective course aspects. students in teacher education courses completed the tbl-sai, as well as responded to open-ended questions around effective and guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 18 ineffective aspects of the course. we found that students in tbl courses, regardless of delivery method, reported a strong preference for tbl, which provides a structured and consistent course framework for team learning. students in tbl courses also commonly identified course structure (i.e., elements of tbl) and teams as effective aspects of the course. students’ perceptions of tbl student mean scores in face-to-face and online tbl courses were statistically significantly higher than the neutral score on the tbl-sai. additionally, there was not a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of students in face-to-face and online tbl courses. this lack of statistical significance in-between groups indicates that students' tbl courses, regardless of how the course was offered, perceived tbl positively (mennenga, 2012). as the most promising affordances of tbl have been reported in face-to-face settings (fatmi et al., 2013; haidet et al., 2014; liu & beaujean, 2017; swanson et al., 2019), these results provide some indication that these same affordances would be available in online settings. student accountability in considering the accountability subscale, students in both methods of course delivery scored significantly higher than the neutral score. there was also not a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of students in face-to-face and online tbl courses, indicating that students, regardless of how the course was offered, felt accountable towards their teammates and the course requirements, i.e., preparing for the irat, etc. (mennenga, 2012). this is in contrast to previous studies that have shown some students are reluctant to participate in their group and are apathetic to the goals or objectives of the group and class assignments (kerr & brunn, 1983; morgan, 2002), which have been referred to as motivational issues of “social loafing” and “free riding” (hall & buzwell, 2013; jones, 1984; latane et al., 1979; ruel et al., 2003; strong & anderson, 1990; watkins, 2004). our qualitative findings provide deeper explanation of the way accountability functioned across face-to-face and online course modalities and suggest that accountability was inherently recognized by students as they felt like their team was counting on them, regardless of method of course delivery. this was further evidenced as students viewed teams as an opportunity to build relationships with a small number of other students. as tbl provided consistent opportunities for students to interact with the same teammates across the semester, trust and camaraderie were developed in such a way that students did not want to let their teammates down. these high-functioning teams were also reported to improve learning as students could leverage the strengths and views of their teammates. in other cases, and in alignment with challenges reported in the literature, students did not always feel like one or more of their teammates were contributing equally on team activities and assignments. while there is certainly evidence that many of the participants viewed their teams positively, it does not appear that tbl completely eliminates the possibility of “social loafing” among some team members. likewise, although peer evaluation is one tbl structure intended to hold students accountable to their team, one student feared that an honest evaluation would damage team relationships—especially as peer evaluation may occur at mid-semester. in future implementations, we will explore the possibility of implementing peer evaluation more frequently across the semester, as well as including a confidential portion of the peer-evaluation such that students will feel comfortable providing honest peer feedback. guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 19 preference for tbl with respect to the preference for lecture or tbl subscale, students in both methods of course delivery scored statistically significantly higher than the neutral score. there was also not a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of students in face-to-face and online tbl courses, indicating that students, regardless of course delivery, preferred team activities versus lecture, which is similar to findings in other studies (opdecam et al., 2014; remington et al., 2017). when considering our qualitative findings, the course structure was often identified as an effective aspect of tbl courses, regardless of method of delivery. this is not surprising as tbl is a course framework with a clear structure across the course; within each module, students engage in the same sequence of instruction: (a) individual preparation, (b) the readiness assurance process (rap), and (c) team application activities (michaelson & sweet , 2008, 2011). the course structure and predictability of tbl was recognized and valued by students, and in some cases, was even attributed to their learning. likewise, in one particular case, a student identified the opportunity to engage with application activities during the “lecture” portion of the class meeting as an effective course aspect. student satisfaction with tbl in considering the student satisfaction subscale, students in both methods of course delivery scored significantly higher than the neutral score on the student satisfaction subscale. however, this subscale was the only instance in which the difference in mean scores of students in face-to-face and online tbl courses was statistically significant, with students in face-to-face tbl courses scoring higher. even though students in face-to-face tbl were more satisfied than students in online tbl, they were both generally satisfied. this is in contrast to research that shows not all students enjoy working in teams and often have difficulty communicating with team members when completing team projects (koh & hill, 2009; roberts & mcinnery, 2007). to further understand why students in face-to-face tbl were more satisfied with tbl than those students in online tbl, students' responses were considered. although online tbl included a number of scheduled course meetings throughout the semester—one per module—a significant amount of team engagement had to be scheduled outside of this class time and might have contributed to this decrease in student satisfaction. this is in contrast to face-to-face courses where class meetings are likely more frequent, and teamwork occurs primarily within the scheduled class meetings. the specific model of online tbl implemented, io-tbl, requires students to coordinate team collaborations in between required online class meetings, which may be an atypical expectation for an online course and thus impacting their satisfaction of the overall course. parrish et al., (2021) also reported that students enrolled in an io-tbl course were often unaware of the synchronous requirements at the time of course registration and identified this as an area of improvement for the model. limitations and future research the primary limitation was the survey response rate of 16.4%, which was less than the recommended 29.9% (blair et al., 2015). future studies should consider additional means of survey dissemination and incentives to ensure a higher response rate. a second limitation is that io-tbl was the only model of online tbl included within the study; students’ perceptions in either fully-asynchronous or synchronous tbl courses might differ from those students in 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(2019). the effect of team-based learning on content knowledge: a meta-analysis. active learning in higher education, 20(1), 39-50. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787417731201 szatkowski, h. d., & brannan, l. r. (2019). taking ownership of team accountability: the student-driven peer evaluation method. journal of faculty development, 33(1), 39-49. tadesse, t., & gillies, r. m. (2015). nurturing cooperative learning pedagogies in higher education classrooms: evidence of instructional reform and potential challenges. current issues in education, 18(2). https://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1374/607 vygotsky, l. s. (1980). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. harvard university press. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-021-00598-5 https://doi.org/10.1002/tl.20439 https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v20i4.1053 https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2017.1322457 https://doi.org/10.1086/444021 https://doi.org/10.5688/ajpe81355 https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787417731201 https://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1374/607 guffey et al.: students’ perceptions of team learning across teaching frameworks and settings current issues in education, 22(3) 24 author notes sarah k. guffey university of south alabama skguffey@southalabama.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9074-901x christopher w. parrish university of south alabama parrish@southalabama.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8699-4362 david s. williams university of south alabama dwilliams@southalabama.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4457-2505 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9074-901x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8699-4362 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4457-2505 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 10, number 1 december, 2008 issn 1099-839x perceptions of program quality and fidelity of an arts-based after school program: a process evaluation jennifer l. gay the university of texas houston health science center sara corwin university of south carolina participation in after school programs is associated with increases in academic achievement and improved behavior in students at risk. process evaluation data from participants and key stakeholders was used to gauge implementation, satisfaction, and program attendance of an after school arts program. lack of scheduling flexibility resulted in low attendance. students and community partners reported problems with school staff. students reported being less likely to react negatively to teachers and peers, and liked being in a safe place. careful selection of staff members who provide autonomy, perceptions of safety, and varied activities may result in increased program attendance and satisfaction. participation in after school programs is associated with increases in academic achievement (scott-little, hamann, & jurs, 2002), attendance (goerge, cusick, wasserman, & gladden, 2007) positive socio-emotional functioning (scott-little et al., 2002), and a decrease in negative behavior (gottfredson, gerstenblith, soulé, womer, & lu, 2004). furthermore, these programs allow children to develop friendships and special abilities in areas such as arts and sports (goerge et al., 2007; grossman, walker, & raley, 2001; halpern, 1999). posner and vandell (1994; 1999) found that children in formal programs were more involved in academic and extracurricular programs, and had parents who participated in more school activities, compared with informal settings, which fostered television watching and hanging out. researchers have found that after school programs, especially for middle school students, increased student perceptions of safety and well-being (grossman et al., 2001; halpern, 1999; kane, 2004). after school programs are frequently targeted towards students who are under-performing academically including, but not limited to, students from low socio-economic backgrounds, students who are receiving free or reduced-priced lunch, africanamerican or hispanic youth, or children who have problem behaviors themselves or have families with problem behaviors (scott-little et al., 2002). importance of process evaluation success of after school programs depends largely on participant satisfaction, as that influences future participation and goal attainment. process evaluation data can be used to identify areas in need of improvement and program elements to retain (mcgraw et al., 2000). interventions with multiple sites can affect implementation, making process evaluation even more valuable (saunders, ward, felton, dowda, & pate, 2006). westmoreland and current issues in education vol. 10 no. 1 little (2006) suggest that program quality includes opportunities for students to have choice, take on leadership roles, and build relationships of mutual respect between students and staff. westmoreland and little (2006) also recommend that staff be trained and evaluated on their positive modeling and relationships with students, not just their ability to supervise and discipline. process evaluation provides insight about what types of assessment and intervention methods can and cannot be delivered in specific settings with regard for quality, and differs from formative evaluation where the primary objective is to assess efficacy (windsor, clark, boyd, & goodman, 2004). in school settings, program process evaluation can include examining student recruitment and retention, student-staff interactions, and student satisfaction (seppanen et al., 1993). data can be collected from participants, key stakeholders, as well as program staff to evaluate the intervention implementation (linnan & steckler, 2002). this information can be used to determine the quality of the program, completeness, exposure, satisfaction, and contextual influences such as aspects of the environment that may affect program success (saunders, evans, & joshi, 2005). data may be used either during the program to identify strengths and weaknesses, or after the end of an intervention, to provide better future programming (mcgraw et al., 2000). steckler and linnan (2002) recommend collecting data from multiple sources to evaluate intervention implementation, program quality, completeness, exposure, satisfaction, and contextual influences (saunders, evans, & joshi, 2005). the primary purpose of this study was to use process evaluation data to gauge program implementation using participant satisfaction and program attendance data from an after school arts program. more specifically, we had two goals: 1) determine dose delivered and dose received (the number of sessions provided to and received by each group), and 2) explore the quality of the after school program implementation by using student focus groups, community partner interviews, and program fidelity data. methods description of the program the program was designed for students from two urban south carolina middle schools during the 2005-2006 school year. poverty levels for the two schools ranged from 87% to 99%, where 91% of students received free or reduced-price lunch. ninetynine percent of students at these schools are africanamerican, and more than half score below basic on state achievement tests (south carolina department of education, 2006). the crime rate in the area is more than twice the national crime index average. all students in the sixth grade at two urban middle schools were notified of the after school program. teachers assisted in identifying 35 students from each school to enroll in the program. the program was implemented over two school semesters, at four sites (two each semester). the program selected a museum of art, a children’s museum, a local theatre, and a zoo and botanical garden for the after school program sites. programs with an arts focus encourage creativity by applying math, science, and writing skills to arts projects, and may also increase student self-esteem and increase parent participation (scott-little et al., 2002). program sites were encouraged to adapt the visual and performing arts standards (south carolina department of education, 2003) into site activities. program activities included, but were not limited to, journaling, sculpting, anti-gang violence projects, planting gardens, and poetry. one of the most important aspects of the program was the opportunity to create positive mentoring and rolemodeling relationships, which payne (1996) suggests are the most significant motivators and keys to achievement. the process evaluation the purpose of the process evaluation was to examine the after school program’s level of implementation (i.e., dose-response), student participants’ satisfaction with program activities, and staff perceptions of the program. development members of the evaluation team were contracted external evaluators who observed the implementation of the after school program. this evaluation team, that is trained and experienced in qualitative data methods, conducted interviews and acted as moderators for the focus groups. informed assent was obtained from students and informed consent from their parents prior to participation. focus group moderators informed participants that evaluation staff would not share responses with any teachers, and participants could withdraw from the group at any time. all student and community partner sessions were audio-taped. a professional service transcribed all data verbatim and removed any personal and identifying information for confidentiality purposes. the institutional review board approved the materials and procedures prior to data collection. evaluation staff developed a 7-item discussion guide for the focus group interviews in order to elicit student responses relating to the following: a) what students liked and disliked, b) what students told others about the program, c) what students heard about other program sites, d) how perceptions of program quality and fidelity of an arts-based after school program: a process evaluation 3 students thought they were different because of the program, and e) what students thought an ideal program would include. all students enrolled in the after school program were invited to participate in the focus groups. a convenience sample of 65 sixth graders (58% female, 100% african-american; ages ranged from 11 to 14 years) participated in focus groups in order to assess the implementation quality and participant satisfaction of the after school arts programs. a total of eight focus group interviews were held, six for the four community partner sites and two for participants who had dropped out during the program. staff (n = 6, 66.7% white, 50% female) from each of the four program sites were interviewed in the spring of 2006. the staff was composed of site program coordinators responsible for program delivery at each site. a total of four interviews were held to examine perceptions of program fidelity, implementation, and quality from the community partner perspective. staff members were asked to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the after school program, student engagement, effects on students, and barriers and recommendations for the program, following a 9-item interview guide. attendance records and program coordinator notes were used to determine dose delivered and dose received. dose delivered (i.e., the amount of the program provided by community partners) was assessed using start and end times (in minutes) at each site. dose received (i.e., the amount of time students were engaged in the after school program activities not including transportation) was assessed through the analysis of attendance records and program coordinator notes. analyses the evaluation team, in collaboration with school administrators, established attendance and program time benchmarks a priori. the intervention program goals included having a minimum of 30 students regularly attend each site per semester, having each student attend at least seven sessions per semester, and having community partners deliver 100 minutes of intervention per session. to determine the dose delivered, each site provided detailed information on the activities, start and end time, by date. these records were examined for total numbers of instructional minutes and instructional sessions, as well as how they aligned with the implementation plan. dose received was determined using attendance data. following established guidelines for thematic analysis (aronson, 1994), two evaluation team members independently read one focus group transcript in order to develop a preliminary codebook for the focus groups and interviews. next, the two team members examined each data collection instrument for potential codes and themes unique to the activity and/or respondent. all subsequent codes were added to the master codebook, all documents were then coded and reviewed for accuracy by comparison with original source documents and audiotapes. the verified and corrected documents were imported into qsr nvivo version 2.0 (qualitative solutions and research pty. ltd., 2002). results attendance was not reported at the individual student level, but at the aggregated community partner site level. therefore, some children from the fall semester may have participated in the spring semester as well. process objectives included having a minimum of 30 students regularly attend each site, each semester, and have each student attend seven sessions per semester. during the fall semester, a total of 68 students participated in the program, whereas only 50 students participated in the spring semester. the number of sessions provided to participants is defined as the dose delivered. the program scheduled two sessions per week. seventeen sessions were provided in the fall semester at each of the two sites, while 20 sessions were delivered at each of the two spring sites. the average dose delivered was 101.7 ± 6.1 minutes per day (range of 94-107 minutes per day) of off-site, after school enrichment education. this exceeded the a priori benchmark of 100 minutes set by the evaluation team. dose received is defined as the participant’s interaction with the program (linnan & steckler, 2002). the average number of sessions attended by students at the four community sites over both semesters was 7.3 ± 1.6 (range of 10-16 sessions). the number of students who attended each session ranged from 12 to 19 (m = 15.0 ± 4.87). therefore, students actively participated in 43% of the fall sessions and 36% of the spring sessions. these dosereceived numbers are well below the desired 30 students per session. however, students attended 7.3 sessions each semester and were expected to attend seven, achieving the attendance process objective. student focus groups. during the student focus groups (n = 8), the moderators asked student participants what they liked and disliked about the activities, scheduling, and program personnel, as well as what they told their parents and friends about the after school program. the four most common themes from the focus groups were: thinking the programs were fun, improving students’ grades or behavior, scheduling, and interacting with the staff. thinking programs were fun. participants reported telling their family and friends about the current issues in education vol. 10 no. 1 after school program activities and what they thought about the program. participants from all sites and groups reported telling others that the program was fun, for example, “i hate when i miss a day because i be missing out on fun things.” table 1 questions and common responses from student focus groups prompt student responses what did you like or dislike about the program schedule? “i like the schedule of monday and friday.” “i think we should also have on mondays and fridays.” “i think we should go monday through thursday because on friday, we have a lot of other things like to do.” “we get home too late.” “i have no time to be with my family.” “on monday it’s kind of not going to work cause when i go home i be having, i be having homework and stuff and then i be having to wash and stuff.” “i think we should go monday through thursday because on friday, like she [another participant] just said we have a lot of things to do on the weekend and we really want to go.” have you seen an improvement in your grades or other ways? “i get better grades then i used to.” “it helped my grade in drama.” “when i start going to the [program] my grade, my grade, i had a 2.7 now my grade is, now my gpa’s up to a 3.7.” “mostly everybody that works here has been increasing almost everybody’s brains.” “telling [my sister] not to bully me anymore”. “so at school you change that too cause you don’t talk back to teachers at school, at school if you don’t talk back to teachers out here [at after school program].” what do you think of the people who work with the program? “i like most of the people who work here because they’re nice if you come here every single day then she’s going to give you a [inaudible] treat.” “i disliked some of the people that work here.” “i kind think that they don’t really want to work with us.” “they be yelling at us for no reason.” “when we be trying to have fun [teacher’s name] will try to stop us.” students were also asked to describe their ideal program. they responded with activities such as sports, field trips, and parties. other students also wanted educational games and a place where they could be safe; for example one student said, “mine be about no gangs, no violence and if they were to get in trouble one time they would be kicked out of this program.” table 1 provides selected quotations from the focus group participants. scheduling. focus group participants were asked what they liked and disliked about the after school program. table 1 provides additional comments from student focus groups. all groups reported liking the activities they were doing. however, there was some disagreement on the days of the week that the program is held, with some students preferring friday and others not because of family or other program obligations. one of the primary reasons students did not like the after school program was that they arrived home late and had other things to do in the afternoon and evening. staff. the most controversy arose when students were asked if they liked the people who worked with the after school programs. some commented positively, as seen in table 1, with responses that staff from the sites were “friendly,” “nice,” and “cool.” however, students from two sites reported hostility and disrespect from the school and program site staff. one student responded, “i didn’t like when i was drawing a picture and the teacher messed it up.” another echoed this sentiment saying, “i don’t like some of them because they try to put stuff on your picture that you don’t even like and they don’t even ask.” other comments about the staff indicated that there was a lack of respect for the students’ work and this characteristic influenced the students’ perceptions of the entire program. improving students’ grades or behavior. some of the most positive comments about the program were responses to the prompt, “has the program affected you in any other ways?” one student responded by saying, “i’ve been leading more.” several students reported not wanting to be “bad” anymore and that they had more respect for the teachers. additionally, students stated that, “i told [my parents] that it’s helping me in life by helping my behavior at school and at home and in the street too.” another student responded similarly, “i told my parents it’s helpful and very useful in life and that we will remember this and we will remember this when we’re growing up.” table 1 provides additional comments. lowor non-attendees. lowor nonattendees also participated in focus groups. program rosters classified these students as participating as of the enrollment deadline, but they had very low attendance, defined as attending ≤5 sessions during one semester, or dropped out of the program. students most frequently reported competing activities and conflicts with the friday meetings that perceptions of program quality and fidelity of an arts-based after school program: a process evaluation 5 were scheduled. one student remarked, “i didn’t go on mondays sometimes because i had tennis practice.” other reasons cited by participants as being barriers to participation included family responsibilities, such as babysitting for siblings, household chores, and family illness, and disciplinary or academic reasons. as one student reported, “the only time i wouldn’t come is if something come up or if i’m suspended or in detention.” lowand nonattendees also mentioned programmatic concerns as a barrier. community partner interviews the community partner interviews yielded many comments that described partnering with schools, communication, teamwork, and relationships with students. table 2 themes and responses from community partner interviews theme responses partnering with schools “i hope it doesn’t end… i’d hate to see a really good thing go away. and i would hate to see the partnership between [the district] and these partners go away…” communication “i felt like i needed a point person that knew everything about the kids in my program. i don’t always feel like i could have gotten the information that i needed. also, things like calendar dates of schools. there were a lot of times that we didn’t know the kids were coming or didn’t know they had an after school holiday…and so that communication got blurred.” teamwork “i think the parental piece is important and we haven’t really explored that as much as we should have…” “we haven’t done anything other than until now … we’re inviting parents to the final gala.” relationships with students “there was a bond between the kids and the instructors even though they only met two days a week and friday programming was limited… the connection was stronger than i expected.” “we have been able as a staff to sort of develop relationships with them and they have developed relationships with each other where they feel comfortable. and, you know, we can talk to them about music what’s on tv and stuff like that. sort of puts us on … our level.” partnering with schools. all of the partners agreed that the program itself was a “good thing” and “a good program for inner city children who don’t get to see art and culture.” however, interviewees from each site acknowledged that there were “bumps in the road”. for example, one participant stated that, “it went fairly well… it has gotten better towards the end of the year. there were a few bumps in the beginning.” table 2 has additional comments from community partners. communication. all sites indicated that communication at the school and district level was inadequate and problematic. one community partner representative summarized the sentiments expressed by all interview participants: we needed more communication on several levels. from the very beginning we did not know what upper level administration at the school felt about the program or what they thought the students needed. we needed much more regular communication with the school personnel. the lack of communication among all parties was one of the primary barriers to implementation and program quality. as shown in table 2, community partner staff cited examples of poor record-keeping, and inconsistencies in information as reasons for not liking the program. teamwork. when commenting about teachers or staff, the students were clear to make a distinction between their day school teachers and staff and the community partner “teachers.” community partners echoed student dissatisfaction with teachers and chaperones from their school who accompanied them offsite. one partner said, “the second semester school staff who chaperoned the students were dedicated and more enthusiastic and supportive than the first semester staff.” promotion of teamwork and mutual respect in curricular activities and organizational cultures was key (the after school corporation (tasc), 2004). in both the student focus groups and the community partner interviews, several participants noted “a real sense of team work” and the cohesion in the groups, especially in preparation for the end-ofthe-year projects and presentations. according to one community partner, “the sixth graders really seemed to separate their differences and get the project done. the team work really came together.” this reinforced the students comments that, “they [games] are fun to do in teams.” and “i like that when we had to do the picture making that you had to all work in the group of people like your friends and you got to talk and stuff.” another aspect of teamwork is involving parents in after school programs. several of the community partners noted that their programming efforts did not include as much of a parental component as they could have. example comments are shown in table 2. the primary reasons parents were contacted through the after school programs were functional (e.g., early dismissals and inquiries about low attendance) or disciplinary in nature. current issues in education vol. 10 no. 1 relationships with students. every community partner commented on their own personal connection, or “bond,” that they developed with the students over the course of the year. two of the partners noted that they would be disappointed that this year’s cohort (of 6th graders) would not be back (as 7th graders) next year. other comments are included in table 2. discussion process evaluation was essential to this program because participant satisfaction and implementation strengths and weaknesses were discovered. the students identified a number of activities and aspects that they liked about the program, such as contests, painting, and writing. the success of future programs depends not only on continuing the successful aspects identified by the students as fun and helpful (e.g., behavior, grades, and projects), but also by improving upon the negative characteristics reported by the students. one recurring theme was the staff. groups who reported liking the staff seemed to hold more favorable attitudes toward the after school program in general. unfortunately, a number of students reported staff members who were yelling, angry, and disrespectful. perceptions of autonomy, safety, and careful selection of high-quality staff members are also themes that have appeared repeatedly in the literature (grossman et al., 2002; halpern, 1999; hollister, 2003; westmoreland & little, 2006). one of the primary aims of this process evaluation was to explore the quality of the after school program implementation utilizing participant satisfaction as an indicator. this information was valuable in an effort to increase participation and retention in the immediate future (hollister, 2003). grossman (2002) suggests that flexible programs may be more successful in attracting older children. this was expressed by the students as recruiting and retention for this program was problematic due to the strict attendance policy. the lack of flexibility and competing priorities (babysitting, sports, etc.) resulted in low attendance numbers throughout the year. students reported preferring a wide variety of programs when asked about an ideal program, but no single activity was reported by all groups. this illustrates that even within one program site a variety of activities may lead to improved retention and satisfaction. community partners mentioned a number of issues similar to the student comments, including scheduling. this may have been made worse by the poor communication among community partners, schools, and the school district. both groups were also dissatisfied with the staff from the schools who accompanied the children off-site. while community partners commented on the students’ lack of enthusiasm, students felt that there was a lack of respect and trust among all groups. however, there were numerous positive comments about the program that focused on the relationships students built with each other and the community partners. these relationships may have been enhanced with more parental involvement throughout the semester and not just for informational or disciplinary purposes. students provided suggestions for improvement that included more choice when selecting activities and program components, activities where they could be physically active, scheduling, and prohibitive attendance policies. community partners also recommended more smallgroup interaction, activities that encourage physical activity, and more parental involvement. given the national trends toward obesity in younger age groups, it was encouraging that both groups wanted more activities involving physical activity. it is important to note that many of the suggestions were in areas where change can occur. providing community partners with school schedules and information regarding relevant similar activities may improve overall communication. additionally, schools often have a systematic infrastructure for contacting parents. therefore, initiating parental involvement may be easier if parent contact was coordinated with schools and the community partners. there is anecdotal evidence that artsfocused programs are helping students in outcome areas, such as achievement and behavior. students reported their grades and attendance improved. perhaps more importantly, they acknowledged being less likely to react negatively towards teachers and friends. projects focused on teamwork and preventing gang violence seemed to strongly influence the students. some students felt that the after school program “kept them off the streets” and away from becoming involved in unsafe and risky behaviors. this is encouraging given the impoverished background from which these students come. as reported by other researchers (grossman et al., 2001; halpern, 1999; kane, 2004), after school programs do have the power to influence perceptions of safety, behavior, and achievement, especially in middle school. these findings are consistent with other after school program evaluations for students at high risk for low achievement. in seppanen et al. (1993), focus groups of children noted that they would like to have more choice in which activities they participate during after school program. also, seppanen et al. (1993) supports the notion that child-staff interactions “sets the tone” (p. 146) by providing positive role models and helping students develop a sense of being in charge of their own environment. perceptions of program quality and fidelity of an arts-based after school program: a process evaluation 7 this is a quality some of our sites lacked, as revealed in participant satisfaction. scott-little, hamann, and jurs (2002) stated that after school program staff was the second most documented challenge, and several studies mention additional staff training and high staff turnover are related to program quality. while few studies support the link between increased attendance and achievement gains in middle schools (scott-little et al., 2002), our evaluation, as well as reisner, white, brimingham, and welsh (2001), found that participants reported social and emotional benefits from participation in after school programs. according to barker (1997), hudley (1999), and huang et al. (2000), students in after school programs demonstrated decreases in aggressive behavior and conflict with peers, in addition to other behavioral improvements. conclusions and recommendations for future research the findings from this study are situated in a particular context and generalizations may be limited. the sample was a sample of convenience of students selected by teachers from urban middle schools in south carolina. while only african-american children were selected to participate, and caution should be used when making inferences about other populations, this sample was similar to others in after school programs based on level of risk associated with low ses, urban or inner-city location, and minority groups. the qualitative methods in this study allowed students and community partners to speak in their own words about their experiences and satisfaction with the program. the collection of data from multiple sources allowed for a more comprehensive picture of program fidelity, implementation, and quality, and validated the statements from both groups. a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between participant satisfaction and program personnel, as well as the preferences of middle school children for after school programs and reasons for not attending, will provide valuable information for future interventions. as urban, african-american middle school children are increasingly influenced by negative peer behavior (beal, ausiello, & perrin, 2001), it is imperative that future programs provide safe, enriching activities to encourage positive social development and academic achievement. after school programs may be especially important for students who experience bullying or other alienation in home, school, or other environments (reisner, white, birmingham, & welsh, 2001). process evaluation can be a valuable component of a formative or impact evaluation as process elements assess the program quality, fidelity, and feasibility (linnan & steckler, 2002). the next steps in process evaluation of after school programs might be to examine a dose-response relationship between academic outcomes and dose-delivered and received. additional elements of process evaluations, including examination of recruitment procedures, scoring implementation, and assessing the fidelity with which intervention providers deliver a program, may be added to explain whether or not a program is successful. to strengthen future process evaluations, researchers could collect additional data, such as fidelity to an arts-based curriculum, as well as support the training of intervention providers. references aronson, j. (1994). a pragmatic view of thematic analysis [electronic version]. the qualitative report, 2(1). barker, n. c. (1997, february 23-26). can specialized after-school programs impact delinquent behavior among african american youth? child welfare and juvenile justice. paper presented at the annual research conference, a system of care for children's mental health: expanding the research base, tampa, fl. beal, a. c., ausiello, j., & perrin, j. m. (2001). social influences on health-risk behaviors among minority middle school students. journal of adolescent health, 28, 474-480. goerge, r., cusick, g. r., wasserman, m., & gladden, m. (2007). after-school programs and academic impact: a study of chicago's after school matters: chapin hall center for children. gottfredson, d. c., gerstenblith, s. a., soulé, d. a., womer, s. c., & lu, s. (2004). do after school programs reduce delinquency? prevention science, 5(4), 253-266. grossman, j. b., price, m. l., fellerath, v., jucovy, l. z., kotloff, l. j., raley, r., et al. (2002). multiple choices after school: findings from the extended-service schools initiative: public / private ventures. grossman, j. b., walker, k., & raley, r. (2001). challenges and opportunities in after-school programs: lessons for policymakers and funders: public / private ventures. halpern, r. (1999). after-school programs for low income children: promise and challenges. the future of children, 9(2), 81-95. hollister, r. (2003). the growth in after-school programs and their impact: the brookings institution. huang, d., gibbons, b., kyung, s. k., lee, c., & baker, e. v. (2000). a decade of results: current issues in education vol. 10 no. 1 the impact of la's best after-school enrichment program on subsequent student achievement and performance. los angeles. hudley, c. 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(2006). examining the link between program implementation and behavior outcomes in the lifestyle education for activity program (leap). evaluation and program planning, 29, 352-364. scott-little, c., hamann, m. s., & jurs, s. g. (2002). evaluations of after-school programs: a meta-evaluation of methodologies and narrative synthesis of findings. american journal of evaluation, 23(4), 387-419. seppanen, p. s., love, j. m., kaplan devries, d., bernstein, l., seligson, m., marx, f., et al. (1993). national study of beforeand after school programs. portsmouth, nh. south carolina department of education. (2003). visual and performing arts curriculum standards. retrieved july 4, 2006, from http://ed.sc.gov/agency/offices/cso south carolina department of education. (2006). 2006 state of south carolina education accountability act report cards. retrieved december 13, 2007, from http://ed.sc.gov/topics/researchandstats/scho olreportcard/2006/default.cfm steckler, a., & linnan, l.. (2002). process evaluation for public health interventions and research: an overview. in l. linnan & a. steckler (eds.), process evaluation for public health interventions and research (pp. 1-24). san francisco: jossey-bass. the after school corporation (tasc). (2004). building a quality after school program. retrieved june 26, 2006, from http://www.tascorp.org westmoreland, h., & little, p. (2006). exploring quality standards for middle school after school programs: what we know and what we need to know. a summit report: harvard university. windsor, r., clark, n., boyd, n.r., & goodman, r.m. (2004). evaluation of health promotion, health education, and disease prevention programs (3rd ed.). new york: mcgraw-hill. http://ed.sc.gov/agency/offices/cso http://ed.sc.gov/topics/researchandstats/scho%09olreportcard/2006/default.cfm http://ed.sc.gov/topics/researchandstats/scho%09olreportcard/2006/default.cfm http://www.tascorp.org/ perceptions of program quality and fidelity of an arts-based after school program: a process evaluation 9 2008 article citation gay, j. l., & corwin, s. (2008, december). perceptions of program quality and fidelity of an arts-based after school program: a process evaluation. current issues in education [on-line], 10(1). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume10/number1/ author notes dr. jennifer l. gay the university of texas at houston health science center school of public health, brownsville campus 80 fort brown, brownsville, tx 78520 jennifer.l.gay@uth.tmc.edu acknowledgments this research was supported by a grant from the john s. and james l. knight foundation, wachovia financial center, suite 3300, 200 south biscayne boulevard, miami, fl 33131-2349, (704) 973-4566. the researchers respectfully acknowledge and thank the foundation and our project liaison, ms. susan patterson, for their continued support over the past five years. we also thank our community partners, school personnel, and the students for their participation in this project. the findings and conclusions reported are the authors' and do not necessarily represent the official views of the foundation. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation gay, j. l., & corwin, s. (2008). perceptions of program quality and fidelity of an arts-based after school program: a process evaluation. current issues in education, 10(1). retrieved from: retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1568 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume10/number1/ mailto:jennifer.l.gay@uth.tmc.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1568 helping stem students thrive: adult learning pathways current issues in education, 22(1) 1 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x shaping the futures of learning in the digital age helping stem students thrive: adult learning pathways patrice torcivia prusko, mba, phd teaching and learning lab harvard graduate school of education abstract: surrounded by stories of underrepresented and first-generation students lagging behind or switching out of stem majors, three women saw an opportunity to shift the narrative. they created a new online speaker series, the next 10 years: helping stem students thrive; where faculty, staff, and students could share ideas, learn from one another, and build a community. they were all members of the women in stem cooperative, which consists of a group of volunteers who are dedicated to advancing women in stem in their respective communities. it is now in its third season with participants from 56 institutions, eight organizations, four countries, and 23 states. keywords: stem, women, equity, thrive citation: prusko, p. t. (2021). helping stem students thrive: adult learning pathways. current issues in education, 22(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1934 this submission is part of a special issue, shaping the futures of learning in the digital age, guest-edited by sean leahy, samantha becker, ben scragg, and kim flintoff. accepted: 11/2/2020 helping stem students thrive: adult learning pathways surrounded by stories of underrepresented and first-generation students lagging behind or switching out of stem majors, three women saw an opportunity to shift the narrative. they created a new online speaker series, the next 10 years: helping stem students thrive; where faculty, staff, and students could share ideas, learn from one another, and build a community. http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1934 reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 2 they were all members of the women in stem cooperative, which consists of a group of volunteers who are dedicated to advancing women in stem in their respective communities. they created this series as an attempt to address some of the systemic challenges faced by students in stem, and highlighted opportunities for improving student success. in addition to sharing knowledge, one of the goals for this series was to provide a space where students and guest speakers could interact with one another, as well as share challenges and successes that would ultimately build a community where, together, everyone could contribute to and perpetuate stories of stem students thriving. the women quickly learned that there was a global desire to better understand how we can help stem students thrive when 140 people from 56 institutions, eight organizations, four countries, and 23 states registered for this event. institutions spanned 4-year colleges, community colleges, k-12, and the private sector. they included: paris ile-de-france digital university, universidad del sagrado corazón, greenfield community college, harvard, penn state, university of wisconsin madison, union college, schreiner university, cornell, university at buffalo, and the society of nuclear medicine, to name a few. the first in the series aired on october 11, 2017 featuring dr. lynne molter, dr. julia thom-levy, dr. elisabeth etopio and dr. richard lamb, discussing trends and innovation in higher ed. season one covered topics related to teaching and learning, and season two covered topics surrounding the stem environment and how we might reimagine it in ways that impart a sense of belonging to women in the field. guests and specific topics are listed in appendix 1. the series is currently led by four women in institutions in the northeast. they just kicked off season three, helping stem students thrive: adult learning pathways, which focuses on shifts in student demographics and how that intersects with women’s experiences in different educational environments, such as community college, online schooling, undergraduate and graduate school, and alternative forms of education. this season, in addition to guests sharing their research and discussing programs they are leading, we are including the authentic, personal stories of women. the first session took place on oct. 23, focusing on community college, with bilge avci, economist working on social justice issues and policies impacting disadvantaged communities, and dina refki, executive director, center for women in government and society, rockefeller college, suny albany, sharing their research, and ashley stenel, phd student, roswell park-cancer sciences sharing her journey from single mother attending community college to her phd. each session begins with an introduction by our distinguished thought leaders, followed by institutional representatives who share insights from their campuses. participants may join the conversation, ask questions, share experiences, build networks, and learn more about: • innovations that can expand female or underrepresented minority student participation and success in stem undergraduate education, • effective evidence-based stem teaching practices commonly adopted at research universities, • unique institutional and cultural challenges to achieving stem diversity, • what “difference at scale” looks like. the author’s research was on nontraditional women returning to school to study stem. each woman in her study initially pursued stem, but, lacking a support system and meaningful goals, did not persist. later in life, they arrived at a “tipping point” where all the pieces were https://www.linkedin.com/in/bilge-avci-a0a89317 https://www.linkedin.com/in/dina-refki-43a5014 https://www.linkedin.com/in/dina-refki-43a5014 https://www.albany.edu/womeningov/ https://www.albany.edu/womeningov/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyestenzel reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 3 finally in harmony, rekindling their motivation to return to school to complete a stem degree. each of these women experienced a “critical event” that enabled them to see how a stem degree could empower them to achieve personally meaningful goals. additionally, they now had guidance from a mentor and, crucially, a support system in place. it was these transformations that initially motivated the author to start this series, in hopes that it could be a “tipping point” for other women. it begs the question: how might we use technology to connect women across the globe? if you are interested in speaking or being added to our list-serv please contact the coordinators of this effort. please go here to view recordings from 2017-18, 2018-19 and 201920. appendix 1 season one covered topics related to teaching and learning: higher education trends ● lynne a. molter, scd, swarthmore college, professor of engineering, consortium for stem success ● julia thom levy, phd, cornell university, professor and vice provost for academic innovation ● elisabeth etopio, phd, university at buffalo, interim assistant dean for teacher education, interim director of the teacher education institute ● richard lamb, phd, university at buffalo, associate professor and director of the neurocognition science laboratory learning spaces ● jeanne l. narum, learning spaces collaboratory ● rebecca rotundo, ma, university at buffalo, instructional technology specialist at the center for educational innovation ● lisa stephens, phd, office of the suny provost, sr. strategistsuny academic innovation ● xin li, phd, cornell university, associate university librarian institutional practices ● nancy shapiro, phd, university system of maryland, associate vice chancellor for education and outreach and special assistant to the chancellor ● renetta tull, phd, university of maryland, baltimore county, associate vice provost for strategic initiatives at the university of maryland, baltimore county (umbc), and founding director/co-pi for the 12-institution university system of maryland’s (usm) promise agep, and codirector/co-pi for the usm’s louis stokes alliance for minority participation (lsamp) ● letitia thomas, phd, university at buffalo, director of stem diversity programs ● amy godert, phd, cornell university, executive director academic success programs introductory undergraduate courses in stem ● jay labov, phd, national research council, senior advisor for education and communication, national academies of sciences https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=plqwjbtqvhmcv64w98ejnhw4lnypx52kck https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=plt1ove34eaucfbjk83u0dkznshxxjyr73 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=plt1ove34eaua9vhpjidahlovfrkz5lsgl https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=plt1ove34eaua9vhpjidahlovfrkz5lsgl reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 4 ● catherine middlecamp, phd, university of wisconsin-madison, professor in the nelson institute for environmental studies ● liesl folks, phd, mba, university at buffalo, dean of the school of engineering and applied sciences and a professor of electrical engineering ● michael fontaine, phd, cornell university, professor and associate vice provost of undergraduate education season two covered topics looked at the stem environment and how we might reimagine it in ways that women can have a sense of belonging. sexual harassment in stem /sexual harassment report from national academies ● alexis stokes, director of diversity, inclusion and belonging, harvard john a. paulson school of engineering and applied sciences ● sharon nolan weiss, director, equity, diversity and inclusion, university at buffalo ● irene ngun, associate program officer with committee on women in science, engineering, and medicine (cwsem), a standing committee of the national academies course design for inclusion in stem ● roberta sullivan, emerging technologies librarian and head of media services, university at buffalo ● martin samuels, harvard university ● thomas tobin, program area director—distance teaching & learning, university of wisconsin at madison mentoring women in stem ● bryan dewsbury, assistant professor, university of rhode island ● letitia thomas, assistant dean for diversity, school of engineering and applied sciences; school of engineering and applied sciences, university at buffalo ● florence hudson, founder & ceo of fdhint, llc ● lisa utzinger shen, doctoral student, harvard graduate school of education the current state of women in stem: what the research says ● mia ong, terc ● liesl folks, dean of the school of engineering and applied sciences, university at buffalo reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 5 author notes patrice torcivia prusko, mba, phd teaching and learning lab, harvard graduate school of education patrice_torcivia@gse.harvard.edu guest editor notes sean m. leahy, phd arizona state university, director of technology initiatives sean.m.leahy@asu.edu samantha adams becker arizona state university, executive director, creative & communications, university technology office; community director, shapingedu sam.becker@asu.edu ben scragg, ma, mba arizona state university, director of design initiatives bscragg@asu.edu kim flintoff peter carnley acs, tides coordinator kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au mailto:patrice_torcivia@gse.harvard.edu mailto:sean.m.leahy@asu.edu mailto:sam.becker@asu.edu mailto:bscragg@asu.edu mailto:kflintoff@pcacs.wa.edu.au reinking: innovatively preparing the teacher workforce current issues in education, 22(1) 6 volume 22, issue 1 january 7, 2021 issn 1099-839x readers are free to copy, display, and distribute this article, as long as the work is attributed to the author(s) and current issues in education (cie), it is distributed for non-commercial purposes only, and no alteration or transformation is made in the work. more details of this creative commons license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/. all other uses must be approved by the author(s) or cie. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. cie is published by the mary lou fulton teachers college at arizona state university. editorial team consulting editor neelakshi tewari lead editor marina basu section editors l&i – renee bhatti-klug llt – anani vasquez epe – ivonne lujano vilchis review board blair stamper melissa warr monica kessel helene shapiro sarah salinas faculty advisors josephine marsh leigh wolf "not motivated but frustrated": preservice teachers’ career choice motivations and professional identity in an african context current issues in education, 24(1) 1 volume 24, issue 1 february 13, 2023 issn 1099-839x "not motivated but frustrated": preservice teachers’ career choice motivations and professional identity in an african context adaobiagu n. obiagu university of nigeria abstract: this study examines preservice teachers’ career choice motivations and professional identity in an african context, nigeria, using a narrative research method. it draws on the stories of 37 social education preservice teachers at a university in nigeria about their teacher-becoming trajectory and teaching practice experience to realize its aims. findings show that in nigeria, the choice of teaching is highly motivated by fallback higher education programs, extrinsic and socialization influence factors, while intrinsic, perceived abilities, and altruistic factors are the least motivators. the choice of teaching is influenced by gender in nigeria, with women’s sociocultural status and traditional gender roles influencing their choice of teaching and intention to remain in the teaching profession. the majority of the preservice teachers (83.78%) have poor and negative teaching professional identities. also, intrinsic and altruistic motivation factors are associated with positive teacher professional identity in nigeria. preservice teachers’ professional identity develops from social influences, intrinsic perspectives, and their teacher education experiences and institutional factors such as teacher welfare and development policies. the findings provide insights into social education teacher pedagogic and ethics training needs that could, drawing on teacher agency to navigate the structural challenges confronting the education profession in nigeria, foster preservice teachers’ strong interest in teaching and possibly reduce teacher attrition in developing contexts. keywords: preservice teacher career choice motivations, teacher professional identity, teaching ethics, fit-choice model, nigeria citation: obiagu, a.n. (2023). “not motivated but frustrated”: preservice teachers’ career choice motivations and professional identity in an african context. current issues in education, 24(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss1.2069 accepted: january 18, 2023 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss1.2069 obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 2 introduction research on teachers’ career motivations has been largely general in nature, covering teachers of all subjects (kiliniҫ et al., 2012; leech et al., 2019; lin et al., 2012; manuel & hughes, 2006; parr et al., 2021), with few of these research comparing the career motivations of teachers of various disciplines of which social science education teachers were referenced (glutsh & könig, 2019; kiliniҫ et al., 2012). there are, however, subject-specific studies that have considered teachers’ motivation, and their findings are similar to the findings of studies on teaching motivation generally (coon, 2020; spittle & spittle, 2014; topkaya & uztosun, 2012). there seems to be no study that has specifically studied social education teachers’ career choice motivations. social education programs deal with preventing and solving social problems through promoting pro-social, economic, political, and environmental behaviors. they include subjects like social studies, civic education, political science education, history education, economics education, geography and environmental education, human rights education, and peace education. these disciplines share some characteristics that could impact students’ choice of them as a career. for example, some of the social topics are difficult and controversial, thereby presenting discomfort and classroom management challenges to teachers (kuş & öztürk, 2019; misco & patterson, 2007). social education deals with affective, complex, and dynamic issues that are usually elusive or contested. commitment to some of its goals—such as protecting human rights and promoting justice and activism—is associated with stress, trauma, depression, and other mental health issues (knuckey et al., 2018; parnes et al., 2020). these characteristics of social education make it imperative to particularly explore why pre-service teachers choose to study and teach them, along with their teaching professional identity. understanding the motivations behind social education preservice teachers’ choice to teach or study social education is important for a better appreciation of their positionality (worldviews and practice) about social education. also, understanding the motivations behind choosing social education as a career is important for making sense of the challenges and problems (e.g., theory-practice gap, uncritical implementation of social or global issues, emphasis on cognition and achievement, and misunderstanding of the scope of social education) observed with social education implementations (obiagu, 2022; idowu, 2017; kwenin, 2021; mezieobi et al., 2012) and for making decisions on how to address the observed challenges since motivations are central to behaviors, practice and willingness to change. it is also worth mentioning that most teachers’ career choice motivation studies are quantitative (parr et al., 2021) and mainly situated in developed contexts. employing a qualitative approach to the study of teachers’ career choices will contribute to the richness of data on this topic by providing more nuanced perspectives from studied participants. this study is a step in this direction. the study draws on a qualitative method (narrative data from 37 social education preservice teachers in a university in nigeria) to explore issues of teachers’ career motivations and professional identity. structural challenges notwithstanding, the findings of the study revealed social educators’ knowledge and competency skills’ training needs that are prerequisites to decolonial, critical and transformative practices largely emphasized in social education research today. such prerequisite training needs will prepare teachers to appreciate social education’s purpose, contents, and pedagogy. the findings of the study could further offer insights into social science education practices, including how to defeminize the profession, in countries with similar social dynamics. obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 3 theoretical framework the interpretation of this study’s findings is guided by fit-choice (factors influencing teaching as a career choice) theory, grounded in eccles et al.’s (1983) expectancy-value theory and developed by watt and richardson (2007). eccles et al. (1983, 2005) expectancy-value theory assumes that academic choices or behaviors are mainly motivated by the chooser’s expectancies of success in the chosen task and perceptions of the values (immediate and continuous gains and costs) of the task and minimally influenced by the chooser’s socialization and previous experience’s perceptions. watt and richardson (2007) extended expectancy-value theory to the teaching career and built on the theory to develop fit-choice integrative model designed to assess the reasons why individuals choose teaching as a career. fit-choice theory holds that the choice to teach is motivated by teachers’ socialization influences (e.g., peers, family, and teachers’ encouragement or dissuasion); perception of teaching task demands (e.g., expected expertise and availability of opportunities) and task returns (e.g., social status and salary); perceptions of self-ability to teach; values’ perceptions such as intrinsic values (love for and interest in teaching), personal utility or extrinsic values (e.g., job security and time for family) and social utility or altruistic values (e.g., desire to nurture future generation and make social contributions); and perception of teaching as a fallback career. the model, though designed for preservice teachers’ motivation assessment, has been replicated and validated in studies assessing both preservice teachers’ (bergmark et al., 2018; kilinҫ et al., 2012; sinclair, 2008) and in-service teachers’ (leech et al., 2019; parr et al., 2021) motivation to teach in both developed and developing countries, with findings of the validating studies similar. anchoring the present study on the fit-choice model is based on the speculation that it will aid the understanding of preservice teachers’ (of all subjects) motivation for choosing to teach in nigeria’s context. the next section reviews previous literature on teaching career choice motivations and teacher professional identity to put the study in context. literature review this section reviews existing literature on two related factors, pre-service and in-service teachers’ career choice motivation and professional identity. teachers’ motivation for choosing teaching as a career teacher motivation is "what attracts individuals to teaching, how long they remain in their initial teacher education courses, and the teaching profession" (sinclair, 2008, p. 37). shortage of teachers and teachers’ recruitment and retention needs have mostly informed studies on teachers’ motivation for a teaching career in developed countries, while the need to improve teachers’ active practice and effective classroom practices have been additional motivating factors for similar studies in developing countries. teacher motivation is usually categorized into intrinsic, extrinsic, and altruistic motivations. it is believed to impact teachers’ professional identity, teaching practice, and students’ educational outcomes, including students’ interest in learning. over the last ten decades, studies have explored the motivations behind the choice of teaching career using similar models (brown, 1992; chivore, 1988; gould, 1934; greene & scott, 1962; lin et al., 2012; olasehinde, 1972; parr et al., 2021; sinclair, 2008; tudhope, 1944; willcox & beigel, 1953). post-2007 teaching career choice studies have relied more on an integrated fit-choice model developed in 2007 by watt and richardson (watt & richardson, 2007). however, both pre-2007 and post-2007 studies, in both developed and developing obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 4 contexts, consistently point to intrinsic, extrinsic, and altruistic motivations for choosing teaching. in developed countries, studies have consistently shown intrinsic and altruistic factors to strongly motivate preservice teachers’ choice of teaching career than fallback career and socialization reasons, though these factors occur in varying degrees in these contexts. studies in the contexts of australia (manuel & hughes, 2006; sinclair, 2008; watt & richardson, 2007, 2012), the united states (lin et al., 2012; thomson et al., 2012), china (lin et al., 2012), sweden (bergmark et al., 2018), germany (glutsh & könig, 2019; könig & rothland, 2012), spain (alvariñas-villaverde et al., 2022), and turkey (kilinҫ et al., 2012) consistently showed the top motivations for choosing teaching among preservice teachers to include perceived ability to teach and intrinsic and altruistic reasons, such as a passion for teaching, a desire to make a social contribution, and a desire to work with children; with fallback career and socialization influence reasons the least ranked motivations in these contexts. the findings of studies exploring in-service teachers’ motivation for choosing teaching across these contexts (alexander et al., 2020; parr et al., 2021) are consistent with the findings of studies that explored preservice teachers’ motivation. in developing contexts, findings are inconsistent and mostly reverse of what exists in developed countries. in countries such as zimbabwe and nigeria, studies showed that extrinsic and mercenary factors, such as salary, working conditions, and job transferability (chivore, 1988; nwagwu, 1981), and socialization influences, including referrals by family and friends (yusuf et al., 2018), were the highest ranked motivating factors for choosing teaching as a career. in these contexts, changes or improvements in students’ interest in choosing a teaching career were observed when the working conditions of teaching service were improved, as shown by findings of a nigerian comparative study of two settings whose participants were secondary school, final-year students—first setting being in 1972 (when working conditions of teachers were poor) and second setting being in 1977 (when teaching conditions were better) (nwagwu, 1981). recent studies in ghana, nigeria, and zambia showed that the desire to make social contributions and shape children’s future were the highest motivating factors for preservice teachers’ choice of teaching (abonyi et al., 2021; akpochafo, 2020; mweemba & allida, 2021) while job security and salary were the least chosen factors in nigeria and zambia (akpochafo, 2020; mweemba & allida, 2021). preservice and in-service teachers in nigeria reported negative attitudes towards the teaching profession, with most of them preferring other professions to teaching, defining teaching as a feminine profession, and doing teaching because they have no other options (egwu, 2015; olasehinde, 1972). sociodemographic factors, such as gender and education programs, are also implicated as influencing teachers’ motivation. female teachers report stronger intrinsic and altruistic motivations, especially the desire to work with children and shape their future, for choosing teaching than males (kilinҫ et al., 2012; spittle & spittle, 2014; ṡtemberger, 2020; yüce et al., 2013) while male teachers rank higher in negative motivations such as choosing teaching based on extrinsic values, fallback career and social influence reasons (alexander et al., 2020; kilinҫ et al., 2012; sinclair, 2008; yüce et al., 2013). more women than men chose to teach on intrinsic grounds and for time for family in ghana and nigeria (abonyi et al., 2021; akpochafo, 2020). women were also found to have stronger positive attitudes towards the teaching profession and greater intention to remain in or continue with teaching than men (nwagwu, 1981; sinclair, 2008; ṡtemberger, 2020): this is due to their higher intrinsic and altruistic motivations (watt & richardson, 2007). obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 5 for study programs variable, findings are inconsistent. kilinҫ et al. (2012) found that preservice teachers of non-science programs, including social science education programs, scored higher on intrinsic and altruistic motivations for teaching, while preservice teachers in science-related programs scored higher on fallback career and socialization influence motives. in another study, social studies/humanities preservice teachers were reported to show lower intrinsic, social, and pedagogical motivations compared to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (stem) and language preservice teachers (glustch & könig, 2019). the authors explained the finding as strange given that social studies/humanities programs deal with human behaviors and humanity (glustch & könig 2019). this inconsistency between findings of previous studies adopting various approaches calls for a robust study focusing specifically on social science education program preservice teachers’ motivations for choosing this teaching course, and this is part of what the present study considers. the following section reviews the literature on another variable of this study, the teachers’ professional identity, given its connection with teachers’ teaching choice motivation. teachers’ professional identity and how it develops there is no universally agreed definition of teacher professional identity. the concept is represented differently and sometimes approached as teachers’ motivation, attitude, or belief in the existing literature. the reason for this is not farfetched. as day et al. (2006) noted, the understanding of self is important to beliefs, attitudes, and actions; and identity "is a key influencing factor on teachers’ sense of purpose, self-efficiency, motivation, commitment, job satisfaction and effectiveness" (p. 601). additionally, beijaard et al. (2004) stated that belief is a part of identity. a review of the literature shows that the concept is defined from two perspectives, individualistic and collectivistic or normative perspectives, with an individualistic perspective representing personal identity and a collectivistic perspective representing group identity. sachs’s (2001) definition of teacher professional identity as "a set of attributes that are imposed upon the teaching profession either by outsiders or members of the teaching fraternity itself" (p. 153) represents a normative or collectivistic perspective. some of these attributes or norms expected of or ascribed to the teaching profession include caring, mastery of content and pedagogical knowledge, tolerance, patience, social-emotional competencies, and global competencies, among others. most definitions in literature take the individualistic perspective that involves selfawareness and self-conception in relation to being a teacher and teaching. one’s awareness and conception of self in a teaching role, just like career motivation, is influenced by one’s idiosyncrasies and biography, personal experiences from culture, schooling, intrinsic, extrinsic, and social factors, as well as by institutional factors like educational policies and political and economic contexts. from this perspective, beijaard et al. (2004) noted teachers’ professional identity as an answer to the question, "who am i as a teacher"? kelchtermans (1993) outlined five components of teacher professional identity as self-image, self-esteem, job motivation, task perception, and future perspectives. notably, one common feature with the various representations of teacher professional identity is its characterization as a dynamic, nonstraightforward, and ongoing process (beijaard et al., 2004; day et al., 2006; sachs, 2001). to focus this article, this study defines teacher professional identity from an individualistic perspective to mean a teacher’s perception of teaching both as a career and practice along with their conception of self in a teaching role or as a teacher. it implies a teacher’s identity that reflects an interconnection between the self, the teaching professional obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 6 community, and the teaching profession. this definition allows for distinction between components of teacher professional identity—teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, and motivation—from teacher professional identity itself and for a clearer assessment of teacher professional identity. where a teacher’s perception of teaching does not come simultaneously with (or is not woven into the teacher’s) conception and narrative of self in relation to the teaching role, then the perception is the teacher’s professional belief and not the teacher’s professional identity. teacher professional identity can be negative or positive. it is negative when teaching is perceived from a contemptuous view as non-demanding or less interesting, with the perceiver disassociating themself from the teaching role now or in the future. it is positive when teaching is perceived as noble, interesting, satisfactory, and fulfilling, with the perceiver associating themself with the teaching role in the present and in the future. to be regarded as positive, the teacher must perceive teaching as noble and interesting and, at the same time, exhibit the intention to remain in the teaching profession. just like teachers’ teaching motivation studies reviewed in the previous section, studies have evidenced that teacher professional identity develops from institutional factors, such as educational policies and sociocultural factors, intrinsic and extrinsic factors, and personal experiences (day et al., 2006; flores & day, 2006; kelchtermans, 1993; thomas & beauchamp, 2011; ye & zhao, 2018). it is also found that new teachers express a lack of confidence and a sense of powerlessness in their professional lives (thomas & beauchamp, 2011). thomas and beauchamp (2011) found that new teachers lack a strong and positive feeling about their professional selves, despite the fact that some came into the profession with a positive identity (flores & day, 2006). where new teachers hold positive teacher professional identity, negative school cultures and contexts that challenge the meanings, values, and images they bring into teaching destabilize the positive identity, and hence make the work a routine and less creative job for many (flores & day, 2006). ensuring that teachers develop a positive professional identity is imperative. this is because a teacher’s understanding of their professional identity impacts their decisions about curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, and student learning (mockler, 2011). for preservice teachers, zhang et al. (2016) found that their professional identity influenced their performance in their program through impacting their task value belief. zhao and zhang (2017) showed that preservice teachers’ professional identity is positively impacted by teaching practice fieldwork and mentor support. yet, teacher education programs fail to provide opportunities and experiences for preservice teachers to develop a strong positive professional identity (flores & day, 2006; thomas & beauchamp, 2011). reviewed studies offer general knowledge about teacher professional identity and the identity holder’s success in teaching programs or practice. additional specialized knowledge of teacher professional identity is important for an effective teacher education practice of respective programs. hence, this present study is more concerned with understanding how social education preservice teachers undergoing teaching practice view teaching as a profession and themselves as teachers at present and in the future, along with how held identity develops in the nigerian context as well as how the identified identity relates with their intention to teach. the present study this study examines preservice social educators’ motivations for choosing social education, their professional identity, and how it relates to their motivations. the study was conducted in a developing context, the south-east region of nigeria and appears to be the first obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 7 specifically exploring social educators’ motivation for choosing to teach social education across teachers’ career choice literature. the factors (such as teacher shortages, teacher attrition, and the entrance to the teaching profession by people from high-paying and prestigious disciplines) that mainly motivate studying motivations for the choice of a teaching career in developed countries are not pronounced in sub-saharan africa. hence, it is considered important to explore, using qualitative methods, why people choose to teach in this context, given factors—such as overcrowded classrooms, poor working conditions, and poor and delayed salaries, amongst others—that embroil the teaching profession in sub-saharan african contexts. also, all reviewed studies in developing contexts and most reviewed studies in developed contexts relied on quantitative methods. given the nature of the items measured in these studies, quantitative methods are highly susceptible to social desirability and unconscious bias. it will be difficult not to pick ‘the desire to make contributions to society or shape children’s future’ as strong motivating factors. these options will most likely be ranked highly by anyone, irrespective of discipline, whether medicine or teaching. my study will contribute to the discourse by drawing on qualitative data, which has the potential to give a nuanced picture of career choice’s trajectory and also reveal the point at which preservice teachers developed altruistic motivations for teaching. findings will most likely be remarkably different from the findings of previous studies and inform policies that could impact teacher education practices. it is further anticipated that the evolving complex and sometimes controversial nature of social education will impact differently social educators’ motivations for choosing teaching as a career and the professional identity they develop. method this study employs a narrative research method. narrative research is focused on how individuals experience the world and assign meaning to their experiences via the stories they tell (connelly & clandinin, 1990; moen, 2006). the sources of narrative data include field notes of shared experiences, storytelling, interviews, journal entries, and autobiographical and biographical writing (connelly & clandinin, 1990). narrative research is criticized as open to fraud or unethical practices since researchers can tamper with participants’ original stories (connelly & clandinin, 1990). this risk notwithstanding, narrative data, collected through stories, is adopted for this study because of its potential to allow sep teachers freedom to share their thoughts and experiences without pretense and with limited room for social desirability bias. again, the question of motivations and identity is best revealed through stories: this is because stories are the embodiment of our identity and experiences, and "without a story, there is no identity, no self, no other" (lewis, 2011, p. 505). also, telling stories does not confine participants to items that may not be representative of their identities or items that are highly susceptible to social desirability/unconscious bias. it gives the participants the opportunity to reflect on their journey, process their experiences, and share it accurately. as observed by parr et al. (2021), "researchers’ overreliance on quantitative methods signals an important gap in the study of teacher education. more qualitative… research is needed to better understand the complexities of how teachers define and interpret their motivations for teaching." narrative research is one of the qualitative methods mainly used in educational studies. it has been applied in studying educational issues, especially curriculum making and human rights, and multicultural education, and a reflective approach is usually adopted in data reporting (coulter et al., 2007; mcgraw et al., 2017; mittson-kiikner et al., 2010; oser & zhu, 2011; valdez et al., 2000). the present study aligns itself with the practice of previous educational obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 8 narrative research but focuses on teachers’ career motivations and professional identity. relying on narrative data for this research aids the understanding of the complexities of motivations for teaching and professional identity. from this perspective, this study considers narrative research as appropriate since the paper sought to explore sep teachers’ teaching career choice motivations and professional identity. the following specific research questions guided the study: 1. what motivates social science education (sse) preservice teachers to choose teaching and their specific programs? 2. what professional identity do sse preservice teachers have? and, how do they develop that professional identity? participants the sample of the study comprised 37 (22 females and 18 males; see table 1 for participant profile) social science education preservice teachers out of the 40 preservice teachers supervised by the author in four schools in the 2018-2019 session who gave consent to have their stories used for this research. the area of the study is enugu state in south-east nigeria. table 1 profile of participants—preservice teachers for the 2018 – 2019 session sn gender specific course program program level school subject taught class taught preservice teacher [pt] 1 male (m) – 300 1 government sss3 pt 2 m – 300 1 civic edu sss2 pt 3 m – 400 1 government sss 2 pt 4 m – 400 1 government sss2 pt 5 female (f) – 400 1 social studies jss3 pt 6 m – 400 1 civic edu sss3 pt 7 f – 300 1 economics sss3 pt 8 f – 400 1 economics sss2 pt 9 f – 300 2 crs sss1 pt 10 f – 400 2 economics sss1 pt 11 f – 300 2 economics sss2 pt 12 f – 300 2 civic edu sss1 pt 13 m – 300 2 social studies jss2 pt 14 m – 400 2 government sss2 pt 15 f – 400 2 civic edu jss2 pt 16 m – 300 2 civic edu jss2 pt 17 m – 300 2 government sss1 pt 18 m – 300 3 civic edu sss1 pt 19 m – 300 3 civic edu sss3 pt 20 f – 300 3 civic edu jss1 pt 21 m – 400 3 government sss3 pt 22 f – 300 3 social studies jss2 obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 9 sn gender specific course program program level school subject taught class taught pt 23 f – 400 3 civic edu jss3 pt 24 m – 400 3 government sss1 pt 25 f – 400 3 social studies jss1 pt 26 f – 300 3 economics sss1 pt 27 f – 400 4 government sss2 pt 28 m – 300 4 social studies jss2 pt 29 f – 400 4 economics sss2 pt 30 f – 300 4 economics sss1 pt 31 m – 300 4 civic edu jss2 pt 32 f – 400 4 civic edu jss1 pt 33 f – 300 4 government sss1 pt 34 f – 300 4 social studies jss3 pt 35 f – 400 4 social studies jss2 pt 36 f – 400 4 social studies jss1 pt 37 m – 300 1 civic edu sss1 note. specific course program details (education/economics, education/political science, and education/social studies) were removed to further blur the identity of the participants. procedure for narrative data collection this study adopts storytelling as a method for narrative data collection (connelly & clandinin, 1990). data was collected on preservice teachers’ teacher-becoming and teaching practice experiences. the study further constructed interpretations about the experiences of the participants and the meaning attributed to the experiences. the narrative data were collected using an instrument, ‘supervisee’s teaching program (tp) motivations, experiences and practice inquiry template,’ developed by the author for eliciting the stories of tp supervisees. the template was administered to the supervisees on a day prior to their actual instructional and classroom practice supervisions. this occasion for eliciting information is a pre-teaching conference –an interactive meeting between the supervisor and their supervisees where the supervisees share stories of their teaching trajectory or teacher becoming. the goal of a preteaching conference is to help the supervisor identify their students’ needs and improve the supervisor’s practice that could meaningfully impact the professional growth of the students. more broadly, the conference aimed to: • build supervisees-supervisor trust; • understand (and encourage or inhibit) the psycho-sociocultural factors that may influence, positively or negatively, preservice teachers’ practice and professional development; • reduce the high level of anxiety, caused partly by observation by supervisors, found among preservice teachers (see danner, 2014) through establishing a first interactive contact with them; • raise supervisees’ consciousness about and reflection on their teaching trajectory, their challenges, and their improvement opportunities; • identify, from the perspectives of preservice teachers, areas of improvement for supervisors and teacher programs. obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 10 the inquiry template comprised five questions. in your story: • tell us your motivation for choosing the program you are studying; • tell us the challenges you have so far encountered in your journey in this program; • tell us what you enjoy about teaching; • share with us your difficulties in your teaching practice exercise; • where do you see yourself in the future? do you intend to teach after graduation? preservice teachers were asked to follow the above template in telling their stories about their journey into the social education program and how the journey has been for them. through these questions, the supervisor allowed themselves into their students’ perspectives and thoughts and explored ways of helping them improve their practice. the supervisor also used the forum to create opportunities for preservice "teachers to map and understand the patterns of their lives experience, both in their personal and professional lives, in order that they may better understand their current purposes and practices" (leitch & day, 2000, p.188). preservice teachers were informed that participation in the conference does not carry any reward or consequence and will not influence their tp assessment; that the conference is aimed at understanding their idiosyncrasies and challenges with teaching; and that their stories will be used for research on understanding social education preservice teachers’ motivations for choosing to study social education, their professional identity, and challenges with teaching. they were informed of their right to choose not to share their stories. three elected not to share their stories, while 37 shared them. the author took handwritten notes of the stories with the students’ consent. permission was further obtained from the department of social science education of the university of nigeria to use the data for research purposes. using the collected data, the study explored social science education preservice teachers’ motivation for choosing the social science education program and their professional identity through identifying themes on these variables from the shared stories and the meanings preservice teachers attributed to their shared experiences. data analysis the collected data were used to draw conclusions on preservice teachers’ motivations for teaching, professional identity, and challenges in nigeria; only findings on career choice motivations and professional identity are reported in this study. the researcher’s handwritten notes (stories or narrative data) collected on each study participant were deductively thematically analyzed using an analytical coding method (strauss & corbin, 1990) to identify codes that are present in previous literature, including in watt & richardson’s (2007) fit-choice model. the stories of individual participants were compared for similar and divergent views or contents. noteworthy is that the codes were quantified to enable percentage calculations. final themes, together with their percentage level of emphasis by participants, were developed by harmonizing collected codes resulting from the analysis of individual data. the generated final themes were grouped and presented as subheads under the two variables, namely preservice teachers’ motivations and preservice teachers’ professional identity, captured in the research questions guiding this study. eight themes emerged under preservice teachers’ motivations, while four themes emerged under preservice teachers’ professional identity. a peer researcher reviewed the themes to reduce interpretation bias and ensure that they accurately represented the information contained in the field notes. obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 11 findings the results showed that a number of intrinsic and extrinsic factors motivate social science education preservice teachers to choose their course of study. it further showed that preservice teachers’ professional identity is in flux and shaped by mostly sociocultural experiences. these results are presented below. social education preservice teachers’ motivation for teaching choice this part presents findings on the first variable, pre-service teachers’ career choice motivation, explored in this study. the result showed that preservice teachers’ choice to study social science education (sse) is motivated by both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. the extrinsic factors are similar to those discussed in fit-choice theory by watt and richardson (2007). the extrinsic factors include broader sociocultural context and immediate social context factors influencing preservice teachers’ decision to teach or study teaching programs. unemployment and economic reasons, fallback higher education and gender expectations, problems, and norms are the broader sociocultural factors, while family influence, previous teaching experience, and secondary teacher’s personality are the immediate social context factors. the intrinsic factors include a love of teaching, a desire for social change, and a perceived oratory or leadership ability. these factors are represented in figure 1 and subsequently discussed in detail. figure 1 social education preservice teachers’ motivation for program choice socialization (family and friends’) influences family members, both extended and nuclear, and friends are instrumental in influencing the choice of teaching career or program among social science preservice teachers, as depicted in the following statements: pt18: i wanted law but my mum hated it because she believes they are liars. i tried it for years. didn’t work. so, i later tried education/political science and got it. preservice teachers' teaching motivations extrinsic motivation broader sociocultural context factors high unemployment and economic reasons fallback higher education programme gender expectations, norms and problems immediate social context factors family/friends' influence secondary teacher's personality previous teaching experience intrinsic and altruistic motivation love of teaching social change desire perceived oratory ability obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 12 pt4: i wanted to do business at onitsha with my father. but all my siblings who are graduates were begging me to go to university that i can’t be the only one that didn’t go to school in our house. they encouraged me to try jamb ones, if i didn’t make it then i should go into business… pt16: i don’t talk too much. my mum is a lecturer and she wants someone to succeed her. i am the one she chose. the influence of family and friends on one’s career choice is defined as a socialization factor (watt & richardson, 2007). generally, socialization factors featured in the stories of 23 out of the 37 (62.16%) participants. this indicates that socialization influence is the strongest motivating factor for choosing to teach in nigeria. this factor, however, is strongly mediated by a prolonged stay at home without admission and connects with fallback higher education motivation. fallback higher education program the fallback higher education program factor noted in this study is similar to watt and richardson’s (2007) fallback career factor, except that individuals in a fallback career consider teaching as a career option in the future while those who chose it as a fallback higher education program do not have interest in a teaching career in the future, but are only interested in becoming higher education graduates and working in any financially better sector. in fact, an education program is a course of last resort for this group of preservice teachers. this factor, the fallback higher education program, ranked as the second highest motivating factor for choosing to teach among the studied sample. out of the 37 participants, 19 (51.35%) indicated choosing to study education program because they could not get admitted into their desired programs. pt19: i wanted political science major. i tried jamb [nigerian joint admission matriculation board examination] four years without getting admission. i was teaching in lesson center before admission. i had to go for education/political science. i was not motivated but frustrated. pt5: i stayed 5 years without getting admission into my choice of course, political science. i was advised by my friends to try guidance and counselling. i tried it and got the admission. pt30: i wasted 3 years trying to get admission to study economics (major) because they have many job opportunities. my friend told me to try education/economics that it is easier to get… so, i tried it and got it. i even prefer it to economics major now. pt10: i wanted law. my family hated education. stayed at home for long. i decided to do education. it is better than not going to school. few students who chose teaching as a fallback higher education program later developed an interest and love for the profession, as shown in the section reporting their professional identity. economic and employment reasons the results showed that economic reasons are strong motivators for choosing to study sse among preservice teachers. economic reasons involve aims to acquire a source of livelihood and improve one’s standard of living. this reason featured strongly in their responses. nine (24.32%) out of the 37 preservice teachers who shared their stories identified economic reasons as motivating their choosing sse. they believed that it is easy to get a teaching job and that demand for teaching services is steady, though the pay is poor. these factors are deducible from preservice teachers’ [pt] statements presented below. obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 13 pt 1: initially, i wanted to do philosophy. but the nature of philosophy in nigeria is useless. i then decided to go for political science. but i was advised by people to go for education/political science so i can have double opportunities. pt 3: i wanted mass communication because of a friend who is a radio presenter. in senior secondary, i noticed i wasn’t understanding literature… lack of job motivated me to attach education to political science. so, i went for political science education. pt 2: i wanted mass communication. my dad was advised by an uncle that education is lucrative now. that was how i found myself in education. i didn’t like the course before. i like it now. pt 9: i wanted to do psychology. my dad wanted law. not being able to get law, i enrolled for guidance and counselling and social studies education. but my parents and friends were not happy that i went for education. i got to love g & c because my aunt abroad called me and told me to continue with the course that it sells abroad. so, i continued. before i resumed my 3rd year, my mum asked me how far? i informed her that i have settled with my dad. i promised him that i will do law as a 2nd degree. the above quotes also indicate a belief that sse offers double opportunities for graduates: teaching job opportunities and employment opportunities in any industry that employs graduates of the program, which they combined with education. gender expectations, norms, and problems time for family, which watt and richardson (2007) group under personal utility value, featured as a factor for choosing teaching. however, in the nigerian context, this factor is noted only by female preservice teachers. even though time for family has been used in most western studies, where both male and female teachers consider it important, this study identifies this factor as rather propelled by gender expectations and norms in nigeria. gender expectations or issues were behind the choice of teaching social education by six out of the 22 female social education preservice teachers (i.e., 27% of the female sample; 16.23% of the total sample) who shared their stories, with three of these women expressly pointing to their traditional gender roles as women. for example: pt22 said "i wanted social studies education. my motivation is because i am a woman. i want a profession that will give me time to take care of my family… i want to be closer to my children. social studies education does not require much commitment." pt12 said "i love teaching because as a woman. it will give me time to take care of myself and my family." there seems to be a connection between intrinsic motivations and time for family in the above excerpts from their narratives. the intrinsic factor is, however, connected with gender expectations that seem to limit the career exploits of women or their genuine independence in making career choices. the excerpts strongly emphasize “less work time and less demand,” “being female,” and “carer roles” as strong motivating factors. aside from gender expectations as motivating female preservice teachers’ choice of teaching, gender problems featured as motivating preservice teachers’ choice. pt23 narrates, "i went to a missionary school. i had a counsellor. the school was in northern nigeria, plateau state. in berom culture, it is the tradition for a girl child to give birth at home so that when you marry there will be children singing at home. thank god my teachers were good and supportive and you must know jesus whether you like it or not. so, i escaped teenage pregnancy. this made me choose guidance and counselling/social studies against my dad’s taste for law. i don’t look forward to teaching. my mother is a teacher and obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 14 she complains of salary delay. i learnt tailoring. so, i will go into fashion and designing, be a youth counsellor and fight immorality." notably, pt23’s experience of high teenage pregnancy (which she also connects to nonspirituality) and her encounter with a school counsellor and teachers who helped some of them avoid the menace motivated her choice of program. this, though related to gender norms factors, also strongly indicates altruistic goals and previous school experiences as motivating factors to choose teaching. in another scenario, the choice of teaching by women features as a consequence of both poverty and patriarchy that enable the dependence of women on men or dichotomizes young nigerian women’s fate into either furthering with education or entering into (early) marriage. pt7 recounts, "i wanted accountancy. i wrote jamb three times but didn’t make it. my father said he can’t continue like this; that he has eight children. and suitors were already coming; i was refusing. my father appointed one for me… i told my husband i can do business education because it is related to accountancy. my husband chose education/economics for me." this situation, though it did not indicate that the participant chose the course by imposition but with influence, seemingly reflects patriarchy as a reason for choosing teaching. intrinsic motivations for choosing social education few preservice teachers choose teaching on intrinsic grounds. in all, six preservice teachers (5 females and 1 male; 16.23%) show love and interest in teaching as behind their choice of the teaching study program. this is reflected in the following statements: pt13 (male): i have loved teaching. i am the last to go to school in my family after i helped train my younger ones. teaching interests me since it provides me the opportunity to do what i like doing, training younger ones. pt17: i love teaching that is why i chose my course. teaching is also cheap and easy to do. in some cases, as explained in the section on gender expectations, the intrinsic motivation is associated with gender expectations. secondary teacher’s personality secondary school teachers’ personalities featured as an influencing factor among the participants’ choice of teaching (5 of the 37 preservice teachers, i.e., 13.51%). it is interesting that despite poor working conditions of teaching in nigeria, some teachers are able to serve as career models for their students. four preservice teachers note being positively motivated, by their teachers’ practices, to choose teaching. the story of pt23 under a subhead above (i.e., gender expectations, norms, and problems subhead) showed that her school teachers impacted her program choice. pt11: i wanted nursing so i will have opportunity to care for people. but things scare me. my economics teacher was caring and this motivated me to go for education… pt20: i didn’t know anything when i was in secondary school. i couldn’t speak english. i chose to study education so i can speak like my teachers… pt22: my teachers in secondary school motivated me to study education. they cared for… my dream is to be a teacher. my students don’t give me trouble. on another hand, one preservice teacher noted negative experiences with teachers as their reason for choosing teaching with the intention to change the status quo. according to pt24: "…i see teachers in school, i thought the teachers do not do well because they went to nti or nce. so, i decided to go to university…" obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 15 altruistic motivations for choosing social education despite the social utility and altruistic nature of social education, only four (10.81%) of the study’s participants showed altruistic reasons for choosing their program. only two of these students (out of all participants) expressly connected their motivations to their specific programs. refer to the statements of pt23, pt 11, and pt13 presented in previous subheads. additionally, pt 25 noted; "i like teaching. my motivation for going for social studies is to teach students and direct them to behave well. it will give me time for my family. job opportunities in education is much. i am older than my students. i feel i am in charge of the class." the small number of sep teachers choosing the program on altruistic grounds is disappointing and raises very strong implications for social education teacher training reforms. perceived ability to teach three preservice teachers (8.11% of the total sample) chose social education because of their perceived qualities which they assume indicate an ability to teach. statements reflecting this motivation are presented below. pt32: i chose teaching myself. i like talking and teaching is about talking. i enjoy to teach and didn’t have difficulty with my students. pt24: i see myself as a motivational speaker. i made inquiry on what course will fit me more. i deemed it fit to go for political science/education. pt28: i have the talent to make people understand things. like, i can easily convince people during discussions that is part of the reason i decided to go for teaching when my dream to study publication admission failed. these students believed that they possess some inherent qualities, including oratory skills, attributed to the teaching profession. this perception motivated them to choose teaching and social education that deals with human beings. previous teaching experience the results further show that some preservice teachers gained motivation to choose a teaching career from their previous engagement in teaching in extramural lesson centers or private schools. this is the least motivating factor for choosing to teach in nigeria, as shown in this study. two preservice teachers, including pt19, who "was teaching in lesson center before admission" and whose experience with the course contributed to their finally choosing a teaching course because "it is easy and not stressful" fall into this category. pt21, who wanted to be a priest or politician, "taught in church and private school before starting this program." their previous backgrounds in teaching were an encouraging factor for their decision to enroll in the program. social education preservice (sep) teachers’ professional identity this part presents findings on the second variable, pre-service teachers’ professional identity, of this study. the narratives of sep teachers revealed the teacher professional identity they hold, including their future career goals. positive and negative self-imagination as a teacher or teacher professional identity, how teacher professional identity develops, and the intention to remain in teaching were revealed. each of these components of professional identity is individually discussed below. obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 16 positive self-image as a teacher in all, only four preservice teachers (pts 13, 15, 22, and 25) exhibited positive teacher professional identity, which implies a satisfaction with their self-image as a teacher and a positive identity about the teaching profession. this is measured by their perception of the teaching profession, along with their intention to remain in the profession. one participant perceived teaching as demanding expertise, though with a poor task return (salary). this belief developed from her experience with her mother, who is a teacher. as she noted: pt15: ‘i hated teaching because my mum is a teacher. she is always marking scripts at home. teaching is stressful and the pay is small. i am beginning to like it… i look forward to teaching.’ evident in the above story is that the pre-service teacher perceived the teaching task as requiring expertise and was satisfied with the teaching profession irrespective of the poor working condition bedeviling the profession. this indicates a positive professional identity. another participant defined the profession as interesting. pt13: i have loved teaching…teaching interests me since it provides me the opportunity to do what i like doing, training younger ones. i will teach after graduation if i get the opportunity. pt13 did not, at any point, associate teaching with poverty but is satisfied with the profession. other participants who have a good attitude towards the teaching profession but lack interest in remaining in the profession are not recognized as having positive teaching professional identity. negative self-image as a teacher negative teacher professional identity was more profound in the stories shared by the study participants. many of the social education preservice teachers shared the perception that "teaching is a cheap course and easy to do course" (pt17) and an easy and less timeconsuming job (14 of the 37, that is, 37.83% of sep teachers). three participants represented teaching as a disrespected and very poor profession. consider the story below: "my first day in class, i was evaluating my lecturer. can he afford suv? can he buy a good house in a cool town? i looked him from head to toe and i was like, no, i can’t [i can’t do teaching job]. the only thing i like about teaching is that it makes me come in contact with people with different views" – (pt4). two pre-service teachers, although they defined teaching as noble and the mother of all professions, perceived it as a poor and disrespected profession with regard to nigeria’s context and hence, disassociated themselves from teaching in the future. for example, pt31 said, "…teaching is a noble profession. in ancient days, it was a job done by only philosophers, like plato, who were intellects. in some countries, teachers are respected. but in nigeria, the job is disrespected and teachers remain poor and do not care to improve on their knowledge. i plan to go and study law after graduation." the above statement additionally depicts that teachers in the nigerian context are perceived as unintelligent and lacking knowledge. this perception impacts pre-service teachers’ self-image as teachers. intention to continue with teaching self-image and self-esteem as a teacher and the intention to remain in teaching are important components of teacher professional identity. overall, the preservice teachers with negative professional identity were not satisfied with their self-image as teachers, and they planned to switch professions. the preservice teachers that did not identify themselves in a obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 17 teaching role, at the pre-higher education level, in the future amounted to 83.78% of the sample (i.e., 31 out of the 37 participants). two out of these 31 participants, however, wish to lecture at a higher institution level. some others consider moving abroad or pursuing a second degree in a non-teaching course, while many others dream of doing business or moving into politics. consider the following statements: pt18: … i don’t have interest in education. my interest is in politics. so, if i get into politics, the interest of teachers will be my priority. pt24: … if i have my way, i will recommend to ministry of education to make a policy that no school should be licensed without projectors. i will switch to criminology and retire as a lecturer there. although the above participants did not identify with the teaching profession in the future, they showed an intention to contribute to improving the conditions of teaching and teachers in nigeria if they find themselves in a position of political power. only seven pre-service teachers (pts 7, 12, 13, 15, 22, 25, and 34) out of the 37 participants identified (18.92% of the study sample) with the teaching profession in the future. these pre-service teachers are satisfied with their self-image as teachers and, as pt22 puts it, "dream to be a teacher," although few of them characterized teaching as non-demanding. it is worth highlighting that six of these preservice teachers who hold the intention to teach in the future belong to the seven (7) participants who either chose teaching for intrinsic or altruistic reasons, including three of the women who chose teaching on gender grounds. how teacher professional identity develop the results showed that negative professional identity among social education pre-service teachers initially developed from their interaction with their social networks, especially family and friends, as highlighted under the previous section. for example, tp9 noted: "i wanted to do psychology… i enrolled for guidance and counselling and social studies education. but my parents and friends were not happy that i went for education. my dad hates the program…i promised him that i will do law as a 2nd degree." they also develop professional identity through their teacher training experiences. sadly, preservice teachers’ experiences with the teacher education schooling system consolidate their negative identity more than they disrupt it. this observation is supported by pt24’s statement below, "…i thought the teachers do not do well because they went to nti or nce. so, i decided to go to university. unfortunately, when i got to university… the lecturers are archaic. no innovative ideas. they dictate from old handouts and teach everyday stuffs." additionally, pt14 noted, "…i love teaching. the first course i learnt was introduction to education. the lecturer told us teachers are poor and education is cheap. i was discouraged. the course is simply cheap..." it is obvious that the hope and positive identity that some students brought with them to the program were dashed by their experiences with learning practices, especially the hidden curriculum. the broader university system, in which teacher education students encounter professional harassment from professional “others,” additionally compounds the negative professional identity reported by participants. pt26 said, "my friends do mock me for doing education. my defense to my friends is that i will be a lecturer". positive professional identity appears to develop from within an individual through the process of self-awareness than from external factors like social networks and pay. this obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 18 observation is evidenced in pt13’s statement thus, "i have loved teaching…since it provides me the opportunity to do what i like doing –training younger ones." the way some preservice teachers feel about teaching changes with time during the course of their study, as evidenced in the stories shared by some of the participants. specifically, 16.22% of the preservice teachers (pts 6, 8, 9, 15, and 30) who lacked initial likeness for or interest in teaching developed a likeness for teaching at a later stage, usually their second or third year into the program. these students’ stories showed that they overcame professional harassment and developed weak positive teacher self-image through focusing on the strengths of their profession, such as (1) the future of other professions and sustenance of the future generation depends on their services as teachers, (2) the program, which is combined with other major non-educational courses, presents many job opportunities, and (3) some of the programs, such as guidance and counselling/social studies, offer higher chances of migrating to advanced countries. their positive self-image as teachers is characterized as weak because they are not sure whether they would want to continue with teaching. discussion this study explored social education preservice (sep) teachers’ motivation for choosing teaching and their professional identity. findings on each variable are individually discussed below. social education preservice teachers’ motivation for choosing teaching findings showed that the motivating factors for choosing teaching among social education preservice teachers include socialization influence, fallback program choice, task demand (economic and employment reasons such as availability of job factors), gender factors including time for family, intrinsic factors (love of teaching), secondary teachers’ personality, altruistic factors (desire to contribute to the society and shape younger ones), perceived ability to teach, and previous teaching experiences. these reasons are listed from the highest to the least referenced. evidently, participants’ choice of teaching program is strongly motivated by mercenary, extrinsic, and negative factors. noteworthy is that socialization influence, the highest motivating factor, interlinks with fallback program choice in nigeria because many students who chose social education as a fallback program did so due to the pressure from family and friends to start higher education. this finding compares to the findings of studies that explored teachers’ career choice motivations in developing contexts (chivore, 1988; nwagwu, 1981; yusuf et al., 2018) and contrasts with findings of similar studies in developed countries (bergmark et al., 2018; glutsh & könig, 2019; lin et al., 2012; parr et al., 2021; thomson et al., 2012; watt & richardson, 2007). this can be explained by the poor social welfare and social representation of teaching in nigeria. teachers receive one of the lowest salaries and are owed a salary more than any other group of civil servants. work conditions are poor; schools and classrooms which serve as teachers’ offices lack modern facilities and are, in some cases, dilapidated; and teachers’ promotion policies are unfriendly – postgraduate degrees are not recognized or rewarded (for promotion purposes) at k-12 education levels and 20 years teaching experience in a public school is required to head or lead a public school. the condition of work as the explanation for extrinsic motivations for the choice of a teaching career is supported by nwagwu’s (1981) findings that students’ interest in the teaching profession fluctuates/varies with changes or improvements in service conditions of teaching in nigeria. another reason for greater fallback program and extrinsic motivations for teaching program choice in nigeria is the nature of obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 19 employment in the country: employment in a sector is not determined by specialized qualification in most cases but by one’s social network. hence, studying education is largely not for it to serve as a future career but for getting a higher education certificate required for employment in any sector or for belonging to the class of highly educated people in a classed society. intrinsic and altruistic motivations were the least reported factors for the choice of social education by preservice teachers. this contrasts with akpochafo’s (2020) finding of altruism as the highest motivating factor in nigeria. the contradiction may be explained by akpochafo’s (2020) use of a questionnaire which is highly susceptible to social desirability bias. yet it is interesting that despite a poor social representation of teaching in nigeria, some preservice teachers were motivated to choose teaching on intrinsic and altruistic grounds, just as it is interesting to find that some chose the profession due to their previous positive experiences of their teachers. however, the fact that these factors were the least reported motivators in social education preservice teachers’ stories is disappointing. since the discipline deals more with moral and civic values and character formation, it is expected that its students and practitioners would be more motivated by and inclined to moral and civic needs. a similar result was found among social studies and humanities preservice teachers in a turkish context (glustch & könig, 2019). this indicates that something is lacking in social education teacher training programs across the world. the disappointing result can be explained by the high-stakes testing focus of educational activities in nigeria. it can further be explained by the non-consciousness of preservice teachers about the specialty and peculiarities of their disciplines as one pattern was predominant in participants’ stories: they focused on their reasons for choosing teaching and ignored pointing to their specific programs. only one of the two students with altruistic motivations particularly connected her motivations to her specific programs. this pattern strengthens the greater fallback program motivation factor revealed by this study. findings showed that the choice of teaching is influenced by gender in nigeria. female teachers are more likely to choose teaching on intrinsic, personal utility, and altruistic goal grounds. this is consistent with previous findings (abonyi et al., 2021; akpochafo, 2020; spittle & spittle, 2014; ṡtemberger, 2020). cultural and social norms are behind women’s choice of teaching on gender grounds. teaching is perceived as a feminine profession in nigeria (egwu, 2015; olasehinde, 1972). women’s income is seen as a supplement to men’s income in this context (obiagu, 2022); hence, women do not mind doing any job – underpaid or uninteresting to them – because they are socialized to be carers, non-ambitious, unassertive, and “theoretical non-providers”; theoretical non-providers because women are active providers in nigeria’s family. also, society’s expectation of women as carers and nurturers of a family is a strong influence on their choice of teaching, which they perceive as providing adequate time needed to be effective in traditional women’s roles. some married female preservice teachers were also found to not have a hand in their choice of the teaching profession; instead, their husbands chose it for them. this is the consequence of a patriarchal society where men make decisions on or determine the future of their wives, who they mostly expect to be home carers. beyond the poor working conditions of teachers in many countries across the globe, especially in the global south (see tikly et al., 2022), the motivation of these female preservice teachers seems to be another major reason for the gradual feminization of the teaching profession (obiagu & nwaubani, 2020; oecd, 2017). linking teaching to being a non-demanding task, usually associated with women, as seen in this study, runs the risk of misconceiving a teaching career as a non-valued or non-technical task. this false knowledge, which contradicts the obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 20 expectations of teaching in nigeria, is the consequence of the poor attitude to work by the nigerian teachers who preservice teachers encounter and observe. this deceptive knowledge can topple the transformative task of education if female teachers are not empowered to challenge traditions that limit their ability and involvement in social change and agency (obiagu & nwaubani, 2020, p. 19). also embedded in the findings are preservice teachers’ stereotype of some cultural societies (that they are non-indigene of), preservice teachers’ inability to distinguish societal problems (teenage pregnancy “out of wedlock”) from culture, and their inability to distinguish cultural issues from immorality (spiritual issues); if at all out-of-wedlock teenage pregnancy is part of a culture. all these could hamper constructive/disruptive classroom practices and social change goals. these and the non-involvement of some married women in choosing their teaching career have implications for social education teacher training. social education preservice teachers’ professional identity results revealed that social education pre-service teachers’ career choice motivation factors, discussed in the previous section, influenced their teacher professional identity. teacher professional identity develops from social influences, intrinsic perspectives, and more strongly from the teacher education training experiences of the preservice teachers. it found that the preservice teachers who were motivated by altruistic and intrinsic factors were the only ones who had positive teacher professional identity –that is, good self-image and self-esteem as teachers alongside the intention to become a teacher. a majority of the studied preservice teachers have a negative professional identity. many of them explained teaching as an easy and non-demanding job. the finding of the study that preservice teachers conceive teaching as easy-to-do work corresponds with egwu’s (2015) finding that only 9% of participants thought teaching is a difficult task. this finding agrees with studies that found that nigerian preservice and in-service teachers have negative attitudes towards the profession (egwu, 2015; olasehinde, 1972). it is surprising that while teachers in developed worlds report classroom practices as overwhelming and define teaching as demanding, stressful and difficult (chaplain, 2008; klassen & chiu, 2011), most preservice teachers in nigeria define teaching as simple, non-demanding, and less stressful. this can be explained by the prescriptive nature of contents emphasized in nigerian curricula and textbooks and the dominance of lecture methods in nigerian classrooms (obiagu, 2019). their perception of teaching as cheap, non-demanding, and unfit for them is arguably informed by the general poor perception of teaching held in nigerian society. preservice social teachers with negative professional identities do not want to continue with the teaching profession in the future. preservice teachers in this study also prefer law, business (trading), criminology, and ‘politics’ and described them as high-esteem jobs. most of them plan to train in and do these jobs after graduation from the teaching program. this is consistent with egwu’s (2015) finding that 71% of preservice teachers in nigeria prefer other professions to teaching. their disassociation of themselves from teaching can be explained by the poor socioeconomic status of teaching in nigeria, as earlier noted. however, the fact that the teaching profession is respected and desired in contexts such as usa and australia, where they are also among the least paid professions, suggests factors beyond socioeconomic status of teaching in nigeria as the cause of preservice teachers’ disrespect of teaching in the country. a greater cause of this could be the inadequate and low-quality teacher education training they receive, resulting in a lack of a sense of purpose by social educators, along with a poor understanding of the purpose of the teaching profession and the power of social education in society. some of the findings support this argument. it was found that some of the preservice obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 21 teachers came into the program with strong hopes but were disappointed by their teacher training schooling experiences. this is similar to thomas and beauchamp’s (2011) findings regarding new teachers who lost or lack a positive feeling about their professional selves due to the school contextual issues, such as values and policies, they experienced in their job. notably, some preservice teachers who initially disliked teaching later developed a likeness for the profession. these findings have implications for teacher education. pedagogic and ethics implications for social education teacher training we need to have the majority of social education teachers motivated to pursue a teaching career for intrinsic and altruistic reasons. this is because teachers with altruistic motivations and positive professional identities are found to be more committed to teaching and making social change via teaching (sinclair, 2008). that social education preservice teachers have strong extrinsic and socialization influence motivations for choosing to study social education programs, and stronger negative professional identity is revealing of some program intervention needs, especially pedagogic and ethics needs, of social education teacher training programs. focus on program intervention needs is not a denial of the importance of (or the challenges presented by) systemic structural factors and broader sociocultural issues in changing the status quo and improving teacher professional identity. priestley et al. (2015) noted how policies require teachers to be creative in their working practices, while effectively ignoring the structural and cultural challenges that disable or constrain teachers’ pedagogic practices. in nigeria, these structural disablements are in the form of poor working conditions, politicization of teacher recruitment, and the non-implementation of policies seeking to improve teachers’ welfare. hence, teachers and teacher educators need to fight back against systemic structural disablement or neglect through disruptive pedagogic practices, while hoping for systems changes to take effect. sequel to the above, the intention of emphasizing pedagogic solutions is to project the roles of teacher-educator agency and pedagogical resistance practices in contexts where structural agency or changes is slow. this is especially as findings showed that getting admitted into the programs or studying experiences of the programs did not disrupt the poor perception of teaching that the majority of the pre-service teachers came into the program with; it, in many instances, worsened their negative professional identity. teacher agency means teachers’ engagement with/in actions or practices that counter societal constraints to educational goals and outcomes. according to priestley et al. (2015), the achievement of teacher agency is always informed by past professional and personal experiences. hence, the findings of this study on teachers’ career motivation and professional identity have implications for teacher education pedagogic practices, including professional ethics, that could promote social education teachers’ agency and resilience. these teacher education pedagogic practices necessary to promote teacher professional identity and agency among social education preservice teachers include program emphasis on developing a sense of purpose that tilts towards social justice, altruism, and social engineering, and a strong professional self-image or self-esteem. this is because self-esteem is an important aspect of teacher professional identity (kelchtermans, 1993). for the development and sustenance of a positive teacher professional identity, professional self-esteem is needed. selfesteem can be initiated through developing and teaching professional ethics in social education teacher training programs. the specialized professional ethics course is central to the professionalism of disciplines, such as law and medicine, as well as crucial in empowering obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 22 professionals with professional identity, purpose, and esteem necessary for resisting and rewriting sociocultural practices that underestimate their profession. yet teaching professional ethics courses is omitted in nigerian universities, and teacher educators ignore or neglect coaching their students on it. even though scholarship on teaching and teacher ethics exists (boon, 2011; campbell, 2000, 2008), the advocated principles (e.g., reflecting moral rules such as caring, honesty, compassion, and diligence) are usually unimplemented, unregulated, or often taken for granted. notably, educational ethics concerns arise in questions of moral dilemma, especially in cases of unprecedented events, conflicts of interest in student-teacher relationships (e.g., campbell, 2000; colnerud, 1997), and implementing school justice regulatory policies capable of occasioning ‘moral injury’ (levinson, 2015; levinson & fay, 2016). emphasizing these topics in teacher education will help to empower teachers with the ability to distinguish between elements of culture and moral dilemmas encountered in their practice. in social education, ethics of (political) belief’s non-disclosure and disclosure or neutrality in teaching controversial topics, such as sexuality, race, and political ideologies, are argued to be necessary (journell, 2017, 2011; kelly, 1986). in addition to these ethics, some ethics are embedded in the united nations convention on the rights of the child (crc) 1990. they are the four crc cardinal principles of non-discrimination and equality, best interest of the child, participation and inclusion, and survival and development. also important for the development of a professional sense among preservice social educators is training on ethics of fashion, lifelong learning, social leadership, civic leadership, communication, and civic cum social justice agency. all these ethics could be harmonized and adopted in planning, conducting, managing, and implementing social education goals and content. social education teacher training programs should pursue (1) exposing social education students to general teaching and specific subject ethics in their first year (in fact, first class) and (2) emphasizing professional ethics throughout their programs’ tenure. presenting these ethics to students in their first year is important for the reasons listed below. exposing pre-service teachers to teaching professional ethics will contribute in: • disrupting preservice teachers’ poor attitude towards the teaching profession formed prior to being admitted into the program; • challenging preservice teachers to seriously commit to and be intentional about their programs; • transforming preservice teachers’ extrinsic, fallback program and socialization influence motivations to intrinsic and altruistic motivations; • increasing preservice teachers’ consciousness about their roles in promoting human rights, peacebuilding, democracy, and civic and social justice in and through education; • imbuing preservice teachers with a sense of professional responsibility and expertise; • empowering preservice teachers with a worldview of themselves as sitting at the center stage of the implementation of local, national, and global development plans; • launching preservice teachers into a new educational and teaching world that is different from their previous experience with learning and teaching either as students or teachers in secondary school or extramural lesson centers. this includes empowering them with the real expectations of the teaching profession that will disrupt their current poor understanding of the profession as less demanding and consuming, which false expectation is the product of the poor attitude to work of the teachers they experienced. obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 23 real committed teachers sure know that teaching is not less demanding or less timeconsuming. • empower preservice teachers with consciousness of the strengths of their programs and prepare them to focus only on the strengths. the success stories of some participants who later liked teaching after some years into their program provide hope about the success of this approach for developing a positive professional identity. based on the above, it is suggested that social educators across the globe, via organizations such as the social studies educationist association of nigeria (sosan) and the national council for the social studies (ncss), begin conversations on articulating social education ethical codes, and developing social education ethics courses and intervention programs for preservice teachers around the world. we need a universal but contextualizable textbook or social education ethical code manual in this regard. it is very imperative that social education teacher program pedagogical practices begin to defeminize teaching through questioning (1) assumptions of what it means to be feminine, how the assumptions affect teachers’ commitment to their duties, and (2) social expectations of women and the impact such expectations have on women’s effectiveness in their participation in human and national development. this questioning and deconstruction process will empower female teachers with the goal and capabilities to engage in active social change-making, while caring for children via their teaching practices, thereby disrupting their tendency to minimize teaching roles and time. the defeminization should also target encouraging men to continue with teaching to serve as role models for younger boys and girls in schools. moreover, while waiting on policymakers and leaders to tackle structural challenges, the leadership of social education programs and associations can engage in systems-oriented change approaches, such as partnering with the private sector to create opportunities for students to experience the social engineering, service, and development aspects of social education. this could increase their teacher professional identity and foster altruistic motivations for entering the teaching workforce. limitations of the study and future directions despite its many strengths, including providing a picture of preservice teachers’ career motivation and professional identity in a developing context, this study is limited by its use of a narrative method that restricted the use of probing questions that could interrogate and clarify some statements made by students in their stories. yet the approach is more reliable since questionnaire items on an individual’s motivation for choosing teaching as a career and professional identity are highly susceptible to social desirability bias, especially in a context where teachers face ridicule. the researcher’s interpretations of the stories may also be affected by unconscious bias. the sample of the study is small because of the interactionist and qualitative nature of this study. these limitations did not affect the quality of the study but its generalizability. future studies in developing contexts should consider adopting a mixed-method design in exploring these issues. the discussed study implications raise some important future research goals, including the need for studies on (1) how teacher education programs confront the structural challenges to teacher development and (2) teachers’ perceptions of what teaching ethics and social education ethics involve. exploring these could lead to the creation of teacher development support tools in contexts of structural neglect and the development of a scientific body of universal but contextualizable professional ethics courses for teaching professionals generally and social educators in particular. obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 24 conclusion with pre-service teachers’ lack of interest in teaching and the increasing need to reduce the attrition of qualified teachers, especially in sub-saharan africa, examining the career choice motivations and professional identity of pre-service and in-service teachers becomes important. this is because teaching career choice motivations and professional identity can be crucial factors in teachers’ retention or withdrawal from schools, especially in a context where the economic conditions of most professionals are similar. following this perspective, this study explored the motivations behind social education preservice [sep] teachers’ choice of social education teaching program and profession, as well as their professional identity. it found that sep teachers have a poor and negative professional identity and that extrinsic, socialization, and mercenary factors are the strongest motivations for choosing to study social education in nigeria. these findings suggest, as theorized in past literature, that context –intrapsychic and social factors– influence teaching career motivations and professional identity. not neglecting the importance of structural factors, the study points to the need to explore and emphasize social educators’ knowledge, ethics, and socioemotional skills training needs that are important for empowering social education preservice teachers with altruistic motivations and positive professional identity about teaching. this empowerment is important to realize the goals of social education, including promoting empathy, peace, and human rights, since an individual’s identity connects to their practices. by exploring these issues in a west african country, nigeria, this paper contributes to the literature on teaching career choice motivations and professional identity and further provides insights into the causes of teachers’ attrition in the region. 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(2017). the influence of field teaching practice on preservice teachers’ professional identity: a mixed methods study. frontiers in psychology, 8:1264, 1–11, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01264 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00573 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01264 obiagu: "not motivated but frustrated" current issues in education, 24(1) 31 author notes adaobiagu n. obiagu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8591-0489 university of nigeria adaobiagu.obiagu@unn.edu.ng more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8591-0489 mailto:adaobiagu.obiagu@unn.edu.ng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 8, number 19 july 20, 2005 issn 1099-839x elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices stephanie z. smith georgia state university marvin e. smith georgia southern university steven r. williams brigham young university this report focuses on the processes of change in beliefs and practices experienced by practicing elementary school teachers during a sixteen-session course using two of the modules from the developing mathematical ideas (dmi) materials. we identify a collection of six metaphors for knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics to succinctly describe and categorize teachers’ beliefs. we present three case studies representing a continuum of change in beliefs observed among the participants of the dmi course. we relate this continuum both to the beliefs teachers brought to the course and to their degree of engagement in various components of a change process model. using this model of change, we analyze the ways in which teachers expressed interest in change, problematized their beliefs, experimented with possible solutions, and reflected on experimental results leading to changes in beliefs and practices. the results of our analysis indicate that variations in change among participants can be explained by variations in their levels of engagement in particular elements of the change model by the learning activities of the dmi course. paradigmatic and systemic changes recommended in the standards of the national council of teachers of mathematics (nctm, 2000) and supported by teacher enhancement grants from the national science foundation involve complex issues associated with teacher beliefs, teacher knowledge, and changes in teaching practices. friel and bright (1997) integrated and summarized a number of issues of particular importance for these changes, including: (1) working to change teacher beliefs is the starting point for most professional development, and (2) changing beliefs and experimenting with teaching practices are intertwined in an iterative process. in discussing programs that are successful in changing beliefs, richardson (1996) singled out “programs that approach learning to teach in a constructivist manner” as being particularly successful in “engaging their participants in examining and changing their beliefs and practices” (p. 113). among the common features of successful constructivist professional development programs current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 which she listed, two are of particular importance for this study: (1) participant’s beliefs and understandings are a major concern in the program, and (2) the goal of the program is to facilitate participants’ understanding of their beliefs as well as their considering and experimenting with new beliefs and practices. richardson (1996) also noted, “attitudes and beliefs are important concepts in understanding teachers’ thought processes, classroom practices, change, and learning to teach” (p. 102). in the context of an innovative elementary mathematics professional development program using two modules from developing mathematical ideas (dmi) (schifter, bastable, & russell, 1999a and 1999b), this study (1) provides a framework for organizing, describing, and analyzing teachers’ beliefs about knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics; (2) explores a sequence model for the processes of teacher change; and (3) reports effects of a specific teacher development program on participating teachers’ beliefs and practices. conceptual framework as we frame the discussion that follows, we draw from research on teachers’ beliefs, propose metaphors that summarize teachers’ beliefs and mental models for teaching mathematics, and summarize research on the processes of changing beliefs through professional development experiences. this literature frames our decision to use case-study methodology to study the effects of the course on teachers’ beliefs and practices as well as our presentation and interpretation of the results. teachers’ beliefs and practices although it seems obvious that teachers’ personal beliefs and experiences effect how they teach, thompson (1992) pointed out that there are numerous ways of interpreting the idea of a belief. we focus here on the beliefs of teachers in our study in three areas: their views of what it means to know mathematics, to learn mathematics, and to teach mathematics. a useful way of talking about such beliefs is the approach taken by bullough (1992) and his associates (bullough & stokes, 1994). bullough discussed metaphors as mental images or models that briefly summarize the elaborate and complex theories, assumptions, and understandings upon which people act. he used the notion of personal teaching metaphors as one image that helps teachers discuss and reflect upon their assumptions about teaching and their roles as teachers. bullough & stokes (1994) discussed at some length one particular metaphor of a teacher as “‘one who knows,’ or master” and students as “disciples, imitators of higher authority.” they went on to suggest that “for the master, teaching is telling,” knowledge is “fixed and stable,” and the teaching and learning process is “a matter of compelling others to dance to the beat of the master’s drum” (p. 201). this master teaching metaphor is coherent with traditional views of knowing and learning mathematics. kuhs and ball (1986) summarized this view as follows: “rules are the basic building blocks of all mathematical knowledge and all mathematical behavior is rule-governed; knowledge of mathematics is being able to get answers and do problems using the rules that have been learned; computational procedures should be automatized; it is not necessary to understand the source or reason for student errors; further instruction on the correct way to do things will result in appropriate learning; in school, knowing mathematics means being able to demonstrate mastery of the skills described by instructional objectives” (p. 2, bullets removed). this description has much in common with lampert’s (1990) description of the cultural assumptions about mathematics in schools: “doing mathematics means following the rules laid down by the teacher; knowing mathematics means remembering and applying the correct rule when the teacher asks a question; and mathematical truth is determined when the answer is ratified by the teacher” (p. 32). discussions by stigler and hiebert (1999) and ma (1999) suggest that this traditional view still dominates the culture of mathematics teaching. in contrast to the master metaphor, research from a social constructivist perspective (vygotsky, 1978; bakhtin, 1981; rogoff & wertsch, 1984; wertsch, 1985, 1991; tharp & gallimore, 1989; rogoff, 1990) provides an alternative model for teaching centered on joint productive activity and instructional conversation (tharp, 1997; dalton, 1998). this view of teaching, which could be summarized by a facilitator metaphor, is founded on alternative beliefs about what knowledge is, how it is learned, and the role of teachers in guiding and facilitating learning. learning from this perspective involves social interactions among students and more capable others (teachers and peers) working together in authentic, goal-directed activities (joint productivity) and conversing about what they are doing, thinking, and learning (instructional conversations). the role of the teacher during these instructional conversations is to listen carefully to what students are saying and to use questioning techniques to guide students’ thinking as they develop understanding and connect it to individual and community knowledge (tharp 1997). this view of teaching is clearly evident in the nctm professional standards for teaching mathematics (1991). elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 3 in table 1 [see appendix d], we provide a set of six metaphors that summarize the traditional and standards-based views of school mathematics. the traditional view includes (1) a toolbox metaphor for knowing mathematics, (2) a behaviorist metaphor for learning, and (3) the master teaching metaphor. the standards-based view of school mathematics includes (1) a flexible problem solving with understanding metaphor for knowing mathematics, (2) a social constructivist metaphor for learning mathematics, and (3) a facilitator metaphor for teaching mathematics. for us, these two sets of metaphors summarize the “from what” and “to what” of the current mathematics education reforms. processes of changing beliefs and practices in the case of school mathematics, changing from the traditional beliefs and practices summarized by one set of metaphors to fundamentally different standards-based beliefs and practices summarized by another set of metaphors constitutes a revolutionary paradigm shift rather than incremental change. beginning to share new exemplars for what it means to know mathematics, to learn mathematics, to teach mathematics, and to practice in this community is a part of the basic approach of both the nctm standards and the dmi materials. as we examine the processes for encouraging and supporting these changes, we can benefit from research on learning and professional development of teachers. the same research that justifies the shift to social constructivist views of learning for students in school mathematics supports a shift in designing professional development for teachers. social constructivist views of learning support the perspective that changes in teachers’ beliefs will be experiential, developmental, and gradual. this is consistent with guskey’s (1986) model of the process of teacher change (see figure 1 [see appendix d]), which claimed that changes in teachers’ beliefs (step 4) followed improvements in student outcomes (step 3) produced by changes in classroom practices (step 2) teachers made in response to professional development experiences (step 1). recognizing the complexity of teacher change, clarke and hollingsworth (2002) recently reviewed guskey (1986) and other models for teacher change (johnson & owen, 1986; lappan et al., 1988; cobb, wood, & yackel, 1990; clarke & peter, 1993) and proposed what they called an interconnected model of teacher professional growth. describing four domains affecting a teacher’s world (external, personal, practice, and consequence), they focused on two processes of change: reflection and enactment. their model particularly emphasizes how these two mechanisms of change produce particular change sequences affecting these four domains, allowing for development of what they call growth networks. although they thoroughly elaborated their model with examples from their empirical studies, they did not provide examples for how their model could be used to analyze and explain variations in change across individuals. in searching for a model that is sufficiently detailed to explain variations across participants, we noticed that the guskey (1986) model could be used to apply a change sequence to dewey’s (1933) model of reflective thought, which included five phases or non-hierarchical elements, including: problematizing the situation and recognizing the conditions of the problem; recognizing possible solutions to a problem; generating hypotheses for possible solutions to the problem; reasoning about these hypotheses to determine their potential for success; and testing one or more of these hypotheses in the context of the problem. to problematize is to recognize a situation as a problem and to acknowledge the conditions in the situation that affect the problem. problematizing current practices is required to translate general interest or curiosity into an interest in changing practices. in applying dewey’s model to preservice teacher education, mewborn (1999) emphasized the importance of problematizing teaching situations. if problematizing is not sufficient to develop interest in complex fundamental change then interest narrows to simple incremental change within current paradigms and practices. obviously, unless a situation is problematized, it is difficult to formulate hypotheses and test possible solutions. examining potential solutions is relatively simple for incremental changes and relatively complex for fundamental changes. incremental change poses only minor changes in strategies within current metaphors as possible solutions. fundamental change requires development of understanding of new principles, metaphors, and curriculum needed to support major changes in practices needed to solve more fundamental and more complex problems. similarly, interest in incremental improvement leads to simple experiments with minor changes, while interest in fundamental changes leads to complex experiments with major changes. dewey’s (1904/1965, 1933) arguments for reflective thinking support the notion that teachers need to develop habits of reflection to be able to do the level of problematizing needed to improve their teaching and students’ learning. he argued that teachers who avoid reflective thinking develop an intellectual dependency on and interest in explicit directions from others on what and how to teach. this dependence can reinforce the master metaphor and focus teachers’ interest on acquiring additional current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 activities and teaching strategies to be accommodated within existing practices. this could support minor, incremental changes in teaching, but would not lead to fundamental changes in practices that produce big benefits in student learning, such as understanding mathematics. both dewey and guskey also discussed elements of interest in change. dewey (1933) mentioned curiosity as one of three personal resources essential for reflective thinking. guskey (1986) was more specific, claiming that most teachers engage in professional development because of their interest in students and their desire to become better teachers to the benefit of their students. this desire to improve student outcomes provides both the basis for problematizing current practices and for changing beliefs when evidence of improved student outcomes can be tied to specific changes in teaching practices. again considering both dewey (1933) and guskey (1986), reflecting on teacher experiences and student outcomes leads to decisions about whether experiments were successful or not for improving students’ learning and were practical or not for longterm use. success then leads to changes in beliefs; failure leads to ending the experiment, reversion to previous practices, and no changes in beliefs. the complexity of the needed reflection depends on the complexity of both the problem posed and the solutions attempted in the teaching experiments. summary the literature summarized above suggests to us that two important characteristics would mediate the effects of the dmi course: (1) beliefs about knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics; and (2) sequenced processes for changing beliefs and practices. these two themes framed our exploration of variations in the impact of the dmi course on teachers’ beliefs and practices. for the purposes of this study, we have chosen to formulate and empirically support a time-sequenced (and therefore linear) process model that supports the detailed analysis of variations in teacher change yet fits within clarke and hollingsworth’s more global (and therefore interconnected and iterative) model of professional growth as a specific change sequence between two domains (the personal domain and the domain of professional practice). integrating the frameworks for change from dewey and guskey provides the components of a model for analysis of the essential elements and processes of changing beliefs, including:  teachers’ interests in change;  the extents to which they problematize current practices and pose possible solutions;  their activities in exploring and testing these alternative practices; and  their reflective analyses of the benefits of these changes for students, leading to lasting changes in beliefs and practices. consequently, this study focuses on (1) describing the beginning and ending beliefs of participants in the dmi course (including summarizing those beliefs with metaphors for knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics) and (2) elaborating and testing a sequenced process model that is useful for explaining the variability in the documented changes in these teachers’ beliefs. methodology the dmi course and participants thirteen inservice elementary teachers participated in a one-semester university course using the developing mathematical ideas (dmi) materials developed at the educational development center. participating teachers were employed in two local school districts. their teaching experience ranged from 1-32 years and averaged about 10 years. their teaching assignments were distributed across grades 1-5, with one teacher in a k-6 mathematics lab. the course used two dmi modules: building a system of tens (schifter, bastable, & russell, 1999a) and making meaning for operations (schifter, bastable, & russell, 1999b). the big ideas in building a system of tens focused on understanding place-value and making meaning for operations focused on understanding addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division operations. these two dmi modules supported a series of sixteen three-hour class sessions designed to help teachers think about these particular big ideas of mathematics and to examine how children learn to understand those ideas. the essence of the course experiences included “a deep exploration of mathematics content—including the base-10 structure of our number system, the meaning of operations, and methods for calculating with multi-digit numbers and fractions—as well as analyzing children’s thinking about that content” (davenport, 2001, p. 6). the dmi materials were designed to help teachers learn additional mathematics content and make mathematical connections, appreciate students’ thinking and learn how to foster such thinking, and analyze mathematics lessons and activities to uncover the mathematics students will learn. at the heart of the dmi materials are: (1) sets of classroom episodes (cases) illustrating student thinking (as described by the students’ teachers), (2) various learning activities providing opportunities for participants to reflect on their own and their students’ understandings of mathematics, and (3) assignments providing opportunities for participants to reflect on teaching elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 5 mathematics. participants collected their written work and responses from the facilitator in a portfolio, which provided another tool for reflection. the dmi materials provided a variety of models for course organization. the course in this study met one evening each week for a full semester and was led by the first author as facilitator. one major role of the facilitator was to organize and moderate small-group and whole-class discussions about: (1) focus questions about the written cases of classroom episodes; (2) videotapes of mathematics classrooms and clinical interviews; (3) samples of student work from teachers’ classrooms; and (4) research reports related to students’ thinking. the teachers also (5) explored the mathematical ideas in the videotapes; (6) planned, conducted, and analyzed clinical interviews of their own students; (7) wrote additional cases about their students; (8) experimented with the ideas discussed in class while teaching in their own classrooms, and (9) wrote personal reflections. data collection and analysis data for this study were taken from (1) audio taped whole-class and small-group discussions during the course; (2) field notes taken by the authors; (3) written materials collected from the teachers as part of the course; (4) a group interview with participants conducted by an independent evaluator following the course; (5) a post-course observation of participants’ teaching practices in their regular classrooms; and (6) a post-observation interview on changes in practices resulting from the dmi course. we audio taped each class session. during small group discussions, the third author usually sat with a target group and recorded their conversation. these audiotapes were transcribed for analysis. we used our field notes to clarify and provide context for the recorded conversations. analysis of the data proceeded in a manner consistent with a naturalistic inquiry approach (lincoln & guba, 1985). first, two researchers read the transcripts independently and identified emergent themes. they paid particular attention to teachers’ beliefs (especially images and metaphors for teaching) and participation in processes of change. as these researchers discussed their reading of the transcripts, common themes began to emerge and they developed codes for these themes. second, these same researchers re-read the transcripts and coded the conversations according to the emergent themes. the next step in the analysis of the data involved the isolation and validation of the major themes wherever they appeared in the data by triangulation across the various data sources and across time. lastly, these themes were used to analyze all of the other data from the study. at the end of the semester following the conclusion of the dmi course, the second author observed several of the dmi course participants’ classroom teaching and then interviewed them about changes in teaching practices they attributed to the dmi course. these interviews were audio taped and transcribed. some of the observed teaching episodes were also audio taped using a wireless microphone worn by the teacher. field notes were taken for all observations, providing the primary data source for those cases in which teachers declined to wear the wireless microphone. this data provided an additional source for teachers’ reflections and for triangulation and confirmation of the conclusions from the primary data collected during the dmi course. results as we analyzed the data we noticed that the impact of the course varied across the participants. to illuminate this variation, we present three cases of individual teachers (indicated by the pseudonyms christine, linda, and paula). in many ways, the cases of christine and paula represent the two extremes of the course’s impact, and the effects of the course on linda are similar to those of the majority of the participants. these three cases also articulate the variety of images and metaphors held by the participants and illuminate the coherence in their mental models. these three individual stories are largely self-narratives by the teachers that we have pieced together from the various data sources indicated. we selected these statements for their consistency across time and data sources. the descriptions of these three cases (located in the appendices) are organized around the framework for changing beliefs and practices that emerged from the analysis of the data and the review of the literature: interest in change, problematizing and posing solutions, exploring/testing alternatives, and reflective analysis of benefits and changing beliefs and practices. this section includes brief descriptions of these teachers’ beginning beliefs as well as summaries of our claims about these teachers’ changes in beliefs and practices. christine at the time of the dmi course, christine was teaching third grade for the second consecutive year. she had previously taught for ten years in the resource room with students she characterized as two or three years behind grade-level in mathematics. beginning beliefs. christine spoke about her mathematical background and beliefs on several occasions, which clearly indicated a toolbox perspective on knowing mathematics, a behaviorist current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 view of learning mathematics, and a strong commitment to the master metaphor for teaching mathematics, primarily because she had been taught that way. she believed mathematics should focus on skills and facts, expressed the goal of getting correct answers using procedures memorized to the point of automaticity, and believed that standard algorithms were most efficient both for her and for her students. christine was comfortable with direct instruction of algorithms and believed that it was “the best way” to teach mathematics. this approach had been successful for her as a student, and it provided a foundation for her confidence as a successful mathematics teacher. for example, she said: [i have thought about] why i like algorithms so much. [it’s because] i was taught that way. i am comfortable using an algorithm, and i am good at it (portfolio assignment 1.7). see the case of christine (appendix a) for evidence of her engagement in the change processes. changes in beliefs and practices. on the whole, the evidence in the case of christine indicates that her view of mathematics changed very little as a result of the dmi course. she had enlarged her view of what it means to do mathematics somewhat by allowing invented strategies into her toolbox, but she made little progress as a result of the course toward revising her preferences for behaviorist learning and the master metaphor for teaching. she learned how to ask students to explain their solutions and allowed some temporary informal inventing, but only if it led students to the traditional algorithms which she continued to emphasize through her direct instruction. (see table 2 [see appendix d] for a comparison of christine’s beginning and ending beliefs and practices.). linda linda had taught kindergarten for 16 years and was teaching first grade for the first time during the dmi course. beginning beliefs. at the beginning of the course, linda embraced the traditional algorithmic emphasis in elementary mathematics and felt that it was fast and accurate. she noted that she was able to perform mathematical tasks and arrive at correct answers, but had not developed meaning for the mathematics she had learned to do. because linda’s beliefs about mathematics were firmly based in algorithmic processes, she was surprised at first by the variation in students’ thinking exhibited in the dmi materials. initially, linda emphasized direct instruction; she believed that the traditional algorithms needed to be taught directly. see the case of linda (appendix b) for evidence of her engagement in the change processes. changes in beliefs and practices. the evidence shows that during the dmi course, a major focus for linda became a new view of number— what she called number sense. she came to believe that differences among students’ strategies for solving number problems in sensible ways indicated real understanding. she came to desire her own students being able to visualize number in the same ways as the students on the dmi videotapes. as part of this, she wanted her students to be able to explain their thinking and be flexible in working with numbers. although she came to value invented algorithms as useful for mental computation, she still placed some importance on speed and efficiency using conventional algorithms. linda pushed herself to solve problems in non-traditional ways and began to enjoy talking to others about her own mathematical ideas. she began to value these new ways of thinking and started to think she had been cheated by the narrow focus of her early mathematical experiences. by the end of the course, she had expanded her view of learning to include children being able to think, explore, take risks, and struggle with a problem in coming to understand mathematics. during the course, it became apparent to linda that children who have developed number sense can approach problems in a variety of ways. thus she began to value letting children explore their own ways of approaching problems as a way to help them “grasp a concept.” at the same time, she felt that this exploration needed “some structure and explanation” and that direct instruction of algorithms still had its place. by the end of the course, changes in her goals for learning allowed changes in her teaching practices. her expectations had changed from recall of number facts to explaining or modeling answers to story problems that allowed her to assess errors in students’ understanding. she began to focus more on questioning individual students’ problem solutions and to keep track of their strategies. in order to do this, she began to keep detailed notes on her students daily, rather than just writing down a score. linda recognized the need to become a better questioner, to help her students articulate their strategies and understandings and explain their thinking processes. finally, she said that she had begun to question and evaluate how she taught. she noted that she was having fun approaching teaching in this way; she found it both exhilarating and frightening. (see table 2 [see appendix d] for a comparison of linda’s beginning and ending beliefs and practices.) paula paula had been teaching fifth grade for six years and had previously taught grades two and four. elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 7 beginning beliefs. paula enjoyed mathematics and had taken other courses to help her become a better mathematics teacher. she entered the course with a view of mathematics as a mixture of the traditional toolbox of algorithms and sense making. she said she valued critical thinking and problem solving skills and wanted her students to “understand what they are doing,” nevertheless she expressed a concern that her fifth grade students were not proficient in the traditional algorithms. she questioned the traditional emphasis on algorithms, even though she was then teaching from a textbook that emphasized direct instruction of standard algorithms. she expressed the concern that if the goals of mathematics instruction included critical thinking and problem solving, more direct instruction in procedural skills would not help meet those goals. this led her to question the efficacy of the traditional master teaching methods she was still using, but there was no evidence that she understood that achieving these additional learning goals required social constructivist learning processes and alternative teaching methods. see the case of paula (appendix c) for evidence of her engagement in the change processes. changes in beliefs and practices. the evidence shows that she developed a deeper and more interconnected view of mathematics and adopted this as a goal of her instruction. she also valued an increased focus on conceptual understanding. this development was supported by her personal mathematical problem solving in the course. she noted that she was becoming more flexible in her problem-solving approaches, and this in turn allowed her to value flexibility in her students. she articulated this as a change in her philosophy about knowing mathematics. paula’s beliefs about learning grew deeper and more interconnected. she began to focus more on students’ thinking processes and variations in thinking among students evidenced through dialogue and written representations. she viewed this as children taking back the responsibility for their learning. the changes in paula’s beliefs about teaching focused on movements away from the standard practice of following a page-by-page sequence in the textbook and a concern about “covering the material.” she felt that she had moved toward a focus on individual children’s thinking, cautious planning of problems, and questioning students to get at their understanding. she began to focus more on individual students’ mistakes and problematic thinking in order to help them build a “bridge” to understanding. because she wanted to press for deeper understanding, she began to be concerned with building deeper, more coherent curriculum materials. she found this approach to teaching very enjoyable, but more importantly, she felt it was a better way of educating students. (see table 2 [see appendix d] for a comparison of paula’s beginning and ending beliefs and practices.) discussion these three cases represent a continuum of engagement in the process of change. on the one extreme, christine started with very traditional beliefs about knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics, and made the least progress toward alternative beliefs and practices. more typical of the results of course participants, linda started with very traditional beliefs and practices and made significant shifts in both, although only beginning to understand the coherent alternative provided by the standardsbased perspective. at the other extreme, paula started the course already wondering about children’s understanding of mathematics and made the most real progress by connecting additional complexity to her previous understanding and developing a robust and coherent philosophy of standards-based mathematics education. the purpose of this section is to examine how varying levels of engagement in the process of change during the dmi course, linked to various beginning beliefs, resulted in these variations in change. in the process of this analysis, the applicability of the analytical framework proposed from the review of literature and used to organize the descriptions of the cases will also be demonstrated. this analysis is organized in terms of the following four variables in the change process: (1) interest in change, (2) problematizing/posing solutions; (3) exploring/testing alternative practices, and (4) reflective analysis/changing beliefs and practices. interest in change by enrolling in the course, all of the participants expressed an interest in learning something that could possibly improve or add greater variety to their teaching, constituting at least a low level of interest in change. most of these interests were expressed in the context of the participants’ initial expectations for the course. these expectations focused largely on acquiring immediately applicable “teaching-as-telling” strategies, “exciting” activities, or “make-it-take-it” materials consistent with incremental change in traditional beliefs and practices. although a few participants came with a desire to explore ways of enhancing their own mathematical understanding and that of their students, most came looking for better ways to be a master teacher rather than for fundamentally different ways to think about mathematics knowing, learning, and teaching. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 at first, these expectations created a mismatch between what the course actually offered and what students expected. the critical point here is that almost all of the participant’s expectations for the course were closely aligned with the traditional beliefs of knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics. the fact that some teachers made progress in changing their beliefs given these initial expectations is encouraging. from examining the data, we recognized that these teachers’ interest in change, as it originated at the beginning of the course or developed during the course, involved three factors: (1) curiosity, (2) recognition of differences in beliefs and practices, and (3) dissatisfaction with current beliefs and practices. curiosity. some teachers enrolled in the dmi course with high initial levels of curiosity, while others increased in curiosity during the early course sessions. in both cases, this curiosity encouraged their becoming more dissatisfied with the status quo, more aware of alternatives, and, consequently, more interested in change. for example, linda expressed curiosity about the ways in which some of her students thought about numbers in ways that she could not. at first, she could not understand the thinking of those students. this led her to become curious about their thinking and to question, “what is it that they know? what are they trying to do? what is in this problem that is causing them to think this way?” she became anxious to explore children’s thinking and her own understanding of mathematics in order to answer some of these questions. this contributed to her increased interest in change. recognition of differences in beliefs and practices. this factor in developing greater interest in change became evident in the discourse during class sessions that verbalized, compared, and contrasted the variety of beliefs and opinions about teaching practices held by course participants (e.g., the value of using manipulatives) or evident in the dmi cases (e.g., facilitating invention of strategies from conceptual understandings). teachers in the course had many opportunities to see and discuss these differences of opinion about various aspects of teaching. recognition of these differences also contributed to increased interest in change. for example, regarding the value of using manipulatives, christine expressed the opinion that “when you do use manipulatives you’ve got to drill and drill so that they understand exactly what those manipulatives are representing.” paula expressed a different view. “i read a research article saying manipulatives are not the answer—be careful and sure that they understand. the emphasis here is on the child’s understanding and the meaning the child makes of the materials they use” rather than on the use of the manipulatives, which can be proceduralized without understanding. this discussion situated one of the differences between christine’s and paula’s beliefs about knowing mathematics: christine used manipulatives in particular ways to further her goals of learning procedures and paula recognized that manipulatives had to be used in different ways to meet her goal of developing conceptual understanding. regarding the example of facilitating children’s invention of strategies from understandings as evidenced in the dmi cases, christine analyzed the teaching practices evident in those cases from the perspective of standard algorithms as the best pathway to correct answers, with her interest in students’ invented strategies only as temporary alternative pathways to the same destination, pathways with which particular students may be more comfortable. however, she paid little attention to the specific thinking and understanding students used to invent those strategies. linda, in comparison, was fascinated by the student thinking in the cases and responded that she wanted to become better at helping students communicate their understanding by improving her questioning techniques focused on flexible problem solving with understanding. paula demonstrated in her response to the cases that she recognized the connection between classroom discussions of students’ thinking and their understanding, and she could even see the logic in students’ incorrect strategies. dissatisfaction with current beliefs and practices. as with curiosity, teachers can come with this factor of interest in change or it can be created in the initial course sessions. more important than curiosity or awareness of differences, this factor is the essential element of an interest in change sufficient to lead to problematizing current beliefs and practices. this factor originates as dissatisfaction with the outcomes of teaching, not yet sufficiently detailed as to have identified the particular problem or cause of the dissatisfaction. for example, engaging in mathematical problem solving and examining children’s thinking and understanding of mathematics during the dmi course led linda and paula to express dissatisfaction with their own early mathematical experiences. linda recognized that she had not developed an understanding of the mathematical procedures she had been taught. paula had found mathematics enjoyable, but recognized that not all of her friends “got it” and was thus dissatisfied with some aspects of her experience. christine, in comparison, expressed satisfaction with what she had been taught and how she had learned, elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 9 and was content with teaching her students the same mathematics in the same manner. in summary, christine expressed a low level of interest in change, focused primarily as adding some “spice” to her teaching. linda expressed a moderate level of interest in change, primarily curiosity about children’s thinking that was different from her own and improving her questioning techniques to facilitate students’ communication. paula expressed a high level of interest in change, centered on sufficient dissatisfaction with traditional practice for her to be interested in exploring the rationale behind particular alternative teaching practices intended to building conceptual understanding. (see table 3 [see appendix d] for a summary of our appraisal of these three teachers’ levels of interest in change as low, moderate, and high, respectively.) problematizing current beliefs and practices and posing possible solutions one element of problematizing current beliefs and practices is becoming aware of possible alternatives. the task of incremental change is primarily experimenting with minor improvements to practices within existing beliefs and reflecting upon the results of these incremental changes in practices. however, without problematizing current beliefs and practices, the need for revolutionary change is unrealized and the focus remains on incremental improvement. two examples are provided here of how revolutionary alternatives problematize traditional beliefs and practices: (1) comparing the learning of algorithms with developing conceptual understanding, and (2) comparing “fast and accurate” computational skills with flexible problem solving. comparing algorithms to understanding. paula questioned the traditional emphasis on algorithms. she expressed a concern that her fifth grade students were not proficient in the traditional algorithms. this led her to question the efficacy of traditional teaching methods. she also expressed the concern that if the goals of mathematics instruction included critical thinking and problem solving, more instruction in procedural skills would not help meet those goals. she even felt constricted by the need to continue to spend time teaching algorithms to satisfy parents and prepare students for standardized tests. in comparison, linda translated her sensitivity about her own supposed lack of understanding into a greater interest in her students coming to thoroughly understand mathematics and be able to clearly communicate that understanding. comparing fast and accurate to flexible. recognition that the traditional elementary school emphasis on “fast and accurate” computation (automaticity) and direct instruction in “one way” to solve particular problems was challenged by a more interconnected and conceptual view of mathematics, including understanding of concepts, invented strategies, and flexibility in solving nonroutine problems. paula came to understand the connection between depth of conceptual understanding and degree of flexibility in problem solving strategies. linda also recognized that children who understand concepts of number show greater flexibility in problem solving and develop very efficient invented strategies for mental computations. she reinforced this perspective as her own understanding grew during the course and she began to develop greater flexibility in her own problem solving. she admitted that her invented mental strategies were often faster than her traditional computational methods. linda also recognized that this shift in learning goals required a corresponding shift in teaching practices. recognizing problems as occurring within one’s own experience requires that these problems be stated and that the conditions that affect them be examined carefully and in detail. thorough statements of problems of practice include the contexts where they typically arise and the relationships between the stated problems and other aspects of practice. mewborn (1999) indicated that preservice elementary teachers rarely specifically stated problems and even less frequently questioned what was problematic about particular situations for others. however, the inservice teachers participating in the dmi course frequently stated problems specifically and often questioned others about particular teaching situations in which those problems occurred. their attempts to personally solve these problems were assisted by the readily available alternatives in the dmi materials. absent these workable solutions, attempting to solve such significant problems of practice would likely have been very difficult. in summary, christine expressed a low level of problematizing and solution posing as she remained confident in her current success with direct instruction and worried about how she could explain a variety of invented strategies without confusing her students further. however, linda focused on how to create an appropriate environment for student exploration and sharing of strategies, reflecting a high level of problematizing knowing, learning, and teaching and posing solutions in each of those areas. paula began to consider changes in her curriculum to provide problem situations that could develop critical thinking, problem solving, and understanding, also reflecting a high level of problematizing and solution posing in all three areas of beliefs and practices. see table 3 [see appendix d] for a summary of our appraisal of these three teachers’ levels of current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 problematizing/posing solutions as low, high, and high, respectively. exploring/testing alternative beliefs and practices to engage in exploring/testing alternatives, the process of problematizing and posing possible solutions in the dmi course needed to create sufficient hope that the revolutionary alternatives would result in better outcomes and more satisfying results to generate the needed experimentation. yet at this stage of the process, many of the teachers’ understandings of the alternative practices were minimal. actually experimenting with these alternatives helped them become more knowledgeable about the specifics of the alternatives. one of the strengths of the dmi course was that it provided two sites for the experimenting/testing of solutions to problematic practice. one was the dmi classroom, where peers had conversations about elementary mathematics and children’s solutions. the second site was the participants’ own classrooms, where they interviewed their own students and tried out different teaching ideas. participants’ experiences suggested that these two laboratories were portable in the sense that they could remember the first one as they tried out ideas in the second, and vice versa. this provided a very rich context for reflection on practice. many of the participants indicated that the things they read in the cases and saw on the videotapes were actually happening in their classrooms and interviews with their students. by design, the teachers’ classrooms provided laboratories for validating what was taking place in the dmi course. having both sites available for exploration of ideas—the dmi course and individual classrooms—allowed participants to reflect on their mathematical thinking and their teaching in both venues. the extent to which participants enjoyed talking to each other about their mathematical ideas and the results of their experiments were evidenced through the participants’ dialogue during class sessions and their written responses in portfolios. change processes in the dmi classroom involved what clarke and hollingsworth (2002) referred to as the teacher’s personal domain, while change processes occurring in the school classrooms involved the teacher’s domain of practice. being able to problematize, experiment, and reflect in both the dmi class and one’s own classroom provided an iterative element with a short turn-around time and increased the impact of the dmi course on teachers’ beliefs and practices. as expected, attempts to experiment with alternative practices were constrained by a variety of factors even after current practices had been problematized. in particular, participants’ conceptions (formed during several years of school mathematics instruction) and traditional expectations of administrators or the teacher next door both served to discourage some attempts to experiment with alternative beliefs and practices. in summary, christine tried asking some of her students to share their thinking, but her focus in teaching mathematics continued to be on the correct answer and providing students with hints if they didn’t get to the answer she wanted. linda departed from her emphasis on direct instruction and tried letting children explore their own ways of approaching problems as a way to help them “grasp a concept.” in doing so, she began to focus more on questioning individual students’ problem solutions and keeping daily detailed notes on her students’ strategies rather than just recording their scores for number of correct answers. paula began to focus specifically on developing understanding; cautiously planning problems to provide a deeper, more coherent curriculum; and questioning students to get at their understanding. (see table 3 [see appendix d] for a summary of our appraisal of these three teachers’ levels of experimenting/testing alternatives as moderate, high, and high, respectively.) reflective analysis of benefits and changing beliefs and practices we have learned that reflecting on practices and changing beliefs is a complex activity. it involves comparative analysis of the evidence of results from current and alternative beliefs and practices and making connections among these experiences. reflecting also involves making judgments about the relative efficacy and relative satisfaction from these alternatives and making generalizations about their potential efficacy in somewhat different circumstances or contexts. in addition, reflecting involves examining the level of implementation of traditional or alternative practices for opportunities for incremental change within existing or alternative beliefs. interest in change and problematizing are highly interactive, with new awareness of possible alternatives strengthening dissatisfactions and leading to additional problematizing of ineffective practices. all of these elements of the change process occurred in both laboratories: the dmi course and teachers’ classrooms. for some, well-developed theories emerged from their analysis of personal experiments with alternative practices. for others, the effects of the dmi course were less dramatic. in summary, although christine engaged in some exploring of alternative practices, her low interest in change and low problematizing of current beliefs and practices left her without a significant problem to be solved by alternative practices. elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 11 consequently, she saw only limited usefulness for students’ invented strategies and made only insignificant changes in her beliefs, curriculum, and teaching practices. she thought students’ strategies were interesting and worth sharing in class occasionally, but failed to recognize them as the foundation for building students’ understanding. in comparison, linda and paula both recognized the results of their experiments as beneficial for students, and made significant progress in changing beliefs and practices involving knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics. linda began to expand her students’ opportunities to explore mathematics in a supportive environment and to build their number sense, particularly for use in mental computations. she increased her ability to ask good questions, rephrase what students said, and assess errors in their thinking. however, she also held on to some traditional tools and emphases in the curriculum. this represents significant progress given her moderate interest in change and her current understanding of the concepts of the standards-based perspective. paula’s reflections on the benefits of her experiments resulted in high levels of change in her beliefs about knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics. her teaching metaphor became that of a facilitator who poses interesting problems, uses questioning to find out what students think, and leads them to build deep, well-connected understandings. she enlarged her curriculum to include more emphasis on understanding big ideas, problem solving, and critical thinking. she also recognized that understanding occurs through problem solving, dialogue about solution processes, and creating written representations for those solutions. all of these changes were responsive to her initial interest in the whys of the standards-based perspective and her ability to develop a new personal theory of mathematics education. (see table 3 [see appendix d] for a summary of our appraisal of these three teachers’ levels of reflecting/ changing beliefs and practices as low, moderate, and high, respectively. conclusions we learned from this study that metaphors can provide concise yet powerfully descriptive summaries of widely held beliefs about knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics. although the titles of these metaphors immediately conjure up particular images in our minds, the ways we used these metaphors still allowed us to describe additional details about specific teachers’ beliefs so that our overall characterization of any particular teacher’s beliefs remained true to the individual subject. yet, for purposes of comparing beginning and ending beliefs, analyzing change, and summarizing the effects of this particular professional development experience, the level of simplification afforded by these metaphors proved to be very helpful. overall, it has been encouraging to see that some teachers made real progress in changing their beliefs during the dmi course, even though they were initially looking for additional strategies to use while teaching within their existing metaphors. examining the processes through which these teachers changed their beliefs has also been a useful tool for understanding the nature of the changes and the variations across individuals. figure 2 [see appendix d] shows our completed process model for describing and analyzing the variations in changes in beliefs and practices observed in the participants of the dmi course and evidenced by the three cases presented. it was clear to us that participants’ beliefs about knowing, learning, and teaching mathematics were complex, varied, and interrelated. creating and using this model has allowed us to elaborate on key elements and processes of teacher change which integrate the literature on professional development with our empirical experiences researching the effects of the dmi course. acceptance of redefined learning goals emphasizing flexible problem solving with understanding, such as those found in nctm’s principles and standards (2000), requires corresponding shifts toward paradigmatic theories of learning and teaching practices that are coherent with and capable of achieving those new learning goals. the results of this study suggest that one’s teaching practices are unlikely to be problematized unless beliefs about knowing and learning mathematics are problematized first. without problematizing beliefs about knowing and learning mathematics, interest tended to follow the typical pattern of remaining focused on incremental change within current teaching metaphors rather than participation in the paradigmatic changes offered by the dmi course. important elements of interest in change, which is essential to this problematizing process, included curiosity, recognition of differences, and dissatisfaction with current beliefs and practices. in analyzing variations in the amount of change achieved by participants in the dmi course, we observed that participants with low interest in change and/or low levels of engagement in these change processes, particularly in problematizing and experimenting, made only limited changes in their beliefs and practices. conversely, those participants who had higher levels of initial interest and more fully engaged in each of the change processes, experienced greater changes in beliefs and practices. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 implications although situated in the context of a specific professional development course in elementary mathematics education, the use of metaphors as a tool for describing and categorizing complex, interconnected beliefs is generally applicable. with some modification to the metaphors for knowing, this collection of metaphors may be useful in examining teachers’ beliefs about knowing, learning, and teaching in other content areas that also focus on developing conceptual understanding and thinking processes. use of metaphors like these can facilitate analyses of the types of changes that can be achieved by various professional development activities. this change process model merges practical elements of professional development targeted at changing beliefs and practices with a potentially generalizable framework from the literature on teacher education. to the extent that this change model has elaborated a change sequence that has been useful for us in explaining variations in the outcomes of this dmi course, this process model may be helpful to others interested in instigating or studying paradigmatic changes in teachers’ beliefs. additional work clearly remains. this study represents our effort at developing theory grounded in the specifics of three individual cases that are representative of the participants in one university classroom engaged together in one series of teaching/learning experiences. additional utility can be added to this theory by further development and testing of suitable collections of metaphors for knowing, learning, and teaching. utility can also be improved by development and testing suitable methods for gathering comparable data relevant to teachers’ participation in the various components of this change process, which would allow comparison of the results of this study to data from larger numbers of participants in similar systematic professional development activities. references bakhtin, m. m. 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(1991). a sociocultural approach to socially shared cognition. in l. b. resnick, j. m. levine, & s. d. teasley (eds.), perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 85-100). washington, dc: american psychological association. . . http://www.crede.ucsc.edu/products/print/re%09ports/rr1.html http://www.crede.ucsc.edu/products/print/re%09ports/rr1.html current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 appendix a the case of christine interest in change. christine expressed some curiosity about whether there were other ways to teach mathematics that could provide ideas she could incorporate into her current practices in an incremental rather than revolutionary way. she wrote: most of my students did well in math. i could bring their math skills up to grade level. i thought i was a good math teacher. i took this class because i thought there was always room for improvement—a way of learning to teach math in a better and more exciting way. (portfolio assignment 1.5) christine’s expectations for the course included learning more about how students learn to think mathematically, along with some skills to make her a better math teacher. she hoped to transfer those skills into her classroom so that her students would be better at mathematics. she was only mildly curious about fundamentally different approaches to teaching mathematics that place greater emphasis on understanding mathematics concepts than on memorizing facts and algorithms. problematizing and posing solutions. various tasks and activities during the course provided opportunities for christine to question what she believed and knew about children’s thinking. as she began studying the dmi cases of teachers’ experiences with children’s thinking, she expressed surprise and amusement at the different ways the children solved problems, some of which seemed “weird and difficult” to her (portfolio assignment 1.2). she wondered if the tediousness and complexity of the student’s work at solving what she thought were simple math problems was not the reason why some students hated mathematics. she questioned the underlying causes of some students’ difficulties. maybe “it is because they do not have a good understanding of basic place value systems…. with this new way of teaching math, will more students change their minds about math? will they do better in math? is there a better way, a most efficient way, to solve math problems? i wonder!” (portfolio assignment 1.3) exploring/testing alternatives. as christine engaged in discussions about various strategies for solving problems, she observed how interesting it was “to see how different people had their own math style in solving a problem.” but her primary interest was in how this should affect her teaching. “in third grade, if you present a problem like this, do you explain all this that we have been doing? or do you just say you can’t do that? or do we just go on and confuse them more by showing all these ways? i’m not sure they’re ready for this” (dmi session discourse). more questions surfaced for christine as she shared her experiences from interviewing some of her students. from the interview i found out i can’t assume that students can do those simple, simple things. i just was shocked at what they didn’t know. i wish i could do this with every one of my kids, so i could see just where they mess up. (dmi session discourse) christine reflected in her portfolio on one student’s work that really concerned her. she titled it “did i do the right thing?” jessica was getting very discouraged. i could tell that she did not want to continue any longer. my question: did i do the right thing to have her come up in front of the class to solve the problem? it was obvious that she had no understanding of the question. i was surprised at what she came up with. i tried to find out more by probing, redirecting, and asking questions to clear up her confusions. how do i get her to ask her own questions? how do i get her to stick with a problem even when it’s difficult without getting discouraged? am i embarrassing her in front of the class? should i give her more hints to come up with the answer, or should i allow her time to figure it out herself? (portfolio assignment 2.2) christine struggled to generate thoughtful potential solution paths to her problematic activity of attending to differences in the classroom. although she perceived the need to expose her students to different solution strategies, her metaphors limited the kinds of solutions she could seek. rather than question her metaphors, she tried solutions that left her teaching metaphor intact, essentially deciding just to tell these other strategies to students. her choices of which strategies to show in class were also linked to her metaphor for mathematics; she chose to show only those strategies that had a clear and direct path to the traditional algorithm. this resulted in a relatively superficial change in her practice. reflective analysis of benefits and changing beliefs and practices. after one classroom episode, christine decided to interview jessica. christine had just finished a multiplication unit where her students first memorized the multiplication tables, then they all passed the “daily times test.” she then taught a unit about the elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 15 meaning of the multiplication process. christine wrote that she thought jessica appeared to understand the basic concept of multiplication. however, during the interview it became clear to christine that jessica hadn’t remembered anything they had discussed in class and was unable to explain what “times” meant. christine wrote: now i am getting a little discouraged. maybe i did not teach her well. maybe she did not pay attention in class. maybe she needs more one-on-one help in math. i was surprised at her [lack of] understanding. (portfolio assignment 2.5) christine began reflecting on her own mathematical thoughts. she recorded in her portfolio that she had never done this before. it was enlightening to her to see how she solved problems differently than her colleagues and how that made her more aware of her thinking. however, throughout the entire course christine still chose a standard algorithm as her preferred approach to solving problems. she said she felt her ways of problem solving had not changed and she was still “most comfortable” with standard algorithms. at times she would look at a problem from what she called “a different way,” but she said she felt it took much longer. as the course progressed, christine broadened her learning goals for students a little bit, but continued to frame her teaching with the master metaphor. for example, during the first of the two dmi modules she recorded in her portfolio “the ultimate goal of doing mathematics is to get correct answers. however, in order to get correct answers understanding plays an important role” (portfolio assignment 1.5). she had noticed that children and adults could use different solution strategies in solving problems and still come up with the same answer. she provided some room in her goals for invented strategies as alternatives to standard algorithms. she even wanted her students to be exposed to what she called “different ways” of solving problems. however consistent with her master metaphor of teaching, she beganshowing those strategies to her students and encouraging them to try them. the value of these invented strategies for her was as a “stop gap” measure until students learned the more efficient standard algorithms. she said: this class has helped me see a variety of ways children solve problems. maybe children can figure out problems other ways until they have had enough practice with the math facts and have drilled standard algorithms long enough that they will become more efficient with them, because many of these creative ways are so time consuming. but it is a way they can solve the problems without getting them marked wrong. who cares anyway how you get it. as long as the answer is correct it doesn’t really matter how you got it—just get it! (dmi session discourse) as christine reflected back over the first half of the course, she wrote that several things had changed for her. she felt she had learned more about the variety of children’s invented strategies. she noticed she had begun to ask students to tell how they had come up with an answer as opposed to just asking them “what is the answer?” in doing so, she believed she had “added a lot to her instruction.” i tend to show students different ways of solving math problems, to expose them to various ways. and i have gained a lot of respect for the many different ways problems can be solved, though some methods i do not really agree with. it has added a little more spice to my math curriculum. (portfolio assignment 1.7) as christine saw other participants in the course bring up new ways to do mathematics, she continually questioned whether they were better than her traditional methods. at the end of the course, she revisited her beliefs about standard algorithms and wrote, “now, i don’t think it is the best way of doing math. it may be one of the many ways of doing math, but it surprised me to admit that it is only one of many ways of doing math” (portfolio assignment 2.8). five months after the completion of the dmi course, christine taught a mathematics lesson during which she posed eight division story problems and asked students to solve them using manipulatives, pictures, graph paper, or traditional algorithms. she asked students to explain their solution strategies, and after the initial solution, asked for students who did it another way. for each of the eight problems, christine asked for additional strategies until she had someone share the traditional long-division algorithm. if no one shared the standard algorithm she would do so, emphasizing how the traditional algorithm was faster, particularly with larger numbers (observation field notes). during the post-observation interview that focused on christine’s perceptions of what had changed in her teaching as a result of the dmi course, she responded: most of the time i just pick out story problems from what we call the curriculum…. and once in a while i add a little bit to it…but most of the time i just follow the curriculum... i just ask more often, “explain to me how you got this answer. why do you say this?” so i ask more for the understanding... i try to use a lot of the visual aids. i try to… meet the different learning styles of the kids by using different ways of teaching. some current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 may be more comfortable with the traditional way, so i am still doing that. i feel like they still need to be exposed to that. i think they still need to know that because of standardize testing. they go to the computer room, and they still give you basic division. you still have to do that. at the same time, i think the understanding part is very important, too, and so i like to see them doing it different ways. i want them to say, “math is not just one way of doing it.” (end-of-year interview transcript) elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 17 appendix b the case of linda interest in change. linda expressed an interest in coming to understand the mathematics she already knew how to do, but her new assignment in first grade focused her interest in learning new things that were immediately applicable to her teaching. “i had hoped for activities and ideas that i could incorporate into my classroom.... more like a big workshop, where you take the ideas and run with them; like a make-it-take-it” (portfolio assignment 1.2). linda said she felt her way of looking at skills would be challenged in the course, but she still considered “the old tried and true ways” faster and more accurate than the children’s invented strategies introduced during the first class session. she felt skills still needed to be taught directly. linda expressed curiosity about some children’s mathematical thinking when she said that her students thought about numbers in ways that she could not. at first, she did not understand how they were thinking, and she was curious about how they were able to manipulate numbers in their heads. this led her to question, “what is it that they know? what are they trying to do? what is it in this problem that is causing them to think this way?” problematizing and posing solutions. as the course progressed, linda gained an ease and confidence that allowed her to share her previous experiences with mathematics as a student and her perceptions of how those experiences had affected her current feelings toward mathematics. when i first came to this class, i was terrified. i wanted to keep my mouth shut because i was afraid someone would discover how little i know about mathematics…. when i was in school a very long time ago, the system expected me to know how to get the answers, and if i got the answer and had it right, that was the important thing…. i really feel bad looking back. i wanted to understand the algorithms, but i never could…. i don’t think i ever really understood why you multiplied this number and then you moved over a space and multiplied the next one. but you obeyed and did it. (dmi session discourse) linda began to raise questions and to reflect on her assumptions about learning mathematics as she read cases about other teachers’ classroom experiences, viewed video recordings of children explaining their mathematical solutions, and discussed children’s thinking with peers. this bothered me last week, because it just seems so much faster and easier to do it my way—using the standard algorithm. and why shouldn’t i teach the kids that way? but then i watch these kids. they’re thinking, and they really picture the numbers much better than i do…. what i am finding i dearly love about this class is i can sit here and i look at these kids and i’m forced to answer these focus questions. i’m forced to step inside their shoes and say, “okay, what do they know? what are they trying to do? what is in this problem that is causing them to think this way?” (dmi session discourse) linda continued to question her beliefs about how children learn mathematics, and she commented on these beliefs in her portfolio. she noted that children who understand numbers show great flexibility in their approaches to problems and become very efficient in mental math. she remained uncertain about the need for direct instruction in algorithms even as her own computational strategies became more flexible. i have found myself trying to stretch and think [like] the children in the case studies…. in regards to addition where regrouping is required, i must admit that i have even found it faster than the traditional method whe n doing mental math. if it is written, i am still more comfortable with the old way. i still feel a need to check my answers using the traditional borrow and carry method. (portfolio assignment 1.5) linda, who problematized not only mathematics and the learning of mathematics but also what it meant to teach, took the greatest risk in generating possible solution paths. she abandoned many of her earlier conceptions for new ways of teaching. her shift from telling things to students to attending more to children’s thinking allowed her to consider a wide variety of practices as part of her solution: (1) keeping more detailed notes on children; (2) learning how to question children in order to help them articulate their thinking; (3) de-emphasizing the traditional algorithms; and (4) allowing children to struggle with problems without stepping in to help. all of these paths led linda out of her comfort zone, but she could see that these paths also led to a significant solution to the problems in her practice. exploring/testing alternatives. as linda made progress in her own mathematical thinking she began to show some willingness to consider alternative approaches to teaching, and she began to confront the dilemma of how to reconcile her preference for direct instruction and what she was learning about teaching for understanding. i still find myself questioning how much instruction is necessary from the teacher. “how do i create an current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 environment where my students are willing to explore and to take risks? is this method effective for children of all ability levels, or am i losing some of my class that doesn’t understand what their peers are doing?” (portfolio assignment 1.5) partway through the semester the course participants were asked to identify the one case that had the greatest impact on them and describe why they had selected that case. it was at this time that we began to see more changes in linda’s personal metaphor. linda commented during class about the case she had selected. the first case had the greatest impact on me because i’m trying to teach my first graders number sense—very basic. but it moved me out of my comfort zone enough that i decided that i wanted my children to be able to visualize number like the students in those cases…. this class is helping me realize, as a primary teacher, we need to help our children develop number sense and do a better job helping children see relationships between numbers at a much younger age…. i’ll probably never teach them the algorithms. (dmi session discourse) reflective analysis of benefits and changing beliefs and practices. by halfway through the course linda had made considerable progress from reflecting on the mathematics she wanted her students to know, what experiences would provide her students the opportunity to learn those things, and what would be her role as a teacher. in her portfolio she wrote: i think that my objectives have changed somewhat from things like “the student will demonstrate their knowledge of addition by adding numbers to 12” to “the student will be able to explain or model answers to story problems using addition.” i think that being able to explain what they are doing is not only helpful for them but for me as a teacher, so that i can see where they might have errors in their understanding of a process…. i struggle with how long to let them explore with some of these concepts before i demonstrate a method. i still feel some things in first grade need to be taught. you need to give them a beginning point. for instance, i need to teach that addition means to combine and subtraction means to take away. (portfolio assignment 1.6) however, linda expressed some uncertainty about how to proceed as she began to move away from her expert metaphor. she recognized that rebuilding her teaching practice could be a lonely and uncertain process, even though she had seen alternative practices modeled in the videotapes and cases. “i feel like i’m kind of hanging out there, like columbus, hoping that i don’t fall off the edge and take my class with me. it’s exhilarating and also very frightening” (portfolio assignment 1.6). linda started to notice that changes in her teaching were beginning to have an important impact on the environment in her classroom and the thinking that her students were beginning to do. this required her to begin supporting students thinking in ways that were still new to her. it’s amazing that some of the things that are happening in these cases have actually been happening in my classroom. my children are finally starting to be able to tell me how they solved their problems…. it takes real restraint to sit back and let a child struggle with a problem and not point out what they should do. (dmi session discourse) near the end of the first unit, linda reflected on her personal knowledge growth with respect to various cases and how her growth had enlightened her thinking about her students’ understanding of mathematics. each reading assignment has helped me view mathematical processes in a new light. i think the case studies in section 1 have had the greatest impact on my thinking and teaching…. i am trying to become better at questioning my students to help them articulate what they are doing. perhaps the reason i felt the greatest impact from the first case study is because it moved me out of my comfort zone and made me question and evaluate how i teach math in my classroom. (dmi session discourse) during the second dmi module, linda noted several ideas that had become important to her. gaining confidence as a problem solver and addressing her past experiences with mathematics had empowered alternative images of herself as a learner and teacher of mathematics. i am finding it exhilarating to talk with other teachers about the teaching of mathematical ideas. i have become concerned about individual understanding, as i have done interviews and case studies of my students. and i have learned to recognize the value of each voice in my class (portfolio assignment 2.3). i have found the focus questions stimulating. i love to come home and share them with my family. i would not have felt this way at the beginning of this class. at that time i felt insecure, and i was resisting the fact that my way of doing things was being challenged. (portfolio assignment 2.6) i hope that i will be able to continue to grow in my ability to ask questions, rephrase what the children tell me, elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 19 and help them to explain their thinking and process in arriving at answers to problems. (portfolio assignment 2.8) i’ve now come to the point where i feel that my comments are somewhat of value, and i feel much more comfortable. i’m not afraid to make a few mistakes and say, “what do you mean?” this class turned out to address a bigger picture than i had envisioned, and it turned out to be very exciting. it was such a revelation for my own self awareness that it became very exciting to see where i was coming from, from my past experiences as a child growing up with mathematics, and my feelings toward mathematics now. i have almost come to feel like i had been cheated. i will never look at mathematics the same way as i did before i had this class. (dmi session discourse) linda’s shifts in mathematics learning goals for students provided a foundation for this shift in her image of a teacher as one who ask questions, rephrases what children say, and helps them explain their thinking and problemsolving processes. five months after the completion of the dmi course, linda taught a first-grade mathematics lesson in which she asked students to use the “rodeo math” manipulatives they had created the previous day (consisting of a cowboy and multiple pants, shirts, and hats with numerals written on each piece of clothing). working in groups of 2-3, students exchanged pieces of clothing on their cowboys to produce addition number sentences. one student recorded the number sentences and all students in the group computed the sums. linda encouraged students to look for patterns among the combinations in order to get all of the possible combinations. she asked students whether the same numbers in different orders were the same sum (e.g., could 5 + 2 + 3 = 10 be 5 + 3 + 2 = 10 instead?). she also asked, “which way could you dress the cowboy to get the highest number” (observation field notes). during the post-observation interview, linda commented about valuing students’ voices as they shared their solution strategies, but also showed that she was focusing on what children were thinking and asking follow-up questions. she said, “i can see that they have a much deeper knowledge of what they are doing if they can explain it and not just go through a ritual.... i am trying very hard to... ask questions and not tell answers.... that is a very difficult skill. i still struggle with it sometimes—not just telling them ‘this is where you’ve made your mistake.’” she had added two more realistic problem-solving tasks to the curriculum. she said, “we have a standard math book, and i have tried to stretch them beyond that and let them do things that i wouldn’t have done before. i took problems that were in the dmi book and brought them back, and i let them try to do them... this morning... we talked about the jazz game, and i said, ‘if at the end of the first quarter, the jazz had 20 points and carl malone had made 5 of those points, how many points had the other people made?’ it was interesting to watch them figure that out, and they all got the same answer. they used several different methods, and each of them shared it” (postobservation interview transcript). she also commented on the dilemma she still faced in reconciling basic skills versus invented strategies: “i’ve felt like they passed the [state] core test very well. i don’t know that they’re any better, really, than other students... but i hope they are freer to explore. one thing that i still struggle with is that in first grade i think they have to have some basic skills. i am still trying to balance between drill and exploration. i still feel that... some of this has to be mastered for them to be able to explore” (post-observation interview transcript). she expressed plans for continued experimenting: “i’ve been thinking that perhaps i will change a little bit more. maybe i’ve tried to take too big of a leap too fast... i’m going to start right at the first day of school, start doing some addition, some subtraction, all with these few numbers and just let it grow as we go along... now that i’m seeing... the full scope of the curriculum a little better, it’s a little clearer to me. i think that i’m going to try to do all of it in connection with the few things that we’ve learned and then move on. that’s my thought for next year” (postobservation interview transcript). current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 appendix c the case of paula interest in change. from the beginning it was clear paula questioned the metaphor of teacher as master and allowed room in her view of learning for sense making. paula recorded five of her expectations for this course in her portfolio.  explore the whys of basic algorithms.  explore the whys of student processing.  collect new games, techniques, and thought provoking problems to incorporate into my instruction.  explore the hows in the management of so many toys, so many ideas, so many children, and so little time.  enhance my own mathematical processing skills. (portfolio assignment 1.2) later, paula said she hoped “teaching to the big ideas” would help her “create, duplicate, borrow, beg, or steal some intervention strategies” that would answer her concerns (portfolio assignment 1.5). paula also expressed her concern with helping older learners “rebuild” a system of tens (portfolio assignment 2.3). problematizing and posing solutions. paula’s experience as a student differed from linda’s. as a child, paula was able to perform algorithms efficiently and enjoyed doing so. but she remembered noticing not all of her classmates could. this raised questions in her mind about whether too much emphasis was being placed on computational algorithms. when most of us went to school, we learned one way to add, one way to subtract, one way to multiply, and one way to divide. several of us noticed, however, that not all of our friends we went to school with “got it.” the question i have is why is the entire nation seemingly committed to the algorithm anyway? is it a universal truth or just a way to fit into society? is an algorithm a tool? is an algorithm really a good thing? is there only one algorithm? i think we teach algorithms because we want to hold our jobs, so that people won’t say we were lousy teachers. really, it’s so children’s parents can help them with their homework, right? what it all comes down to is how we are held accountable. it feels like we are being held back, because we have to teach this way so the children can pass tests. it’s too bad. (dmi session discourse) exploring/testing alternatives. at the beginning of the course paula indicated she was open to alternatives for what to teach and how to teach it and was willing to pursue what teaching for understanding might mean. most of my fifth grade students are not proficient in traditional algorithms. can i reinforce the students’ algorithms best through story context, or symbol context, or pictorial context, or a variety of all three? is there a time when bare mathematical symbol context is better? what i’m most concerned about is that they are able to develop critical thinking in their problem solving, and they won’t get there if we keep saying that the standard algorithm is the only way. in the long run they need to understand what they are doing. (dmi session discourse) as the course progressed, paula noted in her portfolio that her understanding of mathematics was deepening and her rigidity had given way to greater flexibility. she commented that breaking down various problems had given her a much better understanding of how elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 21 algorithms work, the value of base-ten knowledge, and the connected and integrated nature of mathematics. she expressed similar ideas during class: i’m noticing that mathematics is not just single ideas taught separately in isolation, but rather more of a connected and integrated whole. it’s making me re-think what mathematics is—its wholeness versus its parts. it seems like the underlying factor for everything is base ten. we revisit it over and over again, just in different ways. (dmi session discourse) along with shifting her beliefs about mathematics, paula also changed what she did in the classroom. as she reflected on what she had begun to do differently, she wrote about increased frequency of “flights away from the book, workbook, and workshop files” with more time spent on exploring and dissecting students’ mistakes on assignments and tests (portfolio assignment 1.6). later she noted: i have found that i can lead a whole class discussion with only two or three problems and use the children’s ideas to develop a much better session than a page of math problems can accomplish. what many of them are doing is rebuilding an understanding of mathematics. however, it takes longer than i anticipated. (portfolio assignment 2.3) they are taking back the responsibility for learning, and i am becoming convinced that this is not only a “funner” way to teach math but a better way as well. (portfolio assignment 2.7) paula attributed some changes in her teaching practices to a greater emphasis on children’s thinking and understanding. i am thinking more about students’ thinking individually rather than covering the mathematics. not just to say, “okay, that’s checked off” and continue going on hoping everybody in the class has gotten what i planned them to get. but more, “what did that student individually get?” you have to stop and reflect about what you are seeing, and it takes time. i noticed in the last few days i have been more cautious in my planning as to what kind of problems can get at thinking, that will make their mathematical understanding deeper. what i would like is to help bridge their thinking and to diagnose how to help them straighten out some of the problems they are having in that thinking. (dmi session discourse) reflective analysis of benefits and changing beliefs and practices. at the end of the course, paula reflected in her portfolio on what had changed for her during the semester. she wrote that she knew her students better than before. she noticed her students could now track their thinking processes and pinpoint the variations in their ideas. she also noticed that their understanding of the mathematics was deeper and their dialogues and written representations were more focused. paula had gained confidence in her ability to question and pose interesting problems. she commented in class that she had started to teach mathematics more as connected big ideas rather than separate disconnected pieces, which was consistent with changes in her philosophy of mathematics education. i thought this class was going to be more about ideas on how to teach. i think i had an idea that there was going to be a little more theory behind it, and not just ideas, but i think the thing that was most helpful was it helped me develop my philosophy of mathematics education. and, i think until you understand what your philosophy of something is, you are not as powerful at it. i think i had a philosophy, but it changed by the process that we went through and discussions we had. i knew questioning was important, but i now see it spilling current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 over into other subjects. the type of questions that you ask children to get them to understand is permeating my whole life, and i will never be the same. (dmi session discourse) by the end of the course, paula had built upon her views of how children learn to redesign her teaching metaphor as one who uses questions to find out what students are thinking and then poses additional questions to lead students to build new understandings of wellconnected mathematical ideas. five months after the end of the dmi course, paula taught a mathematics lesson that posed a problem that focused on vocabulary and language development associated with the mathematical concepts of twoand three-dimensional shapes connected to the science of soap bubbles and strongest shapes. she fostered development of a problem-solving community as she engaged her students in a social constructivist experience and used questioning to prompt and facilitate students’ thinking about deep understandings of the mathematics in the lesson. (observation field notes) during the post-observation interview focused on changes in paula’s teaching practices resulting from the dmi course, she commented on how she now attended to children’s understanding and helped them explore their mistakes. i spend a lot more time discussing their ideas. i don’t do as many problems per se, but we spend more time on specific problems. we just go broader because we take the time to listen and talk about all the different ways they would approach it. . . . i find myself asking more questions and trying to generate more questions from them. . . . i am trying to build on what each child says and to connect it to either someone else in the room, something they said earlier, or a particular path i am hoping they will go down. . . . i try to point out to them how valuable it is when they find and correct themselves and figure out why they did it wrong. i use a phrase this year i have never used before. i will say, ‘do you realize the most important thing that has happened today just happened for you in our class, because you corrected yourself, and you just figured out what you have done wrong. and that is the most valuable thing.’ i found that the more that i use that phrase the more children start saying that. they would try to find the mistakes they had made and then bring it to my attention. ‘look, this is what i did wrong. that is the most important thing i could do today. i just found what i did wrong.’ and that cognition. . . [and] celebration—of ‘oh, i got that wrong, and now if i figure out why i got it wrong she is going to be even happier than if i had gotten it right’— is very different, and that is attributed directly to the [dmi] class. (postobservation interview transcript) paula recognized that changes to her fifth-grade curriculum were essential to achieving her goals for learning. i haven’t changed all my problems. i’m locked into district core in math, and the majority of the core deals with computation out of context. i do have to continue to work with them on math out of context, but i have given more real life math problems at other times in the day, such as the warm-up activity in the morning. i used to spend quite a bit of time with grammar or daily oral language, and now probably fifty percent of it would be a math contextual question or game, because i have found that if you put math in the context of real life that builds their grammar skills. if the math is in the context of a story, then you are killing two birds with one stone. i want more of the kinds of problems [we saw in the dmi course]. i want more of them because i am too exhausted to think them up myself. i am elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 23 stretched too thin to keep generating them, and i have generated quite a few. i will take situations in the literature book we’ll be reading and use that as a springboard for a math problem, or a field trip we’ve been on. i did a lot more of that this year. almost every field trip or outside experience we did i tied back into a math problem after we had done it, and i watch for those opportunities to do that. . . . still, i haven’t moved everything completely to a big idea. (post-observation interview transcript) her comments during the interview also indicated she understood that shifts in teaching required to facilitate learning flexible problem solving with understanding were revolutionary in nature and as yet unsupported by continuing standardized testing. in addition, she expressed some concern over vocal groups expressing opposing viewpoints that indicated that her changes in beliefs and practices were very fragile due to the limited evidence of their effectiveness. she said, “i think math education is [students’] ticket to the future, and my consciousness is open and sensitive to the need of better math education. i know what we have done traditionally all these years isn’t working as well as it should, and it is exciting but also frustrating to be caught in the middle of the revolution and not know if what you are doing is really [helping]” (postobservation interview transcript). current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 appendix d list of table and figure captions table 1. metaphors table 2. changes in metaphors/beliefs table 3. interest in change, problematizing, exploring, and analyzing figure 1. guskey’s (1986) model of the process of teacher change figure 2. change process model for teachers’ beliefs and practices table 1. metaphors elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 25 table 2. changes in metaphors/beliefs current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 table 3. interest in change, problematizing, exploring, and analyzing figure 1. guskey’s (1986) model of the process of teacher change elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 27 figure 2. change process model for teachers’ beliefs and practices current issues in education vol. 8 no. 19 2005 article citation smith, s.z., smith, m.e. & williams, s.r. (2005, july 20). elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices. current issues in education [on-line], 8(19). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number19/ author notes stephanie z. smith georgia state university dr. stephanie z. smith is an assistant professor in the early childhood education department at georgia state university in atlanta, ga. she received her phd in curriculum and instruction (mathematics education) from the university of wisconsin–madison in 1998. her scholarly interests include learning and teaching mathematics with understanding, children’s and teacher’s conceptions of mathematics, and teacher education and professional development. marvin e. smith georgia southern university dr. marvin e. smith is an assistant professor in the department of teaching and learning at georgia southern university in statesboro, ga. he received his phd in curriculum and instruction (mathematics education) from the university of wisconsin–madison in 2000. his scholarly interests include learning with understanding, classroom assessment, and teacher education and professional development. steven r. williams brigham young university dr. steven r. williams is a professor in the mathematics education department at brigham young university in provo, ut. he received his phd in curriculum and instruction (mathematics education) from the university of wisconsin–madison in 1989. his research has focused on the learning of calculus, discourse in mathematics classrooms, and various topics in teacher education. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber july 13, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation smith, s. z., smith, m. e., & williams, s. r. (2005). elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices. current issues in education, 8(19). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1650 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number15/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1650 elaborating a change process model for elementary mathematics teachers’ beliefs and practices 29 403 forbidden<br> cie template current issues in education, 23(1) 1 volume 23, issue 1 may 9, 2022 issn 1099-839x school curriculum in the news: black lives matter and the continuing struggle for culturally responsive education abe feuerstein bucknell university abstract: this project examines similarities and differences in the ways that major u.s. newspapers (e.g., the new york times, the washington post, etc.) and the more focused ethnic and minority press (e.g., the baltimore afro-american, the milwaukee courier, etc.) characterize educator’s efforts to adopt more culturally responsive educational practices and curriculum. the analysis utilized two distinct full-text proquest news databases, u.s. major dailies and ethnic news watch, and boolean search logic to identify a corpus of 72 relevant articles. within these articles, a process of close reading and coding identified three major frames that cut across articles drawn from both databases: challenging the dominant narrative; activism and engaged citizenship; and defending american heritage and patriotism. differences in the use of these frames across the two datasets are discussed. these frames are interpreted in light of conflicting views on the nature of the american dream. keywords: curriculum, culturally responsive education, media framing, black lives matter citation: feuerstein, abe. (2022). school curriculum in the news: black lives matter and the continuing struggle for culturally responsive education. current issues in education, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss1.1997 accepted: april 19, 2022 introduction the killing of george floyd in the summer of 2020 by minneapolis police officer derek chauvin, who kneeled on floyd’s neck, making it impossible for him to breathe, catalyzed protests across the united states against racism and police violence. these protests were part of the larger black lives matter (blm) movement, which began in 2012 following the killing of trayvon martin. the size, intensity, and duration of the protests held during the summer of 2020 demonstrated the strength of the movement and the depth of concern over continued police violence. these protests raised white awareness of racial inequality in the united states and reinforced efforts to hold police and other public institutions—including public schools— accountable. https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss1.1997 feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 2 although the blm movement has been at the forefront of black activism over the past decade, its emergence as a force for social justice is rooted in a long history of black social and political thought. according to lebron (2017), the ongoing struggle for equal rights is rooted in the efforts of earlier activists such as ida b. wells, frederick douglas, james baldwin, and others who clearly articulated the injustice experienced by black americans. concerning the issue of police violence, blm is also connected to the black power movement of the 1960s, which brought attention to police brutality and the unequal treatment of blacks in the prison system. in addition, the black power movement also focused on community organizing and education by developing “liberation schools” that sought to address the failure of public schools to provide black youth with a deeper understanding of their history. according to huggins and leblanc-ernest (2009), these schools also sought to help black students gain the skills and knowledge they would need to challenge racism and social inequality. taking up this legacy, school-focused organizations associated with the blm movement, such as the movement for black lives (m4bl) and black lives matter at school (blms), have sought to raise awareness of educational inequality and disrupt what education scholars refer to as the “school to prison pipeline.” according to watson, hagopian, and au (2018), this pipeline “starts with a curriculum that conceals the struggles and contributions of black people and other people of color. it is a curriculum that fails to respect young black people as intellectuals and ignores their culture, communities, and concerns” (p. 9). when public schools fail to teach about black history and black contributions, “black people are themselves denied” (watson et al., 2018, p.10). key to understanding the perpetuation of systemic racism is the public-school curriculum. this curriculum, particularly in the areas of social studies, has generally excluded black history while simultaneously including “inaccurate, silenced, stereotypical characterizations” of black americans (brown et al., 2013, p 30). according to brown, heilig, and brown (2013), public schooling has failed to “address issues of whiteness and racism” (p. 34) that are deeply embedded in u.s. social institutions. while pressure to change the curriculum to address these concerns has been ongoing since the 1920s (dubois, 1935, 2009; locke, 1925, 1986; woodson, 1933), the issue has gained new momentum as calls for racial justice have gained support among the american public (kendi, 2020). for example, blms believes that there is “new urgency and radical possibilities for advancing abolitionist practice and uprooting institutional racism” (black lives matter at school, n.d., para. 3). movement leaders have worked to organize educators from around the united states to teach about “structural racism, intersectional black identities, black history, and anti-racist movements” (black lives matter at school, n.d., para.3). beyond addressing problems with the curriculum, the organization’s goals extend to issues such as discipline and policing in schools (watson et al., 2018). along with the efforts of groups like black lives matter in school, journalistic projects such as the 1619 project have also sought to provide teachers and schools with new perspectives, curricula, and insights about the way history shapes the present. opposing these efforts are conservative politicians, including president trump (2020a), who derided these types of curricular reforms as “left-wing indoctrination” (para. 10). in his public remarks on constitution day in 2020, president trump claimed that the american people should “clear away the twisted web of lies in our schools and classrooms” (para. 2), which “make students ashamed of their own history” (para. 10). president trump also claimed that critical race theory was being forced into public schools, teaching students that “america is a wicked and racist nation” (trump, 2020a, para. 14). rather than work to help students feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 3 understand the cause and consequences of structural racism, the president supported the development of a “pro-american curriculum” that “celebrates the truth [emphasis added] about our nation’s great history” (para. 23). given these differences in perspective and the fact that the blm movement gained greater exposure in the mainstream media during the summer of 2020, the purpose of this project is to examine similarities and differences in the ways that major u.s. newspapers (e.g., the new york times, the washington post, etc.) and the more focused ethnic and minority press (e.g., the baltimore afro-american, the milwaukee courier, etc.) characterize the efforts to adopt more culturally responsive educational practices and curriculum. in a democracy, the media plays an essential role in informing the public about important issues and also provides political actors with a platform for sharing their ideologies, interests, and preferred policies with the public. however, journalists, editors, and news organizations do more than simply transmit information; they also highlight certain aspects of stories while overlooking others. this process, known as framing, influences the goals and initiatives that are viewed as legitimate by the public. individuals, interest groups, networks, and other political actors, sometimes referred to as frame sponsors, often have a strong interest in shaping both the framing of the news and the public policy outcomes associated with their interests. in the sections that follow, i examine the ways in which the news depicts the efforts of those encouraging schools to adopt more culturally relevant forms of education. before describing this work, however, i consider the political context within which efforts to reshape the school curriculum exist and review the role of media in shaping public discourse. i then describe the methodology that i used to both select and analyze a corpus of news articles for study. through this analysis, i was able to identify three dominant news frames that i describe as “challenging the dominant narrative,” “activism and engagement,” and “defending american heritage and patriotism.” in addition, i examine differences in new framing based on whether the news source is national in scope or more focused on an ethnic audience. i conclude the article by interpreting these frames in light of conflicting views on the nature of the american dream. context of the study the inspiration for this study is the 1619 project which provides a recent example of the role race plays in debates over school curriculum (understood broadly to include both content and educational practices). this collection of essays, published in the new york times in 2019 to mark the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved africans arriving in virginia — reevaluates the centrality of slavery and the contributions of black americans to the growth and development of the united states. according to nikole hannah-jones, who was awarded a pulitzer prize for her writing as lead author of the project, “this essay was about democracy and the unparalleled role that black americans have played almost always without getting credit and actually creating the democracy that we have and making those glorious words of the declaration actually true for all americans” (shapiro, a., 2020, para. 7). hoping to use the essays in the collection to improve the teaching of u.s. history, the pulitzer center, a non-profit organization supporting public interest journalism (and independent of the pulitzer prize organization), invested in the development of a free downloadable curriculum that “asks students to examine the history and legacy of slavery in the united states, as well as our national memory” (will, 2019, para. 1). the curriculum provides teachers with source material, lessons, and activities appropriate for all grade levels and also identifies how the lessons could be used to address common core standards. feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 4 conservative think tanks, including the heritage foundation, quickly began to critique the curriculum. mike gonzales, a heritage center senior fellow, claimed that, the [pulitzer center] curriculum provides reading material, activities, videos, graphic organizers, etc., that will indoctrinate young minds on how america and its capitalist system are racist to the core. its goal: destroy our present institutions, economic system and ways of thinking, and replace them. (gonzalez, 2020, para. 5) in september 2020, president trump called for the u.s. department of education to investigate whether california schools were using the 1619 project as part of the public-school curriculum. he said that he intended to “defund” schools found to be using the curriculum (cnn, 2020). to further support “pro-american” education, president trump also established the 1776 commission in november of 2020. the goal of the commission was to “improve understanding of the history and the principles of the founding of the united states among our nation’s rising generations” (trump, 2020b, para. 1). the president also ordered “federal agencies to prioritize patriotic education in the delivery of federal resources” (trump, 2020b, para. 5). such efforts to make the school curriculum explicitly “pro-american” and “patriotic” illustrate the challenges faced by those attempting to broaden the curriculum and embrace culturally relevant forms of pedagogy. they also demonstrate the importance of the school curriculum as a means to advance or hinder the adoption of particular values and ideologies. individuals and groups seeking to change the school curriculum understand that the things students learn at school will influence the decisions they make regarding political, economic, and moral issues later in life (spring, 2005). because the stakes are high, struggles over the content of school curricula are commonplace, and there are many impediments that have limited the adoption of culturally relevant curricula and educational practices.1 the following subsections review some of these impediments while also highlighting the efforts of groups such as blm and m4bl to make meaningful change. impediments to curricular reform the current political context described above is rooted in a history of omission and evasion with respect to the inclusion of culturally relevant curriculum. following the supreme court decision in brown v. board in 1954 and the passage of the civil rights act in 1968, there was significant pressure on schools to address obvious omissions and inaccuracies in the school curriculum related to issues of race. according to gay (1983), black students and other students of color began to work together during this period, forming a broad-based movement in support of multicultural education and ethnic studies. the number of multicultural education programs grew as educators sought to respond to the demands of historically oppressed groups for greater representation in the curriculum. however, gorski (1999) notes that most of this growth “focused on slight changes or additions to traditional curriculum” (para. 5). the problem with this additive approach, he explains, is that it serves to further define traditional curricular topics as “the curricular ‘norm’ and curriculum that deals with issues of race and ethnicity as the marginalized ‘other’” (para. 7). smith (2017) explains that this is just one of several reasons why more robust efforts to teach and discuss race have remained on the margin of mainstream curricula. other reasons include, but are not limited 1 ladson-billings (1995) defines cultural relevant curriculum and pedagogy as resting on three criteria: (1) the development of academic skills; (2) the utilization of student culture to support learning; and (3) the development of “broader sociopolitical consciousness that allows them to critique cultural norms, values mores, and institutions that produce and maintain social inequities” (p. 162). feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 5 to, disagreement about the goals of multicultural education, fears that education about race will be divisive, and the influence of standards and testing on what is taught. as the conflict over the 1619 project curriculum demonstrates, the possibility that the public-school curriculum might begin to teach students about the role of slavery and segregation as causes of social inequality makes some political and educational leaders uncomfortable. such leaders believe that openly focusing on controversial topics will lead to division and conflict (kandrovy, 2005) and might potentially disrupt the status quo. this is a long-standing perspective. according to blum (1997), “antiracist education can seem to pit groups against each other, and encourage anger in victimized groups and resentment among white students (e.g. ‘i didn't have anything to do with slavery or segregation; don't blame me!’)” (p. 23). such concerns, blum (1997) argued, are often exaggerated and are much less of a threat to the development of a unified society than existing inequality marked by the creation of an internationally-oriented class of wealthy americans with little loyalty to their nation, the flight of capital and jobs overseas, the enclaving of wealthy, and overwhelmingly white, people in self-enclosed communities (often with their own security systems), the decreasing lack of public contact between people of different classes. (p. 23) in other words, learning about inequality in school through reading and discussion is likely less divisive than the lived experience of inequality. nonetheless, opponents of multicultural education and ethnic studies still fear that curricular inclusion will not only foment division but also provide an unfair advantage to historically disadvantaged groups. such fears are certainly behind recent efforts to limit students’ ability to learn about racial inequality and america’s history of racial oppression. according to schwartz (2021), writing in education week, “since january 2021, 41 states have introduced bills or taken other steps that would restrict teaching critical race theory or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism, according to an education week analysis. fifteen states have imposed these bans and restrictions either through legislation or other avenues” (para. 4). while not explicitly part of the k-12 public school curriculum, critical race theory (crt), which focuses on the systemic nature of racism in american society, has “been warped from its original meaning” and “used by opponents of diversity training as a catch-all to refer to anything that makes race or gender salient in conversations about power and oppression” (schwartz, 2021, para. 10). this kind of widespread denial about the role race plays in social inequality helps to illustrate the immense challenge facing those interested in the adoption of more culturally relevant curricula. enter black lives matter public education’s continued failure to adequately address issues of race and injustice has led groups like m4bl and blms to agitate for more culturally responsive forms of education (cre). according to johnston, montalbano, and kirkland (2017), cre is aimed at creating “more inclusively-minded and more asset-focused instruction of diverse student populations” (p.19). citing gay (2010), the authors argue that this type of education treats students’ backgrounds as assets and seeks to make education “comprehensive, multidimensional, empowering, transformative, and emancipatory” (gay in johnston et al., 2017, p. 20). to address educational inequalities, watson, hagopian, and au (2018) explain that educators in seattle began working together in 2016 to support black students and began to teach more explicitly about black history and the ongoing struggle against racism. this movement has feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 6 since grown into a national coalition of educators known as “black lives matter at school,” which organizes a yearly “week of action” in february and advocates for the following changes in public schools: 1. end “zero tolerance” discipline, and implement restorative justice 2. hire more black teachers 3. mandate black history and ethnic studies in k-12 curriculum 4. fund counselors, not cops (black lives matter at schools, n.d.) these demands are consistent with the goals of cre and seek to reform educational practices that have disadvantaged black students and other students of color for decades. the blms agenda is similar, though it focuses more explicitly on “zero tolerance” disciplinary practices that have been shown to harm black students. by naming specific educational practices and goals, this agenda is an effort to change the educational environment in ways that are attuned to both historical and current forms of oppression that are embedded in schools. having considered some of the barriers that limit the adoption of more culturally responsive forms of education alongside efforts by some groups to overcome these hurdles, i now turn to the role of the media in shaping the way the public understands and responds to these issues. as mentioned earlier, the media’s framing of issues matters because it influences the public’s understanding of which goals and perspectives are legitimate or proscribed. theoretical framework studying the way that the media frames efforts to address issues such as the push for cre is necessary because this framing has the potential to influence the way individuals think about the content of the school curriculum and the overall purpose of public education. rather than simply transmitting information, journalists, editors, and news organizations highlight certain aspects of stories while omitting others. this process, known as “framing,” provides the public with a particular interpretation of issues and events (nisbet, 2009, p. 15). according to nisbet (2009), framing is an unavoidable byproduct of journalists’ efforts to pare down information and highlight what they consider to be important. in this sense, journalists play a mediating role as they receive, interpret, and transmit information to the public (d’angelo & kuypers, 2009). these efforts, suggest d’angelo & kuypers (2009), are influenced by the ways that “politicians, issue advocates, and stakeholders… communicate their preferred meaning of events and issues” (p. 1). van gorp (2009) notes that news texts are part of an ongoing discourse that involves media producers, media consumers, and other social players in a process that helps to define and reproduce cultural values and norms (p. 88). the goal of news framing analysis is to identify the various and often competing frames being used to shape the public’s understanding of a particular issue. over several years, gamson and his colleagues developed a methodology for characterizing the various ways that issues were framed in the news (gamson, 1989; gamson & lasch, 1981; gamson & modigliani, 1989). this methodology involves identifying a mix of framing and reasoning devices gamson called the “interpretive” or “frame” package. framing devices included metaphors, catch-phrases, and depictions used in the description of a particular issue. reasoning devices provide explanations of causes, consequences, and appeals to principles associated with the same issue. building on these ideas, authors such as entman (1993), van gorp (2010), and others have sought to identify the interpretive packages embedded in news stories surrounding issues feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 7 ranging from environmental regulation to charter schools. these frame packages often align with the narratives offered by public officials, politicians, interest groups, and other political actors who can be considered frame sponsors. frame sponsors have a strong interest in shaping the public discourse surrounding particular issues and in the policy solutions that are eventually adopted. a primary goal of this study is to identify the major themes embedded in the news surrounding efforts to make schools more culturally responsive. another goal is to examine the similarities and differences in the way news organizations frame these kinds of stories depending on their intended audience. for example, major daily newspapers like the new york times and the washington post have a large audience that includes a cross-section of the country’s population. according to the pew research center (2012), many daily papers “have audiences whose partisan and ideological breakdowns are fairly similar to the public’s” (para. 20). at the same time, grassroots, community, and independent presses often have smaller and more ethnically homogeneous audiences based on nationality, religion, and/or language. comparing the way major u.s. daily papers and the more focused ethnic press frame efforts to make schools more culturally responsive has the potential to yield new insights into the way media operates in different cultural settings. in the next section, i outline the steps that i took to both select and analyze the newspaper reports at the heart of this study. methodology the process of identifying the dominant themes within news coverage of particular issues requires close reading and analysis (feuerstein, 2014; gamson & lasch, 1981; van gorp, 2005). close reading is central to identifying patterns and themes within qualitative data. according to braun and clarke (2006), a goal of thematic analysis is identifying the “underlying ideas, assumption, and conceptualisations” (p.84) that go beyond the surface meaning of the data. for this study, i began with news articles published from 2012 through 2020 that focused on efforts to broaden the school curriculum with a particular emphasis on black lives. to find relevant articles, i utilized two distinct full-text proquest news databases. the first database, u.s. major dailies, includes the chicago tribune, the los angeles times, the new york times, the wall street journal, and the washington post. these papers are all national in scope and have a broad readership while also covering local issues. the second database, ethnic news watch, covers newspapers drawn from the ethnic, minority, and native press and is aimed at providing researchers “access to essential, often overlooked perspectives” (proquest, n.d., para. 1). these papers have smaller audiences and are more focused on news relevant to their more targeted readership. using boolean search logic, i identified all of the news articles published in these databases between january 1, 2012, and september 18, 2020, which included the term “black lives” or “1619 project” as well as “curriculum,” “ethnic studies,” “multicultural education,” or “social studies.” the goal of combining these terms was to limit the search results to articles that focused on efforts to address omissions and evasions in the school curriculum by including more culturally responsive content related to black lives and black history. this time period spanned the protests following the killing of trayvon martin in 2012 to those taking place in the summer of 2020 following the killing of george floyd. this search resulted in 187 articles from the u.s. major dailies database and 135 articles from the ethnic news watch database. next, i read each set of articles and excluded those lacking sufficient focus on k-12 curricular issues and/or educational practices. this process resulted in my selection of 41 articles feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 8 from the u.s. major dailies database and 36 from the ethnic news watch database. these articles encompassed new stories as well as commentary (sometimes referred to as editorials). the breakdown of these categories across the two samples of articles is summarized in figure 1 below. figure 1 article type by database these articles were then uploaded into a qualitative analysis software package (nvivo) for the purpose of carrying out more careful and systematic content analysis. the goal of my analysis was to identify the dominant frames used to characterize efforts to adopt more culturally responsive curricula and educational practices. i have used this process in a number of other studies focused on the framing of educational issues. for example, one study looked at the framing of “parent trigger” laws aimed at converting public schools to charter schools (feuerstein, 2015a), while others examined the general framing of charter school reform (feuerstein, 2014, 2015b). similar methodologies have been employed to study the media’s representation of teachers (goldstein, 2011). outside of education, these methods have been used to study issues ranging from the coverage of climate change (stecula & merkley, 2019) to the war on terror (reese, 2009). coding of the articles was carried out in a multi-step process that utilized the questions in the framing protocol below to identify the constellations of ideas (frames) used by the press to convey news about curricular issues. the use of protocols is recommended by altheide and schneider (2012) as a way to guide data collection and capture the meaning of text. clarifying the characteristics of the emerging themes was an ongoing process and involved a comparative feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 9 technique, whereby coded material was constantly compared with other coded excerpts and source material in order to further refine and name the themes (glaser & strauss, 1967). table 1 summarizes the central elements of this protocol. table 1 framing protocol depiction ● general focus of article. ● how is the issue described? ● nature of the problem/issue. is there a particular problem or issue that is emphasized? ● who is affected by the issue? causal roots ● what is the main cause of the issue or problem? ● who or what is to blame/praise for the situation? solutions ● what are the views on the current policy or situation? ● what solutions are proposed or implied? ● who is suggested or implied as having sufficient agency to address the issue? core values ● what values or principles are evident in the problem presentation? (e.g., choice, efficiency, quality, equality) while helpful in identifying recurring themes in the data, it is important to note that this type of protocol involves interpretation and judgment. the analysis that follows reflects my best efforts to identify the dominant frames in the news articles described above. because elements of these frames are closely related, it was sometimes possible to code excerpts in multiple ways. in this sense, the patterns in the data were more like a web than a discrete outline, and other readers approaching this data with different questions might develop varied interpretations. in the following section, i describe the dominant frames that emerged from my analysis of the news reports discussed earlier and provide excerpts from the data to illustrate the subthemes embedded within each frame. analysis after reading and coding the articles drawn from the u.s. major dailies and the ethnic news watch databases, i identified three major types of framing concerning efforts to adopt more culturally responsive curricula and educational practices. these frames cut across articles drawn from both u.s. major dailies and the ethnic news watch databases. i’ve named these frames challenging the dominant narrative; activism and engaged citizenship; and defending american heritage and patriotism. the first, challenging the dominant narrative, focused on the efforts of individuals and groups to address ongoing racism within schools while also stressing the importance of teaching students more about their racial and ethnic heritage. the second frame, activism and engaged citizenship, is related to the first but focuses more on the ways in which the blm movement has created new ways for students, parents, teachers, and community members to engage in political action and to learn first-hand about the function of feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 10 democracy. the final frame, defending american heritage and patriotism, encompasses the reactions and efforts of individuals and groups to defend an ideology of american exceptionalism in the face of challenges by movements like blm. figure 2 below illustrates that the bulk of the articles analyzed for this study were published in 2020. the number of articles about efforts to implement more culturally responsive curriculum and educational practices has increased over time as this issue has gained greater prominence in mainstream public discourse. in addition, the number of articles in u.s. major dailies on this topic surpassed the number in the ethnic press in recent years. figure 2 articles by year of publication and database figure 3 shows the three most common frames identified in the sample. the number of articles from each database with this framing is also indicated. feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 11 figure 3 article frame by database frame 1: challenging the dominant narrative the most prominent framing that emerged from reading and coding the articles was centered around the idea that schools need to do more to address ongoing racism while also providing students with a deeper understanding of their racial/ethnic heritage. this framing was evident in 21 of the 36 articles drawn from the ethnic news watch database (58%) and 16 of the 41 articles drawn from the u.s. major dailies database (39%). looking across these articles, a common set of perspectives emerged that focused on the necessity of recognizing and addressing racist incidents in schools while also correcting systemic inequalities in the treatment of black students and other students of color in relation to their white peers. this framing encompassed three sub-themes – everyday racism, systemic racism, and the importance of being reflected in the curriculum. everyday racism some of the articles with this framing focused on the way teachers and students were treated in school. for example, one article in the la times in 2020 (agrawal, 2020) describes what happened to a black teacher who wore a t-shirt to class with the words “i can’t breathe” feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 12 printed on the front as a protest against the killing of eric garner. in this case, the father of one of her students viewed this choice as inappropriate and posted a screenshot of her wearing the shirt on social media. according to the paper, “a torrent of threats poured in on social media, frightening the teacher enough that she fled her home with her daughter and sought restraining orders against the parent and the media commentator” (agrawal, 2020, para. 4). these threats were critiqued by school administrators and a fellow teacher who noted that “educators need to be able to teach about racial and social injustice without threats, harassment, bullying, or scaretactics'' (agrawal, 2020, para. 17). such an example underscores the vulnerability of black teachers who dare to publicly address issues of race in their classrooms. building on this theme, other articles emphasized the need to address the day-to-day racism endured by black students and other students of color in both public and private schools. for example, the nyt included a story about racism in elite girls’ schools in the city where a black alumnus described her treatment while she was a student (shapiro, e. 2020). she explained that “she had been a chapin student for less than a month when she was pulled into an office by a staff member and asked if she had taken $20 from a white classmate’s bag” (shapiro, e., 2020, para. 32). even though she explained that she had not stolen the money, her parents were called. according to the article, “the white classmate eventually found her misplaced bill” (shapiro, e., 2020, para. 33). these articles described both subtle and more overt instances of racism that seem to occur on an everyday basis. one article in the washington post (meckler et al., 2020) provided examples from across the country: in a school near tacoma, wash., a wrestling coach was fired after posting a photo of himself with another person's knee on his neck and the words "not dead yet." a michigan school board voted to fire its superintendent following a facebook comment partially blaming floyd for winding up in custody. and in rural colorado, a student posted on instagram a photo of a student kneeling on what looks like a young black cow's neck, with a caption that included the name "george" and the hashtag #icantbreathe. (para. 5) in another article in the washington post from 2017 (whitfield, 2017), a teacher from st. louis observed that male students discussed how, when walking with a group of friends, being questioned by the police was commonplace. these are kids i teach daily, who horseplay in the halls, cry when a classmate takes their pencils, laugh at corny jokes and fart loudly during instruction. they're children. but when police see them, these immature boys morph into suspects. the thought of one of my students being accosted by police and shot dead makes my ears red and my blood run boiling hot. and they recount these interactions with police as if they are telling me the weather. no emotion. it's normal to them. (para. 15) later in the article, the author laments the fact that she can’t spend time helping her students better understand the source of this racism and must instead continue to address curricular goals and standards that seem inconsequential in relation to her students’ lives. systemic racism while many of the articles in the previous category focused on examples of racism endured by individuals along with efforts to address those issues, other articles conveyed a broader systemic focus. for example, several articles focused on california’s effort to address feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 13 widespread inequality in educational outcomes between black and white students. one of those articles from the sun reporter in san francisco in 2016 (otiko & muhammad, 2016) discussed a research report, black minds matter, that focused on the academic achievement of black students in california. the article noted the importance of such a report because it clearly demonstrated that black students in california were “much more likely to be suspended or put into remedial or special education programs” as compared to their white peers (otiko & muhammad, 2016, para. 5). this article also cited the reports finding that “only 40 percent of black students who attend segregated (or predominantly black) high schools in low-income areas graduate” (otiko & muhammad, 2016, para. 13). such knowledge, the article suggested, was needed if these structural inequalities were to be remedied. other articles described the efforts of black lives matter activists to get schools to adopt curricula with a greater focus on the structural and systemic nature of racism. for example, one article from the los angeles times in 2020 (smith, 2020) discussed the efforts of local activists to get their school district to adopt “a curriculum developed by black lives matter, which includes lessons about structural racism, antiracism, the intersectionality of black and queer identities, and black history that goes beyond the 1960s” (smith, 2020, para. 10). other articles emphasized similar efforts to expand the curriculum to include a greater emphasis on black history, particularly reconstruction and the united states’ legacy of racial violence and exclusion. several articles about curriculum focused on the 1619 project and the zinn education project, both of which were designed to help students understand more about the roots of contemporary racial conflict. for example, one teacher in a 2018 article from the washington post (thomas-lester, 2018) noted that “u.s. history is often taught in this continuous arc of improvement, but post-reconstruction kind of destroyed that myth” and that teaching about this period helps students understand “that race-related advancements have often been followed by backlash” (thomas-lester, 2018, para. 18). “if you don’t teach that,” explained the teacher featured in the article every generation thinks that the things they are going through are new…when president trump won, i wasn't surprised at all because it fell in line with the way u.s. history has gone since the beginning. you have the election of the first black president followed by a president who supports white supremacy. that is actually how the united states works. (thomas-lester, 2018, para. 19) a similar statement was included in an article from the michigan chronicle in 2019 (hunter, 2019), focusing on detroit’s efforts to help students better understand the cause of racial division in the united states. according to the detroit teacher interviewed in the article, until teachers do a better job of educating their students about the harsh realities and racial injustice of slavery, as well as the humanity and creativity of those who were enslaved, they will never be able to help students understand today's disparities in wealth, education and incarceration. (hunter, 2019, para. 12) such framing suggests that knowledge about racial inequality is essential if students are to truly understand the way the united states works. other articles with this framing pointed out the structural impediments faced by teachers who wished to include black history more prominently in the curriculum. for example, an article in the new york times in 2019 (goldstein, 2019) focused on michigan’s efforts to reduce the amount of time dedicated to studying racial conflict within the social studies standards. feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 14 protesting these changes, one insightful student wrote to the state board of education pleading for greater coverage of these issues. “hiding our nation's sins isn't the right way to do it,” wrote the student, “teach us about everything -the good and the bad, so we can learn to think for ourselves” (goldstein, 2019, para. 24). the student also noted that the proposed changes would leave out discussion of the practice of redlining, which enforced and amplified the segregation of cities in michigan (goldstein, 2019, para. 25). the importance of being reflected in the curriculum finally, in addition to pointing out the need for schools and teachers to address the challenges posed by individual and systemic racism, these articles emphasized the value of school curricula that reflects black students’ history and culture. as one 2019 article from the afro american in baltimore emphasized (jordan, 2019), black students and students of color need to be able to understand that the version of history shared in most textbooks is incomplete. a teacher quoted in the article explains that “[a] lot of our work is centered around teaching the history that's left out of the curriculum, and ensuring from early childhood on to high, that we challenge the dominant narrative around race, class and gender,” (jordan, 2019, para. 6). the argument here is that challenging the dominant narrative requires a curriculum that recognizes the accomplishments and contributions of black americans while simultaneously critiquing existing inequality. another example of this framing comes from a 2015 article published in seattle’s international examiner (wu, 2015) explaining the importance of teaching about the united states’ history of discrimination in order to help black students and other students of color better advocate for social justice and racial equality. according to the author, for the majority of u.s. k-12 students, the american history that they learn are [sic.] about presidents, patriotism, and ideals such as liberty, democracy, and freedom. for students of color, this type of history negates their experience. ethnic studies give students of color the chance to learn about their history, empowering them. once students are empowered and activated, they will begin to question the racial hierarchy, advocate for their communities, and create radical change. that's what makes ethnic studies so dangerous, the discipline defers to people of color and challenges white supremacy. (wu, 2015, para. 16) this argument emphasizes the importance of knowing one’s history as a source of strength and empowerment – a central feature of this framing. many of the articles with this framing, 14 from the ethnic news watch database and 21 from u.s. major dailies, discuss the 1619 project and the curriculum designed to go with it. several of these articles explained that one of the goals of the project was to reframe the way black citizens understand their place in america. in one of these articles, nikole hannah-jones, the project’s leader, asserts her hope that the project will help black people “feel a sense of ownership over this country and a sense of pride in our resilience" (jones in gyarkye, 2019, para. 16). this type of framing suggests the importance of historical knowledge as a foundation for understanding contemporary issues. another example, published in 2018 in the los angeles times (kaleem, 2018), focused on efforts to implement ethnic studies programs in a wide variety of states, including texas, kansas, and california. this article articulated the value of surfacing history about the roots of racism and inequality in the u.s. the article emphasized the importance of ethnic studies as an antidote to the erasure and deletion of ethnic histories that often occurs in the public-school feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 15 curriculum. emphasizing the value of ethnic studies, the author describes an ethnic studies class at santa monica high school in california, where a recent lesson revolved around students discussing activism against gentrification in boyle heights, where art galleries and coffee shops have attracted white and more welloff newcomers in the traditionally mexican american, working-class neighborhood. (kaleem, 2018, para. 17) according to the article, such discussions help students explore multiple viewpoints and challenge students to think critically about their communities: the class really challenges you to think about your identity yourself,” said diana hernandez, a mexican american sophomore. “it helps us make more sense of what we're learning throughout the school day. (kaleem, 2018, para. 21) consistent with the sentiment expressed here, many of the articles with this framing emphasized the need for students to have access to accurate knowledge of past injustices so that they might better understand current issues. while the importance of being reflected in the curriculum framing was found in articles from both datasets, there were 21 articles with this framing in the ethnic news watch dataset, but only 16 in the u.s. major dailies. such a difference in framing between these datasets might be explained by differences in the intended audiences of the newspapers included in each set. for example, many of the articles in papers such as the washington red star, the international examiner, and the philadelphia tribune, as well as other papers included in the ethnic news watch database, are written to address the concerns of black readers and the members of ethnic groups. these concerns often include issues such as racism and inequality in american society. news in the mainstream press also addresses these concerns but may do so in ways intended to resonate with a whiter audience. according to the pew research center (2014), white readers make up the largest proportion of daily newspaper readership at 33%, while black readers make up 28%, and spanish/hispanic readers make up 20%. frame 2: activism and engaged citizenship the second most prominent frame cutting across articles in both datasets focused on the role of black lives matter in promoting opportunities for engaged citizenship, such as participation in protests, petitions, and teaching that emphasized the democratic process. this frame positioned schools as institutions with the capacity to address and potentially curb racism. there were 18 total articles with this framing: 12 were from u.s. major dailies databases, and six were from the ethnic news watch database. the first category below, blm is driving positive change included articles focused on developing the capacity for collective action and activism. the second category, curbing racism at school, focused on articles discussing schoolbased efforts to address systemic racism. the third category, counselors not cops, included articles aimed at defunding school safety officers. blm is driving positive change several examples in this category focused on the actions of students, student groups, teachers, and schools to further aspects of the blms agenda, such as ending “zero tolerance” discipline and including black history and ethnic studies in the school curriculum. for example, an article in the los angeles sentinel in 2020 (keller, 2020) described a rally held by el segundo high school students in los angeles to communicate a set of desired changes in the way the school district operates. according to a student quoted in the article, feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 16 the students for change coalition came up with a short list of demands that was somewhat promoted during various segments, such as, a request to modify curriculum, a better diverse faculty, and the implementation of a zero-tolerance policy… natasha lee, a senior at eshs, called for more hispanic and p.o.c. teachers in our faculty, so [the student-body] can see themselves represented. and integrate black and indigenous history into our curriculum because that history is our american history! (keller, 2020, para. 8) this focus on changing school culture and curriculum illustrates the connection between increased levels of student activism and the efforts of blms. this theme was also illustrated by a 2015 article in the new york amsterdam news (ashby, 2015) focused on a rally held by students at baltimore’s academy for the college bound. in this rally, the author explains that students held handmade signs, some with the names of young lives lost, such as mike brown and tamir rice. signs stating, “the dead cannot cry out for justice, it is a duty of the living to do so for them” and “black lives matter” were held high. (ashby, 2015) here, the author notes that the students in this school had studied the news and were familiar with the circumstances surrounding the deaths of sandra bland, trayvon martin, and freddie gray. another article from 2015 in the milwaukee courier (vaccaro, 2015) describes a school protest in response to the killing of freddie gray. the article focuses on the efforts of an eighthgrade social studies class that “took to the sidewalk, donning handmade signs, chanting the words ‘black lives matter; stop the violence!’” (vaccaro, 2015, para. 3). the article describes the teacher’s purpose in bringing his students to the protest as follows: to conley, the march was dual-purposed. it allowed students to live their lessons on the first amendment -the right to peaceably assemble and the right to free speech. not only that, but being able to experience protest first-hand as a participant gave students insight on what current issues require their attention and their efforts as nonviolent protestors. (vaccaro, 2015, para. 5) in this case, as in other articles in this category, teachers are described as using protests as opportunities for students to better understand their civics lessons by engaging directly in political action. this perspective is also evident in a 2019 article in the nyts focusing on youth activists (shapiro, 2019). this article described the actions of several youth leaders active in community politics. one student named aliyah is described as “joining protests and rallies as part of the new york civil liberties union's youth activism program” (shapiro, 2019, para. 25). she is also described as having attended a black lives matter rally that inspired her to get more involved. according to the article, she wants her friends back in the bronx to experience fewer arrests and suspensions in schools, for their metal detectors to be removed and for them to stop having to face police officers in schools. (shapiro, 2019, para. 26). articles with this framing emphasized the way black lives matter inspired young activists to get involved. in another example, from the washington post (lumpkin, 2020), students were described as being “[m]otivated by the death of george floyd, and eager to ride the national momentum generated by movements like black lives matter” (lumpkin, 2020, para. 4). in this particular case, the students wanted to get more involved in school politics so that they could feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 17 “demand that maryland schools rewrite their curriculum to be more honest about systemic racism and slavery” (lumpkin, 2020, para. 4). curbing racism at school many of these articles were also framed around the need to address racism in schools and challenge the racist treatment of black and minoritized youth by peers, teachers, and school administrators. several articles highlighted the efforts of student advocates to make schooling more equitable. for example, a 2020 article in the washington post describes one teacher who “helped organize a virtual conversation about race and inequity” (meckler, et. al., 2020, para. 1) where white and black students were grouped together for initial conversation but also had white students and black students discussing issues in homogeneous groups. in these discussions the white students talked about participating in protests during the pandemic and how to support black students without overstepping. black students spoke about their frustration that institutional racism doesn't end, despite protest after protest. (meckler et al., 2020, para. 12) such examples emphasize schools as places where differences in perspectives around race can be explored and worked out in a peaceful manner. in another example from 2020 in the chicago tribune (elbaum, 2020) a letter to the editor following the death of george floyd in minneapolis explains the pivotal role that social studies education could play in helping students challenge racism: as americans watched the police brutality in minneapolis, and the civil unrest that has followed, social studies educators were hopeful that their students could put the events into a broader perspective. u.s. history students should be able to see the parallel to america's long-standing reckoning with racial division, dating to 1619. civics students should be able to marshal their emotions into civic actions such as protesting, letterwriting, lobbying local officials and organizing to effect change. geography students should be able to understand how political and economic decisions have influenced cultural and environmental characteristics in certain neighborhoods and regions. (elbaum, 2020, para. 3) here again, this excerpt reinforces the idea that public schools can prepare students to both understand racism and address it through civic action. counselors not cops many of the articles were also critical of the role of police in schools and raised questions about whether or not police presence was beneficial. examples of the kinds of questions raised by these articles can be observed in a 2015 piece published in the washington post (brown, 2015). this article focused on the large number of school resource officers (43,000) and security guards (39,000) and connected these statistics with a long list of problematic and high-profile police actions in schools, such as the following: a florida school police officer was arrested and charged with child abuse in june for allegedly slamming a 13-year-old student to the ground and twisting his arm. in august, the american civil liberties union sued a kentucky sheriff after a deputy was caught on camera handcuffing disabled children who didn't follow directions. and in september, a federal judge ruled that school police in birmingham, ala., had used unconstitutional and excessive force when they routinely pepper-sprayed children for minor disciplinary feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 18 infractions -including a pregnant student whose offense was crying in a hallway. (brown, 2015, para. 9) the framing here suggests that incidents such as these, and the disproportionate number of disciplinary actions brought against black students and other students of color, have led students, parents, and others to demand that school funding for resource officers be reduced. such critique is consistent with blms’s effort to reduce funding for school resource officers in the hope that the funds saved will be able to support more school counselors. this desire to replace mechanisms of punishment and control with greater support and counseling is also represented in the following excerpt drawn from a 2020 article in the boston banner (miller, 2020). this excerpt describes boston teachers union president jessica tang’s efforts to convince school officials to reduce police presence in the schools: “we believe counselors need to be a higher funding priority over theoretically increasing the number of police in schools,” tang told school committee members. “with limited budgets and cuts we believe adequate access to social-emotional well-being, restorative practices and other efforts are more effective than increasing police presence in our schools.” tang joined dozens of teachers and students from bps schools at the school committee meeting who wore black lives matter tee-shirts. while not affiliated with the national black lives matter movement, the local effort is part of a national movement of teachers advocating against policies they say harm black children. (miller, 2020, para. 8) such framing suggests that the problems experienced by black students and other students of color at the hands of school police justify a reconsideration of the way that limited school funds should be spent. frame 3: defending american heritage and patriotism another prominent frame found in the news articles analyzed for this study centered on defending an ideology of american exceptionalism in the face of critiques by activists and scholars. of the 18 articles with this framing, ten were from u.s. major dailies databases and eight from the ethnic news watch database. many articles exhibited what some journalists have described as a “whitelash'' narrative. this term, which implies a white backlash against racial progress, was first used by the journalist van jones in his effort to explain why president trump was elected immediately following the presidency of barak obama (ryan, 2016). articles with this framing included a focus on the concerns of conservative whites and other groups who believe that highlighting inequality and ongoing injustice tarnishes the image of the united states and encourages students to adopt the identity of victims rather than selfmotivated individuals (will, 2020). articles with this framing suggest that it is better for students to understand what is admirable about the country and its founding values than it is to understand past wrongs and enduring inequalities. such a view has been frequently communicated by president trump. in a statement in october 2020, just prior to the presidential election, he expressed his view that “the united states of america is the most just and exceptional nation ever to exist on earth,” and schools should play a more active role in furthering this belief (trump, 2020b, para. 1). in analyzing these articles, it became clear that there were several distinct perspectives supporting this overarching view of american exceptionalism. these perspectives included the belief that efforts to address racism were divisive, fears that students were being indoctrinated with liberal perspectives, and general optimism about the benefits associated with patriotic and pro-american education. feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 19 one important caveat influencing this analysis is that all seven of the articles with this framing identified in the ethnic news watch database came from a single new york-based newspaper: the epoch times. according to roose (2020), writing in the new york times, the epoch times is associated with the falun gong religious movement. according to the paper’s founder, it was developed in response to censorship and persecution of the falun gong movement – a religious movement originating in china. the epoch times is highly critical of the communist party in china and supports conservative and far-right political perspectives. according to roose (2020), “the epoch times and its affiliates are a force in right-wing media, with tens of millions of social media followers spread across dozens of pages and an online audience that rivals those of the daily caller and breitbart news” (para. 6). such an overt conservative perspective is inconsistent with most of the other newspapers included in the ethnic news watch database. more typically, as shown in the sections above, the papers in this database support more liberal and left-leaning positions. addressing racism is problematic and divisive articles with this framing generally critiqued the efforts of educators and others wishing to address racism by broadening the school curriculum to include more black history and a better understanding of the nature of systemic racism. for example, one commentary in the epoch times (bauerlein, 2019) described such efforts as paving the way for the adoption of socialism in the united states. according to the author fifty years of revisionist history, multiculturalist literature and art classes, “hey, hey, ho, ho, western civ has got to go!” women’s studies, ethnic studies, black studies, native american studies, critical race theory, and queer theory have done their job. they have created a different america, a wicked one. they don’t speak of the “miracle at philadelphia,” as the constitutional convention was once labeled. they don’t appreciate the fact that in 1800 and in 1900, the united states was the most diverse country in the world, nor do they honor the united states for fighting germany and japan, the most venomously ethnocentric nations at that time. the american past is, instead, a ledger of national crimes. (bauerlein, 2019, para. 9) this mocking tone suggests that efforts to address inequality are unnecessary. moreover, the author advances the idea that multicultural history and literature make students think less of the united states. in several articles exhibiting this framing, the 1619 project is singled out as being particularly problematic because it provides a view of american history that challenges the idea of american exceptionalism and continuous progress. according to one author, the 1619 project is “a deliberate effort by the new york times to displace the moral authority of the signing of the declaration of independence as the heart of america's founding” (humphrey, 2019, para. 2). this same article suggests, “we should see the 1619 project for what it is: part of a comprehensive attempt at political revolution. it seeks to transform the american republican regime, which is based on equal rights for individuals, into one defined by identity politics and the unequal treatment of identity groups” (humphrey, 2019, para. 5). this framing suggests that efforts to educate students about the history of various racial and ethnic groups within the united states are destructive because it produces rancor among students as they begin to recognize patterns of injustice. this framing is also partially evident in several articles included in the u.s. major dailies database, some of which reported on president trump’s concern that “american schools feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 20 have become infected with revisionist ideas about the nation's founding and history, producing a new generation of ‘marxist’ activists and adherents of ‘critical race theory’ who believe american society to be fundamentally racist and wicked -and who have taken to the streets in recent months” (crowley, 2020, para. 8). while this article also critiqued president trump as becoming increasingly “unhinged,” elements of the article reflected the idea that those on the right perceive efforts to expand what is taught in school as part of a broader effort to destabilize american society. this point of view is also evident in the following example from the wall street journal (wall street journal editorial board, 2020) critiquing california’s efforts to develop an ethnic studies curriculum for public schools. according to the article, enforced identity politics and ‘intersectionality’ are on their way to replacing civic nationalism as america's creed. liberals who consider themselves moderate and don't understand the sense of urgency and assault felt by so many americans ought to read this curriculum. (wall street journal editorial board, 2020, para. 7) other articles with this frame go so far as to suggest that “barraging minorities with constant reminders of the injuries their ancestors suffered only discourages them from working to surmount the obstacles in their way” (woodson, 2019, para. 4). here again, is the idea that efforts to recognize inequality are more problematic than the underlying inequality itself. overall, this framing advances the view that efforts to teach students about historical injustices will create deeper divisions and problems for american society. rather than teach students about racial inequality, this framing suggests that educators should work to establish a universal sense of civic identity that transcends race and ethnicity. concerns about indoctrination a second concern within this framing suggests that students are being, or might be, indoctrinated with left-leaning ideologies that would lead to the adoption of socialism or possibly communism in the united states. for example, one author in the epoch times makes a comparison between current efforts to broaden the school curriculum and the strategy thought to be used by communists to sow discord in the united states during the cold war (holmquist, 2020). the author quotes the naked communist, an anti-communist book written in 1958, to illustrate what she believes is now occurring in public schools. get control of the schools. use them as transmission belts for socialism and current communist propaganda. soften the curriculum. get control of teachers' associations. put the party line in textbooks…we've had not a little experience with riots and protests lately, many of which have been heavily attended by young people. are they mere tools in the hands of an ideology we don't realize is pulling the strings? (holmquist, 2020, para. 3-5) such a perspective reveals the fear held by some conservatives that left-leaning teachers and schools will indoctrinate and manipulate students in an effort to undermine traditional democratic and capitalist ideologies. this framing is evident in several articles from the u.s. major dailies database that focus on president trump’s concerns about school curriculum. according to one article, “president trump pressed his case … that u.s. schools are indoctrinating children with a left-wing agenda hostile to the nation's founding fathers, describing efforts to educate students about racism and slavery as an insult to the country's lofty founding principles” (balingit & meckler, 2020, para. 1). the president is quoted as saying, “patriotic moms and dads are going to demand that their feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 21 children are no longer fed hateful lies about this country… american parents are not going to accept indoctrination in our schools, cancel culture at work or the repression of traditional faith, culture, and values in the public square. not anymore” (balingit & meckler, 2020, para. 5). a similar editorial in the wall street journal, focusing on supporters of senator bernie sanders, summed up this perspective in its title: young adults today received a steady diet of socialjustice, secular-progressive and climate-change dogma from grade school to graduate school (peters, 2020). within the article, the author maintains that if you are blessed to be born in a country that has outperformed the world for 400 years and still offers better prospects for a comfortable lifestyle than any other nation, and you think the country needs a radical makeover by bernie sanders, you were punked by the left-wing ideologues teaching your social-studies classes. (peters, 2020) the suggestion that social studies teachers are radicals pushing a socialist, communist, and antiamerican agenda underscores the growing distrust of public institutions. this discourse has pitted those who would like to see greater recognition of diverse perspectives and identities in american society against those who are intent on preserving traditional perspectives and values that privilege whites. patriotic and pro-american education several articles with this pro-american and patriotic framing highlighted the president’s effort to “restore patriotic education to our schools” (crowley, 2020, para. 2). some of these articles featured president trump’s plan to develop, with the aid of conservative historians, an overtly pro-american curriculum. he titled the group working on this curriculum the “1776 commission” so as to commemorate the american revolution and also challenge the “1619 project” described earlier. in one of these articles, president trump explains his belief that this project will “encourage our educators to teach our children about the miracle of american history and make plans to honor the 250th anniversary of our founding” (crowley, 2020, para. 18). supporting this patriotic approach to education, one article in the wall street journal reported on an interview with e.d. hirsch, the conservative english professor and founder of the core knowledge foundation (schaefer-riley, 2020). hirsch’s most recent book is titled how to educate a citizen. hirsch is described in the article as agreeing with the sentiments of political scientist richard rorty, who believed that “in the name of 'the politics of difference,' [the left] refuses to rejoice in the country it inhabits. it repudiates the idea of a national identity, and the emotion of national pride" (rorty in schaefer-riley, 2020, para. 8). following up on this idea, hirsch explains that “[p]atriotism is important because we want to make our society work” (hirsch in schaefer-riley, 2020, para. 12). another piece published in the wall street journal (fields, 2020) provides a similar perspective on the importance of traditional values. according to this author, “public schools today—like the ones using "1619" in their curriculum—rely on one-size-fits-all secular humanistic indoctrination to dumb down american children and drive wedges between them and their parents” (fields, 2020, para. 8). to remedy this attack on traditional values, the author suggests that, we must safeguard our children's innocence by opposing the false prophets of our day while constructing a viable alternative for them. this project entails returning to our first love, judeo-christian values, and our first principles of liberty and justice codified in the declaration of independence by imperfect but prescient men. (fields, 2020, para. 11) feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 22 this kind of patriotic rhetoric, couched in biblical terms, demonstrates the underlying sense among a segment of the population that traditional values are under attack and must be reinforced if they are to be preserved for the next generation. such perspectives fail to acknowledge the role of race in perpetuating present-day inequality. looking at the defending american patriotism and heritage frame across datasets reveals that, except for articles published in the conservative epoch times, there were no other articles drawn from the ethnic news watch database that reflected this point of view. looking at the u.s. major dailies database, six of ten articles with patriotic framing were published in the wall street journal. the number of articles with this type of patriotic framing by news source is illustrated in figure 4 below. figure 4 number of articles with patriotism/heritage framing by newspaper conclusions if one steps back from the close reading of the news presented above, it is possible to detect the outlines of two competing narratives. the first narrative is about efforts to recognize and address systemic injustice and racism. this story encompasses the first two frames identified in my analysis, changing the dominant narrative and activism and engaged citizenship. both of these frames highlight the effort of students, teachers, and parents to address various forms of racism as they work toward realizing the, as yet unfulfilled, ideals of the declaration of independence. such ideals, explains beach (beach, 2007), include “equality; inalienable rights; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; government ruled by the consent of the governed; laws for public good and principles of freedom for all” (p. 160). the second narrative emphasizes the role of schools in developing a strong national identity as a strategy to promote civic and political stability. this narrative is at the core of the third frame identified in my analysis, defending american heritage and patriotism. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 the epoch times, ny edition wsj nyt washington post los angeles times n u m b e r o f a rt ic le s number of articles with patriotism/heritage framing by newspaper feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 23 understood from a historical perspective, these narratives align closely with two longstanding perspectives on the american dream. these views, explains beach (2007), are as old as the nation itself yet still resonate in the modern-day. from one perspective, the american dream is seen as being radically egalitarian and focused on the moral imperative of achieving greater equality and broader access to opportunity. from the other perspective, the american dream is understood as being more focused on maintaining the social order through meritocratic processes. these contrasting visions of the american dream have been invoked by competing political interests for generations as they seek to legitimate their desired approach to education. according to the conservative view of the american dream, the nation has made sufficient efforts to address past discrimination; the remaining social inequality is simply the result of a fair and well-functioning meritocracy. this view has informed efforts in as many as forty-one states to limit public schools' ability to offer ethnic studies, diversity training, or to discuss concepts such as racism and sexism in particular ways (schwartz, 2021). however, such a view ignores centuries of discrimination and existing inequalities that track too closely to racial boundaries for this assertion to hold. to some degree, the defending american heritage and patriotism frame rests on white grievances about supposed “reverse discrimination.” while popular on the right, such a view lacks empirical support and fails to consider how the idea of meritocracy might serve as a cover for systemic injustice and structural racism (hochschild & scovronick, 2004). moreover, many in the blm movement believe that public schools have not done nearly enough to help students understand that racial discrimination has been and continues to be a defining feature of american society. while the blm movement has largely been concerned with inequalities in policing based on race, its efforts have also raised questions about inequality in many social spheres ranging from issues of economic status to sexual identity, gender identity, disability, and inequality in public education. through sustained political action, this movement has demanded that the united states consider the various ways that black lives have been devalued. in doing so, the movement has provided further support for the egalitarian version of the american dream focused on creating a more equal society. part of this vision rests on efforts to make the school curriculum and educational practices more culturally relevant. along these lines, the historian jill lepore (2022) reports that since 2020 seventeen states have made efforts in this direction which expand the teaching of anti-racist history. as the blm movement has gained momentum, it has also created anxiety among those interested in maintaining the status quo. supporting this perspective, waldstreicher (2020), addressing a conservative critique of the 1619 project, observed that efforts to reconsider historical questions such as whether or not the american revolution was truly anti-slavery are often met with resistance because they have the potential to empower the disenfranchised. such backlash is easily observed within the articles conforming to the defending american heritage and patriotism frame. one clear example is former president trump’s creation of the 1776 commission in order to promote “patriotic” education. this move can be interpreted as a not-sosubtle effort to restore “traditional” values in the public schools and bolster meritocracy. such a move, however, also conveys the president’s fear that he and his supporters are quickly losing their grip on some of the systems that have successfully conveyed status and privilege to a narrow (i.e., white) segment of the american population based on my analysis, stories reflecting both versions of the american dream can be found in the mainstream press as well as the more narrowly focused ethnic press. however, my feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 24 findings suggest that these stories are not equally represented in each dataset. i found more stories with the changing the dominant narrative frame in the articles from the ethnic news watch database (see figure 1, above) than in the u.s. major dailies database. except for articles from the epoch times, there was also a greater focus on the egalitarian version of the american dream in news articles from the ethnic news watch database than in the u.s. major dailies database. while it is difficult to discern an overarching pattern in these differences, they make sense, given the intended audience of these news outlets. for example, the fact that black and ethnic newspapers would be more likely to print articles framed around challenging the dominant narrative—a framing that recognizes anti-black racism and injustice makes more sense than framing that conforms with defending american heritage and patriotism, which likely resonates more strongly with whiter audiences. the stakes in this ideological struggle are high. as the blm protests in the summer of 2020 involving over half a million people (buchanan et al., 2020) demonstrate, public debate regarding the true nature of the american dream endures. as the divisions in our society grow, developing a stronger understanding of the role of the news media in shaping public sentiment becomes more important. as shannon (2011) explains, news frames often compete with each other for dominance and have the power to shape our thoughts and actions. our ability to understand the way that news framing shapes discourse and ultimately our perceptions is an important factor influencing our ability to decide which vision of the american dream should ultimately prevail. the efforts of blm and other groups to press for social, political, and educational change have emphasized the cause of social justice. while an increased focus on social justice in the mainstream media is welcome, the backlash is strong, and citizens are far from united in a common vision of the american dream. given the divisions in our society, it is incumbent on educators to help the public discern and grapple with the competing frames frequently concealed in the news. feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 25 references agrawal, n. 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(2015). the elephant is still in the room: race and the backlash against ethnic studies. international examiner, 21, 3. http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2019/08/the_1619_project_curriculum_challenges_teachers_reframe_us_history.html?cmp=soc-shr-fb http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2019/08/the_1619_project_curriculum_challenges_teachers_reframe_us_history.html?cmp=soc-shr-fb feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 30 appendix a articles used in the analysis from the proquest ethnic news watch database date of publication city of publication newspaper article title 5/9/2015 mil milwaukee courier eighth-graders protest for school and black lives 7/25/2015 mil milwaukee courier student to uwm mentor: 'thank you for being a role model' 8/5/2015 seattle international examiner connecting disproportionality, achievement to educational policies and practices 8/13/2015 nyc new york amsterdam news children march for peace 11/4/2015 seattle international examiner the elephant is still in the room: race and the backlash against ethnic studies 12/3/2015 jacksonville fl the jacksonville free press will race be an issue in the 2016 election? 2/4/2016 nyc new york beacon why we celebrate black history month 2/11/2016 jackson miss. jackson advocate what's needed: black history with a purpose 2/18/2016 san fran sun reporter black minds matter movement: california is failing black students 5/5/2016 whippany, nj jewish news 'justice educator' on 'white skin' privilege 10/3/2016 new orl. the louisiana weekly naacp, baeo at odds of charter schools 3/24/2017 ind the indianapolis recorder revolutionary reading 4/1/2017 mil milwaukee courier vote april 4 for children, curriculum, culture, community 1/31/2018 seat and port the skanner black lives matter vancouver seeks volunteers 2/17/2018 balt afro-american local school teach black lives matter 2/16/2019 wdc afro-american red star school week of action brings go go, education 8/20/2019 nyc the epoch times the 1619 project and the fight for the minds and hearts of american children 9/18/2019 mich michigan chronicle 1619 project discussion sails into detroit 11/21/2019 nyc the epoch times the nation must be re-educated! 1/25/2020 mil milwaukee courier we’ve come too far to turn around: why milwaukeeans should support mps’ referendum feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 31 date of publication city of publication newspaper article title 2/13/2020 bos the boston banner teachers give lesson on black lives matter 2/20/2020 la los angeles sentinel author and historian, blair imani sheds light on great migration 3/20/2020 nyc the epoch times bob woodson and the birth of the 1776 initiative 6/4/2020 la los angeles sentinel the heinous murder of george floyd and race in america 6/24/2020 dearfield beach, fl jewish journal alumni call on jewish day schools to do more to fight against racism 7/3/2020 ind the indianapolis recorder ips created racial equity policy 7/9/2020 la los angeles sentinel students for change rally at library park 7/14/2020 phi philadelphia tribune philly school district right to pursue anti-racism initiative 7/26/2020 phi philadelphia tribune senator targets funding for teaching 1619 project 8/1/2020 mia caribbean today caribbean american candidate wants black history education 8/4/2020 nyc the epoch times let's take back our schools 8/5/2020 nyc the epoch times the 1958 'psychological warfare' plan playing out before us 8/13/2020 bos the boston banner a hopscotch step backwards? 9/1/2020 nyc the epoch times love is the answer making america great again 9/17/2020 wdc washington informer has 'unhinged trump' secured 'political popularity' through racist tropes? 9/22/2020 nyc the epoch times kids must learn history to avoid being gaslighted by media feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 32 appendix b articles used in the analysis from the proquest u.s. major dailies database date of publication city of publication newspaper article title 8/2/2016 nyc nyt at school, a 'march' through the civil rights movement in visual detail 8/21/2016 nyc nyt condemnation of charter schools exposes a rift among black americans 9/18/2016 nyc nyt readers' stories about race and education 10/19/2016 nyc nyt teaching seventh graders in a shocking election season 2/19/2017 nyc nyt when the equation is unequal 5/9/2017 wdc washington post driver's ed in va. to teach about traffic stops 10/8/2017 wdc washington post facing racism is part of life in st. louis and my classroom 1/15/2018 wdc washington post drawing lessons from largely forgotten history 2/16/2018 la los angeles times ethnic studies programs thriving; national tensions over race and immigration fuel the curriculum trend in public schools. 4/8/2019 nyc nyt a more perfect civics lesson? 'democracy' itself is up for debate 8/18/2019 nyc nyt how the 1619 project came together 8/18/2019 la los angeles times ethnic studies to get another look; 8/21/2019 la los angeles times expansion would hobble ethnic studies, critics say 8/23/2019 la los angeles times war of words delays ethnic studies bill; an ethnic studies requirement for all high school students in california is placed on hold. 8/29/2019 nyc wsj the 1619 project' hurts blacks 9/5/2019 nyc nyt change from within: city's students are on the front lines 11/25/2019 nyc nyt teacher threw away students' black lives matter posters, the a.c.l.u. says 1/24/2020 la los angeles times glendale unified may add black lives matter week; board discusses holding observance in february to cultivate pride and self-worth. 2/19/2020 nyc wsj upward mobility: a bid to revise the new york times's bad history feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 33 date of publication city of publication newspaper article title 2/19/2020 nyc nyt why the big swarms of young sandernistas? 6/8/2020 chicago chicago tribune voice of the people 6/12/2020 wdc washington post protests provide teachable moments 6/13/2020 nyc nyt some districts remove police from the schools, seeing them as a threat 6/17/2020 nyc nyt elite nyc girls’ schools have a racist culture, black alumni say 6/17/2020 la los angeles times activists, students, parents rally to eliminate l.a. school police; 6/20/2020 wdc washington post baltimore students press for anti-racist curriculum 7/21/2020 la los angeles times who gets to be called an 'activist'? 8/1/2020 la los angeles times 1619 project discussion sails into detroit 8/2/2020 la los angeles times accounts of racism spur change at elite l.a. schools 8/2/2020 wdc washington post the lies our textbooks told my generation of virginians about slavery 8/20/2020 nyc wsj the left still blames america first 8/28/2020 la los angeles times t-shirt ignites threats against teacher 8/31/2020 nyc wsj california's radical indoctrination 9/7/2020 nyc nyt lightfoot: trump's threat to cut funding to districts that teach '1619 project' is 'hot air' 9/9/2020 chicago chicago tribune lightfoot: trump's threat to cut funding to districts that teach '1619 project' is 'hot air' 9/9/2020 la los angeles times trump's diversity training issues 9/11/2020 nyc wsj god, parents and the '1619 project' 9/12/2020 nyc wsj bad teaching is tearing america apart 9/18/2020 nyc nyt trump calls for 'patriotic education' for american children 9/18/2020 wdc washington post trump attacks public schools feuerstein: school curriculum in the news current issues in education, 23(1) 34 author notes abe feuerstein https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4343-6854 bucknell university abe.feuerstein@bucknell.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4343-6854 mailto:abe.feuerstein@bucknell.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 6, number 4 march 7, 2003 issn 1099-839x how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners curt dudley-marling boston college homework is the focus of many versions of educational reform; yet research on the efficacy of homework as a means of raising student achievement is mixed at best. even less certain is the impact of homework on the lives of families, particularly family relationships. this study used interviews to examine how a diverse group of parents whose children struggled academically perceived the effects of homework on their families. in general, the presence of homework had a disruptive effect on the lives of these families, reducing the time available for family activities and diminishing the quality of family interactions. in these families, homework was a carrier for school troubles, a means by which “school troubles” were transformed into “family troubles.” every child . . . should be required to do at least two hours of homework a night, or they're being cheated for the rest of their lives. (newt gingrich, in spring, 1997, p. 16) a taken-for-granted assumption underlying current versions of educational reform is that "there should be a close and intimate relationship between families and education or between home and school in order to achieve effective . . . schooling" (david, 1993, p. 11). recent federal legislation aims "to strengthen partnerships between parents and professionals in meeting the educational needs of children aged birth through 5 and the working relationship between home and school" (u.s. department of education, 1998, on-line) by requiring local school districts to develop written policies for involving parents in their children's education (u.s. department of education, 2002a, on-line). federal and state governments have also sponsored a range of initiatives for encouraging parent involvement. home for the holidays reading together, a campaign to encourage families to read with their children launched by u.s. secretary of education rod paige in december, 2001 (us department of education, 2001), is typical of a wide range of federal and state initiatives for promoting parent involvement in their children's schooling. similar initiatives encouraging parent involvement in their children's schooling have been undertaken in canada, great britain, australia, and new zealand (whitty, power, & halpin, 1998). the desire to "strengthen partnerships between parents and [school] professionals" is based on at least two assumptions: 1) parents "should be available both at home and in the school to work with their children in support of their education" (standing, 1999, p. 57), and 2) student achievement rises when schools make a concerted effort to enlist parents' help in fostering children's learning (u.s. department of education, on-line, 1997). these assumptions about parent involvement are supported by a body of research indicating a strong, positive relationship between parent involvement and higher levels of school achievement, particularly in reading current issues in education vol. 6 no. 4 (balli, demo, & wedman, 1998; green, 1995; lareau, 1989; stevenson & baker, 1987). perhaps the most common manifestation of parents' work in support of their children's education is homework, 1 which is "among the panaceas that policymakers have suggested for improving education" (corno, 1996, p. 27). in a climate of fiscal restraint, increasing the volume of homework has been particularly attractive to politicians and educational policymakers who view the labor of parents as a cost-effective way to enhance learning time as a means of boosting student achievement (keith, 1987; smith, 1998). the u.s. department of education, for example, has made available a variety of materials to help parents with their children's homework as part of the "no child left behind" legislation (u.s. department of education, 2002a, 2002b). demands for more homework are bolstered by the conventional wisdom that homework has the power to foster discipline, responsibility, and initiative (mcdermott, goldman, & varenne, 1984). a publication from the u.s. department of education (1987) makes the additional claim that homework has the power to increase students' love of learning in and out of school. newt gingrich's desire that "every child . . . do at least two hours of homework a night" (in spring, 1997, p. 16) remains unfulfilled, but, since the early 1980s, there has been a significant increase in the amount of homework children do each evening. the amount of time sixto eight-year-old american school children spend doing homework has nearly tripled in the last twenty years from forty-four minutes to over two hours per week (hofferth, 1998) and, in some school districts, even pre-kindergartners and kindergartners may have at least thirty minutes of homework each night (loupe, 1999). the proliferation of books written to help parents cope with the demands of homework (e.g., canter & hausner, 1988; rosemond, 1990) attests to the significance of homework in the lives of contemporary families. the data on the efficacy of increasing homework as a means of improving student achievement are mixed, however. numerous studies have been marshalled either to support (e.g., black, 1996; huntsinger, 1999; keith, 1982, 1986) or to challenge (e.g., cooper, 1989, 1999; cooper, lindsay, nye, & greathouse, 1998; corno, 1996; paschal, 1984) claims made about the benefits of homework. however, because of "the number and complexity of influences on the effectiveness of homework, no simple, general finding that proves or disproves the utility of homework has been forthcoming" (cooper, 1989, p. 5). in the most comprehensive review of research on homework undertaken to date, harris cooper (1989) concluded that the effect of homework on academic achievement is largely a function of grade level; that is, homework has the greatest effect on the academic achievement of high school-age students, but has only a minimal effect on elementary students. research on homework has overwhelmingly focused on the positive effects of homework, usually in terms of academic achievement. researchers have rarely considered the possibility that homework might have negative effects for children or their families. an exception is an ethnographic study by varenne and mcdermott (1999) which suggests that homework may force parents into unwanted roles that strain, at least temporarily, family relations (varenne & mcdermott, 1999). other research suggests that homework may also trouble family relationships by reducing the time families have available for participating in leisure activities (cooper, 1989; kralovec & buell, 2000; samway, 1986). it is likely, however, that not all families experience homework in the same way accounting for the fact that while some parents demand more homework for their children (strother, 1984) other parents view homework as a "curse put on parents" (mcdermott, goldman, & varenne, 1984, p. 391). the variation in parents' responses to homework may be obscured by the nearly exclusive reliance on quantitative methodology to study homework. quantitative methods, with their emphasis on statistically constructed average parents, efface the meaning of parent involvement for individual mothers and fathers. research and policy discourses on parental involvement, including homework, also suffer from a fixation on normative families. smith (1998), for example, observed that, "schools, school curriculum, and the professional training of teachers orient to the idealized middle-class family of two parents, one of whom (understood usually to be the mother) does not work in paid employment and is available to support the schools her children attend" (p. 23). in general, parents' involvement in their children's homework has been presented as an "unproblematic, ungendered concept, free from class and cultural associations" (standing, 1999, p. 57). it is clear, however, that the implications of parent involvement are not the same for all parents. homework may pose a special challenge for students who struggle academically, for example (bursuck, 1994); therefore, homework may be particularly disruptive for their families (lareau, 1989). varenne and mcdermott (1999) observed that homework is often a means by which children's role as people "not good at doing school" is imported into the home. if identities are constructed in the context of relationships organized around particular activities file:///d:/dropbox/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number4/index.html%23endnote1 how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 3 (gergen, 1990), then homework by infusing the tensions of children's struggles in school into ordinary daily activities provides the occasion for creating dysfunctional identities for both students and their families. the research reported here addresses the effects of homework on families and family relations; specifically, how a diverse group of parents each of whom had a child who struggled academically in school perceived the effects of homework on their families. in general, the data presented here indicate that homework seriously disrupted the lives of the families interviewed for this study. i begin by describing the research methods employed in this study including the sample, data collection procedures, and data analysis. i then summarize the findings of the study; specifically how the parents i interviewed perceived the effects of homework on their families and family relationships. this section is organized according to the major themes that emerged from the data analysis: 1) parents' perceptions of the demands of homework; 2) parents' involvement in children's homework; 3) parents' taking on the role of their children's teachers; and, 4) the effect of homework on family routines and relationships. i conclude by discussing the implications of this study for teachers and educational policy makers. the study the purpose of this study was to better understand how parents of children for whom school is a struggle experience their children's homework. in other words, i was interested in parents' experiences with homework and how homework affected their lives and the lives of other family members. interviewing is a particularly useful technique for "understanding the experience of other people and the meaning they make of that experience" (seidman, 1998, p. 3). therefore, i conducted twenty-three interviews with families who self-identified as having at least one child for whom school was a struggle. the interviews were open-ended and ranged from forty-five minutes to one hour and fifty minutes in length, averaging just over one hour for each interview. sixteen of the families i interviewed lived in the canadian province of ontario and seven families resided in the mid-western united states. the participants included married couples and single mothers, although, even in two-parent families, some fathers were unable or unwilling to be interviewed. in all, i interviewed six single mothers; ten mothers from two-parent families; and, seven couples. therefore, the findings presented here tend to favor the perspectives of mothers. the sample included parents from a range of racial, socioeconomic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds. i interviewed asian (2), black (8), and white (13) parents. five families i interviewed were immigrants to canada. two families were mandarin speakers who did not speak english in their homes. most of the parents interviewed were middle-class, but the interviewees included poor and working class families. less than half of the parents i interviewed had completed college. several parents indicated that they had not graduated from high school including a mother who completed only six years of schooling. four of the parents i interviewed had graduate degrees. potential interviewees for this study were identified with the help of university colleagues and school personnel although i knew three families before i undertook this study. for example, three families were identified with the assistance of a university-based sociologist whose work focuses on black, urban communities. the two mandarinspeaking mothers i interviewed were identified with the help of a multicultural consultant working in a large school board. six families were identified with the help of the director of a university-affiliated reading clinic in southwestern ohio. a woman who organizes tutoring services for families of students with learning disabilities in southern ohio recommended two families to me. several other families were located with the assistance of four principals working in southern ontario schools. one family was located by placing an ad in a newsletter published by a private school in ontario. other families were identified through the use "snowball sampling" (that is, parents i interviewed sometimes suggested the names of other parents they thought i might be interested in interviewing). the struggling learners discussed with parents included eight girls and fifteen boys ranging from eight to seventeen years of age. most of these students attended public schools although two were being home-schooled and two others attended private schools. there were significant differences in the degree to which the children i discussed with parents struggled in school. the majority of the children did poorly in most school subjects and a few exhibited serious behaviour problems. twelve of the children had been identified as learning disabled or language disordered and one child had been identified as gifted. one student was enrolled in an esl program. five students had never been formally labelled, but had received some type of remedial assistance during their school careers. what all the children had in common was their parents' perceptions that they were not doing well in school. i relied on open-ended questions to get parents to talk about the nature of their children's struggles in school and how school troubles had current issues in education vol. 6 no. 4 affected them and their families. when interviews bogged down i referred to an interview guide (weiss, 1995) which indicated the general areas i was interested in talking about with parents, including, for example, queries about the effects of their child's struggles in school in general and the effects of homework in particular on family relationships and routines. i read transcriptions of the audiotaped interviews several times before attempting to generate categories that would account for the interview data. as i read and re-read the data, these categories emerged as core themes from parents' accounts of their families' responses to school failure. these themes did not emerge from any a priori categories or theoretical frames. the data were then coded according to the themes that were then used as the basis of an analysis of how school troubles affected the lives of these families (bogdan & biklen, 1982; weiss, 1995). specifically, data were analyzed through a process bogdan and biklen (1982) call "modified analytic induction"; that is, data were collected and analyzed to develop a "loose descriptive theory" that encompassed all cases of the phenomena" (p. 66), in this case, how a diverse group of parents perceived the effects of homework on the lives of their families. the impact of homework on families of struggling learners the parents interviewed for this study indicated that homework was a significant presence in their homes occupying the time of children and parents who monitored and supported children's homework, often taking on the role of their child's teacher. parents indicated that homework frequently reduced time available for family leisure time activities and domestic chores. overall, the demands of homework disrupted the lives of these families, frequently upsetting family relationships and denying parents and children many of the pleasures of family life. these themes are documented in the following sections. the demands of homework homework is a "simple and well-accepted fact" (mcdermott, goldman, & varenne, 1984, p. 391) in most homes, but its presence looms larger in some homes than others. edna bunker 2 the mother of an eighth-grade boy who struggled in school, commented, "[my son] spends hours and hours and hours on homework. all weekend long, all night long. it's dreadful. just dreadful." she added, "there's more to life than homework." mrs. bunker frequently admonished her son to "hurry up so that we can do something else" but homework rarely left time for "something else." betty springs also complained that her ninth-grade son spent "two, three, and four hours a night" on homework to "get just kind of passing grades." betty's husband, martin, added: "sam wasn't sitting in front of the tv and watching television. he was doing his homework. . . . no student should be doing that much homework." the springs and bunkers might have expected that homework assignments would occasionally intrude on their families' leisure time. still, the demands of their sons' homework went beyond what these parents considered reasonable, a perspective shared by nearly all of the parents i interviewed. 3 sheila mcisaac, an irish immigrant, commented on her son's first few years in school: "there was always homework. . . . there were hours of homework. in the evening sitting at the kitchen table just doing it over and over and over again. it was quite stressful." the intrusion of homework into their family life eventually led the mcisaac's to home-school their son. john cooper had a similar perspective on his son's homework. "peter was bringing home seven, eight, nine pages of [home]work a night. . . . i just thought it was ridiculous for a first grader to do so much [home]work . . . two, two and a half, three hours. " mrs. cooper added, "it wasn't difficult work for him to complete. it just took all evening. and sometimes i was getting up in the morning, 'okay, you didn't finish this page, you have to do it before you go to school.'" single mother betty blake offered a similar assessment of the heavy demands of homework when her son was in second grade. "timmy was bringing home homework like he was in high school," she said. "i couldn't believe it. we'd get home and we'd be doing homework until ten o'clock at night." clearly, homework was a significant presence in the homes of the parents i interviewed 3 and parents indicated that their children's learning difficulties were a significant factor in the amount of homework they had each night. the "hours" of homework timmy blake brought home each night, for example, was mostly work he had not completed in school because he spent so much time attending to "what was going on around him," as his mother put it. parents also emphasized the effect academic difficulties had on the amount of time it took for their children to complete homework assignments. children who struggled with reading, for example, had particular difficulty completing homework assignments. mr. mcisaac observed that homework “would take so long [because] there were a lot of problems involved with reading. math problems that involved a lot of reading would be so laborious that it would take forever. it would take hours to do homework.” file:///d:/dropbox/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number4/index.html%23endnote2 file:///d:/dropbox/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number4/index.html%23endnote3 file:///d:/dropbox/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number4/index.html%23endnote3 how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 5 ralph thorn recalled how his son al's distractibility influenced the amount of time he spent working with al's homework. “it would take us two, three hours, four hours every night,” he told me, “to get through fifteen, twenty minutes worth of homework”: in a household where there are other outside noises going on and everything, the slightest little disruption . . . al would focus on what was going on; it was just that al was focussing on everything that was going on …it was a pretty difficult task for both of us. edna bunker blamed her son's "perfectionism" for the amount of time it took him to complete his homework: this year he had to do something for language arts and he was 98% finished, [but] because he is a perfectionist, it wasn't finished enough for him. he was ready to throw the whole thing away. i said, "mike, just do the good copy, just hand it in as it is. . . . at least you will get a grade." but he was ready to dump the whole thing because he gets so frustrated if it's not the way he wants it. he spends hours and hours and hours on homework. poor organizational skills was another reason mike had difficulty with his homework. every afternoon mrs. bunker met her son at the door with a "big stop sign" which was her humorous way of asking her son to stop and think: "do you know what homework you have tonight?" "do you have what you need to complete your homework?" often he did not. in general, homework was a significant presence in the homes of the parents i interviewed that occupied the time of children and parents. in these families, if children had a lot of homework, then so did their parents. parents’ involvement in children’s homework many educators recommend that parents find a quiet place for children to do homework away from the noise and distractions of family activities (strother, 1984). certainly, children will seek the help of parents with the spelling of a word, a difficult math problem, or confusing directions and teachers will occasionally assign projects that require the assistance of parents. most parents will also assume responsibility for monitoring children's homework. but, it is often understood that homework is the child's responsibility, not the parents' (keith, 1986). the parents i interviewed indicated that, for their children, homework was rarely a solitary activity. diane riggs, for example, continually referred to her son's homework in our interview as "our homework" and so it was for most of the parents i interviewed. in these families, homework was a collaborative activity involving children and parents. there were differences in the level of support children required and the kind of assistance parents were capable of providing, but, if homework made significant demands on the time of students who struggled in school, it made similar demands on their parents. carol dumay bemoaned the fact that when her daughter georgina was in first and second grade she wasn't able to do her homework independently. "[homework] was a problem. i had to sit right there with her. i couldn't leave her on her own . . . 'cause she didn't work independently. she always wanted you there, to help her." betty blake indicated that her son timmy required a high level of support with math problems. "i understand that i have to help with homework," she told me, "but the depth in which i have to help him with his homework is what frustrates me. like, i don't understand how come he is not picking this up at school. he should be able to just come home and do the work." but, since timmy could not "just come home and do the work," his homework was also his mother's homework. many parents of elementary school children, like carol dumay and betty blake, told me that their children needed constant support while they did homework, but even parents of older students indicated that their daughters and sons often insisted that a parent sit with them while they did homework. edna bunker spoke of her thirteen-year-old son mike's need for her to "be there" while he did his homework: mike wants someone to sit one-onone with him [while he does his homework]. and so i'll do that for a while. but i get frustrated too because it goes on and on and on. it's not like he can just sit there and get the stuff done quickly. it goes on and on . . . and so it's frustrating. diane riggs also talked about the demands of supporting her son's homework: every night there's always something. . . . his math he's very good at so i don't have to worry about that, unless it comes out with word problems, then i have to read it for him. . . . and if it's grammar i have to read through it. . . . or it might be a book report or current issues in education vol. 6 no. 4 something like that and i have to help him with his spelling [and] trying to figure out what he wants to say. so i'm doing a lot of the work. tanya wallace recalled how she and her husband supported their daughter's writing assignments by helping her to edit her written work. "we used to help catherine a lot with editing her writing because of her spelling. . . . in seventh and eighth grade we would edit for her. we tried everything. but then rewriting took so long." and, as other parents told me, the time homework took was stressful and frustrating for tanya, her husband, and catherine. if all the parents didn't feel that they needed to sit with their children all the time they were doing homework, nearly all the parents i interviewed discussed the amount of time they had to spend monitoring children's homework and helping them to organize their school work. parents generally felt that without careful monitoring their children would have difficulty even beginning their homework. "mike is so disorganized," mrs. bunker told me. "he comes home for lunch and he comes home at the end of the day and you're [always] monitoring." monitoring included making sure mike knew what homework he had been assigned; seeing that he had all the resources and materials needed to complete his assignments; and, checking to see that his homework had been completed. mike was among many children who, their parents told me, often failed to write down assignments or left assignments at school. catherine connor's description of her son, max, who was in fourth grade at the time of our interview, echoed a common theme among the parents i interviewed. "typically, max does not bring home the textbook that's got the homework he needs. he always forgets that." edna bunker often drove her son back to the school to collect materials he needed for his homework, something other parents i interviewed only threatened to do. if parents felt that they needed to monitor their children's homework, "nagging" may have been the principal means parents used to make sure their children's homework was completed. single mother, elma kinkead, described what she said was a typical interaction between her and her teenage daughter over homework. "every day i go in and ask andrea: 'have you done your homework?' 'what are you doing?' 'what kind of marks are you getting?'" diane riggs shared a similar story. "i'm badgering my son every night for his homework," she said. "you know, he loves the computer, so he's on the computer. 'roger, come on, let's do our homework.'" edna bunker spoke for many parents when she told me, "it's always: 'do you have it done?' all day long. if you would hear us, that's all we're saying. hurry up and get it done." the parents i interviewed expended considerable time and emotional energy getting children to complete homework assignments. but, feeling the pressure for their children to do well at school, parents frequently took on roles that went beyond either monitoring homework or helping children with homework assignments. taking on the role of teacher when tiffany scott was in second grade, tiffany's teacher told her mother that tiffany "wasn't up to her level." when ms. scott asked what she should do, tiffany's teacher suggested that she "work with tiffany at home." like maria scott, many of the parents i interviewed took up the challenge to "work with" their children at home. betty lau spent up to two hours each night doing what she called "mom's homework" with her daughter. "mom's homework" focussed on an age-graded "super workbook," full of drills and exercises in math, reading, writing, and spelling, which, according to mrs. lau, was frequently used by other parents in the chinese community. mrs. lau was convinced that these efforts were helping her daughter. "in bonnie's school," she told me, "they are only teaching them two digit addition and subtraction. . . . but now my daughter can do multiplication." like betty lau, many of the parents i interviewed took a direct role in teaching their children school-related skills. the moores attempted to strengthen their son archie's math skills by "drilling him on his math facts," as they put it. the thorns often "got jars of pennies out on the table and tried to show [their son] the concept of numbers and subtraction and multiplication." carol dumay supported her daughter by "letting georgina read to me [and] i read to her constantly." carol also offered georgina more explicit support by drawing on strategies she had learned from the staff at a university reading clinic. celine street saw her efforts to teach her son to read as a means of overcoming what she believed were the shortcomings of her son's teacher(s): i read to him, he would read to me. we would read a book together. it started with the disney baby characters. you get a story and you read some words and there's a character. the character will tell you what that word is. so i would read and he would tell me what the character was. or i would read and then we would switch it around. he would read and i would do the how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 7 character. within two months, i had michael reading. betty springs, a former teacher, taught her son strategies for writing term papers. similarly, alice mandel took advantage of the knowledge she had acquired during her graduate training in education to help her daughter learn specific skills alice believed her daughter needed to overcome her "learning disability": before exams i spent hours and hours with her . . . showing her how to study, how to make herself ask questions. when i ask her questions, she writes them out. and then we review them. help her remember things. give her mnemonics, that kind of thing. overall, the parents i interviewed emphasized their feeling that homework ate up significant chunks of time for them and their children. a few parents saw value in the school work their children brought home. mr. and mrs. mcisaac, for example, told me that, although they resented the intrusion of homework in their family life, it was "mostly time we enjoyed." but, overwhelmingly, the parents i interviewed were ambivalent about homework. still, most parents would likely have agreed with diane riggs about the importance of helping children with their homework: i have to make sure that roger's got his homework done. if i don't, then he gets behind and the teacher gets cross with him and . . . he starts feeling badly about himself. if he can keep up and at least have his homework done, then he's all right. it's when he gets behind that he gets panicky and starts feeling badly about himself. the cost of letting homework slide can be high, as mrs. riggs suggests. but the toll of homework on household routines and family relationships was also high for the families i interviewed. writing about her relationship to her son's homework, educator katherine samway (1986) lamented that homework had harmed her "emotional well-being as a parent ... there have been too many evenings when i have allowed teacher-imposed obligations to supercede . . . family needs and interests" (p. 352). the sense that "teacher-imposed obligations" in the form of homework often interfered with family needs was emphasized by nearly all of the parents i interviewed. parents indicated that the demands of homework reduced the time available for domestic chores and diminished the pleasure they were able to derive from family relationships. “fussing and fighting [over homework]” homework demanded that parents spend significant amounts of time with children on schoolwork, but these interactions were frequently tense and frustrating for both parents and their children. "school affected my relationship with robert," mrs. mcisaac told me. tension over homework was one of the reasons she and her husband decided to remove robert from school in favour of home schooling: i think if i had kept robert in school it would have caused a barrier between us. there was always homework. there were hours of homework. in the evening sitting at the kitchen table just it doing over and over and over again. so it was quite stressful. so when we took him out of school [for home schooling], it removed the third party.... there was like the pressure off all the time. having him out [of school] is easier. i think it could have only gotten worse. maria scott recalled similarly stressful interactions around homework with her daughter: i'd say, tiffany, "okay, let's read. i'll read one page and you read a page." so i'd read a page and she'd listen to me read and then, when it's time for her to read, she'd get frustrated when she got stuck on a word. . . . she just sat there and got so upset. and sometimes she would make me upset and i would say, "tiffany, you know this word. start with the first letter and sound it out." and she'd get upset so we're both sitting there trying to figure out this word. i'd get so frustrated. [sometimes] i would yell, "well just go! just leave me alone!" and she'd get upset and started to cry. ms. scott believed that homework did neither her nor her daughter much good: "it damaged my daughter as well as our relationship," she said. "whenever we did homework we were fussing and fighting. betty blake also worried that fights over homework had harmed her relationship with her son. "i tend to yell a lot," she told me: i don't spank him, but i yell. i know that's not good for him. . . . i try not to yell, but i don't know what else current issues in education vol. 6 no. 4 to do. . . . i get so frustrated. i don't even know what to say any more. i'll spend half a day showing him how to do something and he'll know how to do it as along as i'm sitting here. but if i move and say do it on your own, all of a sudden it's like, "what?" he gets very upset when i yell at him to the point where he cries.... i think the fact that i get frustrated, it might have affected our relationship molly reeves also recalled tense interactions over homework: it was one day last week. it was some of his spelling words: fastfaster, tall-taller. just add "-er," you know. and there was a little story he had to read that had some of his spelling words. and "fast," he got it, but every time we got to "faster," he didn't get it. and there was no difference, except the ending. we just kept arguing over it. and finally i said, "all right, just let it go, forget it. go on." and he went into his room. fussing, fighting, and arguing over homework was a theme common to most of my interviews. like betty blake, parents believed that "education was important" which meant that homework was important, too. "working with" their children was also a way to help their children do better in school or, at least, keep from falling further behind. perhaps this is why parents of children who receive average or below average grades may be especially likely to desire more homework for their children (cooper, 1989). still, the parents interviewed for this study also acknowledged that the costs of getting children to complete their homework monitoring, encouraging, nagging, driving back to school to retrieve materials, and "fighting, fussing, and arguing" was also high. for some of these parents, the aggravation and tension over homework outweighed the benefits of getting it done. "it's not worth it," as one parent told me. this may have accounted for the willingness of the moores and the thibaults to accept their children's claims that they "didn't have any homework." they probably knew differently, but to accept the claim their children had "no homework" was easier than fighting over homework. david thibault put it well: you fear that if your kid doesn't do well in school then their life is going to be hell. what they have to do is take school seriously and always do better at it. but in trying to push your kid to do better at school . . . you end up ruining the relationship that you have with your kid. when school is over you want to have a good relationship with your children and the school gets in the way. homework may be important, but, if the cost of doing homework includes strained relationships with family members, then it may not be "worth it." conclusion most current versions of education reform emphasize parent involvement as a key to academic success. although broadly conceived, parent involvement most often takes the form of supporting children's homework. the assertion that homework increases academic achievement directly by increasing "time on task" and, indirectly, by promoting personal qualities essential for future academic success (e.g., persistence, diligence, the ability to delay gratification [bempechat 1998]) has achieved the status of common sense even if little research can be marshalled to support these claims (cooper, 1989). whatever the benefits of homework, public debates over homework have given little attention to its potential costs, especially the potential violence homework can do to family routines and relationships. my interviews indicate that for some parents, in this case a group parents whose children struggled in school, homework can be a nearly intolerable burden. the parents i interviewed indicated that the amount of time children devoted to homework limited opportunities for other family activities and created resentment among parents and children. the time parents spent on their children's schoolwork frequently disrupted domestic routines and undermined relationships between parents and children and between spouses. the parents interviewed for this study also offered powerful evidence that stressful interactions over homework threatened long-term relationships between mothers and fathers and their children. in these families, homework was a carrier for school troubles, a means for transforming "school troubles" into "family troubles." educational policy makers, politicians, and others demanding more homework as a means of boosting academic achievement must balance the (limited) academic benefits of homework (cooper, 1989) against the potential social costs of increasing children's homework burden. as one of the mothers i interviewed put it, "there's more to life than homework and school." the intensification of how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 9 schooling through homework denies many parents and children the pleasures of family life and, as the data collected for this study indicate, the costs of homework are especially high for families that include children for whom school is a struggle, punishing parents for having children who do not fit the structures of schooling as well as other children. i am not recommending that schools suspend homework merely out of consideration of families like those i interviewed for this study. whatever the academic benefits, homework is a wellentrenched practice in our schools that is not going to go away anytime soon. indeed, teachers who do not routinely assign homework may be liable to severe criticism that they are failing to promote high academic standards. rather, the challenge is for parents, teachers, and school administrators to work together to create homework policies that are considerate of the range of ways families are constituted (e.g., two working parents, one working parent and a stay-at-home parent, single parent), the different ways families live their lives, and the need for schools to maintain "high standards." such policies must also be considerate of the findings of this study that, for some families, particularly families that include children who struggle in school, homework is a heavy burden that, from the parents' perspective at least, is simply "not worth it." endnotes 1. for purposes of this paper, homework includes all school-initiated work children are expected to complete outside of normal school hours, usually at home and often with the support of their parents. 2. to protect the identities of the parents interviewed for this study pseudonyms are used throughout. 3. the disruptive effects of homework on family life were emphasized in eighteen of the twenty-three interviews i conducted. references balli, s. j., demo, d. h., & wedman, j. f. 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(1998). devolution and choice in education: the school, the state, and the market. london: open university press. http://www.ed.gov/pubs/faminvolve/local2.html http://www.ed.gov/pubs/faminvolve/local2.html http://www.ed.gov/legislation/goals2000/theact/sec401.html http://www.ed.gov/legislation/goals2000/theact/sec401.html http://www.ed.gov/pressreleases/12-2001/12172001.html http://www.ed.gov/pressreleases/12-2001/12172001.html http://www.ed.gov/legislation/esea02/pg2.html#sec1118 http://www.ed.gov/legislation/esea02/pg2.html#sec1118 http://www.ed.gov/pubs/parents/homework/index.html http://www.ed.gov/pubs/parents/homework/index.html how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners 11 2003 article citation dudley-marling, c. (2003, march 7). how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners. current issues in education [on-line], 6(4). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume6/number4/ author notes curt dudley-marling boston college lynch school of education dudleyma@bc.edu curt dudley-marling is a professor in the lynch school of education at boston college where his teaching and research focus on struggling readers and their parents and the politics of literacy. he has written nine books including readers and writers with a difference: a holistic approach to teaching struggling readers and writers (with lynn rhodes) and living with uncertainty: the messy reality of classroom practice, winner of the james n. britton award for inquiry in the english language arts. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber november 13, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation dudley-marling, c. (2003). how school troubles come home: the impact of homework on families of struggling learners. current issues in education, 6(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1681 file:///d:/dropbox/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number4/index.html mailto:dudleyma@bc.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1681 supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience: the case of national board certification. current issues in education, 22(3) 1 volume 22, issue 3 december 8, 2021 issn 1099-839x supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience: the case of national board certification laura k. handler, teresa m. petty, amy j. good university of north carolina at charlotte abstract: amidst increasing globalized pressures to raise student achievement, nations are heavily investing in various forms of teacher professional development. in the united states, teachers are increasingly electing to pursue national board certification, yet few studies have analyzed the experience within the greater complex system of teaching and learning. viewed from this approach, findings from this study suggest that numerous dynamic forces— relationships, partnerships, structures, and policies—interact in various patterns that can potentially support effective teacher professional development. implications suggest a need for broader conceptualization, greater cohesion, and more strategic integration of teacher learning in education policy. keywords: professional development, national board certification, teacher support, complex systems, politics and education citation: handler, l.k., petty, t.m., good, a.j. (2021). supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience: the case of national board certification. current issues in education, 22(3). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1976 accepted: october 25, 2021 introduction current focuses on teacher learning and professional development is predicated on the notion that the instruction teachers receive will in turn improve the instruction their students receive in the classroom. in this sense, the desire for effective professional development is driven by its potential to indirectly raise student achievement. since no child left behind (nclb, 2001) was passed, this potential impact—raising test scores—has been of paramount importance in relation to professional development. in fact, funds from title ii, part a of the current every student succeeds act (essa, 2015) directly support professional learning with a focus on recruiting, preparing, training, and developing teachers and school leaders through sustained, data-driven, research-based activities. https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1976 handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 2 while some researchers in the field center their work on studying the specific programs, practices, and activities that aim to support learning—the what of professional development— others focus on the processes related to the topic, debating the sequence of components in a linear framework to achieve this end of increased student learning (desimone, 2009; guskey, 2002). still others in the field advocate for a shift in the research analysis to use a more cyclical, comprehensive, and recursive approach that takes into account the dynamic complexities of the nested systems in which professional development occurs—the how of professional development (clarke & hollingsworth, 2002; cochran-smith et al., 2014; keay et al., 2018; o’leary & wood, 2017; opfer & pedder, 2011; sanford et al., 2015). recognizing that certain particularities in the environments, aims, and contexts of professional development inherently differentiate its direct application or replication to other settings, these authors instead aim to conceptualize professional development “as a complex system rather than as an event” (opfer & pedder, 2011, p. 378), decontextualizing the teaching and learning to elucidate patterns of how and why they occur. a key aspect of teacher learning in this complex systems model is analysis of the dynamic processes simultaneously occurring alongside teachers’ professional development experiences in order to aid understanding and interpretation of learning outcomes. while the literature has fairly consistently identified several design factors integral for high quality learning (see birman et al., 2000; darling-hammond & richardson, 2009; desimone, 2011), a large-scale study surveying more than 1300 educators across the united states found that teachers overwhelmingly hold negative views of current professional development efforts, stating that they are “not relevant, not effective, and most important of all, not connected to their core work of helping students learn” (boston consulting group, 2014, p. 3). coupled with the innovative affordances of technology, a heightened focus on differentiated and personalized learning within professional development models has shown potential to remediate such dissatisfaction, allowing teachers to customize their learning experiences to meet their individual needs and expertise (fox et al., 2015; gamrat et al., 2014). consistent with the desires expressed by teachers in the bcg study, this shift towards personalized professional development allows teachers the autonomy and relevance they are seeking, actualizing the flexibility that researchers have long advocated in professional development (borko, 2004; darling-hammond & richardson, 2009; garet et al., 2001; guskey & yoon, 2009). however, just as integral to addressing these particularities of professional development initiatives is the recognition that these experiences take place among interactive, dynamic contexts. these contexts, supports, and interacting relations of this complex system of learning are unfortunately less detailed in the literature. a consistent trend across countries in the field of education, including the united states, is this heightened commitment to elevate the standards of the profession and to raise student achievement, especially in the current link between educational attainment and participation in the global marketplace (hutt et al., 2018; kennedy & mckay, 2011). in some locations in the united states, such as the states of north carolina and washington, great numbers of teachers are seeking national board certification (nbc) as professional development that will improve their practice and earn a status that will recognize their expertise (nbpts, 2019b). given its personalized nature, requiring the development of a portfolio over a year-long period of analysis and reflection centered on one’s own students and instruction, this structure seems in line with the relevant, sustainable elements teachers desire and research has proven effective (bcg, 2014; desimone, 2009, 2011). while research offers mixed results on the statistical correlation of nbc on student achievement with numerous variables confounding test scores and growth (see cowan handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 3 & goldhaber, 2016), in the authors’ previous study focused on teachers’ own perceptions on the impact of the certification process on their classroom, an overwhelming majority (87.7%) reported a positive influence on student learning (petty et al., 2016a). however, instead of focusing on the what of this professional development, this current study seeks to examine the systems and contexts of how such teacher learning might occur, continuing the use of teacher voice to inform the analysis of the interrelation of the conditions, agents, and knowledge in this complex system of professional development. in particular, the political context surrounding this study fuels inquiry into the complexities of enacting effective teacher professional development. once a priority of the state of north carolina, education received ample support and funding under the leadership of governor jim hunt, serving as an example for the nation of having a strategic and comprehensive plan (darling-hammond, 2010). more recently, education has been seemingly cast aside by policymakers as the state legislature has made cuts to teacher tenure, incentive pay for advanced degrees, and teacher recruitment programs (dewitt, 2014). having slipped to one of the lowest states in the national rankings (bernardo, 2017), efforts are again being made to raise teacher salaries to more competitive levels and reinstate initiatives such as the teaching fellows program (stancill, 2017). support for nbc is one such example of reform efforts being subject to the fluctuating agenda of state budgets and policymakers, and inquiries, such as this one probing for teacher perspectives, offer valuable insight into the nuances and ramifications of educational policy on teaching and learning. hence, the purpose of this study was to examine nbc more broadly in the dynamic contexts of professional development and teacher learning in the united states, specifically the state of north carolina. the question we posed to teachers, what support did you receive while pursuing national board certification? was designed to consider the varying systems and spheres of influence affecting teachers’ pursuit of additional certification in education. this inquiry thus serves as a contribution for analysis and discussion of the patterns and particularities in this complex system of teacher learning. after a review of the relevant literature and summary of the methods employed by this study, we share findings of teachers’ experiences having gone through this certification process, detailing the varying supports in districts across the state of north carolina. we then draw implications from this analysis of nbc to shed light on the various nested and interacting systems of education and policy that might influence high quality professional development and emphasize the big-picture, comprehensive outlook and approach needed for supporting such powerful learning experiences. review of literature with public education increasingly scrutinized in nations across the world, driven by heightened pressures of globalization, competition in the international marketplace, and student performance on international assessments such as the program for international student assessment (hutt et al., 2018; o’leary & wood, 2017), the role and influence of teachers have been examined, expanded, and increasingly emphasized, resulting in a sizable body of literature extending in many directions. because research has pinpointed strong correlations between teacher quality and student achievement (i.e., boyd et al., 2009; darling-hammond, 2000), continuous efforts to train and maintain teachers with the most effective pedagogical practices consume the focus of many districts and researchers across the nation. while the volume of studies examining such numerous initiatives is consequently monumental, in this review we will primarily focus on synthesizing the features of such professional development experiences that handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 4 the literature suggests foster teacher learning. then, in conceptualizing professional development with a complex systems approach, we will consider how particular aspects of teacher learning, namely the layered contexts and supports, influence learning. finally, we will narrow our focus to one particular form of professional development, national board certification (nbc), in considering the historical, political, empirical, and organizational factors that affect teachers undergoing that process. teacher professional development focused on improving the content and pedagogical knowledge, attitudes and beliefs, and instructional practices of teachers, and thus, learning outcomes of students (guskey, 2002), professional development seeks to utilize a systematic approach in undertaking these goals. although the approach may vary greatly in form—as informally as self-reflections and collaborative conversations, or as formally as structured observations, portfolios, conferences, workshops, professional learning communities, book clubs, selfor peer observations, or even inquiry/action research projects (borko, 2004; desimone, 2009, 2011)—the literature on professional development does, however, consistently identify several key characteristics for high quality learning. research (birman et al., 2000; bcg 2014; desimone, 2011) suggests the following attributes: a) to be of sizable duration—desimone (2011) notes at least 20 hours— sustained over time; b) to be coherent, consistent, and connected to teachers’ own knowledge, other current professional development, and the policies and practices of the teacher’s school, district, and state; c) to be focused on content with specific concept development rather than general teaching practices; d) to be active, hands-on learning that engages the participant with meaningful tasks to aid the learning process; and e) to elicit collective participation and collaboration rather than individual consumption. more recently, differentiation of learning that takes into consideration teachers’ backgrounds in relation to their years and types of experiences has shown to positively impact learning (fox et al., 2015). approaches to professional development that solicit and value teachers’ own input and inquiries heighten both morale and professionalism (flint et al., 2011; hutt et al., 2018). these elements hint at the complexity of the conditions under which professional development takes place, as numerous systems interact in a variety of capacities. as such, beyond the characteristics of effective professional development, numerous researchers have sought to examine the process by which learning occurs for teachers and, consequently, affects learning for students. conceptual approaches have included linear models that attempt to detail the sequence of events for teachers’ learning, change in attitude and practice, and ultimate goals of improved student outcomes (desimone, 2009; guskey, 2002). alternatively, diverging from such a cause-and-effect approach, complexity theorists investigate education, learning, and professional development as a more dynamic, cyclical, and recursive system of actions, mechanisms, and elements from numerous layers and levels of influences (clarke & hollingsworth, 2002; cochran-smith et al., 2014; davis & sumara, 1997, 2007; keay et al., 2018; mason, 2008; o’leary & wood, 2017; opfer & pedder, 2011). recognizing the nested systems in which interacting agents of the experience itself, the individual teacher, and the school exist, there are multiple pathways of interconnected domains during professional development that mediate the professional growth of teachers (clarke & hollingworth, 2002; opfer & pedder, 2011). examined with this conceptual approach of a complex phenomenon, professional development can be detailed with the contextual specificity of systems but also handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 5 decontextualized to look for recurring patterns or common affordances emanating from these particularities. unique because of its national recognition that spans local, state, and even federal initiatives, nbc offers an interesting case of professional development to be examined from such a complexity theory approach. various aspects of the certification process can, and have been, analyzed to explain the content features of the required products that prompt teacher learning. a few previous researchers have also conceptualized the nbc process through a framework of complexity theory to examine the emergence of professional communities (rhoades & woods, 2013), which then has the potential to improve instructional practices among an extended network of teachers (rhoades & woods, 2015). along with specifics of what the certification entails, crucial to understanding the contexts of this particular form of professional development is the historical background of the creation of the national board for professional teaching standards, both of which are explained in the following section. from this explanation, the authors shift the study to a concerted consideration of the supports surrounding the certification process, using data from teachers’ self-constructed responses to detail this aspect of their learning. as framed by complexity theory, authors propose that the numerous agents, interacting in various capacities and frequencies, will elucidate the need for a highly intentional, comprehensive, and unified approach to professional development across educational institutions and government leaders. national board certification responding to the dismal portrayal of public education in the report a nation at risk (us ncee, 1983), the national board for professional teaching standards (nbpts) was created in 1987 in order to set forth a plan to develop, retain, and reward accomplished teachers through a system of advanced certification. to be eligible for this esteemed accreditation, candidates must hold a baccalaureate degree, a valid state teaching license, and have taught in a public or private school for at least three years (nbpts, 2021a). there are 25 certificate areas in which teachers can apply, each with their own set of standards that are developed under the guidance of the board’s five core propositions (nbpts, 2021b): 1. teachers are committed to students and their learning. 2. teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students. 3. teachers are responsible for managing and monitoring student learning. 4. teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience. 5. teachers are members of learning communities. board certification is voluntary and gives teachers an opportunity to demonstrate their expertise through a rigorous, performance-based portfolio process as well as a computer-based assessment involving self-constructed responses. teacher learning and mastery are evidenced by four components: content knowledge, differentiation in instruction, teaching practice and learning environment, and effective and reflective practitioner. candidates are provided standards in each certification discipline to facilitate understanding of accomplished teaching, incorporating the analysis of video recorded lessons, student work samples, and their contributions to developing connections between the profession and the community (nbpts, 2021a). as common to other forms of professional development, the goal is to demonstrate a positive impact on student learning. handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 6 while there is some debate on the direct impact of nbc on student achievement as measured through test scores (belson & husted, 2015; boyd & reese, 2006; clotfelter et al., 2007; cowan & goldhaber, 2016; goldhaber & anthony, 2005; harris & sass, 2009; rouse, 2008; smith & colby, 2011; vandevoort et al., 2004), many researchers have documented the rich learning experiences gained by teachers throughout the certification process. with more than 80 percent of study participants attributing a positive impact on student learning through board certification, citing evidence of students’ academic achievement, of their own improved teaching practice, and/or use of effective assessment strategies, researchers suggest a strong link exists between the nbc process and heightened teacher self-efficacy (petty et al., 2016a). the positive impact of national board certified teachers (nbcts) can extend beyond student learning in their individual classroom to improved collegial relations schoolwide, supported by the leadership and collective work that the status distinction promotes (anagnostopoulos et al., 2010; gaudreault & woods, 2012) and the professional networks that the certification process help create (rhoades & woods, 2013, 2015). more likely than their non-certified counterparts to help fellow educators, nbcts provide added value in their willingness to offer instructional support to peers and those in their professional networks or learning communities (frank et al., 2008). policy can thus play an instrumental role in shaping the magnitude of professionalized pedagogical and organizational structures in the field of education. all fifty states offer some sort of support for board certification, and a significant number of states and school systems offer financial incentives. according to nbpts, (nbpts, 2021c) these inducements range from allowances covering the $1900 certification fee to a sizeable salary increase. north carolina leads the nation in total number of nbcts with 23 percent of the state’s teachers holding certification (ncdpi, 2021). the state has offered incentives for teachers to pursue certification, such as a 12 percent salary increase for the life of the 10 year certification, and provided supports such as low-interest loans to pay the certification fee and three release days to work on completion of the certification portfolio. with significant changes in education policy at both the federal and state level over the past decade, in this research we continue efforts to voice teachers’ perceptions of the effect on the profession in relation to nbc. by asking nbcts to detail the supports they received—and sometimes sharing what they did not receive—we aim to provide a better understanding of the intersecting contextual factors that contribute to meaningful teacher learning. research design this study is part of a larger research project in which authors analyze teachers’ perceptions and experiences related to national board certification. researchers developed a survey including nine demographic questions, 20 likert item questions based on the five core propositions, and seven open-ended questions (appendix). in this particular analysis authors utilized participants’ responses to one of the open-ended questions, what support did you receive while pursuing national board certification? following dillman’s total design method (dillman, 2000), authors employed numerous techniques to encourage survey response. to protect participant anonymity, a letter was sent to regional directors of national board certification in north carolina to invite nbcts from their respective regions to participate in the study. this letter included relevant information about the study: who was conducting it, its purpose, why the individual was asked to participate, the time commitment required, and then the secure link to participate. two weeks later, regional directors sent a reminder email, and then an additional week later, a follow-up. in this way, researchers handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 7 worked to maintain frequent communication with potential study participants while simultaneously assuring these individuals that their responses could not reveal their identity. participants a total of 496 nbcts who are all currently teaching in north carolina public schools completed and submitted the survey. of the 115 school districts in north carolina, nbcts in 46 districts participated in the study, representing 40% of school districts in the state. the majority (63%) of participants were from rural schools, 10% of participants reported an urban setting, and 27% identified their schools as suburban. participants have taught across multiple grade levels (see figure 1). figure 1 grade levels taught by participants most participants (85%) graduated from traditional education teacher preparation programs while 15% entered the teaching profession through lateral entry. the various disciplines of nbc (i.e., art, english language arts, music) are represented in this sample with the highest relative frequency (34%) of the participants holding a generalist certificate. the development area for certification is also represented by the participants of this study, with teachers educating the span of ages from early and middle childhood through early adolescence into young adulthood. participants have taught for 5 to 41 years with the mean years of classroom teaching experience being 18.66 years. analysis the open-ended question was coded using thematic analysis (braun & clarke, 2006). to establish trustworthiness through this qualitative process, various levels of analysis occurred (nowell et al., 2017). initially, researchers immersed themselves in the data, rereading participant responses before beginning to search for meanings and patterns they could represent through deductive coding. each researcher evaluated the data independently, making notes about possible codes along the way (lincoln & guba, 1985). next, they compared their analyses and determined inconsistencies. these inconsistencies were discussed in order to establish a codebook (fereday & muir-cochrane, 2006). for example, data points referring to “friend,” 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 8 “mentor,” and “co-worker” were identified by the code “relationships”; responses acknowledging a “workday” or “paid leave” were coded “policy”. authors discussed these codes and revised them as necessary throughout the entire data set. this method of analysis allowed researchers to establish inter-coder reliability (neuendorf, 2002), with unanimous consensus achieved for each code, as well as to ensure that all data points had been coded. the initial analysis generated several codes that demonstrated recurring themes emanating from the source of the support described by the participant. these emerging themes were united and categorized into larger themes by each researcher (aronson, 1995), then discussed collectively to reach consensus on the final themes for this study. these final themes represented a consistent pattern in responses across participants, emanating from the type and source of support they described. for example, researchers recognized that “relationships” included both “colleagues” available through personal relationships and “mentors” assigned to them through district programs. considering these important tiers, researchers identified the overarching themes of this study as the following: 1) colleague support, 2) district support, 3) state support, and 4) professional organization/partnership support. each data point that was coded and then themed was tallied to determine the frequencies of each theme. these frequencies are presented in figure 2 to assist in the interpretation of the findings (wade, 1993). participants’ responses to open-ended questions asked on the survey were further analyzed and included in the findings section to offer the perspectives of the nbcts on the rationale for choosing to pursue certification. finally, in determining themes, authors recognize that as with most research studies, limitations do exist. first, this study focused exclusively on nbcts from north carolina, which has the most nbcts of any state in the nation. the supports that these teachers receive differ from other states, and thus the responses from these teachers could vary from those in other locations. second, the small sample size, in relation to the total number of nbcts in north carolina, is a limitation that confounds the generalizability of this study, even to the population it was intended to represent. researchers utilized personal contacts and in particular relied on the regional directors of nbc identified by the state department of public instruction to distribute the survey to possible participants. however, response rates varied by region and district, which could be attributed to the relationship between the director and nbcts as well as the adherence to protocols outlined in recruitment efforts. third, this study focuses on teachers who have achieved nbc rather than those who went through the process. responses from those who did not pass nbc could vary from those who did, particularly if the supports (or lack thereof) could have been a contributing factor in their submission process. finally, the data collected for this study was limited to the qualitative responses to the survey items; as common with this methodology, our findings suggest that additional research utilizing interviews might further extrapolate the relationships among the dynamic and interactive contexts referenced by participants. findings the participants of this study were asked through an open-ended survey question what support they received while seeking nbc. their responses varied but fell under the themes of colleague support, district support, state support, and professional organization/partnership support, with specific mention of the north carolina center for the advancement of teaching (nccat), north carolina association of educators (ncae)/professional educators of north handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 9 carolina (penc), and local colleges/universities. figure 2 displays the frequencies of each theme identified in the data set. figure 2 supports received by teachers during national board certification support from colleagues support from colleagues was mentioned most frequently by classroom teachers when asked why they chose to pursue nbc. of the 496 participants, 211 (42.5% of participants) mentioned receiving support from colleagues during the certification process. one teacher said, “we (colleagues) created our own network throughout the us and chatted and collaborated. it was great!” another described her collaboration with others in more detail: in my school, there were seven teachers who worked together from october to december. in january of that year, i worked with the other middle childhood generalist to complete the portfolio process. we met after school regularly and on the weekends until the process was completed. a third teacher commented, “i participated in the process with two other colleagues and we supported each other. there were two other teachers that i knew (one at my school and one at another), who were already certified that answered questions for me as well.” data repeatedly showed that colleague support was provided for many of the participants of this study. while some participants received support from other colleagues going through the certification process simultaneously, others received support from colleagues who had previously gone through the certification process. support from district participants also noted that they received support from their school districts. this support came in the form of workshops, support sessions, mentor/mentee pairing, and portfolio reading. of the 496 participants in this study, 206 (41.5%) mentioned receiving some type of support from their school districts as they were going through the certification process. one participant said, i was working in county x at the time, and they provided extensive national board support. they held monthly workshops on each of the portfolio sections and provided a mentor to help us through the process. they also held workshops solely for one-on-one portfolio critique and revision. 0 50 100 150 200 250 professional organization state district colleague handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 10 another study participant detailed numerous district supports as such: i received five days of paid leave and use of a school system laptop to use while going through the certification process. upon receiving national board certification, we received a bonus. we also received $250 for making copies and a paid mentor. additional details of the meaningful supports provided by districts were evident in this teacher’s response: “we had monthly meetings for all county nb candidates. we also had an ‘away to work’ weekend where we could work all weekend long and we had nbcts to read and offer suggestions for revision.” data such as these reiterate the positive role district supports played in the certification process for these teachers as well as the collaboration with state incentives offered, which are detailed in the next section. support from state (north carolina) as previously described, the state of north carolina provides supports for teachers pursuing nbc. of the 496 teachers surveyed for this study, 76 (15.3%) made some mention of a support that they received specifically from the state of north carolina. one teacher shared, “at the time (of my certification process) my fees were paid by the state. we also had three work days to work on our (portfolio) entries and readers were provided on one of those days.” another teacher confirmed this stating, “our state provided 2-3 days we could take to write and work on our portfolio.” a third nbct elaborated her experiences: when i attempted nbct status in 1994-1995, governor hunt had a lot of programs in place to help teachers to go through what was a then very new process. the state of north carolina had money to help pay for the cost of the program. there were [sic] some not very useful local support in 1994 and 2002. when i attempted nbct status in 20012002, north carolina again paid for the cost. while north carolina no longer pays for the certification application fee, the state still offers a low interest loan for which teachers can apply, three release days to work on the portfolio components, and a 12 percent pay increase to those that achieve nbc. other states offer similar incentives for teachers seeking nbc. south carolina provides an annual $5000 supplement for the life of the certification while kansas offers an annual $1000 bonus (nbpts, 2021c). nevada nbcts receive a 5% salary increase while florida offers a salary bonus (nbpts, 2021c). participants cited the financial compensation as a major motivator for their pursuit of the certification (petty et al., 2016b), and these responses further detail the value of state policies supporting nbc. the number of nbcts continues to rise across the united states. even amidst the pandemic of 2020, an additional 2570 teachers achieved nbc while 2484 board-certified teachers successfully renewed their certification, bringing the number of nbcts to over 128,550 across all 50 states (nbpts, 2021d). support from professional organizations/partnerships support from nccat the north carolina center for the advancement of teaching (nccat) was established by the state legislature in 1985. nccat has several facilities in north carolina where teachers can attend intensive professional development, to ‘advance teaching as an art and a profession’ handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 11 (nccat, 2014). of the 496 study participants, 78 (15.7%) mentioned the support that they received from nccat while they were pursuing nbc. one teacher said, the north carolina center for the advancement in teaching was very influential in my pursuit of nbc. they assigned me a mentor that guided me through the process. it also gave me the opportunity to network with other middle school science teachers across the state. another participant commented, “i was also able to attend the north carolina for the advancement in teaching for a four-day session that greatly helped me refine and finish up the writing needed for my portfolio.” with even more detail, a third stated, i attended a week-long session at nccat. this time to dedicate on the front end of the process was unbelievably important in fostering my confidence and general knowledge about what i had to do. it helped me develop a reasonable timeline and establish shortterm and long-term goals. my mentor from nccat provided support throughout the process. nccat continues to be a resource that benefits many teachers from north carolina. support from ncae/penc just under 10% of study participants (n=46) mentioned support that they received from two professional organizations: north carolina association of educators (ncae) and professional educators of north carolina (penc). one teacher commented, “i attended sessions through my professional organization (penc).” another said, “ncae had a boot camp in raleigh for candidates.” a third commented, “i attended several workshops offered by ncae.” these professional organizations continue to assist teachers who are pursuing nbc. support from institutions of higher education a few study participants (n=29) said that they had received support from colleges/universities during the certification process. “i attended national board sessions at my closest university,” stated one participant. another said, “i went to one university’s support group meetings one saturday each month during the process.” other participants mentioned courses that they took at higher education institutions that prepared them for the nbc process. discussion these findings reveal important details from teachers’ perspectives of the conditions and contexts influencing their professional development experience of nbc. when considered as a complex system, it becomes apparent that nbc takes place among numerous nested systems and interrelational agents active in the process of teaching and learning. previous research has provided insight into the relationship between teachers and the experience itself, suggesting positive reciprocal interactions with the process improving pedagogical practices of teachers and their colleagues (anagnostopoulos et al., 2010; frank et al., 2008; gaudreault & woods, 2012; petty et al., 2016b; rhoades & woods, 2013). several characteristics of the nbc process seem to align with research findings of effective learning experiences, namely the voluntary participation (flint et al., 2011), extended duration of time required to complete the process (desimone, 2011) with submission taking place over the course of a year, and the direct relevance of the work in application to teaching practices taking place in one’s own classroom handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 12 (birman et al., 2000; bcg 2014; gore et al., 2017). furthermore, the rigorous portfolio process of analyzing and reflecting upon one’s lessons are practices commonly recognized of effective professional development (borko, 2004; darling-hammond, 2009; fox et al., 2015). the increasing number of teachers pursuing nbc (nbpts, 2021d; will, 2017) speaks to the appeal of this professional development experience. as seen in figure 3, these characteristics and dynamics of teacher learning through nbc are at the center. figure 3 teacher learning through nbc as a complex system of supports and policies beyond the interaction between the individual and the activity, the what of the professional development, in this study we take a broader look at the complex system of professional development with nbc as a process amidst numerous dynamic forces and contexts, particularly the supports helping facilitate teacher learning. from this data, the relationships among teachers become increasingly significant, as teachers cited this collaboration with colleagues as an influential support both in persisting with the challenge of the task and in sharing their expertise. while this notion of collaboration is consistent with descriptors of professional development (birman et al., 2001; desimone, 2011; gore et al., 2017), participants’ responses offered insight into the intersecting components of autonomy and collaboration. it is noteworthy that participants not only mentioned appeal and appreciation for the support and working in conjunction with other teachers, but also described their self-driven efforts to forge these partnerships. rhoades and woods (2013) explain this self-emergence of organization as a product of the complex system of nbc and conceptualize its development of a shared repertoire among candidates. similarly, in this data, whether virtual or face-to-face, teachers reported allying themselves with a colleague to strengthen their learning during the certification process and honored their joint determination to achieve the higher standards set forth by nbpts. the handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 13 flexibility and autonomy of these decisions in combination with collaboration with colleagues seems to be a condition in this data that supports teacher learning. this support, its characteristics, and interactions are depicted in the top circle of figure 3. additionally, mentorship was another pattern of collaboration evident in the data, as participants credited help they received from more experienced nbcts as influential to their certification. whether the mentor was assigned from an outside organization such as nccat or provided through the local school district, these pairings offered the one-on-one support participants needed to critique their reflections. although mentorship has been repeatedly shown to support and retain early career teachers (e.g., hobson et al., 2009, ingersoll & strong, 2011), current challenges such as inadequate resources in districts (hall et al., 2017) and increasing pressure for evaluative roles (carver & feiman-nemser, 2009; fransson, 2010), have shown to be hindrances for such beginning teacher support programs. also, while mentorship is often a focus of teachers and teacher candidates in their early stages of licensure (henning et al., 2015), the nbc process promotes continued mentorship beyond the first three years of a professional career. this additional layer of support which the nbc process was able to provide for the professional development of teachers shows the intersecting roles of community organizations, district level staff, and school-based mentorship programs. this support, its characteristics, and intersections are depicted in the bottom right circle of figure 3. teacher learning also took place with the classes and workshops offered by local organizations and institutions of higher education. outside of their own efforts to engage in the reflective practices facilitated by the nbc portfolio process, teachers report gaining valuable development from nccat, ncae, and universities. such partnerships exist in other states and are even more pronounced, evident by kentucky’s state university system integrating nbc with graduate and doctoral level courses. the national recognition of this certification process aids the collaboration across grade levels, content areas, districts, and groups with its common language and vision of pedagogy and practice outlined through the standards. previous researchers have suggested that coherence is a vital element of professional development, with learning thriving when it is consistent with teachers’ own belief systems (desimone, 2009), connected to and builds off of their own knowledge and other current professional development (birman et al., 2000), and is integrated with the policies and practices of the teachers’ school, district, and state (darling-hammond, 2000). in this case, the availability of resources outside that which teachers’ own school and district could provide proved to offer pivotal learning experiences for teachers. a number of variables surround the effectiveness of this support, from the proximity of these partnering organizations to teachers’ locations all the way to the policies that allowed for teachers’ paid leave to enable these opportunities. this support is then depicted in the bottom left circle of figure 3. this latter point segues into a major intersecting domain in the complex system of professional development—the policy and political context of the local/state education. in some locations such as the site of this study, north carolina, educators are awarded three release days from the classroom in order to work on their nbc. in this study participants voiced a strong appreciation for this policy, as it allowed them the time to fully immerse themselves in their learning. reflective of the interactive nature of this complex system, this policy influenced some teachers’ use of existing supports: some teachers used this time to attend workshops, multipleday sessions, or collaborate with others to refine their portfolio entries. when combined with the financial incentives offered by the state, a 12 percent salary increase and low-interest loan to help with the application fee, these policies have resulted in the state having the highest number of handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 14 nbcts, almost double the next leading state. previous authors have found monetary compensation to be a leading motivator for teachers to pursue nbc (anagnostopoulos et al., 2010; petty et al., 2016b), and thus this incentive is part of the complex system of incentives and supports influencing teacher learning. these policies are the backdrop of the professional development experience and depicted as such in figure 3 by the largest oval in which the systems of supports are nested. policies at the local or district level either reinforced state incentives or even supplemented them to help teachers make use of available supports and resources. particularly in large districts, participants credited the established programs that assigned them nbcts as mentors and the additional district-led workshops that facilitated networking and collaboration during the certification process. with nbc a commonly recognized form of professional development supported at both state and district levels and integrated into the work of professional organizations in the area, there is consistency and alignment across these layers of support. though this data was limited to participants in north carolina, the leading state of nbcts, additional incentives have been instituted in other states, including the recent recognition of “national board certified teacher day” in louisiana (nbpts, 2021f). table 1 details the supports and incentives offered by states with the highest number of nbcts to show the various intersections across levels of supports from the state, district, and community. table 1 national board certification incentives and supports of states with most nbcts state nbcts incentives supports north carolina 23,032 12% pay increase -low cost loan program -three release days -local partnerships and varied district support florida 13,572 varies by district -varies by district washington 11,598 annual bonus of $5,296 -conditional loans for application fee -jump start and home stretch support programs south carolina 9,284 annual supplement of $5,000 -district assigned staff person for nbct -cerra and professional organizations mississippi 4,441 annual supplement of $6,000 -low interest loan program -four campuses of state university system offer world class teaching program kentucky 4,105 annual bonus of $2,000 -application fee reimbursement -two state universities offer jump start support program implications for policy just as the provisions of title ii funds allow states the flexibility and autonomy to determine use of professional development, this data suggests that teachers in north carolina likewise make use of available flex days and personalized choice for learning opportunities through the process of nbc. north carolina designates title ii, part a funds to support teacher learning through professional development plans (pdps) with a partnership model that engages its department of public instruction, community partners such as nccat, and schooland handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 15 district-level professional learning networks (ncdpi, 2017). this partnership model emerged in this study’s data, suggesting some effectiveness of reaching teachers in the classroom. because title ii, part a funds are aimed to improve teachers’ instruction, particularly of educationally disadvantaged children, states can consider how to incorporate the standards set forth by the national board across various partners engaged in these professional development efforts. when states, districts, and professional institutions hold a common vision—national standards—for teaching, there is consistency in the learning these various entities offer to educators. when priorities shift, however, such as a heightened emphasis on student achievement evidenced by test scores as promoted by nclb (2001) legislation and the race to the top competitive grant program launched in 2009, there can be conflict in the policies and structures incentivizing teacher learning, leadership, and performance. for example, in 2012, charlotte mecklenburg schools, the second largest district in north carolina and seventeenth in the nation, initiated success by design, a program aimed at offering highly-effective teachers opportunities to advance their careers—and boost their paycheck—without leaving the classroom by increasing instructional responsibility. supports for nbc detailed by this study’s participants— district workshops, readers, and mentors—are no longer mentioned (cms, n.d.). with recent policy changes in essa (2015) once again allowing states the flexibility to measure teacher quality beyond impact on student test scores, the district might choose to ignore or respond to such changes. this fluctuation in policy hinders the collaboration among entities detailed in this study to support teacher learning yet needs to be addressed by all stakeholders. similarly influenced by federal policy, the current teacher evaluation system in north carolina includes six standards, one of which is directly tied to teacher pay: teachers contribute to the academic success of their students. if the state utilizes the newly-granted provisions of essa (2016) for more autonomy in teacher evaluation systems, other standards (i.e. teachers demonstrate leadership, teachers know the content they teach) closely aligned to the five propositions might be emphasized more. in this way, teacher professional development and evaluation might be more aligned, with policies and supports, such as mentorship and professional learning communities, all working towards common professional goals. in fact, it is this sort of coherent continuum of the profession that nbpts advocates in building a “pipeline to accomplished teaching” (nbpts, 2021e). recently redesigned in 2016, nbc has already adapted to be more compatible to state licensure processes, including the shift from a ten-year to a five-year cycle of renewal. coordinating these learning experiences and requirements for teachers would help streamline and professionalize the work of teachers. conclusion with increasing pressures to raise student achievement in countries around the world, the quality of teacher education and teacher learning has come to the forefront of the educational agenda. in the united states, professional development consumes approximately $18 billion annually of education budgets in accordance with this focus on strengthening the teaching force, yet teachers are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the learning opportunities presented to them (bcg, 2014). similarly, researchers in the field lament that these professional development experiences are “woefully inadequate…fragmented, intellectually superficial, and do not take into account what we know about how teachers learn” (borko, 2004, p. 3). despite this, teachers are increasingly electing to pursue national board certification, which makes it worthy of study not just in the context of what the experience offers, but also the how with its place in the greater complex system of teaching and learning. handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 16 viewed from this approach, these findings suggest that the numerous dynamic forces detailed in this study—the relationships, partnerships, structures, and policies—interact in various patterns and pathways that can potentially support effective teacher professional development. in this nuanced examination of nbc, driven by the voices of teachers themselves, researchers elucidate the complexities in education and offer some of the most pressing considerations from the perspective of members of the workforce. while these findings may not serve as characteristics to guarantee effective professional development, by describing the overlapping and interconnected relations and patterns in this study, authors point to the need for broader conceptualization, greater cohesion, and more strategic integration of teacher learning in practice and education policy, as called for by other researchers (darling-hammond, 2014; keay et al., 2018). responding to the call for contextualized research on effective professional development (fox et al., 2015), authors contribute a new framework of analysis from which to consider nbc and a clearer understanding of the deeper impact that frivolous policymaking in education has on teachers, their learning, their schools, and their students. references anagnostopoulos, d., sykes, g., mccrory, r., cannata, m., & frank, k. 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(2017, january 10). more teachers seek national certification. education week. https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/01/11/more-teachers-seek-nationalcertification.html https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/01/11/more-teachers-seek-national-certification.html https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/01/11/more-teachers-seek-national-certification.html handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 22 appendix survey of national board certified teachers 1) in what state did you achieve national board certification? 2) in what state are you currently employed? 3) which term best describes your school? a) rural (school is located in a small town/country) b) urban (school is located in the city) c) suburban (school is located within driving distance of a city) 4) what grade level do you teach? select all that apply. a) kindergarten b) 1st grade c) 2nd grade d) 3rd grade e) 4th grade f) 5th grade g) 6th grade h) 7th grade i) 8th grade j) 9th grade k) 10th grade l) 11th grade m) 12th grade 5) how long have you been teaching? 6) which term best describes you? a) traditional education b) graduate c) lateral entry graduate 7) what year did you certify? 8) what national board certificate subject area do you currently hold? a) art b) career and technical education c) english as a new language d) english language arts e) exceptional needs specialist f) generalist g) health education h) library media i) literacy: reading language arts j) mathematics k) mathematics l) music m) physical education n) school counseling o) science p) social studies – history handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 23 q) world languages other than english other: 9) select a development area for the certificate you hold. a) adolescence and young adulthood b) early adolescence c) early adolescence through young adulthood d) early and middle childhood e) early childhood f) early childhood through young adulthood g) middle childhood for questions 9-29, consider your teaching prior to pursuing national board certification and after the nb process. rate yourself both before the certification process and after the certification process using the given scale: strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly disagree. 10) i am dedicated to making knowledge accessible to all students. i believe all students can learn. 11) i treat students equitably. i recognize the individual differences that distinguish my students from one another and take into account for these differences in my practice. 12) i understand how students develop and learn. 13) i respect the cultural and family differences students bring to their classroom. 14) i am also concerned with the development of character and civic responsibility. 15) i have mastery over the subject(s) i teach. i have a deep understanding of the history, structure and real-world applications of the subject(s). 16) i have skill and experience in teaching my content area, and i am very familiar with the skills gaps and preconceptions students may bring to the subject. 17) i am able to use diverse instructional strategies to teach for understanding. 18) i deliver effective instruction. i move fluently through a range of instructional techniques, keeping students motivated, engaged and focused. 19) i know how to engage students to ensure a disciplined learning environment, and how to organize instruction to meet instructional goals. 20) i know how to assess the progress of individual students as well as the class as a whole. 21) i use multiple methods for measuring student growth and understanding, and i can clearly explain student performance to parents. 22) i model what it means to be an educated person. i read, i question, i create, and i am willing to try new things. 23) i am familiar with learning theories and instructional strategies and stay abreast of current issues in american education. 24) i critically examine my practice on a regular basis to deepen knowledge, expand my repertoire of skills, and incorporate new findings into my practice. 25) i collaborate with others to improve student learning. 26) i am a leader and actively know how to seek and build partnerships with community groups and businesses. 27) i work with other professionals on instructional policy, curriculum development, and staff development. handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 24 28) i can evaluate school progress and the allocation of resources in order to meet state and local education objectives. 29) i know how to work collaboratively with parents to engage them productively in the work of the school. for questions 30-41, please respond yes or no and explain as indicated. 30) why did you choose to pursue national board certification? 31) what support did you receive while pursuing national board certification? 32) have you renewed? yes no 33) if not, do you plan to renew? yes no 34) explain your answer to question 33. 35) does your district financially support the renewal process? yes no 36) if so, how? 37) have you seen evidence of improved student learning in your classroom as a result of going through the nb process? yes no 38) explain your answer to question 37. 39) what have you learned about yourself as a teacher by going through the nb process? 1) 40) have you experienced leadership opportunities as a result of the nb process? yes no 40) explain your answer to question 40. handler et al.: supporting teacher learning during the professional development experience current issues in education, 22(3) 25 author notes laura k. handler university of north carolina at charlotte laura.handler@uncc.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3396-6392 teresa m. petty university of north carolina at charlotte tmpetty@uncc.edu amy j. good university of north carolina at charlotte agood5@uncc.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9557-1495 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3396-6392 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9557-1495 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 8, number 10 april, 2005 issn 1099-839x teaching students with learning disabilities: constructivism or behaviorism? marcee m. steele university of north carolina wilmington there is much controversy concerning the use of constructivist and behaviorist principles for teaching children with learning disabilities. although many educators support the use of one paradigm exclusively, the author recommends combining ideas from both perspectives for the most effective instruction. this article includes a brief discussion of learning disabilities, a summary of key constructivist and behaviorist principles and their impact on students with learning disabilities, and a list of recommendations for practice in the classroom. there is a major debate in the field of education and in particular special education concerning two different theories and related approaches to teaching: constructivism and behaviorism. evidence of this controversy can be seen in university settings, public schools, and journal articles. it is typical in the education field to challenge a position, dismiss it, and then embrace a new trend as if there were no valid ideas represented in the original position. frequently effective strategies incorporate ideas from different theoretical perspectives; therefore, the author recommends taking some useful ideas from each theory for practice in the classroom. furthermore, for students with learning disabilities (ld) and other special needs, it is more effective to make curricular and instructional decisions based on the individual child, the task, and the setting than to use strategies representing one theory exclusively. in fact integrating components from both approaches could help special and general education teachers work more effectively as a team to teach children with learning disabilities. this article highlights the definition and characteristics of learning disabilities, briefly reviews constructivist and behaviorist principles, and discusses the impact on students with learning disabilities. the author recommends some ideas for practice in the inclusion classroom, where teachers currently face the challenge of teaching students with ld. learning disabilities federal law defines specific learning disabilities as psychological processing disorders that result in deficits in at least one of the academic skills (u.s. office of education, 1977). a child with this label does not have mental retardation, behavior disorders or other major disabilities. the child with ld has difficulty with processing skills such as memory, visual perception, auditory perception, or thinking; and as a result has trouble achieving in at least one subject such as reading, math, or writing (lerner, 2003). some of the typical characteristics associated with learning disabilities include problems in reading, mathematics, writing, and oral language; deficits in interpreting what is seen or heard; difficulty with study skills, self-control, self-esteem, memory, and attention (mercer, 1997). constructivist theory and practice instruction based on constructivist theory is currently supported for general education classes by university faculty and many educational organizations (brooks & brooks, 1999). one of the key ideas associated current issues in education vol. 8 no. 10 with constructivist theory is that learning should be meaningful and related to real life situations (grobecker, 1999). for example, instead of repeatedly having children work word problems to learn how to make change for a dollar, constructivist theory suggests it is better to give children real money to use at a classroom or school store for practice. in social studies, students could role play lawyers, judge, and jury for a simulated court case or conduct an election for classroom leaders instead of memorizing the related procedures and policies. children with learning disabilities will benefit from this approach because of their difficulty in generalizing from the classroom to other settings. with the realistic examples built in to the instruction, the students have specific practice with generalization. teachers following a constructivist perspective base their instruction on what the students already know as a foundation (duhaney & duhaney, 2000). therefore, to introduce new concepts, teachers need to discuss first some related ideas that are already familiar to the students. this practice helps students with ld because of their low self-esteem and repeated failure experiences. if they have the chance to start with something familiar, new learning does not seem so overwhelming and frustrating to them. ellis recommends techniques such as mapping and brainstorming (1997). for example teachers could introduce a science lesson on tides and ask student to brainstorm all the facts they already know; they could have students make a map, web, or other visual to include ideas from the class. later, the students can research further information and make any necessary revisions. in a primary level economics lesson, teachers could model construction of a flow chart of producers and consumers to show how economics works. another principle underlying the constructivist approach is a focus on key ideas and the relationships of these ideas within the subject areas (grobecker, 1999) and across subject areas (ellis, 1997). applying this principle, teachers stress connections of important concepts that are the major ideas for the discipline rather than isolated bits of knowledge. in mathematics, for example, teachers might emphasize fractions and their relationship to decimals, percents, and proportions. in social studies, themes such as conflict and diversity might be used to teach units on warfare, exploration, and government at many different grade levels. in science, cause and effect might provide the underlying theme for many topics. ellis suggests that for students with ld, teachers need to prioritize and to teach the most important facts related to key ideas so students are not overwhelmed with memorizing since many students with ld have significant memory deficits. geometric theorems and postulates about parallel lines could be broken down and taught one or two at a time to be sure they are clear and retained for later use. in addition teachers could focus on strategies and patterns that are useful for many content subjects such as the use of graphic organizers and selfmonitoring. when students learn to keep track of their own progress, errors, and accomplishments, they will gain feelings of confidence and success. active learning is an important facet of a constructivist approach to instruction. when students are actively involved in the lesson, they learn and retain the information (duhaney & duhaney, 2000; harris & graham, 1996). many of the discovery lessons in social studies, inquiry approaches in science, and whole language strategies in language arts incorporate a high level of student involvement. chemistry and physics experiments are useful for motivating students with ld. for example, experiments with plants, color, batteries, and other science concepts, even in the elementary classroom, can provide high interest for science topics and ideas. social studies projects involving maps and posters, such as planning trips and routes, also provide motivation for students. in the language arts areas, the use of literature related to themes being studied keeps students focused on topics of interest. fiction books on current issues such as euthanasia, stem cell research, or other controversial topics can be used to integrate language arts, science, and social studies lessons. teaching students to summarize, paraphrase, predict, and use visual images, which all involve active learning, helps students with ld understand and remember. role play, art, and group projects are also useful for clarifying and reinforcing instruction (ellis, 1997). such strategies are useful in motivating students with ld, who tend to me more passive learners because of their history of failure (lerner, 2003). high level thinking skills, such as problem solving and analysis, are often thought to be too abstract and difficult for students with learning problems, even though they are an important part of a constructivist curriculum. however, with some additional guidance and preparation, it is possible and in fact beneficial to emphasize these skills with such students (ellis, 1997; grobecker, 1999). teachers can guide students with ld to engage in complex writing process assignments, research projects, and other test-taking and study activities. behaviorist theory and practice the application of behaviorist theory to the classroom has generally been referred to as explicit or direct instruction. although these approaches have been criticized for use in the general education teaching students with learning disabilities: constructivism or behaviorism? 3 setting, they have shown promising research results, particularly for children with learning problems (mercer, 1997). therefore, it is worth considering the positive aspects of the behaviorally oriented approaches so that they can be combined with some of the ideas that are more popular in the general education setting. one strategy associated with structured approaches to teaching involves breaking down the tasks into small, manageable segments for teaching (grobecker, 1999). before conducting a science lesson on sound, the teacher could simplify a complex science task by introducing and teaching only one step of the scientific method, for example statement of the problem, so that the procedures and purposes are clear prior to going over all of the steps involved. this is particularly useful for students with ld as they become easily frustrated and overwhelmed when material appears too complex initially and they often give up before even starting a task (lerner, 2003). modeling is another important component of explicit instructional techniques (olson & platt, 2000). in the writing process, for example, it is important for a teacher to explain and demonstrate each stage. it is generally not sufficient to name and give some examples of pre-writing strategies or proofreading; the teacher might actually demonstrate for the whole class and perhaps individually exactly how each step is accomplished. when writing a paper, for example, on “the most significant event in your life,” the teacher could guide the students in brainstorming ideas and making a graphic organizer of topics. for students with learning disabilities, modeling is critical because of their feelings of being overwhelmed. in addition, the model provides the extra guidance that is needed for these students. in most explicit instruction, there is a great deal of practice and review of new learning until mastery occurs (grobecker, 1999). whether it is multiplication facts, geography terms involving landforms, or vocabulary related to a biology lesson on parts of the brain; direct instructional lessons provide extensive drill and practice time (olson and platt, 2000). the students with ld benefit from such over learning because of their memory problems and difficulty processing information. explicit teaching also involves a great deal of structure and systematic planning (olson & platt, 2000). because of the processing, attention, and memory problems of many students with learning disabilities, this emphasis on teacher directed and controlled lessons is beneficial (lerner, 2003). students tend to achieve when they know what to expect; in other words lessons are predictable. they are then able to focus attention on the new material being taught rather than the unique and perhaps confusing features of a lesson. another example of a direct instruction strategy appropriate for students with ld is the use of fast paced lessons with monitoring and feedback. these students can learn to progress if the lesson includes a chance for monitoring by teacher and students, provisions of feedback, and some type of reinforcement. these elements of the lesson have been shown to be effective with children especially those with disabilities. for example during a literature lesson, students might be asked to write an essay analyzing the themes of a story. rather than completing the entire assignment, students benefit from the teacher’s feedback at each step. first they might check to see if the theme they selected is relevant. then they might describe examples of the theme and be sure they are related events. all of the major content of their essays, in fact, could be checked and revised before even working on a draft. this procedure builds confidence and develops strategies to ensure skill development and a higher quality finished product. conclusion students with learning disabilities are challenging to teach successfully in the inclusion setting because of the processing and academic deficits. however, if teachers are familiar with patterns of strengths and weaknesses and aware of several principles for good practice, most students with ld have a good chance for success. instructional decisions should be made based on the child’s learning characteristics, the task, and the content rather than teaching from a pre-determined philosophy. the best teaching will often integrate ideas from constructivist and behaviorist principles. a few examples of relevant recommendations discussed in this paper are in the list that follows this narrative. although it is often easier to teach with one method overall, instruction is most effective if special education and general education teachers are familiar with several options and collaborate to make decisions for each lesson. in addition, these ideas are beneficial for several subjects, grade levels, and students with and without disabilities. they are generally easy to implement without changing an entire lesson. summary of key ideas for teaching students with ld in the general education classroom ideas based on constructivist theory  relate lessons to real life situations to make the ideas more meaningful  start lessons with information and examples that are familiar to the students (from their own experiences) current issues in education vol. 8 no. 10  focus on a few key ideas in each lesson that underlie several topics and subject areas  design activities in which students are actively involved in the lesson  integrate high level thinking skills, and provide clear explanations and guidance to clarify ideas based on behavioral theory  break down tasks into small segments  model, demonstrate, and explain each step in a procedure or new task  include as much extra practice and review as needed for mastery to occur  incorporate structure and predictable routine into lessons  use monitoring and feedback as lesson progresses rather than waiting until conclusion references brooks, j. g., & brooks, m. g. (1999). in search of understanding: the case for constructivist classrooms. alexandria, va: association for supervision and curriculum development. duhaney, d. c., & duhaney, l. m. g. (2000). assistive technology: meeting the needs of learners with disabilities. international journal of instructional media, 27, 393-401. ellis, e. s. (1997). watering up the curriculum for adolescents with learning disabilities: goals of the knowledge dimension. remedial and special education, 18, 326-346. grobecker, b. (1999). mathematics reform and learning disabilities. learning disability quarterly, 22, 43-58. harris, k. r., & graham, s. (1996). constructivism and students with special needs: issues in the classroom. learning disabilities research and practice, 11, 134-137. lerner, j. (2003). learning disabilities: theories, diagnosis, and teaching practices. boston: houghton mifflin company. mercer, c. d. (1997). students with learning disabilities. upper saddle river, nj: merrill/prentice hall. mercer, c. d., jordan, l., & miller, s. p. (1996). constructivist math instruction for diverse learners. learning disabilities research and practice, 11, 147-156. olson, j. l., & platt, j. m. (2000). teaching children and adolescents with special needs (3 rd ed.). upper saddle river, nj: merrill/prentice hall. u.s. office of education. (1977). assistance to states for education of handicapped children: procedures for evaluating specific learning disabilities. (federal register, 42:65082 65085). teaching students with learning disabilities: constructivism or behaviorism? 5 2005 article citation steele, m.m. (2005, april 30). teaching students with learning disabilities: constructivism or behaviorism? current issues in education [on-line], 8(10). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number10/ author notes marcee m. steele university of north carolina wilmington marcee m. steele, phd, university of south florida, is a professor of special education at the university of north carolina wilmington. she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in learning disabilities, assessment procedures, exceptional students, and current issues in special education. she has also taught individuals with learning disabilities from pre-school to graduate school level in public and private settings for over 32 years. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 21, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation steele, m. m. (2005). teaching students with learning disabilities: constructivism or behaviorism? current issues in education, 8(10). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1607 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number10/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1607 volume 6, number 15 september 17, 2003 issn 1099-839x the continuing trouble with collaboration: teachers talk lawrence leonard and pauline leonard louisiana tech university the institutionalization of collaborative working environments is widely considered to be critical to the creation and maintenance of schools as professional learning communities. prevailing thought suggests that improved student performance may be fully realized only when teachers routinely function as teams and abandon their traditional norms of isolationism and individualism. this interpretive study involving teachers in 45 north louisiana schools suggests that while some schools and school districts are indeed characterized by elements of the `learning community' others remain largely mired in customary practices that are counterproductive to realizing the newer collaborative standards. participating teachers report that, despite the rhetoric, major impediments to joint professional work remain and they make suggestions for better meeting the continuing collaborative challenge. there has never been a time when the expectation has been greater that teachers work together in meaningful job-embedded ways. while the prevailing call for routinized collaborative practice has been evident for the past couple of decades, it has intensified with the more recent systemic reforms based in heightened curricula standards and more stringent accountability mechanisms (peterson, 2002). the conception that educators perform better when they work together professionally is buoyed by elements of organizational theory models which emerged earlier in the corporate sector (e.g., argyris, 1978; covey, 1991; drucker, 1985; lawler, 1986; senge, 1990). such conceptions view authentic teamwork as being an essential characteristic of the successful organization as its members come together regularly to share ideas and develop common understandings of goals and the means to their attainment. building organizational capacity through collegial interaction in schools has become prominent in much of the literature on education reform and school improvement. administrators and teachers at all levels of the education practice are encouraged to build professional learning communities based on shared conceptions of vision, purpose, and means (e.g., barth, 1990; lambert, 1998; leonard & leonard, 2001a; speck, 1999). indeed, the thrust for educators to collaborate has taken on wholly international dimensions. for example, the australian college of education encourages teachers to "work collaboratively with their colleagues" (brock, 1999, p. 11) and the general teaching council for england advocates that the bases for raising schooling standards lies largely in "collaborative enquiry and open, active professional learning" (2002, introduction, 4). in canada, the ontario college of teachers asserts that teachers are educational leaders who collaborate with their colleagues, parents, and members of the community (1999, p. 8). in the united states, state-mandated school reforms of the past several years and, more recently, the new federal school accountability initiative articulated and legalized through the bush current issues in education vol. 6 no. 15 administration's no child left behind act (nclb, 2001) -have greatly increased expectations that educators do more to ensure that all students better meet standards of learning performance, particularly as measured by standardized testing procedures. concomitant with these governmental and agency imperatives are newly revised professional standards adopted by prominent professional agencies and learned societies and which compellingly endorse the collaborative initiative. for instance, the national board for professional teaching standards (2001) includes the proposition that effective teachers are members of learning communities and that accomplished teachers contribute to the effectiveness of the school by working collaboratively with other professionals on instructional policy, curriculum development and staff development (nbpts, 2001, 5). as well, the interstate new teacher assessment and support consortium (intasc) recommends that new teachers be prepared to "foster relationships with school colleagues" that help "support students' learning and well being" (intasc standards, 1998). the national staff development council (nsdc) and the interstate school leaders licensure consortium (isllc) also place high emphasis on the need for schools and school districts to create and sustain organizational cultures that are characterized by elements of professional shared learning. the nsdc process standards recommend that teachers be "provided with sufficient time during the work day "to learn and work together to accomplish the school's mission and goals" and that "staff members learn and apply collaborative skills" (nsdc standards, 2001). isslc notes the need for school administrators to promote student learning by sustaining a culture of "staff professional growth" in "an effective learning environment" (isslc standards, 1996). cultural norms and teacher collaboration notwithstanding the noted prevailing expectations that schools exemplify recognized components of professional learning communities, historical norms have not reflected such circumstances. almost three decades ago, lortie (1975) reported that teachers worked in circumstances that placed them physically and intellectually separate from their colleagues and that there was limited professional sharing among them. indications of individualistic and isolationist orientations were also evident in goodlad's (1984) seminal work a place called school: prospects for the future as he reflected upon evidence that teachers tended to interact little either within or among schools, a circumstance further noted by rosenholtz (1989). by the mid 1990s, elmore determined that although there was increasing recognition of how schools might better operate there appeared to be little incentive for teachers "to change their practices in their daily work routines" (1995, p. 15). the relevant literature of even more recent years has provided limited evidence of the melding of expectations and practices (e.g., leonard & leonard, 1999; welch, 1998). nonetheless, there are persistent claims to what professional collaborative cultures can and do achieve, among them, teacher empowerment, collegial trust, and organizational change, and school improvement (hall & hord, 2001; maehr and midgley, 1996; stoll & fink, 1996) all of which are resolutely linked to the ultimate goal of enhanced student outcomes. of course, discussion of collegial behavior must be embedded in an overriding conceptualization of societal and organizational culture. despite the diversity that exists in american society and its multiple micro-societal layers, "individualism as an ideal is extreme in the u.s. core culture" (banks, 2003, p.9). it is not unreasonable to expect that this macro-culture of individualism would penetrate an organization's culture. a school's culture simply reflects what its members collectively value and believe about the world and their place in it (schein, 1985). it includes critical and interactive elements such as shared expectations of behavior, the nature of professional development, mutual respect, and orientations toward collaboration and learning (peterson & deal, 1999; speck, 1999). peterson (2002) identifies two forceful and opposite school cultures: `positive' and `toxic'. positive cultures reflect norms of common purpose, continuous inquiry, and shared practice while toxic cultures thrive where there is a lack of purpose, collaboration is discouraged, and there are hostile relations among staff. toxic cultures can defy individual efforts toward educational improvement and, because of their entrenchment, can even stymie collective reform efforts. authentic teacher collaboration that which is directed ultimately toward student learning is unlikely to occur within the realm of a negative school culture. as wagner and masden-copas (2002) warn, the primary goal of continuous school improvement will not be realized "unless teams of teachers improve together" (p.43). in spite of the potential benefits accrued to cultural norms of collaborative practice, problems may persist in sustaining schools as learning communities founded in notions of professional interaction that is, teachers meeting regularly to exchange ideas, set goals, and make plans to address shared purposes. inherent in such a supposition is, of course, that teachers themselves actually retain commonly-held beliefs about the value of collaborative activities and that they are able to avail the continuing trouble with collaboration: teachers talk 3 of organizational circumstances and conditions that regularly generate them. inhibitors to such collegial professional interaction have been noted often in the literature, among them: time constraints, fragmented visions, competitiveness, conflict avoidance, and lack of administrative support (for examples see dipardo, 1997; knop, lemaster, norris, raudensky & tannehill, 1997; kruse & louis, 1997; leonard, 1998). recent research undertaken by one of the authors (leonard, 2002) with 238 louisiana teachers confirmed several of those suppositions and provided additional insights. in that study, appropriate revisions were made to an earlier survey instrument developed by the authors (leonard & leonard, 2001) and which had been based upon schein's (1985) underlying dimensions of organizational culture. the self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 500 systematic randomly selected teachers in 88 schools in 10 public school districts or parishes in northern louisiana. the instrument was comprised of 52 items, 24 of which were of likert-type response format with the remaining items addressing descriptive aspects of the teachers' schools, demographic information, as well as a selection checklist of various common forms of teacher shared work. these forms of shared activities included team planning, peer observation, joint inservice (i.e., participating in workshops with school colleagues), extracurricular activities, and other forms of joint, or common, activities. from the teachers' reported perspectives, and generally speaking, the research findings were summarized in the following five statements: 1. teachers do not consider their schools to sufficiently exhibit expectations of or support for regular, high levels of collaborative involvement. 2. teacher work continues to be characterized by competition and individualism and lacks the type of trusting, caring environment that is more conducive to collaborative practice. 3. there needs to be greater articulation of underlying values and beliefs about educational practice that is tempered with respect for diverse professional opinions and practices. 4. teachers are dissatisfied with scheduling and appropriations of time, which often serve to deter collaborative practice. 5. teachers need professional development directed at improving their collaborative skills. as noted earlier, the follow-up louisiana research, which is described below, served to further probe the nature and extent of collaborative practice in schools. such inquiry is needed in order to learn more about how cultures can be fostered to "systematically address school improvement and student learning" (hipp & huffman, 2002, p. 39). as noted above, the research reported here primarily addresses data received in a follow-up survey addressing aspects of professional collaboration in north louisiana schools. the questionnaire addressed teachers' beliefs about collaborative practice compared to what they perceived as actual collaborative conditions and circumstances in their schools (see leonard, 2002). of the 238 teachers who completed the initial questionnaire, 101 indicated that they would be willing to participate in the follow-up survey which would delve more deeply into the nature of teacher shared work in schools. the second questionnaire was distributed in the spring of 2002 with 56 (55.5%) teachers from 45 schools in 8 districts returning completed instruments. twenty-five of the respondents taught at the primary/elementary level, 16 in the junior high/middle school grades area, and the remaining 15 in high schools. school enrollment size ranged from a low of 168 to a maximum of approximately 2000 students. teacher experience ranged from 3 years to 34 years. in open-ended question format, the followup survey asked teachers to reflect upon specific aspects of collaborative practices at their schools as well as at the district level and beyond. teachers were also asked to assess administrator and organizational expectations and support for professional collaboration as well as evident impediments to such practices. inasmuch as common language is essential to effective communication - and in an attempt to avoid possible misconceptions about what constitutes professional collaboration - the survey document contained the following guiding definition: "for the purpose of clarity in this discussion, `professional collaboration' is considered to occur when teachers work together regularly, share their knowledge, contribute ideas, and develop plans for achieving educational goals that is, principally in terms of improved student learning. (we are not, in this instance, including such things as hall or lunch supervision or extra-curricular activities.)" results the data analysis of the written responses to the open-ended survey questions employed a basic qualitative enquiry technique by initially structuring the data along question topics and then allowing additional themes and sub-themes to emerge. large portions of the data were coded independently by the researchers and, later, categories and themes were reexamined collectively to determine agreement. the method allowed for high inter-rater reliability and current issues in education vol. 6 no. 15 reasonable confidence that the written opinions of the respondents were being perceived correctly. the coding process resulted in the emergence of two principal themes: 1. the nature and extent of professional collaboration in schools, and 2. the nature and extent of professional collaboration at the school district level and beyond. each category is discussed in turn and then considered together in overall terms. school-level collaboration the most frequent forms of collaborative practices cited by the 56 responding teachers included faculty meetings, departmental meetings, grade-level or subject area meetings, and special education meetings. they also noted curriculum meetings, team teaching, lesson planning, and faculty workshops. a number of the teachers provided explication of the forms collaborative practices took at their schools. for instance, this high school english teacher related how she and her colleagues meet to discuss student progress: we discuss what the students didn't seem to get before moving on to a new level in hopes of the lower level teacher focusing more on those skills with the next group. we do this because we have found that there are some skills entire groups are not acquiring. an elementary teacher noted that teachers in her school are "paired together" to "plan their units" while another recounted how the workload is shared as each teacher is required to "get materials and tests ready for all teachers". as did a few other participants, this middle school teacher described how departments regularly come together: several times in the course of the year, all departments meet to discuss how to meet state benchmarks and provide curriculum for each subject area. reading and english work closely in collaborating writing creatively with assigned stories read in class. a few others referred to various forms of "informal gatherings" or "when we are passing each other" as opportunities for sharing ideas "by word of mouth". occasional reference was also given to addressing student discipline problems by consulting with each other. table 1 contains a summary listing of the various ways the teachers reported collaborating with colleagues. notwithstanding the extensive record of ways that the teachers engage in collaborative practices, there were also those teachers who reported little such activity was to be witnessed in their schools and some indicated that collaborative activity was virtually non-existent. one high school teacher said quite succinctly that the amount of collaborative work was simply "none" while another estimated that "very little collaboration of any kind is done at our school"; a third person stated flatly that "teachers really do not collaborate." of those who did recount various forms of shared work, most (73.1%) lamented that efforts were still largely inadequate. one elementary respondent put it this way: although we do collaborate on various things, we do not meet often enough. most of the time we see each other in the hall and have quick conversation. it is usually short. table 1: various forms of professional collaboration reported by teachers faculty meeting departmental/subject meetings grade-level meetings beginning-of-year meetings lesson planning examination preparation workshops sharing materials informal meetings university graduate classes team teaching special education meetings committee meetings peer observation the research literature on professional collaboration has consistently cited a number of prevailing barriers to meaningful interactions [see for examples dipardo, 1997; knop, lemaster, norris, raudensky & tannehill, 1997; kruse & louis, 1997, leonard, 1999]. most of these impediments to shared work activity were cited by the participant teachers. not unexpectedly, the ubiquitous issue of time was prominent among them. frequently, respondents bemoaned that lack of time is a major problem in their schools and one high school teacher attributed it to there being "so many programs, activities, etc. that we are involved in planning and conducting until no time is left for professional collaboration". this sentiment was echoed by another secondary teacher who stated: "we have a lot of responsibilities and not a lot of free time." increasing amounts of "paper work" was cited by a number of others. this elementary teacher explained circumstances this way: it's hard to find extra time to devote to collaboration. extra time is spent on developing lesson plans, helping children who were absent with make-up work, running papers, gathering materials for lessons and school committee work. i teach 4th grade and average about forty the continuing trouble with collaboration: teachers talk 5 conferences a year. this takes a lot of out time also. a few of the teachers pointed out that they did not think it appropriate that teachers should be expected to utilize after-school time for collaborative activities, especially, as one elementary teacher noted there is little opportunity to meet after classes since teachers "usually have children of their own or errands to run after school". other comments incorporated notions of being "too busy", "too tired", and "overwhelmed" by other professional and personal responsibilities. a couple of teachers also noted that some teachers have other employment and, consequently, are often "in a hurry to leave and get to their other job". this high school teacher summarized the prevailing time-constraining situation in this manner: we have twenty minutes for lunch, and 10 minutes for recess. otherwise we have only our planning period, which does not coincide with other teachers' periods. most do not want to stay after school. the teachers noted a number of other obstacles to teacher collaborative practice. prominent among them was the apparent attitude and lack of commitment by teachers as well as the lack of compensation. they talked of "lazy people" who wished to avoid additional work and others who prefer "to work alone" and stay in their "comfort zone". references were also made to "resistance to change", "competition" among teachers for high test scores, and a genuine "lack of interest" in doing things differently. one middle school teacher was particularly dismayed with the attitudes of some of more experienced teachers toward newer faculty members: [they are] reluctant to accept ideas of new teachers; sometimes they don't want new ideas; sometimes i think they feel threatened by the presence of the new teachers who are up to date with current technology and who are excited about teaching methods. the respondents were also critical of a lack of appropriate compensation for additional work. they noted that "collaboration takes effort and organization" and, without monetary reward, "no one is willing to do it." one teacher with more than 20 years experience put it this way: i have noticed over the years i've been teaching that there seems to be a lack of commitment on the parts of teachers to give time, especially after school or during the summer, without monetary compensation. but, without pay, who can blame them? other noted barriers to collaborative opportunities included "tight scheduling" - especially in smaller schools -teacher personality conflicts, and lack of administrative support. there were marked contrasts among some respondents in terms of how they viewed the extent of administrative concern for collaborative practices among teachers. while some respondents were highly complimentary in their perceptions of principal support others were considerably less enamored. the former spoke of how their principals had arranged for regular subject and grade-level meetings, accommodated schedules to model a collaborative orientation, and provided additional opportunities for teachers to come together during workshops and special teamwork sessions. this junior high school teacher was clearly pleased with the efforts of her chief school administrator: our principal is very supportive! each faculty meeting we share ideas and plan schoolwide activities. next year we have a schoolwide theme planned for 6 th , 7 th , and 8 th . activities are being planned now for next year. we also have a summer retreat when we plan as a faculty the activities and policies we plan to implement. another junior high school teacher related how his principal regularly visited meetings, encouraged teachers, and provided them with necessary information. not everyone was as satisfied with the efforts of their school administrators. some noted that collaboration was largely left "to each grade level to take care of" or was "only ostensibly encouraged" in the realistic recognition that "we can't do it". others were pithy in their appraisals that administrator support for collaborative practice was "very little" or "does not exist". recommendations for improved administrative support for collaboration included suggestions of: scheduling that would better facilitate teacher interaction during the day, arranging for team teaching, providing substitute teachers to free up teachers to work together, organizing classroom allocations more effectively, providing directives and incentives for after school work, and setting stronger expectations that teachers actually collaborate in meaningful ways. collaboration at the district level and beyond the variation that characterized collaborative practice and support for collaboration at the school level seemed largely to be reflected in circumstances at the district or parish level, as well. some teachers spoke of their districts providing multiple and varied opportunities for teachers to engage in professional interaction with counterparts at other schools. other respondents spoke of beginning-of-year initiation gatherings, of occasional district grade-level meetings during which teachers current issues in education vol. 6 no. 15 addressed state curriculum benchmarks, of district supervisors meeting with subject area teachers to "share collaboratively", of grant-writing workshops, and of the notification of regional meetings of interest to teachers. a number of teachers felt these efforts were quite effective in meeting teacher professional development needs. this junior high school faculty member put it this way: our parish is constantly trying to offer programs to help teachers in their classrooms. if there is something we need and if our parish doesn't offer the workshop they will find another place that does. if there is enough interest, they will bring one to us. as with some school-level administration, some teachers perceived a lack of direction for collaborative engagement at the district level. their descriptors ranged from "none" to "very little". one primary teacher went so far as to suggest that she did not think the superintendent "really cares" while this high school faculty member reported a perceived pattern of indifference at the district level: unfortunately our parish administration doesn't promote or encourage collaboration in schools or among schools. this has been the case for my entire 23 years. the louisiana teachers offered a number of ways for improving the promotion of collaboration at the district level and beyond. suggestions included mandating intensive collaboration training at all schools, providing more opportunities for teachers to collaborate with other schools and at the district level, coordinating the dissemination of the latest teaching techniques, providing sufficient numbers of teachers at the school level, and promoting newer ideas by recruiting teachers from outside the district and state. there was also strong support for the notion of paying teachers extra for collaboration time beyond the normal school day and for the supply of more substitutes so teachers could work together more frequently during the school day. some also spoke of the need to better utilize web-based teacher networks, to work with colleges and universities in designing more practice-based courses, and to allocate more funding for attendance at professional conferences outside the state. there were also admonitions that district administrators should not perceive non-teaching time as "time off" and that they more routinely and effectively consult teachers prior to making decisions that impact directly upon them and their students. table 2 summarizes teacher suggestions for better promoting professional collaboration at the school and district levels. table 2: teacher suggestions for promoting collaborative practices in schools and school districts. collaboration training for teachers increase number of teachers arrange common planning time reduce teacher paperwork increase opportunities for collaboration better disseminate new teaching methods recruit teachers outside area pay for collaboration beyond school time provide additional substitute teachers provide web-based teacher networks increase funding to attend conferences design more practicebased courses better utilize inservice time listen to teacher suggestions set expectations for collaboration increase administrative support conclusions and implications the teacher perspectives about the nature and extent of collaborative practices in 45 north louisiana schools contain insights that are meaningful, yet, in and of themselves, are not exceptional. forms of teacher shared work have been commonly noted in the research literature as have been identified barriers to its manifestation (for examples see dipardo, 1997; knop, lemaster, norris, raudensky & tannehill, 1997; kruse & louis, 1997). what is particularly noteworthy, however, is that the realization and maintenance of schools as so-called `professional learning communities' seems to remain, in many instances, little more than an elusive aspiration. while the data presented here indicate that there are indeed multiple forms of teacher collaborative practices occurring in many of the schools of the survey respondents, others remain mired in traditional norms of teacher individuality and organizational isolationism. even in those instances where teachers reported relatively high levels of regular professional involvement among colleagues, dissatisfaction with at least some aspects of prevailing circumstances persisted. earlier research reported by the authors demonstrated that teachers themselves value attributes of collegial enterprise that are based upon strong customs of routine professional interaction (leonard, 2002; leonard & leonard, 2001a/b; leonard & leonard, 2002). through recent revisions to their professional standards and guidelines, various the continuing trouble with collaboration: teachers talk 7 education-based associations and agencies strongly advocate continuous collective reflections and shared work among teachers (e.g. ncate, intasc, nbpts, isllc, nctm, etc.). furthermore, policymakers and administrators at all levels of the public education hierarchy regularly espouse the need for teachers to devise new ways to work together to address professional needs and, by extension, to effect improved student learning. the nclb act (2001) as well as various related federal and state education department directives, position papers, and professional development funding allocations reflect the recognition that teacher collective learning is a crucial factor in achieving successful education reforms. enigmatic to this apparent universal recognition of the inherent value in maintaining routines of professional collaboration and in the ostensible thrust to create cultures of collegial engagement is that, for many schools, this idealism may not match the reality. the impediments to sustaining norms of professional collaborative practice seem as troublesome today as they did decades ago (see lortie, 1975; goodlad, 1984). as this study signifies, many teachers continue to depict severe limitations in the capacity to work meaningfully with colleagues in ways that allow them to address the common goal of enhanced student achievement. the obstacles to collaborative practice today are hauntingly similar to those reported years ago. teachers still complain that the scarcity of opportunities to collaborate is promulgated by increasing work demands and decreasing time availability. they also continue to lament persisting negative mindsets about the actual desirability of shared work and the resistance to moving beyond the traditional models of teacher relationships. while some schools seem to be headed by administrators who value and promote elements of the `learning community', others clearly are not. the distinction is important and it may be time for district level administrators and policymakers to unequivocally communicate expectations of the former to current and potential school-level administrators. school principals who continue to personify traditional leader traits in the currently emerging educational environment not only minimize professional growth, they may also optimize student mediocrity. attempts at school improvement cannot be individual and fragmented but rather must be embedded in collaborative practices that address the day-to-day needs of students (louis & marks, 1996). to that point -and perhaps most debilitating of the concerns that teachers continue to espouse about efforts to establish learning communities founded on principles of professional collaboration -is the lack of consistent resolve at the district and state levels. while many schools have creatively juggled schedules and identified additional resources that are used to occasionally free up teachers for shared work, many others have not. if habitual teacher collaborative practice is truly valued, it should not be left to the vagaries of particular schools and personnel who demonstrate the will and the means to endorse and enact it. rather, it should be a certain expectation that is clearly espoused at the highest policy and administrative levels and supported in actual measures. making provisions for teachers to work together during and outside school hours may indeed require reallocation of resources or securing additional funding. if such is the circumstance, then the strong political will of leaders buoyed by a supportive constituency may be the best chance for addressing the ongoing 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(1996). changing our schools. buckingham, uk: open university press. http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/pbl/pblintasc.htm http://www.umsl.edu/~mpea/pages/aboutisllc/aboutisllc.html#anchor-20645 http://www.umsl.edu/~mpea/pages/aboutisllc/aboutisllc.html#anchor-20645 http://www.ucalgary.ca/~iejll/volume6/leonard.html http://www.ucalgary.ca/~iejll/volume6/leonard.html http://www.nsdc.org/educatorindex.htm http://www.nbpts.org/ http://www.nochildleftbehind.gov/ http://www.oct.on.ca/english/ the continuing trouble with collaboration: teachers talk 9 wagner, c. and masden-copas, p. (2002). an audit of the culture starts with two handy tools. journal of staff development, 23(3), 42-53. welch, m. (1998). collaboration: staying on the bandwagon. journal of teacher education, 49(1), 26-37. . current issues in education vol. 6 no. 15 2003 article citation leonard, l. & leonard, p. (2003, september 17). the continuing trouble with collaboration: teachers talk. current issues in education [on-line], 6(15). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume6/number15/ author notes lawrence leonard louisiana tech university lleonard@latech.edu dr. lawrence leonard is a professor in the department of curriculum, instruction, and leadership at louisiana tech university. he is a former schoolteacher and administrator with primary research interests in educational leadership, organizational change, and collaborative practices. pauline leonard louisiana tech university pleonard@latech.edu dr. pauline leonard is an assistant professor in the department of curriculum, instruction, and leadership at louisiana tech university. she is a former schoolteacher whose primary research areas include educational values, equity and diversity issues, and teacher leadership and collaboration. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 25, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation leonard, l., & leonard, p. (2003). the continuing trouble with collaboration: teachers talk. current issues in education, 6(15). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1615 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number15/index.html mailto:lleonard@latech.edu mailto:pleonard@latech.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1615 volume 11, number 9 may, 2009 issn 1099-839x teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop katia gonzalez-acquaro wagner college the focus of this study was to assess the impact of an online workshop on teachers’ knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy beliefs toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities. a pretest-post-test group design was implemented for this study. sixty-eight teachers were randomly assigned to one of two training conditions or a control group. results demonstrated that teachers in both training groups, information and information/reflection, scored significantly higher compared to the control group on the knowledge toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities questionnaire, the attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey, and the selfefficacy toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey. teachers in the information/reflection group scored the highest of all three groups on the attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey. individuals with intellectual disabilities have made significant strides in the area of legal rights for community integration (tepper, 2001). rights such as employment, housing, marriage, schooling, parenthood and sexual intimacies are now in place. unfortunately, “attitudes toward people with disabilities have not changed as fast as the laws enacted to support them” (tepper, 2001, p. 5). an area that can greatly impact the lives of people with intellectual disabilities and that continues to be plagued with myths is sexuality. labels about the sexuality of individuals with intellectual disabilities have often created situations of unfairness and a reluctance by many to provide sexuality education appropriate to the needs of each individual (mccabe, 1993). opportunities need to be provided to understand rights (mithaug, 1996). the unfairness of having legal rights in place to secure community integration without the necessary education and training can cause many negative effects such as victimization, abuse, hiv, and unwanted pregnancies to name a few. the sexuality information and education council of the united states (siecus) defines sexuality education as a “lifelong process of acquiring information and forming attitudes, beliefs and values. it encompasses sexual development, reproductive health, interpersonal relationships, affection, intimacy, body image, and gender roles” (siecus, 2009, para 1). the definition of what sexuality education means is an important consideration when thinking about ways to adapt and implement a program for students with intellectual disabilities. siecus’s definition of sexuality education provides an example on how sexuality is more than sexual intercourse and how different domains and their significance can greatly impact opportunities for community integration. review of relevant literature current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 schooling and sexuality education there are many legal mandates in place to ensure that students with disabilities have access to and make progress in the general education curriculum (wehmeyer, lance, & bashinski, 2002). the american association of intellectual and developmental disabilities (aaidd), formerly known as the american association on mental retardation (aamr), defines intellectual disabilities as “a disability that is characterized by significant limitations both in intellectual functioning and in adaptive behavior as expressed in conceptual, social, and practical adaptive skills. this disability originates before the age of 18” (aaidd, 2008, para 2). sexuality education, a subject of discussion in many schools, is often a controversial topic and when issues of disabilities are added to the conversations a variety of opinions exist (blanchett & wolfe, 2002). decisions on the type of sexuality education programs, curriculum and standards that should or should not be provided in schools are often left to the local level and typically include comprehensive, abstinence based, abstinence only, abstinence only until marriage, and fear based programs. many of these types of programs are often developed to “complement or augment” the information that students may be receiving at home (siecus, 2001, p.2) with families having different options such as “opt in/out” policies and requirements. “the federal government does not have a direct role in local sexuality. instead, it leaves such control to state and local bodies…states are much more directly involved in decisions about sexuality education. states can mandate that sexuality education be taught, require schools to teach about stds or hiv/aids, set state-wide guidelines for topics, choose curricula, and approve textbooks” (siecus, 2001, para 23). sexuality education can often provide students with intellectual disabilities with the opportunity to learn appropriate socio-sexual skills, protect themselves from sexual abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, and unwanted pregnancies (sparks, 2004). “the fact is that people with disabilities have the same emotional and physical needs and desires as people that are not disabled” (tepper, 2001, p. 5) but the “social isolation as well as functional limitations” can often impact social/sexual development (sweeney, 2007, p. 6). sexuality education and teacher training while politicians, families, students and communities debate on the type of sexuality education program that should or should not be made available in schools, some teachers are often left with the difficult decision of understanding the different viewpoints and sometimes having to select information or follow curriculum that will meet the needs of all students, while also following local mandates. even if a teacher is not directly asked to focus in areas of sexuality education, it may not be uncommon for teachers to be exposed to questions students and families may have about the topic, making many teachers feel unsure about how to handle specific questions. hausman and rusek (1995) stated that “classroom teachers, not specialists, provide most of the health teaching in elementary schools”(p, 81), while getch, branca, fitz-gerald, and fitz-gerald (2001) explained that “ in u.s. public schools, physical education teachers are most likely to provide sexuality education in middle and high schools, followed by health educators, biology teachers, home economics teachers, and school nurses” (p. 402) making it a necessary training topic for all in the education field. “because sexuality issues touch on so many developmental issues relating to children and youth, siecus has, since 1965, urged that all pre-service teachers for prekindergarten through 12th grade receive at least one course in human sexuality” (rodriguez, 2000, p. 68). many teachers report feeling ill prepared during their teacher education programs and receiving little, if any, professional development related to this topic and how to answer questions that could be raised during class (rodriguez,young, renfro, ascencio, & haffner, 1996, howard-barr, rienzo, pigg, & james, 2005). school districts that do provide training for selected teachers may differ in the way training is provided creating the possibility of some teachers receiving more or less information (especially in adaptations for intellectual disabilities) as well as curriculum materials. wolfe and blanchett (2000) pointed out that “personnel delivering sociosexual information should be aware of their personal values related to sexuality and persons with disabilities and actively guard against imposing their values on others” (p.6). assessing teachers’ self efficacy, the “belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute course of actions required to manage prospective situations” (bandura, 1995, p. 2), is essential, especially when curriculum implementation can be greatly affected by teachers’ perceptions of their own capabilities to administer a particular curriculum. research has indicated the need for training and accessible information in the area of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities (bowder, lanning, pipping, & tanner, 2003) howardbarr, rienzo, pigg, and james (2005) reported the need for research to address the effects of a course in teachers’ knowledge as well as adding a more in depth way to study the comfort level of teachers in teaching the topic of sexuality teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 3 education to students with intellectual disabilities. providing teachers with the opportunity to receive knowledge as well as work through their own anxieties is important (donovan, 1998) and teachers “should be required to have a good command of the subject matter, and adequate level of comfort with the content, and should engage in active value clarification” (blanchett & wolfe, 2002, p.55). theoretical framework adult learning theory professional development for teachers vary with challenges such as funding and scheduling conflict playing a role on the different opportunities that may be available. because many teachers may be coming into the profession with limited information about sexuality education and sexuality education for students with intellectual disabilities, professional development in an online format was chosen as the medium to increase the number of teachers accessing information related to the topic while taking into consideration ways adults learn. when in-person professional development or courses are not possible due to funding or scheduling conflicts, online learning provides an alternative medium to deliver information (tinker, 2000). the online seminar was constructed to take into consideration the needs of adult learners. knowles (1984) theory of andragogy has been widely utilized in the development of online learning environments and was selected to serve as a framework for this study. andragogy focuses on the process of learning and how adult learners self-direct their instruction. “adults need to know why they need to learn something; adults maintain the concept of responsibility for their own decisions, their own lives; adults enter the educational activity with a greater volume and more varied experiences than do children; adults have a readiness to learn those things they need to know in order to cope effectively with real life situations; adults are life-centered in their orientation to learning; and adults are more responsive to internal motivators than external motivators”(knowles, holton, & swanson, 2005, p. 72). the online seminar provided teachers with the opportunity to receive the latest resources, while selfdirecting their learning, and engaging in personal inquiry. the tasks and readings created opportunities to connect information to current and future needs in the classroom while using a variety of instructional strategies such as a movie clip, links to research articles, information on local and national viewpoints, news digests, quotes, and a section of resources of books. the online learning environment also provided learners with the opportunity to work through sensitive issues of their own values and attitudes in a “non-threatening environment” (weerakoom, 2003, p.15). additionally, the need for learners to reflect on their learning relating it back to goals of a section they may be working on has been recommended as an essential practice (laurillard, 1993). due to the limited research in the online training of teachers in the area of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities, the literature on the training of health professionals in health education (weerakoon, 2003) was utilized as the rationale for comparing the two specific training conditions for the training of teachers. weerakoon (2003) suggested providing learners with opportunities to use reflective journals to “record feelings and thoughts” (p. 16). research questions the research question addressed in the study was: following a sexuality education and intellectual disability online seminar, do treatment groups (information vs. information/reflection, vs. control) differ significantly on post-test scores on the knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities? table 1 summary of teachers’ demographics and characteristics within treatment groups . method recruitment of participants was done with fliers throughout a large urban university, advertisement on an online community for teachers and administrators, and by emailing school administrators about the study with a copy of the flier (emails were found in the department of education websites). for the purpose of this study, the term current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 “teacher” was utilized to classify both general education teachers (those not trained as a special education teacher) and special education teachers. a demographic questionnaire indicated that the sample size (n = 68) included 45 general education teachers and 23 special education teachers. a total of 23.53% were males (n = 16) and 76.47% were females (n = 52) with 69.12% of the participants between the ages of 20 30 years (n = 47) and 30.88% between 31 40 years of age (n = 21). table 2 summary of teachers’ grade levels, years of teaching experience, and background/experience with students with intellectual disabilities within treatment groups a total of 58.82% of teachers had a bachelor’s degree (n = 40) while 41.18% of teachers had a master’s degree (n = 28). teachers in this study taught the following grade levels: 1.47% toddlers (n = 1), 4.41% preschool (n = 3), 51.47% elementary (n = 35), 35.29% middle school (n = 24), and 7.35% high school (n = 5). a total of 55.88% of teachers had 0-3 years of teaching experience (n = 38), 41.18% had 4-6 years of experience (n = 28), and 2.94% had 7-9 years of experience (n = 2), with 38.24% of teachers having background experience with students with intellectual disabilities (n = 26), and 61.76% of teachers not having any background (n = 42). teachers rated their professional preparation to teach sexuality education to students with intellectual disabilities as 36.77% poor (n = 25), 58.82% below average (n = 40), and 4.41% average (n = 3). teachers’ history of preparation in sexuality education included 7.35 % having a college general course (n = 5), 14.71% having a college sexuality course (n = 10), 23.53% having a college special education course (n = 16), 1.47% having staff development (n = 1), 10.29% having conferences or workshops (n = 7), and 42.65% none of the above or other (n = 29). teachers’ demographics and characteristics, grade levels taught, years of teaching experience, background with students with intellectual disabilities, as well as professional preparation toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities and history of preparation in sexuality education are provided for each treatment group in tables 1-3. a copy of the demographic questionnaire can be found in appendix a. table 3. summary of teachers’ professional self-ratings of their preparation with sexuality education and intellectual disabilities and history of preparation in sexuality education within treatment groups design a group experimental design was utilized for this study. teachers’ were assigned randomly by the computer program to either the information group, the information/reflection group, or the control group. the independent variable of this study was the type of treatment which consisted of two training teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 5 groups (information and information/reflection) and a control group. the training groups, information and information/reflection, received a five-week online seminar. the main dependent variables of interest included: (a) teachers’ knowledge of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities; (b) teachers’ attitudes towards sexuality education and intellectual disabilities, and (c) teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs towards sexuality education and intellectual disabilities. teachers’ responses were evaluated utilizing preand post-test information. measures dependent measures teachers’ knowledge of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities questionnaire. teachers’ knowledge of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities questionnaire (tkseid) was developed by the researcher to assess teachers’ knowledge of sexuality education as well as intellectual disabilities. the questionnaire consisted of 19 multiple-choice questions. these questions were selected based on current topics and research in the area of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities. reliability and validity of tkseid. internal consistency tests for the teachers’ pretest scores on tkseid (n = 19) yielded a cronbach’s alpha of .70. this result indicated that all questions assessed the treatment consistently and reliably. the multiple choice questionnaire was determined as content appropriate by 9 special education teachers for children with intellectual disabilities and 1 professor in the area of sexuality education. a copy of tkseid can be found in appendix b. teachers’ attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey. teachers’ attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey (taseid) was created as a likert-scale survey based on the recommended sexuality topics in a comprehensive sexuality education program as identified by the sexuality information and education council of the united states (national guidelines task force-siecus, 1996). these recommended topics were provided by siecus as guidelines to what topics a sexuality education program should teach if it is going to be comprehensive. teachers were asked to indicate their beliefs about the importance of teaching each topic to students with intellectual disabilities and teachers were also asked about their beliefs toward the importance of teaching these topics in different grade levels for students with and without intellectual disabilities. reliability and validity of taseid. reliability and validity of the teachers’ attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey (n = 44) yielded a cronbach’s alpha score of .95. the attitude survey was determined as appropriate in content by 9 special education teachers and 1 professor in the area of sexuality education. a copy of taseid can be found in appendix c. teachers’ self-efficacy toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities. teachers’ selfefficacy toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities (tseseid) was measured utilizing a teacher efficacy scale modeled on the work by bandura (1990) and revised by the researcher to meet the needs of this study. teachers completed a likert-scale survey consisting of 25 questions related to sexuality education and intellectual disabilities fitting into seven dimensions of teacher efficacy: efficacy to influence decision making, efficacy to influence school resources, instructional self-efficacy, disciplinary self-efficacy, efficacy to enlist parental involvement, efficacy to enlist community involvement, and efficacy to create a positive school climate. the scale was modified to provide teachers with the opportunity to indicate their opinion about statements that related to instruction of sexuality education for students with intellectual disabilities. reliability and validity of tseseid. internal consistency tests for the pretest of the tseseid survey (n = 25) yielded a cronbach’s alpha of .95. the self-efficacy survey was determined as content appropriate by 9 special education teachers and 1 professor in the area of sexuality education. a copy of tseseid can be found in appendix d. procedure pre-test phase teachers participating in the self-paced seminar were provided with a url, the website address, in which the seminar was located. the website in which the online seminar was hosted was programmed to randomly assign teachers into one of the three groups, information, information/reflection, or control group. after entering the website, teachers were taken to the login page which provided information about the study as well as the research description and the participants’ rights to read. teachers agreeing to participate had to click the i agree button at the bottom of the page which documented informed consent of the participants. teachers had the choice of agreeing or not agreeing to participate. access to the seminar was only provided if the i agree button was selected. after teachers completed the online demographic questionnaire, the pretest questionnaire and surveys and submitted each by pressing submit, the computer generated an individual code which they needed to use to reenter the seminar. teachers in the control current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 group received a code that provided them access to the seminar after five weeks. this code was only given after all pretests, teachers’ knowledge toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities, teachers’ attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities, and teachers’ self-efficacy toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities were completed. all scores obtained during this phase of the study were used for the pre test data analyses. intervention phase once the teachers completed the demographic questionnaire as well as the pre test questionnaire and surveys, a computer generated code randomly assigned teachers to one of three treatment conditions: information, information/reflection, or control. information condition. the information condition consisted of four units with a total of 14 lessons taking approximately 10 hours to complete. in unit 1, teachers learned about the definition of sexuality, facets about sexuality, and how the social sexual self develops. unit 2 contained information about the history of sexuality education in the united states and characteristics of different sexuality education choices. unit 3 provided background on intellectual disabilities, the eugenics movement, the history of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities, some of the myths and barriers toward the sexuality education of students with intellectual disabilities, and curriculum choices. unit 4 provided teachers with information on laws affecting the sexuality education of students with intellectual disabilities, such as idea and least restrictive environment, no child left behind, and funding information. activities utilized in some of the units consisted of readings, reports, and watching a movie clip. in addition, the information group was asked to answer factual questions at the end of each unit. these questions were not the same as the ones used in the pre and post-test questionnaire. participants had to answer the questions before the application would allow them to continue into the next section. these activities followed concepts of andragogy in which adult learners had opportunities to self-direct their learning, relate to current and past learning experiences while having opportunities to apply concepts to real (knowles, holton, & swanson, 1998). the data collected were entered automatically into a database after each teacher submitted an answer. information/reflection condition. the information/reflection condition consisted of the same content as the information condition taking approximately 10 hours to complete. however, instead of answering factual questions after each unit, teachers had the opportunity to reflect on the knowledge acquired by answering reflection questions that were embedded throughout the text. an essential aspect of the information/ reflection condition was to encourage teachers to work through what many may consider sensitive topics and reflect on their feelings and understanding toward the information they were learning. all reflection questions had to be answered before the application would allow them to move into the next section. the data collected were entered automatically into a database after each teacher submitted an answer. figure 1. example of a factual question in the information condition. figure 2. example of a reflection question for the information/ reflection condition control condition. teachers in the control condition received a code that granted them access after the five-week time frame that was assigned for the seminar after the data were collected. post-intervention phase post-intervention data collection took place after the five-week time frame assigned for the seminar. although participants had access to the seminar for five weeks, it was designed to be completed in approximately 10 hours. the same procedures and measures that were used for the initial data collection were used again at the post-test phase for both training groups and the control group. all scores obtained during this phase of the study were used for the post data analyses. an overview of units, activities and instructional strategies for the online seminar can be found in appendix e. data analyses preliminary data analyses sixty-eight (68) participants were randomly assigned to either the information group, the information/ reflection group, or the control group. the information group consisted of twenty-two (22) teachers, the information/reflection had twenty-five (25) teachers, and the control group had twenty-one teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 7 (21) teachers. during preliminary data analyses, oneway anovas were performed on pretest scores to ensure that no significant differences between the three groups existed prior to the seminar. means and standard deviations from teachers’ pretest scores are provided in table 4. table 5 provides a summary of the one-way anova on the pretest scores on the knowledge questionnaire. a one-way anova on pretest scores did not show any significant differences between the three groups prior to the online seminar on the knowledge questionnaire. table 4 means and standard deviations for pretest scores note. means and standard deviations (sd) for pretest scores on teachers’ knowledge of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities questionnaire (19 multiple choice questions), teachers’ attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey (44 likert scale questions), and teachers’ selfefficacy beliefs toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities (25 likert scale questions). table 5 summary of one way anova on pretest scores on knowledge of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities note. sum of squares (ss), degree of freedom (df), mean squares (ms), ratio of the between groups by within groups mean squares (f). table 6 provides a summary on the one-way anova on pretest scores on the attitudes survey. no significant differences were found on pretest scores on the anova results of the attitudes survey. table 6 summary of one way anova results on pretest scores on teachers’ attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities note. sum of squares (ss), degree of freedom (df), mean squares (ms), ratio of the between groups by within groups mean squares (f). table 7 provides a summary of the one-way anova on pretest scores on the self-efficacy survey. a one-way anova on pretest scores revealed a significant difference between treatment groups on the self-efficacy measure, f (2, 65) = 4.97, p < .01. the significant main effect for self-efficacy was followed up with tukey (hsd) multiplecomparisons at the .05 level of significance. tukey pairwise comparisons of the three groups indicated that the control group (m = 70.61) and the information group (m = 59.72) differed significantly at p < .05 and the control group and information/reflection group (m = 61.72) differed significantly at p < .05. comparisons between the information and information/reflection did not reveal significant differences. assumptions were tested to determine whether the analysis of covariance (ancova) could be used appropriately on post-test scores for selfefficacy to adjust for the pretest differences. pearson correlations were performed on teachers’ pretest and post-test self-efficacy scores, within and across current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 groups, to test ancova assumptions of linearity of regression and homogeneity of within-group regression. table 8 is a summary of the pearson correlation coefficients. the data showed significant positive correlations (above .30) between teachers’ pretest and post-test performance on self-efficacy, both within and across groups, supporting the use of ancova for this dependent variable. table 7 summary on one way anova results on pretest scores on teachers’ self-efficacy toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities * p < 0.01 note. sum of squares (ss), degree of freedom (df), mean squares (ms), ratio of the between groups by within groups mean squares (f). f (2, 65) = 4.97, p <. 01 table 8 pearson correlations between teachers’ pretest and post-test performance on all dependent variables among all teachers and within treatment groups * correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed) ** correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed) main analyses information, information/ reflection, and control group post-test performance on the post-test multiple-choice questionnaire on the knowledge section of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities were examined using a one-way anova. means and standard deviations are provided in table 9. the results of the one way anova are provided in table 10. the analyses indicated that differences in the mean scores of teachers in the three groups were statistically significant f (2, 65) = 14.36, p < .05 table 9 means and standard deviations for post-test scores note. means and standard deviations (sd) for post-test scores on teachers’ knowledge of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities questionnaire (19 multiple choice questions), teachers’ attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey (44 likert scale questions), and teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities (25 likert scale questions). table 10 summary of one way anova results on post-test scores on knowledge of sexuality education and intellectual disabilities * p < 0.05 note. sum of squares (ss), degree of freedom (df), mean squares (ms), ratio of the between groups by within groups mean squares (f). f (2, 65) = 14.36, p <.05 the pairwise comparisons between the three groups indicated that the information group (m = 17.81) and the information/ reflection group (m = teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 9 18.28) scored significantly higher compared to the control group (m = 15.52) at the .05 level, but the two training groups did not differ significantly from each other. information, information/ reflection, and control group post-test performance on the likertscale survey on attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities were examined using a one-way anova. the results of the one-way anova are provided in table 11. the analyses indicated that scores of teachers participating in the three groups were significantly different f (2, 65) = 64.69, p < .05. the pairwise comparisons between the three groups indicated that the training group information/ reflection (m = 185.60) and the training group information (m = 149.22) scored significantly higher compared to the control group (m = 123.71), and the two training groups did differ significantly from each other p < .05. the information/ reflection group scored higher than the other two groups. table 11 summary of one way anova results on post-test scores on attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities * p < 0.05 note. sum of squares (ss), degree of freedom (df), mean squares (ms), ratio of the between groups by within groups mean squares (f). f (2, 65) = 64.69, p<.05. information, information/ reflection, and control group post-test performance on the likertscale survey on self-efficacy toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities were examined using ancova, with post-test scores as the dependent variable and pretest scores as the covariate. the results of ancova are provided in table 12. the analyses indicated that scores of teachers participating in the three groups differed significantly f (2, 64) = 33.26, p< .05. post hoc comparisons of the three groups indicated that teachers in the training group information (m = 82.86) and the training group information/reflection (m = 86.48) scored significantly higher than teachers in the control group (m = 70.57) at p=.00, but the two training groups, information and information/ reflection, did not differ significantly from each other. table 12 analysis of covariance results for teachers selfefficacy toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities * p < 0.05 additional analyses on demographics additional analyses were also performed within each group to compare teachers with general and special education certification because preliminary analyses had suggested differences in the proportions of teachers with each type of certification in the three treatment groups. comparing means within each group on each dependent variable, t-test results indicated that the performance of teachers with general and special education certification did not differ significantly at the .05 level. means and standard deviations are provided in table 13. the ttest results for the type of certification are provided in table 14. discussion this study was designed to examine the effects of an online seminar on teachers’ knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy beliefs toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities. teachers in the training groups, information and information/ reflection, scored significantly higher compared to teachers in the control group on the knowledge questionnaire, the attitudes survey, and the selfefficacy survey. teachers in the information/re current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 table 13 means and standard deviations (sd) for comparisons of participants with general and special education certification table 14 summary of t-test results for within-group comparisons between teacher certification subgroups flection group scored the highest on the attitudes survey compared to the control and information only group. results of this study indicated that providing training for teachers in topics related to sexuality education and intellectual disabilities can increase not only their knowledge toward the topic but also their attitudes and their feelings of self-efficacy. when creating this workshop, it was important to consider not only providing the latest resources but also giving teachers the opportunity to work through conflicting feelings as they were learning about the possible implications that providing or not providing information can have on students (sparks, 2004). after the seminar, teachers in the information/reflection group scored significantly higher on the attitudes toward sexuality education and intellectual disabilities survey compared to both the control and the information only group. research indicates that having opportunities to reflect can assist teachers in understanding and improving their teaching practice while helping teachers understand different viewpoints and needs (carr & kemmis, 1986). these findings are consistent with the literature that states that addressing teachers’ firmly set attitudes is important in order for educators to talk about sexuality in the classroom (bemish, 1987; wolfe and blanchett, 2000). limitations of the study students with intellectual disabilities have the opportunity to be in classrooms with students without intellectual disabilities and be exposed to topics that are being implemented in the general education setting. “although the practicalities of differentiating learning for children with special needs require firm commitment, the benefits for students are significant and include enhanced social skills, adopting more appropriate expressions of sexuality and reduced risk of sexual abuse, pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases” (sweeney, 2007, p.10). this study contained a disproportionate number of special education teachers compared to general education teachers within the information/reflection group. although t-tests within each of the three groups indicated that the performance of general and special education certification did not differ significantly, the possible influence of having more special education teachers in one of the training groups cannot be ruled out. findings of this study must be considered preliminary since teachers participating in this study volunteered, making it more likely that they were interested in learning more about the topic. teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 11 another limitation of the study that must be taken into consideration is that the sample consisted of volunteers for an online learning environment that happened to be 40 years or younger, which raises issues of representativeness. directions for future research this study adds to the literature on sexuality education and intellectual disabilities and the use of an online environment as a tool for the training of teachers in topics considered controversial and of immediate need. specifically, it provided an online curriculum tailored to the needs of adult learners that targeted three important variables (knowledge, attitudes, and self-efficacy beliefs) that could be considered by many essential when training teachers in controversial topics. the online seminar demonstrated that training in the subject can make a significant difference in what is considered by many a challenging topic to expose participants to while focusing not only in helping teachers gain knowledge about the topic but also address attitudes toward it and self efficacy beliefs. the online seminar also demonstrated the significant effect of reflection while providing a way for teachers to access information and resources. the exposure to the latest research and examples proved to be effective for teachers participating in the training groups of this study. a longitudinal study could assist in understanding if these positive effects are maintained throughout time. additional research is needed measuring the knowledge, attitudes, and selfefficacy of school principals since they greatly affect policy implementation and could impact favorably the type of sexuality education provided to students with intellectual disabilities. references american association of intellectual and developmental disabilities. frequently asked questions on intellectual disability and the aaidd definition. retrieved march 23, 2009, from http://www.aamr.org/content_104.cfm bandura, a. 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(2000). netcourses for staff development. retrieved march 23, 2009 from http://www.mff.org/edtech/article.taf?_funct ion=detail&content_uid1=107 wehmeyer, m.l., lance, g.d., & bashinski, s (2002). promoting access to the general curriculum for students with mental retardation. a multilevel model. education and training in mental retardation and developmental disabilities, 37, 223-234. weerakoon, p. (2003). e-learning in sexuality education. medical teacher, 25 (1), 13-17. wolfe, p., & blanchett, w. (2000, may). moving beyond denial, suppression and fear to embracing the sexuality of people with disabilities. tash newsletter, 5-7. http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction%09%09=page.viewpage&pageid=521%20%09&grandparentid=477&parentid=514 http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction%09%09=page.viewpage&pageid=521%20%09&grandparentid=477&parentid=514 http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction%09%09=page.viewpage&pageid=521%20%09&grandparentid=477&parentid=514 http://www.dddcec.org/positionpapers/sexu%09alityanddd.doc http://www.dddcec.org/positionpapers/sexu%09alityanddd.doc http://www.ejhs.org/volume10/marshmedia%09%20white%20paper.pdf http://www.ejhs.org/volume10/marshmedia%09%20white%20paper.pdf http://www.mff.org/edtech/article.taf?_funct%09ion=detail&content_uid1=107 http://www.mff.org/edtech/article.taf?_funct%09ion=detail&content_uid1=107 teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 13 appendix a current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 appendix b teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 15 current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 17 current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 appendix c teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 19 current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 appendix d teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 21 current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop 23 appendix e current issues in education vol. 11 no. 9 2009 article citation gonzalez-acquaro, k. (2009, june). teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop. current issues in education [on-line], 11(9). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume11/number9/ author notes katia gonzalez-acquaro wagner college [editor’s note: no additional author information was available in the article when accessed in 2015.] note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 15, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation gonzalez-acquaro, k. (2009). teacher training, sexuality education, and intellectual disabilities: an online workshop. current issues in education, 11(9). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1592 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume11/number9/ http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1592 draft september 28, 2008 arts-based teaching 1 arts-based teaching: a pedagogy of imagination and a conduit to a socially just education gail humphries mardirosian and sarah irvine belson american university yvonne pelletier lewis imagination stage for more information about this paper, contact gail humphries mardirosian at ghumphr@american.edu. mailto:ghumphr@american.edu� arts-based teaching 2 abstract this article describes a study in which 53 teachers participating in arts-based professional development courses and workshops gained a profound understanding of the role of the arts in education and an appreciation for the powerful role the arts can play in pedagogy and social justice. the findings of study demonstrate how arts-based instructional approaches contributed to the teachers’ perceptions about the importance of students’ active engagement in the learning process (i.e., the importance of student voice) and the role of higher-order thinking in providing all children the possibility of success in learning. we discuss how the described study was based on action research and how the participants’ perspectives were discerned from their writings using document analysis. arts-based teaching 3 introduction this paper presents findings from the impact of arts-based, in-service, professional development training on participating teachers’ readiness and ability to adopt pedagogy of social justice. we begin by examining the underlying political and personal responsibilities teachers assume when they decide to work as educators and to be part of a community dedicated to the education of our children. many educational researchers and theorists have described teachers’ and systemic responsibilities to children, and we find it useful to draw from their theories to engage in a meaningful discussion of pedagogy emphasizing social justice. next, we examine the current state of the field of education related to arts-based instruction. finally, we analyze how the intersection of these two fields can affect teachers' beliefs, attitudes, skills, and behavior. using document analysis and action research, we cull examples from the writings of 53 teachers. the teachers participated in three arts-based professional development six-week summer courses entitled “arts-based teaching” in addition to a oneday professional development workshop. we also draw upon data from concurrent student in-class residencies involving approximately 200 students. from our findings, we conclude the following: the arts have a powerful and important role in the ongoing development of a progressive, democratic, educational pedagogy. foundations of a pedagogy of social justice in education social justice is a common philosophical perspective in many fields including politics, religion, and economics. for those in education, concepts of social justice are particularly poignant, prompted by the systemic failure to provide equitable educational opportunities to students who are economically or socially disadvantaged both in terms of access to quality arts-based teaching 4 education and because of poverty. the need for a more socially just curriculum has long been recognized and described by many theorists. paulo freire (1993) described how educational concepts and practices can be analyzed in the context of a pedagogy of social justice. two major concepts in freire’s writings inform the theoretical basis of his paper. first and foremost, freire asserted dialog must be a central instrument of education. gottlieb and labelle (1990,p. 3) described freire’s “rehumanizing” discourses having significant value to a teacher’s decision making. a teacher can both create opportunities for expression and also use expression as modes of understanding. freire described children as “unfinished, uncompleted beings in and with a likewise unfinished reality” giving the teacher an opportunity to create experiences which allow for completing the being. as described by rafi (2005), freire sought the liberation of the oppressed by asking teachers to avoid authoritarianism through establishing dialog with their students. in this model, the teacher and the student both contribute to their cognition on the subject being studied through classroom discourse (p. 3908). this leads to a second important concept -the idea of shared knowledge creation. freire challenged teachers not to attempt to import educational practices, but rather, to re-invent the curriculum through shared action (ronald and roskelly, 2001). in this way, what is learned is not a static set of information but rather a process of thinking, and, therefore, liberation of those who are oppressed. john dewey (1938) posited that the responsibility of a democratic society is to develop children’s ability to question the status quo in order to move that society forward. dewey’s work is important to understand the state-of-the-art pedagogies concerning social justice. an example of these practices is seen in edelsky’s (2006) description of bilingual classrooms in which the teacher and student can engage in historicallyand culturally-shared social activities and together arts-based teaching 5 discover psychological and linguistic practices (p. xi). in her study of classrooms situated in a migrant community in duncan, arizona, she found teachers and students struggling with a statemandated curriculum and their own understandings of functional language (p. 58). dewey’s writings provide a foundation upon which we can build a set of perspectives and practices related to progressive, democratic goals of education. a progressive, democratic education proposes that schools do not merely serve the purpose of translating to children a finite pool of already existing knowledge. we engage in educating children so that our own society can ultimately progress beyond what we already know. today, dewey’s work challenges educators to consider the role of experience in the child’s interaction with the “real world” as a vehicle of opportunity by which we can move toward the goal of education. in his book, experience and education (1938), dewey stated a democratic society is intentionally progressive, ever widens its interests, and constantly encourages its members to act continuously as guardians of the democracy. it is, therefore, the responsibility of a democratic society to develop children’s ability to question the status quo, to create better processes within the society, and to progress toward a more just society. the concept of using discourse as a pedagogical tool, not only for educating but also as the main policy instrument for conceptualizing education, is posited by henry giroux (1981). discourse relates to an understanding of how the school creates and recreates forms of consciousness through the language we use to describe its goals since 1976, giroux has written about teaching and learning and how children should be given the opportunity to “negotiate their own shifting environments,” as they often do in the arts. giroux built on the work of freire by arguing schools need to construct conditions of empowerment for the majority of students so that discourse becomes a defining feature of education. on the particular subject of discourse, giroux stated educators should “critically analyze modern forms of discourse which disguise arts-based teaching 6 power relationships and can bring to a specific site the ability to inform and educate” (giroux, 1981, p. 87). for example, ladson billings (1992) contrasted the concepts of international efforts toward literacy to the “literacy campaign” in the united states (p. 381) and suggested literacy skills are technical, social, political and cultural. the current conceptions of literacy in the u.s. are primarily likely linked to a job attainment and must be challenged in order to create opportunities for empowerment (ladson billings, 1992). similarly, boler (1997) suggested the need for discourse has been prompted by the sudden emergence of the "emotional literacy" curriculum. she suggested without discourse and attention to emotion, teachers focus too heavily on rationality, biology, and pathology and, therefore, limit the possibilities of emotion and relationships. discourse is a concept that embodies the process of linking knowledge and power. the call for a socially-just curriculum is profound and is prominent in the literature of the educational field. boutte (2008) described the transfer from theory to practice. for example, dewey’s broad principles and theories r relating to social justice provide high ideals, but these principles and theories provide few practical approaches to achieve those ideals [in the classroom] (mcdonald, 2008). apple (2000) suggested the beliefs teachers hold and bring to the classroom about students and their in-class capabilities are significant indicators of how socially just their pedagogy will be in the classroom. when teachers give credence to the concept that some students are not able to learn, it creates a significant deterrent to democratic education. however, there are significant questions as to whether or not teachers are able to do take on the challenge of focusing on social justice in schools that are focused on teaching to the test. for example, ellsworth (1992) suggested when discourse is a popular practice in classrooms, the results of discourse often become vehicles of repression (p. 298). perhaps, as we suggest, the arts-based teaching 7 arts, particularly the performing arts, give the opportunity to challenge the status quo instead of reinforcing it as do traditional forms of discourse. this study examines arts-integration as a means to empower teachers to translate theory into action in the classroom and to view the classroom as an arena for social justice. arts-based teaching to consider the impact of student voice (i.e., students’ active and personalized participation in what and how they learn) and a progressive education (as described by dewey) on the learning experience of all children, the role of arts-based teaching in education should be considered. arts-based teaching furthers the functional understanding and practical application of current cognitive and affective learning theories. it is an instructional approach strongly aligned with brain research. this research posits that while the learning process takes place in each student’s mind, learning is enhanced when the teaching environment gives students opportunities to think out loud, exchange ideas with their peers, and produce collaborative work. for example, wolfe found “concrete experience is one of the best ways to make strong, longlasting neural connections” (2001, p. 188). arts-based teaching provides opportunities for these concrete experiences. further, recent findings compiled by seven cognitive neuroscientists and presented in the dana consortium report, learning, arts and the brain: a report on arts and cognition describes the interaction between art-based experiences and training and the “ability of the brain to learn in other cognitive domains” (2008, p. v). additionally, arts-based teaching engages students in authentic learning through delivering classroom practices that develop student capacity to function within our culture while incorporating elements of their own culture. support for the use of the arts as a means by which children can achieve academic success and strength of self-esteem comes from many sources. in an in-depth study conducted by arts-based teaching 8 anita page (1983), first, second, and third-grade students were tested for comprehension using dramatization or listening. page’s 1983 study found children were more engaged and scored higher on comprehension tests when the story was dramatized than when students were only listening to the story. the study also clearly demonstrated the drama “had more effect on the younger (grade one) students than older students (grades two and three)” (page, 1983). to support page’s findings, a study evaluating shakespeare & company’s national shakespeare institute (1998) found dramatically enacting shakespeare’s works allowed students to gain rich understanding of difficult texts. the study by the national shakespeare institute also “provides a model of how arts-based, project-based learning can assist students in developing higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills” (catterall, 2006, p. 49). in a study of fifth-grade students in remedial reading classes using three methods of instruction, results suggested, “creative drama assists students to develop ’mental images’ of stories, which in turn helps with comprehension” (catterall, 2006, p. 23). stevenson and deasy (2005) described this arts-rich environment as a “third space” where young people and adults can create in an environment free of barriers imposed by themselves or by others. activities engaging students in this manner not only have the promise of increasing student achievement, but also have the potential of contributing to a socially-just curriculum (zyngier, 2008). in a national endowment for the arts document, “critical evidence: how the arts benefit student achievement”, it is noted “the benefits associated with study of the arts are inclusive of all students, although they can be greatest for those who are educationally or economically disadvantaged. and, an arts-rich learning environment can have far-reaching effects that extend to the entire school and surrounding community” (rupert, 2006, p. 15). arts-based teaching 9 methodology arts-based study: from theory to practice this study describes how teachers' concepts of social justice in education were enhanced through art-based professional development courses and workshops. one of the authors, gail humphries mardirosian, designed the arts-based imagination quest (iq) professional development course and workshop and was involved as team leader in the action research project her contributions generated a “community of practice” in a reflective process throughout the professional development experiences. participants in the extensive workshops included k 12 teachers from washington, d.c., from all subject areas including special education. teachers in the field workshop included students and teachers from grades two through five. teachers’ development of instructional strategies were designed to address a pedagogy of social justice, which included giving students voice, developing a problem-solving and social equity perspective, and helping students develop their own understanding of cultural capital through an examination of their own culture and its impact on their learning. . document analysis of teachers' writing was used as a tool to understand the themes of social justice in teachers' pedagogical approaches and the degree to which those approaches were impacted by their participation in the arts-integrated professional development programs. the professional development courses and workshop in this study were based on an artsintegrated teaching and learning model, imagination quest (iq). in iq, the arts are used as a pathway to understanding and as tools for learning and have the goal of realizing potential in each individual student. to that end, a particular target of the iq program are title i schools often serving at-risk students, who because of limited english proficiency, poverty, race, geographic location, and/or economic disadvantage, face a greater risk of low educational arts-based teaching 10 achievement and/or reduced academic expectations. iq is based on the premise that arts-based teaching can help generate a fair system of education through the accommodation of different ways of learning and acknowledgement of and respect for the different cultures and backgrounds that exist in today’s classrooms. its primary goal is to engender teacher effectiveness in the classroom inhering to greater student achievement; fostering creative, analytical, and social skills; and, providing all students with the opportunity to succeed in learning. drawing upon hammond, the workshops aimed to manifest a democratic pedagogy that “supports freedom of expression, inclusion of multiple perspectives, opportunities to evaluate ideas and make choices, and opportunities to take on responsibility and contribute to the greater good” (1996, p. 144). they furthered, as gutman (1987) posited, teaching and learning involving knowing, doing, and analyzing; developing student capacity to function within a community of learners; and, attempting to realize democratic education. by fostering learning through the arts, the workshops also provided teachers and students with opportunities for ownership, invention, and self-actualization, creating a space for both the teacher and the student to “find their voice.” these professional development courses and workshops were designed to facilitate teachers’ effectiveness in the classroom through the development of experiences linked to the participating teachers’ core curriculum and to their school systems’ standards of learning for both content and the arts. through modeling, guided practice, coaching, and co-teaching, teachers were provided both a theoretical and practical foundation for applying arts-based teaching and learning strategies. the experiential approach used in iq involves the teacher participant in a 4-rs sequence of activities: (1) reading selections informing the theoretical framework of arts-based teaching; (2) reacting through and to the theories in authentic learning arts-based teaching 11 experiences and discussion; (3) responding to the theories through the arts-based mechanisms (body, voice, mind, and imagination); (4) reflecting on the full scope of the learning process through analyzing the practical experiences as they connect to the theoretical framework. the teachers were also provided with multiple possibilities for lesson plan development articulating the studied learning theories into instructional practices. this model highlighted links between the techniques of arts-based activities and cognition and memory via processes such as: • dual coding—enhancing memory by presenting material in both verbal and nonverbal representations, i.e., images, sign language. • hot cognition—enhancing memory by arousal of emotions and furthering personal connection to the content, i.e., relating the learning to the students’ own experiences. • making meaning/comprehension—furthering associations using multiple symbol systems, i.e., music, dance, visual arts... the following categories of activities helped teachers construct knowledge that relies on the arts: arts-based games drama/music/movement/play scripted performance using movement, body language, and visual symbols to connect language to meaning with body analogies, using role-play, visual theatre, improvisations, songs and dances that develop analogous thinking but in more extended scenarios and with more complex or expansive concepts. semi-formal or formal presentation developed over time and shared with an audience and integrating elements of theatre, music, dance, sign language, and the visual arts. arts-based teaching 12 while many of the teachers who participated in this study appeared eager to embrace new pedagogy, elements of apprehension, skepticism, and even fear were evident in their writings. many teachers expressed concerns about “not being artistic enough to use this approach.” others feared “not having the energy or the time for lesson plan development using the arts.” and others had exemplified defiant attitudes of “ok, i’m a math teacher, show me how this is relevant to me.” but as was evidenced through their concluding written and oral responses and ownership of the pedagogy via the transfer from training to classroom practice, the teachers’ initial outlooks changed to a positive stage. by the end of the workshops, the teachers were enthusiastically ready to adopt the arts-based instructional innovation. one teacher, who initially believed the course to be “intimidating,” arrived for her final (required) portfolio presentation in complete scuba diving outfit as she presented her self-developed lessons on the rainbow fish. an excerpt from another teacher’s poem presented on the last day of the class also demonstrates the teachers’ readiness to adopt arts-based instructional practices into the classroom: i’ve learned to make a juuuuuuuuuuuicy word and p-p-p-p-pronounce all my s-s-s-s-sounds there was a lot of standing up and activities done on the ground poetry and sound even beating on a drum using scarves to create a scene can bring a page alive to anyone acting and applying creating, singing, drawing too if it can be fun for me there’s no limit to what my kids could do based on the teachers’ output, it appeared the initial outlooks had changed to an acceptance that arts-based pedagogy is transformative. one teacher noted, the approach is “an arts-based teaching 13 oasis for today’s dehydrated classrooms…bringing back the joy of learning and self-discovery to all our learners.” data collection and analysis data collection the data in this study were collected from two sources: (1) writings from participants in three six-week imagination quest (iq) teach to reach professional development courses; and, (2) data collected from a one-day iq professional development workshop followed by a learning to read, reading to learn consisting of seven sessions, in-class student residency, coconducted by an iq-trained classroom teacher and iq artist/educators specializing in visual theatre/sign language and visual arts, along with music and dance, to present a core reading book story content with the use of multiple symbol systems. data from the courses were derived from the writings of the participants; data from the workshop were derived from teacher evaluations using a k-w-l qualitative data collection design that included preand post-workshop questionnaires. the qualitative data collection included specific prompts in three categories: what i know (k); what i want to learn (w); what i learned (l). the student residency data were derived from preand post-tests for the students involving: picture matching; vocabulary; and, sentence completion. a “storyboard” assessment was also administered as a way of measuring the students’ understanding of the sequencing of the story and their ability to explain the key plot elements of the story. data analysis the primary tool of research in this study is document analysis. the use of document analysis engenders a deeper understanding of teachers' perceptions. in this study, the document analysis yields teachers’ knowledge and practice of a pedagogy of social justice. strauss and arts-based teaching 14 corbin (1990) stated methods of qualitative research can be used to better understand any phenomenon through gaining in-depth information that may be impossible to convey quantitatively. the use of document analysis has been of particular benefit in teacher education. hansen (1995), for example, used a variety of documents from journal entries and memos written by participants to university policy documents to understand new teacher development. in this study, teachers’ writings before and after participation were transcribed and then imported into a qualitative research analysis program--hyperresearch software. themes related to social justice were identified using this code-and-retrieve data analysis program. theories were constructed through an examination of the themes that emerged through the analysis. the data were coded according to predetermined categories and additional emerging subcategories related to social justice. the coding schemes included statements from both the teachers and the residency students garnered through individual student and focus group interviews. the emerging subcategories were identified, discussed, and defined during the coding process. the most appropriate choice for unit of analysis focused on phrases that rationalize the teachers’ decision-making process. findings this study focused on the reactions/writings of the 45 teachers who participated in three intensive, arts-based, six-week professional development summer courses in 2005, 2006, and 2007. it also focused on the reactions/writings of nine teachers who participated in a one-day, arts-based professional development workshop and culminating seven-session, in-class student residency. six of the teachers were assessed—preand post-—regarding their knowledge and http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/jte/v9n1/hoepfl.html#strauss� http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/jte/v9n1/hoepfl.html#hansen� arts-based teaching 15 beliefs about the iq arts-integrated instructional pedagogy and its impact on a pedagogy of social justice. using document analysis, certain themes emerged. a prominent theme seen throughout the document analysis is that teachers gained a broader understanding and appreciation of students’ talents and skills. the document analysis also revealed teachers more greatly appreciated their own talents and skills as well. throughout the lessons, teachers focused on how skills related to the arts were potentially linked to their students’ increased success in learning. by the end of the study, the teachers developed a common conception that children who might otherwise be unsuccessful in the classroom may be better able to comprehend abstract content elements through the arts. as the teachers incorporated elements of the theory of the multiple intelligences (gardner, 1983), they acknowledged there are varying abilities and talents possessed by the children in their classrooms that are frequently underappreciated. the teachers attributed this growth in discernment of the children’s abilities to their personal experiences in the courses and workshop. the experience of the teachers to participate in arts-based activities encouraged them to comprehend what their students would gain in the classroom from an artsintegrated pedagogy. one teacher who “took a risk” commented: what i saw in the rest of the group were people who were confident, creative, uninhibited, and imaginative. what i saw in myself was a person who was inhibited, who felt uncreative and unimaginative, and who lacked confidence. i felt that i did not measure up against all of the others. in the end of this session, this teacher commented, “if i can do it, they [my students] can do it.” to demonstrate the understanding gained by teachers relating to their students’ skills and abilities, it is useful to include some comments derived from the participating teachers’ writings. one teacher noted, “this workshop has added so much color to my life. i have a more positive attitude towards teaching, lesson planning, and student involvement.” furthering this arts-based teaching 16 theme, another teacher observed, “by incorporating arts into my lessons, i can achieve a higher level learning from my students.” in addition to the understanding of the importance of artsbased skills in the classroom, teachers developed a commitment to diverse instructional approaches across classroom settings. the participating teachers’ writings included discussions of a broad set of concerns related to what was described as “traditional” approaches to teaching and a focus on basic knowledge instead of a focus on higher-level thinking this focus on basic knowledge was particularly noted in schools and classrooms where the majority of children came from communities of low socioeconomic standing or were second-language learners. teachers expressing these concerns perceived the arts could be more beneficial to children as arts-based instruction may create more opportunity to learn. examples of teachers’ statements around this theme included the following: “i now find the use of the arts appears to be extremely beneficial for the students in title i schools. arts integration, that is, arts-based teaching and learning, gives every student a chance to experience the subject matter and turns the abstract into something more concrete.” further evidence of the importance of arts-based instruction in enhancing socially just pedagogy is the increase in resistance and risk-taking in teachers’ vocabulary seen through the document analysis. teachers regularly discussed ways in which children should be exposed to different ways of knowing and a different set of concepts related to children’s roles in the classroom. they demonstrated a commitment to meet with school principals to discuss the need for more time for student-based performances; the need to allow students to assume a role in the organization and construction of the school calendar to include more time for their own interests and, the need to find ways to bring parents/caregivers and community members onto the school grounds for positive, student-centered activities. one teacher said, “this class has opened my mind to a world of possibilities with the school system.” another said, “i have already asked for arts-based teaching 17 a teachers’ back -to -school workshop on arts-integration.” another stated: “every principal and teacher should be a part of this approach!” teachers also related statements from parents/caretakers who had been provided the opportunity to see their children respond to artsintegrated instructions. these statements included: “i learned that there is more than one way of looking at things. by asking my child questions, we are able to work problems out together.” “the transfer of knowledge comes in many different forms. sometimes the transfer provides for learning that was unintended. my child now understands the importance of repetition. he sees how important it is to memorize lines. and now, he applies that same understanding and patience to other areas, such as multiplication tables.” another important theme of a socially just pedagogy revealed in the document analysis is the importance of students’ voices in the curriculum. analysis of teachers’ writings revealed an ongoing discussion of the importance of engendering students’ engagement in the classroom, both literally and theoretically. teachers described the desire to challenge students to act out the books they were reading or the ideas they had about society. they also discussed the need for students to spend time in the classroom discussing works and ideas, such as segregation and racism, relevant to their lives. one teacher remarked, “i have learned how to make learning applicable to my students' culture.” an illustrative example of this theme comes from another teacher: “before, i would have never imagined having my students really study something more written by dr. martin luther king, jr., other than the “i have a dream” speech. now i know my students need to read and perform more of his works to better understand exactly what that dream was.” many teachers commented on their own new abilities and the development of their own “voice,” on teacher noted, “i am now able to use innovative ways to reach children and teach them to think on a higher level—to help them in the process of critical thinking.” another arts-based teaching 18 teacher reacted to the use of arts in the classroom in saying, “the arts can inspire, stretch, and increase every student’s ability to learn and ability to live. conclusions the authors conclude the arts play a key role in generating pedagogy of social justice and can engender democracy in the classroom. the arts offer an opportunity for meaningful, unfettered creation. the arts allow one, through the act of making, to actively engage in one’s own development. the generation or making of art builds one’s understanding about relationships to others and to the environment. donald blumenfeld-jones, the lincoln associate professor of ethics at arizona state university’s college of education, stated making art is a meaningful social action since the maker, in order to both make and comprehend the art-piece, comes in contact with both her/his personal and social being. blumenfeld-jones suggested that: the arts may be educationally justified, not because of the ways we can understand ourselves through the examination and appreciation of art but, rather, because of the ways we can understand ourselves and live in a particular way through the making of our own art works (blumenfeld-jones, 1997). much of the extant research on the use of the arts in education focuses on students, yet the arts can also assist teachers in constructing a vocabulary related to a more progressive, sociallyjust curriculum. this study expands the use of the arts in the classroom beyond students creating and producing scripted plays to the retelling and dramatization of literature as an instructional strategy for the teachers. in furthering their understanding of the use of drama in engaging students in their own education teachers assist students in constructing and developing their own voice. the results of this study indicate the participating teachers increasingly saw students as important contributors within the school culture. the study also supports other research that suggests that policy makers should consider how to advocate for teachers in their quest to attend arts-based teaching 19 to students’ individual needs while developing a critical stance toward understanding how those needs are constituted and experienced (mcdonald, 2008). teachers and educational leaders-if committed to the types of schools envisioned by freire, dewey, or giroux-should embrace and endorse the arts as a means by which teachers help children to develop the tools of dialog these tools may be gained through the body, the voice, the mind, or the imagination. specifically, teachers must act as the conduits by which students are given the opportunity to do something much greater than simply appreciating art, as students must be allowed to become involved in the arts in a critical and generative fashion. this deep experience with the arts provides students with the opportunities to examine the world and their role in it. as suggested by rafi (2003), through these arts-constructive experiences, students and teachers can come together to study curriculum and meaningful issues in depth. this study begins to describe the ways in which the arts might enable teachers to engage in pedagogies of social justice and develop sophisticated forms of emotional literacy and awareness in their students and themselves (boler, 1997). a deeper question of how teachers can enable students to utilize the arts and other extra-curricular outlets such as debate and student government to develop their own voice should be undertaken. the analysis of teachers’ writings in this study leads to the idea that this approach may have contributed to a change in instructional methods for the study participants, but a powerful questions remains-how do teachers in the global educational system bridge the intersection between student voice, perspective, and resistance with student learning and the test-driven nature of the school environment? arts-based teaching 20 references apple, m. w. (2002). patriotism, pedagogy, and freedom: on the educational meanings of september 11. teachers college record, 104 (8), 1760-1772. author (2008). learning, arts and the brain. the dana consortium report on arts and cognition. new york, ny: dana foundation. boler, m. (1997). taming the labile other: disciplined emotions in popular and academic discourses. retrieved april 4, 2009 from http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/eps/pesyearbook/97_docs/boler.html. blumenfeld-jones, d. (1997). aesthetic experience, hermeneutics, and curriculum. retrieved september 9, 2007 from http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/eps/pesyearbook/97_docs/blumenfeld-jones.html boutte, g. s. (2008). beyond the illusion of diversity: how early childhood teachers can promote social justice. social studies, 99(4), 165-173. catterall, james s. (ed.) (2002) critical links: learning in the arts and student academic and social development arts education partnership, washington, dc: national endowment for the arts. dewey, j. (1938). experience and education (1st ed.). new york: collier books. (collier edition first published 1963). darling-hammond, l. (1996). what matters most: a competent teacher for every child. delta kappan, 78 (3), 193-200. edelsky, c. (2006). with literacy and justice for all: rethinking the social in language and education. (3rd ed.) mahwah, nj: erlbaum. freire, p. (1993). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: continuum books. gardner, h. (1983). frames of mind: the theory of multiple intelligences. new york: basic books. giroux, h. a. (1981). ideology, culture & the process of schooling. philadelphia, london: temple university press, falmer press gottlieb, e. e., & belle, t. j. l. (1990). ethnographic contextualization of freire's discourse: consciousness-raising, theory and practice. anthropology & education quarterly, 21 (1), 3-18. gutman, a. (1987). democratic education. princeton: princeton university press. hansen, r. e. 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(1983). children’s story comprehension as a result of storytelling and story dramatization: a study of the child as spectator and as participant in deasy, r.j. (ed). (2002). critical links: learning in the arts and student academic and social development. washington, d.c.: arts education partnership. rafi, m. (2003). freire and experiments in conscientisation in a bangladesh village. economic and political weekly, 38 (37), 3908-3914. ronald, k., & roskelly, h. (2001). untested feasibility: imagining the pragmatic possibility of paulo freire. college english, 63 (5), 612-632. rupert, s. (2006). critical evidence: how the arts benefit student achievement. washington, d.c.: arts education partnership. stevenson, l.m. & deasy, r.j. (2005). third space: when learning matters. washington, d.c.: arts education partnership. strauss, a., & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. newbury park, ca: sage publications, inc zyngier, d. (2008). (re) conceptualizing student engagement: doing education not doing time. teaching & teacher education, 24 (7), 1765-1776 arts-based teaching arts-based study: from theory to practice if it can be fun for me based on the teachers’ output, it appeared the initial outlooks had changed to an acceptance that arts-based pedagogy is transformative. one teacher noted, the approach is “an oasis for today’s dehydrated classrooms…bringing back the joy of learning... data collection and analysis findings scripted performance many teachers commented on their own new abilities and the development of their own “voice,” on teacher noted, “i am now able to use innovative ways to reach children and teach them to think on a higher level—to help them in the process of critical t... conclusions microsoft word 1313-5774-7-le.doc 1 volume 17, number 1 february 09, 2014 issn 1099-839x the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science andrea rae milner adrian college toni a. sondergeld bowling green state university charles rop university of toledo appropriate views of the nature of science are vital to scientific literacy yet rarely taught in us schools primarily due to naïve nos views held by teachers. thus, most school teachers need further educational nos experiences and instruction. science education literature suggests teachers can learn nos through both implicit (learning through doing) and explicit (precise utilization) professional development opportunities. through an integrated field studies teacher professional development program (a river runs through it [arrt]) we implemented both implicit and explicit nos instruction to see if the combination of methods would improve nos beliefs following the program. results obtained from pre and post vnos-c (see appendix a) surveys show a modest post-test increase in teachers’ informed nos views in all nos aspects (except inferential which remained the same), supporting the notion of using both implicit and explicit instruction in teaching the nature of science. in the context of a place-based, field oriented and naturally integrated watershed, our work offers insight into the value of using both implicit experiences and explicit instruction in the teaching of the nature of science for changing participant views of nos. however, due to the large number of naïve post-test nos views in empirical, theory vs. law, inferential, scientific method, and tentative aspects we realize extended nos experiences and instruction are necessary if science teacher educators expect to elicit dramatic and sustained change in teacher nos beliefs. our study demonstrates that the combination of implicit and explicit nos instructional methods in teacher professional development programs could be a meaningful method of impacting teachers’ nos beliefs as we saw an increase in all nos aspects from pre to post with the exception of one area which remained the same. keywords: nature of science, implicit instruction, explicit instruction, integrated field studies, professional development for many decades we have heard reports that students in the united states do not know much science by the time they graduate from high school and that the science they do learn is often a surrogate form; a dull, lifeless and often useless list of facts to memorize (aaas, 1993; nrc, 1996; ngss, 2013a). for those who current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 2 know and do science, school science that is found in most k-12 textbooks does not match up to our experiences because it is often not at all like real scientific inquiry. the science scientists know and practice, the very nature of science, is dynamic and logical, driven by curiosity and a need to find out. it is fed by inquiry and influenced by new discoveries and an active set of cultural influences (aaas, 2008). these are not new ideas; that school science is not real science, that real science should be taught in schools, and that students should gain practical understandings of the nature of science. educators and educational researchers have for many years endorsed efforts to nurture informed views of the nature of science (nos) in students (i.e., lederman, abd-el-khalick, bell, & schwartz, 2002) in an attempt to spark students’ interest in the area and produce a more scientifically literate society. the national standards for scientific literacy (aaas, 1993; nrc, 1996; ngss, 2013a) as well as all of the state science standards consider deep understandings of nos a vital part of scientific literacy for any student regardless of whether they wish to pursue a career in science or not. being scientifically literate allows individuals to have a greater understanding of issues they encounter on a daily basis in the media, government, and personal life experiences (hazen, 2002), and having accurate nos perceptions strengthens scientific literacy. further, in order to build a culture of more scientifically literate individuals holding well informed nos views, there needs to be an emphasis on learning scientific principles and concepts through handson inquiry-based practices that are representative of real science (aaas, 1993; hazen, 2002; nrc, 1996; ngss, 2013a). the national science teachers association (2000) preamble to their nature of science position statement reads, in part, “all those involved with science teaching and learning should have a common, accurate view of the nature of science.” our study and research question one common explanation for the absence of real science in classrooms is that teachers have very limited and naïve views of the nature of science themselves. teachers teach the science they know and if this does not represent the best conceptions of the nature of science, their students will not be exposed to it. it follows that in order to improve scientific literacy in schools, teachers need further educational experiences in nos. we believe that even practicing teachers with little background or experience in science can learn the nature of science through participation in well-crafted professional development opportunities that include implicit and explicit instruction in nos. we support the notion that if teachers own a more informed view of nos, their science teaching will gain vitality and scientific literacy will begin to thrive and grow in their classrooms. appropriate experiences may help facilitate the portrayal of science from a “rhetoric of conclusions” (clough & olson, 2012) to teachers representing the best conceptions of nos. without appropriate experiences, teachers may ask themselves, “how do i or can i help students understand the nature of science if i do not understand nos myself?” (ngss 2013b). our research explores the influence of a professional development program entitled a river runs through it (arrt) (grant-funded by the ohio board of regents) on arrt teacher’s nos beliefs prior to and after the program to assess the impact of the implicit experiential nos experiences combined with the explicit nos instruction that teachers received. specifically, the research question guiding this study was: does a river runs through it (arrt), an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program designed to provide nos implicit experiences and explicit instruction, influence teachers’ views of the nature of science? what would a more informed view of nos look like in practice in school classrooms? abd-el-khalick and lederman (2000a) state: “no consensus presently exists among philosophers of science, historians of science, scientists and science educators on a specific definition for nos” (p. 666). neither is it free of structure, of historical and logical order. as mentioned above, science is a dynamic process and not one scientific method or formulaic, universal checklist to follow (tsai, 2006). scientists tend to be lifelong learners because science demands it. sadly, many teachers still hold empiricist perspectives of science and assume that scientific knowledge is the discovery through a universal scientific method (tsai, 2006). instead, teachers should come to know science as a continual construction of meaning that emphasizes the tentative nature of science knowledge, the theory-laden quality of scientific exploration. like scientists, teachers should come to understand the role of conceptual change in the progressive development of their own scientific understanding as well as their students’ (tsai, 2006). research concerning teachers’ views of the nature of science although there are variations in the descriptions of the nature of science, we refer to nos as defined by abd-el-khalick, bell, lederman & schwartz (2002). the nos aspects addressed in this study (empirical, tentative, influential, creative, theory-laden, social and cultural, scientific method, theories and laws) are defined in table 1. we feel that these various aspects combined provide a complete and practical working definition of nos. the literature suggests that nos instruction can be implicit or explicit. implicit attempts utilize science process-skills instruction or engagement in science-based inquiry activities to improve science teachers’ conceptions of nos (abd-el-khalick & lederman, 2000, p. 665). although at first glance, this method would seem to be effective, there is some controversy about its long-range effectiveness. a limited the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science 3 number of studies exploring the implicit nos instruction of pre-service teachers show slight improvement in preservice teachers’ nos views (e.g., palmquist & finley, 1997). others examined nos changes in practicing teachers’ views and found mixed results due to implicit nos instruction. for example, although scharmann and harris (1992) found that some in-service teacher attitudes changed with implicit instruction, other researchers indicate insignificant changes (e.g., haukoos & penick, 1985). consequently, the research results are not conclusive regarding the influence and appropriateness of implicit instruction of nos (abd-el-khalick & lederman, 2000a). in contrast, explicit instruction has been shown to be useful in eliciting positive nos attitudinal changes in practicing and pre-service teachers. according to tsai (2006), science teacher education courses that integrate ideas about the philosophy of science, contemporary learning theories, and activities led to changes in teachers’ views of the nature of science. tsai suggests that practicing teachers showed more agreement with constructivist views about science at the conclusion of the course, but their position toward the empiricist views about science remained statistically unchanged. due to their prior academic experiences in science and rich practice in teaching science, the in-service teachers might have strongly developed (possibly empiricist-oriented) views about science that were resistant to change (tsai, 2006). furthermore, approaches that utilize elements from history, philosophy of science, and/or direct instruction of nos are more effective in achieving adequate conceptions of nos than approaches that utilize scientific process-skills, instruction, or non-reflective inquiry-based activities (abd-el-khalick & lederman, 2000a). context of our study as the historic rivers run through the midwest, they bring outstanding opportunities for invigorating science and mathematics education. this teacher professional development program, entitled a river runs through it (arrt) (grant-funded by the ohio board of regents), is based on the assumption that powerful science teaching is situated in local contexts making the study of these two historic rivers valuable for teachers. the program was designed as an integrated watershed program to offer practicing teachers with professional development focusing on hands-on implicit nos experiences in the field as well as explicit nos classroom discussion. field work in the watershed area, classroom work on pedagogical applications, and technology integrated throughout were set up to enable participating teachers of science and mathematics to develop knowledge, skills and understandings as represented in the ohio academic content standards as well as new facility with field-based and inquiry methods of teaching. extensive field work as, well as intensive collaboration with working scientists, naturalists, mathematicians, and other local experts in related fields were a large component of this professional development program. the program consisted of two phases: 1) an intensive and integrated summer institute that ran monday through thursday from 8:30am until 5:00pm for two weeks; and 2) an academic fall session application phase (three 3hour long face-to-face class sessions). phase 1, the summer institute, mainly focused on nos implicit experiences and had three components: a) field-based inquiry which included collecting data in the local river watersheds, including technology-enhanced water studies, soil sampling, light intensity testing, comparison of flora and fauna in different areas; b) classroom-based study in which participants engaged in data analysis, interpretation and integrated study; and c) an instructional design component in which participants used their new understanding to design curriculum materials for their own classrooms. phase 2, the academic fall sessions, mainly focused on nos explicit instruction had three components: a) lesson planning; b) lesson plan slide show presentations and presentations of draft action plans; and c) culminating activity and action plans. both phases however, because of the inherent nature of our program, at certain points in time, focused on both nos implicit experiences and explicit instruction. in arrt, teachers were exposed to nos through integrated place-based field study that utilized science process-skills instruction and engagement in sciencebased inquiry activities (i.e., abdel-khalick & lederman, 2000a). participants, in field study groups, sampled water, surveyed geological formations, made observations and collected data using technology during field trips and interpretive walks. our specific content focus was watershed ecology in a rather broad sense. we incorporated river ecology, wetlands, natural history as well as human ecology; farming, human settlement, architecture, history, folklore, art and music. participants also regularly discussed specific issues pertaining to the nature of science to collaboratively construct meaningful understanding in situ, while participating in the field study. we also more explicitly approached nos through discussion, guided reflection, specific questioning in the context of classroom science activities (including inquiryoriented activities, examples from history of science, and traditional classroom-based science activities) (i.e., schwartz et al., 2002). during the arrt summer institute, participating teachers acted as environmental field scientists studying, exploring, and experimenting with their natural surroundings implicitly experiencing the nature of science. explicit, direct instruction of nos was later integrated in a rather socratic way into the fall discussion sessions. we consider this explicit instruction because the instructors actively looked for opportunities to directly teach the basic nos aspects through questions and comments. curricular details regarding the content of current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 4 nos instruction during the socratic discussion sessions focused on all aspects of nos. these socratic discussion sessions, in part, included collaborative groups meeting in “implementation sessions” to support each other in putting their new learning of nos aspects into practice with their own students. we hypothesized that the combination of lived experiences in practicing guided scientific inquiry with explicit direct instruction of nos issues would influence teachers’ perceptions of the nos and possibly transfer into their daily teaching. although constructive nos views alone are insufficient to drive teacher practice, they are still a necessary condition (abdel-khalick & lederman, 2000a). additionally, professional development contexts that treat inservice teachers as professionals are more likely to promote change in certain aspects of teachers’ views about the nature of science (schuster & carlsen, 2006). examples of summer institute activities that treated practicing teachers as field scientist professionals include but were not limited to: experiential fieldwork example: water sampling. one example of arrt’s attempt to provide teachers with experiential learning where they explored nos implicitly and were treated as field scientists is described here. teacher participants began the day in the classroom at the local botanical gardens learning about explorer® technology and probes for collecting water sampling data. the instructors for this component of arrt were a high school ecology teacher and a technology expert. curricular details regarding the content of nos instruction during this experiential fieldwork on water sampling focused much on the empirical (observation of the natural world) and inferential (distinction between scientific claims and evidence on which such claims are based) aspects of nos. this included the instructors leading the participants in discussion and demonstration of the probes and their function: temperature, conductivity, ph, and dissolved oxygen levels. in addition, participants took notes and were given ample opportunity to ask any questions they had that were answered by the instructors. class moved to the nearby pond at the local botanical gardens where participants applied the formal instruction in a hands-on application by collecting water data from different locations around the pond. working in groups of three or four, all participants recorded data in their field journals and took turns handling the explorer® probes. through a working lunch, the group gathered outside to discuss their results and the practical implications of different water sample data collected from various locations around the pond. participants were enthusiastic about their discoveries and sharing of their results. following lunch, in small groups participants connected their explorer equipment to laptop computers in the classroom to work with the data charts and tables. each group created a power point presentation using the explorer® software and their water sample data. according to the participants, the activity could easily be reproduced in a real classroom setting. in fact, some of the teachers that already teach water quality were looking forward to using the explorer® equipment with their students rather than traditional “snap kits.” method participants twenty practicing teachers and 4 graduate students (n=24) participated in all phases of the a river runs through it (arrt) program. this article reports the findings of only one of the research foci employed in relationship to the larger project. for this report, we focus on ten of the twenty practicing teacher participants who completed both phases of nos data collection. although all twenty completed the pre-test, ten chose to not participate in the post-test. we are uncertain as to why these ten participants self-selected out of the study, but believe it may have something to do with the nature of the post-survey being conducted after the arrt program was finished. additionally, the post-test was mailed to teachers with a follow-up email rather than having participants complete the survey in a controlled environment (classroom) as done with the pre-test. gender composition of the ten participants who did complete both preand post-tests was made up of mostly female (n=8), all self-identified as white, non-hispanic teachers of public (n=6), urban (n=4), suburban (n=5), and/or rural (n=1) schools in northwestern ohio and southeastern michigan. participants’ current grade level teaching was distributed between elementary (k-3) (n=1), intermediate (4-6) (n=3), middle of junior high (6-8) (n=4), and high school (9-12) (n=2). great variance existed in our participants’ current subject area teaching: math only (n=1), science only (n=5), social studies and language arts (n=1), art (n=1), gifted and talented (n=1), special education (n=1). instructors three professors and four instructors were responsible for arrt program instruction and field study inquiry. instructors held diverse backgrounds and fields of specification to meet the program objective of integrating field study, environmental education, and multiple content areas. the professors included: 1) an environmental scientist/education professor, 2) a geologist/environmental science professor, and 3) and an education professor with a literacy and math content focus. the other instructors consisted of high school biology and environmental education teacher, a technology expert from the university, and two doctoral candidates from the college of education, each with a focus in science education. in addition to the seven key instructors, numerous guest instructors and content specialists assisted in the program’s field trip experiences. for example, the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science 5 when touring local historical sites of indian battle fields, a local archeologist and historian led the discussion and visit. when exploring an excavation site of a local island civil war prison for southern officers, the head archeologist and an archeological “rubber specialist” discussed their work and findings. metropark naturalists and botanical garden staff also participated in other field excursions. these field specialists and local experts contributed great depth to the teachers’ study and understanding of the specific disciplines being explored. they also implicitly portrayed science as a dynamic field of study where inquiry of the natural environment is essential in building upon current scientific knowledge. instrumentation and procedures instrument vnos-c. during arrt, we conducted three applications of the “views of nature of science questionnaire form c” (vnos-c) (lederman, abd-elkhalick, bell, & schwartz, 2002). the vnos-c is a ten item open-ended questionnaire focusing on nos principles such as: empirical, tentative, inferential, creative, theory-laden, social and cultural, myth of the “scientific method,” and nature of and distinction between scientific theories and laws and is used to assess participants’ base level understanding of the nos principles. as a result of previous studies and follow-up interviews, there is support for a high confidence level in the validity of the vnos-c for assessing the nos understandings of a wide variety of respondents (lederman et al., 2002). longitudinal surveys collect information at different points in time in order to study changes over time (fraenkel, wallen, & hyun, 2012). as a panel study, the researchers survey that same sample of individuals at different times during the course of the longitudinal survey (fraenkel, wallen, & hyun, 2012). this survey was administered to the same group of teachers at three different points in time. first, the vnos-c survey was given to all participants during the first day of the summer institute. the second application of the vnos-c occurred during the second (of 3) fall discussion meeting approximately three months after the summer institute concluded. this was a clear diversion from the vnos-c protocol with vygotsky’s belief in mind “that much of what we learn we learn from others” (phillips & soltis, 1998, p. 59). vygotsky argued that learning and development is a social, collaborative activity and that the zone of proximal development can serve as a guide for curricular and lesson planning. vygotsky used the term zone of proximal development to describe the region between the learner’s spontaneous level of knowing and thinking, and the level the learner can reach in problem solving with assistance (carin, bass, & contant, 2005, p. 89). vygotsky believed that school learning should occur in a meaningful context and not be separated from learning and knowledge students develop in the "real world". therefore, out-of-school experiences should be related to the student's school experience. for the third application, we mailed surveys to all of the participating teachers at the beginning of january; approximately six months after the summer institute and about three months after the vnos-c discussion meeting. vnos-c application #1: survey on first day of the summer institute. we modeled our program after the instructional strategies for conceptual change proposed by nussbaum and novick (1982) where we first revealed the practicing teachers naïve views of nos during the vnos-c application #1 on the first day of the summer institute. teachers in the arrt summer institute completed the vnos-c independently on the first day of the program. rather than having participants in the controlled environment of the classroom, as suggested by lederman (2002), teachers were asked to take a clip board, the survey and find a comfortable place out of doors in the local botanical garden, our daily meeting place for the summer institute. this departure from the protocol suggested by the authors is more consistent with our philosophy of informal learning through inquiry and the use of field study in the environmental education program (see arrt philosophy above). as in lederman (2002) teachers were allotted one hour to answer the questionnaire. see appendix a for items on the vnos-c. vnos-c application #2: fall discussion meeting. as described earlier, the arrt program included three fall evening follow-up classroom work sessions designed to continue working on the implementation of what they had learned from the summer field institute into their current teaching. the summer institute provided opportunities for the teachers to evaluate their preconceptions through field work (nussbaum & novick, 1982). the second of our fall meetings was dedicated to a discussion of the nos. small group and whole-group discussion provided opportunity to create cognitive dissonance with their preconceptions based on their summer field work (nussbaum & novick, 1982). teachers worked in their summer institute field study groups of four to five participants to collaboratively construct group responses to vnos-c questions. each of the five groups was assigned two of the 10 vnos-c items. they discussed the meanings of the questions, possible answers and used markers to write group responses on poster board paper. when the group was done, they hung their group responses on the wall of the classroom. in addition to giving the specific answers to the assigned questions, they were asked to describe what implications their answers have for their teaching of science and other subjects. when each field study group stood up to present their responses to their assigned vnos-c items, invigorating whole group discussion occurred where instructors were able to facilitate conceptual restructuring in regard to informed nos views (nussbaum & novick, current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 6 1982) through explicit nos dialogue. participants were required to use examples from the summer institute as evidence for their claims in order to illustrate the impact of the field work in regard to their nos views demonstrating how implicit instruction had impacted their nos beliefs. instructor led explicit nos dialogue with participant shared implicit nos experiences were intentionally combined to facilitate deeper nos understanding through the deliberate meshing of explicit and implicit nos instruction. formal nos assessment of individuals was not a goal of this meeting. rather, the appropriate understanding of nos principles where the knowledge was collectively constructed by the teachers “whose purpose [was] to share their expertise in order to construct and negotiate meaning” (wink & putney, 2002, p. 13). socially constructing meaning and beliefs about nos to elicit greater ownership over these beliefs was the primary desired outcome at this session. as abd-el-khalick and lederman (2000b, p. 1059) state: to be able to effectively teach nos to k-12 students, science teachers need to have more than a rudimentary or superficial knowledge and understanding of various nos aspects. teachers need to know a wide range of related examples, explanations, demonstrations, and historical episodes. they should be able to comfortably discourse about various nos aspects, contextualize their nos teaching with some examples or stories from hos, and design science-based activities to render the target nos aspects accessible and understandable to k-12 students. vnos-c application #3: post survey mailed to teachers only. individual teachers’ nos views were again formally assessed sixteen weeks into the regular school year, six months after the summer inquiry institute and three months after the fall nos discussion session. this time lapse allowed teachers to get back into their regular routines and to field test the lesson plans they produced as an outcome of the arrt summer institute. because busy schedules did not allow another evening session, it was impossible to gather teachers together in a controlled environment for this round of data collection. teachers were mailed the vnos-c and asked to complete it without the use of outside materials and return it to the researchers. an email reminder was sent out to all who did not return their post-survey within two weeks of the initial mailing. data from this phase was used for comparison to teachers’ baseline nos understanding and in comparison to the fall discussion session to see if arrt experiences may have contributed to a lasting change in nos beliefs. our return rate for the mailed surveys was 50%. data analysis data collected for the vnos-c individual teacher responses at time 1 and 3 were coded according to aspects of nos as defined by lederman, abd-el-khalick, bell, and schwartz (2002). their definitions for the categories described in table 1 were used as the basis for determining if responses provided in this study were more informed or more naïve views of the nature of science. interrater reliability is crucial when multiple researchers are analyzing data. the researchers independently analyzed this data, compared their analyses, and resolved any discrepancies with further consultation of the data arriving at a consensus (lederman, abd-ed-khalick, bell, & schwartz, 2002). first, the responses were evaluated for accuracy where researcher’s rated nos response as representing either more informed views or more naive views for each nos aspect. for example, one respondent wrote that: “imagination and creativity are used in presenting ‘hard science’ to the public, but is not tolerated among those following strict scientific methods.” this response was considered a more naïve view for the creative aspect of nos. another respondent stated that: “scientists absolutely must use imagination and creativity…in coming up with new ideas, being able to look at something and see things that no one else has. looking at things in new ways, using tools/technology for other purposes.” in contrast to the first example, this response was rated an informed view for the same nos aspect. following this preliminary round of data analysis, researchers looked for common themes, patterns, and naïve conceptions in the responses (i i.e., akerson, v. l., morrison, j. a., & mcduffie, a. r., 2006). table 1 nature of science aspects defined nos aspect definition empirical science is based, at least partially, on observations of the natural world. tentative scientific knowledge is subject to change and is never absolute or certain. the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science 7 inferential the crucial distinction between scientific claims and evidence on which such claims are based. creative the generation of scientific knowledge involves human imagination and creativity. theory-laden scientific knowledge and investigation are influenced by scientists’ theoretical and disciplinary commitments, beliefs, prior knowledge, training, experience, and expectations. social and cultural science as a human enterprise is practiced within, affects, and is affected by a larger social and cultural milieu. scientific method the lack of a universal step-wise method that guarantees the generation of valid knowledge. theories and laws lack of a hierarchical relationship between theories and laws. results a greater number of informed views were found at the end of arrt program than at the beginning, for seven of the eight vnos-c categories: empirical, tentative, creative, theory-laden, social & cultural, scientific method, and theories vs. laws nos aspects. however, more informed views for the inferential nos remained about the same as it was in the pre-test. none of the nos aspects regressed to having a greater number of more naïve views at the end of the program than in the beginning. see table 2 for vnos-c application results and table 3 for examples of more informed and more naïve view examples from our participants for each nos category. persistent naïve conceptions common themes in misconceptions among participants with more naïve views at the post-test phase were examined to see where participants continued to struggle with appropriate nos beliefs. frequent misconceptions were found in empirical, tentative, inferential, scientific method, and theory vs. law nos aspects. creative, theory laden, and social cultural nos aspects did not possess common misconceptions in the post-test phase as there were so few participants (zero or one) with more naïve views of these domains. empirical nos misconception themes. a common misconception found in the post-test empirical nos was the belief that science relies on “testing” and is “provable” or “supplies provable evidence.” this misconception was described by five of the six participants with more naïve empirical nos views in their post-test responses. tentative nos misconception themes. science as “fact” was found as a common misconception among those with more naïve tentative nos views in the posttest. all six of these participants responded that science is used to “prove something true” or that scientific “laws are fact.” inferential nos misconception themes. common misconceptions were revealed among those with more naïve inferential nos views in the post-test. with respect to the structure of an atom, five of the seven participants with misconceptions referred to technology as the leading reason for scientists’ certainty of atomic structure. and four of the seven participants felt that experimentation played a role. regarding species, six of the seven participants with misconceptions believed similar characteristics such as dna and breeding were responsible for specific categorization of species. scientific method nos misconception themes. of the seven participants with more naïve views about the scientific method dimension of nos in the post-test, four referred to the scientific method as a specific step-wise “procedure” that scientists use in experimentation. while all seven suggested that the experiments elicit scientifically valid or “true” results. theory vs. law nos misconception themes. the common theme of hierarchical structure between theories and laws was evident in post-test responses from those with more naïve views toward theory vs. law nos. all eight of these participants viewed theories as “unproven” and “laws (as) fact” or “proven.” and three participants suggested that “theories become laws once proven.” current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 8 table 2 pre and post individual response vnos-c results (n=10) nos aspect test time more naïve view more informed view empirical pre-test post-test 7 6 3 4 tentative pre-test post-test 7 6 3 4 inferential pre-test post-test 7 7 3 3 creative pre-test post-test 1 0 9 10 theory-laden pre-test post-test 3 1 7 9 social & cultural pre-test post-test 4 1 6 9 scientific method pre-test post-test 9 7 1 3 theories vs. laws pre-test post-test 9 8 1 2 the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science 9 table 3 participant more naïve and more informed response examples for each nos aspect assessed nos aspect more naïve view more informed view empirical people who study scientific methods have the means to actually prove the relativity and validity of a situation… without proof or evidence people of science will not believe. (item 1) science is done in a process that seeks clarification of ideas, while posing more questions for investigation…it tests ideas and retests ideas and relies on peer review to validate findings. (item 1) tentative a theory is a theory until an experiment comes along and makes it a fact. (item 4) theories are only as good as the knowledge we posses at the time. new technology, new experiments constantly alter our scientific theories. the value of learning theories is to discover more. by knowing what is, you can question it or expand it, therefore changing the original theory. (item 4) inferential the looks of atoms are determined through experimentation and observations by the scientists! (item 6) i think that scientists are certain about their characterization of what a species is. i think scientists used similar characteristics to put species into various categories. (item 7) i think scientist’s first use as obvious as possible evidence that they can agree on, maybe such as gills vs. lungs vs., photosynthesis. then they just start narrowing down the characteristics. but there is not total agreement…things change and new species are found. (item 7) creative imagination and creativity are used in presenting “hard science” to the public, but is not tolerated among those following strict scientific methods. (item 10) scientists absolutely must use imagination and creativity…in coming up with new ideas, being able to look at something and see things that no one else has. looking at things in a new way, using current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 10 tools/technology for other purposes…if they were not creative, how would they get the idea to experiment in the first place? theory-laden because no one was there with their yellow notebooks to take observations so no one knows for sure (why dinosaurs were extinct)! (item 8) different biases play a role. theories rely on how experiments are set up and how data is analyzed. since each researcher has their bias it is easy to see how they (views of dinosaur extinction) can vary. (item8) social & cultural science is universal because with the vast array of groups testing for results on a given topic, they should eventually result in the same/similar results. thus the scientific results would not change the social and/or cultural values at the end but enhance the entire population as a whole. (item 9) i think that science is affected by the social and cultural values imbedded in individuals and groups…science is approached by people with their own religious values and beliefs. (item 9) scientific method the scientific method involves posing a question, then postulating a series of answers, then conducting a series of controlled experiments to test the proposed hypothesis, and then seeing which of the hypotheses holds true after many trials. (item 1) a way to find out about something. an exercise to satisfy curiosity…derived from a natural sense of curiosity about our world and how it works. it can revolve around the simplest of questions and observations, and so can be explored at the earliest age and by all, no matter what their intellect or level of knowledge. (items 1 & 2) theories vs. laws i believe a theory becomes a law once scientists are able to prove their theory with certainty. laws don’t change. (item 5) theories attempt to explain “why” something occurs or “how” something occurs. laws predict and don’t explain. (item 5) the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science 11 discussion does a river runs through it (arrt), an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program designed to provide nos implicit experiences and explicit instruction, influence teachers’ views of the nature of science? our study demonstrates that the combination of implicit and explicit nos instructional methods in teacher professional development programs could be a meaningful method of impacting teachers’ nos beliefs as we saw an increase in all nos aspects from pre to post with the exception of one area which remained the same. overall, perceptions of the nature of science held by teachers in this research were more informed after completing the arrt program and having returned to teach for twelve weeks. prior research has shown mixed results for improving teachers’ nos beliefs when using implicit nos experiential learning alone (haukoos & penick, 1985; palmquist & finley, 1997; sharmann & harris, 1992), or solely explicit nos instruction (tsai, 2006) although explicit nos instruction has appeared to worked better (abd-el-khalick & lederman, 2000a). teachers in this study came into the program with higher informed views in certain nos aspects over others. for the creative, theory-laden, and social & cultural domains of nos, over half of the teachers in our sample entered the program with informed views. for these nos aspects all, or all but one, of the teachers held more informed views in the post-test stage. we cannot explain the reason for this. however, we do speculate that it may have something to do with self-selection into the arrt program. by this we mean it is possible that the teachers who chose to participate in our environmental education professional development program may have participated because arrt goals and philosophy matched closely with their personal science education beliefs. supporting this possibility, creative, theory-laden, and social/cultural aspects were all specific goals of arrt. it was a goal for teacher participants to learn to be creative in their exploration of the natural world around them (creative nos). at times they hypothesized about the nature of a river or the condition of a historical battle field based on the remains, where different conjectures were made and all could have been “right” (theory-laden nos). the integrated nature of the program, combining science with local history and other content areas, promoted the social & cultural nos aspect. therefore, teachers who did not at least in part share these philosophical beliefs about science would likely have avoided applying for this intense professional development learning opportunity. on the other hand, teachers in this study held quite naïve views prior to and after the arrt program for particular nos aspects. over half of the teachers’ views were still naïve in the post-test phase for empirical, tentative, inferential, scientific method, and theories vs. laws domains of nos. although all of these nos aspects increased in more informed views in the post-test, except for inferential which remained the same, a large portion of our sample still held more naïve perceptions in the end. most problematic were theories vs. laws, scientific method, and inferential nos aspects. a theme of “science is proven” or “absolute truth” found from doing science was revealed in the teachers’ responses for items addressing these categories. while these results are somewhat similar to prior research (tsai, 2006), it is nevertheless quite troubling in that teachers without appropriate nos views are highly likely to pass these misconceptions along to their students. at the same time, this is not surprising as these naïve views may be long standing beliefs requiring more than one course to change regardless of the nos instructional method. implications in the context of a place-based, field oriented and naturally integrated watershed, our work offers insight into the value of using both implicit experiences and explicit instruction in the teaching of the nature of science for changing participant views of nos. however, based on the naïve views still present in the post-test, specific attention should be given to nos aspects that revolve around science as a dynamic body of knowledge that is never proven “truth” but supporting or refuting evidence. additionally, we realize that one teacher education program is most likely not enough to elicit dramatic change in teacher nos beliefs. especially for those that hold very strong naïve views, as well-established beliefs are very difficult to move and much time is required to facilitate long held attitudinal changes. time and constant support are necessary for helping in-service teachers learn to transfer appropriate nos beliefs through their teaching of nos in their own classrooms (tuan & chin, 1999). and, this is the ultimate goal since we strongly believe that engaging field-based nos learning promotes student excitement toward and learning of science. questions about the value and application of implicit instruction in nos as a specific strategy or in combination with explicit methods as delivered in arrt are raised from this study. undergraduate teacher education programs need to focus on teaching strong nos understanding so these pre-service teachers have exposure to these views and a chance to adopt them. teacher professional development programs addressing the nature of science need to extend longer than a summer session in order to have a competitive chance against strong naïve nos perceptions. providing teacher support in lesson planning throughout a school year or longer may also be a beneficial tactic in enhancing and sustaining nos instruction in the classroom. “the integration of scientific and engineering practices, disciplinary core ideas, and crosscutting concepts set the stage for teaching and learning about the nature of science. this said, learning about the nature of current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 12 science requires more than engaging in activities and conducting investigations.” (next generation of science standards [2013] p. 2). the conclusions of this research support this notion and can help inform policy development, curriculum, as well as assessment advancements. the ngss (2013a) states: quality science education is based on standards that are rich in content and practice, with aligned curricula, pedagogy, assessment, and teacher preparation and development. it has been nearly 15 years since the national research council and the american association for advancement in science produced the seminal documents on which most state standards are based. since that time, major advance in science and our understanding of how students learn science have taken place and need to be reflected in state standards. the time is right to forge next generation science standards. limitations the major limitations in this study are sample size and post-test procedure. we were unable to obtain post-test vnos-c responses from all participants in the arrt program (a 50% return rate). the only responses we received were from those that voluntarily completed and returned the questionnaire. therefore, we are unable to determine if this group of respondents is similar to or different from the participants who chose not to respond. as previously mentioned, we believe the reason for the lower return rate on the post-survey was because participants were asked to complete the survey on their own time and return it after the program was complete, as opposed to having teachers complete the survey when they were in class as a captive audience. procedurally, the post-test was not completed in a “controlled” environment. teachers completing the post-test at their home or school without researcher observation allowed them the opportunity to use outside information in responding even though they were specifically instructed not to do this. interviews of participants would have added to the validity of the results as they would have provided greater depth in understanding more about participants thinking. therefore the generalizability of these results is limited based on the added instability of testing environment, small sample size, and lack of interviews. future research the teachers in this study self-selected to participate in this program. future research should focus on a much larger sample size that includes teachers who are randomly selected to explore whether self-selection is a variable that influences the development of nos views. a longitudinal research study is needed to establish whether an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program designed to provide nos implicit experiences and explicit instruction will influence teachers’ views of the nature of science over time. researchers might consider administering the post survey in a controlled environment in order to increase the post-survey return rate as well as validity of responses. future research should also include interviews which may provide further insight relevant to professional development programs. also, an exploration of the effect this professional development may have on student attitudes and academic achievement is critical. references american association for the advancement of science (aaas) (1993). benchmarks for science literacy. washington, dc: american association for the advancement of science. retrieved from: http://www.project2061.org/tools/benchol/bolfra me.html abd-el-khalick, f., & lederman, n. g., (2000a). improving science teachers’ conceptions of nature of science: a critical review of the literature. international journal of science education, 22, 665-701. abd-el-khalick, f., & lederman, n. g., (2000b). the influence of history of science courses on students’ views of nature of science. journal of research in science teaching, 37, 1057-1095. akerson, v. l., morrison, j. a., & mcduffie, a. r. (2006). one course is not enough: preservice elementary teachers retention of improved views of nature of science. journal of research in science teaching, 43, 194-213. carin, a., bass, j., & contant, t. (2005). methods for teaching science as inquiry. upper saddle river, nj: pearson. clough, m., & olson, j. (2012). impact of a nature of science and science education course on teachers’ nature of science classroom practices. in advances in nature of science research: concepts and methodologies (2012). khine (editor). dordrecht: springer. fraenkel, j., wallen, n., & hyun, h. (2012). how to design and evaluate research in education (8th ed.). new york: mcgraw hill. haukoos, g.d., & penick, j.e. (1985). the effects of classroom climate on college students: a replication study. journal of research in science teaching, 22(2), 163-168. hazen, r. m. (2002). why should you be scientifically literate? american institute of biological sciences. retrieved from http://www.actionbioscience.org/newfrontiers/ha zen.html#primer lederman, n. g., abd-el-khalick, f., bell, r. l., & the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science 13 schwarz, r. s. (2002). views of nature of science questionnaire: toward valid and meaningful assessment of learners’ conceptions of nature of science. journal of research in science teaching, 39, 497-521. national research council (nrc) (1996). national science education standards. washington, dc: national academy press. national science teachers association (nsta). (2000). nature of science position statement. http://www.nsta.org/about/positions/natureofscie nce.aspx next generation of science standards (ngss). (2013a). http://www.nextgenscience.org/next-generationscience-standards. next generation of science standards (ngss). (2013b). appendix h – understanding the scientific enterprise: the nature of science in the next generation science standards. nussbaum, j., & novick, n. (1982). alternative frameworks, conceptual conflict, and accommodation: toward a principled teaching strategy. instructional science, 11, 183-200. palmquist, bruce and finley, fred (1997). "preservice teachers' views of the nature of science during a postbaccalaureate science teaching program." journal of research in science teaching, 34(6), 595-615. phillips, d. c., & soltis, j. f. (1998). perspectives on learning (3rd ed.). new york: teachers college press. scharmann, l., & harris, w. (1992). teaching evaluation: understanding and applying the nature of science. journal of research in science teaching, 29, 375-388. schuster, d., & carlsen, w. (2006). science teaching as a learning profession. paper presented at the annual meeting of the national association of research in science teaching: san francisco, ca. schwartz, r. s., lederman, n. g., khishfe, r., lederman, j. s., matthew, l., liu, s. (2002). explicit/reflective instructional attention to nature of science and scientific inquiry: impact on student learning. proceeding of the international conference of the association for the education of teachers in science: charlotte, nc. tsai, c. (2006). reinterpreting and reconstructing science: teachers’ view changes toward the nature of science by courses of science education. teaching and teacher education, 22, 363-375. tuan, h., & chin, c. (1999). what can in-service taiwanese science teachers learn and teach about the nature of science? paper presented at the annual meeting of the national association for research in science teaching: boston, ma. wink, j., & putney, l. (2002). a vision of vygotsky. boston: allyn and bacon. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 14 appendix vnos-c items 1. what, in your view, is science? what makes science (or a scientific discipline such as physics, biology, etc.) different from other disciplines of inquiry (e.g., religion, philosophy)? 2. what is an experiment? 3. does the development of scientific knowledge require experiments? if yes, explain why. give an example to defend your position. if no, explain why. give an example to defend your position. 4. after scientists have developed a scientific theory (e.g., atomic theory, evolution theory), does the theory ever change? if you believe that scientific theories do not change, explain why. defend your answer with examples. if you believe that scientific theories do change: (a) explain why theories change; (b) explain why we bother to learn scientific theories. defend your answer with examples. 5. is there a difference between a scientific theory and a scientific law? illustrate your answer with an example. 6. science textbooks often represent the atom as a central nucleus composed of protons (positively charged particles) and neutrons (neutral particles) with electrons (negatively charged particles) orbiting the nucleus. how certain are scientists about the structure of the atom? what specific evidence do you think scientists used to determine what an atom looks like? 7. science textbooks often define a species as a group of organisms that share similar characteristics and can interbreed with one another to produce fertile offspring. how certain are scientists about their characterization of what a species is? what specific evidence do you think scientists used to determine what a species is? 8. it is believed that about 65 million years ago the dinosaurs became extinct. of the hypothesis formulated by scientists to explain the extinction, two enjoy wide support. the first, formulated by one group of scientists, suggests that a huge meteorite hit the earth 65 million years ago and led to a series of events that caused the extinction. the second hypothesis, formulated by another group of scientists, suggests that massive and violent volcanic eruptions were responsible for the extinction. how are these different conclusions possible if scientists in both groups have access to and use the same set of data to derive their conclusions? the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science 15 9. some claim that science is infused with social and cultural values. that is, science reflects the social and political values, philosophical assumptions, and intellectual norms of the culture in which it is practiced. others claim that science is universal. that is, science transcends national and cultural boundaries and is not affected by social, political, and philosophical values, and intellectual norms of the culture in which it is practiced. if you believe that science reflects social and cultural values, explain why. defend your answer with examples. if you believe that science is universal, explain why. defend your answer with examples. 10. scientists perform experiments/investigations when trying to find answers to the questions they put forth. do scientists use their creativity and imagination during their investigations? if yes, then at which stages of the investigations do you believe scientists use their imagination and creativity: planning and design, data collection, after data collection? please explain why scientists use imagination and creativity. provide examples if appropriate. if you believe that scientists do not use imagination and creativity, please explain why. provide examples if appropriate. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 16 article citation milner, a. r., sondergeld, t. a., & rop, c. (2014). the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science. current issues in education, 17(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1313 author notes andrea r. milner, phd assistant professor teacher education adrian college 110 south madison street adrian, michigan 49221 517-265-5161 ext. 3885 amilner@adrian.edu andrea r. milner is an assistant professor at adrian college (ac) in the teacher education department. dr. milner is also the director of the institute for education at ac. she earned her doctor of philosophy in curriculum & instruction in august 2008 from the university of toledo. her research focuses on the effects constructivist classroom contextual factors have on student motivation and learning strategy use. this includes the investigations of innovative strategies, techniques, and methods to facilitate learning environments that will ignite motivation and stimulate learning strategy use in a manner that will positively transform students’ experience of education within the classroom and enable students to then transfer that experience to their life out in the “real world”. she has numerous publications and presentations. toni a. sondergeld, phd assistant professor school of educational foundations, leadership and policies bowling green state university bowling green, ohio tsonder@bgsu.edu toni a. sondergeld is an assistant professor at bowling green state university (bgsu) in the school of educational foundations, leadership and policies. dr. sondergeld is also the co-director of the center of assessment and evaluation services (caes) at bgsu. she earned her doctor of philosophy in foundations of education: educational research & measurement in 2009 from the university of toledo. her research focuses on science/stem education; program/grant evaluation; classroom assessment & data driven decision making; and school reform. she has numerous publications and presentations. charles rop, phd associate professor curriculum and instruction university of toledo toledo, ohio 43606 charles.rop@utoledo.edu charles rop is an associate professor at the university of toledo (ut) in the department of curriculum and instruction at the ut’s college of education. he earned his doctor of philosophy in curriculum, teaching and educational policy with cognates in science education, teacher education, and disciplinary knowledge from michigan state university. his research focuses on exploring ways to construct learning experiences that engage the passions and perceptions of learners in ways that transform their views of the world and their relationships to it. in his research in science education he is working to discover ways that thoughtful engagement with the natural world can enable teachers and prospective teachers to catch a vision for authentic inquiry and discovery in science. melding qualitative and quantitative methodologies, he is looking at how these new experiences might influence their presentation of science in their classrooms. he has numerous publications and presentations the influence of an intensive and integrated place-based professional development program on teachers’ views of the nature of science 17 manuscript received: 05/13/13 revisions received: 08/13/2013 accepted: 08/31/2013 current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 18 volume 17, number 1 february 09, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors elizabeth calhoun reyes constantin schreiber assistant executive editor kevin jose raso recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editor elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik aaron bryant darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell younsu kim anna montana cirell kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber melinda thomas faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers volume 9, number 3 february, 2006 issn 1099-839x tolerated failure or missed opportunities and potentials for teacher leadership in urban schools? jumanne r. sledge and pamela morehead oakland university this monograph examines the existing role of teacher leaders while addressing many of the missed opportunities for teacher leaders to impact student achievement. the work of teacher leaders must impact teacher expectations, teacher content knowledge base, and teacher practice. in an era of teacher accountability and teacher quality schools can no longer continue to tolerate the fact that 40 percent of students in urban and rural schools never make it to high school graduation. to that end, urgency suggests that we begin to examine the potential of teacher leadership. for decades, society touted education as america’s great equalizer. fifty years have passed since the u.s. supreme court’s decision regarding brown v. board of education, which should have been pivotal for educating minority students. however, equal access has not led to equal achievement levels for all students, especially minority students. a plethora of literature suggests that there is a significant correlation between a student’s level of education and socio-economic status. fischer et al. (1996) posited that there is a symbiotic relationship between education and prosperity, both on the individual and societal levels. the quality of the education that poor and minority students receive relies heavily on their teachers’ expertise in teaching. unfortunately, rothman’s (2001) study of teachers of poor and minority students in california found that teachers in urban and low-income areas were less likely to have substantive content knowledge, were less experienced, and were less prepared with pedagogical skills to meet student needs. the reality of low achievement levels in many urban schools is a result of low expectations for students. delpit (1995) contended that research continues to reinforce the link between student failure and socio-economic status as well as student failure and cultural differences. delpit lamented, “it is hard to believe that these children can possibly be successful after their teachers have…so much negative indoctrination…there is a tendency to assume deficits in students rather than to locate and teach to strengths” (p. 172). while the 100 largest urban school districts comprise less than 1% of the nation’s school districts, urban schools educate approximately 30% of all students living in poverty and 40% of all nonwhite students in the united states (mdrc, 2003). the urban schools literature is replete with evidence highlighting the deleterious fact that students within urban districts typically suffer from higher poverty rate indexes, higher populations of students for whom english is not their primary language, higher populations of special education students, more complex family structures, higher incidences of violence, and fewer certified teachers in critical subject areas such as math, literacy, and science. in former united states secretary of education rod paige’s recent address to the 2004 national urban league in detroit, michigan, he identified the current issues in education vol. 9 no. 3 achievement gap as the “…major driver of racial inequality….” he contended that, …the african american community is in educational crisis, a catastrophe is upon us. this is no exaggeration. for example, a new study from northeastern university found that black male unemployment was so bad that in 2002, one out of every four african american men, 25 percent, were idle all yearlong, a rate twice as high as that of white or hispanic males.” paige also revealed “…african american students on average score 30 points lower than their anglo peers, one out of every four african american men does not complete high school and of those who do finish 12 th grade and graduate, more than 60% of them are not enrolled in colleges. there is overwhelming evidence that these problems continue generation after generation, passed down from father to son like a name. likewise, armandaiz (2001) concluded that public school systems have institutionalized negative biases enacted toward mexican americans. in the public schools studies, armandariz found that the skills, knowledge, and self-concepts were consistently and systematically devalued coupled with low teacher expectations of these minority students. according to leithwood and fullan (2003), often times school leaders work with student populations that are increasingly diverse and may not be experiencing success in school. this includes children who are from low-income families or whose cultural backgrounds or characteristics fall outside of the mainstream (for example, native peoples or recent immigrants, children with physical handicaps, and latinos, or african americans). histories of poor school performance for such students may result from neglect on behalf of the school and/or district leaders, allocation of the least able teachers and most limited resources to the most needy schools and students, low expectations, or lack of knowledge of effective strategies for working with particular kinds of students in challenging contexts. (p.13) effective schools research emphasizes the impact of teacher content knowledge, best practice methodology and the powerful role teacher expectations play in student achievement. despite consistent low achievement levels of children of poverty in many of our urban schools, we pay little attention to determining how teacher expectations can be changed and sustained. changing teacher expectations is a challenging undertaking as expectations for student achievement hinges on personal beliefs. a teacher’s beliefs ultimately influence teaching practices and behaviors (good & brophy, 1997). teachers' low expectations for student learning result in implementation of less challenging curriculum and ineffective instructional methods. delpit (1995) described the problem succinctly, “we say that we believe that all children can learn, but few of us really believe it” (p.172). if teachers embrace the idea that there is little they can do to improve student achievement, they find little incentive to change their instructional practices. low income and urban schools face the challenge to make knowledge about teaching relevant to practitioners. relevancy prevents teachers from sorting out information through their belief systems. teachers with limited knowledge, passé practices, and low expectations need focused professional development, which allows for teacher transfer and routine use. if teachers seize the opportunity to gain new knowledge and best practices designed to increase student engagement and improve performance, they will have higher expectations. teachers’ sense of self-efficacy increases as their teaching successes increase. the school, as an institution, has the power to change a history of poor school performance however, the school must face what patterson (1997) referred to as the bold realities about leadership and educational reform. the school administrator can no longer exist as the sole instructional leader in school reform. whereas, teacher leadership presents an opportunity for teachers and leaders to grow and develop simultaneously, a parallel opportunity exists for school administrators. as the administrator embraces teacher leadership, sharing instructional leadership roles becomes critical. according to newmann and wehlage (1995), principals play a key role in creating conditions that enable a school to improve. they further purported that effective principals involved in school improvement exhibit the following characteristics:  lead through shared vision and values  involve faculty members in decision-making  provide relevant staff development and training  model behaviors consistent with the vision and values changing teachers’ knowledge, practices and expectations can no longer rest in the lap of the school principal alone if the goal of the reform is to create a learning community to improve teaching and learning. several studies revealed the importance of teacher leadership in total school reform (katzenmeyer & moller, 1996; lieberman, 1988; urbanski & nickolaou, 1997). tolerated failure or missed opportunities and potentials for teacher leadership in urban schools? 3 teacher leadership in urban settings requires time and attention to the challenges related to power, social class, inequity and race for improvement in student achievement levels to occur (delpit, 1995; lipman, 1999; wynn, 2000). successful schools in the united states provide support for teachers on a day-to-day basis and focus on improving learning for all students. what separates successful schools from unsuccessful schools is how educators define and utilize leadership (glickman, 1993; glickman, gordon, & ross-gordon, 2001). teacher leaders who provide their colleagues with the professional development desperately needed to abolish low expectations have become pivotal to reversing the intolerable achievement gap that exists for minority students in urban schools. today, the view of leadership is transformed to focus on scientific understandings of teaching and learning, data driven decision-making and a broader view of professional development. dufour (2002) preferred the term learning leader versus instructional leader. the educational lens is now focused on leading learning communities the national association of elementary school principals (2001), embraced six important roles of leadership: establishing high expectations for students; connecting content and instruction to standards; using multiple sources of data for assessment of learning; placing a high priority on learning for students and adults; providing ongoing professional development in a culture of learning; and embracing the community’s support in the success of the school. this article examines the existing role of teacher leaders, addresses opportunities and potentials for teacher leaders to positively impact teacher knowledge base, and teacher practices and teacher expectations. defining the work of teacher leaders historically, educators defined teacher leadership as support faculty such as social workers, department heads, master teachers, lead teachers, learning specialists and supervisors. specialization of more traditional teacher leadership roles may not necessarily lead to dynamic school reform and perhaps requires a more complex definition. crowther, kaagan, ferguson and hann (2002) stated that, “teacher leadership facilitates principled action to achieve whole-school success. it applies the distinctive power of teaching to shape meaning for children, youth, and adults. and it contributes to long-term, enhanced quality of community life” (p. 10). katzenmeyer and moller (2001) defined teacher leadership as, “teachers who are leaders lead within and beyond the classroom, identify with and contribute to a community of teacher learners and leaders, and influence others toward improved educational practice” (p. 5). the dynamic change in the way a school community works together to improve student learning as suggested here offers promise to schools struggling with limited resources. recognizing the potential that teacher leadership affords schools is the first step toward acquiring positive results. school leaders must take the next step and determine how to identify teacher leaders and define the way in which principals and teacher leaders can work collaboratively toward common goals. teacher leaders are identified primarily by school administrators, other teachers, or the teacher leaders are self-proclaimed; their roles vary dramatically. there is agreement in the literature that teacher leaders take on a variety of roles but the more recent role is one which is not specialized but more generalized (york-barr, 2004). this generalized role is global and process-oriented leading change beyond the school walls. the role emerging for teachers leaders is more than a singular contribution, but far reaching including a strong focus on the well being and achievement of all students and includes more community involvement. according to hargreaves (as cited in crowther, kaagan, ferguson & hann, 2002) an, …intimate connection…exists between teaching and leading, realistically as well as rhetorically…when leadership is conceived as principalship, then really effective principals can bring about successful innovation, turn under performing schools around, and even sustain change…but typically, when top-level leaders move on, the focus shifts, the ownership of change leaves with the departing leaders. (p. xii) conversely, distributed leadership allows the change or reform to continue. the focus is on “communities of teacher leadership” supported by teacher leaders (crowther, kaagan, ferguson & hann, 2002). teacher leaders help colleagues achieve success for all students in the school. they accept more responsibility beyond their individual classrooms and focus on change for the entire school program. crowther, kaagan, ferguson and hann (2002) described this type of leadership as parallel leadership. parallel leadership involves leaders working harmoniously, moving in a common direction and diminishes the role of the principal as primary decision-maker. teacher leaders in this position engage with the school administrator in the goal of increasing the potential of the school to improve as a community. parallel leadership, according to crowther, kaagan, ferguson and hann current issues in education vol. 9 no. 3 (2002), “…engages processes of professional learning, culture building, and school wide pedagogy to enhance a school’s overall capacity to produce positive student outcomes” (p. 43). although a superfluity of definitions of teacher leadership exists in the literature, there is some agreement that the leader must possess certain qualities in order for changes to emerge in the school community. the qualities necessary for teacher leadership include interpersonal skills that build trusting, communicative and collaborative relationships with teachers. content knowledge that involves deep understanding of subject matter and how to deliver the content knowledge through a curriculum development process is necessary for the teacher leader’s ability to gain the respect of colleagues. additionally, pedagogical knowledge (teaching practices) that demands an understanding of how children best learn within a “thinking” curriculum as well as how to assess the learning is paramount to teachers in leadership capacities. an important and somewhat daunting challenge for teacher leaders in urban school settings is the greater inhibitor of school reform: low expectations. despite rhetoric related to teachers’ efforts toward increasing student achievement, teachers often don’t practice what they preach. teacher leaders play a key role in championing the need for high expectations. however, the roadblocks of personal and professional bias regarding race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and gender must first be removed to pave the way for high expectations for all students. opportunities for teacher leaders to impact teacher expectations according to green (2002; 2003), when the professional staff begins with sincerity to believe that all students can achieve, hold high expectations for student accomplishments, and do whatever it takes to ensure that students will learn, then the school operates in a self-sustaining climate of effectiveness. included among the responsibilities of teacher leaders is their ability to positively impact teacher expectations. within urban environments, several students live in a state of hopelessness and are more likely influenced negatively which often results in poorer choices and poorer academic performances. to that end, many teachers have acknowledged and accepted these factors which result in their abilities to expect a lower performance, if a performance at all. nonetheless, many children succumb to these low expectations resulting in self-fulfilling prophecies. harvard university scholar, ronald ferguson (1998; 2003), presented evidence that suggested teachers’ perceptions, expectations, and behaviors probably help sustain, and perhaps even expand, the test score gap between white and african american students. continuing the discussion, swanson, cunningham and spencer (2003) examined african american males’ perceptions of teacher expectations for their achievement and found that negative stereotyping and tracking influenced achievement. seemingly, everyone knows that it is unacceptable for teachers to knowingly engage in behaviors that may stifle and hinder the performance of students. as a result, many urban school districts pride themselves on their belief and expectation that all students can learn, never really demonstrating that this belief alone dictates and guides every action, interaction, and reaction that the professionals within the organization display. in order to demonstrate the expectation that all children can learn, teachers must explore a deep understanding of the protean use of expectations. bamburg (1994) concentrated on three general types of teacher expectations. the first type of expectation refers to a teacher’s perception or hunch as to the student’s current academic level. while the student’s current level may not affect future performance, bamburg (1994) continued to share that it does affect the teacher’s interaction with the students. for example, teachers who believe that they are interacting with bright students nod their heads and smile more often than teachers who believe they are interacting with slower students. additionally, teachers also lean toward and provide more direct eye contact with smarter students more frequently. the second type of expectation that bamburg (1994) mentioned is teacher’s prediction. the teacher’s prediction is the teacher’s guess of how much academic progress will occur over a period of time. coupled with teachers’ perceptions, teachers’ predictions can negatively influence students. for instance, students labeled academically challenging may receive fewer opportunities to learn new material than students labeled as bright. now, academic rigor is factored into the equation because students labeled as slow are less likely to benefit from acceleration versus constant remediation. the third type of expectation is the degree to which a teacher over estimates or underestimates a student’s present level of performance. underestimating a student’s academic performance is usually as a result of test scores or other information gained about the child from a previous teacher. any or all of the general types of expectations influence student performance. according to bamburg (1994), they will create either a self-fulfilling prophecy or a sustaining expectation effect. likewise, the findings of douglass (1964) informed educators by revealing that, tolerated failure or missed opportunities and potentials for teacher leadership in urban schools? 5 …teachers’ expectations about a student’s achievement can be affected by factors having little or nothing to do with his/her ability, and yet these expectations can determine the level of achievement by confining learning opportunities to those available in one’s track.(p. 2) many theorists warned that expectations could become damaging if based upon inaccurate or inflexible information, and if teachers make instructional decisions on these incorrect perceptions (babad, bernieri, & rosenthal, 1991; brophy & good, 1970; demaray & elliot, 1998). while the damage of inaccuracy is potentially detrimental to students, even more alarming is what bognar (1982) shared about the lack of willingness for teachers to revise their expectations of students in response to the new information. attempting to positively affect the attitudes and beliefs of other teachers is a major responsibility for teacher leaders and may be the most complex, especially since it is a highly personal affective measure. hilliard (1991) argued that deep restructuring and fundamental change occurs when we allow teachers to experience the joy of collaborative discussion, dialogue, critique, and research. an enriched academic foundation is definitely a prerequisite for an enriched pedagogical foundation, and the two provide a level of comfort for the teacher who supports professional dialogue as well as teacher-student dialogue. while the critical conversations must begin, conversations alone are not enough to get all teachers to become reflective practitioners. teachers must examine their belief about the expectations of students. teacher leaders should begin to nudge teachers to shift their thinking and practices. for example, in the american educational system, most teachers are prepared to assess students based on the student’s ability instead of the student’s effort. stevenson and baker (1992) highlighted the advent that american society confuses the concepts of ability and effort. they compared educational practices in the united states with those in china and japan. their findings revealed that, …people in the two asian countries acknowledged differences in individuals’ innate abilities, but considered hard work to be the more important factor than ability in students’ academic achievement. in contrast, american children, teachers, and parents emphasized innate abilities as the major component of academic success. (p. 1656) stevenson and baker (1992) underscored the fact that in america innate ability has resulted in a belief tantamount to educational predestination. innate ability, rather than effort, the amount of quality instruction, and parent involvement – is believed to be the sole determinant to achievement. further agitation of this idea may also mean that many american students who have not performed well on standardized tests are believed by their teachers and ultimately themselves to have a much lesser ability. this inferior ability becomes fixed in the minds of teachers and students alike. regardless of hard work, continued development, and additional professional support services, this idea remains fixed. contrary to the innate ability findings is the experience of math teacher jaime escalante at garfield high school in los angeles. escalante presented strong evidence that emphasizing effort can pay off, particularly when a teacher believes that students can succeed and provides the necessary support. escalante’s inner city students consistently outperformed suburban and private school students on the avanced placement (a.p.) calculus exam for more than seven consecutive years. prior to escalante’s work, marva collins, founder and teacher of the westside preparatory academy in chicago took students from the projects of chicago and provided them with a rigorous curriculum and the expectation that they would all attend college. from her steadfast work, her students consistently outperformed students enrolled in the surrounding local school districts and annihilated the predictive statistics of inner city youths between 1970s and 1980s as evidenced in cbs’ 60 minutes feature entitled, too good to be true. in order for teacher leaders to impact teacher expectations, the teacher leaders must become familiar with what works in schools. teachers within the building need the information, and, as collaborative partners, the teacher leaders must agree to support the teachers as they attempt to try new techniques and make use of the new information. ongoing assessment of school culture and beliefs about students and student achievement must guide this process. teacher leaders must take time to raise consciousness and create awareness about race, gender, social class, disability status, communication and speech patterns, student history, limited english proficiency, physical attractiveness, handwriting, and participation in extra-curricula activities for teachers to meet the needs of all students. opportunities for teacher leaders to impact teacher knowledge since legislators, policymakers, and those who make funding decisions about education are now concerned with student outcomes, it has become current issues in education vol. 9 no. 3 apparent to many that the next steps of accountability will be the link between student outcomes and teacher knowledge. beginning in 2000, states received federal dollars in the form of title ii grants. these grants are designed to improve teacher quality using professional development. these professional development proposals were required to affect the teacher’s knowledge base through the rigors of content. the new energy surrounding this type of professional development allowed colleges of education and colleges of arts and sciences to collaborate with school districts to meet this challenge. this framework of professional development aligns with the ideas of guskey and sparks (1998) who postulated the linkage of quality professional development to increased student outcomes through the influence of teacher knowledge. ingersoll (1999) highlighted the significant disparity in content knowledge between teachers in high-poverty, urban schools and those in affluent schools. his research identifies significant comparison gaps in the areas of math, science, english, and social studies. further, teachers in the urban schools lacked a major or a minor in their teaching field. for example, 43 percent of teachers in urban schools lacked a major or minor while only 27 percent of teachers in more affluent schools. coupled with ingersoll’s research, the national center for education statistics (2000) reported that 20 percent of teachers in urban schools have three or fewer years of teaching experience. ultimately, schools assign teachers with the least credentials and least experience the toughest teaching assignments in the nation. even teachers in urban areas with the appropriate experience and credentials are often not adequately prepared and supported to handle the increasingly difficult instructional challenges embedded within these environments. having this insight, the teacher leader must become a master of content and be able to transmit expertise to his/her colleagues. as a master of content, the teacher leader must use his skills as a professional developer to impact teacher knowledge. sanders’ (1998) study showed that students assigned to effective teachers’ [deep academic content] for three years in a row scored an average of 49 percentile points higher on standardized tests than those assigned to ineffective teachers three years in a row. opportunities for teacher leaders to impact teacher practice standards based accountability places more demands on the teacher leaders’ knowledge of curriculum and assessment. classroom teachers need strong support of knowledgeable leaders to produce significant results based on ambitious academic expectations. there are distinctions made in the literature regarding the definitions of pedagogical knowledge. as we consider the evolving role of teacher leaders as ‘capacity’ builders in school reform, we assume content knowledge exists. pedagogy is a process for teachers, placing emphasis on the areas of curriculum development, assessment and best practices in methodology. teachers invest in their own learning to this end. subsequently, teacher leaders share newly gained skills by promoting, participating, and facilitating in a purposeful professional learning community. these teachers are “…informal leaders on the cutting edge of reform…not afraid to take risks…the ones administrators typically call on for opinions and help in effecting change” (stronge, 2002, p. 20). in this role, the teacher leaders build capacity in their school. lambert (2005) defined leadership capacity as “…reciprocal, purposeful learning together in community” (p. 38). in a study of high leadership capacity schools, most of which were urban and highpoverty, the principal was responsible for building shared leadership, gradually releasing the decision making to the teachers (lambert, 2005). there are many descriptors used to illustrate what leadership capacity ‘looks like’, however, we argue that reflective practice embodies effective teacher leadership. when principals create a learning community, they look to teacher leaders to facilitate the process. knowledgeable teacher leaders can assist colleagues in becoming effective teachers through reflective practice. a commitment to teaching and professional learning is critical to improve student achievement (blair, 2000; lambert, 2005; mitchell, 1998). in essence, effective teachers feel responsible for the learning of all students and examine ways to meet their needs (covino & iwanicki, 1996; peart & campbell, 1999; shellard & protheroe, 2000). therefore, we can reasonably conclude that teacher leaders must examine reflective practice as a tool with which to lead others to effective teaching practices. costa, lipton, and wellman (1997) discussed the need for teachers to engage in research, inquiry, reflection and revising of practices. teachers construct knowledge when they engage in a learning process that promotes a spirit of risk-taking. the model of professional development that supports this is one which individuals, small groups, and entire faculties study classroom activities and achievement data as a means for exchanging ideas and exploring research possibilities in their own environment. in this model, teacher leaders facilitate a process that tolerated failure or missed opportunities and potentials for teacher leadership in urban schools? 7 builds a community of learners within the building centered on inquiry, experimentation and reflection. costa and kallick (2000) stated that in order for teachers to maximize meaning from experience they must engage in reflection. they described the activity of reflecting especially with a group of teaching peers as:  amplifying the meaning of one’s work through the insights of others;  applying meaning beyond the situation in which it was learned;  making a commitment to adjustments, plans, and experimentation,  documenting learning and providing a rich base of shared knowledge. (p. 60) reflection leads to substantive conversation, collaborative inquiry into practice of teaching and developing important recommendations for transformation in methodologies. darling-hammond and mclaughlin (1995) stated, “professional development today means providing occasions for teachers to reflect critically on their practice and to fashion new knowledge and beliefs about content, pedagogy, and learners” (p. 597). principals alone cannot sustain this level of learning for their teachers. however, teacher leaders who are generally in nonevaluative roles, better meet with success in this context of professional learning. conclusion in 1954, lawmakers embedded equity into law. today, unfortunately, many students continue to face unequal and inadequate educational opportunities because they are poor, black, latino, or live in inner cities or rural areas. further, many of these students do not get the education they need to thrive in today’s economy and to participate as citizens in a democracy. assuredly, strong public education promotes a strong society. in many cases, the reality of a weak public education system resulting in low student achievement is a result of low expectations (delpit, 1995). several years ago, ron edmonds, father of effective schools research, made a commitment to find schools that were successfully educating all students. he reasoned that if he could find a single school where all children were successful, then success was indeed possible. for edmonds, the belief that all children could learn was nonnegotiable; this was the expectation (bamburg, 1994). as teacher leaders equip other teachers with high-yield best practices that result in increased student achievement, teacher leaders must be prepared to support the new learnings of teachers. teacher leaders must create conditions for teachers to refine, practice, reflect and improve their practice over time. the teacher leader must then become the promoter and facilitator of a purposeful professional learning community. effective schools do not tolerate failure; however, they may miss opportunities and potentials for teacher leadership. helping teachers change their thinking and practices is a difficult task. as capacity for shared leadership or parallel leadership increases, the opportunity for leaders to support colleagues in an analysis and challenge of their beliefs about student learning occurs. improving teacher quality is critical to low-income, urban schools. developing a community of learners holds great promise for urban schools to improve professional practice and ultimately increase student achievement. references armandaiz a. 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(2003). black males’ structural conditions, achievement patterns, normative needs, and opportunities. urban education 38(5), 608 633. urbanski, a. & nickolaou, m.a. (1997). reflections on teachers as leaders. educational policy, 11(2), 243-254. wynn, j. (2001). urban teacher leaders: testimonies and transformations. unpublished paper presented at the aera, montreal canada. ed 436 614. york-barr, j., & duke, k. (2004). “what do we know about teacher leadership? findings from two decades of scholarship. review of educational research.74(3), 255-316. http://www.annenbergchallenge.org/pubs/cj/gap_cj.htm http://www.annenbergchallenge.org/pubs/cj/gap_cj.htm current issues in education vol. 9 no. 3 2006 article citation sledge j.r. & morehead p. (2006, feb). "tolerated failure or missed opportunities and potentials for teacher leadership in urban schools?" current issues in education [on-line], 9(3). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume9/number3/ author notes jumanne r. sledge, ed. d. visiting assistant professor oakland university sledge@oakland.edu jumanne sledge has worked as a teacher, department head, and principal in public education. his expertise and research interests are in the area of school reform and improvement in urban educational arenas. dr. sledge has presented at several local, state, and national conferences. he is committed to closing the achievement gap thereby increasing student achievement, especially among african american males. jumanne earned his master of arts degree from the university of detroit in education administration and his doctor of education degree from wayne state university in the curriculum and instruction. pamela morehead, ph.d. oakland university morehead@oakland.edu pamela morehead is a visiting assistant professor at oakland university in rochester, michigan. she is a former elementary principal and consultant. research interests include teacher leadership and professional development. her degrees earned are in special education, early childhood and education leadership. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation sledge, j. r., & morehead, p. (2006). tolerated failure or missed opportunities and potentials for teacher leadership in urban schools? current issues in education, 9(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1595 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number3/index.html mailto:sledge@oakland.edu mailto:morehead@oakland.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1595 cie template current issues in education, 22(3) 1 volume 22, issue 3 december 8, 2021 issn 1099-839x more than a babysitter: looking back on an effective summer enrichment program benterah c. morton university of south alabama kelly o. byrd university of south alabama elizabeth allison western governors university andré m. green university of south alabama abstract: each summer families across the globe send their children to summer camps and daycares for what amounts to babysitting. this study takes the discussion beyond babysitting and explores a unique summer enrichment program offered to rising second through fifth grade students in a modified enrichment camp model. during the four-week program, students were engaged in standards-based academic instruction in reading, mathematics, and science designed to provide enrichment activities to better prepare them for academic success in the upcoming year. students were pre-tested over standards from the first quarter of the upcoming year. then, they were taught the standards and post-tested. analysis of the pretest and posttest data suggests that the program was successful in increasing students’ content knowledge in each of the subject areas taught. the findings imply that summer programs intentionally offering standards-based academics in an enrichment camp environment can be used to provide learning opportunities that diminish academic opportunity gaps. keywords: summer enrichment programs, standards-based instruction, academic opportunity gaps citation: morton, b. c., byrd, k. o., allison, e. & green, a. m. (2021). more than a babysitter: looking back on an effective summer enrichment program. current issues in education, 22(3). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1964 accepted: november 9, 2021 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1964 morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 2 introduction during the summer of 2018, a summer enrichment program (sep) for local elementary school students was initiated to better prepare the students for academic success in the upcoming year. developed within a partnership of a local university’s college of education and professional studies, one local school district, and the local 100 black men organization, the four-week enrichment program focused on providing accelerated instruction for students from socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. funded as a joint venture among the partners, this program was offered at no cost to students enrolled in title i schools. in contrast to traditional summer school or summer camp opportunities, the sep did not seek to remediate students, but rather provide a strong foundation and preview of the upcoming school year through enrichment. enrichment, rather than remediation, challenges students to engage in experiences beyond traditional classroom contexts (hodges et.al., 2017; miller & gentry, 2010). the program was designed to engage students in meaningful, real-world, learning experiences to best prepare them for success with the upcoming year’s first quarter reading, mathematics, and science content while also supporting the development of physical and social-emotional skills. the purpose of this study was to examine the impact of participation in the sep on student achievement gains in core subject areas. the following research question guided the study: what was the impact of participation in the sep on students’ content knowledge in reading, mathematics, and science? the impact of the program on students’ content knowledge was evaluated using a pretest and posttest design, which allowed for a focused analysis of content knowledge attainment. before delving into the literature review, we believe it is necessary to provide the rationale behind the development of the reading and stem-focused (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) sep within which this study was conducted. providing a glance into the context here will help illuminate the theoretical and historical frameworks that underpinned the development and evaluation of the sep and inform the ways in which the program was developed through a culturally responsive pedagogical lens (gay, 2002, 2010, 2013). during the 2017-2018 academic school year, 60.46% of the elementary schools in the local school district, predominantly serving students of color, received a grade of c (70-79) or below – with most elementary schools receiving grades that were less than desirable (report card, 2018). although it is realized that one assessment does not define a school or a student, the fact remains that many students in the region were underperforming academically in reading and mathematics compared to other students in the state and the nation. the sep described in this study combined both traditional and enrichment summer program design methods. uniquely, the sep utilized preservice teachers as the workforce to accelerate the academic learning of academically underperforming second through fifth grade students in the local school district. literature review the following sections explore the literature surrounding the development of the sep. the first focuses on identifying the role of academic opportunity gaps in student learning related to strategies utilized to accelerate learning for students who have been identified as academically behind their peers. these strategies coupled with the summer enrichment program components described provide the foundation for this study. morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 3 academic opportunity gap achievement gap is the term frequently used by education scholars to denote the difference between standardized test score means for diverse groups of students (darlinghammond, 2013; ladson-billings, 2006; milner, 2012). in the united states, this term most often compares the scores of white students to that of other populations of students. this racially informed, deficit-framed application in which white students are the normal population to which other students are compared, currently besmirches achievement gap research. recent scholars have challenged and reimagined frames through which to understand the academic differences between diverse populations of students. while some scholars understand academic gaps as a function of cultural difference between teachers and students (delpit, 1995), others see it linked to teacher practices (milner, 2012), and still others have tried to link it to socioeconomic status (duncan & magnuson, 2005). ladson-billings (2006) re-imagined the achievement gap as the education debt and theorized solutions that provided lasting positive impacts on meeting the needs of diverse populations of students. since then, achievement gaps have been reframed as academic opportunity gaps or gaps that are caused by the inequitable distribution of resources leading to inconsistent opportunities to access educational goals (darling-hammond, 2013; milner, 2012). a wealth of strategies and interventions have been identified and designed to help accelerate the learning of student populations academically behind their peers and shrink academic opportunity gaps. according to von hippel and hamrock (2019), summer enrichment programs are valuable avenues for providing additional academic opportunities for students outside of the traditional classroom. further, diminishing these academic opportunity gaps relies on the development of educators’ knowledge, skills, and attitudes of a culturally responsive pedagogy (crp). crp embodies the interplay between culturally responsive teaching (gay, 2002, 2010, 2013) and culturally relevant pedagogy (ladson-billings, 1994, 2014). crp provides diverse theoretical frameworks supported by empirical research toward closing academic opportunity gaps. the greatest probability of changing the negative educational trends that plague many students of color and students from communities of low socioeconomic status rests within the school environment and will require an innovative plan of action (bailey & paisley, 2004; orrock & clark, 2018). if these children are to have a chance to survive, interventions must take place early and often within their educational careers (davis, 2003; dumas & nelson, 2016). at the current pace, they are falling further behind each year. if this trend continues, the anticipated outcome will impact the ability of these groups of children to compete within a global economy that requires a skilled and well-educated workforce. if children from these communities are to have a chance at a future, then more resources must be invested in them. equitable investments in education not only benefit students but the communities in which they live and society in general. however, previously used funding models based on the equal distribution of resources have proven not to be equitable (ladson-billings, 2006). thankfully, when distributed equitably, funding can be used to fund summer education programs that provide some remedy to academic opportunity gaps (von hippel & hamrock, 2019). summer enrichment programs summer education programs – including traditional summer school, summer enrichment camps, and summer enrichment programs – offer content-specific topics and activities that closely align with content standards taught in local schools. traditional summer schools, for morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 4 example, often provide the student with remediation support in specific content areas. summer enrichment camps and programs, however, seek to extend and augment student learning. where summer enrichment camps do have connections to curricular themes (henderson, 2018), these connections are intentionally more tenacious in summer enrichment programs (kaul et al., 2016). regardless of the content focus, the goal becomes to provide additional academic opportunities for the students attending the program. variations in summer enrichment program designs are as diverse as the number of summer programs offered each year. using a strengths-based approach, some summer enrichment programs are designed to strengthen participants’ skills in order to provide a head start on learning the content taught. the difference in these programs then shows up in their individual design and target audience. according to hodges et al. (2017), student outcomes are positively impacted by providing engaging and challenging student experiences throughout the program. these experiences, including the integration of stem learning opportunities, engage and challenge the students to make real-life connections increasing their understanding of the content (ihrig et al., 2018). additionally, hiring the right human resources (teachers), and intentionally preparing them for the target population, leads to greater student gains and a decrease in the academic opportunity gap (kim et al., 2017). methodology the purpose of this study was to examine the impact of participation in the sep on student achievement gains in core subject areas. the following research question guided the study: what was the impact of participation in the sep on students’ content knowledge in reading, mathematics, and science? a repeated measures pretest and posttest design was used to address the research question. context of the study the purpose of the sep program was to provide rising second through fifth grade students with a preview of reading, mathematics, and science content from the first quarter of the upcoming academic school year, giving them a solid base on which to build their knowledge and understanding of the content. the sep described in this study was initially advertised as a summer enrichment camp hoping to reap the benefits of summer camp and traditional school at the same time. however, the developers, all k-12 focused educators, designed a program more in line with traditional schools, accented with camp-like activities and field trips. the sep offered a unique and innovative day-camp-like experience that emphasized academic achievement, character development, community partnerships, and connections for students from socioeconomically disadvantaged environments. in contrast to traditional summer school, the sep did not seek to remediate students, but rather provide a strong foundation and preview of the upcoming school year. the sep, held on a local elementary school campus, was made available – at no cost – for students enrolled in title i schools across a large school district in the southeastern region of the united states. most of the students were bussed from their “home school” each day to mitigate travel concerns and costs for guardians. the program was offered four days a week (monday thursday) from 7:30 am 2:30 pm during the month of june. the students were placed in grade-level teams – based on the upcoming school year – and rotated daily through reading, mathematics, science, and integrated stem content courses, as well as physical education, and character, art, and self-esteem (case) curricula. morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 5 the reading, mathematics, science, and integrated stem content sessions engaged students in hands-on, inquiry-based activities focused on concepts for the students’ upcoming grade level as an extension and preparation for the upcoming school year. this was done intentionally to better prepare rising second through fifth graders for future learning, rather than simply remediating previous learning, and thereby diminishing the academic opportunity gap through learning experiences outside of the traditional classroom. using the local school district’s academic pacing guides, first quarter content knowledge and skills were the focus of the activities developed within the program. the state adopted reading program, reading wonders (august & mcgraw-hill, 2014) served as the foundation for the reading curriculum. the alabama math, science, and technology initiative (amsti) program served as the foundation for mathematics, science, and the integrated stem curricula. lessons and activities from investigations in number and space (terc, 2007) were used for the mathematics content and were based on the constructivist view of learning. using concrete and pictorial representations, the student developed a conceptual understanding of the mathematics content, building procedural fluency and mathematical reasoning. for the science content, specific lessons were selected from the grade-level appropriate amsti curriculum, including a teacher’s guide and all the supporting material for each investigation (eie, 2011a, 2011b; foss, 1995; stc, 2013). these kit-based units included hands-on, student-centered investigations that engaged students with the processes of science and engineering. the investigations within the integrated stem classes were created by the university faculty and focused on the engineering design process, using that process to solve a real-world problem. additionally, the use of preservice teachers as primary instructors for the program allowed for a multi-dimensional learning experience not only for the students, but for the preservice teachers. in effort to assure the development of the right human resources (kim et al., 2017) the preservice teachers were recruited from the sponsoring university the semester before the sep was set to begin. they were assigned to content areas and grade levels in pairs, working collaboratively with mentor teachers and university faculty to plan and implement effective lessons with meaningful, engaging activities (hodges et al., 2017). there was an average ratio of ten students to one preservice teacher in each class. the preservice teachers participated in two days of training prior to the program, as well as four additional days of professional development offered during the program. fifteen veteran elementary teachers from the local school district served as mentors to the preservice teachers, providing them with academic and behavioral support throughout the program. further support was provided by university faculty who created and facilitated professional development in the content areas and behavior management as well as assisted mentor teachers with curriculum development and lesson planning for each content area. finally, an on-site leadership team of three state certified educational leaders, being mentored by instructional leadership faculty, facilitated and supervised the program. participants a convenient voluntary sample was used for this study as the participants were elementary school students (entering second through fifth grade) from 30 title 1 schools in the local school district with an average of 290 students attending each day. participants in this study included students who completed the pretest and posttest in each content area with 99% being students of color, primarily african american. of the participants, 99% were from families that were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. the total number of participants (shown in tables 1 morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 6 – 4) varied for each grade level and content area due to a variety of factors discussed within the data collection and analysis. instruments the instruments used in this study were developed in collaboration with university faculty and mentor teachers. reading, mathematics, and science content knowledge was assessed at the beginning and at the completion of the program using the same pretests and posttests specific to each grade level and content area. to assess the participants’ reading content knowledge and skills, grade-level assessments were adapted from the state-adopted reading wonders curriculum (august & mcgraw-hill, 2014) to include only first quarter skills reflected in the local school district’s content pacing guide. similarly, to assess the participants’ mathematical content knowledge, the investigations in number and space (terc, 2007) curriculum grade-level assessments were adapted to include only first quarter skills reflected in the local school district content pacing guide. the science assessments were developed in two ways. the second grade assessment was developed by an amsti specialist to address the selected concepts taught in the unit. the third, fourth, and fifth grade science pretests and posttests were adapted from assessments provided in the grade-level-specific curriculum (eie, 2011a, 2011b; stc, 2013). data collection and analysis a repeated measures research design was utilized to answer the research question, “what was the impact of participation in the sep on students’ content knowledge in reading, mathematics, and science?” pretests were administered at the beginning of the four-week program prior to the delivery of instruction in reading, mathematics, and science. then, the elementary preservice teachers engaged the students in appropriate and meaningful grade-level learning experiences for a total of 14 days. the posttests in each content area were then administered at the completion of the program. the posttests were administered using a staggered approach – different content on different days – so that the participants did not spend the last day of the program completing assessments in each content area. as the content area pretests and posttests were administered at different times and on different days, the number of participants within each grade level varied due to factors including late registration, late dropoffs, early pick-ups, and absences. using spss statistical software, exploratory data analysis was conducted to check for missing values or entry errors. complete pretests and posttests scores for each grade level and content area were used to compare the growth in content knowledge and skills over the 14 days of instruction. descriptive statistics, including measures of central tendency, were used to describe and interpret the data summarizing overall growth in the participants’ content knowledge and skills for each grade level and content area. comparisons of pretest to posttest scores changes were conducted using paired-sample (repeated measures) t-tests with a two-tailed 95% confidence interval. findings the findings are organized by grade level and content area below. for each grade level, the sample size, descriptive statistics, differences, statistical significance, and effect size using cohen’s d are reported. findings revealed overall positive changes in content knowledge for the morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 7 participants in each grade level and content area after participation in the summer enrichment program. second grade results table 1 shows the pretest to posttest change for the rising second grade participants across the reading, mathematics, and science tests. as can be seen in table 1, there were statistically significant changes in performance on all the assessments. an examination of the effect sizes for the pretest to posttest change indicated that the effects were large, ranging from 1.47 to 2.00 standard deviations difference from pretest to posttest. table 1 pretest and posttest means for rising second grade participants in content knowledge content pre-test post-test n m (sd) m (sd) t sig. effect size (cohen’s d) reading 60 51.18 (20.35) 76.15 (19.69) 11.48 p < .001 1.47 mathematics 51 57.92 (18.33) 87.37 (11.25) 13.31 p < .001 2.00 science 44 45.29 (17.60) 73.18 (15.62) 11.60 p < .001 1.74 third grade results the results for the rising third grade participants are shown in table 2. as seen in the table, there were statistically significant differences between the pretest and posttest for all subject areas. the impact for reading and mathematics are large (over 1 standard deviation of improvement as indicated by the cohen’s d). however, the change from pretest to posttest in science was small (0.27 standard deviations). table 2 pretest and posttest means for rising third grade participants in content knowledge content pre-test post-test n m (sd) m (sd) t sig. effect size (cohen’s d) reading 72 50.34 (17.92) 76.23 (15.24) 14.69 p < .001 1.74 mathematics 70 40.31 (24.72) 71.78 (25.05) 11.69 p < .001 1.39 science 96 35.54 (14.93) 44.98 (26.32) 3.75 p < .001 0.27 fourth grade results table 3 shows the results for the rising fourth grade participants. as can be seen in the table, there were statistically significant differences between pretest and posttest scores in each morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 8 subject area. an examination of the effect sizes found the differences to be large (differences greater than 1 standard deviation between pretest and posttest). thus, there were improvements in all the subject areas. table 3 pretest and posttest means for rising fourth grade participants in content knowledge content pre-test post-test n m (sd) m (sd) t sig. effect size (cohen’s d) reading 59 36.33 (22.34) 63.62 (19.87) 9.34 p < .001 1.21 mathematics 53 32.42 (16.51) 51.03 (22.88) 8.63 p < .001 1.27 science 59 49.02 (16.04) 72.17 (17.86) 11.43 p < .001 1.48 fifth grade results table 4 shows the pattern of results for the rising fifth grade participants. as can be seen there were statistically significant differences between pretest and posttest in all the subject areas. additionally, all the pretest to posttest differences were large. effect sizes indicated greater than one standard deviation improvement between pretest and posttest. table 4 pretest and posttest means for rising fifth grade participants in content knowledge content pre-test post-test n m (sd) m (sd) t sig. effect size (cohen’s d) reading 70 49.21 (17.83) 79.17 (12.63) 14.20 p < .001 1.74 mathematics 68 32.57 (19.02) 66.44 (20.12) 13.92 p < .001 1.68 science 69 50.09 (12.72) 73.83 (16.39) 11.27 p < .001 1.37 discussion this study investigated how participation in the sep impacted student achievement gains in reading, mathematics, and science better preparing the students for academic success in the upcoming school year. data analyses revealed a statistically significant increase in content knowledge in each of the disciplines for each grade level, as demonstrated through pretest and posttest gains. our discussion focuses on the overall academic progress composite gains across all levels of the program. the increase in assessment scores over such a short period of time in each content area of each grade level is quite promising. in 14 days of instruction, students experienced academic gains that could possibly carry them through the first quarter of the morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 9 upcoming school year. these findings, specifically the statistically significant increase in content knowledge across disciplines, is consistent with the findings of von hippel and hamrock (2019) who note that summer enrichment programs are a productive method of closing academic gaps. these gaps are closed by providing participants with opportunities to engage with academic content they otherwise may not. as noted across each content area of findings in this study, if students have enriching learning experiences over the summer (i.e., through a summer enrichment program), they will learn. the relaxed academic environment of this sep provided multiple opportunities for students to connect new learning to personal experiences and prior knowledge. the modified design of the sep program (academic acceleration within specific content areas seeking to extend and augment student learning accented with camp-like activities) provided a foundation for students to engage with the academic content in a less traditional summer school environment. furthermore, embracing the format of an enrichment program – intentionally focused on meeting the needs of students from low-income areas – provided a curricular foundation that is often not the focus of enrichment camps (hodges et al., 2017; ihrig et al., 2018; kim et al., 2017). limitations while the program was successful in increasing students’ content knowledge, as evident in the pretest and posttest results, limitations of the study have been identified related to changes in test form (von hipple & hamrock, 2019), assessment type (formative versus summative), and variations in the program’s design (hodges et al., 2017; ihrig et al., 2018; kim et al., 2017). aligning with the research findings of von hippel and hamrock (2019), this study worked to illuminate issues posed by test scaling and changes in the test form. in doing so, the tests were offered within a defined period that did not require measurement scales to spread across different age groups. further, the pretests and posttests were identical to assure that there were no changes in content across testing iterations. while this method of assessment causes concerns with internal validity (koh & owen, 2000), it provided the researchers with an opportunity to verify student learning over congruent assessment administrations. the use of only summative assessments (pre and post) was also identified as a limitation of this study. moving forward, we recommend using formative assessment data that can be collected systematically on the daily implementation of lessons through reflective-based documentation completed by the preservice teachers or mentors, or through analysis of daily student work. this would have given a more accurate representation of the gains in student achievement, as well as inform the preservice teachers of their own practices daily (nctm, 2013). furthermore, all pretests were administered on the first day of the sep, leading to student fatigue and boredom. if pretests were staggered throughout the first two days of the program, this would allow students to immediately engage with student-centered lessons, rather than all-day testing. a further limitation centers on the potential role program design and variations played in supporting the academic growth of the students served through the sep. as noted in the methodology, the sep designers were intentional to provide meaningful, challenging, and engaging experiences (hodges et al., 2017) for all involved. in doing so, one key aspect was to spend time hiring and developing the right human resources (kim et al., 2017). the preservice teachers, selected for the program by university faculty, were open to increasing their understanding of how to work with african american students who were also from low-income areas. the university faculty intentionally assigned the preservice teachers to a specific grade morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 10 level and content area based on strengths – content and pedagogy – observed in respective methods of instruction courses. however, the content and grade-level preferences of the preservice teachers were not collected or considered by the faculty prior to making these teaching assignments. while most preservice teachers were satisfied with their placements, several expressed some concern or discomfort with their grade level or content area. more consideration needs to be given to the preservice teachers’ preferences and, more importantly, strengths concerning their teaching placement during the sep and to determine if these had any impact on the achievement gains of their students. conclusions the sep program design involved the integration of stem components (ihrig et al., 2018) as a way of providing engaging and challenging student experiences (hodges et al., 2017). keeping students engaged in the daily content posed its challenges, however being able to get them out of their seats to engage in hands-on stem activities specifically in engineering and science exploration may have aided in content retention. further, the unique design of the sep, including the intentional hiring and development of the teacher workforce and providing engaging and challenging student experiences through integrated stem, added value to the student outcomes discussed in the findings (hodges et al., 2017; kim et al., 2017). as school districts structure their summer school or summer camp opportunities, several innovative components of this program should be considered. first, enrichment, rather than remediation (rollins, 2014), may be a factor in the significant academic gains in a relatively short period of time. second, the impressive partnership between the school district, local university, and community members created a collaborative framework that benefited all parties involved. students made academic gains, and preservice teachers gained invaluable experience. additionally, the student data presented supports current research (von hippel & hamrock, 2019) that summer enrichment programs can play a role in closing academic opportunity gaps for all students attending the programs. more specifically, this study supports using summer enrichment programs to reduce academic opportunity gaps for students of color (e.g., african american), especially those who are also from socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. simply stated, by attending the summer enrichment program, students were provided additional opportunities to learn. after an in-depth analysis and evaluation of the sep, future research topics emerged. while participation in the sep was effective in achieving student success in the content modules presented during the four-week program itself, it is yet to be determined if students are indeed better prepared for their upcoming grade level. in order to thoroughly determine whether learning that occurred in the sep was retained after the start of the school year, further evaluation of student academic knowledge must continue in the subsequent school year. additionally, using an experimental research design, the end of quarter, district-level assessment data from those attending the sep could be compared to those students who did not attend to determine the impact of participation in the sep on academic achievement of first-quarter skills. lastly, this research opportunity focused on what was done to address the reading, mathematics, and science needs of students in the sep. the next step of this program evaluation will consist of exploring the attitudes and experiences of preservice teachers as the participants. by engaging preservice teachers in the summer enrichment program as facilitators of classroom learning, the preservice teachers made impressive gains in culturally responsive teaching strategies and dispositions based on observations and reflections. therefore, we expect that the morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 11 experience of implementing new culturally responsive teaching strategies will improve academic outcomes of their future k-12 students as they work to actively meet the needs of all students. while we did not anticipate the extent of this impact on students or the preservice teachers, further exploration is needed. in future studies and iterations of the sep it would be helpful to intentionally record the culturally responsive teaching strategies and dispositions of the preservice teachers to ascertain their impacts on student academic growth. references august, d., & mcgraw-hill education. 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(2018). using systems theory to promote academic success for african american males. urban education, 53(8), 1013-1042. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085915613546 report card (2018). alabama state department of education report card (report no. 20172018). montgomery: alabama department of education. https://www.alsde.edu/ rollins, s. p. (2014). learning in the fast lane: 8 ways to pull all students on the road to academic success. ascd. terc (2007). investigations in number, data, and space. pearson. stc (2013). animal studies (3rd ed.). smithsonian science education center. von hippel, p. t., & hamrock, c. (2019). do test score gaps grow before, during, or between the school years? measurement artifacts and what we can know in spite of them. sociological science, 6, 43-80 https://doi.org/10.15195/v6.a3 https://doi.org/10.1177/0162353216640938 https://doi.org/10.1177/1076217517690190 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1401-5_11 https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x033007003 https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.84.1.p2rj131485484751 https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934712442539 https://doi.org/10.1177/1932202x1002100403 https://www.nctm.org/uploadedfiles/standards_and_positions/position_statements/formative%20assessment1.pdf https://www.nctm.org/uploadedfiles/standards_and_positions/position_statements/formative%20assessment1.pdf https://doi.org/10.1177/0042085915613546 https://www.alsde.edu/ https://doi.org/10.15195/v6.a3 morton et al.: more than a babysitter: looking back at an effective summer enrichment program current issues in education, 22(3) 13 author notes benterah c. morton leadership and teacher education, university of south alabama morton@southalabama.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8220-6138 kelly o. byrd leadership and teacher education, university of south alabama kbyrd@southalabama.edu elizabeth allison western governors university elizabeth.r.allison@gmail.com andré m. green leadership and teacher education, university of south alabama green@southalabama.edu this research was supported in part by a grant from the mobile county public school system and the 100 black men of greater mobile, al. more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. mailto:morton@southalabama.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8220-6138 mailto:kbyrd@southalabama.edu mailto:elizabeth.r.allison@gmail.com mailto:green@southalabama.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 8, number 17 august, 2005 issn 1099-839x the impact of high school teacher behaviors on student aggression angela spaulding west texas a&m university aggressive student behaviors are of concern to every school in the nation. discovering ways to help teachers prevent and/or respond to such student behavior is of great importance. this reported research sought to discover if and how teacher behaviors impact student aggression in the classroom. in doing so, the researcher did not set out to blame teachers for student aggression; the goal was to discover how teachers might modify behavior and react in ways that will help create positive and peaceful classroom environments – and prevent student aggressive behaviors that can result in violence. literature and problem introduction aggressive student behaviors are of concern to every school in the nation. discovering ways to help teachers prevent and/or respond to such student behavior is of great importance. this reported research, made possible by a grant from the regents’ initiative for excellence in education (2000-2003), sought to discover how teacher behaviors may impact student aggression in the classroom. there has been a great deal of research conducted on the topic of teacher behavior. however, within this broad category, this particular research sought out specific information on how teacher behavior affects student aggression. in doing so, the researcher did not set out to blame teachers for student aggression; the goal was to discover how teachers can modify behavior and react in ways that will help create positive and peaceful classroom environments – and prevent student aggressive behaviors that can result in violence. the literature supports this effort: “if administrators and teachers want to change student behavior and attitudes, they should start by modifying their own behavior and attitudes. students learn to act in the ways we have taught them to act” (moore, 1997, p. 71). van acker, grant, and henry (1996) echo this sentiment when they state, “teachers require information on their pattern of interaction with individual students. only then would differential treatment of specific students become evident” (p. 332). in a study on student aggression and teacher behavior (spaulding & burleson, 2001), teachers reported that they see the following behaviors in fellow teachers: bullying, derogatory comments, gossip, disrespect of authority, harassment, predetermined expectations of others, discord between individuals and groups, and angry outbursts. not only did teachers witness these actions among their peers, but, when asked to label these behaviors, they identified them as either violence or precursors to violence. interestingly, these are some of the very behaviors schools are trying to eradicate from the student population, yet, eradication efforts will find only limited success if teachers are modeling inappropriate behaviors. as one respondent said, “teachers model expectations – if they show aggression, they will get aggression” (spaulding & burleson, 2001). the literature documents similar findings to those of the spaulding and burleson (2001) study discussed above. hymen and perone (1998) determined that at least 50-60 percent of all students current issues in education vol. 8 no. 17 experience maltreatment by an educator at least once in their school careers. furthermore, research has found that a school may unwittingly contribute to student aggression through inappropriate classroom placement, irrelevant instruction, inconsistent management, overcrowded classrooms, rigid behavioral demands, or insensitivity to student diversity (gable, manning, and bullock, 1997; gable and van acker, 2000). conversely, findings show that elements which may curb aggression include a positive school climate, identification of and response to early violence warning signs, relevant coursework which is neither to simple or too complex, clear classroom rules and expectations, and the avoidance of power struggles (gable and van acker, 2000). other research has explored more specific teacher behaviors and results. for instance, mullins, chard, hartman, bowlby, rich, and burke (1995) studied teachers’ responses to children who were depressed. they discovered that there was an increase in a teacher’s self-reported level of personal rejection and a decrease in the level of personal attraction to children who were depressed. furthermore, the same decrease in personal attraction and increase in personal rejection were found for boys aged six through eleven who showed an increase in social problems or delinquency. finally, mullins (1995), et al., reported that teachers’ negative responses to these troubled students were likely to grow stronger over time. van acker, grant, and henry (1996) drew several conclusions from their research on school violence. first, they found a connection between school climate and violence resulting in the knowledge that schools can aversely affect student behavior. secondly, they posit that teachers may displace their own feelings of anger and aggression onto students. and, thirdly, they discovered that the lack of positive teacher feedback for appropriate student behavior were likely to create inappropriate behavior in students. they describe this phenomenon in the following manner: the lack of predictable feedback following desired behavior appears to suggest a situation in which the school may well provide a context for the exacerbation of undesired social behavior on the part of students most at risk for demonstrating aggressive and violent behavior (p. 331). krugman and krugman (1984) echoed this idea of students behaving according to what is expected of them. they wrote that students adapt quickly to whatever label a teacher gives them in order to fit in the classroom environment. students with social, emotional, or behavioral problems are greatly affected by the way others respond to them and to the feedback that they receive. pace, mullins, beesley, hill, and carson, (1999) stated that, it is argued that children who have significant emotional and behavioral problems respond less positively to others and thus elicit fewer positive responses and more negative responses from others in interpersonal relationships. these problems create a lower sense of acceptance or attraction toward the child and may increase avoidance and rejection toward the child. thus, as suggested by the authors, these processes may become entangled in a vicious circle of reciprocal causation (p. 151). moreover, white and jones (2000) wrote “a consistent flow of public correction of a child may serve to exacerbate the negative impressions peers often have of disruptive, non-compliant classmates” (p. 320). this negative impression can be countered over time, but the reputation earned earlier is difficult for a student to overcome. further research documents how a teacher’s response to a student affects that student academically. carr, taylor, and robinson (1991) found that children who misbehave in response to instruction receive less instruction than do compliant children. carr (1991), et al., refer to this student behavior as “punishment of teaching efforts” (p. 532). such punishment may lead to the “curriculum of non-instruction” whereby the teacher and the student covertly decide to leave one another alone (van acker, grant, and henry, 1996, p. 331). this literature review documents the need for teachers to assess their own behavior and how it impacts their students. obviously, how a teacher treats a student has a profound impact on student behavior, student instruction, and the classroom environment. methodology this is a qualitative study of teacher behavior and its impact on high school students. grounded theory methods were utilized for collecting, coding and analyzing the data. guided by grounded theory, the data are “inductively derived from the study of the phenomenon it represented (in this case, teacher behavior on student aggression). . . and verified through systematic data collection and analysis of the data” (strauss & corbin, 1990, p. 23). in other words, the data collection and analysis stood in reciprocal relationship with one another (i.e., such that data collection lead to analysis, and analysis lead to further data collection). glaser (1978), glaser and strauss (1967), and strauss (1987) refer to this process of constantly switching back and forth the impact of high school teacher behaviors on student aggression 3 between data collection and analysis as the constant comparative process of grounded theory. specifically, data was collected through a qualitative questionnaire. the questionnaire was distributed to the study participants. upon collection of the responses, each questionnaire was searched line by line to find units of data that served as (1) the basis for defining categories and (2) as a spring board for additional data collection. follow up interviews were conducted with participants when new data emerged or when questions of intent were discovered. criteria were used to promote the credibility of the research. credibility, according to lincoln and guba (1985), refers to the extent to which findings are accurate representations of the phenomena under study. credibility criteria included triangulation, peer debriefing and member checking. the questionnaire began with six questions related to demographics and five questions related to the respondents’ teacher education training. following these initial questions were seven openended questions covering teacher behavior and student behavior. in addition, the survey asked the participants to label twenty-two teacher and student behaviors (identified by research literature) as precursors, violent acts, or neither. they were then asked if they see these same behaviors in students at their schools and whether or not they believed that teachers engage in such behaviors. finally, the questionnaire provided space for additional comments. research sample and site the group of respondents consisted of 156 randomly selected teachers in high need, public secondary schools throughout the northern area of the state of texas. of these, 70% were female, and 30% were male. sixty-one percent identified themselves as caucasian, 19% as african american, 12% hispanic, 2% native american, and 6% chose not to answer the question. anonymity was provided for all responders. as for length of time teaching, there was a fairly equitable representation across the categories provided with 21% having taught less than five years, 21% five to ten years, 26% eleven to twenty years, and 20% more than 20 years. two percent did not answer the question. respondents were also asked about the subject they teach. the majority (58.9%) teach one of the core subjects (math, english, science or history). six percent identified themselves as special education teachers. the other teachers, accounting for 27% of the respondents, teach one of the following classes: foreign language, music/band/choir, physical education/athletics, speech/drama, business, industrial/vocational, art, computer technology, or rotc. almost 7% stated that they teach more than one subject. questionnaire: teacher education training respondents were asked about their preservice teacher education training as it relates to classroom management, school safety, and school violence. asked if they had any classes or training in college to prepare them for school safety and violence, only 16.5% stated that they had received such training. of those who had this specific training, only 12% rated it effective. when asked about training in classroom management, 72.5% reported that they received such training in their teacher preparation program. in a follow-up question, they were asked to describe briefly the worth and value of their classroom management class or violence preparation training. less than 10% of the respondents reported a positive and worthwhile classroom management course experience. the exception to this finding was from teachers who had participated in a professional development school model during their teacher preparation programs. these teachers felt that that they lived the realities of the classroom in their pds assignment and, as a result, gained a great deal of skill and knowledge on classroom management. less than 8% of the respondents had been trained with a pds component in their teacher education program. the overwhelming theme of responders was that their classroom management training had absolutely no relationship to real life in the classroom. the final question was “do you believe school violence is an issue that should be addressed in university preparation programs?” the vast majority, 89%, said that school violence and student aggression needed to be addressed in teacher preparation programs. questionnaire: teacher behaviors and actions this discussion will focus on the survey’s open-ended questions. the responses will be reviewed together. the first question was, “what teacher behaviors and actions may help to prevent or de-escalate violent situations in the classroom or school?” three categories of answers were revealed during the data analysis and can be found in table 1.1. these include: 1) classroom management, 2) attitudes and behavior, and 3) skills and knowledge. what these responses reveal is that teachers need to be proactive and remove possible obstacles so as to create classroom environments in which all students feel valued and capable of learning and succeeding. teachers need to be proactive through careful planning and preparation, establish clear rules and expectations (which are enforced consistently and fairly), be observant, building appropriate current issues in education vol. 8 no. 17 relationships with students, exercise self-control, and show students respect. efforts such as these lead to a safe, positive classroom climate that de-escalates student aggression and violence. table 1.1 teacher behaviors and actions that may help prevent or de-escalate violent situations category specific action or trait classroom management  be visible and maintain order  set boundaries; have, follow, and enforce class rules daily  give students a voice in discipline  be observant and aware of subtle changes or when something is getting out of control  be proactive, prepared, and organized; keep students busy  react with authority to arguments  pick battles – ones that can be won  predictable behavior  allow students to express themselves appropriately and teach them how to do this  be fair  positive learning environment and interaction attitudes and behaviors  build relationships with students  self-control: control temper and anger  respect students  positive attitude: friendly, kind, encouraging, supportive skills and knowledge  understand body language – teacher’s and students’  recognize and find assistance for abnormal student behaviors  practice effective listening skills with and between students  understand and model effective conflict management furthermore, teachers need to be aware of the nonverbal messages they are sending as well as how to interpret the nonverbal messages being sent by students. understanding nonverbal communication is important because when verbal and nonverbal messages conflict, the nonverbal messages are, generally, the ones that will be received. teachers must pay careful attention not only to what they say to students, but how they say it. the same applies to the nonverbal communications that students have with one another in the classroom. aggression builds slowly from other emotions such as anger, frustration, depression, and embarrassment. an observant teacher will be able to discern subtle but serious shifts in a student’s mood and demeanor, and take appropriate action and interest in that student. one survey respondent summed up the comments of others by saying, “those {teachers} who maintain good order in the classroom, show respect for others, and have high expectations for appropriate behaviors do not usually have violence issues to face” (emphasis in original). the second survey question was: “what teacher behaviors and actions may increase the likelihood of student aggression or violence in the classroom or school?” the responses fell within two main categories: 1) classroom management, and 2) attitudes and behaviors. these are revealed in table 1.2. basically, these answers are the direct opposites of the behaviors given in response to the first question, particularly those listed under the category of classroom management. by far, the most common answer to what teachers do that may increase the chances of a violent situation was humiliating, provoking, or demeaning students publicly. for many of the respondents, it comes down to the issue of respect. there is no doubt that teachers expect to be treated with respect; however, according to the responses received, there is a problem with teachers who do not respect students. one teacher commented that “even the ‘worst’ kid can be treated respectfully within the classroom (by the teacher), and problems usually will not escalate into violence.” along with the lack of respect for students is the concern among our respondents that some teachers do not care about students, verbally bully students, are belligerent towards students, and, in general, have a poor rapport with them. one respondent stated, “i think that many teachers don’t like kids, but they choose to teach. if there is any way to get the concept that you must like children in order to teach, that would be great.” this concern is supported in the literature. anderson and anderson (1995) studied pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward children and found that 15% of the subjects in their study had negative attitudes toward children. they also found evidence that pre-service teachers are even more distrustful and hold more negative attitudes the impact of high school teacher behaviors on student aggression 5 toward students after completing student teaching. such teachers will be unhappy and frustrated in the classroom and will be less likely to display the attitudes, behaviors, and skills needed to decrease the risk of aggression and violence in the classroom. table 1.2 teacher behaviors and actions that may increase the likelihood of student aggression or violence in the classroom category specific action or trait classroom management  no control or authority  lack of supervision; not visible  unclear rules or requirements; not addressing early behavior  too controlling, rigid; unwilling to compromise  inconsistent treatment of children  paying too much attention to small problems attitudes and behaviors  backing kids into a corner; humiliating challenging, confronting, provoking, demeaning students in front of the class  not listening to students  failure to notice warning signs  disrespectful, rude; verbal bullying and attacks; sarcasm; prejudice  negative attitude/rapport with students; not caring, accepting, nurturing, sensitive  getting and staying angry; not remaining calm with angry students; taking problems with students personally; being argumentative or belligerent  unfair; operating under preconceived ideas  threatening body language  not asking for help from other adults  not learning true situation of students  very passive or too nice  unreasonable expectations additional pitfalls for teachers include: not listening to students, negative body language, not noticing warning signs, and being too nice or passive. just as one of the traits of an effective teacher was building positive relationships with students, one of the behaviors of a teacher more likely to experience student aggression was not understanding the problem represented through student actions. for example, one teacher related how she knew her students well enough to know that one particular eighth grader was unusually irritable and emotional. in an effort to understand his behavior, the teacher found out that his parents and sibling had moved while he was at school. they left no forwarding address. they were tired of feeding a big, growing boy and thought that he would be able to fend for himself. he did this for a few days by staying with friends but he was at a loss for any long-term solution to his problem. through support services, the school arranged to help this student with his needs. such events are more common than not in our high need schools. while there is no way to know if this student would have become violent, the teacher did feel that his emotions were becoming increasingly aggressive. when faced with such increasing emotions, the potential for violence does exist. finally, the respondents said that teachers who do not ask for help from other adults might increase the likelihood of classroom aggression. teaching can be a very isolated occupation, and for those experiencing problems with students, this isolation may seem even more profound. these are times when it is imperative that help is sought. just as teachers need to watch students for changes in behavior, fellow teacher and administrators should also be observant of one other for such changes. one respondent mentioned that school administrators need to support teachers, but this support will be limited if administrators, or other teachers for that matter, do not know what kind of support or assistance is needed. questionnaire: responses to previously identified behaviors the research questionnaire also contained a chart that listed twenty-two behaviors that students exhibit that have been identified (in previous research) as behaviors that contribute to student aggression or violence. for each of these behaviors or attitudes, the teachers were asked three questions:  would you consider this student behavior: a) violence, b) a precursor to violence, or c) neither?  do you see this type of behavior in the students at your school?  do you think that teachers engage in this same behavior? current issues in education vol. 8 no. 17 the responses to these questions can be found in table 1.3 [see appendix a]. (although both was not one of the responses offered for the first question, several people utilized this response, so it is included on the chart.) in a review of table 1.3, out of the twentytwo behaviors and attitudes, the following findings are evident:  twelve behaviors are precursors to violence: social isolation, derogatory comments, verbal abuse, threats, disrespect of authority, gang membership/activities, harassment, gossip, discord between individuals or groups, vulgar or obscene language or gestures, serious discipline problems, and angry outbursts.  a majority of teachers state that they see the twelve precursors in their own school.  a majority of teachers believe that peer teachers also engage in the behaviors of social isolation, derogatory comments, and gossip.  sizable minorities of teachers also believe that teachers exhibit the following negative behaviors: threats (30.9%), disrespect of authority (34.8%), bullying (32.6%), and angry outbursts (39.1%). the fact that a third of teachers believe that peer teachers engage in these behaviors tells us that these are behaviors that must be addressed. this supports unpublished research done by olweus (1996, cited in hyman and perone, 1998), who found that 10% of 5100 norwegian elementary and junior high school teachers had bullied their students on a regular basis.  six of the behaviors listed were labeled as violence by a majority of the teachers: bullying, stealing/theft, weapons possession, vandalism, bomb/bomb threats, and physical threats. of these six, a majority of teachers reported seeing three of these behaviors regularly exhibited in the students at their school. these include: bullying, vandalism, and physical fights. further steps: review of findings by a professional focus group as part of the effort to add credibility to these findings and to seek additional solutions to the problem, a summary of the findings of this study were submitted to a group of experts from education and from fields outside of education including: a psychologist, a lawyer, a law enforcement officer, a nurse, a communications professor, a high school teacher, a high school principal, an educational leadership professor, and a business owner. the members of this focus group were asked to read the findings of the study and respond to the question: do you find the results of this study to be credible? without exception, the members of the focus group found the results to be believable and credible based on their own background experiences and discipline knowledge. the focus group provided the following suggestions with regard to this topic area:  students and teachers need more assistance in becoming aware of their own behaviors.  teachers must be willing to show respect for students and that a lack of respect is problematic in the classroom. respect, for the focus group, meant that teachers became role models for students by admitting their mistakes and even offering apologies to students when warranted.  teachers need to model appropriate behavior in the classroom. this modeling of appropriate behavior was seen as necessary for students to learn how to deal with their own mistakes and to engage in behaviors that de-emphasized the potential for violence in the classroom (e.g., how to disagree, how to admit mistakes, how to listen to other points of view, how to state one’s opinion, how to appreciate differences, how to show and feel compassion, etc.). teachers need to be able to help students develop these skills in order to reach their potential and succeed in school because too many students lack these skills and do not receive encouragement and support at home.  discipline should be age and maturity appropriate because not all students in the classroom were on the same level.  teachers need much more in-depth study in the psychology of youth. it was felt that the small doses of knowledge provided by preservice teacher institutions and school inservice programs were insufficient and problematic. giving teachers vague, hit and miss training in psychology may be as dangerous as letting someone read about surgery and then allowing them to operate.  teachers need access to trained professionals to help them understand and work successfully with student behaviors in the classroom.  teachers need to learn to read and understand both verbal and nonverbal communication, as one member stated, to ‘listen with your eyes.’ the impact of high school teacher behaviors on student aggression 7  teachers need to be adaptable and not afraid of change.  teachers need to be compassionate and truly care for their students or remove themselves from the profession.  pre-service teachers should have more experiences to classroom environments through mentor relationships with current teachers and administrators, school counselors, and police liaisons.  university professors should spend more time in the schools so that they stay current with the issues and problems of the profession. implications the final question on the research questionnaire asked, “how can teachers best be supported in their efforts to modify their own behavior in order to create positive and peaceful classroom environments.” ninety-two percent of the teacher respondents felt that special training (e.g., seminars, classes or inservice workshops) should be offered on classroom behavioral skills – to include behavior awareness, nonverbal and verbal communications, conflict management, anger management, and listening skills. teachers suggest that these trainings be taught by specialists both inside and outside the field of education. suggested experts include: psychologists, arbitrators, law enforcement, school violence experts, communication experts, medical personnel and master teachers. furthermore, teachers suggested that classroom awareness issues be addressed. classroom awareness issues consisted of increased awareness of gang involvement, poverty, depression and suicide, drug and alcohol abuse. the respondents believe that teachers need a greater understanding of child and adolescent psychology and behavior. they also feel that experts who have experiences with youth should teach these courses. respondents feel that these types of trainings should be continuous – not one-shot opportunities. many feel that their original training and knowledge are now out-dated. with regard to teacher preparation programs, respondents suggested additions to existing teacher education curricula. for instance, training in school law is not usually addressed in preservice teacher training but in educational leadership programs. yet, many teachers feel a need to know the legal ramifications of classroom actions and behavior. additionally, criminal justice, nursing and psychology courses are not normally geared for future teachers; yet, these disciplines have much to offer in the effort to understand student and teacher behavior and to create peaceful classroom environments. this project has resulted in an important first step towards helping teachers to become aware of their classroom behaviors and to finding concrete and practical ways to adapt behavior in order to promote a peaceful classroom environment. such modifications will benefit not only the teachers themselves but also students and schools.. references airasian, p.w., & gullickson, a. 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(2000). effects of teacher feedback on the reputations and peer perceptions of children with behavior problems. journal of exceptional child psychology, 76 , 302-326. the impact of high school teacher behaviors on student aggression 9 appendix a table 1.3 teacher responses to behavior and attitudes in school behavior or attitude precursor to violence, violence, or neither? do you see this behavior in students at your school? do you think that teachers engage in this behavior? social isolation precursor: 58.1% neither: 41.9% yes: 76.1% no: 19.6% no answer: 4.3% yes: 50% no: 39.1% no answer: 10.9% bullying precursor: 45.2% violence: 54.8% yes: 65.2% no: 30.4% no answer: 4.3% yes: 32.6% no: 58.7% no answer: 8.7% derogatory comments precursor: 83.9% violence: 6.5% neither: 9.7% yes: 93.5% no: 2.2% no answer: 4.3% yes: 58.7% no: 32.6% no answer: 8.7% verbal abuse precursor: 58.1% violence: 35.5% neither: 3.2% both: 3.2% yes: 82.6% no: 10.9% no answer: 6.5% yes: 39.1% no: 47.8% no answer: 13% threats precursor: 58.1% violence: 41.9% yes: 69.6% no: 23.9% no answer: 6.5% yes: 30.4% no: 56.5% no answer: 13% stealing/theft precursor: 41.9% violence: 48.4% neither: 6.5% both: 3.2% yes: 76.1% no: 17.4% no answer: 6.5% yes: 8.7% no: 76.1% no answer: 15.2% truancy/coming in late or leaving early precursor: 41.9% neither: 58.1% yes: 95.7% no answer: 4.3% yes: 28.3% no: 60.9% no answer: 10.9% disrespect of authority precursor: 67.7% violence: 12.9% neither: 12.9% both: 3.2 % no answer: 3.2% yes: 93.5% no: 2.2% no answer: 4.3% yes: 34.8% no: 56.5% no answer: 8.7% weapons possession precursor: 32.3% violence: 67.7% yes: 26.1% no: 67.4% no answer: 6.5% yes: 2.2% no: 89.1% no answer: 8.7% vandalism precursor: 41.9% violence: 58.1% yes: 80.4% no: 15.2% no answer: 4.3% yes: 2.2% no: 89.1% no answer: 8.7% bomb/bomb threats precursor: 12.9% violence: 87.1% yes: 43.5% no: 47.8% no answer: 8.7% yes: 2.2% no: 89.1% no answer: 8.7% exhibits improper dress or clothing precursor: 38.7% violence: 3.2% neither: 58.1% yes: 91.3% no: 4.3% no answer: 4.3% yes: 34.8% no: 56.5% no answer: 8.7% gang membership or activities precursor: 61.3% violence: 35.5% both: 3.2% yes: 78.3% no: 15.2% no answer: 6.5% yes: 4.3% no: 89.1% no answer: 6.5% physical fights precursor: 12.9% violence: 87.1% yes: 80.4% no: 13% no answer: 6.5% yes: 2.2% no: 91.3% no answer: 6.5% current issues in education vol. 8 no. 17 pushing and shoving precursor: 48.4% violence: 45.2% neither: 3.2% both: 3.2% yes: 82.6% no: 10.9% no answer: 6.5% yes: 4.3% no: 89.1% no answer: 6.5% harassment precursor: 61.3% violence: 35.5% neither: 3.2% yes: 80.4% no: 13% no answer: 6.5% yes: 17.4% no: 73.9% no answer: 8.7% gossip precursor: 51.6% violence: 3.2% neither: 45.2% yes: 89.1% no: 4.3% no answer: 6.5% yes: 63% no: 26.1% no answer: 10.9% pre-determined expectations of others precursor: 22.6% violence: 3.2% neither: 71% no answer: 3.2% yes: 63% no: 23.9% no answer: 13% yes: 60.9% no: 28.3% no answer: 10.9% discord between individuals or groups precursor: 80.6% violence: 6.5% neither: 9.7% no answer: 3.2% yes: 76.1% no: 15.2% no answer: 8.7% yes: 45.7% no: 45.7% no answer: 8.7% vulgar, obscene language or gestures precursor: 51.6% violence: 41.9% neither: 6.5% yes: 87% no: 8.7% no answer: 4.3% yes: 21.7% no: 67.4% no answer: 10.9% serious discipline problems precursor: 61.3% violence: 29% neither: 6.5% both: 3.2% yes: 80.4% no: 13% no answer: 6.5% yes: 6.5% no: 82.6% no answer: 10.9% angry outbursts precursor: 54.8% violence: 41.9% no answer: 3.2% yes: 84.8% no: 8.7% no answer: 6.5% yes: 39.1% no: 47.8% no answer: 13% the impact of high school teacher behaviors on student aggression 11 2005 article citation spaulding, a. (2005, august 02). the impact of high school teacher behaviors on student aggression. current issues in education [on-line], 8(17). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number17/ author notes dr. angela spaulding chair, dept. of educational leadership west texas a&m university wt box 60208, canyon, texas 79016-0001 aspaulding@mail.wtamu.edu dr. angela spaulding is an associate professor of educational leadership at west texas a&m university in canyon, texas, where she chairs the department of educational leadership and teachers courses in leadership, research, group dynamics and curriculum. she has been the recipient of the wtamu outstanding professor award and has research interests that include leadership and group dynamics, communication, conflict management, and micropolitics. she has over 40 publications in these research areas. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 21, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation spaulding, a. (2005). the impact of high school teacher behaviors on student aggression. current issues in education, 8(17). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1605 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number17/index.html mailto:aspaulding@mail.wtamu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1605 disposition_final volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x disposition and early childhood education preservice teachers: where to start? ursula thomas, ed.d university of west georgia citation thomas, u. (2010). disposition and early childhood education preservice teachers: where to start?. current issues in education, 13(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this study explores teacher education programs and preservice teacher dispositions. the study examined the dispositions of two sections of a reading methods course populated by preservice teachers. a dispositions checklist was used to collect data in three phases and from two audiences. the findings of the study strongly suggest that preservice teachers have a positive view of their own dispositions as well as their peers’ dispositions. the study also shows that the perception of preservice teachers’ dispositions of themselves differ greatly from the perception of the instructor of the course. implications from this study suggest further development of practices that surface disposition and strategic use of data to improve teacher dispositions within teacher education programs. keywords: teachers, preservice, early childhood, education, disposition c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 2 about the author(s) author: ursula thomas, ed.d. affiliation: university of west georgia address: dept. of c&i, 1601 maple street, carrollton, ga, 30118 email: uthomas@westga.edu biographical information: ursula thomas ed.d is an assistant professor of early childhood education at the university of west georgia. her research efforts focus on cultural mediation and teacher belief systems in the context of early childhood and teacher education. d isposition and e arly c hildhood e ducation 3 as the push for effective teachers persists, many teacher education programs, and professional development administrators are left speculating about the part dispositions perform in effective teaching. johnson & reinman (2007) sought to explore the definition of dispositions as teacher professional judgment and professional action in the moral/ethical domain of adult cognition. by assessing beginning teacher judgment both quantitatively and qualitatively, convergence between predicted and observed patterns was found in addition to congruence between teacher judgment and action. based on the findings of convergence and congruence, implications for teacher education and development are made. they mirror what jung (2009) found in the study of teacher technology. jung studied technology teacher dispositions and found education significantly increased competence level and disposition measures. the study also found there are no statistically significant differences in technology proficiency level in terms of age or gender, female and older students should be strongly encouraged to use technology without fear of failure. since the major difference in the technology disposition score was due to the male students’ stronger self-confidence level toward technology, teacher educators should pay attention for female students to be more self-assured through repeated contact to the technology experience. jung made the following recommendations: (1)the importance of technology should be stressed frequently and intensely throughout the curriculum. (2) future teachers should see successful role models continuously for adopting technology. (3) numerous technology literacy and integration classes, and other forms of technology education need to be included in the curriculumto make them competent and c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 4 perceive themselves technologically competent. (4) future teachers should be exposed to the experiences, which repeatedly connect the value of technology with their career, which enable them to see and to experience the value of using technology and living with technology, which let them frequently use technology for their learning, problem solving, and future instruction. disparate to the literature on some dispositions, the dispositions cited in the teacher education literature (e.g., intasc) have almost no illuminating value and very little significance presently. this conclusion comes from an examination of the cited teacher dispositions in terms of underwood's levels of meaning in the behavioral sciences and shows that these dispositional paradigms are little more than labels for particular behaviors. although the construct, disposition, in teacher education may be redundant now, it is not entirely inadequate as it may provide a pilot hypothesis for further investigations (murray, 2007; windschitl, 2003). the implications from the previous studies provide the groundwork for exploring teacher dispositions. in order to effectively investigate this, a definition for dispositions by our governing bodies must be identified. “ncate now defines professional dispositions as: professional attitudes, values, and beliefs demonstrated through both verbal and non-verbal behaviors as educators interact with students, families, colleagues, and communities. these positive behaviors support student learning and development” (2007). institutions take their own stab at defining dispositions in many ways. the national association for the education of young children states in order to enact and examine surface disposition: “all teaching staff evaluates and improve their own performance based on ongoing reflection and feedback from supervisors, peers and families. they add to their knowledge and increase d isposition and e arly c hildhood e ducation 5 their ability to put knowledge into practice. they develop an annual individualized professional development plan with their supervisor and use it to inform their continuous professional development”. the national association for the education of young children also states that disposition is defined through: “all teaching staff continuously strengthening their leadership skills and relationships with others and works to improve the conditions of children and families within their programs, the local community or region, and beyond. teaching staff participate in informal or formal ways in local, state, or regional public-awareness activities related to early care by joining groups, attending meetings, or sharing information with others both at and outside the program (2005)”. the university of west georgia surfaces disposition through its conceptual framework. “the conceptual framework is the rationale and organizing principle that guides the curriculum for developing educators for school improvement. the conceptual framework is grounded in research, knowledge, and experience that describe what undergraduate and graduate candidates should know and apply to foster transformational systemic change. our conceptual framework incorporates the standards and principles established by the national council for accreditation of teacher education (ncate), georgia professional standards commission (psc), and specialized professional associations (spas). the following beliefs give credence to our professional commitments—the 10 descriptors used to describe the qualities and dispositions that we feel educators must possess to positively impact school improvement—and provide further delineation of the conceptual framework: 1. decision makers: we believe that candidates should be able to demonstrate knowledge and skills when making decisions that will influence effective transformational systemic change. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 6 2. leaders: we believe that candidates should be able to demonstrate effective leadership skills to initiate and facilitate transformational systemic change. 3. life long learners: we believe that candidates should seek continually to improve their knowledge, disposition, and skills to influence transformational systemic change. 4. adaptive: we believe that candidates should be able to demonstrate flexibility and strategic planning appropriate to a wide variety of learners for effective transformational systemic change. 5. collaborative: we believe that candidates should be able to develop skills to work effectively with various stakeholders involved in the educational process that will bring about transformational systemic change. 6. culturally sensitive: we believe that candidates should be able to develop awareness and understanding of individual and group differences when diagnosing and prescribing transformational systemic change. 7. empathetic: we believe that candidates should be able to develop the sensitivity for individual, family, and institutional needs that will embrace transformational systemic change. 8. knowledgeable: we believe that candidates should be able to demonstrate general knowledge inherent in a liberal arts curriculum, advanced knowledge in content areas, and specific knowledge in professional education for the implementation of transformational systemic change. 9. proactive: we believe that candidates should be able to advocate for the removal of barriers that impede life long learning and hinder transformational systemic change. 10. reflective: we believe that candidates should be able to demonstrate critical thinking skills in the diagnosis and prescription for transformational systemic change. hp authorized custo…, 3/26/11 12:19 pm comment [1]: for your consideration, this is an exceptionally long reference that perhaps could be condensed from two pages down to half a page? it begins with a quotation mark but needs an ending quotation mark added, not sure where? underlining and numbering are style choices, not always advisable and i would reference apa formating and style guide in future if this wasn’t assumably a direct reference. d isposition and e arly c hildhood e ducation 7 according to merriam-webster (2010), disposition is defined as a “prevailing tendency, mood, or inclination b : temperamental makeup c : the tendency of something to act in a certain manner under given circumstances”. katz (1985) defines disposition as “the notion of disposition was defined as an attributed characteristic of a teacher, one that summarizes the trend of a teacher’s actions in particular contexts” (p. 301). now that the definitions for this context have been identified, let us examine what the research says about them. what does research say about disposition? the arena of literature on dispositions in the field of teacher education is one of great concern. in light of the fact that our professional organizations and accrediting bodies are constructing disposition requirements for graduate and undergraduate levels, universities are now being required to provide concrete evidence as to how dispositions are being addressed. at the same time, teacher education programs are continuously providing opportunities for reflection in induction, courses, field and clinical placements. if we are considering reflection in action as schon (1987) defines it, we must marry this concept with teaching dispositions. within action, reflection has the ability to surface. this study seeks to examine this relationship within the coursework through three points of view: the students themselves, their view of each other and the instructor. in the context of this study, the researcher defines preservice teacher as “a teacher education student working to attain an undergraduate degree in education or initial certification after receiving a four-year degree in another field”. disposition origin “the study of dispositions had its roots in the 1960’s when arthur w. combs began a series of studies on the personal perceptions of effective helpers, which he called perceptual characteristics” (p. 96). teacher education programs over the last 30 years have been implicit and explicit in including c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 8 them in their conceptual frameworks. in issues of accreditation, dispositions play an important role in the making of teacher candidates. similarly, giovannelli (2003) stated that dispositions serve as an accurate measure of teacher effectiveness. on the other hand, beyer (2002) stated that accreditation mandates, such as dispositions, emphasize a “technical-rational” approach to teaching and ignore “social, philosophical, and political understandings” needed by educators” (p. 96). the major teacher accrediting bodies have battled with this for a while now. mcknight (2006) states, “where as before ncate held college of education faculty accountable for proving each preservice teacher had mastered certain knowledge and skills, new policies and standards now dictate faculty must generate evidence as to whether the teacher candidate is the right sort of person” (p. 213). national council for accreditation of teacher education has been criticized regarding the dispositions that are highlighted in its’ standards. they should be assessed at the college level, or taught in a manner that would guide the teacher candidate to alter his or her already established dispositions. time and opportunity may be in question. there is also the concern of whether dispositions towards virtues such as social justice, caring and honesty, which ncate standards present as attractive, will fall short of leaving a mark on teacher candidates. mcknight (2006) found, “these dispositions have been reinforced in the general process of schooling, as part of the hidden curriculum and academic achievement discourse, according to those who analyze schooling from a critical lens (e.g. bowers and flinders 1990; cherryholmes 1988; doll 1993; zeichner 1991, p. 214)”. presence of dispositions in order to be aware of the facilitation of dispositions, preservice teachers must be open to interaction and experience in the learning and teaching environment. this would denote presence. raider-roth and rodgers, (2006) defines this “engagement as ‘presence’a state of alert awareness, d isposition and e arly c hildhood e ducation 9 receptivity and connectedness to the mental, emotional and physical workings of both the individual and the group in the context of their learning environments and the ability to respond with a considered and compassionate best next step ” (p. 266). the authors also hold that reflective teaching cannot be compacted to a set of behaviors or skills, but is a practice that requires presence. “it requires selfknowledge, trust, relationship and compassion” (p. 266). research from past studies confirm that the relationship between teacher and student is a cornerstone in student achievement, motivation, engagement and in their ability to depend on what they know (midgley & urdan., 2001; pianta, 1999; roeser eccles & sameroff., 2000; rodgers, in press; raider-roth, 2005a,b). this research illustrated that the quality of these relationships is not a light or surface factor of schooling; it is a critical feature of learning. what allows this relationship to burgeon is intricate and calls upon the mental, physical, emotive and related capital of the teacher”. if this is the case, preservice teachers must be prepared and primed for such a relationship. “maxine greene (1973), lifting the semantics of merleau-ponty, wrote on ‘wide-awakeness.’ through the act of reflection the human being confronts and becomes aware of ‘his relation to his surroundings, his manner of conducting himself with respect to things and other human beings, the changing perspectives through which the world presents itself to him” (p. 269). teacher educators anticipate this permeating exchange in the classroom. schulz (2003) and heshusius (1995) illustrated a similar position when they articulated the power of listening. schultz, categorized listening at the crux of what it is to teach, defined listening as “an active, rational, and interpretive process that is focused on creating meaning” (p. 118). as with other thinkers and practitioners mentioned here she saw the teacher’s job as one of attentiveness. attending to students in this manner, implies becoming deeply engaged in understanding what a person has to say through c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 10 words, gesture, and action. “listening is fundamentally about being in relationship to other and through this relationship supporting change or transformation” (p. 270). transmission of dispositions oftentimes, dispositions are aligned with skills. for example, critical-thinking skills include the ability to create justification for via analysis, evaluation, and interpretation in reasonable, effective, careful, and serious ways, but these skills are powerless if certain dispositions are not in place. attending to concepts and enacting these skills requires open-minded and prejudice-free dispositions. “thinking skills rely on disposition to imply knowledge transfer within domains and the impetus to apply those skills (harpern 1998; wright 2002)”. there are multiple approaches to this. the author suggests: “creating learning experiences for students that foster the development of dispositional commitments including incontrovertible and democratic rights of liberty, opportunity, and dissent, as well as freedoms of participation, inquiry, expression, and worship, are mush easier to prescribe than enact. developing these dispositions is central to the charge of democratic education: creating widening and enlarging experiences (barton and levstik, 2004; dewey, 1916)”. instead of attempting the edification of dispositions via transmission of instruction, learners can instead appropriately surface them habitually when students have continued exposure to various kinds of learning experiences reinforcement of dispositions battalio and morin (2004) share that teachers react to reinforcement similarly as students do. in this case, strategies that engage disposition need to be reinforced. a teacher who meets with d isposition and e arly c hildhood e ducation 11 accomplishment with a strategy will more than likely use the approach at another opportunity. if the success is a lasting one, then the teacher gets consistent confirmation about the usefulness of his or her practice. regrettably, the reverse is also true. if a teacher uses a strategy that does not appear to operate, he or she is likely to employ the approach again. achieving enduring change is often slow and seemingly unresponsive to initial positive interventions. teachers need to be capable and ready to interpret preliminary intervention outcomes in the full framework of the student’s milieu while also resisting the temptation to follow subjective appraisals of the intervention’s effectiveness. the authors describe such teachers as having high personal teaching efficacy (pte; guskey & passaro, 1994). this high personal teaching efficacy springs from a candidate who has the opportunity to explore and develop teacher dispositions for such behavior. problem with dispositions due to concerns with the students’ communication to the instructor, and the nature of the language in that communication, the question of disposition arose. this is based on schon’s definition of reflection in action. reflection-in-action is defined by schon (1987) as the ability of professionals to ‘think about what they are doing while they are doing it’. schon views this as a fundamental skill. he emphasizes that the only way to manage the ‘indeterminate zones of (professional) practice’ is through the ability to think on your feet, and put into operation previous experience to new situations. students often equate a score on an assignment of project with a positive teaching disposition. this is not an automatic correlation and is often misinterpreted in various areas; student-instructor communications, classroom discussions, instructional conversations, group assignments, presentations, field placements and lesson planning; as well as the instructional environment at large. in this particular case, dispositions manifest themselves in all of the previously mentioned areas in this course. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 12 because of a cohort of students in the first block of the program from the previous semester experienced major problems with maintaining the teacher dispositions as indicated by the college of education’s conceptual framework, the instructor soon discovered that a more explicit system for aiding students in surfacing and monitoring their own dispositions was critical. the next semester the instructor taught the course and took a proactive approach to the situation. she instituted a simple instrument that served a three-pronged purpose: to engage students in assessing themselves, each other, and assisting the instructor in assessing the student’s disposition as well. the review of literature and the instructor’s concerns of developing the “whole” teacher raised an essential question. how and under what conditions do preservice teachers assess dispositions in terms of themselves, each other, and in the eyes of the instructor? methodology research questions 1. to what degree do preservice teachers assess their own dispositions? 2. to what degree do preservice teachers assess the dispositions of their peers? 3. to what degree does the instructor assess the dispositions of the preservice teachers in the reading methods course? population the sample consisted of forty-seven students enrolled in two sections of the reading methods course instituted in the first of four methods block courses in the undergraduate teacher education program at the university. there were forty-three females and four males. thirty-six were early childhood education majors, eight were middle grades education majors and three were special d isposition and e arly c hildhood e ducation 13 education majors. the study was voluntary and this population, and its sequences through the methods course blocks, was appropriate for this study because this is the structured progression of the undergraduate teacher education program. convenience sampling was utilized (salkind & rassmussen, 2007). though convenience sampling has been stated in the literature not to be as strong a method as others, this method is essential to the study because of the nature of the candidates to this institution’s program. if these candidates are to continue in the program as a cohort, monitoring them will be essential to teacher quality and program expectations. measurement measures the likert scale is an ordered, one-dimensional scale from which respondents choose one option that that most appropriately supports their view. there are usually between four and seven options. an advantage is that questions used are usually simple to understand and show the way to consistent responses. a disadvantage is that limited options are presented; with which respondents may not completely agree. construction of measures the instrument was a 4-point likert scale with three major response categories: satisfactory, areas of concern, and not observed. with in the category of satisfactory were two response subcategories: exemplary performance and expected performance. within the category of areas of concern was below expected performance. finally, there was the category of not observed. this makes for four responses in total. exemplary performance was rated as a three, expected performance c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 14 was rated as a two and below expected performance was rated as a one. the dispositions being assessed were belonging, mastery, independence and generosity. within the category of belonging were samples of descriptors. descriptors included: relates easily, positively, and tactfully with others, is friendly, courteous, and professional; actively seeks opportunities for personal and professional growth; appropriate professional appearance and personal hygiene. within the category of mastery were samples of descriptors. they were: demonstrates a commitment to continuous learning and reflection; exhibits an interest in and a commitment to teaching and learning; responds with a positive attitude when receiving feedback. within the category of independence were samples of descriptors. descriptors included: demonstrates initiative and positive attitude; is responsible, reliable, dependable, & well organized (meets deadlines, reliable, prompt, attends classes, appointments, meetings, etc.), and demonstrates flexibility and adaptability. within the category of generosity were samples of descriptors. they were willingly, actively and cooperatively participates in collaborative situations; shares ideas and concerns, and appreciates multiple perspectives. there was also an open-ended comments section for those responses that students felt were important to the survey but not included in the checklist (see appendix a). procedures the instrument was administered twice to the students and completed once by the instructor. the students completed the checklist based on their observation of themselves at the middle of the semester. the students then completed the instrument anonymously on a group member at the end of the semester. finally, the instructor completed the disposition checklist on all of the students at the end of the semester. each checklist was submitted the day it was completed and all of the data were d isposition and e arly c hildhood e ducation 15 compiled ten days after the last checklist was collected. though this was a mixed methods study, the research chose to address the quantitative aspect of the study at this time. data analysis the data was subject to descriptive statistical analysis, by way of percentages. results self-reporting in the category of belonging disposition, all of the participants rated themselves as displaying satisfactory performance; with 39 (83%) reporting exemplary performance and 8 (17%) reporting expected performance. in the category of mastery disposition 27 (57%) of the participants rated themselves as exemplary performance, 17 (36%) reported expected performance, and a small percentage; 3 (7%) rated themselves an area of concern-below expected performance. in the category of the independence disposition, 100% rated themselves as satisfactory in the area with 25 (53%) of them rated as exemplary performance and 22 (47%) at expected performance. finally, in the disposition of generosity, 39 (83%) of the participants rated themselves with an exemplary performance and with 8 (17%) of preservice teachers rated themselves with expected performance (see appendix b, table 1). figure 1. 0 10 20 30 40 50 n um be r of s tu de nt s exemplary expected below expected not observed c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 16 peer reporting in the category of belonging, 40 (85%) of the participants rated their classmates as exemplary performance with 5 (10%) of the students citing expected performance. five percent of the participants rated their peers in the area of concern-below expected performance. in the category of mastery, 39 (83%) of the participants rated their peers at exemplary performance. fifteen percent of participants rated their peers with expected performance and a small percentage of participants reported 1 (2%) of their peers at an area of concern-below expected performance. in the category of the independence, 39 (83%) of the participants rated each other with exemplary performance in this area. of the preservice teachers, 5 (10%) were rated by their peers as meeting expected performance. seven percent of the participants rated each other in the category of below-expected performance. in the category of generosity, 41(86 %) of the participants rated each other with a score of exemplary performance. seven percent of participants rated their peers with expected performance. finally, 3 (7 %) of the participants rated their peers below expected performance (see appendix b, table 2). figure 2. 0 10 20 30 40 50 belonging mastery independence generosity n um be r of s tu de nt s exemplary expected below expected not observed d isposition and e arly c hildhood e ducation 17 instructor reporting in the category of belonging, the instructor rated 12 (25%) of the participants as displaying exemplary performance. fifty-seven percent of preservice teachers were rated as displaying expected performance. seventeen percent of the participants were rated below-expected performance. in the category of mastery, the instructor rated 7 (15%) of the participants as exemplary performance. thirtytwo percent were rated as expected performance and a smaller percentage; 25 (53%) of the participants were rated as below expected performance area of concern. in the category of independence, 9 (19%) of the students were rated as displaying exemplary performance. twenty-five percent of participants were rated as having expected performance and 26 (55%) of the participants were rated as below expected performance. in the category of generosity, the instructor rated 7 (15%) of the participants as exemplary performance and 33 (70%) at expected performance. fifteen percent of the participants were rated at area of concern-below expected performance (see appendix b, table 3). figure 3. 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 n um be r of s tu de nt s exemplary expected below expected not observed c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 18 figure 4. discussion this tool provided three views of major disposition categories. the most marked difference was between the instructors view of the participants’ disposition of independence (figure 4). the discrepancy solicits questions about the definition of independence based on objectives and the context provided by the program’s conceptual framework. it is possible that the proactive descriptor could be part of this definition. comparison of students' scores 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 number of students m e a n s c o re reported by self reported by peer reported by instructor d isposition and e arly c hildhood e ducation 19 mastery was another disposition that elicited conversation and conflict. this, like independence, was controversial as well. participants tended to view completing assignments as mastery whereas the instructor looked at issues of quality. belonging was a disposition that was actually consistent across all three reporting groups. this disposition is critiqued because it sets the stage for collegiality; an essential part of teacher life. generosity was also consistent across all three reporting groups. this disposition too, is critical for planting seeds of empathy; a descriptor in the university’s conceptual framework. as far as limitations are concerned, the research acknowledges a few of them. first of all, of the university’s descriptors are not discreetly measured or assessed. secondly, the number of students is a relatively small number. third, these students are in the first methods block of the teacher education program. the researcher questions what this data would reveal if the students were assessed towards the end of the program. conclusion the study found a significant difference between the instructor’s view of the student’s disposition and their view of themselves. the research found this to be of importance and planned to examine this phenomenon qualitatively. independence was the one disposition where students were actually aligned with the perception of that disposition with the instructor. implications this small, yet informative study delineates three relatively important points. first, we must make the importance of dispositions explicit in each course, not just listed in the course objectives. it must be surfaced in the courses and monitored qualitatively and quantitatively. secondly, we must c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 20 teach students how to surface dispositions and understand the total commitment associated with the conceptual frameworks of each institution’s teacher education program. third and finally, we must continue to create and fine tune a more concise process for creating banks of comparative disposition data in our accreditation and institutional reports that inform a dynamic curriculum. as issues of teacher quality and student performance continue to avail, we must make the examination of the potential and power of disposition a part of the deliberate conversation. d isposition and e arly c hildhood e ducation 21 references american psychological association. (2001). publication manual of the american psychological association (5th ed.). washington, dc: author battalio, r., morin, j. (2004). constructing misbehavior: the efficacy connection in responding to misbehavior. journal of positive behavior interventions. vol. 6. 251-254. barton, k. c., and mccully, a. w. (2004). history, identity, and the school curriculum in northern ireland: an empirical study of secondary students' ideas and perspectives. journal of curriculum studies vol. 37, 85-116. beckham, l.; julian, k.; roberson, t.; whitsett, g. (2007). first year teachers’ reported levels of functioning on selected professional dispositions. education. vol. 128. 95-102. beyer, l. e. (2002). the politics of standardization: teacher education in the usa. journal of education for teaching, 28, 239-246 pd. bowers, c.a., & flinders, david j. (1990). responsive teaching: an ecological approach to classroom patterns f language, culture, and thought. new york: teachers college press. cherryholmes, c. h. (1988). power and criticism: poststructural investigations in education. new york: teachers college press. combs, a.w.; avilz, d.; purkey, w. (1971) helping relationships-basic concepts for the helping professions. allyn and bacon, inc. boston, ma. dewey, j. (1916). democracy and education. new york: free press. doll, w. b. (1993). a postmodern perspective on curriculum. new york: teachers college press. disposition. (2010). in merriam-webster online dictionary. retrieved january 17, 2010, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disposition giovannelli, m. (2003). relationship between reflective disposition toward teaching and effective teaching.the journal of educational research (washington, d.c.), 96, 293-309 w. gore, j. & zeichner, k. (1991). action research and reflective teaching in preservice teacher education: a case study from the united states. teaching and teacher education, 7(2), 119136. greene, m. (1973). teacher as stranger: educational philosophy for the modern age. belmont, ca: wadsworth c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 22 guskey, t., & passaro, p. (1994). teacher efficacy: a study of construct dimensions. american educational research journal, 31, 627-643. halpern, d.f. (1998). teaching critical thinking for transfer across domains: dispositions, skills, structure training, and metacognitive monitoring. american psychologist, 53(4), 449-455. heshusius, l. (1995). listening to children: “what could we possibly have in common?” from concerns with self to participatory consciousness. theory into practice, 43(2), 117–123. johnson, l. e., & reiman, a. j. (2007). beginning teacher disposition: examining the moral/ethical domain. teaching and teacher education: an international journal of research and studies. 23(5), 676-687. jung, e. (2009, may). reconsidering disposition assessment in teacher education: moving beyond. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american association of colleges for teacher education retrieved from http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p36305_index.html katz, l. (1985). the nature of professions: where is early childhood education? urbana, il: eric clearinghouse on elementary and early childhood education, university of illinois mcknight, d. (2004). an inquiry of ncate‟s move into virtue ethics by way of dispositions (is this what aristotle meant?). educational studies, 35, (2), 212-230. midgley, c., & urdan, t. (2001). academic self-handicapping and achievement goals: a further examination. contemporary educational psychology, 26, 61–75. misco, t. (2007). did i forget about the dispositions? preparing high school graduates for moral life. the clearing house. vol. 80. 267-270 murray, f. b. (2007). disposition: a superfluous construct in teacher education. journal of teacher education. 58(5), 381-387. national association for the education of young children (2005). program standards: preparing early childhood professionals, washington, d.c. national council for accreditation of teacher education (2000). performance-based accreditation standards, washington dc: author. pianta, r. c. (1999). enhancing relationships between children and teachers. washington, dc: american psychological association. raider-roth, miriam b.; rodgers, carol r. (2006). presence in teaching. teachers and teaching: theory and practice. vol. 12, 265-287. roeser, r., eccles, j., & sameroff, a. (2000). school as a context of early adolescents’ academic and social-emotional development: a summary of research findings. elementary school journal, 100, 443–471. d isposition and e arly c hildhood e ducation 23 salkind, n. j., & rasmussen, k. (2007). encyclopedia of measurement and statistics. thousand oaks, calif: sage publications. schon, d. (1987). educating the reflective practitioner. jossey-bass: san francisco schulz, k. (2003). listening: a framework for teaching across differences. teachers college press: new york. university of west georgia. (2003). college of education conceptual framework: developing educators for school improvement. carrollton, ga. windschitl, m. (2003). inquiry projects in science teacher education: what can investigative experiences reveal about teacher thinking and eventual classroom practice? science education. 87 (1), 112-43. wright, i. (2002). challenging students with the tools of critical thinking. the social studies, 93 (6), 257-61. appendix a assessment of dispositions candidate name____________________________________________id#_________________ major #1______________________________major #2______________________________ course______________________________________________date___________________ the assessment of candidate disposition form will be used to assess teacher education candidates and will help to determine if candidates demonstrate the dispositions necessary to help all c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 24 students learn. decisions regarding program entrance and acceptance to student teaching will be informed by this and other assessment criteria. the assessment of candidate disposition form is built around the teacher education program’s conceptual framework. teacher education candidates receiving a rating of “1”, below expected performance/area of concern, on any criteria will conference with the evaluator to discuss the area of concern(s). if necessary, a staffing may be scheduled to discuss the teacher education candidate’s program status and to further address the area(s) of concern. satisfactory area o f c o n c e r n n/a exempla ry per for ma nce 3 expecte d per for ma nce 2 below exp ect ed per for ma nce 1 not o b s e r v e d belonging relates easily, positively, and tactfully with others, is friendly, courteous, professional; actively seeks opportunities for personal and professional growth; appropriate professional appearance and personal hygiene mastery demonstrates a commitment to continuous learning and reflection; exhibits an interest in and a commitment to teaching and learning; responds with a positive attitude when receiving feedback independence demonstrates initiative and positive attitude; is responsible, reliable, dependable, & wellorganized (meets deadlines, reliable, prompt, attends classes, appointments, meetings, etc.); demonstrates flexibility and adaptability generosity d isposition and e arly c hildhood e ducation 25 willingly, actively and cooperatively participates in collaborative situations; shares ideas and concerns; appreciates multiple perspectives comments: student evaluator signature________________________________________ date______ candidate signature______________________________________________ date______ rating of “1” or area(s) of concern noted yes or no if yes, conference scheduled yes or no if yes, date_____ referred for staffing yes or no original to be returned to candidate carbon copy to be filed in candidate’s academic advising folder appendix btable 1. number (percentage ) of preservice teachers who self-reported dispositions n=47 satisfactory area of co nce rn n/a c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 26 exempla ry per for ma nce 3 expecte d per for ma nce 2 below exp ect ed per for ma nce 1 not o bs er ve d belonging relates easily, positively, and tactfully with others, is friendly, courteous, professional; actively seeks opportunities for personal and professional growth; appropriate professional appearance and personal hygiene n=39 (83%) n=8 (17%) mastery demonstrates a commitment to continuous learning and reflection; exhibits an interest in and a commitment to teaching and learning; responds with a positive attitude when receiving feedback n=27 (57%) n=17 (36%) n=3 (7%) independence demonstrates initiative and positive attitude; is responsible, reliable, dependable, & wellorganized (meets deadlines, reliable, prompt, attends classes, appointments, meetings, etc.); demonstrates flexibility and adaptability n=25 (53%) n=22 (47%) generosity willingly, actively and cooperatively participates in collaborative situations; shares ideas and concerns; appreciates multiple perspectives n=39 (83%) n=8 (17%) d isposition and e arly c hildhood e ducation 27 table 2. number (percentage ) of preservice teachers who peer-reported dispositions n=47 satisfactory area of co nce rn n/a exemplar y perf orm ance 3 expecte d per for ma nce 2 below exp ect ed per for ma nce 1 not o b s e r v e d belonging relates easily, positively, and tactfully with others, is friendly, courteous, professional; actively seeks opportunities for personal and professional growth; appropriate professional appearance and personal hygiene n=40 (85%) n=5 (10%) n=2 (5%) mastery demonstrates a commitment to continuous learning and reflection; exhibits an interest in and a commitment to teaching and learning; responds with a positive attitude when receiving feedback n=39 (83%) n=7 (15%) n=1 (2%) independence demonstrates initiative and positive attitude; is responsible, reliable, dependable, & wellorganized (meets deadlines, reliable, prompt, attends classes, appointments, meetings, etc.); demonstrates flexibility and n=39 (83%) n=5 (10%) n=3 (7%) c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 28 adaptability generosity willingly, actively and cooperatively participates in collaborative situations; shares ideas and concerns; appreciates multiple perspectives n=41 (86%) n=3 (7%) n=3 (7%) table 3. instructors’ review number (percentage ) of preservice teachers assessed by instructor n=47 satisfactory area of co nce rn n/a exempla ry per for ma nce 3 expecte d per for ma nce 2 below exp ect ed per for ma nce 1 not ob se rv ed belonging d isposition and e arly c hildhood e ducation 29 relates easily, positively, and tactfully with others, is friendly, courteous, professional; actively seeks opportunities for personal and professional growth; appropriate professional appearance and personal hygiene n=12 (25%) n=27 (57%) n=8 (17%) mastery demonstrates a commitment to continuous learning and reflection; exhibits an interest in and a commitment to teaching and learning; responds with a positive attitude when receiving feedback n=7 (15%) n=15 (32%) n=25 (53%) independence demonstrates initiative and positive attitude; is responsible, reliable, dependable, & wellorganized (meets deadlines, reliable, prompt, attends classes, appointments, meetings, etc.); demonstrates flexibility and adaptability n=9 (19%) n=12 (25%) n=26 (55%) generosity willingly, actively and cooperatively participates in collaborative situations; shares ideas and concerns; appreciates multiple perspectives n=7 (15%) n=33 (70%) n=7 (15%) c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 30 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo level of preparation of general education teachers to include level of preparation 1 running head: level of preparation level of preparation of general education teachers to include students with autism spectrum disorders emily e. teffs student saint joseph college eteffs@sjc.edu kathleen m. whitbread associate professor of education saint joseph college kwhitbread@sjc.edu mailto:eteffs@sjc.edu� mailto:kwhitbread@sjc.edu� level of preparation 2 abstract since 1998 there has been a dramatic increase in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (asd), resulting in an estimated prevalence of 1 in 150 children. federal law requires schools to educate children with asd in the least restrictive environment, increasing the number of children with asd in regular classrooms. teacher preparation rarely includes training in asd, leaving many teachers unprepared to accommodate these students. using an online survey distributed to a random sample of connecticut teachers, this study explored formal and informal preparation of teachers as well as teachers’ feelings of confidence and competence to teach children with asd. level of preparation 3 level of preparation of general education teachers to include students with autism spectrum disorders according to the individuals with disabilities education improvement act of 2004, an autism spectrum disorder (asd) is a developmental disability that usually manifests itself before age 3 and significantly affects a child’s communication ability, social interaction, and educational performance. additional characteristics associated with asd include: “engagement in repetitive activities and stereotypical movements, resistance to environmental change or change in daily routines, and unusual responses to sensory experiences” (34 code of federal regulations § 300.8 (c) (1)). included under the umbrella of asd reflecting severe to mild symptoms are childhood disintegrative disorder, rhett's disorder, autistic disorder, pervasive developmental disordernot otherwise specified, and asperger's disorder (kutscher, 2002). while symptoms and development vary among individuals, the most common characteristic of those who have asd is a considerable impairment in social skills (boutot, 2007; jordan, 2003). over the past decade there has been a dramatic increase in the prevalence of children with asd (newschaffer, falb, & gurney, 2005; volkmar et al., 2004). recent federal reports by the united states center for disease control and prevention (cdc) reveal that approximately 1 in every 150 children have an asd diagnosis (cdc, 2007). reports by the connecticut state department of education (csde) show that prevalence rates in the state have increased from 1.8 students per thousand in 1998 to 6.2 students per thousand in 2006 and currently average 1 in 150 students in kindergarten through grade twelve (csde, 2007). these data suggest that the number of individuals affected by asd has been increasing at a rate of 10-17% per year (cdc, 2007). if this trend continues, an estimated 4 million americans will have a diagnosis of asd within the next ten years (hecita, 2004). level of preparation 4 on december 19, 2006, president bush signed the combating autism act of 2006 into law. this act authorizes expanded activities related to autism research, prevention, and treatment through 2011. the act focuses on the following six aims: (a) to increase public awareness of developmental milestones, (b) to promote research into the development and validation of reliable screening tools for asd and other developmental disabilities, (c) to promote early screening of individuals at higher risk for asd and other developmental disabilities, (d) to increase the number of individuals who are able to confirm or rule out a diagnosis of asd and other developmental disabilities, (e) to increase the number of individuals able to provide evidence-based interventions for individuals diagnosed with asd or other developmental disabilities, and (f) to promote the use of evidence-based interventions for individuals at higher risk for asd and other developmental disabilities. in signing the act, the president stated that the combating autism act will, increase public awareness about this disorder and provide enhanced federal support for autism research and treatment... [t]his legislation will help more people recognize the symptoms of autism. this will lead to early identification and intervention, which is critical for children with autism. (office of the press secretary, 2006) concurrent with the increase in the prevalence of asd, there has been a trend toward educating children with disabilities, including children with asd, in regular education classrooms (yeargin-allsopp et al., 2003). the united states department of education regulations implementing the individuals with disabilities education act (idea) of 2004 state: to the maximum extent appropriate, children with disabilities, including children in public or private institutions or other care facilities, are educated with children who are not disabled, and special classes, separate schooling, or other removal of children with level of preparation 5 disabilities from the regular educational environment occurs only when the nature or severity of the disability of a child is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily. (34 code of federal regulations § 300.550(b)) the least restrictive environment (lre) mandate has been a key tenet of idea since the law was first enacted in 1975, yet some states have been slow to apply the concept. in connecticut, a significant special education lawsuit was settled in 2002 requiring the state to increase the number of children with disabilities educated in general education classes. the lawsuit (p.j.et al. v. state of connecticut department of education et al.) was brought by parents of children with intellectual disabilities against the connecticut state department of education (csde), the state commissioner of education, and certain local school districts, alleging that the csde was denying many children the right to an education in the least restrictive environment. the p.j. settlement agreement proposed to address this problem by increasing the percentage of students placed in general education classrooms and increasing the time that children with disabilities spent with non-disabled peers. although the lawsuit specifically addresses children with intellectual disabilities, the csde issued a series of statements and memoranda during the five years that the settlement agreement was in effect, reiterating the intent of idea to educate all students in the least restrictive environment (csde, 2005). as a result of the p.j. case, a number of initiatives were put into place by the csde to provide training and technical assistance to teachers and related service personnel to successfully include children with significant disabilities in general education classrooms. however, according to the expert advisory panel (eap) appointed to oversee the case, these initiatives did not result in significant progress in meeting the goals of the settlement agreement. in a 2007 level of preparation 6 report to the united states district court, the eap stated that the “lack of sufficient progress is shocking given the level of dissemination of information about p.j. and the technical assistance and professional development that has been provided” (burrello, coulter, freagon, & sailor, 2007). in spite of the state and federal laws and regulations requiring teachers to include students with significant disabilities in regular classrooms, many connecticut teachers may be ill prepared to successfully teach this population of children. little is known about the status of personnel preparation for teachers of children with asd (scheuermann, webber, boutot, & goodwin, 2003). however, recent studies have shown that providing teachers with training specific to the needs of children with asd improves student outcomes (browder, trela, & jirnenez, 2007; dib & sturmey 2007; jordan, 2003; koegel, koegel, frea, & green-hopkins, 2003). presently, connecticut teacher preparation programs are multi-categorical and designed to meet the needs of students with mild to moderate disabilities, as opposed to serving the specific needs of students with asd and other low incidence disabilities. current connecticut statistics reveal that 41% of students with asd are included in general education classrooms for at least 80% of their day (csde, 2008), resulting in the likelihood that a general education teacher will be assigned at least one student with asd during his or her teaching career. in september 2007, the network of training and technical assistance programs (nattap) held its first annual conference focused on individuals with asd. nattap is affiliated with the autism society of america and includes a network of experts dedicated to the education of children with asd. one of the outcomes of this conference, attended by more than 1400 participants, was a draft of national teacher standards for teachers of students with asd. the draft was made available to conference participants and is currently under review by level of preparation 7 the council for exceptional children. the document includes more than thirty competencies that teachers of students with asd must possess under the following broad categories: a) characteristics of asd, including etiology and criteria used to diagnose the disorder; b) assessment using evidence-based approaches, varied formats and current instruments; c) instructional planning, including access to the general education curriculum, modifications and accommodations, collecting and analyzing data to inform instruction; d) instructional strategies, including individualized and intensive instruction, applied behavioral analysis, positive behavior support, and communication strategies, and; e) transition and independence to assist students with asd to successfully transition to adult life (draft national teacher standards, 2007). these standards are consistent with current literature on personnel preparation needs of teachers of students with asd (callahan, henson, & cowan, 2008; ingersoll & dvortcsak, 2006; scheuermann, webber, boutot, & goodwin, 2003; sulzer-azaroff, fleming, tupa, bass, & hamad, c. 2008). embedded in this set of proposed standards is an emphasis on team collaboration. fleming & monda-amaya (2001) note the following requirements for team effectiveness: shared goals and visions, clear roles, open and effective communication, support and respect, and strategic decision making strategies and monitoring. also crucial to the team process is the inclusion of families. effective home-school communication and collaborative relationships among school personnel must be established in order to develop an appropriate intervention or program for a child with asd (ingersoll & dvortcsak, 2006; ruble, 2002). as the number of children labeled with asd rises, general education teachers must be prepared to not only include these students in their classrooms, but teach them according to grade level standards. the purpose of this study was to determine the level of formal and informal level of preparation 8 preparation of connecticut teachers to teach children with asd as well as teachers’ feelings of confidence and competence to include this population of children in their classroom community. methodology participants study participants were randomly selected from a database of current teachers and administrators in connecticut public schools provided to the researchers by the connecticut state department of education in a microsoft access file. all positions other than general education teacher were removed from the database, resulting in a sample frame of 33,315 general education teachers from kindergarten through grade twelve. a 2% random sample was calculated using the statistical package for social sciences (spss), resulting in a sample of 655 teachers from kindergarten through high school. teachers in the random sample were dispersed among the state’s 169 districts in representative percentages when compared to teachers in the sample frame based on connecticut’s district reference groups (drg). drg is a classification system used to group districts on the basis of the socioeconomic status and at-risk indicators of their student populations. these drgs are used for the purpose of making comparisons in research studies and performance monitoring, and are based on the following seven student/family variables: family income, parental education, parental occupation, family structure, poverty status, home language and district enrollment. each district in the state is placed in one of nine groups, ranging from the most affluent (group a) to the least affluent (group i). see table 1 for a comparison of the drg classifications for teachers represented in the sample frame and teachers represented in the random sample selected for this study. table 1. level of preparation 9 district reference groups district reference group (drg) sample frame n =33,315 random sample n=655 a 6.1% 5.8% b 18.4% 18.9% c 7.7% 7.7% d 15.9% 16.3% e 5.1% 5.4% f 5.6% 7.6% g 12.9% 12.8% h 11.6% 11.1% i 16.7% 14.0% survey development the survey was designed to gather information about the confidence and competence of general education teachers to include students with asd in their classrooms. following a review of the literature, draft survey questions were developed. the survey was piloted with a convenience sample of 10 practicing teachers and minor changes were made to survey questions as a result of feedback from pilot participants. there were three parts to the survey. the first part included demographic questions related to grade levels taught, amount of time in current position, and total number of years in the teaching profession, as well as number of students with asd assigned to their classroom during the current school year. level of preparation 10 the second section of the survey asked teachers to report their experiences working with students who have asd. participants were asked if and when they were notified that they would have a student with asd assigned to their classroom and if they had access to individual education programs (ieps) for those children. they were also asked about their feelings and perceptions about teaching students with asd as well as communication with parents and team members. two open-ended questions were included at the end of this section which asked participants first to comment on whether or not they felt their student(s) with asd was in the most appropriate placement, and then to discuss their greatest challenges in teaching students with asd. the third section of the survey contained questions about respondents’ specific training in asd. participants were asked how much training they may have had in the following areas: characteristics of asd, instructional strategies, implementing the iep, behavioral supports, social skills training, communication and assistive technology. participants were asked if they felt they required additional training in order to successfully teach children with asd and finally, how prepared they felt to teach students with asd. the complete survey is included in appendix a. procedure all information obtained for this study was recorded in such a manner that participants could not be identified directly or through identifiers linked to the subjects. the participant names and email addresses were stored in separate locations from the data. surveys were distributed through surveymonkey, a web-based interface for creating and publishing web surveys. results were calculated by surveymonkey software and were available for view by the research team in real time on the surveymonkey website. results were level of preparation 11 password-protected and displayed without identifying information. email addresses for the selected teachers were obtained by the researchers from district websites. a cover letter with an embedded link to the survey was sent electronically via surveymonkey to the group of teachers in mid-april (approximately 2 months before the end of the school year). emails returned due to incorrect email addresses were re-checked, corrected, and resent. when it was not possible to locate an accurate email for a teacher, a hard copy of the survey and cover letter was mailed to the teacher at his or her school. two electronic reminders were sent through surveymonkey at approximately two and four weeks following the initial mailing of the survey to those who did not respond nor opt out of the study. the response rate was 18.6% with a total of 122 completed surveys. nearly half (47.1%, n=56) of survey respondents were kindergarten and elementary teachers; 22.7% (n=27) were middle school teachers and 31.1% (n=37) were high school teachers. three teachers (2.4%) declined to identify their grade level. in order to encourage participation in the study, respondents were not asked to supply any identifying information so it was not possible to make direct comparisons between the sample group and respondent group based on district reference group classification. in addition, the coding system in the state database did not allow for separation of middle and high school teachers. however, data collected for elementary teachers showed that this grade level was overrepresented in the respondent group, as shown in table 2. table 2. grade level taught grade level sample frame random sample respondents elementary 38.3% 37.4% 47.1% level of preparation 12 middle --22.7% high --31.1% more than a third of the teachers (35.5%, n=43) in the study had been in the teaching profession more than 20 years. a quarter (24.8%, n=30) had been teaching for 11-20 years, 20.7% (n=25) had been teaching 6-10 years and 19% (n=23) had been teaching less than 6 years. fifty-nine percent of participants (n=72) had been teaching in their current position for more than 7 years, 36.1% (n=44) had been teaching a total of 1-6 years, and 4.9% (n=6) had been in their current position for less than one year. results training in autism spectrum disorders a number of participants reported having no formal training in the following areas: characteristics of asd (35.4%), instructional strategies (33.0%), implementing the iep (35.7%), behavioral supports (42.9%), social skills training (48.5%), communication (46.9%), and assistive technology (61.9%). see table 3. table 3. amount of training received specific to teaching students with asd none 1 day or less 2-3 days 4-5 days college course characteristics 35.4% 37.4% 5.1% 7.1% 15.2% instruction 33.0% 38.0% 3.0% 7.0% 19.0% the iep 35.7% 35.7% 8.2% 3.1% 17.3% behavior 42.9% 33.6% 5.1% 7.1% 11.2% social skills 48.5% 28.3% 8.1% 7.1% 8.1% level of preparation 13 communication 46.9% 27.5% 12.2% 4.1% 9.2% assistive tech. 61.9% 22.7% 3.1% 4.1% 8.2% some participants commented that most of their training had come from their direct experiences working with children with asd and from what they read in books and journals. more than two-thirds (76.9%, n = 83) reported the need for more training or support to better meet the needs of their students with asd. within this group, the most frequently cited area in which additional training was needed was social skills, followed by behavioral supports and communication, as shown in table 4. table 4. additional training needs cited by respondents training area % respondents social skills 82.9 behavioral supports 78.0 communication 70.7 assistive technology 63.4 characteristics of asd 52.4 implementing the iep 48.8 finally, when asked how prepared participants felt to teach students with asd, nearly a quarter (22%, n = 24) reported feeling “not at all prepared.” nearly half (54.1%, n = 59) felt only “somewhat prepared,” 18.3% (n = 20) felt “prepared” and only 5.5% (n = 6) felt “wellprepared.” level of preparation 14 experiences with students with autism spectrum disorder during the past school year (2007-2008), more than half of the respondents (60%, n = 72) had been assigned a child with asd to their classroom. of these, 29.2 % (n = 35) had been assigned one student with asd, 20% (n = 24) had been assigned 2-3 students with asd, and 10.8% (n = 13) had been assigned more than 3 students with asd. forty percent (n = 48) had not been assigned a student with asd. of those participants who were assigned a student with asd, 77.6% (n = 52) were informed ahead of time of that assignment. however, 34.5% (n = 20) were not informed until the first week of school and 17.2% (n=10) were notified over the previous summer. approximately half (46.6%, n = 27) were notified during the previous school year. asked if they had access to the individual education program (iep) plan for their student(s) with asd, 77.3% (n = 51) reported having full access to students’ ieps, 16.7% (n = 11) had only partial access to the student's iep and 6.1% (n = 4) had no access to the iep at all. those participants who had a child with asd in their classroom were asked if their feelings about teaching students with asd had changed as a result of the experience. nearly half (45.5%, n = 30) said their feelings were more positive, 42.4% said their feelings were unchanged, 10.6% (n = 7) were unsure and one participant said his/her feelings were more negative. when asked how often participants communicated with parents and other team members, the majority reported the following: monthly communication with parents (41.3%), daily communication with the special educator (48.5%), weekly communication with related service providers (33.3%), and no communication with administrators (54.8%). see table 5. table 5. average frequency of communication between teacher and team members level of preparation 15 daily weekly monthly never parents 7.9% 27.0% 41.3% 23.8% special educator 48.5% 24.2% 21.2% 6.1% related services 20.6% 33.3% 20.6% 25.4% administrator 1.6% 9.7% 33.9% 54.8% sixty participants (83.3 % of those who had taught a child with asd the previous year) responded to the open-ended question asking if they felt their student with asd was in an appropriate placement. of these, 48 (80%) responded “yes,” 6 (10%) responded “no” and the remaining were unsure or had mixed feelings. a third (33%, n = 16) of the teachers who responded “yes” to this question indicated that they felt the placement was appropriate because the student had a mild form of asd. typical comments included: “this particular student is very high functioning,” or “his case is not severe, but very mild.” three of the 6 teachers who responded that their student’s placement was inappropriate cited the severity of the student’s disability as the reason, revealing a trend toward equating the appropriateness of general education placement with the perceived severity of a student’s disability. this finding is consistent with other research on this topic (white, scahill, klin, koenig & volkmar, 2007). two teachers who responded that their students’ placements were inappropriate commented that they had not been trained to teach students with asd. one teacher expressed feeling “overwhelmed … trying to accommodate them,” and another wrote “i am not a special education teacher... by choice! the demands placed on regular ed. teachers these days are outrageous! we were never trained properly to teach these students, nor should we be expected to.” thirty-five percent of the teachers who responded that their student with asd was level of preparation 16 appropriately placed in their classroom wrote about the benefits to the student and the other students in the class. as one teacher stated, “it allows him the opportunity to succeed both academically and socially in the least restrictive environment.” another commented, “he is a welcome member of the class and helps all students use strategies to help them best learn.” participants were asked to comment on their greatest challenges in teaching students with asd. the majority of teachers (83.3%, n = 60) who indicated they had taught a child with asd in the previous school year responded to this question. more than a quarter of this group (26.6%, n = 16) cited behavioral difficulties as their primary challenge. as one teacher commented, “my biggest challenge has been in learning how to get him to calm down or re-evaluate before he has an outburst that disrupts the entire class… i am typically alone in the class.” two respondents cited “inappropriate social behavior” as their greatest challenge. a number of teachers (11.6%, n=13) wrote of a lack of time or resources to meet the individual needs of their student with asd while also meeting the needs of other students in the class. lack of training/technical assistance in adapting curriculum was another frequently cited challenge, with 11 teachers (18.3%) reporting that they lacked the ability or resources to modify curriculum to meet the individual needs of students with asd. discussion this study explored the experiences and perceptions of general education teachers regarding students with asd. approximately half of the respondents had taught at least one student with asd during the current school year (2007-2008). most were notified before the beginning of the school year that they were being assigned a student with asd; however, more than half were notified either in the previous summer or the first week of the school year. while teaching students with asd can be challenging and many teachers lacked appropriate training, level of preparation 17 only one of the respondents felt more negative about teaching students with asd following the experience. half of the respondents who had taught a child with asd reported feeling more positive about including students with asd in their classrooms. one teacher wrote of regret that he or she “doubted the student’s ability,” and another commented, “i really didn't consider this student to be any more challenging than the other children in the class. i had the support of a full time paraprofessional and a wonderful special ed team. so, when problems arose, there were staff to collaborate and/or address the difficulties as needed.” still, responses to the survey show that general education teachers in connecticut have had little training specific to teaching students with asd and once in the classroom, may lack the support they need to provide an appropriate education for students with asd. since connecticut teacher training programs do not currently require preparation in asd, most teachers do not have the confidence and competence to teach these learners. one quarter of the respondents felt totally unprepared to teach students with asd, and nearly half felt only “somewhat prepared.” the current study adds to the existing literature in several ways. first, the findings show that general educators in connecticut are rarely trained to meet the needs of a rapidly growing population of students with asd, even though nearly half of connecticut students with asd spend at least eighty percent of their day in general education classrooms. second, results were consistent with current literature showing that teachers perceive students with milder forms of asd as being appropriately placed in a general education classroom, while students who were viewed as having more significant disabilities were not considered to be appropriately placed in a general education classroom. finally, and perhaps most importantly, the results of this study support the proposed standards of the network of training and technical assistance programs (nattap) which recommend that teachers who work with students with asd receive specific level of preparation 18 training in the following areas: a) characteristics of asd, b) instructional planning, including access to the general education curriculum, c) instructional strategies, d) individualized education plans, e) positive behavior support, e) social skills instruction, f) communication strategies and g) team collaboration. the combating autism act of 2006 calls for an increase in the number of individuals trained to provide evidence-based interventions for students diagnosed with asd and to further the use of evidence-based interventions for students with these disorders. in order to fulfill that promise, pre-service and in-service training programs must be developed and implemented to prepare teachers to provide appropriate educational services to this population of students in the environment where many students with asd spend the majority of their school day: the general education classroom. in addition to infusing this training into existing teacher preparation programs, graduate certificate programs which address research-based competencies in asd, such as those recommended by the nattap, would allow existing teachers to develop competencies that can be immediately put to use in their classrooms. offering these programs in summer, evening and weekend formats would allow teachers to continue to teach while expanding their skills to meet the needs of this population of students. technical assistance in the form of instructional coaching, with experienced educators mentoring less experienced colleagues, has proven effective in the areas of literacy, mathematics and inclusive education (knight, 2007; west & staub, 2003) and may provide a useful model for increasing teachers’ competence and confidence as they apply newly learned skills and concepts in the classroom. this preliminary study was limited to a small sample of teachers in connecticut. to generalize the findings of this study, the sample size would need to be expanded. however, the level of preparation 19 study does provide a glimpse into the current challenges faced by general education teachers who may be assigned to teach students with asd without the appropriate training or technical assistance. further research is needed to explore the experiences of special educators as well as related service personnel in serving students with asd. in addition, it would seem important to explore whether general educators require individualized training programs based on their relative lack of experience with students with disabilities, or if it is effective to train general and special educators along with related service personnel and administrators so they may develop and practice the collaboration skills necessary to meet the varied needs of students with asd. level of preparation 20 references boutot, e. a. 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(2008, may). autism treatment survey: services received by children with autism spectrum disorders in public school classrooms. journal of autism and developmental disorders, 38(5), 961-971. individuals with disabilities education improvement act of 2004, 20 u.s.c. §§ 1401 et seq http://www.sde.ct.gov/sde/lib/sde/pdf/deps/pj/report_annual_05.pdf� http://www.autismsociety-nc.org/draft_copy_of_national_teacher_standards.pdf� http://www.autismsociety-nc.org/draft_copy_of_national_teacher_standards.pdf� http://www.kuam.com/news/9146.aspx� level of preparation 22 ingersoll, b., & dvortcsak, a. (2006,). including parent training in the early childhood special education curriculum for children with autism spectrum disorders. topics in early childhood special education, 26(3), 179-187. jordan, r. (2003). social play and autistic spectrum disorders: a perspective on theory, implications and educational approaches. autism: the international journal of research and practice, 7(4), 347-360. knight, j. (2007). instructional coaching: a partnership approach to improving instruction. thousand oaks, ca: corwin press. koegel. l.. robert l. koegel, r., frea, w. & green-hopkins, i. (2003). priming as a method of coordinating educational services for students with autism. language, speech, and hearing services in schools, 34 (3), 228-235. kutscher, m. l., (2002). autism spectrum disorders: sorting it out. retrieved february 13, 2008 from: http://pediatricneurology.com/martin_kutscher.htm lerman, d. c., vorndran, c. m., addison, l., & kuhn, s. c. (2004). preparing teachers in evidence-based practices for young children with autism. school psychology review, 33 (4) 510-526. lerman, d., tetreault, a., hovanetz, a., strobel, m., & garro, j. (2008). further evaluation of a brief, intensive teacher-training model. journal of applied behavior analysis, 41(2), 243248. newschaffer, c. j., falb, m. d., & gurney, j. g., (2005). national autism prevalence trends from united states special education data. pediatrics, 115,(3), 277-282. retrieved from http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/115/3/e277 ruble, l. a. (2002). a parentteacher collaborative model for students with autism. focus on http://www.literacycoachingonline.org/library/resources/knightj2007instructionalcoachingapartnershipapproachtoimprovinginstructionthousandoakscacorwinpress.html� http://www.literacycoachingonline.org/library/resources/knightj2007instructionalcoachingapartnershipapproachtoimprovinginstructionthousandoakscacorwinpress.html� http://pediatricneurology.com/martin_kutscher.htm� http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/115/3/e277� level of preparation 23 autism and other developmental disabilities, 17, (2), 76-83. safran, j. s. (2002). supporting students with asperger's syndrome in general education. teaching exceptional children, 34 (5), 60-66. scheuermann, b., webber, j., boutot, e. a., & goodwin, m. (2003).). problems in personnel preparation in autism spectrum disorders. focus on autism and other developmental disabilities, 18(3), 197-206. simpson, r. (2003). policy-related research issues and perspectives. focus on autism and other developmental disabilities, 18 (3), 192-196. sulzer-azaroff, b., fleming, r., tupa, m., bass, r., and hamad, c. (2008, march). choosing objectives for a distance learning behavioral intervention in autism curriculum. focus on autism and other developmental disabilities, 23(1), 29-36. tamol, s.( 2007). high school graduationand then what? exceptional parent, 37(10), 34-35. united states office of the press secretary. (2006, december 19). president's statement on combating autism act of 2006. press release. retrieved from: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/12/2006 1219-1.html vacca, j. (2007). incorporating interests and structure to improve participation of a child with autism in a standardized assessment: a case study analysis. focus on autism and other developmental disabilities, 22 (1), 51-59. volkmar, f. r., lord, c., bailey, a., schultz, r. t., & klin, a. (2004). autism and pervasive developmental disorders. journal of child psychology and psychiatry, 45(1), 135-170. west, l., & staub, f. (2003). content-focused coaching: transforming mathematics lessons. portsmouth, me: heinemann. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/12/20061219-1.html� http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/12/20061219-1.html� http://www.literacycoachingonline.org/library/resources/westlstaubf2003content-focusedcoachingtransformingmathematicslessonsportsmouthmeheinemann.html� http://www.literacycoachingonline.org/library/resources/westlstaubf2003content-focusedcoachingtransformingmathematicslessonsportsmouthmeheinemann.html� level of preparation 24 white, s. w., scahill, l., klin, a., koenig. k., & volkmar, f. (2007). educational placements and service use patterns of individuals with autism spectrum disorders. journal of autism and developmental disorders, 37 (8), 1403-1412. yeargin-allsopp m, rice c., karapurkar t., doernberg n., boyle c., & murphy c. (2003). jama, 289(1), 49-55. level of preparation 25 appendix a survey questions: preparation to teach students with autism spectrum disorders section i: demographic information 1. what grade level do you teach? a. elementary school b. middle school c. high school 2. how many years have you taught in your current position? a. less than a year b. 1-3 years c. 4-6 years d. more than 7 years 3. how many years have you been a teacher? a. less than a year b. 1-5 years c. 6-10 years d. 11-20 years e. more than 20 years 4. during the past school year, how many students with autism spectrum disorders (asd) have been assigned to your classroom? a. 0 b. 1 c. 2 level of preparation 26 d. 3 e. more than 3 section ii: experiences with students with autism spectrum disorders definition of autism spectrum disorder: according to the individuals with disabilities education act (idea) an autism spectrum disorder (asd) is “a developmental disability significantly affecting verbal and nonverbal communication and social interaction, generally evident before age 3 that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.” included under the umbrella of asd are childhood disintegrative disorder, rhett’s disorder, autistic disorder, pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified and asperger’s disorder. please answer the following questions about your experiences during the current (2007 2008) school year. if you have more than one student with asd, please select one student about whom you will answer the survey questions. 5. were you informed ahead of time that a student with asd would be assigned to your classroom? a. no b. yes 6. if you answered “yes” to question 5, at what point were you informed that you would be assigned a student with asd? a. the previous school year b. the summer c. the first week of school d. i was never informed level of preparation 27 7. did you have access to the individual education program (iep) plan for your student with asd? a. no b. yes, i had full access c. yes, but i had only partial access if you had access to only part of the iep, please indicate which part. 8. have your feelings about teaching students with asd changed since having a student with asd assigned to your classroom? a. no b. yes, i am more positive about teaching students with asd c. yes, i am more negative about teaching students with asd d. not sure 9. on average, how often do you communicate with the following in relation to your student with asd? daily weekly monthly never parents special educator related service providers administrator 10. do you feel that your student with asd is in the most appropriate placement? why or why not? 11. what is your greatest challenge in teaching your students with asd? level of preparation 28 section iii: training in autism spectrum disorders 12. please indicate what training you have received specific to teaching students with asd. length of training 1 day or less 2-3 days 4-5 days college course characteristics of asd instructional strategies implementing the iep behavioral supports social skills training communication assistive technology other (please comment on any additional training you have received in teaching students with asd) 13. do you feel you need more training or support to better meet the needs of students with asd? a. no b. yes 14. if you answered “yes” to question 13, please indicate areas of further training needed: a. implementing the iep b. social skills training c. characteristics of asd d. assistive technology level of preparation 29 e. communication f. behavioral supports g. instructional strategies h. other (please specify) 15. how prepared do you feel to teach students with asd? a. not at all prepared b. somewhat prepared c. prepared d. well prepared parenting style_final c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 1 volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x parenting style, self-esteem and student performance in the united arab emirates negmeldin alsheikh united arab emirates university gowri parameswaran suny, new paltz hala elhoweris united arab emirates university citation alsheikh, n., parameswaran, g, & elhoweris, h. (2010). parenting style, self-esteem and student performance in the united arab emirates. current issues in education, 13(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the impact of parenting styles on 5-8th grade students’ performance and self-esteem was analyzed within a sample of the united arab emirates (uae) public school children. a sample of 162 children (50% boys, 50% girls) reported on their parents’ child-rearing practices. parenting styles were classified into one of three groups (autonomy granting, demandingness, or responsiveness). the results show that demandingness was found to have a significant impact on gpa scores. mothers’ interactions with children were dependent on both the gender of the child and the age of the child. factor analysis results suggested that family cohesion and effort were positively related to school performance and self-autonomy was negatively related to school performance. self-esteem was not significantly related to any of the variables studied. keywords: parenting style, uae students, self-esteem, student performance, arab students, primary school, early adolescence, secondary school, gender, gpa, c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 2 about the author(s) author: negmeldin alsheikh affiliation: united arab emirates university address: p.o. box 17551, al-ain, uae email: nalsheikh@uaeu.ac.ae biographical information: negmeldin alsheikh is an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction. his research efforts focus on language learning strategies, metacognitive awareness of bi-literate and multi-literate readers, and emergent literacy. author: gowri parameswaran affiliation: suny, new paltz email: paramesg@newpaltz.edu biographical information: gowri parameswaran is an associate professor of educational studies. her research efforts focus on children development in poor environments, exploring changes across generations, and education for social justice.. author: hala elhoweris affiliation: united arab emirates university email: helhoweris@uaeu.ac.ae biographical information: hala elhoweris is an associate professor of special education. her research efforts focus on students with special needs, inclusion, assessment, multicultural issues in education, and gifted education. parenting style 3 introduction the conceptualization of parenting styles as a way to categorize and measure the quality and type of interaction between parents and children began with the pioneering research by baumrind (1971). she noticed that parents varied in their interactions with children along 2 major dimensions – warmth and demandingness. her original framework could place most parental interactions along a 2-way axis, with one axis representing warmth from warm to cold and one axis representing demandingness, ranging from low to high. she thus classified parent-child interactions into 4 types: a) authoritarian: the relationship was characterized by lack of warmth and high demandingness; b) authoritative: the relationship is characterized by high warmth and high demandingness; c) permissive: the relationship is characterized by high warmth and low demandingness; d) neglectful: the relationship is characterized by lack of warmth and low demandingness (baumrind, 1989, 1991; cohen & rice, 1997; maccoby & martin, 1983). researchers added another dimension to baumrind’s original framework. another category called it ‘autonomy granting’ was added. democratic parents encourage their children to be autonomous without being overprotective while authoritarian parents are overprotective (steinberg, lamborn, dornbusch and darling, 1992). there have been several variations of this 3–dimensional model proposed by other north american researchers, which have been used to examine parenting and parent child relationships in other parts of the world. in some cases, the parent child relationship atmosphere is highlighted (stevenson, chen & uttal, 1990) and in other cases, parent child relationship behaviors are emphasized and measured (dornbusch, ritter, leiderman, roberts, & fraleigh, 1987). in studies emphasizing the climate of the relationship, global questions capturing the relationship in a c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 4 variety of situation are asked when the behaviors are emphasized; particular parental responses to specific situations are enquired about. the relationship between the two remains strong in most studies indicating that they are measuring similar constructs (e.g., lee, daniels & kissinger, 2006) there have been many studies attempting to substantiate the positive impact of authoritative parenting on various indicators of child development and the negative impact of the authoritarian and permissive parenting styles on children’s functioning (cohen, richardson, and labree, 1994; epstein, 2001; lamborn, mounts, steinberg, & dornbusch, 1991; steinberg, lamborn, darling, mounts, & dornbusch,1994), i.e., selfesteem (robin & foster, 1989), academic performance (dornbusch, et al.,1987; paulson,1994), emotional maturity (lamborn, et al., 1991), tobacco use (ary, duncan, duncan, & hops, 1999; fleming, kim, harachi, & catalano, 2002), drug use and delinquency (baumrind, 1989, 1991; jackson, henricksen, & dickenson, 1997; tomlinson, 1991), and alcohol use (johnson & padina, 1991). other researchers have found that parental style is related to the frequency of adolescent injuries (bijur, kurzon, hamelsky, & power, 1991) and negative adolescent identity (petersen, 1993). results from studies that attempt to relate parental styles and child and adolescent academic and social behavior and identity have been mixed and the effect sizes vary widely depending on the gender of the parent or a care-giver, gender, age and temperament of the child and the socio-economic status of the family (harris, 2002). for instance, conrade & ho (2001) found that mothers’ parenting style had a bigger impact on child performance in school while bronte-tinkew, moore and carrano (2006) found that fathers’ emotional responsiveness was more highly related to children’s performance. in some studies girls are parenting style 5 affected both positively and negatively by parenting style differences among parents while in others boys are more negatively or positively affected by parenting styles (conrade et al., 2001; lee, et al., 2006). perhaps, the most damaging to the current framework of parenting styles and its impact on children are the findings of parent child relationships and their impact on children in non-western societies. in a study conducted within the usa, it was found that hmong children are less affected by variations in parental behavior in terms of their academic performance and frequency of engaging in risky behavior as compared to european american children (supple & small, 2006). one of the contexts where the parenting style theory has been widely tested for validity is in china. it was found that in china, authoritarian parenting was positively related to children’s performance in school while there was no similar positive impact for authoritative parenting and permissive parenting styles (e.g., chao, 1994; juan & larry, 2004; lamm & keller, 2007). chao (1994, p. 1112) proposed that chinese parenting style involves the confucian concept of ‘chiao shu’ which refers to training in culturally appropriate behaviors and ‘guan’ which means love and governing. chinese parenting involves being very strict and maintaining a high level of control, so that children can learn to value social hierarchy and discipline and at the same time communicating real parental care about the child. school success is highly valued in chinese society and children and parents both valued the control that parents exerted over their children in matters related to academic life (gorman, 1998; quoss and zhao, 1995). however, even in the chinese context, the effects of authoritarian parenting were rarely consistent. in studies conducted with chinese immigrant families in the usa, no difference was observed between chinese c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 6 american families and european american parents with regards to their parenting styles (kelly & tseng, 1992; lin & fu, 1990). additionally, in a study conducted with children of chinese origin in hong kong, tam and lam (2003) found that authoritative and permissive parenting had similar impact on children’s academic performance while authoritarian parenting was no different from neglectful parenting in terms of the impact on children. academic achievement was the most investigated variable among school-related variables. for example, leung, lau & lam (1998) found academic achievement was positively related to general authoritarianism in a hong kong adolescent’s sample, while authoritative parenting style was found to be unrelated to the grades of hong kong adolescents but positively related to the grades of european american and australian adolescents. in another study, park & bauer (2002) found that a positive relationship between authoritative parenting style and academic achievement exists only for the majority group (european americans), but not for latinos, african-americans, or asianamericans (christina, 2008; odubote, 2008; park & bauer, 2002). blair and qian (1998) found parental control was positively related to school performance of chinese adolescents. on the other hand, chao (2001) found that first-generation chinese youth from authoritative families were not better off in school than their counterparts from authoritarian families, whereas european american adolescents from authoritative families performed better in school than those european american youth from authoritarian families. additionally, authoritative parenting had consistently more positive effects on both school grades and school effort for european americans compared to first-generation chinese. all this may suggest that authoritarian parenting style is not commonly associated with negative adolescent outcomes, especially when studying non-caucasian samples. furthermore, positive adolescent outcomes have been parenting style 7 associated with authoritarian parenting style in some asian samples whereas positive effects have been found with authoritarian parenting style in some studies involving asian and other non-caucasian samples. one of the classic measures of adolescent adjustment in parenting studies is the selfesteem (rudy & grusec, 2006). several studies have explored the relationship between parenting styles and self-esteem. for instance, in a study that investigated the impact of parenting styles on adolescents’ self-esteem and internalization of values in spain, martinez and garcia (2007) found that adolescents of indulgent parents show highest scores in selfesteem whereas adolescents from authoritarian parents obtain the worst results. several other researchers have stressed the importance of parenting styles in children’s internalization of social values (grusec, goodnow, & kuczynski, 2000; martínez, garcía, & yubero, 2007). these researchers recommended in taking into account self esteem among other variables of psychological adjustment, because selfesteem entails an internalization of values, and the lack there of could lead to the impediment for such internalization. studies are now being conducted in other non-western cultural contexts to explore the issue of the impact of parenting styles on children’s academic performance and other child outcomes. there are very few studies exploring the relationship between parenting styles and child outcomes in the islamic world. in a study conducted in egypt (dwairy, achoui, abouserie & farah, 2006), the researchers found that for arab youth, the authoritative and authoritarian parenting style both had a positive impact on children’s mental health. the consistency of parenting was more predictive of the mental health status of the child as compared to the type of parenting style itself. the authors posit that in cultures where c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 8 authoritarian parenting is the norm, there are no negative effects of the authoritarian parenting style. the current study hopes to add to our knowledge base on the impact of parenting in the arab world as measured by the mothers’ parenting style questionnaire, administered to children and children’s development as measured by the gpa scores acquired by children in school and their self-esteem. it is hypothesized that the scores on the mothers’ parenting style questionnaire will be related to children’s gpa scores and self–esteem. in the uae, parents’ concept of the ideal child is closely related to traditional values in islamic culture: respect for elders, good manners, good academic outcomes, and self discipline. generally, in islamic societies parenting involves being very strict. the belief is that parents must be authoritarian to maintain a high level of control so that children can learn to value disciplines and social hierarchy. method participants our sampling frame consisted of a complete list of all the uae elementary and secondary public schools including boys and girls schools. identification of participants followed the guidelines of the stratified cluster sampling technique according to gender and geographical location. a total of fourteen elementary and secondary schools (7 boys’ schools & 7 girls’ schools) from the seven emirates were included in this study. classes were selected randomly from these schools. a total of 162 united arab emirates children who attending the uae public schools were included in this study. the children were selected from grades 5, 6, 7 and 8. the number of participants in each grade level was: 18, 85, 26 and 32 respectively. there were about equal numbers of girls and boys in each grade. all participants were muslim, middle-class and lived in urban areas. parenting style 9 instruments i) parental style inventory ii (psi-ii): the scale was adapted for the purpose of this study. this scale was designed to assess the construct of parenting style independently of parenting practice (lefebevre, 2004). it consisted of 36 items; twelve items for each parenting style dimension, namely, autonomy-granting, demandingness and responsiveness. participants had a choice of circling a scale from one to five, one symbolizing disagreement with the statement and five depicting high agreement with the statement. the inter-item reliability of the psiii is adequate for this study (r = .78). additionally, the psi-ii has adequate internal consistency, variability, and predictive validity. based on the scores on the scale participants' mothers' parenting styles were classified into four categories: authoritative, where the mother demonstrated democratic interaction patterns with the child, authoritarian, where the parent was autocratic and cold with the child, permissive, where the parent was laissez-faire and finally, neglectful, where the mother had all but abandoned the child. ii) rosenberg self-esteem scale: the scale was adapted for the purpose of this study. the scale consists of 10 positive and negative self-appraisal statements rated on a 4point likert scale format from 1 (strong disagree) to 4 (strong agree). higher scores indicate higher self-esteem (rosenberg, 1965). the reliability and validity of the scale are both adequate. iii) self-reported gpa score by the student: students were asked to report their current cumulative gpa scores. the reported gpa scores range between 1-4 points. the overall gpa mean score is 2.85 (sd = 1.7) as reported by the participants of this study. procedures participants were selected using the stratified random sampling technique. fourteen school principals who represented the seven emirates of the researchers’ interest were c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 10 contacted and agreed to participate in the study. information about the study and a thank-you letter from the researchers were sent via e-mail to the principals of all the schools. principals were also asked in the letter if the researchers could come at the beginning or after a class to collect the data. most principals preferred that researchers come at the end of the class to collect the data. all students who are enrolled in the selected classes took part in the study. the first and the third author visited each classroom and administered the questionnaire to each child individually. the investigators read each question out loud and wrote down the response. results results are reported as significant when the p-value is less than .05 for each relationship for all of the statistical computations that were performed.table 1 depicts the bivariate correlations of the parental dimensions of autonomy, responsiveness, demandingness, and mothers’ parenting style with children’s selfesteem, and their overall academic performance in the classroom. there were only two relationships that were significant with respect to either of the outcome variables. demandingness was significantly related to overall academic performance. the more demanding the parents were, the better the performance of the child in school (r = .29). gender was significantly correlated with gpa score. boys performed better in school than girls (r = .53). self-esteem was not significantly related to any of the variables. the student’s gender and age were significantly correlated to the mother’s parenting styles. in other words, parents’ interactions with children were dependent on both the gender of the child and the age of the child. autonomy-granting and demandingness by parents was significantly related to the age of the child. the older the child, the more autonomy parents parenting style 11 offered the child (r = .20) and the more demanding parents were of the child (r = .23). responsiveness was significantly correlated with the gender of the child. parents were more responsive to girls as compared with boys (r = .39). having transformed each of the independent parental-style dimensions into four banded categories by the standard deviation change on each dimensional score, a 4 (responsiveness) x 4 (demandingness) x 4 (autonomy-granting) manova was conducted using grades and self-esteem scores as dependent variables. responsiveness and autonomygranting were not found to significantly affect the dependent variable scores. demandingness was found to have a significant impact on gpa scores (f = 3.45, p < .05) but the relationship between demandingness and self-esteem was not significant. a tukey post-hoc test revealed that parents who scored very high on demandingness (4.35 or above on a scale of 5) had children who had significantly better grades than parents who scored less than 4.34 on demandingness. however, there was no difference between the gpa scores of children who reported that their parents made very few demands on them (less than 3.03) and children who reported that their parents had relatively higher expectations of them (between 3.04 and 4.34). the average gpa score for children in the highest demandingness group was 2.36 out of 3.0. the average grade for children of parents in the other three demandingness groups were 1.77, 2.0 and 1.8 respectively. finally, a factor analysis was conducted using the items in the parental style questionnaire. this statistical technique aims to explain the most amount of common variance in a correlation matrix using the least amount of variables possible. since the study was conducted in a different cultural context, the items may not always hold the same meaning for respondents in the uae that they hold for respondents in the u.s. where the c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 12 questionnaire has been used the most. the questionnaire has been used mostly with middle class caucasian students and less often with other children, even within the u.s. in this sample of 162 children the kaisermeyer-olkins was .68, which was greater than .5, indicating that this was a sufficient enough sample to conduct a factor analysis. initial principals-component extraction yielded a total of ten factors, which accounted for 69.56 % of the total variation. however, a scree plot analysis suggested retaining three of the variables. the factors were analyzed after an orthogonal rotation with varimax with kaiser normalization method. the first factor with an eigenvalue of 6.7, we called family cohesion, accounted for 21 % of the variation. the family cohesion variable involved items such as, “when my family does things together, she expects me to come”. the second factor with an eigenvalue of 3.2, we called self-autonomy, accounted for 10 % of the total variation. the self-autonomy factor included statements such as, “my mother encourages me to think for myself”. the third factor with an eigenvalue of 2.1, which we called effort, accounted for 7 % of the variation. the effort factor included statements such as “my mother sets high standards for me to meet.” the scores from the three factors that we derived from the factor analysis procedure were correlated with gpa scores and self-esteem. family cohesion correlated significantly with gpa scores (r = .33) but not self-esteem. effort was related to grade (r = .16) and to self-esteem (r = .15). self-autonomy was correlated negatively with gpa scores (r = -.22) but did not exhibit any relationship with self-esteem. discussion the impact of parenting style on 5-8th grade students’ academic performance and self-esteem was analyzed within a sample of the united arab emirates (uae) public school parenting style 13 children. a sample of 162 children (50% boys, 50% girls) reported on their mothers’ childrearing practices. the psi–ii and the rosenberg self-esteem scales were administered to children along with their self-reported gpa scores. parents’ styles were classified into one of three groups (autonomy granting, demandingness, or responsiveness). the results show that demandingness was found to have a significant impact on gpa scores. both gender and age were significantly related to parenting styles. thus mothers interacted differently with their children based on the age of the child and the gender of the child. factor analysis results suggested that family cohesion and effort were positively related to school performance and self-autonomy was negatively related to school performance. self-esteem was not significantly related to any of the variables studied. of the three dimensions of parenting, only the demandingness measure was correlated positively with gpa scores. the results of this study indicated that children of parents who had high expectations from them performed better in school than children whose parents had low expectations from them. when each parental style dimension was transformed into 4 discrete categories with each category about one standard deviation from each other, it was found that only children with the highest parental demandingness score performed significantly better than the others; the grades of children who came from the other three bands of scores did not do significantly better than each other. thus increasing parental expectations from children did not necessarily translate itself into better grades. it is also unclear as to what the direction of the relationship is, since parents who have high expectations in school for their children may simply be reacting to the high achievement exhibited by the students. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 14 gender was correlated significantly to the gpa scores earned by the students. boys did significantly better than girls. this trend has been replicated in other cultural contexts. sadker and sadker (1995) bemoaned the significant hurdles facing girls in american schools, outlining the many ways in which girls and women are discriminated against in educational institutions. this practice may have resulted in girls achieving less than their potential especially in areas that are considered masculine like science and math. gender and age were both related to parenting as measured by the mothers’ parenting style questionnaire. just as in studies in other cultural contexts, the older the child was the more autonomy mothers granted the child. this substantiates the notion that parenting style is not a stable quality exhibited by parents but is often fluid and responding to the changing nature of the child. parents were more demanding of children as they got older as well. in traditional islamic societies, children are perceived to be connected to other members of their families and the larger community. along with increased autonomy also comes increasing responsibility and demands to prove they are capable of fulfilling their obligations to their parents and other family members. the fact that age and gender were both related to mothers’ parenting styles in this study corroborate the findings from previous research (e.g., conrade et al., 2001; lee, et al., 2006). parental responsiveness was related to the gender of the child; girls perceived parents to be more responsive to them as compared to boys. again, this phenomenon is exhibited in other cultural contexts as well. researchers who have studied parenting styles and its impact on school performance argue that the more responsive a parent is, the better the performance of the child should be in school (baumrind, 1989; cohen & rice, 1997). a counter argument to the above reasoning is that there is a lot of evidence to show that parents respond to girls parenting style 15 verbally and non-verbally more often and faster than they respond to boys (maccoby & martin, 1983; tomlinson, 1991). yet, their school achievement typically lags behind boys. one reason for the contradiction is that girls are taught to view themselves relationally with regard to other people and increased parental responsiveness to their needs advances that aim. however, it does not lead to better performance in school because school achievement is essentially an individualistic endeavor and makes girls alienated and less connected in the process. in traditional societies this phenomenon may be exacerbated because a girls’ identity may be tied up with perceiving herself as a sustainer of other people and not towards her own growth. additionally, a factor analysis was conducted using all of the items on the parenting scale. the rationale for conducting the factor analysis is that often questions in surveys that may seem to have obvious and straightforward meanings to researchers in one cultural context may be read very differently by participants in another cultural context. thus a statement like, “my mother respects my privacy” may indicate a sense of trust in middle white class society while it may indicate neglect in another culture. three major factors emerged from the analysis. family cohesion had the most number of items (8 items) and it was reflected in statements that had to do with activities performed with one’s parent and the importance that parents gave to it. some of the statements were not part of the original 15item scale (psi-ii). it had the highest correlation with self-reported gpa scores as well (r = .33). children who perceived their family as being important and closely knot had higher gpa scores than children who did not. the family is the center of one’s relational life in traditional islamic societies. children spend a lot of time with the adults in their families even as they turn into adolescence. as this study illustrates, the expectation that they are c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 16 going to follow family rules, have strict codes of behavior around family members and do chores for the family appears to influence school performance in a positive fashion. these have not been studied in terms of their relationship with grades in the western context. high self-autonomy was negatively correlated with gpa scores. this parental dimension had items similar to autonomy granting as conceived of in the original scale. but it had other items that are not part of the original scale, i.e., “my mother encourages me to talk to her honestly”. the finding that self-autonomy was not positively related to school performance is contradictory to what has been found in studies in western contexts. perhaps children’s performance in school in the uae is heavily influenced by the obligations that they feel towards their families to make them proud. in families where the child is not allowed to have their own voice, the child may decide that school is not very important to them and may not make much effort to do well. finally, effort was related positively to gpa scores but to a lesser extent than did family cohesion. effort included a number of items that were not included in the original scale, i.e., “my mother pushes me to do my best in whatever i do”. in several studies, it has been found that asian cultures value effort more than they do ability. when children are asked to explain success and failure in vignettes that were posed to them, they spontaneously chose effort as an explanation rather than ability even when it contradicted reality (parameswaran & hom, 2001). the finding in this study perhaps reflected the attributional framework that the child participants in this study used. in other words, successful children in school may perceive their parents to be more supportive of their efforts than children who do not do well in school. parenting style 17 thus in this study, of the traditional parental style dimensions (demandingness, autonomy-granting and warmth), only demandingness appears to significantly affect child outcomes if child outcomes is operationalized as school performance. the original parenting styles questionnaire as conceived by baumrind was mainly used with white middle class children. our study explored parenting styles among children in the united arab emirates. examining the parental behaviors that related to school achievement among the sample in this study, we found a very different group of variables that seemed to relate to school performance. factor analysis with the questionnaire seems to suggest that, family cohesion and effort were positively related to gpa scores and selfautonomy was negatively related to gpa scores. results from studies from “non-western” cultures substantiate the importance of the extended family in children's lives and their school achievement (chao, 2001; christina, 2008). in collectivistic societies, the feeling of oneness to the larger group prevents one wanting to stand out from other individuals in any way. thus too high a self-esteem is discouraged and self-disparagement is encouraged by adults in the familial group. even when children exhibit increased effort it is for the good of one’s familial group and it is less about exhibiting one's own prowess. in cultural groups where one's identity is so tied to the larger cultural group that one belongs, it is not surprising that increased feelings of cohesion with the family leads to better performance in school. a very interesting problem posed by the outcomes of this study is the apparent disconnectedness of self-esteem to any of the variables we studied unlike previous research (e.g., juan & larry, 2004; martinez & garcia, 2007; robin & foster, 1989). however, previous studies have found that higher self-esteem is not necessarily a positive force in c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 18 many cultures. among marginalized and disadvantaged communities in the usa, members of ‘gangs’ and other deviant groups tend to have higher self-esteem than other children in the community. in several traditional cultures, self-depreciating behavior is considered appropriate in order for members to demonstrate their solidarity with the group (chao, 1994; martinez, garcia & yubero, 2007). the items used to measure self-esteem as conceived by western researchers may be inadequate to capture respect for oneself as construed by members of a traditional islamic community. thus we may need to come up with a more culturally sensitive test in order to capture this construct in the uae. there were some limitations to this study. the parenting style of mothers alone was examined and not that of fathers. the gender of the parent has been found to have an important mediating effect of mothers’ style on the child. mothers were not interviewed nor were observations conducted in order to incorporate the children’s reports with actual behavior. the grades of the children were self-reported and not reported by school personnel and hence they may have been inaccurate. there are potentially exciting questions that a future study may be able to answer. how might parental behaviors vary across cultures as parents attempt to develop bonds with their children? what are the familial determinants of school performance in an affluent but traditional society? table 1: correlation between selected variables in the study: correlation between selected variables in the study: age gende r selfesteem gpa responsiveness demandingness autonomy age .04 .02 .08 -.11 .20* .23* parenting style 19 gender .04 -.05 .53** -.20* .14 -.15 self-esteem .02 -.05 .15 .04 .02 -.07 gpa .08 .53** .15 -.03 .29** -.02 responsiveness -.11 -.20* .04 -.03 .03 .39** demandingness .20* .14 .02 .29** .03 -.07 autonomy .23* -.15 -.07 -.02 .39 -.07 notes: * indicates that the relationship is significant at the p<.05 level (2-tailed) ** indicates that the relationship is significant at the p<.01 level (2-tailed) c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 20 references american psychological association. 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(2003). parenting style of chinese fathers in hong kong: correlates with children's school-related performance. international journal of adolescent medicine and health, 15(1):51-62 2003. tomlinson, r. k. (1991). unacceptable adolescent behavior and parent adolescent conflict. child & adolescent social work journal, 8(1), 33-51. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 24 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo volume 4, number 4 april 17, 2001 issn 1099-839x the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write heidi goodrich andrade ohio university this study examines the impact of instructional rubrics on eighth grade students' writing and on their knowledge of the qualities of effective writing. students in the treatment group were given instructional rubrics that articulated the criteria and gradations of quality for three assigned essays. students in the control group wrote the same three essays but did not receive the rubric. students in the treatment group received, on average, higher scores on one of the three essays. questionnaires administered at the end of the study revealed that students in the treatment group tended to identify more of the criteria by which their writing was evaluated. rubrics are currently among the most popular innovations in education (goodrich andrade, 2000; goodrich, 1997a, 1997b; jensen, 1995; ketter, 1997; luft, 1997; popham, 1997), but little research on their effectiveness has been undertaken. moreover, few of the existing research efforts have focused on the ways in which rubrics can serve the purposes of learning and thinking as well as meet the demands of evaluation and accountability. the study described in this paper investigates the impact of instructional rubrics on students' written compositions and on their knowledge of the qualities of effective writing. a rubric is usually a oneor two-page document that lists the criteria for a specific assignment and describes varying levels of quality, from excellent to poor. "instructional rubrics" are rubrics that have been explicitly designed to support as well as to evaluate student learning (goodrich andrade, 2000). instructional rubrics have several features that support learning:  they are written in language that students can understand;  they define and describe quality work;  they refer to common weaknesses in students' work and indicate how such weaknesses can be avoided, and;  they can be used by students to assess their works-in-progress and thereby guide revision and improvement. although the format of an instructional rubric can vary, most rubrics have two features in common: 1. a list of criteria, or what counts in the evaluations of a project or assignment, and 2. gradations of quality, or descriptions of strong, middling and problematic work. table 1 [see “scoring rubric for persuasive essay rubric” in appendix b] contains one of the instructional rubrics used in this study. like each of the rubrics used, it draws on district, state and national standards as well as on feedback from teachers and researchers. it accompanied the following persuasive essay assignment: the state of california has a law that all students must be educated until 16 years of age. this law passed after some debate. some people thought it was a good law, some didn't. put yourself in these current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 lawmakers' shoes and argue either for or against this law. in a 5-paragraph essay, be sure to:  form an opinion on this issue and support it with strong arguments and relevant information, and  use your knowledge of democracy to explain how having or not having such a law would affect a democratic society like ours. this rubric was designed to promote the development of writing skills by describing effective, genre-specific writing as well as the kinds of problems that students commonly experience as they write. genre-specific criteria are helpful as guidelines for student writers because they "announce what is to be achieved in clear and useful language" (cooper, 1999, p. 31). for example, the considers reasons against the claim criterion reminds students to acknowledge a perspective opposite their own and explain how this perspective is lacking. research shows that students (as well as adults) tend not to consider contrary arguments (perkins, jay & tishman, 1993), not because they can't do it but rather because they don't think about doing it. including this criterion cues students to attend to an important component of a persuasive essay. the overarching principle here is that a rubric which reflects and reveals problems that students commonly experience provides more informative feedback than one that either describes mistakes they do not recognize or that defines levels of quality so vaguely as to be meaningless (e.g., "poorly organized" or "boring"). the persuasive essay instructional rubric was also designed to support the use of reasoning skills. the second and third criteria, reasons in support of the claim and reasons against the claim, give the rubric an emphasis on critical thinking—an emphasis missing from many rubrics. these two criteria inform students that critical thinking must be demonstrated in their essays and attempt to guide them in how (and how not) to do it. theoretical framework the hypothesis for this study is that instructional rubrics can have positive effects on students' writing and learning about writing. this hypothesis draws on several areas of cognitive and educational research, including authentic assessment, self-regulated learning, and the teaching and evaluation of writing. perspectives on authentic assessment provide a guiding definition of assessment as an educational tool that serves the purposes of learning as well as the purposes of evaluation (gardner, 1991; hawkins et al., 1993; shepard, 2000; wiggins, 1989a, 1989b; wolf & pistone, 1991). the literature on self-regulated learning and feedback suggests that learning improves when feedback informs students of the need to monitor their learning and guides them in how to achieve learning objectives (bangert-drowns et al., 1991; butler and winne, 1995). similarly, the literature on assessing writing recommends distinguishing between evaluation and grading by having students engage in a process of ongoing evaluation that provides precise and detailed information about what is expected for a particular assignment, as well as guidance on how students can improve their writing on that assignment (cooper, 1999; cooper & odell, 1999; white, 1994; white, 2000). taken together, theory and research on assessment, self-regulation, and feedback suggests that instructional rubrics have the potential to scaffold students' writing if the rubrics and the writing assignment have certain characteristics. they must:  articulate clear, genre-specific criteria for the assignment;  provide guidance in meeting the criteria;  provide opportunities for improvement through revision;  be sensitive to students' developmental readiness by referring to appropriate grade level standards. in this study, these principles for effective assessment were implemented by giving students instructional rubrics like the one in table 1. the other rubrics that were used and their accompanying assignments can be found in appendix a. research questions and methods this study was motivated by two research questions. the first question is: does providing students with instructional rubrics affect their knowledge of the qualities of effective writing? a written questionnaire was used to uncover students' beliefs about "what counts" when evaluating an essay. the questionnaire consisted of one question; "when your teachers read your essays and papers, how do they decide whether your work is excellent (a) or very good (b)?" the question, which was borrowed from a study conducted by dr. w. haney of boston college (personal communication, july 29, 1996), allowed for an examination of students' knowledge of the criteria by which their writing was evaluated and, by extension, of the qualities that define effective writing. this study's second research question is: does providing students with instructional rubrics affect the quality of their writing? this question was investigated by creating two groups of students— those who received an instructional rubric and those who did not—and comparing the average scores the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 3 received on the essays written by each group. in this way, it was possible to determine, at least in broad stroke, whether or not rubrics can have a measurable effect on student writing. sample this project was supported by the edna mcconnell clark foundation, which asked that the work be carried out in schools with which the foundation collaborates. as a result, the research was conducted in nine eighth-grade classes in two very different middle schools in southern california. one of the schools (school a) is located in an upper middle class, largely professional, suburban neighborhood with little ethnic diversity. many of the non-white students that attended school a were bussed in from adjacent communities and tended to be placed in lower level classes. the language arts teachers with whom i worked in school a designed their curricula independently of each other. school b, in contrast, is located in an ethnically and linguistically diverse, working class, urban community. the teachers with whom i worked at school b collaborated on an integrated curriculum that combined history and language arts. their shared humanities curriculum drew explicitly on the district's standards and an experimental new portfolio process. the combined sample from both schools included 242 students. half of the students were boys and half were girls. one hundred and twenty-one (50.0%) were latino, 86 (35.5%) were white, 31 (12.8%) were black, and 4 (1.7%) were of asian descent (filipino, chinese, vietnamese, cambodian or laotian). approximately 8% of the students were considered to have special educational needs, and 6% were identified as students for whom english was a second language (esl). the average humanities/language arts grade for the term prior to this study was 75.9% (or a c). one hundred and forty-one of the students in the sample attended school a and 101 attended school b. procedure the study spanned the 1996-97 school year. students were asked to write three different essays approximately one month apart. each assignment was designed to meet the individual school's curriculum and evaluation needs, so students in the two schools were twice assigned different essays. the first assignment for both schools was a persuasive essay. the second assignment was an autobiographical journey essay at school b, and an essay entitled "oh, the places we'll go" in school a. school a's second essays were not included in this study because of problems in the implementation of the assignment. the third and final assignment was a historical fiction essay in school b, and an essay about a personal challenge in school a. before writing a first draft of each essay, students in the treatment classes were given an instructional rubric. as principle investigator, i introduced the rubric to students during one class period in one of the treatment classrooms while the teachers observed. the teachers of the treatment classes then introduced the rubric to their own classes while i observed. students in both the treatment and control classes were asked to write first and second drafts of the essays, but the students in the control group were not given a rubric. approximately three weeks after the completion of the third essay, all students were asked to write a narrative response to the one-question questionnaire. dependent measures data were collected on two dependent variables: 1) students' responses to the written questionnaire, and 2) students' scores on the essays written for this study. three of the four classes at school a and all five classes at school b filled out and returned the questionnaires at the end of the study, for a total of 196 complete questionnaires. i analyzed students' narrative responses to the questionnaire by noting all of the qualities of writing, or criteria, to which students referred, such as spelling, neatness, organization, "good ideas," and "whether [the teacher] likes me or not." three research assistants and i scored the essays. none of the research assistants had a background in research or writing and none were able to score more than one collection of essays, necessitating rather lengthy training periods and extended attempts to reach reliability for each assignment. we always began by reviewing the rubric for the assignment in order to come to agreement on the precise definition of terms and to "unpack" overlapping criteria. the resulting adaptations did not significantly change the meaning of the rubric, but aided in achieving scoring reliability. see appendix b for the rubrics that we used to score the essays. each essay was scored on each criterion, then an average score was calculated. a total of one hundred and six persuasive essays were scored. because of implementation problems in school a, the second essay written for this study was not used. thirty-seven autobiographical incident essays from school b were scored. one hundred and sixty historical fiction/personal challenge essays were scored. reliability was checked by testing the correlation between the average scores assigned by two raters, and by determining the cohen's kappa for current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 the scores given for each criterion on the rubric. (cohen's kappa is a measure of percentage agreement corrected for chance agreement: k = po pe / 1 pe. ) comparing only the average score would have produced higher rates of agreement but would also have masked disagreements about how students performed on the individual criteria. for the persuasive essay, a correlation of .93 and a cohen's kappa of 70% were achieved by the two raters on the first twenty-six essays scored. for the autobiographical incident essay, the raters scored twenty-two essays together. a correlation of .73 and a cohen's kappa of 60% agreement were achieved for the last six essays. for the historical fiction and personal challenge essays, the raters achieved a cohen's kappa of 67% and a correlation of .74 after scoring thirty-five essays together. at the conclusion of this study the research assistants and i revised the scoring process, and a subsequent study (in preparation) had far higher rates of agreement. for the purposes of this study, however, the above rates of agreement were considered low but adequate. independent measures data were also collected on several independent measures, including school attended, teacher, grade level, gender, ethnicity, previous performance in english as measured by standardized test scores and grades, and identification as esl or a student with special needs. analysis i analyzed the questionnaires by noting the criteria to which students referred, including academically relevant qualities like content and spelling, and academically irrelevant influences such as whether or not the work was turned in on time. i compared the kind of criteria referenced by students in the treatment and control groups to each other and to the criteria contained in the rubrics used in the study. the responses from students in school a and school b were analyzed separately because the students in the control group at school b had had previous exposure to rubrics used by their teacher. the equivalence of the treatment and control groups on each of the independent variables was assessed using chi-square tests for categorical variables and t tests for continuous variables. the two groups were equivalent in terms of gender (x 2 = .002, p = .96), ethnicity (x 2 = 6.76, p = .24), number of students with special needs (x 2 = .05, p = .82), number of esl students (x 2 = .62, p = .43), and previous grades in english/language arts (t = .02, p = .99). because school a and school b used different standardized tests with different scales, equivalence in terms of standardized test scores was determined by comparing the treatment and control groups in each school to each other. at school a, the treatment and control groups were equivalent (t = -.34, p = .74). at school b, the control group had, on average, higher scores and the difference approached statistical significance (t = 1.91, p = .06). as a result, the sample at school b was biased against the treatment and the findings were likely to represent a conservative estimate of the treatment effect. for this reason, standardized test score (test) was included as a high priority control variable in the multiple regression model building process. multiple linear regression was used to understand the relationship between the treatment, the independent variables, and the essay scores. the main effect of each predictor and its interaction with the treatment and with gender were tested. the effect of a predictor was considered statistically significant if its p value was < .05. residual plots from the multiple regression models were inspected throughout the model building process to ensure that the assumptions of linearity, normality and homoscedasticity had not been violated. questionnaires the analysis of students' responses to the questionnaire revealed striking differences between the treatment and control groups. the students in the control group at school a tended to mention fewer and more superficial criteria such as spelling, punctuation, and neatness, if they mentioned any specific criteria at all: well, they give us the assignment and they know the qualifications and if you have all of them you get an a and if you don't get any you get a f and so on. note that this student knows that the teacher has her standards or "qualifications" but he does not suggest that he knows what they are. students in the treatment group, in contrast, tended to mention the same criteria to which the control group referred plus a variety of others, including criteria contained in the rubrics used in this study: student 1: the teacher gives us a paper called a rubric. a rubric is a paper of information of how to do our essays good to deserve an a. if they were to give it an a it would have to be well organized, neat, good spelling, no errors and more important, the accurate information it gives. for a b it's neat, organized, some errors and pretty good information but not perfect. student 2: an a would consist of a lot of good expressions and big words. he/she also uses relevant and rich details and examples. the sentences are clear, they begin in different ways, some are longer than others, and no fragments. has good grammar and the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 5 spelling. a b would be like an a but not as much would be on the paper. with the exception of "neat," all of the criteria referred to by these two students were included in the rubrics used in this study. some of the criteria are quoted exactly as they were written in the rubric (e.g., "... sentences are clear, they begin in different ways..."), while others are paraphrased (e.g., "big words"). table 2 is a list of the criteria from the rubrics that were mentioned by students in the treatment group at school a but not by students in the control group. the numbers to the left represent the number of times each criterion was mentioned by students in the treatment group. students in the control group at school a did not refer to any of these eleven criteria, even by chance. table 2 criteria contained in rubrics and referenced by students in the treatment group but not by students in the control group at school a (n = 74). no. of references criterion 20 word choice, e.g., "words give [the reader] a vivid picture in her mind" 8 voice, reveals feelings and emotions 7 interesting, not boring 3 has accurate information 3 provides details 2 is descriptive 2 uses proper paragraph format 2 includes ideas, thoughts and opinions 2 makes a point 2 is well-organized, e.g., ";has a beginning, middle and end" 1 sentence structure the results from school b are a little different because the students in the control group were accustomed to using rubrics. seven students in the control class referred to the use of rubrics in their responses, even though they were not given the rubrics used in this study. nonetheless, small differences in the treatment and control groups at school b were found. table 3 is a list of the criteria contained in the rubrics used in this study and mentioned by students in the treatment group but not by students in the control group at school b. table 3 criteria contained in rubrics and referenced by students in the treatment group but not by students in the control group at school b (n = 122). no. of references criterion 4 word choice, "powerful words," "vividness" 4 organization 3 length, five paragraphs 3 gives details 2 tells about action and events 2 is easy to understand 2 ideas and content 1 setting 1 the way the writing flows 1 makes a point 1 voice 1 sentence fluency 1 tells about lessons learned 1 contains correct information discussion of questionnaires when compared to the responses of students in the control group, students in the treatment group tended to refer to a greater variety of academically relevant criteria for effective writing. these differences suggest that the students who received the three instructional rubrics had more (if not complete) knowledge of what counts in writing and of the criteria by which their essays were evaluated. it appears that instructional rubrics have the potential to at least broaden students' conceptions of effective writing beyond mechanics to include qualities such as word choice, voice and tone. however, the results of the essay scores discussed in the following section suggest that, predictably, transferring students' new knowledge about effective writing to the composition of written essays is more difficult. current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 essay scores table 4 lists the final regression models for each of the essays. the parameter estimates and pvalues for the treatment condition reveal that there was a positive effect of treatment on the second essay (the autobiographical journey) but not the first or third essays. interestingly, the negative parameter estimate for the interaction between treatment and gender for the third essay (historical fiction/personal challenge) indicates that there may have been a negative effect of treatment on girls' scores but no effect for boys. table 4 parameter estimates from final regression models (see also appendix d) essay 1 n = 106 essay 2 n = 37 essay 3 n = 160 intercept 1.57*** 2.18** 1.62*** trt_cntrl 0.0009 0.49** 0.12 grades 0.01*** -0.005 0.009* test 0.010* 0.01~ 0.009~ teacher -0.100** school 0.300~ (n/a) 0.22* gender -1.78~ 0.51* grades*gender 0.02~ ethnicity 0.20~ trt*gender -0.43~ r 2 % 25 40 19 ~ p < .10 * p < .05 ** p < .01 *** p < .001 essay 1. there was no measurable effect of the treatment on students' scores on the persuasive essay. the only statistically significant effects come from variables with traditionally robust predictive power: previous performance in english, teacher, and school attended. essay 2. because of implementation difficulties at school a during the writing of the "oh, the places we'll go" essay, only the autobiographical essays from school b were scored. the results show that, controlling for grades, test scores, gender, and an interaction between grades and gender, students in the treatment group are predicted to score, on average, almost half a point higher on a 4-point scale than students in the control group. figure 1 summarizes the effect of treatment graphically. figure 1. relationship between essay scores, asat scores and gender for essay 2, autobiographical incident (n=37). the essays in appendix c reveal some of the differences in the autobiographical journey essays written by students in the treatment and control groups. in general, the treatment essays attend more carefully to the purpose of the journey, character development, dialogue, action, paragraph breaks, and conventions. that is not to say that the treatment essays always deal with these criteria effectively; some attempts to meet the requirements of the rubric are limited and/or clunky. for example, the use of dialogue is usually minimal ("then my dad said, 'shut up or i'll turn around and drive straight home'"), and the lessons learned are often tacked on to the end of the essays as afterthoughts ("i learned a valuable lesson that day which was, 'never do anything, that you now you're going to get in trouble for and regrete.'"). nonetheless, the student writers in the treatment group were clearly attending to the criteria on the rubric and, by attempting to meet them, learning about writing. although the teacher of the control group had had her students write down the criteria for the autobiographical essay, they did not have the full rubric at their elbows as they wrote, and their writing reveals fewer explicit attempts to fulfill the criteria. essay 3. the analyses of last two essays, historical fiction and personal challenge, were collapsed because the effect of treatment did not differ by school. since the main effect of treatment is not statistically significant, there are no measured overall differences in essay scores between the treatment and control groups, controlling for the other variables (t = .72, p = .47). the main effect of gender is statistically significant (t = 2.22, p = .03), which shows that, on average, girls are predicted to file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2001,%20vol%204,%20%231-7/number4/index.html%23appendixc the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 7 score .51 points higher than boys, controlling for grades, test scores, and ethnicity. however, the interaction between treatment and gender approaches statistical significance (t = -1.76, p = .08), suggesting that the effect of treatment may be different for girls and boys. for boys, there was no statistically significant difference between the average essay scores for the treatment and control groups. girls in the treatment group, in contrast, tended to score .31 points lower than girls in the control group, controlling for grades, test scores, school and ethnicity. thus, it appears that there may be a negative effect of the treatment on girls' scores for this essay. figure 2 represents this relationship graphically. figure 2. relationship between essay scores, grades and gender fr essay 3, historical fiction/personal challenge (n=160). discussion of essay scores findings from the analysis of the essay scores paint an uneven but intriguing pattern of results. in general, it appears that simply handing out, reviewing and explaining instructional rubrics can orient students toward the criteria for writing as communicated by the rubric and can help students write to those criteria, but that a more intensive intervention may be necessary in order to help all students perform at higher levels consistently. the lack of a treatment effect for the first assignment—the persuasive essay—may be due to several factors. for one, it was many teachers' and students' first exposure to a rubric. only one of the eight teachers participating in this study had previously used rubrics: they may not have been adequately prepared to support students in their use. this is also a likely explanation for the fact that the teacher variable had an effect on scores on the first essay but not on the second or third essays: by the second essay, each of the teachers and their classes had at least some familiarity with rubrics. a second reason for the lack of an effect of the treatment on the first essay may be that the rubric itself was not written in particularly student-friendly terms. the second and third rubrics were written in more accessible language. a third reason for the lack of an effect may be that the students did not have enough time to revise the essays. several teachers reported that the three days the students were given to write and revise was inadequate. students were given five days to write essays two and three. finally, a power calculation suggested that this sample (n = 106, control group n = 30) only had a power of 31% to detect a small effect of treatment even at the relaxed alpha level of .10. a larger sample size may or may not have detected an effect. findings from the second assignment—the autobiographical essay—are positive yet conditional. on the one hand, the magnitude of the between-group differences for the second essay appears to be educationally as well as statistically meaningful. an average of a half-point difference on a 4-point scale is a 12.5% difference. this effect is all the more meaningful because of the minimal amount of classroom time taken by the intervention: less than forty minutes was spent on introducing and reviewing each rubric. on the other hand, the sample size for the second essay is limited (n = 37, treatment = 26, control = 11), so firm conclusions are not warranted. the findings from the third assignment—the historical fiction and personal challenge essays— stand in partial contrast to the findings from the second assignment. assignment 3 results indicate that instructional rubrics may actually be related to a detriment to the performance of girls but not boys. however, it is possible that the results of the last essay were confounded by end-of-the-year pressures. teachers at both schools reported that the third essay assignment came just as their students were attempting to meet new, district mandated portfolio and exhibition requirements for graduation. one teacher referred to the time period when students were writing the third essay as: a last ditch effort to complete their graduating exhibitions. although the third essay would have been awesome to put in an exhibition, most kids were trying to take the easy way out (which was to revise something they already had rather than create something new). when push came to shove—finish exhibition and go to high school or finish the essay—high school won out. nonetheless, the possibility of gender differences in the ways students respond to the use of rubrics needs further investigation. it is conceivable that the different results for each essay could also be explained in part by the fact that students were asked to write different kinds of essays, and different kinds of writing require current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 different kinds of skills. autobiographical essays, for instance, may be easier for students to write and to revise according to a rubric than persuasive essays or historical fiction in part because students are more practiced at telling their own stories. in addition, historical fiction and especially persuasive essays require a writer to decenter, or argue her point from a perspective other than her own. although many junior high students can be expected to have the cognitive maturity needed to decenter, moffett (1983) notes that writing from multiple points of view is a difficult skill that develops over a lifetime. it is possible that students' preferences for their own perspectives made the autobiographical essays easier to write. if that was the case, it is also likely that they found the autobiographical essay rubrics easier to understand and to use, hence the positive effect of the treatment. the implication, not surprisingly, is that instructional rubrics scaffold writing within students' zones of proximal development and no further. like all instructional materials, rubrics should be designed with regard to students' cognitive development and skill level, aiming just beyond what students are able to do without assistance. the relationship between gender and writing may come into play as well. for example, another study (goodrich andrade & delamater, in preparation) also found that girls tended to earn lower scores on historical fiction essays than boys. it has been suggested (m. donahue, personal communication, february 16, 2000) that girls have more difficulty writing historical fiction because most textbooks provide little information about the lives of women. future studies of the effects of rubrics should be careful to assign writing assignments that give male and female students equal opportunities to succeed. conclusion taken together, the analyses of the questionnaires and the essay scores indicate that simply handing out and explaining instructional rubrics can increase students' knowledge of the criteria for writing as communicated by the rubric, but that translating that knowledge into actual writing is more demanding. although instructional rubrics show promise even in a minimalist intervention like the one applied in this study, positive effects on writing are not a given. the literature on teaching and assessing student work, as well as my own teaching experience, indicate the need for sustained attention to the process of writing, with the provision of instructional rubrics playing a key part—but not the only part—in providing helpful feedback to students. for example, i have found it useful to involve students in the design of rubrics, based on their own critiques of effective and ineffective sample work, but controlled studies of this approach do not exist. research is needed on the most effective role for rubrics in the writing process and on the effect of rubrics on the performance of female students if the promises and pitfalls of this popular approach are to be understood and applied in ways that promote learning and development. notes this study was conducted while the author was a principle investigator at project zero, harvard graduate school of education. correspondence should be addressed to heidi andrade, ohio university, college of education, 340 mccracken hall, athens, oh 45701. the author would like to thank norma jimenez and beth delamater for their assistance in analyzing the results of this study. thanks also go to the edna mcconnell clark foundation for its financial support. the opinions expressed in this paper are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of the foundation. references bangert-drowns, r., kulik, c., kulik, j., & morgan, m. (1991). the instructional effect of feedback in test-like events. review of educational research, 61, 213-238. butler, d. & winne, p. (1995). feedback and self regulated learning: a theoretical synthesis. review of educational research, 65(3), 245-281. cooper, c. (1999). what we know about genres, and how it can help us assign and evaluate writing. in c. cooper and l. odell (eds.), evaluating writing: the role of teachers' knowledge about text, learning and culture. national council of teachers of english: urbana, il. cooper, c. & odell, l. (1999). evaluating writing: the role of teachers' knowledge about text, learning and culture. national council of teachers of english: urbana, il. gardner, h. (1991). assessment in context: the alternative to standardized testing. in b. r. gifford and m. c. o'connor (eds.), changing assessments: alternative views of aptitude, achievement and instruction. boston: kluwer. goodrich andrade, h. (2000). using rubrics to promote thinking and learning. educational leadership, 57(5), 13-18. goodrich andrade, h., & delamater, e. (in preparation). gender and the role of rubric referenced self-assessment in learning to write. goodrich, h. (1997b). thinking-centered assessment. in s. veenema, l. hetland, & k. chalfen (eds.), the project zero classroom: new the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 9 approaches to thinking and understanding. cambridge, ma: project zero, harvard graduate school of education. goodrich, h. (1997a). understanding rubrics. educational leadership, 54(4), 14-17. hawkins, j., frederikson, j., collins, a., bennet, d., & collins, e. (1993). assessment and technology: new ways to assess student learning. technology and education, 36(5). jensen, k. (1995). effective rubric design: making the most of this powerful assessment tool. science teacher, 62(5), 34-37. ketter, j. (1997). using rubrics and holistic scoring of writing. in tchudi, s. (ed.) alternatives to grading student writing. urbana, il: national council of teachers of english. luft, j. (1997). design your own rubric. science scope, 20(5), 25-27. moffett, james (1983). teaching the universe of discourse. boston: houghton mifflin co. perkins, d. n., jay, e., & tishman, s. (1993). beyond abilities: a dispositional theory of thinking. the merrill-palmer quarterly, 39(1), 1-21. popham, w. j. (1997). what's wrong—and what's right—with rubrics. educational leadership, 55(2), 72-75. shepard, l. (2000). the role of assessment in a learning culture. educational researcher, 29(7), 4-14. white, e. (1994). teaching and assessing writing: recent advances in understanding, evaluating, and improving student performance, 2nd edition. portland, me: calendar islands publishers. white, e. (2000). bursting the bubble sheet: how to improve evaluations of teaching. the chronicle of higher education, xlvii(11), b11. wiggins, g. (1989b). teaching to the (authentic) test. educational leadership, 46(7), 41-47. wiggins, g. (1989a). a true test: toward more authentic and equitable assessment. phi delta kappan, 70(9), 703-713. wolf, d., & pistone, n. (1991). taking full measure: rethinking assessment through the arts. new york: college board publications. current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 appendix a essay prompts and rubrics essay 2: autobiographical journey write about a journey you have taken. it could be a long trip, a short ride, a walk, or even a fantasy journey you experienced in your mind. tell your readers a story that lets us enter your real or imaginary journey and understand what it means to you. instructional rubric for essay 2: autobiographical journey 4 3 2 1 the purpose of the journey tells where you went and why going there was interesting or important tells where you went and why you went there either where you went or why you went there is unclear does not tell where you went or why you went there the scene vividly sets the scene, describing important sights, sounds, smells, and/or tastes along the way describes the scene in detail, but not vividly describes the scene at some point (usually the beginning) but some scenes are not described well does not describe the setting of the journey the cast of characters creates complex characters by showing them in action, using dialogue, letting the reader overhear their inner thoughts, describing their appearance, personality, behavior, etc. creates characters by describing them and using dialogue describes characters but does not show how they speak, behave, feel, etc. does not introduce a cast of characters the action tells one or two specific exciting, funny, unusual, or sad things that happened during the journey and why they were important tells one or two specific things that happened but it isn't clear why they were important tells one or two specific things but they aren't clearly written no specific events or actions stand out feelings, insights, lessons learned reveals feelings about and insights gained from the trip, and draws a general lesson learned from it reveals feelings about and insights gained from the trip describes a variety of feelings and ideas, but doesn't have a central "vibe," insight or reflection doesn't share any of the writer's insights or lessons learned organization story has an interesting beginning, a developed middle and satisfying end. correct paragraph format, at least 5 paragraphs story moves through the beginning, middle and end in a logical order. correct paragraph format, at least 5 paragraphs the story is usually organized but sometimes gets off the topic. some problems with paragraphs and/or less than 5 paragraphs the story is aimless and disorganized. incorrect paragraph and/or less than 5 paragraphs conventions uses first person form, correct grammar, mechanics and spelling. uses complex sentences, sophisticated vocabulary, etc. generally uses correct grammar, mechanics and spelling. frequent errors are distracting but do not interfere with meaning numerous problems with fragments, run-ons, grammar, spelling, etc. make the story hard to read the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 11 essay 3, school a: personal challenge write a 5 (or more) paragraph essay about a time you faced a challenge. perhaps this challenge seemed impossible, discouraging, or scary. perhaps you were helped through it by another person, or maybe you faced it on your own. tell about this incident in detail, including who was involved, what the people and surroundings looked like, exactly what happened, your thoughts about the alternatives or ways you could have handled the challenge, and the final outcome. try to make your readers understand why this particular event is memorable. instructional rubric for essay 3, school a: personal challenge criteria 4 3 2 1 ideas and content my paper tells of a difficult, discouraging or scary challenge; shows growth or change in the main character and how s/he coped; uses relevant and rich details and examples my paper tells of a challenge but it isn't made to sound very gripping; growth of the main character may be hard to see; uses relevant details and examples my paper tells of a challenge but it may not always be in focus; it may get off topic; it's not clear how the character grows; some details or examples may not matter or don't go together the challenge is murky; it is hard to tell what the topic is; it seems a little like random thoughts on paper organization my paper has a lead that establishes the challenge, a developed middle that builds tension, and a satisfying ending that resolves the problem, all in an order that makes sense, flows, and hangs together i have a beginning, middle and end in a logical order but without flair. my paper takes the reader on a walk but on a sidewalk, not a high wire my organization is rough but workable; my writing may drag its feet then race ahead; my ending may stop suddenly or drag on too long my writing is aimless and disorganized; there is little sense of a beginning or ending; it is probably confusing to a reader voice my writing has personality & sounds like a real person wrote it; it shows how i think and feel & sounds like it was written to be read my writing voice is engaging but may come and go, fading in and out my writing is bland or mechanical, sounds like i have not found my own way to say things there are no hints of the real me in my writing; it may sound like i don't like what i have written word choice the words i use are striking but natural, e.g., i use "terrified" instead of "scared," or "gut" instead of "stomach"; i use powerful verbs my paper has some fine word choices, but is often routine. my word choice is uninspired, colorless, and dull or sounds like i am trying too hard to impress; some words may be used incorrectly the same words are repeated over and over and over and over; some words may be bewildering and confusing to a reader sentence fluency my sentences are clear; they begin in different ways; some are longer than others; no fragments; my paper is a delight to read out loud my sentences are well constructed; some minor errors in sentence structure; my paper marches along but doesn't dance my sentences are often awkward or mechanical; little variety in length; may have many sentences that begin with the same word my paper is tough to read because of incomplete sentences, run-ons, and awkward phrasings conventions i use the correct paragraph form, grammar, capitals, spelling, and punctuation i made some errors, mostly by taking risks and using interesting words or sentences my spelling is correct on common words; several errors in conventions are distracting many errors in paragraph form, grammar, caps, spelling and punctuation make my paper hard to read current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 essay 3, school b: historical fiction please write a letter from or journal entry of a 14 year-old american living in some year between 1491 and 1979. take on the persona of your fictional character and write about a day in her or his life. your 5 (or more) paragraph entry should tell what year it is and use historically accurate phrases and language to describe your living situation, clothing, hygiene, education, roles in family and community, work, food, etc. also refer to relevant political, social, and/or religious events. instructional rubric for essay 3, school b: historical fiction criteria 4 3 2 1 ideas and content my paper brings the time and place in which my character lived alive; vividly describes her/his experiences and values; uses only historically accurate language and events my paper tells the time and place my character lived; describes a day in her/his life; most or all language and events are historically accurate the time & place my character lived is relatively clear, but his/her experiences are more like a list than a letter or diary entry; some language or events may be historically inaccurate the setting is murky; the character's language and experiences are often historically inaccurate; the paper may stray off topic or just ramble organization my letter/diary has a strong lead, a developed middle, and a satisfying ending, all in an order that makes sense, flows, and hangs together i have a beginning, middle and end in a logical order but without flair. my organization is rough but workable; my writing may drag its feet then race ahead; my ending may stop suddenly or drag on too long my writing is aimless and disorganized; there is little sense of a beginning or ending; it is probably confusing to a reader voice my writing sounds like a real person wrote it; it has personality; shows how i think and feel; sounds like it was written to be read my writing voice is engaging but may come and go, fading in and out my writing is bland or mechanical, sounds like i have not found my own way to say things there are no hints of a real person in my writing; it may sound like i don't like what i have written word choice the words i use are striking but natural, e.g., i use "terrified" instead of "scared," or "gut" instead of "stomach"; i use powerful verbs my paper has some fine word choices, but is often routine. my word choice is uninspired, colorless, and dull or sounds like i am trying too hard to impress; some words may be used incorrectly the same words are repeated over and over and over and over; some words may be bewildering and confusing to a reader sentence fluency my sentences are clear; they begin in different ways; some are longer than others; no fragments; my paper is a delight to read out loud my sentences are well constructed; some minor errors in sentence structure; my paper marches along but doesn't dance my sentences are often awkward or mechanical; little variety in length; may have many sentences that begin with the same word my paper is tough to read because of incomplete sentences, run-ons, and awkward phrasings conventions i use the correct paragraph form, grammar, capitals, spelling, and punctuation i made some errors, mostly by taking risks and using interesting words or sentences my spelling is correct on common words; several errors in conventions are distracting many errors in paragraph form, grammar, caps, spelling and punctuation make my paper hard to read the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 13 appendix b scoring rubrics scoring rubric for persuasive essay (adaptations to instructional rubric in bold) criteria 4 3 2 1 makes a claim makes a claim and explains why it is controversial. makes a claim but doesn't explain why it is controversial. a claim is made but it is buried, confused, or unclear. does not make a claim. gives reasons in support of the claim gives clear and accurate reasons in support of the claim. e.g., pro: leadership, informed voters, productive workers, learning from history, self-esteem, decision-making and other tht. skills, jobs / $, economy, delinquency / risk; con: freedom of choice, extracurricular pursuits selfeducation, waste of $, bad students ruin it for others, jobs / $, having kids of one's own. gives reasons in support of the claim, but overlooks important reasons. gives one or two weak reasons which don't support the claim well, and / or irrelevant reasons and / or confused reasoning. does not give reasons in support of the claim. considers reasons against the claim thoroughly discusses reasons against the claim and explains why the claim is valid anyway. reasons, as listed above, should come from whichever side was not taken as the claim. discusses reasons against the claim, but leaves out important reasons, andor doesn't explain why the claim still stands. acknowledges that there are reasons against the claim but doesn't explain them. does not give reasons against the claim. relates the claim to democracy discusses how issues related to democracy can be used both in support of and against the claim. discusses how issues related to democracy can be used to support the claim. says that democracy is relevant but does not clearly explain how or why. does not mention democracy. might mention freedom or choice, but without connecting beyond self to country or world. organization writing is well organized, has a compelling opening, an informative body, and satisfying conclusion. has appropriate paragraph format. writing shows organization through a clear beginning, middle and end. generally uses appropriate paragraph format. writing is usually organized but sometimes gets off topic. has several errors in paragraph format, and / or middle is disorganized. writing is aimless and disorganized. conventions uses correct grammar, mechanics and spelling. generally uses correct grammar. some minor errors do not distract or confuse the reader. shows some control of conventions but frequent errors are distracting or confusing to the reader. writing shows little control of conventions. serious and numerous problems distract and confuse the reader. words and sentences words are striking but natural, varied, and vivid. sentences are clear, defined, fluent, and diverse. may use sophisticated vocabulary and analogies. fine but routine word choice. wellconstructed but somewhat flat sentences. some minor errors. may attempt analogies. word choice is dull, uninspired, or overly selfconscious. some words may be used incorrectly. sentences are redundant, possibly awkward or mechanical. no analogies or strange ones! minimal variety in vocabulary, and some words may be bewildering or confusing to the reader. sentences are poorly crafted and difficult to read, e.g. runons, fragments, awkward phrasing. no analogies. current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 scoring rubric for autobiographical journey essay 4 the wow factor 3 2 an attempt 1 the purpose of the journey (can i say where they went & why?) tells where you went and why going there was interesting or important to you tells where you went and why you went there either where you went or why you went there is unclear does not tell where you went or why you went there the scene (do i have a picture?) vividly sets the scene, describing important sights, sounds, smells, and/or tastes along the way describes the central scene(s) in detail, but not vividly describes the scene at some point but some central scenes are not described well or only unimportant details are given does not describe the setting of the journey the cast of characters 1 2 creates complex characters by showing them in action, describing their appearance, personality or behavior, using dialogue, letting reader "overhear" their inner thoughts. creates central characters by describing who they are, what they look like, gestures, expressions, and using relevant dialogue tells who is in the story by giving names, ages, or older/younger references, but does not show how characters behave, feel, or only describes one of several characters or uses little or only irrelevant dialogue only vaguely refers to characters or leaves significant characters out, does not use dialogue the action tells one or two specific exciting, funny, unusual, or sad things that happened during the journey and why they were important tells in detail one or two specific things that happened but it isn't clear why they were important tells one or two specific things but without enough detail to let a reader understand what's going on no specific events or actions stand out feelings, insights, lessons learned reveals feelings about and insights gained from the trip. a general lesson learned draws on a thread that runs through the essay. reveals feelings about and insights gained from the trip, but insights may be tacked on at the end. describes feelings and ideas, but doesn't have a central insight or reflection, or it isn't well connected to the story doesn't share the writer's feelings, insights or lessons learned organization 1 2 story has an interesting beginning, a developed middle that builds tension, and satisfying end. correct paragraph format, at least 5 paragraphs story moves through the beginning, middle and end in a logical order. generally correct format, at least 5 paragraphs organization is rough but workable. story may get off topic. some problems with paragraphs and/or less than 5 paragraphs the story is aimless or disorganized, lacks direction. incorrect paragraph (maybe only 1) and/or less than 5 paragraphs conventions uses first person form, correct grammar, mechanics and spelling. uses complex sentences, sophisticated vocabulary, etc. generally uses correct grammar, mechanics and spelling. frequent errors are distracting but do not interfere with meaning (3 or so errors per paragraph) numerous problems with fragments, run-ons, grammar, spelling, etc. make the story hard to read the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 15 scoring rubric for the historical fiction essay criteria 4 3 2 1 ideas and content my paper brings the time and place in which my character lived alive; vividly describes her/his experiences and values; refers to historically accurate events. my paper tells the time and place my character lived; describes a day in her/his life; most or all events are historically accurate. the time & place my character lived is relatively clear, but his/her experiences are more like a list than a letter or diary entry; some events may be historically inaccurate. the setting is murky; the character's experiences are often historically inaccurate; the paper may stray off topic or just ramble. organization [stand back and think with holistic perspective] [imagine paragraph breaks] my letter/diary has a strong lead, a developed middle, and a satisfying ending, all in an order that makes sense, flows, and hangs together. i have a beginning, middle and end in order; some minor organization problems such as a superfluous or out-ofplace sentence. my organization is rough but workable; my writing may drag its feet then race ahead; my ending may stop suddenly or drag on too long. my writing is aimless and disorganized; there is little sense of a beginning or ending; it is probably confusing to a reader. voice (a) voice (b) i use only historically accurate language, consistently using terms, phrases and slang from the period. my writing sounds like a real person wrote it. my language is mostly historically accurate but without distinction. my writing voice is engaging but may fade in and out. i use basic english, avoiding 90's slang but not using language of the period. my writing is bland or mechanical in many places. i make no discernable attempt to use historically accurate language. there are no hints of a real person in my writing; it may sound like i don't like what i have written. word choice the words i use are striking but natural, e.g., i use "terrified" instead of "scared," or "gut" instead of "stomach"; i use powerful verbs. my paper has some fine word choices and generally good language; some parts may be routine. my word choice is uninspired, colorless, and dull or sounds like i am trying too hard to impress; some words may be used incorrectly. the same words are repeated over and over and over and over; some words may be bewildering and confusing to a reader. sentence fluency my sentences are clear; they begin in different ways; some are longer than others; no fragments; my paper is a delight to read out loud. my sentences are well constructed; some minor errors in sentence structure; my essay marches along but doesn't dance. my sentences are often awkward or mechanical; little variety in length; may have many sentences that begin with the same word. my paper is tough to read because almost all of my sentences are incomplete, run-ons, and/or awkward. conventions i use the correct paragraph form, grammar, capitals, spelling, and punctuation. i made some errors, perhaps by taking risks and using interesting words or sentences. my spelling is correct on common words; several errors in conventions are distracting. many errors in paragraph form, grammar, caps, spelling, punctuation make my paper hard to read. current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 scoring rubric for the challenge essay criteria 4 3 2 1 ideas and content my paper tells of a difficult, discouraging or scary challenge; shows growth or change in the main character and how s/he coped; uses relevant and rich details and examples my paper tells of a challenge but it isn't made to sound very gripping; growth of the main character may be hard to see; uses relevant details and examples my paper tells of a challenge but it may not always be in focus; it may get off topic; it's not clear how the character grows; some details or examples may not matter or don't go together the challenge is murky; it is hard to tell what the topic is; it seems a little like random thoughts on paper organization my paper has a lead that establishes the challenge, a developed middle that builds tension, and a satisfying ending that resolves the problem, all in an order that makes sense, flows, and hangs together i have a beginning, middle and end in order; may have minor organizational problems such as an out-of-place sentence or two. my paper takes the reader on a walk but on a sidewalk, not a high wire. my organization is rough but workable; my writing may drag its feet then race ahead; my ending may stop suddenly or drag on too long. [you may find yourself rearranging paragraphs.] my writing is aimless and disorganized; there is little sense of a beginning or ending; it is probably confusing to a reader voice my writing sounds like a real person wrote it; it has personality; shows how i think and feel; sounds like it was written to be read my writing voice is engaging but may come and go, fading in and out my writing is bland or mechanical, sounds like i have not found my own way to say things there are no hints of the real me in my writing; it may sound like i don't like what i have written word choice the words i use are striking but natural, e.g., i use "terrified" instead of "scared;" i use powerful verbs my paper has some fine word choices [you can count several], but is often routine. my word choice is plain or colorless or sounds like i am trying too hard to impress; some words may be used incorrectly the same words are repeated over and over and over and over; some words may be bewildering and confusing to a reader sentence fluency my sentences are clear; they begin in different ways; some are longer than others; no fragments; my paper is a delight to read out loud my sentences are well constructed; some minor errors in sentence structure; my paper marches along but doesn't dance my sentences are often awkward or mechanical; little variety in length; may have many sentences that begin with the same word my paper is tough to read because of incomplete sentences, run-ons, and awkward phrasings conventions i use the correct paragraph form, grammar, capitals, spelling, and punctuation i made some errors, mostly by taking risks and using interesting words or sentences my spelling is correct on common words; several errors in conventions are distracting many errors in paragraph form, grammar, caps, spelling, punctuation make my paper hard to read the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 17 appendix c sample essays identification number experimental condition score on rubric 1 treatment 3.22 2 treatment 3.00 3 treatment 4 (teacher score only) 4 control 1.56 5 control 1.44 autobiographical journey essays written by eighth grade students in this study essay 1: "vegas vacation" my dad had been planning on taking my brother and i to las vegas for weeks. the reason it was so important was because my brother and i have never been out of the state. we were going to leave july 10, a monday, and get back july 14, a thursday. we left at 3:00 am so that we would beat the heat. we would get there somewhere around 3:00 am. the day before we left we picked up a rental car, so we would have more room to move around. as we were driving through california we saw many important things. we saw landmarks which my dad said we would see. these landmarks represented the distance to our next destination. the closer we got the more the sun came out. it looked beautiful as we were going through all the mountains in california. in barstow we drove by a slaughter house and it smelled awful for about 30 minutes, then it went away. i drank bottled water and ate chips, that were some of the things we brought on the trip; so we would have something to eat and drink on the long trip. my dad, my brother and i were the ones who went to vegas. my brother was getting impatient about something and he started cusing. then my dad said "shut up or i'll turn around and drive straight home." my brother and i were in the backseat telling each other jokes and listening to music. my brother is short, skinny, and has brown hair. my dad is tall, strong, and has brown hair too. the second day we were there we went to an amusement park called grand slam canyon. the park had an indoor roller coaster that went all throughout the park. i didn't go on it because the line was too long, and because i didn't want to wait in line all day. they also have lots of midway games, and also a big 50 ft. high water slide. i went on the waterslide 3 times. it goes down pretty fast and i also got wet at the end of the slide. the next day we went to a waterpark called "wet n' wild." it was very hot 120 degrees, so the water was very refreshing on our bodies. the park had big pools with water shooting all around. you could just sit around, or frolic in the refreshing water. the best part of the park was a long river like thing that went all the way around the park. the current would take you about 5 miles an hour. you could sit on a big doughnut shaped innertube and float all the way around the park. i went on a lot of different slides. at first i was nervous, but once i started going it was very fun. we took a lot of pictures at these two places, and cut a lot of other places. we drove through glitter guleh and saw all of the different casinos and lights. we visited a lot of other casinos and hotels. we went inside the mgm grand, excaliber, treasure island, and many more. my feelings about this experience is very positive. i had the most fun i ever had in my life. it wasn't the only time i went, i also went the next summer. i found out how crazy about money people can get when there is a lot of it around. i also realized that i shouldn't take san diego's weather for granted. i learned that good weather is more important than having a lot of fun. sometimes fun is more important, but most of the time the weather is much more important. essay 2: my trip to the mall it all started on a sunday afternoon, when my friend mike and i were at my house watching t.v and we were so bored because all there was to watch was barney. we decided to go rollerblading at the mall because we thought it could have been exciting. it was fantastic at the mall! we had the greatest time there, we saw all kinds of different clothing and tasted all kinds of exotic foods. we arrived at this shop were they sold all kinds of weird things. the shop was small, blue, green, and with weird writing on the walls, it was really dark inside so it was hard to see. we smelled all sorts of things in the shop like: black beauty, strawberry, and cherry. current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 a mysterious lady came out of the back room, she was tall, skinny, with dark hair, and freckles. when she spoke to us, she sounded like if she was chocking on something. i saw that she was limping so i took a good look at her leg it looked like a pirate had chopped it off and glued on a wooden one. her personality wasn't at all good, i mean she said,"get the hell out of here." so of course we left the old lady and her weird old shop. after we had left we went to the movies but we had ran out of money so at the time mike and i thought the best thing to do was to sneak in; which was unusual for us because we like to play by the rules besides it was very important to us to brake the rules because we wanted to now how it felt like. so eventually we snuck in and eventually we got caught! for some reason i was expecting to happen, when it did it felt like a dark cloud had come over us and god himself was going to pass judgment on us! good thing that was all in my head because in reality the cops let us of in a warning. so of course right after that we left the mall and our journey had come to an end. i guess when i got home i felt bad for what i had done. i learned a valuable lesson that day which was, "never do anything, that you now you're going to get in trouble for and regrete." essay 3: untitled in my journey i was going to mexico to visit my family. this trip was very important to me because i learned how to get along with-out my parents. also, i learned how to do my best because two people were depending on me. in this trip i flew from tijuana b.c to mazatlan, mexico with my sister adriana. this interesting trip occurred when i was thirteen years old. the airplane i went on was aero mexico. this airplane had rows of three and two seats. in the airplane there were lots of people. we were sitting in the front so that's why i saw lots of people. the airplane at first smelled like perfume but later, it smelled like chicken. the airplane also was very cold at first but, as soon as i heard we were getting near mazatlan i was very nervous. i heard some people laughing, talking, a man snoring hard. it was annoying, i decided to look out the window. the only thing i saw was a lot of white, blue, puffy clouds. i think the best thing i had seen so far that day was the beautiful and interesting sky. when we got off the airplane we were at the mazatlan, mexico airport. mazatlan is a very hot place. you feel like if there's not any air. there in the big airport i saw my tio juan and my cousin stephanie "fanny". my tio was chubby and in my opinion ugly. my cousin was wearing a flowered dress and some little sandals. she was skinny and she was an adorable cute kid. then, as we were out side i saw this old tall man. he had white hair and was wearing a white sombrero. it was my abuelo. after hugging my abuelo we got on his truck. whey we got to tepic, mayarit, mexico i saw this old small woman. it was my abuela. she had a dress and grey hair. she told me that she loved me. an important and unforgtable moment was when my abuelo told my fourteen year old cousin to leave the house because we were flirting with my abuelo's worker. when my tio told him he got very mad. i had never seen him that mad in my life. in that moment i felt very sad because my cousin got in a lot of trouble. my abuelo didn't say anything but i knew he was very mad. this is an important event because i learned and felt something that really hurt. the lesson i learned was not to talk to boys because my relationship with my abuelos is not the same as with my parents. i also learned that flirting with that guy was not right. looking back on journey, i tought the moments i spent with my family were sad, funny, and fun. i feel that my trip to mexico without my parents was a good experience for me to see the world and other things as well. essay 4: countryside—my journey to up state new york on october 7, 1996 i left with my aunt, uncle, and three cusins. my mom (clara) was very sad that was leaving then for at least 4 yrs. my brother (darrold) sad too. when i was leaving the house my mom and brother cried. my brother cried the most. i too cried a little but only for a while. before i left my moms rm. she told, "listen to your aunt, don't give her a hard and help her up when she needs help". i told her "yes mom". my dad (greg) droped me off at the navy log where my aunt and uncle were staying at for the night. we left the navy log at october 8, 1996. the ride to new york was boring because we hardly had anything to do. i had some drawing papers, crayons, markers, and writing papers. that's all i had to do. the only stops we made were to restraunts, gasoline stations, stores, and hotels. oh i forgot to say that we traveld to new york by car. one of the worse places i would never want to pass by was the desert. it was so hot even rolling down the window didn't help. the trip to new york took us at least one week. when we got there, we stay with my grand parents place. my grant parents welcomed us and my aunt, an and two other male cusins too. there were more boys than girls i had to live with. five boys and one girl me. well that's my journey to new york. hope you injoyed it too. essay 5: my journey to disneyland the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 19 at 8:30 a.m. my mom had woken me up. my mom told me to wake up and take a shower. so i did. at 9:39 i was done. i was putting close on and when i was done my mom told me and everyone else to get a jaket because we are going somewhere. my mom also had told me to stop horse playing with everyone. when everyone got ready it was 9:01. my mom told me to put my stuff in the trunk of the car. so i put all my stuff in the trunk and so did everyone else. when my step dad put the ice chest in the trunk. i grabbed a soda out from it. then we all went off together. my sister, my mom, my step dad, brothers, and sister all went off together. my sister and my step brother and i sat in the back messing around. my sister started to play with my step brother my mom and step dad, brother, and sister sat in the front were they all talked to each other. we stopped at my step dads work where we all got drinks and went to the restroom. we stayed there talking for 30 min. we all got back in the car and took off to disneyland. everyone was falling asleep. i was awake talking to my mom that where we were going. i just stopped asking my mom because i was falling asleep. i woke up at disneyland parking lote. we all got out and got something to drink then we left to go on rides. current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 appendix d data interpretations interpretation of the final regression model for the persuasive essay (essay 1) controlling for grades, standardized test scores, teacher, and school, there is no statistically significant effect of treatment on essay 1 scores. this model accounts for 24.49% of the variation in essay 1 scores. no interactions were statistically significant, suggesting that the effects of treatment did not differ for school a and school b, nor for females and males. esl, special education, gender, and ethnicity were dropped from the final model because they were not statistically significant through the model building process nor were any interactions between them and the question predictor or other control variables. this model is the most parsimonious model that accounts for significant covariates. power calculation for a multiple linear regression model which already includes 4 covariates (control variables) with a squared multiple correlation r 2 of 0.245 (the r 2 obtained from a model including the four control variables only), a sample size of 106 will have 31% power to detect at = 0.100 an increase in r 2 of 0.010 due to including 1 additional variable. interpretation of the final regression model for the autobiographical journey essay (essay 2) controlling for grades, standardized test scores, gender, and the interaction between grades and gender, there is a statistically significant effect of treatment on essay 2 scores. controlling for the aforementioned variables, treatment students are predicted to score, on average, .49 points higher on essay 2 than control students. since there were no interactions present between treatment and the control variables, this means that the effects of the treatment did not differ by gender, test scores, or grades. however, there was an interaction between grades and gender, suggesting that the effect of grades on essay 2 scores differed by gender. in this case, the main effect indicates that for males, there is no effect of grades on essay 2 scores, controlling for experimental condition and standardized test scores. however, for females, there is a positive effect of grades on essay 2 scores, controlling for experimental condition and standardized tests ( grade = 0.019537, t-statistic = 1.985, p < .0560). this model accounts for 39.92% of the variation in essay 2 scores. teacher, school, esl, special education, and ethnicity were dropped from the final model because they were not consistently statistically significant through the model building process, nor were any interactions between them and the question predictor or other control variables. this final model is the most parsimonious model that accounts for significant covariates. power calculation for a multiple linear regression model which already includes 4 covariates with a squared multiple correlation r2 of 0.176, a sample size of 37 will have 95% power to detect at = 0.100 an increase in r2 of 0.223 due to including 1 additional variable. interpretation of the final regression model for the historical fiction and personal challenge essay (essay 3) the statistically significant interaction between treatment and gender means that the effect of treatment differs for females and males, controlling for grades, standardized test scores, school, and ethnicity. since the main effect of treatment is not statistically significant, this means that for males (males are coded as gender = 0) there are no statistically significant differences in essay 3 scores between males who were in the treatment group and those in the control group ( treatment = .119110, t-statistic = .72, p = .4726), controlling for the aforementioned variables. for females, there was a statistically significant difference in predicted essay 3 scores between females in the treatment and control groups ( female= -0.308641, t-statistic=-1.736, p<.0845). the negative parameter estimate indicates that, on average, females in the control group are predicted to have essay 3 scores that are .31 points higher than females in the treatment group, controlling for grades, standardized test scores, school and ethnicity. moreover, the main effect of gender in the above model is statistically significant ( gender = -.507182, t-statistic = 2.218, p < .0280) which indicates that females in the control group are predicted to have scores on essay 3 that are .51 points higher than males in the control group, on average, controlling for grades, standardized test scores, and ethnicity. however, there was no statistically significant difference on essay 3 scores between males and females in the treatment group ( the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write 21 treatment = .079431, t-statistic = .784, p < .434), controlling for grades, standardized test scores, and ethnicity. this model accounts for 19.09% of the variation in essay 3 scores. there was no interaction between school and treatment suggesting that the effects of treatment did not differ for school a and school b. teacher, esl, and special education were dropped from the final model because they were not consistently statistically significant through the model building process nor were any interactions between them and the question predictor or other control variables. this final model is the most parsimonious model that accounts for significant covariates. power calculation for a multiple linear regression model which already includes 6 covariates with a squared multiple correlation r2 of 0.188, a sample size of 160 will have 39% power to detect at = 0.100 an increase in r2 of 0.010 due to including 1 additional variable. current issues in education vol. 4 no. 4 2001 article citation goodrich andrade, h. (2001, april 17). the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write. current issues in education [on-line], 4 (4). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume4/number4/. author notes heidi goodrich andrade ohio university athens, oh andradeh@ohio.edu heidi goodrich andrade is an assistant professor at the college of education, ohio university. she took a position at ou after eleven years at harvard university, where she received her doctorate and conducted research at project zero. her teaching focuses on educational psychology and student assessment. through her research she investigates the development of high-level thinking, with an emphasis on the relationships between thinking, learning and classroom assessment. she has worked with educators and businesses nationally and internationally on the design of thinking-centered instruction and assessments for a variety of contexts, including classrooms, after school programs, television shows and cd-roms. she has written numerous articles, including an award-winning article on rubrics (goodrich, 1997), and is co-author of two books, teaching through projects: creating effective learning environments (goodrich, hatch, wiatrowski & unger, 1995) and thinking connections: learning to think and thinking to learn (perkins, goodrich, tishman & mirman owen, 1994). note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber june 11, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation andrade, h. g. (2001). the effects of instructional rubrics on learning to write. current issues in education, 4(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1630 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2001,%20vol%204,%20%231-7/number4/index.html mailto:andradeh@ohio.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1630 reflective teaching_final volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x reflective teaching and how it aids in coping with heavy workloads, mandated policies and disagreements with colleagues mark a. minott university college of the cayman islands citation minott, m.a. (2010). reflective teaching and how it aids in coping with heavy workloads, mandated policies and disagreements with colleagues. current issues in education, 13(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the main aim of this study is to understand (from the perspective of local teachers) what constitute reflective teaching, negative in-school factors, and how teaching reflectively aid in coping with negative factors. in-school factors cited by teachers in the study are: heavy workload, mandated policies and disagreement with colleagues. by reflecting on these, the respondents arrived at a number of solutions and employed both direct and indirect coping strategies. keywords: reflection, reflective teaching, coping strategies, negative in-school factors, cayman islands, students, school context, teaching, heavy workload, policy c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 2 about the author(s) author: mark a. minott affiliation: university college of the cayman islands address: 168 olympic way, p.o. box 702 gt ky1-1107 cayman islands. email: mminott@ucci.edu.ky biographical information: mark minott is an assistant professor of teacher education. his research efforts focus on reflective teaching, teacher education and ict in the classroom. r eflective t eaching 3 the connection between reflective teaching and coping with negative in-school factors is documented in international literature. there is, however, no known local research in the cayman islands which examines these areas. this paper contributes to filling this literary gap by reporting on a study which seeks to understand (from the perspective of local teachers) what constitute reflective teaching, negative in-school factors, and how teaching reflectively aid in coping with negative factors. a review of literature on reflective teaching, indicators of the practice, and what generally constitute negative in-school factors, establishes a framework for the paper. the study, which forms the basis for the paper, is outlined and its findings discussed. teaching reflectively and indicators of the practice minott (2009), defines reflection as careful consideration or thought; it is a process of disciplined intellectual criticism combining research; knowledge of context, and balanced judgment (critical thinking) about previous, present, and future actions, events or decisions. in light of this, reflective teaching is an approach to teaching, learning and problem solving that uses reflection as the main tool. it encourages teachers to create distance between themselves and their practice, as outlined by bengtsson (1993). it involves them in analysing, discussing, evaluating, changing and developing their practice, by adopting an analytical approach to their work as purported by martin jr. wood, & stevens (1988). a common feature of the reflective process is the questioning of ‘self’, that is, one’s beliefs, values, assumptions, context, and goals, in relation to actions, events, or decisions, as outlined by cruickshank (1987). zeichner and liston (1996) put this in practical terms when they point out that reflective teaching involves teachers in examining, framing, attempting to c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 4 solve dilemmas of classroom and schools, and asking questions about assumptions and values   they bring to teaching. it also involves attending to the institutional and cultural context in which they teach, taking part in curriculum development, being involved in school change and taking responsibility for their professional development. the advantages of teaching reflectively are many, for individual teachers, the teaching profession, and schools that are willing to employ and encourage its use. for example, i can infer from farrell (2001) that reflective teaching demands that teachers employ and develop their cognitive skills as a means of improving their practice. they would recall, consider, and evaluate their teaching experiences as a means of improving future ones. cole (1997) and calderhead (1992) point out that reflective teachers develop and use self-directed critical thinking and ongoing critical inquiry in their practice, initiated by them and not administratively decreed. this results in the development of contextualised knowledge. elder and paul (1994), and halpern (1996) also point out that reflective teachers would think critically, which involves the willingness to question, take risks in learning, try out new strategies and ideas, seek alternatives, take control of learning, use higher order thinking skills and reflect upon their own learning processes. they would discuss and analyse with others, problems they encounter in their classroom, to aid their analysis of situations, which could result in improved future classroom encounters, as suggested by (cunningham 2001). i also infer from zeichner and liston (1996) that reflective teachers would be subject conscious as well as standard conscious because teaching reflectively promotes the individual as responsible for identifying subject content deficiencies and, through the act of reflection and being autonomous, address such deficiencies. reflective teaching also demands that teachers use and develop their affective skills as a means of improving their practice. according to markham (1999), they would use their intuition, r eflective t eaching 5 initiative, values, and experience during teaching, and exercise judgment about the use of various teaching and research skills. reiman (1999) suggests that they would identify personal meaning and or significance of a classroom or school situation and this would include the disclosure and examination of personal feelings. markham (1999) further suggests that teachers would also take personal risks, for reflective teaching demands the sharing of perceptions and beliefs with others. they would engage in the disclosure of feeling, ideas, receiving and giving feedback as a part of a collaborative experience, as purported by (day 1999) and, as cunningham (2001) states, they would confront the uncertainty about their teaching philosophies and indeed their competence. if teachers hone their cognitive and affective skills via reflective teaching, this could improve their ability to react and respond—as they are teaching—to assess, revise, and implement approaches and activities on the spot. according to cunningham (2001) and bengtsson (1993), this could also develop further self-awareness and knowledge through personal experience. more importantly, this could aid in encouraging teachers in their role as autonomous professionals, by encouraging them to take greater responsibilities for their own professional growth by deepening an awareness of their practice, set within their unique particular socio-political contexts. defining reflective teaching and outlining its benefits point to its value and role in encouraging effective teaching and teachers. however, given the focus of the paper, there is also the need to highlight potentially, what constitute negative in-school factors. what generally constitute negative in-school factors? the literature draws attention to a number of important in-school factors which affect teachers and teaching: teachers’ heavy workload, administrative requirement/mandated policies, c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 6 poor student behaviour and inadequate interpersonal relational skills. teachers’ workload. the study of johnstone (1993), bridge (2004), and mcavoy (2004) are examples of studies of teachers’ workload and its impact on teachers’ stress, lesson planning, and various aspects of their lives in and out of school. workload is the most important in-school factor that contributes to teachers leaving the classroom. those who headed for new jobs stressed excessive workload as the main reason for leaving, and not the attraction of opportunities elsewhere (smithers and robinson 2003). merttens and robertson (2002) for example, point out that some primary school teachers spend many hours on sundays on work for which there is no cover provided during the week. there are, however, suggestions for addressing this issue of heavy workload. for example, a solution to one aspect of the problem of teachers’ workload i.e. lesson planning could be the use of electronic and computerized aids to planning. this includes making use of available preprepared lesson plans found on the world wide web, thus reducing teachers’ workload by reducing time spent on planning (hamilton-trust 2004 & whittaker 2002). for areas that are administrative in nature, the solution could involve hiring more support/administrative or specialists staff to relieve teachers of certain tasks. the additional staff would take on routine but essential administrative tasks to support behaviour management and provide guidance to pupils, thus giving the classroom teacher more time for planning and teaching (bridge 2004, department for education and skills 2002). another suggestion by braggins (2004) involves structural changes in schools. this requires adjusting timetables to accommodate specialist staff and/or changes in timetabling and school practices to accommodate time for lesson planning in school and during the school day. finding full solutions to these issues is not easy; therefore, what is required is further systematic research into policy, practice, r eflective t eaching 7 culture of schools, and school systems, which are outside the scope and focus of this paper. the other in-school factor identified in the literature and hinted at in this paragraph is administrative requirements and in particular mandated government or school policies. administrative requirements/mandated school or government policies. administrative requirements and or mandated government or school policies are also factors affecting teachers. it is understood that not every government or school mandated policy or decree is eagerly adhered to by teachers. scott (1999), in a questionnaire survey of teachers in 114 schools in eight local education authorities (leas) found that school teaching staff felt increasingly inadequate in the face of rising expectations, greater responsibilities being placed upon them and by government demands that impact their autonomy. in reference to governmentmandated policies and reform and how these affect teachers, lasky, moore, and sutherland (2001) in their study, found that—in response to mandated government educational reform in ontario—ten percent (10%) of teachers in the schools they researched took early retirement or decided to leave teaching altogether. maxwell-jolly (2000) in her study on factors influencing the implementation of mandated policy, states that teachers adapted to the situations they faced in a number of ways. essentially, then, instead of open rebuttal and defiance of mandated government and school policies, teachers performed subtle forms of resistance. maxwell-jolly’s work brings to my attention the fact that both school-mandated policy and the subsequent covert and adaptive behaviour of teachers to such policy could be either detrimental or beneficial to students’ learning. here too, what is required is further systematic research. away from government-mandated policies, teacher also saw other factors such as attending required workshops, completing home visits, attending meetings and conducting developmental review as factors affecting them; for these activities result in a loss of weekly or c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 8 daily planning or teaching time (venn and mccollum 2002). often, visits to homes are required because of another in-school factor i.e. poor student behavior. poor student behavior. poor student behavior seems to be a world-wide concern for teachers. smithers and robinson (2003) in their study found that teachers leaving secondary schools were more likely to cite the school situation, particularly poor student behavior, as a factor that contributed to their leaving. poor student behavior also puts a strain on teacher-parent relationships. while there are many tried and tested strategies i.e. non-punitive and punitive, (long, frye & long 1985) the area of poor student behaviour, especially among students in secondary schools continues to be an in-school challenge for teachers. despite this seeming challenge, reid (1991), encourages teachers to persist, and suggests way to manage behavioral problems. she points out that behavior is a result and not a cause, so there is the need to start with identifying the cause as a part of the process of attending to the behavior recognizing that at times, the cause is beyond the teachers’ control. the writer points out that while corrective measures are of value, the social– emotional climate of the classroom must be attended to, for this can contribute positively to changing poor student behavior. the social-emotional climate of the classroom involves good interpersonal relationship or the cultivation of good human relation i.e. friendliness, understanding, warmth and courtesies. this recommendation seems to place the responsibility on teachers to hone and cultivate relevant interpersonal skills, but this is not always adhered to as will be shown later in this paper. interpersonal relational skills. apart from contributing to addressing the in-school factor of poor students’ behavior, teachers must be in possession of certain interpersonal relational skills because teaching is a r eflective t eaching 9 social activity involving relationships (markham 1999) and peoples’ emotions and feelings are being exposed and examined. gladding (2000), belkin (1988), jacobs (1998) switzer (1986) proposed empathy as a relational skill needed by teachers. empathy refers to perceiving what another person might be feeling, or experiencing another’s emotions from the point of view of that person. this is what feldman (1997) refers to as the ‘understanding of what another individual feels’ (p. 279). mccann and baker (2001), in defining the term take it further by suggesting that to empathize is to understand your client, this means giving them time, listening to them so as to be able to hear their perspective. this also involves an attempt to understand the emotions being expressed. ‘tuning in’ is another relational skill needed, which mccann and baker (2001), hutchins & vaught (1997), suggest involves adopting a flexible and open approach to relating, including the ability to listen effectively which means carefully listening to what is said. being friendly and disclosing oneself are also necessary relational skills for teachers. mccann and baker (2001) interpret ‘being friendly’ as treating colleagues and students as people. they are not to be dealt with in a detached manner, which involves relating to them at their own level and not speaking in a condescending manner. this demands that teachers develop a non-confrontational and non-judgmental relationship in which students and colleagues feel their concerns can be openly and freely discussed. writers such as gladding (2000) and switzer (1986) suggest that a conscious sharing of personal information can facilitate a relationship. information shared between colleagues might not be a secret, but can be quite personal. the sharing of such information might demand confidentiality, which belkin (1988), jacobs (1998); mccann and baker (2001) pointed out is a relationship of trust in which one person imparts private or secret matters to a second party. belkin (1988), jacobs (1998) and mccann and baker c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 10 (2001) also suggest that the level of commitment to this principle also reflects one’s commitment to professionalism. now that we have an understanding of what is involved in teaching reflectively and what generally constitutes in-school factors affecting teachers, there is the need to point out, potentially, how teaching reflectively aids teachers in coping with in-school factors. teaching reflectively and negative in-school factors the role of reflective teaching in aiding teachers to cope with negative in-school factors is outlined by a number of writers. posner (1989) points out that it is by critically thinking about these factors that teachers will be able to make adjustments and arrive at solutions. cunningham (2001) introduces the idea of a collaborative approach when she suggests that teachers should not face in-school factors alone, but should do so by engaging with colleagues in problem solving. she makes the point that reflective teaching demands that teachers discuss and analyse with others, problems they encounter in their classrooms, to aid their analysis of situations, and this could result in improved future classroom encounters. writers such as cole (1997), and calderhead (1992), also point out that employing reflective teaching could result in creative and innovative approaches to classroom and school situations and problems and this can result in improved learning opportunities for students. cultivating interpersonal relational skills are necessary for reflective teachers if they are going to carry out the following affective behaviour and learning methods: an examination of self, beliefs and values, share their interpretations and thoughts, become involved in interaction, analysis, personal learning logs and partnership as suggested by (posner 1989, & cunningham 2001), they need to be able to do these knowing that they are being listened to and that their thoughts are seriously considered. while the connection between reflective teaching and coping with negative in-school factors r eflective t eaching 11 seems to be well documented in international literature, there is no known local research in the cayman islands that examines these areas. based on this fact, a study was carried out. method the aim of the study and research questions the purpose of this small study was twofold, one, to aid in filling this seeming literary gap. two, to identify from the perspective of local teachers what constitute teaching reflectively, negative in-school factors, and how teaching reflectively aid them in coping with the identified factors. three broad research questions were formulated. what constitute reflective teaching? what do participants consider negative in-school factors? how does teaching reflectively aid teachers in coping with negative in-school factors? participants i used an instrumental case study approach, which involves using the participants to provide insight into the concerns of the study. they were two female teachers – william and maxwell (obviously, these are pseudonyms and giving the respondents male names, further enhanced anonymity) with a number of years of teaching experience. maxwell was a junior high school teacher of social studies, history and religious education with over twenty-five years teaching experience and william a primary school teacher with over twenty years of teaching experience. data collection methods i used the process of purposeful convenient or opportunity sampling (creswell, 1998), in their selection, based on their years of experience of teaching in a number of different countries and contexts. their years of experience allowed them to have experienced negative in-school factors. interviews and documentary analysis i.e. teachers’ lesson plans, were the data collection c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 12 methods employed. the main instrument used for the collection of data was a semi-structured interview schedule which i piloted twice (wragg 2002). i chose to use interview, for there was the need to get in-depth information. however, the main reason for employing this method is the fact that it provides the opportunity to include follow-up as well as supplementary questions thought of during the actual interview and used as necessary to illuminate or clarify, thus facilitating depth in responses, as suggested by joffe (2001). interviews focused on participants’ experience and observations of their practice, and were approximately one and a half hours in length. participants also agreed to participate in a second round of interview, if necessary. data analysis process the data from the interviews (which were transcribed from tape recordings) were analyzed using ‘within and cross-case’ analyses. this meant that an analysis was done of each participant’s views, as was a cross-examination of emerging categories to discern findings that were common to all two cases. i also used direct interpretation of the data, which involved looking at each case and drawing meaning from it, and categorical aggregation, where a collection of instances was sought with the hope that issue-relevant meanings would emerge (creswell 1998). i examined all the responses to the interview questions to identify similarities and differences. by highlighting similarities and differences from what was said or how the respondents said it, i constructed an understanding of what constitute teaching reflectively, negative in-school factors and how teaching reflectively aid then in coping with negative factors. i also used participants’ lesson plans to supplement, that is, to confirm or make more or less plausible, findings of the interview. before commencing actual analysis of the data, i asked respondents to read transcripts of their interview and say if the account faithfully represented their experience. elliott (1991) refers r eflective t eaching 13 to this as validating by appealing to the participants. they both agreed and carried out this task and only minor corrections needed to be made. results and discussion what constitute reflective teaching locally? during the data analysis, three useful categories emerged in response to the question of what constitute teaching reflectively. each represents facets of teaching that the respondents described when speaking of reflective teaching. the categories are students (s), teaching context (tc), and mechanics (m).the category of students refers to the use of students in peer evaluation or their engagement in other activities specifically geared to facilitate the acquisition of information, or references made to students’ well-being, welfare, their activities, roles and learning styles. the category of teaching context, includes policies, teaching and teaching material/supplies, facilities, school responsibilities, school physical layout, school philosophy and how each respondent interpreted, conformed, interacted with, and utilised these aspects in their practice. the category of mechanics emerged from the data because the responses were replete with descriptions of ‘when’, ‘how’ and ‘what was done’ during their practice. students and teaching reflectively. both respondents seemed to believe that students were significant to the process of teaching; however, similarities and differences exist in their use of elements of reflective teaching in relation to their students. both employed reflection or ‘thinking about’ and questioned the relevance of their schools’ curricula to students’ needs for example: i find that, people say ‘oh you try to do too much’ but it is my belief that the children must be actively engaged. and so i am always thinking, ‘ what can i do c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 14 to actively engage them’ while someone will just come and give them the text books and the paper and ‘ that’s a no no.’ so they are an active part of the learning process and this is one of the philosophy which guides my own teaching’ (maxwell) now i think about it a lot, you teach them things and you wonder, ‘why am i teaching them about active and passive voice or stuff like that?’ why are we teaching them to convert fractions when in everyday life we don’t do those kinds of fractions? if we truly look at genuine life, we don’t convert anything to anything now, so it is just nonsense! it frightens me’ (william) giving thought to, and the employment of questions is compatible with the view of zeichner and liston (1996), who saw the use of questions by teachers as an aspect of reflective teaching. maxwell’s engagement in a process of questioning led her to become proactive in addressing students’ perceived need by joining the national curriculum planning team. zeicher and liston (1996), in their definition of a reflective teacher, highlight pro-activity and involvement with curriculum issues. maxwell was not only generally concerned with the students in her class, but also reflected on their differences, with the aim to improve how she taught them. the analysis of her lesson plan supports this claim, because the focus of the objectives and overall lesson were the students’ needs. for example, there was a focus on students’ need to be able to identify, list, categorise, utilise the computer, work in pairs, to critically examine a video show and participate in discussion. the idea of reflecting on any aspect of teaching with the aim to improve or change is a characteristic of reflective teaching (cunningham 2001). maxwell also seemed to have reflected on her belief regarding matters to do with students and students’ activities, for she was r eflective t eaching 15 able to articulate a particular personal view regarding this matter. in addition, she also carried out self-evaluation or reflection-on-action as described by (schon 1987), regarding students’ activities she included in her lessons, and the degree to which students had been actively engaged in the lessons. teaching context and teaching reflectively. similarities and differences also exist in respondents’ view regarding the use of elements of reflective teaching in relation to teaching contexts. both respondents reflected on their school layout and the extent to which it influenced their teaching activities. william reflected on, or thought about, her school layout and the extent to which it influenced her choice of student activities. she, however, extended her thinking to include the availability of school resources, space, and the degree to which the lack of these resources negatively influenced lesson implementation. maxwell reflected on the school layout and the extent to which it influenced her choice of student activities, but only in relation to class size and special occasions. she said she thinks about this when she invites special speakers to address a number of classes at the same time, which requires a large area for the students to congregate. maxwell’s lesson plan that i analysed revealed the fact that she reflected on resources, school facilities, and supplies, in relation to the lesson, and she listed these in a specific section labeled ‘resources’. differences in this area were seen in the fact that while both william and maxwell reflected on their school layout and the extent to which it influenced their choice of student activities, they did so either in relation to how their classroom could be arranged to accommodate student activities, when they were planning special events for students, when a large space and special teaching resources were required for the lesson, or when a lesson required the students to c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 16 be out of their self-contained classroom. william, however, employed reflection-on-context and the degree to which this influenced her mood. difficult circumstances at school, for example, difficulty with the school system, act as a trigger for her to question her values, beliefs, and assumptions about teaching generally, and this includes her mood. she also questions her whole interaction with students, her attitude about discipline, and not only in relation to how she planned lessons. cunningham (2001) recognizes this act of self-examination as an element of reflective teaching. the mechanics of teaching and teaching reflectively. similarities and differences also exist in the respondents’ view about the use of elements of reflective teaching in the mechanics of teaching. to varying degrees, both respondents reflected and were reflective about their teaching. both carried out reflection-in-action, framing students’ activities as the cause for making unplanned changes during a single lesson. periodically, changes to a whole lesson occurred. william tried to avoid making changes during a single lesson, by carrying out pre-testing. however, sometimes-misplaced teaching resources caused her to make changes. for maxwell, various interruptions caused changes to occur within a single lesson. maxwell and william reflected on their feelings, values, beliefs and assumptions, about teaching, and the degree to which these influenced their teaching generally. maxwell for example, considered the degree to which lessons that she planned displayed her assumptions, values, and beliefs about teaching. she also questioned the way she went about planning lessons and, by so doing had, over the year, used a number of ways of planning, which she shared with her colleagues. yesover the years, i have done different ways [of planning], i share with r eflective t eaching 17 colleagues to say ‘this is what i did, what do you do ‘asking what do they do, for i am always looking for best practices. (maxwell) during this sharing, she tried to get their ideas about teaching, for she was interested in ‘best practice’. while focusing on making her lessons ‘student centred’, she even questioned the effectiveness of that kind of approach to teaching and compared it with other methods that her grandmother had used. william also used established research, carried out research using students and colleagues, and read generally to improve her teaching. ‘with all the reading that i am doing, the things i learnt in college is a bit, outdated now, i do my reading and i try to make sense of all the new things that are happening now and i might plan it[ lesson] that way instead’ (william). maxwell and william reflected on self and made notes about their role in making lessons a success or failure. in other words, they employed reflection-on-action during their lesson evaluations. differences rested in the elements of reflective teaching that they emphasized or on which they focused. william periodically questioned her role in the success or failure of lessons and employed ‘flashback’ during lesson evaluation. reflecting on lesson plans in order to identify possible difficulties that students might encounter during actual implementation, is a practice of william. this results in creative and innovative approaches to classroom and school situations. maxwell’s willingness and desire to participate in collaborative exercises in order to improve an aspect of her teaching is characterised by day (1999) as a reflective act; additionally, she questioned the usefulness of a ‘student-centered’ approach to teaching. she also reflected on her role regarding students’ activities and the degree to which they were actively engaged in the c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 18 lessons she taught. what constitute negative in-school factors locally? during the data analysis, three factors were identified in response to the question of what constitute negative in-school factors, these are: heavy workload, mandated policies and disagreement with colleagues. heavy workload. in line with the literature review, both respondents spoke of being heavily involved with either additional school responsibilities or having to give certain prescribed number of hours to teaching students, and the negative impact that these had on where and how lessons were planned. this is best summed up by william: you don’t have time; you might share a thought about something that really went well or share resources, that’s about it. we don’t have time and that’s one of my areas of interest that i could go on about. in all they want us to have 190 teaching days and directed instruction and all that garbage but they don’t give teachers time to sit down and plan, talk about what is happening in the classroom, share ideas and i think this is so important but they don’t give us time for that’ (william) an examination of william’s statement specifically reveals administrative hindrances to the sharing and discussion of lesson plans with colleagues. for, she said, there was no time for this and the authorities stipulated teachers’ contact-time/ teaching time and the number of hours that they should allocate to teaching. she, however, found a solution in the use of the internet, which she uses to facilitate her lesson planning. maxwell also highlights the fact that during the school term, her heavy school r eflective t eaching 19 responsibilities deterred her from going over her lesson plans, looking for possible difficulties that students might encounter during the actual lesson. in an effort to improve students’ learning and to make lesson planning easier, thus reducing the stress of heavy workload, maxwell encourages colleagues to share lesson plans on the school intranet to make available a number of lesson plans from which they could easily pull ideas and ‘free up time’ to accomplish otherschool responsibilities. mandated policy and disagreement with colleagues. william’s mood influenced by a school mandated policy and disagreement with colleagues affected how she planned and, especially, how she implemented a particular lesson. there are times as teachers our moods affect the teaching. for, depend on your mood you may decide to write on the black board and let the student ‘copy’ the notes and we will discuss it ‘another day kind of thing’. we all have days like that ... any teacher who is without days like these she needs to teach me a thing or two, sometimes you start a lesson and you know that nobody is into it, not you, not them, so you say, let’s try this another way and another day (william). according to william, both the mandated policy and disagreement with her colleagues influenced her ‘bad’ mood on that occasion. for her, the policy was unnecessary and the disagreement with her colleague was related to an issue in the school, hence they were negative in-school factors. this is reflective of the thoughts of maxwell-jolly (2000) who points out that mandated policies are not always embraced by all teachers. maxwell believes that students must be an active part of the process of learning and this philosophy guides her teaching. she explained this in the next excerpt, from which i will also infer that she must have reflected on her belief regarding this matter, hence, she is able to c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 20 articulate this particular view: i find that, people say ‘oh you try to do too much; but it is my belief that the children must be actively engaged. and so i am always thinking, ‘what can i do to actively engage them’ while someone will just come and give them the text books and the paper and ‘that’s a no no’ (maxwell). the important thing about this quotation is that she identified that her colleagues’ response to her beliefs about students’ involvement was indifferent. as a result, she decided not to share her lesson evaluation with all colleagues but with a select few. how does teaching reflectively aid in coping with these negative in-school factors? gage (1977) and clark and peterson (1986), state that teachers’ practical knowledge is credited with forming a large part of the knowledge base which shapes their classroom actions. marland (1998) agrees and states that teachers, and in particular expert teachers, draw heavily on their practical knowledge about how to teach and they rely less on research. their practical knowledge—that which they build up on the job as they grapple with the daily challenges of teaching and as they seek to refine their professional practice—inevitably influences how they address the issue of heavy workload. by reflecting on the nature of the heavy workload i.e. administrative or pedagogical, and pulling on their practical knowledge, participants arrived at solutions which help them cope with heavy workload. for example, william (after reflection), decided to use the internet as a place for planning lessons which is in-line with suggestions from the literature or maxwell (after reflection) decided to encourage colleagues to place their lesson plans on the school intranet. doing so allowed access to a variety of available lesson plans that could be easily utilised at any time (hamilton-trust 2004 & whittaker 2002). this no doubt reduces the stress of their heavy r eflective t eaching 21 workload by ‘freeing up time’ to accomplish other school responsibilities. birrell et al (1999) make the point that when the teaching context presents a serious challenge to self, ‘strategic defensive adaptations’, or coping strategies, emerged. coping strategies may be indirect, for example, changing the way one thought about or physically responded to the situation to reduce its impact and active, for example, taking some action to change oneself or the situation. based on the study of cooley and yovanoff (1996) reflection can facilitate these coping strategies. in cooley and yovanoff’s study of how to cope with perceived contextual challenges, the writers proposed a peer collaboration program. its strength was the use of reflective problem solving interactions between two teachers about student-related problems. an overview of the process reveals that it closely resembled the activities commonly employed by a reflective teacher, for example, framing the problem as promoted by schon (1987), and asking questions, as suggested by zeichner and liston (1996). the respondents in my study employed these kinds of coping strategies based on their use of reflection. william, when faced with a mandated school policy and a disagreement with colleagues decided to teach the lesson even though these contextual situations affected her mood negatively. the way she taught the lesson (after reflecting on the issue) was also a means of coping. at that time, she felt it necessary to write notes on the chalkboard for the students to copy, instead of employing activities that were interactive and demanded verbal communication between the students and her. the decision she took was one that protected the students from possible negative reaction that could have resulted from her negative mood. in addition, her actions were acts of safeguarding her job, hence herself. here again, according to birrell et al (1999), william was employing an indirect coping strategy by changing the way she physically c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 22 carried out the lesson and she was being active in her coping, in that she took a particular action to reduce the impact of the situation. in the case of maxwell, when faced with a disagreement with her colleagues based on the fact that they lacked the interpersonal relational skills of ‘empathy’ and ‘tuning in’ gladding (2000), belkin (1988), jacobs (1998) switzer (1986) and (after reflection), decided not to share her lesson evaluation with all colleagues. she did so because of seemingly negative responses she had received and these seemed to have affected her emotionally, given the fact that she was able to vividly recount this in the interview (cahill 2003 & mcgaugh 2003). according to birrell et al (1999), maxwell was employing an indirect coping strategy, by changing the way she thought about or physically responded to the situation, and she was being active in her coping, in that she took a particular action to reduce the impact of the situation. conclusion firstly, the findings of this study highlight the fact that school context and situations can be challenging. therefore, what is required in these ever changing, demanding, and sometimes difficult contexts are teachers who employ an approach to teaching that incorporates an understanding of their particular contexts, personal beliefs, practical knowledge and particular content knowledge. this approach should enable them to survive the many contextual constrains and irritations and allow them to draw on knowledge to solve problems that are unique to their particular teaching situation. this approach should also enable creative and innovative approaches to classroom and school situations and problems, which should result in improved learning opportunities for students. reflective teaching provides an excellent opportunity to achieve these. secondly, while the study’s aim was achieved the ways portrayed of how the respondents r eflective t eaching 23 arrived at solutions may seem simplistic, for by simply reflection on situations and encounters they found solutions. the process however is anything but simply, for what is required is careful consideration or thought, a process of disciplined intellectual criticism combining research, knowledge of context/classroom, and balanced judgment (critical thinking) (minott, 2009). this implies there is the need to ‘make the time’ to accomplish this task and requires a willingness to adapt an attitude of inquiry and an engagement in self-assessment. achieving these are not without challenges, given that teachers are not always willing to engage in self-assessment and they are saddled with numerous and varied tasks daily. limitations of the study when considering my study and its contributions, the following limitations must be borne in mind. the study examined the impact of negative in-school factors on teachers and teaching from a narrow empirical perspective, that is, two respondents and my own. however, given my limited financial resources as an independent researcher, this narrow focus made the study both manageable and achievable. clegg (1990) states that an aim underlying almost all scientific investigation was that the findings are applicable from the specific to the general. by looking for similarities and differences between the respondents, i was able to make relatively general statements regarding their understanding of the area being researched. however, given the nature of the research i engaged in, large-scale generalization was neither appropriate nor was it the outcome 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(editors) (1996). reflective teachingan introduction. usa: c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 28 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team r eflective t eaching 29 executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo factors associated with online doctoral student persistence: volume 22, issue 2 may 18, 2021 issn 1099-839x factors associated with online doctoral student persistence: a critical integrative review of the literature tara j. lehan, phd heather d. hussey, phd & thomas hotz, mpa northcentral university abstract: online doctoral students may be at especially high risk for not completing their program. the purpose of this paper is to synthesize and critically analyze the body of research examining factors associated with persistence among online doctoral students, a relatively understudied population. consistent with the notion that integration and institutional factors exert more influence on doctoral persistence than student characteristics, with the exception of leadership and motivation, few student-related characteristics examined were found to be associated with online doctoral student persistence. however, findings should be considered in light of the limitations of the existing research. based on this critical integrative review of the literature, implications for research and practice as well as recommendations for next steps are offered. keywords: higher education, online doctoral students, persistence, completion, attrition citation: lehan, t. j., hussey, h. d., & hotz, t. (2021). factors associated with online doctoral student persistence: a critical integrative review of the literature. current issues in education, 22(2). http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1961 accepted: 3/20/2021 introduction in higher education, enrollment in online courses and programs continues to grow and outpace that of traditional programs (lederman, 2019). however, one of the greatest issues for higher education administrators (bergman et al., 2014; lee & choi, 2011) is the reportedly higher attrition rates for online programs compared to traditional face-to-face programs (cochran et al., 2014; stevenson, 2013; ivankova & stick, 2007; rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016; terrell et al., 2016; terrell et al., 2009; wladis et al., 2014). it has been found that doctoral students are less likely to persist to degree completion than undergraduate and master’s students (cockrell & shelley, 2010; spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2012). varying by field and modality (terrell et al., 2012), the proportion of students who leave doctoral programs is relatively high (30-70%) and http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1961 current issues in education vol. 22 no. 2 has remained steady for about 50 years (zahl, 2015). taken together, it seems that online doctoral learners are at an especially high risk for not completing their program (cross, 2014). this is problematic for a number of reasons, including loss of student self-esteem and a potential reduction in institutional profit (lee & choi, 2011). the majority of retention research in higher education has focused on students in traditional face-to-face programs (bergman et al., 2014; cochran et al., 2014; hachey et al., 2014; stevenson, 2013); however, online doctoral programs and learners warrant scholarly attention, as they have unique characteristics and needs (akojie et al., 2019; cockrell & shelley, 2010; hachey et al., 2014; stevenson, 2013). somewhat complicating the research is the myriad of factors that likely impact online doctoral students’ decision to persist as well as the difficulty in tracking students once they withdraw (fetzner, 2013; layne et al., 2013; stevenson, 2013; willging & johnson, 2009; zahl, 2015). the purpose of this paper is to synthesize and critically analyze the body of research examining factors associated with persistence among online doctoral students. online doctoral student persistence does not seem to be the result of a single factor (akojie et al., 2019; spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2012). instead, it involves the interaction of multiple factors relating to both students and the institution (ivankova & stick, 2007). it is theorized that these factors contribute to the extent to which the student becomes integrated into the university, which is essential to persistence (tinto, 1993). this framework will be used to organize the existing literature. methodology to meet the inclusion criteria, a journal article had to (1) be peer-reviewed, (2) include original data, (3) examine persistence, (4) include only doctoral students taking courses online, (5) be written in english, and (6) be published within the last 15 years. relevant research articles were located using education research complete, eric, ebscohost, and google scholar. no article in which master’s and doctoral students were incorporated in the same sample were included because it was impossible to distinguish what was true of just doctoral students. in addition, no dissertations or book chapters were included. the following search terms were used: "persistence" or "retention" or "attrition" or "drop out" or "dropout" or "completion" or "graduation" and "online" or "distance" or "distributed" or "blended" or "hybrid" or 'limited residency" and "doctoral students". articles with seemingly relevant titles were identified, then their abstracts were read. if the article still appeared to be relevant, the entire document was reviewed. the reference list of each relevant article identified was also searched to locate additional articles. ultimately, 20 articles were deemed to meet the inclusion criteria. each of these articles was reviewed closely, and the most relevant information was documented in the table in the appendix. findings settings and programs as shown in the appendix, more than half the research comes from only two research groups: terrell and colleagues and rockinson-szapkiw and colleagues. terrell and colleagues examined students or graduates from a limited-residency doctoral program at a private metropolitan university in the southeast. rockinson-szapkiw and colleagues recruited students or graduates from a doctor of education program requiring 50 online credit hours and 10 residential credit hours at a private, religious, non-profit, liberal arts university. in addition to the limited diversity of perspective that characterizes the research, it is problematic because the two programs lehan et al: online doctoral student persistence from which these authors recruited students have unique characteristics; therefore, the ability to generalize the findings beyond these institutions might be limited. with few exceptions (e.g., fiore et al., 2019; lee et al., 2020), the participants in these studies reviewed were current or former students or graduates from one or two programs (usually education-related) at one institution. moreover, most of the programs examined in this body of literature were limited residency or hybrid in nature. such programs have different characteristics and outcomes than completely online programs (davidson et al., 2014). in some cases, the research reportedly was initiated in association with a large number of students’ leaving the program (e.g., brown, 2017; terrell, 2005b). methodologies and frameworks as shown in the appendix table, qualitative (case study, phenomenology, grounded theory), quantitative (correlational, causal-comparative), and mixed (sequential explanatory) methods were employed in the body of literature on factors associated with online doctoral student persistence. in addition, with the exception of the studies involving grounded theory, most previous researchers identified a conceptual or theoretical framework that guided the study. frequently, their work was informed by one or more models of attrition, most commonly that of tinto (1993), bean (1980), and bean and metzner (1985). in his model of institutional departure, tinto maintains that students need integration into formal (academic performance) and informal (faculty/staff interactions) academic systems and formal (extracurricular activities) and informal (peer-group interactions) social systems to persist. in his model, bean stressed that student integration and interactions combine with subjective evaluations of the educational process, institution, and experience to influence satisfaction directly and intentions to persist indirectly. at the same time, external factors that are beyond the control of the institution, such as opportunity to transfer, family commitments, and financial constraints, directly influence intention to leave and drop out. in their model, bean and metzner (1985) included four sets of variables: academic performance, intent to leave, background and defined variables, and, most importantly, environmental variables. according to the model, student attrition is most directly affected by environmental variables, such as finance, working hours, outside encouragement, family responsibilities, and opportunity to transfer. it is important to note that tinto’s model was created with a focus on traditional undergraduate students, whereas bean’s (1980) and bean and metzner’s models focused on nontraditional undergraduate students. that is, neither was developed to explain attrition among online and/or doctoral students. in general, the sample sizes in qualitative studies were under 20, although brown (2017), spaulding and rockinson-szapkiw (2012), and deshpande (2016) included 75, 76, and 91 online doctoral students, respectively. the sample sizes in quantitative studies were relatively larger (range: 51 [terrell, 2005a] to 303 [gomez, 2013]). variables and constructs whereas some researchers measured their variables and constructs of interest directly (e.g., terrell, 2005a, 2005b, 2014, 2015), others did so indirectly by soliciting participants’ perceptions and seeking to understand their lived experiences (e.g., kennedy et al., 2015; terrell et al., 2016; spaulding & rockinson-spakiw, 2012; zahl, 2015). researchers also varied the way they measured online doctoral student persistence, with some conceptualizing it as choosing to remain continuously enrolled (e.g., brown, 2017; rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016), and others as the successful completion of the program (e.g., gomez, 2013, spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, current issues in education vol. 22 no. 2 2012). in general, when reported, the completion rates of the students in the programs examined were relatively low (e.g., 49% in terrell, 2005a; 37.6% in terrell, 2005b, 42.9% in terrell, 2014). student-related factors demographic factors. despite the importance of demographic factors to online doctoral student success (see spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2012), only some researchers presented demographic information about the individuals in their studies; even fewer included demographic factors in their analyses. gomez (2013) examined the influence of gender, whereas terrell (2005b, 2014) explored the impact of gender as well as age and ethnicity on online doctoral student persistence. gender was not a significant predictor of persistence in either study. in addition, neither age nor ethnicity significantly predicted persistence. academic factors. only one researcher analyzed the educational background of the online doctoral students in their samples. gomez (2013) found no significant influence of master’s grade point average or application summary score on program completion (e.g., gomez. 2013). cognitive factors. researchers also examined the potential impact of online doctoral students’ critical thinking and learning styles. in gomez (2013), although graduates had higher critical thinking scores by an average of 4.5%, it was not significantly associated with program completion. in an examination of 216 students who began a limited-residency doctoral program, approximately 38% of them graduated but those rates did not differ significantly by learning style (terrell, 2005b). although not statistically significant, the effect sizes in one study showed that students with a preference for information perception through sensing were more likely to succeed in programs like the one examined (terrell, 2005a). however, in a study about a decade later, neither learning style or preference appeared to be related to attrition (terrell, 2014). the relationship between brain hemispheric preference and attrition has also been examined, but has found to not significantly predict attrition (terrell, 2015). personality. one researcher examined the influence of leadership behaviors and psychological type on program completion among online doctoral students (gomez, 2013). graduates had higher leadership practice inventory modeling the way scores by an average of 3.8% and exhibited higher percentages (average of 10%) in the myers-briggs type indicator categories of introvert, sensing, thinking, and judging. only leadership practices inventory modeling the way emerged as a significant predictor of graduation. ivankova and stick (2007) also reported that self-motivation was one of the most important factors to persistence. similarly, fiore and colleagues (2019) reported that students believed that “persistence comes from within.” experience of disruption and loss. qualitative studies offered richer descriptions of online doctoral students’ experiences impacting their persistence. individuals with earned doctorates described personal sacrifice (e.g., summer breaks, sleep, time with loved ones) and disruptive life experiences (e.g., job promotion, marriage, layoff of a partner) (spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2012). death and illness of either a loved one or a dissertation committee member also delayed progress for students (spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2012). material loss (e.g., furniture, utilities, home) and relational loss due to divorce, death, and exposure to drug, alcohol, and physical abuse was also transformative for many students from backgrounds of poverty (rockinson-szapkiw, spaulding, swezey, & wicks, 2014). among these students, risk factors served as resilience mechanisms. for them, education was as a way out of their previous circumstances. for this reason, they reportedly felt compelled to continue their education. in rockinson-szapkiw, spaulding, swezey, and wicks (2014), it was reported that students’ inability lehan et al: online doctoral student persistence to consistently rely on adults influenced them to become more independent. their faith also played a role in their self-reliance. at the same time, these students could easily name one or two significant individuals who helped them to develop positive traits and values. integration researchers have found a link between persistence and online doctoral students’ sense of community and positive interactions with others (e.g., terrell et al., 2009); however, the research has been mixed (e.g., ivankova & stick, 2007). zahl (2015) defined community as “the development of social networks through relationships in the academic setting” (p. 302), using kadushin’s (2004) work in defining social networks as “relationships that one can draw upon as resources during graduate study” (p. 302). these relationships then serve as resources for doctoral students who often face unique challenges while pursuing their degree, and the lack of these relationships or removal of can have a negative impact on student persistence (zahl, 2015). online doctoral students report that “doctoral research feels lonely” (fiore et al., 2019). for those attending doctoral programs part-time and online, developing these supportive relationships can be extra challenging due to distance, lack of time together, changing of cohorts, as well as outside competing obligations (ivankova & stick, 2007; rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016; zahl, 2015). however, the literature continues to grow in showing the importance of these relationships for online doctoral students (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016). relationships within the institution. researchers have found online doctoral students’ relationship with their advisor to be critical to their success, including the time spent together, frequency of interactions, and the sense of care and trust that they perceive (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016). relatedly, ivankova and stick (2007) found that graduate students who were inactive or had withdrawn were less likely to rate their advisors positively. consistent scholarly interactions with peers and faculty have also been found to build a sense of community (zahl, 2015). further, supportive faculty mentors are perceived as having a profound impact on student persistence (zahl, 2015), with students often looking to their faculty for guidance and support more than their academic peers (ivankova & stick, 2005). assigning a faculty advisor to help doctoral students build this positive relationship can help support student success (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016). many students recommend carefully selecting their chair and committee members, as negative experiences with these relationships is often one of the biggest challenges reported by online doctoral students (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016; terrell et al., 2016). this can result in a lack of connectedness and increases attrition (terrell et al., 2009). it is also important to note that online doctoral students may be looking to their advisors to foster these relationships, which may not happen without effort on the student’s end (terrell et al., 2009). online doctoral students recommend new student orientations where students are matched with peer mentors to establish connectedness and supports for persistence as well as formal processes throughout students’ programs to ensure student connectedness to peers, advisors, and faculty (terrell et al., 2016). relationships with academic peers also appear to impact online doctoral student persistence, as many students look to their peers for support when facing challenges (rockinsonszapkiw et al., 2016; zahl, 2015). however, formal academic peer relationships formed through assigned group work at the graduate level led to reported dissatisfaction with courses in some cases (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016) and, in others, helped form peer mentors between those earlier and later in their academic journeys (ivankova & stick, 2005). these informal interactions with peers as well as staff and faculty helped develop a sense of connectedness to academic departments current issues in education vol. 22 no. 2 and a sense of belonging (zahl, 2015). novice students appeared to be drawn to and appreciative of the support of students further along in their academic programs (ivankova & stick, 2005). nevertheless, many online doctoral students struggle to establish long-term relationships with their online academic peers (ivankova & stick, 2007), and this sense of isolation can lead to drop out (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016). this may be due in part to students’ lack of selfefficacy to communicate easily with other in the online learning environment (terrell et al., 2009). helping build these relationships through scaffolded communications in courses can help build students’ abilities to more effectively communicate with peers online and develop those longlasting connections (ivankova & stick, 2005). for example, students reported preferring classes that were not too small or too large (ideal was 6-10 students) with opportunities for synchronous communication and those communications were with those who shared similar goals and values (ivankova & stick, 2005). creating informal discussion areas or places to gather (e.g., “virtual cafeteria”) are another way students reported building a sense of community in their online learning environments (ivankova & stick, 2005). spaulding and rockinson-szapkiw (2012) mentioned economic integration as an important contributing factor to online doctoral student persistence. likewise, deshpande (2016) noted the impact of financial difficulties as an impediment on the road to doctoral persistence. rockinson-szapkiw, spaulding, and spaulding (2016) pointed to financial integration (the interaction between financial support from the higher education institution and the student’s personal finances) as a source of both support and emotional strain felt by online doctoral candidates. this was distinguished from financial support, which was specified as economic support provided solely by the higher education institution. relationships outside the institution. for online doctoral students spending much of their time at school and work, their peers at work can help address feelings of isolation often felt by online students who struggle to make academic peers (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016). as many doctoral students also work, their work peers are sometimes also their academic peers, which has been viewed both positively and negatively by students trying to manage those dual roles (zahl, 2015). successful online graduate students reported the greatest perceived support from employers, family, and friends compared to those who were inactive or had withdrawn (ivankova & stick, 2007). a lack of support from employers reportedly lead to financial strain and decreased likelihood of persistence (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016). supportive partners and family members who can help with childcare and household responsibilities have also been reported to support student success (spaulding & rockinsonszapkiw, 2012). in addition, remaining connected to family while also working to complete a doctoral degree has been shown to support persistence (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016); others use their family as motivation to obtain their degree (spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2012). however, this can be a challenge for online doctoral students who often report sacrificing time spent with family in order to complete their degree, which adds an additional emotional toll (spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2012). online doctoral students reported using financial gains and promotions as motivators to help with persistence (spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2012). institutional factors several researchers investigated program and/or institutional factors associated with persistence in online doctoral students. in spaulding and rockinson-szapkiw (2012), program characteristics frequently were associated with persistence. students’ finding a reputable program with similar values that are compatible with their circumstances and learning styles was also lehan et al: online doctoral student persistence mentioned as being important. brown (2017) also explored doctoral students’ perceptions of the university that contributed to their choice to remain continuously enrolled in their online degree program. support services. in particular, support services, such as academic advising, career services, and library resources, seem important to online doctoral student success (fiore et al., 2019; rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016), as do the quality of academic experiences, support, and assistance (ivankova & stick, 2007). brown (2017) described how some students taking courses online can become overwhelmed by program requirements in combination with work and family demands. in this study, the students’ most prevalent university support centered on assistance from instructors and advisors. however, online doctoral students also expressed that they did not feel that they were receiving adequate or consistent support (fiore et al., 2019; terrell et al., 2009). relatedly, inadequate advising and program supports were reported to have contributed to students’ leaving their doctoral program (kennedy et al., 2015). brown (2017) examined supports not received that students believed would have helped them to achieve additional success. one theme that emerged was that, although students sought an online program for the flexibility, they missed some aspects of traditional programs, such as faceto-face communication and professor availability after business hours. a lack of time was cited as the greatest challenge for these students. similarly, deshpande (2016) reported that the absence of human interaction was a barrier to persistence. full-time student enrollment was found to be correlated with persistence and degree completion in zahl (2015), as part-time students perceived faculty as being unavailable to them and at times and that they catered to full-time students. rockinson-szapkiw and colleagues (2016) suggested that programs can assign a faculty member to serve in an advisory capacity from program entry through program completion. they argued that this faculty member can support acculturation into academia and socialization surrounding the nature of the doctoral journey and the skills and knowledge needed across the distinct phases. in addition, institutional technology supports are important for online doctoral students’ success. technology issues when computers crashed were noted as impediments to student progress (ivankova & stick, 2005). in addition, the online learning environment was cited as important to persistence in ivankova and stick (2007). moreover, in lee and colleagues (2020), the ease of use, flexibility, and usefulness of available technology was highlighted. curriculum and instruction. curriculum and instruction have also been found to be important to online doctoral student persistence (rockinson-szapkiw et al., 2016), with some students reporting course structure and workload as barriers to persistence (deshpande, 2016). in spaulding and rockinson-szapkiw (2012), many participants cited earlier coursework as preparing them for the challenges associated with the dissertation. “knowledgeable” and “highquality” faculty were identified as key to success. similarly, in ivankova and stick (2005), the course instructor was described as “a participant, expert, leader, designer, facilitator, and mediator of the course” (p. 8). in the words of one student, “the instructor is the course” (p. 8). according to ivankova and stick (2007), instructor accessibility and promptness of feedback were found to be more important that the quality of feedback and willingness to accommodate student needs. likewise, terrell and colleagues (2012) found that longer-than-expected response times from dissertation supervisors might contribute to a lack of student success. these authors also highlighted a need for mentorship and other assistance with the dissertation process. challenges in completing the dissertation were reported to have contributed to students’ leaving their doctoral current issues in education vol. 22 no. 2 program (kennedy et al., 2015). in spaulding and rockinson-szapkiw (2012), participants also mentioned challenges associated with the dissertation impacting their success. discussion previous researchers used diverse methodologies and measures to focus on widely varying student, integration, and institutional factors in their attempts to understand persistence in online doctoral students. the resulting lack of overlap makes it difficult to identify convergence and divergence in the research. nonetheless, important takeaways exist. the purpose of this literature review was to examine factors related to online doctoral student persistence. this review shows that the literature is not clearly aligned in terms of the factors examined and the definition of persistence. therefore, it is difficult to ask more sophisticated questions relating to under what conditions factors are related to persistence. consistent with the notion that integration and institutional factors exert more influence on doctoral persistence than student characteristics (lovitts, 2001), with the exception of leadership and motivation, few student-related characteristics examined were found to be statistically significantly associated with online doctoral student persistence. there is evidence that students’ sense of community and positive interactions with others reportedly are linked to their persistence (e.g., fiore et al., 2019; terrell et al., 2009; zahl, 2015). zahl (2015) postulated that research has yet to elucidate how doctoral students develop community. however, “an ideal online learning environment has high levels of faculty-to-student and student-to-student connectedness evidenced by authentic and ongoing discourse and information sharing”, with less than ideal conditions leading to attrition (terrell et al., 2009, p. 114). during their moments of despair, having just one supportive person in the online learning environment can help create a sense of community and support student success (zahl, 2015). in addition, program and institutional characteristics frequently were associated with persistence (spaulding & rockinson-szapkiw, 2017). brown (2017) argued that faculty members need to be encouraged to communicate often with online students and to be provided with the technological tools necessary to facilitate that communication. that is, institutions must provide the time, opportunities, and resources for such support to occur. implications for future research to connect and build upon the current body of literature, future researchers can take several steps. first, they can examine some of the same factors included in previous research in an attempt to replicate the findings. second, they can study completely online students as opposed to students taking one course online or students in a hybrid program. third, given that most of the students included in previous studies were in an education-related program, it is critical to examine students from a variety of programs, disciplines, and institutions. researchers have found differences across programs in terms of persistence. attrition rates can be as high as 70% for doctor of education (edd) programs compared to 40% to 60% for other doctoral programs, with online programs having a 10% to 20% higher attrition rate than traditional face-to-face programs (nettles & millett, 2006). fourth, future researchers can use more direct measures of variables and constructs of interest as opposed to soliciting participants’ perceptions and seeking to understand their lived experiences. fifth, more research might be done on external and informal support, including family members and pets. sixth, more research on factors, such as the impact of caregiving, is needed. seventh, whereas individual and institutional factors have received a great deal of scholarly attention, academic factors might be examined to a greater extent. eighth, other factors, such as learning outcomes and time to completion, might be explored. lehan et al: online doctoral student persistence appendix table 1 articles included in the critical integrative review of the literature citation focus framework methods participants & setting brown (2017) doctoral students' perceptions of work, university, and patterns of familial support that contribute to students' choice to remain continuously enrolled in the online degree program andragogy qualitative interview and demographic questionnaire 75 students enrolled in a university's newly developed online doctoral program in educational leadership deshpande (2016) challenges in persistence in an online dba program in england unclear qualitative interviews and survey 91 doctoral students at one institution 63.5% males, approx. 36% females fiore, heitner, & shaw (2019) online doctoral students’ perceptions of the role of academic advising on their persistence as they transition from coursework to research in doctoral study unclear, but mentioned tinto’s work, bean and metzner’s work, the abd phenomenon qualitative interviews 18 abd students who were currently enrolled in an online doctoral program (n=6), online abd students who completed their coursework within the past five years but were no longer enrolled in an online doctoral program (n=5), and students who had graduated from an online doctoral program in the past five years (n=7) 5 men, 13 women 8 participants identified as white, 10 identified as non-white current issues in education vol. 22 no. 2 participants’ ages ranged from under 45 years of age (27.8%), age 45-54 (33.3%), and over 55 years of age (38.9%) the most popular fields of doctoral study were education (39%) and psychology (28%) gomez (2013) predictive impact of student characteristics on persistence in an online doctoral leadership program unclear quantitative secondary and program-specific data 303 doctoral students in a multi disciplinary online doctoral program in organizational and in strategic leadership at a private graduate university 179 graduated (113 male, 66 female), 124 attritted (86 male, 38 female) ivankova & stick (2005) experiences reported by doctoral students in an online course related to community building and persistence. unclear qualitative online discussion questions 34 doctoral students in educational leadership in higher education program enrolled in online course. all had completed at least one online course. approximately 50% had completed 3 or more online courses. students were from around the globe, with 31 paying non-resident tuition. students ranged in age from 33-52 and all were employed full-time. ivankova & stick (2007) predictive power of internal and external factors on tinto’s student integration theory, bean’s student attrition model, and mixed methods 207 active and inactive students who took more than half their classes online in educational leadership in lehan et al: online doctoral student persistence doctoral students’ persistence kember’s model of dropout from distance education courses interviews, academic transcripts and student files, elicitation materials, questionnaire, archived courses, survey higher education program (202 admitted and active, 13 admitted but inactive, 26 graduated, and 37 withdrawn or terminated from the program) typical participants were between 36 and 54 years of age, predominantly women, employed full-time, mostly out-of-state, and married with children kennedy, terrell, & lohle (2015) a grounded theory of persistence in a limitedresidency doctoral program unclear grounded theory interviews 17 students who left a limitedresidency doctoral program. lee, chang, & bryant (2020) impact of technological factors (tf) and relational factors (rf) on doctoral student learning success (sls) tf, rf, sls quantitative survey 210 doctoral students from 26 online doctoral leadership programs in the u.s. 140 female students, 70 male students rockinsonszapkiw, spaulding, & lunde (2017) how distance education women edd students who are mothers balanced and integrated their multiple identities to persist jones and mcewen’s conceputalization of identity, conceputalization of intersectionality drawn from critical race theory, tinto’s theory of integration qualitative questionnaires, life maps, and interviews 17 women candidates in one of two distance education edd programs with second-generation characteristics at universities in the southeastern us rockinsonszapkiw, spaulding, & spaulding (2016) identifying significant integration and institutional factors that predict online doctoral persistence classic persistence models of tinto, bean, and bean and metzner quantitative archival survey 148 doctoral candidates enrolled in an online doctor of education program with second-generation characteristics 24 african american, 116 caucasian, 3 latino, 4 asian, 1 american indian participants current issues in education vol. 22 no. 2 majority was 30-49 and female, married, and working full time rockinsonszapkiw, spaulding, swezey, & wicks (2014) poverty and persistence: a model for understanding individuals' pursuit and persistence in a doctor of education program deci and ryan’s selfdetermination theory, tinto’s integration theory, resilience framework qualitative survey and interviews 12 students (7 female, 5 male) enrolled in a doctor of education (edd) program requiring 50 online credit hours and 10 residential credits at a private, religious, non-profit, liberal arts university in the eastern united states 1 africa-american, 1 hispanic, 10 caucasian students spaulding & rockinsonszapkiw (2012) to analyze the narratives of successful doctoral candidates to uncover the personal, social, and institutional factors and contexts leading to the completion of the doctorate resilience framework, tinto’s integration theory qualitative interviews data from 42 women and 34 men with earned doctorates in education and employed in the field were analyzed 55 caucasian, 16 african-american, 2 latino, 2 asian, and 1 “other” participant(s) terrell (2005a) a longitudinal investigation of the effect of information perception and focus on attrition in online learning environments jung’s theory of psychological type quantitative longitudinal survey 51 students in limited residency doctoral program. 84.3% male, 37.3% identified as members of a minority group. average age 42 (range 24-64), 78.4% married. 51% dropped from the program or failed to finish within 7 years lehan et al: online doctoral student persistence terrell (2005b) relationship between age, gender, ethnicity, learning style and their effect on attrition from an online doctoral program. kolb’s learning styles quantitative longitudinal survey 216 students who began a limitedresidency doctoral program between 1993 and 1998 and graduated or left by 2003 54.6% male, 22.2% identified as members of a minority group, average age was 43.37 years old and approximately 38% graduated . terrell (2014) the use of experiential learning styles to predict attrition from a limitedresidency information systems graduate program kolb’s learning styles quantitative surveys 56 students enrolled in a course within a limited-residency information systems program 82.1% male, 37.5% identified as a member of a minority group, and 42.9% graduated terrell (2015) relationship between brain hemispheric preference and attrition in students enrolled in a limitedresidency doctoral program. theory of brain hemisphericity quantitative longitudinal surveys 152 students in a limited-residency information systems doctoral program 53.9% female, average age of 44, and 19.7% identified as belonging to a minority group terrell, lohle, & kennedy (2016) lived experiences that contributed to persistence for students who graduated from a limited-residency information systems doctoral program. unclear qualitative interviews graduates from a limited-residency doctoral program although 7 students who had graduated agreed to participate, data collection stopped after 5 due to saturation terrell, snyder, & limited-residency doctoral students' feelings of connectedness towards unclear mixed methods survey 223 students in a limited-residency doctoral program currently working on their dissertation as part of a current issues in education vol. 22 no. 2 dringus (2009) each other and the faculty by using a survey developed specifically for that purpose degree in either educational technology or information systems terrell, snyder, dringus, & maddrey (2012) a grounded theory of connectivity and persistence in a limited residency doctoral program unclear qualitative survey, online questionnaire 17 students, representing three different dissertation advisors approximately 80% of students were in at least their fourth year of the program and had enrolled in an average of 5.8 terms for dissertation credit 65% male, with 64.7% of all students yet to complete their idea paper zahl (2015) ways part-time ph.d. students develop community within the academic department and how a sense of community is related to persistence tinto’s theory of doctoral student persistence weidman et al.’s four stage model of doctoral student socialization qualitative interviews 12 participants (10 students and 2 program chairs) in 2 academic departments (4 from nursing and 6 from education) at one urban research institution students were at or near the qualifying examination phase of their program (they were allowed to have up to two courses remaining) lehan et al: online doctoral student persistence references akojie, p., entrekin, f., bacon, d., & kanai, t. 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(2015). using hemispheric preference as a predictor of success in a limited-residency information systems doctoral program. online journal of applied knowledge management, 3(2), 127–133. http://www.iiakm.org/ojakm/articles/2015/volume3_2/ojakm_volume3_2pp127133.pdf terrell, s. r., snyder, m. m., & dringus, l. p. (2012). a grounded theory of connectivity and persistence in a limited residency doctoral program. the qualitative report, 17(62), 1– 14. http://www.nova.edu/ssss/qr/qr17/terrell.pdf terrell, s., snyder, m., & dringus, l. (2009). the development, validation, and application of the doctoral student connectedness scale. internet and higher education, 12(2), 112-116. tinto, v. (1993). leaving college: rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition (2nd ed.). the university of chicago press. willging, p. a., & johnson, s. d. (2009). factors that influence students’ decision to dropout of online courses. journal of asynchronous learning networks, 13(3), 115-127. wladis, c., wladis, k., & hahey, a. (2014). the role of enrollment choice in online education: course selection rationale and course difficulty as factors affecting retention. online learning, 18(3), 1-14. zahl, s. b. (2015). the impact of community for part-time doctoral students: how relationships in the academic department affect student persistence. international journal of doctoral studies, 10, 301-321. author notes tara lehan, phd northcentral university tlehan@ncu.edu heather d. hussey, phd northcentral university thomas hotz, mpa northcentral university more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. http://www.iiakm.org/ojakm/articles/2015/volume3_2/ojakm_volume3_2pp127-133.pdf http://www.iiakm.org/ojakm/articles/2015/volume3_2/ojakm_volume3_2pp127-133.pdf http://www.nova.edu/ssss/qr/qr17/terrell.pdf https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ microsoft word 1265-5743-2-le.doc 1 volume 17, number 1 january 21, 2014 issn 1099-839x trend analysis techniques to assist school leaders in making critical curriculum and instruction decisions gary d. bigham and mark r. riney west texas a&m university as educational needs of students change in response to changing demographics, economic factors, workforce needs, and school accountability requirements, school leaders must continually monitor and adjust curricula and associated methods of instructional delivery to increase student learning. the analysis of student performance data is a critical component of curriculum decision-making processes, and the purpose of this study is to demonstrate an application of trend analysis techniques in making curriculum and instruction decisions using historical student performance data. the techniques are demonstrated in relation to a real school problem and are transferrable to similar problems facing other schools. this study underscores the importance school leaders should place on analyzing data when making decisions related to curriculum and instruction. keywords: trend analysis, school leadership, curriculum and instruction, assessment, data-driven decision-making as educational needs of students change in response to shifts in demographics (e.g., the national economy, politics, stateand federal-level accountability requirements, workforce needs, etc.), school leaders must continually monitor curricula and associated methods of instructional delivery to make appropriate adjustments in meeting the needs of students. the no child left behind legislation increased federal, state, and local scrutiny of schools in that by the 2014-15 school year, all students are expected to be academically “proficient.” as a result of the increased pressures on schools to improve student performance on state-mandated standardized assessments, vendors are continually producing new products including teaching tools, classroom supplies, curriculum supplements, and even entire curricula to appeal to faculties and administrations of school districts (cuban, 2012; david & cuban, 2010). moreover, alternative class scheduling patterns have been implemented in schools to facilitate enhanced curriculum delivery. while these products or alternative scheduling patterns may meet the needs of some schools, others excel without them. nonetheless, when it appears that all of the neighboring school districts have purchased or adopted a given product, or made various scheduling changes or adjustments, the temptation of some school leaders is to question whether or not their schools should do the same, even though historically many curriculum innovations and reforms have not increased student learning as promised (payne, 2010; ravitch, 2010). rather than trying to “keep up with the jones’ next door” in determining whether such changes are appropriate, school administrators must meticulously analyze student academic performance data to determine ways to improve both curriculum benchmarks and classroom instruction to increase student learning (darling-hammond, 2013; slavin, cheung, holmes, madden, & chamberlain, 2013). background data for this study were collected from publicly accessible state reports for a small, rural texas school district. the school district’s total student enrollment current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 2 ranged from 370 to 431 with an average enrollment of 393.6 over the ten-year period from which data were collected. although the data in table 2 are restricted to state-assessed reading scores, they provide a sense of the high levels of success the school district had experienced with its student population over the decade covered by this study. the school district was considering a middle school scheduling change, with unknown, but potential ramifications for student achievement in its reading and english language arts (ela) curriculum. prompting the potential curriculum change was the fact that many school districts in the same geographical region were adopting a designated, comprehensive curriculum addressing all core subjects. based on the nature of reading and ela components of curricula being considered for adoption, a middle school curriculum and scheduling change specific to reading and ela became the focal area in this study. reading instruction had historically been heavily emphasized school-wide. beginning at the early childhood level, intensive phonics instruction had traditionally been emphasized, followed by the incorporation of a reader program to enhance students’ reading comprehension skills. the school district’s reading philosophy revealed that just as practice is needed by any athletic team to improve and become more competitive, “practice” is also needed in reading to improve students’ reading skills and use of reading strategies as tools to obtain and critically analyze ideas and information, and to increase students’ levels of language acquisition (noddings, 2013). many schools combine the subjects of reading and ela into a single class at the middle school level. however, given this school district’s reading philosophy, reading instruction had been emphasized by designating reading as a class in and of itself in students’ class schedules throughout their middle school years. problem middle schools often find themselves as literal battle grounds for competing interests. pressure is exerted to avail course offerings in the disciplines of fine arts, career and technical education, and sports and exercise sciences. moreover, with advanced high school graduation plans, middle schools have witnessed an impetus to move other courses such as health, algebra, and technology education onto their campuses to provide more advanced options to students as they move into high school (harris, 2011; national middle school association, 2003; wormeli, 2011). while embracing the foundational nature of reading and its contribution to every academic discipline, with the external pressures to move other courses into the middle school, school leaders may be tempted to combine the reading and ela disciplines into a single course at the middle school campus to provide students opportunities to take other courses. similarly, comprehensive curricula designed for purchase by school districts often combine the reading and ela components such that middle schools may be encouraged to combine the two into a single class. yet, recognizing the emphasis placed on reading by both state and federal accountability measures, the problem lies in risking a student performance decline on reading assessments as a result of combining reading with ela instruction into a single class. purpose the purpose of this study is to demonstrate trend analysis techniques that may be useful to school leaders in making decisions affecting curriculum and instruction. specific to the circumstances identified in the school selected for this study, trend analysis techniques will be used to determine the relationship between the scheduling scheme practiced in the middle school and student reading achievement assessed via the state-mandated standardized reading assessment. the information yielded by this type of analysis should prove to be valuable to school leaders in making these critical decisions. research hypothesis through trend analyses of tenand five-year reading performance data obtained from the school district’s academic excellence indicator system (aeis) (tea, 2013) reports, mean student passing percentage scores were computed by grade level and by campus. the calculated data were analyzed to answer the following question: “does a middle school departmentalized scheduling scheme requiring that reading and ela instruction be delivered to students in two separate classes demonstrate any relationship to student performance on the state-mandated standardized reading assessment?” considering the case study parameters, (i.e., a single school district and the ex post facto nature of the data collected), the answer to the question was sought through hypothesis testing by comparing student reading achievement, aggregated by campus, among the three campuses within the same school district. while obvious extraneous variables were at play, the single distinguishing variable that was isolated among the three campuses was the scheduling scheme utilized in the delivery of each campus’s reading and ela curriculum. this question was therefore addressed through the testing of two null hypotheses, from both tenand five-year data compilations, that read: ho: a middle school departmentalized scheduling scheme requiring that reading and ela instruction be delivered to students in separate classes will demonstrate no significant relationship to student performance on the statemandated standardized reading assessment, aggregated by campus, as compared with equivalent aggregated student reading performance resulting from an elementary school delivery of reading and ela instruction through trend analysis techniques to assist school leaders in making critical curriculum and instruction decisions 3 scheduling schemes varying from self-contained to semi-departmentalized. ho: a high school departmentalized scheduling scheme requiring that reading and ela instruction be combined for delivery to students in a single class will demonstrate no significant relationship to student performance on the state-mandated standardized reading assessment, aggregated by campus, as compared with equivalent aggregated student reading performance resulting from a middle school departmentalized scheduling scheme requiring that reading and ela instruction be delivered to students in separate classes. review of literature reading and literacy because of the foundational nature of reading, student success in all academic subjects, including mathematics, is predicated on their ability to read, comprehend, and interpret information. consequently, additional instructional time devoted to reading and writing enriches the school curriculum and enhances students’ levels of language acquisition and their abilities to learn more effectively in all subject areas (mcconachie et al., 2006). a designated reading class in addition to an ela class provides teachers more instructional time to focus on total language development. for instance, students are taught various reading strategies (e.g., mapping stories, baumann & bergerson, 1993; outlining and summarizing texts, marzano, pickering, & pollack, 2001) to enhance their reading comprehension. equally important, a separate reading class allocates more time for instruction in vocabulary development, which improves students’ reading comprehension (kelley, lesaux, kieffer, & faller, 2010; lesaux, kieffer, faller, & kelley, 2010; marzano, 2007), but which is taught infrequently in many classrooms (hiebert, 2005). furthermore, a separate reading class provides opportunities for reading teachers to collaborate with content area teachers to teach content specific reading strategies for their respective content areas including ela (lesaux et al., 2010; morrow, pressley, smith, & smith, 1997; siegel & fonzi, 1995) in addition to spending more time teaching students how to read analytically and how to make inferences to establish purposes for their reading (gomez & gomez, 2007). over the past twenty-five years, researchers have documented the reciprocal nature of reading and writing (newell, 1998; shanahan & shanahan, 2008; wittrock, 1984). for example, teachers often use texts not only to teach students reading strategies, but also as springboards of discussion and topics for compositions. conversely, when students write analytically about complex content they are reading, their understanding of the given concepts and their relationship among ideas is enhanced (kelley et al., 2010; newell, 1998). similarly, reading and writing are intertwined in that teachers often use texts as models of the type of writing students are to complete, and these models serve as instructional scaffolds to guide students through planning and composing processes (vygotsky, 1986). accountability literacy and mathematics instruction were regarded as top priority at the initiation of the no child left behind (nclb) act as indicated on adequate yearly progress (ayp) targets established for schools in the united states. these targets have been measured by their respective state-mandated standardized reading assessments in grades three through eight and ten. the ayp targets as reported in table 1 were established at the outset of the nclb legislation for all u.s. public schools. ayp reading/ela targets were consistently set above math targets from the 2002-03 to the 2012-2013 school year. in texas, from 2002-03 to 2010-11, the literacy target was measured by the reading texas assessment of knowledge and skills (taks) from the 3rd grade through the 9th grade, and the reading/ela taks after the 9th grade. beginning with the 2011-12 school year, the state’s assessment changed from taks to the state of texas assessment of academic readiness (staar). however, since the staar is so new, data collected in this study were limited to that obtained from state assessments prior to the staar. reading and math were also emphasized on the texas accountability system, the academic excellence indicator system (aeis), and these subjects were tested annually in grades three through eleven. table 1 ayp targets for u.s. schools pursuant to the nclb act 02-03 03-04 04-05 05-06 06-07 07-08 08-09 09-10 10-11 11-12 12-13 14-15 rdg/ela 46.8% 53.5% 60.1% 66.8% 73.4% 80.1% 86.7% 93.4% 100% math 33.4% 41.7% 50.0% 58.3% 66.6% 74.9% 83.2% 91.5% 100% current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 4 methods research design the descriptive research design was employed in this study. “descriptive research is a type of quantitative research that involves making careful descriptions of educational phenomena” (gall, gall, & borg, 2003, p. 290) at its most basic level, and it “seeks to find answers to questions through the analysis of variable relationships” (best & kahn, 2006, p. 133). consequently, the descriptive research design was the most appropriate selection since this study endeavored to determine the relationship between the scheduling scheme practiced in the middle school (the independent variable) and student reading achievement (the dependent variable) assessed via the state-mandated standardized reading assessment. because the collected data consisted of historical student performance on state-mandated standardized reading assessments as reported on state accountability reports over tenand five-year periods of time, the trend study methodology – a derivation of the descriptive research design – was designated as the most appropriate method for this study. “trend studies describe change by selecting a different sample at each data collection point from a population that does not remain constant” (gall et al., 2003, p. 292). the population was defined as students in grades three through nine, or ten, in the school district over tenand five-year periods of time. as identified by gall et al’s (2003) description of a trend study population, this study’s population changed from year to year as a result of the normal progression of students from grade to grade and campus to campus. the samples were defined as the students enrolled in each grade level. thus, with data collection occurring once each year at the designated grade levels, the samples changed each year as well. then, the comparison groups used in the statistical analyses were defined as the students enrolled in each campus at each data collection point, which also was an annually changing dynamic. nonetheless, the examination of reading performance scores over time aids in revealing trends and determining the effectiveness of certain system-level practices in relation to student performance, and this method parallels the trend study methodology described by gall et al. (2003). data collection ten years of state-mandated standardized reading assessment data, measured by the texas assessment of academic skills (taas) from 2000 through 2002 and texas assessment of knowledge and skills (taks) from 2003 through 2009, were extrapolated from the school district’s aeis reports published on the texas education agency’s (tea) website. the aeis reports student performance as the percentage of students meeting the state standard, hereinafter referred to throughout this study as the passing rate. these reading performance data were collected and organized on a spreadsheet in columns by grade level and in rows by calendar year as displayed in table 2. table 2 percentage of students meeting reading taas/taks standard from 2000 through 2009 year elementary middle school high school 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 2000 93 100 90 100 100 100 96 2001 91 97 96 88 100 100 100 2002 94 92 100 100 93 100 100 2003 100 97 88 100 100 100 100 2004 96 100 100 96 100 100 100 2005 100 82 95 94 86 100 95 2006 90 81 95 100 100 96 95 2007 100 76 78 86 100 91 93 2008 80 96 84 89 81 96 83 2009 88 70 96 84 80 85 92 ta as ta ks trend analysis techniques to assist school leaders in making critical curriculum and instruction decisions 5 the texas statewide assessment shifted from the taas to the taks from 2002 to 2003. another notable change is that, in high school, reading as a separate subject was tested with the taas in the tenth grade, but with the taks, it was moved to the ninth grade. at the inception of the taks, reading was assessed beyond the ninth grade although it was done so in conjunction with ela with the reading/ela taks. since this study focused primarily on reading, reading/ela data were not used in the calculation of any results. accordingly, for purposes of measuring reading achievement of students in high school, only tenth grade taas scores and only ninth grade taks scores were used. data analysis two separate data analyses were conducted. the first analysis encompassed all ten years of data collected, whereas the second analysis pulled only the most recent five years of data reported in table 2. the two separate analyses were conducted because the statewide assessment change from taas to taks reflected the move to a more rigorous assessment. from a sample size perspective in the application of a statistical power analysis, the ten-year aggregated data resulted in a population of n = 2073 students enrolled in the grade levels tested and the five-year aggregated data resulted in a population of n = 1012 students enrolled in the grade levels tested. obviously, the ten-year analysis resulted in greater sample size power, but the five-year analysis reflected more current information in alignment with the taks. a benefit of the duplicated analyses was the enhanced validity of findings. identical procedures were employed in both analyses. mean scores were calculated for each grade level reported in table 2, reflective of percentages of students passing the reading assessments over the measured time periods. then, campus-level mean scores for the elementary and middle school were calculated by averaging grade-level mean scores for grades three through five and grades six through eight respectively. since high school reading was assessed by the taas in the tenth grade and by the taks in the ninth grade, the three tenth grade scores from 2000 through 2002 were added to the seven ninth grade scores from 2003 through 2009 and divided by ten to derive the ten-year high school mean score. the five-year high school mean score was computed by simply averaging ninth grade passing percentage scores from 2005 through 2009. these gradeand campus-level mean scores were reported numerically in tables 3 and 4, and the numerical data were then converted into graphical format to facilitate the visual identification of evolving trends. the data were combined into a single graph whereby the grade-level scores were plotted linearly and campus-level data were plotted by histogram in figures 1 and 2. to methodically analyze the findings in a nonbiased fashion, the application of a quantitative data analysis technique was employed. individual students’ state-mandated standardized reading assessment results were not available to the researchers, thus data collection was limited to the combined percentages of students passing the reading assessments as displayed on the school's aeis reports. this effectively reduced the analysis to two categories of students – those who passed and those who failed the state-mandated standardized reading assessment. since only passing percentages were reported on the aeis reports, the need for enrollment data came into play to calculate an estimated number of students tested. these data were also collected from the aeis reports. however, it should be noted that student enrollment per grade level, as reported on the aeis reports, did not necessarily represent the exact number of students who were actually tested in all cases. for example, an enrolled student could have been absent on the day of an assessment. although this is problematic from a strict academic research perspective, the purpose of this study is to demonstrate these methods to school leaders and not to make generalizations, therefore it ceases to be a problem because school leaders will have access to their exact enrollment and test participation counts which should obviously be used in place of the more general and publicly accessible enrollment data reported on aeis documents as used by the authors of this study. consequently, for demonstration, in accordance with the stated purpose of this study, these calculations included all enrolled students in the frequency counts as test takers. simple mathematical procedures were used to calculate passing and failing frequency counts by campus. percentage passing rates were multiplied by the respective student enrollments in the tested grade-levels on each campus to determine a total number of students passing the assessments. then, by subtracting this number from the total enrollment counts, the total number of students failing the assessment per campus was derived. these techniques were applied in both the tenand five-year analyses. based on the categorical assessment results (passing or failing per campus), the chi-square test was used to quantitatively analyze the data. the chi-square was the most appropriate statistical test, because the data being analyzed consisted of frequency counts (calculated from percentages) of students passing and failing (categories) the state-mandated reading assessment. as noted by gravetter and wallnau (1996), the chi-square test for goodness of fit uses sample data to test hypotheses about the shape or proportions of a population distribution. the test determines how well the obtained sample proportions fit the population proportions specified by the null hypothesis. (p. 548) the null hypotheses stated that no relationship would exist between the independent and dependent variables for the population. for the purposes of this current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 6 table 3 ten-year mean scores reflecting the percentage of students meeting the passing standard in grades 3 through 8 and 10 on the reading taas and in grades 3 through 9 on reading taks from 2000 through 2009 campus: elementary middle school high school grade: 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 % passing 94.4 91.6 91.5 95.3 95.6 98.3 95.1 98.7 92.5 96.4 96.2 analysis, the independent variable was the middle school scheduling scheme requiring delivery of reading and ela instruction in two separate classes with the dependent variable being student performance on the state-mandated standardized reading assessment. two methods of setting up the chi-square test for goodness of fit are (1) no preference, where nothing is known about the potential outcome, and all categories are weighted equally, and (2) no difference from a comparison population, where information is known about the probable outcome based on prior knowledge (gravetter & wallnau, 1996). since the null hypotheses stated that no relationship would exist between the middle school scheduling scheme and student reading achievement as compared with equivalent elementary and high school reading assessment results, "no difference from a comparison population" was deemed most appropriate for this analysis. the obtained frequencies derived from mean passing and failing frequency counts by campus were compared to test the null hypotheses. in testing the first null hypothesis, the elementary passing and failing percentages were applied to the middle school enrollment to calculate expected passing and failing frequencies – thus in applying the “no difference from a comparison population” chi-square methodology, the elementary served as the comparison population against which the middle school results were analyzed. likewise, in testing the second hypothesis, the middle school served as the comparison population against which the high school results were analyzed. the obtained passing/failing frequencies for the elementary, middle, and high schools were 838.05/67.95 where n = 906; 836.75/31.25 where n = 868; and 287.64/11.36 where n = 299 respectively for the ten year analysis where n = 2073. for the five-year analysis the obtained passing/failing frequencies for the elementary, middle, and high schools were 371.90/44.10 where n = 416; 417.88/25.12 where n = 443; and 142.60/10.40 where n = 153 respectively where n = 1012. the expected frequencies defined an ideal hypothetical situation. for the ten-year analysis the passing/failing ƒ = 802.90/65.10 for the middle school and ƒ = 288.24/10.76 for the high school. similarly, for the five-year analysis, the passing/failing ƒ = 396.04/46.96 for the middle school and ƒ = 143.33/8.68 for the high school. a rigorous alpha level of α = 0.005 was used for the level of significance, and with only two categories – passing and failing – the degrees of freedom equaled one. for df = 1 and α = 0.005, the critical chi-square value was 7.88 (gravetter & wallnau, 1996). results the findings were organized into two main categories. the first category reports ten years of student reading assessment data organized by campus and by grade level as measured by the reading taas and taks. the second category reports five years of reading assessment data organized by campus and by grade level as measured by taks. ten-year grade level and campus findings in objectively analyzing the relationship between the scheduling scheme practiced in the middle school and student reading achievement assessed via the statemandated standardized reading assessment, as compared with student performance on equivalent elementary and high school reading assessments, the ten years of reading taas/taks student performance data collected from aeis reports resulted in n = 2073 students beginning in 2000 and ending in 2009. the data reported in table 3 were obtained from campusand gradelevel mean trend analysis techniques to assist school leaders in making critical curriculum and instruction decisions 7 figure 1. ten-year cumulative mean scores by grade level of all students tested in grades 3 through 8 and 10 on taas and in grades 3 through 9 on taks who met the passing standard established by the state of texas for reading from 2000 to 2009. the data from table 3 were converted into graphical format in figure 1 to reveal the linear trends that evolved by grade level, while campus scores were plotted via histogram. a grade level examination of the data revealed an initial drop in passing percentages from the third to the fourth and fifth grades, followed by successive increases to the eighth grade. there was a difference of 6.8 points from the fifth grade low score of 91.5 to the eighth grade high score of 98.3. the eighth grade high score was then followed by a 2.1 point drop as students moved into high school. by campus, the ten-year cumulative data revealed that the percentage of students passing the reading taas/taks climbed from the elementary through the middle school years, followed by a slight decline as they moved into high school. the chi-square test for goodness of fit was used, as describe in the methods section, to determine the significance of the differences observed in the campus mean scores. setting up the chi-square test in accordance with the “no difference from a comparison population” method, resulted in the testing of two hypotheses. the first null hypothesis stated that there would be no significant difference from the elementary score to the middle school score, and the elementary score served as the comparison population for determining the probable outcome of the middle school score. similarly, the second null hypothesis stated that there would be no significant difference from the middle school score to the high school score, and the middle school score served as the comparison population for determining the probable outcome of the high school score. with only two categories of analysis—passing and failing—the df = c – 1 = 2 – 1 = 1 and with the the rigorous alpha of α = 0.005, the critical chi-square of χ2crit = 7.88. the results of the chi-square tests are reported in table 4. consequently, pursuant to standard hypothesis testing procedures, the decision was to reject the null hypothesis stating that maintaining two separate classes for reading and ela in middle school will have no impact on student reading achievement as measured by the reading taas/taks. once students moved from the middle school campus to the high school campus, even though the percentage of students passing the reading taas/taks dropped, the statistical test indicated that the drop was not significant, thus the decision was to fail to reject the null hypothesis stating that combining the subjects of reading and ela into one course in high school will have no impact on student reading achievement as measured by the reading taas/taks. current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 8 table 4 chi-square results in testing the goodness of fit using the “no difference from a comparison population” methodology applied to ten years of compiled data campus n o e χ2 χ2crit significant passing failing passing failing elementary 906 (.925)(906) 838.05 (.075)(906) 67.95 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a middle school 868 (.964)(868) 836.75 (.036)(868) 31.25 (.925)(868) 802.90 (.075)(868) 65.10 19.03 7.88 yes high school 299 (.962)(299) 287.64 (.038)(299) 11.36 (.964)(299) 288.24 (.036)(299) 10.76 0.03 7.88 no totals 2073 1962.44 110.56 1091.14 75.86 table 5 five-year mean scores reflecting the percentage of students meeting the passing standard in grades 3 through 9 on the reading taks from 2005 through 2009 campus: elementary middle school high school grade: 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 % passing 94.0 86.0 88.2 93.8 92.6 96.6 93.2 92.5 96.4 96.2 figure 2. five-year mean scores reflecting the percentage of students meeting the passing standard in grades 3 through 9 on the reading taks from 2005 through 2009. trend analysis techniques to assist school leaders in making critical curriculum and instruction decisions 9 five-year grade level and campus findings the next analyses employed identical processes described in the preceding section, but with five, in place of ten, years of reading taks student performance data. there were n = 1012 students enrolled in the grade levels from which these data were collected beginning in 2005 and ending in 2009, as reported in the aeis documents. as in the preceding section, mean scores, representing five years of test results were calculated and reported in table 5. the data in table 5 were converted into graphical format in figure 2 to reveal the linear trends that evolved by grade level, while campus scores were plotted via histogram. a grade level examination of the data revealed an initial drop in passing percentages from the third to the fourth grade, followed by successive increases to the sixth grade, a slight decline in the seventh grade, and a notable increase in the eighth grade. this was followed by a decline in the ninth grade. there was a difference of 10.6 points from the fourth grade low score of 86.0 to the eighth grade high score of 96.6. the eighth grade high score was then followed by a 3.4 point drop as students moved into high school. by campus, the five-year cumulative data revealed that the percentage of students passing the reading taks climbed from the elementary through the middle school years, followed by a slight decline as they moved into high school. in following the pattern established with the tenyear data set, to determine the significance of differences observed in the five-year campus mean scores, the chisquare test for goodness of fit was used. the two null hypotheses mirrored those tested in with the ten-year data set, where the first null hypothesis stated that there would be no significant difference from the elementary score to the middle school score, and the second null hypothesis stated that there would be no significant difference from the middle school score to the high school score. the same two categories of analysis—passing and failing— were used, thus the df = c – 1 = 2 – 1 = 1 and χ2crit = 7.88 resulted from the selection of the rigorous alpha of α = 0.005. the results of the chi-square tests are reported in table 6. while the numbers obviously varied, the results of the hypothesis tests for the five-year data set were the same as those for the ten-year data set. the findings from elementary to middle school were significant, whereas the findings from middle school to high school were not. table 6 chi-square results in testing the goodness of fit using the “no difference from a comparison population” methodology applied to five years of compiled data campus n o e χ2 χ2crit significant passing failing passing failing elementary 416 (.894)(416) 371.90 (.106)(416) 44.10 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a middle school 443 (.9433)(443) 417.88 (.0567)(443) 25.12 (.894)(443) 396.04 (.106)(443) 46.96 11.36 7.88 yes high school 153 (.932)(153) 142.60 (.068)(153) 10.40 (.933)(153) 143.33 (.0567)(153) 8.68 0.024 7.88 no totals 1012 932.38 79.62 539.37 55.64 current issues in education vol. 17 no. 1 10 discussion and conclusions in summary, ten years of state-mandated standardized reading assessment data were collected and trend analyses were conducted. the first analysis captured the full ten years of test results through the calculation of campus-level mean scores and the second analysis captured the five most recent years of test results through the calculation of campus-level mean scores. both analyses yielded similar patterns when plotted linearly, where scores rose from the elementary to middle school, followed by a drop in high school. the compilation of third, fourth, and fifth grade scores into a single campus score revealed that the lowest performing campus in the tenand five-year analyses was the elementary. however, there was a statistically significant growth from the elementary to the middle school—perhaps a sign of history, maturation, and more test-wise skills to some extent as described by gall, borg, and gall (1996), but also indicative of increases in students’ levels of reading achievement as a result of additional time allocated in the school curriculum for direct instruction in reading and other aspects of ela. the compilation of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade scores into a single campus score revealed that the highest performing campus in the school district was the middle school. although the drop in test scores from the middle school to the high school was not statistically significant at the 0.005 alpha level, from the perspectives of school leaders, declining scores will still raise pragmatic concerns. while several explanations may be offered for the improvement in students’ reading achievement from the elementary to the middle school, for researchers external to the school district, it is imprudent to overlook the purposeful separation of reading and ela in separate classes as a major contributor. the advantage school leaders have over external researchers is an intimate working knowledge of the internal environment. reiterating that the purpose of this study is to demonstrate trend analysis techniques for use by school leaders, in this final section of the study, the researchers, external to the school, can only speculate on factors leading to the student performance differences observed from campus to campus. nonetheless, those speculations should serve as a guide for school leaders to use as they engage in these same processes with the added benefit of internal organizational knowledge. for example, while the clear separation of reading an ela is obvious to a researcher viewing a class schedule, there is no way to know from an external view how reading and ela are structured (combined or separated) in the self-contained elementary classroom. however, school leaders have the advantage of being privy to that type of information to better inform the conclusions they draw. from the vantage point of the external lens through which the researchers viewed these findings, the decline in students’ reading achievement from middle school to high school may be accounted for by at least two factors that should be investigated proactively by school leaders. first, the transition from middle school to high school is a big step for students involving changes in expectations, maturity, faculty and administration, supervision, and participation in extracurricular activities (national middle school association, 2003), and these factors may have contributed to the reduced performance on the reading assessment. second, it is possible that high school content area teachers (other than ela teachers) need to devote more instructional time to reading instruction to increase students’ literacy development in the absence of separate reading and ela classes. in conclusion, school leaders must use data from state assessments to take direct action to improve classroom instruction and curriculum development (slavin et al., 2013). while the separation of reading and ela into separate courses at the middle school level is not mandated in texas, the data in this study would initially suggest to school leaders in this district that the additional time devoted to reading instruction in the middle school resulted in increased passing rates on statemandated standardized reading assessments. consequently, it seems prudent, especially to middle school leaders, to continue to allocate additional time to reading instruction in the school curriculum. in terms of the decline in reading performance at the high school level, although not significant, proactive school leaders may consider measures for staff development in reading instruction and other aspects of literacy development to improve classroom instruction across the curriculum to prevent a decline in reading performance from middle to high school from becoming significant. in addition, school leaders might consider instituting opportunities for content area teachers to collaborate with peers in their respective academic disciplines to support them in their efforts to more effectively integrate effective reading instruction into the classroom context. references baumann, j. f., & bergeron, b. s. 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(2014). trend analysis techniques to assist school leaders in making critical curriculum and instruction decisions. current issues in education, 17(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1265 author notes gary d. bigham west texas a&m university p.o. box 60208 canyon, tx 79016-0001 gbigham@wtamu.edu gary bigham is an assistant professor of educational leadership at west texas a&m university. his professional background includes twenty-five years of experience in texas public schools and universities holding the positions of teacher, principal, superintendent, adjunct professor, and assistant professor. mark r. riney west texas a&m university p.o. box 60208 canyon, tx 79016-0001 mriney@wtamu.edu mark r. riney, a former language arts and history teacher, is an associate professor and chair of curriculum and instruction at west texas a&m university. he teaches courses in curriculum theory and analysis, multicultural education, foundations of education, and secondary methods. manuscript received: 07/16/2013 revisions received: 11/15/2013 accepted: 12/14/2013 trend analysis techniques to assist school leaders in making critical curriculum and instruction decisions 13 volume 17, number 1 january 21, 2014 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors elizabeth calhoun reyes constantine schreiber assistant executive editors kevin jose rasa recruitment editor hillary andrelchik layout editors elizabeth calhoun reyes copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical advisor andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik aaron bryant darlene michelle gonzales jessica holloway-libell younsu kim anna montana cirell melinda thomas kevin jose raso rory o’neill schmitt constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers volume 8, number 21 july, 2005 issn 1099-839x taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation frank serafini university of nevada, las vegas the national board for professional teaching standards (nbpts) was established in 1987 to develop and operate a system of advanced certification; including a set of high and rigorous standards of accomplished teaching and an assessment system designed to measure these standards. utilizing a qualitative, case study framework, this research project was designed to investigate the meaning perspectives associated with the nbpts certification process from the point of view of a national board candidate interacting with the procedures, assessments and requirements necessary to achieve certification. the study asserts the candidate focused on the alignment of her teaching to the vision of accomplished practice set forth in the nbpts standards, the possible recognition of being nbpts certified, and the challenges with representing teaching practices through the assessment vehicles provided in the certification process. “the mission of the national board is to establish high and rigorous standards for what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do, to develop and operate a national voluntary system to assess and certify those teachers who meet these standards, and to advance related education reforms for the purpose of improving student learning in american schools.” (nbpts, 1989). in the opening statement from the document entitled, “towards high and rigorous standards: what accomplished teachers should know and be able to do” (nbpts, 1989), the national board for professional teaching standards (nbpts) expresses its mission to create a set of standards that describe in detail the board’s vision of accomplished practice, and a certification system designed to assess and certify teachers who match this vision. the nbpts was initiated to increase the professional development of teachers, the status of the teaching profession and the quality of education in america (nbpts, 1987). by establishing high and rigorous standards, and developing an extensive assessment and certification system, it has been suggested that the nbpts will have a profound effect both politically and professionally on the teaching community nationwide (baratz-snowden, shapiro & streeter, 1993). because of the influence the nbpts certification process may have on classroom teachers throughout the united states, it is important to understand the meanings teachers construct concerning the nbpts standards, the certification process and its relationship to their classroom teaching practices. the standards movement in education, of which the nbpts is associated, has had an extensive effect on the way teaching, learning and professional development is enacted in public schools (noddings, 1997). like any standards based educational reform movement, the unifying influences and the assessments that accompany the nbpts certification current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 process offer possibilities, as well as challenges, in both political and educational arenas (eisner, 1998). as a relative newcomer in the professional development arena, the nbpts process has yet to be fully documented and understood from the perspective of the teacher candidates proceeding through the certification process. in numerous educational publications, classroom teachers that have gone through the certification process have written about the effects the nbpts process has had on their lives and teaching practices (cascio, 1995; rose, 1999; shapiro, 1993). these reports have been overwhelmingly positive, expressing the impact the nbpts process has had on teachers’ teaching practices, thinking processes, the enhanced status of the teaching profession and the improvements in the quality of education provided their students (buday & kelly, 1996). classroom teachers, university educators, state legislators and members of the business community have come together to create what the nbpts describes as "high and rigorous standards" for a variety of teacher specializations within the teaching profession (nbpts, 1987). the nbpts certification process may represent a significant change in the way professional development and teacher certification is implemented, with all the inherent possibilities and challenges associated with such an endeavor (petrosky, 1994). in contrast to the testimonial evidence provided by various nbpts candidates and certified teachers, this study seeks to add to the research literature by describing and interpreting the meaning perspectives associated with the nbpts process, as constructed by an elementary classroom teacher seeking national board certification in the early childhood generalist category of specialization. working from an interpretivist research paradigm (erickson, 1986), using a single-case study design (stake, 1994), this research project was designed to gain access to the meaning perspectives associated with the nbpts certification process from the point of view of a national board candidate interacting with the procedures, assessments and requirements necessary to achieve certification.. a brief history of the nbpts in response to recommendations made by the carnegie task force on teaching as a profession, the nbpts was created in 1987 to serve two distinct purposes: (a) the creation of an assessment and certification system to offer teachers an advanced certification, and (b) to establish a standards setting board to develop standards in as many as thirty-six separate teaching certification areas (carnegie forum, 1986). in addition to the standards and certification system designed to recognize accomplished teaching, the nbpts was initiated to provide a staff development model based on the high and rigorous standards created by classroom teachers and other educators, legislators, school board members, business community members and educational researchers (carnegie forum, 1986). the nbpts is governed by a sixty-three member board, a majority of whom are practicing classroom teachers. the nbpts is described as a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental organization that was initiated to respond to the claim that the teaching profession, unlike medicine, architecture or accounting, has not codified the knowledge, skills and dispositions that account for accomplished practice and that certain misconceptions about what constitutes good teaching continue to exist (baratz-snowden, shapiro & streeter, 1993). classroom teachers can apply for nbpts certification in any of the twenty-four specializations, ranging from early childhood generalist to young adult english language arts. each of these certifications align to the nbpts standards developed by teachers, for teachers, intended to create a unified vision of teaching across the united states (ambach, 1996). the goal of the nbpts in the next decade is to certify over 100,000 teachers, roughly one for every school in the united states. possibilities and challenges the nbpts certification process and its accompanying assessment system have been touted as a model for professional development (french, 1997), a unique process for certifying accomplished teachers and attracting qualified individuals into the teaching profession (shapiro, 1993), a vision of excellence in teaching that combines the wisdom of practice of outstanding teachers with consensus among the broader education community (barringer, 1993) and a process that requires teachers to think and talk about their practice in ways they have never done before (mitchell, 1998). proponents of the nbpts system suggest the certification process and the development of rigorous teaching standards will increase the professional standing of the teaching profession, create a sense of collegiality among teachers, develop teachers that are more reflective and cognizant of their practice, create a consistent, unified vision of accomplished teaching and instill in the general public a positive image of public education (buday & kelly, 1996; nbpts, 1989). the positive outcomes proposed by supporters of the nbpts certification system include: (a) an enhanced status accorded public school teachers, (b) the recognition of accomplished practice as represented by the nbpts certification process, (c) the attraction taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation 3 of qualified teachers to the profession, (d) the promotion of reflective practice, (e) enhanced collegial relationships among teachers, and (f) the use of new assessment procedures to capture the complexities inherent in accomplished teaching. in contrast to the positive outcomes suggested by nbpts proponents, other educators have levied challenges to the nbpts standards, assessments and certification system. educators have challenged the nbpts process on the grounds that it will create a competitive atmosphere rather than the collegiality it purports to establish (marshall, 1996), and will create unnecessary distinctions between teachers, leading to an informal hierarchy in the teaching profession, rather than the unifying vision the board proposes (king, 1994). still other educators have claimed that the nbpts standards and criteria are not consistent with what many scholars have described as culturally sensitive teaching pedagogies (irvine & fraser, 1998). another challenge levied against the nbpts is the trend that minority teachers, especially african american teachers, are achieving nbpts certification in disproportionate numbers (bond, 1998). finally, labaree (1992) suggests that the standards themselves represent a normative force on teaching practices, when the teaching profession should be celebrating its diversity and creative differences, rather than a solitary vision of accomplished teaching. it is possible that the rigorous standards outlining the nbpts vision of accomplished practice, and the reflective or systematic thinking that teachers engage in during the certification process, improve the quality of classroom teaching, whereas the assessment procedures utilized by the nbpts are merely a traditional, numerical scoring device, designed to certify and normalize accomplished teaching. a review of the literature revealed a sense of “skeptical optimism” about the future of the nbpts standards and its assessment process. although the nbpts teaching standards may reflect a vision of accomplished teaching that more teachers may be able to demonstrate in the years ahead, one should remain cautious about the standards-based reform movement in general, the hierarchy of teachers that may result from nbpts certification, the assessment system's ability to distinguish and certify accomplished teaching and the means of representing quality teaching given the vehicles provided by the nbpts certification system (serafini, 2002). research questions interpretivist research designs are emergent and flexible, allowing for the construction of knowledge and changes in data collection and perspectives during the study (erickson, 1986). however, the following questions provided an initial focus for the study: (a) what are the meaning perspectives associated with the nbpts process as constructed by an elementary classroom teacher involved in the nbpts certification process for early childhood education?, (b) how are the standards and the certification process interpreted by the candidate as the candidate progressed through the requirements towards achieving certification?, (c) how does the nbpts certification process and the accompanying standards define the core proposition "thinking systematically about one's teaching and learning from one's experience?, and (d) what is the focus of the teacher's systematic thinking as the candidate progresses through the certification process? theoretical framework this study was conducted from the perspective of an interpretivist research paradigm (erickson, 1986). it is a qualitative study designed to understand and describe the interpretations of a candidate going through the nbpts certification process. since the majority of studies conducted by nbpts researchers are quantitative studies intending to understand the overall effects of the nbpts certification system and standards setting process, this study focuses on an individual candidate throughout the certification process. this study was conducted to describe in detail the meanings associated with the nbpts process from the perspective of a classroom teacher and to construct warranted assertions of the nbpts process. based on the idea that individuals construct and assign meanings to the objects and events in their lives and act according to these constructions (erickson, 1986), research methods were employed to describe and interpret the meanings associated with the nbpts process by the teacher candidate attempting to achieve certification. interpretivist research is based on the interpretation of naturally occurring events and the representation of those events to the public. it is a reconstruction of the meaning perspectives held by the actors in their natural settings. merriam (1998) writes, "… reality is constructed by individuals interacting in their social worlds. qualitative [interpretivist] researchers are interested in understanding the meaning people have constructed, (italics in original) that is, how they make sense of their world and the experiences they have in the world" (p.6). stake (1994) states, " a case study is defined by interest in individual cases, not by methods of inquiry used." (p. 236). cases are constructed based on the conceptual framework of the researcher, the physical and temporal distinctions of time and place, the theoretical frameworks brought to the study, and current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 the paradigms the researcher holds to be important (ragin & becker, 1992). participants and setting the researcher worked as a staff development facilitator at an elementary school in an urban center in the southwest united states helping classroom teachers develop child-centered and literature-based approaches to reading and literacy education. the researcher worked in approximately thirty different classrooms each week demonstrating approaches to literacy instruction, responding to various teachers efforts during their classroom instruction and offering resources and support for their professional growth. it was in the position of staff developer that jennifer, the national board teacher candidate who participated in this study (all names in this study are pseudonyms) was introduced to the researcher. jennifer’s primary, multiage classroom (grades k-2) can best be described as a child-centered, multiage classroom. a workshop format was employed in language arts instruction. math instruction utilized manipulatives and problem-solving activities, while science instruction included hands-on experiments and inquiry-based thematic units. jennifer’s classroom contained approximately twenty-four students throughout the course of the study. the demographic makeup of her classroom was fifty percent hispanic, thirty percent caucasian, and twenty percent african american. the school in which she worked was part of the federal title one program, with eighty percent of the school’s children receiving free or reduced priced lunches. in her sixth year as a primary grade teacher, jennifer decided that she would apply for nbpts certification. after learning of her decision to pursue nbpts certification, the researcher approached her to participate in a research study focusing on the nbpts certification process. two factors were important in making the decision to select jennifer. first, jennifer was one of only twenty teachers applying for certification in the geographical proximity, and second, because of the working relationship that had been established between teacher and staff development facilitator, the researcher felt comfortable approaching jennifer with this request. stake (1994) explains that the primary consideration in selecting a case is opportunity to learn and access to the context to be studied. jennifer jennifer was considered by many of her colleagues to be an outstanding teacher even before she applied for the nbpts certification process. jennifer was a member of several professional organizations, including the national council teachers of english and the international reading association, and hade presented at several conferences prior to the onset of the study. the two principals that jennifer worked for during her tenure as a classroom teacher had called on her to lead staff development workshops at their respective schools, had appointed her lead teacher for her grade level, and gave her exemplary teacher evaluations over her years working with them. in general, jennifer was considered an outstanding teacher, one that had earned the respect of many of her colleagues and administrators. data sources this study involved the collection of five types of data: (a) interview transcripts, (b) journal entries, (c) nbpts documents, (d) portfolio artifacts and interpretive commentaries created by the candidate for submission to the nbpts assessors, and (e) observational field notes taken during support group meetings. however, the majority of data used in the study was collected primarily through a series of open interviews, where the candidate simply recounted any work and involvement with the nbpts process since the last interview, and semistructured interviews where a selection of questions were created before the interview and presented to the candidate during the interview. electronic mail (e-mail) was utilized to send jennifer excerpts from the previous weeks’ interviews in order to have her check the transcripts for accuracy. these email notes also served as prompts for our future interviews. in a sense, the excerpts from the interviews served as a "member check" during the course of the year long interview process (lincoln & guba, 1985), allowing jennifer to clarify and expand on her interview statements. information from previous interviews was regularly used to begin subsequent interviews, allowing the candidate the opportunity to clarify particular statements or expand on any points she had previously offered. in addition, the candidate kept a reflective journal during the course of the nbpts certification process to wrote about her thoughts and concerns. the reflective journal entries offered a unique perspective, one that was not always available in field notes or interview data. prior to the study, the nbpts distributed, as part of its information campaign and public awareness efforts, many brochures, articles, web-site resources, and information packets outlining the intentions, procedures, and mission of the nbpts certification process and organization. these sources of information were analyzed to investigate perspectives to the nbpts procedures and intentions in addition to the one offered by the candidate herself. taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation 5 data analysis the data analysis procedures used in this study followed erickson's interpretive model of qualitative research (erickson, 1986). according to erickson (1986) “the basic task of data analysis is to generate assertions that vary in scope and level of inference, largely through induction, and to establish an evidentiary warrant for the assertions one wishes to make." (p. 146). the researcher is looking for "key linkages" among various pieces of data, which can be described as patterns of generalizations within the case at hand. theoretical and research memos, written during the data collection period, provided an impetus for the data analysis to follow (glaser, 1978). these memos were used as a resource for theorizing about what was observed and the data being collected. these memos were used to provide an initial foundation for the data analysis as it proceeded. data analysis procedures occurred in three consecutive phases. the first phase began as information was collected from interviews, support group meetings, nbpts publications, and the candidate’s reflective journal. the second phase began when data collection was completed and the entire "data corpus" (erickson, 1986) was analyzed looking for key linkages and patterns of generalization. after reading through the entire data set twice, seven preliminary categories of data were constructed and the data was organized into individual computer files pertaining to each category. these categories were labeled: (a) alignment, (b) providing evidence, (c) standardized reflection, (d) tensions with writing, (e) recognition, (f) tensions with assessment, and (g) support and collaboration. the final phase of data analysis occurred as the final report was being written. merriam (1998) writes, "…because data collection and analysis is continuous and simultaneous in qualitative research, there is no clean cut off no time when everything else [analysis] stops and writing begins." (p. 220). writing is as much an act of discovery and analysis as it is an act of transcription. after the seven initial categories listed previously were constructed and detailed descriptions about each category were recorded in a research journal, analysis began looking for connections and relationships among the categories. the initial categories of providing evidence and standardized reflection fit better as sub-categories within the larger category of alignment, rather than as separate categories. although jennifer provided evidence of her teaching practices and was required to reflect on her teaching, it seemed the primary impetus of these activities was to align to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice. the category originally entitled recognition remained significant throughout the data analysis. the original category of support and collaboration was eventually constructed as a sub-category within the category of recognition. many aspects of the data labeled support, was considered an act of recognition. in other words, the data labeled support or collaboration included information about various teachers, both nbpts candidates and other teachers at jennifer's school, who supported her during the nbpts process. this evidence of support were considered a form of recognition. the category challenges with representation was constructed from the two initial categories: tensions with writing, and tensions with assessment. these categories, described initially as “tensions,” referred to the candidate’s challenge of representing herself as an accomplished teacher. the tensions focused on the candidate’s ability to represent her level of teaching ability to the assessors through the assessment center exercises and portfolio entries. it is because of this focus that the category of challenges was renamed representation. although every bit of data did not fit neatly into one of the three categories described, these three categories and the subcategories described provided key linkages to a preponderance of the data set. results the goal of data analysis is to construct and warrant the assertions that arise from subsequent readings and re-readings of the data set. erickson (1986) explains, "one of the basic tasks of data analysis is to generate assertions, largely through induction, by reviewing the full set of field notes, interview transcripts, journal entries and pertinent documents." (p. 146). based on an extensive analysis of the data set, the following three assertions were put forth. assertion #1 the teacher candidate viewed the nbpts certification process as one of aligning to the vision of accomplished practice set forth in the nbpts standards documents. the teacher candidate viewed, as part of this process of alignment, her need to adopt the nbpts standards as a vision of accomplished practice, to provide evidence of this alignment in her teaching portfolio and to focus her thinking and reflective processes on the criteria set forth in the standards documents for accomplished practice. one of the central tenets of the nbpts certification process is the adoption of the nbpts standards as a vision of accomplished practice. this vision of accomplished practice is then used as a lens by the teacher candidates to assess and critique their current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 teaching practices during the certification process. from the outset of the nbpts certification process, jennifer believed it was her responsibility to provide evidence of her alignment to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice through the assessment vehicles provided during the nbpts certification process. assertion #2 the teacher candidate believed that she would be recognized as an accomplished teacher by achieving nbpts certification. jennifer viewed the nbpts certification as a legitimate recognition of her accomplished teaching practice, believing that achieving nbpts certification would lead to increased positive recognition of her accomplished teaching practices among her peers, the educational community and the public in general. jennifer believed that the nbpts certification represented a legitimate endorsement of her teaching ability, one that would increase her status as a teaching professional. since there are few, if any, formally recognized hierarchies among elementary school teachers, she believed the nbpts certification could be used as a vehicle to allow her to stand out as an accomplished teacher among her peers. jennifer also believed that achieving national board certification would lead to increased status for the entire teaching profession. assertion #3 the teacher candidate faced several challenges in representing herself as an accomplished teacher through the vehicles provided by the certification process, including the teaching portfolio and assessment center exercises. jennifer often felt the written commentaries she included in the nbpts teaching portfolio were unable to satisfactorily represent her level of accomplished teaching. there seemed to be various “tensions” or “challenges" associated with the assessment vehicles used to represent her teaching practices. representing the complexities of accomplished practice through written, interpretive commentaries and videotape segments presented a considerable challenge jennifer needed to overcome in order to achieve national board certification. in order to further delineate each of the assertions put forth, each assertion will be described in detail and presented with data from a variety of sources to support these three assertions. aligning to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice as teacher candidates begin the nbpts certification process, they must become familiar with the particulars of the vision of accomplished practice as set forth in the nbpts standards. this vision is set forth in the written language of the nbpts standards and candidates are required to interpret these written standards and demonstrate their alignment to the nbpts vision in the written commentaries and videotape segments submitted to the nbpts in their teaching portfolio. the standards are not delivered to the candidates on videotapes or by classroom demonstration; rather they are delivered to candidates in written statements from which candidates must interpret and relate these written standards to their classroom teaching practices. the standards are general statements about accomplished teaching, open to wide interpretations, represented in written language as de-contextualized propositions about teaching that require teachers to contextualize the nbpts standards into their classroom context to determine what to include in the written commentaries and artifacts contained in the portfolio they submit for certification (burroughs, roe & hendricks-lee, 1998). as jennifer became acquainted with the nbpts standards, she understood there to be an alignment between her vision of what it meant to be an accomplished teacher and the nbpts' vision of accomplished teaching. even before beginning the nbpts certification process, jennifer believed she possessed many of the qualities of accomplished teaching described in the nbpts standards, and that she would be able to demonstrate them in the teaching portfolio she would submit for certification. by reading through the standards documents on numerous occasions, jennifer believed that she had become familiar with the nbpts vision of accomplished practice. she began to use the written descriptions of the nbpts standards as a lens to assess, critique and interpret her own teaching practices. after reading through the nbpts standards documents provided to her during the initial phase of the certification process, jennifer explained: i really thought surely that there was something that i don't really strongly agree with, but i went back through, and i was looking through [the standards], there really isn't anything in there that i can disagree with. i know it was a group of early childhood teachers that came up with these. it must have been a really good group of early childhood teachers that came up with these standards because they are not fluff, and they are not cutesy, they just spell out what good teaching is and what it looks like in an early childhood classroom. i think that is why i like them so much. it's very broad and open and it touches on everything i do, so that is kind of nice. taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation 7 as jennifer began to produce the written commentaries and videotape segments required for certification, she referred to the nbpts standards in order to make decisions about what aspects of her teaching to include in the portfolio as a representative sampling of her classroom practices. in other words, because of the space and time limitations imposed by the certification process, she had to decide what to include and what to leave out of the written commentaries and portfolio entries she submitted to the nbpts. the assessments, the teaching portfolio and the written commentaries became the vehicles jennifer would use to represent and demonstrate her alignment to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice. the promotional literature distributed by the nbpts described the standards as a vision of what teaching should be like as we move into the 21 st century. however, this vision is delivered to the candidate in the form of written standards. candidates must construct their own interpretations of the nbpts vision by reading through and becoming familiar with the standards documents. candidates must decide how their interpretations of the written nbpts standards relate to their local contexts and the teaching practices of their own classrooms. jennifer viewed the nbpts standards as the standards of accomplished teaching available in the unites states at the time of this study. just as a lens on a camera focuses on certain aspects in one's field of vision, the nbpts documents were used as a lens to focus on certain aspects of her teaching practice. this nbpts lens is designed to help candidates focus on those aspects of their teaching practice that are included in the nbpts' vision of accomplished practice in order to be able to write about them and provide evidence of this level of practice in their portfolios. in this sense, the standards limit the field of vision of the teacher candidate to what aligns to the vision set forth in the nbpts standards, while at the same time providing a focus for the candidate during the certification process. the expectation that candidates adopt and align to the nbpts vision, temporarily setting aside any of their own criteria for accomplished teaching, was discussed at support group meetings during presentations by several nbpts teacher facilitators and in various nbpts documents. jennifer consistently mentioned her willingness to forego any other standards of quality teaching she might have to focus on the nbpts vision of accomplished practice in order to be successful during the nbpts certification process. jennifer attended several meetings with other nbpts candidates during the course of the certification process. at one of the meetings, an npbts certified teacher that had worked as a scorer for the nbpts evaluation team discussed what she felt was important for candidates to know about how their portfolios and interpretive commentaries would be scored. she told the audience of teacher candidates: after working for a short time with these [nbpts] assessors, i want you to know they knew exactly what they were looking for. teachers, you need to remember and learn what each portfolio entry is addressing and what the standards are for each portfolio entry. be sure to focus on the language of the standards. so when you look at the [lesson] topics be sure it addresses the standards you are looking at. it can’t just be a wonderful lesson if it doesn’t answer what that entry is looking for. the goals for the particular lesson must align to the nbpts goals for what you are teaching. and how it fits in the big picture. it can’t just be a good lesson, it has to align with the nbpts goals and standards. the facilitator was giving the teacher candidates advice on what to include in their portfolios and how to write better interpretive commentaries to submit for certification. her advice hinges on the teacher candidates being able to demonstrate their alignment to the nbpts standards. in a reflective journal entry, written as jennifer began to draft the interpretive commentaries that she would include with her portfolio entries, she explained: my focus is on my goals and the standards pretty much, and i was trying to think about what emily [an nbpts teacher facilitator] was saying after we watched another candidate's video. she said, ‘it's not about being able to show good teaching, it's about being able to, the standards are what you are supposed to be doing, and you can be doing good stuff in your classroom, but it may not be what the standards say you should be doing.’ in addition, jennifer wrote the following entry in her reflective journal: my primary purpose of going through [the nbpts process] is to inform my practice. i want to see if others think my teaching aligns with the standards. i am hoping by the end of this all, i am more knowledgeable about the standards and able to articulate them. this process of aligning to the standards is also supported by the literature distributed by the current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 nbpts. the following excerpt from a brochure entitled, “national board certification: a guide for candidates”, published by the american federation of teachers, a teachers’ union involved with the nbpts, represents the kind of alignment that the developers of the nbpts process believe to be necessary for achieving certification. it states: the first step in approaching the national board standards is to adopt the right mindsetnamely, that you agree with the national board standards and that you see yourself embodying these standards in your practice… in other words, there is no guesswork involvedthe national board standards are the only standards by which your teaching will be assessed. (american federation of teachers, 1998, p.18). not only does alignment involve coming to know the standards, but it also involves learning to use the language of the standards in one's own writing. jennifer was not only trying to understand the nbpts standards, she began to use the language from the standards in the writing that she included in her portfolio submitted for certification. in an interview conducted after her portfolio had been submitted, jennifer talked about how she went about constructing the interpretive commentaries that accompanied the video segments of her teaching: i wrote to the standards a lot. i incorporated the language [of the standards] and made sure to incorporate words like, 'understanding young children' and made sure that i said enough about that in each of the entries that it required. and the standards just kind of helped me stay within their lines, to keep what was most important for the entry, incorporating those standards along with whatever i was teaching. the directions and all the advice i was given said to use the standards, use the language of the standards, and it doesn't say anywhere in the [nbpts] directions that you should use their language, but it does say that you should refer to it, and make sure that your writing covers all those areas. teacher candidates may be thinking about their practice, but are directed to do so through the lens of the nbpts standards. for jennifer, the certification process became a process of representing her alignment to a set of predetermined standards of accomplished teaching, as described in detail in the nbpts standards, through the assessment vehicles provided during the certification process. being recognized as an accomplished teacher in a variety of the literature provided by the nbpts, including brochures, press releases, and the nbpts web-site, increasing the professional status of classroom teachers has been described as one of the primary goals of the nbpts certification and standards development process. in addition, the nbpts standards and certification process has been purported to create a unifying vision of accomplished practice that experienced classroom teachers should aspire to achieve (ambach, 1996). because of the reported lack of formal structures for recognizing accomplished practice currently in place in the teaching profession, it is believed that classroom teachers will gravitate towards the legitimization of accomplished practice offered by the nbpts (king, 1994). during this study, it became evident that jennifer was looking to have her teaching abilities recognized, not only by the educational community and the general public, but by herself as well. because of this, data suggesting two types of recognition were identified: self-recognition and public-professional recognition. first, selfrecognition is defined as the process of seeing oneself as an accomplished teacher. jennifer came to believe that she could legitimize her teaching practices by aligning to the nbpts standards. if she achieved certification, she believed that the certification would legitimize her standing as an accomplished teacher, that it would somehow make her quality of teaching more “official”. shortly before jennifer was scheduled to receive written notification concerning her status as an nbpts candidate, she wrote in her reflective journal: my perception of myself as a classroom teacher is really wrapped up in this [nbpts] process right now. i want to believe that this process will set the exemplary teachers apart from the mediocre teachers, and even more from the "sucky" teachers. i don’t think my teaching practice has dramatically changed since going through the process, however, going into this year [the school year after the nbpts process], i felt more confident about the way i run my room and set up the environment because i have the national standards to back me up. i grow and change each year because i read and reflect on my interactions in my room. i don’t think i did more of this because of the [nbpts] process, it's just what i do. although, jennifer believed that she was already an accomplished teacher before the nbpts process began, she believed that aligning to the taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation 9 nbpts standards would legitimize her level of accomplished teaching practices and provide her with a nationally recognized criteria to support her perception of herself as an accomplished teacher. she believed that aligning to the nbpts standards and ultimately achieving certification would set her apart from what she has described as mediocre, or “sucky,” teachers. jennifer believed that the nbpts certification process was a challenging process to go through, on that no every teacher could handle, and ultimately the nbpts certification would separate her level of teaching from the average teacher, she explains: i don’t think just any “joe schmoe” teacher could come through this and be able to meet the national standards, at least for early childhood. i ask [myself], ‘can i meet this level of teaching?’ because, its a lot in those [nbpts] standards, things that should be happening in your classroom, and to be making sure that you can do all of those things, its like a bar to see if you are reaching that level. for jennifer, the nbpts standards were a “bar,” a level of challenge she was up to demonstrating in order to be recognized as an accomplished teacher. the second type of recognition, described as public-professional recognition, refers to the recognition of accomplished teaching by other members of the teaching profession and the general public, including state and federal legislators, government officials, parents of school children and the business community. being recognized as an accomplished teacher within the educational community and by the general public has been suggested as an important consideration in a candidate's decision to attempt nbpts certification (baratz-snowden, shapiro & streeter, 1993). teachers, like members of other professions, desire to be seen as accomplished members of their profession, and often look to external certifications, awards or exams to legitimize this recognition. many of the elementary school districts throughout the united states are currently offering monetary stipends for becoming national board certified. ranging from $500 to $5,000, these stipends were described by jennifer as a "nice bonus" for all of her efforts. in the district where jennifer works, only five teachers were selected from those that applied to receive financial and clerical support from the district. she felt that being chosen to receive the financial support, and being offered a substitute teacher for up to ten school days in order to work on her certification, was a form of professional recognition. jennifer felt nbpts certified teachers deserved the recognition they received for their level of accomplished teaching. she viewed the nbpts certification as an "elite club" that deserved the level of recognition she hoped would be forthcoming if she became certified. in an entry in her reflective journal she wrote: those that have achieved certification are part of an elite club. i suppose if they go through this process and are successful they deserve recognition. honestly, part of the glamour of doing this, is that i am hoping that it will give me some sort of recognition. at every meeting the researcher attended, whenever an nbpts certified teacher was introduced they received a lengthy and enthusiastic round of applause. teacher candidates seemed to acknowledge their accomplishments and spent time talking with them about the challenges they faced during the certification process. at one of the support meetings, an nbpts facilitators stated: “this [nbpts process] is all consuming. you basically put your life on hold. you are the best of the best! it is not like anything else you have done. it is all consuming.” she explained how challenging the process was and then introduced two nbpts certified teachers, at which time the teacher candidates rose to offer the two teachers a standing ovation. however, jennifer also realized that the nbpts certification was not as universally recognized as she would like. in an interview she explained: as soon as i got my [nbpts] standards, i tried talking to people, ‘what have you heard about it?’ most people don’t even know much about it [nbpts]. except, well in our research group [at jennifer’s school], they knew a little about it. to some people you say, ‘i’m going through national board certification,’ and they have no clue. they say, ‘what’s that?’ and they’re educators! it’s kind of unfortunate. jennifer felt that teachers needed to be more aware of the nbpts certification and process. if teachers didn’t know about the nbpts certification, the recognition she felt she deserved would not be forthcoming. for jennifer, self and publicprofessional recognition was an important factor in her decision to apply for nbpts certification. she valued the nbpts certification process, and hoped that achieving certification would give her the recognition of teaching excellence she felt she deserved. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 challenges with representing accomplished practice the primary function of the teaching portfolio and the assessment center exercises is to provide an opportunity for teacher candidates to represent their teaching abilities to the nbpts team of assessors. in fact, the teaching portfolio and the assessment center exercises were the sole artifacts used to represent jennifer’s alignment to the vision of accomplished practice set forth in the nbpts standards. the portfolio and assessment center exercises were each scored to determine whether jennifer would achieve nbpts certification. in the process of describing her classroom and putting into words those aspects of her teaching practice that jennifer wanted to present to the nbpts assessors, jennifer was forced to represent her teaching through the written commentaries and video segments required by the nbpts certification process. at a support group meeting before jennifer began the certification process, a representative from the nbpts told the group of candidates: you need to show you at your best. a good lesson. the clearer you can make to them [nbpts assessors] the practices you use and why you use them, the better off you will be. you want to give the assessor the best picture of your practice you can. start using the language of the standards in your written answers to the portfolio prompts. take your own subject and add the predicate from the standards documents itself. as the nbpts representative continued to explain the assessment process to jennifer and the other candidates, jennifer began to realize the goal of the assessment process was to provide evidence of one’s alignment to the nbpts vision of accomplished teaching through the assessment vehicles provided. jennifer needed to learn to represent “the best picture of her practice” to the nbpts assessors through the assessment vehicles she would be required to complete. the assessors never met jennifer face to face, conducted interviews or engaged in on-site, classroom observations during the certification process. the items contained in the portfolio, and her responses to the assessment center exercises, were the only artifacts used to represent jennifer's teaching abilities to the nbpts assessors. the two primary challenges of representing her teaching practices jennifer faced during the certification process were: (a) deciding what to include in the portfolio entries and what to discard, and (b) learning to write in an unfamiliar genre in order to represent her alignment to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice through her writing. the portfolio entries and assessment center exercises had rigid space, time and content requirements that jennifer had to adhere to during the assessment exercises. in addition, the written interpretive commentaries that jennifer was required to construct were a type of writing she had never encountered. choices must be made about what to include and what to discard since every aspect of one's classroom and teaching practice cannot be included. candidates must represent their classroom teaching practices, which exists as a series of acts or performances that occur in a specific context, through a set of videotapes, written commentaries and assessment center exercises. delandshire and petrosky (1998) suggest that every representation of the act of teaching is a reduction of the contexts and actions of the actual teaching-learning event to what can be included in the assessment vehicles provided. jennifer struggled at times trying to describe her classroom context and her teaching in clear and concise language that fit the nbpts entry directions, space limitations, and portfolio requirements. in an interview, jennifer commented: there is so much that goes on within the classroom that it's hard to get it down on paper, especially if they [nbpts assessment exercises] don't ask the right questions for me to answer. there's not enough space to explain everything. it's hard to paint a clear picture. they ask very specific questions that lead you to respond in very specific ways, but it doesn't necessarily paint the whole picture. along with each artifact of student work and video tape segment selected, jennifer was required to write an interpretive commentary according to the entry directions and writing instructions included in the nbpts certification materials. each of these written interpretive commentaries has its own requirements, space limitations and font restrictions, and is used as a representative sample of her teaching as a whole. in essence, the interpretive commentaries jennifer constructed were a distinctive genre that she had to come to understand, and be able to write in, if she was to be successful in the nbpts process. these interpretive commentaries are a unique genre that may be unfamiliar to many classroom teachers. burroughs, roe and hendrickslee (1998) state, "because nbpts discourse relies upon decontextualized propositions about teaching written for distant audiences, we hypothesized that teachers, who work in local, situated learning communities, might have difficulty negotiating the [nbpts] board's discourse" (p.34). the nbpts portfolio entries have explicit instructions, and come with an optional format that taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation 11 candidates are invited to follow. although jennifer was provided with these explicit instructions and the standards that accompany each entry, she had never written detailed descriptions of her classroom or teaching practices for a certification process in this particular style or genre before. this created a challenge to her as she prepared the written commentaries to be included in her portfolio. it is important to note that the nbpts standards are broad, general statements regarding the vision of accomplished practice set forth by the nbpts board. these standards are delivered to the teacher candidates in written format, and candidates must then interpret the nbpts vision of accomplished practice for themselves. teachers are required to, first, interpret the nbpts standards of accomplished practice and, second, represent their alignment to these standards, in writing, using the assessment vehicles provided. in the process of writing, audience and purpose are important factors in determining the structures, style and content of a particular piece of writing. because of this, jennifer became concerned about the audience of nbpts assessors that would eventually read and interpret her portfolio and assessment center exercises, and the style and content of the interpretive commentaries she constructed. in an interview as jennifer was preparing interpretive commentaries for several entries in her portfolio, she explained: the directions and all the advice i was given said to use the standards, use the language of the standards. it doesn't say anywhere in the [nbpts] directions that you should use their language, but it does say that you should refer to it, and make sure that your writing covers all those areas, the things in each of those entries. i did this so that it would be easy, completely clear for them so they [nbpts assessors] could pick it up easy. jennifer knew that the nbpts scorers were looking for specific things, for example the language of the standards, and was sure to include some of this language in her written commentaries. in an interview conducted while jennifer was writing some of the interpretive commentaries for her portfolio, she discussed the challenges of finding the right words to describe her classroom and her teaching practices. she said that she would often refer to the actual language of the nbpts standards documents to solve this dilemma. she explained: i wrote to the standards a lot. i incorporated the language of the standards and made sure to incorporate words like, 'understanding young children.’ the standards just kind of helped me stay within their lines, to help me keep what was most important for the entry, that is, incorporating those standards along with whatever i was teaching. after i finished writing, i would go back and read through it and think, ‘oh, i can plug in these words from the standards, because it’s the same thing, just said differently.’ when i did my writing, i would answer the question, read about it, and just write down what i thought about it. if i got stuck on something i was trying to explain, wasn't sure how to put it into words, i would refer to the standards, find a piece that maybe talked about that [aspect of her classroom] and say, ‘there's a thing to say.' or, 'i can plug in these words from the standards, because it's the same thing, only said differently.' i used a lot, a lot of their words because it was what they asked for, and i felt comfortable doing it. the directions and all the advice i was given [by the nbpts facilitators] said to use the standards, use the language of the standards. it doesn't say anywhere in the [nbpts] directions that you should use their language, but it does say that you should refer to it, and make sure that your writing covers all those areas, the things in each of those entries. i did this so that it would be easy, completely clear for them, so they [nbpts assessors] could pick it up easy. as jennifer was trying to understand the requirements of the genre of interpretive commentaries imposed by the certification process and what kind of writing would help her to be successful in the nbpts process, she often referred to her own writing capabilities and processes. she believed that being a better writer would help her score higher on her portfolio entries and interpretive commentaries. however, what jennifer meant by "being a better writer", was being able to successfully negotiate the demands of the genres imposed by the nbpts assessment process. her view of quality writing was focused on the requirements of writing for the nbpts assessors. in an interview conducted near the end of the certification process, referring to the process she was going through in her writing of these interpretive commentaries and classroom descriptions, jennifer stated: it's hard, i mean, i am trying to be a better writer. i'm trying to be more concise in my wording, but i'm not there yet. lots of it [her writing] is just 'flowery' stuff that doesn't need to be there, lots of extra stuff. so, when i was reading through it [one of my entries] current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 it was like, that part needs to stay, and that part needs to go. when asked if she was talking about being a better writer in general or just for the nbpts requirements, she responded: both! it [the portfolio entry] requires you to be very concise, because you have a strict page limit, but i do find just becoming a better writer, in general, that you don't need all those extra words that i throw in there. like i found a lot of 'in my classrooms' in there, which is, well, redundant right? so it's coming together pretty well now. the presentation of evidence in the teaching portfolio is a rhetorical process, where candidates attempt to convince the nbpts assessors of their level of accomplished practice and their alignment to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice set forth in the standards documents (burroughs, roe & hendricks-lee, 1998). teachers make a case that their level of accomplished practice, represented by specific samples of their teaching practices contained in the assessment vehicles, align to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice set forth in the standards documents. although jennifer viewed the certification process, in particular the writing instructions and entry directions as "jumping through hoops" at times, they were hoops she was willing to jump through to achieve certification. she stated: being able to write to the questions [in the entry directions] is a big part of it. being able to jump through these hoops. it's some hoop jumping for sure. the direction say write to the questions, so, i will write to the questions. jennifer spent an extraordinary amount of time, both in and out of school, preparing items to submit for certification. the nbpts process requires a large commitment on the part of classroom teachers to complete the requirements during a school year when they are also in the classroom teaching. she hoped that her “hoop jumping” efforts would not go unnoticed. discussion the nbpts certification process and standards documents represented a vision of accomplished practice, a possible avenue for increased recognition as a classroom teacher, and an assessment system that required jennifer to represent her level of accomplished teaching to the nbpts assessors for scoring and certification purposes through the written commentaries and artifacts submitted. beginning with the process of adopting the nbpts vision of accomplished practice, and culminating with jennifer’s use of the nbpts language in her written commentaries, the certification process forced jennifer to forego any personally held criteria about accomplished teaching and evaluate her own teaching solely in light of the vision offered by the nbpts standards documents. because of its power to recognize and certify classroom teachers that demonstrate their alignment to a specific vision of accomplished teaching, the nbpts represents an emerging authority within the teaching profession in the united states. with this emerging authority comes various possibilities and challenges due to the future directions and extent of the nbpts’ influence. based on the evidence provided and the assertions put forth, the nbpts process represents: (a) a process of aligning to a specific discourse community or community of practice, (b) a commodity designed to support the recognition of accomplished teaching, and (c) a vehicle intended to promote reflective practice. nbpts as community of practice there is a close relationship among the nbpts certification process, the vision of accomplished practice set forth in the written language of the standards documents, and the theory of discourse communities or communities of practice proposed by lave and wenger (lave & wenger, 1991), and other researchers (gee, 1992; smyth, 1992). lave and wenger (1991) view learning as a situated activity dependent upon a process they call “legitimate peripheral participation.” “learners inevitably participate in community of practitioners [practice] and that the mastery of knowledge and skill requires newcomers to move toward full participation in the socio-cultural practices of a community” (lave & wenger, 1991, p.29). the nbpts certification process represents a set of situated activities within a community of practice. candidates participate in the activities of this community of practitioners and eventually, if certified, become legitimate members of the nbpts community of accomplished teachers. one of the most important activities that candidates engaged in during the certification process is the writing of the interpretive commentaries and portfolio entries submitted for evaluation. extending lave and wenger’s concept of communities of practice to include communities of writers, beaufort's (1997) definition of a discourse community, which focused on the writing practices of a discourse community, stated that discourse communities are “…social entit[ies] within which a set of distinctive writing practices occur and beyond whose borders different writing practices occur" (p. 518). the writing practices associated with the nbpts certification process focus on teacher candidates’ ability to create written commentaries that taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation 13 demonstrate an alignment to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice in order to achieve certification. throughout the certification process, jennifer was shown how to write to the standards, frequently reviewed her drafts with other candidates to see if they were following the nbpts entry directions and standards documents, adopted the language of the nbpts standards for inclusion in her written commentaries, and aligned her descriptions of her classroom and teaching practices to her interpretations of the nbpts values and practices. these activities demonstrate jennifer’s process of legitimate peripheral participation as she was apprenticed into the nbpts community of practice. burroughs et al. (1998) described the nbpts certification process as a discourse community to which teacher candidates were required to align in order to achieve certification. if nbpts candidates are to be successful in achieving certification, they must assume the nbpts discourse values and be able to represent these values in the portfolio they are required to submit for certification. it is the candidate's responsibility to interpret the values represented in the written standards of the nbpts by becoming familiar with, and aligning to, the vision of accomplished practice set forth in the nbpts standards documents (burroughs et al., 1998). the adoption of the vision of accomplished practice set forth in the nbpts standards, the focusing of the candidate's systematic thinking during the certification process, and the representation of the candidate's alignment to this established vision are all social processes that work to include participants in the nbpts discourse and communities of practice. aligning to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice meant more to jennifer than simply understanding the nbpts standards. it meant using the language of the standards in the written commentaries she submitted, adopting the nbpts vision of accomplished practice as her own, and learning to write and represent her teaching practices in language and formats the nbpts scorers would recognize and value. jennifer argued in writing that she had assumed the correct values, had adopted the language and writing practices of the discourse community, and was ready to become a legitimate member of the nbpts community of practice. certification remained the final step to legitimize her acceptance into the nbpts community. burroughs et al. (1998) suggest that candidates that were not certified had difficulties adopting the nbpts vision and aligning to the values of the nbpts discourse community, while successful candidates were able to, “…assume the nbpts discourse values.” (p. 3). jennifer was able to successfully accomplish this adoption of, and alignment to, the nbpts discourse values. in essence, jennifer’s representation of her level of accomplished practice was a process of moving from local, contextualized classroom events to the general, abstract discourse required by the nbpts, using the standards documents as “mediating artifacts” (werstch, 1991) in the process. during one of the support group meetings, one of the nbpts teacher facilitators told the group of candidates, "welcome to the club!" in essence, the facilitator was accepting the candidates' alignment to the nbpts discourse values as the key to membership in the nbpts club. the nbpts certification process serves as a process of legitimizing candidates’ alignment and acceptance of the nbpts values and practices. for a club to exist it must have members. membership is predicated on one's ability to accept and demonstrate an alignment to the values of a particular club in order to be accepted as a member. the nbpts is no different. the vision of accomplished practice set forth in the standards documents, represents a guide for candidates to follow to join the club. however, any membership in a club creates a distinction between members and non-members. it is this distinction that may create challenges in the teaching profession as the nbpts gains in prominence. the allocation of teachers to higher and lower rungs on the educational hierarchy may disenfranchise certain groups of teachers and disrupt the sense of community among teachers the nbpts initially set out to support and extend. nbpts as commodity king (1994) expressed his concerns about the nbpts certificate becoming a valued commodity and the possible creation of a hierarchy of teachers because of the nbpts certification. king (1994) wrote, "…the struggle for certification represents a race for certain qualifications that bring cultural assets. what national board certification is about, at least in part, is extending to teachers the symbolic struggle for cultural capital within their occupational field." (p. 103). because of the authority given to the nbpts to recognize and certify accomplished teaching, the certificate itself helps promote the recognition of a specific group of teachers over another. jennifer began the nbpts certification process hoping to use the certificate as a symbol of her level of accomplished teaching, a commodity she could exchange in the educational marketplace for higher salaries and promotions within the educational hierarchy and as a symbol to set her level of teaching apart from the average teacher. in fact, not soon after successfully completing the certification process, jennifer explained that she had been promoted to the current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 position of teacher leader at her grade level and given a substantial salary increase (personal communication, may, 2001). one of the concerns jennifer had during the certification process was how she would be perceived by other teachers at the school where she worked and in the educational community. she held little hope that the teachers at her own school would recognize her as an accomplished teacher. in fact, she was concerned that certain teachers would almost hold it against her, wondering, “who does she think she is?” after achieving certification. however, she held out more hope for the larger educational community, stating in an interview, “someday, somewhere in the future, teachers will recognize how important this certification is.” in the variety of literature distributed by the nbpts, ranging from promotional brochures to periodic newsletters, one of the primary outcomes of achieving certification suggested by the national board is the status accorded nbpts certified teachers. the ways in which this status will be given to teachers includes: (a) reciprocity across many states for recognizing teaching credentials and licensure, (b) assuming new roles in the teaching profession, (c) faculty adjunct positions at local universities, (d) being considered a spokesperson for the teaching profession, (e) mentoring responsibilities, (f) increased salaries and stipends, and (g) appointment to curriculum development and other administrative positions. it seems that there are many external rewards being associated with nbpts certification. how these external rewards and the status given to nbpts certified teachers effects the teaching profession will need to be investigated as the nbpts expands its influence. nbpts process as standardized reflection in the literature distributed by the nbpts and included in one of the five “core propositions” that serves as a framework for all of the certifications and standards documents, the nbpts strongly suggests that the certification and assessment process promotes systematic or reflective thinking and teaching practices. based on the evidence presented, the nbpts certification process required jennifer to reflect on her teaching practices, however, it did so on a limited, “standardized” basis. setting the nbpts standards as the lens to assess her practice and as the sole criteria of judging her level of accomplished teaching, the certification process narrowed the scope and dimensions of jennifer’s reflective processes to those that will help get her certified. rather than reflecting on the standards, the nbpts process promotes “standardized reflection” where the nbpts standards documents become the only lens used to reflect on one’s teaching. jennifer adopted the nbpts standards as the sole criteria of accomplished practice during the certification process. she mentioned several times during interviews and in her journal entries that she was not involved in this process to critique the standards or look for other criteria to evaluate her teaching. she believed that it was her job to demonstrate the standards in her writing and her portfolio entries, period. when asked whether she disagreed with some of the standards, she said it didn’t matter. she was here to demonstrate them, not challenge them. in other words, if it wasn’t contained in the nbpts standards, it was of no consequence to her during the certification process. because of the reduction of criteria of accomplished practice to the vision set forth in the nbpts standards, it is possible that the certification process represents an alternative form of "technical rationality" (schon, 1983), simply substituting one set of prescribed, universal teaching methods, for another set of contemporary, consensus standards of accomplished teaching. rather than teachers adopting particular teaching methods designed by university researchers to be delivered in the classroom context as suggested by schon’s concept of technical rationality, nbpts candidates are required to adopt a set of values, attitudes, practices, and visions of accomplished teaching to enact in their classrooms and demonstrate during the assessment process. unless the standards remain open to negotiation, and teachers are able to reflect on the changes in their practice based on a variety of criteria, the nbpts process may reduce its version of reflective practice to the same narrow version of reflection that it hoped to leave behind. the nbpts certification process may raise the level of accomplished teaching in america, however, it may also have a limiting, standardizing effect on the teachers that proceed through the certification process. this standardization of accomplished teaching may restrict the abilities of particular groups of teachers to be recognized for their individual talents. if the nbpts standards are recognized by the educational community and the general public as the only set of teaching standards, and do not allow for alternative perspectives concerning accomplished teaching to be given credence, the standardization of teachers may diminish, rather than increase, the effects of the nbpts certification process and assessment system.. limitations there are many possible perspectives from which to study the nbpts certification process. a researcher could construct a written survey and administer it to a representative sample of nbpts candidates or nbpts certified teachers to understand taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation 15 general trends concerning the certification process. it is also possible that researchers would select a sample of candidates to interview before, during or after the certification process to see what kinds of experiences they were having, or the meanings these candidates constructed concerning the nbpts process. this study focused on the experiences of one candidate as she progressed through the yearlong nbpts certification process. the qualitative, single-case design allowed the construction of an intimate understanding of the complex experiences and meanings constructed by the candidate during the certification process. methodological choices were made to understand a single candidate in greater detail, rather than study a larger number of candidates in less detail. with any single case study, limitations concerning generalizability and credibility are expected (lincoln & guba, 1985). the credibility of this study rests primarily on the ability of other researchers and readers of this report to accept the relationships described among the data collected and the categories and assertions constructed. the utility of the study, the importance assigned by the readers to the descriptions, interpretations and assertions contained in the report, will, in part, determine its credibility. constructing thick descriptions, providing quotes from interviews and journal entries, and including artifacts from the teaching portfolio, lend credibility to the assertions set forth and allow the readers of this report to understand the meaning perspectives constructed by the teacher candidate during her nbpts certification experience. the study initially intended to focus on the reflective practices, or systematic thinking processes, of a single candidate during the certification process. i chose this focus because the literature distributed by the nbpts and the testimonials provided by nbpts certified teachers suggested that the certification process was an effective vehicle for promoting reflective practice. i wanted to know what they meant by reflective practice, and how the nbpts certification process promoted this type of thinking. during the initial interviews, however, i became aware of the challenges of focusing on such a small aspect of the nbpts process without first understanding the process as a whole. i was unable to separate the candidate's reflective processes from the rest of her understandings and experiences concerning the nbpts certification process. as the study progressed, the direction of the study changed, and the content of the interviews focused on jennifer's understandings of the entire nbpts process, not exclusively the reflective aspects of the certification process. remaining open to the data being collected during the course of a qualitative study is crucial if researchers are, according to peshkin (2000) “…to exploit the opportunities for learning that fieldwork makes possible. such selection, together with ordering, associating and meaning making, is an element of interpretation. stated otherwise, interpretation is an act of imagination and logic. it entails perceiving importance, order, and form in what one is learning that relates to the argument, story, narrative that is continually undergoing creation." (p. 9). one of the primary concerns during the data analysis of the study was whether i found three assertions that simply fit my interests a priori, or whether i was able to divorce my predilections and motivations to construct assertions that connected to the data. in order to address this concern, i began the study by writing in my research journal about my understandings of the nbpts process and its effects on the teaching profession i had been a part of for the past eleven years. i needed to bring to a conscious level the perspectives and possible concerns that i held intuitively about the nbpts certification process. before going into the study, i admittedly had reservations about any process that claimed to create reflective teachers and was concerned about the rapid development of standards in the various disciplines of knowledge or content areas during the past two decades. further, i was, and still am, concerned about the effect of the nbpts teaching standards on the classroom teacher, and that the alignment to any standards of teaching practice, nbpts or otherwise, will lead to a standardization of classroom teaching and the reduction of the content of the curriculum to what is included in the accepted standards. avenues for future research given the financial limitations imposed by the non-profit status of the organization, the board's concerns with creating and maintaining a legally defensible national certification process, and the time constraints imposed by the structure of the certification process, the nbpts has strived to provide a variety of assessment vehicles for candidates to use to represent their teaching practices, educational philosophies and classroom contexts. the nbpts process is required by design to result in a single decision, to certify or not to certify. candidates are currently provided with limited feedback concerning the results of the assessment process. in general, they are simply provided with their final scores for each individual entry and an overall tally. in other words, the whole certification and scoring process is eventually reduced to a single decision, whether the candidate achieves national board current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 certification or not. whether the reduction of the assessment and certification process to a single score is effective in developing accomplished, reflective teachers is an important consideration for future research. reflective practice requires a teacher to be able to look back and evaluate their teaching and its effects. the limited feedback provided to the nbpts candidates may be a possible deterrent to their reflective processes. the nbpts process reduces the representation of accomplished teaching to what can be included in the written commentaries and video segments. future research will have to address the question, “does the process of becoming an nbpts certified teacher hinge on one's level of teaching ability, or one's ability to successfully align to the nbpts vision of accomplished practice, or discourse community, through the written commentaries, videotape segments and assessment vehicles provided during the certification process?” in other words, do better writers pass and poor writers fail regardless of their teaching abilities? another concern is the underlying assumption of the nbpts process that accomplished teaching is measurable, and that the nbpts assessment system is a credible and reliable process for doing so. does nbpts certification mean that certified teachers are more accomplished than other teachers, or that they are just more capable of representing an alignment to the nbpts vision of accomplished teaching through their written commentaries and portfolio artifacts? i am also left with questions concerning the nbpts assessment vehicle's ability to represent accomplished teaching, and the scorers' ability to recognize it when they review prospective candidates' portfolios. i know that decisions are being made, and that less that fifty percent of potential candidates are certified. however, whether accomplished teaching can be assessed, scored and tallied remains a primary concern. as the number of nbpts certified teachers begins to grow (there are approximately 10,000 certified teachers in the country as of the fall of 2000), the potential the nbpts has for impacting the teaching profession will increase. concerns have been raised about the effects of particular classroom teachers being recognized as accomplished teachers and given the financial incentives and leadership positions that may become, in part, associated with the nbpts certificate, while other teachers are viewed as unaccomplished and relegated to a lower rung on the teacher hierarchy. it will be important to understand the effects of the nbpts certification on the teaching community as more and more teachers become certified. the nbpts describes its certification process as an opportunity to build a sense of community among teachers. if the certification itself creates unwanted hierarchies, the nbpts process may have the opposite effect on the communities developed among the next generation of teachers. concluding remarks whether teachers can demonstrate the nbpts vision of accomplished teaching through the written commentaries, videotape segments and assessment center exercises or not will determine whether they achieve nbpts certification. the teacher candidate in this study believed that her nbpts certification would eventually be recognized as a legitimate endorsement of her accomplished teaching abilities by the educational community and the general public. although she had concerns about the nbpts assessment system's ability to assess and represent her accomplished teaching abilities, she was able to set aside these concerns and created a portfolio that allowed her to achieve nbpts certification. jennifer is now a certified nbpts teacher. what this certification will provide for her in the future as a classroom teacher remains to be seen. references ambach, g. 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(1983). the reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. new york: basic books. serafini, f. (2002). possibilities and challenges: the national board for professional teaching standards. journal of teacher education. 53(4), 316-327. shapiro, b. (1993). a boost for teachers?. vocational education journal, 68, 28-29. shapiro, b. (1995). the nbpts sets standards for accomplished teaching. educational leadership , 52(3), 55-57. smyth, j. (1992). teacher’s work and the politics of reflection. american educational research journal , 29, 267-300. stake, r.(1994). case studies. in n.k. denzin &y.s lincoln (eds.), handbook of qualitative research. (pp.236-247). thousand oaks, ca: sage. werstch, j. v. (1991). voices of the mind: a sociocultural approach to mediated action. cambridge , ma: harvard university press. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 21 2005 article citation serafini, f. (2005, july 20). taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation. current issues in education [on-line], 8(15). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number21/ author notes frank serafini, ph.d assistant professor university of nevada, las vegas 7247 hollywood park ave., las vegas , nv 89129 serafini@unlv.nevada.edu note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 19, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation serafini, f. (2005). taking on the national board for professional teaching standards: alignment, recognition and representation. current issues in education, 8(21). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1603 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number15/index.html mailto:serafini@unlv.nevada.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1603 volume 6, number 2 february, 2003 issn 1099-839x typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research anthony j. onwuegbuzie howard university larry g. daniel university of north florida the purpose of this paper is to identify and to discuss major analytical and interpretational errors that occur regularly in quantitative and qualitative educational research. a comprehensive review of the literature discussing various problems was conducted. with respect to quantitative data analyses, common analytical and interpretational misconceptions are presented for dataanalytic techniques representing each major member of the general linear model, including hierarchical linear modeling. common errors associated with many of these approaches include (a) no evidence provided that statistical assumptions were checked; (b) no power/sample size considerations discussed; (c) inappropriate treatment of multivariate data; (d) use of stepwise procedures; (e) failure to report reliability indices for either previous or present samples; (f) no control for type i error rate; and (g) failure to report effect sizes. with respect to qualitative research studies, the most common errors are failure to provide evidence for judging the dependability (i.e., reliability) and credibility (i.e., validity) of findings, generalizing findings beyond the sample, and failure to estimate and to interpret effect sizes. educational research worldwide has played a major role in influencing and informing educational practice. indeed, the last decade has seen a proliferation in the number of articles published in educational research journals. some of these published works have been the basis of educational reform in many settings. moreover, most investigators utilize previous research in developing their conceptual and theoretical frameworks, as well as in providing qualitative (e.g., content analyses) and quantitative (e.g., meta-analyses) reviews of the literature in which the key findings are summarized. in conducting literature reviews, researchers often assume that the documented findings are trustworthy. unfortunately, some researchers have found that the majority of published studies and dissertations are seriously flawed, containing analytical and interpretational errors (daniel, 1998c; hall, ward, & comer, 1988; keselman et al., 1998; onwuegbuzie, 2002b; thompson, 1998a; vockell & asher, 1974; ward, hall, & schramm, 1975; witta & daniel, 1998). some of these flaws have arisen from graduate-level instruction in which research methodology and statistics are taught as a series of routine steps, rather than as a holistic, reflective, current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 integrative process (kerlinger, 1960; newman & benz, 1998); from graduate-level curricula that minimize students' exposure to quantitative and qualitative content (aiken et al., 1990; thompson, 1998a); from proliferations of various erroneous "mythologies" about the nature of research (daniel, 1997; kerlinger, 1960); from increasing numbers of research methodology instructors teaching out of their specialty areas; and from a failure, unwillingness, or even refusal to recognize that analytical and interpretational techniques that were popular in previous decades no longer reflect best practices and, moreover, may now be deemed inappropriate, invalid, or obsolete (schmidt & hunter, 1997). purpose the purpose of the present paper is to identify and to discuss the major analytical and interpretational errors that occur in qualitative and quantitative educational research. also contained in this essay are recommendations for good data analytic practices for each of these techniques that are based on the extant literature. although a few methodologists have identified common errors made by researchers when analyzing various types of data, they have tended to focus their attention on a few data-analytic techniques at a time. for example, thompson (1998a) reviewed the following five methodological errors that occur in educational research: (a) use of stepwise methods; (b) failure to consider result interpretation in the context specificity of analytical weights (e.g., regression beta weights, discriminant function coefficients); (c) failure to interpret both weights and structure coefficients in result interpretation; (d) failure to realize that reliability is a function of scores and not of instruments; and (e) incorrect interpretation of statistical significance and the associated failure to report and to interpret effect sizes present in all quantitative analyses. moreover, no published paper was found in which errors made in both quantitative and qualitative research are discussed within the same article. as such, the present essay appears to represent the most wide-ranging discussion of analytical and interpretational errors in educational research to date. there is little doubt that a myriad of analytical errors still prevails, despite the widespread availability of statistical software and many documented accounts calling for better research practice. as supported in the foregoing literature review, it is likely that many of these errors stem from a lack of a unified framework for analyzing and interpreting qualitative and quantitative data. in order to rectify these shortcomings, it is recommended that researchers be provided with a catalog of appropriate and inappropriate data analytic practices upon which the majority of researchers agree. in addition, editors of research journals should provide authors, as well as members of their editorial board and other reviewers of articles, with specific guidelines for analyzing and interpreting empirical data (daniel, 1998a). again, these guidelines should be based on agreed-upon practices. as such, the guidelines that are included in the ensuing literature review represent one small step in this direction.. method for arriving at typology of errors over the last six years, several methodologists have examined various erroneous analytical practices undertaken by applied quantitative researchers in various educational and psychological journals. the current authors attempted to obtain as many of these articles arising from these examinations as possible by conducting a search of literature databases such as eric (i.e., educational resource information center) and psycinfo, as well as by attending methodological paper presentations at state (e.g., georgia educational research association), regional (e.g., mid-south educational research association, southwest educational research association, eastern educational research association, midwestern educational research association), national (e.g., american educational research association, association for the advancement of educational research), and international (e.g., european educational research association) conferences over this time period. the articles extracted from these sources included the following: elmore and woehlke (1988, 1998); kirk (1996); keselman et al. (1998); onwuegbuzie (2002b), vacha-haase, ness, nilsson, and reetz (1999); vacha-haase (1998); simmelink and vachahaase (1999); henson, capraro, and capraro (2001); henson and roberts (in press); lance and vachahaase (1998); vacha-haase, nilsson, reetz, lance, and thompson (2000); snyder and thompson (1998); thompson (1999b); thompson and snyder (1997, 1998), vacha-haase and ness (1999); vachahaase and nilsson (1998); and mcmillan, lawson, lewis, and snyder (2002). all of these articles represent paper presentations at professional meetings and/or published works in reputable journals over the last six years. in addition to searching the literature database and collecting methodological articles from professional meetings, the authors used the "snowballing" approach to obtaining manuscripts. specifically, the reference list of every methodological paper extracted was examined to determine if it contained relevant articles that we had overlooked. this technique led to the identification of several additional articles. this method also helped typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 3 us to validate our choice of articles. for example, vacha-haase et al. (2000) reviewed 10 of the articles cited above, whereas mcmillan et al. (2002) reviewed these same 10 articles, as well as vachahaase et al.'s (2000) article. these three techniques for extracting methodological papers (i.e., database searching, attending conferences, snowballing) led to the identification of a large proportion of empirical studies examining the erroneous practices undertaken by applied researchers with respect to statistical analyses over the last six years. the same three techniques outlined above were used to obtain articles that formed the basis of our recommendations for analyzing and interpreting quantitative and qualitative data. extracting literature for this purpose was much more challenging than obtaining articles that examined the incidence of errors of omission and commission made by applied researchers, as described above. whereas the latter type contained less than two dozen articles, papers presenting methodological recommendations for qualitative and statistical analyses numbered in the hundreds, just in the last decade alone! in extracting articles from the literature database, professional conferences, and via snowballing, the present writers tended to include articles that were authored or coauthored by quantitative and qualitative researchers and methodologists with national/international reputations. many of these methodologists are not only researchers and writers, but also are journal editors and reviewers. thus, they are widely read in the fields of educational and psychological research, as reflected by the reference lists contained in their articles. snowballing techniques on these lead methodologists' articles yielded many more useful sources. in compiling our list of recommendations, we also reviewed many of the most popular textbooks in the area of qualitative research methods, quantitative research methods, statistics, measurement, and evaluation. a series of content analyses was undertaken on the collected articles. specifically, a content analysis was undertaken with respect to each of the analytical techniques discussed below. in using this procedure, our goal was to summarize the collective thought in the field. it could be argued that the fact that we did not summarize a random (i.e., scientific) sample of methodological papers provides a limitation to our paper. to the extent that our sample of articles was not representative of the recommendations posited by the majority of the leading methodologists, this criticism is valid. however, it should be noted that the aim of this essay was not to provide a survey of different analytical techniques found in the literature because this would have led to the "best" and the "worst" recommendations being given equal weight; rather, our goal was to attempt to determine the best practices as advanced by the community of research scholars as a whole. in any case, a perusal of other articles similar to our own (e.g., thompson, 1994a, 1998a, 1999) indicates no more, and often even less structure in the technique used to select articles than described above. at the very least, as noted earlier, our paper appears to cite more literature in general and more current articles in particular than any other paper of its type. review of the literature errors common to both qualitative and quantitative research at the highest level, analytical and interpretational errors in educational research include creating a false dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative research methodologies; that is, failing to treat quantitative and qualitative research strategies as lying on an interactive continuum, with theory as the driving force. this practice tends to prevent researchers from taking a holistic and comprehensive approach to research (newman & benz, 1998). throughout the 20th century, an uncompromising rift has prevailed between quantitative and qualitative researchers. quantitative purists express assumptions about the world in general and research in particular that are consistent with a positivist or empiricist philosophy, whereas qualitative purists (e.g., post-positivists, poststructuralists, and post-modernists) reject positivism (onwuegbuzie, 2002a). moreover, the major differences that prevail between the two sets of purists are at the level of logic of justification (smith & heshusius, 1986). positivists believe that behavior can be measured empirically. on the other hand, nonpositivism is rooted in the constructivist, hermeneutic paradigm (i.e., verstehen) in which multiple realities are socially constructed through individual and collaborative definitions of the situation, that values are an essential component of the research process, and that facts are indistinguishable from values (onwuegbuzie, 2000a, 2002a). as such, qualitative purists are skeptical about the utility of providing evidence of representation and legitimation (onwuegbuzie, 2000b). unfortunately, much of the quantitative-qualitative debate has been counterproductive, entailing a continual contest of polemics, which has tended to confuse rather than to illuminate, and to segregate rather than to unify educational researchers (onwuegbuzie, 2002a). indeed, this trend prompted miles and huberman (1984, p. 21) to declare, "epistemological purity doesn't get research done." however, more and more researchers are realizing that no one paradigm is a hegemony in current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 educational research. indeed, as concluded by hammersley (1992), the primary dilemma facing both sets of purists is that their assumptions are selfrefuting. with respect to positivists, their assertion of the verifiability principle is self-refuting because it is neither logical nor empirical, and thus lacks meaning. to be congruous with their epistemological underpinnings, extreme relativists (i.e., constructivists) must concede that their assertion that all truth is relative is itself only true in the relative sense; thus, in terms of other philosophical perspectives their claims may be false. accordingly, relativism is both true and false (hammersley, 1992). moreover, to be consistent with their tenets, realists must treat the quantitative paradigm not only as being true by its own standards, but also as a reality that is as legitimate as is any other reality--in particular, the qualitative paradigm (onwuegbuzie, 2002a). as such, a false dichotomy exists between the quantitative and qualitative research paradigms (newman & benz, 1998). as asserted by onwuegbuzie (2002a), recognizing these flaws in the logic of justification allows one to re-frame how research paradigms should be considered. as surmised by newman and benz (1998), instead of representing a dichotomy, positivist and non-positivist ideologies lie on an epistemological continuum. in fact, the myriad of dichotomies that are used to differentiate qualitative and quantitative research paradigms can be re-framed as lying on continua. these include realism versus idealism, foundational versus antifoundational, objective versus subjective, impersonal versus personal, and deductive reasoning versus inductive reasoning (onwuegbuzie, 2002a). such a reconceptualization permits quantitative and qualitative researchers alike to focus more on research methodologies rather than on paradigmatic considerations (onwuegbuzie, 2002a). indeed, as contended by smith and heshusius (1986), there is no one-to-one correspondence between research paradigm and research methodology. paradigm-specific errors in educational research the remainder of this paper provides a critical synthesis and review of the educational research literature, examining both the extant qualitative and quantitative body of literature as described above. the first component involves an identification and discussion of the most prevalent analytical and interpretational errors made in qualitative educational research. this component is organized into sections that discuss general analytical and interpretational errors made in qualitative research, regardless of which methodologies are being referenced. on the other hand, the second component is divided into two major parts. the first part, mirroring the qualitative component, discusses general analytical and interpretational errors made in quantitative research, irrespective of the underlying technique(s). the second part provides common analytical and interpretational misconceptions for each of the major data-analytic techniques, including: bivariate correlational analyses, multiple regression, analysis of variance, analysis of covariance, multivariate analysis of variance, multiple analysis of covariance, discriminant analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling, as well as hierarchical linear modeling. because of the inclusion of this second section, the quantitative component is much longer than is the qualitative component. however, the discrepancy in length should not be interpreted to mean that one paradigm is more important than is the other or that one paradigm leads to better quality research than does the other. errors in qualitative research many data analytic and interpretational errors permeate qualitative research. therefore, the section below highlights the most common and pervasive errors encountered in the literature. in addition to discussing general errors made in qualitative research, the authors would have liked to have outlined the most prevalent analytical and interpretational errors that have been found to occur for each of the major data-analytic techniques-similar to that undertaken for quantitative research. however, this goal was beyond the scope of the present article for the following reasons. first and foremost, there is not the same level of agreement among qualitative researchers concerning available data-analytic approaches as there is among quantitative researchers. indeed, whereby specific terms have been given to very specific quantitative (i.e., statistical) analyses (e.g., t-test, analysis of variance, multiple regression), the interactive nature of qualitative data analysis renders it much more difficult to provide labels for each type of analysis. for example, what one qualitative researcher might refer to as the method of constant comparison (e.g., lincoln & guba, 1985), another researcher might call a thematic analysis (e.g., boyatzis, 1998). second, whereas quantitative data analysis typically represents a distinct stage in the research process (onwuegbuzie, in press-a), qualitative data-analysis tends to be much more interactive, recursive, and iterative. more specifically, in qualitative research, the research design/data collection, data analysis, and data interpretation stages are often non-linear in nature, and it is not unusual for these three stages to be inseparable. as a result, only general analytical typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 5 and interpretational errors that have been found to occur in qualitative research are presented. general errors in qualitative research. failure to legitimize research findings. with respect to qualitative research methodologies, analytical errors include a failure, often for philosophical reasons, to legitimize research findings and interpretations through documentation of validity (e.g., credibility, relativism, external criticism) and reliability (e.g., inter-rater reliability, internal consistency). with respect to the former, although the importance of validity has long been recognized by quantitative researchers, this issue has been the subject of disagreement among qualitative researchers. at the one end of the qualitative continuum are those (e.g., goetz & lecompte, 1984; miles & huberman, 1984) who contend that validity for qualitative research should be interpreted in the same manner as for quantitative research. at the other end of the continuum, some post-modernists (e.g., wolcott, 1990) question the appropriateness of validity in qualitative research, asserting that the goal of providing evidences of validity is utopian. disturbingly, a common definition of validity among relativists is that it represents whatever the community agrees it should represent. unfortunately, such a definition is ambiguous, and, consequently, does not help beginning qualitative researchers to design their studies and to assess the legitimacy and trustworthiness of their findings. it appears that a reason for the rejection of validity by some qualitative researchers stems from their perceptions that the positivist definition and interpretation of validity serves as the yardstick against which all other standards are evaluated. thus, these extremists believe that in order to reject positivism, they must reject validity (onwuegbuzie, 2002a). however, this is tantamount to throwing out the baby with the bath water. unfortunately, many qualitative researchers adopt an "anything goes" relativist attitude (onwuegbuzie, 2002a), culminating in a failure to assess the credibility of their data interpretations. yet, as contended by onwuegbuzie (2002a), in order to be taken seriously, qualitative researchers must be accountable fully at all phases of their research study, including the data collection, analysis, and interpretation stages. such accountability can only come to the fore by providing evidence of representation and legitimation. thus, rigor in research is needed, regardless of whether quantitative or qualitative research techniques are utilized. with respect to the latter, it is important that qualitative researchers assess the legitimacy of their interpretations. this can be undertaken by re-defining the concept of validity in qualitative research, for example, by deeming validity as representing an examination of rival interpretations and hypotheses (polkinghorne, 1983), or by re-conceptualizing validity as being multidimensional (e.g., credibility, transferability, dependability, confirmability; lincoln & guba, 1985). in fact, onwuegbuzie (2000b) identified 24 techniques for assessing the legitimacy of qualitative findings and interpretations. a myriad of methods for assessing the truth value of findings and interpretations in qualitative research have emerged in the literature. these include triangulation, prolonged engagement, persistent observation, leaving an audit trail, member checking, weighting the evidence, checking for representativeness of sources of data, checking for researcher effects, making contrasts/comparisons, checking the meaning of outliers, using extreme cases, ruling out spurious relations, replicating a finding, assessing rival explanations, looking for negative evidence, obtaining feedback from informants, peer debriefing, clarifying researcher bias, and thick description (creswell, 1998; maxwell, 1996; miles & huberman, 1984, 1994). utilizing and documenting such techniques should help to reduce methodological errors in qualitative research. another analytical error in qualitative research is the failure to assess the reliability of observed findings. although reliability is generally conceived of as an important concept in analyzing quantitative data, it is important to note that reliability is actually pertinent with regard to qualitative data (madill, jordan, & shirley, 2000). in qualitative research, information gleaned from observations, interviews, and the like must be "trustworthy" (eisenhart & howe, 1992; lincoln & guba, 1985); otherwise any themes that emerge from these data will not be credible. an important component of trustworthiness is "dependability" (lincoln & guba, 1985). interestingly, dependability is analogous to reliability (eisenhart & howe, 1992). techniques for evaluating this dimension of trustworthiness include triangulation, which involves the use of multiple and different methods, investigators, sources, and theories to obtain corroborating evidence (ely, anzul, friedman, garner, & steinmetz, 1991; glesne & peshkin, 1992; lincoln & guba, 1985; merriam, 1988; miles & huberman, 1984, 1994; patton, 1990). triangulation reduces the possibility of chance associations, as well as of systematic biases prevailing due to only qualitative (or quantitative) methods being utilized, thereby allowing greater confidence in any interpretations made (fielding & fielding, 1986; maxwell, 1992). current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 according to denzin (1978), three outcomes arise from triangulation: convergence, inconsistency, and contradiction. each of these outcomes clearly represents issues pertaining to reliability. nevertheless, many interpretivists refrain from using the term "reliability" when pertaining to qualitative data, probably because of an attempt to distance qualitative analytical techniques from statistical method (madill et al., 2000). however, this line of thinking is counterproductive. indeed, as noted by constas (1992, p. 255), unless methods for examining rival hypotheses in qualitative research are developed, "the research community will be entitled to question the analytical rigor of qualitative research"--where rigor is defined as the attempt to make data and categorical schemes as public and as replicable as possible (denzin, 1978). fortunately, reliability as a concept in qualitative data analysis is increasingly gaining acceptance. in particular, it is no longer unusual for qualitative researchers to report either intrarater (e.g., consistency of a given rater's scores or observations) or interrater (e.g., consistency of two or more independent raters' scores or observations) reliability estimates (gay & airasian, 2000; worthen, borg, & white, 1993). evidence of this can be gleaned from the fact that a leading theory-building qualitative software program called nud.ist (non-numerical unstructured data indexing searching & theorizing) allows data analysts to determine inter-coder reliability (qsr international pty ltd., 2002). generalizing findings beyond sample. interpretative errors in qualitative research include the tendency to generalize findings rather than to use qualitative techniques to obtain insights into particular educational, social, and familial processes and practices that existed within a specific location (connolly, 1998). only when relatively large representative samples are utilized is it fully justified for researchers to generalize findings from the sample to the population. while obtaining large, representative samples typically is the goal in quantitative research, this is not the case in qualitative research, where purposive sampling of relatively few cases is more the norm. yet, some qualitative researchers find it difficult to resist the temptation to generalize their results (e.g., thematic representations) to the underlying population. failure to estimate and interpret effect sizes. recently, the american psychological association (apa) task force advocated strongly that researchers should "always present effect sizes for primary outcomes...[and]...reporting and interpreting effect sizes...is essential to good research" (wilkinson & the task force on statistical inference, 1999, pp. 10-11). however, the title of their report (i.e., "statistical methods in psychology journals: guidelines and explanations"), suggests that these stipulations are pertinent only to quantitative data. moreover, the apa task force did not provide any recommendations that effect sizes be reported and interpreted when analyzing qualitative data. yet, as advanced by onwuegbuzie (in press-b), there are many situations in which effect sizes would provide a richer, thicker description of underlying qualitative data. indeed, it appears that failure to utilize effect sizes by qualitative researchers stems, at least in part, from educational researchers associating effect sizes with the quantitative paradigm. yet, ironically, the use of effect sizes actually results in empirical data being qualitized (tashakkori & teddlie, 1998), which, in turn, facilitates the assessment of whether an observed effect is small, medium, large, or the like (cohen, 1988). simply put, these effect size interpretations represent qualitative categorizations (onwuegbuzie & teddlie, 2002). at its most basic form, providing an effect size in qualitative research involves obtaining counts of the frequency of an observed phenomenon. interestingly, as noted by sechrest and sidani (1995, p. 79), "qualitative researchers regularly use terms like 'many,' 'most,' 'frequently,' 'several,' 'never,' and so on. these terms are fundamentally quantitative." moreover, it could be argued that terms such as "many" are "frequently" are relative; that is, they depend on the context from which the data were obtained. using such phrases without supplementing them with the counts, forces the reader to accept the writer's interpretation. conversely, by providing counts, readers can make up their own mind as to what adjective best depicts the underlying phenomenon. as a result, qualitative researchers often can extract more meaning by obtaining counts of observations in addition to their narrative descriptions (sandelowski, 2001). for example, witcher, onwuegbuzie, and minor (2001) conducted a qualitative study to ascertain preservice teachers' perceptions of characteristics of effective teachers. a phenomenological analysis resulted in the emergence of six characteristics of effective teaching (as perceived by the preservice teachers). by counting the frequency of the emergent themes, these researchers found that of the six identified characteristics of effective teachers, studentcenteredness was the most commonly-cited trait (cited by 80% of the preservice sample). this was followed by enthusiasm for teaching (40%), ethicalness (39%), classroom and behavior management (33%), teaching methodology (32%), and knowledge of subject (32%). this example provides support for dey's (1993) contention that typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 7 meaning and number can be inextricably intertwined. obtaining counts of the themes prevented the researchers from over-weighting or under-weighting the emergent themes (sandelowski, 2001). the development of themes, categories, typologies, and the like is commonplace in qualitative data analysis (boyatzis, 1998; constas, 1992). such development is based on the frequency with which a facet occurs (miles & huberman, 1994). more specifically, every time a qualitative researcher reduces data to categories or themes, he/she is utilizing the "numbered nature of phenomena for their analysis" (sandelowski, 2001, p. 231). in fact, at least three rationales prevail for counting themes: (a) to identify patterns more easily, (b) to maintain analytic integrity, and (c) to verify a hypothesis (miles & huberman, 1994). further, by adding numerical accuracy to their descriptive accounts, witcher et al. (2001) were able to leave an audit trail, which involved a more extensive documentation of the observed data. interestingly, audit trails are advocated by qualitative researchers as a means of evaluating legitimation or increasing legitimation, or both (halpern, 1983; lincoln & guba, 1985). counting themes is a manifestation of what tashakkori and teddlie (1998, p. 126) referred to as "quantitizing" data, in which qualitative data are transformed into numerical codes that can be represented statistically. as stated by sandelowski (2001), in quantitizing, "qualitative 'themes' are numerically represented, in scores, scales, or clusters, in order more fully to describe and/or interpret a target phenomenon" (p. 231). also, boyatzis (1998, p. 129) referred to the counting of themes as "quantitative translation." onwuegbuzie (in press-b) presented a typology of effect sizes in qualitative research. this typology was divided into what he termed manifest effect sizes (i.e., effect sizes pertaining to observable content) and latent effect sizes (i.e., effect sizes pertaining to non-observable, underlying aspects of the phenomenon under observation). for example, when conducting thematic analyses, qualitative analysts usually only classify and describe emergent themes. however, much more information can be ascertained about these themes. in particular, these themes can be quantitized (i.e., quantified) by determining the frequency of occurrence (e.g., least/most prevalent theme) and intensity of each identified theme (onwuegbuzie, in press-b). moreover, by unitizing the themes and utilizing what he termed as intra-respondent matrices (i.e., unit x theme matrices) and inter-respondent matrices (e.g., subject x theme matrices and subject x unit matrices), onwuegbuzie demonstrated how exploratory factor analyses and cluster analyses can be undertaken on these matrices such that the hierarchical structure of the themes (i.e., meta-themes) and their interrelationships can be identified. onwuegbuzie also illustrated how effect sizes (e.g., eigenvalues and proportion of variance explained by each theme) pertaining to the thematic structure and relationships among themes and meta-themes can be estimated. onwuegbuzie (in press-b) introduced the concept of adjusted effect sizes in qualitative research, in which the frequency and intensity of themes are adjusted for the time occurrence and length of the unit of analysis (e.g., observation, interview, text). for instance, with regard to the length of unit analysis, the frequency of the emergent theme could be divided by the number of words, sentences, paragraphs, and/or pages analyzed. such adjusted effect sizes help to minimize bias that is inherent in the data (onwuegbuzie, in press-b). consistent with onwuegbuzie's conceptualization of effect sizes in qualitative research, nearly one-half a century ago, barton and lazarsfeld (1955) advocated the use of what they coined as "quasi-statistics" in qualitative research. according to these authors, quasi-statistics refer to the use of descriptive statistics that can be extracted from qualitative data. interestingly, becker (1970, pp. 81-82) contended that "one of the greatest faults in most observational case studies has been their failure to make explicit the quasi-statistical basis of their conclusions." as noted by maxwell (1996): quasi-statistics not only allow you to test and support claims that are inherently quantitative, but also enable you to assess the amount of evidence in your data that bears on a particular conclusion or threat, such as how many discrepant instances exist and from how many different sources they were obtained. (p. 95) [emphasis in original] indeed, becker, geer, hughes, and strauss (1961/1977) provided more than 50 tables and graphs in their qualitative work. these tables and graphs facilitate effect size interpretations of their qualitative data. errors in quantitative research as is the case for qualitative research, there are many data analytic and interpretational errors that prevail in existing research that uses quantitative data regardless of the statistical analysis used. thus, the first part of this section provides a summary of the major errors that are not dependent on the statistical technique used. in the second part of this section, we outline the errors in quantitative research that are dependent, at least for the most part, on the method used. specifically, we present the major analytical and interpretational errors that have been found to current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 prevail for each of the major data-analytic techniques, namely, bivariate correlational analyses, reliability analyses, analysis of variance, analysis of covariance, multiple regression, multivariate analysis of variance, multiple analysis of covariance, discriminant analysis, canonical correlation analysis, principal component and factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, path analysis, structural equation modeling, and hierarchical linear modeling. general errors in quantitative research. as noted by onwuegbuzie (in press-a), threats to internal validity in quantitative research occur at both the data analysis (i.e., analytical errors) and data interpretation (i.e., interpretational errors) stages. indeed, onwuegbuzie (in press-a) described several types of errors that occur at both these stages. according to this researcher, data analytical errors can stem from several sources, including the following: mortality, non-interaction seeking bias, researcher bias, treatment replication error, violated assumptions, multicollinearity, and mis-specification error. each of these sources of error is summarized briefly below. (for a more detailed discussion of these sources of error, see onwuegbuzie, in press-a.) mortality. it is not uncommon for researchers to delete some cases from their final data sets. there are many reasons why such a practice occurs. specifically, cases may be deleted if they appear to represent outlying observations. alternatively, the size of a data set may be reduced in an attempt to analyze groups with equal or approximately equal sample sizes (i.e., to conduct a "balanced" analysis). such removal of cases can lead to analytical errors in the first situation if one or more participants who are deleted represent valid cases, and in the second situation if one or more participants who are removed from the data set are different than those who remain. in either event, the reduction of the data set introduces or adds bias into the analysis, thereby influencing the effect size in an unknown manner (onwuegbuzie, in press-a). in the same way, using casewise deletion and listwise deletion strategies in the presence of missing data, a very common practice among researchers, also can lead to analytical errors. non-interaction seeking bias. when testing hypotheses and theory, some researchers do not examine the presence of interactions. this likely is more often to occur for correlational-based analyses (e.g., correlations, regression, canonical correlation, path analysis, structural equation modeling) than for ova-type methods (e.g., factorial analysis of variance, multivariate analysis of variance). noninteraction seeking bias can not only lead to errors at the data analysis stage, but it can also induce interpretational errors. moreover, by not formally testing for the presence of interactions, researchers may end up interpreting a model that does not accurately or validly represent the underlying nature of reality (onwuegbuzie, in press-a). researcher bias. the form of researcher bias that is more prevalent at the data analysis stage is the halo effect. the halo effect occurs when a researcher is scoring open-ended responses, or the like, and allows her or his prior knowledge of or experience with the participants to influence the scores given. this biases the data, leading to analytical errors. treatment replication error. as noted by mcmillan (1999), a common mistake made by analysts involves the use of an inappropriate unit of analysis. for example, a researcher might use individuals as the unit of analysis to compare groups when analyzing available group scores would have been more appropriate. in particular, analyzing individual data when groups received the intervention violates the independence assumption, thereby inducing an analytical error through the inflation of both the type i error rate and effect size estimates. violated assumptions. several authors (e.g., keselman et al., 1998; onwuegbuzie, 2002b) have noted that the majority of researchers do not adequately check the underlying assumptions associated with a particular statistical test. regardless of the inferential statistical technique used, unless assumptions are checked, the extent to which an analytical error prevails is unknown. with knowledge of the extent to which assumptions are violated, researchers are in a position to interpret findings within an appropriate context. however, when it is unknown whether assumptions have been met, data interpretation can be extremely misleading and invalid. multicollinearity. multicollinearity occurs when two or more independent variables are highly related. when one independent variable is perfectly correlated with other independent variables, the parameter estimates are not uniquely determined. a strong, but less-than-perfect, linear relationship among independent variables, as is more often the case, results in unstable (least-squares) coefficients with large standard errors and wide confidence intervals (fox, 1997). multicollinearity often is associated with multiple regression; however, multicollinearity is an issue for other members of the general linear model, including ova methods. thus, multicollinearity should not only be assessed when multiple regression is involved but for all analysis involving two or more independent variables. mis-specification error. mis-specification error involves omitting one or more important variables from the final model. this is an error that typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 9 can be committed with any inferential analysis. as noted by onwuegbuzie (in press-a), mis-specification error often arises from a weak or non-existent theoretical framework for building a statistical model. this inattention to a theoretical framework leads many researchers to (a) undertake univariate analyses when the phenomenon is multivariate, (b) utilize data-driven techniques such as stepwise multiple regression procedures, and (c) omit the assessment of interactions. all of these approaches lead to misspecification error. unfortunately, mis-specification error, although likely common, is extremely difficult to detect, especially if the selected non-optimal model, which does not include any interaction terms, appears to fit the data adequately. as noted by onwuegbuzie (in press-a), interpretational errors, can arise from the following: effect size, confirmation bias, distorted graphics, illusory correlation, crud factor, positive manifold, and causal error. each of these sources of error is summarized briefly below. (for a more detailed discussion of these sources of error, see onwuegbuzie, in press-a.) effect size. the non-reporting of effect sizes likely represents the most common interpretational error in quantitative research. failure to report effect sizes often culminates in misinterpretation of pvalues. in particular, a p-value tends to be underinterpreted when the sample size is small and the corresponding non-reported effect size is large. on the other hand, a p-value tends to be over-interpreted when the sample size is large and the non-reported effect size is small (e.g., daniel, 1998a). the lack of reporting of effect sizes led the apa task force to recommend strongly that researchers "always present effect sizes for primary outcomes...[and]...reporting and interpreting effect sizes...is essential to good research" (wilkinson & the task force on statistical inference, 1999, p. 599). more recently, the latest version of the american psychological association (apa), version 5 (2001), contained the following statement: when reporting inferential statistics (e.g., t tests, f tests, and chi-square), include information about the obtained magnitude or value of the test statistic, the degrees of freedom, the probability of obtaining a value as extreme as or more extreme than the one obtained, and the direction of the effect. be sure to include sufficient descriptive statistics (e.g., per-cell sample size, means, correlations, standard deviations) so that the nature of the effect being reported can be understood by the reader and for future meta-analyses. this information is important, even if no significant effect is being reported. (p. 22) a few pages later, apa (2001) states neither of the two types of probability value directly reflects the magnitude of an effect or the strength of a relationship. for the reader to fully understand the importance of your findings, it is almost always necessary to include some index of effect size or strength of relationship in your results section. (p. 25) on the next page, apa states that the general principle to be followed, however, is to provide the reader not only with information about statistical significance but also with enough information to assess the magnitude of the observed effect or relationship. (p. 26) confirmation bias. confirmation bias is the tendency for interpretations and conclusions based on the current data to be overly consistent with a priori hypotheses (greenwald, pratkanis, leippe, & baumgardner, 1986). unfortunately, confirmation bias is a common source of error at the data interpretation stage. confirmation bias tends to prevail when the researcher attempts to test theory, because testing a theory can "dominate research in a way that blinds the researcher to potentially informative observation" (greenwald et al., 1986, p. 217). when hypotheses are not supported, some researchers interpret their data as if the theory underlying the hypotheses is still likely to be correct. in so doing, many researchers are not aware that the purpose of their research no longer can be described as theory testing but theory confirming. however, confirmation bias, per se, does not necessarily lead to interpretational errors. such errors occur only when one or more plausible rival explanations to underlying findings exist that could have been demonstrated as being superior if given the opportunity (greenwald et al., 1986). however, because the vast majority of findings generate rival explanations, researchers should always assess their interpretations for the possibility of confirmation bias. distorted graphics. the interpretation of graphs can be a source of error. for example, it is not unusual for histograms to suggest normality, when numerical data (e.g., skewness and kurtosis) indicate non-normality. distorted graphs could be the result of an inappropriate scale. alternatively, interpretation errors can ensue even if the graph is not distorted, especially when the researcher has a confirmation bias (e.g., desperately wants to demonstrate that the normality assumption holds). illusory correlation. the illusory correlation is a propensity to overestimate relationships among variables that are either not related or only slightly related. the illusory correlation often arises from a current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 confirmation bias. the illusory correlation also may arise from a false consensus bias, in which researchers falsely believe that most other persons share their interpretations of a relationship (johnson & johnson, 2000). crud factor. meehl (1990) observed that given a large enough sample size, many trivial relationships can emerge as being statistically significant because to some degree, "everything correlates to some extent with everything else" (p. 204). meehl referred to this tendency to reject null hypotheses when the true relationships are trivial as the crud factor. this crud factor leads some researchers to interpret trivial relationships, leading to interpretational errors. positive manifold. positive manifold can occur when individuals who perform well on one ability or attitudinal measure tend to perform well on other measures in the same domain (neisser, 1998). as such, positive manifold can lead to an overinterpretation of relationships. thus, analysts should be careful when interpreting relationships found among two or more sets of cognitive test scores or affective measures. causal error. some researchers cannot resist interpreting large relationships as suggesting causality. however, causality is a function of the research design and not the analytic technique used. thus, regardless of the complexity of the analysis, cause-and-effect relationships should only be inferred confidently from experimental studies. in the absence of an experimental design, any causal statements made likely will represent interpretational errors. additional general analytical and interpretational errors. daniel and onwuegbuzie (2000) have identified 10 analytical and interpretational errors associated with statistical significance testing. they labeled these errors as type i to type x. the first four errors are known to all statisticians as type i (falsely rejecting the null hypothesis), type ii (incorrectly failing to reject the null hypothesis), type iii (incorrect inferences about result directionality), and type iv (incorrectly following-up an interaction effect with a simple effects analysis). daniel and onwuegbuzie (2000) identified and described the following six additional types of error: (a) type v error--internal replication error-measured via incidence of type i or type ii errors detected during internal replication cycles when using methodologies such as the jackknife procedure; (b) type vi error--reliability generalization error--measured via linkages of statistical results to characteristics of scores on the measures used to generate results (a particularly problematic type of error when researchers fail to consider differential reliability estimates for subsamples within a data set); (c) type vii error-heterogeneity of variance/regression--measured via the extent to which data examined via analysis of variance/covariance are not appropriately screened to determine whether they meet homogeneity assumptions prior to analysis of group comparison statistics; (d) type viii error--test statistic distribution error--measured as the extent to which researchers express alternative hypotheses as directional yet evaluate results with two-tailed tests; (e) type ix error--sampling bias error--measured via disparities in results generated from numerous convenience samples across a multiplicity of similar studies; and (f) type x error--degrees of freedom error--measured as the tendency of researchers using certain statistical procedures (mainly stepwise procedures) erroneously to compute the degrees of freedom used in these methods. method-dependent errors in quantitative research. correlation coefficients. with respect to quantitative research methodologies, perhaps the most common analytical/interpretational error stems from a failure to realize that all parametric analyses (i.e., univariate and multivariate techniques), with the exception of predictive discriminant analyses, are subsumed by a general linear model (glm), and that, consequently, all analyses are correlational (cohen, 1968; henson, 2000; knapp, 1978; roberts & henson, 2002; thompson, 1998a). in particular, many researchers are unaware that even correlation coefficients are specific cases of the glm, and are therefore bounded by its assumptions (onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2002a). moreover, onwuegbuzie and daniel (2002a) identified several inappropriate practices undertaken by researchers while utilizing correlational coefficients for inferential purposes, including failure to consider the statistical assumptions underlying correlation coefficients, failure to interpret confidence intervals and effect sizes of correlation coefficients, failure to interpret pcalculated values in light of familywise type i error, failure to consider the power of tests of hypotheses, failure to consider whether outliers are inherent in the data set, failure to recognize how measurement error can affect correlation coefficients, and failure to evaluate empirically the replicability of correlation coefficients (i.e., internal replication). based on these observations, onwuegbuzie and daniel (2002a) made the following 10 recommendations for utilizing and interpreting correlation coefficients: 1. always check statistical assumptions prior to using pearson's r to conduct tests of statistical significance, as well as after the correlation has been computed. use nontypology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 11 parametric correlation (e.g., spearman's rho) if the normality assumption is violated. 2. always adjust for type i error when conducting multiple nhsts [null hypothesis statistical tests] of correlations. 3. always be cognizant of the power of nhsts of correlations, preferably before the data collection stage, and, at the very least, at the data analysis stage. 4. when making inferences about the pearson r value, always interpret effect sizes. 5. do not conduct "nil" null tests of statistical significance for reliability and validity coefficients (i.e., do not test whether reliability and validity coefficients are statistically significantly greater than zero). 6. do not report disattenuated correlation coefficients without also presenting the raw coefficients. 7. do not correlate variables without a theoretical framework. 8. avoid inferring causation from a correlation coefficient, regardless of its magnitude. 9. do not use hotelling's t-test when comparing correlation coefficients arising from the same sample. 10. conduct external replications when possible, and, in their absence, always undertake internal replications. regarding recommendation (10) above, onwuegbuzie and daniel (2002a) coined the term "type v error" to describe internal replication error rates (as noted earlier), which provides information about how stable the computed p-value is across multiple re-samples of the same dataset. using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), noninteraction seeking bias, violated assumptions, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for correlation coefficients, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, illusory correlation, crud factor, positive manifold, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. reliability of scores. authors of statistics textbooks routinely report that statistical power is affected by at least three components: (a) sample size, (b) level of statistical significance, and (c) effect size. however, a fourth component should be added, namely, the reliability of scores. reliability, which typically ranges from 0 (measurement is all error) to 1 (no error in measurement), is the proportion of variance in the observed scores which is free from error. (reliability coefficients also can be negative.) unfortunately, relatively few researchers report reliability coefficients for data from their samples (meier & davis, 1990; onwuegbuzie, 2002b; onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2002a, 2002b; thompson & snyder, 1998; vacha-haase et al., 1999; willson, 1980). for example, willson (1980) noted "that reliability ...is unreported in almost half of the published research...[and is] inexcusable at this late date" (pp. 8-9). unfortunately, more than two decades later, vacha-haase et al. (1999), who reviewed practices regarding the reporting of reliability coefficients in three journals from 1990 to 1997, found that 64.4% of articles did not provide reliability coefficients for the data being analyzed. similarly, vacha-haase (1998), who identified 628 articles in which the bem sex role inventory (bem, 1981) was utilized, found that 86.9% of the articles did not present any score reliability information for the underlying data. simmelink and vacha-haase (1999) reported that 75.9% fell into this category with respect to the use of the rosenberg self-esteem instrument (rosenberg, 1965). the trend of not reporting current-sample reliability coefficients stems, in part, from a failure to realize that reliability is a function of scores, not of instruments (thompson & vacha-haase, 2000).the dearth in the reporting of reliability estimates led the apa task force on statistical inference recently to recommend that authors "provide reliability coefficients of the scores for the data being analyzed even when the focus of their research is not psychometric" (wilkinson & the task force on statistical inference, 1999, p. 21). further, the american educational research association, american psychological association, and national council on measurement in education [aera/apa/ncme] (1999) stated that good standards for reporting results necessitate researchers to provide reliability estimates and standard errors for "each total score, subscore, or combination of scores that is to be interpreted" (p. 31). without information about score reliability, it is impossible to assess accurately the extent to which statistical power is affected. thus, reliability coefficients always should be reported for the underlying data. moreover, the use of confidence intervals around reliability coefficients is advocated, considering that reliability coefficients represent only point estimates. in fact, confidence intervals around reliability coefficients can be compared to coefficients presented in test manuals to assess generalizability (onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2002b). additionally, as noted by onwuegbuzie and daniel (2002b), the recommendations of the apa task force and aera/apa/ncme (1999) regarding the reporting of current-sample reliability coefficients do not go far enough. indeed, it is argued that reliability coefficients should not only be reported for the full sample at hand, but also for sample subgroups. for example, in a two-sample case, it is current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 possible to obtain a moderate reliability estimate for the full sample, whereby the reliability coefficient of one group is relatively large but the coefficient for the other group is relatively small. it is likely that such a case would produce a different outcome in terms of statistical and practical significance than would a scenario in which the ratio of reliability coefficients is much smaller. simply put, comparing subgroups with different reliability coefficients can affect type i and type ii error rates, as well as effect size estimates. in such circumstances, type vi error (reliability generalization error; daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2000) prevails. thus, in summary, we recommend that subgroup reliability coefficients be reported whenever possible, alongside their confidence intervals. when current-sample reliability coefficients are not available, researchers, at the very least, should compare the sample composition and variability of scores of the present sample with those of the inducted (i.e., norm) group (vacha-haase, kogan, & thompson, 2000). the results of these comparisons should be delineated. specifically, as noted by vacha-haase et al. (2000), assuming that previouslyreported reliability coefficients generalize to the present sample is only marginally justified if the compositions and the score variabilities of the two samples are similar. additionally, magnusson's (1967) formula could be used to predict the reliability of the present sample, based on the reliability of the inducted sample and the standard deviations of the inducted and current samples, as follows: where rc = the predicted reliability of the current sample, ri = the predicted reliability of the inducted sample, is the variance of the current sample, and is the variance of the inducted sample. however, it should be noted that the predicted reliabilities are purely theoretical. (for an example of the use of this formula see diamond & onwuegbuzie, 2001.) independent/dependent samples t-test. when researchers are interested in comparing two independent samples, assuming normality, they must choose between the pooled and non-pooled t-test. this selection depends on whether the variances are equal or unequal, respectively. when the variances are equal, the pooled t-test should be used. on the other hand, when the variances are unequal, or when there is doubt about their equality, the non-pooled ttest should be employed. that is, if the homogeneity of variance assumption does not hold, then the t-test formula for separate variances should be used (maxwell & delaney, 1990). under the assumption of variance homogeneity, the pooled t-test is only slightly more powerful (i.e., smaller type ii error probability) than is the non-pooled t-test. at the same time, in the presence of variance heterogeneity, use of the pooled t-test can increase greatly the chances of an invalid conclusion, especially when the sample sizes also are unequal. some statisticians recommend that the analyst first test the equal variance hypothesis: if h0 is rejected, then they conclude that the population variances are not equal and proceed with the non-pooled t-test. if h0 is not rejected, then they advise that the pooled t-test procedure be used. however, this is a misuse of the variance test, because it may result in failing to reject the null hypothesis that without knowing the probability of a type ii error. it should be noted that when the researcher fails to reject a null hypothesis, it is inappropriate to conclude that the null is true, but only that there is not enough evidence to justify its rejection. in addition, the probability of a type i error is changed by performing two tests. thus, we recommend the use of the pooled t-test only when prior knowledge, experience, or theory suggests that the population variances are approximately equal. if there is any doubt about the equality of the variances, the non-pooled t-test should be used. unfortunately, presently, it appears that many analysts utilize the pooled version of the t-test. such a practice typically will result in type vii error (heterogeneity of variance/regression; daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2000). disturbingly, keselman et al. (1998) found that variance homogeneity was evaluated in only 8.20% of articles involving between-subjects univariate designs (n = 61) published in 17 prominent educational and behavioral science research journals in the 1994 or 1995 issues that were selected for review. this trend must be reversed in order to strengthen the conclusion validity stemming from independent/dependent t-tests. using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), non-interaction seeking bias, violated assumptions, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for independent/dependent samples t-tests, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, and causal error are common interpretational errors. analysis of variance tests. research suggests that analysis of variance (anova) is the most popular statistical procedure for conducting null hypothesis statistical significance tests among educational researchers (elmore & woehlke, 1998; goodwin & goodwin, 1985; onwuegbuzie, 2002b). unfortunately, the anova test is often misused. specifically, lacking the knowledge that nearly all typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 13 parametric analyses represent the general linear model, many analysts inappropriately categorize variables in non-experimental designs using anova, in an attempt to justify making causal inferences, when all that occurred typically is a discarding of relevant variance (cliff, 1987; pedhazur, 1982; prosser, 1990; thompson, 1986, 1988a, 1992a). for example, cohen (1983) calculated that the pearson product-moment correlation between a variable and its dichotomized version (i.e., divided at the mean) was .798, which suggests that the cost of dichotomization is approximately a 20% reduction in correlation coefficient. in other words, an artificially dichotomized variable accounts for only 63.7% as much variance as does the original continuous variable. interestingly, more recently, peet (1999) found that for the one-way anova framework, as the number of categorized groups decreases (minimum number = 2), less variance in the dependent variable is accounted for by the categorical variable, compared to the continuous variable. specifically, peet noted that with four groups, almost 90% of the variance accounted for by the continuous variable was explained by the categorical variable; however, with two groups, only approximately 50% of the original variance accounted for was explained by the categorical variable. it follows that with factorial anovas, when artificial categorization occurs, even more power is sacrificed. for instance, in the 2 x 2 anova framework, when the correlation is between .2 and .5, double dichotomization at the mean culminates in a discarding of 60% of the sample members at both the two-tailed 5% and 1% levels. thus, as stated by kerlinger (1986), we recommend that researchers avoid artificially categorizing continuous variables, unless compelled to do so as a result of the distribution of the data (e.g., bimodal). indeed, rather than categorizing independent variables, in many cases, regression techniques should be used, because they have been shown consistently to be superior to ova methods (daniel, 1989a; kerlinger & pedhazur, 1973; lopez, 1989; nelson & zaichkowsky, 1979; thompson, 1986). disturbingly, it is clear that most users of anova tests do not adequately check the underlying assumptions. this is evidenced by the paucity of researchers who provide information about the extent to which anova assumptions are met. for example, keselman et al. (1998) reported that less than one-fifth of articles (i.e., 19.7%) "indicated some concern for distributional assumption violations" (p. 356). similarly, onwuegbuzie (2002b) found that only 11.1% of researchers discussed the extent to which ova assumptions were violated. the fact that, when conducting univariate comparisons, anova tests are almost exclusively used is a serious cause for concern, bearing in mind that (a) anova relies on the assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variance; and (b) only the minority of data utilized in the field of educational research tends to satisfy anova assumptions (micceri, 1989; wilcox, charlin, & thompson, 1986). unfortunately, non-normality and variance heterogeneity lead to a distortion of type i and/or type ii error rates, particularly if the group sizes are very different (keselman et al., 1998). thus, researchers always should check the anova assumptions. in particular, if the normality assumption is violated, analysts should consider using the non-parametric counterparts, for example, the mann-whitney u test (for the two-group case) or the kruskal-wallis test (when three or more groups are being compared). when the homogeneity of variance assumption is violated (type vii error; daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2000), techniques such as welch, james, and brown and forsythe tests could be utilized because they are reasonably robust when heterogeneity of variance prevails (maxwell & delaney, 1990). additionally, some researchers unwisely use omnibus anova tests (i.e., protected tests) followed by post-hoc comparisons instead of testing planned contrasts (i.e., unprotected tests). use of omnibus tests when planned comparisons are of interest results in reduced statistical power. we recommend use of planned comparisons as these comparisons tend to be more consistent with carefully structured research questions and serve to limit the number of statistical tests needed (pedhazur & schmelkin, 1991). however, in cases in which researchers insist on using omnibus anovas followed by post hoc tests, we suggest that the dunn-bonferroni procedure for unprotected tests be utilized because it appears to provide the best control of type i error (barnette & mclean, 1998). (presently, only 12% of researchers use the dunn-bonferroni procedure for making pairwise multiple comparisons; keselman et al., 1998). moreover, as recommended by maxwell and delaney (1990), when conducting pairwise comparisons, the pooled (omnibus) error term should only be used if the variance homogeneity assumption is met--otherwise, a separate error term should be utilized which involves only data representing the levels of interest in the particular comparison. using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), mortality, violated assumptions, and misspecification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for anova, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. analysis of covariance tests. most comparisons made in educational research involve current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 intact groups that may have pre-existing differences. unfortunately, these differences often threaten the internal validity of the findings (gay & airasian, 2000). thus, in an attempt to minimize this threat, some analysts utilize analysis of covariance (ancova) techniques in which there is an attempt to control statistically for pre-existing differences between the groups being studied. prior research suggests that ancova is undertaken in approximately 4% of published research (elmore & woehlke, 1988; goodwin & goodwin, 1985; willson, 1980). unfortunately, most of these published works have inappropriately used ancova because one or more of the assumptions have either not been checked or met--particularly the homogeneity of regression slopes assumption (glass, peckham, & sanders, 1972). as noted by maxwell and delaney (1990), ancova represents an anova after adjusting for the regression of the dependent variable on the covariate. in other words, the aim of an ancova is to allocate a percentage of the variance in the dependent variable that would otherwise have been attributed to error in a conventional analysis of variance, to a potentially confounding variable (i.e., the covariate). this partitioning of the variance culminates in a reduction in the sum of squared errors and, consequently, the mean square error. in theory, this subsequent decrease in "noise" helps to clarify the relationship between the independent and dependent variables (loftin & madison, 1991). the first step of ancova is to regress the dependent variable on the covariate, ignoring group membership. after this is undertaken, an anova is conducted on the residualized dependent variable. if the analysis goes as anticipated, holding everything else constant, the anova f-statistic is increased because the error variance is smaller than it would have been if the influence of the covariate had not been removed. the allimportant assumption that must be met (i.e., homogeneity of regression slopes) implies that the covariate must be highly correlated with the dependent variable but not related to the independent variable. however, as noted by henson (1998), few covariates exist that meet these criteria-especially when study participants are not randomly assigned to groups (i.e., in quasi-experimental designs), which are endemic to educational research. unfortunately, if an appreciable correlation exists between the covariate and the independent variable, as is often the case, then the covariate also can reduce the variance in the independent variable--culminating in reduced power and effect size. thus, the homogeneity of regression assumption means that the regression slopes of the covariate and the dependent variable in each group must be identical, or at least similar, if the single pooled regression slope can be utilized accurately with all groups. to the extent that the individual regression slopes are different, the part correlation of the covariate-adjusted dependent variable with the independent variable will more closely mirror a partial correlation, and the pooled regression slope will not provide an adequate representation of some or all of the groups. in this case, the ancova will introduce bias into the data instead of providing a "correction" for the confounding variable (loftin & madison, 1991). ironically, ancova typically is appropriate when used with randomly assigned groups; however, it is typically not justified when groups are not randomly assigned (henson, 1998). another argument against the use of ancova is that after using a covariate to adjust the dependent variable, it is not clear whether the residual scores are interpretable (thompson, 1992b). disturbingly, some researchers utilize ancova as a substitute for not incorporating a true experimental design, believing that methodological designs and statistical analyses are synonymous (henson, 1998; thompson, 1994a). thus, we recommend that researchers should use ancova sparingly and with extreme caution. however, when it is utilized, an assessment of the homogeneity of regression assumption always must be undertaken and documented. if the data are shown to violate this assumption (e.g., via a statistically significant levene test result), the researcher will make a serious mistake in proceeding with the ancova analysis. if ancova is undertaken in the presence of heterogeneity of regression slopes then a type vii error will prevail (daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2000). using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), mortality, violated assumptions, and misspecification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for ancova, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. multiple regression. in their review of articles published in the american education research journal, educational researcher, and review of educational research over a 20-year period, elmore and woehlke (1998) found that multiple regression was the third-most popular statistical technique utilized. unfortunately, the majority of researchers use multiple regression in inappropriate ways. undoubtedly the most common error in regression is the use of stepwise regression procedures (i.e., forward selection, backward selection, stepwise selection). indeed, the use of stepwise regression in educational research is rampant (huberty, 1994), probably due to its widespread availability on statistical computer typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 15 software programs. as a result of this apparent obsession with stepwise regression, as stated by cliff (1987, pp. 120-121), "a large proportion of the published results using this method probably present conclusions that are not supported by the data." perhaps bruce thompson has been the most vocal critic of the use of stepwise regression. he and others (beasley & leitner, 1994; davidson, 1988; edirisooriya, 1995; lockridge, 1997; moore, 1996; thompson, 1994a, 1995, 1998a, 1999; welge, 1990) have identified at least three problems associated with this technique. first, at every step of the analysis, computer packages use incorrect degrees of freedom in computing statistical significance (type x error; daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2000). unfortunately, these incorrect degrees of freedom tend to bias statistical significance tests in favor of declaring trivial effects as statistically significant. second, not only does undertaking k steps of analysis not necessarily lead to the best predictor set of size k, it is possible that none of the predictors entered in the first k steps are even among the best predictor set of size k. third, because the order in which the independent variables are entered in the model is influenced by sampling error, which, at any step, can lead to mis-specification of the model, and because stepwise regression typically involves several steps, this technique often produces results that are very difficult to replicate (thompson, 1995). a fourth problem identified by the present authors is that because stepwise regression utilizes a series of statistical significance tests, it is subject to actual type i error rates that can be much greater than its nominal alpha value. for example, a stepwise regression procedure which takes 5 steps to select a final model, with the entry criterion being set at .05 (which is the default value for statistical packages such as spss), results in the probability of at least one type i error rate being .23 (i.e., 1 (1 .05) 5 ) (see for example, maxwell & delaney, 1990). if some variables that are entered are then subsequently removed, then the type i error rate can increase even more. moreover, stepwise regression, more than any other regression technique, tends to capitalize on chance, often resulting in an overfitting of data (tabachnick & fidell. 1996) and yielding results that are based on randomness rather than carefully articulated theoretical models. specifically, decisions about which variables are included in the final regression model are based on p-values, which are extremely sample-dependent. for an extensive discussion of the major flaws associated with stepwise regression, see huberty (1989) and thompson, smith, miller, and thomson (1991). as advocated by thompson (1995), instead of conducting a stepwise regression, an all possible subsets (aps) (i.e., setwise) multiple regression should be performed. using this technique, all possible models involving some or all of the independent variables are examined. indeed, in aps regression, separate regressions are computed for all independent variables singly, all possible pairs of independent variables, all possible trios of independent variables, and so forth, until the best subset of independent variables is identified according to some criterion such as the maximum proportion of variance explained (r 2 ), which provides an important measure of effect size (cohen, 1988). similarly, these repeated subsets can be useful in conducting a regression commonality analysis (newton & spurrell, 1967; rowell, 1996; seibold & mcphee, 1979). (for an example of an aps multiple regression, see onwuegbuzie, slate, paterson, watson, and schwartz, 2000; for an example of commonality analysis, see daniel, 1989a.) unfortunately, statistical software programs such as the statistical package for the social sciences (spss; spss inc., 2001) do not allow analysts to conduct aps regression analyses directly, although the statistical analysis system (sas institute inc., 1999) does, and no commonly available packages include computations for commonality analyses. it should be noted that both aps regression and commonality analyses represent exploratory model-building tools, as opposed to a model-testing techniques (tabachnick & fidell, 1996). as such, aps regression models and commonality analysis results should never be treated as definitive. rather, they should be subjected to both internal and external replications. alternative forms of linear regression techniques that are acceptable are hierarchical (i.e., sequential) multiple regression and standard multiple regression. in hierarchical multiple regression, independent variables are entered into the regression equation in an order specified a priori by the researcher. each independent variable is then evaluated with respect to its own contribution to the model at its own point of entry. independent variables can be entered one-at-a-time or in blocks in a specified order based on the researcher's theoretical considerations (tabachnick & fidell, 1996). hierarchical regression can be conducted interactively via any statistical software. however, it is likely that many users shy away from this technique because it is not fully automated, unlike stepwise regression. standard multiple regression involves entering all variables into the regression equation simultaneously (i.e., "direct" variable entry) and assessing the contribution of each (via partial and current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 semi-partial correlations) as if it had been entered into the model after all other variables had been entered. both hierarchical multiple regression and standard multiple regression represent model-testing approaches, and are thus recommended for confirmatory purposes. in any case, whichever technique is used (i.e., aps regression, hierarchical regression, standard regression), it should be noted that the choice of regression variables is just as important as with any other regression technique. that is, the variables that are selected for the initial multiple regression model must be based on theoretical and/or practical considerations (daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2001). in reporting the results of a multiple regression model, most researchers only present unstandardized and/or standardized regression coefficients (b or weights), and regression structure coefficients (thompson & borrello, 1985; henson, 2002) typically are omitted from the analysis. yet, structure coefficients, which describe the relationship between scores on a given manifest (i.e., observed) variable with the scores on a given latent (i.e., synthetic) variable, when considered alongside standardized weights, can provide vital information about the relative importance of each of the regression variables (courville & thompson, 2001; henson, 2002). specifically, the extent to which the standardized weights and the structure coefficients are identical for each variable indicates how uncorrelated the predictor variables are (thompson, 1998a). second, if both standardized and structure coefficients of a variable are trivial (i.e., near-zero), the variable is not a practicable predictor of the outcome measure. third, if a variable has a near-zero standardized coefficient but a large structure coefficient, the variable plays a role in explaining the dependent variable, but the variable is collinear with at least one additional predictor variable. finally, if a variable has a near-zero structure coefficient but a large standardized coefficient, this indicates that the variable is a suppressor variable. suppressor variables are variables which assist in the prediction of dependent variables (i.e., they increase the effect size) due to their correlation with other independent variables (tabachnick & fidell, 1996). specifically, suppressor variables improve the predictive power of the other independent variables in the model by suppressing variance that is irrelevant to this prediction, as a result of the suppressor variable's relationship with the other independent variables. although the proportion of variance explained (i.e., r 2 ) is routinely reported, very rarely is the corrected estimate of explained variance (adjusted r 2 ) reported. yet, this adjusted measure helps to reduce the positive bias that is inherent in r 2 (ezekiel, 1930; wherry, 1931) when sample size is small, correlation is trivial, or the number of predictor variables is large. another mistake that analysts make when conducting multiple regression analyses is that they do not consider in result interpretation the context-specificity of analytical weights (thompson, 1998a). this often leads to overinterpretation of regression weights (cliff, 1987). thus, as recommended by thompson (1998a), regression weights always should be interpreted with extreme caution. additionally, few researchers provide an analysis of the residuals to assess the extent to which the selected multiple regression model fits the underlying data (i.e., meets the regression assumption of constancy of error variance). even less frequent is the examination of influence diagnostics to determine whether any observations (i.e., cases) exert an undue amount of influence on the regression results (fox, 1997). such influence typically is counterproductive; however, if the case diagnostics indicate a serious deficiency in the regression model, it is very likely that the given observation will provide valuable information to the analyst. as noted by myers (1986), influence diagnostics include the following: (a) the number of estimated standard errors (for each regression coefficient) that the coefficient changes if the ith observation were set aside (i.e., dfbetas); (b) the number of estimated standard errors that the predicted value changes if the ith point is removed from the data set (i.e., dffits); and (c) the reduction in the estimated generalized variance of the coefficient over what would have been produced without the ith data point (i.e., covratio). (for an example of the use of influence diagnostics, see onwuegbuzie et al., 2000.) most analysts do not appear to evaluate multicollinearity among the regression variables. multicollinearity leads to inflated regression coefficients or "bouncing betas." thus, multicollinearity should routinely be assessed in multiple regression models. techniques for assessing multicollinearity include (a) variance inflation factors (vifs), which indicate the extent to which the variance of an individual regression coefficient has been inflated by the presence of collinearity, and (b) condition numbers, which represent the ratio of the largest to the smallest eigenvalues based on a principal components analysis of the regression coefficients yielded by a given analysis, and which serve as measures of the strength of linear dependency among the regression variables (sen & srivastava, 1990). vifs and condition numbers less typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 17 than 10 indicate that multicollinearity is not appreciably present (fox, 1997; myers, 1986). another error that appears to be a common feature of multiple regression analyses is an inadequate case-to-independent variable ratio. green (1991) recommended using the following guideline for determining an appropriate sample size for a multiple regression analysis that takes into account the effect size. according to green, the sample size should be greater than or equal to (8 / f 2 ) + (i 1), where f 2 = r 2 /(1 r 2 ). the sample size should exceed this value if the dependent variable is skewed, if one or more of the variables yield low score reliability, or if cross-validation is needed to test the generalizability of the regression model. finally, we recommend the use of internal replications, in order to avoid type v error (internal replication error; daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2000). the three most common classes of internal replication utilize either cross-validation, jackknife, or bootstrap techniques (thompson, 1994b). for regression analyses, cross-validation involves dividing the sample into two approximately equally sized subsamples (although equality of sub-samples is not required), computing the regression coefficients for the first sub-sample, and then using the second subsample to attempt to confirm the results of the first sub-sample. also, the results of the second subgroup can be confirmed via the first subsample's data. jackknife techniques involve conducting separate analyses, with groups of participants of an equal size (usually one at a time) being deleted from each analysis once only until all cases/groups have been dropped. the regression results at each stage would be compared to determine stability. finally, bootstrap methods involve resampling the same dataset repeatedly (i.e., thousands of times), and then computing the regression coefficients and r 2 values for each sample. these coefficients are then compared to the original regression coefficients from the full sample in order to assess stability. using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), noninteraction seeking bias, violated assumptions, multicollinearity, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for multiple regression, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, illusory correlation, positive manifold, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. multivariate analysis of variance/ covariance. with the increased availability of comprehensive statistical software, more researchers are utilizing multivariate statistical techniques. for example, in a review of 36 research articles published in the 1998 volume of the british journal of educational psychology, onwuegbuzie (2002b) found that multivariate analysis of variance (manova) was the second most common technique utilized. specifically, this technique was undertaken in nearly one-fourth of the articles examined. elmore and woehlke (1998) found that manova was utilized in 12.4% of the articles contained in journals published by the american educational research association from 1978 to 1997. unfortunately, several flaws are associated with use of multivariate analyses of variance. for example, some researchers undertake one-way repeated measures analyses of variance (anovas) in order to determine whether there are statistically significant differences among multiple measures (i.e., an omnibus test), and then, if a statistical significant difference is found, follow up with a series of univariate analyses with type i error rate protection (e.g., scheffé tests). however, this practice is now outdated. moreover, many statisticians criticize this technique because analyses involving repeated measures test "linear combinations of the outcome variables (determined by the variable intercorrelations) and therefore do not yield results that are in any way comparable with a collection of separate univariate tests" (keselman et al., 1998, p. 361). in fact, using anova as a follow-up to manova is a variant of type iv error (see daniel & onwuegbuze, 2000). moreover, although as many as 37.5% of researchers conduct a manova followed by a univariate analyses (i.e., a manova-univariate data analysis strategy) (onwuegbuzie, 2002b), as noted by keselman et al. (1998, p. 361), "there is very limited empirical support for this strategy. indeed, keselman et al. (1998) stated that "if the univariate effects are those of interest, then it is suggested that the researcher go directly to the univariate analyses and bypass manova. . . . focusing on results of multiple univariate analyses preceded by a manova is no more logical than conducting an omnibus anova but focusing on the results of group contrast analyses (olejnik & huberty, 1993)" (pp. 361-362). furthermore, because this technique relies on a statistically significant manova omnibus test as a precursor to using anova on a post hoc basis, the incompatibility of manova and anova, due to the differences in their respective mean square errors and error degrees of freedom, results in a post hoc anova test that has lower statistical power than if the anova test had been used as a planned comparison. thompson (1999) also criticized researchers who perform several univariate analyses to analyze multivariate data. he maintained that because univariate analyses can be viewed as assessing the contribution of one or more independent variables to a solitary dependent variable, it typically does not current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 honor, in the optimal sense, the nature of reality that most researchers are interested in studying. this is because most phenomena involve multiple effects. as tatsuoka (1973) asserted: the often-heard argument, "i'm more interested in seeing how each variable, in its own right, affects the outcome" overlooks the fact that any variable taken in isolation may affect the criterion differently from the way it will act in the company of other variables. it also overlooks the fact that multivariate analysis-precisely by considering all the variables simultaneously-can throw light on how each one contributes to the relation. (p. 273) thus, we recommend that researchers avoid using the manova-anova analytical strategy, and focus instead on conducting analyses that most appropriately reflect the underlying multivariate reality of interest. (for a more extensive discussion of manova versus multiple anovas, see huberty and morris, 1989.) also, we suggest that researchers use the multivariate approach to analyzing repeatedmeasures data (which basis its analysis on the difference scores) rather than the mixed-methods (i.e., with one factor representing the betweensubjects factor(s) and the other factor representing the within-subject factor(s)) approach because the latter necessitates an assumption that is not required by the former. specifically, the mixed-model approach requires a homogeneity of treatment-difference variances (i.e., sphericity) assumption. simply put, this assumption requires that every measure must have the same variance, and all correlations between any pair of measures must be the same (maxwell & delaney, 1990). however, it should also be noted that the multivariate approach itself requires multivariate normality. as such, researchers always should assess the viability of this assumption. another oversight of researchers employing manova techniques is the failure to report the criteria used for determining statistical significance. these criteria include wilk's lambda, pillai's criteria, hotelling's trace criterion, and roy's gcr criterion. under certain conditions (e.g., when the independent variable has two levels), the first three criteria are identical. however, there are times when these techniques will yield different p-values. thus, researchers always should specify which criteria were used. finally, as for the case of ancova, multivariate analysis of covariance (mancova) should be used with extreme caution. this is because mancova is subject to the same assumptions as for ancova. however, not only is mancova based on the multivariate normal distribution, but it is also assumed that the regression between covariates and the dependent variables in one group is the same as the regression in other groups (i.e., homogeneity of regression) such that using the mean regression to adjust for covariates in all groups is appropriate (tabachnick & fidell, 1996). using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), mortality, violated assumptions, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for manova and mancova, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. descriptive discriminant analysis/predictive discriminant analysis. huberty and his colleagues (huberty, 1994; huberty & barton, 1989; huberty & wisenbaker, 1992) have eloquently differentiated between descriptive discriminant analysis (dda) and predictive discriminant analysis (pda). according to huberty (1994), dda describes the differences on dependent variables that are measured on the interval or ratio scale with respect to a nominally-scaled variable, namely group membership. on the other hand, pda involves predicting group membership from response variables that are intervalor ratioscaled. in pda, the percentage of correct classification is of particular interest, whereas in dda, the function and structure coefficients are the focus, with the hit rate being immaterial (thompson, 1998a). also, as thompson (1998a) noted, whereas dda is a member of the general linear model, pda is not a direct family member. one of the biggest flaws in interpreting dda results is a failure to interpret both the discriminant function coefficients and the structure coefficients. whether dda or pda is utilized, many researchers do not report the criteria used for statistical significance (e.g., wilks' lambda, pillai's criteria, hotelling's trace criterion, and roy's gcr criterion). in addition, many analysts utilize stepwise discriminant analysis techniques. as is the case for stepwise multiple regression, stepwise discriminant analysis contains serious flaws (e.g., type x error; daniel & onwuegbuzie, 2000). thus, this technique should never be used. instead, standard discriminant analysis or hierarchical discriminant analysis could be utilized. using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), non-interaction seeking bias, violated assumptions, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for discriminant analysis, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, positive manifold, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. both pda and dda are subject to the assumption of multivariate normality. this assumption means that scores on the predictor typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 19 variables are independently and randomly sampled from a population, and that the sampling distribution of any linear combination of predictors is normally distributed. unfortunately, these procedures are not robust to departures from normality if the group sizes are very unequal. indeed, logistic regression is more appropriate than is discriminant analysis in the presence of non-normality and unequal group sizes (tabachnick & fidell, 1996), and thus could be utilized in this case. in fact, logistic regression is more versatile than is discriminant analysis because less stringent assumptions are needed. specifically, logistic regression makes no assumptions about the distributional properties of the regression variables-in particular, the predictors do not have to be normally distributed; nor do they have to linearly related or have equal variances within each group. also, the regression variables can be discrete, continuous, or a combination of the two. it is thus surprising how infrequent logistic regression is used in educational research--despite its popularity in the health sciences. because logistic regression is a discrete response-variable analog to multiple regression, the recommendations made above for the latter (e.g., non-use of stepwise methods, examining residuals, and conducting internal replications) are pertinent for using the former. canonical correlation analyses. canonical correlation analysis is utilized to examine the relationship between two sets of variables when each set contains more than one variable (cliff & krus, 1976; darlington, weinberg, & walberg, 1973; thompson, 1980, 1984, 1991). indeed, as noted by knapp (1978, p. 410), "virtually all of the commonly encountered tests of significance can be treated as special cases of canonical correlation analysis.” that is, canonical correlation analysis can be used to undertake all the parametric tests which canonical correlation methods subsume as special cases, including pearson correlation, t-tests, multiple regression, analysis of variance, and analysis of covariance (henson, 2000; roberts & henson, 2002; thompson, 1988b, 1998a, 1991). humphries-wadsworth (1997) reviewed articles published between 1988 and 1998 in which canonical correlation analyses were undertaken. she identified several problems arising from the use of this technique. these problems included inconsistencies in the terminology used to label the same procedure (e.g., “canonical loadings,” “canonical weights,” “correlation loadings,” and “canonical correlates”), and failure to report all the necessary information. summarizing thompson's (1992a) recommendations, humphries-wadsworth (1997) stated that when performing a canonical correlation analysis, (a) both the p-values pertaining to canonical functions and the squared canonical correlation coefficients (i.e., effect sizes) should be assessed; (b) both the canonical function coefficients and the canonical structure coefficients should be interpreted, along the lines outlined above for multiple regression; (c) redundancy coefficients, which are equal to the average of the squared multiple correlation of each of the variables in one set with all the variables in the other set (pedhazur, 1982) should not be interpreted because they represent univariate statistics; (d) communality coefficients should be routinely examined; and (e) internal replications (e.g., cross-validation, jackknife, or bootstrap techniques) should be undertaken. using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), non-interaction seeking bias, violated assumptions, multicollinearity, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for canonical correlation analyses, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, illusory correlation, crud factor, positive manifold, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. principal component analysis and factor analysis. principal component analysis (pca) and factor analysis (fa) are statistical procedures performed on a set of variables in order to determine which variables in the set form logical subsets that are statistically independent from each other. specifically, variables that are statistically related with each other but statistically independent from other subsets of variables are combined into components/factors. these components or factors thus are assumed to represent the underlying phenomena/constructs that are responsible for the observed correlations among the variables. the overall goals of both pca and fa, which are the two most common methods of factor extraction, are to reduce the dimensionality of the set of variables, to summarize patterns of correlations among manifest variables, to describe an underlying process via the observed relationships among variables, or to test theories about the nature of underlying processes or constructs (henson et al., 2001; henson & roberts, in press; tabachnick & fidell, 1996). there are two major types of factor analysis: exploratory and confirmatory. exploratory factor analysis (efa) is an analytic technique conducted in the early stages of the research process with the goal of reducing a larger set of variables into a smaller, interpretable set based on the correlations among the variables. in so doing, the analyst hopes to understand better the internal structure of an instrument or a dataset when insufficient information is available about the data structure. simply put, exploratory factor analyses are based on current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 mathematical solutions and do not incorporate a priori theoretical underpinnings (daniel, 1989b). on the other hand, confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) is typically utilized in the latter stages of the research process to test a theory about the latent processes (henson et al., 2001; henson & roberts, in press; kieffer, 1999). a common flaw that is apparent in factor analysis is the use of inadequate case-to-variable ratio (henson et al., 2001; henson & roberts, in press). for example, in a review of 40 articles using exploratory factor analysis published in the american educational research journal (vol. 33-36), journal of educational research (vol. 89-93), or the elementary school journal (vol. 96-100), henson et al. (2001) found that 14% of efas used subject-tovariable ratios of less than 5:1, with two studies using fewer participants than variables. similarly, henson and roberts (in press) reported that 11.86% of the 60 efa articles they examined had ratios less than 5:1. comrey and lee (1992) suggest that for factor analyses, sample sizes of 50 are very poor, 100 are poor, 200 are fair, 300 are good, 500 are very good, and 1,000 are excellent. tabachnick and fidell (1996) and kieffer (1999) recommend that at least 300 cases be used for factor analysis. however, these guidelines are too simplistic because they do not directly take into account the number of variables. we recommend using case-to-variable ratios as a guideline (henson et al., 2001; stevens, 1996, 2002). to this end, we suggest using 5 participants per variable as the bare minimum, although at least 10 participants per variable is much more desirable (gorsuch, 1983). when researchers use case-tovariable ratios that are less than 5, this should be readily acknowledged in the report as posing a threat to internal validity (i.e., the reliability of the variable scores and emergent factor scores). the difference in pca and fa is that the former utilizes the total variance of each variable to assess the shared variation among the variables. that is, pca uses “ones” on the diagonal of the correlation matrix that is factor analyzed. on the other hand, fa utilizes estimates of common variance or reliability on the main diagonal (henson et al., 2001; henson & roberts, in press; thompson & daniel, 1996). it is likely that fa better reflects reality better than does pca because the latter assumes that each variable represents scores that are perfectly reliable (kieffer, 1999). regardless, as noted by thompson and daniel (1996), heated arguments prevail as to the relative merits of pca or fa. some statisticians (e.g., daniel, 1990; thompson, 1992c) have asserted that the difference between pca and fa is trivial. more specifically, thompson and daniel (1996) reported that the difference between pca and other extraction methods reduces as the number of factored variables increases and as scores on the factored variables become more reliable. however, other researchers (e.g., gorsuch, 1983) have maintained that there is enough discrepancy between the two procedures to justify careful consideration of which technique to utilize. in any case, our position is that researchers should specify which extraction method they have used and provide a rationale for their choice. analysts may even want to consider examining both pca and fa results and then selecting the method which provides the most meaningful interpretation. as noted by hetzel (1996), a common misunderstanding among novice factor analysts is incorrectly assuming that the eigenvalue for a specific factor after extraction is identical to the trace (summation of squared values in columns of the factor pattern/structure matrix) after the factor solution is rotated. this error in thinking leads to incorrect proportions of variance being reported for factors. as identified by thompson (1997), another mistake made by some analysts is a failure to interpret both the factor pattern matrix and the factor structure matrix after conducting an oblique rotation (i.e., rotation of the factors in the factor space such that the angle between the factors is different than 90 degrees). the rationale for this is the same as for interpreting both standardized coefficients and structure coefficients in multiple regression and discriminant analysis. reporting only one of these two matrices provides only partial information (henson et al., 2001; henson & roberts, in press; thompson, 1997). on the other hand, when varimax rotation (i.e., orthogonal rotation of the factors in the factor space such that all factors are at 90-degree angles to each other) is utilized, the factor pattern matrix and the factor structure matrices are identical. perhaps the most common flaw in articles reporting factor analyses is the lack of attention to detail (henson et al., 2001; henson & roberts, in press). indeed, of the factor-analytic studies in the field of counseling psychology examined by tinsley and tinsley (1987), most did not accurately and completely report the results. in a follow-up study by hetzel (1996), none of the factor-analytic articles reviewed contained all of the necessary information. in a further replication of tinsley and tinsley's (1987) seminal work, kieffer (1999) had very similar conclusions, as did henson et al. (2001) and henson and roberts (in press). we recommend that exploratory factor analyses include as many of the following pieces of information as possible: initial number of variables, sample size, sample composition, sampling design, means and variances of the items, correlation matrix typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 21 (for replication purposes), method of factor extraction, criteria used for selecting the number of factors to be extracted, method of factor rotation, eigenvalues, correlation matrix of the extracted factors, final communality estimates, estimates of reliability, rotated factor pattern matrix, and rotated factor structure matrix (if oblique rotation is utilized) (cf. hetzel, 1996). (for an example of how to report efa results in table form for orthogonal rotations and oblique solutions, see table 4 of henson & roberts, in press, and henson et al., 2001, respectively.) we recognize that many factor analysts are operating under stringent page restrictions. nevertheless, attempts should be made to provide as much as the above information as possible. researchers conducting exploratory factor analysis also should provide an explicit justification for each criterion used in the analytical process (henson & roberts, in press). using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), non-interaction seeking bias and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for exploratory factor analyses, whereas confirmation bias, crud factor, and positive manifold are pertinent interpretational errors. confirmatory factor analyses. when performing confirmatory factor analyses, some researchers mistakenly analyze the correlation matrix instead of the variance-covariance matrix (thompson & daniel, 1996). using correlation matrices with confirmatory factor analyses is tantamount to utilizing a variance-covariance matrix wherein the manifest variables have been standardized to unit variance (bollen, 1989), which likely does not reflect reality. as noted by skehan (1991), the acceptance or rejection of a confirmatory factor model is not only a function of the difference between the model and reality, but it also is a function of the size of the sample. in particular, large samples tend to have a bias toward rejection of models (skehan, 1991). according to schumacker and lomax (1996, p. 125), for sample sizes larger than 200, “the test has a tendency to indicate a significant level” and, consequently, to lead to a rejection of the underlying model. thus, it is even more important that effect sizes are reported alongside values. indeed, because there does not appear to be a universally agreed-upon index for assessing model adequacy, we recommend that researchers report several fit indices (i.e., effect size measures) such as the ratio of chisquare to degrees of freedom , the adjusted goodness-of-fit index, the relative fit index (rfi), the incremental fit index (ifi), the tucker-lewis index (tli), and the comparative fit index (cfi) (bentler, 1990; bentler & bonett, 1980; bollen, 1986, 1989; schumacker & lomax, 1996). cut-off values between .90 (e.g., bentler & bonett, 1980) and .95 (hu & bentler, 1999) have been recommended for demonstrating model adequacy. the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea; browne & cudeck, 1993) is another index that researchers should consider reporting. the rmsea, which is the square root of the difference between the population covariance matrix and the fitted matrix divided by the number of degrees of freedom for testing the model (i.e., the discrepancy per degree of freedom for the model), is used to compare the fit of two different models to the same data. the rmsea is bounded below by zero and will be zero only if the model fits exactly (browne & cudeck, 1993). browne and cudeck (1993) asserted that (1) a rmsea of approximately .05 or less is indicative of a close fit of the model in relation to the degrees of freedom, (2) a rmsea value between .05 and .08 indicates a reasonable error of approximation, and (3) models with rmsea's greater than 0.1 always should be rejected. hu and bentler (1999) suggest a cut-off value of .06 for the rmsea. with respect to the ratio, although some researchers (e.g., carmines & mciver as cited in arbuckle, 1997) recommend a range between 2 to 1 and 3 to 1 for declaring an acceptable fit, most researchers (e.g., byrne, 1989) believe that relative chi-square ratios above 2.00 represent an inadequate fit. thus, we recommend this latter value. it should be noted, however, that several monte carlo studies (i.e., studies in which a series of specific empirical sampling distributions for each index are examined) have demonstrated that many effect size indices also are affected by sample size. for example, marsh, balla, and mcdonald (1988), who analyzed the distributions of 29 different indices (e.g., gfi, nfi, tli), found several of these indices to be related to sample size. notwithstanding, in most cases, all the fit indices obtained using ml techniques tend to perform much better with respect to accuracy of estimates and correctness of statistical results than those obtained using other techniques such as generalized least squares and the asymptotic distribution free method (hu & bentler, 1995). apart from sample bias, violation of assumptions underlying estimation methods-specifically, violation of distributional assumptions and the effect of dependence of latent variates--can threaten the adequacy of fit indices. in particular, hu and bentler (1995) reported that, when latent variables are dependent, most fit indices over-reject models at a sample size of 250 or less. unfortunately, given that chi-square tests have a tendency to reject models using sample sizes greater than 200, and that most fit indices lead to an over-rejection of models current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 for samples smaller than 250 when latent variables are dependent, it is difficult, if not impossible, to recommend an ideal sample size for cfa studies. (for comprehensive examples of exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis see kieffer, 1999, and onwuegbuzie, bailey, and daley, 2000.) as for exploratory factor analyses, non-interaction seeking bias and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for confirmatory factor analysis, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, crud factor, and positive manifold are pertinent interpretational errors. path analysis. path analysis, which was developed in the 1920s by sewall wright in order to gain a better understanding of genetic theory, became popularized in behavioral and social sciences in 1960s (schumacker & lomax, 1996). path analysis is a technique for studying the direct and indirect effects of variables on one or more outcomes. direct effects involve two variables (observed or latent) that are connected by a single directional path, which represents the regression of the outcome on the predictor. by contrast, indirect effects occur between two latent variables when no single direct path connects them, but instead when the second variable is logically related to the first latent variable through one or more other latent variables via their paths. conveniently, path coefficients in path models take on the values of pearson product-moment correlation coefficients or standardized partial regression coefficients. moreover, the paths suggest whether the dependent variables are related to correlated effects, mediated effects, and/or independent effects. unlike multiple regression analyses, path analysis models allow analysts to specify the type of relationship among the independent variables when predicting one or more dependent variables. path analysis involves decomposing correlations and then comparing original coefficients with the path coefficients computed on the basis of the path model. correlations between any two variables are decomposed into simple and complex paths (schumacker & lomax, 1996). path coefficients can be tested for statistical significance (e.g., using t-values), whereas the overall path model can be tested for goodness of fit using various test statistics (e.g., chi-square tests). unfortunately, because statistically significant chi-square values suggest that a model does not fit the underlying data, sample sizes greater than 200 have a tendency to reject models, as is the case for cfa. using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), noninteraction seeking bias, violated assumptions, multicollinearity, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for path analyses, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, illusory correlation, crud factor, positive manifold, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. structural equation modeling. structural equation models differ from path analysis in that the former focus on latent variables rather than observed variables, and combine a measurement model (i.e., confirmatory factor analysis) with a structural model (i.e., path analysis) to substantiate theory (schumacker & lomax, 1996). by first utilizing multiple observed variables in defining a particular latent variable or hypothesized construct (e.g., a factor), measurement error can be estimated, and, as such, measurement properties (i.e., structural-related validity) can be assessed via parameter estimates. as with confirmatory factor analysis, we recommend that researchers who utilize structural equation techniques report several fit indexes simultaneously (thompson, 2000), because there is "no single statistical test of significance that identifies a correct model given the sample data" [emphasis in original] (schumacker & lomax, 1996, p. 120). also, as recommended by schumacker and lomax (1996), we advocate that a bootstrap analysis should be conducted to determine the stability of path coefficients for the selected model. bootstrapping involves re-sampling the data (with replacement) a specified (large) number of times to generate statistical estimators adjusted for case-by-case bias and to establish standard error bands around these estimators. these sample bootstrap estimates and standard errors are averaged and used to obtain confidence intervals around the average of the bootstrap estimates (i.e., bootstrap estimators). the bootstrap estimators and their corresponding confidence intervals are then used to determine how stable the sample statistic is as an estimator of the population parameter. however, it should be noted that even though sem analyses often lead to models that more closely reflect reality, many of these resultant models may still be under-specified because they (a) do not include interaction effects, (b) do not test for nonlinear relationships, and/or (c) fail to account for a sufficient number of observables to identify one or more of the latent variables (i.e., under-identification of the model). another concern surrounding sem is the fact that this method of analysis also has been termed causal modeling. this is regrettable because the term causal modeling appears to give many researchers the impression that sem is a method of identifying causes--which is not necessarily the case. indeed, sem is no less correlational in analytical framework than is any other member of the general linear model. that is, as is the case for all types of statistical analyses regardless of level of complexity, use of sem can only allow for causal statements to typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research 23 be made if the research design permits it (i.e., experimental). using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), non-interaction seeking bias, violated assumptions, multicollinearity, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for sem, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, illusory correlation, crud factor, positive manifold, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. hierarchical (multilevel) linear modeling. hierarchical linear modeling (hlm) is a technique designed to analyze data that are structured hierarchically. indeed, hlm has been found to be especially relevant to studies of educational settings because students typically are clustered together within classes, classes are clustered together within schools, schools are clustered together within local education authorities or school districts, and so forth (bryk & raudenbush, 1992; goldstein, 1987, 1995; gray & wilcox, 1995; kreft & de leeuw, 1998). as hlm software has become more readily available, this method of data analysis is increasing in popularity (onwuegbuzie, 2002b). however, due to its relative complexity, still relatively few researchers use hlm. in hlm, models contain one or more variables measured at different levels of the hierarchy. models can have as few as two levels (e.g., students nested within classes), or many more than two. the lowest level measurements are referred to as being at the micro level, whereas all higher-level measurements are deemed to be at the macro level. because hlm models are generalizations of multiple regression models (kreft & de leeuw, 1998), the same assumptions associated with multiple regression not only prevail when using hlm, but they are more complicated. moreover, when these assumptions are violated, type i and type ii errors will be imminent. as cautioned by kreft and de leeuw (1998), hlm should not be used for data exploration. indeed, such exploration should be undertaken prior to the hlm stage. additionally, when using hlm, researchers should refrain from testing models that are too complex--that is models that contain many independent variables, measured at all levels of the hierarchy, and/or that include many cross-level interactions (kreft & de leeuw, 1998). such models are to be avoided, not only because they are sensitive to subtle changes in the system and thus contain unstable parameter estimates, but also because such models are much more difficult to interpret, as well as to replicate from one sample to the next. using the framework of onwuegbuzie (in press-a), noninteraction seeking bias, violated assumptions, multicollinearity, and mis-specification error are analytical errors that are particularly pertinent for hlm, whereas effect size, confirmation bias, illusory correlation, crud factor, positive manifold, and causal error are pertinent interpretational errors. summary the purpose of the present paper was to identify and to discuss major analytical and interpretational errors that occur regularly in quantitative and qualitative educational research. with respect to qualitative, interpretivist research, the most common errors are failure to provide evidence for judging the credibility (i.e., validity) of the findings, generalizing findings beyond the sample, and failure to estimate and to interpret effect sizes. typical errors associated with quantitative research include (a) no evidence provided that statistical assumptions were checked; (b) no power/sample size considerations discussed; (c) inappropriate treatment of multivariate data; (d) use of stepwise procedures; (e) failure to report score reliability indices for either previous or present samples; and (f) no control for type i error rate. however, perhaps the most prevalent two errors made in quantitative research, appear across all types of quantitative analyses, namely the incorrect interpretation of statistical significance and the related failure to report and to interpret confidence intervals and effect sizes (i.e., variance-accounted for effect sizes or standardized mean differences) (daniel, 1998a, 1998b; ernest & mclean, 1998; knapp, 1998; levin, 1998; mclean & ernest, 1998; nix & barnette, 1998a, 1998b; thompson, 1998b, 2002). this error often leads to under-interpretation of associated p-values when sample sizes are small and the corresponding effect sizes are large, and an over-interpretation of p-values when sample sizes are large and effect sizes are small (e.g., daniel, 1998a, 1998c). because of this common confusion between significance in the probabilistic sense (i.e., statistical significance) and significance in the practical sense (i.e., effect size), some researchers (e.g., daniel, 1998a) have recommended that authors insert the word "statistically" before the word "significant," when interpreting the findings of a null hypothesis statistical test. conclusion a plethora of analytical and interpretational errors prevails in both quantitative and qualitative research. based on the frequency of many of the errors identified, one has to wonder what percentage of published educational research findings is invalid. in any case, it is clear that extreme caution should be exercised when undertaking quantitative and qualitative analyses, regardless of level of complexity. indeed, use of sophisticated analytical techniques and computer software is no substitute for current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 really getting to know the underlying data and carefully checking all a priori assumptions. we are aware that our views and recommendations provided throughout this essay represent only a portion of the larger body of metathinking and appraisal in the field of education that has taken place for many decades. in providing what we believe to be current best practices for various data-analytic techniques, we encourage the reader either to endorse our recommendations or to demonstrate errors in our judgments. at the very least, we hope that we have provided a framework for promoting dialogue. references aiken, l. s., west, s. g., sechrest, l., reno, r. r., with roediger, h. l., scarr, s., kazdin, a. e., & sherman, s. j. 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(2003, february 19). typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research. current issues in education [on-line], 6(2). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume6/number2/ author notes anthony j. onwuegbuzie howard university department of human development and psychoeducational studies, school of education 2441 fourth street, nw, washington, dc 20059 tonyo@surfsouth.com anthony j. onwuegbuzie is an associate professor of educational psychology at howard university in washington, dc. he earned his ph.d. in educational research and two of his three master's degrees (i.e., m.s. in statistics and m.ed. in testing and measurement) at the university of south carolina. also, he earned a postgraduate diploma in statistics at the university college london. his research topics primarily involve disadvantaged and under-served populations such as minorities, learning disabled students, and juvenile delinquents. in the last four years, he has secured more than 120 publications in reputable refereed journals. to date, he has made or has been invited to make more than 200 presentations and keynote addresses at the international, national, regional, and university levels, presenting on the continents of north america (including canada), europe, and africa. he has a forthcoming book entitled: library anxiety: theory, research, and applications (scarecrow press). larry g. daniel university of north florida larry g. daniel is associate dean, college of education and human services, and professor, division of educational services and research, at the university of north florida. his research and writing interest include research methodology and statistics, measurement issues, educational leadership, and teacher education. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 22, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation onwuegbuzie, a. j., & daniel, l. g. (2003). typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research. current issues in education, 6(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1609 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number2/index.html file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2003,%20vol%206,%20%231-18/number2/tonyo@surfsouth.com http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1609 current issues in education vol. 6 no. 2 understanding sel to create a sense of belonging: the role teachers play in addressing students’ social and emotional well-being current issues in education, 23(2) 1 volume 23, issue 2 october 28, 2022 issn 1099-839x understanding sel to create a sense of belonging: the role teachers play in addressing students’ social and emotional well-being blanca n. ibarra university of texas rio grande valley abstract: this inquiry examines the benefits of utilizing social-emotional learning in today’s classrooms to address students’ academic and social-emotional needs. now, more than ever, as teachers have transitioned from remote instruction to face-to-face or blended learning, particular emphasis must be placed on addressing students’ social and emotional needs (fagell, 2021) while addressing learning loss. social-emotional learning (sel) may have been in place in school systems before the covid-19 pandemic; however, understanding sel and the instructional practices that contribute to developing a learning environment that nourishes students’ sense of belonging is necessary to inform teacher pedagogical practices post-pandemic. teachers play a critical role in establishing a learning environment suitable for nurturing students’ sense of belonging (jennings & greenberg, 2009). as teachers attempt to provide a sense of normalcy in the classroom, they must skillfully balance designing instruction, creating an inviting classroom community, and helping students “feel” safe and supported. keywords: social-emotional learning, sense of belonging, teacher role, academic benefits, wellbeing citation: ibarra, b. (2022). understanding sel to create a sense of belonging: the role teachers play in addressing students’ social and emotional well-being. current issues in education, 23(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss2.2049 accepted: september 2, 2022 introduction today’s students face many social and emotional issues. the pandemic has created a need for educators to understand their role in creating an optimal learning environment for students to ensure their overall well-being and academic success. social-emotional learning (sel) is an approach that promotes the well-being of students and prepares them for the challenges of the 21st century. sel program academic benefits are well documented in the research (durlak et al., 2011; greenberg et al., 2017; mahoney et al., 2018-2019; osher et al., 2016); however, there is a gap in the literature about how teachers can utilize sel principles to address students’ social and emotional well-being in the classroom. there is insufficient research into the impact of a social and emotional learning climate in classrooms on student engagement https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss2.2049 ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 2 and academic achievement. this research specifically positions teachers at the forefront of creating the classroom’s social and emotional learning climate where sel principles have a more direct impact on addressing students’ social and emotional well-being. much research abounds examining the benefits of sel program implementations. however, the problem is that it focuses on implementing a specific program rather than focusing on sel principles that teachers can use to create the conditions in the classroom to provide social and emotional support within the learning environment. this research addresses the gap in teachers’ role in developing students’ sense of belonging in the classroom. sel has an essential role in the educational system, especially today, because “social and emotional competencies are not secondary to the mission of education, but concrete factors in the success of teachers, students, and schools” (jones et al., 2013, p. 65). this year, many students returned to school for the first time since the pandemic started with learning gaps, fear, and a lack of personal connection with peers and teachers (texas school safety center, n.d.). in postpandemic education, failure to address students’ social and emotional needs in the classroom may result in disengagement and poor academic performance (yorke et al., 2021), which schools cannot afford to occur if they are to address students’ learning needs successfully. teachers can no longer be solely responsible for teaching content knowledge (ferraira, 2021). findings from jennings and greenberg (2009) suggest that teachers influence students’ social and emotional development; unfortunately, there is limited research on this topic (gimbert et al., 2021). in today’s climate, where the term sel is permeating schools and classrooms across the nation, it is imperative that teachers understand what sel is but, more importantly, be aware of how the place where students spend most of their time in, the classroom, is the place that needs to be supportive. this article asserts that while social-emotional learning impacts students’ well-being and academic success, it is dependent on teachers’ active role in developing students’ sense of belonging by creating a learning environment that is safe, nurturing, and supportive. therefore, this paper aims to answer what educators should know about sel and how they can create a learning environment that supports students’ social and emotional well-being. method the literature included in this review relied on the following search terms: sel, sel competencies, benefits of sel, and academic benefits of sel on academic databases and google scholar. articles that appeared in educational research or practitioner journals had priority for inclusion. through the numerous articles obtained, commonalities began to emerge and overlap and are the rationale for including specific literature in this article. for example, the collaborative for academic, social, and emotional learning (casel) main sel theoretical components consistently appeared as a reference in the literature. several meta-analyses conducted by a combination of the following authors (durlak, dymnicki, taylor, & weissberg) were repeatedly cited in other literature referenced in this article. the authors, as mentioned above, have well-documented research supporting the fact that the use of sel program implementation has academic benefits. an important finding emerged from this literature: sel programs were more effective when implemented by the classroom teacher. as a result of this finding, an additional search explored the role of teachers in supporting students’ social and emotional well-being in the classroom. the search terms used included: teachers and sel, teacher social-emotional competence, and developing a sense of belonging. jennings and greenberg’s research (2009; 2017) frequently appeared as a reference in research addressing teachers’ social-emotional competence and their role in sel. for this reason, their research ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 3 anchors the focus on teachers’ role in developing students’ social and emotional well-being in the classroom. i will first provide a brief overview of sel and its theoretical components in the literature review. understanding the sel framework helps explain the array of benefits to students (academic, social, and emotional). second, i will discuss the benefits of sel as documented in meta-analytic studies. understanding sel’s benefits are essential for educators since they play a significant role in addressing students’ well-being. third, i will delve into the teachers’ social-emotional competence, instructional practices, and the specific role they have in preparing the learning environment for addressing students’ social and emotional well-being. the classroom is where students spend most of their time in school with one adult to teach and guide them and, therefore, should be a place where they feel safe, secure, and nurtured. finally, i will conclude with implications for educator practices in post-pandemic learning environments. historical background of social emotional learning theory social-emotional learning (sel) is the application of knowledge, skills, and dispositions that allows individuals to manage behavior and emotions and set goals. sel, as defined by the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning (casel), is “the broad process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships and make responsible decisions” (mckown, 2017, p. 160). sel research dates back to 1900, but it was not until the 1990s that research began focusing on the role of sel in the school climate (osher et al., 2016). the term social-emotional learning (sel) first appeared in promoting social and emotional learning: guidelines for educators (elias et al., 1997), and it outlined the goals of sel as being to promote the creation of a nurturing learning environment and to develop five core components: self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, and relationship skills (osher et al., 2016). social-emotional learning draws from other learning theories, including social learning, behavioral, and multiple intelligences. according to osher et al. (2016), social learning theory emphasizes self-expectancies which correlate to sel’s emphasis on social awareness and self-awareness. cognitive behavior theory emphasizes the roles of thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes that influence feelings and affect behaviors, such as making choices that align with sel’s emphasis on self-management and responsible decisionmaking (osher et al., 2016). lastly, gardner’s multiple intelligence theory, specifically interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence, emphasizes empathy and understanding, aligning with the sel components of self-awareness and self-management (taylor & larson, 1999). theoretical components sel encompasses three types of skills: thinking, behavioral, and self-control. thinking skills involve interpreting and reasoning information about other people’s behavior; behavior skills refer to the specific actions people take to form and maintain relationships; and self-control skills refer to the ability to control emotions to preserve and achieve goals (mckown, 2017). these skill sets serve as a foundation for the five core sel competencies, which casel identifies as self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, and relationship skills. self-awareness involves recognizing one’s emotions, strengths, and weaknesses to develop a sense of self-worth (denham & brown, 2010; osher et al., 2016), while self-management is the ability to control emotions and behaviors (weissberg & cascarino, 2013). social awareness involves recognizing social and cultural norms (osher et al., 2016), ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 4 being empathetic toward others, and understanding support systems and resources available for assistance (frank, 2020; weissberg & cascarino, 2013). relationship skills refer to sustaining healthy and positive relationships with parents, peers, and teachers (frank, 2020), as evidenced by practicing effective communication, listening, and collaboration skills. lastly, responsible decision-making involves making rational choices and understanding the consequences of decisions on others and oneself (denham & brown, 2010; weissberg & cascarino, 2013). the development of these five components is the short-term goal of sel, but the long-term benefits are developing socially adjusted students who have less stress and are thriving academically (weissberg & cascarino, 2013). benefits of using social-emotional learning social-emotional factors such as a sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and a sense of caring impact students’ academic success (jennings & greenberg, 2009). the use of sel programs has many benefits, such as improved social-emotional competence of students, fewer conduct problems, reduced emotional distress (weissberg & cascarino, 2013), and a positive learning climate (osher et al., 2016). short-term benefits of sel include increased student engagement, positive attitudes, and a sense of belonging, while long-term benefits include academic achievement, social-emotional competence, college readiness, mental health, and 21st-century skills (greenberg et al., 2017; mahoney et al., 2018-2019). however, an additional benefit identified in some meta-analyses (durlak et al., 2011; payton et al., 2008) reveals positive academic outcomes and increased student engagement. sel benefits three areas significantly: academic achievement, students’ social-emotional competence, and 21st-century skills. academic achievement a significant benefit of sel frequently mentioned in the literature (durlak et al., 2011; greenberg et al., 2017; mahoney et al., 2018-2019; osher et al., 2016) is academic achievement. specifically, academic achievement in the literature refers to improved performance by students on standardized exams in reading and math, report card grades, and overall gpa (durlak et al., 2011). payton et al.’s (2008) review of 317 studies involving 324,303 students revealed that, on average, students enrolled in sel programs demonstrated an achievement gain on standardized test scores from 11 to 17 percentile points. additional support for these findings includes durlak et al.’s (2011) meta-analysis, which revealed an 11-percentile gain in students’ academic achievement in reading and math standardized test scores and overall gpa when they participated in classrooms with an sel program. mahoney et al.’s (2018-2019) analysis of four meta-analyses of sel programs found that the effect size on academic achievement (standardized test scores) remained constant across all four meta-analyses (r = 26 to r = 33), indicating a direct and moderate relationship, thereby supporting the argument that one of the benefits of sel programming in schools is improved academic achievement. furthermore, a more recent study also revealed significant effects of sel on reading (g = 0.25) and math (g = 0.26) achievement on standardized tests indicating a direct and moderate relationship as well (hart et al., 2020). ragozzino et al. (2003) write that casel has identified four ways sel initiatives can positively impact academic achievement. first, it allows students to apply sel skills to classroom behaviors that can enhance learning, such as setting educational goals, mastery of content within a particular subject, and identifying strategies to address areas of difficulty to achieve academic goals (ragozzino et al., 2003). second, providing students the opportunities to ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 5 apply sel skills such as writing from a certain point of view, providing students with choices, and using cooperative learning results in self-directed and academically engaged students (moore-mcbride et al., 2016). lastly, forming relationships with students allows teachers to provide feedback on academic progress, contributing to developing students’ self-awareness and social-emotional competence (denham & brown, 2010). social-emotional competence social-emotional learning supports students’ social and emotional development by helping them develop positive relationships, learning to work cooperatively with peers, managing emotions, and setting and achieving goals (ragozzino et al., 2003). students who are socially and emotionally competent are actively engaged, have a good rapport with peers, are motivated to learn, and have grit which is the persistence and desire to achieve goals despite obstacles encountered (mckown, 2017). a competent person has the skills “to generate and coordinate flexible, adaptive responses to demands and to generate and capitalize on opportunities in the environment” (waters & sroufe, 1983, as quoted in durlak et al., 2011, p. 406). weissberg and cascarino (2013) add that academically successful students develop persistence and determination, which are positive habits of mind that allow students to be academically successful, and that an sel program further develops. 21st-century learners to be prepared for the 21st century, today’s students need to be creative, critical, reflective, and conceptual thinkers (erickson, 2007). devaney and moroney (2018) argue that sel develops 21st-century skills since “it builds upon the practices and strategies inherent in youth development, project-based learning, and college and career readiness activities” (p. 255). kaufman (2013) explains that 21st-century skills include problem-solving, being flexible, taking personal responsibility for decisions, communicating effectively, working collaboratively, and having initiative. devaney and moroney (2018) add that 21st-century skills encompass skills addressing literacy (economic, technological, and information), internal and learning processes, social interactions, and, more recently, the development of social-emotional competence as a 21st-century skill. sel helps develop flexibility, collaboration, and critical thinking skills, making students college-ready and preparing them to succeed and function in the 21st century (osher et al., 2016). another benefit of sel is improved student-teacher relationships, increased motivation for learning, and academic and life success (kress et al., 2004), such as earning a high school diploma and attaining gainful employment (devaney & moroney, 2018). while sel develops students’ cognitive, social-emotional, and behavioral readiness to succeed academically and citizenship skills to actively participate in a democratic society (kress et al., 2004), it is contingent on the classroom teacher. role of teacher in developing students’ sense of belonging ferraira et al. (2020) write that the teacher is instrumental in implementing sel. in addition, allen et al.’s (2018) meta-analysis revealed that teacher support in the classroom was the factor that had the most substantial effect size (r = 0.46) on a student’s sense of belonging, indicating a moderately strong impact. a student will have a stronger sense of belonging if they perceive that their teachers are genuinely caring and supportive (allen et al., 2018; freeman et al., 2007; ibrahim & zaatari, 2020; osterman, 2000). a sense of belonging is “the extent to which students feel personally accepted, respected, included, and supported by others in the ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 6 school environment” (goodenow & grady, 1993, p. 60-61). strayhorn (2019) writes that belonging is a necessity to ensure a student’s success and is “vital for optimal human functioning” (p. xiv). more specifically, autonomy, support and involvement, caring relationships, fairness, and friendliness significantly impact students’ sense of belonging (allen et al., 2018). jennings and greenberg (2009) and allen et al. (2018) assert that the teacher plays a pivotal role in contributing to students’ sense of belonging; hence if students feel they belong in the classroom and have a positive and trusting relationship with teachers, they will be more inclined to participate and be engaged (texas school safety center, n.d.). teachers can cultivate a sense of belonging by ensuring they know their students socially, culturally, and academically (thayer-bacon, 2014) to create an optimal environment for academic engagement, collaboration, relevant learning, and academic success. educators often conduct activities at the start of the school year to learn about their students’ interests; however, early attempts often dissipate (miller, 2021). ibrahim and zaatari (2020) argue that teachers must invest time forming relationships with their students instead of just focusing on meeting accountability standards. they also believe that “the power relationship has to be balanced” (p. 393), and teachers need to self-reflect and determine if their word choice, intonation, and interactions with students convey caring and support or disrespect and lack of appreciation. students need to perceive that they have a positive relationship with their teachers to feel like they belong (allen et al., 2018), which teachers can cultivate by making themselves available to assist students with academic and nonacademic issues. however, for teachers to develop students’ sense of belonging, they must be socially competent to create a prosocial classroom learning climate and use instructional practices conducive to student interaction and the development of social-emotional competence (greenberg et al., 2017; jennings & greenberg, 2009). social-emotional competence of teacher teachers play an essential role in shaping the hearts and minds of students, and they must be intuitively aware of their strengths and weaknesses as an educator to nourish relationships with students effectively (jones et al., 2013). research (coelho & sousa, 2018; durlak et al., 2011) reveals that sel program implementation is more successful when the classroom teacher implements it, thus supporting the notion that teachers play an integral role in developing the social and emotional competence of students. jennings and greenberg (2009) and greenberg et al. (2017) affirm that teachers play a pivotal role in the development of students’ socialemotional development; however, for classrooms to improve, teachers not only have to be motivated to learn and use sel but must be socially and emotionally competent (ferraira, 2021; jones et al., 2014; jones et al., 2013). socially and emotionally competent teachers are socially aware, recognize the differences between students and their emotions, and are sensitive to others’ perspectives (gimbert et al., 2021; jennings & greenberg, 2009; oberle et al., 2020). teachers with low social-emotional competence tend to have issues with classroom management (jones et al., 2013), which can create negative classroom experiences for both students and teachers and result in teacher burnout and an adverse climate (jennings & greenberg, 2009). teachers need to have the capacity to show empathy and compassion (collie, 2017) to de-escalate conflict and a deep awareness of sel in order to understand their students better and communicate with them more effectively (kress et al., 2004). therefore, teachers must receive pedagogical training on identifying and developing their sel competence to understand how to create a learning environment conducive to students’ social-emotional development (greenberg et al., 2017). ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 7 schools can address teachers’ social-emotional competence by developing their social awareness skills (gimbert et al., 2021) to develop compassion and empathy. gimbert (2021) suggests three guiding principles to develop teachers’ social-emotional competence. the first principle is to ensure teachers understand the casel competencies (self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, and relationship skills) for sel since understanding allows teachers to be cognizant of how their actions and behaviors demonstrate social-emotional competence. second, teachers need to develop positive collaborative relationships with colleagues, which can occur through plcs. utilizing the plc, teachers can discuss ways to incorporate casel competencies within their classroom and develop an understanding of them. third, school leaders need to provide teachers with “a safe space to reflect, dialogue, make connection to their past experiences and see immediate relevance” (p. 25). through critical self-reflection (schon, 2017), teachers can refine their sel understanding, reflect on their social-emotional competence, and improve their instructional practice. classroom learning climate the development of a safe and supportive learning environment promotes student risktaking to tackle educational tasks, inquiry, engagement, and a sense of community (jones et al., 2013). range et al. (2013) suggest that teachers develop a nurturing learning environment by adopting a student-centered approach to teaching and learning. the learning environment should allow for student input, frequent praise, and classroom choices that contribute to student empowerment (cooper, 2014), a sense of belonging, and self-efficacy, factors that influence student engagement (battistich et al., 1997). an optimal social and emotional climate has minimal conflict, effective transitions between activities, positive feedback, and engagement and supports all learner differences (jennings & greenberg, 2009). the creation of an optimal classroom learning environment begins with the establishment of a community which battistich et al. (1997) defined as a “place where members care about and support each other, actively participate in and have an influence on the group’s activities and decisions, feel a sense of belonging and identification with the group and have common norms, goals and values” (p. 137). the ideal learning community should function on the principle of mutual enhancement in which both students and teachers understand that there is an expectation of “equanimity and universal respect” (gallagher & goodman, 2014, p. 309) governing the classroom. therefore, teachers must be aware of the learning climate because the classroom environment can contribute to or derail student social-emotional growth (coelho & sousa, 2018). jennings and greenberg (2009) assert that “teachers must establish relationships that promote each student’s discovery of the intrinsic reward for learning and create responsive environments that allow autonomy and cooperative learning” (p. 510). harnessing students’ funds of knowledge can create positive relationships between teachers and students and between and among students (connery & curran, 2014). students who feel welcomed, supported, and appreciated feel comfortable in class (ibrahim & zaatari, 2020; texas school safety center, n.d.; schonert-reichel, 2017) and participate in academic learning experiences (furrer & skinner, 2003). student perceptions of teacher interest and caring (pendergast et al., 2018) contribute to participation, on-task behavior, engagement, and self-directed learning (ryan & patrick, 2001). emotional security, a feeling of support and safety to make mistakes, and fulfillment of basic needs can contribute to a student’s engagement in academic settings (roorda et al., 2011; schonert-reichel, 2017). however, if students feel that their teacher does not like them, it can contribute to disengagement and lack of motivation for learning (jennings & greenberg, 2009). ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 8 instructional practices classroom practices such as student choice, brain breaks, games (texas school safety center, n.d.), cooperative learning (casel, 2012), and teacher-student interaction (ibrahim & zaatari, 2020) contribute to students’ social-emotional development and academic achievement. teachers establish routines, procedures for cooperation, discussion, and norms for participation; however, the quality of the tasks and activities assigned by the teacher often determines participation (ferraira, 2021; ryan & patrick, 2001). teacher practices such as cooperative learning, self-assessment, teacher-led activities, and language of instruction can contribute to social-emotional development (osher et al., 2016). small group and cooperative learning practices allow for the teacher to serve as a facilitator (ghorbani et al., 2018) and provide both individual assistance, personalized immediate and corrective feedback, which contribute to the development of students’ self-awareness in the mastery of content and their sense of self-efficacy (ferraira, 2021). taylor and larson (1999) indicate that cooperative learning strategies such as jigsaw, think-pair-share, and numbered heads help students develop their communication and relationship skills. teachers can create a social-emotional learning environment through interactions with students and instructional practices, primarily through learner-centered instruction (greenberg et al., 2017). teachers can incorporate sel principles in the classroom by allowing students to express their opinions and interact with others (ferraira, 2021; taylor & larson, 1999; wang & holcombe, 2010) by doing debates, structured dialogues, role play, simulations, and reflective journaling. by participating in debates, students can articulate their perspectives, listen to their peers’ differing points of view, and develop a sophisticated understanding of issues under discussion, resulting in cognitive engagement (ferraira, 2021; wang & holcombe, 2010). perspective-based writing allows students to express their feelings about a topic, event, or issue discussed in class. however, teachers need to recognize that students’ perceptions about their self-efficacy affect their ability to complete assigned academic work and heighten feelings of stress (zimmerman, 2014). also, in terms of motivation, some students show engagement in learning while others feel alienated, and for all students to be autonomous learners and develop a sense of belonging, differentiated learning experiences are necessary (pendergast et al., 2018; wang & holcombe, 2010). teacher practices that empower students to express themselves have choices in learning, and opportunities to master learning produce positive teacher-student relationships, educational benefits, and emotional well-being (greenberg et al., 2017; wang & holcombe, 2010). implications for educator practices this inquiry on the benefits of social and emotional learning is significant because it helps educators understand the importance of developing a learning environment conducive to nurturing students’ social and emotional needs. as schools across the country strategically plan to adjust instruction and address learning loss, they need to understand that “there is no manual for helping vulnerable children-or-adults-to thrive in the aftermath of the pandemic, but we can start by ensuring that everyone feels seen, nurtured, and valued” (fagell, 2021, p. 55). considering that the literature review revealed that sel helps students academically and contributes to their social-emotional well-being, teachers need to understand how to prepare the learning environment to sustain and nurture students’ social-emotional well-being organically. teachers must understand that knowing an sel program’s components or implementing sel activities is insufficient. instead, teachers need to teach effectively and model socialibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 9 emotional skills, be aware of their social-emotional competence and recognize that “feeling” (brackett, 2019) is a part of the human condition. research into the role of teachers in developing a sense of belonging is a timely contribution to educators since there is a priority on addressing students’ emotional needs through the use of sel practices. students returning to school may be experiencing a mixture of emotions, and “true feelings can be messy, inconvenient, confusing, even addictive [which often] leave us vulnerable, exposed, naked to their world” (brackett, 2019, p. 7). therefore, the findings from this inquiry suggest that addressing students’ social and emotional needs begins with teachers creating a safe, supportive, and nurturing environment. the classroom environment is crucial to ensuring students feel safe and welcomed. teachers need to understand that “sel is developmental” (ferraira, 2021, p. 31), and instructional practices in the classroom will need to vary based on students’ individual needs. to assist students in readjusting to face-to-face instruction, teachers must emphasize class-building and help students rebuild trust within their learning community—the classroom. part of developing a classroom community requires students to have the opportunity to know their peers (elias, 2016) and feel valued. teachers can design an environment that allows for autonomy, cooperation, collaboration, and support by using kagan cooperative learning structures (kagan, 2001) to promote discussion and simultaneous equitable participation by all students in the classroom. they can encourage conversation in the classroom by providing students with nonacademic discussion questions (ex. talking about favorite foods, hobbies, tv shows, or sports), thus allowing everyone to talk, share, and learn about their peers. casel (2020) also offers question stems (ex. “what are some things that make you feel mad? sad? happy? what are some ways that you let your friends in your class know you care about them?”) that support the sel competencies and engages students in self-reflection. to have a more structured discussion that encourages respect and listening but allows students to “feel” and share their emotions, teachers can use the talking circle strategy (alarcon et al., 2017). in this strategy, the teacher poses a question or topic and then passes an object to students to take turns sharing their opinions while everyone else listens. students can talk when the object gets to them or pass, but everyone has to respect, be quiet and listen. teachers can utilize this strategy to have students express how they feel about returning to school and discuss feelings of anxiety, stress, and nervousness, which can also help students develop empathy. next, teachers need to get to know their students and incorporate opportunities for students to learn about their culture to develop their identity and understand who they are. for example, through a student identity activity such as “who am i” (the linking network, 2022), students can share personal life stories, experiences, or information about their family background. identity activities (facing history & ourselves, 2009) allow students to get to know their peers in a non-threatening manner resulting in class-building. often schools select a popular entertainment trend/theme in society to be the theme for the school’s bulletin boards (ex., star wars, lego, marvel avengers, harry potter), and decorations reflect that theme throughout the school. similarly, teachers can embrace culturally responsive pedagogical practices to promote diversity, inclusivity, trust, and belonging (mason, 2021; elias, 2021) as their themes. creating an inviting classroom space communicates to students that it belongs to them (smith-gillman et al., 2014). for example, having a designated area for students to read a book, listen to music, or take a mental break before resuming class work provides them with a safe place to de-stress. brain breaks function as opportunities for the brain to stop thinking about learning (desautels, 2016). also, dedicating some wall space for a picture wall for students to post pictures of their ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 10 accomplishments and give shout-outs (inquired, 2019) to peers contributes to building that sense of community in the classroom. in addition, teachers can nurture a classroom community by having each student assume a role in the classroom, such as technical expert, motivator, influencer, timekeeper, or materials manager (herrmann, 2021). students feel they belong when they know they are essential and have responsibilities in the classroom community. to maintain a safe and nurturing classroom, teachers should use a firm but calm voice instead of yelling and use close kneeling proximity to be on an equal footing with students to address individual misbehavior discreetly instead of in front of the whole class (brunzell et al., 2020) so students understand and feel that you want them to be better and not that you are punishing them. this inquiry revealed the importance of teachers understanding that students need to be doing well mentally to do well academically. while many schools’ focus this year is learning loss, teachers need to consider adjusting their instructional design to ensure students do not feel overwhelmed but are relatively supportive in a classroom where they feel safe to learn, make mistakes, and be themselves. brunzell et al. (2020) recommend that when it comes to instructional planning, lessons should: (1) reflect students’ readiness for learning, (2) provide clear goals for learning with differentiated paths for completion but the same criteria, and (3) provide students with immediate and corrective feedback aligned to established criteria. following these recommendations helps students meet their individual learning needs at their own pace. furthermore, teachers need to embrace mindfulness practices (philibert, 2021) to ensure their stress level does not transfer into the learning environment (dicarlo et al., 2019). teachers need to plan for non-academic mental breaks such as having students stand up and stretch, playing meditation music, or doing a puzzle or brain teaser to help students de-stress. at the same time, though, teachers also need to address their own social and emotional needs. for example, learning about mindfulness techniques can help teachers regulate their emotions to avoid stress and burnout at school (zolkoski & lewis-chiu, 2019). mindfulness practices may assist teachers in finding the right balance between planning and teaching, using technology, and addressing learning loss without feeling overwhelmed. teachers’ social-emotional competence is also a necessity that requires an investment in professional development to ensure they can model sel skills and develop the learning environment that nourishes students and helps them feel valued, supported, and nurtured. conclusion the pandemic resurfaced interest in social-emotional learning to address students’ social and emotional needs. while sel helps develop academic dispositions, social skills, academic grit (mckown, 2017), and improve academic achievement (durlak et al., 2011; payton et al., 2018), it also helps to address students’ emotional well-being. as teachers readjust to face-toface instruction and deal with the impact of the pandemic on the educational system, they must be prepared to address not only the academic needs of students but their social and emotional needs. fagell (2021) stresses that in this post-pandemic educational system, “safe-guarding students’ mental health and well-being will be key to ensuring their future success” (p. 51). thus, teachers must understand their critical role in establishing a safe and secure classroom environment (allen et al., 2018; ibrahim & zaatari, 2020) to positively develop trusting relationships with students and utilize instructional practices conducive to addressing students’ social and emotional needs. at the same time, school leaders must invest in professional ibarra: understanding sel to create a sense of belonging current issues in education, 23(2) 11 development to help teachers develop their social-emotional competence to nurture students’ social-emotional well-being. though this article suggests some practical strategies for educators to create a supportive and nurturing learning environment to develop students’ sense of belonging, more research is necessary. while there is much research on sel pre-pandemic, the pandemic warrants newer research on post-pandemic sel programs and best practices, including possibly redesigning sel programs to address students’ emotional well-being effectively. in addition, further research on effective ways to help develop and sustain teachers’ socialemotional competence through professional development and effective teaching practices that help promote students’ sense of belonging in a post-pandemic environment would benefit practitioners. as schools navigate teaching and learning post-pandemic, they must make a concerted effort to prioritize students’ social and emotional well-being, assist teachers in nurturing positive relationships with students, and develop their social-emotional competence, which in the end, will result in academic success. academic success is measurable through performance on academic achievement tests or subject area grades on report cards or observable as in the development of study habits, resiliency, and a growth mindset which facilitate longterm success in pk-12, university, and post-graduate settings. as educators, our goal is to develop life-long learners, which begins with removing the social and emotional barriers students face and nurturing the love of learning. references alarcon, j. d., marhatt, p., & price, e. 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(2014). self-efficacy: an essential motive to learn. in g. s. goodman (ed.), educational psychology reader: the art and science of how people learn (revised ed., pp. 217-224). peter lang. zolkoski, s. m., & lewis-chui, c. (2019). alternative approaches: implementing mindfulness practices in the classroom to improve challenging behaviors. beyond behavior, 28(1), 46-54. author notes blanca n. ibarra https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4893-2902 university of texas at rio grande valley blanca.ibarra02@utrgv.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://doi.org/10.1080/00098659909599420 https://txssc.txstate.edu/tools/covid-mh/ https://thelinkingnetwork.org.uk/resource/identity-activities/ https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831209361209 https://doi.org/10.1177/003172171309500203 https://doi.org/10.35489/bsg-rise-ri_2021/025 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4893-2902 mailto:blanca.ibarra02@utrgv.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ volume 8, number 20 july 20, 2005 issn 1099-839x children's stereotype threat in african-american high school students: an initial investigation j. thomas kellow and brett d. jones university of south florida st. petersburg stereotype threat refers to the risk associated with confirming a negative stereotype based on group membership. we examined this effect in a sample of african-american high school students. stereotype threat was manipulated by presenting a visual spatial reasoning test as (a) diagnostic of mathematical ability or (b) a culture and gender fair test of mathematical reasoning. support was found for the general effect, and while tests of the effect of the manipulation on anxiety and perceptions of ability and expectancies for success were statistically inconclusive, the data trended in the predicted direction. implications related to the high-stakes testing of african-american students are discussed. with the advent of the no child left behind (nclb) act of 2001 (u.s. department of education, no date), the focus on high-stakes standardized testing has become even more intense as states have been coerced into developing testing programs to measure and report student achievement. to avoid leaving children behind, nclb increased accountability for states, school districts, and schools and required students to be tested in grades three through eight in the basics of mathematics, reading or language arts, and science. while the intent behind nclb may be admirable, standardized testing is often problematic for minority students who, as a group, consistently score lower on standardized measures of achievement (steele, 1997). in fact, african-american and hispanic students continue to score well below white students on academic achievement tests (national center for education statistics, 2004). this finding has often been labeled the “achievement gap” because of the large gap between the higher test scores of white students and the lower test scores of minority students. although some progress has been made (coley, 2003), the achievement gap has failed to substantially close over several decades. as a result, researchers have searched for causes of the achievement gap, several of which have been identified, such as family and community differences (jencks & phillips, 1998), fewer opportunities for minority students to study a rigorous curriculum with highly qualified teachers (oakes, gamoran, & page, 1992), social expectations (lumsden, 1998; rosenthal & jacobson, 1968), and negative stereotypes concerning academic abilities (steele, 1997). to reduce the achievement gap, we suspect that some combination of these types of potential causes must be addressed. however, one of these potential causes, negative stereotypes concerning academic abilities, is of particular interest to us because so little research has been conducted about its effects on k-12 students. steele and aronson (1995) have researched this phenomenon with college students and labeled it “stereotype threat” (p. 797). stereotype threat for an african-american student is the risk that she feels of confirming a current issues in education vol. 8 no. 20 negative stereotype about her ethnic group. for instance, an african-american student might feel the risk of confirming the fact that african-american students generally score lower than whites and asians on standardized measures of achievement when she is taking a standardized mathematics test. in an era of high-stakes tests, stereotype threat is important to consider because it has been shown to have negative effects on student test scores (steele & aronson, 1995). although the effects of stereotype threat have been well documented at the college level (see steele, spencer, & aronson, 2002, for a review), few studies have specifically measured the effects of stereotype threat on k-12 students (walton & cohen, 2003). given the unprecedented use of high-stakes testing in k-12 schools to determine grade promotion and graduation, this population seems deserving of study. if k-12 students experience stereotype threat during standardized state testing, this phenomenon could partially explain the achievement gap between white and minority students. the purpose of this study was to investigate whether african-american high school freshman students experienced stereotype threat when given a test that is seen as a predictor of their success on a high-stakes test. we chose this population for several reasons. first, many high school students across the country must pass exit-level criterion-referenced tests in various content domains in order to obtain a diploma. students transitioning from middle to high school are often explicitly or implicitly reminded of this fact by parents, teachers, administrators, and their peers. second, these exit-level tests are typically given at the 10 th and sometimes the 11 th grade level. if stereotype threat is indeed a phenomenon that exists with these students, the 9 th grade would seem to be a minimum starting point for interventions designed to reduce the threat (although ideally efforts would begin well before this grade level). narrative and expository schemata indeed, a large body of research shows that narrative and exposition do invoke different schemata. traditional stories start by describing relations among settings, characters, and plots; they contain clear markers between episodes (e.g., beginnings and endings, setting and goal attainment); and conclude with a global ending (mandler, 1984). socio-linguistic models likewise find a well-defined structure in narrative discourse composed of six elements: abstract, orientation, complication, evaluation, result, and coda (labov & waletsky, 1967). the narrative structure of text has been shown to affect information reduction, organization, storage, and retrieval of textual information (mandler & johnson, 1977). in contrast, expository discourse is organized into statements that allow readers to follow text flow through logic and causality, exposition relies primarily on declarative statements, logic, and reason, and it is evaluated in terms of its accuracy and strength of argument (bruner, 1986, 1990). expository text is generally analyzed in terms of propositional structure (e.g., meyer & rice, 1984; otero & kintsch, 1992). a well-written expository text uses a macroproposition early in the paragraph to organize subsequent propositions and connect them to the larger goals of the author. still, knowing how schemata differ does not tell us how these differences affect comprehension. this is not only dissatisfying from a research perspective, it creates practical limitations as well. there are many differences to be found between exposition and narrative, and therefore likely to be many sources of differences in processing. we focus on one that, based upon prior work in psycholinguistics, we believe to be of particular importance: that narrative and expository text tend to differ in the scope of processing they receive. literature review stereotype threat the phenomenon of stereotype threat was first examined by claude steele and his colleagues at stanford university (e.g., steele & aronson, 1995). steele and aronson proposed that differences in academic performance between minority and nonminority students, as measured by standardized achievement tests such as the sat, could partially be explained by anxiety and evaluation apprehension produced by knowledge of negative stereotypes related to group membership. consistent with his hypothesis, steele found that when a task was presented to african-american college students as indicative of verbal academic ability, they performed far worse than a matched group of students who were told the identical task measured psychological processes involved in verbal problem solving. another popular manipulation of evaluation apprehension is to present a measure as a “traditional” test of achievement or intellect (evaluative) or as a “culture-free” or “non-biased” test (non-evaluative). interestingly, steele (1997) found that, irrespective of presenting the task as evaluative or non-evaluative, simply indicating one’s race prior to taking the test was sufficient to activate stereotype threat. similar findings have been produced between males and females using the same paradigm with mathematics performance as the dependent variable (e.g., spencer, steele, & quinn, 1999). moreover, the effect has been produced not only with academic achievement tests, but also with visual spatial children's stereotype threat in african-american high school students: an initial investigation 3 reasoning tasks (mayer & hanges, 2003; mckay, doverspike, bowen-hilton, & martin, 2002). a number of potential mediators of stereotype threat have been proposed. of these, only anxiety and performance confidence have emerged as likely candidates (smith, 2004). anxiety a number of studies, beginning with steele and aronson (1995), have examined the role of anxiety in producing the steretype threat effect (smith, 2004). these researchers hypothesize that fear of confirming a negative stereotype related to one’s group membership (e.g., african-american) elicits an anxiety response which, in turn, produces cognitive interference that undermines test performance. the anxiety variable has been operationalized in a variety of ways, including (a) self-report inventories, (b) physiological measures such as blood pressure, and (c) word fragment tests designed to elicit negative adjectives related to the stereotyped group (mayer & hanges, 2003; smith, 2004). results from studies that examined the role of anxiety in mediating stereotype threat are mixed, with some studies demonstrating an experimental effect on anxiety and others producing no effects. in the present study, we chose to assess the role of anxiety because it potentially has a more profound effect on adolescents than adults. this assertion is based on an adolescent developmental phenomenon known as the “imaginary audience.” numerous studies (see vartanian, 2000, for a review) have documented the existence of the imaginary audience, wherein adolescents tend to believe they are constantly being evaluated by others with respect to their personal characteristics (e.g., ethnicity and intelligence) and behavior. this preoccupation with the way in which others evaluate them often enhances anxiety when the person is called upon to perform a task, even if that performance is private or not directly observable. this would seem to make performance on a test that is presumably diagnostic of one’s ability particularly anxiety provoking for this population. perceptions of ability and expectancy for success eccles and her colleagues (eccles et al., 1983; eccles, adler, & meece, 1984; eccles & wigfield, 1995; wigfield & eccles, 1992) have developed an expectancy-value model of motivation that predicts that student performance is directly affected by both expectancies and values. they have tested their model empirically with elementary through secondary school students in mathematics and english and have found that students’ selfperceptions of ability and expectancies for success relate strongly to their achievement (eccles, 1984a,b; eccles et al., 1983; meece, wigfield, & eccles, 1990) and their use of more effective cognitive and metacognitive strategies (pintrich, 1989, 1999; shell, murphy, & bruning, 1989). interestingly, the relationship between students’ achievement level and their perceptions of ability and expectancies for success is not as strong for african-american students as it is for white students (stevenson, chen, & uttal, 1990). this appears to be true, in part, because african-american students tend to have higher self-perceptions of ability and expectancies for success (cooper & dorr, 1995; graham, 1994), yet have lower grades and lower levels of performance on standardized achievement tests (graham, 1994). stereotype threat researchers have speculated that facing a challenging test in a diagnostic context may lead minorities to question their ability (steele and aronson, 1995, call this an “ability-indicting” interpretation, p. 799) and perhaps withdraw effort to perform based on low expectations for success. rationale and purpose of the study there are several important limitations in the current body of research on stereotype threat. first, of the more than 40 empirical studies conducted with minority participants, all but one have used college students and other adult samples. the sole study conducted with high school students employed a very select sample (i.e., those taking the advanced placement calculus examination). second, the majority of studies have used individual as opposed to group testing sessions. while this affords a certain amount of additional control over the experimental setting, it is hardly realistic in the context of realworld academic achievement testing. in the present study, we attempt to advance knowledge of stereotype threat by addressing these deficiencies in the literature while focusing on two possible mechanisms that may be associated with decrements in performance evinced by african-americans facing a diagnostic challenge: (a) anxiety and (b) perceptions of ability and expectancies for success. we chose to use a visual spatial representation task in the experiment because it seemed better suited than a traditional achievement test when presented as a culture fair instrument (non-evaluative) or one highly correlated with academic achievement – in this case mathematics (evaluative). directional hypotheses h1: after controlling for pre-existing differences in mathematics ability, african-american participants in the evaluative condition will score lower on the visual spatial task relative to white participants in the same condition; h2: after controlling for pre-existing differences in mathematics ability, african-american participants in the evaluative condition will report current issues in education vol. 8 no. 20 lower self-perceptions of ability and expectancies for success than white participants in the same condition; h3: african-american participants in the evaluative condition will report higher levels of anxiety than white participants in the same condition. method design the present study employed a quasiexperimental 2 x 2 factorial design. the factors were ethnicity (african-american or white) and experimental condition (evaluative or nonevaluative). the dependent measures were (a) performance on a visual spatial reasoning task, (b) self-perceptions of ability and expectancies for success, and (c) level of state anxiety. results from a standardized test of mathematics achievement were used as a covariate for analyses related to the first two measures. participants participants were recruited from freshman critical thinking courses at a large urban high school in florida. before initiating student recruitment, approval was obtained from the institutional review board at the university of south florida and the local school district. in addition, we received the approval and support of the principal at the targeted high school. all freshman students at this high school were required to enroll in this critical thinking course. informed consent forms for parent or guardian approval were provided to 393 students. the study was presented as an investigation of mathematical reasoning. parents were informed that the study had been approved by the school district and a university institutional review board. for their participation, students received a gift card for a free meal at a local restaurant. ninety (23%) of the forms were signed and returned. the ethnic composition for students returning forms was: white 61%, african-american 36%, hispanic 2%, and asian 1%. fifty-eight percent of the students were female. based on the demographics of all 9 th grade students at this school, whites and females were slightly, but not statistically significantly, overrepresented in the sample. since the focus of the study was on african-american and white students, data for the three hispanic students and one asian student that participated in the experiment were excluded from the final sample. in addition, five students (four white and one africanamerican) were absent on the day of the experiment, leaving a final sample of 81 participants. measures after exposure to the evaluative or nonevaluative condition and completing the visual spatial task, all participants completed a seven-page survey. survey items were ordered to address (a) perceptions of test bias, (b) state anxiety level, and (c) selfperceived ability and expectancies for success. test bias. a single item, “this test was biased against minority students,” was used to assess the degree to which students felt the apr visual spatial reasoning task was a biased measure. respondents indicated their belief using a sevenpoint likert scale anchored at 1 (not at all) and 7 (a lot). florida comprehensive assessment test (fcat) in mathematics. the 8 th grade criterionreferenced fcat scale scores were used as a covariate in several analyses. the content of the test is linked to the florida sunshine state standards, and has been thoroughly content validated. concurrent validity coefficients based on a comparison with the stanford achievement test (sat-9) in mathematics are in the .75 to .85 range across grades. internal consistency estimates using kr-20 range from .88 to .92. apr spatial ability test. the apr was developed by wiesen (1996) as a personnel selection test for skilled clerical applicants. it is a timed test (we allowed 5 minutes) consisting of 50 items that relate to a set of blocks that are stacked in various configurations (see figure 1 for an example item). figure 1. example apr test item respondents must indicate how many other blocks are touched by a specific block. for instance, for the example in figure 1, respondents indicate the number of blocks touching the block labeled a (the answer is two – one above and one below block a). this type of problem is consistent with the types of knowledge and skills that are expected of ninth grade students. in fact, the national council of teachers of mathematics (nctm) geometry standards specifically state: “in grades 9-12 all students should visualize three-dimensional objects from different perspectives and analyze their cross sections” (nctm, 2000, p. 308). the correlation of number children's stereotype threat in african-american high school students: an initial investigation 5 correct on the apr and fcat mathematics scores was .4 in the present data. we performed a modified split-half procedure appropriate for speeded tests (anastasi, 1988) on a sub-sample of 24 students in the present study and obtained a spearman-brown adjusted score reliability of .92. the apr served as the primary dependent variable in the study. selfand task-perception questionnaire (stpq). this measure has been used with adolescents to assess a variety of constructs related to their beliefs, values, and attitudes regarding an academic domain, such as mathematics (eccles & wigfield, 1995). we used five items from this scale that pertained to ability and performance expectations. each item was scaled using a 7-point likert format. the reported score represents an average of the five items. a sample item is, “compared to other students, how well do you expect to do in math this year?” students responded on a 1 (much worse) to 7 (much better) scale. previous researchers (e.g., eccles, adler, & meece, 1984; eccles & wigfield, 1995) have empirically evaluated the psychometric properties of the scale and report strong factorial validity and reliability of scores. the correlation between the total score and fcat mathematics in the present study was .4. we conducted an internal consistency analysis (cronbach’s alpha) on the present data and found a reliability estimate of .85. state trait anxiety inventory (stai). a short-form of the stai (spielberger, gorsuch, & lushene, 1970) consisting of eight items with a fourpoint likert scale anchored at 1 (not at all) and 4 (very much) was used to assess state anxiety of students while taking the apr test. items were summed to produce a total score. a sample item is, “while taking the test i felt nervous.” the stai has a strong psychometric reputation built on numerous empirical studies (see anastasi, 1988, for a review). in the present study, the stai and apr scores were modestly negatively correlated (r = -.15). in addition, the scale yielded a respectable internal consistency estimate (α = .80). procedure the high school from which students were recruited was on a 4-block (period) schedule, so the four blocks (groups) of students were randomly assigned to be either (a) evaluative or (b) nonevaluative (there were no significant differences in prior mathematics ability between the four groups). students were tested in groups during the period they ordinarily would have their critical thinking class. at each of the four blocks, students came from three different critical thinking classrooms to the school media center, which is often used for make-up testing on the fcat (and thus, is not a novel testing environment). the groups ranged in size from 14 to 24. there were a total of 46 students in the evaluative condition (28 white and 18 african-american) and 35 students in the non-evaluative condition (23 white and 12 african-american). after arriving at the media center, participants were provided with a pencil and a booklet containing the student assent form, the apr, and the various instruments described previously. after reading and signing the assent form, students received one of two sets of instructions described below. evaluative condition instructions. “you will be taking a test that consists of challenging questions about mathematical reasoning. we are very interested in this test because students who score highly on this test tend to score highly on the 10 th grade mathematics fcat and students who do poorly on this test tend to do poorly on the 10 th grade mathematics fcat. you will have 5 minutes to complete this mathematical reasoning test. it is important that you do your very best, because we will use your scores to give you information about your strengths and weaknesses that will help you pass the 10 th grade mathematics fcat.” non-evaluative condition instructions. “you will be taking a test that consists of challenging questions about mathematical reasoning. we are very interested in this test because research has shown that boys and girls score the same on it. research has also shown that students of different ethnicities, such as white, black, or hispanic students, score the same. we call this test a gender and culture fair test because it is unbiased. you will have 5 minutes to complete this mathematical reasoning test. it is important that you do your very best, because we will use your scores to give you information about your strengths and weaknesses that will help you pass the 10 th grade mathematics fcat.” following the instructions, students were guided through an example item to ensure that they understood the proper procedure for interpreting and responding to the items. after completing the example, students were told: “when you are told to begin, go to the next page and complete as many of the problems as you can. please do not skip any of the problems. give your best answer. you only have 5 minutes, so you must work quickly.” soon after the experiment the researchers revisited the school and debriefed students as to the true purpose of the study, as well as answered any questions the students had pertaining to the experiment. in addition, they were provided with a debriefing sheet to share with their parent or guardian. current issues in education vol. 8 no. 20 results reporting and analysis for reporting purposes, the critical level for statistical significance (p) was set at .05. exact p values for all results are reported, supplemented by partial eta-squared (η 2 part) as an uncorrected effect size measure. in addition, 95% confidence intervals (ci 95%) based on non-central f distributions were calculated for the effect size estimates using an spss routine developed by smithson (2001). overall model fit was assessed using unadjusted r 2. all analyses were conducted with spss 12.1 using the general linear model procedure. for all analyses, both main effects and interaction effects were examined. in addition, since the fcat scores were statistically significantly related to both the apr (r = .41 and to the stpq (r = .38), we included this measure as a covariate (after testing for violations of assumptions related to analysis of covariance) in these analyses. text bias the first analysis consisted of assessing the extent to which participants felt the apr visual spatial reasoning task was biased toward minorities. these data are found in table 1. table 1. student perception of test bias there was a statistically significant effect for ethnicity that accounted for 11% of the variance in bias ratings. neither condition nor the ethnicity by treatment interaction were statistically significant. the group means for this item are presented in figure 2. figure 2. mean perception of test bias against minority students by ethnicity and condition african-american students were statistically significantly (p = .00) more likely to perceive the apr as biased, irrespective of experimental condition. interestingly, mayer and hanges (2003) found a similar result using the raven’s advanced progressive matrices, another visual spatial reasoning task. they attributed the lack of perceived bias in the evaluative group (as opposed to the non-evaluative condition) to the ambiguous nature of the test itself. indeed, given the range of possible values (1 to 7) on this item, the overall means between evaluative (x = 1.7) and non-evaluative (x = 2.0) conditions suggest a relatively low presence of perceived test bias. apr visual spatial reasoning task results of analysis of the primary dependent variable, the apr, are presented in table 2. the fcat scores in mathematics were used as a covariate in this analysis to control for pre-existing differences in achievement. table 2. student performance on the apr by ethnicity and condition a statistically significant main effect for ethnicity (p = .00) was found that accounted for 14% of score variance. in addition, a statistically significant interaction effect (p = .02) for ethnicity * condition was present that captured 5% of score variance. the estimated marginal (adjusted) means are presented in figure 3. figure 3. mean adjusted number correct on the apr by ethnicity and condition in the non-evaluative condition the performances of african-american (x = 17.3) and white students (x = 19.5) were similar. in the evaluative condition, however, white students (x = 21.0) outperformed children's stereotype threat in african-american high school students: an initial investigation 7 african-american students (x = 12.3) by nearly nine correct responses. self and task perception questionnaire (stpq) analysis of the stpq data also employed the fcat as a covariate. these results are found in table 3. table 3. stpq scores by ethnicity and condition neither the main effects nor interaction effect for the stpq were statistically significant after statistically controlling for actual ability as measured by the fcat mathematics scale. the plotted marginal means are displayed in figure 4. figure 4. mean adjusted stpq scores by ethnicity and condition although not statistically significant the means trend in the predicted direction, with african-american students in the evaluative condition reporting slightly lower perceptions of mathematics ability and expectancies for success after controlling for actual ability. state trait anxiety inventory (stai) results for the analysis of stai scores are presented in table 4. table 4. stai scores by ethnicity and condition neither ethnicity nor condition was statistically significant. the hypothesized interaction effect was not statistically significant either, although there was a modest η 2 part value of .02. the plotted means for the interaction may be found in figure 5. figure 5. mean stai scores by ethnicity and condition despite the non-significant p value, the results are clearly in the hypothesized direction. students as a whole in the non-evaluative condition were very similar in their self-reported levels of anxiety, while african-american students (x = 14.3) in the evaluative condition were more anxious than their white counterparts (x = 11.9). discussion the present study represents the first effort of which we are aware to examine stereotype threat in an academically representative (as opposed to elite) high school african-american sample. the findings suggest that stereotype threat is indeed a phenomenon that exists with these students. africanamerican students in the evaluative condition scored significantly and substantially lower than white students on the apr. to put this effect into perspective, we calculated cohen’s d (cohen, 1988) for the group mean differences using the pooled standard deviations. the effect size was 1.3, which is well above the 1.0 value cohen suggested as a “large” effect. this effect size is illustrated in figure 6, which shows the superimposed distributions of the apr results for the respective groups. figure 6. distributional differences on apr number correct by ethnicity (evaluative condition) current issues in education vol. 8 no. 20 although there were no statistically significant differences between white and africanamerican students on the stpq, the means trend in the directions we predicted. as mentioned previously, research generally indicates that africanamericans have higher self-perceptions of ability and expectancies for success (cooper & dorr, 1995; graham, 1994). in the non-evaluative condition, african-americans had higher perceptions of their competence. however, in the evaluative condition, their perceptions were slightly lower and very close to the mean values reported by whites. if this trend were to hold true with a larger sample of students, it would indicate that the evaluative condition lowered african-american students’ perceptions of their competence. interestingly, it would also suggest that the evaluative condition slightly raised white students’ perceptions of their competence. walton and cohen (2003) have labeled this phenomenon “stereotype lift” in non-minority students, whereby knowledge of the negative stereotype associated with minority students improves the performance, sense of competency, and social worth of the non-stereotyped group. their meta-analysis of 43 stereotype threat studies provides some evidence for this effect. although the effect was not statistically significant and η 2 part was small, we did find that the interaction effect for the anxiety variable was in the expected direction. this provides at least some support for the potential role of anxiety as a concomitant of the stereotype threat effect. it also is interesting that white students in the evaluative condition tended to be less anxious, which again raises the possibility of a stereotype lift effect. limitations and directions for future inquiry in the present study we chose to use a visual spatial reasoning task rather than a traditional test of mathematics achievement. while we had legitimate reasons for selecting this option, one may wonder how the results might have differed if, instead, a traditional achievement test had been administered. several recent studies ( mayer & hanges, 2003; mckay, doverspike, bowen-hilton, & martin, 2002) have indicated that the stereotype threat effect is less pronounced when a visual spatial task, as opposed to a traditional achievement test, is used to assess performance. thus, it is conceivable that a replication using a traditional test might yield even stronger effects than those reported in the present study. because of the relatively small (n = 81) size of the sample employed in the study we were limited in several ways. first, with only 30 africanamerican students, the cell sizes for this group in each condition were less than ideal. a larger sample would have improved the statistical power of the study (all other things being equal) and likely allowed us to obtain statistically significant results for the last two tests. second, we were unable to conduct formal tests of mediation using, for instance, a structural equation modeling approach with any real confidence. third, steele (1997) has suggested that the stereotype threat effect is most pronounced in individuals who are “identified” with the academic domain being tested. one way this variable has been operationalized is to study individuals who previously have demonstrated strong academic prowess in the domain as evidenced by high test scores (thus explaining his early focus on stanford university students). in the present study we used previous mathematics achievement as a covariate in several analyses, which statistically adjusts the dependent variable scores to what they would have been if all participants were “equal” on the covariate. unfortunately, they are not equated on any number of other moderating or mediating variables that are associated with academic achievement, so the approach is not entirely satisfactory. in summary, while the present data suggest a rather strong stereotype threat effect in this population, the quest for definitive answers regarding the underlying causal mechanisms that produce the effect continues. several researchers (e.g., mayer & hanges, 2003; smith, 2004) have suggested that no one variable, such as anxiety, may explain the stereotype threat effect satisfactorily. rather, the effect may be caused by a complex interaction between multiple mediating variables. smith has suggested that other variables, such as achievement goals, play a part in the causal process. future studies of this population might gain noteworthy insights into the causes of stereotype threat by employing larger samples and modeling multiple mediators and moderators simultaneously within a structural modeling framework. as mayer and hanges (2003) note, “it is possible that stereotype threat influences test scores through several mediators with only a slight affect on any one mediator. it is also possible that these variables influence one another making simple mediation models inappropriate” (p. 211). finally, we are unaware of any systematic efforts to examine stereotype threat in hispanic students, a rising demographic in the united states. it is reasonable to assume that these processes may be operating in other groups who are stereotyped based on low group performance. indeed, during the debriefing process, two of the three hispanic students whose data were excluded from the analysis pointedly asked the researchers, “what about hispanic and multi-ethnic kids”? conclusion and implications the results of this study raise serious concerns about the use of high-stakes tests as a children's stereotype threat in african-american high school students: an initial investigation 9 measure of african-american high school students’ knowledge and skills. these findings indicate that the achievement gap may be explained, in part, by the stereotype threat felt by african-american students during high-stakes tests. consequently, compared to white students, african-american students may be at a disadvantage because they are unable to demonstrate their true abilities on tests in which african-americans have been shown to consistently score lower than white students. if stereotype threat and its associated mechanisms are indeed even partially responsible for decrements in the performance of african-american students, researchers and educators are morally and professionally obliged to uncover the specific mediators of this effect. once these variables have been identified, it may be possible to develop effective interventions for minority students that would reduce the negative impact of stereotype threat. the implications of failing to address this charge, from a social justice perspective, are (at least) twofold and are embodied in the nclb legislation. first, african-american children are disproportionately left behind by virtue of failing high-stakes tests and consequently being retained in grade. second, schools with large african-american enrollments face sanctions based on the performance of these students. if tests are to be used in this fashion, we must at least have some assurance that the performance of african-american and other minority students is not being distorted by influences that are irrelevant to the task at hand. references anastasi, a. 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(2005, july 20). stereotype threat in african-american high school students: an initial investigation. current issues in education [on-line], 8(15). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number20/ author notes j. thomas kellow college of education university of south florida st. petersburg 140 seventh ave south, coq 201, st. petersburg, florida 33701 kellow@stpt.usf.edu j. thomas kellow is an assistant professor of measurement and research at the university of south florida st. petersburg. his research interests include high-stakes testing, applied statistics, and program evaluation methodology. he received his ph.d. in educational psychology from texas a&m university-college station. brett d. jones. college of education university of south florida st. petersburg bjones@stpt.usf.edu brett d. jones is an assistant professor of educational psychology. his professional interests include applying cognitive and motivational theories to instruction and examining the effects of high-stakes testing on students, teachers, and administrators. he has published several articles related to test-based accountability, as well as a book entitled the unintended consequences of high-stakes testing. note: this work was supported in full or in part by a grant from the university of south florida st. petersburg new investigator research grants fund. this support does not necessarily imply endorsement of the research conclusions by the university. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber august 8, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number15/index.html mailto:kellow@stpt.usf.edu mailto:bjones@stpt.usf.edu current issues in education vol. 8 no. 20 2015 article citation kellow t. j., & jones, b. d. (2005). stereotype threat in african-american high school students: an initial investigation. current issues in education, 8(20). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1663 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1663 volume 9, number 5 february, 2006 issn 1099-839x progressive educational practices and environments in sweden: preparing students to live and work in the global age r. d. nordgren cleveland state university a multi-site case study of three swedish schools examined the dimensions of trust, responsibility, shared power (democracy), and global workforce competence as required by a decade-old national education reforms. a key finding was the existence of progressive educational practices including constructivist epistemology, evidenced by the schools’ organizational structure, the instructional methods employed, and the various roles engaged in by the teachers, students, and administrators. these progressive practices and the mechanisms used to sustain them in one swedish public school system may be conducive to effective preparation of workers and citizens for the post-industrial economy and to live in a participatory democracy. for at least a century, progressive educators have advocated for schools that empower students to be self-directed and self-regulated, active participants in their learning and in the governance of their learning environments (dewey, 1916). this contrasts greatly with the controlling, knowledge-dispensing traditional schooling model that, despite progressives’ decades of efforts, remains the dominant model in the u.s. this article describes the findings from a study conducted in sweden where progressive schooling reforms affected teachers, administrators and, most profoundly, students. the model embraces an egalitarian dissemination of power among children and adults and utilizes the constructivist epistemology while establishing democratic, collaborative learning environments based on a foundation of trust and personal responsibility. the swedish education reform of 1994 (skolverket, 2000) and the guiding curricula that spawned these schools may also ensure that sweden fosters in its youth the essential traits and values for success in the post-industrial global economy and to actively participate in a vibrant democracy, the most dominant and prolific form of government in the global age (castells, 2000; karatnycky, piano, & puddington, 2003). 1 review of relevant literature constructivism and school reform many of the real and perceived problems regarding u.s. public education have been combated by reforms that are ostensibly “more of the same,” not changing the way schooling is done, merely adding to what is already in place—more standards, course requirements and, of course, high-stakes tests (kohn, 2004; meier, 2002). some scholars (e.g., delors, 1998; freire, 1985; chomsky, 2000) advocate for truly alternative ways of educating, employing methods and developing school environments that internally motivate students to not only learn prescribed content but to “learn how to learn” so as to become life-long learners as well as knowledgeable participants in a democracy. one such alternative that has been the focus of much scholarly writing in recent years is constructivism, an epistemology seemingly embraced by the swedish school reforms of the 1990’s and by the three schools in this study. current issues in education vol. 9 no. 5 constructivists contend that all learning emanates from the personal experiences of the learner through social interactions with others ( howard, mcgee, & schwartz, 2000). dewey, vygosky, and piaget were early advocates of constructivism, and their work powerfully impacted education theory and, to a lesser degree, practice by focusing classroom activity on the student rather than the teacher and the curriculum. the learning environments in this study were consistently student-focused, strongly suggesting an adherence to, if not an approval of, constructivism. keeping students actively engaged in meaningful learning may be the key to resolving disciplinary and motivational problems in u.s. schools (glasser, 1998; kohn, 2004). in doing so, direct instructional methods of teacher lecture followed by individual student seatwork, resembling the “banking” model impugned by freire (1985), must be severely limited. not only does a reliance on direct instruction force students to become little more than passive recipients of information (howard, mcgee, & schwartz, 2000; shapiro, 2000), but also research in learning theory (e.g., gregorc, 1982; gardner, 1985) suggests that most students not only dislike direct instruction but also may actually be demotivated by it. in order for schools to evolve beyond direct instruction, the role of the teacher must change from that of dispenser of knowledge to facilitator of learning who, through an understanding of each student’s learning preferences and motivational “buttons,” can help students learn from numerous resources (including the teacher) and foster selfdirectedness that may eventually lead to a love of learning. a strong internal desire for learning is essential for life-long learning, a crucial aspect of “knowledgework” as described later in this article. to ensure that students are internally motivated, life-long learners, the classroom and school environments must transform from autocracies that are strictly controlled by authoritative adults to more open, democratic settings that more resemble senge’s (1990) learning organization and other organic, flexible structures that can readily meet the changing needs of the environment (morgan, 1985). when teachers are coerced by outside forces such as site-based and district administrators in addition to mandates from the state and federal levels (i.e., imposed standards and high-stakes tests), their autonomy is lost and their motivation to perform quality work is greatly diminished (kohn, 2004; meier, 2002). a learning environment conducive to strategies supporting constructivist beliefs and the nurturing of democratic ideals in children and adolescents is one where all stakeholders share power: teachers, students, administrators, parents, and the surrounding community. sharing of power demands that decisions directly affecting learning should be made with the learner’s input, if not solely by the learner. this type of democratic environment was evident in the three swedish schools in this study and is at the core of constructivist education (shapiro, 2000). students were not only invited to make important decisions affecting their education, they were—ironically—mandated to do so. swedes did not allow their children to escape the civic obligation of learning how to not only live in a democracy but to ensure their democracy remains robust. constructivism and democracy constructivism’s origins may be traced to dewey’s promotion of experiential learning and his belief that the primary function of education should be the preparation of democratic citizens (1916). deep understanding of content beyond mere recall or even application, as described in bloom’s taxonomy of learning (1956), must be fostered by social interchange, which would require teachers to allow for student interaction in classrooms, rather than force students to sit quiet and motionless. this deep understanding/high-level learning is necessary for critical analyses of the content, the source of the content (teachers, textbooks, internet sites), and of all authority (goodlad, 2001). democracies, dependent upon a participatory, well-educated populace that is able and willing to critically analyze (barber, 1992), will most likely be the dominant form of government in the age of globalization. preparing students to succeed in the global economy within the global village, where national boundaries are blurred and corporations demonstrate no allegiance to any nationstate (castells, 2000), will require a drastic change from the traditional schooling model that relies heavily on passive recall of low-level information (reich, 2002; torres, 2002). education agencies, therefore, must create environments where students can interact and learn to participate in a democracy, not schools where control is the dominant theme (sehr, 1996). methods this multi-site case study focused on the dimensions of shared power, trust, student responsibility, and “global workforce competence” (teamwork, pragmatic technical skills, problem solving, and entrepreneurship). the first three emanated from the swedish national curricula, which are value-laden documents, designed to guide pre-school, compulsory, upper-secondary, and adult schooling (regeringskansliet, 1999) (see appendix a for excerpts from one of these curricula). democracy is a dominant theme throughout these documents, but fearing political misconceptions that may surround this concept and its inherent complexities (barber, 1992), the study concentrated on the sharing of power progressive educational practices and environments in sweden: preparing students to live and work in the global age 3 within the schools. a search of the prevailing literature on what students should know, do, and be like to succeed in the global economy led to the four categories of global workforce competence. these were, the literature suggested, the most important skills and/or traits for one to succeed in the global economy (entrepreneurship subsumed the traits of creativity and risk-taking) 2 . the research questions asked in what ways the three schools support these seven dimensions. the three schools in the study were selected for their continuity of service for a large proportion of students in the community. all the students attending the elementary school were scheduled to matriculate on to the middle school and, although high school (or “upper secondary school”) is not mandatory in sweden, approximately 80% of all those leaving the middle school went on to the high school in the study. the schools were located in a small community in central sweden of about 35,000 people and, although the community had one local government, it had two school districts: one for preschools and compulsory schools, and the other for upper secondary and adult education. the principals of the schools and the superintendent of the pre/compulsory schools were known to the researcher; two principals and the superintendent participated in an international school consortium with the researcher and readily volunteered their campuses for research along with several other principals in the district. the researcher had met and interviewed the two upper secondary school principals during a visit one year prior to this study. the elementary school was by far the largest in the community, serving about 500 students, the middle school about 800, and approximately 1200 students were educated at the upper secondary school. one other middle school and 14 other elementary schools were also in and around the community, as were two other upper secondary schools. eleven of the 16 career-focused national programs were located at the upper secondary school in the study; two significantly smaller schools housed the other four programs. a seventeenth program was “individual” in that students having difficulty in other programs could opt to develop their own program of study and be taught by teachers who specialized in motivational techniques, somewhat equivalent to drop-out prevention programs in u.s. high schools. the goal was to eventually motivate these students to re-enter their chosen academic program or attempt another (skolverket, 2000). data were collected through individual and focus group interviews of high school students, and teachers at all levels. the elementary and middle school principals were interviewed individually; the two upper secondary principals were interviewed together. each interview lasted approximately one hour and consisted of seven to eight base questions. these sessions took place on campus during and after school hours, were recorded and later transcribed. surveys were administered to every teacher in the schools and to the students in the high school (appendices b and c). a document search conducted before, during, and after the other data were collected, focused on curricula and decision making at each school and the two school districts. finally, focused classroom observations and general campus observations were conducted at the three sites, both attentive to student-teacher/adult interactions that may relate to shared power. data were analyzed using the constant comparative method (glaser & strauss, 1967) in which data collected (interviews and documents) were compared throughout the collection process for themes arising from the seven established categories of shared power, trust, student responsibility, teamwork, pragmatic technical skills, problem solving, and entrepreneurship. these theories were used as conceptual links between and among the seven categories; the findings discussed in this article are divided into the dominant themes found in the analysis (survey results were later included in this analysis). these themes are the following and head each of the subsections in “findings.”  students owning their learning  standards and national curricula that guide rather than dictate  constructivist teaching strategies that empower students  trust and adult supervision  democracy and empowerment  global workforce competence: making schooling relevant to the workplace. these themes have obvious and subtle connections to the seven dimensions that drove this study; the themes and the connections are described in the next section. findings students owning their learning students in all schools developed their own learning plans, beginning with pre-school children as young as four years old. although the youngest of the students did not have their learning plans in written form, the evidence suggested that they were deeply involved with the development of these plans. according to teachers, pre-school children sat in circles (“rings”) on monday mornings to decide what file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html%232 current issues in education vol. 9 no. 5 they were to do during the week, the teachers acting as facilitators. on fridays, they discussed their learning for the week and then completed a selfassessment consisting of smiling or frowning faces for each of the week’s activities, followed by more discussion of their progress. this was the earliest example of democratic schooling experiences found in the study and may be indicative of the swedes’ valuing democracy. when a focus group of elementary teachers was asked about democratic activity, one teacher responded yes, they need [democracy skills] when they are going out to the society … and when they’re six years old that’s mid point [of their experience in that school, so] i think to make them secure and think of each other and the social part … it’s a part of swedish society, isn’t it? democracy--to care for each other and not to fight [but] to talk …no fighting to learn from …and you can’t fight to have [an] effective democracy. at the middle school, teams of teachers and students met weekly in a large forum to discuss how they felt their learning was proceeding. one middle school teacher described this forum. with our 120 pupils we have started something we called “a team.” we started [this] pupils’ team so that we [can] each discuss what's good and what's bad, and [the students] hand [their comments] into us [beforehand] so we discuss [some of these] at our meeting. we try to see if there’s anything we could do to make it better for the pupils, but also have them think about “is this really good?” or “is it just a way of making protest?” in the high school, students agreed that they were involved in most aspects of their learning, from planning to assessment; but insisted that they should have even more power in their schools. upper secondary student: well, i just think you need to let the students decide more by themselves, especially [in upper secondary school]. …i can decide on my own likes in sweden so then the teachers and the administrators decide for me…[long pause]. [students] should have a bigger… influence in everything and [teachers and administrators] should let students be part of everything. as part of a focus group, another upper secondary student replied, “ … the teachers and principals and students should be a part of the decisions, of course, otherwise it’s not a democracy.” a survey administered to 300 students at the upper secondary school (154 respondents) (appendix b) revealed that students were mildly negative regarding their position of power (see table 1). the items pertaining to the shared power dimension in the student survey were 3 through 5 and 8 through 15 and this grouping’s mean score was 2.35 on a 1 to 5 scale, with 5 corresponding to their perception that they were greatly empowered. all teachers at each school were given similar surveys (appendix c) (rate of return was a disappointing 48 out of 231 3 ). (table 3 and teacher empowerment will be discussed shortly.). table 1 teacher and student survey data (by dimensions) table notes: score was calculated as a negative but is reported as “0.” teacher survey: n = 48, cronbach alpha for survey = 0.60 student survey: n = 154, cronbach alpha for survey = 0.78 standards and national curricula that guide rather than dictate although, students were required to reach the academic standards developed by the swedish department of education (skolverket) for each of the seventeen upper secondary programs offered in all of the 278 swedish communities, the standards (referred to as the “syllabuses”) were found to be sparse in comparison to american state standards 4 and the means to these ends were decided by negotiations between the students and the teachers. the standards were passed down from skolverket through the local school boards and on into each school building, changing often along the way. upon being asked about the influence state and local government has on her education, an upper secondary school student stated … certain rules that they [skolverket] has to loll through and then the community can look at them and [determine] what they think about [the standards] they have to follow … but in their own way, so all communities don’t have the same thing. interviewer: so your school and maybe even the students interpret what the politicians give you? student: oh yea, we can … i don’t know … we can, we look at it; all the schools are looking at in different ways, and that’s … that’s what we do. interviewer: do you think that’s good? file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html%233 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html%234 progressive educational practices and environments in sweden: preparing students to live and work in the global age 5 student: yes! … [the skolverket] just has, ah, this map you have to go after … just you don’t have to fold it exactly all the same way. in essence, standards were not ironclad statements, but malleable guidelines that could change according to local and even individual needs. despite the existence of academic standards found in the syllabuses, the guiding force for each level of schooling was the three swedish national curricula that were developed in the mid-to-late 1990’s (skolverket, 2000). these documents (see appendix a for excerpt of the compulsory school curriculum) were value-laden, not content-focused as were the syllabuses. these curricula were mentioned again and again by teachers and administrators throughout the study. interviewer: in what way does the national curriculum [as translated by the school] affect the curriculum and the instruction in your classroom? middle school teacher: a lot because the curriculum status for the students [what we think they should be able to know and do] by the end of the year [is developed] at the beginning of the year, so we are following that schedule... the program, what the curriculum says about…what they should know … so we are looking at it, and [the students] read it, and then they can … we can discuss how we are going to work with this… in an interview with the two upper secondary principals (both had equal power in the school), they described the aforementioned evolution of the skolverket’s “mandated” curricula from the state to the local levels, emphasizing how little impact they felt they had on their jobs at the school. principal 1: i would say that the national curriculum in the upper level, if i can say so, [is like a] chain. first [link] is at the national level … and then on our district level we have a certain plan, which should be matching the goals in the national curriculum. and then we have our plan for our … school, and in our school we have our two principals, and we have our own plan for our … areas [or programs]. principal 2: yes and it should be [that] the goals match each other in a sort of chain. so … i wouldn’t say that the national curriculum has very much to do with how we work here. but conversely, the second principal stated the importance of the values found in the curriculum for upper secondary schools. … all these words which you have in your study democracy, trust--all these kind of values-they are very important as they [guide us]… but this principal is quick to point out that the curriculum is to be individualized to meet the students’ needs. … the whole system is a mixture of different ambitions, i would say different intention; we want to have structure but also … say [we have a] national curriculum, but every pupil, every student should be able to choose her or his own plan. constructivist teaching strategies that empower students teachers in the middle and upper secondary schools were difficult to identify upon entering the classrooms as they blended well with the students. they dressed casually and rarely began their classes by standing in front addressing the students. instead, students typically entered classrooms nonchalantly (there were no bells at the schools), began working on a project, usually collaboratively but sometimes individually, with their teachers sitting amongst them at tables or even on the floor. in addition, all teachers were addressed by their first name only--even the two superintendents were known to students and teachers by their first names. this casual environment may have positively affected trust within the schools and of the schools within the community (kramer, 1999; kramer, brewer, & hanna, 1996). teachers’ instructional strategies and the classroom environments they developed with the students were greatly influenced by the seemingly constructivist reforms of 1994. individualized instruction, a crucial aspect of constructivism (shapiro, 2000), was evident during the observations and supported by an upper secondary student in an interview and who, perhaps unknowingly, also criticized the banking model of instruction. i like to decide … i always like to do that, and i think [making my own decisions is] important because if all the teachers decide everything, we maybe not learn properly. we may not learn everything we have to learn [without the teachers’ deciding what we learn] but [if they did decide everything] maybe we just learn it for one day and then do the test … the day after we don’t know it... a middle school teacher spoke about how she worked to individualize instruction based on her knowledge of the students and from their input about what they want to learn and how they learn, determining each student’s learning style; a strategy used in a university course she had taken a few summers before. [i have students] who like writing [when] they use their eyes [and i have] those who use their ears, and we try to make a list of the group [‘s preferences]. we try to find many different ways current issues in education vol. 9 no. 5 [they could learn]… i sit in a ring [with students] and i talk about ... how did it work for you? …some said it was good--it was very good. and i would start a discussion [about] what’s good for you maybe is not good for others, and that’s where they have to make their own decisions how to learn… she went on to describe how students in her class are required to develop and teach one lesson a week to other students, requiring them not to use a textbook so as they might then depend on the prescribed lessons published in it. this, the teacher felt, required the students to be more creative, to think about the learning preferences of those in the room based on the circle conversations they routinely had. she asked them to bring in material from other classes (she taught english) such as art so that they could see that “you don’t have to leave art when you come into [the] english classroom.” after each lesson, they were to write a reflective piece on what went right and what they would change, a practice she and her colleagues do on a daily basis, she said. she referred to these teacher reflections as “diaries.” trust and adult supervision at the elementary school, children played outdoors on an icy hill and on a skating rink between and during classes. usually a teacher was in the vicinity, but sometimes not. one day the researchers walked across the skating rink and were shouted at, in swedish, by a boy who appeared to be about six years old. once they arrived at the other side of the rink, an apologetic teacher said that the boy was simply stating the rules about not going onto the rink unless you wore ice skates—a rule, she said that was developed by the students themselves. at another elementary school in the community but not in the study, the researchers participated in a mid-morning tea planned and presented by two eleven year olds in appreciation for all the adults at the school. when asked where the other 200 students were, the principal pointed out the window where they were sledding down a rather large hill and skating on a frozen pond at the bottom of the hill. no adults were outside. when asked what would happen if a child were to get hurt, the principal replied, “oh, another child would let us know, i suppose.” upon hearing the researcher’s concerns about litigation, a teacher at a nearby table responded laughingly, “oh, you americans!” with the possible exception of the students’ development of their own learning plans, the lunchrooms may have been the best place to see how responsible swedish children could be in these trusting learning environments. at all three schools, students ate and socialized without formal adult supervision, even at the elementary school where teachers did eat with their students in a small cafeteria, but only because the principal said he would provide them lunches if they ate with their students. his explanation was that he wanted them to have more informal time with their students; indeed, it was informal as no teachers were witnessed giving directives to the children during the several hours of lunches observed there, simply eating and socializing with students who were eight to ten years old. students ate their meals while conversing with friends (students and teachers) then cleared their tables, dropped off their metal utensils and ceramic plates and cups with the dishwashers, then disposed their waste in appropriate recycling bins. the same scenario was repeated during three days at the middle school except that there the adults did pay a nominal fee for their lunches. at the high school, adults ate separately in a small room adjoining the cafeteria, leaving the students adult-free except for the lunchroom servers. during formal interviews and lunchtime conversations, no adults or students could recall a problem stemming from this lack of adult supervision. in fact, they seemed puzzled by the researchers’ concern for this. 5 at the middle and high schools, students were found in snack rooms and recreation areas with little or no adult supervision. in fact, the only adults consistently in the vicinity were those who worked the snack counter. at the middle school, the students had sofas and stereos in one snack room while at the other they had a volleyball court, table tennis, billiards and other games at their disposal. administrators and teachers, as well as the adults working the snack bars, insisted no problems ever arose from these relatively unsupervised rooms. in fact, the middle school principal noted how startled the students were in one snack room when he and the researchers “intruded” upon their snack time. he led the researchers out of room after only a few seconds saying he wanted the students to have their privacy. when asked in interviews, “what happens when students do not do what they are supposed to do?” several times teachers gave a puzzled look and replied, “why wouldn’t they?” apparently, the students were not simply obedient 6 as there were no directives from teachers or other adults that were witnessed in the observations; instead, students simply went about their business of learning. elementary teachers reported that they concentrated on social skills rather than academics in the early years, yet international studies suggest that by upper secondary, swedes outperform students from most industrialized nations, including the u.s (nces, 1999). one swedish teacher said that their first intention is for the children to learn to get along with others adding, “what good is it to teach them to read and write if they’re only going to end up in prison?” file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html%235 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html%236 progressive educational practices and environments in sweden: preparing students to live and work in the global age 7 further discussion found that this statement was a commentary on the difference in crime and incarceration rates between the u.s. and sweden, and america’s recent intense focus on academic standards and subsequent high-stakes testing rather than the learning of values necessary for good citizenship. democracy and empowerment the creation of empowering democratic learning environments was a desired outcome of the 1994 school reforms (skolverket, 2000) and is evidenced by the wording in the three national curricula (see appendix a). teachers were to be given more autonomy to make decisions about their jobs and, it was desired, this autonomy would be passed down to the students. it is not clear from the date collected that teachers were in fact autonomous. when asked about this new empowerment in an interview, one upper secondary school teacher stated during the last five years, we are rather used to be[ing] free to take care of our own planning to take care of our own economics--even so, we want the administrators to be responsible for their logistics, so to speak, so we can do the work. but you know we have these teams … and we are responsible for planning … different subjects and economics and the status of courses-[what] we want to see, [the] results [that may coincide with the national plan]. interviewer: do you think this is better or worse than the old way? teacher: this is, of course, much better … because it’s possible for us to make … find new solutions for new problems. we meet different students and different classes and then we can relate to them instead of following the instructions [from the formerly-used prescribed curriculum]. teachers and administrators were reluctant to talk about the transition from a relatively autocratic leadership (or the “british style that americans seem to like,” as one upper secondary teacher said) to an egalitarian, democratic style. one of the upper secondary principals simply smiled and said the transition was “painful.” a focus group of middle school teachers laughed uncomfortably at the question of this change, and one veteran suggested that if not for the teachers’ unions supporting the reforms, then they would not have been enacted. two younger teachers stated that they could not imagine having schooling any other way. “it’s best for the children … they need to be able to [function] in the new economy … the new world.” an interesting finding from a teacher interview was the existence of a children’s “parliament’ in the community in which students from the middle and upper secondary schools were asked to participate in meetings with local government officials. the two upper secondary principals commented on the parliament principal 1: [the community leaders] ask for feedback or what … young people think about … different issues. principal 2: i think it started years ago by one of the youth leaders in the community. principal 1: yes, and our politicians … listen quite eagerly to what the young person says and … how would it be possible for the students to get better marks [and be prepared for life] after school has finished. the person in the community who led the children’s parliament confirmed the principals’ remarks that the community leaders did want to know what the children learn in school, and what their views are about local issues. three students were chosen by their peers from the middle level and three more from the upper secondary schools to serve in the parliament and, although the ultimate decisionmaking was left to the elected and appointed government officials, the students’ input often influenced the decisions made by the adults. for instance, two community centers were opened in the past several years due to the discussions with adolescents, and the governing of these centers was based in part on the feedback the adults received from the students in the parliament. according to survey data, students agreed or strongly agreed to statements pertaining to the importance of their empowerment (items 4, 9, 11, 14, and 15) ranging from 73 to 87% (bolded in table 2). but their agreement to how much they were actually empowered ranged only from 19 to 48%. their disagreement to these statements was generally not as strong as their agreement to these items, ranging from 14 to 36%. as will be noted in the teacher survey discussion, high percentages of neutrality were found. in an interview with the upper secondary principals, it was apparent that despite observations suggesting that the teachers were accepting of the constructivist changes, there still was some concern about teachers continuing to hold on to teachercentered, traditional methods. prior to the 1994 reform, curriculum was much more structured, ostensibly prescribing to the teachers just what they were to teach and how the content was to be transmitted to the students. principal 1: [teachers] are pretty free as long as they fill the goals. current issues in education vol. 9 no. 5 principal 2: i think they are more free now than some years ago when the curriculum told them how to do and what to study in each subject. now they can choose what to study and how; but we say, and the school … says you must discuss with your students [what is to be taught and how]. students must have real influence … of … planning the studies together with the teachers. principal 1: and that’s in the curriculum … in the laws. interviewer: you said it was more rigid in the past, more structured before ’94? principal 2: yes, it was before ’94, the last national curriculum for the secondary school [prior to ‘94] was in … 1970. interviewer: are teachers generally happier at your school to make their own decisions or would they rather have you make most of the decisions? principal 2: they would [rather] make their own decisions, i think. interviewer: you think they would be happier doing that? principal 2: yes. principal 1: that depends. principal 2: yes, it depends … some teachers are very conscious and aware of what the national curriculum says and try to do like the intentions are written in it. but i think some teachers want to do as they always have done, they are quite traditional in the way of working … some [of] the teachers are in front of the students and deciding what to read and how to read and what to… interviewer: teacher centered? principal 1: yes, and it varies quite a lot. principal 2: yes, it varies quite a lot. the principals went on to discuss how they manipulated the environment to discourage traditional teaching. in particular, they replaced individual desks with tables so that students would be more inclined to work together. the principals felt they were winning the battle to get all teachers to accept constructivist practices. principal 2: i think the number of traditional teachers [is] declining, but there are some left. but many people they … principal 1: they are tired now. principal 2: yeah, they are tired. interviewer: you’ve worn them down? principal 2: yes, they are waiting for their pension. results of the teacher surveys bring into doubt whether or not teachers truly believe that they are empowered by authorities. as noted earlier, only 48 of 231 (21%) of the teacher surveys were returned making generalizations made from these surveys for all teachers in these three schools suspect. regardless, what can be culled from these data is an overwhelming feeling that teacher empowerment is important as evidenced by items 6, 9, 12, and 19 (bolded in table 2) which ask teachers to respond to the importance of shared power (between 84 and 100% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed to this importance). yet when asked about their actual empowerment as it relates to their involvement in school decision-making, the teachers were less emphatic. items 5, 10, 11, and 20 referred to teacher empowerment and if they believed their administration encouraged their involvement. those responding favorably (agree or strongly agree) ranged from 52 to 79%, but very few responded negatively. for item 20 which had a favorable response of only 52%, the other 48% responded “neutral.” table 2 student survey responses for items regarding empowerment table 3 teacher survey responses for items regarding empowerment progressive educational practices and environments in sweden: preparing students to live and work in the global age 9 what is not clear from the both the survey and interview data is the degree to which teachers are empowered, performing as autonomous and active participants in democratic settings. some of the remarks by the teachers and administrators suggest that the reforms of 1994 were exacted upon teachers; those who did not accept these changes may have been counseled out of the profession (wearing them down). the following questions arise: does a democracy exist when it is imposed upon the people? is forced autonomy truly autonomy? those who designed the swedish national curriculum, laying out the vision for swedish schools, apparently felt that democracy and autonomy were important (see appendix a), but what if teachers were happy with the way schools were previously operated, even if they did not have significant power in this operation? were their opinions taken into consideration or did the sponsors of the national reform use “eminent domain” to ignore or even squelch dissent? further research is needed to gain a better understanding of teacher autonomy and empowerment in these three swedish schools and all swedish schools considering the effects of the 1994 reforms. global workforce competence: making schooling relevant to the workplace in addition to the social dimensions of democracy, trust, and responsibility, this study was designed to find if the schools were preparing the students for the global economy. the first three dimensions—shared power, trust, and personal responsibility—may assist students to participate in a democracy and perhaps live peaceably in the “global village” (a term first used by marshall mcluhan in the 1960’s when he described the shrinking world due to advancements in communications technology). but were these students gaining the skills and knowledge necessary for them to endure and ultimately succeed in the every-changing world of globalization? studying recent workforce skills literature including the seminal scans report (1991), the four areas of teamwork, pragmatic technical skills, problem solving, and entrepreneurship were developed for use in this study. indeed, the lower levels of schooling concentrated on social skills, yet the upper secondary school was set on preparing the students for the workforce in the spirit of conant’s (1959) comprehensive high school. as mentioned previously, each swedish community must offer all 16 of the career-centered programs of study. these programs were treated as schools-within-schools where teachers usually worked in only one program, and the program’s teachers were given significant autonomy within that program. the skolverket set the academic guidelines for each program, but these were scant in content, similar to the syllabuses of the compulsory schools, and the department’s mandate to follow these was rather flexible, essentially allowing students and teachers to decide amongst themselves what would be learned. all main subject areas (swedish, english, math, social studies, and science) were mandatory in each program, but these subjects were learned through the lens of the career area of that particular program (skolverket, 2000). two programs did not appear to be as career oriented as the others, but rather college preparatory. teachers, however, were quick to point out that students in every program theoretically could be accepted into a university (university admission in sweden is quite competitive with only about one in three students gaining admission) (sandahl, 1997). in the 11 programs offered at the upper secondary school in this study, evidence suggested that the four dimensions of “global workforce competence” were supported. these teen-age students, as students of all ages in the study, usually worked collaboratively. the few who did work individually did so at their own request but this, they said, was only a temporary situation, eventually everyone learned in collaboration. marketable technical skills were to be gained in the various programs, and critical analysis was inherent in the project-based curricula developed by the students with the help of the teachers. the community had a committee of local leaders from government agencies and businesses who addressed the economic needs of the kommun including how the schools, especially the upper secondary schools, prepared its students for the workforce. the upper secondary school principals spoke of trying to balance the committee’s desires with what they felt, as professional educators, was sound education for the students. all in all, they felt satisfied with the arrangement as local businesses often donated equipment such as computers to the school and even better, held employment slots open for graduates. when asked if the businesses funded any part of the school’s programs, the principals were quick to say that they received all their funding from the government, adding that funding all of the schools’ needs was the obligation of the various levels of government. it should be noted that about 40 swedish principals, superintendents, and university professors visited 14 florida schools prior to this study, hoping to find ways to increase creativity and risk-taking among their students, what they believed to be the core of entrepreneurship. the swedish educators did current issues in education vol. 9 no. 5 not find entrepreneurial skills being learned in florida schools but instead reported that these schools emphasized control and obedience (school management institute, 1999), neither compatible with the fostering of entrepreneurs. the assumption was made for this study that if the swedes were looking to the u.s. to help increase entrepreneurship in their schools, then this must be almost non-existent in swedish education. but, alas, creativity was quite evident in all the schools of the study. by the instructional methods used and the structures of the schools, creativity was a natural by-product--as was risk-taking. developing their own learning required students to be both creative and risk-takers. two programs observed in the upper secondary school offered classes in entrepreneurship where students were allotted money to open actual businesses in the community, usually in the form of on-line services. students were required to obtain personal loans from a local bank, loans that were secured by the school board. it was rare, however, that these businesses lost money, according to the programs’ teachers; the loans were repaid by the student prior to his/her leaving the school. only the last four items in the teacher and student surveys pertained to global workforce competence and the mean scores (table 1) suggest that the 154 student respondents and the 48 teacher respondents mildly to strongly supported that these skills were learned in the schools. what was surprising is that, although it may be assumed that the primary responsibility for teaching these skills would fall upon the upper secondary school with its 11 career-focused programs, the elementary and middle school teachers strongly supported the existence of these skills in the overall curricula. discussion possible implications for u.s. education of course, progressive, democratic schools like the swedish schools in this study do exist in other parts of the world including the u.s. 7 yet, from the results of this study which examined the impact of the national curricula and from other u.s. educators’ findings in schools in sweden, these constructivist learning environments may be nationwide (school management institute, 1999). only ten to fifteen years ago, according to some swedish teachers and administrators, their schools resembled the u.s. in their british-style, autocratic approach to how school was conducted (instructional strategies, classroom and school management styles). how could this transformation be accomplished at such speed and seemingly be widespread? asking teachers and administrators to share power with children, literally changing the roles they play in the schools must have indeed been painful, but it appeared to be working. one veteran teacher said that he had his doubts about the new system when it was implemented at his school following the 1994 education reform act, but he could now see that his students were much better prepared to live and work in a democracy. the structure of the each school’s management and the instructional methods used promoted the skills deemed necessary to succeed in the global economy. all schools had teams of teachers that shared power with the principals, and this sharing of power was evident among teachers and students. can this progressive, democratic schooling model be extensively replicated in the u.s.? first, it should be noted that the swedes do not encounter what is, with the possible exception of teacher quality 8 , the one consistent indicator of school success—poverty (giroux, 2003; payne, 1996). the social democracy that prevails in sweden does not allow for great economic differences due to deliberate efforts by the federal government to implement an egalitarian economic system, and to provide for a “workfare” as compared to a welfare system that gives equalizing benefits for all who are employed, even if only part-time (bjorklund & freeman, 2005). therefore, the differences in lifestyle between someone working the counter at mcdonald’s and a medical doctor are not nearly as overwhelming as they would be in america due in part to the relative lack of strong social supports, at least relative to the swedish system. the result of the swedes’ efforts is a relative (to the u.s.) elimination of poverty in their nation, but poverty remains the destructive mediating variable that u.s. school reforms cannot universally overcome (anyon, 1997; giroux, 2003; rothstein, 2002). another mediating variable was horizontalindividualism described by triandis (1995) who notes differences between scandinavian culture and the u.s. in that, although both are individualistic rather than collective, the norwegians, finns, danes, and swedes do not readily accept the existence of great chasms of wealth in their societies, making their individualism horizontal. each citizen is primarily responsible for his or her own development, as is expected in an individualist culture, but it is embarrassing for swedes to be too rich or allow for others to be too poor. americans, conversely, accept these chasms (a vertical individualism), and acceptance that is evident in their unwillingness to create and sustain the type of social safety nets that exist in the nordic countries. the swedes’ egalitarian individualism may originate from a viking tradition dating back a millennium where a bowl of mead was shared with comrades, each man being careful not to take more than his share, a cultural norm now known file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html%237 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html%238 progressive educational practices and environments in sweden: preparing students to live and work in the global age 11 as lagom. in addition, a 19 th century novel a fugitive crosses his tracks by aksel sandemose has guided scandinavian culture specifically toward embracing the values of modesty, humility, and selfrestraint. this novel is the origin of jante’s law named after the fictional town that was the setting of sandemose’s story (dewitt, 2003). a related swedish tradition is that “no one blade of grass can stick out higher than another, for that blade will be the first to be cut down” (sandahl, 1997). in other words, be wary of those who seek attention to themselves. even if americans were to eliminate poverty and embrace lagom, they would still not be able to develop and sustain the swedish style of schooling without first restructuring the schools and school systems in such a way that power can be shared. the bureaucratic organizations that exist at the state and local levels in the u.s. would have to give way to flatter, more responsive systems (morgan, 1985). with the implementation of state and national standards in recent years, the u.s. school bureaucracies have ballooned, further removing the local stakeholders of education from relevant decision making (johnson, 2004; kohn, 2004; meier, 2002). the u.s., with 49 different state standards (at the time of this study, only iowa did not have statemandated academic standards), does not have a national system of education, despite the efforts of the so-called “no child left behind” initiative. although the swede’s system is nationalized, it is set in a myriad of “free schools,” as the elementary principal called them, where all the standards are malleable at the local and even the classroom levels. school reform in the u.s., especially since the publication of a nation at risk in 1983, has been a movement advocating “more of the same.” bracey proffers that schools are doing a better job at what they have been asked to do than ever before; that is, educate as many children as possible in the most efficient yet, rudimentary, manner (1998). the concern is the term “educate.” is education merely a regurgitation of often useless facts (the ability to perform well on standardized tests)? or is it the gaining of skills necessary to flourish in the future as espoused by chomsky 9 (2000)? toffler (1970) noted over 30 years ago that schools primarily prepare students to be 1) on time, 2) obedient, and 3) able to perform repetitive tasks; all skills, he contended, necessary for success in the industrial age. toffler (1980) claimed that the industrial age ended in 1955 when white-collar workers first outnumbered bluecollar workers in the u.s. why should local and state governments, and especially the federal government, support an education system that prepares citizens to live in the past? at a school board meeting in sweden observed in this study, a principal made a presentation about why her school and the schools in her district conduct schooling in a constructivist manner. she began her presentation by telling all the adults in attendance (mostly parents) that their experiences in school had no relevance to what their children were experiencing. the adults in the room, the principal explained, were schooled for the industrial age, a time that had long since passed in sweden. she insisted that the audience understand that her school’s and her school district’s educators were preparing the community’s children for both the present and the future: the global age, as she called it. the findings of this study may have important implications on u.s. schooling as it presumably prepares students to be successful workers in the global economy and capable participants in a democracy as the no child left behind legislation would indicate. swedish students were trusted to make important decisions regarding their learning and their behavior, freeing adults to concentrate on facilitating learning rather than controlling children and dispensing low-level knowledge. reich (2002) describes the successful workers of the post-industrial economy as “symbolic analysts” or “knowledgeworkers” who shun so-called “dumbed-down,” systematically routinized work (dobbins & boychuk, 1999), and the direct supervision that this work requires. in effect, autonomy (the marrying of trust and responsibility) is the necessary trait to be mastered if one is to find a satisfying and financially rewarding job in the global economy; otherwise a worker who requires direct supervision reminiscent of that found in u.s. schools, will be relegated to low-wage, little-or-no-benefits job, toiling in the lowest echelons of the service industry. knowledgework requires self-regulated and self-directed personnel who can be trusted to accept the responsibility of work and be relatively unsupervised, and responsible for their own actions (delors, 1998; reich, 1991; 2002). swedish educators and policy makers may understand this and have somehow implemented a system that is designed to foster a responsible worker while also preparing students to actively participate in a “public” democracy where the populace is required to be able to critically analyze their micro and macro environments (sehr, 1996; goodlad, 2001). if america is to compete in the post-industrial global economy and fashion itself as the beacon of file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html%239 current issues in education vol. 9 no. 5 democracy for rest of the world, its political and education leaders must develop educational settings and opportunities that promote the type of worker and citizen that is responsible and trusted to operate collaboratively in a self-regulated environment and to question the authority of those in power. the continued proliferation--perhaps the veritable existence--of democracy may depend on how the u.s. educates its citizens. footnotes 1 as of 2003, 121 of the world’s 192 nation-states (63%) were technically electoral democracies, up from 28% in 1950 (karatnycky et al, 2003). 2 swedish educators visited florida schools in 1999 to find how entrepreneurship was fostered in u.s. schools. they instead came away with the belief that these schools were infatuated with control rather than risk-taking and creativity (school management institute, 1999). 3 this poor rate of return surprised the principals and pre/compulsory school superintendent. completed surveys were returned to the central office at each school and mailed to the researcher. this collection method was problematic but necessary due to time constraints. the researcher acknowledges that follow-ups for non-respondents and/or interviews of a random sample of non-respondents would increase the generalizability of the teacher survey data across the three schools (see gall, borg, & gall, 1996, pp.302-4). 4 the syllabus for all swedish compulsory schooling (regeringskansliet, 1995) is 103 pages as compared to 1196 total pages found in four volumes (mathematics, science, social studies, language arts) for k-12 schooling in the state of ohio. 5 in post-columbine america, it is uncommon for school cafeterias to allow for metal utensils as these can be used as weapons, plus the u.s., relative to sweden, chooses to dispose of products rather than reuse them. when this was mentioned to teachers and administrators, they asked how u.s. students could possibly eat without utensils. mostly with their hands, it was explained, but they were given plastic “sporks” that were both forks and spoons--and relatively harmless. this so amused the swedes that the spork story leaked to the local newspaper which interviewed the researchers about violence in american schools and the ridiculous-sounding spork. 6 blind obedience is often conflated with democracy according to some scholars (e.g., goodlad, 1998; sehr, 1996; soder, 2001). instead, a strong democracy must depend upon a populace willing to be skeptical of rules and laws and accept them only if they can rationalize their existence or that by not following policy, they would disrupt the greater good of the environment ( barber, 1992; soder, 2001). 7 see david sehr’s case studies of democratic schools, deborah meier’s descriptions of the mission hill school [2002] or dennis littky’s “the met” high school [2004]). 8 several recent studies seem to contradict the 1960’s coleman report that contended school success is predicated on family circumstances rather than school qualities. studies by both ronald ferguson and william sanders suggest that teacher quality may be a stronger indicator of success than socioeconomics. 9 chomsky contends that the majority of u.s. citizens depend on others to “analyze, execute, and run” important matters. by understanding the world around them through the gaining of information available and analyzing this information, the majority can truly participate as citizens of a democracy rather than allow those in power to replicate society. chomsky advocates for the requirement of higherorder thinking skills in all public schools (analysis, synthesis, evaluation to use benjamin bloom’s terms). references andrusyszyn, m., & davie, l. 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(2003). case study research (3rd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage. http://www.foundationcoalition.org/publicati%09ons/journalpapers/fie97/1142.pdf http://www.foundationcoalition.org/publicati%09ons/journalpapers/fie97/1142.pdf http://www.inspriringteachers.com/articles/j%09ournaling http://www.inspriringteachers.com/articles/j%09ournaling http://www.inspriringteachers.com/articles/j%09ournaling http://www.inspriringteachers.com/articles/j%09ournaling http://www.cete.org/acve/docgen.asp?tbl=pa%09b&id-112 http://www.cete.org/acve/docgen.asp?tbl=pa%09b&id-112 http://712educators.about.com/cs/writingres%09ources/a/journals.htm http://712educators.about.com/cs/writingres%09ources/a/journals.htm http://www.nsdc.org/library/publications/jsd%09/killion203.cfm http://www.nsdc.org/library/publications/jsd%09/killion203.cfm http://liberalarts.udmercy.edu/~koontzc2/me%09nuartcl.html http://liberalarts.udmercy.edu/~koontzc2/me%09nuartcl.html http://webphysics.iupui.edu/jitt/what.html http://www.iupui.edu/~adulted/mwr2p/prior/%09orem.htm http://www.iupui.edu/~adulted/mwr2p/prior/%09orem.htm http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm05/eq%09m0519.asp?print=yes http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm05/eq%09m0519.asp?print=yes http://s11.stanford.edu/projects/tomprof/new%09tomprof/postings/176.html http://s11.stanford.edu/projects/tomprof/new%09tomprof/postings/176.html current issues in education vol. 9 no. 5 2006 article citation nordgren r.d. (2006, feb).e-journaling: progressive educational practices and environments in sweden: preparing students to live and work in the global age. current issues in education [on-line], 9(5). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume9/number5/ author notes r. d. nordgren cleveland state university nordgren was an english teacher and an assistant principal at the middle and high school levels and is author of making schooling relevant for the global age: fulfilling our moral obligation (rowan littlefield, 2003). he is currently an assistant professor and coordinator of the master’s in urban secondary teaching program at cleveland state university. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation nordgren, r. d. (2006). e-journaling: progressive educational practices and environments in sweden: preparing students to live and work in the global age. current issues in education, 9(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1597 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number5/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1597 microsoft word novice teachers and their acquisition of work-related information.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x novice teachers and their acquisition of work-related information kyoung-ae kim korea advanced institute of science and technology & gene l. roth northern illinois university citation kim, k. & roth, g. (2011). novice teachers and their acquisition of work-related information. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this qualitative case study explores types of work-related information that novice teachers seek out and learn that is related to their daily work tasks. eighteen experienced k-6 teachers offer their reflections about the dynamics of seeking and interpreting work-related information during their initial years of teaching. in-depth interviews were used to ask participants to reflect on their pathways of finding and using work-related information when they were novice teachers. the participants described nuances of their school settings that provided catalysts and barriers to gaining and using work-related information. keywords: teachers’ work-related information, information acquisition, novice teachers, information sharing c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 2 about the author(s) author: kyoung-ae kim affiliation: korea advanced institute of science and technology (kaist) address: 119 munijiro, yuseong-gu, daejeon, 305-732, republic of korea email: kaykin2006@gmail.com biographical information: kyoung-ae kim is a senior researcher with the global institute for talented education at kaist. she received her doctoral degree in adult and higher education from northern illinois university. author: gene l. roth affiliation: northern illinois university address: counseling, adult and higher education, niu, dekalb, il. 60115 email: groth@nin.edu biographical information: gene roth is a distinguished teaching professor at niu in the adult and higher education program. n o v ic e t e a c h e r s 3 novice teachers and their acquisition of work-related information new graduates of formal teacher preparation programs frequently encounter difficulties when they experience the practical realities of schools. teacher education programs tend to predominantly orient pre-service teachers either theoretically or practically (nottis, feuerstein, murray, & adams, 2000) and the type of orientation can affect the success of beginning teachers. the satisfaction that teachers experience in performing their daily routines is linked to factors such as job attrition and sense of self-worth (pillay, boulton-lewis, wilss, & lankshear, 2003). the daily work within schools is embedded in contexts, and novice teachers experience unexpected events and situations that occur daily in school life (lowery, 2002). this study asks experienced teachers to reflect back on their novice experiences, and describe the types of workrelated information that could help them perform their jobs and survive in their new schools. for the purposes of this study, work-related information means job-specific information that can help new teachers perform tasks (e.g., getting children to line up orderly in the hallways, restoring order after recess, interacting with parents). little is known about experienced teachers’ perceptions of work-related information that can benefit novice teachers. furthermore, little is known about how a school setting can help or hinder a novice teacher’s acquisition of work-related information. the purpose of this study is to provide practitioners and researchers insights regarding work-related information that can benefit novice teachers. these insights are gleaned from the recollections of experienced teachers who described work-related information from their years as novice teachers. the following question guided this study: what are the recollections of experienced k-6 teachers regarding their experiences with work-related information as novice teachers? c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 4 novice teachers and work-related information as a preliminary step of this study, attention was given to the term “novice teacher.” novice teachers, beginning teachers, neophytes, and pre-service teachers are depicted in many studies that focus on teachers who have difficulties dealing with their tasks at work. for the purposes of this study, the term novice teacher is defined as a teacher with less than five years of teaching experience. experienced teachers were asked to reflect on their daily activities and experiences in schools. because this study is about long-term processes that led to the achievement of current status, this study required experienced teachers to deeply reflect and search for insights. in this study, work-related information helps to form the task-based knowledge that teachers need to perform their jobs. task-based knowledge is defined as general work (basic tasks) that teachers perform as part of their daily routines, including both explicit tasks and implicit tasks. explicit tasks are those imposed by the rules within a school setting, and implicit tasks are those carried out autonomously. explicit tasks in school settings can be articulated by the school principal or in written policies and procedures. implicit tasks are typically more difficult for novice teachers to learn because they may be shrouded in ambiguities of the work setting and not easily shared by peer workers. in this study, experienced teachers explain circumstances that affected their interactions with work-related information when they were novice teachers. situating work-related learning of novice teachers in the context of schools one may argue that the learning by teachers within their school contexts is a neglected area of inquiry. researchers outside of the school context are typically not privy to the learning processes used by teachers in action. they cannot observe how teachers access and learn from work-related information. a few scholars have examined how teachers have evolved as learners n o v ic e t e a c h e r s 5 in their workplaces. mclaughlin (1993) views the school context as a professional learning community for teachers in terms of social and psychological growth. flores (2004) emphasizes that teachers develop sociologically and psychologically in schools and that schools can be professional learning communities in which teachers collaboratively learn from one another and develop their knowledge and skills. however, these claims are rarely highlighted in the literature, perhaps because of the unofficial and invisible phenomena that influence teacher learning in school contexts. schools are workplaces for teachers, but schools are also places of their informal learning. this informal learning begins when new teachers enter the building for the first time and begin to seek out work-related information that can help them perform their jobs. campbell, evans, neill, and packwood (1992) assert that minimal research has been conducted on the experiences of beginning teachers in schools. an often cited refrain of new teachers is that a gap exists between the relevance of their professional education and the demand of their work realities. as a result, both new and experienced teachers often access informal pathways to acquire work-related information that is relevant to their jobs. powell (1998) observes that an enormous amount of the teacher’s information and knowledge resides in their minds, and unfortunately, barriers within school settings can restrict teachers from sharing and learning from each other. experienced teachers tend to take for granted the work-related information that they have accessed and learned over time, and they may be unclear of its origin. the practical knowledge that they have formed from this information may not be readily transferable; it is different from the “official” knowledge that can be located in a textbook or a “how to” manual. teacher education pre-service programs are unable to supply all of the work-related information that novice teachers need to perform their work roles because much of this information is context c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 6 specific within the school setting. novice teachers may not encounter the need to seek out and learn from this type of information until they are immersed in their school situations. the experienced teachers of this study provide a glimpse of the topics and related types of information that affected their early years as novice teachers. experienced elementary teachers reflecting back on their novice years this study sought out the reflections of experienced k-6 teachers regarding their interactions with work-related information. teachers with at least five years of practical field experiences served as participants of this study. the use of the experienced teachers as the primary source of data in this study was based on assertions in the literature. according to beginning teacher developmental theories, the concerns of novice teachers are quite different from the concerns of experienced teachers. experienced teachers are more focused on long term professional tasks, whereas the concerns of novice teachers are driven more by emotion and their short term survival in the work context. these new teachers are swimming in a sensory overload with new co-workers, a new physical environment, and new students. survival is the metaphor that is often used to depict the new teacher experience. novice teachers typically struggle to sort through all of the new information they face early in their job tenure, and they can experience disconnects between their prior knowledge and the pressing problems of their work reality. pope, smith, goodwin, and mort (2003) provide logic for the use of experienced teachers in this current study: what happens when you are very junior, is that you don’t recognize abnormal because you are not used to normal, and experience teaches you what is normal, as much as what is abnormal. so you know when things aren’t going the way they should be. (p. 652) n o v ic e t e a c h e r s 7 taking these points into account, experienced teachers who had already worked through the confusing period of their early teaching years were selected to serve as the primary sources of data in this study. the reflective narratives of past experiences of these teachers are used for the reconstruction of their own developmental resources. conversely, as noted by eisenhart and borko (1991), novice teachers have few opportunities to be reflective in the workplace. several authors (colley, 2002; gidwitz & wish, 2001; herbert & ramsay, 2004; luekens, lyter, & fox, 2004) note that beginning teachers with less than five years experience have a high rate of turnover. from these studies, one can surmise that novice teachers face many challenges in their work context within their first five years. methods of the study this study was conducted in a north-central region of illinois, usa. in-depth interviews with 18 experienced teachers provided the main source of data in this case study. these experienced teachers taught in middle to upper-middle class schools. other sources of data were used to support the interview data and help to confirm the emergent themes. they included reflective journals, formal documents, observations, and field notes. two to three interview sessions were conducted with each study participant, and a consent form was signed by each study participant. the early segment of the initial interviews focused on general career information and the participants’ recollections of their entry into the teaching profession. the next segment of the interviews asked teachers to comment on their daily work tasks and their recollections regarding the routines or processes they utilized to gain work-related information that was relevant to their daily work tasks. in essence, experienced teachers were requested to reflect on their interactions with work-related information. prior to each interview, i made a rough outline of the interview sequence and prepared alternative questions in case there were c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 8 unexpected reactions from participants. after each interview, i recreated field notes concerning the interview, and later constructed a personal journal that highlighted my feelings, observations, dilemmas, or other information worthy of documenting. during the interview, i focused on active listening and maintaining a comfortable atmosphere that allowed the participants to narrate their experiences. the participants were asked to reflect on their early period of practical field experiences as novice teachers. chain sampling was used to include teachers who had more than five years of teaching experience. study participants were sought after approval of the study by the institutional review board (irb). table 1 illustrates the 18 participants’ basic information, and the pseudonyms of the participants. table 1 profile of participants name years of teaching experience grade level (current position) emily 6 years 3rd grade emma 18 years 5th madison 18 years 1st isabella 15 years 1st and 2nd (multi-age class) ava 18 years 1st abigail 35 years 6th olivia 10 years principal (after 10 years-teaching) hannah 30 years 5th sophia 15 years 2nd samantha 16 years 2nd elizabeth 9 years full-time graduate student ashley 20 years kindergarten mia 8 years 6th alexis 11 years 5th sarah 20 years 1st~5th (special ed. teacher) natalie 20 years 5th grace 24 years 5th chloe 15 years kindergarten n o v ic e t e a c h e r s 9 analysis of data all interviews were tape recorded after the participants’ permission was obtained. the recorded tapes were transcribed verbatim and the written data were later analyzed. i carefully listened to each interview tape and identified the dominant or recurring themes that were linked with other cases for triangulation. an appropriate software program (n-vivo) was used to conceptualize data coding. data analysis strategies included concept maps and themes and linkages within the frameworks that were suggested above. according to eraut (2000), workplace learning is a challenging topic of inquiry because of the difficult nature of drawing out the issues from the participants. therefore, multiple sources of data were gathered, and the analysis of data was thorough. data analysis was peer-reviewed by an experienced qualitative researcher, and member checks were used after the transcription of interviews to ensure that my interpretations were accurate. cross-checking with my observations, field notes, and my own personal reflections as an elementary school teacher also contributed to the triangulation of data. from these multiple sources of data, a thick description was built to provide a telling portrayal of the nature of this inquiry (yin, 1994). minimizing threats to trustworthiness rubin and rubin (1995) explain that different techniques are needed to provide credibility to qualitative inquiry compared to quantitative inquiry. an important issue with qualitative research pertains to consistency that is obtained with data collection tools (lindolf & taylor, 2002). consistency is established by examining whether emergent themes are in accord with themes in other data and cases (rubin & rubin, 1995). triangulation (source-methodresearcher agreement) is often sought in qualitative inquiry, and it can involve several strategies (e.g., member-checking, rich and thick description, self-reflection, presenting negative or c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 10 discrepant information, spending prolonged time, peer debriefing, and external auditor review) (creswell, 1994). in this study, select strategies were applied. first, themes were carefully categorized and compared to other contexts, and data from transcripts and other supplemental data were scrutinized. a compelling narrative was crafted to support the interpretations of the multiple data sources. the study considered and adapted several frameworks that have been previously applied by researchers. findings of the research were thoughtfully analyzed by asking contrasting questions. positionality of the researcher as an undergraduate student majoring in education, i believed that upon graduation i would be able to professionally perform workplace tasks without much difficulty. when i later encountered difficulty in handling many professional tasks in practice, i still believed that a graduate degree in education would provide the information i needed to survive in the workplace. with a master’s degree in education, i put myself into the role of elementary school teacher and i experienced considerable conflict between unexpected work realities and my base of knowledge related to teaching. i found that i was struggling to understand aspects of my job, and the information that i seemed to need was mysteriously embedded in the work context – difficult for me to access and sometimes challenging to interpret. i came to believe that novice teachers (such as myself), regardless of their educational backgrounds, seemed to suffer from similar problems that stemmed from the conflicting realities of their work and their expectations about teaching that were groomed in formal educational training. i wondered about the observable differences between experienced teachers and novice teachers; one group seemed to n o v ic e t e a c h e r s 11 succeed in practice, while the latter group struggled to cope on the job. with this sense of wonderment, i began this inquiry. school settings as sources of work-related information for novice teachers environmental characteristics of schools can be key factors that affect how novice teachers seek out information that is relevant to performing their jobs. novice teachers go through processes of observing cultural phenomena in their attempts to understand the knowwhy (cause-and-effect relationships) of incumbent teachers’ common behavioral patterns. school settings can be dominated by unwritten or implicit information that may be difficult to unearth and interpret. because novice teachers lack deep contextual knowledge, they tend to try to find sequential logic in the experienced teachers’ performance. as a result, novice teachers can experience confusion and frustration in their new work settings. socialization involves transferring values and norms of a certain group “through observation, imitation, and practice” (nonaka & takeuchi, 2004, p. 55). schoonmaker (2002) notes that socialization is a powerful process that influences the development of novice teachers. the socialization process is a natural way for novice teachers to acquire work-related information from their colleagues and other stakeholders (lortie, 1975/2002). lortie emphasizes that this process takes place through “doing-while-doing” (p. 60). the following sections provide excerpts from the data in which the study participants describe their interactions with workrelated information when they were novice teachers. the first section pertains to information relative to the various stakeholder relationships that novice teachers encounter. stakeholder relationships schools consist of multiple, close stakeholder relationships: principal (and other administrators), parents, community representatives, students, and teachers themselves. teachers c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 12 are the main decision makers within their own classrooms; however, the principal affects the whole school atmosphere at the school level. the parents do not actually work for the school but they can strongly affect the climate and culture of the school. the students are a core concern of teachers’ decisions in schools because teachers judge situational conditions based on students’ needs. isabella, who was working in a different profession and changed her career to teaching, points out this relationship. she states that teaching is dealing with parent-child-teacher triangles, a relationship that is different from what she encountered in the business world. the biggest difference is in most professions you are dealing solely with adults. when you're in the teaching profession, especially in middle school and down, you're dealing with children. so you're dealing with behaviors that wouldn't exist in the adult population. you're also dealing with the parent-child-teacher triangle which you don't have when you're in the business world. it's a very different type of situation. alexis describes job tasks and daily routines of the teaching profession as “juggling many plates.” she says that a main concern is striking a balance among these multiple stakeholder relationships. that’s experience to me gained by having different jobs, going out and just gaining work experience. oh, it’s complex….you’ve got administration, the principal, you’ve got other teachers, you’ve got parents, you’ve got the school board, and then you have the kids, which is why you are there....you are juggling many plates....so, a lot of balance. parents make up one group of the many stakeholders with which new teachers learn to interact. parents of children can influence the work routines of teachers and the school culture. they do not work for the school or spend a great deal of time at the school, but they exert considerable influence on the work of teachers. although students are considered to be the n o v ic e t e a c h e r s 13 teachers’ direct customers, parents play a strong role in the school. this issue triggers stress for novice teachers, especially during their initial interactions with parents. novice teachers seek out information from more experienced teachers so as to better navigate the tricky waters of parentteacher interactions. most participants recalled ‘how to deal with parents’ as a very challenging task for a novice teacher to learn. they were not prepared for or experienced in this task before they became professional teachers. ashley gives an example of how a parent can make her job difficult. that’s how it is here, that’s why some teachers don’t last because parents often come and say “i want to see how you gave my kid grades.” they confront teachers. they have high teacher turnover, that’s what you find in places like smithville and jonesville, and those areas. the parents go and actually try to get teachers fired. the previous paragraphs stress the importance of parents in schools, but the main stakeholders for teachers in schools are the students. in this study, the participants based their decision making on their students’ needs. even if the school or state policy mandates a certain direction, if the participants believed that it was counter to their students’ needs, then they would tend to neglect the rules to follow their real beliefs. hannah believes that finding students’ needs and filling their needs are teachers’ responsibilities. she explains how novice teachers come to understand these responsibilities over time. good teachers know what is useful, and what’s not. teachers know what’s good for kids because of the relationships. “why do they not understand?” the relationships that help new teachers survive and prove their craft are, “what’s going to help kids to learn?” school settings involve bureaucratic-style organizations because school districts have highly hierarchical structures and teachers are supposed to follow rules. however, the c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 14 participants reveal that they are independent rule decision makers; that is, teachers make independent judgments to serve their students’ needs. the participants note multiple stakeholder relationships, and they note that their practical tasks and work routines closely rely upon the principal, parents, and student stakeholders. some of these work routines and tasks are considered to be the most challenging tasks by the participants, and some require significant assistance from their mentors. however, the ultimate decision makers regarding their work tasks are the participants themselves in the moment, even though their interactions involve multiple stakeholders. given the ambiguities and complexities of their roles and their work environments, novice teachers seek out and interpret work-related information from their environments that can help them make sound judgments. in the next section, participants describe how the isolated nature of teaching affects their interactions with others. isolated environment school settings have been characterized as work settings of isolation and individualism (hargreaves, 1992; flores, 2004). however, teachers explore and discover pathways for finding work-related information that can help them with their daily routines and job tasks. for example, participants in this study explain that teachers in the same grade level are able to get together to share ideas, swap materials, and/or team-teach. isabella describes interactions among teachers at the same level, even though they teach in different schools. well there are always, i think, little factions in larger school settings like this. it was very different in the building where there were only five of us. there really weren't any factions to perceive, but i think whenever you have a larger staff, when you are dealing with like 30, 40 people on the staff, you have certain groups that you know do things socially together. n o v ic e t e a c h e r s 15 the degree to which teachers can interact is affected by many variables, such as the size of the school, its policies and procedures, and the school climate. in some cases, an isolated physical environment and the school climate can create barriers to information sharing both physically and emotionally among teachers. madison provides her viewpoints of these phenomena: i know teaching is such an isolated profession. when you get to school, you really don’t know what's going on next door. you make your own business, too. over the past, i had opportunities to team teach with other teachers where we really did get to see their styles and learn from it. sarah raises an internal problem that blocks the sharing of work-related information with her colleagues. according to her, even though it appears to be welcoming or friendly on the surface, the real culture of her school was not as it seemed. her colleagues were uncomfortable with sharing and exposing their spaces, so they closed the doors. probably, people in the building were friendly, and they seemed very welcoming, but they were not open. i never felt welcomed to go to them with problems and say “hey, i don’t know what to do about this.” the classrooms of the participants are basically self-contained. according to the participants, they mostly close their classroom doors, even after class. that is to say, the participants’ work environments are physically isolated. however, they point out they are isolated not only physically but also psychologically. they believe that their colleagues are more comfortable working alone in closed self-contained classrooms. in the next section participants recall how groups of influential teachers influenced interactions among teachers. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 16 “core group” kardos, johnson, peske, kauffman, & liu, (2001) describe two different school cultures that new teachers encounter: veteran-oriented and novice-oriented cultures. however, results of this study do not indicate novice-oriented cultures. most participants of this study described a core-group culture within their work settings. it was typically comprised of a senior group of influential teachers. aligned with the findings of this study, schoonmaker (2002) describes teacher cultures as “notorious centers of gossip about children, their families, [and teachers]” (p. 108). the participants of this study describe one of these hidden cultural components, a core group which can strongly influence the nature of the work setting, and thus, affect the sharing of work-related information among novice and experienced teachers. abigail explains that there has always been a core group that has been dominant regardless of the school during her entire teaching career (35 years). therefore, when teachers enter a school, the participants suggest digging into an important kind of work-related information -finding out who are the people they should get along with or who they should avoid. this kind of work-related information can be difficult for new teachers to distinguish and interpret. that seniority culture, oh you learn that fast. i learned by observing that it exists in every single school, every school and every workplace. there is a little core group of people who are in there… they are sort of go to people. i mean if you want to know the gossip, you go to them. if you want to know the latest scoop on anything, you go to them, but also you know that if you don't want to be gossiped about, you stay away from them. hannah supports the notion that this core group is developed by a seniority culture. teachers can stay at the same school for a long time, and the teachers who have senior status can n o v ic e t e a c h e r s 17 become a center group. considering the work-related information that can be transferred from person-to-person, the informants who provide the backdrop of this information automatically stand on higher ground than the receiver; hence a seniority culture emerges. novice teachers may easily fall prey to this culture because they are ignorant of the culture’s undercurrents. hannah emphasizes the importance of reading the culture and interpreting the hidden cultural information: i think to be a good teacher you have to read the culture. you have to read the other teachers and see what they are doing, see how they are behaving, see how they are fitting in so you know what to do and what not to do. i mean you just have to be a very good social observer. when i first went to that school, there was a certain table you never sat at, because that’s where the old ladies sat at, played cards and smoked cigarettes during lunch. this is a long time ago! they would give you the eye or they would like let you know non-verbally that you couldn’t sit there. according to the participants, the core group culture is commonly connected to political issues that exist in schools. based on the participants’ narratives, trust is a serious issue among teachers. novice teachers can struggle with interpreting who may be trusted within power circles of the school setting; therefore, novice teachers may struggle with interpreting some of the workrelated information and making judgments about the information’s utility for their work tasks and daily routines. the participants offer negative perceptions about the existence of core group cultures in schools. they believe that senior teachers dominate the atmosphere of a school, and novice teachers are required to implicitly read those hidden cultures. from these readings, novice teachers try to determine the usefulness and applicability of work-related information that they c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 18 glean from their interactions with these core groups. the participants warn that novice teachers should carefully assess the nature of core groups. on the one hand they can be a good source of useful work-related information, but on the other hand they can be sources of gossip or dissent. in the next section participants describe how the ages of select stakeholders of school settings can affect how novice teachers access work-related information. age culture the participants describe an age culture in schools that has a different meaning from seniority culture. the age culture can be revealed between teachers and parents, or among teachers themselves. the participants explain a tendency to get along with stakeholders within similar age groups. age seems to be relevant to the participants when they connect with others to share information in school or build personal relationships that are relevant to their jobs. hannah shares her experiences of how the age issue influenced personal relationships in the school. happy hour! there are a lot of happy hours on friday nights. there's a place that they go to, and one of the teachers had a swimming party to get together this summer. but these teachers are a lot younger than the ones that i was working with in blakeville. those were mostly older veteran teachers....i was a lot younger than most of them, and i got married during that first semester that i taught here. i had no children, so i didn't have that in common with any other teachers. i think it was just the age gap. olivia’s age affected how others perceived her teaching expertise. olivia’s beliefs were rejected in the school context because of her relatively young age. this age factor is not limited to interactions with teachers or administrators, according to olivia it also influences parents’ perceptions of the skills and abilities of novice teachers. n o v ic e t e a c h e r s 19 that was one of my biggest challenges, of course. when you are a first year teacher they don’t respect your opinions as much as if you are teaching for say ten years. then they assume that maybe you do know what you are talking about, so i think i ran into that as a first year teacher, too. i wasn’t always respected and believed by either administration or parents. i think that it takes a while to learn. another dynamic is you know when you are in your twenties and the parents are in their thirties, they tend to think that they know more than you do just because they are older, so as you get older that automatically changes. this preceding finding is aligned with the research of day, johnson, chen, wallace, and ricketts (2010). for example, they note that younger teachers are more likely to experience parental aggression than some of their teaching counterparts. synthesizing the participants’ narratives, the age level is very important for the novice teachers to select a group with which to share their time and work-related information. the participants recalled how they were most comfortable sharing time with similarly aged people. this age culture limits novice teachers from developing in their jobs because they limit their span of influence in regard to other teachers, principals, or parents. in the next section, participants describe their interpretations of mandatory volunteer work within the context of their schools. mandatory volunteering for work according to demarrais and lecompte (1999), schools are very special organizations that consist of a lot of unwritten job expectations that are not depicted by official job descriptions. connell (1985) also pinpoints this characteristic by describing teaching as a process of labor that does not have an object. for example, teachers are commonly expected to balance c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 20 heavy committee duties beyond their established workloads. committee work is a volunteer job, but the participants of this study were implicitly expected to volunteer as novice teachers regardless of their willingness. the participants view committee roles as a political or fitting-in strategy to visibly show they are filling the expectations held for novice teachers within the school. chloe did not know that several committee duties are included in the teaching profession before she graduated from college. chloe explains how she eventually took on committee work in her school. you don’t really know about this when you leave college. there is committee work that you are expected to participate in….the building committee and district committee and curriculum committee and school improvement plan....you are not forced to do it, but you are expected to do it, encouraged strongly (laugh) to go ahead and make sure that you are doing it. that’s a part of being a team member at the school. everybody has to take on some of those things. the participants volunteered for several committees as a means of fitting in, but they explain that they took on those tasks as an unwritten expectation of the school culture. they did not know this cultural component before they entered the schools, but they came to learn these expectations through the socialization processes. the participants used the contexts of the committees as useful and meaningful places to expand their insights about their schools; that is, they were able to access work-related information and learn things about their schools that were unattainable within their classrooms. n o v ic e t e a c h e r s 21 in the next section, participants explain the importance of novice teachers learning about additional types of informal work relationships that can affect their success with daily routines and performing their work tasks. get on the good side of support staff finally, participants explain an implicit type of work information that resides in the schools. the participants commonly emphasize one component that is not directly relevant to teaching but that significantly affects their daily routines and performance of their job tasks: good relationships with custodians and secretaries. on the surface, secretaries and custodians do not appear to be vital to a novice teacher’s success because they are not in decision making positions that directly influence the teachers’ jobs. as a result, novice teachers might easily overlook the significance of these relationships. however, the participants acquired this workrelated information either from family members who were teachers or other teachers who cared about their welfare. in other words, those who have worked in schools understand the importance of these relationships. for example, madison’s father (and educator) helped her become aware of this hidden cultural factor: my dad said to me when i became a teacher, “you know, madison, i want to tell you who the most important people in the school are: the custodian and the secretary. (laughing) they run the school, and really, they are part of the family at our school, they really are.” ashley specifically explains how custodians or secretaries can affect teachers in the school. she also gives some tips of how to be conscious about these factors in school life. your contact is always the secretary, so you need to know secretaries' day or you always need to take care of your secretary because the secretary is the one who decides if you get c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 22 messages or you don’t get messages. if you need something, they are the ones who know where it is. you have to be conscious of the janitor. if you do not clean your room or something happened to your classroom, they may take the time to come to see you, or if you need something to be fixed, they are going to take the time. so you need to cover your context and make sure that you get them cards for christmas or whatever. just be conscious of them because they are not teachers but they are very important as far as your success. the participants are conscious of this hidden cultural component that makes their tasks easier or helps them become successful teachers. they have specific strategies on how to deal with this work-related information, and they agree on its importance for novice teachers. the preceding sections highlighted the predominant themes that emerged from the data. although school environments may vary from school to school and district to district, based on the participants’ narratives, these common thematic findings are representative of the types of work-related information embedded in school contexts. from these contexts the participants depict types of work-related information from which they learned as novice teachers. in summary, a school consists of multiple stakeholder relationships, and teachers’ workplaces are isolated not only physically but also psychologically. a “core group” can significantly influence the overall atmosphere of a school, and an age culture can also exist in the school. the participants describe the importance of mandatory volunteer work. and finally, they note the importance of establishing good relationships with school staff members. for these participants, accessing and learning from these types of work-related information occurred over time and through different channels. n o v ic e t e a c h e r s 23 discussion, concluding thoughts, and suggestions for future research the participants of this study believe that teaching is a lengthy and endless learning process. they believe that their established routines and work tasks are affected by multiple factors, and broad capabilities are needed to successfully carry out these tasks. the participants of this study explain that developing an understanding of the school setting helped them to seek out work-related information and to learn from it, and nuances of the school culture can facilitate or obstruct information sharing among teachers. school settings are characterized by a number of features that coexist, such as being comparing and competitive, autonomous and hierarchical, individualistic and collaborative, silent and interactive. as flores (2004) notes, school environments are commonly very paradoxical, and no two of them are exactly alike. therefore, the approaches for accessing workrelated information and learning from it will probably vary from one school to the next. an important finding of this study is that teachers’ contexts are dominated by unwritten or implicit information. therefore, novice teachers who tend to look only at the surface can become frustrated trying to figure out why things are done the way they are done in a school. because novice teachers may not understand the backdrop of this information and are unable to interpret it, they try to seek logic in experienced teachers’ performance. however, confusion can set in for them as they become immersed in a school culture that they may not understand. schools can be heavily influenced by bureaucratic organizational structure; however, several of the participants of this study emerged as rule-independent decision makers for which their bottom-line criteria were their students’ needs. in this study, unlike what flores (2004) describes, the participants demonstrated that unless they had common beliefs or philosophy, collaboration and commitment to each other was not likely to occur. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 24 this study provides school-based contexts from which experienced teachers reflected on work-related information, some barriers and pathways for accessing it, and personal learning that was connected to it. the narratives of these teachers provide insights regarding the types of work-related information that can help novice teachers succeed in their entry to the profession. this study relied on the abilities of experienced teachers to accurately recall their time as novice teachers. however, confidence in the accuracy of their recollections is based in the premise that teaching is a reflective practice. additional studies could be conducted that are based on the reflections of novice teachers who are engaged in acquiring work-related information. studies could be conducted on the learning-in-action that is based on recently accessed work-related information. comparative studies can be conducted that examine the barriers and catalysts to information sharing among novice teachers and experienced teachers across disciplines and other boundaries that exist within school systems. a limitation of this study is that its participants taught at middle to upper-middle class schools. findings may have been considerably different, for example, if participants had been socialized as novice teachers in urban schools in poor neighborhoods. therefore, additional studies are recommended that can broaden this line of inquiry to other types of school settings. finally, additional research is encouraged that can provide new conceptual frameworks for examining work-related information. research is needed that can be easily interpreted by novice teachers who are trying to access work-related information and learn from it. the high attrition rate of novice teachers is a well known problem in the profession. additional research is needed that can help novice teachers read cues in their work settings and survive their early professional struggles. n o v ic e t e a c h e r s 25 references campbell, r., j., evans, l., neill, s. r. s. j., & packwood, a. (1992). the changing work of infant teachers: some issues. british journal studies, 40(2), 149-162. colley, a. c. (2002). what can principals do about new teacher attrition? principal teaching the teachers, 81(4), 22-24. connell, r. w. (1985). teachers' work. north sydney, australia: george allen & unwin. creswell, j. w. (1994). research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (2nd ed.). thousand oaks: sage publications. demarrais, k. b., & lecompte, m. d. (1999). the way schools work: sociological analysis of education. new york: addison wesley longman. eisenhart, m. a., & borko, h. (1991). in search of an interdisciplinary collaborative design for studying teacher education. teaching and teacher education, 7(2), 137-148. eraut, m. (2000). non-formal learning and tacit knowledge in professional work. british journal of educational psychology, 70, 113-136. flores, m. a. 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(1998). learning from collaboration: knowledge and networks in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. california management review, 40(3), 228240. rubin, h. j., & rubin, i. s. (1995). qualitative interviewing: the art of hearing data. thousand oaks: sage publications. schoonmaker, f. (2002). "growing up" teaching: from personal knowledge to professional practice. new york: teachers college press. yin, r. (1994). case study research: design and methods (2nd ed.). beverly hills, ca: sage publishing. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 28 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt cie template volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x web-based call to listening comprehension li-mei chen valdosta state university ruiming zhang guangzhou university citation chen, l. & zhang, r. (2011). web-based call to listening comprehension. current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this paper reports on a study which investigated the effectiveness of web-based computer assisted language learning (call) on tertiary students’ listening comprehension. both students’ academic performance and attitudes were examined at the end of the web-based call. while t tests were used to analyze the results of students’ academic performance, descriptive statistics interpreted students’ attitudes toward this learning. although there was no significant difference between the students employing the web-based call and the students using the traditional method, the students responded to the web-based call positively, and the lower-level students, compared to their higher-level peers, were more motivated to practice listening comprehension under the web-based call environment. this paper ends with discussions of potential issues that need to be taken into account and recommendations for future implementation and studies. keywords: listening, call, web-based current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 about the author(s) author: li-mei chen affiliation: valdosta state university address: 1500 north patterson street, valdosta, ga 31698 email: lchen@valdosta.edu biographical information: li-mei chen received her phd from ohio state university. she is an associate professor of linguistics. she has published articles on technology and language teaching, teacher education for esl and efl, and testing effects on language education. author: ruiming zhang affiliation: guangzhou university biographical information: ruiming zhang is an instructor of english. his research efforts focus on language acquisition, computer-assisted language teaching, and applied linguistics. web-based call to listening comprehension 3 web-based call to listening comprehension traditional tertiary english education in china placed an emphasis on reading. the ultimate goal was to cultivate students’ abilities in reading and translating materials written in english. most college teachers implemented the grammar translation teaching method in the classroom to meet the expectations of national college english teaching syllabus. as china strengthens its economic development and accelerates its steps into the world, the function of english education is shifting from linguistic competence to communicative competence. more employers, especially those in joint-venture businesses, consider communicative competence in english as a crucial factor in hiring (huang & xu, 1999). the national syllabus for tertiary english teaching was under serious criticism for not preparing college students with an adequate level of communicative competence to meet the actual needs. the ministry of education, thus, undertook the revision of the old syllabus. the revised syllabus emphasizing communicative competence also stipulated the national standardized college english tests (cet) as a means to evaluate college students’ english levels. college students are required to pass cet level 4 (cet4) before graduation. despite many years of effort, most college english learners in china are still not able to use the language to communicate. according to zhao’s (2004) analysis, insufficient input, lack of practice, ineffective feedback, and lack of motivation are four major challenges faced by english learners in china. however, traditional face-to-face, teacher-led instruction fails to respond to these challenges. faced with the disappointing outcomes, china has launched a reform of the traditional mode in english education at all levels. one of its major efforts in the reform is to maximize modern technology in english education because it is believed that the advancement of information and communication technology should make it possible to devise a current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 language environment that delivers high-quality language education (zhao, 2004). the technology-integrated approach is also expected to remove two major teaching barriers, poor resources and lack of teaching professionals, in teaching college english listening and speaking. theoretically, web-based call seems a suitable environment for tertiary students in china to improve listening skills; its effect, however, remains unclear. in spite that many studies have reported positive effects of web-based call on language learning, successful models from one context may not produce a desirable result in another context. thus, this study was designed to investigate effects of web-based call on language learning with a focus on english listening to understand how web-based call facilitates tertiary students’ listening comprehension in the context of china and what the students’ attitudes are toward this learning. the results of this study should also provide more insight into the nature of web-based call to language learning. theoretical background web-based call computers have been used in language learning since 1960s. since its first introduction, computer-assisted language learning or simply call has involved through three major phrases: structural call (1970’s-1980’s), communicative call (1980’s-1990’s) and integrative call (21 st century). each phrase corresponds to the main language acquisition theories and advancement of computer technology. the present phrase of call, integrative call, has been made possible by the development of powerful pcs that support rapid use of the internet, lans, multimedia, and linked resources known as hypermedia (lee, 2007). a significant feature of integrative call is a shift from language-learning software and cd-roms to web-based activities that allow learners flexible, self-paced access to information (fotos & browne, 2004). web-based call to listening comprehension 5 the powerful web offers a range of new opportunities for learners to develop their language proficiency. the use of multimedia, such as sound, pictures, and video, in addition to text, facilitates language learning (al-seghayer, 2005). not only does the web make it possible for easy access to an assortment of language experience, but it also allows repeated practice with a variety of authentic materials that can supplement and transcend what students receive in class or in their local communities (hubbard, kessler, & madden, 2004). the web-based practice tools also create different learning and assessment contexts, and produce flexible approaches to instruction and evaluation (lee, 2007). such flexible approaches allow learners to receive timely feedback for their improvement and adjustment. moreover, web-based call can be a great means for achieving independent learning and better learning results in the long run because through computer technology learners can 1) access huge amounts of relevant information, 2) explore and browse through different choices, 3) expose themselves both to linguistic input and socio-cultural knowledge, and 4) eventually make their own evaluations and suggestions regarding what works for them, what can be improved and how (sheerin, 1997; sturdridge, 1997). this, in turn, increases learners’ engagement, willingness, motivation as well as autonomy (rowsell & libben, 1994). due to its wide use, effects of call and web technology on second and foreign language education have been concerned and studied. numerous researchers and practitioners (e.g., warschauer & healey, 1998; watts & lloyd, 2001; chang & lehman, 2002; cobb, 2002; bang & cantos, 2004; murray & mcpherson, 2004; breen, 2005; son, 2007) have asserted that the integration of call and web technology is beneficial in the area of second and foreign language acquisition. technology and listening comprehension current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 listening has long been labeled as the major and fundamental skill in language acquisition. not only is it a key language and communication skill in its own right, but it also provides a channel through which new language can be received and become intake (brett, 1997). the features that computer and web technology possess, in terms of their flexibility and variety of content, approach and media, provide a solid basis and platform for acquiring english listening because the integration of web-based call enables students’ learning of listening not to be restricted by time, space, content, and environment; large number of students can have access to the web-based listening learning opportunities. it allows students to practice listening in a simulated and concrete learning environment. also, web-based call promotes learning interests as the web allows students to search for the relevant information instead of being restricted in a pre-designed course model (wijekumar, 2005). a number of research studies have proved that with the utilization of computer and web technology, listening comprehension can be taught much more efficiently and effectively. for example, a research study conducted by brett (1997) to investigate the effectiveness of computer-based multimedia applications for developing listening skills shows that multimedia enhance listening comprehension greatly. in a similar study, klassen and milton (1999) demonstrate that call can be an efficient medium whereby learners can improve their listening skills significantly. smidt and hegelheimer (2004), in a study of examining how web-based video assists listening comprehension, conclude that online academic lectures supported by multimedia increase listening comprehension. corresponding to smidt and hegelheimer’s findings, zhou and yang (2004), in their study of the effects of visual aid on efl listening comprehension, support the use of multimedia in enhancing listening comprehension. they also point out that viewing-assisted functions are especially helpful to learners with low-level english web-based call to listening comprehension 7 competence. wong (2006), in her study of evaluating a web-based listening program for chinese university non-english majors, indicates that the web-based instruction, when integrated appropriately, can add a valuable dimension to face-to-face teaching. she further points out that the web-based listening program is suitable for self-access, which fully incorporates significant factors (e.g., learner differences and modified interaction) in second language acquisition into its task design. learner attitudes learner attitudes toward call play a crucial role influencing effectiveness of call to language acquisition. smith (2000), in a study examining students’ response to call as a language learning approach, concludes that students’ positive response to call helps them benefit more from technology in language learning. aacken (1999) as well as lasagabaster and sierra (2003), in their studies, report a positive relationship between student attitudes to call and effective language learning. likewise, many other studies (see klassen & milton, 1999; ayres, 2002; greenfield, 2003) also confirm the relationship between students’ reaction to call and language learning results. even though most studies prove that students have a general positive attitude toward call, a few studies question the effectiveness of call integration into language learning due to negative learner attitudes toward call. as bloom (1985) indicates, students’ resistance to the use of call into language learning is related to their anxiety or computer phobia. susses (1998) also points out that students, especially those of lower proficiency, may not have developed the navigational skills needed to find what they want or the skills for how to exploit the material. thus, they may feel call is an “unwanted” change. because engaging in call current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 requires time and commitment particularly during the transitional stage, some learners may not accept it. as learners potentially contribute to the development of the language tools, a number of researchers (e.g., hulstijn, 2000; lynch, 2000; lasagabaster & sierra, 2003) recommend taking students’ opinions into consideration when evaluating call in language learning. thus, this study also aims to identify the relationship between learner attitudes toward web-based call when examining the effectiveness of web-based call on students’ listening comprehension. methods all the first year non-english majors (n = 556) from school of humanities and school of education, who were taking college english as required courses at guangzhou university in 2005, were asked to participate in this study. they were randomly assigned to two groups. the experimental group contained 296 students and the control group consisted of 260 students. to ensure that the two groups had the same level of listening competence, both groups took the traditional english classes in the first term (about 4.5 months) in which the students learned the text first (e.g., main point, vocabulary, and structure of sentences) and listened to the text read by a native speaker of english on a tape recorder. in the end of the term, listening scores in the university’s standardized english test from both groups were analyzed by using spss, and the results are as follows. according to table 1, both the means (10.68 vs. 10.88) and standard deviations (2.46 vs. 2.51) of the two groups are very close. from the two-tailed t-test, the p-value (0.35) is greater than 0.01, which indicates no significant difference between the two groups in their first-term final english test scores in listening. in other words, the listening levels between the two groups before the experiment appeared to be the same. web-based call to listening comprehension 9 table 1: comparison of all students’ first-term final english test scores in listening between the experimental group and the control group first term (before the experiment) group n mean std. deviation t p-value df control 260 10.68 2.46 0.93 0.35 554 experimental 296 10.88 2.51 p>0.01, t-test not significant (two-tailed) students with lower listening abilities were also compared. these students were identified based on their first-term final english test scores in listening. the bottom 30% of the students whose scores in the listening test were below average was drawn. we compared the listening score differences between the students in the experimental group and those in the control group; table 2 shows the results. the means (7.89 vs. 8.13) and standard deviations (1.29 vs. 1.53) of the two groups are close to each other; and the p-value (0.26) from the two-tailed ttest is greater than 0.01 and thus is not statistically significant. all of these indicate that the listening abilities in the two groups had no difference before the experiment. table 2: comparison of lower-level students’ first-term final english test scores in listening between the experimental group and the control group first term (before the experiment) group n mean std. deviation t p-value df control 79 7.89 1.29 1.12 0.26 168 experimental 91 8.13 1.53 p>0.01, t-test not significant (two-tailed) our study started at the second term, which, like the first term, took another 4.5 months. in this term, students in the control group continued the traditional classes. as to the experimental group, listening was not taught in class, but the students were required to use a web-based computer-assisted listening system to practice their listening comprehension during current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 the term. while students were free to arrange their time, the web connection was a must; otherwise, they could not log into the system. information including the frequency of log-ins, numbers of students on line, the study time each student spent on the web-based call, number of activities each student completed, and students’ test scores was recorded and transmitted to the server. teacher interventions were provided whenever necessary. after the second term, both groups took the university’s standardized english test. their performance in listening was compared by using the t-tests. the experimental group was also asked to complete a questionnaire which surveyed their approval of the web-based call to listening comprehension. the results were analyzed by using descriptive statistics. in order to facilitate our investigation, we formulated the following research questions: 1) does the experimental group perform better than the control group? 2) do the lower-level students in the experimental group outperform those in the control group? 3) how do students respond to the web-based call? we adopted a learning system, the new era interactive english, developed by tsinghua university press and approved by the ministry of education. this system, designed to reflect the challenges of english learning for non-english majors in china, contains four main components that are closely integrated with each other. the online learning material, through authentic videos, flexible control mechanisms, advanced speech recognition technology and automatic feedback mechanisms, provides students with individualized and flexible access to authentic language and cultural materials and practice opportunities with instant feedback. the audio cds offer students extended access to authentic language and cultural materials. the companion book provides students with the opportunity to study language and cultural materials in more depth. web-based call to listening comprehension 11 the learning system also includes links to a variety of media-based materials, e.g., english movies, sound files, etc., to provide students extensive access (zhao, 2004). the actual learning material was installed on a local computer but had to be accessed though the web so that the students’ learning process and performance could be transmitted to the server. the administrator assigned a login name and password to every student, so he/she could log into the learning platform. the learning material, with about 13 theme-specific units in each level, fairly matched the students’ linguistic competence by categorizing listening into six levels. within a unit, the students could do the study and practice as many times as they wanted as long as they did not submit their study report and go to the next unit. in the end of each unit, there was a test to assess students’ learning. if a student failed to reach a score of 70 out of 100, he/she had to repeat the same unit. after three units, a review test followed. when the students finished all units at a level, there was a final test to assess their overall learning. we used the following ways for the teachers and students to interact with each other. while the students worked on the listening course on their own, the teacher, via the web, could learn of each student’s learning progress and performance and communicate with the student (see figure 1). the teacher could also schedule classroom meetings to provide academic reporting and, if desired, guidance to the students to help them make the best use of their time. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 figure 1: main components of the web-based call results question 1: does the experimental group perform better than the control group? the students’ academic performance results after employing the web-based call are shown in table 3. the experimental group has a lower standard deviation (1.86) than the control group (2.44). this indicates the experimental group has a more homogeneous dispersion of the scores than the control group. that is to say most of the students’ scores in the experimental group, while not identical, are more similar. in contrast, a wider dispersion or greater heterogeneity in the listening ability exists in the control group. although this is a pleasing finding, the p-value (0.15) from the t-test is greater than 0.01 and is not significant. this means the experimental group did not perform better than the control group. table 3: comparison of all students’ second-term final english test scores in listening between the experimental group and the control group web-based call to listening comprehension 13 second term (after the experiment) group n mean std. deviation t p-value df control 257 13.96 2.44 1.45 0.15 548 experimental 293 14.22 1.86 p>0.01, t-test not significant (one-tailed) question 2: do the lower-level students in the experimental group outperform those in the control group? the results of the comparison of the students with lower english competence are shown in table 4. the t-test (p-value 0.06 > 0.01) is not statistically significant, meaning the experimental group did not demonstrate higher listening comprehension than the control group after the web-based call. table 4: comparison of lower-level students’ second-term final english test scores in listening between the experimental group and the control group second term (after the experiment) group n mean std. deviation t p-value df control 76 13.16 2.95 1.88 0.06 165 experimental 91 13.87 1.87 p>0.01, t-test not significant (one-tailed) question 3: how do students respond to the web-based call? according to the survey results, 83% of the students were in favor of the web-based call; 79% of the students indicated that compared to the traditional learning, the web-based call made their learning more autonomous; 83% of the students revealed that the web-based call was more interesting than the traditional learning. the students commented on strengths of the web-based call as self-paced learning, flexibility, easy access to information, instant feedback on their performance, and ability to work on their own. however, some students had current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 concerns of their comfort and confidence levels in utilizing the web and computers, accessibility of computers and the network, and issues of teacher facilitation and support. according to the participation information recorded under the server, students in general participated in the web-based call regularly and actively. however, the participation rate started to decline when cet4 was approaching. participation of the students after their pass of cet4 dropped dramatically; more than half of them did not participate in the rest of the webbased call after they passed cet4. compared to their higher-level peers, the lower-level students logged into the learning platform more frequently, spent more time on the learning activities, and completed more unit tasks. discussion and recommendations this study examined the effectiveness of the web-based call on listening comprehension and learner attitudes toward this learning. in contrast to the literature, the study did not show that the web-based call improved listening comprehension. nevertheless, the students generally responded to the web-based call learning positively. the results of this study reveals that integration of web-based call is quite context dependent. although it has been commonly reported that call is effective to language learning, a successful model from one context cannot be imported into another context without modifications. based on this, we recommend further studies investigating factors influencing the implementation of web-based call, e.g., cet4, should be conducted to help understand how to implement the web-based call into the context of china. although the lower-level students employing the web-based call did not demonstrate higher listening comprehension than those using the traditional method, our record from the server shows that the lower-level students, compared to their higher-level peers, spent more time web-based call to listening comprehension 15 practicing listening and completed more unit activities under the web-based call environment. this is a pleasing finding because in class the lower-level students are usually less motivated to practice listening. when they are less motivated to learn, it is hard to improve their listening skills. this study reveals that if given a proper opportunity, lower-level students can be selfdisciplined and motivated to improve their listening skills. because it generally takes more time to see lower-level students’ progress than higher-level students’, a longitudinal study is encouraged to understand effects of the web-based call on lower-level students’ listening comprehension over longer-term scales. overall, the students responded to the web-based call positively. over 80% of the students were in favor of the web-based call. they viewed the web as a helpful tool and the call as a useful way for acquiring listening. about 80% of the students reported the call made their learning more autonomous. the students listed the best features of the web-based call as self-paced learning, flexibility, easy access to information, instant feedback on their performance, and ability to work on their own. as the self-paced learning allows the student to control the pace of their learning process, each student has the same level of participation in the learning process. in addition, the web-based call offers instant feedback on the students’ performance and exercise errors so that they are able to understand their weaknesses and make necessary adjustments. while the call program can be seen to constitute the first step to promoting the students’ autonomy in acquiring listening, the web further fosters the students’ autonomous learning. via the web, the students can access their learning at any time and complete their activities at their own pace. the flexibility allows them to set their learning goals, arrange their time, and assess their learning. in this way, the students can monitor their own learning and work on their own. this result, corresponding to many other findings (e.g., rowsell current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 & libben, 1994; hayati, 2005; pala, 2005; wong, 2006), shows that students when using computer technology become motivated and interested in improving their listening comprehension. this, in turn, promotes learner autonomy. however, about one-fifth of the students disliked their web-based call experience. some of them were not satisfied with the availability of computers and connectivity of the network. inaccessibility, poor performance, and slow speed impede the success of the webbased call. for this, we strongly recommend the institution to make necessary arrangements and financial investments in the computer labs (e.g., coordinating with different departments and units to open their computer labs or otherwise establishing more pubic computer labs for the students) and in upgrading all the remaining hubs with newer, faster network technology. in addition, some students expressed their lack of comfort and confidence in using the web and computer technology. such a problem particularly occurred to frustrate the students from remote, less-developed areas. these students had less access to the web and computer technology and thus lacked necessary computer skills for task completion. this finding emphasizes the importance of taking students’ computer skills into consideration before the web-based call is implemented. we recommend the institution assess students’ computer skills, offer necessary training and instructions to help students obtain essential computer skills, and provide students with adequate onsite and online technology supports. the other finding also supports that the teacher role as a facilitator is an important variable in the success of the web-based call (stepp-greany, 2002). in this web-based call, like any call activity at any level of proficiency, for a variety of cultural or psychological reasons, some students had a more passive learning attitude than the others. although the learning environment offered ways for the teacher to provide input web-based call to listening comprehension 17 to the students during their learning process, some students still felt they needed more physical teacher facilitation and support (e.g., in developing their learning strategies and in navigating the web). this reflects jones’ (2001) argument when he examines call and teachers’ responsibilities. according to jones, the web is an immensely seductive resource for efl learners. while it offers genuine opportunities for self-directed learning, the sheer wealth of material places more responsibility on the teacher. all of these reveal that the teachers’ role in the web-based call environment cannot be minimized. teachers need to be called on to provide assistance in training students in adopting effective independent learning strategies and in the use of the web for learning. in addition, we recommend teachers add one-on-one conferences with individual students in the early stages of the web-based call and whenever necessary to better understand individual learners’ special needs. conclusion the study does not correspond to the recent research that proves the use of web-based call facilitates students’ acquisition of english listening. this finding explains that the relationship between web-based call and listening comprehension is complex. successful models from one context cannot be imported into another context without modifications. nevertheless, this study shows that lower-level students are more motivated to practice their listening skills under the web-based call environment and learners have positive attitudes to the web-based call. despite these two pleasing findings, this study also reveals a variety of issues, including accessibility of technology, students’ comfort level to technology, the role and responsibilities of teachers, and the institution’s support, which may occur to impede the effectiveness of the web-based call. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 the findings of the study should serve as a basis for additional research that will examine more closely the effects of web-based call on listening comprehension. since the results may be context dependent, further studies in different esl and efl contexts are encouraged to better understand the influence of computer and web technology on listening comprehension. we also recommend longitudinal studies investigating effects of web-based call on lower-level students to understand how web-based call really affects lower-level students’ listening comprehension over longer-term scales. since learner engagement serves as an important indicator for how web-based call functions, we encourage additional studies to examine factors affecting learner engagement or motivation under the web-based call environment. web-based call to listening comprehension 19 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 references aacken, van s. 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(2004). the effects of visual aid on efl listening comprehension. journal of pla university of foreign languages, 27(3), 58-62. http://www.gse.uci.edu/person/markw/overview.html http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=26 http://www1.open.edu/cn/elt/5/22/htm web-based call to listening comprehension 23 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic: faculty and administrator experiences current issues in education, vol 22 no. 3 1 volume 22, issue 3 december 8, 2021 issn 1099-839x institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic: faculty and administrator experiences narketta sparkman-key old dominion university tammi f. dice old dominion university alexandra c. gantt old dominion university abstract: the onset of the covid-19 pandemic required shifts in operations for institutions of higher education everywhere. faculty and administrators were asked to adapt to meet the needs of students. we conducted a qualitative content analysis to understand institutional responses and examine the experiences of faculty and administrators during the covid-19 pandemic through the lens of chaos theory. institutional responses to the pandemic varied. participants identified supports and resources deemed helpful, as well as those found to be inadequate or unwanted. we also found that the pandemic resulted in some positive outcomes for faculty and administrators, which led to growth in teaching and self-care. implications for strategic planning and future directions for research are explored. keywords: covid-19, disaster preparation, higher education, institutional response, faculty support citation: sparkman-key, n., dice, t.f., & gantt, a.c. (2021). institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic: faculty and administrator experiences. current issues in education, 22(3). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1993 accepted: october/9/2021 institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic: faculty and administrator experiences to date, over 756,962 covid-19-related deaths have been reported in the united states (centers for disease control and prevention [cdc], 2021). amidst the tragedies and unknowns of the pandemic, university faculty, students, and administrators experienced major transitions in both their personal and professional lives as institutions of higher education across the country https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1993 sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 2 transitioned to remote learning environments to reduce the spread of the virus. such transitions, coupled with personal and collective traumas and stressors, warrant exploration of impact, both professionally and emotionally. holmes and colleagues (2020) called for exploration of related mental health effects and potential mitigation on the general population, while other researchers have specifically called for exploration of the impact of education’s transition from residential to remote learning on university faculty (watermeyer et al., 2020). with awareness of the multiple stressors facing university faculty and the pressing need for faculty support, we conducted a qualitative content analysis and engaged chaos theory to better understand faculty experiences and needs in response to the covid-19 pandemic. the effects of covid-19 the novel coronavirus disease 2019, or covid-19, was recognized by the world health organization (who) in december of 2019 and is associated with a variety of physical and mental health outcomes at both individual and community levels (fauci et al., 2020; von braun et al., 2020; who, 2020). impacts of the pandemic have disproportionately affected marginalized populations (von braun et al., 2020) and brought attention to the need for preventative work regarding infectious disease outbreak (fauci et al., 2020). americans have also experienced various challenges related to job loss and economic insecurity due to the pandemic. for example, according to a study by parker et al. (2020), 25% of adults have reported having trouble paying their bills since the covid-19 outbreak, 17% have sought food from a food bank, and 50% of individuals who lost their jobs because of the pandemic remain unemployed. mental health outcomes appear similarly troubling. pfefferbaum and north (2020) highlighted some possible mental health impacts of the pandemic, including: insecurity, feelings of isolation, emotional distress, increased substance use/abuse, insomnia, and fear. pfefferbaum and north also noted how negative mental health outcomes may disproportionately affect individuals from certain groups, such as the elderly, and called for “...already stretched health care providers...to [monitor the] psychosocial needs” of their patients (para. 11). others have also emphasized the critical need for future research to examine the mental health implications of the pandemic (roy et al., 2020; torales et al., 2020). covid-19 and higher education considering the wide-ranging implications of the covid-19 pandemic, it is plausible to consider potential impacts on higher education, specifically on university faculty and administrators. such impacts would be far-reaching, given the 4,234 higher education institutions and over 25 million college students in the united states (entangled solutions, 2020). watermeyer et al. (2020) engaged a sample of over 1,000 university faculty in the united kingdom to explore their thoughts and feelings regarding the transition from residential to online learning due to the pandemic. participants reported negative outcomes, including distrust of remote learning, and the researchers noted: “online migration is engendering significant dysfunctionality and disturbance to [university faculty’s] roles and their personal lives'' (p. 1). other challenges to faculty members during the pandemic are related to work-life balance and changes in job responsibilities (watermeyer et al., 2020). moreover, researchers have found disproportionate effects of the pandemic regarding gender, with female faculty members experiencing decreased research productivity compared to males (cui et al., 2020). media outlets have also begun to explore the impact of covid-19 on academia, suggesting chronic faculty sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 3 stress, perceptions of work as more difficult, and even experiences of secondary trauma (flaherty, 2020). thus, in the present qualitative study, we engaged chaos theory to increase understanding of the needs of faculty in higher education in response to the covid-19 pandemic and sought to answer the following research questions: (1) what accommodations have been implemented by universities for university faculty and academic administrators to adapt to the covid-19 pandemic? and (2) how have faculty and academic administrators responded to the changes stemming from the covid-19 pandemic? theoretical framework relative to the field of psychology, chaos theory is defined by ayers (1997) as “a systems approach which looks at process and not a static state, examining the change or movement of systems” (p. 374). chaos theory maintains that systems are deeply complex, interconnected, nonlinear, and affected even by small changes (chamberlain & butz, 2016). additionally, chamberlain and butz (2016) described movement away from equilibrium within a system as an increase in chaos, possibly including increased opportunity for reorganization, new choices, and general change. the theory has been used in framing the impact of pandemics (chamberlain & butz, 2016) and in understanding higher education leadership, planning, and policy (swenk, 2001). moreover, chaos theory does not refer to total randomness or pandemonium as some may assume by the title; rather, the theory is concerned with varying behavior, meaning one cannot predict what will exactly happen in the future (swenk, 2001). the theory describes a system as being influenced by internal feedback (swenk, 2001). feedback loops within an institution modify the system and predictability is only possible in short time frames. constant change, unpredictability, instability, and disequilibrium are expectations for a system (swenk, 2001). in higher education, chaos theory has been applied to strategic planning within this complex system (cutright, 2001). relative to the current covid-19 pandemic, chaos theory “implies that a small change of one parameter (e.g., length of lockdowns) might create a very different outcome on many variables; thus, various aspects that interact with each other have to be taken into account” (zenker & kock, 2020, p. 2). zenker and kock (2020) called for future researchers to explore the impacts of related chaos on complex system outcomes during the covid-19 pandemic. inside higher ed (2020) partnered with gallup to examine the financial impact of the pandemic on higher education institutions. many institutions immediately lost sources of revenue (e.g., campus housing and sports) while concurrently assuming increased expenses to meet technology demands of both students and staff with the migration to remote work and online learning (anderson and alonso, 2020). through a survey of university presidents, researchers found that 70% of participants felt that their institution needed to make fundamental changes to its business model, programming, and other operations (inside higher education, 2020). the pandemic has seemingly produced fears for the future and effective strategic planning could help institutions reduce those fears. strategic planning is an “attempt to systematize the processes that enable an organization to achieve goals and objectives'' (crittenden, 2000 as cited in goldman and salem, 2015). academic institutions engage in strategic planning in a variety of ways. hinton (2012) suggests that the mission of the institution be the foundation of higher education strategic planning. the supporting components of the strategic plan are the values, institutional goals, and vision. the plan itself includes operational goals, objectives, and an implementation plan. according to sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 4 goldman and salem (2015), the general structure of strategic planning is like a pyramid. at the very top is the university vision, followed by the university mission, and then specific goals, objectives, and key performance indicators. the environment, both inside of the institution and external to the institution, informs each level of the pyramid because the environment can impact the strategic planning process and the goals initiated within the plan. institutions often do an analysis of the environment prior to beginning the planning process (alexander & alonso, 2020). some universities begin by appointing a strategic planning committee which assumes the role of initiating the strategic planning process. however, this can vary by institution. capturing the voice of key stakeholders is an important aspect of planning and this is typically done through focus groups (nutefall, 2015). focus groups and/ or open forums are used at multiple phases in the planning process typically to provide feedback on the vision/mission, and goals and objectives of the strategic plan. in addition, some institutions hire outside consultants to assist in the strategic planning process, finding that they garner greater participation from stakeholders when an outside consultant is used (nutefall, 2015). communication and implementation plans are often developed in conjunction with the strategic plan. this helps to ensure there is a streamlined process for communication of information related to the plan and for garnering support from key stakeholders. the common element of these strategies is the notion that the mission and vision of the institution is the foundation of the plan. in the present study, chaos theory is applied with regard to how it informs strategic planning within higher education by accounting for the complexity of institutions and the impact of change on those institutions. change in this study is defined in terms of the impact the pandemic has had on institutional operations and key stakeholders. according to cutright (2001), chaos theory has ten propositions that frame the basis for strategic planning. each proposition informs institutions of guidelines critical in strategic planning and preparing for change that can impact institutional goals. these guiding propositions are outlined in table 1. each of these propositions detail foundational guidelines for effective strategic planning. the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on higher education institutions presents an opportunity to better prepare for the future. in this study, we considered participants’ experiences within and in relation to their institutional response to the pandemic, academic work environments, personal health, family systems, and social contexts during the time of the covid-19 pandemic. chaos theory is applicable to the conceptualization of university faculty and administrators’ experiences during the covid-19 pandemic due to the rapidly changing nature of the university environment currently, along with the influences of innumerable other personal and collective factors. chaos theory is also applicable because of its use in strategic planning within higher education which can assist institutions in planning after the impact of the pandemic. results of this study can be used to help shape strategic planning for institutions moving forward. sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 5 table 1 the 10 propositions of chaos theory proposition definition 1 “the ideal outcome of planning is planning, not a plan” (p. 61) 2 “planning begins with a distillation of the institution’s key values and purposes” (p. 62) 3 “the widest possible universe of information should be made available to all members of the institution. this universe of information includes ongoing, rich, and current feedback” (p. 64) 4 “dissent and conflict are creative, healthy, and real. the absence of conflict is reductionist, illusory, and suspect” (p. 65) 5 “linearity doesn’t work in strategic planning. it doesn’t work in dictationplanning and plans imposed from above, or in collation-planning, and plans created solely by the collection of unit information” (p. 66) 6 “the institution should budget-fiscally and psychically for failure. pilots are alternate futures. not all can be realized or succeed” (p. 68). 7 “the considerable expense of time on the front end is an investment. it is recouped, with interest, in the future” (p. 69) 8 “the executive is not demoted or minimized. the executive is the most critical shaper and champion of the process. ultimately, the executive is empowered by the process” (p. 70) 9 “that which can be quantified is not to be overvalued, and that which can not be quantified is not to be discounted” (p. 72) 10 “the future is a creation, not a prediction. this power of agency is distinguishing the context of human chaotic systems” (p. 73) note. adapted from cutright, m. (2001). chaos theory & higher education: leadership, planning, & policy. higher education: questions about the purpose (s) of colleges & universities. volume 9. peter lang. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1017978827715 method using qualitative content analysis, we examined participants’ responses to open-ended survey questions to gain insight into the experiences, perceptions, and overall mental health of college and university faculty and administrators amid the covid-19 pandemic. a qualitative approach was selected due to the dearth of information currently known about universities’ responses to covid-19 and the impacts on university faculty and administrators (hunt, 2011). qualitative content analysis was best suited for this study as it is a “research method for the subjective interpretation of the content of text data through the systematic classification process https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1017978827715 sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 6 of coding and identifying themes or patterns” (hsieh & shannon, 2005, p. 1278). specifically, conventional content analysis was used with the intent to derive themes inductively from the raw data to describe the experiences of the faculty and administrators (hsieh & shannon, 2005; zhang & wildemuth, 2005). this approach allows for both quantifying coded data and qualitatively interpreting the quantitative counts of the codes. participants we utilized purposeful sampling methods to recruit participants through email and listserv postings, and asked participants to meet the following criteria: over 18 years of age and currently employed as a faculty member or academic administrator at a college or university. more specifically, we utilized a random university generator to select university departments in the united states, and then retrieved faculty emails from the respective department webpages to request participation. we emailed 1,000 individual potential participants in total. other means of recruitment included emails to various faculty email listservs (e.g., cesnet) and posts to faculty facebook and linkedin groups. ultimately, 212 respondents met the criteria, consented to participate, and were included in the study. of these, 70.3% (n = 149) identified as female, while 29.2% (n = 62) identified as male and .5% (n = 1) as non-binary. most participants (34.4%; n = 73) were between the ages of 51 and 64 years old. the remaining 27.4% (n = 58) were between 29-40 years old, 23.6% (n = 50) were 41-50 years old, 11.8% (n = 25) were 65 or older, and 1% (n = 2) were between the ages of 18 and 28. four participants did not report their age. ninety percent (n = 191) of participants identified as white, while the remaining 10% identified as a racial minority (n = 8 african american, and n = 9 asian) or declined to answer (n = 4). seventeen participants (8%) identified as hispanic, latino or of spanish origin. the majority (72.2%; n = 153) reported they were married and 89 (42%) indicated caring for children in the home. participants also provided information pertaining to their primary job positions. the majority were tenured or tenure eligible faculty with 27.4% (n = 58) identifying as assistant professors, 25% (n = 53) as full professors, and 25% (n = 53) as associate professors. faculty respondents also included lecturers/instructors (8.5%; n = 18) and adjunct instructors (8%; n = 17). administrators made up 7.1% (n = 15) of participants. two indicated dual roles as faculty and administrator. a little over half (54.5%; n = 114) of participants reported working for public colleges and universities, and the remaining were affiliated with private colleges and universities. most participants (50%; n = 106) reported being employed by a large college or university (at least 15,000 students). those at mid-size institutions (5,001-14,999 students) accounted for 29.2% (n = 62) of respondents, and those at small institutions (5,000 or fewer students) accounted for 20.8% (n = 44). variations also existed by type of institution: 44% (n = 93) were teaching institutions, 31.1% (n = 66) were r1, 19.3% (n = 41) were r2, 5% (n = 10) by another type of institution (such as a community or technical college), and 1% (n = 2) declined to answer. finally, faculty and administrators from colleges and universities in the southeastern united states accounted for 41% (n = 87) of respondents. the remaining 23.1% (n = 49) were from the midwest, 14.2% (n = 30) from the northeast, 8.5% (n = 18) from the northwest, 7.5% (n = 16) from the west, and 6% (n = 12) from the southwest. data source the data set for this study consisted of open-ended responses to a survey taken by participants via qualtrics, an online survey software. the questions included: (1) what sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 7 accommodations, if any, has your department/university made for faculty due to the pandemic?; (2) if any, please list accommodations and/or resources that would be helpful during this time that your department/university has not provided; (3) please describe any coping strategies you have utilized while working at home; and (4) what skills, attitudes, or ideas have you gained/learned from your experience working remote that you will continue to apply postpandemic? procedure the university’s institutional review board provided exempt status for the study. we then sent the survey, including demographic questions and the four open-ended questions, to faculty and administrators throughout the united states via emails directly to faculty members, to department chairs for dissemination, and to listserv postings. we sent three follow-up emails encouraging individuals to participate in the study to promote data saturation. efforts were taken to ensure that participants were not coerced to participate; specifically, participants were provided an informed consent form and assured that confidentiality would be maintained. no identifying information was used when quoting participants in this article. all survey responses, data, and analyses were maintained on a password-secured computer. data analysis the responses to each of the four open-ended items on the survey were analyzed separately. we followed hsieh & shannon’s (2005) procedures for conventional content analysis. two of the authors participated in the analyses to enhance credibility through researcher triangulation (elliott et al., 1999). initially, we immersed ourselves in the raw data to gain an overall sense of responses. each researcher maintained an independent code book to record the data and note frequency of responses by hand. the codes included key words and phrases that were recorded directly and inductively from the raw data without imposing preconceived perspectives or categories. the coded data was then organized into preliminary categories and patterns. each researcher maintained a research memo to note reflections pertaining to the codes and emergent categories and patterns. we then came together for consensus coding. the independent code books were compared, and congruity and inconsistencies were discussed. meaningful and consistent themes and subthemes were defined. see the appendix for the final code book. themes that emerged were supported with verbatim quotes to mitigate researcher bias (hsieh & shannon, 2005). the third author reviewed the analyses and confirmed the emergent themes. results themes emerged in each of the four open-ended questions on the survey. the first question produced three themes, the second produced five, the third produced four, and the fourth produced three. question 1: institutional response three themes emerged from the first question on the survey which asked, “what accommodations has your department/university made for faculty due to the pandemic?” the themes addressed professional adaptations (subthemes: teaching and work), professional supports (subthemes: technology, information, materials, and funding), and no/minimal or sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 8 unwanted accommodations. see table 2 for an overview of the themes and subthemes for question 1. table 2 question 1: what accommodations were made for faculty? theme freq. % summary 1. professional adaptations teaching adaptations 151 79 53.4 choice of online or face to face teaching; or full shift to online; online teaching trainings work adaptations 72 teleworking; extending the tenure clock; eliminating course evaluations; extending deadlines 2. professional supports technology resources materials information funding 95 67 14 7 7 33.6 equipment; technology support office supplies at home; covid resources such as ppe meetings; email stipends; reimbursements 3. no/minimal/unwanted 37 13.0 total 283 100.0 note. since many responses had more than one code applied to them, the total frequency will be more than the total number of respondents. the first theme of professional adaptations, shared by 53.4% of participants (n = 151), consisted of two subthemes. the first addressed teaching adaptations such as accommodations to teaching formats in which faculty were permitted to choose whether they wished to teach faceto-face, hybrid or fully online, or all courses were transitioned fully online. this sub theme also included online teaching trainings provided by institutions. the second sub theme addressed work adaptations and included accommodations such as a shift to teleworking, as well as flexibility regarding extending the clock for tenure and pre-tenure review, eliminating course evaluations for the spring semester, and extending deadlines for things such as grading. quotes included, “full shift to online teaching…,” “many online teaching resources/trainings…,” “allowed fully remote work,” and “option to postpone going up for tenure.” sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 9 the second theme of professional supports was apparent in 33.6% (n = 95) of participants’ responses. it consisted of four subthemes. the first of which addressed technology resources, including both equipment, such as access to laptops, headsets, and software, and support, such as troubleshooting issues and providing trainings for the use of technology such as zoom. the second sub theme addressed material supports such as office supplies being sent to faculty’s homes for teleworking and access to covid-related resources, such as personal protective equipment (ppe). the third sub theme included supportive information through meetings and email, particularly from administrators, and the final sub theme addressed the provision of funds through stipends and reimbursements. participants stated, “faculty receive ppe and online teaching kits (hardware),” “lots of it support,” “they offered us training on zoom,” “dean hosts weekly zoom meeting to discuss and update,” and “assistance with personal phone bill and assistance with stationary supplies.” the third and final theme for this question was “no/minimal or unwanted accommodations” and was expressed by 13% (n = 37) of participants. these individuals felt that their institutions had done very little to nothing to address the pandemic. the sentiment was captured in the following: “unknown, it seems like we have all been on our own,” “none, other than working from home,” and “none. there was only more work added.” question 2: additional supports five themes emerged from the second item on the survey which stated: “if any, please list accommodations and/or resources that would be helpful during this time that your department/university has not provided.” the themes addressed technology, enhanced system support, no accommodations needed or not sure what is needed, manageable workload, and teaching. see table 3 for an overview of the themes and subthemes for question 2. the first theme, technology, was addressed by 25.5% (n = 36) participants. these individuals expressed a desire to have more access to equipment and training. one participant stated, “not all faculty have laptop/digital tools needed; hardware has been very slow to be disseminated.” another specified, “definitely better technology, and better tech support.” enhanced system support, the second theme, was highlighted by 23.4% (n = 33) of participants and included things such as desiring better communication from leadership, mental health supports, financial support, and covid-19 safety measures. these were captured in the following quotes: “mental health check-ins for faculty (they did it with students, but not faculty),” “more money, or at least, you know, not being furloughed,” “…more consistent and detailed communication,” and “more masks!” the third theme which emerged was that no other accommodations were needed, or that participants were not sure what else was needed. this was expressed by 19.1% (n = 27) of participants and captured in the following: “nothing comes to mind,” “none needed,” and “unknown at this time.” the fourth theme, manageable workload, was addressed by 16.3% (n = 23) of participants and included support with balancing childcare with work, and reducing nonessential work and meetings so more time would be available for adjusting to online teaching and maintaining research. participants stated: “identifying which faculty have childcare or other caregiving responsibilities that impact their daily schedule and designing accommodations– e.g., lessen service work,” and “more protection of our time to do research for pre-tenure faculty.” the fifth and final theme for this question addressed teaching accommodations that would have been helpful, such as additional online teaching trainings, graduate teaching sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 10 assistants, and being able to select a preferred teaching modality. these were highlighted by 15.6% (n = 22) of participants. statements included, “better training on hybrid course design,” “access to a graduate assistant,” “ta [teaching assistant],” and “autonomy over whether classes are moved online for the fall.” table 3 what accommodations would be helpful that have not been provided? code freq. % summary 1. technology 36 25.5 greater access to equipment and training 2. enhanced system support 33 23.4 better communication, mental health supports, financial support, and covid safety measures 3. none needed/not sure 27 19.1 no accommodations needed or unsure of what needed 4. manageable workload 23 16.3 support to balance childcare; reducing nonessential meetings and work 5. teaching 22 15.60 online teaching trainings; gas, select teaching modality total 141 100 note. since many responses had more than one code applied to them, the total frequency will be more than the total number of respondents. question 3: coping strategies four themes emerged from the third item on the survey which stated, “please describe any coping strategies you have utilized while working at home.” the themes addressed activities (with sub themes including physical, social, and enjoyable), mental health boosters, work habits, and not using any/none needed. see table 4 for an overview of the themes and subthemes for question 3. for the first theme, activities, 58.9% (n = 219) of participants shared endeavors in which they have engaged to cope while teleworking that fell into three subthemes: physical, social, and enjoyable. physical activities included exercising, going for walks, practicing yoga, and gardening. social activities included connecting with friends and family, engaging with colleagues, and continuing writing groups via zoom. many examples of enjoyable activities were provided, including watching tv or movies, baking, playing with pets, reading for pleasure, playing and/or listening to music, engaging in crafts and hobbies, and playing games. this sub theme also included indulgences such as eating junk food and drinking wine. activities were addressed in the following statements: “going outside daily and taking lots of walks. zoom meetings with family and friends,” and “going for walks, cooking, staying connected to friends.” sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 11 the second theme, mental health boosters, was identified by 24.2% (n = 90) of participants. these included stress reducing techniques such as taking breaks, practicing patience, gratitude and self-compassion, engaging in prayer and meditation, and setting limits around watching the news and social media. participants specified the following: “taking breaks from the computer when needed,” “daily meditation,” “taking ‘news vacations’,” and “practicing gratitude particularly being thankful i have a job.” theme three addressed work habits used to help cope. these were identified by 14% (n = 52) of participants and included strategies such as following a set schedule, creating a separate space in their home for work, and managing the dual roles of work and childcare. one participant said they were coping by, “designating a workspace from home space, maintaining a set schedule, and dressing as if [she were] going to work.” another expressed coping by “developing a new schedule/routine, alternating childcare responsibilities with partner.” for the final theme, a smaller percentage of participants indicated that they weren’t using coping strategies or didn’t need any (3%; n = 11). several individuals responded, “none,” or “n/a.” for these, it is impossible to know whether they indicated not using coping skills because they did not need them or if they were not using them but should. others clarified their lack of use with statements such as, “minimal without childcare,” indicating the challenge of utilizing coping strategies when balancing work and parenting. others indicated that coping strategies were not needed with statements such as, “i usually work from home, so to me, this was a no big deal type of situation.” table 4 coping strategies utilized code freq. % summary 1. activities physical social enjoyable 219 111 45 63 58.9 exercise; walks; yoga; gardening connecting with friends and family; engaging colleagues; writing groups tv/movies; baking; pets; reading; music; hobbies; games; food and drinks 2. mental health boosters 90 24.2 stress reduction techniques; prayer and meditation; limiting exposure to news and social media 3. work habits 52 14.0 setting a schedule; creating work space; managing childcare 4. not using any/no need 11 3.0 not applying coping skills total 372 100 note. since many responses had more than one code applied to them, the total frequency will be more than the total number of respondents. sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 12 question 4: growth and learning three themes emerged from the fourth and final question on the survey which asked, “what skills, attitudes, or ideas have you gained/learned from your experience working remotely that you will continue to apply post-pandemic?” the themes addressed teaching skills, professional insights, and personal insights. see table 5 for an overview of the themes and subthemes for question 4. table 5 skills, attitudes, ideas gained that you will continue post-pandemic code freq. % summary 1. teaching skills 89 48.9 online teaching tools; connecting with students; teaching more online or not teaching online 2. professional insights 55 30.0 continue meeting online; maintaining a set schedule 3. personal insights 38 20.1 realizing adaptability; importance of self-care total 182 100 note. since many responses had more than one code applied to them, the total frequency will be more than the total number of respondents. the first theme of teaching skills was shared by 48.9% (n = 89) of participants. they addressed continuing to use more online teaching tools, regardless of modality. they also expressed a desire to continue to take strides to connect more with their students and be more flexible and empathic. some realized they would like to continue teaching more online courses while others realized online teaching is not for them. one respondent stated: just pertaining to teaching, i have learned many ideas and approaches that i think will improve my teaching whether online or on ground. the situation has forced us to reexamine assumptions about what we do and online makes many of us who taught mainly on ground to rethink how you make connections with students, structure courses, and prepare students for challenging situations. another said, “spending more time with students, being a little less task-focused and a little more person-focused.” professional insights, the second theme, accounted for 30% (n = 55) of responses. participants expressed a desire to continue meeting online either in place of or in addition to face-to-face. this was captured in the following statement, “administrative meetings can be more conveniently scheduled as video calls.” another said, “zoom meetings are, overall, as efficient or more efficient than face to face meetings.” some also intend to continue to work more from home. a respondent said, “i will likely do more work from home because i'm confident i can be productive now.” being more organized and maintaining a set schedule with sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 13 boundaries to the workday was shared as well. participants stated, “time management,” and “setting workday schedule and stopping.” the final theme addressed personal insights and was expressed by 20.1% (n = 38) of participants. these participants reportedly experienced a shift in perspective. there was a realization of how adaptable they were, and how important it is to engage in self-care and practice setting more realistic expectations for themselves. one participant shared, “…the unplugged coffee time, bullet journaling, and more intentional gratitude practice are something i hope to keep applying.” others said, “i must take care of myself,” and “resiliency and grace!” discussion findings from this study indicate that institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic varied and resulted in mixed experiences for faculty and administrator participants. some expressed feeling supported and well resourced, while others felt uninformed, unheard, and under-supported. when asked about accommodations made by institutions, participants identified professional adaptations in the form of modified teaching and work expectations, and professional supports such as additional technology, information, materials, and funding. however, 15% of participants reported that their institutions had not offered any accommodations or had instituted accommodations that were burdensome or unwanted. the lack of accommodations could indicate that some institutions felt ill prepared for the impact of the pandemic or unaware of what accommodations were needed. burdensome or unwanted accommodations could indicate limited resources to meet the needs or unaware of what the needs were. these factors could also be an indication of the lack of preparedness to address the demands that resulted from the impact of the pandemic. chaos theory implies that a small change could create different outcomes on many variables, and all variables that interact must be considered (zenker & kock, 2020). employing feedback loops among all stakeholders, as suggested by chaos theory, could possibly have prevented institutions from invoking burdensome and unwanted resources, and promoted application of helpful resources. to address state and national requirements to social distance, quarantine, and slow the spread of the covid-19 virus, institutions of higher education across the country responded quickly and instituted accommodations to allow for courses to continue, albeit online. researchers found that the pandemic negatively impacted individuals across disciplines, which aligns with our findings concerning negative faculty experiences such as perceived lack of support and a dearth of accommodations. pfefferbaum and north (2020) highlighted mental health impacts of the pandemic, while watermeyer et. al. (2020) noted challenges with work-life balance due to changes in job responsibilities. these findings may help explain our findings surrounding the perceived increased need for university-provided supports, as well as negative feelings of stress and lack of support. additionally, cui et. al. (2020) reported disproportionate effects of the pandemic on female faculty members experiencing decreased research productivity compared to males, while flaherty (2020) noted chronic faculty stress, negative perceptions of work, and experiences of secondary trauma being perpetuated because of the pandemic. in line with the findings of these studies, participants in the present study noted various changes in personal and professional functioning, needs, and related changes in ways of thinking about themselves and their jobs. though limited, the extant literature seems to consistently suggest the need for universities to be prepared to respond to crises in support of their faculty, both professionally and regarding mental health. sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 14 accommodations and adaptations were necessary steps in meeting the needs of the university community. however, developing strategies to meet these needs without first gathering employee input could have led to accommodations that benefited institutions, but not necessarily the individuals they were intended to support. we found that many institutions offered a multitude of accommodations to support faculty; however, some institutions seemingly struggled to make such accommodations. for instance, some participants reported that no/minimal or unwanted accommodations” were provided by their university. these differences in accommodations provided may be due to varying resources from one institution to another, with some far more financially salient and able to provide a litany of support across varying needs, and others having to strategically apply limited resources to a small portion of targeted needs. another contributing factor may be differences in leadership, with some universities focused more on the business and financial solvency of the institution as opposed to the needs and well-being of the faculty and staff. a lack of preparedness for addressing the impact of the covid-19 pandemic certainly may have also contributed to some institutions responding with minimal, none, or unwanted accommodations for faculty. while approximately 20% of participants expressed not needing any additional accommodations other than what had already been provided, the remaining 80% offered a range of suggested supports that would have been helpful during their institution's response to the covid-19 pandemic. almost half stressed the need for additional technology and system support. also emphasized was the desire for additional teaching support and more manageable workloads. previous research identified technology as causing disturbances and dysfunction for faculty during the pandemic (watermeyer et al., 2020), particularly since they had to make the adjustments to an online environment immediately, often without online teaching experience or proper equipment. based on our findings on the perceived need for greater technological support from nearly half of our sample, we infer that administrators often assumed faculty had the technology needed to teach courses from home, including computers, microphones and effective wi-fi at minimum, though this was not always the case. the effort needed to resolve these issues, on top of learning new technologies and transferring course content to online modalities without the necessary resources and support, translated to greater workloads and heightened stress for many. our findings align with the extant literature which suggests that faculty workloads have increased due to additional service responsibilities and new pressures related to teaching and research (krukowski et al., 2020; johnson et al., 2020). these professional challenges, in combination with concerns about the virus, may be related to heightened levels of stress, and the subsequent utilization of coping strategies like physical activity, meditation, and connecting with friends and family. the covid-19 pandemic provoked stress and uncertainty about the future regarding work and personal matters for many across the globe, which likely led to feelings of fear and anxiety (flaherty, 2020) and subsequent new or refocused utilization of various coping skills. more specifically, this study revealed strategies used by faculty and administrators to cope with the many challenges, changes and concerns stemming from the covid-19 pandemic. it was found that participants managed to cope through various activities, such as working out, watching movies, and engaging with friends on zoom. many also relied on wellness practices such as prayer and meditation, and setting limits on exposure to the news and social media. our findings are supported by research on coping strategies. physical activity and mental health related activities are among the most prescribed coping mechanisms for combating stress and sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 15 anxiety (iqbal & kokash, 2011). however, new and modified coping strategies may be needed when faced with the unique stressors of a pandemic. during the pandemic, many states completely shut down, which restricted individuals to working from their homes. for many, the pandemic resulted in major shifts in daily schedules and work habits, necessitating adjustments. rather than taking a break from work to get lunch with a colleague or leaving the office at a set time to return home at the end of a workday, faculty and administrators needed to identify ways in which they could set boundaries on their work, fulfill social needs, and create a work-life balance despite being home almost exclusively. specific professional practices, such as creating a separate space in their home for work, and continuing to engage in writing groups via zoom, were identified to help reduce work stress. institutions could play a role in providing support to faculty, such as offering online meditation sessions, scheduling online coffee hours, and providing online writing workshops. strategic, proactive planning may have better prepared institutions to support faculty in these ways. participants in the present study provided insights on what they gained or learned from working remotely during the pandemic. for example, one participant shared that they have learned more about “resiliency and grace,” while another noted a lesson learned about taking time away from technology. many identified new skills and practices that they will continue post covid-19. almost half of participants stated that they learned new online teaching skills that they will continue to apply, even if they return to face-to-face teaching. likewise, some participants indicated a preference to continue online meetings as opposed to face to face meetings, finding them to be more efficient and productive. in addition, faculty noted a heightened awareness of the value of engaging in self-care through both personal and professional practices. these ranged from plans to continue following set schedules to improve the work-life balance, to deliberately incorporating wellness activities in daily routines. ultimately, many participants realized that they are quite adaptable and resilient. they also noted being more empathetic and understanding toward students as they supported their students through the pandemic. these results shed light on some positive outcomes stemming from the pandemic, suggesting that perhaps not everything needs to return to how it was prior to covid-19. institutions would be wise to consider these outcomes and strategize plans for incorporating some of the modified work and teaching formats that have proven to be effective. institutions may also consider encouraging faculty boundary setting and allowing greater flexibility with regard to responding to student challenges. a greater focus on wellness for faculty, staff, and students may positively impact productivity. systems that prioritize the health and wellness of their employees have demonstrated positive trends in return, such as improving employee health behavior and lowering elevated health risks (kaul, 2020). strategic planning may assist institutions in planning for modified operations after the pandemic. implications the findings from this study may be used to inform higher education strategic planning. institutions of higher learning would benefit from adopting the strategic planning processes espoused by chaos theory. for example, according to swenk (2001), the theory posits that institutional strategic planning processes should include steps to adequately prepare for the future, foster a culture of planning, and utilize appropriate feedback loops. strategic planning has been identified as the best way to consider possible futures (swenk, 2001). planning for the sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 16 future could include actions such as preparing reserve funding for emergencies and developing plans to pivot in case of natural disaster or similar pandemics. the financial impact on institutions of higher education resulting from the pandemic were often severe. inside higher ed’s 2020 study of college and university presidents found that 53% of campus leaders were worried about the impact the economic downturn could have on their institutions in the future. through strategic planning, institutions can prepare to proactively decrease such negative effects when faced with future disasters or emergency situations moving forward. if a crisis plan to provide resources to faculty, staff, and students has already been developed, institutions would be activating a plan already in existence instead of devising a plan while in the throes of the crisis. even without this proactive stance, in the event of a pandemic, universities with “planning cultures'' would be prepared for an institutional response, immediately taking action to address the needs of all parties. it is important to note that chaos theory rejects a top-down approach to strategic planning, as planning is not seen as linear (swenk, 2001). rather, the theory suggests a collection of plans created by each department and brought together to inform the master strategic plan (swenk, 2001). an example of this in a university comprised of individual colleges would be each college formulating a plan, and those individual plans informing the university’s master plan. covid-19 had a major impact across the nation, and participants within this study identified accommodations that their institutions could have provided to be more helpful to them. effective planning during the time of crisis could have been helpful in ensuring faculty received accommodations that were needed. chaos theory advocates for creating a culture of planning which involves every stakeholder having a voice in the planning process even when responding to crises. moreover, institutions should consider how they might receive ongoing feedback from various stakeholders as a necessary source of information. stakeholders should include individuals from all levels of the system: students, staff, faculty, administrators, and members of the community. such information should be shared with all members of the institution (swenk, 2001). feedback is a necessary component of planning, especially in planning for the future and a possible crisis response. pertaining to the covid-19 pandemic, a planning culture would have captured faculty experiences very early in the process, as they would have been a part of the crisis response planning (swenk, 2001). the inclusion of faculty experiences in the planning process could have improved the impact of accommodations on the population they were meant to support. often, institutions were planning support without faculty input, which may have resulted in unwanted or less helpful accommodations. future planning should capture the experiences of all stakeholders prior to and during the pandemic to inform crisis responses in higher education. these responses need to include socioemotional supports. researchers call for institutions to adopt an ethic of care in crisis responses to minimize the emotional impact on faculty, staff and students (corbera et. al., 2020). limitations and future directions as with all qualitative research, it should be noted that our findings may not be generalized to all populations. the results are intended to provide insight on the lived experience of the participants in the current study. limitations of the present study include lack of diversity in some areas including the sex and university size of participants. notably, the majority of our participants were from large schools, which may mean their universities in general benefit from resources unavailable to those at small universities, possibly influencing the results of this study. sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 17 furthermore, in future studies, researchers may expand upon the current study by utilizing quantitative methods to explore broader covid-19 impacts on faculty and administrators and their satisfaction with their institution’s response to the pandemic. future research may also focus on specific related issues, such as the incidence of anxiety and depression among higher education faculty resulting from covid-19. this study is also limited to faculty and administrators’ experiences while in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic. it does not account for institutions’ evolving response to the pandemic over time. future research should be conducted following the pandemic to fully capture the university response to the covid-19 pandemic and the experiences of faculty, staff and students. in addition, op-eds were published more rapidly during the pandemic to capture and address the experiences of faculty, staff, and students. published research on the topic was limited during the time of this publication. future research could include a systematic review of all the studies published about university experiences and responses during the pandemic to gain a comprehensive understanding of existing gaps and to inform future institutional strategic planning. there is still a need to understand how strategic planning was used in institutions' responses to the pandemic and future research should be conducted to uncover this and inform future higher education strategic planning initiatives. conclusion this study explored the experiences of faculty and staff during the covid-19 pandemic concerning their transition to remote work. institutional accommodations, coping strategies, and growth were integral aspects of participants' experiences. this study identified the strengths of institutional responses to the pandemic as well as challenges for participants. through the lens of chaos theory, strategic planning may have assisted institutions in better responding to faculty needs. the results of this study can assist institutions in their current response to the pandemic, as the pandemic has not ended. thus, providing an opportunity for institutions to adjust previous practices by applying the results and ensuring they are meeting the needs of their key stakeholders. it is critical that institutions of higher education take proactive steps to plan, now, how they will operate after the pandemic and prepare for future crises. it is suggested that institutions consider the ten propositions of chaos theory which can inform planning for the future, enabling them to shape the entire university culture toward becoming better equipped to meet the needs of all stakeholders moving forward. references anderson, i., & alonso, g. 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(2005). qualitative analysis of content. human brain mapping, 30(7), 2197-2206. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/09/24/economic-fallout-from-covid-19-continues-to-hit-lower-income-americans-the-hardest/ https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/09/24/economic-fallout-from-covid-19-continues-to-hit-lower-income-americans-the-hardest/ https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmp2008017 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2020.102083 https://doi.org/10.1177/0020764020915212 https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abc2255 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00561-y https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unkown-cause-china/en/ https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unkown-cause-china/en/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2020.104164 sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 20 appendix theme code book by question q1: what accommodations were made for faculty? code freq. % 1. professional adaptations teaching adaptations · online teaching trainings · teaching format o choice to teach f2f, hybrid, online o teach online with documented accommodations o fully online o smaller class sizes 151 79 34 45 31 11 2 1 53.4 work adaptations · remote work · flexibility o extend the clock for tenure and pre-tenure review o not counting course evaluations o extended deadlines/extra time for grading o accommodating those with children 72 33 39 23 4 9 3 2. professional supports technology resources · equipment (mics, headsets, cameras, hot spots, laptops, zoom, online textbooks) · support (troubleshooting and trainings) information · from admin (meetings, emails, understanding, flexibility) · from colleagues · mental health support workshops materials · office supplies sent to home · access to office phone calls · 1 day off per week · covid resources o masks/ppe o testing o social distancing funding · stipends · reimbursements for supplies · reimbursement for personal phone bill · emergency sick leave fund 95 67 38 29 7 5 1 1 14 3 1 1 9 6 1 2 7 3 2 1 1 33.6 sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 21 3. none/minimal/unwanted none provided already teach/work online must teach online not allowed on campus without permission more work 37 25 6 1 3 2 13.0 total 283 100 q2: what accommodations would be helpful that have not been provided? code freq. % 1. technology resources/equipment support/trainings support for students (wi-fi, laptops) 36 25 9 2 25.5 2. enhanced system support mental health support better communication/instructions/information from leaders faculty input in decisions better support from support staff safe access to offices/labs ppe, cleaning supplies financial support · not being furloughed/laid off · insurance for adjuncts · stipends/reimbursements 33 8 10 1 1 2 4 7 2 1 4 23.4 3. none needed/not sure 27 19.1 4. manageable workload support with balancing childcare and work pause p&t clock reduce nonessential work, service load and meetings so more time for adjusting to online and maintaining research 23 11 3 9 16.3 sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 22 5. teaching online teaching training gas/tas/support choice of teaching modality all classrooms zoom capable assistance addressing field placements more collaboration reduce course load more time to grade 22 4 5 8 1 1 1 1 1 15.60 total 141 100 q3: coping strategies utilized code freq. % 1. activities physical · exercise (such as running) · walking/hiking/outdoor activities · yoga/stretching/deep breathing · yard work/gardening social · talking/collaborating with colleagues and students · connect with friends and family · zoom writing/research group · virtual community events enjoyable · watch tv/movies · cook/bake · play with pets · reading for pleasure · playing/listening to music · hobby/crocheting/crafts · play games (video, board, etc.) · go for drives · remodel/organize house · social media/internet · indulgences o wine/alcohol o take-out/junk food o smoking 219 111 49 43 17 2 45 12 28 4 1 63 7 6 6 7 6 6 4 2 2 3 14 6 7 1 58.9 sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 23 2. mental health boosters taking breaks! prayer meditation antidepressant/antianxiety medication naps therapy practice patience & gratitude/self-talk/self-compassion/selfcare/crying/relax goals avoiding the news/disconnecting/limiting tv/not checking email during certain times humor 90 25 4 15 3 3 4 22 12 2 24.2 3. work habits follow a schedule/routine/put boundaries on workday creating a separate space in house for work got improved internet managing children · got assistance (babysitter or sharing children's responsibilities with spouse) · allow more screen time · send to daycare 52 26 17 1 8 5 2 1 14.0 4. not using any/no need 11 3.0 total 372 100 q4: skills, attitudes, idea gained that you will continue post-pandemic code freq. % 1. teaching skills more flexibility with students/more connections with students use of more online teaching tools regardless of format will teach more online courses learned that do not want to teach online 89 32 45 10 2 48.9 2. professional insights more use of zoom/online meetings rather than in-person or in addition to apply scheduling/organization to day/boundaries will work more from home learned that cannot work well from home continue to use digitized processes (signing forms) importance of connecting and being patient with other faculty 55 28 13 8 2 1 3 30.0 sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 24 3. personal insights crisis response skills/being adaptive/staying positive/selfcare/less hard on self importance of connecting with people more use of fun activities in life more use of telehealth 38 26 7 3 2 20.1 total 182 100 note. since many responses had more than one code applied to them, the total frequency will be more than the total number of respondents. sparkman-key et al: institutional responses to the covid-19 pandemic current issues in education, 22(3) 25 author notes narketta sparkman-key old dominion university nsparkma@odu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1438-6704 tammi f. dice old dominion university tmillike@odu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1754-6232 alexandra c. gantt old dominion university agant002@odu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0889-2109 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1438-6704 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1754-6232 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0889-2109 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts: teachers’ perceptions of best practices for literacy current issues in education, 23(2) 1 volume 23, issue 2 october 28, 2022 issn 1099-839x comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts: teachers’ perceptions of best practices for literacy jennifer a. manak, rollins college chelsey bahlmann bollinger, james madison university courtney shimek, west virginia university jennifer barrett-tatum, western carolina university debra wellman, rollins college abstract: this study illuminates the voices of literacy teachers. findings from this study were based on a questionnaire about what teachers perceive as best practices in literacy instruction. we received 44 fully completed questionnaires. the 44 teacher respondents ranged from pre-k through 6th grade with experience ranging from 1 to 20+ years of teaching. teachers came from rural, suburban, and urban schools, with 40% of these teachers in title i schools. more than 130 best practices in literacy instruction were identified by our teacher participants. teachers’ responses illustrated many of the components of comprehensive literacy instruction that covered a broad array of practices from the initiation of instruction through the assessment of student learning. literacy teachers’ responses were organized into three themes: preparing for instruction, literacy instruction, and student assessment and differentiation. keywords: literacy instruction, best practices for literacy instruction, teacher preparation citation: manak, j., bollinger, c.b., shimek, c., barrett-tatum, j., & wellman, d. (2022). comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts: teachers’ perceptions of best practices for literacy. current issues in education, 23(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss2.2029 accepted: april 28, 2022 introduction within the last decade, there have been several public challenges to the teaching of reading, which suggest that literacy teacher preparation programs are “ignoring the sound science behind how people become readers” (hanford, 2018). attention-grabbing headlines like “why are we teaching reading the wrong way?” (hanford, 2018) and “why johnny still can’t read—and what to do about it” (wexler, 2018) are incredibly misleading. the underpinnings of such attention-grabbing headlines ignore the voices of teachers and reinforce detrimental myths about reading instruction. they misrepresent what’s happening in classrooms, higher education teacher preparation programs, and current research. what gets misconstrued is the https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss2.2029 manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 2 literacy teachers’ professional judgment and ability to determine what works best for their own students. after all, shavelson and towne (2002) argued, “scientific findings interact with differing views in practical and political arenas. the scientist discovers the basis for what is possible. the practitioner, parent, or policy maker, in turn, has to consider what is practical, affordable, desirable, and credible” (p. 49). given the lack of teacher voices in the aforementioned articles and a dearth of research exploring what current teachers conceive of best practices, this research set out to understand what teachers perceive to be best literacy practices in their elementary classrooms. while there is no one “right way” to teach reading, there are a multitude of effective instructional practices. we have good evidence that access to text that can be read with accuracy is an effective practice (lindsay, 2013). additionally, opportunities to engage with text are also related to improved reading achievement (e.g., allington et al., 2010). we know that when children are allowed to self-select books, their engagement and reading achievement are improved (guthrie & humenick, 2004). we also know that when students engage in bookrelated conversations focused on higher-order understandings, students benefit greatly (ivey & johnston, 2013; nystrand, 2006). in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms, using explicit decoding instruction for about 10-minutes per day provides the best results (national reading panel, 2000). lastly, we know that teachers matter. not because they have specialized degrees or know how to manage time but because they know what to do with time to maximize student learning (allington & johnston, 2002; pressley et al., 2001). today’s teachers are equipped with a breadth of research-based instructional practices and pedagogical knowledge. in an era where society questions teachers’ professionalism and their ability to teach reading, how do educators describe the best practices used in literacy instruction? our study went directly to the teachers of reading in the elementary grades to hear their voices and better understand their perceptions of best instructional practices. rather than collecting a “top 10” list of the most widely used literacy practices, 44 teachers identified more than 130 effective practices and strategies. the search for best practices in reading instruction the process of eliminating subpar practices and standardizing the most efficient practices has been applied across countless fields. concepts such as “maximum prosperity” in business management (robbins & judge, 2009, p. 270) and “best practices” in education arose from this process (kuh, 2001, p. 66). the central idea is that inefficient practices should be eliminated while those that streamline a process should be encouraged. george kuh used the term “best practice” to identify collegiate practices in “schools that performed better than expected” (kuh, 2001, p. 66), and this term has worked its way into the lexicon of k-12 schools. literacy’s “best practices” include methods that help more students achieve literacy goals at a pace better than expected. in the 1960s, the u.s. office of education sponsored research to identify “best practices” in literacy instruction for elementary students. one of the most famous studies during this time was an examination of first-grade reading instruction conducted by bond and dykstra (1967). they concluded that the teacher, not the materials nor the methods of instruction, had the largest effect on student achievement. research continues to untangle what quality literacy teaching encompasses through the identification of effective classroom practices as defined by student literacy achievement (wharton-mcdonald, pressley, & hampston, 1998). manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 3 in 1999, congress convened the national reading panel (nrp) with the charge to “determine the most effective evidence-based methods for teaching children to read” (2000). according to this panel, the best approach to reading instruction included “explicit instruction in phonemic awareness, systematic phonics instruction, methods to improve fluency, [and] ways to enhance comprehension” (nrp, 2000). this led to the focus on the five pillars of literacy instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, and fluency (cassidy, valadez, & garrett, 2010). views of effective literacy instruction were noted as a balance of phonics-based instruction for encoding and decoding and meaning-based comprehension and writing with vocabulary instruction encompassed throughout (fisher, frey, & akhavan, 2019). despite the view of balance, the “science of reading” focused namely on phonological and graphophonemic aspects of literacy and teachers’ knowledge or lack thereof for providing effective literacy instruction (hudson et al., 2021). burkins and yates (2021) discuss that as educators are rethinking what balance looks like within literacy instruction, it is important to review research, reconsider practices, and envision new instructional possibilities. for instance, many teachers overlook the role of listening comprehension in reading comprehension, the student’s capacity to understand spoken language. the authors share research supporting that understanding spoken language and understanding written language are two different things, so opportunities to grow oral language help in developing the comprehension mechanism of reading (quinn et al., 2015; lervåg, a., hulme, c., & melby‐lervåg, m., 2018). burkins and yates (2021) seek to “shift the balance” by encouraging teachers to revise some current literacy practices while continuing to use other practices common to both balanced literacy and the science of reading as they make instructional decisions based on their knowledge of their students. what are best practices in literacy? while many research programs and curricula guides refer to “best practices,” scholars examining the field of literacy research have disagreed on what are best practices for literacy teaching (bricker et al., 2017). since we were interested in how teachers determine best practices, this review of literature emphasizes studies that include the voices of teachers and examine highly effective teaching practices. interwoven and responsive to students wharton-mcdonald, pressley, and hampston (1998) set out to determine best practices in literacy education by examining teaching practices of those identified by language arts coordinators as being “highly effective.” they observed and interviewed teachers nominated as “outstanding” or “typical” in their ability to teach literacy skills and determined eight aspects common among the teachers with the highest student success. their research found that the most effective teachers provide: (a) coherent and thorough integration of skills with high-quality reading and writing experiences, (b) a high density of instruction (integration of multiple goals in a single lesson), (c) extensive use of scaffolding, (d) encouragement of student self-regulation, (e) a thorough integration of reading and writing activities, (f) high expectations for all students, (g) masterful classroom management, and (h) an awareness of their practices and the goals underlying them (p. 101). although some researchers argue that these qualities are challenging to produce, if not worthy teaching goals, the delicate art of weaving all these eight skills together emphasizes the complexity of strong literacy instruction. on a smaller scale, scott et al. (2009) interviewed three manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 4 literacy educators with extensive experience in urban schools to determine what learners need most. they, too, found that teaching literacy is a complex process that requires well-trained teachers that can respond to students’ motivations, cultural differences, and emotional needs. contextually and culturally situated in smagorinsky’s (2018) reflection of his own practice, he problematized one-size-fits-all literacy practices by highlighting the need for contextual teaching practices. his experiences conducting literacy education development in guadalajara, mexico emphasized the need for culturally situated teaching practices and that literacy teaching relies upon the context and cultural knowledge of the students. smagorinsky argued that any notion of best practices in education will fail students if the contextualized, relational, and situational nature of human commerce is not considered first. smagorinsky highlighted the intricate process of determining best practices and supporting others’ beliefs that best practices need to be contextually situated. lastly, peck (2010) conducted a study of a school’s faculty-led process of switching literacy curricula and amplified the teacher’s opinions of the process. in hearing teachers’ voices, peck emphasized teachers’ ownership of the curriculum based on the contextual needs of their students but found that teachers asked for significant amounts of support and professional development. ultimately, the faculty transformed their school through a focus on inquiry-based learning, curriculum alignment, and assessment-based literacy instruction, which were areas the teachers determined as best practices. peck found that targeted and useful professional development empowers teachers to take ownership of their instruction, encourages culturally relevant teaching, and provides ongoing support from instructional leaders and administration. even though the most effective practices of teaching literacy are still being debated amongst researchers (bricker et al., 2017), examinations of effective literacy teachers demonstrate that best practices include having confident teachers that understand the complexities of their job, professional development aligned with teacher’s needs, and allowing teachers to adapt curricula to meet the contextual needs of a community. how do teachers determine their teaching practices? considering the mixed messages about best practices from literacy researchers, government stakeholders, and advocacy groups, we contemplated how teachers determine best practices. some researchers approached how teachers determine best practices by examining their teacher education programs. scales et al. (2017) conducted a seven-year longitudinal study to better understand how teacher education programs shape the teaching identities of pre-service and in-service teachers. after examining teacher preparation program documents, they conducted a multi-case study by following former teacher candidates located in seven different environments across the u.s. throughout their first year of teaching. they conducted three observations of the new teachers’ classrooms, conducted interviews, and collected field notes. their findings illustrated that teacher education programs greatly influence the identities of novice teachers, but that each local and school context also shaped the teaching practices of their participants. ultimately, they found that pre-service and in-service teachers think of themselves as decision-makers, and strong teacher education programs help foster this identity. in a similar, but different approach, roe (2004), conducted a study of one excellent literacy teacher and found that this teacher relied upon professional development, colleagues, dialogue, state and district initiatives, and her established theoretical framework when making instructional decisions. later, brunetti and marston (2018) took up a similar study on a larger manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 5 scale and interviewed 53 early and mid-career teachers (years 1-10) about professional development and what they found helpful throughout their careers. all participants were former graduates of a 5-year teacher education program at a mid-size liberal arts university on the west coast of the united states. brunetti and marston (2018) found that teachers primarily emphasized validation, collaboration, relationships with students, continuing professional engagement, leadership, and balance as important themes contributing to their professional growth. they argued that these themes are correlated with teacher identity development and should be considered by teacher educators and school personnel. finally, squires and bliss (2004) explored teachers’ best practices by focusing on two teachers that appeared to have similar beliefs but acted in dramatically different ways. squires and bliss (2004) discovered a more nuanced and complex understanding of the teacher’s beliefs towards student autonomy, literacy development, and the role of the teacher in the classroom. the two teachers demonstrated that beliefs are not always visible as actions in the classroom, and thus understanding teachers’ practices is a deeply complex process. ultimately, squires and bliss (2004) argued for the importance of listening to teachers’ voices and explanations of their practices. considering the previous research on best practices, we were curious to better understand elementary literacy teachers’ conceptions of best practices. this led five professors of literacy education from four institutions to contemplate how elementary teachers navigate their literacy instruction, including scientifically based literacy research. thus, this study’s research question was: what do teachers believe are “best practices” in literacy instruction? findings from this study were based on a national questionnaire gathering rich descriptive voices of teachers regarding what they perceive as best practices in literacy instruction and how they orchestrate these effective practices. conceptual framework working from an understanding that learning to teach is grounded in experiences of practice (e.g., korthagen, loughran, & russell, 2006; peercy & troyan, 2017), we argue that it is critical to listen to teachers’ voices, as they are the experts. this perspective is born from a sociocultural understanding of learning that learning occurs in interaction with one’s environment, including the experiences and other people, texts, and tools embedded therein (e.g., bakhtin, 1986; putnam & borko, 2000; vygotsky & cole, 1978; bruner, 1984). zeichner et al. (2015) similarly raised the question of whose knowledge counts for informing teacher education. they argue about the importance of hearing a variety of voices to transform approaches to teacher education and suggest horizontal expertise as a way to bring together the unique knowledge of a range of different people, spaces, and situations. methods data collection for this study included a qualitative questionnaire designed by the research team, which was administered to elementary literacy teachers (prek-6th). the questionnaire consisted of eight open-ended questions that prompted participants to describe items related to their perceptions of best practices for literacy instruction (see appendix a). the present study focuses solely on two questions relating directly to teachers’ perceptions of best practices. as both questions related to participants’ perceptions of best practices, reliability between their perceptions and their implementation of these practices was not dependent upon what was reported versus what was implemented. https://www.tandfonline.com/reader/content/17f16745b7f/10.1080/01626620.2019.1675201/format/epub/epub/xhtml/index.xhtml#cit0068 manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 6 each of the five researchers initially emailed the qualtrics questionnaire to 20 elementary school teachers within our professional networks (approximately 100 teachers). next, colleagues from a professional research group emailed the questionnaire to elementary teachers within their professional networks. forty-four complete questionnaires met the criteria of educators who taught literacy (reading and writing) in grades pre-k through 6th. the 44 teacher respondents from eight states across the eastern united states ranged from 1 to 20+ years of teaching experience. teachers came from rural, suburban, and urban schools, with 40% in title i schools (see appendix b for participant demographics). data analysis this analysis focused on the first two questions of the questionnaire relating to teachers’ descriptions of literacy instruction best practices in the ideal classroom: 1. in your ideal classroom, describe what literacy (reading and writing) instruction looks like? 2. when you think about best practices in literacy instruction (reading and writing), what comes to mind? responses to these two questions were recorded, tallied, and categorized. there were numerous phases of thematic coding. in phase 1, the researchers worked together to establish codes and definitions based on 5% of the questionnaire responses. in phase 2, members of the research team coded all responses individually using the pre-established codes and definitions. in phase 3, members of the research team split into two groups to discuss their coding and ensure validity. each group achieved consensus amongst their individually-determined codes and worked together to employ descriptive coding (miles & huberman, 1994; strauss & corbin, 1998) by assigning phrases that summarized passages of participants’ responses. these phrases later became larger themes presented in the findings. in phase 4, the two groups reconvened and employed pattern coding (miles & huberman, 1994) by examining the descriptive codes and larger themes determined by each individual group for commonalities between the different coding teams. once consensus was reached amongst all members of the research team about the larger themes and responses that fit under these themes, they were further consolidated into a smaller number of categories (glaser & strauss, 1967). reliability was reached through regular bi-weekly meetings held by zoom, and an iterative, recursive process continued until the researchers reached a consensus on the themes to be discussed in the findings. lastly, once the larger themes and questionnaire responses were agreed upon by the research team, we went back to the original responses from the questionnaire and sorted the responses by demographic information such as primary (k-2nd) and intermediate (3rd-5th) grade-level bands, geographic location, and identifying information about the teacher (e.g., race, school ses). findings more than 130 best practices in literacy instruction were identified by our teacher participants. teachers illustrated many of the components of morrow and gambrell’s (2014) comprehensive literacy instruction. teachers’ responses covered a broad array of practices from the initiation of instruction through the assessment of student learning. literacy teachers’ responses were organized into three themes: preparing for instruction, literacy instruction, and student assessment and differentiation (figure 1). manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 7 figure 1 moving towards comprehensive literacy instruction: literacy teachers’ perceptions of best practices within these categories, teachers described practices, strategies, and theories that were further organized into subcategories. in the following subsections, we highlight the authentic language teacher respondents used when describing best practices. although we parsed these into discrete subcategories, we saw overlap in comments and that some practices could be incorporated within various categories and across grade levels. our data analysis considered the context in which the teachers identified these best practices within their responses and organized them accordingly. teachers’ top responses in each category and/or subcategory were identified and analyzed by grade-level bands (see appendix c). regardless of teachers’ different school settings, years of experience, and/or numbers of students identified as ell or ese within their schools, teachers’ responses illustrated the complexity of reading instruction and the multitude of tools teachers have available to address the needs of their students. for instance, a white, female, intermediate-grade teacher in an urban, title one school in massachusetts (51-75% ell and 10-25% ese) with a master’s degree and 10-14 years of teaching experience explained: in my ideal classroom, i would love to be able to follow a true reader’s and writer’s workshop format. i would like to do a mini-lesson for each subject and then have them move into independent practice. in reading, after the independent practice, i would have guided reading groups and would like to meet with two out of four of my reading groups each day. the two groups i do not meet with would manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 8 be working on independent projects that focus on the skill i am teaching for the week, or enrichment projects for the advanced readers. similarly, a white, female, primary-grade teacher in a suburban, title one school in georgia (less than 10% ell and ese) with a bachelor’s degree and less than four years of teaching experience articulated: ideally, reading instruction looks like flexibly grouped small groups, differentiated based on what each individual group needs during instruction. this would give me more time to effectively work with each individual student in a small group setting/individually to meet their needs. (this is somewhat the plan each day, but the chaos of first grade seems to get the better of us on many days!) ideally, writing instruction looks like writer’s workshop, with a brief whole group mini lesson, leading to individual work time through the writing process (brainstorming, bubble maps, rough drafting, conferencing with students about writing, self-evaluating truthfully using rubrics, peer evaluating, etc.). furthermore, a white, female, intermediate-grade teacher in a suburban school in massachusetts (less than 10% ell and ese) with a master’s degree and 15-19 years of teaching experience stated: in an ideal classroom literacy would be balanced and differentiated to the needs of my individual learners. there would be time for engaging, authentic texts read individually, as a class, small group, and as shared reading. there would be time for word work and building vocabulary as well as directed phonics instruction for students who needed it. i would use a writer’s workshop model with students that connected with themes and texts in the reading block of the day. analysis of the data, such as the excerpts above, made us even more aware of the comprehensive nature of literacy instruction. preparing for instruction within the subcategories for preparing for instruction, teacher responses demonstrated many considerations that they use to guide the preparation of their literacy environment. teachers identified the importance of preparation for establishing a meaningful, supportive literacy environment as a foundation for engaging and motivating reading and writing instruction. these were grouped into five subcategories: (1) theoretical and scholarly basis, (2) literacy environment, (3) motivating literacy practices, (4) grouping options, and (5) literacy tools. table 1 provides a comprehensive list of the best practices that teachers identified within these categories. table 1 preparing for instruction subcategories theoretical and scholarly basis 6+1 traits (culham) bloom’s taxonomy daily 5 (boushey) fountas & pinnell lucy calkins reading workshop writing workshop zpd zone of proximal development manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 9 literacy environment balanced (see our definition) class size comfy and cozy environment develop life-long learners fluid instruction integrated joyful experiences literacy block/ uninterrupted time love of reading/writing materials readily available share [sharing] teacher as facilitator teacher voice in curriculum motivating literacy practices challenging choice (students) engagement meaningful literacy experiences student interest grouping options collaboration small groups individual/1:1 with teacher partners whole group literacy tools anchor charts anchor text w/ supplemental level readers authentic texts brainstorming bubble maps graphic organizers* literature (use of quality) mentor texts scope and sequence standards sticky notes technology wide variety of texts/genres theoretical and scholarly basis teachers reflected both explicitly and implicitly on the theoretical and scholarly foundation for their teaching practices. responses in this category were evenly distributed between primary and intermediate grade teachers. while one teacher with primary and intermediate teaching responsibilities specifically mentioned the zone of proximal development (zpd) (vygotsky, 1978), we see evidence of other teachers across grade levels referring to the theoretical underpinnings of zpd with descriptions such as “teaching that is based on where your students are—not a one size fits all model.” another teacher mentioned bloom’s taxonomy (1956) explicitly. however, other teachers implicitly identified practices imbued with bloom’s taxonomy, such as using “metacognitive strategies,” “challenging” students, identifying “learning targets,” and utilizing “higher order questioning.” while teachers did not explicitly name other theories or theorists, we see evidence of theoretical basis in teachers’ instructional manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 10 practices. for instance, we see instructional practices grounded in theoretical concepts such as reader response theory (rosenblatt, 1978), constructivist approaches (vygotsky, 1978; bruner, 1991), and sociocultural theory (vygotsky, 1934/1986). teachers also mentioned literacy scholars and/or their approaches, such as the daily 5 (boushey & moser, 2006), fountas & pinnell’s guided reading (1996), and 6 +1 traits (culham, 2003); however, the greatest number of responses across grade-levels focused on grounding their instruction in calkins, (1994) reading and writing workshop approaches. literacy environment with the most frequent number of mentions, fifteen k-5 teachers emphasized that an ideal literacy environment would have an uninterrupted block of time for literacy instruction. one intermediate teacher highlighted “a designated amount of time daily for writing instruction and practice,” while a primary grade teacher mentioned “a 90-minute ela block” and then further described the components that it would include. teachers across grade levels articulated the significance of creating an instructional environment that supports a love of learning. within the literacy environment subcategory, teacher comments emphasized “developing life-long learners,” “developing a love of reading,” and engaging students in “joyful experiences” within a “comfy and cozy environment.” teachers also frequently commented on the importance of balanced, integrated literacy experiences as well as interconnecting reading and writing instruction. motivating literacy practices motivating literacy practices (turner & paris, 1995) played a prominent part in teachers’ thoughts about best practices. overwhelmingly, teachers’ responses most frequently included choice and engagement with meaningful experiences and student interest followed by challenge. slightly more intermediate than primary teachers identified the importance of allowing students to make choices in various aspects of their literacy learning. a teacher with primary and intermediate teaching experience articulated the motivational aspect of choice in combination with student interest when she explained, “it is important for kids to read what they want and write what they want. . . . i think they need to explore and find out what they love so that we build on it as they grow.” while teachers often referred to choice within their students’ independent reading and writing topics, an intermediate grade teacher emphasized the role of choice in assessment with “students making choices as to how they would like to demonstrate their learning/understanding of important skills/concepts.” student engagement was also slightly more emphasized by intermediate than primary grade teachers. responses included “engagement with all kinds of literature” and “engagement in whole group and small group instruction.” illustrative of the interconnected nature of engagement, student interest, and meaningful literacy experiences, an intermediate teacher explained, “students should be engaged in personal narratives, writing in various genres, and learning about the writer’s craft . . . if we are to encourage students to become strong writers they must learn to love writing first. that happens with students writing about themselves and their lives.” a primary grade teacher highlighted that in an ideal reading environment, “students engage in guided reading every day, time for phonics instruction, and center work where they engage in comprehension and fluency practice.” as seen in the previous quotes, teachers’ responses were woven with the importance of providing meaningful experiences and identifying students’ interests. one primary grade teacher wrote, “…reading instruction in an ideal manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 11 classroom is when students’ interests in a wide variety of genres are nurtured, and they are engaged with all kinds of literature.” grouping options teachers identified a variety of grouping practices ranging from whole group to small groups to one-on-one individual instruction. small groups represented the grouping practice most frequently articulated by the k-6 teachers, whole groups were the second most frequent response. small groups, mentioned by a few more primary than intermediate teachers, were identified for a variety of uses, including collaborative work groups, direct instruction, and differentiated, targeted instruction. whole group instruction and independent/individual instruction, the third most common grouping option, were both identified nearly equally between both groups of teachers. teachers often included multiple grouping options within their responses. for instance, a primary grade teacher explained, “in the ideal classroom, there is a mix of whole group and small group instruction. mini lessons, strategy groupings, student/teacher conferencing are all part of the classroom.” similarly, an intermediate teacher articulated the importance of implementing multiple grouping options in a “workshop model where kids are constantly reading and writing independently to practice their skills while the teacher conferences 1:1 or teaches guided instruction through small groups.” with slightly more intermediate teachers mentioning collaboration and partner work in their responses, these were the least frequently mentioned but included collaborative practices between students such as “partner talk,” “think-pair-share,” and “turn and talk.” teachers’ flexibility in using different grouping options based on the context of their instruction was an important aspect woven throughout their responses. literacy tools often at the forefront of thinking about best practices was using the standards as a guiding tool for instruction. nearly twice as many primary grade teachers than intermediate grade teachers cited standards. the use of a wide variety of texts/genres and authentic texts were the next two most frequently identified best practices respectively by both groups of teachers. one intermediate teacher highlighted the significance of “texts that feature characters and situations that reflect the student population with a good variety of mentor texts and classic children’s literature.” teachers’ comments about best practices often included a “wide variety of texts,” “authentic texts,” “literature,” and “anchor and/or mentor texts.” teachers named several other tools for literacy instruction, with some broader in nature (e.g., graphic organizers and technology), while others were more concrete and specific (e.g., post-it notes and bubble maps). literacy instruction at the heart of comprehensive literacy instruction is the actual implementation of instruction and the ways teachers engage learners. teachers’ responses revealed a broad definition of literacy, including reading, writing, listening, speaking, and visually representing. the majority of best practices were categorized in this section. while developing and preparing for instruction are important for setting the stage for the instructional process, actual teaching happens when students are actively engaged in learning. we further divided the best practices into two categories: teacher-centered instruction and student-centered learning in table 2 below. manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 12 table 2 literacy instruction teacher-centered instruction student-centered practice/application activating and building prior knowledge aligned instruction assigned activities balanced literacy book units close reading gaps comprehension daily five deepen students’ understanding developing reading & writing skills direct instruction grammar guided practice guided reading higher order questioning integrated with content interactive read alouds learning targets (objectives) matching students with books metacognitive strategies mini-lessons model(ing) reading phonemic awareness phonics read aloud shared reading shared writing sight words flexible, small group instruction skill/strategy-based instruction think alouds unit-based instruction vocabulary word study applying strategies book talks book to write in & highlight literacy centers/stations discussion enrichment fluency practices hands-on learning independent reading independent writing interactive notebooks invented spelling literacy integration with content-area units journaling literature circles making connections notice and note partner talk/think-pair-share/ turn & talk personal narratives practice with a variety of texts project-based learning reader’s workshop rereading student-centered writing process writers and readers notebooks quick writes rewriting revising/editing response writing responding to books rough drafting student accountability sustained silent reading (ssr) think critically varied writing tasks writer’s workshop manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 13 teacher-centered instruction best practices within this category focused on the teacher’s instruction and guidance of students’ learning. more specifically, this category included a variety of practices that focused on the teachers’ role, instructional strategies and skills, curriculum, and lesson design. guided reading, mini lessons, and read alouds were the top three most frequently mentioned practices by both primary and intermediate grade teachers. guided reading stood out with over 33 mentions, which was nearly twice the other most frequently identified categories. slightly more intermediate than primary teachers identified guided reading as a best practice. an intermediate teacher highlighted, “small group guided reading allows the teacher to focus on individual strengths and weaknesses, which can be done with the whole class book or secondary texts” before further adding, “[r]ead aloud is an important time of the day in the elementary classroom and allows students to explore reading concepts in a stakes-free setting.” similar to many teachers’ responses, one primary grade teacher addressed several practices stating, “teachers teach mini lessons based on the comprehension skill of the day. then, students spend time in independent reading while teachers are conferencing with students, pulling strategy groups or guided reading groups depending on the grade level.” the bulk of practices that teachers shared focused on their role leading and facilitating instruction. interestingly, all categories except book units and deepening students’ understanding were mentioned by both primary as well as intermediate teachers. in addition to emphasizing guided reading, teachers also mentioned modeling as well as shared reading and writing activities within the classroom. within their explanations, teachers identified ways they intentionally craft their instruction, such as deepening students’ understandings, developing reading and writing skills, activating and building prior knowledge, and even how they taught comprehension and vocabulary strategies. student-centered practice/application best practices that involved the student’s active engagement in learning were included in this category. more specifically, these best practices are student-centered and focus on students practicing and applying what they are learning. independent reading, independent writing, writer’s workshop, and literacy centers or stations were the top four most frequently mentioned practices by both primary and intermediate grade teachers. independent reading and writing were two practices identified as essential components of literacy instruction. several teachers emphasized independent reading, such as one primary grade teacher who emphasized that “students [should] spend time independent reading while teachers are conferencing with students, pulling strategy groups, or guided reading groups depending on the grade level” and an intermediate teacher who noted, “students should be independently applying strategies taught in the classroom to their independent book of choice.” primary and intermediate teachers echoed the importance of independent reading opportunities for their readers. in addition to independent reading and writing, teachers emphasized reading and writing workshops, such as the intermediate grade teacher who wrote, “reading and writing workshops should be taking place in every classroom, every day. allowing students to read books they love… students should write about what they know--themselves. writer’s workshop should be taking place daily.” furthermore, writing practices overall took a prominent role in the teachers’ responses. aspects of the writing process, although not always within the context of writing workshops, were articulated throughout their comments, including brainstorming, drafting, manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 14 revising, editing, teacher conferencing, peer-editing, and rewriting. just as teachers discussed a variety of reading experiences, a variety of writing activities were also emphasized. some writing activities identified were journaling, personal narratives, quick writes, response writing, and writing notebooks. one teacher emphasized “writing tasks where they have some choice about craft and audience.” multiple teachers noted the importance of providing varied literacy experiences, including a wide genre of texts, multiple reading and writing activities, opportunities to work on individualized and small group projects as well as integrating literacy learning across content areas. for example, a primary grade teacher shared, “when i think of best practices for ela, i think of reading and writing being integrated into all subject areas…[they] are intertwined and it’s so important to include collaboration for students.” collaborative experiences were recognized as an important aspect of student learning. interestingly, an equal number of primary and intermediate grade teachers referred to small, collaborative group work in literacy centers or stations. while a first-grade teacher highlighted that students should work in “literacy centers to work on phonics, grammar, writing, and reading strategies,” an intermediate teacher similarly stated in an ideal classroom, students should be “moving through meaningful small group stations focused on different aspects of literacy (reading, writing, word study).” one teacher commented, “in my ideal classroom...there would be a lot of discussion, opportunity to talk to others about our subject matter, and time to truly read/write.” student assessment and differentiation the final category includes best practices that teachers use to monitor student learning and accommodate individual students’ abilities and needs. the placement of this category at the end is a bit misleading since the differentiation and assessment of learning are interwoven throughout the instructional process; however, we know these practices bind together instructional decision making with student learning. table 3 details a comprehensive list of best practices within this assessment and differentiation category. table 3 student assessment and differentiation review/assessment differentiation based on students’ needs anecdotal recording (good note taking) conferencing formative assessment peer evaluating rubrics running records self-assessing/evaluating setting reading goals tracking student progress additional instructional support differentiated instruction leveled books leveled instruction pacing instruction reading recovery scaffolded support targeted, small group direct instruction words their way manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 15 review/assessment this category highlights an array of formative assessment practices used to assess student progress. notably, these best practices reveal the importance of the teacher’s role in the use of assessment as a guide for their instruction. the two most frequently identified practices were the use of formative assessments and conferencing with students. teachers’ comments also included “anecdotal records,” “rubrics,” helping students to set “reasonable and attainable goals for themselves,” and “tracking student progress.” one teacher summarized her view of assessment, “i think best practices in literacy instruction come from unpacking the standards and knowing what our students already know and what they’re expected to know in the next grade level. this enables the teacher to set expectations and students to set reasonable and attainable goals for themselves.” differentiation based on students’ needs within this category, best practices highlighted ways that teachers address their students’ needs. the data clearly delineated that teachers believe that small group instruction is a vital best practice. many of the best practices mentioned by teachers used the terms “flexible,” “small group,” “targeted,” and “leveled” to describe small group instruction. another practice, “scaffolded support,” was mentioned several times by teachers. one teacher wrote that it is necessary “to scaffold learning from where students are to where they need to be.” additional instructional support, leveled books and instruction, as well as pacing also provided a window into the ways teachers differentiate instruction for their students. discussion considering bond and dykstra’s (1967) research demonstrating that teachers determine the effectiveness of a literacy program, this research study asked teachers to articulate what they perceived to be best practices. the analysis of this questionnaire reiterates what bond and dykstra discovered: best practices are teachers intentionally selecting tools, approaches, and programs that support students’ diverse needs in specific contexts. yet, in our study, we discovered through the voices of the teachers that the popular term “best practices” may actually be more limiting than illuminating. we believe that teachers practice “best practices” in literacy instruction through a broader scope than detailed by the balanced approach that focuses on the science of reading. our findings indicate that teachers engage in comprehensive literacy instruction. comprehensive literacy instruction, as defined by morrow and gambrell (2014), is a balanced approach that emphasizes both skills-based instruction and meaning making. it incorporates evidence-based practices to meet the needs of all students through whole-group, small-group, and individualized instruction. it incorporates children’s funds of knowledge by building on the knowledge that students bring to school and acknowledging the role of motivation in writing. while recognizing the fundamental role of phonics and orthography, it also recognizes that comprehension is the ultimate goal of literacy instruction. in other words, it recognizes the science of reading but contextualizes it to the students who make up the community of learners. comprehensive literacy instruction is an approach more widely known in the field of inclusive education rather than general elementary education (e.g., hunt et al., 2020; kozlski et al., 2021) due to the approach’s attention to individual needs and individualized or small group instruction. yet comprehensive literacy instruction is receiving increased attention in the general education classroom as teachers use these inclusive practices as part of their day-to-day manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 16 instruction (hunt, 2019) and has gained some momentum among administration (e.g., national association of secondary school principals). while “best practices in balanced literacy instruction” encompass the teachers’ ability to orchestrate a variety of skill-based and strategy-based instruction within authentic learning experiences, our research indicates that today’s teachers use the more nuanced comprehensive literacy approach to reading instruction that considers each child’s reading development and experiences with literacy learning. explicit, systematic phonics instruction needs to be situated within a classroom context where reading is conducted meaningfully to motivate students to utilize these newfound letter-sound relationships to make meaning from texts. furthermore, best practices in comprehensive literacy instruction emphasize a combination of student-centered and teacher-directed instruction (cooper, robinson, slansky, & kiger, 2014). teachers strategically use their cumulative knowledge of research-based literacy teaching practices to address their students’ needs and the families they serve. teachers also discussed what was expected of them in their unique cultural circumstances. ultimately, it was a combination of all of their knowledge situated within a specific cultural context that shaped what teachers understood to be comprehensive literacy practices (smagorinsky, 2018). as we analyzed the data, we came to realize that in comprehensive literacy instruction, teachers consider both abstract and explicit considerations for their classrooms ranging from the need for and use of authentic texts to the emotional learning of their students and the physical space for their classrooms. many approaches that are touted as best practices were identified as including components of comprehensive literacy instruction (morrow and gambrell, 2014), universal design for learning (udl) (meyer, rose, & gordon, 2014), five pillars of literacy (nrp, 2000), sheltered instruction observation protocol (echevarría, vogt, & short, 2013), and echoes of theoretical underpinnings. ultimately, the numerous best practices in comprehensive literacy instruction identified by our respondents highlights the complexity of teaching and learning that teachers consider in determining their classroom instruction. although there are fundamental aspects of literacy instruction we need to explicitly teach, perhaps there are hundreds of best practices. our understanding of best practices should shift from labeling specific strategies to recognizing the interplay of a variety of strategies situated within a particular context (shavelson & towne, 2002). unlike some of the op-ed pieces that have received mainstream media attention attacking teachers’ knowledge (e.g., hanford, 2018; wexler, 2018), the teachers in this questionnaire demonstrated a wealth of knowledge and expertise. although curriculum decisions may be made at the state or district level, the questionnaire responses highlight how teachers intentionally design their literacy practices to fit their context and students’ needs. literacy learning is viewed as more than solely the actions of the teacher but is rather the meaning making of the collective (bakhtin, 1981; gutiérrez, 2008). teachers emphasized the shared learning experiences between all members of the classroom rather than focusing on the simplification of the actions of the teacher. in sum, the teachers from this survey demonstrate that the notion of best practices is actually an orchestration of literacy instruction between teachers and students. many of the practices teachers provided as “best” were not specifically “teacher-centered” or “studentcentered,” but rather focused on their interactions as the place where learning occurs. it is the compenetration, or the infusion, of the teachers’ and students’ actions and responses in intentionally designed environments that result in best practices. https://www.nassp.org/top-issues-in-education/position-statements/comprehensive-literacy-education/ https://www.nassp.org/top-issues-in-education/position-statements/comprehensive-literacy-education/ manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 17 implications this study illuminated forty-four teachers’ voices about best practices in literacy instruction. teachers’ responses clearly articulated practices that are effective for their students and the importance of data, and how to use it to support literacy teaching and learning. analysis of these teachers’ responses revealed a convergence of teachers’ understanding of literacy practices. while numerous respondents from a randomized national sample would significantly add to the findings, this core sample of teachers clearly illustrated the multilayered nature of comprehensive literacy instruction required to effectively meet students’ needs in today’s diverse classrooms. this is not surprising given literacy researchers’ consistent argument that context matters, especially for literacy practitioners (shavelson & towne, 2002; smagorinsky, 2018). furthermore, in-depth interviews with individuals would further enhance our understanding of what these practices look like in the classroom. educational terms morph over time (scales & wellman, 2016), but the theoretical underpinnings that support best practices remain. given that the field of education defines effective literacy instruction practices with a myriad of terms for the wide range of diverse and complex contexts in which they teach, we propose morrow and gambrell’s (2014) comprehensive literacy instruction as the most appropriate terminology to represent the reading instruction teachers are actively implementing. comprehensive literacy instruction is inclusive of all elements of instruction, from the teachers’ ability to structure their literacy environment, to determine instructional approaches, to consider ways to engage students in literacy learning and to assess and differentiate for students’ needs. this term addresses the convergence of the complexities and nuances of the ever-shifting definition of literacy combined with the professionalism of teachers’ decision making within the socially contextualized elements of literacy instruction’s best practices. teachers’ knowledge is demonstrated through higher education degrees, products for accreditation portfolios, and required educator exams. this research illustrates that teachers are not just using “best practices,” they are providing students with comprehensive literacy instruction that is solidly built upon research and theory across multiple disciplines. while teachers specifically identified strategies, skills, and tools, they also identified intangible qualities that motivate, engage, and foster their students’ love of literacy learning within each of their own social contexts. teachers should be viewed as valued, trusted, and informed advocates for students’ literacy needs rather than trying to control their instruction through policy and curriculum design. as literacy leaders, we need to continue to listen to teachers’ voices and encourage teachers to advocate for themselves as professionals and leaders in the field of education. references allington, r. l., & johnson, p. h. 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(2015). democratizing teacher education. journal of teacher education, 66(2), 122-135. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487114560908 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f0022487114560908 manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 22 appendix a questionnaire ● what are the best practices in literacy instruction (reading and writing)? ● what informs your view of best practices? how do you know which practices are best? ● in your ideal classroom, describe what literacy (reading and writing) instruction looks like? ● how well does your ideal vision and view of best practices align with what you are asked to do during literacy instruction at your school? ● describe the supports from within your school that help you implement your ideal literacy instruction. ● describe the supports from outside your school that help you implement your ideal literacy instruction. ● describe the barriers from within your school that help you implement your ideal literacy instruction. ● describe the barriers from outside your school that help you implement your ideal literacy instruction. manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 23 appendix b participant demographics state florida georgia illinois maryland massachusetts new york grade levels taught pre-k k 1 2 3 4 5 6 other # of years teaching 0 to 4 5 to 9 10 to 14 15 to 19 20+ highest degree earned bachelors degree masters degree ed.s. specialist type of school rural urban suburban other dll/esl/ell # less than 10% 10-25% 26-50% 51-75% 76-89% title one school title one school non-title one school unanswered sped # less than 10% 10-25% 26-50% 51-75% 76-89% manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 24 appendix c teachers’ top responses analyzed by grade level bands preparing for literacy instruction 0 5 10 15 20 25 6+1 traits (culham) bloom's taxonomy daily 5 (boushey) reading workshop writing workshop theoretical and scholarly basis k-2nd 3rd-5th 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 balanced literacy block/ uninterrupted time love of reading/writing materials readily available sharing reading/writing interconnected literacy environment k-2nd 3rd-5th 0 5 10 15 20 25 challenging student choice engagement meaningful literacy experiences student interest motivating literacy practices k-2nd 3rd-5th manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 25 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 collaboration small groups individual/1:1 with teacher partners whole group grouping options k-2nd 3rd-5th 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 authentic texts graphic organizers mentor texts standards wide variety of texts/genres literacy tools k-2nd 3rd-5th manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 26 literacy instruction 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 literacy centers/stations literature circles discussion extension/enrichment independent reading independent writing project based learning reader's workshop varied writing tasks & genres writer's workshop student-centered practice / application k-2nd 3rd-5th 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 comprehension developing reading & writing skills guided writing guided reading mini-lessons modeling reading/writing phonics read aloud flexible, small group instruction word study teacher-centered instruction k-2nd 3rd-5th manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 27 student assessment and differentiation 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 additional instructional support differentiated instruction leveled books leveled instruction targeted, small group direct instruction differentiation based on students' needs k-2nd 3rd-5th 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 anecdotal recording (good note taking) conferencing formative assessment peer evaluating rubrics review / assessment k-2nd 3rd-5th manak et al.: comprehensive literacy instruction within classroom contexts current issues in education, 23(2) 28 author notes jennifer a. manak rollins college jmanak@rollins.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8987-924x chelsey bahlmann bolling james madison university bahlmacm@jmu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8213-0180 courtney shimek west virginia university courtney.shimek@mail.wvu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3299-5033 jennifer barrett-tatum western carolina university jabarrett@wcu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6508-8520 debra k. wellman rollins college dwellman@rollins.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1747-8794 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . mailto:jmanak@rollins.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8987-924x mailto:bahlmacm@jmu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8213-0180 mailto:courtney.shimek@mail.wvu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3299-5033 mailto:jabarrett@wcu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6508-8520 mailto:dwellman@rollins.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1747-8794 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices: getting students to chill current issues in education, 23(3) 1 volume 23, issue 3 december 12, 2022 issn 1099-839x teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices: getting students to chill stacy bailey university of northern colorado abstract: if the recent turbulent times have shown educators anything, it is that we need to be prepared to address our own and our students’ social and emotional needs. however, moments of tension are not the time to start. rather, students need to be prepared to engage in meaningful ways with skills and competencies. to achieve this state of readiness, teachers can use selfregulation strategies such as the one i call “chill.” chill is an easy-to-implement five-step process designed to reduce tension in moments of crisis and create the conditions whereby students are prepared to reengage with instruction, both with the teacher and with the class. c is for calm down, h is for hear yourself breathe, i is for investigate your condition, l is for let yourself know what you need, and the second l is for let others know what you need. based on the unique developmental aspects of the adolescent brains, chill is designed to support both preand in-service teachers as they seek to negotiate tense classroom situations and build skills in self-regulation and resiliency. importantly, chill is a strategy for de-escalation that supports students and teachers in the face of student behavioral challenges. keywords: sel, adolescent social and emotional learning, trauma-informed teaching, titp, secondary teacher education, self-regulation citation: bailey, s. (2022). teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices: getting students to chill. current issues in education, 23(2). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23.iss3.2057 accepted: 11/02/2022 two years ago, the teacher-preparation program (tpp) in which i teach developed a new methods course designed to address two increasingly significant challenges faced by our teacher candidates (tcs): the effects of trauma on students and the need to cultivate both their own and their students’ social and emotional learning (sel) skills. the need for our curricular change was apparent in light of the national education association’s assertion that the rising levels of trauma students experience are tantamount to an epidemic (national education association, https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23.iss3.2057 bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 2 2019). while teaching the resulting course, i encountered the fallout when one of my tcs posed a startlingly simple question: “how do i talk about sel strategies when a student is about to hurl a desk across the classroom?” in such moments of crisis, even the best pedagogical intentions are sometimes insufficient. tcs seeking licensure in secondary education are, of course, working with adolescents, so teacher training raises a number of very particular issues. first and foremost, adolescents are living through substantial developmental changes. researchers have described these changes as “similar to early childhood in terms of the significance of the brain’s growth and development” (craig, 2017, p. 31). highlighting, if not compounding, these developmental changes are the consequences of the covid-19 pandemic and larger political turmoil. for their part, educators at all institutional levels face the shortand long-term effects. the situation is complex, particularly because on the front lines will be a new generation of teachers who will have experienced these events themselves and be responsible for guiding their still-younger students. accordingly, tpps must adapt the ways they ready these future teachers for the day-to-day classroom by addressing more than their students’ academic needs: they must prepare tcs to consider the whole student. after all, for those wrestling with trauma or with limited skills to address social and emotional challenges like self-regulation, focusing on learning is a struggle (deci & ryan, 2002; lüftenegger, 2012; pintrich, 2003). according to the substance abuse and mental health services administration (2014), adolescents struggling with trauma or without the skills to address sel challenges often wrestle with anger, anxiety, and disorientation. or, they can appear moody, emotionally detached, or unable to control their emotions and reactions. thinking that teachers can simply deliver content or address academic standards without attending to students’ sel needs is an idea fraught with problems. as researchers have begun to recognize, “instructional strategies that teach students self-regulation techniques have demonstrated positive results for both behavioral and academic outcomes” (popham et al., 2018, p. 240). further proof of the value of this type of instruction can be found in the fact that 27 states have adopted k-12 sel competencies (bunting, 2022). similarly, tpps have begun to introduce trauma-informed teaching practices (titp) into their curricula. at the same time, two considerations are essential alongside sel and/or titp. the first is ensuring that secondary teachers design instruction that addresses adolescents specifically (yeager, 2017) and the adolescent brain in particular (dorado et al., 2017). the second is recognizing that no strategy, however thoughtful and well-intentioned, can be implemented when students are in a moment of crisis and unable to self-regulate (thiers, 2020). in the following discussion, i begin by addressing how any titp or instruction in sel must be developed with an eye to the particulars of the adolescent brain. from that starting point and with those particulars in mind, i introduce a strategy for de-escalating situations where students are in crisis. only after such a de-escalation will the student—and the teacher—be prepared to introduce titp or sel competencies designed to address the student’s academic or social and emotional needs. this strategy, which i call “chill,” is designed for preand inservice tcs to help them negotiate tense situations and build skills in self-regulation and resiliency for both their students and themselves. each letter of my chill strategy, discussed in detail below, addresses a step in the process of de-escalation: c is calm down, h is hear yourself breathe, i is investigate your condition, l is let yourself know what you need, and l is let others know what you need. chill helps maintain positive teacher-student relationships even in the face of student challenges. derived from approaches associated with titp and sel, chill is designed to reduce tension in moments of crisis and create the conditions whereby a bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 3 student or students can subsequently reengage with the class community and curricular instruction. in this light, my formulating this slang-ish term is a deliberate act. the urban dictionary (2019), a source of all hip definitions, explains that to be “chill” is to “go with the flow,” to “calm down,” or “to be okay.” this general attitude aligns with the purpose of the chill strategy, and the accessibility of using an acronym that comes from the lexicon of our students makes it more congenial for them to carry the practice from inside the classroom to the world beyond it. dealing with trauma and vicarious trauma social and emotional challenges brought on by trauma cut across age, race, gender, and socioeconomic status. moreover, certain triggers are nearly universal because almost all students experience some degree of stress from academic, social, or out-of-school pressures. most conspicuously, going through adolescence involves forming and maintaining relationships with peers, a process that can vary widely (allen & loeb, 2015). additionally, individual students experience widely different levels of support from the adults in their lives, which, in turn, affects their ability to learn and the nature and extent of their engagement with school. when students find themselves a bit wobbly on their feet, teachers should not be surprised. in their response, teachers are best served by having a tool for immediate action to address the causes of their student’s behavior. chill is just such a tool. as with all the pedagogies they implement, teacher educators should instruct their candidates in the theories and practices that will prepare them to remain steadfast to their curricular mission even while responding meaningfully to students who are experiencing trauma. for these reasons, it is essential that, alongside instruction in content and pedagogy, tpps prepare tcs to recognize and address the effects of trauma on students. equally important is that tpps provide tcs with the skills to also deal with the effects of vicarious trauma—what is sometimes called compassion fatigue. with such fatigue, the effects of exhaustion, burnout, and even chronic illness on their own lives are magnified (eyal et al., 2019). like their students, beginning teachers often experience social isolation and, for many, economic hardship. preparing them to address trauma-driven behavior with their students can, at the same time, help them deal with their own anxieties and stressors—it is what yeager and walton (2011) call a “stealthy approach” (p. 284) whereby, in working to help their students, teachers concurrently heal themselves. to be clear, even the most experienced teachers are not immune from the effects of trauma. most notable has been the covid pandemic. there is no need to document here the balancing act teachers have been forced to master: it has been the subject of academic journals, national news, and social media (cardoza, 2021; casey, 2022; pressley et al., 2021). indeed, younger teachers are mistaken if they believe that veteran teachers are more secure in their status because they have somehow weathered the challenges of teaching unscathed. rather, all teachers, regardless of their level of experience, benefit from meaningful strategies that serve their students and themselves. addressing adolescent brain development in approaching chill trauma, it seems, is everywhere. researchers refer to the traumatic events of children from age 0 to 17 as adverse childhood experiences. data from the national survey of children’s health (2016) confirm that 55 percent of america’s children between the ages of 12 and 17 have had at least one such experience, while one in five u.s. children has had two or more. in short, trauma has been “hiding in plain sight” for decades (national education association, 2019, p. 2). given the numbers, it is safe to say that tpps have always had to prepare their tcs to work with bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 4 diverse situations. for example, tpps typically include courses on educational psychology, although these are often introductory overviews of “development, learning, and assessment” (patrick et al., 2011, p. 73). only recently, schools and tpps have begun to address trauma in meaningful ways. in particular, titp offers significant benefits for students who have experienced trauma. still, given the multiple ways that trauma can suddenly manifest, teachers need a strategy that allows them to respond effectively, and especially in the moment, to support students who struggle with trauma. overall, my chill strategy aims to de-escalate moments of crisis in the classroom and prepare teachers and students to address the effects of trauma. in addition to elements of titp and sel, chill seeks to cultivate mindfulness and self-regulation in students. integral to this approach is how chill accounts for what is unique about the adolescent brain. focusing on the particulars of the adolescent brain is key when it comes to addressing students’ social and emotional competencies and the effects of trauma, especially in terms of how trauma affects particular areas of the brain. equally important is differentiating practices for secondary education from those addressing elementary education (yeager, 2017). such differentiation accounts for the unique features and opportunities that stem from adolescent brain development. useful to framing chill is some basic information about the effects of trauma on the adolescent brain, most significantly, the amygdala (ganzel & morris, 2011; norbury & goodwin, 2007). the amygdala is essential to emotional learning and memory, emotional modulation of memory, emotional influences on attention and perception, emotion and social behavior, and emotion inhibition and regulation (phelps & ledoux, 2005). importantly, it is the portion of the brain that mediates the acquisition and expression of conditioned fear and the enhancement of emotional memory (koenigs & grafman, 2009). as a result, alterations in the amygdala that result from trauma can affect emotional behavior in significant ways. when the amygdala has been required to react to a traumatic event, it can make an individual more likely to react to triggers—even mild ones—by combining them with the stress of a previous traumatic event (ganzel & morris, 2011). the result can be greater emotional extremes and a struggle to self-regulate. in school, these struggles can manifest as excessive reactions to stressful events. in such instances, the sooner teachers intervene to de-escalate the moment, the better. helping teachers to recognize the causal relationship between trauma, the brain, and student behavior achieves two important ends. most obviously, it better prepares teachers to recognize and address the social, emotional, and academic needs of students suffering from trauma. additionally, and equally important, it is a means for understanding and addressing their own emotional exhaustion that manifests in teacher burnout. the statistics regarding this latter point paint a worrisome picture: researchers found that 37.9% of secondary teachers experience “severe emotional exhaustion” (garcia-carmona et al., 2019, p. 201) and that emotional exhaustion has been on the rise since covid (sojkal et al., 2020). at the core of the emotional exhaustion are negative interactions between teachers and students. titp are an essential step towards addressing both student trauma and teacher burnout because they shift how classroom behavior is understood. instead of approaching self-regulation problems as classroom management issues, titp encourage teachers to perceive self-regulation problems as potential indicators of trauma. in advocating for schools to be more trauma aware, dorado et al. (2016) promote a mindset shift for teachers: far different from beginning with the question, “what is wrong with you?” teachers begin by asking, “what has happened to you?” (p. 164). without the training to make this shift, these researchers warn, “trauma-impacted students are at risk of being seen as children with ‘problem behaviors’ rather than as children in need of bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 5 help who have made adaptations in order to survive trauma” (dorado et al., 2016, p. 164). titp is also an approach endorsed by the substance abuse and mental health services administration and the center for developing adolescents, which has advocated for those who work with adolescents to improve their “understanding of the mechanisms that affect sensation-seeking, cognitive control, and emotional regulation” (institute of medicine and national resource council, 2011, p. 44). in their classrooms, teachers benefit from an approach such as chill by understanding that when a student reacts to a stressor in a way that is disparate to the stressor, that reaction could be based on previous factors. for example, students who yell at teachers who ask that they simply “sit down and take notes” might seem to be exhibiting unreasonable behavior. teachers not trained in titp are more likely to perceive such a reaction as a “bad behavior” and proceed with a disciplinary strategy (public counsel, 2015; west et al., 2014). this assumption, however, can lead to what jennings and greenburg (2009) refer to as a “burnout cascade” (p. 492)—that is, a tumble of repeated ineffective teacher responses to student behavior problems that result in increased student anger and teacher frustration and emotional exhaustion. the outcome is often more intense and frequent punishments for students, which can lead to “vicarious traumatization” (pawlo et al., 2019, p. 38). for teachers trained in titp, the situation calls for a more measured response to reduce escalation and implement calming strategies. recognizing trauma can clarify the link between students who have experienced trauma or are struggling with self-regulation and vicarious trauma. developing the skills needed to distinguish trauma-informed behavior and implement trauma-informed strategies must become a central component in teacher education. teachers who understand the effect of trauma recognize that students’ actions could result from a combination of previous trauma and a current event. as a result, the strategies teachers implement and their composure in addressing the behavior in the moment are key to reducing stress in the classroom. during moments of high tension, teachers need a strategy for de-escalation based in evidence-based practices. to start, the difference between the brain-based behaviors of adults and children must be understood. neuroscientists have called adolescence an age of opportunity in terms of the ability to learn new resiliency skills and how to overcome adversity (national academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine, 2019; rimm-kaufman & jodl, 2020). a report by the institute of medicine (2011) also addressed the uniqueness of brain development in adolescence, noting that changes in the adolescent brain make this age a prime time for “modulating behavioral responses . . . and exert[ing] control over impulses and emotional and social responses” (p. 37). a consortium called the adolescent brain cognitive development project established that adolescent brains have “tension[s] between developing capacities for cognitive control and the emergence of strong incentive strivings” (luciana et al., 2018, pp. 67-68). the unique cognitive development in adolescents can lead to behaviors such as increased risk-taking and increased reliance on peers for validation and support (collaborative association of social and emotional learning, 2015; luciana et al., 2018). not surprisingly, then, growth in the regions of the brain that result in these behaviors outpaces growth in the regions of the brain that are used for making judgment calls and planning (willoughby et al., 2013). any strategy for addressing adolescent behaviors must account for the development of the adolescent brain. finally, in the same way that it is important to distinguish the adolescent brain from that of adults and children, any classroom strategy such as chill must differentiate between the experiences and needs of elementary and secondary teachers and students. yeager (2017), in his study of social and emotional learning programs for adolescents, explains that promoting the use bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 6 of elementary sel practices in the secondary setting is common. such practices can explain why “typical sel programs, which directly teach skills and invite participants to rehearse those skills over the course of many classroom lessons, have a poor track record with middle adolescents (roughly age 14 to 17), even though they work well with children” (p. 73). these “aged-up versions of childhood programs” (p. 74) do not address the particular challenges of working with adolescents, and the “poor track record” (p. 74) of such programs creates frustrations for students and teachers. moreover, unlike children, adolescent behavior is more frequently characterized by risk-taking. discussing this concept, siegel (2014), a clinical professor of psychiatry at ucla, described counseling a high-school student who was expelled for bringing alcohol to a school dance. the student remarked, “i guess i knew what might happen. . . but the fun of it just seemed like too much to turn down” (katey, 2014, as cited in siegel, 2014, para. 3). any strategy that fails to account for what is unique to the adolescent brain, summarily stated, stands little chance of sustained success. taking time to chill when the effects of trauma or anxiety or frustration interfere with implementing instruction, teachers need a strategy that can diminish tension—for an individual student or an entire class—and create a climate wherein the student is better prepared to self-regulate and engage without anxiety or anger. chill is a self-regulation strategy designed to de-escalate tense situations quickly. for example, when the risk-taking adolescent challenges a teacher publicly, even aggressively, the response must be immediate and effective. at the same time, when frustration or anxiety prevents a student from engaging or performing, teachers need a strategy that helps students to focus. because the chill technique is based on research surrounding self-regulation and effective sel interventions, it can be effective in all such instances, for as researchers have determined, self-regulation strategies “have been successfully implemented across a variety of settings including general education classrooms” (popham et al., 2018, p. 240). what follows is a section about each of the five steps of chill and then a section about how the strategy can be modeled in the classroom. once students are familiar with the process and the practice, the entire chill intervention can be implemented in as little as two to three minutes. importantly, students who are taught the chill process can (and should) practice “chill-ing” before a tense situation escalates. indeed, researchers have concluded instruction in self-management techniques can actually “serve as a cue” to help students self-manage (mooney et al., 2005, p. 204). and, chill strategies can be applied to situations inside and outside school. it is the ease and speed with which it can be implemented that makes chill invaluable for teachers and students: almost any practicing teacher will relate that trying to stop an entire class to have a fifteen-minute counseling session with one student invites chaos. instead, teachers can simply ask students who are escalating whether they would like to take a few minutes to chill. equally important, chill can be used as a tool for the teachers themselves. when teachers learn to chill, they build their own self-regulation and sel skills and are more authentic models for implementing the strategy. c: calming yourself down to begin, creating calm in tense situations asks students to practice the competencies of self-management and responsible decision-making. the sense of calm is created through selftalk, an internal dialogue during which we tell ourselves to be calm and take control of our emotions—in the common expression, “to be the boss of you.” researchers have found that selfbailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 7 talk is an effective strategy for helping students self-regulate (popham et al., 2018). this step, to be sure, involves more than saying the words “calm down.” rather, it is a process. thomas (2020), a cognitive psychologist, advises teachers that counseling their students about managing stress in the middle of stress is counterproductive: “telling students to calm down doesn’t give them the tools to manage their stress levels and their anxiety. how can one do something (like calming down) if they don’t know how to do it?” (as cited in thiers, 2020, p.12). teachers, in other words, need to model the calming behaviors they expect in their students. part of this strategy involves tapping memories. the neuroscience of memory demonstrates that accessing sensory memories results in strengthening the synapses in the brain, a process called myelination (xin & chan, 2020). synapses, which are the small gaps between neurons, must be bridged in order for messages to travel from one neuron to the next. the more often that bridge is traversed, the more myelinated those synapse pathways become, and the more efficiently messages can cross that gap or synapse (fields & bukalo, 2020). one analogy that helps explain this process is driving a car. city traffic moves slowly in starts and stops. highway driving moves quickly, with few, if any, stops. the lesser myelinated synapse is like city driving—stop and go. the higher myelinated synapses are like speeding down the interstate—smooth sailing. when students experience moments of high stress, it is more difficult for the brain to access these smooth-flowing pathways. however, by practicing chill and focusing on creating calm, we can strengthen the brain’s synapses, effectively clearing the traffic. the practice of calming yourself down involves not only self-talk but visualization, the two together tapping into a pleasant sensory memory and practices that directly affect the brain (norelli et al., 2021). self-talk can take the form of a personal or occasional mantra that the student summons as needed. visualization, also known in research studies as “guided imagery,” asks students to return to or imagine a place that makes them feel at peace—their particular “happy place”—a spot they can envision when overwhelmed by emotions or anxieties (skeens, 2017, p. 92). the more often students practice these strategies in moments of calm, the easier it will be to access them in moments of need. to extend the driving-a-car metaphor, the more often student practice using the on-ramp to their myelinated highway, the easier it will be to find that route when they are stressed. in some instances, sharing these memories can help students concretize them. we can ask them to write a description, draw a picture, or find a photograph. still, teachers must be wary. with all elements of chill, it is important to remember the high risk of asking students to disclose or share personal matters in the classroom. students living with trauma often work daily to hide their trauma. envisioning one’s safe spaces does not require sharing with the class or the teacher. h: hearing yourself breathe after engaging in self-talk, students are better prepared to attune themselves to their bodies. “h” advises them, “hear yourself breathe.” hearing is an important mindfulness practice (kuppusamy et al., 2020). in particular, listening for our audible breath forces us to breathe deeply. this kind of breathing is a common practice in meditation and mindfulness, and research acknowledges the effect of such practices on the body. neuropsychologist rhoades explains that “deep breathing (sometimes called diaphragmatic breathing) is a practice that enables more air to flow into your body and can help calm your nerves, reducing stress and anxiety” (as cited in princing, 2022, para. 4). in implementing chill, teachers can help students to move beyond deep breathing to what is called expiratory breathing. practitioners of yoga might be familiar with ujjayi breathing, which is a soft, whispering breath that is expiratory. expiratory breathing bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 8 involves producing a wheezing or hissing sound with each exhale—a sound loud enough to be audible. expiratory breathing engages the parasympathetic system, the part of the autonomic nervous system that functions as a counterpart to the sympathetic nervous system. whereas the sympathetic nervous system controls the body’s responses to a perceived threat and is responsible for the fight or flight response, the parasympathetic nervous system controls the body at rest by slowing both one’s heart and breathing rate (roelofs & dayan, 2022). because when the sympathetic nervous system is engaged, self-regulation is more difficult (mccraty & zayas, 2014), chill uses breathing techniques to engage the parasympathetic system. expiratory breathing encourages the body to slow its heart rate and breathing speed, thereby exiting the fight-or-flight mode brought on by stressful events. research specifically designed to assess the effects of parasympathetic breathing on adolescents found that repeated practice led to a stronger ability to regulate the autonomic nervous system (kuppusamy et al., 2020). an additional study conducted at the department of stress and health science at mie university graduate school of medicine examined the physiological effects of expiratory breathing, concluding that it significantly activates the parasympathetic system (komori, 2018). noteworthy to the mie university study was the fact that, although participants were able to vary their breathing without any kind of training, practicing the kind of deep breathing needed to engage the parasympathetic system took repeated practice. i: investigating your condition the signs of stress can be difficult to recognize or even deceiving, so it is essential to investigate the body for those signs. some of the signs are easy to spot: queasiness, headaches, or aching muscles. however, these effects are not always associated with stress. research has shown that adolescents can decrease immediate stress by learning about these symptoms, recognizing that their bodies deliver messages to them about their emotional as well as physical well-being, and working to manage them through mindfulness-based strategies (fulambarkar et al., 2022; mccraty & zayas, 2014). investigating one’s body, taking inventory of areas of pain or tension resulting from stress, and working deliberately to mitigate those effects is a concrete way for students to take control of their bodies and, by extension, the situation. this step in the chill process is designed to help students de-escalate by directing their own reactions to stressful situations. one way to engage in self-investigation is through progressive muscle relaxation (pmr) (marksberry, 2012; rausch, 2006). pmr begins by focusing on an area of tension identified through the process of investigation. to address areas of tension—a tight muscle or a clenched jaw, for example—pmr involves focusing intently on that one spot and using our breathing to help ease that tension. on each inhale, we tense the spot even further—tightening the muscle or clenching even harder—and on each exhale, we release that tension. in the same way that stress tells muscles to tense, when we work to relax our muscles, we send a reverse message back to the brain telling it to relax, meaning that stress can cause muscle tension in the same way that prolonged muscles tension can cause stress reactions in the brain (american psychological association, 2018). because our nervous systems are bi-directional feedback loops, the process of working to relax areas of stress-induced tension has a powerful reverse effect on the stress itself. pmr, in this way, helps reduce feelings of stress and fear, and, as a result, the tension subsides. in studies conducted specifically with adolescents, pmr was found to be effective in reducing stress (damodaran & paul, 2015; manjushambika, 2017) and maintaining a steady bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 9 psychological state (tsai et al., 2021). pmr then becomes an important step in helping adolescents self-regulate. l: letting yourself know what you need the first three steps of the chill practice are designed to prepare students to move from being reactive to being proactive. “letting yourself know what you need” begins with another kind of self-talk: self-instruction (meichenbaum & goodman, 1971). this step helps students self-regulate by transitioning from focusing on feelings to focusing on thinking. self-instruction can be a tool for analyzing one’s situation, behaviors, anxieties, or fears. practicing this type of internal communication is an important way of continuing to reduce stress and increase selfmanagement. self-talk has become an essential component of self-management (callicott & park, 2003; lidstone et al., 2010; popham et al., 2018). mooney et al. (2005) found that strategies based on self-instruction resulted in significant positive changes across a variety of settings. studies on the use of self-talk in public health situations have shown very positive results indicating that individuals trained to use self-talk were able to “enhance rational thinking and quell worry” (hatzigeorgiadis et al., 2011, p. 388). these are the same results we seek when we ask students to practice and use chill. what one needs at a particular moment can vary. as a result, self-appraisal must be deliberate. for example, one could have a physical need for food or water or sleep, resulting in feelings of anxiety. or, one’s needs could be emotional, so it is important to understand what underlies feelings of sadness or frustration. harsh words with a friend or frustration with events at school or at home can require different responses. this kind of self-talk has been a subject of study in multiple areas—from sports psychology and public health policy to early childhood and behavioral development (daugherty & white, 2008; de dios & montero, 2003; winsler & naglieri, 2003). for example, in sports psychology, an analysis of self-talk interventions found that there was a positive effect when subjects practiced self-talk (hatzigeorgiadis et al., 2011; van raalt et al., 2016). because chill is a strategy designed to support students in moments of stress for which they were previously unprepared, this research suggests that the results of chill will be similarly effective. l: letting others know what you need the simple act of asking for help can seem daunting to students in ordinary circumstances. it can be especially difficult when they are in crisis. the culminating step of the chill strategy is “letting others know what you need.” asking for help is an act of agency to which the chill strategy has been building. placing this step in the context of a larger strategy empowers students to speak up for themselves in order to get their needs addressed. boonekamp et al. (2022) write, “for young people to aspire to what is not readily available, they need to be able to form conceptions of what they desire, and to perceive themselves as having the potential for goal-oriented action towards its achievement” (p. 2). this final step needs to be diligently scaffolded. because chill is a deliberate process of working towards de-escalation, students are well prepared, even in the brief time it takes to work through the steps, to begin the process of taking control of the moment. boonekamp et al. (2022) also assert that critical to engaging in agency is teaching adolescents how to assume “the responsibility to reflect and be responsible for their own choices” (p. 3). building the skills needed to practice agency has multiple benefits. wilson & deane (2001), in their study of high-school-aged students, confirmed that when adolescents engage in help-seeking behaviors, they tend to feel more “heard, valued, accepted, and treated with dignity” (p. 358). these perceptions make engaging in bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 10 help-seeking behaviors more likely. as with the other steps of chill, students need to be taught how to seek help. there are three variables involved in help-seeking behavior: the task, the person needing help, and the person whose help is being sought. for this last step, students need to know about the multiple others to whom they can turn for support. for their part, teachers need to explain the available sources for help, whether from classmates and friends, trusted adults in their immediate environment, teachers and school counselors, or professionals such as social workers, psychologists, and other medical professionals. in this light, self-advocacy introduces and depends on a skill set that is different from what is required at other steps in the chill strategy. with the other steps, students focus primarily on intrapersonal skills, including self-management, self-awareness, and intrapersonal communication. advocacy addresses the interpersonal skill of social awareness, one that requires a level of trust that a student might not yet have achieved. asking for help can be a psychologically difficult task that depends on one’s emotional competence. emotional competence is an important factor both in avoiding and engaging in help-seeking behaviors: the higher a student’s level of emotional competence, the more likely they are to seek help (cherland, 2004). modeling chill the goal of the chill process is for students to learn an approach that allows them to regulate their behavior in moments of crisis or escalating tensions. there are multiple ways to introduce the complete strategy to students. although the skills associated with chill are different from the content area skills on which their classrooms are centered, the familiar structure of “i do, we do, you do” can make the practice seem less daunting to students. this kind of modeling both ensures explicit teaching of strategies and provides support for students before they are expected to perform the strategy on their own. it also allows teachers to monitor students’ levels of mastery as they move through the chill steps. before beginning instruction in the process, teachers should explain the purpose and benefits of each step of the strategy. how much or how little of the scholarly basis for chill teachers choose to share will depend on their classroom situations. for example, some students might find the brain-based research compelling, while others might need proof before they are open to a process that seems out of sync with typical classroom behavior management tools. teachers can create a lesson or series of lessons that offer direct instruction on the theories that undergird the strategy. or the steps can be discussed in the context of social and emotional learning competencies. here, i shall describe the process i use to introduce chill to students, one in which i move through the steps one at a time, first modeling my practice (and thereby building trust) and then walking students through their own unique methods of chill-ing. i begin by writing the acronym on the board and briefly describing each of the steps. as with any instruction, i use questioning to engage the class to ensure their understanding and to clarify any misunderstandings about the individual steps and the entire process. i explain that chill is a technique that can reduce stress and lower their anxiety, and i make clear that before i ask them to practice, i shall model each step for them to show how easy it is to implement. if students are familiar with the activity called a think-aloud, then they should recognize the self-talk of the first stages of chill during the “i do” process and be comfortable at the next stage, “you do.” in brief, the think-aloud technique is a strategy that teachers use during instruction whereby they engage in the practice while verbalizing the thoughts and decisions that they are making. they are, in essence, modeling the thoughts that underlie the practice. the value of the think-aloud in bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 11 this instance helps to ensure that students are hearing examples from which they can build their own internal monologues. my modeling starts with vocalizing self-talk that encourages calm. although during chill self-talk is typically an internal monologue, i remind students that my modeling is a think-aloud, so i am sharing my personal approach to achieving calm. as part of modeling, teachers should share, if they are comfortable, a mantra, a calming memory, or a description of a calming space. i explain to students that first, i tell myself to calm down. then, repeating the phrase, “calm down,” i locate a calming place of memory or a calming space i can visit in my head. i share how sitting in the sun and petting my dog always gives me a sense of peace. so, i travel to that spot in my imagination, and i can feel my body relaxing. having modeled calming myself, i guide the class through their own calming practice. “first,” i tell them, “i want you to tell yourself to calm down.” then, i continue, “in repeating that mantra to yourself, find a pleasant memory or create a calming space in your mind.” while the students engage their own memories or create their own spaces, i remain silent. after a few moments, i bring the class back to the center. after practicing each step, we make time for discussion and how the process felt or worked. this self-reflective pause is the same kind of check for understanding teachers should do regularly during instruction in new academic content or skills. once we have worked through the first step of chill, i introduce students to breathing exercises. i remind them that they want to hear themselves breathe. i model deep breathing, describing while i do the method of raising the tongue to the roof of the mouth and vocalizing as i inhale and exhale. i remind them that they should be breathing at a normal or comfortable pace. because students can feel awkward practicing deep breathing, we engage the process as a whole class. we breathe deeply together until we find our own rhythms. once students are comfortable, we again take a moment to discuss the process and how they feel about the strategy before moving to the next step. before moving on, i explain to students that these first two steps are designed to create a condition where they are able to directly address the causes of any stress or anxiety. i advise them, “now you need to investigate your body’s condition for signs of stress.” i model for them how i do a mental check of each region of my body to locate areas of tension. “for me,” i tell them, “i carry my tension in my shoulders.” then, i walk them through the pmr process, explaining, “i find that tension in my shoulders, i inhale, and then i squeeze them as tightly as i can creating even more tension.” i show them how i breathe in, hunch my shoulders tightly, and then pause. on my hissing exhale, they watch me release my shoulders back to their regular position. “the tension begins to dissipate,” i tell them, noting that it might take a few breaths to release it all. as with the previous steps, students practice the process of investigating their bodies, and after a few rounds, we discuss the process—not only this step but the first three. now, i tell them that they are ready to take control of the situation, and taking control, i explain, means asking for help. as i have already remarked, the first three steps of chill focus on students’ intrapersonal skills. starting with “let yourself know what you need,” we are moving students outwards towards seeking and getting the support they need in a moment of crisis. i explain to students that after releasing tension and achieving a state of calm, we want to understand the origins of our stress or anxieties. “by engaging again in self-talk,” i tell them, “we put words to our needs.” these needs vary across the physical, social, emotional, and academic, and i make clear to students that their needs can be multiple. in discussing this step and how they feel about bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 12 it, i do not ask students to share their needs. rather, i ask them if they feel comfortable identifying their needs and encourage them, as educator mcgee (2022) suggests, to write them down. next, i tell them, “we are at the hardest step—asking for help.” in moving to the “letting others know what you need” step, i want students to understand that they do not have to deal with things that challenge them on their own. asking for help can involve seeking the support of a professional; however, it can also be an act as simple as turning to a neighbor in class, asking the teacher for support, or sharing with a friend. at this step of chill, there is real activity on which to reflect with students. this is an opportunity to talk as a class about the people we can ask for help and the resources available to us in the school and community. throughout this introduction to chill, i share with students those times when the chill process can be helpful outside the classroom. i do so by sharing my own moments of anxiety or tension. in all cases, when i share with students, i remain cautious about boundaries. before modeling any element of the process, teachers must decide in advance what topics they will and will not address with students. the issue here is not simply what is appropriate. examples we use must be relatable to students. our experiences as adults are typically very different from those of our students. walking students through the phases of chill gives them the opportunity to practice the steps on their own. i remind them that there is no right way to breathe, no one mantra to recite, no best “happy place,” and no single place in our bodies where tension resides. likewise, there is no single moment when the strategy can be implemented. as well, students who have lived with multiple traumas are less likely to be trusting. it can take time to build the kind of trust necessary to engage willingly in the process of chilling. modeling is one way for teachers to demonstrate trust with their students. by modeling, we provide the tools students need to take control of stressful situations and give them permission to advocate for themselves. chill is thus not only a powerful skill for self-management and practice for intraand interpersonal communication but a means for building authentic trust between teacher and students and between the students themselves. considering the implications to chill as teacher educators, we have a bifurcated view of our tcs. on the one hand, we picture them as teachers with their own classes; on the other, we see them still as students in our classes. although the description of modeling and implementing the chill strategy is designed for teachers at any stage in their careers and in any classroom, it is also the very process that i use with my tcs as i introduce them to the strategy in our methods course. tpps are unavoidably stressful. the closer students get to student teaching and then their own classrooms, the more their natural enthusiasm collides with their anxiety and apprehension. research indicates that building initial titp and sel skills are best done in an indirect fashion. those who study socialpsychological interventions designed to help individuals overcome social and psychological hurdles advocate stealthy guidance over direct instruction, noting that the latter feels controlling (hulleman et al., 2010; yeager & walton, 2011). introducing a strategy such as chill follows the indirect approach, for it gives tcs a valuable classroom strategy for addressing students’ social and emotional needs as well as preparing the tcs to address their own anxieties, whatever their source. it is, truly, “win-win. whatever is one’s view of classroom management, though, just as it is shortsighted to think that teachers can simply deliver content or address academic standards without attending to the extraacademic needs of the students in their classrooms, it is equally so for tpps to think that content expertise and pedagogical training is sufficient to prepare tcs for the classroom. no matter how bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 13 well we prepare teacher candidates with content expertise and best practices, supplemented with training in social and emotional learning and trauma-informed teaching practices, they will confront moments of crisis in the classroom. during these moments, teachers need to be able to maintain their own equanimity and the well-being of students in their care. both they and their students need to take a moment, as it were, to chill out by chill-ing. references allen, j. p., & loeb, e. l. 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(2011, june). social-psychological interventions in education: they’re not magic. review of educational research, 81(2), 267-301. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311405999 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedro.2020.100016 https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare9101319 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chill https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2015.08.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2014.01.013 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2013.09.008 https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532768xjepc1204_03 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00561 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8624.00561 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-020-00379-8 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-020-00379-8 https://doi.org/10.1353/foc.2017.0004 https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311405999 bailey: teacher-preparation programs and trauma-informed teaching practices current issues in education, 23(3) 18 author notes stacy bailey https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8661-8068 university of northern colorado stacy.bailey@unco.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8661-8068 mailto:stacy.bailey@unco.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ cie template current issues in education, vol(number) 1 volume 22, issue 3 december 8, 2021 issn 1099-839x mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators emily mcrobbie northern arizona university abstract: this interpretive case study explored how k-12 educators conceptualized and related mindfulness to their professional lives while completing the stress management and relaxation techniques (smart) in education mindfulness-based intervention program. participants were able to construct an understanding of mindfulness and noted increased present moment focus, expanded awareness, and a greater sense of neutrality or reduced judgment. educators who practiced mindfulness regularly reported strengthened compassion, improved relational quality, and a stronger sense of empowerment. the study suggests that mindfulness for educators presents opportunities for individual and school transformation, although the amount of school change participants reported was influenced by systemic support and privilege. strengthening relational quality in schools, empowering teachers, and shifting school culture from places of cultural reproduction to those of transformation may more effectively address the sources of teacher stress and create relational spaces that support teaching and learning. keywords: mindfulness, teacher, educator, relational quality, compassion citation: mcrobbie, e. j. (2021). mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators. current issues in education, 22(3). https://10.14507/cie.vol22iss3.1988 accepted: 11/1/2021 introduction mindfulness in education has gained a great deal of attention in recent years, yet few studies explore contextual nuances or describe how mindfulness is understood by educators and related to teacher work. current literature largely focuses on teacher well-being, stress reduction, and social-emotional learning as a method for improving teaching skills and student learning. mindfulness-based interventions might also create space for educators to connect, reflect, and transform. educators view mindfulness training as a meaningful, positive experience that improves well-being and professional work (greenberg & harris, 2012; herrmann & gallo, 2013; jennings et al., 2013; roeser et al., 2012; roeser et al., 2013; sharp & jennings, 2015). several studies provide evidence that mindfulness training for k-12 teachers can improve teacher resiliency (flook et al., 2013; roeser et al., 2013; schussler et al., 2018). additionally, https://10.0.56.171/cie.vol22iss3.1988 mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 2 improving one’s ability to attend to students with open awareness in the present moment is thought to enhance the teacher-student relationship and positively influence the learning environment (sharp & jennings, 2015). yet findings from a limited number of studies are to be considered cautiously (schussler et al., 2018) and studies that explore participant meaning in context are needed to better understand diverse experiences. the purpose of this study is to understand how k-12 educators make meaning of mindfulness and explain how they relate it to teaching and learning. an interpretive theoretical lens is used to document and describe educator experiences. this can be the first step to identifying the variety of ways that mindfulness-based interventions are received by educators and considering implications for program design as well as new research questions. participants who committed to regular mindfulness practice during an 8-week stress management and relaxation techniques (smart) in education program discussed changes that they attributed to improving their professional and personal lives. participants who did not establish a daily practice did not experience many changes even though they saw value in the training. shared understanding of mindfulness included present moment observation, awareness, and a greater sense of neutrality that fostered compassionate responsiveness to others. these attributes were linked with improved relational quality and personal empowerment in professional work. additionally, this study revealed significant differences between two school sites. experiences differed between participants in an affluent, suburban school setting and those in an at-risk, urban school district. levels of privilege and systemic support altered educator experience with mindfulness training and practice. the study highlights that although mindfulness practice as an individualistic tool to strengthen well-being was valued by participants, it is also important to address contextual differences and how educators are empowered to meet professional challenges. systemic support and privilege may play a role in teacher experiences with mindfulness. research examining mindfulness-based interventions for k-12 teachers is currently establishing foundational knowledge. this study responds to the call for additional exploratory and descriptive research and contributes to contextual knowledge to better understand how educators make meaning of mindfulness. multiple studies recommend the need for qualitative research to provide rich, contextual information related to mindfulness educator training (greenberg & harris, 2012; roeser et al., 2012; sharp & jennings, 2015). this study captures personal meaning and descriptions of how participants explain mindfulness in the context of their work. it also extends the conversation of mindfulness for educators beyond pragmatic concerns to consider issues of teacher empowerment, the role of privilege, and individual and school change. although there is evidence that mindfulness improves a sense of well-being, resiliency, and social emotional development, mindfulness additionally offers leverage for transformation of educational structures. overview of relevant literature review research specific to mindfulness-based interventions for k-12 educators suggests improvements in stress management, well-being, social-emotional regulation, and relationships with students (jennings & greenberg, 2009; jennings et al., 2013; roeser et al., 2012). the specific mechanisms by which mindfulness strengthens these areas is still in development. one promising line of research suggests that adults engaging in regular mindfulness practice develop meta-awareness that fosters improved attention in the present moment, clearer quality in the mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 3 content of consciousness, ability to inhibit irrelevant processes or thoughts, and self-regulation (jankowski & holas, 2014). mindfulness appears to reduce cognitive rigidity and allow flexibility of thought (greenberg, reiner & meiran, 2012). such cognitive flexibility allows for positive reappraisal of stressors (hanley et al., 2014). positive reappraisal is the process of reinterpreting stressful events as harmless or even meaningful and beneficial (lazarus & folkman, 1984 as cited in hanley et al., 2014; sharp & jennings, 2015). adults with regular mindful meditation practice tend to use reappraisal coping to handle stressors more frequently than those who are less experienced or less regular in their practice (hanley et al., 2014). enhancing one’s ability to reappraise stressful situations is certainly a helpful life skill and one that would benefit k-12 educators as they navigate work stress. however, it is also important to consider sources of teacher work stress and critically examine educational structures that may create less than ideal teaching and learning spaces. to best understand systemic sources of teacher stress, it helps to position the teaching profession in the political, social, and cultural climate that american educators navigate. the empiricist philosophy common in public education values schools as models of efficiency and places a high value on empirical testing and verification (flinders & thornton, 2013). teachers and students often experience separation, rigid rules, restrictive evaluation, and institutional conformity (jackson, 1990). this system undervalues and manages teachers’ knowledge, intensifies their work, and isolates them in ways that leave few opportunities for collaboration or empowerment (apple, 2004 in flinders & thornton, 2013). research indicates that teacher satisfaction with their profession has steadily decreased in the last 25 years (mccarthy et al., 2014) and that up to 30% of teachers experience psychological ill-being or burnout (milatz et al., 2015). in several studies focused on mindfulness-based interventions, teachers noted how extreme workload and the stress of teaching leads to exhaustion (jennings & schonart-reichl, 2014; roeser et al., 2013; sharp & jennings, 2015; trumbower, 2015). in a public education model influenced by neoliberal policies and reforms, teachers are not viewed as relational and empowered professionals (giroux, 2015; hargreaves & fullan, 2013; slouka, 2009). yet teachers commonly name the relational quality of their work to be of greatest importance (mccarthy et al., 2014; milatz et al., 2015). social support and interaction serve as a stress buffering system (ditzen & heinrichs, 2014 as cited in milatz et al., 2015). positive relationships with colleagues and supervisors are noted as a helpful coping strategy that offsets work stress (certo & fox, 2002). relationships with students can be an important source of enjoyment in a teacher’s work life (milatz et al., 2015). additionally, teacher relationships with students have “been shown to be among the top ten predictors for students’ academic outcomes” in hundreds of studies (hattie, 2009 as cited in milatz, et al., 2015, p. 2). we must consider that nurturing relationships is an important and necessary task for schools, and one that is often overlooked. many teachers entering classrooms take on a new identity that is contrary to the relational reasons they entered the teaching profession; this school-shaped identity feels false and leads to a sense of separation and dissatisfaction (casbon et al., 2005). for example, a new teacher in this study voiced her surprise and discomfort with the realities of teaching as she struggled with a large class size, limited parent and administrative support, expectations in a data-driven environment, and classroom management challenges. she was already considering leaving the profession in her third year as a classroom teacher because she did not feel she was part of supportive, relational community. but when teachers are invited to rediscover and express their true identity in their profession, they feel more authentic and engaged (casbon et al., 2005). mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 4 teachers who experience spaces of care and trust in professional work also bring that same awareness into their classrooms and find strength to question authority (casbon et al., 2005). mindfulness-based interventions as professional development may provide opportunities to promote connection, reflection, and support to make new choices. mindfulness is associated with enhanced capacities for relationships (brown et al., 2007). mindfulness-based interventions can create spaces to support relational wellness and provide a unique approach to teacher growth and development. palmer (1998) believed that excellent teaching originates from identity and integrity rather than reducing teaching to a set of techniques. in this view, educator growth involves developing authentic practitioners with renewed connections to self and present context (intrator & kunzman, 2009). this is precisely what mindfulness practices aim to develop. this unique type of professional development opens space to rediscover their own knowledge, voice, and strength (casbon et al., 2005; intrator & kunzman, 2006). another area of related literature identifies the development of professional dispositions or habits of mind for teachers (dottin, 2009; national council for the accreditation of teacher education, 2006 as cited in roeser et al., 2012). examples of effective habits of mind for educators include emotional regulation, reflecting in a nonjudgmental way, observing and gathering data, resiliency, empathy, and compassion (jennings & greenberg, 2009). evidence of occupational self-compassion in teachers who have participated in mindfulness training is encouraging (roeser et al., 2013). mindfulness-based interventions may include practices that focus on building compassion and empathy (greenberg & harris, 2012; herrmann & gallo, 2013). in one case study, participants shared that they experienced a sense of increased compassion and began to implement mindfulness practices in their classrooms (herrmann & gallo, 2013). empathy and compassion may buffer burnout and future research that explores the link between mindfulness and compassion should be explored (sharp & jennings, 2015). participants in this study noted greater compassion towards self and others and related it to improved relational quality. a shift in perspective is needed to create a healthy relational space in educational structures that will support k-12 teachers and students. the current technical rational view of education seeks to improve student achievement, yet it deemphasizes the very important role of human relationships in that process. mindfulness-based interventions may offer promise for individual and collective change. method the interpretivist theoretical lens selected for this study adopts a constructivist view that assumes that reality is socially constructed, intersubjective, and represented in diverse ways as people make meaning (butin, 2010; lukenchuk, 2013; stake, 1995). case study methodology is grounded in a constructivist paradigm that values human construction of meaning (baxter & jack, 2008). as qualitative data is collected and analyzed in this frame, the researcher’s role is to examine patterns of meaning and describe the participant experience (butin, 2010). this study was exploratory and remained open to patterns of meaning that arose from the data. descriptive and exploratory research can inform contextual understanding in mindfulness-based interventions (greenburg & harris, 2012; roeser et al., 2012; sharp & jennings, 2015). research situated in this frame seeks to explore how people understand their experiences and construct meaning (merriam, 1998). a case study design best suited this study to explore educator understanding and mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 5 experience in a particular context (merriam, 1998). case study research is grounded in natural settings and situates the participants and researcher in context (creswell, 2006; denzin & lincoln, 2005; miles et al., 2014; yin, 2003). an important feature of case study methodology is that it “investigates a unique, contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between the phenomenon and context are not clearly evident” (yin, 2009, p. 18). case study is a preferred approach to examine contemporary events when behaviors of participants cannot be manipulated or separated from context (yin, 2009). this study values understanding experience within a complex, contextual setting, co-construction of meaning by participants and researcher, and inductive analysis (lukenchuk, 2013; miles et al., 2014). it provides an in-depth, rich exploration of meaning, and values a holistic story (creswell, 2006; merriam, 1998; miles et al., 2014; stake, 1995; travers, 2004). the use of broad research questions that ask “how” or “why” is typical in case study design and the intention is to remain flexible and open as data is gathered (swanborn, 2010; yin, 2003). two research questions guided this study: 1. how do k-12 educators make meaning of mindfulness? 2. how do educators relate mindfulness to teaching and learning? positionality and reflexivity the life experiences a researcher brings to the field is made transparent to recognize the inherent subjectivity of research and allow readers to make their own determination around confirmability (miles et al., 2014; stake, 1995). this process allows the researcher to “unravel how their biographies intersect with their interpretation of field experiences” (finlay, 2003, p. 4). it would be remiss of me to not to examine my own tradition of contemplative practice and how i came to this work. when i entered the research field, i had a fifteen-year contemplative practice in yoga, a six-year practice in vipassana meditation, and a twenty-five-year career as an educator. as a seasoned educator, i was well acquainted with the challenges, frustrations and stress that occupy the work lives of many teachers. the questions a researcher will ask is influenced by their experiences. complete detachment from one’s research is not possible (horsburgh, 2003). however, every effort was made to let the data speak for itself and conversations with participants illuminated diversity. reflexivity and attention to trustworthiness in research practices were attended to throughout the research process. reflexivity, an effort to examine one’s beliefs and positionality, was a regular practice. the researcher journal was a tool used to reflect on areas of potential bias and record researcher experiences and thoughts. additionally, a bracketing interview to reveal and explore potential research bias was completed prior to data collection. participants and context this study is bounded by place and time, a characteristic of case study design (stake, 1995). the smart in education training for k-12 educators took place in the rocky mountain region of the united states. two sites were included in the study, one an affluent suburban school (site 1) and the other an urban school district with a high at-risk student population (site 2). data collection took place during an 11-week time frame in fall 2016. this included the 8week mindfulness program schedule that skipped two weeks to match school district schedules plus one week following the last session to complete interviews and collect final documents. nine educators, four located at site 1 and five at site 2, participated in this study and were concurrently working in k-12 public school districts. the inclusion of multiple participants at mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 6 two sites represents a single case with embedded units design (baxter & jack, 2008). there was a total of 50 educators registered at the two sites, including four males and 46 females. nine participants volunteered for the study and gave written informed consent as required by the university institutional review board procedures. names in this report were changed to honor confidentiality. no compensation for participation was provided. participant years of teaching ranged from 3 to 20 with an average of 14.4 years. all but two had earned master’s degrees and six worked at the elementary level, two worked across the k-12 spectrum, and one worked at the high school level. participants were predominantly female with one male and predominantly white with one person of color, although this was representative of the overall gender and ethnicity enrollment during this smart in education session. participant demographics are found in table 1. table 1 participant demographics ellen maisy stephanie greg mavis grace ann mollie charlotte site location 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 years employed as educator 16 20 9 17 13 18 3 17 17 current role sp sp sp cl sp adm cl sp cl level elem elem elem elem k-12 elem elem k-12 hs education ma ma ma ma ma ma ba ma ba gender f f f m f f f f f ethnicity white white white white white minority white white white prior mf yes yes no no yes no no no no note. current role abbreviations include sp = specialist; cl = classroom teacher; adm = administrator at the suburban site (site 1) the four participants, one male and three female, were experienced educators who worked in the same elementary school. their years of experience in education ranged from 9 to 20 years with an average of 15.5 years. two had prior experience with mindfulness while two were new to mindfulness. all reported that they registered for this training to be part of a school mindfulness goal aimed to bring mindfulness practices into all classrooms and also thought there would be personal benefits. these participants noted strong well-being at the beginning of the study and felt they had positive life habits in place to effectively deal with stress. all completed requirements to receive professional development. at the urban site (site 2) five female participants volunteered to participate in the study. two worked in elementary schools, one worked at a high school, and two worked across the kmcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 7 12 spectrum in the district. their years of experience in education ranged from 3 to 18 years and average 13.6 years. these participants had less familiarity with mindfulness and primarily registered to learn new strategies to manage stress. several stated that they felt they needed this training to deal with high levels of work stress, and four indicated mediocre to poor sense of well-being at the beginning of the training. all study participants completed the program as well as the study, although one participant at site 2 did not complete suggested home mindfulness practice and did not submit the practice log document. the training was offered for free or for a nominal registration, often ranging from $25.00 to $75.00 depending on the school district. the purpose of the program is captured in the registration statement, “smart supports participants in: re-connecting to personal and professional meaning and purpose, finding balance and cultivating emotional intelligence, and improving mental and physical health” (passageworks, 2014). smart in education is described as 70% mindfulness based stress reduction (mbsr) curriculum and 30% smart curriculum including social emotional content and examples that relate to classroom work (r. wilensky, personal communication, december 4, 2015). the curriculum included: mindfulness practices, creating a new habit, mindful listening, setting intentions, observing sensations, thoughts and emotions, effects of stress, responding versus reacting, emotions and emotional reactivity, working with anger, forgiveness, kindness and compassion, and a state of being as compared with a state of doing. although different facilitators led the two cohorts, the curriculum and mindfulness practices were consistent between sites. the program consisted of 2-hour group meetings each week for eight weeks, a half-day saturday retreat devoted to mindfulness practice, and encouraged daily practice. an additional 14 hours or 840 minutes of mindfulness practice outside of group meetings, completion of logs, and a final reflection paper were required if one desired formal professional development credit. each session included multiple mindfulness practices, such as mindful eating, mindful movement, body scan, sitting meditation, and loving kindness meditation, as well as shared content and discussion. chairs were arranged in a circle and facilitators utilized an invitational, participatory approach. periodic open dialogue in dyads, small groups, and whole group took place. both facilitators emphasized self-compassion and reflection on one’s own experiences. data collection and analysis case study methodology uses multiple data sources to allow for triangulation of data and strengthened confidence in findings (creswell, 1994; swanborn, 2010; yin, 2009). data sources included interviews with individuals during the first three weeks and last two weeks of the study, participant practice logs and final essays, smart in education curriculum materials, school district goals, school demographics, and field notes. the researcher assumed a participantobserver role and field notes were taken during smart in education sessions. weekly research summaries compiled data and supported data analysis. individual interviews with participants were in person, 20-50 minutes in length, semi-structured, audiotaped, and transcribed. interview questions related to sources of work stress, approaches to and regularity of mindfulness practice, views about the training, content and mindfulness practices, descriptions of mindfulness, examples, challenges and benefits, and observations of change. participants were encouraged to add additional information and interviews were purposefully open-ended. desimone (2009) notes that interviews and observations are one of the most appropriate methods to understand and describe a contextual professional development experience. member checking involved returning mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 8 transcribed interviews to participants to make changes, ask for clarification, and confirm data. the constant comparative method of data analysis was used to identify emerging patterns in the data (merriam, 1998). this method involves “continuous comparison of incidents, respondents’ remarks, and so on with each other. units of data – bits of information – are literally sorted into groupings that have something in common” (merriam, 1998, p. 179). this method begins with coding. coding provides a strategy to examine words or phrases that participants use to communicate meaning (merriam, 1998; miles et al., 2014). all transcribed interviews were coded by hand using a priori and in vivo codes for first cycle coding (miles et al., 2014). approximately 50 a priori codes were created to begin coding and these were generated using current literature at the time of the study. examples of a priori codes include awareness, attention, kindness/compassion, forgiveness, patience, benefits, challenges, stress, and others that were expected to arise during interviews. additional in vivo codes arose from participant language (miles et al., 2014). subcodes for certain concepts were utilized, such as in the case of teacher stress to help identify various sources of teacher stress. as new codes emerged, they were also applied to previously coded transcripts. in total, 200 codes were used in the first level analysis. codes were then arranged into categories with similar meaning for second level analysis. for example, the phrases “in the present” and “right now” represented different vocabulary for the concept present moment. the frequency for each meaning code was then tabulated and ranked. codes were next organized by frequency for the entire group, each site, individuals, and examined in relationship to research questions, practice logs, and final essays. this information was analyzed and assertions and propositions were developed. “an assertion is a declarative statement of summative synthesis, supported by confirming evidence from the data and revised when disconfirming evidence or discrepant cases require modification of the assertion” (miles et al., 2014, p. 99). a proposition suggests a conditional event or a relationship (miles et al., 2014). for example, the data revealed differences between participants that committed to regular daily practice and those that did not. the resulting proposition was, “participants who committed to regular practice and completed 800 or more minutes of home practice reported greater change and explained mindfulness in more detail.” the construction of assertions, propositions, and memos allows the researcher to begin to reflect upon and develop early analysis (miles et al., 2014). matrices were developed and exploration of rival themes and outliers were explored before developing themes (miles et al., 2014). outlier experiences were included in the findings. for example, one person who did not adopt regular practice also shared valuable insights about mindfulness and the role of privilege that were included in the findings. data source triangulation, including field notes, interviews, and documents, was used to confirm emerging themes and reduce potential bias (denzin & lincoln, 2005; miles et al., 2014; stake, 1995). patterns that emerged from the data sources were examined and interpreted to develop findings and conclusions (miles, et al., 2014). from this process, emerged evidence that: (a) similar understandings of mindfulness existed, (b) those with greater home practice expressed deeper understanding of mindfulness and noted change, and (c) specific individual and site similarities and differences existed to explore further. continued analysis resulted in the emergence of several categories related to the research questions that reflected the research purpose, were exhaustive, and conceptually congruent (merriam, 1998). inductive analysis is appropriate in qualitative research to allow findings and themes to emerge from the data that are plausible, accurate, and meaningful (letts et al., 2007; miles et al., mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 9 2014). a decision was made to organize findings by themes rather than research questions because overlap existed between research questions and the patterns of meaning were better illustrated using theme organization. three themes emerged from the data: (a) understanding and experiencing mindfulness, (b) holistic personal and professional change, and (c) transforming schools. the first two themes address the first research question: how do k-12 educators make meaning of mindfulness? all three themes, although with greater emphasis on the last two themes, address the second research question: how do educators relate mindfulness to teaching and learning? findings participants explained how mindfulness practice influenced awareness and how it improved relational quality. there were noticeable differences between individuals who established a consistent mindfulness practice and those who did not. an additional insight emerged while comparing the two sites. there were noticeable contextual differences that supported or inhibited individual and school change. representative examples are included to honor participant voice. theme 1: understanding and experiencing mindfulness participants constructed an understanding of mindfulness and three concepts emerged from the data: (a) present moment focus, (b) expanded awareness, and (c) a greater sense of neutrality or reduced judgment. data revealed differences between educators who established a regular mindfulness practice and those who did not. five of the nine participants, ellen, maisy, and stephanie at site 1 and mavis and mollie at site 2, completed more than 800 minutes of practice outside of group meetings. these individuals integrated mindfulness into daily routines, noted more beneficial changes, and spoke about mindfulness concepts in greater depth. an increase in present moment focus was noted. mavis explained that mindfulness is “being able to live in the present moment, to identify your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions” and being able to sit with those observations. observing in the present moment allowed participants to pay attention to subtleties that might have once gone unnoticed in their environments, thoughts, or emotions. the concept of expanded awareness emerged from the data. the phrases “being aware,” “noticing,” and “in touch with” connected with the concept of awareness. awareness of environmental surroundings, one’s emotions, and considering the needs of others were topics noted. in some examples, participants linked greater awareness of emotions with choosing a response. during a stressful day, charlotte explained how she realized that she needed to take a moment for herself and found a quiet place to breathe for a few minutes. she recounted: it was that day i had to take a pause in the locker room. i think that’s why i needed that because i did notice that it was happening. even in the meeting where i was getting more angry, i knew that i was getting angry so i also knew that i needed to hold my tongue and i needed to just think before i could speak and i needed to process it. participants who completed over 800 minutes of home practice, spoke about awareness in greater depth and began to attend to patterns in their minds or actions. maisy said that mindfulness “shifts your thinking.” her growing self-awareness was traced over several weeks. in our second interview she noted, “i really think a lot of my reactions, my emotions for me, stem from the inability to forgive, which is a huge recognition … i’m starting to see this little pattern.” she explained, “i have more awareness about underlying feelings. and if i’m going to mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 10 forgive myself or if i’m going to do whatever, if i’m not really aware of the source i can’t make any growth changes in myself.” this evidence suggests a deeper self-awareness emerging. not all participants expressed that they had experienced significant changes in awareness. those who practiced infrequently spoke about their experiences differently. ann’s realization was to begin to recognize emotions and then let them go, although she noticed few other changes. grace said she did not experience changes beyond noticing more in her environment and working to increase mindful listening with students. interestingly, despite her claim that she saw no significant changes, she offered a unique explanation of mindfulness that some might argue captures a deep understanding. grace explained, “it’s like an awakening or an awareness of yourself, but also way more than yourself because i think people are always really focused on themselves, but not in this type of way, not in a positive, metacognitive sort of way.” she likened becoming more mindful to “waking up from a fog or mist where you cannot see clearly.” experienced practitioners often describe a sense of awakening to our habits of mind, conditioned reactions, and deeper awareness (yates, 2015). the final mindfulness concept that emerged from the data was experiencing a state of calm neutrality and reduced judgment. participants frequently described a strengthened sense of calm, peacefulness, or steadiness. most spoke about experiencing less judgment and connected this with being kinder to oneself or another. ann stated, “the big part that i really like is the nonjudgmental part of it; don’t beat yourself up about it. you won’t be perfect, just recognize those feelings and let it go.” a sense of relief was present as participants released harsh selfjudgment and transitioned to greater self-acceptance and self-compassion. at the beginning of the study, all participants commented that it was difficult to find time in their schedules to practice mindfulness. however, those who established a regular practice no longer indicated that time was a barrier in final interviews. instead, they talked about how they felt more efficient with their time and prioritized better. stephanie commented, “it really benefits your time; it makes you feel like you spend your time wisely.” they shifted their view to believe that making time for mindfulness was important and expressed that mindfulness practice felt essential to maintain well-being. additionally, they noticed multiple changes, including less worry, more self-care, improved sleep, decreased rumination, attending more to others, and improved relationships. by comparison, those who did not establish a regular practice expressed that they continued to struggle with time and had not experienced significant long-lasting changes even though they found the practices useful. those who successfully established a regular practice explained that they used multiple, short practices scattered throughout each day. the type of home mindfulness practices selected varied, and the data indicated that commitment to regular practice using any of the options to be valuable. theme 2: holistic personal and professional change interestingly, when participants were asked questions related to the second research question to better understand how they related mindfulness to teaching and learning they frequently interwove examples from professional and personal lives together in responses. they spoke about mindfulness holistically and felt that it resulted in kinder and more compassionate responses. mindfulness was integrated into both professional and personal lives. there were many examples of more actively listening, considering another’s perspective, and being more present with family members as well as students, parents, and colleagues. participants shared evidence that they were responding in new ways to strengthen relationships. although they saw the mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 11 benefits of mindfulness practice to reduce stress, they emphasized that mindfulness enhanced their lives in many ways. participants commonly used phrases such as “less reactive,” “softer,” “gentler,” “kinder,” “calmer,” and “more patient” to describe interactions with others. some felt that relationships with students were becoming more genuine and enjoyable. a caring relationship is a basic form of connection that builds trust and is necessary in learning spaces (noddings, 1992). both students and teachers benefit from classroom relationships (milatz, et al., 2015). participants linked feeling calmer and more patient with the ability to pause, listen, observe, and consider other perspectives. greg commented, “i feel the difference on the inside. that now it doesn’t have to be this calm exterior as a façade; now the calm exterior is matching a calmer interior, too.” charlotte said, “i’m watching students. as i’m listening to students, i think i’m also being very mindful about what is it that i’m hearing? and what is it that i’m seeing? and just what’s going on around me and how is it affecting me?” maisy attributed increased patience and self-reflection to her mindfulness practice and related it to her work with students: working with struggling readers you have to have a lot of patience, and again, a lot of that can come back to your own feelings of inadequacy. sometimes if they’re not getting it and you get frustrated with them, but you are really frustrated at yourself because what you’re doing isn’t working and you’re not sure what to do next. so, i think i’ve had more reflection on stuff like that, like where is my reaction coming from? why am i having this emotion? so being able to notice that more has been really good because my response, i can change it then. and then my patience level with kids, too, is better because i’m coming from a little bit of a different place. not every day, but it’s better. many participants noticed that being able to create calm within allowed them to engage with others in more constructive ways. stephanie explained, “the example of being calm about my workload. it has helped me be more present in meetings with my colleagues.” mavis explained how mindful listening allowed her to be more present and consider other perspectives. she stated, “i’ve really, really tried harder to be there in the moment and actually listen to people and not be ready with my solution because i might be missing something when i’m doing that, and i’m sure some folks can probably sense that i’m not fully present.” individuals reported that simply taking a breath and pausing for a moment before responding to another resulted in awareness to listen and consider another’s perspective or one’s response. it is possible that creating a pause allows participants to consider how to be more proactive and avoid unnecessary conflict. participants expressed that it felt positive to respond in kinder, calmer ways to others and they attributed these moments to effective communication and improved relationships. they also discussed engaging in more self-compassion. they related self-compassion with releasing a pattern of self-judgment. greg explained, “i wasn’t always kind to myself … and i think i’m getting better at, o.k., let it go, it just doesn’t matter.” when i asked charlotte what she had learned about herself, she stated, “that i’m pretty hard on myself. i think i’ve always known that, but i don’t think i’ve actually admitted that. i think i’m harder on myself than anybody else is, so i think being able to forgive myself and just let it be is something i’m still learning.” mavis echoed similar comments, “i’m very hard on myself. i knew i was, but it was kind of glaring how hard on myself i can be.” participants provided examples of increasing positive internal dialogue and increasing self-care as methods of countering self-judgment. several participants explained that they considered other perspectives more often and this led to greater compassion. mollie stated she is “seeing things through the other person’s eyes.” mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 12 greg said that it helped him relax and listen to a colleague’s concerns. participants connected a sense of increased calm, patience, forgiveness and compassion towards self and others with improved relationships. all participants perceived mindfulness practice as more than a stress-reduction tool and those with greater home practice were able to articulate why. they viewed mindfulness practice as a proactive wellness habit that made them better teachers and people. stephanie explained that she viewed it as a method to prevent stress, improve mental health, and make life feel more meaningful. mavis stated, “i think it’s a way of living because being kind and compassionate to others and also compassionate towards self is way more, i think, than a tool or a practice.” maisy stated in our final interview, “and maybe that’s a big takeaway is that this is not supposed to be some separate thing that i do; this is the way i live.” she additionally explained a distinction between mindfulness as a potential stress-reduction strategy and mindfulness as a state of awareness: stress is not the only thing that affects our well-being. i used to think this was about stress management, but really it’s about reacting. and reacting isn’t necessarily stress. you know, if a student’s doing something and i’m feeling frustrated and i overreact, it’s not because i’m stressed; i’m just annoyed or feeling inadequate or whatever. so for me, it’s the awareness of how i’m reacting. like i was saying i was noticing my kids, it’s noticing. i’m not stressed if i’m cutting vegetables. it’s not stressful. but i’m not paying attention to a child who just walked in the door that i haven’t seen for eight hours or, so noticing, oh, i should actually be present when i talk to this person. maisy continued: so i think mindfulness is much bigger to me now, at least. stress is just one really small component of it now that i’ve gone through all that. and i’m realizing it’s helped me more with other things more than it has with the stress because the stress seems somewhat insignificant now compared with some of the other things i’ve learned. there were noticeable differences in the depth of explanations between those who had adopted a regular home mindfulness practice and those who did not. there were also subtle differences in the insights among those who had prior mindfulness experience and those who did not. the three participants who completed more than 800 minutes of home practice and had prior experience with mindfulness viewed it as a way of living. other participants tended to lean towards viewing mindfulness as a tool or strategy, although additionally commented that mindfulness practice was more than a stress-reduction tool even if they were unable to articulate reasons for this belief. it is further noted in the literature that positive benefits may also be related to the opportunity to participate in a group support program that attends to teacher stress and wellbeing (burrows, 2011; jennings et al., 2013). this study suggests that although participants did note a benefit from group support while establishing a habit of regular mindfulness practice, the experienced changes and benefits were attributed to practicing mindfulness regularly. theme 3: transforming schools mindfulness training encouraged participants to trust their own professional insights, yet contextual differences were documented between the two sites in how educators related mindfulness to teaching and learning. site 1 was engaged in a whole school mindfulness initiative with administrative and parent support, a supportive community of colleagues, and greater privilege. a former smart in education participant, michelle at site 1, observed her mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 13 peers taking the smart training this fall, “people are coming in changed and different and leading their students in a refreshed way. and i think that whole idea of letting all the teachers know on the staff that the best intervention is them.” there was a sense of positive school change. site 2 consisted of educators traveling from multiple schools within a large district who were experiencing greater work stress, more isolation, and less privilege. here any changes noted were limited to the individual and these participants continued to struggle with work satisfaction. participants related mindfulness to their work with students and colleagues as well as paperwork and testing requirements. they viewed mindfulness as a catalyst for experiencing greater presence with students and colleagues and restoring balance to schools where standardized curriculum and testing dominated the landscape. participants noted how mindfulness practice clarified their values and altered choices related to curriculum and instruction. at site 1, there was significant discussion about the importance of developing socialemotional skills and focusing on whole child development. they related mindfulness to one of the district’s goals, social-emotional learning. those who began their careers close to 20 years ago spoke openly about how standards and testing mandates in the past decade had shifted focus away from social-emotional growth of the child. ellen commented that the stress she faces as a teacher had shifted and was now more directly related to testing pressures in a heavily mandated, data-driven environment. she said, “it felt like we were wringing out every point in the test scores that we could with kids.” she commented, “i think anxiety levels were increasing and the fun was going out of it, so we weren’t helping kids grow into healthy human beings.” she continued to explain that mindfulness returns balance to the teaching and learning environment. she said, “i feel like we’re still able to have quality instruction that’s rigorous and really nurture [students].” maisy wrote in her final reflection paper: education has changed a lot over the past decade since data and accountability have become such strong focal points. in the past, education was more child-centered. as a teacher, i was more reflective on each child, their needs and i used that information to help drive my instruction. now, data and common core standards drive the instruction. all students are expected to meet those standards at the same time and a failure of their ability to do so is reflective as a failure of their teacher. this subtle pressure of blaming the teacher has permeated the way i respond to stress and to my students. i get frustrated and agitated if a student continues to struggle and is not taking on my instruction. i carry that stress and frustration around with me, which causes me to be impatient, preoccupied, grumpy and overwhelmed. logically, i know my job is about the child and not the data, but i know my data is being watched and judged by people who do not know my students. the emphasis on standards-driven academic outcomes has added an additional layer of stress on already overwhelmed teachers (darling-hammond, 2001 as cited in sharp & jennings, 2015). maisy emphasized how mindfulness practice helped her reconnect with a child-centered teaching philosophy, “this course has reignited my core beliefs about child-centered education and given me some tools to help diminish the stress that the ‘data-driven’ movement has created for both me and the students.” she explained how it has changed her interactions with students in the teaching and learning environment, “we laugh more, take more pause breaks, think and reflect before we respond, and really listen to others’ responses.” from our first interview in september to this final reflection paper written in november, maisy transitioned from frustration about the current state of education to a more empowered position. stephanie, initially doubtful mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 14 about the benefits of the schoolwide mindfulness goal, changed her opinion as the result of experiencing positive changes herself. in our final interview, she thought the school-wide mindfulness program for students would be beneficial and support social-emotional health. by contrast, participants at site 2 felt their efforts were isolated and did not influence greater school change. their practice helped clarify their own ideas and how they interacted with students, although they believed that a larger school initiative and administrative commitment to mindfulness was needed to experience greater school change. charlotte linked mindfulness with restorative justice, the school’s approach to improve student behavior. in our first interview, she indicated frustration with this system and stated that she did not fully understand how restorative justice worked. in our final interview, she expressed that she thought training teachers and students in mindfulness would support the practice of true mindful listening and restorative justice. she stated: i think it’s making me a bigger believer in restorative justice and yet how do we build the capacity of kids to grow, as well? so, i think the next thing that i would like to look into, if i ever have any time to do that, is, alright, i get it. i know what it’s about, it’s listening to kids, i get it, but how do we really get kids to listen to kids? because that’s what restorative justice is and seeing the consequences of their actions. are we really letting kids really listen to kids or are we just going through the process? because if we don’t have more people trained in mindfulness and in really paying attention to what you’re feeling, then are we really having them listen to each other or are we just going through the motions? mollie shared taking deep breaths and a few mindful movements with a student and engaged in conversations about mindfulness with colleagues. she primarily used the practices to keep herself calm and effectively interact with others. unlike participants at site 1, however, she did not believe that the efforts of a small group of teachers would be enough to shift the teaching and learning environment in the schools where she worked. she thought that administrators should also complete the training and school district commitment was needed for real change to occur. systemic support and privilege allowed greater change in the school environment at site 1 while lack of systemic support and less privilege restricted school change at site 2. it is noted that participants at site 2 collectively completed fewer independent mindfulness practice minutes than those at site 1. additionally, participants at site 2 worked in different schools and had to drive long distances through traffic to attend training while those at site 1 worked together in the same school and had colleagues also enrolled in the program as well as a supportive administrator. site 2 participants consistently referenced greater stress in their work life. they spoke about large class sizes, student behavior and learning challenges, less involved parents, and rapidly changing administration and curriculum. mollie noted workload concerns, “in my work life, definitely, it’s just too much. it’s just too much. i don’t even have time to teach.” she linked excessive workload to her stress and teacher burnout. stress is related to emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, often resulting in detachment from students and negative feelings about work (sharp & jennings, 2015). teacher burnout is attributed to long-term professional stress, including emotional exhaustion, lack of autonomy, and disengagement (maslach et al., 2001; mccarthy et al., 2009; jennett, harris & mesibov, 2003 as cited in trumbower, 2015). mollie was not sure that she could make it to retirement and ann commented that she was already experiencing burnout after three years of teaching. high teacher stress and burnout in the teaching profession often leads to teachers leaving the field prematurely (flook et al., 2013; mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 15 herrmann & gallo; 2013). participants at this site did not have the privileges of strong support systems and resources in their jobs nor did they work with a privileged student body. the district did help fund the training using grant money and offered professional development credit. this action was greatly appreciated by participants and supported their ability to attend. as the only person of color in the study, grace noted important considerations about the role of privilege as it relates to mindfulness. she stated, “i mean, culturally speaking, i think of this as a white people thing to do, and when i looked around the room that was validated every time.” she also pointed out that although taking breaths might help to calm a person with small stressors, it may not work for more serious life issues. she explained that mindfulness assumes a certain amount of privilege. she stated, “i feel like in order to be in a place where you can use this there are certain privileges that you already have to have to even be in a place to be open to it.” when i probed to better understand the specific privileges she meant, she answered: i mean the fact that you can, first of all, even take a class to do those, which money was one of the reasons i didn’t take it early on. then to be in a space where your biggest problems are things that you can manage by deep breathing or doing body scans, where people have much bigger problems than that. although site 2 educators valued what mindfulness could do to improve the teaching and learning environment, change was limited to individualistic efforts. by comparison, site 1 participants expressed they were not experiencing significant stress in their work life and had administrative support. site 1 was a privileged community. the parent teacher association raised funds to help pay for the smart in education program at the school and teachers were able to walk down the hall to attend weekly sessions. they also were immersed in a school where many people had taken or were taking the training and could easily find others to practice or discuss mindfulness if they wished. participants at site 1 shared examples to illustrate how mindfulness was already shifting the school environment. maisy shared, “you know, we start off our staff meetings now in mindfulness; we do a mindful 10 minutes of mindful breathing as a staff now ... and everyone knows what to do. it’s not weird. it’s very comfortable.” she explained, “it’s just a more common phrase. it’s just what people are starting to do more often.” ellen articulated how mindfulness was already creating change: the kids need to know that they’re respected. and there’s something about taking time out and everybody participating in a common exercise that benefits child and adult alike. that’s one angle. another one is the general theme of kindness that is a part of mindfulness is vital and i think can help shift the culture of a school. and as a school, i would say that we are shifting. we have been shifting and this will hopefully continue the momentum away from kids being, more about valuing the kids’ output on a test over who they are as people and what they can contribute to the world and how to take care of themselves. and i think the mindfulness that we’re focusing on is an opportunity to grow to the next stage as a community, and a community that’s kind and thinking beyond just the curriculum of content. stephanie explained, “i can already feel it,” and, “that kids are acting out less. there’s way more attention brought onto how can we be kind to ourselves and kind to others in the classroom. so that’s been a great thing for me to observe, as someone who works with all grade levels.” systemic support and greater privilege allowed for greater school change at site 1 while at site 2 change was individualistic. since mindfulness was not prioritized in the site 2 school district, it was left to individuals to take an interest and invest their time, a perceived limited mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 16 resource. site 2 participants felt more isolated while trying to implement mindfulness practice in their lives. privilege may play a role in mindfulness reaching educator audiences as well as supporting individuals to establish regular mindfulness practice. discussion the purpose of this study was to understand how k-12 educators make meaning of mindfulness and relate it to their professional work. the first theme revealed that similar conceptual understandings of mindfulness were identified: (a) present moment focus, (b) expanded awareness, and (c) a sense of neutrality or reduced judgement. interestingly, these concepts align with how experienced practitioners describe mindfulness. jon kabat-zinn describes mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally” (kabat-zinn, 1994 as cited in roeser et al., 2012, p. 169). thich nhat hahn states, “mindfulness is the energy of being aware and awake to the present moment” (plum village mindfulness practice center, 2014). mindfulness is the practice of intentionally focusing awareness on the present without judgment, coming into a state of neutral observation (mccown et al., 2010). participants who practiced regularly during this study provided more indepth explanations about these concepts, stated they were able to return attention to the present moment more often, experienced more extensive beneficial changes, and integrated mindfulness practice into daily life. the second theme suggests improvements in relational quality. the study supports literature related to strengthened relationships, increased feelings of compassion, and reappraisal of a problem before responding (burrows, 2011, 2013; herrmann & gallo, 2013; sharp & jennings, 2015; trumbower, 2015). there were opportunities to pause, observe, and respond from a greater sense of calm, patience, and compassion. evidence suggests that participants began to experience the first and second levels of mindfulness that involve moderating one’s behavior and becoming more consistently responsive (yates, 2015). participants discussed how expanding awareness, observation of details, and willingness to consider other perspectives strengthened responsiveness, compassion, and relationships. these skills were experienced more frequently by participants who established a regular mindfulness practice. participants who integrated mindfulness practices into their lives began to question and consider patterns of thought and behavior. several participants expressed a sense of empowerment and reclaimed child-centered philosophies, shared examples of choosing new responses in their work environments, made efforts to listen and consider other perspectives, observed students and colleagues more closely, practiced self-compassion, and took steps to increase self-care. self-care and community support allows educators to experience resilience and “capitalize on a mindfulness-based program” (schussler et al., 2018, p. 22). nel noddings (1992) advocates for ethics of care in schools to strengthen teaching and learning. participants in this study felt mindfulness made them kinder and more caring teachers. when educators model relational skills in learning spaces, students and colleagues may experience a genuine and compassionate presence that supports social bonds. mindfulness is thought to assist in the transformation of the mind to experience a sense of interconnection and compassion (palmer & zajonc, 2010; yates, 2015; zajonc, 2009). attending to the relational quality of teaching and learning responds to giroux’s (1997, 2015) suggestion that social bonds and collective reasoning are essential to a successful democratic community. opportunities to align work with values and feel connection with others may be meaningful for educators. they perceived that mindfulness improved relationships and strengthened relationships may create a mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 17 support network important to educator resiliency. stronger relationships could counter teacher stress in two ways: (a) creating a positive, proactive support network, and (b) reducing interpersonal conflict. strengthening collegiality along with enhanced emotional regulation, awareness, and efficacy may strengthen resilience and create a protective factor that reduces teacher burnout (schussler et al., 2018). the literature links mindfulness to social emotional competency (dottin, 2009; jennings & greenberg, 2009; jennings et al., 2013; sharp & jennings, 2015). this study provides evidence that participants related mindfulness to social emotional skills, including reflecting in a nonjudgmental way, observing and gathering data, empathy, and compassion referred to by other authors. some of these skills were specifically addressed in the smart in education curriculum while others were indirectly experienced. participants noted responding with compassion towards self and others. strengthening compassion may buffer teacher stress and counteract teacher burnout (sharp & jennings, 2015). additionally, compassion may play a significant role in healthy relationships and school communities. scholar bell hooks (2000) noted, “compassion and forgiveness reconnect us” (p. 217). finding new ways to increase compassion in teaching and learning environments is likely to improve relational quality in educational settings. as participants began to notice details in the present moment more keenly, they responded in ways that were kinder to establish trust. “trustworthy spaces are fundamental to learning and allow real change to take place” (casbon et al., 2005, p. 366). although participants believed mindfulness practice helped reduce stress, several found the benefits extended into all areas of their lives and well beyond stress management. one participant offered an insight that mindfulness is really about increasing awareness and becoming fully present. she stated that as her experience with mindfulness expanded, stress seemed almost insignificant as compared with greater awareness and presence. improved professional and personal relationships were a significant focus of discussion in this study. the final theme provided insights about individual and school change as well as contextual differences. mindfulness training provided a new opportunity to experience connection and reflection. it provided space to pause, reflect, and feel validated and empowered. interactions occurred laterally as opposed to what is generally experienced in traditional authoritarian structures. there was a sense of openness, mutual respect, trust, and freedom. mindfulness training can create space for teacher empowerment, and empowered teachers are better able to reclaim child-centered philosophies and create relational spaces in schools. an intensely standards-driven teaching and learning environment and excessive work demands were considered stressful for teachers in this study. participants explained that extreme focus on testing had an unintended consequence of dehumanizing students and teachers. participants, especially at site 1, believed that social emotional health was the foundation for learning and they experienced a renewed commitment to this view. the american history of rationalization has created an educational reform culture that quantifies measurement to gauge success and downplays complex human interactions (eisner, 2001, as cited in flinders & thornton, 2013). educational environments influenced by neoliberal forces devalue teacher decision-making, emphasize efficiency and output as opposed to process, intensify work, and isolate educators (apple, 2004, as cited in flinders & thornton, 2013; giroux, 2015; slouka, 2009). teachers who might otherwise respond to students as individuals and assume empowered roles are too often forced into unrealistic demands that result in loss of power. in such systems, the focus becomes on efficiency of time and work productivity at the expense of personal and mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 18 social growth. the intensification of teacher work escalates chronic work overload resulting in little time for conversation or reflection (apple, 2004 in flinders & thornton, 2013). these factors contribute to the daily stress encountered by educators. mindfulness training as professional development presents an opportunity for teachers to reconnect with themselves and with others in ways that counter the hectic climate in which they normally work. it also may increase a sense of connection and empowerment. contextual differences at the two sites, including perceived work stress, support, isolation, and privilege influenced participant experience with mindfulness. systemic support and privilege influenced the degree to which participants experienced change in their schools, and incongruence persisted between mindfulness and the current educational structure. this study suggests that systemic support and privilege may influence how individuals and schools integrate mindfulness. additional research to explore these factors in greater depth is recommended. limitations there are several limitations of this study. analysis of data in case study research focuses on the complexity of the case rather than generalization to other contexts (creswell, 2006). limitations of this study include the demographics of the participants, time frame, and settings specific to the study. the findings do not explore if participants continued mindfulness practice beyond the scope of this time frame nor does it reflect experiences at other smart in education sites. these might be appropriate subjects for future research. there may exist differences between self-reported perceptions and actual participant behavior (singer, 2014). mindfulness practice logs were self-reported and may or may not represent exact mindfulness practice time completed by each participant. adding classroom observations to a future study could better capture if observable changes took place in the teaching and learning setting. conclusions and recommendations the mindfulness in education community is currently establishing foundational knowledge to better understand how contemplative epistemology might influence the teaching profession. this study identifies how k-12 educators made meaning of mindfulness and how they related it to professional work. despite individual and contextual differences, shared understandings about mindfulness existed. these included: (a) present moment focus, (b) expanded awareness, and (c) a sense of neutrality or reduced judgement. educators who integrated mindfulness practices into daily life were able to explain and experience these concepts in greater depth. participants related these concepts to improved relationships, greater present-moment awareness, compassion, and the ability to make healthier and more empowered choices. participants who did not practice regularly did not experience these same changes even though they enjoyed the training and thought it was worthwhile. it is recommended that mindfulness training for teachers include multiple supports to help participants establish regular mindfulness practice. in particular, participants found that short, guided audio practices were helpful. they also appreciated the diverse mindfulness practices that were introduced so that they could select which practices worked best for them. participants found the half-day retreat with multiple mindfulness practices to be impactful because they experienced mindfulness for a longer period and felt calmer and more relaxed for several hours following. mcrobbie: mindfulness in the professional lives of k-12 educators current issues in education, 22(3) 19 participants provided many examples of how they utilized mindfulness in their professional lives. those who practiced consistently and frequently communicated that mindfulness practice positively influenced both personal and professional life and described a holistic change. this change involved longer periods of time spent in the present moment and greater awareness that allowed room for new and often healthier, compassionate responses. participants emphasized that although mindfulness was a helpful stress reduction tool, it offered much more and supported expanded awareness, relational quality, and sense of well-being. however, differences were discovered between the two sites. more of the educators at site 1 with greater systemic supports and privilege were able to commit to regular practice. examining systems of support and the role of privilege in various school settings will deepen our understanding of contextual differences. this study suggests that educators enrolled in a mindfulness-based intervention and simultaneously working in k-12 environment may benefit from administrative support, a connected community of peers also learning and practicing mindfulness, attention to diversity, and reduction of barriers, such as financial commitment, location, and excessive workload to allow time to attend. it is recommended that program designers and school districts consider the role of systemic support and privilege to best support educator participation in such programs. future research might explore individual motivations and attitudes related to attendance as well as individual and systemic factors involved in establishing regular practice. educators experienced improved relational quality during the smart in education program. additionally, this study revealed that several participants experienced a greater sense of empowerment and new ways to interact with colleagues and students. site 1 participants felt that creating a mindfulness culture at their school was transforming the teaching and learning environment. they observed that teachers were more focused on being present with students, strengthened commitment to social-emotional learning, and responded in more patient and compassionate ways. although participants at site 2 did not experience a similar shift in their school environments, they did believe that mindful presence positively influenced their interactions with others. studies that investigate schools that have integrated mindfulness practices into the school culture could inform potential connections between individual and school change. additional ethnographies, narrative inquiries, and case studies that explore contextual differences in mindfulness-based interventions for educators are needed. studies that follow educators after mindfulness training has concluded will be important to learn to what extent mindfulness practice continues post-training. future research that investigates mindfulness as it relates to relational quality, educator empowerment, and school change will add depth to the literature. this study highlights that although mindfulness may be successful in reducing teacher stress and strengthening social emotional competency, it is also important to attend to contextual sources of stress, teacher empowerment, and systemic support. this shift in focus will help avoid the potential co-opting of mindfulness and empower educators to better address the core issues in schools that impact student learning and teacher work. mindfulness as professional development may create 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(2009). meditation as contemplative inquiry. lindisfarne books. author notes emily mcrobbie adult and higher education program university of southern maine emilyjmcrobbie@gmail.com http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0617-7571 this study was conducted while completing a doctoral degree at northern arizona university and in collaboration with passageworks institute. special acknowledgment and thanks extended to dr. rona wilensky at passageworks institute. more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. http://sophia.stkate.edu/msw_papers/533 mailto:emilyjmcrobbie@gmail.com http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0617-7571 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ latino and whit_final volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x latino and white students’ perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring: do gender and ethnicity matter? rubén garza, phd texas state university – san marcos martha n. ovando, phd university of texas at austin claire e. seymour texas state university – san marcos citation garza, r., ovando, m.n., & seymour, c.e. (2010). latino and white students’ perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring: do gender and ethnicity matter? current issues in education, 13(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 2 about the author(s) author: rubén garza, phd affiliation: texas state university – san marcos address: 601 university drive, san marcos, tx, 78666 email: rubengarza@txstate.edu biographical information: rubén garza is an assistant professor of curriculum & instruction and secondary undergraduate coordinator at texas state university – san marcos. his research efforts focus on latino education, culturally responsive teaching, mentoring beginning teachers and adolescents, and feedback to improve teachers’ performance. author: martha n. ovando, phd affiliation: university of texas at austin email: movando@mail.utexas.edu biographical information: martha n. ovando is professor and graduate advisor at the university of texas at austin. her research interests focus on teacher leadership, instructional leadership, constructive feedback to improve teachers’ instructional performance, and teacher evaluation and development. author: claire e. seymour affiliation: texas state university – san marcos email: claireseymour@txstate.edu biographical information: claire e. seymour is a graduate student in the curriculum studies and special education program at texas state university – san marcos. her research efforts focus on the integration of arts education curriculum and communication design for special education, at-risk, and minority students. l atino and w hite students’ perceptions 3 although caring has been identified as an important attribute of quality teaching (rodriguez, 2008; burrell & ovando, 2008), student perceptions of teachers’ behaviors that convey a caring attitude tend to vary, according to students’ experiences and expectations. for instance, a study of teaching practices in segregated and desegregated schools (burrell & ovando, 2008) found that teachers exhibited caring regardless of the context, but their actual display of caring varied. the study revealed that when teachers moved from one context to the other, “they needed to change how they demonstrated caring but not their philosophy of care itself” (2008, p. 279). as the context may require that teachers modify their approach to caring, students’ perceptions may also vary depending on their own needs, values, and expectations. when there is a difference between teachers’ own personal lens or practice and their students’ perspectives, classroom interactions may result in un-intended consequences for the students. thus, it is imperative to closely examine students’ perceptions of caring. previous research on caring suggests that students tend to value teacher behaviors that demonstrate caring. for instance, some (alder, 2002; garza, 2007; hayes, ryan, & zseller, 1994; nelson & bauch, 1997; nelson, lott, & glenn, 1997; wentzel, 1997) have suggested that empathic listening is a form of caring. students also agree that a caring teacher is one who provides encouragement and cultivates a climate of trust by treating students with respect (garza, 2009; nelsen, lott, & glenn, 1997). further, “it is critical to remember that when you treat students with respect, they tend to appreciate and like you” (boynton & boynton, 2005, p. 6). as ridnouer (2006) suggests, “putting your care for your student first creates a learning community that inspires them to be their best selves, both in school and out in the world” (p. 3).therefore, conveying a positive tone through teacher disposition is an approach to convey caring for c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 4 students, but more importantly, to preserve student dignity (alder, 2002; garza, 2009; nelsen, lott, & glenn, 1997; valverde, 2006). on the other hand, behaviors that may impede meaningful relationships (pang, 2005; pizarro, 2005) may be counterproductive to student success. furthermore, negative incidents can result in instructional disengagement because “students know who they can and can’t learn from” (ridnouer, 2006, p. 4). compounding the issue of unsuccessful teacher-student interactions, students who lack self-esteem generally struggle academically and lack appropriate social skills in the school environment. in addition, factors such as “academic deficits, limited intellectual ability, an unhealthy home environment, language processing, perceptual abilities, or social status” (pierangelo & giuliani, 2000, p. 2-9) may also exacerbate struggling students’ educational experiences. therefore, knowing how to improve educational experiences and classroom interactions between teacher and student through the construct of caring, may be one way to provide better learning experiences for students, especially those who are often marginalized, disenfranchised, and disconnected from the learning environment. this paper reports on the findings from a study conducted to measure latino and white high school students’ perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring and the influence of students’ gender and ethnicity on those perceptions. perspectives on caring while researchers (blustein, 1991; mayeroff, 1971; noddings, 1984; noddings, 2005) agree that the ethic of caring involves a relationship between someone who cares for another, not all agree on a single definition of caring. according to noddings (1984; 2005), caring is reciprocal. the person cared for must acknowledge the act of being cared for in order to form a relationship. unlike noddings (2005) who believes caring must be reciprocal in nature, mayeroff l atino and w hite students’ perceptions 5 (1971) asserts that caring is not always a mutual act. similarly, bluestein (1991) recognizes that a relationship consists of certain roles that may not include reciprocal behaviors. for instance, a teacher-student relationship can be described in terms of a role where the teacher is expected to care for students as part of his or her professional job responsibility. still, deiro (2003) contends that “caring in and of itself, implies a relationship, but appropriate caring in teacher-student relationships is demonstrated differently from caring in other types of relationships” (p. 60). a caring ethic “requires commitment and the continual expression of caring behaviors develops the trusting relationships in which growth can occur” (chaskin & rauner, 1995, p. 674). what makes this endeavor challenging is the interpretation of caring. caring is viewed as a reciprocal interaction (noddings, 1984), behavior that is influenced by context and perspective (bluestein, 1991); a synergetic relationship between someone who cares for another but context dictates whether or not caring is reciprocal (mayeroff, 1971). whereas the construct of caring has been delineated, studies have identified behaviors that demonstrate caring. for example, nelson and bauch (1997) interviewed 88 africanamerican high school seniors and reported that teachers, who set high expectations, gave verbal encouragement, orchestrated demanding learning tasks, provided assistance, and built relationships with students, were perceived as teacher behaviors that convey caring. a study (garrett, barr, & forsbach-rothman, 2007) conducted in a large diverse urban setting, asked 24 african-american, 13 white, and 23 latino sixth grade students, and 22 african-american, 27 white, and 46 latino ninth grade students to comment on how teachers demonstrated care. their findings suggested that latino and african american students perceived providing academic support as critical in demonstrating care, more so than white students. even though teacher personality and taking a personal interest in students were identified as other aspects of c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 6 demonstrating care, white students mentioned them more often than latino and africanamerican students did. in summary, their findings suggested ethnicity did not significantly influence student’s perceptions of caring behaviors. previous research has focused on student perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring (garrett, barr, & forsbach-rothman, 2007; garza, 2007; garza, 2009), student perceptions of the learning environment (byrne, hattie, & fraser, 1986), the link between caring and motivation (wentzel, 1997), teacher conceptions of caring (weinstein, 1998), school climate (slaughter-defoe & carlson, 1996), sense of belonging (goodenow, 1993), and teacher-student relationships (osterman & freese, 2000), to name a few. “in caring classrooms where all children are represented,” (antón-oldenburg, 2000, p. 46) students are more apt to be actively engaged in their education, “especially for culturally diverse students who may be at risk of failing or who may be disengaged from schooling” (perez, 2000). gender and ethnicity as influential factors while administrators, school personnel, and classroom educators cope with mounting pressures to meet district, state and national standards, the uniqueness of diverse classrooms cannot be ignored, especially gender as an influential factor in the educational environment. “while there have been a large number of explanations of the origins of gender differences in educational achievement, few studies have examined the extent to which these differences are mediated by biological, sociocultural or school factors” (gibb, fergusson, & horwood, 2008, p. 65). according to patchen (2006), “gender studies, although varied, tend to swing from the acutely personal (how one perceives of oneself) to the obtusely general (how the force of a masculine or feminine nature determines one’s identity or role)” (p. 2056.) however, past research in education has examined gender differences with regard to achievement (clark, lee, l atino and w hite students’ perceptions 7 goodman, & yacco, 2008; gibb, fergusson, & horwood, 2008; mulholland, hansen, & kaminski, 2004; robinson & gillibrand, 2004). some studies have examined the influence of gender on the interpersonal behavior between teacher and student (fisher, fraser, & rickards, 1997; levy, den brock, wubbels, & breckelmans, 2003), classroom participation (patchen, 2006), teacher-student relationships (koepke & harkins, 2008), course-taking (crosnoe, riegelcrumb, & muller, 2007; kloosterman, tassell, ponniah, & essex, 2008; riegle-crumb, farkas, & muller, 2006), school-related attitudes (van de gaer, pustjens, van damme, & de munter, 2006) and motivation and achievement (marsh, martin, & cheng, 2008; sokal & katz, 2008). still, other studies have examined students’ perceptions with regards to teachers’ instructional communication behaviors (mottet et al., 2008), teachers’ interpersonal behavior (den brock, brekelmans, wubbels, 2004), power relationships in the classroom (cothron & ennis, 1997), use of computers (johnson, 2006), and school experiences (pomeroy, 1999). in addition to gender, other studies have documented how ethnicity and gender may influence high school students’ perceptions of teacher caring. garza (2007) examined 49 latino and 44 white high school students’ perceptions of teacher caring. the students were asked to identify ways teachers cared for them. the results suggested five dominant themes that included the following: (a) provide scaffolding during a teaching episode, (b) reflect a kind disposition through actions, (c) are always available to the student, (d) show a personal interest in the student’s well being inside and outside the classroom, (e) and provide affective academic support in the classroom setting. both ethnic groups valued the same five themes but ranking in order of importance for each of the specific behaviors was different. ding and hall (2007) used a survey (health behavior of school-aged children) to examine more than 14,000 middle and high school students’ perceptions of teacher caring. the demographic groups included white (70%), african c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 8 american (19%), latino (10%), asian (.05%), native american (.03%), and other (2%). the findings suggested grade, gender, and ethnicity influenced student perceptions of teacher caring. “african american male and female students from all grades reported a high degree of negative school environment and male students of all grades, races, and ethnicities tended to report lower degrees of teacher caring than females” (p. 168). similarly, akos & galassi (2004) examined race and gender as factors that influence student perceptions of “difficulty of transition and connectedness to school” (p. 102). participants included 173 sixth-grade students with 57% white, 20% african american, 9% asian american, 8% latino, 4% multiracial and unspecified 2%. the demographics of the 320 freshman high school students included 76% white, 10% african american, 6% asian american, 3% latino, 2% multiracial, and 2% unspecified. the results suggested that race and gender were factors that influenced student perceptions. while middle school girls felt more connected to school than middle school boys did, this perspective was the opposite in high school. although race was not a significant factor in school connectedness, there was significance in the person who was most helpful in their transition to high school. latino high school students reported the counselors as more helpful during their transition than white students. whereas previous research suggests that students’ perceptions may vary according to their ethnicity and gender, it is also evident that teachers care about their students in both tangible and intangible ways, but the way they actually demonstrate care might vary according to the school context, and student composition (burrell & ovando, 2008). as a result, students may have different perceptions of teacher caring behaviors that align with their personal philosophy. given that “past learning environment studies have shown the importance of perceptions of interpersonal behavior in determining student learning outcomes” (fisher, fraser, & rickards, l atino and w hite students’ perceptions 9 1997. p. 12) we were motivated to explore gender and ethnicity as factors that influence high school adolescents’ perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring. in addition, “as educators, we all care for our students, but the potential of caring is influenced by our own experiences and espoused pedagogical beliefs. while we may perceive our actions and dispositions as caring” (garza, 2006, p.15) student perspectives may be incongruent with teaching and schooling practices considered the norm. therefore, the purpose of this study was to measure high school students’ perceptions of caring reflected through teacher behavior and the influence of students’ gender and ethnicity on those perceptions. this research is instrumental to those in the educational field who want to improve classroom environments and foster positive learning and social outcomes of all students. methodological considerations while previous studies (byrne, hattie, & fraser, 1986; slaughter-defoe & carlson, 1996; weinstein, 1998; wentzel, 1997) have examined student conceptions of caring, our study further advances research by illuminating high school students’ voices that seem to be limited in the literature. research also suggests that additional studies that focus on diverse students’ perceptions may add information to the understanding of caring as an important component of quality teaching (rodriguez, 2008). in addition, we consider students’ gender and ethnicity as an influential factor that may shape their conceptions of teachers’ caring in a classroom environment. this study advanced the following hypotheses: h1. high school students’ ethnicity influences their perceptions of teacher caring behaviors. h2. high school students’ gender influences their perceptions of teacher caring behaviors. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 10 participants participants included 799 high school students, majority representing lowto-middleincome socioeconomic status, from a large suburban high school in the southern part of the united states. this one high school was selected because it was conducive to obtaining a rich, diverse, and substantive amount of information about the context of study. since the first author is a field-based instructor at the high school where the study was conducted, access to the study site was uncomplicated. although the research site was limited to one school district, the study focused on the adolescents’ perspectives about teacher behaviors that convey caring. in addition, the familiarity with the school faculty and administrators helped to establish credibility for the investigation. this convenience coupled with the high school principal’s suggestion to survey all students, helped to facilitate the study. purposeful and convenience sampling (creswell, 2003; creswell, 2007; gall, borg, & gall, 1996) were used to identify the participants. this means that the inquirer “purposefully selects individual participants that will best help the researcher understand the problem and research question” (creswell, 2003, p. 185). although the total number of students surveyed included various ethnic groups, representing various ethnic backgrounds, grade levels, and ages, we focus only on latino (349) and white (450) high school students in this study. this investigation was part of a larger study. procedures in order to collect the robust data efficiently, we decided to ask students to complete a survey scan form during their english class. this meant that the english teachers would be trained in data collection procedures for our study. the author and trained research assistants (high school english teachers) administered the 36 item likert survey instrument to high school students during their english classes. the participants were given a packet that included a scan l atino and w hite students’ perceptions 11 form and the scale with directions that explained the study’s purpose, provided an example of how to respond to each item, and provided the labels for the likert scale. the research assistants adhered to a written script to explain the instructions to the students. after reading the directions aloud and explaining how to fill in the scan form, used to collect demographic information and item responses, the participants were asked to complete the scale. students were expected to rate the statements about caring using a 4 point likert scale with 1=not important and 4=very important. the perceptions of teacher caring (ptc) took about 10-15 minutes to complete and the students were thanked for participating. upon completion of the scale, the scan forms were collected and scanned. the resulting raw data file was converted to spss and sas data files. measures the ptc was developed by the author and reported in a previous paper (garza, ryser, & lee, submitted manuscript). the scale was developed in two primary phases. the first phase involved qualitatively identifying teacher behaviors that were thematically categorized. an instrument consisting of 42 items was then developed during the second phase. to reduce the number of items on the ptc and to assure the instrument had internal consistency, we conducted an item analysis. based on the results of the item analysis and a subsequent content analysis, the scale was reduced from 42 items to 36 items. all but one of the discrimination coefficients of the remaining items were moderate to high ranging from .27 to .73. the exception had a discrimination coefficient of .27. while this is low, the item was important qualitatively and was retained in the scale. cronbach’s alpha coefficient was used to determine the internal consistency of the scale and was .94 for all students, .92 for the latino students, and .94 for the white students. an exploratory factor analysis using principal axis factoring was also conducted to provide evidence of the instrument’s validity. we extracted factors based on two considerations. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 12 first, we identified how many factors had eigenvalues greater than one. second, we examined the scree plot, which is plot of successive eigenvalues. using this method one determines how many eigenvalues lie above the elbow of the plot. in our case, we found that three factors were optimal. these results, coupled with the ptc scores’ high internal consistency and strong factor loadings, supported using the ptc with a large sample of high school students. data analysis and results the purpose of our study was to measure latino and white high school students’ perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring and whether students’ ethnicity and gender influenced their perceptions.  first, we generated a new random variable using a bernoulli distribution to select approximately 50 percent of the sample to use in an oblique (i.e., correlated factors) exploratory factor analysis using maximum likelihood estimation. we used the results of the exploratory factor analysis and the first author’s previous qualitative analyses to ascertain which items loaded on each latent construct. results of the factor analysis revealed that the three factor model best fit the data. based on the factor loadings we eliminated eight additional items that were not correlated with any of the three factors. the resulting 28 items (appendix a) loaded as follows: factor 1 (validating student worth) consisted of 15 items, factor 2 (individualizing academic success) consisted of 6 items, and factor 3 (fostering positive engagement) consisted of 7 items. an examination of the items by factor suggested that the ptc was comprised of the following three subscales: validating student worth, individualizing academic success, and fostering positive engagement. the factor pattern loadings for factor 1 ranged from .330 to .765, factor 2 ranged from .365 to .871, and factor 3 ranged from .334 to .810.   l atino and w hite students’ perceptions 13 ethnicity influence we created a summative total using the 28 items and compared the latino and white students’ mean total scores using an f-test for all three scales, table 1. table 1 one-way anova – ethnicity subscale and source df ss ms f validating student worth between groups within groups 1 990 .233 56374.00 .233 56.944 .040 individualizing academic success between groups within groups 1 1018 .210 14422.036 .210 14.167 .015 fostering positive engagement between groups within groups 1 1027 1.989 11763.249 1.989 11.454 .174 h1. ethnicity influences high school students’ perceptions of teacher caring behaviors, was not supported. in this study, ethnicity was not an overall significant factor which further supports results by garrett, barr, and forsbach-rothman (2007), who suggested that ethnicity is not an influential factor. while, hayes, ryan, and zseller (1994) indicate gender and ethnicity as factors that influence student perceptions at the item level, our findings do not support other studies (akos & galassi, 2004; ding & hall, 2006) that suggest ethnicity as a significant variable in shaping students’ perceptions. gender influence we next compared the mean total scores for males and females using an f-test for all three subscales. the results were statistically significant and are reported in table 2. the survey c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 14 items describe ways teacher can demonstrate caring for students. females were more likely than males to perceive the survey items as more important in each subscale. since the subscales differed for males and females, this finding is in concert with previous work (akos & galassi, 2004; ding & hall, 2007). in contrast, hayes, ryan and zseller, (1994) reported no statistical significance at the item level. we examined differences in response patterns between them by constructing cross tabulation tables and computing a chi-square statistic for each item. because multiple tests were run on the same data, we used the bonferroni procedure to adjust for type i error and set p<.001 to determine statistical significance. table 2 one-way anova – gender subscale and source df ss ms f validating student worth between groups within groups 1 980 1013.77 54676.00 1013.77 55.79 18.71*** individualizing academic success between groups within groups 1 1009 121.438 14202.065 121.438 14.075 8.63** fostering positive engagement between groups within groups 1 1017 214.764 11382.793 214.764 11.193 19.19*** **p < .01. ***p < .001. statistically significant differences were found among gender groups at the item level for 17 of the 28 items. table 3 shows the percentage of students by gender who rated the item as important or very important. l atino and w hite students’ perceptions 15 table 3 frequency item analysis of perceived caring behaviors by gender survey items male n % female n % 1 encourages me in class. ** 327 66 376 70 2 gives me examples on how to improve. 393 80 434 82 3 is available whenever i need help on something. ** 401 82 465 88 4 prepares me for tests. *** 421 85 497 93 5 responds with a positive tone when i ask for help. *** 399 81 478 89 6 is very nice to me. 350 71 393 74 7 suggests i come to tutorials whenever i fail something. ** 288 58 355 67 8 gives additional time to turn in any kind of work. 334 68 340 64 9 talks to me whenever my grades are poor. ** 362 73 422 79 10 believes in me. *** 332 67 406 76 11 tells me i can achieve my goals. ** 276 56 342 64 12 will stay before or after school to tutor me. *** 338 68 427 80 13 makes learning fun. 415 84 453 86 14 answers my questions with respect. *** 413 84 476 89 15 allows any effort i give. ** 310 63 372 70 16 offers to help whenever convenient for me. 345 70 381 72 17 shows an attitude that makes me feel comfortable in class. *** 381 77 452 85 18 calls me by my name. *** 367 75 438 83 19 listens to me whenever i talk. *** 401 82 479 90 20 talks to me in class. 268 54 318 60 21 works with me on an individual basis. 294 60 292 55 22 jokes with me. ** 299 61 280 53 23 likes helping me when i do not understand something. *** 392 80 442 84 24 returns my papers on time. 321 65 354 67 25 reminds me about important things more than once. 388 79 424 80 26 is willing to help me when i need it. ** 414 84 463 87 27 asks for my opinions. 307 62 333 63 28 pays attention to my opinions. 338 73 367 76   **p < .01. ***p < .001. n= 799 male students were more likely to perceive jokes with me as more important than female students. female students were more likely to perceive encourages me in class, is available whenever i need help on something, prepares me for tests, responds with a positive tone when i ask for help, suggests i come in for tutorials when i fail something, talks to me whenever my grades are poor, believes in me, tells me i can achieve my goals, will stay before or after school to tutor me, answers my questions with respect, allows any effort i give, shows an attitude that c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 16 makes me comfortable in class, calls me by my name, listens to me whenever i talk, likes helping me when i do not understand something, and is willing to help me when i need it, as more important than male students. discussion the purpose of our study was to measure high school students’ perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring. specifically, the ptc measured latino and white high school students’ perceptions and whether ethnicity and gender influenced perceptions of caring. although ethnicity was not a significant factor in influencing adolescents’ perceptions of teacher caring behaviors, the significance at the item level merits further research and may provide some important insights about caring. this section begins with an overview of the three subscales (see appendix a), as reported in a previous manuscript, followed by the descriptive statistics at the item level with regards to gender, since ethnicity was not a statistical factor. the ptc included 28 items grouped into three subscales: validating student worth, individualizing academic success, and fostering positive engagement. validating student worth validating student worth, the first subscale of the instrument, refers to actions or behaviors, verbal and non-verbal, which demonstrate respectful interactions and communicate a sincere level of regard for students as individuals and interest for the student’s welfare. consistent with previous studies (coburn & nelson, 1989; coley, 1995; geary, 1988; hansen & toso, 2007; kitano & lewis, 2005; knesting, 2008), similar behaviors regarded as most important by the participants in this study (see appendix a) are linked to this subscale, suggesting the critical nature of caring and regard for students. the language and actions convey a perception of students as human beings rather than physical bodies in the classroom (valverde, l atino and w hite students’ perceptions 17 2006). the manner in which a teacher responds or interacts with students is self-regulated, therefore, instrumental in the manner with which the verbal or non-verbal interaction is interpreted by a student. these behaviors engender a sense of belonging and respect for students that may increase student interest and motivation which drive learning. as kottler and zehm (2000) state “a sense of humor and playfulness are among the most powerful tools available to teachers to help accomplish this mission (p. 15). when students feel valued (kitano & lewis, 2008) and encounter positive experiences (mcmillan & reed, 1994) coupled with a teacher’s pleasant manner, a sense of belonging (coley, 1995; hansen & toso, 2007) may occur, instrumental in maintaining students’ interest in school. when teacher behavior reflects an attitude that is inviting, rather than discouraging, students are more apt to attend class and participate in the learning process because they want to be there. it is interesting to note that 9 of 15 items in this subscale were significant at the item level. the following table shows the statistical significance at the item level by gender. table 4 individualizing academic success influence on perceived caring behaviors by gender survey items suggests i come to tutorials whenever i fail something. ** is available whenever i need help on something. ** shows an attitude that makes me feel comfortable in class. *** jokes with me. ** is willing to help me when i need it. ** believes in me. *** listens to me whenever i talk. *** calls me by my name. *** responds with a positive tone when i ask for help. *** **p < .01. ***p < .001. n= 799 c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 18 the next subscale, individualizing academic success, refers to student perceptions of a teacher’s responsiveness or scaffolding that provides both cognitive and affective instructional support and assistance to students (garza, 2006). these actions help to engender successful and positive classroom experiences for all students. while scaffolding may be viewed as the process of providing the cognitive input to support new learning (monzó & rueda, 2001), scaffolding in this study was reflected also by concrete actions that supported academic gains (ferreira & bosworth, 2001; nelson & bauch, 1997). these responsive actions are motivated by teacher ethic, context, and moral obligation (bluestein, 1991; noddings, 2005). when students encounter positive experiences in the classroom (epstein, 1992; hansen & toso, 2007; haynes, 1996) and caring teachers (mcmillan & reed, 1994; reis, colbert, & hébert, 2005) they are more likely to remain in school. in this subscale, all items were significant at the item level. the following table shows the statistical significance at the item level by gender. table 5 individualizing academic success influence on perceived caring behaviors by gender survey items prepares me for tests. *** talks to me whenever my grades are poor. ** likes helping me when i do not understand something. *** allows any effort i give. ** returns my papers on time. ** pays attention to my opinions. **   **p < .01. ***p < .001. n= 79 l atino and w hite students’ perceptions 19 fostering positive engagement fostering positive engagement, the third subscale, describes behaviors that encourage self-esteem in students to promote active participation in the classroom. when this occurs, students feel cared for (hansen & toso, 2007). mendes (2003) agrees that “positive responses create an emotional bank account that can absorb relational difficulties that occur along the way” (p. 59). these behaviors reflect how the teacher invests the time necessary to create positive experiences for students rather than discounting them or labeling them as unmotivated whenever challenges occur for the learner. in other words, students believe the teacher cares about their learning and success or in irvine’s (2003) words, “effective teachers love and care about the students whom they teach, and they also love and are excited about the subject that they teach” (p. 47). additionally, brown (2007) affirms “a positive or negative response could affect the self-esteem and academic success of students” (p. 57). if students perceive the teacher to be unresponsive to their needs, disengagement may occur, which in turn may lead to underachievement or dropping out of school (kitano & lewis, 2005). valverde (2006) emphasizes that students’ “interest in learning will continue if they find success” (p. 37). this subscale included 6 of 7 items significant at the item level. ethnicity was an influential factor for two of these items; gender was an influential variable for four of the items; and both ethnicity and gender were influential factors on two of the items. the following table shows the statistical significance at the item level by gender and ethnicity. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 20 table 6 fostering positive engagement influence on perceived caring behaviors by gender survey items encourages me in class. ** tells me i can achieve my goals. ** answers my questions with respect. *** will stay before or after school to tutor me. *** **p < .01. ***p < .001. n= 799 implications students are key players in the teaching and learning process and consequently have direct knowledge of what takes place in the classroom (stronge & ostrander, 2006). students, therefore, are in the best position to provide an authentic account about student-teacher interactions in the classroom, and their perceptions about teacher behaviors that convey caring can add an important perspective to caring. obtaining their feedback is a viable means for improving educational practices that may unconsciously be ineffective and impede student success. understanding secondary students’ conceptions of caring behaviors may be influential in breaking down unresponsive institutional and systemic barriers that prevent students from learning, staying in school, or having positive experiences. we need to examine further students’ perspectives to learn how to care for them in a manner that is culturally responsive to better address their needs. as garza (2009) explains, “once students step into the context of the classroom, educators may perceive their unique assets as problems, complex challenges, or differences that are misinterpreted. as a result, educators often label students as unmotivated, withdrawn, or academically incapable” (p. 1). while some educators may ignore struggling or l atino and w hite students’ perceptions 21 reluctant students and some continue to invest their time to scaffold and encourage them to succeed, a further examination of the dynamics of caring is important. additionally, the findings may be used as a springboard to examine teacher practice to determine the extent of culturally responsive caring (garrett, barr &, forsbach-rothman, 2007). classroom demographics have changed; in some areas, the latino population is the majority. therefore, school administrators could use the ptc survey in their respective schools to identify teacher caring behaviors congruent with their students’ conceptions. consequently, educators might benefit from knowing how to best care for their students, since their disposition and interaction with students may not be congruent with student perceptions (den brok, brekelmans, wubbels, 2004; rickards & fisher, 1999; thompson, 2007). the results of our study may assist teachers who wish to convey a more responsive caring approach in teaching a diverse population. similarly to what garza (2009) suggests, our findings “are especially helpful for teachers who are ethnically unique to their students and whose background and experiences may obstruct caring in ways appropriate for their students” (p. 22). having knowledge about gender differences in student perceptions about caring behaviors might serve as a means for educators to improve relationships with students, specifically with male students. researchers (ding & hall, 2007) have suggested that male students, in all grade levels and ethnicity groups, are more likely to perceive teachers as uncaring. the culture for learning has to be perceived as non-threatening and teachers must be perceived as caring adults if students are to reach their potential. for example, male students were more likely to perceive jokes with me as more important than female students, suggesting males need to perceive teachers as having a sense of humor. perceiving a teacher to have a sense of humor as a form of caring has been linked to student success in school (rodriguez, 2008; c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 22 geary, 1988). previous research supports this notion (van de gaer, pustgens, & van damme, & de munter, 2006) indicating males are more likely to achieve less when attitudes toward school or the teacher-student relationship are negative. some have suggested that student perceptions are influenced by teacher gender. for example, levy, den brock, wubbels, and brekelmans (2003), reported “male students thought their male teachers were more helpful, friendly, and understanding than their female teachers” (p. 27). future research might examine student’s perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring with regard to teacher gender since teachers’ conceptions of caring may not be the students’ reality (thompson, 2007). furthermore, based on this knowledge, teachers could assess their own actions and disposition towards students to improve educational experiences for all students. equal opportunity for learning in the least restrictive environment is essential for learning to occur. “when students’ needs, values, and interests are excluded from the curriculum, perhaps it is only logical that they in turn, exclude themselves from engaging in knowledge for which they see little value or recognition of their personal worth” (cothron & ennis, 1997, p. 553). methodological limitations the main focus of this study was on high school students’ perceptions with gender and ethnicity as influential factors. this study is limited by the gathering of data at one large high school. students in other content areas might have different expectations and needs associated with the subject matter and as a result, their perceptions might be different from those reported here. therefore, analysis and comparisons by subject matter or teachers were beyond the scope of this study. further research should be conducted to examine students’ perceptions in different parts of the country. the selection of participants is also a contextual limitation. examining a more geographically and ethnically diverse sample of participants might provide different l atino and w hite students’ perceptions 23 results, especially since this study was limited to latino and white students. in addition, inquiring about teachers’ ethnicity and gender as influential factors on student perceptions is a possible research initiative. furthermore, other researchers might label the three subscales differently based on the findings of this research investigation. caution should be taken when generalizing the conclusions from this study to similar demographic groups in diverse high school settings in other parts of the united states. additional research is needed to further test ethnicity as an influential factor in student perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring. final remarks the results of our study suggest that gender significantly influences student perceptions of teacher behaviors that convey caring. although ethnicity was not statistically significant, we must not ignore the fact that there was some significance at the item level. these findings further expand on previous studies (ding & hall, 2007; garrett, barr, & forsbach-rothman, 2007; garza, 2009; hayes, ryan, & zseller, 1994) and support the need to research ethnicity as an influential variable on secondary students’ perceptions about caring in the school environment. our study also adds to the current research on student perceptions by illuminating high school student voices that seem limited in the literature. in addition, the results of this study were obtained through an instrument developed solely to measure students’ perceptions about teacher behaviors that convey caring. whereas a significant body of work supports the importance of a caring teacher in the classroom (bruce & stellern, 2005; collinson, killeavy, & stephenson, 1998; garza, 2009; gay, 2000; letts, 1997; noddings, 2005; pang, rivera, mora, 1999; slaughter-defoe & carlson, 1996), undoubtedly, a teacher’s ability to demonstrate genuine caring is linked to student success. collinson, et al. (1998) acknowledge that only “…cursory attention (is given) to the role c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 24 of an ethic of care in effective teaching” (p.22). this implies that caring teachers must purposefully know their students well and establish relationships with them because without establishing caring, school reforms “are not likely to strengthen teaching or improve student learning significantly as long as the focus on teacher competence overshadows the role of an ethic of care in exemplary teaching” (collinson, et al., 1998, p.23). this is especially critical for students of color (burrell & ovando, 2008). although caring is instrumental in motivating and academically engaging students (capps, 2004; osterman & freese, 2000; patchen, 2006), engendering relationships (garza, 2007; letts, 1997; stanton-salazar, vasquez, & mehan, 2000), establishing a sense of belonging (goodenow, 1993), creating a productive culture for learning (weinstein, 1998), and establishing a cooperative learning community (battistich, solomon, watson, & schaps,1997), high school students’ perspectives about how to best care for them are limited in the extant research. validating student worth, individualizing academic success, and fostering positive engagement were important notions to the high school students in this study. therefore, knowing what students think is an avenue administrators, counselors, and educators can embrace to improve schooling experiences for all students. references akos, p., & galassi, j. p. 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(1997). student motivation in middle school: the role of perceived pedagogical caring. journal of educational psychology, 89(3), 411-419. l atino and w hite students’ perceptions 31 appendix a perceptions of teacher caring validating student worth 1. suggests i come to tutorials whenever i fail something. 2. works with me on an individual basis. 3. offers to help whenever convenient for me. 4. is available whenever i need help on something. 5. reminds me about important things more than once. 6. is very nice to me. 7. shows an attitude that makes me feel comfortable in class. 8. talks to me in class. 9. jokes with me. 10. is willing to help me when i need it. 11. believes in me. 12. asks for my opinions. 13. listens to me whenever i talk. 14. calls me by my name. 15. responds with a positive tone when i ask for help. individualizing academic success 1. prepares me for tests. 2. talks to me whenever my grades are poor. 3. likes helping me when i do not understand something. 4. allows any effort i give. 5. returns my papers on time. 6. pays attention to my opinions. fostering positive engagement 1. encourages me in class. 2. gives me examples on how to improve. 3. gives additional time to turn in any kind of work. 4. makes learning fun. 5. tells me i can achieve my goals. 6. answers my questions with respect. 7. will stay before or after school to tutor me. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 32 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo complementary medicine in the classroom: is it science? current issues in education, 24(1) 1 volume 24, issue 1 february 13, 2023 issn 1099-839x complementary medicine in the classroom: is it science? frank trocco lesley university abstract: this academic essay provides a strategy for teaching complementary and alternative medicine (cam) in the classroom, a subject typically critiqued as unconventional and nonscientific. it demonstrates how students can enhance their critically reflective skills by examining polarizing and controversial medical topics, which are often considered by conventional doctors and researchers to be on the fringes of credible western medicine. included are examples of hands-on cam experiments that can easily be incorporated in the classroom. it demonstrates how, by using an inquiry-based constructivist pedagogy, examining controversial and sometimes pseudoscientific ideas deepens learning. keywords: cam, complementary medicine, constructivist education, critical reflection, inquirybased, pseudoscience citation: trocco, f. (2023). complementary medicine in the classroom: is it science? current issues in education, 24(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss1.2093 accepted: january 5, 2023 complementary medicine in the classroom: is it science? i searched the juice section of the shelves for something the color of urine. i finally settled on green tea, and when watered down in a glass jar, it truly looked like the real thing. walking into class, i held up the jar, explained that instead of drinking my urine that morning i decided to bring it in, and asked: “anyone want a hit?” for a moment, i broke through the students’ usual blasé haze, and i could hear gasps of surprise as i sipped on my morning libation. urine is drunk by americans as part of a routine health regime for cancer treatment, aids, and migraines (gardner, 2001). drinking urine is widespread in india (where indians also drink sacred cow urine) and in the middle east (where they also drink camel urine). but in the classroom that day, my “tea” got the students’ attention focused on complementary medicine. when i pitched the course complementary and alternative medicine (cam) to the science department, i faced mathematicians, a physicist, a chemist, a biologist, and an ecologist—all scientists and research scholars. for years whenever courses came up for our review (e.g., biology 101 or anatomy and physiology), there was no question that the students, https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss1.2093 trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 2 through experiments, mathematical analysis, and research, would be conducting and learning “science.” there was never anything contentious about these courses “being science.” the only suggestions from faculty involved tweaks to the learning outcomes and assessment. however, when i brought up cam to this group, someone said: “frank, how can you teach students about these ideas (e.g., reiki, magnet therapy, therapeutic touch, chi) when none of them are supported by scientific evidence? is it science?” i replied that the class was not going to teach “about” these topics (i.e., we were not going to learn the techniques of, say, traditional chinese medicine), but we were going to work on understanding why these modalities, mostly without accepted scientific credentials, are used so extensively in the us and around the world, even to the exclusion of conventional medicine (national center for complementary and integrative health, 2016b). the course would be centered on critical reflection but not in the abstract. instruction would involve applying our studies to real-world medical issues, demonstrated by in-class experiments (paris, 2016, para. 24). this was pedagogy my scientific colleagues could understand, and the course was approved. the cam course always begins by discussing the scientific method, measurement, and a central tool of medical research, randomized controlled trials (rcts). it turns out that the modalities, medicines, and procedures contained in cam almost entirely do not pass muster with any of these scientific standards. you could say that cam is a grouping of modalities that, for the most part, lives outside the western biomedical model (wbm) or biomedicine (i.e., scientific medicine) and is generally not found in conventional hospitals or the doctors’ offices that students normally visit. as opposed to the body of knowledge conventional doctors learn in medical schools, cam modalities originate from ancient traditions, folk beliefs, traditional and spiritual belief systems, and are passed on by word-of-mouth and (mostly) unlicensed practitioners. what divides science from not-science is a surprisingly open question (trocco, 1998). for most people, this is a seemingly easy distinction, but for myriads of philosophers, historians, and anthropologists of science, it is a pivotal yet embarrassing distinction. this is at the root of why cam is an epistemic gift for students, as they try to determine a clear definition for science and find out that “the devil is in the details.” for no lack of trying, researchers have been hardpressed to say definitively whether something like, for example, the ancient navajo nine-night nightway ceremony, which heals “diseases of the head” (bell’s palsy, headaches, and bad dreams), is medically scientific or not (francis, 2012; joe et al., 2016). the cam course does not argue that cam treatments actually do what their proponents say they do, only that looking at cam pushes the boundaries of what we think of as science, what we consider as evidence, and who is in the position to make those choices. an underlying question is what is “legitimate knowledge,” how is it determined, and who gets to decide? the surety of western epistemology is at stake, which is why the confirmation of something seemingly as simple as someone using reiki, or “energy healing,” to help with stress receives a full frontal assault from skeptical opponents (engler & mielczarek, 2014). this is why the cam students need to grapple with critical, constructivist pedagogy and look at ideas that seem firmly set, such as the scientific method, but which may be based on underlying cultural assumptions about what is credible and what is not (collins & pinch, 1982; pinch, 1979). it is why cam researchers call for a paradigm shift, as even experiments do not always reveal the truth: . . . experimental evidence is not unambiguous. it may appear to be unambiguous so long as the assumptions upon which it is based are not examined too radically. one might say that experimental evidence appears unambiguous within a taken-for-granted set of rules of trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 3 induction but that different rules of induction operate in different scientific paradigms. a fortiori we may expect different rules of induction to operate in radically different societies, yielding different, but self-consistent, pictures of the world. (collins & pinch, 1982, p. 182). sometimes convincing faculty to work with constructivist pedagogy, where students have more control over what they are learning, rather than teaching endless content, can be provocative: “i have attended more than one faculty meeting where some version of the question, ‘what do we want our students to know?’ has led to a curricular rift between the lumpers and the splitters. typically, the splitters are the most vocal, wanting to add more academic content to the existing courses, and add additional required courses to the curricula covering areas that they see as critical to undergraduate enlightenment. they do not fully grasp perkins’s point: ‘knowledge and skill in themselves do not guarantee understanding. people can acquire knowledge and routine skills without understanding their basis or when to use them’ (perkins, 1993, para. 8). on one occasion, we divided into groups to address this question, each group reporting out the results of its discussion. i was the spokesperson when it was my group’s turn, and i stood up and said: ‘we want our students to know how to figure out, in each discipline, what the questions are that interest them most. our role as teachers needs to be to help them figure out how to answer those questions.’ i continued, in response to the splitters’ suggestions for new essential coursework, ‘there’s an endless amount of “stuff” that we can tell them about, but it doesn’t mean it leads them into deep understanding.’ some colleagues still believe in aristotle’s tabula rasa and what freire (2018) termed the ‘banking model’ method of instruction. in this view, students’ brains are mostly empty and in order to educate them we have a responsibility to open them up and pour in endless information—sophisticated thinking is then (somehow) an epiphenomenon of this process. in the sciences, this sort of pedagogy is often criticized as a ‘cookbook’ approach, as students work on experimental problems with known solutions and expected results (fukami, 2013) [similar to a skeptic’s a priori assumptions about cam being pseudoscience]. the splitters never like it when objections are raised to this instructional narrowness.” (trocco, 2014, p. 1) the experiences included in this analysis are recounted from over ten years of teaching cam to undergraduate students. after a decade, i noticed from class discussions and student assignments how similarly their reactions were to both cam practices and to the intense reactions that skeptical researchers had to these practices. it was after 20 semesters of teaching cam that i realized certain themes in student attitudes were emerging, as well as the same comments and anxiety with the wbm. i spent three recent semesters soliciting the students’ thoughts and feelings through assignments, emails, and interviews, receiving their permission to include their statements in this paper, which have all been marked “personal communication.” all the comments in the present paper echo the students’ reactions from the previous ten years, although they have only been collected from about three semesters. this paper describes unique cam experiments the class engages in and includes the results and responses of students performing those experiments. the cam classes at a university in massachusetts are typically composed of 20 predominately white, 18-22 years old, mostly female college students and several asian and african-american students majoring in psychology, holistic studies, and health. they make up a fairly homogenous group of young people, and there are no relevant differences in the students trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 4 who provided the interviews which accompany this paper. the demographic of the classes reflects the use of cam in the general population of us young adults: “in 2007, more than onethird of adults aged 18 to 29 years used any complementary and alternative medicine in the previous 12 months, suggesting that adults are incorporating complementary and alternative medicine into their healthy lifestyle behaviors early on” with the smallest percentage use among african-americans (upchurch & rainisch, 2012, para. 2). similar results were found by cam students who surveyed 40+ undergraduate students from a number of universities during a citizen science project: we found that there are many reasons students choose to use cam practices rather than turning to conventional medicine. there was a theme throughout the surveys and interviews of strong dissatisfaction with western medicine, and a mindset of “how can i help myself if no one else is going to help me?” when students felt unsupported by western practitioners. this led them to seek out cam modalities instead. by far the most common reason for the switch, cited by 35.29% of students who used cam, was that students had fewer concerns about side effects and dependence with cam, whereas they felt that western medicine was unhealthy and would lead to those negative outcomes. (bianco et al., 2022, p. 8-9). the cam classes are not lecture-oriented, but based on hands-on, constructivist learning, first-person research, citizen science projects, discussions, and experiments. constructivist teaching starts from the assumption that students can build their own learning and answer the questions that are most important to them if given the proper tools and direction (hein, 1995). in this educational model, students are given control over what questions interest them and are helped in trying to figure out how to research and answer those questions. as the cam semesters passed, it was apparent that student learning was built around the discoveries and analysis from the rich results of our experiments. it was clear that the student observations and conclusions described below could eventually be incorporated into the present research report. a typical class could involve a brief lecture from the instructor, one or two small group discussions analyzing proponent or skeptic approaches to cam, a discussion of the weekly readings, a student group presentation, and a segment of the experiments outlined below as they can carry over through a number of class sessions. the instructor and the weekly lessons maintain an agnostic and balanced view toward cam (trocco, 1998), as many students have deeply held and familial beliefs for and against cam modalities. beyond that, there are many potent academic and medical criticisms of cam, especially since they are seen as non-scientific, distracting, and perhaps dangerous when used instead of conventional medical treatments (werneke et al., 2004). while there are undoubtedly truly fraudulent cam practitioners, the entire field of cam is seen as pseudoscience by an overwhelming number of medical and scientific researchers: “we [skeptics] will confidently stand by our position. cam proponents, like creationists, have nothing but weak and fallacious—and long-discredited—arguments on their side” (novella, 2012, p. 25). the class structure and pedagogy make no attempt to convince students that cam is the correct choice in medicine, only to complexify the debate between proponents and skeptics, which can initially seem to many students as being black and white. to work with this, the class demonstrates and practices how cam can be empirically studied (trocco, 1998). during the class’s study of cam, the students review the historical successes of the wbm, which has achieved dominance in medical practice throughout the world. some might say this is because a system of healing developed in europe and the near east which is far superior trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 5 to any medicine or treatment that evolved anywhere else on earth. perhaps this is correct, but through colonialism, conquest, and forced education, cultures throughout the world were coerced into accepting the wbm as the only medicine. in the process, these world cultures neglected, and eventually lost, most of their original ways of knowing, including thousands of years of the nature-based knowledge they had developed about health and well-being. symbolic healing, spirituality, and herbalism, enacted through mythic ritual and ceremony, constituted the healing focus of most non-western cultures, but were openly denigrated by western colonizers as being primitive and superstitious—public perceptions which remain today. although the development of the wbm provides critical historical context, the cam course focuses on what was “neglected and forgotten” as the west reached near total authority and hegemony in world medicine. science’s semi-permeable membrane cam includes medicines and applications not found in (most) conventional hospitals, and even teaching cam at the university level is contested (flatt, 2013): it is okay to teach about so-called complementary and alternative medicine (cam) as a sociological phenomenon or even as an example of pseudoscience. practitioners also need to learn about any method their patients may be using or about which they are curious. credulously teaching cam, however, is an endorsement, the granting of the imprimatur of the university. (novella, 2012, p. 24) few cam modalities are scientifically credible by the standards of the wbm, with its emphasis on measurement and the experimental requirements of double-blinded randomized controlled trials (rcts) (hall, 2012; jackson & scambler, 2007; verhoef et al., 2005). over the years, the cam class has arrived at a working metaphor for distinguishing these two sides and the difficulty that cam has in becoming validated and certified, especially by hospitals and insurance companies (national center for complementary and integrative health, 2016a). this metaphor can be visualized as a semi-permeable “wall” between cam modalities and the accredited medical modalities which are approved by the wbm. on the left side of this wall is the incredible, and on the right side is the credible (figure 1). the wall is not impenetrable, which is why it is portrayed as semi-permeable. first, ideas about what is considered credible and incredible change with time, experiences, experiments, and the public and scientific ethos. second, occasionally a cam modality will make it through the semi-permeable wall to the other side, as mindfulness has (because neuronal changes as a result of meditation can be measured with an fmri); and parts of acupuncture have because some treatments (e.g., for morning sickness) can be measured (boccia et al., 2015; smith et al., 2002). for the most part, cam modalities will not be able to move from the left to the right, from the incredible to the credible, which is why there is a visible distance between the two sides. this includes in classrooms because what counts as “quackery” and what counts as legitimate knowledge is fiercely entrenched (brosnan, 2015). one possible way through the wall is by negotiating the methodology of the scientific method itself. whole systems research attempts to develop a scientific methodology and discovery process for medicine, which could show that some cam modalities can achieve scientific recognition for their healing effects, perhaps without passing rcts, by examining the whole person’s life and their health rather than focusing on specific medical symptoms. from whole systems analysis, it might even be possible to convert anecdotal and testimonial evidence into scientific data (verhoef et al., 2005). trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 6 figure 1 science’s semi-permeable membrane note. illustration commissioned by the author. cam researchers on both sides of the wall take strong positions—does cam have healing value (snyderman & weil, 2002), or is it “flim-flam” (brosnan, 2015; engler & mielczarek, 2014; huston, 1995; randi, 1982;), “quackery” (barrett, 2021), “magical thinking” (stevens, 2001), and “snake oil science” (bausell, 2009)? this means cam has spectacular value for critical reflection, involving “creativity, great intuition, and deep insights” (aacu, 2009, p. 4; list, 2021, p. 1). students weigh and analyze polarized opinions, which, because they involve personal and family health care concerns, matter deeply to them. cam students have no alternative but to practice navigating the territory between facts and fiction (paul, 2005; murawski, 2014; vickers, 1997): “controversies, it will be seen, are settled in science as they are settled in other walks of life—by negotiation, not revelation” (collins & pinch, 1982, p. 6). researchers who study cam mostly fall into being either believers or skeptics, which creates a radical ideological division. many skeptical researchers are only interested in demonstrating the absurdity of cam treatments (randi, 2013), and their lack of credible scientific evidence (barrett, 2021; beyerstein & sampson, 1996; hall, 2019; mccutcheon, trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 7 1996). they are intent on keeping all of cam on the left side of the wall, while students frequently point out that collaboration among cam & wbm researchers would lead to deeper awareness and discovery, as some researchers agree (vuolanto et al., 2020). an alternative is that some folks turn to cam only when nothing else has helped, as this student points out: in the western world, everything is all about measurements when it comes to medicine. people only fully believe something works if there is a randomized controlled trial where the results can be properly measured. however, when it comes to cam, there is not much “proof” that it works; hence, there are no randomized controlled trials that “prove” anything as of yet. because of this, it is incredibly hard for cam medicines to be taken seriously in places such as the united states. people do not want to believe that these forms of medicine are real medicine. everyone is so accustomed to traditional allopathic medicine in the modern day that they really only use cam as a last resort. it is only when all other hope is gone that they turn to it. (student #1, personal communication, may 2021). the skeptical community is populated by researchers, scientists, and theorists who are concerned by what they see as bad science and, in the case of cam, they see practitioners who take advantage of people who are sick and vulnerable. much publishing takes place in two central journals, the skeptical inquirer and skeptic. while the skeptical inquirer calls itself “the magazine for science and reason,” and complains about cam in the name of science, some sociologists of science have labeled these skeptical communities “scientific vigilante group[s]” (collins & pinch, 1982, p. 5). others have very low opinions of the scientific credibility of the most prominent skeptics (gale, 2019), which is often echoed by students who use these skeptics as sources in research papers: auras and aura reading have been argued to be fake by skeptics who use historical art and literature examples combined with medical symptoms to prove their points. in comparison, believers in auras and aura reading use historical art and literature along with first accounts to prove their points. i align myself with the skeptics that auras and aura readers are fake, but i disagree with how they argue their points. while researching auras and aura reading, there were many skeptics that were just horrible to the believers. i was not surprised by this; i was just more disgusted by it. many skeptics claim to be scientists; however, science as a whole is rarely my way or the highway death threats when it comes to analytically arguing their facts. (student #2, personal communication, november 2021) one notable skeptic was james randi, not a scientist but a magician who was an expert at investigating people he saw as charlatans and hucksters—because he knew all the tricks he could easily see when they were making one (1982): wherever we went [in china], randi helped quickly devise controlled tests so we could see what was going on. the qigong master’s powers seemingly to influence the movements of a nearby woman worked at first, when she could see him. when we placed her in another room where she couldn’t see him and kept careful records in both locations, their motions went totally out of phase. she had been responding only to what she saw him do; when she couldn’t see him any longer, it didn’t work. there was no transmission of “qigong” energy. (frazier, 2021, para. 18-19) the pedagogical approach used in the cam class is to show students both sides of the argument and let them make up their own minds. in every assignment, they are tasked with demonstrating that they understand what is being claimed by both proponents and skeptical trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 8 researchers. they are assigned to review a number of prominent skeptics and their critique and research of cam, for example: “whither chiropractic?” (hall, 2019b), “how thinking goes wrong” (shermer, 1994), homeopathy (randi, 1982), quackwatch: your guide to quackery, health fraud, and intelligent decisions (barrett, 2021), and “traditional medicine and pseudoscience in china: a report of the second csicop delegation” (beyerstein & sampson, 1996). although many students come loaded with discomfort about the wbm from their personal experiences, it is important for them to balance that by learning there is deceit and fraud in many places in medicine, including in cam, and it is important to know how to detect it (synovitz & larson, 2018, pp. 263-276). when you go looking for fraud in cam practices, it is very easy to find claims that most cam is false and deceitful. this is because many researchers believe cam is fraudulent from the get-go because of its lack of scientific validity: alternative medicine embraces many things: treatments that have never been tested or have not been adequately tested; treatments that have been tested and shown not to work; treatments that are based on nonexistent phenomena such as human energy fields and acupoints; treatments such as homeopathy that if true would violate established scientific knowledge; and treatments that have been proven to work but that mainstream doctors have good reasons not to recommend. (hall, 2019a, para. 2) the views on both sides are backed up by volumes of research and testimony and are always being challenged. this means that a convincing adjudication of the “truth” comes under the disciplines of cultural studies or social psychology rather than through determining certain scientific evidential clarity (collins & pinch, 2008): . . . philosophies of science that depend heavily upon the invocation of experimental evidence to decide between major differences in theoretical perspectives are not tenable. it would seem that evidence is so bound up with the society or social group which gives rise to it that theories held by members of radically different scientifico-social groups cannot be adequately tested against each other by experiment. it matters not whether the evidence is intended to corroborate, “prove,” or refute the theories in questions. similarly, these differences cannot be settled by logical argument. (collins & pinch, 1982, p. 184) what science is and what it is not, what truth is and what it is not, has never been clearly demarcated and is constantly debated. it may be that looking at cultural or psychological influences can offer a better adjudication than the results of contentious scientific experiments. [this is because] “there is a basic difference between western scientific epistemology and all other secular worldviews. the western analytic approach claims that the reality content of other belief systems can be critiqued and evaluated from within its model: ‘ . . . science is not only a means of categorizing the world, but of categorizing science itself in relation to other knowledge systems that are excluded’ (nader, 2014, p. 3). western science claims to be able to judge how closely other worldviews accurately describe the empirical world of everyday reality, and how close their versions of the world are to the truth. the knowledge of other cultures is evaluated against the criteria of a single belief system. this hegemonic confidence has led to ever-increasing trust in the western view of reality: [‘while there is no a priori reason to expect that knowledge generated out of non-western paradigms or social processes should be empirically or predictively less adequate, it has been an affect of western ethnocentrism to construe non-western knowledge processes as “pseudoscientific,” “protoscientific,” or merely “unscientific’” (scott, 2014, p. 69)] the [cam] pseudoscientists are the ones who have come under the scrutiny of this analytical model. in our tightly dichotomous trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 9 worldview, if the category ‘science’ exists, the category of ‘not-science’ is a necessity. just as the demarcation of sixteenth-century demons indirectly affirmed the existence of god, the accusations against pseudoscience reinforce our trust in contemporary orthodoxy.” (trocco, 1998) students come to the cam course with both believer and skeptical opinions, although all the orthodox scientific evidence is on the side of the skeptics: for most cam modalities, there is virtually no measurable evidence that, for example, bee stings (for arthritis), magnet therapy (for muscle aches), or chiropractic (for any condition beyond back pain) leads to a cure (although these interventions may provide relief). that said, cam modalities are paid for out of pocket by countless people because the left side of the wall is generally not covered by insurance (levine, 2020; nahin et al., 2007). even skeptical scholars can be persuaded that having students interrogate controversial ideas non-judgmentally and without a priori bias has great value. although ferreting out the scientific “truth” will not ultimately determine an individual’s behavior, students are eager to learn how to follow the data. the important thing is to give them the scholarly tools to determine what is credible and what is incredible, what is possible and what is impossible. extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence most students come to cam with a dim understanding of what cam means: “complementary medicine is used to describe therapeutic techniques that are not part of conventional medicine. . . they are used as a ‘complement’ or addition to conventional medicine” (breastcancer.org, para. 1, 2022). students arrive holding a range of unchallenged beliefs in cam modalities. their understanding is typically based on “testimonial evidence,” stories they have heard from friends, relatives, and media that are unsupported by medical science. testimonial evidence counts for very little in the scientific method (beyerstein & sampson, 1996; hall, 2021). frustratingly for skeptics, even though students do not reject evidence-based science, they are sometimes willing to combine it with testimonial evidence (vuolanto et al., 2020, p. 518). as skilled learners, they develop their own sense of what it is to think critically from their experiences and local knowledges. this approach should not be discounted out of hand (irwin et al., p. 48, 2003) simply because it does not fit the standard definitions: . . . science has no special status for everyday life but must instead compete with all other sorts of knowledge and understanding (especially those categorized here as “local” knowledges). very often the “test” for the applicability of these knowledges is the extent to which they assist in the understanding and control of one’s life. (irwin et al., p. 63, 2003) an underlying mantra of skeptical researchers is that if a healing modality is making a big counterintuitive claim, it needs extraordinary evidence to verify it. in almost all cases for cam, this evidence does not exist, and most students are unaware of this distinction (figure 2), rigidly held by cam critics (nova, 1996). at the same time, definitively proving a modality does not work is near impossible, which some cam treatments depend on for unofficial confirmation. trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 10 figure 2 extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence note. cartoon commissioned by the author. in practice, deeply held beliefs are seldom changed by evidence (lambert et al., 2003, p. 81; snelson, 1992). if we are going to influence the students’ understanding of the real and the imaginary, the methodology has to come from a reflective critical pedagogical direction, not from one of outlining undeniable facts. more evidence and more facts will not necessarily convince students to believe one way or the other, as this student insisted: when researching an alternative medicine modality, it is extremely important to look at both sides of the argument. looking at just one side will not give the entirety of the truth because each source has a biased opinion which they are arguing towards. (student #3, personal communication, may 2021) what is the fundamental difference between cam and the wbm, and why do so many people choose cam in the face of serious illness? the wbm is very good for some things. in the west, we taught ourselves the systems of the body, the germ theory of disease, antibiotics, vaccines, and amazing diagnostic tools. these attributes are what built our metaphorical wall and what gave us immense confidence that eventually the wbm could cure any disease. today, sick patients do not have to tell their doctors very much about themselves, but they wait for the blood tests and fmri scans to come back to be interpreted by the doctor so the doctor can tell them what is wrong (burke, 2009; carman et al., 2010; porter, 1997). the citizen science students found this reflected in their study: on a related note, the second most common reason students cited for cam use over western medical practices, cited by 17.65% of students, was a belief that complementary trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 11 and alternative practices were “more natural” than what they would find with conventional medicine. . . being able to take charge of their own health, without needing a referral from a doctor, led some students to more feelings of control over their treatment. for example, one student stated that “through conventional medicine, i find i get lost in the illness and symptoms and lose myself in the process.” (bianco et al., 2022, p. 9) that said, many healthcare practitioners are caring, sympathetic providers (hall, 2010), doing whatever they can to help their patients (hall, 2014). importantly, some physicians have embraced integrative medicine, which is a sort of “whatever works” approach, using alternative and complementary techniques along with allopathic treatments (snyderman & weil, 2002). in comparison to most conventional doctors, cam practitioners focus on lifestyle, diet, exercise, stress levels, an empathic doctor/patient relationship, and an emphasis on “balance” (samuels & bennett, 1983; zollman & vickers, 1999). this speaks powerfully to patients, and all students are patients at one time or another. the usual impersonal, clinical nature of the wbm does not offer the compassionate care that cam practitioners do (rees & weil 2001), and so people turn to cam modalities because they provide something more satisfying than surgery, drugs, and 15-minute office visits (national center for complementary and integrative health, 2021; rabin, 2014). students recognize this even if they remain uncertain about the efficacy of cam modalities: part of the reason why i sometimes dread going to the doctor is because i know when they are busy, i will be rushed in and out of the office without my opinions or concerns being heard--which is ironic considering it is a consultation about my body. i have talked to a few people who feel the same, and why doctors offices shouldn’t operate like businesses but healing centers where patients feel like people, not numbers who get checked in and out as fast as possible. (student #4, personal communication, december 2021) chinese chi and american vitalism life is a mystery. actually, many mysteries, but the one that often concerns students is what makes life, alive? what enlivens our bodies? is it simply the hamburgers, salad, and beans we eat every day that gives us life, or is there something more? does life come from some intangible spark or energy? in tcm, this is called chi, or vital energy. a belief in chi and its seamless movement through the body is fundamental in tcm, and is the basis of acupuncture, cupping, qigong, and pulse diagnosis (grippo, 1993). however, chi is problematic because it cannot be measured in any way accepted in the west, with a thermometer, blood test, geiger counter, x-ray, fmri—with anything other than the (imagined) testimony of practitioners and patients. but there is something very compelling about the presence of an ineffable life energy, something that is enlivening us beyond burgers and beans. it is so compelling that, at one time, this same belief was widespread among doctors in the us. vital energy, the spark that makes us alive, was called vitalism (coulter et al., 2019; greco, 2005; melzer, 1904). people did not believe that it was all burgers and beans, and for the most part, lay people still do not. however, the wbm could not find any measurable evidence for vital energy and, while it was a central component of medicine in the us in the 19th & early 20th centuries, as we learned more and more how to measure our bodies inside and out, we no longer had a need for vitalism to explain life. vitalism disappeared from medical diagnoses and texts. from the point of view of the wbm, life turned out to be just burgers and beans after all: trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 12 scientists abandoned the notion of life energy over a century ago because there was no evidence that such a force exists (and there still isn’t). after figuring out all the basic processes of life, there was essentially nothing left for the alleged life force to do. (novella, 2012, p. 25) when students understand the history of vitalism, it puts skeptical eurocentric diatribes against chi in perspective (huston, 1995), as this student remarks: i find that there is a pattern with skeptics where no amount of proof or evidence is enough to even open their minds to a new idea, let alone believe it is effective. those who believe in alternative or integrative medicine do not discredit the effectiveness of “real” medication, rather they aim to expand this field to include other ways of healing. the skeptics do not accept cam as even a potential option for someone in need of healing. i think to dismiss these studies is a mistake, and i am unsure if any amount of proof will be enough for true skeptics. (student #5, personal communication, december 2021) the hand’s-on cam classroom preparing a homeopathic super-dilution maybe experiencing the testing of cam modalities themselves would deepen students’ critical reflection and dissuade them from too-quick judgments about impossible things? homeopathy is a 1.2 billion dollar industry in the us (plante, 2019, para. 10) and is used throughout the world (williams, 2013, pp. 147-49). its basic principle, developed in the 19th century by samuel hahnemann, is to find a substance which causes a certain symptom, put a small amount of this active ingredient in a jar, and dilute it with water beyond the existence of the original substance. then use a few drops of that inert solution to cure the symptom. thus, counterintuitively, coffee works as a sleep aid, and poison ivy might work to cure a rash. students can make their own remedy in class, including “potentizing” the solution by “succussing” it—meaning rapping the dropper bottle in their hands 40 times while they hold their intention for the benefits of the remedy (figure 3). this copies hahnemann’s language and process (simpson, 2018). figure 3 succussing a homeopathic dilution trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 13 skeptics believe this is absurd, and anyone who uses homeopathy is deluded (plante, 2019). curiously, when students go through the process for themselves, most do not find it nonsensical. the drops of the remedy they put under their tongue or rub on a sore knee (100% water) remind them of the intention they held while making their remedy, and some report positive results: after listening to james randi’s skeptic talk on homeopathy, i can see how scientifically it does not really make sense. substances are so diluted to the point that there is essentially nothing left but water. when i think of homeopathy in this way, i can see why many people think there is no medical value. on the other hand, my reasoning as to why homeopathic remedies have some medical value is because of the placebo effect. our mindset can affect our health. (student #6, personal communication, december 2021) students’ conclusions in the classroom approximate the reactions to homeopathy in the world outside. even when cam classroom experiments following experimental protocol reach inconclusive results, it does not mean students toss out the entire modality. however, a number of students always remain unconvinced because in class, they are encouraged to stay tuned in to their “baloney detection” à la carl sagan (2011, pp. 201-218): try as i might, homeopathy is an alternative medicine that i believe is a sham (aside from the ones that are obviously a sham like drinking cow urine). this opinion was further solidified when we were told that the potency of the homeopathic cures was made stronger by hitting the bottle. (student #7, personal communication, december 2021) the key point here is the tension between balancing empirical results with personal belief systems. looking over the results of their experiment, one student remarked: i think that homeopathic remedies and placebos have a lot in common. i would say that the success is less about the number of times that the substance is diluted and shaken, and more about the intention and confidence that we put behind it. (student #8, personal communication, may 2021) detecting the human energy field in 1998 11-year-old emily rosa co-authored a paper in the prestigious journal of the american medical association (jama) (rosa et al., 1998). she completed a class science project that challenged practitioners of therapeutic touch (tt) and set off a firestorm of oppositional journalism. tt practitioners believe there is a human energy field (hef) in and surrounding our bodies (a la chi and vitalism) and that by using their hands to feel and control the hef, they can reduce pain and anxiety and help someone who is sick. tt is used in some conventional hospitals, and nurses can receive in-service tt training (mount sinai, 2021), which particularly irritates skeptics as this cam modality is sometimes accepted on the right side of the wall (sarner, 1998). emily performed a simple, yet ingenious experiment. setting up a piece of cardboard with holes in the bottom for the practitioners’ hands, she sat across from the practitioners and had them put their hands palms up through the holes. then, on the other side of the cardboard and out of their sight, emily held a hand randomly above the practitioner’s hands and asked 20 times whether her hand was above the practitioner’s left or right hand. emily repeated this with 21 trained tt practitioners. the practitioners “guessed” correctly where emily’s hand was about 50% of the time, no better than chance. embarrassingly, emily had explained the experimental protocol to each of them and asked them whether, under these conditions, they would be able to trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 14 detect the hef. they all said yes. emily reported in her jama paper that the hef was undetectable (if it existed at all), and tt was a sham. for the skeptical community, this was a slam dunk (sarner, 1998). hef did not exist, and tt was finished. for practitioners, advocates, and patients, not so much. in fact, the publication of these results did not affect the use of tt in hospitals (bleske-rechek et al., 2019). when students perform this experiment in the classroom, and it is easy as all you need is a large piece of cardboard with two holes in the bottom (one student role-playing the practitioner and one roleplaying emily), students get the same results as emily: about 50% correct guesses (figure 4). figure 4 detecting the human energy field students are assigned emily’s jama paper, sarner’s skeptical critique, and a contemporary account in time (lemonick, 1998), to examine the argument. does this tell them that the hef does not exist? does it make them feel that tt is a foolish modality? not at all. it does lead to an involved discussion on the question of “what’s going on here?” this inquiry does not demonstrate analytical naivete on the students’ part, but a strengthening of their critically reflective imagination, as the following two statements demonstrate: i really enjoyed replicating emily’s therapeutic touch and human energy field experiment. this was an awesome and educational way to bring in the assigned readings and alternative perspectives into the classroom. as a spiritual person myself, i found that my perspective around therapeutic touch and human energy field was different before and after completing the in-class experiment. if we were only assigned to read the articles instead of completing the experiment ourselves, i do not think that i would have had the ability to change perspectives and really think about therapeutic touch and human energy field from a personal point of view (student #9, personal communication, december 2021). trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 15 here is another student who acknowledged the class had confirmed emily’s results: i thought emily's experiment in class was interesting because none of the students claimed to be able to sense human energy fields. we received the same results as emily did in her experiment, which i think further proves that her experiment meant bad news for the touch therapists. even if therapeutic touch is a placebo effect, it still manages to help some people live an easier, happier life; why should we try so hard to invalidate that? (student #10, personal communication, december 2021). placebos without deception it is an ongoing mystery as to why people turn to cam and why many claim it “works.” why should foot massages (reflexology) or ocean bathing (balneotherapy) work as cures, against all scientific evidence? we all have an answer for this. when someone recovers from an illness by taking or doing something that is unconventional, it is common to hear, “well, that’s just a placebo.” placebos have always gotten a bad rap. they are the sugar pill used to prove the “real” medicine works in an rct (collins & pinch, 2008). this placebo story is incomplete, as research is continuing to explore how effective openlabel placeboes might be, i.e., a prescription that someone takes knowing it is a placebo (feinberg, 2013; kaptchuk et al., 2010; robson, 2018). the thinking is that something about taking a placebo pill, especially prescribed from an empathic listener, may amplify the body’s “self-healing network” and provide drug-free relief (silberman, 2010, para. 7). students can demonstrate this in the classroom. divided into pairs, as a practitioner and client, the client comes to the practitioner with some condition of their choosing, for example, nervousness about an upcoming exam. the practitioner, suspending their disbelief and listening compassionately, prescribes placebos based on published experimental data (silberman, 2010), and the client leaves with a prescription in a “child proof” vial of “pills” (for example, colored beans or lentils) (figure 5). it turns out that red placebos can be a stimulant, yellow an antidepressant, green can reduce anxiety, and the amounts and sizes of placebos have measurable effects (silberman, 2009). figure 5 a medicine bottle of placebo “pills” trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 16 to begin, the students are assigned a number of readings outlining experiments using open-label placebos. the experiment lasts two weeks, during which time the clients are asked to swallow the prescribed placebos. (if they cannot manage to swallow the bean pills, then it works just as well for them to make their placebos at home using different colored vegetables.) in the first week , the practitioner, listening empathically, prescribes placebos based on the “condition” their client presents them with, usually something having to do with stress, for example, they do not sleep well or are nervous about an upcoming exam or relationship. at the end of the (usually 10 minute) session, the practitioner hands the client a written prescription listing the prescribed bean pills. a week later, during the second consultation, the practitioner listens carefully to what the client reports about their use of the placebos and makes a second prescription based on their client’s self-report, often different from the first. a week later, the practitioner meets for the last time with their client and hears how the placebos worked over the two-week period. everyone knows that they are “just swallowing beans” and that this is a classroom role-play where they are asked to “suspend their disbelief.” even in clinical situations, placebos do not work all the time, especially for certain aliments (resnick & hoddinott, 2021), but the point of this class experiment is not only to see if they “work” for the client’s condition, but for students to exp erientially explore the potential power of their relationship with the client and the placebo effect. for the most part, the students find this experiment exciting, and backed up by substantial reading, are amazed by a placebo’s potential, which is seldom realized during the class experiment. the biggest challenge is suspending their disbelief around swallowing “just beans,” and for some, they can find it challenging to simply keep taking them! students are struck by the power of this experiment, and (in some cases) the clients report positive outcomes from inert pills they know are “just beans,” as one student wrote: “it is an amazing discovery that we can train our brain to activate our self-healing abilities through the use of placebos” (student #11, personal communication, may 2021), and another commented: during our placebo experiment, i realized that my negative connotations with placebos had to be uncovered and changed so that i could experience the placebos for what they really were. the legitimacy of placebos is easier to accept when hard science is proving the real and concrete evidence that placebos are altering brain structure (student #12, personal communication, may 2021). this student used the research data we read in class to make their prescription: the [kaptchuk] ibs study uses the following contexts to ensure the placebo’s efficacy: “1) an accurate description of what is known about placebo effects, 2) encouragement to suspend disbelief, 3) instructions that foster a positive but realistic expectancy, and 4) directions to adhere to the medical ritual of pill taking” (kaptchuk et al., 2010, p. 6). i believe that my class’s assignment successfully covered these four contexts by reading articles about placebos prior to the beginning of the assignment and finding that they have some potential, discussing thoughts and opinions on the matter, and being assigned to prescribe and accept specific times and amounts to take the placebo. i found it fascinating to learn about how effective placebos can be, and how different variables can contribute to their efficacy whether we can see the label on the bottle or not. i think that a lot of their success has to do with confidence, intention, and trust in the person providing the placebo (student #13, personal communication, december 2021). trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 17 all of the experiments reviewed here for the hands-on cam classroom, the homeopathic super-dilution, detecting the human energy field, and placebos without deception, are meant to give students a direct sensory, somatic, and emotional classroom experience about cam practices. they are not meant to convince them one way or another as to the efficacy of cam, and they usually do not. what they accomplish is deepening their interest in cam while demonstrating that decisions about the efficacy or usefulness of cam modalities are more complex than either proponents or skeptics claim they are. does critical reflection always lead to a single conclusion? cam skeptics would like us to believe that science and the “truth” will lead students away from “believing in weird things” (shermer, 1997). many faculty have a definite view (or bias as described by students) about what is a reasonable topic to study and what is on the fringe (trocco, 2000), but if students perceive inflexible cynicism, they are turned off to skeptical arguments. if we move away from the binary choice of science or pseudoscience, students are adept at finding a sensible middle ground. by maintaining an agnostic position regarding truthclaims, they can find credible approaches to investigate seemingly far-out modalities. as citizen scientists, cam students become peer reviewers and community-based investigators, adding to their expertise and the scientific discourse (collins & pinch, 2008; irwin & wynne, 2003). is cam scientific? here is a definition of science that cam students can work with: “science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence” (science council, para. 1, 2021). skeptics think adjudicating the lines between science and pseudoscience is easy. as we have said, for decades, philosophers of science and anthropologists (nelson, 1993) have protested that the boundaries between science and not-science are not as cleanly demarcated as skeptics would have us believe (collins & pinch, 1993; hepeng and jiao, 2007; trocco, 1998). investigating this liminal tension makes students better scholars, not gullible believers. many of the skeptics cited in this paper have an investment in the students’ conclusions (e.g., barrett, 2021; randi, 2013; shermer, 1997;). for them, “critical thinking” only leads in one direction. they can be so focused on explaining the silliness of cam ideas that they skip the step of giving students the interdisciplinary tools to truly examine them. but this approach does not change minds or hearts (inside or outside the classroom) and does not lead to deep critical reflection, as irwin et al. point out: “. . . if scientists are sincere in their desire to communicate more effectively with the rest of society—then this will involve a willingness to engage with alternative worldviews and ‘knowledges’ rather than labeling them in advance as emotive and ignorant” (2003, p. 64). working with cam in the classroom, given sometimes impossible and contradictory problems to solve, leads to a path of inquiry-based learning that places students in a “disorienting dilemma” (mezirow, 1991)—a mismatch between what we think we know and something previously seen as implausible. students are then compelled to question their assumptions, which can lead to a transformative educational experience (western governors university, 2020). the strategy is to position students in learning situations in which they are faced with multiple realities. the process often gets messy before it is resolved as they are pushed to narrow down the choices and edge closer and closer to a solution that makes the most analytical sense. trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 18 is pedagogy more important than the truth? the question in this sub-title does not have to be the choice! to deepen thinking skills, we can personally engage students in the problems we give them, even to the point where arriving at a single truth may be unlikely. aristotle did not believe there could be multiple epistemic truths (see his law of non-contradiction), and, buoyed by the scientific ethos, his belief has seeped into our primary assumptions that two conflicting truths cannot inhabit the same space. the pedagogical magic is in allowing students to solve tangled problems while the instructor remains unattached to them, arriving at the “right” answer. most critical thinking seminars involving cam are deterministic; their goal is to have students achieve a particular outcome. this mimics pedagogy from a banking model of education rather than a constructivist model where students collaboratively build individual and integrated knowledge (hein, 1995). the design of these classroom experiments can always be improved by other teachers, as they are meant to fit within a class period. even more exciting, it would be easy to create simple experiments for other popular cam modalities in the classroom, for example: reiki, acupressure, coining, hypnosis, astrology, and prayer. these experiments would not reach the level of rcts, or create any real proof one way or the other, as they are meant as illustrative teaching tools to demonstrate to students the complexity of cam modalities and why it is difficult for these modalities to move to the “credible” side of the wall. the unsolved larger question for cam is whether it will ever be possible for these modalities to achieve scientific credibility without proving themselves against the scientific method and rcts. it would be intriguing for other faculty to make these experiments into classroom citizen science projects for their students and part of student presentations to their community. there may be further benefits about teaching students about cam as students interviewing other students discovered: when asked about their experience of cam, one student stated, “i believe the mindset these modalities force you into encourages you to focus on your health in a way you hadn’t before.” many students also cited cam as a way to improve their physical health and reduce/prevent pain or treat injuries. several students shared with us that they believed cam practices improved their mental health/emotional well-being, helped them feel more balanced/grounded, gave them a way to express emotions, or helped give them better separation from their thoughts and feelings. (bianco et al., 2022, pp. 7-8) as classroom teachers incorporate these experiments and a constructivist pedagogy into their classrooms, it will be apparent that a limitation of the present study was the student population itself, with similar ethnicity, age, and class. it is hard to know how this may have skewed the student responses included here. we do know that healthcare practices are often determined by cultural factors that are stratified along racial lines. it may be that the receptiveness to these class experiments is due to the mostly caucasian audience; however, significant numbers of african-americans use cam modalities, “cam is substantially used by african-americans, particularly among those with chronic conditions. african-americans tend to use cam for treatment versus prevention” (barner et al., 2010, p. 2). there is every reason to believe the reception to these classroom experiments would be consistent across student populations. it is not important that students arrive at the correct (that is, the teacher’s) answer, only that they follow an evidence-based process that makes sense to them and their collaborating peers while drawing from the research and data. unbiased critical reflection means the freedom trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 19 to come to any result, as long as students are using all the data and a considered process to arrive at a defensible conclusion—and that’s science! acknowledgements the author thanks pia gibson for figure 1. the author thanks peaco todd for figure 2. trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 20 references aacu (2009). learning and assessment: trends in under-graduate education. american association of colleges and universities. https://www.fredonia.edu/sites/default/files/section/about/offices/president/baccgoals/_fil es/learning%20and%20assessment-trends%20in%20undergraduate%20education.pdf barner, j. c., bohman, t. m., brown, c. m., & richards, k. m. 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(1999). abc of complementary medicine: what is complementary medicine? british medical journal, 319(7211), 693-696. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.319.7213.836 https://skepticalinquirer.org/2001/11/magical-thinking-in-complementary-and-alternative-medicine/ https://skepticalinquirer.org/2001/11/magical-thinking-in-complementary-and-alternative-medicine/ https://doi.org/10.1177%2f096366259800700206 https://skepticalinquirer.org/1998/09/how-to-study-weird-things/ https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297701109_encouraging_students_to_study_weird_things https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297701109_encouraging_students_to_study_weird_things https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/jppp/vol6/iss1/3/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ctim.2005.05.001 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9141292/ https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662520934752 https://www.wgu.edu/blog/what-transformative-learning-theory2007.html#close https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.319.7213.836 trocco: complementary medicine in the classroom current issues in education, 24(1) 26 author notes frank trocco https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2151-4222 lesley university ftrocco@lesley.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2151-4222 mailto:ftrocco@lesley.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ to begin, the students are assigned a number of readings outlining experiments using open-label placebos. the experiment lasts two weeks, during which time the clients are asked to swallow the prescribed placebos. (if they cannot manage to swallow the... a week later, during the second consultation, the practitioner listens carefully to what the client reports about their use of the placebos and makes a second prescription based on their client’s self-report, often different from the first. a week lat... breastcancer.org what is complementary medicine? (2022, november 22). breastcancer.org. gale, r. (2019). stephen barrett: wikipedia’s agent provacateur against natural medicine. skeptical about skeptics. https://skepticalaboutskeptics.org/wikipedia-captured-by-skeptics/stephen-barrett-wikipedias-agent-provacateur-natural-medicine/ hall, h. (2014). defending science-based medicine: 44 doctor-bashing arguments… and harriet hall’s rebuttals. skeptical inquirer, 38(6). https://skepticalinquirer.org/2014/11/defending-science-based-medicine-44-doctor-bashing-arguments-and-rebuttals/ hall, h. (2019b) whither chiropractic? skeptical inquirer. 43(6), 1-3. hall, h. (2021, march 22). no, no, no, no! testimonials are not evidence! skeptical inquirer. https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/no-no-no-no-testimonials-are-not-evidence/ mount sinai. (2021). therapeutic touch: what is therapeutic touch? https://www.mountsinai.org/health-library/treatment/therapeutic-touch national center for complementary and integrative health. (2016a). paying for complementary and integrative health approaches. national institutes of health. https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/paying-for-complementary-and-integrative-health-approaches rabin, r. c. (2014, april 21). 15-minute doctor visits take a toll on patient-physician relationships. pbs news hour. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/need-15-minutes-doctors-time trocco, f. (2014). the road less traveled: leading students into messy learning. journal of pedagogy, pluralism and practice, 6(1). https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/jppp/vol6/iss1/3/ werneke, u., earl, j., seydel, c., horn, o., crichton, p., & fannon, d. (2004). potential health risks of complementary alternative medicines in cancer patients. british journal of cancer, 90(2), 408–413. https://10.1038/sj.bjc.6601560 cie template volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x confronting the other: understanding empathy h james garrett university of georgia kyle a. greenwalt michigan state university citation garret, h.j. & greenwalt, k. (2010). confronting the other: understanding empathy. current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the concept of empathy is strongly at play across the field of education. in analyzing literature from which this concept both emerges and presently appears, this review elaborates on what empathy affords the educational enterprise. drawing from theorists from diverse fields of inquiry, among them education research, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis, we focus on the limits of empathy while questioning what lies beyond. we find that deployments of empathy might actually create more distance between self and other rather than bring about more understanding across difference. further, in looking at the literature on empathy there is an insufficient attention to broader social considerations that impact understandings of the other. in light of what we find to be problematic about the idea and uses of empathy in education, the paper concludes with speculations about how practicing educators might adequately address the inherent problems within learning across difference. keywords: empathy, phenomenology, psychoanalysis current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 about the author(s) author: h. james garrett affiliation: michigan state university address: 624g aderhold hall, university of georgia. athens, ga. 30602 email: hjames@uga.edu biographical information: author: kyle a. greenwalt affiliation: michigan state university address: 328 erickson hall, michigan state university. east lansing, mi 48824 email: greenwlt@msu.edu biographical information: kyle greenwalt is an assistant professor in the department of teacher education at michigan state university. grounded in the tradition of progressive education, he is interested in the study of curriculum through the twin lenses of lived experience and identity. he has published his work in teaching and teacher education, the harvard educational review and education and culture. he is currently the secretary of the john dewey society. confronting the other 3 confronting the other: understanding empathy what we want from education it has not given us. we hope that students will become ethical actors in the world through learning about the people with whom they cohabitate, celebrate, and mourn, the systems that give rise to opportunity and that sustain violence, and the processes by which they form their common notions about how it works. of course we recognize that the world has wonderful people, and do not wish to convey an inappropriate or staggering pessimism. but the fact remains that gross injustices go ignored—often willfully. and so as educators, we seek to foster a sense of empathy in our students. that is, we ask individuals to consider another’s perspective before deciding on a course of action of their own. across several fields of educational research, we find the term empathy strongly at play. within the research literature in history education, the term empathy generally denotes the ability to cognitively reconstruct how historical actors experienced their world, thereby providing properly historicized explanations for past actions (ashby & lee, 1987; lee & ashby, 2001; portal, 1987; shemilt, 1984; yeager & foster, 2001). the term is also implicit in much of the literacy research on readers’ responses to literature, and becomes explicit in some research on students engagement with multicultural literature (louie, 2005). finally, empathy plays a small but crucial role in some of the work that theorizes the development of an anti-racist consciousness (derman-sparks & phillips, 1997; howard, 1999). looked at through this lens, it becomes apparent that empathy is crucial—both as a process we initiate and as an outcome we achieve—in working across cultural divides. indeed, as we shall see in the next section, debates about empathetic understanding have been present in western thinking since the romantics first started to celebrate human difference in the nineteenth century. hence, we see our own research as an important intervention not only in current current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 educational research, but also as an attempt to provide a more nuanced conceptualization of empathy, one that will allow educational researchers and practicing teachers to make better sense of the sensitivities needed for ethical living in a pluralistic world. as educators and researchers, then, we need to think about the complexity of the empathetic task: what it is that we put at risk, what do we gain, and what might we lose as we implore and explore empathy? insofar as empathic understanding is most commonly used in educational setting, it is perhaps ill suited to do that which we might wish. indeed, it all too often strengthens the divisions between self and other—that which we least want it to do. in the paper, we first seek to situate the emergence of the idea of empathy in its nineteenth-century context. we do this so as to provide historical perspective on current uses of the term, and so as to make explicit our own desire to tell a particular story about empathy—one that may have very different beginning and ending points for scholars with differing projects. i in the next section of the paper, we move to further define empathy by looking at its structure as it emerges from lived experience and ego formation. here, we show the dangers inherent in empathy, whereby it may affirm the self at the expense of the other. in the next section of the paper, we give attention to the way sociality is ignored in early attempts to write about empathy. we correct the omission of social factors by using psychoanalytic concepts such as the big other, the signifying chain, and the master’s discourse. finally, since the desire in education for students to consider others in ethical ways is by all means appropriate—indeed, of the utmost importance—we move to offer the idea of love as that towards which we should ultimately look when we speak of empathy. it is not that love can or should replace empathy in our talk in education, but more so the idea that empathy reaches a confronting the other 5 limit in its consideration of the other that love might help it to surpass. we conclude with a note on teaching. the problematic of empathy and its influence contemporary research discourses intellectual historians such as alain finkielkraut (1988) and isaiah berlin (1991) have pointed to the key role of one figure in the early theorization of cultural pluralism: johann gottfried herder. of his early nineteenth-century ―discovery of difference,‖ berlin (1991) writes: the conception that there are many different ends that men [sic] may seek and still be fully rational, fully men [sic], capable of understanding each other and sympathising and deriving light from each other, as we derive it from reading plato or the novels of medieval japan—worlds, outlooks, very remote from our own. (p. 11) sympathizing, or more correctly, empathizing (einfühlung) is that method of understanding which allows us to communicate across time and space, to understand the ―cultural other.‖ hence, from the moment where cultural diversity and pluralism become issues of importance, empathy becomes the tool of choice for both understanding and bridging it (bahr, durrant, evans, & maughan, 2008). herder’s use of an empathetic method for working across cultural divides is, for the story we wish to tell here, most importantly taken up by the early systematizers of the hermeneutic and human science tradition ii —and in particular, through the work of wilhelm dilthey (portal, 1983). however, in the mature work of dilthey (1900/1972), empathy as herder’s ―feeling one’s way‖ (sich einfühling) into other life contexts gives way to empathy as ―re-feeling‖ (nachfühling) and ―re-experiencing‖ (nacherleben) the lifeworlds iii which gave rise to the texts that come to us from the past. or as dilthey himself claimed (1900/1972): current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 much of our happiness as human beings derives from our re-experiencing [nachfühling] of alien states of mind; the entire science of philology and of history is based on the presupposition that such recomprehension [nachverstandnis] of individual existence can be raised to objective validity . . . so at the threshold of human studies we encounter a problem specific to them alone and quite distinct from anything involved in the apprehension of nature. (pp. 230-231) for dilthey, then, empathy (now conceptualized as ―re-feeling‖) is the basis upon which any individual act of understanding takes place—and in particular, those artful acts of understanding that stand as the foundation for the human sciences. as austin harrington (2001) has noted, though, dilthey’s views on the role of empathy in understanding have tended to be mischaracterized by contemporary human science theorists. in particular, both gadamer and habermas are thought to ―fail to distinguish properly between the specific problematic concept of einfühlung and a wider legitimate function of feeling and imagination in understanding‖ (p. 313). that is, confusion over two conflicting views runs throughout debates over the role of empathy in any human sciences methodology: 1) empathy as feelings another’s feelings; and 2) empathy as an imaginative reconstruction of another’s lifeworld. interestingly, the tendency to reduce empathy to ―just feelings‖ has tended to be reproduced in the field of contemporary history education, beginning when british history educators introduced empathy into the national reform curriculum of the 1970s and 1980s (lee & ashby, 2001). while the movement for an empathetic history curriculum was grounded firmly in the cognitive—―it is where we get to when we have successfully reconstructed other peoples’ beliefs, values, goals, and attendant feelings‖ (ashby & lee, 1987, p. 63)—subsequent criticism confronting the other 7 of the term’s use, both in the us and the uk, drove history educators to an even larger extreme, eventually reaching the point where affect and emotion were seen as potential defects in a student’s thinking. hence, karen riley (2001), in writing about holocaust education, could claim that ―the problem with working in the affective domain is that teachers often use history to inculcate compassion or other similar feelings within students rather than offer them a useful framework with which they can conduct individual inquiry‖ (p. 154). we find such separations—compassion from inquiry—problematic (garrison, 1997). barton and levstik (2004) have written quite movingly about this unfortunate turn of events. as they note, history without care, feeling, or emotion is ―a soulless enterprise, a constraint on motivation that warrants reconsideration of the subject’s place in the curriculum. we cannot interest students in the study of history . . . if we dismiss their feeling and emotions‖ (pp. 228-229). barton and levstik identify five different ways in which an affective empathy might matter for contemporary classrooms engaged in the study of human difference. in particular, we will note two of them now as a potential point from which our own work might be said to emerge: ―caring for‖ the other; and ―caring to‖ revise our own actions and beliefs in light of what we have learned. we will return to the connections between care, empathy and classroom life as we close the paper. stein and klein: empathy’s structure, and its role in the formation of the self what is missing from all of the above accounts, we feel, is a look at the lived structure of empathy, in and of itself. phenomenology allows us to do just that, by asking: what is the lived meaning of empathy? what role does it play in human experience? in particular, we will answer these questions by first turning to the writings of edith stein before then moving to discuss our own subsequent revisions of her work in light of melanie klein. in both cases, we pay particular current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 attention to the role empathy plays in the constitution of the self, in and through its relation to an other. that is, we will use these two thinkers to introduce the intersubjective dynamic that we feel needs to lie at the heart of any adequate explanation of empathy. edith stein was one of edmund husserl’s most important pupils, and indeed, much of her own work on the problem of empathy can be seen as growing out of the husserlian framework. in her doctoral dissertation (subsequently published as on the problem of empathy, 1917/1989), stein argues that empathy is the act by which we come to experience the experiences of others. unlike sympathy, which can be understood as a reproduction of the other’s feeling, in all of their primordiality, in one’s own self, empathy is a projective act, whereby we directly perceive the experience of others, but in a non-primordial way. the structure of this act is similar to other descriptions given by phenomenology: there is an immediate lived apprehension, such as when i see the blush of embarrassment on my friend’s face and intuit its meaning. then there is the fulfillment, when i use context to confirm that this blush is due, not to exertion or anger, but to an embarrassing slip of the tongue. my relationship to the embarrassment is non-primordial, because i do not implicate myself in the slip, and therefore do not experience it as my ―own.‖ stein therefore uses the concept of empathy to answer the question of how we are able to experience the experiences of others—and in particular, aspects of experience such as affect or feeling. for stein, foreign experiences are given to us because we perceive the other as inhabiting a living body (der leib)—that is, we immediately ―know‖ that this other body can feel, act, and sense just as we can. it is not a pure material body (der körper), a lifeless corpse or object, existing therefore without a lifeworld. in general, this experience of the vitality of the other is itself co-given with the experiences of the other; that is to say, it is apperceived along with the direct perception of the body itself. iv our contact with the experiences of others are confronting the other 9 therefore dependent neither upon the logical operation of deduction nor that of induction— rather, they are given to us in a lived reality that is felt to be both immediate and foreign. empathy is therefore an essential moment in the building of a coherent self—empathy divides self from other. without empathy, as stein’s work demonstrates, we would have no sense of our own self as an individual. our own ―zero-point‖ (stein’s term for the coordinating center of our lived body which helps us establish own from other) becomes balanced by a world where other zero-points exist. our ability to empathize is therefore ultimately determined by the degree of felt separation between co-existing zero-points. such a view also would imply that the early relationship between infant, caregiver and world are important precursors in learning how to empathize. melanie klein has made exactly this point. it should therefore be of primary notice that we all have practice with empathy in this sense of the term—indeed, in some ways, it is ―no big deal.‖ if we accept from klein (and psychoanalytic thinking more generally) that there is an unconscious component to our selves that structures our awareness and perception, then it is clear that empathy begins long before our parents or teachers ask us to ―think about the other guy.‖ in fact, the knowledge that there are others to whom we must attend begins with the infant recognizing itself as a subject during—according to lacan (2006)—the mirror stage. as the infant recognizes the self as an integrated whole and a unitary subject—where before she lived out ―her‖ experience of the self as a separated collection of drives—the infant begins to learn that there is a world of objects to which she relates, and which simultaneously relate to her. klein (1937/1994) describes this as a process of ―phantasy-building‖— the inauguration of imaginative thinking whereby the object (the caregiver) need not necessarily be physically current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 present in order to still exist for the infant. the infant can now imagine the object being there, and this imagination is incarnation enough to satisfy its desire. while klein did not label this object-relation an empathic one, it seems to build the capacity for such undertakings. it is this imaginative capacity to produce an other, to produce the presence of an object not physically present, upon which we would theorize empathy. of course, this imaginary relationship to the other is not in itself a full theory of empathy. but as we proceed through this early infant-caregiver relationship, we can see that the next task for the infant is to recognize that the world is not centered in her erogenous cravings. in oscillating between rage and love, between being given attention and having attention given elsewhere, the infant must negotiate the reality of the caregiver needing to attend to tasks other than the care of the infant’s own self, thereby shattering the infantile wish of being all there is. empathy is instrumental, then, for allowing the self to be de-centered from the world and to help the young ego allow for the existence of others and understand these others as also being constituted with desires, wants, and needs of their own. comparing the views of melanie klein with her near contemporary, edith stein, is therefore revealing. for klein, empathy de-centers, while for stein, it centers. for klein, empathy is a moment in granting the other her own separate existence, while for stein, such acknowledging reaffirms the self. rather than view these as conflicting accounts of the same empathetic phenomenon, we would instead suggest that they perfectly lay out the dilemma we face. that is, we need an account of empathy that does justice to both interdependence and independence, to both a bordering subjectivity and a breeching and interpenetrating intersubjectivity. we will take this point up in earnest in the final section of the paper. yet for now, we wish to stress the point that empathy has been both oversold and confronting the other 11 undersold in the educational literature. on the one hand, empathy is present with us from very early on in our lives, as we all have the capacity to recognize the lived feelings and experiences of others. on the other hand, the capacity to empathize, serving as it does as a bridge to the other, always implicates the way in which we think about ourselves. it is both ―a big deal‖ and ―no big deal.‖ for teachers and students, the implications are therefore clear: students and teachers have already rehearsed the performance of the empathic drama many times before they enter the classroom (todd, 2003). furthermore, since we are prone to replaying these early scripts, it is with certainty that empathy is a part of any educational transaction within a school setting— where students can never be the sole object of the teacher’s attention. the question therefore becomes not whether empathy is part of the educational experience—it is—but instead becomes what happens when there is a further pedagogical intent to have students perform empathy as either learning strategy or outcome. we turn to this question in the next section of our paper by exploring the way in which sociality impinges upon the empathic relationship. levinas and lacan: empathy and sociality a clear shortcoming in the work of edith stein is its lack of attention to sociality. the other is present in stein’s work—indeed, it absolutely necessary. but that other is not given sufficient attention in her own right. neither is it acknowledged that the other comes to us socially-coded, a product not of pure perception, but of culturally-constructed ways of seeing and perceiving. in short, the empathetic performances described by stein are an overly simplistic ithou relationship, one that does not acknowledge that the optical moment of engagement with another always take place before and within an audience (in the strictest sense of that term: the state or condition of hearing, or of being able to hear). v current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 this transition to sociality, from the optical to the auricular, is undertaken by emmanuel levinas’ in his totality and infinity (2002). while empathy is not a term that is prominent in the work itself, we feel that levinas’ own conceptualization of the relationship between self and other is crucial to our own project, as it begins to introduce ethical and social wrinkles into the fabric of empathy and empathic understandings. levinas argues that the other’s relationship to the self is one of complete alterity. our relationship is not as separate species joined by a common genus, but of two ―separate subjects,‖ each overflowing the status they are assigned by the aggressivity of the other’s gaze. this moment of overflowing (the other is not contained by my perception of her), levinas refers to as ―infinity,‖ and claims that its idea is produced in and through speech. hence, speech, or discourse, is what creates a relationship—a common humanity. vi discourse, for levinas, is not a simple exteriorization of an interior thought. as he rightly notes, ―modern investigations in the philosophy of language have made familiar the idea of underlying solidarity of thought with speech.‖ he goes on to note that ―thought consists in foraging in the system of signs, in the particular tongue of a people or civilization, and receiving signification from this very operation‖ (2002, p. 206). hence, our discourse with another, our commerce, is inherently social. indeed, while the dyadic relation of separate subjects is the plain upon which the ethical is carried out, it is always before an audience of still more: everything that takes place here ―between us‖ concerns everyone, the face that looks at it places itself in the full light of the public order . . . language as the presence of the face does not invite complicity with the preferred being, the self-sufficient ―i-thou‖ forgetful of the universe . . . the third party looks at me in the eyes of the other—language is justice. (2002, pp. 212-213) confronting the other 13 society calls us to account in our interactions with other subjects—once discourse breeches alterity, the obligation to respond is placed upon us in the full light of ―public order.‖ yet levinas remains uncomfortable with the notion of free-floating signification, of a symbolic chain that engulfs self and other in a series of shifting displacements. seeing in this pattern a denial of the ethical, levinas preserves in his thought a special foundation for discourse and the ethical relationship: the face (le visage). for levinas, the face is incapable of being signified. it is pure ―expression,‖ an ―epiphany:‖ to manifest oneself as a face is to impose oneself above and beyond the manifested and purely phenomenal form, to present oneself in a mode irreducible to manifestation, the very straightforwardness of the face to face, without the intermediary of any image, in one’s nudity, that is, in one’s destitution and hunger. (2002, p. 200) without discarding the importance of levinas’ work for our own—in his ability to conceive of a subject/object relationship outside of the dialectic (―separate subjects‖), in his acknowledgement of the social within the empathetic dyad, and in his relentless advocacy for the ethical as the foundation for knowledge—we nonetheless remain deeply skeptical of the ability of the face to function as levinas claims it does. we therefore turn to psychoanalytic frames in the remainder of this section, and in particular, to the work of jacques lacan. lacan’s notion of the unconscious—noting that, for him, it is ―the discourse of the other.‖ slavoj žižek (2008), himself a helpful decoder of lacan’s work, explains that this ―big other‖ represents: society’s unwritten constitution . . . the second nature of every speaking being: it is here, directing and controlling my acts; it is the sea i swim in, yet remains ultimately impenetrable—i can never put it in front of me and grasp it. it is as if we, subjects and current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 language, talk and interact like puppets, our speech and gestures dictated by some nameless all-pervasive agency. (p. 8) the big other, then, is the discourse that works on us. put somewhat differently, we do not speak a language, that language speaks us. we are, in effect, placed by discourse—in fluid rather than fixed ways—within a structure of symbols called the ―symbolic chain.‖ for lacan (2006), the other’s discourse is the unconscious, itself ―structured like language,‖ because of the workings of the symbolic field. the unconscious engages our desire, indeed, founds it: because the symbolic is elusive, because it is never ―here,‖ but always ―somewhere else,‖ we as speaking subjects tend to have our speaking acts pulled along the somewhat familiar tracks that constitute normative ways of speaking and acting in the world. that is, the unconscious orients us towards particular understandings of the world (and away from others), working almost like the everyday conceptualizations that pass for common sense. therefore, the way we understand the world and the objects that we find there depends upon the big other. considered in this way, in any empathic encounter, there is a necessity for considering not just the one-to-one relationship between a self and other, but also a consideration of the discursive practices that are implicated in and through the big other. in other words, the concept of the big other introduces a third term in the otherwise dyadic relationships of analyst/analysand and self/other that traditionally hold sway in both phenomenological and psychoanalytic thinking. it is this third field, socially constructed and evolving, towards which the big other orients us. lacan’s signifying chain refers to the constellation of signifiers that give meaning its illusion of stability and certainty, along which the subject slides as different positions are occupied, and through which we conceptualize self in relation to others. as with constellations of stars, for example, the signifying chain is significant not only in the ways that individual confronting the other 15 signifiers indicate and confer meaning, but instead on how meaning is indicated and produced based on the relationships between them. lacan (2006) illustrates the concept of the symbolic chain in his ―seminar on the purloined letter,‖ in which he reflects upon poe’s story of a stolen letter used in a blackmailing scheme. for lacan, the stolen letter exemplifies the signifier, circulating through the story from character to character. what lacan (2006) offers via this lecture is the idea that the signifier, in its displacement: determines subjects’ acts, destiny, refusals, blindnesses, success, and fate, regardless of their innate gifts and instruction, and regardless of their character or sex; and that everything pertaining to the psychological pregiven follows willy-nilly the signifiers train, like weapons and baggage. (p. 21) to exemplify this situation, we will share a brief story about a research encounter that one of us recently had. in undertaking a study about difficult knowledge, the first author arranged to meet several study participants at the holocaust memorial and museum in farmington hills, michigan. later, one of the participants asked the first author the following question about his drive to the memorial: why do i immediately feel the need to turn the music down or off? why, indeed. for who told the participant that this was the way to approach a holocaust memorial? there was not a sign on the freeway that asked all those going to visit the holocaust memorial to turn down their music, and there was not a passenger in the car who would have been able to report the kind of music he had been listening to. in essence, though, there was someone else in the car with the participant: the big other. this story underscores the functioning of the symbolic chain, in terms of the degree to which something beyond conscious awareness compels the actions of ourselves and our students. we are in so many ways compelled to action because of our location in these symbolic current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 coordinates, and because of an unconsciously interpolated message about what it is that we should or should not do. one could say our location within the symbolic chain trains us to think in certain ways and not others. when we enter into a conversation about cultural difference, for example, we enter an exchange already long in progress, complete with a history and certain ways of knowing and articulating experience. this is to say, then, that the existence of signifying chains determine individual understandings of the relationship between the self and another. it introduces a seemingly outside consideration to an otherwise one-to-one encounter, complicating our endeavor to consider the other ethically. the varieties of classroom experience, or, what’s love got to do with it? more often than not, the focus of an encouraged classroom empathy is to aid students in becoming attentive to the difference, pain, or misfortune of others. it is outwardly guided, moving on a one-way track from student to stranger. but the journey is always round-trip. the way and the manner of this ―return‖ lie at the very heart of the problem of classroom empathy. when a student attaches some meaning to a victim of genocide or natural disaster, that meaning is dependent upon her own individual psychic history. but the story of empathy neither begins nor ends in the class session, and these psychic histories, as we have discussed, are at least in part socially mitigated and determined. this gives rise to the need to consider a third term. and, even though we often go to the places furthest away for our empathetic performances—for, we would argue, it is all too often easier to empathize with the starving ethiopian child than the homeless person whom we pass on the street—this performance always takes place within the individually-situated psychic realities of those who are physical occupants of the classroom. it is to these types of classroom performances that we next turn. sharon todd (2003) outlines two common types of performances where the big other confronting the other 17 seemingly blocks the type of empathetic performance we as teachers seek. the first is as a defense of the ego. this manifestation of empathy can be exemplified in a student articulating a thought in two parts: first, their surprise at learning of the suffering of another, and then, secondly, their gratitude for the comforts in their own life. in this case, we are hoping to protect a construction of the world that feels safe—normal—but is put in jeopardy by the ―new‖ knowledge to which we are attending. in our position as teacher educators, we find this particular performance of empathy less than desirable, but acknowledge that it is what we often get. indeed, in recollecting our own early teaching experiences, we remember having students read accounts of the plight of sudanese children who were forced into military service, or diaries of lonely and homesick wives moving across the western frontier. our students’ protective performances helped them articulate pleasure at being ―here‖ rather than ―there.‖ although a common response, this does not seem completely ethical to us, and is, in fact, ethically congruent with pointing, laughing, and then exclaiming, ―sucks to be you.‖ this schadenfreude-approach to empathy is roundly denounced in the empathy literature of history education—but, we feel, for the wrong reasons. for we are not so interested in valorizing the cognitive over the affective performance of empathy (as has tended to happen there), but rather we concern ourselves with the ethical effects of any particular empathetic performance. ego-defensive performances of empathy deny the other—as a separate subject— their existence as such; the student only understands that the other is ―not me‖ (and thankfully so). todd’s (2003) second case is when the ego boundaries expand such that the other is incorporated as part of the self and, therefore, must necessarily be taken care of in ethical ways. in this experience of empathy, it is identification with the other that takes the place of a rejection. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 it is this identification with the other which most clearly aligns with the best of the historical empathy literature: barton and levstik’s (2004) call for history teacher to encourage ―care for‖ the victims of the past. for in this approach, empathetic classroom performances are understood as important ―tools‖ or ―resources‖ which afford ethical and democratic action in the present. we worry, however, that this identification again makes ―them‖ too much a part of ―us‖ (vansledright, 2001). it does not allow for the existence of the other as a constituted subject in his or her own right. it, in effect, assimilates that person in an affirmation that she is ―just like me.‖ of course, we want to encourage students to understand the commonalities that human’s share, but we do not wish to encourage people to equate the singularity of their own experiences with the ultimately unknowable singularity of an other’s. in opposition to these two cases, we conceptualize a third way to conceive of empathic performances. it is to ask how one might understand others not as part of our own selves—―just like us‖—but as an existing subject with desires and needs of its own. žižek (2008) explains an effort in iceland to do just this: where an other (another nationality, sexuality, etc.) is welcomed to the home of a ―normal‖ family–normal here meaning part of the dominant culture—to have a conversation, therefore making a ―subject‖ where there was once an ―other.‖ for the fundamental problem here is that when considering an other, we are considering an object as opposed to a subject. the difference between an object and a subject is, as exemplified here, that the subject is imbued with an expectation of having desires and wishes of their own. an object is imbued with the desires and wishes of the subject to whom the object is ―attached‖. an object, in other words, is less-than-human, denied the right to exist as an autonomous being within the world. the point of such žižekian encounters, we believe, is what levinas calls the ―face-to-face.‖ in welcoming the other into the very home of the self, of confronting the other 19 responding to the face of the other and the obligation for listening and dialogue which it imposes, the very notion of normality itself is called into question. yet, while such an approach may indeed be a point from which to conceive and practice empathy, it falls short for classroom practice—a site where the ―face-to-face‖ and the calling into the question of one’s ―home‖ is often not possible. feeling-sorry-for, feeling-the-pain-and-hunger-of, feeling-the whip-onthe-back and the-noose-around-the-neck: those feelings, those emotional attachments, they are the ways the symbolic interacts with the real—in short, the performance of empathy. for lacan, the real is that which is immediately and irrevocably unattainable in terms of understanding or enunciating, which is why ―the real can only be inscribed on the basis of an impasse of formalization‖—that is, where the normal paths of meaning-making consciously break down for the subject (1998, p. 93). therefore, the closer one gets to the real, the more fantasy and psychic defenses are forced into action; encounters with the real are literally traumatic, as the representation of these experiences is rendered impossible. it is a cause for great anxiety, then, that empathy asks a subject to ―walk in the shoes of another‖—since this is clearly not possible. consider those settings where empathetic performance is invited in the classroom. when a student is confronted with an image of the holocaust, they are empathizing within a particular symbolic chain. their position ―speaks‖ them. in other words, it holds fixed the person captured in suffering, or after suffering, as ―victim,‖ as ―object-deserving-of-my-attention.‖ the subject position of the student is one of giving—giving attention, giving affect—and is not necessarily positioned to receive, to be penetrated by, either by that image or by a reciprocal relationship with another separate subject. it is only by repositioning the student as not only giver, but receiver, that an ethico-erotic relationship can be maintained between the subject and that to which the subject attaches current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 knowledge. vii just as the detectives in ―the purloined letter‖—blinded by the power of the phallic position of power they hold—are certain that their method of criminal investigation will yield their wanted results, we as educators have too often been guilty of thinking that if students could only empathize with the other, we would have an ethical result. but as lacan (2006) reminds us in that ―seminar on the purloined letter,‖ it is the method of investigation that constitutes its object. so yes, we get something akin to empathy, but it is not empathy that we really want. as teachers, then, what we are really after is a consideration of an other as a separate subject, capable of his or her own thoughts, desires, and wishes, in dialogue with our own. and as such, the relationship of empathy needs to be founded upon something like love. for love is constituted of a reciprocity, of an acknowledgement and a tolerance of another being. when in love, according to young-bruehl (2003), ―we allow ourselves to be receptive . . . of love from another, who, as a real person, can give it‖ (p. 9). the return that seems missing from the symbolic structuring of empathy is precisely the idea of receptivity; where the energy of empathy is outward moving, love mandates some modicum of return. it is the vulnerability of being open to such care, which is rehearsed in the helplessness of infancy, that might work to structure our understandings of who we are in society in such as a way as to yield more humane notions of who we are as we face the separate subject about whom we happen to be learning. lacan, for whom love is defined by giving something that one does not have, provides that ―psychoanalysis alone recognizes the knot of imaginary servitude that love must always untie anew or sever‖ (2006, p. 80). an imaginary servitude to what or whom? while lacan does not specify, it is likely the case that love’s severing capability works in relation to the master’s discourse, the big other. the loving relationship within analysis works to re-order, rearrange, confronting the other 21 and re-understand the subject’s awarenesses in the world. to untie the knots of servitude that constitute the constructions of meanings that individuals live by, and through, is close both to the heart of the pedagogical endeavor as well as to the mutuality of love. indeed, lacan (1998) says that ―love is the sign that one is changing discourse‖ (p. 16). while changing discourse is not easy, nor without turmoil, it very well could be the turn that leads to the type of empathetic performances we as teachers are after. these issues arise often in our own teaching, as we ask students to question their dearly held assumptions about the world. often these conversations are difficult and emotional. but if we are to take lacan at his word, then this is a sign of a relationship of love, where subjects constituting a social space are being a/effected by ideas from an other. in thinking of classroom interactions where students are expected to learn from their encounter with an other, the landscape of what it means to learn, to express learning, and to articulate ―knowing‖ would be altered in tremendous ways, since an empathy founded upon love is sublime. a final word to those who teach: getting empathy to do what it might for us this paper has taken up the issue of encouraging empathy among our students. it has pointed out the crucial role of empathy in both centering and de-centering the self, and the importance of directing our best pedagogical efforts at artfully structuring ―the return‖—to ensuring that empathetic performances are not overtaken by the dominant social codes and master discourses that all too often objectify the other. we have argued that teachers and their students most definitely should consider the stranger, their plight, and the ways in which we are implicated in their lives and vice-versa. however, what calls for the most attention is the degree to which—and the ways in which—those occupants of the classroom allow that knowledge to current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 22 come home, and the challenges attendant upon the discursive breaks that will allow this to happen. as we noted in the above, the best discussions of empathy in the educational literature— such as those given by barton and levstik (2004)—borrow from the ideas of nel noddings and in particular, her the challenge to care in schools (1992). and indeed, our work mirrors noddings' own, in that empathy for us is (as care is for her) both an instrument of the profession and an achievement towards which all education—rightly understood—must aim. yet we would not want that a recurrent criticism of care theory be transferred on to our own. for, at times, care theory comes perilously close to forgetting the teacher—of reducing her to the stock image of the selfless maternal figure who is ever present and available to the child. jim garrison (1997) expresses this concern by reminding us that ―people who do not blaze with their own passions burn out‖ (p. 57). we take seriously this need for our own passions to burn. as teachers, empathy is at play as we shape our identities in relationship to those of our students. their own (in)capacities to care and empathize can move us to the heights of joy, and the very pit of despair. yet such a dynamic cannot sustain a robust self in the long term—for all fires require the consumption of fuel, and working with children for eight or more hours a day may not provide the fodder the flames most need. we therefore urge our colleagues who care about empathy to continue to find ways for their own selves to be breeched and penetrated; to be loved as well as give love; to seek encounters where established discourse fails and the face of the other opens up new heights upon which a self may be refashioned. at the present moment, such vulnerability in our teachers seems unwelcome, and therefore is perhaps too dangerous for teachers to undertake in confronting the other 23 relationship with their students. yet if empathy is to be taught, it would seem such experiences must in some other context be sought. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 confronting the other 25 references american psychological association. 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(original work published in 1900) finkielkraut, a. (1988). the undoing of thought (d. o’keeffe, trans.). london: the claridge press. garrison, j. (1997). dewey and eros: wisdom and desire in the art of teaching. new york: teachers college press. harrington, a. (2001). dilthey, empathy and verstehen: a contemporary reappraisal. european journal of social theory, 4(3), 311-329. howard, g.r. (1999). we can’t teach what we don’t know: white teachers, multiracial schools. new york: teachers college press. klein, m. (1994). love, guilt, and reparation and other works, 1921-1945. london: virago press. (original work published in 1937) lacan, j. (1998). on feminine sexuality: the limits of love and knowledge, 1972-1973 (b. fink, trans.). new york: w.w. norton & company. lacan, j. (2006). ecrits (b. fink, trans.). new york: w.w. norton & company. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 26 lee, p. & ashby, r. (2001). empathy, perspective taking, and rational understanding. in o.l. davis jr., e.a. yeager, & s.j. foster (eds.), historical empathy and perspective taking in the social studies (pp. 21-50). lanham, md: rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. levinas, e. (2002). totality and infinity: an essay on exteriority (a. lingis, trans.). pittsburgh, pa: duquesne university press. louie, b. (2005). development of empathetic responses with multicultural literature. journal of adolescent & adult literacy, 48(7), 566-578. noddings, n. (1992). the challenge to care in schools: an alternative approach to education. new york: teachers college press. palmer, r.e. (1969). hermeneutics: interpretation theory in schleiermacher, dilthey, heidegger, and gadamer. evanston, il: northwestern university press. portal, c. (1983). empathy as an aim for curriculum: lessons from history. journal of curriculum studies, 15(3), 303-310. portal, c. (1987). empathy as an objective for history teaching. in c. portal (ed.), the history curriculum for teachers (pp. 89-102). london, uk: the falmer press. riley, k.l. (2001). the holocaust and historical empathy: the politics of understanding. in o.l. davis jr., e.a. yeager, & s.j. foster (eds.), historical empathy and perspective taking in the social studies (pp. 139-166). lanham, md: rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. shemilt, d. (1984). beauty and the philosopher: empathy in history and classroom. in a.k. dickinson, p.j. lee, & p.j. rogers (eds.), learning history (pp. 39-84). london, uk: heinemann educational books. stein, e. (1989). on the problem of empathy (w. stein, trans.). washington, dc: ics publications. (based upon the dissertation published in 1917) todd, s. (2003). learning from the other: levinas, psychoanalysis, and ethical possibilities in education. albany: state university of new york press. van manen, m. (2001). researching lived experience. cobourg, ontario: transcontinental printing inc. vansledright, b.a. (2001). from empathic regard to self-understanding: im/positionality, empathy, and historical contextualization. in o.l. davis jr., e.a. yeager, & s.j. foster (eds.), historical empathy and perspective taking in the social studies (pp. 51-68). lanham, md: rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. yeager, e.a. & foster, s.j. (2001). the role of empathy in the development of historical understanding. in o.l. davis jr., e.a. yeager, & s.j. foster (eds.), historical empathy confronting the other 27 and perspective taking in the social studies (pp. 13-20). lanham, md: rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. young-bruehl, e. (2003). where do we fall when we fall in love? new york: other press. žižek, s. (2008). violence: six sideways reflections. new york: picador. current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 28 authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo endnotes i in this paper, we draw primarily from thinking in psychoanalysis and phenomenology. we realize that there are other disciplines which have done work on the topic of empathy, and which we do not discuss here. in particular, we wish to acknowledge the informed comments of an anonymous reviewer who not only helped us in our interpretation of lacan, but pointed us to work in experimental psychology on neuroimaging in primates and infants. we must acknowledge that such work is beyond the scope of both our expertise and interests. educational policy analysis archives vol. 18 no. x 29 ii whenever we speak of the ―human sciences‖ or the ―human sciences tradition,‖ we are referring to the line of thinking inaugurated by wilhelm dilthey, who popularized the distinction between naturwissenschaften (natural or ―hard‖ sciences) and geisteswissenschaften (cultural or human sciences). see palmer, 1969, pp. 98ff. iii ―lifeworld‖ and ―lived experience‖ are key terms in the lexicon of phenomenology. the lifeworld is ―the world as we immediately experience it pre-reflectively rather than as we conceptualize, categorize or reflect on it‖ (van manen, 2001, p. 9). likewise, lived experience ―involves our immediate, pre-reflective consciousness of life: a reflexive or self-given awareness which is, as awareness, unaware of itself‖ (van manen, 2001, p. 35). iv the notion of apperception is important in phenomenology. it refers to those aspects of experience that are ―given‖ in perception, even though they are not directly perceived. for example, the other sides of a cube are given to us in ordinary perception, even though we do not ―see‖ them directly as we do the face of the cube. v there is a long-running critique in postmodern thought of the role of sight and vision in the thought of modernity. critiques of the masculine gaze, surveillance, objectification of the other, will be familiar to many readers. the ability to listen and hear, by contrast, stands at the base of several postmodern projects engaged with ethics—in particular, within the thought of levinas. vi unlike so much of the existing literature of empathy, then, a common humanity is not a starting point for levinas, but an achievement, something that happens when two separate subjects are brought into a relationship by discourse. vii see also bersani (1987) for the importance of this ―penetration.‖ microsoft word playing with sciencean investigation of young children’s science conceptions and misconceptions .docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x playing with science: an investigation of young children’s science conceptions and misconceptions lori smolleck bucknell university vanessa hershberger washington episcopal school citation smolleck, l. & hershberger, v. (2011). playing with science: an investigation of young children’s science conceptions and misconceptions. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/ abstract the purpose of this research was to investigate the conceptions and misconceptions of young children (ages 3 – 8) related to science concepts, skills, and phenomena. these conceptions and misconceptions were investigated within the framework of the pennsylvania early learning standards for pre-kindergarten and the pennsylvania standards for kindergarten as developed and published by the pennsylvania department of education in 2005. in addition, the national science education standards also served as a foundation for our research. findings reveal the most common conceptions related to matter, magnetism, density, and air. extrapolations from c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 2 this research can be used by pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and teacher educators to implement experiences in the classroom that assist in developing and refining young children’s understandings of scientific concepts, skills, and phenomena. keywords: young children, science education, misconceptions, conceptions, conceptual change, conceptual learning pl a y in g w it h sc ie n c e – a n in v e st ig a t io n 3 about the author(s) author: lori smolleck affiliation: bucknell university email: lori.smolleck@bucknell.edu biographical information: lori a. smolleck is an assistant professor at bucknell university. she teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in the education department. her research interests include science education, self-efficacy, early childhood education, and literacy education. *correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to lori a. smolleck, 470, olin science building, department of education, bucknell university, lewisburg, pa 17837. email: lori.smolleck@bucknell.edu. author: vanessa hershberger affiliation: washington episcopal school biographical information: vanessa hershberger is an elementary school teacher at washington episcopal school in montgomery county, maryland. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 4 playing with science: an investigation of young children’s science conceptions and misconceptions past research in science education indicates that most educators underestimate the abilities of early childhood age children to learn science concepts (ayers, 1999; blosser, 1987; eaton, anderson, & smith, 1984; kyle, family, & shymansky, 1989). this notion is problematic because by holding this idea, teachers often fail to “…capitalize on young children’s seemingly innate interest and enthusiasm for science” (watters, diezmann, greishaber & davis, 2001, p. 2). children are constantly exploring, and as they investigate their environment, they create naïve understandings about the world in which they live. these naïve understandings become the building blocks for developing more sophisticated understandings and can therefore interfere with subsequent learning. children are “naturally inquisitive and begin doing science from the moment of birth by observing and sorting out their world” (martin, raynice & schmidt, 2005, p.13). as a result of these exploratory experiences, children often come to school with conceptions that are often inconsistent with commonly held views of scientific concepts, skills and phenomena. in many early childhood settings, science is often omitted from the classroom. in fact, research indicates that early childhood classrooms spend an average of 119 minutes per day on reading/language arts instruction versus 21 minutes per day for science instruction (fulp, 2002). in the rare cases when science is taught to young children, teachers often neglect children’s prior experiences. when teachers ignore the experiences that have been instrumental pl a y in g w it h sc ie n c e – a n in v e st ig a t io n 5 in forming students’ conceptions of the world, teachers are simultaneously ignoring the misconceptions that students hold about the world. teacher must understand both the conceptions and misconceptions of students in order to teach in a manner that allows for the correction and replacement of misconceptions with accurate scientific understandings. hence, the purpose of this research was to investigate the conceptions and misconceptions young children hold in relation to scientific concepts, skills, and phenomena. by understanding the conceptions and misconceptions of young children, educators may be better able to achieve the goal of scientific literacy for all children (national research council, 1996). framework misconceptions the term misconception is used to describe “a situation in which students’ ideas differ from those of scientists about a concept” (blosser, 1987, a variety of terms section, para. 2). as young children explore the world guided by curiosity and interest, children’s conceptions and misconceptions are based on their everyday experiences. the way that students characterize and explain the world is often guided by logical but scientifically inaccurate understandings. “in many cases students have developed partially correct ideas that can be used as the foundation for further learning” (as cited in committee on undergraduate science education, 1997, misconceptions as barriers to understanding section, para. 2). while students’ prior experiences serve as the foundation and context for further learning, educators should not underestimate the power of student’s misconceptions. “ausubel, (1968) noted that misconceptions are ‘amazingly tenacious and resistant to extinction…the unlearning of preconceptions might well prove to be the most determinative c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 6 single factor in the acquisition and retention of subject-matter knowledge’” (as cited in kyle, family, & shymansky, 1989, prior knowledge and conceptions of students section, para. 1). there are several ways that children develop conceptions and misconceptions. some of the sources of misconceptions include everyday observations, religious or mythical teachings, science teaching that does not adequately challenge students’ misconceptions, and vernacular misconceptions (committee on undergraduate science education, 1997). there are multiple contexts through which young children encounter information that promotes misconceptions. it is therefore possible for children to have multiple explanations for a given phenomena, depending on the context in which it occurs. young children are capable of delivering the appropriate answers to questions however, they may simultaneously hold misconceptions in which they believe strongly. for example, in a study reported by william philips (1991), “…it was estimated that 95% of [second graders] knew that the earth was a sphere. however, through interviews it was later discovered that while students said they believed it was a spherical planet, they actually believed that earth was indeed flat” (p. 21). this example demonstrates how students combine their everyday experiences with the world and the knowledge that they are taught in school. when students are exposed to two different explanations of scientific phenomena “it is possible that children develop mutually inconsistent explanations of scientific concepts – one for use in school and one for use in the ‘real world’” (blosser, 1987, findings related to elementary science section, para. 1). thus, it is important to consider how to truly uncover misconceptions. one way to correct the misconceptions that children have is through teaching for conceptual change. “misconceptions are rarely expressed aloud or in writing and, therefore, pl a y in g w it h sc ie n c e – a n in v e st ig a t io n 7 often go undetected…but before beginning instruction to challenge misconceptions a teacher must discover the misconceptions that his or her students hold” (phillips, 1991, p. 21). by understanding the conceptions and misconceptions of young children, educators can better adapt their teaching methods in an attempt to guide students toward accurate and more sophisticated understandings of science. conceptual change conceptual change elaborates on the theory of constructivism and refers to the process learners go through in “…coming to comprehend and accept ideas because they are seen as intelligible and rational” (posner, strike, hewson, & gertzog, 1982, p. 212). the conceptual change learning model is a view of learning that takes into account the interplay between what a student already knows and what the student is being taught (1982). in order for a student to replace a faulty understanding (i.e. misconception) with an accurate understanding, certain conditions must be met. these conditions describe the process by which learners’ “…central, organizing concepts change from one set of concepts to another” (p. 211). specifically three criteria must be met when attempting to replace misconceptions with accurate understandings. first, a student must experience “dissatisfaction” with existing conceptions (p. 214). students are unlikely to change their faulty conceptions unless they come to believe that the conceptions they hold no longer satisfy their need to solve problems (1982). second, the new conception that is to replace the old must be “intelligible” (p. 214). this means that the learner must come to “grasp how experience can be structured by a new concept sufficiently to explore the possibilities inherent in it” (p. 214). third, the new conception must appear “plausible” (p. 214). plausibility refers to a concepts ability to “at least appear to have the capacity to solve problems and be consistent with other knowledge and/or past experience” (p. 214). finally, the new c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 8 concept should be “fruitful” (p. 214). in other words, the new concept must present the learner with new avenues for solving problems. clearly, the process of conceptual change can at times be a lengthy and complex endeavor due to the fact that students have constructed their conceptions over extended periods of time. thus, at times, it can be quite difficult for learners to accept that their ideas need adjustment and/or replacement, even when these ideas are not supported by evidence. “changes can be strenuous and potentially threatening, particularly when the individual is firmly committed to prior assumptions” (posner, strike, hewson, & gertzog, 1982, p. 223). in fact, some students will go to extreme lengths to defend these ideas. on the other hand, some preconceptions can be easily revised through instruction (chi & roscoe, 2002). regardless of the tenacity of the beliefs, students will resist making a change “…unless they are dissatisfied with their current concepts and find and intelligible and plausible alternative that appears fruitful for further inquiry” (1982, p. 223). “the conceptual change model is widely accepted among science educators. though there are competing views of how conceptual change occurs, there seems to be no argument about whether conceptual change occurs; it is central to learning in science” (suping, 2003, conclusions section, para. 1). hence, by understanding the common misconceptions that children have, teachers can come to better understand the ways in which they can begin to scaffold instruction in an effort to encourage students to move through the process of conceptual change. “in science…misconceptions affect the way children understand a variety of scientific ideas,” therefore it is imperative that teachers understand why and how misconceptions can exist, as well as how they may be replaced (eaton, anderson & smith, 1984, p. 366). pl a y in g w it h sc ie n c e – a n in v e st ig a t io n 9 although teaching for conceptual change is challenging, it is an attainable goal and has proven benefits or learning. in this style of learning, children confront the inconsistencies in their scientific knowledge, and gain a deeper understanding of science content (watson & kopnicek, 1990). as such, providing instructional strategies that address the importance of students’ conceptions and prior knowledge is imperative. consequently, this study is aimed at investigating the conceptions and misconceptions young children hold in relation to science concepts, skills, and phenomena. as a result of this investigation, educators may come to better understand the conceptions and misconceptions that children hold in relation to science. furthermore, this knowledge will also assist in the development and implementation of instruction that supports conceptual change. method the purpose of this research was to investigate the conceptions and misconceptions young children hold in relation to scientific concepts, skills, and phenomena. this study represents qualitative research. qualitative data was collected from 63 children from three separate early childhood educational sites in an attempt to investigate the conceptions and misconceptions of young children. the age range of the participants was from 3 – 8 years old and data collection took place over the course of three months. of the 63 participants, 65% were male and 35% were female (see table 1). participants were predominantly white, middle class and resided in a suburban town of pennsylvanian. to conduct the research, the researchers created multiple inquiry-based science units for the areas of matter, magnetism, density, and air (see appendix). these inquiry-based units were developed using the national science education standards. hence, each unit was designed around the five essential features of classroom inquiry, which are necessary for teaching science c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 10 as inquiry (national research council, 2000). each of these units was aligned with both state and national standards and required children to express their understandings of science concepts and skills. the units encouraged student participation, thus the researchers assumed the position of uncovering student conceptions and misconceptions. it is important to note that throughout all of the lessons, the researchers were careful not to confirm or deny participant ideas. the goal of this research was to uncover the conceptions and misconceptions held by young children, not to teach them scientific content. in addition, within each of the lessons, the research asked the students to justify their thoughts, decisions and responses by giving priority to evidence. units were implemented with small groups of young children on multiple occasions. each site was visited an average of five times over the three month time period. during each visit, a unit was implemented and videotaped in an effort to capture all of the conceptions and misconceptions that children portrayed in both their verbal and non-verbal communication skills. the videotapes from each implementation were transcribed and then analyzed. data sources were analyzed in an attempt to identify the common conceptions and misconceptions held by the participants with regard to science concepts, skills, and phenomena. the method of choice for analyzing the data was grounded theory (denzin & lincoln, 2000) and narrative inquiry (clandinin & connelly, 2004). specifically, the researchers analyzed videotapes and transcripts to uncover the most common conceptions and misconceptions held by the participants in regard to matter, magnetism, density, and air. pl a y in g w it h sc ie n c e – a n in v e st ig a t io n 11 table 1 demographic information of teaching sites site a site b site c male 20 14 7 female 8 8 6 total 28 (44%) 22 (35%) 13 (21%) total n = 63 results upon completion of the qualitative data analyses, the researchers were able to identify the common conceptions and misconceptions young children hold related to the specific areas addressed within this study: matter, magnetism, density, and air. matter the common conceptions that children held related to matter included “a brick is a solid” (ages 7, 6, 5, 4) and “water is a liquid” (ages 6, 5, 4). in addition, children were able to provide several accurate examples of both solids and liquids. specifically, some children categorized liquids as something that “they could drink” (ages 7, 6, 5, 4). although this notion of ‘drinkable’ does not always determine if a substance is liquid, children used this idea when providing examples of liquids such as “milk,” “juice,” “soda,” “water…etc.” in addition, children also utilized the ‘touch test’ to determine if a substance was a solid or liquid. for example, children articulated the belief that “you can stick your finger in a liquid, but your finger stops for a solid” (ages 7, 6). children utilized this ‘touch test’ process to inform their ideas about additional objects/materials that were presented during the unit. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 12 the common misconceptions that children held related to matter were that “solids are “heavy” (age 5), “hard” (ages 7, 6, 5, 4), solids cannot be “eaten” (age 6), “broken” (ages 7, 6, 5), “bent” (ages 7, 6), “squished” (ages 7, 4), “have holes” (age 7), “be hollow” (age 7), or “soft” (ages 6, 5). in addition, children also believed that “you can drink liquids” (ages 7, 6, 5, 4) and that “if you cannot drink a liquid, it is not a liquid” (ages 5, 4). it is important to note that the conceptions children have oftentimes inform the misconceptions that they have. this notion is particularly evident in the children’s explanation of a solid being something that cannot be “broken” or “bent” (ages 6, 4). this misconception is informed by their conception of a brick being a solid. although children were able to categorize the brick as a solid, they also generalized the properties of the brick to determine the properties of a solid. another example of this was in the children’s description of a liquid being something that “you can drink” (ages 7, 6, 5, 4). although it is true that some liquids can be drank, the children used this idea to incorrectly generalize the idea of drinkable liquids to all liquids. for example, juice is a liquid, but vinegar is not because “you can’t drink it—it doesn’t taste good” (ages 5, 4) these examples are a perfect illustration of how children can hold inconsistent understandings about scientific concepts that lead to the creation of further, more detrimental misconceptions, which may prevent young children from gaining deeper understandings of science. magnetism the common conceptions about magnetism included that magnets “stick” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4) and magnets “help you stick pictures/paper to the refrigerator” (ages 5, 4), in addition, children were able to generate some correct predictions about what magnets would and would not be attracted to in a classroom or recreational space. children also acknowledged that magnets pl a y in g w it h sc ie n c e – a n in v e st ig a t io n 13 are different “colors” (ages 8, 7, 4), “shapes” (ages 8, 7), “sizes” (ages 8, 7), magnets “have north and south poles” (age 8), and magnets have “different strengths” (ages 8, 7, 6). it is important to note that children were able to use real world examples and experiences such as the refrigerator, to inform some of their scientifically accurate conceptions. however, the children’s overgeneralizations of their conceptions again lead to misconceptions. for example, a common misconception was that “magnets stick to all refrigerators” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4). while this may be a logical extrapolation based on their previous experiences, the children failed to recognize that there might be some circumstances where a magnet will not be attracted to a particular refrigerator. furthermore, this overgeneralization communicates the children’s lack of understanding related to why magnets are attracted to certain objects and not others. another common misconception among children was the idea that magnets “stick.” at all of the sites, children explored the room with magnets looking for items that the magnet would “stick to” and would “not stick to.” as the children tested their predictions, many children tried to “stick” their magnets to a filing cabinet; the magnets did attract to the cabinet but the magnets then slid down the cabinet door. as a result, because the magnet did not “stick” and stay stationary, the magnet was not “sticking” to the cabinet and thus the magnet was not attracted to the cabinet. additional misconceptions about magnets are that magnets are “magic” (age 5), “hard” (ages 4, 5), “stick to all metal” (ages 7, 6, 5), “stick to silver”(ages 6, 5) the “size of a magnet” affects its magnetic field (ages 8, 7), the poles “do not stick equally” (ages 7, 6), magnets will not attract through objects that are “heavier” than the magnet itself (ages 8, 7), and magnets will not attract through items that are “harder” (age 8), “thicker” (ages 8, 7), “stronger” (age 7), and “bigger” than the magnet (ages 8, 7). c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 14 density the common conceptions that children held about density primary correlated with the children’s ability to predict and identify objects that would sink and float. children knew that: “a marble sinks” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5) and “corks” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4), “boats” (age 5), and “ducks” (ages 6, 3) float. however, the young children were also able to express that water inside a boat would impact the boat’s ability to float. this finding illustrates the children’s understanding of mass being important in determining the density of an object. it is clear that the children used their prior knowledge and experiences with sinking and floating to inform their conceptions as their list of conceptions included many examples from their everyday lives, and the same is true of their misconceptions. common misconceptions were that “glass sinks” (age 5), “heavy metal sinks” (ages 7, 6, 4), “plastic floats” (ages 6, 5), “all wood floats” (ages 8, 7, 6), “objects with air inside them float” (age 8). while these conceptions are sometimes true, they are not true all of the time and thus again, illustrate how incomplete conceptions can create misconceptions. additional misconceptions that the children held were related to the task of manipulating a piece of clay so that it would both sink and float, but at different times. to accomplish this task, the children were provided a piece of clay. to make the clay sink, most children immediately formed a ball and put it in the water. however, when asked if they could take that same piece of clay and make it float, the children needed time to experiment with the clay in an effort to test their ideas. many children attempted to remove amounts of clay from the original piece thinking that by decreasing the mass, the clay would then float. this strategy clearly illustrated inconsistencies associated with the concept of density. specifically, children articulated the following misconceptions when manipulating the piece of clay: “heavy objects pl a y in g w it h sc ie n c e – a n in v e st ig a t io n 15 sink” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3), “light objects float” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3), “thin objects float” (ages 8, 7, 6), “big things sink” (ages 8), and “small things float” (ages 8). with time to explore, children were able to conclude that their initial ideas were not accurate and eventually, all children were able to make their piece of clay float by creating a boat-like object that spread the mass of the clay over a greater area without “flooding.” although children arrived at the understanding of the relationship between mass and volume, this understanding was certainly naïve. specifically, children articulated that, “walls make things float” (ages 8), “flattening it will make it float” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3), and “objects with air in them float” (ages 8, 6). throughout the course of this unit, children consistently drew on previous experiences and knowledge to inform their attempts at creating objects that would float. some interesting examples included a young girl who made a duck out of the clay because she knew that ducks floated and a young boy who made a lifesaver ring because he knew that he had seen the object float in a swimming pool. air the common conceptions associated with air were…“air is for breathing” (age 6), “air can be used to move objects” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4), “if you have more air, you can move heavier objects” (ages 8, 6), “air can be created by blowing” (ages 6, 5, 4), “air is inside a bubble” (ages 7, 6, 5, 4), and “air is invisible” (ages 5, 4). for this particular concept, children again used many connections to their real life to arrive at their conceptions regarding air. it is important to note that this unit involving air required children to explore paper and plastic bags along with napkin parachutes. through this exploration, the following misconceptions were revealed: “if a bag is flattened, there is no air in it” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4), “if a bag is puffed up, there is air in it” (ages 8, 7, 6, 5, 4), “air helps the parachute fall slowly” (age c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 16 6), “air is inside or on top of a parachute, but not around it” (ages 8, 7, 6), “air is outside and in the sky” (ages 5, 4), and “air is not everywhere…it’s only around when someone/something is blowing” (ages 6, 4). similar to the conceptions previously listed, children again relied on their prior knowledge and experiences to inform their misconceptions. additionally however, their prior knowledge was also used in concert with the new experiences they were encountering. for example, when children explored the napkin parachute to determine how air was involved, they used their conception of air being used to move objects to recognize that air did indeed influence the way the parachute fell to the ground. in the same sense, however, the children were unable to recognize that air was also present on the sides of the parachute, as well as inside and on top of the parachute. this example demonstrates another instance where children have a naïve understanding of a concept that informs how they interact with materials and science content discussion “since the early work of piaget (1929; 1969) researchers have been aware that children’s conceptions about the world are sometimes quite different from scientific conceptions” (eaton, anderson & smith, 1984, p. 365). these misconceptions subsequently affect they way children learn, understand, and apply scientific concepts, skills, and phenomena. by investigating and understanding the conceptions and misconceptions of young children, educators can better tailor their instruction so that opportunities are provided for children to correct their misconceptions and develop deeper, more sophisticated understandings of science. the findings of this research are consistent with other research in the area of children’s misconceptions, however this study is unique in that the population researched involved young children. in addition, this study shed further light on the strategies children use to create understandings about science. for example, children used the ‘touch test’ and pl a y in g w it h sc ie n c e – a n in v e st ig a t io n 17 the categorization of ‘drinkable’ to determine if a substance was a liquid or a solid. furthermore, when exploring all areas of content involved in this study, children consistently relied on their prior knowledge and experiences to articulate their understandings, which is consistent with previous research associated with misconceptions and conceptual understanding (ayers, 1999; blosser, 1987; committee on undergraduate science education, 1997; eaton, anderson, & smith, 1984; kyle, family, & shymansky, 1989; ozdemir & clark 2007; suping, 2003). this finding further exemplifies the importance of prior knowledge and past experiences in the development of young children’s conceptions and misconceptions associated with science. “children come to school already holding beliefs about how things happen, and have expectations based on past experiences which enable them to predict future events” (blosser, 1987, findings related to elementary science section, para. 1). teachers must take these experiences and knowledge into account when planning and implementing instruction. if teachers do not connect their units of study to the child’s life and prior experiences, the misconceptions that the children have will never be challenged and will therefore continue to exist. another notable finding associated with his study was the discovery of how the conceptions that children hold can also lead to the misconceptions that they have. for example, children articulated the conception that marbles sink. this understanding informed the misconception children simultaneously held: all glass sinks. this finding was consistent across all content areas and is an important discovery for educators to consider when planning and implementing instruction. “preconceptions, never having been put on the table, will continue to coexist with a morass of conflicting ideas… and scientific principles that are not addressed, can coexist with ‘what the teacher told us’ and create a mishmash of fact and fiction” (watson & c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 18 kopnicek, 1990, p. 680). in addition, we also found that children frequently over-generalized their conceptions, which created inadequacies in their scientific understandings. this overgeneralization of knowledge is a manifestation of conceptions informing misconceptions. implications based on the results of this research, the experiences of the researchers as well as prior literature, three areas of implications are specifically addressed. these areas are implications for research, policy, and practice. research there are several research implications targeted for misconceptions and conceptual change. first, further research to identify additional conceptions and misconceptions that young children hold in regard to scientific concepts, skills, and phenomena is warranted. many research studies address the misconceptions associated with older populations of students, however, little is done in the area of early childhood education. although this study was successful in providing results associated with young children in the areas of matter, magnetism, density, and air, more research should also be conducted to include other areas of science such as, biological science, physical science, chemistry, earth science, as well as environmental and ecological sciences. second, research to investigate and determine effective instructional methods for identifying misconceptions and promoting conceptual change is also critical. although research indicates that implementing instructional strategies to help children progress through the four conditions necessary for conceptual change (posner, strike, hewson, & gertzog, 1982) are promising, specific methods for teaching in such a way are limited. in our research, we found the inquiry process to be effective for identifying the conceptions and misconceptions of young children. inquiry teaching and learning provided the children with opportunities to discover and pl a y in g w it h sc ie n c e – a n in v e st ig a t io n 19 begin to address the inconsistencies in their scientific ideas while also providing them the space to enjoy learning about science content, skills, and phenomena. once methods of instruction have been identified, it would also be especially useful for researchers to investigate the effectiveness of conceptual change instruction on academic achievement. if the underlying goal of progress made in the area of science education and conceptual change is to have children come to better, more sophisticated understandings of science, it is crucial to investigate the effectiveness of these practices on student achievement. finally, we also believe that the misconceptions of preservice and inservice teachers should be investigated. it has been suggested that teachers oftentimes transfer their own misconceptions on to their students, thereby creating additional misconceptions for students that are even more difficult to address (blosser, 1987; maria 1997; watson and kopnicek, 1990). therefore, understanding and correcting the misconceptions of preservice and inservice teachers before they begin teaching would be a worthy research endeavor. policy professional development opportunities and additional preservice and inservice teacher education opportunities are important if we expect teachers to be adequately prepared for teaching conceptual change in early childhood science classrooms. according to the national research council (1996), “the process of transforming schools requires that professional development opportunities be clearly and appropriately connected to teachers’ work in the context of schools” (p. 57). therefore, these opportunities must provide teachers with both the theoretical and practical background knowledge of conceptual change. specifically, preservice and inservice teachers will need to understand how to identify and address the multitude of misconceptions that children can have in their classrooms. in addition, preservice and inservice c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 20 teachers will also need to be provided with numerous opportunities and a great deal of support when developing lessons and units designed to create cognitive conflicts which provide children opportunities to confront the inconsistencies in their scientific ideas. most importantly, if all of these propositions are to take place, preservice and inservice teachers must also have adequate scientific content knowledge in all areas of science. if all of these issues are addressed, educators may then be able to augment their teaching practices to support children in developing accurate and sophisticated understandings of science. practice both teachers and preservice teachers alike need to understand that children are capable of discovering and constructing scientific understandings, skills, and abilities with deliberate planning of effective instruction. this research provides further evidence to suggest that young children are capable of expressing their ideas associated with science, when they are provided the opportunity to do so. thus, it is important for preservice and inservice teachers to not underestimate the abilities of their young learners and plan for instruction that addresses conceptual change. specifically, preservice and inservice teachers must provide opportunities for children to inquire into the world of science while connecting their prior knowledge with the new information that is to be acquired. children must experience the dissatisfaction of erroneous ideas so that they can progress toward finding more accurate ways of knowing that are “intelligible, plausible, and fruitful” (posner, strike, hewson, & gertzog, 1982, p. 214). teaching science through inquiry may be one potentially valuable avenue for assisting children in moving from misconceptions to accurate scientific understandings. in doing so, preservice and inservice teachers will thereby be employing strategies that support accommodation. in addition pl a y in g w it h sc ie n c e – a n in v e st ig a t io n 21 to instructional practices, preservice and inservice teachers also need to develop more appropriate evaluation techniques that take into consideration the process of conceptual change. while making these adaptations to instruction, it is important for preservice and inservice teachers to recognize that “…changes can be strenuous and potentially threatening, particularly when the individual is firmly committed to prior assumptions” (posner, strike, hewson, & gertzog, 1982, p. 223). although teaching for conceptual change will take time, it is a worthy pursuit that will indeed assist in achieving scientific literacy for all children (nrc, 1996). c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 22 references ayers, t. (1999). early start counts in science education. science, 284(5423), 2189-2192. blosser, p. (1987). science misconceptions research and some implications for the teaching of science to elementary school students. retrieved from http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-925/science.htm chi, m. & roscoe, r. (2002). the process and challenges of conceptual change’, in m. limon & l. mason (eds.), reconsidering conceptual change: issues in theory and practice, (pp. 3 – 27). dordrecht: kluwer. clandinin, j.d. & connely, m.f. (2004). narrative inquiry: experience and story in qualitative research. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. committee on undergraduate science education. (1997). science teaching reconsidered: a handbook. national academy press, retrieved from http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=5287#toc. denzin, n. k. & lincoln, y. s. (2000). handbook of qualitative research (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications, inc. eaton, j.f., anderson, c.w, & smith, e.l. (1984). students’ misconceptions interfere with science learning: case studies of fifth-grade students. the elementary school journal, 84(4), 365-379. fulp, s. (2002). the status of elementary science teaching. washington, dc: national academy press: u.s. department of education. kyle, w.c., family, e.d., & shymansky, j.a. (1989). enhancing learning through conceptual change teaching. retrieved from http://www.narst.org/publications/research/concept.cfm maria, k. (1997). a case study of conceptual change in young child. the elementary school pl a y in g w it h sc ie n c e – a n in v e st ig a t io n 23 journal, 98(1), 67-88. martin, d.j., raynice, j.s., schmidt, e. (2005). process-oriented-inquiry—a constructivist approach to early childhood science education: teaching teachers to do science. journal of elementary science education, 17(2), 13-26. national research council. (1996). national science education standards. washington, dc: national academy press. national research council. (2000). inquiry and the national science education standards: a guide for teaching and learning. washington, dc: national academy press. ozdemir, g & clark, d. (2007). an overview of conceptual change theories. eurasia journal of mathematics, science & technology education, 3(4), 351-361. philips, w. (1991). earth science misconceptions. the science teacher, 58(2), 21-23. posner, g., strike, k. hewson, p. & gertzog, w. (1982). accommodation of a scientific conception: toward a theory of conceptual change. science education, 66(2), 211-227. suping, s. (2003). conceptual change among students in science. retrieved from http://www.ericdigests.org/2004-3/change.html. watson, b. & kopnicek, r. (1990). teaching for conceptual change: confronting children’s experiences. phi delta kappan, 71(9), 680-684. watters, j., diezmann, c., grieshaber, s., davis, j. (2001). enhancing science education for young children: a contemporary initiative. australian journal of early childhood, 26(2), 1-7. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 24 appendix unit information it is important to note that throughout all of the lessons, the researchers were careful not to confirm or deny participant ideas. the goal of this research was to uncover the conceptions and misconceptions held by young children, not to teach them scientific content. in addition, within each of the lessons, the research asked the students to justify their thoughts, decisions and responses by giving priority to evidence. matter to begin the lesson, the researchers provided each participant with a variety of rocks and had them describe the rocks to us (i.e. what do they look like, feel like, etc). after listening to student responses, we introduced the word ‘solid’ to the students and told them that the rocks were examples of solids and then asked the participants to provide other examples of solids. next, we provided the participants with the opportunity to explore a variety of objects that were also solids (i.e shoe box, brick with holes, solid brick, bucket, water bottle, baskets with holes, foam noodle, marbles, coins, keys, paperclips, sorting bears, crayon, teddy bear, blocks, rubber eraser or dog toy, paper, cloth), however, we didn’t tell then that these objects were solids. instead, we asked the children to talk about the objects and discuss whether or not they thought they were solids. after listening to student discussions, we then asked the students to create a definition of solid and provide additional examples of solids. to extend the idea of matter to liquids, the researchers provided the participants with a shallow bowl of water. children were allowed to explore the water and describe what they were feeling and/or noticing. after listening to student ideas, we then asked the students if this water was a solid and asked follow up questions, which required students to justify their thoughts based pl a y in g w it h sc ie n c e – a n in v e st ig a t io n 25 on their previous experiences. next, we introduced the idea of a liquid and told students that water is an example of a liquid. based on this idea, we then asked students to provide other examples of liquids. we then provided the participants with the opportunity to explore a variety of substances that were also liquids, but again, did not tell them that they were examples of liquids (i.e. water, milk, half and half, ginger ale, cool aid, oil, syrup, vinegar, soy sauce, juice, etc.). similar to the solids exploration, we asked students to classify the substances as either ‘liquid’ or ‘not liquid’ and then asked the students to create a definition of liquid and provide additional examples. to conclude the lesson and to determine if students would be able to differentiate between solids and liquids, the researchers provided the participants with a large piece of construction paper with the labels of ‘solid’ and ‘liquid’ at the top of the paper. using this organizer, we asked students to classify a variety of solids and liquids into the appropriate categories. while categorizing the materials, the researchers asked the students to justify their decisions with evidence and attention to the properties of solids and liquids previously discussed. magnetism to begin the lesson, the researchers threw a stuffed animal (with magnetic limbs) onto a magnetic surface so that it would stick. the researchers then asked the students why they thought the animal was able to stick to the surfaces. the participants were allow the opportunity to manipulate the stuffed animal and based on evidence, adjust their ideas if necessary. te researchers then introduced the idea of magnets to the children and asked them to discuss what they knew about magnets (i.e purposes, appearance, etc). participants were then asked to discuss what magnets stick to and make predictions about objects around the room that would stick to magnets. students were then provided with the opportunity to test their predictions by traveling c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 26 throughout the classroom to determine which objects the magnets would stick to. after children had time to explore, we came back together to discuss findings as a group. during this time, the researchers were sure to have students discuss the things that did stick as well as those that did not. next, the researchers extended this idea of ‘stick’ and ‘not stick’ typically used by the children and introduced the vocabulary of attract and repel. next, the idea of magnetism was further investigated by having the participants discuss if magnets would attract through other things. after a discussion, students were again provided the opportunity to explore this idea within the classroom using, cloth, paper, wood, glass, water, plastic, etc. after children had time to explore this idea, we again discussed findings with attention to the materials that magnets did attract through as well as those they did not attract through. to uncover the conceptions and misconceptions associated with the poles of a magnet, each participant was provided with two bar magnets. then were then asked to make observations about their magnets and encouraged to predict what the ‘n’ and ‘s’ on either side of the magnet represented. next, to assist students in articulating these ideas, we asked questions regarding which poles would attract to each other and prompted students to explore this question with their magnets. after exploring, the students then discussed their findings with the researchers and were asked to explain what they have learned, being sure to give priority to evidence. finally, to ascertain if the learning from the exploration could be applied to a new situation, the researchers showed students a demonstration of magnets suspended on a rod. the researchers asked the students what they thought was happening and why. to conclude the lesson, the researchers had the students share their new understandings about magnets as well as their new wonderings. pl a y in g w it h sc ie n c e – a n in v e st ig a t io n 27 density to begin this lesson, the researchers showed the participants a cork and marble and allowed them to hold and explore the objects. next, the researchers asked the participants to predict what would happen if we put them both in a bucket of water. after listening to responses, the researchers placed one of the objects in the water and had the students make observations and discuss what happened. next, the researchers introduced the vocabulary of sink or float and had students use the vocabulary accurately to describe what happened to the object. the participants were also asked to explain why they thought the object sank or floated. this same procedure was followed for the second object then the participants were asked to articulate the difference between the two objects when they were placed in the water. the goal of this conversation was to elicit from students their ideas about why one object floated and one sank, and to determine if the participants noticed any differences between the two objects. to offer participants an opportunity to apply their ideas associated with density, they were presented with a variety of objects, one at a time, and asked to predict if the object would sink or float. again, students were asked to justify their thoughts. following the prediction, participants were then asked to place their object in the bucket of water to determine the accuracy of their predictions. in light of this exploration, the researchers again discussed the results with the participants and required them to provide explanations for what they were observing giving priority to evidence and drawing relationships between and among the objects. expanding on these basic ideas, the researchers then provided the participants with another exploration with density cubes and clay. first, the density cubes are cubes that have the same volume but different weights. to begin, the participants were presented with the cubes and provided the opportunity to manipulate the cubes to observe their properties. similar to the c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 28 previous explorations, students were instructed to discuss their predictions regarding how the cubes would behave when placed into the water. next, the students placed the cubes (one at a time) in the water, made observations and discussed happenings. again, the researchers discussed the results with the participants and required them to provide explanations for what they were observing giving priority to evidence and drawing relationships between and among the objects. during the clay exploration the researchers provided the participants with a ball of clay and asked them to predict if the clay would sink or float. similar to the above procedures, these predictions were discussed. next, the students placed the clay in the water, made observations, evaluated the accuracy of their initial predictions, and discussed happenings. again, the researchers discussed the results with the participants and required them to provide explanations for what they were observing giving priority to evidence and drawing relationships between and among the objects. the participants were then asked if they thought there might be a way they could make the clay float and were then provided time to explore this question. when students finished molding the clay, they were then asked to place it in the water. the students then discussed their observations with the researchers and were allowed additional time for alternative designs of the clay if needed. after all children were able to successfully float their clay in the water, the researchers asked the participants why the clay was floating if we didn’t change the original amount of clay. within this discussion, students were encouraged to justify their thoughts and to make connections to the previous investigations (i.e. density cubes). using this connection, the participants were then asked to discuss how the heaviest density could possibly be manipulated to float. pl a y in g w it h sc ie n c e – a n in v e st ig a t io n 29 to conclude the lesson, the participants were shown a picture of an aquarium with objects that were floating and sinking and were asked to discuss their observations of the aquarium. participants were encouraged to discuss why some objects were sinking and others were floating. to elaborate on this idea, participants were then asked to explain how we could get the objects that were floating to sink. participants discussed their thoughts with the researchers while giving priority to evidence and then were asked how the objects that were sinking could be made to float. again, the participants discussed their thoughts and related their ideas to evidence from previous explorations. air to engage students in the air lesson, the researchers showed students a paper bag full of random items and told them that we were going to investigate the objects and materials inside the bag. students were then asked to predict what might be inside of the bag. one by one, the items from the bag were removed and identified. when the bag was “empty” the researchers asked the students if there was anything else in the bag and required them to justify their thoughts. when the students arrived at the idea that there was only air left in the bag, we then discussed with the students how they are able t tell if air is inside of a bag or another container. to uncover the answer to this question the participants were provided with experiences to investigate air on their own. the first of these investigations involved providing the participants with a zipper seal bag and a straw and were encouraged to see what they could discover about air. specifically, participants were instructed to blow into their baggies and observe what happens. throughout the exploration, participants were encouraged to discuss and describe what they were doing and how air was being used. after participants completed their investigations, the researchers c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 30 revisited the initial question: how can you tell when air is in a bag or another container? participants were required to use evidence from their explorations as a way to justify their thoughts. to conclude this portion of the lesson participants were asked where else they have seen or felt air. next, the students explored air through the use of parachutes. to begin, the participants were asked what a parachute was, if they had ever seen one, and if so, where. participants were then asked how they thought a parachute worked. to encourage students to elaborate, the researchers, when necessary, asked the participants how air was involved in moving a parachute. to extend this idea, the participants were provided with parachutes and were asked to release them and observe how they move. after investigating the parachutes, the participants then explained and discussed what was happening and why they thought it happened. the researcher then posed another question to the participants: what do you think will happen if we add a ‘passenger’ to the parachute? again, a brief discussion about the associated predictions took place and the participants were once again provided the opportunity to explore this question. after all investigations had concluded, the researchers conducted a discussion with the students to discover how they thought the ‘passenger’ impacted the way the parachute worked. to conclude this portion of the lesson, the researchers discussed with the participants what made the parachute fall slowly and asked them to compare the differences between flying one and two ‘passengers.’ within this discussion, the researchers were attempting to ascertain where the students recognized the presence of air. finally, the participants were asked to predict what would happen if we took the parachutes outside or home and a discussion was conducted around the following questions: would the parachutes move differently? what role would air play in making the parachute move outside or at home? where can air be found? pl a y in g w it h sc ie n c e – a n in v e st ig a t io n 31 the next portion of this lesson centered around the use, production, and movement of bubbles. to begin, participants were shown a bottle of bubbles. they were then asked what they thought it was and how they might use it. the researcher then blew a bubble and asked: what is inside a bubble? can you see it? what is outside a bubble? can you see it? what moves a bubble around? the researchers then explained to participants that, although they cannot see the air, they could use bubbles to see where the air is moving. in light of this idea, the participants were then asked to explain how they thought air was moving in the classroom. to assist them in their ideas, the researchers blew more bubbles, required the students to make observations and then asked students to elaborate on their thoughts using evidence. to extend this idea, the researcher provided time for the participants to investigate the following questions: how can you use bubbles to show if air moves around corners? how can you use bubbles to show where the air moves fastest? how can you use bubbles to show where the air moves slowest? how can you use bubbles to show how air moves in a doorway? the participants then discussed their findings and provided justification using evidence from their investigations. to conclude, the researchers asked the participants what bubbles had to do with air and what bubbles could tell you about air. additionally the participants discussed what they had learned about air and then drew a picture to illustrate their learning. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 32 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt telengage: enhancing collaboration between families and schools current issues in education, 24(1) 1 volume 24, issue 1 february 13, 2023 issn 1099-839x telengage: enhancing collaboration between families and schools katherine a. curry, edward harris, jentre j. olsen, younglong kim, & dominic egure oklahoma state university abstract: findings in the literature strongly support the importance of family engagement in education. however, effective partnerships between families and schools are rare , especially in ethnically diverse communities where families may lack efficacy or face structural challenges for engagement. additionally, educator perspectives toward engagement are often framed by white, middle-class paradigms. educators often fail to acknowledge structural challenges faced by low -income families or the cultural contributions low-income and/or minoritized families can bring. to facilitate engagement between families and schools, a new echo® line, telengage, was developed at oklahoma state university, educational leadership program. echo ®, traditionally used in the field of medicine, has utility for professional development for educators because it offers a platform for case -based learning where real problems are addressed in real-time. additionally, didactic presentations provide professional development for collaborative learning. through the lens of communities of practice (cop), this qualitative case study explores how relationships between families and schools changed as a result of participation in telengage. tenets of cop, negotiated meaning, mutual engagement, and a shared repertoire, support a collaborative approach to addressing complex problems. findings suggest that a cop has emerged through telengage and has resulted in changes in perspectives across families and educational leaders about “what it means to be engaged,” enhanced family efficacy for engagement, and changes in engagement practice as family voice has expanded through sharing of concerns/perspectives. these findings have important implications for equitable engagement in a convenient, cost-free environment where educators and families can communicate and develop mutually supportive understandings and practices. keywords: family engagement, professional development, family/school partnerships, echo, communities of practice citation: curry, k., harris, e., olsen, j., kim, y., egure, d. (2023). telengage: enhancing collaboration between families and schools. current issues in education, 24(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss1.2089 accepted: january 24, 2023 https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol24iss1.2089 curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 2 introduction several paradigm shifts have occurred in the last two decades in the line of research examining relationships between families and schools. one shift has been a move from “parent involvement,” which focused on school-centered strategies, to “family engagement,” which prioritized strategies aimed at empowering families to become change agents within their school communities (ishimaru, 2019; stefanski et al., 2016). this shift addressed concerns regarding previous approaches that may have unconsciously proliferated a deficit perspective because it limited family participation to the types of activities that school s perceived as “involvement,” and it failed to address community -level barriers that often limit family participation in those activities (ishimaru, 2014). additionally, parent involvement approaches failed to consider societal inequities or acknowledge “fundamental historical, cultural, and social divides between parents and schools” (ishimaru, 2013, p. 189). the movement away from parent involvement and toward family engagement presupposed that most families were already doing what they could to help the ir children succeed in school, and the shift recognized that community structural factors often limited families in their engagement efforts. this perception further acknowledged barriers such as poverty, language and cultural differences, immigration stat us, lack of dependable transportation, childcare needs, and demands of inflexible work schedules that sometimes limit family presence on school campuses (baker et al., 2016; christianakis, 2011; ishimaru & bang, 2016). it also addressed the importance of shared understandings so that families and schools could collaborate more effectively (alameda-lawson, 2014). despite movement from a parent involvement to a family engagement perspective, ishimaru (2019) argues that both approaches fall short of their intended outcomes because they tend to emphasize “changing – or ‘fixing’marginalized parents and families” (p. 3). the result is a perpetuation of racialized narratives regarding low -income families or communities of color (ishimaru, 2019). in contrast, ishimaru (2019) calls for new practices that provide parents and families “a place at the table to contribute their expertise in shaping the education agenda” (p. 4). in these efforts, educational leaders can build and enact equitable collaborations “as a process that moves beyond the ‘good parent/bad parent’ dichotomy to foster solidarities amid difference toward co mmunity-determined educational justice and well-being” (ishimaru, 2019, p. 4). the new perspective of transformative equitable collaboration provides space for families, schools, and communities to work together to support student success. problem advancements in perspectives should arguably lead to enhanced collaboration between families and schools; however, solidarities and understandings between schools and families remain relatively rare, and low-income households and families of color continue to have interactions with schools that are less empowering or satisfying than interactions between schools and white or middle-class families (rispoli et al., 2018). socio-economic factors, understood as predictive of involvement (bardhoshi et al., 2016), contin ue to limit family access to schools, and educator perspectives toward collaboration continue to be framed by white, middle-class paradigms, which fail to acknowledge that low -income families are often hindered by the structural challenges they face on a d aily basis (alamedalawson, 2014). additionally, educators often enter the profession with limited understanding curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 3 of students’ cultural contexts (epstein et al., 2011), and they fail to recognize the cultural contributions that low-income and/or minoritized families can bring (ishimaru, 2014). new practices must be shaped, therefore, that position parents as co -leaders and decision makers in schools in order to disrupt barriers and integrate the cultural capital of diverse families. these instances are challenging because, when power sharing between schools and families is implemented, existing norms and practices are disrupted, and consistent attention is needed to implement these changes with fidelity (ishimaru, 2013 ). school-centric perspectives that inhibit understandings of how families are actually engaged in education and, as a result, limit family voice in collaborative efforts must be replaced with opportunities for transformative collaboration in equitable spaces to support student educational needs. background in 2017, a group of educational leadership faculty at oklahoma state university (osu) partnered with the osu center for health sciences to incorporate the echo® platform, traditionally used in the field of medicine, into the field of education. project echo®, originally developed at the university of new mexico to provide professional development to health care specialists/providers in under-resourced communities, consists of four basic principles (arora, 2019) with a focus on de-monopolizing knowledge: 1. cost-effective technology to leverage scarce resources 2. case-based and problem-based learning to master complexity. 3. assessment strategies to track and monitor outcomes. 4. pedagogical and andragogical learning strategies to facilitate learning (“all teach; all learn”). utilizing teleconferencing zoom technology, echo® links expert specialists at “hub” sites with primary care clinicians in local communities referred to as “spoke” sites. hub team members serve as the planning team for echo® sessions, and spoke site members serve as participants in these social learning spaces. during echo® clinics, two activities are advanced: 1) participants present patient cases that promote interactive hub/spoke discussions that lead to recommendations for best treatment strategies, and 2) participants present a short, ten-to-fifteenminute didactic presentation regarding a topic of mutual interest. in medical echo® lines, rather than referring clients to specialists in larger metropolitan areas, rural physicians can receive training to meet the health needs of their clients, resulting in substantial savings and health care efficiency for both the client and the state. in transferring the echo® platform to educational leadership, three educational echo® lines were launched in 2017: teleed, telesped, and teleedge. these lines provided professional development support centered around bolstering statewide professional growth in three ways: support for remotely located rural educators (teleed), special education support (telesped), and support for leadership initiatives set forth by the oklahoma state department of education (teleedge). the purpose of each educationrelated echo® line is to provide an online, social learning space for professional growth and development to meet the needs of educators across the state. instead of traditional professional development opportunities that bring educational leaders to an urban area to receive specialized training, echo® expands learning opportunities across the state by meeting educational leaders “where they are.” specialized training, often unavailable in remote areas, is delivered through the zoom platform during bi curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 4 weekly, hour-long meetings. each meeting is planned by a member of a hub team, and the schedule consists of presentation of an anonymous case and a short, ten -to-fifteen-minute, didactic presentation. each case, presented anonymously, involves a dilemma or concern that is common to most educational leaders. adhering to strict anonymity, details are shared with all participants, and participants work together to suggest potential solutions to address the challenges of the case. the echo® mantra, “all teach; all learn,” undergirds all discussions as exchange of ideas and hearing the “voice” of all participants facilitates an equitable learning space. it is important to emphasize that echo® is not a webinar; instead, it is a collaborative virtual learning space where all participants can experience professional growth and development. echo® education lines have proven vital for facilitating high -quality professional development and communication, particularly during the covid -19 pandemic when participation in echo® lines exceeded the five-hundred participant capacity of zoom. family/school collaboration introduced in echo® in fall 2020, a new echo® line, telengage, was launched at osu. the purpose of telengage was to enhance relationships, facilitate collaboration, and promote shared understandings between families and schools. telengage connects families and schools through virtual zoom meetings for exchange of ideas to enhance collaborative understanding and capacity building, a mission that is essential as families have assumed additional educational responsibilities related to the covid-19 pandemic. telengage met twice each month for one hour on zoom during the course of this study, from fall 2020 through spring 2021. participants were encouraged to attend through email invitations sent to district and building leaders. district and building leaders forwarded the invitations to the families in their districts/buildings. all families were invited to participate, providing a space for “belonging” regardless of ethnicity, identity, or income. participation in telengage ranged from 25 to 55 participants during the pandemic , with attendance from teachers, educational leaders, and family members. participation gr ew as the pandemic progressed, and relational networks were established for the purpose of knowledge production and shared control of knowledge. because telengage is a new application of the echo® platform for collaborative efforts, the purpose of this study is to understand how participation in telengage has influenced transformative equitable collaboration between families and schools. theoretical framework the theoretical framework applied for this study is relational congruence (garbacz et al., 2015) embedded in wenger’s (1998) communities of practice (cop). wenger defines a cop as “a group of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do, and they learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (wenger & wenger-trayner, 2015, para. 4). telengage functions as a cop through bi-monthly, online interactions with a specific focus on enhancing collaboration to support student success. wenger (1998) explains that a cop is a system of (1) joint enterprise through negotiated meaning, (2) mutual engagement, and (3) shared repertoire. joint enterprise refers to how members negotiate their response to the conditions/goals of the cop; mutual engagement involves sustained interaction and roles/relationships that arise from interaction; and shared repertoire consists of signs, symbols, tools, and language used as resources and have meaning to the cop (wenger, 1998). curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 5 in this work, we expand on wenger’s cop model by integrating the concept of relational congruence. relational congruence is defined as “a multidimensional relationship concerned with the degree of similarity and shared perceptions among participants” (sheridan et al., 2004, p. 125). we argue that relational congruence, through congruence in communication (garbacz et al., 2015), is a necessary condition for enhancing the mutual engagement dimension of successful cops. specifically, congruence in communication leads to relational congruence as participants begin to understand the perspectives of one another. findings by garbacz et al. (2015) support this contention. they examined congruence in communication across parents and teachers in consultation efforts regarding student behavior and goals. their findings indicated that congruent communication moderated the effect of behavioral consultation on student social skills. we argue that relational congruence, through congruent communication, is necessary for joint enterprise, mutual engagement toward the development of negotiated conditions/goals of the cop, and a shared repertoire of language, signs, and symbols that must be present to provide meaning to the cop. the overall success or effectiveness of the cop depends on the strength of these three overlapping dimensions: domain, the identity of the cop; community, the quality of relationships and interactions between members; and practice, the activities related to acquiring and sharing knowledge (snyder et al., 2004; wenger & wenger-trayner, 2015). these dimensions support a process of learning that involves participation, membership, and identity formation. identity formation begins with the processes of self-identification, changes as a product of participation, and, ultimately, influences practice. snyder et al. (2004) argue that effective cops are imperative for increasing an organization’s collective intelligence and creating true learning systems equipped to address large-scale, complex challenges of our global society. we add that relational congruence, through congruent communication, can enhance the effectiveness of a successful cop, acting as a conduit and increasing the flow of information and usable insights among all participants. a model of the embeddedness of relational congruence into wenger’s (1998) cop is provided in figure 1. figure 1 model for enhancing family and school collaboration through communities of practice joint enterprise shared repertoire mutual engagement relation al curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 6 theoretical framework and telengage due to the volunteer, interactive nature of telengage, communities of practice as a theoretical framework aligns seamlessly with the function of telengage. telengage participants are individuals brought together by a common desire to learn and solve problems in schools. as individuals become more involved with telengage through continual participation, the core components of a cop are naturally facilitated: joint enterprise, mutual engagement, and shared repertoire. therefore, utilizing wenger’s dimensions and the practices associated with them could help provide an understanding of how collaboration is enhanced through participation in telengage. research questions how has telengage influenced transformative equitable collaboration between families and schools? subquestions: 1. how has participation in telengage enabled communication congruence between families and schools? 2. how has participation in telengage influenced educator and family identities toward relational congruence? 3. if present, how has relational congruence influenced negotiated meaning and goals of the cop (joint enterprise)? 4. if present, how has relational congruence influenced mutual engagement within this cop (mutual engagement)? 5. how have tools and resources made available in this cop promoted collaborative approaches to decision-making (shared repertoire)? literature review educational leaders and scholars agree that family engagement in education is critical for student success (ackley & cullen, 2010; cheung & pomerantz, 2012; gonzalez & jackson, 2013; mcconnell & kubina, 2014; oberg de la garza & kuri, 2014). family engagement can have a positive effect on key educational measures, including student motivation (cheung & pomerantz, 2012), student behavior (sheldon & epstein, 2002; sheridan et al., 2012), student optimism toward school (oberg de la garza & moreno kuri, 2014), and student attendance (mcconnell & kubina, 2014; sheldon, 2007). students whose parents are engaged experience higher levels of homework completion (dettmers et al., 2019), enhanced school satisfaction/optimism (oberg de la garza & moreno kuri, 2014), higher engagement in school (hughes & kwok, 2007), higher graduation rates (midel & reynolds, 1999; parr & bonitz, 2015), and higher academic outcomes such as test scores and grades (gonzales & jackson, 2013; hughes & kwok, 2007) and college entrance rates (ou & reynolds, 2014; pernam & titus, 2005). ackley and cullen (2010) also found that home/school collaboration has a positive effect on family relationships, often reducing stress on parents and children in the home. family engagement perspectives over time understandings regarding family engagement have evolved over the past several decades. epstein’s (1986) seminal work on “overlapping spheres of influence” was framed during the time when three primary perspectives guided the thinking of researchers: separate curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 7 responsibilities of families and schools (weber, 1947), shared responsibilities of families and schools (bronfenbrenner, 1979), and sequential responsibilities of families and schools (bloom, 1964; piaget & inhelder, 1969). epstein’s model of overlapping spheres of influence most closely aligns with bronfenbrenner’s (1979) model as it builds on the ecology-nuanced engagement reality. in epstein’s model, three spheres—home, school, and community—overlap in shared goals and missions, and with unique and combined influences on children through the interactions of parents, educators, community partners, and students across contexts. epstein (2011) suggested that, when the spheres of the family, school, and community closely resemble each other through “family-like schools” and “school-like families” (p.46), student learning is supported and facilitated. the degree of overlap of influence is determined by a twin set of forces: time, experiences in families and schools, and also, by shared experiences, philosophies, and practices (epstein, 2011). barton et al. (2004) viewed the practice of parent engagement as ecologies, emphasizing space and capital to describe engagement practices. they also recognized parents’ mental nodes of engagement practices. their conceptual work is built from cultural-historical activity theory and critical race theory to point to engagement practices regarding how the community and its values make or mar engagement practices. according to barton et al. (2004), all engagement practices are mediated by power and politics. in the light of their framework, barton et al. (2004) described parental engagement as the mediation between space and capital by parents in relation to others in school settings, and they emphasized that this mediation must be understood as both an action and an orientation to action. further, baquedano-lopez et al. (2013) questioned previous approaches to family engagement, which they perceived as “neo-deficit perspectives” (p. 150), because they believed that previous models did not acknowledge power relations between educational stakeholders nor inequity issues that influence the ways that families engage in schools. they argued that the “tropes of parents as first teachers, parents as learners, parents as partners, and parents as choosers and consumers find their counterpart in government policies on education and reflect deeply held beliefs about parental roles” (baquedano-lopez et al., 2013, p. 172). they argued that these roles are disadvantageous to non-dominant groups but may provide an advantage to white middle-class parents. the authors consequently offered a decolonized and empowerment approach to parent engagement that considered the intersecting dimensions of race and class in engagement efforts. to be noted, along with this work, are efforts centering communities and families along a framework of culturally sustaining pedagogy (csp) (ladson-billings, 2017; paris & alim, 2017). at its core, csp advances educational contexts as sites for “sustaining the lifeways of communities rather than eradicating them” (alim et al., 2020, p. 262). this important work further promotes a paradigm shift away from deficit-minded family engagement as csp positions diversity, or cultural dexterity, as a necessary good whereby the work of engaging cultural pluralism is viewed, not by replacing deficits, but rather through critically enriching the strengths of the diverse school community (paris, 2012). current status of engagement of non-dominant families despite advancements in understandings regarding how non-dominant families can be included in engagement efforts, true collaboration between families and schools remains relatively rare, especially in ethnically diverse communities. research indicates lower levels of collaboration between low-income families or families of color than between schools and white, curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 8 middle-class families. socio-economic factors, often predictive of involvement (bardhoshi et al., 2016; green et al., 2007), and cultural/ethnic disparities between minoritized groups and schools tend to negatively influence collaboration between schools and families (rispoli et al., 2018). one potential reason for disparities between low-income families and schools is that school efforts to include families are often framed by white, middle-class paradigms (curry-stevens et al., 2013). curry-stevens and colleagues (2013) state, parent engagement has long favored self-motivated parents who are aligned with dominant school culture, meaning white, professionally credentialed parents. this leaves many parents out, to the detriment of both schools becoming the hub of their communities and the elimination of disparities (p. 20). specifically, structural challenges faced by low-income families (alameda-lawson, 2014; kohl et al., 2000) and deficit mentalities attributed to misunderstandings of the cultural capital and strengths that diverse families can bring to education result in disparities in the effectiveness of partnerships (christianakis, 2011; ishimaru, 2013). these challenges are important because without addressing community-level barriers, collaboration efforts cannot equitably engage families from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, and they prevent schools and families from forming shared understandings that can ultimately influence student success. further, even when school personnel are able to identify structural challenges that impede family engagement, evidence suggests that they struggle to conceptualize the need to address such barriers or to determine strategies that may enhance common understandings (baker et al., 2016). baker et al. (2016) suggest that many educators simply lack the training and resources needed to equitably engage all parents. transformative equitable collaboration: a move away from deficit-based strategies a more recent approach to collaboration has been to collaborate with families in an equitable manner that involves family capacity-building, relationship-building, and systemic capacity-building efforts (ishimaru, 2017). this process, referred to as “transformative equitable collaboration” (ishimaru, 2017, p. 2), moves away from deficit-based strategies (ishimaru, 2017; olivos, 2006) toward equitable interactions to promote transformative educational change (ishimaru, 2017). it further recognizes cultural wealth that is present in all neighborhoods (yosso, 2005) and repositions leadership as a collective effort (bertrand & rodela, 2018). this strategy differs from family engagement in that, even though family engagement efforts attempted to empower and include families as “change agents who can transform urban schools and neighborhoods” (shirley, 1997, p. 73), transformative equitable collaboration addresses power inequities between families and schools by challenging the “rules of engagement” in traditional partnership efforts (ishimaru, 2017, p.5). equitable collaboration encourages reciprocal strategies that recognize the “funds of knowledge” and cultural/intellectual resources for more equitable, collaborative interactions between families and schools (bryk et al., 2010; moll et al., 1992). the echo® platform and telengage telengage uses the exact process, technology, and infrastructure as echo®; however, instead of medical counsel, telengage unites families, schools, community members, and professionals to support shared understandings regarding student learning. through bi-monthly, hour-long meetings, telengage virtually connects interdisciplinary stakeholders to create a learning network and to enhance family contributions to their school communities. in line with curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 9 the echo® model, participants include a hub team and spoke sites. the role of the hub team is to help with session organization, identification and sharing of cases, and didactic presentations. the hub team for telengage consists of nine members: two university professors, one building leader, one district leader, a classroom teacher, a parent, a school psychologist, a district leader from one of the tribal nations in the state, and a representative from a national parent/school networking platform. spoke site participants consist of a diverse group of teachers, administrators, state-level educational leaders, family members, and community leaders. invitations for telengage are sent through email, and anyone who is interested in the discussion may join as a spoke site participant. the goals of telengage include: 1. encouraging shared understandings between educators and families regarding collaboration in education 2. communication capacity building of families and educators as they learn to work together. 3. shared understandings of challenges faced by families and schools. 4. development of strategies to address those challenges. 5. enhanced family and educator efficacy for collaboration 6. enhanced family social capital (access to resources, support, etc.) through networks established. the salience of the timing of telengage cannot be overstated. in spring 2020, the covid19 pandemic propelled families to the center of educational responsibility. telengage addressed networking needs by providing the following benefits: • case-based discussions to address “real” problems in “real” contexts in “real” time • sharing of perspectives, including cultural capital embedded in diverse communities • multidisciplinary collaboration in a mutually supportive space. additionally, telengage will provide a platform to enhance understandings between families and schools as new post-pandemic educational norms begin to emerge. methods the design for this qualitative case study provides a “holistic description and explanation” (merriam, 1998, p. 51) of participant perspectives exploring the influence of participation in 2020 telengage bi-monthly sessions on engagement practices. telengage participation involves a nine-member hub team and 40-50 spoke site members. hub team members are responsible for identifying and presenting anonymous cases during bi-weekly sessions and for “taking turns” presenting short didactic presentations focusing on an issue related to school/family partnerships. spoke site members include administrators, educational leaders, parents, teachers , and other stakeholders across the state of oklahoma. these spoke site members receive an invitation to bi -weekly telengage meetings, and attendance at each meeting has been between 44-50 spoke site members. in the spirit of “all teach; all learn,” spoke sites participants engage in each telengage session by asking clarifying questions and providing recommendations regarding the case that is presented. participants purposeful criterion sampling was used to select six hub team and six spoke site members for semi-structured interviews. criteria included attendance at more than half of all curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 10 telengage sessions, active participation through telengage discussions or presentations, and diversity in professional affiliation. registration data that had been gathered before each telengage session included attendance, participant email addresses, and occupation/position. these data were utilized to identify possible participants in the study, and participants who had attended more than half of the telengage sessions during 2020 were invited to participate through email. as potential participants volunteered to participate, purposeful selection was utilized to select participants from a variety of professional positions to access diverse perspectives. hub team participants included one district leader, one building leader, one classroom teacher, one parent, one representative from the family engagement network, and one school psycho logist. spoke site participants included two building leaders, one district leader, two parents, and a community stakeholder. as with the sample from the hub team, spoke site participants were selected to gain diverse perspectives. two university professors led the interview process (one from the hub team and another from a related program in the university). data analysis data collection and analysis occurred simultaneously following merriam’s (1985) constant comparative method. data sources included interviews with twelve participants (6 hub team members and 6 spoke site members), didactic powerpoint and case presentations posted on the telengage webpage, notes that recorded recommendations for addressing problems identified in case presentations, and obs ervation of recorded telengage sessions and accompanying field notes. interviews were conducted via zoom technology because of pandemic protocols, and each lasted approximately 45 minutes to one hour. all telengage sessions were recorded, and all session recordings were included in data analysis. data were also collected from interactions in the “chat” feature of telengage bi -weekly meetings. interview transcript data were coded following merriam’s (2016) constant comparative method of analysis. each researcher conducted open coding independently so that comparisons could be made across researchers as data were coded. open coding was followed by axial coding (charmaz, 2006) to identify relationships among the codes. researchers met to collectively condense codes into categories, and categories were utilized to identify themes following merriam’s (2009) analysis process called “sorting categories” (p. 187). powerpoint presentations, telengage session recordings, participant comments in the “chat” feature of zoom, case documents, and recommendations for case-based problems were analyzed through the creation of reflective memos (creswell & poth, 2018). these additional data sources were utilized for triangulation and to promote trustworthiness of the findings (lincoln & guba, 1985). coding of memos was an iterative process, allowing continual consideration of how each piece of data related to the study’s purpose and research questions. following the process of constant comparison, reflective memos were coded as data were collected (merriam, 2016) and were then analyzed to compare findings with themes that emerged from transcript data to further promote trustworthiness of the findings (lincoln & guba, 1985). themes that emerged from data analysis included: (1) shared understandings of “what it means to support student success,” (2) enhanced family efficacy for collaboration, (3) change of practice through sharing of concerns, ideas , and perspectives, (4) the influence of covid-19 closures on family/school communication, and (5) collaborative problem solving curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 11 between families and schools. the themes were then utilized to answer research questions, and the theoretical framework was applied in the discussion of the findings. findings what it means to support student success enabling conversations interview and observational data revealed that telengage created channels of communication between families and schools. due to the intentional lack of hierarchy among telengage echo® participants, through the “all teach; all learn” mantra, all voices are given space and equal weight. telengage sessions, we found, served as a mechanism to facilitate the flow of dialogue, back and forth communication between schools and families, enabling communication congruence. one participant explained her perception of communication during telengage sessions by stating, “i always forget who is on the hub team and who are spoke sites. it doesn’t make any difference. we all participate in problem solving together.” another participant stated, “at first, i thought i would be afraid to speak up, but everyone made me feel comfortable. i really look forward to discussions now.” the case presentations, specifically, provided an opportunity for all participants to participate in meaningful conversations. for example, during conversations regarding suggestions for case presentations, differing opinions and perspectives were presented. however, each suggestion for addressing the situation in the case was presented respectfully, and diverse perspectives enabled conversations to deepen. as one educator participant shared her perspective, a parent participant responded, “i never thought of [the problem presented] that way. that helps me understand why school leaders may respond this way.” in this way, telengage served as a community of practice in promoting expanded understandings of differe nt ways to support student success. it is unknown, exactly, how the degree or type of parent input to school staff differed from conversations between schools and families prior to telengage; however, observations of dialogue during telengage sessions suggest that the efficacy of families to share their perspectives or concerns were strengthened during telengage and that these diverse perspectives helped participants to understand the viewpoints of others. school staff comments during telengage, such as, “there have been suggestions that parents have made that i had not considered,” support the conclusion that, during telengage, school staff heard parent voices in ways that differed from their previous interactions. relational congruence, therefore, was deepened through first establishing communication congruence. family perspectives when conversations began in early fall 2020, parents often described their actions as “getting [name of child] ready for school,” “attending parent conferences,” “helping in t he classroom,” “making copies for teachers,” or “volunteering for after school events.” however, as discussions during telengage sessions continued, it became apparent that perceptions were changing. for example, during one telengage session, the role of t he parent teacher organization (pta) was discussed. parents and educators were very quick to point out that parent teacher organizations often fulfill roles that are not within the originating purpose of the organization. one parent stated, “i think people are confused about what pta is meant for. pta is supposed to be about advocating for our children, not making curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 12 copies or hosting bake sales. i think we need to change what we are doing.” another parent agreed by stating, “yes, we need a discussion of how [children’s] needs have changed and how pta can bridge the gap for those needs.” during interviews, both educator and family participants explained that the opportunity to engage in discussions and didactic presentations through telengage encouraged them to perceive collaboration more as “shared responsibility” for learning. during an interview session, one parent noted, “i used to think i sent [name of child] to school to get an education. now, i see that it is my responsibility too.” a second parent stated during an interview, “[education] shouldn’t all fall on the shoulders of the teachers. we can help at home.” this comment represents perceptions of parent participants during telengage sessions who expressed that they had always thought of their roles a s “getting the child to school” and “supporting the teacher.” many had not considered the understanding expressed by an educator during a telengage meeting that “a parent is a child’s first teacher.” these findings from both interview and observational data suggest a deeper recognition of individual contributions that both parents and educators make in promoting student success. educator perspectives during early meetings of telengage, when educators were asked, “what does collaboration look like? how do you know that parents are involved?” educator responses aligned with the responses of parents. they often suggested activities that were school centric, such as, “attending parent/teacher conferences,” “helping kids with homework,” or “communicating with the teacher.” as time progressed, however, actions and activities such as “talking with [name of child] about the school day,” “family traditions,” and “communicating expectations for learning” have been recognized. one educator stated, “…when parents say things like ‘when you graduate from high school, not if.’ those comments let children know that families have high expectations for learning.” additiona lly, as families have shared their perspectives during case discussions, educators have noted the important contributions that they bring. during an interview, one educator responded, “there have been suggestions that parents have made that i had not consi dered. their comments help me understand different ways to address these problems.” prior to a more established relational congruence between parents and educators, important parent suggestions and usable insights easily fell by the wayside. however, as communication increased during telengage sessions, so did the shared repertoire of language and tools to reinforce consistent messaging for student success. these shared understandings were evident in observational data as well as interview data. consistent communication and collaboration during telengage sessions allowed for the creation of opportunities toward the mutual exchange of usable insight. when families and educators more consistently engaged in this shared learning space, a shared repertoire of to ols and language was reinforced, and the resulting knowledge creation was beneficial both in the home and in the school. family efficacy the mantra of echo®, “all teach; all learn,” provides a platform for equitable discussion among participants. professional titles and affiliations are not mentioned, and all participants have the opportunity to voice their opinions. as participation in telengage curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 13 progressed, parents gained efficacy to engage in conversations with educational leaders. this finding was evident in observational data from telengage sessions. during an interview, one parent stated, “it’s getting easier [to participate]. i didn’t know, at first, if my opinion would matter.” during a separate interview, another parent stated, “with all of the exp erts in the meeting, i didn’t know if i could speak up or not.” this efficacy was further reflected in enhanced participation during discussions when parent input did align exactly with educator responses. during one of the sessions, when a case study addressed the issue of parents feeling like an administrative decision had limited their participation at the school, one parent stated, “parents just want to know they are welcome and that their help is appreciated.” this parent made this statement in a sess ion with educational leaders present. parent confidence to express their perspectives is further evidenced in the “chat” feature of online meetings. one parent stated, “[administrators need to] find ways to show parents sincere appreciation for their willi ngness to help and for the tasks that they complete.” enhanced efficacy is further evidenced in the frequency of family participation in telengage discussions. parents participated freely, and they often addressed educators and each other in their discussions. these findings from interview and observational data collected during telengage were supported in comments in the “chat” feature of telengage sessions. as time progressed, family members increasingly offered their comments through discussion or in “chat” comments. these interactions suggest an increase in relational congruence as family participant efficacy increased. as parents began to feel more comfortable and established in their role as a partner in these discussions, all stakeholders benefitted, and the goal of supporting student success was mutually advanced. changes in practice hearing the opinions, suggestions, and challenges from both educators and families led to less separation or distinction in roles. during one telengage session, one part icipant stated, “i often forget if i am wearing my ‘educator’ or ‘parent’ hat [during telengage meetings]!” evidence suggests that, as identities consolidated toward a unified community with the common goal of enhancing education for students, changes in p ractice resulted. during one of the telengage sessions, a spoke site participant suggested that schools need to “touch base” with parents and students on a regular basis during the pandemic. numerous comments were made from educators regarding how they hav e integrated this practice in their districts, with one educator stating, “i understand that families are struggling right now and doing all that they can. i need to continue to ask how i can support them at home.” during another telengage session, an educator responded to a parent's suggestion by stating, “i love the suggestion of also getting feedback from students. it keeps them engaged!” during an interview with a spoke site district leader, she stated, “we can’t do this alone. we are very dependent on families to help students learn. knowing what they care about will help us support them.” an additional perspective that has emerged is the recognition of the social and cultural capital that diverse families can bring. observational data revealed that par ticipation in telengage has grown increasingly diverse, with approximately 25-30% individuals of color during each session. spoke site participants included individuals from both rural and urban schools, highand low-poverty families, families and school leaders with high english language learner populations, and family members from black, native american, and curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 14 hispanic/latinx families. because urban and rural schools in the state serve a diverse population of families and students, this trend is important. while enhanced diversity continues to be a goal of telengage, participants openly shared suggestions that reflect the social capital that they bring. during one telengage session, a spoke site participant explained, “my family is a large, extended family. we make sure that our babies have what they need [to succeed in school]. if schools let us know what they need, we will all join in to help.” another spoke site participant stated, “if they can’t get it [academic help] at school, we have plenty of help at my church.” another telengage family participant explained, “i have a job that is flexible. i know many don’t have that, but i look for ways to enrich my child’s education. it can’t be all worksheets [to keep them engaged]. i depend on other parents to help me with that.” at the family level, changes in practice are evidenced as families looked for ways to enhance learning, particularly those whose children are attending class virtually. during interview sessions, families explained that they had learned new approaches to supporting student success, such as reaching out to other families to plan learning activities such as trips to the aquarium or coordinated efforts to tutor students in algebra 1. educator practice has been influenced as they began to understand some of the challenges that families were experiencing. for example, participants who were also parents on both the hub team and spoke sites shared frustration with working from home while also trying to support student learning. this commonality caused blurring of roles as both educators and family members experienced similar dilemmas. demanding work schedules was a common frustration among telengage participants as well. during telengage sessions, educators openly shared some of their frus trations with online learning, and they reached out to parents for ideas and support. for example, educators expressed their concerns with a lack of student engagement in online learning and asked family members for ideas of how to engage students more ful ly. conversations during telengage sessions involved discussion of delays in learning during school closures that will likely have long-term consequences if not addressed. educators participating in telengage offered ideas such as reading time, adhering to a learning schedule, and other supportive practices that can support learning in the home. these findings suggest that an increase in communication congruence resulted in more clearly defined relational congruence as educators and family members understoo d each other’s perspectives. as communication increased, not only between family members and educators, but also among different families and out into the community, the nature of a joint enterprise seemed to be more clearly established. this interdependen ce seemed to solidify the negotiated meaning and goal of the collective by keeping the promotion of student success at the fore, as explained further in the discussion section of this manuscript. covid and telengage the launch of telengage coincided with school closures due to high rates of covid-19 infection in the state. school closures strongly influenced discussions during telengage sessions. during telengage sessions, parents were eager to discuss their “new responsibilities” as a result of at-home learning. during an interview with a family member participant, she expressed that telengage has helped her adjust to the changes that the covid-19 pandemic “has propelled [her] into.” although perspectives regarding online learning were always positive, dialogue helped to support both families and educators during curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 15 this trying time. during interview sessions, parents described their roles as more active and “hands-on” in the education of their children, and they expressed that covid -19 closures have caused “quite a bit of stress” in their homes. one parent stated, “having my children at home all day means that our [family] schedules have changed dramatically. i really didn’t know how to structure a school day before this [pandemic] started” one parent stated, “i am now a teacher for [name of child]. i used to think teaching was all on the school.” all participants in this study recognized that family roles and responsibilities have rapidly changed because of the pandemic and that “a new normal” is likely to e volve. during an interview, one educator summed this sentiment when he stated, “this is a perfect time to reflect upon and clarify roles. all schools should do that now and after the pandemic, as roles and responsibilities may not be the same.” it is clear that the covid-19 pandemic has caused a disruption of normality for both schools and families. during an interview with a district leader, this leader mentioned that one benefit of disruption, however, “is that it forces innovation.” this leader explained , “as schools and families have been forced to pivot, the need for communication and collaboration between these vital entities has never been greater.” unintentionally, the echo® model and telengage were perfectly positioned for such a unique time in huma n history. as evident in our findings, families and schools were forced to lean into communication and collaboration to promote the success of students during the pandemic. telengage helped to provide the structure for these interactions, enabling communic ation congruence towards re-identified relational congruence. collaborative problem solving within the telengage framework, as participants engaged in conversations and made recommendations regarding cases that were presented, educators and parents became aware of diverse solutions to complex problems. observational and interview data suggest that they also become aware of the care and concern that both families and schools have for student success. problems that were addressed during case presentations included miscommunication between families and schools, misappropriation in parent -led band booster club activity accounts, challenges with online learning, social and emotional needs of families during crisis events, and expanded learning gaps during covid closures. during one case presentation that involved a disagreement between several families in the school and an administrator, one educator suggested, “it is important to take the high road, rather than to assign blame. all involved have their own perceptions of what happened. pick up the pieces and move forward.” a parent agreed with this statement by indicating, “i think it is important to listen as much as share.” an educational leader stated, “we need to be able to apologize sincerely when we make mistakes and laugh with families about our missteps. we are learners too. we need to be genuine.” this finding suggests an ongoing process of reidentification as schools and families grow toward relational congruence. relational congruence was supported in interview data when educators and family members recognized the important contributions of the other to support student success. the dialogue back and forth during case presentations further supported this understanding as goals and strategies to support learning were discussed and as all parties mutually engaged in collaborative efforts. furthermore, this finding suggests that, the more interactive the conversation, the greater the opportunity for sharing of tools curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 16 and resources that, ultimately, benefitted the collaborative. this process enriched the shared repertoire, and all participants benefitted from increased le arning. discussion negotiated meaning: “what it means to support student success” wenger’s (1998) cop model suggests that, in order to become a functioning cop, a group must develop joint enterprise through negotiated meaning. from this negotiated meaning, individuals within a cop learn collectively as they participate together in a “shared domain of human endeavor” (wenger & wenger-trayner, 2015, para. 4). in telengage, joint enterprise explains the process of how members negotiate their response to the conditions and goals of the group. concerning negotiating meaning, our findings suggest clarification of “what it means to support student learning” for both educators and families through participation in telengage. during early meetings, participants identified support activities that were very “school-centric,” such as “attending parent conferences,” “returning signed forms,” and “communicating with the teacher.” this finding aligns with findings in the literature that educators often perceive families as “helpers” rather than co-contributors of knowledge in the educational process (christiankis, 2011). our findings further suggest that families also perceived themselves in the “helper” role. however, didactic presentations and case-based learning have expanded perceptions of collaboration. this conclusion is important because previous perceptions dramatically limited collaborative potential when they were focused on simply “train[ing] individual parents to better conform to existing educator expectations and school practices” (ishimaru, 2013, p. 191). in this cop, communication has developed, and varied perceptions indicating the recognition of parents as co-contributors or partners in education have emerged. this recognition aligns with understandings in the literature regarding the more salient forms of engagement, such as family expectations for learning/achievement (jeynes, 2012) and the social and cultural capital that families can bring (mcintosh & curry, 2020). findings further align with the explained difference between “community ownership,” where community voices are heard through direct engagement, versus “community buy-in,” where communities acquiesce their voices for “compliance with someone else’s [namely political and educational leader’s] vision and agenda” (stovall, 2016, para. 9). further, as perceptions changed, participants began recognizing the contribution of others, regardless of role or position. relational congruence was evidenced as participant perspectives reflected shared understandings. participants were able to share their stories and experiences to provide illumination of persistent conditions that minimize traditionally marginalized voices (stovall, 2016). as an example of enhanced shared understanding and in promoting a less “schoolcentric” approach to engagement, telengage has highlighted family contributions, cultural norms, and cultural capital in homes and communities that may not be visible to educators. an example of cultural capital emerged when an african american participant reminded participants of the resources available through her church, a black church in the community. she indicated that members of her church have partnered with schools to provide tutoring and mentoring for students. these findings align with findings by curry and mcintosh (2020) and mcintosh and curry (2020) regarding the cultural resources that are readily available, yet infrequently accessed, in lower-income communities. curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 17 mutual engagement: enhanced family efficacy mutual engagement can best be understood through a discussion of the “community” aspect of the cop model and enhancement of family efficacy. “community” reflects the quality of relationships and interactions between members (wenger, 1998). communication in telengage allowed participants to freely share diverse perspectives. according to wenger (1998), for a true community to form, relationships must develop that allow members to “learn from each other” (wenger & wenger-trayner, 2015, para. 8). in this instance, the “all teach/all learn” mantra of telengage created a space where relational congruence developed through inclusion of all participants and promotion of mutual respect and understanding. even families that indicated that they felt uncomfortable, at first, to speak up in front of educational “experts” over time actively participated and expressed their satisfaction with interactions during telengage meetings. participants felt free to share concerns and challenges as well as successes in supporting student needs. for example, one case discussion described strained relationships between parents and a building administrator in a small, rural district. a parent participated by suggesting, “parents just want to know that their voice is heard. it makes us feel like we are needed.” additionally, one parent stated, “i care very much about my child’s education. sometimes, i feel like my efforts aren’t recognized.” these parents’ contributions enhanced understandings between families and educators and encouraged a re-envisioning of how family members support their children’s education both at school and at home. family members felt that their voice was heard and that their actions were recognized. through communication, relational congruence was enhanced, and this finding aligns with our previous finding regarding the expansion of family and educator perceptions regarding how families support student success. further, the enhancement of family efficacy can be explained through wenger’s (1998) cop model. wenger (1998) suggests that identity formation in a cop requires participation, membership, and identity formation. identity formation begins with the process of selfidentification/reflection and changes as a product of participation. as families participated in discussion and offered their opinions, they developed confidence, and their participation increased. telengage discussions offered the opportunity for differing perspectives without judgment, and they encouraged self-reflection regarding preconceived ideas and perceptions of the efforts and actions of others. both educators and families explained that their perspectives were widened in statements, such as “i had never thought about [the problem] this way.” the function of communication practices in telengage differ significantly from understandings advanced in traditional parent involvement research. historically, family engagement practices were formed with the intention of passing along information to families (hirsto, 2010). this intention stands in stark contrast to the acknowledgment of the importance of congruent conversations where family members and schools come together to enhance shared perceptions and mutual understandings. in summary, “community” is reflected as relational congruence has developed through sustained congruence in communication. telengage has provided an opportunity, as christianakis (2011) explains, to “come together….in order to jointly accomplish sustain[able] change” (p. 173). as explained through wenger’s (1998) communities of practice (cop), all participants in telengage share a common goal accompanied by a passion for children and a desire to facilitate learning. telengage supports this common desire and provides an opportunity to “learn how to do it better as [participants] interact regularly” (wenger & wengertrayner, 2015, para. 4). curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 18 shared repertoire: collaborative decision making according to wenger (1998), shared repertoire consists of the signs, symbols, tools, and language used as resources that have meaning to members of the cop. the tools utilized in each telengage session include didactic presentations and case-based discussions. the cases presented in each telengage session include complex situations that lack an easily identified or defined solution. participants must make sense of these situations through perceptions that have been shaped by prior training, experiences, cultural norms, and other contextual factors. therefore, hearing both educator and parent perspectives on issues provides balance and the opportunity to learn from each other, creating a shared repertoire of meaning, enhancing the congruence of communication. additionally, even though all cases are presented anonymously and closely adhere to confidentiality and ferpa requirements, the issues addressed are widely applicable to educators and parents in districts across the state. many times, participants made statements such as, “i have had the same thing happen in my district!” these anonymous discussions lead to enhanced problem-solving as educators and parents apply their learning to their own contexts. recommendations made by both educator and family participants provide a balanced perspective as educator and family input is equally valued and as input is received from diverse contexts across the state. because cases presented in each echo® session are real cases happening in real-time, families benefit from the ability to “analyze and change their conditions” as they “develop the capacity to utilize their own skills and expertise to address issues and concerns” (stovall, 2016, p. 7). recommendations from all participants are recorded and provided to the school or district represented in each case. these recommendations are also recorded and posted on the telengage website for later reference, creating a set of tools and resources for participants to utilize when needed. the second tool utilized in all telengage sessions is short didactic presentations lasting approximately ten to fifteen minutes. didactic presentations have addressed a variety of issues, including trust in schools, covid information, online learning support, psychological needs of students, student engagement, and 21st-century learning skills. each presentation is also posted on the telengage website, and participants can use them as needed. participants have indicated that they have used powerpoint presentations during faculty/staff meetings at their schools, exemplifying a shared repertoire for continual learning. a symbol that has been utilized in each telengage session is that of a wagon wheel with a hub and spokes. the hub team represents the hub of the wheel, and all other participants represent the spoke sites. participants have become well acquainted with this language, and although they recognize which participants represent the hub team and which participants represent the spokes, these lines become blurred very quickly. participants on both the hub team and spoke sites represent a very diverse group of individuals interacting toward common goals. educator positions range from classroom teachers to building leaders to district leaders to state leaders. family participants vary in ethnicity, socio-economic status, educational level, location, and experience with schools. it is likely that family participants in telengage sessions would rarely have the opportunity for dialogue with this diverse group of educators, and it is likely that many would lack the navigational capital or efficacy for active engagement on their own. additionally, it is equally likely that these educators may be limited in the feedback they receive from such a diverse group of families. these conversations, and the resulting recordings from each telengage session, establish a repertoire of resources available to all participants, further cultivating the relational congruence of this cop. curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 19 implications findings from this study suggest that telengage has important implications for furthering the understanding of transformative equitable collaboration between families and schools. this understanding has been, historically, limited by deficit perspectives that educators often held of lower-income families (christiankis, 2011; ishimaru, 2013) and, sometimes, deficit perspectives that families may have of schools. these deficit perspectives have proliferated “fundamental, historical, cultural and social divides between families and schools” (christiankis, 2011, p. 189). additionally, this study has implications for the lack of educator preparedness to effectively interact with culturally diverse families (blackmore & hutchison, 2010). telengage has provided a platform for shared understandings and interactions so that schools and families can learn the perspectives of each other. these implications for practice are important because teachers who are underprepared to work with diverse populations often avoid interactions with families because of cultural differences that could, potentially, be difficult for them to address (bronson & dentith, 2014) and also because findings in the literature indicate that family-school relationships tend to be weaker in schools with high percentages of lower socio-economic families (frew et al., 2012). further, limited collaboration with lower-income families has, historically, been explained through the understanding that low-income families are less likely to engage in school-initiated activities because they feel that they may be inadequate or because they lack the resources for collaboration that most middle-class families possess (blackmore & hutchison, 2010). in contrast, telengage has provided a platform for equitable collaboration in a convenient, cost-free environment that allows educators and families to communicate and develop practices that support the needs of each other. while it is imperative to note that limitations for collaboration in telengage do exist (e.g., access to internet, access to a compatible technological device, and/or time of day/work conflicts), the virtual nature of telengage, as well as its “all teach, all learn” philosophy, helps to break down many of the historical barriers that remained evident in parental engagement efforts. the availability and flexibility of telengage, as a cop to meet family and school needs, may enhance understandings of sustainable, transformative, equitable collaboration. further research is recommended on the influence of social learning spaces to facilitate collaborative efforts. implications for theory include the utility of the cop model for explaining effective, transformative, equitable collaboration between families and schools. the findings of negotiated meaning, mutual engagement, and shared repertoire created through telengage sessions indicate the formation of an authentic cop. the application of cop to collaboration efforts may address some of the challenges related to sustainability of partnerships between families and schools (rispoli et al., 2018). additionally, embedding relational congruence into the cop framework provides possible insight into how cops may develop. further, this study illuminates the common critique of “abstract theorizing” often present in empirical work regarding social justice issues (stovall, 2016) by advancing understandings of how individuals can engage to enrich experiences of families that may frequently experience disinvestment, marginalization, and isolation in traditional partnership efforts (stovall, 2016). concerning research, this study expanded understandings of transformative equitable collaboration, and through the lens of relational convergence, explained the shared meaning that can emerge when families and schools experience congruence in communication. this study accentuates the importance of creating belonging and identity for all families within education systems. belonging and identity formation, in this study, enhanced family efficacy for collaboration. telengage facilitates opportunities for two-way communication between curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 20 families/schools, enabling relational congruence and the opportunity to re-imagine schools to represent students and their families. further, our findings suggest that through congruence in communication in telengage sessions, a mechanism for critical discourse emerged. as the covid-19 pandemic has forced many students into virtual learning from home, the implications of such research have never been more timely. in sum, shifting from parent involvement, when a school “leads with its mouth—identifying projects, needs, and goals and then telling parents how they can contribute,” telengage, instead, focuses on transformative equitable collaboration where both schools and families “lead with its ears—listening to what [others] think, dream, and worry about…not to serve clients but to gain partners” (ferlazzo, 2011, p. 12). these findings have important implications and support the preponderance of evidence that suggests when schools and families work together, students thrive. curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 21 references ackley, 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(2002). improving student behavior and school discipline with family and community involvement. education and urban society, 35(1), 4–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/001312402237212 sheridan, s., bovaird, j. a., glover, t. a., garbacz, s. a., & witte, a., l. (2012). randomized trial examining the effects of conjoint behavioral consultation and the mediating role of the parent-teacher relationship, psychology review, 41(1), 23-46. https://doi.org/10.1080/02796015.2012.12087374 shirley, d. (1997). community organizing for urban school reform. university of texas press. snyder, w. , wenger, e., & de sousa briggs, x. (2004). communities of practice in government: leveraging knowledge for performance. public manager, 32(4), 17-22. stefanski, a., valli, l., & jacobson, r. (2016). beyond involvement and engagement: the role of the family in school-community partnerships. school community journal, 26(2). stovall, d.o. (2016). born out of struggle: critical race theory, school creation, and the politics of interruption. university of new york press. weber, m. (1947). the theory of social and economic organization. oxford university press. wenger, e. (1998). communities of practice: learning as a social system. systems thinker, 9(5), 2-3. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 wenger, e. & wenger-trayner, b. (2015, june). introduction to communities of practice: a brief overview of the concept and its uses. wenger-trayner. https://www.wengertrayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/ yosso, t. j. (2005). whose culture has capital? a critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. race ethnicity and education, 8(1), 69-91. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006 https://doi.org/10.1177/0013124512447810 https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x12441244 https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.2014.917256 https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2005.11772296 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f0022466918757199 https://doi.org/10.3200/joer.100.5.267-275 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f001312402237212 https://doi.org/10.1080/02796015.2012.12087374 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 https://www.wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/ https://www.wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice/ https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006 curry et al.: telengage current issues in education, 24(1) 25 author notes katherine a. curry, ph.d. https://orcid.org/0000-00024977-538x oklahoma state university katherine.curry@okstate.edu ed harris oklahoma state university ed.harris@okstate.edu jentre olsen https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4678-5478 oklahoma state university jentre.olsen@okstate.edu rachel kim oklahoma state university rachel.kim@okstate.edu dominic egure oklahoma state university dominic.egure@okstate.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . https://orcid.org/0000-00024977-538x mailto:katherine.curry@okstate.edu mailto:ed.harris@okstate.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4678-5478 mailto:jentre.olsen@okstate.edu mailto:rachel.kim@okstate.edu mailto:dominic.egure@okstate.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ cie template volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x an analysis of the fidelity implementation policies of the what works clearinghouse jean stockard university of oregon and national institute for direct instruction citation stockard, j. (2010). an analysis of the fidelity implementation policies of the what works clearinghouse. current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract a large body of literature documents the central importance of fidelity of program implementation in creating an internally valid research design and considering such fidelity in judgments of research quality. the what works clearinghouse (wwc) provides web-based summary ratings of educational innovations and is the only rating group that is officially sponsored by the u.s. department of education. yet, correspondence with the organization indicates that it disregards information regarding implementation fidelity in its summary ratings, relying on “replicated findings” and suggesting that any fidelity issues that “may have arisen are averaged.” this paper demonstrates the fallacy in this logic. simulations show that the policy minimizes the positive impact of highly effective programs and the negative impact of highly ineffective programs. implications are discussed. keywords: implementation fidelity, what works clearinghouse, evidence screening, systematic reviews, program evaluation current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 about the author(s) author: jean stockard affiliation: university of oregon and national institute for direct instruction address: p.o. box 11248, eugene, oregon 97440 email: jstockard@nifdi.org biographical information: a sociologist by training, jean stockard is professor emerita at the university of oregon and director of research for the national institute for direct instruction. her recent publications span areas of sociology of education, family, youth, demography, and methodology. an analysis of the fidelity implementation policies of the what works clearinghouse analysis of fidelity implementation policies prompted by the long-standing concern with promoting students’ academic achievement, reviews and meta-analyses of studies of educational reforms are relatively common (e.g. adams and engelmann 1996, aft 1998, beck and mccaslin 1978, borman et al 2003, herman, et al 1999). in addition, several groups have web-based summaries of program effectiveness oriented toward educators and the public at large (e.g. social programs that work, http://www.evidencebasedprograms.org/; promising practices network, http://www.promisingpractices.net/; and the best evidence encyclopedia, http://www.bestevidence.org/). yet, only one of these, the what works clearinghouse (wwc), is endorsed by the u.s. department of education. the wwc was established in 2002 by the u.s. department of education’s institute of education sciences “to provide educators, policymakers, researchers and the public with a central and trusted source of scientific evidence of what works to improve student outcomes” (wwc statement of work, p. 1). given this official sponsorship by the federal government, any systematic errors with its conclusions should be the focus of serious concern. although the clearinghouse began reviewing research on various topic areas in education in 2003, summary ratings did not begin to appear until 2007. despite its relatively short period of existence, the wwc’s policies and procedures have received substantial scholarly and professional criticism. these criticisms have included concerns about 1) the scope of studies that are reviewed, both the inclusion of poor quality work as well as the exclusion of large numbers of relevant studies; 2) the quality of reviews, including reporting inaccurate and misleading summaries, using measures of outcomes that fail to match the studied curricula, and employing inappropriate statistical techniques; 3) a narrow research agenda including a bias toward small studies in artificial settings and of short duration; 4) ignoring contextual factors and issues of external validity; 5) failing to incorporate the cumulated scientific knowledge regarding research procedures in its conduct of http://www.evidencebasedprograms.org/ http://www.promisingpractices.net/ current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 reviews; 6) employing analysis techniques that result in minimizing the actual size of effects; 7) not including rigorous and transparent quality control measures such as peer review, comparisons with previous summaries, and reliability checks of ratings; and 8) the suppression of criticism, thus violating basic norms regarding the open quality of scientific inquiry (e.g. briggs 2008, chatterji 2005, 2008, confrey 2006, mcarthur 2008, schoenfeld 2006, slavin 2008, stockard 2008). much of the substance of these critiques focuses on the wwc’s strong preference for strongly controlled randomized experiments. for instance, in an extensive discussion of the wwc’s procedures, robert slavin (2008) cites meta-analytic studies showing that quasi-experimental designs with well matched experimental and control groups provide results very similar to randomized experiments. in addition, slavin suggests that the focus on highly controlled, randomized designs often results in highlighting short-term studies with small samples. he notes that this focus can potentially introduce bias and have low external validity. jeffrey confrey (2006) compares the wwc’s procedures to those used by the national research council’s report on evaluating curricular effectiveness (oece). like slavin, confrey criticizes the overreliance on randomized studies, detailing the way in which a sole focus on randomized designs ignores other issues in the quality of studies such as the nature of outcome measures, insights that are obtained through multiple methods of analysis, and issues regarding both internal and external validity. confrey specifically criticized the way in which the wwc deals with the fidelity of implementation: in sum, if the intervention program is sufficiently described, and there is no evidence in the research report that particular kinds of disruptions occurred, the program is given a rating of “fully meets the criteria” for implementation fidelity. this process seems to underestimate dramatically the challenges associated with implementation. analysis of fidelity implementation policies based on the studies we reviewed for oece, the variation within an implementation of a curriculum is substantial… (confrey, 2006, p. 206). this paper focuses on a specific aspect of the clearinghouse’s procedures for dealing with the fidelity of treatment interventions. this aspect has not received public scrutiny, but has the potential of resulting in misleading recommendations and conclusions. below i expand on confrey’s statement, by discussing the well-established importance of treatment fidelity in research and describing the wwc’s policies for addressing fidelity in their reviews. i then move to a description of the problems that result from the implementation of the wwc’s policy: it results in summary ratings that minimize the positive impact of effective programs as well as the negative impacts of poor programs. quite simply, it makes good programs look worse and poor programs look better than they actually are. the potential impacts are illustrated with examples using effect sizes and regression techniques. a concluding section discusses the potentially serious implications of the policy for educators, families, and students, as well as the public at large, and provides suggestions for change. treatment fidelity and the wwc policy as summarized by o’donnell (2008, pp. 33-34), “fidelity of implementation (emphasis in original) is traditionally defined as the determination of how well an intervention is implemented in comparison with the original program design.” the central importance of treatment fidelity to ensuring internal validity of an experiment has long been a standard element of strong research. poor implementation of an intervention is a major threat to the internal validity of any type of research design, and numerous scholars call for paying close attention to fidelity of implementation in any type of review of research results (e.g. crowley and hauser 2007, desimone 2002, emshoff et al 1987, gersten et al 2005, haynes 1998, mcmillan 2007, o’donnell 2008, ross 2007). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 somewhat surprisingly, the wwc website (as of october 7, 2009) pays relatively little attention to fidelity of implementation. a search of the website (using their search engine and the term “fidelity”) revealed 26 reports on individual curricula that included information on fidelity within a given study. in addition, a document directed toward consumers and titled, identifying and implementing educational practices supported by rigorous evidence: a user-friendly guide (2003), listed fidelity as one of the “important factors to consider when implementing an evidence-based intervention in your schools or classrooms.” the document notes that “whether an evidence-based intervention will have a positive effect in your schools or classrooms may depend critically on your adhering closely to the details of its implementation” (http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/references/idocviewer/doc.aspx?docid=14&tocid=7). i was not able to find any documentation on the website regarding how the fidelity of implementation affects the rating that a study may receive and nothing to indicate that confrey’s description, quoted above, has altered. it was only through personal communications with the wwc that i was able to obtain additional details regarding the way in which they handle issues of fidelity. in a letter written to mathematica, the organization that now holds the contract for wwc, in june of 2008, i mentioned the issue of treatment fidelity in the context of more general concerns with recognizing issues of both internal and external validity in their review procedures, echoing the criticisms cited above. the paragraph in which these issues were raised is reproduced below: finally, the range of work considered has been limited by downgrading findings from studies that do not incorporate strict random assignment. while we all know that random assignment is the “gold standard” for experimental work, the wwc’s overreliance on this criterion ignores the realities of how school organizations work. with this strict attention to random assignment, other aspects of research designs that are analysis of fidelity implementation policies an even greater threat to internal validity can be ignored. the most important of these is no doubt ensuring the fidelity of treatment implementation, making sure that a program is implemented as the developers designed it. a response from a high-level wwc official was received in september of 2008: the letter notes that the wwc review process may downplay implementation fidelity. definitions of implementation fidelity vary and many studies include little information to gauge fidelity, especially information about whether an intervention has been implemented within normal operating regimes of districts, schools, and teachers, not under specialized laboratory conditions. moreover, there is no standard metric with which to rate and assess fidelity across studies that assures comparability. the wwc’s approach emphasizes the importance of replicated findings, which ensures that any one study in which fidelity issues may have arisen are averaged with findings from other studies. intervention reports include an “extent of evidence” classification that allows practitioners to place more weight if they choose on interventions for which the extent of evidence is large, meaning the results are drawn from multiple studies and a large number of classrooms and students. note that this response essentially confirms the description provided by confrey – variations in implementation fidelity are simply ignored with an assumption that any bias will “balance out.” problems with the wwc policy there are numerous logical and methodological problems with the policy outlined by the wwc. the sections below address these issues beginning with the claims regarding defining and measuring fidelity and then moving to empirical assessments of the claim that “replicated findings” provide a way to deal with any fidelity issues. defining and measuring fidelity current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 the first paragraph quoted above makes three general points regarding the definition and measurement of fidelity. first, it suggests that the wwc review process downplays the importance of fidelity because definitions of fidelity vary. yet, as noted above, the definition of fidelity of implementation is well-grounded and highly developed within the field. in her extensive discussion of the area, o’donnell (2008) cites at least 15 sources in the mainstream education literature that converge on the standard interpretation of the term. she also notes that even more studies discuss the term in areas outside of education. contrary to the wwc’s claim, the notion of fidelity of implementation as program integrity, the implementation of a program as it was intended, is long established and well accepted. second, the wwc letter suggests that “many studies include little information to gauge fidelity.” the number of reports on the wwc website that include mentions of fidelity indicates that, in fact, many of them have sufficient information to gauge the extent of fidelity of implementation. 1 more important, however, is the point that a study’s failure to include such information should be taken as a reason to question its conclusions (see crowley and hauser 2007, emshoff et al 1987, gersten et al, 2005, haynes 1998, mcmillan 2007, ross 2007). interestingly, two published criticisms of wwc decisions specifically address the wwc’s decision to give high ratings to studies with serious fidelity issues (slavin 2008, confrey 2006, and see discussion in briggs 2008, p. 18). third, the wwc letter notes that “there is no standard metric with which to rate and assess fidelity across studies that assures comparability.” this statement can be logically challenged. fidelity, by definition, is measured within a program, for the question is the extent to which an implementation adheres to the developer’s guidelines. logically, such comparisons would be within 1 because the wwc downplays the importance of fidelity of implementation, the number of studies that actually deal with this issue and were reviewed by the clearinghouse may well be larger than the number found through the web search. analysis of fidelity implementation policies a program. most well developed programs have guidelines for implementation and ways to assess the degree to which adopters meet those guidelines. comparisons across programs could be easily made, such as using dummy variables to represent whether or not a program met the developer’s standards (see cook 2002, p. 186). a measure of fidelity must, by definition, be program specific, but an indicator of the extent to which fidelity occurred can easily be universal. can fidelity problems “average out?” the second paragraph of the wwc’s response quoted above claims that by consulting numerous reports “any one study in which fidelity issues may have arisen are averaged with findings from other studies.” in other words, any problems with fidelity will simply “wash out,” sometimes portraying a program as better than it really is and sometimes portraying it as worse. this assumption probably, however, only applies to programs that have little or no effect, that is, to programs in which students achieve, on average, only as well as (not better than or worse than) those in a control group. it is likely however, that even if there were no differences in central tendency (the means), poor fidelity would result in a larger variance. when programs are implemented in different ways, greater variability should occur. 2 more generally, however, the assumption that the effect of fidelity problems will be random is seriously flawed. for both exemplary programs and for programs that are ineffective, poor implementation of a program would, very likely, produce results that are systematically biased. thus, the wwc’s policy has very serious consequences for consumers, minimizing the positive impact of good programs as well as the negative impact of poor programs (see also engelmann 2008). basic to our analysis is the assumption of “regression toward the mean,” the well-established statistical phenomenon where those with high scores, or low scores, on a measure will tend to have 2 a recent article by zvoch and associates (2007) included measures of fidelity in the analysis of multisite implementation of a childhood literacy program and found greater variability among the sites with low fidelity of implementation than among those with higher fidelity. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 scores that are closer to the mean (lower for those who are high and higher for those who are low) at later testing periods. simply through regression toward the mean we would expect those who score lower than a mean at pretest to score higher (and closer to the mean) at posttest. this concept can apply to programs as well as individuals. by chance, programs that typically do well will, on average, do less well (rather than even better) over time. similarly, programs that do not perform well will, on average, do somewhat better (rather than worse) over time. 3 these trends would be expected to be even stronger with poor implementation. a good program, when implemented poorly, would result in students doing less well than they would normally do. similarly, a program that typically results in poor achievement would, when implemented with less fidelity, result in students doing better than they normally would with the program. with poor implementation, the good programs would be less good and bad programs would be less bad. in other words, poor fidelity would result in biased results – and the nature of this bias is different for effective programs than for less effective programs. the sections below illustrate the extent of this problem using two different methods: calculations of effect sizes and calculations of regression coefficients. the impact of poor fidelity on effect sizes. tables 1 and 2 summarize the possible implications of inadequate fidelity of implementation for two different hypothetical curricular programs: one that is more effective than a control program (table 1) and one that is less effective than a control (table 2). effect sizes (the difference between the mean scores of experimental and control groups divided by the common standard deviation) are used as the metric of comparison. 4 3 in lay person’s terms, this phenomenon corresponds to common-day sayings such as, “when things are bad, the only way to go is up;” and “those on top are poised for a fall.” 4 effect sizes are measures commonly used to estimate the strength of the relationship between two variables. unlike tests of statistical significance, they are not affected by sample size and thus provide estimates that can be compared from one study to another. they are often used in meta-analyses and other quantitative summaries of research literature. this paper uses cohen’s d, a widely used measure (cohen 1992). analysis of fidelity implementation policies for sake of illustration, it is assumed that the scores involved are normal curve equivalent (nce) scores with, for the control group, a consistent mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 21. consider first the data in table 1 regarding an exemplary program. the first column of panels a and b of table 1 gives four possible mean values of the experimental group that we will assume are the “true” values and the second column gives the values of cohen’s d that result when comparing these experimental means with those of the control group. it can be seen that the d values vary from .24, when the experimental mean is 55, to .95, when the experimental mean is 70. the higher values in this column are, in fact, similar to those often obtained in studies of highly effective programs, especially when they are implemented with fidelity (see adams and engelmann 1996). the lower values correspond to the level generally considered the point of educationally significant (d = .25, see fashola and slavin 1997). the other columns in part a of table 1 examine the likely result if the effective program is implemented with less than optimal fidelity, but the impact is simply the “random” effects that the wwc assumes will occur. in these calculations, as implied by the wwc assumption, the means of the experimental group do not change. however, the standard deviation is assumed to change, for with lower levels of fidelity, even if the means stay constant, greater variability would be expected. this is at the basis of the wwc notion of “averaging out.” three different table 1 effect sizes of comparisons with an effective program with different levels of fidelity a. random influences of fidelity problems (the wwc assumption) alternative d % change from "true" d m exp. gp. "true" d sd = 25 sd = 30 sd = 35 sd = 25 sd = 30 sd = 35 55 0.24 0.22 0.20 0.18 -10% -18% -26% 60 0.47 0.43 0.39 0.36 -8% -17% -24% 65 0.71 0.65 0.59 0.54 -8% -17% -25% 70 0.95 0.87 0.78 0.71 -9% -18% -25% current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 b. systematic influences of fidelity problems with smaller experimental means, but constant standard deviation effect sizes % ch. from "true" d m exp. gp. “true” d m 5 pts less m 10 pts less m 5 pts less m 10 pts less 55 0.24 0.00 -0.24 -100% -200% 60 0.47 0.24 0.00 -49% -100% 65 0.71 0.47 0.24 -34% -66% 70 0.95 0.71 0.47 -25% -51% c. systematic influences of fidelity problems with smaller experimental means and varying standard deviations effect size % change from "true" d m 5 pts. less m 10 pts less m 5 pts. less m 10 pts less m exp. gp. sd=25 sd=30 sd=25 sd=30 sd=25 sd=30 sd=25 sd=30 55 0.00 0.00 -0.22 -0.20 -100% -100% -190% -182% 60 0.22 0.20 0.00 0.00 -54% -58% -100% -100% 65 0.43 0.39 0.22 0.20 -39% -45% -69% -72% 70 0.65 0.59 0.43 0.39 -31% -38% -54% -59% note: if the impact of fidelity implementation is random (panel a), it is assumed that this affects only the standard deviation of the experimental group and not the mean. if the impact of fidelity implementation is systematic (panels b and c), both the mean and the standard deviation can be affected. cohen's d is calculated by subtracting the mean of the experimental group from the mean of the control group and dividing by the common standard deviation. the control group is always assumed to have a mean of 50 and a standard deviation of 21.06, the mean and standard deviation of the experimental group varies as shown in the table. for the "true" condition, with perfect fidelity, both the experimental group and the control group are assumed to have the s.d. of 21.06, reflecting the definition of normal curve equivalent scores. the common standard deviation is calculated as the average of control and experimental group s.d. for each case, assuming that the two groups are of equal size. values of the standard deviation are given, and it can be seen that in all situations the value of the effect size becomes lower than the “true” value. the final columns in panel a report the percentage change from the “true” d value, with results ranging from eight to 26 percent. (percentages were calculated by comparing the “true” values in the second column with the other values of d going across each row and using the “true” value as the base of the percent.) panel b and panel c of table 1 presents results that are more likely to occur when an effective program is implemented with less than adequate fidelity. in such a situation, it would be analysis of fidelity implementation policies logical to expect that performance would be lower – that the mean value would decline. as with panel a, the first two columns of panel b give the “true” experimental mean and effect size for comparison purposes. the next two columns present the effect sizes that would occur if the average value of the experimental group declined by either 5 points (column 3) or by 10 points (column 4), but assuming no change in the standard deviation. 5 again, all of the effect sizes are smaller, but the percentage change from the “true value” is much larger than in panel a, ranging from 25 to 200 percent. finally, the calculations in panel c assume that lower fidelity with an effective program has two effects: the average score is lower than it would otherwise be and the standard deviation is larger, as in panel a. again, of course, the effect sizes are substantially lower and the declines are marked. now consider the possible implications of poor fidelity of implementation of a program that is, in reality, ineffective and, in fact, produces poorer results than the control group. these results are shown in table 2. as with table 1, the results with the “true” values are shown in the first two columns of panels a and b. it can be seen that the “true” effect sizes vary from -.24 to -.95. the data in panel a illustrate what would happen if the fidelity problems produced only random changes: the means would stay the same, but the standard deviations would become larger. it can be seen that, in all cases, the absolute values of the effect sizes become smaller – that is, less negative. table 2 effect sizes of comparisons with an ineffective program with different levels of fidelity a. random influences of fidelity problems (the wwc assumption) alternative d % change from "true" d m exp. gp. "true" d sd = 25 sd = 30 sd = 35 sd = 25 sd = 30 sd = 35 45 -0.24 -0.22 -0.20 -0.18 -10% -18% -26% 40 -0.47 -0.43 -0.39 -0.36 -8% -17% -24% 5 these differences in the means are probably reasonable estimates. a recent analysis (stockard, forthcoming) compared reading achievement nce scores between a control group and two implementations of a highly effective program – one with high fidelity and one with lower fidelity. the differences in nce scores between the two experimental groups ranged between 5 and 17 nce points depending on the measure and time during the implementation. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 35 -0.71 -0.65 -0.59 -0.54 -8% -17% -25% 30 -0.95 -0.87 -0.78 -0.71 -9% -18% -25% b. systematic influences of fidelity problems with larger experimental means, but constant standard deviations effect sizes % change from "true" d increased mean increased mean m exp. gp. "true" d 5 pts. 10 pts 5 pts. 10 pts 45 -0.24 0.00 0.24 -100% -200% 40 -0.47 -0.24 0.00 -49% -100% 35 -0.71 -0.47 -0.24 -34% -66% 30 -0.95 -0.71 -0.47 -25% -51% c. systematic influences of fidelity problems with larger experimental means and varying standard deviations effect size % change from "true" d m 5 pts higher m 10 pts higher m 5 pts higher m 10 pts higher m exp. gp. sd=18 sd=15 sd=18 sd=15 sd=18 sd=15 sd=18 sd=15 45 0.00 0.00 0.26 0.28 -100% -100% -207% -216% 40 -0.26 -0.28 0.00 0.00 -46% -41% -100% -100% 35 -0.51 -0.55 -0.26 -0.28 -28% -22% -64% -61% 30 -0.77 -0.83 -0.51 -0.55 -19% -12% -46% -42% note: if the impact of fidelity implementation is random (panel a), it is assumed that this affects only the common standard deviation and not the mean. if the impact of fidelity implementation is systematic (panels b and c), both the mean and the standard deviation can be affected. cohen's d is calculated by subtracting the mean of the experimental group from the mean of the control group and dividing by the common standard deviation. the "true" calculations assume that the standard deviation for both groups is 21.06, the values of the experimental mean and standard deviation vary as shown in each of the rows of the table. the common standard deviation is calculated as the average of the experimental and control group s.d., assuming that the groups are of equal size. the results in panels b and c illustrate the results if the impact of poor fidelity is systematic. with programs that are ineffective, it would be expected that poor implementation would lead to higher average scores (through regression to the mean) and smaller standard deviations. the smaller standard deviations result from having values that are “less ineffective.” as can be seen in table 2, the result is that the effect sizes are less negative. that is, the extent to which tahe programs are ineffective, as shown by the “true” values of d, is disguised. the impact of poor fidelity on regression coefficients. the same substantive results occur if one addresses this issue using regression models. in other words, one reaches the same analysis of fidelity implementation policies conclusion when approaching this issue with the language of regression analysis rather than the language associated with difference of means and effect sizes. assume that there are two groups, an experimental and a control group and that the two groups are of equal size. by definition, the variance of this grouping variable, which we will term x, is var (x) = p (1-p) = .5 (1 .5) = .25 (1). equation (1) simply reflects the computational formula for the variance in a binomial distribution as equal to the product of the two proportions (p * q), where q = 1 – p and where, with groups of equal size, p = .5. now suppose that a program is implemented with complete fidelity. in other words, there is no error at all in the implementation. for sake of example, we will assume that the “true” covariance between the treatment (x) and the outcome (y) (cov (xy)) is 4. 6 the regression coefficient (byx) is defined as the covariance of the treatment and outcome (cov (xy)) divided by the variance of the predictor, or treatment, variable. with the values defined here, b*yx = cov (xy) / var (x) = 4 / .25 = 16 (2), where b* refers to the “true” value of the regression coefficient. in other words, when the program is implemented with complete fidelity the regression coefficient (byx), which is defined as the difference between the experimental and control group (the two values of x), is 16 points. now suppose that the program is implemented with less than complete fidelity. in regression terminology, poorer fidelity results in lower reliability of the experimental treatment. this simply means that the differences that are observed between the experimental and control group do not reflect the “true” differences that exist. observed differences reflect the true differences (var(x)) 6 the choice of “4” is arbitrary. the important point for the example is that it is the “true” value, or the covariance that occurs with perfect fidelity of implementation. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 as well as error (termed var(e), for variance of the error term). in other words, under poor implementation, it is harder to tell the “real” or “true” differences between the two groups, and the observed variance of this grouping variable reflects both true differences and error. as a result, when a program is implemented with less than complete fidelity, the estimates of the regression coefficient are altered: byx = cov (xy) / [var(x) + var(e)] (3). (note that the asterisk has been omitted from the b coefficient to indicate that it is not the “true” value.) the covariance is unchanged, but the estimate of the variance of the independent variable is increased because it now includes the error resulting from less than perfect implementation (var(x) + var (e)). the result is simple. with lower reliability (higher error) the denominator of equation 3 becomes larger and the absolute value of b decreases. in other words, the error introduced through poor implementation obscures the “true” difference between the experimental and control group and increases the estimated variance of the independent variable (by var (e)). this change in the estimate of variance alters the regression coefficient. in a regression framework, varying levels of fidelity of implementation are usually illustrated through the use of reliability coefficients, a standard method of estimating measurement error. by definition, reliability coefficients vary from 1.0, indicating no error in measurement and thus perfect implementation, to 0.0, indicating simple random implementation procedures. the computational formula for the reliability coefficient, rii, is rii = var (x) / [var(x) + var (e)] (4). thus, in a situation of error-free implementation, when the error variance equals zero, rii = var (x) / [var(x) + 0] = var(x)/var(x) = 1.0 (5). however, as implementation fidelity declines and the error variance increases, the denominator of equation 4 rises and the reliability coefficient declines. analysis of fidelity implementation policies from rearranging equation (4), we can estimate the sum of the variance of x and the error variance as the variance of x divided by the reliability coefficient: var(x) + var(e) = var(x) / rii (6). substituting in equation (3), we can then estimate the regression coefficient, byx, as byx = cov (xy) / [var(x)/rii] = [rii * cov(xy)]/ [var (x)] (7). given that cov (xy) /var (x) is the “true” value of the regression coefficient (b*yx), the biased estimate of byx that results from decreasing reliability can be written simply as byx = (rii )( b*yx) (8), where b*yx is the “true” value of byx and rii is the reliability coefficient. in other words, the estimated value of the regression coefficient, or the difference between the experimental and control group, is linearly related to the reliability coefficient. if there is perfect reliability (perfect implementation or no error), the estimated coefficient equals the true coefficient (rii = 1.0 and b*yx = byx). however, as reliability declines the absolute value of the estimated coefficient becomes lower than the true coefficient. table 3 summarizes this pattern of results for programs with positive effects and programs with negative effects. three different covariance values are included, with absolute values ranging from 2.0 to 4.0 (across columns two through seven). the first column on the left lists different levels of reliability, from a coefficient of 1.0, indicating perfect fidelity, to .30, indicating very low reliability and low fidelity. values within the table are the regression coefficients, byx, which were computed using equation 8, for each level of reliability. as would be expected, the absolute value of the estimate of b declines linearly with decreasing reliability levels. most importantly, as with the results with effect sizes, both the positive impact of effective programs and the negative impact of ineffective programs are obscured. with effective programs, the positive impact is smaller with less reliability (lower fidelity), as indicated by current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 table 3 regression coefficients for varying levels of association and varying levels of fidelity covariance (x,y) effective programs covariance (x,y) ineffective programs reliability 4 3 2 -4 -3 -2 1.0 16.0 12.0 8.0 -16.0 -12.0 -8.0 0.9 14.4 10.8 7.2 -14.4 -10.8 -7.2 0.8 12.8 9.6 6.4 -12.8 -9.6 -6.4 0.7 11.2 8.4 5.6 -11.2 -8.4 -5.6 0.6 9.6 7.2 4.8 -9.6 -7.2 -4.8 0.5 8.0 6.0 4.0 -8.0 -6.0 -4.0 0.4 6.4 4.8 3.2 -6.4 -4.8 -3.2 0.3 4.8 3.6 2.4 -4.8 -3.6 -2.4 note: the values in the cells represent the regression coefficient (b) for each level of reliability and for different values of the covariance, calculated using equation 8 in the text. lower reliability coefficients correspond to lower levels of fidelity of treatment (larger error variances). smaller coefficients. with ineffective programs, the negative impact is also smaller with poor implementation fidelity. thus, with lower fidelity the “true” difference of both effective and ineffective programs is obscured. discussion the results presented above seem to refute the assumption that guides the wwc’s approach to considering the fidelity of implementation in its deliberations and summary ratings. even if the results of poor fidelity of implementation were random, the efficacy of both good and poor programs would be misrepresented. if, as is more likely, the results of poor implementation are not random, the impact would be even greater. good programs appear less effective and poor programs appear better than they actually are. the logic and calculations presented in this paper are simple, but the implications are potentially serious. even though the chance of a false negative (concluding that a good program is analysis of fidelity implementation policies harmful) or false positive (concluding that a harmful program is good) is not high, 7 the procedures that the wwc has adopted would appear to almost definitely promote inaccurate conclusions. their ratings would automatically minimize the extent to which individual programs can either help or hurt students. in addition, the procedures lead to false impressions regarding the extent to which educational programs have the potential to change achievement patterns by minimizing accurate information about the actual range of change when programs are well implemented. the wwc policy may result in especially misleading results regarding effective programs, which are, of course, of most interest to policy makers, educators, and families. effective programs may be more difficult to implement precisely because they address numerous factors that affect student performance. such models are typically “extensive-requirements” reform programs, rather than “minimal-requirements” programs. the greater complexity and intricacy of the models, while resulting in substantially stronger results, also present greater challenges to full implementation and high fidelity (engelmann and engelmann 2004). it would not be unreasonable to expect that issues with fidelity could affect a higher proportion of such extensive requirements models than those that were simpler. the impact of the wwc policy should also be considered in light of the very few studies that the wwc has determined meet their standards of evidence. while their reviews of individual curricula generally indicate that numerous studies, often dozens, have been examined, only a handful, usually less than three for any particular program, are deemed to have met the set criteria for inclusion. as noted earlier, the standards and their application have received an extraordinary amount of criticism. yet, the simple fact that so few studies are actually reviewed to develop the summary ratings makes the importance of considering fidelity of implementation even more crucial. 7 with the regression simulation, the calculated values of b never cross zero, but come increasingly close to this point as the error variance approaches infinity. this result reflects the constant covariance used in the analysis. with the effect size simulations, in which the difference of means varies, some of the simulations result in changing signs from positive to negative or negative to positive. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 given the very small number of studies on which the summaries are based, it is extremely important that the possibility of systematic bias be removed. it could be relatively easy to add such elements to a review procedure. as noted earlier, simple rating scales could indicate the extent to which study reports note fidelity of implementation. those with low fidelity to a given model could be discounted or omitted from analyses. more generally, this paper adds to the already large body of critiques of the procedures of the wwc. the literature is replete with well-developed guidelines for reviewing literature and developing systems of consolidating findings in ways that pay careful attention to issues of both internal and external validity – including issues of fidelity. the results of the analysis above suggest that the wwc would benefit from consulting this literature closely. if the clearinghouse were simply a project of a lone faculty member or small nonprofit with an obscure website the issues would be far less serious. however, given the extensive funding received by the clearinghouse (in excess of $50 million at last report) as well as the endorsement of the federal department of education, one could suggest that students, families, the educational community, and the general public deserve more. analysis of fidelity implementation policies references adams, g. l. & engelmann, s. 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(2008). the what works clearinghouse beginning reading reports and rating of reading mastery: an evaluation and comment. technical report # 2008-4. eugene, http://www.zigsite.com/pdfs/machinationswwc%28v4%29.pdf analysis of fidelity implementation policies oregon: national institute for direct instruction. stockard, j. (forthcoming). direct instruction and first grade reading achievement: the role of technical support and time of implementation. journal of direct instruction. zvoch, k., letourneau, l.e., & parker, r.p. (2007). a multilevel multisite outcomes-by implementation evaluation of an early childhood literacy model. american journal of evaluation, 28, 132-150. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word the 65% instructional expenditure ratio and student achievement.docx volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x the 65% instructional expenditure ratio and student achievement: does money matter? timothy b. jones sam houston state university john r. slate sam houston state university citation jones, t.b. & slate j.r. (2010). the 65% instructional expenditure ratio and student achievement: does money matter? current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract in this study, the researchers examined the extent to which texas public school districts’ compliance with the 65% instructional expenditures ratio was related to student academic success on the texas assessment of knowledge & skills tests. separated into three groups (i.e., 65% instructional expenditures and higher, 60 to 65% instructional expenditures, and less than 60% instructional expenditures), statistically significant differences were yielded among these groups in the taks reading, math, social studies, science, and writing measures. school districts that spent less than 60% of their monies on instructional expenditures had the lowest percent passing rates in all five taks tests. effect sizes ranged from small to large and were consistent across ethnic groups. implications of these findings and suggestions for further research are discussed. keywords: instructional expenditures, student performance, statewide assessments c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 2 about the author(s) author: timothy b. jones affiliation: sam houston university email: tbj004@shsu.edu biographical information: timothy b. jones is an associate professor and director of the educational research center and doctoral studies in educational leadership at sam houston state university. dr. jones received his ed.d. in educational leadership from stephen f. austin state university. he teaches doctoral level ethics, policy, finance and law. his research interests focus on school finance policy, public school law and school improvement. author: john r. slate affiliation: sam houston university email: jrs051@shsu.edu biographical information: john r. slate received his ph.d. in psychology from the university of tennessee, knoxville. he teaches doctoral level statistics, research design, and academic writing courses in the department of educational leadership and counseling at sam houston state university. his research interests lie in the use of state and national educational databases for school improvement. the 65% instructional expenditure ratio the 65% instructional expenditure ratio and student achievement: does money matter? columnist and political commentator george will (2005a, 2005b), in his article, one man’s way to better schools, and then in a policy statement from an organization called first class education, gave a wide national audience to first class education, an organization founded by overstock.com president and ceo patrick m. byrne. the organization called for all state governments in the united states, by 2008, to spend at least 65% of school district funds on instructional costs as defined by the national center for education statistics (2003). in their policy statement, first class education (2005) suggested three critical objectives that would be met with the implementation of the 65 percent rule: (a) an increase in the amount of money spent in the classroom without increasing taxes; (b) a reduction in the amount of money spent on non-classroom expenditures such as athletics, teacher training and curriculum, student support such as nurses and counseling, instructional support such as libraries and librarians, food service, student transportation and administration; and hence, (c) provide school children with a first class education indicated by higher student performance. other organizations have also joined the 65 percent call. for example, one organization, americans for prosperity, cited “texas polling data” that shows “overwhelming support” in texas for the measure (americans for prosperity, 2005). the no child left behind act (nclb, 2001) mandated that schools evaluate not only the academic performance of all students but, more importantly, the academic performance of students by ethnic membership as well as by variables such as economic status and at-risk status. the 65% instructional expenditures ratio mandate should be evaluated along the same lines. that is, the extent to which this mandate affects the academic performance of students similarly across ethnic membership is unknown and merits attention. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 4 the literature six studies were identified as being particularly germane to this study. roper (1996) examined the relationship between expenditures and student performance using stanford achievement test scores of 127 alabama public school districts using fourth, seventh, and tenth grade students. when the test scores of the homogeneous groups were analyzed, the instructional support expenditures were not related with student academic achievement. roper (1996) stated that the relationship between expenditures and achievement was seemingly curvilinear, rather than a typically linear relationship. that is, too little expenditures and too much expenditures were not related positively with student achievement, compared with expenditures in the middle of the range. turner (1999) conducted a study in which he examined the relationship between fifth grade state reading scores and per pupil expenditure. data were collected and analyzed from a sample of 40 public schools in georgia for the 1997-98 school year. factors such as percentage of students receiving free and reduced lunch, percentage of total budget used for salaries and benefits, district enrollment, percentage of teachers with a master's degree or higher, and average years of teacher experience were the specific variables analyzed. only a moderate relationship was demonstrated between per pupil expenditure and fifth grade state reading scores. a stronger relationship was observed between the percentage of students receiving free and reduced lunch and fifth grade reading scores. a relatively low relationship was identified between the percentage of total budget used for salaries and benefits and fifth grade reading scores in georgia. turner (1999) also noted an implication from his study was that increasing school spending did not necessarily increase student achievement, and that targeting specific programs might lead to more substantial academic gains than simply increasing overall school spending. the 65% instructional expenditure ratio in a recent study, lance et al. (2003) gathered data on hours of operation, staff and activities, the media collection, educational technology, total library expenditures, and several types of library usage in 657 illinois school libraries. they demonstrated the presence of statistically significant relationships between various dimensions of school libraries and appropriate indicators of academic achievement. walters, in a study published in 2005, sought to determine the efficient allocation of school district financial resources for the delivery of educational services as related to performance outcomes in arkansas public schools. walters (2005) documented that high academic achieving school districts, compared to other academic achievement levels, had the highest support service cost per student for instruction, the lowest administrative cost per student, the highest percent of net current expenditure for instruction, the lowest transportation cost per student, and the lowest expenditure per pupil cost. walters (2005) further demonstrated that high academic achieving school districts had the lowest free and reduced lunch rate, the greatest number of students in average daily membership, and the highest percent of white students, when compared to the other achievement levels. these findings were consistent with numerous other researchers who have documented that a variety of factors contribute to high student performance (lance, rodney, & hamilton-pennell, 2005; roper, 1996; turner, 1999; walters, 2005). the research literature on the topic surrounding the newly coined phrase “65 percent rule” is rather limited (jones, bingham, & jackson, 2007). in november 2005, standard and poor’s disclosed their findings and conclusions on various 65% policies in their study the issues and implications of the “65 percent solution.” in their study, data were examined from the 9 states (i.e., minnesota, ohio, louisiana, texas, kentucky, florida, kansas, arizona, and colorado) that have implemented policy mandates of some type using the 65 percent rule. utilized in this study were state testing data for each individual state. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 6 using a linear regression analysis, the standard and poor’s study revealed the absence of a positive correlation between instructional spending allocations and student performance. in fact, documented in the study was “that there is no minimum instructional spending allocation that necessarily produces higher student achievement” (standard and poor’s, 2005, p. 4). they ultimately concluded, “there is a lack of empirical evidence for mandating a uniform percentage spending threshold across all districts to raise student achievement” (p. 4). in 2006, standard and poor’s conducted a follow-up addendum to their original study the following year by adding arkansas to the list of schools and had similar findings (standard & poor’s, 2006). finally, jones et al. (2007) reported, in a study of more than 1000 school districts in texas, that no relationship was present between school district instructional expenditure ratios and student academic performance on the state-mandated achievement measure. in addition, jones and colleagues (2007) explored whether a relationship was also present between instructional expenditure ratios and student performance on the scholastic assessment test (sat). similar to their results on the state-mandated achievement measure, jones et al. identified the lack of a relationship between school instructional expenditure ratios and the sat. additionally, jones et al. (2007) stated that “using the 65 percent rule standard or mandate as a dependent variable for prescribing improved student performance negated all other dynamics at play in successful school district operations” (p. 229). they concluded that, “such a uniform standard trivializes the complex nature of the public educational systems across the united states and the task of educating individual children with individual needs” (p. 229). purpose of the study our purposes in conducting this study were twofold: (a) to determine the extent to which student academic achievement might differ as a function of school district instructional the 65% instructional expenditure ratio expenditure ratios and (b) the extent to which findings would be consistent across ethnic membership. with the state mandate that instructional expenditure ratios be 65% or higher, an analysis of its relationship with student performance is clearly warranted. research questions the following research questions were addressed in this study: (a) what is the difference in math percent passing rates as a function of instructional expenditure ratios?; (b) what is the difference in reading percent passing rates as a function of instructional expenditure ratios?; (c) what is the difference in science percent passing rates as a function of instructional expenditure ratios?; (d) what is the difference in social studies percent passing rates as a function of instructional expenditure ratios?; (e) what is the difference in writing percent passing rates as a function of instructional expenditure ratios?; and (f) to what extent are differences consistent in student academic achievement among ethnic groups (i.e., white, hispanic, african american)? method participants data from all texas public school districts for the most recent school year, 20072008, were utilized in this study. the research questions previously mentioned were addressed for all students and then separately by ethnic membership. a total of 943 public school districts had passing rates on the five taks academic measures that were utilized in this study. for african american students, a total of 363 school districts provided analyzable data whereas for hispanic students, a total of 653 public school districts had passing rates available for analysis. the reason for the different sample sizes reflects the manner in which texas reports educational data. when a small number of students is present at a school, scores are not reported to ensure student anonymity and confidentiality of their scores. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 8 instrumentation archival data were acquired on all texas public school districts for the 2007-2008 school year. through accessing and downloading files from the texas education agency (tea) academic excellence indicator system (aeis), data that were reported by each public school district were gathered. specifically, data on the instructional expenditure ratio, overall student performance on each taks measure, and student performance by ethnic membership on each taks measure were obtained. because the data for these variables are reported to the state by each school district and/or calculated by the texas education agency, traditional reliability and validity estimates are not appropriate for the variables analyzed in this study. rather, any errors in these self-reported figures are assumed to be minimal. to determine the extent to which the individual taks measures provide reliable and/or valid scores, readers are referred to the tea website for the technical manuals for each of the taks tests. the dependent variable of instructional expenditure ratio was defined by the texas education agency as: this measure, required by tec 44.0071, indicates the percentage of the district's total actual expenditures for the 2006-07 fiscal year that were used to fund direct instructional activities. the instructional expenditure ratio is a district-level only measure, and is calculated as follows: expenditures reported in function codes 11, 12, 13, 31 and object codes 6112 through 6499 divided by expenditures reported in function codes 11-52, 92,and 95 and object codes 6112 through 6499. (tea, 2008) procedures after accessing the texas education agency’s academic excellence indicator system website, connection to each aeis data file of interest (i.e., school district, financial, and student the 65% instructional expenditure ratio achievement) was made. data from each data file were downloaded as .dat files and then merged using the statistical package for the social sciences-version 15. prior to conducting statistical procedures, the underlying assumptions (e.g., normality of data) were checked. even though some of the skewness and kurtosis values exhibited a departure from normality (i.e., +/ 3, onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2002), the decision was made to use parametric statistical procedures because of their robustness. results the results are presented by subgroup: all students, african-american students, hispanic students, and white students. all students to ascertain whether a difference was present in student performance on the five taks measures as a function of instructional expenditures for all students, a multivariate analysis of variance (manova) procedure was conducted and yielded a statistically significant result, λ = .95, p < .001, n2 = .024. this overall difference was reflective of a small effect size (cohen, 1988). univariate follow-up fs revealed statistically significant differences for math, f(2, 940) = 19.58, p < .001, n2 = .04; for english, f(2, 940) = 11.75, p < .001, n2 = .024; for science, f(2, 940) = 18.16, p < .001, n2 = .037; for social studies, f(2, 940) = 13.57, p < .001, n2 = .028; and for writing, f(2, 940) = 10.15, p < .001, n2 = .02. effect sizes for these statistically significant results were small (cohen, 1988). scheffe` post hoc procedures revealed that the school districts in the less than 60% instructional expenditures ratio group had statistically significantly lower passing rates in math than the other two sets of school districts which did not differ from each other in math passing rates. the same pattern was present for english, science, social studies, and writing. when the passing rates of all students were analyzed, the poorest passing rates were in school districts in c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 10 the less than 60% of instructional expenditures ratio schools. an examination of table 1 shows the average passing rates for each taks measure, separated by instructional expenditures group. table 1 descriptive statistics for taks passing rates in math, english, science, social studies, and writing by instructional expenditure ratios group for all students taks measure by instructional expenditures n m sd math 65% and above instructional expenditures 134 80.34 10.92 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 473 80.61 8.43 below 60% instructional expenditures 336 76.23 11.94 english 65% and above instructional expenditures 134 91.35 5.69 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 473 91.56 4.53 below 60% instructional expenditures 336 89.64 7.06 science 65% and above instructional expenditures 134 74.02 12.36 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 473 73.64 9.48 below 60% instructional expenditures 336 68.92 14.15 social studies 65% and above instructional expenditures 134 91.30 7.01 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 473 91.24 4.96 below 60% instructional expenditures 336 88.76 9.20 writing the 65% instructional expenditure ratio 65% and above instructional expenditures 134 92.76 5.43 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 473 92.50 5.57 below 60% instructional expenditures 336 90.64 7.44 african american students to determine whether a difference was present in student performance on the five taks measures as a function of instructional expenditures for african american students, a manova was conducted and yielded a statistically significant result, λ = .88, p < .001, n2 = .06. this overall difference was reflective of a moderate effect size (cohen, 1988). univariate follow-up fs revealed statistically significant differences for math, f(2, 360) = 12.44, p < .001, n2 = .065; for english, f(2, 360) = 9.80, p < .001, n2 = .05; for science, f(2, 360) = 15.44, p < .001, n2 = .08; for social studies, f(2, 360) = 8.09, p < .001, n2 = .043; and for writing, f(2, 360) = 7.02, p < .001, n2 = .038. effect sizes for the math and science results were moderate whereas the effect sizes for english, social studies, and writing were small (cohen, 1988). scheffe` post hoc procedures revealed that the school districts in the less than 60% instructional expenditures ratio group had statistically significantly lower passing rates in math than the other two sets of school districts which did not differ from each other in math passing rates. the same pattern was present for english, science, social studies, and writing. in science, however, all three school district groupings differed. as the percent of instructional expenditures increased, so too did student passing rates on the taks science measure. when the passing rates of african american students were analyzed, the poorest passing rates were in school districts in the less than 60% of instructional expenditures ratio schools. an examination of table 2 shows the average passing rates for each taks measure, separated by instructional c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 12 expenditures group. findings for african american students were commensurate with the results for all students. table 2 descriptive statistics for taks passing rates in math, english, science, social studies, and writing by instructional expenditure ratios group for african american students taks measure by instructional expenditures n m sd math 65% and above instructional expenditures 78 68.99 11.98 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 201 67.51 9.03 below 60% instructional expenditures 84 61.43 12.91 english 65% and above instructional expenditures 78 87.49 6.26 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 201 85.90 6.14 below 60% instructional expenditures 84 82.89 8.62 science 65% and above instructional expenditures 78 60.38 12.88 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 201 55.44 12.13 below 60% instructional expenditures 84 49.56 12.78 social studies 65% and above instructional expenditures 78 86.71 9.04 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 201 84.52 9.38 below 60% instructional expenditures 84 80.51 12.39 writing the 65% instructional expenditure ratio 65% and above instructional expenditures 78 90.08 6.71 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 201 86.61 9.25 below 60% instructional expenditures 84 85.12 9.03 hispanic students to ascertain whether a difference was present in student performance on the five taks measures as a function of instructional expenditures for hispanic students, a manova was conducted and yielded a statistically significant result, λ = .96, p = .001, n2 = .02. this overall difference was reflective of a small effect size (cohen, 1988). univariate follow-up fs revealed statistically significant differences for math, f(2, 650) = 8.72, p < .001, n2 = .026; for english, f(2, 650) = 4.70, p = .001, n2 = .014; for science, f(2, 650) = 5.74, p = .003, n2 = .017; for social studies, f(2, 650) = 3.32, p = .037, n2 = .01; and for writing, f(2, 650) = 8.71, p < .001, n2 = .026. effect sizes for these results were small (cohen, 1988). scheffe` post hoc procedures revealed that the school districts in the less than 60% instructional expenditures ratio group had statistically significantly lower passing rates in math than the other two sets of school districts which did not differ from each other in math passing rates. the same pattern was present for english, science, social studies, and writing. when the passing rates of hispanic students were analyzed, the poorest passing rates were in school districts in the less than 60% of instructional expenditures ratio schools. an examination of table 3 shows the average passing rates for each taks measure, separated by instructional expenditures group. findings for hispanic students were commensurate with the results for african american students. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 14 table 3 descriptive statistics for taks passing rates in math, english, science, social studies, and writing by instructional expenditure ratios group for hispanic students taks measure by instructional expenditures n m sd math 65% and above instructional expenditures 101 75.86 9.50 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 355 75.42 8.01 below 60% instructional expenditures 197 72.27 10.76 english 65% and above instructional expenditures 101 87.99 5.39 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 355 87.69 4.77 below 60% instructional expenditures 197 86.35 6.52 science 65% and above instructional expenditures 101 65.37 12.51 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 355 63.39 9.52 below 60% instructional expenditures 197 60.91 13.52 social studies 65% and above instructional expenditures 101 87.49 6.92 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 355 87.01 6.07 below 60% instructional expenditures 197 85.55 9.31 writing 65% and above instructional expenditures 101 91.27 5.34 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 355 90.50 5.54 the 65% instructional expenditure ratio below 60% instructional expenditures 197 88.47 8.10 white students to ascertain whether a difference was present in student performance on the five taks measures as a function of instructional expenditures for white students, a manova was conducted and yielded a statistically significant result, λ = .92, p = .001, n2 = .04. this overall difference was reflective of a small effect size (cohen, 1988). univariate follow-up fs revealed statistically significant differences for math, f(2, 729) = 16.72, p < .001, n2 = .04; for english, f(2, 729) = 11.17, p = .001, n2 = .03; for science, f(2, 729) = 25.07, p < .001, n2 = .06; for social studies, f(2, 729) = 20.51, p < .001, n2 = .05; and for writing, f(2, 729) = 8.74, p < .001, n2 = .023. effect sizes for these results were small, with the exception of science, which was a moderate effect size (cohen, 1988). scheffe` post hoc procedures revealed that the school districts in the less than 60% instructional expenditures ratio group had statistically significantly lower passing rates in math than the other two sets of school districts which did not differ from each other in math passing rates. the same pattern was present for english, science, social studies, and writing. when the passing rates of white students were analyzed, the poorest passing rates were in school districts in the less than 60% of instructional expenditures ratio schools. an examination of table 4 shows the average passing rates for each taks measure, separated by instructional expenditures group. findings for white students were commensurate with the results for african american students and for hispanic students. table 4 descriptive statistics for taks passing rates in math, english, science, social studies, and writing by instructional expenditure ratios group for white students c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 16 taks measure by instructional expenditures n m sd math 65% and above instructional expenditures 117 86.40 7.73 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 396 85.75 6.30 below 60% instructional expenditures 219 82.59 8.23 english 65% and above instructional expenditures 117 94.84 3.58 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 396 94.75 2.71 below 60% instructional expenditures 219 93.55 3.74 science 65% and above instructional expenditures 117 83.98 8.64 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 396 82.45 6.46 below 60% instructional expenditures 219 78.57 9.03 social studies 65% and above instructional expenditures 117 95.25 3.62 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 396 94.32 3.52 below 60% instructional expenditures 219 92.51 5.32 writing 65% and above instructional expenditures 117 94.18 5.62 60 to 64.99% instructional expenditures 396 93.44 5.73 below 60% instructional expenditures 219 91.68 6.45 the 65% instructional expenditure ratio discussion researchers previously cited (jones et al., 2007; lance et al., 2005; roper, 1996; standard and poor’s, 2005, 2006; turner, 1999; walters, 2005) have documented the absence of any strong relationships between the 65% instructional expenditure ration and student performance on state assessments or the scholastic aptitude test. these researchers, though important, seem to address the broader systems of state accountability and national norm tests, but ignore perhaps a greater understanding of subsets of the population within these broader systems. in this study, the presence of statistically significant differences were documented between schools that maintain a 60% or higher instructional expenditure ratio in their student performance on the reading, math, social studies, science, and writing portions of the texas assessment of knowledge & skills compared to schools that have lower than a 60% instructional expenditure ratio. further, our findings demonstrate clear relationships between instructional expenditure ratio and sub-population student performance. in contrast to jones et al. (2007) and standards and poor’s (2005) who reported the lack of relationships between the 65% instructional expenditures ratio and student test performance, the presence of statistically significant relationships were demonstrated between a benchmark of 60% instructional expenditures and student test performance. as such, a better benchmark may exist at the 60% level than at the 65% level. this recommendation is particularly important as schools continue to close the gap in student performance among sub-group. several cautionary statements are necessary to discourage readers from going beyond the limitations of this study. first, this study represents a causal-comparative research design and, as such, does not yield cause-and-effect results. second, a limited set of variables was examined that related to instructional expenditure ratios and student academic performance. third, data c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 18 from only one state were analyzed. fourth, data from only a single school year were analyzed. therefore, readers are urged to be tentative to the extent they make generalizations from this study. researchers are encouraged to extend this study by investigating other schooling financial variables. though results of this study, as well as the other studies cited, do not offer a panacea on the complete impact of money on student performance, it is clear that money does influence student achievement. it is clearly true that the enterprise of educating young people is complex and involves many variables. one of those variables is resources and thus it clearly stands that money does matter. perhaps the better question is, “to what extent and in what way does money matter?” the 65% instructional expenditure ratio references americans for prosperity. (2005). highlights on the 65% initiative to put 65 percent of the education funding in the classroom. retrieved from http://www.americansforprosperity.org/highlights-65-initiative-put-65-percent-educationfunding-classroom american psychological association. (2001). publication manual of the american psychological association (5th ed.). washington, dc: author byrne, p. m. (2006). chairman’s perspective. retrieved from http://www.firstclasseducation.org/index.asp cohen, j. (1988). statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). new york, ny: wiley. first class education. (2005). frequently asked questions. retrieved from http://www.firstclasseducation.org/index.asp government affairs home. (2006). 65% rule background. retrieved from http://www.txla.org/html/legis/65rule.html jones, t. b., bingham, w. d., & jackson, s. h. (2007). the emerging sixty-five percent instructional expenditure rule public policy: will student performance improve? in lemasters, l.k. & para, r. (eds.), at the tipping point: navigating the course for the preparation of educational administrators. lancaster, pa: pro-active publications. lance, k. c., rodney, m. j., & hamilton-pennell, c. (2005). libraries make powerful learners: the illinois study. retrieved from http://www.islma.org/pdf/ilstudy%20report.pdf national center for education statistics. (2003). financial accounting for local and state school systems. washington dc: author. onwuegbuzie, a. j., & daniel, l. g. (2002). uses and misuses of the correlation coefficient. research in the schools, 9(1), 73-90. roper, d. m. (1996). alabama public school expenditures as correlates of student academic achievement. ed.d. dissertation, the university of alabama, al: u.s. retrieved from proquest digital dissertations database. (publication no. aat 9633936) standard and poor’s. (2005). the issues and implications of the “65 percent solution.” school matters. retrieved from http://www.65percentdeceptionfacts.com/pdf/s&p_report.pdf c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 20 standard and poor’s. (2006). the issues and implications of the “65 percent solution – addendum.” school matters. retrieved from http://admin.schoolmatters.com/smresourcehandler/resourcehandler.res?rtype=file&rpi d=42767467&flnm=the%20issues%2065%20percent%20solution%20%20addendum.pdf texas education agency. (2008). instructional expenditure ratio. retrieved from http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/aeis/2008/glossary.html turner, y. m. (1999). the relationship between student achievement, per-pupil expenditure, and other factors in selected georgia public schools. ed.d. dissertation, university of sarasota, fl: u.s. retrieved from proquest digital dissertations database. (publication no. aat 9938767) will, g. (2005a, april). one man’s way to better schools. the washington post. p. b7. will, g. (2005b, april). the 65 percent solution. retrieved from http://townhall.com/columnists/georgewill/2005/04/10/the_65_percent_solution the 65% instructional expenditure ratio current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo volume quality citation oloo, j. a is abstract debate a extensive the impo study ex alberta, norwegi higher e jurisdicti keyword 13, numbe y assura a. (2010). q ssues in edu t about academ e dispute ab ortance of qu amined issu canada, no ian agency education in ions. possib ds: quality a er 4 nce of hi quality assur cation, 13(4 mic quality bout the mea uality assura ues in quality orway, and k for quality n assuring an ble lessons f ssurance, hi w igher edu jame university rance of high 4). retrieved assurance h aning of the ance and enh y assurance kenya and t assurance i nd enhancin for kenya an igher educat winter 2010 ucation in s alan olo y of saskatc her education from http:// has often ten phrase. how hancement o of higher e the roles of c in education ng quality of nd other dev tion, alberta n alberta oo chewan n in albert, k /cie.asu.edu/ nded to bring wever, man of degree pr ducation in campus alb n, and the k f higher edu veloping cou a, kenya, n iss a, kenya kenya, and n / g into the fo ny observers rogramming the provinc berta qualit kenya comm ucation in th untries are p norway sn 1099-83 and norw norway. cu ore s appreciate g. this ce of ty council, mission for he three presented. 39x way urrent current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 quality assurance of higher education in alberta, kenya and norway in alberta, kenya and norway, postsecondary participation rates have been growing steadily for years (snowdon, 2010; aas, 2007; odhiambo, 2006). while recognizing the public and private benefits of investment in higher education, snowdon (2010) posited that at a time when many jurisdictions are investing heavily in their higher education sector, “government commitment to quality higher education must be strengthened” (p. 2). law (2010) surmised that the rapid expansion of higher education provision makes it necessary to address the question of quality of degree programming and whether it is sacrificed for quantity. welle-strand (2000) asserted that for a country to remain relevant in today’s competitive knowledge economy, it cannot afford to ignore the importance of the quality and reputation of its higher education institutions and programs. snowdon (2010) predicted that it is the quality of a country’s graduates that will set it apart in the 21st century. hence, degree programming in alberta, kenya, and norway has undergone fundamental reforms in recent years (snowdon, 2010; lycke, 2004; odhiambo, 2006). a primary aspect of higher education reforms in the three jurisdictions is the “emphasis on the pursuit of educational quality” (law, 2010, p. 65). despite the reforms, debate about academic quality assurance has often tended to bring into the fore extensive dispute about the meaning of the phrase. dill (2003, p. 1) suggested that “academic quality is amorphous, non-measurable, (and) too ambiguous in meaning as to be not appropriate for public regulation.” beaton (1999, p. 4) argued that the “rhetoric of ... quality is often vague ... lucks substance (and) is empty of meaning” while pounder (1999) posited that quality is a “notoriously ambiguous term” (p. 156). as a result of the difficulty in defining quality, the measurement of quality has also proved to be contentious (becket & brookes, 2006). in this study, ‘quality’ refers to continuous improvement in the search for excellence while quality assurance of higher education 3 ‘quality assurance’ means initiatives which are undertaken in the quest to assure and enhance quality of degree programming (law, 2010) in alberta, kenya and norway. the three jurisdictions were chosen because the author is a native of kenya who has visited norway and previously worked as a policy analyst at the campus alberta quality council. primary sources for the descriptive aspects of this study were websites for campus alberta quality council (www.caqc.gov.ab.ca), the norwegian agency for quality assurance in education (www.nokut.no) and the kenya commission for higher education (www.che.or.ke). this paper is loosely divided into five sections. section one explores general issues in academic quality assurance. section two discusses quality assurance of degree programming in canada and the province of alberta. section three explores higher education quality assurance and accreditation in europe in general and norway in particular. section four presents an overview of quality assurance in kenya, while section five suggests possible lessons for kenya and other developing countries. general issues in academic quality assurance today, the increased popularity of academic quality assurance initiatives is perhaps best reflected in the membership of the international network of quality assurance agencies for higher education (inqaahe). from inqaahe’s founding in 1990 through 2007, the year of its biennial conference in toronto, the network’s membership increased from 12 to 180 agencies from over 70 countries. most of these agencies are interested in the quality of postsecondary education especially due to such factors as increasing numbers of private providers, many of dubious provenance; rapid growth in transnational education leading to the need for a credible quality assurance process; and proliferation of new types of postsecondary programs and institutions (law, 2010; bond & patton, 2007). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 quality assurance processes in higher education are based on four general principles (van vught & westerheijden, 1994), namely, a coordinating agency (such as campus alberta quality council in alberta, the norwegian agency for quality assurance in education, and the commission for higher education in kenya); self appraisal by the institution to be evaluated; a site visit by experts; and a report on the evaluation results prepared by experts. among the objectives of conducting external evaluation is to declare the applicant institution’s processes of self-evaluation and submit them to evaluation by a third party. the third party perspective being brought to the validation must however be a judicious mix of relevant technical expertise, and a detached external stakeholder perspective (carmichael, 2007). quality assurance of higher education in canada in canada, education is a provincial responsibility and there is no federal ministry of education. in the absence of a coherent national quality assurance policy for higher education and lack of formal national system of accreditation for degree-granting institutions, there is a general acceptance that membership in the association of universities and colleges of canada (aucc) serves as an assurance that the member institution has undergone a thorough assessment by credible peer experts who have concluded that the institution meets exacting criteria (queen’s university senate committee on academic development, 2004). as well as having their own internal quality assurance policies and processes, members of aucc are committed to aucc principles of institutional quality assurance. these principles include: provision of responsive, “high quality education that is competitive with that offered anywhere else in the world and the provision of complete and reliable information about the quality of their educational programs to maintain public confidence, (and) support mobility of graduates” (aucc, 2008, p. 1). quality assurance of higher education 5 not all degree granting institutions in canada are members of aucc. thus, while degrees awarded by non-aucc member institutions in alberta, such as grant macewan university, northern alberta institute of technology, and st. mary’s university college, are recognized in alberta and beyond, some canadian graduate schools, including those at queen’s university, do not consider them to be of comparable quality to those awarded by aucc member institutions (marshall, 2005). in nova scotia, quebec, and saskatchewan, only aucc member institutions are authorized to offer degree programs (marshall, 2004). academic quality assurance process in alberta established in 2004 by an act of legislature, campus alberta quality council (caqc) is the quality assurance agency that makes recommendations to the minister of advanced education and technology on applications from postsecondary institutions to offer new degree programs in alberta. other than degrees in divinity, all degree programs offered in alberta must be approved by the minister. caqc also has guidelines on quality assurance for alberta universities that offer degree programming outside alberta (see working group on quality assurance of off-site and international degree programs, 2009). upon receiving an application from a postsecondary institution to offer a degree program in alberta, the minister of advanced education and technology initiates a two-stage review process. the ministry conducts a system coordination review of the proposed program to determine the need for the program and how it fits with other degree programs currently offered in alberta. during the review process, the ministry may require the institution to submit a selfevaluation report. the self-study provides evidence of the institution’s academic and strategic planning, governance and resources, as well as its analysis of any shortfalls and plans for current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 improvement (bond & patton, 2007). following a successful system coordination review, the minister refers the proposal to caqc for quality review. in evaluating the proposal, caqc decides whether to employ a full review or an expedited review. a full review involves both an organizational review to determine if the institution is capable of implementing and sustaining the proposed degree program; and a program review to determine whether the quality of the proposed degree program meets caqc’s standards. full campus alberta quality council review full review usually applies to institutions that are proposing to offer a first degree, or first degree program at a new level (e.g., a first graduate degree). the organizational review team conducts a site visit to the institution, and using caqc’s organizational guidelines prepares a report for caqc. the team report and the institution’s response to it are then reviewed by caqc. if the results are positive, the application is moved to the program evaluation stage of the review during which a review is conducted by a team of subject area experts recruited by caqc. using caqc’s program guidelines, the team reviews the proposal, visits the institution, and writes a report for caqc. based mainly on the team report and the institution’s response to the report, caqc makes its recommendation to the minister on whether or not to approve the application. expedited review caqc may conduct a partially expedited review or a fully expedited review of a proposal. a partially expedited review does not require an organizational evaluation; rather caqc engages a team of experts to assess the quality of the proposed degree program and prepare a report. in a fully expedited review, caqc does a desk review of the proposal, may or quality assurance of higher education 7 may not engage external evaluators, and does not conduct site visit of the institution. fully expedited review usually applies to ‘mature’ institutions like the universities of alberta and calgary. caqc guidelines and standards are comparable to those used by quality assurance agencies in canada and internationally (see british columbia degree quality assessment board, 2006; european association for quality assurance in higher education, 2005). caqc emphasizes its commitment to the quality review of its own activities and to the sharing of best practices with other jurisdictions (bond & patton, 2007). caqc’s organizational and program assessment standards and guidelines and its expectations of evaluators and applicant institutions are available on its website at www.caqc.gov.ab.ca. accreditation of professional programs a form of quality assurance and enhancement exists at a national level in canada. professional regulatory organizations, such as canadian engineering accreditation board, canadian association of schools of social work, and the canadian architectural certification board, participate in the establishment and review of postsecondary programs and other professional issues governing students' preparations for entry into such professions (bond & patton, 2007; marshall, 2004). this form of review is based on meeting or exceeding predetermined requirements and leads to professional accreditation of specific programs. some programs offered by alberta institutions are also accredited by american accreditation agencies. these include university of calgary’s doctor of veterinary medicine program that is accredited by the american veterinary medicine association, and the university of alberta school of business and the university of calgary haskayne school of business, both accredited by the american-based association to advance collegiate schools of business. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 whether or not the accrediting agency is based in canada, meeting or exceeding the requirements of these agencies is an affirmation of quality (bond & patton, 2007). however, while caqc recognizes the existence of such accreditations, its decisions are not subservient to those by other agencies (caqc, 2007). challenges to academic quality assurance in alberta alberta permits ‘non-resident’ institutions, such as the university of northern british columbia and university of phoenix, to offer degree programs in the province. because alberta, and most canadian provinces have traditionally focused on resident institutions as opposed to commercial transnational universities (leyton-brown, 2004), observers, such as council of ministers of education, canada (cmec), worry that this gap could lead to a proliferation of degree mills (cmec, 2007). indeed, in 2007, the governments of china, india, and korea advised their students to be cautious of private institutions in canada following reports that british columbia minister of advanced education was investigating private for-profit institutions for granting university degrees in the province without authorization (sen, 2007). the minister later ordered lansbridge university to cease its operations in the province of british columbia (b.c. ministry of advanced education, 2007). although there is need for a coherent national process for ensuring quality of higher education programs in canada, how this could be attained within the context of exclusive provincial/territorial jurisdiction over education is a longstanding policy dilemma. in 2007, provincial ministers responsible for higher education in canada under the umbrella cmec took a step towards a canada-wide policy for quality assurance of degree education in canada. the proposals endorsed by cmec aim to “provide assurance … at home and abroad that … programs and … institutions of higher learning meet appropriate standards” (council of quality assurance of higher education 9 ministers of education, canada, 2007, p. 1). however, these proposals were non-binding and nothing has been done with respect to national quality assurance of degree programs in canada since then. despite the importance of aucc membership as attestation for institutional and program quality, there is a potential shortcoming in overreliance on aucc given that aucc has no reaccreditation requirement (marshall, 2004). that is, once an institution becomes a member, it remains a member with no “further assessment of degree-granting capability” (marshall, 2004, p. 92). as well, in the coming years, the presence of transnational private-for profit institutions in alberta is likely to increase judging by the fact that between 2009 and 2010, alberta minister of advanced education approved four new graduate degree programs to be offered in alberta by city university of seattle, gonzaga university, and university of portland (caqc, 2010). because private-for profit universities are currently excluded from aucc membership, establishment of quality assurance standards and guidelines will be left to provincial politics, and thus, be susceptible to the type of abuse in the now-disbanded ottawa business college (marshall, 2004, p. 18). the next section of this article explores how europeans are dealing with the issue of academic quality assurance. quality assurance of higher education in europe european countries have diverse processes for quality assurance in their higher education sector. among the objectives of the bologna declaration is “the promotion of european cooperation in quality assurance with a view to developing comparable criteria and methodologies” (campbell & van der wende, 2000, p. 2). as a participant in the bologna process, norway has committed itself to the standards and guidelines for quality assurance in the european higher education area. the council of european union recommended that national current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 systems of higher education quality assurance be based on: 1) autonomy of the quality assurance agencies; 2) relating evaluation procedures to the way institutions see themselves; 3) internal and external evaluation; 4) involvement of stakeholders; and 5) publication of evaluation reports (european association for quality assurance in higher education, 2005). european standards and guidelines for internal quality assurance in institutions of higher education stipulate that institutions should have: 1) policies and procedures for the assurance of the quality of their programs; 2) formal mechanisms for the approval, periodic review and monitoring of their programs and awards; 3) student assessment policies that include using published criteria, regulations and procedures; 4) qualified and competent academic staff; 5) adequate and appropriate resources to support student learning for each program offered; and 6) means of collecting analysing and using relevant information of the effective management of their programs of study (european association for quality assurance in higher education, 2005). higher education in norway norway has a highly educated population. according to 2002 statistics, 55 percent of norwegians have completed upper secondary schooling and 31 percent are college or university graduates (correa, 2008). four of norway’s seven universities are listed among the top 500 in the world (shanghai jiao tong university, 2009). higher education in norway is offered by a range of seven universities, eight specialized universities, 25 university colleges, as well as a number of private university colleges. norwegian higher education system is in accordance with the bologna process, with bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees. the norwegian agency for quality assurance in education (nokut) is the organization mandated to safeguard and enhance the quality of higher education in norway. it quality assurance of higher education 11 does this through evaluation, accreditation and recognition of quality systems, institutions and programs of study (nokut, 2006). unlike caqc whose mandate covers only degree programs, nokut ensures quality of both degree programs and vocational education at the postsecondary level. lycke (2004) argued that quality processes in the norwegian higher education sector have “not traditionally been associated with the term quality assurance but with quality development (and) ... has largely been synonymous with multifaceted and multilevel development of quality of studies” (p. 219). among the broad purposes of quality assurance of degree programming in norway are to: 1) ensure that higher education in norway is of high quality and is developing toward further improvements, 2) reveal cases of deficient quality and to detect good and bad quality, 3) provide educational institutions with a basis for selfassessment and change, and 4) help to develop a strong quality culture (nokut, 2003). evaluation criteria in norwegian higher education do not relate directly to the quality of educational provision, but concern the quality assurance system and the quality work that is carried out in the institution (aas, 2007). norwegian institutional quality assurance system is evaluated both internally and externally and developed in accordance with needs and in the spirit of continual improvement (lycke, 2004). the ministerial regulation, nokut’s criteria and the european standards and guidelines together make up the standard against which internal quality assurance systems at norwegian institutions of higher learning are evaluated. as in alberta, the process of evaluation in norway includes: 1) a study of documentation from institution’s quality assurance system including a description of the system and annual report on educational quality; 2) an assessment made by an expert panel based on the institution’s documentation and the standards and criteria for internal quality assurance systems; current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 3) site visit to the institution by the panel; and 4) presentation of the panel report to nokut. the report and institution’s response to it forms the basis of nokut’s decision on whether or not the quality assurance system is satisfactory. if the results indicate that the institution’s quality assurance of its approved programs does not meet nokut’s expectations, then the institution could lose the right to establish new programs (danø & stensaker, 2007). the sections above have briefly explored academic quality assurance processes in alberta and norway. the next section discusses how kenya assures and enhances quality of its degree programs. higher education quality assurance in kenya kenya has eight public and 17 private universities. a number of foreign institutions including edith cowan university (australia), technicon southern africa university (south africa), and the university of sunderland (great britain) are also offering their degree programs, usually in partnerships with local kenyan institutions. private universities include united states international university which is accredited both in kenya by commission for higher education and in the united states by the accrediting commission for senior colleges and universities. about 20 percent of the 150,000 university students attend private universities. the annual university enrolment in kenya accounts for less than 10 percent of the high school graduates (oloo, 2010). public universities in kenya are established under their respective acts of parliament, giving them autonomy in governance and quality assurance. thus, unlike alberta and norway, in kenya there is no external agency that accredits or monitors the quality of the public universities (commission for higher education, 2008; odhiambo, 2006). private universities, on the other hand, are established under the universities act of 1986 and the associated university rules of 1989. the university act established the kenya commission for higher education (che), the quality assurance of higher education 13 agency that accredits private universities and their programming. as is the case in alberta and norway, both institutional and program accreditation processes involve institutional self-study and the use of external experts who conduct a site visit of the institution and write an evaluation report for the che. public universities in kenya may choose to enter into partnership agreements with nondegree granting private or public colleges to deliver their degree programs (commission for higher education, 2006). this policy is double-edged. while it empowers public universities to be responsive to demand for degree programming and is less bureaucratic, public institutions are expected to ‘accredit’ the colleges they partner with to deliver their programs. however, public universities have been accused of putting more emphasis on increased enrolment to raise money from tuition than on quality of their degree programs (odhiambo, 2006). jomo kenyatta university of agriculture and technology, for example, delivers its programs at 22 colleges scattered all over the country. in some cases, these colleges are understaffed and lack adequate facilities to deliver quality higher education (commission for higher education, 2006). challenges and possible future development according lycke (2004), four main purposes of academic quality assurance are to ensure and develop quality, to detect good and bad quality, to put in place a strong quality culture, and as a basis for self-assessment and change. in their own ways, caqc, nokut, and che play fundamental roles in achieving these goals in alberta, norway, and kenya respectively. a challenge facing caqc, nokut and che is striking a good balance in their roles as a tool for sanctioning and rewarding, conducting evaluation processes that presuppose interpretations and judgments, and operating systems that require equal and fair treatment of institutions (aas, 2007). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 both caqc and nokut were founded less than a decade ago, so they are relatively young organizations. che has been in existence since 1986. unlike caqc and nokut, che has jurisdiction over private institutions and not public institutions. a challenge facing caqc, che, and nokut with respect to their roles in higher education quality assurance is striking a good balance in their quests to achieve their three main goals: their roles as a tool for sanctioning and rewarding, conducting evaluation processes that presuppose interpretations and judgments, and operating systems that require equal and fair treatment of institutions (aas, 2007). caqc, nokut and che continuously maintain documentation and processes that guide academic quality assurance and enhancement in their respective jurisdictions. however, there is a potential risk of paying less attention to whether institutions are teaching and assessing their students at appropriate levels as the agencies’ processes and guidelines tend to emphasize on whether institutions have established and documented in great detail processes which may or may not enhance teaching and student assessment (moodie, 2008). as law (2010, p. 72) put it, higher education systems “tend to favour the institutional aspects rather than the student aspects of the quality issues,” as well as put more emphasis on the “accountability-led view rather than the improvement-led view of quality assurance.” moodie (2008) posited that monitoring in academic quality should be of standards directly and not of processes which may or may not result in high quality. he suggested that quality assurance agencies should take a risk management approach rather than seeking to apply the same level of scrutiny to all institutions and all areas. that is, caqc, che, and nokut should scrutinize most intensively institutions and areas that are at greatest risk of a lapse of standards and it should spend far less effort monitoring institutions and areas that have a low risk of poor standards. quality assurance of higher education 15 lessons for kenya and other developing countries while public universities in kenya enjoy autonomy with respect to entering in to partnerships, starting new programs, and ensuring quality of their programs, there should be some form of accountability and transparency in their policies on quality assurance after all they get public funding. this could be by way of an external oversight by peers or organizations such as che. external review promotes institutional quality improvement by giving a third party feedback to the institution as well as enhancing and legitimizing internal quality management (leyton-brown, 2004). as stated above, institutional self-appraisal is a key aspect of quality assurance and enhancement in alberta, kenya and norway. however, unlike in alberta and norway where caqc and nokut conduct external evaluation of institutions and programs respectively, in kenya, public universities are not mandated to undergo external appraisal. while self-assessment can be variable in its quality and effectiveness (leyton-brown, 2004), it is the foundation of well-managed and successful institutions (lloyds, 2003) and is likely to lead to quality enhancement of degree programming and make the “reports of external reviewers more useful to that purpose” (leyton-brown, 2004, p. 11). trow (1996, p. 30) posited that effective quality assurance and enhancement is premised on “efforts to create an institutional culture marked by self-criticism, openness to criticism by others, and a commitment to improvement in practice.” thus both self-evaluation and external evaluation should be emphasized in the quest for quality degree programming by public universities in kenya. this study discussed quality assurance of higher education in alberta, norway, and kenya. alberta and norway have a long history of quality assurance of their degree programming and have world class universities. despite the challenges both face in their quest current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 for assuring and enhancing quality of their higher education, there are lessons from their experience that would be valuable to kenya and other developing nations. these include transparency, accountability, and increased emphasis on external review of quality assurance processes of both institutions and quality assurance agencies. as well, quality assurance must not be reduced to rules of inspection and control but rather should aim at enhancing quality of degree programming and upholding institutional independence and accountability. quality assurance of higher education 17 references aas, g. h. 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(2008, march 20). australian universities quality agency’s role. retrieved on november 23, 2009 from the australian website: http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/gavinmoodie/index.php/theaustralian/comment norwegian agency for quality assurance in education (nokut). (2006). norway: the system of education. oslo: author. quality assurance of higher education 19 norwegian agency for quality assurance in education (nokut). (2003). criteria for evaluation of universities and university colleges’ quality systems for educational activities. oslo: author. odhiambo, j. (2006). advancing the quality of higher education through internationalization. a paper presented at the 2006 international investment forum for private higher education, international finance corporation headquarters, washington, d.c., february 2, 2006. retrieved from http://www.strathmore.edu/pdf/ifd_speech.pdf oloo, j. a. (2010). citizenship education and youth engagement in kenyan politics. presented at the graduate student conference on theories and practices of citizenship education, centre for global citizenship education and research (cgcer), university of alberta, edmonton, canada, november 11-13. pounder, j. (1999). institutional performance in higher education: is quality a relevant concept? quality assurance in education, 7(1/3), 156-163. queen’s university senate committee on academic development. (2004). policy on determining canadian universities’ status for basis of admission. retrieved march 14, 2010 from http://www.queensu.ca/secretariat/senate/jan2204/scad_cdnuniversities_policy.pdf shanghai jiao tong university, china (2009). academic ranking of world universities, 2009. retrieved on january 14, 2010 from http://www.arwu.org/arwu2009.jsp sen, m. (2007, april 12). indian students 'stranded' in canada. retrieved may 3, 2010 from http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indian_students_stranded_in_canada/articleshow/189 5067.cms snowdon, k. (2010). canada’s quality challenge. retrieved october 20, 2010 from http://educationalpolicy.org/publications/etw/canada/commentary/etwcancom_100416.html trow, m. (1996). on the accountability of higher education in the united states. paper presented at the princeton conference on higher education, march 21-23, university of california, berkley. van vught, f. a., & westerheijden, d. f. (1994). towards a general model of quality assessment in higher education. higher education, 28, 355-371. welle-strand, a. (2000). knowledge production, service and quality: higher education tensions in norway. quality in higher education, 6(3), 219-230. working group on quality assurance of off-site and international degree programs. (2009). toolkit for off-site and cross-border delivery of programs. edmonton: government of alberta. current is about th author: affiliatio address of saska email: j biograp adminis previous ministry ssues in educ he author james ala on: univer s: departme atchewan, s james.oloo@ phical infor stration) pr sly worked y of advan cation vol. 13 n oloo rsity of sask ent of educ saskatoon, @usask.ca rmation: ja rogram at th d as a policy nced educat 3 no. 4 katchewan cational ad sk s7n 0 ames alan o he univers y analyst at tion. dministratio x1, canad oloo is a st ity of sask t the camp on, college da tudent in th katchewan i pus alberta e of educat he phd (ed in saskatoo quality co tion, unive ducational on, canada ouncil, alb 20 ersity . he berta quality a volum authors articles publishe an kr hilla d ju an h mi assurance of h me 13, num hold the copy s in other jour er and include ngela abeyta rista adams ary andrelch diana barela ulia boukara ndrew darian aiying dong iriam emran higher educa curr mber 4 yright to artic rnals should b e the url of t provide a hik n n tion rent issu http:// fall/ cles published be addressed t the cie publi ed cie is cred edit exe lor katy e jeffr sec sar mar me amb seo tiff calv linds fac gusta jean deb ues in e /cie.asu.e /winter 20 d in current is to the author. ication. permi dited and cop torial team cutive editor ri ellingford elizabeth his rey i. johnso ction editors rah heaslip rlene hinton elinda hollis ber johnston onghee kim fany o’neill vin richards say richerso culty advisers vo e. fischm nne m. power bby zambo educati edu 010 issues in educ reprints sho ission is here pies are not so m rs d rich on n n s on s man rs on issn cation. reque ould credit cie eby granted to old. ror ta kar luc ker jennife ky n 1099-83 ests to reprint e as the origi o copy any art ry schmitt apati sen ri visconti cy watson rie wilkins er wojtulewi yle wright 21 39x cie inal ticle, icz xxx 22 the development of 'project 1'formative assessment project 1: formative assessment 1 volume 13, number 3 issn 1099-839x the development of 'project 1': formative assessment strategies in uk schools ian clark university of washington citation clark, i. (2011). the development of 'project 1': formative assessment strategies in uk schools. current issues in education, 13(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract in recent years, a growing political emphasis has been placed upon the development of transformative assessment-driven reform in schools. there is global consensus on the value of assessment activities that are carefully designed to be consistent with desired learning outcomes, and which coherently connect learning theory, the curriculum, classroom activities and assessment. the consensus ends when there is debate between those who believe that schools produce more able students when they are faced with summative assessments and those who propose the implementation of formative assessment strategies in classrooms. this article presents a literature review which investigates the large-scale transformation of classroom practice in the scottish region of the uk, known as project1. the article begins with a summary overview of project 1 and continues with a conceptual discussion of formative and summative assessment. the latter sections of the article delineate the key architectural principles underpinning formative assessment in practical settings before going on to present the professional evaluations of project 1 by participating teachers. keywords: formative, assessment, curriculum, summative, scotland, uk c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 3 2 about the author(s) author: ian clark affiliation: university of washington email: clarki@u.washington.edu biographical information: ian clark is a research assistant at the university of washington (seattle) specializing in formative assessment and in the latter stages of his doctoral studies. he is a nationally qualified high-school and college level teacher in business studies and economics and has worked in seven different nations where his focus has been the development and delivery of formative assessment programs in esl/efl settings. project 1: formative assessment 3 in the past 30 years, educational researchers have given the significance of emphasis to various investigations on assessment practices and how they impact the quality of student learning and motivation, (bloom et al, 1971; crooks, 1988; black & wiliam 1998a, b; arg, 1999, 2002; george street research, 2007). arising from the proliferation of historical interest into assessment and learning the development of formative assessment strategies has gathered momentum on an international scale. one example of the remarkable expansion in awareness regarding the benefits of formative assessment is a 2005 organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) study which features exemplary cases from secondary schools in canada, denmark, england, finland, italy, new zealand, queensland in australia, and scotland. despite widening global awareness regarding the impact of assessment strategies on learning, one review of assessment practices (in us schools) remarked that transformative ‘assessment practices are not common, even though these kinds of approaches are now widely promoted in the professional literature’ (neill, 1997, p. 35-6). project 1: summary overview there were two distinct phases to assessment reform in scotland: firstly, the development phase (2002-2004) of the program, which was strategically directed by the assessment action group (aag) and operationally managed by the aifl program management group (apmg). secondly, the implementation phase (2005-2008) was overseen by the apmg, which served as the main forum for liaison, encouraged cooperation and emphasized the importance of professionals working together in order to build communities of practice (seed, sept 2005). this article examines the crucial first phase which took place between the beginning of 2002 and the end of 2004. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 3 4 the development of formative assessment strategies in the scotland is connected by two contiguous assessment themes: assessment for learning (afl) and assessment as learning (aal). afl focuses on the progress of the learner toward a desired goal, seeking to close the gap between a learner’s current status and the desired outcome. ‘this can be achieved through processes such as sharing criteria with learners, effective questioning and feedback’ (aag/apmg 2002-2008). aal is about reflecting on evidence of learning. it is a process ‘where pupils and staff set learning goals, share learning intentions and success criteria, and evaluate their learning through dialogue and self and peer assessment’ (aag/apmg, 2002-2008). both themes are integrated into a nation-wide project classified by the scottish executive education department (seed) as 'project 1' and stand together as the cornerstone of a wider programme known as assessment is for learning (aifl). 'an aifl school is a place where everyone is learning together. it is a place where assessment is part of learning and teaching without dominating them ... is about supporting classroom learning and teaching. it connects assessment and learning/teaching' (aag/apmg, 2002-2008). the emphasis of this article is placed upon the early experiences of participating schools, which in partnership with the british government began to develop the use of project 1 formative assessment strategies across many hundreds of primary, special and secondary schools. 195 schools were involved in the initial phase of aifl (2002-2003). a key feature of developments during 2003-2004 was to increase the number of schools involved in the program, with a particular emphasis on building collaborative partnerships between schools called associated schools groups (asgs). asgs range from individual schools to large groups of schools (for instance a secondary school and feeder primary schools) that work together on practitioner-based action-research projects that support the development of professional practice in assessment. by december 2004, local authorities' reports on the number of schools involved in aifl through asgs had risen from project 1: formative assessment 5 195 to 1,581 schools (approximately 56% of all schools in scotland). the scottish executive education department (seed) expressed the intention of making every possible effort to meet the target to 'ensure all schools are part of the assessment is for learning programme, by 2007' (june, 2005). formative and summative assessment: concepts and issues new ways of seeing formative assessment is described as: 'all those activities undertaken by teachers, and by their students in assessing themselves, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged. such assessment becomes 'formative assessment' when the evidence is used to adapt the teaching work to meet the needs.' (black & wiliam, 1998b, p. 2). seed advocate a re-thinking of the 20th century vygotskian perspective because traditional teacher centered instructional methods designed to prepare students for frequent high-stakes summative tests were found to be ineffective when compared with collaborative learning systems which emphasize high quality interactions between teachers, students and parents/carers (aag/apmg 2002-2008). the notion of the zone of proximal development (zpd) (vygotsky, 1978) is of central relevance to the formative assessment classroom entailing a significant change in classroom culture from one that is teacher-centered (expert/novice) to one that encourages equality and mutuality between students. goos, galbraith and renshaw (2002) use the term ‘collaborative zpd’ to denote equal status interactions between peers. however, high-quality interactions between students are rarely found in classrooms. in an oft-cited study from 1980 conducted by galton, simon and croll, it was noted that the students frequently work in groups but not as groups. some 20 years later galton, hargreaves, comber, wall and pell (1999) conducted a replication study which found only a slight c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 3 6 increase in peer interaction; a finding more recently reiterated by black (2005). baines, blatchford and chowne (2007) observe, ‘teachers typically plan for their interactions with pupils, but not for interactions between pupils’ (p. 664). what is a 'project 1' classroom? a project 1 afl/aal classroom is founded upon eight key formative assessment principles (aag/apmg, 2002-2008; oecd, 2005) which demand high quality interactions between students, teachers and parents/carers. there are six key principles underpinning the afl aspects of project 1: students need to 1) be able to understand clearly what they are trying to learn, and what is expected of them; 2) be given immediate feedback about the quality of their work and what they can do to make it better; 3) be given advice about how to sustain improvement; 4) be fully involved in deciding what needs to be done next; 5) be aware of who can give them help if they need it and have full access to such help, and 6) to engage parents and carers in the learning process. the six principles of afl combine with two further aal assessment principles: students need to 7) be able to build knowledge of themselves as learners, and become meta-cognitive; 8) take more responsibility for their learning and participate more in the process of learning. when taken together afl/aal strategies breathe a new vitality into the concept of 'student centered learning' by re-positioning the students at the center of the learning process by building a network of constructive interactions which seek to link students directly to systems, teachers, parents/carers and their peers. in a project 1 classroom, students can develop a deeper understanding of their learning when they are given opportunities to discuss the learning process with their teacher as their advisor and with their peers in a climate of equality and mutuality (aag/apmg, 2002-2008). the quality of classroom interaction is a matter for grave consideration. askew (2000) observes that: 'the characteristics of dialogue are equality, sharing, spontaneity, collaboration and project 1: formative assessment 7 reciprocity. what i found interesting is that young people do not think such experiences are appropriate for the classroom where a particular view of behaviour is perceived' (p. 47). the issue of ineffective classroom interaction is comprehensively addressed by black & wiliam (1998b) who believe that, 'in terms of systems engineering, present policies in the u.s. and in many other countries seem to treat the classroom as a black box' (p.1). the 'black box' is an object for vital criticism because it functions primarily as a receptive system where, 'certain inputs from the outside--pupils, teachers, other resources, management rules and requirements, parental anxieties, standards, tests with high stakes, and so on--are fed into the box,' (black & wiliam, 1998b, p. 1). as proponents of the constructivist classroom, they are persuasive in voicing their concerns about such a system which is primarily designed to receive and decode external signals. those who advocate afl/aal seek to go beyond a merely passive congregation of students (i.e. the notion of the pejorative 'black box') by encouraging co-operative and collaborative activities in the classroom. however, traditional learning arrangements continue to prevail, consequently pupils are often seen working in groups but not working as groups (galton et al, 1980; black, 2005). at present, the majority of classrooms exhibit a superficial culture of cooperative interaction (black, 2005). however, research undertaken by the aag (2002-2004) and the subsequent in-service experiences reported by the apmg (2005-2008) found compelling evidence which indicates the conditions for successful cooperation exist in classrooms. it was found that students are very responsive to the idea of co-operating with different people in their assessment. of particular interest among their findings is confirmation that students liked to help each other with schoolwork, while either actually working and learning or in terms of assessment. it is therefore unsurprising that a key technique of the afl/aal program is effective dialogue among the central participants--the students. furthermore, afl/aal necessarily entails cooperation c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 3 8 between all the participants in the learning process including teachers and parents/carers. the apmg found that students appreciate in-depth communication with teachers and parents/carers about their progress, and consider it to be a valuable part of the process of learning. mccroskey and richmond (1992) state that 'all aspects of what happens in the classroom are contingent upon eliciting cooperation from every class member by employing sound principles of classroom management' (p. 44). the term 'management' in a afl/aal classroom context takes on a unique meaning because it entails the effective management of the learning process by developing activities which support learning through high quality interaction such as, discussion, feedback and goal setting. formative assessment strategies in practical settings participants in project 1 schools were trained in the deployment of 16 formative assessment teaching strategies: higher order questioning techniques; use of problem solving techniques; jot time (students are afforded an extended period of time to commit their ideas in writing before the beginning of an interaction); use of wrong answers; wait time; traffic lighting; group work and pair work; discussions; feedback as comments and not grades; oral feedback; sharing assessment criteria; peer assessment; redrafting of work; developing peer-peer communication skills (relational skills training); collaborative goal setting; reflective learning. a strategy worthy of some extended emphasis from the list provided here is that of traffic lighting. it may be used in various ways and is a powerful tool for self and peer assessment. for peer assessment, students may be required to traffic light each other’s explanations and justifications: green indicates work that exhibits explanations which surpass their own current level; orange indicates work that is comparable to their own, and red is used for work which is of lesser quality than their own. all students are then required to explain why they assigned those levels of recognition and provide constructive critique project 1: formative assessment 9 and praise to each other. for example, a student may recognize that his/her partner has included an example or explanation from beyond the worksheet and award a ‘green light’. traffic lighting also provides an opportunity for self-assessment and reflection upon one’s current status. for example, if students are required to learn certain science terms or language vocabulary they may clarify their own knowledge by assigning green to words they know and can use with confidence, orange for words in which they have some understanding and red for terms/words that they do not yet understand. summative assessment revisited research indicates that many of the problems with assessment arise from its summative nature (black & wiliam, 1998a; harlen & deakin crick, 2003; arg, 1999). a significant systemic obstacle frustrating the engagement of teachers with formative assessment strategies is the tension between the formative (assessment for learning) and summative (assessment of learning/assessment for qualifications) components of a program. this tension arises from the roles and responsibilities expected of teachers as both formative assessors, engaged in the process of student learning and as summative assessors required to behave as dispassionate judges of attainment (knight & yorke, 2003). tests are usually viewed summatively by teachers, and their formative potential is largely overlooked (morris et al, 1999) and 'while teachers are usually conscientious about marking student work they often fail to offer guidance on how work can be improved' (hallam et al, 2004, ¶ 2.4). the assessment reform group (arg, 1999) at cambridge university identifies various undesirable tendencies exhibited by classroom practitioners. these may be summarized as: a) a tendency for teachers to assess quantity of work and presentation rather than the quality of learning; b) a focus on marking and grading at the expense of providing advice for improvement, c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 3 10 which tends to lower the self esteem of pupils; c) a strong emphasis on comparing pupils with each other which demoralizes the less successful learners; d) teachers' feedback to pupils often attempts to serve managerial and social purposes rather than helping them to learn more effectively. the arg go on to propose that improving learning through assessment depends on five key factors: i) a recognition of the profound influence instruction and specifically assessment has on the motivation and self esteem of pupils; ii) adjusting teaching to take account of the results of assessment; iv) the provision of effective feedback to pupils; iii) the active involvement of pupils in their own learning; v) the need for pupils to be able to assess themselves and understand how to improve. particular emphasis was placed upon the sharing of learning goals with pupils; encouraging equality and mutuality between students; involving pupils in self-assessment and providing feedback which leads to pupils recognizing their next steps and how to take them. a consequence of summative assessment strategies is the creation of large numbers of disaffected students, particularly among lower achieving students (harlen & deakin crick, 2003). this negative impact of current practice has been well documented. both the arg (1999, 2002) and the university of london's eppi-centre (2002) found that students show high levels of test anxiety when facing summative tests and much prefer other forms of assessment. high-stakes testing creates disaffection among students who do not achieve their full potential. as with all systemic phenomena, the outcomes are cyclical and reinforcing. those students who exhibit disaffection often experience an ever-deepening spiral of self-defeating learning behavior and worsening motivational problems (covington, 1984). the arg (1999, 2002) found that the use of formative assessment techniques in the classroom mitigates the problems identified with summative testing and creates large positive increases in the level of student engagement. consequently, choices need to be made between assessment techniques which support the process project 1: formative assessment 11 of classroom learning by involving the student with the meta-process of learning and those that demotivate students by frequently testing performance outcomes (clark, 2008). not only does the predominance of summative testing systems create disaffection on a wide-scale, it perpetuates its own existence a phenomenon noted by wiliam et al (2004) when they write: '... the introduction of high-stakes state-mandated testing, such as now exists in england and most states in the u.s.a, makes the effective implementation of formative assessment even more difficult. this is because ... attempts to maximise student and school scores appear to result in a lack of attention to the kinds of higher-order thinking involved in formative assessment' (p. 49). however, it should be noted that there is great importance in ensuring the constructive alignment between aims, learning and teaching processes and so summative assessment methods have been emphasized as methods to ensure effective learning (biggs, 1996). the difference between summative assessment and formative assessment is that while constructive alignment can promote success on summatively assessed learning outcomes, formative assessment is specifically designed to support the learning process itself. afl/aal curriculum: four key architectural principles if wide-scale educational innovation is to be successful, the strategic aims of the curriculum should be embodied in a comprehensive blueprint: the 'curriculum architecture'. it must also be understood that such a blueprint presents the structure of a curriculum and as such, it is an unresponsive or 'inorganic' entity. it is not designed to (and therefore does not) predict or limit the valid learning activities which arise in a classroom where formative assessment strategies are in use. while the afl/aal classroom system is built upon the blueprint, afl/aal is an organic process and a process of continuous adaptation which seeks to meet the learning needs of the c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 3 12 students. the afl/aal classroom is a place where students and teachers work together and 'feedback is used to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged' (black & wiliam, 1998b, p.2). the fundamental need for constant readjustment means that a prescription for teacher action, which seeks to specify the 'best' course of action given certain conditions is impossible even in principle (wiliam, 2003). the central importance of the dynamic adaptation of instructional methods to the needs of individual students is therefore powerfully emphasized in the formative assessment classroom. four interdependent principals govern the construction of an effective assessment infused curriculum; 1. coherence; 2. progression; 3. relevance; 4. engagement/motivation and personalization/choice. the following sub-sections will discuss these principles of curriculum architecture and how they orient teachers and students to the learning process. the principle of coherence the first curriculum design principle is coherence, or the alignment of program content with program aims to ensure that learning activities combine to form a coherent experience. to avert a misalignment, which can cause serious issues across time, there should be clear links between the different aspects of children's learning, including carefully considered opportunities for extended activities which further consolidate learning and draw different strands of learning together. assessment should support the learning process, not drive it and assessments should be part of a holistic and balanced learning and teaching process. learning behaviour is determined by the kind of assessments learners are confronted by and therefore assessments 'define what specific patterns of thinking we want students to demonstrate' (sparks, 1999). if we want students to demonstrate higher order cognitive skills they need to be engaged in assessment activities which support that kind of learning. in order to support the learning process and realize learning goals, assessment of project 1: formative assessment 13 content should support higher order learning goals by involving learners in the processes of their own learning. the curriculum architecture should underpin the process of orchestrating high quality learning encounters that provide students with the means for achieving desired learning outcomes (knight, 2001). as such, curriculum coherence is in part conceptualized as a 'series of encounters between students' (parker, 2003, p. 532) in collaboration with other stakeholders in the learning process. the principle of coherence was a vital aspect of the successful development of project 1 in scottish schools; it is the fundamental need for coherence the aag/apmg refer to when they say, 'assessment is for learning connects assessment and learning/teaching,' (aag/apmg, 2002-2008). learner: assessment is an important part of my learning. i understand how the assessment activities i do can help me learn. teacher: in planning learning and teaching, i consider what information is needed to demonstrate that learning has taken place and how this evidence can be gathered from learning activities. in my planning i share assessment information with others involved in the learner’s learning across the curriculum. together we ensure learning is planned on the basis of sound evidence about skills development. the principle of progression the second curriculum design principle is progression (aag/apmg, 2002-2008). as part of learning and teaching, evidence needs to be collected which demonstrates and promotes the full breadth and depth of learning as experienced by learners and described by the outcomes. all children should have opportunities for a broad, suitably weighted range of experiences. the c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 3 14 curriculum should be organised so that they will learn and develop through a variety of contexts within both the classroom and other aspects of school life. there should be opportunities for children to develop their full capacity for different types of thinking and learning. as they progress, they should develop and apply increasing intellectual rigour, drawing different strands of learning together, and exploring and achieving more advanced levels of understanding. learner: assessment information provides me with a full picture of my learning. it shows me how much i have learned and how well and helps me to see pathways into the future of my learning both in and beyond school. teacher: i design assessment in a way which enables the learner to demonstrate the breadth and depth of their learning. i use information on their progress and their learning goals to plan appropriate learning opportunities, building on what they have already achieved. the principle of relevance the third principle is relevance, and may be divided into two parts a) validity and b) consistency. many students will learn whatever is necessary to get the grades they desire. many summatively assessed programs are based on memorizing details. in those circumstances students will usually attempt to deploy a learning strategy that focuses on the retention of facts. the development of higher order cognition is a focal instructional strategy of project 1 (hallam et al, 2004). formative assessment is fundamentally underpinned by dialogue (black & wiliam, 2006). it is therefore an assessment process that supports learning by stressing higher order thinking skills project 1: formative assessment 15 through collaborative planning and organising of work; compromise; conflict resolution (baines, blatchford & chowne, 2007); the sharing and augmentation of knowledge and feedback (barron, 2000). a) validity: a range of assessment approaches are used which are fit for purpose. this means that they should be valid and reliable – they should be well designed and capture the full range of learning and skills that are being developed; particularly high-order problem solving skills. learner: i understand why i am being assessed and my assessment clearly reflects the learning i am trying to achieve. they provide me with valuable feedback about how much and how well i have learned so that i can plan next steps. teacher: in planning learning activities, i consider the learning intentions and range of evidence i will gather to demonstrate this learning. i develop valid and reliable methods of assessment accordingly. parent: i have accurate and succinct information about my child’s learning across a wide range of learning and skills. b) consistency: learners’ achievements are assessed fairly and consistently across the system, based on shared and commonly understood and consistently applied standards. learner: i understand what good learning looks like and i know what i have to do to achieve my learning goals. self and peer evaluation help me to develop my understanding of what i need to do. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 3 16 teacher: i know what quality in learning looks like. i share a common understanding of standards with my colleagues, and apply these with consistency across learners. the principles of engagement/motivation and personalisation/choice the decision to develop formative assessment strategies in scottish classrooms arose from the compelling research of black and william (1998a, b) and subsequent reports on their work (arg, 1999, 2002) which emphasized the potential of formative assessment strategies to create a large positive increase in the level of student engagement with the learning process. the principles of engagement and motivation are contiguous with those of personalisation and choice, and are highly significant features of an effective curriculum architecture. the arrangements for assessment should be responsive to individual needs and support particular aptitudes and talents in order to challenge and motivate all learners to develop to their fullest. the curriculum should recognize that learners progress in different ways and, based on their experiences go on to make different choices. assessment should reflect these differences by giving each child increasing opportunities for exercising responsible personal choice as they move through their school career. once they have achieved suitable levels of attainment across a wide range of areas of learning the choice should become as open as possible. there should be safeguards to ensure that choices are soundly based and lead to successful outcomes. the effectiveness of such safeguards is dependent on the ability of individual teachers to understand the principles of assessment for learning and apply them in the classroom in order to support the fullest development of learners, while minimising distortions in learning (aag/apmg, 2002-2008). project 1: formative assessment 17 the notion of personalization and choice is by no means new. for more than 30 years researchers have been aware that relating new knowledge to learners' existing understandings of the world is an effective way for learners to acquire deeper meaning from new information. since personalization of the curriculum emerged as a valid pedagogical principle, it has been discussed as a means of motivating learners by incorporating their goals and choice of topics into a curriculum, particularly for addressing values (howe & howe, 1975), and as a model of behaviour modification for disruptive students (mamchak & mamchak, 1976). some 35 years later the project 1 classroom system seeks to fully value and recognize learners' achievements by acknowledging the individuality of personal experience and the accommodation of learners' needs in the instruction. learner: i am involved in planning my learning and setting challenging goals for myself. assessment information helps me to see how far i have come and what i need to do to achieve my goals and motivates me to set new goals. i am assessed in ways that allow me to demonstrate and recognise the full range of my achievements. where appropriate, i am involved in decisions about when and how this assessment will take place. teacher: the learning, teaching and assessment activities i plan create opportunities for dialogue to help learners set and achieve challenging goals based on high quality feedback on their progress. in planning teaching learning and assessment, i consider the needs of the wide needs of learners. i plan an appropriate range of activities to give learners the opportunity to demonstrate their learning and provide feedback accordingly. a practitioner evaluation of 'project 1': a literature review c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 3 18 this section of the article features the findings of two separate research papers which evaluate the crucial development stages of project 1 (2002-2004) in uk schools: 1) hallam, kiston, peffers, robertson and stobart (2004) investigated project 1only and; 2) condie, livingstone and seagraves (2005) examined the impact of project 1 alongside various other projects within the aifl programme. it may be of interest to note that teachers exhibited a consistently greater interest in responding to questions regarding project 1 than any other project included in condie’s research. at the behest of seed, hallam et al undertook to investigate effective classroom approaches to formative assessment (october 2004). their investigation is founded upon the earlier (and continuing) research of black and wiliam (1998a, b). they draw various sources of data directly from school settings: teachers' agreements, action plans, program dairies, case study reports, relevant school self-evaluations and field visits. a primary function of the early field visits was to introduce participating staff to the use of a rating scale used to quantify the perceived effectiveness of project 1 to a range of outcomes. all data was analyzed to consider the extent of change across the early period of the innovation in the following areas: student learning, motivation and behavior; student awareness of assessment; attainment; classroom practice; teacher beliefs and attitudes; teacher understanding of assessment; parental/carer involvement in their child's education. student learning, motivation and behaviour hallam et al (2004) found strong positive consensus among teachers (n=72) regarding enhanced involvement, motivation and confidence in their students. generally, there were fewer comments regarding behavior. hallam et al (2004) speculate that 'this may have been in part, because the pupils participating in the project were on the whole already well behaved (¶ 4.7.4).' a project 1: formative assessment 19 slightly later seed commissioned study into aifl and the effectiveness of formative assessment strategies was undertaken by condie et al in december 2005. the reluctance of teachers to comment on changes in behavior was a remarkable feature here as well. condie et al (2005) used questionnaires as a part of their method and issued the same basic template in two phases spaced 16 months apart. 44 teachers and 21 head-teachers participated in phase 1; 56 teachers and 26 head-teachers participated in phase 2 of the survey. in both phases, 21% of participating teachers declined to evaluate the statement: 'pupils have shown improved classroom behavior'. a further interesting feature of condie's research is that while 73.5% of respondents strongly agreed or agreed (sa/a) with the statement on discipline in phase one, only 46% did so in phase two (2005, ¶ 4.4). the marked decline of positive responses in phase two of condie's questionnaire was explained by head-teachers' as an indication of the generally good discipline found across participating classes at the time, and so what may not be observed may not be reported. condie's report did not seek to examine if the good discipline reported by head-teachers at the time of phase two was the outcome of earlier project 1 interventions in the classroom. the responses to the condie et al questionnaire concur with the favorable indications received by hallam et al, regarding learning, confidence and motivation: project 1 questionnaire (condie et al, 2005, ¶ 4.4) phase 1 phase 2 sa/a sa/a the developments enhance the learning of all pupils 75.00% 67.00% pupils have increased confidence and show greater self-esteem 70.50% 72.00% pupils are more motivated toward learning 70.00% n/a c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 3 20 pupils have become more actively involved in the learning process 81.00% 82.00% student awareness of assessment an important aspect of project 1 was the effect on students' meta-cognitive skills. participating students became more aware of their learning needs and what they had to do in order to make progress (hallam et al, 2004). for example, hallam reports a strong positive reaction from students after the use of a feedback sheet designed to develop their insights into their writing skills (2004, ¶ 4.7.5). condie solicited the perceptions of teachers on this matter: phase 1 phase 2 sa/a sa/a pupils are better equipped to assess their own learning 79.50% 78.00% pupils are able to set realistic targets 66.00% 66.00% pupils are developing skills in peer assessment 66.00% 77.00% attainment attainment was an area in which teachers were reluctant to offer comment. hallam states that drawing conclusions about project 1's impact on attainment would be premature because of the early development stage of the project. they do however report that some teachers were very positive about the impact of formative assessment strategies, while some in policy positions (headteachers and local government officials) were more reserved in their praise (2004, ¶ 4.7.8). condie posed the following statement on attainment to teachers: ‘i have evidence that pupil attainment has project 1: formative assessment 21 improved through project activities.’ only 32% of respondents in phase 1, and 28% in phase 2 strongly agreed or agreed with the statement. the low approval rating afforded to this statement is in part explained by a marked reluctance among participating teachers to commit any form of response on this issue: 44% of teachers in phase one and 42% in phase two chose to offer no response. it is therefore impossible to ascertain if they inclined towards agreement or disagreement on the issue of attainment. classroom practices 'a major outcome...was the change in classroom practices which increased the active engagement of pupils, who were encouraged to take ownership of their learning rather than being the passive recipients of the delivery of curriculum' (hallam et al, 2004, ¶ 4.7.1). hallam reported that relationships with the students 'blossomed' and it became possible to bring forward difficulties without negative impact (2004, ¶ 4.7.1). significantly, hallam found that the students were generally positive about the impact of the project. similarly, condie et al (2005) requested that teachers respond to the following statement: ‘pupils themselves report positive views of project activities.’ practitioner responses were favourable, with 62.5% (in phase 1) and 65% (in phase 2) of teachers strongly agreeing or agreeing with the statement. it can be seen that there is a consensus which runs throughout the responses to the condie research questionnaire. teachers consistently indicate that students are more motivated, more involved and better equipped to assess their own learning. in addition, students are positive about project activities, show greater confidence and are generally able to set realistic learning targets. teacher beliefs and attitudes the afl project tapped into the existing beliefs and attitudes of many participating teachers. hallam et al (2004) observe that: c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 3 22 'the nature of the project itself with its focus on pupil learning and the enhancement of teaching resonates with teachers, taking them back to fundamental pedagogical principles...it's success in delivering improved pupil motivation and engagement provided teachers with immediate positive reinforcement for continuing development, implementation and evaluation of the strategies' (¶ 1.5.11). indeed, 100% of respondents assigned a rating of vs/s to the project improving their motivation (hallam et al, 2004, ¶ 1.5.18). condie et al reported numerous positive descriptions: 're-energised, satisfied, confident, renewed enjoyment' (2005, ¶ 4.4). it is evident that the students are not the sole beneficiary of a movement from a teacher-centered pedagogy to one which places the student and their learning needs at the heart of teaching. teachers themselves report it to be an essential opportunity to reflect on their existing attitudes on classroom practice (hallam et al, 2004). hallam et al present a particularly meaningful remark from a participating teacher: 'even in terms of where i was in education 10 years ago, you can see that is a shift, and it’s almost as if now the focus is on the process rather than the product' (¶ 4.8.2). this is a very significant insight into the essential focus of formative assessment being one of process and not oriented to performance. both hallam and condie gathered extensive evidence of the impact of project 1 on the personal and professional development of teachers, many of which used the opportunity to reflect on their past understandings of teaching and learning and compare them to their current practices. teacher understandings of assessment hallam's report on project 1 stresses the need for a careful clarification of the meaning of formative assessment, followed by the embedding of formative assessment strategies in practice. 'teachers need to understand the underlying principles rather than have a superficial knowledge of strategies' (hallam et al, 2004, ¶ 1.8). condie et al discovered that teachers and head-teachers project 1: formative assessment 23 participating in the initial development phase of project 1 were troubled by a lack of understanding regarding the underlying theories and principles of formative assessment (2005, ¶ 4.4). both studies elicited feedback which indicated that a much greater depth of understanding was required by participating staff prior to the commencement of work in schools. however, as the development phase of project 1 continued, teachers reported the evolving understanding of how assessment and learning connect as a very powerful learning experience (hallam et al, 2004, ¶ 4.8.1). by the latter stages of project development, 100% of participating teachers in project 1 evaluated the project as vs/s at improving their understanding of assessments (2004, ¶ 1.5.18). in terms of the overall effect of the project upon teachers, the hallam et al report reveals that the project had a significant impact and led to: • the understandings that formative assessment takes time and requires long-term commitment; • improved feedback to students; • a deeper understanding of assessment; • teachers applying formative assessment strategies beyond the prescribed boundaries of the project; • teachers becoming increasingly aware of how students learn and their learning needs. parent/carer involvement one of the key aims of the wider multi-project aifl innovation is to involve parents and carers more actively in the process of their children's learning. this overall aim is therefore equally significant when considering project 1 and the task of developing formative assessment strategies in schools. the importance of parental/carer inclusion is confirmed by townsend (1997),who c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 3 24 believes that effective schools are those which welcome parents by engaging them and involving them in the widest range of school activities; most crucially those concerning their child's development. although a key aim of project 1, the level of involvement by parents and carers by the end of the development phase was disappointing, particularly when compared to the other more successful aspects of the project discussed above. only 23% of teachers indicated that parental/carer involvement had increased as a result of the project (hallam et al, 2004, ¶ 1.5.18). condie et al found that only 38% of head-teachers reported that involvement practices had changed as a result of the project. indeed, some schools neglected to inform the parents about the project (2005, ¶ 4.4). condie determined six key themes by analyzing teachers' comments about the project. from a total of 410 recorded thematic references there were only 22 mentions of better links to parents and carers (2005, ¶ 4.4). it is apparent that the space between the school system and parents/carers had not been sufficiently explored by the end of the project development stage. it is to be hoped that the level of 'public engagement' exhibited by schools increases in order to create communities of practice which work together in the spirit of trust and under the agreement of mutual accountability. it is this kind of relationship which brings into existence legitimate partnerships (marx 2000). project 1: challenges encountered in the development stage (2002-2004) instigating change in schools is a highly complex process. any complex system can be broken down into sub-parts and various authors have sought to examine the process of educational change management in terms of categories. for example, johnston and neidermeier (1987) see change in terms of 3 broad categories of variables: a) structural (leadership, finance, human resources); b) procedural (time, organization, technical assistance) and c) attitudinal, primarily relating to negative responses to top-own policy making and the existence of internal politics. project 1: formative assessment 25 knoop (1987) suggests four key areas of change: i) administrative (policies and objectives); ii) curriculum/program; iii) human resources (staff interactions, beliefs, expectations; and iv) teaching and learning, where knoop highlighted group interactions between teachers and students and methods of teaching pertaining to classroom relations and communication. fullan (1991) confirms that the actual process of educational change management is a highly complex process requiring the strong commitment of principals and external policy makers. it can be seen that the factors which ensured the success of the project 1 (stated earlier) take these change variables into full account. the careful arrangement of consultative networks by seed led to project success despite the reputation of teachers for being inherently stubborn when faced with innovation, in part due to their strong sense of acculturation and continuity. hallam et al report very positive attitudes by schools to the difficulties faced during the developmental stage of project 1. when asked about the difficulties encountered schools identified relatively few, preferring instead to see problem solving as developmental and positive (2004, ¶ 1.5.6) – an indication that the overwhelming majority of participating teachers and principals were committed to the project from the outset. it was in this spirit that various developmental challenges were reported by participating schools. hallam et al (2004) found that some teachers, even those who grasped the underlying principles of formative assessment, were unclear on what they were supposed to do in their classrooms. one teacher explains that this barrier to change exists because, 'teachers are used to attending various in-service courses where they are told exactly what to do in the classroom' (hallam et al 2004, ¶ 4.6.1). consequently, participating teachers expressed concerns about the movement from concept to operationalization. some felt that more direction was required on the differentiation of strategies taking into account the wide range of attainment in some classes (hallam et al, 2004). these are valid concerns, not least when one considers issues of c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 3 26 choice and equity, which are fundamental themes of any credible curriculum architecture. all students, no matter what their ability, gender, ethnicity or economic status, need to be supported equally as they gain mastery of the basic curriculum and so it is essential that schools 'identify and remove physical and programmatic barriers that produce disproportionality in academic achievement' (ospi website). this situation must exist in such a way that students do not perceive bias or discrimination in their treatment. if it does not, it is to betray sensitivity and trust and destroy the central pillar supporting the afl/aal classroom: cooperation (arg 2002). in addition, some teachers found the integration of formative and summative assessments very challenging (george street research [gsr], 2007). such initial uncertainty among some teachers is not indicative of shortcomings in their preparation by seed. such preparations simply did not take place and traditionally precise instruction regarding the specifics of implementation were carefully avoided. wiliam, lee, harrison and black (2004) explain the rationale behind this non-prescriptive approach, 'the central tenet of the research project was that if the promise of formative assessment was to be realised, traditional research designs, in which teachers are 'told' what to do by researchers would not be appropriate (p. 50).' as the project progressed, the lack of clarity exhibited by some teachers at the beginning evolved into an advantage as they appreciated that it had compelled them to focus on their own teaching materials and devise their own action plan (hallam et al, 2004) in effect they were adjusting to the atmosphere outside of the 'black box' (black & wiliam, 1998b). however, in a 2007 review of the entire aifl project research conducted by george street research found that awareness and understanding of aifl was not firmly embedded across teachers in scotland and understanding was not clear by teachers in terms of the principles underpinning assessment strategies (gsr, 2007). as the government funded part project 1: formative assessment 27 of the aifl project drew to close in late 2007 the quest for fine-grained understandings of formative assessment principles among teachers continued. other challenges arising from the development of formative assessment strategies included: • some staff and students didn't like to be videoed or lacked the technical support to expedite this process; • teachers spoke of the need for self awareness to avoid reverting to old habits; • tensions between formative and summative assessment demands; • concerns about funding for further development; • competing agenda and external accountability demands. many teachers identified their primary concern as insufficient time to engage in the process of strategic development (planning, preparing, reflecting, reporting) (condie et al, 2005). time was also a concern when it came to covering the curriculum, with many teachers expressing concern that the material was being covered at a slower pace. these initial concerns were to some extent mitigated by the emerging quality of work and learning as the project progressed (hallam et al, 2004). project 1: factors contributing to success both hallam et al (2004) and condie et al (2005) found the development stage of project 1 to be a success from which lessons can be learned and applied to future projects which seek to develop innovative changes to classroom practice. it is clear that the development of formative assessment strategies in the classroom stimulated teachers personally and improved them professionally. hallam et al attribute various factors to the success of the project: • participating teachers had time to plan, prepare, reflect and evaluate. this was made possible c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 3 28 by the serious intent of seed to instigate change at a policy level; • once teachers became accustomed to the idea of exploring formative assessment strategies in their classrooms, the action-research elements of the project became very meaningful; • head-teachers, senior management team members and teachers were committed to the project from the outset; • teamwork between all stakeholders in the project; • regular meetings and project forums to reflect upon project efficacy and to plan next steps; • resources (supply teachers, i.t, instructional materials, time and funding) were provided which supported the project and the strategies; • the incorporation of the project into the school development program. conclusion the development of formative assessment strategies in the scottish region of the uk was a highly complex process that required the political commitment of government to be matched by that of participating teachers and principals. even when this collaboration was secured and the processes of change management among stakeholders carefully planned, conceptual difficulties persisted beyond the 2002-2004 development phase of the aifl project (gsr, 2007). the embedding of innovative pedagogical principles is beset by challenges and tensions. as black & wiliam (2005) observe, the effective integration of formative and summative assessment will require a different changemanagement strategy depending on national circumstances, and in some cases may be very challenging indeed. innovations in education invite such challenges and are inevitable (fullan, 1991). from the out-set, the constructive problem-solving attitude exhibited by participating schools in scotland was project 1: formative assessment 29 a large contributory factor to the successful development of formative assessment strategies (hallam et al, 2004). a primary source of conceptual challenge associated with project 1 was the acculturated preference of teachers for prescriptive and precise instructions on how to implement new classroom practices (william et al, 2004; hallam et al, 2004). despite the challenges discussed in this article, teachers responded very positively on an evaluative rating scale: 100% of respondents reported that the project was ‘very successful’ or ‘successful’ (vs/s) in increasing teacher understanding of the role of assessment and in improving teacher motivation. further, 91% of respondents indicated that project 1 was vs/s in changing classroom practices; 92% indicated the project was vs/s at changing assessment practices; 94% the extent of questioning; 95% in increasing the level of discussion and 97% of respondents assigned a vs/s rating to an improved teacher focus on the learning needs of students (hallam et al, 2004). if formative assessment interventions are to be successful on a large and long-term scale certain conditions should exist: (i) dedicated political support at all levels of government; (ii) a clear and compelling expression of the conceptual framework which underpins formative assessment and continuing support for practitioners beyond the development phase (iii) close collaboration between all stakeholders (teachers, administrators, parents/carers and students), who work together to engage students with the process of their own learning; (iv) a climate of change management in which practitioners approach obstacles as constructive and necessary challenges; (v) the alignment of summative and formative assessment activities so that they work in concert to support and evaluate learning. finally, at the most fundamental level formative assessment practices are characterized by positive learning interactions and dialogue. as such, an important strand of future research resides in developing fine-grained understandings about high-quality c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 3 30 classroom dialogue between teacher/student and between peers, and how they support productive learning in practical settings. references american psychological association. 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(2004). teachers developing assessment for learning: impact on student learning. assessment in education, 11(1), 49-65. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 34 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 3 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain jeffery johnson seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo perceptions of teaching volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x perceptions of teacher planning time: an epistemological challenge m.p. prytula, l.m. hellsten, and l.j. mcintyre university of saskatchewan citation m.p. prytula, l.m. hellsten, and l.j. mcintyre (2010). perceptions of teacher planning time: and epistemological challenge. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/437 abstract the concept of developing teacher collaboration teams continues to be a prevalent problem for teachers and schools. the results of a saskatchewan study of beginning teachers (hellsten et al., 2007) was the finding that first and second year teachers perceived planning and collaboration with other teachers, as well as professional development as the least important support or resource for their induction years. this bears heavy implications for teacher learning and learning improvement in today’s schools. this paper examines the perceptions that beginning teachers in saskatchewan have regarding preparation time and planning time, explores the epistemological basis for these findings and the impact of this basis, and discusses the c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 2 significance of this finding and the potential problems and implications that this realization has for continued theory and practice for teacher education and collaboration in schools. keywords: teacher induction, preparation and planning time, collaboration, epistemology, professional development perceptions of teacher planning time 3 about the author(s) author: dr. laureen mcintyre affiliation: university of saskatchewan address: 28 campus drive saskatoon, sk s7n 0x1 email: laureen.mcintyre@usask.ca biographical information: dr. laureen mcintyre is an associate professor and director of the special education certificate program in the college of education at the university of saskatchewan. dr. mcintyre completed a b.ed. at the university of saskatchewan, a m.sc. in communication disorders at minot state university, and a ph.d. ineducational psychology (specifically special education) at the university of alberta. as an american and canadian certified speech-language pathologist, dr. mcintyre has worked in both community health and school settings. author: dr. michelle prytula affiliation: university of saskatchewan address: 28 campus dr., saskatoon, sk. s7n 0x1 email: michelle.prytula@usask.ca biographical information: michelle prytula is an assistant professor in the department of educational administration, college of education, at the university of saskatchewan. previous to academia, she held teacher, vice-principal and principal positions. her current faculty teaching areas include leadership, policy studies, organizational theory, and educational finance. her current research interests include teacher learning, action research, the professional learning community, teacher induction, and school leadership and improvement. her work recently earned her the mcdowell foundation award for research into teaching in 2010. author: dr. laurie hellsten affiliation: university of saskatchewan address: 28 campus dr., saskatoon, sk. s7n 0x1 email: laurie.hellsten@usask.ca c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 4 perceptions of teacher planning time: an epistemological challenge “teacher isolation is the enemy of improvement” (kanold, toncheff, & douglas, 2008, p. 23). teacher collaboration remains an integral component of successful teaching and learning. teachers can make significant improvements to student performance by abandoning the traditional culture of teacher isolation and opting to work in collaborative teams (leonard & leonard, 2003). after over a decade of theory and research pertaining to the potential benefits of teacher collaboration (dufour & eaker, 1998; mitchell & sackney, 2000; schmoker, 2005), one would not only expect to see this concept to have begun to take hold within the culture of teaching, but to have achieved a stronghold in the behaviours and practices of teacher education and teaching. however, this is not the case. the concept of developing teacher collaboration teams continues to be a prevalent problem for teachers and schools. so prevalent, in fact, that not only is the concept of collaboration not taking shape, but it remains “little more than an aspiration” (leonard & leonard, 2003, p. 9). developing teacher collaboration teams may be just an aspiration in saskatchewan. among the results of a saskatchewan study of beginning teachers (hellsten et al., 2007) was the finding that first and second year teachers perceived planning and collaboration with other teachers, as well as professional development as the least important support or resource for their induction years. this bears heavy implications for teacher learning and learning improvement in today’s schools. using the findings of the hellsten et al. (2007) study as the foundation, this paper will: (1) examine the perceptions that beginning teachers in saskatchewan have regarding preparation time and planning time; (2) explore the epistemological basis for these findings and the impact of this basis; and (3) discuss the significance of this finding and the potential problems and perceptions of teacher planning time 5 implications that this realization has for continued theory and practice for teacher education and collaboration in schools. background professional collaboration, collaborative planning, and school reform initiatives have been at the forefront of school improvement initiatives over the past twenty years. most commonly referred to as communities of practice (wenger, 1998), and professional learning communities (dufour & eaker, 1998), social learning and planning in collaborative teams of educators is a strategy used in many academic settings to improve student achievement (schmoker, 2005). to say that knowledge is constructive and co-created implies that mastering the skills of teaching requires working in community with other professionals, creating interactive learning environments, and sharing with and learning from one another. distinct from the epistemology that knowledge is accessible and exists beyond the individual, a constructivist epistemology implies that greater knowledge exists within a group of people, rather than in a single individual (mitchell & sackney, 2001). two main barriers to beneficial collaboration and planning in today’s schools have been identified as a lack of time and poor administrative support (henry, 2005; leonard & leonard, 2003). furthermore, professional development initiatives focused on collaboration have been criticized as one-shot, sporadic, and shallow (colantonio, 2005). cherubini (2007) found, from a research study conducted in ontario into beginning teachers’ perceptions of the effects of their induction, that beginning teachers do value those induction programs that included collaborative dialogue between colleagues that served to enhance their skills in improving student achievement, rather than those that provided a “surface approach to addressing generic needs” (p. 9). despite this, however, the concept of teacher collaboration has been slow to catch on. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 6 a study of the experiences of beginning teachers in saskatchewan (hellsten et al., 2007) has revealed a further barrier to the development of collaborative work teams, professional learning communities, or communities of practice. results showed that beginning teachers entered the profession perceiving collaborative planning and professional development as relatively unimportant as compared to isolated teacher preparation time. although the sample was restricted to only saskatchewan beginning teachers, and therefore is not generalizable to teachers in all provinces, this finding suggests that the barriers to collaboration may be situated internally, rather than externally. teachers’ relative perceptions of the value of supports indicate that a challenge to collaboration may exist within the epistemological beliefs of beginning teachers. individual epistemological beliefs influence “how individuals make meaning and how this (meaning) in turn affects learning” (hofer, 2000, p. 379). these beliefs play a role in how future and practicing teachers learn to teach and practice their teaching (fives & buehl, 2008, p. 135); therefore, if learning improvement is to be initiated through collaboration, these perceptions must be challenged. this is an epistemological issue, rather than a professional development issue, thus it must be approached as such. this epistemological issue will be discussed in detail following an overview of the becoming a teacher study. the becoming a teacher study becoming a teacher: a longitudinal study of saskatchewan teachers’ early career paths (“author”, 2007; “author”, 2008; “author”, “author”, in press) was designed to identify and examine key factors that affect saskatchewan beginning teachers’ early career paths, as well as their commitment to the profession. the context of this study is the province of saskatchewan where there are two teacher education institutions (university of saskatchewan and the perceptions of teacher planning time 7 university of regina). saskatchewan provides an interesting context in which to examine beginning teachers' transition experiences because of the province's diversity and distinctiveness (e.g., rural and urban dimensions1, a population comprised of a high proportion of aboriginal persons2), a recent structural renewal of the publicly funded k-12 system3, and a re-culturing of teaching and learning4. one of the six main purposes of the study was to describe and analyze the supports new teachers believe are required to assist their transition into the profession. the survey instrument was developed specifically for this study by the longitudinal research team (authors, 2007) based on relevant literature. the majority of the survey instrument was comprised of forced choice items many of which were single items (not subscales of items). although content validity evidence was collected using experts, no other validity or reliability evidence has been collected. surveys were composed of five sections including: demographics; background information regarding education and training; information about certification and employment; specific information about the teaching position; and reflections about teaching. this paper reports on the section of the survey that asked participants to reflect on their perceptions of the importance of a variety of supports. although there were minimal slight wording modifications between the 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 first year teacher surveys, essentially all first year teachers were surveyed using an identical instrument. the wording of the second year survey was modified to reflect the second year teaching status of the participants and additional questions only relevant to second year teachers were asked (e.g., perception of 1 the population of saskatchewan is approximately one million people, more people in live in rural settings than in any other province in canada (tymchak, 2001), and the population in rural schools is declining (assessment and evaluation unit, 2000). 2 the young aboriginal population is growing rapidly (tymchak, 2001); there is a need to ensure that an appropriate number of beginning teachers of aboriginal ancestry are successfully recruited/ retained to reflect this population. 3 such a restructuring process has been shown in other jurisdictions to negatively impact the classroom (dibbon, 2004). 4 all schools are expected not only to educate children and youth but to serve as centres at the community level for the delivery of appropriate social, health, recreation, culture, justice and other services for children and families. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 8 workload in second year as compared to first). however, the section of the survey that this paper focuses on was identical to the survey completed by first year teachers. in the first year of the study (2006-2007), beginning teachers from the university of saskatchewan were surveyed. in order to ensure that the sample was generalizable to beginning teachers throughout the province of saskatchewan rather than just beginning teachers from one particular institution, graduates from the university of regina were added to the sampling frame in the second year (2007-2008). in addition, as the first two years of teaching are commonly referred to as a time of survival (huberman, 1989) we felt comfortable expanding the sample to include second year teachers from both the university of regina and the university of saskatchewan in 2007-2008. in 2006-2007, all beginning first year teachers who graduated from the university of saskatchewan with valid alumni addresses were sent a paper and pencil survey. the process was repeated in 2007-2008 for all first and second year teachers from both the university of saskatchewan and the university of regina. in order to ensure confidentiality and anonymity, the respective alumni offices at both universities mailed out the survey packages on behalf of the research team. two hundred and seventy-five participants completed and returned the first year form of the survey (n2006-2007 = 125, n2007-2008 = 153), while 151 participants completed the second year form in 2007-2008. data were entered into spss 15.0, double verification was completed, and descriptive statistics were calculated. demographic data is presented in table 1. the beginning teachers were asked to rate their perception of the importance of a variety of supports using a scale ranging from one (not important) to four (very important). respondents were asked to rate each support independently and were not asked to rank order the supports perceptions of teacher planning time 9 listed. for the purposes of this article, only the scores from the very important column were included (see table 2). findings generally, all supports were considered important by all respondents in the study. across all three samples (i.e., 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 first year teachers, and 2007-2008 second year teachers), most beginning teachers identified preparation time during the school day and support from family/friends as very important supports during their first years of teaching. more specifically, preparation time was identified as very important for all survey sets, at 81.9%, 69.9% and 66.2% respectively. similarly, support of family and friends was perceived as very important by 81.6%, 62.1% and 62.3% of the respondents in those same three survey sets. table 1 demographic data of the participants 1st year teachers 2006-2007 1st year teachers 2007-2008 2nd year teachers 2007-2008 gender males 36 (28.8) 25 (16.4) 28 (39.7) females 88 (70.4) 115 (75.2) 118 (55.0) missing 1 (0.8) 13 (8.5) 5 (3.3) age group 22-24 50 (40.0) 72 (47.1) 42 (27.8) 25-34 54 (43.2) 59 (38.6) 88 (58.3) 35-44 15 (12.0) 18 (11.8) 14 (9.3) 45 + 5 (4.0) 2 (1.3) 5 (3.3) missing 1 (0.8) 2 (1.3) 2 (1.3) marital status single 58 (46.4) 87 (56.9) 60 (39.7) married/common law 61 (48.8) 61 (39.9) 83 (55.0) divorced/separated 5 (4.0) 2 (1.3) 6 (3.9) missing 1 (0.8) 3 (1.9) 2 (1.3) note. counts are presented first, with percentages in parentheses. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 10 table 2 numbers and percentages of respondents who selected each factor as a very important support in their first years of teaching factors ‘very important’ (1st year teachers, year 1) ‘very important’ (1st year teachers, year 2) ‘very important’ (2nd year teachers, year 2) new staff orientation n 56 69 54 percent 61.5 45.1 35.8 mentor n 53 61 56 percent 60.9 39.9 37.1 teacher colleagues n 61 95 81 percent 62.2 62.1 53.6 principal/vice principal n 57 83 87 percent 58.2 54.2 57.6 professional development opportunities n 45 44 48 percent 50 28.8 31.8 classroom/school resources n 69 93 86 percent 71.9 60.8 57.0 assistance for students with special needs n 62 88 90 percent 66 57.5 59.6 preparation time during the school day n 77 107 100 percent 81.9 69.9 66.2 planning time during the school day with teacher colleagues, staff n 39 65 53 percent 42.4 42.5 35.1 support of students’ parents/families n 60 72 87 percent 63.2 47.1 57.6 support of my family/friends n 80 95 94 percent 81.6 62.1 62.3 note. for the purposes of this article, only the scores from the very important column were included. low sample sizes per item reflect low numbers endorsing the item at the very important category. perceptions of teacher planning time 11 although even the items that were least likely to be endorsed received a good deal of support, there were relative differences in how many beginning teachers endorsed two of the survey items as being very important. both planning time during the school day and professional development opportunities were consistently identified as very important by the smallest number of beginning teachers. planning time during the school day was identified by only 42.4%, 42.5%, and 35.1% of the beginning teachers and professional development opportunities was identified by 50.0%, 28.8%, and 31.8% of the beginning teachers. in 20072008, planning time was identified as very important by the smallest number of beginning teachers, while professional development took this position for both forms of the surveys conducted in the 2007-2008. the lack of endorsement for planning time during the school day was recognized during an interim data analysis at the conclusion of the first year of the study. due to this surprising result, and in an effort to ensure that the wording was not responsible for the lack of endorsement, the research team modified the wording of the planning time item from planning time during the school day to planning time during the school day with teacher colleagues, staff. results from both forms of the 2007-2008 surveys (i.e., both first and second year teacher responses) showed that the frequency with which the planning time item was endorsed stayed relatively stable, with planning time being the second least frequent item endorsed as very important and professional development being the least frequently endorsed item. as the purpose of the question was to determine the supports new teachers believe are required to assist their transition into the profession, the discovery that some items were perceived as relatively unimportant was unintentional. however, now that we recognize that beginning teachers perceive isolated preparation time as relatively more important than either c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 12 professional development opportunities or planning time with teacher colleagues and staff, we must examine this finding in terms of its potential implications for theory, research and practice. discussion the remainder of this article is a discussion to further explore the findings from the question of perceived importance of supports. specifically, we intend to present the low perception of importance of collaboration and group planning in a context of recent educational movements toward professional development through collaboration and professional learning communities. we will also discuss the role of epistemology and the potential necessity to explicitly teach for epistemological change at the teacher training level, and how epistemology and our adherence to epistemological ideas impacts the approaches of instructional leadership at the school level. the development of the professional: research and practice professional development through communities of practice, professional learning communities, or collaborating and planning with teachers in the same school, department, or grade level have proven to be not only sound approaches to education, rather they have proven themselves as having the potential to transform education (dufour & eaker, 1998; fullan, 2005; schon, 1995). in schools where these approaches have taken hold, reports of success and higher student learning have followed (dufour & eaker, 1998; prytula, makahonuk, syrota, & pesenti, 2009; schmoker, 2005; vescio, ross, & adams, 2008). despite many articles, books, and studies on this effective phenomenon, the collaborative approach is very slow to be adopted in the majority of schools. historically blamed on teacher complacency, dufour (1998) recognized that approaches to professional development have been flawed through bringing in experts with little regard for the major determinant of professional development success. that is, what is perceptions of teacher planning time 13 flawed is the “context of the school in which it is presented… the beliefs, expectations, behaviours and norms that constitute the culture of a given school” (dufour, 1998, p. 24). what is of primary importance then, is not the content of the message, but the context in which it is being delivered. this context includes the epistemological beliefs and backgrounds of the professionals within the school. too often, schools are left with the substantial work of creating the change needed in teacher thinking and learning. being products of about a dozen years of elementary and high school education, and another few years of university certification, teachers tend to teach in the ways that they were taught (ball, 1990; lortie, 1975; vrasidas & mcisaac, 2001); therefore, it is a substantial challenge to develop collaborative teams, encourage teacher planning, and erode the traditional norms of working in isolation. schools, working within their own means, have only achieved marginal success with this type of reform to date. this is likely because this task of reform has less to do with explicit behaviours and habits of teachers (which can be modified through expectations and guidelines), and more to do with internal beliefs and understandings (which have been created through past experiences and knowledge). pockets of success have been found, however, in schools where professional learning communities have been established. vescio et al. (2008) found that in the schools they studied, the establishment of professional learning communities contributed to a “fundamental shift in the habits of mind that teachers bring to their daily work in the classroom” (p. 84), and that a change in professional culture had occurred. they noted, however, that these successes are not the result of a prescriptive model, but rather based on context, experience, and the creation of new knowledge. one major limitation to the widespread success of teacher collaboration and planning through structures such as the professional learning community is that they require leadership as c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 14 a catalyst. the problem is that unless a leader exhibits this initiative and has an understanding of this kind of teacher learning, school leaders, working within a continuum of eclecticism, have neither the time nor the training regarding the epistemological beliefs that underpin teachers’ understanding of their work. this understanding, then, must be rooted in the foundations of education. dufour (1998) implied that school reform must begin much earlier, and achieve a much deeper effect in order to erode the norms of teacher isolation in school systems, and bring about the effects of collaboration. the perspectives and understandings of the epistemological constructivist nature of learning must come to the surface through first the foundations of teacher training, and later, through the foundations of professional development. that means if we are to take on this reform, then we must first consider a modification to pre-service teacher education. the epistemological foundations of teaching in education, “continuing learning, both structured and self-directed, is critical to professional practice” (graham & phelps, 2003, p. 2). the epistemology of teaching and learning in education has traditionally been known as the process of transmitting knowledge from the teacher to the student (schon, 1995). tyack and cuban (1996) claimed that teaching has always been traditional. this traditional approach is how society expects teachers to teach, and this is how students have always learned. for the most part, teachers have learned this way, so it is almost expected that they teach this way. hatala and hatala (2004) indicated that teaching and learning in this way no longer suits today’s knowledge paradigm. what is required includes cooperation, collaboration, wisdom, and dialogue. this brings to the surface the idea that the traditional epistemology of teaching and learning may be incomplete or insufficient. perceptions of teacher planning time 15 schon (1995) identified two ways of conceptualizing teaching and learning. he termed the first conception as institutional epistemology of teaching, the traditional idea that students learn through the transmission of knowledge from the teacher to the student. students learn what they are told and do what they are shown, and knowledge is transmitted to students through curriculum and blocks of time. schon (1995) argued that there is a second and new epistemology of teaching and learning, termed scholarship epistemology, which highlights the potential of greater learning through thinking. scholarship epistemology includes reflection-in-action, reflection-on-knowing, and reflection-on-practice, whereby a teacher takes the opportunity to reflect deeply on what he does while he is doing it, what he knows, and what he has done after doing it (schon, 1995). contrasted with institutional epistemology, where knowledge is simply becoming familiar with a model or theory and using it in practice, scholarship epistemology involves a constructive approach through the discovery of knowledge. epistemologically, if a teacher wants to convey a certain knowing, he first has to understand what it is, and how it is that he knows something, and then re-create that learning opportunity for students. “if we want to teach about our ’doing’, then we need to observe ourselves in the doing, reflect on what we observe, describe it, and reflect on our description” (schon, 1995, p. 33). richardson (2002) emphasized that discourse in teacher planning results in meaningful, reflective practice. he said that,” (i)f practitioners engage with discourse thinking, and develop their critical awareness...played out in the day-to-day micro-level practices of planning, they are likely to gain some very useful perspectives and insights which will strengthen their reflexive practice” (p. 353). the practice of reflection and discourse, or dialogue, becomes a central activity which allows professionals to make sense of their actions and work. not limiting reflection to pure discourse, bolton (2006) recognized a similar approach for reflective practice c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 16 through writing and sharing with colleagues. she highlighted that reflective practice “critically recognizes and challenges the prevailing discourse and dominant paradigm, denying any innocence of those which structure and force us culturally” (p. 205) and that this dialogue and reflection helps to develop clarity, insight and understanding for the work that they themselves do. key to reflection and dialogue is that they employ internal critical thinking and external discourse to learn, evaluate ideas, share strategies, and create change in practice and outcomes. important to note at this point, is that reflection, done alone, is not enough to improve practice beyond the technical day-to-day aspects of the job. what is required to take reflection to a form of scholarship is bringing it into relationship with others, either through dialogue, discussion, and debate. taken this way, this elevates the teaching profession to, as kelchtermans (2009) described “a risky endeavor” (p. 270) (emphasis in original) as through these experiences, a teacher may be confronted with ideas, practices, approaches and experiences that differ from their own, and, true to the processes of collaborative planning and learning communities, experience discomfort and work at reducing the discomfort either by modifying their own practice or influencing others to change theirs. this discomfort, however, is necessary, for as kelchermans stated, “without deep reflection, one’s scholarship cannot be developed, nor the scholarship of teaching in general” (p. 270). done regularly, collaboration results in a new epistemic understanding of what it means to teach and learn, and results in a break from traditional paradigms. schon (1995) noted, however, that the majority of the time teachers do not do this, so ultimately, they may have a very shallow understanding of their own teaching. this illustrates a gap that exists between perceptions of teacher planning time 17 policy and practice. institutional epistemology can be achieved in isolation. scholarship epistemology cannot. teaching teachers much of the work in the development of teachers’ epistemological beliefs or understandings must begin to happen at the pre-service stage. it could be said that operating, as a knowledge society, universities and schools can no longer teach the way they have always taught in the hopes of developing teachers who can work and teach differently. “in order to achieve this, teacher education as well as in-service training need to provide spaces to engage in discomforting dialogues” (kelchtermans, 2009, p. 370) (emphasis in original). schon (2005) said that teaching cannot solely be bound by the application of knowledge, but must be entrenched in the generation of knowledge. bolton (2006) went further to state that this reflective practice is vital to teaching and learning, so much so that it must be considered a pedagogical approach infused throughout the curriculum. she implied that if teachers were taught this way through their own education programs, that they would be more inclined to teach this way. recent research has revealed strong positive connections between the deprivatization practices of teachers through collaboration and planning with not only enhanced teacher learning and student centered practices, but also with improvements in student achievement (vescio, et al., 2008). finding few studies that linked epistemological beliefs with conceptions of teaching and learning, wong, chan and lai (2009), believing that “epistemological beliefs could bring impacts and solutions to problems encountered in the educational arena” (p. 2), conducted an examination into the epistemological beliefs and conceptions of teaching of pre-service teachers. although conducted in hong kong, they found that students largely held a constructivist epistemological orientation over the traditional orientation, and that this was contrary to previous findings since schools of education had introduced more collaborative instructional strategies c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 18 and approaches. this exploration, however, was limited to the students’ epistemological understandings of teaching and learning in the classroom, and not specifically related to teacher learning beyond certification. through another study conducted by cheng, chan, tang and cheng (2009), it was discovered that about half of the beginning teachers had tendencies towards constructivist orientations to teaching and that “when the student-teachers get used to this way of believing and thinking in their learning, they are more likely to believe in a constructivist view in their classroom teaching” (p. 325). the other half had more naïve constructivist conceptions of teaching. they noted that this caused inconsistencies in practice, but explained this with the notion that these beginning teachers were still in a state of transition and that their epistemological beliefs were still developing due to inconsistencies between their pre-service experiences and new information to be learned as they began their careers. hashweh (1996) investigated science teachers’ epistemological beliefs in teaching. they tested two groups of teachers with different epistemological beliefs to determine the effects of these beliefs on their teaching. they found that teachers with constructivist orientations had a more diverse set of teaching strategies and accepted alternative responses from students. they also used effective strategies more frequently than their positivist colleagues. hashweh indicated that these results conformed to similar studies that he conducted, indicating that constructivist teachers are better able to help students arrive at new conceptions to problems and facilitate cognitive restructuring. these studies, although helpful in determining the teachers’ tendencies toward constructivism in their future or current teaching practice in the classroom, provide little perceptions of teacher planning time 19 information regarding their perspectives or orientations toward teacher professional learning. further work is needed in this area, which will be discussed at the conclusion of this paper. the role of instructional leaders at the pre-service stage there is a growing body of research on the types of instruction and leadership that create a change in epistemology (hofer, 2000; hofer & pintrich, 1997; valanides & charoula, 2005). as an instructor, knowing that students’ epistemological beliefs affect their learning and motivation, a teacher can orient student work so that students’ epistemological beliefs are challenged, so that students may discover the value of creating knowledge in a similar way. “if teacher educators can identify areas of teaching knowledge [that] teachers and pre-service [teachers] do not particularly value, they can more explicitly address issues related to the importance of that knowledge in class” (fives & buehl, 2008, p. 172). valanides and charoula (2005) demonstrated that by structuring education students’ work in ways that require them to make their beliefs about knowledge explicit, they become better educated. valanides and charoula added that, (c)ritical thinking instruction combined with a process where students are encouraged to reflect, debate, and evaluate their thinking based in explicitly stated principles, in the context of an ill-defined and controversial issue, can have a significant effect on learners’ epistemological beliefs. (p. 328) in turn, better-educated students are more epistemologically advanced, meaning that they are capable of reflection and rational inquiry, leading to an appreciation and desire for collaboration. “when applied to the teacher education context, student-teachers beliefs and hence their classroom practices is a concern in teacher education” (cheng et al., 2009, p. 320). cheng et al. suggested, from their study, that teacher educators must assist in developing education students’ epistemological beliefs from naïve to sophisticated c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 20 through modeling teaching/learning environments that are consistent with a constructivist orientation, and refrain from education through transmission. although increasingly complex, this recommendation includes working closely in partnership with placement schools in providing mentorship experiences that include similar orientations. this holds implications for what it is that instructors are asking pre-service teachers to do when they are in the field. sometimes, prescribing assignments for the sake of consistency between students robs them of the authentic learning experiences that they could encounter. for example, in their study on field experiences, whitehead and fitzgerald (2006) noted that prescribing teacher mentorship requirements through defined practices reduced teacher candidates’ abilities to develop their own knowledge and limited their ability to learn through collaboration with teachers in the field. this type of top-down approach served the university rather than the profession. from this, whitehead and fitzgerald suggested a more generative approach for teacher experiences that involved collaboration, allowed for “the formation and reformation of knowledge” (p. 40), and created the opportunity for a “new epistemological base for professional learning” (p. 37). this also has implications for how pre-service educators are taught. “if a student believes that knowledge is certain and simple, then he or she may have different preferences about desirable learning environments than the student who believes that knowledge is complex and interrelated” (hofer, 2001, pp. 361-362). opportunities for higher learning and epistemological development that could potentially transform education are created when instructors take advantage of situations where teacher candidates can be engaged in the real problems of education in the field, interrelated with theory, while still enrolled as students. the opportunity for students to internalize how learning takes place and how they cognitively perceptions of teacher planning time 21 experience a change in knowledge must also be integral to these experiences. it is through providing direct experiences with creating knowledge, and then having conversations about how this knowledge was created, that educational institutions can cultivate educators who will enter the professional with an already developed sense of what it means to work in a community of practice. here, knowledge transmission is replaced with knowledge creation (schon, 1995). if university educators want teachers to know how to work in collaborative learning communities where knowledge is created, then these students cannot be taught in environments where knowledge is transmitted. this just makes sense. the university of saskatchewan, like many other universities, has partnered with school divisions to create teacher cohorts that are deployed into schools to increase their opportunities to work with teachers and students. research into specific teacher cohort experiences has found that those cohorts in which teacher candidates are invited to engage in professional learning communities, collaboration, and discussion with teachers have proven to bring about increased professional learning for the teacher candidate (prytula, et al., 2009). engagement with professional learning communities also increases the likelihood that teacher candidates achieve the type of scholarship epistemology required for sustained collaboration in their careers. unfortunately, not all schools operate as professional learning communities; therefore, these experiences have so far been trial studies in the field, and the opportunities have not yet been provided for all students. through the creation of instruction that accesses pre-service teachers’ epistemological beliefs, it is possible to advance their own understandings of their epistemological assumptions and to make changes to those assumptions. “understanding future teachers’ beliefs as well as how their beliefs are related to teaching practices and motivation may allow teacher educators to plan instruction that will best support the development of teachers” (fives & buehl, 2008, p. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 22 172). having experienced an education where epistemological beliefs are accessed and challenged, beginning teachers have the opportunity to enter the profession prepared for the collaborative work that will be required of them. the role of instructional leaders at the in-service stage instructional leadership at the school level is also a key factor in the role of professional development and teacher learning. once beginning teachers enter the teaching profession, they face a further challenge to their epistemological development and appreciation for the necessity of collaboration. rogoff, goodman turkanis, and bartlett (2001) contended that current school organization is still a reflection of the early 1900s when considerable efforts were made to “treat school instruction as an efficient factory” (p. 6). deep thinking does not emerge in a factory model. instead, by its very nature, education itself is holistic and continuously evolving. therefore, a traditional system of education that presents the world in chopped, linear pieces does not fit. rogoff et al. (2001) suggested that a new approach is to take on a community perspective, where “teachers and students are connected rather than isolated” (p. 4). mitchell and sackney (2001) explained that successful professional learning communities can only be sustained when the leadership is skilled in approaching knowledge and learning in nontraditional ways: (s)aying that a learning community must be thus and so does not automatically make it so. the creation of a learning community is not an easy endeavor because it entails fundamentally different ways of thinking about teaching and learning and fundamentally different ways of being teachers and administrators. (p. 12) perceptions of teacher planning time 23 learning communities thrive within environments of learning, trust, and improvement (fullan, 2002; mitchell & sackney, 2001; sparks, 2005). colantonio (2005) stated that creating such environments requires not only expertise on teacher supervision, but expertise on the contexts for and the development of knowledge. the principal must be one who “facilitates growth of teachers’ knowledge and skill in a constructivist manner” (p. 31). not to be considered in a cursory manner, having an awareness of how knowledge is created, how it develops, and how its creation can be sustained is key to achieving the type of improvement needed in today’s schools. there is the implication that a school leader must understand what teacher collaboration and group planning means prior to embarking on a school improvement initiative through the process of instructional leadership. “often confused with departmental meetings…teacher collaboration is not discussions of student behaviour, purchasing of textbooks, and distributing supplies” (henry, 2005, p. 31). collaboration and planning for student success entails a pure focus on student learning, and in-depth scholarly and academic discussion and deliberation (sometimes heated, and sometimes not) on how to engage, improve, and enhance teaching and learning. dufour (1998) argued that even in the right context, flawed professional development initiatives can have a positive effect on teacher learning. inversely, in the wrong school context, “even well-conceived and delivered activities are likely to be ineffective” (p. 25). the context that is required is one with expectations of collaboration, team planning, and collective inquiry. wenger (1998) explained a similar understanding in his theory of communities of practice. it is the participation aspect of the communities that creates the learning, and that learning must be reshaped and redefined into three categories: individual, where individuals engage and contribute to practice; community, where learning is refined and sustained for future c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 24 members; and organizational, where learning is sustained and where knowing exists to transform the organization into one that is effective and valuable. instructional leaders must be able to adopt this new approach and become comfortable with knowledge creation that is no longer linear, but rather murky and dialogical, conflicting, and at times disordered. such a leader must also be able to tackle the issues of resistance to professional collaboration and planning, and not succumb to them, knowing that overcoming the barriers to change will be worth the effort. instructional leaders must be the proponents of the change, as they know their contexts the best. confirmed by dufour (1999), “(t)hose who look to consultants to solve the problems of a school that continues to operate under the traditional model of fragmentation and teacher isolation are almost certain to be disappointed in the results” (p. 26). creating the proper context for collaboration, as previously mentioned, is highly dependent on the context and mindsets of the people within the school. an effective school context will be much more laborious to create, if its creation is even possible. if educators enter the profession with the understanding that teaching is done in isolation, isolated preparation time will be highly important to them; while professional development and collaborative planning time will continue to be low in terms of importance to their success as teachers. conclusion from this study, there is evidence that beginning teachers in saskatchewan value isolated teacher preparation time more than they value collaborative teacher planning time and professional development, despite the fact that research and practice indicate that learning communities and communities of practice ultimately improve student learning. this knowledge suggests that the task of challenging these perceptions requires not only challenging teacher perceptions of teacher planning time 25 practices but also challenging teacher beliefs, which must be done at the pre-service and inservice stages. this issue must be addressed systemically from the time students enter the universities which will prepare them for their profession (or sooner), as well as through the professional development initiatives in which they are part of within their school divisions. research and practice has revealed that establishing effective collaborative school teams is necessary to generate improvements to student learning, whether these collaborative teams are termed professional learning communities or communities of practice. however, the incorporation of these teams has been slow despite the knowledge that collaborative teams positively affect student learning. previously identified barriers to establishing effective collaboration in schools include time constraints, as well as lack of instructional leadership (henry, 2005; leonard & leonard, 2003). this means that instructional leadership (both at the pre-service and in-service stages) requires an understanding of collaboration, as well as knowledge and the creation of knowledge, so that contexts appropriate to collaborative teams can be created. central to the barriers, however, are the epistemological beliefs of teachers and beginning teachers in the province. perhaps through directly experiencing instruction aimed at accessing epistemological beliefs, pre-service teachers would enter the teaching profession predisposed to valuing collaboration. this would reduce the school’s burden to not only attempt create a collaborative culture, but to first change the epistemological beliefs of teachers within the school in order to sustain such a culture. given that this finding is derived from a study aimed at understanding beginning teachers’ experiences as they transition from pre-service to professional employment, more research is needed to determine why there is a difference in the perceived importance between teacher preparation time and teacher planning time. more research must also be conducted as to the differences in epistemological beliefs of those teachers who have not experienced the c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 26 learning community and collaboration construct with those that have had such an experience. as kincheloe (2004) stated, “(t)he ultimate justification for such reflective research activity is practitioner and student empowerment” (p. 64). perhaps through a deeper understanding of the epistemological foundations of beginning teachers, and how these foundations can be influenced, we can achieve such empowerment. this paper focused on the coming to know, which has implications for instructors and leaders of students in education. it is the role of both universities and school leadership to ensure that students of education have the opportunity to possess the epistemological viewpoint that knowledge is complex and interrelated. perceptions of teacher planning time 27 references american psychological association. 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(2009). revisiting the relationships of epistemological beliefs and conceptions about teaching and learning of pre-service teachers in hong kong. the asiapacific education researcher, 18(1), 1-19. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 30 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo cie template current issues in education, 23(1) 1 volume 23, issue 1 may 9, 2022 issn 1099-839x exploring long-term impacts of self-regulated learning interventions in k-12 contexts: a systematic review erin cousins, linda bol, tian luo old dominion university abstract: while research illustrates the benefits of interventions designed to improve selfregulated learning (srl) and academic achievement, far fewer studies have examined the durability of these effects. this review synthesizes research on the lasting effects of 17 comprehensive srl interventions on variables related to metacognition, cognition, motivation, and achievement in k-12 populations. results reveal common patterns of design, domainspecificity, intervention complexity, and style of measurement instrument. intervention effects tend to be durable regarding achievement and srl but were mixed when presented across multiple measures of srl. overall findings imply that srl interventions can lead to enduring effects on achievement and better achievement outcomes than content-strategy instruction alone and can be implemented successfully in a variety of contexts and subjects. keywords: self-regulated learning, durability, k-12, systematic review citation: cousins, e., bol, l., & luo, t. (2022). exploring long-term impacts of self-regulated learning interventions in k-12 contexts: a systematic review. current issues in education, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss1.2013 accepted: march 14, 2022 introduction self-regulated learning (srl) refers to the cyclical process wherein learners manage their own behaviors, emotions, and cognition before, during, and after a learning task (panadero, 2017; sitzmann & ely, 2011). srl is beneficial and related to students’ academic performance in many contexts (dorrenbacher & perels, 2016; panadero, 2017). beyond formal academic environments, srl is also valuable in ongoing personal and professional learning throughout one's life (dignath et al., 2008; sitzmann & ely, 2011). unfortunately, while srl is clearly beneficial for learners, many individuals are not engaging in adequate self-regulation of learning and are unlikely to improve on their own; however, researchers have found that interventions can be helpful in improving learners’ self-regulation (dorrenbacher & perels, 2016; panadero, 2017; richardson et al., 2012). srl is a rich area of research, and over time many interventions have been studied in an attempt to support srl in a variety of contexts and populations. many https://doi.org/10.14507/cie.vol23iss1.2013 cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 2 researchers have reported positive effects on students’ academic achievement and srl (dignath & buttner, 2008; donker et al., 2014; sitzmann & ely, 2011). given the relevance of srl for learning throughout one's educational career and beyond, it is valuable to explore the lasting effects of such intervention over time. however, only a small portion of srl intervention studies have included follow-up or maintenance data after the implementation period. synthesizing these empirical studies affords important implications regarding the lasting effects of srl interventions, practical applications for designers and instructors, and gaps in research. theoretical and conceptual framework several models and variations of srl have emerged over time, but one of the most enduring and widely used models is zimmerman’s (2002) social cognitive model of srl (panadero, 2017). in fact, many of the studies included in this systematic review cite this model as the basis for their own theoretical frameworks. this model conceptualizes srl as encompassing the metacognitive and cognitive processes that take place as a learner directs themselves through a learning task and cyclical feedback loop (zimmerman, 2002). zimmerman’s (2002) model includes three phases: forethought, performance, and self-reflection. the first phase, forethought, occurs before learning and involves setting goals, planning what strategies to employ, assessing one’s self-efficacy related to the task, and forming expectations about outcomes. it also includes the orientation of their learning goal (e.g., performance or mastery) as well as its intrinsic value (zimmerman, 2002). the second phase takes place during learning and involves processes of self-control and self-observation. in this performance phase, learners employ cognitive strategies, self-instruction, attention focusing, and self-recording. the final stage of self-reflection includes self-evaluation, making causal attributions for performance, and reacting to the learning experience with emotions and adaptations. other models of srl have commonalities with zimmerman’s model and often include phases that capture learners’ processes of preparing for, completing, and reflecting on a learning event. they further emphasize many of the same subprocesses and components, such as motivation, goal-setting, metacognition, strategy use, reactions, and adaptations (panadero, 2017; sitzmann & ely, 2011). srl is associated with academic achievement, and this relationship has been supported by research in many subject areas and with a wide range of grade levels. srl interventions have led to academic improvements in content areas such as reading, writing, science, and math at levels ranging from elementary through college populations (dignath et al., 2008; richardson et al., 2012). some research has shown the particular importance of srl at times when students are transitioning to a novel environment with greater expectations for autonomy as a learner, such as moving between levels of schooling (dorrenbacher & perels, 2016). further, srl is helpful for professional and personal learning beyond academic contexts and throughout an individual’s life (sitzmann & ely, 2011). unfortunately, many students lack adequate self-regulation skills, which is detrimental to their learning and performance (dignath et al., 2008; zimmerman, 2002). meta-analyses and reviews offer insight regarding the construction of effective srl interventions (e.g., dignath & buttner, 2008; donker et al., 2014). while students are unlikely to make spontaneous improvements to their self-regulation of learning, research reveals that students can see improvements in srl as a result of training and intervention (sitzmann & ely, 2011). such interventions have been successful even with elementary students for enhancing srl and academic achievement (sitzmann & ely, 2011). cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 3 although research on srl interventions is encouraging and offers useful, practical implications for designing instruction, most of these studies only evaluate short-term effects assessed at an immediate posttest. relatively few studies have included delayed follow-up measures. given srl’s importance for learning at various stages, examining the durability of intervention effects is extremely valuable. when supporting srl, educators should aim to bolster these skills so that students are able to continue engaging in these processes beyond the intervention period and contribute to ongoing academic success. however, there is a lack of comprehensive reviews and meta-analyses investigating these ongoing effects. one metaanalysis conducted by de boer et al. (2018) explores the durability of metacognitive strategy interventions. however, while metacognitive strategies are a component of srl, there are no systematic reviews or meta-analyses which examine the lasting effects of interventions targeting srl more holistically and addressing multiple phases and subphases. given the paucity of evidence, a review of studies which incorporate a comprehensive srl intervention and assess its long-term effects is warranted in order to identify patterns for practical applications and gaps in the research literature. research questions this paper follows the guidance of alexander (2020) in structuring a systematic review to address the following research questions: 1. what trends are present in srl intervention studies that include follow-up measures? 2. do srl interventions have durable effects on students’ achievement and selfregulated learning? method in addition to alexander’s (2020) framework, guidance from gough’s work (2007) was utilized in developing the methodology. it involved defining inclusion and exclusion criteria, identifying sources of information and search terms, screening studies, extracting data, assessing methodological rigor of included studies, synthesizing the data, and interpreting overall findings. inclusion and exclusion criteria in choosing appropriate inclusion and exclusion criteria, several factors were considered. first, the review was confined to studies within an academic context, rather than self-regulation that is behavioral, such as smoking cessation or weight-loss interventions. further, since the relationship between srl and achievement is critically relevant, the intervention should be designed based on self-regulated learning principles and intended to improve participants' srl or their academic performance. additionally, because of the strong academic benefits of srl, this review is limited to interventions which approach srl more comprehensively and address one or more components of all three phases. hacker and bol (2019) reported that more comprehensive srl interventions were associated with more accurate metacognitive judgments and improved academic outcomes. in the present document, the interventions included are termed holistic. because this review is specifically focused on long-term effects of srl interventions, included studies must involve a delayed follow-up measure eight or more weeks following the intervention implementation period. eight weeks was chosen as the lower limit to ensure that measured effects were lasting beyond just a few days or weeks after the intervention, targeting impacts that were, in fact, long term. eight weeks is also a similar timeframe for cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 4 evaluations in response to intervention (rti) programs as well as grading periods in k-12 school systems (averill et al., 2014). finally, this review is limited to k-12 populations. the importance of srl for k-12 students’ academic achievement has been well demonstrated, and srl interventions have been impactful for this population and within k-12 school settings (dignath & buttner, 2008; panadero, 2017). it is also theorized that students may rely on srl even more as they transition to more autonomous learning environments, such as college and many workplace settings (bembenutty, 2011; dorrenbacher & perels, 2016). therefore, early intervention may promote student development of effective srl skills. the focus on k-12 is further warranted due to validity threats present in higher education samples. college student samples often require incentivization and may not reflect students in k-12 education, given barriers to entry of postsecondary education (ferguson et al., 2004; peterson, 2001). this review also excluded studies published in a language other than english as well as gray literature. there were no limiters associated with the year of publication. to summarize, the inclusion and exclusion criteria were as follows: 1. the context of the study is academic. 2. the study involves an intervention based on self-regulated learning principles aimed at improving students’ srl and/or academic achievement by way of srl. 3. the srl intervention is holistic, meaning that it targets subcomponents from each srl phase of forethought, performance, and reflection, rather than focusing on a singular phase or subcomponent, or subcomponents from only two of the three phases. 4. the study includes a delayed posttest follow-up measure which takes place at least eight weeks after the intervention period. 5. the study sample consists of k-12 students. 6. the study is published in a peer-reviewed journal available in english. search strategy first, search terms were identified. the first search term was “self-regulated learning” or “self-regulation of learning.” the word “learning” was included in these specific search phrases as the review is not focused on simply self-regulation of a specific behavior. rather, this review specifically concerns self-regulation as it pertains to learning. while metacognition is at times used synonymously with srl, it was not included since it is nested within the overall framework of srl (dinsmore et al., 2008). because several concepts and processes are subsumed by srl, searching for each of these individually would not have been feasible for the scope of this review. further, interventions grounded in the srl framework of srl guided this review. additional search terms included “follow up,” “delayed follow up,” “longitudinal,” “lasting,” “long term,” “long-term,” “maintenance,” “intervention,” and “treatment.” these key terms were selected in order to retrieve studies which included a delayed posttest or follow-up measure, as well as experimental studies that included an intervention or treatment. searches were conducted using the following databases: education source, apa psycinfo, education research complete, eric, psychology and behavioral sciences collection, academic search complete, apa psycarticles, and google scholar. with the exception of google scholar, all databases were searched simultaneously utilizing a platform, ebscohost, which automatically removes duplicates. this initial search resulted in a total of 170 results. the first ten pages of google scholar results were reviewed, adding another 100 search results (n = 270). cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 5 study selection after searches were conducted, the resulting potentially relevant studies were initially screened using primarily abstracts and full texts as needed for clarification. at this point, studies were excluded if they did not include an srl intervention, did not include delayed follow-up measures, were not in english, were not a peer-reviewed journal publication (such as a dissertation), or were purely aimed at behavior change or physical skill development rather than academic learning. duplicate studies were also excluded at this time. following this initial round of screening, a total of 35 studies were identified (22 from ebscohost searches, 13 from google scholar). an additional 11 studies were identified through reference tracking, bringing the total studies to 46. these remaining studies were retrieved in full for a more detailed screening against the identified inclusion and exclusion criteria. following this detailed evaluation against the above inclusion and exclusion criteria, 18 remaining studies were retained for coding and analysis. one study conducted by fidalgo et al. (2008) is an additional delayed follow-up assessment to the earlier study published by torrance et al. (2007), which also included its own shorter-term follow-up measures. due to this occurrence, there are only 17 unique interventions within the 18 identified articles. the search process is illustrated in figure 1, and the final set of articles is listed in table 1. figure 1 search process 270 search results from 8 databases 35 studies remaining after screening against initial selection criteria 11 additional studies identified through reference tracking 46 studies screened against final inclusion criteria 18 selected studies, 17 unique interventions cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 6 table 1 reviewed studies author and year journal antoniou & souvignier, 2007 learning disabilities: a contemporary journal cleary et al., 2017 journal of school psychology dresel & haugwitz, 2008 the journal of experimental education festas et al., 2015 contemporary educational psychology fidalgo et al., 2008* contemporary educational psychology gidalevich & kramarski, 2019 instructional science hacker et al., 2015 reading and writing quarterly minnaert et al., 2017 frontiers in education sanz et al., 2003 european journal of psychology of education schunemann et al., 2013 contemporary educational psychology schunemann et al., 2017 instructional science sontag & stoeger, 2015 learning and individual differences souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006 learning and instruction sporer & schunemann, 2014 learning and instruction stoeger et al., 2014 journal of educational psychology torrance et al., 2007 learning and instruction vandevelde et al., 2017 the journal of educational research wagner & perels, 2012 international scholarly research network education *study contained an additional delayed follow-up for the intervention in torrance et al. (2007). data analysis articles were read in full and analyzed through an extensive coding scheme. in addition to authors, publication year, and journal, codes related to rq1 included research design, type of data, participants, setting, domain, nature of control group, treatment conditions, duration of intervention, length of delay before follow-up measures, srl measures, achievement measures, implementers of intervention, training provided for implementers, intervention components and materials, intervention instruction and timing, and use of existing or prescribed intervention programs. codes related to rq2 included srl results, achievement results, and additional results. additional codes were used to evaluate the methodological rigor and limitations of studies, including assignment to groups, attrition, equivalency of groups, monitoring fidelity of implementation, additional threats to external validity, additional threats to internal validity, and additional limitations identified by authors. results the majority of the studies were from well-regarded journals with strong metrics. for example, three articles were from contemporary educational psychology, and an additional three articles were found in learning and instruction, which each have an acceptance rate of 13% according to cabell’s international and have 2020 impact factors of 4.277 and 5.146, respectively. however, because the review aims to be comprehensive, no journals were excluded. the studies were rigorous and most utilized a quasi-experimental design with random assignment of intact classrooms and incorporated control or comparison groups without cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 7 intervention. exceptions from these standards are discussed in more detail in the following subsections. results are further presented in response to each research question. research question 1: what trends are present in srl intervention studies that include follow-up measures? some salient trends were present amongst the reviewed studies. these will be addressed in the following subsections. research designs and treatment conditions as noted, the reviewed studies were almost exclusively quasi-experimental in design. one notable exception is cleary et al. (2017), a true experimental study. another exception is fidalgo et al. (2008), which is an additional delayed follow-up using some individuals from a previous treatment group from another reviewed study (torrance et al., 2007) but a newly sampled comparison group. additionally, all included studies utilized quantitative data for analysis, including quantified scores and frequency counts from open-ended data and thinkalouds in some cases. only one study lacked a comparison group (gidalevich & kramarski, 2019). comparison conditions are listed in table 2. the reviewed studies most frequently included one treatment group receiving an srl intervention and compared them to a control group with unaltered classroom instruction or, in other words, a “business as usual” (bau) control group (n = 8) (dynarski, 2016). however, several studies did include two treatment groups (n = 7). of these, four studies included a treatment group receiving only content strategy instruction in addition to a treatment group receiving the same content strategy instruction combined with srl training (schunemann et al., 2013; schunemann et al., 2017; stoeger et al., 2014; wagner & perels 2012). each of these also included a no-treatment comparison group. other studies included a treatment group that received strategy training that addressed only a component related to srl, in addition to a treatment group receiving that same strategy training within a holistic srl intervention (dresel & haugwitz, 2008; minnaert et al., 2017). the remaining study with two treatment groups did not incorporate a control condition and instead compared an intervention group with fixed scaffolds to one with scaffolds that were gradually removed (gidalevich & kramarski, 2019). studies with three treatment groups each included one treatment group receiving a holistic srl intervention including content strategies, which was compared to a treatment group receiving only content-strategy instruction and a treatment group receiving content-strategy instruction combined with a component of srl (souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006; sporer & schunemann, 2014). treatment conditions are listed in table 2. cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 8 table 2 conditions author and year treatment condition control condition antoniou & souvignier, 2007 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention bau cleary et al., 2017 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention bau dresel & haugwitz, 2008 2 treatment groups: 1 received attribution feedback, 1 received feedback and metacognitive control questions control group worked with the same math software with no feedback or metacognitive questions festas et al., 2015 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention bau fidalgo et al., 2008* 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention bau gidalevich & kramarski, 2019 2 treatment groups receiving srl interventions: 1 group had consistent prompts, 1 group had faded prompts no control group hacker et al., 2015 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention bau minnaert et al., 2017 2 treatment groups: 1 received self-regulated strategy instruction (srsd), 1 combined this with behavioral support bau sanz et al., 2003 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention bau schunemann et al., 2013 2 treatment groups: 1 group received a reading strategies intervention, 1 group received reading strategies combined with srl bau schunemann et al., 2017 2 treatment groups: 1 group received reciprocal teaching (rt) intervention, 1 group combined this with srl bau sontag & stoeger, 2015 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention bau souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006 3 treatment groups: 1 group receiving a reading strategies intervention, 1 group combining that with cognitive self-regulation, and 1 group combining reading strategies with cognitive and motivational self-regulation bau sporer & schunemann, 2014 3 treatment groups: 1 group receiving reciprocal teaching (rt) combined with strategy implementation, 1 group combining reciprocal teaching with outcome regulation, and 1 group combining all components control group receiving reciprocal teaching program stoeger et al., 2014 2 treatment groups: 1 group receiving text reduction intervention, 1 group combining that with srl training bau torrance et al., 2007 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention bau vandevelde et al., 2017 1 treatment group receiving srl intervention via tutoring control group not receiving tutoring wagner & perels, 2012 2 treatment groups: 1 group receiving translation instruction, 1 group combining that with srl training bau cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 9 populations under study this review was restricted to k-12 populations, but within that constraint, there are still variations regarding the participants, which are detailed in table 3. participants ranged from 4th grade to 10th grade, with each grade in between represented in at least one study. the highest proportion of studies were completed with an elementary population (n = 9) and a middle or junior high school population (n = 8), with some studies including multiple grade levels and thus reflected in both counts. there were fewer studies completed with high school participants (n = 2). grade levels refer to the status of participants at the time of the intervention rather than at follow-up. sample sizes ranged from 40 to 763, with the majority of studies including over 100 participants. most of the studies focused on participants with no special demographic characteristics and described students as typical. however, five studies included more unique populations based on demographics, socioeconomic status, or academic risk factors such as learning disabilities or low grades in a subject area. table 3 study samples author and year number of participants participant grade special characteristics antoniou & souvignier, 2007 73 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th learning disabilities cleary et al., 2017 42 7th low math scores and/or lacking motivation (teacherreported) dresel & haugwitz, 2008 151 6th none festas et al., 2015 380 8th none fidalgo et al., 2008* 77 6th none gidalevich & kramarski, 2019 134 4th none hacker et al., 2015 393 7th title 1 schools, most eligible for free or reduced lunch minnaert et al., 2017 249 9th prevocational sanz et al., 2003 40 8th none schunemann et al., 2013 323 5th none schunemann et al., 2017 244 5th none sontag & stoeger, 2015 322 4th students without migration background souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006 593 5th none sporer & schunemann, 2014 535 5th none stoeger et al., 2014 763 4th none torrance et al., 2007 95 6th none vandevelde et al., 2017 401 5th, 6th majority students of low socioeconomic or immigrant background wagner & perels, 2012 109 10th none cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 10 intervention structure the studies under review all included an srl intervention, but the contexts, timeframe, and structure of these interventions vary; details for individual studies are included in table 4. the majority of interventions were situated within a specific domain, with the most frequent being reading (n = 7), followed by writing (n = 4) and math (n = 3). most interventions were also implemented during class, even when implemented by researchers rather than teachers. one notable exception is the intervention implemented by vandevele et al. (2017), which took place during tutoring sessions. interventions also ranged in frequency and length of intervention sessions as well as the duration of the overall implementation period. intervention sessions ranged from 30 minutes to two hours in length, with 45 minutes as the most commonly reported amount of time. studies reported sessions taking place from one time per week to daily. overall durations of interventions ranged from three weeks to two years. the length of time between the end of the duration and the time of the delayed follow-up measure ranged from the initial inclusion criteria of eight weeks up to 28 months. table 4 intervention structure author and year domain duration time between posttest and follow-up antoniou & souvignier, 2007 reading one academic year 3 months cleary et al., 2017 math 4 months 2 months dresel & haugwitz, 2008 math 5 months 5 months festas et al., 2015 writing 4 months 2 months fidalgo et al., 2008 writing 10 weeks 28 months gidalevich & kramarski, 2019 math 7 weeks 3 months hacker et al., 2015 writing 6 weeks 2 months minnaert et al., 2017 writing 3 months 1 year sanz et al., 2003 not-domain specific two academic years two years schunemann et al., 2013 reading 7 weeks 8 weeks schunemann et al., 2017 reading 8 weeks 8 weeks sontag & stoeger, 2015 reading and science 7 weeks 11 weeks souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006 reading 4 months 5 months sporer & schunemann, 2014 reading 8 weeks 8 weeks stoeger et al., 2014 reading and science 7 weeks 11 weeks torrance et al., 2007 writing 10 weeks 12 weeks vandevelde et al., 2017 not-domain specific 3 months 2 months wagner & perels, 2012 latin 3 weeks 8 weeks note. language used in the table is based on the authors’ language in the original studies. cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 11 common intervention programs several studies utilized existing intervention designs which they implemented or adapted for their studies. three studies incorporated a writing intervention using the self-regulated strategy development (srsd) framework developed by harris and graham (1996) (festas et al., 2015; hacker et al., 2015; minnaert et al., 2017). three other studies utilized the same reciprocal teaching (rt) framework developed by palincsar and brown (1984) for the content strategy component of their interventions and appeared to share many common components within the srl elements of their interventions as well (schunemann et al., 2013; schunemann et al., 2017; sporer & schunemann, 2014). two other studies employed an intervention framework developed by stoeger and zeigler (2008) (sontag & stoeger, 2015; stoeger et al., 2014). other existing frameworks used in single studies included the self-regulation empowerment program (srep) designed by cleary & platten (2013) and improve metacognitive prompts developed by mevarech and kramarski (1997) (cleary et al., 2017; gidalevich & kramarski, 2019). other interventions were developed for studies by the authors, all of whom extensively cited srl research. intervention components srl interventions tended to involve a combination of teaching approaches, including combinations of direct instruction, teacher modeling and examples, in-class activities and tasks to facilitate guided practice, class discussion, interactive in-class games, and independent work on assignments. interventions also often included tools to remind students about processes involved in srl, such as cards, help sheets, mnemonic devices and charts, graphs, visual aids such as posters, and prompts within class content assignments and homework. these supplementary materials were sometimes just external aids to encourage students to engage in srl processes. at other times, they were tools students had to use tools such as worksheets, logbooks, journals, and diagrams that required students to set written goals, monitor progress, plan and track strategy use, reflect on feedback, evaluate performance, and describe adaptations. interventions typically followed a set schedule and introduced different components of srl on a timeline, and some interventions reduced srl scaffolding over time to encourage students to engage in the processes more autonomously. interventions differed in complexity, but most were intricate and involved many components and tools in concert. one intervention which deviated from this pattern was implemented by dresel and haugwitz (2008). this simplified intervention required students to answer questions that were designed to support metacognitive control as they worked on math exercises. students were also provided computer-generated attributional feedback alongside their scores. some studies included clear information about the intervention’s theoretical basis, topics, and learning objectives, but offered only limited descriptions of the actual intervention implementation, which made them more difficult to compare to others (sanz et al., 2003; wagner & perels, 2012). the use of group work in interventions to support shared or co-regulation of learning was less consistent than some other characteristics across studies. six studies explicitly mentioned group, team, or partner work and/or peer feedback or discussions as a component of the intervention; three of these studies used a common intervention framework which incorporates rotating roles within small group activities (schunemann et al., 2013; schunemann et al., 2017; sporer & schunemann, 2014). an additional two studies involved interventions that took place exclusively in a small group format: vandevelde et al. (2017) implemented an intervention through small group tutoring, and cleary et al. (2017) used a small group coaching format. it is cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 12 possible that additional interventions involved small group work during some of the included activities and did not explicitly differentiate group activities from individual activities. intervention implementation interventions were most often implemented by existing teachers within their classrooms, but in multiple other studies, researchers or research assistants implemented the intervention. exceptions included one intervention which was implemented by a handful of trained school employees, such as counselors, and one intervention that was facilitated by trained graduate student tutors with some supervision from classroom teachers (cleary et al., 2017; vandevelde et al., 2017). all studies utilizing teachers or school employees for implementation included training, with the exception of dresel and haugwitz (2008), which was heavily computer-based. most trainings were reported to be several hours long and often over multiple days. they typically included materials for use during implementation, such as manuals containing sequences, structure, and guidelines for the intervention. many authors also described ongoing meetings with teachers and school employee facilitators for support and training ranging from one additional meeting to weekly meetings throughout the implementation period. some researchers also utilized checklists which served to aid facilitators in correctly implementing the intervention as well as offer evidence of fidelity for researchers. other means of monitoring fidelity of implementation included periodic observations, facilitator notes and reports of sessions, and analysis of student materials for task completion. measures most studies included measures of both srl and academic achievement; measures for all studies are listed in table 5. in multiple studies, srl was measured exclusively via student selfreport measures, often primarily likert-style rating scales. other studies included a variety of other measurement forms for srl, often in combination with one or more self-report scales. some less complex additional measures included a calculation of calibration accuracy, a teacher self-report scale, and multiple-choice tests to assess understanding of content strategies. other measures of srl were more expansive, such as process logs, a think-aloud, and coding openended responses to reading tasks, scenario-based questions, or after an exam. the majority of studies that included measures beyond self-report scales also triangulated srl data across multiple measures, with the exception of schunemann et al. (2017) and torrance et al. (2007). while studies included similar theoretical frameworks for their research, there is variation in how srl was measured beyond the type of instrument employed. some studies included one measure or a combination of measures that addressed all major phases and multiple subprocesses of srl. measures assessed subprocesses such as motivation, self-efficacy, self-concept, metacognition, metacognitive control, understanding and application of cognitive strategies, calibration, and attributions; however, the included subprocesses assessed were inconsistent from study to study. studies which included a comprehensive measure to assess all phases of srl also revealed few commonalities, with only one questionnaire being utilized in two different studies: the questionnaire of self-regulated learning-7, developed by ziegler et al. (2010), was used by both stoeger et al. (2014) and sontag & stoeger (2015). other studies that measured srl only included measures addressing a relatively small portion of srl subprocesses. for instance, minnaert et al. (2017) assessed only goal orientation. other studies included a measure of domain-specific strategy knowledge or application along with a measure of self-efficacy or cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 13 motivation (antoniou & souvignier, 2007; schunemann et al., 2013; sporer & schunemann, 2014). achievement measures in the reviewed studies typically consisted of one or two content tests and included both multiple-choice and open-ended measures. most reading and math measures were standardized, but some reading measures involved longer responses and were analyzed for correctly identified main ideas. writing tasks were scored for a variety of elements, including structure, coherence, quality, word counts, paragraphs included, and structural elements included. researchers utilizing open-ended measures of achievement reported at least a portion of responses being scored by two or more independent raters. one writing measure was scored by an automated essay-scoring system (hacker et al., 2015). only one study incorporated course grades as a measure of achievement (sanz et al., 2003). table 5 measures author and year srl measures achievement measures antoniou & souvignier, 2007 reading-strategy knowledge task (students had to “grade” strategy use of others); reading self-efficacy general intelligence; vocabulary knowledge; decoding speed; reading comprehension (multiple choice and open-ended) cleary et al., 2017 srl scale; hypothetical test preparation scenario; microanalytic attributions; microanalytic adaptive inferences; self-efficacy for selfregulated learning mathematics standardized exams dresel & haugwitz, 2008 internality of success attributions; stability of failure attributions; ability self-concept; helplessness scale; metacognitive control strategies math achievement (researcherdeveloped based on the official mathematics curricula) festas et al., 2015 none writing, opinion essay task (scored for number of words and for number of structural elements) fidalgo et al., 2008 writing metaknowledge/motivation open-ended questionnaire (coded for substantive processing, low-level processing, ability, and motivation); writing self-efficacy; writing processes log writing quality (scored for structure, coherence, and general quality); number of paragraphs and words and introductory and concluding paragraphs gidalevich & kramarski, 2019 metacognitive awareness; calibration judgments; motivation (achievement goals) standardized math achievement test cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 14 author and year srl measures achievement measures hacker et al., 2015 none persuasive essay task (scored using an automated essay scoring system) minnaert et al., 2017 goal orientation questionnaire none sanz et al., 2003 learning strategies (to measure frequency of use of metacognitive strategies) general intelligence; average grades in mathematics, language, and natural sciences schunemann et al., 2013 self-efficacy for reading; strategyrelated task performance activity (coded for strategy use) reading comprehension; reading fluency schunemann et al., 2017 strategy-related task performance activity (coded for strategy use) reading comprehension sontag & stoeger, 2015 preference for srl main ideas (number of correct main ideas identified in training materials) souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006 reading strategies test; open-ended application of reading strategies task (scored for correct strategy application); self-efficacy; motivational learning goal orientation reading comprehension sporer & schünemann, 2014 reading strategy application task (coded for quality); reading motivation reading comprehension; reading fluency stoeger et al., 2014 preference for srl reading comprehension; main ideas (number of correct main ideas identified in training materials) torrance et al., 2007 writing processes log writing quality (scored for structure, coherence, and general quality); number of words and number of paragraphs by type. vandevelde et al., 2017 teacher rating scale; srl scale think-aloud protocols none wagner & perels, 2012 srl scale latin translation test research question 2: do srl interventions have lasting effects on students’ achievement and self-regulated learning results of the reviewed studies are included in table 6. of the studies that included a delayed measure of achievement, results for the majority (n = 12) indicated lasting effects on students’ achievement after a delay. only two interventions deviated from this pattern; results for each indicated significant effects on achievement at an initial posttest, but these did not remain after a delay (dresel & haugwitz, 2008; stoeger et al., 2014). while some of the successful cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 15 interventions resulted in similar effects at an initial posttest, in other studies (n = 5), significant differences did not emerge between the holistic srl intervention treatment group and a control group until a delayed posttest (antoniou & souvignier, 2007; hacker et al., 2015; schunemann et al., 2017; souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006; sporer & schunemann, 2014). gidalevich & kramarski (2019) did not include a control group in their study and similarly did not report statistically significant within-group changes at an initial posttest, but did after a delay. results of a few studies indicated lasting effects on student achievement with a holistic srl intervention and included an additional treatment group targeting only content strategies; in each of these studies, the holistic intervention treatment group significantly outperformed or improved achievement more than the group receiving only strategy instruction (schunemann et al., 2013; schunemann et al., 2017; wagner & perels, 2012). in other studies showing durable achievement results, additional treatment groups varied regarding the phases of srl that were supported in the intervention; however, results did not follow a clear pattern wherein the most comprehensive intervention led to the strongest achievement results (souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006; sporer & schunemann, 2014). in souvignier and mokhlesgerami’s (2006) study, while the holistic srl treatment group did outperform a control group at a delay, it had no statistically significant differences from the group receiving only strategy instruction or the groups receiving strategy instruction combined with less comprehensive srl interventions. in sporer and schunemann’s (2004) study, students in the holistic srl treatment group outperformed students receiving only reading strategy instruction but did not have higher achievement scores than treatment groups which supported only one or two phases of srl. overall, of the holistic srl interventions resulting in long-term effects on achievement, most featured inclusion of domain-specific strategy instruction. of the studies that included a delayed measure of srl, the majority (n = 14) indicated lasting effects on one or more components of students’ srl after a delay. only one study measured srl after a delay and provided no significant effects (vandevelde et al., 2017). studies differed greatly in the extent to which srl was assessed, including how many measures were utilized and how many srl processes were measured. some studies included only a singular, close-ended self-report instrument designed to assess all phases of srl; data from each of these studies suggested lasting effects on students’ srl (sanz et al., 2003; sontag & stoeger, 2015; stoeger et al., 2014; wagner & perels, 2012). other researchers utilized a combination of measures to address all phases of srl; each of these studies resulted in mixed findings at a delay, rather than exclusively positive findings for all components of srl (cleary et al., 2017; fidalgo et al., 2008; gidalevich & kramarski, 2019; torrance et al., 2007). other researchers explored only limited components of srl rather than including measures for each phase. some of these studies similarly had mixed results for different components of srl after a delay (minnaert et al., 2017; souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006; sporer & schunemann, 2014). however, other studies addressing limited components of srl found exclusively positive results for all the components examined (antoniou & souvignier, 2007; dresel & haugwitz, 2008; schunemann et al., 2013; schunemann et al., 2017). three studies included treatment groups targeting only parts of srl in addition to a holistic srl intervention (dresel & haugwitz, 2008; souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006; sporer & schunemann, 2014). none of these studies showed the holistic srl intervention having significantly stronger results regarding srl at a delayed follow-up on all measures of srl, but they did show stronger results on some measures. cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 16 table 6 study results author and year results posttest follow up antoniou & souvignier, 2007 no significant differences on reading comprehension; treatment group significantly increased reading strategy knowledge compared to control; no significant differences on reading self-efficacy. treatment group had significantly higher reading comprehension; treatment group had significantly increased reading-strategy knowledge and reading selfefficacy compared to the control. cleary et al., 2017 no significant differences in math achievement; treatment group had significantly higher scores for microanalytic attributions and adaptive inferences and test preparation; no significant differences on selfefficacy or maladaptive regulatory behaviors. no significant differences in math achievement; treatment group maintained significantly higher scores for microanalytic attributions and adaptive inferences; no significant differences on self-efficacy, maladaptive regulatory behaviors, or test preparation. dresel & haugwitz, 2008 both treatment groups had significantly greater increase in math knowledge and motivation than control; combined treatment group had significantly higher metacognitive control than the attributional feedback and control conditions; no significant differences on math knowledge; combined treatment group had significantly higher metacognitive control than the attributional feedback and control conditions; both treatment groups had significantly higher motivation than control. festas et al., 2015 treatment group had significantly greater improvements in writing. treatment group had significantly greater improvements in writing. fidalgo et al., 2008 posttest results from torrance et al. (2007): treatment group had significantly greater increase in time on task and time spent planning than control; no significant differences for revising. within-group results: treatment group significantly increased text quality treatment group had significantly higher quality writing; treatment group had significantly higher time spent planning and metaknowledge of text structure; no significant differences on revisions or selfefficacy. gidalevich & kramarski, 2019 no significant differences on math; no significant differences on srl measures. faded treatment group had significantly higher math scores than fixed treatment group (no control group). faded treatment group had significantly higher scores than fixed treatment group on some srl measures: knowledge of cognition, mastery goal and performance-approach goal orientation; fixed treatment group had significantly more accurate confidence judgments than faded treatment group. hacker et al., 2015 no significant differences on writing scores. treatment group had significantly higher writing scores. cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 17 author and year results minnaert et al., 2017 mainly modest declines in motivation across groups. significantly less decline in motivation for combined treatment group on task orientation, ego-enhancing orientation, and ego-defeating orientation than control; for the strategy instruction only, ego orientations showed significantly less decline than control. sanz et al., 2003 treatment group had significantly higher scores for general intelligence and academic achievement; treatment group had significantly higher frequency of use of metacognitive strategies. treatment group had significantly higher scores for general intelligence and academic achievement; treatment group had significantly higher frequency of use of metacognitive strategies. schunemann et al., 2013 both treatment groups had significantly higher reading comprehension than control, but treatment groups did not differ; both treatment groups had significantly higher strategy-related task performance and reading selfefficacy than control, but treatment groups did not differ. both treatment groups had significantly higher reading comprehension than control, and the combined treatment group had significantly higher reading comprehension than the rt treatment group; both treatment groups had significantly higher strategy-related task performance and reading self-efficacy than control, and the combined treatment group had significantly higher strategy-related task performance than the rt treatment group. schunemann et al., 2017 no significant differences on reading comprehension. combined srl treatment group had significantly higher quality feedback and significantly more improved strategy-related task performance than the rt-only treatment group. sontag & stoeger, 2015 within-group results: treatment group including high achieving subgroup, average achieving subgroup, and average intelligence subgroup, had significantly increased self-reported srl; treatment group including all subgroups had significantly increased scores for correctly identified main ideas. within-group results: treatment group, including all subgroups, had significantly increased self-reported srl. souvignier & mokhlesgerami, 2006 comprehensive combined treatment group had significantly greater effects for reading comprehension compared to control; partially combined treatment group had significantly higher understanding of reading strategies and significantly reduced learning goal orientation compared to control; no significant differences between treatment and control groups for selfefficacy. comprehensive combined treatment group had significantly higher reading comprehension compared to control; comprehensive combined treatment group had significantly higher understanding of reading strategies and application of reading strategies compared to control; no significant differences between treatment and control groups for self-efficacy. cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 18 author and year results sporer & schunemann, 2014 no significant differences for reading strategies or motivation. all treatment groups had significantly higher reading comprehension than control; combined srl treatment group and strategy implementation treatment group had significantly higher reading strategy scores compared to the outcome regulation treatment and control groups; outcome regulation treatment group had significantly higher motivation than the combined srl treatment. stoeger et al., 2014 when migration data was included as a predictor, the combined treatment group had significantly higher reading comprehension scores than the text reduction treatment and control groups; the combined group had a significantly higher preference for srl and identified significantly more main ideas than other groups. no significant differences for reading comprehension; the combined group showed a significantly higher preference for srl than other groups. torrance et al., 2007 treatment group had significantly greater increase in time on task and time spent planning than control; no significant differences for revising. within-group results: treatment group significantly increased text quality. treatment group had significantly greater increase in time on task and time spent planning than control; no significant differences for revising within-group results: treatment group sustained increased text quality. vandevelde et al., 2017 treatment group had a significantly greater increase in teacher-rated srl and significantly lower decrease in external regulation and memorizing compared to control. treatment group had a significantly greater decrease in teacher-rated srl; no significant differences on self-reported or think-aloud measures of srl. wagner & perels, 2012 both treatment groups had a significantly greater increase in translation competency and translation strategy application than control group; both treatment groups had significantly higher srl scores than control group. within-group results: the combined treatment group maintained translation competency and translation strategy application; the translation-only treatment group significantly decreased in translation competency and strategy application. note. results included in the table are between-group results unless otherwise noted. discussion this review evaluated studies that include holistic srl interventions targeting all phases of srl and were intended to improve students’ srl or academic achievement. because this review focused on the durability of effects of srl interventions, only studies with a delayed follow-up measure that took place at least eight weeks following the intervention period were included. the studies are further restricted to k-12 populations. these studies included a wide range of participants from elementary to high school grade levels, including both typical student populations and populations with more specific characteristics typically related to academic risk. studies generally included large sample sizes, and researchers executed rigorous, quasicousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 19 experimental designs. the holistic srl interventions tended to be complex, multi-faceted, and lengthy interventions typically implemented in classroom settings and within core academic domains. given the quality of the identified studies, conclusions drawn from compiled results can be viewed as strong empirical evidence for the effectiveness of such interventions. these studies included mainly positive outcomes related to srl variables after a delay and overall indicate that srl interventions can have a lasting impact on students’ self-regulation, though results were mixed in several studies that included multiple measures of srl. there were many differences in how srl was operationalized and assessed due to the variety of subprocesses subsumed by srl, which made it difficult to draw conclusions regarding the specific contributing factors that led to these results beyond the general trends amongst the interventions previously described. other researchers have similarly noted the challenges in measuring srl and variations between studies (rovers et al., 2019). achievement results from these interventions were also largely positive after a delayed follow-up measure and were more readily synthesized. after examining the durability of intervention effects on achievement, one can conclude that holistic srl interventions do often have lasting effects on student achievement, at least within the content area in which they were implemented. furthermore, one study included a widespread intervention and showed lasting positive effects on a global measure of achievement, but this was not replicated in other studies (sanz et al., 2003). enduring achievement effects occurred across multiple domains, including reading, writing, math, and foreign language. these results were present for typical students, atrisk populations, and across grade levels. this pattern of effects on achievement across domains and populations illustrates the flexibility of these interventions to improve student success in a variety of contexts and without exacerbating existing achievement gaps. another pattern from the reviewed studies indicates that combining srl strategies with domain-specific strategy instruction leads to better long-term achievement outcomes than domain-specific strategies alone (schunemann et al., 2013; schunemann et al., 2017; sporer & schunemann, 2014; wagner & perels, 2012). this is an important implication for our classrooms, where instructors may focus on one domain at a time. although students may receive a great deal of instruction regarding domain-specific strategies, they may consequently be provided with less emphasis on strategies that are transferable across domains. finally, while most researchers that assessed achievement after a delay reported positive effects of holistic srl interventions on achievement, several of these studies did not have the same results at an immediate posttest; rather, they did not see these effects emerge until the delayed follow-up. this finding implies that in some instances, the effect of holistic srl interventions on academic achievement may not be realized until a delay, at which time many educators and administrators may have failed to continue to evaluate lingering effects and prematurely abandoned the srl programs. overall, this review supports the assertion of other researchers that holistic srl interventions have the potential to induce lasting effects on students’ achievement. hacker and bol (2019) described a similar pattern supporting holistic interventions on metacognitive judgments and achievement; however, they did not focus on the durability of findings or differences across domains. dignath and buttner (2008) did address durability and concluded from their meta-analysis that longer srl interventions were generally more effective for primary and secondary school students. similarly, another review (de boer et al., 2018) did focus on long-term effects but more broadly included interventions involving metacognitive strategy instruction. de boer et al. (2018) reported that student achievement generally improved following cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 20 the intervention and that these improvements were sustained and sometimes increased further after a delay. while the studies reviewed here generally did not address transfer from one academic domain to another, and most achievement results are domain-specific, such results consistently occurred across domains. this suggests that similar supports could be implemented in a wide variety of classes, subjects, and domains and lead to improved student success. while domainspecific learning strategies are already being utilized within k-12 education, these results lend support for the implication that combining srl training and domain-specific strategies can lead to better achievement outcomes in the long term. results of this review translate into practical implications for educators. designers and instructors should include comprehensive srl supports in various domain areas. there is a need for more srl support in our k-12 schools. if these interventions seem to work and lead to lasting effects, they should be incorporated frequently. additionally, srl is an important predictor of academic achievement in college environments as well (dorrenbacher & perels, 2016). fostering srl in earlier grades can have long-term benefits and help prepare students for continued academic success as they advance to postsecondary education. limitations of studies reviewed the reviewed studies are not without limitations, many of which were identified by the authors themselves. regarding methodology, the researchers typically utilized quasiexperimental designs. although intact classrooms were generally randomly assigned to conditions, there was not true random assignment of participants to treatment and control groups. selection bias cannot be ruled out completely as a potential confound. also, in most studies, the control group was a “business as usual” condition, which limits clarity of conclusions given that it is not a true control condition (dynarski, 2016). this is particularly salient when few details are provided regarding the bau condition or when comparison groups are selected from classes taught by different teachers or from different schools, as occurred in many of the reviewed studies. there are also limitations regarding the fidelity of implementation of interventions. while most studies described steps taken to monitor and assess fidelity, these ranged in rigor, such as whether they included frequent observations or relied on few or no observations and instead focused on teacher self-reports. in other studies, the intervention was implemented by researchers or trained assistants; while this may improve the fidelity of implementation, it reduces the ecological validity of the studies (schunemann et al., 2013). another limitation is the frequent reliance on self-report measures to assess srl. while there were some other creative approaches utilized, such as process logs, think-alouds, and analysis of writing tasks and other artifacts, these kinds of additional measures were less frequent, leading to a lack of triangulation of srl data as well as the potential for self-report biases (rovers et al., 2019). also, as previously discussed, there was variation among studies in the components of srl targeted and the instruments utilized. gaps remaining in the literature become clear when examining the trends amongst the studies. there is a lack of exploration of the transfer of srl skills across academic domains, with most interventions implemented and evaluated in only one domain. most studies also took place with typical student populations resulting in less information regarding at-risk, neurodiverse, or ell students. cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 21 limitations of present review there are also limitations of this systematic review. the review includes a relatively small number of articles, and only articles available in english were selected. the review also excludes gray literature, further limiting the scope. an additional challenge of the present review concerns the complex nature of srl. srl is broad and encompasses many phases and subprocesses (zimmerman, 2002). it is difficult to measure srl comprehensively, and there are a multitude of ways to approach assessment (rovers et al., 2019). there are also myriad options for interventions designed to target different combinations of subprocesses, and srl is applicable in all different content areas. because of these complexities, it can be difficult to make clear comparisons between studies which lack commonalities in measurement and intervention design. suggestions for further research authors of the reviewed studies had several suggestions for future research. they described extending research to other populations of grade levels and demographics, utilizing larger sample sizes, and including more treatment groups. researchers also recommended including additional measures to address more components of srl and to move beyond selfreport measures. authors discussed the need for additional interventions of varying structures of time blocks and implemented by teachers rather than researchers. the need for more observation of treatment groups was also noted, including video recordings and observations of control groups. the present authors agree with these identified areas for ongoing research. increased monitoring of fidelity via observations would improve the rigor of future studies. further, frequent observations of control groups would improve studies as well. observations could also be a vehicle for assessing srl and could be video recorded for in-depth analysis. additional srl measures are also needed in further research, such as think-aloud protocols, microanalytic measures, document analysis, and other process measures. including more measures of srl would consequently allow for triangulation of data to reduce bias in results. future research could also explore long-term transfer effects of srl and achievement in other domain areas and with global measures. additionally, studies could include interventions that are reinforced periodically over time after the initial implementation period in comparison to those that are not to evaluate differences in durability. also, as noted, srl interventions were successful in many domain areas. future research could explore interventions which are implemented in multiple domains simultaneously. future reviews of lasting effects of srl interventions can also be more comprehensive by including additional populations beyond k-12 as well as additional forms of literature. ultimately, more studies which meet the inclusion criteria of this review are needed to form a larger data set to examine patterns and draw conclusions about specific intervention designs and components that are most effective in a variety of different contexts. although this review illustrates the potential of holistic srl interventions to improve k12 students’ academic achievement and self-regulation of learning, knowledge is still limited due to the relative paucity of studies that include longer-term follow-up outcome measures. this dearth of research could be explained by the complexities of designing and implementing holistic srl interventions, including the resources required. in sum, these studies can be burdensome to conduct and sponsor, yet well worthwhile in order to enhance the validity, generalizability, and durability of findings. cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 22 references alexander, p. a. 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(2012). evaluation of an intervention program to foster self-regulated learning and academic achievement in latin instruction. international scholarly research network education, 2012, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.5402/2012/848562 ziegler, a., stoeger, h., & grassinger, r. (2010). assessing self-regulated learning with the fsl–7. journal für begabtenförderung, 10, 24 –33. http://refhub.elsevier.com/s10416080(15)00144-2/rf0240 zimmerman, b. (2002). becoming a self-regulated learner: an overview. theory into practice, 41(2), 64-70. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4102_2 https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.2014.999363 https://doi.org/10.5402/2012/848562 http://refhub.elsevier.com/s1041-6080(15)00144-2/rf0240 http://refhub.elsevier.com/s1041-6080(15)00144-2/rf0240 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4102_2 cousins, et al.: exploring long-term impacts of self-tegulated learning interventions current issues in education, 23(1) 26 author notes erin cousins old dominion university ecousins@odu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7508-147x linda bol old dominion university lbol@odu.edu tian luo old dominion university tluo@odu.edu more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university . mailto:ecousins@odu.edu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7508-147x mailto:lbol@odu.edu mailto:tluo@odu.edu https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ teachers' perceptions of the influence of no child left volume 13, number 3 issn 1099-839x teachers' perceptions of the influence of no child left behind on classroom practices craig a. mertler university of west georgia citation mertler, c. (2011). teachers' perceptions of the influence of no child left behind on classroom practices. current issues in education, 13(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract due to the magnitude of nclb, the pressure on teachers has increased to perhaps immeasurable proportions. one could argue that nclb has ramifications for nearly all aspects of the teaching– learning process, including classroom-based assessment. the purpose of this study was to describe the extent to which k–12 teachers perceive that nclb has influenced their instructional and assessment practices. differences based on several demographic variables were also examined. an original instrument was administered to teachers and 1,534 responses were received. salient findings revealed that teachers believe nclb is having negative impacts on instructional and curricular practices, including higher levels of stress related to improving student performance. teachers reported several changes in how they assess students. significant group differences were found, particularly on the resultant components of student test preparation and instructional changes. keywords: teacher perceptions, no child left behind, classroom practices, assessment practices c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 2 about the author(s) author: craig a. mertler affiliation: university of west georgia address: 102 education center, carrollton, ga. email: cmertler@westga.edu or craig.mertler@gmail.com biographical information: craig a. mertler is currently a professor of assessment and research methodologies and director of the doctoral program in school improvement in the college of education at the university of west georgia. he teaches doctoral courses focused on the application of action research to promote school improvement and reform, and also teaches quantitative research methods, introductory statistical analyses, multivariate statistical analyses, and educational assessment methods. he is the author of five books, four invited book chapters, 16 refereed journal articles, and numerous nonrefereed articles and manuscripts. he has also presented numerous research papers at professional meetings around the country, as well as internationally. he conducts workshops for in-service educational professionals on classroombased action research and on the broad topic of classroom assessment. his primary research interests include classroom-based action research, professional learning communities, and assessment practices of classroom teachers. t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 3 the no child left behind act of 2001 (nclb) requires all states in the nation to set standards for grade-level achievement and to develop a system to measure the progress of all students and subgroups of students in meeting those state-determined grade-level standards (u.s. department of education, 2004). this act represents a marked departure from the efforts of the clinton administration to develop a single national test. nclb provides a mandate for national testing, but leaves the format and design of the test up to individual states (sloane & kelly, 2003). furthermore, because of the inconsistencies in the implementation of the mandate, students in some states will not graduate or be promoted unless they are able to pass their respective state's test (kober, 2002). in this most recent era of high-stakes testing, the amount of pressure and stress imposed upon students—and teachers, as well—has increased immensely. many leaders believe that this push for increased test scores, with little regard for how those improvements are attained, have created an accountability system that tends to cultivate inappropriate and sometimes unethical behaviors on the part of educators. additionally, research has cited the fact that large-scale, high-stakes standardized testing movements actually result in decreases in student learning. for example, in their study of high-stakes test data from 18 states, amrein and berliner (2002) concluded that student learning is indeterminate, remains at the same level it was before the policy was implemented, or actually decreases [emphasis added] when high-stakes testing policies are instituted. they further concluded that a transformation of current high-stakes testing policies is warranted due largely to this lack of improvement to student learning, as well as unintended consequences associated with high-stakes testing policies (e.g., increased drop-out rates, teachers' and schools' cheating on exams, teachers' defection from the profession). c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 4 due to the magnitude of the nclb testing mandates, the extent of this "pressure to perform" and its impact on teachers and their classroom practices has increased to perhaps immeasurable proportions. nonetheless, it is imperative for the educational community at large to better understand the degree to which teachers have altered their instructional and assessment practices based primarily on their knowledge, understanding, and implementation of nclb. the purpose of this study was to describe the extent to which k–12 teachers perceive that nclb has influenced their instructional and assessment practices. additionally, the study sought to determine if any differences in these perceptions existed based on gender, school level, education level, teaching experience, and school and district rating. the impact of "no child left behind" the no child left behind act has been the topic of substantial debate since its enactment in early 2002. arguably, its most crucial component is the heightened requirement for—as well as its greater importance placed on—accountability and high-stakes testing. few people would disagree with the notion that high-stakes testing can be a driving force behind fundamental change in schools. however, there is little agreement as to whether this change is for better or for worse (abrams, pedulla, & madaus, 2003). whereas, some have argued that the guarantee of rewards and the threats of sanctions will promote higher quality teaching and, therefore, higher student achievement, others have argued that focusing instruction on the ultimate goal of performance on high-stakes tests only limits the scope of classroom instruction and student learning. research studies have revealed somewhat mixed findings regarding the impact of nclb, depending on whether one examines its effects on student achievement or its effects on motivation and stress. t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 5 in comparing student achievement and growth in achievement prior to the implementation of nclb (school year 2001-2002) and following its implementation (school year 2003-2004), researchers at the northwest evaluation association found mixed results in their analyses of mathematics and reading assessment data from over 320,000 students in more than 200 school districts in over 22 states. the main finding reported by cronin, kingsbury, mccall, and bowe (2005) was that mathematics and reading scores had improved over the initial twoyear period of nclb. however, they also found that student growth scores had decreased, that students in grade levels tested by state assessments have higher achievement and growth than students who are in non-tested grades, and that student growth in every ethnic group had decreased slightly since nclb was implemented. the researchers concluded that there is evidence that nclb has improved student achievement, but if the change in achievement continues at roughly the same magnitude, nclb will not bring schools anywhere near the requirement of 100 percent proficiency by 2014. research has not been limited to examinations of the effects of nclb and its testing requirements on student achievement, but has also investigated the effects on student and teacher motivation. abrams et al. (2003) and stecher (2002) delineate several positive and negative effects on both students and teachers. the positive effects on students include that high-stakes tests motivate them to work harder in school, provide them with better information about their own knowledge and skills, and send clearer signals to students about what to study. frustration, discouragement from trying, increased competition, and a general devaluation of grades and school assessments are the primary negative student effects. positive effects on teachers include improvements in the diagnosis of individual student needs and the identification of strengths and weaknesses in the curriculum, as well as increased c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 6 motivation to work harder and smarter, to align instruction with standards, and to identify content not mastered by students, thus allowing for redirected instruction. these positive effects are countered by the facts that high-stakes tests increase stress and decrease morale among teachers, encourage teachers to focus more on specific test content rather than on standards, lead teachers to engage in inappropriate and unethical test preparation practices, and entice teachers to cheat when preparing or administering tests (abrams et al., 2003; stecher, 2002). according to teachers, much of this pressure comes from district administrators, building administrators, and the media (herman & golan, n.d.). that being said, there is certainly a lack of agreement regarding the effects of testing on student motivation. some believe that high-stakes accountability testing is unfairly criticized for these effects (sloane & kelly, 2002). the authors discuss that it is not clear if the anxiety experienced by students in high-stakes testing situations is due to the tests themselves—as well as the consequences of the resulting test scores—or to generally ineffective preparation for learning, which may be attributable to numerous causes, which could possibly include poor instruction. teachers' perceptions of "no child left behind" since the implementation of nclb, research has shown that, generally speaking, teachers do not have favorable perceptions of the law. in 2004, researchers at the civil rights project at harvard surveyed over 1,400 teachers regarding their knowledge of nclb and how they were responding to its mandates (sunderman, tracey, kim, & orfield, 2004). among the key findings from the study, teachers confirmed that the accountability system created by nclb is influencing the instructional and curricular practices of teachers, but is also producing unintended and possibly negative consequences. specifically, teachers reported that they ignored important t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 7 aspects of the curriculum, de-emphasized or completely neglected untested topics, and tended to focus their instruction on tested subjects, sometimes excessively. additionally, these teachers rejected the idea that nclb's testing requirements would ultimately focus teachers' instruction and/or improve the curriculum. finally, teachers who were teaching in schools that had been identified as needing improvement reported that they did not plan to be teaching in those same schools five years in the future. generally, teachers believed that nclb sanctions would cause teachers to transfer out of schools not making adequate progress (sunderman et al., 2004). in a survey conducted by the nclb task force of the national staff development council, nearly half of the 2,000 educators responding to the survey believed that the impact of nclb on professional development has had "no discernable effect." these teachers reported that professional development activities were more of an obligation, as opposed to being meaningful, useful professional learning opportunities. only a small percentage (14%) believed the nclbfunded professional development is "improving the quality of teaching" (national staff development council [nsdc], 2004). furthermore, and perhaps more pertinent to this study, the results of the nsdc survey revealed that nearly 60% of teachers believed that the law is having a negative impact on their work settings. forty percent reported that they experience nclb implementation pressures that negatively impact teacher morale and performance (nsdc, 2004). one-tenth reported that one effect of the law is that teachers are being forced to divert their attention away from more important educational issues that could improve teaching and learning. approximately the same proportion believed that educators are carrying on their work much as they did prior to the implementation of nclb. in contrast, over one-fourth of responding teachers indicated that the law is having a more positive effect, as evidenced by the fact that many educators were c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 8 beginning to think, talk, and act in new ways that could ultimately result in higher levels of student performance (nsdc, 2004). "no child left behind" and classroom assessment since nclb places such high-stakes consequences on its mandated standardized testing, teachers must do a more thorough job of teaching to their respective curricular standards. they must also engage in meaningful and valid classroom assessment in order to accurately determine the knowledge and skills that have been mastered by their students, as well as those content areas that may require redirected instruction to entire classes or individualized student reinforcement. one could make the argument that nclb has far-reaching ramifications for nearly all aspects of the teaching–learning process, of which classroom-based student assessment is a part. unfortunately, at this point in time, very little research exists regarding the relationship between nclb and teachers' classroom assessment practices. in a statewide survey conducted with teachers in virginia, mcmillan, myran, and workman (1999) found that more than three-fourths of elementary teachers and one-third of secondary teachers believed that their statewide testing program had a "somewhat" or "extensive" impact on their teaching and assessment. specifically, teachers reported that they did not cover untested areas of the curriculum nearly as much as those areas that were tested, and that they tended to emphasize breadth rather than depth of content coverage. teachers also reported greater use of multiple-choice formats on their self-developed classroom tests. many teachers identified accountability and increased pressures as the driving forces behind these changes in assessment and instruction (mcmillan et al., 1999). these results have been supported by a more recent, nationwide survey of more than 4,000 teachers (abrams et al., 2003). t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 9 with respect to a smaller, yet important, aspect of this relationship, there is research that has examined the arena of test preparation practices. researchers have identified five types of legitimate test preparation practices that help students demonstrate more completely their knowledge and skills. these strategies include teaching the entire content domain, using a variety of assessment and test item formats, teaching time management skills, fostering student motivation, and reducing test anxiety (gulek, 2003; miyasaka, 2000). these practices are considered by the measurement community to be ethical strategies for helping students prepare to take high-stakes tests, largely because they produce student learning that is robust; that is to say, the learning is generalizable to contexts beyond student performance on the test (gulek, 2003). however, inappropriate test preparation practices also abound. the basic problem with these practices is that they focus only on raising scores on a given test without also increasing students' knowledge and skills in the broader subject being tested (kober, 2002; gulek, 2003). these practices include such teacher behaviors as limiting content instruction to a particular item format, teaching of those objectives from the domain that are sampled on the test, using instructional guides that review actual items from a recent issue of a test, and limiting instruction to actual test items (gulek, 2003; mehrens, 1991). abrams, pedulla, and madaus (2003) summarized research in which teachers reported giving greater attention, with regard to instruction and assessment, to content areas they knew would appear on a state test. some teachers reported de-emphasizing or completely neglecting untested subjects or content. these types of practices are arguably a result of the stress and pressure experienced by teachers to raise test scores (stecher, 2002; mehrens, 1991). c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 10 purpose of the study the purpose of this study was to describe the extent to which k–12 teachers perceive that nclb has influenced their instructional and assessment practices. additionally, the study sought to determine if any differences in these perceptions existed based on gender, school level, education level, teaching experience, and school and district rating. the specific research questions addressed in this study were: 1. what are k–12 teachers' perceptions of nclb? 2. in what ways do teachers believe that nclb has influenced their instruction and assessment practices? 3. what differences in the perceptions of nclb's influence on assessment practices exist between groups as determined by gender, school level, education level, teaching experience, and school rating? methods participants the population for this study included all k–12 teachers in the state of ohio during the 2005–2006 school year. participation was sought through initial contact with superintendents from 156 school districts (roughly 25% of the total 614 school districts in the state). this initial list was randomly selected from the ohio department of education's online database of school districts (http://www.ode.state.oh.us/data/extract_oed_addgrades.asp). email communications with the superintendents provided them with an explanation of the study and asked for their agreement to allow their teachers to participate. by using this procedure, the researcher was not required to have access to individual teachers' email addresses. once a superintendent agreed to t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 11 allow the district’s teachers to participate, he or she was asked to simply forward an email "cover letter" to respective teachers via email. thirty-eight of the 156 districts (24%) agreed to participate. the researcher sought an additional random sample of 105 districts. from the second random sample, 15 districts agreed to participate. completed surveys were submitted from 1,534 teachers representing 53 school districts (more than 20% of those districts randomly sampled) across the state. instrumentation an original web-based survey instrument, titled the nclb * cap (classroom assessment practices) survey, consisting of 22 items, was developed for purposes of data collection. teacher respondents were instructed to respond to each statement on a four-point likert scale, ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree." for purposes of addressing research question #3, six additional demographic questions were asked of respondents. they were asked to indicate their gender, teaching level, education level, years of teaching experience, and school district and school building rating, as determined by the ohio department of education (ode). with respect to these last two questions, some explanation of this rating system is in order. each year, ode provides local report cards for each school district and building in the state of ohio. both districts and individual buildings are provided with a rating based on multiple measures, including the results from statewide assessments, graduation rates, and attendance as the input variables (ohio department of education [ode], 2004). specifically, the three measures are: § the school's or district's adequate yearly progress (ayp) for students in 10 student groups; c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 12 § a series of state indicators, defined as a minimum percentage of students at or above the proficient level on grade-level achievement tests (at grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. and 8) and on the ohio graduation test; and § a performance index score, ranging from 0 to 120, and defined as the average of performance level scores (i.e., below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced) received by students on each of five subjects tested in grades 4 and 6 (ode, 2004). school district ratings and their descriptions are as follows: § excellent—district meets 22 or 23 (of 23) indicators, or has a score of 100 or more on the performance index (pi); § effective—meets 17 to 21 indicators, or has a score of 90 to 99.9 on the pi; § continuous improvement—meets 11 to 16 indicators, or has a score of 80 to 89.9 on the pi, or meets ayp (the lowest a district can be rated is they meet ayp is continuous improvement); § academic watch—meets 8 to 10 indicators, or has a score of 70 to 79.9 on the pi and has missed ayp; and § academic emergency—meets 7 or fewer indicators, has a score less than 70 on the pi and missed ayp (ode, 2004). the rating for an individual school is based, in part, on the percentage of indicators that apply directly to that school (rather than out of a total of 23 for the entire district). these school-level ratings are as follows: § excellent—school meets 94% or more of applicable indicators, or has a score of 100 or more on the performance index (pi); t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 13 § effective—meets 75% to 93.9% of applicable indicators, or has a score of 90 to 99.9 on the pi; § continuous improvement—meets 50% to 74.9% of applicable indicators, or has a score of 80 to 89.9 on the pi, or meets ayp (the lowest a district can be rated is they meet ayp is continuous improvement); § academic watch—meets 31% to 49.9% of applicable indicators, or has a score of 70 to 79.9 on the pi and missed ayp; and § academic emergency—meets 30.9% or fewer indicators, has a score less than 70 on the pi and missed ayp (ode, 2004). the initial set of content-based items were adapted from a handful of existing instruments (i.e., abrams et al., 2003; nsdc, 2004; sunderman et al., 2004). the nclb * cap survey underwent pilot-testing (with data collected from a randomly-selected sample from the population previously described) and revision prior to its implementation. content-evidence of validity was also collected during the pilot-testing phase, based on reviews from survey research experts, as well as from classroom teachers. an alpha coefficient value equal to .76 was obtained for instrument's overall reliability. procedures school district participation was sought through email communications with the superintendents from the randomly selected districts during late summer. once a superintendent, or an appropriate designee, agreed to permit the survey to be accessed by the district's teachers, the researcher sent the email "cover letter" to the superintendent and asked that the message be forwarded to the entire teaching staff of that district. teachers were informed that the survey would require only about 10 minutes to complete, that their responses would remain confidential, c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 14 and that only aggregate results would be reported. this email message contained an embedded link which provided direct access for respondents to the nclb * cap survey. the survey was administered during a three-week period extending from mid-september through early-october. all data were collected and stored electronically. data analyses all data analyses were conducted using the statistical package for the social sciences (spss, v. 15). initial data analyses included frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations to summarize the overall results. an exploratory factor analysis was conducted as a data reduction technique in order to reduce the number of items for purposes of group comparisons. analyses of variance were then used to compare group responses based on gender, teaching level, education level, years of teaching experience, district rating, and school rating. all anova results were evaluated at an alpha level equal to .05. results the descriptive, overall results of the analyses are presented first. these results are followed by a discussion of the data reduction procedure and the subsequent group comparisons. provided in table 1 is a summary of the demographic characteristics of the sample. table 1 demographic characteristics of teachers as represented by frequencies and percentages demographic characteristic frequency percentage gender female male 1186 319 78.8 21.2 school level elementary 697 50.4 t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 15 secondary 687 49.6 education level b.a./b.s. m.a./m.s. doctoral/specialist 408 1039 76 26.8 68.2 5.0 years of teaching experience 1-5 years 6-10 years 11-15 years 16-20 years 21-25 years 25-30 years more than 30 years 228 316 238 194 166 199 179 15.0 20.8 15.7 12.8 10.9 13.1 11.8 district rating excellent effective continuous improvement academic watch academic emergency 84 808 248 298 44 5.7 54.5 16.7 20.1 3.0 school rating excellent effective continuous improvement academic watch academic emergency 280 657 326 122 49 19.5 45.8 22.7 8.5 3.4 overall results the descriptive results for the 22 items appearing on the survey, including the percentages of response for each point on the scale, means, and standard deviations, are presented in table 2. with respect to teachers' knowledge of nclb, nearly three-fourths (72%) of teachers responding to the survey indicated that they believed that they knew a lot about c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 16 nclb and nearly half (43%) specified that they did not care to know anything more about it and its effects on their work as classroom teachers. nearly three-fourths (73%) of teachers believe that nclb has forced teachers to divert their attention away from the types of issues that can actually improve teaching and learning. only 31% believed that the overall effect of nclb on their schools has been positive, and only 24% believed that most teachers are carrying on their work much as they did prior to the law. table 2 percentages of teachers' responses, means, and standard deviations for items appearing on nclb * cap survey (n = 1,531) frequencies (percentages) of response item 1 sd 2 d 3 a 4 sa mean (sd) i believe that i know a lot about the no child left behind (nclb) act. 35 (2%) 392 (26%) 931 (61%) 167 (11%) 2.81 (.65) nclb has forced me to change the focus of my classroom instruction. 68 (5%) 441 (29%) 748 (49%) 260 (17%) 2.79 (.77) nclb has changed the nature of academic motivation for students and has placed more stress on students. 68 (5%) 338 (22%) 579 (38%) 530 (35%) 3.04 (.87) nclb has changed the nature of instructional motivation for teachers and has placed more stress on teachers. 12 (1%) 98 (7%) 599 (40%) 805 (53%) 3.45 (.65) the importance placed on ohio's achievement tests and the ohio graduation test (ogt) has lead to instruction that violates the standards of good educational practice. 36(2%) 380 (25%) 613 (40%) 488 (32%) 3.02 (.82) i feel more pressure and stress as a result of the increased testing mandates in ohio and 26 (2%) 166 (11%) 629 (42%) 696 (46%) 3.32 (.73) t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 17 the related need to improve student performance. my students feel more stress as a result of the increased testing mandates in ohio. 16 (1%) 201 (13%) 642 (42%) 655 (43%) 3.28 (.73) nclb has forced me to change the ways in which i assess my students' academic performance. 21 (1%) 356 (24%) 806 (53%) 325 (22%) 2.95 (.71) as a result of nclb, i create a greater number of my classroom tests such that they mirror the same format and types of questions on the state's achievements tests and/or the ogt. 37 (3%) 284 (19%) 743 (49%) 439 (29%) 3.05 (.76) i use multiple-choice classroom tests more frequently than i have in the past. 139 (9%) 837 (56%) 398 (27%) 119 (8%) 2.33 (.75) i have substantially decreased the amount of time spent on instruction of content not tested on the state-mandated tests. 49 (3%) 345 (23%) 635 (42%) 476 (32%) 3.02 (.82) i have not let nclb or the state-mandated testing program in ohio influence what or how i provide instruction to my students. 424 (28%) 842 (56%) 213 (14%) 33 (2%) 1.90 (.71) i have substantially increased the amount of time spent on instruction of content that i know is covered on the statemandated tests. 28 (2%) 240 (16%) 742 (49%) 491 (33%) 3.13 (.74) i have not let nclb affect how i assess the academic achievement and progress of my students. 283 (19%) 849 (57%) 322 (22%) 42 (3%) 2.08 (.71) i spend much more time throughout the year preparing my students for the state-mandated tests. 28 (2%) 272 (18%) 721 (48%) 472 (32%) 3.10 (.75) as a result of nclb, i now spend more time teaching 28 (2%) 291 (20%) 817 (55%) 358 (24%) 3.01 (.71) c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 18 test-taking skills to my students. i have used sample test items from the state tests, approved by the ohio department of education, to help prepare my students to take the tests. 49 (3%) 268 (18%) 699 (47%) 477 (32%) 3.07 (.79) as a result of nclb, i use standardized test data to help guide and improve my instruction. 46 (3%) 394 (26%) 835 (56%) 219 (15%) 2.82 (.71) in my school, i believe that most teachers are carrying on their work much as they did before nclb. 311 (21%) 831 (55%) 315 (21%) 46 (3%) 2.06 (.73) in my school, i believe that nclb has forced teachers to divert their attention away from more important issues that can better improve teaching and learning. 38 (3%) 375 (25%) 674 (45%) 418 (28%) 2.98 (.79) i do not care to know any more about nclb and its effect on my work as a classroom teacher than i do right now. 148 (10%) 704 (47%) 495 (33%) 153 (10%) 2.44 (.81) i believe that the overall effect of nclb on my school has been positive. 331 (22%) 698 (47%) 436 (29%) 34 (2%) 2.12 (.77) the majority of the survey items dealt with the impact of nclb on classroom practice. some of the more prominent individual item results were found with statements that addressed increased amounts of pressure and stress that are being caused by nclb. an overwhelming majority (n = 1,404, 93%) of teachers indicated that nclb has changed the nature of instructional motivation for teachers and has placed more stress on teachers, although a slightly smaller number of teachers (n = 1,325, 88%) believed that they personally were feeling more pressure and stress. a smaller, but meaningful, number (n = 1,109, 73%) of teachers believed t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 19 that nclb, in general, has changed the nature of academic motivation for and has placed more stress on students; however, more teachers (n = 1,297, 85%) felt that their students were feeling additional stress, as compared to students in general. two-thirds (n = 1,008, 66%) of teachers agreed that nclb has forced them to change the focus of their classroom instruction. an even greater amount (n = 1,101, 72%) indicated that the law and its required testing mandates have lead to instruction that violates standards of good educational practice. according to these teachers, nclb has had a major impact on their instruction of content. the vast majority (n = 1,266, 84%) of teachers agreed that nclb had influenced what or how instruction is provided to students. additionally, 74% (n = 1,111) indicated that they have substantially decreased the amount of time spent on content that they knew was not tested on the state-mandated tests. similarly, 82% (n = 1,233) responded that they had substantially increased the amount of time spent on content that they knew would appear on the state tests. finally, with respect to the assessment of student learning, teachers clearly indicated several prominent impacts of nclb. three-fourths (n = 1,131, 75%) of teachers indicated that nclb had forced them to change the ways in which they assess their students' academic performance. a substantial majority (n = 1,193, 80%) indicated that they spent much more time throughout the school year preparing students for the state-mandated tests. many teachers engaged in this type of preparation by teaching test-taking skills (n = 1,175, 79%), by using sample items from previous versions of the state tests to help prepare students to take the tests (n = 1,176, 79%), and by creating a greater number of classroom tests so that they mirror the format and item types which appear on the state's tests (n = 1,182, 78%). interestingly, 65% (n = 976) disagreed with the statement that they use multiple-choice classroom tests more frequently than in the past. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 20 factor analysis results in an effort to reduce the number of items into more meaningful clusters of items for purposes of group comparisons, the data were subjected to an exploratory factor analysis. principal components extraction with varimax rotation was used in order to reduce the number of items to a smaller set of uncorrelated variables for use in analysis of variance procedures. using the criterion of eigenvalues equal to 1, the analysis returned four components. however, items composing two of the components were so diverse that naming those components proved quite difficult. therefore, the researcher requested the extraction of three components, which lent themselves nicely to interpretation. this three-component solution explained 52% of the variability across the items. the loadings for this resultant three-component solution are shown in table 3. based on the relationships between items within components, it was feasible to attach conceptual labels to each. following an interpretation of these loadings, component 1 was labeled student test preparation, component 2 was labeled stressful motivation, and component 3 was labeled instructional changes. table 3 loadings, eigenvalues, percent of variance accounted for, and reliability coefficients for resulting components component item 1 2 3 i spend much more time throughout the year preparing my students for the state-mandated tests. .79 .23 .13 i have used sample test items from the state tests, approved by the ohio department of education, to help prepare my students to take the tests. .78 .03 .01 i have substantially increased the amount of time spent on instruction of content that i know is covered on the state-mandated tests. .77 .13 .14 as a result of nclb, i create a greater number of my classroom tests such that they mirror the same .71 .08 .17 t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 21 format and types of questions on the state's achievements tests and/or the ogt. as a result of nclb, i now spend more time teaching test-taking skills to my students. .70 .24 .12 i have substantially decreased the amount of time spent on instruction of content not tested on the state-mandated tests. .69 .32 .15 i have not let nclb or the state-mandated testing program in ohio influence what or how i provide instruction to my students. -.68 -.01 -.25 i have not let nclb affect how i assess the academic achievement and progress of my students. -.66 -.02 -.27 as a result of nclb, i use standardized test data to help guide and improve my instruction. .63 -.20 .18 i use multiple-choice classroom tests more frequently than i have in the past. .40 .24 .01 in my school, i believe that most teachers are carrying on their work much as they did before nclb. -.31 -.20 -.29 i believe that the overall effect of nclb on my school has been positive. -.11 -.80 .06 in my school, i believe that nclb has forced teachers to divert their attention away from more important issues that can better improve teaching and learning. .15 .77 .08 the importance placed on ohio's achievement tests and the ohio graduation test (ogt) has lead to instruction that violates the standards of good educational practice. .11 .76 .14 my students feel more stress as a result of the increased testing mandates in ohio. .32 .57 .29 nclb has changed the nature of instructional motivation for teachers and has placed more stress on teachers. .19 .54 .50 i do not care to know any more about nclb and its effect on my work as a classroom teacher than i do right now. -.09 .50 -.04 i feel more pressure and stress as a result of the increased testing mandates in ohio and the related need to improve student performance. .41 .49 .36 nclb has forced me to change the focus of my classroom instruction. .32 .14 .68 c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 22 nclb has changed the nature of academic motivation for students and has placed more stress on students. .17 .45 .60 i believe that i know a lot about the no child left behind (nclb) act. .01 -.19 .58 nclb has forced me to change the ways in which i assess my students' academic performance. .46 .21 .52 eigenvalue 5.57 3.59 2.27 percent of variance accounted for a 25.33 16.31 10.34 alpha reliability coefficient b .57 .53 .64 a total percent of variance accounted for by three components = 51.98 b overall alpha reliability = .76 group comparisons the responses (as the three component scores) from teachers were compared across the various demographic data collected (i.e., gender, teaching level, education level, years of teaching experience, district rating, and school rating). these results are summarized in table 4. table 4 summary of significant group comparison results demographic factor dependent variable (component) f-ratio p-value eta squared gender student test preparation 5.58 .02 .004 instructional changes 32.14 < .01 .024 school level student test preparation 34.40 < .01 .031 instructional changes 53.10 < .01 .042 years of teaching experience student test preparation 2.80 .01 .013 district rating student test preparation 7.03 < .01 .022 school rating student test preparation 6.61 < .01 .021 t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 23 females scored higher (i.e., they had a higher level of agreement) on each of the three component scores than their male counterparts. however, the differences between females and males were significant only for student test preparation, f(1, 1298) = 5.58, p = .02, η2 = .004, and for instructional changes, f(1, 1298) = 32.14, p < .01, η2 = .024. the difference for stressful motivation was not significant, f(1, 1298) = 1.54, p = .216, η2 = .001. these results indicate that female teachers are doing more to prepare students to take the state-mandated tests and that they are making more nclb-induced instructional changes than are male teachers. however, it is important to note that the discrepancy in sample sizes between females (n = 1,186) and males (n = 319) certainly could have impacted these statistical results. a similar pattern of differences was apparent for the comparisons between elementary and secondary teachers in the sample. elementary teachers scored higher on all three components than did secondary teachers. however, only two of these differences were significant. the difference for student test preparation was significant, f(1, 1198) = 34.40, p < .01, η2 = .031, as was the difference for instructional changes, f(1, 1198) = 53.10, p < .01, η2 = .042. the difference for stressful motivation was not significant, f(1, 1198) = .57, p = .45, η2 = .000. these results indicate that elementary teachers are doing more to prepare students to take the state tests and that they are making more instructional changes than are secondary teachers. although none of the education level comparisons were significant, teachers with masters degrees scored higher than both those with bachelors or doctoral/specialist degrees on student test preparation, f(2, 1313) = 1.11, p = .33, η2 = .002. those teachers with bachelors degrees scored higher than the other two groups on stressful motivation, f(2, 1313) = 3.03, p = .05, η2 = c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 24 .005. finally, those with doctoral/specialist degrees scored highest on instructional changes, f(2, 1313) = .458, p = 63, η2 = .001. those with 6-10 years of teaching experience scored highest on student test preparation, where there was a significant difference, f(6, 1309) = 2.80, p = .01, η2 = .013. scheffé post hoc tests revealed the only significant difference to be between those with 6-10 years of experience and those with more than 30 years of experience. there were no significant differences based on years of teaching experience for stressful motivation, f(6, 1309) = .77, p = .59, η2 = .004, or for instructional changes, f(6, 1309) = .74, p = .62, η2 = .003. with respect to the current school district rating, a significant difference was found for the student test preparation component, f(4, 1279) = 7.03, p < .01, η2 = .022. teachers from districts rated as "academic emergency" scored significantly higher (indicating that they were engaged in more of these practices) than those rated "excellent" or "effective." additionally, "academic emergency" and "academic watch" were both significantly different from those rated "continuous improvement." although there were no significant differences for stressful motivation, f(4, 1279) = .70, p = .59, η2 = .002, those from "academic watch" districts scored highest. similarly, there were no significant differences for instructional changes, f(4, 1279) = 1.18, p = .32, η2 = .004, those from "effective" and from "academic watch" districts scored highest. finally, with regard to the current school building rating, a similar pattern of results was found. there was again a significant difference for student test preparation, f(4, 1241) = 6.61, p < .01, η2 = .021, with teachers from "academic emergency" and "academic watch" schools scoring significantly higher than those from "excellent" and "effective" schools. again, although there were no significant differences for stressful motivation, f(4, 1241) = 1.55, p = .19, η2 = t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 25 .005, those from "academic emergency" schools scored highest. similarly, there were no significant differences for instructional changes, f(4, 1241) = 1.96, p = .10, η2 = .006, those from "academic emergency" schools scored highest. discussion the results of this study support those of the limited studies previously conducted on the topic of the impact of nclb on teachers' classroom practices. consistent with recent studies (abrams et al., 2003; mcmillan et al., 1999; nsdc, 2004; sunderman et al., 2004), this study found that teachers do not have favorable perceptions of nclb. specifically, teachers believe that nclb is having negative impacts on both instructional and curricular practices of teachers. the vast majority of teachers in the large sample employed in this study also reported that they have substantially reduced the amount of time spent teaching content that they know is not tested on the state-mandated tests and substantially increased time spent on tested content. previously, 60% of teachers surveyed indicated that nclb was having a negative impact on their work settings (nsdc, 2004); in the present study, 69% of teachers believed that its impact on their work, as well as on their school setting, was negative. teachers in this study also reported experiencing much greater levels of pressure and stress related to the need to improve student performance as a result of nclb and its associated testing mandates. this stress has also "trickled down" to the students of these teachers. this study has provided empirical evidence of assertions made by abrams et al. (2003) and stecher (2002). specifically, with respect to classroom assessment practices, the results of this study have strongly supported previous research (abrams et al., 2003; mcmillan et al., 1999). a substantial majority of teachers in this study reported that they had changed the ways in which they assess students, spent more time teaching test-taking skills, used sample items from previous tests, and c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 26 created a greater number of classroom tests that paralleled the format of state tests. the lone finding from this study that seems to contradict previous research (e.g., mcmillan et al., 1999) is that well over half of the teachers reported that they did not use multiple-choice classroom tests more frequently than in the past. this study found that teachers have experienced a substantial increase in stress and pressure as a result of its testing mandates, as well as the push to improve student performance on those tests. teachers in this study have reported altering numerous aspects of their instruction, including content coverage and methods of assessing student performance. teachers believe that these types of changes have forced them to take time away from more important aspects of the teaching–learning process. these results seem to support an assertion made by abrams et al. (2003) that these state tests are the more powerful influence on teaching practices, as opposed to the content standards themselves. while it is important to remember that the ultimate purpose of any test is to improve teaching and learning (kober, 2002), this study strongly supports previous research (e.g., abrams et al., 2003) that nclb, with its emphasis on and pressure to improve student performance as measured by standardized assessments, has quite possibly led to an increased level of teacher-led student test preparation in our schools. while this appears to be an ethical and admirable effort on the part of teachers, abrams et al. (2003) are quick to point out that these "highly consequential tests encourage teachers to employ test preparation strategies that may result in improved test scores...but may not represent an actual improvement in achievement" (p. 25). the group comparisons from this study revealed some interesting findings. the fact that there were no significant differences between any subgroups on the stressful motivation t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 27 component suggests that all teachers—regardless of gender, school setting, education level, years of teaching experience, or effectiveness ratings—are feeling the stress of this increased accountability and the need to improve student performance. although the effect sizes were not large, the two largest group differences were obtained for comparisons between elementary and secondary teachers on the student test preparation and instructional changes components. elementary teachers indicated significantly more time spent on test preparation and that they had made more instructional changes than secondary teachers. this is not surprising when one takes into consideration the nature of state-mandated testing in ohio. there is substantially more testing that occurs during the elementary years of school. in addition to diagnostic testing in grades 1 and 2, students in elementary grades are required to take achievement tests in the following grade levels and subjects: § grade 3—mathematics and reading § grade 4—mathematics, reading, and writing § grade 5—mathematics and reading (science and social studies will be added in 20062007) § grade 6—mathematics and reading (ode, 2005). at the secondary level, students are tested in mathematics and reading in grades 7 and 8. additionally, students begin taking the ohio graduation test (ogt) in grade 10. arguably, there is more pressure at the elementary level for students to demonstrate academic achievement on these tests since they are being tested every year in grades 1 through 6. however, at the secondary level, students are tested only three times between grades 7 and 12. elementary teachers in ohio may feel it necessary to spend more time c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 28 preparing students to take the state tests and may engage more frequently in making changes to their instruction. similarly, more pressure to demonstrate improvements in student achievement may be felt by those districts or individual schools that are currently rated low (i.e., "academic watch" and "academic emergency") on the state's effectiveness scale. these districts and schools are on a much shorter timeline, so to speak, to show improvements and to demonstrate adequate yearly progress than those that are rated as being more effective. teachers, as well as administrators, in these districts and buildings undoubtedly feel that they must do more, and do it sooner rather than later, to improve student performance. however, this fact raises an interesting set of questions. in light of greater pressure to perform, are these teachers preparing students for these tests by using only those practices that are generally agreed-upon as being acceptable by the greater measurement community? if not, they may be engaging in practices that are truly, and only, artificially inflating test scores (urdan & paris, 1994). examples of these unacceptable test preparation practices include: § acquiring actual test questions from a current test form and teaching students the answers; § giving students actual test questions for drill, review, or homework; and § copying, distributing, or keeping past versions of a test that have not been officially released as practice exams (kober, 2002). a second question relates to teachers' knowledge of these practices. if teachers are using any of these practices, are they aware of their ethical “violations?” we might assume and take for granted that teachers would know what is and is not appropriate practice in this arena. for example, however, it is possible that a given teacher may not be aware that the state may reuse some of the same test questions, or the same entire test version, from year to year (kober, 2002). t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 29 a final question of interest is that if these teachers are engaged in unethical test preparation practices, have they taken this initiative on their own, or are they feeling increased pressure to do so from district or school-level administrators? again, it is possible that this is happening without realizing that certain practices are considered unacceptable. it is important to note a couple of limitations of the results of this study. although the findings are limited by geographic location (all teachers currently work in school districts in ohio, a state which includes a series of state-mandated achievement tests), external validity of the findings of this study is suggested through the large and broad nature of the sample. the study sought to describe teachers' beliefs with respect to specific classroom-based instructional and assessment practices. of course, the findings are based purely on self-reported data, and no efforts were made within the scope of this study to validate the extent to which these beliefs are consistent with actual classroom practice. worthy of reiteration is the fact that this was a study of teachers’ perceptions of the impact of nclb, and not one of scientifically studying the extent to which actual classroom practices have changed as a direct result of nclb. in light of the findings from this study of teacher perceptions, it is imperative for various groups to be aware of any unintended effects of nclb. for example, policymakers need to be aware of how the law is affecting teachers. the increased pressure that has been placed on teachers to raise levels of student academic achievement has made their daily work much more stressful. furthermore, teachers have been forced to change the ways that they provide instruction to students and assess their resultant academic performance. they have substantially altered the amount of time spent on specific content, which sometimes conflicts with their respective academic content standards and violates sound educational practice. additionally, teachers have resorted to spending much more time teaching students how to take standardized c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 30 achievement tests, perhaps turning to unethical practices in order to achieve higher test scores. similarly, administrators need to be mindful of these issues as well. they should be aware of these unintended consequences of nclb and should look for ways to address increased stress levels, perhaps through professional development activities. they should definitely be cognizant of the potential for their teachers to utilize unethical test preparation practices. closely examining how teachers are instructing students in the skills of test-taking may be a critical first step. in light of the earlier discussion of unacceptable test preparation practices, it is recommended that teachers gain a better understanding of not only these unacceptable practices, but also activities whose practice would be more acceptable. some students do not perform to the best of their abilities because they lack skills in test taking (hogan, 2007; linn & miller, 2005). specifically, students can be taught “testwiseness” skills (i.e., test-taking strategies) in order to prevent this type of inadequacy from lowering their test scores. these skills can be mastered by most students, but they need practice in order to develop them (linn & miller, 2005). testwiseness skills that students should be taught, and given the opportunity to practice, include: § listening to and/or reading test directions carefully (including following proper procedures for marking responses on the answer sheet); § listening to and/or reading test items carefully; § establishing a pace that will permit completion of the test or subtest; § skipping difficult items (instead of wasting valuable testing time) and returning to them later; § making informed guesses, as opposed to just omitting items that appear too difficult; t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 31 § eliminating possible options (in the case of multiple-choice items), by identifying options that are clearly incorrect based on knowledge of content, prior to making informed guesses; § checking to be sure that an answer number matches the item number when marking an answer; and § checking answers, as well as the accuracy of marking those answers, if time permits (linn & miller, 2005). the importance of engaging in these types of practices with students in advance of the administration of standardized tests is not only that they are seen as acceptable and ethical, but that they likely will result in test scores that demonstrate real student learning (mertler, 2007). since there were so many group differences on the student test preparation component, it is imperative that we shed light on the phenomenon. in order to understand this potential "problem" more completely, it is recommended that researchers look more closely at how teachers engage in student test preparation, focusing perhaps on particular test preparation strategies used by teachers. we need to better understand what specific techniques are used, why those techniques are used (i.e., what teachers are hoping to accomplish by using them), and the nature of their overall effectiveness. if they fail to improve actual student learning, their use should be strongly discouraged. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 32 references abrams, l. m., pedulla, j. j., & madaus, g. f. (2003). views from the classroom: teachers' opinions of statewide testing programs. theory into practice, 42(1), 18-29 american psychological association. (2001). publication manual of the american psychological association (5th ed.). washington, dc: author amrein, a. l. & berliner, d. c. (2002, march 28). high-stakes testing, uncertainty, and student learning education policy analysis archives, 10(18). retrieved february 19, 2010 from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v10n18/. cronin, j., kingsbury, g. g., mccall, m. s., & bowe, b. (2005, april). the impact of the no child left behind act on student achievement and growth: 2005 edition. retrieved february 14, 2006, from the northwest evaluation association web site: http://www.nwea.org/research/nclbstudy.asp gulek, c. (2003). preparing for high-stakes testing. theory into practice, 42(1), 42-50. herman, j. l., & golan, s. (n.d.). effects of standardized testing on teachers and learning: another look. (cse technical report 334). los angeles, ca: university of california, national center for research on evaluation, standards, and student testing. hogan, t. p. (2007). educational assessment: a practical approach. hoboken, nj: john wiley & sons. kober, n. (2002). teaching to the test: the good, the bad, and who's responsible (testtalk for leaders, issue no. 1). washington, d.c.: center on education policy. linn, r. l., & miller, m. d. (2005). measurement and assessment in teaching (9th ed.). upper saddle river, nj: merrill/prentice hall. mcmillan, j. h., myran, s., & workman, d. (1999). the impact of mandated statewide testing on teachers' classroom assessment and instructional practices. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, montreal, canada. mehrens, w. a. (1991, april). defensible/indefensible instructional preparation for high stakes achievement tests: an exploratory trialogue. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, chicago, il. mertler, c. a. (2007). interpreting standardized test scores: strategies for data-driven instructional decision making. thousand oaks, ca: sage. t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 33 miyasaka, j. r. (2000, april). a framework for evaluating the validity of test preparation practices. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, new orleans, la. national staff development council. (2004). nclb: survey finds many educators experience little positive nclb impact on professional development. retrieved may 20, 2005, from http://www.nsdc.org/library/policy/nclbsurvey2_04.cfm ohio department of education. (2004). 2004-05 ohio school district rating definitions. retrieved july 15, 2005, from http://www.ode.state.oh.us/reportcard/definitions/rating.asp ohio department of education. (2005). implementation schedule of ohio statewide assessments. retrieved march 2, 2006, from http://www.ode.state.oh.us/proficiency/pdf/implementation_schedule_ohio _statewide_assessments083005.pdf sloane, f. c., & kelly, a. e. (2003). issues in high-stakes testing programs. theory into practice, 42(1), 12-17. stecher, b. (2002). consequences of large-scale, high-stakes testing on school and classroom practice. in l. s. hamilton, b. m. stecher, & s. p. klein (eds.), making sense of testbased accountability in education. (pp. 79-100). santa monica, ca: rand. sunderman, g. l., tracey, c. a., kim, j., & orfield, g. (2004). listening to teachers: classroom realities and no child left behind. cambridge, ma: the civil rights project at harvard university. urdan, t. c., & paris, s. g. (1994). teachers' perceptions of standardized achievement tests. educational policy, 8(2), 137-156. u.s. department of education. (2004). a guide to education and "no child left behind." retrieved september 10, 2005, from http://www.ed.gov/nclb/overview/intro/guide/guide.pdf c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 34 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. t eachers’ perceptions of n c l b 35 editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain jeffery johnson seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo cie template volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x making the transition from traditional to home schooling: home school family motivations kenneth v. anthony and susie burroughs mississippi state university citation anthony, k.v. & burroughs, s. (2010). making the transition from traditional to home schooling: home school family motivations. current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this study examined the motivations of families that operate home schools. four intact, religiously conservative families were interviewed and observed over one year. findings showed that families were motivated by multiple factors to leave traditional schooling and begin home schooling. additionally, the motivations to home school influenced the families‘ instructional practices. finally, results indicated that the decision to home school was a positive decision for the families, not an outright rejection of traditional schooling. this study reveals the complex motivations to home school and may assist administrators, teachers, and policymakers in traditional schools induct and retain families considering home schooling. keywords: home education, motivations, home schooling, parental control, curriculum decisionmaking current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 about the author(s) author: kenneth v. anthony affiliation: mississippi state university address: po box 5447, mississippi state, ms 39762-5447 email: kanthony@armyrotc.msstate.edu biographical information: kenneth v. anthony is a lecturer in the college of education at mississippi state university and adjunct faculty in history in the school of undergraduate studies at university of maryland university collegeeurope. author: susie burroughs affiliation: mississippi state university address: po box 5447, mississippi state, ms 39762-5447 email: susie.burroughs@msstate.edu biographical information: susie burroughs is professor of education in the college of education at mississippi state university. making the transition 3 making the transition from traditional to home schooling: home school family motivations, home schooling is not a new phenomenon, but the increased numbers of home schooled children, the organization of homeschoolers into a mass movement, and the potential social impact of home schooling mark those involved in home schooling as a significant segment of the population in the united states (u.s.) today. as early as 2000, mcdowell and ray observed that ―the home education movement is a growing one. its numbers are growing, its acceptance is growing and its power to affect the political environment is growing‖ (p. 1). in 2005, brian ray, president of the national home education research institute, estimated that the number of students home schooled in the u.s. had reached 2.5 million (roberts, 2005). as home schooling continues to grow in the u.s., the number of home schooled students who attend college and move into the workforce also grows. consequently, the motivations, experiences, and outcomes of homeschoolers have, of late, intrigued educators and researchers alike. the purpose of the study described herein was to examine the motivations of families to leave a traditional, public school environment and teach their children at home. of particular interest to the researchers was the intersection of pedagogical and ideological motivations in the reasoning implicit in parents making the decision to home school. other goals of the study were to learn how the parents of the home schooled children involved in the study made the transition from traditional schooling to home schooling and why they had continued to home school their children. making the decision to home school home education has grown as an education alternative for those who are current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 dissatisfied with public education as well as schools in general (i.e., private and public). jeub (1994) identified four main reasons parents home school: social, familial, academic, and religious. a 1999 national center for education statistics (nces) study (as cited in basham, 2001) reported data on 850,000 children that were home schooled. from the data, three primary reasons that parents home school were extracted. the data revealed that the primary reasons cited were better education (48.9%), religious reasons (38.4%), and poor learning environment at school (25.6%). a subsequent nces study (bielick, 2008), reported that the number of home school students increased to 1.1 million in 2003 and 1.5 million in 2007. this increase indicates that home schooling continues to grow as an educational choice for american families. the 2008 nces report updated the primary reasons cited for home schooling were concern about the school environment (88%), desire to provide religious or moral instruction (83%), dissatisfaction with academic instruction in other schools (73%), and non traditional approach to child‘s education (65%). in a study of 235 families that home school, collum (2005) identified four broad reasons that parents home school their children: dissatisfaction with public schools, academic and pedagogical concerns, religious values, and family needs. other factors were also found to influence a parent‘s decision to home school. these included parental education level, the number of siblings home schooled, and political identification. princotta and bielick (2006) identified similar reasons families home educate, but the priorities of home school families they reported were different than in the nces or collum studies. the purposes of the princotta and bielick study were to estimate how many people in the united states home school and to collect descriptive data on home school families. survey data was used from the national household education surveys program as well as interviews conducted with 239 home school families. making the transition 5 these researchers found that parents home school for the following reasons: disdain for adverse environment of schools (e.g., safety concerns, drugs, negative peer pressure) (31%); desire to provide religious and moral instruction (30%); and dissatisfaction with the academic programs of schools (16%). generally speaking, the motivations to home educate can be divided into two domains: ideological and pedagogical (basham, 2001; knowles, 1991; knowles, muchmore, & spaulding, 1994). ideological motivations are primarily religious and social in nature, while pedagogical motivations primarily center on the process of education. there are, however, similarities between the two domains, and a family can have reasons to home educate that are both ideologically and pedagogically motivated. ideological reasons to home educate predominately focus on issues related to family values (ray, 2000); perceived lack of religion in public schools and a desire to educate children in an environment that is in tune with the family‘s religious beliefs (carper, 2000; pearson as cited in martin, 1997); conflicts between families and schools over values and religion (klicka, 2002); family matters or building a closer family (holt & farenga, 2003); and safety concerns, including moral, physical, mental, and spiritual safety (martin, 1997). according to kirschner (as cited in ray, 2000), ―we find many americans turning to ‘family values‘ and scriptural religion in a search for stability and something to believe in‖ (p. 2). those who ascribe to this ideology view home education as a means to upholding their values and finding stability that cannot be achieved outside the home. consequently, the home education movement has, for many, taken on the feel of a religious revival and, indeed, has been characterized as such: current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 home schooling has proven to be a revival of a time-tested method of individualized education. it reflects a deep concern by parents to be involved in the education of their children. the home school movement is profoundly religious, for the most part making the revival more than educational. it is a christian revival and restoration of the family, with a focus on god‘s absolute moral values and principles. (klicka, 2002, p. 439) interestingly, even in this appraisal of the home school movement as a revival, reference is still made to the pedagogical advantages of home schooling. it is, in reality, difficult to separate the two, especially among ideological practitioners of home education. the twin factors of the perceived irreligious or anti-religious nature of public schools (carper, 2000) and the importance of religion in developing and educating children (basham, 2001) combine to push some families out of public schools and into home schools. while concerns about their children‘s moral safety strongly influence ideologues to home educate their children (knowles et al., 1994), some also fear for their children‘s physical safety (hill, 2000; klicka, 2002; martin, 1997; princotta & bielick, 2006). the ideological reasons to home educate students originate predominantly from a fundamentalist, religious mindset. for some whom ideological and religious conflicts with public schools are the lone motivations for home schooling, having their children educated in privately funded religious schools is an option. beyond the conflicts with public schools, however, it has been documented that there is yet another, deeper ideological motive that drives many to home educate, and that motive is intrinsically connected to the notion held of the proper role of the parent in a child‘s education (carper, 2000; ray, 2000). for this reason, many homeschoolers proclaim that ―they have abandoned institutional education for home schooling in an attempt to restore what they believe to be education in its purest form—parents teaching their own making the transition 7 children‖ (carper, 2000, p. 6). these ideological homeschoolers believe they are fulfilling a religious mandate, and for them neither public nor private schools is an option. as explained by klicka (2002), ―in home schooling, parents can fulfill the commands in scripture to teach their children god‘s truth throughout each day‖ (p. 124). parents who hold this belief maintain that they are exercising their rights to educate their own children as they deem appropriate. mayberry (as cited in ray, 2000) discovered that many parents who home school ―perceived home education as a way for parents to regain control of their own lives, a way to make the impact they want on the next generation‖ (p. 2). parents who ascribe to this mindset not only see home education as a right, but as an obligation they must fulfill. they perceive a fundamental difference between their value systems and mass schooling, be it public or privately funded and controlled, and they feel an obligation as parents to build a closer family (knowles, marlow, & muchmore, 1992). while ideological reasons for home schooling are first and foremost religiously oriented, pedagogical reasons for home schooling stem directly from the preferred relationship between the student and learning. pedagogues do not view school and education as the same thing. they believe that education should occur in a less structured environment and students should engage in the type of experiential learning that they believe is seldom practiced in public schools. they also value more freedom in the curriculum than is typically allowed in public schools (jeub, 1994). medlin (2000) reported that home school families describe traditional schools as ―rigid and authoritarian institutions where passive conformity is rewarded, where peer interactions are too often hostile or derisive or manipulative, and where children must contend with a dispiriting ideological and moral climate‖ (p. 107). for homeschoolers, schools create environments that actually make learning too difficult for kids (holt & farenga, 2003). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 within both domains of motivation to home school, there exists a feeling that traditional schools are not the best places to educate children (knowles et al., 1994). when describing the sentiments of homeschoolers toward the prescripted curriculums of public schools, klicka (2002) declared that, ―we [homeschoolers] don‘t want that controlled by the government‖ (p. 8). many homeschoolers feel that schools equal a less individualized education (zehr, 2006), and many also view home schooling as a less stressful learning environment (holt & farenga, 2003). lubienski (2003) proposed that there is an ―anti-institutional element to the home education movement, where parents believe that institutions can be destructive, or think that they can do a better job than impersonal bureaucracy‖ (p. 176). according to gaither (2009), most parents who home school their children ―choose this option out of frustration with or protest against formal, institutional schooling and seek to offer an alternative, usually conservative christian, worldview to their children by teaching them at home‖ (p. 343). in sum, the pedagogues do not acknowledge the need for public schooling; and, in fact, they reject such government action as unwanted interference into an area that should be reserved to parents. these radical stances can be found among members of both groups of homeschoolers – those who seek to establish a religious education for their children as well as those who choose to home school for pedagogical reasons. however, medlin (2000) determined that ―when parents decide to home school, they are thinking more of the advantages of home schooling than the disadvantages of conventional schooling‖ (p. 107). simply stated, parents choose to home school because they are convinced that the home is the best environment in which to educate their children. because of this, their motivations to home school can be interpreted to be grounded in a more positive than negative impetus. making the transition 9 the question then becomes, why do home school families contend home schooling is a preferred learning environment for their children? generally speaking, it is primarily because of the nature of instruction typically employed in a home school setting. home school advocates defend their choice to home school by pointing to what they view to be two of the greatest strengths of homeschooling: (a) the practice commonly referred to as the ―tutorial method,‖ (basham, 2001) and (b) the ability of parents to individualize learning to the specific needs of the child (klicka, 2002). interestingly, home school parents‘ oftentimes ascribe to liberal philosophies of education. it has been found that most advocate experiential learning, individual freedom, and hands-on learning in the real world (griffith, 1998; holt & farenga, 2003; jeub, 1994; knowles, 1991; knowles et al., 1994). in 1992, however, researchers knowles, marlow, and muchmore observed that although the modern home school movement was an ―outcome of a direct reaction to the many short comings of public education that was commonly raised by educational reformers of the 1960s and early 1970s‖ (p. 195), within a decade or so, the movement had been co-opted by individuals and groups that were religiously and politically conservative. these ideologues adopted pedagogical reasons to home educate and paired them with their ideological motivations, but according to knowles et al. (1992), when home schools are examined carefully, ―… it becomes clear that they are not closely tied to the liberal roots of home education. relatively few home schools seem to operate on the premise that homes are superior places of learning‖ (p.227). it can, therefore, be concluded that the motivations of those who choose to home school are myriad and complicated, and although a number of studies have been conducted to ascertain the primary motivations of homeschoolers (basham, 2001; knowles, 1991; knowles et al., 1994; neuman & aviram, 2003; princoiotta & bielick, 2006), a review of the literature reveals that current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 research into the subtle ambiguities that exist when determining why parents choose to home school their children is lacking. while previous research has focused on why parents home school, little attention has been given to the interconnectedness of pedagogical and ideological motivations or to the reasons why parents continue to home school. furthermore, while the question of why parents‘ home school has been answered using large-scale surveys, the individual stories of families that inform those measures have not been captured. it is these stories that can serve to provide the detail and nuance into how motivations pushed or pulled families into home schooling and why they chose to continue to home school their children. methodology research design the study presented herein sought to fill a perceived gap in the literature on home schooling by exploring the individual stories of selected home school families and identifying the push-pull factors parents encounter when making the decision to home school their children. to this end, the research was guided by two lines of research. the first was intended to identify factors that influenced the families to home school. the second was designed to determine how the families made the transition from traditional schooling to home schooling and why they continued to home school their children. because of the nature of the questions the study sought to answer, the case study method was used employed. as explained by merriam (1998), ―case study is appropriate when the object of an evaluation is to develop a better understanding of the dynamics of a program‖ (p.39), and such was the objective of the researchers. participants four home school families that were active in a home school organization that operated in the southeastern u.s. were chosen and agreed to participate in a year-long study. the home making the transition 11 school organization the families were affiliated with was a cooperative that embraced a classical approach to education. the organization was made up of primarily religiously conservative families. though chosen from the same home school organization, the families transitioned to home schooling before they joined the group. the criteria for choosing the families were that they (a) had at least three years of home school experience, (b) had children they were currently home schooling, and (c) had at least one child who had completed the home school education and had moved on to college or into the work force. these criteria were chosen to insure a study cohort with extensive experience with home education that was willing to candidly discuss their motivations, successes, and failures. glesne (2006) wrote that homogeneity sampling can be used to describe a subgroup in depth. the researchers used purposive homogeneity sampling from a home school group of religious conservative families in order to find a sample that would provided a rich detailed description of the research problem. this enabled the researchers to allow the participants to tell their unique stories about how they made the decision to home school. this narrow sampling increases the depth of the findings of the study but limits the transferability to other groups who differ from the sample. table one provides demographic data on the sample families. procedures data for this study were gathered through (a) interviews with the parents and children; (b) informal discussions during and after periods of observations; (c) observation of the families at home; (d) observations of home school group activities; and (e) collection of artifacts (student work samples and weekly logs). interview protocols were scripted using open-ended questions designed to elicit rich, comprehensive dialogue from the participants. the researchers elected to conduct formal interview and informal discussion sessions because they ascribe to the current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 philosophy expounded by byers and wilcox (as cited in vaughn et al., 1996), which is: ―if we want to know how people felt, what they experienced, what they remembered, what their emotions and motives were like and the reasons for acting as they did, why not just ask them?‖ (p. 18). as suggested by morgan (1993), the number of target questions was limited to 12 with additional impromptu probing and follow-up questions asked as needed. observations were conducted in the homes of the homeschoolers in an effort to accomplish what sherman and webb (1988) recommended that researchers do, which is to ―gather data about the ‗lived' experience of participants‖ (p. 125). table 1 sample demographics smith johnson harbor riley family structure intact intact intact intact father‘s occupation constitutional lawyer business owner university employee (non faculty) business owner mother‘s education level b.s. history some college some college b.s. education/ m.s. education administration children at home school male (16), female (13), female (8), male (6) male (16), male (10) male (15), female (8) male (15) children at college male (20) female (18) female (18) male (18) none adult children out of college or in work force none none none female (26) male (25) making the transition 13 children ever in private school? no yes no yes children ever in public school? yes yes yes yes the data analysis began with an initial set of domains that emerged from the review of the literature. as additional domains emerged during the data analysis, the set expanded accordingly. qsr‘s nvivo 8 software was used to code the data collected during the interviews and the observations. nvivo is a useful tool for researchers that can be used to efficiently manipulate and query text-based data (bazley, 2007). data charts and matrices were used to analyze the information gathered within and across the four cases that was relevant to the research questions. supporting data from both parents and children as well as from the multiple data sources were identified to elicit major findings of the study. peer review and participant checks were utilized to confirm the trustworthiness of the study‘s findings and conclusions. the trustworthiness of the data was also bolstered by the facts that the data were collected over a period of a year and multiple data points within and across the cases were used to support each finding. results for the four families involved in this study, motivations to home school were determined to be exceedingly complex. three elements were found to be common among the families. first, although the initial catalyst for each family might have been a conflict with the public school, there were also latent motivations that pushed the families to make the change and resort to home schooling their children. secondly, the motivations to home school were found to directly influence the way the families operated their home schools. lastly, additional, unanticipated motivators to continue home schooling were revealed. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 the smith family the smith family was initially motivated to home school because of conflicts with the public schools. the mother was involved in her children‘s education and active in the public school. she began to be concerned about some of the teachings that she felt were contrary to her family‘s religious beliefs. she articulated the push-pull she experienced as follows: i got involved in the schools and didn‘t agree with a lot of things. it was new age stuff in the schools. i always said i would never home school, but it felt like god changed my heart, and led me toward home schooling. when asked for a specific instance that illustrated her rejection of public school instructional practices she replied: one stands out, they were doing these guided imagery classes, and i knew about new age and all and asked questions, and they did not like it. once i started asking questions, my son started getting checks all the time. i felt they were taking it out on him. this mother reported that her attempts to address the issue led to further conflict with the schools. she perceived her child‘s teacher to be defensive when asked about the ―guided imagery‖ activities, and when she asked to see the school system‘s curriculum framework, the mother said she was told she could not see it. when asked why they home school, the fifteenyear-old son replied, ―when my older brother was little, he went to public school and there was something with the teachers and i don‘t remember exactly, but my mom found out about home school.‖ strikingly, even though the event happened sixteen years earlier, this story was still being echoed by the younger children who were being home schooled during the study. in spite of the conflict with the school, the parents said that they tried to keep the older child in public schools. two additional factors ultimately influenced their decision to home making the transition 15 school. the first was financial. when asked if private school was ever an option the father replied, ―it was really just the money,‖ and the mother added, ―financially it was not an option.‖ the second factor was religious and family reasons. the mother was the first to want to home school but the father resisted, even though he stated that he understood why she wanted to home school. recounting discussions they had when deliberating over the decision, the father said, ―she more or less had a spiritual calling and wanted the children to have a godly upbringing.‖ the mother added, ―we were uncomfortable with the public school system, but really feeling like that‘s what god wanted us to do as a family.‖ hence, while the initial catalyst to home school for the smiths may have been conflict with the school, the desire to do what they felt god wanted them to do with their family was the reason that they actually removed their children from the public school setting. it was revealed through the course of the interviews that the family continues to home school for several reasons. family and religious reasons are central to their belief that homeschooling is a better alternative than public schooling, but they also maintain that they prefer homeschooling because of the flexibility it allows and for pedagogical reasons. flexibility encompasses both curriculum and family flexibility. during one observation, the mother was overheard telling her daughter, ―you can read aesop when we go to the orthodontist.‖ during an interview, the father posited that one of the best things about home schooling was flexibility regarding vacations. according to mr. smith, ―one of the major differences i really love is vacation. we can take vacation any time we want. it still is like school, because they still learn where we go, like the capitol building.‖ interestingly, though this family can be described as conservative, they operate their home school by incorporating a mixture of progressive and traditional beliefs and practices. this current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 was evidenced by comments mrs. smith made such as, ―critical thinking makes them think logically and be able to understand what they read.‖ it was observed that for the smith family, there was a desire to go beyond the basics and teach the children to become lifelong learners, but the family did also focus on memorization of facts, poems, and bible verses. the mother justified memorization by saying, ―you memorize things that are in your head and at a later point they remember it. they put things together. it‘s training for self discipline.‖ the point of memorization, for this family, was for later use as information to draw on for critical and creative thinking. their motivations to home school directly influenced this family‘s curriculum choices. because of their religious education priorities, they elected to align themselves with a home school cooperative made up of a group of religiously conservative families. the cooperative operated on a classical education model, and it focused on helping families educate their children from a christian worldview. the cooperative‘s curriculum centered on religious teachings, and the bible was a primary text used in many of the students‘ assignments. the bible was also used as a primary text in the smith‘s home for the study of both literature and history. the johnson family the johnsons were initially motivated to home school because of conflicts with the public schools. the father was a constitutional lawyer and represented conservative religious families in cases against public schools throughout the nation. their children attended public schools until there was a conflict over outcome based education (o.b.e.) and practices the parents felt were in opposition to their religious beliefs. the mother described one practice she was offended by as follows: making the transition 17 at our son‘s elementary school one year during earth day, one classroom had a board that said, ―ask mother earth to forgive us.‖ i felt that violated everything i believed about god, and that was a different religion to me. my children … did not attend earth day. we were always opting them out of things. like the smiths, the johnsons said that they tried to reconcile their differences with the school district. they transferred their child to another school and tried to find teachers they believed to be more conservative or traditional in their instructional practices. the decision to actually leave the public school system did not come until several years later when they had more children in school and the school system reorganized. the mother articulated her frustration with the school‘s reorganization by stating, ―i would have been at three different schools!‖ their youngest child at the time was scheduled to start kindergarten the next year. when mrs. smith requested a transfer for that child, it was denied. again, she expressed her frustration by stating, ―i would have had four kids at four different schools. i had said, ‘lord if you don‘t want me to continue this then don‘t grant the transfer‘.‖ for the family, the school system‘s denial of the transfer was the catalyst they needed to finally make the decision to home school all four of their children. although the mother and father readily agreed that the initial conflict with the school over religious beliefs and o.b.e. were the reasons they started to home school, when questioned further they admitted that an underlying reason was that they ―wanted our children to be raised in a christian home and [we] felt home schooling was the best way to do that.‖ additional evidence of the johnsons‘ inherent desire for a religious education for their children emerged when the parents arranged for the older children to attend a creation science seminar at a nearby church. the stated purpose of the seminar was to ―educate children in nature, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 nurture, and admonition of the lord‖ and to ―use the bible to explain dinosaurs rather than fitting dinosaurs into the bible.‖ similarly to the smiths, the johnsons mentioned the flexibility of home schooling as a reason to continue to home school. the father related that ―one of the great things of home schooling is there is a real freedom in the natural kind of pursuit of knowledge and new things and understanding more deeply.‖ the family reported that they had the freedom of taking vacations during the school year because they were not tied down to a school district‘s calendar. also like the smiths, finances were described to have played a role in their decision to home school. in one interview, the mother stated, ―i would have been pleased to send my kids to a private school, but we could not afford it at $3,000 a kid.‖ she quickly stated, however, that that might not be totally true, because she felt that home schooling was a better environment for her children than any traditional school setting. with respect to their instructional approaches, the johnson family utilized a combination of traditional and progressive curriculum and teaching strategies. the father indicted the public schools saying, that‘s one of our greatest frustrations with the public school approach, the way they tinker with pulling out phonics and the whole language approach and all this spelling is another … it almost appears as if there is a concentrated effort to keep kids from learning how to read and reading quality material. comments such as these provided evidence for mr. johnson‘s disdain for much of what he perceived to be progressive in public education. ironically, however, when discussing the ways they operated their home school, some rather progressive techniques were described. for example, he stated that ―the word we like to utilize is integration. in our history we try to making the transition 19 integrate with our science, which we integrate with our literature, and hopefully it all ties together so that they‘ll understand.‖ observation of the johnson children at their home school indicated that the family operated a home school that allowed children to move about freely during their studies. there was little control exercised over when something was studied, especially for the secondary-aged children. the mother provided them their assignments at the beginning of the week and they worked at their own pace and in their own order. there were no set study periods. these practices supported one of the reasons cited by the family for continuing to home school, which was their desire to encourage their children to become independent learners. the harbor family the harbors reported that they initially home schooled for pedagogical reasons that stemmed from difficulties their oldest son was having in public school. the mother explained, i really promise you i was not mad at the public school, but i was seeing my own child sort of fall between the cracks. by this time he was not reading toward the end of his first grade year and he was just not really picking up and catching on. she first decided to begin teaching her son at home after school in an effort to supplement the instruction he received at the public school he attended. eventually, however, she decided that if she was going to have to re-teach him everything after school, she might as well assume total responsibility for teaching her son at home and save him from what she perceived as wasted time at school. though this was the initial motivating factor, it was revealed that there was another, equally strong factor. as the mother explained, ―the reason to home school is not [for] knowledge itself, because i would say that education encompasses a lot more than knowledge; it includes skills. it was important imparting our values to them.‖ she indicated that it upset her current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 that she was not the primary influence in her daughter‘s life, ―i would say things to her and she would say, ‗well, my teacher said this‘ – just the real pull of somebody else's influence holding more weight with her than what we said.‖ though the reason to home school for this family was pedagogical, there was also evidence of a religious conflict between the family and the public schools. when asked why they home schooled, the oldest son responded, ―because of the lack of god inside the public school system, and i came out of first grade not being able to read.‖ when pressed as to why parents choose to home school, the mother ordered the motivations as follows: ―i know a lot of people will say religious reasons to home school was the reason they started, but for us it wasn‘t the reason we started, but it is the reason we stayed.‖ this family also exhibited progressive and traditional educational beliefs and practices. they were traditional in the sense that they believed in a great books curriculum and classical education. according to the mother, what we are having them read is not just fun or entertainment but actually to teach them how our culture developed. why we are where we are. why we think the way we do. those kinds of things. those shaping influences have shaped the people who have gone before us. the mother went on to explain, however, that their children‘s education was not limited to the things their family believed. to illustrate her point she said, ―we are even exposing them to ideas that we wouldn‘t necessarily agree with their stance or their philosophy. they greatly influenced the people before us so for that reason we do a whole lot of reading.‖ an observation of the books in the house confirmed the mother‘s statement about allowing her children to learn about ideas that were divergent from their beliefs. making the transition 21 like the smiths and the johnsons, the harbor family operated their home school in a way that was indicative of the motivating factors that drove them to home school. this family was concerned with their son falling through the cracks in the public schools, and they decided to address his individual needs and academic shortcomings by home schooling him. after administering a standardized achievement test to their son, the parents realized that he was a grade level behind in spelling. the next year the mother focused instruction on remediating his spelling deficiencies and his problems with spelling were corrected. this supported the family‘s contention that home schooling provides a flexibility that public schooling does not, and this was a reason they cited for deciding to continue to home school their children. the riley family the initial motivation to home school for the riley family was conflict with the public school over sex education. mrs. riley did not agree with the content of the program or the way it was implemented. she said she obtained a copy of the sex education curriculum and found that there was a long list of things you had to do and couldn‘t do. if you gave them up for adoption there was half the problems. when you got to abortion, there was nothing. so if you have an abortion, you don‘t have to face all the problems. it said if you and your partner decide to have sex, it never said husband and wife. i saw a clip of the video they show. my kids were not happy with this and wanted to be home schooled again. she reported that she tried to address the issue with the school district by attending a meeting, but she said she and her husband ―were treated like we were idiots.‖ the parents explained that their children had been in home school, private school, and public school before the final decision to return to home schooling. the family did not resort to home schooling until after the children attended a private religious school. the reason they opted current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 22 for home schooling was that they found the home school cooperative and it was using a classical approach to education from a christian perspective. the mother stated that she would have continued to send her child to a private school if there had been one that offered a classical education. the mother indicated that the primary reason they chose to home school was that they ―wanted our children to have a christ-centered education and see a whole complete picture revolved around christian principles.‖ this, combined with their pedagogical motivation for a classical education, is what pushed the family into home schooling. the family combined progressive and traditional educational practices in their home school. reading was observed to be the primary mode of instruction, and the mother, who was a certified teacher and school administrator, reported that ―they read all the time, books and articles. i feel the more they read the better the student is.‖ on the progressive front, the mother was trying to foster independence in her son. as evidence of this she said, ―he is more independent. so he gets his assignments out on monday and chooses what he wants to do. we don‘t have a set thing on times or a set schedule.‖ the mother stated that she did not make out a weekly schedule for her son, but gave him the freedom to organize his education. one of the reasons this family said they continued to home school was the flexibility it provided them. over a period of two years, both her father in-law and her parents had been extremely sick. during that time, she was able to continue teaching her children as well as let them have increased visitation time with their sick grandparents. the family was able to care for their family and maintain their educational efforts. the mother explained, ―my mother was here and we took care of her. what was so wonderful was i would go stay with her at her little apartment, and my son would go with me and i still did his schoolwork. it was a blessing.‖ discussion making the transition 23 the families that were a part of this study reported similar motivations to home school as those present in the literature (basham, 2001; collum, 2005; knowles, 1991; knowles et al., 1994; princotta & bielick, 2006). the findings of this study, however, reveal nuances in the way the dual motivations – ideological and pedagogical – work together to pull a family out of a public school setting and into home schooling. the smith, johnson, and riley families experienced direct conflict with the public schools their children attended while the harbor family‘s break with public schooling stemmed more from disappointment than conflict. in reality, however, the conflicts and disappointment were simply catalysts that caused them to begin to think seriously about resorting to home schooling. while all of these families attempted to reconcile their differences with the public schools, in the end their efforts at reconciliation proved unsuccessful in large part because they were simultaneously being influenced by other motivations, and in each case the parents ultimately resolved to remove their children from the public schools. for the smith, johnson, and riley families, it was either religious beliefs or family issues that cemented their decisions to resort to home schooling. they all shared the belief that home schooling was what they should do because it was the best thing for their families. they wanted to raise their children in keeping with their religious beliefs, and they determined they could best do that by educating them at home. the harbors, on the other hand, were initially motivated from a desire to address an academic shortcoming. this, combined with their desire to be the primary influence over their children on all issues, pushed them to begin home schooling. for the harbors, the religious motivations became a motivation to stay in home schooling, rather than the reason to start home schooling. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 a closer inspection of these families‘ motivations suggests that home school proponents cannot so neatly be grouped into the two domains identified in previous studies, that is, an ideological group and a pedagogical group (basham, 2001; knowles, 1991; knowles, muchmore, & spaulding, 1994). for each individual family, the motivations to home school play out in different ways. each motivation can serve either as a catalyst that sparks an interest in home schooling or as a latent or underlying motivation that is actually the primary reason to home school. the findings of this study also reveal that these motivators also reinforce, and therefore play a significant role in, families‘ decisions to continue to home school. for the smiths the catalyst was conflict with public schools over perceived new age practices, but the latent motivation was family reasons influenced by religious beliefs. the johnsons were initially motivated by conflicts over o.b.e. practices, but the added inconvenience of taking their children to different schools combined with religious beliefs that they should teach their children at home were the latent motivators. academic issues with their oldest son was the catalyst that prompted the harbors to consider home schooling, but the desire to be the primary influence over the children was the latent motivator and religious reasons are the reasons that the family continues to home school. the rileys were initially prompted to home school because of a conflict over sex education, but the latent motivator was a combination of religious beliefs and a desire to give her children a classical education. the results of this research also reveal that the motivations to home school influence the way that families teach. the families all expressed a desire to foster independent, lifelong learners, and this was seen in the way that they approached their children‘s education. the parents were less teachers and more organizers and taskmasters for learning activities. in the words of one child, ―our parents aren‘t really our teachers – it‘s kind of, they‘ll give us the making the transition 25 material and then the books themselves are the teachers. our parents are kind of just there to enforce.‖ the parents provided the environment, resources, and motivation for the children to learn and the children do the learning. observation, weekly logs, and interviews of all families indicated that the secondary-aged children spent about seventy percent of their learning day reading. another way that motivations were found to influence learning was that the curriculum was very much focused on their religious beliefs. all of the families used the bible as a primary source for history and literature. three of the families attended the creation science event. the assignments and activities that the students completed and participated in were oftentimes related to comparing their christian worldview to the dominant (i.e., contemporary) worldview. this connects to the work of carper (2000), klicka (2002), and pearson (as cited in martin, 1997). an appreciation of the complexity of these families‘ motivations challenges the myths that home school families are anti-public school. these families were found to be independentminded families who were guided by both deeply religious and educational beliefs. in other words, these families viewed home schooling as a positive, personal educational choice, not necessarily as an overt rejection of public schooling. this finding agrees with the findings of parker (as cited in medlin, 2000) and medlin (2000). a statement made by the mother in the harbor family effectively speaks directly to this conclusion: it‘s not always a statement that public schools are bad you know, but it‘s just what we want to do and what we feel is best for us and our families, and it‘s not necessarily meant as a statement against what you do. of significant interest in this study is that even though the conflicts with public schools that served as catalysts for these families to home school were rooted in the conservative current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 26 religious and political beliefs of the families, in practice the home schools these families operated exhibited much that could be considered exemplars of progressive education. they desired that their children become independent learners, be exposed to ideas that are contrary to their beliefs, value critical and creative thinking, and be allowed freedom of choice in courses studied. in addition, the parents fostered an atmosphere that allowed their children, as students, to determine when and what they would learn on most days, considered by most to be a true mark of progressive education. another interesting finding of this study was the importance of flexibility as a motivator for the families to continue to practice home schooling. whether it was because they could address the individual learning needs of their children without concern for curriculum constraints or they could have the ability to take ―learning vacations‖ whenever they pleased, all of the families in this study cited flexibility as one of the realized benefits of home schooling. this single, unanticipated finding may give pause to policymakers whose efforts over the past two decades to micro-manage the public school curriculum have not only lengthened the school day and the school year, but have seemingly also, and ironically, resulted in the institutionalization of a system that in many ways limits authentic learning opportunities for students of both basic and enrichment instructional material. conclusion the families who agreed to participate in this study were motivated to leave public schools because of ideological and pedagogical concerns. having decided to home school their children, each family elected to operate their home school with a mixture of traditional and progressive educational practices, but each with a decidedly religious focus. it can be concluded from this study that the families were not just disillusioned with public schooling, but rather they making the transition 27 felt they were driven to make major life style changes and create learning environments for their children that aligned with both their ideological and pedagogical beliefs. in many ways, the home schools they established operated qualitatively differently than public schools. most notably was the flexibility each family derived from home schooling their children, and in each case, it was the flexibility factor that ultimately became a primary motivation for them to continue to home school. perhaps a better understanding of the nuanced and complex motivations to home school can help public schools better meet the needs of families considering home schooling, thus serving to keep them enrolled. further, a clearer understanding of parents motivations to home school can lead to the educational establishment specifically and society in general modifying the view of homeschoolers as a radical fringe, discontented with the greater society, and to see them as individual families that are acting on multiple motivators to do what they feel is best for their children. public schools might consider becoming more flexible and allowing families some of the freedoms that home schooling offers. traditional schools can learn from the individualized nature of home schooling and potentially transform into institutions that support independent learning rather than act as dispensers of knowledge. traditional schools can also learn from the mixed traditional and progressive methods that the homeschoolers use in their curriculum and instruction. schools can look back to the past for material, inspiration, and guidance and also develop students who are independent minded both grounded in the traditions of the past yet looking to the future for better things to come. while this study revealed new and interesting insights into the motivations of homeschoolers, further research is needed into the day-to-day operation of home schools and current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 28 how families manage and evaluate home schooled children‘s learning. further research is also needed into the support structures, including technology and cooperatives that home school families rely on to educate their children. finally, research is needed to expand the finding that flexibility is an important motivator that contributes to families‘ decisions to continue home schooling their children. references american psychological association. (2001). publication manual of the american psychological association (5th ed.). washington, dc: author basham, p. (2001). home schooling: from the extreme to the mainstream. public policy sources, 51. retrieved july 21, 2007 from http://www.fraserinstitute.org bazeley, p. (2007). qualitative data analysis with nvivo. los angeles; london: sage. bielick, s. (2008). 1.5 million homeschooled students in the united states in 2007 (nces publication no. 2009-030). washington, dc: national center for educational statistics. retrieved may 1, 2010 from http://www.nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2009030 carper, j. c. (2000). pluralism to establishment to dissent: the religious and educational context of home schooling. peabody journal of education, 75(1/2), 819. retrieved july 23, 2007 from http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/peabody_journal_of_ education.xml. collum, e. 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(2003). teach your own: the john holt book of home schooling. cambridge, ma: perseus publishing. jeub, c. (1994, september). why parents choose home schooling. educational leadership, 52(1), 5052. klicka, c. (2002). home schooling: the right choice. nashville, tn: broadman & holman publishers. knowles, j. g. (1991). parents‘ rationales for operating home schools. journal of contemporary ethnography, 20(2), 203230. knowles, j. g., marlow, s. e., & muchmore, j. a. (1992). from pedagogy to ideology: origins and phases of home education in the united states, 19701990. american journal of education, 100(2), 195235. knowles, j. g., muchmore, j. a., & spaulding, h. w. (1994). home education as an alternative to institutionalized education. the educational forum, 58(3), 238243. lubienski, c. (2003). a critical view of home education. evaluation and research in education, 17(2/3), 167178. martin, m. (1997). homeschooling: parents’ reactions. 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(2006). homeschooling in the united states: 2003, (nces 2006 042) u.s. department of education. national center for education statistics, washington, dc: 2005. http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/peabody_journal_%20of_education.xml current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 30 ray, b.d. (2000). home schooling: the ameliorator of negative influences on learning? peabody journal of education, 75(1/2), 71106. retrieved july 23, 2007 from http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/peabody_journal_of_education.xml. roberts, l. (2005). can we play, too? parks & recreation, 40(9), 112115. retrieved july 21, 2007 from http://www.nrpa.org sherman, r. r., & webb, r. b. (1988). qualitative research in education: focus and methods. philadelphia, pa: the falmer press. vaughn, s., schumm, j. s., & sinagub, j. (1996). focus group interviews in education and psychology. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. zehr, m.a. (2006) u.s. home schoolers push movement around the world. education week, 25(16), 8. http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/peabody_journal_of_education.xml http://www.nrpa.org/ making the transition 31 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers xxx 32 debby zambo perceptions_final volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x perceptions of teachers and students regarding the middle school honors program selma testa pennsylvania state university citation testa, s. (2010). perceptions of teachers and students regarding the middle school honors program. current issues in education, 13(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this study examined the perceptions held by 40 teachers and 304 students regarding a middle school honors program. the sample population represented an equal number of honors and nonhonors participants. two surveys were analyzed using thematic coding for qualitative questions, while t test and descriptive statistics were used for quantitative results. the results confirm college and high school findings regarding the academic perceptions of the honors students, the reasons for and against their enrollment, satisfaction with the program, and the overrepresentation of female and white students, but reject specific identified characteristics of an honors student. middle school honors students do not have the same qualities as high school and college honors students. keywords: honors program, middle school, perceptions, student qualities c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 2 about the author(s) author: selma testa affiliation: pennsylvania state university email: selma.t@netzero.net biographical information: selma testa, m.a. in community psychology and social change from penn state university, has taught at the middle school level for several years prior to conducting the research on the honors program. she advocates the use of a participatory-based research approach to improve all educational settings. thus, she would like to thank the students and educators who made this research possible. middle school honors program perceptions 3 the number of middle schools in the united states that have adopted an honors program has increased, yet research on the programs at this level has lagged behind. the need for research specific to middle school honors programs is imperative due to the social, physical, and mental developmental differences between the adolescent student and the collegiate student on whom current honors program research centers. school districts using an honors program, or, those considering its use, need information regarding the middle school honor students’ characteristics to better facilitate the proper selection of students for the program. the purpose of this study is to close the gap in research into middle school honors programs and then compare those research findings with existing research done in high schools and colleges. an honors program is a planned set of experiences through which the academic needs of talented and able students are better served than they can be within the regular classroom (halverson, 1973). it is used by schools as a means for encouraging and challenging the highachieving student. research has focused on collegiate honors programs. herr (1992a) point out a lack of such studies on high school honors programs within the united states. middle school honors programs have received little attention from researchers, and are only occasionally included in tracking studies. this study looks at the differences between honors and non-honors middle school students as perceived by the students and their teachers as well as on the honors program. literature review college level in a survey of 19 collegiate honors programs, mckeauge (1984) found that 88% required more reading and discussion, 81% more writing, and 75% stressed a higher level of critical thinking than the equivalent non-honors classes. in 1994 the national collegiate honors council c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 4 developed guidelines for “basic characteristics of a fully developed honors programs” to enable more consistent programming in higher education. when first semester college students were asked about their expectations of the honors college, they stated that these included challenge, honors housing, good professors, special advisement, relationships with other honors students and professors, and personal recognition (christopher, 2005). participants interviewed for this case study reported that the honors college met their social, emotional, and academic needs. in one of the earliest studies of perceptions of honors students, as rated by their non-honors peers, waggoner (1963) found that honors students were characterized as more intellectual, studious, thorough, precise, accurate, persistent, industrious, logical, responsible, orderly, and capable: all of which are traits of successful students. socially, they were found to be self-confident, alert, mature, stable, dependable, economical, friendly, sympathetic, tolerant, charming, and less sloppy. negatively they were described as unimaginative, reckless, unreliable, implosive, inept, egotistical, fault-finding, moody, sarcastic, argumentative, lonely, nervous, rigid, annoying, more critical, and less humorous than non-honors students. when looking at the long-term effects that honors programs can have on students, studies have examined the performances of these students while in colleges. even students who were placed into an honors program for just their first two years of college showed drastic differences in career ambition in comparison with students who were not in such a program (rinn, 2005). when the academic achievement, aspirations, and self-concepts of gifted college students enrolled in an honors program were compared with those of gifted students not enrolled in an honors program, rinn (2007) found that honors students exhibit both higher academic achievement and higher academic self-concept than their non-honors counterparts. college middle school honors program perceptions 5 students in an honors program perform better on tests of critical thinking, mathematics, and composite cognitive development (seifert, pascarella, colangelo, & assouline, 2007). in 2005 george mason university’s study administered the cooperative institutional research program freshman survey to 1,709 freshman students and found that the differences between the honors students and their non-honors counterparts to be higher grade point average (gpa) and less need for remedial work during high school (gentemann, zhou, zamon, & mcshery, 2006). in addition, the honors college students rated their personal qualities as being more driven to achieve; higher in academic, mathematical, and leadership ability, in writing, and in public speaking, than their non-honors peers. while, honors students rated themselves as higher in intellectual self-confidence, they rated themselves lower in cooperativeness and social self-confidence. mason’s honors freshmen reported that improving their understanding of other countries and cultures was their top aspiration, while non-honors freshmen reported that being very well off financially was their top priority. non-honors freshmen rated being in charge of others, being well off, and becoming a successful entrepreneur more highly than the honors college students (gentemann, et al., 2006). college level research generally focuses on the implementation of the program in colleges, selection of students into an honors program, shortterm evaluation of the program, and the perceptions of students and teachers regarding the program. high school level many high schools have adopted honors or advanced classes, the latter being presented as advanced placement courses (ap), dual enrollments, or international baccalaureate (ib) programs. over 50% of high schools in the u.s. offer either honor programs or advanced c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 6 placement courses (mansfield & farris, 1992). a lack of research into the honors courses in the united states’ high schools has been reported by herr (1992a). some research has been done on this area: in 1992, kulik & kulik showed that the participation and discussion that occurs in honors courses are much higher than that occurring in a regular, non-grouped classroom. in examining high school english classes, gamoran (1986, 1992a) found that honors classes include more reading of classic literature, more writing assignments, and greater participation of students in class discussions about the literature than non-honors classes. science teachers of honors classes report that these classes offer them the chance to work with students who are more stimulated and creative than those in regular classes; in addition, the teachers have an opportunity to learn more from these students (herr, 1991, 1992a, 1992b). researchers also found that higher track teachers are more involved in preparation and tend to be more enthusiastic (oakes, 1991; rosonbaum, 1976). in foreign language honors classes, students participate more in communication activities than they do in regular classes (morris, 2005). teachers hold honors students to higher expectations of maturity, ability, and motivation (morris, 2005). these findings are supported by numerous studies on tracking. tracking studies found that the higher tracked honors classes promote more independence and self-expression among students (oakes, 1985; oakes, gamoran, & page, 1992). overall, a national survey of 10th to 12th graders showed that academically tracked students, which includes honors and advanced streams, tested higher for vocabulary than students in general classes (gamoran, 1987). although tracking studies provide some insight into honors classes, comprehensive research is lacking about high school honors programs, forcing school districts to rely on the collegiate findings when creating honors programs for high schools. middle school honors program perceptions 7 middle school level in middle schools, students must be trained for ap and ib classes if they are to become successful in these courses in high school. some schools use names such as pre-ap, academic plus, or acceleration track to group students together, while others use the term honors program to meet the needs of top students. these students typically score advanced or proficient on their grade-level standardized tests and excel academically within the regular education classroom. in honors programs, students tend to be grouped with peers of higher ability and motivation, so that enrichment and acceleration can occur. students face an increased set of demands in these honors classes, and they may also be asked to participate in special projects, field trips, college trips, and individual research projects. since there are no national regulations for these programs at the middle school level, each district is free to design its own version of the program. usually, these programs are styled after the collegiate model of forming honors sections from regular classes. the massachusetts department of education measured the initiatives for academically advanced students and found that the subject of advanced instruction mirrors the subject matter of regular k-8 classrooms, with greater emphasis on mathematics and reading (driscoll, 2002). however, in grades six to eight, students who are academically advanced are just as likely to receive advanced instruction through differentiated instruction within a heterogeneously grouped classroom as through separated advanced and accelerated courses (2002). even in a heterogonous middle school classroom, taking advanced mathematics showed positive correlation with higher career earnings later in life (rose & betts, 2004). research into a mathematics pre-algebra course in missouri junior high school indicates that placement of average 8th grade students into a higher track improves these students’ scores on the c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 8 comprehensive assessment program achievement series test more than being in a regular mathematics class (mason, schroeter, comps, & washington, 1992). in addition, more of these students enrolled in advanced mathematics courses in high school. even average achievers benefited from being placed in higher achieving classes and were 91% more likely to complete a two-year sequence of preparatory college mathematics courses in high school (gamoran, porter, smithson, & white, 1997). research based upon a six-year longitudinal study in mathematical acceleration, comparing honors and non-honors students from 7th to 12th grade, showed that being in the accelerated program made a greater difference to non-honors students than it did to honors students (ma, 2003). the research showed that regular students benefited the most from having algebra earlier in middle school (ma, 2005). this type of study needs to be conducted in other subjects, especially in a comparison of honors and regular students, to validate the existence of the honors programs in middle schools. since acceleration and enrichment are the primary characteristics of the honors program, their effect on all students should be tested to improve the overall standard of education. adolescent development adolescence is characterized by drastic developmental changes that occur to individuals including physical, emotional, psychological, and social changes. early adolescence occurs between ages 12 to 15, where the growth spurt occurs. this is a time where the effort to define the self is the primary personality issue (erikson, 1968). adolescents have trouble with these changes and may feel uncomfortable and self-conscious because of their inability to adjust to these rapid changes, so they turn to peers as a source of emotional support and acceptance. middle school honors program perceptions 9 understanding the appropriateness of developing honors programs in middle schools is critical, due to the extreme vulnerability adolescents’ face while searching for identity (kelly, 1990). in early adolescence emotional development, feeling may override reason due to immature brain development, thus leading to poor choices (yurgelon-todd, 2002). at this stage of development the frontal cortical system, which deals with motivations, impulsivity, and addiction, is underdeveloped. this may help to explain why so many adolescents have trouble focusing on long term goals, and choose thrill seeking behaviors (bjork, knutson, fong, caggiano, bennett, & hommer, 2004; chambers, taylor, & potenza, 2003). thus, their perceived personal characteristics may reflect differently than the college students’ characteristics. at the psychological level, adolescents enter a formative stage of development, according to piaget (1972), which is characterized by the ability to think abstractly. learning vocabulary and other aspects of language improves in adolescence, and at this stage, hypothetical-deductive reasoning occurs where the adolescent has the ability to develop, consider and test hypotheses (piaget, 1972). elkind’s (1984, 1998) research found adolescent immaturity in six areas of psychological development. first, idealism and criticalness in their thinking leads them to become super conscious of hypocrisy as they find faults in everything. second, apparent hypocrisy leads them to believe that there is no difference between ideals and reality. third, indecisiveness is another characteristic of adolescents as they come up with many alternatives, yet lack ability to choose an effective one. fourth, argumentativeness occurs where adolescents look for opportunities to show their reasoning abilities during an argument. the fifth characteristic is self-consciousness; adolescents are so preoccupied with their own thinking, that they assume everyone else is thinking the same thing. in addition, they seem to think that there is c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 10 an imaginary audience concerned with their thoughts and behavior. the sixth characteristic is specialness and invulnerability, where the adolescents think of themselves as unique, special and exempt from following rules, which explains why they take more risks. due to these immaturities within their psychological development, honors program participation may not have the same effect on adolescents as it does on the college students. research has been so focused on college level honors programs that the middle school and high school students, who are at a lower developmental level from college students, are placed into these classes without research support. to accept collegiate honors programs research and apply it to middle schools, perceptions of the honors students, as compared to the regular students, should be similar to college students in terms of academic ability, learning habits, and aspirations. the college honors students tend to rate higher in all of these areas by their own self-reporting, so the assumption is that this will occur at the middle school level. thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of the middle school honors students and to compare them to the non-honors students. in addition, this study will report the perceptions regarding the middle school honors program as experienced by teachers and students both in and out of the program. method this study was conducted using a survey of teachers and students in four middle schools, which was designed to measure the perceptions of participants in and out of the middle school program that was implemented during the 2007-2008 school year in a school district located in south central pennsylvania. the research used surveys of the students who were attending the middle school in the district and teachers who taught these students. the study was conducted in a racially diverse urban district located in south central pennsylvania with 11,761 students, and middle school honors program perceptions 11 four middle schools. the number of honors students in each middle school grade level was approximately 25% of all students. the honors program was in its first year of development in this district. participants there were multiple informants involved in this study. first, data were collected from seventh and eighth grade students inside and outside of the honors program. second, teachers in and out of the honors program were also surveyed. all students in seventh and eighth grade had a chance to participate in the study, however since about 25% of the students were enrolled in the honors program, a random sample was drawn of non-honors students based on the number of completed surveys by the students in the honors program. the teachers selected for this study were honors teachers in the middle schools. currently only two honors classes were offered at the middle school level, communication arts classes and social studies classes, with a total of 24 teachers teaching these classes. therefore, teachers who taught the honors students, and the same subject teachers who did not teach the honors students, were compared. instrument the closed questions survey was based on the cooperative institutional research program’s (cirp) college freshman survey, which is a part of a national longitudinal study established in 1973 by the american council on education in higher education research institute (1966). however, some of the wording was adjusted accordingly to match the psychological development of the adolescents. synonyms from a thesaurus were used to simplify vocabulary unfamiliar to the middle school students. the teacher survey contained open-ended questions and quantitative questions. due to the lack of an existing testing instrument, the openc urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 12 ended questions were designed by the researcher. the survey was designed with a quantitative item to triangulate results between groups. this cirp freshmen survey had been tested and used in over 700 college evaluations of honors programs in the last 40 years. the reliability of the survey instrument performed by heri and repeat participation was at about 90 percent. the confidence interval means, if replicating the survey using the same size sample, the expected resulting percentage would fall between 18.3 percent and 19.1 percent 95 times out of 100. for the sample of 500 participants, the estimated standard of error at 99% is .445. to calculate the validity of the instrument, austin (1991) found the scale reliability coefficient exceeded .70. procedure the data were analyzed using the thematic coding method for any commonalities and differences between honors and non-honors students who participated in the study. statistics were used to describe responses as pertaining to themes. data from open-ended student responses and teacher surveys were analyzed by a consistent comparative method of analysis (glaser & strauss, 1967). this method involves reviewing all responses for descriptive categories and refining each category by seeking examples until no new information emerges (1967). this is called the saturation of the category. moustakas’ (1994, p.122) seven steps of analysis were used to guide the researcher through this type of analysis. for the quantitative portion of the survey, coding developed by the researcher was similar to heri analysis and entered into statistical package for the social sciences, which is a program used for analysis. specifically, t test was used to evaluate the difference between honors and non-honors participants along with mean, standard deviation, and variance for each quantitative item. the independent variable included honors or non-honors placement. results description of the sample teachers participating in this study were divided into two groups: an honors teaching group and a non-honors counterparts group, which served as the comparison sample totaling 40 participants. the number of student participants in the survey was 304; half were enrolled in the honors program and the other half were not. the student demographics include gender, grade, school, age, language, grade point average, race, remedial needs, honors program interest, and parents’ level of education. based on the responses provided, noticeable differences exist in the grade point average, which is higher for honors students. the percentage of honors students who had an a or b average amounted to 87.7%, compared with 65.2% of non-honors students with the same average. significant differences between the two groups were also noted in the racial background: caucasian (37.5% to 21.7%), asian american (6.6% to 1.3%), and other students (9.9% to 5.3%) as participants in the honors program, while there were fewer african american (17.8% to 27.6%) students participating in the district’s program. more non-honors students needed remedial assistance overall in the areas of reading (15.1% to 7.9%), mathematics (37.5% to 23%), and science (14.5% to 3.3%), while honors students stated that they needed more help in english (9.25 to 3.9%). the parents of honors students had higher education overall than the parents of non-honors students. the percentage of mothers who held educational credentials beyond high schools totaled 55.3% for honors and 36.9% for non-honors students, while 44.7% of honors students’ fathers held these credentials, as compared to 24.2% for the non-honors group. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 14 the differences among the honors students’ and non-honors students’ personal qualities the students were asked to rate their qualities as compared with the average person their age. the likert scale was used to determine whether the students felt they were at the lowest 10% of their age group, below average, average, above average or in the highest 10%. the qualities included academic ability, artistic ability, competitiveness, computer skills, cooperativeness, creativity, motivation to achieve, emotional health, leadership ability, mathematic ability, physical health, public speaking ability, intellectual self-confidence, social self-confidence, self-understanding, spirituality, understanding of others, and writing ability. the t test, used to determine the level of significance between the self-reported ratings of honors and non-honors students, found academic ability, artistic ability, computer skills, cooperativeness, creativity, motivation to achieve, emotional health, leadership ability, mathematical ability, physical health, and intellectual self-confidence to be higher in the honors students’ ratings, as shown in table 1. ________________________________________________________________________ table 1 self-reported differences between honors and non-honors students’ personal qualities ________________________________________________________________________ quality mean t df p ________________________________________________________________________ academic ability h-4.17 -5.518 302 0.000 nh-3.59 artistic ability h-3.40 -2.082 302 0.038 nh-3.14 computer skills h-3.86 -2.251 302 0.025 nh-3.59 cooperativeness h -4.09 -3.656 302 0.000 nh-3.66 middle school honors program perceptions 15 creativity h-4.26 -3.497 302 0.001 nh-3.88 motivation to achieve h-4.41 -5.058 302 0.000 nh-3.88 emotional health h-3.96 -2.603 302 0.010 nh-3.63 leadership ability h-4.14 -2.416 302 0.016 nh-3.86 mathematical ability h -4.13 -6.390 302 0.000 nh-3.33 physical health h-4.14 -2.734 302 0.007 nh-3.82 intellectual h-4.34 -2.358 302 0.019 selfconfidence nh-4.09 ________________________________________________________________________ note. means (m) for honors students were represented with h, and for non-honors students with nh. ________________________________________________________________________ academic ability for the honors students had a mean rating of 4.17, which was above average, while non-honors students had an average score of 3.59. in artistic ability, both groups were average, with honors being at 3.40 and non-honors only slightly lower at 3.14. honors students were average to above average in computer skills, while non-honors students rated slightly lower. creativity was rated at 4.26, which is above average, for honors and at 3.88, average to above, for non-honors. similarly, in motivation to achieve, the mean of the honors students was 4.41, which was also well above the average, while the non-honors mean was 3.88. in emotional health, the honors students rated at above average and non-honors fell between an average and above average rating. leadership ability was above average for honors students (m=4.14), while being average to above for the non-honors (m=3.86) group. the mean in cooperativeness for honors students was 4.09, which was above average, as compared to an average of 3.66 for non-honors students. the largest difference in qualities between the two groups was in mathematical ability, with the mean of the honors students at 4.13 and the nonc urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 16 honors at an average level of 3.33. even in physical health, the honors group rated themselves as above average (m=4.14), while the non-honors group (m=3.82) was slightly behind. the last significant difference in personal qualities was in intellectual self-confidence, where both groups were above average with honors at 4.34 and non-honors at 4.09 rating. a significant deference between the two groups for other qualities was not shown. next, students rated their learning habits within the last school year to determine whether there were any significant differences between the two sample groups in asking questions in class, supporting opinions with facts, seeking solutions to problems and explaining them to others, revising papers, taking a risk, seeking solutions, researching topics on their own, accepting failure as part of learning, and asking for feedback on schoolwork. honors students self-reported their tendency to support their opinions with facts more often than the non-honors students’ reporting (t=-3.568, df=302, p<0.000), while all other learning habits were similar. measuring hours per week spent outside of schools on various activities by students, the differences were found in studying and homework (t=-2.725, df=302, p<0.007), partying (t=2.952, df=302, p<0.003), participating in student clubs (t=-3.272, df=302, p<0.001), reading for pleasure (t=-2.418, df=302, p<0.016), and participating in online social networks (t=3.287, df=302, p<0.001). the honors students spent 3 to 5 hours a week on studying and homework, while non-honors spent 2 to 3 hours. the honors students’ mean for student club participation was 2.17, which amounted to over 2 hours, as compared to a mean of 1.40, which amounted to less than 1 hour per week for the non-honors students. reading for pleasure amounted to between 2 to 3 hours per week for the honors and almost 2 hours for the non-honors group. participating in online social networks was very popular for both groups of students, with honors students spending from 3 to 5 hours and non-honors students spending 6 to 10 hours per week middle school honors program perceptions 17 enjoying this activity. in each of these activities, the non-honors students surpassed the honors students in the amount of time they spent on leisure activities, while the honors students spent more time on schoolwork-related activities. other leisure activities, including socializing with friends, performing household duties, exercising, playing video games, and watching television, were not significantly different between the two groups. in addition, there were no differences reported on time spent on schoolwork-related activities including talking with teachers outside of class and volunteering. looking at the aspiration goals, there were differences between importance of being skilled in their future career and becoming successful in a business of their own. all other goals, including becoming respected in a future career, raising a family, being wealthy, being in charge of others, helping others, creating original works, cleaning environments, promoting racial understanding, and understanding other cultures, were similar for both groups. the honors students rated higher the importance of being skilled in their future careers (t=-2.410, df=302, p<0.017), while non-honors students expressed that being successful in a business of their own was more important to them personally (t=3.154, df=302, p<0.002). honors students believed that becoming skilled (m=2.76) in their future career was very important and even necessary, but the non-honors students thought becoming skilled (m=2.60) was important, but not as necessary. being successful in a business of their own (m=2.44) for non-honors students was very important to even necessary, compared to (m=2.13) being very important for honors students. honors students’ perceptions of the honors program based on the responses provided by the honors students, 74% decided to enroll in the program due to their desire to learn and be challenged beyond the regular classroom. the students believed that the program would help them prepare for honors and ap classes in high school and college (14%), and some felt that the program would benefit their future (18%). in c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 18 reference to the question regarding the importance of doing well in school, the majority of the honors students (98%) valued education due to the belief that it will benefit them in the future. one student summarized his thinking as, “i believe that education is very important because my parents work very hard to have food on the table, and i see them wanting a better life for me and my sister. i also want to support them when they get old and can’t support themselves.” a small group of students (7%) were encouraged by their parents to join the program, and 6% were placed in the program by a teacher or an administrator and actually not aware of the program at first. other responses included a desire to be in advanced classes with students who want to succeed, or to be in classes with friends. according to the honors students in the survey the perceived benefits of the program included challenge (40%), higher level of learning (30%), preparation for the future (23%), special activities (17%), being a part of a great program (13%), higher level of teacher support (8%), and friendships with better students (4%). the negatives expressed by the students enrolled in the first year of the program included too much work (49%), pressure from higher expectations (17%), too much of a challenge (28%), unmotivated peers (7%), disorganization (5%), friendship with students who feel negatively about not being in the honors program (3%), boring teachers (3%), and being labeled as nerds (1%). non-honors students’ perception of the honors program the students who were not in the honors program described their feelings about the program very similarly to the honors students. non-honors students decided not to enroll in the program due to 41% not being ready for the challenge, 15% applied but did not get in, 14% believed that their grades were too low, 9% were not aware of the opportunity that existed, 5% liked their regular classes, 3% believed it was too nerdy, 3% were too busy for extra work, and middle school honors program perceptions 19 1% believed that the students in the honors program were elitist. eighty percent of these students also expressed that education was very important, 14% believed it somewhat important, and 3% claimed it was not important. the non-honors students did saw positives of the honors program, which included learning at a higher level (34%), preparation for high school and college (24%), special activities, which include projects, privileges, field trips, and extra support (18%), smart peers (8%), higher expectations (7%), and recognition (3%). the negatives expressed included more work (33%), increased work difficulty (26%), superiority (10%), stress (5%), boredom (3%), and a difficult adjustment to a faster-paced work environment (3%). perceptions of honors and non-honors students by their counterparts and each other most non-honors students (49%) ranked themselves as average for their section or above average (41%), but believed that the honors students were higher in academic ability. eighty-two percent of the students believed that the honors students were higher in academic ability, intelligence, motivation, and social skills, while 16% believed they were average in all categories. twenty-two percent of non-honors students believed that in spite of being in honors, the honors students’ social skills were not above average, 4% believed they were elitist, and 4% saw them as smart and hardworking. other labels expressed included fast thinkers, overachievers, and nerds. honors students compared themselves as average (60%) or above average (34%) in their honors class. seventy-six percent saw themselves as higher than an average student in academic ability, motivation, intelligence, and social skills, and 18% claimed they were average. eleven percent saw their peers’ within the honors group as not having higher social skills than an average student, in spite of the higher characteristics in motivation, intelligence, competition, and responsibility. teachers’ perceptions of the honors program c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 20 teachers supported the honors program due to the need to challenge students who need and want the challenge; it tapped into creative and enriching opportunities for students; it prepared students for high school; it raised the bar across all levels; and it was rewarding to both students and teachers. when asked about having an honors program specifically at the middle school level, 16 (80%) honors teachers agreed it was beneficial for all students, and 4 (20%) sixth grade teachers stated that it should be implemented in 7th grade, after a strong foundation building, including study habits, work habits, and organization in sixth grade. non-honors teachers had similar answers, with 17 (85%) supporting the program’s existence at the middle school, and 3 (15%) opposing it due to tracking that occurs within the program. challenging work, preparation for high school and in-depth study of topics were mentioned most frequently as the benefits of the program by teachers. additional benefits for honors students participating in the program included a higher level of work, enriching opportunities, creativity, higher expectations, respect, developing a work ethic, having an academic peer group, and not being slowed down by standardized tests or less proficient students. the disadvantages mentioned most frequently included stress from a higher workload and an elitist attitude that may come with the honors label. other disadvantages for honors students, included lack of flexibility in scheduling and choosing of honors classes, failing students, perceived entitlement, and large class size. the strengths for teachers in the honors programs included creativity, a challenging curriculum, interest level, supportive parents, inspiring students, higher levels of participation, access to materials, training, student achievement, and collaboration with other honors teachers. the weaknesses for teachers were large classes requiring multiple curriculum preparations, unmotivated students, various levels of student abilities, keeping true to the honors expectations, middle school honors program perceptions 21 a higher level of pressure, lack of curriculum, and lack of input in the program’s decision making. honors students’ characteristics (ideal versus real) identifiable expectations for the characteristics of honors students were brought into the middle school level. when teachers were asked how they view an ideal middle school honors students, their responses were recorded in by the frequency mentioned. most teachers mentioned that higher academic, learning, and personal abilities should be present in honors students. academic ability was expected to be average to above average in reading and writing. in addition, the honors students needed to have high grades, complete assignments, use higher levels of thinking, seek challenges, and to perform to the best of his/her ability. they were expected to be competent, independent and quick learners, as well as, show high interest and high performance on standardized tests. the ideal honors student’s learning goals needed to be higher; also, the student should be an intrinsic learner who was motivated to learn, be involved in class, helpful, goal-oriented, and willing to struggle to learn. personal habits desired in the honors student by teachers included valuing learning, staying on task, meeting deadlines, having higher study skills, and completing homework. teachers described an ideal honors student as hardworking, competitive, creative, organized, prepared, considerate, responsible, disciplined, diligent, cooperative, and intrinsically motivated. next, the teachers rated their average honors student’s qualities as compared to the average non-honors student their age. the likert scale was used to compute their answers with means reported for honors and non-honors teachers’ responses. the score of 1 meant that the students were in the lowest 10% of their grade, 2 meant below average, 3 was average, 4 above average, and 5 highest 10% of the grade. both the honors and non-honors teachers rated the honors students in their building similarly, as shown by the means (m) in table 2. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 22 ___________________________________________________________________ table 2 rating of honors student’s qualities as compared to a non-honors student in the district by teachers and honors students ________________________________________________________________________ variable non-honors honors honor non-honors teachers’ m teachers’ m students’ m students’ m ________________________________________________________________________ academic ability 4.2 4.35 4.17 3.59 artistic ability 3.39 3.45 3.40 3.14 competitiveness 4.05 3.85 3.77 3.66 computer skills 3.83 4.05 3.86 3.59 cooperativeness 4.0 4.1 4.09 3.66 creativity 3.65 4.1 4.26 3.88 drive to achieve 4.37 4.1 4.41 3.88 emotional health 3.72 3.8 3.95 3.64 leadership ability 3.94 3.9 4.14 3.86 mathematical ability 4.19 4.05 4.13 3.33 physical health 3.27 3.55 4.14 3.82 public speaking 3.67 3.9 3.54 3.53 self-confidence 4.22 4.15 4.34 4.09 (intellectual) self-confidence 3.65 3.95 4.23 4.22 (social) self-understanding 3.82 3.75 4.13 4.11 understanding of 3.63 3.8 4.24 4.1 others writing ability 4.32 4.1 3.89 3.9 middle school honors program perceptions 23 ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ based on the rating of the honors students by honors and non-honors teachers, academically related characteristics, including writing ability (m=4.32, m=4.1), mathematical ability (m=4.19, m=4.05), computer skills (m=3.83, m=4.05), intellectual self-confidence (m=4.22, m=4.15), and academic ability (m=4.2, m=4.35), had scores that were close to or well above average. social skills, including understanding of others (m=3.63, m=3.8), social selfconfidence (m=3.65, m=3.95), public speaking ability (m=3.67, m=3.9), leadership ability (m=3.94, m=3.9), competitiveness (m=4.05, m=3.85), and emotional health (m=3.72, m=3.8) were only slightly above average for their age group. personal habits, including physical health (m=3.27, m=3.55), creativity (m=3.51, m=4.1), and artistic ability (m=3.39, m=3.45), fell between average and above average with the exception of cooperativeness (m=4, m=4.01) and drive to achieve (m=4.37, m=4.1), which rated above average for honors students. in general, honors students were lacking superior characteristics that teachers expect from the honors students, which were shown very similarly by both the honors and non-honors teachers’ scores. however, the honors students rated their physical health (m=4.14), social self-confidence (m=4.23), self-understanding (m=4.13), and understanding of others (m=4.24) as being above average for their age group, which was higher than teacher perceptions. non-honors students’ ratings of themselves were shown in comparison to the honors students, with significant differences (p<0.005) shown in academic ability, artistic ability, computer skills, cooperativeness, motivation to achieve, emotional health, leadership ability, mathematical ability, physical health, and intellectual self-confidence, which was explained in table 2. all other characteristics were rated as a non-significant difference between honors and non-honors students in self-reporting. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 24 furthermore, the honors teachers compared the honors students they taught to non-honors students in their classes, and results showed similar findings. the greatest differences appeared in the work ethic and higher level thinking that honors students were able to express. an honors teacher explained: they seem to have entered into abstract thought (many of them) and they are very aware of their own world. they seem to have a sense of right and wrong and can give rationales for why they think what they think. so overall, they seem to be critical thinkers, better writers, and better readers. most teachers reported that even though their honors students are capable of high performance, many at the middle school level seemed to lack habits of personal responsibility and motivation. this was indicated by teachers of the honors students: most are average, as far as being independent learners, with not accepting responsibility for completing work. they are more concerned and aware about grades, but some seem to be okay with getting a c in the class; learning goals for most are a little above average; they are more focused on how things today will affect their future (long term goals); and academically, they are higher than regular students. overall, the honors students tended to be stronger academically than the regular students; however, some were unmotivated. honors teachers focus more on enriching opportunities instead of remedial reading and writing skills, since most students in the honors classes are reading on their grade level. as explained by an honors teacher: “students are more willing to interact and have discussions with peers they are not friends with. they are more focused and on-task. they have already mastered eligible content, so higher order thinking is at the middle school honors program perceptions 25 forefront.” teachers stressed that mastery of background knowledge makes teaching more enjoyable and rewarding. teachers’ were able to dive deeper into content, without having to slow down, as explained by this honors teacher: i include less time for guided teaching (reading, note-taking, review) and more time for supplemental content (more connections to modern day, more projects, and more discussion). i require considerably more work. the climate tends to be more workfocused, though there are two significant behavior problem students who bring down the class climate. also, the honors students were slightly more mature socially, which made the class climate more conducive to learning due to fewer disinterested and disruptive students. yet, personal habits left more to be desired from these students and should be addressed in the middle school curricula. discussion this study provides an overview of the middle school honors program in a district located in south central pennsylvania following its first year of implementation. the study confirms that the middle school honors students’ characteristics differ from college students in social skills and maturity. in this middle school study, the general perceptions of an honors program were similar to college level findings. the benefits of the program are experienced by both teachers and students enrolled in the program, and the honors classes are perceived as more challenging than non-honors classes. middle school honors teachers report the use of more discussions, projects, and exploration of in-depth content through more challenging materials in their honors classes, as opposed to their regular classes. this is consistent with kulik and kulik’s (1992) findings in high schools and mckeauge’s (1984) finding in colleges. ideally, in the middle schools, teachers have higher expectations of maturity, ability, and motivation for honors students, which is reported by morris (2005) for high schools as well; however, the reality for the middle school is c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 26 different. the honors students in this study are perceived higher academically and in motivation by teachers and students, but not in maturity. an inference that the middle school student does not necessarily increase in maturity, simultaneously with their increase in academic ability and motivation, can be drawn from the responses of the teachers and the students in this study. cohen’s (1985) evaluation of the college hp found that faculty and students benefit from honors classes by having minimal commitment, smaller class sizes, increased exposure to higher ability students, and overall satisfaction. in middle school, teachers are satisfied with the program and are exposed to higher ability students; however, their commitment is higher due to an increased amount of work and lack of curriculum. in addition, the class size is much larger than in their non-honors classes. most middle school honors students wanted the increased level of work that the program offers; however, their commitment to the program may be lower due to the lower social maturity of the middle school students. they may desire to do well; yet controlling their impulsiveness may prove to be more difficult, thus reflecting in decreased performance at school. even within the first year of the implementation, there are noticeable differences in students who take the opportunity that the program offers. darity et al. (2001) found that a majority of high school students decline placement in honors courses due to a lack of willingness to work hard and conflicts with class schedules, extracurricular activities, or employment. the middle school students have some similar reasons, including not being ready for the challenge and time conflicts; in addition, they believe that their grades are too low, some were not aware of the opportunity, some like their regular classes, several believe hp is too nerdy, and a few report that the students in the honors program are elitist. as the program becomes institutionalized and more students learn about it, it would be interesting to reevaluate this finding. middle school honors program perceptions 27 from the honors teachers’ responses in teaching differences for the honors classes as opposed to their non-honors classes, the honors classes receive more projects, discussions, and in-depth content. even if the standard curriculum is lacking, the teachers make modifications for their honors students in order to challenge them further than the regular class allows, which is the objective of the hp. from this finding, it can be concluded that teachers know the goals of the program, and even without the support they need, they feel obligated to accommodate their honors students by providing them with higher educational opportunities that mirror their increased academic abilities. the middle school honors students think that doing well in school is more important, have higher overall grade point averages, and have higher-educated parents. the students who choose to enroll in the program do so because they feel the need to be challenged at a higher rate than is offered in a regular classroom, and believe that the program will help in preparing them for honors and advanced placement classes in high school, and, eventually in college, which are the goals of the hp. they also believe that the program will expose them to better teachers and peers and offer more recognition. the first semester college student’s expectations of the honors college were identical to the middle school expectation of the hp, except, of course, in housing (christopher, 2005). the expectations of the honors programs seem to be carried down from college and high school to middle schools. rinn (2007) found that gifted honors students have both higher academic achievement and higher academic self-concepts than their gifted non-honors counterparts. there were no differences in the aspiration of these college students. this study, however, found academic achievement and grades to be higher in middle school honors students, as pertaining to academic self-concept in areas of academic ability, artistic ability, computer skills, cooperativeness, creativity, motivation to achieve, emotional health, leadership ability, mathematical ability, c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 28 physical health, and intellectual self-confidence. in this selfreported study, middle school honors students reported higher in the belief that doing well in school is very important. with aspiration, the difference was found in honors students’ desire to be skilled in their future career, as opposed to non-honors students’ desire to succeed in their own business. in the george mason university’s (2005) study, which used the same quantitative survey questions as this study, the major difference was that the honors students had a higher gpa and needed less remedial work in high school than their non-honors counterparts. this holds true for the middle school honors students as well. mason’s honors college students rated their personal qualities as more driven to achieve, higher in academic, mathematical, writing, public speaking, and leadership ability than its non-honors peers. this finding was confirmed for motivation to achieve, academic ability, leadership ability, and mathematic ability for the middle school honors students. in addition, honors college students rated themselves as higher in intellectual self-confidence and lower in cooperativeness and social self-confidence (gentemann, zhou, zamon, & mcshery, 2006). gmu honors freshmen reported that improving their understanding of other countries and culture is their top aspiration goal, while non-honors freshmen reported being very well off financially is their top priority. non-honors freshmen rated being in charge of others, being well off, and becoming successful in a business of their own, as higher than the honors college students (gentemann, et al., 2006). besides becoming successful in a business of their own, these personal goals are different from the goals of the middle school students in this study. when comparing the perceptions of the college honors students as rated by their nonhonors peers, waggoner (1963) found that honors students were characterized as more intellectual, studious, thorough, precise, accurate, persistent, industrious, logical, responsible, middle school honors program perceptions 29 orderly, and capable, all of which are traits of successful students. comparing that to responses provided by middle school non-honors students, honors students were described as being higher in academic ability, intelligence, motivation, social skills, and critical thinking. other labels used are elitist, overachieving, nerdy, and hardworking, which is consistent with general pattern of waggoner’s findings. however, with regards to socialization, the responses of both honors and non-honors students were not as similarly favorable, with many students believing that honors students are just average in social skills. this may be due to the individual developmental stage of each middle school student. some of these students are just entering the formative stage of development, while many others are in the concrete stage. this may explain why socially they lack the maturity that honors college students possess. both teachers and students agree that middle school honors students rated higher academically compared to their non-honors counterparts. this is based on the criteria needed to enter an honors program, in which this school district includes high grades, high scores on standardized tests, teacher recommendations, and a writing sample. it is not confirmed whether these middle school students continue with the high performance on the standardized tests after their enrollment in the program, which was found in kulik’s (1982) study in high school honors students. however, socially, there are no screening criteria used to determine the student’s level of psychological development. as a result, many students lack good personal habits, due to immature brain development (yurgelon-todd, 2002). with the frontal cortical system being underdeveloped, students lack motivation, and tend to be highly impulsive. even these honors adolescents have trouble focusing on long term goals, including the value for education (bjork, et al., 2004; chambers, taylor, & potenza, 2003). a majority of students reported value in education due to a belief that it will help them in the future. however, many are making poor c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 30 choices even in the honor’s program, as reported by both student and the teacher participants. with the implementation of the honors program in the middle school, it is important to understand that the students are just searching for identity and tend to value their peers more than their parents, so the program must try to help students move to the last developmental stage. these social and personal habits are the main quality difference between findings for middle school students, as opposed to college students, who tend to rate higher than their non-honors counterparts in both areas. college students have reached formative stages of development, which may explain the difference in social maturity demonstrated between collegiate and middle school students. this study supports the finding that minority students are underrepresented in the honors program even within this urban district, which has a high number of minority students. lucas, hull, and brantley’s (1995) finding, which shows that majority of honors program participants are white and female, was true in this district. based on the district’s demographics, white students were overrepresented in the honors program at 37.5%, while 19.5% of the white students are enrolled in the district. asian american students were overrepresented (6.6%), since asian and other students make up only 2.3% of the total students in this district. overall, many of the findings for college and high school honors programs are confirmed in this study: the benefits of the program, with the exception of the class size and curriculum; student and teacher satisfaction with the hp; teacher’s teaching methods, with the exception of independence and self-expression; perceptions of the honors students academically; reasons for and against the enrollment; and the overrepresentation of female and white students in the program. the differences in benefits for teachers in the middle school program are lower personal and social skills (maturity) than expected from the honors students. middle school honors program perceptions 31 the hypothesis that the middle school honors, like college and high school students rating in the areas of academic abilities, personal habits, and aspirations, will be higher than the non-honors students was confirmed in a few areas. the areas of academic ability, artistic ability, computer skills, cooperativeness, creativity, motivation to achieve, emotional health, leadership ability, mathematical ability, physical health, and intellectual self-confidence were higher for the honors students. negative personal habits of partying and participating in online social networks are higher for non-honors students, while positive habits of reading for pleasure, completing studying and homework, and participating in student groups are higher for honors students. honors students’ positive personal habit of supporting opinions with facts is higher than in the non-honors students. in addition, being respected in their future career is more important to honors students, while being successful in a business of their own is more important to nonhonors students. all other areas of academic, personal, and aspiration ratings were similar for the two groups, which is different from college students reporting, which is higher for honors students in all areas. middle school honors students do not have the same qualities as high school and college honors students, which reinforces the need for further research on the middle school hp. there are limitations for this study, the largest one being the overall population of the district which is diverse and urban, thus not representing all districts. limitations include the ability to generalize findings to other populations who may not have the same characteristics as the diverse urban community in this district. the validity of the survey instrument may be questioned due to its initial design that is intended for honors colleges and additional questions that were generated without a statistical pilot test. more research is needed on the middle school honors program as these programs continue to be implemented, thus impacting the students who choose to take advantage of the c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 32 academic challenges provided through the program. these programs shape personal and social identities of the high school students enrolled in these classes (yonezawa, wells, & serna, 1992), which may hold true at the middle school level as well. this study provided a crucial step in measuring perceptions of the honors program in general by teachers and students; however, future studies should focus on the long-term effects of this program on students and communities. are middle school students truly better off when they are enrolled and complete the program, like high school students who take ap classes (creech, 1995)? do they make more money, have a better education, and succeed later in life? the performance of students who are enrolled in this program should be continued and some tracking studies have begun this process. including interviews of students in the program would provide useful and enriching data for measuring the whole experience of being in the honors program at the middle school level. finding a more standardized test of measure would be useful with the comparison in performances of the students in the middle school. having a national organization similar to the national collegiate honors council would be extremely beneficial in developing a standardized way of implementing the hp in the middle school, measuring honors performance, training the teachers, and providing a clear set of expectations for all schools. this communication would be a tremendous 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(2002). inside the teen brain. retrieved september 18, 2007, from http://www.pbs./org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/ interviews/todd.html. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 4 38 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo cie template volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x the de-emphasis on social studies in elementary schools: teacher candidate perspective amy j. good university of north carolina at charlotte tina l. heafner university of north carolina at charlotte tracy c. rock university of north carolina at charlotte katherine a o‟connor east carolina university jeff passe towson univeristy scott m. waring university of central florida sandra byrd university of north carolina at asheville citation good, a.j. et al (2010). the de-emphasis on social studies in elementary schools: teacher candidate perspective. current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the de-valuing of social studies is becoming prevalent as schools shift emphasis to other subjects addressing national and state accountability. the teacher candidate perspective is presented from an original study regarding the de-emphasis of social studies in elementary schools (rock, heafner, o‟connor, passe, oldendorf, good, & byrd, 2006). teacher candidates gathered data current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 during their clinical experiences, from five teacher preparation programs in north carolina. teacher candidates recognized difficulty in finding instructional time for the entire curriculum, conveyed social studies is de-valued in the elementary curriculum, stated integration is important to social studies instruction, and recognized it is their responsibility social studies is taught. keywords: social studies, elementary, teacher preparation, marginalization, instructional time, integration, social studies instruction teacher candidate perspective 3 about the author(s) author: amy j. good affiliation: university of north carolina at charlotte address: 9201 university city blvd., charlotte, nc 28223 email: agood5@uncc.edu biographical information: amy j. good is an associate professor in the department of reading and elementary education at the university of north carolina at charlotte. author: tina l. heafner affiliation: university of north carolina at charlotte address: 9201 university city blvd., charlotte, nc 28223 email: tina.heafner@uncc.edu biographical information: tina l. heafner is an associate professor in the department of middle, secondary, and k-12 education at the university of north carolina at charlotte. author: tracy c. rock affiliation: university of north carolina at charlotte address: 9201 university city blvd., charlotte, nc 28223 email: tracy.rock@uncc.edu biographical information: tracy c. rock is an associate professor in the department of reading and elementary education at the university of north carolina at charlotte. author: katherine a. o‟connor affiliation: east carolina university email: oconnork@ecu.edu biographical information: katherine a. o‟connor is an associate professor in the department of curriculum and instruction at east carolina university. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 author: jeff passe affiliation: towson university email: jpasse@towson.edu biographical information: jeff passe is professor and chair of the department of secondary education at towson university. author: scott m. waring affiliation: university of central florida email: scott.waring@ucf.edu biographical information: scott m. waring is an assistant professor and program coordinator of social science education at the university of central florida. author: sandra byrd affiliation: university of north carolina at asheville email: sbyrd@unca.edu biographical information: sandra byrd is the assistant provost and associate professor for graduate and continuing education program at the university of north carolina at asheville. teacher candidate perspective 5 the de-emphasis on social studies in elementary schools: teacher candidate perspective in a social studies methods class, a future teacher was assigned to observe social studies lessons in a school setting, as part of the clinical field experience requirement. the veteran clinical teacher, leading the clinical field experience, let the teacher candidate know, “i do not teach social studies; therefore it would be hard to observe. i will teach a lesson for you, if you need to just observe the subject being taught”. the de-valuing of the social studies is becoming prevalent as schools shift their emphasis to science, math, and language arts addressing national and state accountability. researchers (burroughs, groce, & webeck, 2005; center on education policy, 2008; gross, 1977; hahn, 1977; heafner, lipscomb, & rock, 2006; lintner, 2006; ochoa, 1981; rock et al., 2006; stecher & chun, 2001; vanfossen, 2005; vonzastrow & janc, 2004) raise concerns about the diminishing emphasis spent on elementary social studies instruction. according to owen (1997), there are five challenges when educating preservice social studies teachers 1) negative past experiences, 2) lack of interest, 3) confusion over the definition, 4) world view taught in a short time, and 5) finding clinical placements where social studies is taught. in what ways can teacher candidates obtain a substantive social studies clinical experience, when social studies is missing from elementary classrooms? will teacher candidates not see the value of social studies and not teach the subject in their future classrooms? the purpose of the original longitudinal north carolina initiative was to gather information regarding the de-emphasis of social studies in elementary schools (rock et al, 2006). in this study, most teachers reported that students received social studies instruction in 30 to 45 minute lessons for two to three days per week. the authors present the argument that the high current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 stakes standardized testing of reading and math in north carolina has diminished instructional time in elementary social studies. it was also found, however, that the more teachers valued social studies the more instructional time they devoted to it. the study recommends that solid actions in the form of research, advocacy, and professional development with in-service and preservice teachers is needed if social studies education is to be revitalized in our elementary schools. the purpose of this paper is to share the teacher candidate perspective, while in their social studies clinical classroom, of the devaluing and de-emphasis of social studies. the impact of the de-emphasis of social studies instruction on teacher candidates and attempt to validate teacher reported responses from the structured interviews are outlined. the following three areas will be reviewed from the teacher candidate‟s perspective: a) the amount of instructional time allowed for social studies in the elementary classroom, b) corresponding responses from cooperating teacher regarding the nature of the social studies in their classrooms, and c) the impact of the social studies clinical on the teacher candidate‟s teaching and learning of social studies. method to explore teacher candidate perspectives of social studies within their c linical experiences data were collected from the following sources. at the beginning of the clinical experience, preservice teachers interviewed cooperating teachers using a structured questionnaire consisting of 20 closed-ended and open-ended questions in which teachers were asked to explain their responses [see appendix]. interviews were conducted face to face and the teacher candidates transcribed cooperating teacher responses. candidates then observed their cooperating teaching and documented comparisons between the initial interviews and actual classroom observations. the teacher candidates were students enrolled teacher candidate perspective 7 in social studies methods classes within the unc system. the amount of time the teacher candidates spent in the clinical placements varied between 15-30 contact hours over the course of the semester depending on their program‟s requirements. the nature of the clinical experience varied in minor ways at each institution as well. all teacher candidates were required to observe social studies instruction, plan at least one lesson, teach the lesson, and receive feedback from their cooperating teacher. at the conclusion of preservice teacher candidates‟ clinical experiences, preservice teachers provided written reflections to the following three questions: 1) did the amount of instructional time used for social studies as conveyed by the clinical teacher in the interview, correspond with what you observed in the classroom this semester? explain. 2) were you surprised by any of the responses your cooperating teacher shared with you? explain. 3) how did the time you spent in this elementary school classroom impact your thinking about the teaching and learning of social studies? data from teacher candidate written reflections are the focus of this article. seventy-one (n=71) teacher candidate reflections were reviewed. the teacher candidates were students enrolled in social studies methods classes within the unc system. qualitative responses were evaluated by four university researchers using a combination of content analysis (silverman, 1999) and the constant -comparative method (glaser & straus, 1967) to determine patterns or themes in the data. teacher candidate reflections were coded to guarantee anonymity. individual question responses were evaluated, grouped, and categorized based on themes that emerged. each researcher conducted three independent readings of these data with subsequent collaborative meetings to compare themes, categorical grouping, and discuss implications. findings current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 overall, the following findings were conveyed. the teacher candidates: a) recognized the difficulty in finding time to teach the entire curriculum, b) conveyed social studies is not valued in the elementary curriculum, c) stated that integration is important to be able to teach social studies, and d) recognized it is their responsibility to make sure social studies is taught. teacher candidates also noted cooperating teachers felt their students were well prepared for the next grade level in social studies but indicated limited instructional time provided for social studies instruction. the focus of this research was to examine the teacher candidate perspective, and to give the teacher candidates a voice related to this topic. the following section will highlight the themes found in the qualitative responses. based on their responses, it is difficult to ascertain whether the teacher candidates are valuing the social studies because they are not seeing it taught. on the contrary, their responses reveal they value the social studies even more following this experience, in spite of what their clinical teacher valued or taught. some of the teacher candidates observed wonderful social studies instruction while others observed no social studies instruction at all, not even an integrated lesson. when asked about the time spent in the clinical and the impact on teaching and learning social studies, a teacher candidate responded: i will work hard to be an advocate for social studies. i didn‟t realize this was such a problem. i think it is crucial to student‟s academic and social development and i will work harder to push it in my classes, since i know it is so overlooked! difficult to find time for the subject the majority (53/71=75%) of the teacher candidates reported the amount of instructional time used for social studies conveyed by the cooperating teacher corresponded with what was observed in the classroom. with only 14/71 (20%) not corresponding with what was observed in teacher candidate perspective 9 the classroom, and 4/71 (5%) were not able to report because they felt they were not there long enough to determine correspondence of answers. the 20% who responded “no” to the first question reported their cooperating teacher would teach lessons mainly focused on math and reading. the “yes” responses included the following themes of what was observed: a) social studies taught through „integration‟ everyday, when possible, b) social studies, science, and health were taught on a three-week rotation c) social studies was taught 1 hour per week or not at all, and d) teachers were ordered to spend more time on other subjects and leave social studies behind. one teacher candidate wrote: i think i was most surprised by the fact that the school system tells you what you are to concentrate on most. a lot of the time it is not up to the teacher even though you may think you have a lot of freedom. i was totally baffled by the amount of time she spends on the social studies. there are four nine-week terms in one school year. therefore, this means she covers all of the social studies standards in less than 12 weeks! social studies under pressure a majority, 55/71 (77%) of the responses revealed the teacher candidates were surprised by the clinical teacher responses. a large portion (47%) of those 55 teacher candidates were surprised about the actual amount of time the teachers claimed to teach social studies. other themes from the responses included when the cooperating teacher reported no familiarity with the standard course of study for social studies and when the school systems allow certain standards to be ignored, so focus can be placed on the tested subjects and when clinical teachers did not seem to value the social studies more than other subjects or enough to teach it anyway, in spite of the pressure to teach other subjects. in current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 some cases, the teacher candidates could not believe that even if the teacher valued the subject of social studies, they would still not teach it, due to administration pressures. confusion over integration even though the teachers reported „integration‟ was used to teach social studies, the teacher candidates may not have been able to see this integration or may not know what to look for in an integrative lesson. for example, one teacher candidate reported: i was surprised that she put social studies as her last priority, even below science. she also said that all of the subjects were „covered‟ through integration, but i never once saw her doing this. maybe she did it on days i was not there? another teacher candidate reported: i am shocked that the school system allows the social studies curriculum to be „left in the dust‟ like it is. thankfully, i observed social studies being integrated in the classroom, without compromising the quality of the other objectives being taught. this experience inspired me to do what i observed: teach social studies, throughout the whole curriculum using integration and technology… of the 71 teacher candidates surveyed, the importance of learning how to integrate was explicitly mentioned in thirty-two (45%) responses. they stressed the desire to learn proper integration methods for their own class of the future. planning to teach social studies in the future the teacher candidates‟ self-report responses revealed themes implying they would take responsibility to teach the social studies to their classes of the future. perhaps with more training and experience, they will teach the subject regardless of pressures. other common themes included: a) the importance of making time for the social studies b) the realization that social teacher candidate perspective 11 studies can be taught in a powerful, innovating, and dynamic manner, while involving the children in the learning process, and finally, c) the emphasis on social studies should not be neglected because it is a natural part of our lives. even though there is pressure to teach other subjects, the teacher candidates point out the teachers, ultimately, make the decisions of what is taught and valued in the classroom. the teacher candidates report they plan on teaching the subject in some manner in the future. one teacher candidate reported, “i know now that social studies is much easier to include when it is integrated with other subjects. i am no longer frightened of teaching social studies; i am looking forward to it”. while another participant stated: the clinical teacher‟s classroom was really cool. you could tell she spent a lot of time on social studies integrated with the arts. there were student made mexican hats and artifacts in her classroom and displayed in the hall because they were studying mexican culture. i did not get to observe the lessons on mexico, but there was evidence integration has occurred. i am just not sure how to do it. discussion as teacher candidates reflected on their clinical observations, they expressed frustration with the lack of time dedicated to the subject of social studies and their own inability to differentiate social studies instruction from other content areas. one student wrote, “how can i observe social studies when it is not being taught?” the teacher candidates are required to teach at least one lesson in their clinical experience; however, they indicated barriers to their own course requirements of teaching social studies lessons. many were unable to teach social studies because of time devoted to other content areas, like reading and literacy (boyle-baise, hsu, johnson, serriere, &stewart; 2008), and the shared current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 time with science. teacher candidates reported a concern with a lack of understanding fo r how to integrate social studies, based on their observations. the level and definitions of integration varied among teachers indicating a need for university instructors to provide models for effective integration. there is, oftentimes, a hidden curric ulum or camouflaged social studies being taught (character education, citizenship, classroom management, classroom community, etc.). if preservice teachers cannot recognize social studies instruction then how can we expect k-6 students to know they are learning social studies? as teacher educators, we need to help our teacher candidates to identify social studies in various settings. the data point to another important role for teacher education promoting the value of social studies. teachers who value social studies claim to be more prepared to teach it (duplass, 2007). plus, they tend to believe their students are prepared for subsequent levels of study. a methods course that is devoted to social studies seems to be an effective strategy for promoting teachers‟ valuing of social studies goals (mccall, 2008). the teacher candidate responses reveal they recognized, as they observed and participated in their clinical placements, that social studies is not an equally valued component of the elementary school curriculum. for example, one teacher candidate wrote: i am very disappointed… social studies and the skills and information learned by studying our world are imperative to one‟s personal and academic development. however, it is not being learned and taught. i spent numerous hours in this classroom and was very disappointed that a teacher of such caliber feels so much time constraint that her students are not learning about their world. it‟s disheartening that students are graduating high school and have little or no understanding of the world and how it works teacher candidate perspective 13 but they are quite skilled at bubbling a multiple-choice test. as a result of this methods course, i am determined to change this pattern of preparing effective test takers rather than effective citizens. the role of the social studies methods course becomes one of not only teaching the social studies curriculum and content pedagogy, but that of advocating for teaching social studies (pascopella, 2005). with the external constraints on time and the focus on standardized testing, teachers must have a strong grounding in the importance of social studies or they will surrender to these external pressures and omit social studies from their instruction, (willis &sandholtz, 2009), as observed by many of our teacher candidates. those teachers who remained steadfast and continued to seek ingenuous methods for integrating social studies were those who had a robust training in the social studies (vanfossen, 2005). in addition, the teacher candidates demonstrated through their reflective writing that they valued the social studies by emphasizing the importance of providing a balance between integrated and stand-alone instruction in social studies and that it was their responsibility as a professional teacher to ensure that students receive instruction in the social studies. these areas are addressed in the social studies methods course and appear to have impacted the teacher candidate‟s perspectives as they interacted in the clinical schools. the purpose of the social studies methods course is to provide the teacher candidate with the opportunity to experiment with various social studies teaching methods in the clinical placement. such assignments allow teacher candidates to see that students can engage in and even enjoy learning social studies and may lead to a greater valuing of the social studies curriculum. if the opportunity to try the methods and theories supporting social studies best practices is not available, it is possible the teacher candidates will not value the subject. the results of this study show that the teacher current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 candidates value the subject at this time but what about when they are under the same pressures and constraints of time and testing that clinical teachers are currently experiencing? there are limitations to this study. the teacher candidates could have framed their answers to be „pro‟ social studies, knowing their methods instructor was reading the responses. another limitation of this study might be the teacher candidate participants may have reported valuing the social studies because they thought it was an expectation of the course. there is also a construct issue, related to a need for common definitions of integration, social studies instruction, and social studies powerful teaching. perhaps this study will allow educators to continue to re-examine how we discuss and deliberate issues surrounding social studies instruction. the main and immediate concern for the authors was how can teacher candidates obtain a substantive social studies clinical experience, when social studies is „missing‟ or not clearly seen often in elementary classrooms? also, in what ways is the de-emphasis on the subject impacting the teacher candidate‟s experience? following this study, those questions remain for each new class of teacher candidates. from the responses, it appears the teacher candidates, who participated, will be teaching social studies in their classrooms in the near future. conclusion in the elementary grades, social studies has been and continues to be marginalized within state curriculum standards, and a continued de-emphasis has been placed upon it by some administration and classroom teachers alike (gross, 1977; hahn, 1977; heafner, et.al, 2006; ochoa, 1981; rock, et al, 2006; vanfossen, 2005). this does not mean the teachers and administrators are “wrong,” it just means the pressures of standardized tests and yearly progress have almost forced schools to reprioritize subject matter. consequently, many teacher teacher candidate perspective 15 candidates enter the higher education classroom with a lack of content knowledge and very little interest for the subject. with the lack of coursework dealing with social studies methods and poor modeling occurring in content related courses, many of the students graduate with the same low level of interest and the ability to teach as they were taught. it appears the social studies clinical course can make a difference: now that i have seen social studies taught in such a way that the students were directly involved with the decision of their learning was so amazing. my previous idea of teaching social studies strictly from a textbook is completely shattered. to me, learning social studies is a part of our everyday lives as we interact with others, work in groups, meet new people, etc. i do not think i am nearly as intimidated or insecure about teaching social studies as what i originally expected i would be. faculty in teacher preparation programs and clinical teachers, especially at the elementary level, have an obligation to instill the passion for social studies and empower teacher candidates with the knowledge and skills to teach social studies in an effective and powerful manner (heafner et al, 2007). with increased usage and availability of technological resources, educators have access to more resources than ever to help make instruction more meaningful and enjoyable for elementary students. there is also a need for increased collaborative efforts with local school districts and community resources, so that an environment of interest in social studies is fostered. a change in the status-quo is greatly needed. it must begin with a triad approach of teacher educators, clinical teachers, and teacher candidates working together to not only emphasize the importance of the social studies in the classroom, but to develop strategies for instruction and planning, and advocate for social studies (mccall, janssen, & riederer, 2008). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 references american psychological association. (2001). publication manual of the american psychological association (5th ed.). washington, dc: author boyle-baise, m., hsu, m.c. johnson, s., serriere, s.c., & stewart, d. (2008). putting reading first: teaching social studies in elementary classrooms. theory and research in social education, 36(3), 233-255. burroughs, s., groce, e., & webeck, m. l. (2005). social studies education in the age of testing and accountability. educational measurement: issues and practice, 24(3), 13-20. center on education policy. (2008). instructional time in elementary schools: a closer look at changes for specific subjects. washington, dc: center on education policy (cep), 1-8. retrieved july 1, 2009, from http://www.cepdc.org/document/docwindow.cfm?fuseaction=document.viewdocument &documentid=234&documentformatid=3713 duplass, j. (2007, july/august). elementary social studies: trite, disjointed, and in need of reform? the social studies, 137-144. glaser, b. g., & straus, a. l. (1967). the discovery of grounded theory. chicago: aldine. gross, r. e. (1977, november/december). the status of the social studies in the public schools of the united states. social education, 41, 194-205. hahn, c. w. (1985, january). the status of the social studies in the public schools of the united states: another look. social education, 49, 220-223. heafner, t. l., lipscomb, g. b. & rock, t. c. (2006). to test or not to test? the role of testing in elementary social studies, a collaborative study conducted by ncpsse and scpsse. social studies research and practice, 1(2), 145-164. heafner, t., o‟connor, k., groce, e., byrd, s., good, a., oldendorf, s., passe, j., rock, t. (2007). a case for social studies advocacy: becoming agents for change. social studies and the young learner, 20(1), 26-29. lintner, t. (2006). social studies (still) on the back burner: perceptions and practices of k-5 social studies instruction. journal of social studies research, 30(1), 3-8. mccall, a. l., janssen, b., & riederer, k. (2008). more time for powerful social studies: when university social studies methods faculty and classroom teachers collaborate. the social studies, 99(3), 135-141. mccall, a. (2008, may/june). more time for powerful social studies: when university social studies methods faculty and classroom teachers collaborate. the social studies, 135-144. teacher candidate perspective 17 ochoa, a. (1981). a profile of social studies teachers. social education, 45(6), 401-404. owen, w. t. (1997). the challenges of teaching social studies methods to preservice elementary teachers. social studies, 88(3), 113-120. pascopella, a. (2005). staying alive: social studies in elementary schools. social studies and the young learner, 17(3), 30-32. rock, t., heafner, t., o‟connor, k., passe, j., oldendorf, s., good, a., & byrd, s. (2006). one state closer to a national crisis: a report on elementary social studies in north carolina schools. theory and research in social education, 34(4), 455-483. silverman, d. (1999). interpreting qualitative data: methods for analyzing talk, text and interaction. 2nd ed. london: sage. stecher, b. m., & chun, t. (2001). school and classroom practices during two years of education reform in washington state (cse technical report 550), los angeles, ca: university of california national center for research on evaluation, standards, and student testing, 14. vanfossen, p. j. (2005). „reading and math take so much of the time…‟: an overview of social studies instruction in elementary classrooms in indiana. theory and research in social education, 33(3), 376-403. von zastrow, c., & janc, h. (2004). academic atrophy: the condition of the liberal arts in america‟s public schools. council for a basic education, a report from the council for basic education, carnegie corporation of new york. 1-40. retrieved july 1, 2009, from http://music-forall.org/documents/cbe_principal_report.pdf wills, j. s., & sandholtz, j. h. (2009). constrained professionalism: dilemmas of teaching in the face of test-based accountability. teachers college record, 111(4), 1065-1114. http://music-forall.org/documents/cbe_principal_report.pdf current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team teacher candidate perspective 19 executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo research into_final volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x research into factors contributing to discipline use and disproportionality in major urban schools caven s. mcloughlin kent state university amity l. noltemeyer miami university citation mcloughlin, c. & noltemeyer, a. (2010). research into factors contributing to discipline use and disproportionality in major urban schools. current issues in education, 13(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract major urban high poverty schools frequently use exclusionary discipline (i.e., out of school suspensions) and apply these consequences disproportionately to african american students. we explored school demographic variables predicting these two outcomes using data from 433 major urban, high poverty schools. results suggest a different set of predictors for the overall use of suspensions than for disproportionality. specifically, four variables significantly predicted overall suspension use (office disciplinary referrals; the proportions of african american teachers, economically disadvantaged students, and african american students) whereas only one variable significantly predicted disproportionality (percentage economically disadvantaged students). implications, limitations and future directions are provided. keywords: disproportionality; suspension; expulsion; discipline; urban; african american c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 2 about the author(s) author: caven mcloughin affiliation: kent state university address: 405 white hall, kent state university, kent, oh 44242 email: caven@kent.edu biographical information: caven mcloughlin is professor of school psychology at kent state university with a specialty in delivering services to infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families, and in policy and implementation practices for related services. author: amity noltemeyer affiliation: miami university email: anoltemeyer@muohio.edu biographical information: amity noltemeyer is an assistant professor in school psychology at miami university. her research interests include disproportionality (in special education identification and discipline), response-to-intervention, and systems change. discipline use and disproportionality 3 exclusionary discipline is frequently utilized in today’s schools. in 2006 approximately 3.3 million students in the united states received out of school suspensions (planty et al., 2009), and data suggest the practice is increasing. for example, in the state of maryland a 58.7% increase in suspensions was documented from 1995 to 2003 (krezmien, leone, and achilles, 2006). these practices are concerning considering the documented relationship between exclusionary discipline and a variety of unfavorable student outcomes (e.g., costenbader & markson, 1998; deridder, 1990; gersch and nolan, 1994; rausch & skiba, 2004; safer, heaton, & parker, 1981). also concerning is the overrepresentation of minority students as recipients of such exclusionary discipline. evidence of this phenomenon – referred to as disciplinary disproportionality – is abundant. for example, constenbader and markston (1998) found that african american students composed 23% of the student population but 45% of those receiving disciplinary actions. even more startling, mendez and knoff (2003) found that african american males in a large florida school district experienced approximately 2.5 times as many suspensions per 100 students as white males, and african american females in the same district experienced approximately 3.6 times as many suspensions per 100 students as white females. other researchers have documented similar findings of disciplinary disproportionality (garibaldi, 1992; skiba, peterson, & williams, 1997; skiba, michael, nardo, & peterson, 2002; thornton & trent, 1988; wu, pink, crain, & moles, 1982). because the use of exclusionary discipline and the overrepresentation of minority students as recipients have both been thoroughly documented, recent research has become more specifically concerned with identifying factors that predict each phenomenon. for example, school administrator philosophy and beliefs (christle, nelson, & jolivette, 2004; mukuria, 2002; c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 4 wu, 1980), ambiance of the physical school setting (christle et al.), per pupil spending (christle et al.), district ses (fowler & walberg, 1991), and public-versus-private school status (farmer, 1999) are school-level variables that have been shown to impact disciplinary practices. in addition, several student-level variables have been linked to discipline use, including gender, (mendez & knoff, 2003; skiba et al., 1997; skiba & peterson, 2000), student socioeconomic status (wu et al., 1982), and student grade-level (mendez and knoff, 2003; arcia, 2008). school typology (urban, suburban, rural) is another factor that has recently been considered. noltemeyer and mcloughlin (in press) conducted a study to examine differences in disciplinary usage and disciplinary disproportionality based on school typology. results suggested that, when compared to other school typologies, major urban districts with ‘very high poverty levels’ evidenced greater reliance on disciplinary techniques overall as well as higher levels of disciplinary disproportionality for african american students (even when controlling for student poverty level). we suggested a need for further research to identify the unique contribution of various characteristics of major urban, very high poverty schools that increase their likelihood of utilizing exclusionary discipline and disproportionally for african american students. we further recommended additional research aimed at determining the degree to which overall differences in exclusionary discipline rates explain differences in disciplinary disproportionality, as well as the degree to which differences in discipline rates can be explained by the ethnic composition of the student population. this follow-up study addresses these issues using school-level demographic variables as predictors. specifically, the purpose of our study is: (1) determine which of five variables significantly predict overall suspension usage in major urban, very high poverty schools, and identify the relative contribution of each variable; (2) determine which of six variables discipline use and disproportionality 5 significantly predict suspension disproportionality in major urban, very high poverty schools and identify the relative contribution of each variable. methods first, the district identification numbers for all major urban, very high poverty schools in the state of ohio (usa) were obtained using the “school typology” database, available at http://www.ode.state.oh.us/. “major urban, very high poverty” is one of nine school typologies identified by the ohio department of education. this typology describes school districts in major cities with high population density, very high poverty, and a very high percentage of minority students (ohio department of education, 2007). next, data on predictor variables were obtained using the ohio department of education’s power users tool. this ‘tool’ allows for access to all schools in all public school districts in ohio, disaggregated by desired characteristics (e.g., ethnicity). the following data were obtained for each of the 433 schools from the 12 major urban, high-poverty school districts in ohio for the 2007-2008 school year: percent african american teachers in the school (%aat); total suspensions per 100 students at the school (susp); percent economically disadvantaged students at the school (%ed); percent african american students attending the school (%aas); instructional expenditures per student (instr); suspensions per 100 white students; suspensions per 100 african american students; and, office disciplinary referrals per 100 students (odr). these predictor variables were selected for inclusion due to previous research suggesting a possible relationship to suspension use or disciplinary disproportionality. data for each predictor variable were exported to microsoft excel and then transferred to spss. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 6 once these variables were in spss, a new variable—called the relative risk ratio (risk) —was created by dividing the suspensions per 100 african american students by the suspensions per 100 white students. the relative risk ratio is a metric that compares an ethnic group’s risk of receiving an exclusionary discipline action to the risk of a comparison group (donovan & cross, 2002). in our investigation, this number represents the risk of african american students compared to white students. white students were selected as the comparison population because they represent the majority of students attending school in ohio. a relative risk ratio of 1.0 indicates that african american students and white students in the school are equally likely to receive an out-of-school suspension; in contrast, a relative risk ratio of 2.0 indicates african american students were twice as likely as white students to receive an out-ofschool suspension. ratios have frequently been used as used metric for assessing disproportionality (e.g., krezmien et al., 2006; mcnulty, eitle & eitle, 2004; noltemeyer & mcloughlin, in press; rausch & skiba, 2004). latino, asian american, native american, and students from other ethnic groups were not included in any analyses due to small sample sizes. some schools did not have any values for suspensions per 100 african american students or for suspensions per 100 white students because (a) no white or african american students attended the school, or (b) white or african american students did attend the school, but none were suspended during the 2007-2008 school year. if either of these variables was empty or had a value of zero, the relative risk ratio was not calculated. as a result, the relative risk ratio was available for 206 schools. analyses were conducted to determine how the participating schools differed from the non-participating schools. most notably, results suggested that participating schools had a higher number of suspensions per 100 students (white, african american, and discipline use and disproportionality 7 total) as well as a higher number of odrs per 100 students than non-participating schools. these findings should be considered when interpreting the results of the study. multiple regression analyses were run to answer each of the two research questions. multiple regression was selected as the analysis technique because it allows for an examination of the effect of several predictor variables on a dependent variable. stepwise procedures were used because there was no theoretical foundation for the relative contribution of each predictor variable to the dependent variable. the first multiple regression analysis examined the effect of five predictor variables on the overall number of suspensions per 100 students in the 346 schools for which all data were available. the second multiple regression analysis examined the effect of six predictor variables on the relative risk ratio in the 206 schools for which all data were available. this analysis included one more variable because the outcome variable from the first analysis (total suspensions per 100 students) was also used as a predictor. descriptive statistics and pearson correlations were also calculated to provide more information about the variables in each of the analyses. in addition, partial eta squared – an estimate of effect size – was used to determine the percentage of variation in the dependent variables explained by the predictor variables in each analysis. ohio data comprise the data-set for this study because the state is a bellwether that reflects national educational and political trends (noltemeyer, brown, & mcloughlin, 2010; rubin, 1997) and the percentages of white and african american individuals statewide are approximately equal to national averages based on census data (united states census bureau, 2008). c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 8 results examination of the tolerance and vif values for each of the two analyses indicates no concerns with multicollinearity of data. additionally, because the η2 and adjusted η2 were close in value, both multiple regression models were judged to be reliable. results of the first regression analysis indicated that the best set of predictors for overall use of suspensions included the following variables: office disciplinary referrals per 100 students; percent african american teachers; percent economically disadvantaged students; and percent african american students, f (4, 341) = 18.51, p <.001. this suggests that the linear combination of these variables significantly predicted the number of suspensions per 100 students in the sample of ohio’s major urban, high poverty schools during the 2007-2008 school year. specifically, this set of variables predicted nearly 18% of the variability in suspension use (η2 = .18). when considering the unique contribution of each of these predictor variables to total suspensions per 100 students, the number of office disciplinary referrals per 100 students explained 8.4% of the variability. the percent of african american teachers, the percent of economically disadvantaged students, and the percent of african american students each explained 3.5%, 3.9%, and 2.1% of the variability, respectively. see table 1 for descriptive statistics. as evidenced by these data, the participating schools averaged over 32 suspensions per 100 students and over 33 office disciplinary referrals per 100 students. in addition, the majority of students in the schools were economically disadvantaged and african american, whereas less than 25% of teachers were african american. table 2 reveals a summary of the relationships between the predictor variables and total suspensions per 100 students. these results indicate the strength and direction of the relationships between each of the variables using pearson correlations. discipline use and disproportionality 9 table 1. descriptive statistics for variables in the first multiple regression analysis m sd n total suspensions 32.51 46.24 346 %african american teachers 21 17 346 %economically disadvantaged students 75 19 346 %african american students 59 31 346 office discipline referrals per 100 students 33.08 72.08 346 instructional expenditures per student ($) 6945.47 1893.43 346 c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 10 table 2. pearson correlations between variables in the first multiple regression analysis susp %aat %ed %aas odr instr suspensions per 100 students 1.000 % african american teachers -.207 1.000 %economically disadvantaged students .108 .139 1.000 % african american students .126 .266 .207 1.000 office discipline referrals per 100 students .289 -.072 -.210 .008 1.000 instructional expenditures per student ($) .035 .218 .243 .261 -.085 1.000 results of the second regression analysis suggested the best set of predictors for disciplinary disproportionality (i.e., the relative risk ratio) included a single variable: percentage of economically disadvantaged students f (1, 205) = 10.48, p =001. this variable explained almost 5% of the variability in the relative risk ratio during the 2007-2008 school year (η2 = .049). see table 3 for descriptive statistics on all variables in this analysis, and table 4 for a summary of the relationship between the variables and the relative risk ratio. discipline use and disproportionality 11 table 3 reviews descriptive statistics for this second analysis. the participating schools averaged over 42 suspensions and over 37 office disciplinary referrals per 100 students. in addition, over 75% of the students in the schools were economically disadvantaged, 47% were african american, and 17% of teachers were african american. like table 2, table 4 summarizes the relationships between the predictor variables and the relative risk ratio using pearson correlations. table 3. descriptive statistics for variables in the second multiple regression analysis m sd n relative risk ratio 2.88 2.32 206 total suspensions 42.45 49.48 206 %african american teachers 17 15 206 %economically disadvantaged students 76 19 206 %african american students 47 26 206 office discipline referrals per 100 students 37.18 79.01 206 instructional expenditures per student ($) 6672.56 1727.88 206 c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 12 table 4. pearson correlations between variables in the second multiple regression analysis risk %aat %ed %aas odr instr susp relative risk ratios 1.000 %african american teachers -.036 1.000 %economically disadvantaged students -.221 .191 1.000 %african american students -.116 .109 .120 1.000 office discipline referrals per 100 students -.045 -.180 -.243 .082 1.000 instructional expenditures per student ($) .047 .284 .240 .135 -.119 1.000 suspensions per 100 students -.127 -.143 .016 .341 .460 -.038 1.000 discussion compared to other school typologies, major urban high poverty schools have been documented frequently to use exclusionary discipline (e.g., adams, 1992; noltemeyer & mcloughlin, in press), and apply these techniques disproportionately to african american students (e.g., noltemeyer & mcloughlin, 2010). our study sought to explore school discipline use and disproportionality 13 demographic variables that predict suspension use and disciplinary disproportionality. results suggest a different set of predictors for the overall use of suspensions than for disproportionality. overall suspension use four variables were found to predict overall suspension use: office disciplinary referrals per 100 students; percent african american teachers; percent economically disadvantaged students; and percent african american students. the finding that office disciplinary referrals was a significant predictor of overall suspension use makes intuitive sense considering referrals that lead to suspensions begin in the classroom setting and typically require an initial referral to a school administrator. skiba et al. (1997) found that most behaviors prompting an office disciplinary referral occurred in the classroom and were made by teachers. they also found that nearly half of the referrals were written by small percentage of teachers who made high numbers of referrals. these findings along with results of our investigation suggest that schools seeking to minimize exclusionary discipline techniques – and thus its negative and unintended consequences – should aim to provide teachers with professional development and supports to prevent and handle behaviors within the classroom. the finding that the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in a school significantly predicts suspension use is also logical given previous research demonstrating a positive relationship between the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in a district and suspension use (e.g., christle, nelson & jolivette, 2004; fowler & walberg, 1991; mendez, knoff, & ferron, 2002;). poverty can increase stressors on a child and his or her family, which may in turn increase the risk of poor behavioral outcomes. in addition, children living in poverty may bring different experiences and beliefs than their middleor upper-class teachers. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 14 the ethnic composition of both teachers and students also predicted overall suspension rates. specifically, a positive relationship emerged between the percentage of african american students and suspension rates, and a negative relationship emerged between the percentage of african american teachers and suspension rates. the relationship between african american students and suspension is expected given the documentation of disciplinary disproportionality over the past several decades (e.g., constenbader and markston, 1998; garibaldi, 1992; mendez and knoff, 2003; skiba et al., 1997; skiba et al., 2002; thornton & trent, 1988; wu et al.,1982). although the negative relationship between african american teachers and suspension use remains unexplained, speculations can be made based on other research. for example, when examining preservice teachers’ perceptions about characteristics of effective teachers, witcher and onwuegbuzie (1999) found that minority preservice teachers less often endorsed behavior management skills (e.g., authoritative, good disciplinarian) as characteristic of effective teachers than did white preservice teachers. at the same time, they more often endorsed ethical behaviors (e.g., impartial, fair, unbiased) as characteristic of effective teachers than did their white counterparts. these results suggest there may be cultural differences in views on discipline and its application. in addition, saft and pianta (2001) found that when children and their teachers have the same ethnicity, teachers rated the relationships more positively. because of the positive correlation between the percentage of african american teachers and students in this sample of urban schools, these more positive relationships and reduced potential for cultural incongruence could contribute to the findings. finally, instructional expenditure per student was not a significant predictor in the model. christle et al. (2004) found that in one state higher per-pupil spending was linked to higher discipline use and disproportionality 15 suspension rates; however, they indicated these findings needed replication. in our study, a positive relationship was noted; however, it was extremely weak and not statistically significant. disproportionality in suspension use our findings related to disciplinary disproportionality provide less insight into factors contributing to the phenomenon. the only significant predictor of disproportionality in suspensions was the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in the schools; however, the relationship was opposite that found when considering overall suspension use. specifically, as the percentage of economically disadvantaged students increased, disproportionality decreased. in addition, this variable explained very little of the proportion of variance in disproportionality. this weak and contradictory role of poverty is interesting, yet perhaps unsurprising; skiba & peterson (2000) in a study on the factors contributing to disproportionality in special education identification, found that poverty made a weak and inconsistent contribution, having a positive effect in some disability categories and a negative effect in others., using multiple regression, they found that a district’s level of poverty did not predict its overall disproportionality rates nor disproportionality in two disability categories; in two other disability categories it was a significant negative predictor, and in the final disability categories it was a significant positive predictor. additionally, a more recent study (pelham, 2007) suggested that professional development efforts aimed at increasing teachers’ understanding of student poverty had no significant effects on disciplinary disproportionality, and in some cases actually led to a greater discrepancy in suspensions between african american and white students. when considering the findings of our study, it certainly appears that poverty level positively predicts overall suspension use and negatively predicts disproportionality rates. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 16 it is surprising that reliance on suspensions and office disciplinary referrals did not significantly predict disciplinary disproportionality, particularly given evidence that suspension rates do predict disproportionality in special education identification (e.g., skiba et al., 2004). also, the percentage of african american teachers and the percentage of african american students did not significantly predict disciplinary disproportionality. together, the failure of any of these variables to significantly predict disciplinary disproportionality – while they concurrently predict overall suspension rates – suggests that a different mechanism may explain overall discipline rates and disciplinary disproportionality. limitations these data derive from a single midwestern state in the usa; the degree to which our results accurately generalize to other states and other settings is unknown and should be considered with caution. in addition, we examined only major urban, very high poverty schools. previous research has suggested predictors may vary based on school typology. it is important to conduct similar analyses on other school typologies to avoid generalizing the results to nonurban schools. many schools in the sample had to be eliminated due either to an insufficient population of african american students or to an insufficient number of suspensions. it appears that the eliminated schools engaged in less exclusionary discipline than the participating schools; therefore, the analyses are really generalizable only to a circumscribed set of urban schools. finally, the study relied on existing data and the degree to which suspensions were administered and documented consistently between schools is unknown. future research we anticipate these results contributing to the growing understanding of factors that contribute to exclusionary discipline and disciplinary disproportionality. multiple avenues for discipline use and disproportionality 17 future research emerge from the study. given prior contradictory results, coupled with our results, it is reasonable to assume that future research needs to move beyond an examination of poverty and attempt to capture the primary force behind disproportionality. in the case of overall suspension rates, it appears that although some contributing factors have been identified, there are further unstudied explanatory factors. with regard to disproportionality, it appears that none of the primary explanatory factors were captured using simple school-level demographic variables as predictors. future research should explore other predictors. most notably, it seems wise to move beyond demographic variables to explore the effect of process and attitudinal variables. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 18 references american psychological association. 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(1982). student suspension: a critical reappraisal. the urban review, 14, 245-303 discipline use and disproportionality 21 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word five secondary teachers.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x five secondary teachers: creating and presenting a teaching persona janine s. davis averett university citation davis, j. (2011). five secondary teachers: creating and presenting a teaching persona. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this qualitative study investigates the ways that five secondary teachers developed and presented personae. the researcher collected and analyzed data using a theoretical frame based in social psychology, including goffman’s presentation of self in everyday life (1959), and miles and huberman’s (1994) three-step approach to qualitative data analysis. findings indicate that teachers drew on three major realms—the physical, psychological, and social—when constructing classroom personae. implications include increased opportunities for teacher reflection on persona and its effects. keywords: persona, social psychology, qualitative, reflection c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 2 about the author(s) author: janine s. davis affiliation: averett university address: 4880 cox road #101, glen allen, va 23060 email: jsdavis@averett.edu biographical information: an assistant professor in the averett university graduate and professional studies m.ed. program, janine is currently teaching courses in philosophy of education, curriculum development, and models of instruction. her research interests include teacher persona and identity, preservice teachers, and qualitative research. c r e a t in g a n d pr e se n t in g a t e a c h in g pe r so n a 3 five secondary teachers: creating and presenting a teaching persona teachers and actors have similar jobs—they perform for audiences, and those audiences can interact with the actors and change the outcome of the performance based on their reactions. elliot eisner (2002) calls the classroom a context for improvisation and likens teaching to standup comedy. those who teach know that they do not necessarily play the same role in class as they do at home or among friends. we adopt personae and present the sides of our selves that suit us and the situation. the word persona comes from the latin word for mask and suggests the “taking on of a mask,” that “involves artifice” (parini, 1997). this aspect of teaching is especially relevant to the current push to determine what successful teachers do: a recent new york times magazine article suggests that teaching is “decidedly not about being yourself” (green, 2010). persona is complex, and we know little about how and why teachers create certain personae in their classrooms. it is crucial to know all we can about what goes on in the classroom, including the ways that teachers enact roles; investigating how teachers create personae may impact teacher training in the future. the construct of persona the persona provides external clues about one’s self-image (sadoski, 1992). since the time of aristotle, when public speakers employed the rhetorical technique of ethos to highlight their character to sway their audiences, people in society have engaged in playing social roles (minot, 1989). more recently, social psychologists have investigated how and why people enact social roles: symbolic interactionism states that we adopt roles and define our selves depending on our understanding of and response to situations (blumer, 1969; mead, 1982; zurcher, 1983); thus, as applied to teaching, describing one’s persona helps others understand how the actor views the teaching act. in education, symbolic interactionists might refer to the novice teacher c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 4 who “takes on the role” or persona of the teacher (knowles & holt-reynolds, 1991; labaree, 2000; lortie, 1975). among the reasons for certain personae are one’s expectations and understanding of specific professions, which include rigid role expectations for teachers due to our extended time as students (lortie, 1975; perlman, 1986; weber & mitchell, 1995). studying social roles has extended to poker games, college football fans, and sorority houses and revealed that people do play roles consciously based on the audience’s expectations and the context (zurcher, 1983). however, there are few clear examples of studies that investigate the ways that personae emerge within the complex sociological interactions of teaching. theoretical frame various ideas from the literature underpin this study. figure 1 details the interrelationships of theory that informed data collection and analysis. the process of persona creation set forth in figure 1 also served as an a priori hypothesis about the ways that the participants would create personae. figure 1. theoretical frame. c r e a t in g a n d pr e se n t in g a t e a c h in g pe r so n a 5 as seen in figure 1, consideration of context serves as a filter for managing impressions and constructing persona (gardner & avolio, 1998; schlenker, 1980). teachers are primarily influenced by the classroom context as they create personae. the context can shape a leader’s presentation of self; charismatic leaders use positive characteristics like high self-esteem and motivation and manage their audience’s impressions through framing, scripting, staging, and performing, which leads to positive group outcomes (gardner & avolio, 1998). the next stage of the diagram shows the various ways that people construct a persona in society: goffman (1959), in his theory of the presentation of self in everyday life, separated the methods of creating a persona into discursive and non-discursive actions. non-discursive actions might include such signals as clothing or gestures; it is partly through these that a teacher conveys his or her ideas about the role of the teacher. discursive speech is influenced by relationships and social norms, which comes from the field of sociolinguistics. relationships and social norms influence discursive language because they are a part of the discourses that preservice teachers encounter in their own schooling and teacher training programs (kagan, 1992; lortie, 1975; zeichner & gore, 1990). as indicated in the third stage of the diagram, the purpose of these actions is for the teacher to display a persona and manage the students’ impressions of him or her. part of the point of managing students’ impressions is for the teacher to continue to do his or her job (schlenker, 1980); depending on the teacher, this may take the form of increasing student attention or learning, or simply be to make the teacher want to continue appearing in front of the class day after day. this process of persona creation and presentation occurs in all social settings, including the classroom. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 6 study’s purpose because there has been little research in the area of teacher persona, the purpose of this study was to investigate the ways that teachers create a persona in their classrooms. the research question guiding this study was “how do teachers develop and present a teaching persona?” it is important to know how teachers present personae in the classroom because the method infuses and modifies content—or how one teaches is constituent with what is taught (eisner, 2002). this study’s findings provide insight into the ways that teachers construct personae in the classroom, which can in turn inform pre-service teacher education and teacher staff development. once we know more about the choices that teachers make when creating personae, we may be able gauge the effectiveness of various personae in future studies and intervene to enable teachers to construct the most effective personae possible. method site and participants participants were a convenience sample of teachers at the trinity school; i gained access to the site through an acquaintance who taught at the school. the site was conveniently located but was not as saturated with other researchers as other public schools in the area due to the presence of a large research university in the vicinity. the five participants volunteered for the study in response to an email sent to all teachers at the school. the teachers were all caucasian, between the ages of 30 and 65, and had been teaching for more than three years, some for more than a decade. the participants taught math, english, science, history, and government. trinity school, a private, religious, k-12 school of about 700 students, is located in a residential area of a small city in the mid-atlantic region. the approximately 400 seventh to 12th c r e a t in g a n d pr e se n t in g a t e a c h in g pe r so n a 7 grade students pay tuition of more than $12,000 a year; most students are caucasian and uppermiddle-class. the school website indicates that 13% of the student body is made up of minorities and 20% of the students receive some financial assistance. observations suggest that the largest group of minority students are asian, followed by a small number of latino, africanamerican, and biracial students. sports are an important component of student life at trinity: almost 80% of students play at least one school sport, and the hallways showcase newspaper clippings about teacher-coaches or student-athletes. data collection data collection involved observations, interviews, and document analysis and took place from september 30 to december 1, 2008. observations totaling 15 hours included class periods at multiple class levels, such as honors or regular, as well as time immediately before and after the class periods to observe “backstage” (i.e. not engaged in teaching) behavior at those times. i conducted semi-structured, audio recorded interviews of between 45-60 minutes with each participant. these interviews included questions that were grounded in the literature and probed teachers’ ideas about their personae, including their responses to different school and student contexts and prior teacher models. sample questions and sub-questions are listed below: what do you think you are like as a person? what do you think you are like as a teacher? if the two are similar or different, please explain why you believe that is the case. what kinds of personality traits do you think you present to the class purposefully? why do you choose those traits? are there any traits that you deliberately choose not to show? c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 8 how much personal information (about children, spouse, hobbies) do you choose to share with students? why do you choose to share it? i interviewed each participant once, near the end of the data collection period. interviews took place at trinity school, and i transcribed them for analysis. document collection included assignment sheets, lecture handouts, photocopied readings, and the school schedule, website, and newspaper. i collected these multiple sources of data in order to triangulate my findings—which is vital to qualitative research—and not rely on one source of data collection. all of the data that i collected contributed to answering the research question, but i relied most heavily on observations for the initial phase of analysis. because of the nature of the research question, i used observations to determine how teachers presented their teaching personae. interviews mainly addressed how teachers had developed their personae over time. documents were a minor source of data collection and served to provide details about the classroom and school context in order to support a thick description. data analysis the data analysis involved miles and huberman’s (1994) three-step approach of data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification. i developed a start list of codes that was grounded in the literature and added emergent codes during the process of analysis, which ran concurrently with data collection. coding language mirrored goffman’s (1959) discussion of enacted personae, using, for example, the code “costume” for teacher clothing, “setting” for classroom decoration, and “backstage” for teacher comments that occurred when the teachers were not engaged in the act of teaching. some later codes that evolved during the analysis included “sarcasm,” “teacher sensitivity to student needs,” and “address”. c r e a t in g a n d pr e se n t in g a t e a c h in g pe r so n a 9 after uploading all data files into the nvivo computer program, i assigned codes during multiple readings of the entire data corpus. in addition to assigning codes to relevant sections of text at the phrase level, nvivo supported later phases of analysis, which included the creation of models using these codes and displays of instances of certain key codes across the participants. for a complete list of codes, see appendix i. limitations as with any study, this study has limitations that must be acknowledged. these limitations included the site and participants, time for data collection, and data collection implementation. the site for this study was one private, religious school, which means that extending the findings to public school teachers is most likely not advisable due to the difference in context. the data collection for this study took place over the course of eight weeks, starting at the middle of the semester, which is a relatively short period of time. additionally, while i compare instances of codes across the participants in the findings, my observations did not always provide a completely representative sample of each participant’s schedule. while i developed the questions for the interview protocols from the literature, it is possible that my questions did not resonate with the participants as they described their experiences. it is also possible that the themes i derived from the data were not absolutely representative of the participants’ experiences, however in order to guard against this i employed member checking. each participant accepted my analysis and played a role in shaping the final themes. finally, i did not have access to the pupils’ perspectives through interviews, although pupil voices do appear in my field notes and i observed their actions and reactions during my note taking. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 10 findings: how do teachers develop and present a teaching persona? analysis of the data revealed that the teachers were operating within and drawing from three interconnected realms—the physical, psychological, and social—when developing and presenting their personae (figure 2). each teacher’s persona was informed by all three realms, but the teachers varied in the degree to which each realm drove their choices. figure 2 illustrates the relationships among these realms and associated concepts; the subheadings listed under each realm below align with those found in the figure. figure 2. the three realms of persona development. the physical realm according to goffman (1959), we use sign vehicles, or indicators of persona, for two kinds of expression: the one that we give discursively, through speech and language, and the one that we give off nondiscursively, through such nonverbal modes as clothing and gestures. these c r e a t in g a n d pr e se n t in g a t e a c h in g pe r so n a 11 two kinds of expression are inextricably linked in the dramaturgical view of social interaction (brissett & edgeley, 1990). the participants in this study often used vocal volume, pitch, discourse, and general physicality to present their teaching personae. voice. perhaps most notable among the ways that teachers created a persona were the ways that they spoke to their students. a consideration of voice involved not only simply volume and pitch, but also the kinds of speech the teachers used in their classrooms. whether through the use of questioning at various levels, calling students by name or by nicknames, or using sarcasm, teachers conveyed differing roles of the teacher and the teacher’s relationship to students through their choices. table 1 numerically represents these findings. table 1 instances of student address, questioning, and sarcasm code ann john mary rob tina address 14 27 26 12 10 name 13 18 26 8 8 nickname 2 12 0 4 2 questioning 21 35 32 31 17 high 5 5 12 10 1 low 16 30 24 21 16 sarcasm 1 4 13 1 25 table 1 shows a clear division in the teachers’ use of discursive language. mary and tina used sarcasm often in the classroom, while ann, john and rob did not. ann even acknowledged that this choice was made deliberately when she said, “i don’t think that it’s [sarcasm] appropriate for the classroom” (ann, personal interview, november 20, 2008). tina said that she did use sarcasm purposefully because she saw it as a part of her personality (tina, personal interview, november 23, 2008). c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 12 for coding purposes, high and low levels of questioning were defined using bloom’s taxonomy, with lower-level questions involving either clear yes or no answers that drew on recently-taught information or questions that asked students to comprehend instruction and respond to it briefly. higher-level questions asked students to synthesize or apply knowledge or predict outcomes. all of the teachers asked more lower-level questions than higher-level questions, but both mary and rob often used higher-level questions as well. this could be due to the age of the students in their classes—both taught seniors—although tina taught upperclassmen as well and she asked one higher-level question to 16 lower-level questions. the teachers’ views of their content areas contributed here; tina taught math and both she and the students saw the subject as being made up of more clearly right-or-wrong knowledge. ann and john taught middle school science and social studies, respectively, and also had many more lower-level questions than higher-level questions—5 to 16 and 5 to 30, respectively. these two teachers also tended to focus much more on the process of learning, such as how to take notes, read for information, and conduct research, and acknowledged that they saw middle school students as needing this kind of support instead of a content-heavy curriculum. this contributes to the explanation of why teachers differ in their personae: they believe that their students need certain things from teachers. finally, the ways that teachers addressed students conveyed the teachers’ personae. persona is constructed within social interactions (goffman, 1959), and the ways that people address others indicates their ideas about their roles in the interaction. for example, a teacher who calls students “honey” or “sweetie” with a gentle tone may be seen as presenting a motherly persona. although in the initial analysis the difference appeared to be between teachers who did and didn’t use nicknames, later analysis showed that a bigger difference appeared when teachers c r e a t in g a n d pr e se n t in g a t e a c h in g pe r so n a 13 did or didn’t address students at all. i observed all of the teachers for the same amount of time, but while rob and tina used student names or nicknames fewer than 12 times overall, mary and john addressed students 26 and 30 times, respectively. mary did not use nicknames for students, while john, who also coaches a sports team at the school, often referred to students as “my man,” or by nicknames that slightly changed their actual names, like “macster.” ann fell in the middle of this division, addressing students 15 times. she favored nicknames like “sweet pea” or “sweetheart,” when she did use nicknames. this set up a big sister/mom persona and relationship with the students. the use of names was one way that teachers conveyed a basic relationship with their students, whether it was straightforward and collegiate, as with mary, or enthusiastic and coach-like, as with john’s persona. physicality. teachers had active or stationary styles when it came to motion in the classroom: mary usually sat a large round table while discussing literature. tina generally stood in front of the smart board while teaching and rarely circulated throughout the room, perhaps because there was little room to maneuver between the students’ desks. john and ann frequently circulated throughout the room to check on student progress. john also frequently employed fist bumps with his student in class, which created a coach-like persona and drew on the signals of physical action and tone of voice, as it was often delivered in an expectant, excited manner. rob moved purposefully, and indicated how he developed an awareness of his movements, saying: i’m probably more self-aware of my body actions than most because of my law training…and i did ceremonies for the marine corps where everything from the curl of my hand to [where my feet are] was analyzed…i choose to sit down on the desk at times, or i’ll be on a [power point] slide and then change it and consciously go to the other c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 14 side—that’s kind of a classic persuasive use of body movement (rob, personal interview, november 25, 2008). rob’s deliberate and intentional use of physical movements to make points in the classroom created a lawyerly, college-like teaching persona. other teachers did not express this level of awareness of their movements, although all acknowledged their preferences for sitting, standing, or circulating. costume. the teachers’ clothing choices contributed to their personae in the way that the costume contributes to a character onstage. both rob and john dressed in a polished and preppy style. the first time i met rob, he was wearing a pink oxford shirt with his monogram embroidered on the chest. ann’s colorful, youthful clothing choices included cowboy boots, brightly colored college sweaters, and mini skirts. ann’s style contrasted with mary’s and tina’s comfortable-looking and generally dark-colored wardrobes. tina often wore knee-length jean skirts and solid-colored shirts, while mary favored pants and tops in dark colors. setting. decorations varied from many diverse materials to almost nothing. although teachers had little control over the size, shape, and furnishings of their classroom space, they used posters and decorations to outwardly represent their personae. in this way, they served as the set decorators of their classrooms. rob controlled the setting by planning several off-campus field trips and trips to the computer lab. some choices were a function of the teachers’ content areas; for example, ann had live animals in her room because she taught science. ann also displayed family pictures and large amounts of student work. this was a highly-charged election year as viewed from a conservative religious school, which led rob, a government teacher, both to take students to a polling place on election day and to break with his usual strategy of not telling students who would receive his vote. he attributed this choice to wanting to check in c r e a t in g a n d pr e se n t in g a t e a c h in g pe r so n a 15 with students about whether he was accurately presenting an unbiased view of politics. rob also displayed personal artifacts including framed diplomas. john decorated his space with college pennants, a large american flag, and a personal pez collection. in mary’s room, there were fewer decorations, including two small pictures from nature and a bulletin board on mla style. finally, tina used the smart board during lessons, but there were very few decorations on the walls other than a few slogan stickers such as “if i throw enough at ‘em, maybe something’ll stick,” which presumably represented the tongue-in-cheek side of her view of teaching. the psychological realm predating goffman, some of the origins of our conceptions of persona can be found in jung (1875-1961), whose work centered on personality as exhibited through social interaction; for example, the popular division of types into extravert and introvert is based on one’s own interest and attitudes toward others in social settings. extending from personality and intertwining with the psychological aspect of persona creation is teacher identity. selfpresentation within the context of social interaction is seen in the research as a step toward identity formation (perlman, 1986; zembylas, 2003). in other words, persona is enacted socially with various others on a daily basis, and identity is formed by processing the effects of the accumulation of these daily personae; this relationship between persona and identity highlights that the ways people think about themselves impact the ways they conduct themselves in public. for this study, the psychological dimension of persona creation included feelings about content, beliefs about teaching such as what the role of a teacher should be and what students like or need from a teacher, and personal teacher models, whether real or fictional. feelings about content. the participants’ feelings about their content areas influenced the personae they created in the classroom. ann’s enthusiasm for the nature of scientific c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 16 discovery meant that she wanted to present an enthusiastic persona for her students, while mary’s feelings about english as an interesting but serious and scholarly pursuit led to her serious and practical persona. both rob and john described a love for the civic opportunities and relevance of social studies and government, and they revealed this through their professional but democratic personae. they made their openness and desire to hear multiple students’ voices—as in a democratic society—a part of the personae that they presented to their classes. tina saw math as important but often boring, and her often impatient and sarcastic persona flowed from these beliefs. beliefs about teaching. in considering her views of teaching the students at trinity, tina drew on her own experience as a student in a religious school and her upbringing and said, i know that these kids drink, they do drugs, they’re not sheltered…a lot of the trinity teachers actually believe that they do absolutely no wrong, and so they treat them as if they do absolutely no wrong…i don’t want them for one second to think that i can be manipulated…i’m a control freak, and a lot of it had to do with that i grew up in an alcoholic family, a bad one. (personal interview, november 23, 2008) tina acknowledged that her often inflexible, sarcastic persona came from these aforementioned beliefs about the students. during one class, tina said, “so this is solving, in the other one we were just simplifying.” when a boy offered a long explanation for how to do the problems, tina said in a joking, sarcastic way, “well, that was made a whole lot easier” (field notes, november 10, 2008). ann’s caring, motherly persona contrasted but could also be attributed to her beliefs about teaching her particular students. she said, “well, i believe the best in all my students…my kids know i love them” (ann, personal interview, november 20, 2008). rob had held a high position in the military and attended law school, and recalled the styles of c r e a t in g a n d pr e se n t in g a t e a c h in g pe r so n a 17 teaching and leadership that were effective in those settings as he considered his own persona. mary said that she enjoyed her work and english literature but admitted that she felt that “so much of teaching is scut work” (personal interview, november 24, 2008). teacher models. a common expression that is supported by the literature is that teachers teach in the ways that they were taught (lortie, 1975), and the teachers in this study did describe using their own favorite teachers as models as they formed their personae. ann named a teacher model who was “very frenetic” and who “looked for you to get things right, which is what i try to do with my struggling students” (ann, personal interview, november 20, 2008). one particular movie proved to be polarizing between two teachers with different personae. john stated, “one of the great models is actually from a movie, dead poets’ society…i remember seeing that movie early in my college career and being inspired by it…just the connection that his character was able to make with his students, i think is very powerful, even more than academe” (john, personal interview, december 1, 2008). john frequently enacted a charismatic, enthusiastic persona similar to the teacher in the film. in contrast, mary listed the prim and proper mary poppins from literature (not the film, she indicated) as one of her models, and said that, “some of the teachers that are not role models for me are people like robin williams in dead poets’ society, sort of, you know, cutting edge maverick, throw the book out the window…that’s so not who i am” (personal interview, november 24, 2008). in her teaching, she set up an opposing persona to the teacher in dead poets’ society; she could be stern, inflexible, and sarcastic, and delved deeply and straightforwardly into the text in discussions. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 18 the social realm persona is enacted in social settings, with an “audience” (goffman, 1959). the social definitions of symbolic interactionists (blumer, 1969; schlenker, 1980; zurcher, 1983) extend to the classroom and persona: students form definitions and expectations for the role and behavior of the teacher and teachers respond to these expectations (lortie, 1975; vanderstraeten, 2004; weber & mitchell, 1995). in this study, the social realm of persona construction included the teachers’ relationships with students and their (the teachers’) responses to the school context. relationships with students. as they enacted persona socially, the relevant audiences for the teachers in this study were the classes of students they taught, and the kinds of relationships that the teachers created were an important part of their personae. ann wanted to convey motherly warmth and gentle support in her relationships with students, and indicated that she would hug students when they were upset. during class, john and rob brought up experiences with students that they had had while coaching sporting activities, which highlighted their views of teacher-as-coach. tina responded to the students’ academic performance, at times openly conveying frustration when they hadn’t completed assignments or weren’t paying attention. mary listened to the students’ thoughts but pushed them to interact with and think critically about the material (in this case, novels) instead of discussing their personal lives with her or their classmates. context response. in this private, religious school, students were encouraged to get involved in extra-curricular activities such as sports, and many of the teachers responded to this context by discussing their coaching duties (as rob and john did) or interest in student or professional sports (as tina and ann did) during class time. c r e a t in g a n d pr e se n t in g a t e a c h in g pe r so n a 19 additionally, trinity school used ability grouping and at times the teachers adjusted their personae depending on the level of students that they were teaching. this became evident in observations and the teachers confirmed in the interviews that their choices were intentional. in this way, the prior and present actions of the “audience” of students informed the teacher’s performance. for example, tina was often sarcastic in class, but the tone of the sarcasm was more positive in the honors class, while in the regular class, it was harsher and directed at students’ misbehavior or lack of involvement with the class activities. when teaching a mathematical formula, tina said to a regular class, “oh yeah. this is for two by two. it’s gonna get big. abc, def, ghi.” student: [sarcastically] “i hate you.” t: “write it down. i’ll never ask you to like me, i’ll never ask you to like this class, and i’m not asking you to cure cancer” (field notes, tina, october 20, 2008). in the honors class, she said, “you have to be meticulous [she pronounces it carefully]. [to two students] guys, stop petting.” student: “were you petting her?” t: “yes, like a dog. i’ll check the numbers. you understand how, though? maybe? because i’m so nice, i printed this out for you” (field notes, tina, october 6, 2008). she changed her persona slightly based on the “audience,” and could be slightly more abrupt and negative with lower-performing students. some of these differences between class levels were subtle and were enacted through slight changes such as the level of the questions asked of the students. for a comparison of the numbers of questions by level, see table 1. at trinity, teachers pray with their classes at least once each day, and the ways that the teachers responded to this requirement contributed to their overall presentation of persona. because prayer was the one subject common to the participants in the context of trinity school (except mary, who did not teach during the prayer time), their treatment of the prayers indicated their preferred teaching style, which was a part of the persona. while rob began a prayer with a c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 20 joke and then chose some quotes from the bible and explained their significance, ann and john would ask for prayer requests from students and spend about ten minutes asking for strength and comfort for the students. in contrast, tina once prayed for students in the class who were failing and may not be asked back to the school. discussion the theoretical framework for this study served as an a priori hypothesis, and the process indicated therein did occur for each of the participants. they considered the context of their classroom and school and used non-verbal and discursive signals in order to manage the students’ impressions of them. goffman’s interaction order (1983, as cited in malone, 1997) indicates that face-to-face interaction involves “bodily displays [that] are enacted and read as if part of a natural theater.” the participants engaged in this “natural theater,” which included hand gestures, eye movements and gaze, facial expressions, and physical positioning in the classroom and in relation to the students. the importance of clothing and appearance, particularly for ann, highlights some participants’ attention to their physical presentation of self. non-verbal signals such as these, combined with speech and use of objects, form what gee (2000) calls a “combination” (109). the participants developed and presented personae in various ways, and indicated varying levels of awareness that they were doing so. research supports the actions of the teachers, including goffman’s theory of the presentation of self, which states: sometimes the individual will act in a thoroughly calculating manner, expressing himself in a given way solely in order to give the kind of impression to others that is likely to evoke from them a specific response he is concerned to obtain. sometimes the individual will be calculating in his activity but be relatively unaware that this is the case. c r e a t in g a n d pr e se n t in g a t e a c h in g pe r so n a 21 sometimes he will intentionally and consciously express himself in a particular way, but chiefly because the tradition of his group or social status require this kind of expression and not because of any particular response (other than vague acceptance or approval) that is likely to be evoked from those impressed by the expression. sometimes the traditions of an individual's role will lead him to give a well-designed impression of a particular kind and yet be may be neither consciously nor unconsciously disposed to create such an impression (1959, p.7). personal biographies can impact teacher role identity (knowles, 1992; solomon, worthy, & carter, 1993), and in this study, patterns of interaction from the participants’ family lives were also important when presenting a persona. this was especially true for tina, who recalled toxic relationships with her siblings and parents and who admitted that she sometimes resorted to negative interactions with students. the findings raise many questions which may be addressed in future studies. one of the biggest remaining questions is that of teacher choice of content area and student age level (as in middle or high school). it is unclear whether teachers made choices in response to the students in the room or whether teachers chose the kinds of situations that suited their own personal teaching preferences and personae. more work is needed in this area to know the reasons behind this complex process of persona creation. nevertheless, the research findings do have some important implications for research on teaching and teacher education. implications first, if teachers operate within these three realms, then it is reasonable to investigate how teacher educators might prepare their programs to align with these areas. results also suggest that reflection on the development and presentation of one’s personae may support teacher c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 22 awareness of their actions and interactions. this is a small sample of teachers at one private school, so more studies like this are necessary to know whether the persona-creating choices made by these teachers are similar to those made by teachers in larger and/or public schools. second, this study does not focus on effects of certain personae on students, but my observations suggest that students do respond differently to different teacher personae. future studies must consider the impact of teacher personae on both student achievement and student attitudes about learning. conclusion the kinds of personae that teachers enact in front of their student audiences vary a great deal. how do teachers develop and present their personae? this study aims to answer this question; the findings show that the physical, social, and psychological realms are vital as teachers construct their public selves in the classroom. participants signaled their differences in persona through visual and auditory cues like vocal tone, student address, classroom decoration, and teacher dress. they interacted with students in different ways and drew on a variety of experiences as they went “onstage” day after day. to what degree are the teachers’ personae intentional? this question was beyond the scope of this study, but would definitely provide a rich source of data for future studies. if we can determine if and how certain teachers construct their personae purposefully in the classroom and the effects of those personae on pupils, then we may take a step toward increasing teacher effectiveness in the future. c r e a t in g a n d pr e se n t in g a t e a c h in g pe r so n a 23 references blumer, h. (1969). symbolic interactionism: perspective and method. berkeley: university of california press. brissett, d. & edgeley, c. (eds.). (1990). life as theatre: a dramaturgical sourcebook. new york: walter de gruyter. eisner, e. (2002). the educational imagination: on the design and evaluation of school programs. upper saddle river, nj: prentice hall. erickson, f. (1986). qualitative methods in research on teaching. in m. wittrock (ed.), handbook of research on teaching, (3rd ed.), pp. 119-161. new york: macmillan. gardner, w., & avolio, b. (1998). the charismatic relationship: a dramaturgical perspective. the academy of management review, 23(1), 32-58. geertz, c. (1973). the interpretation of cultures. new york: basic books. goffman, e. (1959). the presentation of self in everyday life. new york: doubleday. goffman, e. (1983). the interaction order: american sociological association, 1982 presidential address. american sociological review. guba, e.g. & lincoln, y.s. (1994). competing paradigms in qualitative research. in n.k. denzin & y.s. lincoln (eds.), handbook of qualitative research (pp. 105-117). thousand oaks, ca: sage. kagan, d. (1992). professional growth among preservice and beginning teachers. review of educational research, 62(2), 129-169. knowles, g., & holt-reynolds, d. (1991). shaping pedagogies through personal histories in preservice teacher education. teachers college record, (93)1, 87-113. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 24 labaree, d. (2000). on the nature of teaching and teacher education: difficult practices that look easy. journal of teacher education, (51)3, 228-233. lortie, d. (1975). schoolteacher: a sociological study. chicago: university of chicago press. mead. g.h. (1982). the individual and the social self: unpublished work of george herbert mead. chicago: university of chicago press. miles, m. b., & huberman, a. m. (1994). qualitative data analysis: an expanded sourcebook (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. minot, w. (1989). personality and persona: developing the self. rhetoric review, 7(2), 352 363. parini, j. cultivating a teaching persona. chronicle of higher education, september 5, 1997. perlman, h. h. (1986). persona: social role and personality. chicago: university of chicago press. richards, l. (2005). handling ideas (chapter 6). in handling qualitative data: a practical guide (p. 146-161). thousand oaks, ca: sage. sadoski, m. (1992). imagination, cognition, and persona. rhetoric review, 10(2), 266-278. schlenker, b. (1980). impression management. monterey, ca: brooks/cole. vanderstraeten, r. (2004). emerging mechanisms of educational interaction. educational review, 56(1), 43-52. weber, s., & mitchell, c. (1995). that’s funny, you don’t look like a teacher: interrogating images and identity in popular culture. philadelphia, pa: the falmer press. zeichner, k. m., & gore, j. m. (1990). teacher socialization. in w. r. houston (ed.), handbook of research on teacher education (pp. 329348). new york: macmillan. c r e a t in g a n d pr e se n t in g a t e a c h in g pe r so n a 25 zembylas, m. (2003). interrogating “teacher identity”: emotion, resistance, and self formation. educational theory, 53(1), 107-127. zurcher, l. (1983). social roles: conformity, conflict, and creativity. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 26 appendix i list of codes tree node address tree node affect tree node content relevance tree node humor tree node motion tree node politics tree node questioning tree node sarcasm tree node teacher models free node age free node backstage free node collective teachers free node costume free node gender roles free node ignoring free node inflexibility free node micromanaging free node onstage free node personal story free node prayer free node process of learning free node setting free node sports free node student excitement free node student frustration free node teacher sensitivity to student needs free node text reference c r e a t in g a n d pr e se n t in g a t e a c h in g pe r so n a 27 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word pre-service teachers’ perception and beliefs of readiness to teach mathematics.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x pre-service teachers’ perception and beliefs of readiness to teach mathematics clarissa rosas and mary west college of mount st. joseph citation rosas, c. & west, m. (2011). pre-service teachers’ perception and beliefs of readiness to teach mathematics. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/ abstract this study explored pre-service teachers’ perceptions regarding their readiness to teach mathematical concepts and their preparation to integrate mathematical topics in instruction. participants consisted of pre-service teachers who agreed to participate in a state-wide survey. for the purpose of this study, data was disaggregated into two groups: pre-service teachers who attended a private teacher education program and pre-service teachers who attended a public teacher education program. results of this study indicate that pre-service teachers from both private and public colleges felt adequately prepared to teach mathematics and were indifferent in their perception of their ability to integrate mathematical concepts. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 2 keywords: teacher preparation; mathematical readiness; teacher perception; integration of topics; private teacher preparation; public teacher preparation; higher education teacher preparation; mathematical integration; mathematic education; and mathematical education preparation. r e a d in e ss t o t e a c h m a t h e m a t ic s 3 about the author(s) author: clarissa rosas, ph.d. affiliation: college of mount saint joseph address: 5701 delhi road, cincinnati, ohio 45233 email: clarissa_rosas@mail.msj.edu biographical information: dr. rosas is the director of the graduate multicultural special education program at the college of mount st. joseph. her research interests include multicultural special education, teacher education and effective online course delivery. dr. rosas has extensive experience in curriculum development for both pre-service and in-service teachers at the school, district and higher education level. dr. rosas holds a ph.d. in multicultural/bilingual special education and an ed.s. in school administration from the university of new mexico. studies, etc.). author: mary west, ph.d. affiliation: college of mount saint joseph address: 6701 delhi road, cincinnati, ohio 45233 email: mary_west@mail.msj.edu biographical information: dr. west is the director of the graduate adolescent & young adult graduate program at the college of mount saint joseph. dr. west earned her doctorate at ohio state university. her research interests include issues in science education, educational technology and teacher thinking. she is an ohio board of regents math and science teacher fellow and recent recipient of a two-year teach ohio grant from the team aya program. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 4 pre-service teachers’ perception and beliefs of readiness to teach mathematics in an effort to raise the academic achievement of all children, the no child left behind act of 2001 (nclb, 2001) mandates that all teachers be highly qualified in the content area they teach and that all student subgroups meet the academic standards set forth by individual states. at the heart of this mandate is the requirement that teacher preparation institutions graduate teachers who have the subject content knowledge to instruct all children in grades k-12. this type of mandate reflects the increased concern in recent years of the failure to adequately staff schools in grades k-12 with qualified teachers. a review of the literature also indicates that there is a heightened concern for both the quantity and quality of teachers to fill mathematics teaching positions (ingersoll & perda, 2009; boe, 2006; u.s. department of education, 2002; national commission on mathematics and science teaching, 2000). institutions of higher education (ihes) that provide teacher training programs are faced with the challenge to ensure that graduates are prepared to teach mathematics to students in grades k-12. two bodies of research warrant consideration from institutions of higher education that provide teacher training programs: (1) teachers’ mathematical background and (2) pedagogical knowledge. mathematical background the literature indicates that teachers’ background subject knowledge directly influences student achievement (barth, 2002; ingersoll, 2003; darling-hammond & bransford, 2005; heritage & vendlinski, 2006; hill, rowan & ball, 2005; national mathematics advisory panel, 2008). this view is supported by studies which spans over several decades documenting that many teachers enter the classroom without a comprehensive understanding of mathematics (hill, rowen, & ball, 1995; ball & bass, 2000; ball, 1990; usiskin, 2001). such findings claim that the lack of teachers’ mathematical understanding significantly impact students’ opportunities for r e a d in e ss t o t e a c h m a t h e m a t ic s 5 learning, as teacher content knowledge is a vital component for academic success (darling hammond, 2000). in order to explain mathematical concepts and provide connections and rationales behind mathematical operations, teachers need a profound understanding of the subject (ma, 1999). rosas & campbell’s (2010) study found that pre-service teachers had a limited understanding of mathematics. their study, which focused on mathematical achievement of preservice teachers at a small private ihe in southwestern ohio, revealed that these graduate students completed an average of three undergraduate mathematic courses (m = 3.5; sd= 2.09), with the majority (77%) of the coursework at the basic level. this finding of a basic level of mathematic coursework supports floden & meiketti’s (2005) literature review, which found that teachers only had a cursory understanding of mathematics and lacked the ability to elucidate important concepts. “if the ability to explain basic concepts is important for teaching, then the subject matter courses teachers now typically take leave a large fraction of teachers without important subject matter knowledge” (p. 283). rosas & campbell’s (2010) study found that pre-service teachers in the graduate program had an inadequate, basic mathematics background to prepare k-12 students for ohio’s required standardized tests. when pre-service teacher participants were given the ohio achievement math practice test at the 8th grade level, the majority of the pre-service teacher participants (69%, n=26) correctly answered 50% or less of the math questions, which covered concepts of measurement, data and probability, patterns/algebra, and number sense. the belief that student achievement is directly linked to teachers’ subject knowledge and their understanding of how individuals learn is based on intuition and logic. a reasonable assumption would be that teachers must know the subject content they teach. however, according to floden & menikeetti (2005), there is little empirical research to support such a claim. floden & meniketti (2005) reviewed c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 6 the literature and found few empirical studies that conclusively affirmed the common belief that teachers’ background knowledge directly impacts student achievement. of the forty empirical studies reviewed by floden & meniketti (2005), the majority used classroom assessments to measure student achievement, severely limiting the generalizability of the findings. the few empirical studies that linked teachers’ mathematical content knowledge to student achievement were vague. there was a lack of specific information which linked mathematical coursework and content completed by the teachers during their teacher preparation programs to students’ mathematical achievement. this inability to specifically identify the mathematics content courses can be attributed to two main issues: (1) the variability of college courses within and across ihes and (2) the fact that student data on mathematic achievement was not established until the 1990s. the shortage of empirical studies to define the relationship between content knowledge from ihes’ teacher preparation courses and k-12 student achievement compounds the issue further. pedagogical knowledge in addition to the research on mathematical background knowledge, institutes of higher education that provide teacher training programs also must be cognizant of teacher candidates’ pedagogical background and its effect on teaching performance. it is important to note that while content knowledge represents a general aptitude, pedagogical content knowledge refers to an understanding of how to teach the subject (shulman, 1986). several researchers (usiskin, 2001; conference board of mathematical sciences, 2001; shulman, 1986; darling hammond, 2000) stress that pre-service teacher education programs need to focus on distinctive courses that expand upon future teachers’ conceptual and pedagogical knowledge in mathematics. teacher r e a d in e ss t o t e a c h m a t h e m a t ic s 7 training programs typically require pre-service teachers to complete methods of teaching coursework and field experiences. in an effort to determine the effectiveness of methodology coursework and field experience, clift & brady (2005) reviewed the research from 1995 through 2001and found that most studies focused on pre-service teachers’ beliefs and perceptions of teaching. in general, the reviewed research indicated that teacher candidates who participated in mathematics methodology courses and field experiences reported confidence in their ability “to write lesson plans,… to focus on learning as exploratory rather than rote, …the importance of the teacher’s role, and … method and understandings of problem-solving process and skills (p.318)”. however, clift & brady (2005) found studies which indicated that while methodology courses focused on instruction that included national council of teachers of mathematics (nctm) standards, in practice there was little evidence that pre-service teachers included the standards in instruction during field experiences. even more confounding, clift & brady found that cooperating teachers understanding of standard-based instruction improved through their experiences with pre-service teachers, their. the research further indicated a consistent theme of a paradigm shift from the teacher as the “authority and provider of knowledge to teacher as facilitator” (p.319). such contrasting findings obviously indicate that more in-depth research, which directly connects teacher preparation to student achievement, is needed in the field of mathematics instruction. the first step to this type of research requires an investigation into the pre-service teachers’ perception about their readiness to teach mathematics. in summary, the literature revealed that the research on teachers’ mathematics content knowledge and teaching methodology was limited and therefore inconclusive. the purpose of this study was to provide more specific information about pre-service teachers’ perceptions of c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 8 their readiness to teach mathematics, their mathematical knowledge base, and their ability to integrate mathematics in the curriculum. this study will add to the body of knowledge on mathematics teacher training. the research questions that guided this study were as follows: 1. what are pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their readiness to teach mathematical concepts? 2. what are pre-service teachers’ beliefs on the integration of mathematical topics in instruction? methodology this study explored ohio’s pre-service teachers’ perceptions regarding their readiness to teach mathematical concepts and their preparation to integrate mathematical topics in instruction. data was disaggregated from an ohio 2006-2007 statewide survey and analyzed using descriptive statistics. participants participants for this study consisted of pre-service teachers who agreed to participate in the teacher quality partnership (tqp, 2007). in 2003, 50 institutes of higher education formed a partnership known as the teacher quality partnership (tqp) to identify effective teacher preparation practices and their impact on students. the participating ihes consisted of thirtyeight private colleges and/or universities and twelve public universities which offered teacher preparation programs. during the final semester of coursework, pre-service teachers at each participating institute were asked to volunteer in the tqp study by completing an eleven-page survey regarding their beliefs about the quality of their teacher preparation program and their concerns regarding teaching. data from each institution was compiled and a data base was formed. for the purpose of this study, the data was divided into two groups: 1) pre-service r e a d in e ss t o t e a c h m a t h e m a t ic s 9 teachers who attended a private ihe and 2) pre-service teachers who attended a public ihe. demographic questions on the survey revealed that the majority of the participants from both private and public ihes were white and non-hispanic females. table 1 presents the demographics of the pre-service participants. table 1 demographic data of pre-service participants by percentage ____________________________________________________________________________ institutes of higher education participant percentage of percentage of n male female white other _____________________________________________________________________________ private 2559 20.75 75.89 91.48 4.37 public 2747 21.59 76.52 91.01 6.71 ______________________________________________________________________________ tqp, 2008 (2006-2007 data set) instrumentation the pre-service survey was developed by a team of ohio faculty representatives from ihes participating in tqp. the survey measure has been used each semester since 2004 with pre-service teachers and since 2005 for in-service teachers in ohio. the pre-service survey consisted of 167 questions/statements regarding teachers’ perceptions of their preparation programs, professional knowledge and skills, teacher efficacy, and concerns about teaching. using a 5-point likert type scale, participants were asked to rate each question or statement. researchers who coordinated the development of the survey asserted that the survey was a reliable measure of teachers’ perceptions, as responses from approximately 7,000 teachers yielded similar mean scores (loadmen, 2007). c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 10 for the purpose of this study, data generated from the survey pertaining to mathematics were disaggregated for the academic year of 2006-2007. the data was then categorized into two groups. the first group consisted of pre-service participants from ohio’s private ihes and the second group was pre-service teachers from ohio’s public ihes. descriptive statistics was used to examine pre-service teachers’ perceptions about their background mathematical knowledge and their beliefs on the integration of mathematical topics in instruction. t-tests were completed to determine if there was a significant difference between the responses of pre-service teachers trained at public versus private ihes. results disaggregated data from the survey was analyzed to determine pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their readiness to teach mathematics. using a 5point likerttype scale, preservice teachers were asked to rate ten statements regarding how well their program prepared them to teach mathematics (on a scale from 1not at all;2poorly; 3adequately; 4well; to 5very well). the pre-service teachers from private ohio ihes rated all ten questions related to their preparation to teach mathematics as adequate (m=3.31, s.d. = 0.15). the pre-service teachers from public ohio ihes also rated all ten questions/statements regarding their preparation to teach mathematics as adequate (m=3.29, s.d. = 0.14). table 2 provides the preservice teachers’ response to the ten questions regarding their preparation to teach mathematics. r e a d in e ss t o t e a c h m a t h e m a t ic s 11 table 2 ohio pre-service teachers’ perception on readiness to teach mathematics ______________________________________________________________________________ survey response to: how well teacher public institutes private institutes preparation prepared them to… n mean (sd) n mean (sd) ______________________________________________________________________________ use mathematical problem solving processes 2702 3.35 (1.27) 2506 3.32 (1.27) in teaching. teach mathematical representations 2700 3.50 (1.23) 2505 3.47 (1.26) (e.g. graphs, tables). use mathematics communication processes 2696 3.27 (1.28) 2502 3.24 (1.29) in teaching. integrate mathematics with other subject areas. 2703 3.38 (1.28) 2507 3.43 (1.28) teach mathematical concepts to student groups 2698 3.15 (1.32) 2503 3.16 (1.32) that are mixed in ability. teach connections among mathematical ideas. 2701 3.05 (1.34) 2497 3.05 (1.33) use discovery approaches in mathematics. 2698 3.19 (1.37) 2498 3.28 (1.36) use manipulatives (e.g. blocks) in mathematics. 699 3.50 (1.44) 2497 3.55 (1.44) take into account students’ prior conceptions 2696 3.34 (1.34) 2493 3.40 (1.35) about mathematics when planning curriculum & instruction. use textbook as a resource in mathematics rather 2694 3.20 (1.38) 2493 3.26 (1.37) than as the primary instructional tool. ____________________________________________________________________________ tqp, 2007 (data set for 2006-2007) 5-point likert scale type: 1= not at all; 2=poorly; 3=adequately; 4=well; 5=very well c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 12 a t-test was completed to determine if a significant difference existed between the responses per question of pre-service teachers trained at an ohio private versus public ihe. the survey statements regarded pre-service teachers’ perceptions of their readiness to teach mathematics. results of the t-test (α=.05) indicated that there was no significant difference in ratings between pre-service teachers’ from private and public ihes. results of the t-test are presented in table 3. table 3 t-test results of ohio pre-service teachers’ perception on readiness to teach mathematics ______________________________________________________________________________ survey response to: how well 95% ci teacher preparation prepared t df p mf sed ll ul them to… ____________________________________________________________________________ use mathematical problem 0.8517 5205 0.3944 0.03 0.035 -0.0392 0.0992 solving processes in teaching. teach mathematical represent 0.8689 5203 0.3849 0.03 0.035 -0.0378 0.0978 ations (e.g. graphs, tables). use mathematics communica 0.8411 5196 0.4003 0.03 0.036 -0.0401 0.1001 tion processes in teaching. integrate mathematics with 1.4088 5208 0.1590 0.05 0.035 -0.0500 0.0197 other subject areas. teach mathematical concepts 0.2730 5199 0.7849 -0.01 0.037 -0.0820 0.0620 to student groups that are mixed in ability. teach connections among 0.0000 5196 1.0000 0.00 0.037 -0.0728 0.0728 mathematical ideas. use discovery approaches 2.3743 5194 0.0176 -0.09 0.038 -0.1645 -.0155 in mathematics. use manipulative (e.g. 1.2505 5194 0.2112 0.050 0.040 0.1286 0.0286 blocks) in mathematics. r e a d in e ss t o t e a c h m a t h e m a t ic s 13 take into account students’ 1.6057 5187 0.1084 0.060 0.037 -0.1334 0.0134 prior conceptions about math ematics when planning curriculum & instruction. use textbook as a resource in 1.5700 5185 0.1165 -0.060 0.038 -0.1351 0.0151 mathematics rather than as the primary instructional tool. ____________________________________________________________________________ note: ci= confidence interval; ll = lower limit; ul = upper limit; α=.05; equal variances not assumed; 5-point likert scale: 1=not at all, 2=poorly, 3 =adequately, 4=well, 5=very well the second question which guided this study pertained to pre-service teachers’ beliefs on the integration of mathematics. disaggregated data from the survey was analyzed to determine pre-service teachers’ beliefs on the integration of mathematical topics in instruction. overall, participants from both the private and public institutions rated the belief statements at m=3.40 (s.d. =0.3078), which indicates a similar level of indifference (“neither agree or disagree”). using a 5point likert-type scale, pre-service teachers were asked to rate their level of agreement or disagreement for eight statements. the statement that had the lowest rating from the pre-service teachers was the statement, “in my mathematics lessons, i aim for in-depth study of selected topics, even if it means sacrificing comprehensive coverage”. the pre-service teachers from public ihes rated this statement as “neither disagree or agree” (m=3.0; s.d. = 3.0). the pre-service teachers from private ihes rated the statement as “neither disagree or agree” (m= 2.97; s.d. = 1.14). the statement which pre-service teachers rated the highest was, “my job as a teacher is to encourage students to think and question mathematically”. the pre-service teachers from public ihes rated this statement as “neither disagree or agree” (m=3.86; s.d =1.14). the pre-service teachers from private ihes rated the c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 14 statement as “neither disagree or agree” (m= 3.85; s.d. = 1.16). overall, the pre-service teachers from private ihes rated all eight questions as “neither disagree or agree” (m=3.4; s.d. = 0.31). the pre-service teachers from public ihes also rated all eight questions as “neither disagree or agree” (m=3.3; s.d. 0.32). table 4 presents the findings on pre-service teachers’ belief on the integration mathematics topics in instruction. table 4 ohio pre-service teachers’ belief on the integration of mathematics topic in instruction ____________________________________________________________________________ survey statements public institutes private institutes n mean (sd) n mean (sd) ____________________________________________________________________________ my primary goal is to help students learn 2670 3.13 (1.18) 2476 3.14 (1.21) mathematical terminology. my primary goal is to help students achieve a 2670 3.70 (1.28) 2472 3.67 (1.27) deep conceptual understanding of mathematics. in my mathematics lessons, i aim for in-depth 2659 3.00 (1.13) 2470 2.97 (1.14) study of selected topics, even if it means sacrificing comprehensive coverage. my primary goal is to help students master 2664 3.43 (1.10) 2468 3.47 (1.12) computational skills. i generally teach basic facts and computation 2660 3.27 (1.18( 2471 3.30 (1.18) skills before discussing underlying principles of mathematics. in my mathematics lessons i aim for 2.663 3.08 (1.09) 2470 3.12 (1.13) comprehension coverage, even if it means sacrificing in-depth study. my job as a teacher is to encourage students to 2666 3.86 (1.14) 2475 3.85 (1.16) think and question mathematically. my job as a teacher is to transmit the knowledge 2664 3.66 (1.18) 2470 3.68 (1.20) and content of mathematics. ____________________________________________________________________________ r e a d in e ss t o t e a c h m a t h e m a t ic s 15 tqp 2007 (data set 2006-2007) 5-point likert scale: 1=strongly disagree: 2=somewhat disagree; 3=neither disagree or agree: 4=somewhat agree; 5=strongly agree t-tests were completed to determine if there was a significant difference between preservice teachers’ mean ratings of statements regarding beliefs on the integration of mathematics topic in instruction. results of the t-test (α=.05) indicated that there was no difference in the beliefs between pre-service teachers’ from private and public ihes. results of the t-tests (α=.05) are presented in table 5. table 5 t-test results of ohio pre-service teachers’ belief on the integration of mathematical topic in instruction ___________________________________________________________________________________________ survey questions 95% ci t df p md sed ll ul ____________________________________________________________________________ my primary goal is to help 0.3001 5144 0.7641 -0.0100 0.033 -0.0755 0.0555 students learn mathematical terminology. my primary goal is to help 0.8420 5129 0.3998 0.0300 0.036 -0.0323 0.0923 students achieve a deep conceptual understanding of mathematics. in my mathematics lessons, 1.2904 5131 0.1970 -0.0400 0.031 -0.1009 0.0209 i aim for in-depth study of selected topics, even if it means sacrificing comprehensive coverage. my primary goal is to help 1.2904 5131 0.1970 -0.0400 0.031 -0.1009 0.0209 students master compu tational skills. i generally teach basic facts 0.9099 5129 0.3629 -0.0300 -0.033 -0.0948 0.0348 c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 16 and computation skills before discussing underlying principles of mathematics. in my mathematics lessons 1.2907 5131 0.1969 -0.0400 0.031 -0.1009 0.0209 i aim for comprehension coverage, even if it means sacrificing in-depth study. my job as a teacher is to 0.3116 5139 0.7553 0.01000 0.032 -0.0530 0.0730 encourage students to think and question mathematically. my job as a teacher is to 0.6019 5132 0.5473 -0.02000 0.033 -0.0853 0.0453 transmit the knowledge and content of mathematics. note: ci= confidence interval; ll = lower limit; ul = upper limit; α=.05; equal variances not assumed; 5-point likert scale: 1=strongly disagree: 2=somewhat disagree; 3=neither disagree or agree: 4=somewhat agree; 5=strongly agree conclusion this study explored ohio pre-service teachers’ perceptions regarding their readiness to teach mathematical concepts and their preparation to integrate mathematical topics in instruction. historically, there is a body of research that indicates that teachers’ background subject knowledge influences their teaching (barth, 2002; ingersoll, 2003; darling-hammond & bransford, 2005; heritage & vendlinski, 2006; hill, rowan & ball, 2005; national mathematics advisory panel, 2008). however, results of this study indicate that pre-service teachers rate their perception of readiness to teach mathematics only in the adequate range (likert response of 3= adequate). the overall mean response for all ten survey questions from ohio’s public and private pre-service teachers was 3.30 (sd=0.146); the overall mean from the public pre-service teachers was 3.29 (sd=0.14), while the mean for private pre-service teachers was 3.31 (sd=0.15). an overall mean pre-service teacher perception of adequate readiness to teach mathematical r e a d in e ss t o t e a c h m a t h e m a t ic s 17 concepts, instead of a rating of well or very well on the likert scale, is noteworthy for several reasons. while there is a limited number of empirical studies that connects student achievement with teachers’ background knowledge, there is a body of research that indicates that student achievement is directly connected to teachers’ background knowledge (darling-hammond & bransford, 2005; heritage & vendlinski, 2006; national mathematics advisory panel, 2008). therefore, a rating of “adequate” in terms of readiness to teach mathematics concepts is concerning. teachers’ confidence levels to teach mathematical concepts should be at least at the well or very well prepared. further research is needed to determine if there is a connection between student achievement and pre-service teachers’ perceptions of being prepared to teach mathematics. results of this study support the research that spans over several decades documenting that many teachers enter the classroom without a comprehensive understanding of mathematics (ball & bass, 2000; ball, 1990). in particular, flodin and meiketti (2005) found that teachers only have a cursory understanding of mathematics, which could explain the perceptions of the pre-service teachers in this study. ma (1990) found that a profound understanding of mathematics is necessary to fully explain mathematical concepts and to provide meaningful connections behind mathematics in the classroom. therefore, the self-reported adequate level of readiness to teach mathematics by ohio pre-service teachers may be an indication that additional mathematics coursework is needed in teacher preparation programs. there are few empirical studies that specifically identify the mathematical content courses that pre-service teachers would require to have a comprehensive understanding of mathematics (floden & meniketti, 2005). this gap in educational research should be addressed in future studies. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 18 the second area of focus in this study was to determine pre-service teachers’ beliefs on the integration of mathematical topics in instruction. both private and public pre-service teachers indicated that they felt indifferent (“neither agree or disagree”) on their beliefs of the integration of mathematics. overall, participants from both the private and public institutions rated the belief statements at m=3.40 (s.d. =0.3078). this level of indifference may be more indicative of pre-service teachers’ lack of comprehensive understanding of mathematics and the critical need to integrate and apply mathematics throughout the curriculum with all k-12 subject areas. the statement that was rated the lowest by both private and public pre-service teachers which further sheds light on the participants’ beliefs was, “in my mathematics lessons, i aim for in-depth study of selected topics, even if it means sacrificing comprehensive coverage”. these findings support the body of research that stresses the importance on teacher preparation programs to focus on the expansion of pedagogical knowledge in mathematics (usiskin, 2001; conference board of mathematical sciences, 2001; shulman, 1986; darling hammond, 2000). in conclusion, the findings from this study indicate that future empirical research is needed in order to determine if pre-service teachers’ perceptions about their readiness to teach mathematics and their ability to integrate mathematical topics in instruction directly impacts student achievement. in addition, a follow-up investigation is needed to determine if the classroom teaching experiences of in-service teachers eventually change their perception of their preparation and readiness to teach mathematics. r e a d in e ss t o t e a c h m a t h e m a t ic s 19 references ball, d. (1990). the mathematical understandings that prospective teachers bring to teacher education. the elementary school journal, 90(4), 449-466. ball, d., & bass, h. (2000). interweaving content and pedagogy in teaching and learning to teach: knowing and using mathematics. in j. boaler (ed.), multiple perspectives on mathematics teaching and learning (pp.83-104). westport, ct: ablex publishing. ball, d., & wilson, s. (1990). knowing the subject and learning to teach it: examining assumptions about becoming a mathematics teacher. (research report 90-7). east lansing, mi: michigan state university, ncrte. barth, p. (2002). add it up: mathematics education in the u.s. does not compute. thinking k-16, 6(1), presented at the 12th educational trust national conference, washington, dc. boe, e.e. (2006). long term trends in the national demand, supply, and shortage of special education teachers. the journal of special education, 40(3), 138-150. clift, r., & brady, p. (2005). research on methods courses and field experiences. in cochran smith, m., & zeichner, k. studying teacher education: the report of the aera panel on research and teacher education (pp. 309-425). mahwah, new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. conference board of the mathematical sciences. (2001). the mathematical education teachers. providence ri and washington dc: american mathematical society mathematical association of america. darling-hammond, l. (2000). teacher quality and student achievement: a review of state policy issues in the undergraduate mathematics preparation of school teachers. education c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 20 policy analysis archives, 8(1). retrieved from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n1 darling-hammond, l. & bransford, j. (eds.). (2005). preparing teachers for a changing world: what teachers should learn and be able to do. san francisco: jossey bass. floden, r., & menikeetti, m. 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(2010). who’s teaching math to our most needy students? a descriptive study. teacher education and special education. v 33 (1). c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 22 shulman, l. (1986). those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching. educational researcher, v 15 (2): p. 4-14. teacher quality partnership (2007). tqp graduate survey progress report. presented at the spring ohio confederation of teacher organization (octeo) conference. columbus, ohio. usiskin, z. (2001). teachers’ mathematics: a collection of content deserving to be a field. the mathematics educator, 6 (1), 85-97 u.s. department of education. (2002). meeting the highly qualified teachers challenge: the secretary’s annual report on teacher quality. washington, dc: u.s. department of education, office of postsecondary education, office of policy, planning, and innovation. r e a d in e ss t o t e a c h m a t h e m a t ic s 23 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word 699-2799-6-le.docx 1 volume 14, number 2 may 28, 2011 issn 1099-839x do schools make a difference? a study of high school effects and first year college success wade smith jason droddy louisiana state university a. j. guarino massachusetts general institute of health schools across america are being ranked for their effectiveness on a number of student criteria, among them preparation of students for a successful college experience. this study investigates the relationship between graduating seniors, their successful first year retention in college and several personal and school related factors. the study also explores the relationships between school accountability rankings and the demographics of the respective schools in an effort to assess school effect sizes for student growth, a mandate of no child left behind (nclb). nearly 11,000 high school seniors from more than 280 schools were included in the analyses. when taken collectively, results from the study indicate that school accountability rankings provide little predictive value when assessing successful first year college retention. keywords: accountability, school effects, college retention “success in college is predicated upon success in high school.” intuitively this just makes sense, and as a result, students who perform well in high school are rewarded with scholarships and are courted by colleges seeking their admission. many states in an effort to bolster the high school experience are now offering concurrent or dual enrollment courses. in these courses, students are able to receive both carnegie units and college credits simultaneously and the interest in these opportunities is growing (u.s. department. of education, 2010). these efforts reflect the belief that the high school experience contributes to subsequent success in college. beyond the high school to college expectations, no child left behind applies pressure to states and school districts to develop and implement accountability measures with the express purpose of improving student learning and achievement. in louisiana, the site of this study, the accountability system has a goal of documented improvement in student achievement and it is reasonable to conclude that one of the desired outcomes is students that are well-prepared for success in higher education. this conclusion is supported by a state constitutional requirement that requires the louisiana board of elementary and secondary education (bese) to meet semi-annually with louisiana’s higher education coordinating board to coordinate programs (louisiana constitution,1974). although the data base is unique to louisiana, efforts to affect human and social capital as well as individual productivity via schools are by no means unique c u r r e n t i s s u e s in e d u c a tio n v o l. 1 4 n o . 2 2 to this particular state. historically, america has held a strong belief that schools provide students of all social classes with the means to achieve (traub, 2000) and school accountability models are expected to provide confirmation of their successes or failures. a core goal of accountability models in general, and in the particular case of louisiana’s accountability model, is the measurement of a school’s contribution to students’ academic success. therefore, schools can be viewed as the provider of environmental stimuli that are expected to shape and facilitate productive student behaviors. or, said another way, louisiana’s accountability model attempts to categorize the extent individual schools are preparing their students. these efforts borrow heavily from tenets of environmental determinism, a view most notably associated with b. f. skinner (e.g., 1971, 1974) and can be summarized succinctly by the phrase “the school makes the student.” no one would likely argue the statement to be literally true. however, the underlying basis for the statement is indeed a powerful contributor to school accountability efforts throughout the nation. accountability models are, therefore, efforts to document school level effects as they pertain to student achievement. environmental solutions provide a practical means of attempting to facilitate and document student learning. the solutions can be applied in a rather universal fashion, providing an efficient means of attempting to improve school and student productivity. this contrasts markedly with efforts that attempt to change the individual belief systems of students. processes such as these would, by necessity, tend to be idiosyncratic and time consuming. furthermore, how exactly would an accountability system accurately recognize and reward the school for these internal shifts in motivation or perseverance? for reasons such as these, it is understandable why accountability models such as louisiana’s tend to focus on measuring school effects. that said, it is important to remember that school effects are mediated by the collective and individual results of environmental conditioning being imported to the school by its student body, not to mention the role that strongly held internal beliefs of students, faculty, and indeed all stakeholders will ultimately play in determining just how strong the school level effects actually are. for these reasons there is compelling justification to analyze how the two contexts might interact. in other words,” to what extent do the students make the school or the schools make the students?” is a valid question. research conducted by payne and biddle (1999) and berliner and biddle (1995) attest to longstanding efforts towards these ends. louisiana’s school accountability model categorizes schools into five categories and these are designated by stars. five star schools are the highest ranking school and 1 star the lowest. accountability rankings are a combination of attendance, standardized test scores, and graduation rates (louisiana department of education, 2009). because a 5 star school has documented success for the accountability parameters, it is reasonable to assume these effects will translate into the success of the students who have enjoyed the collective benefits of the opportunities afforded them. conversely, poor performing schools have strict guidelines they must follow in order to work towards improving their school scores. if these efforts do not produce results a school is designated as” academically unacceptable.” if progress is not forthcoming the school is designated as a “failed school” and is taken over by the recovery school district (louisiana department of education, 2010). if a school’s success is the order of the day for documenting school accountability, it is reasonable to infer that a school’s accountability ranking is a valid indicator of success in delivering appropriate instruction. from this perspective, it is also reasonable to infer that student success in college should be influenced by the level of success schools have been able to generate regarding these effects. it is also sensible to posit that other variables contributing to a school’s accountability score may also influence a student’s success in their first year of college (cohn, cohn, balch, & bradley, 2004; debeard, spielmans, & julka, 2004; tinto, 1993). with that in mind, the study included variables that would indicate a student’s academic preparation, socioeconomic status (ses), and the ses of the student’s school. these variables were included to provide means of assessing effects that might be primarily attributed to a school along with those that would likely be outside the scope of the school’s primary influence. the variables were operationalized through widely recognized indicators of these factors (national association for college admissions counseling, 2008), such as high school grade point average on a college preparatory curriculum (coregpa) and eligibility status for the state’s merit-based scholarship called the taylor opportunity program for students (tops). additionally, in an effort to determine whether school effects might be extending to disadvantaged students pell grant status was also included as a study variable. finally, with the question of school level effects being raised, we believe it is essential to investigate the extent (if any) that school accountability rankings might be a function of a school’s attendant student demographics. this study has three primary objectives. first, this study investigates the predictability of school accountability status (star) upon first year college retention for students. a second concern is the nature of the relationships of successful first-year college retention to pell grant status, core gpa, tops eligibility, and proportion of students on free/reduced lunch. finally, the study investigates the relationships between school accountability rankings and attendant student populations. collectively, these analyses do schools make a difference? a study of high school effects and first year college success 3 table 1 number and percent of students in star status schools, tops, and pell eligibility variable status n percent 1 3229 29.7% 2 4969 45.8% 3 2308 21.3% 4 354 3.3% stars total 10860 100.0% no 3715 34.2% yes 7145 65.8% tops total 10860 100.0% no 6799 62.6% yes 4061 37.4% pell total 10860 100.0% table 2 at-risk students by star mean percents, sd, and n stars mean std. deviation n 1 62.7788 15.34221 3250 2 43.1878 12.18475 4988 3 31.2507 15.17589 2324 4 20.0289 10.73974 355 total 45.7258 18.60767 10917 table 3 mean core gpa and percent of at-risk students in sample n minimum maximum mean std. deviation core gpa 10860 .33 4.00 3.1004 .61332 covariate atrisk 10860 2.09 100.00 45.6965 18.57601 are belived to provide a picture of the interactions between school level effects and subsequent student success in the first year of college. methods the louisiana board of regents, the state’s higher education coordinating body, provided a dataset of 17,123 student-level records of students who graduated from a louisiana high school in 2006 and enrolled in a public fouryear university the same year. the sample was refined to 10,935 due to obvious data entry errors, missing data, and graduates of private and parochial schools that are not subject to the state’s accountability system. retention is defined as a 2006 louisiana public or non-public high school graduate who began at public fouryear university in fall 2006 and enrolled at any public postsecondary institution, twoor four-year. students who were retained in the public postsecondary system were identified with a “1”, and students were not retained or transferred out of the public system were assigned a “0”. c u r r e n t i s s u e s in e d u c a tio n v o l. 1 4 n o . 2 4 the louisiana school accountability system assigns a baseline school performance score (sps) comprised of data from three statewide student assessments, two subject area tests, attendance, drop-out rates, and graduation data (louisiana department of education, 2009). schools with higher baseline sps earn a higher rating from the state, and we assigned a value (star) equivalent to the number of stars each school achieved. a baseline sps of 140 or greater is equivalent to five stars, four stars to 120-39 points, three stars to 100-119 points, two stars to 80-99, and one star to an sps of 60-79. schools scoring below 60 are considered “academically unacceptable,” and we coded those as “0” (louisiana department of education, 2009). given the small number of schools designated as 4 and 5 star schools, it was decided to collapse these schools into one category (star4). unacceptable schools (o stars) and 1 star schools were also collapsed into one category for the same reason, providing the categories of star1, star2, star3, and star4 respectively. noting nclb’s stated interest in improving student performance across all sub-populations, it was deemed necessary to use a variable indicative of community wealth which could also imply social capital. heller and rasmussen (2002, august) created a “school ses” variable using the proportion of students at each school who qualified for freeor reduced-lunch and they used the term “at risk.” an atrisk variable was included to provide a means of analyzing relationships between a school’s demographics and its accountability ranking. at-risk is the proportion of students in each school who qualify for the free and reduced lunch program. the mean at-risk proportion in this sample is 45.73%, indicating that at the average louisiana public high school; nearly half of the student population qualify for free or reduced lunch (louisiana department of education, 2006). results data were analyzed using pasw (18) employing the following statistical tests, (a) multi-level modeling, (b) generalized estimating equation (gee) with ordinal logistic regression, (c) gee with binary logistic regression, and (d) trend analysis with simple contrasts. prior to analyses, descriptive statistics for the sample were collected. of interest were the disproportionate levels of students in 3 star or lower schools (96.7%) and the small number of students attending four or five star schools (3.3%). approximately 65% of the students in the sample were tops eligible while over 37% were pell eligible, suggesting that many of the students who are tops eligible could also be categorized as “at-risk.” it is also worth noting that the mean core gpa for the group was 3.10. this information is provided in tables 1-3. analysis 1: predictors of first year success in college to assess retention rates among the school districts, an unconditional multi-level model analysis revealed that there was significant variability among the districts in retention rates, indicating that a conditional model could explain additional variability. the conditional model included the following predictors, (a) pell grant (1= yes, 0 =no), (b) tops (1 = yes, 0 =no), and (c) star status (4 = highest level to 1 = lowest level) with free/reduced lunch and core gpa as covariates. results indicated that holding all other predictor variables constant; students attending star4 schools were more likely to persist compared to stars1 or 2 classified schools with odds ratios of 1.38 and 1.62 respectively. there were no statistically significant differences in retention between star 3 and 4 schools. pell grant recipients were less likely to persist with an odds ratio of 0.87. students achieving tops demonstrated no statistically significant differences in retention in this model, regardless of their school’s accountability ranking. this conditional model demonstrated a substantial improvement in model fit by reducing the quasi likelihood under the independence model criterion (qic) value from 48521.73 to 37609.37. analysis 2: predicting tops recipients by school accountability status generalized estimating equation (gee) with ordinal logistic regression was conducted to assess the effects tops status (1=yes, 0=no), pell grant status (1=yes, 0= no), core gpa, and atrisk values on star classification (1=poor to 4=highest rating). although previous analyses indicated no significant difference for the retention rates of tops students from high or low performing schools, the data indicate there is a significant relationship between a school’s accountability status and the likelihood of students receiving tops. data analysis indicate star 4 schools compared to star 1, 2, and 3 schools were more likely to produce tops recipients 1.66, 1.26, and 1.14 times respectively. analysis 3: predicting pell recipients by school accountability status results suggest that star 1 schools compared with star 2, 3, and 4 schools (while holding all other predictors constant), were more likely to produce pell recipients 1.81, 2.62, and 2.40 times respectively. analysis 4: is there a relationship between atrisk students and star classification? results indicated a statistically significant trend, f(3, 10917) = 2969.22, p < .001, eta-squared = .45. simple contrasts supported the linear trend that lower rated schools do schools make a difference? a study of high school effects and first year college success 5 reported higher levels of free/reduced lunches. these results are represented in figure 1. discussion taken collectively, our analyses provide little evidence to suggest that any of our findings confirm a substantive school level effect is translating into subsequent student success in the first year of college. in fact, the totality of our analyses suggests that neither school accountability models nor any of the other attendant variables in this study are accurate predictors of first-year college success for students. we did find that a school’s accountability ranking was predictive of the likelihood of astudent receiving tops, but one must wonder what the importance of this finding is when faced with data that indicate students achieving tops demonstrated no statistically significant differences for first year college success. furthermore, retention rates for students receiving tops from a one star school demonstrated no significant difference for retention rates than students from high performing schools. one could reasonably infer that a school’s higher ranking would indicate the likelihood of a school level effect providing some advantage to their students, but our analyses failed to document this possibility. with regard to predicting first year college success via a school’s accountability ranking, the analyses again demonstrated a statistically significant effect. students from higher performing schools do indeed tend to be successfully retained at a higher rate than those who graduate from 1 or 2 star schools. however, this too must be tempered with the findings that nearly 45% of a school’s accountability ranking can be accounted for by the level of atrisk students that attend. it seems possible (likely?) that the findings for school accountability rankings are operating as proxy measures for levels of human and social capital present in a school, at least as it pertains to first-yea college success. this possibility seems to be supported by the findings for pell grants that indicate pell recipients are less likely to persist when compared to those who do not receive the grant. in short, our initial analyses provided little evidence to advance an argument that a school’s accountability status has significant predictive value for their students’ first year college retention. we are not altogether surprised by this finding. there is a year of distance between the last direct influence a high school has upon a senior and the culmination of the freshmen year in college. a tremendous amount of variables beyond those included in this study can influence first year success in college, and those that are part of the first-year college experience seem to be far more important. additionally, the small sample size for high performing schools may also limit our conclusions. it should be noted that none of our data provide any personal profiles so we do not know how motivated these students were to attend college or the degree to which they are inclined to persevere. finally, and perhaps most importantly, we do not know the levels of attention colleges are providing to their incoming freshmen in an effort to maximize first-year retention. figure 1. simple trend analysis of at-risk populations vs star classification c u r r e n t i s s u e s in e d u c a tio n v o l. 1 4 n o . 2 6 it seems to us however that a broader issue emerges regarding school accountability. school accountability models are expected to discriminate between levels of school performance and the information about these schools is expected to inform public opinion regarding the quality of education received from a school. linn (2000) recognizes this reality and notes that the ready accessibility of accountability rankings is a major factor in their popularity. because of this ready access, innumerable parents have received accountability results and scrutinized high schools searching for the best possible educational experience with a belief that this decision will have a large bearing on subsequent college success for their child. in these cases parents are behaving rationally, using information provided to them via a state accountability model to maximize their child’s future educational opportunities. however, these decisions do not seem to be supported by the real world evidence. we are not arguing that choice of school decisions are without merit. there are obvious differences in instructional efficacy in louisiana schools subject to the state accountability model. to argue otherwise would be absurd. we return however to a foundational issue at this point: accountability models represent a concerted effort to document school level effects regarding student success. they posit that “schools make the student.” if that position is held regarding first-year success of graduating students it will be difficult to defend, given the results of this study. finally, no child left behind requires states to develop school accountability models. nclb also pays close attention to disadvantaged populations, requiring that data be disaggregated for this specific sub-population. our findings suggest that something far different may be happening from the outcomes nclb anticipates with atrisk populations. in spite of the considerable attention being paid to this sub-population in school accountability models there remains compelling empirical evidence indicating much work is left to be done. we do not want to overreach with our conclusions. however, this we know: in our study, nearly 280 schools with an average at-risk population of nearly 46% have individually tackled the problem of affecting substantial educational progress for their at-risk populations. yet, after all of these efforts we are still left with compelling collective evidence suggesting that at-risk students are dramatically less likely to succeed in their first year of college, regardless of how their school is rated in the accountability model. that this trend is evident so clearly after nearly a decade of nclb should give one pause when seeking solutions to the problem of elevating the educational advantages attained by students at-risk. our data also indicate that nearly 45% of the variance in school accountability scores can be explained by the percentage of at-risk population found at a particular school. this finding should be tracked over time to see if this trend changes or if it is reinforced. also, similar analyses should be conducted in different states to assess whether results generalize. as noted previously, at-risk students demonstrated no significant differences in retention rates regardless of their high school’s accountability ranking. essentially, there was nothing in the data to suggest that at-risk students from high performing schools were more likely to succeed in their first year of college. there is, however, compelling evidence that higher performing schools tend to have lower percentages of at-risk students. but, when we looked for any evidence that there was a school level effect facilitating this phenomenon none was demonstrated in our analysis. this finding supports traub’s conclusion that, in general, schools are not (cannot?) providing effects that effectively mediate for the myriad of external issues associated with atrisk populations. this implication, if it is borne out by further investigation, is significant. some states, louisiana included, are now designing or utilizing accountability systems that take performance scores from students as the primary component of a school accountability assessment (2 the advocate, 2010). in essence, the level of analysis is being extended from the school level to the teacher level. and, at least in the case of louisiana, the weight being assigned to variables other than assessment scores will “barely register in the assessment model,” as stated by the designer of louisiana’s model in the aforementioned newspaper article. if this is the case, it will be interesting to see if the trend analysis conducted for this study varies significantly. perhaps more important will be the retrospection that occurs regarding whether these efforts to document school level effects are, in fact, translating into subsequent student success. references 2 the advocate (2010). new law changes teacher evaluation. retrieved from http://www.2theadvocate.com/new/100953239.ht ml berliner, d. c., & biddle, b. j. 1995. the manufactured crisis: myths, fraud, and the attack on america’s public schools. reading, ma: perseus books. cohn, e., cohn, s., balch, d., & bradley, j. (2004). determinants of undergraduate gpas: sat scores, high-school gpa and highschool rank. economics of education review, 23(6), 577-586. deberard, m. s., spielmans, g. i., & julka, d. l. (2004). predictors of academic achievement and retention among college freshmen: a longitudinal study. college student journal, 38(1), 66-80. do schools make a difference? a study of high school effects and first year college success 7 heller, d. e., & rasmussen, c. (2002, august). merit scholarships and college access: evidence from florida and michigan. in d. e. heller & p. marin (eds.), who should we help? the negative social consequences of merit aid scholarships. linn, r. l. (2000). assessments and accountability. educational researcher, 29(2), 4-16. louisiana constitution. (1974). article viii, section 5(d). retrieved april 4, 2010 from http://www.legis.state.lsu.us/lss/lss.asp?doc=2065 76 louisiana department of education (2006). multiple statistics by site code for mfp and other public school funded student membership may 2006. may db: may 01, 2006 multi-stats by site-4 (funded membership). retrieved from http://www.louisianaschools.net/lde/pair/2289.html louisiana department of education (2009). 2006-2007 accountability summary results: a user guide for the state and district table. retrieved from http://www.louisianaschools.net/lde/uploads/1147 5.pdf louisiana department of education (2010). accountability page. retrieved august, 18, 2010 from http://www.doe.state.la.us/lde/portals/accountabilit y.html payne, k. j., & biddle, b. j. august-september 1999. poor school funding, child poverty and mathematics achievement. educational researcher 28(6), 4-13. skinner, b. f. (1971). beyond freedom and dignity. new york: knopf. skinner, b. f. (1974). about behaviorism. new york: knopf. tinto, v. (1993). leaving college: rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition (2nd ed.). chicago: the university of chicago press. traub, j. (jan. 16, 2000). schools are not the answer. the new york times magazine. cambridge, ma: harvard university. u.s. department of education (2010). high school students using dual enrollment programs to earn college credits, new reports say. retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2005/04/0 4062005a.html c u r r e n t i s s u e s in e d u c a tio n v o l. 1 4 n o . 2 8 article citation smith, w., droddy, j., & guarino, a.j. (2011). do schools make a difference? a study of high school effects and first year college success. current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/699 author notes wade smith, phd louisiana state university 14255 dalrymple drive baton rouge, la 70803 smithwa@lsu.edu wade smith is the superintendent of the louisiana state university laboratory school. he maintains an active research agenda related to school level effects on student learning and social cognitive theory. jason droddy, phd louisiana state university 156 thomas boyd hall baton rouge, la 70803 jdroddy@lsu.edu jason droddy serves as director in the chancellor’s office at lsu, specializing in external relations. his research interests include higher education funding and successful retention of college students. a. j. guarino, phd massachusetts general institute of health 36 first avenue, charlestown navy yard boston, ma 01880 ajguarino@mghihp.edu a. j. guarino is a professor of inter-disciplinary studies and nursing at the massachusetts general institute of health. he has co-authored the following statistics textbooks: applied multivariate research design and interpretation (2006), analysis of variance designs with spss and sas (2008), and data analysis using sas enterprise guide (2009). do schools make a difference? a study of high school effects and first year college success 9 volume 14, number 2 may 28, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors krista adams melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp angela hines younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy angeles maldonado carol masser john michael tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers volume 9, number 7 march, 2006 issn 1099-839x the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community audrey p. watkins western illinois university this qualitative study of how parents teach their children to excel academically in the african american community seeks to establish the validity of the pedagogical practices of working class african american families by investigating the educational leadership of two families on chicago's south side. the study acknowledges the significance of non school factors (schubert, 1986) that contribute to academic success. parent pedagogical strategies are consistent with research findings on the sponsored independence parent involvement style reported by clark, (1983). findings demonstrate the significance of intergenerational educational practices, expectations, experiential motivation, parent advocacy, rituals and other factors. “the reason i wanted her and my son to go to an ivy league school was because i felt that they would be able to have contact to do whatever they wanted to do. so what i’ve found is that if you don’t put boundaries on the children that you’re having a close relationship with they can go far, far, far” (billye jo). "we have to deprive our kids of things in order to spark ambition. if they have everything, what is there left for them to want? achievement usually comes out of a desire for something. i believe even if we have to do it artificially, we have to create deprivation in our children’s lives in order to inspire them to want something more" (constance).  despite acknowledgement and growing recognition of the importance of home and out-of-school factors (schubert, 1986) that contribute to academic success and educating the whole person, little attention is still being given to parents’ views of their roles in their children’s schooling and education. this study of the pedagogy of african american parents seeks to make visible the educational leadership of parents who design and implement curriculum at home to enable their children to attain educational excellence.  my admiration for billye jo ford’s successful work as a family educator led me to this area of research. billye jo has worked to successfully enable the outstanding scholastic achievement of her children and grandchildren. she is also a community teacher in that she is frequently solicited to teach adults to read and to prepare children to attain standardized test scores that qualify them to enter elite, prestigious schools. billye jo's success is particularly intriguing since a high school diploma is the extent of her schooling. current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 this level of formal education was not unusual for teachers in the african american community immediately after slavery. however, contemporary conceptions of educational experts and elite constructions of knowledge production obstruct and obscure the educational contributions of those without formal teaching credentials. in addition, the diverse dynamics of family and community education in the african american community must be documented, and our knowledge of teaching and learning is incomplete if the theory and practice of those considered noncredentialed are ignored. power and justice in a democratic society are linked to educational excellence and equity for disenfranchised groups such as african americans, whose continuing struggles for equal and quality education are multifaceted, shape american society, and serve to define the collective hopes, dreams, and strivings of a people for justice, dignity, and equality. the case studies presented here explore how two working class african american families on chicago's south side--one single-parent, and the other a two-parent family--strategized to prepare their children for academic excellence and scholastic success. these parents whom i refer to as billye jo and constance began educating their children at home with the goals of academic achievement beyond mere school completion. billye jo's husband, matthew, was also involved in their children's education. the parents aimed for excellent grades and prestigious institutions as their children's means of social capital and social mobility. these families attained these goals in that their children won scholarships to, are attending, or have graduated from educational institutions such as harvard, dartmouth, stanford, northwestern, and iowa state university. billye jo continues to instruct her grandchildren and others to achieve academic excellence. in the context of this study, i define educational excellence as superior acquisition, mastery, and demonstrated accomplishment in and of the cultural knowledge, skills and competencies highly valued by and required for mobility and success in america's macroculture as well as demonstration of that knowledge, competence, learning and achievement in outstanding standardized test scores. clearly parent pedagogies in african american communities are diverse, and this qualitative study is illustrative only of two families. this work is significant, however, because it has the important goal of documenting and establishing these parents' educational leadership as well as establishing the validity of the pedagogical practice of working class african american families. through semistructured conversational life history interviews with both mothers, an audio taped homework/tutoring session with billye jo and two of her grandchildren, and an interview with one of constance's children when she was a college sophomore, i examine the mothers' roles in their children's education, particularly their explicit teaching in the home which include the strategies and rituals parents used to fulfill their educational goals and related contextual factors that affect education and schooling. history and context n america, upward mobility is linked to education, specifically to a college education (hale, 2001, p. 25; jackson, 2001, p. 259; tidwell, 1988, p. 153; winter, 1993), and graduating from an ivy league school generally means access to privileged social status. as brunious (1998, p. 24-25) explains, however, this view is contested, particularly by social reproductionists who "argue that education does not level the playing field; rather it is a means of reproducing the social order, the dominant ideology and the work force. the school maintains class structure and takes an active role perpetuating and maintaining the existing social strata." for many african americans and others in oppressed groups academic achievement does not necessarily result in economic success and upward mobility (price, 2000, p. 6; bowles & gintis, 1977; spring, 1993). the construction of education as the great equalizer is a prominent idea which accompanies the view of gradualism (watkins, 2001). this ideology nurtures the hope/belief that african americans’ status will improve little by little by means of schooling over successive generations and neglects the more immediate struggles for justice and equality. gradualism and similar beliefs ensure that blacks, as a group, remain at the bottom of society because for many of america’s poor and minority children education perpetuates the status quo. as a group, african americans have always desired and striven for schooling. from the inception of public education for blacks, however, schooling offered to african americans has been largely separate and unequal. obtaining education and schooling for america's former slaves has been a struggle of epic proportions which still impacts our society socially, politically, economically, as well as morally and spiritually. during slavery, even learning to read was a criminal act in some areas for many slaves, and in 1810 most southern blacks were illiterate (jones, 1986; spring 2001). amott and matthaei (1991) report that: "history is clear that denying african americans access to education, and then arguing that their illiteracy proved their inferiority, was a central tool in white's subordination of blacks; proving whites wrong in theory and practice was a main concern of the free black community" (p. 154). the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 3 after slavery, former slaves’ compelling desire for schooling was firmly opposed by most whites, and burning schools and lynching teachers were some of the tactics used to keep blacks uneducated. in 1915, twenty-three southern cities with populations of over 20,000 including tampa, new orleans, charleston, and charlotte had no public high school for blacks. yet, these twenty-three cities had 36 high schools for whites (hine et al., 2003, p. 337). even with the establishment of public schooling, "one of the most important barriers african americans faced was the extremely poor conditions of black schools, especially those in the rural south. at the beginning of the 20 th century, nearly all black parents had low education levels and most black schools were in poor condition” (bauman, pp. 502, 504, 1998). once public education was established in america, there was much resistance to funding schools for blacks with public monies. the latter was the case, even in the north (hine et al., 2003, p. 161). after the brown v. board of education ruling in 1954 overturned plessy v. ferguson by declaring separate but equal education illegal, american mainstream society became even more creative in confining blacks to inferior education. tracking, ability grouping, special education designations (hale, 2001; jackson, 2001, p. 61; reglin, 1995, p. 73; rosciggno, 1998) unequal funding, different curriculums, underprepared teachers, outdated books and other means such as inferior resources and facilities are still being used to deny blacks educational equity. because of the latter, it is unconscionable to place the blame for the achievement gap and other educational problems solely on the black family while winking at the aforementioned inequities (franklin, p. 11, 2000). today's dropout rates and standardized test scores are constant reminders of america’s history and the need for equity and excellence in the education of all americans (jackson, 2001; steele, 1992). statistics illustrating the closing of the education gap must be scrutinized. "in 1940, 26 percent of whites, but only 7 percent of african americans over age 25 were high school graduates. currently, the figures are close for both races. however, the increasing number of black high school graduates does not mean blacks are being better educated (malveaux, 1998, p. 64). malveaux wonders about the quality of their [blacks’] high school education as well as the resources allocated for their education. jeremy price (2000, p. 6) continues this line of reasoning by observing that "although there has been a steady decline over the past 30 years in the number of african american youth dropping out of school, more than one out of five black youth in the 18 to 21 age group do not have the necessary skills for entry level jobs, apprenticeship programs, or post secondary education (gibbs, 1988)." corroborating evidence exists to support price's contention (yan, 1999). ideas of black inferiority seem to be perennially nourished around the standardized test score table; however, berry (1989, p. 288) believes that "the old labels of the past that have inferred cognitive, motivational, self-esteem, and learning deficits of black children, youth and college age young adults should be looked at with a jaundiced eye….cultural attributes found in the family, community and peer groups do not by themselves explain the lower levels of academic and social achievement experienced by some black people." on the other hand, berry (1989) and tucker (1999) do link the educational attainment of african americans to the need for school and community programs that emphasize solid parenting skills which are important to the future achievement of the child, his or her selfesteem, and the survival of black people" (berry, p. 291; cooper and datnow, 2000; sanders , 2000, p. 365). notwithstanding the historical and contemporary challenges, african american parents still strive for quality education to inoculate their children against unemployment and minimum wage jobs and as a means of social uplift. berry (1988, p. 288) echoes this claim that “contrary to much of the conventional wisdom, black families, even of the socalled underclass, believe in education and schooling as a pathway to a better life. frequently, however, the socioeconomic circumstances and experiences of the parents do not adequately provide the early educational orientation that prepares the child to be successful in a classroom that does not value the strengths of his or her life-style.” bauman (1998) reports that sociological surveys indicate, “african american students from disadvantaged backgrounds have higher educational and occupational aspirations than comparable whites (rosenberg and simmons 1972; hout and morgan 1975; hauser and anderson 1991)…. one cannot read much of the literature on black education without seeing many assertions of the desire, respect and even reverence for education held in the black community" (p. 504). despite this critical, compelling need for quality education, schooling and education, in the context of our society, are neither solutions nor panaceas for discrimination, inequality, injustice and oppression. however, the very existence of a black middle class indicates that some african americans current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 are able to use schooling and education to move out of poverty. the focus of this study is not the relationship between schooling and social mobility. rather, the goal of this research is to investigate the pedagogy of working class african american parents who help their children achieve educational excellence. features of the context and content of the pedagogical strategies and tactics of these parents should prove instructive to other parents and the educational community as well. review and rationale this examination of african american mothers' family pedagogies and parenting practices in the achievement of educational excellence addresses multiple areas such as informal education, parent involvement, and parent pedagogical practices. hoover-dempsey and o'connor's (2002) study of factors responsible for how parents construct their roles for involvement in their children's education derived findings which suggest, "it is the implementation of values and goals--parents' cognitions and actions related to those cognitions-that are most closely associated with student achievement"(p. 19). it is therefore important to examine various areas of these families' lives in order to reveal the values and goals reflected in their practice. clark's (1983) concept of sponsored and unsponsored independence forms part of the conceptual framework used in this study. his ethnographic case studies of ten black families compare and contrast child development strategies used by parents of five high achieving students with the strategies of parents of five students who are not high achievers. clark concluded that, “psychological processes and social communication patterns of family life come closest to capturing the essence of human learning experiences in homes” (p.3). he maintains that parents use either “sponsored independence” or an “unsponsored independence” style of parenting to prepare their children for major life roles. high achieving families use the “sponsored independence” style of communication in which parents use their influence in an authoritative manner, maintain high involvement and interest in their children’s activity in the home, and consistently monitor their children’s use of time and space. these parents also engage in frequent, almost ritualistic, parent and child activity which involves studying, reading, writing, conversing, and creating, regular parental explanation, advisement, and demonstration of everyday life skills. praising and acknowledging the child’s talents and abilities; consistent parental expectations and standards for responsible and restricted child behavior are factors as well as generally disciplined parental role behavior modeled to the child, and regular use of special parent-child role etiquettes to get the child’s compliance. in low achieving children’s homes the “unsponsored independence” parenting style is generally characterized by permissive or authoritarian parental behavior patterns as well as the opposite of the sponsored independence style described above. for example, there are infrequent parent child activities involving literacy tasks such as studying, reading, writing, information sharing and creating; limited parental teaching, advising and demonstrating of concepts and ideas to the child; inconsistent or non existent parental expectations and standards for “responsible” child behavior in home, classroom, and neighborhood settings; inconsistent discipline or irresponsible role behavior modeled before the child. other studies have supported these findings see yan (1999). clark concludes his investigation by calling for more studies which trace and analyze family educational practices over three generations of a family and the discovery of patterns of family pedagogy used by diverse strata, including never employed parents. he (1983, p. 213) observes that: "although several important research projects on family learning processes are now being done, there is not enough carefully done research on the role of parents' home teaching practices." this study of the pedagogy of these african american families in the inner cities is an addition to this literature. research by bempechat (1992) concurs with the data above: the literature on home influences in african american families suggests that the importance of parental educational socialization practices--both cognitive and academic--cannot be overstated. thus, it would be fruitful for parenting programs to focus in part on parental teaching strategies. parents who learn how to organize their homes around learning, and, in particular, how to engage their children to better meet the demands of the school, will better prepare their children to meet the demands of the school (p. 46). most of the strategies and tactics devised by the parents in this study can be considered forms of parent involvement, but there are myriad ways of conceptualizing parent involvement. yan’s (1999, p. 1) analysis follows: in the search for strategies that foster academic success among african american students, attention has been focused on increasing parental involvement in these students' schooling. however, parental the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 5 involvement has multiple meanings (cassanova, 1996), and it has been operationalized in studies in a variety of ways. nonetheless, parental involvement is widely recognized as an important contributor to the academic success of african american students (coleman, 1991; comer & haynes, 1991; cooper & datnow, in press; epstein, 1995; lareau, 1989). winters (1993, p. viii) conceives of parent participation as referring “to parents who become an integral part of their children's education." while this conception is necessary to defining constance’s and billye jo's roles in their children's educational achievement, i conceive their involvement as going beyond common meanings of “involvement” and see them, in addition, as being educational leaders who organize and use schooling as one of the many strands designed to produce specific characters and lifestyles for their children. much of the literature on parent involvement, parents as teachers, informal education, and parent participation construct or describe parents as clients who need motivation to assist their children with homework and other duties. some of these approaches define parent involvement in ways that exclude parent leadership and representations of parents as sources of transforming knowledge and pedagogy that can contribute to scholarship and to the field of education. the focus is generally for teachers and other school personnel to urge or direct parents to become involved in the school and/or with their children. recently, more emphasis has been placed on school family partnerships to improve educational outcomes (lewis, 1992). according to lewis, "no discussion of school reform and school or education policy issues these days seems complete without references to 'parent involvement.' most educators would agree this term goes far beyond the traditional view of parents as field trip chaperones and cookie bakers from preparing children for education choice, to new forms of school governance. nevertheless, much of the literature still defines parent involvement as those activities supporting what the schools define as involvement, and continues to address what parents should do" (lewis, 1992, p. 1). while efforts to enhance parent participation are commendable and clearly necessary, we must also examine what teachers, administrators, and the wider educational community can learn from the theory and practice of parents who have successfully mastered the art and science of teaching their children to succeed academically. in his study of the role of parental involvement in successful african american students, yan (1999, p. 1) decries how "studies examining the effect of parental involvement on african american students often focus on the factors that place these students at risk and ignore the ways in which african american families promote successful school achievement and experiences." louque (1999) agrees that insufficient studies have focused on successful black students. she critiques discussions of the educational achievement of blacks that blame black pathology for educational failure, but completely overlook black students who succeed despite overwhelmingly negative caricatures of their culture and home environments. louque further asserts that: “the effectiveness of education can be improved by what we learn from the ones who experience academic success. since most studies have focused on black underachievers, little is known about the influences that stimulate academic achievement by blacks, particularly females” (p. 2). jenkins (1989, p. 140) observes that: “successful academic achievement appears to be greatly influenced by good parenting skills and positive parental involvement.” he cites research, which indicates that parents’ educational level, reading activities and behaviors on the part of family and child enhance reading proficiency. the absence of these activities was found to be important in explaining lower achievement of black and hispanic children. jenkins (p. 141) discusses another study, which found that lavish praise, teaching responsibility, and buying trade books were critical to parents’ pedagogy. a national institute of education document (june 1985) explains that “programs fostering parent involvement in at-home teaching improve achievement, particularly for low-income elementary school children, but more elaborate parental programs and parent education are needed. the pedagogies of the two mothers who participated in this study exemplify the parenting practices discussed above. harris et al (1999, p. 490-491) write that: ...contemporary investigations examining the teaching practices of african american mothers (with the exception of low-income mothers) and the influence of education or schooling on the teaching practices of african american mothers are virtually nonexistent (brody & flor, 1997; heath and thomas, 1984; scott jones, 1987). this seems puzzling given that for the past few years, social scientists have argued for racehomogenous studies that explore the cultural aspects of child rearing, parenting style, and current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 behavior (peters, 1988). conversely, research on the teaching behaviors of caucasian mothers has expanded rapidly during the past two decades. the diversity in parenting and methodology of in home education among african americans demands examinations of a range of family types and settings. the literature discussed reveals the usefulness of this examination of various aspects of participants’ pedagogy from the early years of parenting until the children leave for college. in the case of billye jo, her family pedagogy continues with her grandchildren's schooling. a significant benefit of this research is this intergenerational educational experience. scott-jones, (1987) establishes the need for information about both contextual and intentional teaching by parents in the following: the current popular educational practice of encouraging parental help with children’s schoolwork needs to be carefully implemented and needs to be informed by more extensive research. conceptualizations of the mother’s role in her children’s school achievement must be developmentally based. research with older children as well as with preschoolers is needed to establish effective roles for parents to assume as children progress through school. the indirect ways in which parents influence their children, in addition to directly teaching skills, must be assessed….greater knowledge in these areas may lead to both families and schools being more successful in the socialization and education of children” (p.34). bempechat (1992, p.1) also stresses the research needs in this area: "while much research has underscored the importance of parental educational socializational practices in children's academic achievement, little is known about the ways in which high achieving black families differ from one another. the educational value orientations of families can be quite complex.... more research on within group differences will deepen an understanding of the home factors that mediate high achievement in african american families" multiple aspects of parents as teachers need to be investigated to illuminate and facilitate teaching and learning. laura desimone (1999, p. 15) advocates developing "a better understanding of the mechanisms through which parent involvement affects children’s school success.” billye jo and constance are not simply models of excellence from the african american community, but their educational experiences can contribute to an examination of how/whether or not the system of education held up as ideal works for diverse constituencies in a democracy. this study could also help to inform further exploration and assessment of the relationship between school and home in our society. finally, this study has implications for the educative process in general and for curriculum and methodology in formal and informal learning communities and can serve to enlighten classroom teachers and parents who need to be informed, encouraged, and connected as to the efficacy of their efforts towards the educational success of children. using parents’ narratives gained from conversational interviews i explored:  parents' beliefs about schooling and education  the role and source of parents’ motivation and action/agency for schooling and education  the role of literacy and parent selfeducation and research in their children’s achievements  parents’ practice--strategy and tactics used to educate their children/home/ methodologies parents’ formal and informal teaching/learning in the home introducing billye jo billye jo and matthew married after their high school graduation in 1955; she was 17, he was 20 years old. their daughter, sybil, was born the following year. matthew completed junior college during this period, but billye jo's schooling ended with her high school graduation. intelligence and a desire to work did not unlock job opportunities closed to blacks in memphis, and the frustratingly futile efforts to get a job as a postal clerk in memphis led matthew and the family to leave the jim crow south and join the “great migration” to chicago. unlike in memphis, passing the postal service test in chicago allowed matthew to begin a 32-year career as a postal clerk. he welcomed the chance to work and soon he was a full-time bus driver and a part-time postal worker. when he became a chicago police officer two years later, matthew continued working two jobs so that billye jo could remain at home and teach their children. billye jo's self educational efforts, talents, hard work, and educational strategizing led her to not only provide educational leadership for her family, but also to her being asked to serve as the teaching assistant in the first open classroom in chicago’s public school system. in addition, parents of students at the university of chicago laboratory schools recommended her as a tutor for children who needed the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 7 academic help. when billye jo told parents who requested her services that she did not have a college degree, they simply responded, “what’s your fee?” billye jo's family socialization despite their economic locations on the other side of the american dream, billye jo's parents created an atmosphere of confident hope. she and her siblings sat on orange crates because the only chairs were for the family’s adults. billye jo recalls however that: "the table always had a tablecloth on it.” the table was always set and floral arrangements from their garden mediated the starkness of poverty. despite the family’s circumstances, billye jo’s mother and grandmother provided informal education, which laid a foundation for the children’s adult lives. in addition to a flower and a vegetable garden, there was an herb garden, and everything was used to instruct: “my grandmother would walk with us and tell us the names of the flowers and the plants. she would pick off some leaves and say, ‘here's peppermint, smell this, taste this sweet gum.” an important piece of billye jo's family's education was the love of reading that her mother and grandmother inculcated into the children. billye jo says her mother and grandmother always read: “i think my mother probably had a fifth or sixth grade education and probably my grandmother even less, but the thing that impressed me the most was that we always had this big box and it was full of books, and my mother and grandmother read, you know, all the time. and when we got through with our homework we would sit and they would tell us folktales or riddles and read to us." the behaviors these women modeled, impacted the children's lives. billye jo spent most of her free time reading. she particularly liked reading fairy tales. in addition to reading, the curriculum of the home included arts and crafts projects, which ranged from sewing, quilt making, drawing, and painting to woodworking. arts and crafts are on billye jo’s home curriculum, just as it was when she herself was a child. one of her brothers earned his college tuition by tailoring. the result of this home training is obvious in billye jo’s life. tiffany’s of new york purchased some of her dolls for their “dolls and diamonds” exhibit. billye jo has conducted quilting and origami workshops in schools, and she has been commissioned to make quilts for schools and organizations such as jack and jill of america. she strives to learn and produce any art or craft that intrigues her. introducing constance the second participant, constance, was a housewife during her three children's infancy. her husband was a financial aid administrator at a university, and she says she held middle class status during her marriage. the couple divorced, and constance and her three children slipped into the underclass, coping with the pervasive poverty, which accompanied single parent status. "in a social climate in which only 23 percent of american children are growing up in two parent families and 85 percent of african american children are in single parent families" (hale, 2001, p. 6), constance and her children were surrounded by others in similar circumstances. yet, she raised her three high achieving children while dealing with abuse from her former husband and earning a bachelor's degree in communications. the degree helped her work her way up to becoming a public housing manager. while in this position, constance developed a training program to teach public housing residents who were supervisory trainees skills ranging from business etiquette to using a calculator and writing reports. constance’s family socialization i have more information on billye jo than i do on constance because i have been investigating billye jo’s practice for a longer time. constance had a difficult relationship with her mother. her mother believed in african derived religious practices and constance wanted no part of it. she remembers: because i resisted my mother’s attempts to include me in a religious practice called “roots”, we were never close. she was an interesting dichotomy; she sent us to church every sunday, but she wanted me to be a “root worker” as well . because i was steadfast in my refusal to participate in any of the rituals she practiced, i became the family goat. my mother was a terrifying woman. she drank, she smoked, she fought men and women all her life. i didn’t drink, i didn’t smoke. i was an “a” student and as straight as i could figure out how to be. she would look at me and get mad. when she got mad, she would beat me. she was a funny, fearless, intelligent woman who lived a life completely out of control. maintaining control over her children was of paramount importance to her. when i left her house, it was to marry yet another controlling personality. despite the above, constance credits her mother "for teaching me how to persevere in the face of extreme adversity." she remembers that her father motivated her to excel. she credits him: current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 for giving us a sense of self. my daddy insisted that all of his children were exceptional. he taught us that we were all blessed with high intelligence, which increased our responsibility to our race, our community, and our family name. we were taught to always be aware that other people are watching what we do. my father loved the church. he did not always live an exemplary life, but he loved god all of his life. in the church, they say that if you’re a christian, you’re supposed to be a stand up example, and i’ve used that most of my life. i have always wanted to create a positive environment where people are encouraged, where people are convinced that the dream they have is attainable. clark (1983, p. 112) explains that, “the case studies of high achieving students indicate the existence of an intergenerational transmission of behavior patterns.” the lives of billye jo and constance illustrate this transmission in multiple areas. both women are successful in their personal and professional endeavors. billye jo discovered an extraordinary talent when a friend took a sample doll billye jo had made to the american bar association and received 400 orders that first day. connie excels as housing manager in the public and private sectors and is currently assistant housing manager of a city in the eastern united states. method billye jo's enthusiasm for excellence in educational achievement fuels her desire to see parents infected with hope and equipped with strategies to help their children succeed and excel. constance is also gratified with her own and her children's educational successes and agreed to participate in this study. a third parent, billye jo's neighbor, whose son recently was graduated from harvard university with a double major, declined to participate. clark (1983, p. 9) observes that the “most promising new research on the topic of ‘families’ as educators is taking a more holistic view of family units as producers of knowledge.” my goal is to look holistically at these lives so as not to, a priori, exclude information that may inform our understanding of their family education. i use background information from a previous study of billye jo's practice which i conducted in 1994 for doctoral coursework because this knowledge is inextricably part of the data i use to conceptualize her pedagogy. i also use information from an audio taped tutoring session with the two grandchildren she worked closely with, simon and jill. i recorded an interview with constance's oldest daughter, pauline, in 1999 about her perceptions of her family's educational journey during her tenure at dartmouth. i recorded and transcribed life history conversational interviews with both mothers in 2000, and i conducted follow up interviews by telephone and in person in 2003. semi-structured conversational life history interviews enabled the excavation of embedded information about participants' lives and teaching. both mothers' philosophies and practices are interspersed/suffused/located in several areas of their experiences. not wanting to disembody them from their individuality, which is critical to examining and understanding their pedagogy, i look at them individually and jointly. the diversity and similarity in their approaches should be valuable to our understanding in many areas. i use narrative methodology (riessman, 1993) because it gives agency to participants and allows them to discuss how their life experiences shaped their decisions, strategies and tactics as successful family educators. interviews are similar to informal conversational ones used in etter-lewis' (1993) study of older professional black women. themes (eisner, 1988, p. 64) and patterns (polkinghorne, 1988) are identified and analyzed. both inand out-of school factors influence education and academic achievement, and this study acknowledges the conceptual framework derived from schubert's (1986) theorizing on the significance of the relationship between the in-school and nonschool curriculum. schubert suggests that answers to questions such as “what messages do students get about the value of schooling; what do they see it as being good for; do students come into contact with persons who are actively trying to become educated in their homes and families; is such an education of a formal or informal variety; do family members take an interest in or discuss ideas or projects dealt with in school; and what does the family environment teach," must inform the practice of educational stakeholders and therefore should be investigated. the answers to these questions will not only inform us as about the various influences on education but will also illuminate the pedagogy of the parents in this research. narrative data from this study address questions similar to schubert's that explore family education. the significance of the out-of-school curriculum and pedagogy of these parents in their children's academic success will be demonstrated. academic achievement of participant's children/grandchildren her children's elementary school teachers often told constance that her children set the curves on examinations. two of her three children majored in mathematics. however, her son mark was notable in that: the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 9 the teachers recognized that he needed challenging, so from seventh grade on every summer he went to a different college for high-level mathematics. and so they kept trying to engage him, and by his junior year he was taking his math at the university of chicago, because there wasn’t anything else for him to take. by third and fourth grade he figured out that school was easy, work was dumb. and so that was the struggle i had with him. mark did not learn until after he entered the master’s program how to study because he never needed to. mark earned a master's degree in electrical and computer engineering and is thriving in his profession. billye jo's daughter, sybil, was in kindergarten for only three weeks when the teacher requested a conference; “i was like what could sybil have done, why is she calling me? so i go up and she said, 'you know your daughter is very, very bright.' i was like, she is? and she said, 'yes, we want to move her from kindergarten to second grade.' and so i said okay she could go, you know, and sybil felt all right with it. and so then i started paying attention to what sybil was really doing.” sybil scored in the 99 percentile on her high school entrance examination and won scholarships to prestigious high schools such as the latin school and frances parker. billye jo and matthew, unaware of the reputation of these schools, sent sybil to a catholic girls’ school close to home, however, because they believed she would be safer. under her mother's tutelage, sybil became valedictorian of her class and won academic scholarships to institutions such as harvard, yale, and dartmouth. she became a lawyer and married a doctor. when sybil and her husband were expecting their first child, billye jo challenged herself to see if she could make her first grandchild a genius. billye jo's grandchildren, sybil's two children, represent the maturation of billye jo's pedagogy. billye jo began teaching jill soon after she was born, and at four years old, billye jo applied to have jill admitted to a program for the gifted at northwestern university. jill’s comprehension impressed the program’s instructors when they noticed that she knew the difference between “rain,” “reign,” and “rein.” jill enrolled in all honors classes at the university of chicago laboratory schools, won the brown university award for literature, and earned perfect sat verbal scores. she is now completing her freshman year at an ivy league university. her brother, simon, is just as accomplished, although not as disciplined, according to billye jo’s standard. he has been admitted to the high school rated by chicago magazine and the chicago sun times as one of the top five high schools in chicago where he has been invited to enroll in honors mathematics and science. contextualizing – struggles and dreams – education as motivation and motivation for education poverty was a ubiquitous, oppressing force in both families--a legacy they did not want their children to inherit. their lives were influenced by their struggles to survive and escape poverty. yet, they refused to allow poverty to define them and fix their destinies. both families saw schooling and education as a means of empowerment and upward social mobility, and they shared these values with their children explicitly, both verbally and nonverbally. in addition to single parenthood and financial disaster, constance coped with knowing that her husband was stalking her. billye jo and constance are both characteristic of clark’s (1983, p. 116) description of the high achieving students’ parents he describes as being: distinguished by their hopeful, forthright sensibilities about themselves and their children. specifically, they possessed a belief in their own ability to see to it somehow that their children’s needs would be provided for, a strong sense of goal direction and a hope and belief that things would get better, a penchant for managing their time and material resources prudently, a strong sense of self-reliance and independence, deep self-pride and personal integrity, a sense of the salience of the needs of their children.... they saw themselves and their own efforts as indispensable to attaining educational goals they willingly sacrificed to obtain. this willingness to sacrifice demonstrates their beliefs in and commitment to assuming responsibility for the education of their offspring. throughout her struggles, constance focused on her educational goals for the children as well as for herself. she explains: i was paying all of the little money i was making out in babysitting, and tuition and we were eating raviolis and ramen pride-three for a dollar. we were struggling, but i knew that--i kept my eyes on the prize--i knew that the struggle was worth it, and i was able to convince the children that we could do anything in a short period of time…but all through our lives education current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 was the key to the change and the children saw it once i got my degree. after earning her bachelor's degree, constance's salary climbed from $13,000 a year to $25,000, "and that seemed like a fortune. we were middle class at 25 grand." the children noted that they no longer shopped in thrift stores once their mother became manager of a department at sears. billye jo and matthew’s strategy meant that he worked two jobs so that she could remain at home and educate their child. despite his working two jobs, money was still scarce. “here comes one-suit-ford,” matthew’s coworkers would say. “what if you make this sacrifice and your daughter gets pregnant,” some of them would ask him. he was resolute, however, in his determination to see his daughter well educated. even before sybil was born, billye jo dreamed of the life she wanted for her daughter. andy hardy movies exposed billye jo to the link between a diploma from an ivy league school and upward mobility. “the girls attended mt. holyoke and others of the seven sisters. there’d be a big ball at harvard or dartmouth and the girls always looked fabulous." billye jo reminisces that the message she got from the media and society was that "blacks had to excel; we had to have something special. when i watched the kids on the screen, i just thought, that looks like a much better life than i had, and i decided i wanted that for my child.” by the time sybil enrolled in high school, billye jo had researched "ivy league schools, and i figured, why shouldn’t she go? never mind we didn’t have any money. never mind all of these other things, you know." epps reveals that his survey research indicates that parents and students who believe opportunities are not open to them have lower educational aspirations (epps in clark 1983). mavis sanders' (1998) investigation of students' beliefs also links beliefs about social mobility and achievement in schooling: students' achievement ideologies or beliefs about the relationship between schooling and future success and prosperity also have been found to influence academic performance.... if youth view education as an effective means of social and economic improvement, they are more likely to value educational attainment and academic achievement. on the other hand, if they are pessimistic about the role of education for socioeconomic mobility, they are less likely to value academic achievement. indeed, in an analysis of fifth-grade attitudes, brookover and schneider (1975) found that students' sense of futility in the school system accounted for nearly 45% of the remaining variance in academic achievement after controlling for student background variables. expectations and boundaries kitano's (1998, p. 2) observation applies to how billye jo and constance were raised and how they in turn trained their children: in general african american families hold high expectations for schooling and are motivated to support children’s academic achievement (stevenson, chen, & uttal, 1990). within african american families, achieving students are more likely than their unachieving peers to have nurturing but firm parents who are optimistic and who perceive themselves as having effective coping strategies, engage in activities that enhance their children’s literacy, and are assertive in their interactions with the schools ( clark, 1983). overall, there is a strong belief in education as means to a better life across economic groups (clark; prom-jackson, johnson, & wallace, 1987; willis, 1992). some of the factors critical to the children's success were that their parents set high standards of academic performance, explicitly communicated these goals/expectations/dreams, and supported their children's own goals and efforts by implementing strategies for their success. billye jo was not an outstanding student, but she was aware of her parents' expectations: “i could never catch on as fast. i could catch on, but it took time for me to catch on. i felt that i was dumb…but going through school i guess i was like ahm low average. i never brought home ds, but bs and some cs because my parents did not do ds. so that’s what i grew up with, but my place was in the peach tree. i would sit up in the peach tree and just daydream all the time and “star light, star bright….” these dreams may well have been sites where young billye jo envisioned breaking boundaries. constance’s parents were also quite explicit in conveying their academic expectations: “my daddy used to say that anybody could get a “c.” the only thing he really expected you to bring home was an “a” or a “b,” so i did tell the children that as well-so i passed that on. anybody could get a “c”--you might as well be flunking. all you gotta do is show up; you get a “c;” so they accepted it. it was easy for them to get “a”s. ...my children would get “a”s. they would set the curves on exams.” when her children were three, five, and seven years of age, constance communicated to them her vision of how they would survive and thrive: after my divorce, i used to sit and talk to my children. after being a stay at home the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 11 mother, it was time for me to go to work. i sat down and talked to them. i said i’ve got to go to work and that’s going to be my job…i told them that you’ve got a job too. your job is to make good grades… your mother’s poor. we’re poor now and i am not sure that i’ll be able to send you to college. but you can go if you make good grades. you make good grades and they’ll give you scholarships. you can go anywhere in the world you want to go. you can go to paris, you can go to austria, you can go anywhere. your job is to make those grades and the world is yours. i had no intention of staying poor enough for my kids to get to school based on financial hardship, …[but] i knew if they didn’t make the cut financially, they needed to make it academically. as it turned out, all three of them went to school on academic scholarships. like connie, billye jo was explicit with sybil. “i’m telling her, oh sybil, i want you to go to an ivy league school, either yale or harvard or whatever. i said, you know, your grades have to be perfect, but her grades always were. she was always in the junior classical league, honors, everything." billye jo explained that students who excelled in latin were invited to join the junior classical league. both families exemplified persistent dedication by working daily towards their goals. information such as the academic rankings of educational institutions was part of the social capital that helped them compete in a world where knowledge and information can mean the difference between success and failure. the word 'boundaries' represents opposition to limits on their children's potential, which billye jo and constance reject. instead, they strove to harness all areas of life to holistically support educational achievement. constance stresses: “i never told them there was a limit to anywhere they could go. i never told them there was a limit to their aspirations, because how would i know? i told my children they could be anything they wanted. i told them that with the understanding that they needed to know what they wanted. i never said that they would be the president of the united states, but i fully--i let them know they could be the president of something.” billye jo expresses similar sentiments: “what i found is that if you don’t put boundaries on the children that you are having close relationship with, they can go far, far, far." billye jo adds that her daughter “sybil wanted to be the best, and i would tell her, you are the best. i told her my hopes and dreams for her.” the latter conveys both positive expectations and boundary defying worldviews that bore fruit by inculcating positive self-concept. an adult sybil informed billye jo that: “i wanted them (these goals) for myself, but for you, too." these mothers' practices exemplify bempechat's findings (1992, p. 1) in the following: "the messages parents communicate to their children about learning and schooling, while often subtle, can be very powerful in their children's developing notions about achievement. caregivers who communicate the importance of effort and of taking responsibility for personal academic outcomes may foster in children greater persistence and diligence in the pursuit of achievement goals." both families used explicit as well as subtle means of educational socialization. clearly these parents’ beliefs in the viability of education as the way to upward mobility, and their focus support clark’s finding that parents of high achievers seem more optimistic and believe they can cope with life challenges, whereas parents of low achievers view things as hopeless ( clark 1983). even in their interactions with the youth in their communities, billye jo and constance share similar messages of setting high standards, personal achievement, and fulfilling potentials. constance told the youth at the housing projects she managed not to limit themselves: “they have people in their lives that are telling them what they can’t do. i don’t want people to think in a provincial way. i don’t want people to believe that where they are is the only place for them to be.” parental responsibility and advocacy although their tactics differed, both mothers demonstrated persistent, informed advocacy as a form of parent involvement. this advocacy meant high visibility in school affairs. connie taught her children how to negotiate with adults and to solve problems in the school environment, so they could learn to handle situations independently. however, she knew when to intervene: now if one of my children took my advice and did as i suggested, and i did not like the report they brought back to me, i appeared at the school. the favorite phrase at the school was, ‘now ms. clark, now ms. clark, (laugh) let me explain what happened...’ but what it did, in matters where my children seemed to have been victimized or mistreated, p.s. 25 knew that i was going to show up. i think that too, affected my children’s academic careers. current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 the children got to the point where they would rather take care of the problem than see me show up at the school. i was never ignorant, never abusive to the administrators, but i was very firm, and very determined to get the problem resolved. and that’s how we went through their secondary school years. i would go to the school, i would make it very clear to whoever was involved in the matter, that whatever their problem was, they should visit it upon somebody else. my child was not the one. it’s interesting in that once a teacher had met me, from that point on, my children would cease to have problems with that particular teacher. whatever their personality problems were, they did not want those dialogues to happen again and they would leave my children alone. billye jo and matthew both visited a high school teacher they thought was being unfair to sybil. the presence of both parents, united in their concern and support, undoubtedly left an indelible impact on the school. their approach seems subtler than constance's, though. billye jo's advocacy was frequently expressed in assertively researching information to help sybil fulfill her dreams and goals. like constance, billye jo believes passionately that parents must assume responsibility for and take charge of their children’s education. when sybil wanted to be the valedictorian of her class, but worried that other classmates who were smarter than she might prevail, billye jo responded, "oh well, you can be that if you want to be.” action followed those words: “ i went to school to find out what it took to be valedictorian, and she ended up valedictorian; so that taught me a lot of times you can’t wait for circumstances. if you want something you have to go after it." now that billye jo's granddaughter jill wants to win the service award for jack and jill of america, the same parental assertiveness is guiding her towards her goal. findings of hoover-dempsey’s and jones o'connor's (2002) study of the role of parental role construction in parent involvement and children's education affirm the link between billye jo’s and constance’s concept of responsibility for their children's educational success and their children’s academic achievement. these researchers define parental role construction for involvement in education "as parental beliefs about what one is supposed to do, as a parent, in relation to the child's education. it functions as a motivator of parental involvement because it enables the parent to imagine, anticipate, plan, and behave in relation to a host of activities potentially relevant to the child's educational success" (2002, p. 5). hoover-dempsey and jones o'connor (2002, p. 15) found that: "student achievement, the focal student outcome for much parental involvement research, was associated with components of parental role construction. parents of lower achieving children tend to focus on the school's responsibility in both day to day and common crisis situations; parents of higher achieving students tended to focus on their own responsibilities in day-to-day education and on partnership-focused responsibilities in common crisis situations.” constance's response to my question if she believes the educational system works for african americans since it has worked for her children follows: i believe that it is the parents’ responsibility to see to it that it works. i believe in public education. my children got an excellent education from the public school system, but i am somewhat concerned about the tendency of parents to abdicate total responsibility for their children’s education to the school system. i do not believe it’s possible for the school system to totally serve the needs of black children, and i think that we are fooling ourselves when we try to structure a situation where that is. because all it means to me is that we are abdicating responsibility. i believe that the primary basis for ensuring the education of our children remains in the home. i’ve always believed that. and i believe that we as parents have to take full responsibility for our children. if my children were mad at me because i wouldn’t let em go somewhere, well that’s just too bad. i’d just have to take that hit. they still couldn’t go! the economic and social stressors should not be minimized, but these families’ lives demonstrate the faith as well as the works needed to overcome the barriers they faced. constance's position on the role of parents in the educational achievement of their children is informed partly by her observation of how "southern blacks, maids, people with third grade educations sent five, six kids to college because they insisted that that’s what was going to happen." the latter illustrates the power of parent leadership as well as the influence of community and the force of history to motivate educational achievement. the intergenerational transmission of values is evident here as well. clark (1983, p. 211) notes: “parents who expect public schools and other public agencies to take the major responsibility for their children are the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 13 likely to see their children leave school sooner than they should and with inadequate preparation for social responsibilities.” clark advocates practical training and information to help black parents improve the quality of their children's academic experience. for this training to be most effective, i believe it is critical to investigate parents’ perceptions of the role of the school and their own roles in the educational process. family pedagogical strategies educational rigor/commitment/discipline that these parents accepted the responsibility for the academic goals they chose for their children as discussed above is reflected in the level of educational rigor they sustained. they sought the educational experiences and rewards of elite institutions, and therefore accepted the accompanying challenges. the following remarks by billye jo about her grandchildren's schools are self-explanatory: "but another thing that i like about lab and lenard, is that no matter what the parents think, you know, a lot of parents say i don’t want my child under stress, i don’t want my child this, i don’t want my child that, but we live in a real world. you have to either do it or not do it. if you’re gonna be successful there are things you’ve gotta do. and if you’re not, you’re not. so this has taught jill and simon i’m gonna budget my time and i’m going to do this, this, and this. and then the stress is not stressful." billye jo acknowledges the parents' challenges in the following: "…but if you go to the meetings there are parents there who complain that there’s too much homework, you shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t do that, and you shouldn’t do the other. and i feel the same way; i feel there is an awful lot of homework at both schools, awful lot, plus they have an awful lot of after school things that are going on too that they want to participate in, so you have to find a way to do all of it.... if you’re gonna do it, you might as well do it well.” in addition to school work, billye jo's grandchildren have elected to be involved in extra curricular activities such as foreign study, music, tennis, children's choir, soccer, and theatre. each child also has to plan and cook dinner one night per week at home. clark (1983, p. 5) asserts: “there are at least three types of home activity that prepare children for the competent performance of school responsibilities.” the first of these is “home educational-instructional activities, such as deliberate teaching in the three rs, home recreational activities, and health maintenance activities.” the first two factors are particularly relevant in this study. both mothers conscientiously implemented early literacy. during sybil's infancy, the family’s weekly shopping trip always ended with the purchase of a golden book. by the time sybil was six years old, she owned about 100 of these books. sybil took a book instead of a toy on family outings, her father read to her nightly, and books were always part of her life. billye jo remembers, "i talked to sybil a lot and because of my love for reading, every time i saw a book i'd bring it to sybil. and ahm, we'd talk and we'd read stories together and she--i wanted her to have the love of reading because when i discovered reading from that box my mother had, it was like a whole world opened up. you could dream about traveling and dream about this and that. so when sybil was born i had all these dreams for sybil." the multidimensional connections between education and dreams are repeatedly apparent in their dialogue. the period after sybil was skipped from kindergarten to second grade was decisive. billye jo noted: i really started paying attention to what sybil was doing. so when she came home and talked about phonics--i had never really heard about phonics because i grew up in the 50s, so i went to school and i sat in the back of class and told the teacher you need to teach me phonics because i’ve never heard of this. so the teacher was gracious and she taught me phonics, then i could help sybil. i attended school with her at least two times a week to learn what she was learning, then i’d improve on the lesson and teach it to her. billye jo diligently used the school or any other resource that she could learn from, so that she could teach the information to her cooperative daughter: “people often think that i overpowered sybil, but i always asked her opinion and agreement before we did things. even when sybil was only in the fifth grade i’d get her opinion on what i planned to cover with her. i’d say, sybil, i think this is what we should do, what do you think?” both mothers pursued early literacy for their children. on observing a first grade classroom where many children were not being taught to read at grade level, hale’s (2001, p. 137) remarks address the critical nature of early literacy: "they want to learn. however, many of these children are not being taught to read at grade level. teaching reading is hard work. many children who are not taught to read by their parents before entering school fall through the cracks." constance shared some teaching techniques she used with mark when he was a preschooler: current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 when i taught him it was big a, it might have been like a song, i had a book. it said big a--little a. what begins with a, a-apple, something else, it all began that way. it was a poem. but i also found when i was teaching him, and this is helpful to young parents who try, you have to teach him both cases. you have to teach him the big “a” the little “a,” big “b”, the little “b” at the same time because the children take what you say as law. so if you teach them the upper case and then you try to introduce the lower cases, they’re going to think you’re crazy. no, no you told me this other thing was the “a.” what do you mean this is an “a” too? so i found that out in the course of me working with them, you have to teach them both cases of the letters going in, and you have to pick a book that reflects the fonts that are most regularly used in books. of her after school sessions with grandchildren simon and jill, billye jo remarked: "i make learning a game, it's not just a matter of do this or do that.” she also mentioned arts and crafts: “there's a big box of papers, origami things, scissors, i have crafts, it's so much fun, they cry when they have to go home." even though single parenting meant she had to enter the workforce, connie says she developed an abbreviated method of instruction, which included a minimum of 15 minutes per day with each child, and like billye jo, she stresses the importance of making learning fun: what i did was i combined it with love, you know. if they got it right i’d kiss em all up and tickle em all, and they just loved it. and so then they’d want to do the next one. and then i’d say “what’s this?” and he’d say big "a," and i’d say what’s that and he’d say little “a.” and i’d tickle, tickle, tickle and then we’d go. and so i would introduce maybe three letters at a time, you know. maybe a, b, c then d, e, f and then we’d go back and check those other ones just to make sure he retained it. and it was nothing. they picked it up like that. both parents bought educational toys with alphabets or numbers, blocks or puzzles of the united states. constance limited her purchases to “anything ...that taught them how to do something.” she bought a few non-educational toys such as he man and she ra for christmas, though. teaching and learning were neither relegated to a particular time nor space. billye jo kept a map on the wall, and whenever she took one of her many trips to places such as japan, israel, or china, for example, jill charted the countries on the map and studied them. the world almanac, ripley’s believe it or not, greek and indian myths, the "iliad" and the "odyssey," great artists for children, shakespeare for children, a question and answer book (the latter is reminiscent of general knowledge textbooks i used in jamaica under the british system of education) were some of the texts in billye jo's home curriculum. "i’ve got this great new book, it’s gonna teach you how to remember the capitals,” was billye jo's introduction to a memory system to help jill, who was now in the fourth grade, remember the state capitals and the american presidents. jill now says that her grandmother’s enthusiasm motivated her to love learning. one of billye jo's goals was for jill to be equally interested in all subjects. this plan was eminently successful because as a high school student jill was enrolled in honors physics, chemistry, english, literature, and writing. in preparing to teach her grandchildren, billye jo took her neighbor’s advice and purchased the book how to give your child a higher i.q. one of the book's techniques that she used was teaching her granddaughter colors even before she could speak. “this is a red rattle,” billye jo would say. “people would wonder why mention the color when she didn’t understand, but i’d always mention it. by the time jill was one and a half years old, she knew all her colors.” every day billye jo picked up her two grandchildren from school, supervised their schoolwork, helped them with homework, and instructed them. as mentioned above, arts and crafts were integral to the curriculum in the home. ritualized learning practices began so early that the children knew no alternatives. early in their family education efforts, matthew, billye jo’s husband, came home in between his two jobs to teach sybil mathematics. unlike billye jo, constance received no help from her husband with the children, but she was undeterred from her daily teaching ritual. she says her son received more teaching time because she did not work outside the home during his infancy. billye jo's neighbor who declined to be part of this study shared many successful techniques with her such as how to use alphabet blocks and flash cards to instruct the children. billye jo threw flash cards on the floor and used them to compose words for jill. she would then have jill compose her own words. next, billye jo moved the words around to make sentences. soon she would assign the five-year-old jill to make a sentence, and competition heightened the challenge. “my sentence is the best, billye jo would say; i bet you $100 you can’t make a better sentence than mine.” jill might fail and become concerned that she the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 15 owed her grandmother money, but billye jo would graciously give jill opportunities to clear her debts by earning double the money if she could produce more than the agreed on number of sentences. progress came quickly, and soon jill would be composing “asking sentences,” “statement sentences,” and so on. one day, billye jo announced to four-year old jill, "i'm giving you a test; i’m putting you on the clock." jill looked puzzled, but began the process of becoming familiar with taking timed tests. billye jo had been afraid of tests in her youth and the realization that her children would be competing in a stratified society mandated this approach. one of the teachers interviewed in cynthia jackson's reference handbook on african american education believes if african american students are taught test taking skills, "they could probably do equally as well as other children" (2001, p. 81). a synonym finder and the study of critical thinking were soon added to the home curriculum. billye jo's husband’s belief that if one knows the rules for a particular procedure, one can do anything, guided the family’s focus on the rules for grammar, math, latin, and other subjects. jill’s teachers at the university of chicago laboratory schools did not believe in such a focus on rules, but billye jo and matthew insisted on it anyway. they wanted their children and grandchildren to study latin to help them with root derivatives, for example, and they are pleased with the results. although billye jo never studied geometry in high school, she read books and taught jill geometry before jill learned it in school. the goal was to keep jill ahead of her class. jill was the only student of color and the only female at a prestigious national engineering summer camp for honor students, and it is obvious that the fruit of these labors of love is evident. these parents conceived of these strategies as giving their children "a little leg up." teachers recognized the achievement, preparedness for learning, and the superior performance of these students. billye jo believes that success comes in "having and working a plan," and her pedagogy is illustrative of this. the educational strategies she currently uses with her grandchildren reflect her ingenuity and initiative to research and develop ways to achieve her educational goals. she consulted with upper class asians at her grandchildren’s schools to learn how they helped their children excel academically. she discovered that these parents acquired required readings for the coming school year and prepared their children over the summer. they examined papers and other schoolwork to anticipate what their children would need and provided the appropriate resources in advance. billye jo began to apply these same principles, and her grandchildren were always ahead of their classes. she explains, "i keep em ahead. that’s the key; you have to keep them ahead of what the teacher’s asking. when jill was in third grade if i knew the teacher’s gonna give a test on whatever, i would teach it to her. she already knew it because i would teach it to her. when i had her with me, i’m teaching her.” hale's (2001, p. 134) discussion of affluent white parents is descriptive of what constance and billye jo sought to do by means of their pedagogy: "these parents left nothing to chance. they did not depend upon the schools to teach their children to read and calculate. the children came to school reading, having being taught by their mothers." i tape recorded an after school session during which billye jo worked with simon on rhyming words while jill did her mathematics homework. in one segment billye jo tells four-yearold simon, “ok now, this might be a little hard” and receives the expected reply: simon: not hard for me, hard for you! billye jo responds: oh, is that what it’s going to be? let’s see! and the challenge is on. billye jo: okay, what’s the next word? simon: spoon. billye jo: and what rhymes with it? simon: poon? billye jo: spoon, what? simon: moon? billye jo sounds delighted and a bit surprised. oh, that’s great, okay! jill, who has been working independently asks, jill: grandma, billye jo: yes, jill? jill: what does it mean when it says tell how many hundreds tens and ones? i did not sense anything spectacular except devotion, diligence, patience and a disciplined, yet fun approach to the work. billye jo tells simon, “look at the word so when you see it again you’ll know it.” undoubtedly, the day-by-day consistency counts. while working on rhyming words, simon sees the word 'money' and begins singing "more money, more money, more money, more!" billye jo firmly guides him back to the rhyming sentences. when billye jo invested in learning aids such as the evelyn woods reading course. the speed-reading and comprehension helps sybil in her work as a lawyer. constance stressed the importance of going beyond commitment to being informed: "....it’s a time, it’s a time commitment, for sure. and then you current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 educate yourself. i mean, i went to the teachers’ stores...." i asked these parents repeatedly if these were bright children who would do well academically under any circumstances. rather than claiming their children are geniuses, both mothers believe their early and consistent home education efforts were instrumental in their children's academic excellence. connie responds: i believe my children are bright. i don’t know that they are necessarily brighter than other people’s children. i’ve had this conversation with other people. my children represent the third generation of college educated people on both sides of their family; both my ex-husband’s family and my own. we are intelligent people. but i have become convinced that if you take the time out when they are very small, then almost any child can achieve similar results. i didn’t expect people to consider my children geniuses when they went to school. i just wanted them to be adequately prepared. everybody went nuts every time one of my children came through the first grade because they knew how to read. i believe just doing that isolates the children. in our educational system, the category they assign you to going in oftentimes determines how the system will respond to you. my children were given opportunities and advantages that other children were not given. that is unfortunate. as a parent of a student in the high school constance's children attended, my observations of the teachers with whom i interacted led me to conclude that some of them were more enthusiastic, responsive, protective of, and helpful to these students who already had the strong foundation of the "little leg up" and were outstanding scholastically. my perception was that the "ordinary" students were not 'feathers in teachers' caps,' and therefore resources and opportunities were different. this is probably what billye jo referred to when she said blacks need "something special to succeed." in addition, constance's daughter pauline who graduated from dartmouth noticed that her friends who attended all black high schools were pushed to graduate from high school, but not to attend college. these students did not get the referrals and college information her integrated high school offered. pauline claims guidance counselors made a difference because at her high school, "there were three really good counselors. i kept close to them. a friend of mine was telling me how guidance counselors didn’t tell them anything. they had to go to the counselors. i understand having to go to them, but you have to pry information; and, like, if you don’t ask the right questions you don’t get info. no information is volunteered as far as like college or higher education. the higher education information is like chicago state or robert morris, columbia. so i mean, i found that very interesting.” discipline this study’s parents were not engrossed with academic achievement to the exclusion of discipline, the effect of peer influences, and such. their holistic plans included discipline as a critical component of the various methods they used to shape their children’s consciousness and steer them towards their educational goals. i asked constance if the children rebelled; she replied, “well now, i didn’t do a lot of that;” she continued with a laugh: “i know that parents today worry about that, but my children never--i never gave them that latitude. this is how they lived, you know, this was it! ‘can you go?’ ‘no, mother’s not goin’ let me go,’ (whiney voice) you know. it wasn’t like they had witnessed another option, so this was normal life.” constance adds that while she separated the children from negative forces, she also made home life fun. constance's behavior echoes that of the high achieving parents clark (1983, p. 114) describes: “a significant amount of television watching was monitored at home and was supplemented by parental discussions and explanations. parents believed that television programs influenced the way a person thinks.” constance agrees, and explains: throughout my children’s lives i only had one tv in this house, so whatever was watched, everybody watched it--from sesame street to whatever. we weren’t sitting in the house in four different bedrooms all doing our own thing. i constantly interacted with the kids. we laughed. we joked. i refused to get cable. i didn’t get cable until my last child went away to college because i believe that there was too much sexual material, you know, too many incendiary things on cable for young children. we would watch the tv program and then i would ask them questions about the program. that’s what we did, we would pick out stuff. i would say, “what do you think about what that girl just did, do you see that? and we would talk about it. we are a very chatty family. the foregoing supports research by yan (1999, p. 8), and others that "the finding of higher levels of home discussion in successful african american students' families is consistent with the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 17 previous literature (clark, 1983; ritter, montreynaud, &; dornbusch, 1993)." like billye jo's family in memphis, one of constance's family's favorite entertainments was nature walks, which were also used to instruct: "we would just all go outta the house and we’d just walk, and we’d examine flowers, people’s houses, people who passed us….” they would return home and discuss their adventures. in his case studies of high achieving black children clark (1983, p. 114) found that parents encouraged and maintained “cohesion building family rituals that involved group singing, conversation, and reading aloud within an affectauthority relationship characterized by firm but warm supervision and support.” in addition to nature walks, the family skipped and sang together. i remember being incredulous at seeing an adult female singing and skipping down the street with her daughters. at the time it seemed odd and maybe slightly offensive to my sensibilities. i did not realize the role this and similar activities played in their family cohesiveness. the impact of these rituals is apparently life long. connie explains: they loved the singing, even bruce, he’d be embarrassed, but even he would do the ‘off to see the wizard’ song. we had a favorite song; it was the ‘greatest american hero’ song--it went ‘believe it or not, i’m walking on air, i never thought i could feel so free”! we would skip down the sidewalk and sing these songs. it’s so funny, mabel and i were riding back from maine the other day, it started thunder storming and she started singing one of our songs. we had power songs and we had happy songs. our power song was ‘ if it had not been for the lord on my side, tell me where would i be?’ we would sing that song at the top of our lungs. this thunderstorm was coming down and she just broke into that song and we both sang it. if we were happy, we would sing ‘look at what's happened to me, i can’t believe it myself’, suddenly i’m on top of the world, it could have been somebody else.' and if we were angry, it was ‘don’t push me ,cause i’m close to the edge.' we’ve sung together since my divorce from their father. it’s been a part of our family life for many years. billye jo and her family sang and performed oldies, particularly on saturdays, as they hurried through housework so they could do fun things later on. particularly in constance's family's case, it seems as if the songs were modes of communication that were also used as coping mechanisms used to communicate various states of being. the family could solicit/elicit various modes such as support, comfort, or communicate anger, frustration or other emotions or simply see the song as a call to rejoice in the moment with hope. motivation and social control in addition to telling their children that education could enable them to travel to exotic destinations, the parents vividly illustrated to their children what their destinations in life could be if they made other choices. modern day object lessons were features of this experiential learning. connie took her middle school daughters to a chicago housing authority building: when my girls were 10 and 11, i made them walk a 16-story building with me. and i said, ‘you know your mother has been struggling for many years. it’s been hard, taking care of all of you by myself. i need you to understand that i’m not going to take care of you and a baby, too. if you look around, do you see my mother? no? well when you have a child, you’re going to be the mother. you’re going to have to take care of them like i take care of you. look around, if you don’t finish your education, this is where you’ll stay. i can get you a place here, and i can get it cheap. if you decide you want to get pregnant for some boy, be sure to have a plan. if you want, you can plan to live here. but you’re not going to live with me.' and they believed me. standing in a urinestained hallway in robert taylor homes, they believed me… billye jo used similar techniques to instruct and motivate her grandchildren. when simon and jill were even younger than constance's children were, billye jo drove them by the same housing projects and asked, “do you want to live this way?” next, she drove by upscale hyde park residences and asked the same questions. “if you want to live this way, then education is the key. you have to decide. what do you want your life to be like? it’s up to you.” she sometimes watched the "jerry springer" show with jill to teach her what to avoid. billye jo states that at times she would ask jill, “here is a young man who is not a christian, has no job, he doesn’t respect his parents, why are these girls fighting over him?" connie walked with her children to the neighborhood hangout and discussed the behaviors they observed. “i’d say look at that one, they’re up to no good. my favorite quote was ‘look to your current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 friends, there goes your future. i would say that child’s future is not going to be yours. you cannot be with this person." constance pointed out that her separating her children from others had nothing to do with economic status, because some of her children’s friends were as poor as her family was. “i wasn’t going to have them running with kids whose parents didn’t want anything for em, who were ill-supervised, you know. if there was a kid who could run around and do whatever they wanted to do then that wasn’t the kid for them to hang out with because that meant their parents were not on the case. so i couldn’t trust my children to that parent.” billye jo conveyed the same message to her children and grandchildren by using the exhortation: “you have to decide who is your kind. you deal with people that are your kind." the grammar of the macroculture was the foundation of the curriculum, and, so speech, and language and other aspects of mainstream american culture had to be mastered. billye jo's parents told her and the other children to speak like the words they read in the books. constance's older daughter observed: my mother and father were, you know, very correct speaking people. they spoke standard english. they expected us to speak standard english, especially my father. if we said something in slang, he’d say, 'what?' and at my school everybody spoke the same way that being the type of school it was, even though it was a public school. and when i moved around here...everybody called me little white girl, called me and my sister, you know the two little white girls or whatever. when sybil was invited to a cotillion, given by a parent who was a member of the links, billye jo and her sister, capri, researched the proper etiquette so that sybil would fit in. billye jo even instituted her own manners week as a part of sybil’s social grooming. some of this information on "proper etiquette" billye jo learned from wealthy whites her mother worked for in memphis. i conceptualize the parental roles of these mothers as life coaches in that they addressed every area of their children's lives and pursued their educational goals continuously and relentlessly. every component of the family culture: peers, recreation and entertainment were vehicles for the desired outcome. billye jo wanted sybil to not only excel in school, but to be well rounded in the social graces also. sybil enjoyed being popular, and the family subscribed to time and newsweek magazines to keep her informed and to ensure that she knew enough about current events to converse effectively with people at all levels. connie’s daughter pauline remembers the catch in her voice as she responded “stamps” when the proprietor of the arab store across the street from our building asked 'cash or stamps?' she also remembers vividly the embarrassment of wearing thrift store and hand me down clothing while students in her middle class school wore the latest fashions. according to pauline, a strong desire to avoid this deprivation helped motivate her focus on education as a way out of poverty. work both families approached the discipline of work in the lives of their children differently. constance explained: i carried the ball with the eating and i would tell them, you know 'mama doesn’t have it. -but if they wanted extra stuff, they had to work (stated very emphatically)! all of them. the only one that didn’t work every summer was mark, and that was because he was always at a math camp. but he was working on his education. my children could not sit around the house during the summertime. that was the other thing. my mother used to say, ‘when i get up, everybody has to get up.’ and that was my philosophy. when i get up, everybody has to get up. and you have to have something to do. you just can’t sit around this house. so they started, each one of them started working at 13.... but, now, they got to keep all of their own money, and they got to spend it any way they wanted. i never saw their checks. i would encourage them to save it. i would give them suggestions. referring to her youngest daughter, mabel, who spent her money on her friends rather than save for school clothing, constance offers: "i never made up for the difference. i mean however your money turned out that’s the way it turned out because i believe that experience is the best teacher. so she would treat everybody, and… she’d never have a dime.” constance fervently believes: “we have to deprive our kids of things in order to spark ambition. if they have everything, what is there left for them to want? and, and achievement usually comes out of a desire for something. i believe even if we have to do it artificially, we have to create deprivation in our children’s lives in order to inspire them to want something more.” billye jo's family had the benefit of income from matthew’s full time and his part time job. although her children did not have to seek employment, the discipline of work was still inculcated in them because they were responsible for keeping their rooms clean and performing household the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 19 chores. matthew and billye jo did not deny sybil anything the family could afford. billye jo believes that if children are taught the right values and they know them, that is sufficient. matthew would leave twenty dollars on the dresser each week so that sybil and andy could get what they needed, whenever they needed it. they were accountable for the money, and they used it judiciously. constance told her children that she expected them to move out after high school. if they decided to attend college, however, they could remain in the home for four more years. they clearly acceded to the added motivation to pursue a college education. billye jo’s grandchildren have been told that their parents’ possessions belong to their parents. the expectation is that jill and simon will make their own ways in life. clearly the seeds of family education are designed to direct and equip them to pursue formal education that will guarantee social mobility and a secure future. one of constance’s children who earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from an ivy league school now earns over $100,000 annually while she is still in her twenties. i doubt if she is being asked cash or stamps any longer when she shops in her new neighborhood. race sanders (1997) interviewed high-achieving african american students from urban areas and reported that black parents' efforts to promote their children's positive racial/ethnic socialization helped promote academic success as a response to racism and discrimination in yan (1999, p. 2). as a means of helping their children excel, these mothers were careful about how they taught about racism, or whether they mentioned racial discrimination at all. although racism impacted their lives in diverse ways, neither family taught about the issue directly. this was a part of their strategy to help their children cope with a stratified society. billye jo says she did not present racism as a barrier. she taught her children that some people would dislike them for various reasons, but that was not their problem; rather, it was the problem of those who disliked them. reasons for dislike could be jealousy, because sybil had a car when some of her peers did not, for example. according to constance: even now, my children believe that it’s going to be all right, and that’s the sense that i wanted to give. i didn’t want them to go into any experience anticipating that it’s going to go wrong. i want them to approach every situation as a human being. so i never said that this happened to you because you’re black, or that happened because you’re black. i think i only started to make comments like that since they started working. and even then, it’s a rare occurrence. i didn’t want my children to start thinking along those lines…i taught my children that most things can be negotiated, and either they’re going to negotiate it for themselves, or i’m going to negotiate it for them. constance 's approach seems empowering, particularly in view of comer's research, in hale (2001, p. 146), which indicates that a "key element of academic achievement in schoolchildren is the ability to elicit a positive response from school personnel and peers. this requires a high level of social skill. often the parents of inner-city children were unsuccessful in negotiating the school themselves and therefore are unable to impart those skills to the children." constance gave her children advice in the form of suggestions such as: “why don’t you go talk to them, and this is what you say, or make appointment with so and so and do this and this.” the children learned well and began to coach one another, and connie only went to school when they failed to resolve the problem themselves. connie found the results of her approach rewarding: "and it empowered them, it taught them that even in their interactions with adults, that they had the capacity to affect the outcome. i didn’t tell them that they were limited in any way because of racism. if something happened that i thought smacked of racism, that’s when i became involved. i would show up, we’d have a meeting, and we would reach a resolution. i didn’t say that white lady was trying to do this or that to you.” connie says she expected her children to learn about racism through her experiences. i talked about my own experiences growing up in the south. because those experiences created some negative attitudes, my children considered me racist most of my life. i may be a racist. i may be a little bigoted, but i have never attempted to visit my personal perspectives upon my children. i discussed politics with them. they did know the concepts. but they all attended a very diverse high school, and they thought that racial problems were a part of the past. when they went to college, it hit them. their first years, their freshman years, were traumatic. they came back to me and said, mom, you should have told us, (she laughs). i said, “well i did talk about these things.’ current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 i have found african american students who believe racial problems to be a part of the past quite a challenge in my african american classes. this discussion helps my understanding of why some of them believe as they do. the following from webster (1974, p. 119) illuminates constance’s rationale: the “works of rotter, seeman, and liverant (1962) and coleman (1966) have clearly documented the fact that achievement and motivation are significantly related to feelings of personal worth, competency, or power. in the case of black americans, second-class citizenship is held to be the cause of feelings of stigmatization and unworthiness, which inhibit levels of motivation and aspiration.” i believe the parents’ approach to racism may have played a significant role in developing confidence, and this confidence stimulated the self-esteem needed to achieve excellence. research which investigates the children’s conception of race and racism and the relationship to academic achievement would be most informative. without resources such as financial aid all of these dreams and hard work would be invisible epitaphs on the graves of stillborn visions. billye jo describes her family's financial miracle which helped them fulfill their dream and demonstrates their faith in god: when she got in high school, i started dreaming about sybil going to an ivy league school, and so when it was time, god stepped in and a man called me. his name is ahm, silas parnell, and he usually, he helped the black children get into college, and it’s all public school, so i have no idea how he got sybil’s records; and he called me the summer of her going--you know when she got out of junior year, and he said, 'have you ever thought of your daughter going to an ivy league school?' i said all the time. i said, but i can’t, we can’t pay for her to go to an ivy league school. how would you like harvard, yale? yes, i want em all, you know. he arranged for sybil to go visit the schools, and she got an academic scholarship to yale, to harvard to dartmouth. we chose dartmouth because i could not see sybil at yale because it’s urban. she’d been sheltered and i could not turn her loose… harvard was the same but dartmouth is wonderful. the whole town is dartmouth, if you’ve ever been on that campus, it’s phenomenal! so we were glad that she went along with us and wanted to go to dartmouth. she was in the first class of women that went to dartmouth and had no problems. none whatsoever. she made the transition. we had talked to her about you know these were very rich people. the kennedys and the rockefellers were there.... constance says she was "savvy enough about the financial aid situation--my ex husband had been a financial aid administrator for a university, but again that’s the advantage that my children had over a lot of other children. their parents went to college." early information about the right courses to take early in high school and financial aid are important to students’ decision to attend college (jamilah, 1998). an example of constance's resourcefulness is that she was one of the few parents in our community with the information and foresight to prepare her children in their precollege, even in their preteen years, to fulfill scholarship requirements. working as a golf caddy, for example, helped mabel to enter college on a golf scholarship. further investigation of the roles of constance and billye jo’s christian beliefs should illuminate our understanding of their motivation to persevere. it is clear that their faith under girds the worldviews that helped them hurdle the barriers they faced, but this is a topic for another paper. to omit their source of faith that helped them succeed would be untruthful. in discussing some of her most challenging moments after her husband left, constance recalls times such as when she had no money and a commonwealth edison employee came to disconnect the electricity. “i would get down on my knees and pray sometimes when i just, i couldn’t figure out what was goin' happen next. i couldn’t figure it out. the next day the sun would shine, i mean-----something would come to me and i know it wasn’t me. i knew it wasn’t me. an idea…." four years after the initial interview, constance responded to reading her data with the following statement: “my hopes were not built on deprivation. i was making over $60,000 a year by the time my last child went to college. i never doubted for a moment that i and my children would do well. i knew that faith in god and hard work would see us through. we were “education poor”. at one time, i had all three of them in college at the same time. but i never, ever doubted the way our lives would turn out. it was not need, but faith and confidence in god, in each other, and in the future. we expected to excel.” conclusion focusing solely on the role of the family in the education of african american students would be inaccurate, insufficient and thus, inappropriate. however, it is critical that we learn from parents' educational experiences. thus, this study examined the educational leadership, inclusive of some of the specific teaching and learning strategies, of two the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 21 african american mothers, billye jo and constance. a goal of this work is to address the need for information that depicts black parents as proactive successful teachers of their children. these parents’ pedagogies affirm the sponsored independence approach described by clark (1983). in addition, their attitudes and approaches to education become acts of empowerment for their children. they engaged the system on its own terms and won. from positions of seeming weakness and powerlessness they ‘flipped the script.’ since these models of teaching in african american families exist, there is a need to realign our epistemologies to see these parents as producers of useful/valid knowledge that can inform other parents and the educational community as well. this research forms part of the mosaic that seeks to acknowledge and document the “great diversity found in the teaching practices of african american mothers and [demonstrates] that...african american mothers of all social status groups have been remarkably effective and resilient in preparing and helping their children cope with the schooling process” (slaughter, 1987, pp. 7 & 11). these families’ achievements are not simply due to the natural evolutionary processes of a kind and gentle society. rather, these achievements are the results of dreams and deliberate decisions to strategize and to work to achieve these dreams. the word “dream” was used as a verb and as a noun, repeatedly in both women’s narratives. early in her account billye jo began with: “when i discovered reading from that box my mother had, it was like a whole world opened up. you could dream about traveling and dream about this and that. so when sybil was born i had all these dreams for sybil." billye jo’s mother and grandmother had stressed: “don’t let your circumstances keep you from dreaming and wanting to be something.” part of constance’s goal is “to create a positive environment where people are encouraged, where people are convinced that the dream that they have is attainable.” clearly, this envisioning of a better life is inter generational, begins in the soul, and forms the very environment that sustains, invigorates, and energizes these families. billye jo's explanation that she wanted her children to attend ivy league schools because “they would be able to have contact to do whatever they wanted to do," illuminates another facet of these parents' goals of empowerment by means of a certain type of schooling. connie's discussion with her children in which she linked education with the ability to travel to exotic places denotes a similar goal to that of billye jo's. i observed substantive evidence of how organizations such as the dartmouth club served as mechanisms for these goals. before attending law school, sybil sought a career in international banking, and dartmouth club members helped open doors for her. semesters in spain and brazil, wall street internships, backpacking across europe, and particularly for sybil, lifelong friendships with other women who are also at various levels of the legal profession are some of the social capital enjoyed by dartmouth graduates. these parents’ open communication with their children bonded the family together in partnerships to achieve educational goals which were made explicit and which were strategically operationalized throughout the school years. education was both formal and informal as well as didactic and experiential. billye jo’s statement that “experience is the best teacher” is indicative and illustrative of these parents taking their children to the projects and neighborhood hangouts to demonstrate what deviation from their educational goals could mean for their futures. children and parents agreed on the out of school curriculum and the rigor needed to implement it. clearly, the early years were foundational and preparatory to these academic achievements. non-school learning was valued as much as school learning, or maybe even more so, because the informal curriculum harnessed the totality of their lives to develop realities which ensured/supported school achievement. that both mothers did not work outside the home in the early years of parenting meant that time was available for critical foundational training. on the other hand, it is quite clear that these parents' achievements cannot solely be attributed to their remaining at home during their children’s infancy. for numerous reasons many parents with more resources, time, formal education as well as other forms of social and human capital fail to attain the results these parents have attained. children's cooperativeness should also not be underrated, and in some cases, competitiveness was a factor, at least in billye jo’s family. early literacy, diligently providing and pursuing an enriched curriculum, particularly as is demonstrated in the case of billye jo's granddaughter, jill, also enhanced educational achievement for these children. alluding to the benefits of an enriched curriculum berry mentions: “excellence for black students will not become a reality unless and until they receive enriched curricular opportunities in elementary and secondary schools..." (berry, 1989, p. 293). connie and billye current issues in education vol. 9 no. 7 jo referred to their pedagogy as giving their children a "little leg up," and clearly this allowed the children to make giant strides forward. the parents' discipline and love for learning, enthusiasm, and encouragement helped to build confidence and competence and shaped contexts in which these children fulfilled the goals they and their parents set. i interpret billye jo and constance's definitions of parent involvement to include responsibility for exercising leadership in their families’ education. they saw themselves as their children's first and most important teachers, and they were unintimidated by teachers and schools in their advocacy for their children. the approach to knowledge, particularly exemplified in billye jo's words, is that the answer to every question exists somewhere--in an individual, a book or in some other resource. this approach is liberating and frees the individual to be a seeker of information, a self-educator and a producer of knowledge. clearly communicating goals and having open communication were indispensable. faith that they could succeed was also important. an interesting finding of this study is that in the process of educating their children the mothers themselves were transformed. winters (1993, p. 99), observes that a basic thesis of her book--african american mothers and urban schools: the power of participation--is that “participation and its educational benefits contribute to personal development." accomplishments such as teaching her granddaughter, jill, geometry when billye jo herself had never studied the subject brought a sense of accomplishment that was transferable to other areas. billye jo says she began to think, "i made a doll’s dress, maybe i can make a dress!" an origami workshop in an alternative high school, a commissioned quilt for a graduating class, being consulted on decorating an apartment for visiting soviet scientists, coordinating weddings, in addition to designing and making dolls and, of course, teaching a bus driver to read, are accomplishments which continuously spiral into other areas for billye jo. recently two parents, both of whom hold doctorates in the sciences, sought billye jo's advice and tutoring services to prepare their eight-year old son to gain entrance into a school for the gifted. validation of her expertise is apparent in that she has never advertised her services. i have suggested to billye jo that attending college might have limited the development of her potential. by this i mean that her creativity and confidence in her ability might have been stifled through socialization to a field, profession, or a discipline in a traditional classroom. billye jo's life is an advertisement for the value of literacy. under the auspices of a university of illinois research team, she conducted a workshop to help parents at a chicago public school which serves a nearby housing project teach their children . a workshop for university teachers in a field master's program, one for undergraduate students, and another for students at an alternative high school are illustrative of the range of billye jo’s contributions to both parents and educators. one of the teachers in the master’s degree in education program commented: the last class we just had allowed me the pleasure of meeting billye jo. what an experience! i couldn’t wait to get home to tell everyone i know about her. she was so inspiring in so many ways. i tried to explain her to my family, but they did not quite get the same impression as i did. as i tried to describe her and talk of her accomplishments to my audience, they could not truly understand her prestige. they too wondered why she wasn’t “college educated” as did i before i met her. when she first started speaking of her childhood and her family, i started making assumptions in my mind. the wrong assumptions at that. i was wondering what was so special about her that would have you ask her to come speak to us. but as time past, [sic] i became quickly absorbed in her life experiences and views. i was truly inspired. she spoke modestly as if she’s an average person, but she is not…. i am very appreciative for having the opportunity to have listened to her life story. i wish everyone could also, too. i hope to remember her for the rest of my life and lead some of my decisions in a more productive way. she is a perfect example of selfdetermination...thank you for bringing billye jo into my life. as life goes on, i am sure that i might forget some of her words, but i will always remember her spirit to strive to succeed. while there are things any parent can do to improve her children's education, not all parents can overcome societal challenges to produce the results these two parents and others have achieved. as much as they want their children to excel in school, not many fathers can work or maybe even find two jobs as matthew did. not every parent possesses the information and ability to teach and supervise children while coping with external pressures, as constance was able to do. we need to continue to find and implement solutions that will make quality education available to all students. i am curious about these parents' definitions of worthwhile or useful knowledge. what type of the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community 23 curriculum do they see as being most worthwhile for various groups in american society? what type of curriculum would they advocate as ideal for public schools? do they uncritically accept mainstream society's conception of education and the public school's definition of knowledge, as well as the curriculum being offered? how would they change the educational system to accommodate all children? do the successful outcomes for their children mean that the educational system works for african americans? do their philosophies and practices indicate acceptance of the current educational system? do they hold different ways of conceptualizing/defining knowledge that would be more liberating for society? references bauman, k. 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(2006, march).the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community. current issues in education [on-line], 9(7). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume9/number7/ author notes audrey p. watkins, phd., assistant professor western illinois university department of african american studies macomb , illinois 61455 ap-watkins@wiu.edu ph.d., education, university of illinois at chicago, 1996, curriculum and instruction/curriculum design. dissertation topic: "educational experiences in the family, school, and work lives of african-american women." m.a., communication, university of illinois at chicago, 1983, research area: culture and communication -wrote, produced, and directed video documentary on jamaicans in chicago. b.a., communication/english emphasis, with high honor, depaul university, chicago, illinois, 1981. research interests include: schooling and education of africans in diaspora; education of women of color; social justice and education’ christian schooling and education; transnationalism of caribbean women note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 14, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation watkins, a. p. (2006). the pedagogy of african american parents: learning from educational excellence in the african american community. current issues in education, 9(7). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1599 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2006,%20vol%209,%20%231-7/number7/index.html mailto:ap-watkins@wiu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1599 cie template 1 volume 7, number 5 january 20, 2004 issn 1099-839x cultural collision in urban schools floyd beachum university of wisconsin-milwaukee carlos mccray alabama state university young african americans face several critical issues such as dire economic circumstances, peer pressure, random violence, and feelings of alienation from the cultural mainstream in america. black popular culture for these youth creates a value system born out of these same issues. this analysis will address the influence of black popular culture on african american urban youth and its subsequent intersection with the culture found in secondary schools (cultural collision). black popular culture will be examined through the use of two components: hip-hop culture and television media. current literature as related to the topics discussed will be used to make recommendations. black youth identity is unique and multi-faceted. it can be affected by a multitude of factors including parents, peers, music, school, television, religious influences, and life experiences. for many inner-city youth in particular, self-identity is a combination of various complexities. these youth may face several critical issues such as socioeconomic despair, pressure from gangs, a lack of faith in government, and society‟s concentration on materialism and individualism (berman & berreth, 1997). these issues also have an effect on youth identity. of the numerous influences and factors that shape youth identity, two, sometimes conflicting factors, black youth popular culture (hip-hop culture and television) and school culture are of particular importance. this analysis will concentrate on the development of secondary school-aged urban youth; i.e. those in grades 7-12. urban black youth popular culture will be examined by means of hip-hop culture and the media. both of these variables have the awesome potential to shape youth identity. the american phenomenon known as hip-hop can affect youth in both positive and negative ways (kunjufu, 1993). in a like manner, television too, can exert a powerful influence over youth. the media has the power to alter the habits, feelings, and minds of young people, especially black youth (kunjufu, 1990). for the purposes of this discussion it is important to also understand the significance of the urban context. many urban areas across the nation are plagued with all types of social and community problems. urban schools in these areas face challenges such as inadequate funding and teacher apathy. resentment from external powers fuels the fire for the marginalizing and criticism of these schools (ayers, 1994). furthermore, youth in these areas deal with pressures from gang violence, drugs and alcohol, domestic conflicts, and depression. hip-hop culture hip-hop culture has a great influence on american youth. white and cones (1999) write, “hip hop is a catchall term for a contemporary, urban-centered youth lifestyle associated with popular music, break dancing, certain dress and hair styles, graffiti, and street language” (p. 96). hip hop culture has gone from primarily rapping, break dancing, dj-ing, and graffiti to including dialects, attitude, expression, mannerisms, and fashion (dyson, 2001; kitwana, 2002). in reference to its wider appeal, kitwana (2002) asserts, “rappers access to global media and their current issues in education vol. 7 no. 1 2 use of popular culture to articulate many aspects of this national identity renders rap music central to any discussion of the new black youth culture” (p.11). this emphasis on media opens up rap artists to audio and visual mediums. mccall (1997) writes: dr. william byrd, a black clinical psychologist, pointed out that for young, impressionable people the mere fact that explicit gangsta lyrics are aired on the radio lends credence to their messages as truth. „when you bombard someone with those messages, it causes conflict, even with those young people who may have been taught other values. with these rap messages, not only are they being bombarded with radio, they also get video‟. so it‟s what you hear and what you see. it confirms that these are acceptable values in a subculture. (p. 60) therefore, this “message bombardment” can be influential to impressionable youth. kitwana (2002) agrees, “today, more and more black youth are turning to rap music, music videos, designer clothing, popular black films, and television programs for values and identity” (p. 9). hip-hop culture has become an integral part of the lives of many urban youth. through its influence they develop various ideas about sex, relationships, success, and life (kunjufu, 1993). in addition, these influences can have positive or negative effects on youth identity. “the ages between 13-17 are when they [youth] are particularly vulnerable to outside influence and before their values and ideas have fully developed” (kunjufu, 1993, p. 81). hiphop culture is expressed through songs on the radio, glamorized by video, and reinforced by peers. the result is a particularly powerful form of indoctrination. however, this influence can be good or bad. most of the controversy surrounding hip-hop culture has to do with its emphasis on male chauvinism, open gunplay, and illegal drug usage. hip-hop culture has the ability to affect the values of black youth through various mediums. another important medium is television. television media the american media is a source of news, entertainment, and information. it includes radio, newspapers, the internet, and television. for our purposes, the authors will concentrate on the media as represented by television. the media has the ability to spread truthful and positive knowledge or misrepresent people, events, and data. unfortunately, many times the latter is the case. moreover, television is responsible for imagery that negatively influences youth (bush, 1999). consequently, this imagery has the ability to affect youth identity. television is an important part of life to many americans. black youth, in particular, watch seven to eight hours of television a day, as compared to four and a half hours for white youth (browder, 1989). bush (1999) notes, “negative images presented in all of the media conspire with many hours of television viewing to produce a negative effect on black children‟s self-image” (p. 36). in reference to black youth and television, browder (1989) observes the following:  black children tend to use tv as a source of role models. they imitate other people‟s behavior, dress, appearance, and speech.  tv provides examples of relationships with members of the opposite sex.  tv is used as a primary source of learning and perfecting aggressive behavior.  black children closely identify with television characters – particularly the black characters. (p. 47) given the amount of television watched by black youth and its influence on their development, the images portrayed by the television media become extremely important. television many times promotes gender stereotypes and negative images of blacks. a study conducted by mamay and simpson (as cited in bush, 1999) concluded that “women in commercials were typecast according to three stereotypical roles: mother, housekeeper, and sexual objects” (pp. 35-36). some research indicates that television has the ability to affect the way people view gender roles. katz (1995) writes: stressing gender differences in this context means defining masculinity in the opposition to femininity. this requires constantly reasserting what is masculine and what is feminine. one of the ways that is accomplished, in the image system, is to equate masculinity with violence (and femininity with passivity). (p. 135) in addition to gender, the television media also influences many youth towards violence. for instance, a 14year-old black male was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a 6-year-old girl. he was imitating pro wrestling moves he watched on television (ripley, 2001). today‟s black youth are many times criticized and labeled as violent or rebellious (dyson, 1997; kitwana, 2002). wilson (1990) asserts, “deeds of violence in our society are performed largely by those trying to establish their selfesteem, to defend their self-image, or to demonstrate that they too are significant” (p. 54). this is not to excuse individuals for violent behavior, but it provides insight into other influences impacting behavior. moreover, the television media promotes a value system based on materialism and immediate gratification (kunjufu, 1990). in accordance with these values, too many youths resort to violence. thus television exposure to negative imagery could possibly encourage a warped self-identity. identity theory and black youth black youth who are matriculating through middle and high school deal with a considerable amount of transition. the transitions here are related to grade levels, geographic location of schools, maturation, and identity development (to name a few). considering the latter, young adults share a certain amount of curiosity, exploration, and cultural collision in urban schools 3 discovery with regard to the development of identity (tatum, 1997). however, black youth in particular, begin to examine their own ethnic/racial identities even more that their white counterparts (negy, shreve, jensen, & uddin, 2003). tatum (1997) agrees noting that “given the impact of dominant and subordinate status, it is not surprising that researchers have found that adolescents of color are more likely to be actively engaged in an exploration of their racial or ethnic identity than are white adolescents” (p. 53). in this state of heightened identity awareness is where salient and unconscious messages and imagery can influence ideas and values. black youth are more sensitized to society‟s view of them with regard to race. “our selfperceptions are shaped by the messages that we receive from those around us, and when young black men and women enter adolescence, the racial content of those messages intensifies” (tatum, 1997, p. 54). hence, identity development for black youth is complicated by notions of race/ethnicity more than for their white peers, making this a time of complexity and vulnerability. this situation creates the need for direction and guidance from influential individuals and institutions, one of which is the school. school culture the school itself can have a major impact on the development of students. during school, students are afforded opportunities for academic, emotional, and social growth. students also interact with teachers and administrators within this educational environment that is founded upon certain values. academics, opportunities for growth, different types of interaction, and value systems all play a role in a school‟s culture. the school‟s culture also has the ability to shape student identity. a school is commonly defined as a place of teaching and learning. karpike and murphy (1996) indicate that the culture of an organization is the set of values and beliefs of the organization, and these values and beliefs are normally shared with the majority of people in the organization. thus, school culture is the shared value system of a given school. specifically, school culture involves certain components. according to pawlas (1997), “the key components of a strong effective school culture include shared values, humor, storytelling, empowerment, a communication system for spreading information, rituals and ceremonies, and collegiality” (p. 119). school culture is important to all that are involved with the school. the school culture can affect student identity. banks (2001) notes “the school culture communicates to students the school‟s attitudes toward a range of issues and problems, including how the school views them as human beings and its attitudes toward males, females, exceptional students, and students from various religious, cultural, racial, and ethnic groups” (p. 24). when the school‟s culture is characterized by value disagreement, lack of communication, and little collegiality (among teachers and students), many students see themselves as incapable, incompetent, and worthless. however, when an environment promotes a school-wide value system, good communication, collegiality, and the utilization of ceremonies, students‟ attitudes are much more positive. karpicke and murphy (1996) agree that a healthy (school) culture has a great impact on the success of students. taking all of this into account we find that those leaders who are interested in changing a culture must first try to understand the existing culture. in doing this, the leader and others would have to begin by respecting the various cultures that come to the schoolhouse on a daily basis, before imposing another culture. intersection of school culture and black popular culture the values as dictated by negative hip-hop culture and the media many times conflict with the values of the school. kunjufu (1990) notes that gangs and negative media promote immediate gratification and materialism, while parents and teachers promote long-term gratification and qualities such as moral integrity and honesty. kunjufu (1993) also states that there is a concern about some hiphop artists‟ misogynistic and violent messages. in effect, students obtain certain values from this segment of hip-hop culture and television media and then bring those values to the school. therefore, there is a conflict of value systems, which sometimes results in discipline problems and lack of communication between students and educators. in addition, peers can have a great influence on each other, even more so than the influence of adults (kunjufu, 1990). thus, the values are shared and become pervasive because of the influence of peer communication and pressure. furthermore, black youth spend much more time with peers, listening to music, and watching television than they do having meaningful conversations with teachers and parents (kunjufu, 1994; bush, 1999). the task for educators is to familiarize themselves with youth culture/value systems and realize the subsequent affect on youth identity. hip-hop culture has undergone tremendous growth as an artistic form of expression, fashion, as well a money making venture. many have advocated censorship in order to curtail much of the negative influence of rap music. however, censorship may not be the appropriate response. it sends the message that artistic expression can be stifled by those who simply disagree. therefore, a certain amount of responsibility must be placed on parents, guardians, and school officials. in effect, parents and educators should take a greater role in involving themselves in the lives of these youth. one must remember that hip-hop culture has a business aspect and the supply will meet the demand. what would happen if the consumers demanded more positive conscious images? the media also has to be held accountable for its negative imagery. if not, then youth identity could be at stake. chideya (1995) writes, “in the final analysis, it‟s up to the reader and viewers to keep the media honest…pointing out times that the media has current issues in education vol. 7 no. 1 4 misrepresented the african-american community can only make the community better. the media belongs to all of us. if we want it to work, we have to work” (p. 11). implications for educators in summary, there are many factors that influence the identities of urban black youth. hip-hop culture, television media, and school culture do have a serious impact on this particular group. at the heart of this analysis is the creation of a healthy positive value system. consequently, those students who develop this strong value system have less of a chance to be affected by negative aspects of hip-hop culture and misrepresentation in television media and more of a chance to be influenced by the “positivity” exemplified in a healthy school culture. due to the increasing amount of cultural and social diversity found in society and in our schools, educators must find the right balance which promotes a healthy school climate while also embracing some degree of cultural pluralism. there should be a willingness and effort among educators to structure the school culture to ensure that individuals of diverse backgrounds are well positioned to achieve regardless of their predispositions in life. a school culture structured in a pluralistic manner, can lead to the self-efficacy and self-determination of students who may bring conflicting values from their environment (banks, 1995). banks (2001) insists “the culture and organization of the school must be examined by all members of the school staff…in order to create a school culture that empowers students from diverse racial and ethnic groups” (p. 22). this is extremely important because it helps to ensure that students are not being labeled incorrectly and are not subjugated because of inadequate cultural capital. therefore, it is important for educators to help such students develop the kinds of value systems that encourage positive self-identities and give them the legitimate opportunity to become successful in school as well as in life. references ayers, w. (1994). can city schools be saved? educational leadership, 51(8), 60-63. banks, j. a. (1995). multicultural education: development, dimensions, and challenges. in j. joll, (ed.), taking sides: clashing views on controversial education issues (pp. 84-93). new york: the dushkin publishing group, inc. banks, j. a. (2001). multicultural education: characteristics and goals. in j. a. banks & c. a. mcgee banks (eds.), multicultural education: issues and perspectives (4 th ed.), (pp. 3-30). new york: john wiley & sons, inc. berman, s., & berreth, d. (1997). the moral dimensions of schools. educationalleadership, 54(8), 24-27. browder, a. (1989). from the browder file: 22 essays of the african american experience. washington, dc: the institute of karmic guidance. bush, l. v. (1999). can black mothers raise our sons? chicago: african american images. chideya, f. (1995). don’t believe the hype: fighting cultural misinformation aboutafrican-americans. new york: penguin books. dyson, m. e. (1996). between god and gangsta rap. new york: oxford university press. dyson, m. e. (1997). race rules: navigating the color line. new york: vintage books. dyson, m. e. (2001). holler if you hear me: searching for tupac shakur. new york: basic civitas books. karpicke, h. & murphy, m. e. (1996). productive school culture: principals working from the inside. national association of secondary school principals, 80, 26-32. katz, j. (1995). advertisement and the construction of violent white masculinity. in g. dines and j. humez (eds.). gender, race and class in the media: a text reader.thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. kitwana, b. (2002). the hip hop generation: young blacks and the crisis in africanamerican culture . new york: basic books. kunjufu, j. (1990). countering the conspiracy to destroy black boys (vol. iii). chicago: african american images. kunjufu, j. (1993). hip-hop vs. maat: a psycho/social analysis of values. chicago: african american images. kunjufu, j. (1994). countering the conspiracy to destroy black boys (vol. iv). chicago: african american images. mccall, n. (1997). what’s going on. new york: random house. negy, c., shreve, jensen, b. j., & uddin, n. (2003). ethnic identity, self-esteem, and ethnocentrism: a study of social identity versus multicultural theory of development.cultural diversity and mental health, 9(4), 333-334. pawlas, g. e. (1997). vision and school culture. national association of secondary school principals, 81, 118-120. ripley, a. (2001, march). throwing the book at kids. time, 157 (11), 34. tatum, b. d. (1997). why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?: andother conversations about race. new york: basic books. white, j. l. & cones iii, j. h. (1999). black man emerging: facing the past and seizing a future in america. new york: w. h. freeman and company. wilson, a. (1990). black on black violence. new york: african world info systems. the netgeneration: the internet as classroom and community 5 2004 article citation beachum, f. d. & mccray, c.r.(2004, september 14). cultural collision in urban schools. current issues in education [on-line], 7(5). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number5/ author notes dr. floyd beachum is an assistant professor in the department of administrative leadership at the university of wisconsinmilwaukee, where he teaches courses in organizational change and leadership in educational organizations. his research interests include: character education, racial inequity in urban education, and organizational change in k-12 schools. dr. carlos mccray is an assistant professor of educational administration at alabama state university, where he teaches school law, foundations of education administration, and mentoring in education. his research interests include: organizational change, organizational diversity, and school law. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article‟s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article‟s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation beachum, f. d. & mccray, c. r. (2011). cultural collision in urban schools. current issues in education, 7(5). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/821 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number5/ http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 microsoft word 811_final2_mh.doc 1 volume 15, number 1 february 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x higher education tuition and fees in china: implications and impacts on affordability and educational equity haiying dong arizona state university xuehong wan sichuan university students in china are being shouldered with more financial responsibility for their higher education. this shift impacts individuals across the economic spectrum in different ways. this paper assesses recent trends in china’s higher education tuition and fees, and the implications on educational equity. results document substantial increases in tuition and fees since 1996. china’s policies have caused costs to rise to the point where they now exceed the abilities of many individuals to pay. as a consequence, many lower income families find it impossible to afford higher education without assistance. recently, the government began increasing financial assistance to low-income families. this has resulted in some relative improvements. while progress has been noteworthy, it will be important for the chinese government to continue reforming student subsidy programs and student loans policies in order to foster more equal access for capable students from all economic backgrounds. keywords: chinese higher education, cost-sharing, tuition and fees, educational equity china needs a system of higher education that will be accessible and affordable to its most capable young adults. in the past three decades, dramatic growth of china’s higher education system has helped lead to unprecedented changes within society and tremendous expansions of economic opportunities. these major developments and achievements have received worldwide attention. from 1978 to 2009, the number of general higher education institutions increased from 598 to 2,305; while the number of full-time undergraduates and shortterm training students increased from 0.86 million to over 21.4 million (bureau of china statistics, 2010). this growth of higher education has been centrally important to china’s economic development. since 1978, china’s policies relating to higher education fee charging have undergone tremendous change. beginning in 1989, a few chinese universities began to experiment with policies that required students to pay a portion of some tuition and fees; and by 1997, all higher education institutions were charging students some form of fees for their higher education (dong &wan, 2006; zhong & zhan, 2003). the result is that higher education in china is no longer without cost to students. college students in china now must pay substantial parts of, if not all of their tuition and fees. in july of 1999, in an attempt to solve the mismatch between the strong demand for higher education and the deficiency of the supply, the chinese state department made another attempt to adjust the nation’s economic and social development plan (the working group of “the reform of china’s higher education”, 1998). the policy changed from one of current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 2 steady, moderate expansion to one that more proactively developed higher education. as a result, it became clear that a wider base of support for higher education was needed. after considering various sources, the government strengthened policies related to the charging of fees. since then, tuition and fees have increased annually. officially, it is presumed that spreading the costs of higher education in china will lead to higher market efficiency and promote student learning. the actual impacts may, in fact, be much more far reaching. there were two main motivations for implementing these changes in tuition policy. the first motivation was that the scale of china’s planned higher education expansion exceeded the government’s ability to finance it. second, the chinese government embraced the higher education cost-sharing theory (the so called cost compensation theory). this theory was first proposed by united states economists in the early 1970s. since then, cost-sharing theory has become more widely accepted (johnstone, 1986, 2004), and related policies were adopted in many countries throughout the world (colclough, 1996). policymakers in china agree that cost sharing is conducive to educational equity; that it fits the common sense that education is a kind of quasi-public product. the rationale was that those who will benefit most directly from higher education should pay for a substantial portion of it. accordingly, in china the costs of higher education shifted from an entirely governmental burden to a shared governmental, societal, and individual burden to the point where students and their families now must cover increasing proportions of their higher education costs through tuition and fees. the new tuition policies have gone a long way towards reducing the chinese higher education funding shortage. it has also led, however, to the emergence of many new problems that have aroused widespread concern throughout chinese society. this paper uses official, publicly available statistical data to analyze what has happened to tuition and fees in chinese higher education from 1996 to 2008. tuition and fee trends are identified and their implications for chinese society and for the higher education system are discussed. the hope is that this analysis and discussion will help foster equitable development of china’s higher education system while remaining consistent with prudent application of cost sharing theory in china. data and analysis the growth trends of tuition and fees data from the china statistical yearbooks from 1996 to 2010 (bureau of china statistics, 1996 through 2010) were used to seek a better understanding of how higher education has come to be financed. in order to better understand tuition and fee trends, we compare the annual proportions of higher education funds from two main resources: 1) government appropriations for education; and 2) tuition & fees (the amounts that college students and their families are required to pay) (see table 1). table 1 shows unprecedented decreases in the proportion of higher education funds from government appropriations, but remarkable increases in the proportion of tuition and fees. during this period, the share of table 1 the proportion of higher education funds by different resources (percentage) year government appropriation (%) tuition & fees (%) 1996 80.3 13.7 1997 78.3 14.8 1998 65.0 13.3 1999 62.5 17.0 2000 58.2 21.1 2001 54.2 24.2 2002 50.6 26.3 2003 47.9 28.8 2004 45.5 30.4 2005 42.8 31.1 2006 42.9 29.2 2007 44.0 33.7 2008 47.6 33.7 data source: bureau of china statistics (2010) higher education tuition and fees in china 3 government appropriation for education in total funds dramatically declined. in 1996, the ratio of governmental appropriations to total funds was 80.3%. by 2008, this ratio decreased to 47.6%; less than half of the total amount of funding. growth of tuition and fees, however, has also been dramatic. in 1996, the ratio of tuition and fees to the total higher education funds was only 13.7%. by 2008, this ratio increased to about one-third of the total amount of funding. tuition and fees in china have increased to the point where the amount of total education funds that individuals now assume has reached or exceeded the level in some developed countries. in 1990, for example, personal tuition and fees only accounted for 24.3% of the cost of american higher education (wang, 2000). according to table 2, total higher education expenditures and government appropriations for education were maintained at almost stable annual growth rates. the average annual growth rate of the total higher education funds was 24%. the average annual growth rate for government educational appropriations, however, only averaged 19%. in contrast, the average annual growth rate of tuition and fees was as high as 34%. these figures reveal two conspicuous trends: 1) the growth rate of tuition and fees was significantly higher than it was for governmental sources; 2) during this period, china’s steady growth in total funds available to higher education was achieved primarily through rapid increases in tuition and fees. the growth of per capita tuition and fees in 1999, the policy of “the enrollment expansion” began to be implemented throughout china’s mainland (the working group of “the reform of china’s higher education”, 1998). since then, the student enrollment in higher institutions increased rapidly. as the gross rate of higher education enrollment grew from 8.3% in 1996 to 26.5% in 2010, china’s higher education entered the popularization stage. according to some economists’ and educators’, adequate per capita funding for higher education can ensure better teaching, more learning, an increase in the overall quality of higher education, and more purposeful development of higher institutions generally (wang, 2006). therefore, because the growth of the total amount of tuition and fees may have been largely due to the increases in student numbers, per capita tuition and fees may not have actually risen as much as it may seem. for these reasons it is necessary for us to examine per capita higher education funding. table 3, based on the china statistical yearbook (bureau of china statistics, 2010), shows growth trends of the average value of various factors in higher education funding from 1996 to 2003. during the entire period, total per capita higher education funding maintained steady growth, with an average annual growth rate of 6%. starting in 1999, when the enrollment expansion policy was implemented, average annual growth rates of per capita higher education funds dramatically decreased, due to the sharp increase of enrollment of higher education in table 2 the annual growth rate of china’s higher education funds year total funds (%) government appropriation (%) tuition & fees (%) 1996 19.5 16.5 29.7 1997 40.7 16.7 26.3 1998 29.0 24.2 65.2 1999 28.9 19.9 59.5 2000 27.7 19.1 46.6 2001 27.5 18.9 38.3 2002 17.9 11.8 29.5 2003 21.4 15.4 28.1 2004 19.7 12.5 22.3 2005 15.2 15.5 8.3 2006 23.7 26.9 42.6 2007 15.9 25.4 15.9 2008 19.5 16.5 29.7 data source: bureau of china statistics (2010) current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 4 table 3 the growth trend of per capita various factors in higher education funds in china year per capita total funds (%) government appropriation (%) per capita tuition & fees (%) 1997 13.7 10.8 23.5 1998 31.0 8.7 17.6 1999 7.6 3.6 37.8 2000 -5.3 -11.9 17.2 2001 -1.2 -7.9 13.4 2002 1.5 -5.4 10.1 2003 -3.9 -8.9 5.5 2004 0.9 -4.1 6.5 2005 2.2 -4.0 4.4 2006 3.5 3.7 -2.7 2007 14.1 17.1 31.6 2008 8.0 16.9 8.1 data source: bureau of china statistics (2010) china. this downward turning situation had not improved until 2007. during the same period, the average annual growth rates of per capita government appropriations were actually negative from 1996 to 2007; its average annual growth rate was -2%, though it had a period of growth in the years before 1999. in contrast, per capita tuition and fees continued to increase, except in 2006, when the growth rate of per capita tuition and fees was uncommonly negative. however, it significantly increased to 31.6% in 2007. from 1996 to 2008, per capita tuition and fees steadily increased with an average annual growth rates as high as 14.4%. the dramatic increase of per capita tuition and fees, just as the increases in total tuition and fees, is the primary reason to help china’s per capita higher education funds steady growth, even when considering the rapid enrollment. both total tuition and fees analyses and the tuition and fees per capita analyses indicate that higher education cost-sharing was quick to be realized in china. however, china is still a developing country. according to the china statistical yearbook (bureau of china statistics, 2010), per capita gdp and per capita income in china is still far below the world’s average level. with the reality of increasingly more substantial levels of higher education tuition and fees in china, a series of new questions have become relevant. among the most important are: can most chinese students and their families afford the growing cost for higher education? what is the impact of the incremental tuition and fees on educational equity? what are the appropriate policies or measures that the government should adopt to help those poor students accomplish their educational goals? life-cycle model. to answer the first question, an estimate was made of china's urban and rural residents’ paying ability for higher education by applying publicly available data. the ability of resident students to pay for their higher education depends not only on their income, but also on their accumulated wealth (heckman, 1976). cha and ding (2006) set up a new model to estimate students’ and families’ ability to pay for higher education based on the life-cycle model: they reported that paying for higher education is one of the chief aims of chinese families’ savings plans. under normal circumstances, families will primarily use their savings to pay for their child’s education. the model assumes that families typically do their best to support the higher education needs of their child. hence, student/family paying ability for a four-year undergraduate student’s tuition and fees can be presented as follows: (model i) (where x is student/family paying ability for higher education; n is the number of people in a family; w is annual per capita saving; r is annual per capita net income; c is the per capita balance of saving deposits). improved life-cycle model. cha and ding’s 2006 theoretical model is helpful for examining the paying ability of the students and their families for higher education expenditures. in china, however, there are huge differences in the economic situations and social higher education tuition and fees in china 5 structure between the rural and urban areas. if students come from different areas, the methods of calculation will be different. for example, most of china’s colleges and universities are located in urban areas, so the annual average consumption of a student could be thought as approximating the annual per capita consumption expenditure of city households, even though calculating the paying ability of students from rural areas. the consumption of others in rural chinese families still resembles the average level of the rural residents. using model i for reference, then, two new models can be derived to evaluate the different paying ability of rural students and urban students based on their different backgrounds. in model ii, the capacity of rural students and their families to pay for higher education would be: (model ii) (where rr is annual per capita net income of rural households; cu is annual per capita consumption expenditure of city household; cr is annual per capita expenditure of rural household.) in model iii, the capacity of urban students and their families to pay for higher education would be: (model iii) (where ru is annual per capita disposable income of city household; cu is annual per capita consumption expenditure of city household.) the structure of chinese family has been relatively stable in the most recent ten year period. in 2008, the average number of people in urban families was 2.91; in rural families the number was 4.01. so, to facilitate the calculation, 3 was used as the reference value of the number of people in urban families while 4 was used as the reference value of the number of people in urban families without considering the impact of the years. according to models ii and iii, the estimated values for rural and urban students paying ability for higher education were presented in table 4. results indicate that the per capita tuition and fees exceed both urban and rural residents’ average paying ability for higher education, in general. in fact, these estimated values of the rural students’ paying ability for higher education are probably overly optimistic. restricted by statistics, the data used to substitute per capita balance of saving deposit is the statistical average for all urban and rural residents in model ii and iii. however, some studies have demonstrated that in china, the wealth gap between urban and rural residents is large and widening (huang, 2006). according to some assessments, in 1999, the per capita saving deposit balance of rural residents was only 1,600 yuan while that of urban residents was 11,570 yuan (bureau of china statistics, 2010). in urban areas as well, gaps of wealth should not be ignored. it should be noted that all of the data presented in table 4 were based on averages. the number of students in a family was hypothesized to be 1. if calculations assumed there were some significant portions of families with two or more children who may accept higher education in a family at the same time, then the estimated value would be even lower than the reported results. hence, it can be assumed that the above methods of calculation cover up, to a degree, gaps of wealth. the conclusion, therefore, is that tuition and fees in china already outstrip the ability of many families to pay for higher education, especially in chinese rural areas or the low-income communities in urban areas. the impact of rising tuition and fees on educational equity in china most educational resources are located in urban areas. under current admission systems, the sole criterion for admission to major higher institutions is a student’s score in the national entrance examination. according to a recent survey, there are large differences in actual admission scores between the students from different economic strata. the average score of the students who come from rural areas is about 20 points higher than for those that come from urban areas. it can be assumed that high-priced and rising tuition and fees has likely prohibited many outstanding students with low socioeconomic status (ses) from accepting higher education opportunities (chung & lu, 1999). in 1960, while it was recognized that increasing student payments for higher education standards would be beneficial for reducing higher education funding shortages, it was also recognized that doing so was viewed as an unfavorable way to achieve educational equity and the objectives of social welfare (johnson, 1960). several other empirical studies (hoenack & weiler, 1975; rose & sorensen, 1992) have come to similar conclusions. that said, in china, higher education tuition and fees are already beyond the means of significant numbers of lower income students (chung & lu, 2003). the negative impacts of rising tuition and fees on educational equity have been mainly documented in two areas: 1) relatively fewer high ability lower income students admitted, and; 2) more high ability lower income students choosing lower status universities and majors. some studies have predicted that the growth of tuition and fees would impact the social demand for higher education. for example, one empirical study demonstrates that the price flexibility of the american students’ demand for higher education was -0.62, which means if tuition current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 6 table 4 the estimated value of the rural and urban residents’ paying ability for higher education (1996-2008) (units: yuan) estimated value year per capita tuition and fees rural residents urban residents 1996 1477 -2582 294 1997 1824 -1765 584 1998 2145 -938 1063 1999 2956 -421 1411 2000 3464 -1118 1374 2001 3928 -771 2128 2002 4324 -608 2391 2003 4562 298 3425 2004 4857 4268 4196 2005 5071 4944 5247 2006 4932 5870 6649 2007 6489 5809 7375 2008 7017 8464 10138 data source: bureau of china statistics (2010) and fees increased 10%, the enrollment of students in the higher institutions would drop 6.2% (leslie & brinkman, 1988). in china, the social demand for higher education is extremely strong (altbach, 1992, 2007; johnstone, 2004; mok, 2000). even though tuition and fees have increased to some extent, total enrollment in higher education institutions has still increased dramatically. however, the growth of tuition and fees may have serious undesirable impacts on those students who are from low ses families. this is because the price flexibility of tuition and fees for lower-income students was higher than that of students from higher income families (gertler & glewwe, 1990). probably because of lower paying ability, in china the proportion of rural students in the college population is remarkably decreasing. in the 1980s, this proportion was about 30%. by 2004 it had declined to 19.2%, even though the rural population accounted for 58.2% of china’s total population (wu, 2004). while students from low-income families have access to higher education, they are still subject to inequities when they choose a college or major within the institution. under cost sharing policies, tuition and fees have become a very important factor effecting students choice of college and major. students from lower-income families tend to choose majors like agriculture, teacher education, forestry, geology in less highly ranked higher institutions. students from high ses families tend to choose higher ranked institutions and are more likely to major in foreign languages, the arts, economics, law and the medical sciences (chung & lu, 1999). this indicates that regardless of where they matriculate, students from low-income families may be disadvantaged in the labor market when they graduate. as a result, the rate of return from their higher education would be expected to be lower than that of students from more wealthy, middle class families. improving affordability for china’s lowincome families the increase of residents’ income for rural or urban disadvantaged families obviously is not simple for the chinese government to achieve in a short time. in such a case, the financial assistance for helping lowincome students to complete postsecondary education is an effective means for the government. such an approach requires the government and society to provide adequate financial aid to highly capable students from low-income families. in fact, many countries have adopted similar “high-charging and high financial support” policies to assist with the development of their higher education systems. since the 1990s, most american universities have gradually raised tuition and fees. as a result, many forms of financial aid have been provided. these have included waivers of tuition and fees, fellowships, and scholarships for over 30% of needy students (chung & lu, 2003). such measures were intended to help balance competing demands of educational development and equity of access to higher education. because of the imperfections in current subsidy systems, however, china’s higher education remains in a “high-charging and low subsidizing” mode. the higher education tuition and fees in china 7 government has been trying to improve financial assistance by increasing the scope and the amount of needs-based subsidies by engaging in some overcharging of tuition and fees. as a result, it appears that china’s higher education policy is slowly transitioning to a policy of “higher-charging and higher financial support.” in this reform procession, a student loan system is thought of as a promising measure to improve students’ financial situations while in school. to enhance the effectiveness of student loan program, countermeasures put forward by albrecht and ziderman (1991) were thought to be valuable: (1) more effectively identify the needy recipients for loans; (2) reducing the debt burden of students with the reduction of the subsidy (such as raising interest rates, but using the students’ future income to help repay their loans) and; (3) designing even more effective recovery mechanisms to reduce the risks/costs to a minimum, such as australia has done by recovering student loans through the tax or social security system (albrecht & ziderman, 1991). nevertheless, debate continues in china about how to best structure student loan and subsidy programs to maximize access to higher education for academically talented students in relatively affordable ways so that educational equity will also be achieved. low-income families will likely be willing to continue accepting, perhaps out of necessity, universities that have lower tuition and fees even though they would prefer to have their children have access to more prestigious universities through more substantial educational grant and scholarship programs. it is likely that student loans and other subsidy programs will become more a part of china’s solution to educational inequality, particularly for middle income families who are capable of making meaningful financial contributions to the education of their children. without more loans and more grant programs, however, lower income students will continue to have less access to higher quality higher education and, as a result, will tend toward lower paying jobs. without even greater advances in these areas, the loser will be society which needs the best and brightest to help address the huge challenges that china’s recent transformation and development are posing. conclusion based on the foregoing analyses, it appears that china’s rising tuition and fees have already exceeded many families’ ability to pay. it also appears that the effects may be particularly hard on most of rural families and some lower ses communities in urban areas. the net effects can be presumed to be largely negative on educational equity. how to ameliorate these likely adverse effects of the recent changes in tuition and fee policies, and how to improve the low-income families’ ability to pay for higher education remain perplexing questions. a number of conclusions are inescapable from this study. first, despite the fact that the “high-charging and high subsidy” policy remains controversial, the chinese government is considering re-intensifying it as a means to improve access to higher education opportunities. second, in the past 15 years the contribution of tuition and fees accounting to total higher education funding has increased rapidly, reaching a peak of 33.7% in 2008. the same period witnessed the proportion of government appropriation for higher education declining gradually to less than half; indicating that the higher education cost sharing policies are having substantial impacts in china. third, rapidly rising tuition and fees have increased the burden on rural and lower ses urban students and their families. fourth, the current situation of having higher education tuition and fees beyond many students’ and/or families’ ability to pay, which is likely to have negatively impacted educational equity. these impacts on students have resulted from lowincome students selecting different admission opportunities and different choices of college and majors. finally, the chinese government is attempting to reform student assistance and loan policies to accelerate attainment of the goal of increasing the likelihood that low-income families’ can afford higher education. based on the life cycle theory, a new method was used to calculate the students’ abilities to pay for higher education in china. models were used to estimate the ability of rural and urban students and their families’ abilities to pay for higher education. the analysis indicated that the current high-priced tuition and fees have resulted in a situation where costs of higher education exceed the ability of many low ses chinese families’ abilities to pay, even families that use their entire savings to pay for their child’s higher education. if china’s system of higher education is to meet its goals, then a more comprehensive system of student financial assistance will be critical. increasing the affordability of higher education in china means that net tuition and fees would need to begin declining more so that the majority of families would become more able to afford it. if that were to happen, then low-income families would not have to pay as much. such an approach could make lower income students more economically capable of accessing higher education. similar studies in china, however, have shown that the low-charging policy will not significantly improve educational equity by itself (cha & ding, 2006; chung & lu, 1999, 2003; mok, 2000; zhong & zhan, 2003). the admirable goals of increasing the quality of china’s higher education, and making it more equally accessible to all able students, must be undertaken carefully so as not to bring excessive financial burdens to the government (cha & ding, 2006) upon which higher education so heavily relies. in addition, it is important that those who can afford higher education and benefit from it current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 8 should pay a fair share of the costs. progress to date has been somewhat less than optimal because the scope of the financial assistance is quite narrow; only a relative few needy students are being helped. we therefore recommend that china consider expanding programs that offer more ability-based tuition and fee waivers, scholarships, work-study opportunities, and fellowships, to high ability but lower income students. references albrecht, d., & ziderman, a. (1991). deferred cost recovery for higher education: student loan programs in developing countries (world bank discussion paper). washington, d. c.: the world bank. altbach, p.g. (1992). patterns in higher education development: toward the year 2000. in r.f. arnove, p.g. altbach, & g.p. kelly (eds) emergent issues in education: comparative perspectives. albany, ny: state university of new york press. altbach, p.g., & knight, j. (2007). the internationalization of higher education: motivations and realities. journal of studies in international education, 11 (3-4), 290-305. bureau of china statistics. (2010). china statistics yearbook (1996-2010) (china). beijing: china statistics press. cha, x., & ding, s. (2006). can low tuition policy improve education fairness and social welfare? tsinghua journal of education (china), 27(1), 65-70. chung, y., & lu, g. (1999). the affecting factors in students choosing college under fee charging system. journal of higher education (china), 2, 31-39. chung, y., & lu, g. (2003). the equity effects of cost recovery in higher education. peking university education review (china), 1(2), 52-64. colclough, c. (1996). education and the market: which parts of the neoliberal solution are correct? world development, 24(4), 589-610. dong, h., & wan, x. (2006). the research of current cost-sharing system in higher education in china, china education science study (china), 4(6), 25-26. gertler, p., & glewwe, p. (1990). the willingness to pay for education in developing countries: evidence from rural peru. journal of public economics, 42(3), 251-275. heckman, j.j. (1976). a life-cycle model of earnings, learning, and consumption. journal of political economy, 84(4): 11-44. hoenack, s.a., & weiler, w.c. (1975), cost-related tuition policies and university enrollments. journal of human resources, 10(3), 332–360. huang, l. (2006). the statistical analysis of the income gap between urban and rural in china. statistics and decision (china), 21, 107-108. johnson, e.l. (1960). is the low-tuition principle outmoded? the review of economics and statistics, (3), 44-47. johnstone, d.b. (1986). sharing the costs of higher education: student financial assistance in united kingdom, the federal republic of germany, france, sweden, and the united states. new york: college board. mok, k.h. (2000) marketizing higher education in postmao china. international journal of educational development, 20(2), 109-126. rose, d.c., & sorensen, r.l. (1992). high tuition, financial aid and cross-subsidization: do needy students really benefit? southern economic journal, 59(1): 66–76. the working group of “the reform of china’s higher education”. (1998). the reform of china’s higher education. beijing: finance and economic press. wang, s. (2000). concise guide to economics of education. beijing: higher education press. wang, y. (2006). changes in funding source of higher education in china: an analysis of the relationship between government funding and student tuition and fees, tsinghua journal of education (china), 27(5), 42-48. wu, s. (2004). the comparative analysis of the students’ cost about attending school and getting employment between public and private universities, education and economics (china), 2, 6-10. zhong, y., & zhan, s. (2003). on charging fees in public higher education from an equality perspective application of cost-recovery theory in mainland china. journal of higher education (china), 24(6), 28-33. higher education tuition and fees in china 9 article citation dong, h. & wan, x. (2012). higher education tuition and fees in china: implications and impacts on affordability and educational equity. current issues in education, 15(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/811 author notes haiying dong arizona state university po box 871811 tempe, az 85287 usa haiying.dong@asu.edu haiying dong is a ph.d. candidate at arizona state university, in the area of educational leadership & policy studies. his interests include the application of large-scale data analysis in educational policy studies; the influence of educational policy on individual and collective actions; school choice; school accountability; student achievement; and international and comparative education. xuehong wan west china school of medicine, sichuan university no. 37,guoxue xiang, west china school of medicine, chengdu, sichuan, 610041, china xhwan929@163.com xuehong wan is a professor of internal medicine and vice dean for educational affairs in west china school of medicine, sichuan university. his interests include the international comparative study on medical education system, curriculum designing, medical tests and faculty development. manuscript received: 09/12/2011 revisions received: 12/21/2011 accepted: 1/13/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 10 volume 15, number 1 february 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors angela hines elizabeth reyes recruitment editors angela hines lisa lacy copy editors/proofreaders carol masser lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson mary bankhead laura busby michelle crowley tulani garnett catherine gay ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca hyun jung kang monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser lauren preston stephanie quintero katherine ronan kelly rubel leslie salazar melisa tarango lauren williams kevin woo faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers volume 8, number 22 july, 2005 issn 1099-839x narratives on culturally relevant pedagogy: personal responses to the standardized curriculum paula booker baker georgia southern university lee woodham digiovanni georgia college and state university as curriculum objectives become more “standardized,” pedagogical strategies that reach diverse populations become more important, not less as some practitioners might be prone to believe. through the use of narratives, we have found that students achieve greater understandings of curriculum as well as find culturally relevant ways of applying curriculum to previous knowledge. using the same line of thinking, stories of successful pedagogical practice help to reinforce the ideas behind culturally relevant pedagogy as it translates from theory into practice. classroom narratives from students and teachers where culturally relevant pedagogical practices have been implemented are the focus of this article. efforts to implement standardization in education have increased over the years. this return to “a single standard of achievement and a onedimensional definition of the common will…result in severe injustices to the children …” (greene, 1995, p. 173). in schools today, the phrase “high standards” implies that every student is expected to reach a predetermined bar. the inevitable consequence becomes failure when teachers are forced to implement these standards without regards to the needs and experiences of the students. teachers and administrators blame the state standards and assessments for the decline of multicultural education (bohn & sleeter, 2001). “standards can…make explicit what students will be tested on, a detail that may help parents and community leaders at least know what the ‘game’ is and what the students will be judged on” (bohn & sleeter, 2001, p. 2). many students’ educations are in jeopardy because they are oblivious to this game or “culture of power” (delpit, 1995). standardized approaches to curricula and pedagogy are inadequate when considering the needs of culturally diverse classrooms. delpit (1995) argues that “children who may be gifted in real-life settings are often at a loss when asked to exhibit knowledge solely through decontextualized paper-and-pencil exercises” (p.173). in order to provide a culturally relevant environment for teaching, no one pedagogy should control the classroom by excluding all others. we have been involved in conversations with our peers in different school districts and find that many teachers are supposed to be on specific lessons on specific days – that the lessons are fairly scripted and that deviation from the timeline is not permitted. no room is allowed for individuality or creativity in presenting lessons; only the officially sanctioned timeline of lessons is to be seen if an current issues in education vol. 8 no. 22 administrator walks into the classroom. delpit (2003) goes into details of excellent teachers who have been reprimanded for not following standardized curriculum, including one who was “ordered to give up his thoughtful, imaginative, and effective practice in order to conform to following the script of the mandated open court (sra/mcgraw hill, 2002) literacy program. although he protested that his students were already achieving beyond the district’s expectations, he was told he had to fall in line” (p.15). we concur with delpit that this practice is dangerous, treating students as products on an assembly line, with no thought as to the emotional and intellectual growth, only the results on a standardized test. while we find the experiences the teachers in these districts are having to be appalling, the missing factor for us in all the talk about standards is the student. where does the student fit into this assembly line model of education? what experiences does the student bring with her when she enters the classroom? what are the cultural expectations and mores that the student encounters at home? what kinds of biases are inherent in the curriculum that prevent student learning? we believe that through responsive teachers, schools can make a difference and begin to address these questions and the impact of education on the lives of students (banks, cookson, gay, et al., 2001). as educators, we understand that there is more to education than “covering” the objectives that are issued to us from our state departments of education; there is also the need to cultivate relations with our students, to allow students the opportunity to be free to express their ideas without fear of reprisal or humiliation in our classrooms, to make the curriculum relevant to all. by making teaching culturally relevant, strategies such as constructing multicultural representations in the classrooms will help bridge the gap between students, their diverse experiences, and what the school curriculum requires (banks, cookson, gay, et al., 2001). in an effort to find ways to build bridges between the home and school as well as academic and lived experiences of students, we performed a literature review on cultural biases in education and pedagogical practices to help in our exploration to find strategies that will counteract or eliminate these biases. in order to make the literature come alive for us, we began to look for examples within our own classrooms that represented culturally responsive pedagogy in action. in this article you will find some understandings we culled from our literature review, followed by anecdotes that represent for us theory in practice. the anecdotes you find here represent just the beginning of this exercise, as we have also begun collecting real world examples from our peers. we hope to illustrate how theory can be moved into practice, with narratives where culturally responsive pedagogical practices have been implemented in our classrooms. educational importance for culturally relevant/responsive teaching the 2000 census shows a growing hispanic and african american population in the united states, and figures show that non-white population in the united states is approximating 25% (grieco & cassidy, 2001). meanwhile, a recent study in our state, georgia, shows that the teaching force in georgia remains over 80% white, with a trend of higher turnover for white teachers at schools that serve predominantly minority students (freeman, scafidi, & sjoquist, 2002). as “no child left behind” reforms and the consequential “adequate yearly progress” reports that specifically track performance of ethnic groups emerge, the focus for teachers ought to move away from what curriculum will be tested to how to engage both teachers and students in appropriate pedagogical practices for diverse populations. the importance of multicultural education as well as culturally appropriate pedagogical practices becomes even clearer. literature has been devoted to the empowerment of the majority culture and the consequent disabling of minority students (e.g. bowman, 1994; cotton, 1991; cummins, 1985; dimitriadis, 2001; hale, 2001; ladson-billings, 1994; lipka, 2002; perry & delpit, 1998; salzer, 1998; steele, 1992). “many of the…marginalized are made to feel distrustful of their own voices…yet they are not provided alternatives that allow them to their stories or shape their narratives or ground new learning in what they already know” (greene, 1995). in order for students to “buy into” education, they must be able to find a personal connection with education and the learning process. as teachers we ought to become fluid in our curricula presentation so as to allow students opportunities to connect. using gloria ladson-billings term, culturally relevant teaching, we ought to initiate actions to integrate the students’ cultural backgrounds into the classroom (1994, 1995). the objective of a culturally relevant classroom is to use this connection between culture and curriculum, home and school to promote academic achievement. ladson-billings (1994) and others (e.g. gay, 2000; howard, 2003; klug & whitfield, 2002; townsend, 2002) have taken the research a step further with the development of culturally relevant/responsive pedagogy, a theoretical framework for education “that attempts to integrate the culture of different racial and ethnic groups into narratives on culturally relevant pedagogy: personal responses to the standardized curriculum 3 the overall academic program” (http://www.emstac.org/registered/topics/disproportio nality/models.htm). by involving students in a culturally responsive classroom, they learn different ways of knowing, understanding, and presenting information. because diverse views are allowed, students are introduced to new and diverse interpretations and perspectives. the different views challenge and broaden the students’ boundaries. in the classrooms students are allowed to use their strengths which in turn facilitates the development of new skills. moreover, associations are made between the school culture and home culture. what exactly is meant when we say culturally relevant pedagogy? gay (2000) actually prefers the term culturally responsive as opposed to relevant, and one will find that we use the terms interchangeably. from gay, we find that “culturally responsive teaching can be defined as using the cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant and effective for them” (p. 29). gay notes that improving academic achievement is far from the only goal, as a culturally responsive approach to teaching helps students of color “maintain identity and connection with their ethnic groups and communities; develop a sense of community, camaraderie, and shared responsibility; and acquire an ethic of success” (p. 30). further, culturally responsive/relevant teaching can be described as multidimensional. while it does address curriculum content, culturally relevant teaching also includes “learning context, classroom climate, student-teacher relationships, instructional techniques, and performance assessments” (p. 31). an important understanding of this multidimensionality is to realize that to do this kind of teaching well requires tapping into a wide range of cultural knowledge, experiences, contributions, and perspectives. emotions, beliefs, values, ethos, opinions, and feelings are scrutinized along with factual information to make curriculum and instruction more reflective of and responsive to ethnic diversity. however, every conceivable aspect of an ethnic group’s culture is not replicated in the classroom. nor are the cultures included in the curriculum used only with students from that ethnic group. cultural responsive pedagogy focuses on those elements of cultural socialization that most directly affect learning. (gay, 2000, pp. 31-32) consequently, culturally responsive teaching can be considered transformative, as “it recognizes the existing strengths and accomplishments of these students and then enhances them further in the instructional process” (gay, 2000, p. 33) and emancipatory, “in that it releases the intellect of students of color from the constraining manacles of mainstream canons of knowledge and ways of knowing” (gay, 2000, p. 35). finally, “cooperation, community, and connectedness are also central features of culturally responsive teaching. students are expected to work together and are held accountable for one another’s success” (gay, 2000, p. 36). even with the aforementioned research, as educators we still find an ever-growing divide between theory and practice. while there is a movement within teacher education programs to include more instruction about multicultural education, and even a “bold proposal” to certify new teachers in culturally responsive pedagogy (townsend, nov.2002), there remains a large segment of the practicing teaching population who are unexposed and unaware of the philosophy behind the movement, or for that matter, unaware of the need for culturally relevant teaching practices in the face of the standards movement. the need for visualization: translating theory into practice while appreciating the literature on culturally relevant pedagogy, we felt a need to visualize the practices in classrooms that are very culturally diverse as well as classrooms that are predominantly white. this visualization is important for several reasons. one author is an african american woman who teaches in a culturally diverse middle school, while the other author is a white woman who taught in a predominantly white elementary school. our experiences are vastly different, but we both believe that every child in our classroom has the right to be successful, and the right to be affirmed as an important human being regardless of the ethnic makeup of our classes – culturally responsive pedagogy is one way to accomplish this task. the conversations we have had about what culturally responsive pedagogy looks like in our classrooms have been invaluable in helping each other make deeper connections. another reason why we have become engrossed in this visualization is in an effort to make the practice more accessible to our colleagues and present our students with opportunities for academic success while guiding them to become more caring, concerned, and humane individuals. in both of our personal experiences as teachers in a k-12 setting, we have learned from experience that the use of narratives in the classroom not only helps students to achieve a greater understanding of curriculum, but also allows our students to find culturally relevant ways of applying http://www.emstac.org/registered/topics/disproportionality/models.htm http://www.emstac.org/registered/topics/disproportionality/models.htm current issues in education vol. 8 no. 22 the curriculum to previous knowledge. theoretically and methodically we took a narrative approach as we monitored our own classrooms. this study began as a project for our doctoral class; however, we quickly realized the impact culturally relevant pedagogy had on our students and the classroom environment. narrative inquiry encouraged us to examine our roles as practitioners as we listened to and learned from the stories of our students. through the storytelling we were allowed to understand perspectives of others and develop rich connections as we gained knowledge academically and socially. using the same line of thinking, we as teachers achieve a greater understanding of culturally relevant practice by listening to one another. our own experiences of listening to each other about events in our classrooms have solidified this belief for us. stories of successful pedagogical practice with diverse populations help to reinforce the ideas behind culturally relevant pedagogy as it translates from theory into practice. narratives from our classrooms our scripts are based on life experiences, students’ needs, and required curriculum. through narratives, we have attempted to move the curriculum from the noun to verb form by restoring the fluidity to curriculum. by utilizing a concept of fluidity the curriculum becomes reflexive instead of linear. students are able to accept diversity and develop and enhance critical thinking skills, where as those in a linear environment settle for dichotomous understanding. worded differently, the inability to make connections through teachable moments when the interpretation of standards is a curriculum that insists upon specific objectives and pages covered reduces the fluid nature of dialogue within the classroom, and the understandings that can emerge about one another and the curriculum. as teachers we need to realize that narratives are powerful tools that can positively or negatively affect our students. through narratives we are presented with a safe environment to experience, explore, and understand with a different openness . the following narratives represent some of our own personal explorations with culturally responsive pedagogy in classrooms that are the most familiar to us – our own. narrative i: recently my literature classes read a short story about two pre-teens (boy and girl) that are in conflict with their family, cultural tradition, and community. the children were preparing to endure a cultural ritual that takes place when the boy child becomes a warrior and the girl becomes a woman. in the introductory discussion the students and i talked about traditions. in each class, i had at least one student per class to express that the traditions of the featured culture was “stupid.” i asked my students two questions that took our discussion to a new level. the questions: why do you think this tradition is stupid? how would you feel if someone called your family tradition stupid? i could realize these students were in some instances speaking from learned stereotypes. they honestly did not know why they spoke so negatively about differences. after our class discussions, i could tell some of the students realized the pain their closed mindedness and negative words could cause. i believe this storytelling also allowed the students to see the conflict from the “other” point of view. the students were able to understand how it feels to be torn between following family tradition and how others perceive your difference. in one class a student shared a narrative that served as the perfect bridge into our literature story. this student began with her feelings of fear of an indian woman in her neighborhood that wore clothing that covered all but her eyes. she thought this woman was deformed. her mother was friends with this lady and arranged for the indian woman to tell her daughter of her culture and beliefs. the student was even allowed to try on one of the woman’s garments. quickly she clarified that she did not try on a garment but a jhumn (head and body covering) and a ghago (dress). she eventually completed a social studies project on the culture of her neighbor and got an a. this student was beaming with excitement as she told this story to the class. while she talked, her peers stared and clung to every part of her story. by gaining exposure to a different culture, history, and literature the students gained experience, learned respect for difference, and developed empathy and a greater understanding of self and others. in reflecting upon the above narrative there is displayed an instance in which the traditional curriculum has stepped apart from the rigid steps and rules process of teaching. the students had the opportunity to experience “otherness” and use that unique experience to see the literature story from a different lens. the lessons that incorporate narratives, like the above, encourage students to be autonomous, find a connection, and allow for personal reflection on diversity. “the purpose of critical reflection is not to indict teachers…but to improve practice, rethinking, philosophies, and become more effective narratives on culturally relevant pedagogy: personal responses to the standardized curriculum 5 for today’s ever-changing population” (howard, 2003). reflection through critically relevant pedagogy enhances education one component of narrative teaching is the opportunity for self-reflection. the value of reflection in education has been documented in history through the era of john dewey. dewey (1933) viewed reflection as a form of problem solving developed in the framework of using experiences as a deliberate cognitive process. this philosophical process is interwoven with many contemporary approaches to education. in order for this process to be beneficial in a diverse society, we should be cognizant of moral, political, and ethical concepts presented. ladson-billings (1994) argues on the same lines of dewey that a reflective approach provides students with an authentic belief that culturally diverse students are capable learners. she argues that if students are treated as morally and ethically competent, they will demonstrate these expectations through actions. to become culturally relevant, we as teachers need to engage in honest, critical reflection and discourse that challenges our colleagues and students into reevaluating their positionality. “good intentions and awareness are not enough to bring about the changes needed in educational programs and procedures to prevent academic inequities among diverse students” (gay, 2000, p. 13). this discourse will explore the areas of race, culture, social class, and gender and how these characteristics shape our learning, thinking, and understanding of our curriculum, society, and the world. narrative ii: poetry is another unit placed within the literature curriculum for k-12 student. within the thematic unit and standardized curriculum, students are required to read and explain from a literary canon to which they cannot connect. as with most topics, students come alive when they are able to read, learn, and write about something that is of interest to them. ladson-billings (1995) asserts, “if the students’ home language is incorporated into the classroom, students are more likely to experience academic success” (p. 159). in many instances musicians speak the home language of our students. many required poetry units feature traditional works that are considered foreign to students that live in the popular culture era. narratives by those outside the school environment can be used to find that connection so that students are capable of relating to the unit of study. the first day of the poetry unit the students entered my room with sad faces and despair. the question on many of their mind was how long we had to study poetry. i waited until i got everyone’s attention and began to name the poets that would introduce our unit. i told the students that i would hope they recognized some of the names and began to call names of the rap artists and singers they recognize from radio and television. within two minutes my class was electric. the students understand and listen intently to popular rap songs, and this was the needed connection to re-ignite the spark for poetry. rap music is a global phenomenon that my students understand. i decided to use the genre of the hip-hop culture to introduce poetry and get my students excited about poetry. the idea behind rap as poetry is to encourage the students to remove the melody of a song they know and like and realize that once the words are spoken, there is a poem. once the excitement developed, it was an easy transition from rap to the required poetry for the curriculum. one important feature of culturally relevant pedagogy is that the teacher does not teach as if the student has deficits of knowledge (howard, 2003, p. 14). in this above instance, the students were affirmed and their knowledge of popular culture was treated as worth knowing. in addition, this introduction to poetry further helped to explicitly make a “connection between culture and learning” (howard, 2003, p. 15) as well as “ incorporate a wider range of dynamic and fluid teaching practices” (howard, 2003, p. 15), both of which are important understandings of what culturally relevant pedagogy entails. choosing excellence "culturally relevant teaching requires that teachers attend to students' academic needs, not merely make them ‘feel good.’ the trick of culturally relevant teaching is to get students to ‘choose’ academic excellence" (ladson-billings, 1995, p. 160). narrative iii: just this week i witnessed one of those moments where students chose academic excellence. the students had been working diligently as we studied the elements of mythology. to keep the excitement high, i decided to incorporate an art activity. the students chose partners or small groups. the objective was to create a mythic cartoon that had characterization, foreshadowing, a mythic hero, and a moral. while meeting the current issues in education vol. 8 no. 22 students’ needs in academics, i saw culturally relevant teaching pay off as a bond develops between two of my most ‘unlikely’ students. j is an african american male student that was recently mainstreamed into the regular classroom from the behavior disorder class. he is opinionated, loud, and very independent. a is a white male student that comes from a very conservative environment. he is the typical child with the need to please. a is independent (when he believes the teacher wishes it). i assume from a’s mannerisms and reactions to the other students and to me that he has limited interactions with minorities outside the school environment. both boys love sports and wanted to use that love as the framework for their mythic cartoon. they had the same idea and very reluctantly decided to work together. a is an excellent writer with a keen sense of creativity. j is an excellent artist with a flair for drawing what others request. the boys worked diligently and actually produced the best product of all the classes that completed the assignment. their classmates were in awe of the final project.three days later, i noticed them talking in the hall and sitting together during lunch. j (the behavior problem) is much calmer and contributes positively to the class. i watched a have an opinion in a discussion, and he did not back down when other students disagreed. what an amazing transformation for both boys. i am almost certain that these two students would have been in the same class for the entire year and never talk. however, their love for football and art created an unlikely friendship and connection. the above narrative is an interesting example of choosing excellence. not only did the assignment allow the students to succeed while using their strengths, but it also created a bridge between cultures – showing each student that the other has strengths to bring to the table, focusing on positive interaction rather than negative interaction. culturally responsive pedagogy in majority white schools through narratives, teachers are able to look inward. this allows teachers to know themselves and their students. palmer (1998) asserts that “we teach who we are.” hard questions are then asked: are the students that fail unlike us? we feel that culturally responsive pedagogy is not only important for schools who have a large representation of diverse populations, but also important in schools that do not have a large diverse population. ladson-billings (1994) states, “culturally relevant teaching is about questioning (and preparing students to question) the structural inequality, the racism, and the injustice that exist in society” (p. 128). nieto (2000) elaborates on this point further: racism is seldom mentioned in school (it is bad, a dirty word) and therefore is not dealt with. unfortunately, many teachers think that simply having lessons in getting along or celebrating human relations week will make students nonracist or nondiscriminatory in general. but it is impossible to be untouched by racism, sexism, linguicism, heterosexism, ageism, anti-semitism, classism, and ethnocentrism in a society characterized by all of them….therefore, part of the mission of the school becomes creating the space and encouragement that legitimates talk about racism and discrimination and makes it a source of dialogue. (p. 307) this element is why we include stories that show the importance of examining and affirming cultures in the classroom when the majority of the faces are white. not only do these teachers have a responsibility to the students in their rooms who are not part of the dominant culture, they also have a responsibility to all of their students to learn to accept and appreciate one another. “we must cultivate in ourselves a capacity for sympathetic imagination that will enable us to comprehend the motives and choices of people different from ourselves, seeing them not only as forbiddingly alien…but as sharing many problems and possibilities with us” (nussbaum, 1997, p. 85). there are so many differences in society that it makes acceptance of different people, diverse cultural beliefs, or various points of view harder. through the development of understanding and sympathy we can hopefully learn to collaborate across cultural boundaries. narrative a: in one of my classes recently, i had a class discussion based on something that i found that was entitled “if the world were a village of 100 people” (some of this information, found below, can be found at http://www.pratyeka.org/library/text/100peo ple.html). the following represents some of the information that we discussed:  70 would be nonwhite, 30 would be white  61 would be asian, 13 african, 13 from north and south america, 12 http://www.pratyeka.org/library/text/100people.html http://www.pratyeka.org/library/text/100people.html narratives on culturally relevant pedagogy: personal responses to the standardized curriculum 7 europeans, and the remaining one from the south pacific.  33 would be christians, 19 believers in islam, 13 would be hindus, and 6 would follow buddhist teachings. 5 would believe that there are spirits in the trees and rocks and in all of nature. 24 would believe in other religions, or would believe in no religion.  17 would speak chinese, 9 english, 8 hindi and urdu, 6 spanish, 6 russian, and 4 would speak arabic. that would account for half the village. the other half would speak bengal, portuguese, indonesian, japanese, german, french, or some other language.  in such a village with so many sorts of folks, it would be very important to learn to understand people different from yourself and to accept others as they are. but consider this. of the 100 people in this village, o 20 are undernourished, 1 is dying of starvation, while 15 are overweight. o of the wealth in this village, 6 people own 59% (all of them from the united states), 74 people own 39%, and 20 people share the remaining 2%. o of the energy of this village, 20 people consume 80%, and 80 people share the remaining 20%. o 75 people have some supply of food and a place to shelter them from the wind and the rain, but 25 do not. 17 have no clean, safe water to drink. o if you have money in the bank, money in your wallet and spare change somewhere around the house, then you are among the richest 8. o if you have a car, you are among the richest 7. o among the villages, 1 has a college education. 2 have computers. 14 cannot read. i decided that for this activity i would present this information by writing it on the board, but that i wanted my students to copy it. groans of how “mean” i am followed from some students, but i believe that by having the students copy the information, the possibility of them absorbing what was presented was greater. it certainly allowed for more introspection. after the students had finished copying most of the information, i asked them how this relates to perspective, our focus of discussion. one child said that we are very fortunate. many of them had never thought that a college education could be considered rare – after all, most of their parents have college educations. somehow in the conversation, someone said that this is a reminder to treat others the way that you want to be treated, and i asked in return “is it really?” this brought us into a discussion of how different cultures have different social mores, and the way that people within that culture want to be treated may be very different from the way that “i” want to be treated. as i reflected back on how the conversation progressed in both classes, i thought to myself that more students need to be engaged in conversations like this one, and how good it felt to be engaged in dialogue that was on such a high level with nine and ten year olds. moments like this one are one of the reasons that i teach. one of the reasons we include this particular narrative is that this activity shows a white teacher who is becoming more comfortable with discussing race, class, gender, and other differences in her classroom. this step is important, as howard (2003) notes: as the teaching profession becomes increasingly homogeneous, given the task of educating an increasingly heterogeneous student population, reflections on racial and cultural differences are essential. in order to become a culturally relevant pedagogue, teachers must be prepared to engage in a rigorous and oftentimes painful reflection process about what it means to teach students who come from different racial and cultural backgrounds than their own (p. 18). narrative b: i was leading my fifth-graders in a discussion of current events, which is a daily practice in my classroom. one of our first events was a discussion of shirin ebadi, who current issues in education vol. 8 no. 22 is the recent recipient of the nobel peace prize, and the first muslim woman to receive this prestigious award. one of my students, m, immediately raised his hand and said, “why in the world would they give the nobel peace prize to a muslim?” another student, t, immediately erupted from his chair and said, “excuse me, ms. h., but i really need to deal with this.” he faced the students and entered into a heartfelt speech on prejudice and racism. he told m that he still liked him very much as a person, but was deeply offended by what m had said. he said, “how dare you judge an entire group of people based on what a few people from one religion have done?” what ensued was a class debate—totally unplanned! the students explored racism, prejudice, and the many factors that shape our perspectives. when one student stated that the world would be boring if we were all alike, i asked him to look around our classroom. there were actually gasps when they realized that we were sitting in a class with no diversity whatsoever. this led into a discussion of how it can be detrimental to assume that we are the “norm.” the students also discussed how sometimes people do judge an entire group of individuals because they are different from themselves or because of what a few of those individuals have done. at the end of this profound debate, the original student who had made the comment about the nobel peace prize asked to make a statement. he told the class that his perspective had totally changed and that he now fully understood the merit of this amazing muslim woman. he actually thanked the student who had helped to open his eyes. when i later shared this event with colleagues, i stated that this was one of the most amazing teaching moments of my career. when students are given the freedom and the forum to discuss relevant issues in our world, we are all enriched. (k. harrell, personal communication, november 12, 2003) activities such as these in a predominantly white setting also shows culturally relevant pedagogy. ladson-billings (1995) states that in order to have culturally relevant teaching as pedagogy, three criteria must be in place: “(a) students must experience academic success, (b) students must develop and/or maintain cultural competence, and (c) students must develop a critical consciousness where they challenge the status quo of the current social order” (p. 160). in an environment where the students are exposed to monoculture instead of multiculture, students need to develop a broader sense of sociopolitical consciousness to realize the cultural norms, values, and mores of others. these students need to know that race matters (west, 1994). it always has, and it always will. it matters in whose version of history is presented, what canon is adopted, and in who is seen as invisible. perspectives presented through narratives enhance inquiries just as the use of narratives in a classroom (and narratives about classrooms) can enhance learning and help make important connections for our students, the use of narratives have not been lost upon educational researchers. educational researchers are utilizing a variety of different approaches that include the use of narratives: personal narrative and narrative inquiry (e.g. josselson, 1996; connelly and clandinin, 1990), narrative multiculturalism (e.g. phillion, 2002; he, 2002), reflexive ethnography (pink in mullen, 2001); portraiture (e.g. garcia, 1999); fiction as inquiry (morrison, 1970); and cultural inquiry (e.g. gee, 1999), just to name a few. many of these approaches have common characteristics. the above-mentioned researchers each seek to discover cultural roots to encourage participation from students of diverse cultures in the classroom. the importance of culturally relevant teaching is immeasurable. ethically speaking, all students should receive equal educational opportunities and enrichment experiences. one thread that runs through each of these inquiries is the attempt to connect the researchers with personal and cultural experiences of a diverse population. this knowledge allows the researchers to develop an understanding of complications, concerns, and cultural issues that affect the diverse student population. the emphasis on “narrative,” or story telling, in each of these modes of inquiry is important when translating theory into practice. “we see; we hear; we make connections; (greene, 1995, p. 186). in our classrooms, we realize that each person has a story to tell. some of these stories may actually show the prejudices that our students have developed. many times we would not have the opportunities to act as multicultural educators if we did not have opportunities to discuss such prejudices, just as illustrated in the story about the muslim woman winning the nobel peace prize. as one reviewer of this article commented, “the stories many students will tell draw from racist, sexist and misinformed accounts which dominate popular narratives on culturally relevant pedagogy: personal responses to the standardized curriculum 9 culture. these are easier for students to find the words to speak…narratives show how unplanned pedagogical interventions can give students access to subjugated stories – and enable other stories to be told and heard.” we encourage the use of personal narratives in our classes for this reason, as well as to help students make connections with the curriculum just as we encourage the telling of personal narratives so we can better understand the cultural backgrounds and heritage that our students bring to the classroom. “cultural background…plays a part in shaping identity; but it does not determine identity” (greene, 1995, p. 163). these stories remain dormant if the focus is on curriculum, not on culturally relevant pedagogical practices. relationships that are fostered through the use of narrative, then, become important for both the student and the teacher in maneuvering through the curriculum. conclusion ohanian (1999) makes numerous cases against the use of education standards. she asserts with much research that current educational reform is from a business framework and excludes the voices of teachers and students. schools would benefit when the curriculum expands as to provide options so that the diverse student population may become aware of the knowledge presented and find opportunities for self-reflection. ohanian (1999) believes there is a need for more accountability, but standardization without inclusion of diversification is not the answer. ignoring cultural differences may also lead to unfair testing practices. for example, the illustrations, wording, and contextual information given on standardized tests may reflect the experiences and languages of a particular group. this privilege will benefit some students while penalizing many that are not aware of the cultural differences. through narratives, students gain exposure and perception of diverse cultures. for students who are not a “participant in the culture of power, being told explicitly the rules of that culture makes acquiring power (understanding) easier” (delpit, 1995, p. 24). the proliferation of standardized testing and standardized curriculum ignores the beauty of diverse cultures and divergent thinking that can be fostered in our classrooms. it ignores the power of the teachable moment that occurs when we stop and listen to each other’s stories, focusing instead on a measurable product. delpit (2003) well sums up the difference between a focus on standardization and culturally responsive teaching: …we can educate all children if we truly want to. to do so, we must first stop attempting to determine their capacity. we must be convinced of their inherent intellectual capability, humanity, and spiritual character. we must fight the foolishness proliferated by those who believe that one number can measure the worth and drive the education of human beings, or that predetermined scripts can make for good teaching. finally, we must learn who our children are – their lived culture, their interests, and their intellectual, political and historical legacies. (p. 20) every class will have a unique cultural make-up. whatever commonalities exist, it is important to realize that no two schools, classrooms, or students will be exactly alike. therefore, examinations of the impact of narratives as well as the narratives themselves will be a continual and ever changing process. a superior academic education is dialogical in nature – it is not standardized. it initiates all students in the art of participating in a creative interplay between different cultural perspectives. a dialogue between cultures through narratives alerts them to personal biases a gain in itself and enables them to reduce such biases in a non-threatening way. culturally relevant pedagogy is an empty phrase without action, and transformation of the standardized educational system can not happen without action. in order for success, we must include action and reflection without new pedagogy. one element needed to begin this transformation is dialogue of teachers with their colleagues, teachers with students, and teachers with parents and community representatives. dialogue adds awareness and perspective as teachers and students begin to broaden their view. from the dialogue will come the stories from teachers on how culturally relevant pedagogy emerged in their classrooms. thus we have developed an appropriate step for bridging theory into practice. as our population becomes more diverse, and teachers of all races and genders are seeking ways of meeting the challenge of increased standardization, successful practices need to be chronicled and shared with others, in turn reducing more biases that are inherent in the standardized curriculum. the narratives presented here from classrooms familiar to us represent only the beginning of our endeavor to chronicle these stories. references banks, j., cookson, p., gay, g., hawley, w., irvine, j., nieto, s., schofield, j., stephan, w. 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(2002). leave no teacher behind: a bold proposal for teacher education [electronic version]. international journal of qualitative studies in education,15(6), 727-738. retrieved october 5, 2003, from academic search premier. west, c. (1994). race matters. new york: vintage. http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-%09texte/1-02/1-02review-mullen-e.htm http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-%09texte/1-02/1-02review-mullen-e.htm http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/race/stee%09le/htm http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/race/stee%09le/htm current issues in education vol. 8 no. 22 2005 article citation baker p.b. & digiovanni, l.w. (2005, july). narratives on culturally relevant pedagogy: personal responses to the standardized curriculum. current issues in education [on-line], 8(15). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number22/ author notes paula booker baker georgia southern university paula baker received her doctorate in curriculum studies from georgia southern university. her area of interest is critical narrative inquiry, culturally relevant pedagogy, and academic affects of identity exploration with a particular focus on linguistically and culturally diverse student education. her dissertation study focused on critical narrative identity exploration and resiliency and the effects on african american women with doctorates in the field of education. lee woodham digiovanni georgia college and state university cbx 71, georgia college & state university, milledgeville, ga 31061 lee.digiovanni@gcsu.edu lee woodham digiovanni is an assistant professor of early childhood education at georgia college and state university. her research interests focus on the application of multicultural and feminist understandings to education. she completed her ed.d in curriculum studies from georgia southern university. her dissertation study focused on white female elementary teachers who have internalized the importance of teaching for diversity. note from the 2015 executive editor, constantin schreiber may 22, 2015. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website was from then on only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. after the new cie website moved to a different server in 2014, the original website and original article urls could not be accessed anymore. therefore, this article had to be repurposed into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. 2015 article citation baker, p. b., & digiovanni, l. w. (2005). narratives on culturally relevant pedagogy: personal responses to the standardized curriculum. current issues in education, 8(22). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1611 file:///d:/cie/volumes%20&%20issues/cie-archive/2005,%20vol%208,%20%231-25/number15/index.html mailto:lee.digiovanni@gcsu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1611 cie template volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x rethinking undergraduate mathematics education: the importance of classroom climate and self-efficacy on mathematics achievement michelle l. peters university of houston-clear lake karen kortecamp the george washington university citation peters, m. & kortecamp, k. (2010). rethinking undergraduate mathematics education: the importance of classroom climate and self-efficacy on mathematics achievement. current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract given the growing societal demand for a more mathematically proficient work force, mathematics proficiency is viewed as a necessary component for success in today’s world. to ensure proficiency, undergraduate institutions may need to rethink their instructional approaches to teaching mathematics. understanding the influence of classroom climate and self-efficacy on mathematics achievement may lead to instructional practices that increase the percentage of students choosing to pursue mathematics related majors. this literature review synthesizes research that has empirically examined the influence of classroom climate and self-efficacy on mathematics achievement. this review also offers recommendations for future research and policy in the area of undergraduate mathematics. keywords: mathematics education, mathematics self-efficacy, mathematics achievement, classroom climate, learner-centered environments, teacher-centered environments, literature review current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 about the author(s) author: michelle l. peters affiliation: university of houston-clear lake address: university of houston-clear lake, houston, tx 77058 email: petersm@uhcl.edu biographical information: michelle l. peters is an assistant professor of quantitative research methods at the university of houston-clear lake’s school of education. her research focuses on middle school stem and undergraduate mathematics education. author: karen kortecamp affiliation: the george washington university address: 2134 g street, washington, dc 20052 email: karenkor@gwu.edu biographical information: karen kortecamp is an associate professor of curriculum and pedagogy at the george washington university’s graduate school of education and human development. her research interests include professional development, teacher development, and evaluation practices. rethinking undergraduate mathematics 3 rethinking undergraduate mathematics education: the importance of classroom climate and self-efficacy on mathematics achievement for nearly fifty years leaders in american industry, military, education, and politics have focused considerable attention on stem (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education. it has been argued that growing the number of college graduates proficient in stem fields is essential to america’s economic well being and national security. the federal government has legislated billions of dollars to fund stem research and education (lips & mcneil, 2009). recently, the american recovery and reinvestment act of 2009 signed into law by barack obama included an additional $2.5 billion to fund the national science foundation including stem programs. in spite of increased spending the number of undergraduate students completing stem degrees is not increasing sufficiently to meet workforce demands. viewed separately, proficiency in mathematics is a necessary component for success in today’s technological workforce (mdhe, 2007; shinn et. al, 2003). higher education institutions are an avenue for preparing this workforce. to ensure proficiency, undergraduate institutions need to rethink their instructional approaches to teaching mathematics. the challenge to undergraduate mathematics educators is to teach students with diverse backgrounds and interests. according to nces (2007), the total number of bachelor’s degrees conferred continues to increase from year to year. the number of women and minorities pursuing college degrees is also increasing (hussar & bailey, 2008). despite the fact that the demographics of undergraduate mathematics classes have dramatically changed over the years, undergraduate mathematics education has remained pedagogically stagnant. as a result, student achievement in current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 those mathematics classrooms has declined (fletcher & tienda, 2010; nelson, 1996; treisman, 1992). teachers often teach in the manner in which they were taught (ball, 1988; clark, dicarlo, & gilchrist, 2003). for those who have had traditional schooling experiences, this may lead them to believe that their role is to give information to students utilizing didactic teachercentered approaches. compounding this, walczyk, ramsey, and zha (2007) reported mathematics faculty perceive obstacles to instructional innovation including the weight given to teaching effectiveness in personnel decisions, challenges in assessing teaching effectiveness and lack of formal professional development. with little or no incentive to improve instruction and little or no professional development in innovative teaching practices, the learner-centered directions in undergraduate mathematics education called for by the national research council (nrc) in 1999 will likely not be pursued. the concern is that the infrequent use of learnercentered instruction has negative effects on undergraduate learning and motivation (walczyk, ramsey, & zha, 2007). this literature review synthesizes research that has empirically examined the influence of classroom climate (teacher-centered and learner-centered) and self-efficacy on mathematics achievement. improving classroom climate and self-efficacy in undergraduate mathematics is increasingly important as the percentage of students earning mathematics degrees is not increasing at the same rate as college enrollments. in a september 2008 report, the national center for education statistics (nces) reported, “total enrollment in degree granting institutions increased 23 percent from 1992 to 2006” (hussar & bailey, 2008, p. 8). between 2006 and 2017, the nces has projected the following enrollment trends: rethinking undergraduate mathematics 5 1. thirteen percent increase in total college enrollments from 17.8 million to 20.1 million. 2. ten percent increase for students between the ages of 18 and 24 and 8% for students over 35 years of age. 3. thirteen percent increase for both males and females. 4. twelve percent increase in undergraduate enrollments and 18% increase in graduate enrollments. 5. five percent increase for students who are white, 26% for black students, 39% for hispanic students, 26% for asian or pacific islander students, 30% for american indian or alaska native, and 1% for nonresident aliens. although college attendance rates are climbing, the number of mathematics majors is not increasing. this poses a challenge for the traditional ways of approaching or thinking about undergraduate mathematics education. though the percentages of minorities, women, and older students deciding to pursue college degrees is increasing, groups such as these typically have reported lower self-efficacy and achievement in their previous mathematics courses (betz, 2001; o’brien & martinez-pons, 1999; stevens, olivarez, lan, & tallent-runnels, 2004). as a result, educational institutions are going to be faced with the challenge of educating an increasingly diverse set of learners. research shows that only 2.6 out of 30 students in the class or approximately 9.0% percent will complete a degree in mathematics or choose to major in a mathematics related field nces, 2008). given society’s need to maximize the usage of human capital in an increasingly technological world, a strong background in mathematics is critical for many career and job opportunities (meece, wigfield, & eccles, 1990). mathematics proficiency is necessary, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 particularly for those students in post-secondary education who will someday take the middle and higher-level jobs in the current and future economy (augustine, 2007). despite the growing need for graduates prepared to enter mathematics related fields, trends show those needs will be largely unmet. research shows that the lack of self-efficacy (bandura, 1997) relating to mathematics is a significant contributor to why students are not successful in mathematics (hackett & betz, 1989; hall & ponton, 2005; lent, brown, & larkin; 1986; o’brien, martinez-pons, & kopala, 1999; pajares & miller, 1994). self-efficacy is defined as a person’s perception of his or her capabilities at performing a given task (bandura, 1997). in order to build self-efficacy on the way to increasing mathematics achievement, the classroom climate in undergraduate mathematics may need to address and support the development of students’ mathematics self-efficacy. many students entering undergraduate education lack confidence or a sense of efficacy in their academic abilities because of unpleasant mathematical experiences, such as poor mathematics grades in high school. due to an increasing number of individuals seeking to earn higher education degrees, the traditional classroom climate utilizing the teacher-centered perspective may no longer be sufficient for ensuring academic success in an undergraduate mathematics course for a majority of students with diverse mathematical skills and career goals. consequently, if greater numbers of students are to be successful in undergraduate mathematics courses, it may be imperative to examine the influence classroom climate can have on mathematics self-efficacy and ultimately mathematics achievement. given that k-16 studies have shown that mathematics self-efficacy influences mathematics achievement, a review of the empirical studies may illuminate what could be done to ensure that more students choose to major in mathematics-related career fields, and thus add to rethinking undergraduate mathematics 7 today’s workforce in technical fields (cooper & robinson, 1991; hackett & betz, 1989; hall & ponton, 2005; lent, lopez, & bieschke, 1991; o’brien & martinez-pons, 1999; pajares & graham, 1999; pajares & miller, 1994; schunk & hansen, 1985; randhawa, beamer, & lundberg, 1993). research has verified that self-efficacy beliefs greatly influence decisions that college students make concerning choice of college majors and career decisions (hackett, 1985; hackett & betz, 1989; lent & hackett, 1987; lent, lopez, & bieschke, 1991). as a result of low perceptions of mathematical ability, students tend to choose career fields that do not require success in mathematics. according to nces (2007), approximately 91% of bachelor’s degrees awarded in 2005-2006 were primarily from non-mathematics degree fields. these statistics clearly indicate that the majority of students are choosing not to pursue mathematics-based fields. yet, the demands of society are requiring greater numbers of competent graduates in mathematics. theoretical framework this section provides a proposed conceptual framework, concerning the relationships between (a) classroom climate and mathematics self-efficacy, (b) mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics achievement, and (c) classroom climate and mathematics achievement. based on our review of the literature we believe learner-centered classroom climates promote mathematics self-efficacy, which in turn improves mathematics achievement. classroom climate research suggests that classroom climate can influence achievement directly through the environment established by the teacher in a classroom (brown, 1960; eggen & kauchak, 2007; o’reilly, 1975; pierce, 2001). classroom climate is defined as the learning environment that the instructor creates by teaching in a teacher-centered or learner-centered manner. teachercurrent issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 centered (tc) refers to an instructional preference or teaching style focusing most on teaching and assessing behavioral objectives through course content and delivery. the needs of the student are placed second to instructing and assessing the curriculum. the teacher-centered instructional preference is the dominant approach across all levels of education in north america (conti, 1990). this is especially the case for mathematics teachers, whose subject matter expertise and skill in organizing and structuring content is what makes them most useful (boldt, 2002). on the other hand, learner-centered (lc) climate refers to an instructional preference or teaching style that focuses most on the needs and well being of the student, not to mention the process of learning (knowles, holton, & swanson, 2005). a learner-centered environment provides students with: (a) support and guidance, (b) positive feedback and encouragement, (c) empathy, and (d) mutual trust and respect (pratt, 2002). when teachers create a classroom climate based on mutual trust and respect, which is also free of ridicule and criticism, students tend to feel more secure (pratt, 2002). this sense of safety is believed to have a positive influence on mathematics self-efficacy and, consequently, mathematics achievement (adelman & taylor, 2005; harradine, 1999; pianta, stuhlman, & hamre, 2002; pierce, 2001; stipek, feiler, daniels, & milburn, 1995). learner-centered teachers at all levels have faith that learners can grow and, therefore, can learn. a primary role of the learner-centered educator is to establish a learner-teacher relationship that fosters growth in confidence and self-efficacy. it is believed that educators who embrace the learner-centered perspective of teaching: (a) seek to empower the learner, (b) divulge a sense of personal regard for the welfare of their learners, and (c) view subject -matter content as simply a means for learner self-efficacy (pratt, 2002). in facilitating self-efficacy, rethinking undergraduate mathematics 9 learner-centered teachers attempt to find a balance between caring and challenging by believing in their students and helping them achieve their goals. from this point of view, teaching is effective if achievement is the means and self-efficacy is the end. mathematics self-efficacy the link between self-efficacy and achievement is well documented in the literature (cooper & robinson, 1991; hackett, 1985; hackett & betz, 1989; hall & ponton, 2005; lent, lopez, & bieschke, 1991; o’brien, martinez-pons, & kopala, 1999; pajares & graham, 1999; pajares & miller, 1994; randhawa, beamer, & lundberg, 1993; schunk & hansen, 1985; siegle & mccoach, 2007). an individual’s level of self-efficacy affects his or her behavior in many ways in that it influences the choices that a person will make and the courses of action he or she will choose to pursue (pajares, 1996). bandura (1986, 1997) claimed that a person’s selfefficacy is a major determinant of whether there will be persistence in a given task, how much effort will be expended toward the task, and whether a person will even attempt it (pajares, 1996). people tend to avoid tasks for which they feel less competent and confident, but do engage in those tasks in which perceived competence and confidence is high. research suggests that the higher the self-efficacy, the greater the effort and persistence expended toward a given task (schunk, 1991). there are four key factors that contribute to the development of a student’s self-efficacy: (a) prior behaviors and performances, (b) verbal persuasion, (c) vicarious learning, and (d) emotional arousal (bandura, 1986, 1997; ormrod, 1998; schunk, 1989). students are more likely to feel confident in their mathematics ability, and thus have higher academic achievement, if they have experienced success in a previous mathematics class, if they have received positive current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 feedback and encouragement for their mathematics accomplishments, or if they have witnessed others of a similar age and ability successfully solving a difficult mathematics problem. in academic venues, self-efficacy research has primarily focused on two main areas: (a) exploring the relationships among self-efficacy beliefs, related psychological constructs, and motivation and achievement (cooper & robinson, 1991; hackett & betz, 1989; hall & ponton, 2005) and (b) examining the link between self-efficacy beliefs and college major and career choices (betz & hackett, 1983; hackett, 1985; lent, lopez, & bieschke, 1991; pajares, 1996). as previously mentioned, the results from past k-16 studies have shown that mathematics selfefficacy is positively correlated with mathematics ability/performance. in other words, students who report higher levels of mathematics self-efficacy also report higher levels of mathematics performance. research has also indicated that self-efficacy is a mediating factor for academic outcomes, cognitive engagement, and academic performance (patrick & hicks, 1997). the mediating effects of mathematics self-efficacy on mathematics performance have been of great interest to many researchers (hackett, 1985; o’brien, martinez-pons, & kopala, 1999; pajares & miller, 1994; randhawa, beamer, & lundberg, 1993; stevens, olivarez, lan, & tallentrunnels, 2004). review of the research literature an exploration of the empirical literature was undertaken to better understand the relationships among (a) classroom climate and mathematics self-efficacy, (b) classroom climate and mathematics achievement, and (c) mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics achievement. the developmental nature of self-efficacy and the lack of empirical research for all grade levels required studies to be reviewed from the k-16 literature base. given the limited amount of rethinking undergraduate mathematics 11 research on the above relationships carried out in mathematics classrooms, these studies were taken primarily, but not entirely, from studies conducted in mathematics. the search of literature on classroom climate was limited to studies published after 1936, when it was discovered that the environment and its interaction with an individual’s personal characteristics were powerful determinants of human behavior. few studies of collegiate teachers’ classroom teaching practice actually exist (speer, smith, & horvath, 2010). given the lack of relevant research conducted using undergraduate and/or mathematics students, classroom climate studies focused primarily on non-mathematics k-12 literature. the relationship between mathematics self-efficacy and achievement has been well established in the k-16 literature base. empirical research in self-efficacy was limited to studies published after 1977 the year bandura’s social learning theory was published. initially, the search discovered 71 articles on classroom climate, mathematics selfefficacy, and mathematics achievement. in order to narrow the number to only those that addressed the research purpose and questions, each article was reviewed thoroughly to determine if it did or did not meet the necessary criteria for inclusion. although several articles were examined for this literature review, only 5 of the classroom climate studies and 12 of the selfefficacy studies met the criteria for inclusion. the classroom climate studies were restricted to those demonstrating a link between (a) a learner-centered classroom climate and self-efficacy and (b) a learner-centered classroom climate and achievement. the self-efficacy studies were limited to those primarily, but not entirely, in higher education examining the relationship between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics achievement. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 studies of classroom climate for more than 20 years, the influence of classroom climate on student learning has been of interest to researchers. according to fraser (1989), “the strongest tradition in past classroom environment research has involved investigation of associations between students’ cognitive and affective learning outcomes and their perceptions of psychosocial characteristics of their classrooms” (p. 315). research has shown that student perceptions account for a considerable amount of variance in learning outcomes and, as a result, one could assume that student outcomes might be improved by creating a classroom environment conducive to student learning (fraser, 1989). haertel, g., walberg, and haertel, e. (1981) conducted a meta-analysis involving 734 correlations from 12 studies (823 classes in eight subject areas, 17,805 k-12 students in four nations). the purpose of the study was to estimate the sign and size of the correlations between student perceptions of the social psychological climates of their classrooms and student learning outcomes. findings indicate that better achievement on a variety of learning outcomes was positively associated with classrooms consisting of cohesiveness, satisfaction, task difficulty, formality, goal direction, democracy, and the material environment. negative associations were found to exist in those classrooms consisting of friction, cliqueness, apathy, and disorganization. in 1981, walberg incorporated classroom environment as one factor in a multi-factor model of educational productivity. the model claims that student learning is codetermined by the following factors: (a) student age, ability, and motivation, (b) quality and quantity of instruction, and (c) the psychosocial environment of the home, the classroom, the peer group, and the mass media (walberg, 1981). research not only confirmed the importance of all of the factors in the model, but also concluded that even when all other factors in the model were held rethinking undergraduate mathematics 13 constant; classroom environment was a strong predictor of student achievement and attitudes (fraser, 1989; walberg, fraser, & welch, 1986). for the purpose of this review, only classroom environment (climate) will be utilized as a factor in determining self-efficacy and achievement levels. classroom climate and self-efficacy this review of the literature revealed a lack of empirical research directly related to whether classroom climate builds self-efficacy in an undergraduate mathematics class. however, related k-12 research links learner-centered environments to increased self-efficacy in other classroom contexts (pianta, stuhlman, & hamre, 2002). results of such studies indicate that the climate in a classroom affects a student’s confidence in his or her abilities (adelman & taylor, 2005; harradine, 1999; stipek, feiler, daniels, & milburn, 1995). stipek, feiler, daniels, and milburn’s (1995) study compared children in learner-centered preschools and kindergartens with children in didactic (teacher-centered) preschools and kindergartens in terms of motivational variables, such as perceptions of abilities and expectations for success. their study consisted of a total of 227 children (105 males, 122 females), from 32 classrooms (age 4-6). to differentiate classroom types, observers, using a 47-item observation measure, rated each classroom based on classroom instruction and social climate. the didactic group consisted of 123 students (60 males, 63 females) and the learner-centered group consisted of 104 students (45 males, 59 females). findings indicated that, compared to students in teachercentered classrooms, students in learner-centered classroom climates tend to (a) rate their abilities significantly higher, (b) have higher expectations for success, (c) select higher levels of task difficulty, (d) have less dependency on the teacher, and (e) display more pride in their accomplishments. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 in a similar study conducted by harradine (1999), possible relationships between classroom climate, self-efficacy, and interest were examined with 107 third and fourth-grade students from four classrooms and two schools throughout the duration of one social studies unit. the two classes in school i were taught in the traditional manner, with the teacher positioned at the front of the room and the students sitting in clusters of four desks. classroom activities were teacher-driven, with students seated at their desks, and the textbook primarily drove instructional content. the students in school ii did not have assigned seats and each classroom consisted of numerous work centers where the students could work. each student was afforded quite a bit of autonomy in deciding what they would do, when they would do it, and where they wanted to do it. students were administered a 10-item self-efficacy scale, a 12-item general interest scale, and a 7-item unit-specific interest scale constructed by the researcher. in addition, a modified version of the origin climate questionnaire was administered to each student to gauge perceptions on classroom climate. the classroom teachers administered each of the scales, one per day, in the same week. the results of the study concluded that classroom climate was responsible for fostering the students’ interests and self-efficacy was directly related to student interest in the classroom topics and activities. classroom climate and achievement various characteristics of the classroom environment, such as satisfaction and “democraticness” (one aspect of a learner-centered environment), were found to be directly linked to academic achievement (o’reilly, 1975). in order to evaluate various aspects comprising classroom climate on mathematics achievement, o’reilly (1975) surveyed 1,100 ninth and tenth-graders in 48 mathematics classrooms from 12 secondary schools in eastern rethinking undergraduate mathematics 15 ontario. in two sittings, students were administered the stanford achievement testmathematics and the learning environment inventory (lei). the results indicated that a positive significant relationship existed between classroom satisfaction and mathematics achievement, r = .45, p < .05, and between democraticness and mathematics achievement, r = .47, p < .05. the results of this study suggested that the higher the satisfaction perceived by the student concerning the class, the greater the mathematics achievement and the more democratic the learning environment, the greater the mathematics achievement. teacher characteristics related to establishing a learner-centered environment, such as praising and encouraging students, can affect the classroom climate and, subsequently, academic achievement (brown, 1960; pratt, 2002). brown (1960) conducted a study to gauge a teacher’s classroom climate, based on verbal behavior, and compared it to student achievement. the study consisted of 15 third-grade classrooms (n = 318; 175 males, 143 females). to measure the classroom climate of the teachers, observers classified the verbal behavior toward the students into seven categories, such as learner-supportive statements and teacher-supportive statements, and then placed each teacher on a continuum that extended from learner-centered to teachercentered. to gauge student achievement, students were administered various forms of the elementary battery of the stanford achievement test. the findings indicated a higher relationship between a learner-centered classroom climate and the arithmetic subtest of the elementary battery of the stanford achievement test. a more recent study examined the influence of other teacher behaviors on her classroom’s climate, and thus her students’ achievement. pierce (2001) conducted a case study involving a middle school teacher with 24 years of teaching experience (21 at-risk students). the teacher was selected for the study based on recommendations from teachers, administrators, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 parents, and former students. observations were conducted over a period of 12 weeks in the form of audiotapes and field notes paying close attention to verbal/nonverbal teaching behaviors, teacher personality characteristics, and student learning. findings showed that the teacher created a classroom atmosphere that promoted a non-threatening environment for taking risks and participating freely in the learning process, provided students with a sense of safety and support, and showed enthusiasm and respect for her students. as a result, she increased her students’ level of academic achievement. mathematics self-efficacy and achievement in contrast to the body of work on classroom climate, the self-efficacy and achievement literature is more rich and complex. bandura’s social cognitive theory has greatly influenced researchers in many disciplines, particularly in the field of mathematics. in academic venues, self-efficacy research has focused on exploring the relationships between self-efficacy beliefs, related psychological constructs, and motivation and achievement (pajares, 1996). it is held that self-efficacy fosters engagement with learning activities, which promote educational competencies, which influence academic achievement (zimmerman, 1995). in addition, research has shown that self-efficacy is a mediating factor for academic outcomes, cognitive engagement, and academic performance (bikkar, beamer, & lundberg, 1993; patrick & hicks, 1997). the effects of mathematics self-efficacy on mathematics performance have been of great interest to many researchers. although there might be a reciprocal relationship between selfefficacy and achievement (pajares, 1997), a range of k-16 studies have shown that mathematics self-efficacy is positively correlated with mathematics ability/performance (betz, 1978; cooper & robinson, 1991; goldman & hewitt, 1976; hackett, 1985). results from these studies indicated that students who tend to report higher levels of mathematics self-efficacy also tend to rethinking undergraduate mathematics 17 have higher levels of mathematics performance (hackett & betz, 1989; pajares and miller, 1994; schunk and cox, 1986; schunk & hanson, 1985). modeling (vicarious experience) and persistence increase mathematics self-efficacy and thus have a direct effect on skill acquisition and performance (bandura, 1997; schunk & gunn, 1986; zimmerman & ringle, 1981). in 1985, schunk and hansen conducted a study to explore the influence of modeling on self-efficacy and mathematics achievement. the study involved 72 elementary students (36 boys, 36 girls, mean age = 10.1) selected from eight classes in two schools (schunk & hansen, 1985). students were administered a pre-test on which each student rated his or her self-efficacy for solving subtraction problems correctly. immediately following the self-efficacy assessment, each student took a subtraction skill test composed of 25 problems. following the pre-test students were randomly assigned by sex and school to one of the six experimental conditions including one control group. all children in the five model conditions received two 45-minute treatment sessions on consecutive school days. students viewed two videotapes that presented various subtraction operations in 15-minute blocks. the day after students viewed the second videotape, children participated in a subtractiontraining program consisting of 40-minute sessions on five consecutive days. students assessed their subtraction self-efficacy, skill, and persistence the day following the last training session, and it was concluded that modeling led to higher self-efficacy for learning and subtraction skills. several years later, mccoach and siegle (2007) conducted a study to assess whether training teachers in ways to enhance self-efficacy could influence mathematics self-efficacy and achievement. this study consisted of 872 fifth-grade mathematics students from 10 school districts, 15 schools, and 40 classrooms. each of the 15 schools was randomly assigned to either the treatment (n = 7 schools, 21 classrooms, 430 students) or the control (n = 8 schools, 19 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 classrooms, 442 students) group. after the teachers assigned to the treatment group received staff development training in self-efficacy strategies to use in their classrooms, all of the fifthgrade mathematics teachers taught a 4-week unit on measurement. prior to and following instruction, all of the students completed the student mathematics survey and the math achievement test. the results of the hierarchical linear modeling (hlm) analysis indicated that mathematics self-efficacy was a statistically significant predictor of mathematics achievement and the relationship for post-test mathematics achievement and self-efficacy was stronger for the treatment students than for the control students. in a study consisting of middle school students, pajares and graham (1999) chose 273 sixth-graders (150 boys, 123 girls) from one suburban, public middle school in the south to investigate the impact of various motivation variables on task-specific mathematics performance. attitude and outcome measures were administered in october and again in april, including a mathematics self-efficacy scale and a mathematics performance examination. the results of the multiple regression analyses concluded that mathematics self-efficacy was the only variable to predict mathematics performance at the beginning and the end of the school year. during the same year, o’brien and martinez-pons (1999) published a study designed to assess relationships among mathematics self-efficacy, performance, ethnicity, gender, and career interests in mathematics/science. four-hundred and fifteen (221 boys, 194 girls) 11 th grade high school students were surveyed using the mathematics self-efficacy scale (mses), adapted for high school students, and their achievement scores were obtained through pre-scholastic test (psat) scores. the results of path analyses techniques showed statistically significant correlations between mathematics self-efficacy and academic performance, indicating that as mathematics self-efficacy increases, so does mathematics performance. rethinking undergraduate mathematics 19 in a somewhat similar study, stevens, olivarez, lan, and tallent-runnels (2004) conducted a study to determine if self-efficacy could predict mathematics achievement across ethnicity. high school algebra students (317 ninth-graders, 100 tenth-graders, mean age = 14.7, 53% hispanic, 30% caucasian, 4.6% african american) participated in the study. each student was required to take a mathematics self-efficacy instrument created by pajares and graham (1999) to evaluate the confidence levels of eighth-grade students at the end of the school year. in addition, mathematics performance was assessed by having each student complete 20 problems similar to those found on the self-efficacy instrument. the findings suggested that on the average the hispanic students have a lower mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance than did the caucasian students and a statistically significant relationship existed among mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance for the entire sample. the findings showed a statistically significant relationship among mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance for the entire sample, r = .47, p < .01, caucasian sample, r = .46, p < .01, and the hispanic sample, r = .41, p < .01. studies evaluating the relationship between self-efficacy and academic achievement have also been conducted utilizing various groups of undergraduate student populations. in 1985, employing the use of undergraduate volunteers (n = 262; 109 males, 153 females) enrolled in an introductory psychology course, hackett (1985), utilizing data that were collected as part of a larger project on mathematics self-efficacy, developed a causal model examining the role of mathematics self-efficacy as a mediating variable in the choice of mathematics-related majors (betz & hackett, 1983). each participant was administered the mses and participant act mathemat ics scores were obtained from college records. to investigate the relationship between act mathematics current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 scores and mathematics self-efficacy, path analysis techniques were applied and found a significant positive relationship between act mathematics scores and mathematics self-efficacy, r = .66, p < .001. these results suggest that as mathematics self-efficacy increases, so does mathematics achievement. in addition, findings showed that there existed a relationship between gender and mathematics self-efficacy, r = -.25, p < .01, and gender and mathematics achievement, r = -.19, p < 05. men tended to have higher mathematics self-efficacy and achievement than women. in 1989, hackett and betz, extending on the previous study (betz & hackett, 1983), extended their research to further explore the relationship between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance in undergraduate college students. pearson product-moment correlations were conducted to examine the relationships between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance. the results of the pearson product-moment correlation indicated that there was a significant positive relationship between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance, r = .44, p < .001. in other words, the higher the mathematics self-efficacy, the higher the mathematics performance. in 1991, two other research teams, cooper and robinson and lent, lopez, and bieschke published findings addressing the relationship between mathematics self-efficacy and achievement. building on previous research conducted on mathematics self-efficacy, cooper and robinson’s (1991) study aimed to examine the relationships between hackett’s (1985) recommended variables of mathematics and career self-efficacy, perceived external support, mathematics background, math anxiety, and mathematics performance. this study targeted engineering and applied science students at a public mid-western university. participants included 229 male and 61 female undergraduates, who selected rethinking undergraduate mathematics 21 mathematics-based college majors, attending the first, third, and fifth summer orientation session. during the first two days of the orientation session, each participant was administered various survey instruments, including the mathematics self-efficacy (mse) scale constructed by the investigators. the american college testing program mathematics academic test (act-9) scores were obtained from student transcripts. pearson product-moment correlations were computed between mathematics and mathematics ability. the results indicated that significant correlations existed between scores on the mse and act-9. a significant positive relationship was found to exist between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance, r = .22, p < .001, suggesting that as mathematics self-efficacy increased, mathematics performance increased. building on prior research on career and academic self-efficacy, lent, lopez, and bieschke’s (1991) study investigated mathematical self-efficacy beliefs and the relationship of those beliefs to outcome expectations, academic interests, and science-based career choices. at a large mid-western university, participants (53 men, 85 women; 94% white, and 80% freshmen/sophomores) enrolled in an introductory psychology course received experimental credit for agreeing to take part in this study. each participant completed various measures, to include a mathematics self-efficacy scale designed specifically for this study. in addition, researchers obtained participant act scores from university records. predicting for mathematics self-efficacy, the results of the regression analysis indicated that after controlling for gender, only the mathematics act scores and perceived performance variables explained unique variation. a couple of years later, randhawa, beamer, and lundberg (1993) proposed a structural model to test the mediational role of mathematics self-efficacy between mathematics attitudes current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 22 and mathematics achievement. a sample of 225 (117 male, 108 female, age 17-19) high school students, from nine algebra 30 (an academic grade 12 course) classes in three high schools, was chosen to participate in the study. each participant was administered 3-rating scales including the mses) and a mathematics achievement test. results indicated that not only did mathematics self-efficacy act as a mediator variable between mathematics attitudes and mathematics achievement, it was also statistically correlated with mathematics achievement, r = .44, p < .05. the following year, pajares and miller (1994) decided to use path analysis to test bandura’s hypotheses regarding the mediational role of self-efficacy in the area of mathematics. the authors were interested in examining whether mathematics problemsolving self-efficacy had a greater effect on problem-solving performance, than did math anxiety, gender, math selfconcept, prior experience with math, and perceived usefulness of mathematics. in addition, pajares and miller tested whether self-efficacy had a mediating effect on gender and prior math experience on problem-solving performance. students at a large public university in the south, (121 men, 229 women), a majority of whom were enrolled in courses in the college of education (137 education majors, 213 other majors), volunteered to participate in this study. in the individual classes, in one sitting, students were asked to complete four survey instruments, including a modified version of the mathematics confidence scale (mcs), and were required to complete the mathematics problems performance scale (mpps) to assess their mathematics performance. the correlation of the variables in the path analysis results indicated significant relationships between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics performance. path coefficients from mathematics self-efficacy, β = .545, t = 10.87, p < .0001, were found to be significant to mathematics performance. in comparison to the other variables in the study, mathematics selfrethinking undergraduate mathematics 23 efficacy had the stronger direct effects on mathematics performance. in addition, self-efficacy was found to mediate the effect of gender and prior mathematics experience on mathematics performance. several years later, hall and ponton (2005) aimed to determine whether there were selfefficacy differences between undergraduates enrolled in a calculus course and those enrolled in a developmental mathematics (intermediate algebra) course. hall and ponton hypothesized that self-efficacy beliefs may impede success for those students enrolled in developmental mathematics courses. freshman students, enrolled in either intermediate algebra (n = 105; 42 men, 63 women) or calculus i (n = 80; 42 men, 38 women), were solicited from a medium-sized southeast rural university. each participant was required to complete the mses. the results of an independent t-test indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between the self-efficacy beliefs of the intermediate algebra and calculus i students, t(185) = 8.902, p < .001. the calculus i students (mean mses = 7.08) showed a higher selfefficacy than the intermediate algebra students (mean mses = 5.33). the pearson productmoment correlation results for all participants, r = .580, p < .001, and the calculus i students, r = .454, p = .598, indicated that there was a relationship between mses scores and act scores, whereas there was no relationship found with the intermediate algebra students, r = .052, p = .598. discussion summary of the literature the studies reviewed provide evidence of relationships among (a) classroom climate and mathematics self-efficacy, (b) classroom climate and mathematics achievement, and (c) current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics achievement. the research here shows that it is reasonable to link classroom climate to learner and teacher-centered climates (harradine, 1999; stipek, feiler, daniels, & milburn, 1995). empirical studies indicate that learner-centered classroom climates increase learner self-efficacy and influence academic achievement indirectly and directly. in addition, the results of studies also suggest that self-efficacy affects mathematics achievement (hackett & betz, 1989; harradine, 1999; pajares & graham, 1999). results of several studies suggest that as self-efficacy increases mathematics achievement also increases (hackett, 1985; hackett & betz, 1989; lent, lopez, & bieschke, 1991; siegle & mccoach, 2007; stevens, olivarez, lan, & tallent-runnels, 2004). research therefore indicates that selfefficacy influences academic achievement directly. implications for practice mathematics proficiency is a must for today’s technological workforce (mdhe, 2007; shinn et. al, 2003) and colleges and universities are one avenue for preparing individuals for that workforce. given that most higher education institutions require the successful completion of at least one mathematics course and that many college students lack confidence in their mathematics abilities (ashcraft, 2002; lent, lopez, & bieschke, 1991; stipek, 1998), undergraduate mathematics classroom instruction may need to be augmented with a classroom climate that engenders the success of all students thereby increasing the number of students choosing to pursue degrees that prepare them for mathematics-related careers. this review of the literature suggests that one means to increase the number of students who successfully complete undergraduate mathematics courses and, in turn, the percent of students who decide to major in mathematics or pursue mathematics related careers is to utilize learner-centered approaches designed to empower the learner and develop learner self-efficacy. rethinking undergraduate mathematics 25 undergraduate mathematics instructors can be instrumental in ensuring this by creating a classroom climate which fosters mutual respect and trust, affords sufficient support and guidance, provides positive feedback and encouragement, and bestows frequent opportunities for student success. learner-centered approaches would include, but are not limited to, encouraging students to ask questions, eliciting classroom discussion among students, instructor willingness to provide additional assistance, and empowering students through positive communications about their ability to achieve success. surprisingly little research exists on undergraduate mathematics education. the impact of instructional methods and classroom environment on students’ learning has not been well documented. consequently if greater numbers of students are to be successful in undergraduate mathematics courses, it follows that more research in this arena needs to be undertaken. recommendations for future research given the dearth of literature, several recommendations are suggested for future research examining the dynamics of undergraduate mathematics courses. based on our review of the literature, we would argue that quantitative methods dominate the majority of published research studies conducted in mathematics education. we question whether all research questions dealing with undergraduate mathematics education can or should be answered using quantitative methods. given that the classroom is a learning environment abundant with psycho-socio elements, it logically follows that survey instruments cannot adequately measure the contextual inputs that influence individual and group performance in an undergraduate mathematics classroom. for instance, the dynamics involved in teacher-student interactions cannot be completely captured or measured using the responses to a likert scale (always agree – always disagree). as a result, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 26 researchers should broaden their data collection methods to include classroom observations, interviews, and/or focus groups to gather data that may lead to deeper understanding of the complex interactions between environment and learners. in the event that a researcher chooses to examine the climate of a mathematics classroom using a survey instrument, he/she must be cautious in his/her selection. although validated classroom climate or environment scales are already in existence (e.g., college and university classroom environment inventory (fraser et al., 1986), learning environment inventory (fraser, 1994), principles of adult learning scale (conti, 1978)), for the most part, several of the survey items appear to either not apply or to be inappropriate for measuring the climate of a mathematics classroom. given the importance of classroom climate on the academic success of mathematics students, one might consider either modifying a pre-existing instrument or developing an instrument that is designed to specially measure the climate of mathematics classrooms. last, but not least, very little research examining the dynamics of mathematics classrooms appears to acknowledge the nested structure that exists within a classroom. for instance, mathematics self-efficacy and academic achievement more often than not occur at the individual level, while classroom climate typically takes place at the classroom level. in this particular case, the unit of analysis poses a methodological dilemma. in the past, researchers have chosen to address this issue by aggregating individual level variables to the group level (e.g., district, school, classroom) or assigning group level variables to the individual level (e.g., student). this statistical strategy often poses many challenges, such as: (a) aggregation bias, (b) heterogeneity of regression among groups, and (c) misestimated standard errors (raudenbush & rethinking undergraduate mathematics 27 bryk, 2002). as a result, future research in mathematics might consider analyze quantitative data using a multi-level analysis technique, such as hierarchical linear modeling (hlm). hlm results are more precise and credible than those of a single-level analysis, such as pearson’s correlations, analysis of variance (anova), and regression. hlm has the distinct advantage of allowing for the analysis to be conducted simultaneously at multiple levels by using procedures that let the researcher examine relationships among variables within a nested structure, such as students within a classroom, thereby preventing the bias toward the rejection of the null hypothesis and thus the inflation of type-i errors (frank, 1999; raudenbush & bryk, 2002). as a result, estimations can be made for between-classroom variables (e.g., classroom climate) and within-student variables (e.g., mathematics self-efficacy and achievement). in addition, hlm also has the unique ability to account for the violation of the interdependence of observations assumption. given that students within a class represent a cluster and, therefore, share similar educational experiences, their responses to survey items or answers on achievement examinations would not necessarily be independent of one another. recommendations for policy it is important to accept certain “givens”; the diversity of students choosing to attend college is increasing (hussar & bailey, 2008); most students entering college have low selfefficacy in mathematics; and most students entering college will be required to successfully complete at least one mathematics course, such as college algebra, to graduate college. therefore, it would seem that providing classroom climates conducive to enhancing student success in mathematics is imperative. colleges and universities can be instrumental in the academic success of students enrolled in undergraduate mathematics courses. all newly hired mathematics instructors could current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 28 be required to either have a k-12 teaching certification and/or to have successfully completed teacher preparation coursework (e.g., educational psychology, human growth and development, development, diversity). another avenue would be to require instructors to attend professional development workshops focused on methods and strategies aimed at developing favorable classroom climates that enhance student self-efficacy. professional development could be provided in the form of paid workshops instructed by national experts, seminars taught within the university’s school of education, or departmental meetings addressing topics dealing with how to enhance student learning. in sum, current trends suggest that a much smaller percentage of undergraduate students are completing degrees in mathematics than is needed to meet increasing demands for mathematics proficiency in the workforce. although insufficient supply to meet demands in the workforce tends to ensure more competitive salaries and benefits for those who meet the need, relatively few undergraduate students are choosing to pursue mathematics education. one explanation for this may be the structure of undergraduate mathematics education. the review of the literature presented in this paper documents the relationships between mathematics self-efficacy and mathematics achievement and classroom climate and self-efficacy. combined, the studies imply that climate influences self efficacy and therefore achievement. in particular, learner-centered climates in which instructors seek to empower learners, show empathy and are committed to learner success have been shown to foster growth in learner confidence and self-efficacy. rethinking how undergraduate mathematics courses are taught to incorporate strategies and approaches that support development of learner self-efficacy could lead to increased enrollment in mathematics courses and subsequently, help meet the need for a more mathematics proficient workforce. rethinking undergraduate mathematics 29 references adelman, h., & taylor, l. 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(1981). effects of model persistence and statements of confidence on children’s self-efficacy and problem solving. journal of educational psychology, 73, 485-493. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 34 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo speaking in an echo chamber: the politics of parental choice volume 13, number 3 issn 1099-839x evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets: an alternative analytical framework christopher lubienski university of illinois gregg garn university of oklahoma citation lubienski, c. & garn, g. (2010). evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets: an alternative analytical framework current issues in education, 13(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the question of how information is used by parents in selecting schools is a central issue in school choice debates, where advocates and opponents frequently intermingle theory (often economic), ideological beliefs, and empirical evidence in constructing arguments about the potential of this reform. we employ a nomination strategy to analyze rational choice claims about information on school quality, finding a much more complex picture of this issue than is typically found in policy advocacy. we offer an alternative framework for evaluating consumer information on schools, concluding that researchers and policymakers must consider the nature, quality, and equitable distribution of information. keywords: education reform, school choice, vouchers, charter schools, parent information current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 about the author(s) author: christopher lubienski affiliation: university of illinois address: 338 education building mc-708, 1310 south sixth street, champaign, il 61820 email: club@illinois.edu. biographical information: christopher lubienski is an associate professor of education politics and policy, and a fellow at the forum on the future of public education at the university of illinois. his current work examines organizational responses to competitive conditions in urban areas, and was recently named a fulbright senior scholar for research on local education markets in new zealand. author: gregg garn affiliation: university of oklahoma email: garn@ou.edu biographical information: gregg garn is professor of educational leadership and policy studies and associate dean of the jeannine rainbolt college of education at the university of oklahoma. dr. garn is director of the k20 center for educational and community renewal (k20center.ou.edu) and serves as the linda clark anderson presidential professor. evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 3 a fundamental assumption of all school choice policies is that parents are in an advantageous position for discerning and choosing the best schools for their children. this argument holds that parents are not only best situated to evaluate their own child’s educational options, but also have the incentives to choose wisely. this thinking identifies the idealized “rational consumer” in the parent, where individuals are driven by the quest for academic quality and, consequently, advantages in later economic opportunities. this thinking is aligned with what is known as “rational choice” theory, where individual actions are assumed to be based in logical weighting of different alternatives based on accumulated information and motivated by self-interest. i while this hypothesis is appealing with regard to educational choice, and is seemingly supported by common-sense evidence, empirical support for this perspective is highly contested in policy debates. in fact, contrary to the claims of some policy advocates, a comprehensive review of the evidence on parental information and choices presents a much more complex picture of parents’ use of information on academic quality — one which seriously questions the idealization on a rational consumer pursuing educational effectiveness. we note the key question is not so much whether parents can choose wisely for their children, but whether information to make effective choices is readily available and equitably distributed. in this analysis, we re-examine a framework offered by two school choice policy advocates regarding the theoretical and empirical evidence related to the rational consumer hypothesis, which has been used to support the contention that not only can parents make good choices, but “parents would do a better job choosing schools for their children than do experts in governmental agencies” (bast & walberg, 2004, p.431). this framework had been structured around three lines of research: current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 1.) survey data demonstrating that parents and “experts” come to similar assessments of school quality — indicating that parents have the necessary information on schools in order to make wise choices. 2.) survey data demonstrating that parents tend to focus on issues of academic quality when selecting schools — suggesting that parents are making choices in support of the rational consumer concern with later economic opportunities. 3.) achievement data indicating that academic effectiveness is superior in choice schools, as opposed to that in schools to which students are assigned (see bast & walberg, 2004). although such claims are often framed as emerging from empirical research, we demonstrate in this analysis that they are instead a clear example of what belfield & levin (2005) argue is ideology trumping evidence. as we note in our discussion, the empirical evidence used to support the rational consumer model is highly selective (and sometimes misinterpreted or misrepresented). a more careful review of the research indicates a much more complex picture that defies neat, ideologically pure portraits. this paper pursues the question of what we know about parents and the use of information on educational options. in the following section we question how this issue is framed, suggesting the need to consider institutional, political, and individual concerns. then we consider the different research literatures highlighted in the framework (following bast and walberg) pertinent to this issue. we examine (1) the evidence on the propensity of parents to accurately determine the academic quality of a school, and (2) whether or not academic quality is the paramount concern for parents. furthermore, we survey the research on (3) the effects of choices on academic quality; this last issue offers insights into the type of evidence that is used to support the “rational consumer” argument, and suggests the role of an ideological echoevidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 5 chamber to substantiate that model. alternatively, we propose a framework for considering the types, quality, and utility of information on school effectiveness, and provide specific recommendations on improving the availability and distribution of information for consumers. the concluding discussion highlights the need for more careful and comprehensive understanding of the complex evidence on parental choice of schools. consumer information the simple insight that parents are best able to exercise responsibility over their children’s education is quite appealing and seemingly self-evident. indeed, there are many cases where this is obviously true. however, the question is not whether this is typically the case or not, but whether or not this is to be a guiding principle for shaping public policy. fundamentally, if parents are expected to make good choices for their children, they must have sufficient information on both their children and their options in order to make this decision most effectively. in that regard, there are three essential issues that need to be addressed — issues that are too often neglected in assumptions about the appropriate role of parents in their children’s education. the first issue is institutional. parents act as proxy-consumers for their children in schools, as they do in other areas of life: medical care, nutrition, religion, and so forth (brighouse, 2000). yet, with regard to different social institutions, proxy consumers play different roles, depending largely on their knowledge and the nature of a specific sector. for instance, parents purchase food and clothing in the business sector for their children based on their assessment of preferences, costs, availability, etc. similarly, other institutions such as politics and religion are left almost exclusively to the parents to instruct the child as they see fit. however, in more specialized sectors, parents often defer to experts with arcane knowledge on current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 issues such as medicine, for instance. the issue, then, is whether education is best characterized as a market, politics, or science. but this is a question neglected in the discourse among policymakers debating parental choice. this discussion currently advances largely from the assumption that education is akin to the inculcation of political or religious values, often played out in a market arena where parents can shop for the right educational services for their children. while education does indeed embody these types of qualities, it is also the case that education may require some outside expertise (that is, moving beyond the role of advocate) in “diagnosing” and “treating” each learner — a consideration often denied in the rhetoric about parental control. the second issue is political, specifically a democratic concern. families have an interest in reproducing their values in the next generation. thus, parents rely not only on childrearing or church, but also look to institutions such as education to reinforce (or at least not contradict) the values that they emphasize in the home (bast & walberg, 2004). this is widely agreed to be a primary interest of the good parent. however, a democratic society — particularly one with any pretensions of meritocratic fairness — also has an interest in providing equitable opportunities for autonomous citizens. since family backgrounds provide an inequitable basis for determining future opportunities — with some children receiving a much greater advantage from their families — democratic societies typically look to institutions such as schooling to provide both equity and autonomy for individuals. this means, in a sense, that schools need to break the cycle of poverty (and, implicitly, then, the cycle of affluence as well) that so characterize modern market societies. that is, one of the primary purposes of schools in a democratic society is to make a child’s family factors meaningless for success in schools and life. similarly, parents typically seek to get children to respect their authority, while a truly democratic society may encourage children to question authority. evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 7 the third issue is a concern for the individual and involves the place of the child in a democratic society. choice advocates often point to a parent’s “prior” right to determine their children’s education, guaranteed in agreements such as the universal declaration of human rights, which trumps claims of other interests (monk, 2004). although it is assumed that parents will act in the child’s best interests, as a parental right, that assumption is largely irrelevant. instead, this parental right is often articulated and exercised in the manner of a property right. yet parents do not “own” their children, nor are they the only recognized authority with respect to the child. the broader public also has both a right and responsibility to care for the child’s interests. although parents are typically positioned to be the primary agent in looking after the child, it is generally accepted that democratic societies also exercise an overriding prerogative regarding a child’s welfare, particularly in instances where a parent is unwilling or ill-equipped to make wise choices on behalf of the child. although it can take many forms, this public interest is typically articulated through the role of the government in areas such as education. while these three concerns confound simplistic claims that a parent’s position makes him or her an exclusive authority in education, they are not necessarily the only issues in evaluating parental choices in education. it is also important to consider the empirical evidence on parental choice of schools. as noted above, information is a key component, so it is essential to understand the information available to parents in making school choices. below we highlight three forms of evidence on parents choosing schools. in doing so, we draw on the framework employed by bast and walberg (2004) in promoting the rational consumer model to support school choice: parent ratings of schools, parent preferences for academic quality, and effects of choice on academic achievement — these together are thought to support the classical economic current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 idealization of a rational consumer, proving that parents are inherently better positioned to make such choices than is, say, a government bureaucracy. thus, we use a nomination strategy, examining research nominated by policy advocates, under the assumption that such research represents the strongest evidence is support of that position. however, a more comprehensive review of the evidence around these three points suggests a much more complex picture, problematizing easy and attractive assumptions about parents, information, and academic quality. rating school quality many observers argue that parents are both best positioned and most likely to make the best education choices for children. some refer to empirical literatures in order to demonstrate parents’ ability, willingness, and effectiveness in making wise and informed choices. the first element of this argument is that parents and education experts rate school similarly. to support this point, bast and walberg (2004), for instance, cite three studies indicating that parents’ ratings and ranking of schools were accurate on specific criteria. however, two of the studies cited actually contradict that thesis. hoxby (2001) examines parental satisfaction with different public schools, relative to the actual academic effectiveness of those schools. yet, contrary to the thesis that parents are necessarily accurate judges of school quality, the majority of parents were incorrect in their assessment of school quality; according to the data reported by bast and walberg: only 44% were “highly satisfied” with the highest performing schools, and 15% of parents were “highly satisfied” with the worst schools — suggesting that the majority of parents (71%) assessing school quality in that study were inaccurate or highly inaccurate. a second study, examining new zealand’s educational choice reforms, noted that parent assessments of high quality schools were probably based on the evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 9 socioeconomic characteristics of the students (fiske & ladd, 2000). this finding is problematic for the argument that parents are the best judges of academic quality, since it suggests that academic quality is either difficult to discern, or parents focused on other information instead, such as the racial characteristics of students in a school, rather than actual evidence of school quality. ii thus, it appears that the evidence cited does not necessarily support claims about parents’ ratings matching those of experts, but instead actually undermines this argument, and presents a more complex picture of this issue. in fact, a comprehensive research literature suggests that parents do not necessarily always agree with objective assessments of school quality. in research on parents’ school choices in chile — a nation with a much more comprehensive market model for education than those in the us and new zealand — studies have found parents had tenuous sources of information, and were largely incorrect when asked to identify high and low quality schools in their area (espínola, 1993; gauri, 1998). and in a comprehensive study of us mathematics achievement on the national assessment of educational progress, lubienski and lubienski (2006) noted that, after controlling for student demographics, charter schools were actually performing significantly beneath the level of public schools, despite their much-mentioned waiting lists (see also braun et al., 2006a). more importantly, students in self-described conservative christian schools, which are the fastest-growing segment of the private school sector, are almost a year behind their public school counterparts, while higher performing catholic and lutheran schools often struggle to attract families — indicating that popularity with parents is not a good proxy for academic quality (see broughman & pugh, 2004; braun et al., 2006b). similarly, evidence that parents are using vouchers to send their children to higher performing schools is less than compelling (belfield, 2006). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 indeed, much evidence already indicates that parents have different perceptions around general issues of school quality than do school choice advocates. president bush’s 2006 state of the union address called for a dramatic ramping up of math and science training, a theme echoed by many business leaders and school reformers. but parents are generally satisfied with the amount and quality of instruction their children receive in these areas (johnson et al., 2006). parents often see more value to the local public schools than some advocates of rational choice believe they should. iii surveys have repeatedly demonstrated that the people thought to be best positioned to make assessments of school quality — “those who are closest to and most familiar with the situation” (bast & walberg, 2004, p. 433) — also tend to give relatively high marks to the schools they know the most: the local public school that their children attend (rose & gallup, 1999, 2003, 2005). either parents are in error regarding the quality of their local schools and therefore, by implication, are incapable of judging school quality, or the experts calling for drastic moves to market models for schooling are inaccurate in their own assessment of schools. once again, the issue is much more complex than some of the advocacy rhetoric would indicate. choosing a school based on academic quality the second pillar of the rational consumer model holds that parents are primarily interested in academic quality. we find a much less conclusive sense of the literature on this issue than advocates or opponents of school choice may like. the notion that parental preferences for schools revolve around issues of academic quality is a key element in the rational consumer idealization in much of the thinking on school choice (see schneider et al., 2000). specifically, economic logic holds that the parents are primarily interested in the academic quality of a school because this will in turn enhance economic prospects for their children (bast & walberg, 2004). iv theorists seek to support this notion by citing four sources showing evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 11 national and local survey research in which parents identify academic quality as the most important criterion in selecting a school. on the other hand, there is a substantial research literature — both survey and behavioral — from the us and other nations suggesting that parents choose for a number of reasons besides strictly academic considerations (e.g., gauri, 1998; molnar, 1996; polansky, 1998; smith & meier, 1995; wells, 1993). this is not to say that parents do not choose schools based on academic quality, but that many other considerations (e.g., location, transportation, curricular focus, uniforms, sports, or student demographics) also come into play — making for a much more complex picture than is portrayed in the rationalconsumer idealization. in fact, since school choice moved into the national spotlight, this question has been debated, and the literature hardly reflects the consensus implied by the four sources cited by some rational choice theorists (see coulson, 1999; moe, 1995; solomon, 2003; witte, 2000). of course, there are problems with citing survey data to support any contention on this issue. most importantly, surveys are notoriously unreliable when people are asked to express preferences on controversial topics, compared to when they actually reveal their true preferences away from public scrutiny. for instance, although few parents cite racial composition of schools as a factor in their choices (schneider et al., 1998), it is, in fact, perhaps the most urgent bit of information they seek when considering different schools (schneider & buckley, 2002; see also glazerman, 1998; henig, 1996). furthermore, many of these studies survey parents who have chosen to use a voucher or charter school, presenting a problem with selection bias; not only are those schools based on choice more likely to have already shed disgruntled families, who would then not be included in the survey, but, furthermore, those remaining are unlikely to admit in a survey they have chosen poorly for their child. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 finally, while parents may say that academic quality is a high priority, this does not mean that they actually have hard information on that issue. for instance, recent studies of school marketing in competitive environments suggest that evidence of academic quality is not a prominent theme in school promotional materials; instead, schools often seek to attract families through images of white or asian-american students, information about extracurricular opportunities, or symbols associated with exclusive schooling, rather than, say, test scores (identifying information removed). this trend may be troubling. even if parents act on “perceived academic quality,” school officials may recognize and respond to incentives to shape those perceptions through surrogate information on school quality that highlights racial and socio-economic criteria (bast & walberg, 2004, p. 431; emphasis added). competitive dynamics may promote sorting on these factors, and undercut incentives for school improvement (identifying reference, 2005). our analysis of the relevant literature leads us to conclude that academics may be one of a variety of factors that influence school selection by parents. moreover, problems with selection bias in the survey data and difficulty in getting trustworthy evidence of school quality complicate the rational consumer argument. academic achievement gains are higher in schools of choice the third pillar of the rational consumer argument is that academic achievement gains are higher in schools of choice than traditional public schools. the dynamics set in motion by parental choice are thought to lead to more effective schools overall (hoxby, 1994). this is a crucial claim. as bast and walberg (2004) note: higher academic achievement by students attending schools of choice, after controlling for family socioeconomic status, could be evidence that parents are evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 13 choosing wisely. however, it could also be evidence that competition produces better schools… even if parents are not choosing wisely, the fact that producers must compete or that choice motivates parents to be more engaged in their children’s schooling may lift their children’s academic achievement. (p. 436, emphasis in original) as a case in point, bast and walberg (2004) cite 25 studies on a number of school choice programs, including public school choice, private schools, charter schools, and voucher programs to support this claim. not all of the studies report original research, but some instead summarize existing research. more importantly, a review of these studies indicates a much more complex picture than is implied in the effort to support this claim. for instance, a study by grogger and neal (2000) is cited as evidence of a “positive and statistically significant” private school effect on academic achievement. in fact, grogger and neal’s study of nels:88 data found no statistically significant effect for catholic schools on mathematics achievement for students in the suburbs, but a modest advantage for white students, and larger gains for minority students, in urban areas; no private school effect was found for secular private schools. v (this is a significant omission, in view of the thesis about the competitive impact of choice, since nonreligious private schools may be more susceptible to market-like forces than catholic schools, which can rely on the more inert patronage of parishioners.) other studies cited show similarly mixed results. furthermore, causation is often implied, but cannot be supported by the data or analysis. for example, bast and walberg cite a one-page study of inputs and achievement of catholic and public school students in new york as proof that achievement “growth is greater in catholic schools than in public schools” (peterson & walberg, 2002, p. 435). however, the authors do not indicate that they used longitudinal data, nor does it appear that they controlled current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 for student demographics — two fatal errors if one is to demonstrate that a school type, and not family factors, caused achievement growth. many of the other studies cited to support this claim are actually just summaries of previous studies that have also been contested on methodological grounds. vi not only does the rational choice argument depend on a selective interpretation of these studies, but it would depend as well on a very selective review of the literature. other studies not cited found no academic advantage for schools of choice, and a few found a negative effect. for instance, studies by rouse (1998) and miron and nelson (2002) of achievement in voucher and charter programs, respectively, do not support the thesis that school choice necessarily leads to greater achievement gains. in a longitudinal study, figlio and stone (1997) found a small but statistically significant negative effect for religious schools for white students, but a positive impact for minority students (see also figlio & stone, 1999). more recently, using national samples, lubienski and lubienski (2006) and braun, jenkins and grigg (2006a, 2006b) found schools of choice to be trailing public schools in academic achievement after implementing appropriate controls for student demographics. and belfield (2006) found a negative private school effect in his rigorous study of the cleveland voucher program. we reference the aforementioned studies, not to “prove” that choice has a particular impact (or not) on student achievement, but to demonstrate that the picture is much more complex than what is implied in support of the claim that choice generates gains in academic achievement. ideology and evidence in support of rational choice in education the three pillars of the rational consumer hypothesis that parents would do a better job choosing schools than experts are tenuous at best. a selective use of the literature and a mischaracterization of several key studies undercut the rational choice argument significantly. evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 15 however, another problem also problematizes such claims. the rational choice claim relies heavily on studies of questionable value for researchers and policymakers. as table 1 demonstrates, many of them are supported and published by various think tanks rather than traditional peer reviewed publications. in an analysis of their references we found only two of the 64 total references come from traditional refereed journal articles while 32 are published by think tanks — most with definite political agendas. vii table 1: think tanks and other sources of research citations in bast and walberg (2004) source frequency brookings institution 9 hoover institute 6 school reform news (heartland institute) 2 american enterprise institute 1 national center for the study of privatization in education 1 carnegie foundation 1 pacific research institute 1 rand 1 manhattan institute 1 kettering foundation 1 morrison institute 1 goldwater institute 1 human resources policy corporation 1 reason public policy institute 1 princeton university working paper 1 public agenda 1 current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 the world bank 1 national bureau for economic research 1 for example, the three surveys offered by advocates support the assertion that parents rate schools similar to experts were published by the human resources policy corporation, the hoover institute, and the brookings institution. similarly, in section 4.3.2 (p.437) bast and walberg identify nine references to support their assertion that the private school effect is statistically significant (see table 2). table 2: sources of research on school effects cited in bast and walberg (2004) reference publication source chubb & moe, 1990 brookings institution coleman & hoffer, 1987 basic books grogger & neal, 2000 brookings institution neal, 1996 national bureau for economic research patrinos & ariasingam, 1997 the world bank rouse, 2000 princeton university working paper sander, 1995 westview press witte, 1996 brookings institution peterson & walberg, 2002 the heartland institute simply analyzing the publication source raised credibility issues in several cases. in fact, the table they present on page 435 summarizing research on school choice includes only two peerreviewed journal articles. thirty-two of the references are to documents produced by think tanks evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 17 (brookings, hoover, heartland institute, etc.). in sum, the quality of the debate is weakened when publications from ideologically driven think tanks dominate the citations. towards a deeper understanding of parent information on school quality in view of these difficulties in substantiating the thesis that parents are positioned to make the best choices for their children’s schools, it makes sense to take a deeper look at the issue. indeed, it appears that there are serious shortcomings with the question itself when it is framed as: “can parents choose the best schools for their children?” or “can people be trusted to decide for themselves?” (bast & walberg, 2004; brandt, 2000, respectively). such representations of the issue treat parents as monolithic, ignoring substantial evidence that parents’ views of schools and information can be diverse and socially situated (e.g., ball et al., 1995; bell, 2005; gewirtz et al., 1995; schneider et al., 1998). furthermore, as noted above, framing the issue along strictly individualistic/ consumer lines negates any broader social or democratic interest in a child’s education. therefore, hypotheses such as “parents would do a better job choosing the schools their children attend than “experts” working for governments” (bast & walberg, 2004, p. 432), while empirically falsifiable, largely miss the point. rather than asking if parents can make informed choices (when for many the answer is obvious), it makes more sense to ask whether the requisite knowledge or information to make such choices is of sufficient quality, widely available and equitably distributed. a framework for assessing information on school quality to that end, we offer three dimensions to consider in evaluating information that could be employed in selecting a school: insights into observable productive processes, the nature of the good or service, viii and information that encourages horizontal and vertical differentiation. although there is a strong case to be made that education exhibits many of the primary aspects of current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 a public good (labaree, 2007), we can assume here, for the sake of argument, that schooling is primarily a private good, and should be examined as such. 1) information on productive processes. first, to understand information on the quality of any consumable good, it is important to consider what aspect of the good is being illuminated for the consumer. for many goods, such as a car or a computer, consumers look for information on the quality of the finished product. ix for others, such as health care, the quality of the production processes is a key concern (weisbrod, 1998). with schooling, for instance, a diploma may be important, but it tells us little about the quality of the school experience — instead, such information is often just a proxy for school inputs (such as the socioeconomic characteristics of students enrolling at a school). perhaps slightly more accurate assessments of quality come from evaluations of the more immediate educational inputs in a school (e.g., teacher qualifications, class composition and size, etc.). probably the best information on processes would be information on actual educational processes at a school: curriculum program, pedagogical practices, etc. however, productive processes and their effectiveness are not always apparent to consumers, leading to asymmetries of information between producer and consumer that put the customer at a relative disadvantage. the clarity of productive processes can be represented on a scale, where more obvious processes are transparent to the consumer, somewhat complex or hidden processes are translucent, while opaque processes are more obscured or even removed from the consumer’s view. as is noted below, schooling involves some aspects that are difficult to make apparent to the consumer. 2) information on the consumable qualities of a good. second, just as information on productive processes can be important to consumers, different goods themselves exhibit different types of qualities — qualities that are conveyed to the consumer in different ways. some goods evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 19 embed qualities that are readily apparent to consumers before purchase and consumption. for instance, we can usually decide if fruit is ripe, or if a sweater fits, and use that information in making a selection. such qualities then allow consumers to make choices based on other factors as well, such as price and availability, and competitive marketing for these search goods tends to offer information on those criteria (aggarwal & vaidyanathan, 2003; darby & karni, 1973; nelson, 1974; tirole, 1988). however, important aspects of other types of goods are not readily apparent to consumers before purchase, in the case of experience goods such as canned food or a movie; while, for credence goods, important qualities may never be really known — for instance, the effects of an herbal supplement, or the actual effects of higher octane gasoline on an engine. in these cases, marketing tends to play upon the information asymmetries enjoyed by the producer, further obscuring information on quality by appealing to emotions or allegiance. therefore, it is useful to consider the types of information available about a good: whether the information makes “softer” emotional appeals, or provides direct or “hard” evidence of product quality or effectiveness. 3) horizontal and vertical differentiation. third, in any competitive market, producers or providers are expected to differentiate their product or service from those of competitors. x while assessments of the diversity of different options can be made by examining the qualities of actual products, more importantly for the present purposes is the information made available to consumers regarding the differences between products. in sectors such as education it is important to note whether that information identifies differences between different options arranged on a vertical scale of different-but-equal programs, or on a horizontal scale of quality (glomm et al., 2005). if the information focuses on the former, that could indicate niche marketing to diverse preferences. if the information focuses primarily on the latter, that could current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 indicate a monolithic conception of quality, but it could also suggest competitive incentives to enhance market position by attracting more “preferred” customers. discussion the educational processes in schools are relatively esoteric, and largely obscured from the direct observations of current and potential consumers. since schooling does not appear to lend itself to easy comparisons between options based on explicit indicators of quality, as it would if it were a search good, competition between providers by itself is unlikely to generate the information necessary for consumers to make informed choices (identifying reference, 2001). instead, with experience or credence goods, extra-market remedies such as licensing, regulation, or accreditation are often necessary in order to compensate the consumer in light of informational asymmetries favoring producers. xi unfortunately, quality information appears to be rare, or rarely used. xii furthermore, the information that is available has little to do with program diversity, and more to do with socio-economic distinctions between students, suggesting incentives for families and schools to sort themselves by such characteristics, and thereby voiding incentives for school improvement, innovation, and equitable access to diverse options. of course, it is likely that many parents get information on schools from social networks — the word-of-mouth means of gathering information on options (identifying reference, 2005). however, it is important to note that these networks tend to be relatively homogenous, so that information disseminated through such channels will not be equitably distributed (schneider et al., 1997). as noted earlier, there are many justifications for parental choice of schools, and most school choice plans depend on the informed participation of parents. as former secretary of education rod paige so aptly put it in championing nclb: “there is no more powerful advocate evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 21 for children than a parent armed with information and options” (wrightslaw, 2002). such assertions, while simple, eloquent, and appealing, appear to be more of a statement of ideology than of evidence. this analysis finds both the ideological and empirical aspects of such claims to be problematic in light of both their own internal logic and evidence on the dynamics of school choice in the real-world context. the issue of parental choice of schools is much more complex than simplistic assertions would indicate. instead of debating whether or not parents are able to choose the best schools, it is important to consider whether the requisite knowledge or information is widely available and equitably distributed. the question is centered largely on the issue of school quality, which is difficult for researchers to identify even with advanced statistical measures, and is also difficult to convey to potential consumers. yet more useful types of information are least likely to be available to parents, thereby hindering parental choice as an effective vehicle for equity and effectiveness in education. this does not mean that parents are incapable of choosing wisely — a claim that is obviously not supported by this analysis. however, this absence of quality information problematizes easy assumptions about informed parental choice of schools as the basis for public policy. notes i “rational choice” theory (see blau, 1997; goode, 1997) is often called “market theory” when applied to education (lubienski, 2006; see, for example, walberg, 2000). ii see also (schneider & buckley, 2002). although rational from the consumer’s perspective, such patterns can also be problematic since they indicate incentives for providers to promote themselves based on evidence of the social characteristics of their students, rather than evidence of academic quality (see below; see also identifying reference, in press-c). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 the third study cited by bast and walberg — from solomon (2003) — supports their thesis, but is of highly dubious quality. not only was it never peer reviewed, but it suffers from multiple shortcomings, including low response rate (29%), selection bias (surveying only families with children currently still in charter schools), and possible responses weighted toward higher scores (with the inclusion of an a+ response). iii thus, there is a degree of irony when market enthusiast john stossel (2006) cites parental choice advocate kevin chavous in arguing that parents do not understand about school quality: “if you're like most american parents, you might think ‘these things don’t happen at my kid’s school.’ a gallup poll survey showed 76 percent of americans were completely or somewhat satisfied with their kids' public school. education reformers like kevin chavous have a message for these parents: if you only knew. even though people in the suburbs might think their schools are great, chavous says, ‘they’re not. that’s the thing and the test scores show that.’ chavous and many other education professionals say americans don't know that their public schools, on the whole, just aren’t that good.” similarly, former heritage foundation analyst and bush (ii) administration education official nina rees says: “to some extent, when you offer something new to low-income parents or to any parent group, initially you’re not going to have a surge signing up because they don't know what it is and the procedure to sign kids up is somewhat complicated” (saulny, 2006). iv bast and walberg do note — and we agree — that it is presumptuous to assume that academic achievement is the ultimate measure for school success. (there are, after all, other goals for schools that are often neglected in reform rhetoric: socialization, democratic citizenship, integration, tolerance, etc.) however, this is certainly the metric that is elevated by reform discourse on school effectiveness, so it is important to consider. evidence and ideology on consumer choices in education markets 23 v this finding caused hoover institute economist eric hanushek to wonder, in his commentary, how parents could violate basic economic logic by paying for an underperforming service when a superior alternative is free of charge (grogger & neal, 2000, p. 196). vi see, for instance, krueger & zhu (2004a, 2004b), metcalf (1998), and witte (1996). vii most of these sources are agenda-driven think tanks, although a few — including the national bureau of economic research and the national center for the study of privatization in education — focus instead on presenting research for its own sake, and thereby reflect a range of perspectives. viii for brevity, we use the term “good,” while understanding that education and other “consumables” can also be described as a service. ix in those cases, process innovations (as opposed to product innovations) may lower production costs, but are largely irrelevant to the consumer as an immediate consideration in making a choice. x of course, producers at the low end of a hierarchy have an incentive to minimize distinctions between their product and those of their more prestigious competitors, while those at the high end of the scale attempt to exaggerate any differences. in education, policymakers have used reforms such as charter schools to encourage diversification of options so that parents have a greater set of choices. xi walberg and bast (2003) focus on market mechanisms to deal with asymmetric information (p. 65). in particular, they point to information from producers, repeat purchases, and “personal and public sources of information.” however, schooling does not lend itself to repeat purchases, which would be required to punish bad providers; and children, not the choosers, are the ones who have to pay a price for unfortunate choices in this idealized “discovery process” (bast & current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 walberg, 2004, p. 433; brighouse, 2000; identifying reference, in press-b). and, as this analysis shows, information from producers, as well as personal and public sources, can be more limited than these authors assume. xii it does not appear that competition is necessarily producing quality information on schools’ value-added effects (identifying reference, in press-b). bast and walberg (2004) point to extra-market mechanisms such as school data collection sites on the internet as a possible device to equalize access to information. while the internet is certainly just one means of accessing information on schools — and, of course, access to the internet is not equitably distributed — it is fast becoming a primary method for gathering information on schools (as bast and walberg note). indeed, while gaps in access exist, we might expect the most demand for high quality information from the relatively sophisticated consumers with internet access. still, the quality of information from school information websites is relatively poor, and speaks more to school inputs and demographic characteristics than to school effectiveness (identifying reference, in press-c). references aggarwal, p., & vaidyanathan, r. 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(2002, december 2). no child left behind act — final regulations published. wrightslaw, 6. ________________________________________________________________________ note from the spring 2016 executive editor, constantin schreiber april 18, 2016. a major editing issue with the original version of this article was discovered in april 2016. this issue was addressed and all content from the original manuscript has been preserved to the extent possible. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. however, it was not possible to identify the references that were removed from the manuscript for the purposes of peer review. therefore, the article contains references to “identifying information” that has been removed. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to cie@asu.edu. ________________________________________________________________________ mailto:cie@asu.edu current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 30 microsoft word enacting culture in gaminga video gamer’s literacy experiences and practices .docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x enacting culture in gaming: a video gamer’s literacy experiences and practices aaron a. toscano university of north carolina at charlotte citation toscano, a. a. (2011). enacting culture in gaming: a video gamer’s literacy experience and practice. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this article is a case study of a young adult video gamer and his literacy acquisition in relation to video game play. the author conducted an interview with the gamer and read texts the gamer produced—both creative and personal. the interview and textual analysis revealed evidence that the gamer’s literacy practices are influenced by his immersion in the virtual worlds of gaming environments. additionally, following scholars in new literacy studies and video game research, the author demonstrates how his interviewee enacts culture and absorbs literacy practices through socially mediated ways. this ethnographic study suggests ways in which other young adults may carry out literacy practices in our increasingly multimodal contexts inside and outside school. keywords: video games, gamers, new literacy studies, literacy acquisition, socio-cultural context, acculturation, young adults current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 2 about the author(s) author: aaron a. toscano, phd affiliation: university of north carolina at charlotte address: department of english, college of liberal arts and sciences, university of north carolina at charlotte, 9201 university city blvd, charlotte, nc 28223-0001 email: astoscano@uncc.edu biographical information: dr. aaron a. toscano is an assistant professor in the department of english in the college of liberal arts and sciences at the university of north carolina at charlotte. he teaches courses in technical communication, rhetoric/composition, new media studies, and women’s and gender studies. he received his ph.d. in rhetoric and composition from the university of louisville. although his main research interests are in technical communication, he also conducts research in the rhetoric of technology, science and technology studies (sts), and popular culture studies. acknowledgement: the author would like to thank brent for providing his interesting literacy narrative. the author is also grateful to dr. boyd davis, dr. jennifer munroe, and dr. mark west for their feedback on earlier drafts of this article. enacting culture in gaming 3 enacting culture in gaming: a video gamer’s literacy experiences and practices many groups inside and outside academia consider proficiency to be an important tenet of literacy. the dominant, most sought literacy related to education for the twenty-first century appears to be technological literacy. selfe (1999) argues that educators should not think of technological literacy as simply computer proficiency; instead, we ought to understand “technological literacy as a cultural phenomenon, one that includes cultural dimensions, incorporating what brian street (1995) identifies as both literacy ‘events’ and literacy ‘practices’” (p. 11). these events and practices are not experienced in a vacuum devoid of culture, history, or power. literacy—technological and traditional—is acquired by immersion in a social framework (cazden, 1988; heath, 1983; street, 1984, 1993, and 1995). likewise, gee (2003) mentions that “literacy and thinking, are, in reality…primarily social achievements” and not simply “mental achievements” (p. 1), and this article provides evidence of literacy practices and events enacting culture. in order to test gee’s argument in relation to video games, this article analyzes an interview of brent o’malley1 regarding his background in literacy acquisition and video gaming practices. the interview and analysis demonstrate how social influences contribute to a particular player’s literacy practices while engaged in the semiotic systems of video games. throughout the interview brent discussed the literacies he compiled from school, home, work, and his leisure activities. the notion that literacies “pile up” comes from brandt’s (1995) work on literacy studies (p. 652). brent’s interview uncovers his literacy practices mediated by culture, specifically, popular culture events and myths. in these settings, brent learns not only reading and writing skills, but he also absorbs cultural messages that are reinscribed in his own creative work. although this is an ethnographic study of a single gamer, brent’s literacy practices suggest current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 how others might compile literacies. that is, accumulate skills and critical faculties regarding those skills. he is, then, multimodal; an analysis of his practices as a gamer enables teachers to continue learning about the literacy practices of the growing multimodal twenty-first century citizen/student. cultural work of video games video games can serve as cultural repositories for a literacy analysis. brent does not acquire literacies in a vacuum; instead, brent acquires literacies as both a subject and agent immersed in culture. culture and the culture’s dominant ideologies mediate all forms of production: education and literacy acquisition are not outside of culture. video games, like films, are cultural products that enact culture and display values entwined with culture. therefore, video games do cultural work, and gamers acquire cultural literacy by absorbing video game narratives. societal characteristics are incorporated into video games much like ideology is carried out in all semiotic systems. for instance, most first-person shooter video games allow the gamer to take on entire armies, huge gangs, and even hordes of zombies by himself.2 such a situation is impossible in reality, but it reflects another male-dominated genre: the american action film, specifically, ones with a single male hero, such as the rambo films, many arnold schwarzenegger films, and the missing in action trilogy. these films appeal to male audiences and reflect the pervasive ideology of individualism that claims an individual is seemingly all powerful and can overcome enormous odds and be victorious. the individual hero is an american ideology, but it resonates with such archetypal characters from mythology as ulysses, hercules, and david. gamers embody their on-screen avatars and engross themselves in campaigns where they conquer the video game domain with unlimited ammunition and awesome fighting skills. such a description is not completely accurate enacting culture in gaming 5 for the entire history of video games, for instance, 1980s video games such as frogger (activision) and donkey kong (nintendo), but those games reflect the myth of the american dream that claims an individual can persevere regardless of the obstacles: in frogger it is traffic and a fast-moving river, and in donkey kong it is barrels (among other things) thrown by a huge gorilla that has captured the princess. whether one sees video games as frivolously passing time or as systems with complex grammars players must decode (gee, 2003; devoss et al., 2004), observers cannot deny that persistent, dedicated playing improves players’ gaming abilities. also, persistent playing (much like persistent consumption of media) allows gamers to absorb the cultural messages of games. this medium is quite popular and deserves scholarly attention. as cultural products, video games reflect hegemonic values. for instance, living in a capitalist society, we can expect games to reflect values related to acquiring wealth, perseverance, and free markets. some games have obvious markers of capitalism that encourage exploring the semiotic system of the game. sonic and the secret rings and the entire sonic the hedgehog series (sega) has gamers collect shiny gold rings which offer protection when injured (and make a cha-ching sound when picked up); mario in super mario brothers (nintendo) collects coins as he makes his way through his odd pipe world (on his way to save the princess); cj from grand theft auto: san andreas (rockstar), literally, starts with nothing but the shirt on his back, and, through a series of adventures, he acquires money with which he builds a small criminal empire and even owns a large stake in a casino by the end of the game. cj pulls himself up by his boot straps and lives the american dream. the other games in the grand theft auto series also follow this bootstrap narrative. in the hitman (edios) series of video games, players trade their labor—being an assassin—for money. this reflects a free market ideology because hitman claims he kills for money and not political agendas; he is completely for sale. as hitman current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 carries out assassinations, he acquires money that he can use to purchase body armor, weapons, and bribes. even illegal activity follows payment for services in this virtual world. even many massively multiplayer online role playing games (mmorpgs) have players refine their skills in order to acquire virtual wealth, thus rewarding hard work with virtual cash. mmorpgs are video games such as world of warcraft (blizzard entertainment), ultima online (origin systems), and everquest (sony online entertainment) where gamers interact with thousands of players wandering virtual worlds (often fantastic themed worlds) in order to complete tasks that build a character’s profile and skill capability. this skills building reflects advancement in capitalist societies. citizens are supposed to attend school and/or job training in order to market themselves and advance in a career. the mmorpgs reflect a skills-building type of career path where the employee enters knowing little about the job but, after years in the position, the employee is supposed to be able to work more efficiently and, perhaps, assume more responsibility in the organization. players’ characters in many virtual worlds can improve their abilities by performing actions and logging on time in these virtual environments. this time spent in the game helps players’ characters become stronger, faster, or just more powerful at various actions needed to succeed in the game. therefore, these video games enact culture by reinforcing the notion that hard work (or just work) allows individuals to succeed. video games are complex multimodal texts that both tell stories and invite audience interpretation. gamers enter virtual worlds with rules that mimic culture and provide entertainment for leisure activities. in literacy studies, prominent scholars see “figured worlds” as collective or intersubjective truths (holland et al., 1998; street, 2003). video games as figured worlds have not been theorized, but they are figured worlds in a broad sense. gamers enter the figured world of video games and allow their imaginations to position themselves within the enacting culture in gaming 7 video game structure. therefore, the gamer is lara croft or cj or mario working through the complex world the game designers created. although the software controls or, more accurately, enforces game rules that limit player action (salen & zimmerman, 2004, p. 122), the video game itself is a cultural product, one allowing gamers to immerse themselves into the narrative/activity of the video game. the lead characters in these video games, controlled by the gamer, have paths to choose and rules to follow, and these rules are accepted by the gamer. that acceptance is part of the gamer’s entertainment choice. with the exception of gamers who immediately go into “cheat mode,” most gamers want the challenge of obstacles. without obstacles, games would not be much fun. because video games embed gamers into the virtual digital world much as a film embeds viewers into the filmic narrative, they should be recognized as having a narrative feel. the video games tell stories, and the many cut scenes reinforce a narrative quality. gamers often must work through the narrative to advance in a game: successive levels unlock secrets or offer more information to the audience. furthermore, we can think of video game levels as “chapters.” video games also have characters, plots, settings, and other attributes (i.e., irony, action, and resolution) that mimic novels and stories. as gee (2003) notes, people who play, review, and discuss such games, as well as those who design and produce them, shape the external design grammar of the semiotic domain of first-person shooter games through their ongoing social interactions. it is their ongoing social interactions that determine the principles and patterns through which people in the domains can recognize and judge thinking, talking, reading, writing, acting, interacting, valuing, and believing characteristic of people who are in the affinity group associated with first person shooter games (p. 32). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 the group associated with these first-person shooters is a group enacting culture, specifically, a culture inundated with media narratives partially focused on terrorism, disasters, rampages, and combat. in turn, hollywood and the gaming industry keep recreating those violent narratives. video games reinscribe the violence enacted in society at large, violence that existed long before video games were invented. this observation complicates studies that claim video games lead to violence (c.f. anderson et al., 2003; bushman & anderson, 2001; fischer, kastenmüller, & greitemeyer, 2010; gentile et al., 2004), but other scholars in social science fields call into question the causation of violent video games leading to acts of violence in real life (c.f. block & crain, 2007; ferguson, 2007; kutner & olson, 2008; olson et al., 2007). an obvious example of video games reflecting an already violent culture is the number of video games with war themes. video games like several in the call of duty (activision) series are set during world war ii, thus, allowing gamers to enter the virtual worlds of the european and pacific theaters in the early 1940s. however, war is not the only reflection of violence in society: urban gangs, drug cartels, disgruntled spouses/family members, and rampaging shooters enact violence in society. video games reflect this violence, but they are not the genesis of violence. kutner and olson (2008) claim that suggesting video games lead to violence in real life has been “drawn from bad or irrelevant research, muddleheaded thinking and unfounded, simplistic news reports” (p. 8). news media representations of violence, which can hype situations, also provide viewers the infotainment of real life violence. consuming cultural products enacts culture, so the consumer is enmeshed in an ideological framework much greater than video games themselves. therefore, violent video game narratives are cultural reflections and not autochthonous creations of video game enacting culture in gaming 9 developers. but not all scholars agree that video games are narratives. because video games require gamers to interact with the “fixed” game environment, klevjer (2002) believes such an activity “signifies the general principle of having to work with the materiality of a text, the need to participate in the construction of its material structure” (p. 192, emphasis mine). according to klevjer, such an activity is different from “narrative discourse, where the user is invited only to engage in the semantics of the text….in narrative discourse the user is only a reader, not a coconstructor, not a player” (p. 192). several european gaming theorists see games as ludology (frasca, 1999; juul, 2000; juul, 2005), which views “games as something unique” (juul, 2005, p. 15). juul (2005) contends that “ludology has often been perceived as focused on distancing itself from narratology, and as trying to carve out video game studies as a separate academic field” (p.16). regardless of whether one believes games are narrative or not narrative, we do not need to have a purely narrative definition to define video games as texts. we may still “read” the semiotics of video games and, contrary to klevjer’s argument, readers will construct meaning based on their understanding of cultural motifs. video game spaces enact culture, and brent’s literacy activities, including his (re)presentation of ideology in his work, represent the sociality of literacy. brent is not just playing a game to pass the time or indulge in an entertaining activity. he is performing and, simultaneously, absorbing socially constructed ideologies. the video game environment is a cultural product that carries values, which, gamers, in turn, reproduce as brent shows in the following abridged literacy narrative. brent o’malley’s abridged literacy narrative at the time of his interview, brent, a male in his early 20s, lived in a medium-sized southern city. he was born and raised in a rural community south of the city. brent was the current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 computer support technician for the english department at granville university, a public university on an urban campus. he holds a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems. at the time of the interview, he was enrolled in graduate-level creative writing seminars at the university, and, since then, he has received an mfa in creative writing at a different university. throughout brent’s life his parents stressed the importance of education. the o’malley parents also brought brent to the library often when he was younger and got him a library card while he was in elementary school. brent’s parents encouraged him to read all kinds of texts— “magazines, books, comics, and encyclopedias.” brent’s early life was full of traditional literacy practices, and his parents were his main literacy role models. his mother and father were (and still are) avid readers. brent remembers seeing his parents reading more than watching tv when he was younger and he, too, is an avid fiction reader. brent also likes magazines that cover popular culture from a male’s perspective—gq, details, esquire, maxim, fhm, etc.—because they are not “serious.” even when they do deal with a serious issue (such as terrorism), they have a humorous slant to their coverage. he also claims that is why he enjoys humorous online satire (e.g., the onion). because of brent’s busy job and class schedule, he does not have as much time to read novels for pleasure, but he does read his classmates’ works in his creative writing seminars. brent explains that the majority of his reading is devoted to his job. he reads internet forums where computer professionals go to ask about complex software and hardware issues. in these forums experts look for advice on technological business solutions (e.g. should they implement a particular program for their organizations) and not for consumer solutions (e.g., what should i do if i get an error message?). additionally, brent reads online articles that review software and hardware; these articles are more technical than those in pc magazine or computer enacting culture in gaming 11 shopper magazine. brent says the forums and articles he reads “are not aiming for a mass distribution. they’re for tech junkies.” because of his interest in keeping current with computer technology, brent is well informed about the state of computers today, and he knows where to find information on all kinds of products available. his ability to read specifications and descriptions in a specialized field in order to make informed decisions for his employer is a crucial literacy practice for the twenty-first-century it professional. additionally, these sources help in brent’s own personal technology choices—brent builds his own computers. brent’s résumé demonstrates his computer skills for his employer. in addition to his extensive computer skills and duties in his previous jobs, brent lists many computer skills in the following “miscellaneous” section of his resume: • possess experience setting up windows 95, 98, nt, 2000, xp, unix/linux and netware 5/6 networks as well as installing, configuring and securing ftp servers. extensive exposure to the ads and nds trees, including creating groups and users within the tree. • served on [his undergraduate university]’s laptop committee to study the feasibility of moving to a “wireless university.” • actual microsoft visual basic, access and project experience. • designed web pages with html and frontpage. • working knowledge of norton’s ghost imaging software. • set up a five-computer network at home with internet connection sharing. • received expert certification from microsoft office training course. the above are just the miscellaneous technological literacies brent has, and they alone identify him as an expert in information technology. brent says that he had no formal computer current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 instruction before his first job as an entry-level technician and data entry specialist during college, but he managed to catch on quickly to the demands of his job and learned valuable skills upon which he would later build. brent describes his way of learning technology as a “hands on” approach: he is more comfortable diving into a technology and discovering how it works as opposed to being taught by a manual or by having directives given over his shoulder. brent got most of his instruction in computer technology (mostly in gaming) at home until entering college. brent was fortunate to have been exposed to computer technology at a young age. his rural school system made computers available to his elementary school in the late 1980s and early 1990s. in fact, brent remembers being on a computer as early as first grade. brent claims to have used every gaming system available in the united states since the original atari console came out: my family, my roommates, or i have owned one of the following: atari, colecovision, nintendo, sega, super nintendo, sega genesis, playstation, nintendo 64, playstation 2, the xbox, and the game cube. i might even be forgetting a few. i can’t remember all the handheld games like the nintendo gameboy i’ve played. brent’s introduction to the internet changed his gaming habits. whether brent was on his computer or on his roommates’ gaming consoles, he has preferences as to the genres he most enjoys playing—first-person shooters and adventure games. brent became a big fan of firstperson shooters his while in college. he describes how he and his friends bonded over the very popular game doom (activision): i met most of [my gaming friends] in college by walking down the hall and going into their rooms to check out the games they were playing. doom was huge at my college. you could hear people playing up and down the hall. we would play with and against enacting culture in gaming 13 each other over the net. sometimes we would play all night and then sleep through class the next day. brent rejects the myth that gamers are alienated adolescents and young adults who just hang out in their parents’ basements and play with themselves. he says that he and his friends were very social, and, even though they spent much time playing video games, they still went out to dinner, the movies, and parties together. brent and five or six other players would get online at the same time and play as a team on a mission. many of the games he and his friends played from the tom clancy genre (e.g. rainbow six [red storm entertainment] and splinter cell [ubisoft]) were about fighting terrorists and rescuing hostages—a common hollywood film theme. the james bond video game goldeneye 007 (rare)—based on the film goldeneye (1995)—also follows a similar plot line with james bond carrying out secret missions in order to rescue hostages, stop terrorists, and save the (virtual) world. in many of the team oriented first-person shooters, the team members can only carry a limited amount of equipment, so the mission’s success is enhanced if brent’s team divides up the tasks. during the game the team members have to communicate with one another. this requires multitasking skills as well as refined kinesthetic motions. brent and his friends first started shouting commands to each other down the hall: “go right…fall in…shoot…take the hill!” the players would make their characters move by using a joystick, mouse, keyboard, or a combination of the three. eventually, brent and his friends were able to type their commands instead of shouting them. because brent had to use the mouse, joystick, and keyboard simultaneously, he claims his reflexes improved greatly. although reflexes are a kinesthetic function and not a literacy skill, the multitasking done in the games is an activity or, more accurately, are a set of activities that reappear in other contexts. during the interview brent current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 answered questions, checked his e-mail, instant messaged his friends, and surfed the internet. the computer environment offered in windows or macintosh systems (brent uses pc platforms) allows users to multitask, and he routinely downloads files, types e-mail messages, and watches videos simultaneously. operating multiple programs is definitely a literacy most of our twentyfirst-century students possess. besides trying to understand brent’s gaming practices, the interview discovered why he played video games. brent gave me a few interesting reasons. his main reason was to have a break from reality. video games are a way for brent to escape the stress of the “real world” and indulge in the fantasies video games offer. brent says “i enjoy the cathartic experience of finishing an adventure game much like i do a novel. i really believe it is a similar feeling.” brent’s relating gaming to reading a novel shows he equates video gaming to story telling or, more simply, advancing through a narrative. this assumption regarding the narrative of video gaming uncovers a literacy practice parallel with reading in the semiotic system of language (specifically literature). for instance, from reading novels and stories all his life, brent knows that all stories have plots and take readers through dialogue, scenery, characters, and even sometimes history to get to the end. video games have many of the same elements. also, like novel reading, a reader is not just trying to get through to the end—he or she wants to learn something and have an enjoyable experience. many readers would probably claim that rushing to the end of a novel is a waste of time. brent feels that way about video games: strategy games like warcraft [blizzard entertainment] are not just about getting through. they’re about mastering the situation. you can get through a game and have nearly no life left and technically solve the puzzle without mastering the game, but that’s not as fun enacting culture in gaming 15 to me. i like to learn all the secrets and truly beat a game. of course, once i do that, i rarely return to the game. although he admits to returning to some games and re-reading certain novels that are his favorites, those occasions are rare (the harry potter series being an exception). playing video games is a literacy practice that is informed by our traditional print culture. brent and his friends are engaged in reading stories similarly to how they read novels, but they do have a different vantage point—they control the protagonists (avatars) in the gaming world. brent offers us a chance to see how technology influenced his life—his literacy practices—on a micro level and how certain cultural work gets done in video games—usually in the form of the need for psychological releases—on a macro level. brent, who is very well educated, astutely reads society into video games; he especially has an interesting view of video games as sites where popular culture is re-encoded for a unique, virtual interactive experience. as we can see from brent’s literacy history and his video game interests, the idea of a “traditional” text is called into question. a text is not simply a static narrative one reads from beginning to end. a video game is a text that follows genre conventions similar to literature and film. brent’s case study demonstrates an example of someone using traditional literacy/literary terms to describe the textuality or textual features of the video game medium. the next section discusses how to view video games as cultural products that can be “read” using street’s (2003) social theory categories for literacy analysis. social contexts of literacy brent’s gaming—his video game play and penchant for certain video game genres—is mediated by culture. while playing video games, which are dynamic semiotic systems that embody ideology, brent absorbs cultural messages as the game enacts culture. therefore, brent’s current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 literacy acquisition encompasses acculturation as well as skills learning or understanding the game’s structure, patterns, or secrets. although brent has a penchant for group games where he collaborates with others, many video games hold prototypical american values related to individualism: individual heroes, perseverance, and the myth of the american dream. brent shows us that video game politics fits within his literacy practices, which may also be further generalized as his entertainment preferences. there are two important aspects of brent’s gamer identity that make him more than a passive individual who consumes entertainment, a stereotype often projected upon video game fans: 1) brent’s popular culture references inform his creative writing, and 2) his video game activity somewhat mimics his occupational practices. the games themselves are cultural products produced to fulfill gamer demands. even though video games have similar print-based attributes, they require us to re-conceptualize the idea of textuality. video games as texts relate to genre theory (bakhtin, 1986; lukács, 1962) and the notion that texts do cultural work—they are products formed by individuals and groups mediated by cultural forces and ideologies. just as scholars claim that gamers read the “grammar” of a system (gee, 2003; devoss et al., 2004), gamers and critics can read the semiotics of these cultural products. this section discusses video game “texts” through the categories street (2003) defined in his call for further research into “how literacy relates to more general issues of social theory regarding textuality, figured worlds, identity, and power” (p. 8788). identity and power is analyzed in the next section alongside brent’s reinscription of dominant ideology into his own creative work. brent’s interview helps theorize the textuality of video games and enacting culture: his own texts—his creative work—are also mediated by socially constructed narratives. enacting culture in gaming 17 because video games are cultural products they adhere to certain conventions. most notably, for the adventure/strategy games and first-person shooters that brent enjoys, some american themes arise—the individual hero, colonization/conquest, patriotism, and militarization. brent’s penchant for first-person shooters suggests that he enjoys embodying the avatar’s persona: as the helicopter “gunner” in battlefield vietnam (electronic arts), brent is in an army attack chopper firing on the vietcong listening to creedance clearwater revival’s “fortunate son” and the rolling stones’ “satisfaction”—two popular songs from the vietnam era. brent was never in vietnam, but the music and his sense of attacking the vc from a software-engineered helicopter helps him better incorporate the soldier’s persona from representations he has seen in films such as platoon (1986) and full metal jacket (1987), popular war movies he watches. the video game is a synecdoche of experience and a simulacrum at best. unlike real war, brent’s only risk is temporary eye strain and not serious injury or death—he is engaged in a fictional world. juul (2005) points out that “games project fictional worlds through a variety of different means, but the fictional worlds are imagined by the player, and the player fills in any gaps in the fictional world” (p. 121). what makes the video game a figured world is that the world of the helicopter gunner is simulated via the video game’s programming and accepted by gamers who enter the “text” for this virtual experience. like brent’s situation above regarding what it feels like to be in vietnam, a gamer’s interpretations come from other sources—culture. video games (and gamers) are products of the culture(s) from which they come, and we can read the culture—its values, fears, and “history”—in video games. video games also represent the figured worlds holland et al. (1998) describes. as brent points out, the stereotypical 1980s “computer geek,” a male living in his parents’ basement with no friends, is not the typical gamer anymore. gamers are rather social. even at the author’s current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 university there is a student organization called gamer’s alliance that consists of gamers who get together to play video games at various times during the semester. gamer culture is quite prominent and fits the definition of holland et al.’s figured worlds: “under the rubric of culturally figured worlds or figured worlds we include all those cultural realms peopled by characters from collective imaginings: academia, the factory, crime, romance, environmentalism, [and] games of dungeons and dragons” (p. 51). the last figured worlds mentioned, “games of dungeons and dragons,” parallels the gaming societies that have sprung up around certain video games. for almost any video game, one can find information on game play strategies, hints, cheats, and discussions about the game. many of the group members never communicate face to face, but they are a culture with similar interests, linguistic nuances (e.g., emoticons and texting language), and similar experiences. these members are fans, and a simple online search reveals the ways in which they communicate about games. a study of fandom and fan sites is beyond the scope of this article, but the ease of finding online discussions about games suggests there is an audience wanting both to communicate about and find information on video games. for instance, natasha whiteman (2008) observes that fans of video games participate in “the creation of websites, petitions, campaigns, and tirades [that are] left on bulletin board forums and discussion groups” (p. 33). these fans are devoted to games and express their “enthusiasm and excitement surrounding new releases” in online environments with other fans (whiteman, 2008, p. 33). these fans follow conventions of electronically mediated textual spaces. whiteman’s focus is on fan nostalgia for the video game silent hill (konami), but she also reprints excerpts of fan posts that reveal their shared experiences and ways of communicating about the video game. one post she recounts is that of an upset fan who laments “i’m sorry, but sh is supposed to be in sh” enacting culture in gaming 19 (p. 41). the poster’s use of capitalization to evoke screaming and abbreviations for a commonly known topic abound in text-based online spaces. the poster, a member of the silent hill (sh) fan gaming subculture, participates through the discourse conventions of online environments. even though these fans might never meet each other face to face, they enter the virtual community, the online space, as members of a social unit. by incorporating literacy scholars’ theories for analyzing video gaming literacy, this article proposes an expansion of social from strictly interpersonal physical connections to include virtual societies as well. for instance, contemporary video games allow gamers to play with others they have never met as well as with friends and acquaintances playing on one system or many like a lan party (a lan party is when individuals bring their gaming systems and “hook up” via a router or other network connection in order to play with or against each other). the rules of the games are set, but the gamers interact through their avatars, thus, creating social space. gamers are not solitary individuals simply interacting with the game’s artificial intelligence (ai); instead, they communicate within a community devoted to a particular game. for instance, the community could be vast like the mmorpg world of warcraft (blizzard entertainment) or the immersive environment second life (linden research), where tens of thousands of players can potentially play at the same time; on the other hand, the community could be a group of a few acquaintances entering the world of smaller multiplayer games such as halo (bungie) or gears of war (epic). brent describes his experience as both solitary and social, but he very much enjoys playing with his friends and roommates. besides brent’s earlier remark about enjoying the commando-squad games that he and his friends from the dorm would play, brent feels firstperson shooters are bonding moments: current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 first-person-shooters can be very stress relieving. you just pick your weapons and go out and shoot other characters. i really like playing these with my friends. we go out and try to kill each other online, so there’s camaraderie of a sort in doing that. again, although the figured worlds of video games are manufactured by the game designers, gamers, who may be from any socio-economic status, interact with others (or the game’s artificial intelligence) through the medium of avatars—characters the gamers embody. holland et al. (1998) argue “figured worlds rest upon people’s abilities to form and be formed in collectively realized ‘as if’ realms” (p. 49). although holland et al. (1998) reference non-virtual social realms—social groupings based on profession and gender to name two—gamer culture centers around arbitrary, yet accepted systems of valor that certainly work as “as if” spaces. gamers “win” by getting the high score, saving the princess, or eliminating their competition. juul (2005) defines a component of gaming, “valorization of outcome,” as “the different potential outcomes of the game are assigned different values, some positive and some negative” (p. 36). compared to holland et al.’s (1998) further explanation of “figured worlds,” a game is just as legitimate a figured world as non-virtual cultures: “by ‘figured world,’ then, we mean a socially and culturally constructed realm of interpretation in which particular characters and actors are recognized, significance is assigned to certain acts, and particular outcomes are valued over others” (p. 52). whether it be the game of life (milton bradley) or the games of life, value is assigned based on cultural assumptions. members of a culture value certain items, ideas, and investments over others. these values need not be universal to be prevailing cultural assumptions. in capitalist society, members value money, success, and advancement in careers. although one could argue that money is valuable because, in a practical sense, people use money to buy goods enacting culture in gaming 21 of value, the assumption that society has to believe is that the system of purchasing goods with money is acceptable. additionally, items purchased as reflections of oneself (sports cars, diamonds, exotic animals, etc.) as opposed to items purchased for sustenance (food, clothing, shelter, etc.) embody culturally defined assumptions. just as the stock market rises and falls based on the perceived value of companies, members of a culture value items, such as diamonds, based on the perceived social status associated with jewelry. the point of displaying a diamond or driving a sports car is not purely functional or practical. luxury items convey value because they are perceived as being expensive; in capitalist society, one’s being able to afford luxury items points to one’s importance through the association of wealth. games, of course, have points—both numeric and goal-oriented reasons for playing—but, in the case of friends playing against each other, the game outcome may have positive or negative social ramifications (e.g., bragging rights). regardless of the valor ascribed or assumed in winning a game, the game is a figured world “people have the propensity to be drawn to, recruited for, and formed in these worlds, and to be active in and passionate about them” (holland et. al., 1998, p. 49). gamer culture is a serious one to study along with other identities. the figured world of gamer culture has webpages, magazines, blogs, and other media to advertise itself and facilitate dialog. gamer communication contributes to the culture’s maintenance just as holland et al.’s (1998) figured worlds idea indicates where “people’s identities and agency are formed dialectically and dialogically in these ‘as if’ worlds” (p. 49). the next section covers gamer identity by examining brent’s gamer literacy practices and demonstrating how ideology mediates his creative work. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 identity and dominant ideology a gamer’s identity is inextricably intertwined with his or her literacy practices. brent is a computer expert and gamer: his acquisition of literacy skills—both traditional and technological—has informed his everyday persona. although this section is limited in what can be generalized to a larger gaming culture, brent’s literacy practices are congruent to his creative self. as a writer and popular culture consumer, brent’s identity is carried out through his reading tastes and, ultimately, through his writing. unlike the more robust discussions of literacy and identity (street, 1984, 1993, and 1995; gee 2003; holland et. al., 1998), this article offers a site for analyzing one gamer’s inculcation of popular culture literacy as garnered through a sample of texts and the gamer’s own words. in a short story brent wrote, he describes a post-apocalyptic dystopia where citizens are so stressed out they relieve their anxieties through a government program that grants a select group of citizens (through a lottery) the chance to kill another citizen without repercussions. brent’s own gaming has this release feel when he says, “the impetus for me to play a game is to take a break from real life….many games offer the player a chance to become another persona.” brent goes on to point out that through video games “a player can try out the lifestyle of a swat team member, a race car driver, and a soldier. players want these types of real life games.” the ability to enact random violence in his short story is a common theme of first-person shooters. such a philosophy on gaming must, therefore, inform his short story. additionally, the post-apocalyptic theme is common in science fiction narratives as well and futuristic-themed video games: wasteland (electronic arts) and fallout (interplay) are two notable ones. brent’s creative vision, however, shows he is a product of his historical moment. alqaeda in brent’s fictional story’s future destroyed american cities, thus plunging the united enacting culture in gaming 23 states into chaos. brent’s use of this particular plot line goes along with what holland et al. (1998) believe is the social and historical construction of identity, cited at length below: “person” and “society” are alike as sites, or moments, of the production and reproduction of social practices. but there is a substantiality to both sites. we object to antiessentialism that rotely rejects any sense of durability or predisposition in social life. forms of personhood and forms of society are historical products, intimate and public, that situate the interactivity of social practices. it is in this doubly historical landscape that we place human identities. we take identity to be a central means by which selves, and the sets of actions they organize, form and re-form over personal lifetimes and in the histories of social collective. (p. 270) also, brent’s post apocalyptic incorporation characterizes street’s (2003) “ideological model of literacy,” which claims “literacy is a social practice…identity, and being” (p. 77-78). both holland et al. and street identify the social construction of one’s literacy as a sociohistorical (re)production internalized by an individual. brent’s moment in history is carried out through his creative activities, and his entertainment choices (video games being one choice) reinforce his understanding of his historical context. our interview in april 2004 was only one year after the united states’ invasion of iraq and a little over two and a half years since 9/11. the analysis here departs from ideas of power and literacy of literacy/language scholars who note that literacy and opportunity are often related to access and one’s social position (brandt, 2001). for instance, street (2003) comments on teacher-student relationships as nonneutral hierarchies because “the ways in which teachers or facilitators and their students interact is already a social practice that affects the nature of the literacy being learned and the ideas about literacy held by the participants” (p. 78). historically, literacy—meaning the dominant culture’s current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 definition of literacy—has been assumed to be a necessary component of success and various socio-economic groups have varying access to literacy. we need only look to the historical case of frederick douglass (1845/1995) to see how his contemporary agents of social control—his owners—denied literacy instruction to him and fellow slaves. brandt (2001) argues that literacy should be “addressed in a civil rights context” (p. 206). in fact, at a luncheon in early 2003 honoring deborah brandt winning the very prestigious grawemeyer award for her book literacy in american lives, an elected official from the kentucky state legislature pressed her on the issue of literacy as a civil right. he felt it was a bold proposition, which demonstrates that such a concept is quite radical in the public sphere.3 the power differences and relationships regarding literacy and literacy acquisition have been addressed by scholars such as street and brandt. this article’s focus on literacy and power is not about brent’s socio-economic status and his assumed privileged position in the larger culture; instead, it uncovers some interesting examples where brent enacts culture, specifically, popular culture. the evidence above suggests that he absorbed dominant ideology and narratives, for instance, media headlines about terrorism, and his literacy acquisition follows a socially constructed model. culture mediates brent’s literacy activities. conclusion literacy is not just language but the politics of the language/skills that society uses. video games are literacy sites that need to be understood beyond problem solving and strategies. what cultural messages might arise and what might they mean for gamers’ other, more traditional literacy practices? brent’s literacy practices offer readers a way to understand video games as a semiotic system that exists as a mirror to the larger society. because literacy is tied to the socio-historical moment in which an individual interacts, we can think of cultural literacy as enacting culture in gaming 25 a component of literacy practices or activities. the ability to read the video game environment— a skill video gamers possess—requires the same amount of attention to details as reading other texts to locate the cultural work being done. although video gamers may transfer other skills from the semiotic system of the video game to another semiotic system, as brent shows in his creative writing, gamers’ entertainment preferences are supported by an adherence to many cultural myths that pervade popular culture. brent reminds us that our students will come to us having absorbed culture and ideology across a variety of media and modalities. we ought to be ready to help our students “read” cultural assumptions in media in order to prepare them for literacy in the twenty-first century and to foster critical thinking about cultural myths. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 26 references anderson, c. a., berkowitz, l., donnerstein, e., huesmann, l. r., johnson, j. d., linz, d., malamuth, n. m., & wartella, e. 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(1999). technology and literacy in the twenty-first century: the importance of paying attention. carbondale, il: southern illinois university press. selfe, c. & hawisher, g. (eds.). (2004). literate lives in the information age: narratives of literacy from the united states. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. selfe, c. & hawisher, g. (eds.). (2007). gaming lives in the twenty-first century: literate connections. new york: palgrave macmillan. street, b. (1984). literacy in theory and practice. cambridge: cambridge university press. street, b. (ed.). (1993). cross-cultural approaches to literacy. (pp. 1-21). cambridge: cambridge university press. street, b. (ed.). (1995). social literacies. london: longman. street, b. (2003). what’s ‘new’ in new literacy studies? critical approaches to literacy in enacting culture in gaming 29 theory and practice. current issues in comparative education, 5(2), 77-91. whiteman, natasha. (2008). homesick for silent hill: modalities of nostalgia in fan responses to silent hill 4: the room. in z. whalen, zach & l. n. taylor (eds.), playing the past: history and nostalgia in video games (pp. 32-50). nashville, tn: vanderbilt university press. endnotes 1 the interviewee’s name and university are pseudonyms. all information about brent’s background and brent’s actual words come from a recorded personal interview on 1 april 2004. 2 the male pronoun is used to reinforce that this study is based on a male gamer. 3the author attended this luncheon. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 30 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt education websites_final volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x education websites and their benefits to potential international students: a case study of higher education service providers in malaysia teik chooi ooi intel penang, malaysia henry wai leong ho swinburne university of technology siti amri griffith university citation ooi, t.c, ho, h., & amri, s. (2010). education websites and their benefits to potential international students: a case study of higher education service providers in malaysia. current issues in education, 13(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this paper looks at criteria on how education service providers’ websites could benefit their potential students from overseas. effective design of education website is important as web users are typically fastidious and want information fast this serves as the background of this study. the study focuses on three selected education institutions’ websites; identifying their strengths and weaknesses, followed by recommendation on how institutions can improve their websites to gain good impression or perception from potential customers, such that they will re-visit the websites to get more information. ultimately, the goal is to turn potential students to real students. three education service providers (all located in penang, malaysia) have been identified and used for this study. they are inti international college penang, kdu college penang and olympia college penang. these c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 2 websites are examined against a list of criteria: source, layout, accessibility, speed, navigability, content, accuracy, level of details, current information and appearance. based on the study done, the kdu college website is the best website compared to the other two colleges. nevertheless, further improvement can be made in terms of displaying all course fees, frequently asked questions (faq) for international and local student admission, and contact information for faculty, staff and students. keywords: education service providers, international student, webpage analysis, education in malaysia e ducation w ebsites 3 about the author(s) author: teik chooi ooi affiliation: intel penang, malaysia biographical information: short paragraph (department info, field, studies, etc.). if there is more than one author, start and use separate paragraphs. author: henry wai leong ho affiliation: swinburne university of technology email: hho@swin.edu.au biographical information: short paragraph (department info, field, studies, etc.). if there is more than one author, start and use separate paragraphs. author: siti amri affiliation: griffith university email: samri@csu.edu.au biographical information: short paragraph (department info, field, studies, etc.). if there is more than one author, start and use separate paragraphs. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 4 private higher educational institutions (pheis) in malaysia have equal role as the government funded universities, that is, the public universities, in the provision of tertiary education in malaysia (wilkinson & yussof, 2005). pheis are fully-funded by the private sector. a number of these educational institutions have also obtained listing in the bursa malaysia (formerly known as kuala lumpur stock exchange (klse)). these institutions of higher learning are under the jurisdiction of the ministry of higher education (mohe) malaysia, and are governed by various legislations to ensure provision of quality education. in 1995, mohe found that 20 per cent of overseas-trained malaysian students cost the country around us$800 million in currency outflow, constituting nearly 12 per cent of malaysia’s current account deficit. in order to reduce the outflows of funds, the government has intervened by increasing the capacity of public universities and expanding the capacity of local (private) higher education sector (sirat, 2008; ziguras, 2001). the mohe saw the local pheis as the key means of reducing this currency outflow and in the long term of transforming malaysia into a net exporter of higher education (ziguras, 2001). poised to be the centre of educational excellence in the asia pacific region, majority of the pheis are using english, an international lingua franca, as the medium of instruction for programmes conducted. besides offering study opportunities to the malaysian students, pheis are also the favourite choice of many international students. the advantages for international students to pursue their tertiary education in malaysia include time and cost saving, quality education awarded by foreign partners and the opportunity to explore in the country’s diverse culture and language. as of january 2005, there were about 40,000 foreign students from over 150 countries studying in malaysia (acca, 2007). the number of foreign students increased into 55,000 in 2006 (verbik & lasanowski, 2007). as e ducation w ebsites 5 claimed by verbik and lasanowski (2007), malaysia has an approximate 2% share of the international student market since 2006. the majority of international students came from china, indonesia, india, thailand, singapore and the middle east, and they pursued courses in business, information technology, and engineering. the target of the malaysian government is to recruit 100,000 foreign students by year 2010 (sirat, 2008). under the ninth malaysia plan (2006 – 2010), the malaysian government will double efforts to develop malaysia as a regional centre for excellence in the provision of tertiary level education (prime minister malaysia speech, 2006). malaysia intends to promote and export tertiary education through strategic marketing efforts and the branding of educational products. promotion approaches through the web is accepted to be one of new forms of technology that can contribute to the success of the plan. in june 2007, there were 521 pheis approved by the ministry of higher education malaysia. they are categorized as below: table 1: number of pheis as at 30 june 2007 categories of pheis number university status university status university college status foreign university branch campuses 16 16 4 non-university status 485 total 521 source: study malaysia.com (2008) c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 6 the four foreign university branch campuses offer foreign degree qualifications and the 32 universities provide home-grown degree programmes. a number of these institutions also offer 3+0 foreign university degree programmes. under this 3+0 arrangement, institutions are permitted by the foreign partner university to conduct the entire degree programme in malaysia for their foreign-partner university, which will then award the degree qualification). 25 of the non-university status pheis conduct 3+0 foreign university degree programmes in collaboration with overseas host universities. several pheis also have twinning degree arrangement with reputable foreign universities all over the world. at the beginning of year 2007, there were more than 320,000 students studying in pheis and about 35,000 (approximately 10% of the total) of them were international students pursuing tertiary programmes and english language courses (study malaysia.com, 2008). promoting tertiary education service providers in malaysia in order to achieve the target of 100,000 students by 2010, the government and pheis have implemented selected strategies. under the ninth malaysia plan, the malaysian government plans to promote tertiary education through marketing efforts and the branding of educational products. this included the implementation of a quality assurance system, promotional activities and the establishment of education promotion offices in beijing, dubai, ho chi minh city and jakarta (ninth malaysia plan, 2006). with these efforts, enrolment of foreign students in education institutions increased. de-regulation of visas by allowing foreign students in malaysia to work part-time also helped to recruit more foreign students (higher-edge.com, 2004). e ducation w ebsites 7 there are a few promotional approaches used by pheis. they are advertisements in selected education publications, education fairs and information sessions targeted at students and parents. colleges also have ambassadors like personnel and programme providers (for example, idp – individual development programme) who directly provide advice. other promotion approaches are running series of media and agent visits from targeted markets, exhibitions at conferences targeted directly at secondary schools and college counsellors, and distribution of promotional publications such as flyers (deupree, 2002). they also have partnership strategies to actively pursue dual degree programmes, which allow students to spend a year studying abroad, and awarded a degree by both the local and foreign institutions. a study on attracting foreign students also recommends that students be allowed to seek employment during and after their studies. it also suggests adapting immigration rules to make it easier for malaysia’s private tertiary institutions to hire teaching staff from abroad. it will be more attractive if study loans and scholarships (binsardi & ekwulugo, 2003) from private sectors or the government are offered to foreign students. website and promotion of tertiary education service providers in malaysia the web is important to organizations and is recognized by all industries including education. fast and easy access to millions of potential customers are the main benefits of websites (belch & belch, 2007; keegan & green, 2008). research has shown that total internet user growth in asia increased more than 406% from 2000 to 2008 (internet world stats, 2008). the web facilitates an efficient way to conduct international business (belch & belch, 2007; kotler, brown, adam, burton, & armstrong, 2007). websites can be updated often with latest promotions and course information in timely manner, with comprehensive virtual brochures c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 8 (chaffey, ellis-chadwick, johnston & mayer, 2006; strauss, el-ansary & frost, 2006). as claimed by allison (2002), access to and use of the internet is increasing rapidly: • 39% of adults claimed use of the internet in august 2001, up from 28% the previous year • 83% of potential higher education students had access the internet from home in 2001 • 81% of applicants used the internet for higher education information in 2001 compared with 50% in 2000 • 77% of applicants in 2001 had visited individual institution sites (allison, 2002) as a promotional medium, changes to the web can be quickly implemented and with limited cost. websites that are dynamic are those that get the hits. the web enables the display of photos, sound and short movie clips at lower costs. frequently asked questions on websites can address typical admission questions from customers, freeing up a lot of time for office staff. websites serve customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without additional costs. websites can efficiently reach target customers by presenting the right branding message at the right time, at the right place, to the right person for optimum results (belch & belch, 2007; chaffey et al., 2006; kotler et al., 2007; strauss et al., 2006). comparing the web to other mediums such as print media advertising, education fairs, exhibitions, personnel fees, information sessions and publication mails, a website is cheaper, with faster and wider audience coverage (belch & belch, 2007; chaffey et al., 2006; strauss et al., 2006). this is in line with the quote, “marketing on the internet has received substantial attention. businesses are not only able to reach a wider audience but also reduce marketing costs” (ellsworth & ellsworth, 1994). as indicated by porter (2001), "the internet is a powerful set of tools that can be used, wisely or unwisely, in almost every industry and as part of almost any strategy". he stressed that e ducation w ebsites 9 companies which succeed will be the ones that use the internet as complimentary to traditional ways of competing, not those who set their internet initiatives apart from their established operations (porter, 2001). in summary, although there are many advantages of having websites, tertiary education providers need to consider and overcome some common mistakes and limitations of websites. this is to ensure the institution’s website is an effective marketing tool and brings value to institution. method three higher education service providers (inti, kdu, and olympia) have been selected as a focus in this paper due to numerous reasons. firstly, they are pioneers in malaysian private education and both inti and kdu colleges have been established for more than 20 years, while olympia college started up 12 years ago. in addition, kdu and olympia are public listed companies in klse, under the subsidiary of paramount corporation berhad group and stamford group respectively. secondly, they offer a wide range of programmes at certificate, diploma, degree and masters levels. the certificate and diploma courses are internally developed while the degree and masters programmes are conducted in association with prestigious universities in australia, uk, usa, new zealand and other countries. thirdly, the institutions’ high standards of academic provision are well recognized by employers of various industries and universities worldwide, as a result of their competent graduates who excel in their workplace. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 10 most importantly, they are internationally acknowledged as institutions that are committed to providing quality education. students now come from various countries around the world including china, indonesia, middle east, africa and others. website indicators for evaluation the website evaluation criteria are designed based on two sections. first section consists of 10 criteria with their respective components. criteria are scaled depending on a number of sub-components rated ‘yes’. however, criteria at second section are rated with yes or no. for example, the first criterion in the first section has three sub-criteria located at second section. from the evaluation, if it only has one “yes”, the first section will have a score of “1”. if there are no “yes” ratings, then the first section scores “0”. table 2 provides the detail listing of the criteria and its respective component used in this study: table 2: criteria used to evaluate tertiary service providers website no criteria 1 source 1.1 more than 10 years 1.2 awards 1.3 public listed company 2 layout 2.1 center, left and right 2.2 sequence base on important 2.3 not “below the fold” 3 accessibility e ducation w ebsites 11 3.1 highest hits at search engine 3.2 counter 3.3 no error outage 3.4 affiliate partner, newspaper and government sponsor 3.5 cascading style sheet (css) 3.6 alt attribute 3.7 named links 3.8 contrasting background + text color 4 speed 4.1 website site (bytes) 4.2 flash (if none is there an option for flash or non-flash?) 4.3 download time (<10 seconds) 5 navigability 5.1 number of clicks ( < 4 clicks) 5.2 two minutes to find information 5.3 site map usage 5.4 button terminology – descriptive 6 content 6.1 admissions 6.2 academic programmes 6.3 faculty, staff, student, alumni 6.4 student financial assistance c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 12 6.5 welcome from the chair or programme director 6.6 news and announcements 6.7 cost of admission 6.8 frequently asked questions (faqs) 6.9 international student corner 6.10 sign in/request information 6.11 contact us 6.12 other languages used in website, besides english 7 accuracy 7.1 college affiliated with wellknown university 7.2 testimonials from students 7.3 government 7.4 author of website 8 appropriate level of details 8.1 the level of details for information 8.2 courses offered 8.3 pre-requisite to register course 8.4 credit transfer 8.5 course fees 9 current information 9.1 regular update 9.2 reliable link e ducation w ebsites 13 9.3 event date 9.4 semester calendar 9.5 copyright 10 appearance 10.1 good spelling 10.2 grammar 10.3 font 10.4 professional look 10.5 news flash source: develop for this research the criteria designed were implemented in these three colleges’ websites, and data collected by surfing and browsing each college website. the strategy is to use case study evaluating three identified colleges’ websites in gathering primary data. the data collection was performed within 32 days, commencing from second week of september until the third week of october, 2008. most of the time, access to respective website were performed during night time in malaysia, although evaluation of speed was done during day and night time in order to have more accurate data. after data collection, a separate analysis focusing on each individual institution calls out both available and non-available attributes at respective websites. the result and summary are presented in the following section. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 14 results webpage analysis of inti international college penang for more than 19 years, inti international college penang has maintained its commitment to uncompromised teaching excellence. this continues to benefit students in business, law, computing & it, engineering, applied science and social science (inti international college penang, 2008). figure 1 website of inti international college penang source: inti international college penang (2008) the college offers programmes wherein students complete certificates, diplomas and bachelor degrees. in the 3 + 0 programmes, students can complete their studies on-campus at inti and still obtain overseas degrees. in addition, they can select from an impressive list of e ducation w ebsites 15 prestigious universities and enrol in the uk degree transfer programmes, the australian degree transfer programmes, or the american degree transfer program before proceeding overseas to complete their degrees (inti international college penang, 2008). strategic links with partner universities have resulted in several exchange programmes that enable students and staff to expand their knowledge, experiences and creativity. inti encourages such exchanges as they provide unique opportunities for participants (inti international college penang, 2008). sources for this college are its 20-year history as an established education center. inti international college penang is the top-notch centre in the world for higher school certificate (hsc). the layout for page uses top center as the main menu and left hand is the sub-menu from the main menu selected. sequence of menu is based on the importance of information and length of the page is just nice, not a very long page that required scrolling down the page. accessibility is part of the quality and popularity assessment of websites. higher search engines ranking translate into greater traffic on a site and, subsequently increase its accessibility degree. practical ways to examine inti college was conducted through search engine google. the result is inti college has the highest result from search engine ranking. second factor used to measure accessibility is the site popularity. the most common of web performance is the number of "hits" a site generates. for inti college, there is no counter included in their website. the third factor used is website up time. almost all the time, the site is accessible. other factors used to measure the accessibility are the website uses css, alt attribute, named links, and contrasting background and text color. speed is important as potential customers are looking for information and they do not have much patience to wait a long time for a web page to down load. it is not advisable to use c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 16 flash site, if there is a need, should have options of flash or non-flash site. the web page is a non-flash website with reasonable download time (~30 seconds). the average number of clicks needed to access faculties or college pages < n, and to access courses information was n. however, some sites require around ten clicks to access programmes, implying a very poor organization of the information that should be improved. the average number of clicks needed to access faculties or college pages < n, and to access courses information was n. however, some sites require around ten clicks to access programmes, implying a very poor organization of the information that should be improved. navigability for inti college by potential customer is less than five, in terms of number of clicks. it took two minutes to find the information that is readily available with the descriptive buttons as a main menu and sub-menu. the content of the web page includes admissions, academic programmes, alumni testimonial, student financial assistance, welcome from the school principal, news and announcements, and online enquiry for information. however, the webpage lacks frequently asked questions, cost of admission, site map and international student corner. in addition to this, the inti college student affair information provides information about general welfare of students and provides other services to increase the quality of student life in iicp. the services are included as follows: accommodation transfer, booking of bus tickets, students’ mail, lost and found, health & emergencies, available facilities, available equipment/games, grievance report, rental of lockers, on/off-campus jobs, and notice boards. other information published at the website are map to college, contact information and campus facilities photos at library, convenience store, lecture theaters, cafeteria, and cybercafe. sports facilities include football, pool, table tennis, gymnasium, basketball, table e ducation w ebsites 17 soccer, tennis, chinese chess and music room. computer labs include engineering labs, physics labs, chemistry labs, biology labs. various forms of campus accommodation are provided types with reasonable prices and listed in the website. the site publishes contact information like email address, phone number and fax number. the language used in website meets the needs of their targeted market. it uses english as the official language of the internet. site accuracy is good promoting college facilities, services, and courses with reasonable price and yet not compromising quality, and good study environment through their websites. the site has short testimonials with good comments from students. the site also publishes affiliations with well-known universities in united states, united kingdom, canada, australia and new zealand, jobdb.com and industrial training center, which gives confidence to potential customers to pursue their studies in the college. courses offered by the college are also recognized by national accreditation board (nab), or better known as lembaga akreditasi negara (lan) in bahasa. the detail level of information for courses offered include description, academic pathway diagram, course structure, intake, course link with affiliated university and subjects needed to complete per semester/year. another value-added feature shows past track record of college achievement on passing score specifically on pre-university programme and it lists out the partnership of respective universities for credit transfer programme. the limitations are no course fees and credit transfer details available. for admission, it also contains the information for local student and international student requirements. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 18 respondents mentioned that sites need to be dated [x]. in order to know if the website is current, last updated date needs to be listed at the bottom of web page. furthermore, the home page can publish coming events like college open day, seminars, forums and other workshops. current information appears on the college‘s intake calendar and latest news on serving community and student achievements. an organization that regularly updates websites gives confidence to potential customers and influences them to visit the site repeatedly, while a website’s current reliable links should be available and working. the copyright year at the bottom of the website also reflects the current status of websites. there is no last updated date listed at the inti site. appearance of the site looks professional. generally, the site has short and meaningful text, good spelling and grammar, and font size and color are appropriate, usage of frame to make websites look organized, links are working, minimal animation, quality college picture, best viewed information of the website example with internet explorer & resolution (1024 x 768). there is no virtual tour to college with multimedia component that could make the website look more professional. webpage analysis of kdu college penang from its humble beginnings in 1991, kdu college penang has evolved into one of the leading higher learning institutions in the country, offering a commendable range of industrydriven courses. in a poll conducted by the star education during the star education fair 2004 in penang, kdu college was listed as one of the top four choices for higher education in the northern region (kdu college penang, 2008). e ducation w ebsites 19 figure 2 website of kdu college penang source: kdu college penang (2008) strategically located at jalan anson (anson road), the five-storey college building is well-equipped with state-of-the-art teaching, learning and research facilities to provide a more conducive learning environment for students enrolled in its six schools: american university studies, arts & science, business, computing & information systems, engineering, and hotel & tourism management. a new eight-storey block was also completed in october 2003 to meet the demand of increased students and to provide more facilities. with this expansion, the college now has a capacity of 5,000 students (kdu college penang, 2008). c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 20 with a current student population of 2,500, kdu penang is becoming a popular higher educational institution for international students from indonesia, thailand, china, hong kong, japan, korea, mongolia, europe and many other nations (kdu college penang 2008). sources for this college are also its 20-year history as an established education center. kdu college was established as a small institution, becoming a well-known education center today. kdu college, under paramount corporation berhad group is a public listed company in malaysia. potential customers, who visit these websites, should be impressed, considering the good track record. the layout for the page has the main menu located at the top center and left hand side. menu sequence is based on the importance of information and length of the page is just nice – not a very long page that requires significant scrolling down the page. accessibility is part of the quality and popularity assessment of websites. higher search engines ranking translate into greater traffic on a site and, subsequently increase its accessibility degree. practical ways to examine kdu college was conducted through the search engine google. kdu college is the highest result from search engine ranking. second factor used to measure accessibility is the site popularity. the most common of web performance is the number of hits a site generates. kdu college does not have a counter in its websites. the third factor used, is website up time. almost all the time, the site is accessible. however there is one limitation where expand function for respective button will only work when it starts from the home button. other factors used to measure the accessibility are usage of css and alt attribute, which are not used in this web page. however the page has a contrasting background and text color and it does name the links as well. e ducation w ebsites 21 speed is important as potential customers are looking for information and they do not have much patience to wait a long time for a web page to download. it is not advisable to use flash site, if there is a need, one should have options of flash or non-flash site. the web page is not a flash site but has some animation and graphics with reasonable download time of ~30 seconds. the average number of clicks needed to access faculties or college pages < n, and to access courses information was n. however, some sites require around ten clicks to access programmes, implying a very poor organization of the information that should be improved. navigability for kdu college by potential customer is less than five, in terms of number of clicks. it took two minutes to find the information that is readily available with descriptive buttons as a main menu and sub-menu. site map is also available to ease finding information. the content of the web page include admissions, academic programmes, alumni testimonial, student financial assistance, welcome from the school principal, news and announcements, international student corner and online enquiry for information. however, he webpage lacks frequently asked questions and cost of admission. other links are online enquiry¸ contact information and site map. photos of campus facilities photos such as career corner restaurants, canteen and gymnasium are published. laboratories include class lab, multimedia lab, workshop lab, computer lab, internet lab, communication lab, chemistry/biology lab, electronic lab, electrical power lab, smart lecture theatre, library, resource centre, and studio. the site publishes contact information like email address, phone number and fax number. kdu college website has additional contact information, which is kdu online enquiry. besides this contact information, some value-added services provided to students are kdu 24c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 22 hours emergency assist line information for emergency assistance to staff and students. there is a kdu accommodation help-line for assistance with an accommodation or to lodge complaints about repairs to the hostel or student houses. both these services could influence potential customers to study at the college. language used in the website meets the needs of their targeted market. the site uses english as the official language of the internet. in addition, kdu college website does use mandarin in certain webpages, as china and taiwan are their targeted markets. site accuracy is good promoting college facilities, services, and courses with reasonable price and yet not compromising quality, and good study environment through their websites. the site has short testimonials with good comments from students. the site also publishes affiliations with well-known universities in the united states, united kingdom, canada, australia and new zealand, giving confidence to potential customers to pursue their studies in the college. courses offered by the college are also recognized by nab. level of details of the site and its information available are for international students, where it provides information about malaysia, climate, people and language, religion, food, currency and banking, living expenses, one-stop center for international students, accommodation, transport and shopping. apart from this, there are a few services provided to international students, such as airport pickup, accommodation check-in, banking and currency exchange, immigration matters, safe-keeping of passports, and booking air tickets. besides this, appropriate level of details for courses are available, such as course introduction (affiliated university), course description (intake and duration), structure (syllabus) requirement, study route (in diagram), and full accreditation. the limitations are no publication of course fees except for one-course and credit transfer details. e ducation w ebsites 23 respondents mentioned that sites need to be dated [x]. in order to know if the website is current, the last updated date needs to be listed at the bottom of the webpage. furthermore, the home page can publish coming events like college open day, seminars, forums and other workshops. current information appears on the college’s coming intake calendar and latest news on serving community and student achievements are available by utilizing the rss (really simple syndication). an organization that regularly updates websites gives confidence to potential customers and influences them to visit the site repeatedly, while a website’s current reliable links should be available and working. copyright year at the bottom of the website also reflects the current status of websites. there is no last updated date listed at the kdu site. appearance of the site looks professional. generally, the site has short and meaningful text, good spelling and grammar, font size and colour are appropriate, usage of frame to make websites look organized, links are working, minimal animation, quality college pictures, best viewed information of the website example with internet explorer & resolution (1024 x 768). there is no virtual tour of the college with multimedia component that could make the website look more professional. however, the usage of rss for coming intake calendar, latest news on serving community and student achievements contributed to the appearance of web page as well. webpage analysis of olympia college olympia college penang has a five-acre campus and has an extensive range of facilities for its students that include sports and accommodation. it has always been at the forefront of cocurricular activities where staff and students alike maintain equilibrium of academia and c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 24 recreation. perhaps it’s the typical penang culture that influenced the campus environment as it buzzes with activities, be it their work, study or otherwise (olympia college, 2008). figure 3 website of olympia college penang source: olympia college (2008) for more than 10 years, olympia college has provided quality training and education services to benefit students in secretarial, business, entrepreneurship, hotels, multimedia specialist, systems engineer, financial services, accounting, sales and marketing, human resource, administrative management, public relations or advertising, system analysis and web designing (olympia college, 2008). the college offers programmes wherein students complete pre-university/foundation, certificate programmes, diploma programmes, higher national diploma and degree e ducation w ebsites 25 programmes. the qualification would lead to external awards from australia, united kingdom and united states of america universities (olympia college, 2008). sources for this college are its 10-year history as an educational institution. olympia college, under raffles education group, is a public listed company in malaysia. potential customers, who visit these websites, should be impressed, considering with the good track record. apart from this, olympia college has been awarded the napei education excellence 2005 award, for the best large private education institution in malaysia. the layout for the page has the main menu located at top left hand side. sub-menus based on the selection from main menu are located at the middle left hand side. menu sequence is based on the importance of information. however, length of the page is quite long and requires significant scrolling down the page. higher search engines ranking translate into greater traffic on a site and, subsequently increase its accessibility degree. practical way to examine olympia college has been conducted through the search engine google. olympia college has the highest result from search engine ranking. the second factor used to measure accessibility is the site popularity. the most common indicator of web performance is the number of hits a site generates. there is no counter included in olympia college’s websites. the third factor is website up time. generally all sites are accessible except at the intake button, where there was an error due to microsoft ole db provider. speed is important as potential customers are looking for information and they do not have much patience to wait a long time for a web page to download. it is not advisable to use flash site, if there is a need, one should have options of flash or non-flash site. the web page is non-flash website with reasonable download time of ~30 seconds. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 26 the average number of clicks needed to access faculties or college pages < n, and to access courses information was n. however, some sites require around ten clicks to access programmes, implying a very poor organization of the information that should be improved. navigability for olympia college to potential customer is less than five, in terms of number of clicks. the content of the web page includes home (campuses, student testimonial), about us (college, country), courses (why choose olympia college, programmes available, courses faq), fees, intakes, scholarship, career opportunities, galleries (events & forum), contact us (campus facilities contact, application & scholarship form) photos with facilities such as library, classroom, computer lab and canteen, for the benefit of students. the only weakness in terms of content is the lack of a site map that will help ease the navigating perspective of a potential customer. the site publishes their contact information like email address, phone number and fax number. it uses english as the official language of the internet. site accuracy is good promoting college facilities, services, and courses with reasonable price and yet not compromising quality, and good study environment through their websites. the site has short testimonials with good comments from students. the site also publishes affiliations with well-known universities in the united states, united kingdom, canada, australia and new zealand, giving confidence to potential customers to pursue their studies in the college. courses offered by the college are also recognized by nab. for level of details, the site has information line up the main menu, such as about us, fees, intakes, scholarships, and contact. a portion for foreign potential customers lists out e ducation w ebsites 27 details in the following sequence: about us, followed by the country, study abroad and international student office. besides this, appropriate level of details for availability of information for courses offered, pre-requisite to register course, credit transfer and course fees are available. quality education and support, arrival and orientation, studying on-campus, study abroad and exchange, sufficient publications and forms and frequently asked questions were found. olympia college has a country introduction link, providing information about malaysia, climate, people and language, religion, food, currency and banking. the study abroad link provides information such as international passport application details, and furnished accommodation services provided by the college. the international student office offers services including airport pickup, accommodation check-in, banking and money changing, immigration matters, safekeeping of passports, and booking air tickets. there is a link to the malaysia immigration office, which is useful especially to foreign students who need to apply for visas, understand lead times and custom restriction on food and plants. respondents mentioned that sites need to be dated [x]. in order to know if the website is current, the last updated date needs to be listed at the bottom of the webpage. furthermore, the home page can publish coming events like college open day, seminars, forums and other workshops. current information appears on the college’s coming intake calendar and latest news on serving community and student achievements are found. an organization that regularly updates websites gives confidence to potential customers and influences them to visit the site repeatedly, while a website’s current reliable links should be c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 28 available and working. copyright year at the bottom of the website also reflects the current status of websites. there is no last updated date listed at the olympia college site. appearance of the site is professional. generally, the site has short and meaningful text, good spelling and grammar, and font size and color are appropriate, usage of frame to make websites look organized, links are working, best viewed information of the website example with internet explorer & resolution (1024 x 768). there is no animation or virtual college tour with multimedia component that could make the website look more professional. the following is a summarized analysis of the three colleges’ websites: table 3: summary analysis for three colleges no criteria inti kdu olympia 1 source (0 3) 2 3 3 1.1 more than 10 years (yes or no) 1.2 awards (yes or no) 1.3 public listed (yes or no) yes yes no yes yes yes yes yes yes 2 layout (0 3) 3 3 2 2.1 center, left and right (yes or no) 2.2 sequence based on importance (yes or no) 2.3 not “below the fold” (yes or no) yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes no 3 accessibility (0 – 8) 7 5 4 3.1 highest hit at search engine (yes or no) yes yes yes e ducation w ebsites 29 3.2 counter 3.3 no error outage 3.4 affiliate partner, newspaper and government sponsor 3.5 css 3.6 alt attribute 3.7 named links 3.8 contrasting background + text color no yes yes yes yes yes yes no yes yes no no yes yes no no yes no no yes yes 4 speed ( 0 – 3) 2 2 2 4.1 website size (bytes) 4.2 no flash (if no, is there an option for flash or non-flash?) 4.3 download time (<10 seconds) yes no yes yes no yes yes no yes 5 navigability (0 – 4) 3 4 2 5.1 number of clicks ( < 4) 5.2 two minutes to find information 5.3 site map usage 5.4 button terminology – descriptive yes yes no yes yes yes yes yes no yes no yes 6 content (0 – 13) 8 10 10 6.1 admissions 6.2 academic programmes yes yes yes yes yes yes c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 30 6.3 faculty, staff, student, alumni 6.4 student financial assistance 6.5 welcome from the chair or programme director 6.6 news and announcement 6.7 cost of admission 6.8 course frequently asked questions (faqs) 6.9 foreign student frequently asked questions (faqs) 6.10 international student corner 6.11 sign in/request information 6.12 contact us a. international number 6.13 other language used in website, besides english yes yes yes yes no no no yes yes yes no no yes yes yes yes yes no no yes yes yes no yes yes yes yes yes yes yes no yes yes yes no no 7 accuracy (0 – 4) 2 2 2 7.1 college affiliated with wellknown universities 7.2 testimonials from students 7.3 government 7.4 author of website yes yes yes no yes yes yes no yes yes yes no e ducation w ebsites 31 8 appropriate level of details (0 – 5) 1 2 2 8.1 the level of details for availability of information 8.2 courses offered 8.3 pre-requisite to register course 8.4 credit transfer 8.5 course fees no yes no no no no yes no no yes no yes no no yes 9 current information (0 – 5) 5 5 5 9.1 regular update 9.2 reliable link 9.3 event dates 9.4 semester calendar 9.5 copyright yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes 10 appearance (0 – 5) 5 5 4 10.1 good spelling 10.2 grammar 10.3 font 10.4 look professional 10.5 news flash yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes no total possible score 55 38 41 34 percent score 69% 75% 61% source: develop for this research c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 32 table 3 provides the results of the websites evaluation. this study shows that kdu college has the best overall scores for web content and information presentation. all three institutions have on average similar ratings. this study revealed that these institutions have perfect scores for information currency and appearance. this evaluation also illustrates where the selected institutions performed poorly, especially in areas of level of details and accessibility. the results of this study can be useful for website content improvements for better servicing of their potential students. speed is in an acceptable range, as all of them are non-flash websites. three websites have current information by through regular updates, reliable links and updated event calendars. three websites have good spelling, grammar and font, and professional outlook, especially the kdu college website which has rss feature where it could refreshed by the latest news and events. layout from three websites look good, except that olympia college has a long page that requires significant scrolling down to read the whole page. generally, the basic content are available, such as admissions, academic programmes, student testimonials, student financial assistance, welcome message, news and announcement, international student corner and contact information. however, three websites lack frequently asked questions for international students, and costs for local and international student. cost of admission is fully available at olympia college and some courses in kdu college. site map feature is only available in kdu college website. english is the language used at three websites, while chinese language is also used in the kdu college website. with existing content available, three websites are rated moderate for detailed level of content. e ducation w ebsites 33 accessibility and navigability for inti college are the best compared to the other two colleges. olympia college needs to improve on their accessibility and navigability, as there is an error outage encountered when a certain button is clicked, while it takes more than three clicks and exceeded two minutes to find the international student corner. therefore, it can be concluded that the kdu college website is the best website compared to the other two college websites. nevertheless, more effort can be made to further publish all course fees, faqs for international and local student admission, and contact information for faculty, staff and students. this study indicates that these web site attributes are vital to convert potential customers to real customers. in summary, the study shows that source and accuracy of the content are trusted based on prestige of higher education service providers that are established over 20 years. two are public listed companies and all of their courses are recognized by the malaysian government, and are affiliated with well-known universities from uk, usa, australia, new zealand and canada. conclusion and future research the present paper is a timely and useful report that can be used to identify the benefits of higher education service providers’ websites to potential international students. it can also be used to build competitive advantage. as previously mentioned, the study focuses on three tertiary education service providers websites from malaysia. this study illustrated a website evaluation technique for educational institutions to undertake a comprehensive assessment of their respective websites. this study also provides useful recommendations for educational institutions to integrate in the improvements of websites content and appearance. websites specific to private tertiary education promote courses offered, promoting services provided, promote the tertiary education institution, promote events, facilitate potential customer interaction 365 days, 24/7, answer frequently asked questions, improve c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 34 branding, reach targeted markets, improve communication and timely information, and support inquiry marketing. the key strategies used to promote private tertiary education were identified, and having a website is a key strategy to promote private tertiary education in malaysia. as an exploratory study of how higher education service providers’ websites could benefit their potential students from overseas, we limited our investigation into three institutions only. it would be interesting for future studies to undertake the investigation across public and private tertiary institution websites that located in different states and/or cities within malaysia. future research could also look at private tertiary institution within asia region such as how tertiary institution websites across different countries in asia could benefit their potential students from overseas. references acca. (2007). study acca in malaysia: guide for international students. retrieved december 6, 2008, from http://www.accaglobal.com/pubs/malaysia/students/information/guide/studyacca_malaysia .pdf allison, n. (2002). the higher education institution website as a marketing tool in student recruitment. retrieved december 6, 2008, from http://umpalumpa.info/webmarketing/he_web_marketing.doc american psychological association. (2001). publication manual of the american psychological association (5th ed.). washington, dc: author belch, g. e., & belch, m. a. (2007). advertising and promotion: an integrated marketing communications perspective (7th ed.). sydney, australia: mcgraw-hill. binsardi, a., & ekwulugo, f. (2003). international marketing of british education: research on the students' perception and the uk market penetration. marketing intelligence & planning, 21(5), 318-327. chaffey, d., ellis-chadwick, f., johnston, k., & mayer, r. (2006). internet marketing. essex: prentice hall. deupree, j. (2002). strategies to recruit u.s students to study in other national systems. retrieved december 6, 2008, from http://www.daad.org/file_depot/0-10000000/1000020000/16426/folder/33804/strategies.pdf ellsworth j. h., & ellsworth m. v. (1994). the internet business book. new york: john wiley & sons, inc. higher-edge.com. (2004). not-so-foreign 2004. retrieved december 6, 2008, from http://www.higher-edge.com/docs/nsf-3_36-20041208.pdf internet world stats. (2008). asia internet usage stats and populations statistics. retrieved december 6, 2008, from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats3.htm inti international college penang. (2008). inti international college penang homepage. retrieved december 5, 2008, from http://www.intipen.edu.my/ kdu college penang. (2008). kdu college penang campus. retrieved december 5, 2008, from http://www.kdupg.edu.my/ keegan, w. j., & green, m. 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(2008). the impact of september 11 on international student flow into malaysia: lessons learned. international journal of asia-pacific studies, 4, (1). strauss, j., el-ansary, a., & frost, r. (2006). e-marketing. upper saddle river, new jersey: pearson education. study malaysia.com. (2008). private higher educational institutions: study opportunities for upper & post secondary school leavers. retrieved december 1, 2008, from http://www.studymalaysia.com/education/edusystem.php?fn=studyop&t=local verbik, l., & lasanowski, v. (2007). international student mobility: patterns and trends. the observatory on borderless higher education, september. wilkinson, r., & yussof, i. (2005). public and private provision of higher education in malaysia: a comparative analysis. higher education, 50, 361–386. ziguras, c. (2001). the effect of gats on transnational higher education: comparing experiences of new zealand, australia, singapore and malaysia. proceedings of the australian association for research in education (aare) annual conference, fremantle, australia. retrieved february, 1, 2009 from http://www.aare.edu.au/01pap/zig01257.htm e ducation w ebsites 37 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo using narrative_final volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x using narrative case studies in an online world religions course to stimulate deep learning about islam sherman elliott, ed.d arizona state university citation elliott, s. (2010). using narrative case studies in an online world religions course to stimulate deep learning about islam. current issues in education, 13(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the purpose of this action research was to examine how a narrative case study in an online asynchronous world religions course affected learners’ understandings, appreciation, and respect for the beliefs and values of others. the world religions course examined a variety of religions including islam. ten participants received information about the five pillars of islam; they then analyzed a narrative case study written by the instructor that was a fictional representation centering around the five pillars. following this analysis, learners used the five pillars of islam to construct their own narrative case study. pre and post assignment data were collected and analyzed. the data sources included: responses to a survey; narrative answers to open-ended questions; written analyses of the narrative case study; responses to telephone interviews; and, written original narrative case studies. results indicated that learners demonstrated positive changes in their beliefs and attitudes about islam, and experienced different ways of thinking. in particular, participants demonstrated changes when they: (a) expressed new understandings of islam as framed through self reflection; (b) compared islam to a personal prayer life; (c) reflected new appreciations of the islamic faith; and, (d) recognized stereotypes about islam. the different ways of thinking that participants experienced occurred when c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 2 they; (a) created mental images; (b) understood comprehensively and analytically; (c) reflected understandings in constructing an original narrative; (d) applied content to real-life; and, (e) enjoyed analyzing the case. keywords: teaching world religions, islam; deep learning, narrative case studies u sing n arrative c ase studies 3 about the author(s) author: sherman elliott affiliation: arizona state university email: sherman.elliott@asu.edu biographical information: sherman elliott is the director of the center for civic education and leadership in the college of teacher education and leadership at arizona state university. his research interests include the pedagogy of world religions (particularly buddhism and islam), teaching religious studies objectives in social studies courses, and civic education. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 4 introduction as evidenced by the current situations between the united states and iraq, the united states and al-qaeda, muslim-hindu uprisings in india, the spread of the taliban outside of afghanistan, the conflict between palestinians and israelis, and the assassination of former prime minister benazir bhutto of pakistan, the world’s population is drawn into and affected by the beliefs and values of others. many of these conflicts’ causes emanate from peoples’ religious experiences. now more than ever, it is crucial that people not only know about the various religions of the world but understand the perspective and intrinsic views held by believers. opening to the faith and spirituality of others is to show affection for others, which ultimately leads to new understandings and respect for their humanity (ruland, 1985). as citizens of the world, people living in the 21st century need to understand others and, in times of value-laden conflict, to truly comprehend others’ religions. religion has multiple meanings. according to paul tillich (1948), religion is defined as “that which is of the ultimate concern” (p. 273). with this description, religion is a very broad experience that affects all people. more specifically, vernon ruland (1998) of the university of san francisco describes religion as “the quality that permeates that life; the center from which everything derives its meaning or without which all else would be meaningless” (p.10). finally, webster’s third new international dictionary of the english language, unabridged (2002), a commonly used source for world religions texts, defines religion as, “a personal awareness or conviction of the existence of a supreme being or of supernatural powers or influences controlling one’s own, humanity’s, or all nature’s destiny” (p.1918). a collective approach to the study of religion would use or blend definitions so as to encompass the broadest possible approach to understanding all of the world’s religions. however, designing world religions courses with such a broad comprehensive treatment often creates a learning environment that u sing n arrative c ase studies 5 leads to surface as opposed to deep learning (masuzawa, 2005). the consequence of such a pedagogical approach is that the learner leaves the course with a simple fact-based understanding of complex beliefs and values held by others. further, such a simple or surface knowledge does not invite the learner to change his or her own understandings about the beliefs and values held by others. while educators agree on the need to develop courses that cultivate deep learning, the challenge persists as to how to do so in a fast paced, technological age where the instructor has less opportunity to interact personally with learners and draw out deep insights and meanings from the presented material. as an instructor of asynchronous online world religions courses in the community college setting for over nine years, i have discovered that a real challenge persists as to how to present an enormous curricular subject such as world religions, often times in an abbreviated semester of 8 to 14 weeks, without resorting to a fact-based, surface treatment of the material. as such, i have continually experimented and sought out pedagogical devices that will lead the learner to draw deep and meaningful understandings from the study of religion. when a learner leaves my course, it is my hope that the person is able to make connections between the values and beliefs of others and his or her own values and beliefs. i have sought to design a course in which each person’s view of the human condition is altered and new meanings and ideas about the world have emerged. one promising tool that appears to facilitate a deep learning experience is the narrative case study. a narrative case study is a short account written for the sole purpose of leading learners to understand specific curricular content objectives by examining the actions and dialogues of others. the narrative blends fiction and non-fiction into a story that the learner analyzes after studying basic core tenets of a religion or religious system. the purpose of this research was to examine how a narrative case study in my on-line asynchronous world religions course affected learners’ understandings, appreciation, and respect for the beliefs and values of others. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 6 review of supporting scholarship four categories of ideas and information were central to this study. although the major philosophical underpinning of the study encompassed the implementation of deep learning in a religious studies context, many significant strategies of learning were utilized as a means of facilitating a deep learning experience for the study of islam. this section explores deep learning as well as narrative text processing, writing to learn, and case study instruction. deep learning for several years, many courses in higher education have been dominated by pedagogical methods that reflect surface learning where facts and concepts are emphasized by the external demands of testing, institutional goals, or society (atherton, 2005). instead of instilling wisdom in learners, this approach encourages an artificial form of learning wherein the aim is to please teachers on various short-lived assessments (ramsden, 2003). learners often are asked to demonstrate their knowledge of disassociated facts and theories or memorize data about philosophies and principles without applying them to individuals and real-world situations. this approach often results in learners obtaining a shortlived knowledge of a very specific field of study, a curriculum that is shallow in its depth, and a cursory view of meaningful, interdisciplinary connections (lombardo, 2006). a generative goal of education is to guide learners toward developing the necessary tools and learning strategies needed to think deeply and productively about broad–based subjects, including historical and social phenomena (bransford, brown, & cocking, 2000; pring, 2000). the intent is to have learners move beyond simple recitations of facts and figures to a relevant knowledge where they move outside of the basic realm of information to thinking about problems, analyzing issues, making inferences, and relating various pieces of information for the purpose of drawing conclusions (bigge & shermis, 1999; joyce &weil, 2000). u sing n arrative c ase studies 7 designing a course with these objectives is to guide learners toward deep learning. deep learning forms a learner in such a way that he or she can apply theories to everyday practices and behaviors (atherton, 2005; pring 2000). deep learning is a “comprehensive understanding of a domain of study” (lombardo, 2006, p. 2). the goal is to have learners internalize new understandings and directly apply these new thoughts and ideas to previous knowledge. simply put, deep connections are made between the new understanding and previously held ideas and beliefs (atherton, 2005; bransford et al., 2000). when learners successfully engage in deep learning, they are self-reflecting. that is, they are thinking about how they interpret events and ideas in their own life. by challenging learners to engage in this form of thinking, the instructor helps learners ultimately create new understandings and new operational knowledge (lombardo, 2006; pring, 2000). narrative text processing narrative texts represent the world by describing characters’ experiences during sequences of events (graesser, golding, & long, 1991). research in cognitive psychology and reader-response theory has shed light on the role of narrative texts in deep learning. cognitive psychology. research in cognitive psychology has shown that narratives appeal to the natural attributes of human memory (mccauley, 2000). once learners begin to hear a story, they tend to automatically search their long-term memory to locate a story that is similar (shank, 1995). a level of understanding develops while the listeners are engaged in the process of searching their own memories and making connections to prior knowledge resonating from prior stories (shank, 1995). while they are searching for a familiar or related story in their memory, learners begin to apply concepts to someone else’s story. by engaging in this extraction and construction process, learners produce deeper and deeper levels of understanding (shank, 1995). c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 8 research has suggested that engaging in story is an effective means of learning about the customs and rules of other societies (hsu, 2008). this learning process occurs as individuals experience narrative that appeals to their emotions and capacity for empathy (hsu, 2008). the degree to which narrative influences others’ beliefs rests on the existence of prior knowledge and experience. as learners process a narrative, on an unconscious level they apply theories and philosophies about the beliefs and values of others to their own beliefs and values. during this process, they are beginning to create new understandings about both their own beliefs and the beliefs and values of others. the more a person relates to the life experience or emotions of the characters in the narrative, the greater their immersion in a state green calls “narrative transport” (as cited in hsu, 2008, p.51). this purposeful strategy of inviting learners to relate their own experiences to that of others is a form of deep learning(smith & colby,2007) reader-response theory. reader-response theory offers key insights into the experience that an active reader or listener brings to a narrative (karolides, 2000; tompkins, 1980). according to readerresponse theorists, the reader does not sit by passively when reading text, but participates as an active actor in a process of generating new meaning from the text. during reading, there is an engaging mutual process that exists between the reader and the text. according to louise rosenblatt (1978), “the relation between the text and the reader is not linear. it is a situation, an event in a particular time and place in which each element conditions the other” (p.16). as such, if learners enrolled in a world religions class are actively reading a narrative on religion or a religious system, they are doing much more than seeking out clues and answers from the printed material. the learners bring their own cultural and societal biases, including perceived religious or spiritual beliefs, to the actions, ideas, and dialogues found in the text (karolides, 2000). the impressions brought about within the text in conjunction with the background provided by the reader at u sing n arrative c ase studies 9 a particular point in time lead to a new experience where a unique meaning is understood (beach, 1994; karolides, 2000). this new meaning often creates new insights and understandings about the values and beliefs of others. by bringing their emotional and intellectual engagement to the text, respondents create a response that unknowingly is shaped by their own perceived identity with or distance from the characters (karolides, 2000). writing to learn when all goes well, writing, as a mode of learning, engages learners with content and activates thinking (emig, 2003). writing can lead learners to new insights, new ideas, and new knowledge. although writing often is a mainstay of everyday communication and frequently is used pedagogically for assessing the transmission of information, it can create opportunities for learners to grasp content and analyze it critically. in commending the value of writing in order to learn, george newell (2005) claims that the “process of writing will somehow lead inevitably to a better understanding of information gleaned from texts and from a teacher’s presentation” (p. 238). the constructivist school of thought has influenced the writing to learn movement in education (newell, 2005). according to the constructivist view, which aligns with the cognitive psychology and reader response theories of reading presented earlier, writers actively participate in the creation of knowledge. similar to readers who often “compare a speaker’s or character’s experience with their personal experience” (beach, 1994, p. 762), writers break down barriers between themselves and their subjects and actively place themselves in the roles of others. when learners place themselves in the roles of others, they are moving toward deep learning. case study instruction scholars have noted some general characteristics of effective case studies (hiltz, coppola, rotter, turoff, & benbunan-fich, 2000). effective case-studies tend to be authentic, ill-structured, and c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 10 open-ended -just like problems in real life (bernard & lundgren-cayrol, 2001). real-life problems, as opposed to unlikely or implausible actions and dialogues, tend to engage learners (vinaja & raisinghani, 2001). however, little research is available to guide pedagogues in the design and use of on-line case studies in a world religions course devoted to deep learning. as used in my pedagogy, a narrative case study is a short narrative written by the instructor for the sole purpose of getting learners to understand specific curricular content objectives by examining the actions and dialogues of others. learners study the tenets of a specific religion or religious system through various means, then they read the actions and dialogues of characters who embody these tenets. the purpose in creating the narrative case study is to guide the learner toward a deep learning experience where the learner does not simply accept the material at face value, but questions and analyzes it. here the learner contemplates the personal relevance of the material and the potential applications of it. in an online setting, the learner is completing this activity without the benefit of a face-to-face classroom environment where colleagues and an instructor would be able to probe and offer immediate possible meanings. since online learners are working independently on this assignment, the question remains as to how a narrative case study in an on-line asynchronous world religions course affects learners’ understandings, appreciation, and respect for the beliefs and values of others. methods the purpose of this research was to examine how a narrative case study in my on-line asynchronous world religions course affected learners’ understandings, appreciation, and respect for the beliefs and values of others. this research was conducted utilizing an action-research mixedmethods methodology (stringer, 2007). u sing n arrative c ase studies 11 setting learners participating in the research were enrolled in rel 243 (world religions) at rio salado college, a member of the maricopa county (az) community colleges. learners enroll in the online course every two weeks. once they are assigned an official start date, each learner receives a 15 week calendar that reflects when lessons should be completed and assignments submitted. due to the asynchronous nature of the class, the average learner is engaged only with the online material and does not have an opportunity to process the content with peers. after assignments are submitted, they are scored and returned by me within five calendar days. the demographics of those who participated in the research study represented a traditional range of online learners at rio salado college. seven of the 10 participants were women. while four participants ranged from 29-39 years of age, one was 42 and the remaining five were 18-28 years of age. eight of the participants resided in the greater phoenix metropolitan area, while the remaining two resided in tucson and florence, arizona. one participant, who just completed a tour of duty in iraq, was in the earmy university partnership with rio salado college, a program where active duty u.s. army personnel take online courses through rio salado college and other online colleges throughout the country. although learners entered the course in two week intervals commencing on august 25, 2008, all fifteen original research participants were presented with a due date calendar for assignments and a due date calendar for completing the extra research study assignments. assignments were collected at various times during fall 2008 with all ten participants finishing the data collection pieces of the study by january 5, 2009. action steps c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 12 world religions is an undergraduate survey course that is designed to expose learners to the major developed and indigenous religions of the world. after examining indigenous religions, several developed asian religions, and two other abrahamic religions, learners are required to complete a unit on islam. the unit begins with the life of islam’s founder, mohammed, and ends with a discussion of contemporary muslim sects and practices. learners read two chapters in a textbook, read an online summary provided by me on the main tenets of islam, completed two multiple choice quizzes, and wrote a brief essay describing the five of pillars of islam. the specific actions examined in this asynchronous online world religions course consisted of two learning tasks. in addition to the above assignments, participants produced a written analysis of a narrative case study, and then they constructed a narrative case study. written analysis of a narrative case study. each learner was invited to analyze a narrative case study on islam so as to stimulate deep learning (appendix d). the procedure for analyzing a narrative case study was to examine the actions and dialogues of the characters in the story so as to identify the five pillars of islam. when learners are analyzing a piece of information in this fashion and drawing conclusions, they are engaging in deep learning. (bigge & shermis, 1999;joyce & weil, 2000). in their written analysis, the learner was to specifically name the pillar, identify how it was represented by the actions and dialogues of the characters, and show the direct correlation between the actions and dialogues with the definitions and attributes of the pillars. for example, after reading the narrative case study provided, a learner may have written in their analysis,” sadia professed her faith with the creed or shahada when she stated, ‘o’merciful god, i know of your oneness and praise the name of mohammed your prophet.’” this statement would be appropriate because shahada is the first pillar that is a profession of faith. it also is the acceptance of this confession of faith and its faithful repetition that u sing n arrative c ase studies 13 constitute the first step to being a muslim. the significance of the shahada is the belief that the only purpose of life is to serve and obey. construction of an original narrative case study. under the theoretical umbrella of writing to learn to stimulate deep learning, the participants were invited to construct their own original narrative case studies. after they prepared a written analysis of the narrative case study provided, each learner was asked to write his or her own narrative case study based on the five pillars of islam using the same technique of embedding the curricular content in the actions and dialogue of the characters (see appendix c). learners were provided with the already analyzed narrative case study as a sample. although they were asked to submit the original narrative case study within five days of receipt of the assignment, specific length or writing style were not included in the instructions so as to provide as much creativity as possible with the writing process. writing a narrative case study allows the learner to apply content facts to sophisticated actions, dialogues, and events, which is a form of deep learning (smith & colby, 2007). with analytic writing, such as constructing a written narrative case study based on how characters live out their religious beliefs, learners were prompted to engage in a deeper form of understanding. by producing their own original narrative case study, a learner has the opportunity to participate in a “more lasting intellectual representation of the content (that) seems to develop through an integration and reformulation of ideas” (newell, 2005, p. 240). data sources data for this study came from surveys, the written analyses of a narrative case study, the written original narrative case studies, and telephone interviews. the following describes each data source. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 14 surveys. at the beginning of the unit, learners were asked to complete a survey that measured their personal beliefs and attitudes about islam (see appendix b). the purpose of such a preassignment survey was to capture an initial snapshot of the learners’ attitudes and provide quantitative data on those attitudes that could be used for comparison (johnson, 2002). the pre-assignment survey included statements that were considered to be inaccurate stereotypical beliefs about islam. using content analysis research, i noted and collected statements from assignments and email correspondence over the past ten years of teaching courses with curricular content on islam(fraenkel & wallen, 2006) the survey incorporated five statements that included beliefs or assumptions about islam or the role of islam in the lives of others. beliefs about violence, the role of women, tolerance for other religions, the worship of a singular abrahamic god, and the events on september 11, 2001 were poignantly and directly stated in survey prompts. each statement was accompanied by an open-ended question that allowed the participant to clarify why they held such beliefs or values about islam. after they completed the pre-assignment survey and the written analysis of the narrative case study assignment, learners were asked to complete a post-assignment survey designed to measure their beliefs and values about islam (see appendix d & e). the post-assignment survey listed the identical statements and questions about participants’ beliefs and attitudes about islam, but it also included open-ended questions about analyzing a narrative case study and constructing a written narrative case study. the quantitative data on learners’ beliefs and attitudes about islam collected from the postassignment survey were used for comparison with the pre-assignment survey. the qualitative data on learners’ responses to analyzing a narrative case study and constructing a written narrative case study were analyzed separately. u sing n arrative c ase studies 15 written analysis of a narrative case study. participants’ were given a narrative case study written by the instructor to analyze as a learning task for this study’s action. this narrative case study also served as a source of data. once the appropriateness of the case study was determined, it was given to learners to analyze. because of the difference innate to what each learner brings to the narrative case study, learners would draw different interpretations of presented religious practices and values. participants’ written analyses of the particular narrative case study on islam used in this study reflected their understandings, appreciation, and respect for the beliefs and values of others. constructed original narrative case study. participants’ construction of an original written narrative case study, which they completed as a learning task for this study’s action, also served as a source of data. in the narrative case study that they constructed, learners represented in a concrete way their understanding of the five pillars of islam. this assignment required them to organize and interpret in a very real and meaningful way the five pillars of islam. as a data source, these constructed narrative case studies reflected both the participants’ understandings and appreciation of the five pillars and of islam as a whole. interviews. interviews enable learners to describe their interactions in detail and on their own terms (stringer, 2007). i used interviews (see appendix f) to afford participants the opportunity to describe their interactions with the case studies and to explore and share their beliefs and attitudes about islam. the interviews were a blended approach of structured and informal (franklin & wallen, 2006). the structured component of the interview helped to maintain consistency as the same questions were asked in the same order (franklin & wallen, 2006; johnson, 2002). by being consistent, i was able to minimize the impact of variables that do not pertain to deep learning. utilizing a computer audio recording program allowed me to focus on learners’ responses and to develop immediate follow-up c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 16 questions that represented individual understanding, beliefs, or attitudes about islam and a learner’s experience with the narrative case study. during the semi-structured interview process, i posed questions that probed learners about their experiences analyzing the narrative case study on islam and creating an original narrative case study on islam. a special emphasis was placed on participants’ experiences that represented deep learning. analysis the data consisted of 185 minutes of digital audio files, 36 pages of audio transcriptions, nine written narrative case studies of 1-2 pages each, 35 pages of pre and post lesson surveys, and 13 pages of analyses of the narrative case study. quantitative analysis quantitative data aggregated from the preand post-assignment surveys were compared through a repeated measures analysis of variance test (fraenkel & wallen, 2006; olejnik & algina, 2000). the effect of time was significant, f(1, 9) = 21.87, p < 0.001. as table 1 shows, the post-assignment survey mean, 4.08, was statistically significantly different than the pre-assignment survey mean, 2.98. the partial eta squared effect size, 0.71, is extraordinarily large for a within-subject factor based on cohen’s criteria (olejnike & aljina, 2000). table 1 means comparison for survey (n = 10) pretest posttest m2m1 p hp2 u sing n arrative c ase studies 17 m 2.98 4.08 1.10 <.001 0.71 sd 95% ci 0.70 2.48 3.58 0.71 3.48 4.58 note: maximum score = 5 qualitative analysis the qualitative data consisting of the written analyses of narrative case studies, open-ended questions on the surveys, written original narrative case studies, and telephone interviews were analyzed with a content analysis approach (fraenkel & wallen, 2006). employing a grounded theory methodology (fraenkel & wallen, 2006), each response was unitized and coded as individual “units of meaning” (stringer, 2007, p. 98). units of meaning consisted of learner comments that indicated their understandings and appreciation of the beliefs and values of others. in particular, units of meaning consisted of comments indicating deep learning such as words, phrases, sentences, or ideas that reflected profound understanding about islam or one’s beliefs, understandings, or attitudes about islam. the following deep learning indicators (lombardo, 2006) were used to focus the content analyses of the various qualitative data sources: 1. comprehension and analytical understanding 2. critical thinking 3. holistic insight and interdisciplinary application 4. self-reflection and self-awareness 5. demonstration of application and value to life c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 18 6. expansion of consciousness 7. open to growth after categorizing the data by source (i.e., interview transcriptions, written analysis of the narrative case study, written original narrative case studies and open-ended survey questions), i identified each respondent in the data source and collated the sources accordingly. each source was then analyzed in great detail by using color highlighting pens to identify discreet units of meaning that pointed to deep learning or beliefs and attitudes about islam. as much as possible, the verbatim principle was employed to prevent an insertion of my own views or interpretations of the data into the analysis (stringer, 2007). each category was then labeled according to the various perspectives that participants shared during the study. categories and subcategories emerged as this process brought in units of meaning from all four qualitative sources. main categories that were generated included self-reflection and self-awareness, application of theories to everyday practices and behaviors, comprehension and analytical understanding, value to life, and connections between new understandings and previously held ideas and beliefs. a written record was maintained of all categories, including those that may not have represented deep learning or changes in beliefs and attitudes about islam. all relevant participants’ comments were analyzed for word choice. participant verb choices, other forms of the same word, and other words that were repetitively used by the participants were listed individually for each participant along with the number of times they used the word. i then developed a grid for words that were used by several participants. coded on the grid were participants’ names, thirteen words used by more than one participant, and the number of times each participant used the word. words noted on the grid included the following: 1) know/knowledge, 2) understand, 3) think/thought, 4) learned, 5) different(ly), 6) real(ly), 7) appreciate/appreciation, 8) realized, 9) analyze/analytic. 10) comprehend, 11) u sing n arrative c ase studies 19 believe, 12) experience, 13) change. after detecting these patterns of word choice. i then merged the themes into triangulated, data-based assertions regarding how a narrative case study in my on-line asynchronous world religions course affected learners’ understandings, appreciation, and respect for the beliefs and values of others. results my analysis of the data collected during this action research led to two assertions. the assertions are (a) learners demonstrated changes in their beliefs and attitudes about islam and (b) learners experienced different ways of thinking. assertion #1: learners demonstrated changes in their beliefs and attitudes about islam data collected in this study revealed that learners generally demonstrated changes in their beliefs and attitudes about islam. learners were observed to engage in a process of changing their beliefs and attitudes and, after doing so, ascribing new meaning to the knowledge they acquired. the survey scores revealed a significant change in overall belief about islam, and the qualitative data revealed the process of change for the learners. prior to the lesson, learners held pejorative viewpoints about islam that correlated islam with intolerance, violence, oppression of women, and terrorism. specific changes that i noted involved learners demonstrating a new understanding and appreciation of the faith itself, devoid of the cultural stereotypes listed above. learners demonstrated an understanding and appreciation of the pillars of islam in a manner that was self-reflective and personal. prior to the unit of study, learners ascribed pejorative views to islam, but after the unit of study learners reflected an appreciation of the pillars of islam to the extent that they saw the pillars containing some elements that were similar to their own faith experience. in particular, participants demonstrated changes when they (a) expressed new understandings of islam as framed through self reflection, c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 20 (b) compared islam to a personal prayer life, (c) reflected new appreciations of the islamic faith, and (d) recognized stereotypes about islam. expressed new understandings of islam as framed through self reflection. after analyzing the narrative case study on the five pillars of islam, several learners made connections between their own religious beliefs and those of muslims. when learners engaged in such comparisons, they demonstrated active self-reflection. to illustrate, one respondent commented, “i do believe that they are a lot like me. my religion is different from them, but i believe they have a lot of similarities i believe in”(rd\ sur)1. other learners were even more specific about the comparisons between their own religious convictions and those of muslims. allison stated, “it just caused me to pause and think about how…how very different islam is from, my christian faith in terms of how much is required. i don’t think anyone in my church or denomination is going to hold it over my head if i make it to the holy land or not” (as\int). statements by other participants, although brief, also pointed to active self-reflection. chuck stated, “the koran is like the bible” (cs\int), and later said, “i see from their side instead of just our side” (cs\int). the reflection was very introspective for rebecca, who stated, “i do believe they are people like me” (rd\int). another learner’s comments not only echoed personal reflection, but also contained the reflections of a friend, with whom the learner dialogued on her own volition. i am catholic and i realize through their religion, it’s very similar in that they put god first…you just realize that they’re more like us, a different culture we don’t know. after reading the narrative and learning about the five pillars, my opinion was pretty much changed. my best friend, she’s catholic too, [she] was like wow i didn’t realize that’s how similar these religions were. (eo/int) 1 parenthetical information specifies data-based support for the assertion. the first letter string identifies the pseudonym for the participant. the second letter string identifies the data source (int = interview; sur = survey; oncs = original narrative case study). u sing n arrative c ase studies 21 significantly, the deep learning principle of selfreflection was articulated by every research participant, including one who had analyzed the narrative case study but had not written her own narrative. compared islam to a personal prayer life. in demonstrating a comparison to one’s own devotional life, some learners focused on prayer. they commonly associated their own relationship with praying to a monotheistic god who was the same god of a muslim. one respondent stated, “when you hear that they pray 5 to 8 times a day, you think wow, that’s a lot in the [day] okay, i pray before bed, and other times, so it’s not so different” (tw\int). at first this learner was clearly conscious of the number of times a muslim may pray, but by relating those actions to her own life, she came to draw a comparison that emphasized the similarity to her own prayer life. reflected new appreciations of the islamic faith. in the interviews, learners reflected an appreciation of some specific aspect of islamic faith independent of comparing it to their own religious beliefs. one learner commented, “i am exposed to a lot of protestants and judaism, where i grew up. even those religions …people (are) very ritualistic…i saw in this islam faith not just ritualism but whole-heartedness(ca\int). another respondent focused on the structure of daily religious life for muslims. he stated, “praying five times a day…they really take that to heart, so i think that’s definitely a very positive thing for them”(ck\ sur). another learner was not specific in his appreciation of islam, but did gain appreciation of the faith that affected his personal life. he stated, “i have some friends that are muslim too so i guess it kind of makes me understand or appreciate them a little bit more and some of the things that they have to do on a daily basis (mm\ sur). in constructing an original narrative case study, the participants reflected an appreciation of islam in their representations of some of the pillars. in their characterizations, several learners reflected excitement over the pilgrimage to mecca. theresa’s character, heba, states, “i know i am just so excited because of our trip to mecca next week” (tg\oncs). another learner created a character, prathan, who “enjoys the peace that comes c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 22 with consistent submission to allah and his will” (as\oncs). other learners depicted characters who were pleased to give alms. mercy wrote, “amir went to bed feeling very excited about the next day when he would give the money he set aside and the money his family had given him to the muslim family that was having difficulty” (mm\oncs). another learner reflected a character who “enjoys his time of prayer with his family” (ca\oncs). rebecca writes of a character, shillan, who has cancer but who longs to be “well for the fasting month of ramadan” (rd\oncs). most of the constructed narratives reflected an affirming depiction of at least one pillar of islam. recognized stereotypes about islam. toward the end of the telephone interviews, i provided the respondents with a quote from a nationally recognized radio broadcaster. during the broadcast, the radio commentator linked the muslim hijackers who attacked the united states on september 11, 2001 to a current group of muslim inmates in a british prison who requested that the toilets in their restroom be turned around so that they were not using the facility while facing mecca, a sacred place. the broadcaster implied that all muslims were terrorists who deserved no special treatment. the purpose of my prompt was to determine if the participants could easily recognize this stereotype about islam. in all cases, the respondents stated that the radio broadcaster’s comments reflected a strong religious stereotype about islam. one respondent stated, “i think it is based on ignorance, and probably a lack of knowledge, and personal…inactions or convictions in their own lives to generate a comment on that”(mm/int). another learner ascribed a nefarious motive to the radio broadcaster’s comment, stating that, “that’s a shallow comment because it had nothing to do with the first part…he was trying to take one story personally, a horrible comment, i think he’s trying to build a case against islam by making additional comments, and by tying it in with a different story”(ca/int). the ability to recognize islamic stereotypes extended beyond the interview prompt. in responding to one open-ended survey question, one participant commented, “it [the narrative case study] put the life of a u sing n arrative c ase studies 23 regular muslim family in perspective so i can relate to them in the fact that they are people too instead of satan in human form which many americans think about muslims”(bj/ sur). assertion #2: learners experienced different ways of thinking the majority of respondents stated that they experienced different ways of thinking by analyzing and responding to the narrative case study. nine of 10 respondents used the word, “different,” or the phrase, “different way of thinking,” in both their survey responses and telephone interviews. these different ways of thinking represented a deeper sense of understanding of content, in this case the five pillars of islam. overall, different ways of thinking led to new insights and understandings. during her interview, kay stated, when i first went into this class, to be honest with you, i was probably ignorant about the culture and what they believe in [islam]. they just don’t necessarily believe in hating americans or blowing up the united states…when you read the narrative you find what’s important to them, giving back…after reading the narrative and learning about the five pillars, my opinion pretty much changed. (ko\int) michael also reported that the narrative case study prompted different ways of thinking. he stated, “it [narrative case study] definitely taught me a lot of new things, a lot of information, and opened my eyes up into different understandings of religion, cultures, to see how some similarities are in my beliefs altogether different”(mi\ sur). the different ways of thinking that participants experienced occurred when they (a) created mental images, (b) understood comprehensively and analytically, (c) reflected understandings in constructing an original narrative, (d) applied content to real-life, and (e) enjoyed analyzing the case. created mental images. many learners were aided in their analysis of the narrative and their understanding of the content by creating pictures or images in their minds of what was occurring with the characters. allison stated, “i understand the characters, they have a name and you’re picturing them. when you read a case study you’re kind of picturing them walking in the busy streets…in time, it just becomes a c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 24 little more real than simply reading an academic text” (as\int). another respondent went beyond creating a mental image of the story and inserted herself into the narrative, as this comment shows, “it was really interesting to try and image myself or someone else i know in that situation” (mm\int). other learners related a sense that the narrative was a “real world experience” for them (as\int) or that it gave them a “vivid understanding of what or how…[muslim] people conduct some of their daily living” (mm\int). understood comprehensively and analytically. analyzing the narrative case study on the five pillars of islam led learners to demonstrate a comprehensive and analytical understanding of the content. mercy stated, “i learned differently. i can remember each pillar right off the top of my head just by thinking about the narrative.”(int.) on a survey prompt, kay revealed that she had to “think in a different way. [i] had to become more analytical.”(sur.) reading about the lives of others created a much deeper level of knowledge. learners applied the basic content to real situations, a mainstay of deep learning. for example, sherry stated, “it kind of forced me to go to another level of what they (pillars) are…to comprehend them more in a(n) application…it kind of brought in my thinking on it rather than here’s the topic and learning about it, a place of actually having to incorporate it into a different way of thinking.” (int.) reflected understandings in constructing an original narrative. although many learners stated that constructing an original narrative case study was challenging and difficult, the original narrative case studies constructed by the learners revealed a thorough understanding of the five pillars of islam and their application to the daily life of a muslim. every learner represented each pillar accurately and in such a manner that revealed a very complex and deep understanding of the practice of the religious concepts. for example, when explaining the pillar of salat, or daily prayer, learners not only depicted a character praying, but they referred to characters praying a number of times per day in a meaningful and reverent way that reflected praise and submission. allison wrote about her character, “although he felt tired from staying up too late the previous u sing n arrative c ase studies 25 night, he would never consider skipping the 1st prayer of the day” (as\oncs). rather than simply mention that a character is praying, the writer here refers to the challenges of everyday life and the centrality of prayer in that life. this reflects a deep level of understanding of the pillar as the learner has applied the principle to her own creation. another learner depicted the hajj as a very meaningful experience for one of his characters. when describing the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to mecca, charles’ character not only plans the trip with his spouse and children, but states that, “[it will be] time spent at the ka’ba with other members of the same faith. it will be refreshing for the soul, mind, and body” (ck\oncs). again, the learner is writing about a piece of content in such a way that reveals depth and holistic insight about the hajj rather than simply articulating that it is the annual trip to mecca. applied content to real life. participants frequently applied case contents to real life. mercy stated during her interview, “it makes you think of things in real life, you can actually put yourself in that position as someone really living at that moment”(mm\int). this notion of putting oneself in an actual situation was a recurring theme. learners applied contents to real life in concrete terms. the words “real” or “reality” were used by respondents over 200 times. for instance, allison stated, “we got a chance to actually think of religion in people’s lives in an everyday sense, in a very practical sense. it was enjoyable. it was a real world experience” (as\int). the process of analyzing the actions and dialogues in the narrative case study led many learners to a deep knowledge of islam and its role in everyday life. mercy said, “it (the narrative case study) made me think about how i would act if i were a muslim” (mm\int). another participant stated, c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 26 i felt the story was a reflection on how you would go about your daily life, through your eyes what would constitute a day of someone who adopts these religions and practices them…it just made me appreciate actually learning about religion. it made me appreciate how focused they are on religion. (mm\ int) enjoyed analyzing the case. each respondent described the experience of analyzing the narrative case study as enjoyable. allison stated, “i enjoyed the case study. i looked forward to reading paragraph after paragraph about the characters and how their faith was part of their daily life” (as\int). other learners used terminology such as “enjoyed,” “fantastic,” “really good,” “interesting,” and “fascinating” when describing the process of analyzing the narrative. in response to an open-ended survey question, jane stated, “i have learned a lot. i don’t get to associate with many people from other religions and found it fascinating” (jg\sur). limitations this study is limited by the nature of how participants were recruited into the study. participation was solely voluntary. since there was not a reward or incentive to participate in the study, any social desirability on the part of learners to please the instructor was mitigated. as an online, asynchronous, general prerequisite course, i did not have a long term relationship with learners. this action research was intended to address the impact of a narrative case study on learners enrolled in this specific course and was not designed to address personal change in belief in the long term. conclusion discussion as an instructor of world religions, i have noted that students bring to the study of islam stereotypes and pejorative views of muslims’ practices and beliefs. many views have been shaped by the events of september 11, 2001, the wars in iraq and afghanistan, and the continual conflict among arabs and israelis over the future of palestine. a survey of learners’ perceptions of certain aspects of islam conducted prior to the unit of study on islam revealed that these learners did, indeed, hold stereotypical views of islam. the purpose u sing n arrative c ase studies 27 of this research was to examine how a narrative case study in my on-line asynchronous world religions course affected learners’ understandings, appreciation, and respect for the beliefs and values of others. to stimulate deep learning so as to facilitate change within the learner, participants were asked to identify the five pillars of islam within a narrative case study and to generate their own written narrative case study illustrating the five pillars of islam. the data collected in this action research demonstrated that change took place among learner’s beliefs and attitudes about islam. my surprise in this study was the means by which new understandings of islam occurred; namely, they occurred through the lens of the participants’ own religious lens. learners made comparisons and contrasting statements about the five pillars of islam as it related to their own religious practices and spiritual beliefs. at times during the interview, participants appeared to be more focused on what they learned about themselves as opposed to what they learned about islam. in a secular world religions course, this method for change in meaning would not be something that would be an expectation for learners. as a teacher of religious studies, i acknowledge that a person’s spiritual or religious practices will certainly enter into the course and its outcomes; however, it is not the intent to ask learners in a secular world religions course to analyze their own faith-based perspective. nevertheless, the study revealed that my learners’ new understandings of islam were engendered by their framing of meaning through their own personal faith-based convictions and practices. i inferred from their statements that the majority of the learners held christian beliefs. a religious lens may also be reflected in the culminating assignment of constructing a narrative case study. in their written original narrative case studies, learners tended to focus more on one aspect of the five pillars, that being either zakat (almsgiving) or salat (daily prayer). both of these pillars have similar expressions in the other abrahamic faiths of christianity and judaism. these faiths affirm also the private and c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 28 communal role of prayer and the sacrificial nature of almsgiving. it was interesting to note that the one pillar that finds less similarity with these faiths, that of the shahada, was depicted less in the constructed narratives. the shahada, or profession of faith, is a requirement for all muslims. in one form or another, muslims proclaim that there is no god but allah, and muhammad is the prophet of allah. although the shahada was mentioned in the constructed narrative case studies and was identified in the analysis of a narrative case study, learners included little explanation or expansive detail with this pillar. most practicing christians or jews, for example, probably would easily see a connection between their own faith and the muslim practices of almsgiving, prayer, pilgrimage and fasting. the creed, however, would not be a daily practice, but would appear in text or in a specific liturgical practice. this focus on familiar practices may correspond with my early assertion that learners were continually comparing their own religious beliefs and practices with those of muslims. although learners on the whole found it difficult to construct an original narrative, they were able to objectify their new understanding of the five pillars of islam into a concrete story. the characters in the narratives reflected in word and deed a positive disposition toward the pillars. in some cases, the tenets were depicted in an idyllic way with characters attributing great meaning and significance to them. in addition, the women in the narrative were depicted as thoughtful and faithful women and were treated well by the male characters of the story. this depiction of characters contrasts with findings from the initial pre-assignment survey that reflected learners’ beliefs of women being treated poorly in islam. implications for practice there is no typical on-line learner of today. rather, the strong diversity of on-line enrollees affirms the need for different learning experiences that reach more learners. assignments that are meaningful to more learners and that appeal to a diversity of learners are in high demand. by continuing to design narrative case studies and invite learners to construct their own narrative case studies, i plan to not only facilitate new u sing n arrative c ase studies 29 understandings for my diverse learners, but also to offer them an enjoyable experience. for educators who wish to stimulate deep learning under the same conditions as this study, it is reasonable to assume that utilizing teacher generated narrative case studies and inviting learners to write their own narrative case studies would indeed offer a pedagogical platform for new understandings and new insights. closing word a very promising finding of this study was that learners processed their thoughts about the written case study analysis and constructing a written narrative case study with others. several respondents indicated that they spoke with their families, intimates, and peers in other classes about muslim beliefs and practices. in fact, one respondent mentioned that she sought out an old friend from previous employment who is muslim to discuss the assignments. as an educator, it is always a point to relish when learners take experiences outside the confines of a course and are open to the views of others. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 30 references american psychological association. 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(2002). springfield, ma: merriam-webster. u sing n arrative c ase studies 33 appendix a pre-assignment survey 1. pre-survey of beliefs and attitudes about islam please match your response to each comment below with the scale provided scale: 1-5: 5 =absolutely true, 4=likely true, 3=neither true/false, 2=somewhat false, 1=absolutely false muslims practice a religion that supports or condones violence. the god to whom muslims pray and worship is the same as the god worshipped by christians and jews. muslims are to blame for the attacks against the united states on september 11, 2001. women are treated very poorly if not disrespectfully in islam. muslims are intolerant of other religions. for the following five questions, please reflect on your rating of the items above. why did you choose the rating that you did for each question. 2. why did you choose the rating you did for "muslims practice a religion that supports or condones violence." 3. why did you choose the rating you did for "the god to whom muslims pray and worship is the c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 34 same as the god worshipped by christians and jews." 4. why did you choose the rating you did for "muslims are to blame for the attacks against the united states on september 11, 2001.” 5. why did you choose the rating you did for "women are treated very poorly if not disrespectfully in islam” 6. why did you choose the rating you did for "muslims are intolerant of other religions.” 7. gender: 1. female 2. male 8. age: a)18-22 b) 23-28, c) 29-39 d) 40-45 e) 46 or older 9. how many courses have you completed that have contained content about islam? a) 1 b)2 c)3 d)4 5)5 or more 10. how many years of post secondary education have you completed? a)1 b)2 c)3 d)4 5)5 or more appendix b student guide for production of a case study world religions (rel 243) directions: write a narrative case study based on the five pillars of islam using the technique of embedding the curricular content in the actions and dialogue of the characters. the narrative case study that you analyzed prior to this assignment serves as one example of the construction of narrative case study designed for the study of a particular religion or religious tenant. please be certain that your narrative case study contains the following components: 1. narrative contains the five pillars of islam 2. narrative reflects a direct correlation between the action and conversations of the characters and the five pillars of islam. 3. narrative is sufficiently broad in scope to develop the concepts for understanding. guidelines for presentation and submission of narrative case study: 1. writer uses clear, direct, easily understood language. 2. proofread and invite peer readers to check for grammatical, spelling or typographical errors. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 36 3. presentation is double-spaced typed, attractive and has appropriate headings. u sing n arrative c ase studies 37 appendix c written analysis of a case study case study on the five pillars of islam rel 243 world religions assignment: case study analysis on the five pillars of islam: • directions: once you have completed the essay assignment on islam, please read the attached narrative case study very carefully. analyze the case study to determine which pillars of islam are represented in the characters’ actions and conversations. be certain to show the direct correlation between the action and content of the conversation with the definition or attributes of each pillar. “o’merciful god, i know of your oneness and praise the name of mohammed your prophet.” sadia was able to make her profession of faith this morning as she does every morning, but for some strange reason, she felt that this day would not be ordinary. after helping her husband and older children get off to work and school, she grabbed her two little ones and fled quickly out the door. sadia was rushing to the market this morning, because she needed to get back to the mosque by noon. she is never late to the mosque on friday and wants to show her children that we can rush through the vegetable stand but c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 38 not through their relationship with allah. her youngest, abduallah hears the familiar cry of the vegetable vendor, “...closing in ten minutes....” oh my, says sadia nervously, we will have to eat leftovers tonight..." sadia quickly dashes down the narrow street to her family’s mosque. a nice surprise awaits as her husband greets her in front of the mosque. “why are you here today? sadia asks. her husband, ahmet, smiles and says i have a surprise for you, but i will have to tell you later, after prayers. ahmet was so eager to tell sadia that he had received a bonus at work and that he could now take her and her sister on the annual trip to mecca. he knew how eagerly sadia wanted to visit mecca, but they never seemed able to come-up with the necessary funds. during the imam’s talk, ahmet was trying to think of a way to tell sadia about his bonus and the trip when all of a sudden, some very anxious news came from the imam. it seemed that a terrible earthquake had struck pakistan; the red crescent society was asking for alms to build shelters and provide food and water for those who were suffering. ahmet became troubled and began to question whether his bonus should go for alms or for his family’s pilgrimage to mecca. after noontime prayers, sadia went home with the little ones as ahmet returned to work. during the afternoon, sadia was very excited about the surprise that awaited her at dinner. meanwhile, ahmet was listening to everyone at work talk about the devastation in pakistan and was watching images of people in great need on the al-jazera news network all afternoon. he decided that giving alms was going to have to take precedence over the trip to mecca with sadia. u sing n arrative c ase studies 39 sadia’s oldest son tazik arrived home from school as he always does. running into the house, tazik threw his books on the kitchen table, kissed his mother on the cheek, and grabbed his soccer ball. “wait,” shouted his mother. “your father has a surprise for us tonight. please put the ball away and stay inside awhile.” tazik began to whine about his plight and begged his mother to let him go to the field with the others, but sadia reminded him that he needs to be with his family just like when they break the fast together during the holy month. ahmet came inside and his wife was waiting for him. she and the children were very excited. ahmet told her that there would be no surprise because of the day’s news. he quickly and quietly explained that he had received a bonus at work and wanted to take her and her sister to mecca this year, but the disaster in pakistan produced so much devastation and suffering that he heard the call of the imam today and decided that his bonus would have to go to those in need. sadia began to cry. ahmet was so upset that he had disappointed his wife that he begged her to stop. sadia composed herself and told her husband that she was crying not because of the disappointment of not going to mecca, but because of how caring and loving her husband was and that he roll-modeled for her what it meant to follow the will of allah. appendix d post-assignment survey 1. post-survey of beliefs and attitudes about islam please match your response to each comment below with the scale provided scale: 1-5: 5 =absolutely true, 4=likely true, 3=neither true/false, 2=somewhat false, 1=absolutely false muslims practice a religion that supports or condones violence. the god to whom muslims pray and worship is the same as the god worshipped by christians and jews. muslims are to blame for the attacks against the united states on september 11, 2001. women are treated very poorly if not disrespectfully in islam. muslims are intolerant of other religions. for the following five questions, please reflect on your rating of the items above. why did you choose the rating that you did for each question. 2. why did you choose the rating you did for "muslims practice a religion that supports or condones violence." 3. why did you choose the rating you did for "the god to whom muslims pray and worship is the u sing n arrative c ase studies 41 same as the god worshipped by christians and jews." 4. why did you choose the rating you did for "muslims are to blame for the attacks against the united states on september 11, 2001.” 5. why did you choose the rating you did for "women are treated very poorly if not disrespectfully in islam” 6. why did you choose the rating you did for "muslims are intolerant of other religions.” 7. have you ever analyzed a narrative case study for a college course before? a) yes b) no 8. how would you describe the learning experience of analyzing a narrative case study? a) very useful or interesting b) interesting or useful c) somewhat interesting or useful d) neither interesting or useful e) definitely not interesting or useful please describe what the learning experience meant to you. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 42 9. if you completed the case study assignment, how many hours did you devote to this assignment from beginning to end? a) 1-3 b) 4-6 c) 7-9 d) 10 or more 10. did you find value in creating your own narrative case study on islam? a) yes b) no c) did not complete the assignment please describe your experience with creating a narrative case study. appendix e interview questions sample interview questions: 1. what was your overall experience with the narrative case study assignment? 2. do you believe that completing the case study aided your understanding of the basic components of islam? u sing n arrative studies 43 3. do you recall how the following pillars of islam were present in the narrative case study: shahada (creed), salat (prayer), zakat (almsgiving), ramadan (fasting period), hajj (pilgrimage)? 4. after completing the case study, do you feel that you have changed your views of islam? 5. did you find value or personal meaning in creating your own narrative case study on the basic religious tenants of islam? if so, why? if not, why not? 6. after writing your own narrative case study on islam, did any of your preexisting beliefs or attitudes change about islam? 7. prompt for telephone interview: recently, it was reported in the news that a british prison changed the direction of its toilets to accommodate religious muslim inmates who are forbidden to face or turn their backs on their direction of prayer, which must be directed toward mecca, while using the bathroom. when hearing this news report, rush limbaugh responded on his national radio program, "what do they do on an airplane? go to the cockpit and say, 'i got some box cutters, and if you don't turn this airplane 45 degrees for the next two minutes, i'm going to hijack you? c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 44 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word building new identities in teacher preparation for inclusive education in ghana.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x building new identities in teacher preparation for inclusive education in ghana joseph a. agbenyega monash univeristy and prosper k. deku university of cape coast, ghana citation agbenyega, j. & deku, p. (2011). building new identities in teacher preparation for inclusive education in ghana. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract “we want our classrooms to be just and caring, full of various conceptions of the good. we want them to be articulate, with the dialogue involving as many persons as possible, opening to one another, opening to the world” (greene 1993 as cited in nieto & bode, 2008). these words sum up inclusive education as a multifaceted practice that deals with value and belief systems, invites and celebrates diversity and difference arising from family background, social class, gender, language, socio-economic background, cultural origin or ability with human rights and social justice at its core. in this paper we reflect critically on current pedagogical practices in ghana in relation to inclusive education. using a critical post-colonial discursive framework the paper takes up the challenge to problematise the existing pedagogical practices, which are intensely oppressive. it examines the impact of colonial and cultural practices (beliefs, values, norms) on teaching and learning, using data obtained from three focus groups with 21 student teachers, a total of 42 hours of non-participant observation of their classroom teaching and existing research commentaries. we found that current pedagogical practices are prescriptive, mechanistic, and do not value student diversity and different learning styles. we conclude with new directions for teacher education programs in ghana that value and celebrate diversity, and difference. keywords: ghana, inclusion, teacher preparation about the author(s) author: joseph a. agbenyega affiliation: monash university address: department of early childhood education, faculty of education monash university, mcmahons road peninsula campus, frankston email: joseph. agbenyega@monash.edu biographical information: dr. joseph s. agbenyega is currently a lecturer in inclusive education and teacher professional inquiry in the department of early childhood education in monash university, australia. he has served on the victorian state department of education and early childhood development workforce advisory board in 2010 and is currently a member of the international inclusive research expert panel and victorian curriculum and assessment authority early childhood advisory board. author: prosper deku affiliation: university of cape coast, ghana biographical information: mr prosper deku is a senior lecturer in inclusive education at the department of educational foundations at the university of cape coast, ghana. he was a former head of the department of early childhood education in the same university. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 4 building new identities in teacher preparation for inclusive education in ghana in ghana, government and teacher training institutional initiatives have aimed to contribute to the quality design and conduct of preservice teacher education, and inclusive teaching (amedeker, 2005; anamuah-mensah, n.d.; republic of ghana, 2002). this paper aims to contribute to the knowledge base for the design and implementation of preservice teacher education to enhance teachers’ professional knowledge and identity to support diverse learners’ needs. the paper draws on data obtained from 21 preservice teachers in three focus groups, 42 hours of non-participant observation of these teachers’ professional placement experience, public commentaries and previous research to highlight the issues associated with inclusive teaching and learning in ghana. using a critical post-colonial discursive framework, the paper highlights the need to construct new teacher knowledge and identity forms for inclusive education to be successful in ghana. a critical post-colonial discursive framework there is no space in this paper to provide a comprehensive account on a critical postcolonial discursive framework; therefore, we present key components of this theoretical framework to guide our analysis. historically and intellectually, post-colonial theory deals with the examination of the impact and continuing legacy of the european conquest, colonisation and domination of non-european lands, peoples and cultures (mcleod, 2000). integral to this is a critical examination and analysis of the inherent ideas of european superiority over noneuropean peoples and cultures that such imperial colonisation implies (childs & williams, 1997). post-colonial work also seeks to uncover the debilitating effects of such ideas on both the self-identity of the colonised and the instability of the conceptual underpinnings of the colonizers, for instance, the role of representation in establishing and perpetuating such notions inclusive education in ghana 5 of european superiority (ashcroft, griffiths, & tiffin, 1989, 1998; childs & williams, 1997). dirlik (1994) and slemon (1990) present three reference points of post-colonial theory: a literal description of conditions in formerly colonial societies; a description of a global condition after the period of colonialism; and a description of discourse informed by an epistemological orientation. in this paper, we draw on the third reference point to critically examine and analyse discursively, how information, knowledge, belief and value systems are structured to create dominating meaning for everyday school practices. our main framing of critical post-colonial theory in this analysis is a gradual disengagement with the colonial experience of pedagogy not necessarily the foreign but also local forms that are dominating, exclusive and elitist with little accommodation for students’ creative thinking in school and teacher training institutions. we used post-colonial theory as a pathway towards exploring the complexities of teacher identity, policy dimensions, inclusive education and the constructs that maintain or uphold the current pedagogical system in ghana. we believe that a critical post-colonial analysis of pedagogical archetypes in ghana offers possibilities for arguing for educational and pedagogical change, and for supporting social and educational inclusion. true change that supports inclusion must start from teacher training institutions (mclaren, 2007). teacher identity studies on teacher identity formation have identified teaching as a complex process of socialization (carrington, deppeler, & moss, 2010; murrell, 2001; proweller & mitchener, 2004; wenger, 1998). with this complexity is the tension between philosophy of teaching underpin by the teacher’s self (values, beliefs, behaviours) which influences what is taught, the policy and curriculum, and the structural constraints of school ethos (goodson, 1992; helms, 1998). teacher identity development and change is shaped by the interrelationship between personal current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 6 and experience, and professional knowledge linked to the teaching environment, students, curriculum and culture of the school (proweller & mitchener, 2004). according to proweller and mitchener (2004), “early functionalist frameworks dominating research on teacher socialization provided linear models of teacher identity development and change” (p. 1045). fullan (1993) argues, ”the way that teachers are trained, the way that schools are organized, the way that the educational hierarchy operates, and the way that education is treated by political decision makers results in a system that is more likely to retain the status quo than to change” (p. 3, italics in the original). lortie as far back as 1975 posited that the school as a society shapes and alters the teacher, reconstructs teacher socialization more in terms of structural accommodation than individual agency. agency here implies giving opportunity to learners to produce themselves in the world of their learning, to socially interact and reflect back through the independent behaviours of their interaction and knowledge they have produced. without agency teacher development practices remain traditional, and “legitimate and institutionalize dominant beliefs and values; a process that both undermines critical thinking as a democratic educational and social practice” (armstrong, 2006, p. 8). however, new theoretical insights into strong and effective teacher professional identify formation relevant for inclusive education have highlighted the importance of multidimensional framings within interrelationships and community (britzman, 1991; munby & russell, 1994) and professional knowledge linked to the teaching environment, students, curriculum, policy and ethos of the school (hargreaves, 1994). what does inclusive education involve? inclusive education is “a process intended to respond to students’ diversity by increasing their participation and reducing exclusion within and from education” (unesco, 2009 p.1). this definition considers inclusive education beyond disability issues and includes quality inclusive education in ghana 7 teaching, the attendance, involvement and achievement of all students, especially those who, for different reasons, are excluded or at risk of being marginalized (unesco, 2009). our own understanding and concept of inclusive education intersects with established multifaceted scholarship that deals with value and belief system, invites and celebrates diversity and difference arising from family background, social class, gender, language, socio-economic background, cultural origin or ability with human rights and social justice at its core. thus far, our definition is grounded in gardner and kelly’s (2008) view that educators must “…foster learning environments that are integrally attentive to issues of meaning-making, critical reflection, social justice, diversity, care, collaboration, and community” (p. 1). therefore, teachers who promote inclusive education are caring. they consider a school as a community, value good interpersonal and personal relationships and create optimum learning opportunities for all students (lindsay, 2003; sweetland, 2008). inclusive education requires something more than the binary divide between teachers as the givers of knowledge and the students as receivers (freire, 1973). freire (1998) posits, … our relationship with the learners demands that we respect them and demands equally that we be aware of the concrete conditions of their world, the conditions that shape them. to try to know the reality that our students live is a task that educational practice imposes on us: without this, we have no access ‘to the way they think, so only with great difficulty can we perceive what and how they know (p. 58). this affirms that positive attitudes from the whole school community and changes to the concept of pedagogy, structure and policy are perpetuities for successful inclusion (elkins & grimes, 2009; hooker, 2008; loreman, 2007; peterson, 2004; sweetland, 2008). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 8 in relation to inclusive practice student achievement can be compromised unless teacher training programmes change course to embrace a new wave of pedagogical practice that value all learners (carrington, deppeler, & moss, 2010). learning to teach in an inclusive setting is a highly complex and dynamic activity, and much to do with context that uses a ‘whole school approach.’ a whole school approach to inclusive education involves using multiple strategies that have a unifying purpose and reflect a common set of values. it requires that policy makers, teacher educators, teachers parents, students, and the community working together to create education environment that promotes equal opportunity for learning and wellbeing on social and emotional levels (avramidis, 2005; elkins & grimes, 2009; fullan, 2007; peterson, 2004). while we cannot claim a definitive form of inclusive pedagogy an attempt can be made to stir up a rich and diverse knowledge base that informs the preparation of teachers for inclusive education. the education policy framework the first post-independence policy initiative in ghana to provide a comprehensive equal access to education for all children was the 1961 education act, which sought to provide a free, universal and compulsory basic education (of 6 years duration) for all children from 6 years of age. the act mandated that: every child who has attained the school going age as determined by the minister shall attend a course of instruction as laid down by the minister in a school recognised for the purpose by the minister (ges, 2004, p. 2). this act was followed by a free compulsory universal basic education (fcube) policy which was the ministry of education’s response to the 1992 fourth republican constitution of ghana article 39 (2) which states: inclusive education in ghana 9 the government shall, within two years of parliament first meets after coming into force of this constitution draw up a programme for implementation within the following ten years, for the provision of free, compulsory and universal basic education (gov, 1992, p. 40). in line with this the special education division of ges developed a policy in 2004 that sought to adhere to the challenges of marginalization, segregation and inequality that students with additional needs experience in ghanaian schools. essential components of the policy outlining inclusive initiatives were presented at the international conference on education in geneva in 2004. these included: the mandating of special education division of ges to carry out policies that will ensure the social inclusion and quality education for children with disabilities; the provision of equal educational opportunities for children with special needs at pre-university levels to promote access and participation, quality and inclusion; and the mobilization of financial and human resources towards the provision of educational opportunities for children with special needs and its efforts towards inclusive education in ghana (ges, 2006, pp. 14 & 16). the ministry of education’s strategic plan (2003 – 2015) envisions the achievement of quality inclusive education system by 2015 (ges, 2003; hooker, 2008; kuyini, 2010). this is reflected in the support provided by both government and ngos such as voluntary services overseas (vso), sight savers international (ssi), and united states agency for international development (usaid) in inclusive education in the last decade (agbenyega, 2005; kuyini, 2010). the government also initiated pilot inclusive education programs in 2003 in 30 schools in central, eastern and greater accra regions with the aim of rolling out the outcomes nation-wide (see agbenyega, 2005 for details). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 10 the ghanaian persons with disability (pwd) act 2006 reinforced the rights of (pwd) and gave the impetus for their inclusiveness in education and all aspects of social life in ghana. although the policies demonstrate the government of ghana’s commitment to equity for all children, researching from insider perspectives, we would argue that ghana’s education system is essentially arbitrary, dualist in nature with good education policies on one side and poor implementations on the other side (avoke & avoke, 2004; kuyini & desai, 2006, 2009; ocloo & subbey, 2008; yarboi-tetteh, 2008). whereas the education policies advocate for inclusive teaching, we found through our observation that curriculum and assessment requirements are essentially prescriptive and rigid, leaving little room for teachers to modify it to meet individual student’s needs. the main concern for teachers was to finish the curriculum as stipulated by policy. post-colonial theory provides a framework which helps to address questions of why so many curriculum practices appear still so far away from reaching or even recognising the goals of individual differences. the inclusive elements of the education policy thus remain on paper without its real meaning being experience in schools. a post-colonial view of the policy-practice divide as it currently exists would see it as an outdated dysfunctional colonial institution in many ways, including the way in which it promotes inclusive policy on one hand and a curriculum steeped in the traditional assumption that the highly structured examination driven and teacher centred approach is the best. it is argued that the traditional school almost inevitably promotes and reinforces socio-economic inequity (hickling-hudson, 2002; ladwig, 2000) because they are unsuitable for meeting the learning needs of diverse student populations but rather drill the bodies of students into a regimented and stultified approach to learning through regimented curriculum (tait, 2000). post-colonial educators argue that it is vitally necessary to teach inclusive education in ghana 11 students to critique policies and practices that reproduce privilege and dominance for some children, and disadvantage others (dei & shahjahan, 2008). current teacher education in ghana teacher training in ghana has a checkered history yet space will not allow us to present a detailed historical account in this paper. currently, teacher training is offered at two types of institutions in ghana, teacher training colleges and universities. prior to 2004, the training colleges offered a 3 year post-secondary teachers certificate a. due to low teacher salary levels compared to other sectors of the economy, students who do not qualify to enter public universities mostly enrolled in the training colleges, and some brilliant but needy students who could not afford university fees also find their way into the training colleges. the training colleges pay allowances to the preservice teachers as a form of motivation. as part of a national improvement strategy to raise teachers’ entry level skills the 38 public and three private post secondary teacher training colleges, which formerly offer a three-year ‘certificate a’ to teachers were upgraded in 2004 to offer diploma courses. students spend two years on campus learning theory and in the third year, are assigned to classroom mentor teachers to undertake a one year professional placement while they continue to study through a distance mode. education studies, cultural studies, physical education, english, basic science, basic mathematics, ghanaian language and basic agricultural science form core course components of study with little emphasis on inclusive education. ghana education service (ges) exercises supervisory responsibilities over the work of the teacher training colleges, and qualified teachers from the programs are eligible to teach in primary and junior secondary schools. primary school teachers generally teach all subjects in a class, and junior secondary teachers teach subjects according to their specializations but this is not always the case in areas with teacher shortage. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 12 the university of education, winneba (uew) and the university of cape coast are both public universities and provide university level training for teachers, awarding diplomas and degrees. currently, uew has replaced the four-week per year teaching practice with a new programme that seeks to enhance the efficiency of teacher-trainees. this involves teachertrainees spending the final year of their training period out of campus to undertake teaching practice in selected schools with the aim of infusing greater professionalism into the students before they graduate. professional placement is supervised by the university lecturers (amedeker, 2005). the university of cape coast is currently reviewing its current structure of practicum experience. there are departments of special education in both universities that teach courses in inclusive education and an introduction to special education as a core unit for all students undertaking education related courses for a semester. the pedagogical landscape this section theorizes pedagogical practices in ghana. by using a critical post-colonial discursive lens we examined the power dynamics inherent in ghanaian pedagogical practices and histories represented in the education system. this approach enabled us to explore the complexities of oppressive pedagogy (freire, 1973) so as to become emancipated of the embedded colonial pedagogical archetypes. emancipation is foundational for developing a new pedagogical landscape that values and supports all learners. perhaps the major challenges facing teacher education in both the training colleges and the universities are the approach to pedagogy and entry level scores for admission into the teacher training colleges. in an international teacher education conference in 2008 in ghana, prof. joseph kingsley aboagye, director of the institute of education of the university of cape coast, (ucc), advocated strongly for a review of the entry requirement for admission into inclusive education in ghana 13 ghana’s teacher training colleges to be raised from aggregate 24 to 22 or better to make it comparable to what pertains in the universities. he indicated that some of the students admitted into the teacher training colleges were sometimes of sub-quality standard (yarboi-tetteh, 2008). similarly, prof. emmanuel adow obeng, the former vice chancellor of ucc, posited that there is absence of coherent policies in teachers’ professional training and development, and content of many teacher training programmes lacked reflective practice, active learning, innovation, creativity and partnership building. pervasive of these are severe disjuncture between the training provided and the realities of the classroom, schools, their communities and the world of work affect teaching quality and learning for all (yarboi-tetteh, 2008). as some of the teachers stated in focus groups: the issue is the lack of support systems for pre-service teachers in training colleges or universities. if you struggle with academic work the only option available for you is expulsion from the academic program. the moment you enter you are on your own unless you have a critical friend who can support you…because rigid examinations are more favoured than any other forms of assessment, it makes teaching and learning mechanistic, prescriptive, we don’t think this support inclusion (transcript, 2/10/2009). this situation depicts the student teachers as colonised bodies with limited opportunities to thrive in learning environment. we observed similar practices in the student-teachers’ professional placement, they were subjective, rigid in their pedagogy without provision for individual differences. foucalt’s (1977) point illustrates this more vividly: the body now serves as an instrument or intermediary: if one intervenes upon it to imprison it, or make it work, it is in order to deprive the individual of a liberty that is current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 14 regarded both as a right and as a property…now the body is caught up in a system of constraints….obligations and prohibitions (p. 11). while the gloomy picture of the lack of support and regimented assessment practices are giving way to generic assessment practices such as portfolios in many advanced education systems these students are still caught up in the transcendental pedagogy of colonialism. similarly, a ghana education service report card on inclusion found that critical challenges facing educational inclusion highlighted curriculum inflexibility and inadequate pre-/posttraining in additional education needs for regular teachers (ges, 2004, p. 15). further evidence suggests that a large number of children are in school as a result of fcube policy but a significant number do not stay to finish and those who stay on produce poor results because of the hostile school communities, poor teaching, regular corporal punishment and the lack of care expected in inclusive classrooms (agbenyega, 2006; dei & shahjahan, 2008; kuyini, & desai, 2007). it appears the form of oppressive pedagogy in ghana has its roots in her colonial history and traditional cultures. colonialism under the former imperial power (great britain) was based on a social and economic construction of "otherness", a conscious oppression, exclusion and marginalisation of native ghanaians from the white minority. by this construction ghanaians were considered unequal to their former colonial masters, and consequently, were subjected to master-servant relationships accompanied with severe sanctions and punishment. formal schooling, which started as a colonial endeavour in the castles, the symbols of white supremacy, adopted oppressive pedagogical practices. the traditional ghanaian system, which operates on the culture of submissive absolutism, reinforces the oppression experience through colonialism (deppeler, moss, & agbenyega, 2008). inclusive education in ghana 15 for instance, the traditional kinship system in ghana resonates around subject-master ideology. it precludes mutually constituted relationships and legitimises authoritative relationships. a king must exercise his authority over his subjects to demonstrate how powerful he is. invariably, it can be explained that the dualist experience (culture and colonialism) were precursors to the formation of excessive control identities and the ways in which teaching and learning are currently legitimated and practiced in ghana. without the experiences of mutually constituted learning it would be difficult for an educator to do same for his/her learners. research points to the direction that the ghanaian learning spaces (from preschool to the university level) depict a hegemonic colonial rationalist way of organizing educational practice (agbenyega, 2006; deppeler, moss, & agbenyega, 2008). researchers of inclusive education practices in ghana consistently found that despite the majority of teachers’ support for inclusive education, they had limited knowledge of inclusive practices and their approaches to pedagogy remain punitive (agbenyega, 2006; deppeler, moss, & agbenyega, 2008; kuyini & desai, 2007, 2009). for example our observation of pedagogy during field works in some primary schools show: some of the children with tears in their eyes so we asked the teacher, what is wrong with the children? the teacher replied, i caned all of them…i taught them well then i gave them work to do but they all failed… it is shocking…they don’t know anything so i caned them. i am going to cane them again for this disgrace. we saw most of the kids very timid, some unable to express themselves for fear of making mistakes that could attract punishment from the teacher (field observation, 5/11/2009). this is a demonstration that the colonial-culturally blended pedagogical practice is still ripe in the ghanaian classrooms. by culture we imply, the self in relation with others to which current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 16 the individual belongs. this self is made up of beliefs, values and behaviours. by colonial we mean anything that is imposed. thus colonial-culturally blended pedagogical practice is pedagogical practice that imposes beliefs, values, behaviours and knowledge on learners. in noninclusive learning spaces learners’ voices and agency are submerged in the authoritative pedagogy of teachers (deppeler, moss, & agbenyega, 2008; kanpol, 1994; mprah, 2008). the colonial pedagogical practice considers the learning relationship as simply a ‘novice’ receiving knowledge from a higher authority. other comments made by the classroom teachers during focus groups are quite illuminating of the power dynamics they experienced during their professional preparation: the entire university system operates on the false belief that we the students are ignorant and that the professor is the one who has knowledge and is the one to whom everybody should listen…if you question a lecturer that might be your license to losing your student status or your certificate because… you just need to keep your cool and salute them if you want to guarantee your successful exit (teachers’ focus groups). mprah (2008), a ghanaian quoting paulo freire’s baking concept of education to illustrate the pedagogical situation in ghana states: the teacher teaches and the students are taught, the teacher thinks and the students are thought about, the teacher knows everything and the student knows nothing, the teacher talks and the students listen and meekly, of course. the teacher is the subject of the learning process, while the students are mere objects. the teacher confuses the authority of knowledge with his or her own professional authority, which is set in opposition to the freedom of the students (p. 1). inclusive education in ghana 17 it appears from this extract that teachers often privilege their position over their learners through a replication of their previous experiences. because their own training silenced them similarly, they are also likely to silence their students. it can be argued that preservice teachers who form their identities through the experience of tyranny and exclusion are likely to accept that tyranny is good to be meted out to other learners. thus, the ‘colonial’ should not be perceived simply as only ‘foreign and alien’, but as broadly to imply any pedagogic behaviour that is ‘imposed’ and ‘dominating’ (dei & asgharzadeh, 2001; dei, & opini, 2007; foucault, 1980). a colonised pedagogy considers teaching as a mere collection of strategies of what works and what does not work for the teacher; the authoritative knower must pass on what works to his or her students whether that knowledge is contextually relevant or not. further focus group comments from preservice teachers reflect this: during a lecture we all sat quiet as the lecturer dictated her notes on language acquisition…the only time she paused was when she thought there was a difficult term she needed to explain to us... she went on like that and everybody was silent. i took the courage to ask a question, madam, i read in another book which contested noam chomsky’s version of innate language abilities, what is your…i did not finished the statement when she attacked me verbally…are you here to teach me or who is in control here? it went on for some five minutes but i was the looser as my fate was decided by the final grade that was awarded me for what was considered challenging the lecturer’s authority (transcript, 2/10/2009). this account further confirms the practice of pedagogy as simply the transmission of information through fear. it is an approach that rejects knowledge construction through mutual meaning making (vygotsky, 1987; daniels, 2001). such approaches to pedagogy current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 18 neither make connections with learners nor engage them so that they want to be at school. it mirrors the banking concept of education where knowledge is perceived as a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing (freire, 1973). it demonstrates a departure from a school as a community of individuals learning and sharing knowledge together (rogoff, 1994). in inclusive learning, all students, teachers and policy makers belong to the school community and therefore, value the differences embodied in various elements of the school (keddie & churchill, 2005). colonial form of schooling on the other hand, considers schooling as simply receiving knowledge from a superior authority for replication (dahlberg & moss, 2005). if the pedagogical landscape of the ghanaian schooling systems privilege teachers’ authority and knowledge over learners then individuals with learning difficulties will be further subjugated. dewey (1938) cautions that: education is essentially a social process. this quality is realised in the degree in which individuals form a community group…as the most mature member of the group, [the teacher] has a peculiar responsibility for the conduct of the interactions and intercommunications which are the very life of the group as a community…when education is based upon experience and educative experience is seen to be a social process,…the teacher loses the position of external boss or dictator but takes on that of leader of group activities (pp. 65-66). dewey’s comments are consistent with rogoff’s (1994) idea of a learning community and a whole school approach where all elements of the school must be brought together to make inclusion effective (rinaldi & stuart, 2009). similarly, teacher education and pedagogy in ghana need to shift a focus from sheer transmission of knowledge to a more inclusive approach that inclusive education in ghana 19 actively involves learners in producing knowledge. this approach values active engagement where the voice of teacher trainees are valued and respected. current inclusive practices challenged traditional frameworks of pedagogy that view learners as receptacles. it embraces a new discourse of education where appropriate support is the key (loreman, 2007). given this new direction post-colonial theory signals a new interest in education, a renewed interest in the colonial legacy and its aftermath in ghana. by applying a post-colonial theory to current pedagogical practices in ghana we place centre stage the continuing implication of colonial legacy of pedagogy on inclusive education which has little changed since independence in 1957. our main framing of post-colonial theory in the analysis of teacher education in ghana is a gradual disengagement with the colonial and the aversive forms of cultural reproduction of pedagogy. teachers need a new way of thinking about educational practice as a collective social and cultural endeavour (daniels, 2001; fleer, 2006). teachers will not support inclusive education if they do not understand it. we therefore consider teacher education as the primary task in addressing the challenges facing inclusive education in ghana. reframing teacher preparation for successful inclusion in ghana we conclude this paper by proposing a new framework for teacher education in light of the presidential committee on the review of education reform in ghana which stated the objective of teacher education in ghana as the training and development of the right type of teacher who is competent, committed and dedicated who should be able to: • develop attitudes, values and dispositions that create a conducive environment; for quality teaching and learning in schools; • apply, extend and synthesise various forms of knowledge; • facilitate learning and motivate individual learners to fully realise their potential; current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 20 • promote inclusive education at all levels; • adequately prepare the learner to participate fully in the national development effort (anamuah-mensah, n.d; republic of ghana, 2002). deconstructing the pedagogical experiences reported in this paper provided insights into how teacher training must be reconstructed and the factors instrumental in reshaping teacher identities or core beliefs consistent with the above statements. it appears that if current teacher preparation continues to reproduce teachers in the traditional practice of knowledge transmitters, inclusive education will be hard to achieve. teacher education in ghana needs to be infused with content that includes instructional and curricular techniques appropriate for the development of cognitive, social, cultural and physical needs of diverse learners in the inclusive environments. the implementation must be swift, decisive and dramatic in the wake of ghana’s education reforms that characterised the education enterprise. the pedagogical archetypes in practice in current teacher training institutions and schools in ghana lacked the complexity of teaching required in inclusive classrooms. effective teachers know their role and do effective teaching, and this begins with effective training (fullan, 2007; norwich, 2000). teacher training institutions in ghana need to design inspiring preservice and inservice programs that engage learners in problem-based learning communities, transforming their understanding and experience of learning, teaching and inclusive practice. current approaches should inspire transformational learning in student teachers by structuring learning opportunities and experiences that respond to the student’s home culture. there should be both a solid foundation in the course content, and its application to problem solving in classrooms and society. course development should be based on these core beliefs: • vibrant learning communities; inclusive education in ghana 21 • respect and a positive attitude influence learning; • a high level of content knowledge and expertise on subject matter to influence teaching; • strong and continuous support of students’ learning; and • empowerment to encourage students to become critical thinkers who can take risks to question normalisation and marginalisation processes which will lead to broader understandings of the broader historical, cultural, political and educational context in which they are part of (curran, 2007). vibrant learning communities. inclusive education is full of complexities in regard to policy and implementation. the course units in teacher training should lead students to identify and understand these complexities, and find practical ways of implementing inclusion practice in their schools. an important way to do this is to make learning spaces vibrant communities that allow preservice teachers to reflect on their own experiences of inclusive education (mclaren, 2007) and consider why inclusion matters and for whom it is important. they would then reflect on how their own experience of inclusion in education and learning compares with what they now believe inclusion should be about and look like. course units should incorporate requirements for students to conduct research as part of their ongoing learning and assessment which they must discuss in groups. teaching methods and teacher behaviours that are needed to facilitate context specific quality inclusive education should form core components of course delivery. through this approach, students are not only learning content but are also building their identities as effective teachers with extensive knowledge in using research to inform practice. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 22 respect and positive attitude influence learning. the extracts provided in this paper demonstrated that colonial pedagogy does not respect students and as such is counterproductive to inclusive education. for a transformation to occur pedagogical practices in ghana must be based on respect and positive attitude as these play important role in students’ survival in their academic learning (keddie & churchill, 2005; rinaldi & stuart, 2009). teachers cannot motivate diverse learners without earning their respect. this can be achieved by designing the professional development course structures that take learner’s feelings, needs and thoughts into consideration (rogoff, pradise, arauz, correa-chavez, & angelillo, 2003). for example, teaching and learning must encourage open discussion both in lectures and tutorials on what qualities and capabilities the students want to attain at the end of their qualifications. this implies that ghanaian teacher educators must listen non-judgmentally and non-defensively, and allow students to come out with innovative suggestions other than those provided by their lecturers. a high level of knowledge and expertise on subject matter influences teaching. research shows that the pedagogy of talking, where the lecturer dominates the teaching and learning situation, dampens students’ enthusiasm and leads to exclusion (dahlberg & moss, 2005). for this reason, the nature of the material to be delivered to preservice and inservice teachers must be based upon constructivist learning incorporating a community of learners approach (rogoff, 1994; rogoff et al., 2003) whereby real world, classroom, family and societal problems are incorporated into developing course units. the constructivist approach to learning derives its name and power from the belief that knowledge is best constructed when the learner actively interacts with the environment and, hence, constructs meaning from that experience (vygotsky, 1987; daniels, 2001; hausfather, 2001) implying that learning should be meaningful inclusive education in ghana 23 and related to real life situations. educators following the constructivist perspective base their instruction on what the students already know as a foundation (duhany & duhany, 2000) and active learning is an important facet. when students are actively involved in the lesson, they learn and retain information (harris & graham, 1996). according to bruner (1997), the teaching of theoretical concepts must be inextricably linked to its application. this kind of teacher training is required if teachers are to assist all children in inclusive settings to apply their learning to a useful purpose. similarly, prospective teachers must understand the relationship between the ideas they are taught and the applications they will encounter. one way to develop this skill is to arrange for this connection to be made in the context of real life situations (hughes, 2006). such learning in context will provide the preservice teachers the opportunity of questioning what they do or think (brookfield, 1995). it is during this process of inquiry, thinking about their practice that teacher transformation and new identity forms occur (hughes, 2006). the community of learners approach (rogoff, 1994) ensures that the lecturer and the students have no fixed position but where everybody is a learner and an educator. there should be a focus on setting interesting but challenging assessment tasks. students can be motivated for learning through assigning tasks that are neither too easy nor too difficult, and which incorporates research activity for individual or group investigation. to counter students’ apathy to engagement and learning, rigorous steps and time must be spent to develop a well-organized unit that is integrated, and incorporates real life situations and events into assignment tasks. teacher professional preparation should aim at liberating the individual and must move away from unidirectional to a community of learners’ relationship (rogoff, 1994). this calls for collaborative teaching and dialogicity the essence of education as freedom in practice (freire, 1973). this interactive approach is important for working with varying learning styles. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 24 preservice teachers need to know from the onset what they are learning, why they need to learn it and what is expected of them as well as how this applies in real classroom or world context. to facilitate the preparation in a more unified fashion, the field experience would have to be constructed and take place in classrooms and settings that are inclusive and representative of the range of students one would expect to teach after completing training (fleer, 2008; hedegaard, 2008). further, field experience would have to be structured to provide regular and consistent opportunities for reflection since experience alone would not be enough to clarify the knowledge and meanings derived from practice (pugach, 1996). this type of reflection forms the basis by which students can question what they think or do (brookfield, 1995). constructive timely feedback. quality inclusive teachers are those that provide prompt and timely response on students’ work. research suggests that timely constructive feedback can be a powerful tool for learning ad contributor to building student’s identity (black & william, 1998). feedback is critical to preservice and novice teachers’ professional development. newmann and wehlage's (1983) writes, “the professional cultures into which new teachers are inducted are critically important because the early years not only confirm new teachers' choice of occupation in life, but also lay a base for future professional development” (p.255). we should not assume that full blown teachers emerge from preservice programs capable of implementing all that they learnt from their professional preparation programs (russell & mcpherson 2001), which suggested that, failure to acknowledge the effects of experience and further professional development on professional growth could result in teachers losing their core identities as good teachers. thus, frequent, timely, positive feedback that supports preservice teachers' beliefs that they are either doing well or what they need to do to be successful in their programs should form a core component of the teacher training programs. inclusive education in ghana 25 reflections for professional development. of particular importance is personal measurement of preservice teacher’s own work. many ghanaian teachers know a lot about children with additional needs however, they do not incorporate reflection in their teaching. the lack of reflection about children with additional needs can push teachers into ineffective programming, rejection and abuse (allen, 2000, horn, 2000). thus reflective practice needs to form a core component of preservice teacher education in ghana. our analysis demonstrate a pattern of schooling that reflects ongoing teacher education models based on what freire (1973) described as oppressive educational practice and creates further barriers to inclusive education that continue to reinforce a technical approach to the professional practices of teaching (giroux, 1981). carrington, deppeler and moss (2010) argue strongly that “if we want to progress education reform and change, then the importance of value positions that are grounded by social and cultural beliefs about education, learning and difference need to be acknowledged” (p. 1). a critical post-colonial framework requires that teachers use selfreflection to form their identities through communities of practice that promote active and critical dialogue, and questioning of historical and traditional notions about education and pedagogy. kumashiro and ngo (2007) writes succinctly, “anti-oppressive education requires us to be continuously reflexive about how any of our perspectives on teaching and learning are partial, necessarily so” (p. xix). to confront oppression involves teacher educators and teachers discerning and critically positioning themselves in ways that allow them to actively question ideologies about how professional beliefs and knowledge are understood and enacted in professional preparation and practice. as teachers reflect, construct and adopt identity positions for themselves (bucholtz & hall, 2005) that are grounded in equity and social justice transformational teaching and learning can occur (gur-ze’ev, masschelein, & blake, 2001). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 1 26 conclusion what we have discussed so far provides a framework for teacher education that prepares teachers to be responsive to individual differences. it moves beyond the mechanistic prescriptions of pedagogy and conformity expected in dominant traditional classrooms. a postcolonial teacher preparation and pedagogy applies a multilogical reasoning and meaning making that draw on individual strengths, and not on their shortcomings (kincheloe, 2008). teacher education within this theoretical space will re-position pedagogy in ghana that rejects the notion of transmission (dahlberg, moss, & pence, 1999; nsamenang, 2008). inclusive teaching does not set boundaries and or lock children into rigid categories of ‘deficits and normals’ (ashby & causton-theoharis, 2009; rossetti, ashby, arndt, chadwick, & kasahara, 2008). inclusive teaching is an ethical practice that brings to the educational table multiple ways of learning and knowing (dahlberg, moss, & pence, 1999). it is only when teachers achieve such transformations that they would no longer view different cognitive abilities in children as markers of deficiency, and need to fix them (ashby & causton-theoharis, 2009; daniels, 2001; rossetti et al., 2008). society and school systems would come to view all children as knowledgeable individuals who are developing in different cultural contexts and thus need culturally appropriate support and not criticism and punitive pedagogy that is based colonial rationality. inclusive education in ghana 27 references agbebyega, j. s. 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(2008). review entry requirement of teacher training colleges, the ghanaian times, wed, 23 jul 2008. inclusive education in ghana 37 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt visible or invisible_final volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x visible or invisible? korean high school students’ current schooling experiences in the united states bogum yoon texas woman’s university claudia haag texas woman’s university citation yoon, b. & haag, c. (2010). visible or invisible? korean high school students’ current schooling experiences in the united states. current issues in education, 13(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this qualitative study examined the current schooling experiences of eight korean high school students in the united states. by comparing and contrasting recent immigrant adolescents and 1.5/2nd generation students, the purpose of this study was to explore how their identities as koreans or korean americans were formed and shifted while they engaged with american teachers and peers in mainstream contexts. the findings suggest that even in the same ethnic group, differences were conspicuous. the newcomer group desperately wished to assimilate to mainstream culture by associating with american classmates. on the other hand, the 1.5/2nd generation group lived bi-culturally with dual identities as korean and american and shifted their identities according to their convenience. despite these differences, both of the groups suffered a similar experience by receiving unwelcome gestures from their mainstream teachers and peers: the newcomers as invisible outsiders and the 1.5/2nd generation as visible and marked outsiders. keywords: qualitative study, schooling experiences, korean students, and shifting identities. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 2 about the author(s) author: bogum yoon, ph. d affiliation: texas woman’s university address: p. o. box 425769, denton, tx 76204-5769 email: byoon@mail.twu.edu biographical information: bogum yoon, ph. d. is an associate professor in the department of reading at texas woman’s university. she has worked in the field of literacy as a teacher educator both in south korea and the united states. her research interests include teacher education on adolescent english language learners, critical literacy, cultural and social identity, and multicultural education. author: claudia haag, ph.d affiliation: texas woman’s university address: p. o. box 425769, denton, tx 76204-5769 email: chaag@mail.twu.edu biographical information: claudia haag, ph.d. is an assistant professor in the department of reading at texas woman’s university. her research interests include culturally responsive teaching practices in working with english language learners, esl and mainstream teacher collaboration, and her newest collaborative research with dr. yoon focusing on the analysis of current multicultural literature using a multicultural education framework. v isible or invisible? 3 koreans began to emigrate to the united states at the turn of the 20th century, but the majority of modern-day korean americans arrived after the passage of the immigrant reform act of 1965 (chan, 1991). in 1990, the u.s. census registered about 800,000 korean americans, but current population estimates suggest that approximately 1.08 million koreans reside in the united states (u.s. bureau of the census, 2001). the older-generation koreans were greatly diverse and they were from all segments of korean society. but most of recent korean immigrants have highly educated, urban, christian, and middle-class backgrounds (min, 1993). currently, the immigration pattern is changing. more and more korean adolescents are coming to the united states by themselves to study or coming with only one parent, leaving the other parent at home, who usually acts in a financially supportive role (kim & greene, 2003). it is predictable that these students will have tremendous difficulties in adjusting to american educational systems and curricula that are different from those of south korea (yoon, 2009). along with language barriers, the high school korean students, who construct and reconstruct their identities in the mainstream culture, may also experience racial discrimination and intergroup conflicts and tensions (chiu & ring, 1998; goodwin, 2003). not only newcomer students, second-generation korean students may also have difficulties living in the u.s. although they may not have language difficulties like newcomer adolescents, they may struggle with dual identities as korean and american. living up to the standards of a model minority as koreans and living as americans at the same time, korean american students may be highly conscious about their dual identities. their identities as korean or korean americans will form and shift through their experiences while they interact with american teachers and classmates. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 4 in spite of the different educational backgrounds and experiences between newly arrived korean students and second-generation korean students, there has been very little research examining the identity issues of these students through their voices. simple emphasis on similarities within the korean group of students has often led teachers to overlook these students’ complicated lives in the mainstream culture and increased stereotypical beliefs about the students. it is essential to analyze the complex dimensions of the korean groups’ differences by looking at their schooling experiences and their own interpretations of identity as they navigate the u.s. school systems. the central purpose of this article is to report the difficulties and dilemmas that eight korean adolescents experienced when they engaged with american teachers and peers in the mainstream culture. one overarching research question guided this study: how do high school students of korean backgrounds who have different lengths of stay in the united states articulate their engagement with school, experiences in courses, as well as their experiences with peers, teachers, and other school personnel? by comparing and contrasting the schooling experiences of the recent adolescent immigrants and second-generation students, this study explored how their identities as koreans or korean americans were formed and altered. theoritcal perspectives this study which focuses on the identities of the newly arrived korean students and second-generation korean students draws on davidson’s (1996) identity concept: “presentation of self in a matrix of social relationships – a pattern of social assertion that significant others recognize and come to expect” (p.2). this concept includes that identity is formed and shifts in accordance with the relationships among people in a changing society. v isible or invisible? 5 davidson’ identity notion, which emphasizes social relationships, is better understood when we look at positioning theory. positioning theory (harré & langenhove, 1999) is defined as “the study of local moral orders as ever-shifting patterns of mutual and contestable rights and obligations of speaking and acting” (p. 1). by paying attention to how people speak and act, this theory focuses on people’s discourse and intentional acts. “positioning” is a metaphorical term that was originally introduced to analyze interpersonal encounters from a discursive viewpoint (hollway, 1984, cited in tan & moghddam, 1999). it has a specific meaning in the analysis of interactions between people. in the technical sense, a position has an effect on the possibilities of interpersonal and intergroup action. positioning is relational and reciprocal. when people interact with each other, assignments such as rights, duties and obligations are involved. in other words, positioning happens. for instance, if a person is positioned as powerful, this person is given a legitimate right to command and demand obligation. however, if a person is positioned as powerless, the person is not given a legitimate right to do so. thus, there is always positioning between people. positioning has the characteristics of a power relation. tan and moghaddam (1999) discuss the positioning process of power by using the example of the boys who participated in sherif et. al.’s study (1961) that focused on intergroup conflict and cooperation. an informative incident happened among the boys. a boy took a knife to cut a watermelon for his group, but some of the members stopped him from doing it. another boy, who was highly regarded by the group, took the knife and cut the watermelon and said, “you guys who yell the loudest get yours last.” in this example, the second boy was positioning himself as one claiming the right to cut the watermelon. he was positioning himself as having the authority to select his own criterion by which the watermelon pieces were to be distributed. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 6 in positioning himself as the one with the power to be group leader, he was positioning the other members as followers. however, the second boy’s positioning as the group leader was put to an end by another boy, who said, “you’re not the boss.” the example above indicates that positioning is reciprocal. initial positioning can be challenged, and the speakers thereby repositioned (harré & langenhove, 1993). the boys negotiated positions and repositioning was formed. if nobody in the group had challenged the second boy’s claims to be the leader, they would have allowed him to take a privileged position and accordingly, would have allowed him more rights to exercise his power over the other members. the incident illustrates that there is a person to be positioned as powerful as long as there is a person to be positioned as powerless. as shown in the example, positioning is an active and discursive practice rather than a stable one. people position others and the others position them back. while positioning and repositioning each other, power relation is always embedded in action. as harré and langenhove (1999) argued, positioning theory is a theory which allows people to reflect on many different aspects of social life in relation to people’s interactions. they emphasize that it should not be treated as a “general theory” which calls for a deterministic application to several subject matters. it can be applicable to research and theories regarding reflection on human relations. because of positioning theory’s reflective and applicable characteristics, it is often used when people understand the relationship between identity and learning. miller (2000) conducted studies of several asian immigrant students who recently arrived in an australian high school. the study illustrated how the students were positioned by the dominant anglo-australian teachers and peers. some students mentioned that they did not like to speak because of their v isible or invisible? 7 different accents which were not recognized as legitimate under the mainstream power. the australian classmates simply did not talk to the asian students. failing to be accepted by the mainstream members, the students remained silent without challenging them. repositioning did not occur in this context. this example illustrates how learning, identity, and power are related. it implies how the dominant power affects students’ learning and identity. literature review a vast amount of literature discusses minority groups in terms of ethnicity, race, culture, and education in the united states (banks, 2004; brown 1994; sleeter & grant, 1988). however, the voices of asian americans including koreans are almost absent in the discourse of race because the discussion of race is generally framed in terms of black and white (asher, 2001; s. j. lee, 1996). although there are several reasons why asian voices are excluded from the discourse of race, such as their relatively small population when compared to african american and hispanic people, the most conspicuous reason is that asians have been viewed as “model minorities” in the united states (sleeter, 1993). only successes by asian students have been depicted and praised in american societies. lee (1996) argues that this minority stereotype has been used as a hegemonic device which makes it possible to maintain the dominance of whites in the racial hierarchy by diverting attention away from racial inequality and by setting standards for how minorities should behave. the stereotype has been used in order to silence the charges of racial injustice made by african americans and other minorities. several studies (fu, 1995; s. j. lee, 1996; li, 2002; nozaki, 2000), which have attempted to debunk the stereotype of model minority asian students, discuss the differences among the minority groups and between individuals in the same group. for example, s. j. lee’s c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 8 (1996) study suggests that only korean immigrant students identified themselves as koreans, compared to other asian youth who identified themselves as asian or asian american. korean students thought of themselves as being different from all other asian americans in order to distance themselves from southeast asians who they believe received special financial aids from the government. a notable point in such a discussion is that, in spite of korean students’ efforts to distance themselves from southeast asian students, non-asian students and teachers did not recognize any differences. they saw asians as one homogeneous group and lumped koreans together with all other asians. the study suggests that no matter how hard asian groups attempt to differentiate themselves, the dominant group does not acknowledge the distinctness. yeh and inose’s study (2002) also suggests differences between asian students by exploring east-asian immigrant students’ cultural adjustment. the study suggests that, compared to their chinese and japanese counterparts, korean immigrant students have greater cultural adjustment difficulties. one important finding shows that korean immigrants tend to utilize religious practices as a coping strategy more than chinese and japanese students do. attending church allows not only for worship but also for a place to socialize and network with one another. the studies illustrated above explain some of ways korean students differ from other asian students. the participants in the studies were mostly second generation, or 1.5 generation those who came to the u.s. when they were elementary or middle school (kim, 1993). therefore, it is not known, through these studies, whether newly arrived korean students have similar characteristics as earlier generations of korean students do in terms of their identity formation and adjustment in the united states. v isible or invisible? 9 although there are lack of studies focusing on korean high school students’ identity issues, several scholars’ (e.g., goodwin, 2003; kibria, 2002; mehra, 2003; palmer, 2001; g. park, 2001; vyas, 2001) post-modernistic approach to examine minority groups’ identity are important here. for instance, gilbert park (2001) examines korean american college students’ ethnic sense of selves. his findings suggest that the students’ ethnic identities do not simply equal their national ancestry or origin. the students identify themselves by using different labels in different situations. it shows that the students’ ethnic sense of selves is multidimensional and situational. identity appears to change according to different contexts. palmer’s (2001) study about korean adopted young women also suggests the complexity of identity. the students were seen to struggle with their dual identities as korean and american under the dominant group’s power. as seen in the review of literature above, the korean americans’ complex identities were discussed more in general contexts rather than centering in on specific contexts such as schools and classrooms. discussions on identity issues in contexts such as schools or classrooms in which korean adolescents engage directly with teachers and peers are missing. a focus on identity issues in these contexts is needed to help american teachers better understand korean adolescents’ complicated identity development and their different needs. method participants and contexts i, the first author, used a qualitative approach following creswell’s (1998) perspectives that emphasize the nature of research questions focusing on how or what, a detailed view of the topic, and studying individuals. among research traditions in qualitative study, i selected the method of case study (stake, 1995; merriam, 1998). the case study fits the characteristics of my c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 10 study of eight korean students, which involves in-depth, detailed description. i divided the students into two groups according to their length of stay in the united states: “the newcomer group” and “1.5/2nd generation group.” i define the newcomers as those who arrived in the united states less than two years ago and the 1.5/2nd generation group as those who were born here or have been here for more than ten years. i wanted to study whether there were any similarities or differences in the high school experiences and identity issues of the two groups. the selection criterion of participants was the length of stay in the united states. i used two different channels to recruit participants. i contacted my own children’s middle school esl teacher who was also teaching at a public high school. she helped me contact one high school student who arrived eight months ago. i also contacted several korean families who attended the same church that i attended, to find if any had high school children or knew of other korean families with high school children. along with the first student recommended by the esl teacher, the other seven students (three newly arrived students and the four second-generation students) who met the selection criteria were all contacted by me and were willing to participate in my study. the newcomer group the newcomer group’s situations are unique and different in terms of their motives for coming to the united states. specific backgrounds of the four participants are presented below, followed by some educational contexts of south korea to help readers better understand the students’ backgrounds. all of the participants’ names are pseudonyms kyung is a ninth grader in a catholic school in western new york. she came to the u.s. for the purpose of studying, and her parents stayed in south korea to run their small motel. since middle school, kyung has desperately pursued her desire to study in the u.s. by searching for v isible or invisible? 11 schools on the internet. she kept asking her parents to allow her to study abroad and finally obtained their permission. it was kyung, and not her parents, who initiated her study decisions. she is currently staying in mr. kim’s home, who is a korean immigrant. he is beginning to recruit korean students who want to study in the united states. eun, who is also in the ninth grade, is attending the same school and taking the same courses as kyung. eun is staying with her sister, a college student, who came to the united states by herself when she was in the seventh grade. eun’s father is a businessman who manufactures pesticides in south korea. her mother is a housewife. eun mentioned that her father sends almost all the money that he earns for her and her sister’s educational expenses. wook is in the tenth grade. he is also attending the same school as kyung and eun. wook is staying with his mother who came to the u.s. for graduate study at a university. after completion of her master’s program, she is planning to go back to south korea, where her husband and daughter live. wook, however, is going to stay in the u.s to continue his study at college. the three students above mentioned that they wanted to attend a public school. however, the american embassy in south korea refused to issue them visas to the united states unless they obtained private school admissions in the united states. all three students stated that they chose their current catholic school because their parents thought the school cost less (about $6,000 per year) than most of other private schools in the u.s. the fourth student in the newcomer group, bon, is a ninth grader. he is attending a public school in a suburban area in western new york. he came to the united states following his father who is a visiting scholar (art professor) at a university. bon is the only student among the newcomer group who is living with all of his family members, including his father, his c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 12 mother, and his two other siblings. he is going to stay with his two other siblings and mother even after his father returns to south korea to teach at a university there. except for wook, who lived in one of the most affluent areas in seoul, korea, the other three lived in other provinces which are not recognized as “good educational” provinces. there is a general saying among korean people that states, “if you want to educate your children, you should send them to seoul.” there is a huge educational gap between seoul and most of the other areas in south korea. even among seoul school districts, the gap is huge. for example, a student who ranks first in his/her class in a district area outside of seoul might be ranked as below average in a school in seoul. most renowned colleges in south korea are situated in seoul, and korean parents desperately wish to send their children there. if their children cannot enter one of the colleges in seoul, it is a matter of embarrassment to many parents. the decision on whether their children can enter a good college is usually made before they enter high school. it depends on what school district students attend, but mostly, only one or two top students in a class can enter a prestigious college in south korea. therefore, the desire for professional jobs, such as that of a medical doctor or a lawyer, is a difficult dream to realize for most “average” korean adolescents. 1.5/2nd generation group compared to newcomer students, all of the 1.5/2nd generation students live with their parents in homes that range in price from about $400,000 to $500,000. their parents all immigrated to the united states twenty years ago. more specific students’ profiles are as follows. v isible or invisible? 13 two participants were siblings. eugin is in eleventh grade and his sister, eunji, is in ninth grade. eugin and eunji’s father is a businessman and their mother is a minister. both eugin and eunji were born in the u.s. daewon is in the ninth grade. he came to the u.s when he was two months old. his parents own a clothing store. daewon attends a public school in an affluent district, where eugin and eunji attend. bokeun was born in the u.s. she is in the twelfth grade and attends a public school in one of the most affluent districts in western new york. her father is a radiologist and her mother is a housewife. data collection as a qualitative researcher, i functioned as the primary instrument in data collection (creswell, 1998). my identity as a middle-class korean, as a former english teacher for middle and high school students, as a teacher educator in korea, and as a mother of two esl (english as a second language) children was my lens for processing, collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data. my second author, a european american colleague, was invited to provide an outsider lens as she reviewed, questioned, and helped me clarify my findings. in this study, the primary form of data consisted of in-depth interviews with the participants (see appendix for interview questions). their personal narratives were my main data. the interviews were conducted for about ninety minutes to two hours at the participants’ convenience at their homes or at my office. i interviewed the 1.5/2nd generation group at their houses. i interviewed using the korean language with the newcomer group who expressed that their english is limited and wanted to speak in korean. however, i interviewed the 1.5/2nd c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 14 generation group in english. all of the 1.5/2nd generation members said that they could hardly speak in korean. limitations the limitations of this study are two-fold. the major data depended on the students’ narratives through the method of interview. if i could have opportunities to observe the students in their classroom, i could triangulate my data and provide a fuller picture of their interaction with their teachers and peers. the other limitation is related to the selection of participants. although i did not intend to choose the students from the same school, it happened that the three students in each group attended the same school. diverse settings in different school districts might have provided different insights of the korean students’ current school experiences and their identity formations and shifts. data analysis data sources include interview transcripts, interview memos in which i wrote down the participants’ “illocutionary force,” such as their gestures and tone, and research journal logs in which i wrote down my reflections as soon as i returned from the interviews. all of the formal interviews were audio taped, transcribed, and coded. first of all, i transcribed the tapes with the newcomer group in korean and then translated the data into english. while i was translating, i attempted to find equivalent words and nuances to match with english words since there is no exact relationship between english language and korean language (brown, 1987; chu, 1999). therefore, all interview data for the newcomer interviews shared in the following findings section has been translated into english. for data analysis, i used merriam’s (1998) case study analysis – within-case analysis and cross-case analysis and spradley’s (1980) taxonomic analysis. for within-case analysis, i first v isible or invisible? 15 treated each student’s case individually within each group. then, i tried to find common themes within the group. finally, i compared the newcomer group with the 1.5/2nd generation group and found similarities and differences between them. the codes that emerged from newcomer groups were: “invisible outsiders,” “impact of content knowledge,” “assimilation desire,” & “american dreams.” the codes from 1.5/2nd generation groups were: “realistic dreams,” “blaming teachers & school systems,” & “dual identities.” in categorizing my data, spradley’s seven steps of taxonomic analysis were helpful: 1) select a domain for taxonomic analysis, 2) look for similarities based on the same semantic relationship, 3) look for additional included terms, 4) search for larger, more inclusive domains, 5) construct a tentative taxonomy, 6) make focused observations to check out my analysis, and 7) construct a completed taxonomy. more specifically, i first found more general themes such as difficulties and identity shifts related to my research questions. then, i looked for similar patterns such as teachers’ and peers’ mistreatments. finally, i closely looked for specific examples to support my arguments. findings and discussion the newcomer group as stated earlier, four codes emerged while analyzing my data on the newcomer group: invisible/silent outsiders, being recognized through content knowledge, the desire to assimilate to the dominant culture, and living with the american dream. invisible/silent outsiders the newcomer students, who expressed their difficulties in speaking in english, often received unwelcome gestures from their mainstream teachers and classmates. for instance, c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 16 kyung’s statements below illustrated how mainstream teachers and classmates positioned her and her korean friend, eun, as invisible outsiders. kyung: a teacher in global class always calls on me and eun “ladies,” instead of calling our names individually although we changed our korean names to english names, (kelly and jenny, respectively). the first time, i thought he could not distinguish eun and me because asian people might look the same to him. but it has been a few months, and he still doesn’t call on us by our english names, kelly and jenny. he remembers and calls the other students’ [american classmates] names in an accurate way. researcher: how did you feel when you were called “ladies?” kyung: i didn’t feel good, of course. i wanted him to call me kelly. researcher: then did you ask him to call you kelly, not “ladies?” kyung: no, i didn’t. researcher: why not? kyung: ‘cause (long pause)… i don’t know. my english is not good enough. the teacher in global class treated kyung and her friend eun as a categorized asian group and not as individual agents. by treating the two korean students differently from the other american students, he marginalized and positioned kyung and eun as outsiders. even though kyung knew that it was not appropriate to be addressed as “ladies” when all the other students were called on by their individual names, she did not reposition herself as a legitimate member of the community by challenging the teacher. not only were kyung and eun treated as outsiders by teachers, but also by peers in their classes. for instance, kyung and eun were in the same group in science class. at that time, one boy in the same group looked at the korean girls and said to the boy in another group, “our team v isible or invisible? 17 is bad,” enunciating that kyung and eun were not good enough to contribute to his group. this case illustrated the boy treating the korean girls as invisible persons, as if they were not present as he made this comment. another example also provides evidence that the girls encountered discrimination from their american peers. kyung and eun mentioned in an interview that some american classmates also talked about them behind their backs. although kyung and eun did not clearly understand what was being said, they could sense that their american classmates talked about them. one day, when the two korean students turned around, a boy who was talking behind them said to his friend, “that’s okay—they do not understand, anyway.” this incident indicates that although the korean students were a part of this classroom, the american classmate positioned kyung and eun as outsiders who would not be able to understand due to language differences making it all right to talk behind their backs. with these unwelcome gestures from mainstream teachers and classmates, the striking point is that kyung and eun did not blame their teachers and classmates who treated them as outsiders. the korean girls attributed themselves to be at fault for not being able to speak english well. the girls took it for granted that it was acceptable to be treated like that. both kyung and eun mentioned that if they could speak english well, “it would be all right.” this illustrates that they only blame their poor english rather than the american teachers’ and peers’ discriminatory attitudes towards them. wook’s remarks also demonstrated that he blamed his english pronunciation and accent, not his peers, for this treatment. he talked about his experience with one of his classmates: wook: when i asked anne next to me, “what time is it?” she did not respond at all. researcher: maybe she did not hear you? c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 18 wook: no way. she was just next to me and when i called her name to ask her the time, she looked at me. researcher: then why do you think she did not respond to you? wook: maybe because of my poor pronunciation. maybe she did not like my heavy accent. instead of noting his peer’s mistreatment of him, wook blamed his pronunciation of “what time is it?” which was stated clearly to me during this interview session. the examples above illustrate how newcomer students experienced unwelcome gestures from their mainstream teachers and classmates. the korean students appeared to view that the mainstream teachers’ and classmates’ ignorance and mistreatment toward them being related to their own lack of english skills, rather than american teachers and classmates themselves. being recognized through content knowledge despite such ignorance and mistreatment by their teachers and classmates, the newcomer students are nevertheless “happy” and “satisfied” with their new school life. it appears to be contradictory in arguing that the students were being discriminated against, but they were happy at the same time. a plausible answer is that, as time goes by, compared to the first semester, the students began to have confidence by displaying their content knowledge, such as in math or science. by proving that they were not deficient, the korean newcomer students began to be recognized as acceptable persons by the mainstream teachers and peers. three of the students who i interviewed individually were excited to be talking about their experiences with their american peers: v isible or invisible? 19 kyung: in biology class, a girl did not know even where a lung was. i showed her. since that time, she has treated me differently. i mean, since then, she has greeted me first and acted very kindly. _ _ _ wook: i am taking an english language skills class with two other american.one is a junior and the other is a senior. they did not even know what the spelling of “grammar” was. one boy answered the english teacher’s question, by saying, “grammer.” i was speechless at that time, thinking american people may not know how to spell words correctly. we (wook, kyung and eun) are all strong at spelling, and the american boys sometimes ask me how to spell some words, such as “cemetery.” _ _ _ eun: in math class, i drew four graphs correctly and neatly by using a pencil. after the math teacher saw my clean drawings, she praised me highly. since then, some american peers who never paid attention to me asked me whether they could borrow a pencil or angles. i was happy about the fact that they asked to borrow my stuffs. the korean students were all excited talking about how they proved to american teachers and classmates that they are knowledgeable. the students want to be accepted and recognized by the mainstream teachers and peers. eun’s excitement that some students asked her to borrow a pencil indicates how greatly she wants to gain acceptance and be recognized by mainstream american people in class. she said, “i am grateful that they ask me something.” it appears that the newcomers’ content knowledge played a limited role in making them recognized as capable rather than deficient. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 20 desire to assimilate to dominant culture most of the newcomer students were eager to make american friends to fit into a new culture. bon’s narration illustrates how he attempts to make friends despite the mainstream classmates’ disinterest in him: bon: when i was passing by, i said, “hi” to a boy who is in my class. but he simply ignored me without saying, “hi” back. researcher: how did you feel at that time? bon: i felt he was very rude. but i decided to make him as my friend. since then, i approached him and joked around even with my poor english. and now he has become my friend. although all of the newcomer students attempted hard to associate with american friends, the results were not successful. to them, getting associated with american friends was a difficult task in a mainstream context, which only accepts standard american english and its norms. however, it was interesting that only bon seems to accomplish the “goal”: making american friends. his attempt to fit into mainstream culture by joining sports clubs and joking around appeared to make it possible for him to do so. kyung, eun, and wook also showed their eagerness to associate with americans. although the three students have lunch together at a cafeteria with a senior korean student in the school, they mentioned, in individual interviews, that they wanted to have lunch with their american peers. eun’s remarks illustrate how greatly she wishes to be in the mainstream group: eun: i really want to get closer to american peers. if i can speak english well later, i will act and play like american peers do, not thinking of myself as asian who cannot speak english well…. even though i want to be with american friends for lunch, i can’t v isible or invisible? 21 move to them because we [korean group] already formed a lunch group. also i am hesitant to do that because i am concerned that i might feel stupid when sitting with american friends and keeping silent while they are talking [because of my lack of understanding english]. eun’s consciousness of the other korean students’ opinions and her lack of english inhibit her willingness to join in her american peers’ lunch tables. however, her eagerness to act like and play like the americans indicate that she wishes to assimilate to mainstream culture. living with american dreams interestingly, kyung, eun, wook, and bon all mentioned that they ranked about 20th out of 40 students in a class in south korea. from a korean academic standard, they all ranked below average and it would have been hard for them to enter a prestigious college that is closely related to their future job in a korean context. however, all of the newcomer members mentioned they wanted to be medical doctors in interviews. they all recognized that they might not be able to be doctors in their native country because their grades did not guarantee it at all. however, the students were sure that their goals could come true in the u.s. once they overcame their language difficulties. the newcomer group did not seem to show any doubt about accomplishing their dreams. to the students who have experienced the competitive and rigid schooling in korea that only focuses on tests for entering college (seth, 2002), the united states seems to be viewed as a land of opportunity. to those who have not been recognized as top students in south korea, the united states is a dreamland in which they can pursue their goals. all the newcomer students shared that they like their american schools. everything seems to be new and great to them. when i asked the students about the reason why they liked american schools so much better than korean schools, all of the newcomer students kept c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 22 mentioning that “no teacher gives corporal punishments to students.” “facilities are good.” bon said even moving to other classrooms and having his own locker was new to him. he did not have the same facilities in south korea, where he did not have to move from class to class because teachers move and students stay and have their own desks in their classrooms. all the newcomer students were excited to share their american school experiences with their korean friends through chatting on the internet. this is one way that they release their tension in a new culture. the interesting point is that the korean students only share exciting experiences with their peers in korea, not their struggles. kyung’s remarks illustrate how as she chatted with her korean friends, she made them long for american high school life: kyung: i only tell them the good and funny things because i do not want them to feel sorry for me by telling them about my difficulties. and, i know they want to hear something new, i mean, something different. so i told them that i saw many students here kiss and hug each other in the hall way and it was quite natural. then they say, “really? i wish i could go there [u.s].” researcher: to see them? kyung: no, to do that [kissing and hugging] researcher and kyung: [laugh]. the newcomer group students appear to be still in a euphoric stage. despite their language obstacles and mistreatment as outsiders by the mainstream group, they are still in high spirits and are satisfied with living in the u.s. society. their strong belief that they can accomplish their dreams in the unites states, once they overcome language difficulties, does not seem to be hindered even in light of their struggles and dilemmas as a marginalized group in class. v isible or invisible? 23 the 1.5/2nd generation group as noted earlier, except for daewon, who was born in korea and moved to america when he was two months old, the other three students were born and raised in the united states. compared to the newcomer group students, adolescents in the 1.5/2nd generation group show very different perspectives and attitudes towards their school experiences. three main codes emerged: realistic dreams, blaming their teachers, and living with dual identities. realistic dreams first of all, the 1.5/2nd generation students’ dreams appeared to be realistic. the students were not sure about their future. even though most of the students’ parents wanted them to be medical doctors or lawyers, they did not believe that they could be and often considered different dreams. although they all took it for granted that they would go to college, they were not sure what they wanted to be after graduating from college: researcher: what do you want to be after graduating from college? eugin: my dad wants me to be a lawyer. i don’t know. i might be an english teacher. or involved in technology. i don’t know. _ _ _ eunji: my dad wants me to get a good job to make good money. my mom doesn’t care. she wants me to do what i like. maybe something with the church. i don’t know what i want to be. _ _ _ daewon: my parents want me to be a doctor. i don’t know. probably. i don’t know. _ _ _ c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 24 bokeun: they [my parents] want me to be a doctor. but i haven’t decided what i want to be. all the remarks above illustrate that they are not sure what career path they want to take in life. even though their parents wish them to be doctors, the 1.5/2nd generation group students show doubts about their future, unlike newcomer students who appeared to have confidence about their future jobs. all of the immigrant group students made their dreams realistic in accordance with their academic achievement. in particular, eugin’s narration indicates how he views himself and adjusts his dream to his academic achievement: eugin: i am an average student. researcher: what do you mean? eugin: like, my grades are average. sometimes 90s, sometimes 80s, and 70s, i usually go down there. my parents keep telling me i should go higher in order to get into a good college. i will go to an average college, like x university, they still accept average students, so i think i am good. i don’t want to be a doctor or lawyer—what my parents want me to be. my goals are very reasonable. i should do what i can do. i might be an english teacher. as shown in eugin’s remarks, he might get pressure from his parents who keep telling him to get higher grades. as most of korean parents, eugin’s parents seem to have high aspirations for their son. they believe that his grades are not adequate enough to gain admission to a good college and to be a doctor or a lawyer. they think that eugin is not doing as well as he could be. considering that he cannot meet his parents’ expectations, eugin adjusts his dream to go to an “average” college and to be a teacher rather than being a doctor or a lawyer. v isible or invisible? 25 the other students, daewon (ninth grade) and bokeun (twelfth grade), also reveal that they do not dream about what they feel is hard to accomplish: daewon: my dad wants me to go to an ivy league school. but i don’t think so. it’s really hard to get into. i get average 90s. i don’t think it is enough. _ _ _ bokeun: i know a lot of competition to go to a good college such as columbia. i got sat 1470 [current 2190]. i got average mid-90s in most ap level college classes. but it is not enough to go there. researcher: isn’t sat 1470 enough? bokeun: no, it’s not. i should get at least over [sat] 1500. many students need to get over 1500 to go to a good college. going to a good college is very competitive. daewon’s and bokeun’s grades are excellent from american standard points of view. however, daewon and bokeun seemed to believe that their grades were not sufficient to accomplish their goals. blaming their teachers another notable point in the 1.5/2nd generation’ attitudes about school is that most of them, except for bokeun, who is involved in many activities such as being vice president of a student council and editor of school newspaper at her school, have negative perceptions towards their school and teachers. they responded to my question about their school and teachers: “school is school.” “i have no school spirit.” “why should i have to have school spirit?” “teachers are boring.” “so boring.” “typical teachers.” by having negative perceptions towards their teachers, the 1.5/2nd generation group students blame their teachers when they get rather “low” scores, which was quite a different c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 26 perspective when compared to the newcomer group students who blame themselves. eugin, eunji, and daewon talk about their teachers and their impact on their grades: eugin: if i am motivated, i can get high grades. real high grades. my teachers keep telling me i am a potential straight-a student. but they are not interesting. all our teachers are very dull. they don’t motivate me. researcher: don’t you think you can motivate yourself? eugin: no, they should be encouraging me. _ _ _ eunji: if teachers teach better, then my grades will be higher. some teachers don’t really push you to do something. some are really bad at teaching. they just write on the board and do not explain. especially, my french teacher, i don’t think she knows what she is doing. _ _ _ daewon: they (teachers) affect my grades, like, if i don’t like the way they teach, i can’t really do well—as well as i can. these students’ remarks imply that schools have to provide engaging instruction. they view barriers to their academic achievement as social, which is a different perspective from the newcomer group students who view the barriers as personal rather than social. if the teachers taught better, their academic achievement would improve. to the students, it is the teachers’ responsibility to serve students, and the students deserve the best educational service. motivating them is the teacher’s job—not their job. instead of blaming themselves, they blame the teachers’ lack of encouragement, which fails to motivate them. the 1.5/2nd generation students’ criticism towards their teachers, which is related to institutions, is quite conspicuous and in contrast to the v isible or invisible? 27 newcomer group students. the newcomer group students never viewed their unequal treatment— making them marginalized outsiders—as the fault of the teachers or school systems. living in the two cultures/two identities the 1.5/2nd generation adolescents live in two cultures with dual identities. their relationship to their american teachers and peers affects the students’ dual identities as korean and american. the dominant group’s stereotype of the model minority in regard to koreans influences the students’ identities: eugin: my blood is korean. but, since i was born in america, i am more like american. i speak like an american, act like an american. researcher: act like an american? eugin: like say, accent, i really don’t have much accent. also study habits. i have heard that koreans are very smart. study hard, work hard. me? i am just, i am just like an american. i don’t try hard. i am an average student [laugh]. eugin’s remarks about his identity as american because of his study habits illustrate that he is unable to live up to standards of the model minority. to him, the model minority stereotype affects his identity formation. his narration implies that if he thinks that he is a model minority student, his identity as an american might shift to that of being a korean. it should be noted, however, that eugin did not dichotomize his identity as, “i am korean,” or “i am american.” rather, he talks about his dual identity in an indirect way such as, “my blood is korean,” and “i am more like an american.” he is in dilemma between two identities. succinctly speaking, he lives in his dual identities as korean and american and uses his identities differently according to his convenience as a living strategy in american society (palmer, 2001; g. park, 2001). c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 28 eugin is not the only student who feels the asian concept of model minority is a burden which impacts individual identities. eunji narrates how american peers view her: they (american peers) think all asian people are smart. they ask me, “what classes are you taking?” i said, “i am just taking a freshman class.” and they say, “really?” because i am asian, they think i should take higher classes. i don’t feel good. i want them to treat me as american at those times…in global class, we talked about north korea, nuclear weapons, attacks—stuff like that. the teacher looked at me because i am korean. i just felt it’s not me. eunji’s descriptions imply that she wanted to be considered as an american, not as a korean, in the context of when she is not in a favorable situation. when the asian model minority stereotype did not apply to her, she wanted to remain as an american. in addition, when she was perceived as korean by the teacher in global class, she resisted her identity as korean in that unfavorable context. she wanted to remain as american. however, her american identity shifts to korean in a different context: eunji: my american friends think i am korean. when they saw a taekwondo (korean martial arts) demonstration, they shouted to me, “eunji, eunji, taekwondo, taekwondo. they think koreans are really cool. in terms of fashion, computer games, korean students know more. they (american friends) find out later about what we already know. eunji used the word “we,” which means koreans, to represent her identity. during the interview, she was exuberant to talk about how her american peers view her as korean. although the first example above indicated she was not pleased about her teacher’s and peers’ perception toward her as korean, her narration indicates that she senses her american peers’ positive perceptions towards koreans in terms of fashion and technology. eunji does not show any resistance to be v isible or invisible? 29 perceived as korean when the situation does not hurt her korean identity. in sum, the 1.5/2nd generation examples show that their identity shifts are influenced by the dominant groups’ recognition. conclusion this study examined the current schooling experiences of eight korean high school students in the united states. the findings suggest that even in the same ethnic group, differences were enlightening. how the korean students portrayed themselves in the mainstream context was related to how american teachers and peers recognized them. it was interesting that the way that the newcomer korean students presented themselves in a social matrix was different from that of the 1.5/2nd generation group. both groups’ different experiences might have affected their view of themselves as koreans or korean americans. the korean adolescents’ different experiences in a mainstream context show the complex features of their identity formation and shift as follows. first, the newcomer group experienced serious language difficulties along with discrimination from the dominant group and was often treated as invisible outsiders. the 1.5/2nd generation group did not experience the same type of discrimination as invisible outsiders, but they experienced how the dominant group positioned them as visible and marked outsiders. the newcomer students’ sense of themselves as outsiders was more evident when they worked with american teachers and peers by communicating in english. this study suggests that english language was used as a tool that disempowered the korean students. as shown in the data of kyung, eun, and bon, the students felt powerless and acted passively when their american teachers and classmates exercised their power through english language. the korean students, however, did not reposition themselves as legitimate and active members in the class by c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 30 challenging the mainstream power. as positioning theorists (harré & langanhove, 1999; tan & moghdam, 1999) argue about power relation, without challenging the dominant group, the korean students allowed the group to take a privileged position, and accordingly, allowed it more rights to exercise its power over them. second, in spite of their mistreatment from their mainstream teachers and classmates, a notable point is that the newcomer students did not take the discrimination issue seriously. the students believe that when they have a good command of english, the mainstream people would treat them well. as ogbu (1992) claimed, barriers are mostly overcome by concentrating on future goals. the korean students seemed to focus on possibility, not obstacles, for their future dreams. to them, the american dream meant that individuals had an equal opportunity if they worked hard. to the newcomer students, “barriers to success are mainly personal rather than social” (macleod, 1987, p. 1). clearly, the way that the 1.5/2nd generation viewed obstacles was different from that of the newcomers. to the 1.5/2nd generation, barriers to academic success were social rather than personal. they tended to blame the school system because it did not provide effective teachers who motivated them and provided them with the best services for their learning. the 1.5/2nd generation group adolescents were very realistic about their future goals. the way that they set goals was related to their academic achievement at school. as shown in the data from the 1.5/2nd generation, their parents’ pressure on their grades is apparent. the students who did not meet their parents’ high expectations tended to adjust their dreams as realistic. these 1.5/2nd generation group students’ attitudes towards their dreams contrasts sharply to the newcomer group adolescents who believe that they can accomplish their goals once they overcome a language barrier. v isible or invisible? 31 finally, the way that the newcomer students associate with american peers was different from that of the 1.5/2nd generation students. the newcomer group desperately wished to assimilate to mainstream culture by associating with american classmates. they wanted to be like americans and to be treated as americans. to the newcomer students, assimilation was seen as a way of integrating into the mainstream context (kibria, 2002) and was viewed as an essential process in becoming legitimate members of the society. on the other hand, the 1.5/2nd generation adolescents lived in two cultures and they were often in a dilemma in regard to their dual identities. they lived bi-culturally with dual identities as korean and american, according to their convenience. norton (2000) argues that the question “who am i?” can be understood from the question “what am i allowed to do?” however, this case study suggested that the answer about “who am i?” can be influenced by the question “how do you perceive me?” the 1.5/2nd generation group’s identity formation and shifting were affected by how american people viewed and positioned them. in sum, the findings of this study support most of identity researchers’ findings that identities are situational and socially constructed (palmer, 2001; g. park, 2001; vyas, 2001). however, findings also suggest that the second-generation students’ identity shift depended on whether they perceived the situations as favorable or unfavorable to them. my data support several researchers’ (kim, 1993; s. j. lee, 1996; palmer, 2001) perspectives on identity, that it is flexible and fluid, not rigid and unchanging over time. the students shift their identities from korean to american or vice versa. however, the shift of identity is always based upon the students’ recognition and consciousness of the dominant group. their identities shift according to how the dominant group positions them. creating, forming, and shifting identities are all related to the dominant group’s power. the students become c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 32 korean, korean american, or american as they develop their images on the “map” of american society (olsen, 1997). by being positioned and repositioned by the mainstream culture, students from both groups continually have to define and redine their identities and place in u.s. school contexts. in sum, the findings of this study suggest that whether they arrived recently, had lived for over a decade, or were born in the u.s, the korean adolescents carried with them the legacy of outsiders in the mainstream context. the implication of this study is that the complexities and differences within the same ethnic group need to be focused on and studied more in educational contexts. in particular, american teachers might reflect on how to focus on students’ individuality and develop diverse teaching approaches that address their needs. the perceptions that teachers hold about a certain ethnic group guide their practices and how they interact with them (olneck, 2004). when teachers hold perceptions that all asian students are strong at math or science, they may not attempt to pursue different pedagogies for the students who are not as strong in these content areas and may label them as “deficient” or “at-risk” students. taking students into consideration as individual entities, as is needed for all students, is the way that teachers can avoid the stereotyping of ethnic minority students. in addition, helping students develop a positive sense of themselves is significant since it affects their learning. when students perceive hostility, indifference, and discrimination from american teachers and peers, they are deterred from learning and their sense of marginality is accentuated (trueba, jacobs, & kirton, 1990). even initially resilient immigrant students as shown in this study may have their optimism and confidence eroded and their engagement decreased when they continuously encounter denigration and neglect by teachers and classmates (davidson, 1997). teaching that fosters culturally relevant pedagogy (ladson-billings, 1995), v isible or invisible? 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(1990). cultural conflict and adaptation: the case of hmong children in american society. new york: falmer press. u.s. bureau of the census (2001). profiles of general demographic characteristics: 2000 census of population and housing [online]. available: http://www.census.gov vyas, s. (2001). am i indian, american, or indian american?: studying the home and school experiences of indian bicultural adolescents. in c. c. park, a. l. goodwin, & s. j. lee (eds.), research on the education of asian and pacific americans (pp. 129-154). greenwich, ct: information age publishing. yeh, c. j & inose, m. (2002). difficulties and coping strategies of chinese, japanese, and korean immigrant students. adolescence, 37, 69-82. yoon, b. (2009). education fever and exam hell: the current educational systems and issues in south korea. in s.b. mertens, v.a. anfara, & k. roney (eds.), handbook of research in middle level education: an international look at educating young adolescents (pp. 115134). information age publishing, charlotte: north carolina. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 38 appendix semistructured interview questions: 1. introduce about yourself. how old are you? what grade are you in? 2. what made you come to the united states? 3. how would you describe yourself? what would you call yourself? is there a label that best describes who you are? 4. how would your teachers/peers describe you? 5. how long have you attended this school? how would you describe your school? 6. do you have any difficulties/successes in school? 7. tell me about your level of participation in class. 8. what type of academic program are you in? 9. what do you think it takes to be successful in your school? 10. describe a class/subject that is important to you. what makes the course important to you? what courses are not so important, if any? why? 11. do students in your school separate themselves into groups? what groups does your school have? do the members of different groups interact? which groups are you a part of? can anyone become part of any group? 12. how do you feel about your teachers? 13. are there any teachers at your school who you feel have had a particularly positive or negative impact on you? who are they? what did they do? 14. how would your teachers describe you as a student? is this description an accurate one? 15. how do you feel about your peers? 16. how do your peers interact with each other? v isible or invisible? 39 17. what do you think your peers would say about you? 18. how would you describe your parents’ involvement in the daily aspects of your school life? 19. what do you hope to do after you leave high school? 20. do your parents approve of your success in high school thus far? 21. what do your parents want you to do after you graduate from high school? 22. what is the occupation of your mother/father? do your parents expect that you will follow in their footsteps? 23. tell me about your daily life. 24. is there anything that you think i have missed or that you think i should have asked you? is there anything else you would like to tell me? c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 40 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo 403 forbidden<br> cie template 1 volume 14, number 3 september 24, 2011 issn 1099-839x what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? an account of newcomer immigrant youths’ afterschool academic lives hee jin bang national writing project while substantial research has focused on homework in the lives of native-born englishspeaking students, research on immigrant students’ homework experiences remains scarce. a goal of this study was to describe the homework experiences of newcomer immigrant students, drawing from a project on how individual, family, and school characteristics shape these youths’ homework experiences. focus groups and surveys were conducted with newcomer students (n=192) in an urban high school. survey data were used to determine the prevalence of homework facilitators and impediments students experienced; focus group data were examined to develop an enhanced understanding of the contexts in which students encounter various facilitators and impediments. understanding course materials, i.e. having academic english proficiency to comprehend course contents, was a key determinant in whether students experienced homework as easy or difficult. results can inform ways in which home, school, and afterschool settings may be structured to facilitate immigrant youths’ homework completion. keywords: immigrant youth, english language learners, homework, ecological systems, mixed methods recent educational reform initiatives in the u.s. have focused attention on raising students’ academic achievement. schools are held accountable for ensuring that all children make adequate progress towards achieving standards aligned with the general curriculum. in this climate, homework has emerged as a potential vehicle to improve achievement. it is a means of extending the school day, as homework is schoolwork assigned to be done outside of class. among students who could potentially benefit from the learning opportunities offered by homework is the increasing population of immigrant adolescents. in the united states today, about 12% of the population are foreign-born (larsen, 2003), and among 262.4 million people aged 5 and over, about 18% speak a non-english language at home (u.s. census, 2002). more than one in five children are either firstor second-generation immigrants, growing up in homes with at least one foreignborn parent (mather, 2009); these youth comprise the fastest growing segment of the school-aged population (hernández, denton, & macartney, 2007). newcomer immigrant youth refer to first-generation immigrants who have recently arrived in the u.s. (typically within 5 years). this paper concerns youth (ages 14-17 yrs) within this group; in particular, it focuses on their homework experiences. since many immigrant youth learn english and complex academic subjects simultaneously, they often lag behind their native-born english-speaking peers in academic achievement. one way to bridge this gap is through the thoughtful assignment of homework. since homework can be tailored to individual student’s learning needs, appropriately designed assignments can offer valuable learning opportunities for immigrant youth who need to review course materials and current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 2 practice specific skills. there is limited research, however, on academic and developmental needs of newcomer immigrant adolescents; thus, secondary schools are often ill-equipped to address the needs of these newcomers (ruizde-vélasco, clewell, & fix, 2001; suárez-orozco, suárezorozco, & todorova, 2008). yet schools represent the primary context of acculturation for immigrant youth, and performance in secondary grades has significant implications for students’ decision to continue on to college. since research shows strong positive relationship between high school achievement and homework completion (cooper, robinson, & patall, 2006), each homework assignment that is out of reach for immigrant students places them at a position of cumulative disadvantage—for failed opportunities to learn, negative teacher perceptions (weinstein, 2002), lower academic selfefficacy (schunk, 1991), and academic disengagement over time (goslin, 2003). thus, educators need to be informed of factors that facilitate or challenge immigrant students’ homework experiences, so that steps can be taken to help them derive maximal benefit from homework. theoretical framework this study is guided by an ecological perspective (bronfenbrenner & morris, 1998) which recognizes that academic performance is linked to various characteristics in students’ family and school ecologies (benner, graham, & mistry, 2008; chung & steinberg, 2006). the ecological systems and the processes that occur within each system are interrelated; the persons or characteristics of one ecological system can influence those found in another system. in this study, the ecological systems model is used as a framework for understanding how various individual, home, school, and outside school activities are associated with newcomer immigrant students’ homework completion. literature relationship between homework and academic achievement a rich body of literature exists on homework experiences of native-born english speaking students, but research on immigrant students’ experiences with homework remains scarce. the existing research has been synthesized in a recent review (cooper et al., 2006); it demonstrated a general positive relationship between the amount of homework and academic achievement. however, this positive effect of homework on achievement is significant only at the secondary grade levels. there is a moderate correlation between time spent on homework and achievement at the middle school level, while little or no relationship is observed at the elementary grade levels. thus, the relationship between homework and achievement is not straightforward or uniform across all students. some scholars contend that homework can be overwhelming for students, leading to frustration, disengagement from school, and low academic self-efficacy (bennett & kalish, 2007; zimmermann & kitsantas, 2005). homework can also disrupt families, as parent-child conflicts arise over homework, and too much homework often takes time away from family events, extracurricular activities, leisure, and rest (kralovec & buell, 2000). moreover, studies that show positive associations between homework completion and attainment of higher class grades and test scores (cooper & valentine, 2001; tymms, 1992) may in fact be reflecting the socioeconomic advantage of students who have access to resources such as computers, internet, or help from parents or tutors. homework and grades. in broad terms, grades are meant to indicate students’ mastery of skills and level of understanding in a given course. in practice, however, grades are not limited to students’ mastery of the course materials, and doing one’s homework is often critical for obtaining good grades. a previous study based on a survey of teachers working with recently arrived immigrant youth (from china, central america, dominican republic, haiti, and mexico) showed that the most important determinant of grades is homework completion (bang, suárez-orozco, pakes, & o’connor, 2009). indeed, the literature on grading practices indicates that teacher-assigned grades often take into account students’ homework completion and other indicators of effort and classroom behaviors (brookhart, 1991, 1993; stiggins, frisbie, & griswold, 1989). such grading practice is supported by a theoretical model of academic achievement (diperna & elliott, 1999, 2000) which asserts that academic competence is a combination of two types of student characteristics: academic skills (i.e., language, mathematics, and critical thinking skills) and academic enablers (i.e., motivation, engagement, interpersonal skills, and study skills). teachers’ consideration of both components in evaluating student achievement is particularly important in immigrant students’ grades, since low performance on tests may be less a result of these students’ content knowledge and skill than their limited proficiency in the new language (e.g., genesee, lindholm-leary, saunders, & christian, 2006). thus, teachers may justifiably seek to give relatively greater weight to factors such as effort, class participation, and homework completion in determining immigrant students’ grades (brookhart, 1994). although grades are subjective, they identify students as highor low-achieving, determine the level of classes in which students can enroll, and generally are closely linked to other more objective indicators of students’ achievement (wendel & anderson, 1994). individual characteristics english proficiency and academic skills. limited proficiency in english is a particular impediment to homework completion for immigrant youth, and the challenges are even greater for students with interrupted formal education, as they lack the basic academic skills needed to complete assignments and perform in school (august & hakuta, 1997). moreover, not having developed what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 3 strong literacy skills in one’s native language considerably decreases the chances of acquiring academic language skills in a second language (genesee et al., 2006). additionally, the content of secondary school curricula becomes increasingly complex, and resources available in u.s. schools for adolescent ells are more limited in comparison to those available for younger ells (ruiz-de-vélasco et al., 2001). without solid instruction in content areas and language support to access the materials being taught in classes, immigrant youth are unlikely to acquire english proficiency regardless of the length of their time in the u.s.; the gap in academic achievement relative to native-born youth will continue to increase (suárezorozco et al., 2008). academic engagement. in broad terms, engagement is conceptualized as the extent to which students are involved in their classes and school-related activities (steinberg, brown, & dornbusch, 1996). engagement is a multi-faceted construct that involves behavioral (e.g., effort, participation), emotional (e.g., enjoyment derived from learning), relational (e.g., sense of connectedness with peers and teachers), as well as cognitive dimensions (e.g., interest in a topic) (fredricks, blumenfeld, & paris, 2004; national research council, 2004; suárez-orozco, pimentel, & martin, 2009). research has demonstrated that the extent to which students are academically engaged in their classes significantly influences their performance in school (fredricks et al., 2004; suárez-orozco et al., 2008). the present study examines behavioral and cognitive dimensions of engagement. prior analyses on data involving newcomer immigrant students indicated that behavioral engagement is an important predictor of homework completion (bang et al., 2009). furthermore, research shows that engagement is a prerequisite for learning (goslin, 2003), and students need to be interested and intellectually engrossed in what is being taught in class in order to learn and be able to apply the skills in completing their homework. family background and home environment many studies have demonstrated associations between family demographic factors (e.g., socioeconomic status, maternal education, parental employment, racial/ethnic background) and children’s achievement (e.g., ferriss, 2006; sirin, 2005). the socioeconomic status of a family is among the most important demographic factors related to children’s development and academic performance. some family background and home environment characteristics affect homework completion due to poverty (e.g., limited educational resources, parents working long hours, children having to work in order to support the family), while others are particular to immigrant families. immigration is a stressful event that often brings about changes in the family system, causing some family relationships to be strained and conflictual (falicov 1998; suárez-orozco & suárez orozco, 2001). the process of migration and acculturation frequently involves separation and estrangement between family members, introduction of new members, and cultural/generational gap due to children’s and parents’ differential rates of adaptation to the u.s. culture (suárezorozco & suárez-orozco, 2001). in addition, immigrant youth are often asked to take on responsibilities beyond their years, such as childcare, translation, and negotiation, which can sometimes deter students from focusing on school work (faulstich-orellana, 2001; suárez-orozco et al., 2008). parental involvement. a review of research on native-born students’ parental involvement in homework has shown that across all grade levels, students who receive parents’ assistance and support tend to achieve higher, outperforming their peers with relatively less-involved parents in accuracy, consistency, and quality of completed assignments (hoover-dempsey, battiato, walker, reed, dejong, & jones, 2001). however, immigrant parents may be unable to attend to their children’s schooling and provide homework help to the extent that many parents of nativeborn, middleto upper-class youth often do. some may have received limited formal schooling or education in another language; they may not be familiar with the u.s. school system. nevertheless, parental homework help can take many forms. these include having regular discussions about what children are learning in classes, providing emotional support and encouragement, helping to develop learning strategies and work habits, and ensuring that their children’s homework is completed (hoover-dempsey et al., 2001; xu, 2004). school environment many studies have shown that student engagement and achievement are increased in school environments that ensure physical safety, promote positive social norms, provide opportunities to develop skills within warm, supportive relationships, and convey high expectations for academic achievement (e.g., hoy & sabo, 1998; phillips, 1997; shouse, 1997). previous research involving immigrant students indicated that many of them attend schools with high levels of poverty and segregation (suárez-orozco et al., 2008). students in these contexts have limited access to educational resources and few opportunities to interact with peers of the dominant culture (kozol, 2005). in some schools, ells may be isolated in english as second language tracks, where they may experience unchallenging classes, low expectations, and embarrassment due to their slow acquisition of academic english (olsen, 1997; valdés, 1998). problems such as lack of discipline and violence that often afflict high-poverty schools threaten the physical safety of students, leading them to focus their energies on remaining safe rather than on learning (gronna & chinchance, 1999; prothrow-stith & quaday, 1995). current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 4 outside school supports/homework help and resources the availability of someone who can provide homework help is associated with higher homework completion rates and greater enjoyment of the learning experience (xu, 2005; xu & corno, 2003). for many youths, the often isolating experience of working on assignments instead of activities that involve socializing with others seems to contribute to their negative attitude toward homework (xu, 2005). especially for youths who are struggling in school, homework that is overly challenging, repetitive, uninteresting, or too lengthy can lead to frustration, impatience, low self-esteem, and low academic self-efficacy (zimmermann & kitsantas, 2005). homework help centers or tutoring programs can provide a set place and time for students to complete their assignments, thus helping them manage their afterschool hours efficiently and ensuring an environment that is conducive to academic work. by structuring students’ afterschool schedules and offering educational resources, homework centers may further increase the time that students dedicate to academic work, and time spent on homework is generally positively associated with homework completion, accuracy, and achievement (dotterer, mchale, & crouter, 2007). furthermore, newcomer immigrant youths can benefit from the language support provided by teachers, gain insight and learning strategies by working with peers, and develop skills in using reference materials that can help them in future assignments. whether or not immigrant students have access to such help and resources can significantly impact their homework experiences and determine the success with which they complete their assignments. this brief review points to numerous factors that may shape immigrant students’ homework experiences. yet little is known about the homework experiences of newcomer immigrant students. since homework, particularly in high school, has been recognized to help students achieve in school (cooper et al., 2006), and given newcomer immigrant students’ need to acquire academic english language proficiency, research is needed to help develop a better understanding of the factors that influence homework experiences among this population. the present study this study is based on a subset of data i collected for a broader project on the homework experiences and academic adaptation of recently arrived immigrant youth in the u.s. given the limited research on homework experiences of newcomer immigrant students, a primary objective of the project was descriptive; the research question guiding this study is: what are the facilitators and impediments to homework completion for immigrant students attending a newcomer school? focus groups were conducted to gather reports from immigrant youth about the various factors that affect their homework completion; the resulting data informed questions to be included in a subsequent questionnaire. this study utilizes a subset of the quantitative data derived from the surveys, as well as data collected through focus group discussions. method study setting and participants participants were students from international high school at prospect heights, a newcomer school in new york city (referred to hereafter as ―international high school‖). this school is a part of the internationals network for public schools, a non-profit organization that addresses the educational needs of recent immigrant students in 9th through 12th grades who have limited proficiency in english. the international high school was opened in 2004 and is one of the most recently established sites. in 20072008, it served about 450 students, operating as one of four small schools housed in a building that was formerly a single high school. it accepts a diverse group of newcomer students who have spent less than four years in the u.s. at the time of admission. these students, who have scored at an intermediate level or below on the new york state english as a second language achievement test (nyseslat), come from over fifty different countries in africa, asia, europe, central and south america. some enter the school with a solid formal educational background, while others have had almost no formal schooling. as a school designed to serve first generation newcomer immigrants, the international high school was an appropriate site at which to conduct research that aims to shed light on the academic adaptation and homework experiences of recently arrived immigrant youth in a u.s. school. procedures a brief presentation of the project was given before all teachers at international high school during a faculty meeting. all teachers expressed interest in the project; irb approvals were obtained from the author’s institution and from the nyc department of education. each teacher received permission forms and letters describing the study to parents to be distributed to students in their respective advisory groups. numerous efforts were made to obtain signed parental permission forms (e.g., incentives, party for the advisory group with the highest return rate). administrators and teachers also helped by requesting parents’ permission when they came to school for parent-teacher conferences, and almost all parents agreed to have their child participate in the project. data collection times were scheduled to take place after school (for focus groups) and during 50-minute independent reading periods (for surveys). a total of four 45-60 minute focus groups were conducted with students across grades 9 through 12 (see appendix a for focus group protocol). with the help of the school’s special programs coordinator, participants were recruited so that each group would be balanced by gender. attempts were made to recruit students of varying achievement levels and what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 5 countries of origin, but given the constraints of scheduling and the voluntary participation of students, selection bias may have been introduced; thus, the focus group data are not generalized beyond the participants. each group included 4 to 7 participants (one group of 4 students, two groups of 5 students, and one group of 7 students); a total of 21 students participated in the four focus groups. a brief description of students in each group is presented in table 1. focus groups. focus groups were moderated by trained bilingual / bicultural research assistants (ras), each accompanied by a non-participating observer whose task was to take detailed notes on elements that could not be captured in discussions, such as participants’ body language, facial expressions, or behaviors in interactions with other group members. all focus group discussions were audio-recorded. the focus groups elicited a rich set of first-hand, contextualized accounts on participants’ homework experiences and identified specific facilitators and impediments that newcomer immigrant students encounter in completing homework assignments in the u.s. school system. these focus groups also offered considerable flexibility in exploring new ideas that emerged during the data collection process and investigate unanticipated factors that act as homework facilitators or impediments (seal, bogart, & ehrhardt, 1998). the responses provided during these discussions served to refine measures to be included in the survey so that it posed culturally relevant questions about factors influencing immigrant students’ homework experiences. focus groups offered a means of gathering rich data contextualized in the lives of the participants. students could build on and respond to the comments from other group members. moreover, as the participants were english language learners, communication was facilitated by peers with relatively more advanced english proficiency (stewart, shamdasani, & rook, 2007). the focus group data provided student perspectives about the type and importance of various facilitators and impediments to homework completion. the data also informed items included in the subsequent survey, designed to gather information about a variety of factors associated with homework completion. it was designed to gather information about a variety of factors associated with homework completion. table 1 description of focus group participants group gender & grade level countries of origin home language length of time in the u.s. 1 m: two 9 th f: two 9 th & one 11 th haiti, dominican republic, philippines, sierra leone kreyol, spanish, filipino, mende 6 months – 5 years 2 m: two 9 th & one 10 th f: one 9 th china, haiti, mexico mandarin, kreyol, spanish 1.5 years – 3 years 3 m: two 9 th & two 10 th f: one 9 th & two 10 th honduras, mexico, bangladesh spanish, bengali 8 months – 8 years 4 m: one 12 th f: one 11 th & three 12 th dominican republic, gabon, haiti, south africa spanish, french, kreyol, zulu 3 years – 5 years current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 6 survey on homework experiences. for the survey, two lists of reasons (facilitators and impediments) were generated based on focus group discussions and literature regarding factors associated with students’ homework experiences (see appendix b for the complete lists of items). students were asked, ―which of the reasons listed below make it hard / easy for you to do your homework?‖, and they were to check all reasons that applied to them (e.g., i do not understand the lesson; the assignment is explained step by step.) responses were coded dichotomously, with 1= ―yes‖ and 0= ―no.‖ the survey items were piloted with five high school students (of whom two were english language learners); all items were translated by professionals into six languages that were most commonly used as the primary/home language of students at the international high school: spanish, chinese, french, haitian kreyol, bengali, and arabic. (the diverse language(s) that students reported using at home are displayed figure 1.) each translated survey was back-translated and reviewed by native speakers of the target language to assess whether the questions were linguistically and age-appropriate; they also examined the items to ensure that the intended meanings were accurately conveyed. the survey was administered by a team of trained bilingual research assistants (ras). all ninth and tenth graders who were present on the survey day were asked to participate. a total of 192 students agreed to participate and completed the survey, corresponding to a response rate of 97 percent. the sample was balanced by student gender (n of boys = 99, or 52%); the mean student age was 16 (sd= 1.07 years); and, participants came from diverse regions: 11 (6%) from africa, 55 (31%) from caribbean, 44 (25%) from central/south america, 25 (14%) from east asia, 34 (19%) from south/southeast asia, and 9 (5%) from eastern europe/other. according to students’ reports, about 59 percent (n= 114) of their mothers and 49 percent of their fathers (n=95) had completed high school education or less. as for their parents’ employment status, 50 percent of mothers (n=96) and 72 percent of fathers (n=139) were working outside the home. in addition to the focus groups and surveys conducted with students, i also interviewed eight purposefully selected teachers (from various subject areas and grade levels) to understand the kinds of homework students received. the interview protocol included questions on the amount and type of homework that were typically assigned, relationships between homework and class work or tests, teacher perceptions about their students’ capacity to complete homework, and any accommodations or adjustments made to facilitate their students’ homework experiences. findings from the interviews are reported elsewhere (bang, in press). figure 1. number of students who reported using the language at home. note: total is greater than n=192 because many students reported using more than 1 language at home: 96 students reported two languages, 58 reported three or more languages. other category includes 6 or less of the following: albanian, fuzhounese, ewe, fuliani, nepali, polish, punjabi, russian, tibetan, and urdu. what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 7 analysis all focus group discussions were transcribed. the interview transcripts were organized and analyzed using atlas/ti. this qualitative data analysis program facilitated taking memos, development of inductive and deductive codes to be applied across the qualitative data, as well as categorization and thematic analysis. i read the transcripts and listened to the recordings multiple times and wrote memos and annotations, giving particular attention to students’ responses about the various facilitators and impediments that they encounter in completing homework. the data were then fractured into phrases and sorted into broader categories. while the topics covered during the focus group discussions provided several coding categories, most codes were developed inductively during analysis, using grounded theory approaches based on the data. an open-coding process using phrases as the unit of analysis was employed (strauss & corbin, 1998). i analyzed the content, extracted keywords, and identified emergent descriptive themes from the transcripts, generating a comprehensive set of 35 firstlevel codes (e.g., not knowing what the homework is, having clear, detailed instructions to complete assignment). then, similar codes were combined to reduce redundancy in coding categories. larger chunks of data could then be sorted, and general patterns could be identified. for example, getting good grades and praise from teachers or parents were combined into a higher-level coding category labeled rewards/encouragement. the data were then organized in a table in which each row was labeled with codes. more specific codes, definitions, and illustrative quotations of each code were displayed in adjacent cells. subsequent tables were created by individual characteristics (e.g., fatigue, fear of mistakes) home environment features (e.g., parents’ encouragement) school environment features (e.g., starting homework with teacher), and out-of-school factors (e.g., jobs). examining the data in this way helped identify homework facilitators and impediments in relation to the ecological systems framework. this coding scheme was presented to two colleagues who have expertise in psychological development and academic adaptation of immigrant youth. they were asked to independently code all focus group transcripts and to generate coding categories. the two colleagues and i refined the coding scheme through discussion of each code and its relationship with other codes. we established rules for determining when a code was to be assigned. coding cross-checks were performed by tallying the number of agreements and disagreements between two colleagues and myself. the formula for intercoder reliability was: agreement/ (agreement + disagreement) with a target rate of 85% reliability as the lowest acceptable level for each category (miles & huberman, 1994). the team obtained an inter-coder reliability of 90%. disagreements in coding were resolved through discussion and consultation with another expert in school psychology and immigration studies until complete agreement was achieved. the focus groups generated rich data that informed the questions to be included in a subsequent survey, which was designed to gather information about a variety of factors associated with newcomer immigrants’ academic adaptation and homework experiences. the survey data were examined descriptively. i first counted the number of students who answered ―yes‖ to having experienced each facilitator and impediment and calculated the percentages to see the prevalence of each homework facilitator or impediment among the students. on average, each student reported 7.2 (sd = 4.05) total facilitators and 4.1 (sd = 3.28) total impediments. examination of the relative frequency and prevalence of homework facilitators and impediments reported by all 9th and 10th grade students indicated that the ecological systems model can be applied to understand the factors as originating from the individual-, home-, school-, and outof-school systems. this categorization, along with the focus group data, allowed me to gain insights into how newcomer immigrant students’ homework experiences are shaped by various factors in contexts in which they engage routinely. results this section presents the descriptive statistics of the specific homework impediments and facilitators and categorizes them into individual, home, school, and out of school/ extracurricular systems. the data from focus groups are also presented, along with interpretations of how specific factors operate to shape students’ homework experiences. prevalence of homework impediments the number of students who responded ―yes‖ to statements describing a specific factor that may either help or hinder their homework efforts were counted (e.g., ―having clear instructions about the homework assignment‖ ―not having the necessary materials i need to do homework‖). of the impediments to homework completion, the most salient factors were related to having limited understanding of the course materials (50.5 percent of participants), or having difficulty with english (40.6 percent of participants). the least frequently reported impediments included not being organized (8.3 percent), getting limited feedback from the teacher (8.9 percent), and having a job (9.4 percent). in broad terms, the impediments fell into the following seven types, in descending order from the most frequently reported to the least frequently reported impediment: limited understanding; fatigue; motivational issues; organizational issues; competing environmental demands; high standards; and limited access to help or resources to complete homework. table 2 displays the number and percentage of students who reported experiencing specific homework impediments. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 8 table 2 total number and percentage of students who responded having experienced each homework impediment homework impediments type n of respondents % of respondents limited understanding limited academic skills 97 50.5 problem with vocab in hw 78 40.6 limited english proficiency 64 33.3 not reviewing lessons 21 10.9 too much hw fatigue 78 40.6 too tired 55 28.6 forgetting hw materials organization issue 48 25.0 leaving hw till last minute 45 23.4 not knowing what hw was assigned 43 22.4 lack of organization 16 8.3 fear of mistakes high standards 40 20.8 not happy with quality of own work 23 12.0 lack of will/desire to do hw motivation issue 31 16.1 boredom/lack of interest in topic 31 16.1 chores competing environmental demands 27 14.1 no quiet place 21 10.9 job 18 9.4 limited teacher feedback limited help/resources 17 8.9 no materials to do hw 17 8.9 the factors influencing homework completion were then categorized using the ecological systems model framework that guided the study. most of the homework impediments (about 86 percent of all impediments reported by students) fell under individual student characteristics (e.g., limited academic skills; too much homework; fatigue; forgetting homework materials). less than 10 percent of studentreported impediments were related to home environment characteristics, and less than 3 percent of the impediments were related to school environment or extracurricular/ afterschool contexts. figure 2 displays the distribution of homework impediments across the ecological systems. what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 9 figure 2. ecological systems categorization of homework impediments table 3 ecological systems categorization of homework impediments individual limited understanding problem with vocab in hw too much hw limited english proficiency too tired forgetting hw materials leaving hw till last minute not knowing what hw was assigned fear of mistakes lack of will/desire to do hw boredom/lack of interest in topic not happy with quality of own work not reviewing lessons lack of organization home chores no quiet place school limited teacher feedback out of school/ extracurricular job current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 10 focus group discussion of homework impediments although the students tended to attribute a disproportionate number of homework impediments to individual student characteristics, an examination of qualitative data indicated that many of the individual level factors interacted with factors in their greater ecological contexts. the responses from the students in focus groups complemented the survey data and shed light on the interaction between the individual and contextual factors. limited academic skills and too much homework. the most commonly discussed impediments in focus groups were related to not understanding the course materials and having limited english proficiency; this language barrier, in turn, prevented students from fully grasping the meaning of materials. limited understanding further led students to feel overwhelmed, as they needed to exert greater effort and time to complete assignments. a number of students concurred with jorge and wen, 9th grade students from mexico and china, respectively: jorge: homework is a lot because we really not understand a lot of english so… we have some of the words that we don't understand and we have to translate and everything and i think with that it's a lot of work. wen: sometimes the words in the question, they are too difficult. i don’t understand it. thus, completing homework assignments in english demanded more time and energy from newcomers than it would have from native english-speaking students. the resulting feeling of burden is illustrated in an exchange amongst 9th graders from honduras, mexico, and bangladesh: remi: english is hard. luis: yeah, global [studies] is hard too. [why is it hard?] because i don't understand the language. annie: sometimes they like give us a quote and we have to write an essay on it ... and writing essay is hard. it takes a really long time. these remarks suggest that newcomer students need extra help and supports to facilitate their homework completion. yet not all students readily had access to such help. limited help or access to resources. immigrant parents are often unable to provide direct homework help that students need. a haitian 10th grade boy stated: ―when i came here, like last year in 9th grade i never did my homework cuz i didn't understand what to do, like we're immigrants, and in new york, parents work and don't have much time to help you.‖ his statement was supported by responses from other students: 9th grade chinese girl: my mom, she don’t help me because she comes home like seven or eight o’clock. she’s so tired. 10th grade mexican boy: i don’t ask my mom or father because they learn how to talk english, but they don’t know how to read or do homework 9th grade mexican boy: my father comes home at eleven and he doesn’t have time. clearly, schools must provide adequate instructional support and homework help for these students to compensate for the limited help they can receive at home. motivation, organization, and competing environmental demands. like all students, whether immigrant or not, certain types of facilitators such as motivation, organization, and competing environmental demands serve as impediments to getting homework done, in varying degrees. student responses elicited through focus groups allowed for contextualization of these impediments. for instance, a statement from 12th grade girl from gabon illustrated how motivation or engagement in an assignment and organizational skills such as time management can interact to pose challenges in doing homework: 12th grade gabon girl: one time i don't want to do homework is like these journals… just about what we read and the words we looked up. i have to write in it like three times a week, and usually i don’t do it. i wait till the last minute cuz um the teacher collects them like after a certain period of time like a month… so i have missing assignments but then i have to it cuz i know she's going to collect it so i do like six in a row. students also described how organizational issues such as procrastination can be compounded with competing environmental demands, including television, household chores, and other responsibilities. a frequently mentioned source of distraction was the television: 9th grade boy from bangladesh: sometimes at home, other people are watching tv so you watch too, and when you wanna do homework, it's too late, and so you sleep and then the next day you aren’t ready for class. 12th grade girl from dominican republic: television, i mean like if there’s a show that just comes on every thursday, like lost, i might choose to just watch that rather than do homework some immigrant students, particularly girls, had responsibilities at home that interfered with their ability to get their homework done. a student described how requests what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 11 from parents often made it difficult for her to do homework: 10th grade girl from bangladesh: when i start to do homework and concentrate really hard, something that happens a lot for me, like every day, is …my mom calls, and says, annie, do this, do that, and i’ll be like, let me do my homework and then i will do it. but then i start to do chores and stuff, and a call comes, like from my friend, and they will never hang up the phone before an hour, and i'll have to speak with them. it happens every day….my mom, she works four days a week, so it's really hard to do homework… and i have to maintain every single thing and also do my homework so it's really hard.‖ interplay of homework impediments in students’ lives. for some students, types of impediments such as competing environmental demands, limited access to resources to do homework, and having high standards together interacted as impediments. an exchange between 12th grade girls from gabon (jasmin) and dominican republic (lesly) illustrates this interplay: jasmin: my door, the lock is messed up and i always have my family. they live close by and i have little cousins they always come in so i cannot concentrate and whenever i do something i like to put my complete thought into it so i almost never have that chance. i’d rather not do something if i am not gonna do it right, so i’d rather not even bother. lesly: like me, my ...the room, i share with my little sister and my aunt, so she comes in, she puts the tv on, and i cannot do nothin’ with the tv… so if i go in the living room, my mom is in the room and she’s watching tv, so then my dad comes in the living room and watches games, like basketball, soccer, and like we have speakers, like boom boom boom and i am like in the corner trying to concentrate and looking at him like with evil eyes [laughs] that’s how it is so... i can't go anywhere. i have the brooklyn library over there but the library, sometimes i don't like the library cuz they’re not really updated… jasmin: yeah, so their books are kinda old and also the computer thing, you have to get off after thirty minutes and then if it’s too much people then you have to wait for them to get off ... so it's really annoying. these students recognized that their school offered afterschool homework help sessions, where they could ask questions to teachers and gain access to the internet and other educational resources. an unexpected finding, however, was that homework help centers did not always provide the support needed by some students, particularly 11th and 12th graders and those with relatively more advanced english skills. these students were expected to help beginner ells and others who were having difficulty with their homework; thus, they were unable to use the time and environment designated for completing their own assignments: 12th grade girl from south africa: we have homework help, but the thing is, if we go we are not gonna get our homework done ... we have to help others cuz we are 12th graders. we’re supposed to know everything. we are supposed to help. and you get distracted. even in class sometimes that happens... [sounds of agreement from other participants]. you don’t get your things done cuz you have to go and help people this quotation illustrates how a factor that is generally expected to facilitate homework completion (e.g., afterschool homework centers, peer tutors) can also serve as an impediment. in the following section, i examine the homework facilitators reported by students and present an analysis which parallels that of homework impediments. prevalence of homework facilitators the student survey data on homework facilitators revealed that the most frequently reported factor was knowing or understanding the course material (75.5 percent of participants). having clear instructions (59.9 percent) and having the assignment broken down into smaller steps (58.3 percent) were also among the most frequently reported facilitators; this finding stressed the importance of understanding the content and/or language in order to be able to complete homework. the other major homework facilitators were being interested in the topic or subject the assignment is for (68.2 percent), and getting good grades (63.0 percent); these factors would make homework completion easier for all students, not just for the participants in this study. somewhat surprisingly, the least frequently reported homework facilitators included not having to do chores around the house (16.7 percent), receiving rewards from parents (18.2 percent), and attending homework help centers (18.8 percent). these facilitators can be grouped into five broad types: knowing/understanding course materials, help/access to resources, environment conducive to doing homework, rewards/encouragement, and use of one’s native language. table 4 shows the number and percentage of participants who reported having experienced each of the homework facilitators. applying the ecological systems framework to examine the homework facilitators revealed a notable difference between the distributions of facilitators and impediments discussed earlier. while most of the impediments fell under the individual student characteristics, homework facilitators were relatively current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 12 evenly distributed throughout the ecological systems. individual student characteristics still comprised the most frequently reported facilitators (37.4 percent), but home environment and school environment characteristics also represented substantial proportion of the facilitators, 27.2 percent and 23.1 percent, respectively. about 12.3 percent of the homework facilitators were related to extracurricular or afterschool contexts. the distribution of homework facilitators across the ecological systems is presented in figure 3 and table 5. figure 3. ecological systems categorization of homework facilitators table 4 total number and percentage of students who reported having experienced each homework facilitator homework facilitators type n of respondents % of respondents understand course material know/understand material 145 75.5 interested in topic 131 68.2 clear instructions 115 59.9 hw broken down in to small steps 112 58.3 to get good grades rewards/encouragement 121 63.0 parents' encouragement 66 34.4 mentor's encouragement 60 31.3 praise from teacher 51 26.6 rewards from parents 35 18.2 available reference materials help/access to resources 101 52.6 starting hw in class with teacher 87 45.3 friends' help 72 37.5 hw help center 36 18.8 quiet place to do hw conductive environment for hw 80 41.7 no chores 32 16.7 translation of hw and instructions use if native language 62 32.3 doing hw in native language 56 29.2 what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 13 table 5 ecological systems categorization of homework facilitators individual understand course material interested in topic clear instructions translation of hw and instructions doing hw in native language to get good grades home available reference materials quiet place to do hw parents' encouragement rewards from parents no chores school hw broken down in to small steps starting hw in class with teacher praise from teacher out of school / extracurricular friends' help mentor's encouragement hw help center focus group discussions of homework facilitators the broad categories of homework facilitators identified from survey results also emerged in student focus group discussions. many participants acknowledged the value of homework and recognized it as a means of reinforcing, extending, and deepening their understanding of the materials covered in class. one 10th grade boy from bangladesh noted: if you go home and like don't do anything, like not be in touch with homework, with lesson,… i’ll forget everything so it's very important to keep in touch with those things. yeah besides it's not possible for a teacher to teach everything in one hour, so he or she gives homework to cover it at home so that the student can learn something. that also proves what did you learn from that class, if you can do your homework. in another focus group with 11th and 12th graders, two girls from dominican republic (lesly) and south africa (kyra) said: lesly: you learn. like for example for math, if you don't practice, you forget it. everybody knows that. kyra: yeah, and it’s for your own understanding, cuz for the homework, it might just be, explaining the subject, … like you might have questions that if you didn't do the homework, you wouldn't have had before so you know it expands your knowledge. knowing / understanding course materials. when asked to talk about some things that help them get their homework done, students also commented on their understanding of the course materials and the steps required to complete the given assignments. the following exchange is between two girls, lesly, an 11th grader from dominican republic and jasmin, a 12th grader from gabon: lesly: if you understand it, if you understand the homework, what to do, and in class, you already have a pretty good, … an idea of what to do when you go home, then homework would be easy. it just flows. but if you go home and you’re like how did the teacher explain …then you’re stuck. jasmin it also depends on the teacher cuz different people have different teaching styles… i remember like current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 14 comparing my previous history teacher and the one that i have now… mr. p., the one i had before, he would really explain what we are supposed to write about and we would have some background and insight about it. and we have to do this, that, and that, in order to get to the final thing… now it’s basically,… just one class, he said something quick about a topic and you have to start. use of one’s native language. for 9th and 10th grade students with limited english proficiency, knowing or understanding assignments entailed the use of their native languages. when students could get translations from peers or help from a teacher who knows the students’ native language, completing homework was relatively easier. in a focus group with 9th and 10th grade students from china, haiti, and mexico, students made the following comments: student: as an international school they should have teachers that speak other languages, for all the languages especially to help students that don’t understand their assignments. student: or if there’s a student in the same class that speaks your language, if he or she understands what they are doing the teacher should ask that person to help us. student: yeah, you need someone to help you with your homework, someone to translate. rewards/encouragement. another main category of homework facilitators were rewards/ encouragement, such as extra credit and higher grades, praise from parents, and encouragement from mentors. some students reported practical, instrumental reasons that motivated them to complete homework, as illustrated in the following exchange amongst 10th graders from bangladesh: student: the positive thing about homework is that i can get extra credit if i do homework. student: if you don't hand it in,…you lose points. student: yeah your grade goes down. other students’ comments also indicated that they are inclined to complete their assignments because homework completion can affect how teachers evaluate them. for example, jasmin, a 12th grade girl from gabon remarked: if you do your homework, it makes you look better [laughs]. you don’t want teacher to think bad about you, see what i mean? like sometimes you are asked to do homework because you want to do something like an activity with the homework, and if you didn't do it, it looks bad you know, just in general. for example, back in my junior year, you want something, like the internship, you’re looking for an internship and right now and then the teacher might know somebody who’s interested in what you are doing and if he sees the way you are in class, you know not doing your work and stuff, he might not think that he can trust you. he might say that you act the same way over there the same way you do in class, so this is bad. students also described rewards and encouragements from parents that helped them complete homework. their remarks show how these rewards and encouragements shape the home environment and interact with individual characteristics to promote homework completion. annie, a 10th grade girl from bangladesh, reported: every year if i get a’s and b’s only, [my parents] give me a present. like this year i got a cell phone ...they saw good results, and they just took me to a store and were like, here, pick one. ... they give me like options, if you do this, i will give you this, if you don’t i will never let you do this. a 10th grade mexican boy commented on how his father encourages him to do homework: my father asks me if my homework is done when he gets home from work. he always says that he’s not that good and tells me to do my homework to achieve a higher level than him. my father, he never got enough school and he thinks i can reach higher and homework is important for that. by simply checking to see that homework is completed, asking about what their children are learning at school, parents could encourage their children to focus on their schoolwork. even discipline served as a way to encourage homework completion. one 9th grade haitian boy described how his mother monitors his homework: when she’s at work she’s always calling me, asking if i am doing my homework or if i don't understanding something. then she tells me to,… i just go to the library to look up some books and finish it because i know she’s gonna ask about it. additionally, kyra, a 12th grade south african girl shared the following comment with the group: my dad, he tells me to do my homework, cuz he’ll be checking, and if i didn’t do it, he can whoop me up …. even if i’m sleeping. so i probably won’t do it if he doesn’t tell me to do it. he always asks me if i got homework, cuz my dad, you don’t play, he want me to do my homework all the time. what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 15 furthermore, if students were motivated and interested by the homework they were more likely to complete it: kyra: if you like what you’re doing right now in class of course you will do it. jasmin: i am personally moved to do homework whenever it’s something i am particularly interested about like if it’s for math it’s really rare for me to do it ... [laughs] just like, in general, if something does not motivate me to something about it… there’s a big chance that i would not do it... i’d probably just rather watch television or go to sleep. [laughs] help or access to resources and environment conducive to doing homework. other homework facilitators were access to help or resources such as the internet, and environment that is conducive to studying. the following comments illustrate how these facilitators interact with each other and influence students’ homework completion: an exchange between students from dominican republic and south africa show how the internet and friends can serve as sources of homework help: lesly: internet. i cannot do my homework without internet. kyra: me, i talk to friends. i call them all the time, like one o’clock in the morning and i go, you're doing your homework? yeah. because most of the time we all are doing our homework at two, one o’clock in the morning ... [why so late?] lesly: cuz it's just the way it is. kyra: you go on the internet, on msn, all of them are there, you just go and ask a question ... and you chat chat chat [laughs] lesly: yeah, msn, it's faster and it’s there all the time, twenty-four hours. lesly, the 11th grader from dominican republic further elaborated on her room, where she does her homework, in talking about the facilitators: there’s like a little learning environment going on … i have a lot of books about just cleopatra, anne frank. i have stuff about surrealism. i have books about nature, how we could just more simply, stuff like that, so um yeah whenever i look at that, i feel inspired to do the homework. in sum, the findings based on survey data and focus group data complement one another and are consistent with the ecological systems model. homework completion was affected by a wide range of characteristics related to individual students, home environments, school environments, and extracurricular/ outside school contexts, many of which could function as impediments and also serve as facilitators. the focus group data shed light on the interrelated processes affecting homework completion from students’ perspective. the individual student characteristics were influenced by and interacted with characteristics of the other ecological systems. many of the individual characteristics challenging homework completion could be mitigated by factors in the home, school, or afterschool contexts, resulting in increased homework completion among the participants. discussion facilitators and impediments to immigrant students’ homework completion whether or not students understood their course materials was a major factor affecting their homework completion. as newcomer immigrants, their limited english proficiency played a primary role in the extent to which the participants understood their lessons and the assignments given to them. data from focus groups indicated that figuring out homework instructions and translating unfamiliar words in the assignments consumed a considerable amount of time and effort, leading students to feel overwhelmed and burdened by homework. thus, in broad terms, limited understanding of course materials, often due to limited english proficiency, and fatigue resulting from the energy and time demanded by homework were the two major categories encompassing homework impediments. conversely, understanding the course material and having supports to overcome the language barrier (e.g., clear instructions, homework broken down into smaller steps, reference materials) comprised the two major categories of homework facilitators. academic english proficiency: a prerequisite for homework. the fact that successful completion of homework is heavily dependent on students’ english proficiency corroborates the findings from an earlier study (bang et al., 2009) that examined the relationships between homework completion, course understanding, and english language skills of recently arrived immigrant youth. the study showed overall positive associations between students’ homework completion and their academic achievement as indicated by teacher evaluations of students’ course understanding. yet this positive association between homework completion and course understanding was substantial only for youth with relatively high levels of english language proficiency. for youth with lower levels of english language proficiency, completion of homework had little positive associations with their achievement of understanding the course materials. these patterns from both studies indicate that teachers across the curriculum need to first and foremost help students master english. without proficiency in academic english, each assignment that is inaccessible to immigrant youth increases the educational disparities between these youth and their native-born english speaking peers. this finding also underscores the need for teachers to carefully design current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 16 homework and make necessary adjustments so that the tasks are appropriate for each student’s level of academic skills. if thoughtfully assigned, homework represents precious opportunities for newcomer immigrant students to build proficiency in academic english critical for performing grade-level work. however, if the homework is ill-suited to students’ learning needs, it can potentially do more harm than good. factors common to all students’ homework experiences. several categories of factors influencing homework completion were those that would most likely affect all students, regardless of whether or not they were of immigrant origin. these categories were motivation or engagement, organizational skills, and characteristics of environments in which students do their homework. consistent with the existing literature on engagement (e.g., fredricks et al., 2004; goslin, 2003), being interested in the topic of a given assignment made homework completion easier for students. not surprisingly, inadequate organizational skills (e.g., forgetting materials needed for homework, procrastination) made homework completion a challenge for a considerable number of students. further, having a quiet place to study or an environment was important for students’ homework completion. the descriptive data on homework facilitators and impediments also confirmed the existing body of research applying the ecological systems framework (e.g., benner et al., 2008; cook, herman, phillips, & settersen, 2002). many of the homework impediments were individual student characteristics (e.g., limited academic skills, motivation, organization, high standards); these individual characteristics interacted with factors in other ecological systems in influencing homework completion. focus group data revealed that impediments at the individual level may be mediated by facilitators in home environment (e.g., encouragement from parents), school environment (e.g., teacher feedback, grades), and outside school contexts (e.g., homework centers, friends’ help). this interplay of factors across ecological systems shaped students’ homework experiences. factors unique to study participants. a noteworthy finding is that while facilitators were fairly evenly distributed across the ecological systems, the majority of impediments were attributed to individual characteristics. it seems that the students generally had high levels of internal locus of control (bandura, 1997; pajares, 2003) perceiving themselves as agents of certain outcomes (e.g., successful completion of homework), rather than believing that fate, luck or other external circumstances determine the outcomes. this finding indicates that given access to adequate resources and appropriate guidance, these students would likely to take initiative and direct their behaviors to realizing their goals. additionally, an unexpected finding, (i.e. some students’ experiences with homework help centers), illustrated the interaction between individual characteristics (academic skills, english proficiency) and extracurricular/ afterschool contexts (homework center), influencing these participants’ homework completion. while homework help center provided the much-needed support for struggling students or students with limited english proficiency, it could hinder homework completion for more advanced students, as they felt obliged to serve as peer tutors. factors such as not wanting to do the assignment or having to do chores around the house were relatively minor hindrances to homework completion among the participants in this study. one explanation for this finding may be that students recognized the value of homework, as 9th and 10th grade students from sierra leone and dominican republic noted: ―the homework is for you, for your future,‖ ―yeah, you learn… and if you don’t do your homework, you don’t learn anything, you lose.‖ another explanation may be that impediments such as lack of will or desire to do homework and competing demands on students’ time were mitigated by potent facilitators such as getting good grades and positive feedback from adults. implications this study offers insight into newcomer immigrant students’ homework experiences and the factors that impact their homework completion. the specific factors that newcomer immigrants in this study reported as facilitators or impediments to their homework completion have implications for teachers and afterschool programs. according to this study’s results, the most significant factor affecting students’ homework completion involves whether or not they understand the course materials. participants’ limited understanding of course materials and difficulty with the language involved in the assignment or the instructions were major reasons for their inability to complete their homework. this finding highlights not only the importance of homework for immigrant youth to provide them with additional opportunities to learn and practice skills, but also the need for teachers to design assignments that their immigrant students can comprehend and complete. to ensure that newcomer immigrant students understand their homework tasks, teachers may have students start their homework in class, discuss vocabulary in the assignment that could pose difficulties, or have students explain to each other the instructions and the steps to take in completing a given task. by doing so, students would have the chance to ask questions and have help readily accessible from teachers and peers. in addition, newcomer immigrant students would benefit from attending homework help programs, where they have access to teachers or tutors who can simplify the vocabulary used in assignments and explain the materials targeted in the homework. results of this study indicated that lack of materials to complete assignments and competing environmental demands (e.g., crowded/noisy family settings, responsibilities beyond those typically expected of adolescents) can hinder homework completion what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 17 for immigrant youth. thus, homework help sessions would ideally be arranged to take place in libraries or classrooms well-equipped with educational resources (e.g. computers with internet access, encyclopedias, periodicals), that can aid students with understanding and mastering new materials. the study findings showed that for some students, resources such as access to the internet is critical for completing homework, and that it can be frustrating to go to the library to find outdated books and long line of people waiting to use the computers. such impediments can be addressed by reserving certain resources (e.g., quiet space, time, school supplies, and equipments) for use by students to work on their assignments. furthermore, homework help programs may serve as a vehicle through which students receive guidance on how to organize their assignments, allocate their time, and manage their study environments. since a considerable number of participants reported difficulty completing homework due to lack of organization or distractions in their homework environment, teachers and tutors staffing the homework help programs may demonstrate strategies, for example, on how to use an assignment agenda and plan one’s homework time. extracurricular programs that are not focused on academic tasks may also consider including a homework help or tutoring component to their program, especially in light of research evidence indicating improvement in academic performance among immigrant youth who obtained homework help through participation in afterschool activities (e.g., aspiazu, bauer, & spillett, 1998; cosden et al., 2004; dotterer et al., 2007; eccles et al., 2003). finally, in order to help immigrant students derive maximal benefits from homework, teachers may reconsider the purposes of homework and the role that homework plays in giving grades. many participants in the present study indicated grades as an important reason for doing homework, sometimes to the exclusion of other reasons. emphasizing the effect that homework has on students’ grades, or offering extra credit for behaviors such as handing assignments earlier than the deadline can send the wrong message about why homework is given. since most homework is designed to help students practice their skills, it seems that assessments of homework should primarily be formative, used to shape day-to-day instruction (o’connor, 2007; william, 2007), and not included in students’ grades that indicate their achievement in the course. limitations and future research this study was conducted with newcomer immigrant adolescents in one international high school designed specifically to address the educational needs of ells. in addition, the homework survey questions were administered only to 9th and 10th graders of the school. since the study site was a relatively new school (first graduating class was class of 2008), and given the shift in the focus of academic curriculum as students enter 11th and 12th grades (e.g., increased emphasis on regents examinations, postsecondary education), the findings of the present study are not generalized beyond the study participants. future studies should be expanded to include immigrant youth in upper grades as well as students in other international schools in new york city to enhance the generalizability of findings and to examine changes in immigrant youth’s homework experiences longitudinally, as they advance through the high school grades. student samples should also be expanded to include second generation immigrant-origin youth, as well as native-born minority youth who may experience some similar challenges in completing homework as newcomer immigrant youth. furthermore, a wider range of school contexts should be considered, such as private schools, charter schools, and parochial schools that serve differing densities of ells, as well as comparison schools that serve primarily non-ells. it will be important to distinguish the homework impediments that are unique to each group of students and determine which homework facilitators have positive effects for whom, under what conditions, and with what support services, in order to implement intervention programs that can best address the needs of specific populations. evaluation research should also be undertaken to identify the characteristics of programs that produce increased homework completion and academic achievement to explore means of implementation throughout different communities and school contexts. subsequent studies should incorporate individual student interviews to gather more detailed information about the processes of newcomer immigrant students’ homework completion and the ways in which they cope with specific homework impediments. although the survey data, supplemented with qualitative data collected through student focus groups, provided some insight into several major factors that help or hinder their homework completion, individual students varied in the range and type of factors influencing their homework experiences (e.g., lack of understanding, responsibilities around the house, fatigue) as well as in their responses to these factors (e.g., seeking help from older siblings, accommodating parents’ requests for help instead of completing homework). data collected through in-depth interviews and case studies can shed light on patterns or sets of homework facilitators and impediments associated with, for example, newcomer immigrant students with interrupted formal schooling or students from certain language backgrounds. delineating specific, unique factors that shape different immigrant students’ homework experiences would complement the findings of the present study, which focused primarily on the most common or frequently reported impediments. the detailed profiles created through individual interviews can also help school staff identify additional potential factors that may be deterring some students from accessing homework help. such information would well inform the instructional practices of teachers and schools seeking to tailor assignments / programs to current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 18 newcomer youths’ diverse individual learning needs and circumstances. immigrant families and english language learners are becoming a majority in many communities in the united states (u.s. census bureau, 2003), and educators have the important role of providing quality education for this rapidly growing segment of the population. ensuring that homework assignments offer meaningful learning experiences and facilitating newcomer immigrant youth’s homework completion is a first step towards academic achievement among these students. success in school will not only improve the lives of these immigrant youth and their families, but also help to enhance the future economic and social welfare of this country. 1 permission to use the school name was granted by the principal of the school. 2 complete survey can be provided by the author upon request. 3 data on mother’s education were missing for 35 (18%) students; data on father’s education were missing for 46 (24%) students. data on mother’s employment were missing for 26 (14%) students; data on father’s employment were missing for 35 (18%) students. the percentages reported include these students with missing values. 4 complete survey can be provided by the author upon request. 5 all participants’ names have been replaced with pseudonyms. references aspiazu, g. g., bauer, s. c., & spillett, m. d. 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(2005). homework practices and academic achievement: the mediating role of self-efficacy and perceived responsibility beliefs. contemporary educational psychology, 30, 397-417. doi:10.1016/j.cedpsych. 2005.05.003 what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 21 appendix a focus group protocol welcome & introduction goal of the focus group the purpose of this focus group is to gain a better understanding of how homework affects your lives as immigrant youth living in the u.s. the information you provide will help your teachers design more effective homework assignments and improve the kinds of help that are available to students like you when doing homework. explanation of how data will be recorded and used: we will be discussing your experiences with homework. i would like you to share with the group, talk about how homework affects your daily lives, and what makes doing homework easy or hard. there is no right or wrong answer, and what you share with the group will not impact your grades in any way. i will be using the data only for my project. everything we talk about will remain confidential and anonymous, so i will not use any of your names in my project. the discussion will be recorded by a digital recorder, but if during the discussion, there is something you want to share but do not want it to be recorded, you can just ask me to turn the recorder off. establish ground rules for focus group discussion: 1. please turn off any music or communication devices that you may have. 2. please share your experiences and ideas openly and honestly. 3. please respect what your peers have to say and allow everyone to take their turn to speak. there should be only one speaker at a time. 4. at times, i will intervene so that we stay focused and to keep the discussion moving. focus group questions and discussion  how do you feel about homework? o why do you think that teachers assign you homework? o do you feel that you have too much homework / too little / just the right amount? o generally, is homework easy / hard for you? what makes homework easy or hard?  when and where do you usually do your homework? (during school hours? right after school, at home? at an afterschool program or homework center? morning of the day it is due?) o why do you tend to do homework at that time / place? • how important is it to you that you have your homework done and handed in on time? probe why it is relatively important or unimportant. • for you, what are benefits of homework? • what are the costs / negative effects of homework? • what are some things that help you get your homework done? (e.g., someone to help with homework, reference resources such as computer with internet access, encyclopedias, tutor, homework center, encouragement from parents and teachers) facilitators to homework completion (prompts) tutors after-school programs / homework centers reference materials; computer with internet access quiet place to study / set time designated for homework / study relieved from household chores / responsibilities to do homework rules about homework (e.g., no playing with friends / watching tv, etc. until homework is completed) peers who can explain homework problems / who can be counted on to bring you the assignments when you have missed school. mentors / non-related adults / role models who provide encouragement and motivation parental support (direct assistance with homework assignments or indirect / emotional assistance rewards for homework completion (from parents, teachers)  how regularly / often do you have these things available to you when you do homework?  what are some things that make it hard for you to get your homework done? (e.g., not interested in the subject, lack of motivation / self-discipline, lack of quiet place to do homework, responsibilities in the house, part-time jobs, current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 22 interruptions from siblings, peers, or family members, limited english, limited understanding of course materials, no one to help with homework) impediments to homework completion (prompts) limited english proficiency limited understanding of materials overwhelming amount of homework not knowing exactly what homework has been assigned limited feedback from teacher responsibilities around the house paid employment lack of a quiet, suitable place to study limited resources at home (reference materials, computer with internet access) no one who can help with homework lack of motivation / desire to do homework procrastination fatigue / frustration / impatience fear of making mistakes and feeling like a failure dissatisfaction with one’s work forgetting to bring home assignments and necessary materials lack of organizational skills and study habits  failing to bring assignments back to class  how regularly / often do these things affect your ability to do homework?  what are some strategies that you have used to complete your homework?  what would make you want to do homework?  what would you like to change about your homework assignments / teachers / parents / environments so that doing homework is easier / more enjoyable for you? what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 23 appendix b homework facilitators and impediments which of the things listed below help you to do your homework? (check all that apply) when... 1. i am interested in the subject. 2. i understand what was taught in class. 3. i have clear instructions about what to do. 4. the assignment is explained step by step. 5. i start the homework in class. 6. i go to homework help sessions in the morning or after school. 7. i use reference materials (e.g., dictionary, encyclopedia, internet). 8. i have a quiet place to do homework. 9. i get rewards from my parents for finishing my homework. 10. i get good grades if i do my homework. 11. my teachers praise me for doing homework. 12. i do not have to do housework. 13. my friends help me with homework. 14. i get instructions in my own language. 15. i can complete the homework in my own language. 16. my parents encourage me. 17. my mentor or another adult encourages me. which of the reasons listed below make it hard for you to do your homework?(check all that apply) when... 1. i do not understand the lesson. 2. i have too much homework. 3. i do not understand the instructions for the assignment. current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 24 4. i don't know what the homework is. 5. i have problems with english. 6. i don't think my teacher will check my homework. 7. i have to do housework. 8. i have a job. 9. there is too much noise in my home. 10. i don't have the things i need to do homework (e.g., books, computer). 11. i don't want to do the homework. 12. i do my homework last-minute. 13. i am too tired to do homework. 14. i am afraid of making mistakes. 15. i am not happy with my work. 16. i forget to bring home the assignment. 17. i am not interested in the subject. 18. i am not organized. 19. i don't review or study what was taught in earlier lessons. what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? 25 article citation bang, h.j. (2011). what makes it easy or hard for you to do your homework? an account of newcomer immigrant youths’ afterschool academic lives. current issues in education, 14(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/527 author notes hee jin bang national writing project university of california 2105 bancroft way #1042 berkeley, ca 94720-1042 hbang@nwp.org hee jin bang is a senior research associate at the national writing project. her current research interests include academic and social adaptation of immigrant youth in the united states and france; influence of school and home environments on minority youths’ civic engagement; second-language acquisition; writing instruction and assessment of writing by english language learners; and cross-cultural research methods. special thanks go to the students and staff at the international high school at prospect heights for their time and participation in the project. mailto:hbang@nwp.org current issues in education vol. 14 no. 3 26 volume 14, number 3 september 24, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editor melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca anglea hines younsu kim seong hee kim lisa lacy carol masser leslie salazar jennifer shea alaya swann faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template 1 volume 2, number 2 september 8, 1999 issn 1099-839x commentary — a new day in how scholars communicate gene v. glass arizona state university since the founding of the royal society (of london for improving natural knowledge) in 1660—an event that some mark as the beginning of science as it is known in the modern world—the production and consumption of scientific writings have been subject to economic necessities that have forcefully shaped the very nature of knowledge. (the earliest members of the royal society paid an "admission fee" of 10 shillings at each wednesday afternoon meeting, which went to subsidize the publication of philosophical transactions, the world's first scientific journal which dates from 1664.) the costs of printing and transporting paper have exerted a tremendous influence over which scientific writings are made public and who constitutes the public for whom they are published. when a hundred years ago the cultural and intellectual strains of positivism/operationism were conveniently joined with the professionalization of science in the university and the economics of industrialized capitalism, modern scholarly communications assumed its present form. a reader in the year 2000 browsing a scientific journal from the year 1910 will find the environs thoroughly familiar. about ten years ago, the economics of publishing and communicating writings over vast distances were radically changed by the emergence of the internet, i.e., telecommunications utilizing small, cheap computers. the effects of this revolution in telecommunications have yet to change the way scholars publish and who reads their writings. three and a half centuries of custom and entrenched economic interests will not yield readily to a new day. the work of scholars can now be shared almost instantly with literally ten-fold or a hundred-fold more persons than could access such works in the past. and yet, there are those who would squelch this revolution if they could. the economic interests of publishers of scholarly journals are obvious. less obvious is the fact that their profits—variously estimated as high as 30% to 40%—are the envy of the business world, and that scholarly publishers are now working frantically to find ways of owning the communications among scholars, arguing that the "value added" by their editing and formatting justifies their continued intermediary role between scholars and their audience. many non-profit scholarly societies owe a good portion of their income to paper publications and are indistinguishable from commercial publishers in regard to their wish to maintain things as they are. the editors of current issues in education,as well as editors of other electronic journals, will attest to the fact that professional quality editing and formatting can be achieved by individuals working in public institutions and making their efforts freely available to the world for the public good. recently, the majority of the faculty at cal tech signed a petition vowing that they would no longer cede copyright of their work to commercial journal publishers. more difficult to understand, perhaps, are the motives and attitudes to toward electronic telecommunications of scientists and scholars themselves, particularly those who occupy influential positions in universities and scholarly societies. william j. brand (1999), in his dissertation research on electronic scholarly journals, interviewed nearly three dozen prominent researchers in physics, mathematics, psychology and education on the subject of their practices and attitudes toward electronic publication. surprisingly, the "softer" the discipline (education and psychology being considered much "softer" than physics and mathematics), the more insistent the researchers were that all publication be rigorously refereed and the less concerned they were with timely release of work. educational researchers worried that any compromising of the highest academic standards would permit errors to enter the body of knowledge about education. some even expressed the somewhat supercilious opinion that it is desirable for manuscripts to lie around for months or even a year to give the authors time to mull over their work. (those who expressed these opinions were professors long ago tenured, it bears noting.) physicists, on the other hand, said, "give me the article as soon as it's written; i can make up my own mind if it is right or not." and so they do, as any visit to http://xxx.lanl.gov/, where physicists and many other scientists archive their "preprints," will quickly show. (the british have already http://xxx.lanl.gov/ current issues in education vol. 2 no. 2 2 established a "preprint" archiving service for educational researchers called education-line.) now the issue of "peer review" in the production of scholarly writings and the issue of access to those writings by the public are easily separated. and i hesitate to continue down the road that leads to a severe critique of peer review, particularly since i do not wish to infect my colleagues who edit current issues in education with the virus of "low standards," the virulent kiss of death in the academic world. so permit me to say just a few words about access. the great joy of this new world of electronic publication comes at least once a day to those who edit scholarly ejournals. the same computers that "serve" out the publications also record the location (nation, for sure, sometimes the university or organization) of the recipient (the personal identity of the recipient is generally ambiguous, though not always). by scanning the daily access logs, one can see the locations of persons who visited the journal that day and downloaded articles. current issues in education is still a bit young to have established clear patterns of usage. on a good day, cie will be visited by about 100 persons, but a look at a more established ejournal, education policy analysis archives, will show the breadth of access to scholarly writings that beggars by comparison the distribution of paper journals. the access logs for epaa for one weekday in august 1999 (a notoriously slow month for academic work in the northern hemisphere) revealed the following features among the nearly 1,000 persons who visited the journal that day: location number of persons aol.com 156 canada 42 australia 42 united states school districts 29 united kingdom 16 netherlands 16 malaysia 15 saudi arabia 12 singapore 11 mexico 8 japan 6 new zealand (aotearoa) 6 philippines 4 turkey 4 taiwan 4 thailand 4 columbia 3 hungary 3 hong kong 3 indonesia 3 http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/ http://epaa.asu.edu/ http://epaa.asu.edu/ commentary — a new day in how scholars communicate 3 france 2 nepal 2 portugal 2 cyprus 2 mauritius 2 brazil 2 chile 2 italy 1 brunei 1 belarus 1 numbers like these are not simply gratifying, they are also very informative. the more than 150 persons visiting the journal from america online represent mostly persons not connected to the traditional academic community; many teachers and administrators maintain aol accounts, as well as school board members and interested citizens. it is difficult to imagine this number of such individuals making their way to the stacks of the nearest university library to find a research article on education policy. the connections from the philippines, turkey, thailand, columbia, hungary, indonesia, nepal, mauritius, brazil and chile represent accesses to scholarly literature that has often been beyond the reach of these individuals, because commercial publishers charge libraries as much as $200 u.s. for journals of fewer than 300 pages. the remaining nearly 600 persons accessing the journal on that day were from universities in the u.s. the journal, epaa, competes for attention with three other journals in its field whose combined subscriptions total about 5,000. one article in epaa has been downloaded 25,000 times in three years. a national survey of home schooling was published in the journal on march 23, 1999, and surpassed 9,500 downloads on august 1, 1999. the new age of scholarly communications immediately promises wide access at low cost. on a day now not even dimly foreseen, it promises to reshape what scholars mean by "publication" as well as the very nature of their work. that day cannot come too soon. references brand, w.j. (1999). papyrophiles, philistines and electroncentrics: the slow growth of electronic scholarly journals. doctoral dissertation. tempe, az: arizona state university. current issues in education vol. 2 no. 2 4 1999 article citation glass, g. v. (1999, september 8). a new day in how scholars communicate. current issues in education [on-line], 2(2). available:http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number2/. author notes gene v glass is associate dean for research of college of education at arizona state university. he has had extensive experience editing print journals dating back to 1968, and has edited and published education policy analysis archives (epaa)http://epaa.asu.edu/ a scholarly electronic journal since 1993. dr. glass may be reached at glass@asu.edu. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation glass, g. v. (2011). a new day in how scholars communicate. current issues in education, 2(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/826 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number2/index.html http://epaa.asu.edu/ mailto:glass@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 microsoft word 819_final_1.doc 1 volume 15, number 1 april 10, 2012 issn 1099-839x exploring student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching: a longitudinal study kemal sinan özmen gazi university this paper presents a four-year longitudinal study of student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching over the course of an english teacher education (elt) program. the study attempts to track possible changes in the beliefs and to analyze the impact of an elt pre-service program by taking the program itself as a dynamic variable. interviews were conducted with 49 student teachers for four years, and the data were processed through a mixed-method design. the results of the study indicate that different phases of the program resulted in various changes at certain degrees. student teachers’ engagement in the teaching practicum seems to have a higher impact on the development of the beliefs about language learning and teaching. the findings may be influential in developing and designing more effective elt programs. keywords: teacher beliefs, pre-service teacher education, beliefs about language learning and teaching beliefs of language teachers about language learning and teaching have a significant impact on their practice. the studies on student teachers’ (sts) beliefs highlight that sts carry with them some strong ideas and beliefs about education influencing the way in which they process the input during their program (pajares, 1992). furthermore, sts are believed to use their previous educational experiences to interpret the input provided in their teacher education program (kagan, 1992). as much of the research indicates, the previously-constructed beliefs are likely to remain unchanged after graduation (peacock, 2001; powell, 1992; wubbels, 1992). such findings have led us to focus on two critical issues: the mechanics of sts beliefs’ change should be studied empirically in different countries and contexts, and the findings of those studies must be utilized to reshape the current content and structure of teacher education programs. while we still do not have a crystal clear portrait of how beliefs are constructed during sts’ educational lives, the findings of some promising studies provide persuasive evidence. for example, nettle’s (1996) findings indicated both change and stability in sts’ beliefs during their program. later, nettle (1998) confirmed these findings in his study in which the firstyear sts’ beliefs were analyzed after the practicum. in this respect, the literature concerned may be broadly classified into two kinds of studies: some research emphasizes changes in the beliefs of sts (winitzky & kaucak, 1997), while others do not (tillema & knoll, 1997). one reason why the findings are quite different from each other may be that we generally possess little or no information about the program of study and content of english language teaching (elt) programs in which belief studies were conducted (mattheoudakis, 2007). bramald, hardman, and leat (1995) rightfully mention that the nature and the quality of teacher education programs are not taken into consideration as an influential variable in studies about sts’ beliefs. those programs are mostly regarded as a constant rather than as a dynamic variable (cabaroglu & roberts, 2000). current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 2 along this line of thinking, this paper presents a longitudinal study on sts’ beliefs about language learning and teaching. the details of the elt program are also discussed to explain how the structure and the content of a program may influence the findings. thus, the study aims at enriching our perception of the development of sts’ beliefs by pointing to the correlation between belief changes and the phases of the elt program at gazi university in turkey. student teachers’ beliefs as is generally acknowledged, sts’ beliefs can be tracked back to early experiences, from primary education up to tertiary level. besides, the beliefs of university teachers about the learning and teaching may exert a notable impact on the educational experiences of students in tertiary contexts (calderhead, 1996; errington, 1985, 2001; hofer & pintrich, 1997; mcdiarmid, 1990; pajares, 1992; richardson, 1996; tatto, 1998). as for teacher education programs, the leading question underlying most of the research into sts’ beliefs is whether these programs result in drastic cognitive developments, and if so, whether these developments influence the classroom behavior of novices and their approach to education in general. surely, the assumption of the researchers is that sts’ beliefs and ideas on how learning and teaching should be conducted will shape sts’ practices in classroom teaching. although teachers’ beliefs are characterized in various ways, the literature is centered around two major categories; namely, (1) teaching as a process of knowledge transmission, and (2) teaching as a process of knowledge construction (entwistle, skinner, entwistle, & orr, 2000; kane, sandretto, & heath, 2002; samuelowicz & bain, 2001; teo, chai, hung, & lee, 2008). the transmissive view addresses the tendency of teachers toward didactic teaching during which students adopt a passive role. in this view of teaching, the teacher is the source of knowledge and the authority, identifying the objectives, pace of teaching and methodology, also known as traditional teaching. the other view is the constructivist view of teaching, stressed by chai, teo, and lee (2009) as “the importance of students’ efforts to make sense of their experiences and the teachers’ role in facilitating this process” (p. 353). generally, most of the studies have revealed that students adopt an eclectic approach integrating traditional and constructivist views of teaching (brooks, 2002; entwistle et al., 2000; minor et al., 2002; van driel, bulte, & verloop, 2007). second language teacher education (slte) and sts’ beliefs the content and context of teacher education programs and specifically the ratio of theoretical and practical courses vary significantly depending on the nature of the program, the cultural values, norms and expectations of the society. richards (1990) notes that the second language teacher education (slte) programs should provide opportunities for the novice teachers to acquire skills and competences of effective teachers. to this end, elt programs offer both theoretical courses and practical courses. these programs usually have a teaching practicum module in the last year. freeman and johnson (1998) point out that “learning to teach is a long-term, complex developmental process that operates through participation in social practices and contexts associated with learning and teaching” (p. 402). this statement implies that there is a need for the adoption of a constructivist view of teaching in slte. similarly, crandall (2000) mentions the changing trends in slte in the 1990s, referring to (1) a theoretical shift from behaviorism to constructivism, (2) the heavy influence of sts’ prior learning and beliefs, (3) the realization that slte programs did not adequately prepare sts for real classroom teaching and (4) the growth of professionalism among elt practitioners. we can infer that the critical role of sts’ beliefs and the need for sts teaching in real classrooms have been understood clearly over the last two decades. however, wright (2010) laments that “research on the interactions of sts’ prior knowledge and beliefs about language learning and teaching, and program goals, course content and teacher educators’ cognitions and pedagogy in ongoing slte programs is almost nonexistent” (p. 269). although the tendency in the current literature acknowledges the importance of sts’ beliefs in shaping their teacher identities and practices, only a limited number of studies have reported a modification in slte programs. even though sts’ beliefs still await being taken into consideration in slte, changing winds have surely challenged the transmissive and behaviorist pedagogies. the growing evidence indicates that experiential (dewey, 1938), constructivist, and social constructivist views of learning (lantolf, 2000) have been adopted, which in turn has led to the widespread implementation of reflective practice in slte pedagogy (schön, 1983, 1987; wallace, 1991). the reason why slte does not adequately benefit from the studies that address the critical role of sts’ beliefs leads us to focus on the discussion of teaching theoretical courses like second language acquisition (sla). sla courses, which normally must have a vital role in shaping the sts’ beliefs, are claimed to remain too theoretical and abstract (markee, 1997). therefore, most of the sts cannot associate these courses with the practical methodology courses and the teaching practicum. lightbrown (1985) notes that sla studies can actually convince sts to adopt communicative approaches to elt and help understand why communicative approaches are more effective than behaviorist or purely cognitivist methods. macdonald, exploring student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching: a longitudinal study 3 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 1 three phases of the elt program phases courses offered in the elt program phase 1 year 1 & 2 academic english (four skills separately), educational sciences (around 10 credits), linguistics i and ii, language acquisition, techniques and principles in language teaching i and ii, special teaching methods i phase 2 year 3 special teaching methods ii, teaching english to young learners i and ii, creative drama, teaching language skills i and ii, educational sciences (6 credits) phase 3 year 4 practicum i and ii, testing, material design and adaptation, elective courses (discourse analysis, pragmatics, semantics, sociolinguistics), educational sciences (6 credits) ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ badger, and white (2001) confirmed the suggestion mentioned above in their study in which sla courses were found to have a significant impact on sts’ beliefs. however, the extent to which such theoretical courses contribute to a change in sts’ beliefs depends on the nature of teaching, the syllabus, and the curriculum of the program. within this theoretical frame of sts’ beliefs and slte pedagogy, the present study analyzes the impact of the phases of a typical elt pre-service program and aims to explore the influences of each phase on sts’ beliefs about language learning and teaching. the structure and content of the program in which the study was conducted in four years were also taken into account so that the program itself as a dynamic variable could be included in the data analysis process. the findings may illuminate our thinking about what aspects of a slte program should be modified to support sts’ belief change. the study context the present study emerged from our need to explore the impact of the elt pre-service education program at gazi university, gazi faculty of education in ankara. the elt program at gazi university offers a national curriculum that is based on a constructivist view of education and reflective approach in pre-service teacher education. among many other reasons such as the general trend in teacher education and impact of national academicians, the major reason behind offering a constructivist program is the language teaching policy of the european union adopted and currently implemented in turkey (çakır & balçıkanlı, 2012). sts at gazi university elt program have to complete a one-year teaching practicum in the fourth year. the practicum is carried out at state primary or secondary schools. sts are assigned to a particular classroom for each semester. english as a foreign language is a compulsory subject in both primary (starting by 4th grade) and secondary schools in turkey, and the number of teaching hours varies from 4 to 10, depending on the grade and type of school. in the practicum, sts are to stick to the prescribed curriculum that is developed and run by the ministry of education. the first semester practicum is based on observation of the students, teachers and the school system. in the second semester, sts start out teaching every week for one course hour (40 or 45 minutes). the methodology trainer observes each st twice during the semester. however, sts are to write reflections and submit them weekly to their trainer. sts also plan their own lessons, prepare original materials and submit them weekly. the one-day practicum is supported with a st and trainer interaction (called "feedbacksessions"). the elt program at gazi university has two major limitations. the first: sts’ prior language learning experience is mostly based on a grammar-based and an exam-oriented secondary school system. in order to be accepted to an elt program, the students in turkey need to take an examination called “foreign language examination” (fle) that is offered by student selection and placement center nationwide. the fle includes 80 multiple-choice test items assessing grammar, academic vocabulary knowledge with some sub-skills of reading. the examination has been proven to exert a negative washback effect on students (yıldırım, 2010). the second, the program is the most crowded one with a population of 1,260 undergraduate students in 2011. the number of faculty is only 38. this study attempted to analyze the content of a typical elt program in terms of certain phases that were identified by the author (table 1). three phases were utilized to observe how the program influenced belief development. phase 1 covers the first two years of the program during which sts are introduced to academic english courses, some educational sciences courses and applied linguistics courses. in phase 1, the only practical course is “special teaching methods i” (4 hours per week) offered in the spring semester of the second year. phase 2 represents the third year of the program in which the current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 4 courses are completely practical and based on the performance of the sts in teaching attempts. phase 3 includes the practicum as well as some methodology and linguistics courses. participants among 243 students enrolled in the program in 2007, 60 sts were invited randomly by email, but only 49 sts wanted to take part in the study. thus, 49 participants were followed up from the first year (september 2007) until the end of the program (may 2011). their age ranged between 18 and 21. forty-four of the participants were female (89.8%), which is common in elt programs in turkey. attempts were made to ensure homogeneity among the participants. specifically, the variables that might influence the results, such as educational background, socio-economic demography and their aim to attend an elt program were tightly controlled before the research. the trainers who taught the methodology courses were taken into consideration during the study, which means all the participants took 16 credits of core methodology courses and the complete practicum from the same trainer. on the other hand, the study has various limitations. the sample of 49 sts may not represent the whole population. the number of participants was limited due to the nature of the qualitative design. also possible idiosyncratic differences among participants cannot be controlled in any way. taking these limitations into account, the results should be interpreted with caution. research objectives the aims of the present four-year longitudinal study are listed below, as follows: • identify the current status of the sts’ beliefs about language learning and teaching when they enter the elt program in 2007, • track the changes in sts’ beliefs about language learning and teaching during four years of the elt program, • explore the impact of each phase of the elt program on sts’ beliefs about language learning and teaching, • examine the areas of the elt curriculum which have a low, a high or a neutral impact on the sts’ belief development. data collection the study is based on a mixed-method design. to explore in greater depth the sts’ belief development, two different semi-structured interviews were conducted with the set of questions given in the appendix. all the interviews were conducted by the author in english. the first interview was conducted at the end of each academic year starting by may 2008. the first interview was also utilized at the beginning of the program (september 2007) with the newcomer sts. the aim of this first interview was to gather data concerning the beliefs of the participating sts about learning and teaching a foreign language. the second interview was applied only once when the participants completed the program in may 2011. the second interview aimed at gathering data that related to the ideas of sts about the curriculum of the program and their experiences as sts during four years. two pilot interviews were conducted during the summer school in 2007 and some of the interview questions were refined accordingly. forty-nine sts participated in the interviews. each st was invited to the research and they were informed about their rights to secure the ethical grounds of the study. the participants were assigned nicknames to secure their privacy. each interview lasted around 30 minutes. all of the interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. as for collecting data concerning the demographical features of the participants, a short questionnaire was developed and administered in 2007 when the participants were enrolled to the program. this questionnaire included items about age, gender, motivation for becoming a teacher, socio-economic status and educational background. data analysis the software nvivo was used to assist in organizing the gathered data derived from the transcriptions of the interviews. the data were categorized under the major educational views on teaching a foreign language, namely, traditional view, constructivist view (wright, 2010), and the mixed view. one more category, “other,” was added to classify the data that were neither related to other categories nor clear enough to code them safely as a finding. these categories were also utilized to classify the data in terms of (1) learning, (2) teaching and (3) being a learner/teacher. in the process of data analysis, three scholars cross-checked the coding of the transcriptions, and refined the categorized data in light of a cyclical reading process. consensus was achieved upon discussions on differences and flaws. the trustworthiness of the data was enhanced through this process (cohen, manion, & morrison, 2000). the demographic data gathered through a questionnaire were analyzed using computer software. descriptive statistics such as frequency and percentage were utilized for the analysis. the demographic findings were referred to ensure the homogeneity and identify the characteristics of the sample group. however, those specific data were not exploited to categorize or compare the findings. results demography the analysis of the sts’ answers to the questionnaire showed that the participants were quite a homogeneous group in terms of their educational and exploring student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching: a longitudinal study 5 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 2 results of the interview sessions in september 2007 traditional/ transmissive constructivist mixed other beliefs about f % f % f % f % learning 44 89.8 5 10.2 teaching 37 75.5 7 14.2 5 10.2 learner/teacher 41 83.6 3 6.1 5 10.2 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ socio-demographic background, and their motivation in enrolling an elt program. they all were native speakers of turkish who learned english as a foreign language after the age of nine or ten in state primary schools. following their primary education, they all chose an english major in secondary education. this is typical in turkey since the only way to get prepared for the “foreign language examination” is to choose english as a major in upper secondary education. the age of the participants in 2007 ranged between 18-20 (sd 0.3). forty-four (89.8%) of the sts were female and the remainder of 5 (10.2%) were male. they mostly came from the middle class families. all student teachers were full-time undergraduates in gazi faculty of education, english language teaching program at gazi university. findings the discussions of the qualitative data were organized in terms of the research objectives, shorter versions of which are as follows: (1) identifying the current status, (2) tracking the changes in sts’ beliefs, (3) exploring the impact of the program, and (4) examining the elt curriculum. the verbal data were quantified through coding and categorization in order to illustrate the change more clearly. critical remarks and ideas of the participants were also presented in quotations for providing an in-depth discussion of each research question (rq). research question 1: identifying the current status the findings used to test the first research question were based on the first interview sessions held in 2007 when the sts enrolled in the program (table 2). the first interview results indicated that most of the sts held a transmissive/traditional view of language teaching and learning (f=44, 89.8%). the details are presented in table 1. 89.8% of the sts believed that learning a foreign language effectively was a result of memorizing vocabulary items and practicing grammar so as to construct an infrastructure to develop the communicative skills. they mostly perceived foreign language learning as a set of some cognitive operations. only 5 participants (10.2%) mentioned various socio-affective language learning strategies and study skills that help develop communicative competence in the target language. as for the beliefs regarding teaching, 75.5% (f=37) had a transmissive /traditional view of teaching l2. while around 14% held a mixed view (f=7), the views of 5 participants (10.2%) were either vague or incomprehensible, thus categorized as ‘other.' the sts believed that an english teacher was the source of the knowledge and had the complete authority in managing the classroom and deciding on what and how to learn. the findings about the learning/teacher were parallel with those of learning and teaching. the sts referred to the traditional teacher roles in defining a typical english teacher (f-41, 83.6%). similarly, the participants viewed the language student as a passive learning who rarely practices language in a constructivist way (f-3, 6.1%). in 2007, only 5 (10.2%) possessed a mixed view about learners' and teachers' roles. research question 2: tracking the development when the sts were asked to reflect on the source of these beliefs in 2007, unanimously and normally, they all referred to their l2 learning experiences in primary and secondary school education. the influence of the secondary school, during which they had studied for a grammar-oriented examination (fle) to be accepted to an elt program, was heavier than that of the primary school. some critical highlights of the interviews are as follows: in order to speak english, first we must have some grammar and vocabulary knowledge. after learning some grammar and vocabulary, we can start practicing speaking. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 6 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 3 classification of the beliefs at the beginning of the elt program (2007) area of questioning (semi-structured questions) see appendix core relevant narrative formed from quotation (key content summarized through relevant quotations and linked by formulated meaning statements) emergent themes (initial themes arising within quotation) sum of constructivist mixed views f % beliefs about language learning language learning should start with learning grammar and vocabulary. (st2, st25,st26, st30, st39, st43) transmissive and traditional view of teaching 5 10.2 beliefs about language teaching teacher explains grammar rules and translates reading passages. (st2, st7, st11, st23, st28, st32, st37, st40, st49) grammar translation method, behaviorist applications of language teaching _ _ beliefs about being a language learner students should memorize rules and vocabulary items. learning how to speak english can be realized in an english speaking community. st4, st10, st14, st19, st33, st42, st47) rote learning, memorization, short-term study habits 2 4.08 beliefs about being a language teacher teachers provide exercises and tests. (st17, st23, st31, st41, st49) source of knowledge, knowledge transmitter 1 2.02 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ i generally memorize rules and structures so that i can use them when necessary. in lycee [high school], we needed to memorize thousands of vocabulary items and rules to achieve in the university exam. in the academic year 2008-2009, the sts did not display a significant change in their beliefs. the first phase of the program offers only 8 credits of practical methodology courses and 6 more on theoretical aspects of elt methods and approaches. in exploring student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching: a longitudinal study 7 addition to such courses, the sts take many academic english courses, such as “speaking i and ii and reading and writing i and ii” in the first year. many (f=43, 87.7%) reported that the methodology that the instructors of these courses adopted was quite ‘unusual’ for them: in all of the courses, we need to speak english. this is difficult. honestly, we did not practice speaking in lycee [high school] since we did not have time for that. when our teacher wanted us to speak in the classroom, we usually reminded her that we needed to focus on the exam and practice tests. in our method courses, our trainer talks about ways of teaching english and shows us some activities which are completely strange and interesting. i do not know whether such activities work in a real classroom. the third year of the program (2009-2010), which was categorized as phase 2, is heavily based on a practiceand a student-oriented syllabus that provide opportunities for the sts to perform micro and macro teaching demonstrations. at the end of this phase in may 2010, the sts displayed a significant change in their beliefs about language teaching and learning. this remarkable change can be observed in the sharp increase of the mixed view (f=29, 59.1%). seventeen (24.4%) of the sts seemed to hold views categorized as ‘other,' which was unexpected. however, it was found that the sts were confused about the teaching principles and techniques they performed because very few sts witnessed that such innovative techniques (typical tasks and activities of communicative approaches) worked in practice: this year i have prepared and presented more than ten demonstrations. well, we simply learn to teach english different than our learning experiences. we will see if they are really useful in the future. we cannot give instructions in turkish. we don’t talk about grammar rules directly because we need to do elicitation. we don’t write turkish equivalents of the unknown words. we don’t translate reading passages for our students, and we do not do reading aloud. i mean these all describe the way i learned english. now i need to believe that all these are wrong. perhaps they are. i need to see it for myself. in the last year (2010-2011), the third phase of the study, the sts began to teach in the practicum. the results indicated that the practicum had a significant impact on the sts beliefs. thirty-two (65.3%) of the participants reported a constructivist view of language teaching, and 11 (22.4%) seemed to hold a mixed view. the number of 'other view' decreased to 6 participants (12.2%), which was promising. table 3 displays the classification of the sts beliefs at the beginning of the teacher education program (in 2007) with frequencies and percentages of the constructivist and mixed views in this year. the core narrative represents the commonly referred statements in sts’ defining learning, teaching, being a learner and a teacher. one can infer that sts in 2007 viewed language learning and teaching under the influence of the traditional high-stakes examination. thus, the negative washback of the “foreign language examination” can be regarded as rote learning, memorization, and low order thinking skills among students, which were also found as the emergent themes in 2007. table 4 below shows the classification of the sts beliefs at the end of the teacher education program (in 2011) with frequencies and percentages about the constructivist and mixed views. at the end of the program, the change in sts beliefs approximated to an academic perspective; for example, most of the sts viewed language learning as a process through which individuals tried to develop their communicative competence. in addition, the non-linguistic elements, such as motivational factors or the roles of the teachers can be categorized under a constructivist view of language learning, as sts believed the teacher is a mentor and a counselor. the common response to the interview questions in the last year was that “it was convincing to see that all of those activities, tasks and games worked in practice” (i̇pek, last interview in 2011). the reason why the practicum was so influential might be found in another comment of a participant: “we practiced and rehearsed teaching english in the third year...even how to use our body language and voice. and witnessing that what we learned is applicable and realistic has made me feel secure and confident” (burçak, last interview in 2011). many of the participants (f=45, 91.8%) noted that the weekly reflections that they wrote after their teaching attempt in the practicum and the feedback of the trainer and the peers were influential in shaping their beliefs. “generally, the response of our trainer to my reflections referred to our sla or methodology courses. she always answered my questions by leading me to think about the academic knowledge” (samet, last interview in 2011). the impact of reflective writing and feedback sessions throughout the practicum seemed to help sts associate their teaching experience with the elt literature and make sense of their actions in front of real students. also, the sts (f=39, 79.5%) underlined that feedback sessions encouraged and convinced them to use those “unusual teaching techniques." current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 8 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 4 classification of the beliefs at the end of the elt program (2011) area of questioning (semi-structured questions) see appendix core relevant narrative formed from quotation (key content summarized through relevant quotations and linked by formulated meaning statements) emergent themes (initial themes arising within quotation) sum of constructivist mixed views f % beliefs about language learning students should be led to become inquisitive and open to communicate. (st7, st13,st21, st34) developing communicative skills, contextual learning, socio-affective strategies, interaction with authentic materials 43 87.7 beliefs about language teaching teachers use written or oral contexts and guide students to discover language use and usage. (st1, st9, st22 st23, st29, st32, st36, st45, st48) using tasks, contextual teaching, language competences, being humanistic, promoting use of l2 in the class 44 87.7 beliefs about being a language learner learners try to develop their communicative competence. (st6, st9, st19, st23 st25, st35, st40, st41, st46) motivation, diminishing affective filter, personalizing language learning, use of real life resources, developing language skills 40 81.6 beliefs about being a language teacher teachers are patient, resourceful, fun and friendly. (st3, st8, st14, st18 st20, st28, st39, st44) facilitator, mentor, counselor, critical thinker 41 83.6 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ research question 3: exploring the impact of the program the findings that helped examine the rq 3 were parallel with those of rq 2. the participants believed that the most influential phase of the program was phase 3 (f=47, 95.9%). nineteen participants (38.7%) agreed that phase 2 followed phase 3 in terms of its effect on their belief change. one participant pointed out that “we simply learned everything which we put into practice in the last year.” as for the second year (as the part of phase 1), 17 of the sts (34.6%) believed that this year had some impact, mostly reminded them of the methodology course they took in the second semester. however, the first year of the phase 1 had little or no impact (f=3, 6.1%). again the sts unanimously agreed that the practicum was influential, and the interaction with the trainer and the exploring student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching: a longitudinal study 9 peers supported the experiential learning process. one st noted: we brought many new teaching techniques to the efl classes in state schools. the students were quite surprised at first, but then they begun to react positively because they saw our effort and sincerity. i wish i had learned english the way we taught in the practicum. although the responses of the sts have led us to infer that the phase 3 is the most influential one, we should underline that the program is complementary in nature. in other words, the first year, which was found to have the lowest impact on the belief development, is actually critical in developing the l2 communicative competences of the sts. moreover, the theoretical courses that were repeatedly reported to be boring and irrelevant were found effective in the feedback sessions during practicum. therefore, an inference that the phase 1 and 2 are weak and limited may not be accurate. research question 4: examining the elt curriculum the fourth research question aimed at exploring what phases and components of the elt program should be modified to help sts develop more effective beliefs. in examining the research question, the data gathered through the first and second interviews were exploited. therefore, the suggestions are based on merely the participating sts’ perspectives. the sts agreed on the three major limitations of the program, presented in table 5. educational sciences courses are around 20 credits (with the electives) in the elt program and taught in turkish. the participating sts believed that these courses were about general educational sciences, quite generalized and irrelevant to their education. they also reported that the lecturers of those courses had no background in elt, which means the teaching principles and techniques taught in these courses are not related to teaching l2. the sts suggested these courses be taught in english by the lecturers with a background in elt or be excluded from the program. the sts take various language skills courses in the first year, and the participants believed that these courses might be replaced with some field courses. some suggested that a content-based approach be applied to these courses. on the other hand, they also acknowledged that these courses helped develop the necessary academic language competences that were critically important in attaining success in the following years. the sts also regarded the intensity of the third year as a weakness and repeatedly mentioned that they could not find enough time to get prepared for the teaching demonstrations, the number of which is around ten per semester. the sts are to prepare a detailed lesson plan, original materials and the demonstration that is performed in front of peers and the trainer. some believed that stress and tiredness negatively affected their performance. discussion the present study has revealed that the sts of gazi university, elt program start out their teacher education with various common beliefs and ideas about language learning and teaching. those beliefs were constructed during their previous education, based on their experiences as language students. because this group of sts had to take a grammar-based and a traditional test to be accepted to the program, the nature of their preconceptions about learning and teaching l2 were mostly transmissive/traditional. however, the courses specifically that they took in the third and fourth year (phase 2 and 3) of the program enabled them to change their beliefs about how language learning should be facilitated and what kind of teacher identity they should develop to become an effective efl teacher. reflective writing and post-feedback sessions during the practicum were reported to help them build attitudes and actions on a well-established theoretical ground; that is, the practicum actually enabled them to make sense of the theoretical courses such as linguistics, sla and other applied linguistic courses (see table 1). rq 1 investigated the current status of the sts beliefs in 2007 when they first entered the program. the sts beliefs were found to base on a transmissive/traditional view of learning. rote learning, memorization, and short-term study habits were observed as the major learning strategies that they developed previously as a student. similar cases were reported in only one study (e.g. mattheoudakis, 2007). very few seemed to demonstrate socio-affective learning strategies (f=5, 10.2%). the reason the sts developed such beliefs can be tracked back to the national grammar-based examinations offered even in primary education. sts in english teacher education programs in turkey are offered high-stakes examinations at every level of education. these examinations are based on a traditional view of language testing and offer questions in multiple-choice format that assess grammar and vocabulary knowledge in isolated and artificial test items (özmen, 2011; yıldırım, 2010). foreign language students taking these examinations generally follow a preparation period through which they learn about grammar and vocabulary with some exam strategies, and they hardly find time to develop their communicative competences. therefore, the study skills and learning strategies they develop are mostly based on viewing language as a subject matter to be memorized (balçıkanlı, 2010) and used in examinations to enroll in better schools and teacher education programs. a recent study on sts beliefs conducted in turkey (altan, 2012) confirms these findings. rq 2 tracked the developmental process of the current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 10 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 5 suggestions of sts for possible program modifications area of questioning (semi-structured questions) core relevant narrative formed from quotation (key content summarized through relevant quotations and linked by formulated meaning statements) emergent themes (initial themes arising within quotation) f % courses on general educational sciences should be parallel with the elt courses. they should be either excluded or modified (st2, st4, st11, st18, st24, st27 st39, st42 and st48). educational sciences courses, inconsistency of general education courses, instruction language of education courses [l1] 41 83.6 first-year academic english courses should be replaced with some field courses (st3, st8, st9, st12, st18, st23, st24, st29, st31, st36, and st42). language skills courses in the first year, content-based approach to english courses, field courses, first year general courses 40 81.6 what phases and components of the elt program should be modified to help sts develop more effective beliefs? third year is very intense. some courses should be given in the fourth year (st1, st4, st5, st16, st23, st29, st33 st34, st37, st43, st46 and st49). intensity of the third year, overloaded method courses [3rd year] 38 77.5 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ sts beliefs during four years of the elt program. each year, the participants were interviewed at the end of the year and the data were analyzed and compared with the previous years. the findings were similar with the previous research indicating that the models of teacher education based on knowledge transmission do not contribute to sts’ belief development (lamb, 1995). phase 2 was found to be influential, and at the end of this phase sts reported a mixed view of language learning and teaching that borrows from both traditional and modern views. nettle (1998) in his seminal study reports both stability and change may be observed in students’ beliefs about learning a language, depending on many variables. some of these variables may be the nature of the professional context and the cultural factors (sang, valcke, tondeur, zhu, & van braak, 2012). similarly, prosser and trigwell (1999) point out that the same teacher may adopt different approaches to teaching in different settings mostly due to the contextual factors. thus, although sts in phase 2 seemed to change their beliefs in a significant degree, its impact may be observed in their future teaching situations. phase 3 was found to have the most influential impact on the belief development of the sts. the participants held that the practicum, the humanistic approach of the trainer, feedback sessions, reflective writing and feedback obtained at the end of the teaching attempt in the practicum enabled them to make sense of their teaching experience and build up their own style of teaching a foreign language. in a study conducted on the exploring student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching: a longitudinal study 11 same group of student teachers, balçıkanlı (2010) found that a significant change in sts’ beliefs contributes to their level of autonomy as teacher candidates. tercanlıoğlu (2005) revealed similar findings in her research in which beliefs of students were analyzed in terms of gender. what was also critical in this study was the impact of sla and linguistic courses on sts’ beliefs. if they remained as an intellectual input, such courses are known to have little or no impact on sts’ beliefs (chin & benne, 1985). however, in the context of this study, those courses did have an impact on the sts’ beliefs. although the interviews conducted in the spring terms of 2008, 2009 and 2010 displayed a low impact of these theoretical courses, the participants reported some significant impacts of those courses in the last interview in 2011, when they were able to associate their teaching actions with these courses thanks to the feedback of the trainer in the feedback-sessions. cephe (2009) claims that a reflective approach to teacher education promotes an effective belief change in sts during pre-service teacher education. because cephe (2009) conducted his study in the department in which the present study was carried out, we can possibly infer that a constructivist view of second language teacher education enables a context in which sts may adopt effective beliefs about language learning and teaching. this is quite a critical finding for the slte studies and more research should be conducted to investigate whether a teaching practicum in a reflective atmosphere results in acquiring effective teacher behavior. considering the homogeneous group of this study and the rich qualitative data gathered in four years, we can safely assume that this critical hypothesis is confirmed in this specific study. rq 3 focused on the impact of the elt program. actually it is not surprising that the findings of the rq 2 and 3 were similar in that high and low developments tracked during the phases of the program also illustrated the particular impacts that the program made on the participating sts. teaching practicum year (phase 3) was regarded as the most influential phase of the program. also the third year (phase 2) was claimed to provide the knowledge and skills that were necessary in the practicum. therefore, the experiential and practical phases of the program were regarded as the most influential ones. as lamb (1985) suggests, teacher education programs should give extra attention to an educational strategy that helps sts reshape their beliefs about learning and teaching. in this respect, the findings are in line with the suggestion of lamb (1985). also wright (2010) notes that teacher education programs generally neglect the belief change process of sts and that so little has been done up to now. in this study, however, the department at focus seems to achieve what wright views as a problem by applying a constructivist curriculum with the techniques of reflective approach in teacher education. a similar study conducted in greece by mattheudakis (2007) reported a low impact of teaching practicum on the belief development of pre-service efl students. mattheudakis (2007) reported that the reason for this low impact might be attributed to the transmissive/traditional nature of the efl curriculum and also the grammar-based and certificate-oriented english learning structure of greece. this study, however, reported on different results gathered in an elt program that is based on a constructivist view of education. rq 4 addressed the suggestions of the sts on possible changes that may be necessary to shape the program for a better impact on the belief development. the sts believed educational sciences courses conducted in turkish should be either excluded or modified to relate them to the elt field. these courses were structured mostly by referring to rational-experiential strategies and have already proven ineffective (joram & gabriele, 1998). also the intensity of the third year should be considered in that sts reported a negative effect of this intense year. further research should investigate this case in detail. however, the intense programs like celta are harshly criticized (wright, 2010). conclusion the aim of this study was to investigate sts’ beliefs about language learning and teaching in an elt program by identifying the current status when they first entered the program, tracking the changes in those beliefs during four years, and by exploring their ideas about the impact of the program on their belief development. one of the aims was to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the program from the sts’ perspectives. the findings of this study revealed that a teacher education program based on a constructivist view of education might have a significant impact on the belief development of the pre-service sts. although the first two years were not found significantly influential, the following years led sts to display a significant change in the beliefs, which also indicated a radical difference between the first and the last year of the program. when the theoretical courses are associated with the teaching experiences of the sts in the practicum, they may be influential and convincing in adopting an academic approach to developing effective teacher behavior. the truth is that beliefs, sts beliefs or any other ones, do not change overnight (richardson, 1996). the relevant studies were convincing enough to plan a longitudinal study to investigate the transformation of teacher beliefs and to measure the change in beliefs in a long period of time. the current trend in slte pinpoints the vital role of reflective practice in belief development; however, little has been done up to now to achieve this goal (wright, 2010). in this respect, the present study might be complementary to the literature. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 12 further research may track the sts in their professional careers and measure whether an effective elt program contributes to teaching contexts of these novices. such a study would be complementary because prosser and trigwell (1999) note that the approaches to teaching that teachers adopt in a given context are seen as being contextual or relational; therefore, the approach adopted by a teacher in one context may not be similar with the approach in a different context. understanding the real influence of the belief change or development in initial teacher education requires an observation of teachers from their pre-service education to their professional teaching contexts. these and similar findings may also enlighten the studies of the in-service trainers and decision-makers, who possess inadequate information about this issue. references altan, m. z. 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(2010). washback effects of a high-stakes university entrance exam: effects of the english section of the university entrance exam on future english language teachers in turkey. asian efl journal, 2(12), 92116. retrieved from http://www.asian-efljournal.com appendix first interview 1. about learning: a. please explain how you study english. what strategies, study skills do you use to practice four skills, grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation? b. how do you define learning a foreign language? 2. about teaching: a. how should a teacher teach english? please describe the principles, techniques, some ways and views. can you give specific examples of activities, exercises, tasks, assignments? b. what are the effective teaching strategies, skills and techniques you prefer as a student? what do you expect from an english teacher to help you improve your english? 3. about learner: a. who is a good language learner? what are her characteristics? b. what are the specific strategies that a good learner employs? 4. about teacher: a. who is a good language teacher? what are her characteristics? b. what specific attitudes does an effective language teacher display? for example, how does s/he approach to the students? what kind of activities and exercises does s/he use to teach english? second interview 1. influence of the elt program: a. what aspects, years or courses of your program have had the most influential impact on your beliefs about language learning and teaching? b. how did the influential aspects of the program affect your thinking? for example, what were the content of the specific course(s) that made you reconsider your ideas about language learning and teaching? 2. strengths and weaknesses of the elt program: a. what are the strengths of the program in terms of your beliefs about language teaching? b. what are the weaknesses of the program in terms of your beliefs about language teaching? 3. necessary modifications on the elt program: a. do you believe that some courses of the program should be modified to help you become a more effective teacher? b. which courses should be modified? c. do you think that there are some courses in the program that were inadequate in terms of their impact in your belief development? exploring student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching: a longitudinal study 15 article citation özmen, k. (2012). exploring student teachers’ beliefs about language learning and teaching: a longitudinal study. current issues in education, 15(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/819 author notes dr. kemal sinan özmen gazi university, gazi egitim fakultesi, c-blok, c122, 06500 besevler-ankara, turkey sozmen@gazi.edu.tr dr. özmen works at gazi university, english language teaching program in turkey, and teaches tesol methodology, second language acquisition and creative drama. he has completed his ba, ma and ph.d. degrees in english language teaching at gazi university. he also studied at university of rochester in new york as a fulbright doctoral researcher. his research interests include ‘teaching as a performing art,’ ‘teacher identity and belief development’ and pre-service english teacher education. acknowledgements the author would like to thank the editors and the reviewers of current issues in education for their selfless efforts, and for providing a highly professional editorial process that was a genuine learning experience. manuscript received: 10/1/2011 revisions received: 3/20/2012 accepted: 3/27/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 16 volume 15, number 1 april 10, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors angela hines elizabeth reyes recruitment editors angela hines copy editors/proofreaders carol masser lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson mary bankhead laura busby michelle crowley tulani garnett catherine gay ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca hyun jung kang monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser lauren preston stephanie quintero kelly rubel leslie salazar melisa tarango lauren williams kevin woo faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template 1 volume 2, number 4 september 8, 1999 issn 1099-839x book review — american higher education: a history k.b. melear florida state university lucas, christopher j. (1994). american higher education: a history. new york: st. martin's press. pp. xxi + 375. isbn 0-312-12945-9. 15.95 american higher education: a history, by christopher j. lucas is a historical narrative of the origins and development of the system of higher learning in place in contemporary america. it extends and updates earlier works in this area, and provides, as the author had hoped, "a more 'accessible' historical account, useful chiefly for nonspecialists and a more general readership . . ." but is nonetheless a thorough review of the historical underpinnings of american higher education. this work is recommended for students and professionals who seek a broad understanding of contemporary higher education and how it came to pass. christopher lucas' book, american higher education: a history, traces higher education in america from its historical origins to its contemporary status, seeking to define the predicates of our system of higher learning and to delineate the course of events which determined the development of colleges and universities today. it is a critical review of an area previously explored in great detail by two classic works on the history of higher education in america, the american college and university: a history (1962) by frederick rudolph, and higher education in transition: a history of american colleges and universities, 1636-1976 (1976) by john brubacher and willis rudy. the intention of lucas's work, however, is clearly not to displace these prior histories, but to update them in a manner readable by anyone with an interest in the topic. in that regard, lucas has presented, as the final portion of the work, a section on contemporary american higher education in an effort to bridge the gap between the other works and the current status of higher education. this historical narrative, therefore, serves as an extension of earlier works, and accomplishes the purposes delineated by the author to present ". . . a more 'accessible' historical account, useful chiefly for nonspecialists and a more general readership than the audiences for which earlier studies were intended, though without sacrificing essential material." lucas has produced a very smoothly written text which flows logically across time periods, avoiding the technical vernacular and discontinuous framework characterized by earlier works. the book is dubiously titled, as the first of its four major sections (roughly one-third of the actual text of the book, as the final 58 pages are comprised of notes, sources, and indices), entitled "historical origins and antecedents," explores higher education in antiquity. although incongruent with the book's title, the discussion of the effects of ancient education is concomitant to the study of contemporary higher education. in this section, lucas examines the role of higher learning and scholarship from a number of ancient perspectives, including a review of mesopotamian and egyptian scribal schooling and a thorough discourse on the influence of early greek, roman, and christian influences on education, emphasizing the works of plato and aristotle. lucas moves then into the medieval period in european history to examine the rise of the cathedral school and its transformation into the early collegia and its ultimate renaissance. the final portion of this section then current issues in education vol. 2 no. 4 2 examines post-medieval european academe's contribution to the foundation of higher learning in colonial america to provide a conceptual framework for the predicates of the concept of modern higher education. part two "american higher education: the formative period," begins the exploration of our system of higher education by examining the college in existence in colonial and antebellum america. although this work can in no way be considered an institutional history, the necessary progression of institutional origins is outlined in great detail in this section. the early institutions of higher learning in the original colonies were founded on the notion of piety and the universal curriculum was a clear reflection of this ideology. according to lucas, the curriculum was less of an exploration of the available body of knowledge and more of a ". . . repository of knowledge to be absorbed and committed to memory, not criticized or questioned." the american revolution, however, engendered dramatic changes in this philosophy, and students found themselves with a new voice, of which they made frequent use! the college movement began to boom, and the jacksonian mentality of the antebellum years created a move toward practical vocationalism and away from liberal learning. the ensuing vigorous curricular debates are thoroughly discussed in this section. the pernicious effects of the civil war on higher education are examined, and the evolution of the american college and university is developed through a discussion of the birth of the landgrant college, institutions of higher learning for women and black students, and the rise of the elective curricula and graduate education. part three "american higher education: maturation and development," examines the tumultuous changes which took place throughout the course of the twentieth century and their effects on american higher education. colleges and universities were no longer seeking leadership from clergymen—rather, they desired a president with a penchant for business and fundraising to help satisfy the needs of the new areas of research and institutional expansion. particular attention is given to changes in the nature of student life, as universities became ". . . more impersonal, more permissive, less directly engaged in student supervision." indeed, a clearly outstanding difference between institutions of higher learning in this time period compared to their predecessors was size—the twentieth century institution was larger and more focused on graduate education and inquiry, an influence of the german university model. these larger and more diverse schools of higher learning saw many changes take place in the world of academe as professors sought the idea of "academic freedom", students were admitted based upon entrance examination scores, and community colleges began to play a significant role as providers of students who sought a varied curricula. lucas' treatment of curricular changes throughout the course of the development of higher education in america provides the reader with a foundation for a basic understanding of the social and political influences on the prescribed curriculum over time. further study of the curriculum in america should be directed to frederick rudolph's (1977) curriculum: a history of the american undergraduate course of study since 1636. the final chapter of this section focuses on post-world war ii higher learning in america, and emphasizes the effect of growing government involvement in higher education, most particularly with regard to the dramatic increases in enrollments and the changed face of the student population brought about by the g.i. bill. lucas then brings us into contemporary america as he traces the changing role of minorities and women in higher education, and paints a vivid portrait of student life in the tempest of the 1960's and 1970's. part four "contemporary challenges and issues," chronicles the issues facing american higher education today, and lucas takes care to present current topics without inflecting his opinions or interpretation by attempting to examine arguments made from each viewpoint represented. he presents us with the predicating arguments surrounding such issues such as multiculturalism and "political correctness" and the influence of the ideas on american higher education, the fragmentation of the curriculum and the related rise in vocationalism, and the dreaded "publish or perish" doctrine faced by many faculty members. the final chapter of the book brings us full circle by integrating a historical context into lucas' assessment of the condition of higher education today in an attempt to explain where higher education stands today and the events which shaped the course of its arrival. in an intelligent society, we must learn from the triumphs and failures of the past. it is therefore necessary to maintain a working knowledge of bygone events in order to understand our current condition. christopher lucas has provided us with a means of assessing the colorful history of higher education in america so that we may draw our own conclusions regarding our current status and direction for the future. lucas' book is central to the study of higher education for just that reason: it is a concisely written text, devoid of technical verbiage and detail, which opens a window on the past to help us shape our vision for the future. he has achieved his stated goal of creating a work which satisfies the need to develop a sense of context, a ". . . setting within which both continuities and essential discontinuities with the past may be examined fruitfully." lucas' book, for this reason, would serve as an excellent complement to the library of anyone interested in a broad overview of the history and examination of american higher education. book review — american higher education: a history 3 references brubacher, j. s., & rudy, w.(1976). higher education in transition: a history of american colleges and universities, 1636-1976. new york: harper & row. rudolph, f. (1962). the american college and university: a history. athens, georgia: the university of georgia press. rudolph, f. (1977). curriculum: a history of the american undergraduate course of study since 1636. san francisco: jossey bass. current issues in education vol. 2 no. 4 4 1999 article citation melear, k. b. (1999, september 8). book review — american higher education: a history. current issues in education [on-line], 2(4). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number4/. author notes k.b. melear is a doctoral student in higher education at florida state university. his research interests include the history of american higher education, with particular regard to the history of higher education in the south, the influences of politics and policy on institutions of higher learning, and leadership studies. he holds a bachelor and master of accountancy from the university of mississippi. k.b. melear can be reached via e-mail at kmelear@aol.com. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation melear, k. b. (2011). book review — american higher education: a history. current issues in education, 2(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/828 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number4/index.html mailto:kmelear@aol.com http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 microsoft word 807-4235-4-le.doc twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 1 volume 15, number 3 october 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources abigail l. larrison,ab alan j. daly,a and carol vanvoorenb university of california, san diegoa california state university, san marcosb as the number of public waldorf schools operating in the u.s. continues to grow, there is a need to examine the effectiveness of this approach in the public sector. this empirical study provides a beginning look at available quantitative and qualitative extant data on public waldorf schools obtained from state and national websites. available data included standardized tests and parent comment boards hosted by the independent source, greatschools.org. public waldorf schools were compared to their district standardized test scores in reading and math as well as matched comparison schools. test score results suggested the waldorf experience provided a slower academic build-up resulting in poorer test scores in the lower grades followed by higher levels of advanced performance in the 8th grade. quantitative content analysis of parent comments supported the idea that public waldorf is indeed a more holistic approach with greater emphasis on the arts, community and developmentally appropriate practice. findings suggest standard measures of school quality may midjudge the effectiveness of holistic education particularly with regards to academics. challenges for successfully bringing holistic education into the current cultural-political climate are discussed. keywords: charter schools, holistic education, steiner, testing, waldorf it has been more than two decades since the first public waldorf methods school opened its doors in the high poverty urban area of milwaukee, wi. the milwaukee urban waldorf elementary school created in 1991 was an immediate success, increasing grade level reading scores from 26% to 63% in just three years (mcdermott et al., 1996). since that time, the number of public waldorf methods schools has continued to grow across the united states, with more than half operating in the state of california. although waldorf has predominantly existed in the private sector and has been called a “special philosophy for special children” (see oberman, 2008, p. 10), on its inception waldorf was intended to meet the needs of all types of students. in speaking to teachers, rudolf steiner described the aims of the school as, “a school for all classes” with the aim of taking into “account of what is universally human.” he goes on to say, “in the waldorf school what is considered is the educational principles and no difference is made in their application between a child of the proletariat and a child of the ex-kaiser” (steiner, 1922/1947, lecture 4). steiner also made specific recommendations as to how the school must adapt to fit sufficiently well within the existing structures of traditional schools. this running in parallel with the traditional schools was both strategic and practical as steiner stated: this arrangement to run parallel with the organization of ordinary schools was an current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 endeavor to accord our own intentions and convictions with things as they are, to make a certain harmony. for there is nothing unpractical about the waldorf school, on the contrary, on every point [waldorf education] aims at realizing things which have a practical application to life. (steiner, 1922/1947, lecture 4) nonetheless, waldorf schools in today’s modern public educational milieu face unique challenges when operating within the policy structure of standards driven high stakes testing. the difficulty of this endeavor is highlighted by the recent closing of the milwaukee urban school. hence, research on the potential of waldorf to provide a holistic experience for public school children is critical if we are to protect this approach from the encroachment of rigid policies misaligned with developmental and holistic pedagogies (nichols & berliner, 2007; ravitch, 2010). waldorf is not an add-on program to a traditional approach; rather it is structurally and functionally different from conventional public education. it is not a free school where students can decide whether to attend class or not, and it is not a democratic school where students vote on coursework and other aspects of running the school. waldorf education follows a learner-centered pedagogy within a specific curricular framework including content suffused with texts from mythology and classical literature (ogletree, 1975). the order of the curriculum across grades is set to accord with the developmental and psychological challenges of each specific age range. teachers are trained to appreciate these specific challenges and utilize meditative practice to fully understand and meet the needs of each student in his/her classroom (woods, ashley, & woods, 2005). steiner describes his approach as being “based on educational theories founded on a real knowledge of the growing, developing human being” (steiner, 1971, p. 15). the waldorf curriculum moves through learning first by engaging students’ motor/action systems, then students’ emotions and finally engaging students’ knowledge and skill base; this is referred popularly to teaching to the head, heart and hand (steiner, 1919/1997). perhaps the most significant difference between waldorf and conventional education is the structure of the school day. rather than switching from class to class in 50 minutes blocks, the students engage in what is called the main lesson presented at the beginning of the school day while the afternoon is spent entirely in what some schools would be considered electives: second languages, drama, painting, movement, music, and handwork. the main lesson contains the core of the academic content and is fully integrated across disciplines. for example, when the students in 7th grade study the renaissance, the main lesson includes content from history, math, science and art from that time. discussions of the major figures of the time are presented as historical narratives within which cross discipline content is presented via the major discoveries of those historical figures. so for example, learning about leonardo da vinci, students might hear how he was commissioned to draw images for the mathematician luca pacioli. from there the discussion of the mathematical concepts of the golden ratio could be followed by student created geometrical constructions as well as perspective drawing. across the grades, the main lesson content follows logically and/or historically so that each year provides the foundation for the following years of schooling. in this way students are able to have significant context allowing for greater ability for meaning making, something that is well recognized in the brain sciences as critical for learning (tokuhamaespinosa, 2011). all basic content is addressed through the main lesson, and the subject is presented for several weeks during which students prepare a high quality product called the main lesson book. general themes and sequencing of content are defined by the waldorf curriculum, however, the details and specific focus is left to the teacher’s discretion, and can be based on the interests of the students. completely original content is added to meet the specific needs and interests of the community as steiner was clear that waldorf education must be responsive to the space and time in which it would be enacted (steiner, 1919/1966). other central aspects of traditional waldorf include: (1) the integration of the arts into all subjects, (2) a slower, more developmental approach to academics, (3) looping of students with a single main lesson teacher, (4) block scheduling in which two hours a day are spent on a single subject for several weeks, (5) two second languages starting in first grade, and (6) no text books or standardized testing (ogletree, 1975). modern day waldorf schools also have rules regarding exposure to media. the incorporation of technology is delayed, with some schools not introducing computers until high school. public waldorf schools attempt to maintain as much of this framework as possible, but of course must also follow the requirements of public schools, including the administration of standardized tests. the empirical research on waldorf education is surprisingly limited given its nearly 100 year history. however, the available studies suggest a positive impact of waldorf on a number of cognitive and social outcome measures. these outcomes are aligned with some of the more recent initiatives in education to promote greater creativity and critical thinking in students (partnership for 21 century skills, 2008; bellanca & brandt, 2010). waldorf has been shown to be associated with greater creativity (ogletree, 1971), critical thinking (gidley, 1998; mitchell & gerwin, 2007) and potential for engagement as global citizens (dahlin, 2010; oberman, 2008). research suggests that students attending waldorf schools show more mature social and moral impulses twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 3 (armon, 1997; dahlin, 2010; rivers & soutter, 1996) as well as better social skills (payne, river-bento, & skillings, 2002) and a reduction in bullying of peers (rivers & soutter, 1996). further, studies indicate that waldorf students value lasting relationships and helping others (mitchell & gerwin, 2007) and have a tendency to have more long term friendships (oberman, 2007). research findings on the academic outcomes of waldorf students are scarcer. oppenheimer (1999) reported that waldorf graduates’ sat scores are well above the national average; however these findings are confounded by the fact that most waldorf schools are private, and that parents tend to be well-educated and financially stable. studies in public waldorf schools, although limited, indicate a positive impact of waldorf on academic achievement (oberman, 2008; schieffer & busse, 2001). schieffer and busse (2001) compared achievement scores on national assessments of 4th graders in the urban waldorf school to scores in a neighboring school with a similar demographic profile. overall there were a greater number of students achieving higher levels of performance in the waldorf schools. oberman (2007) examined not just overall test scores, but the interaction of performance and grade level. overall, test scores were significantly lower for waldorf students; however, this effect was isolated to the early grades. the significantly lower second grade test-scores in her sample were replaced by superior scores by the 8th grade waldorf students, and these standardized test scores were on par with the top ten peer-alike public schools in the state (oberman, 2007/2008). in an article examining parent and teacher’s perceptions on the outcomes of waldorf on students, smith (1998) reported that parents felt that waldorf education developed artistic abilities and appreciation of nature in students as well as imagination, intuitive abilities, and a strong sense of self. there was also a belief that waldorf contributed to academic and intellectual skills and, although less frequently cited, a responsibility to the local and global community and spiritual awareness. the study by smith (1998) was performed in private schools. parent perceptions of public waldorf schools have not been formally examined, and hence this research addresses this gap in the literature by examining parent’s self-reported perceptions of their experiences with waldorf using available online data. in their extensive report on waldorf schools in the uk, woods, ashley, and woods (2005) point to the fact that: no research was found on steiner schools entering the public sector, nor on the process and outcomes of mutual sharing of practices between steiner and mainstream schools. both of these topics would benefit from systematic investigation, through action research and other methods. (p. 6) although the number of waldorf schools in the public sector continues to grow, the dearth of literature continues. beyond the need to examine waldorf in particular, there is a noteworthy value in determining how holistic approaches are faring in the current context of high stakes testing. by examining the ways in which waldorf schools are performing under the constraints and structure of public education, we can begin to identify the issues facing holistic and alternative approaches in general as they are implemented under the current standards driven model of education. this study compared standardized test measures of public waldorf schools using three different data sets. data set a examined national public waldorf schools against district standardized test scores for the year 2008, data set b examined performance on standardized testing and reporting (star) for california public waldorf schools for the year 2009, and data set c examined longitudinal performance on the star for california public waldorf schools from the years 20052011. in addition to examining quantitative test scores, this study looked at open-ended school comments posted from the parents, teachers, and students obtained from the third-party resource greatschools.org. content analysis of parent comments from waldorf schools were examined for multiple themes including issues surrounding holistic education. the current challenges and successes of waldorf schools can be connected with greater emerging trends and issues being faced nationally. becoming aware of how alternative approaches perform might help guide practice to meet the concerns and issues of communities working towards greater holism in their local public schools. methods school selection all public waldorf schools in the united states were considered for use in our study. a list of public waldorf schools were obtained from the waldorf answer website (http://www.waldorfanswers.com/ publicwaldorf .htm#list) and from oberman (2007) producing an initial sample of 34. schools were selected from the list given they met the criteria outlined in table 1. the exclusion of schools that had been in operation for less than five years acted to assure the student had had a minimal number of years participating in the waldorf curriculum. the initial exclusion criteria for data set a were also applied to the two following data sets, but were expanded to exclude schools outside of california. this was done so that differences and variability caused by the comparison of multiple state standardized tests would be eliminated. for data set a, standardized test scores in reading and math by public waldorf schools were compared to the district averages. twenty waldorf current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 table 1 school exclusion criteria data set a – 2008 national waldorf data set b – 2009 california waldorf data set c – 2005-2011 ca. waldorf longitudinal charter less than 5 years (n=2) non-california schools no available data from 2005/20062010/2011 court ordered/alternative schools (n=1) same as data set a same as data set b grade range less than 6th grade (n=8) unavailable test scores (n=3) table 2 school selection criteria quantitative data sets data set a data set b data set c waldorf schools all national waldorf public schools (n=20) ca waldorf public schools (n=15) ca waldorf public schools (n=11) control/comparison schools district averages (n=20) matched in district for ses & % minority (n=20) highest-performing k-8th schools in ca (n=11) data sources www.greatschools.org www.schoolmatters.com california department of education http://star.cde.ca.gov/ california department of education http://star.cde.ca.gov/ dates collected 11/2009-2/2010 4/2010 2/2011-8/2011 schools were used for this data set, and were compared to their 20 district scores. data sets b and c examined california waldorf schools matched to comparison schools according to appropriate criteria (see table 2). data set b comparison schools were selected from the same districts and matched for socioeconomic status (ses) and percent of minority groups with known achievement gaps, i.e. african american and hispanic. fifteen waldorf schools were compared to twenty comparison schools. this was because only ten of the comparison schools provided a full k-8 education. the remaining matches represented separate elementary and middle schools, each matched for demographics. for data set c, the longitudinal study, because it used a within-subjects design, there was a greater requirement for matching schools with continuous enrollment of their student body from 2nd – 8th grade. eleven waldorf schools met this criteria, and eleven schools with k-8 education were matched. the reduced number of available schools meeting the criteria of k-8th and data available from 2005-2011 made it not possible to match across every demographic variable or to maintain cohesion within the district. for data set c, rather than matching schools for demographic variables, comparison schools were selected based on performance. the schools with the highest performance ratings according to the greatschools.org rating system were selected as our final eleven matches (see appendix ii). school selection, qualitative data set qualitative data were collected from the greatschools.org website from may to june 2011. all waldorf public schools for which parent comments were available were utilized in the qualitative data analysis, resulting in a total of 23 schools (see appendix i for list). comparison schools represented all of the matched schools utilized across the quantitative data analyses for which parent comments were available on the greatschools.org website. all of the 26 comparison twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 5 schools used from data set b and data set c had parent comments available for analysis (see appendix ii). data analysis –quantitative data anovas. for data set a and b reading and math score data were submitted to individual between subject anovas where group (comparison, waldorf) and grade (2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th) represented the two between factors. any significant interactions were further submitted to a post-hoc fisher lsd. for data set c, data were submitted to repeated measures within and between factor anovas where the between factor was group (comparison, waldorf) and the within factor was year (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011). treatment of missing data. there were several missing values in all three of the data sets. for data set a there were the following missing data values: 7th grade reading (2 schools), 7th grade math (3 schools), 8th grade reading (5 schools), 8th grade math (7 schools). there was also no 2nd grade test score data in several schools since nclb does not require 2nd grade testing. data from the following states did not provide 2nd grade scores: arizona (n=3), oregon (n=1), alaska (n=1) or wisconsin (n=1). no attempt was made to replace or estimate missing values in these cases. however, a missing value for a waldorf school resulted in the elimination of the district score for that school so that scores were paired with their comparison districts only. thre greater number of missing values for math was due to the use of alternative testing in the algebra subtest in 8th grade. for this reason, data sets b and c excluded 8th grade math scores. for data set b there were the following missing data values: 7th grade reading and math (2 schools), 8th grade reading (4 schools) making the group totals (n=13 and n=11, respectively). only five out of the 15 schools provided general math scores for the 8th grade, as mentioned previously, due to school alternate assessment of algebra; therefore, 8th grade math scores were excluded from both this data set and data set c. missing values from comparison schools were eliminated when no comparison values from waldorf schools were available. no attempt was made to replace or estimate missing values. for data set c, the use of repeated measures, made it necessary to replace missing values with appropriate estimates. there were three missing data points: two from year 2005 and one from 2011. the estimated values for these missing data points were determined by taking the mean difference between the missing year, and adding it to the closest available year. so the for example, the mean difference between 2005 and 2006 for waldorf schools was -8, so taking the 2006 score and subtracting 8 provided the estimate. there were no missing values from matched comparison schools. estimated values were required in order to run the repeated measures anova, however, to verify that these estimated values did not impact the overall performance scores, t-test values of year-by-year differences were run, demonstrating that no changes the data output were seen when the estimated values were removed. qualitative data analysis-content analysis first coding: emergent themes. in the first stage of coding we examined 606 comments from 23 public waldorf schools. these comments were coded by hand using in vivo and descriptive coding techniques (saldana, 2009). hand coding was performed by the first author and results were discussed with the other authors. coded comments were assigned, based on these discussions, into three groups: (1) parent school relationships, which corresponded to the codes of: community, parent involvement, teachers, leadership; (2) academic core: second languages, academics, curriculum; and (3) whole child education: 21st century skills, art and music, holistic education, developmentally appropriate practice (dap), love of learning, world citizens. each code from these three emergent themes was then utilized for the second coding procedure. although there are the opportunities for teachers, students, administrators, and other community members to submit comments on the greatschools.org site, our data showed that approximately 97% of the comments were from parents (also including the very few comments by grandparents or other direct relatives or guardians of the students). non-parent/guardian comments consisted of less than 1% of comments from teachers, and slightly less than 2% from students or former students. because of the low numbers of comments from other sources than parents we refer to the analyses as parent comments and no effort was made to distinguish between comments from any of the subgroups during the frequency and subsequently autocoding process. second coding: autocoding procedure. autocoding is an approach to content analysis that acts to minimize subjectivity. the use of predetermined keywords allowed for examination of patterns of responses in waldorf schools compared to non-waldorf schools. the same 606 responses from the 23 waldorf schools used in the first coding were compared to the 1013 comments posted for the 26 comparison schools. there was a higher average number of responses for comparison versus waldorf schools (mean= 39, 26 respectively) however, median values for comments were fewer for comparison versus waldorf schools (median= 11, 17 respectively). each school was entered as a separate case into hyperresearch™ qda software and was coded using key terms relating to our selected themes (see appendix iii). the autocodes were checked for accurate correspondence with the theme before being included in the final counts. the frequencies counts were then changed to percents and compared for pattern in responses using an exploratory factor analysis. as with current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 our first hand-coding procedure, each of the parents’ comments was separated into positive and negative statements. patterns of responding across positive and negative comments were submitted to separate independent-samples t-tests with school type as the grouping variable. results data set a – 2008 scores there were several significant differences between waldorf student performance compared to their district scores in both reading and math. for reading, there was no significant difference for group, f(1,240) = 1.13. however, there was a significant effect of grade f(6,240) = 13.93, p<0.0001, as well as a group x grade interaction, f(6,240) = 4.65, p<0.001 (fig. 1a). this effect was due to an increase in reading scores progressing from the lowest to the higher grades in waldorf-based curriculums. fischer lsd post-hoc analysis revealed significant differences for group at second grade (p<0.01), where waldorf methods showed significantly poorer test scores than their matched districts. there were no significant fisher test values for 3rd, 4th or 5th grades. for 6th, 7th and 8th grade, however, waldorf students significantly outperformed district comparisons (p<0.05 and p<0.01 respectively). for math scores, unlike reading, there was a significant main effect of group, f(1,240) = 9.47, p<0.01, but there was no significant main effect of grade. similar to reading, there was a significant interaction between group and grade, f(6,240) = 2.53, p<0.05, (see fig. 1b). fisher lsd post-hoc analyses revealed significant differences between waldorf and district scores at 3rd grade (p<0.01). this was due to poorer performance by waldorf students at this grade level. no significant differences were noted at any other grade level. data from our first analysis were taken from nationwide public waldorf programs compared to their district scores. some concerns over the validity of these comparisons, specifically regarding use of multiple state measures and comparing average district scores with individual waldorf schools, needed to be addressed. a second set of data was collected to address these issues. the criteria for the second data set are outlined above (see table 2). data set b – 2009 scores waldorf schools in california matched to nonwaldorf schools in the same or neighboring districts figure 1. waldorf curriculum was associated with poor initial performance in the early grades in reading (1a) and math (1b) this effect was reversed in the higher grades. (error bars = sem). twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 7 table 3 demographic information from waldorf schools in california and matched comparisons waldorf n=15 comparison n=20 class size % ses parent education % minority teacher credentials waldorf 23.4 19.9 3.93 11 89.8* comparison 25.4 20.7 3.76 15.4 98.7 (* = p<0.05)(parent education 1= did not grad hs; 5=completed graduate school, % minority = %hispanic+%african american) figure 2. waldorf school scores compared to comparison schools matched for ses. scores are presented as those students performing at or above the proficient level (2a., 2c) and those performing at the advanced level (2b, 2d). waldorf students performed more poorly in early grades, but these differences were no longer present in the upper grades. (error bars = sem). current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 showed similar demographic profiles (see table 3) five out of the 15 matches were taken from separate elementary and middle schools, the other 10 matches provided k-8th education. demographic data were submitted to separate individual t-tests and showed no significant differences between waldorf and matched non-waldorf schools on any of the demographic measures, except teacher credentialing, where waldorf schools were associated with fewer credentialed teachers p<0.05. anova analysis the california department of education website breaks down performance not only by percent proficient or above, but into five levels: far below, below, basic, proficient, and advanced. we compared performance across schools by comparing percent proficiency and above (proficient + advanced scores) as well as looking at students who were in the advanced range for both math and reading. there were several significant differences between waldorf school scores and district scores in both reading and math. for reading, there was a significant difference for group for both those scoring above proficient, as well as for percent advanced only, f(1,198) = 15.4, p<0.001; f(1,198). =6.7, p<0.01, respectively. there was also a significant group x grade interaction for both proficient, f(6,198) = 12.2, p<0.001 (fig 2a) and advanced scores, f(6,198) = 4.0, p<0.001 (fig. 2b). this effect was due to poorer performance in reading and math in early grades shifting to better performance higher grades in waldorf schools. fisher lsd post-hoc analysis revealed significant differences between groups at second and third grade (p<0.01), for students above proficiency (advanced + proficient) and for second grade and third grade (p<0.01, p<0.05 respectively) for students in advanced proficiency. although not significant, there was a trend towards significance for 8th grade reading scores in the advanced range, (p=0.08). this was due to higher percentages of waldorf students scoring in the advanced range by 8th grade. for math scores, there was a significant main effect for group and a group x grade interaction both for students’ scoring above basic, as well as those scoring in the advanced range f(1,188) = 18.7, p<0.001; f(1,188). =26.9, p<0.001, f(6,188) = 5.7, p<0.001 (fig 2c), f(6,188) = 4.7, p<0.001 (fig. 2d). fisher lsd post-hoc analysis revealed significant differences between groups in second through fifth grades for students above basic (advanced + proficient) and for students in advanced proficiency. this effect was no longer significant in 6th through 8th grade. data set c – 2005 to 2011 waldorf schools are unique in their continuity of education. more than simply remaining in the same school through the elementary and middle school years, the students and teacher in waldorf are intentionally kept together through the practice of looping; i.e. instruction by a single main lesson teacher from grade one to grade eight. data from our previous analyses indicated improved test scores of students in the higher grades. however, examining cross-sectional data from a single testing year limits the assumptions regarding the growth of those same students. in order to address whether individual classes of students would demonstrate the same pattern of performance as our cross-sectional data, test scores of waldorf school classes from grades two to grade eight corresponding to the academic school years of 20052011 were submitted to repeated measures within subject anovas. grade eight data for mathematics were excluded based on the loss of subjects in that year due to the high number of schools opting to take the algebra portion of the math exam rather than the general math exam for eighth grade. performance of waldorf students from california schools were compared to schools matched for continuity of grade (i.e. combined elementary and middle school program) and the availability of test scores from 2005-2011. because of the limited number of schools meeting these criteria, it was not possible to match on all variables known to affect standardized test scores (see table 4). comparison schools were chosen based on the nationally recognized greatschools.org table 4 demographic information from 2010 for waldorf and comparison schools included in the longitudinal analysis waldorf ( n=11) comparison ( n=11) charter school class size ses parent education minority teacher credentials parents’ school rating great school rating waldorf 9 22.1 18.8 3.83 13.1 92.9 4.36 5.82 comparison 8 22.2 19.4 3.55 32.9* 95.2 4.09 7.45* (*p<0.01) (parent rating, 1=poor, 5=excellent) (greatschool rating, 1=low, 10=high) twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 9 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!reading!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!math! 3a.!students!above!basic! 3c.!students!below!basic! 3b.!students!advanced! 0! 10! 20! 30! 40! 50! 60! 70! 2005! 2006! 2007! 2008! 2009! 2010! 2011! pe rc en t'o f's tu de nt s' cont! wald! 0! 10! 20! 30! 40! 50! 2005! 2006! 2007! 2008! 2009! 2010! 0! 10! 20! 30! 40! 50! 60! 2005! 2006! 2007! 2008! 2009! 2010! 2011! pe rc en t'o f's tu de nt s' cont! wald! 10! 20! 30! 40! 50! 2005! 2006! 2007! 2008! 2009! 2010! 0! 10! 20! 30! 40! 50! 60! 70! 80! 90! 2005! 2006! 2007! 2008! 2009! 2010! 2011! pe rc en t'o f's tu de nt s' cont! wald! 10! 20! 30! 40! 50! 60! 70! 80! 90! 2005! 2006! 2007! 2008! 2009! 2010! figure 3a-c. reading and math scores (column 1 &2 respectively) for california public waldorf schools compared to high performing california k-8 schools. waldorf students scored poorer in the early grades, but show significant improvement in the later grades (error bars = sem). current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 10 table 5 t-test post-hoc analyses of waldorf and non-waldorf schools* reading – t-tests & p values t-test p-values 2nd grade 3rd grade 4th grade 5th grade 6th grade 7th grade 8th grade above basic -4.53 -1.82 -1.16 .38 .06 .42 2.02 .00 .08 .26 .71 .95 .68 .06 advanced -5.23 -1.27 -.14 .84 .27 2.22 1.99 .00 .22 .89 .41 .79 .04 .06 below basic 5.25 2.38 1.75 1.29 1.19 -.70 -.33 .00 .03 .10 .21 .25 .49 .74 math – t-tests & p values 2nd grade 3rd grade 4th grade 5th grade 6th grade 7th grade above basic -2.94 -3.42 -2.86 -1.77 -.69 1.58 .01 .00 .01 .09 .50 .13 advanced -4.24 -3.21 -2.70 -1.16 -.32 1.75 .00 .00 .01 .26 .75 .10 below basic 2.78 3.37 2.81 2.14 1.52 -.63 .01 .00 .01 .05 .14 .53 note. * data corresponds to fig 3a-c. darker blue indicates significantly poorer performance by waldorf students, while darker orange indicates significantly better performance. lighter blue indicates performance trending towards significantly poorer performance, while lighter orange indicates performance trending toward significantly better performance. (above basic = proficient + advanced; below basic = below + far below basic) rating system score. this score is based on a number of performance variables (http://www.greatschools.org/finda-school/defining-your-ideal/2423-ratings.gs). in addition, the greatschools.org site provides the opportunity for parents to rate their own school. notably, the greatschools.org performance measure was significantly higher in our selected schools, suggesting that the schools selected for comparison were “better” schools. however, there was no difference between parent ratings on their satisfaction with the school. there was no significant difference in the ses measure between our groups. however, there was a significantly greater number of african american and/or latino minorities in our comparison schools. although previous research has shown a relationship between minority students and standardized test performance, correlational analysis between percent minority and students scoring proficient or above in our sample did not indicate a negative impact of percent minority. on the contrary, using a pearson’s bivariate correlation, california standardized test (cst) performance measures were positively correlated with increasing percent minority, these included reading scores for 2005, r(20)= 0.514, p<05; and math scores for 2007, r(20) = 0.575, p<0.01. this reflects the nature of the schools that were selected for comparison, of which many utilized unique approaches to teaching, i.e. international schools, open classroom, positive discipline, project based learning (see appendix ii). anova analysis. for the test score longitudinal data analysis we performed separate mixed between and within factor anovas for the following four categories: basic level, above basic (proficient + advanced), below basic (below basic + far below basic), and advanced. there were no group main effects or group interactions on the percent of students achieving basic level performance, and therefore basic scores were not included in any other of the analyses. the findings from the remaining three categories were as follows. for reading scores above basic (i.e. proficient and above), there was a main effect of time, f(6,15)=71.6, p<0.0005, but no main effect of group. this was also true for those scoring in advanced only f(6,15)=54.7, p<0.0005. there was also a significant group x time interaction for both above basic f(6,15)=12.7, p<0.0005, and advanced only f(6,15)=8.59, p<0.0005. this was the result of increasing numbers of students in waldorf twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 11 education achieving higher levels of proficiency by later grades compared to no change seen in comparison students. in math there was no main effect for either group or time, for above basic and advanced only. however, there was a significant interaction, between group x time for both above basic f(5,16)=7.89, p<0.0005 and advanced f(5,16)=7.89, p<0.0005. this was due to increasing scores in later grades for waldorf students, while matched schools declined in their average scores (fig 3a, 3b). for scores below basic the trend was reversed. reading and math showed main effects for group (p<0.005; p<0.05, respectively) and time (ps < 0.0005). in addition, both reading and math scores below and far below basic resulted in significant interactions for group x time f(6,15)=14.8, p<0.0005; f(5,16)=4.04, p<0.01 (figure 1c). post hoc analysis: independent samples ttests. the initial repeated measures anova was significant for group x time for above basic, advanced and for below basic. in order to examine which of the grade levels differed between our groups we examined differences at each time point using independent sample t-tests (table 5). there were several significant differences between our two groups in the early grades. all of the performance levels for reading and math show significantly poorer performance by waldorf students in 2nd grade (ps < 0.01). by the 6th grade waldorf students were no longer performing more poorly than matched schools, and for advanced students by 7th grade there was a significant difference in performance in reading, and a trend towards better performance in math (p<0.05, p<0.10, respectively). in 8th grade, both those scoring above basic and in advanced range in reading showed a trend towards better performance than non-waldorf students (p<0.10). qualitative data results first coding. the first coding of the parent comments utilized waldorf school data only. this first coding sequence segregated positive and negative comments, an approach supported by quantitative content analysis using frequency coding (saldana, 2009; weber, 1990). by far the majority of the comments were positive, with the emotional tones of enthusiasm, gratitude, appreciation, ownership, and pride. approximately 10% of the codes were negative, and these had the tones of warning, insulting, sarcasm, disappointment and anger. once positive and negative comments were separated, differences in code frequencies between the positive and negative codes provided a look at tendencies within the data. the frequency of the more common hand-codes is presented in order (table 6). many of the codes corresponded to the central elements of waldorf education. parents appreciated the arts integration, music and handwork along with second language starting in the early grades and continuing throughout the child’s education. in reference to the waldorf approach, parents particularly liked the holistic model, and cited frequently the attention to “head, heart and hand” (steiner, 1919/1971). positive comments included an appreciation for the slow build-up to academics and the use of play in the early childhood without formally teaching reading until later. in fact there were positive comments for almost all of the aspects central to waldorf (see ogletree, 1975). although the data are rich, it is beyond the scope of this paper to go into too much depth. here we report specifically on the most common themes that could provide indicators as to how waldorf schools in the public sector are being received by parents. for the first coding, i.e. hand-coded waldorf school data, the most common code was teachers. parents referred to teachers as caring, committed, dedicated, aware, knowledgeable, and doubly-credentialed. teachers were seen as being sensitive and responsive to their child and respecting individual differences. not all teacher comments were positive. negative posts were more varied and mentioned several problems including: communication, flakiness, cold, cliquish attitudes, aggressive behavior towards their child, and brushing off parents. one aspect of the teacher-student relationship that was specific to waldorf spoke to the difficulty of successfully “looping” with the child given factors such as teacher attrition and inconsistent teacher quality. by some, getting a good teacher was considered the luck of the draw and was deemed critically important in the quality of the education. negative comments surrounding disciplinary issues, with parents mentioning lack of teacher control of the class and/or parent led classrooms. several comments mentioned bullying as a problem with a lack of intervention or taking of responsibility. this was more frequently cited as a leadership problem than the fault of the teachers. besides art, the most common positive theme was community. waldorf parents described the community as warm, welcoming, loving, nurturing, supportive, diverse, open-minded, dynamic, active, magic, and rare in comparison to traditional public education. community was often associated with parent involvement and a sense of ownership towards the school. there was mention of the participation in festivals and school performances. the community was compared to a family and thought to foster sensitivity and respect for others. many of the parents reported with enthusiasm how much their children loved school and felt this was the beginning of life-long learning. there was great enthusiasm from many parents that this education was free, and that their children were obtaining a private school experience in a public school. although parent involvement was a decidedly positive theme, there were some negative comments current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 12 associated with involvement. these related to parents feeling they were being used as piggy banks, and serving mandatory volunteer hours, especially for single, working parents. parents reported feeling unappreciated and that their voice was not heard or that they were not allowed in the classroom. on the other-hand, parent involvement was also seen as negative when it seemed pervasive. several comments mentioned parents dictating classroom activities and teachers not being in control. one comment suggested that certain parents, referred to as “waldorfites”, controlled the school. along those lines there were a few extreme comments of waldorf as being a cult, having a secretive feel, or that there was a spiritual undercurrent to the school. in terms of academics, many parents appreciated the slow build-up to academics, with positive comments that revolved as much around the lessened focus on academics as the quality of academics themselves; however, this was also one of the more common negative codes. negative comments referenced poor test scores, although test scores also came up in positive comments too, with parents praising the fact that their schools were not just about test scores, and that they did not ‘teach to the test’ as other public schools did. with respect to the reduced academic load and holistic focus, one parent commented that waldorf was teaching laziness and mediocrity, another that students were being taught arts and crafts at the expense of real learning or factual knowledge. parents also feared that the reduced academic load would leave their child unprepared for high school or life. parents voiced concerns that the waldorf approach was not preparing their children for the future. in some cases the same parents who were concerned with the lack of academics stated that they appreciated the arts, and others appreciated the slow pace for the younger grades, but were decidedly unhappy with the pace in the later grades. a number of these comments were associated with decisions to take a child out for middle school due to ‘lack of rigor’ in the upper grades. frequency based content analysis. following analysis of hand coding a frequency report of the codes was generated. raw data was not used for this analysis, rather the codes themselves were counted. looking at the pattern of codes some things become immediately apparent (table 6). overall, frequency of comments tended to be more positive than negative, and there were distinct differences in the balance of that positive negative frequency across the codes. table 6 waldorf hand-coding counts based on positive/negative comments handcoding frequency counts waldorf positive negative teacher 208 52 arts 171 16 community 168 6 waldorf curriculum 78 12 love of learning 84 0 academics 53 24 music 73 2 parent involvement 64 10 holistic ed 56 2 leadership 25 32 relationships 47 6 second language 35 0 discipline 7 18 testing 10 6 slow pace 4 11 media 4 4 special needs 1 6 total 1088 207 twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 13 two codes showed only positive comments: love of learning and second language, and only three codes had greater numbers of negative to positive codes: leadership, discipline, special needs, and slow paced. examining the pattern of responding was used to validate the second phase of coding. second coding: auto-coding. the second coding consisted of analyzing the frequency of words using auto-codes (see appendix iii). unlike the handcoding where some subjective assessment of the comment will be used to assign a code, the use of auto-codes provides an unbiased analysis of word frequency. autocodes were selected based on the three themes that emerged through discussion of the hand-codes, parentstudent relationships, whole child learning and academic core. because both hand-codes and auto-codes were performed on the waldorf schools, comparisons between the two allowed for internal validation of the accuracy of the chosen auto-codes. comparing the responses in table 6 and table 7 it is possible to see that there is a similar pattern of positive and negative responses as in the hand-codes. this is true even though the hand-codes used actual counts, and the auto-codes used percents or proportional responses, something more appropriate when applying parametric statistical measures (weber, 1990). furthermore, the high level of concordance between the hand and auto-codes, supported the validity of the selected key-words as representing our hand-coded categories. responses from waldorf and the comparison schools indicated several similarities between the two data sets (table 7). for example, both waldorf and comparison schools showed the greatest overall number of responses to the themes teachers and leadership. in addition, both had similar patterns of positive versus negative comments surrounding the themes. for leadership, there was a greater percentages of negative responding compared to positive responses for both waldorf and comparison schools. factor analysis & t-tests. we examined our data for alignment with our intended three factors: parent school relations, academic core and whole child education. the use of a factor analysis is typical in basic content analysis (weber, 1990) and although our absolute number of cases was small (n=50), the actual number of participant comments exceeded 1600 postings. furthermore, there is some precedence for using a factor analysis with as few as 50 units of analysis (arrindell & van der ende, 1985). the rotated varimax output from our fourteen variables showed that our categories did not separate into their presumed groups. setting eigenvalues at 1.1, a five factor model emerged that explained 71.25% of the variance. in this model none of the variable loadings were less than 0.5, and three were greater than 0.80. the use of a factor analysis with such high explanatory value, and high factor loadings further supported this approach (costello & osborne, 2005). therefore the five factor model was used to organize our table as well as to guide the interpretation of the data (see table 7). five factor model. there were distinct differences between our waldorf and non-waldorf comments with regards to the five factors. factor a and factor b both showed higher rates of responding by nonwaldorf schools, whereas for factors c-e, waldorf schools had greater rates of responding. interestingly, these higher rates of responding were seen in both negative and positive comments, indicating the greater presence of these themes overall, and that not all members of the community were in agreement on the value of each. independent t-tests. using independent t-tests we then looked at differences between the frequency of responses across our 12 themes for positive and negative comments. table 7 shows significant differences between waldorf and comparison schools and these differences related to both significantly higher rates of responses (light orange shading), and significantly lower rates of responses (light blue shading). however, there were no significant differences for any negative comments. this might reflect the relatively few number of negative comments that contributed to the data set. there were several response patterns between waldorf and non-waldorf schools that were unexpected and did not fit within our initial categories of related codes. parent-involvement versus community. we had initially assumed that parent involvement would be related to community in parent-school relationships, however, these did not load together in our factor analysis, and they showed distinct differences between waldorf and non-waldorf school comments. waldorf schools show lower rates of responding around issues related to parent involvement, and higher rates of responding for community. the difference between community and parent-involvement suggests that community is supported by the holistic philosophy of waldorf. parent involvement may reflect a more independent activity than involvement through community. this difference should be further investigated with regards to effective parent engagement. curriculum versus academics. we had also initially assumed curriculum and academics would be related under the theme of academic core, however, the factor analysis grouped these separately and again, there was a distinct difference between waldorf and nonwaldorf schools responses. waldorf school comments were higher for the term curriculum, while the term academics was more often seen in non-waldorf school comments. again, the difference between what is signified by a curriculum versus academics can be current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 14 table 7 percent positive and negative responses across 12 codes pos (ns= 23, 27) factor waldorf nonwaldorf positive negative neg (ns=12, 14) loadings pos neg pos neg t-test p-value t-test p-value factor a parent involv. .61 6% 3% 12% 8% -1.57 p=0.11 -0.72 p=0.48 leadership .68 7% 30% 17% 56% -2.75 p<0.01 -1.88 p=0.07 teachers .72 43% 47% 59% 69% -2.77 p<0.01 -1.55 p=0.14 factor b academics .82 9% 16% 16% 24% -1.99 p=0.05 -0.47 p=0.64 testing .68 4% 10% 6% 12% -0.97 p=0.34 -0.11 p=0.92 factor c curriculum .66 17% 21% 9% 11% 1.95 p=0.06 0.77 p=0.45 holistic ed .61 10% 3% 2% 0% 3.79 p<0.001 1.01 p=0.34 second language .69 7% 0% 2% 0% 2.29 p<0.05 na na factor d arts & music .87 29% 1% 12% 7% 3.35 p<0.005 1.01 p=0.39 love of learning .83 10% 0% 3% 0% 1.63 p=0.11 na na factor e community .51 24% 4% 14% 0% 1.85 p=0.07 1.00 p=0.34 21c skills .65 4% 0% 1% 2% 2.13 p<0.05 -0.92 p=0.34 dap .65 6% 17% 1% 0% 2.78 p<0.01 1.48 p=0.17 world citizen .79 6% <1% 4% <1% 0.98 p=0.33 0.40 p=0.69 note. individual t-tests for waldorf and comparison schools show several significant difference for positive responses only. there were no significant differences between groups for negative responses. light blue = significantly less frequent from waldorf. light orange = significantly more frequent for waldorf. interpreted as potentially more holistic, and should be investigated further. second language. rudolf steiner emphasized the early introduction of languages. “the earlier you begin, the more easily children learn foreign languages and the better their pronunciation. beginning at seven, the ability to learn languages decreases with age. thus, we must begin early.” (steiner, 1966, p. 79). the fact that this aspect of waldorf continues to be successful in the public sector is reflected in the parent comments. this point is important to validate the successful practice of waldorf principles in the classrooms. limitations of qca. although quantitative content analysis (qca) is traditionally used for documents, there is a growing trend to mine data from blogs and internet sources (berendt, 2010). the data presented here represent a select portion of the population of the attendees at the schools. these findings are considered supportive, but in no way are meant to be conclusive. future research using controlled surveys or interviews would be able to better address some of the issues that have been brought up in these data. qca is not about making causal determinations; it is rather to look for trends and tendencies within written text. the tendencies reported here lead to some interesting hypothesis that frame questions and may suggest possible directions for further investigation of these schools using more direct survey methods. limitations of qualitative data source. there is a need to recognize that the data collected here represent a unique population of participants. first, those who decided to post comments on greatschools.org represent only a few voices from the many members of the school community. nonetheless, it is safe to say that although this group is not random, the perspectives may be more meaningful in that it required a certain degree of motivation to engage in the comment writing process. this motivation could reflect a bad experience, or it could twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 15 reflect school pride and enthusiasm. in their “terms of use” policy, greatschools.org makes a general disclaimer as to the accuracy of the information, stating “greatschools does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any information on the website.” although there is no system by which the leadership of the school is able to delete comments, abusive comments, comments deemed to be incorrect, or posted maliciously and not by actual parents or other related members of the school community, can be challenged, and thereafter removed by a greatschools.org administer if they are deemed to not follow the guidelines (www.greatschools.org/about/guidelines.page). given this framework, the presence of negative and unflattering comments, so long as they fit within general guidelines, would be just as likely as positive comments. although this data source could most certainly be considered a convenience source, the advantage of being hosed by a third party supports the notion of impartiality, as greatschools.org would have no particular interest in promoting one school versus the other. discussion federal title i mandates of no child left behind (nclb, 2002) have created an accountability program in the educational system in the united states that relies heavily on performance on standardized tests. this emphasis on academic fact-based content knowledge presents challenges to holistic alternative education. the difficulty of undertaking a program such as waldorf, in which academics are intentionally delayed, is one that requires a great deal of risk when school test scores requiring early academic achievement in reading and math determine whether a school is considered passing or may face entering program improvement (pi). not only do schools risk state interventions such as pi, but their reputation is impacted by rating scales based on test results. even the most recent research indicates that parents generally base their perceptions of school quality almost entirely on student test scores (gibbons & silva, 2011). waldorf schools must work against the culture of competition for the highest test scores and educate parents to the purposes of a more balanced developmental approach. the basic content analysis of parent comments performed here reflected potential difficulties in parent perceptions when creating an alignment of the school curriculum away from academics and towards a more holistic approach. the unique pattern of performance by students in waldorf education on standardized tests presented here suggested a trajectory of continued improvement in both cross-sectional as well as longitudinal data. the slower developmental approach of waldorf, particularly with the delay in learning reading, is one that is misaligned with current test-based policies. unfortunately, the high value society places on test scores along with the policy structures of nclb effectively takes the focus away from effective developmental and creative approaches resulting in a narrowed view of curriculum (cawelti, 2006; daly, 2009; perlstein, 2010). the question this data presents is whether there is any value at all of using test scores in determining the quality of education particularly in the early grades. these data do not intend to say that waldorf as a pedagogical approach is better than the comparison schools. comparison schools were some of the best in the state of california, with some utilizing incredibly progressive approaches. rather these data should be interpreted with respect to their pattern of performance. waldorf student outcomes at 8th grade are on par with those of some of the top schools in the state, while in the early grades waldorf students fall below even the district averages. since the current measure of school effectiveness, api and ayp do not differentiate between the various grades, the overall measure of student outcome in waldorf schools are being grossly underrepresented and further call into question the current use of standardized testing as an accurate measure of school quality. our data and the work of others indicate that the costs of testing outweigh the benefits. research examining the impact of early focus on academics, a byproduct of early testing, has reported that the small initial benefits on academics seen in the early grades are followed by long term worsening of life outcomes (nel, 2000; schweinhart & weikart, 1997). as such we must ask the question as to what are the consequences of not moving away from a system of school evaluation that is inaccurate and flawed. research from the brain sciences suggest that the pressures on students and teachers to reach reading milestones early, may in fact, have a causal relationship to acquired learning disabilities. david boulton calls the emotional damage caused by attempting to force a child to read before they are developmentally ready, mind-shame (boulton, 2005). given that early test scores appear not to hold any predictive value for a student’s ultimate academic success, at least for waldorf, and there is no reason to suspect these children are biologically unique, it is important that we reconsider the utility of early grade testing at all. chauncey (2006) describes the challenge of evaluating waldorf education using the traditional testing assessments. we wanted to move beyond examining standardized test performance as the sole means of assessing the quality of education being provided by public waldorf schools. examining qualitative data and moving beyond test scores required some ingenuity. we utilized self-initiated comments by parents of waldorf and non-waldorf comparison schools posted on a nationally recognized website. through comparing code frequencies on critical issues, it was possible to reveal patterns in responses. waldorf schools were associated with greater frequency of responses relating to aspects of holistic education when compared to demographically current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 16 similar charters and public schools. these findings suggest that a more holistic approach is possible in a public setting even in the era of accountability. the difficulty of trying to fit waldorf into the current standards-based culture can be seen in the parents’ negative comments, particularly around issues of testing and academics. one parent stated: while i appreciate the concept of ‘teaching the whole child’, i do not believe that this school has been able to successfully merge the waldorf philosophy with the statemandated standards for public schools. i feel that my child was taught some life skills, but not exposed to some of the experiences of a traditional school. it is not possible to tell from these self-reported comments to what extent complaints regarding the waldorf approach reflect the clash in cultural values versus the inability for waldorf to maintain integrity in the public sphere. however, research reminds us that regardless of the growing number of whole child initiatives, the norm for many parents remains in support of early academics and higher test scores (chingos, henderson, & west, 2010). traditional waldorf encompasses a spiritual dimension. the inclusion of ideas surrounding spiritual and soul development can often clash with the public agenda. some have said that bringing waldorf into the public sector was done too soon and in too much of a rush. there was the feeling that as a public school, waldorf would not be able to fully maintain its philosophy, and that it would have to minimize or bury the spiritual components of the program (see ruenzel, 2001). the question as to how a so called “despiritualized” form of waldorf in the public education sector compares to private waldorf deserves further investigation. in some cases the schools have already experienced difficulties in these areas with two public waldorf schools having to go through the court system to prove they were not a religious school in order to receive state funding (retrieved from: http://www.waldorfanswers.com/lawsuit.html). the motion submitted by the agency plans (people for legal and nonsectarian schools) was denied, but the issue of spirituality continues to be critical both for the parents and for the public at large. as such, waldorf teachers participating in the public school institute in sacramento learn the physical and emotional developmental aspects of waldorf, rather than the spiritual dimension. the challenge faced by waldorf parents who misunderstand the tenets of the philosophy is further exacerbated by the existing policy structure. a delay in academics, as is prescribed by waldorf, will necessarily bring about low test scores in the early grades. this will impact a school’s rating on nclb measures and can make parents worried that their child is being “left behind” academically. it will be necessary not only to change public opinion but also change national policy of measuring a school based only on test scores if waldorf is to be able to succeed in the public sector. in an evaluation of the potential of bringing waldorf into the mainstream in england, woods, ashley, and woods (2005) make several recommendations. first, with regard to the use of a national curriculum, woods et al. (2005) recommend the “disapplication of steiner schools from the requirements of the national curriculum” (p. 10). they further recommend the allowance for evaluation of schools based on measures other than national tests and assessments. these allowances would certainly go a long way towards creating opportunities for schools, such as waldorf, to follow unique curricular and pedagogical practices that may hold significance for understanding alternative means of educating. our findings from the qca suggest that public waldorf schools are able to provide a more holistic experience for their students, while giving them the ability to be ultimately successful in academics over the course of a k-8 education. this study draws into question the value of early test scores as predictors for later performance for students in waldorf schools. based on our data, early test scores provide poor predictive value as to the quality of education of waldorf students are receiving at least as measured by test scores and national rating scales. even parents who spoke poorly about waldorf in the later grades praised waldorf for its treatment of early childhood and the early grades. this lack of correspondence of test scores to qualitative measures of schools performance should be a considerable concern for policy makers who support testing in the early grades. if we are to gauge schools based on test scores then these tests should at least be reliable measures of student outcomes in later grades. if not, then we must question the expense, time and stress of testing at all. until reliable measures of school quality are available, the impact of testing should be minimized, especially in the lower grades. the findings presented here were drawn from extant data, primarily from schools in california, and therefore generalizability of the data may be limited. nonetheless, these results support further investigation into the waldorf approach and indicate it may have potential for guiding pedagogy towards a more holistic approach in public education. future research should examine the emergence of cognitive capacities such as creativity, flexibility, and innovation specifically in students participating in public waldorf schools. as holistic education grows in the public sector, there is the need to support the approach as reliable and valid. perhaps the most significant support may come from an unlikely source, findings from the brain sciences. in their new book, educating the whole child for the twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 17 whole world, editors suarez-orozco and sattin-bajaj (2010) include a section on the emerging field of mind, brain and education (mbe). mbe is a program cofounded by one of the central figures in modern holistic approaches to education, howard gardner. the primary goal of this initiative as defined by another of the founding members, kurt fischer is “to join biology, cognitive science, development, and education in order to create a sound grounding of education in research” (fischer, 2009, p. 3). mbe is a growing field that holds promise for holistic educators (sousa, 2010; tokuhama-espinosa, 2011). a recently published report on neuroeducation calls for the use of music and the arts, not as a means of enrichment, but as a means of building cortical circuits critical for success in writing, reading and mathematics (hardiman, magsamen, mckhann, & eilber, 2009). there is also a long history of research speaking to the importance of play as the primary source of learning for young children with continued supporting evidence from the brain sciences (singer, golinkoff, & hirsh-pasek, 2006). given this growing awareness from the brain science on the beneficial aspects of holistic practices, it is not surprising that the waldorf curriculum with its full two year play-based kindergarten and fully integrated arts-based curriculum is gaining attention. references armon, j. 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(2005). steiner schools in england. report #645, department for education and skills, pg. 1-208. twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 19 appendix i public waldorf schools alice birney waldorf a, b, c, d sacramento, ca blue oak charter b, d chico, ca coastal grove charter school a, b, c, d arcata, ca desert marigold school a, d phoenix, az desert star d yavapai, az golden valley charter a, b sacramento journey charter school a, b, c, d aliso viejo, ca lighthouse school a, d north bend, or live oak charter a, b, c, d petaluma, ca monterey bay charter school a, b, c, d pacific grove, ca mountain mahogany d albuquequerqui, nm mountain oak school a, d prescott, az novato charter school a, b, c, d novato, ca ocean charter school a, b, c, d los angeles, ca pine forest charter school a, d flagstaff, az portland village school d portland, or river oak charter school a, b, d ukiah, ca sebastopol independent charter a, b, c, d sebastopol, ca stone bridge school a, b, c, d napa, ca sunridge charter school a, b, c, d sebastopol, ca the urban waldorf school a milwaukee, wi the village school a, d eugene, or woodland star charter school a, b, c, d sonoma, ca yuba river charter school a, b, d nevada city, ca (a=data set a, b=data set b, c=data set c, d=qualitative data set) current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 20 appendix ii matched comparison schools academy for academic excellence c, d san bernadino alder grove charter b, d humboldt apple blossom b, d sonoma brook haven elementary b, d sonoma forest charter b, d nevada hesby oaks b, d los angeles hooker oak elementary b, d butte international school of monterey b, c, d monterey ivy academia c, d los angeles unified julian charter c, d san diego unified las flores middle school b, d capistrano unified leonardo da vinci b, c, d sacramento mendocino elementary b, d mendocino natomas charter #19 c, d sacramento ottoman way elementary b, d sacramento pleasant valley elementary b, d marin ramona community c, d san diego river charter b, d napa sanger academy charter c, d fresno santa rosa charter b, c, d sonoma sinaloa middle b, d marin sonoma charter b, c, d sonoma temecula preparatory c, d temecula valley unified tijeras creek elementary b, d capistrano unified twin hills middle b, d sonoma vichy elementary b, d napa (b=data set b, c=data set c, d=qualitative data set) twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 21 appendix iii autocodes 21st century skills – century skill, century learn, creativity, critical think, imagination, innovation, problem solv, solve problem, think critical academics –academic, homework, home work art & music-art, music community –community, community curriculum-curricul, curicul, cirricul, ciricul developmentally appropriate practice-develop, pace, rate of learn, speed second language – foreign lang, foriegn lang, french, japanese, spanish holistic – whole child, holist, child centered, well (-) rounded leadership-admin, board, director, director, leader, organiz, principal loves learning – life(-)long learn, love(s) school, love(s) going to school, love(s) to learn, love(s) learn, love of learn parent involvement-fund raising, fundraising, parent involv, parent participation, volunteer, volunter teachers –teacher, staff, faculty testing – score, test world citizens—citizen, citez, world, glob, future, societ, steward, environmental, earth, planet current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 22 article citation larrison, a. l., daly, a. j., & van vooren, c. l. (2012). twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/807 author notes abigail l. larrison university of california, san diego and california state university, san marcos 9500 gilman drive, la jolla ca 92037; 333 s twin oaks valley rd, san marcos ca 92096 abigail.larrison@gmail.com abigail larrison received her phd in neuroscience from rutgers center for molecular and behavioral neuroscience studying mechanisms of attention and systems level neuroscience. she began working in education in 1995, applying her knowledge of the brain sciences towards teaching pedagogy and practice. she joined the joint doctoral program in educational leadership in order to further advance issues of educational reform based on the brain and learning sciences. her recent publications extend into the area of neuropharmacology, the psychophysiology of attention and critical issues in neuroeducation. alan j. daly university of california, san diego 9500 gilman drive, la jolla ca 92037 ajaydaly@uscd.edu alan j. daly is an associate professor of education at the university of california, san diego. in addition to 16 years of public education experience as a teacher, psychologist, and administrator, alan has also been the program director for the center for educational leadership and effective schools at the university of california, santa barbara. research interests include leadership, educational policy, district reform, and social network theory. his recent publications include an edited volume entitled, social network theory and educational change, published by harvard education press. carol van vooren, ed.d. california state university, san marcos 333 s twin oaks valley rd, san marcos ca 92096 cvanvoor@csum.edu carol l. van vooren has served as a teacher and school leader at all levels of instruction and is currently an assistant professor at california state university san marcos. her interest in alternative pedagogy developed as the principal of an international baccalaureate primary years programme school and as the director of the international baccalaureate certificate in teaching and learning at csusm. her research in international mindedness and leadership has resulted in publications and presentations at conferences around the world. acknowledgements: the authors would like to thank dr. alison guerra-wishard for her assistance with the quantitative research design. twenty years and counting: a look at waldorf in the public sector using online sources 23 manuscript received: 09/01/2011 revisions received: 02/22/2012 accepted: 08/26/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 24 volume 15, number 3 october 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors evan fishman ayfer gokalp kathleen hill sultan kilinc younsu kim carol masser bonnie mazza leslie ramos salazar melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers volume pre-s citation hodge, a te abstract both tea program classroom been fou discussio teachers their con data show a more re keyword secondar 13, numbe service t a. (2010). pr eachers. cur t cher educato s prepare te m. pre-servi und to influe on and unde by examini ntent area wh w that some eform-orien ds: teaching ry education er 4 teachers’ n re-service tea rent issues i ors and rese achers to tak ice teachers ence their te erstanding of ng the expe hile comple e of the prented stance. g visions, pr n. win changin orient ang north dako achers’ chan in education earchers hav ke on the ro ’ visions of aching. the f how pre-se riences of 1 ting their un service teac re-service te nter 2010 ng vision ted teach gie hodge ota state un nging visions n, 13(4). retr ve been tryin ole of “refor f themselves e purpose of ervice teach 1 pre-servic ndergraduat chers from th acher educa ns of them hers e niversity s of themsel rieved from ng to ensure rm-oriented” s as future cl f this study w hers envision ces teachers te education his cohort sh ation, mathe is mselves a lves as reform http://cie.as e that teache ” teachers u lassroom tea was to furth n themselve s who taught n. interviews hifted their ematics educ sn 1099-83 as reform m-oriented u.edu/ er education upon enterin achers have her the es as future t a course in s and survey visions tow cation, refor 39x mn g the e n y ward rm, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves as reform-oriented teachers the role of pre-service teachers’ visions of themselves as future teachers is a current issue of study by many (hammerness, 2003; shulman & shulman, 2004; urzua & vasquez, 2008; wilke & losh, 2008). shulman and shulman even claim that the vision someone has about his/her future teaching influences his/her teaching practices. hence, we as educators have a responsibility to help pre-service teachers create visions of their future teaching that align with our visions of how we want them to teach in the classroom. currently, the hope that most teacher educators hold is that our pre-service teachers will become reform-oriented rather than traditional teachers. in mathematics, the national council of teachers of mathematics (nctm, 2000) views this as a teacher who engages students in their learning and helps them to discover the knowledge on their own. the traditional teacher, on the other hand, tells students the information acting like the “sage-on-stage.” in this study i examine an atypical teaching experience that afforded one cohort of pre-service secondary mathematics teachers the opportunity to obtain a more reform-oriented vision of themselves as teachers. it should be noted that even though the subjects in this study were studying mathematics, this experience is seen as valuable to all pre-service teachers. reform-oriented teaching although there is some debate on whether reform-oriented teaching is the best method of instruction for all students, the reality is that these are the standards our teachers are being held to in the classroom. therefore, for the purposes of this article, i am using reform-oriented teaching as one goal of teacher education programs. discussing field of education in general, korthagen et al. (2006) writes about how traditional approaches to teaching pre-service teachers are being critiqued and how teachers need pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 3 to do more than learn just theory to become non-traditional (reform-oriented) teachers. this is also true in the field of mathematics where the first standard for the professional development of mathematics teachers found in nctm’s (1991) professional standards for teaching mathematics states within a teacher education program pre-service teachers should “experience good mathematics teaching” (p. 127) in order to learn and understand how they too can teach in reform-oriented ways. by experiencing teaching similar to what is expected of them in their future classrooms, pre-service teachers may develop visions of themselves as non-traditional, reform-oriented, teachers. this notion of good teaching is referred to as reform-oriented teaching in this document. to clarify what was meant by reform-oriented the nctm standard stated: mathematics and mathematics education instructors in pre-service and continuing education programs should model good mathematics teaching by: 1. posing worthwhile mathematical tasks; 2. engaging teachers in mathematical discourse; 3. enhancing mathematical discourse through the use of a variety of tools, including calculators, computers, and physical and pictorial models; 4. creating learning environments that support and encourage mathematical reasoning and teachers’ dispositions and abilities to do mathematics; 5. expecting and encouraging teachers to take intellectual risks in doing mathematics and to work independently and collaboratively; 6. representing mathematics as an ongoing human activity; 7. affirming and supporting full participation and continued study of mathematics by all students. (p. 127) current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 although this list contains aspects of teaching, all of which appear valuable for preservice teachers to experience, more research needs to be implemented related to this conception of reform-oriented teaching and pre-service teacher’s visions of themselves as future teachers. teaching visions it is hoped that if pre-service teachers experience reform-oriented teaching, coursework in a specific content area, and authentic experiences in their undergraduate education they will be able to envision themselves as reform-oriented teachers. hammerness (2003) proposed that “understanding teachers’ vision – teachers’ images of their ideal classroom practices may provide a means for us to better appreciate what decisions teachers make and what experiences they have in their classrooms” (p. 45). the hope is that if they are able to envision themselves as reform-oriented teachers, they will be able to engage in reform-oriented practices in their classrooms. if teachers cannot picture themselves teaching in a particular manner, then it is unlikely they will be able to teach in that manner. as stated in the introduction, shulman and shulman (2004) further claimed that teachers’ visions guide their teaching. preliminary observations of a seminar course, given the pseudonym “teaching seminar,” suggested that particular aspects of the seminar course had the potential to shed light on ways to strengthen the education of pre-service teachers in relation to their visions as future teachers. this seminar course allowed pre-service secondary mathematics teachers an atypical opportunity to each independently teach one section of an undergraduate college algebra class at a midwestern university prior to their student teaching. the material in the college algebra course was secondary level algebra, which provided pre-service teachers with the experience of teaching a complete course containing material similar to what many will teach in the future. pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 5 furthermore, the pre-service teachers were provided with daily opportunities for reflection on this experience. specifically, the pre-service teachers concurrently attended the teaching seminar where they engaged in tri-weekly discussions related to their teaching experiences with their peers and a mathematics faculty member. through a collaborative learning experience, pre-service teachers were provided the opportunity to practice and discuss the teaching of mathematical topics before they were taught, as well as reflect upon their actual teaching experiences in the classroom (hodge, in press). i was interested in finding out how the pre-service teachers’ visions of themselves as future teachers, including the role they see themselves as having in the classroom, would change as a result of this experience. an understanding of how the teaching visions of the pre-service teachers changed after taking the course as they engage in such an activity at the undergraduate level will help both researchers’ teacher educators understand the value of these types of learning experiences. research question the purpose of this study was to further the discussion and understanding of how preservice teachers envision themselves as future teachers. this study was guided by the following research question. how, if at all, did pre-service teachers’ visions of themselves as future teachers change after partaking in a unique experience: teaching their own university class and regularly reflecting upon their teaching? current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 methods participants the pool of participants in this study was a cohort (n = 11) of pre-service secondary mathematics teachers enrolled in the teaching seminar course. all 11 pre-service teachers enrolled in the course agreed to participate in the study. from this cohort of pre-service teachers, 4 participants were selected to serve as focal participants in the research study. these focal participants were selected based upon their gender (2 male and 2 female), as i wanted to have equal representation of males and females. all students were traditional-aged students with similar reported exposure to reform-oriented teaching practices, so these variables were not the focus of the study. rather the practical issue of time was another consideration. i had to select focal students who taught at a time that did not conflict with my own teaching responsibilities. these students gave valuable insights on how their visions as teachers changed from this experience. prior to the first day of the semester, each participant was informed of the research goals aligned with this study. they were told the overall goal of the project was to gain an understanding of the experiences afforded to them in the teaching seminar. although this course focused on the teaching of college algebra, this paper will focus on the visions of the pre-service teachers in general. role of the researcher in order to view the setting in the most natural way possible, i served as an inactive observer (patton, 2002) in the teaching seminar classroom and while conducting teaching observations. i sat in a desk near the back corner of the classroom, and observed the happenings of the classroom in an unobtrusive manner. i attended all but two of the seminar sessions to pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 7 establish my presence in the classroom as familiar to the pre-service teachers. my consistent presence also helped to ensure the data collected reflects the day-to-day interactions of the preservice teachers in the teaching seminar and not occurrences that are out of the ordinary. although i was not an active participant in the teaching seminar, my experiences influenced the lens through which i examined the data. my educational work and experiences prepared me to conduct research on pre-service teachers’ experiences in the seminar course and while they were teaching. my undergraduate education in pre-service secondary mathematics education served as a foundational background for my work with pre-service teachers. by completing the mathematics and mathematics education coursework myself, although not at the same university, i developed my own perceptions on undergraduate teacher education programs. i concur with putman and borko (2000) that teachers should be afforded with more experiences that align with their future teaching. hence, the educational experiences afforded to pre-service teachers in the teaching seminar were of interest to me. at the graduate level, i have built upon this foundation in a variety of ways: (a) obtained my master’s degree in mathematics, (b) completed coursework in the field of education, (c) taught general mathematics courses, (d) taught mathematics content courses to undergraduate pre-service elementary school teachers, and (e) supervised pre-service teachers who were student teaching at both middle and high school levels. these experiences helped to give me expertise in the subject matter area, but some may argue that they biases the way i examined the data. to minimize bias, my thesis director and other members of my dissertation committee checked for an agreement with the results i found from the data. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 data collection data collection included multiple modes of inquiry: (a) preand postcourse questionnaires, (b) preand postcourse interviews with each of the four focal pre-service teachers, and (c) videotapes and field notes from the observed teaching seminar sessions. i administered the surveys, conducted the interviews, and recorded all sessions of the teaching seminar except for one session. the questionnaires were used, in part, to determine how all (n = 11) of the pre-service teachers’ visions of themselves changed from the beginning to the end of the semester. the questionnaires contained nine questions (most with multiple parts) concerning both their role in the classroom while they were teaching and the role of their students in the classroom. sample question: pre: describe what you think your role will be in teaching your section of college algebra; post: describe your role in teaching your section of college algebra. pre-service teachers’ responses were used to guide interviews with the focal participants to probe how the teaching seminar altered their current visions of themselves as teachers. two semi-structured interviews (patton, 2002) were conducted with each of the focal pre-service teachers to gain an understanding of how the seminar supported their visions of their roles as teachers. the initial interviews were conducted during the third and fourth weeks of the teaching seminar, and the final interviews were conducted during the last two weeks. to gauge the evolution of their experiences, responses to the first questionnaire regarding their perceptions of themselves as a teacher were stated, and they were asked to respond to how they felt this has changed throughout the semester. these data allowed for triangulation (patton, 2002) with the observed findings from the teaching seminar related to pre-service teachers’ ways of talking about themselves as teachers. pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 9 the pre-service teachers were each observed at the beginning and end of the semester teaching in their classrooms. they were observed on two consecutive days (50 minute class periods) at each time period. in addition, the pre-service teachers were observed indirectly on a regular basis in the teaching seminar. for the purposes of this study, since it focused on visions, observational data were used for purposes of triangulation rather than to make direct claims about the pre-service teachers. data analysis following standard methods of qualitative (e.g., miles & huberman, 1994; patton, 2002) research, i analyzed and interpreted the data. coding (grounded theory approach), case records, and assertion creation were used in the analysis of this study. coding was completed using both the guidelines for coding given in patton (2002) and details of coding found in miles and huberman (1994). results in making comparisons between the preand postseminar questionnaires, i was interested in examining if there were changes in the roles pre-service teachers envisioned themselves having as teachers in relation to reform versus traditional teaching. to determine this, each description of their roles as teachers provided by the pre-service teachers was coded as reform, traditional, or undecided. reform responses were often characterized by envisioning themselves as a facilitator of information, traditional responses as a “teller” of information, and undecided as hard to infer from the information provided. the following table provides the results: current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 table 1: pre-service teachers’ visions as teachers pre-course response post-course response participant traditional traditional 2 males, 2 females traditional undecided 1 male, 1 female traditional reform 1 female undecided undecided 1 male undecided reform 1 male, 2 females using this coding scheme, 7 of the 11 pre-service teachers’ pre-seminar responses were traditional and 4 of the 11 responses were undecided. there were no original responses that fit under the reform style of teaching. although 4 of the pre-service teachers’ descriptions of themselves as teachers remained traditional, 4 of them provided more reform-oriented responses in the post-seminar questionnaires. the other 3 pre-service teachers provided responses that were difficult to decipher and coded as undecided. below are two of the extreme cases. garrett’s responses illustrate both traditional responses, while mandi’s responses shifted from traditional to a more reform-oriented response. garrett (pre): to relay knowledge to the students, and doing what it takes to accomplish that task. garrett (post): i was a provider of information to the students. i didn't make class fun. i showed them what they need to know. mandi (pre): we have a lot of material and not much time i am forced to be the "sage on the stage." i am the one who has to have knowledge. shows the students how to work the problems. we can't get too in depth. mandi (post): my role…hmmm…i am a facilitator of information. i help students decipher the stuff the book is telling them. pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 11 garrett kept his position as the provider of knowledge, while mandi shifted her description of her role as a teacher from one that tells students what they should know to one that helps students understand mathematics. the statements provided by garrett and mandi were consistent with their classroom teaching. garrett asked students for questions they had on their homework and solved the problems for the students. then he gave examples for students to reference for their next set of homework questions. even though mandi also provided help with homework problems in her classroom, she tried to involve the students in the thinking process and recognized that it was not how she wanted to conduct her future teaching. to illustrate a pre-service teacher whose view shifted from one which was hard to categorize to a more reform-oriented view, consider a few excerpts from lisa’s interviews. pre-seminar interview excerpt: author: so in terms of your teaching, can you describe to me a little more your role as a teacher in that class? lisa: i found that i work good with my students when i’m at more of a friendly level instead of an authority level. author: uh, huh. lisa: because i’m not comfortable just kind of feeling mean [laugh] standing up there. author: uh, huh. lisa: as an authority. i like to hear my students talk back and be comfortable with me, so i think i’m better with that. author: so can you give me an example of some teaching that would be in a friendly level and some that would be in authority level? current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 lisa: well more of a friendly level is just asking them, you know, “how’d you guys do on your test?”, and just caring about them and being open to questions and. author: yeah. lisa: you know, if they ask me questions, as long as it’s not like too unprofessional, you know, i can answer pretty much anything and those sorts of things. more of an authority is just like standing up there saying “do this, listen to me.” author: uh, huh. lisa: you know, “be quiet while i teach,” that sort of thing. author: so it’d be fair to say getting their input on things? lisa: yeah. post-seminar interview: lisa: you don’t just want to memorize something because a couple years from now you might not use it enough and forget it… lisa: you know i get that impression from a lot of students and so when you’re in a high school, you know, they’re there, they wanna, they really want to have fun in a class if they can so i would try to do more like games and things like that in a high school class. i mean obviously, like we talked about before, you have to be careful about when fun can just be in the way. author: uh, huh. lisa: so i mean, i would definitely make it more interactive, more student-centered. author: did you do anything to try to make this class student-centered, you were limited by quite a few factors, but is there anything you did, yourself? pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 13 lisa: um, a lot of times what i just tried to do is ask them “how do i do this problem?,” “how do you start this problem?” author: yeah. lisa: that’s the main thing that i do. and then i did that group thing with the word problems and um, i’m trying to think if i did anything else. just, i’ve never really had them come up to the board except for when they did the group things. in lisa’s pre-seminar interview, she did not give a direct inclination on her stance as either a traditional or reform-oriented teacher. rather lisa discussed her rapport with students in the classroom. in her post-seminar interview, however, lisa used the phrase “student-centered” and discussed how she hoped her students would go beyond memorizing procedures. this shift in her discussion of her teaching may be slight, but it is a step in the direction of envisioning herself as a reform-oriented secondary mathematics teacher. once again, her teaching was consistent with her interview responses. lisa did, in fact, as her students for input on how to solve problems that she worked in class. she recognized that her teaching was not one hundred percent student-centered, but it fit the class she was working with and her comfort zone as a first time teacher. yet she also wanted to continue to make her class more interactive as she grew as a teacher. in general, it is important to note that only 4 pre-service teachers provided traditional responses at the end of the teaching seminar. hence, evidence supports some of the pre-service teachers’ visions of themselves as teachers became more reform-oriented after partaking in the experience of teaching college algebra and discussing this teaching in the teaching seminar. in any case, the teaching seminar provided pre-service teachers with an authentic experience of teaching a mathematics course and reflecting upon it with their peers and an current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 experienced mathematics professor. this experience offered pre-service teachers the opportunity to think about and reflect upon their classroom teaching in ways that went beyond most standard teacher education programs. discussion as stated by shulman and shulman (2004), pre-service teachers’ visions are thought, in part, to guide the style of their future teaching. some of the pre-service teachers’ visions of themselves as teachers changed after completing the teaching seminar, while others did not appear to change. data indicated that the pre-service teachers were showing evidence of reform oriented discussions in the teaching seminar. however, when asked about this in questionnaires, not all of them provided descriptions of themselves falling under the national council of teachers of mathematics’ (2000) classification of reform-oriented teachers. this is not surprising, since many have had a least 13 years of experience as a student where most, if not all, of their teachers taught in a traditional manner as opposed to a reform oriented manner. altering the visions of pre-service teachers is not an easy task with the experiences pre-service teachers bring with them to the classroom (shulman & shulman, 2004). after all, the pre-service teachers selected to be in the teaching seminar were deemed successful at mathematics by the department and were taught the subject using traditional teaching methods. in addition, there was little pressure on the pre-service in the teaching seminar to conform to reform-oriented views of teaching. developing a reform-oriented style of teaching was not an explicit goal of the course. rather, it was me who examined pre-service teachers’ visions to find out if they changed after attending the teaching seminar. nonetheless, after attending the teaching seminar 4 of the 11 pre-service teachers did describe themselves as more reform-oriented teachers of mathematics. at the beginning of the semester, none of the pre-service teachers described themselves as pre-service teachers’ changing visions of themselves 15 reform-oriented teachers. by the end of the semester, some of their descriptions of themselves as teachers had become more reform-oriented or had become descriptions that were not as extreme on the traditional side. both the change and lack of change, exhibited in different pre-service teachers’ visions bring about important questions: (a) what was it about the teaching seminar that impacted some of the pre-service teachers in a way that made them alter their visions of themselves as mathematics teachers?, (b) if the teaching seminar were to have pre-service teachers’ visions become reform-oriented as one of its goals, would the results be different?, and (c) what could be done differently to alter pre-service teachers’ visions of teaching to a more reform-oriented stance? if this study were to be replicated, follow up interviews could be done with the preservice teachers to investigate their perceptions of these questions. in addition to bringing about future questions, i envision general education faculty and content specialists gaining perspectives and ideas from this study to design teaching seminars for different disciplines. the general education faculty and content specialists could collaborate more on the design and goals of this seminar to enhance the outcomes in relation to reformoriented teaching. this does not mean that the seminar has to run differently, but it does mean pre-service teachers’ ideas about their visions of teaching could be challenged in the teaching seminar. the discussion of facilitating discourse is one aspect, for instance, that should be added to the teaching seminar. in addition, pre-service teachers could be encouraged to think outside of their normal domain of teaching and attempt new methods for teaching their students more frequently. these ideas, of course, should be investigated further. it does necessitate additional research to be conducted on the teaching seminar at the researched university, as well as trying to establish and research similar seminars at other schools and in other subject areas. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 references hammerness, k. (2003). learning to hope or hoping to learn, journal of teacher education, 54, 43-56. hodge, a. (in press). the design of a teaching seminar for pre-service secondary mathematics teachers. to appear in primus: problems, resources, and issues in undergraduate mathematics: 2011. korthagen, f., loughran, j., & russell, t. (2006). developing fundamental principles for teacher education programs and practices. teaching and teacher education, 22, 10201041. miles, m. b., & huberman, a. m. (1994). qualitative data analysis: an expanded sourcebook (2nd ed.). newbury park, ca: sage publications. national council of teachers of mathematics (2000). principles and standards for school mathematics. reston, va: author. patton, m. (2002). qualitative research and evaluation methods (3rd ed.). california: sage publications. putnam, r., & borko, h., (2000). what do new views of knowledge and thinking have to say about research on teaching and learning? educational researcher, 29(1), 4-15. shulman, l., & shulman, j. (2004). how and what teachers learn: a shifting perspective. journal of curriculum studies, 36, 257-271. urzua, a., & vasquez, c. (2008). reflection and professional identity in teachers’ futureoriented discourse. teaching and teacher education, 24 1935-1946. wilke, r. a., & losh, s. c. (2008). beyond belief: preservice teachers’ planned instructional strategies. action in teacher education, 30 (3), 64-73. pre-service about th author: affiliatio address univers email: a biograp teacher undergr inquirylearning e teachers’ c he author angie hod on: north d s: departme ity, ndsu angela.hod phical infor r education aduate mat -based learn g. changing visio dge dakota stat ents of mat mathemat dge@ndsu. rmation: an n at north d thematics e ning in und ons of themse te universi thematics a tics dept #2 .edu ngie hodge dakota stat education, g dergraduate elves ity and teache 2750, p.o. e is an assi te universi gender equi e mathemat r education box 6050, istant profe ity. her res ity in the s tics classes n, north d , fargo, nd essor of ma earch inter stem disci , and pre-s akota state d 58108-60 athematics rests includ iplines, ervice teac 17 e 050 and de cher current is volume authors articles publishe an kr hilla d ju an h mi ssues in educ e 13, num hold the copy s in other jour er and include ngela abeyta rista adams ary andrelch diana barela ulia boukara ndrew darian aiying dong iriam emran cation vol. 13 curr mber 4 yright to artic rnals should b e the url of t provide a hik n n 3 no. 4 rent issu http:// w cles published be addressed t the cie publi ed cie is cred edit exe lor katy e jeffr sec sar mar me amb seo tiff calv linds fac gusta jean deb ues in e /cie.asu.e winter 2010 d in current is to the author. ication. permi dited and cop torial team cutive editor ri ellingford elizabeth his rey i. johnso ction editors rah heaslip rlene hinton elinda hollis ber johnston onghee kim fany o’neill vin richards say richerso culty advisers vo e. fischm nne m. power bby zambo educati edu 0 issues in educ reprints sho ission is here pies are not so m rs d rich on n n s on s man rs on issn cation. reque ould credit cie eby granted to old. ror ta kar luc ker jennife ky n 1099-83 ests to reprint e as the origi o copy any art ry schmitt apati sen ri visconti cy watson rie wilkins er wojtulewi yle wright 18 39x cie inal ticle, icz volume an an citation karadağ, d 13 abstract to asses researche frequent correlatio bivariate statistica introduce techniqu keyword 13, numbe nalysis of doctoral , e. (2010). a doctoral diss 3(4). retriev t s research m ers, this stud tly used rese onal study; e correlation al technique ed into educ ues stayed re ds: research er 4 f researc disserta e an analysis sertation at th ved from http methods and dy surveyed earch metho and a case s n, many wh s analysis. t cational diss elatively stea h method, st ch method ation at th engi eskişehir os s of research he education p://cie.asu.ed d analysis of d unpublishe ods consisted study. descr itney-u test though som sertation, th ady. tatistical ana ds and st he educat in karadağ smangazi u h methods an n sciences in du/ f statistical t ed doctoral d d of experim riptive statis t, and krusk me new statis e trends of f alysis, docto tatistical tion scien ğ university and statistica n turkey. c techniques e dissertation mental resea stics, t-test, kal wallis-h stical techni frequently u oral disserta is techniqu nces in t al technique current issue employed by from 2003 arch; a surve anova, f h test were f iques analys used analysi ation, educat sn 1099-83 ues used turkey es used by es in educati y education to 2007. ey; a factor analys frequently u ses were is of statistic tion science 39x d by ion, al sis, used cal es current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 an analysis of research methods and statistical techniques used by doctoral dissertation at the education sciences in turkey educational research worldwide has played a major role in influencing and informing educational practice. indeed, the last decade has seen a proliferation in the number of articles published in educational research journals. some of these published works have been the basis of educational reform in many settings. moreover, most investigators utilize previous research in developing their conceptual and theoretical frameworks, as well as in providing qualitative (e.g., content analyses) and quantitative (e.g., meta-analyses) reviews of the literature in which the key findings are summarized. in conducting literature reviews, researchers often assume that the documented findings are trustworthy (onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2003). for the last 20 years a large body of literature on ways of synthesizing research in education has been developed (dunkin, 1994; walberg, 1986). approaches to gleaning the accumulated findings of that research have varied from the narrative through vote counting of box scores to meta-analysis. some of these approaches make more demands on the conceptual and interpretative skills of the synthesizer than others and, therefore, contain more scope for error and bias than others, although all approaches are subject to the fallibility of the synthesizers and those upon whom they necessarily rely. it is important that the validity of all syntheses is subject to be tested as for they are the mail ways in which assessments can be made about the accumulation and development of research-based knowledge. syntheses of research are influential in regard to subsequent research, policy, and practice. they provide the empirical bases for applications for research grants, for higher-degree dissertations and theses as well as for individual and institutional research. they are used by policymakers both in designing strategies for development and to guide practitioners in the enhancement of professional activity. research methods and statistical techniques 3 they provide the contents of highly regarded publications in handbooks, encyclopedias, and textbooks and become the best known statements of the state of knowledge on the topics to which they are addressed (dunkin, 1996). different research methods and analysis of statistical techniques have been preferred in the research of different disciplines. for example, laboratory experiments tend to be used in physical sciences, while field studies are carried out more often in social investigations. more correlation-related statistics are used in biological and medical research. in agricultural research, however, analysis of variance and covariance (anova/ancova) are used most frequently. what methods/analyses are preferred in educational research? what are the application trends of these methods/analyses over the years? educational researchers have shown interest in these questions throughout the years. surveys on methods/analyses used in articles published by educational and psychological journals have appeared in literature continuously (hsu, 2005). surveys on research methods, which were treated separately from statistical techniques analysis in this study, are reviewed first. walker (1956) identified the following as the commonly used educational research methods in the 1950s: survey, historical research, library method, case study, experimental design, action research, statistical method and content analysis. observation, interview, measurement and opinion polls were frequently used data collection techniques. shaver and norton (1980) reviewed articles in the american educational research journal (aerj) published in 1968, 1971, 1973 and 1975–1977 in terms of several design issues such as design types, randomization, replications and sampling. they found that almost more than half of the articles were correlation studies and that the percentage remained about the same throughout the years. the number of true-experimental studies declined as the number of quasi-experimental studies increased. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 the review by keselman et al. (1998) involves both statistical techniques analysis and research design. four hundred and eleven articles in the 1994 and 1995 issues of 17 educational and psychological journals were reviewed in terms of the practice of using anova (analysis of variance), manova (multivariate analysis of variance) and ancova (analysis of covariance) in four types of design: between subjects univariate design, between subjects multivariate design, repeated measures design, and covariance design. results show that many researchers failed to verify assumptions, report effect sizes, and examine power of the statistics employed. however, it is interesting to note that the repeated measures design was used most often, about 55%. the percentages of the remaining three designs range only between 11 and 19. the trends and shifts of research methods during the past decade are well summarized by kelly and lesh (2000). in general, more emphasis is given to qualitative methods than quantitative methods. experimental method is no longer the only dominant method in math and science research. in determining the existence of certain factors, ethnographic descriptions are often used instead of statistical tests. designs involving one-time summative measure or pre-post tests are less frequently used. instead, approaches involving iterative cycles of observations of complex behavior are employed. this article deals with research methods employed in mathematics and science education research. the question to be answered here is whether research practice in education as a whole has made similar shifts in research methodology. there are many surveys on statistical techniques analysis used in studies published by educational and psychological journals. for example, edgington (1974) reviewed seven journals of the american psychological association each year from 1948 to 1972. his results showed that the percentage using anova increased steadily from 1948 to 1972. however, the percentages using t-test and correlation declined. the percentages employing chi-square and factor analysis research methods and statistical techniques 5 were about the same throughout the period. willson (1980) surveyed aerj between 1969 and 1978. he discovered that approximately 41% of the statistical techniques analyses were biostatistics (such as correlation, multiple regression, discriminate analysis, multivariate analysis of variance). approximately 34% were agricultural statistics (such as anova/ancova). in comparing the statistical procedures used in articles published in the journal of educational research (jer), 1970 and 1980, with the exception of descriptive statistics, west, carmody and stallings. (1983) found more multivariate statistics were used in 1980. the most frequently used statistics in 1970 were correlation, anova, t-test, chi-square, multiple regression, and nonparametric statistics. the most frequently used statistics in 1980 were anova, multivariate, multiple regression and t-test. goodwin and goodwin (1985a, b) surveyed statistical techniques used in the journal of educational psychology (jep) and aerj between 1979 and 1983. the most commonly used statistics in aerj were anova/ancova (17%), correlation (12%), descriptive statistics (10%) chi-square/non-parametric statistics (7%), multiple-comparison (6%) and t-test (5%). statistics most frequently used in jep were anova/ancova (26%), correlation (17%), multiple-comparison (13%), t-test (8%) and regression (8%). elmore and woehlke (1988) reviewed aerj, review of educational research (rer) and educational researcher (er) between 1978 and 1987. they discovered that the most frequently used statistics were anova/ancova, descriptive statistics, multiple correlation/regression, bivariate correlation, multivariate and non-parametric statistics. later, they extended their survey to include 1978 to 1997 (elmore & woehlke, 1998). the extension changed the rankings of the most frequently used statistics to descriptive statistics, anova/ancova, correlation/regression, qualitative techniques, bivariate correlation, and multivariate. the discrepancies between goodwin and current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 goodwin (1985b) and elmore and woehlke (1988, 1998) were due to the different nature of the articles published in er (consisting of more interpretive and philosophical articles) and rer (consisting mostly of reviews of research). the rankings were almost identical when only the articles in aerj were considered. purpose an expressive review of the literature revealed that all authors (e.g., hall, ward, & comer, 1988; onwuegbuzie & daniel, 2003; thompson, 1998; vockell & asher, 1974; ward, hall, & comer, 1975) who have examined the research methods and statistical techniques analysis made by researchers have utilized journals published in the united states and these errors occur in the other parts of the world as well. thus, as the purpose research methods/designs, and data statistical techniques analysis appeared in research studies unpublished by doctoral dissertation from 2003 to 2007 the purpose of the study was to assess the research methods and statistical techniques analysis used by doctoral dissertation at the education sciences in turkey. more specifically, this study was designed to address the following questions: (i) what are the frequently used research methods? (ii) what are the frequently used statistical techniques analyses? results of the investigation should be of concern not just to the publishers of educational research journals and the practitioners of educational research, but also to the instructors of research methodology as well. graduate students in education are required to take research method courses so that they can become both/either good consumer of research publications and/or conductors of quality research. however, educators disagree on exactly how much knowledge of methods/analyses should be required for which levels of graduate students. research methods and statistical techniques 7 information about research practice in the field may provide some helpful guidelines. the present study is different from previous surveys in several aspects. first, it does methods/analyses without considering the subject matters investigated. second, unlike most of the previous surveys, this survey separates statistical techniques analysis from research methods. research methods include approaches, plans or designs of investigation with the exception of procedures to deal with data and their interpretations. third, it covers dissertations published from 2003 to 2007 (hsu, 2005). method data for the present study were obtained from a database developed by a cross-cultural study of educational and psychological research methods (hsu, 2005). the construction of the database included the following steps: (i) initially 211 unpublished doctoral dissertation original research studies in education sciences in turkey from 2003 to 2007 were indentified. years were coded by numbers: 6 (2003), 7 (2004), 30 (2005), 79 (2006), 89 (2007). (ii) as shown in table 1, each article was reviewed and classified in terms of three aspects: (i) research methods (15 categories); and (ii) statistical techniques analysis (23 categories). the categories of research methods; and data analysis procedures were adapted from the study of hsu (2005). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 table 1. categories of research methods, and statistical techniques analysis categories of research methods 1-action research 2-case study 3-experimental design 4-causal comparative/model 5-comparative approach 6-correlational study 7-cross culture 8-survey 9-ethnography 10-phenomenology 11-histography 12-other methods 13-interpretative/rhetorical 14-observational study 15-policy study categories of statistical techniques analysis 1-ancova 2-anova 3-bivariate correlation 4-canonical correlation 5chi-square 6-cluster analysis 7-descriptive statistics 8-discriminant analysis 9-effect size/power analysis 10-factor analysis 11kruskal wallis h test 12-kormogrov smirnov 13-linear regression 14-mancova 15-manova 16-many whitney-u test 17-meta-analysis 18-multiple correlation 19-multiple regression 20-path/structural equation 21-psychometric statistics 22-t-test 23wilcoxon the selection of categories for methods/analyses was based on an extensive review of methodology literature (keeves, 1988), encyclopedias of education and psychology (alkin, 1992) and categories used in surveys reviewed in a previous section. unlike some previous studies, as mentioned previously, analyses of statistical techniques were treated separately from research methods because they served somewhat different functions in the research process. for methods that were named after analysis of statistical techniques such as meta-analysis, multilevel analysis and structural equation modeling, they were included in statistical techniques analysis in research methods and statistical techniques 9 this study. rationales of some subjects/methods/analyses categorizations will be clarified in the following sections when appropriate. for studies employing more than one research method, up to three of the most important methods were recorded for each study. for data analysis, all procedures in the article were recorded. however, if a procedure was used more than once in the same doctoral dissertation, it was counted only once. it is important to note that qualitative interpretation was also considered as one technique so that data treatment procedures of qualitative research could be considered. to assure that the same criteria were used in classifying the articles, a manual description of the characteristics of each category was prepared. the frequencies of methods/analyses appearing in each doctoral dissertation from 2003 to 2007 were tabulated and their percentages were computed. to compute the percentage for each subject matter, its frequency was divided by the total number of doctoral dissertation and multiplied by 100. the frequency for each category was divided by the total number of methods/analyses and multiplied by 100 because a doctoral dissertation may have more than one method/analysis. to explore the trends of application, categories for plotting were selected because they were classified as frequently observed (at least 5%) in at least two of the doctoral dissertations. the unpublication years from 2003 to 2007 were divided into seven periods with five years each. in situations where a combination of categories was required (e.g., where experimental research is a combination of pre -quasiand true-experimental designs) frequencies of the combined categories were summed for that period before the percentage was computed (hsu, 2005). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 findings table 2 shows frequently used research methods and the least frequently used methods in unpublished doctoral dissertation. four of the frequently used methods are identical for all unpublished doctoral dissertations: experimental research, survey, correlational study, and case study. comparative approach was used to describe a study when it compared different techniques, methods, instruments, procedures, or objects and when it was neither an experimental study nor a correlational study. descriptive research involves the collection of data to describe the existing conditions of the problem under investigation. some publications use this term to include most non-experimental studies such as case studies, developmental studies, and observational studies, which were treated separately in this study. descriptive research was used only to identify studies describing existing characteristics that were not case studies, developmental studies, or observational studies. action research, phenomenology, causalcomparative approach, grounded theory, arge is also shown in table 2 as the least frequently used methods. table 2. research methods/designs used most and least frequently in the unpublished doctoral dissertation methods η % 1-experimental design 85 37.1 2-survey 78 34.0 3-correlational study 28 12.2 4-case study 26 11.3 5-action research 5 2.1 6-phenomenology 4 1.7 7-causal-comparative approach 1 0.4 8grounded theory 1 0.4 9-arge 1 0.4 total 229 100 research methods and statistical techniques 11 percentages of statistical techniques analysis most frequently appearing in articles published by unpublished doctoral dissertations presented in table 3. again, there are similarities among these unpublished doctoral dissertations. in fact, five of the six frequently used analyses are identical: descriptive statistics, t-test, anova, factor analysis, bivariate correlation, many whitney-u test and kruskal wallis-h test. actually, if the percentages were rounded to a whole number, psychometric statistics (3%) for unpublished doctoral dissertations could be classified as a frequently used data analysis procedure too. psychometric statistics included statistics designed for data collection instruments such as indices of reliability and validity. this category did not include factor analysis because it was treated as a separate category. in the present study, we deliberately included two categories that were normally omitted in surveys of analysis of statistical techniques: descriptive statistics and qualitative interpretation. descriptive statistics is the foundation of quantitative analysis. its role cannot be overlooked simply because advanced statistics are also used in the same studies. with the increasing popularity of qualitative research, qualitative interpretation should be included to account for treatment of qualitative data. fifteen (15) of the statistical techniques analyses were classified as the least frequently used procedures in table 3. this large number is unusual but was expected because the categorization is so specific. for example, multiple regression, linear regression, kormogrov smirnov, manova, and path analysis on this list can be grouped into a single category of multivariate statistics. same table also presents the percentages of the number of different statistical techniques analysis used in the same study. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 table 3. statistical techniques analysis used most and least frequently in the unpublished doctoral dissertation analysis of statistical techniques η % 1-descriptive statistics 181 28.46 2-t-test 138 21.70 3-anova 114 17.92 4-factor analysis 58 9.12 5-bivariate correlation 33 5.19 6-many whitney-u test 29 4.56 7-kruskal wallis-h test 19 2.99 8-ancova 19 2.99 9-chi-score test 12 1.89 10-wilcoxon 10 1.57 11-multiple regression 8 1.26 12-linear regression 7 1.10 13-kormogrov smirnov 4 0.63 14-manova 2 0.31 15-path analysis 2 0.31 total 636 100 results and discussion this study identified and tabulated research methods and statistical techniques analysis from studies unpublished in doctoral dissertation from 2003 to 2007. in addition, it also identified the subject matters under which these methods/analyses were applied. percentages of frequently used methods and analyses were plotted over for being unpublished in doctoral dissertation so that its trends of practice could be assessed and compared. as for being connected with the research model, it is related to the distribution of the models used in dissertation studies. in the case it has been determined that totally 9 different research models were used in 211 doctoral dissertation studies. among the models determined, research methods and statistical techniques 13 experimental design (37.1 %), survey (34.0 %), correlational study (12.2%) and case study (11.3 %) models are frequently used ones. besides this, only a few researchers carried on their works by taking the improvement on research methodology into the consideration and applying to causal-comparative approach and qualitative models. hsu(2005), who has studied a similar matter about methodological errors, suggests that the frequently used research methods, mentioned through the articles published by american educational research journal (aerj), journal of experimental education (jee) and journal of educational research (jer) between 1971 and 1998, are composed of experimental, defining, correlational, causal-comparative approach and case study, but, till middle of 1980s, percentage of the experimental and defining studies have continuously decreased in number; on the contrary, causal-comparative and the qualitative research has increased. when the results of this study are discussed in terms of these outputs, the experimental and scanning model applications in the three of four thesis studies in turkey can be shown as an indication of lack of an adaptation to innovations in this field, compared to the international tendency. furthermore, frequent use of experimental and scanning models in the study held by balcı (1993), and the findings of akkoyun’s study (1989) that show the existence of a modeling difference between the researches on consultation physiology held in america and turkey, supports this comment. as far as the data analysis dimension is concerned, the other comprehensive result relates to the distribution of the statistical techniques applied during data analysis in dissertation studies. it has been determined that 23 different statistical techniques were used in 205 doctoral dissertations in which statistics applied. among the techniques determined, descriptive statistics (28%), t-test (21%) and anova (17%) are most frequently used. when these techniques current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 analyzed, it can be said that descriptive statistics and differential statistics are applied in most of the dissertations. other statistical techniques which are limitedly applied are manova, mancova and path analysis. on the contrary, while there exists more than one variable in most of the dissertations, an evaluation has been done as if there were only one. thus it has prevented the study from achieving its purpose by using the techniques with one variable such as t-test and anova instead of applying multi variable statistical techniques in dissertation studies in which attitude and success are discussed together as a sample. most favorable explanation of this situation was done by loftus (1994). he states that a force effect exists on differential researches and relatively a negative view has been encountered in some studies. corresponding with this dimension of the research lots of works can be encountered in international literature; these studies mostly include the published articles on education. (table 4). wilson (1980) stated in his articles in american educational research journal (aerj) between 1969 and 1978 that anova, ancova, correlation, multiple regressions, discriminate analysis and manova are mostly applied tests. in 150 articles issued at journal of educational psychology (jep) between 1979 and 1983, anova and multiple regressions, correlation tests were stated as mostly applied ones (goodwin & goodwin, 1985a). in another study held by goodwin & goodwin (1985b) variant and covariant analyses, multiple regressions, correlation, descriptive statistics and manova were stated as largely used ones in the articles issued in aerj between 1979 and 1983 and t-test was found to be the one among the least preferred methods. the research results, which were repeated to determine the statistical techniques used in aerj published by elmore & woehlke (1998) since 1997, are parallel to the research outcomes of goodwin & goodwin’s (1985b). kieffer, reese & thompson (2001) determined that variant and covariant analyses, regression analyses, and correlation analyses had research methods and statistical techniques 15 been frequently used in 756 articles issued in journal of counseling psychology (jcp) and american educational research journal (aerj) between 1988 and 1997. in addition to american oriented journal analysis, at onwuegbuzie’s (2002) studies published in british journal of education psychology (bjep) in 1998, the most applied analyses techniques were variant, covariant and factor analysis. some parts of these outcomes are relevant to those found in this research. however, when a comparison made among the studies carried on after 2000, the fact that the research going along with the results of the study are desperately dated, can be interpreted as an indication our being behind the international progress with regard to statistical analysis in the research on education held in turkey. fortunately, some slow, glacial progress in the incremental movement of the field was reflected in the apa (1994, p. 18) style manual “encouraging” the reporting of effect sizes. but enlightened editorial policies now provide the strongest basis for cautious optimism (thompson, 1998). finally, even the criteria for the combination of different categories might not be identical; the differences of the results among surveys are relatively minor. it should be noted, however, that the percentages presented in table 4 were aggregated over the time periods covered. the percentages of procedures might vary from one year to another for different surveys, which was not addressed in this table. to have a more accurate comparison among these results, trends of application over the years should be explored (hsu, 2005). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 table 4. a comparison of most commonly used statistical techniques analysis identified by selected surveys reference journals statistical techniques analysis (%) edgington [1974] 7 apa journals [1948-1972] [54%] anova [26%] correlation [22%] t-test chi-sq. [15%] non-parametric [15%] factor analysis [3%] willson [1980] aerj [1969-1970] [41%] based correlation/regression [34%] anova/ancova [12%] factor analysis goodwin & goodwin [1985a] jep [1979-1983] [26%] ancova/anova [17%] correlation [13%] multiple comparison t-test [8%] regression [8%] goodwin & goodwin [1985b] aerj [1979-1983] [17%] ancona/anova [12%] correlation [10%] descriptive statistics non-parametric [7%] multiple comparison [6%] t-test [5%] elmore & weohlke [1988] aerj [1978-1987] [25%] ancova/anova [15%] correlation/regression [10%] multivariate bivariate correlation [9%] non-parametric [8%] t-test [8%] elmore & weohlke [1998] aerj [1978-1997] [31%] ancova/anova [19%] multiple regression [12%] multivariate bivariate correlation [11%] nonparametric [10%] t-test [10%] onwuegbuzie [2002]  bjep [1971-1998] [38%] anova [22%] manova [19%] factor analysis correlation [11%] regression [11%] chi-sq. [8%] hsu [2005] aerj [1971-1998] [24%] descriptive [19%] anova/ancova [13%] correlation regression [7%] qualitative interpre. [7%] t-test [6%] hsu [2005]  jee [1971-1998] [29%] descriptive [24%] anova/ancova [13%] correlation t-test [7%] non-parametric [6%] regression [6%] hsu [2005]  jer [1971-1998] [29%] descriptive [23%] anova/ancova [12%] correlation t-test [8%] regression [7%] non-parametric [6%] this study [2003-2007] [28%] descriptive [21%] t-test [17%] anova factor analysis [9%] non-parametric [6%] bivariate correlation [5%] note: apa: american psychological association, aerj: american educational research journal, jep: journal of educational psychology, bjep: british journal of education psychology, jee: journal of experimental education, jer: journal of educational research research methods and statistical techniques 17 references akkoyun, f. (1989). danışma psikolojisindeki araştırmaların gelişimi [development of research in counseling psychology]. paper presented at the meeting of the ii. ulusal sosyal bilimler kongresi, ankara, turkey. american psychological association. (1994). publication manual of the american psychological association. washington, dc: author. balcı, a. (1993). türkiye’de eğitim araştırmalarının durumu: a.ü. ebf örneği [status of educational research in turkey: a.u. f.e.s. example]. in eğitim bilimleri birinci ulusal kongresi (pp. 89-120). ankara: milli eğitim basımevi, dunkin, m. j. (1994). teaching, synthesizing research on. in t. husen & t. n. postlethwaite (series eds.), the international encyclopedia of education: vol. 10. research and studies (pp. 6235-6240). oxford, england: pergamin press. dunkin, m. j. (1996). types of errors in synthesizing research in education. review of educational research, 66(2), 87–97. edgington, e. s. (1974). a new tabulation of statistical procedures in apa journals. american psychologist, 29, 25-26. elmore, p. b., & woehlke, p. l. (1988). statistical methods employed in american educational research journal, educational researcher and review of educational research from 1978 to 1987. educational researcher, 17(9), 9-20. elmore, p. b., & woehlke, p. l. (1998). twenty years of research methods employed in american educational research journal, educational researcher and review of educational research. (eric document reproduction service no. ed420701). goodwin, l. d., & goodwin, w. l. (1985a). an analysis of statistical techniques used in the journal of educational psychology, 1979-1983. educational psychologist, 20(1), 13-21. goodwin, l. d., & goodwin, w. l. (1985b). statistical techniques in aerj articles, 1979-1983: the preparation of graduate students to read educational research literature. educational researcher, 14(2), 5-11. hall, b. w., ward, a. w., & comer, c. b. (1998). published educational research: an empirical study of its quality. journal of educational research, 81(3), 182-189. hsu, t. (2005). research methods and data analysis procedures used by educational researchers. international journal of research & method in education, 28(2), 109-133 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 keeves, j. p. (ed.) (1988) educational research, methodology, and measurement: an international handbook, oxford, england: pergamon press. kelly, a. e. & lesh, r. a. (2000) trends and shifts in research methods. in a. e. kelly & r. a. lesh (eds), handbook of research design in mathematics and science education (pp. 35-44), mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. keselman, h. j., huberty, c. j., lix, l. m., olejnik, s., cribbie, r. a., et al. (1998). statistical practices of educational researchers: an analysis of their anova, manova, and ancova analyses. review of educational research, 68, 350-386. kieffer, k. m., reese, r. j., & thompson, b. (2001). statistical techniques employed in aerj and jcp articles from 1988 to 1997: a methodological review. journal of experimental education, 69(3), 280-309. loftus, g. r. (1994). why psychology will never be a real science until we change the way we analyze data. current directions in psychological science, 5, 161-171. onwuegbuzie, a. j. (2002). common analytical and interpretational errors in educational research: an analysis of the 1998 volume of the british journal of educational psychology. educational research quarterly, 26, 11-22. onwuegbuzie, a. j., & daniel l.g. (2003). typology of analytical and interpretational errors in quantitative and qualitative educational research. current issues in education [on-line], 6(2). http://cie.ed.asu.edu/ volume6/number2/ shaver, j. p., & norton, r. s. (1980). randomness and replication in ten years of the american educational research. educational researcher, 9(1), 9-15. thompson, b. (1998). five methodology errors in educational research: the pantheon of statistical significance and other faux pas. (eric document reproduction service no: ed419023). vockell, e. l., & asher, w. (1974). perceptions of document quality and use by educational decision makers and researchers. american educational research journal, 11, 249-258. walberg, h. j. (1986). syntheses of research on teaching. in m. c. wittrock (ed.). handbook of research on teaching (pp. 214-229). new york: macmillan. walker, h. m. (1956) methods of research, review of educational research, 26, 323-344. ward, a. w., hall, b. w., & schramm, c. e. (1975). evaluation of published educational research: a national survey. american educational research journal, 12, 109-128. research methods and statistical techniques 19 west, c. k., carmody, c., & stallings, w. m. (1983). the quality of research articles in the journal of education research, 1970 and 1980. journal of educational research, 77(2), 28-36. willson, v. l. (1980). research techniques in aerj articles: 1969 to 1978. educational researcher, 9(6), 5-10. current is about th author: affiliatio address educatio email: e biograp educatio educatio ssues in educ he author engin kara on: eskiseh s: eskisehir on, meselik enginkarada phical infor on at eskis onal leaders cation vol. 13 adağ hir osmang r osmangaz k, eskişehi ag@ogu.ed rmation: en sehir osman ship, social 3 no. 4 gazi univer zi, college r, turkey du.tr ngin karada ngazi univ l constructi rsity of educati ağ is an ass versity. his ivism, and ion, depart sistant prof research in advanced e tment of pr fessor of el nterests inc educational rimary lementary clude l statistics. 20 research m volume authors articles publishe an kr hilla d ju an h mi methods and e 13, num hold the copy s in other jour er and include ngela abeyta rista adams ary andrelch diana barela ulia boukara ndrew darian aiying dong iriam emran statistical te curr mber 4 yright to artic rnals should b e the url of t provide a hik n n echniques rent issu http:// cles published be addressed t the cie publi ed cie is cred edit exe lor katy e jeffr sec sar mar me amb seo tiff calv linds fac gusta jean de ues in e /cie.asu.e d in current is to the author. ication. permi dited and cop torial team cutive editor ri ellingford elizabeth his rey i. johnso ction editors rah heaslip rlene hinton elinda hollis ber johnston onghee kim fany o’neill vin richards say richerso culty advisers vo e. fischm nne m. power ebby zambo educati edu issues in educ reprints sho ission is here pies are not so m rs d rich on n n s on s man rs on issn cation. reque ould credit cie eby granted to old. ror ta kar luc ker jennife ky n 1099-83 ests to reprint e as the origi o copy any art ry schmitt apati sen ri visconti cy watson rie wilkins er wojtulewi yle wright 21 39x cie inal ticle, icz cie template 1 volume 7, number 1 january 20, 2004 issn 1099-839x the netgeneration: the internet as classroom and community jennifer hendricks arizona state university classroom practice in the real world has become increasingly incommensurate with the lived experience of students. policy dictates, packaged curricula, the commodification and commercialization of the classroom, along with high stakes testing have objectified students. young people, consisting of all age cohorts and class fractions, have never known their world to not include the internet. they are well versed and completely comfortable with negotiating its space. they have been utilizing this technology since before they started kindergarten, whether it was in games that they played or internet sites they logged on to. much has been made of the internet's potential to wrest power from the interests that dominate it. the internet allows ordinary citizens to spread the word and organize resistance as a form of popular culture. in short, to fight power. as a technological artifact and a popular image, the internet provides a site for exploring and positioning "the world.” it is necessary to recognize and critically examine other sites and or institutions as places of knowledge learning. and where do the technology savvy teens go to learn? they utilize the internet as a major pedagogical site. as john street (1997) contends, "…culture neither manipulates nor mirrors us; instead we live through and with it" (p. 4). it seems that we are not compelled by culture to imitate it but rather to immerse ourselves in it. in studying the culture of emerging (trans) national cybersocieties, we have arrived at a new moment in history: a moment in which such terms as class, race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and ideology are no longer useful (because they assume singular "identities" for example). we are, according to postmodern theories, now in a culture that is post-national, post-ideological and post-class--a culture shaped not by "production" (labor) but by our social relations of shopping ("consumption"). in an argument related to the idea of virtual communities, internet scholars often relate the internet to the idea of the 'public sphere', as developed by habermas (1989). in an ideal public sphere, citizens would discuss issues of concern and arrive at a consensus for the common good. habermas did not feel that we have an effective public sphere in western societies, partly because commercial mass media had turned people into consumers of information and entertainment, rather thanparticipants in an interactive democratic process. additionally, gramsci‟s theory of hegemony (1988), which borrows from hegel the idea that particular interests are concretely determined within material culture and undergo a process of universalization that leads to the creation of collective subjects, is an important theory when attempting to understand that participation in various hegemonic sites is a consensual process. for gramsci, deliberation about matters of social concern and the entire decision-making process in an authentic democracy must be based on a "consensual inter-subjective interaction" (p. 98) and without consensus, websites or communities can become paces of mere reproduction, much like physical classrooms are now. this puts into question our familiar notions not only of "identity" but also of "subjectivity" and "self-hood"; it argues that there are no "pure" (i.e. "absolute") identities and that all cultural practices such as "growing up" are instances of hybridity: a "difference" that is in all social phenomena. in his groundbreaking book,the postmodern condition (1984), jean francois lyotard points to this hybridity when he writes, "one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats mcdonald's food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears paris perfume in tokyo and "retro" clothes in hong kong...." perhaps more so than any other contemporary theorist, baudrillard (1981) provides a provocative concept for "navigating" this hyperreal terrain. current issues in education vol. 7 no. 1 2 although he has not addressed worldwide networking and internet in the specific in his writing, his comments on telematics, along with his more general critiques of modernity, provide an interesting means for exploring the metaphoricity of internet. thus the internet is best thought of as a place, which is far more than a highway. it is a destination, a place where we can create new social designs, where we can dissolve and reconstruct the classroom. by the mid 1990s, cyberculture was well underway, focusing primarily on virtual communities and online identities. since howard rheingold published the virtual community in 1993, much has been written about communities on the internet. before the internet, communities were people who lived or worked close to each other. sometimes the community would be of likeminded people, although it was unlikely that they would bet a very compatible group all in the same place. the global internet transforms this for those, as always, who have access to it because it enables like-minded people to form communities regardless of where they are located in the physical world. before the internet, teens had little contact with other teenagers outside of their high school, or school district. meanwhile, fans of obscure bands would have little to do with their counterparts elsewhere, and people interested in certain hobbies, or artists, or skills, could only feed their interest through one-way communication processes such as reading a magazine or newsletter about it. the internet changed all that. now, regardless of where they are in the world, teens with similar interests, or with similar backgrounds, or with similar attitudes, can join communities of like-minded people, and share views, exchange information, and build relationships. in practice, what these communities look like are teenagers sending electronic text to each other. most of the studies of virtual communities are about groups exchanging messages on newsgroups and e-mail discussion lists, or groups who often meet in the same chat rooms. the studies seem, so far, to have ignored the communities, which develop amongst similarly themed websites and their creators, which in many ways may be stronger, more permanent and more complex. after all, the internet surpasses the restrictions of fixed locations such as schools and opens up a new world of understanding and knowledge. participants in cyberspace may come and go, but the websites will remain. thus, the opportunity for counter education exists on the internet. as giroux (1995) contends students, as well as teachers, and their empowerment as radical intellectuals change the concept of school as a part of a general struggle over essential social change (p. 30). in giroux‟s concept, education is a political arena with a major role in producing discourse, meaning and subjects, as well as control and distribution. in comparison, the internet as classroom and community does much the same thing. it is a place that has the capacity to open up an infinite number of opportunities to connect with individuals, knowledge and experiences. the internet offers students boundless possibilities for exploration and exchange of ideas (westera and sloep 2001). on the internet, students are free to „log on‟ at any time and place of their choosing. they are ultimately free to explore in a new construction of the „classroom.‟ technology makes possible a reconfiguring of school; a refocusing of everyday life, and the use of the tools and techniques of computer and image technologies expands the field of politics and culture. to a meaningful extent, technology is revolutionary. the battles of the future may well be fought not only in the streets, factories, or other sites of past struggle, but on the internet as well. and as the members of the “netgeneration,” teenagers today are more adaptable than other sectors of society and in general are quicker to adapt to the new technologies. to some extent they are the innovators, the forces of change in a new community landscape. references baudrillard, j. (1981). simulacra and simulation: the body in theory. ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press. giroux, h. (1995). "radical pedagogy as cultural politics: beyond the discourse of critique and antiutopianism." in peter mclaren (ed.), critical pedagogy and predatory culture: oppositional politics in a postmodern era. london: routledge. gramsci, a. (1988). a gramsci reader: selected writings, 1916-1935. edited by david forgacs. london: lawrence and wishart. habermas, j. (1989). the structural transformation of the public sphere: an inquiry into bourgeois society . translated by t. burger & f. lawrence. cambridge, ma: mit press. (original work published 1962). ---. (1992). further reflections on the public sphere. in c. calhoun (ed.), habermas and the public sphere (pp. 421-461). cambridge, ma: mit press. lyotard, j. (1984). the postmodern condition: a report on knowledge. translation from the french by geoff bennington and brian massumi. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. mclaren, peter. (1991). critical pedagogy: constructing an arch of social dreaming and a doorway to hope. the sociology of education in canada 173: 137-60. rheingold, h. (1993). the virtual community: homesteading on the electronic frontier. reading, ma: addison-wesley pub. co. street, j. (1997). politics and popular culture. philadelphia, pa: temple university press. westera, w. and sloep, p. (2001). the future of education in cyberspace. in l. vandervert & l. shavinina (eds), cybereducation: the future of long distance learning. new york: liebert publishers. the netgeneration: the internet as classroom and community 3 2004 article citation hendricks, j. a. (2004, january 20). the netgeneration: the internet as classroom and community. current issues in education [on-line], 7(1). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number1/ author notes jennifer hendricks arizona state university tempe, az 85287 jennifer.hendricks@asu.edu jennifer a. hendricks, is a doctoral candidate in the interdisciplinary ph.d. program with a focus on curriculum and cultural studies in the college of education at arizona state university. jennifer has a b.a. in art history and archaeology with a minor in studio art. she also holds an m.a. in art education from the university of maryland at college park. her research interests include the use of narrative methodology to empower students' life stories of school and alternative artsbased forms of research and research representation. her current research focuses on how teens create a political curriculum outside of the increasingly anarcharistic classroom, specifically concentrating on the internet as a site of empowerment. she may be contacted via e-mail at jennifer.hendricks@asu.edu. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article‟s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article‟s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation hendricks, j. a. (2011). the netgeneration: the internet as classroom and community. current issues in education, 7(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number1/ jennifer.hendricks@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 ideological dissonance in a literature teaching process volume 13, number 3 issn 1099-839x the ideological dilemma in teaching literature moral conflicts in a diversified society an israeli teacher case study lea baratz achva-college of education roni reingold achva-college of education citation baratz, l. & reingold, r. (2010). the ideological dilemma in teaching literature moral conflicts in a diversified society an israeli teacher case study. current issues in education, 13(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the current study examines the implications of literary teaching material in a national diversified society in which the governmental educational policy separates between two national educational systems, and controls both of these separate systems. we set out to examine whether, in such realty, teachers are willing to teach texts, not formally included in the curriculum, that are replete with values and politics. in addition, we examine if they are willing to teach, whether they would introduce their ideological beliefs even if the teaching unit is incompatible with their ideological worldview. the teaching material comprises two poems about jerusalem, one written by a jewish poet and the other by an israeli palestinian poet. 26 interviews were preformed with teachers: 13 jews and 13 palestinians. their sayings were categorized into the following voices: the essence of the voice – a captured or liberated voice; character of the voice – neutral or political; and aim of the voice – socialization or individualization. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 2 we did not find any differences in the voices among the palestinian and the jewish teachers. categorically, the teachers attempted to silence any discussion that spilled over into political matters. the ideological dilemma made the teachers voice as hidden voice. since, we do not believe that the governmental educational policy in israel is going to become more democratic, we hope that our findings will encourage colleges of education in israel and similar societies to encourage their students to develop liberated and political voices, and voices of individualization. keywords: literature teaching, teachers' voices, israel, ideological dilemma, moral conflict t he ideological d ilem m a 3 about the author(s) author: lea baratz affiliation: achva-college of education email: lbaratz@netvision.net.il biographical information: lea baratz has a phd in hebrew literature from bar ilan university (israel). she is chair of department of literature in achva-college of education (israel). her fields of research are modern literature (mostly children literature), literature teaching, multicultural education. she wrote several research books and in addition one poem book. author: roni reingold affiliation: achva-college of education email: reingold@netvision.net.il biographical information: roni reingold has a phd in history and philosophy of education from tel aviv university (israel). he is chair of department of education in achvacollege of education (israel). his fields of research are multicultural education; teacher education and online learning. he is the organizer of the earli's 2nd sig 13-moral and democratic education symposium. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 4 jerusalem has been the focus of jewish national being since ancient times and is the political and cultural center of modern israel. jerusalem is central to three faiths christianity, islam and judaism. in addition, jerusalem remains a bone of contention in the israeli-palestinian conflict: israel's annexation of east jerusalem (captured in the 1967 six-day war) is a particularly controversial issue. israeli palestinians view the eastern part of the city in which the palestinian population resides as an occupied area and consider east jerusalem as the capital of a future palestinian state. possible descriptions of jerusalem in literature are numerous and diverse. the images can change from realistic to abstract, from symbolic to representative. each poet has his or her own personal point of view of jerusalem: jerusalem as a geographical point, a social or political location. in addition, jerusalem is an archetypical symbol, standing for a vague heavenly sacredness. jerusalem might also be a secular and private place to live in or a universal religious essence1. jerusalem creates a complex situation, not only politically. the issue of jerusalem is not less complex when we deal with jerusalem as an object of literature, and of course as a subject to be taught and as a pedagogical issue. introducing such a theme in the classroom, raises the question of what political-ideological teaching direction would be suitable, knowing that the subject could be problematic. the major political problems implicated in the whole subject of jerusalem generate a wide spectrum of firmly fixed concepts, which are almost impossible to change through analysis and estimation. the conflict is political by nature and therefore not given to be solved practically. clark (2006) described a case study, which represents a poem that creates a moral conflict in the teaching process teaching poems opposed to the war in iraq. she noted the 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/jerusalem t he ideological d ilem m a 5 difficulties that the subject creates in the process of teaching. in her conclusion she writes: "poets against war," offering students an opportunity to understand literary production and the power of poetry – in the context of social change." (p. 11) her notes about poetry emphasize the following assumption: literature mediates between politics and esthetics: "doing literature" will never be equivalent to "doing politics" in the "real world" (grobman, 2005). "through experiencing art, we may potentially perceive that which binds us to the world as it is or should be and eradicates the violence at the heart of our society, where the powerlessness of the many sustains the power of few" (p.143). hence, the current study examines the implications of literary material for the teaching process where the teaching unit not formally included in the curriculum, is replete with values, politics and beliefs, in some cases, such a teaching unit is incompatible with the teacher’s ideological worldview, thus creating an ideological dissonance (baratz, 2004). the teaching material used in the study comprises two poems written about jerusalem by jewish and arab israeli poets. the two poems are: "in the holy temple", by nida’a houry and "eternal jerusalem" by uri zvi greenberg. both poems were given to the teachers in hebrew, even though houry's poem was originally written in arabic and was translated. it was done since, even though both hebrew and arabic are formal languages in israel, palestine students learn hebrew since the second grade, so they read and write hebrew almost as well as arabic. jewish students, on the other hand, learn arabic only a few hours in junior high schools, so most of them do not know how to read arabic. the two poems we choose are not included in the reading list of the official literature curriculum. both of them were written by nationalist (or right-wing advocated). the palestinian poet, nidaa khoury, is a christian palestinian woman (meaning member of several minority c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 6 groups). her poetry has been the subject of studies at the university of haifa and the hebrew university and has been widely reviewed by the arab press. the jewish poet, uri zevi greenberg, was a member of a right-wing party in the israeli parliament. he was awarded the israel prize in 1957 for his contribution to hebrew literature. following are the two poems: "you, the wedding of……… dancing with the sun you, whispering legend you, his vision is opened the world till the wind calls our holly till the wind calls our via dolorosa till the wind calls' our blessings and our funerals and drops till the wind will say that mother of earth gives birth to the truth's child to freedom and nation in front of the sultan we are shooting our scream" (in the holy temple, nida’a houry) "….. jerusalem was, is and will be. the gate to royalty and the gate to sky t he ideological d ilem m a 7 at its entrance its enemies will kneel down" (eternal jerusalem, uri zvi greenberg) we examined whether or not, teachers are willing to teach those texts that present the political complications, which exist regarding the question of jerusalem? but, we also wanted to know what pedagogical approach will be chosen by the teachers that will agree to teach these poems. choosing a particular technique of teaching is a means of self-expression! what sort of "voice" will the teacher wish the students to hear? will the pedagogical voice sound like the formal voice of the state? will it reflect personal beliefs and those of the collective group to which he belongs, or will it reflect the voices of students? in the process of teaching a poem, it is assumed that the role of art is to create an esthetic experience. in presenting the esthetic experience, the teacher is liable to confront a pedagogical method, which does not correspond to the ideological position. the teacher can respond in one of three possible ways: a. the teacher may ignore the subject because it does not match the perception of values (to ignore and repressing approach). b. the teacher may teach the material despite its incompatibility with his or her worldview, while distancing him or herself from the material and alienating it (a socialization approach). c. the teacher may teach it while presenting the full range of problems the poems arouse. one can also allow students to state their opinions (individualization approach). exploration of teachers' individual response to governmental (ministry of education) policy of suppression will enable us to indicate whether there are differences in the voices among the c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 8 palestinian and the jewish teachers. moreover, it will provide us empirical basis for our recommendation to policy makers in colleges of education. theoretical background the ideological basis of literature curricula in israel in israel the ministry of education – a political agency controls educational policy and practice throughout the country. the ministry of education is responsible for pre-academic education. the task of developing curricula is entrusted to teams of planners subordinated to a ministerial department, which also has the power to authorize textbooks for daily schoolwork. the ministry also controls the matriculation examinations, which test the knowledge the students have acquired in the course of their studies. israel differs from most countries in the world in setting educational goals and curricula in the various disciplines, as well as controlling and supervising textbooks. curricula dealing with subject matter are drawn up by local, non-political professional teams or even by school teaching staffs. at times, syllabi are drawn up jointly by teachers and students (alpert, 2002). this concentration of power in the ministry enables control of the curricula (hoffman and schnell, 2002). this is particularly evident in the humanities and social sciences (see discussions by al-haj, 2002 on the history curricula, and that by pedahtzur & frlinger, 2004 on the civics curricula). control and supervision of education in israel also extend to teacher training. the ministry of education determines the structure of the curricula; the ministry determines the number of students accepted into the colleges of education and also provides the resources for these colleges. t he ideological d ilem m a 9 control and supervision through shaping the body of knowledge are the foundation of the doctrine of michel foucault. according to foucault, the absolute and brutal power of the sovereigns ruling before the 18th century has been replaced in the modern era by a hidden and sophisticated power system based on the politics of truth (foucault, 1975, 1980). he claims that knowledge is that which governmental power creates and shapes, and in turn, shapes governmental power. power and knowledge are actually two sides of the same coin (foucault, 1972). powerful individuals of high standing are those who determine and define truth, although there is no absolute truth, and use that definition of truth to promote their own interests (back, 2005). in our era, social sciences or human science are the main theoretical fields for shaping truthfulness (ball, 1990, popkewitz, 1998), which enables building and preserving power systems, knowledge, supervision, control and exclusion. there should be a distinction between ideological education and political education. in the framework of ideological education, the educator endeavors to instill in his or her students a loyalty to political concepts, while in the framework of political education he or she endeavors to encourage them to develop capabilities to form personal opinions on all political issues (lamm, 1991). in more recent works (2000, 2001, 2005) lamm extended the distinction between educational ideologies and formulated a typology which is constructed of three educational ideologies: socialization, acculturation and individualization as a socialization agent, teachers must guide the students to adopt a dictated world of values and norms. those values and norms are dictated from the ministry of education, and teachers function as a connecting channel between the state and the students. teachers are not authorized to make any personal decisions about those values and norms. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 10 as acculturation agent, teachers are also dedicating to a world of values and norms, but they must represent cultural values they support and be the model for values their students should identify with. in the third typology, the individualization, the tasks of teachers are to help students grow and develop. in this framework, teachers help them to form value concepts and acquire skills for evaluating moral considerations by themselves. as already mentioned, humanities teachers in israel, including literature teachers, are expected to be socialization agents of zionist education. since political thinking, ideological thinking, tolerance of minorities and support for freedom of expression are internalized by people during their childhood and adolescence, i.e. in the learning process at school, teaching literature to the young can turn the teacher into a very effective socialization agent. voice and identity in the process of education a "voice" has social and political ramifications that cannot be ignored. from a psychological point of view, everyone can express himself in different voices or reveal different aspects of his personality at different moments according to a given situation, but it is also important to pay attention to the notion of "voice" from a social point of view. the location of a voice implies the right to speak, as well as speaking in a context, speaking to an audience and speaking to achieve a specific purpose (boa, 1999). the social reality is constructed by human voices and not only examined and reflected through it. thus, the teacher's voice is a means of both formulating world-view and expressing it. t he ideological d ilem m a 11 because of those assumptions, we decided to examine the teacher's voice in order to explore an educational reality. since, every interaction between worldviews and political power is ideological (eagelton, 1991, back, 2005); we can identify the teacher's personal political and ideological beliefs by listening to his or her "voice.” hence, a teacher’s voice is the measure for identifying the position in the educational system more than that the personal and social voice. elbaz luvish (2005) examines the process teachers are experiencing while standing in front the class. she isolates the teacher's different "voices" while analyzing the narrative of the teacher's stories. teachers are often "ambivalent" about their work. in a variety of cases, they show this ambivalence even in the course of telling one single story. sometimes the analysis of the sub-text yields contradictory points of view. however, when it can be pointed out as a "moral voice"? it can be called "moral voice" when teaching merges evaluation with judgment and choices. in the process of teaching, teachers demonstrate authority and impose their status of authority on those under their supervision and influence. at the same time, teachers have a unique responsibility for the appropriate ethical development of their students (elbaz, 1991). according to bakhtin (1981), language cannot be disassociated from the social contexts in which it is used. every utterance is a unique expression of socio-linguistic interaction in a specific social context: every utterance is dialogical, and it is therefore dependent on what precedes it and the way others interpret it. the dialogue takes place between "voices" likely to represent differences of social classes, ideologies, periods or genres. consequently, contact of one utterance with another serves to give presence and a unique "voice" to each one of them. in addition bakhtin claims that authoritative voice is bodiless, sounding reliable and objective. it expresses a rigid ideological position rejecting out of hand, by using various rhetorical devices, c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 12 all "strange speech," i.e. every "voice" that is not in harmony with the ruling official ideological opinion of the time. "it demands that we acknowledge it, to make it our own. it handcuffs us in a way that almost does not depend on its power to be able to persuade us; in a way … its authority has already been acknowledged in the past" (bakhtin, 1981, p. 342). while listening to teachers' voices, one must pay attention to the voice speaking in a social, historical and cultural environment (gudmundsdottir, 2001). lensmire and satanovsky (1988) developed their approach and commentary regarding "voices" following bakhtin's assertions. they do not perceive voices as something given, expressed in speech in a natural, trouble-free manner, but as a 'project', something that students can develop through work and effort. in addition, they claim that voices do not indicate any essence in their content that finally attains expression, but indicate a continuous human effort that builds and rebuilds our self and our relationship with the world. they identified three dimensions in voices: appropriation, social struggle and creation. appropriation is an activity emphasizing the "activity of the self vis-à-vis cultural resources." in developing a voice, the individual does not passively acquire knowledge. he also does not internalize cultural content as it presents itself, but he must make an effort in order to impart meaning to occurrences using language, that we share with others. in bakhtin's (1981) concept, this is an activity involving our using and reprocessing other people's language. social struggle is the use of our voice to express our ideas, some of which are new, in convincing ways. an additional aspect of this struggle is the fact that at times we must choose one voice among many others. we must take a stand on issues facing one audience or another, toward others or concerning others. t he ideological d ilem m a 13 it is important to express the teacher voice who teaches according to the "critic pedagogy" as mentioned by giroux (2000). it is insufficient to consider the politics of texts, the canon, or the curriculum without connecting issues of power in public spheres (75-76). by moving away from the text, giroux argues, theorists will become more "politically responsible" in their approaches to literary texts and, in so doing, will "open . . . up possibilities for new approaches to social reform" (68), addressing issues such as civil rights for minorities and the poor, including immigrants; public school reform; racism in the criminal justice system; and welfare and workfare. methodology the current research followed two empirical stages. first, 200 questionnaires were handed out to literature teachers. since, many school principals (both jewish and palestinians) did not allow us to handed questionnaires to teachers in their schools, we handed the questionnaires to teachers that participated in professional development course in college. in consideration of the demographical structure of the israeli society: 80% jewish and 20% of the palestinian, we handed out 159 questionnaires to teachers in secular jewish high schools (i.e., not from religious schools and not from the occupied territories). forty-one were handed out to teachers in regular palestinian high schools (i.e., schools under the supervision of the ministry of education). all of the participants knew that both of the researchers are secular jews. teachers were asked to send back the questionnaires to the researchers, but only 91 of them (70 jewish and 21 palestinians) replied. the teachers were asked in the questionnaires c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 14 whether or not they would agree to teach one of two provocative poems, written about jerusalem by jewish and palestinianisraeli poets, and whether or not they would agree to be interviewed in that context. 45.5% of the 200 teachers that were asked to participate in the study agreed to participate 51.2% of the palestinians teachers and 43.4% of the jewish teachers. only 13 of the palestinians teachers and 25 of the jewish teachers accepted the challenge. we decided, as the second empirical stage of the current study, to conduct interviews with two groups of 13 teachers from the two national groups. each teacher was asked to read a poem which he would be required to teach, and, after reading it, to relate to it. the data generated by the interviews was analyzed and divided into predefined categories. a method of qualitative research was chosen in order to locate the important, interesting, and repetitively appearing elements of the data. the findings were analyzed in a manner known as quantification, by open coding on one axis of the information yielded in the interviews (ben-yehoshua, 1990). the interviews were conducted discreetly, with no one else present. complete confidentiality was guaranteed to the interviewees and even the teachers who expressed reservations about cooperating with the research agreed to speak candidly results ninety-two percent of the teachers that replied the questionnaires declared that they would teach any poem that they were asked to teach, and 97% said that while teaching they would deal with both the esthetic and the ideological aspects of the poems. we asked the t he ideological d ilem m a 15 informators if they are willing to teach a provocative poem, written about jerusalem by a poet from the opposing national group and participate in an interview which would deal with how they would teach that poem. almost 65% of the jewish teachers and 38% of the palestinians teachers, who replied, did not agree to our request. during the interviews, the teachers explained how they prepared the poem to be taught in class. a distinction was made between the esthetic-poetic and the ethical-moral aspects, which stems from the poem, that is to say, deconstructing the text. some of the teachers were dealing only with the text, avoiding the meaning in the sub text. a variety of teaching methods was used, each method depending on the teacher's world point of view. categorically, the teachers attempted to silence any discussion that spilled over into political matters. there were no voice differences among the palestinian and the jewish teachers. hence, we do not represent the findings according to national affiliation. following the analysis of the teachers’ words and examination of the common threads observed in them we defined several voices as follows: the essence of the voice is divided into the flowing sub categories: a captured or liberated voice. a captured voice implies that a teacher cannot feel free to express his or her own beliefs, or to express non-formal and external ideology. a liberated voice implies that teachers express themselves freely according to their own beliefs and according to their moral courage or personal point of view. captured voice: (13 palestinians teachers, 9 jewish teachers) c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 16 "i’ll teach only poems which match my political opinions. if i am forced to teach a poem which does not match opinions, that will be the one which “i didn’t have time to get to.” "students are liable to identify my political opinions" and "i’m liable to be perceived as being a "collaborator”.” "the school administration forbids the expression of political opinions.” "the proper place for discussions like this one is in citizenship or history class.” "we should teach according to the values of the state.” "i teach according to the worldview acceptable to all the students.” liberated voice (2 palestinians teachers, 4 jewish teachers) "we are a heterogeneous people, so we must teach poems of different shades" "we must expose the student to the whole, wide world, including the world of the other.” "a student should be permitted to express anger, criticism, and his feelings.” t he ideological d ilem m a 17 "it’s important that students should express their feelings under the guidance of the teacher. the expression of personal opinions educates the student to be a good citizen in his country" "we will discuss things which characterize the three religions." "the lesson is interesting when many opinions are expressed" "we will discuss things which characterize the three religions" "a poem is a means of instilling an esthetic essence. there’s no alternative to explaining that we have to live together here.” voice manner: agitated speech or subdued speech agitated voice reflect the teacher’s voice, moving from the text to reality. in this case, teachers are not afraid to transmit a message through the text. in subdued speech the voice remains very close to the poetic content, and there is hesitation to say something about reality especially not about politics. agitated speech an esthetic voice (5 palestinian teachers, 6 jewish teachers) "the poem is militant in its tone. it is therefore hard to appreciate its poetic strengths. even if the poem is beautiful from an artistic point of view, its political stance neutralizes the artistic side.” "it is important to struggle with difficult texts, from both a poetic and an ideological point of view" c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 18 "it is important to struggle with difficult texts, from both a poetic and an ideological point of view" "students shouldn’t be allowed to express their opinions, as they are still immature" subdued speech an ideology poetic voice (8 palestinians teachers, 7 jewish teachers) "the poet’s sensitivity is helpful in exposing the political problem.” "i am a deprived citizen, and feel enchained. first, they should make amends for the kfar kassem massacre (an historical event l.b & r.r)" "poems whose message is death should not be taught.” "the poem nurtures dangerous values.” content of the voice – divided into a voice of socialization or a voice of individualization. in a socialized voice the teacher express just what is allowed to be expressed by the authority, but as one who holds an individual voice, one may allow students to express their personal opinions, even if the students’ voices oppose or coincide with the teacher’s personal opinion the socialized voice (9 palestinians teachers, 8 jewish teachers) "every student will judge the issues (the political statements in the poem) by his own standards.” "the student must examine his worldview in relation to the world around him.” "one must distinguish between the political climate and the poetic process" "one must nurture the student’s emotional world, therefore he should be taught to struggle with painful problems as well.” t he ideological d ilem m a 19 "one may teach non-violence with the help of a violent poem." "violence is not the way to solve problems.” "i have no intention to influence my students, but i do intend to show the justice in the poet’s attitude.” "the student will not be able to separate the esthetic attitude from the political one.” individual voice (4 palestinians teachers, 5 jewish teachers) "the text strengthens the student’s ability to cope with his feelings; including his negative ones.” "one mustn’t confuse adolescents with problems of this sort.” "these days we must not deal with these painful topics. five years ago everything was different.” "the historical truth is what should be taught" "the historical axis should be built from scratch" "it’s difficult to accept poetic truth. also, poetic truth has no meaning for the future of society.” "an experienced teacher is able to neutralize his opinion, and so is able to present an objective message.”" we should help the student to mature so that he is able to listen to a wide range of views, even if they are not always pleasant for him to hear.” "poetic pathos won’t solve the conflict between two peoples.” "we should educate students to have a pluralistic view of the world.” c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 20 diagram of result discussion our research was intended to examine how teachers deal with ideological dissonance and/or with the formal educational policy in israel while teaching a poem about jerusalem. we tried to isolate teachers' voices in order to discern whether it is possible to identify the voices and determine if they can overcome the ideological dilemma. conclusions it was difficult to isolate just "one" voice in the teaching process. participants from both of the national groups (jewish and palestinian) tried to appear consistent in their opinions or ideological point of view, as revealed in the interviews. a voice of socialization characterized most teachers’ voices. moreover, since they were speaking in captive voice denotes that they hesitated to teach or to discuss matters arising from the text. in other words, they ignored the idea that emerges from the sub text and leads to political issues. the subdued speech reflects 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 captured voice liberated voice agitated speech subdued speech socialized voice individual voice essence of the voice voice manner content of the voice jews arabs t he ideological d ilem m a 21 their way of working – they remain at the esthetic level of the text. they do not transfer any message from the text to the socio-political context. in this situation, they prefer to relate to history because they could rely on a solid basic argument. each teacher found his or her own interpretation of justice in order to justify his or her attitude to the subject matter. a common phrase was "we never expressed our opinions at any point in the interview. nor were we judgmental about this sensitive issue." the teachers with subdued voices clung to the text. they refused to express their opinions, or as one of the teachers said: “when you’re sitting in a draft, get up, close the window, sit down and rest.” by means of that aphorism, he wished to state that he did not want to enter into an unhealthy situation. in instances of ideological dissonance, the head in the sand approach is not at all unpopular. implications from the findings the texts, which were presented to the teachers, revealed a process of emotional struggle with the text, which represents a worldview incompatible with the “official” ideology. the world of emotions makes it harder to maintain a rational struggle for understanding the meaning of a text. from studying the utterances, it is clear that most teachers cannot allow their voices any freedom. they explained that external factors were responsible for not allowing them to say what was really on their minds, or what they wished to say. most teachers reflect the formal official format and their wish to neutralize all political affinity in it (a socialization process). they produced a 'broken monologue' according to bakhtin's terminology. as a result, the learning process concentrates on the "poetic" side of teaching. seemingly, there is a conscious effort on the part of the teachers to avoid 'appropriation of a voice'. in the process, the teachers remain faithful to the text according to barthes' (1967) definition, that is to say their discussions revolve c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 22 around the personality of the writer, and around the presentation of the world as depicted in the poem. khaled abu‘asbah (2001) provides an answer to what was revealed from our findings in the field. the arab teacher is not willing to endanger his/her status as a teacher. for that reason, there is a gap between the educational process and his/her perception of his/her works as something merely technical and external to himself/herself. the writer lists the reasons, which emphasize that gap: the absence of internal democracy, and a lack of confidence in school administration, other teachers, and students. the system does not provide an inclusive educational experience. the bottom line is that the only benefits a student can expect to get out of school are information and technical skills. the ideological dilemma determined the teachers’ voice as a hidden voice. teachers should teach by the perception of alienation. alienation is responsible for a rational approach. people cannot be rational in their political or ideological decisions without liberating themselves from their emotional ties and obligations, which cause them to prefer one set of resources and goals to another, different set. the student develops an attitude of non-identity regarding his/her position, and regarding the extension of the cultural, political, and social code, which sets the existing limit of power, dependence, and possibility. according to his/her concept, pedagogy of this sort assimilates the asynchronous relationship between a given person’s social perception and the many ways in which culture is built on its patterns, and is read. in other words, there is not even one relationship between the cultural code and the position held by the subject, which is predetermined. an individual’s racial, social, sexual, or ethnic status may have influence, but it t he ideological d ilem m a 23 does not have the kind of influence which dictates how the person chooses ideology for himself/herself, how he/she reads a certain text, or how he/she responds to a particular form of oppression. pedagogy of limits recognizes that teachers and students read and write culture on varying levels. recommendation continuation of such an educational realty in which teachers, both in jewish and palestinian schools in israel, prefer to act without moral courage whenever they have to deal with ideological dilemmas is very dangerous to the israeli society. this is true not only in relation to the jewish-palestinians relationship, but, also to the sake of the possibility that israel will be a true democratic society. how can there be a democratic society when teachers do not educate their students to do so? since, we do not believe that the governmental educational policy in israel is going to become more democratic and multicultural, we hope that our findings will encourage colleges of education in israel and similar societies to encourage their students to develop liberated and political voices, and voices of individualization. the colleges of education, even though they are controlled and budget by the ministry of education, should encourage their students to develop moral courage attitude through complicated matters like those reflected in this issue. we strongly recommend focusing in future researches in finding the appropriate and effective ways of developing moral courage during teacher education programs. in addition, since the subject of teaching literature texts that arouse ideological dilemmas in a moral courage ways should not be dealt only regarding future teachers, we would like to c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 24 suggest another two theoretical anchors for in-service teachers that would like to build true dialogues in the classroom. the literary work itself is a broad field, full of meanings and facts. it is perceived not as a finished text, but as a production (barthes, 1967). the textual analysis creates the space for understanding the text. jacobson’s (1987) five elements of etymology can help to discuss the message of the poem: the addressor, the addressee, the code, the context, and the contact. a poetic message becomes understandable and meaningful only after the code and the context have been understood, especially regarding the principle functions of the poem’s language. jacobson presents it: examination of the direct tie between the word and its meaning, the word as a representative of a certain thing. an additional way of dealing with a text is the way proposed by scholes (1985, 1996), who speaks of reading within the text, about the text, and against the text. he maintains that in this way, one can learn about the "other", and, thus, learn about oneself. reading within the text means identifying the cultural codes, which build the work. reading within the text means that the reader can retell the story, sum it up and expand upon it. a text seeks to develop a range of readings in the student. it seeks to create a situation in which the student can analyze the text in terms of that which is missing from it, so that he will be able to develop a position external to his opinions of the text. it seems, that taking into consideration the demographical structure and the political reality of israeli society, has an added significant value with teachers exercising moral courage, while participating in initial teacher education programs and of course while servicing in their classes. t he ideological d ilem m a 25 references al-haj, m. 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(1990), qualitative research in teaching and learning. ramat-gan: masada (hebre c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 28 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain jeffery johnson seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo microsoft word 568 layout complete_4.doc current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 1 volume 15, number 1 january 1, 2012 issn 1099-839x the effects of background music on learning disabled elementary school students’ performance in writing robert s. legutko bloomsburg university theodore t. trissler north penn school district this study investigated effects of background music on writing performance of nine 6th grade students with learning disabilities at one suburban public elementary school in the mid-atlantic region of the united states. a single-subject a-b-a design was utilized, and results from graded writing prompts with and without background music over 21 weeks were compared. group mean gain was higher in the music (treatment) phase than in the final phase (returning to baseline), indicating that background music improved writing ability of students with learning disabilities overall. scores dropped instantly and markedly in the first weeks that music was added and removed, indicating that consistency in routine may be more essential to academic performance for students with learning disabilities than the presence or absence of background music. keywords: learning, special education, music, learning disabled, writing this study was based upon research conducted by kariuki and honeycutt (1998) which investigated whether or not music could be used as a tool to motivate students with emotional and behavioral disorders to develop positive attitudes toward writing, and whether or not these attitudes would result in improved writing skills. kariuki and honeycutt focused upon two 4th grade male students with emotional and behavioral disorders in a rural east tennessee elementary school. their results indicated that (a) the quality of basic writing skills improved overall when the students were exposed to music during writing assignments, (b) the students were immediately absorbed in the music and the calming effect helped them to ignore surrounding distractions (thus enabling them to focus on their writing assignments), (c) quantity of writing increased substantially in writing assignments with music while writing assignments without music were regarded as chores to be accomplished as quickly as possible, and (d) the students’ attitudes towards writing improved (writing assignments were considered “exciting” when exposed to music during writing). understanding the impact of motivational techniques on students with learning disabilities can be of great assistance to practicing teachers. students with learning disabilities welcome verbal persuasion to boost their confidence levels (klassen & lynch, 2007) and depend on external sources of evaluation such as teacher feedback, grades, and marks (lincoln & chazan, 1979), although teacher behaviors are not significantly linked to motivational variables for students with learning disabilities (lapointe, legault, & batiste, 2005). purpose of the study the purpose of this study was to determine whether or not background music had a positive effect on writing performance of students with learning disabilities. if a positive relationship could be determined, the use of current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 2 background music may be considered beneficial in educating students with learning disabilities in writing assignments. if there was a negative or no relationship, then either additional research may be necessary, or background music should not be utilized in future writing assignments. literature review the research located in this literature review included studies that were tangentially related to the subject and spanned from 1979 to the present. this was due to a scarcity of directly related literature found concerning the effects of background music on writing performance of students with learning disabilities. none of the works cited were considered to be seminal works. positive effects of music on student learning educators have a problem motivating students to become engaged in the literary process, and music may be one way of fostering this engagement (ebistuani, donlan, & siebers, 1991). integrated music experiences improve students’ reading, writing, thinking, and analyzing skills and strategies by providing excitement in learning (collett, 1992). it may also be concluded that integrating music into elementary, middle school, high school, advanced placement, and college linguistic classrooms, as well as into virtual classrooms, enables students to learn to read and write more easily, based upon gardner’s multiple intelligence theory, the mozart effect, and participation as precedent to learning (diedwardo, 2005). according to o’bruba (1987), the use of music in the teaching of reading at the elementary level may motivate and build the ability of students, whether or not they are musically talented or intellectually above-average. o’bruba further stated that because of similarities in the symbol structure of music and written language, left-to-right framework, and visual and auditory discrimination, music can be used in beginning reading programs for stimulation and inspiration. kariuki and honeycutt (1998) found that the quality and quantity of spontaneous writing demonstrated by their two students with emotional and behavioral disorders was positively affected by using music as a stimulus. observation during the duration of the research revealed a difference in the students’ outward reactions during their writing assignments. when music was not available, both students were easily distracted from the classroom environment. they were apparently frustrated and indicated this through their verbal responses and physical actions (usually complaining about the writing assignment and exhibiting increased physical movement). in contrast, when the students were exposed to music, their resistance to perform decreased and they were able to ignore outside disturbances and focus on their writing. this enabled the students to produce a higher volume of writing output which resulted in improved writing skills and positive attitudes. in a similar study by donohoe and mcneely (1999) of two 4th grade classes in rural virginia with a majority of low-achieving students, the number of words written by students when not listening to music was found to be significantly fewer than when the students listened to music. neutral and inconclusive effects of music on student learning in their review of the literature on the effects of music on reading, oral language, and writing abilities, ebisutani, donlan, and siebers (1991) posited that the theories which justify the use of music in reading and language arts activities were not firmly backed by research, that the research itself was inconclusive, and that it did not suggest that music has the potential for affecting writing fluency. they recalled studies from as far back as 75 years ago: fendrick found in 1937 that music distracted students’ reading; henderson, crews, and barlow discovered in 1945 that only certain kinds of music was distracting; and freeburne and fleischer learned in 1952 that music was not significantly distracting to reading performance. ebisutani, donlan, and siebers also reported research from groff in 1977 who stated that good listening skills gained in school music situations or instruction will not necessarily transfer into a student’s successfully reading words. examples of integrating music into learning schuster and vincent (1980) described lozanov’s suggestive accelerative learning and teaching (salt) method with students with learning disabilities, where music was used in the classroom at the beginning and end of class to relax and calm the students. there were significant gains in both reading and mathematics after one year in the program (a mean gain in reading of 2.2 years and a mean gain in mathematics of 1.4 years), and students also had increased positive self-concepts and better feelings toward their education (schuster & vincent). collett (1992) reported that the learning to read through the arts (ltrta) program was an integrated elementary curriculum designed as a collaborative effort of specialists in performing arts, visual arts, and reading and classroom teachers who designed units with specific developmental aims that reflected the needs of the children. according to collett, arts instruction, when integrated with a total reading and writing approach, had significant impact on the child’s appreciation for the arts, self-esteem, ability, and desire to learn in the lrta program. methodology guiding research question and hypothesis the following question guided the research: what effect will playing background music during specific writing assignments have on writing performance of students with learning disabilities? the hypothesis was that background music would increase student performance in writing fluency (writing speed) and quality of writing in focus, content, organization, style, and conventions. design this study utilized a single-subject a-b-a design. a-b-a designs are characterized by taking repeated baseline measurements, introducing treatment, making a the effects of background music on learning disabled elementary school students’ performance in writing 3 number of measurements, then removing treatment to return to a second baseline phase. if the behavior is better during the treatment phase than during either baseline phase, the effectiveness of the treatment has been demonstrated (gay, mills, & airasian, 2009). participants this study was conducted at a suburban public elementary school in the mid-atlantic region of the united states. there were nine 6th grade students (two females and seven males between 11-12 years of age) in one learning support class who had specific learning disabilities in reading, writing, or both. the students’ deficiencies in reading negatively affected their performance in writing and spelling. also, if these students were not proficient at a task, they simply did not desire to either work on or complete it. the students were placed into this learning support classroom based upon one or more of the following characteristics: specific learning disabilities in reading, mathematics, and/or speech; autism; attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorder (adhd); oppositional defiance; communications disorder; emotional disturbance; or required occupational therapy. instruments, data gathering, and procedures aimsweb correct writing sequence probes were administered weekly to assess writing fluency. reliability and validity studies were provided by powell-smith and shinn (2004), authors of the aimsweb training workbook. reliability was based upon 15 studies that included interscorer agreement, alternate form, parallel forms, testretest, split-half, and cronbach’s alpha; validity was based upon eight studies that included criterion measures from the stanford achievement test, california achievement test, test of written language, and developmental sequence scoring system (powell-smith & shinn). a rubric writing skills evaluation form, which was used to objectively measure various writing skills, established the initial baseline. the rubric was not tested for reliability or validity. students engaged in writing prompts and received feedback daily for the duration of the study. they worked on writing skills and writing strategies through both small group and one-on-one instruction with the teacher. there was a weekly one paragraph writing homework assignment (a rough draft, graphic organizer, and final copy). students also had a formal in-class writing assignment, a threeparagraph essay (edited with the teacher and one peer), and a typed final copy. in addition, students practiced their writing daily through an assigned writing prompt administered during the morning homeroom period. the study lasted 21 weeks, was conducted in spring 2009, and was comprised of three sections. in the first and third sections (six weeks each), the students completed their writing assignments without any intervention. in the second section (seven weeks), background music was provided as students completed their writing assignments. (note: baseline data was gathered during the first week.) the background music utilized in the study alternated each week between two mozart compositions, il re pastore (opera k. 208) and symphony no. 16 in c major (opera k. 128). these compositions were chosen by the classroom teacher because they are from the classical period and up tempo in nature. once a week, students completed correct writing sequence probes (aimsweb). a story starter/writing prompt was read to them. students then had one minute to think, then the prompt was repeated again followed by three minutes to write. the prompt was repeated one final time before they were finished. from this point, students were graded by the teacher (with a number grade) on spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and whether or not the words made sense. additionally, a special education assistant teacher scored the prompts a second time to ensure that the number grade was the same. (note: there was 100% consistency in both scores each time.) findings overall results all students improved their writing efficiency throughout the experiment. as a group, students improved by 26.9 words correct per three minute probe from the beginning to the end of the experiment. the highest score attained by a student was 96, the highest increase from baseline by a student was 41, and the highest overall increase (range) of a student was 44. four students had their highest score in the final phase of the experiment (return to baseline), four students had their highest score in the music (treatment) phase of the experiment, and one student tied for highest score in both the final phase (return to baseline) and the music (treatment) phase of the experiment. low score, high score, range, increase from baseline data (calculated as the mean for the entire phase and not as the highest score), and the phase where the highest score was attained for each student is found in table 2. in both cases where there was a change in environment – adding the music and removing the music – scores dropped immediately and markedly in the week of the change. when music was added in the treatment phase, the mean score dropped from 54.1 to 50.6 (difference of 3.6). when music was removed in the return to baseline, the mean score dropped from 71.9 to 61.7 (difference of -10.2). these findings are graphically illustrated in figure 1. data at critical weekly points in baseline, treatment, and return to baseline by student is located in table 3. measurements of progress (or regression) in each phase by student is found in table 4. the overall group mean gain was higher in the music (treatment) phase (9.8) than in the final phase (returning to baseline) (6.0). a one-way analysis of variance (anova) was used to determine whether or not the differences in student means at the baseline, treatment, and return to baseline phases were significant. scores differed significantly across the three phases, f (2, 24) = 57.2, p = .001. (f score significant). tukey’s hsd post hoc analysis (psychology world, n.d.) was then used to determine which specific current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 4 table 1 student diagnoses student 1 moderate learning disabilities in reading, mathematics, and speech student 2 autism and adhd student 3 learning disabilities in reading, writing, and mathematics; autism; adhd; oppositional defiance; required occupational therapy student 4 moderate learning disabilities in reading, writing, and speech student 5 moderate learning disabilities in reading student 6 communications disorder student 7 moderate learning disabilities in reading and speech student 8 moderate learning disabilities in reading, writing, and speech student 9 moderate learning disabilities in reading, writing, and speech table 2 low score, high score, range, increase from baseline, and highest score phase data by student lowest score highest score range increase from baseline high score phase student 1 42 84 42 35 b student 2 38 82 44 41 b student 3 23 66 43 31 b & return a student 4 45 82 37 20 b student 5 38 70 32 21 return a student 6 29 50 21 17 return a student 7 34 72 38 28 return a student 8 36 73 37 25 return a student 9 57 96 39 24 b group mean 38.0 75.0 37.0 26.9 n/a the effects of background music on learning disabled elementary school students’ performance in writing 5 table 3 points in baseline, treatment, and return to baseline by student figure 1. students’ combined weekly mean writing score at baseline, treatment, and return to baseline phases (a-b-a) final baseline week initial treatment week drop/ gain final treatment week initial baseline return week drop/gain student 1 59 61 2 84 68 -16 student 2 55 56 1 81 73 -8 student 3 54 23 -31 60 53 -7 student 4 64 59 -5 74 72 -2 student 5 54 54 0 64 63 -1 student 6 41 39 -2 50 45 -5 student 7 46 46 0 65 55 -10 student 8 47 41 -6 73 60 -13 student 9 64 76 9 96 66 -30 group mean 54.1 50.6 -3.6 71.9 61.7 -10.2 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 6 table 4 measurements of progress/regression in each phase by student note. difference in a-b measures the progress or regression of the student mean from initial baseline to treatment. difference in b-a measures the progress or regression of the student mean from treatment to the return to baseline. table 5 anova for measures of student means for baseline, treatment, and return to baseline note. n = 9. baseline a treatment b return to baseline a difference in baseline a difference in a-b m sd m sd m sd m sd m sd student 1 55.7 6.3 67.9 13.5 73.8 5.6 12.2 7.2 5.9 -7.9 student 2 46.8 7.1 64.0 12.2 76.3 4.1 17.2 5.1 12.3 -8.1 student 3 46.1 8.3 50.3 15.7 60.5 4.9 4.2 7.4 10.2 -10.8 student 4 58.4 7.7 68.7 8.7 72.5 3.2 10.3 1.0 3.8 -5.5 student 5 47.3 5.2 56.4 6.4 60.3 6.7 9.1 1.2 3.9 0.3 student 6 34.4 3.0 40.0 5.3 44.7 4.5 5.6 2.3 4.7 -0.8 student 7 42.6 4.2 49.9 7.7 58.3 6.4 7.3 3.5 8.4 -1.3 student 8 44.3 7.8 50.1 8.4 59.3 8.4 5.8 0.6 9.2 0.0 student 9 61.4 3.0 77.9 11.3 73.5 12.6 16.5 8.3 -4.4 1.3 group mean 48.6 5.8 58.4 9.9 64.4 6.3 9.8 4.1 6.0 -3.6 ss df ms f p between groups 1,145 2 572.5 10 0.001 within groups 1,373 24 57.2 total 2,518 26 the effects of background music on learning disabled elementary school students’ performance in writing 7 mean pairs (phases) significantly differed. in this analysis, the mean scores from baseline to treatment were significantly different from one another, indicating that students scored higher overall due to the treatment (listening to music) than with no treatment (absence of music) in the initial phase of the study. individual results better with music. five of the nine students performed better on average with music. they were student 1 (6.3), student 2 (4.9), student 4 (6.5), student 5 (5.2), and student 9 (20.9). student 1, student 2, and student 9 also had their highest score in the final week of the music (treatment) phase. student 4 had his highest score in the next-to-last week of the music (treatment) phase. student 1, with moderate learning disabilities in reading, mathematics, and speech, went below baseline once, and surprisingly it was during the music (treatment) phase. student 2, with autism and adhd, was near baseline twice during the initial phase. student 4, with moderate learning disabilities in reading, writing, and speech, went below baseline once during the initial phase, and surprisingly returned to near baseline once during the music (treatment) phase. student 5, with moderate learning disabilities in reading, returned to near baseline twice during the initial phase, and also surprisingly once during the music (treatment) phase. student 9, with moderate learning disabilities in reading, writing, and speech, returned to near baseline twice in the initial phase, and surprisingly once in the music (treatment) phase. student 9 was also the only student to regress in any phase, dropping -4.4 from music (treatment) to return to baseline phase. student 9 also realized a 30-point drop in the first week without the music (treatment). better without music. two of the nine students performed better on average without music. they were student 3 (-6.0) and student 8 (-3.4). student 3, with learning disabilities in reading, writing, mathematics, autism, occupational therapy, adhd, and oppositional defiance, went below or near baseline twice, both during the music (treatment) phase. student 3 immediately dropped 31 points in the first week with music. student 8, with moderate learning disabilities in reading, writing, and speech, was near baseline once in the initial phase, and either near baseline or below baseline three times in the music (treatment) phase. student 8 immediately dropped six points in the first week with music. same with or without music. two of the students performed essentially the same with or without music. they were student 6 (0.9) and student 7 (-1.1). student 6, with a communications disorder, was near baseline once in the initial phase, twice during the music (treatment) phase, and once in the return to baseline phase. student 7, with moderate learning disabilities in reading and speech, was either near or below baseline twice in the initial phase, twice in the music (treatment) phase, and once in the return to baseline phase. discussion summary of findings although gains and losses were realized in the baseline, treatment, and return to baseline phases, all students improved their writing over the entire course of the study. data obtained in anova and tukey’s hsd post hoc analysis indicated that the increase in student mean scores from baseline to treatment were a result of listening to music. it may then be determined that using background music as a means to improving writing ability of students with learning disabilities can be beneficial. individually, five students performed better when background music was utilized, two had similar results with or without background music, and two students performed worse when background music was utilized. those students who performed better when background music was utilized also had their highest scores in that part of the study. conversely, it should be noted that the two students who performed worse when background music was utilized performed at or below their baseline several times in the music (treatment) phase. this suggests that it may be beneficial to incorporate background music to improve writing for students with learning disabilities, but if students drop to their lowest levels, remove the music for those students immediately. perhaps having the background-music-benefiting students using headphones to play the songs (and thus keeping the rest of the classroom quiet for those who have difficulty when the music is playing) would be a way to incorporate the strengths of all students into the activity. also, the data indicates that any change – going from silence to adding music, and then back to silence – results in a large drop in writing performance of students with learning disabilities, and it takes several weeks to regain the progress made in the time before the addition of music. this likely shows that consistency in routine is essential to the academic performance of students with learning disabilities, and that variability or change in routine is both a distraction and a hindrance in performance. the classroom teacher observed that when he initially began using the music, “a number of students (3-4) commented that they found it distracting and did not want it played; however, once i ended the music, those same students (plus several more) were disappointed to see the music removed.” limitations and generalizability the primary limitation of this study pertains to generalizing the findings to other educational settings. this investigation focused upon the effect of background music on writing performance of students with learning disabilities in a suburban public elementary school in the mid-atlantic region of the united states. as a result, current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 8 external validity is questionable. appropriateness of the findings of this study should be determined by the consumer of the research. another limitation of the study is that specific learning disabilities were neither considered nor measured singularly. all students were grouped together in the learning disabilities classroom regardless of their condition. as a result, it cannot be determined if a student with a particular learning disability (for example, adhd) performed better (or worse) with music or without music. there was also a lack of qualitative data to support or refute the quantitative findings. there may have been instances where students enjoyed having the music played and performed at a higher level than without it, and conversely may have disliked the music being played and yet still performed at a higher level. performance may also have been affected by the scope of the writing prompt administered. although aimsweb probes were utilized in sequence, probes may have been of varying interest to the students, and personal connections may have been made at varying degrees based on a student’s background knowledge. the study may also be more advantageous to occur over a longer period of time than 21 weeks. perhaps an entire year-long examination would yield alternative results. recommendations it may be beneficial to conduct this study utilizing an experimental design with independent samples, comparing like-groups over a period of time with one group utilizing music (treatment) for the duration and the other group being denied music for the duration of the study. it may also be beneficial to conduct this study in alternate settings – with younger or older students, private or parochial schools, or even utilizing different types of music – to either validate or refute the results found in this examination. implications for practice background music improved the writing ability of students with learning disabilities overall as compared to writing in silence. incorporating music into writing exercises and activities is sound pedagogy. however, consistency in routine appears to be more essential to the academic performance for students with learning disabilities than the presence or absence of background music. references collett, m. (1992). music as the basis for learning. the education digest, 57, 61-64. retrieved from education full text database. diedwardo, m. (2005). pairing linguistic and music intelligences. kappa delta pi record, 41(3), 128130. (eric document reproduction service no. ej773903) retrieved from eric database. donohoe, r., & mcneely, t. (1999). the effect of student music choice on writing productivity. (eric document reproduction service no. ed448472) retrieved from eric database. ebisutani, k., donlan, d., & siebers, e. (1991, january 1). the effects of music on reading, oral language, and writing abilities: a review of literature. (eric document reproduction service no. ed333356) retrieved from eric database. gay, l. r., mills, g. e., & airasian, p. (2009). educational research: competencies for analysis and applications (9th ed.). upper saddle river, nj: pearson education, inc. kariuki, p., & honeycutt, c. (1998). an investigation of the effects of music on two emotionally disturbed students' writing motivations and writing skills. (eric document reproduction service no. ed427491) retrieved from eric database. klassen, r. m., & lynch, s. l. (2007). self-efficacy from the perspective of adolescents with ld and their specialist teachers. journal of learning disabilities, 40(6), 494-507. retrieved from ebscohost. lapointe, j. m., legault, f., & batiste, s. j. (2005). teacher interpersonal behavior and adolescents’ motivation in mathematics: a comparison of learning disabled, average, and talented students. international journal of educational research, 43(1/2), 39-54. retrieved from ebscohost. lincoln, a., & chazan, s. (1979). perceived competence and intrinsic motivation in learning disability children. journal of clinical child psychology, 8(3), 213-216. retrieved from ebscohost. o’bruba, w. (1987). reading through the creative arts. reading horizons, 27(3), 170-177. powell-smith, k. a., & shinn, m. r. (2004). administration and scoring of written expression curriculum-based measurement (we-cbm) for use in general outcome measurement (aimsweb training workbook). eden prairie, mn: edformation, inc. retrieved at http://www.aimsweb.com/uploads/pdfs/adminand scoringwe-cbm.pdf psychology world. (n.d.). tukey’s hsd post hoc test steps. retrieved at http://web.mst.edu/~psyworld/ tukeyssteps.htm schuster, d. h. & vincent, l. (1980). teaching reading and math with suggestion and music. academic therapy, 16, 69-72. the effects of background music on learning disabled elementary school students’ performance in writing 9 article citation legutko, r.s., & trissler, t.t. (2012). the effects of background music on learning disabled elementary school students’ performance in writing. current issues in education, 15(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/568 author notes robert s. legutko ed.d. bloomsburg university 400 e. 2nd street, bloomsburg, pa 17815 rlegutko@hotmail.com robert s. legutko is an assistant professor in the early childhood and adolescent education department at bloomsburg university (where he also received his bachelor’s degree). dr. legutko earned master’s degrees from penn state university and desales university, and a doctorate in education from wilmington university, delaware. theodore t. trissler ed.d.. north penn school district 401 east hancock street, lansdale, pa 19446 tedtrissler@hotmail.com theodore t. trissler is a special education teacher in the north penn school district and an adjunct instructor at desales university. dr. trissler earned a bachelor’s degree from edinboro university, a master’s degree from penn state university, and a doctorate in education from widener university. manuscript received: 5/28/2010 revisions received: 9/19/2011 accepted: 12/8/2011 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 10 volume 15, number 1 january 1, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors angela hines elizabeth reyes recruitment editors angela hines lisa lacy copy editors/proofreaders carol masser lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson mary bankhead tulani garnett catherine gay ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca hyun jung kang younsu kim monica keys lisa lacy catherine lasman victoria lucero carol masser faculty advisors lauren preston stephanie quintero katherine ronan kelly rubel leslie salazar bertha sanchez melisa tarango lauren williams dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 876-4319-3-le.doc volume 15, number 3 september 28, 2012 issn 1099-839x building the case for culturally responsive teaching in physical education: using high school students’ perceptions toward multiethnic groups debra patterson california state university fullerton recent census data indicates student populations are changing drastically. it is essential to inform educators on the benefits of culturally responsive teaching with their students. educators must be open to learning about their students and modifying their teaching to increase students academic success. physical education offers a unique environment for students to be engaged with each other in a variety of learning opportunities. this study investigated high school students' perceptions toward multiethnic groups using a modified multicultural sensitivity scale. participants included 140 high school male and female students ages 14-18 years. students voluntarily completed the 27-item 5-point likert type questionnaire. descriptive statistics were computed to determine differences in responses. results indicated some students are open to learning about other cultures which is the first step in reducing prejudices and stereotypes. for educators, culturally responsive teaching provides opportunity to raise awareness and breakdown racial barriers within their school. keywords: culturally responsive teaching, physical education, teacher education, multicultural education students entering educational institutions in the 21st century are experiencing an evolving composition of increasing numbers of ethnic minorities across the united states. the most current 2010 u.s. census bureau data indicated that racial and ethnic minorities accounted for roughly 85% of the nation’s population growth over the past decade (u.s. census bureau, 2011). in california, educators have known for years that student populations are changing drastically. over the years the educational literature has attempted to prepare current and incoming educators of this fact. wyman (1993) stated that an educational approach that recognizes and responds to the needs and traditions of culturally diverse students is labeled “multicultural” or “multiethnic education.” this concept has become critical to teacher education programs and our current educators. theoretically, instructional approaches that integrate multicultural concepts within the physical education setting can strengthen inter-racial and extraracial bonds along with increasing sensitivity levels between student groups (sutliff & perry, 2000). respecting the demographic shift toward an increased multiethnic population encourages a greater awareness toward the sensitivity levels between all persons. teacher education is attempting to address this by providing teacher training programs that produce culturally sensitive teachers who are able to meet the needs of students from all cultures and ethnicities. currently, in california the courses in single subject credential programs are required to meet sb 2042 (2002) which necessitates an infusion of competencies that will prepare teacher candidates to teach english language learners (ell) from diverse cultures and first languages other than english. to support this mandate, teacher current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 education programs typically offer one course in multicultural education while infusing ell strategies throughout the teacher education program. teachers may be the answer to helping students learn to work and accept each other as jibaja-rusth, kingery, holcomb, buckner, and pruitt (1994) suggested over 17 years ago that increasing the interaction between teachers and students of color requires a high degree of multicultural sensitivity in order for teachers to fully address cultural subtleties in the classroom. torry and ashy (1995) ascertained that all students are able to achieve their full potential for academic, social, and vocational success only when teachers are culturally sensitive. this concept can be taken one step further by asking if this idea also includes cultural sensitivity between students, especially with respect to the cooperative learning approach that many educators are embracing. according to posnick-goodwin (2006), helping students to get to know students from other backgrounds is critical for all schools, and educators should pave the way. learning about others, becoming sensitive to the challenges and feelings of others, and learning to work with people are essential skills all students need to learn. one movement towards improving the process of learning about multiculturalism and developing more effective teachers through changes in teacher education programs has emerged. culturally responsive teaching (crt) is just one approach towards infusing multiculturalism and teacher education (gay, 2010). it is common for the terms culturally relevant teaching and crt to be used interchangeably (castagno & brayboy, 2008). it has been suggested that institutions responsible for teacher education rethink their current curriculum to include increased education on crt (abbate-vaughn, 2005; gay, 2002; villegas & lucas, 2002). gay (2010) discussed the importance of implementing the six specific qualities: validating, comprehensive, multidimensional, empowering, transformative, and emancipatory that define crt and have these qualities incorporated within the teacher education program. villegas and lucas (2002) warned that the traditional approach of just adding an additional course to the existing teacher education curriculums may not have sustainable effects unless the entire teacher education curriculum adopts the ideas of developing culturally responsive teachers and have the content infused within every course of the curriculum. researchers have investigated sensitivity levels that have transcended many academic and instructional groups. larke (1990) investigated levels of sensitivity between preservice teachers through the utilization of the cultural diversity awareness inventory. the investigation utilized a 28-item agree/disagree questionnaire that ascertained a respondent attitude regarding (1) general cultural awareness, (2) the culturally diverse family, (3) cross-cultural communication, (4) assessment, and (5) the multicultural environment. the results indicated that respondents had hesitations associated to interacting and working with multiethnic students and their parents. larke (1990) suggested the preservice teachers discomfort should be addressed by offering increased opportunities to raise cultural sensitivity. additionally, torrey and ashy (1995) investigated the impact of culture on preservice physical education teacher's through the multicultural self-report inventory. the instrument measured respondent's values toward implementing multicultural concepts during instruction. the 72 preservice physical education teachers (87% caucasian) who served as subjects had no prior student teaching or academic training in multicultural education. the instrument was divided into categories with questions addressing the following issues: (1) personal beliefs about culture, (2) beliefs about interacting with other cultures, and (3) beliefs about the importance of culture in teaching. the results suggested that respondents did not possess strong beliefs about culture and did not see how a student's cultural background would alter their future instructional approach. with a strong effort of training preservice teachers underway, the focus must also include educating the current teachers about crt and the impact it can have not only in their classes and school community but most importantly in society. current teachers may need to become familiarized with the details of crt. gay (2010) defines crt as a pedagogy that distinguishes the different cultural backgrounds and traits of all students regardless of ethnic differences along with modifications of teaching methods to address the diversity within the class setting. furthermore, teachers must develop the skills to adjust their teaching for multicultural settings (scherff & spector, 2011). the theory around culturally responsive teaching embraces a large amount of knowledge about multicultural education and ways of assisting culturally diverse students in succeeding in education (castagno & brayboy, 2008). along the same lines of crt, cultural relevant teaching was defined by ladson-billings in 1994, “as an approach to teaching and learning that empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural references to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes” (as cited in grant & ladson-billings, 1997, p. 62). whichever term is used the same message is clear, there is an important need to educate teachers on ways of modifying their teaching methods to benefit their students learning. the literature on crt that has focused on teaching african-american students has provided critical aspects of teaching that educators should try and embrace with their students. howard (2001) conducted a qualitative study on 17 elementary students’ perspectives of their teachers. students were selected from four different urban schools. the results of his study found that building the case for culturally responsive teaching in physical education:using high school students’ perceptions toward multiethnic groups 3 table 1 ethnicities for males and females grade age (years) caucasian males/females african american asian american hispanic native american other total 9th 14 36/10 1/0 3/2 7/3 3/3 1/2 71 15 21/7 1/0 2/0 2/3 2/0 38 10th 15 3/6 0/1 2/3 0/1 3/1 20 16 5/2 1/0 8 17 0/1 1/0 2 18 1/0 1 students’ were very aware of their teachers sense of responsibility of helping them become successful in academic achievement. the students’ reported feeling that their teachers expressed a genuine concern for them at school by building a caring environment and establishing a community-like atmosphere through the engagement of dynamic and stimulating classroom experiences. these positive experiences provided students’ a safe learning environment where they felt they could be successful. it was further validated when teachers took a genuine caring approach to their students learning and at the same time were willing to modify their teaching styles to meet their students needs a true sense of crt was evident. howard (2001) indicated that the results of his study can easily carry over to other ethnic groups. he concluded that teachers should listen to their students and what they have to say about their teachers, the school environment, and other factors that impact their learning. thus, as researchers continue to build a foundation for the best method to provide both preservice and current teachers a wide view of multicultural education, cultural sensitivity, and crt (haberman & post, 1990; jibaja-rusth et al., 1994; phuntsog, 1995; torry & ashy, 1995) it becomes paramount that additional insight must also be derived from students. the current literature identifies a need to continue investigating students’ voices by listening to their stories and feelings of learning in multicultural environments and with others who are different from them. there is a research gap in the physical education environment in regards to crt especially at the high school level. the purpose of this study was to determine high school students' perceptions toward multiethnic groups within a physical education setting using a modified multicultural sensitivity scale (jibaja-rusth et al., 1994). it should be noted that the physical education setting was used due to the uniqueness of the environment where students for the most part are not sitting behind desks and where their cultural differences might be displayed on a larger scale due to the context and content. in physical education students’ are generally put into groups where they must work together, problem-solve, and perform in front of others. thus, students’ may develop different attitudes of working with multiethnic groups in physical education then in other academic areas in high school curriculum. it is hoped that when teachers develop an awareness of their students they will be able to provide the best learning environment for academic success. methods participants and setting participants included 140 high school students from one urban public school in central california whose ages ranged from 14 to 18 years (table 1). there were significantly more males n=95 (68%) than females n=45 (32%) participants. most students were caucasian (65%) with a smaller population representing african americans (1.5%), asian americans (5.8%), hispanics (16.1%), native americans (6.5%), and "other" (5.1 %). there were three 9th grade (average class size 31-37 students) classes and one 10th grade class (class size was 31) used. most participants (95%) lived in an urban setting. specific details about the school include 34% of the students were classified as english learners, 78% as socially disadvantaged, and an overall school api score of 676. the graduation rate was 88.1% for all students. instrument the questionnaire was a 27-item 5-point likert type questionnaire containing the original 21 questions from the multicultural sensitivity scale (mss) created by jibaja-rusth et al. (1994) plus an additional six questions that were developed by the researchers to specifically address the physical education setting. the mss is a validated and reliable instrument (jibaja-rusth et al., 1994). permission was sought from the authors of the multicultural sensitivity scale prior to administering the survey to modify the survey by adding additional questions and changing the original scale from a 6-point likert scale to a 5-point likert scale as well as reversing the order. after receiving permission from the authors, face validity was established for the modified mss current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 table 2 m u l t i c u l t u r a l s e n s i t i v i t y s c a l e r a t i n g s c a l e : ( 1 ) strongly agree, (2) agree, (3) undecided, (4) disagree, (5) strongly disagree q u e s t i o n m e a n sd 1. i have a tendency to trust students of my ethnic group more than i trust those of other ethnic groups. 3.48 1.26 2. i feel very uncomfortable in the presence of members of ethnic groups other than my own. 3.99 1.14 3. when i observe the hardships of some children, i understand why they are not proud of their ethnic identity. 3.34 1.08 4. individuals should be deeply sensitive to the thoughts others have of them. 3.35 1.25 5. it is good to avoid encounters with people who are different from you. 4.28 1.16 6. each ethnic group should strive to become more americanized rather than maintaining the characteristics of their ethnic group. 3.75 1.22 7. i feel most secure when i am in the presence of members of my ethnic group. 3.25 1.25 8. i feel less comfortable when i socialize with persons outside my ethnic group. 3.80 1.08 9. i feel threatened by members of other ethnic groups. 4.15 1.00 10. when i understand the environment from which many children of ethnic minority backgrounds come from, i understand why they do not have pride in their ethnic identities. 3.38 1.04 11. the ethnic group that students belong to frequently determines how i respond to them interpersonally. 3.59 1.07 12. when i am offended by an ethnic minority, i generalize the behavior to other members of that group. 3.74 1.05 13. in order to be accepted by persons of other ethnic groups, i frequently find myself altering my behavior. 3.63 1.11 14. i have discovered that it is better to avoid associating with people who think differently than me. 3.78 1.09 building the case for culturally responsive teaching in physical education:using high school students’ perceptions toward multiethnic groups 5 15. i naturally respond more favorably to students of my ethnic group. 3.45 1.13 16. multicultural issues are a community issue. 2.67 1.19 17. i prefer working with students with whom i can identify ethnically. 3.49 1.12 18. i have not been able to overcome my feelings of uneasiness when i see a group of people from a particular ethnic group together. 3.75 1.03 19. i feel tense and uptight when i have to work closely with students who are of a different ethnic group than my own. 4.02 1.01 20. i would feel more relaxed if i could work with students of my own ethnic group. 3.64 1.07 21. i do not enjoy associating with persons of other ethnic groups. 4.09 1.05 22. i classify people on the basis of obvious ethnic characteristics. 3.81 1.03 23. including multicultural education in physical education is important. 2.85 1.20 24. multicultural education is a school issue. 2.83 1.14 25. i believe that students with certain ethnic backgrounds are more successful in certain sports than other students. 2.84 1.21 26. i would like to learn games and activities that are from other ethnic origins. 2.47 1.08 27. i have been a victim of ethnic prejudice. 3.60 1.26 including the rating scale and additional six questions by having two professors, one representing physical education and the other education review the modified instrument. although the original mss had only been administered to adults, it was deemed appropriate for high school age participants by the original authors. the rating scale consisted of strongly agree (1), agree (2), undecided (3), disagree (4), and strongly disagree (5). questions 2226 were the added questions to the mss for use with this study. data collection and analysis all participants and parents completed the university institutional review board approved consent forms. consent was granted to use high school students by the school site principal. one condition stipulated by the principal was to indicate to the students that participation was strictly voluntary. additionally, each participant’s responses remained anonymous. the questionnaire was administered during the student's physical education class. no time limit was given to complete the questionnaire. participants were instructed not to discuss the survey with others and to turn it in face down to ensure confidentiality. all participants completed the survey within 20 minutes. means and standard deviations were computed on each of the demographic questions and for each of the 27 questions. results the purpose of this study was to determine high school students' perceptions toward multiethnic groups within a physical education setting using a modified multicultural sensitivity scale in an attempt to provide educators with a tool that might provide additional insight and greater awareness of their students. the means and standard deviations are listed for each question (see table 2). after rank-ordering each question, many of the responses were in the neutral zone. however, four questions provided the perspective that students’ were not bothered by being around or working with other ethnic groups. examples of this include the disagreement for questions 5, 9, 19, and 21 which all have a common theme of the need to avoid encounters, feel threatened, current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 feel tense and uptight, and not enjoying working or associating with other ethnic groups. specifically, question 5, "it is good to avoid encounters with people who are different from you," question 9, "i feel threatened by members of other ethnic groups," question 19, “i feel tense and uptight when i have to work closely with students who are a different ethnic group than my own,” and question 21, "i do not enjoy associating with persons of other ethnic groups.” these results indicated students openness to learning about other cultures. the strongest neutral response occurred on question 7, "i feel most secure when i am in the presence of members of my ethnic group.” this was the only question that produced a high response rate for both "disagree" and “agree." this might demonstrate that students don’t have a string feeling one way or another involved with their own ethnic groups. the results of this question illustrate the importance of providing students opportunities to work with multiethnic groups and demonstrate the benefits of working with each other. there were six questions (2, 8, 12, 14, 18, and 21) that resulted in students reporting that they tended to disagree. these six questions addressed students perceptions of feeling uncomfortable, socializing, generalizing behavior, avoiding people who think differently, uneasiness, and classifying people based on ethnicities different then their own. although the results may indicate that many students were either neutral or disagreed with these specific questions, it demonstrates that there was not a strong agreement of their feelings of working in multiethnic groups. questions 23-27 were added for this survey. it was also found that most students agreed with question 26, "i would like to learn games and activities that are from other ethnic origins", which shows an openness towards trying more non-traditional sports and learning about other cultures. agreement with question 16, "multicultural issues are a community issue" and question 24, "multicultural issues are a school issue," demonstrated that students feel it is important that both schools and the community address race and cultural issues. agreement on question 25, "i believe that students with certain ethnic backgrounds are more successful in certain sports than other students" is both interesting and disturbing, as this indicates students are stereotyping players in certain sports. for this reason, students may be missing out on opportunities to participate in a sport in which they could excel. since stereotyping is a form of prejudice, these feelings have the potential to grow into larger cultural insensitivity issues. however, the responses may indicate students' willingness to record what they think is the "morally correct" answer. it is interesting to note that even though question 5 and question 14 are similar, the different wording elicited different responses from the students. the overall mean of responses for question 5, "it is good to avoid encounters with people who are different from you," was 4.28. yet, question 14, "i have discovered that it is better to avoid associating with people different from me," evoked a lower mean at 3.78. although both means lie on the right side of the scale, difference in responses may be a reflection of the more politically correct phrasing in question 5 versus the "real life experience" phrasing in question 14. the differing responses may also indicate a tendency to not “practice-what-you¬ preach” type of philosophy when it comes to encounters with students who are ethnically different than themselves. discussion the findings from this study demonstrated that high school students displayed a variety of perceptions about multicultural education and sensitivity levels of interacting with each other in physical education class. many of the responses confirmed that high school age students may not have strong beliefs one way or another when it comes to interacting with cultures other than theirs. this could prove to be a vital age to help shape their future behavior to learn the benefits of working and interacting collectively with students from other ethnicities. the results from this study indicated that some students are open to learning about other cultures, which is one of the first steps in reducing prejudices and stereotypes (devine, monteith, zuwerink, & elliot, 1991). yet, this doesn't just happen. these are concepts that need to be taught, discussed, and emphasized. students need to learn how to work together with trust and acceptance. students need to be able to demonstrate their eagerness to work with students from other cultures rather than simply verbalizing their willingness. when teachers have an awareness of their students feelings then they should strive to provide an environment that encompasses the six specific qualities (gay, 2000): validating, comprehensive, multidimensional, empowering, transformative, and emancipatory that define crt. when crt is implemented on a daily basis it may provide students with the skills and opportunities necessary to work together in the classroom or gymnasium. since the physical education environment offers unique opportunities for students to collaborate and problem-solve in a physical setting as opposed to a traditional classroom setting it may prove to be a prime target to address multicultural education and working with each other. there are two major factors that physical education teachers can employ to embrace the idea of breaking down the multicultural issues. the first factor deals with the teacher’s behavior and taking on the role of a leader as is needed in crt. this involves strengthening their teaching skills, becoming knowledge on instructional practices related to crt, and having effective management strategies that involve both individual circumstances and large group settings. teachers need to be aware of the many different cultures building the case for culturally responsive teaching in physical education:using high school students’ perceptions toward multiethnic groups 7 in the classes and adapt their teaching to all groups. for example, many hispanic students prefer to work in small cooperative groups whereas many asian students prefer to work alone (nieto & bode, 2012). the teacher must find the balance of how to effectively teach all students. this further demonstrates the need for teachers to have a strong awareness of who their students are in their classes and their feelings of working with different ethnicities. the second factor involves implementing cultural diverse activities throughout the curriculum that are designed to provide students with a diverse environment that conforms to the national association for sport and physical education (naspe) 2009 instructional practices guidelines. many times teachers implement a variety of multicultural dances and refer to this process as implementing a multicultural curriculum. clemens and metzler rady (2012) have provided many ideas for not only introducing dances from other cultures but also physical activity games and fitness activities that represent a variety of different cultures. it is important that the teacher doesn’t just teach the activities but provides closure questions that allow students the opportunity to process their experiences. teachers need to listen to what their students are encountering and have the confidence to discuss the uniqueness of their experiences. teachers need to offer continuous opportunities that involve students working in random groups, trust building activities, and cooperative games. specific examples include activities that encourage problem-solving and collaboration such as orienteering, developing offensive/defensive strategies for modified game play, creating games from other cultures, and assisting each other with setting realist goals for lifetime physical activity. gay (2010) and howard (2001) stated that teachers must demonstrate a genuine care for their students along with a motivating learning environment in the hope of producing academic success. in physical education, this means the teachers should be creating a cooperative instead of competitive curriculum that might break down students preconceived thoughts of working with each other in a multiethnic setting. this may also help students assuming that students from other ethnic backgrounds may exhibit a more natural athletic ability then their own ethnic culture. this concept was a concern with question 25 in the results. some students may not even try different sports or activities if they think others will be better then themselves due to cultural differences. a strong step forward of addressing multiculturalism when paring the responses from the questionnaire, specifically from questions 16 and 24, that indicated students do tend to agree and feel that multicultural issues are both the community and school issues along with practical applications of implementing an on-going program of culturally diverse activities. when teachers implement culturally diverse activities they will be offering opportunities for the students to learn games and activities from other ethnic origins as they indicated they wanted to on question 26. implementing a curriculum that has a foundation in cultural diverse activities and experiences should address most of the responses from the questionnaire. students will be provided a vast array of hands-on opportunities to engage and learn about each other and about activities. as previously indicated, preservice teachers are now required to take one class that addresses multicultural issues and pedagogies when working with students from different ethnicities in their classes. however prior to this mandate, torrey and ashy (1995) found that preservice teachers in physical education who had no prior training in multicultural education did not possess strong beliefs about culture or nor did they see how a student’s cultural background would have an impact on their instructional approach. along this line of research larke (1990) found that preservice teachers had hesitations of interacting and working with multiethnic students. technically, the preservice teachers from these studies may be current teachers who need to enhance their knowledge of working with multiethnic groups and learn current pedagogies that address their students needs. this demonstrates the need to inform and educate current teachers on the benefits of crt. conclusion this study used high school students responses on the modified mss questionnaire to identify their perceptions on multiethnic issues and situations. when teachers are aware of the attitudes and perceptions of the students in their classes, they can have a better understanding of how to be a leader and help the students learn about each other. nieto and bode (2012) defined multicultural education as inclusive. they also discussed that multicultural education is about all people and for all people regardless of their ethnicity or other differences. creating a culturally sensitive program may seem like an overwhelming task. phuntsog (1995) suggested addressing practicing teachers’ perceptions to identify what competencies are crucial for promoting this type of learning. gay (2002) indicated that teacher education programs must engage future educators in discussions of crt to increase the awareness of strategies that will impact student learning and the likelihood of responsible citizens in society. although this may be the most common solution, another very competent resource are the students. if given the chance, students can use their experiences to change multiculturalism from a way of recognizing minorities to a way of viewing society as a whole (garcia & pugh, 1992). the necessity for physical education teachers to engage in a consistent practice of implementing culturally diverse physical activities should prove one way to assist students and teachers in learning about different ethnic origins. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 this study further builds the case for teachers to embrace the idea of developing an awareness and genuine concern about their students which will assist them in implementing crt into their physical education classes. the results support the idea that content and context of physical education may be one of the best places to focus on implementing crt. the benefits of crt can provide both the teachers and the students a unique learning environment that builds community and can increase academic success. these results demonstrated that students do not always feel threatened or uncomfortable working with others of different ethnicities as sometimes society assumes. with the increasing diversity in our schools teachers must attempt to provide environments where students do not feel threatened or uncomfortable learning amongst students of different ethnicities. again, teachers need to be open to listening to what their students are saying and feeling. the ultimate outcome of breaking down the cultural barriers may be producing a society that works together in future endeavors. limitations and future research there are several limitations of this study. the results may have been more powerful using complex statistics such as anovas rather than just descriptive statistics. another limitation was using the 5-point likert scale instead of a 4-point likert scale which would elicit students in deciding on either agreeing or disagreeing for each statement thus staying out of the neutral response. however, it should be noted that it is important that students may not have feelings one way or another in working in multiethnic groups. also, using only one school and one content are may have limited the findings. the results of this study barely touches the existing gap in research on crt in physical education. future research should include an investigation of students’ sensitivity levels that are broadened across different content areas and grade levels in the same school. it would be valuable to establish any patterns of students reacting differently in different courses based on the content being presented and then discovering ways to address them. an additional area of focus would include a longitudinal study following the students’ from the middle school level of education through high school and see if the results change due to the implementation of a culturally diverse curriculum. another area for future research would be a prepost study design using the mss. this would involve gathering data using the mss at the beginning of the school year with several classes and teachers in physical education. then provide the teachers with the results of the mss so they can identify the specific needs of their students’ and implement a culturally sensitive curriculum while focusing on crt throughout the school year. subsequently, administering the mss at the end of the school year to measure any changes in students’ perceptions. it would also be advantageous to collect data on specific crt strategies implemented by the teachers. references abbate-vaughn, j. 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(2002). preparing for culturally responsive teaching. journal of teacher education, 53(2), 106-116. garcia, j., & pugh, s. l. (1992). multicultural education in teacher preparation programs: a political or an education concept? phi delta kappan, 74(3), 214-219. grant, c., & ladson-billings, g. (eds.) (1997). dictionary of multicultural education. phoenix, az: oryx press. haberman, m., & post, l. (1990). cooperating teachers' perceptions of the goals of multicultural education. action in teacher education, 12(3), 31-35. jibaja-rusth, m. l., kingery, p. m., holcomb, j. d., buckner, jr., w. p., & pruitt, b. e. (1994). development of a multicultural sensitivity scale. journal of health education, 25(6), 350-357. larke, p. j. (1990). cultural diversity awareness inventory: assessing the sensitivity of preservice teachers. action in teacher education, 12(3), 2330. national association for sport and physical education. (2009). appropriate instructional practice guidelines for high school physical education: a position statement (3rd ed.) reston, va: naspe. nieto, s., & bode, p. (2012). affirming diversity: the building the case for culturally responsive teaching in physical education:using high school students’ perceptions toward multiethnic groups 9 sociopolitical context of multicultural education (6th ed.). boston, ma: allyn & bacon. phuntsog, n. (1995). teacher educators' perceptions of the importance of multiculturaleducation in the preparation of elementary teachers. equity and excellence in education, 28(1), 10-14. posnick-goodwin, s. (2006). can’t schools be gang free zones? the california educator, 10(7), 7-8, 1011. torry, c., & ashy, m. (1995). preservice physical educators' beliefs about culture and multicultural education. louisiana association for health, physical education, recreation and dance journal, 59(1), 8-10. scherff, l., & spector, k. (2011). culturally relevant pedagogy: clashes and confrontations. lanham, md: rowman & littlefield education. sutliff, m., & perry, j. (2000) multicultural education: developing connections in elementary physical education. strategies: a journal for physical and sport educators, 13(5), 33-36. u. s. census bureau. (2011, october). american fact finder: allegany county, n.y. retrieved october 1, 2011 from http://factfinder2.census.gov. villegas, a. m., & lucas, t. (2002). preparing culturally responsive teachers: rethinking the curriculum. journal of teacher education, 53(2), 20-33. wyman, s. (1993). how to respond to your culturally diverse student population. alexandria, va: association for supervision and curriculum development. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 10 article citation patterson, d. (2012). building the case for culturally responsive teaching in physical education: using high school students’ perceptions toward multiethnic groups. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/876 author notes debra patterson california state university fullerton 800 north state college boulevard fullerton, ca 92834 (657) 278-8337 dpatterson@fullerton.edu debra patterson, ph.d. is an associate professor in the department of kinesiology at california state university fullerton. her research focuses on students and teachers perceptions in physical education. manuscript received: 12/09/2011 revisions received: 08/03/2012 accepted: 09/24/2012 building the case for culturally responsive teaching in physical education:using high school students’ perceptions toward multiethnic groups 11 volume 15, number 3 september 28, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors evan fishman ayfer gokalp kathleen hill sultan kilinc younsu kim carol masser bonnie mazza leslie ramos salazar melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers exploring parental_final volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x exploring parental aggression toward teachers in a public school setting david c. may eastern kentucky university jerry johnson eastern kentucky university yanfen chen eastern kentucky university lisa hutchison eastern kentucky university melissa ricketts eastern kentucky university citation may, d., johnson, j., chen, y., hutchison, l., & ricketts, m. (2010). exploring parental aggression toward teachers in a public school setting. current issues in education, 13(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract almost all of the extant research examining aggressive activity uses data from student populations. in this study, we extend that literature by examining teacher perceptions of parental aggression in public schools in kentucky. using data from a sample of 5,971 public school teachers, we determine that parental aggression directed at public school teachers is a rare event, c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 2 and when it occurs, it is far more likely to be verbal than physical in nature. the multivariate results presented here further indicate that younger teachers, teachers with advanced degrees, and teachers from more heavily populated areas as more likely to have experienced parental aggression than their counterparts. implication for policy and suggestions for future research are also discussed. keywords: parental aggression; teacher victimization; school violence; parent-teacher communication e xploring parental a ggression 3 about the author(s) author: david c. may affiliation: eastern kentucky university email: david.may@eku.edu author: jerry johnson affiliation: eastern kentucky university email: jerry.johnson@eku.edu author: yanfen chen affiliation: eastern kentucky university email: yanfen.chen@eku.edu author: lisa hutchison affiliation: eastern kentucky university email: lisa.hutchison@eku.edu author: melissa ricketts affiliation: eastern kentucky university email: melissa.ricketts@eku.edu exploring parental aggression toward teachers in a public school setting c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 4 while researchers have identified a number of characteristics and causal influences related to aggression against students in school settings, similar research focusing on aggression against teachers is limited and typically concerned only with instances that involve students as perpetrators. given the literature describing an inherent conflict in parent-teacher relationships, the emerging recognition of the “pushy parent” (beard, 1991; estes, 2002; frean, 2002), and increased recognition of the existence of incidents of parental aggression against school personnel, a more thorough examination of the issue of parental aggression is warranted. the research reported here is an attempt to fill that void by (1) examining public school teachers' perceptions of (and experiences with) parental behaviors they perceive as aggressive or otherwise problematic, and (2) investigating the extent to which perceptions and experiences vary according to selected teacher, school, and community characteristics. we begin with a review of the literature on teacher experiences with (and perceptions of) instances of parental aggression and violence, followed by a description of the methods through which these data were collected. using self-reports from a cross-section of elementary, middle, and high school teachers from the state of kentucky, we then provide a descriptive analysis of teacher perceptions of, and experiences with) problematic behaviors on the part of parents. we follow that with results from analyses investigating variations in perceptions and experiences according to individual teacher characteristics, school characteristics, and community characteristics. finally, we conclude with policy recommendations and suggestions for future research. literature review in recent years, recognition of the seriousness of school safety issues has brought about a concerted effort to document the existence, types, and frequency of crimes and aggressive e xploring parental a ggression 5 behaviors that occur within schools (bauer, guerino, nolle, & tang, 2008; dinkes, kemp, & baum, 2009; eaton et al., 2007; harris & udry, 2010; national center for education statistics, 2009). however, the majority of information specific to the issue of acts of aggression in school settings has focused primarily on student-on-student behaviors (bauer et al., 2008; dinkes et al., 2009) and includes only a small amount of information regarding aggression towards teachers (callahan & rivara, 1992; johnston, o’malley, & bachman, 1993). moreover, a growing literature has also sought to identify the causal influences of aggressive behaviors among students. of particular relevance to the current project, out of this effort has emerged a wealth of information regarding the influential nature of parents as predictors of student aggression within schools (batsche & knoff, 1994; farrington, 1989; hotaling, strauss & lincoln, 1989; loeber & stouthamer-loeber, 1986; olweus, 1980; paperny & deisher, 1983; patterson, dishion, & bank, 1984; trickett & kuczynski, 1986). a related literature has examined the adversarial nature of the parent-teacher relationship as well (anderson-levitt, 1989; attanucci, 2004; fine, 1993; katz, 1996; lasky, 2000; lightfoot, 2003; lodish, 1994; trumbull, rothstein-risch, & greenfield, 2000). in response to this body of knowledge regarding the importance of parents' role in the school environment and culture, researchers have also attempted to develop appropriate methodologies for dealing with the inherent conflict between parents and teachers (ames, 1995; epstein, 2001; fenwick, 1993; krumm, 1989; rucci, 1991; st. john-brooks, 2001). much of the aforementioned literature focuses on how to resolve the inherent teacherparent conflict or improve the nature of parental involvement in the school, yet little attention has been paid to the specific issue of parental aggression in education. this lack of attention is surprising given that studies have identified parental attitudes as a significant source of stress for c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 6 teachers (brown, 1984; heads fear, 2000; moses, slough, & croll, 1987; phillips, 2005). in fact, the strain of dealing with parents has been cited as one of the primary factors in new teachers leaving the profession (phillips, 2005). further, documented incidents of parental aggression towards school administrators are numerous. philadelphia public schools reported 57 instances of parental assaults against teachers in one six-month period. in a 2001 study of school administrators in one florida county, trump and moore (2001) found that 70% of respondents had been threatened by a parent. they identified three primary types of threats that occurred: verbal threats accompanied by intimidation, non-contact threats accompanied by intimidation, and intimidation with physical contact. while the study results confirmed the anecdotal belief that parental aggression towards teachers existed in their district, the authors cautioned against generalizing beyond their district and suggested replicating their study in other places (trump & moore, 2001). from an international perspective, 140 members of the national association of head teachers reported being assaulted in the united kingdom in the year 2001 (figures confirm, 2001; rights culture, 2001). in edinburgh alone, over 70 parental assaults of teachers occurred during 2004 (meglynn, 2005). recent incidents of parental aggression in a variety of other contexts further recommend this line of inquiry for additional investigation. parental involvement in extracurricular activities has been linked to a wide range of behaviors, including relatively harmless acts of overextending their child’s involvement in youth sports to more serious acts of physical aggression and even murder (freivogal, 1991; kanter, 2002; sports illustrated, 2000). indeed, increasingly close parental involvement in extracurricular activities and debates between parents and teachers regarding academic grades has resulted in the emergence of a “pushy parents” typology (beard, 1991; estes, 2002; frean, 2002). e xploring parental a ggression 7 although society has recognized the existence of “pushy parents” and educators have sought to develop strategies to address conflict in parent teacher relationships, limited empirical research examines parental aggression towards teachers. specifically, while some research is available, it is limited in scope and geography. the present study fills a void in this literature by conducting a descriptive and exploratory analysis focusing on parental aggression toward teachers. this study will enable researchers to learn more about 1) the prevalence and incidence of behaviors perceived as aggressive or problematic, and 2) the teacher, school, and community characteristics associated with the presence and prevalence of such behaviors. methodology survey construction the limited literature on parental aggression towards teachers necessitated developing original constructs to include in the survey instrument. to facilitate that development, the researchers convened a focus group following a structured group format (morgan, 1997) with a representative group of administrators and teachers (n = 10). the purpose of the focus group was to solicit information regarding the following issues: (1) conceptual definition of parental aggression, (2) forms of parental aggression, (3) frequency and extent of parental aggression, (4) issues around which parental aggression arises, (5) current responses to parental aggression, and (6) possible recommendations for dealing with aggressive parents. several themes emerged from analysis of the focus group data. the question concerning the conceptualization of parental aggression resulted in the identification of two primary sources of conflict, communication and issues of control, as well as a suggestion for a more appropriate conceptualization of the problem. specifically, participants stressed the need to frame the survey c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 8 instrument to conceptualize the issue from the standpoint of a problem versus a conflict (i.e., to extend the inquiry beyond just overtly aggressive behaviors to consider other problematic interactions). the question concerning the types of parental aggression also yielded several themes, with verbal, property, and physical aggression identified as the most common. the question concerning the frequency and extent of parental aggression produced results suggesting that while few parents were problematic, dealing with those problematic parents consumed an inordinate amount of the teacher’s time. a total of seven themes emerged for the question concerning the issues around which parental aggression arises: grades, discipline, special education, curriculum, absences, extracurricular activities, and negative media portrayal. the aforementioned themes served as the basis for developing the survey instrument. data collection data were collected via electronic questionnaire. while electronic questionnaires may not yield representative results for surveys of the general public, valid, reliable electronic surveys involving members of organizations that have both access to the internet and valid email addresses can be conducted with minimal issues of coverage (devoe et al., 2000). a letter was mailed to all kentucky superintendents (n = 176) describing the purpose and methodology of the study and asking for the email addresses of all school principals in the district and permission to send an email to each principal asking for their help in administering the questionnaire. the initial letter was followed up with three mailings and a phone call. in the end, 161 (91.5%) superintendents agreed to allow their principals to participate. using an email distribution list of principals created from addresses provided by the superintendents, an informational letter was emailed to the principals. approximately one month later, principals were sent an email containing the link to the web-based survey and were asked e xploring parental a ggression 9 to forward the email to all the teachers in their school. the website was deactivated after approximately six weeks. after cleaning the data, the sample consisted of responses from 5,971 public school teachers. estimating an accurate response rate for this project is problematic. if each of the principals forwarded the email to all teachers in their school, then 33,106 teachers, the number of teachers in the 161 districts who agreed to participate in the research, had the opportunity to complete the questionnaire. because the sample under study here consists of 5,971 respondents, our response rate using that calculation strategy is 18.0 percent. this estimate is conservative, at best, as it assumes that (1) all principals in all districts whose superintendent cooperated were able and willing to forward the email containing the link to the web-based survey to all the teachers in their school and (2) all teachers in those schools received and read that email. nevertheless, the low response rate is indicative of the literature suggesting that lower response rates generally result from online versus pen and paper survey administrations (handwerk, carson, & blackwell, 2000; matz, 1999; sax, gilmartin, & bryant, 2003; tomsic, hendel & matross, 2000; underwood, kim & matier, 2000). demographic characteristics of teachers in the sample are remarkably similar, however, to the overall population of kentucky teachers in terms of race and gender, suggesting that nonresponse bias is not a serious issue (dillman, 1991; krosnick, 1999). as such, while the findings presented here need to be taken in the context of this sample and are not immediately generalizable to the state as a whole, it is reasonable to expect that future research efforts with more representative samples would produce similar results. moreover, if we construe the 5,971 respondents as a sample for the population of 33,106 teachers, sample size calculations using a c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 10 confidence level of 95% result in a confidence interval of 1.15 when based on the most stringent range of responses (two-item, or 50%). data analysis the following research questions guided the quantitative investigation in this study: 1. to what extent have public school teachers in kentucky experienced aggressive or otherwise problematic parental behaviors? 2. what do public school teachers in kentucky perceive to be the primary causes of problematic interactions with parents? 3. how do teachers’ experiences and perceptions with regard to problematic interactions with parents vary according to key characteristics of the teacher (e.g., gender, age, years of education experience, education level)? 4. how do teachers’ experiences and perceptions with regard to problematic interactions with parents vary according to key characteristics of the school and community (e.g., grade level, school enrollment, community population size)? the research questions were addressed using descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance (anova), and multiple linear regression analysis. specifically, descriptive statistics were used to present a general overview of characteristics of the teachers, schools and communities represented in the sample, and were also used to describe experiences with aggressive or problematic interactions for the sample as a whole. a one-way anova test was then used to investigate the extent that incidences of problematic behaviors vary according to the level of the school (i.e., elementary, middle, or high). finally, multiple linear regression analysis was used to investigate the impact of salient teacher and school characteristics on the number of instances of aggressive or problematic interactions with parents reported by respondents. e xploring parental a ggression 11 additional description and specification of the anova and regression models follows in the next section, accompanying the results reported from these investigations. this study is responsive to key gaps in the literature regarding parental aggression toward teachers. in general, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners have little information about: (1) the prevalence or incidence of parental aggression toward teachers; and (2) situational and contextual factors associated with parental aggression toward teachers. thus, despite the caveats indicated by the sampling limitations, this project lays an important foundation for future work in this area. results descriptive analyses tables 1 to 4 provide descriptive and frequency statistics for demographic and professional characteristics of respondents in the sample. table 1 presents descriptive statistics for respondents’ age and years of teaching experience. tables 2-4 offer frequency statistics describing gender, race, and education level distributions among the sample. table 1 summary of descriptive statistics for respondents’ age and tenure in education variable n min. max. mean sd teacher’s age 5,743 21 75 41.636 10.493 years experience 5,933 0 43 12.670 8.976 table 2 summary of frequency statistics for teacher gender variable frequency percent valid cumulative c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 12 percent percent valid female 4,856 81.3 81.6 81.6 male 1,097 18.4 18.4 100.0 total 5,953 99.7 100.0 missing 18 .3 total 5,971 100.0 table 3-summary of frequency statistics for teacher race variable frequency percent valid percent cumulative percent valid black 109 1.8 1.8 1.8 white 5,757 96.4 96.9 98.7 american indian 24 .4 .4 99.1 hispanic 17 .3 .3 99.4 asian 11 .2 .2 99.6 other 17 .3 .3 99.9 multiracial 7 .1 .1 100.0 missing 29 .5 total 5,971 100.0 table 4 summary of frequency statistics for teacher education level variable frequency percent valid cumulative e xploring parental a ggression 13 percent percent valid some college 9 .2 .2 .2 bachelor’s 1,428 23.9 24.0 24.2 master’s 2,957 49.5 49.7 73.9 masters +30 hours 1,502 25.2 25.3 99.2 ed.d./ph.d. 48 .8 .8 100.0 total 5,945 99.6 100.0 missing 26 .4 total 5,971 100.0 tables 5 to 7 provide frequency statistics for school and community characteristics. table 5 reports the distribution of respondents by school level, table 6 reports the distribution of respondents by school size, in discrete categories, and table 7 reports the distribution of respondents by community size, in discrete categories. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 14 table 5 summary of frequency statistics for school level variable frequency percent valid percent cumulative percent valid elementary 2,598 43.5 43.6 43.6 middle 1,501 25.1 25.2 68.7 high 1,865 31.2 31.3 100.0 total 5,964 99.9 100.0 missing 7 .1 total 5,971 100.0 e xploring parental a ggression 15 table 6 summary of frequency statistics for school size (enrollment) categories variable frequency percent valid percent cumulative percent valid less than 250 471 7.9 8.0 8.0 251 to 500 1,922 32.2 32.5 40.5 501 to 750 1,874 31.4 31.7 72.2 751 to 1,000 754 12.6 12.8 84.9 1,001 to 1,250 335 5.6 5.7 90.6 1,251 to 1,500 272 4.6 4.6 95.2 1,501 to 1,750 151 2.5 2.6 97.8 1,751 to 2,000 73 1.2 1.2 99.0 2,001 to 2,500 59 1.0 1.0 100.0 total 5,911 99.0 100.0 missing 60 1.0 total 5,971 100.0 c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 16 table 7 summary of frequency statistics for community size (population) categories variable frequency percent valid percent cumulative percent valid less than 2,500 974 16.3 16.6 16.6 2,501 to 5,000 1,047 17.5 17.8 34.4 5,001 to 10,000 861 14.4 14.7 49.0 10,001 to 25,000 1,169 19.6 19.9 68.9 25,001 to 50,000 784 13.1 13.3 82.3 50,001 to 150,000 388 6.5 6.6 88.9 over 150,000 653 10.9 11.1 100.0 total 5,876 98.4 100.0 missing 95 1.6 total 5,971 100.0 tables 8 and 9 provide frequency and descriptive statistics related to respondents’ experiences with aggressive or problematic interactions with parents. table 8 reports the number and percentage of respondents who experienced one or more incidents in a given category, as reported by respondents based on their overall career (i.e., since they started teaching). table 9 reports descriptive statistics for the total number of aggressive or problematic interactions; in other words, the sum of all aggressive or problematic interactions, per the seven types of interactions reported in table 8. e xploring parental a ggression 17 table 8 incidence of respondents reporting various problematic interactions with parents interaction frequency valid percent a parent has shouted at me in anger 1,930 36.0 a parent has used profanity directed toward me 1,506 27.9 a parent has verbally threatened me 820 15.2 a parent has sent numerous emails to harass me 443 8.3 a parent has detained or attempted to detain me against my will 300 5.6 a parent has damaged my property at home or school 122 2.3 a parent has hit, pushed, or attempted to hit or push me 91 1.7 table 9 summary of descriptive statistics for the number of total incidents reported variable n min. max. mean sd incidents reported 5,426 0 255 3.2254 10.567 the results presented in table 8 reflect responses to questions regarding the prevalence of problematic behaviors that respondents had experienced in their careers. the most prevalent form of aggressive/problematic behavior was verbal aggression. more than one in three respondents reported that a parent of a child at the school had shouted at them in anger, more than one in four reported that a parent had used profanity directed toward the respondent, and c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 18 more than one in seven reported having been threatened verbally. considerably less common, about one in eight respondents reported having been harassed as a result of receiving numerous emails. far fewer respondents had experienced any of several more serious situations: a parent detaining or attempting to detain the teacher in a location in which they did not want to be (5.6%); a parent damaging their property at school or at their home (2.3%); or a parent pushing, hitting, or attempting to push or hit them (1.7%). the results presented in table 9 represent descriptive statistics for the variable measuring the total number of incidents reported in the above-described seven categories of aggressive or problematic interactions with parents. of note, the mean of 3.2 is potentially misleading as an illustration of what is a typical among respondents. the median statistic for this variable is in fact 0, and a total of 3,243 respondents (approximately 60%) reported no interactions in one of these categories. thus, the majority of respondents in the sample have never experienced aggressive or otherwise problematic behavior from a parent. a sizable minority did report having some but not many incidents; an additional 30% reported between one and eight total instances of aggressive parent behavior or problematic interactions with parents. less than 3% of respondents reported 20 or more incidents of such interactions over the course of their career. table 10 reports frequency statistics for the variable measuring respondents’ perceptions of the most important causes of problems between teachers and parents. e xploring parental a ggression 19 table 10 summary of frequency statistics for respondents’ perception of most important causes of problems with parents variable frequency percent valid percent cumulative percent valid discipline 3,016 50.5 51.4 51.4 grades 1,637 27.4 27.9 79.3 special education 417 7.0 7.1 86.4 other issues 285 4.8 4.9 91.3 attendance 228 3.8 3.9 95.2 curriculum 117 2.0 2.0 97.2 sports 120 2.0 2.0 99.2 other extracurricular 44 .7 .8 100 total 5,864 98.2 100.0 missing 107 1.8 total 5,971 100.0 more than half of the respondents reported that discipline was the most important cause of problems with parents, while another 28% cited grades as the leading cause. other notable causes included special education, cited as most important by 1 in 14 respondents, and attendance issues, cited as most important by 1 in 25 respondents. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 20 investigative analyses the results reported in the previous section represent measures of central tendency and variance among the nearly 6,000 respondents in the sample, thus depicting their collective experiences with regard to aggressive or otherwise problematic parent behavior directed toward teachers. as a follow-up to that general depiction, here we investigate the extent to which reported experiences vary according to characteristics of the respondent, the school, and the community. the results from a one-way analysis of variance (anova) that was performed to investigate whether experiences with aggressive or otherwise problematic parent interactions vary according to the level of the school are reported in tables 11 and 12. the dependent variable for this analysis operationalizes respondents’ experiences as the total number of incidents reported from among the categories in table 8. the factor variable is the grade level of the school (i.e., elementary, middle, or high school) table 11 summary of anova for number of incidents reported by school level sum of squares df mean square f between groups 1467.307 2 733.654 6.581** within groups 603802.379 5416 111.485 total 605269.686 5418 **p = 0.001 e xploring parental a ggression 21 table 12 post-hoc bonferroni comparison for number incidents reported by school level 95% ci comparisons mean difference (in reported incidents) std. error lower bound upper bound elementary vs. middle -1.130* 0.358 -1.989 -0.271 elementary vs. high -0.972* 0.336 -1.777 -0.166 middle vs. high 0.158 0.384 -0.762 1.079 * p < 0.05 anova results indicate that there is a significant difference in the number of aggressive parent behaviors or problematic parent interactions experienced by teachers at the three grade levels (f = 6.581, df = 2, p < .01). this suggests that the grade level of the teacher’s school affects the number of aggressive/problematic parent incidents experienced by the teacher. results of post hoc comparisons indicate that experiences for teachers at the elementary level differ significantly from that of each of the other two groups; elementary teachers experienced significantly fewer incidents than either middle or high school teachers. elementary teachers, on average, experienced 1.1 fewer incidents than middle school teachers, and .9 fewer incidents than high school teachers. the difference in the number of incidents experienced by middle school teachers when compared to high school teachers was not statistically significant. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 22 we next performed a multiple linear regression analysis to investigate whether salient teacher and school characteristics constitute viable predictors for the same dependent variable used in the anova (i.e., the variable measuring the total number of instances of aggressive or problematic interactions with parents reported by the respondent). independent variables included respondent’s sex, age, total years of experience in education, and educational attainment, along with school enrollment size and community population size. prior to performing the analysis, relevant statistical tests and transformations were performed to ensure that variables met assumptions for regression analysis. table 12 summary of regression analysis for variables predicting number of incidents reported by teacher (n = 5, 691) variable b se b β sex of respondent .129 .062 .048 age of respondent -.010 .004 -.100** years experience in education .004 .005 .031 level of educational attainment .080 .038 .054* school enrollment .020 .018 .030 community size .057 .012 .108*** notes: adjusted r2 = .162; *p ≤ .05; **p ≤ .01;***p ≤ .001 the r2 statistic in table 12 indicates that 16.2 percent of the variation in experiences with problematic parent behaviors is explained by the variables included in the regression equation. the results suggest that respondent’s age, respondent’s level of educational attainment, and e xploring parental a ggression 23 community size where the respondent was located all had statistically significant associations with problematic parental behavior. specifically, the regression results suggest (1) that, on average, the higher the age of the teacher, the less likely it is that the teacher will experience aggressive and/or problematic interactions with parents; (2) that, on average, the higher the education level of the teacher, the more likely it is that the teacher will experience aggressive and/or problematic interactions with parents; and (3) that, on average, the larger the community, the more likely it is that a teacher will experience aggressive and/or problematic interactions with parents. discussion interpretation of results as noted earlier, data limitations in this study prevent us from making generalizations to the larger population with statistical certainty. in other words, we cannot draw statistical conclusions. given the close similarities between teachers, schools, and communities in the sample and in the larger population, we can, however, draw logical conclusions based upon the results reported here. first, the experiences and perspectives of nearly 6,000 kentucky teachers were assessed regarding the incidence and prevalence of problematic behavior among parents. the results presented here suggest that although a substantial minority of teachers had experienced verbal abuse and threats from parents, only a small percentage of teachers had actually experienced any physical aggression from parents. in other words, while the problem of parental aggression was present for many of the teachers in the study, the issue was more verbal than physical. this finding, coupled with the fact that much of the literature on parental aggression against teachers is found in popular or trade magazines (e.g., time, good housekeeping, times c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 24 educational supplement), further suggests the need for scholarly research in this area. based on the results of this study, most teachers are likely to experience somewhat regular, if primarily verbal, conflict with parents. contradicting anecdotal evidence and media accounts of numerous threats and assaults on parents, the results presented here suggest that teachers in this sample experienced only a small amount of physical confrontations with parents. the explanation for this perception that teachers are at great risk of physical assault by parents may be attributed to the rarity of these types of events, rather than their frequency. whenever a teacher is assaulted by a parent, it becomes a newsworthy event, not just at the local level, but often at the state, regional, and sometimes national levels as well. thus, these rare events often dominate the news, saturating those areas with news accounts about these events. this saturation increases public perceptions that these events are regular occurrences in the school setting when, in actuality, verbal threats from parents far outnumber any sort of physical threat against teachers in the school setting. secondly, respondents indicated that the primary cause of conflict between parents and teachers is discipline. this finding suggests that teachers who regularly discipline students may increase the likelihood of parental conflict by doing so. consequently, it is important that school administrators be aware of this relationship and take steps to reduce potential for conflict between parents and teachers over disciplinary actions in their schools. one method through which administrators can do so is by supporting teachers when they discipline students and, if needed, by serving as the disciplinarian for teachers for particularly problematic children so teachers can focus on the academic tasks at hand, and not worry about increasing their risk for victimization by firmly and fairly enforcing classroom rules. e xploring parental a ggression 25 anova results also suggested that the experiences of elementary teachers with regard to parental aggression or problematic interactions differ from that of either middle school or high school teachers. specifically, both middle and high school teachers are, on average, likely to experience about one more incident of problematic parental behavior than an elementary teacher is. to characterize the practical significance of this one incident difference, it is worth recalling that approximately 60% of respondents reported no such incidents, and that 90% of respondents reported eight or fewer incidents. the one incident difference represents a 33% increase over the mean of 3.2, and a 100% increase over the median of 0. thus, differences in the experiences of elementary school teachers, when compared to those of middle school and high school teachers, are not only statistically significant, but substantively significant as well. the grade-level differences suggest that efforts in this area should be targeted at the middle and high school levels. teachers were more likely to experience incidents of parental aggression or other problematic interactions than their older counterparts, as were teachers working in larger communities. the relationship between age and exposure to increased incidents of parental aggression is intuitive, as younger teachers often do not have the life experience and maturity of their older counterparts, who have often developed strategies through the “school of hard knocks” that are effective in avoiding parental conflict. additionally, given that teachers working in smaller communities are generally more likely to have long-standing roots in that community (and often have attended the same school in which they are currently working) and are also more likely to interact with the parents of their children in settings outside of the school, this finding makes sense as well. it is also possible that differences in the number and/or severity of disciplinary incidents is a contributing factor—rural and small town schools, on average, c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 26 experience fewer incidents and fewer serious incidents (nces, 2006). this difference is thus impacted by differences in community dynamics in urban, suburban, and rural settings. the regression results also suggest that teachers with more advanced degrees were more likely to experience incidents of parental aggression or other problematic interactions than their counterparts without those advanced degrees. although this relationship was somewhat unexpected, it is not completely surprising. it may be that teachers who return for additional graduate courses are more willing to experiment with innovative educational practices and theories than their counterparts who do not. these practices may make parents that are unfamiliar with these strategies uncomfortable and thus more likely to confront these teachers than they would be to confront their less innovative counterparts. it could also be that teachers with higher levels of education are less willing to tolerate questions or suggestions about their educational strategies and methods from parents. this resistance may make conflict with parents more likely. further analysis is needed to unravel these relationships. recommendations for future research the results of this descriptive and exploratory project warrant further inquiry into this line of research. specifically, the following recommendations for future research are offered: (1) replication of this project using a more representative data sample and additional salient variables, and (2) investigation of parental perceptions at different grade levels about school discipline, attendance, and other issues identified by respondents as causes of parent aggression and other problematic interactions. data for use in a replication or modified replication of this study could be obtained using different sampling and collection methods to achieve a more appropriate set of respondents. additional variables that could be added to enhance the work include (1) discipline data about e xploring parental a ggression 27 the teacher and school, additions that would allow for examining the influence of teachers’ disciplinary action and also provide some additional context for exploring school level influences; (2) locale codes from nces, an addition that would allow for more precise consideration of the influence of community characteristics by using an established 12 item typology describing school locations on a rural-suburban-urban continuum; and (3) types and perceptions of coursework completed by respondents as part of their graduate programs, additions that would allow for exploring the influence—and potential for influence—of graduate instruction on practices related to student discipline and parent engagement issues. the use of national datasets such as the schools and staffing survey and the national household education survey, both products of the national center for education statistics, should also be explored. a related line of inquiry with the potential to inform findings in this line involves the investigation of parent perceptions of salient issues identified in this project (e.g., discipline). results of such inquiry could confirm teacher perceptions that certain types of issues and interactions lead to aggression and problematic interactions. moreover, and more exploratory in nature, investigations in this line of inquiry would allow researchers to explore the hypothesis that differences in parent behaviors at different school grade levels are in part the result of changes in the perceptions of those parents as their children move through the different schooling levels, with a particular focus on the middle school transition years. recommendations for policy and practice the results presented here reveal that incidents involving problematic interactions with parents are far more likely to be verbal than physical, that middle school and high school teachers are more likely to experience such incidents, and that discipline is a primary cause of such incidents. with that in mind, the following recommendations for policy and practice are c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 28 offered: (1) that pre-service training and in-service professional development incorporate strategies for dealing effectively with verbal conflict; and (2) that schools involve parents in developing, implementing, and monitoring discipline policies and procedures. because teachers are most likely to experience verbal conflict with parents, providing training for teachers on how to avoid, prevent, and resolve verbal confrontations with parents (e.g., de-escalation strategies for preventing verbal confrontations from turning into physical conflict) is recommended for both pre-service and in-service teachers. additionally, training and support for teachers in developing non-confrontational approaches to student discipline are recommended. while providing training and support in these areas for all teachers is clearly warranted by results reported here, findings also suggest, if more tentatively, that inexperienced teachers likely need the most support and assistance if they are to build capacity in these areas. because discipline incidents are a primary cause of teacher-parent conflict, based on teacher perceptions, disciplinary policy and practice should be procedurally clean, should involve parents, and should provide for transparency in its development, implementation, and monitoring. schools can be proactive in preventing problems here by: (1) developing clear discipline codes, including consequences for specific infractions; (2) enforcing rules consistently and without favoritism; (3) communicating the rules to parents, students, and the community at large; and (4) creating and maintaining a process through which parents can address their concerns regarding discipline issues with the principal and, if needed, the superintendent and school board. involving parents in the process of developing discipline codes can be a very effective approach (sheldon & epstein, 2002). a clear disciplinary code and a process for addressing appeals and other issues should also be thoroughly explained in the student handbook. recent research (nces, 2006) suggests that only 60% of schools have a formal process to obtain e xploring parental a ggression 29 parent input on policies related to school crime and discipline, and only 19% of schools have a program that involves parents at school in helping to maintain school discipline. moreover, data on disciplinary incidents should be assembled and published in a manner that is accessible to parents and other interested parties in the community. schools should also be proactive in disseminating this information to parents at every opportunity and through a variety of media (e.g., print, electronic). clearly and proactively communicating 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(2001, may 29). bbc new online. retrieved june 4, 2005 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/education/1357670.stm. rucci, r. (1991). dealing with difficult people: a guide for educators. washington, d.c.: office of educational research. (eric document reproduction service no. 336810). sax, l. j., gilmartin, s. k., & bryant, a. n. (2003). assessing response rates and non-response bias in web and paper surveys. research in higher education, 44(4), 409–431. sheldon, s., & epstein, j. (2002). improving student behavior and school discipline with family and community involvement. education and urban society, 35(1), 4-26. sports illustrated. (2000, july). out of control. sports illustrated, 87-95. st. john-brooks, c. (2001). mutual respect will tame pit-bull parents. times educational supplement, 4437, 23. tomsic, m. l., hendel, d. d., & matross, r. p. (2000). a world wide web response to student satisfaction surveys: comparisons using paper and internet formats. paper presented at the 40th annual meeting of the association for institutional research, cincinnati, oh, may 21-24, 2004. trickett, p., & kuczynski, l. (1986). children’s misbehaviors and parental discipline strategies in abusive and nonabusive families. developmental psychology, 22, 115-123. trumbull, e., rothstein-fisch, f., greenfield, p. m. (2000). bridging cultures in our schools: new approaches that work. washington, d.c.: office of educational research. (eric document reproduction service no. ed404954). trump, k. s., & moore a. (eds.). (2001). deal effectively with hostile visitors to the front office. inside school safety, 6(2), 1-10. underwood, d., kim, h., & matier, m. (2000). to mail or to web: comparisons of survey response rates and respondent characteristics. paper presented at the annual forum of the association for institutional research. cincinnati, oh. (eric document reproduction service no. ed 446513). c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 34 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo volume vi citation yüksel, s c abstract the purp project fo researche teachers. had more have had responsib keyword 13, numbe ews of sc s. & karada councils proj t pose of this s or school co ers develope based on th e positive vie d positive vie bility of the c ds: school c er 4 chool ma e ağ, e. (2010) ject. current study is to de ouncils whic ed a perceptio he results of ews than ma ews regardin councils wil councils pro anagers a coun sed uluda engi eskisehir os . views of s t issues in e etermine teac ch have been on scale for this research ale teachers a ng the school ll turn projec oject, democ and teach ncils proje dat yüksel ag universi in karadağ smangazi u school mana education, 13 chers' views n used in sch the project ( h, female tea and high sch l councils pr ct practices i cracy, schoo hers rega ect l ity ğ university agers and te 3(4). retriev s regarding d hools in turk (pspda), w achers and el hool teacher. roject, the la into a mere r ols is arding th eachers rega ved from http democracy e key. in the st which was ad lementary sc . although st ack of power ritual. sn 1099-83 e school arding the sc p://cie.asu.ed ducation and tudy, the dministered t chool teache taff member r and 39x chool du/ d the to the ers rs current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 views of school managers and teachers regarding the school councils project the 21st century places high demands on education with regard to globalisation, multiculturalism, democracy, and human rights. students should graduate from schools after they incorporate an understanding of democracy that satisfies these demands. teaching students about democracy and other relevant subjects through theoretical lessons alone does not raise awareness about democracy in students. the key factor is that students accumulate experiences based on the principles of democracy at many points in their lives, but these opportunities occur more frequently at school. there is no doubt that teaching theoretical information to students is insufficient to make democracy a lifestyle. the most basic characteristic of democracy is that it is an idea form and a cultural matter. it cannot be integrated into individuals through laws, regulations, enforcement, or teaching through school lessons. the information should be conveyed through experiences. the individual should learn democratic values at school; however, the key is to practice these values with the help of the teacher (beane, 2005; mosher, kenny, & garrod, 1994). . practicing democratic education depends on configuring school and class media based on the principles of democracy. rusch (1994) states that democratic practices at schools should consist of two related parts: (i) the values achievable in reality (creating an intellectual base for beliefs and practices); and (ii) specific practices for attendance of the individuals at school completely. calabrese (1990) states that there are several basic democratic practices, including: of the promotion of justice, a cherishing of equity, the maintenance of integrity, constituents (active and full participation), a norm of inclusion, equity in the distribution of resources, and reasonable recourse for grievances. considering these principles, it is evident that a participatory structure should be formed at school. school councils project 3 one of the most important elements of democracy is participation. participation is the basis of an education in democracy. democracy may be better learned in democratic environments where participation is encouraged, ideas are sincerely expressed and discussed, freedom of expression is truly experienced by teachers and students, and justice exists. democratic relationships between all parties (managers, teachers, students, other employees, and families) participating in school life are desired. these democratic relationships will facilitate the formation of a participatory environment. as a result, providing democratic participation in schools is a process that includes managers, students, and guardians. a system to increase the effectiveness of teachers and guardians was planned during the 1990s, and efforts were undertaken to implement this system (levin, 1998). recognition of teachers within school management and their contributions to making these decisions were seen as a factor in making the education process democratic. the idea of student participation in school management appeared after the 1990s (perlin, 2004). school councils one of the key methods for raising student participation in school management and making democracy education effective is to form “student councils” “student assemblies”. according to this practice, managers, teachers, and students should work in cooperation for modifications at school (alderson, 2000). school councils also gather students and make them aware of projects at their schools (baginsky & hannam, 1999). students can explain their demands about their schools, which will increase the quality of education and bring attention to matters ignored by management. students will take responsibility during councils, rather than observe events around them as a spectator; this will lead students to show the required sensitivity that is appropriate in these councils. they will not hesitate to explain their ideas about the events current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 (cotmore, 2004). according to studies, students, teachers, and guardians look favourably on active student participation in management, and believe that school councils are effective and helpful in developing democratic behaviours (parker & leithwood, 2000; veugelers & kat, 2003). however, according to some studies, teachers and students do not look on active participation of students in management with the same favour; teachers do not believe that student councils have a positive effect on schools and classes (parker & leithwood, 2000). some teachers complain that student councils create additional work burdens. students state that they cannot explain their ideas in meetings due to the time restrictions. however, it is understood that students are willing to take responsibility and have positive views on school councils (alderson, 2000; cotmore, 2003). however, it has been observed that school managers do not want student groups to participate in matters relating to schools, thus keeping their participation levels to a minimum (clune & white, 1988; conley, 1991; 1993; malen & ogawa, 1988). school councils in the turkish educational context turkish education system has democratic, modern, scientific secular and coeducational characteristics. the purpose of the turkish education system is to increase the welfare and happiness of the turkish citizens and turkish society, to support and facilitate economic, social and cultural development in national unity and integration and to make the turkish nation a constructive, creative and distinguished partner in modern civilization (meb, 2002). the age of entry to school is six or seven in turkish education system. since 1997, secondary education follows eight years of basic education and covers general, vocational and technical high schools that provide three or four years of education. general high schools do not prepare students for a specific profession but rather for higher education. the following institutions are considered to fall within general secondary education: high schools; high schools with intensive foreign school councils project 5 language teaching; anatolian high schools where a foreign language english, french or german is taught during the preparatory year and the teaching of certain subjects is provided in that language in upper grades; science high schools; teacher training high schools; anatolian fine arts schools; multi-curricula high schools; evening high schools; and private high schools. in general high schools, the average number of weekly periods of teaching in each grade varies from a minimum of 33 to a maximum of 41. in their second year, students in high schools where the general programmer is applied may choose to attend branches which specialize in the natural sciences, literature and mathematics, the social sciences, foreign languages, art or physical education. vocational high schools provide three-year secondary education, train qualified people for various professions and also prepare students for higher education. technical high schools offer a four-year programmer. subjects offered in the first year are the same as in the vocational high schools. secondary education students obtain the diploma which is the prerequisite for entry to higher education (whed, n.d.). the most important reason for this development, the european union and the modernization of the turkish education system examines the reconstruction of turkish history/social studies curriculum and accesses how well the program conforms to the established european union (eu) directions and norms. in this age of globalization, the extent to which the eu can impose its educational norms on turkish education as the membership process unfolds is in question. therefore, the problem addressed in this study concerns the relationship between educational and national development in turkey and the degree of influence the eu can exercise appropriately on that development (tarman, 2008). although positivism –as well as its corollary in the social sciences, structuralfunctionalism – continues to resurface as an influential paradigm, the last two decades have witnessed the emergence of a variety of new perspectives and approaches. these include: critical current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 theory (foster, 1986), hermeneutics, feminism (capper, 1999), (critical) pragmatism (maxcy, 1991, 1995), and postmodernism/post-structuralism (capper, 1998, 1993) (see also, derrida, 1982, 1984; lyotard, 1984; foucault, 1979, 1992; anderson & grinberg, 1998). anderson and ginsberg (1998) have offered a subtle theoretical account of how foucault’s ideas on power can illuminate the field of educational administration. the deployment of a range of discursive techniques has been an essential element in the legitimating of educational policies and management practices in a period of rapid change. according to turan (2000), citizens have not comprehended the importance of participatory democracy in turkey since the turkish government has not made the necessary arrangements in schools which would create a democratic environment or prepared the administrators who would implement those arrangements. school councils and practices for cooperative decision-making have been seen in canada, the u.s., new zealand, australia, and the united kingdom (malen & ogawa, 1992; mohrman, wohlstetter & associates, 1994; murphy & beck, 1995). these practices have also been started in turkey. democracy education has consistently been discussed in turkey. one of 15 basic principles in turkish education is to provide democracy education (official gazette, 24 june 1973). considering the legal fundamentals of education, this indicates the importance that is attached to education. however, the quality of democracy education has frequently been discussed. theoretical teaching in democracy education in turkey has been dominant, and attitudes and skills have been ignored until recent years. with respect to the theoretical teaching of democracy to students, subjects regarding human rights and democracy have been included in other lessons. in addition, lessons regarding “human rights and democracy” are beginning to be school councils project 7 taught in elementary and senior schools after the relevant program was recently developed in turkey. however, it is claimed that the contents of these lesson are insufficient (kepenekçi, 2000) and the subjects of human rights and democracy are not properly emphasized in lesson books (i̇nal, 2004; akbaşlı, 2000). theoretical aspects of democracy were discussed within lessons; however, there was no practical application that could help students relate to democracy at schools. thus, discussions of organising school councils began in turkey, and “the project for democracy education and school councils -pdesa” was put into effect. this project was enabled by a protocol signed between the ministry of national education (mne) and the turkish grand national assembly (tgna) on 13 january 2004, and was based on the idea that democracy can only be learned through practice. in the same year, pilot practices of the project began at 300 schools. due to the positive results that were obtained, pdesa was implemented in all schools across turkey in the 2004-2005 academic years. “the project for democracy education and school councils pdesa,” executed by the ministry of national education (mne) and the turkish grand national assembly (tgna), cooperatively aims to raise children, starting at early ages, with an awareness of democracy. this will make students more sensitive to democratic subjects, such as elections, becoming elected, voting, critical thinking, cooperation, participation, forming public opinion, and the adoption of democratic leadership (meb, 2007). there are three separate councils in the execution of this project. first, the school assembly is founded according to the votes of all students at the school; this assembly assigns one student as president through election. the city’s student assembly is founded on a general city basis, and assigns one student as president through election, who is then sent to the tgna to represent the city assembly. the presidents coming from various cities make up the turkish current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 students’ assembly, and discuss matters relevant to education in their cities during sovereignty week, which starts on the april 23rd of each year. the city’s student assembly notifies the minister of national assembly of its decisions, reached during this week, as recommendations for education (tezgel, 2006). there is no doubt that school managers and teachers are key factors in democracy education and in the execution of the projects for school councils. studies on attitudes, thoughts and behaviours of managers and teachers with respect to turkish democracy education indicate that managers and teachers adopt democratic principles and also consider themselves sufficient to practice them at school (bilgen, 1993; işıkgöz, 1999). however, there are often shortcomings in teachers’ democratic behaviours (ertürk, 1970; tezcan; 1982; gözütok, 1995; şahin, 1995). the physical conditions of schools often obstruct teachers’ abilities to demonstrate democratic behaviours (yeşil, 2001). studies conducted after the implementation of democracy education and the project for school councils confirm the results mentioned above. accordingly, teachers’ opinions on democracy are positive, and they believe that democracy can only be learned through education. therefore, they reported positive views regarding the project; however, there are a number of problems with respect to execution due to school conditions. teachers complain that participatory mechanisms cannot be instituted at schools, and that school managements have general intentions to supervise participation and keep the project under control (cılga, 2004; emir & kaya, 2004; kıncal & uygun, 2006; metin, 2006). however, these studies were conducted only a short time after the project was put into effect. consequently, it was assumed that teachers were still experiencing difficulties in satisfying the requirements of the project for democracy; therefore, results obtained before the project is fully and correctly integrated may be subject to change. as a result, it was decided to review the practicability of school councils at the school councils project 9 end of the third year. the aim of this study is to determine teachers’ views about democracy education and the project for school councils and its practice. the key role of teachers in democracy education and the importance of practising the concepts at school and in class have both been highlighted in the literature (giroux & penna, 1983; holmes, 1991). thus, teachers’ contributions to the execution of the project will remain high, and there is no doubt that opinions on the project will directly affect the result of its execution. method participants this is a descriptive study and was carried out on 235 managers and teachers working in istanbul and bursa at the end of the 2006-2007 academic years. istanbul and bursa are intensely populated cities, and are also industrial and commercial centres. migration to these cities occurs at high rates. as a result, schools in these cities contain students from lower, middle, and higher socio-economic classes. table 1 shows data regarding the schools in which the participants work. table 1 distributions of the schools at which the participants included in the sample work city elementary school senior school vocational high school total n % n % n % n % istanbul 61 45.9 29 21.8 43 32.3 133 100 bursa 50 49.0 25 24.5 27 26.5 102 100 total 111 47.2 54 23.0 70 29.8 235 100 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 almost half of those participating in this research (%47.2) work at elementary schools. 29.8 and 23 percent of the participants work at vocational high schools and senior high school respectively. table 2 shows data regarding personal features of the participants who were included in the study. table 2 distributions of personal features of the participants who were included in the study options 1 2 total gender male female – n 130 105 235 % 44.7 55.3 100.0 job manager teacher – n 19 216 235 % 8.1 91.9 100.0 education school of education other faculty – n 155 80 235 % 66.0 34.0 100.0 as can be seen at table 2, the ratios of participants were mostly female (55.3 %), teachers (91.9 %), and graduates of school of education (66 %). instrument in the study, the researchers developed the perception scale for the project for school councils project 11 democracy assembly (pspda), which was applied to the teachers. the scale was designed to question the views of the teachers regarding democracy education and the school council’s project applied in elementary and senior schools. the correlations of item-total and item-residue were calculated based on data collected from 235 teachers in order to determine the distinguishing powers of the individual criteria of the 37 questions in the draft form with respect to its features. correlation coefficients, which were obtained in item-total correlations, ranged between 0.19 and 0.80; item-residue correlations ranged between 0.23 and 0.78. all items were statistically meaningful. to determine the distinguishing power of the items existing in the draft form, raw scores (which were obtained from the scales) were ordered from highest to lowest. the scores can also be evaluated in one dimension due to the total point, which may be obtained from the form. a significant difference at a level of p<.01 was determined by comparing this ordering result with the average scores of the lower and upper groups of 27% through an independent group t test. analytic and confirmatory factor analyses were employed to determine the structural validity of pspda. analytic factor analysis for analytic factor analysis, kaiser meyer was calculated as olkin=.943, and bartlet analysis was calculated as [p<.01]. the perpendicular axial rotating technique was then performed to generalise the data to be obtained from the scale in this study. the varimax technique for perpendicular axial rotation was preferred due to the multifactor nature of the scale (kline, 1994; stapleton, 1997; stewens, 1996; rennie, 1997). it was understood that the items of the scale consisted of two (2) subscales. the specific values of each subscale are greater than 1. the total of the specific values of the subscales in the scale is 11.87. the explained variance percentage total is 56.57, and factor charges for the items of the subscales range between 0.44 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 and 0.78 (see table 3). when factor analysis was repeated for the remaining 21 items resulting from factor analysis, it was seen that the factor charges of these items were higher in only the subscale directly below. these subscales are as follows: (i) awareness of democracy: this consists of sixteen items, which are all positive. high scores obtained for this scale indicate that the project will help in raising awareness of democracy in the individuals. samples from the items: (1) endeavouring to be elected is a good opportunity for students to bring their personal characteristics to the fore. (2) pdesa encourages students to express their ideas. school councils project 13 table 3 the results of analytic factor analysis for the pspda scale subscales awareness of democracy national and global values item no factor charge factor charge item 15 .83 item 23 .76 item 14 .72 item 29 .71 item 28 .69 item 25 .68 item 30 .68 item 24 .67 item 17 .67 item 3 .67 item 20 .66 item 31 .63 item 27 .62 item 16 .61 item 9 .59 item 18 .57 item 6 .82 item 7 .78 item 21 .74 item 8 .57 item 11 .53 specific value 7.80 4.07 explained variance 37.18 19.38 (ii) national and global values: this consists of five items, all of which are positive. high scores obtained for this scale indicate that the project will contribute to raising national and global values in the individuals. samples from the items: (1) pdesa will help to raise awareness of scientific thinking in students. (2) pdesa will help to raise awareness of being open to global values in students. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 confirmatory factor analysis confirmatory factor analysis was performed in two stages as another effort to support the scale’s structural validity. in the first stage, it was determined whether the estimated values exceeded the theoretical limits before evaluation of the confirmatory analysis results of the subscales (which were obtained as a result of analytic factor analysis of the scale). according to the results, no values were found to exceed the theoretical limits. the consistency indices for confirmatory factor analysis seen on table 4 were calculated as chi-square (χ2) value [χ2=241.64, df=89, p<.01] for the scale. also, other consistency wellness indices [gfi=0.88, agfi=0.84, pgfi=0.65] show that the model recommended for scale is suitable. furthermore, factor charges, which were obtained in the confirmatory factor analysis for the scale, range between 0.54 and 0.81. table 4 consistency parameters of the scale for the confirmatory factor analysis model consistency parameter coefficient gfi 0.88 agfi 0.84 pgfi 0.65 df 89 χ2 241.64 χ2/df 2.71 cronbach’s alpha coefficients for interrelation in the scale were found to be 0.80 and 0.94 for the subscales, and 0.94 for the scale in general. table 5 shows the cronbach’s alpha school councils project 15 coefficients of subscales and item numbers of the subscales of the scale. table 5 reliability coefficients of the subscales and item numbers subscales n item number alpha 1awareness of democracy 235 16 0.80 2national and global values 235 5 0.94 total 235 21 0.94 table 5 shows the scale is consist of two subscales (awareness of democracy, and national and global values). cronbach’s alpha coefficients of subscales are 0.80 and 0.94. . analysing the data in the study, demographic variables of the sample group were grouped before statistical analysis, and the scale was then scored according to a 5-point likert system. sample number (n), describing demographic features of the teachers included in the sample, as well as percentage values (%), were calculated. sample number (n), mean (x), and standard deviation (sd) scores were calculated for the scores obtained by the scale. the distribution of the data was checked. kolmogorov-smirnov’s normality test was performed to determine whether the distribution was normal. according to the result of the test (p<.05), the data was not distributed normally. in other words, the distribution was non-parametric. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 table 6 test of normality: kolmogorov-smirnov dimension z df p 1awareness of democracy 2.32 235 .012 2national and global values 1.78 235 .013 total 1.43 235 .033 accordingly,  the mann-whitney-u test was employed to determine whether the scores of the teachers included in the sample varied depending on gender and job variables.  the kruskal wallis-h test was employed to determine whether the scores of the teachers included in the sample varied depending on the following variables: the type of school in which the teachers worked and the socio-economic level of the school’s district.  if variation was seen between the groups according to the kruskal wallis h test, the many whitney-u test was employed to determine the cause of the variation [between the groups].  pearson product moment correlation analysis was employed to determine the relationships between the scores of the teachers and their experiences. findings the findings of the research are as follows: table 7 shows the results of the many whitney-u test for variations in participants’ views regarding the school council’s project depending on gender. school councils project 17 table 7 mann-whitney u-test results for participants depending on gender subscale female n=105 male n=130 u z p x sd x sd 1awareness of democracy 4.09 .55 3.91 .62 5400.0 -2.756 .006 2national and global values 3.87 .62 3.54 .73 5069.5 -3.409 .001 total 7.97 1.10 7.45 1.22 5012.5 -3.499 .000 according to the statistical results, meaningful variations were found for female participants in favour of the school councils project in the subscales of awareness of democracy and national and global values, as well as in the total. that is, female managers and teachers are more positive about the school councils project than males. table 8 shows the results of the mann-whitney-u test for variations in participants’ views about the school council’s project depending on the job variable. table 8 mann-whitney u-test results for participants depending on the job variable subscales manager n=19 teacher n=216 u z p x sd x sd 1-awareness of democracy 3.76 .65 4.01 .59 1591.0 -1.626 .104 2-national and global values 3.53 .64 3.70 .71 1739.0 -1.109 .268 total 7.30 1.03 7.72 1.20 1561.5 -1.727 .084 current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 according to the statistical results, no meaningful variations were found for the school councils project in the subscales of awareness of democracy and national and global values, or in the total. thereby, the opinions of participants about school councils project do not change whether they are managers of teachers. this is an important finding. it would have been thought that managers would perceive such projects negatively since managers worry that students can have more power in school administration (levin, 1998), the discipline and governance of the school might be disturbed by the propaganda and election campaigns (furman & starratt, 2002). however, managers are aware of the importance of school councils project and perceive it positively like teachers. table 9 shows the results of the kruskal wallis-h test for variations in participants’ views about the school council’s project between groups divided according to the socioeconomic levels of particular school districts. school councils project 19 table 9 kruskal wallis-h test results for participants depending on the socio-economic levels of the districts in which the schools exist subscales group n xrank df p variation 1awareness of democracy lower 89 120.02 2 .488 –middle 134 118.69 upper 12 95.29 2national and global values lower 89 116.67 2 .892 –middle 134 118.11 upper 12 126.58 total lower 89 116.13 2 .930 –middle 134 119.46 upper 12 115.54 according to the statistical results, no meaningful variations were found for the school councils project in the subscales of awareness of democracy and national and global values, or in the total. that is, the opinions of the participants do not change according to socio economical level of schools at which they work. it had been assumed that those participants working at low socio-economical environments would have perceived this projects negatively since the process of the election might have been troublesome in those schools. however, these managers and teachers do not worry about the process of the elections. table 10 shows the results of the kruskal wallis-h test for variations in participants’ views about the school council’s project depending on the school type variable. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 table 10 kruskal wallis-h test results for participants teachers depending on the school type subscales group n xrank df p variation 1awareness of democracy elementary school 111 126.12 2 .150 –senior high school 54 104.59 vocational high school 70 115.47 2national and global values elementary school 111 129.24 2 .043 1-2senior high school 54 103.32 vocational high school 70 111.49 total elementary school 111 129.13 2 .043 1-2senior high school 54 102.38 vocational high school 70 112.40 according to table 10, it was found that variation occurs between elementary and senior school managers and teachers. the variation is in favour of the elementary school managers and teachers according to the results of the many whitney-u test performed to determine which groups caused the variation. however, no meaningful variation was found for the school council’s project in the subscale of awareness of democracy. these results show that managers and teachers in elementary schools perceive this project more positively. the reason why high school managers and teachers perceive this project negatively might be that there would be undesirable interactions among students during elections such as fighting. table 11 shows the results of the pearson product moment correlation analysis done to determine the correlation between participants’ views on the school council’s project and their job experience. school councils project 21 table 11 pearson correlation matrix between participants’ views and their job experience variables awareness of democracy national and global values total job experience -.060 -.057 -.063 n=235 according to the statistical results, no meaningful correlation were found for the school councils project in the subscales of awareness of democracy and national and global values, or in the total. namely, there is no relationship between job experience and the opinions about school council project. in fact, as the seniority of managers and teachers increase, they might have been expected to have negative opinions about this project. however, it is very important that there is no finding in this research supporting this expectation. this means that, this project does not meet considerable resistance by managers and teachers in schools discussion turkey, which is a candidate for member statehood in the european union, is undertaking efforts to satisfy eu criteria. accordingly, it is making changes in its social welfare and education systems, in addition to its official government bodies. without a doubt, one of the most important criteria of change is to make democracy an integral part of turkey’s social life. strengthening social attachment and enabling the efficient participation of citizens in social and political life are among the essential considerations of governments and the eu. schools are considered to be important organisations that can contribute significantly to the socialisation of citizens and the future development of democracy. accordingly, the council of europe current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 22 announced that 2005 was ‘european citizenship year through education’ (council of europe, 2008). the council of europe wishes to highlight the importance of education by raising awareness of citizenship and through participation in democratic society. it was seen in many european states in recent elections that participation and interest in political life and public life are decreasing, which is cause for concern, especially with regard to young people. this organisation aims to make young people aware of the need to participate in democratic life. the council of europe aims to highlight individuals’ critical thinking abilities, as well as their abilities to discuss matters within the limits of tolerance and logic (kepenekçi, 2000). thus, the development of individuals who have adopted democracy into their social lives and are respectful of democracy has become increasingly important. the turkish education system has been modified such that the lessons of democracy and human rights have been put into schools, and these subjects are now taught in social information lessons. the second stage requires that students learn democracy through experimentation and practical experience at schools. accordingly, the project for democracy education and school councils was put into effect. it is expected that democracy will effectively take place in school life if this project is successfully completed. without a doubt, two of the most important factors for integrating democracy into schools are managers and teachers. some of the most important tools in the project are the attitudes, beliefs, and views of teachers regarding democracy and democratic practices at school. the study shows that managers and teachers view the project favourably and believe in its benefits for students. this result is very important, especially since managers and teachers retain favourable views despite the additional workloads incurred due to the project. also, it is significant that managers and teachers have taken on such views since the beginning of the school councils project 23 project in light of the fact that many managers and teachers had poor views on the benefits of school councils in the beginning (leithwood & menzies, 1998). another important finding is that managers and teachers’ positive views do not vary according to the school’s socio-economic level. it was possible that staff at schools with lower socio-economic level would think that students could not benefit sufficiently from the project due to their lower socio-economic conditions. another interesting finding is that no correlation was found between the staff’s job experience and their views on the project. it is well-known that resistance to change increases with increasing experience and age (achinstein & ogawa, 2006; gonzalez, nelson, gutkin & shwery, 2004; mckenzie & scheurich, 2008; şimşek & seashore, 2008). it is significant that the staffs’ views on student council, as well as participation at older ages, were positive. more positive views from the staff working for elementary schools are normal. it may be said that students of elementary schools may benefit more from the project compared with those attending senior schools the important matter is whether this council will be effective in school management and practice. for example, leithwood & menzies (1998) failed to find strong proof for direct or indirect effects in their reviews, which covered 83 studies on the effects of site-based management and school councils. it must be said that various factors influence the effectiveness of school councils. these factors include: the makeup of the councils in direct relation to student participation (wohlstetter et. al., 1994), the council’s goals, clearly-defined objectives and purpose (daresh, 1992; jenni, 1991; malen, ogawa & kranz, 1990), and the management style of the council (easton & storey, 1994). in considering the school councils project from these points of view, the election process for making up the council was clearly defined. however, the council’s goals and mission were not defined. in fact, students in the council were not authorised current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 to make decisions in the school, and they carried no significant responsibilities. the authority is mostly held by a central organisation in the ministry, and partially by school managers, as was previously the case. as a result, although staff members have had positive views regarding the school councils project, the lack of power and responsibility of the councils will turn project practices into a mere ritual. unfortunately, the lack of power and responsibility of the councils (and consequently, the students) indicates that the traditional approach is still valid; this approach underestimates student participation in decision-making processes, considering them to be insufficient, illiterate, and unreliable. however, when schools fail to rely on students, who account for the main element of the school, the school fails to rely on democracy. development of a democratic lifestyle at school depends on raising awareness of ‘us’ in a school’s mentality. consequently, the project should be seated on strong foundations, relieved of its mere ‘project’ status, and made into a reality in practice. in addition, school councils should be authorised as required by a democratic lifestyle. as a result, individuals will make democracy a lifestyle in the future, which will influence and contribute to the development of democracy in society. for these reasons, turkish ministry of education should give more power to the school councils since this research reveals that managers and teachers favor school councils. thus, these educators are not expected to resist or obstruct the activities of school councils. in this respect, the power of school councils should be increased and its participation in school administration should be encouraged. as a result of this, democracy will strongly take place at schools and students will acquire more easily the democratically attitudes. this research reveals the opinions of managers and teachers about school councils project. the same topic can be studied with different samplings. moreover, quantitative and school councils project 25 qualitative research can be conducted to find the possible problems in the operation of school councils in high schools. since senior high school managers and teachers perceive this project more negatively, the reasons for this negative perception can be studied in detail by conducting research in high schools. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 26 references achinstein, b., & ogawa, r. t. 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(eric document reproduction service no. ed479166). whed, (no date). world higher education database. london: macmillan. wohlstetter, p., smyer, r., & mohrman, s. (1994). new boundaries for school-based management: the high-involvement model. educational evaluation and policy analysis, 16(3), 268-286. yeşil, r. (2001). i̇lköğretim düzeyinde okul ve ailenin demokratik davranışlar kazandırmadaki etkisi [the effects of schools and families on the elementary school students in the process of gaining democratic behaviours] unpublished doctoral dissertation, atatürk university, erzurum, turkey. school co about th authors affiliatio address 16059 g email: s biograp sedat y univers democra engin k osmang construc ouncils project he authors : sedat yük on: uludag s: uludag u gorukle, bu sedaty@ulu phical infor yüksel is an ity. his res acy educati karadağ is a gazi univer ctivism, adv t ksel & eng g university university, ursa, turke udag.edu.tr rmation: n associate p search inter ion and effe an assistant rsity. his re vanced edu gin karadağ y & eskise education ey r professor o rests includ fect of teach t professor esearch inte ucational st ğ hir osmang faculty, d of curriculu de hidden c hing course of elemen erests inclu tatistics. gazi unive department um and ins curriculum, es in teache ntary educa ude educati ersity of educati struction at student re er education ation at esk ional leader onal scienc uludag sistance, n. kisehir rship, socia 31 ces, al current is volume authors articles publishe an kr hilla d ju an h mi ssues in educ e 13, num hold the copy s in other jour er and include ngela abeyta rista adams ary andrelch diana barela ulia boukara ndrew darian aiying dong iriam emran cation vol. 13 curr mber 4 yright to artic rnals should b e the url of t provide a hik n n 3 no. 4 rent issu http:// cles published be addressed t the cie publi ed cie is cred edit exe lor katy e jeffr sec sar mar me amb seo tiff calv linds fac gusta jean de ues in e /cie.asu.e d in current is to the author. ication. permi dited and cop torial team cutive editor ri ellingford elizabeth his rey i. johnso ction editors rah heaslip rlene hinton elinda hollis ber johnston onghee kim fany o’neill vin richards say richerso culty advisers vo e. fischm nne m. power ebby zambo educati edu issues in educ reprints sho ission is here pies are not so m rs d rich on n n s on s man rs on issn cation. reque ould credit cie eby granted to old. ror ta kar luc ker jennife ky n 1099-83 ests to reprint e as the origi o copy any art ry schmitt apati sen ri visconti cy watson rie wilkins er wojtulewi yle wright 32 39x cie inal ticle, icz value of the first days of school field experience for teacher education candidates the value of experiencing the first days of school for preservice teachers sarah c. blackwell and kaye pepper school of education university of mississippi biographical information: sarah c. blackwell is an assistant professor in the department of curriculum and instruction. her research interests focus on teacher preparation, with emphasis on reflective instructional decision making and active participation by preservice teachers in educational settings. kaye pepper is an associate professor in the departments of curriculum and instruction and educational leadership. her primary research interests focus on the use of program evaluation results as an impetus for change and organizational leadership. correspondence should be addressed to: sarah c. blackwell, university of mississippi. guyton 308, university, ms, 38677. phone: (662) 915-5037. fax: (662) 915-6718. email: sblackwe@olemiss.edu abstract quality teacher education programs recognize the importance of field experiences in preparing teacher candidates. a field experience planned during the first days of school is invaluable to the success of a new teacher. the school of education faculty at the university of mississippi took on the challenge of implementing a first days of school field experience which proved to be beneficial to the teacher candidates. the information provided in this article explains the steps involved in implementing the plan, as well as the perceptions of the teacher candidates regarding the experience during the preparation program and later during their first year of teaching. value of the first days of school field experience for teacher education candidates field experience is one of the most common “real world” learning experiences implemented in schools of education across the united states (mcglinn, 2003). teacher education programs recognize the need for candidates to participate in a variety of quality field experiences. teacher education candidates also understand the importance of field experiences. according to guyton and mcintyre (1990), they often tend to believe that field experiences provide the only “real” learning in their teacher education programs. quality field experiences at the beginning of the school year provide candidates with many of the tools they need to be successful and prepare them to start the school year on the positive note their k-12 students deserve (sommers, 2000). probably the most frightening time for beginning teachers is the first day of school. insuring that teacher education candidates have an opportunity to experience the beginning of school prior to having their own classroom is essential. wong (2000) contends that the first day of school is the most important day of the school year because what the teacher does can determine success or failure for the entire year. teacher education candidates and beginning teachers deserve to know how to prepare for this most important time. teacher candidates often have misconceptions about what they believe is involved in beginning a school year (darling-hammond & bransford, 2005). however, first days of school field experiences provide candidates with an opportunity to see how classroom procedures and routines are established and put into motion, how teachers get to know their students and build an understanding of their families and communities, and how prior planning for instruction and procedures enhances classroom management (lepage, darling-hammond, akar, gutierrez, jenkins-gunn, and rosebrock, 2005). candidates better understand the challenges and necessary problem-solving skills inherent in teaching when they have the opportunity to actually experience the first days of school and build on that knowledge through class discussion later in coursework. in addition, these experiences allow them to make connections between the content learned in coursework and real-life experiences in the classroom (darling-hammond, hammerness, grossman, rust, and shulman, 2005). learning to make these connections increases the probability that the theories, concepts, and skills teacher candidates learn in coursework are remembered and used later as they begin their career (bransford, darlinghammond, and lepage, 2005). ross, hughes and hill (2001) acknowledges there are advantages for learning when students are required to connect educational concepts with application observed in school classrooms. they conclude that field experiences, such as the first days of school experience, produce measurable improvement in understanding theory taught in university courses. it is important for teacher education candidates to recognize that reflection and evaluation are as important as having adequate content knowledge and skills for teaching. in addition, they should learn from their teaching so that it continually improves (bransford, darling-hammond, and lepage, 2005). according to moore (2003), field experiences hold great potential for providing candidates with opportunities to practice decision-making. university instructors advise teacher candidates about the instructional situations they encounter in the classroom, yet through reflection candidates analyze classroom situations and practice effective decision-making skills. student teaching is one field experience opportunity in which routine reflection focuses on classroom situations. moore (2003) contends that teacher education programs need to provide opportunities for teacher candidates, their supervisors, and their mentor teachers to examine and discuss the rationale behind decisions prior to student teaching. ingersoll (2003) suggests that understanding the issues beginning teachers face and how university faculty can support them during the initial years of teaching is a proactive measure for maintaining those new to the profession. teacher education programs realize the need to provide field experience opportunities that include preparing for a new school year. the goal of the teacher preparation program is to provide teacher candidates with the experiences necessary to build the complex schema required to be an effective classroom teacher (holing, 1998). in order to help future teachers cope with the challenges and diversity of current schools and classrooms, darling-hammond (2005) recommends participating in more authentic experiences. assisting a classroom teacher prior to the first day of school and on the first day of school offers an excellent authentic experience to reduce candidates’ anxiety and heighten their awareness that teaching is complex and multifaceted. the challenge facing many teacher education programs is deciding how to implement a field experience during the first days of school since the starting dates for the k-12 school year and the starting dates for the university are different. a review of the teacher preparation programs across the nation revealed that some universities offer optional first days of school observation field experiences. in these optional programs, teacher education candidates choose to participate in the first days of school observation or elect to substitute another form of field experience. in areas where the k-12 school year begins after the beginning of the university school calendar, soe programs place candidates in local professional development school (pds) sites near the university. faculty at one university in canada found that placing candidates in pds sites was a very beneficial field experience for their candidates. placing candidates in schools on the opening day not only provides their candidates with insight into what it takes to prepare for the first day of school, but also provides the best possible preparation for the candidates’ own first day as a newly qualified teacher the following year (russell, 1999). after years of discussing the feasibility of implementing a first days of school field experience, the school of education faculty at the university of mississippi (um) took on the challenge of devising a workable plan for implementing a first days of school field experience and were rewarded with very encouraging results. the plan revealed promising effects in better preparing secondary, elementary and special education teacher education candidates for their first teaching job. unlike the optional field experience offered at other universities, the um school of education required all k-12 teacher education candidates entering their senior year to participate in the first days of school field experience. placing candidates in schools typically used for field experience within the teacher preparation program was not an option because the starting dates for k-12 schools and the university did not coincide. the solution was to allow teacher education candidates to complete this field experience at a public or private k-12 school that they found in the area where they were located during the month of august. implementing the plan in this manner makes it a unique and flexible alternative that better accommodates the teacher candidates. method the university of mississippi’s school of education has administered the teacher education program evaluation (tepe) to teacher candidates, university supervisors, clinical instructors and administrators in the cooperating schools for over 15 years. as a result of concerns raised on the tepe and during focus-group interviews held with candidates, the school of education planned and implemented the first days of school field experience with senior teacher education candidates. a review of the research supported this decision. candidates’ reflective journals, written during the field experience opportunity, were analyzed to determine their perceptions of the benefits of working with and observing an experienced teacher as they prepared for the school year. in addition, a follow-up study was conducted with graduates who participated in the initial first days of school field experience during their first year of teaching to determine the effectiveness of this experience. the research questions that guided the study are listed below. 1. what connections did teacher candidates make between university instruction and the k-12 setting in relation to preparing for a new school year? 2. what were first-year teachers’ perceptions as to the value of this experience? 3. what evidence was revealed that assisted in making improvements to the experience? research design a mixed-method research design was utilized to answer the questions posed in this study. incorporating both qualitative and quantitative methods allowed for a more complete understanding of the issue at hand. qualitative research incorporates participants’ own words as they relate their ideas, perceptions, and attitudes about the phenomenon. survey research utilizes quantitative methodology that provides an explanation of the phenomenon through numerical data (gay, mills, & airasian, 2006). sample the participants in this study were 244 elementary, secondary, and special education teacher candidates beginning their senior year at the university of mississippi. the first days of school field experience was required for all teacher education candidates at this stage in their program. participants consisted of one hundred sixty-one elementary teacher education candidates, sixty-five secondary teacher education candidates, and eighteen special education teacher education candidates. procedures university instructors talked with teacher education candidates about the importance of the first days of school and the benefits they would receive from participating in this “event” during the semester prior to their senior year. candidates were given a packet of materials that provided specific guidelines of what they were to observe, assist with, and reflect upon. (see guidelines at the end of this article.) other materials included an informational letter from the dean of the school of education and a form to be completed by the school principal where the field experience would take place. in order to make this field experience possible, teacher education candidates were allowed to assist in a k-12 school convenient to them during the opening of the school year, usually during the first weeks of august. it was their responsibility to contact the principal, provide the letter from the dean, and explain their assignment. the principal was asked to complete the form provided and return it to the school of education. the dean’s office then contacted the principal to thank him/her for providing this important opportunity for our student. the teacher education candidates were required to assist one day prior to the first day of school and on the first day of school. following the field experience, the principal notified the dean’s office verifying that the teacher education candidate completed the field experience requirements. candidates turned in their written responses for each item on the observation guideline sheet when they reported for senior orientation at the beginning of the university school year. guideline criteria included information about the physical environment of the classroom, procedures and routines used on the first day of school, implementation of a classroom management plan, and teacher affect. the reflection component of the guidelines required candidates to explain the rationale for decisions made by the classroom teacher and the implications for impact on student and teacher success. candidates were also asked to explain how their ideas about the first days of school were influenced during the observation. teacher education candidates’ written responses to the observation guidelines were utilized in the classroom management course the following semester during student teaching. the candidates’ knowledge and understanding of the importance of the first days of school were extended by using their written responses as a supplement to the course content. their understanding of classroom management was enhanced through group discussions focused on management issues related to their observations during the first days of school experience. in addition, course instructors discovered that some candidates had much richer experiences than others did. candidates were able to benefit from one another’s experience through the structured discussions facilitated by the instructors. data analysis in the initial stage of this study, student written responses to items on the observation guideline sheet were coded and categorized to identify themes within the responses. the follow-up portion of the study was completed by asking first year teachers who participated in the first days of school field experience to complete a survey to indicate their perceptions of the value of the experience. a percent was calculated for each response choice for each survey item. for the open-ended item, responses were coded and categorized to reveal themes. information for improving the first days of school field experience was generated from results of both the qualitative and quantitative approaches. results analysis of observation guideline written responses valuable information about candidates’ conceptualization of preparing for the first day of school was gathered through the analysis of their written responses. this analysis also provided feedback that assisted the school of education in making changes in the first days of schools field experience that better met the needs of the teacher education candidates. two themes emerged from the written responses: realizations about preparing for the school year and management on the first day of school. theme 1: realizations about preparing for the school year. the teacher education candidates assisted with a variety of tasks before the students reported to school. these tasks included putting up bulletin boards, hanging posters, writing names in textbooks, rearranging desks, and copying educational materials. the review of the written responses also indicated that some candidates were not aware of some important aspects of preparing for the first day of school. special education candidates helped prepare the physical environments of classrooms for students with special needs. in those classrooms, seating arrangements were altered to accommodate students with physical disabilities. a secondary candidate was surprised to discover that by the time she got to her school site, the classroom teacher had already worked for a couple of weeks to prepare the classroom for the first day of school, leaving her little to do. one elementary candidate, who observed in a fourth grade classroom, characterized the day before students arrived as a whirlwind of activity. he admitted being exhausted at the end of the day. these were important aspects of teaching that these students had not considered prior to this experience. although most responses indicated our teacher education candidates were impressed with the organization of the physical environments of the classrooms, one candidate noted that the classroom in which she observed remained very messy, even on the first day of school. she realized that this was not how she intended for her classroom to be. candidates from each program were surprised to discover that some school districts could not equip teachers and students with needed supplies. yet they pointed out that this too was a good learning experience because future teachers need to be prepared to deal with such shortages. teacher education candidates also learned that there is more to the beginning of school than preparing the classroom for students. in addition to duties that helped prepare the classroom, some candidates attended teacher’s meetings. one candidate attended a professional development meeting that presented various teaching strategies for teaching writing. another candidate met with kindergarten teachers to plan lessons for the first two weeks of school. one elementary candidate explained how teachers at her field experience site met to discuss test scores and plan strategies to improve students’ test scores. a teacher’s meeting, attended by one secondary candidate, called attention to the need for school safety and familiarized teachers with ways to recognize potential gang related problems. to her surprise, the principal introduced the school’s police officer. this was certainly a wake-up call. theme 2: realizations about managing a classroom on the first day on the first day of school, most teacher education candidates expressed amazement at how much the teacher had to ‘juggle’ in order to take care of everything. numerous candidates were surprised to learn how many duties teachers were responsible for in addition to teaching. candidates in all three programs indicated that many classroom teachers provided clear expectations for the students by going over the classroom rules and reading the handbook to the students. teacher education candidates expressed uncertainty as to how students would behave and how teachers would react. a candidate observing in a second grade classroom expressed pleasure as she observed her classroom teacher greet each student at the door with a big smile and welcome them into the classroom. one candidate was impressed with how well behaved the students were; while another teacher education candidate was shocked to see a child spanked on the first day of school. experiences like these validated the need for an effective classroom management plan, a topic covered in several of their teacher education courses. numerous teacher education candidates indicated that the first day of school was hectic. one candidate even described it as the most organized chaos he had ever experienced. however, even with the chaos, almost every candidate agreed that the experience had been beneficial. a secondary candidate stated that this chaos revealed another dimension. she pointed out that in previous observation experiences, schools were well into their school year and functioned like well-oiled machines. witnessing this disorderly aspect revealed a surprising side she never knew existed. one special education candidate said that she found it encouraging that the first days of school can be exciting and fun when the teacher is prepared. this field experience seemed to diminish fears of the first day of school. the narratives yielded interesting information concerning how teachers spent their time prior to and on the first day of school. many of the teacher education candidates were surprised by the amount of work required to effectively plan lessons and activities for the beginning days of a new school year. most candidates felt the observation was beneficial to them because they were able to see what happened behind the scenes as teachers prepared for the first day of school. some candidates admitted they were intimidated at first, while others stated they were skeptical of the value of the experience. however, after observing these initial days of school, most of the candidates were grateful to have had this experience and felt more confident to plan for the beginning of the year. follow-up survey results teacher education candidates who participated in the initial first days of school field experience were contacted during the fall of their first year of teaching. a follow-up survey, which consisted of ten likert-type items and one open-ended question, was sent electronically to these graduates. the intent of the survey was to determine the benefits of the experience to the new teachers and to assist university faculty in strengthening the experience for future teacher education candidates. responses to the items on the followup survey ranged from strongly agree, agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, disagree, to strongly disagree. results of the survey are included on table 1: table 1 first year teacher responses to follow-up survey the first days of school observation: strongly agree agree somewhat agree somewhat disagree disagree strongly disagree 1. provided me with an opportunity to assist a classroom teacher in preparing a classroom for the beginning of the school year. 54.5% 27.3% 9.1% 9.1% 2. provided me with an opportunity to assist in a classroom the first day students reported to school. 63.6% 18.2% 9.1% 9.1% 3. was beneficial to my preparation as a classroom teacher. 63.6% 9.1% 9.1% 9.1% 9.1% 4. helped prepare me for my first day of school as a classroom teacher. 54.5% 27.3% 9.1% 9.1% 5. reduced my anxiety about the first day of school. 36.4% 27.3% 18.2% 9.1% 9.1% 6. helped me organize my classroom for the first day of school. 27.3% 18.2% 18.2% 9.1% 27.3% 7. helped me organize materials for the first day of school. 36.4% 36.4% 9.1% 9.1% 9.1% 8. provided me with effective procedural techniques to implement on the first day of school. 36.4% 27.3% 18.2% 9.1% 9.1% 9. enhanced my content knowledge during class discussions in the classroom management class. 18.2% 27.3% 36.4% 9.1% 9.1% 10. should be continued as a required field experience component in the teacher education program. 18.2% 27.3% 36.4% 9.1% 9.1% note. cells that contain a indicate that no response was made for that rating category. although the return rate was low (41%), the survey revealed some interesting results. • overall, respondents were positive about the experience and the majority strongly agreed or agreed that it was beneficial in their preparation of becoming a classroom teacher and in preparing them for the first day of school. the majority also strongly agreed or agreed that the experience provided ideas on procedural techniques to use on the first day of school. • the respondents were not as positive, however, that the experience reduced their anxiety about the first day of school or that the experience helped them organize their own classrooms or materials for the first day of school. • when asked whether the experience strengthened their understanding of the connections between course content and the classroom and whether this experience should continue to be required, only 18.2% of respondents disagreed. to better prepare teacher education candidates for the first days of school, results of the follow-up survey indicated three areas that should receive focus in our teacher education program. the areas were related to reducing anxiety about the first day of school, and providing more guidance on organizing the classroom and instructional materials for the first day of school. teacher education candidates and first-year teachers provided suggestions for improvement on the teacher candidate narratives and on the follow-up survey that would strengthen these areas. these suggestions, described below, are being taken into consideration while planning for future first day of school experiences. teacher candidates felt the experience should last longer than two days; one response indicated that it would be beneficial to remain in the classroom the entire first week of school. other candidates responded that it would be beneficial to meet with the teachers several times throughout the summer as they prepared their classroom and considered lesson plans. the days prior to school starting are hectic for teachers and the candidates did not feel they had adequate time to talk with the teachers and ask questions related to their experience. after experiencing the first days of school as teachers in their own classrooms, first-year teachers indicated they realized much more was involved in starting a new school year. they suggested that spending more than two days in a k-12 school setting would be beneficial to future teacher education candidates. the extra time in the classroom at the beginning of the school year would allow more dialogue with veteran teachers and would involve them in a wider range of beginning of the year experiences. feedback from principals and classroom teachers was also positive. they indicated the extra help at this hectic time of year has been very beneficial to the classroom teacher and students. conclusion as lepage, et. al. (2005) indicated the opportunity to participate in preparation for the first day of school is an invaluable experience for teacher education candidates. being a part of this allows them to acquire knowledge about procedures and routines that should be in place; about planning for instruction and classroom management; and learning about the community, the students, and their families. findings from the study conducted at the university of mississippi support these ideas and indicate the need for the program to add more time to the first days of school experience to address teacher candidate concerns related to anxiety and preparation for the beginning of school. the results also provide information about the transfer of learning teacher candidates made between the university course content and the k-12 classroom that later became useful in their first year of teaching. allowing teacher candidates to observe and assist in-service teachers as they prepare for the beginning of the school year heightened candidates’ awareness of what was involved. providing a predetermined list of items on which candidates focus during the experience and use as they reflected on the time spent in the classroom proved very beneficial to their understanding of the importance of establishing a positive k-12 environment. as a follow-up activity, these candidates were surveyed during their first year of teaching to determine the value of the first days of school field experience and to provide suggestions of ways the experience may be improved. improvements to the field experience for future teacher education candidates were based on the reflections and the suggestions for improvement provided by the participants. the initial first days of school field experience plan used at the university of mississippi shows promise for programs searching for a plan that will allow their teacher education candidates to spend time in the k-12 setting at the beginning of the school year. however, each teacher preparation program must consider their own circumstances when developing a plan to meet the needs of the future teachers in their education preparation programs. if scheduling a field experience for teacher candidates during the first days of school is not possible because of time constraints, the use of video clips, interactive videos, or other electronic means could be an alternative. this opportunity will be beneficial to teacher candidates however it is structured. references bransford, j., darling-hammond, l., & lepage, p. (2005). introduction. in l. darlinghammond and j. bransford (eds.). preparing teachers for a changing world: what teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. (1-39). san francisco: josseybass. darling-hammond, l. (2006). powerful teacher education: lessons from exemplary programs. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. darling-hammond, l., hammerness, k., grossman, p., rust, f., and shulman, l. (2005). the design of teacher education programs. in l. darling-hammond and j. bransford (eds.). preparing teachers for a changing world: what teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 390-441). san francisco: jossey-bass. gay, l.r., mills, g. e. and airasian, p. (2006) educational research: competencies for analysis and application (8th ed.). upper saddle river, nj: pearson. guyton, e., & mcintyre, d. j. (1990). student teaching and school experiences. in w. r. houston (ed.) handbook of research on teacher education (pp 514-535). new york: macmillan. hammerness, k., darling-hammond, l., bransford, j. (2005). how teachers learn and develop. in l. darling-hammond and j. bransford (eds.). preparing teachers for a changing world: what teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 358-389). san francisco: jossey-bass. lepage, p., darling-hammond, l., akar, h., gutierrez, c., jenkins-gunn, e., & rosebrock, k. (2005). classroom management. in l. darling-hammond and j. bransford (eds.). preparing teachers for a changing world: what teachers should learn and be able to do (pp. 327 357). san francisco: jossey-bass. moore, r. (2003). reexamining the field experiences of teacher education candidates. journal of teacher education, 54 (1), 31-42. ingersoll, r.m. (2003). the teacher shortage: myth or reality? educational horizons, 81(3), 146-152. mcglinn, j. (2003). the impact of experiential learning on student teachers. clearing house,76 (3), 143-148. ross, s., hughes, t., & hill, r. (2001). field experiences as meaningful contexts for learning about learning. journal of educational research, 75 (2), 103107. russell, t. (1999). the challenge of change in teacher education. journal of teacher education, 45, 86-95. sommers, r.c. (2000). learning to set the stage. washington, d.c. (eric document no. ed 468 427). wong, h.k., & wong, r.t. (2000). the first days of school. sunnyvale, ca: harry k. wong publications. first days of school observation guidelines teacher education candidate: grade: program: elementary secondary special education district school: principal classroom teacher part 1: respond to the following in narrative form based on your first of the school year two-day observations. • what preparations were made by the classroom teacher prior to the students’ first day? • how did students enter the class, and how/where were they seated? • describe the room environment (e.g., posters, bulletin boards, teacher table, etc.) • what was the desk/table arrangement? provide a brief description and attach a detailed diagram. • were there posted/written objectives or daily agenda? if so, describe: • were there posted classroom/school rules? if so, describe. if not, how were the students informed of the rules? • how were textbooks and other materials they distributed? • what was the routine for dismissal (bell or other)? • describe the teacher’s effect (e.g., tone, smiling, friendly, strict, humorous, etc.) part 2: reflection of observation experience • what procedure and routines did the teacher introduce on the first day that will clearly be used all year long? • what did the students learn on their first day of class about behavior expectations from the teacher? what did the teacher do (both implicitly and explicitly) to teach the students about his/her behavior expectations? • what did you find surprising or unexpected about your observations? how have your ideas about the first days of school been influenced by this observation?  teacher education candidates will turn in the completed computer generated narrative at the beginning of the next school year at the senior orientation. microsoft word school improvement grants.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x school improvement grants: ransoming title i schools in distress craig a. waddell university of missouri, st. louis citation waddell, c. (2011).school improvement grants: ransoming title i schools in distress. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract in august 2009, the u.s. department of education announced opportunities for states and local educational agencies to vie for $3.5 billion in title i school improvement grants targeted at turning around or closing down chronically low-achieving schools. to qualify for a portion of these funds, school districts were required to implement one of four remedies at schools where students chronically demonstrated low academic performance. evidence is provided showing that the mandated interventions are highly speculative, minimally effective, and overly punitive toward educational professionals. keywords: school improvement grants, low-achieving schools, title i schools, school turnaround, charter schools c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 2 about the author(s) author: craig waddell, phd. affiliation: university of missouri – st. louis email: craig.waddell@sbcglobal.net biographical information: craig waddell is an 8th grade math teacher in a large urban school district and part-time associate adjunct professor at the university of missouri – st. louis. his research interests include student achievement motivation and educational policies. opinions expressed in this article are the authors own. sc h o o l im pr o v e m e n t g r a n t s 3 school improvement grants: ransoming title i schools in distress in august 2009, the u.s. department of education announced opportunities for states and local educational agencies to vie for $3.5 billion in title i school improvement grants targeted at “turning around or closing down chronically low-achieving schools” (abrevaya & white, 2009, p. 1). to qualify for a portion of these funds, school districts are required to implement one of four remedies at those low-income schools that ranked in the bottom 5% on the state’s annual achievement test. the press release described the required “rigorous interventions” as follows: turnaround model – this would include among other actions, replacing the principal and at least 50 percent of the school’s staff, adopting a new governance structure and implementing a new or revised instructional program. restart model – school districts would close failing schools and reopen them under the management of a charter school operator, a charter management organization or an educational management organization selected through a rigorous review process. school closure – the district would close a failing school and enroll the students who attended that school in other high-achieving schools in the district. transformational model – districts would address four specific areas: 1) developing teacher and school leader effectiveness, which includes replacing the principal who led the school prior to commencement of the transformational model, 2) implementing comprehensive instructional reform strategies, 3) extending learning and teacher planning time and creating communityoriented schools, and 4) providing operating flexibility and sustained support (abrevaya & white, 2009, p. 1). c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 4 the well-intentioned remedies mandated by the u.s. department of education are highly speculative, minimally effective, and overly punitive toward educational professionals. the mandate has two major shortcomings: 1. this legislation falsely assumes that student learning is wholly under the control of the school system, holding teachers and administrators exclusively responsible for inadequate student achievement. 2. the mandated “rigorous” interventions are arbitrary and unsupported by solid scientific evidence. the legislation’s first presumption is that the nation’s children are being “underserved” by the “lowest-achieving public schools.” achievement levels are based on rank-order comparisons rather than specific criteria. this is a zero-sum formula, where one out of every twenty schools must be labeled as failing. there is no level of mastery or yardstick of competency that a “low-achieving” school can demonstrate to exonerate itself. therefore, it is statistically inevitable that one-twentieth of title i or title i-eligible schools will have students whose standardized test scores rank in the bottom 5%; just as some schools must place in the upper echelon, some must place near the bottom when relative comparisons are made. ironically, the vision of school improvement has shifted from no child left behind to some schools must be failures. under the “lowest-achieving” philosophy some title i(-eligible) schools must be labeled as defective. for example, if a state has 1,000 title-i(-eligible) schools, 50 of them (5%) will be designated as low-achieving and there is nothing that anyone can do to change that fact. the standard being put into place now is that the lowest ranking schools are considered unmitigated failures, and the presumption is that those schools are deficient primarily due to the faculty. some of the schools at the back of the pack will be closed, others will be reincarnated as charter schools, and the remaining will be whipped into shape through teacher churn and metamorphosis. sc h o o l im pr o v e m e n t g r a n t s 5 “low-achieving” schools typically have high student drop-out rates, students with subpar standardized test scores, high absentee rates, acute classroom management challenges and myriad other indicators of academic deficiency. some of the teachers and school administration may be partially culpable for inadequate student progress, as gauged by standardized test scores. however, the school improvement grant program presumes that the majority of the school personnel are guilty of malfeasance simply by virtue of their presence in a low-achieving school setting. under the u.s. department of education’s plan, one-twentieth of title i(-eligible) schools must be considered failures. further, the rationale for determining badness is the premise that when students’ test scores are bad the schools are bad. however, this assumption that the lowest results are always the result of bad faculty is problematic. lashway (2003) identified three primary causes of school failure: demographics, inefficient resources, and ineffective school practices. attributing school failures to the latter cause is arbitrary. teachers in low-performing schools are denied due process when they are terminated en mass, without regard to individual teacher performance. school improvement grants should be geared toward accurately identifying and ameliorating sources of academic inadequacy in teachers, students, parents, and the community. testing experts have warned against using a single annual test to gauge academic progress and evaluate teacher effectiveness (maxwell, 2009). so, “lowest-achieving” designation is based on the speculative selection of one of three causal factors of low test scores, and this factor is assessed contrary to professional advice. even if the supposed measure of school caliber (i.e., student achievement) is valid and the supposed cause of student achievement c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 6 is correct (i.e., school faculty), critical decisions are seldom based on a single piece of evidence (i.e., annual test scores). consider the following analogies: 1. in 2006-2007, the following hospitals had the highest death rates due to heart failure: memorial hospital of martinsville & henry county in martinsville, va; valley hospital medical center in las vegas, nv; and st. clare medical center in crawfordsville, in (sternberg & debarros, 2008). based solely on the mortality rates for these hospitals, is it reasonable to conclude that the hospitals’ staffs are inept? 2. between 2000 and 2008, louisiana and north dakota experienced population declines while every other state saw population growth (u.s. census bureau, 2008). can this statistic be used to validly conclude that the government and legislature of these two states—in the bottom 5% of population growth—is incompetent and should be disbanded? 3. based on the fbi’s uniform crime report, issued in 2008, detroit, memphis, and miami are america’s “most dangerous cities” (greenburg, 2009). since the crime rates are high, can one reliably deduce that the cities’ police forces are ineffective and that “rigorous interventions” are warranted to fix the police departments (i.e., replacing the chief of police and terminating all of the police officers)? rarely should a single metric be used to judge the overall effectiveness of an organization’s entire staff, yet this is precisely what the department of education has elected to do in classifying schools as “persistently low-achieving.” ironically, this approach is contrary to the department’s own long-standing precedents. for several decades, the u.s. department of education attributed academic success to several factors. the elementary and secondary education act of 1965 (public law 89-10)—which was the predecessor to the no child left behind act (public law 107-110) and the obama administration’s school improvement grants—begins as follows: sec. 201. in recognition of the special educational needs of children of low-income families and the impact that concentrations of low-income families have on the ability of local educational agencies to support adequate educational programs [italics added], the congress hereby declares it to be the policy of the united states to provide financial assistance (as set forth in this title) to local educational agencies serving areas with concentrations of children from low-income families to expend and improve their educational programs by various means (including preschool programs) which contribute particularly to meeting the special educational needs of educationally deprived children [italics added] (p. 1). sc h o o l im pr o v e m e n t g r a n t s 7 almost a half-century ago, the u.s. government explicitly acknowledged that “concentrations of low-income families” have “special educational needs.” why, then, is it surprising that some of these children would continue to underperform their more-privileged peers? more than thirty years later, the department of education, under the clinton administration, reiterated the position that poverty, family distress, crime, and violence impair academic achievement. here is an excerpt from turning around low-achieving schools: a guide for state and local leaders (educational resources information center, 1998): many low-achieving schools are located in impoverished communities where family distress, crime, and violence are prevalent. these and other circumstances make it hard for children to come to school prepared to learn … students in high-poverty schools may be performing at levels up to four years behind their peers in low-poverty schools [italics added] (educational resources information center, 1998, p. 1). “low-achieving schools” are not simply the result of bad teaching. by the department of education’s own admission, students in title i(-eligible) schools having “special educational needs” that handicap their academic performance. some title i schools may be labeled as “lowachieving” by virtue of their inability to overcome the communities’ socioeconomic liabilities. teachers are responsible for students’ academic growth, but not solely responsible. furthermore, the incompetence of some teachers should not be an indictment of an entire schools’ faculty. another indication of the effect of the environment on students’ academic success is provided by the foundation for child development (2010). the organization’s child wellness index (cwi) predicts that the current economic downturn (“great recession”) will result in lower future scores on the national assessment of educational progress (naep) tests and higher school dropout rates. this report forecasts an academic downturn caused by an economic recession, independent of teacher and school quality. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 8 the u.s. department of education’s contemporary presumption that “low-achieving” schools “underserve” students summarily disregards the social, economical, physiological, and psychological extenuating circumstances that, by definition affect title i communities. in some cases, “low-achieving” schools may simply be unable to overcome the demographic handicaps of the communities that they serve. this scenario is similar to the analogies presented earlier: hospitals cannot dictate their patients’ lifestyle choices, governments cannot control citizens’ emigration choices, police departments cannot suspend civil liberties simply because liberties might result in criminal activity, and title i(-eligible) schools cannot nullify the social and economic liabilities of their impoverished clientele. school improvement grants cannot solve all of society’s ills, but they should not place the responsibility for academic failure exclusively on the shoulders of teachers and school administrators. teachers and school administrators should be held accountable for student achievement, but only insofar as they have the ability to influence student outcomes. teachers should not be held liable for lack of resources, mandated curriculum materials, mandated pacing guides, placement in non-certificated fields, excessive student absences and truancies, test scores that occurred prior to the teacher’s residency, unfunded mandates, and socioeconomic declines. the current incarnation of the school improvement grants identifies inadequate educational progress and metes out punishments without regard to culpability. school improvement grants are essentially academic redlining; the bottom 5% threshold brands a school as anathema and the entire faculty is convicted of guilt by association. the department of education has mistakenly equated “lowest-achieving public schools” with schools that have been unable to leapfrog their students’ academic performances beyond the achievements of their socially-advantaged peers. these “lowest-achieving public schools” may sc h o o l im pr o v e m e n t g r a n t s 9 be doing an adequate job under the circumstances. as diane ravitch (2010) noted, “our schools cannot be improved if we use them as society’s all-purpose punching bag, blaming them for the ills of the economy, the burdens imposed on children by poverty, the dysfunction of families, and the erosion of civility” (p. 229). both educational specialists and experienced politicians across the political spectrum recognize the crucial role of families and “villages” in children’s learning (clinton, 1996; santorum, 2005). conversely, the department of education has chosen to heap blame disproportionately on the school’s teachers and administrators. there are bad schools. there are incompetent, disinterested, burnt-out, negligent educators. they should be properly identified, carefully diagnosed, intensely rehabilitated, and if necessary, terminated. however, identification and remediation cannot be based on a simplistic, naïve formula that: a) consists of an annual test with unsubstantiated construct validity, b) disregards all mitigating factors, and c) applies a scorched earth policy. even when substandard schools are properly identified the school improvement grant’s prescriptions are regressive. in order for a “low-achieving school” to be successful, this “low” school must academically jump ahead of other schools—thus making some sister school the “loser”—by engaging a talented faculty, employing an effective curriculum, and implementing superior instructional strategies. the flaw in this line of reasoning is that it presumes that other schools are not making similar academic improvements. the low-achieving school will only surpass other schools if their counterparts employ less effective faculty, a less rigorous curriculum, and inferior instructional strategies. the low-achieving school cannot simply improve; it must improve more than its peers. adequate progress is now relative; a lowachieving school must overtake its peers regardless of how much its peers might improve. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 10 school improvement grants are predicated on the unsubstantiated assumption that all schools with consistently “low-achieving” students are broken and require “rigorous interventions.” as previously discussed, many environmental factors affect student achievement. even when deficient schools are properly identified, the government-mandated interventions are unsupported by solid scientific evidence. each of the proposed interventions will be briefly critiqued. one of the permissible remedies is school closure. this intervention seldom makes sense as a mandated recourse. when a school closes, all of its students are moved to other schools within the district. typically, all tenured faculty are relocated to other positions. either additional classrooms are opened in target schools and there are few staff reductions, or class sizes increase at the receiving schools. students and faculty are shuffled. shuffling people from school to school does not magically improve their caliber any more than promoting students from second grade to third grade makes them smarter. school closure simply masks the problem of students with low academic performance by camouflaging them among higher-performing peers. indeed, research into the school closure model suggests that this approach is not effective. marisa de la torre and julia gwynne (2009) studied the effects of eighteen school closures on students in the chicago public school system. they concluded that: “most students who transferred out of closing schools reenrolled in schools that were academically weak” (p. 2); reading and math achievement for the relocated students did not improve one, two, or three years following school closure; students’ high school completion outlook did not improve; and, “changing schools neither resulted in additional negative effects on student achievement nor substantially improved the achievement of displaced students” (p. 26). sc h o o l im pr o v e m e n t g r a n t s 11 school closure does not seem to be a worthwhile approach to improving students’ academic achievement. when schools close, students and staff are displaced; children are dispersed from their neighborhoods; the connections between the community, the family, and the school are weakened; and academic acceleration does not occur. school closure is not an effective solution for low academic performance. a second remedy permitted under the school improvement grant legislation is the restart model. under this approach, school districts close failing schools and reopen them under the management of a charter school operator, a charter management organization or an educational management organization (emo). the fallacy with this approach is a misconception that will be called the lebron james syndrome. consider the following scenario. a teacher attempts to emphasize the importance of academic skills in helping students pursue future career opportunities. invariably, a few students will contend that they do not need these academic skills because they are going to be professional athletes. the teacher argues that most athletes are recruited from college teams and that aspiring athletes will need academic credentials to be admitted into division 1 colleges. a student retorts that, “lebron james didn’t need to go to college.” hence the lebron james syndrome: the person suffering from this affliction misinterprets the possibility that an event can occur as the probability that an event will occur. this line of reasoning is only slightly less radical than subscribing to a state lottery as a retirement plan; one could win a fortune but they probably will not. conceptually, there is nothing wrong with charter schools; there is simply no compelling evidence that this approach is superior to a public school implementation. the department of education misinterprets the possibility that charter schools and emo’s could be effective as the probability that they will be c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 12 effective. school vouchers, home schooling, or private school enrollment alternatives could be equally-viable options. a number of educational experts and researchers have questioned the efficacy of charter schools. here are some of their findings. fleishman and heppen (2009) found no “reliable evidence that emos [education management organizations] can have a positive impact at the high school level” (p. 125). buckley and schneider (2007) concluded that charter schools’ promises are “at best, weakly supported by evidence” (p. 267). the national center for education statistics (2005) found that students in charter schools scored lower on mathematics assessments than their public school counterparts and observed “no measurable difference between the overall performance of charter school fourth-grade students as a whole and their counterparts in other public schools” (p. 10). interviews of charter school parents indicated that their impressions of their children’s school meshed with those of public school parents, and their children felt “no differently about their schools than their peers in the traditional public schools” (buckley & schneider, 2007, p. 269). finally, an extensive study of 2,403 charter schools across 16 states found that 17% of the charter schools were superior to their traditional public school counterparts, about half of the charter schools provided educational quality similar to that of public schools, and 37% of the charter schools were significantly worse than corresponding public schools (center for research in education outcomes [credo], 2009). charter schools, in total, fail to live up to their claims and their hype. there definitely are instances of highly-successful charter schools but there are also numerous instances of inferior charter schools and premier public schools. there is nothing inherent in the charter school implementations that heighten their likelihood of success above that of other school structures. the next charter school to open certainly could be a successful sc h o o l im pr o v e m e n t g r a n t s 13 school but, based on the research cited above, there is 83% chance that it will not be any more successful than a traditional public school. in fact, the likelihood that a charter school will be inferior to a public school is more than twice as high as the chances that it will be superior to a public school. should we invest in a venture that has less than a one-out-of-four chance of success and a large downside? should we bet our children’s educations on those odds? even if we should choose to take this gamble it should be pointed out that charter schools are prohibited in many communities; state and local regulations do not allow public funds to be allocated to charter schools. for most “low-performing” schools, the restart model is either ill-advised or illegal. the third intervention allowed by the school improvement grants legislation is the turnaround model. this approach requires that the principal and at least 50 percent of the school’s staff be replaced and that the instructional program be revamped. this approach is so ambiguous and speculative that it defies being either supported by or refuted by scientific research. for example, is it a good idea to replace a failing school’s principal? districts typically have wide latitude when dealing with administrators. why must the u.s. government mandate a principal’s reassignment? what basis is there for the presumption that a principal is always guilty when a school’s students are “low-achieving”? similarly, the requirement to replace “at least 50 percent” of the faculty is completely arbitrary. statistically, one-half of the faculty is at or below the median, but this says nothing about their competency. there is no scientific basis for presuming that “at least” 50% of a “lowachieving” school’s faculty is incompetent. couldn’t two-thirds or three-fourths of the faculty be good? most faculty members have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree, professional certification, and positive employee evaluations. these teachers—who are employees of the local c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 14 educational agency (lea), not employees of the “low-achieving” school—have met all state and lea employment criteria. junior faculty may be relegated to these stigmatized schools, and some teachers may be forced to teach subjects for which they are not certificated employees. these employees should not be condemned based solely on their involuntary placement into a struggling school. even if we accept the dubious premise that half of the veteran core teachers in “lowachieving” schools are incompetent, what about teachers with less than three years at the school? should they be held liable for student scores that occurred prior to their arrival at the institution? and what about teachers outside of the core subject areas? for example, art teachers, p.e. teachers, and music teachers have an ancillary impact on standardized test scores in communication arts and mathematics. what criteria will be used to assess their competency when their students span grade levels and core subject area teachers? on what basis are school counselors and other support personnel evaluated, condemned, or exonerated? the turnaround model mandates faculty changes. how will the replacement staff be selected? what reason is there to believe that the replacement teachers will be superior to the faculty that they are replacing? recall that a median cut-off was part of the “rigorous intervention” mandated by this legislation. statistically speaking, one-half of the newly-selected teachers will be at or below the median of the new group. therefore, the turnaround model is placing a new set of subpar teachers into the revamped school (i.e., half of the replacement group will be at or below the median of their group). perhaps the lea could circumvent future problems of having half of its staff “below the median” by hiring twice as many replacement teachers as needed and then summarily firing the bottom half of the newly-recruited pool! sc h o o l im pr o v e m e n t g r a n t s 15 assuming that the displaced faculty can be rehabilitated, the school improvement grant legislation has not fully considered the consequences of the mandates on these teachers. teachers who are “fired” from low-achieving schools will often be reassigned to another school within their district (especially if they are tenured), quite possibly a struggling school with high staff turnover. what happens to this teacher if the target school is designated as “low-achieving” within the following year or two; should this reassigned teacher be held liable for scores that he or she did not affect? the edict that at least half of all teachers must be dismissed disregards many of the nuances of a lea’s personnel issues, just as the “low-achieving” designation overlooks the characteristics of the school’s community. overall, the turnaround model seems rather inchoate. here are just a few of the issues that have been trivialized. perhaps this is nitpicky, but the word turnaround means a reversal in direction. are “low-achieving” schools always going in the wrong direction, or could it be that they are going in the right direction but at an inadequate pace? it could be that additional supports are required to help the school surmount obstacles. then there is the issue of principal selection under the turnaround model. unless some ingenious process is implemented it is quite possible that the new principal will be no better than his or her predecessor. the same holds true for the replacement faculty. the turnaround model’s ambition to employ better principals, recruit better staff and improve instruction presumes that the existing structure is defective, and that the same people who created the existing structure can “build a better mousetrap” if compelled to do so through federal edict and financial incentive. the turnaround model is a shotgun approach to fixing low-achieving schools by a series of speculative prescriptions aimed at arbitrarily-presumed causes of low student achievement. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 16 the american education research association, a group of more than 25,000 education researchers, agrees that the turnaround model is a highly speculative approach (vaidero, 2009). the final intervention available under the school improvement grant guidelines is the transformation model. two key characteristics of this model are to replace the principal—a recurring theme—and develop “teacher and school leader effectiveness.” principal replacement in this scenario is equally as dubious as described in the turnaround model. developing teacher and school leader effectiveness includes monetary rewards for teachers based on student achievement. recent research debunks the assumption that performance-based pay enhances teacher quality (sawchuk, 2010; springer et al., 2010). upon reflection, this should be a fairly self-evident conclusion: teacher salaries are typically lower than salaries for comparable business opportunities. unless teacher salaries are commensurate with those of business people—a highly-unlikely scenario—“effective” teachers who are salary-motivated will likely exit the teaching profession despite a nominal incentive pay. there is an important caveat to the transformation model: many local teacher unions prohibit merit pay, nullifying this option. sure, some inferior teachers use tenure and pay steps to protect them from well-deserved indictment, but the primary reason for opposition to merit pay in education is that it is very difficult to objectively measure teacher quality. measuring teacher quality is like assessing beauty. the transformation model is ethereal and its implementation is frequently prohibited by union contracts. interestingly, the department of education’s regulations prohibit the use of the turnaround model in more than 50% of the district’s low-achieving schools (u.s. department of education, 2010). one has to wonder under what omniscience the government has divined that the transformation model is one of only four viable “rigorous interventions,” interventions that sc h o o l im pr o v e m e n t g r a n t s 17 must be used 100% of the time, but this particular approach cannot be effective in more than 50% of a district’s endangered schools. does incentive pay make sense for one of the district’s schools but not for another one? this double-standard could certainly cause friction among the school district’s employees. through its definition of what constitutes a “low-achieving school,” the u.s. department of education may have unfairly indicted some institutions by erroneously presuming that all schools with academically sub-par students are defective schools with categorically incompetent or uncaring faculty. teachers in these schools are victims of professional profiling and are at risk of being blacklisted by virtue of their association with a “low-achieving school” (school improvement grants mandate that all teachers be “fired” and no more than 50% rehired). in actuality, some effective schools may simply be unable to compensate for the socioeconomic liabilities of their clientele. schools that are erroneously singled out for improvement are then blackmailed into tolerating a litany of harsh, speculative interventions. here are just a few of the concerns with the interventions expressed by reputable researchers: • “the [center on education policy] studied what 23 school districts and 48 schools in six states learned during the past five years about improving struggling schools. it found that the five strategies for restructuring under the no child left behind act, the current version of the esea, did not offer much help to schools that were trying to improve after five or more years of failing to make adequate yearly progress under the law” (gewertz, 2009, p. 10). • “federal restructuring strategies have not shown promise, and all six states in our studies have moved away from these options” (caitlin, 2009, p. 2). • “experience with these sorts of remedies outside the nclb context provides little cause to believe that they reliably yield heightened student achievement or school improvement” (hess & finn, 2007, p. 317). • “thus far, research on takeovers and reconstitutions has been inconclusive” (lashway, 2003, p. 4). • “all recommendations had to rely on low levels of evidence” (national center for education evaluation and regional assistance, 2008, p. 1) c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 18 schools whose students are academically unsuccessful are not necessarily “lowachieving” schools; “powerful cultural and political forces will continue to impede school improvement” (hess & finn, 2007, p. 328). furthermore, there is little reason to believe that the “rigorous interventions” mandated by the u.s. department of education are pedagogically sound. even if the interventions were sound, two of the four possible interventions, the restart model and the transformation model, are often prohibited by either local statutes or teachers’ unions, and the school closure model is more of a condemnation than an intervention. this leaves many “low-achieving” schools with the hobson’s choice of the turnaround model. title i(-eligible) schools serve a disadvantaged populace. the edicts of school improvement grants exacerbate the problem, ransoming federal funds contingent on districts making illconceived interventions. the u.s. department of education should recognize the competency of local school districts, retract the edicts of the school improvement grants, and work cooperatively with local authorities to achieve authentic educational improvements for disadvantaged families. school improvement grants are a great idea gone seriously awry. the department of education needs to close the book on the current incarnation and then turnaround, restart, and transform their approach. sc h o o l im pr o v e m e n t g r a n t s 19 references abrevaya, s., & white, j. (2009, august 26, 2009). obama administration announces historic opportunity to turn around nation's lowest-achieving public schools. u.s. department of education, pp. 1. buckley, j., & schneider, m. (2007). charter schools: hope or hype? princeton: princeton university press. caitlin, s. (2009). improving low-performing schools: lessons from five years of studying school restructuring under no child left behind (report). washington, dc: center on education policy. center for research in education outcomes (credo). (2009). multiple choice: charter school performance in 16 states. stanford, ca: stanford university. clinton, h. r. (1996). it takes a village and other lessons children teach us. new york: simon & schuster. de la torre, m., & gwynne, j. (2009). when schools close: effects on displaced students in the chicago public schools. chicago: consortium on chicago school research. educational resources information center. (1998). turning around low-performing schools: a guide for state and local leaders. washington, d.c.: u.s. department of education. fleishman, s., & heppen, j. (2009). improving low-performing high schools: searching for evidence of promise. the future of children, 19(1), 105-133. gewertz, c. (2009). restructuring under nclb found lacking. education week, 29(15), 1, 10. greenburg, z. o. m. (2009). america's most dangerous cities. forbes.com. retrieved june 10, 2010, 2010, from the world wide web: http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/23/mostdangerous-cities-lifestyle-real-estate-dangerous-american-cities.html c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 20 hess, f. m., & finn, j., chester e. (eds.). (2007). no remedy left behind: lessons from a halfdecade of nclb. washington, dc: aei press. land, k. c. (2010). 2010 child well-being index (cwi) (report). new york: foundation for child development. lashway, l. (2003). the mandate to help low-performing schools (edo-ea-03-06). eugene, or: office of educational research and improvement (ed), washington, dc. maxwell, l. a. (2009). test experts wary on 'race to top' rules: officials warn against using single assessment to measure gains. education week, 29(7), 16. national center for education evaluation and regional assistance. (2008). turning around chronically low-performing schools. washington, d.c.: u.s. department of education. national center for education statistics. (2005). american's charter schools: results from the naep 2003 pilot study. washington d.c.: national center for education statistics, u.s. department of education. ravitch, d. (2010). the death and life of the great american school system: how testing and choice are undermining education. new york: basic books. santorum, r. (2005). it takes a family: conservatism and the common good. wilmington: isi books. sawchuk, s. (2010). performance-pay model shows no achievement edge. education week. retrieved june 10, 2010, from the world wide web: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/06/01/33tap.h29.html springer, m. g., ballou, d., hamilton, l., le, v.-n., lockwood, j. r., mccaffrey, d. f., pepper, m., & stecher, b. m. (2010). teacher pay for performance: experimental evidence from sc h o o l im pr o v e m e n t g r a n t s 21 the project on incentives in teaching. nashville, tn: national center on performance incentives. sternberg, s., & debarros, a. (2008, 8/21/2008). hospital death rates unveiled for first-time comparison. usa today. u.s. bureau of labor statistics. (2010). unemployment rates for metropolitan areas. retrieved june 10, 2010, from the world wide web: http://www.bls.gov/web/metro/laummtrk.htm u.s. census bureau. (2008). state population—rank, percent change, and population density: 1980 to 2008. retrieved june 10, 2010, from the world wide web: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2010/tables/10s0013.pdf u.s. department of education. (2010). guidance on school improvement grants under section 1003(g) of the elementary and secondary education act of 1965. washington, d.c.: u.s. department of education. vaidero, d. (2009). 'race to top' said to lack key science: scant evidence for policies, researchers tell ed. dept. education week, 29(6), 1, 18-19. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 22 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word accountability ratings of elementary schoolsstudent demographics matter .docx running head: accountability ratings of elementary schools 1 volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x accountability ratings of elementary schools: student demographics matter cynthia martinez-garcia kimberly n. laprairie john r. slate sam houston state university citation martinez-garcia, c., laprairie, k. n. & slate, j. r. (2011). accountability ratings of elementary schools: student demographics matter. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the researchers examined the most recent year of data (i.e., 2008-2009) from the texas academic excellence indicator system regarding accountability ratings and student characteristics (i.e., ethnicity, programmatic enrollment, mobility) in elementary schools (n = 4,110). accountability ratings (i.e., exemplary, recognized, academically acceptable, and academically unacceptable) are assigned primarily based upon school performance on statemandated tests by student subgroups. exemplary elementary school campuses had statistically significantly lower percentages of black students, hispanic students, at-risk students, 2 economically disadvantaged students, students with limited english proficient, and mobility percent (i.e., being at the school less than 83% of the school year) whereas academically unacceptable had the highest percentages in all these areas. as such, accountability ratings in texas elementary schools were clearly related to student characteristics and not just test scores. implications of these findings and suggestions for further research are discussed. keywords: elementary schools, student demographics, accountability ratings a c c o u n t a bl it iy r a t in g s o f e l e m e n t a r y sc h o o l s 3 about the author(s) author: cynthia martinz-garcia, edd affiliation: sam houston state university, department of educational leadership and counseling address: teacher education center, box 2119, huntsville, tx 77341 email: cynthia3687@sbcglobal.net biographical information: dr. martinez-garcia is an assistant professor at sam houston state university. her research interests lie in beginning teachers and teacher attrition. author: kimberly laprairie, phd affiliation: sam houston state university, department of curriculum and instruction address: teacher education center, box 2119, huntsville, tx 77341 email: knl007@shsu.edu biographical information: dr. laprairie is an assistant professor at sam houston state university. her expertise and interests lie in the use of technology to improve instructional practices. author: john r. slate, phd affiliation: sam houston state university, department of educational leadership and counseling address: teacher education center, box 2119, huntsville, tx 77341 email: jrs051@shsu.edu biographical information: dr. slate is a professor at sam houston state university in the department of educational leadership and counseling. his research interests lie in the use of national and state educational databases for school reform. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 4 accountability ratings of elementary schools: student demographics matter andreas schleicher, senior education official at the organization for economic cooperation and development (o.e.c.d.) and leading expert on comparing school systems, recently revealed findings to the united states senate education committee that show many other countries surpassing the united states in high school completion rates and achievement test scores (dillion, 2010). though unsettling and cause for concern (alliance for excellent education, 2008), these revelations are not new ones (secretary arne duncan, 2010). results such as these reports have undoubtedly prompted the obama administration’s race to the top initiative and proposal for overhauling the no child left behind act, the core law outlining federal education policies on public schooling (obama, 2009, july 24; 2009, july 23). as the united states department of education office of educational technology (2010) pointed out in the national educational technology plan: under the obama administration, education has become an urgent priority driven by two clear goals. by 2020, we will raise the proportion of college graduates from where it now stands [39%] so that 60% of our population holds a 2-year or 4-year degree. we will close the achievement gap so that all students regardless of race, income, or neighborhood graduate from high school ready to succeed in college and careers. (p. 3) these goals are lofty ones in view of the fact that, despite the focus of the no child left behind act on closing the achievement gap between white and minority students, the gap has not narrowed under previous administrations (dillion, 2009). in fact, “… a disproportionate a c c o u n t a bl it iy r a t in g s o f e l e m e n t a r y sc h o o l s 5 number of the schools being labeled as persistent failures and facing sanctions under this program are segregated minority schools” (orfield & lee, 2005, p. 4). at the 2010 centennial convention of the national urban league, president obama responded to concerns that were raised on the competition for education funds with the race to the top reforms during a time of recession (christian science monitor, 2010). he affirmed, “let me tell you, what’s not working for black kids and hispanic kids and native american kids across this country is the status quo…” (education week, 2010, para. 3). president obama expressed that, "we have an obligation to lift up every child in every school in this country, especially those who are starting out furthest behind” (www.msnbc.com, 2010, para. 2). he also declared that race to the top is “the single most ambitious, meaningful education reform effort we’ve attempted in this country in generations” (christian science monitor, 2010, para. 5). we believe it is imperative that the academic achievement level among all students be increased, regardless of race, language, or socioeconomic status, to ensure the economic growth and prosperity of the united states and to guarantee the ability of american youth to compete in a global economy. in president obama’s remarks on race to the top (2009, july 24), he emphasized this priority. america will not succeed in the 21st century unless we do a far better job of educating our sons and daughters... in an economy where knowledge is the most valuable commodity a person and a country have to offer, the best jobs will go to the best educated -whether they live in the united states or india or china. in a world where countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow, the future belongs to the nation that best educates its people… c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 6 but what does it take to transform american education? as stakeholders, the population of students served in today’s schools need to be understood. currently, approximately 18% of children in the u.s. live below the federal poverty level and an additional 8% are considered low income, with a family income less than twice the federal poverty threshold (bowling & cummings, 2009). during the mid-1950s and early 1960s, black student enrollment was much higher than latino student enrollment and asian student enrollment was considered insignificant in our nation; however, immigration during the past four decades has changed american schools. orfield and lee (2005) stated that latino and asian student enrollment has increased exponentially; black student enrollment has increased steadily; whereas white student enrollment has decreased. national enrollment statistics show that black students make up approximately 17% of the total student population, whereas 18% is represented by a rapidly growing latino student enrollment and white student enrollment continues to decline as a proportion of the total (orfield & lee, 2005). in the south, where minority populations are more concentrated and students have less opportunity to attend multiracial schools, black students represent 27% of the total enrollment and latino students account for at least 19% of total student enrollment. these statistics are important to note because minority students are disproportionately represented in special education (frankson & white-lindsey, 2007; petterway, kritsonis, & herrington, 2006) and nationally, minority students have the highest drop-out rates. for example, hispanics students had almost four times higher drop-out rates (i.e., 16 through 24-year-olds who are not enrolled in school or have not earned a high school diploma or equivalent education certificate such as the general educational development [ged] certificate) and black students had around two times higher drop-out rates than white students a c c o u n t a bl it iy r a t in g s o f e l e m e n t a r y sc h o o l s 7 (i.e., 22%, 11%, and 6% respectively) in 2006 (planty et al., 2008). orfield and lee (2005) noted that as many as half of the country’s black and hispanic students drop out of school, with the most severe problems in segregated high poverty schools. though much more attention has been devoted in recent years to test scores, dropping out is, of course, the ultimate failure for a student in the post-industrial economy—a failure that usually causes deep and irreversible life-long damage to a student and his future family. (orfield & lee, 2005, p. 37) factors other than mental capacity must be associated with racial performance disparities and the gap in minority student achievement (gould, 1981). one such factor may actually be a design flaw in curriculum and assessments used to measure academic achievement (frankson & white-lindsey, 2007; petterway et al., 2006). specifically overlooked in the design of academic expectations are the distinct cultural needs of minority students. for instance, in a review of the literature, frankson and white-lindsey (2007) reported that “african americans display the academic behaviors that do not emulate their non-minority peers; african americans are more expressive, verbal, field dependent (in that they require contextual instruction), relational, and affectively oriented” (p. 18). consequently, when these students are instructed and evaluated through traditional means they are automatically at a disadvantage compared to their nonminority peers. petterway et al. (2006) also pointed out that schools with a large number of english language learners (ells) “… risk being ranked as underperforming because the measure used to evaluate its performance is blind to this important demographic fact” (p. 3). beyond being culturally irresponsive to minority students, the education system fails to provide minority and economically disadvantaged students with high-quality teachers (allen, palaich, & anthes, 1999; darling-hammond, 1998; ingersoll, 1999, 2002; martinez-garcia & c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 8 slate, 2010a, 2010b; nieto, 2003; orfield & lee, 2005; peske & haycock, 2006; rowland & coble, 2005). on average, students in high-minority and the highest-poverty schools are twice as likely to be assigned to a beginning teacher as students in schools with low-poverty and few minority students (education trust, 2008; jepsen & rivkin, 2002; peske & haycock, 2006; u.s. department of education, national center for education statistics, 2000). in a multi-year statewide study of texas, martinez-garcia and slate (2010a) noted that elementary schools with the highest percentage of beginning teachers had higher percentages of minority student enrollment and also had higher percentages of economically disadvantaged student enrollment. this situation is of concern because numerous researchers have documented that teachers are considerably more effective at contributing to student learning and preparing students to meet state standards after completing at least two years of teaching experience (education trust, 2008; peske & haycock, 2006). furthermore, given that a growing body of research underscores the impact of the quality of the teacher and instruction on student achievement gains despite other background factors, this situation is particularly concerning (alliance for excellent education, 2004; darling-hammond, 2000; darling-hammond & sykes, 2003; obama, 2005; rice, 2003; rowland & coble, 2005; whitehurst, 2003). the education system, however, cannot shoulder all of the blame for educational inequality. in fact, according to sociologist james coleman’s 1966 equality of educational opportunity research, “… everything schools did accounted for only 5 to 35 percent of the variation in students’ academic performances, though he did find the figures for disadvantaged students were on the high end of the scale” (traub, 2000, p. 53). numerous researchers support this finding and have proposed that the achievement gap is largely environmental (bainbridge & lasley, 2002; jencks & phillips, 1998; orfield & lee, 2005). specifically, factors such as a c c o u n t a bl it iy r a t in g s o f e l e m e n t a r y sc h o o l s 9 community conditions, including housing inadequacy and decay, weak and failing infrastructure, and critical lack of mentors and shortage of jobs (orfield & lee, 2005); family-background characteristics, including the education level of people in the home (bainbridge & lasley, 2002), family income, number of siblings, and the number of books in the home (peterson, 2010); peer influence (orfield & lee, 2005); and availability of health care and proper nutrition (bainbridge & lasley, 2002; orfield & lee, 2005) have been documented to have a substantial impact on student success in school. as orfield and lee (2005) noted, “schools tend to reflect and intensify the racial stratification of society” (p. 15). therefore, to establish effective school environments leaders in education need to understand the interrelationship between demographic characteristics and achievement. of particular interest to these researchers are the student demographic characteristics that might be reflected in the accountability ratings assigned to elementary schools. significance of the study to date, the means for measuring school accountability has focused mainly on student achievement on state-mandated tests (u.s. department of education, 2002). though important, such a focus is limited. test scores by themselves are not a complete picture of student learning and performance. in this study, the characteristics of students who were enrolled at elementary schools that differed in their accountability rating were investigated. accountability rating, assigned primarily on the basis of state-mandated assessments, may also reflect student demographic characteristics. no published research studies with such an emphasis were located, even after an extensive search of academic databases occurred. as such, more detailed c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 10 information than is currently available on the characteristics of students enrolled at elementary schools differing in their accountability rating may be provided in this study. purpose of the study the purpose in conducting this study was to determine the extent to which elementary school campus accountability rating was related with student demographic characteristics. that is, for accountability ratings that are assigned based primarily on student academic performance, the extent to which student characteristics were related to the assigning of accountability ratings was the primary focus of this study. research questions the following research question was addressed in this study: what is the difference among elementary school campus accountability ratings in their percent of black students, hispanic students, economically disadvantaged students, at-risk students, students designated as limited english proficient, mobility, and the total student enrollment? method participants data from all elementary public school campuses (n = 4,110) in texas for the 20082009 school year were utilized in this study. because of their uniqueness and major differences from public elementary schools, charter schools and their data were removed from analysis in this study. the public elementary schools whose student data were analyzed in this study were separated into four groups: exemplary (n = 1,791), recognized (n = 1,750), academically acceptable (n = 544), and academically unacceptable (n = 25). the state of texas rates school success through its state-mandated accountability system. this accountability system provides ratings both for individual school campuses and for school a c c o u n t a bl it iy r a t in g s o f e l e m e n t a r y sc h o o l s 11 districts. at the highest rating, exemplary, the following criteria must be met: no more than a 0.2% dropout rate, at least 90% of students passing the texas assessment of knowledge and skills (taks), as well as subgroups, and 95% of the completion standard met (texas education agency, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008). the next highest rating, academically recognized, is assigned when these criteria are met: no greater than a 0.7% dropout rate, at least 75% of students passing the taks, as well as subgroups, and 85% of the completion standard (texas education agency, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008). a label of academically acceptable is assigned when: no greater than a 1.0% dropout rate, at least 65% of students pass the english/language arts, writing, and social studies sections of the taks, as well as subgroups, at least 45% of students pass the taks math, including subgroups, at least 40% of students pass the taks science measure, including subgroups, and 75% of the completion standard met (texas education agency, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008). readers are referred to the tea website, specifically the aeis glossary in which the definitions for dropout rate and completion standard, among others, are present (http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/aeis/2010/glossary.pdf) instrumentation and procedure archival data were acquired on all public elementary school campuses in the state of texas for the 2008-2009 school year. through accessing and downloading files from the academic excellence indicator system (http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/aeis/), data that were reported by each elementary school campus were gathered. specifically, data on the accountability rating, the percent of black students, the percent of hispanic students, the percent of students designated as limited english proficient, the percent of economically disadvantaged students, the percent of at-risk students, and the number of students enrolled at each elementary school campus were obtained. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 12 results prior to conducting statistical analyses, checks for normality of data and for the assumptions underlying parametric statistical procedures were made. though a few of the skewness and kurtosis values were outside the range of normality, the majority of the assumptions underlying parametric statistical procedures were met. therefore, a multivariate analysis of variance (manova) was conducted to determine whether the (a) percent of black students, (b) percent of hispanic students, (c) percent of economically disadvantaged students, (d) percent of at-risk students, (e) percent of students with lep, (f) mobility percent, and (g) the total student enrollment differed as a function of campus accountability rating for the 2008-2009 school year. this analysis yielded a statistically significant result, λ = .78, p < .001, n2 = .08, moderate effect size (cohen, 1988). this overall result revealed a difference among the four accountability ratings as a function of student demographic characteristic. univariate follow-up analysis of variance procedures revealed statistically significant differences for the percent of black students, f(3, 4012) = 48.36, p < .001, n2 = .04, small effect size; for the percent of hispanic students, f(3, 4012) = 121.47, p < .001, n2 = .21, large effect size; for the percent of economically disadvantaged students, f(3, 4012) = 327.43, p < .001, n2 = .44, very large effect size; for the percent of at-risk students, f(3, 4012) = 222.45, p < .001, n2 = .41, very large effect size; for the percent of students designated as lep, f(3, 4012) = 87.05, p < .001, n2 = .06, moderate effect size; and for the mobility percent, f(3, 4012) = 141.43, p < .001, n2 = .10, moderate effect size. no statistically significant difference was yielded for the total number of students enrolled in school, f(3, 4012) = 0.84, p = .47. thus, with the exception of school size, student demographic characteristics were different by elementary school accountability rating. a c c o u n t a bl it iy r a t in g s o f e l e m e n t a r y sc h o o l s 13 scheffe` post hoc tests revealed that the percent of black students was statistically significantly different among the four campus accountability ratings. as the accountability rating decreased from exemplary to academically unacceptable, the percent of black students increased (i.e., from 10.44% to 34.36%). concerning hispanic students, exemplary schools had lower percentages of hispanic students (i.e., 38.33%) than did the other three accountability ratings (i.e., in the mid-50% range) which did not differ among themselves. differences were also present for the percent of economically disadvantaged students. with the exception of academically acceptable and academically unacceptable elementary schools which did not differ, as the accountability rating decreased, the percent of economically disadvantaged students increased (i.e., from 49.04% to 91.19%). similar results were present for the percent of at-risk students (i.e., from 39.28% to 67.62%). that is, as the school ranking became poorer, the percent of at-risk students dramatically increased. concerning students with a label of limited english proficient, exemplary schools had lower percentages (i.e., 17.02%) than did the other three school accountability ratings which did not differ among themselves (i.e., mid-20s to low30%s). all four accountability ratings differed for the mobility percent. as the accountability rating went from exemplary to academically unacceptable, the mobility percent increased (i.e., from 15.45% to 26.46%). readers are referred to tables 1 3 for the descriptive statistics for the percentages of the dependent variables by campus accountability rating. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 14 table 1 descriptive statistics for student characteristics by elementary school accountability rating for the 2008-2009 school year variable n m sd percent of black students exemplary 1791 10.44 14.49 recognized 1750 13.74 17.98 acceptable 544 19.16 21.16 unacceptable 25 34.36 28.67 percent of hispanic students exemplary 1791 38.33 30.32 recognized 1750 56.26 30.70 acceptable 544 58.59 29.22 unacceptable 25 56.08 29.03 percent of minority students exemplary 1791 48.77 31.24 recognized 1750 69.99 27.68 acceptable 544 77.76 24.40 unacceptable 25 90.44 12.55 a c c o u n t a bl it iy r a t in g s o f e l e m e n t a r y sc h o o l s 15 table 2 descriptive statistics for student characteristics by elementary school accountability rating for the 2008-2009 school year variable n m sd percent of at-risk students exemplary 1791 39.28 20.44 recognized 1750 53.82 19.47 acceptable 544 58.82 18.01 unacceptable 25 67.62 17.90 percent of economically disadvantaged students exemplary 1791 49.04 28.91 recognized 1750 70.67 21.19 acceptable 544 78.32 16.49 unacceptable 25 91.19 8.81 percent of students with lep exemplary 1791 17.02 18.80 recognized 1750 26.86 22.24 acceptable 544 29.91 23.15 unacceptable 25 33.84 26.75 c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 16 table 3 descriptive statistics for student characteristics by elementary school accountability rating for the 2008-2009 school year variable n m sd percent of student mobility exemplary 1743 15.45 6.99 recognized 1719 19.40 6.86 acceptable 530 20.77 7.09 unacceptable 24 26.46 8.07 total number of students enrolled exemplary 1791 552.91 214.84 recognized 1750 553.96 216.79 acceptable 544 540.32 210.36 unacceptable 25 514.72 195.26 discussion in this study, student characteristics of texas elementary public schools were analyzed by their accountability rating for the 2008-2009 school year. with the exception of school size, elementary schools differed in their student characteristics by the school accountability rating. exemplary elementary schools had the lowest percentages of black students, hispanic students, economically disadvantaged students, at-risk students, students with lep, and mobility percent whereas academically unacceptable schools had the highest percentages. effect sizes, or the practical importance of these analyses, ranged from moderate to very large (cohen, 1988). what a c c o u n t a bl it iy r a t in g s o f e l e m e n t a r y sc h o o l s 17 these analyses revealed was that differences were clearly present in the students who were enrolled at texas elementary schools with different accountability ratings. based on the findings of this study, texas elementary schools with higher percentages of black, hispanic, economically disadvantaged, at-risk, lep, and mobile students face unique challenges. documented in the existing research literature is that these students, largely minority and low-income, tend to have varied cultural needs (frankson & white-lindsey, 2007; petterway et al., 2006) and are susceptible to environmental risk factors (bainbridge & lasley, 2002; jencks & phillips, 1998; orfield & lee, 2005) that require special attention to ensure academic achievement. the current system of education and assessment appears to continue to fall short of properly serving these children (allen et al., 1999; darling-hammond, 1998; education trust, 2008; ingersoll, 1999, 2002; jepsen & rivkin, 2002; nieto, 2003; orfield & lee, 2005; peske & haycock, 2006; rowland & coble, 2005; u.s. department of education, national center for education statistics, 2000). if appropriate and effective educational programs are ever to be designed for minority and economically disadvantaged students, educational leaders must recognize and understand the interrelationship between student demographic characteristics and achievement. currently, the amount of learning that takes place in schools is measured primarily based on students’ scores on standardized assessments (petterway et al., 2006). however, black and hispanic students are at a disadvantage compared to non-minority peers on achievement tests (bainbridge & lasley, 2002). therefore, they are often unable to demonstrate what they have actually learned. researchers have reported that these students need, “to be exposed to high quality, well-designed assessments that take into consideration the risk factors associated with certain racial groups” (frankson & white-lindsey, 2007, p. 21). frankson and white-lindsey (2007) suggested that c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 18 appropriately teaching and assessing minority students requires the following measures be taken to build on students’ strengths and meet their individual needs: implantation of culturally responsive practices, including teacher dialogue offering social support and encouragement, activities honoring ancestral culture, and parental involvement; designing instructional practices in which goals, objectives, and parental input and involvement are aligned with the diversity of students’ cultures and learning styles; and infusion of authentic assessments, such as oral retellings or tactile physical activities, that involve relatable content-rich pedagogy. without this understanding of the particular needs of minority students, the achievement gap between these students and their non-minority counterparts is not likely to be bridged, and school rankings will continue to be unintended indicators of the demographic characteristics to which schools cater (petterway et al., 2006). to raise the achievement of all students in the nation and eliminate the achievement gap seen among students by race, ethnicity, poverty, and english proficiency, the education community must also recruit, train, and retain highly qualified teachers who are prepared to work in diverse environments (bowling & cummings, 2009; u.s. department of education, 2002). according to the education trust (2008), “by assigning poor and minority students to stronger teachers, texas schools could produce much better results, regardless of the outside-of-school factors that affect students success” (p. 2). peske and haycock (2006) recommended a range of actions to aid education leaders in ending the unfair distribution of teacher quality, which include: overhauling hiring practices to allow schools that serve low-income, high-minority, and low-performing students the first pick of teacher talent; paying effective teachers more in highneed schools; balancing the challenges of working in high-poverty schools by giving teachers reduced student loads; reserving tenure for those teachers who demonstrate effectiveness at a c c o u n t a bl it iy r a t in g s o f e l e m e n t a r y sc h o o l s 19 producing student learning; setting staff budgets at the school level and ensuring that they are proportionate with student needs; building better data systems that link individual teachers to the academic achievement of their students over time in order to identify the most effective teachers; and targeting funding to high poverty schools. closing the achievement gap will not be an effortless task, neither will it be immediate or cheap. as bainbridge and lasley (2002) observed, closing the achievement gap will require new approaches to understanding demographics, diversity, and accountability. it will also require more commitment on the part of society to find ways of ensuring that those who start school possess enough advantages to be advantaged by education and not so many disadvantages that make the efforts of even the best educators ineffective. (p. 434) as with other studies in which archival data are utilized, this study is a causalcomparative study which limits the extent to which any cause-and-effect statements can be made. additionally, only data from one state were analyzed. finally, numerous variables that are related to student success were not analyzed herein. therefore, readers are encouraged to be cautious in the extent to which they make generalizations from this study. researchers are encouraged to extend this study by investigating other schooling conditions and student demographic characteristics related to school accountability ratings. in particular, accountability ratings and characteristics of students enrolled at other school levels (i.e., middle schools, high schools) and in additional states need to be addressed. until such time as these findings are extended and replicated, these results should be viewed as tentative in nature. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 20 references allen, m., palaich, r., & anthes, c. 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(2010, march 5). transforming american education: learning powered by technology, national educational technology plan executive summary. draft. retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/sites/default/files/netp-2010-exec-summary.pdf whitehurst, g. (2003). research on teacher preparation and professional development. whitehouse conference on preparing tomorrow’s teachers. washington, dc. retrieved from http://www.ed.gov/admins/tchrqual/learn/preparingteachersconference/whitehurst.html c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 26 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt the teaching performance_final volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x the teacher performance assessment: reflections on the pedagogical thought processes of three student teachers kimberlee a. sharp, ed.d. morehead state university citation sharp, k.a. (2010). the teacher performance assessment: reflections on the pedagogical thought processes of three student teachers. current issues in education, 13(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract the impact of the teacher performance assessment (tpa) on three pre-service teachers’ pedagogical thought processes and self-perceptions is the focus of this study. qualitative research procedures included interviews, observations, and coding of the pre-service teachers’ written documents. emerging themes and implications for teacher education include variance in: 1) the pre-service teachers’ ability to analyze and articulate learner outcome results; 2) how they thought they impacted student learning; and 3) their locus of control. keywords: pre-service teachers, pre-service teacher supervision, qualitative research, teacher performance assessment c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 2 about the author(s) author: kimberlee a. sharp, ed.d. affiliation: morehead state university address: 301-c ginger hall, morehead, ky 40351. email: k.sharp@moreheadstate.edu biographical information: kimberlee sharp is an assistant professor of teacher education in the department of middle grades and secondary education at morehead state university in kentucky. her research efforts focus on the pedagogy of controversial issues in the social studies, citizenship education, and pre-service teacher preparation and supervision. t he t eacher p erform ance a ssessm ent 3 what is teacher quality? what attributes and dispositions must teachers possess to demonstrate quality? what is the relationship between teachers’ instructional decisions and students’ learning? these questions are just a few on the minds of teacher educators in this era of no child left behind and heightened interest in pre-service teacher effectiveness. because teacher attributes resulting in significant learner gains are difficult to determine and classify, recent experiences using performance assessments is drawing attention. this article suggests that the teacher performance assessment (tpa), although strong in its ability to evaluate entry level teacher competencies, is capable of yielding more important information about teacher candidates: their pedagogical thought processes and perceptions of themselves as teachers. the teacher performance assessment conceptualized at western oregon university as the “teacher work sample,” the teacher performance assessment (tpa) was developed as a means to assist pre-service and new teachers to evaluate their instructional effects on learners (devlin–scherer, burroughs, daly & mccartan, 2007; girod & girod, 2006). more precisely, girod and girod state that the purpose of the tpa is to develop in teachers the ability to “make systematic connections between their teaching actions and the learning of each student in their classrooms” using student data (p. 482). to ensure this occurs, pre-service and new teachers (“candidates,” henceforth) follow a six-step process while planning a unit of instruction which involves documenting: 1) student contextual features; 2) desired learning outcomes; 3) instructional plans; 4) assessment plans; 5) evidence of learner gains; and 6) reflections on student achievement and instructional decision – making (french, 2002). it is not surprising that the tpa methodology is receiving widespread attention among c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 4 teacher preparation programs. federal and state education reforms have created a high-stakes atmosphere, and at no other time in american public school history has student achievement been scrutinized as closely as it is today (french, 2002; mayer, 2005). changes occurring in the credentialing and licensing of new teachers is an example of the impact of these reforms. many states now have new-teacher induction programs, bureaucratic accountability systems, and new teacher standards to evaluate entry-level competence (branyon, 2008; mayer, 2005; ohio department of education [ode], 1999; pecheone, pigg, chung & souviney, 2005). in addition to these responses to education reform, teacher accreditation organizations, such as the national council for the accreditation of teacher education (ncate) have revised their standards to include performance-based models for assessing teacher candidates and accrediting teacher preparation programs (cawyer & caldwell, 2002; national council for the accreditation of teacher education [ncate], 2008). the current educational reform environment has given rise to several studies examining the value of using the tpa to evaluate teacher candidates’ entry-level teaching skills. one theme emerging from the current literature concerns candidates’ attitudes and supports they perceive to have received while completing a tpa. with regard to attitudes, okhremtchouk, seiki, gilliland, ateh, wallace and kato (2009) found the tpa adversely affects candidates’ ability to complete concurrent university coursework and impedes their ability to maintain normal sleeping routines and personal relationships. another study conducted by stone (1998) revealed lack of time and lack of preparation assistance by university supervisors as deterrents to the candidates’ attitudes toward performance-based assessment. taking this finding further, devlin – scherer et al. (2007) reported that some mentor teachers are unsupportive of pre assessment techniques as a method for determining instructional course of action by teacher t he t eacher p erform ance a ssessm ent 5 candidates. even worse, the candidates in okhremtchouk et al. reported that mentor teachers had “nothing to do” with candidates’ teacher performance preparation and maintained an “indifference to [its] importance and significance” (p. 54). thus, the attitudes regarding tpa supports reported in these studies may be suggestive of team members’ competing pedagogical beliefs and differing levels of expertise with performance assessment. reports such as these may also justify the move of some teacher preparation programs to train partner teachers in the tpa process (branyon, 2008; devlin – scherer et al.). recent research has also explored teacher candidates’ perceived value of the tpa in terms of informing their instructional practice. girod & girod’s (2006) web-based simulation, the “cook school district simulation,” is one example. used as a training tool to introduce teacher candidates to performance assessment methodology, the cook simulation rendered positive results in candidates’ ability to connect teaching and learning in simulated classroom exercises. okhremtchouk et al. (2009) found that despite the performance assessment’s negative features (i.e., the consumption of one’s time and the sacrifice of other coursework), candidates reported to have improved their skills in lesson plan development and aligning assessment with state standards. branyon’s (2008) study further affirms the methodology’s power to inform instructional practice. this study reported that candidates “had indeed affected k-12 student learning” (p. 36), and the collaboration of skilled mentor teachers was an essential factor in the candidates’ performance. yet another marker of the perceived value of the tpa by candidates is the extent to which they claim to differentiate instruction based upon diverse learning needs and learning styles. in the devlin – scherer et al. (2007) study, candidates reported reflection and experimentation with fusing theory and practice as the key elements to informing their instructional decisions regarding individualized adaptations. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 6 in summary of the literature, the tpa is a powerful methodology for evaluating teacher candidate instructional effects on learners. it sensitizes beginning teachers to numerous factors and nuances of classroom teaching. because of this, candidates need to possess nominal skills and understandings prior to commencing a tpa. the collective skills represented in the research above stipulate common features to determine candidate effectiveness, which include: 1) the ability to demonstrate effective oral and written communication; 2) the ability to identify and articulate learner outcomes; 3) the ability to identify appropriate assessment procedures; and 4) the ability to adapt instruction according to student dynamics and student outcomes. the collective research also underscores the importance of developmentally appropriate instructional practices as informed by theory and practice as well as the presentation of thorough and accurate content knowledge as requisite understandings of teacher candidates. the teacher education program (tep) described in this article affirmed this collective body of knowledge and scaffolded the skills and understandings in courses and field – experiences prior to its candidates’ clinical practice semester. methodology the role of the tpa on the pedagogical thought processes of 3 student teachers and the perceived impact on student learning described in this article took place at a regional university in the southern region of the united states during the 2008 spring semester. the national council for accreditation of teacher education (ncate) and the state’s teacher licensing board accredit this university’s teacher education program. the college of education at this university is composed of three departments, all of which share in the preand post-professional preparation of teachers, both undergraduate and graduate. t he t eacher p erform ance a ssessm ent 7 prior to this college of education’s adoption of the tpa, faculty assessed their student teachers’ initial teaching competencies using a portfolio of artifacts aligned with state teacher standards. although the portfolio was designed to represent a comprehensive evaluation of the student teachers’ exiting competencies, several faculty members criticized the method for its lack of tangible, quantifiable evidence of pre-service teacher skills (e.g., articulation of instructional decisions as determined by student data) and for its “scrapbook” format. members of the faculty and clinical practice supervisors decided to replace the portfolio with the tpa and vigorously drafted its own manual and scoring rubrics using existing tpa models, such as the renaissance partnership teacher work sample (the renaissance partnership for improving teacher quality [rpitq], 2004). the author (“professor,” henceforth) hoped to gain insight into the pedagogical thought processes of 3 student teachers during and following their work on the tpa. she solicited volunteers from among the college of education’s student teachers during their clinical practice semester. the professor informed the volunteers that the inquiry would consist of regularly scheduled conferences, interviews, and observations in order to render conclusions about their thought processes, actions, and self – perceptions as teachers. the professor collected data about the 3 student teachers’ pedagogical thought processes using methodology from the qualitative research tradition; more specifically, classroom action research. according to kemmis and mctaggart (2000), this tradition involves researchers assisting teachers in “making judgments about how to improve their own practices” (p. 569). the professor employed a reflexive system of questioning in order to challenge the student teachers’ existing views of theory and practice as well as their interactions and actions in the classroom. in doing so, the professor relied upon the unique context of each student teacher’s placement to c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 8 determine the sets of questions asked. however, to stimulate thinking about lesson planning and differentiation, the professor developed some common questions that she asked of each student teacher: 1) given the special needs identified in your classroom, how do you expect to modify instruction for every child? 2) what do you believe will be some obstacles or challenges when designing your lesson plans for your group of students? 3) what do you believe to be your strengths and/ or weaknesses with regard to the topic you are about to teach? what do you plan to do to compensate for weak areas? 4) can you explain how community factors and background experiences of your students will impact the unit you are about to teach? and, how do you know these factors will impact learning? what is the relationship between the community factors and background experiences to the unit topic you are about to teach? what do you anticipate some misunderstandings will be? as the student teachers progressed through the teaching of their units, the professor queried them about their lesson plans, the delivery of instruction, their assessment practices, and their instructional decision – making. examples of these questions included: 1) during your lesson today, i noticed that you had confused the students on the explanation of two similar, but different concepts. can you identify when that happened during your lesson and identify the two concepts? how do you think you will address this error tomorrow in your teaching? what strategy do you think will help iron – out the students’ confusion? (student teacher #1, marie) 2) how did you derive the questions asked during the interviews of your students? did these interviews elicit the responses you wanted? why or why not? (student teacher t he t eacher p erform ance a ssessm ent 9 #1, marie) 3) what do you predict your students’ retention level will be using the strategy you have selected? what other strategies have you tried when helping your learners with rote – level tasks? did they work? why or why not? (student teacher #2, anne) 4) during your lesson, i observed two students off-task. can you identify when this occurred? physical and cognitive disability aside, what could you do to ensure that everyone participate? how do you know they understand “rhyming”? did the “tickmarks” used to tally their claps demonstrate an understand of rhyming? why or why not? (student teacher #2, anne) 5) based upon results of your pre-assessment, what modern day examples do you think you could use to serve as analogies for explaining prohibition and women’s suffrage? how do you know your students will identify with these examples? what is their connection to these examples? (student teacher #3, june) 6) can you explain how you decided upon “community-building” as part of your lesson plan development? what factors about the students influenced your decisions to use community building in your lessons? during your observation, i noticed a breakdown of the “democratic process.” what do you believe caused this breakdown? how do plan to restore democracy tomorrow? (student teacher #3, june) the professor archived the questions and responses in individually labeled portfolios for each student teacher. these portfolios also held classroom observation protocols, email exchanges, the student teachers’ written lesson plans, action-impact-refinement essays, and drafts of narratives of their tpa documents. following each meeting with the student teachers and review of tpa documents, the professor recorded notes on an excel spreadsheet and coded them according to decisions about instructional strategies, adaptations, assessment procedures, c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 10 and resources used. the professor also recorded verbatim comments made by the student teachers that appeared to be unique thoughts and responses to their teaching and learning experience. it was during this process of recording the student teachers’ interview comments, written reflections, and anecdotal information from observations that the professor employed the constant comparative method and discovered patterns emerging from the data. according to strauss and corbin (1998), the constant comparison method enables the researcher to identify “variations in the patterns” of the data by comparing those patterns to various “properties and dimensions under different conditions” (p. 67). the researcher coded the student teachers’ information according to pre-conceived properties (e.g., instructional strategies, assessment plans, etc.) and found variance in their behaviors, thinking processes, and comments. the researcher deduced the variances were due to the individual context and predilection of each student teacher as well as the context of their classroom placement. this process generated three themes attributed to the student teachers’ entry-level competencies in which this article proceeds to report: 1) their ability to analyze and articulate learner outcome results; 2) their perceptions of how they thought they impacted student learning; and 3) the role their exhibited locus of control played in the delivery of their lessons. the student teachers the professor assigned pseudonyms to the three student teachers in order to protect their anonymity. each of the 3 participating student teachers were dual special education and regular education majors and completed their clinical practice semester in the same school district close to the university. the school district services students of the entire county and consists of one high school, one middle school, and four elementary schools. although the district is rural and t he t eacher p erform ance a ssessm ent 11 generally homogenous in terms of ethnicity and religious background, several aspects regarding the grade level, classroom profile, and subject matter deemed each of these student teachers’ experiences as very different. the first student teacher, marie, was a dual elementary p-5/msd (moderate to severe disabilities) p-12 major and assigned to a self-contained, inclusive 5th grade classroom. several of marie’s students exhibited the range of ability levels often associated with inclusive learning environments. these ability levels included students with significant learning delays and/ or disabilities in addition to students designated as academically gifted. at the time of marie’s arrival, the class was studying early history and political life of the american colonies. to keep with this general theme, marie’s cooperating teacher assigned the preamble to the united states constitution as the subject for her tpa learning sequence. the second student teacher, anne, also a dual elementary p-5/msd p-12 major, was assigned to a self-contained, multi-age msd classroom consisting of grades 6, 7, and 8. each of the 9 students in this classroom had disabilities which precluded their ability to function in regular education settings, although a few of these students “went out” for physical education, social studies, and music. some of the specific disabilities represented in this classroom included down syndrome, childhood ataxia with central hypomyelination (cach), and other neurological and physical disorders impeding normal cognitive development and growth. the curriculum practiced in this classroom primarily focused on the practical living needs of the students supplemented with some academic instruction in reading, mathematics, and science. anne’s cooperating teacher assigned poetry, more specifically, the attributes of rhyme and rhythm of poetry as her tpa learning sequence topic. the third student teacher, june, was a dual elementary p-5/lbd (learning and behavior c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 12 disorders) p-12 major, and assigned to the county high school for her student teaching assignment. her experience occurred in an 11th grade lbd resource classroom in which the students’ disabilities consisted of mild mental disorders, emotional behavioral disorders, and specific learning disabilities in reading and comprehension. june’s cooperating teacher taught mathematics, language arts, and social studies at different times of the day, and assigned june u.s. history, more specifically, the roaring twenties, as her subject for the tpa learning sequence. findings as stated previously, the professor spent significant time conferencing with the 3 participating student teachers during and following the completion of their tpa for the purpose of understanding their pedagogical thought processes. these conferences along with their individual tpa documentation produced several findings which appeared to have profound effect on these pre-service teachers’ decision-making skills and the achievement of their students. these findings include variances in their understanding of their students’ prior knowledge and cognitive capabilities, their perceptions of how they thought they impacted student learning, and the extent to which their observed locus of control may have contributed to their perceptions of their impact on learning. prior to the tpa learning sequence, each student teacher ascertained their students’ prior knowledge by administering an informal pre-test. although the student teachers gleaned productive information from these pre-tests, especially in the form of zeroing in on daily skill and concept targets, the professor noted differences in the student teachers’ expectations of student performance and cognitive capabilities. marie, whose tpa learning sequence was t he t eacher p erform ance a ssessm ent 13 written for a 5th grade social studies class, appeared to have the greatest challenge reconciling her students’ misunderstandings with her selected instructional strategies. marie’s pre-test results indicated that 100% of her students could recite the preamble with near perfection, that 62.5% of her students understood that the preamble is an introduction, and that 37.5% of her students knew the preamble is part of the u.s. constitution. these results indicated that her students’ rote-level understanding of the preamble was sufficient and did not require extensive re teaching. however, the pre-test also showed marie that only .03% of her students understood the meaning of each of the 6 goals listed in the preamble; thus, “after the pre-test, it was clear that my students only had a superficial understanding of the preamble” and its role in american’s lives. this pre-test result caused marie to focus her daily instruction on the “current day representations of each goal so that [the] students can derive meaning from the complex words.” marie developed higher – order objectives using bloom’s taxonomy that she hoped would enable her students “to apply those meanings to present day experiences.” in summary, marie “felt that having the students recite a bunch of big words without any conceptual understanding would serve little, if any practical purpose.” to aid her students’ understanding of the preamble and its current day representations, marie planned a variety of instructional strategies that were hands-on, engaging, and nurtured conceptual understanding. the conferences with marie and the notes in her tpa revealed that she planned these exercises according to lev vygotsky’s theory of zone of proximal development utilizing scaffolds such as rich conversation, analogies, and current event representations of the preamble. marie alluded to this constructivist approach by commenting, i will probe the students about their understanding of the constitution ... as an analogy using a game board. this activity will take the form of a whole class c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 14 discussion ... present[ing] the information in a student inquiry method. i will have the students discover the meaning of the game board by guiding them to the final conclusion that the constitution is like the instruction manual for our nation’s government. marie also demonstrated a constructivist approach to teaching this topic by her frequent use of “interactive powerpoint,” in which the teacher recorded student comments and questions on the computer for all students to see. this approach allowed marie’s students an opportunity to revise their thinking about each goal of the preamble as they proceeded through their activities. using the interactive powerpoint marie “move[d] onto the next activity using newspapers ... each group [having] one goal from the preamble and had them take time to locate articles from the newspaper that represent that goal.” as each group presented their current event representation of the preamble, “students [were] encouraged to jot down notes” using the powerpoint as their guide. although marie observed slight gains in her students’ conceptual understanding of the preamble’s 6 goals, she appeared somewhat discouraged in their ability to retain or make sense of the goals’ abstract meanings. to compensate for this, she supplemented the interactive powerpoint exercises with core content textbooks, re-taught the newspaper exercise using video clips and discussion, and asked the students to illustrate their personal constructions of the goals in small groups. the professor’s classroom observations with marie also indicated that she had confused the students during their daily discussions on two of the goals by giving vague definitions and examples to ambiguous goals, namely, “providing for the common defense” and “establishing domestic tranquility.” despite this error, the students’ scores regarding the meanings of the 6 goals listed in the preamble did improve on the post-assessment that marie t he t eacher p erform ance a ssessm ent 15 administered, moving from .03% correct responses to 56.2% correct. marie commented that, those scores show a marked improvement in the conceptual understanding of the goals ... i think that this [the preamble] was an extremely challenging and abstract concept for 5th graders to understand and that my class especially had trouble due to their limited means and limited experience outside of their rural community. marie exhibited a strong internal locus of control in her tpa documentation as well as during the conferences she had with the professor. when asked about how she thought she impacted student learning, it was clear that she derived her explanations from thoughtful observations and data evaluation. she testified in her tpa that 88.8% of her students improved their conceptual understanding of each of the preamble’s goals between their pre-test and post test performances. she made a decision to “teach the preamble from a conceptual standpoint” and added that she “expect[ed] the students at the end of the unit to be able to provide specific examples and evidence of how the goals in the preamble can be seen in action today.” marie’s decision-making appeared effective as she observed that her students “provided examples of each goal from the preamble,” and attributed her students’ success to factors for which she was in control as evidenced in her comment that, “after reviewing the students’ [written] answers, i could see much of my phrasing that was used throughout the learning sequence.” in short, marie’s students were successful in repeating drilled examples of the preamble’s goals in written form. further evidence of marie’s strong internal locus of control in impacting student learning occurred during the administration of a second tier to her post-test. cleverly designed to augment her understanding of the depth of knowledge gained by her students, marie interviewed 4 c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 16 students of differing academic abilities and socioeconomic backgrounds about the goals set forth in the preamble by showing them pictures of events, people, and/ or situations. marie noted vast differences and errors in their responses and interpretations about the pictures, and reasoned that 5th grade students have “a limited ability to attach the meaning of the goals to pictorial representations” and to explain them in their own words. marie further reasoned that her students’ difficulty to think abstractly on the subject was due to their “limited experiences,” yet qualified this statement by recounting various compensations she implemented to bridge the experience gap. thus, marie’s use of interview allowed her to discover firsthand the degree to which environment plays in students’ abstract thinking and served to reconcile for her the importance of examining instructional inputs in light of students’ special backgrounds. anne’s experiences teaching her tpa learning sequence and the expectations she had for her students were notably different than marie’s; the most important difference being the student context of anne’s classroom: multi-age students with severe neurological, physical, and cognitive disabilities. each of anne’s students were exempt from state standardized testing. as marie had done, anne administered a pre-test about rhyme and rhythm in poetry. her pre-test differed from marie’s, however, because anne developed pre-tests according to each student’s individual iep and alternate portfolio. having access to each of the students’ records therefore enabled anne to effectively plan her learning sequence and assessments based upon known abilities and frustration levels. each student failed anne’s pre-test which contained questions regarding the rudiments of poetry, rhyme, and rhythm. anne informed the professor that she expected each of the students to fail the pre-test because of their cognitive disabilities and because “the students lacked basic understanding and / or awareness of this literary genre.” anne reasoned that her daily objectives t he t eacher p erform ance a ssessm ent 17 needed to focus on the lowest levels of bloom’s taxonomy, and, tasks will need to be age appropriate since they are in middle school, even though their academic and functional abilities are as low as a typical 1st grader ... i feel emphasizing the knowledge, comprehension, and application levels will be appropriate for my students because i want them to work at both the independent and instructional levels. i don’t want to push my students to their frustration level because they can get very sensitive, and their [impaired] confidence will prohibit them from achieving my objectives. as a result of anne’s acute attention to her students’ cognitive capabilities, she developed only one to two lower-order objectives for each day of her instructional sequence with subobjectives specifying adaptations for each student. the theoretical foundation by which anne selected instructional strategies to teach about rhyme and rhythm in poetry differed markedly from marie’s unit on the preamble. whereas the latter relied heavily on “students making meaning,” (i.e., constructivism), the former selected strategies which had more in common with behaviorist assumptions about learning (parsons, hinson, & sardo – brown, 2001). using the stimulus – response model, anne taught rhyme by reading rhyming words from shel silverstein’s (1996) “spoiled brat” and having her students match silverstein’s words to highlighted words on individualized worksheets. in addition, anne attempted to teach rhythm by breaking down the skill into small, easily emulated tasks. anne introduced syllables and rhythm by reading segments of another shel silverstein (1974) poem, “alice.” she read phrases out loud and clapped with the expectation of students echo clapping in unison. as a follow up to this exercise, the students were given a sheet with the poem printed on it. to the side of each phrase, space was provided for students to write in tick marks. tick marks indicated each time a clap was heard. for this activity, the teacher clapped the poem as the c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 18 students made tick marks. following the post-assessment on rhyme and rhythm in poetry, anne discovered that her students demonstrated limited success toward her established objectives. anne’s pre-test scores were extremely low prior to her unit (i.e., 33%, 44%, 25%, and 0% for each of the four students taught), yet the daily formative assessment scores were nearly perfect. anne commented, with the results of their formatives being so high, i expected a near perfect summative assessment [for each student] ... knowing that my students have such limited cognitive ability, i had to provide several manipulatives and accommodations during their lessons to help them be successful. anne was surprised with the students’ post-test results as only two students passed her test on rhyme and rhythm with scores of 70% or higher. anne’s reflection revealed that she may have contributed to the low scores by not taking into account her students’ inability “to retain even the simplest skills and pieces of information on a day-to-day basis.” as a self-identified growth area, anne emphasized the need for frequent repetition, modeling, and immersion while developing new skills and concepts, especially with students having moderate to severe learning disabilities. whereas anne’s tpa documentation and conference notes indicated significant elaborations regarding her instructional plans and was replete with data used to inform her practice, anne’s perceptions for how she thought she impacted learning were less detailed. the professor observed that her reasoning emanated largely from the obvious physical and cognitive impairments of her students, their academic histories, and their behaviors in class; in other words, factors beyond her immediate control. thus, anne exhibited a greater tendency to justify her students’ performance based on their disabilities and other extraneous factors. in terms of her t he t eacher p erform ance a ssessm ent 19 students’ reluctant behaviors and limited attention spans, anne attributed frequent interruptions in the classroom as the impediment for meaningful instruction to occur, by noting, most of my students need bathroom assistance, which is provided by the teacher or one of her aides. this can take away a lot of the day because of how much time it takes to get to every student in the room. anne also attributed her students’ limited attention span on day 2 of her learning sequence by commenting, “my students were not as engaged in the activities i had. the behavior of one student was slouching, putting her head down, and arguing. others were frustrated that we were working with poetry again.” and finally, anne pointed out that in order to maintain a student’s alternate portfolio designation, pre-test scores for the core content must fall below 50%, and based upon that standard, “by looking at my [post-test] results, i feel that my students did have success.” anne’s tpa lacked compelling evidence to suggest that she thought constructively about the impact of the external factors on her instructional delivery and on her students’ achievement, even though she mentioned the externals several times. anne provided little to no reflection for how to atone for those factors by taking responsibility for them. instead, anne’s documentation contained several references of the burden for achievement as belonging to the students, such as in her statement that, “being able to retain knowledge into another lesson can be hard for students, but it is especially hard for my students.” further, anne’s documentation mentioned “review” as a means to address her students’ inability to “retain knowledge”; yet she inadvertently failed to identify specific instructional interventions and their predicted impact on learning. because of this omission, anne’s understanding of the overall contributions she made toward her students’ achievement may only be superficial. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 20 the final student teacher, june, appeared to have the fewest struggles planning and teaching her tpa learning sequence. like anne, june had access to her students’ individual ieps and academic histories which enabled her to differentiate instruction according to specific learning styles and needs. although her students were 11th graders in a special education resource classroom, none of her students’ learning delays were severe enough for exemption from the state standardized test for u.s. history. in conferencing with june, the professor found that developing a learning sequence with strong connections to the present was her primary focus. with help from her cooperating teacher and investigation into the state’s core content for assessment, june identified the “roaring twenties” as the topic that would elicit the greatest interest and discussion among her students. june’s pre-test consisted of 10 questions using the anticipation guide method (fisher, brozo, frey, & ivey, 2007). her aim was to determine what the students considered fact or fiction regarding women’s suffrage, prohibition, and cultural change in the 1920s. the results of june’s pre-test showed that the students had naïve constructions of the term, “women’s suffrage,” had little understanding of the term “prohibition” and its effects on american society, yet had realistic understanding of the impact of automobiles and factories on society and on the economy. these misunderstandings caused june to focus her learning sequence on women’s suffrage and prohibition by, tapping into students’ interests and background experiences, asking them to make comparisons of women’s rights of yesteryear with the present, and by asking them to think about restrictions on the sale of alcohol in our state today compared to the past. june’s tpa suggested numerous efforts to compensate for her students’ lower academic aptitudes and impaired motivations to learn by involving them in the planning and decision making process of the learning sequence. much in the spirit of john dewey’s (1933) democracyt he t eacher p erform ance a ssessm ent 21 building in the classroom, june commented that, “each of [the students] gave me their suggestions on how to make the unit beneficial to them . . . i added those suggestions before i taught the unit. these suggestions included more visuals and more class participation assignments.” in addition, june attempted to nurture communitybuilding and participatory citizenship skills among her students by involving them in a constructive discussion exercise. june observed that the topics of women’s rights and restrictions on the sale of alcohol evoked emotional and argumentative responses from her students. the professor observed that june did not succumb to their outbursts and strong convictions; instead, she decided to channel their intensity “by having them participate in a teacher moderated debate between the boys and girls.” to prepare her students for the debate, june provided video clips, primary sources such as advertisements and photographs, and short journal articles and newspaper clippings as resources for their position development. june’s students collectively demonstrated significant gains in achievement between her pre-test and post-test administrations; the former average being 66.67% and the latter being 92.67%. she noted, however, that her students struggled on the segment of the post-test which assessed students’ analysis of the roaring twenties’ issues and their relationship to contemporary society. june noted that because of the open-ended format and requirement to “write complete sentences and use paragraph form,” her students “had trouble explaining in writing, when they rarely have trouble explaining verbally,” even though the task was necessary for her to determine their depth of understanding. throughout the tpa process, june exuded enthusiasm and self-confidence in her instructional abilities both in her written documentation and conversations with the professor. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 22 june opined in her reflection, i feel that i have not only grown as a teacher, but i have also grown as a human being. i have been able to experience this growth from the beginning to the end. now, that it is over, i feel successful and confident in my abilities and for a new teacher that is the best reward. perhaps more so than her peers, june claimed the greatest responsibility for her actions and their effects on her learners, suggesting a strong internal locus of control. to support her students’ recommendations regarding strategies they would like to see her employ, june overtly sought ways to make her unit on the roaring twenties meaningful through extensive background reading on the subject. owning up to this responsibility she commented, i think that i need to focus on the content areas i struggle with in order to better prepare myself for the classroom. as teachers, we are taught a wide range of content and information in a short period of time. with that in mind, i believe that as much as we tell our students that they need to be lifelong learners, we ourselves need to take that into consideration and should never stop increasing our knowledge of the content. insofar as the perceived impact june’s instruction had on her students, the professor observed that june felt she could control for her students’ various learning disabilities by actively involving them in the learning process. june’s written notes indicated that her cooperating teacher conditioned the students to work silently and independently in the resource classroom with little teacher/student interaction. by experimenting with deweyian principles, june altered the learning arrangement to include group work, exchange of ideas through debate and discussion, and democratic decision-making. her own decisions to include these strategies appeared beneficial, as evidenced in her observation that, “each of my students was able to give an ‘alcohol’ law and state their opinion on why the government created that law. learning from t he t eacher p erform ance a ssessm ent 23 each other’s comments, this discussion was very successful in meeting my objective.” thus, june’s thought processes recorded in her tpa suggest that she perhaps displayed the strongest self-efficacy, or power, to impact learning among the three student teachers. she appeared to exert enthusiasm for the teaching process, appeared to own the responsibility for student achievement regardless of extenuating factors, and appeared to compensate for her students’ motivational challenges by involving them in the instructional decision-making process. discussion as stated earlier, the purpose of this inquiry was to help the professor gain a better insight into student teachers’ pedagogical thought processes and perceived impacts on student learning during their completion of a tpa. the professor’s inquiry involved only 3 student teachers and therefore the results described in this article are not necessarily demonstrative of their peers’ within the same population. nonetheless, the professor uncovered worthwhile observations about these 3 student teachers’ thought processes and actions during their tpa which may have implications for teacher preparation programs and for predicting teacher effectiveness. specifically, these implications concern the articulation of desirable tpa outcomes and desirable supervision of student teachers during their completion of tpas. first and perhaps most important, the snapshots of these 3 student teachers’ experiences reveal that they demonstrated rudimentary instructional and analysis skills. their tpas represent the first opportunity to independently plan, implement, and analyze student assessment results for an entire learning sequence. in terms of knowing what to teach and cogitating appropriate strategies, each of these student teachers appeared to understand the connection between prec urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 24 tests and instructional targets. additionally, each student teacher attempted to address student learning needs and learning preferences by differentiating instruction as much as possible. one explanation for these observations may rest in the fact that each of the 3 student teachers majored in both regular and special education (i.e., msd and lbd specifically) and benefited from the emphasis placed on assessment and differentiation in their special education courses. if this is true, which continued research in this area could illumine, teacher preparation programs utilizing the tpa as a means of evaluating candidate competency should ensure all methods courses embed assessment and differentiation practices in their syllabi. a second implication regarding these 3 student teachers’ experiences during their tpa completion is in the area of data analysis. each of the student teachers adequately reported pre test, formative, and summative assessment results in their tpas using appropriate statistical calculations, graphs, and tables. each attempted to articulate the meanings of those results; however, these attempts depicted nothing more than written summaries of their graphs, tables, and data artifacts found in the tpa appendices. although sensitized to the importance of data collection and analysis to inform instruction, each of the 3 student teachers lacked important inferences and speculations about their students’ achievement and long – term impact on learning. an explanation for this observation may reside in the psychology of cognitive development; that as adults continue to grow and enter new situations and experiences, their ability to reason contextually expands. due to these student teachers’ experiential and cognitive limitations, teacher preparation programs may need to consider the inability of the tpa to evaluate the likelihood new teachers can effectively use and make meaning of student data. a third and final implication regarding these 3 student teachers’ thought processes during the completion of their tpa concerns the influence of internal and external factors on the t he t eacher p erform ance a ssessm ent 25 shaping of their instructional decision-making. two of the student teachers exhibited strong internal loci of control as evidenced by taking responsibility for reducing barriers to learning and holding students to high standards for achievement. the other student teacher, although equally capable and conscientious in her efforts, exhibited an external locus of control tendency as factors beyond her control (i.e., the students’ obvious physical and neurological disabilities, and classroom interruptions) appeared to influence her instructional responses. an explanation accounting for this variance in their decision-making and perceived impacts on learning may reside in their innate personalities, but also in the degree to which they believe their instructional efforts will be worthwhile. as a result, teacher preparation programs utilizing the tpa should nourish the attitude in their student teachers that all students are capable of learning regardless of intervening factors. supervisors particularly should regularly query and challenge their student teachers’ thought processes in such a way that is conducive to enlightened instructional practice. in closing, this article reported on the pedagogical thought processes of 3 student teachers as derived from tpa documentation and conferencing. the findings included variances in the student teachers’ understanding of their students’ prior knowledge and cognitive capabilities, their perceptions of how they thought they impacted student learning, and the extent to which their observed locus of control may have contributed to their self-perceptions. the insights illuminated in this article will hopefully spawn new interest and dialogue in the evaluative possibilities of the tpa in predicting teacher candidate effectiveness as it relates to student achievement. references american psychological association. (2001). publication manual of the american psychological association (5th ed.). washington, dc: author c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 26 branyon, j. (2008). using mentoring and cohort collaboration: enhancing teacher quality in preservice teachers. delta kappa gamma bulletin, 74(3), 35–38. cawyer, c., & caldwell, d.a. (2002). performance-based assessment of teacher education: some contextual considerations. action in teacher education, 23(4), 1–3. devlin – scherer, r., burroughs, g., daly, j., & mccartan, w. (2007). the value of the teacher work sample for improving instruction and program. action in teacher education, 29(1), 51–60. dewey, j. (1933). how we think: a restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. boston, ma: d.c. heath. fisher, d., brozo, w.g., frey, n., & ivey, g. (2007). anticipation guides. in 50 content area strategies for adolescent literacy. upper saddle river, nj: pearson education, inc. french, r. 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(1999). ohio’s entry year program for teachers: toward the implementation of performancebased licensure. (eric document reproduction service no. ed 436495). okhremtchouk, i., seiki, s., gilliland, b., ateh, c., wallace, m., & kato, a. (2009). voices of pre-service teachers: perspectives on the performance assessment for california teachers (pact). issues in teacher education, 18(1), 39–62. parsons, r.d., hinson, s.l., & sardo-brown, d. (2001). educational psychology: a practitioner – researcher model of teaching. stamford, ct: wadsworth/ thomson learning, inc. pecheone, r.l., pigg, m.j., chung, r.r., & souviney, r.j. (2005). performance assessment and electronic portfolios: their effect on teacher learning and education. the clearing house, 78(4), 164–176. t he t eacher p erform ance a ssessm ent 27 renaissance partnership for improving teacher quality. (2004). the teacher work sample: manual for teacher candidates – tips for preparing the teacher work sample. retrieved june 30, 2008 from http://www.uni.edu/itq/pdf_files/student_tws_manual_june_2004.pdf silverstein, s. (1974). alice. in where the sidewalk ends. new york, ny: harper collins publishers, inc. silverstein, s. (1996). spoiled brat. in falling up. new york, ny: harper collins publishers, inc. stone, b.a. (1998). problems, pitfalls, and benefits of portfolios. teacher education quarterly, 25(1), 105–114. strauss, a. & corbin, j. (1998). basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications ltd. current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 1 28 editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo cie template volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x valuing children‘s voices mary alice barksdale virginia tech cheri f. triplett radford university citation barksdale, m.a. & triplett, c.f (2010). valuing children‘s voices. current issues in education, 13(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract this paper explores the voices of elementary children in public schools. three databases were used including (a) interviews with 25 elementary students, (b) drawings and writings created by 225 third through sixth-grade students about their high stakes testing experiences, and (c) observations in two first-grade classrooms. the data demonstrate that elementary children have much to say about their overall school experiences, including their worries at school, their feelings of disconnect with their teachers, the lack of meaningful learning experiences, and their desire to be heard as unique individuals. these findings challenge educators to make changes in our american classrooms in order to best meet the needs of young children. keywords: elementary children‘s perceptions, elementary children‘s voices, child-centered practices current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 about the author(s) author: mary alice barksdale affiliation: virginia tech address: 307 war memorial hall, mc 0313, blacksburg, va 24061 email: mbarksda@vt.edu biographical information: mary alice barksdale is the program area leader for elementary education at virginia tech and her research interests include: children's perceptions, cultures, and voices; literacy teacher education; literacy teaching in developing countries, and children who struggle in literacy acquisition. author: cheri f. triplett affiliation: radford university email: cftriplet@radford.edu biographical information: cheri f. triplett is an associate professor of reading education at radford university. cheri teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in reading and language arts. she also works with student teachers as they tutor struggling readers in three local partnership schools. her research interests include motivational and emotional issues for struggling readers, motivational and emotional issues for elementary students and literacy teacher education. valuing children ’s voices 3 valuing children‘s voices historically, the design of schooling in the united states has been based on the premise that educators are the experts in determining what children need to learn, how learning should be taught, and how learning should be assessed. children are called upon to respond to teachers‘ questions, but rarely to contribute to the overall management and decision making of classrooms and schools. while the notion of identifying and meeting the needs of children as unique learners has proliferated over the past quarter century, the assumption has been that educators must identify children‘s strengths and weaknesses, determine appropriate learning goals, and create instructional plans for moving toward those goals. although educators and researchers have focused on individual children, individual student voice rarely influences the educational process and there is little evidence that teachers are listening to student voices as a means of meeting student needs (cook-sather, 2002, 2003; scherff, 2005). many educators have suggested that attending to student voice and creating educational environments that support student agency and empowerment within teaching/learning processes is necessary in meeting the needs of children (cook-sather, 2002, 2003; cook-sather & schultz, 2001a, 2001 b; kozol, 1991; mitra, 2003; oldfather, 1995a, 1995b). there is little evidence that student perspectives are given consideration in educational decision-making. in studying middle and high school student perspectives on schools and school violence, haselswertz and lenhardt (2003) found that students had an ―us-them‖ attitude about the adults in their schools. they did not feel respected by their teachers, and the only reported meaningful/respectful relationships students encountered in school were with peers. the students viewed programs and policies directed at increasing school safety as top-down in nature. they lacked trust and connection with teachers-certainly not a condition that would lead students to current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 feel that they were safe and cared for within the school context (haselswertz & lenhardt, 2003). similarly, scherff (2005) found that students held the perspective that, for the most part, teachers did not care about students as individuals. educators who did include student voices in school reform efforts discovered they were able to create more positive and trusting school learning environments. mitra (2003) found that when student voices were given a ―place‖ in high school reform, it was possible for students and teachers to develop trust and decrease divisiveness. in this study, there were teacher-focused activities that made it possible for students to understand teacher views, and student-focused activities that allowed teachers to understand student perspectives. mitra (2003, 2004) reported that by including student voices in school reform, students gained a sense of position and agency in schools, which in turn reduced the level of student alienation from schooling. similarly, bacon & bloom (2000) asserted that student voice leads to high levels of responsibility in addressing school problems and designing solutions. further, rudduck and demetriou (2003) suggested that including student voices in the school, as a learning community, could increase student engagement in learning. oldfather (1995b) found that when high school students were actively involved as educational co-researchers, they developed clear understandings of their own abilities, they developed solid understandings of themselves as learners and their own motivations for learning, and they gained perspective on their own capacities to help themselves and others. similarly, cook-sather (2003) discovered that high school students had in-depth insights and sound impressions of their own learning and of learner differences. these student insights were used to assist teachers in making decisions about appropriate instructional support. valuing children ’s voices 5 most previous research on student voice and the potential impact of student voice on teaching, learning, and schooling has been conducted with middle and high school students. what about elementary students? could the voices of elementary children be of value in improving their perceptions of school and schooling? could the voices of elementary children provide information that could be useful in the teaching/learning process? as a starting point in listening to the voices of elementary children, we revisited our own data, which was collected over the past 7 years. our research often includes the voices of children and we wondered if there were common themes across studies. we revisited three of our own previous studies with the purpose of asking a new question,‖what do elementary children have to say about their school experiences?‖ methods data sources and participants three data sources were revisited for this exploration. they will be identified as the interview study, the drawing/writing study, and the observation study. the interview study involved interviews with 25 third and fourth graders. the drawing/writing study used illustrations and texts created by 225 third through sixth graders. the observation study utilized field notes and teacher interview data related to observations of first-grade reading lessons in two different urban classrooms. interview study for this study, data were drawn from a study in which 33 students were interviewed about their perceptions about school (triplett & barksdale, 2003). in the original study, interviews were conducted with third through eighth grade students. for the current review, only the interviews with elementary learners (grades 3-4) were used, representing 25 children. the current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 children were from two different states and represented from a small city school, an urban school, and a rural school. three interviews were conducted with each student over five months, with interviews lasting from 15-35 minutes each. the interview protocol included questions on: (a) current perceptions about school, (b) what students were learning, (c) what happened in school that helped students learn, (d) areas in which students were successful, (e) areas of in which students were less successful, (f) aspects of school that were stressful or worries about school, and, (g) aspects of school that help students deal with stresses and worries. drawing/writing study as a second data source, we analyzed the drawings created by 225 third through sixth grade students, as well as the written explanations these students produced to explain their drawings (triplett & barksdale, 2005). the children were from two different states, and represented both rural and urban contexts. on the day following completion of state-mandated high stakes tests, the students were asked to, ―draw a picture about your recent testing experience.‖ next, the students were asked to write in response to the prompt, ―tell me about your picture.‖ this method of data collection allowed for students' free responses without the possible biases of the researchers (which could have been revealed in interview or survey questions) influencing the responses (wheelock, bebell, and haney, 2000). observation study the third data source included observational field notes about the interactions between elementary students and their first-grade teachers, as well as interviews with the teachers after the lessons. two lessons were selected for inclusion in this paper. student voices were identified as statements made and other verbal and nonverbal messages during the lessons. the observations were of a reading group with six students and a writing group with four students. valuing children ’s voices 7 after observations of the lessons, an unstructured interview format was used to discuss the lessons with the teachers. one interview question was used to start the conversation: ―tell me what you thought about the lesson.‖ as a member check, the vignettes written based on the field notes and the interview transcriptions were shared with the teachers. the teachers were asked to identify any inaccuracies in the vignettes or transcripts and invited to recommend needed changes. both teachers found the vignettes and interviews to be accurate and neither suggested changes. data analysis all of the data collected were qualitative in nature. for the interview study, audio-taped interviews were transcribed then segmented into units of meaning, with attention given to the preservation of context (hycner, 1985). after segmenting the interviews, the units of meaning were grouped into categories sharing common characteristics. after organizing these data into categories, each category given a themed name that was representative of commonalties within the grouping (bogdan & biklen, 1998). a constant comparative approach was used in the analysis of the data for the drawing/writing study. this inductive method was selected as appropriate for the analysis of student drawings, which represent a qualitatively different type of data from interviews (strauss & corbin, 1990). the researchers examined the drawings to identify obvious recurring themes, noting the objects/people that were included. next, we transcribed the statements made by the students and met to identify emerging themes from the transcripts. finally, examinations were conducted to identify intersections between the themes identified in the drawings and the themes identified in student writings. many of the children used the acronyms for the high stakes tests current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 given in their state in their statements. for confidentiality purposes, the acronym ―hst‖ (for high stakes test) was used in the paper rather than the actual test acronyms. in the observation study, for the purpose of exploring the voices of elementary children during lessons, field notes and interviews based upon observations of two literacy lessons were selected. the teacher interview was transcribed. the field notes were written as vignettes and matched with related teacher comments. what are elementary students saying about their school experiences? the themes from each data source are presented separately, first the interview study, second the drawing/writing study, and then the observation study. interview study the recurrent themes from interviewing 25 elementary students included: (a) current learning, (b) who helps with current learning, (c) areas of success, (d) areas of struggle, (e) connections between academic struggles and life away from school, (f) stresses and worries in school (other than testing), (g) stresses, worries, and thoughts about testing, (h) methods of dealing with stress and worries, (i) concerns about fairness in school, (j) concerns about teachers and instruction, (k) liking school. current learning the children identified themes within specific subject areas they were learning in mathematics, science, and social studies, (for example, fractions, rocks and minerals, and the civil war). none of the students interviewed were able to identify what they were learning in reading, writing, or spelling. they discussed reading, writing, and spelling as subjects in which they ―worked‖ and ―practiced.‖ valuing children ’s voices 9 the participants provided many opinions about the subject areas such as, ―i can‘t stand reading and writing, and that is what we do for almost the entire day, and it is just, well, i get so tired of it and you have to sit and do these stupid stories almost everyday and all these pages about where you have to answer all these questions about nothing. and we write every day and i don‘t like writing at all because it is just the same kind of stuff to write about and the same sentences and sentences, and i just wish we could do something interesting.‖ the children made very few statements were indicating that they liked or enjoyed particular subjects. several children indicated that they liked reading, but when asked about their enjoyment of reading instruction, they had comments such as, ―i mean, i like to read, like read books at home, but i don‘t like reading in school.‖ one student liked ―some of the stories‖ that she had read in school, and several children liked for their teachers to read to them. one said that math was his favorite subject, and another liked social studies. who helps with current learning when these children were asked in interviews, ―who helps you with learning,‖ in most cases, they named family members. this was an unexpected response, as the next intended interview question was to be, ―tell me about how your teacher helps you with learning.‖ we expected that if students identified individuals other than teachers as helping them with learning, we would ask how these others helped. in 22 of the cases (66 interviews), teachers were not mentioned, so we did not ask the follow-up question about how teachers helped. instead, we asked the students about how the identified individuals helped with learning. typically, the students provided responses like, ―she helps me do my homework every night,‖ ―we read stories and magazines together almost all days,‖ and ―momma helps me study for every test, and we work and work until i know almost everything.‖ a few students made comments such as, ―my current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 dad is the best teacher because he helps me learn about how to do everything that you really need, hammering nails, climbing on ladders, and being safe and that; and we going fishing and he teaches me everything about all of the fish and how to catch them, and he helps me do everything that‘s hard. a handful of children mentioned coaches and sunday school teachers as helping them learn. only three of the 25 children mentioned teachers as helping them learn. the same three children mentioned teachers in multiple interviews. in these three cases, the students named family members first and teachers later in the discussion. one of the children‘s comments was revealing in that it may provide insight into the rarity of the identification of teachers as helping students learn. this child said, ―my teacher has too much, too many children and we have to do too many things to learn everyday so she doesn‘t really have time to help me very much, because, she does if she has time and i have something i didn‘t understand, if she has time she can tell me and explain and i can understand usually after that, and she‘s really nice, she‘s not mean if you don‘t understand and some teachers are, but she just helps me on sometimes.‖ this statement demonstrates that this child clearly perceived the time constraints faced in day-to-day interactions with her teacher. areas of success when students named areas of success such as reading, writing, math, and science, it was evident that most understood success as being reflected in grades. for instance, a fourth grader said, ―i know i‘m good at science because i always get an a, every nine weeks, but i‘m not so good at anything else.‖ the children felt that their success in different subject areas came naturally, as in, ―i just think it‘s easy,‖ and ―i‘ve always been good at writing.‖ there were few indications that the children viewed successes as related to their efforts. valuing children ’s voices 11 areas of struggle nineteen of the twenty-five students identified mathematics as the most troublesome subject area. a fourth-grade male found math to be much more challenging than it had been in the earlier years. he said, ―i was good at math in first and second grade and i really got it and good grades, too, you know? but now i can‘t remember it all and i‘m always getting something wrong even when i thought i knew it, so i think it is really hard this year and i keep getting a c.‖ several students noted difficulties in reading and writing; none indicated that they struggled with science or social studies. in several cases, the children indicated confusions about their success between home and school. another fourth-grader said, “i like reading at home and i read to my mom and we talk about it all, what it was about, and i don‘t have no problems understanding or saying the words, so my mom thinks i can read good, but i‘m no good at it in school and i always get a c, no matter how hard i try, so i guess you could say that it isn‘t a very good subject for me, and i don‘t like it in school either.‖ connections between academic struggles and life away from school there were many instances in which children made connections between their struggles in school and their lives away from school. in a rather impassioned and detailed manner, a fourth grader stated, ―i don‘t think the teachers understand what life is like for kids. i‘m slow, i just can‘t do things quickly and i have to read every word and think about every question and if i rush, i get it wrong and i don‘t like that … we get up, and get dressed and eat breakfast, and that takes a long time if there‘s a few kids, and wait for the school bus, and then ride, and we are busy at school all day, and then we have to go to the baby sitter after the bus, and there‘s a whole bunch of different kids there. you can‘t do homework with all that going on, and then momma current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 comes and gets us and while she fixes the dinner, we have to do the chores, and then we eat dinner and everybody has to take a bath, and before or after your bath, you can have a few minutes for homework, but i‘m always tired and then it‘s time to go to bed, and a new day. i almost never finish the homework, and i get bad grades and get in trouble, and i tell ms. (teacher) i don‘t have time, but she doesn‘t understand, doesn‘t believe me, or something. she just gives too much of homework to do, like she thinks everyone gets home at four o‘clock and has nothing to do but homework until they go to bed, and i really wish she could understand, but my momma tells her, and it still, we still get so much homework. i want to do it, and i want to get good grades, but she doesn‘t understand i‘m trying as hard as i can and doing all that i can with the time. i can‘t watch tv at all in the week, and i haven‘t really been able to watch it in about two years, except in the summer since the first of third grade because of my grades and there isn‘t any way to just make more time for yourself, you know?‖ stresses and worries in school (other than testing) topics for worries in school included: tornadoes and hurricanes, school violence, having to repeat a grade, competitions in school, bullies, report cards, and terrorism. most children mentioned numerous worries. for instance, in a representative statement, a fourth grader said, ―i worry about a lot of stuff, like guns and shooting, like kids who bring guns to school and might shoot some other kids, and i‘m afraid that could happen to us, and stuff like kids who are mean to me and say mean things to me and hit, sometimes, and i‘m scared they would bring guns to school. and it sort of scares me sometimes about my report card and what i‘m going to get, and whether i would pass or not, because if you don‘t pass, you have to do the whole year all over again and everybody knows about it. i worry about a whole lot of stuff.‖ stresses, worries, and thoughts about testing valuing children ’s voices 13 twenty-one of the 25 participants brought up worries about testing, and nineteen of these students discussed this topic in all three interviews. the focus of student worries about testing centered on whether or not they would pass, and what would happen if they did not pass. a third grader stated, ―the hst test, that is the worst thing that happens in school. it is awful and i worried and worried and my mom and dad, they worried a lot and we talked about it every day and i knew, i could tell ms. (teacher) was worried ‗cause everything we did, every single day, she would be saying something about remembering it for the hst test. i thought i would probably throw up in the middle of the test, it just seemed like it made me sick and now i‘m scared to know if i passed or not, ‗cause if i‘m not, then everyone will think i‘m so dumb.‖ similarly, another child said, ―if you don‘t pass the hst, you have to fail, fail the whole grade and be in third grade again next year, and i know that this is for, even if you have passing grades, they just don‘t matter, so i worry every day and every night, all the time, even in the summer, about if i can pass the hst.‖ methods of dealing with stress and worries very few children were able to identify strategies they could use to help themselves deal with or address their worries. their ideas for dealing with worries included reading books, and breathing and counting. most of the children felt that nothing could be done to alleviate worries. concerns about fairness in school many students found aspects of schooling to be unfair, and they expressed frustrations about the unfairness of school. there were discussions of unfairness such as whole classes being punished for the misbehavior of a few children, having too much homework, silent lunches, not having chances to socialize with other children, and grading methods. there were also several comments about the unfair nature of school in general. for current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 instance, a third grade student said, “i wish i didn‘t have school. i mean, you get to see your friends, but it is just so miserable all day, just sitting there, doing this and writing that and reading this and talking about this. i really don‘t think it‘s fair, what they make us do; i know, i understand that all of the kids have to learn, but we don‘t really learn very much, we just do work and write pages and give answers all day, and we aren‘t learning anything. i like learning and i wouldn‘t complain this if, about school, if i was learning new things every day, but i don‘t learn anything new most days and i really don‘t think it is fair that we have to spend so long sitting there just doing things when we aren‘t learning nothing.‖ concern about teachers over half of the children felt that their teachers did not understand their struggles as learners. again, grades were featured as being very important. a third grader reported, ―i don‘t think it is fair, because if you do all the work and try hard, and i try to know everything she tells us, and do the homework and follow the rules, why can‘t i just get good grades?‖ liking school although most of the themes in these interview data from thirdand fourth-graders had negative connotations about children‘s experiences in school, the students overwhelmingly stated that they liked school. every child stated in at least one interview (some in all three interviews) that they liked school. in a number of cases, this comment was added at the end of a negative comment about school. for instance, ―i really hate all of that worrying about the hst‘s, but i still like school,‖ ―my teacher doesn‘t seem very, like, she doesn‘t really understand, and she doesn‘t want to hear what i think about stuff mostly, but i still like her and i know she loves us and i like school,‖ i can‘t hardly stand reading time every day and it is so boring and has too many skills, but i know i would, it‘s supposed to help me and everybody grown has to, you valuing children ’s voices 15 know, read, so it‘s like okay; i mean, i hate reading, but school is okay; i like school.‖ some of the children made comments indicating that they had developed their own perspectives on liking school. one fourth-grader said, ―for kids, school is the same as your work and you have to go to school to get sort, into a way so that you‘re used to, you have to go there every day and staying for a long time like at work and some might‘ve not liked their job, not everything about their job, but you‘ve got to find something to like so you just won‘t hate everything and hate it all the time. so we go to school just like that, and you have to find some things that you like at school, something you can like about it, or if you don‘t, you‘ll be mad and mean all the time, and i do that; i find things that i can like about school, and so i can like it, like the kids and the teachers, they‘re good to be around most of the time. it‘s okay.‖ another said, ―i know it is all of my own good, and if i don‘t like stuff we do in school, my dad says it‘s too bad but i have to do it so i‘ll grow up knowing what i‘m supposed to know, and i don‘t want to be one of those stupid people who have to work at the wal-mart, so i better just learn and do whatever they tell me and try to like it.‖ drawing/writing study the themes that emerged during the drawing/writing study included: (a) emotions, (b) the culture of testing, (c) the role of the teacher, (d) adult language, (e) student metaphors, (f) isolation, (g) fire, (h) power/politics, and (i) passing or failing. emotions the expression of emotions was common in this study. in their writing, children used words like “mad,” “confused,” “frustrated,” “tired,” “bored,” “sweating,” “sleepy,” and “happy.” the most repeated word was “nervous.” although many of the children did not know how to spell “nervous,” they wanted to get the concept across. spellings for nervous included, current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 “nervios,” “nurves,” “nurvse,” “nerves,” “nirvis,” “nervise,” “nerves,” “nervos,” “nervour,” “nervious,” and “nervous.” in the drawings, there were many question marks over heads and cartoon balloons containing terms like “help!” we noted that the children had drawn the mouths of the children in their pictures with great care, and across the 225 drawings, there were no standard cup-like mouths. the children had intentionally drawn unhappy and angry mouth shapes. figure 1: drawing of unhappy 4 th grade test taker. although these were not representative, a couple of the drawings depicted depression, and in one case, a student wrote that he wanted to “kill self.” valuing children ’s voices 17 figure 2: drawing of depressed 3 rd grade test taker. figure 3: drawing of 3 rd grade test taker with suicidal thoughts. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 the terms ―happy‖ or ―glad‖ occurred in 18 of the 225 pictures/writings. students indicated that they were happy when the tests were over, happy about ice cream parties after the tests, and happy about being able to chew gum and take off their shoes during the tests. culture of testing student drawings demonstrated that these students were well versed in the culture of testing. many drawings featured desks upon which bubble sheets, test booklets, and pencils were placed. figure 4: drawing of 5 th grader depicting the implements of the testing experience. valuing children ’s voices 19 teacher role although teachers were in the classrooms in which students took their high stakes tests, teachers were surprisingly absent from the drawings. only 16 children included teachers in their drawings or writings. when teachers were discussed in student writings, there was little substantive information about teachers. for instance, a sixth grader wrote, ―the work was hard & you had to think. the book was very hard to read. some words i didn‘t understand. the sun was beating on my head. very bored and tired. mr. [teacher] had wrote work on the broad after hst. i felt very spiced up. very mad. and sad.‖ in the drawings, there were teachers in both supportive and non-supportive roles. figure 5: less supportive teacher during testing. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 figure 6: more supportive teacher provides student with bubble gum during testing. adult language valuing children ’s voices 21 in some cases, children used terms in their drawings and writings adult language rather than children‘s language. for instance, one student drew a picture of a stick figure holding a large sign that said ―fuck hst.‖ several students wrote that, ―hst‘s suck.‖ there were also cases in which the adult language used did not express opinions. statements were made such as, ―the picture is about me finding the proof and circling the key words and rereading the story.‖ these terms were non-typical of the language used by students in the study, and had the marks of language repeated from teachers or parents. student metaphors several students created metaphors for their high stakes testing experience. for instance, a third-grade child said that taking the hst was like a ―war between the question marks and the light bulbs‖ in his mind. his picture was a detailed depicture of this metaphor. figure 7: drawing of a ―war between the question marks and the light bulbs.‖ current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 22 isolation the most recurrent pattern in the analysis of drawings was a picture of an individual child sitting at a desk on which testing materials were drawn, surrounded by white space. this was the case in 125 (55%) of the drawings. in the most cases, the children and desks were very small and in the center of the paper. no children used the words ―alone‖ or ―isolation‖ in their writings, yet, the number of drawings of this kind implied that the children felt isolated or alone during their testing experiences. figure 8: sample 1 of student isolation during testing. figure 9: sample 2 of student isolation during testing. valuing children ’s voices 23 fire fifteen students drew and wrote about fire or burning. this occurred at all grade levels and in both states. in most cases, these drawings included test booklets on fire with people standing by cheering. students made statements about their drawings such as, ―i hate test and i am sitting near a fire with a lot of tests in it burning.‖ figure 10: sixth-grader‘s depiction of burning high stakes tests. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 power/politics several student writings about their drawings had political implications, or in some way reflected the notion that testing has a political function. for example, one student wrote, ―what expressed on the back of this is nothing but pure hatred for the hst because i really don‘t need no dumb test telling if i get to go to another grade. because when you are nervous you crazy things. and if i flunk, who fault is that. not mine. it‘s george bush‘s. ps i would this war blows up all the hst tests.‖ there were also statements that reflected children‘s understandings of the fact that their test scores could eventually have an impact on their lives as adults. a fourth grader said, ―that is me before the hst testing. i was very nevios because if you don‘t pass you can‘t go to a good collage. so you could be the guy at the burger king drive through.‖ pass/fail many students expressed concern about whether they would pass or fail their hst. a fifth grader wrote, ―my picture is about me and my tests. well i am very nerveous about my valuing children ’s voices 25 hst testing. i don‘t think i can pass my test. when i read in the passages when it asks you some questions i sweat all the time when important test are on the line. well i think the hst testing was hard.‖ observation study the following vignettes were written based on field notes from observations in two different first-grade classrooms. in each case, observations were followed by an interview with the teacher about the observation. in the first vignette, the teacher was working with a group of six students in a reading group. in the second vignette, another teacher was working with a writing group of four students. vignette 1: classroom observation teacher: ―now, give me your vowel cards. we are going to work on skills today.‖ several shoulders lower. children hand cards to teacher. teacher: ―get your workbooks out.‖ students: [loud groan; seems to come from all 6. two boys stretch out over the table, laying their heads down.] teacher: ―now sit up and pay attention. you need to open your workbook to page 95.‖ male student: lifts head and says: ―can‘t we read that bear story again?‖ another student: ―yeah, we liked that one. it was the best.‖ teacher: ―you have to take the test on this book soon and you need to be able to do the skills. now, find page 95.‖ current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 26 the children slowly begin looking through the workbook for page 95. one child leaves to go to the restroom, then another. the others whisper as they wait for the return of the two classmates. five minutes later, the group begins to work in the workbooks. segment of interview with the teacher teacher: ―every time we do it [the workbook], it‘s like all i have to say is the word ‗workbook‘ and they just deflate, like i stick pins in all of them at once.‖ interviewer: ―what do you think about that?‖ teacher: ―i hate it, of course, because it is their reading group and i want them all to be excited about reading, and it seems to me that if they learn to hate what happens in the reading group, they are going to learn to hate reading, and i can‘t stand that, but i don‘t feel that there is any choice because we have all of these books, three hardcover books, all of these [she points to a shelf at the three different books], and they have to take a test at the end of every book. if they don‘t pass the tests, which are mostly skills, then i haven‘t done my job and they are considered not ready for second grade. and i have to start getting them ready for hst testing, even though this is only first grade.‖ vignette 2 classroom observation teacher: ―all right. today we are going to work on your mother‘s day letters.‖ teacher hands out folders and gives each child a sheet of blank lined paper. ―i‘ve gone through your letters and made some corrections, so today, i want you to copy your letters over again, very neatly and use the correct spellings. these are the letters you will take to your mothers, and after you finish copying yours, you can draw a picture to go with it.‖ valuing children ’s voices 27 child 1: ―do i have to copy mine? i only got one thing wrong.‖ teacher: ―don‘t you want it to be nice for your mother?‖ child 1: ―my mom don‘t care if there‘s only one thing wrong, an‘ i hate copying. can‘t i just draw a picture?‖ child 2: ―my mom don‘t care either, she likes it the way it is.‖ none of the children have started copying. they are all waiting and watching the teacher. teacher: ―this is special, for your mothers for mother‘s day, and just this once, let‘s make these letters as beautiful and perfect as we can make them.‖ child 1: ―my hand hurts, cause we been sitting and writing all morning. i don‘t want to copy.‖ child 3: ―if you want it perfect, why don‘t you do it on the computer?‖ teacher: “we don‘t have time for all of you to do your letters on the computer. now stop arguing with me, and get to work.‖ the children all slowly pick up their pencils and start writing. teacher: “that‘s good, but remember to leave a nice space between words.‖ child 3 has written a couple of words and begins erasing something. her paper tears. child 3: ―i messed up. i need another paper.‖ teacher: ―okay, here‘s another sheet of paper, but go slow and pay attention to your work. we need to get this finished.‖ hands child 3 another sheet of paper. child 4: ―i got mine wrong, too. see, i wrote a different word.‖ teacher: voice louder, in strict tone: ―what is wrong with you all today? this is just copying, and you can do it if you will pay attention. child 1: ―but we hate copying.‖ current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 28 teacher: still using loud voice: ―i don‘t care if you hate copying. i really want you to be able to show your mothers what a good job you can doing on your writing. you have all improved so much, and you have written sweet letters. let‘s show your mother‘s how well you can do. at this point, the children all start writing again. the teacher watches over them, making suggestions as they write. the children are silent and “on task.” the copying activity itself takes 15 minutes. teacher: ―you‘ve all done a very good job and i‘m proud of you. now you can go to your seats and draw a picture to go with your letters. put your new letters back in the folders, and we can throw away the old ones. the children follow the instructions, putting the new letters in the folders and handing the folders to the teacher. child 1 picks up his draft letter and starts shredding it, then balls up the shreds. children 2, 3, and 4 start shredding their drafts. teacher: ―what are you all doing? i just told you to throw your old letters away. we don‘t need all of this tearing and carrying on. child 1: ―i hate these stupid letters.‖ all four children take their shredded, balled up letters to the garbage can and drop them, then go to their seats and sit down. segment of interview with the teacher teacher: ―this group is just so active and so social, and i knew that if i gave them the letters to copy at their seats, they either wouldn‘t do it, or they wouldn‘t do it right. this is my lowest group, and they are very uncooperative all the time, but i didn‘t think they would do it in front of you. no matter what i ask them to do in reading or writing, they have some argument about it, and they know how it‘s going to end; they know they will end up doing what i told them to do to valuing children ’s voices 29 begin with, but they just have to argue. if they had things their way, first grade would be nothing but watching videos, socializing, and eating.‖ interviewer: ―it was obviously important to you that these children copied their letters correctly. tell me about that.‖ teacher: ―all of the other kids have already done theirs. i already had 14 folders with nice looking, correct letters in them, and just these four with lots of mistakes, and very messy letters. i know they don‘t like to copy, and i know they don‘t learn anything from copying. and it‘s not like we copy things everyday, but on friday, i wanted everyone to be able to take home a nice mother‘s day letter with a picture, and i don‘t like the idea of having most of the class bring home really pretty letters, and these four take home messy, incorrect ones. i mean, what they said is right. some of their mothers wouldn‘t care one way or the other, and some of their mothers probably won‘t pay one bit of attention to these letters, but i think the children need to learn; i know that some of these mothers don‘t deserve a lot of appreciation because they don‘t even take good care of their kids and send them to school clean, and that‘s why i have to provide snack for so many of them every morning, because they haven‘t had breakfast, and they get too hungry. but still, i know they love their mothers, and have appreciation for them no matter what the circumstances, so i thought they would be okay with this. you just don‘t know, it‘s really hard to know what to do sometimes, because most of the other kids were actually motivated by this. they wrote gorgeous letters, with lots of sentiment, surprising really for first grade, and they copied them beautifully, with not a complaint, and they‘re excited about taking them home and giving them to their mothers on sunday. but these other four, they are just a mess. i don‘t know what to do with them.‖ interviewer: ―so, were you pleased with the letters they wrote today?‖ current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 30 teacher: ―they‘re okay. these children just don‘t care about things like this, and they still have some mistakes, but this is as good as it‘s going to get with these kids.‖ the two first-grade vignettes demonstrate that the children had a great deal to say about their learning experiences, both verbally and nonverbally. in both cases, the children objected to what they had been asked to do by their teachers, and they assured that their objections were made clear for their teachers. these particular vignettes were selected for this analysis in part because the voices of the children were so articulate; in other lessons in which students did not object to teacher requests, there was little ―voice‖ of this kind and the children simply performed tasks identified by the teachers. it was also clear that both teachers heard the objections of the children and decided to follow through with their own plans and require that the children completed the assigned tasks. discussion at the onset, we asked the question, ―what are elementary students saying about their school experiences?‖ across these data, there is evidence that elementary students have much to say about their school experiences. through interviews, drawings, writings, and classroom interactions, elementary children made some very strong statements. children worry at school these studies, conducted across the past decade, reveal that children worry a lot at school. most children reported worrying about grades, the consequences of failing, or failing their end-of-grade tests. most of the children reported worrying before, during, and after their end-of –grade tests. specifically, they worried about state-mandated high stakes tests. in the drawing/writing study, students‘ perceptions were the most detailed. the students reported worry, anger, nervousness, boredom and even suicidal thoughts. the most prevalent theme about valuing children ’s voices 31 testing was that of isolation, with more than half the students creating depictions of themselves sitting alone at desks surrounded by white space—all alone. from a psychological perspective, we know that in order to feel safe and allow for maximum learning, children need to have their belonging needs fulfilled and stress should be minimal (bradburn, 1969; ellis, 2004; grant, compas, stuhlmacher, thurm, mcmahon, & halbert, 2003; sherman, 2004). these data reflect high levels of stress and worry in elementary children, a condition that might be lessened if children knew that their voices were heard and valued. sherman states, ― . . . through responsiveness to every student, teachers can nurture the unique personal qualities students possess and help move them toward deeper understandings of both the world around them and the universe within them‖ (2004, 24). unfortunately, many children we interviewed also worried that their teachers did not really understand them and their life situations. children feel disconnected from their teachers in these studies, children did not report experiencing responsiveness from their teachers. instead, the elementary students reported feeling disconnected from their teachers. much like the middle school and high school students reported in previous studies (haselswertz & lenhardt, 2003; scherff, 2005), the elementary students in this study reported feeling alienated from their teachers. the students did not think that teachers understood their lives away from school, and over half of the children indicated that their teachers did not understand their struggles as learners. several students indicated that they had high levels of success when working at home with parents, but this success did not follow them into the classroom. most students identified family members as helping them with learning – not teachers. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 32 the elementary students in this study reported that their teachers were too busy and too worried about high-stakes tests to consider their needs as individual children. even a child who thought her teacher was really nice also noticed, ―my teacher has too much, too many children, too many things to do everyday so she doesn‘t really have time to help me very much…‖ even during testing, when teachers could possibly play a positive role in alleviating anxiety, most children portrayed themselves as all alone, with no teacher present. learning opportunities are not meaningful as a fourth grader so poignantly commented, ―i understand that all of the kids have to learn, but we really don‘t learn very much, we just do the work and write pages and answers all day, and we aren‘t learning anything new most days…‖ children across the elementary grades reported that most of their school activities do not seem meaningful. children reported that they would like to learn, read, and write if they were allowed to pursue something interesting. even the teachers in the observation study wrestled with the lack of meaningfulness in their worksheets and writing practice. likewise, children in the interview study reported boring review activities for many months before the end-of-grade tests and experiencing ―wasted time‖ during the tests. these elementary students seemed to understand that a testing focus can lead to drill and skill practice, instead of momentous learning opportunities. children want an opportunity to be listened to these studies not only demonstrated that elementary children have a great deal to say; there was evidence that they welcome opportunities to say it. while collecting data for the interview study, an unexpected phenomenon was that the children began to jump up and run to the researchers as they entered classrooms, saying, ―are you going to take me today? please, take me.‖ and at the time of the final interview, children expressed sorrow, making statements valuing children ’s voices 33 like, ―i wish you would keep coming here and talking to me ‗cause you‘re the only person who‘s ever really, really like talked to me at school, and i think, i probably need somebody to talk to me and listen, really listen, like you.‖ it was difficult to end data collection when the young participants were begging for more. these children truly wanted someone to hear and value their voices in their school. likewise, in the drawing/writing study, many children were very reflective and unyielding in openly sharing their angst about high-stakes testing. they chose to use strong words and strong images to relay their thoughts and feelings—some even erasing holes in their paper until they chose the perfect word to describe their thoughts or the perfect mouth to portray their feelings. there are numerous calls in the literature for the inclusion of student voices in the classroom and in schools as a whole (cook-sather, 2002, 2003; cool-sather & schultz, 2001a, 2001 b; kozol, 1991; mitra, 2003; oldfather, 1995a, 1995b; rudduck & demetriou, 2003). previous studies have shown that when student voice is valued and used to develop respect and rapport between teachers and students, it can lead to significant school improvements; however, these studies were conducted with middle and high school students (bacon & bloom, 2000; cook-sather, 2003; haselswertz & lenhardt, 2003; mitra, 2003; oldfather, 1995b). this current look at elementary students naturally leads to questions about the viability of valuing elementary children‘s voices in the day-to-day instructional life of the schools. to what degree do elementary students understand what is best for them? when the children in the observation study asked their teacher to allow them to reread a story rather than completing workbook pages, did they know what was best for themselves? did the interviewed children who felt that their teachers did not understand their struggles as learners have accurate perceptions? what is the meaning of the fact that nearly all of the 225 drawings looked sad or current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 34 angry? could it be possible to test children in such a way as to result in drawings of happy faces? if we are to value children‘s voices in elementary classrooms, how do we know what to value, and what to hear but perhaps not value? we must assume that there are limits on what elementary children know about what is best for them and what would best meet their needs. how could elementary schools best provide ―places‖ for students to voice their thoughts and for teachers to respond to these voices? can the positive findings involving valuing student voices in middle schools and high schools be replicated in elementary schools? we are left with many questions to ponder and many children yet to listen to. valuing children ’s voices 35 references american psychological association. (2001). publication manual of the american psychological association (5th ed.). washington, dc: author bacon, e. & bloom, l. (2000). listening to student voices. teaching exceptional children, 32, 38-43. bogdan, r. and biklen, s. (1998). qualitative research for education: an introduction to theory and methods. needham heights, ma: allyn & bacon. bradburn, n. m. (1969). the structure of psychological well-being. chicago: aldine pub. co. (published online by norc library, 2001, http://cloud9.norc.uchicago.edu/dlib/spwb/). cook-sather, a. (2002). authorizing students‘ perspectives: toward trust, dialogue, and change in education. educational researcher, 31, 3-14. cook-sather, a. (2003). listening to students about learning differences. teaching exceptional children, 35, 22-26. cook-sather, a. & shultz, j. (2001a). starting where the learner is: listening to students. in j. shultz & a. cook-sather (eds.), in our own words: students’ perspectives on school (pp. 1-17). lanham, md: rowman & littlefields. cook-sather, a. & shultz, j. (2001b). negotiating worlds and words: writing about children‘s experiences of school. in j. shultz & a. cook-sather (eds.), in our own words: students’ perspectives on school (pp. 165-178). lanham, md: rowman & littlefields. ellis, j. (2004). researching children‘s place and space. journal of curriculum theorizing, 20, 83-99. grant, k. e., compas, b. e., stuhlmacher, a. f., thurm, a. e., mcmahon, s. d., & halbert, j. a. (2003). stressors and child and adolescent psychopathology: moving from markers to mechanisms of risk. psychological bulletin, 129, 447-466. hycner, r.h. (1985). some guidelines for the phenomenological analysis of interview data. human studies, 8, 279-303. kozol, j. (1991). savage inequalities: children in america’s schools. new york: harper perennial. meier, d. (2002). in schools we trust. creating communities of learning in an era of testing and standardization. boston: beacon press. mitra, d. l. (2003). student voice in school reform: reframing student-teacher relationships. mcgill journal of education, 38, 289-304. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 36 mitra, d. l. (2004). the significance of students: can increasing ―student voice‖ in schools lead to gains in youth development? teachers college record, 106, 651-688. oldfather, p. (ed.). (1995a). learning from student voices. theory into practice, 43, 2. oldfather, p. (1995b). songs ―come back most to them:‖ student‘s experiences as researchers, theory into practice, 43, 131-137. rudduck, j. & demetriou, h. (2003). student perspectives and teacher practices: the transformative potential. mcgill journal of education, 38, 274-288. scherff, l. (2005). thirteen years of school: what students really think. lanham md: scarecrow education. sherman, s. (2004). responsiveness in teaching: responsibility in its most particular sense. education forum, 68(2), 115-124. strauss, a. & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. newbury park: sage. triplett, c., & barksdale, m. a. (2005). third through sixth grader‘s perceptions of high stakes testing. journal of literacy research, 37, 237-260. triplett, c., & barksdale, m. a. (2003). high stakes for whom?: children‘s perceptions of high stakes testing. journal of research in education 13, 15-21. wheelock, a., bebell, d., & haney, w. (2000). what can drawings tell us about high-stakes testing in massachusetts. teachers college record. http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=10634, retrieved april 10, 2008. http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=10634 valuing children ’s voices 37 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 4 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo cie template 1 volume 2, number 3 september 8, 1999 issn 1099-839x developing technology competencies in a college of education bob algozzine lonnie r. bateman claudia p. flowers john a. gretes c. dane hughes richard lambert university of north carolina at charlotte colleges of education across the country are implementing initiatives to promote new and more effective teaching methods grounded in information technology and the improvement of teaching skills of graduate and undergraduate students in professional education programs. the goals for participating faculty members are to integrate information technology competencies into not only the content of the courses that they teach, but also into their instructional methods of teaching. an initiative grounded in existing coursework, extant resources, and prior experience is described in this article. working from a state-accepted list of basic and advanced instructional technology competencies, a course-by-competency matrix was articulated to support the development of instructional technology competencies among faculty and students. faculty and student development activities to infuse technology into teaching, using existing resources and facilities, were designed, field-tested, and evaluated. the activities were modified for use in subsequent semesters as vehicles for building or extending competencies of undergraduate and graduate students preparing for professional positions as teachers, administrators, and counselors. to support continued implementation and improvement, practical, hands-on experiences were supervised by information technology specialists, knowledgeable faculty members, and graduate students with demonstrated competence. a team of professionals with expertise in instructional technology monitors all faculty and student development activities. the effort provides a comprehensive, practical model for addressing the growing need for altering instructional methods to accommodate technology innovations for school personnel in meaningful ways. the information age has created increasing needs for teachers and other school personnel at all levels of education to develop, use, and disseminate skills for including technology as the driving force behind integrated, cross-disciplinary learning experiences that prepare students for life in the "real" world (bailey, ross, & griffin, 1996; petrakis, 1996; stanley, linauer, & petrie, 1998). technology has a significant foot in the door of america's classrooms, and the schools will never be the same (fisher, 1997; funnell & owen, 1992; lowther, bassoppo-moyo, & morrison, 1998; lumley & bailey, 1996; mehlinger, 1996). yet, most educators are provided little training in how to use new technologies so it is no surprise that many of them continue doing what they were doing rather than spend time learning how to use the innovations that are being provided for them (bailey, ross, & griffin, 1996; furst-bowe, 1996; hill & somers, 1996; hunt, 1995; ley, 1997; stanley, linauer, & petrie, 1998). too often, technology innovations go unnoticed, ignored, or seldom used in today's schools; and, the effects of failing to keep up continue to downgrade america's educational system. the exclusion of information technology from the processes of planning, managing, and implementing curriculum innovations keeps change in education moving at a snail's pace and serves to maintain stagnant, sometimes mediocre instruction as the rule in efforts to "reform" the schools (morton, 1996). there is a growing and continuing need current issues in education vol. 2 no. 3 2 for systematic efforts to infuse instructional technology in relevant ways in all professional education programs preparing administrators, teachers, and counselors (hill & somers, 1996; kitagaki, 1995; northrup & little, 1996; otter, 1992). while the evidence for need is widespread and overwhelming, models and illustrations providing practical steps to take in bringing technology into professional education programs are less pervasive (bailey, ross, & griffin, 1996; fisher, 1997; hill & somers, 1996; hunt, 1995; ley, 1997; petrakis, 1996). in other words, the problem has been identified, but the solution is still under construction. in this article, we describe an effort to enhance the professional education programs in a college of education through learning experiences designed to assist university faculty members and students, as well as practicing public and private school teachers, counselors, and administrators, to master and use information technology competencies in relevant ways in schools. the project was designed to address problems associated with inadequate preparation of educators. it offers a well-reasoned model for others in professional development schools to consider when addressing information technology education needs. project design and workplan the first step in successful implementation of any innovation is commitment on the part of representative stakeholders (mehlinger, 1996). supported by a statewide initiative to assist public schools by increasing the technology-related competence of the educational workforce of approximately 80,000 educators, the schools and departments of education on the campuses of the university system committed to ensuring that all faculty members who prepare professional educators and all graduates of professional education programs can use information technology to enhance instruction. for purposes of this effort, technology not only included computers but also computer networks and telecommunications multimedia and hypermedia, camcorders and vcrs, instructional television and interactive video, cd-rom and videodisk players, graphing calculators and video microscopes, telephone and voice mail technologies. the goals of the effort were: 1. to enhance basic and advanced information technology knowledge and productivity of faculty and students related to computer operating systems, word processing, spreadsheet programming, database management, page layout and design, internet resources and use, presentation software, statistics and data processing, and instructional design courseware. 2. to develop instructional modules to help faculty members infuse information technology content into the teaching and learning processes that are the foundation of all professional education coursework. 3. to evaluate improvements in faculty member and student competence and productivity that result from these efforts to enhance information technology use in instruction. responsibility for designing, implementing, and coordinating this response was assigned to a team composed of eight individuals responsible for teaching research, evaluation, and technology courses. seven implementation objectives (see figure 1) and formative evaluation activities drove the team's effort to accomplish the overall goals: (1) clarify and refine technology competencies, (2) articulate curriculum linkages, (3) acquire necessary information technology resources, (4) develop faculty member competence, (5) assess faculty member competence, (6) develop student competence, and (7) assess student competence. members of the team organized and chaired a series of task forces to design, implement, and evaluate faculty and student development activities related to each of seven implementation objectives. to ensure adequate representation of the perspectives of those who would be affected by the activities, each task force included an appropriate mix of faculty and students who were directly involved in teacher, counselor, and administrator education programs (each department in the college was represented on each task force). the design and workplan for implementation objectives are described below. the article concludes with a discussion of expected benefits and recommendations to support others' efforts to initiate and implement change toward developing information technology competencies among professional educators. technology competencies two clusters of technology competencies served as overall guiding principles in developing learning objectives: basic competencies represented entry-level skills related to basic computer operation and the use of an array of software that supports and enhances professional productivity. advanced competencies extended the application of basic competencies to teaching, administration, and counseling and to other professional activities of both students and faculty. the value of and commitment to these competencies was enhanced by the statewide mandate that required their demonstration for initial licensure of teachers and administrators; the former, by means of a state test, and the latter by means of a portfolio assessment. significant overlap existed between these developing technology competencies in a college of education 3 competencies and those identified as "recommended foundations in technology for all teachers" by the international society for technology in education (see figures 2 and 3 for representative examples). working from the state's list of basic and advanced technology competencies, a task force clarified and refined the specific information technology competencies that professional education faculty members and students were expected to have and use in their teaching and education programs. the "basics" included knowledge and skills in the following areas: computer operating systems, setup, maintenance, and troubleshooting; word processing and introductory desktop publishing; spreadsheets and graphing; databases; networking, telecommunications, media communications, and multimedia integration. advanced information technology competencies enable teachers and other education professionals to use multiple forms of technology to enhance learning in their classrooms (e.g., using school television resources to support teaching, using technology tools that are specific to a discipline, using technology to design and manage learning environments and resources). curriculum articulation to support the development of information technology competencies among both faculty and students, a second task force developed a course-bycompetency matrix that identified which competencies ought to be developed, enhanced, and applied in each course or other instructional activity in each professional education program (i.e., elementary, middle, secondary, special, and counselor education and school administration). each course in the college was evaluated relative to each competency to determine goodness-of-fit between the current curriculum and the intended technology-enhanced agenda. this activity served as the basis for all subsequent planning and implementation efforts. this provided a conceptual and logical base on which to evaluate existing activities, identify information technology instructional needs, and plan faculty and student development efforts. technology resources and facilities in collaboration with the college's information technology advisory committee (itac), a third task force developed policies, procedures, descriptive materials, and other mechanisms to ensure that professional education faculty members and students had access to the technology resources and facilities they needed to develop, enhance, and apply their growing repertoire of instructional technology competencies. these facilities and resources included:  networked desktop computers in faculty offices.  an instructional technology classroom with 20 pc computers, instructional workstation, ceiling mounted sound and video projection equipment, and networked laser printers.  an information technology lab with 19 pc computers, 10 macintosh computers, networked laser printers, a color scanner, and a color printer.  a faculty development lab with two multimedia pc and two multimedia macintosh computers, networked laser printers, a black and white scanner, 2 color scanners, and a color printer.  a "high-end" multimedia production lab available for faculty member use and located in the university library.  a suite of one large and five small interactive video labs with networked video cameras and vcrs, a roof mounted satellite dish for itv reception, duplex intercom system, and a video feed to ceiling mounted video monitors in a large "smart" classroom.  two model classrooms for teaching methods courses -one focused on teaching science and the other focused on teaching reading, language arts, and social studies -each with four computers, instructor's workstation, portable projection equipment, and networked laser printer.  four college novell servers to operate the technology classroom, the technology lab, and the model classrooms, provide access to special school-based courseware using ibm classroom lan administration system (iclas), and provide shared network services (printing, file sharing, and an administrative database). the task force and college information technology committee continuously monitor resources and carry on additional efforts to address needs required to maintain, enhance, and expand information technology capabilities. in addition to a portion of the college's operating budget, resources are being sought from internal (i.e., a university student computing fee) and external (i.e., grants from federal and state agencies as well as businesses and industry) sources. faculty member competencies assessment and development a fourth task force reviewed the basic and advanced information technology competencies and developed a survey instrument (available upon request) to determine the faculty members' perceptions of their capabilities within broad areas (e.g., word processing, communications, desktop publishing), their levels of use of information technology, and their opinions about priority areas for faculty development activities. results of this assessment were used by a fifth task force to design, develop, and implement group training programs, current issues in education vol. 2 no. 3 4 computer-assisted instruction activities, print learning materials, peer tutoring, short courses, and workshop presentations by which faculty enhanced their mastery and use of the expected technology competencies. for example, higher levels of competence were indicated for basic skills related to disk operating system functions (e.g., making backup copies) and word processing (e.g., editing or creating headers) and lower levels of skills were evident for database functions. relative to ratings for use, operating systems, word processing programs, and internet programs reflected higher levels of use and ratings for database programs, multimedia programs, presentation programs, and statistical processing programs reflected lower levels of use. in response to evidence of these needs, a series of individual and group professional development activities was planned and delivered to interested faculty. participants were provided general information as well as specific suggestions for how to use the technology (e.g., databases, multimedia and presentation programs) in their courses. additionally, a "help-desk" was established as a vehicle for identifying needs and problems and formulating alternatives and solutions. case study illustrations and templates were also an important part of the professional development activities. the same assessment protocols and procedures were used for determining and documenting both formatively and summatively the degree to which professional education faculty members in the college acquired and used the state's basic and advanced technology competencies (and any others refined or added in the future) in their teaching and other professional activities. student competencies assessment and development a sixth task force reviewed the competencies and developed a second survey instrument (available upon request) for use in evaluating students' perceptions of their abilities within broad areas (e.g., word processing, communications, desktop publishing). this information served a needs assessment function and provided baseline data for subsequent formative and summative evaluations. analyses of these data led a seventh task force to the design, development, selection, acquisition, and modification of an array of methods, programs, activities, materials, and other mechanisms some "courseimbedded" and others "stand-alone" by which students could develop and enhance their mastery and use of the expected information technology competencies. these same assessment protocols, as well as a portfolio assessment procedure currently in the conceptual stage of development, were used within the college for determining and documenting both formatively and summatively the degree to which students have and use the state's basic and advanced technology competencies (and any others refined or added in the future) in their professional education courses and in their own teaching. formative evaluation and feedback using appropriate models (e.g., kirkpatrick's four levels of evaluation), data were collected to evaluate the efforts to achieve the seven implementation objectives and the overall goals for infusing information technology content in existing and planned teacher education curricula and classrooms. formative evaluation reports were prepared at the end of each semester and these evaluation data were used in a feedback loop to refine the seven implementation objectives and the associated activities. a faculty member within the college of education with extensive experience in quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods was responsible for overseeing the design, execution, and reporting of this aspect of the project. the following questions guided the evaluation effort: 1. to what extent are attitudes toward and knowledge about information technology (including, but not limited to, word processing, spreadsheets, data base management, statistical processing, presentation software, internet use) similar for faculty members and students participating in innovative training experiences and their peers not participating in training? 2. to what extent are the proposed training experiences provided to students appropriate and beneficial? is instruction presented effectively? do faculty and students receiving it produce products that meet accepted functional and practical standards? do students demonstrate mastery of the basic and advanced competencies as measured by the state information technology test and through portfolio assessment? a pretest/posttest control group design was used to address questions about attitude and knowledge; an expertise-based evaluation was conducted to address questions about the value of products (gall, borg, & gall, 1996). a total of 15 faculty members participated in the proposed instructional activities each semester. faculty with comparable general levels of knowledge in all of the education disciplines will be available to serve as a notreatment control group to be included in development activities in subsequent years. since random assignment is not possible, statistical equivalence of the control group will be established on key moderator variables (e.g., age, prior content knowledge, area of education expertise) using matched selection criteria. conclusions and recommendations because information technology has the potential to stimulate learning, because it is more and more pervasive in schools and society, because computer-based skills must be taught to children, because of the speed at which computers support and stimulate change, and developing technology competencies in a college of education 5 because of the expanded vision computers and their related technologies provide teachers and students, it is surprising that colleges of education often exclude technology-based learning experiences from curriculum enhancement efforts (morton, 1996). feedback from school representatives and the public in general indicates that competence in information technologies is important, but all too often lacking in teachers, counselors, and administrators in public and private schools. hill and somers (1996) described how one college of education was working toward making better use of technology in the preparation of future educators. their position paper focused more on the process for arriving at valued goals than on efforts, plans, or models for attaining them. in concluding, they echoed the widely recognized need for a common theme in colleges of education grounded in modeling and providing instruction in the educational use of technology (cf. bailey, ross, & griffin, 1996; lumley & bailey, 1996). the project we described addresses that need by illustrating how one college of education is enhancing basic and advanced information technology knowledge and productivity of faculty and students. this goal is being achieved by following a model emphasizing careful planning and evaluating of improvements in competence and productivity that result from enhanced information technology instruction. the following benefits have been or are expected to be accrued:  systemic change within the college concerning the ways in which faculty members teach and manage instruction.  enhancement of the information technology competencies for participating faculty members in a non-threatening manner.  the skills of graduate and undergraduate students to use information technology as an instructional tool in the schools are not taught in isolation but are integrated into coursework across the teacher preparation curriculum.  assisting inservice educators (i.e., teachers, administrators, counselors) to master competencies for the infusion of information technology into their professional activities.  preparation of a set of integrated instructional modules for use in developing and extending the information technology skills of graduate and undergraduate students.  preparation of innovative, computer-assisted assessment methods to determine the mastery of specific information technology competencies.  preparation of continuing education workshops showing professional educators how and when to apply information technology to specific content and skill areas in the curriculum.  preparation of continuing education workshops showing counselors and administrators how and when to apply information technology to the instructional support functions of the schools.  making graduate and undergraduate students aware of the range of educational applications of information technology, including ones to which the schools may not as yet have access.  adopting and adapting computer-assisted instruction projects required of students in a master's degree program in instructional systems technology for use in training faculty and students in professional education programs in the use of information technology.  providing opportunities for students in a master's degree program in instructional systems technology to design, direct, and evaluate information technology workshops for faculty and students in professional education programs.  building excitement and increasing anticipation of professional educators for the use of information technology to enhance instruction in schools. selected relations between these benefits and activities and evidence of change within a college of education implementing technology change are illustrated in table 1. in general, the unc charlotte experience offers direction and reflects a successful process for addressing the need for enhancing technology competencies in institutions of higher learning. while future research illustrating effects of this and similar efforts is needed, there is promise evident in this effort. references bailey, g. d., ross, t., & griffin, d. l. (1996). barriers to curriculum-technology integration in education. educational considerations, 23(2), 417. fisher, m. m. (1997). the voice of experience: inservice teacher technology competency recommendations for preservice teacher preparation programs. journal of technology and teacher education, 5, 139-147. funnell, p., & owen, j. (1992). developing and measuring competence. aspects of educational and training technology series, 25, 27-32. furst-bowe, j. a. (1996). an analysis of competencies needed by trainers to use computer-based technologies and distance learning systems. performance improvement quarterly, 9(4), 57-78. current issues in education vol. 2 no. 3 6 gall, m. d., borg, w. r., & gall, j. p. (1996). educational research (6th ed.). white plains, ny: longman publishers. hill, r. b., & somers, j. a. (1996). a process for initiating change: developing technology goals for a college of education. journal of teacher education, 47, 300-306. hunt, n. (1995). bringing technology into the pre-service teaching field experience.computers in the schools, 11(3), 37-48. kitagaki, i. (1995). technology literacy in the immediate future and educational technology. journal of educational technology systems, 23, 369-381. ley, k. (1997). facing ncate review or just looking for technology standards?techtrends, 42(4), 41-42. lowther, d. l., bassoppo-moyo, t., & morrison, g. r. (1998). moving from computer literate to technologically competent: the next educational reform. computers in human behavior, 14, 93109. lumley, d., & bailey, g. d. (1996). creating staff development programs: a leadership perspective. educational considerations, 23(2), 9-13. mehlinger, h. d. (1996). school reform in the information age. phi delta kappan, 77,400-407. morton, c. the modern land of laputa: where computers are used in education. phi delta kappan, 77, 416-419. northrup, p. t., & little, w. (1996). establishing instructional technology benchmarks for teacher preparation programs. journal of teacher education, 47, 213-222. otter, s. (1992). developing and measuring competence. aspects of educational and training technology series, 25, 99-100. petrakis, e., (1996). using a portfolio to assess preservice teachers' technology competence. journal of computing in teacher educaion, 13, 12-13. stanley, r. b., lindauer, p., & petrie, g. (1998). factors that influence teachers' use of computer technology. ers spectrum, 16(3), 42-46. developing technology competencies in a college of education 7 appendix table 1: examples of benefits and activities/evidence benefit activities/evidence changes in how faculty members teach and manage instruction multimedia technology based presentations replace stand-alone lecturing and traditional overhead transparencies. electronic gradebooks replace pencil and paper records. internet feedback replaces individual conferences, often difficult to schedule and use effectively within a typical course. on-line course materials, practice tests, and review materials used to broaden interactions and instructional opportunities. enhancement of competencies in a non-threatening manner individuals and small groups of faculty solve problems grounded in their current and future teaching assignments. faculty and students work collaboratively in addressing important educational issues. solutions are based on practical rather than presumed needs. skills to use technology are not taught in isolation future teachers learn to use electronic resources in doing research. future teachers learn to use technology for presentations and projects. future teachers learn to use technology to replace traditional tools. inservice educators master competencies for infusion into their professional activities practicing educators learn to use electronic resources in doing research. practicing educators learn to use technology for presentations and projects. practicing educators learn to use technology to replace traditional tools. students are aware of the range of educational applications available first year teachers enter profession with latest knowledge. new inductees in teaching profession take key positions in relation to technology and innovation. faculty and students are engaged in adopting and adapting projects relations between faculty and students reflect cooperation. collaboration becomes effective means for solving problems. providing opportunities for students to design, direct, and evaluate workshops in professional education programs students receive "on-the-job" experiences under supervision. current issues in education vol. 2 no. 3 8 figure 1: implementation objectives and formative evaluation activities developing technology competencies in a college of education 9 figure 2: basic technology competencies for all north carolina educators 1.0 computer operations skills essential knowledge and skills demonstrate these skills: 1. start up and shut down computer system and peripherals o use correct startup/shut down procedure according to computer type o start up and shut down printer o start up and shut down cd-rom o start up and shut down scanner 2. identify and use icons, windows, menus o point, click, double-click, click and drag with mouse o maximize and minimize a window o use pull-down and expanded pull-down menus o select, open, and move an icon o select, open, move, and close a window o resize a window and title/stack windows o scroll up/down, left/right within a window o make a window active/inactive 3. start an application and create a document 4. name, save, retrieve, revise a document o name a document o save a document using both the save and save as commands o retrieve a document from floppy disk o retrieve a document from hard drive o rename a document o edit and re-save a document 5. use printing options 6. insert and eject floppy disk and cd-rom 7. initialize, name/rename floppy disk and hard disk 8. copy document from hard disk to floppy disk and vice versa 9. create and name/rename subdirectories/folders 10. save, open, place documents inside subdirectories/folders 11. open and work with more than one application at a time 12. use special operating features for people with disabilities current issues in education vol. 2 no. 3 10 figure 3: international society for technology in education iste recommended foundations in technology for all teachers the national council for accreditation of teacher education (ncate) is the official body for accrediting teacher preparation programs. the international society for technology in education (iste) is the professional education organization responsible for recommending guidelines for accreditation to ncate for programs in educational computing and technology teacher preparation. i. foundations. the iste foundation standards reflect professional studies in education that provide fundamental concepts and skills for applying information technology in educational settings. all candidates seeking initial certification or endorsements in teacher preparation programs should have opportunities to meet the educational technology foundations standards. a. basic computer/technology operations and concepts. candidates will use computer systems run software; to access, generate and manipulate data; and to publish results. they will also evaluate performance of hardware and software components of computer systems and apply basic troubleshooting strategies as needed. 1. operate a multimedia computer system with related peripheral devices to successfully install and use a variety of software package. 2. use terminology related to computers and technology appropriately in written and oral communications. 3. describe and implement basic troubleshooting techniques for multimedia computer systems with related peripheral devices. 4. use imaging devices such as scanners, digital cameras, and/or video cameras with computer systems and software. 5. demonstrate knowledge of uses of computers and technology in business, industry, and society. b. personal and professional use of technology. candidates will apply tools for enhancing their own professional growth and productivity. they will use technology in communicating, collaborating, conducting research, and solving problems. in addition, they will plan and participate in activities that encourage lifelong learning and will promote equitable, ethical, and legal use of computer/technology resources. 1. use productivity tools for word processing, database management, and spreadsheet applications. 2. apply productivity tools for creating multimedia presentations. 3. use computer-based technologies including telecommunications to access information and enhance personal and professional productivity. 4. use computers to support problem solving, data collection, information management, communications, presentations, and decision making. 5. demonstrate awareness of resources for adaptive assistive devices for student with special needs. 6. demonstrate knowledge of equity, ethics, legal, and human issues concerning use of computers and technology. 7. identify computer and related technology resources for facilitating lifelong learning and emerging roles of the learner and the educator. 8. observe demonstrations or uses of broadcast instruction, audio/video conferencing, and other distant learning applications. c. application of technology in instruction. candidates will apply computers and related technologies to support instruction in their grade level and subject areas. they must plan and deliver instructional units that integrate a variety of software, applications, and learning tools. lessons developed must reflect effective grouping and assessment strategies for diverse populations. 1. explore, evaluate, and use computer/technology resources including applications, tools, educational software and associated documentation. 2. describe current instructional principles, research, and appropriate assessment practices as related to the use of computers and technology resources in the curriculum. 3. design, deliver, and assess student learning activities that integrate computers/technology for a variety of student group strategies and for diverse student populations. 4. design student learning activities that foster equitable, ethical, and legal use of technology by students. 5. practice responsible, ethical and legal use of technology, information, and software resources. http://www.iste.org/standards/index.html developing technology competencies in a college of education 11 1999 article citation algozzine, b., bateman, l. r., flowers, c. p., gretes, j. a., hughes, c. d., & lambert, r. (1999, september 8). developing technology competencies in a college of education. current issues in education [on-line], 2(3). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number3/. author notes authorship is listed in alphabetical order. these six individuals constitute the team responsible for implementation of the technology initiative described in this article and participated equally in the preparation of the manuscript. the authors acknowledge the efforts of richard antonak and butch smith in the initial development of the model. dr. algozzine is a professor in the educational administration, research, and technology department at the university of north carolina at charlotte. he is serving as evaluator for the project. his other research interests include effective teaching, assessment, and improving the lives of individuals with disabilities. bob algozzine can be reached via e-mail at rfalgozz@email.uncc.edu. mr. bateman is an information technology specialist in the office of information technology at the university of north carolina at charlotte. he provides technical assistance to faculty, staff, and students in the college of education in all ma tters related to technology. lonnie bateman can be reached via e-mail atlrbatema@email.uncc.edu. dr. flowers is an assistant professor in the educational administration, research, and technology department at the university of north carolina at charlotte. she developed instruments for assessing student competencies. her other research interests include teacher evaluation, scale development, and individualized assessment methods. claudia flowers can be reached via e-mail atcpflower@email.uncc.edu. dr. gretes is a professor in the educational administration, research, and technology department at the university of north carolina at charlotte. he is faculty coordinator for the office of information technology in the college of education. his other research interests include educational evaluation, course development technologies, and computerized-testing. john gretes can be reached via e-mail atjagretes@email.uncc.edu . mr. hughes is director of the office of information technology at the university of north carolina at charlotte. he supervises all technology-related activities and provides technical assistance to faculty, staff, and students in the college of education. dane hughes can be reached via e-mail at cdhughes@email.uncc.edu. dr. lambert is an assistant professor in the educational administration, research, and technology department at the university of north carolina at charlotte. he is serving as qualitative evaluator for the project. his other research interests include large-scale evaluation, effectiveness of preschool programs, and applied measurement statistics. richard lambert can be reached via e-mail atrglamber@email.uncc.edu. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number3/index.html mailto:rfalgozz@email.uncc.edu mailto:lrbatema@email.uncc.edu mailto:cpflower@email.uncc.edu mailto:jagretes@email.uncc.edu mailto:cdhughes%20@email.uncc.edu mailto:rglamber@email.uncc.edu http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu current issues in education vol. 2 no. 3 12 2011 article citation algozzine, b., bateman, l. r., flowers, c. p., gretes, j. a., hughes, c. d., & lambert, r. (2011). developing technology competencies in a college of education. current issues in education, 2(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/827 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 microsoft word 863-4146-4-le v2.docx 1 volume 15, number 3 september 7, 2012 issn 1099-839x an examination of school resource officers' attitudes regarding behavioral issues among students receiving special education services david c. may mississippi state university corrie rice and kevin i. minor eastern kentucky university for many parents and educators, school safety is one of the most important issues in the united states. despite anecdotal evidence that students receiving special education services are often negatively stereotyped by school administrators and educators for behaviors threatening school order and safety, and despite increased media attention to the interaction between students receiving special education services and law enforcement officers in schools, no research has examined perceptions of school resource officers toward these students. because school resource officers are now a permanent part of the school culture, and because disproportionate numbers of students receiving special education services are disciplined (e.g., school suspensions and arrests) each year, research is needed to examine attitudes of sros regarding the presence and behaviors of students receiving special education services. data collected from 130 school resource officers (sros) in kentucky revealed that large portions of sros perceived that behaviors of students receiving special education services had a negative impact on the school environments and these perceptions had little association with the sro’s demographic and experiential variables. implications for policy and future research are addressed. keywords: school resource officers, students receiving special education services, special education america has witnessed a growing awareness of school violence within the past two decades. as public concern has grown, school administrators have been prompted to take action. technological devices, frequent locker checks, and school uniforms are just a few of the many practices that public schools are using to promote safety. one response to school safety concerns has been the implementation of school resource officers (sros). although sros have become more prevalent in recent years, mulqueen (1999) reported that the first sro program began in flint, michigan in 1953; by 1998, 40 states had sro programs. these programs have continued to grow rapidly nationally. according to a 2005 publication of the u.s. department of justice, office of community oriented policing, over 6,500 school resource officer positions have been funded through the cops in schools (cis) program (u.s. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 department of justice, 2005), and some estimates put the number as high as 20,000 officers patrolling the nation’s schools (brown, 2006). in theory, sro’s improve community-law enforcement relations, prevent crime, and educate students on law related issues. the office of community oriented policing services (cops), through its cops in schools (cis) program, has awarded more than $753 million to law enforcement agencies to fund sro’s (u.s. department of justice, 2005). however, despite public approval and the millions of dollars spent, there is scant evidence as to the actual effectiveness of sro programs. mayer (2008) called for standardized data collection systems to promote reliable and valid evaluations and identified a “strong need for rigorous causal research demonstrating effects of sro programs in schools” (p. 1). although no attempt is made to ascertain the effectiveness of sros in this study, perceptions of sros regarding behavior and treatment of students receiving special education services in schools are examined herein. this effort is important for three reasons. first, and most importantly, no research examining the sros’ perceptions about and interactions with students receiving special education services is currently available. second, media and advocacy groups periodically report accounts of students receiving special education services being “tasered” (oregon advocacy center, 2005) and “beat up” (cop caught on camera, 2010) by police officers in the school setting. third, because students receiving special education services have a wide variety of emotional and psychological developmental needs, and because these students present a wide range of behaviors that are often unexpected in the school setting, there is a strong likelihood that sros may be called by teachers or school administrators to assist in efforts to guide these students into more acceptable behavior. the attitude of the sro (or any other adult) toward the students involved in these situations will often impact the strategies chosen by that sro to deal with the situation. thus, school administrators, teachers, parents, and law enforcement officers seeking to understand the interaction between these two groups currently have no research to examine to further their understanding about the interaction between sros and students receiving special education services, or the attitudes of sros toward these students. this research is an attempt to fill that gap. sro responsibilities although sros have become increasingly popular components of school safety programs (theriot, 2009), not all sros perform the same duties. the responsibilities vary from state to state and even within states. for example, chicago public schools implemented the safe school program that focuses on character qualities such as honesty and integrity, while the sro program in fresno, california emphasizes community relations (johnson, 1999). the sros in each of these programs are required to perform different tasks in order to target the desired goal. while some sros focus more on building relationships with the students, others act as liaisons between law enforcement agencies and the students in order to stay informed about possible problems. there are several formal definitions for sros that address the roles and responsibilities of the sro. the federal definition, as defined by the u.s. federal code 20 u.s.c. §7161 (2012) states that an sro is, “a career law enforcement officer, with sworn authority, deployed in community-oriented policing, and assigned by the employing police department or agency to work in collaboration with school and community-based organizations” (p. 1). a second definition of sros was developed by the center for the prevention of school violence (n.d.): an sro is a certified law enforcement officer who is permanently assigned to provide coverage to a school or a set of schools. the sro is specifically trained to perform three roles: law enforcement officer; law-related counselor; and law-related education teacher. the sro is not necessarily a dare officer (although many have received such training), security guard, or officer who has been placed temporarily in a school in response to a crisis situation but rather acts as a comprehensive resource for his/her school. the national association of school resource officers (nasro) adds that, in addition to their law enforcement role, sros should also (a) act as a liaison between the school, the police and the community, (b) teach law-related education classes, and (c) counsel students (u.s. department of justice, 2001). as implied in the definitions of sros, the job encompasses a wide range of duties and tasks. kennedy (2000) stated that an sro must combine three elements: law enforcement, education, and counseling. sros serve as armed police officers, counselors to help answer students’ questions, and teachers of the law. they are responsible for establishing trust with students so that others will be deterred from crime and delinquency. the extant research supports the multifaceted nature of the sro role. lockyer (2000) and kennedy (2000) found many duties of an sro including: preventing vandalism, reducing truancy, investigating allegations of crime, teaching classes about law enforcement and drug prevention, attending school activities, working with vice principals on discipline matters, and acting as liaisons to law enforcement agencies (kennedy, 2000; lockyer, 2000). may, cordner, and fessel (2004) determined that while sros often fulfilled all three roles in the sro triad (law enforcement, law-related counseling, and law-related an examination of school resource officers' attitudes regarding behavioral issues among students receiving special education services 3 education), the majority of their time was spent in law enforcement duties and other duties that might be more accurately labeled “school bouncer” duties (e.g., monitoring hallways, helping teachers control classroom behaviors). perhaps the most significant task of a school resource officer is to be a mentor and counselor to at-risk students, a disproportionately high number who display special education needs (minor, williams, & minor, 1997). sros are assigned to schools to not only reduce and prevent crime, but to act as role models to those students who need it most. by establishing a trusting relationship with students, there is a greater chance that potential problems will be reported and information will be shared. sro effects on student behavior previous research on the effectiveness of sro’s in schools has relied primarily on opinion surveys and research designs that do not provide solid evidence of actual impact (mayer, 2008). for example, the virginia department of criminal justice services (2001), using content analysis of reports submitted by 78 sro programs in the state, determined that sro’s were effective in reducing school crime. results indicated that 37.3% of sros and 82% of school staff stated that a reduction in fighting at the school where they served since the sro arrived. in addition, 99% of staff and 91% of the students either agreed or strongly agreed that they “support having a sro assigned to my school…” (virginia department of criminal justice services, 2001, p. 3). information collected via surveys by nasro at their national conference during the spring of 2001 indicated that 99% of the sro’s felt their presence increased school safety. two in three sro’s reported that they had prevented a student or other individual from assaulting a teacher or staff member during their employment as an sro. respondents also indicated they had good relationships with administrators at the schools where they worked (trump, 2001). in a study of the impact of an sro program on school violence and school disciplinary programs, johnson (1999) found evidence that sros were meeting their goals of reducing school crime. her evaluation of sro programs in a southern city included data collected from a number of sources at four high schools and one middle school from 1995 to 1996. results indicated that school fights, gang activities, possession of drugs, suspensions, and minor and major offenses decreased after sros were assigned to school (johnson, 1999). while all of these studies suggest that sro programs are effective at increasing school safety, the limitations cannot be ignored. although studies may demonstrate a correlation between the placement of sros and improvements in students’ behaviors and attitudes, other possible causal factors of behavioral and/or attitudinal change are not taken into account. in other words, the placement of sros may not necessarily have caused students’ behavioral changes. there may have been other impulses for such changes that also need to be measured; therefore, future research should control for such variables. students’ perceptions of sros student reactions are a helpful tool to measure sro program effectiveness. students may be resistant to the presence of sros if they do not hold a positive view of sros. on the other hand, students could be neutral to the idea but actually develop a negative view as a result of being around the sro. according to johnson (1999) school officials in alabama stated that students, as well as their parents, were generally supportive of sros. most students felt that sros provided a sense of security and were necessary to reduce the availability of guns, drugs, and gang-related activities. they also appreciated the actions taken when disciplinary problems arose and their support in dealing with disciplinary problems (johnson, 1999). hopkins and hewstone (1992) described the importance of youths’ attitudes toward police. policeschool liaisons emphasize the relationship between the police and youth and therefore, must improve the image youth hold of the police. because sros are highly visible in schools, they have an opportunity to correct or change stereotypes students may have about police. hopkins and hewstone found that while females held more positive views of the police than males and that students in schools that have an sro display less positive attitudes and general liking of the police than those in schools without an sro. over time, the approval for the officer significantly decreased; however, the students held a more positive image of the sro than the police in general. although this study had negative implications, research has indicated that student attitudes become less positive toward authority figures between the ages of 14 and 16 (hopkins & hewstone, 1992). in other words, resistance to authority is typical during adolescence, suggesting that negative attitudes toward police may be something youth simply grow out of. additionally, students’ perceptions of sros may be influenced by their contact with police outside of school. school officials’ perceptions of sros in general, school officials are supportive and optimistic about the effectiveness of sro programs (may, fessel, & means, 2004) california’s school officials noted the program is a huge success in effectively reducing school crime and truancy as well as building mentoring relationships with the students. at-risk juveniles on probation are less likely to commit more serious offenses because of the sro/probation officer’s intervention and their recommendations to the court. overall, california’s school administrators seem enthusiastic about the program (lockyer, 2000). current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 johnson’s (1999) study revealed similar findings. the majority of school officials (76.5%) thought police officers were very effective and should be placed in school. teachers felt comfortable, but some thought sros should assist more in the classrooms and hallways. school officials reported that they would like more than one sro assigned to each school and sros assigned to the schools should work well with the student population some administrators (41.2%) suggested sros should make themselves more visible to improve their services. in general, officials were satisfied with school resource officers’ performance. may, fessel, and means (2004) further explored perceptions of school administrators regarding the presence of sros in their schools. in general, may, fessel, and means (2004) found that school administrators indicated that sros were valuable additions to school safety in their schools. however, these investigators also found significant gaps in communication between principals, sros, and law enforcement supervisors regarding the nature of the sro role at school. the perceptions school officials’ hold of sros is significant because vital information must be communicated between the two groups. if sro programs are to be successful, consistent interaction between all parties involved is a necessary component. although sro’s now appear to be permanent fixtures in schools, there is little research exploring sros’ perceptions of school officials (may et al., 2004a; may et al., 2004b) and no research examining sros’ perceptions of students as indicators of their effectiveness. perceptions that sros hold of students receiving special education services are of particular interest, given that these students are such a unique and often stigmatized population. students receiving special education services teachers must possess adequate training to meet the needs of students requiring special education services. teachers often attribute the failures of students receiving special education services to factors unique to the individual student (e.g., faulty social judgment, difficulty processing social clues) (sprouse, hall, webser, & bolen, 1998). this may lead to the development of a poor selfconcept among these students (hastings, hewes, locke, & witting, 1996). in an effort to test this idea, sprouse et al. (1998) found that students with learning disabilities did not misperceive nonverbal social cues significantly more than students without learning disabilities. however, teachers rated them as having greater social perception difficulties (sprouse et al., 1998). research by cook (2001) concluded that teachers also spent less individual time with students with severe disabilities. poor academic performance and stigmatization and harassment from other students can cause students receiving special education services to have poor attendance and even drop out of school (winters, 1997). lack of educational success is associated with juvenile crime because these youth may feel they have no other outlet for gaining money or status. youth receiving special education services account for 28% to 43% of the juveniles in correctional centers (winters, 1997). the most frequently represented needs among juvenile justice clients include learning disabilities, mental disabilities, and emotional and behavioral disorders. in comparison to the general population, all of these conditions appear to be overrepresented among youth involved with the juvenile justice system (minor et al., 1996). these learning disabilities have serious implications for involvement in the juvenile justice system. as winters (1997) stated, “ld students may be at risk for future incarceration if their disability is not remediated or at least lessened in severity so that they become self-sufficient and participate fully in all economic and social opportunities that are available to the nonhandicapped…” (p. 8). this research portrays an overwhelming correlation between learning disabilities and juvenile delinquency (see also minor et al., 1996). proper intervention and adequate resources are essential for addressing the problems of learning disabled students. sros and students receiving special education services according to the center for evaluation and education policy (rausch & skiba, 2006), a study conducted in the indiana school system found that students receiving special education services were suspended more often than general education students. this finding was mirrored in other states as well (may & chen, 2011). in indiana, students identified with emotional and behavioral disorders (ebd) were at a higher risk of being removed compared to students with other types of disabilities, while in kentucky, students who had an individualized education plan (iep) were suspended at higher rates than their counterparts without ieps. because students receiving special education services are disproportionately at-risk for disciplinary action in the school setting, sros can serve as effective and positive role models for educational development and success. likewise, students receiving special education services may feel less de-valued and be deterred from delinquent involvement as a result of a positive relationship with a sro. thus, sros have the potential to improve these students’ attendance at school, counsel them about personal problems, and even help them with their schoolwork. on the other hand, sros may actually do more harm than good with students who receive special education services. without the proper knowledge of special education, coupled with skills and attitudes appropriate for working with special education an examination of school resource officers' attitudes regarding behavioral issues among students receiving special education services 5 populations, sro’s may find themselves ill-equipped for the challenges that can arise, and the frustrations that can ensue, in dealing with such students. additionally, if sros witness teachers and/or staff negatively stereotyping these students, they may, in turn, form similar perceptions and treat these students in the same manner. negative views of students receiving special education services could lead sros to ignore, reject, or treat these students more harshly than other students, possibly resulting in higher numbers of students receiving special education services receiving suspensions or being arrested. the individuals with disabilities education improvement act (idea) of 2004 is especially pertinent when discussing sro’s and students receiving special education services. idea contains regulations applicable to students with disabilities who are facing disciplinary action. the act’s provisions are intended to ensure that schools use an approach to discipline that balances the need to protect the rights of children with disabilities against the need to provide orderly and safe schools (united states office of special education and rehabilitative services, 1997). intended to protect students’ right to an education, idea provides procedural safeguards before students receiving special education services can be removed from their current educational placement due to disciplinary action and allows school officials to consider the unique circumstances of special education in their disciplinary decisions. sros’ perceptions of students receiving special education services in kentucky are investigated in this study. although some of the aforementioned research has examined school officials’ perceptions of both students receiving special education services and sros, as well as students’ perceptions of sros, we were unable to uncover any study that examined sro attitudes toward students receiving special education services in schools. because students receiving special education services are overrepresented in juvenile justice agencies and instances of school disciplinary action, and because prior research is lacking in this area, it is important to explore sros’ perceptions of these students. this is particularly relevant because, as suggested above, sros may be uniquely positioned in the school environment to help students receiving special education services avoid behavior that could lead to disciplinary action. research questions sros play an important part in maintaining the safety and security of the schools where they serve. given the wide variety of circumstances they encounter, one of the most important traits of sros is their discretion. while there are a number of positive aspects of discretion for the sro, if sros perceive that students receiving special education services are responsible for a disproportionate amount of problem behaviors, then they may use their power of discretion to treat students receiving special education services differently than they would if they had a different attitude about these students. thus, understanding sro attitudes about the involvement of students receiving special education services in problem behaviors is an important endeavor. given the lack of extant research on this subject, the following research questions (in place of hypotheses) are used to guide the study: 1. to what extent do sros perceive students receiving special education services as being responsible for a disproportionate amount of problem behavior in school? 2. to what extent do sros believe that students receiving special education services who exhibit problem behaviors should get less punitive treatment for these behaviors than they currently receive in schools? 3. to what extent do sros perceive students receiving special education services as using their status as an excuse for problem behaviors and to avoid accountability for their actions? 4. what demographic and experiential differences exist among sros in these perceptions? method data collection in early april of 2004, researchers at the kentucky center for school safety (kcss) conducted the third phase of a panel study examining the attributes of sros throughout the state of kentucky. using an existing database created in 2002, a letter was mailed to all sros in the database notifying them that they would be receiving a self-report questionnaire in approximately two weeks and requesting their participation in the study. a questionnaire and cover letter explaining the importance of the project was then mailed two weeks later. a second letter and questionnaire were mailed to those who did not respond to the original questionnaire. a final questionnaire and letter were mailed to nonrespondents three weeks later. of the 216 sros who received a questionnaire, 132 responses were received, for a response rate of 61.1%. thus, approximately three in five sros in the state of kentucky provided data for this report. the final sro survey in 2002 was eight pages long and required approximately 40 minutes to complete. based on responses to those questionnaires, and reviews of extant research and policy, the survey was revised again for 2004. the questionnaire used to collect the data for this study was seven pages long, requiring approximately 30 minutes for completion. data analysis after electronically coding the questionnaires, the data were analyzed using the statistical package for the social sciences (spss). frequencies and descriptive statistics were first estimated. these results are presented in tables 1 and 2. given the nature of the dependent current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 variables utilized herein, and the exploratory nature of this work, the spss bivariate correlations procedure was then used to estimate the association between the four dependent variables and the demographic and contextual factors about sros that might predict their perceptions of students receiving special education services. those results are presented in table 3. results the descriptive statistics for the sample are presented in table 1. the vast majority of the respondents were male (90.8%) and white (88.5%). approximately one in four officers were high school graduates, while almost one in four was a college graduate. three in five (59.5%) worked primarily in high schools, while one in five worked primarily in middle schools and 1 in 10 worked in more than one school. over half had not received either academic training (58.8%) or in-service training (56.5%) on special education issues. the average sro was about 43 years of age, with 16 years of law enforcement experience and over 3.5 years as an sro. sros estimated that about one in three (36.75%) of their law related incidents involved students receiving special education services. the average sro spent the majority (55.57%) of their time as a law enforcer, with smaller proportions of their time being spent as a law-related counselor (26.51%) and a law-related educator (16.06%). sros were also asked four questions about their perceptions of students receiving special education services in the educational environment. table 1 descriptive statistics for sample variable n % gender male female 119 12 90.8 9.2 race white nonwhite 116 15 88.5 11.5 education high school graduate some college college graduate some graduate work missing 36 49 29 14 3 27.5 37.4 22.1 10.7 2.3 type of school sro supervises elementary middle high more than one school in district missing 9 27 78 13 4 6.9 20.6 59.5 10.0 3.1 received academic training on special education issues yes no missing 52 77 2 39.7 58.8 1.5 received in-service training on special education issues yes no missing 52 74 5 39.7 56.5 3.8 mean age 43.38 mean years as law enforcement officer 16.24 mean years as school resource officer 3.53 mean percent of law-related incidents involving students receiving special education services 36.75 mean percentage of time spent as law enforcer 55.57 mean percentage of time spent as counselor 26.51 mean percentage of time spent as educator 16.06 an examination of school resource officers' attitudes regarding behavioral issues among students receiving special education services 7 table 2 school resource officer’s perceptions of students receiving special education services variable strongly agree agree somewhat agree somewhat disagree disagree strongly disagree special education students are responsible for a disproportionate amount of problem behaviors at my school. 10.7 26.0 18.3 7.6 26.7 4.6 including kids with special education needs in classrooms with other students is detrimental because of the problem behaviors of the special education students. 11.5 16.8 26.0 17.6 15.3 16.9 students with special education status who exhibit problem behaviors should receive less punitive treatment for their problem behaviors than they currently receive in the schools. 3.1 4.6 8.4 13.7 41.2 24.4 some students in the school where i work use their special education status as an excuse for their problem behavior to avoid accountability for those actions. 34.4 34.4 16.0 .8 6.1 3.8 the wording of those questions is included in table 2. approximately 55 percent of the sros agreed that “students receiving special education services were responsible for a disproportionate amount of problem behaviors at school,” and 54.3 percent agreed that “including students receiving special education services in classrooms with other students is detrimental because of their problem behaviors.” while most sros (79.3%) disagreed that “students receiving special education services should receive less punitive treatment for their problem behaviors,” the vast majority (84.8%) at least somewhat agreed that “some students receiving special education services used their special education status as an excuse for their problem behavior to avoid accountability for their actions.” bivariate correlations between the sros’ responses to the questions included in table 2 and the demographic and experiential variables presented in table 1 were then estimated. findings appear in table 3. sros that spent more time in law enforcement activities and less time in law-related education at school were significantly more likely to feel that including students receiving special education services in the regular classroom was detrimental because of their problem behaviors. male sros were significantly more likely to feel that students receiving special education services use their special education status as an excuse for their problem behaviors. finally, those sros who spent more time in law-related education as part of their role as an sro were less likely to feel that students receiving special education services were responsible for a disproportionate amount of problem behavior at school1. ____________________ 1multivariate linear regression models were estimated for all four dependent variables. only age was significant and it was significant in only one model. given the lack of significant findings in the multivariate models, we limit our discussion to the bivariate models included here. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 table 3 bivariate correlations between perceptions of students receiving special education services and predictor variables variable including se kids is detrimental se students should receive less punitive treatment se students use status as an excuse se students are responsible for disproportionate amount of problems race (w=1) .048 -.034 -.143 -.101 gender (m=1) -.043 .029 -.148* -.117 age .091 .001 -.099 -.012 education .130 -.029 .051 .118 l.e. experience .069 .083 .075 -.033 size of school -.071 .024 -.042 .027 sro experience -.100 .094 .020 -.039 academic training -.080 .118 -.021 -.005 in-service training -.140 -.006 -.023 .019 percent leo .163* -.010 .040 .112 percent lrc .025 -.051 .029 .046 percent lre -.204** .004 -.088 -.209** * p<.10 ** p<.05 discussion data from 132 sros in kentucky were utilized to examine perceptions of students receiving special education services and the demographic and contextual predictors of those perceptions. regarding the research questions that guided the study, the majority of sros who responded agreed that (1) students receiving special education services are responsible for a disproportionate amount of problem behaviors at school and (2) including students receiving special education services in classrooms with other students is detrimental because of their problem behaviors. the vast majority of respondents also suggested that (1) students receiving special education services who exhibit problem behaviors should not receive less punitive treatment for these behaviors than they currently receive at school and (2) some students receiving special education services use their special education status as an excuse for their problem behavior to avoid accountability for their actions. this is indicative of a pattern of negative stereotypes held by many sros toward students receiving special education services. moreover, there were few significant demographic and experiential differences across sros in these perceptions; in general, the demographic and experiential variables examined were not predictive of variations in sros’ perceptions of students receiving special education services. one possible explanation for negative sro perceptions of students receiving special education services could be a lack of understanding and knowledge of the unique characteristics and needs of this population. this, in turn, might be rooted in the law enforcement training and orientation of many sros. consistent with this interpretation, our data revealed that sros who reported spending more of their time in the law enforcement role were significantly more likely to see inclusion of students receiving special education services in the regular classroom as detrimental, while sros who reported spending more time in the law-related education role were significantly less likely to perceive students receiving special education services as disproportionately responsible for troublesome behavior at in the school. with a disproportionate number of students receiving special education services being disciplined by school officials (kresmien, leone, & achilles, 2006; miller et al., 2011; rausch & skiba, 2006), disciplining itself could, across time, conceivably instill, solidify, and expand negative perceptions of students receiving special education services among sros. as such, to avoid both real and perceived net widening of the police in schools already being put forth (justice policy institute, 2011; thierot, 2009) it is essential that sros receive specialized training to develop the necessary knowledge and skills for effectively understanding and working with the students receiving special education services. sro training programs and education requirements differ throughout the united states. according to the national association of school resource officers’ training guidelines (n.d.), the current basic sro training (40 hour training) devotes eight hours an examination of school resource officers' attitudes regarding behavioral issues among students receiving special education services 9 to cover topics including counseling, adolescent emotional issues, child abuse, dysfunctional families, and special education. nevertheless, none of this training directly addresses the unique challenges students receiving special education services pose. additionally, although little is known about training of sros throughout the united states, we do know quite a bit about sro training in kentucky. currently, sros in kentucky are required to attend the department of criminal justice training academy or a regional training academy (in jefferson county, bowling green, or lexington) as part of their eligibility to serve as law enforcement officers. the training is intensive and includes a wide variety of courses on law, investigation, use of force, and many other topics. working with students receiving special education services in a school environment, however, is only now being considered to be part of kentucky sro’s required training and/or education. the findings presented here suggest that lack of training is not the only cause of these perceptions. we found that the two training related variables (representing whether or not the sro had received academic training on special education issues and whether or not they had received in-service training on special education issues) did not significantly predict sro’s perceptions of students receiving special education services. in other words, those sros who had received training about working with students receiving special education services did not have significantly different perceptions of students receiving special education services than their counterparts without such training. thus, it could be that negative perceptions are so strong among officers that training cannot offset those perceptions. it could also be that the type and/or duration of the training the sro’s received in the area of special education was inadequate. these questions cannot be answered with data from the present study but are important to consider in future research and training design initiatives. in view of the negative perceptions of students receiving special education services uncovered in this study, it seems possible that law enforcement agencies should be more selective in their choice of officers for sro duty. the consortium to prevent school violence (mayer, 2008) recommends that officers selected for sro duties be highly motivated and a good fit for the program. additionally, the findings presented here suggest that selected officers should be screened for amenability to at least partial role transfer, away from the traditional law enforcer dictums toward the educator role. in the present study, officers who were more oriented toward law enforcement and less oriented toward law-related education were more likely to perceive efforts to mainstream students receiving special education services as being detrimental to regular classrooms, something potentially problematic given the national trend toward greater use of mainstreaming. by contrast, those officers more oriented toward law-related education were less likely to see students receiving special education services as disproportionately responsible for problem behaviors in the school setting. this suggests that these officers may “find” fewer problem behaviors from students receiving special education services precisely because they are not expecting them from the outset; approach can direct response. one important initial step in addressing negative perceptions sros may have toward students receiving special education services is to increase interaction between sros and each school’s resident expert on these students—the school’s special education teacher(s). informal conversations, question and answer sessions, and even formal training sessions with these teachers may assist sros in gaining a better understanding of the challenges faced by students receiving special education services and may also help sros find ways to serve as law-related educators and mentors to help the youths navigate those challenges. when attempting law-related education and mentoring with students receiving special education services, it is critical that functional assessments and functional curricular approaches be utilized (minor et al., 1997). functional assessments are meant to identify the specific skill deficits underlying a given student’s impaired educational performance, and assessment outcomes are used to structure curricular and instructional approaches in a manner tailored to meet the student’s special needs (lewis & sugai, 1996). it is important that instructional approaches be modified and adapted to the needs of the learner, lest the student receiving special education services be prematurely (and often mistakenly) judged recalcitrant and therefore deserving of discipline. special educators can readily convey to sros what assessment information is most essential and the types of instructional modifications and adaptations that are in order for a given special education learner; in many instances, modifications and adaptations need only be slight as opposed to drastic. in this manner, sros can become contributing members to multidisciplinary teams assigned to particular students receiving special education services (especially those diagnosed with behavioral disorders), rather than persons who special educators perceive as members of another group unfairly biased against special education learners. limitations of the study the present study is not without limitations. the findings derive from a single state and can be generalized to other contexts only to the extent that sros in those contexts display characteristics similar to the characteristics of respondents in this study. additionally, we had insufficient data on the type and duration of special education training received by sro respondents. the most important limitation of this work revolves around the measurement of the perceptions of students current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 10 receiving special education services. because this effort was not the primary focus of the original research project, only four measures of sro perceptions of students receiving special education services were employed. additionally, because of the exploratory nature of this research, the instrument used in this work did not clearly distinguish between the range of students receiving special education services (e.g., students with learning disabilities, students with behavior disorders) when examining the sros’ perceptions of the students. doing so may have more clearly articulated differences in sros’ perceptions of these students. additionally, we only examined a limited range of potential predictors of these perceptions. future research in this area should aim for clearer distinctions and definitions of the student population in question; doing so would allow for richer data regarding the sros’ perceptions of these students and predictors of those perceptions. researchers should also use expanded perceptual measures and larger numbers of participants in the future. this would permit multivariate modeling with a greater number of potential predictor variables, including improved proxies for special education training as well as measures of communication with school counselors and special educators. conclusion the findings presented here reveal some insight into the relationship between sros and students receiving special education services in the educational environment. in general, sros in this sample had a relatively negative view of students receiving special education services and this perception was particularly acute among male sros and those sros that view themselves as primarily law enforcers. on the other hand, those sros that spent more time in law-related education as part of their role as an sro were less likely to share those negative perceptions of students receiving special education services. no other variables (e.g., tenure as an sro, training about special education topics, education level) had an impact on these negative perceptions. the results presented indicate that (1) additional training about the intricacies of special education in the school setting is needed among sros and (2) sros should work closely with special education teachers in an attempt to gain a better understanding of this world. nevertheless, like many exploratory studies, the results presented here provide more questions than answers. research is needed in this area to better understand not only perceptions of sros regarding students receiving special education services, but sros’ treatment of students receiving special education services. this work serves as a foundation for these efforts. references brown, b. 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(2001). cops: on the beat. washington, d.c.: office of community oriented policing services. school safety leadership initiative. united states federal code. (2012). 20 u.s.c. §7161. title 20, chapter 70, subchapter 4, part a, subpart 4. virginia department of criminal justice services. (2001). second annual evaluation of dcjs funded school resource officer programs: fiscal year 1999-2000. richmond, va: crime prevention center. winters, c. (1997). learning disabilities, crime, delinquency, and special education placement. adolescence, 32, 451-462. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 12 article citation may, d. c., rice, c., & minor, k. i. (2012). an examination of school resource officers' attitudes regarding behavioral issues among students receiving special education services. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/863 author notes david c. may mississippi state university department of sociology and social work p.o. drawer c200 bowen hall mississippi state, ms 39762 dmay@soc.msstate.edu david c. may is an associate professor and criminology program coordinator in the department of sociology and social work at mississippi state university. he has published numerous articles and books in the areas of responses to school violence, perceptions of the severity of correctional punishments, fear of criminal victimization, and weapon possession and use among adolescents. corrie rice eastern kentucky university training resource center mattox 229 521 lancaster avenue richmond, ky 40475 corrie.rice@eku.edu corrie rice is the research advisor for the university training consortium (utc) at eastern kentucky university (eku). her research interests include organizational development, organizational climate, and occupational training and development. she holds a m.s. degree in criminal justice from eku and a ph.d. in educational leadership and organizational development from the university of louisville. kevin i. minor eastern kentucky university department of criminal justice 521 lancaster avenue stratton 467 richmond, ky 40475 kevin.minor@eku.edu kevin minor is a professor in the department of criminal justice at eastern kentucky university. he has published various books and articles in the areas of adult corrections, juvenile justice, and applied/evaluation research. acknowledgements: the authors would like to thank the kentucky center for school safety for allowing us to use the data analyzed in this study. the views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of the kentucky center for school safety staff and administration. an examination of school resource officers' attitudes regarding behavioral issues among students receiving special education services 13 manuscript received: 11/27/2011 revisions received: 5/2/2012 accepted: 8/20/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 14 volume 15, number 3 september 7, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors evan fishman ayfer gokalp kathleen hill sultan kilinc younsu kim carol masser bonnie mazza leslie ramos salazar melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers a comparison of_final running head: a comparison of academic performance 1 volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x a comparison of the academic performance of college bound high school students in regional vs. community high schools in connecticut joseph p. cullen appalachian state university citation cullen, j.p. (2010). a comparison of the academic performance of college bound high school students in regional vs. community high schools in connecticut. current issues in education, 13(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract consolidated regional high schools (rhss) have replaced traditional community high schools (chss) in many nonmetropolitan communities. consolidation purports to offer cost savings that, in theory, enable nonmetropolitan districts to provide a wider array of instructional opportunities to their students. nonetheless, critics argue that the benefits of consolidation do not outweigh the costs. this inquiry adds to this discussion an examination of differences in performance on the 2006 2008 sat i between rhs and chs students in connecticut. results suggest that rhs students outperformed their chs counterparts on 15 of 16 points of comparison. four of these differences were statistically significant. keywords: rural education, educational policy, school reform, secondary education about the author(s) author: joseph p. cullen affiliation: appalachian state university email: joe.cullen@familyinnovations.org biographical information: joseph p. cullen received his ph.d. in special education from the university of connecticut in 1995. during his 26-year career in the fields of education and child welfare, dr. cullen has served in a school psychologist, learning disabilities specialist, consultant, program director, and university faculty member. he currently serves in a dual capacity as the director of research and evaluation at appalachian family innovations, a university-affiliated research and training program, and as an associate professor in special education at appalachian state university in boone, north carolina. dr. cullen’s research and professional interests include school reform, the prevention of child maltreatment, and strategies for working with teachers and families to support children with learning disabilities, adhd, and emotional and behavioral challenges in school and community settings. a comparison of academic performance 3 for more than a century, educational reformers have been discussing solutions to the challenges of rural schools. as kannapel and deyoung (1999) relate, rural schools have traditionally been described as lacking appropriate facilities, curricula, and personnel, leading many to regard them as inferior to schools in metropolitan communities. to improve rural school quality, advocates for reform in the first half of the 20th century relied heavily on the factory paradigm that emerged during the industrial revolution (bard, gardener, & wieland, 2005). in particular, it was thought that rural schools would benefit from the concept of “economies of scale” (i.e., the principle that the production cost per unit is reduced when the size of the operation is increased). in this regard, large consolidated schools were thought to be more efficient and to have lower production costs than small community schools, leaving more resources for the improvement of facilities, curriculum, and the quality of teachers (fanning, 1995). this trend of thought led to the conclusion that school consolidation -the unification of two or more attendance areas into one large school (peshkin, 1982) -was the premier solution to the challenges of rural schools (lasley, leistritz, lobao, & meyer, 1995). by the middle of the 20th century, the pace of rural school consolidation was accelerated by demographic trends that included a decline in the population of rural areas due to a dying agricultural economy and falling birth rates. these factors resulted in diminished resources, especially in rural districts that received state funds on a per pupil basis, and made it difficult for them to upgrade school facilities or offer competitive salaries to teachers or administrators. consequently, many rural districts could not provide the same educational services and specialty courses as their larger, better-funded, urban and suburban counterparts. specifically, they were found to be less likely to offer advanced placement (ap) classes along with fewer courses in art, music, literature, foreign language, technology, and laboratory science (schwartzbeck, 2003). to address these challenges, conant (1959), in a highly influential report on secondary school reform, urged the elimination of small high schools as a means of offering a wider range of curricula and improving the cost-effectiveness of secondary education. in addition, elected officials implemented state policies in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s that encouraged school consolidation by requiring districts to meet mandated enrollment levels before they could receive state funds for new school buildings or capital improvements. many districts were forced to consolidate in order to meet these mandates (deyoung & howley, 1990; purdy, 1992). advocates of consolidation at the secondary level also benefited from the political climate of the cold war era. after the launch of sputnik in 1957, secondary education received a great deal of federal scrutiny, especially in the domains of math and science. the resulting effort to improve instruction in these areas necessitated significant upgrades to educational infrastructure including the modernization of laboratory facilities, the development of curricula, and the training of teachers and support staff. in order to afford these upgrades, many rural secondary schools were forced to consolidate into regional high schools wherein capital and operational costs could be shared among two or more communities (deyoung, 1989; ravitch, 1983). further accelerating the consolidation movement was the a nation at risk report (usde national commission on excellence in education, 1983) and its scathing critique of the nation’s public school system. the effect of this report was to shift the emphasis in secondary educational policy away from broad-based curricula to a primary focus on preparation for college. it also resulted in a series of federal mandates aimed at raising professional standards for teachers and increasing facility and academic requirements. these mandates added significantly to the cost of a comparison of academic performance 5 public schools, creating additional hardship for high schools in nonmetropolitan areas and forcing many to consolidate (kannapel & deyoung, 1999). by the end of the 20th century, rural school consolidation and associated efforts to increase the professionalization of the teaching field were so effectively implemented that large, centralized school districts controlled by credentialed professionals became the accepted standard in our society (kannapel & deyoung, 1999). it is, in fact, no longer accurate to refer to consolidation as an exclusively rural phenomenon in that many outlying suburban communities have also joined the consolidation movement (plucker, spradlin, magaro, chien, & zapf, 2007). for this reason, this inquiry will use the term nonmetropolitan, as proposed by hobbs (1994), to refer to the rural, small town, and outlying suburban districts that most often experience pressure to consolidate. this change in terminology is particularly well suited to the state of connecticut, the locale for this inquiry. connecticut, like many northeastern states, has experienced a demographic shift over the past 25 years. in 1986, approximately 67% of connecticut school districts were described as small/rural in 1986 (melnick, shibles, and gable, 1986). however, due to the phenomenon of urban sprawl, the population of many rural communities has swelled since the 1980’s. these shifts have changed the character of these communities from rural/agrarian to suburban. consolidation and the effects of school size as the united states entered the 21st century, the justification for school consolidation encompassed research on the effects of school size. one such study was done by horn (1986) who found that, relative to larger schools, teachers in small high schools were less qualified, lower paid, and had fewer opportunities for professional development. in addition, he found that course offerings in small high schools were more limited and guidance counselors and librarians were less likely to be available. another study from this era (monk, 1990) found that school size was one of the most powerful predictors of variation in curriculum offerings in secondary schools. nonetheless, recent examinations of the issue of school size have reached conclusions that are at odds with earlier studies. for instance, monk and haller (1993) concluded that that the relationship between school size and curriculum was not linear. rather, they found that it appears to be influenced by factors such as academic subject area, level of course difficulty, school setting, socioeconomic status, faculty unionization, and grade configuration. in addition, other authors have found evidence that small schools have distinct advantages over large schools. they include cotton (1998) who wrote that the benefits of small schools appear to include higher numbers of students taking academic courses, more attention to student needs, a closer connection with one’s community, more positive staff attitudes, higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities, and better attendance. furthermore, lee and burkham (2003) found that small schools have lower dropout rates than their larger counterparts while lee and loeb (2000) found that teachers in smaller schools took greater personal responsibility for student learning than teachers in larger schools. as a result, they tended to exhibit better relationships with their students and more confidence in their teaching. in the domain of school climate, noguera (2004) cites evidence of student alienation as justification for reorganizing secondary schools into smaller, more personalized learning communities. efforts to address this factor have resulted in the creation of smaller high schools in distressed inner city districts where student alienation is a significant problem (“making room for literacy in secondary schools,” 2005; rubenstein, reisner, coon, & fabiano, 2005). finally, recent research has provided evidence that smaller schools show higher overall a comparison of academic performance 7 achievement, more inclusive decision-making processes, less tension between teachers and students, fewer resources devoted to discipline problems, higher rates of parent-teacher involvement, higher morale, and lower levels of frustration and alienation (plucker, et al., 2007; steward, 2009). the results of these studies have been used to advocate for changes in educational policy that would give a higher priority to creating and maintaining small community schools (deyoung & howley, 1990; fanning, 1995; howley, 1989; kannapel & deyoung, 1999). with regard to schools in connecticut, the subject of this inquiry, melnick et al. (1986), concluded that there were very few differences between small and large districts in terms of quality. specifically, small and large schools were not found to vary with respect to per pupil expenditures, percent of students in need of remedial services, performance on state-mandated assessments, or student attendance and persistence rates. differences favoring larger high schools were, however, found in the number of advanced courses offered and proportion of students who continue on to higher education. in addition, a difference favoring small schools was found in the number of school staff per 1,000 students. these results indicate that the effects of school size in connecticut mirror national trends; that is, size appears irrelevant to school costs with the primary benefit of large schools being their potential for offering advanced curriculum and the primary benefit of small schools being their potential for offering more individualized attention to students. consolidation and consumer satisfaction like any government policy, the most important test of school consolidation may occur not in academia but in the court of public opinion. in this regard, the consolidation movement continues to thrive because some communities welcome consolidated schools and perceive them to be effective at achieving their intended benefits. specifically, self (2001) in an evaluation of the effects of school consolidation found that teachers, parents, and students held overwhelmingly positive attitudes toward the consolidation of schools in ohio in the early 1990s. a follow up survey revealed that major stakeholders continued to perceive consolidation in a positive manner eight years later. in addition, studies supportive of consolidation report that, relative to community high schools, consolidated high schools exhibit: 1) financial advantages, 2) higher and more consistent standards of teacher preparation, 3) more variation in course offerings, and 4) higher faculty salaries (cummins, chance, & steinhoff, 1997; nelson, 1985; schwartzbeck, 2003). despite these positive perceptions, a growing number of stakeholders have expressed dissatisfaction with the practice of school consolidation. their criticisms have been positioned within a broader discourse about the ends and means of education and the importance of schools as community centers, not just instructional settings. specifically, the arguments of advocates for the preservation of small nonmetropolitan schools have focused on: 1) practical problems such as long bus rides and disincentives to participation in extra-curricular activities and 2) philosophical concerns such as social justice and maintaining a meaningful context for learning (bard, et al., 2005; fanning, 1995; fitchen, 1991; howley & howley, 2001; kannapel & deyoung, 1999; luloff & swanson, 1990; nachtigal, 1982, 1994; peshkin, 1978). regarding practical concerns, howley and howley (2001) write that students in consolidated schools are far more likely to have long bus rides than students in small community schools. these lengthy bus rides add significantly to transportation costs that rise more sharply, are less predictable, and offer fewer instructional benefits than the costs associated with educating children in their own communities. in addition, the logistics of providing bus a comparison of academic performance 9 transportation across broad geographic areas make it difficult for many students to participate in extra-curricular activities. research has found that consolidated schools show significantly lower rates of student participation in extra-curricular activities than do comparable community schools (biere, 1995; cotton, 1998; fitchen, 1991; howley & howley, 1995; luloff & swanson, 1990; nachtigal, 1982). this finding is particularly problematic in light of research indicating that many nonmetropolitan communities value extra-curricular and nonacademic activities as much as academic activities if not more so (deyoung, 1995; nachtigal, 1982; peshkin, 1978; stern, 1994). other examiners have challenged consolidation on the basis of social justice and the importance of creating meaningful contexts for learning. specifically, a robust body of research suggests that large consolidated schools primarily benefit affluent, college-bound students while small community schools have been found to achieve positive learning outcomes across a broader range of socioeconomic strata (fowler & walberg, 1991; friedkin & necochea, 1988; howley, 1995; lee & smith, 1997). another social justice issue concerns the fact that consolidation is often justified by its effectiveness at addressing national goals such as the preparation of workers to compete in the global economy (deyoung, 1995; howley, 1997; howley & howley, 1995; post & stambach, 1999; theobald & nachtigal, 1995). this justification weakens local control over public schools, resulting in policies that are less responsive to community values and priorities. for example, in farming communities, modern consolidated high schools that are designed first, and foremost, to prepare students for college often fail to provide learning experiences that are rooted in the community’s agricultural heritage (fanning, 1995; kannapel & deyoung, 1999). fanning (1995) indicates that this lack of connection between school and community results in “place-less” rather than “place-based” learning; a trend that undermines the meaningfulness of learning contexts and runs contrary to modern movements in curriculum reform such as constructivism (haas & lambert, 1995; herzog & pittman, 1995; howley, 1997: howley & howley, 1995; rosenfeld, 1983; theobald and nachtigal, 1995). to re-connect schools to the community, fanning (1995) argues for a balance between “grounded knowing,” which helps children to interpret the events of their lives, and “technical knowing,” which enables them to understand the connection of these events with larger human experience (p. 4). consolidation may be an effective model for promoting technical knowing. however, if it results in impersonal educational institutions devoted primarily to college preparation, then it becomes an ineffective model for promoting grounded knowing outcomes such as good citizenship, healthy relationships, or functional living skills. it also fails to value the importance of community schools as cultural and social centers that enrich the broader community (deyoung & lawrence, 1995; herzog & pittman, 1995; nachtigal, 1982; seal & harmon, 1995; stern, 1994). current status of school consolidation despite the arguments of its detractors, school consolidation is alive and well as an educational policy initiative. the state of maine, for example, has recently proposed merging its 290 local school districts into 26 regional administrative districts. in addition, the 2007 state budget in indiana appropriated funds for use by school districts wishing to study the feasibility of consolidation. furthermore, the legislatures in kansas, nebraska and north dakota have recently debated school consolidation initiatives. over the past three years, these states, along with idaho, south dakota, and arkansas, have either passed laws or established policies that encourage consolidation (plucker et al., 2007; schwartzbeck, 2003). a comparison of academic performance 11 in light of these trends, there is a need for communities considering the question of consolidation to engage in rigorous cost-benefit analyses relative to community values, culture, and traditions. do the benefits of an enhanced capacity to offer technical education outweigh the practical and social justice objections to consolidation or the loss of meaningful contexts for learning? surprisingly, very few quantitative inquiries evaluate the effects of consolidation on the academic performance of students. to inform policy makers on this issue, this inquiry will explore this gap in the literature. it will do so by comparing the scores on college entrance examinations of students in consolidated (also known as regional) high schools with those of students in community high schools. for the purposes of this study, the term regional high school (rhs) will be used to describe a secondary school that was created to serve a consolidated student body from several nonmetropolitan districts. the term community high school (chs) will be used to refer to a secondary school in a nonmetropolitan area whose student enrollment falls in the bottom quartile in the state census. in addition, chss resemble in size, demographics, and geographic location the constituent high schools of districts that have consolidated.   methods this investigation utilized a causal-comparative design to address the following research question: on standardized college admissions tests, do students is regional high schools (rhss) outperform students in community high schools (chss)? given that the districts being studied cannot be randomly selected, a matching procedure was used to assure that the two groups were comparable on key demographic and geographic characteristics. to address the threat of location (gall, gall, & borg, 2006), a standardized instrument (the college board sat i) with specific administrative guidelines was used to assure that data were collected under relatively uniform sets of circumstances. to address the threat of mortality, this inquiry focused on archival data collected from an authoritative source, the connecticut education data and research (cedar) database (2008). this approach assured a 100% response rate among districts in the sample. in addition, with regard to instrumentation, the use of an objectively administered and scored standardized achievement measure eliminated data collector bias as a significant rival hypothesis. finally, because the data for this investigation were collected in a naturalistic setting, it is free of the threats to external validity mentioned by campbell and stanley (1963) with respect to experimental research designs. however, given that the sample for this study is geographically limited, results will not be generalized beyond school districts within the state of connecticut. the dependent variable for this investigation was student performance on the college board sat i reasoning test (sat i), the premier norm-referenced measure of academic preparedness for college. in that this study compared the performance of two discrete groups of participants, the independent variable was group membership; that is, comparisons were made between group a: rhs students and group b: chs students. the sample for this investigation included 32 high schools – 16 regional and 16 community – with an enrollment in excess of 20,000 students. the two groups used for this investigation were matched using district reference group (drg) as the control variable. the state of connecticut created district reference groups (drgs) – designated a (the highest) through i (the lowest) – as a means of classifying schools and school districts according to their needs and resources. specifically, drgs are groups of districts that have similar geographic, cultural, and socio-economic characteristics. the csde assigns districts to drg groupings based upon data elements from the 2000 census and 2004 public school information system a comparison of academic performance 13 (psis) database. to measure socioeconomic status, the csde used three data elements from the 2000 census: median family income; percentage of parents with a bachelor’s degree or higher; and percentage of parents holding jobs in executive, managerial or professional occupations. three other indicators – the percentage of children living in families with a single parent, the percentage of children enrolled in public schools whose families have incomes that make them eligible to receive free or reduced-price meals, and the proportion of children in the district whose families speak a language other than english at home – were used to assess need. in addition, enrollment in the district at the end of the 2003-2004 academic year was a minor factor in the analysis (cedar, 2008). the first step in sample selection was to establish an operational definition of a small high school. this process involved an analysis of two sources of information. the first was enrollment data on communities that participate in regional high schools. these data were examined to identify benchmarks for selecting a matched sample of schools that would be similar in size to the schools that would be operated by these communities if they did not participate in a regional high school. based on state of connecticut k-12 enrollment data (cedar, 2008), “head counts” in the elementary grades, which offer a valid prediction of the number of high school aged students in these districts, range from approximately 40 to approximately 800 students. to obtain more precise figures, a second source of information – the 2006 state of connecticut school census (cedar, 2008) – was analyzed. this document lists 123 comprehensive community high schools with a mean enrollment of 1147 students (standard deviation=589). based on the mean and standard deviation, it was determined that schools with 750 or fewer students would constitute the bottom quartile in enrollment. given the similarity between this figure and the upper limit of the elementary “head count” among communities with regional high schools, it was accepted as a defensible benchmark for selecting schools for the sample. when this benchmark was applied, an initial pool containing the 30 smallest comprehensive public high schools in connecticut was identified. these schools ranged in size from 231 to 740 students with a mean of 509.13 and a standard deviation of 149.74. the second step in sample selection was to match regional high schools with community high schools based on the drg system. to accomplish this in a defensible manner, it was necessary to narrow the range of drgs in both groups. therefore, given that the state’s 17 regional schools are spread across drgs a through f, community high schools in lower drgs (g though i) were eliminated from the chs pool. by the same token, because there were no community high schools in drg a, the lone drg a regional school was eliminated from the rhs pool. in addition, since consolidation appeals primarily to schools in rural areas, small community high schools in suburbs on the fringes of urban centers were eliminated from the chs pool. to achieve a similar distribution in the rhs and chs groups on key demographic and geographic variables, schools were matched based on their drg to the fullest extent possible. however, because of unequal distributions of schools across drg groups, it was necessary, in some instances, to match schools in higher drgs with schools in lower drgs based on a careful examination of demographic data. this strategy was legitimized by the fact that the schools in drgs c through e are all in middle-income communities that are very similar demographically. the two resulting groups had the following compositions: (1) the rhs group was composed of 16 high schools serving 12,231 students. the group includes one high school from drg b, 14 from drgs c through e, and one from drg f. (2) the chs group was composed of 16 high schools serving 7,893 students. the group includes one high school from drg b, 14 from drgs c through e, and one from drg f. a comparison of academic performance 15 descriptive and inferential statistics were used to verify the comparability of the rhs and chs groups on the demographic factors that the state of connecticut uses to assign schools to drgs; i.e., median family income; percentage of parents with a bachelor’s degree or higher; proportion of children’s parents who hold jobs in executive, managerial, and/or professional (i.e., “white collar”) occupations; percentage of children living with a single-parent; proportion of students who meet eligibility guidelines for free or reduced meals, and percentage of students whose families speak a language other than english at home. in addition, schools were compared on their minority enrollments, number of students per academic computer, and per pupil expenditures. table 1.1 provides a complete profile of the rhs and chs groups, including descriptive statistics and t-test results used to evaluate the significance of group differences. table 1.1 descriptions and comparisons of research groups source: connecticut education data and research (cedar, 2008) schools size d r g median income % free/ reduced meals % minority % college degree % white collar % single parent % non english speaking students per computer per pupil spending regional n=12,231 region 1 562 e $56,591 12.6 3.7 29.4 44.5 30.1 1 1.6 $12,305 region 4 594 c $82,620 7.3 6 43.9 50.8 16.3 1.7 1.9 $11,046 region 5 1678 b $93,868 1.8 12.7 59.1 63.5 12 3.2 3.5 $10,397 region 6 390 e $65,759 7.6 2.6 28.7 38.7 13.7 0.2 2.9 $10,395 region 7 786 c $84,090 2.1 2 40.8 56.2 13 0.1 2.0 $11,392 region 8 1026 c $81,862 3.6 3 45 51.2 15.1 0.1 2.4 $8,365 region 10 775 c $84,246 3.1 4.9 42.5 55 5.3 2.1 2.2 $11,016 region 11 200 f $64,732 14.8 5.8 21.5 32.6 20.3 0 1.4 $14,210 region 12 392 c $83,514 2.6 6.1 39.9 42.7 10.3 0.8 2.1 $13,510 region 13 1380 c $79,900 4.8 3.5 40.2 47.8 16.3 0.2 3.4 $10,040 region 14 836 c $82,025 4.6 4.5 46.9 52.6 19.6 1.4 3.7 $9,205 region 15 814 b $87,671 1.6 7 53 57.4 9.2 2.4 4.1 $9562 region 16 679 e $77,260 8.2 4.9 27.6 35.8 8.8 1.9 3.1 $9,705 region 17 459 c $88,307 5.6 3.4 48.3 57.9 9 0.4 3.7 $11,732 region 18 459 c $78,025 3.8 5.7 55.5 51.9 18.2 1.8 2.9 $13,538 region 19 1201 c $70,239 6.8 11.7 50 58.9 17.3 1.7 2.9 $10,291 means 764.4 $78,794 5.58 5.47 42.02 49.84 14.66 1.19 2.74 $11,044 sd 408.8 $9,829 3.79 2.98 10.67 8.85 5.96 0.99 .82 $663 community n=7,893 bolton 285 c $81,293 6.2 6.4 47.4 54.1 16.2 0 3.6 $11,706 canton 515 c $76,113 3.5 7.2 47.5 58.6 12.3 1.1 4.1 $10,888 clinton 663 d $70,776 7.8 9.7 35.9 45.7 16.2 1.3 3.4 $11,854 coventry 573 e $65,707 10.6 5 20.8 40.1 22.7 0.3 3.7 $8,234 e. granby 241 d $77,852 1.3 11.2 29.8 49.5 20.6 3.6 3.1 $11,919 e. haddam 387 e $68,393 5.4 4.7 29.7 41.1 11.1 1.2 3.3 $9,463 e. hampton 567 d $70,400 7.8 5 32.6 44.1 22.1 1.4 4.9 $10,467 ellington 738 c $81,196 4.4 7.2 36.1 48.5 13 1.7 3.0 $10,111 granby 687 b $92,696 3.4 6.7 57.3 65.4 10.9 1.2 3.1 $10,201 lebanon 581 e $66,652 8.1 4.3 26.8 43 13.3 0.7 3.6 $9,776 litchfield 438 e $66,809 4.8 5.2 36.5 43.6 14 0 3.5 $11,420 old saybrook 462 d $73,409 7.7 11.1 43.3 44 19.9 5 4.3 $11,294 plymouth 526 f $65,917 14 5.4 16.4 33.9 18.8 1.5 4.4 $9,013 portland 362 e $68,802 9.9 8.4 38.4 41 25.3 0.6 3.0 $11,811 somers 574 c $77,795 4.8 4.4 34.9 46.3 9.5 1.2 3.8 $9,747 westbrook 294 e $75,568 9.6 6.5 31.9 35.4 19.4 1.7 2.5 $13,984 means 493.3 $72,711 6.83 6.78 35.33 45.89 16.58 1.41 3.58 $10,527 sd 119 $7,354 3.24 2.26 10.25 8.10 4.80 1.28 .62 $1,148 t probability .026 .150 .337 .128 .058 .232 .414 .550 .003 .425 a comparison of academic performance 17 the instrument used to measure the dependent variable in this investigation was the college board sat i reasoning test (sat i), a norm-referenced measure of student readiness for college learning with three sections: critical reading, writing, and math. the sat i meets the highest standards of technical adequacy in content, construct, and criterion-related validity as well as internal consistency and test re-test reliability. it was deemed an appropriate basis for the comparison of school districts in that it now measures, since its 2006 revision, a set of skills that is closely aligned with college preparatory instruction. in addition, relative to state mastery tests, it offers an elevated ceiling capable of differentiating student performance at higher levels of achievement. scores from 2006 through 2008 were used for this inquiry, as they are the only scores available since the revision. the connecticut state department of education official database was used as the sole data source for this inquiry. this database compiles official statistics on connecticut school districts based upon federal census information and superintendents’ yearly reports. with regard to the research question – on standardized achievement tests, do students in regional high schools outperform students in community high schools? – the sat i scores for the rhs group were compared with those of the chs group. to assure that group differences were not primarily a function of the size and diversity of the test-taking cohort, the two groups were also compared on the proportion of students who took the sat i. given that this inquiry used matched groups, correlated t-tests were used to evaluate group differences. in addition, twotailed tests with an alpha level of .05 were used for all comparisons. all analyses were performed on the ms excel spreadsheet with t-test results reported as probability values. results in terms of demographics, table 1.1 provides a profile of the two groups that were the focus of this inquiry. the reader will note that while the regional schools are consistently higher on most indicators of socioeconomic status, none of the differences between the groups crosses the threshold of statistical significance. however, one indicator, the percentage of parents who are college educated bordered on statistical significance (p=.058). nonetheless, given that both groups exhibited socioeconomic characteristics that were solidly in the middle range, the decision to treat them as comparable is justified. aside from demographic contrasts, there are two points of comparison between the two groups that are noteworthy. first of all, the rhs and chs groups were found to be strikingly similar in terms of per pupil expenditures. this finding is intriguing given the economy of scale argument that is often used to justify consolidation. in fact, the data indicate that the regional high schools sampled spend approximately $600 more per year per student than their community high school counterparts. while this difference is not statistically significant, it is supportive of the conclusion that regional high schools do not appear to offer overall cost savings relative to community high schools. secondly, there was a significant difference between the two groups in terms of students per academic computer. this difference suggests that the regional schools may offer significantly better access to technology than their community school counterparts. with regard to the research question, table 2.1 provides a summary of the 2006, 2007 and 2008 sat i scores for the two groups. a summary of the 2006-2008 sat i mean scores can be found in table 2.2. both tables also provide the results of correlated t-tests on all 16 points of comparison between the rhs and chs groups. as these results indicate, the groups were not found to differ in terms of the proportion of students taking the sat i. however, in 2006, a comparison of academic performance 19 students in regional high schools obtained higher scores than their community high school counterparts on three out of four points of comparison: critical reading (p =.002), writing (p = .025), and total scale (p=.016). in addition, the difference between groups in math was very close to the threshold of statistical significance (p=.057). in 2007, students in regional high schools earned slightly higher scores than their counterparts in community high schools on three of the four sat i components (critical reading, writing, and sat i total). in math, the chs group outperformed the rhs group by a slim margin. these differences, though, were not found to be statistically significant. similarly, in 2008, students in regional high schools earned slightly higher scores than their counterparts in community high schools on all four sat i components (critical reading, math, writing, and sat i total). however, these differences were, again, insignificant. overall, when compared on the basis of 2006 through 2008 sat i mean scores, students in regional schools outscored students in community high schools on all four components but the only statistically significant difference occurred in critical reading (p=.035). the approximate mean score differences in favor of the rhs group were as follows: 11 points in critical reading, five points in math, ten points in writing, and 26 points on the total scale. table 2.1 2006 -2008 sat i scores for rhs & chs groups tot=sat total; cre=sat critical reading; mat = sat math; wri=sat writing source: connecticut education data and research (cedar, 2008) high schools % of students tested 06-08 2006 sat i 2007 sat i 2008 sat i tot cre mat wri tot cre mat wri tot cre mat wri regional : region 01 64.68 1579 539 519 524 1551 532 501 518 1528 513 505 510 region 04 81.20 1563 521 525 524 1550 523 504 524 1576 530 519 526 region 05 92.25 1677 552 566 559 1634 539 548 547 1655 545 551 559 region 06 75.05 1563 520 517 522 1566 527 531 508 1601 531 531 539 region 07 83.55 1628 544 548 538 1586 529 533 524 1612 526 551 535 region 08 83.30 1608 536 542 528 1628 541 550 536 1627 540 552 536 region 10 85.88 1601 532 527 540 1554 512 521 521 1556 515 520 521 region 11 74.65 1579 534 515 530 1475 501 468 506 1509 521 477 511 region 12 88.98 1576 527 527 522 1551 527 504 521 1536 513 506 516 region 13 77.35 1579 540 530 517 1595 531 530 534 1569 520 522 526 region 14 91.88 1552 520 518 515 1517 510 498 508 1560 524 508 528 region 15 95.18 1568 522 528 525 1629 547 546 536 1633 541 551 541 region 16 71.23 1489 500 499 491 1457 485 487 485 1463 485 490 488 region 17 85.78 1598 530 531 529 1532 511 512 509 1578 522 528 527 region 18 79.60 1660 542 567 553 1691 560 569 561 1687 557 565 565 region 19 72.93 1668 563 558 550 1651 547 560 542 1657 550 561 547 mean 81.5 1593 532.6 532.3 529.2 1572.9 526.4 522.6 523.8 1584.2 527.1 527.3 529.7 sd 8.5 47.9 14.8 19.2 16.5 63.4 19.1 28.1 18.70 59.8 17.4 26.2 19.1 community: bolton 77.13 1562 526 512 524 1626 544 538 543 1583 525 511 546 canton 86.93 1624 531 546 543 1632 535 554 543 1625 537 545 543 clinton 86.63 1538 515 512 512 1508 495 510 503 1572 521 523 528 coventry 78.73 1518 510 507 499 1499 506 499 495 1527 516 507 504 e. granby 71.83 1551 510 548 493 1620 533 561 526 1619 534 562 523 e. haddam 79.03 1469 494 499 492 1523 497 501 525 1582 522 521 539 e. hampton 82.10 1530 512 505 514 1527 503 514 511 1615 538 540 538 ellington 86.90 1572 519 530 526 1549 512 529 508 1554 513 522 519 granby 80.83 1646 554 549 544 1650 550 553 546 1617 539 542 536 lebanon 86.78 1469 494 487 490 1490 499 494 497 1529 526 499 503 litchfield 83.20 1564 509 523 528 1682 556 559 567 1607 528 539 539 old saybrook 90.35 1567 504 531 531 1543 510 516 517 1534 510 507 517 plymouth 75.25 1516 499 512 505 1483 492 499 489 1416 470 482 464 portland 89.53 1490 491 500 496 1573 522 541 510 1571 528 526 517 somers 85.15 1568 520 533 519 1636 542 553 541 1551 512 524 515 westbrook 77.30 1492 507 495 493 1552 515 522 516 1567 524 509 533 mean 82.4 1542.3 512.2 518.1 513.1 1568.3 519.4 527.7 521.1 1566.8 521.4 522.4 522.8 sd 5.4 50.3 15.9 19.6 18.4 63.9 21.1 23.8 21.9 51.9 16.5 20.1 20.6 t probability .649 .016 .002 .057 .025 .840 .313 .619 .685 .324 .283 .538 .262 a comparison of academic performance 21 table 2.2 20062008 sat i mean scores for rhs & chs groups tot=sat total; cre=sat critical reading; mat = sat math; wri=sat writing source: connecticut education data and research (cedar, 2008) mean 2006 – 2008 sat i tot mean 2006-2008 sat i cre mean 2006-2008 sat i mat mean 2006-2008 sat i wri regional high schools: region 01 1552.67 528.00 508.33 517.33 region 04 1563.00 524.67 516.00 524.67 region 05 1655.33 545.33 555.00 555.00 region 06 1576.67 526.00 526.33 523.00 region 07 1608.67 533.00 544.00 532.33 region 08 1621.00 539.00 548.00 533.33 region 10 1570.33 519.67 522.67 527.33 region 11 1521.00 518.67 486.67 515.67 region 12 1554.33 522.33 512.33 519.67 region 13 1581.00 530.33 527.33 525.67 region 14 1543.00 518.00 508.00 517.00 region 15 1610.00 536.67 541.67 534.00 region 16 1469.67 490.00 492.00 488.00 region 17 1569.33 521.00 523.67 521.67 region 18 1679.33 553.00 567.00 559.67 region 19 1658.67 553.33 559.67 546.33 mean 1583.38 528.69 527.42 527.54 sd 54.09 15.46 23.55 16.90 community high schools: bolton 1590.33 531.67 520.33 537.67 canton 1627.00 534.33 548.33 543.00 clinton 1539.33 510.33 515.00 514.33 coventry 1514.67 510.67 504.33 499.33 e. granby 1596.67 525.67 557.00 514.00 e. haddam 1524.67 504.33 507.00 518.67 e. hampton 1557.33 517.67 519.67 521.00 ellington 1558.33 514.67 527.00 517.67 granby 1637.67 547.67 548.00 542.00 lebanon 1496.00 506.33 493.33 496.67 litchfield 1617.67 531.00 540.33 544.67 old saybrook 1548.00 508.00 518.00 521.67 plymouth 1471.67 487.00 497.67 486.00 portland 1544.67 513.67 522.33 507.67 somers 1585.00 524.67 536.67 525.00 westbrook 1537.00 515.33 508.67 514.00 mean 1559.13 517.69 522.73 518.96 sd 47.10 14.46 18.91 17.00 t probability .183 .035 .549 .135 discussion c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 22 the results of this inquiry suggest that, relative to community high schools (chss), regional high schools (rhss) may provide a slight academic benefit to college preparatory students as measured by scores on the sat i. however, this conclusion must be viewed as highly tentative in light of the fact that the most dramatic differences occurred in a single year, 2006, and were not consistent across the three-year period examined. furthermore, those who would use these results to inform policy decisions should be mindful that the sample for this inquiry is small and drawn exclusively from nonmetropolitan regions of connecticut. the results cannot, therefore, be generalized nationally or to urban or suburban districts where the relationship between school-level variables and student achievement appears to be much more complex. another limitation of this inquiry is the fact that it is focused on the sat i, a college entrance examination, and its findings are, therefore, limited to students who are bound for college. as a result, it offers few insights into the differences between students in regional and community high schools who are pursuing courses of study that prepare them for postsecondary objectives other than college. this is an especially important consideration in that it is these students that critics describe as being most in need of the more intimate environment of a small community school (bard et al., 2005; fitchen, 1991; luloff & swanson, 1990; nachtigal, 1982; plucker, et al., 2007; purcell & shakelford, 2005). when applied to the consolidation debate, advocates and opponents of consolidation will both find support for their positions in the results of this inquiry. advocates will argue that their view is validated by the higher sat i scores of students in regional high schools and data indicating that regional schools offer greater access to technology for a comparable per pupil cost. opponents will point out that most of the differences between groups on the sat i are a c om parison of a cadem ic p erform ance 23 insignificant and that the ones that reach statistical significance are not sufficiently robust to be considered an advantage for regional schools. in addition, they will point out that the gap between rhss and chss appears to narrow over the three-year period examined in this study. specifically, in reading, the performance of chss improved each year from a mean of 512.2 in 2006 to a mean of 519.4 in 2007 and 521.4 in 2008. similarly, writing scores improved from 513.1 in 2006 to 521.1 in 2007 and 522.8 in 2008. these trends suggest that the “regional effect” may be fading. furthermore, advocates of chss will argue that the data from this inquiry do not support the conclusion that regional schools are more cost effective that community schools. this conclusion is consistent with a previous study conducted on a similar sample in the same geographic region (melnick et al., 1986). finally, critics of consolidation will point out that the results of this inquiry do not speak to such core concerns as the effects of consolidation on transportation, student participation in extracurricular activities, educational equity, or the context for learning. conclusions the results of this inquiry strongly indicate a need for further research. specifically, given the size and geographic limitations of the sample, it would be necessary to replicate this study with larger samples, drawn from multiple locales, over a longer period of time before the stability and meaningfulness of these results can be determined. in addition, should meaningful differences be found, further inquiry would be needed to determine the reasons for these differences. a related issue would be to determine why these differences seem to occur more often in reading and writing than in math. inquiry in this area may also provide an explanation for the finding that, from 2006 through 2008, the gap between regional and community high schools on the sati reading and writing subtests diminished steadily. possible areas of inquiry c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 24 might include differences in the quality and preparation of teachers, the availability of instructional resources in regional versus community high schools, or the distribution of these resources across socioeconomic strata. furthermore, since the demonstration of positive academic effects would not alone be sufficient to address the most daunting social, cultural, and philosophical challenges to consolidation, there is a need for policy makers to reflect on existing research and arrive at a consensus position on its benefits and limitations. while community leaders await the emergence of such a position, they would be wise to look beyond the fiscal benefits of consolidation and engage stakeholders in a deeper discussion of community beliefs regarding the goals and purposes of public education. the relevance of this study to this discussion is that an analysis of data from 32 nonmetropolitan communities in connecticut provides additional support to the following three conclusions from the literature on school consolidation: (1) the cost benefits of modern school consolidation may be illusory given that regional schools and small community schools have similar per-pupil expenditures. therefore, consolidating schools primarily as a cost saving measure may not be a defensible strategy. (2) regional high schools appear to offer some limited advantages to college preparatory students as demonstrated by their higher performance on the literacy sections of the sat i. these differences may be associated with the enhanced curriculum resources of larger schools, including the ability to offer advanced placement classes. however, these benefits may be diminishing as the performance gap between collegebound students in regional vs. community high schools appears to be narrowing and a c om parison of a cadem ic p erform ance 25 affordable technology becomes available to add these enhancements to the curriculum of smaller schools. (3) large consolidated schools may offer greater access to technology. however, this advantage may be of diminishing importance in light of the growing saturation of technology in american society. given the advantages of small schools as described in the literature and the growing body of research on the benefits of small schools for a variety of historically under-performing groups, school leaders in connecticut and across the country many need to re-examine the assumptions of school consolidation and consider the possibility that “small may be the new big.” in this regard, recent research indicates that “small is better” in poor inner-city communities where schools must counteract anomie, normlessness, and the breakdown of institutions that form the fabric of society (“making room for literacy in secondary schools,” 2005; rubenstein, reisner, coon, & fabiano, 2005). similarly, many have suggested that small may be better in remote rural areas where schools are the only institutions that can combat the effects of social isolation (biere, 1995; fanning, 1995; fitchen, 1991; luloff and swanson, 1990; nachtigal, 1982; peshkin, 1978, 1982). nonetheless, if we are to heed the admonition of kannapel and deyoung (1995) to avoid assuming that all schools suffer from generic problems that lend themselves to generic solutions, then we must also make room for the possibility that, in some communities, larger may continue to be better. in this regard, one practical recommendation would be to consider the question posed by fanning (1995); “what should our young people have the chance to learn?” (p.5). if the answer to this question is, as fanning suggests, a balance of “grounded” (i.e., personal and experiential) with “technical” (i.e., rational and empirical) knowing, then the results of this inquiry suggest c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 26 that community schools, which may be more effective at promoting grounded knowing, may wish to actively explore alternatives to consolidation for assisting their students in the development of technical knowing. by the same token, communities served by regional schools, which may offer advantages over community schools in promoting technical knowing, may wish to explore strategies for assisting their students in the development of grounded knowing. in the domain of technical knowing, communities that wish to preserve their community schools may find in this study the motivation to identify new ways to access talent and resources. one evidence-based option for accomplishing this objective is to develop partnerships with public and private institutions and foundations (fanning, 1995; nachtigal, 1994). in addition, to augment and/or avoid consolidation, schwartzbeck (2003) recommends that districts explore: 1) cooperative agreements with nearby districts that enable then to share staff, contractual services and/or buildings; 2) four day work weeks (thus saving on utility and transportation costs); 3) distance learning; and 4) using regional educational service centers (rescs) to achieve economies of scale in areas such as food and custodial services, special education, and payroll management. in the domain of grounded knowing, communities that are served by regional and/or consolidated schools may wish to explore the formation of smaller learning communities to promote a sense of cohesion and belongingness among students (cotton, 1998; “making room for literacy in secondary schools,” 2005; noguera, 2004; and rubenstein, reisner, coon, & fabiano, 2005). this approach, based on the schools-within-schools model (goodlad, 1984; murphy, 1991), creates semi-autonomous small schools that are housed within larger schools to achieve learning environments characterized by greater intimacy, improved teacher engagement, and a more positive peer culture. a c om parison of a cadem ic p erform ance 27 finally, the results of this inquiry provide insight into the thorny question of school size. it is noteworthy that although the regional high schools examined in this study were significantly larger than the community high schools sampled, they were not large schools relative to the state mean. indeed, of the 16 schools studied, eight fell in the bottom quartile in terms of school size (n≤750) and only three were above the state mean (n≥1147). it is, therefore, difficult to conclude that the benefits (or lack thereof) of consolidation suggested by this inquiry have much to do with school size. this conclusion fits with prior research on this subject (melnick et al., 1986) and with the lack of consensus in the literature on the benefits and disadvantages of small versus large schools. it also fits with the conclusion that the factors that mitigate the effects of school size are myriad and appear to include the demographic, socio-economic, cultural, and geographic characteristics of a given community. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 28 references american psychological association. 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(1993). predictors of high school academic course offerings: the role of school size. american educational research journal, 30, 3-21. murphy, j. (1991). restructuring schools: capturing and assessing the phenomenon. new york: teachers college press. nachtigal, p. (ed.) (1982). rural education: in search of a better way. boulder, co: westview press. nachtigal, p. (1994). political trends affecting nonmetropolitan america. new orleans, la: paper presented at the rural education symposium during the annual conference of the american educational research association. (eric document reproduction service no. ed 370 749) nelson, e. (1985). school consolidation (report no. 1985-00-00). eugene, or: eric clearinghouse on educational management. (eric document reproduction service no. ed 282 346) noguera, p. (2004). transforming high schools. educational leadership, 61, 8, 26-31. peshkin, a. (1978). growing up american. chicago: university of chicago press. peshkin, a. (1982). the imperfect union: school consolidation and community conflict. chicago: the university of chicago press. plucker, j. spradlin, t. magaro, m., chien, r., & zapf, j. (2007). assessing the policy environment for school corporation collaboration, cooperation, and consolidation in indiana. bloomington, in: university of indiana center for evaluation & educational policy. (eric document reproduction service no. ed 497 535) post, d. & stambach, a. (1999). district consolidation and rural school closure: e pluribus unum? journal of research in rural education, 15, 106-117. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 32 purcell, d. & shakelford, r. (2005). an evaluation of the impact of rural school consolidation. what challenges may a new round of rural school consolidations have on the safety, educational performance and social environment of rural communities? west lafayette, in: nrea. (eric document reproduction service no. ed 497 051) purdy, d. (1997). an economical, thorough, and efficient school system: the west virginia school building authority and economy of scale numbers. journal of research in rural education, 12, 170-182. ravitch, d. (1983). the troubled crusade. new york: basic books. rosenfeld, s. (1983). something old, something new: the wedding of rural education and rural development. phi delta kappan, 65, 270-273. rubenstein, m., reisner, e., coon, m., fabiano, l., (2005). new century high schools: evaluation findings from the second year. new york: policy studies associates, inc. (eric document reproduction service no. ed 491 882). schwartzbeck, t. (2003). declining counties, declining school enrollments. arlington, va: american association of school administrators. (eric document reproduction service no. ed 478 349) seal, s. & harmon, h. (1995). realities of rural school reform. phi delta kappan, 77, 119-124. self, t. (2001). post-consolidation evaluation: the effects eight years later. chicago, il: paper presented at the annual meeting of the mid-western educational research association. (eric document reproduction service no. ed 475 492) stern, j. (1994). the condition of education in rural school. charleston, wv: u.s. department of education, office of educational research and improvement (eric document reproduction service no. ed371935) steward, l. (2009). achievement differences between large and small schools in texas. the rural educator, 30, 2, 20-28. theobald, p. & nachtigal. p. (1995). culture, community and the promise of rural education. phi delta kappan, 77, 132-135. a c om parison of a cadem ic p erform ance 33 united states department of education national commission on excellence in education. (1983). a nation at risk: the imperative for educational reform. washington, dc: u.s. government printing office. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 13 n o. 2 34 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 13, number 2 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors jeffery johnson lori ellingford katy hirsch section editors krista adams hillary andrelchik miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis amber johnston seong hee kim lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer wojtulewicz lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo cie template 1 volume 2, number 5 september 30, 1999 issn 1099-839x effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking barry leshowitz kristen eignor dicerbo scott symington arizona state university this article describes a college course in critical thinking. offered in the psychology department at arizona state university, this active-learning course provides instruction in how to apply principles of (scientific) methodological reasoning and optimum decision making to problems faced in everyday-life situations. students learn to evaluate statistical and scientific evidence, clarify personal and societal values, and anticipate the consequences of their actions in dealing with personally significant issues. crime and punishment, societal acceptance of the gay lifestyle, alcohol abuse, and racial stereotypes comprise a partial list of topics addressed in the class. using internet links to recorded classroom discussions archived on the world wide web, the article provides qualitative support for a three-level model of critical thinking. this model attempts to account for the progression of methodological reasoning skills and related dispositions that takes place over the course of the semester. [realplayer needed to view video clips in this article.] a special note from the authors our paper makes extensive use of webcasts (broadcasts of the class transmitted over the internet). these video clips allow the reader to see active-learning teaching methodology, student reactions, and changes in students' critical thinking skills that occurred in the course. the videos show the progress of students over time lend credibility to our analysis of the teaching and learning process. we would not have been able to display with visual images this longitudinal progression in a standard paper format. we believe that video clips are also valuable because communication is more than just words; people speak to us through facial expressions, body language, and voice tone. the webcasts allow readers to witness for themselves what the students are communicating. one specific situation that leant itself to display in a webcast was the development of graphic analysis of data. the readers can observe the students' progress analyzing claims in terms of dependent and independent variables. we observe students determining how the variables were measured, what subjects comprised the sample, and other details of the particular study. a standard paper format would be adequate for displaying the graph, but the videos allow for an examination of the process that led to the graph. finally, the videos break up with some entertaining moments what might otherwise be a somewhat tedious presentation of a program of classroom instruction. introduction "the goal of instruction should be to allow students to deal sensibly with problems that often involve evidence, quantitative consideration, logical arguments, and uncertainty; without the ability to think critically and independently, citizens are easy prey to dogmatists, flimflam artists, and purveyors of simple solutions to complex problems" (american association for the advancement of science, 1989). unfortunately, the results of any number of national and international studies indicate that few high school graduates (or entering college students) are able to http://www.real.com/ current issues in education vol. 2 no. 5 2 apply higher-order thinking skills to problems faced in everyday life (see e.g. nsf, 1996). controlled studies in psychology and education confirm this finding. they indicate that most students have difficulty in (a) identifying and defining problems from multiple perspectives; (b) detecting gaps in knowledge and information; (c) establishing cause-effect relationships; (d) distinguishing facts from opinions or personal values; (e) accepting unfavorable information; and (f) evaluating costs and benefits of risky decisions (arons, 1979; baron, 1988; fiske & taylor, 1991; gigerenzer, 1996; kahneman & tversky, 1996; leshowitz, 1989; leshowitz & yoshikawa, 1996; nisbett & ross, 1980; stanovich & west, 1998; whimbey & lockhead, 1986). in an exhaustive study evaluating the thinking of students in high school, college, and graduate school and comparison groups of nonstudents, perkins (1985) has reached similar conclusions. post-primary education appears to have little impact on students' reasoning about everyday events, and number of years of education is only a borderline significant predictor of reasoning ability. one explanation for the poor performance of students in reasoning and other higher-order thinking skills is the nature of the educational experience typically encountered in our classrooms. educational researchers have long observed that instruction at all levels does not emphasize information-processing skills. instead of making the development of reasoning a priority, most instruction forces a large fraction of students into blind memorization. for the great majority of high school and college students, education is limited to reproducing isolated facts that they have been taught are "true"(aaas, 1989; adey, 1988; jungwirth & dreyfus, 1990; goodlad, 1983; layton, 1986; loria, mantovani & nasi, 1984; thelen, 1987; nsf, 1966). unschooled in the processes of inquiry, it is hardly surprising that many students do not know how to seek evidence for claims or evaluate data so as to extract meaningful conclusions in their effort to make informed decisions and solve problems. these limitations of instruction have not gone unrecognized by the educational establishment. to remedy this situation in k-12 education, state and federal departments of education under the leadership of blueribbon panels of educators have introduced inquiry-based standards in history, math, science, and art, among other areas. the science-education community has been especially active in educational reform. at the college level, for example, the national science foundation, the american association for the advancement of science, and the national academy of sciences have cooperated closely in launching a nation-wide effort aimed at facilitating inquiry-based instruction in science, math, engineering, and technology (nsf, 1996). in the past decade, advocates of instruction in critical thinking also have been active in the education reform movement at all levels and across the curriculum. reflecting many of the concerns of science educators, proponents of critical thinking have focused on higherorder reasoning skills and related thinking dispositions as the major goal of instruction (paul, 1990). halpern (1989, p. 5) has used the term "critical thinking" to describe the cognitive processes "involved in solving problems, formulating inferences, calculating likelihood, and making decisions." lipman (1988) has written extensively on the criteria for evaluating critical thinking. he has defined critical thinking as thinking that meets accepted criteria within the discipline, is sensitive to context, is self-corrective, and is manifested as a propensity to give sound reasons in reaching judgments, making decisions, solving problems, and taking action. the close correspondence between the dimensions of critical thinking described by halpern and lipman and many of the practices of the inquiring scientist is noteworthy. this observation has had important implications for the development of my (the first author's) program of instruction in critical thinking and provides the point of departure for the present paper. below we describe a course in effective thinking that attempts to facilitate the development of the skills of critical thinking through practical instruction in methodological reasoning. methodological reasoning refers to the rules of the scientific method that emphasize posing questions in terms of relationships between variables, formulating alternative hypotheses, testing these hypotheses, collecting data, drawing (causal) inferences, reaching warranted conclusions, and making informed decisions. these "are the kinds of skills that people must have in some measure in order to live effectively in the world" (lehman et al., 1988, p. 441). in collaboration with students over several years, i have developed and demonstrated programs in critical thinking for college and high school students (leshowitz, jenkens, heaton, & bough, 1993; leshowitz & yoshikawa, 1996). the cornerstone of my instruction is the application of elements of methodological reasoning to relevant, often emotionally charged problems confronted in everyday life. these practices include the methods for identifying problems, proposing alternative hypotheses, conducting scientific studies, using descriptive statistics and graphs to analyze data, doing causal analysis, and making valid inferences. in addition to instruction in methodological reasoning, my class addresses the role of personal values, ethical and moral beliefs, and cost/benefits in normative (or optimal) decision making. these personal, social, and historical factors provide the background or context for making evidence-based decisions. the overall goal of my instruction in critical thinking is to prepare students to take action based on what is objectively known and what they subjectively value. preliminary empirical support for the effectiveness of my instruction has been presented elsewhere effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking 3 (leshowitz, 1989; leshowitz & yoshikawa, 1996; leshowitz, dicerbo & okun, 1999). (detailed findings evaluating my program will be included in future papers.) briefly, the results of several nonequivalent-control-group studies indicate that methodological reasoning, metacognitive insights, skepticism, reliance on intuition, cognitive bias, and resistance to attitude change, among other dimensions of critical thinking, change significantly over the course of the semester. a psychology course in effective thinking a principal focus of this article is to illustrate the active-learning, discovery-based instructional techniques that i use in my psychology course, effective thinking. the course is an elective that meets arizona state university's general studies first-level requirement for literacy and critical inquiry. a course in finite mathematics or statistics and introductory psychology are prerequisites for the course. about 25 students, representing psychology majors and nonmajors in about equal proportions, comprise the course's enrollment each semester. emphasizing problems of direct concern to college students to encourage personal involvement, the course provides hands-on, real-world-based experience in dealing with everyday-life situations (de sanchez, 1995). the following is a partial list of the personally meaningful, often highly-charged issues addressed in the course: the psychological effects of divorce on children, use of untested drugs for terminally-ill patients, formation of racial stereotypes, binge drinking in college students, and acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle in the local community. the goal of the course is to help students understand how to use methodological reasoning in gathering, analyzing, and integrating information for the purpose of making informed decisions in everyday life. to illustrate how the class learns to apply methodological reasoning to everyday problems, we present a vignette used in the class. imagine that pete smith, a typical college freshman, decides to "party" excessively in response to peer pressure. in a few weeks, he reports that he has made lots of friends and attributes his acceptance to his willingness to party in the manner his pals deem appropriate. this judgment is reached despite the fact that many events have taken place during this periodhe has dated a young woman in the "in" group, he is a good athlete, he has a keen sense of humor, and he seems to do well in class with minimum effort. pete's subjective validation of the effects of partying with alcohol on his sociability is not soundly reasoned since the effects of alcohol have not been isolated. in a discovery-based, highly interactive discussion that may include role-playing, the instruction addresses pete's flawed, "make-sense" thinking. in a rational investigation of what really is "so," the instructor might begin by asking the students to describe the scenario's major claim (or hypothesis) in terms of a relation between the antecedent (independent variable; alcohol) and the consequent condition (dependent variable; popularity). depicting the claim pictorially in a fully labeled graph helps students focus on the underlying claim and its empirical basis. students learn that an observed comparison between two groups is essential for establishing an association between variables. often students' preconceived ideas about the validity of the underlying claim lead them to assume the existence of a comparison when in fact none is available. in the course of the discussion, students discover that there is little objective support for pete's (and perhaps their own) firmly held views on the effects of alcohol and that their beliefs on the issue are essentially "illusory." during the course, students complete a plethora of written assignments. in-class and take-home exams (about 4), daily homework assignments (brief essays), at least three substantial papers of about five pages in length, and a cumulative final exam constitute a partial list of writing exercises. students complete about 45 writing assignments, totaling well over 100 pages. completion of these assignments, which requires about two hours of outside work for each hour of class time, involves gathering, interpreting, and evaluating information. popular media, such as newspaper and magazine articles and videos, along with students' own personal experiences constitute the sources of information analyzed. there is no assigned textbook. realistic communication formats, such as memoranda, letters-to-the editor, structured interviews, and investigative reports, are used whenever possible. final grades are determined by assessing the general level of performance (numerical averages are not computed), paying special attention to progress in the late stages of the course. asking students to confront highly controversial issues in a classroom environment can lead to frustration in some students, especially at the outset of the course. to help overcome this problem, i enlist the assistance of peer tutors. each semester, i select outstanding undergraduates from previous semesters to serve as peer tutors. given course credit for their participation in the program, peer tutors provide assistance in all aspects of the course. by providing detailed written comments and assessments of assignments, the peer tutors help their students explore the assumptions on which they base their personal opinions and beliefs. peer tutors may ask for clarification of terms, reasoned support for opinions, acknowledgment of the influence of a personal bias, advantages of the opposing viewpoint, and/or consideration of values that might be affecting their thinking process. in-depth feedback on daily written assignments, we find, solidifies the relationship among the instructor, the peer tutors, and the students (mackeachie, 1986). in this highly supportive learning environment, the peer tutors and i help our students to realize that their ideas, contributions, successes, and frustrations are taken into account by all of the participants. current issues in education vol. 2 no. 5 4 qualitative evidence the course relies heavily on active-learning and discovery-based techniques that facilitate development of the skills and dispositions underlying critical thinking. in an attempt to demonstrate these active-learning techniques and the students' reactions to the course's instruction, we present below internet links to archived audio/video clips of class discussions recorded in my classroom. these segments examine problematic situations, ranging from simulated mock-jury deliberations and investigations of untested drugs, to an examination of gay marriage in a local community. the clips illustrate how i attempt to reduce active learning in critical thinking to classroom practice. these clips also serve as qualitative evidence that allows researchers to "seek explanation of what the program is doing, why it follows the course that it does, how recipients respond, and why they act in ways they do" (weiss, 1998, p.265). we believe that video clips are more valuable than words because communication is more than just words; people speak to us through facial expressions, body language, and voice tone. the readers can witness for themselves what the student is communicating. readers can also experience the classroom and the evolution of critical thinking with their own eyes. in effect, the clips provide people with a flavor for the environment in which we teach higher-order thinking in an active-learning environment. elaine yoshikawa, a returning undergraduate in psychology, and i developed a three-level model of cognitive development for the purpose of organizing our observations of my students' thinking at various critical junctures in the semester (leshowitz & yoshikawa, 1996). the three levels of cognitive development were expanded into descriptive categories so the audio/video clips could be coded accordingly (weiss, 1998). an entire semester of the class was videotaped as webcasts (broadcasts of the class transmitted over the internet). the webcasts were then sorted according to which level was exemplified by the students' responses. inclusive and exclusive examples of each level facilitated the sorting of the clips. we also analyzed the clips in terms of teaching techniques demonstrated. techniques available for viewing include socratic dialogues, collaborative problem-solving exercises, and role-playing scenarios. in order for a clip to be included in the paper, it had to perform one of the following functions (guba, 1978): (a) identify new elements of importance (e.g., characterize a particular level of cognitive development; (b) reinforce existing information, but not to the point of redundancy; (c) explain information that is already available; or (d) exemplify the nature of the category. in searching for clips, we at times found ourselves examining hours of tape for a minute of relevant dialogue. in some measure this difficulty was heightened by the fact that we had a very limited set of clips from which to select tape. also, the level of students' thinking displayed inconsistency at times, which is an inevitable consequence of the instructional process. this inconsistency made it difficult to code clips in which students exhibited various levels of thinking. however, we believe that the clips we selected for this paper do present the classroom realistically. for any particular student they show a progression in mastering the principles of critical thinking along with instances of regression to earlier ways of thinking. (to view the clips of the archived webcasts, the user must have either a pentium pc running windows 95/98 or windows nt or a power macintosh computer. the most current web browser must also be used; the latest version of netscape (4.5) or microsoft internet explorer version 4.0 is required. both may be downloaded from their respective vendors free of charge. in addition, the most current version of real networks realplayer g2 software will be needed to view the clips of the class discussions. if needed, the reader may download realplayer g2. select the archived clip to view by clicking on the url. at this point, the realplayer software should automatically start and after a few seconds, begin playing the video. to exit the clip, click on the x at the upper right-hand corner of the realplayer window.) instructional model guiding my program of instruction is a threelevel cognitive model that describes the emergence of critical thinking and associated dispositions in most students over the course of the semester. many of the initial observations which led to this model came from a qualitative analysis of students' comments in daily class reviews. similar to entries in a student journal, these personal essays are analogous to contributions to portfolios and structured diaries which are currently being used as evidence of students' change, growth, and responsiveness to instruction (collins, 1993; delongis, hemphill & lehman, 1992). this analysis led to the emergence of the theoretical framework described below. students enrolled in my effective thinking course generally proceed through three levels of development. kitchener and brenner (1990) and kuhn (1993; kuhn, 1999) have proposed similar approaches to the development of reflective judgment in adulthood. although the three levels of the model are presented here sequentially, the postulated transformations rarely occur in linear sequence. however, it is our contention that this model elucidates and clarifies the ways in which reasoning skills, cognitive strategies, and associated dispositions are modified over time. additionally, the model provides a framework for describing the events experienced by the majority of my students, peer teachers, and their instructor in the course. level 1: pseudo-knowing student characteristics. the first level of "pseudo-knowing" reflects the typical entering student's http://www.real.com/ effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking 5 willingness to accept or reject new information with a modicum of questioning or critical evaluation. the first clip presents an illustrative example of level-1 thinking. in an introductory discussion, the student expresses in a forthright manner his strong preference for opinions over facts. the student indicates that opinions are "fun," while facts are "boring." at the beginning of the semester, the great majority of students do not actively engage in questioning, evaluating, or critically analyzing information. rather, the students passively assimilate unsubstantiated claims into their knowledge base of "known facts," especially those claims posited by "experts" or appearing in print (leshowitz, okun, & dicerbo, 1999). moreover, they are generally unaware that many of their beliefs are unsupported and speculative (leshowitz, 1989). in the next clip, one student defends his reliance on the personal experience of respected individuals in his hometown as a source of reliable information on attending college. he believes this approach to serious decision making is preferable to gathering facts for himself. strong, emotional, and generally unsupported opinions dominate the students' analysis of information in the early stages of the course. consistent with these classroom observations, investigators in social psychology have empirically established that it is difficult, perhaps impossible, for many individuals to evaluate objectively information that contradicts their beliefs (nisbett & ross, 1980). the next clip presents an example of this common cognitive bias. in a discussion on gay issues, this student argues that no fact could change his opinion about gay marriages; what he feels (values) is on a "grander scale" that is not open to scrutiny. the student made these comments in an introductory "ice-breaking" dialogue where the students discussed various sources of information on which they rely, and rated their confidence in these sources. the aim of this dialogue is to help the students begin to identify the underlying basis of their beliefs and personal opinions. rarely mentioning standards or criteria for evaluating information, the students make few distinctions among statements of fact, opinion, belief and theory. in large measure, the goal of the course is to help students recognize these differences in their thinking. teaching techniques. the class uses reflective dialogue is to build scaffolding on past experiences and knowledge of the participants and to facilitate insights into past and present thinking. toward this end, i anchor the dialogue on specific points or "windows." allowing students to follow their own path through the dialogue's windows gives rise to a class discussion that develops spontaneously. when the class dialogue goes well, it resembles a one-on-one personal conversation. the dialogue in the next clip illustrates this instructional process. following the presentation of a tv magazine segment on an "expert" who claims he can teach people to think "intuitively," the class assesses the usefulness of "gut instinct" in decision making. in response to the students' confidence in their powers of intuition, i direct the discussion toward the concepts of hindsight bias, rational thinking, fast (intentional) processing, and proof. i also encourage the students to examine their personal experiences as they relate to the issue at hand. the following clip presents a group discussion on the merits of using intuition in decision making. one student relates how she has used intuition (or gut-level feelings) in deciding everything from selecting a flavor of ice cream, to what college to attend, to decisions regarding whether to go out with a particular person. by rigorously challenging students' unquestioned opinions and beliefs, i try to inspire in them the desire and motivation to learn more generally accepted ways of assessing what they believe as fact. the early dialogues may appear confrontational to some students; many of these students have never had their strongly held beliefs intellectually confronted in a classroom setting. in my dialogues with students, i attempt to communicate to the individual students that their contributions are significant and valued and that they should not fear embarrassment or judgmental responses. however, even with students with whom i have established a strong mentoring relationship, i may fail to adequately affirm the student's contribution. the following interchange illustrates a situation where my effort to challenge one student's use of (limited) personal experience as a source of valid information fell short of my high standards for conducting reflective dialogues. level 2: destabilized knowing student characteristics. uncertainty, confusion, and self-doubt regarding what or whom to believe characterizes "destabilized knowing." in the next clip, a student wonders how one goes about checking the factual basis of opinions, especially when they appear in books. in preparation for a lengthier consideration of the matter, the instructor responds, "use your head." in level 2, students are uncertain how to determine who, what, or why to believe. what constitutes valid and reliable information, minimal inference, expert testimony, and reasonable speculation take on major importance. students discover that standard journalismbased criteria for evaluating information, while helpful, are too imprecise to deal substantively with issues they care about. they are uncertain about definitions of "reliable statistics," "expert witness," and "appropriate language." adding to their discomfort and diminishing confidence in their old ways of thinking is the realization that good information is absolutely necessary for solving problems and making sound decisions. at this juncture, i find that most students are prepared emotionally to make the serious commitment to fundamentally changing their http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/031199.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/031199.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/092298.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/031199b.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/092298a.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/012899.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/031199a.smil http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number5/index.html#level2 current issues in education vol. 2 no. 5 6 knowledge-assessment and decision-making strategies. they understand that their standard ways of thinking and deciding are in need of improvement. they know they can make better, more informed decisions. teaching techniques. my objective at this point is to provide my students with the opportunity to become aware of and confront their misconceptions (garfield, 1993). toward this end, i attempt to elicit feeling-level reactions to controversial issues in an attempt to lessen the students' propensity to respond as they think is expected. expressions of core beliefs and attitudes, i find, prepare the students to deal seriously with personally significant issues. the following illustrates the frustration of one student toward the media. he asserts that people are afraid, and the media play to this fear. exercises in legal reasoning are especially useful in encouraging students to reconsider their ways of forming beliefs and rendering judgments. in our society, the courtroom serves as a public arena for exhibiting our thinking skills. in the legal adversarial process that takes place in the courtroom, we often display some of our best and worst examples of human cognition. from an instructional standpoint, the mock-jury exercise enables me to increase the stakes students place in developing their thinking. one particular exercise i have used with good success is a fictitious civil case involving steroid abuse in intercollegiate athletics. many students report the resolution of this case represents a watershed in their understanding of the principles of effective thinking. in this case, a highly talented freshman football player has committed suicide immediately after abruptly ending his use of steroids. his family (the plaintiff) holds the university and coach (defendants) responsible and has instituted a lawsuit for negligence in the death of their son. in addition to the transcript of the trial, students (jurors) receive the oral testimony of a teammate roleplayed by a member of the class. to encourage active involvement in the trial, the jurors get an opportunity to cross-examine the teammate. this courtroom interrogation of the teammate, role-played by a female student, is depicted in the next clip. the probing questions of the "jury" indicate the high degree of student involvement elicited by this real-world, problem-based exercise. in this trial, the jury also examines several media reports that have been placed into evidence. these pieces describe the effects of anabolic steroids on the psychological well being of young men and women. as part of its deliberation, the jury must determine whether this medical evidence is methodologically sound and of probative value in the case. for example, one illustrative print article, entitled "of muscles and mania," begins as follows: "paranoia, hallucinations, delusions of grandeur, and random violent tendencies are frightening whenever they appear. . . . bodybuilders using steroids may be prone to such psychotic and manic symptoms, according to ongoing research. . ." to underscore the claim that steroids cause harmful psychological effects, the journalist presents several vivid anecdotes of steroid use. for example, we are informed, a steroid user deliberately drove his car into a tree at 40 miles per hour while his friend videotaped the crash. corroborating these anecdotal reports, the article presents the results of a study conducted by two psychiatrists at the harvard medical school. based on interviews of 41 steroid-using bodybuilders and athletes, the study found that "psychiatric problems were far more pronounced than the physical ones . . . fortunately, the psychotic and manic symptoms disappeared promptly when steroid use was discontinued." lacking a control group, this study clearly does not permit one to draw any inferences about an association between steroids and psychological disorder. it can be seen in the next clip that one student found complete agreement with the article's claims of the harmful psychological effects of steroids. she reports that her past experiences with users of steroids are totally consistent with the three (anecdotal) case studies, the (cursory) statistics, and the findings of the (methodologically flawed) study reported in the article. falling-back to earlier ways of thinking is common at this stage as students wrestle with their habitual ways of thinking. regressing to level-1 thinking, she confidently attributes emotional outbursts ("roid rages") she has observed in high students to the effects of steroids. in her view, her personal observations validate the purported psychological effects of the steroids. employing a discovery method of instruction, in the next clip i attempt to facilitate a close examination of the questionable medical evidence linking steroids to psychological disorders. a student applies a methodological examination of the evidence in the next clip. using graphic analysis, he argues that, without a control group, the study's findings do not meet the criteria for causality. unable to establish in evidence that steroids are a "general" cause of psychological disturbance, the student concludes that steroids were not involved in the death of the student athlete. furthermore, he argues that if steroids have not been shown in scientific investigations to cause suicide, then the coach's failure to act does not constitute legal negligence in the death of the athlete. he may have been derelict in his responsibility to the team, but he probably did not contribute in any way to the demise of the athlete. in their deliberation, the jurors consider the following questions: what do i "know?" how do i know it? what else do i need to know to reach justified conclusions about the effects of steroids and the legal negligence of the coach? somewhat dejected by their inability to reach a consensus on answers to these questions, some students voice the view that there is little left to be said. this http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/110398.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/102298.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/102998a.smil http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number5/index.html#level1 http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/102998b.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/102998c.smil effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking 7 "ruminating" and "guided frustration" are crucial for arousing students' desire to engage in the learning process. without a strong (even emotional) commitment toward examining one's thinking process, i have found that the most one can hope for is a superficial technical understanding of the processes underlying effective thinking. level 3: reasoned knowing student characteristics. methodological analysis of all available evidence characterizes the final level of cognitive development achieved in this course. the importance of separating evidence and values in decision making is illustrated in the next clip. the student observes that by emphasizing personal values rather than hard (tangible) evidence, the plaintiff's attorney in the steroid case loses credibility. at this juncture, students are able to abandon their reliance on unsupported opinion and untested beliefs and hunches, and understand the benefits of basing decisions on facts, evidence, and what is known, according to commonly accepted standards. gradually, students become aware of the intrusions of their values, biases, theories, opinions, and personal beliefs on what they thought they knew as factual. reflection on one's own thinking, which is termed metacognitive reasoning, is an essential component of reasoned knowing (kuhn, 1991). the purpose of such "rhetorical argumentation" is to coordinate objective evidence with the theories and knowledge claims one has personally constructed to make sense of the world. critical thinkers are individuals who not only think with their theories, but also think about their theories. in the next clip a student reflects on how her theories and intuitions should be tested against data and other information. willing to look for facts to explain her intuition to others, she no longer is driven by her gut-level feelings. along with the development of metacognitive and methodological-reasoning skills, these students evince signs of a pronounced skeptical disposition. the observed changes in the attitudes of the students toward information accord closely with the theoretical categorization of methodological versus systematic skepticism (bunge, 1991). earlier in the course, reflecting level-2 thinking, some students refused to believe in the justifiability of any knowledge. having witnessed numerous flawed claims and the precarious nature of what they thought they knew as fact, students displayed discomfort with information sources they had earlier accepted without hesitation. thissystematically skeptical stance resulted in rejection of the possibility that verifiable, certain knowledge is ever attainable. as the course progresses, i typically observe that most students' systematic skepticism is replaced by more finely tuned reasoning, level-3 skills that engender thoughtful, methodological skepticism. the methodologically skeptical individual deems claims that derive strong support from empirical findings as acceptable knowledge. without substantive proof of claims, this individual will suspend judgment and postpone taking action. not only does the methodologically skeptical individual demonstrate a "show me" attitude toward the theories of others, which we might call "external skepticism," they also display "internal skepticism." in the next clip, students display healthy skeptical dispositions toward an "expert" who has appeared on several tv talk shows to discuss his book on the "power of intuition". unimpressed with the expert's "bs," the students want to see evidence. the students are now about to enter the final leg of their cognitive journey. now able to recognize that their normal ways of knowing lack precision and explicit rules for application, they ask for more powerful tools of analysis. teaching techniquesapplying practical methodological reasoning skills. in the final phase of instruction, my goal is to make explicit the principles of methodological reasoning and to show their wide applicability to virtually all areas of everyday life. in response to the ground swell of demand for better methods for evaluating evidence and rules for reaching sound judgments, i direct the class toward the principles of methodological reasoning. in a group of exercises, the students reduce the rhetoric in persuasive communications to simple claims relating the antecedent condition (independent variable) to the consequent condition (dependent variable). depicting the claim in a fully labeled graph helps the students focus on the communication's bottom-line conclusion and its empirical justification (leshowitz, jenkens, heaton, & bough, 1993). the principal goal of methodological analysis is to determine whether the observed effects are attributable to the antecedent or causal condition. to make this determination, one must control for (or eliminate the influence of) third (confounding) variables or other possible causes (rival hypotheses).the following is an excerpt from a class discussion where the students discover that correlation between variables does not imply causation. unable to establish the (causal) connection between obesity and success in life, the students are unwilling to recommend losing weight to an individual who wishes to attain personal success. they recognize that too many other factors may play a greater role in determining success. in classroom exercises and real-world-based investigations, the students discover that knowledge of causal relations allows one to predict and control future events. this knowledge is fundamental to making the informed decisions that underlie effective problem solving. although the students readily accept the importance of methodological analysis for decision http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/102998.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/021899.smil http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number5/index.html#level2 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number5/index.html#level3 http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/110398a.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/101598.smil current issues in education vol. 2 no. 5 8 making, they also wonder whether it will be of very much practical use. they observe that rarely are (causal) data from true experimental designs available for the kinds of rapid decision making required in everyday-life situations. hoping to deflect this criticism, i point out that the need to research all claims is not nearly as onerous as might appear at first glance. looking back at issues that we have examined over the semester, i ask whether there is even a shred of evidence to support the assertions of of the various purveyors of questionable claims. the goal of methodological analysis in everyday-life situations is to detect "big zero's." with a little practice, students can detect "smoke and mirrors" almost reflexively. however, there is no escaping the fact that some effort is required and that "the devil is in the details." teaching techniquesintegrating evidence and values in decision making. after considerable practice, frustration and soul-searching, most students come to realize the benefits of extracting and analyzing an issue's empirical or evidential support. at this point, i return to the students' questions about the practical value of methodological reasoning. pulling the intellectual rug out from under them, i ask whether decision making based on principles of rational analysis of evidence is too limited. to underscore this point, i often ask the class to identify situations where a great deal of statistical/scientific evidence points to a certain course of action that is ethically or morally unacceptable. for example, i ask them whether they would be willing to implement the policies of certain other countries that severely punish, and often execute, all distributors, and sometimes users of illegal drugs. somewhat confused, but generally relieved, students examine the possibility that critical thinking entails a methodological analysis of evidence as well as an assessment of non-evidential factors such as personal values, ethical/moral principles, and cost/benefits of decision outcomes. the need to integrate all relevant evidenceand value-based information in problem solving has been noted by others (see e.g., arambula-greenfield, 1996). to facilitate this process, i present to the class the following formula: e x v = a. useful in decision making, this formula integrates independent estimates of values and evidence. the quantity e represents the strength of the empirical evidence assessed through methodological analysis. the quantity v represents the strength of all non-evidential factors, such as personal values of the decision maker, and cost/benefits of the outcome of the contemplated action (a). although the assumption of complete independence between evidence and values is difficult to maintain in many situations, my students report that it helps clarify and categorize the objects of their thinking. according to this qualitative model, if a exceeds the individual's "threshold" for action, the particular course of action is recommended or warranted. when alternative actions are under consideration, that alternative yielding the highest value of a is recommended. in the next clip, a student grapples with the relationship between values and evidence in decision making. holding very strong (religious) values about the negative consequences of using marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco, she cannot envision any kind of evidence (displayed in a graph) that could alter her beliefs or behavior. capstone dialogue. one topic that generates a powerful confrontation between reason and emotionbased thinking is the treatment of terminally ill patients. in an effort to bring together the principles of critical thinking and informed decision making, i ask the students to confront a life-and-death scenario. in the course's capstone dialogue, i ask the students to react to the following article: alzheimer's dilemma this week the u.s. medical research community dropped a bombshell guaranteed to cause thousands of people to call their family doctors for more information. a researcher at a major university announced that a drug that he had administered to 17 patients with alzheimer's disease had caused significant improvement in 16 of them. "of these 17," he said, "four of them got dramatically better, seven got clearly better, and five of them got better to anybody's eye." the results with the drug, called tha, were indeed remarkable. one alzheimer's victim is again playing golf; another went back to work part time. another drives her car again, cooks and takes care of her own house. these results are simply mind-boggling to the many people in this country who have become familiar with the dreadful nature of alzheimer's disease. between 1.5 million and 3 million people have it; about 100,000 people die of it annually. quite obviously the announcement will mean that husbands, wives, and children of alzheimer's disease will call the family doctor to find out how soon the drug will be available to them. and the family doctor will tell all of them essentially the same thing. you can't get it. the doctors will say that the drug hasn't been approved for sale yet by the u.s. food and drug administration. the fda requires many tests to assure that the drug is safe and effective. and that the process can't be completed for years. many of the callers to their doctor will reply, "but my father will be dead by then, and he and we are already living in hell with this disease." in this exercise, i ask the students to imagine they had a father in the early stages of alzheimer's disease. based on the information in the article, would http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/111298.smil effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking 9 they be willing to take their father to this physician for treatment? through role playing, first in self-directed exercises in small collaborative groups and later in a larger class discussion, the students explore the issue through the perspective of the patient, his family, the fda administrator, the family doctor, an alzheimerdisease activist, and an ordinary citizen presently unaffected by this affliction. this role-playing exercise seeks to create a moral dilemma between what they know (scientifically) and what they feel and value. the primary question addressed by the family in this exercise is the following: should they give their father a "shot" and allow him to receive an untested, "promising" drug? at the outset of the discussion, moved by their desire to preserve life at all costs, two students recommend to a loved one that they take this totally untested drug. in table 1, we apply the e x v = a model to the alzheimer's dilemma in an attempt to understand how of the parties can reach justified (though different) decisions. table 1. e x v = a model for the alzheimer's dilemma * * although this theoretical framework is not a computational model, for purposes of illustration, we present quantitative estimates of e and v. role e v action patient .01 life maintained 10 6 family member .01 doing everything possible 10 5 doctor .01 conflicted between "interests" of patient and scientific evidence 10 3 10 3 fda official .01 scientific evidence, public safety 10 -3 citizen (unaffected directly) .01 compassion 10 ? first, we assume that the results of the physician's preliminary study (e) can be evaluated objectively. the small size of this study's sample, biased observations of the drug's effectiveness, lack of a control group, and a failure to consider side effects all suggest the evidence is very weak at best. of importance to the application of this model is the assumption that estimates of e (based on a rational evaluation of the evidence) do not change as from participant to participant. the first student in the next clip cannot imagine ever being able to disregard his role in society in evaluating evidence. a second student, however, disagrees. she readily accepts the need to evaluate evidence objectively, and declares "the evidence doesn't change….those are the facts." next, we examine the (non-evidential) value factors (v). clearly, the parties to the dilemma will differ greatly in their perception of moral obligations, legal rights of individuals, compassion, and societal benefits of rigorous medical testing. in contrast to estimations of e, there will be no agreement on the v factor. thus, there will be no consensus on an appropriate course of action (as seen in table 1). indeed, often individuals will re-evaluate their initial commitment to act as they continue to evaluate the possible outcome of their decision. the class addresses this point in the next clip. you will note that we have expanded the discussion to include the related controversy issue of untested aids drugs. students understand that there is little or no evidence of the drug's effectiveness. however, the students have different values about how long they would wish to live with the disease, and therefore reach different courses of action. paralleling this personal dilemma is the consideration of the government's policy on compassionate (early) release of experimental drugs to terminally ill patients prior to fully establishing efficacy and safety through the arduous procedure of randomized clinical trials. the class examines the ethical/moral values of this societal concern in the final two clips (clip 1 & clip 2). are the rights of the patient violated by the government's interest in preserving scientific purity? how do we reconcile http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu/media1/leshowitz/120898.smil http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number5/index.html#table1 http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/120898b.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/120898b.smil http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number5/index.html#table1 http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/120898c.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/120898d.smil http://hitchcock.dlt.asu.edu:8080/ramgen/media1/leshowitz/120898e.smil current issues in education vol. 2 no. 5 10 feelings of compassion and rational thought in matters of life and death? students (i.e., unaffected citizens in the role play) express varying opinions about whether they would sign a petition mandating that the fda release untested drugs to terminally ill patients: one student says "no" based on the lack of evidence showing effectiveness. a second student believes it is her right to be treated in the manner she deems most appropriate. another student wants to "look into it." and the final student concludes "it would not be in the best interest of everybody" and that these drugs should not be released. final comment students in the class are led through instruction that results in conceptual change. they move from a position of unquestioning acceptance of information to one of methodological skepticism and assessment of nonevidential factors. table 2 summarizes the changes in students' conceptions of knowledge, metacognitive strategies, and methodological reasoning. table 2. levels of development level knowledge claims source of knowled ge dispositio n instructio nal events level of epistemolog ical understandi ng (kuhn, 1999 ) critical thinking 1. pseudoknowing undifferentia ted fact/ opinions/ values; truth is knowable direct observatio n (experienc e); authority biased information assimilation reflective dialogue and confrontatio n of present ways of thinking absolutist little or none 2. destabiliz ed knowing opinions only accountable to their owners; nothing can be known diversity of sources; all knowledge is equal; subjective systematic skepticism expose beliefs/valu es in realworld, problembased exercises multiplist thought to be irrelevant 3. reasoned knowing statements of evidence and opinion are distinguishe d; evidence meets criteria; uncertain knowing is a process methodolog ical skepticism methodolog ical (scientific) reasoning exercises; integrating evidence and values in optimal decision making evaluative valued to promote informed decision making, effective problem solving, metacogniti on, and personal control http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number5/index.html#table2 effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking 11 that such conceptual change can occur in a classroom environment may be surprising to some readers. thagard (1992) wrote that conceptual change can occur by discovery or instruction. in the case of instruction, the instructor must, "develop rules and procedures that are sufficiently coherent... to supplant the existing rules that otherwise would take precedence" (p.58). thagard explains that consistently using the new conceptual system builds up the strength of all of the rules of the system to the point where they are stronger than the pre-existing rules. in this case, using the rules of methodological reasoning repeatedly strengthens them so the students come to rely on them instead of intuition and gut reaction. conceptual change does not occur easily in all students. as my role of instructional leader is reduced and i am no longer perceived as the primary source of knowledge, some students may express feelings of incertitude, frustration, and self-doubt. however, once they conceptually organize their ideas about these new thinking processes and begin to get the "big" point of the discussions, the students experience gratification and selfsatisfaction. this observation is consistent with the line of research supporting the constructivist approach to education, which posits that active discovery, construction and integration is the basis for effective learning (garfield, 1993; gill-perez, 1996; resnick, 1987; von glaserfeld, 1987). in order to produce the conceptual changes described here, i have found this active discovery method essential. summing up, this course in effective thinking does not provide shortcuts to solving problems. rather, it encourages participants to perceive problematic situations through the perspective of others and encourages an enlightened pluralism in the context of the critical thinking process. references adey, p. 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(1989). it's time we did something about scientific illiteracy. american psychologist, 44 (8) 1159-1160. leshowitz, b., jenkins, k., heaton, s., & bough, t. (1993). effectiveness and benefits of an instructional program for developing critical thinking skills in students with learning disabilities. the journal of learning disabilities, 26,483-490. current issues in education vol. 2 no. 5 12 leshowitz, b. & meyers, j.b. (1996). application of decision theory to dui assessment. alcoholism: clinical and experimental research, 20, 11481152. leshowitz, b., okun, m, & dicerbo, k.e. (1999). the effects of methodological reasoning on biased information processing and attitude polarization. manuscript submitted for publication. leshowitz, b. & yoshikawa e. 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(1990). critical thinking: what every person needs to survive in a rapidly changing world. rohnert park, california: center for critical thinking and moral critique, sonoma state university. perkins, d. n. (1985). postprimary education has little impact on informal reasoning. journal of educational psychology, 77 (5), 562-571. thagard, p. (1992). conceptual revolutions. princeton, nj: princeton university press. thelen, l. v. (1987). values clarification: science or nonscience. science education, 71 (2), 201-220. stanovich, k. e., & west, r. f. (1998). individual differences in rational thought. journal of experimental psychology: general, 127, 161188. whimbey, a., & lochhead, l. j. (1986). problem solving and comprehension. hillsdale, nj: erlbaum, inc. effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking 13 1999 article citation leshowitz, b., dicerbo, k. e., & symington, s. (1999, september 30). effective thinking: an active -learning course in critical thinking. current issues in education[on-line], 2(5). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number5/. author notes the research described here was supported by a grant from the college of liberal arts and sciences, arizona state university. the authors thank marc van horne in the college of extended education for his help with editing and archiving the video clips.department of psychology, arizona state university,tempe, az 85287-1104. correspondence may be sent to the first author: barry leshowitz. barry leshowitz is an associate professor of psychology at arizona state university where he teaches courses in effective thinking and research methods. he actively researches, develops, and demonstrates college and high school programs of instruction that enhance the inquiry, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills of students. kristen eignor dicerbo is a doctoral student in school psychology at arizona state university. kristen eignor dicerbo can be reached via e-mail at kristen.dicerbo@asu.edu. scott symington is currently enrolled in the ph.d. program in clinical psychology at fuller theological seminary in pasadena ca. scott symington can be reached via e-mail at symington@aol.com. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 3, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation leshowitz, b., dicerbo, k. e., & symington, s. (2011). effective thinking: an active-learning course in critical thinking. current issues in education, 2(5). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/ article/view/831 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number5/index.html mailto:leshowitz@asu.edu mailto:kristen.dicerbo@asu.edu mailto:symington@aol.com http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 current issues in education vol. 2 no. 5 14 volume does i citation gill, m. & intervent ht abstract this pap identifie answerin designs t feasible research and plan sample s participa keyword research 13, numbe it work? mi & hahs-vau tions in educ ttp://cie.asu. t per examines s interventio ng causal qu that may ov or appropria in educatio ning future study to test ants who ma ds: research er 4 a guid i ichele gre ughn, d. (20 cational res edu/ s types of re on research uestions are ercome limi ate. the rol n. finally, research on the effects ay be consid design, inte e to inve in educat goire gill university 10). does it earch. curre esearch ques as a type of reviewed, p itations face le of the des a graphical n educationa of a new ma dering plann ervention re stigating tional re and debb of central work? a g ent issues in stions posed f causal que paying attent ed when ran signs is disc organizer to al interventio ath program ning their ow search, effic the effic esearch bie l. hahs florida guide to inve n education, d by educati stion. next tion to the a ndomized ex cussed as is t o aid in inte ons is prese m that may b wn research cacy, causal is cacy of in s-vaughn estigating th 13(4). retri onal researc t, research d application o xperimental the role of n erpreting exi nted. a des be used as a is also pres l research, n sn 1099-83 nterventi he efficacy o ieved from chers and designs for of lesser use designs are non-causal isting resear sign for a model for ented. non-causal 39x ons of ed not rch current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 2 does it work? a guide to investigating the efficacy of interventions in educational research in a recent article on newsweek.com (2008), peg tyre commented on the latest study showing that more boys—a lot more boys, nearly double—are being referred to medical professionals for emotional and behavior problems than are girls. that statement is a fact. in the next several paragraphs, tyre discusses possible explanations for such a disparity. these explanations take the form of various theories about why boys are struggling more than girls. some attribute the cause to an increase in adhd in boys or the burgeoning levels of contaminants in our environment. tyre offers her own theory—that kids are overscheduled and asked to behave like adults at too young of an age; moreover, their unstructured free play time has diminished. she supports her theory with anecdotal evidence, but tyre is not alone in her thinking. the recent plethora of books with titles such as the hurried child (elkind, 2001) and the case against standardized testing: raising the scores, ruining the schools (kohn, 2000) show a backlash against schools’ increasing reliance on standardized testing as well as the no child left behind act (u.s. department of education, n.d.). but is her theory correct? tyre makes plausible arguments, but there are other arguments—and, more importantly, conflicting data—that cast doubt on her lay theory. consider, for instance, the many benefits of head start (u.s. department of health and human services, 2001) and the abcedarian project (national institute of early education research, 2008) for low income children. these kids do not seem to be harmed by earlier exposure to academic rigor. consider also children in colonial times (washington crossing historic park, n.d.) or living in indigenous tribes (sprott, 2002) who were and are expected to perform significant household chores with little playtime at very young ages. there is no evidence that these children suffered negative outcomes from such labor. does it work? 3 so, who do we believe? are all theories equally valid? of course not. the scientific method provides a way to evaluate claims of competing theories so we can determine which are better supported than others. we may never “prove” a theory correct, but we can “disprove” enough claims of the theory to render the theory invalid. as educators and education researchers, we share the common goal of trying to find solutions that work to increase students’ success in school, and ultimately, in life. often, we may ask ourselves if what we are doing works. we may obtain anecdotal evidence that it does, but what if it only works in one classroom and not others? perhaps the activity we love works for reasons unbeknownst to us. it would be helpful to be able to identify the aspects of the activity that are most beneficial for improving students’ learning in order to most efficiently meet students’ needs. similarly, how do we know that what is being taught during professional development teacher work days actually works? it would save much time and resources if teachers knew that what they were being told to implement in their classrooms really and truly works. the purpose of this paper is to provide a useful heuristic for understanding and evaluating intervention research in education. when one of the authors of this paper was a teacher, she dreamed of having access to a large binder filled with research-supported activities that made sense and promoted student learning. what actually happened, however, was that she was required to attend multiple workshops and inservice trainings in which each presenter claimed that his/her particular method of instruction was really the best way to teach. what was most disconcerting was that the theories underlying the different methods often conflicted with each other, resulting in superficial changed to the curriculum rather than well thought out plans for how to design comprehensive instruction based on these techniques. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 4 as stated in the national research council's 2002 report on scientific research in education (shavelson & towne, 2002): no one would think of getting to the moon or of wiping out a disease without research. likewise, one cannot expect reform efforts in education to have significant effects without research-based knowledge to guide them… [t]o address the challenges of, for example, low-performing schools, the 'achievement gap,' and language diversity, educators today require new knowledge to reengineer schools in effective ways. to meet these new demands, rigorous, sustained, scientific research in education is needed (pp. 1, 12). to meet this need and to suggest improvements in designing future educational studies, there must be an increased dissemination of information on and guidelines for effectively conducting research on educational interventions. new guidelines exist (e.g., see center for psychology in schools and education, 2008), but they are still seldom implemented. with the recent emphasis in our public schools on accountability, it becomes even more important to make sure that we are investing in curriculum and teaching methods that really work to increase students’ academic success. it is our hope in this paper to provide teachers, teacher educators, and educational researchers with the tools to be able to evaluate current research on interventions—in our case, activities that are supposed to work to improve schooling—in order to make more informed decisions about their efficacy in the classroom. unfortunately, for many years, educational research on interventions was often not generalizable to schools because of either its weak design or lack of ecological validity (shadish, cook, & campbell, 2002). in 2002, the institute of education sciences (ies) was created to help does it work? 5 strengthen the quality of educational research, particularly research on educational interventions—those specific activities, programs, curriculum changes, or textbooks that purport to increase student achievement and success in school: the education sciences reform act of 2002 established a new organization within the u.s. department of education, the institute of education sciences. our mission is to provide rigorous evidence on which to ground education practice and policy. by identifying what works, what doesn’t, and why, we intend to improve the outcomes of education for all students, particularly those at risk of failure. (whitehurst, n.d.) since the formation of the ies and the push for quality educational research, guidelines for conducting such research have been clarified and updated. for example, the recent revision of cook and campbell’s classic text on quasi-experimentation (1979) by shadish, cook, and campbell (2002) presents an extensive discussion about not only how to conduct high quality educational intervention research, but also the conditions under which different types of research designs might be used. in addition, the center for psychology in schools and education, an office within the american psychological association, just published a useful chart to help educational researchers test intervention effects using multiple methods (2008). still, such guidelines remain out of reach of many educators and educational researchers. in this paper, we will discuss the types of research questions posed by educational researchers, review research designs created to answer causal questions, and then present a useful graphical organizer for helping educational researchers decide which study design to use, which can also be used as a useful heuristic for evaluating intervention research. we will conclude with a design for a sample study to test the effects of a new math program using the guidelines just presented. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 6 types of research questions concerning education in this section, we discuss examples of the types of research questions posed by educational researchers and identify intervention research as a particular type of causal question. this list is not comprehensive, but it does address the majority of questions asked by those interested in educational research. factual questions these questions concern descriptive information about a topic, such as what are the facts about x, or how does a relate to b. an example question might be, “on average, how do u.s. students compare in their math achievement compared to those in other industrialized nations?” another is “are ses and achievement related?” these types of questions are often investigated using straightforward quantitative designs, such as survey questionnaires and correlational statistics. investigative questions investigative questions concern why things are the way they are, such as why does a particular phenomenon happen. a typical example is the question, “why do students with low ses tend to do more poorly in school than their more affluent counterparts?” this type of question may be answered using grounded theory (glaser & strauss, 1967) or using a predetermined theoretical framework, with the careful collection of evidence to support or disprove key hypotheses of the theory involved. attachment theory is a good example. ainsworth (crain, 2005) started with the idea that some children seemed to be happier, more confident, and more connected to their parents. she investigated this phenomenon at first with ethnographic research techniques where she lived among a tribe in uganda and studied their does it work? 7 parenting techniques. she developed the idea of secure attachment, then after moving to baltimore, she tested her theory by designing a strange situation for children to see if how they actually reacted upon being separated from their mothers confirmed her hypothesis of how they would react. explanatory questions these questions concern how something works, such as, how does this method or this type of schooling work. an example question is “how does montessori education benefit students with mental retardation?” this type of question is usually answered with qualitative research that investigates a phenomenon over a period of time, gathering careful descriptive evidence from classroom observations, interviews, etc. and is particularly suited for grounded theory research (glaser & strauss, 1967). intervention questions these questions concern whether one treatment works better than other, along the lines of whether x (treatment) is helpful to students. similarly, we can ask if one treatment is better than another, such as, is x better than y, or which is better under what conditions. a sample question might be: “is whole language instruction better than phonics instruction?” these are the types of questions we are addressing in our paper, and they are best answered using experimental methodology, particularly the gold standard in educational research of the randomized control trial (rct). due to the limitations and difficulties of executing this design, particularly in school settings, the quasi-experimental design was created to also help answer questions of a causal nature. used properly, it can be a very good way to test the efficacy of particular school interventions. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 8 in the next section, we review research designs for answering causal questions that are concerned with the efficacy of instructional interventions, paying particular attention to some of the newer designs that may overcome some of the limitations encountered when rcts cannot be conducted. research designs for answering causal questions in intervention research new methods, treatments, interventions, curriculum, and other strategies are often implemented in classes or schools with the intention of making some positive impact, such as increasing student performance, learning, or skills or decreasing behavior problems. as these new elements are introduced in a classroom or implemented across grades or school-wide, the question of “how effective is x on y” and more specifically “does x cause y” often arises. these are valid and important questions to answer. for example, does the implementation of a new teaching method increase student performance in mathematics more than the previous method? it is important to define what causality is in the context of intervention research. a causal relationship is such that the following occurs: 1) the cause (e.g., new intervention or curriculum) occurs prior to the effect (e.g., student performance in mathematics); 2) there is a relationship between the cause and the effect; and 3) the cause is the only plausible explanation for the effect (shadish et al., 2002). there are a number of research designs that allow researchers to study causal relationships, and the most commonly known is an experiment. additional but less frequently does it work? 9 used designs exist, however, that are valuable in educational research when true manipulation of the treatment (as in a true experiment) is not possible. the following research designs will be reviewed: a) randomized experiment; b) quasi-experiment; c) regression discontinuity; d) propensity score analysis; e) correlational; and f) action research and design experiments. randomized experiments for intervention research what is referred to as an experiment has been more specifically labeled a 'social experiment' (p. 546) by cook and shadish (1994) or a ‘field experiment’ by kerlinger & lee (2000, p. 581). a social experiment (shortened to just 'experiment' in this manuscript) occurs outside of a controlled environment (e.g., in a ‘real’ classroom) which therefore results in less standardization and more enduring treatments as compared to experiments conducted in a controlled laboratory (cook & shadish, 1994). in a randomized experiment, the treatment (e.g., new teaching method or curriculum) is assigned to students (i.e., the participants in the research study) on the basis of chance such as through a coin toss or random number generation (shadish et al., 2002). when random assignment is performed correctly, the groups created are similar, on average (shadish et al., 2002). random experiments, more specifically termed randomized control trials (rct) (shadish et al., 2002) or more loosely “true experiment” (wallen & frankael, 2001, p. 279), are often known as the "gold standard" (shadish et al., 2002, p. 13) in educational research. this is because when designed rigorously and systematically, random assignment creates groups that are similar, on average, and any differences between groups can be attributed to the intervention rather than other factors (shadish et al., 2002; torgerson & torgerson, 2008). in addition, when a randomized controlled trial is designed and conducted systematically and rigorously, relatively simple statistical procedures are all that is required to analyze the data (torgerson & torgerson, 2008). current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 10 in many randomized controlled trials conducted to examine intervention research, it is not possible to randomly assign at the student level but it is possible to randomly assign at a cluster level (e.g., randomly assigning classes rather than individual students to different teaching methods). if the interest is on studying the student, however, randomly assigning at the cluster level introduces analytical issues such as potential homogeneity that exists within the clusters. although beyond the scope of this paper, statistical procedures such as multilevel modeling are commonly used to address issues related to cluster random assignment (raudenbush & bryk, 2002; shadish et al., 2002). there are a number of variations of randomized experiments that can be applied in intervention research. the most basic design includes two conditions (e.g., one treatment and one control group) in which students are randomly assigned to one of two groups. the students in the treatment group receive the intervention or treatment (e.g., new teaching method or curriculum). how the control group is defined is left to the researcher's choosing. the control group may be, for example, a group that receives no treatment at all or a number of variations in which the control group receives the treatment at some point or receives a comparison treatment (e.g., the method of instruction that has always been offered or the curriculum that has been used previously) (shadish et al., 2002). regardless, both the treatment students and the control students are measured after the intervention. a classic example of this basic design is research conducted on the salk polio vaccine in which 400,000 children were randomly assigned to receive a placebo or a polio vaccine (meier, 1972). other commonly used experimental designs include: 1) pretest-posttest control group; 2) alternative treatments design with pretest; 3) multiple treatments and controls with pretest; 4) factorial; 5) longitudinal; and 6) crossover (shadish et al., 2002). discussing each of these designs is beyond the scope of the present paper. does it work? 11 interested readers are encouraged to review any of a number of excellent sources (e.g., frankael & wallen, 2005; kerlinger & lee, 2000; shadish et al., 2002). quasi-experiments in intervention research although rcts may be the gold standard in educational research because they most clearly allow the inference of causality, there are many instances in which rcts are not ethical nor feasible (rutter, 2007). a quasi-experiment does not include random assignments of students to intervention (shadish et al., 2002; wallen & frankael, 2001). this does not mean inferences of causality cannot be made from quasi-experiments; however, causality is more difficult and more attention must be paid in designing the study in order to reduce the likelihood of other explanations for what has occurred (beyond that of the intervention) (shadish et al., 2002). in a quasi-experiment, the following conditions must still occur: 1) the cause occurs prior to the effect; 2) there is a relationship between the cause and the effect; and 3) the cause is the only plausible explanation for the effect (shadish et al., 2002). the last condition is the point at which random experiments and quasi-experiments differ. in a quasi-experiment, the last condition is not met through random assignment but can be met by the following. first, potential threats to internal validity (i.e., the probability that something other than the intervention caused the outcome) are identified and examined to determine the likelihood that they may explain the outcome rather than the intervention. second, design (e.g., additional pretest measurements and more control groups) and statistical (i.e., using statistical procedures to remove confounding of variables) controls are introduced. third, "coherent pattern matching" (shadish et al., 2002) is current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 12 introduced in which "a complex prediction is made about a given causal hypothesis that few alternative explanations can match" (p. 105) there are a number of different types of quasi-experiments including designs that: 1) do not have control groups (e.g., one group pretest-posttest, repeated treatment); 2) have a control group but do not have a pretest (e.g., posttest-only with nonequivalent groups); and 3) have both a control group and a pretest (e.g., untreated control group with dependent pretest and posttest samples, untreated control group with dependent pretest and posttest samples using a double pretest, cohort control group with pretest from each cohort). interested readers are encouraged to review any of a number of excellent sources for specific details on designing quasi-experimental studies (e.g., frankael & wallen, 2005; kerlinger & lee, 2000; shadish et al., 2002). two valuable but lesser used types of quasi-experiments—regression discontinuity and propensity score analysis— will be discussed next. these designs were selected because they have great applicability in educational research and, of all the quasi-experimental designs, are the closest kin to a randomized experiment. regression discontinuity although regression discontinuity was introduced in the late 1950s (campbell, 1984), with the exception of application to evaluate title i programs in the mid-1960s (trochim, 1980), it has been used sparingly in educational research. however, there are many instances where regression discontinuity is a better option than a quasi-experiment or may increase the power of the test when combined with a randomized experiment (shadish et al., 2002). additionally, regression discontinuity is the only natural experiment that can deal with unobserved confounding variables (rutter, 2007). the regression discontinuity design for intervention does it work? 13 research is really very simple: students are assigned to a treatment condition based on a cutoff score of an assignment variable (which is at least ordinal in measurement scale and measured prior to intervention) rather than randomization or other assignment (shadish et al., 2002). this assignment, by cutoff and only cutoff, is a strict rule that must be adhered for regression discontinuity to function properly. participants on one side of the cutoff score receive the treatment, and participants on the other side of the cutoff score do not receive the treatment (shadish et al., 2002). a treatment effect is found if the scores of the two groups differ (i.e., show discontinuity) at the cutoff on a scatterplot of participants’ scores (torgerson & torgerson, 2008). regression discontinuity is a robust quasi-experimental design and is a useful approach to take in instances where it is not possible or not ethical to design a randomized controlled trial. in education, it is easy to imagine the vast number of instances where regression discontinuity may be applied--from instances where students scoring below proficient on the fcat reading, for example, are assigned to developmental reading classes to instances where students scoring above a cutoff receive a meritorious program (e.g., gifted program) (shadish et al., 2002). regression discontinuity designs can also be combined with a randomized control element to strengthen the design (torgerson & torgerson, 2008). with the fcat reading proficiency example this combined process can be illustrated as follows. students scoring above proficient do not receive developmental reading. students scoring below proficient are randomly assigned to one of two different types of developmental reading: one is a new, innovative developmental approach and the other is the usual developmental reading approach. as stated previously, regression discontinuity designs have been used infrequently in education and the social sciences. only three refereed studies were found by the authors that current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 14 have applied regression discontinuity within the past ten years (bryant, bryant, gersten, scammacca, & chavez, 2008; cahan, greenbaum, artman, deluya, & gappel-gilon, 2008; gormley, gayer, phillips, & dawson, 2005). note that all three studies found within the past ten years have been published since 2004. due to the stronger standards for research being implemented at the institute for education sciences, regression discontinuity designs should increase as robust alternatives to rcts; therefore educational researchers and consumers of research should have some familiarity with these designs. propensity score analysis propensity score analysis is also considered a robust quasi-experimental design with nonequivalent groups (shadish et al., 2002) and is the recommended approach to take when estimating causal effects from observational data (rosenbaum & rubin, 1983; rubin, 1997). data is considered observational if it has been collected on students in situations that do not involve manipulation. introduced by rosenbaum and rubin (1983), propensity score analysis is considered an extension of discriminant analysis (rubin, 1997). the value in propensity score analysis is that it can be used to answer causal questions with observational data in situations where random assignment is not feasible (rubin, 1997). observational studies allow for empirical examination of treatment effects, similar to an experiment, however they differ from an experiment in that there is a lack of systematic assignment of students to groups (dehejia & wahba, 2002). researchers that use observational data run the risk of biased data because differences between groups may be due to the treatment or to pre-existing differences between the groups (that could have been balanced out through the random assignment process in a true experiment) (rosenbaum, 1986). does it work? 15 propensity score analysis has been used most extensively in medical research (e.g., connors et al., 1996; earle et al., 2001; foody, cole, blackstone, & lauer, 2001; gunn, thamilarasan, watanabe, blackstone, & lauer, 2001; mitra, schnabel, neuget, & heitjan, 2001) and has been slow to migrate to education and the social sciences (pruzek, 2004). an example of an educational research study where propensity score analysis would be appropriate is examining outcomes of children based on their attendance at a public or private school. in this example, it would likely be difficult to get support of parents to allow their child to be randomly assigned to either a public or private school. thus a researcher wishing to study this topic is left with conducting a quasi-experiment and matching students on important and relevant covariates. the matching process can become quite cumbersome, however, considering the large number of potentially relevant covariates on which to match. traditional matching is conducted based on direct matching of covariates whereas propensity score analysis matches on propensity score. in traditional matching, therefore, researchers are limited in the number of covariates on which to match and thus the design of the study is comprised. this often leads to biased results in which differences in the outcome are difficult to attribute to the intervention and may rather be due to covariates that were not considered in the matching process (rosenbaum, 1986). this bias can then lead to a case of mistaken identity (e.g., false positive or false negative) with the treatment effect (rosenbaum, 1991). more specifically, the propensity score is the estimated chance of receiving the treatment based on pretreatment covariates (rubin, 1997). given the propensity score, this conditional distribution of the covariates is the same for both treatment and control groups and thus creates a balancing score (rosenbaum & rubin, 1983). the beauty in propensity score analysis is the one score is created from the information of the covariates that can be applied in the model rather current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 16 than applying multiple covariates in the model--greatly simplifying the model (rubin, 1997). unlike other procedures, propensity score analysis does not hinge on parsimony. rather, all variables that may possible predict the outcome are included (rutter, 2007). one limitation with the use of propensity score analysis is that the assurance that there will not be systematic differences between groups is based solely on the use of observed covariates. in comparison, random assignment provides the assurance that systematic group differences tend to not exist based on both observed and unobserved covariates. however, sensitivity analysis can be examined to determine the probability that relevant but unobserved covariates were excluded from the model (rosenbaum, 1991). although computing propensity score analysis is a multi-step process, it does not require special statistical software. additionally, primers (luellen, shadish, & clark, 2005) and how-to tutorials are available (hahs-vaughn & onwuegbuzie, 2006). correlational designs correlational studies in intervention research allow researchers to determine the extent to which variables are related without attempting to manipulate any (frankael & wallen, 2001). correlations are just that—relationships—and thus causality cannot be inferred from studies that are strictly correlational in nature (rutter, 2007), although results from correlational studies can suggest causality and the suggested causality is often the spark from which rcts are created (wallen & frankael, 2001). correlational studies are generally considered less advantageous than quasi-experiments (rutter, 2007). so why bother with correlational studies? historically, much has been gained from correlational studies, especially in disciplines where design of rcts are difficult (wallen & frankael, 2001). possibly the best known example are the multitude of does it work? 17 correlational studies that examined smoking and lung cancer (wallen & frankael, 2001). thus correlational studies are valuable in explanatory studies where clarifying understanding is critical (wallen & frankael, 2001). correlational studies are also beneficial in prediction. for example, predicting college grade point average based on high school grade point average (wallen & frankael, 2001). in terms of intervention research, examining the relationship between, for example, a diagnostic measure and a test score may be very beneficial in clarifying the extent to which the diagnostic can be used to predict a test score. new statistical methodologies, such as structural equation modeling and multilevel modeling (e.g., hierarchical linear modeling), are correlational procedures that can be very powerful in examining relationships. interested readers are encouraged to examine key texts in these areas (raudenbush & bryk, 2002; schumacker & lomax, 2010). action research action research was first introduced approximately 60 years ago by kurt lewin with the intent of seeking solutions to social issues (lewin, 1946/1948). action research, or teacher research, is one way to foster meaningful professional development (cochran & lytle, 1999), and it can have a powerful impact for the teachers who engage in it (boles, kamii, & troen, 1999; cochran & lytle, 1999; graham, 1998; hankins, 1998). teacher researchers indicate that through their investigations they learn about their students (fecho, 2000), their schools (herr, 1999), and themselves (hankins, 1998). bargal cited eight principles for action research (2008, p. 19): current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 18 1. action research combines a systematic study, sometimes experimental, of a social problem as well as the endeavors to solve it. 2. action research includes a spiral process of data collection to determine goals, action to implement goals, and assessment of the results of the intervention. 3. action research requires feedback of the results of intervention to all parties involved in the research. 4. action research implies continuous cooperation between researchers and practitioners. 5. action research relies on the principles of group dynamics and is anchored in its change phases. the phases are unfreezing, moving, and refreezing. decision making is mutual and is carried out in a public way. 6. action research takes into account issues of values, objectives, and power needs of the parties involved. 7. action research serves to create knowledge, to formulate principles of intervention, and to develop instruments for selection, intervention, and training. 8. within the framework of action research, there is an emphasis on the recruitment, training, and support of the change agents. although there are cited benefits of teacher research, there are also concerns with effectively supporting teacher researchers and assisting teachers to learn about teacher research (radencich, 1998). there are different schools of thought on what action research is or can be as well as how to design action research. reason and bradbury (2001) define action research as an ideology as well as a methodology. the traditional view of action research holds that this form of research is conducted by a practicing teacher within their own classroom with the goal of making does it work? 19 instructional changes based upon the results (little & rawlinson, 2002)--i.e., taking action based on the research--although as noted later, this is a narrow perception of what may constitute action research. in addition, qualitative statistical procedures are also often considered the tool of choice for analysis of action research (clayton et al., 2008), and this is evidenced in a complete chapter devoted to action research in the handbook of qualitative research (kemmis & mctaggart, 2000). however, experiments and quasi-experiments can also be applied in action research (bargal, 2008) and the application of quantitative methods is recommended depending on the research question addressed in action research (lankshear & knobel, 2004). it is important to note that while action research is often considered a methodology itself, this does not exclude action research studies from being rigorously designed in a systematic fashion (lankshear & knobel, 2004). this is one of many myths related to action research that have been dispelled by lankshear and knobel (2004) who introduce teacher research more broadly, suggesting that teacher research is research. they offer a more global picture of what constitutes research conducted by teachers and emphasize the systematic and rigorous nature of teacher research. design experiments design experiments, also termed design studies or teaching experiments, have been embraced in recent decades in education (gorard, roberts, & taylor, 2004) to the extent that an entire issue of educational researcher was devoted to the topic (2003, 32, 1). in essence, design experiments allow teachers to examine contextual learning while at the same time designing and creating interventions for the classroom in a systematic way (gorard et al., 2004). applying design experiments is not always clear cut: "design experiments are messier than traditional current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 20 experiments, because they monitor many dependent variables, characterize the situation ethnographically, revise the procedures at will, allow participants to interact, develop profiles rather than hypotheses, involve users and practitioners in the design, and generate copious amounts of data of various sorts" (gorard et al., 2004, p. 581). before design experiments can be easily incorporated into practice (gorard et al., 2004), systematic and explicit design experiment models are needed (kelly & lesh, 2002). what is the role of these designs in intervention research? the descriptions presented are meant to provide a framework so that discussion on how they can be applied in intervention research is better contextualized. when applied effectively in intervention research, randomized control trials (rct) will provide the best evidence of causality of all research designs. in addition, relatively simple statistical analysis can be applied to data from rcts if designed appropriately. however, rcts may be difficult to apply in many educational settings due to ethical issues or lack of feasibility in randomizing students to the intervention. in situations where a rct cannot be applied, quasi-experimental designs may be applied. there are a number of traditional quasi-experimental designs (aka ‘natural experiments’) (e.g., pretest-posttest control group) that may be appropriate for intervention research. lesser-used quasi-experimental designs that are considered the “next best thing” to rct include regression discontinuity and propensity score analysis. while both are powerful in providing evidence that may be used for causal inference, both require higher level statistical skills (although no special statistical software is needed). thus, those interested in applying said designs who do not possess the statistical ability needed may want to consider collaborating with university faculty does it work? 21 who can provide the statistical expertise. correlational research may be appropriate in intervention research when other types of design cannot be applied and/or as a precursor to an experiment in an attempt to explore relationships or determine predictive power of one or more variables. action research and design experiments, when applied systematically and designed rigorously using experimental or quasi-experimental methods as well as correlational designs, can provide evidence of causality in intervention research. the key in designing both action research and design experiments for intervention research is being systematic and rigorous. without this rigor, results become less interpretable and thus evidence from the results less valuable and lacking inference of causality. the role of non-causal research designs in intervention research depending on how the efficacy research is designed, all the designs presented may, in a given situation, be non-causal (even a rct may fit this category if it is poorly designed). closer to rcts are regression discontinuity designs and propensity score analysis and thus the inference of causality becomes clearer, but not perfect, with these designs. beyond these types of designs, however, there are many research questions that are valuable to examine but do not permit the application of a research design that will allow the inference of causality. for example, theory building is usually initiated by qualitative research such as grounded theory. other types of qualitative designs such as case studies and phenomenologies provide comprehensive examination of people or events that can help inform a discipline but do not provide inference of causality. descriptive studies that only describe a situation or group of students may be very valuable in enlightening a research problem but at the same time do not provide evidence of current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 22 causality. these are just a few examples of non-causal designs. although results from these types of designs may not suggest cause and effect when studying whether a particular intervention works, they still hold value if they serve to appropriately answer the research question. additionally, when designed effectively, they can contribute to understanding the efficacy of an intervention, albeit not causality of such efficacy. flowchart for determining how to investigate causal questions regarding educational interventions in figure 1, we present a flowchart that represents a decision-making path that can be used when either planning a research study or evaluating a research study that involves intervention research (in other words, does treatment x work?). to begin, we suggest that the first question that needs to be asked is whether x is a desirable treatment. is it needed? if not, then the path suggests that efficacy studies should be conducted and/or qualitative research studies to determine how to improve x or find where it might be needed. however, if x is found to be desirable, figure 1 shows that the next question to ask is whether x is feasible to test experimentally. if yes, then the solution is to conduct a randomized control trial (rct) of x against either a control group, another treatment group, or both. does it work? 23 figure 1. does x work? flowchart for determining how to investigate this question conduct efficacy studies conduct qualitative research *action research and design experiments may incorporate any of these designs, albeit usually on a relatively smaller scale. no yes desirability: is x needed? feasibility: can we experimentally test x? no yes conduct a: 1. quasi-experimental study* 2. correlational study* conduct a rct* (randomized controlled trial) current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 24 if it is not feasible to conduct an rct, then we suggest two options to try instead, in order of decreasing validity. the first choice is to conduct a high quality quasi-experimental study where the groups have been carefully selected to match on as many important criteria as possible (e.g., socioeconomic status, age, ability, etc.). this may be accomplished by using one of the lesser used statistical techniques discussed in the second section of our paper, particularly propensity score analysis. in the event of the application of a cutoff score in the research, an additional lesser used technique (regression discontinuity analysis) may be applied. although complicated statistically, they provide a way of testing causal questions without the need for random assignment into a treatment and control group. the second option is to conduct a well-designed correlational study, using high quality statistical analyses and measures (such as structural equation modeling or hierarchical linear modeling). these analyses should control for pre-existing differences between groups so that the suggestion of causality results. with any of these designs, action research or design experiments may be conducted although possibly on a smaller scale, i.e., local studies of the efficacy of a particular treatment. depending on the design, these studies may be limited in their generalizability to a broader population (i.e., external validity), but they may be very helpful for determining the efficacy of an intervention on a local scale (i.e., internal validity). we realize that not all researchers may have the resources to apply some of the designs, such as propensity score analysis, in their research. figure 1, however, serves as a functional heuristic to use when evaluating competing claims about the effectiveness of a particular instructional treatment, something most teachers must do on a regular basis. the remaining does it work? 25 options are well within the reach of most educational researchers. applying randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental designs are ones that we encourage more researchers and administrators to adopt. determining the efficacy of an intervention on a local scale is not only practically useful—it can help one’s day to day teaching—but it is also important for the broader research community in that it may reveal conditions under which the treatment x works or does not work as well. in the next section, we present an example of a study designed for testing whether a particular intervention works in a local setting using a randomized controlled trial in the context of an action research study as the framework for our design. example study we present this example study applying a randomized controlled trial (albeit limited randomization at the classroom level) in the context of an action research design because we want to appeal to the broadest possible audience, discussing a design, that, when conducted with appropriate methodological rigor, can be used by both administrators and educational researchers to investigate the efficacy of an instructional intervention at the local level. to begin, let us say that one is interested in a new mathematics curriculum that focuses predominantly on complex problem solving, with less emphasis given to procedural fluency. one might be the principal asked to make this curriculum change or an educational researcher interested in the local impact of this intervention on both teacher efficacy and student achievement. in this illustration, we will assume that we are the principal of the school who has been asked to make this curriculum change. one way to go about testing this intervention is to select two sections of the same class. one section will be taught with the new curriculum while the second section will be taught with the previously used curriculum. deciding on which class to administer the new curriculum to may be done on the basis of a coin toss. to determine the comparability of mathematics skills of current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 26 students prior to initiating the new curriculum, we collect data on the previous year’s mathematics portion of our state’s standardized assessment as well as their grade received in the mathematics class taken previous to this (assuming all students completed the same mathematics class). so that we are not overburdening students with additional testing, these scores will serve as their pretest scores. however, because these instruments were not designed to specifically measure the skills acquired from exposure to the new curriculum, we may also want to consider administering either a teacher-created test or other assessment that is designed to more directly measure skills that should have been acquired at the conclusion of teaching the new curriculum. how can we be assured that we are not biasing our own study by teaching ‘better’ using the new curriculum? one thing we decide to do is to have another math teacher observe the classrooms at various times throughout the year to check the fidelity of implementing both the status quo curriculum as well as the new curriculum. we also ask the teachers to keep a detailed teaching log in which they reflect on their teaching and tracks any unusual (and not so unusual) occurrences in both classes. their lesson plans will further provide documentation of adherence to curriculum. in combination, these three elements (colleague observation, teaching log and lesson plans) will provide some suggestion of fidelity to the curriculum, whether old or new. at the conclusion of the semester, students’ grades are tracked. at the end of the academic year, information on this year’s state mathematics assessment is collected. if we also administered an additional pre-assessment, either created by the teacher or that was provided with the curriculum, we would want to administer that same assessment as a posttest at the conclusion of the semester. in terms of analysis, depending on finding comparable groups on the pretest measures, we may be able to apply basic statistics such as an independent t test, analysis of variance, or multiple regressions. as stated previously, one limitation to this research is that it does it work? 27 was not possible to draw a random sample of students. more limiting, however, is that it was not possible to randomly assign at the student level. that limits our ability to generalize to a larger population (i.e., external validity). however, depending on how comparable we find our groups to be prior to initiating the study, we may have relatively good internal validity—the ability to find evidence that our intervention is the reason for the change in mathematics achievement. conclusion the purpose of this paper was to present a conceptual framework that summarized state of the art research designs for investigating causal questions regarding educational interventions. this paper examined examples of the types of research questions posed by educational researchers and identified intervention research as a particular type of causal question. next, research designs for answering causal questions were reviewed, paying particular attention to and providing examples of the application of lesser used designs (such as regression discontinuity and propensity score analysis) that may overcome some of the limitations faced when randomized experimental designs are not feasible or appropriate. the role of these designs in teaching and research were also discussed as was the role of non-causal research designs in education. next, a useful graphical organizer to aid in interpreting existing research and planning future research on educational interventions was presented. finally, we presented a design for a sample study that could be used by educational administrators and researchers interested in testing the local effects of a new curriculum intervention. this paper was designed to serve dual purposes: first, to help teachers, teacher educators, administrators, and others understand how to judge quality intervention research, and second, to provide educational researchers a useful heuristic to guide their own intervention research. current issues in education vol. 13 no. 4 28 references bargal, d. 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(n.d.). director's statement. journal. retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/director/ does it w about th authors affiliatio address florida, email: m biograp michele school o complet research educatio debbie h college educatio include: to comp question work? he authors : michele g on: univer s: school of orlando, f mgill@mai phical infor gregoire g of teaching ed her ph. d h interests in onal reform. hahs-vaug of educatio onal researc methodolo lex survey ns, program gregoire gi sity of cen f teaching, florida, 328 l.ucf.edu rmation: gill is an as g, learning d. in educa nclude conc . ghn is an as on at the un h at the un ogical issues data and us evaluation ll & debbie ntral florida , learning, 816-1250 ssociate pro and leader ational psych ceptual chan ssociate pro niversity of niversity of a s associated sing comple n, and practi e hahs-vau a and leade ofessor of e rship at the hology at th nge, teacher ofessor in e f central flo alabama. d d with apply ex survey da itioner use o ughn ership, univ educational university he universi r beliefs an ducational orida. she dr. hahs-v ying quantit ata to answ of research. versity of c l psycholog y of central ity of florid nd developm research w completed vaughn's res tative statis wer substanti . central gy within th florida. sh da. dr. gill ment, and within the her ph. d. search inter stical metho ive research 33 he he l’s in rests ods h current is volume authors articles publishe an kr hilla d ju an h mi ssues in educ e 13, num hold the copy s in other jour er and include ngela abeyta rista adams ary andrelch diana barela ulia boukara ndrew darian aiying dong iriam emran cation vol. 13 curr mber 4 yright to artic rnals should b e the url of t provide a hik n n 3 no. 4 rent issu http:// cles published be addressed t the cie publi ed cie is cred edit exe lor katy e jeffr sec sar mar me amb seo tiff calv linds fac gusta jean de ues in e /cie.asu.e d in current is to the author. ication. permi dited and cop torial team cutive editor ri ellingford elizabeth his rey i. johnso ction editors rah heaslip rlene hinton elinda hollis ber johnston onghee kim fany o’neill vin richards say richerso culty advisers vo e. fischm nne m. power ebby zambo educati edu issues in educ reprints sho ission is here pies are not so m rs d rich on n n s on s man rs on issn cation. reque ould credit cie eby granted to old. ror ta kar luc ker jennife ky n 1099-83 ests to reprint e as the origi o copy any art ry schmitt apati sen ri visconti cy watson rie wilkins er wojtulewi yle wright 34 39x cie inal ticle, icz cie template 1 volume 7, number 2 january 20, 2004 issn 1099-839x monitoring the middle school movement: are teachers in step? john a. huss northern kentucky university a descriptive study examined the degree to which middle level teachers in grades 6-8 in three states accept the tenets of the middle school philosophy. the guiding questions were: (1) does a cross difference in variables exist among teachers from different organizational settings or grade configurations in respect to the teacher’s acceptance of the tenets of the middle school philosophy? (2) does a cross difference in variables exist among teachers who hold different types of certification or licensure in respect to the teacher’s acceptance of the tenets of the middle school philosophy? based on the overall data, the middle school movement appears to be making steady progress. data in this study suggest substantial teacher acceptance of the middle school philosophy across the various organizational settings. pearson chi square values denoting significant differences across building configurations were revealed for eight of the 20 survey questions. a greater sense of uniformity existed across certification or licensure types with significant differences uncovered for four of the 20 questions. many could argue the middle school movement is walking in molasses as an increasing number of districts show renewed interest in k-8 alignments or otherwise abandon key elements of the middle school concept. determining the relative success of the 40-year middle school movement and its well crafted ethos would be much easier to do if “middle school” were a single entity that meant the same thing to all people. let’s face it; teachers interact with middle level students in a variety of settings. in addition to so-named middle schools, the list includes junior high schools, k-8 schools, and elementary schools. these same teachers also possess a variety of certification or licensure types, ranging from elementary to middle grades to secondary. amidst such a cacophony of confusion, do some teachers view “middle school” as a culture with its successful operation dependent upon teachers’ attitudes and approaches, while others view it as a mere configuration dictated primarily by programmatic characteristics? simply put, do all teachers of middle level students exhibit the same philosophical commitment to the middle school model? sustaining the growth of the middle school movement becomes a daunting task indeed if the very practitioners who lead the classrooms do not identify or align themselves with the middle school philosophy, or fail to understand the tenets underlying this philosophy. according to this we believe, a seminal document generated from the national middle school association (1982, 1995, 2003), the middle school “philosophy” provides a clear set of guiding characteristics for successful, developmentally responsive middle schools to embody. among these are: a shared vision; educators committed to young adolescents; a positive school climate; an adult advocate for every child; family and community partnerships; and high expectations for all students, buttressed by an integrative, exploratory curriculum. yet if teachers consider only certain building configurations to be bonafide “middle schools” or are professionally prepared in areas other than a middle level specialization, the result could be a wide gap in middle level education wherein the middle school concept is not practiced, or is attempted with indifference simply because current issues in education vol. 7 no. 2 2 of the name chiseled on the building marquee or the grade denotations printed on a state certification. according to mizell (2000a), so long as these divisions of belief and practice exist among middle level educators, it is not likely there will be the consensus of conviction and action necessary to have a major impact on student learning. revisiting this gray area involving teacher attitudes toward the middle school philosophy may provide valuable information to help gauge whether the middle school movement is making an impact where it ultimately matters most, in the hearts and minds of the middle level teachers. while uniqueness may be fascinating for snowflakes and thumbprints, it brings only dissonance and fluster to an educational movement dependent upon adherence to an unequivocal set of underlying beliefs. if teachers universally accept the aforementioned middle school philosophy and believe that “middle school” is an ideathat should be discernible wherever transecent students are being taught, the tenets can serve as a common denominator or shared vision for middle level teachers, thus effectively negating any differences that may arise from variables such as organizational setting or certification/licensure type. conversely, differing perceptions across building configurations or certification lines as to what constitutes a “middle school teacher” could signal an inconsistency in how early adolescent students experience “middle school” in the classroom. the carnegie report (1989, 2000) recommends that middle schools be staffed with teachers who are expert at teaching early adolescents and who have the education and training necessary for the assignment. it is reasonable to postulate that the degree to which a particular school setting is consciously or unconsciously aligned with the middle school philosophy, or the extent to which a building configuration actually resembles a “complete” middle school, may have a bearing on the extent to which the teachers in that setting feel a sense of urgency to likewise adopt the philosophy, are encouraged to adopt the philosophy, or are provided with adequate professional development to adopt the philosophy. schools, after all, are both socially conditioned and subject to political influences (woods and bagley, 1996). the professional preparation of middle level teachers might be the x factor in determining the ultimate acceptance of middle school tenets in a given school or district. the importance of specialized middle grades preparation can certainly not be overstated. stahler (1996) compared a group of middle level student teachers that were prepared in a middle school teacher education program with a group of middle level student teachers that were prepared in an elementary or a secondary teacher education program. these student teachers (n=34) completed a questionnaire about their attitudes toward middle level learners and middle level teaching. results of analyses showed the student teachers with special middle school preparation knew more about early adolescents, were familiar with the literature, prepared lesson plans that included more practices appropriate for middle level learners, taught more highly rated lessons, and had a better attitude toward middle level teaching than those who had been prepared in a more general program. several studies, however, have suggested that fewer than one in four middle grades teachers have received specialized preparation before they begin their careers (mcewin, dickinson, & jenkins, 1996; scales, 1992; scales & mcewin, 1994). this practice of staffing middle level schools with teachers and other professional personnel who lack special preparation for working with young adolescents appears to be a perennial roadblock to excellence in middle level education. in short, preservice teacher programs, state departments of education, and the profession itself have struggled to divest themselves from the elementary-secondary mindset and, thus, have largely failed to recognize the essentiality of introducing specific preparation programs for middle level teachers. as a result, many unwitting middle grades teachers fail to put serious effort into becoming adept middle level instructors because they are waiting to be elevated to the high school or assigned to elementary classrooms to teach primary children. with a prevailing attitude of “no special know-how required,” many middle level teachers forgo opportunities to improve their skills and dispositions focused directly on the middle level environment. in many states, for example, the only requirement for obtaining a middle school license is to have an elementary or secondary credential and teach one year at the middle grades level (jackson & davis, 2000). likewise, the patterns of “grade overlaps” (k-8, 6-9, 7-12) found in many teaching licenses negate the alleged significance of a separate middle school license and send a message that the middle grades option is relatively unimportant inasmuch as both elementary and high school teachers are also licensed for the middle grades classroom (mcewin & dickinson, 1996). as an example, one state's current plan includes the following options: grades pre k-3, 1-8, 4-8, 7-9 and 7-12. presented with these choices when considering future employment possibilities, many prospective teachers select programs leading to licensure in grades 1-8 or 7-12 because these grade spans make them more “marketable” (mcewin and dickinson, 1995). a study was conducted to examine the degree to which middle level teachers in grades 6-8 in three states accept those basic principles, ideas, and ideals which grow out of a belief that “middle school” is an educational response to the needs and characteristics of youngsters during transecence. two questions guided the study: (1) does a cross difference in variables exist among teachers from different organizational settings or grade configurations in respect to the teacher’s acceptance of the tenets of the middle school philosophy? (2) does a cross difference in variables exist among teachers who hold different types of certification or licensure in respect to the teacher’s acceptance of the tenets of the middle school monitoring the middle school movement: are teachers in step? 3 philosophy? knowing the extent to which middle level teachers endorse and are committed to the middle school philosophy could provide a yardstick for teacher educators, school administrators, and middle school researchers who are often answerable for difficulties encountered with innovations in education. a review of related literature in the 1970’s, wiles and thomason (1975) commented on the state of germinal research efforts in middle level education and described it as being of “remarkably low quality” (p. 421). hopefully, we are now coming of age in middle level research by identifying an agenda for research that can inform and extend our agenda for action. we are also raising common questions and beginning to identify the types of studies we need to address those questions (strahan, 1992). the inaugural literature on middle level education is concerned almost exclusively with the emanation of the junior high model and the subsequent inability of the junior high school to effectively fulfill its mission and meet the academic and social needs of pre-adolescent students. the pioneering works of koos (1927) and gruhn and doulgass (1956) are particularly noteworthy. the perceived failure of the junior high school is quite significant and represents the beginning of an unfortunate pattern of instability throughout middle level education that continues to the present day. within the body of literature focusing on middle level education, variables such as grade organization and building configuration are found in abundance. jenkins and mcewin (1992) point out that grade organization has remained a controversial topic in american education for over 80 years. indeed, beginning in 1918 with a survey by the north central association of colleges and secondary schools to determine the most common grade configuration in america’s junior high schools, and continuing into the new millennium, the quest to expose the “best” physical arrangement for the middle grades has left us with data to literally support any combination one would care to advocate. a gradual transition from the junior high to the middle school arrangement has, however, clearly emerged with each passing decade. for instance, several studies documented the growth in the percentage of schools organized in the 6-7-8 pattern from 15% (valentine, clark, nickerson, and keefe, 1981) to 40% (alexander and mcewin, 1989) to 50% (valentine, clark, irvin, keefe, and melton, 1993) to 55% (mcewin, dickinson, and jenkins, 1995). in a 1993 national study, 65% of the principals reported that their schools had moved to a 5-8 or 6-8 grade level configuration, as compared to 25% in 1981 reporting such a change (valentine, et al, 1993). nonetheless, the recent work of paglin and fager (1997) now hints at a revivification of the k-8 format (often referred to as the “elemiddle school”). in the same vein, offenberg (2001) compared the effects of attending public philadelphia k-8 schools or public middle schools on eighthand ninth-grade achievement and discovered students attending k-8 schools had higher reading, mathematics, and science achievement than students attending middle schools serving similar communities. similarly, a study of baltimore city public schools reveals that students in k-8 schools produced significantly higher reading, language arts, and mathematics scores than did students in 6-8 schools (connolly, yakimowski-srebnick & russo, 2002). such vacillation on the “configuration of choice” may have a role in the ongoing challenge of the middle school philosophy to engender a strong sense of identification among classroom teachers who are employed within such a diversified collection of “middle school” arrangements. despite the perpetuity of this debate, the overall literature suggests that when considering the “proper” arrangement of grades for the middle years of schooling, the grade level configuration alone appears to bear little consequence on student learning, school adjustment, and personal growth. according to norton and lewis (2000), it is the execution of appropriate programs delivered in the best institutions that will provide the most responsive education for the young adolescent. hough (1999) insists a bona fide middle school is not an organizational structure consisting of a specific grade level configuration and a name that includes the word middle, rather it is a set of characteristics that meet the needs of the emerging adolescent. roeser, et al (2000) suggest that it is the integration of specific instructional and interpersonal dimensions that create effective middle schools. nevertheless, some research has inferred that “complete” middle schools may foster higher teacher efficacy, which leads to positive student attitudes (warren and payne, 1997). further, teachers in “complete” middle schools tend to perform better and have a more positive, humanistic attitude toward teaching and student control than do their counterparts in the junior high school and other middle level settings. studies of teacher thinking have revealed that if teachers’ implicit theories about learners or their mental images of effective teaching are contrary to that embodied in a new curriculum or teaching method, they may be unlikely to bring the innovation alive with great enthusiasm, thoroughness, and persistence. as represented in the literature, teacher thinking can be described as a set of moderating contextual factors that influence substantially the outcomes of teacher effectiveness and curriculum effectiveness (clark and peterson, 1986; cochran-smith (1990); richardson, 1996). a study by vulliamy (1997) agrees that teachers' beliefs, values, and practices are powerful mediators of their interpretations and responses to imposed changes. to many teachers, middle schools are not compelling, and the purpose of middle schools is fuzzy and clouded by jargon that, to them, has little relevance to the day-to-day challenges of teaching and learning (mizell, 2000b). current issues in education vol. 7 no. 2 4 recent middle grades research has specifically isolated a need for teacher attitudes that embrace the concepts of the middle school model. dickinson and butler (2001) uncover six elements of the transition to middle schools that ultimately hinder full implementation of the middle school concept in many schools: use of an incremental stage implementation model, lack of teacher education programs, lack of curriculum development, inadequate leadership, a paucity of research, and misunderstanding of the middle school concept. similarly, pitton (2001) discusses the need for changing teacher perceptions of middle school students in order to create a welcoming school and classroom environment that fulfills the goals of the middle school concept. teachers and school districts are encouraged to focus on students' changing needs by making connections to the middle school model. indeed, trends beginning in the early 1990’s indicated an increasing number of middle level schools were implementing programs recommended to align more closely with the developmental needs of early adolescents (epstein and maciver, 1990; valentine et al., 1993). is this enough? despite sporadic studies on the classroom implementation of middle school principles, a deficiency exists in solid research on how middle level teachers actually encircle and accept the tenets of the middle school concept, either in a general sense or as the tenets apply to their own unique educational environments. the mere reported implementation of a classroom practice could be misleading. as the research on teachers’ thought processes alludes, if teachers do not embrace or give credence to a specific practice, the desired outcomes may still fail to be realized, even though, on paper, the program component appears to have been “implemented.” the components are, in fact, implemented without integrity. what is lacking then in the literature is a study or series of studies to examine organizational setting and its relationship to teacher acceptance of the middle school philosophy. similarly there is a lack of studies that examine teacher certification/licensure and its relationship to teacher acceptance of the middle school philosophy. without the proper expectations and support by classroom teachers, the status of the middle school movement is precarious at best and the vision of middle level settings that are scholastically excellent, developmentally responsive, and socially equitable will remain as little more than fodder for academia. statement of hypothesis the null hypotheses (ho) for this study were twofold: 1. there will be no significant difference in how middle level teachers from four distinct building configurations (teachers from schools referred to as “middle schools,” organized with some combination of grades 6-8; teachers from schools referred to as “junior high schools;” teachers who teach middle level grades in k-8 or 1-8 schools; and teachers who teach 6 th grade in an elementary k-6 or 1-6 building) accept the tenets of the middle school philosophy. 2. there will be no significant difference in how middle level teachers possessing various types of teaching certification or licensure (elementary, middle, secondary) accept the tenets of the middle school philosophy. method the sample for this study consisted of 200 randomly selected middle level teachers in three states from the four dominant organizational settings in which one typically finds grades 6-8, or some combination thereof: (a) 50 teachers from schools specifically referred to as “middle schools,” organized with some combination of grades 6-8; (b) 50 teachers from schools designated as “junior high schools;” (c) 50 teachers who teach middle level grades in k-8 or 1-8 buildings in which the elementary and middle level grades share a common structure; (d) 50 teachers who teach 6 th grade in an elementary k-6 or 1-6 building. the states of indiana, kentucky, and ohio were selected for the study because these states provide ”heartland” moderation with a desirable balance of urban/rural districts. some studies, for example, have suggested that very rural or very urban school systems are often incompatible with the middle school, for explanations ranging from a perceived loss of “community identity” to a prevailing lack of socioeconomic “fit” (becker, 1987; deyoung, howley, & theobald, 1995). a total of 280 questionnaires were mailed (70 in each category of building configuration; 112 to indiana, 91 to kentucky, 77 to ohio) with 204 being returned (53 elementary, 50 junior high, 51 middle school, 50 k-8), an overall 73% return rate. forty-two percent of the questionnaires were returned from indiana teachers, 31 percent were from kentucky, and 27 percent were from ohio. to provide homogeneity and simplify comparisons, only the first 200 returned questionnaires (50 in each category of building configuration) were used for analysis. the average years of classroom experience for the teachers who responded were: junior high (13), middle school (15), elementary (15), and k/8 (13), for a combined average of 14 years. the measuring instrument for this study was a researcher-generated questionnaire that made use of a 1-to5 likert scale (1=strongly agree, 5=strongly disagree). respondents were also asked to denote the type of building in which they teach as well as the type of professional certification/licensure held. survey questions were compiled from desirable middle level attributes as articulated by such landmark sources as wiles and bondi (1981), carnegie council’s turning points (1989; 2000) and the national middle school association’s this we believe (1982, 1995, 2003). survey questions (and the category of the middle school philosophy apposite to each questions were as follows): monitoring the middle school movement: are teachers in step? 5 1. the entire school program should offer many opportunities for physical movement meeting the needs of emerging adolescents 2. the school schedule should be flexible and permit time for recreation breaks or special activities meeting the needs of emerging adolescents 3. parents should have a role in governing the school (e.g. through school site councils, decision-making teams, etc.) parental cooperation 4. each learner should able to identify one teacher to whom he/she may turn for support and guidance meeting the needs of emerging adolescents 5. each learner should have the chance to explore a wide range of interests through exploratory courses, mini-courses, activities, etc. meeting the needs of emerging adolescents 6. students should be given directed practice in the use of materials and the “ways of knowing” appropriate to the subject (e.g., studying history as a historian would) instruction for middle level learners 7. the use of interdisciplinary teams does not improve the quality of learning among students in grades 6-8 instruction for middle level learners 8. the use of multiage groups improves student learning instruction for middle level learners 9. team planning time should be scheduled during the day instruction for middle level learners 10. learning tasks should be individualized instruction for middle level learners 11. i believe students should be grouped by ability instruction for middle level learners 12. students should be housed in smaller areas, which enable them to identify with a smaller group meeting the needs of emerging adolescents 13. teachers should have special training for middle school a staff of middle school teaching provided by the school system specialists 14. administrators and teachers should understand and be committed to the middle school concept a staff of middle school specialists 15. each curriculum area should have a prepared statement of goals and a continuum of objectives planning for continuous progress 16. evaluation of learner progress should be keyed to the goals and objectives planning for continuous progress 17. instruction should match the adopted goals and objectives planning for continuous progress 18. textbooks should be used seldom or never instruction for middle level learners 19. reports to parents concerning learner progress should be multidimensional,relying more on narrative accounts and less on letter or numerical "grades" planning for continuous progress 20. i consider myself to be a middle school teacher self identification current issues in education vol. 7 no. 2 6 data analysis was accomplished through the use of the two-dimensional chi square in the form of 4 x 3 and 3x 3 contingency tables with each middle level setting being compared with each of the other middle level settings, and each certification type compared with each of the other certification types. the chi-square is a nonparametric test of significance appropriate when the data are in the form of frequency counts. it can also be used to determine whether two variables are independent by comparing their observed joint occurrence with their expected joint occurrence, assuming independence. to both acknowledge minimum frequency thresholds of certain cells and to streamline the reporting of data, survey categories were “lumped” or “collapsed” to achieve this efficiency: “strongly disagree (sd)” and “disagree (d)” were logically combined as “disagreement” while “strongly agree (sa)” and “agree (a)” were merged into “agreement.” certification categories were likewise synthesized to reflect “elementary,” “middle,” (which includes teachers with precise middle school certification and teachers with a so-stated middle school endorsement, acquired through an approved program of studies), and “secondary.” such aggregation preserved the integrity of the data as originally collected. cross difference in variables among organizational setting and middle level teacher acceptance of the middle school philosophy: a summary of findings data in this study suggest substantial teacher acceptance of the middle school philosophy across the various organizational settings. there were, for example, no significant differences revealed on the following items: the school schedule should be flexible and permit time for recreation breaks or special activities; each curriculum area should have a prepared statement of goals and a continuum of objectives; evaluation should be keyed to the goals and objectives; instruction should match the goals and objectives; students should be given directed practice in the use of materials and the “ways of knowing” appropriate to the subject; and the value of interdisciplinary teams. such findings are consistent with earlier published research summaries from the national middle school association that concluded effective programs and practices, not grade configuration, determine quality schools (lucas and valentine, 2001). pearson chi square values denoting significant differences among building configurations were, however, revealed for eight of the 20 questions on the survey (see table 1). this lack of symmetry on 40 percent of the items would suggest someassociation between school setting and how teachers accept the tenets of the middle school philosophy. the items with significant differences may serve to isolate those tenets that have, perhaps, made less headway in gaining universal acceptance by middle level teachers in all settings. cross difference in variables among certification or licensure type and middle level teacher acceptance of the middle school philosophy: a summary of findings a greater sense of uniformity existed across certification or licensure types than building configurations. efforts by teacher education programs and districtsponsored professional development to emphasize experiential, student-centered, cognitive approaches to learning may slowly be blurring the lines between elementary, middle, and secondary certification. pearson chi square values indicating significance among certification types were uncovered for four of the 20 survey questions (see table 2). additional findings: middle level teachers as a group with varying degrees of enthusiasm, the 200 middle level teachers who participated in this survey (with a combined average of 14 years classroom experience) were in agreement as an aggregate with 15 of the 17 questions for which an affirmative response would be viewed as consistent with the beliefs of the middle school philosophy. similarly the teachers disputed two of two statements for which a negative response was consistent with the beliefs of the middle school philosophy. nonetheless, the items where teacher responses were incompatible with middle school beliefs can certainly not be disregarded or discounted. in fact, these responses are very telling, especially when placed in juxtaposition with the idea that 61 percent of the participants considered themselves to be “middle school” teachers. the teachers, for example, rejected the notion that reports to parents concerning learner progress should be multi-dimensional, relying more on narrative accounts and less on letter or numerical grades (62% disagreed or were unsure). teachers disagreed textbooks should be used seldom or never (75% disagreed), demonstrating a reluctance to subjugate the textbook even within a classroom philosophy based around learning that really matters, higher-order thinking skills, authentic contexts, and demonstrations that engage students in role performances. in addition, the teachers were collectively unsure about the use of multiage groups to improve student learning (58% unsure). the argument can be made the aforementioned tenets are more than incidental components of the middle school concept. in many ways these tenets represent much of the kernel of the middle school movement. discussion based on the overall data, the middle school movement appears to be making steady progress. the first phase of the movement was obviously the creation and development of middle schools themselves. the second phase, currently in progress, emphasizes increased knowledge and skills for principals and teachers, the strengthening of curriculum and the significant reform of education for young adolescents. the level of agreement by teachers with the tenets of the middle school philosophy monitoring the middle school movement: are teachers in step? 7 table 1. organizational setting and teacher acceptance of middle school philosophy question from instrument x 2 / probability significant difference 3) parents should have a role in governing the school 13.8 0.002 elem (46% a, 26% u), jh (60% a, 10% u), mid (56% a, 24% u), k-8 (54% a, 36% u) jh vs. k-8 5) each learner should have the chance to explore a wide range of interests through exploratory courses, minicourses. 8.62 0.044 elem (54% a, 32% u), jh (80% a, 10% u), mid (80% a, 10% u), k-8 (72% a, 18% u) elem vs. jh, elem vs. mid 10) learning tasks should be individualized. 8.22 0.016 elem (66% a), jh (36% a), mid (56% a), k-8 (56%) elem vs. jh, mid vs. jh, jh vs. k-8, 11) i believe students should be grouped by ability. 13.1 0.041 elem (22% a, 30% u), jh (34% a, 24% u), mid (46% a, 18% u), k-8 (22% a, 42% u) elem vs. mid, mid vs. k-8 12) students should be housed in smaller areas, which enable them to identify with a smaller group. 14.5 0.025 elem (70% a, 18% u), jh (78% a, 12% u), mid (62% a, 18% u), k-8 (50% a, 38% u) jh vs. k-8 13) teachers in grades 6-8 should have special training for middle school teaching provided by the school system. 15.0 0.020 elem (54% a, 36% u), jh (68% a, 14% u), mid (80% a, 10% u), k-8 (58% a, 24% u) elem vs. mid, elem vs. jh 14) administrators and teachers should understand and be committed to the middle school concept 15.2 0.002 elem (68% a, 22% u), jh (72% a, 16% u), mid (80% a, 10% u), k-8 (50% a, 40% u) jh vs. k-8, k-8 vs. mid 20) i consider myself to be a middle school teacher. 16.4 0.000 elem (36% a), jh (72% a), mid (80% a), k-8 (60% a) elem vs. mid, elem vs. jh, elemvs. k-8 note. elem is abbreviation for elementary, mid is abbreviation for middle school, jh is abbreviation for junior high, a is abbreviation for agreement, u is abbreviation for undecided. terms in bold print indicate pairings of significant differences. *p < .05 df=6 current issues in education vol. 7 no. 2 8 table 2. certification / licensure type and teacher acceptance of middle school philosophy question from instrument x 2 / probability significant difference 1) the entire school program should offer many opportunities for physical movement. 11.7 0.020 elem (76% a, 9% u), mid (75% a, 10% u), sec (53% a, 31% u) elem vs. sec, mid vs. sec 4) each learner should be able to identify one teacher to whom he/she may turn for support and guidance. 9.68 0.046 elem (72% a, 13% u) mid (87% a, 8% u); sec (66% a, 19% u) elem vs. mid, mid vs. sec 9) team planning time should be scheduled during the day 15.6 0.004 elem (79% a, 11% u), mid (86% a, 7% u), sec (53% a, 25% u) elem vs. sec, mid vs. sec 9) team planning time should be scheduled during the day. 14.3 0.006 elem (39% a), mid (71% a), sec (56% a) elem vs. mid note. elem is abbreviation for elementary, mid is abbreviation for middle school, sec is abbreviation for secondary, a is for agreement, u is for undecided. terms in bold print indicate pairings of significant differences. *p < .05 df=4 (building configuration and certification type notwithstanding) shows recognition that the disparate needs of young adolescents were not being adequately met within the context of previous administrative units. teachers are expressing widespread agreement with those program components that align with key recommendations from the literature on middle school education. perhaps most encouraging was the lack of significant differences between the attitudes of teachers in buildings called “middle schools” and the attitudes of teachers in buildings called “junior high schools.” the junior high school, with its reputation for a sterile fixed curriculum and didactic approach to instruction, has been perceived for decades as an antithesis to the organizational flexibility, individualization, and humanistic sensitivity of the middle school. both organizational settings appear to be moving closer together in the attitudes they exhibit toward meeting the developmental and social needs of young adolescent students. interestingly the questionnaire items which produced significant differences for certain pockets of middle level teachers were those items concentrated in clusters of tenets most explicitly representative of a middle school structure (e.g. meeting needs of emerging adolescent, instruction for middle level learners, parental cooperation, staffing in middle school). despite the absence of a clear trend regarding those groupings that revealed significant differences, the data suggest that some strong and traditional schooling cultures might still exist. teachers who teach sixth grade in an elementary building, teachers who are elementary-certified, teachers who teach middle level grades in a k-8 building, and teachers who are secondary-certified appear to be the most vulnerable to a departure from the tenets of the middle school philosophy. targeting the improvement of teachers’ learning through consistent and high quality middle school-specific staff development holds promise as an effective intervention. teachers who teach sixth grade in the elementary school, for instance, must be made aware of the value of student exploration and the wisdom of special training for middle school teaching provided by the district. most importantly, these teachers need to identify themselves as middle school, not elementary, teachers. likewise, it is important for teachers who are elementary-certified to align themselves with the middle school philosophy if they are teaching middle level students. otherwise, the teachers may defer to an “elementary” predisposition and fail to adequately acknowledge the needs of “tween-agers.” k-8 teachers were irresolute about the value in housing middle level students in smaller areas. such buildings may benefit from a variation of the “school within a school” or “small school” concept to personalize teaching monitoring the middle school movement: are teachers in step? 9 and learning. to avoid sacrificing middle level educational needs to elementary or high school program priorities, educators should provide separate bell schedules, faculty, and budget categories for the middle level program as well as staff development based on the separate needs of the middle level staff. teachers should be involved in the planning and reorganization of the middle level school curriculum and programs. ninety percent of k-8 teachers were either opposed to or undecided about the tenet that administrators and teachers should understand and be committed to the middle school concept. such a scenario is quite unsettling and should be a cause of great concern to those who are in leadership roles within the middle school movement. teachers in k-8 schools also need to understand the value of parental involvement in the governance of the school (k-8 teachers led all building configurations with more than 1/3 of respondents “undecided”); this sharing of authority with parents clearly helps to establish a coordinated home-school effort. teachers with secondary certification should come to recognize the importance of physical movement, team planning, and, like elementary-certified teachers, the ability of students to identify one teacher to whom they can go for guidance and support. junior high teachers in the sample were unconvinced about the need to individualize instruction, thus effectively disregarding the premise that students are always unique, even in classes of supposedly homogeneously grouped students. strikingly, middle school teachers led all organizational settings in their agreement with ability grouping, and, therefore, must work to create a culture of detracking in which the right and ability of students from every background to learn from the best kind of curriculum is respected. the common practice of pacing instruction to the “average” student must be reevaluated. while the affirmation that middle level schools should be about the business of developing a true identity has not been fully realized to date, there is certainly room for optimism. true, some middle level settings and professional certification types display evidence of “blended outcomes” as they reconcile traditional structures with the components of the middle school philosophy, yet the teachers as a whole appear to be moving toward greater implementation of middle school programming. such findings should inspirit middle school advocates who frequently face a significant communications challenge as they attempt to inform educators as to the reasons why middle schools exist and why the experiences they should provide for young adolescents are different from those at the elementary and secondary levels. this study serves to isolate areas of concern, while simultaneously articulating the tenets where little disagreement by teachers exists. in this way, precious professional development time can be utilized in strengthening those areas where attitudes of middle level teachers may conflict with the middle school philosophy rather than continually revisiting those components where concurrence is already in evidence. limitations of the study the attributes represented within the questions on this survey describe effective middle schools. they do not necessarily present a recipe for making any given school more effective. quite simply, they are “artifacts of effectiveness” or things produced by effective schools. thus, the questionnaire can provide only arbitrary, albeit research-based, indicators of what exemplary middle school programs might (and, perhaps, should) look like. the questionnaire cannot regard the level of consistency within, passion for, or integrity to an educational model that may or may not be present at the various and sundry schools where the responding teachers practice their crafts. the results of this study, then, represent only one aspect of a middle school profile. it is the whole of the interactions in any given school environment that ultimately determines the effectiveness of that school. as noted earlier, computation of the chi square values in this study required the collapsing of likert categories in order to meet the assumption of adequate cell sizes, although recent scholarship in this area (e.g. howell, 1998) is suggesting that previous assumptions of this nature may be overly conservative and perhaps unnecessary. nevertheless, the lumping of categories removed the original distinctions between “strongly disagree” and “disagree” and “strongly agree” and “agree.” the same is true for certification types (“elementary + middle” and “secondary + middle” were included under the larger umbrella of “middle and middle endorsed”). for purposes of analysis, merging these graduated distinctions affected the data very little (if at all), with acuteness of description more than statistical contribution being sacrificed. the selection process was limited to those middle level schools for which a roster of teachers could be attained with reasonable effort after a particular school was randomly selected. while a randomly selected school was disqualified in less than one percent of the cases, consumers of this study should be aware of the inherent sampling bias. the data, of course, are limited to those teachers who received a questionnaire and returned it. while the sample size for this study was adequate, generalizability of the results should not be overstated. being a cross-sectional study, the results sought to represent all relevant subgroups in the population, but, like heraclitus who could not step into the same river twice (lecompte & preissle, 1993), data collected in this study represent, at best, a snapshot of teachers in three states at a particular time and their attitudes toward various tenets of the middle school philosophy. as with any questionnaire, respondents can be unduly influenced by the scope of their general understanding and private interpretations of question content, any anticipatory mindset that may be present (“what am i supposed to say?”), and the amount of time devoted to thoughtfully completing the instrument. current issues in education vol. 7 no. 2 10 future research needed the endeavor initiated with this study calls for further expansion. as noted earlier, it is generally accepted that the middle school philosophy is followed more aggressively in certain regions and geographic districts and less so in others. the question begs if the tendencies exposed in this study are a territorial peculiarity or a national trend. enlargement of the study into other sections of the country, along with increased sample sizes, would serve to capture the attitudes of more and more teachers, thereby helping to determine if independent investigators, in fact, detect similar relationships. studies using likerttype survey instruments and chi square analysis, however, do not effectively answer the question of “why” middle level teachers feel the way they do about the various tenets of the middle school philosophy. a demographic of particular interest might be the subjects taught by the middle level teachers who respond to a future questionnaire. this additional information might serve to reveal whether teachers in certain content areas are more prone to agreement or disagreement with the middle school philosophy. a future qualitative study in the form of an interview study might focus on the in-depth perceptions of teachers in the various building configurations. two interviewing approaches would be germane for this research question: one-on-one and/or focus group. according to gay and airasian (2003), interviews have a unique purpose, namely, to acquire data not obtainable in any other way. there are certain things, which simply cannot be observed or quantified, including (but not limited to) past events, events, which occur outside of the researcher’s sphere of observation, and mental processes. also, according to kvale (1996), there is a move away from obtaining knowledge only through external observation and experimental manipulation of human subjects, toward an understanding by means of conversations with the humans to be understood. as glesne and peshkin (1992) assert, "you cannot, except through interviewing, get the actor's explanations. the opportunity to learn about what you cannot see and to explore alternative explanations of what you do see is the special strength of interviewing in qualitative inquiry" (p.65). a focus group interview of middle level teachers in which participants are given latitude to expand on the middle school philosophy may provide excellent insights into teacher attitudes and how these ideas are manifested in the classroom. according to mcmillan (1989), interviewing more than one person at a time sometimes proves very useful. some people need company to be emboldened to talk; and some topics are better discussed by a small group of people who know one another. summary with no significant differences among teachers on 12 of the 20 questionnaire items when compared by building configuration, and no significant differences among teachers on 16 of the 20 questionnaire items when compared by certification or licensure, data in this study suggest the middle school movement is advancing satisfactorily throughout middle level education. no clear patterns were established for those items where significant differences were revealed, although teachers who teach sixth-graders in an elementary building, teachers who are elementary-certified, teachers who teach middle level grades in a k-8 building, and teachers who are secondarycertified appear to demonstrate the greatest divergence between middle school ideology and teacher attitude. teachers and administrators can no longer say there are no models, no best practices, no techniques, no assistance, or no high performing schools to see or from which to learn. identifying sites with high implementation of middle level programming concepts for the purpose of having practitioners visit those sites should be encouraged (russell, 1994). high-quality, comprehensive staff development is paramount. this study recognizes that self-report descriptive research of this nature cannot establish cause-and-effect, or answer “why” middle level teachers feel the way they do about the various tenets of the middle school philosophy. resolution of such issues would require conducting additional studies using other research designs. final conclusion by accepting key characteristics of the middle school philosophy as a part of everyday schooling, teachers who teach middle level grades are attempting to address the needs of young adolescents, irrespective of the grade span organization in which they teach or the type of certification/license they hold. teachers are expressing widespread agreement with those program components that align with key recommendations from the literature on middle school education and are shedding those residual practices that are inconsistent with the spirit of the middle school philosophy. by recognizing the need for developmentally appropriate teaching strategies and strategies which enhance teacher efficacy, the notion that middle school is an “idea” and middle school students are “unique” may finally be on the cusp of realization. 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(2004, january 20). monitoring the middle school movement: are teachers in step? current issues in education [on-line], 7(2). available:http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number2/ author notes dr. john a. huss is an assistant professor in the college of education at northern kentucky university. his background is in curriculum and instruction and middle grades education. dr. huss has also taught fifth and seventh grades language arts. he can be reached by email at hussj@nku.edu or at (859) 727-2809 by phone. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation huss, j. a. (2011). monitoring the middle school movement: are teachers in step? current issues in education, 7(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/823 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number2/ hussj@nku.edu  http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 microsoft word 809_final.doc 1 volume 16, number 1 january 20, 2013 issn 1099-839x relative contributions of selected teachers’ variables and students’ attitudes toward academic achievement in biology among senior secondary school students in ondo state, nigeria l. o. gbore and c. a. daramola adekunle ajasin university this study investigated the relative contributions of selected teachers’ variables and students’ attitude towards academic achievement in biology among senior secondary schools in ondo state, nigeria. it involved descriptive survey research and ex-post facto research designs. the sample, 360 respondents which consists of 180 biology teachers and 180 senior secondary school three students were randomly selected from 36 senior secondary schools from the three senatorial districts of ondo state using stratified random sampling technique. teachers’ teaching attitudinal scale, science oriented attitudinal scale and an inventory which requested for data from records on students’ senior secondary school certificate examination grades in biology were used for data collection. data collected for the study were analyzed using correlation matrix and multiple regression analysis. the results showed that significant relationships existed among the independent variables and students’ academic achievement in biology. also 62.5% of the variance observed in students’ achievement in biology was explained by linear combination of the five predictor variables. students’ attitude was the most potent contributor to the prediction. teachers’ workload was the least contributor to the prediction. it was recommended that constant workshops and seminars should be made available by government for teachers to attend for the improvement of their teaching skills. teachers and students were also charged to change their attitudes positively towards the teaching and learning of biology. keywords: relative contributions, teachers’ variables, students’ attitude, prediction, biology, academic achievement, secondary school students success in certain endeavors may be contingent upon certain factors. this may also be true of achievement in schooling. good achievement in schooling could be the partial contributions of an individual’s gender sensitivity, cognitive, affective (attitude) and psychomotor domains. adodo (2007) argued that one key overriding factor for the success of students’ academic achievement is the teacher. in the same vein, ibrahim (2000) believed that teachers’ qualifications and exposure can go a long way to bring about pupils’ high academic achievement. it is probably for this reason, ibukun (2009) asserted that no education system can rise above the quality of its teachers. considering the assertions of ibrahim (2000), adodo (2007), and ibukun (2009), it implies that teachers’ role in the preparation of students to succeed in examinations cannot be undermined. usman (2003) argued that shortage of qualified teachers is responsible for the poor academic achievement observable among the students while ademulegun (2001) current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 2 argued that students taught by more qualified and experienced teachers in terms of knowledge of the subject matter perform better than those taught by less qualified but experienced teachers. the educational analysis recently carried out in nigeria by the national economic empowerment and development strategy (needs, 2005) indicated that more than forty nine percent (49%) of the teachers in nigeria are unqualified. this revealed the quality of teachers teaching various school subjects to the secondary school students. the teachers teaching biology as a subject in the various secondary schools would probably be among the said over forty nine percent unqualified teachers. as important as knowledge of biology is to human beings, it appears students’ achievement in this subject at the secondary school level is becoming worse than in the other science subjects. ibe and maduabum (2001) argued that candidates performance at the senior school certificate examinations (ssce) conducted by west african examination council have consistently remain poor, with biology having the highest enrolments and the poorest results over the years. looking at the importance of biology to the national development and considering the state of poor academic achievement in this very subject at the secondary school level which incidentally serves as the foundation for advance learning and professional courses in fields such as medicine, pharmacy, nursing and other allied courses, the poor academic achievement observable in the biology results of the students should be a thing of serious concern to any citizen of nigeria. the teachers’ attitude (ta), teachers’ qualifications (tq), teachers’ workload (tw) in terms of number of students handled by teachers and the experience possessed by teachers (te) teaching biology as a subject to the students coupled with the students’ attitude (sa) toward the subject may be responsible in part for the downward trend in achievement observed in the results of the students in the subject. attitude as a factor could be viewed as the totality of an individual’s inclination towards object, institution or idea. attitude could be learned or formed and acquired from members of the family, teacher and peer group. the learner acquires from the teacher’s disposition to form attitude towards learning which could positively or negatively affect his performance. teachers are role models to the students because as they act, so do the students demonstrate and perfect such act or behaviour. it is very unfortunate that little did many teachers realize that the manner they handled the teaching of biology as a subject, behave and interact with the students as biology teachers could produce major effect on students’ achievement. for instance, when teachers frequently absent from the classroom, such negative attitude can cause the students at the foundation laying to lose interest in science as the delivery of the subject matter handled by such teacher has to be done by an array of substitute teachers who may not be a specialist in basic science. according to finlayson (2009), the resultant effect of such teacher’s absenting from school is negative correlation between students’ performance and high teacher absenteeism. some teachers seem to have developed negative attitude towards teaching the students this subject (biology) that is very vital to human living. this may have been responsible for the negative attitude developed towards learning biology by the students. other factors, according to adodo (2005), identified to be related to students’ attitude in science include: teachers’ teaching method, teachers’ attitude, age, students’ cognitive style, interest of students and social implication of science among others.. ali and aigbomian (1990) have argued that the extent a student prefers a subject, to that extent the student works hard to achieve in it. a close examination of the submissions of ali and aigbomian (1990) and adodo (2005) revealed that academic achievement may be dependent upon positive attitude from the teachers and the students in the teaching/learning processes. in his contribution, okebukola (1986) pointed attention to the quality of biology teachers as the prime factor attributed to the cause of students’ consistent poor academic achievement in examinations. teachers’ effectiveness in a subject may be prime determinant of students’ performance in the subject. ineffective teaching in secondary schools arises probably from the quality of teachers recruited to teach science. in many secondary schools, science subjects are taught by people who are neither interested nor qualified in teaching the subject. for instance, undesirable situations showed engineers teaching mathematics and physics, biochemists teaching chemistry and microbiologists teaching biology. in this kind of situation, students who undertake science and mathematics at school may either end up disillusioned or greatly hampered in the development of the mental discipline which acquisition of scientific knowledge demands. secondary school science teachers need to be professionally qualified to enable them work effectively with pupils in stimulating and directing their growth in desired directions. there are various approaches a teacher can employ to bring about effective teaching. the science of teaching, according to ogunboyede (2011), is referred to as pedagogy while mccaughtry (2005) and sidhu, fook, and kaur (2011) stressed that pedagogical content knowledge refers to the teaching and learning of the subject. houston, haberman and sikula (2002) and sidhu et al. (2011) claimed that even at the integration of pedagogical knowledge into the teachers’ education in malaysia, the methodology being used by some science teachers in schools are not child-friendly, hence, effective learning of science could not take place in the classroom. it is not surprising; therefore, that oloyede (1992) argued that a significant difference exists in the achievement of relative contributions of selected teachers’ variables and students’ attitudes toward academic achievement in biology among senior secondary school students in ondo state, nigeria 3 the students taught by professionally trained and nonprofessionally trained teachers in the art of teaching biology. researchers have carried out studies on teachers’ demographic variables such as qualifications, age, experience, gender, attitude and students’ academic performance. for instance, adepoju (2002) reported that a significant relationship exists between teachers’ variables such as gender, area of specialization, possession of academic qualification in education and the learning outcomes of secondary school students, but igwe (1990) found no significant relationship between teachers’ qualifications and students’ achievement in biology, chemistry and physics at senior secondary school certificate level. while ayodele (1997) found a positive relationship between teachers’ qualifications and students’ academic achievement, khan and bertecher (1988) found out that there is a high and significant relationship between teachers’ qualifications and global wastage ratio in basic education in madagascar. nevertheless, ajewole (1990) did not completely agree with these findings and showed passive reservation concerning the relationship between teachers’ qualification and students’ achievement but concluded that there is need to carry out more careful investigations about it. studies have also shown that teachers experience exerts a great influence on the academic achievement of students. banjoko (2001) argued that a good foundation in science is necessary to attract more students into the field of science while oke (2003) stressed that performance in separate science subjects at the senior secondary school may be due to the foundation laid on integrated science learnt at the elementary and junior secondary school level. ilugbusi, falola, and daramola (2007) showed that teaching experience in schools count significantly in the determination of students’ achievement in external examinations such as west africa senior school certificate examination (ssce), national examination council (neco), national business and technical education examinations and the unified tertiary matriculation examination. according to them, inexperienced teachers are easily upset and destabilized by unfamiliar situations. this may imply that inexperienced teachers could get confused, mixed up the content of the topics taught to the students and hence the students will receive wrong information which would definitely lead to poor achievement among the students, while the experienced teachers are already immune to classroom provocative situations and have developed resistance and several solutions against classroom confusion inducing agents. in the same vein, gibbons, kimmel, and o’shea (1997) reported that there was a significant relationship between teachers’ experience and students’ academic achievement since students taught by more experienced teachers achieved at a higher level due to the fact that the experienced teachers have mastered the subject content and acquired cumulated classroom management skills and strategies to handle and cope with different classroom problems. literature has also indicated that teachers’ attitude and students’ attitude have exerted some influence on the academic achievement of students. for instance, yara (2009) reported that teacher’s attitude towards science has a strong relationship with students science achievement as well as the students’ attitude towards science. onocha (1985) and ogunwuyi (2000) showed that teachers’ attitude towards science is a potent predictor of students’ academic achievement in science and attitude towards science learning, but igwe (1985) reported that the effect of students’ attitude on achievement in mathematics is not as strong as the effect of teachers’ attitude on students’ achievement in mathematics. studies of researchers such as ajayi (1999), revealed that no significant relationship exists between teachers workload and students academic achievement while kolawole (1982) found that a negative relationship exists between the academic performance of students and class size, but walberg (1969) argued that a significant and consistent relationship exists in the academic achievement of students in small classes of between 1-20 students that obtained higher scores in science tests than their counterparts in large classes of more than 20 students. the rate of interaction between teachers and students in the classroom where students’ population is far above the normal or recommended number of pupils per class by unesco would be very stressful. a situation where sixty or more students are packed in one classroom does not provide for effective teaching and learning to take place. in situation as this, work might become cumbersome for the teachers in terms of attending to individual student’s needs, marking students’ class work, home-works / assignments, hence, the teacher may decide to continually reduce the amount of work that should be given to the students to avoid been stressed. the over loading of teachers with congested classes would invariably end up in high reduction of efficiency while students’ performance bears the consequences. olaleye (2006) claimed that some schools have the problem of overcrowded classroom. this has serious implication for academic performance of the students. teaching process involves planning learning activities, preparing learning materials, using time and keeping general order. teaching effectiveness, according to agharuwhe and nkechi (2006) has assumed a multidimensional construct because it measures different aspects of teaching such as subject mastery, effective communication, lesson preparation and presentation. in the contribution of ofoegbu (2004), poor academic performance of students in nigeria could be due to poor current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 4 teachers’ performance in terms of accomplishing the teaching task, negative attitude to work and poor teaching habits which have been attributed to poor motivation. statement of the problem it has been shown that researchers have investigated many factors considered to affect students’ learning (ayodele, 2009). at the heart of this line of inquiry is the core belief that teachers make a difference, but the extent to which the extant teacher-effectiveness can be trusted to identify characteristics of effective teachers become obscured. few attempts have been made to directly measure the influence of individual teachers on the academic progress of large population of students using database of measurement available from records. it is observed that previous studies also centered attention mainly on investigating the difference or relationship between individual (single) teachers’ variables and students’ academic achievement. apparently, further studies are required to investigate the combined contribution of teachers’ qualification (tq), teachers’ attitude (ta), teachers’ workload (tw), teachers experience (te) and students’ attitude (sa) towards students’ academic achievement at the senior secondary school level. therefore, the problem of this is will academic achievement in biology, at the ssce level, be better explained by the combined influence of teachers’ qualification, teachers’ workload, teachers’ experience, teachers attitude and students’ attitude? in addressing this situation, the following research questions were generated to guide the study. (i) are there any relationships among teachers’ qualifications, teachers’ workload, teachers’ attitude, teachers’ experience, students’ attitude and students’ academic achievement in biology at the ssce level? (ii) to what extent would teachers’ attitude, students’ attitude, teachers’ workload, teachers’ experience and teachers’ qualifications when taken together predict students’ academic achievement at the ssce level? (iii) what is the relative contribution of each of the teachers’ workload, teachers’ attitude, students’ attitude, teachers’ experience, and teachers’ qualifications to the prediction of academic achievement of the senior secondary school students at the ssce level? methodology this study is designed along the line of both descriptive research of the survey type and ex-post-facto research design. the descriptive research of the survey type was adopted by using questionnaire to obtain information about the teachers’ attitude, work load, qualification, experience and students’ attitude towards the teaching / learning of biology in the school. ex-postfacto was used because the researcher does not have control on both the independent and dependent variables. the ex-post-facto design is neither completely descriptive nor completely experimental but involves a systematic procedure that utilizes observation of variables as found in their actual natural state (bandele, 2004). this type of design was employed by campbell and stanley (1966) in a desperate bid to solve the problem of randomization and control of variables in educational research. part of the data involved in this study (senior school certificate examination results) was observed and used as found in their natural state because the cause and the effect have already occurred. there was no treatment and manipulation of subjects rather it involved collection of data from records. the population of the study comprised all the biology teachers and the senior secondary school class three (sss iii) students in ondo state, nigeria. the sample for the study consisted of 360 respondents made up of 180 teachers and 180 sss iii students randomly selected from the three senatorial districts of ondo state (ondo south, ondo central, and ondo north) using stratified random sampling technique. the 180 teachers selected for this study have at one class been assigned to teach the content of the syllabus of west african examination council on biology to the sampled students between 2007 – 2010 either in senior secondary school class one (sss1) or senior secondary school class two or class three (sss2 or sss3) to prepare the students ready for external examination in the year 2009/2010 academic session. the results of these students also served as database for this study. the instruments used for the study were: science oriented attitudinal scale (soas) adopted from omirin (1999), teachers teaching attitudinal scale (tas) adapted from craig, franklin, and andrew (1984) locus of control of behaviour scale, and tschannel-moran and woolfolk-hoy (2001) teacher sense of efficacy scale and an inventory, which requested for data on students’ senior secondary school certificate examination grades in biology. both the teachers teaching attitudinal scale and the soas were re-validated by the researcher. the estimates of construct validity and internal consistency reliability for the tas and soas as depicted by the cronbach coefficient alpha values were 0.68 and 0.72 respectively. the academic achievement of the participating students was measured by their grades in the senior secondary school certificate examination collected from records. procedure each of the 360 respondents (180 teachers and 180 students) was given a copy of their questionnaire respectively to respond to for thirty-five minutes. for the purpose of data analysis, the completed copies of the questionnaire were collected from the respondents and scored while the senior secondary school certificate letter grade for biology was converted to point for each participating student. the range of scores of the relative contributions of selected teachers’ variables and students’ attitudes toward academic achievement in biology among senior secondary school students in ondo state, nigeria 5 respondents in the tas and soas fell between 20-100 and 30-135 respectively. data analysis the following statistical methods were used to answer the research questions. correlation analysis (matrix) was used to estimate the relationships between teachers’ experience, teachers’ workload, teachers’ qualification, teachers’ attitude, students’ attitude and students’ final grade (sgb) in biology. multiple regression analysis was used to determine the extent to which the independent variables explain the criterion (final grade in biology) variable. standardized regression coefficients (beta) showed the relative contributions of the predictor variables to the criterion variable while unstandardized β weight shows the predictive strength of the predictor variables on the criterion variable. results the results of the analysis are shown in tables 1, 2 and 3. in table 1, it is observed that a moderate and positive significant relationship exists between teachers’ variables (ta and sgb, tq and sgb), and students’ grade in biology with ta versus sgb = 0.536 and tq versus sgb = 0.579. students’ attitude also depicted that significant relationship exists between it and students’ grades in biology. however, teachers’ workload and teachers’ experience exhibited low significant relationship with students’ grades in biology (tw versus sgb = 0.420 and teachers’ experience versus sgb = 0.407) at 0.05 level of significance. table 2 shows that there is linear positive relationship between the predictor variables (teachers’ workload, teachers’ attitude, students’ attitude, teachers’ experience, and teachers’ qualifications) and the criterion variable (sgb) achievement in biology among the senior secondary school students. the table indicates that the multiple r was 0.792 which implies that there is high positive relationship among the predictor variables and the criterion variable. as much as 62.5% (as indicated by r square of 0.625) of the variation observed in the achievement in biology among secondary school students was explained by the combination of the predictor variables while the standard error of 0.55612 indicates that on the average the predicted achievement in biology will deviate from true value by 0.55612 limits of that measure. the analysis of variance for the multiple regression data yielded an f-ratio of 152.14 which was significant at p < 0.05. this implies that the combination of the five predictor variables (tw, ta, sa, te and tq) have significant influence on achievement in biology among secondary school students. from table 3, the regression equation derivable is: achievement in biology (sgb) = 5.716e.02 (tw) + 0.194 (ta) + 0.342 (sa) + 0.127 (te) + 0.185 (tq) – 0.110. hence, students’ attitude indicates the best predictor to achievement in biology. the table also reveals the relative contribution of each of the predictor variables to the prediction as shown in the values of the regression coefficients which ranged from 0.070 (7%) to 0.453 (45.3%) while the standard error ranged from 0.020 to 0.030 and the t-values ranged from 1.830 to 12.282. table 1 correlation matrix showing the intercorrelation among the variables tw ta sa te tq sgb tw 1.00 ta 0.417 1.00 sa 0.413 0.563 1.00 te 0.264 0.305 0.241 1.00 tq 0.249 0.318 0.205 0.325 1.00 sgb 0.420 0.536 0.615 0.407 0.579 1.00 current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 6 table 2 summary of regression analysis of the predictor variables on the criterion variables (sgb) multiple r 0.792 source of variance ss df ms fc ftab r2 0.625 regression 188.216 5 47.054 152.14 2.23 adjusted r2 0.623 residual 111.956 354 0.309 standard error 0.55612 total 300.172 359 table 3 test of significance of regression coefficients b seb beta t teachers workload (tw) 5.716e.02 0.030 0.070 1.830 teachers attitude (ta) 0.194 0.022 0.317 8.346 student attitude (sa) 0.342 0.027 0.453 12.282 teachers experience (te) 0.127 0.020 0.209 6.015 teachers qualification (tq) 0.185 0.021 0.394 8.853 constant -0.110 0.139 -0.787 p< 0.05 critical t = 1.960 the t-values associated with teachers’ attitude, students’ attitude, teachers’ experience and teachers’ qualification were significant at 0.05 alpha level. from table 3, the regression equation derivable is: achievement in biology (sgb) = 5.716e.02 (tw) + 0.194 (ta) + 0.342 (sa) + 0.127 (te) + 0.185 (tq) – 0.110. hence, students’ attitude indicates the best predictor to achievement in biology. the table also reveals the relative contribution of each of the predictor variables to the prediction as shown in the values of the regression coefficients which ranged from 0.070 (7%) to 0.453 (45.3%) while the standard error ranged from 0.020 to 0.030 and the t-values ranged from 1.830 to 12.282. the t-values associated with teachers’ attitude, students’ attitude, teachers’ experience and teachers’ qualification were significant at 0.05 alpha level. discussion the results above showed that the predictor variables in predicting academic achievement in biology among the senior secondary school three students could not be attributed to chance factor. the relationship between the predictor variables (tw, ta, sa, te and tq) in predicting academic achievement in biology among senior secondary school students is reflected in the value of coefficient of multiple regressions (0.792) and in the adjusted r-square (0.623) as shown in table 2. the fratio value of 152.14 which is significant as the 0.05 level of significance attested to the fact that predictive capacity of the independent variables could not be attached to the effect of chance factor. the findings of this study showed that there were positive significant relationships among the teachers’ variables and students’ attitude. this finding relative contributions of selected teachers’ variables and students’ attitudes toward academic achievement in biology among senior secondary school students in ondo state, nigeria 7 is in agreement with the findings of yara (2009) and adodo (2005) who claimed that teachers and students attitude toward teaching and learning respectively go side by side to record achievement in science. this is because good or bad professional conduct on the part of the teachers goes a long way to stimulate, influence and encourage student to develop positive or negative attitude respectively to the studying of biology. demonstration of good professional teaching behaviours probably stirred up the potentials in the students to manifest positive attitude to learning. by implication, positive and effective relationship between the teacher and the pupils will perhaps show positive interrelationship with educational performance in the school subjects on the part of the pupils. the findings also revealed that moderate and positive relationships exist between the teachers’ variables and students’ academic achievement and grade points in biology. statistically, students achievement and teachers attitudes are both tending towards the same direction, this may not signify high academic achievement because negative attitude on the part of teachers would also breed negative attitudes on the parts of the students that can lead to lackadaisical behaviour and frustration in learning the subjects. hence, the students will automatically return poor achievement in their academic work in the subject. again, attitude towards learning a subject may be positively correlated with achievement in the subject but that is not enough a yardstick to conclude that the cause of such achievement is completely attitude. it could be that such achievement assisted in shaping the students attitudes towards the subjects. the findings did not undermine omotayo (2002) argument that students bring into classroom acquired attitude which could hinder or facilitate learning. by implication, pedagogical teachers, should as a matter of necessity, make great effort and sacrifice in terms of time to design and inculcate attitude-shaping behaviours into the teaching/learning processes for the benefit of the learners in the school. this finding is in line with the finding of adepoju (2002), ogunwuyi (2000), and gibbons et al. (1997). the low and significant relationship observable between teachers’ workload, teachers experience and students achievement in biology could be due to lack of commitment on the part of the teachers, as well shallow knowledge of application of methodology and psychology of imparting the biology course content by the teachers into the students. this finding further gave credence to the fact that attitude towards teaching subject is a strong and potent weapon that can influence achievement in learning. the result of this study further indicated that 62.5% of the variance in the academic achievement in biology among secondary school students was explained by linear combination of the teachers’ attitude, qualification, experience, workload and students’ attitude. it also shows that students’ attitude has the most potent contribution to the prediction followed by the teachers’ qualification and the teachers’ attitude while the teachers work load shows the least contribution to the academic achievement in biology. this finding corroborate the findings of (onocha, 1985; mukerjee, 2002; houston et al., 2002; and sidhu et al., 2011) who reported that attitude to mathematics explained more of the total variance than the children intelligence and that attitude of students towards science were linked with some personality factors through relationship with teachers. this finding have shown that students’ attitude, teachers’ qualification and teachers’ attitude were the most important factors than the other independent variables in the prediction of academic achievement in biology among senior secondary school students. the result that students’ attitude showed to be the most potent contributing factor among the variables to the prediction can be explained from inter-relationship between the students and the teachers. teachers are supposed to be a role model to the students, and if teachers’ attitude towards studying biology is positive, such teacher(s) should device all methods entice students to develop positive attitudes to learning the subject. this suggests that teachers should not bring into the teaching/learning situations behavior that can jeopardize the development and acquisition of positive attitudes towards the learning by the students. teacher qualifications are another factor identified as making contribution to the prediction. the contribution is not as weighty as students’ attitudes because teachers’ qualifications deal with the mastery of secondary school biology content alone and could not guarantee appropriate and effective transmission of acquired body of knowledge. yet, the combination of appropriate training of personnel and application of appropriate methodology of teaching can achieve it. teachers, therefore, need to develop positive healthy work ethics, attitude and zeal towards their teaching job, and by implication, it becomes imperative that a would-be teacher should receive training on pedagogical teaching and educational psychology to guide would-be teachers in the “art of teaching”. conclusion therefore, there is need for both the students and teachers of biology in senior secondary schools to have positive attitudinal change towards learning and teaching of biology accordingly to improve on the learning outcomes of secondary school students in biology. government, both at the federal and states ministry of education level, should as a matter concern, organize regular seminar and workshops for the teachers to refresh their memories about new developments and skills currently in use in the field of teaching biology to current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 8 secondary school pupils in order to improve the quality of teaching strategies of the teachers as well as improving the learning processes of the students. references ademulegun, d. 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(2009). relationship between teachers’ attitude and students’ academic achievement in mathematics in some selected senior secondary schools in south west, nigeria. european journal of social sciences, 11(3), 364-369. . current issues in education vol. 16 no. 1 10 article citation gbore, l. o., & daramola, c. a. (2013). relative contributions of selected teachers’ variables and students’ attitudes toward academic achievement in biology among senior secondary school students in ondo state, nigeria. current issues in education, 16(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/809 author notes l. o. gbore, ph.d department of guidance and counseling adekunle ajasin university akungba-akoko ondo state, nigeria drglawolu@yahoo.co.uk dr. l.o. gbore is currently working as a lecturer in the department of guidance and counseling, faculty of education, adekunle ajasin university, akungba akoko, ondo state, nigeria. his areas of interest include test, measurement and evaluation, applied statistics, psychology and research methods. c. a. daramola, ph.d department of guidance and counseling adekunle ajasin university akungba-akoko ondo state, nigeria dr. c. a. daramola is currently working as a lecturer in the department of guidance and counseling, faculty of education, adekunle ajasin university, akungba akoko, ondo state, nigeria. his areas of interest include psychopathology and culture and special education. manuscript received: 9/20/2011 revisions received: 11/11/2012 accepted:11/24/2013 relative contributions of selected teachers’ variables and students’ attitudes toward academic achievement in biology among senior secondary school students in ondo state, nigeria 11 volume 16, number 1 january 20, 2013 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors melinda a. hollis rory schmitt assistant executive editors laura busby elizabeth reyes layout editors bonnie mazza elizabeth reyes recruitment editor hillary andrelchik copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy technical consultant andrew j. thomas section editors hillary andrelchik michelle crowley ayfer gokalp darlene michelle gonzales courtney hart david isaac hernandez-saca sultan kilinc younsu kim linda s. krecker carol masser bonnie mazza constantin schreiber faculty advisors dr. gustavo e. fischman dr. jeanne m. powers microsoft word curriculum integration and adaptation individualizing pedagogy for linguistically and culturally diverse students.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x curriculum integration and adaptation: individualizing pedagogy for linguistically and culturally diverse students tynisha d. meidl & christopher meidl st. norbert college citation meidl, t. & meidl, c. (2011). curriculum integration and adaptation: individualizing pedagogy for linguistically and culturally diverse students. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract in the united states, populations identified as linguistically and culturally diverse (lcd) are increasing at the fastest rate in public schools (samway & mckeon, 2007). lcd students have not performed as well as their monolingual and/or affluent peers on state mandated assessments. no child left behind act (2001) stressed this disparity as “the achievement gap,” resulting in highly structured curricular demands from districts forcing teachers to grapple between those demands and meeting the academic and cultural needs of lcd students. using case-study methodology, this research explored how teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning influence curriculum decision-making for lcd students. through the triangulation of interviews, observations, and document analysis, three teachers and their students in a low-income, urban, k4 school in a predominantly spanish-speaking community was investigated. participants integrated and adapted curriculum based on personal beliefs about teaching and learning, the needs of their lcd students, and the mandated curriculum. keywords: linguistically and culturally diverse, curriculum planning, curriculum integration, curriculum adaptation c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 2 about the author(s) author: tynisha d. meidl affiliation: st. norbert college address: 100 grant street, de pere, wi 54115 email: tynisha.meidl@snc.edu biographical information: dr. t. meidl is an assistant professor at st. norbert college in teacher education. her research focuses on literacy, preparing pre-service teachers for the reading classroom, and academic service learning in teacher education. author: christopher meidl affiliation: st. norbert college address: 100 grant street, de pere, wi 54115 email: chistopher.meidl@snc.edu biographical information: dr. c. meidl is a visiting assistant professor at st. norbert college in teacher education. he currently teaches undergraduate courses in early childhood education. his research includes character education. c u r r ic l u l u m in t e g r a t io n a n d a d a pt a t io n 3 curriculum integration and adaptation: individualizing pedagogy for linguistically and culturally diverse students the changing climate of classrooms in the united states increasingly includes populations who are linguistically and culturally diverse (lcd) (samway & mckeon, 2007). to better understand what linguistically and culturally diverse students are defined as “minority populations” (darder, 1991). based on the u.s. census bureau’s definitions of race and for the focus, when discussing individuals from lcd backgrounds refers to any person who is (1) of non-white ancestry and/or (2) utilizes english as a second language. nieto (2005) states given the inexactness of language, just one term cannot fully encompass all that composes a person. research has indicated that students from racial and ethnic-minority backgrounds do not perform as well academically as their mainstream peers (darder & torres, 2004). sleeter (2001) suggested “education in many communities of color, as well as many poor white communities, is in a state of crisis” (p. 94). she continued by saying, “students are learning far too little, becoming disengaged, and dropping out at high rates” (sleeter, 2001, p. 94). in a climate of standards/objectives based reform, educators have to seek ways to address diversity in classrooms and employ practices that concentrate on the needs of lcd student populations. as a result, many public schools adopt curricula aligned to state standards under the auspice of making planning easier for teachers or preparing students for standardized assessments. often times, classroom teachers may not be included or have limited input in the process of adopting curriculum. when teachers are not included in the curriculum adoption process or curriculum decision-making, they are forced to plan and deliver curriculum that may neither be appropriate for meeting the needs of their diverse students nor permit opportunities for c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 4 individualized instruction. tomlinson (2000) summarized the notion of stripping from teachers the ability to create effective curricula when he wrote: for many teachers, curriculum has become a prescribed set of academic standards, instructional pacing has become a race against a clock to cover the standards, and the sole goal of teaching has been reduced to raising student test scores on a single test (p. 7). a disconnect occurs between the needs of children from diverse cultures and the system of instructional delivery, including curriculum, planning, and materials, in public education in the united states (darder & torres, 2004). the curriculum materials should be chosen based on evidence that they contribute to the production of meaningful learning experiences. educators, on the front lines, are attempting to close the achievement gap as judged against proficiency delineated by standards in academic areas, without being equipped with the proper tools to both meet both state standards and students learning needs. in an era of educational reform, appropriate curricula and materials are essential for embracing the background knowledge of diverse learners. teachers’ voices and involvement are essential for developing and adapting curricula and adjusting learning experiences and formative assessments to create educational success (owings & kaplan, 2001). appropriate curricula allow teachers to create lessons that empower students to be successful learners. when teachers are not given the autonomy to create appropriate curricula, the planned curricula, especially when scripted, is informally modified through instructional delivery (tomlinson, 2000). objectives-driven curricula provide the exact content, written in measurable terms, to which district administrators expect teachers to adhere (darder & torres, 2004). instead of teachers using objectives based “melting-pot” mentality and the “one-size-fitsall” approach, they should be encouraged to incorporate differentiation of learning, inclusive of c u r r ic l u l u m in t e g r a t io n a n d a d a pt a t io n 5 language, culture, community, and socioeconomic status that best serves students (darder, 1991). currently, teachers are confined to the curricular demands of the school or district while grappling with the academic and cultural needs of lcd students. curriculum adoption and teacher voice nieto (2002) stated, “teachers sometimes view curriculum development as little more than a technical activity rather than as a dynamic and potentially empowering decision-making process” (p. 190). curriculum should challenge students to think creatively and critically. according to nieto (2002), teachers have tremendous power when deciding how to execute a curriculum. effective learning occurs when teachers “learn to view curriculum as a decision making process in which their own creativity and talents can be used” (nieto, 2002, p. 191). the following explores curriculum in these contexts: curriculum adoption and teacher voice, nclb requirements, effects of standards/objectives-based reform, scripted curriculum, and addressing student academic needs through individualizing instruction. teachers’ voices in curriculum decision making is paramount to student outcomes and the ability for teachers to meet individual student needs. shavelson (1983) believed that a unique feature of teacher decision-making is that most decisions are made in front of the class during the instruction process. he called this “real time” decision-making (shavelson, 1983, p.325). because many teacher choices are done spontaneously in front of the classroom, teachers must rely on their own knowledge and experience to determine the appropriate path to take. owings and kaplan (2001) found that teachers who have an active voice in curriculum development or leeway to adapt and adjust curriculum are able to design creative and unique learning experiences and formative assessments so learners experience success. as ladsonbillings (2006) explained, teachers demonstrate the ability to make professional decisions about c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 6 curriculum in the process of constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing curriculum. this process is never to “tear down” (ladson-billings, 2006, p. 32), but to expose weaknesses, discover ways to address weaknesses, and then, through critical analysis, make decisions about the best ways to fill the weakness. effects of standards-based reform in an era of standards/objectives based reform, curricular focus is on alignment to state standards/objectives with state testing as the anchor. standards and objectives suggest a “onesize-fits-all” approach (samway and mckeon, 2007). decisions of curricula creation and “pedagogical imperatives of the classroom” are founded on state standards and objectives (darder & torres, 2004, p. 80). the curriculum, as a result, has become a prescribed set of skills leading instruction (tomlinson, 2000). the intent of standards/objectives based curriculum is for all students to become competent applying skills demonstrating mastery of content matter. standards/objectives based reform in american public schools are a response to criticisms that schools were not preparing students with the knowledge and skills necessary for college or fulltime employment (owings & kaplan, 2001). standards based instruction, often times assessed through high-stakes testing, is believed by some to be the most effective way to raise student achievement (mclaren & farahmandpur, 2001). a standardized approach to school curriculum has resulted in teachers being given exact content and expected to adhere to the form of delivery prescribed by the curriculum designer (darder & torres, 2004). some policy makers have argued that is what is needed to decrease the achievement gap between students. in contrast, kaplan and owings (2001) argue that standards and objectives deprive students and teachers of a broad range of creative learning experiences. c u r r ic l u l u m in t e g r a t io n a n d a d a pt a t io n 7 scripted curriculum some school districts, under the pressure of accountability due to the residual effects of nclb and currently race to the top, are choosing scripted curriculum designed to complement state standards, thought to lead to increased achievement. scripted curriculum not only takes away the decision-making ability of teachers, but also articulates the exact words teachers are to say during instruction (ladsonbillings, 2006). thinking that meaning is enhanced or depleted by emphasizing the specificity of exact words epitomizes hall’s concept of the united states as a low-context society (bennett, 2003). giving educators the exact words to be spoken viewed by some as a strategy to “teacher proof” learning by prescribing a particular sequence and format, that is often skill driven (darder & torres, 2004). the system of high-stakes testing and standards/objectives based instruction legislated by federal government and state governments, and endorsed by many school districts has led to a very trade like culture to teaching. the concept of “right or wrong” approaches to instruction has led to what darder and torres (2004) have called a “deprofessionalized” vocation driven by “mistake” free scripted curriculum. “deprofessionalizing” or what shannon (2007) calls “deskilling,” is where planned or mandated curriculum reduces teaching to a technical skill. with teachers being accountable for student learning as demonstrated solely on high-stakes tests, there is pressure for instruction to center around skills found in district and state tests. hence, teaching becomes a procedure of teaching skills in a similar fashion to a technical job where success is based on a job being done to code, and entails a sense of correctness or incorrectness. the emphasis on skills supports traditional “melting-pot” and the one-size-fits-all approaches to instructional delivery. differentiation, from a standards/objectives based model, is not grounded in the appreciation of c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 8 language, culture, community, and social economic status as darder (1991) suggests. instead, it is anchored in approaches meant to teach and reteach skills until “mastered” by students. darder (1997) states how scripted curriculum, “fails to acknowledge the creative potential of educators to grapple effectively with a multiplicity of contexts found in classrooms and to shape environments according to the lived experiences and actual educational needs of their students” (p. 332). this approach to curriculum design employs banking methods to teach basic skills; with the assumption students will score higher on standardized tests (darder & torres, 2004). therefore scripted curriculum reinforces instruction with what freire (1970) described as “banking” (p.72). freire’s (1970) notion of “banking” describes a process where teachers, the depositors, make deposits of knowledge and information into the minds, depositories, of passive students. the adoption of scripted curriculum insinuates teachers need to be directed in what and how to teach while students are expected to attain specific skills deemed necessary for future success in society by politicians, businessmen, and administrative level educators of the dominant culture. a major effect of scripted and planned curriculum, according to kayes and maranto (2006), is that recently graduated pre-service teachers are leaving certification programs with the expectation they don’t need to be able to develop curriculum because, “the curriculum people will tell you what to teach” (p. 41). when teachers are required to use scripted curriculum, both “students and teachers, as subjects of classroom discourse who bring their personal stories and life experiences to bear on their teaching and learning, are systematically silenced by the need for the class to ‘cover’ a generic curriculum at a prescribed pace established by the state” (darder & torres, 2004, p. 87). nieto (1999) summed up the backlash of planned and scripted curricula as c u r r ic l u l u m in t e g r a t io n a n d a d a pt a t io n 9 learning environments in which students are subjected to “stale teaching and irrelevant curriculum” (p. 78). addressing student needs through individualized instruction brisk and harrington (2007) elucidated upon lived constructs related to teaching and learning saying, “students are individuals very different from each other” (p. 16). individualizing instruction is not a means to “water down” curriculum. nieto (2002) claims, “good teachers know that learning begins where the students are at” (p.192). effective individualized instruction necessitates identifying and recognizing students’ abilities as strengths and not weaknesses. pang and kamil (2004) suggested that instruction should build on students’ knowledge and experiences as well as present opportunities for students to make connections between school and community-based knowledge sources. perez and torres-guzman (1996) discussed setting up learning environments where instruction does not consist of drills, but projects, dramatic presentations, storytelling, and encouraging teachers to seize teachable moments when students have real purpose for learning. another way to individualize instruction is through an understanding of students. brisk and harrington (2007) discussed teachers’ knowledge of students’ personal life, home and situational factors, in establishing individualized instructional techniques helping to teach, motivate, and evaluate students. an active voice in curriculum development increases teachers’ ability to adapt curriculum and adjust learning experiences, including formative assessments so each learner experiences success (owings & kaplan, 2001). standards-based reforms have led many schools to make objectives-based curriculum aligning to state standards as evidenced by samway and mckeon (2007). current education reforms and policies such as nclb and race to the top have endorsed curricular materials c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 10 debatably described as being based on sound evidence, sometimes through research funded by for profit educational companies who profit from the perceived evidence. states and districts in hopes they ensure students’ proficiency in academic content areas adopt these marketed curricular materials. increasingly the result of this movement is away from teacher-based decision making to state and school districts mandating teachers use scripted curriculum as a means to raise test scores. methods this qualitative study focused on how teachers in a small, urban elementary school in the northeast negotiated their beliefs, teaching materials, and instructional delivery in linguistically culturally diverse (lcd) classrooms. the central focus of the study was based on the “overarching” research question (creswell, 1998, p. 99): how do teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning influence curriculum decision making for lcd students? this question, as it applies to everyday classrooms, seeks to understand what it means when teachers use rhetoric such as “every student can learn.” investigation site the elementary school featured in this case study was chosen because it serves a lcd community in an urban area. the school site serves a low-income, inner-city, k–4 school in a predominantly spanish-speaking community. the building is over one hundred years old and was built to serve 125 students, but served 334 students at the time of the research. the largest demographic group represented in the school was latino at 93.4%, while the remaining population was 3.3% african american and 2.7% caucasian. although the student population was largely spanish-speaking, all classes were taught in english with an emphasis on english as a second language (esl) strategy. c u r r ic l u l u m in t e g r a t io n a n d a d a pt a t io n 11 participants the participants invited to take part in this research were state certified thirdand fourthgrade teachers. these teachers held teaching certificates in their content areas and each had over ten years of teaching experience. each had worked in this school for a minimum of four years. all three of the teachers identified as caucasian, and one spoke spanish. all other demographic data regarding teachers and students was collected through interviews to understand the background characteristics of the teachers and the classrooms where they were teaching. observations and interviews this research focused on teachers’ beliefs about lcd student populations influence their curriculum decision-making, one form of data collected was observations designed to understand the instructional intersections between the written curriculum, curriculum planning, and instructional delivery through the actions and interactions of the participants. observations were conducted on a daily basis for eight weeks during literacy instruction. the researcher made daily visits to the elementary school and visited the three participants for 60 minutes of the 90-minute literacy block. the observations were of direct instruction, mini-lessons, small groups, one on one conferences, and assessments. the research employed a field log to organize and document data. systematic field observations and maintained detailed written records of the observations established a contextual basis for understanding and interpreting the interviews. in-depth, semi-structured interviews were the primary source of data used to understand participants’ perceptions about teaching and learning with lcd students. teachers were interviewed to collect information about past and present experiences as a means to assist the researcher in making sense of the participating teachers’ beliefs and philosophies about teaching and learning. in addition, teachers reflected on their instructional practices and defined their c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 12 beliefs about teaching and learning for lcd students. the interviews were scheduled, securing a time and location, to occur after the first week of the school year. the interviews took place at the school site during the school day or at the end of the school day. the follow-up interviews were intended to draw explanations about teachers’ instructional delivery based on observations and data from the initial interview. the explanations created an understanding of how teachers negotiate between their beliefs and the needs of their classrooms in planning and delivering instruction. each follow-up interview lasted about thirty minutes. follow-up interviews were designed to obtain clarification of teachers’ beliefs about practices, addressing the needs of lcd students, observed and statements made during previous interviews. analyzing interviews, observations, and documents three sources of data were analyzed both as single sources of data and for the relationships between them (stake, 1995). using yin’s (2003) analytic strategies for observations and interviews, a descriptive framework for organizing this case study was developed. first, interviews and field notes were transcribed. the researcher searched for patterns of behavior and outcomes that generated a list of categories. after categories were identified, the data were manually coded to visually denote the patterns and the contradictions. besides analysis of documents the researcher collected from observations and interviews, documents relevant to prescribed content involved in curriculum planning, such as district time lines, also called pacing schedules, were analyzed. the purpose of engaging in document analysis was to explore the triangulation of the researcher’s observations, the teachers’ responses from the interviews, and the documents guiding and influencing teacher pedagogy. as merriam (2002) pointed out, “the strength of documents as a data source lies with the fact that they c u r r ic l u l u m in t e g r a t io n a n d a d a pt a t io n 13 already exist in the situation; they do not intrude upon or alter the setting in ways that the presence of the investigator might” (p.13). this is of importance because all of the documents are used for either planning, instruction, or for both. they are available on the district’s website and are expected to be used by teachers in daily classroom instruction. triangulation of data sources allows the interpretation of data to make sense of the case, and establish trustworthiness of relationships between the three data sources (stake, 1995). results data collected by the researcher consisted of an initial and concluding interview, observations of each teacher’s literacy instructional period along with a follow up interview after each week of observations. as the data was coded the following themes emerged: (a) curriculum adaptation and (b) curriculum integration. curriculum integration and adaptation were strategies teachers employed to create equilibrium between teaching the content and skills of the mandated curriculum required for the six-week assessment and the learning needs of the lcd students. the following sections analyze and synthesize the data, incorporating relevant literature as it pertains to the findings focused specifically on curriculum adaptation and integration through the use of non-district mandated supplemental resources and technology. the particpants described the curriculum used in their classroom as a “mandated curriculum based on the state standards,” that the district calls the “core curriculum.” tomlinson (2000) explained that, “for many teachers, curriculum has become a prescribed set of academic standards, instructional pacing has become a race against a clock to cover the standards, and the sole goal of teaching has been reduced to raising student test scores on a single test” (p. 7). as participants thought about how they planned for instruction in their classrooms many of them referred back to the district’s pacing guide or pacing schedule as a docment that “may not c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 14 always fit every student or every classrom because student needs are not taken into account” (participant response). in reflection on the needs of their individual students and their classrooms, participants discussed the tension between what the mandated curriculum prescribed for them to teach and their ability to do so. the following vignette attempts to capture the tension expressed by partcipants: … if i realize that students don’t get it, i am re-teaching it in, it’s the sixth week. if i realize i'm never touching it again according to the curriculum; [but] not according to me. what i do, according to me, is i would further the skill. i would further predicting [for three weeks], because i know it's a very important strategy that they need to have. they need to go deeper into it. not just tell me a basic prediction. they have been doing that since kindergarten, so i feel that even if it says we are done predicting, and never talking about again, it can always be touched on. these are important strategies, just like all the other comprehension strategies. they are all very important. in resolving the tension between teachers’ beliefs about teaching, learning, and the mandated or planned curriculum, the participants individualized and adapted instructional pedagogy. curriculum integration and curriculum adaptation are conceptually individualized pedagogical approaches to address teachers’ perceptions of inadequate curriculum choices. the implemented curriculum is how teachers interpret curriculum and “maximize the value of their lessons in light of the dynamics of their classroom” (marsh & willis, 2007, p. 185). supporting clandinin’s (1986) work, participants sought ways to either integrate other strategies, viewed as “best practices,” or incorporate alternative resources into the mandated curriculum. they used resources and programs that fit their beliefs about teaching and learning along with the intention of addressing the needs of diverse learners in their classrooms. c u r r ic l u l u m in t e g r a t io n a n d a d a pt a t io n 15 curriculum adaptation the mandated curriculum was organized by one-size-fits-all objectives and standards intended for designated grade level instruction. incongruence occurs when designers of mandated curriculum presume students have the prerequisite skills necessary to introduce new skills. not only are prerequisite skills disregarded, but also a delinquency within the mandated curriculum to revisit skills taught previously in lieu of maintaining a pace so “coverage” occurs. teachers navigate the incongruence using one or more strategies. for example, a third grade teacher states: “…if i realize that students don’t get it, i am re-teaching it. what i do, according to me, is i would further the skill. i would further predicting for three weeks, because i know it's a very important strategy that they need to have.” the particpants “do more clarification” or find ways to “slow things down” for students instead of focusing on “coverage.” during an observation one fourth grade teacher was teaching students how to make predictions. she knew students had learned making predictions. she modeled making predictions thorugh a read aloud and prediction chart. every student had a white board and she would read then stop and have students make predictions. students during their independent reading time were making predictions about what would happen next or how their story would end. as she conferenced with individual students she would have students orally make predictons for her. participants referred to this approach as “going deeper” rather than “reteaching” which is what teachers did. the mandated curriculum perpetuates maximum coverage of material, breadth over depth, with greater amounts of surface knowledge leading to a mastery of subject knowledge (tomlinson, 2002). the participants validated the quality of the parts of the planning and scheduling timeline that fit their personally constructed beliefs about teaching, learning, and c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 16 instructional practices. dissonance came when they disagreed with the mandated skills within the planning and scheduling timeline. when the participants perceived deficiencies in the curriculum for the abilities of their students, they found concordance of the various influences on classroom pedagogy through adaptations and supplements to the curriculum. some strategies for modifying the curriculum included clarifications/connections of concepts or adjusting the pacing schedule, completely or in part, for students. the idea of “going deeper” was echoed by all participants, especially when students needed more time to learn the skills outlined to be learned during a specified period of time. “going deeper” would challenge students to engage in higher order thinking such as synthesizing and evaluating information. observations indicate this pedagogical practice as “reteaching” or “differentiating” instruction based on students needs. participants reteach concepts and skills students do not master or as a means to make the curriculum recursive. curriculum adaptation portrays the way that participants “tweak the curriculum.” “tweaking the curriculum defined by participants are ways curriculum is perceived to be adapted to create a “good program” with “what works in the classroom and what doesn’t.” participants believed they could reconcile the limitations of the mandated curriculum by “tweak [ing] it to fit the children and learners in the class.” a participant stated, “i take what i know will work, i take what they [students] need. i model it into a lesson i know that my children will get something from.” participants explained that the curriculum did not leave room for creativity or for prerequisite concepts to be taught. while the document informs teachers as to what concepts and skills to teach, it also “fails to acknowledge the creative potential of educators to grapple effectively with the multiplicity of contexts they find in their classrooms and to shape environments according to the lived experiences and actual educational needs of their students” c u r r ic l u l u m in t e g r a t io n a n d a d a pt a t io n 17 (darder et al., 1997, p. 332). the pacing timetable dictates when specific concepts and skills have to be taught while making assumptions as to how certain concepts will be taught in order to prepare for the district and state assessments. teachers used curriculum adaptation and integration to make curriculum decisions based on their beliefs about creativity and best practices learned throughout their experience as described by nieto (2002). participants adapted curricula when it conflicted with what they believed was good teaching. as a result, teachers who recognized the importance of cultural relevance appeared to have greater dissonance between personal beliefs about teaching and learning, the mandated curriculum, and addressing their lcd students’ needs. for example, a third grade teacher stated, “at times there may be a need for mini-lessons.” in this case it was a phonics lesson in the middle of the literacy lesson that the researcher observed; later the teacher described, “if the students need a phonics review i am not going to neglect that need and keep going. i am going to teach the phonics lesson that is needed because that is going to impact learning later on.” teachers incorporated mini-lessons to adjust for students’ lack of prior knowledge with a skill or concept presented in the district’s pacing schedule. the mini-lesson also provided an opportunity for the teacher to model thinking about text, make connections across content areas, and introduce or re-teach literacy strategies. mini-lessons, aligned to the objectives but not necessarily in congruent with the pacing schedule allowed for instruction as a means to either extend learning or fill in gaps beyond the set objectives. for instance, if the third-grade curriculum indicated predictions were to be taught for a week, then making predictions was a mini-lesson taught and reinforced throughout the week. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 18 the participants believed they continued to use “good teaching and learning” by using supplemental resources to focus on skills and re-teaching. many opportunities were created for students to learn skills taught through additional teaching. small groups and independent instruction were two strategies discussed and observed to address students’ needs. curriculum integration unlike curriculum adaptation, which takes the currulum and makes modifications using the same materials and resources idenitfied by the district, curricululum integration combines outside resources with the existing curriculum to “fill the gaps” or “meet student needs,” where the core curriculum seems to fail to do so. during observations the researchers saw teachers using outside resources or approaches to deliver the planned curriculum. for example, a third grade and a fourth grade teacher used aspects of other curricular approaches such as: readers and writers workhop and message time plus, to meet the needs of their students in the area of literacy. technology played an integral role in delivering instruction; however, its use is not defined in the curriculum. in numerous observations the researcher watched one participant rely on the smart board in the classroom for instruction. a smart board has been provided by the district to assist in instructional delivery, however was only present in this participants classroom. in addition, the curricular materials did not identify technology integration, technology support or the use there of as a means to meet the standards. the data indicates that the core curriculum, which informs instructional practice, is not designed to incorporate this type of technology as supported by the following vignette. while teaching is going on, you constantly have to scan the room to differentiate what kind of delivery you are giving them, to differentiate the kind of activities you are going c u r r ic l u l u m in t e g r a t io n a n d a d a pt a t io n 19 to give them. there have been times i've had an activity ready, and i'm like i'm not going to give them this today because they are no way ready for it; or, it's too boring for them because they've already got it. so you modify right there, and that's where the smart board is a really great tool, because you can come up with another activity (snaps fingers) on the spot. finally, teachers found ways to integrate students language into instruction as a means to “clarify” or “make connections” with what students know. curriculum integration “help[s] build the prerequisite skills so that they [students] can get the target skills that are identified by the pacing schedule.” from an observation, one of the fourth grade teachers used an old set of english textbooks with her students. when asked about this on a follow up interview she stated, “i am outsourcing. it is the content that i am working on. i try to use as many sources as i can to implement the core curriculum.” in addition, another particpant discussed how many students have a limited number of experiences and as a result it makes it hard for them to connect with the texts in the basal reader, the reading program purchased by the district, and other parts of the curriculum. the use of newspapers in the classroom, helps when it is integrated into the curriculum. unlike curriculum adaptation, curriculum integration combines supplemental resources with the existing curriculum to “fill the gaps” or “meet student needs” where the core curriculum was perceived to fail to do so. curriculum integration, as observed and explained by participants, “help[s] build the prerequisite skills so that they [students] can get the target skills that are identified by the pacing schedule,” as stated by a participant during an interview. all of the participants make use of supplemental resources, like a smart board, to assist in c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 20 instructional delivery. the particpants drew on their past experiences, likes and dislikes to make not only teaching choices, but curriculum choices as well (shavelson, 1983). discussion this study set out to explore how teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning impact curriculum planning to meet the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse students. the findings from this qualitative case study offer us a glimpse into the pedagogical approaches and instructional strategies that drive what teachers do in the classroom to meet the needs of lcd students. as in any case study, generalizability is left to the reader and the findings may not be generalizable to all contexts. when teachers are able to reflect, identify, and name their own socialization process and experiences, they will be better able to recognize and identify those qualities in their students (ladson-billings, 2006). ultimately “you as a teacher, a professional, know what’s best for you students, your class and what works,” said a fourth grade teacher. teachers know what students “need in their heart.” this was a sentiment shared by participants. despite the strengths and weaknesses of the core curriculum, one participant statement encompasses the importance of being a reflective practitioner, “you don't want to have them [students] leave your room and not feel you've done the best possible job you could just because the curriculum says do this. you need to give them what they need to be lifelong learners.” the teachers clearly had beliefs about teaching and learning, but believed they should use the mandated or planned curriculum. although the participants recognized the deficiencies in the planning and scheduling timeline, they also validated it by using it as the foundation of their instructional practice. dissonance occurred in all three teachers when faced with a mandated curriculum that did not fit the needs of their students nor their beliefs about teaching and c u r r ic l u l u m in t e g r a t io n a n d a d a pt a t io n 21 learning. they chose one or more strategies to balance came when they disagreed with the mandated skills within the planning and scheduling timeline. the two major ways teachers met the needs of lcd students as identified through this research was curriculum adaptation and curriculum integration. a conclusion drawn from the data was that behind closed doors teachers made curriculum decisions based on their beliefs of what was best for their students rather than strict obedience to the district created pacing schedule. quality instruction for lcd students, where instruction is continually adjusted to address the needs of the students is supported by nieto and bode’s (2007) call for a standards-conscious curriculum. a standards-conscious curriculum is where standards are a tool for promoting a rigorous, demanding, and inspiring curriculum that can be creatively designed around the needs for diverse student populations. teachers must present opportunities for students to construct knowledge and reinvent their world through a curriculum providing activities, texts, and a variety of learning experiences. educators must be willing to transform curriculum and instructional pedagogy to engage students and connect learning to the real world. freire & macedo (1987) states: “what we do in the classroom is not an isolated moment separate from the ‘real world.’ it is entirely connected to the real world” (p. 25). connections to the real world provide authentic learning experiences that validate individual people, who they are, what they bring to the classroom, culturally and linguistically, which can be used to stimulate student engagement and academic success. teachers found ways to adapt and supplement the curriculum to balance the perceived deficiencies of curriculum. some strategies for modifying the curriculum included clarifications/connections of concepts or adjusting the pacing schedule, completely or in part, for students. the contentious part of the planning and pacing timeline is that teachers are c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 22 expected to teach in a way leading to high achievement on the state test. as one participant elaborated, “everything has to be linked to the test.” data such as this reinforces silvermail’s (1996) evidence that standardized testing promotes a narrowed curriculum. teachers used curriculum adaptation and integration to make curriculum decisions based on their beliefs about creativity and best practices learned throughout their experience as described by nieto (2002). although participants adapted curricula, they supported the mandated curriculum as a legitimate foundation for teaching and learning, as evidenced by lessons connectivity to the goals and objectives of the mandated curriculum. the more teachers recognized the importance of cultural relevance and context, the greater the dissonance between beliefs about teaching and learning, the mandated curriculum, and addressing their lcd students’ needs. the participants believed they continued to use “good teaching and learning” by using supplemental programs or curricula to focus on skills and re-teaching. many opportunities were created for students to learn skills taught through additional teaching. small groups and independent instruction were two strategies discussed and observed to address students’ needs. implications this study unveiled the how teachers used their professional judgment or “real time” decision making in the classroom to benefit their students. the use of professional judgment was explicated, as “you know what the kids need to know to survive.” explicitly structured curriculum, like the planning timeline, is teaching and learning operating at a technical level, in which content and skills are the predictors of the outcomes and goals of students as measured by benchmarks and the state assessment. as a result not all teachers are struggling, as professionals, to implement practice meant to address the unique needs of diverse students through an understanding of their students (language, culture, and lives). some have found ways to do what c u r r ic l u l u m in t e g r a t io n a n d a d a pt a t io n 23 is best for their students once the classroom door is closed, although the incongruence in what is being taught and a solid way to assess learning gets lost. although students’ needs may be met, they still are left behind their peers who have many more advantages when it comes to testing. another implication from this study could be the use of formal or informal dialogue may guide school-based curriculum planning meetings in which teachers reflect on their beliefs and goals for their students. school stakeholders must have dialogues where the needs of students represented in the school community as are identified and defined in an effort for greater application of academic and social learning. dialogues must include planning for teaching and learning experiences developed in intentional and innovative ways to meet students’ needs, while allowing them to develop a love for learning. dialogue in this sense is not simply having a conversation, but rather engaging in an on-going forum between and among colleagues, mentors, administrators, and others. the lack of dialogue or collaborations between constituents was evident as a fourth grade teacher indicated when discussing the mandated curriculum, “it does not always have what we need” and “needs more open ended writing in the curriculum.” the curriculum has “no flow with it.” it is, “missing great strategies; inferring, questioning, and visualization.” through reflective practices veteran and pre-service teachers begin to see themselves as learners and understand that they are also engaging in the learning process and are able to find ownership in the curriculum to be taught. conclusion in creating classrooms where the needs of lcd students are met, teachers need to become more aware of their own beliefs about teaching and learning, presumptions about mandated curriculum, and a true understanding of the instructional strategies that meet the needs of lcd students. mandated curriculum is implemented more fully when it is in line with c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 24 teachers’ 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(2003). case study research design and methods (3rd ed.). thousand oaks: sage. current issues in education c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 30 http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word teacher collaborationimplications for new mathematics teachers.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x teacher collaboration: implications for new mathematics teachers laura m. gellert the city college of the city university of new york lidia gonzalez york college of the city university of new york citation gellert, l. & gonzalez, l. (2011). teacher collaboration: implications for new mathematics teachers. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/ abstract one increasingly popular way of supporting new teachers is through the use of mentoring. new teachers are often paired with mentors as one of a number of supports meant to aid new teachers as they begin their career. the various types of mentoring range from school based mentors assigned by the school to specialty mentors, such as math coaches. examples of other types of supports that are thought of as separate from formal mentoring are lesson studies, professional development schools, professional development workshops supported by local universities, teacher networks and sponsored professional development. given the popularity of policies promoting support for new teachers, we explore specific supports for new teachers in addition to characteristics of these supports by focusing on two new alternatively certified mathematics c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 2 teachers in new york city. through observations and both formal and informal interviews that span a year, we gained insight into the various influences on these two teachers’ practice in mathematics and considered how these might inform future practices aimed at supporting new teachers. keywords: : mathematics education, mentoring, teacher collaboration, alternative certification t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 3 about the authors author: laura m. gellert affiliation: the city college of the city university of new york address: department of teaching, learning, and culture, school of education, the city college of the city university of new york, 160 convent avenue, new york, ny 10031 email: lgellert@ccny.cuny.edu biographical information: dr. laura m. gellert is currently an assistant professor in the department of teaching, learning, and culture in the school of education at the city college of the city university of new york. she teaches mathematics education courses. she received her ph.d. in urban education from the graduate center of the city university of new york. her main research interests are new elementary school teacher induction and the connections to the teaching of mathematics. author: lidia gonzalez affiliation: york college of the city university of new york address: 94-20 guy r. brewer blvd. jamaica, ny 11451 email: lgonzalez@york.cuny.edu biographical information: dr. lidia gonzalez is currently an assistant professor in the department of mathematics and computer science at york college of the city university of new york. she received her ph.d. in urban education from the graduate center of the city university of new york. while her primary research interest is in the teaching of mathematics c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 4 for social justice, she is interested, more broadly, in efforts at improving the educational experiences of urban youth. acknowledgement: this article is based upon work partially supported by the national science foundation (nsf) under grant no. esi-0333753. any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the nsf. t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 5 teacher collaboration: implications for new mathematics teachers current federal and state policies advocate that new teachers not be left to their own devices in a solitary classroom. the sink or swim model described by lortie (1975) is being replaced with a “rapid growth in mentoring and induction programs in recent decades” (2006, american association of state colleges and universities, p. 1) such that over 80 percent of new teachers now participate in such programs. one increasingly popular way of supporting new teachers is through the use of mentoring. new teachers are often paired with mentors as one of a number of supports meant to aid new teachers as they begin their career. many states, among them new jersey, california, michigan, virginia and new york, have mandated support programs for new teachers that include mentoring. mentoring and other supports are abundant in new york city public schools. the various types of mentoring range from school based mentors assigned by the school to specialty mentors appointed by the department of education of new york city (nycdoe). examples of other types of supports that are thought of as separate from formal mentoring are lesson studies, professional development schools, professional development workshops supported by local universities, teacher networks and doe sponsored professional development. specifically for new teachers in new york city with less than one year of teaching experience, a teacher mentoring program was adopted in 2004. this mentoring program consisted of four components: a) a rigorous mentor selection process, b) mentors whose full‐time job was mentoring, c) intensive mentor professional development, and d) regional rather than school‐based assignments. (new teacher project@ucsc, 2006) c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 6 given the popularity of policies promoting support for new teachers, we explore specific supports for new teachers in addition to characteristics of these supports by focusing on two new alternatively certified mathematics teachers in new york city. we consider the supports in place for these two teachers as well as the influence of these upon their mathematics teaching practices. some of these supports may include mentoring, collaboration with peers, professional development, and coursework. these teachers are part of a larger study focused on mathematics teachers certified through the new york city teaching fellows program, an alternative certification program that provides over 60% of new mathematics teachers in new york city. through observations and both formal and informal interviews that span a year, we gained insight into the various influences on these two teachers’ practice in mathematics. theoretical framework this paper is framed by the research around learning in social settings as well as on new teacher induction especially that on both mentoring and teacher collaboration. historically, teachers were expected to “sink or swim” (lortie, 1975). this was often coupled with new teachers entering the profession as outsiders with a general concept of what to do but little experience in actually doing it. with this model, many teachers reverted to a teaching method that was familiar to them and did not deviate from, reflect on, or change this method (feimannemser, 2001) drawing on their first opportunity for learning how to teach, one’s own practice as a learner (bransford, brown, and cocking,1999). in recent years, teachers have had more opportunities to learn from their peers as well as from the school culture and the benefits of these opportunities have been studied. darlinghammond (1998) notes that, “teachers learn best by studying, doing and reflecting, by collaborating with other teachers, by looking closely at students and their work and by sharing t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 7 what they see” (p. 1). teachers who are aware of and involved in a practice where participants can talk, work, generate ideas, build on others’ ideas, reason, explore, and discover together can create reflective learning environments that may have the ability to experience what franke, carpenter, fennema, ansell, and behrend (1998) call “self-sustaining generative change” in their own learning. this process incorporates not only reflection on the practice of teaching but also continual engagement in a collaborative practice that is supported institutionally. working in learning communities may not alone lead to change and growth as there needs to be a connection to practice (rufo-tepper, 2009). rather than functioning in isolation, this view of teacher development and learning puts the teachers’ social environment at the center of teacher learning. that teachers learn from the social environments in which they participate has its roots in social learning theories that describe how people learn in practice. the work of both vygotsky (1978) and dewey (1997) is seminal in this area and adds to our understanding of how new teachers learn by stressing that what people do in practice influences what they learn.(vygotsky, 1978; dewey, 1997). if the practice is designed to further our learning, then it involves “overcoming the inertia that inclines us to accept suggestions at their face value” (dewey, 1997, p. 13). to be put in a situation of uncertainty or reflective thought leads to further inquiry and change. vygotsky writes about how social interactions are central to how we learn, reflect, and change. more recently the work of wenger (1998) takes the idea of learning in social settings even further by claiming that learning is inevitable in social situations and furthermore that learning itself is participation. teacher collaboration (peer-learning) taylor (2004) describes teacher collaboration as an interaction “in which teachers engage voluntarily with the intention of improving their practice” (p. 220). building on taylor’s c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 8 definition and adding to it the perception by teachers of being supported, we take teacher collaboration to mean the collegial interaction between peers, either voluntary or mandated, in which the participants feel supported and we use this definition throughout this paper. schools where new teachers are not isolated from their peers but instead work collaboratively with them tend to be most successful in terms of both meeting students’ needs and retaining teachers (johnson, 2004). as a result, providing opportunities for teachers to work together allows new teachers to be supported in their professional growth through activities such as lesson planning. kardos (2004b) explains that new teachers are more likely to stay in teaching when they “feel supported and are buoyed by a professional culture that encourages professional interaction” despite the persistence of the ‘sink or swim’ paradigm in schools (pp. 139-140). similarly, many studies support the use of teacher collaboration in the form of learning communities for the retention of teachers (smith and ingersoll, 2004; national commission on teaching and america's future [nctaf], 2005; new teacher project@ucsc, 2006). teacher collaboration affords teachers the opportunity to focus on practical ways of improving their teaching that they can use almost immediately. the focus is on their immediate situation and how best to improve it. taylor (2004) notes that, “teachers, like students, learn best when they are solving problems that they have identified and that are in the context of their daily lives” (p. 221). working with colleagues allows teachers to focus on classroom issues and make practical and specific changes in pedagogy that they are unlikely to be able to do with less frequent, pre-structured, non-school based supports (branford, et.al., 1999). outside mentors who are rarely a daily presence in teachers’ lives are often not relied on for ideas and feedback on immediate issues teachers face daily (foote, brantlinger, haydar, smith and gonzalez, 2011). t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 9 school based mentors while a more consistent presence in teachers’ lives may not be valued by these as highly as peer collaboration. the job of administrators and university mentors includes evaluating teachers, which may place them in a situation of power with respect to these teachers. this is unlike working with peers who may be more equal in power and position to one another. administrators often conduct observations to determine how well the teacher is fulfilling her/ his duties as an educator. while administrators may provide feedback on how to improve instruction, the evaluative nature of their work impacts the support they may be able to offer in ways that should not be dismissed. university mentors, although they are to provide feedback that improves instruction, are also using observations as evaluations of the teacher’s progress in relation to their graduate coursework. for this reason, kardos (2004b) explains that much more helpful to teachers are observations by peers that end not in evaluation or a letter in one’s file but instead in a debriefing session where the teachers learn about each others’ practice as well as reflecting on their own. while it certainly may be the case that power issues exist between colleagues especially between newer and more veteran teachers, for example, such power issues are not as pronounced as when working with a supervisor of some kind. such issues did not arise in the case of either of the two teachers we focus on. this may be due to the relatively young age of the teachers and the colleagues they chose to work with or perhaps is a result of these teachers seeking out such colleagues themselves. it is reasonable to expect that in choosing someone to work with, these teachers would select individuals who they admire but also with whom they do not feel powerless. in fact, it has been noted that when working with peers, as opposed to supervisors, new teachers may feel that they give to the interaction as well as take from it in the spirit of true collaboration, in part, because issues of power are diminished allowing for a more effective c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 10 means to develop teachers professionally (bransford, et.al., 1999). formal collaborations that are supported by the school are beneficial to the teachers’ overall feeling of support and guidance. johnson (2004) stresses that new teachers who are encouraged to observe and learn from veteran teachers and whose school structure supports this work, for example, through accommodations made in scheduling, tend to remain in their schools and be more successful in their work. mentoring mentoring has been shown, in many cases, to be a positive practice in the induction of new teachers. although many models exist, mentoring is often defined as a strategy for inducting new teachers into the profession where, “beginning teachers are paired with a more experienced teacher or, in some cases, with a team of experienced teachers, for guidance and support” (northwest regional educational laboratory, 2001, p. 14). in theory, mentors should be “available to answer questions, observe classes, problem solve, and talk confidentially to new teachers about problems they may be facing in the classroom” with two main goals which are to “support the new teacher” and “maximize his or her effectiveness in the classroom” (northwest regional educational laboratory, 2001, pp. 14-15). mentoring, when implemented properly, is considered a valuable way to enhance the development of new teachers (the new teacher center, 2007). some characteristics of successful mentoring include the use of peer mentors, a reliance on school-specific mentoring models and a structured approach to mentoring. kardos (2004a) also touts school-based support structures that orient new teachers to their buildings, school administration, colleagues, policies, procedures and so forth explaining that, t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 11 school based induction begins with the assumption that each school is unique and intricate and that, in order to succeed, a new teacher must understand her school’s particular mission, values, norms, traditions, curriculum, policies, and practices. becoming a good teacher necessarily means becoming a good teacher in the context of a particular school and its community (p. 195). furthermore she describes exemplary programs as those that rely on experienced teachers to induct new teachers, introduce new teachers to their schools, designate time and space for the mentoring to occur, and involve reflective teaching, observations and regular feedback for new teachers (kardos, 2004a). the use of a multi-year mentoring program and pairing new teachers and mentors in similar subject areas and grade levels and the ongoing training of mentors, has also been found to be successful (smith and ingersoll, 2004; the new teacher center, 2007). reasons why mentoring may not be successful in some cases include the relationship of the mentor and mentee, time committed to mentoring, whether mentoring is content specific and consistent across multiple mentors and supports/influences. the new teacher center (2007) recommends the rigorous screening and selection of mentors and for pairing with new teachers to be done in a purposeful manner to avoid issues of a bad fit. a lack of good fit between mentor and mentee may lead to a lack of success in their work. further, many programs have mentoring that occurs infrequently. however, frequent and prolonged interaction between the mentors and those being mentored seems most successful (gellert, 2008; smith and ingersoll, 2004). the number of mentors an individual has may cause difficulties. although being able to reflect on one’s teaching with the guidance of mentors can be a positive step towards improving one’s practice, if there are a large number of individuals offering support, this might make it difficult to coordinate the feedback and advice being given. as a result, teachers receive c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 12 different messages from each of these individuals, some of which may conflict and thus confuse the teacher leaving her/him unable to decide whose advice he/she should follow and becoming more of an obstacle than a support (foote, et. al., 2011; the new teacher center, 2007). overall, one thing that comes across from all of these studies is similar to what ingersoll & kralik (2004) stated in their research review on mentoring, “collectively the studies do provide empirical support for the claim that assistance for new teachers and, in particular, mentoring programs have a positive impact on teachers and their retention.” therefore, while mentoring clearly has the appearance of enhancing the success of beginning teachers, it exists in a variety of forms with differing degrees of success. methodology we report on a qualitative case study of two nyc teaching fellows with the goals of examining the formal and informal influences on their teaching practices and considering how these might inform future practices aimed at supporting new teachers. we focus on two research questions. 1. what are the influences/supports on the teaching practices of two nyc mathematics teaching fellows? 2. what are the characteristics of the influences and supports that the teachers find most beneficial to their teaching practices? data collection included two in-depth, semi-structured interviews of each participant. the participants, whom we will refer to by the pseudonyms kate and ellen, were in their first and second year of teaching respectively. as such, kate’s interviews took place prior to and after her first year of teaching while ellen’s took place at the start and end of her second year of teaching. the interviews lasted over an hour each. during the interviews teachers were asked t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 13 about their teacher preparation program, the supports in place to help them as they enter the teaching profession, their beliefs about teaching, mathematics and mathematics teaching as well as their teaching practices. these interviews varied significantly from post-observation interviews. post-observation interviews were more informal and conducted after a researcher observed the teacher teaching a lesson. the questions focused more on the lesson observed. they may include questions about why teachers chose a particular pedagogical approach, impressions of the teacher on the learning of students during the lesson, or clarification for the researcher about observed practices. the teachers were observed regularly over the course of two years. after each observation, the teachers wrote a reflection. these reflections varied in length and scope from teacher to teacher and reflection to reflection. more than anything, reflections gave teachers the opportunities to reflect on a particular lesson and make note of the impressions, ideas, feelings and beliefs that emerge as they considered the lesson. these were unstructured reflections so teachers could choose to write about whatever they felt was important to them. field-notes from the observations, the written reflections of the observed class and the follow-up interviews form part of the data upon which we rely for this paper. analysis was undertaken by coding the data. codes were created for each category of supports/influences that the teachers referred to in their interviews and reflections. the categories that were coded for included mentors, peers, administrators, school structure, and university coursework. we divided the supports/influences categories into two subcategories, formal and informal. formal supports/influences codes included mentors both from the university partners and the department of education, school-based math specialists, university coursework, curriculum, scheduling, and school administrators. informal supports/influences c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 14 codes included prior experiences as a learner, prior work experiences and collaborations with peers. coded statements were analyzed to connect the influences to teacher’s practice based upon how the teachers talked about these supports/influences. finally, comparisons were drawn between the teachers. we noted the similarities and differences in the ways they were supported and in additional supports/influences they may have sought out. before moving onto findings, we present a short introduction to each of the teacher participants. participants we were in the classroom of the two teachers participants twice a month for a full academic year with subsequent visits in the following academic year, and as a result quite familiar with these teachers and their practice. as data analysis unfolded in the larger study we noticed that there were patterns of similarity between these two particular teachers with respect to the supports/influences upon their teaching practices. this was particularly interesting to us given the fact that there were many differences between them in relation to the size of school (big school vs. small school), type of curriculum used (standardized curriculum vs. reform curriculum), grade level taught (middle school vs. high school), and the supports in place at their schools (many formal supports vs. few formal supports). as a result, we conducted a focused analysis of the data respective to each of these teachers so as to shed light on the similarities and differences in how supports /influences shape their teaching practices in mathematics. ellen. at the time of the study, ellen was entering her second year as a nyctf. prior to becoming a teaching fellow, ellen, with a degree in business management/finance was working in finance. she had taken some math courses during her undergraduate studies but was required t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 15 to participate in the math immersion program offered at the beginning of the program because her math background was not deemed strong enough by her university. ellen stated that she found the math immersion program to be a reinforcement of essential math topics (1st interview, september 2006). ellen became a teacher at a large new york city public high school with over 3,000 students. this school was similar to many of the large public high schools in that the population was largely minority students of middle to low socioeconomic status who did not come from the neighboring communities exclusively. some students were part of special small academies that the school set up in recent years. one major difference of this school as compared to other nyc public schools was that its administration successfully fought to adopt a reform mathematics curriculum about eight years ago and so did not rely on the mandated new york city department of education curriculum entitled math a and math b (prentice hall publication). the reform curriculum is project centered and focuses on problem solving. the chair of the mathematics department was a strong believer in this curriculum and made sure that all of the new teachers participated in an intensive two-week professional development on how to teach the reform curriculum before they began teaching at the school. at the time of this study, ellen taught both the first and second year of the reform curriculum that had students working cooperatively to discover properties of mathematics. in one observed lesson, a ninth grade class used protractors to measure the interior angles of triangles and quadrilaterals to figure out the sum of the angles of the given polygons and then the students worked collaboratively to find the formula for the sum of the angles of any polygon and determine and/or justify why the formula works (observation, october 2006). although, the school had aligned the reform curriculum with the new york state math a and math b c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 16 curriculum, ellen still found that she needed to find and provide additional resources to supplement the students’ learning and readiness for the state exams. these supplements consisted of traditional texts that were very procedurally focused (1st interview, september 2006). ellen had a university mentor and a department of education mentor her first year. in her second year neither of these supports was available, according to her (2nd interview, august 2007). the internal school support provided by the chair of the mathematics department with respect to the learning and teaching of the reform curriculum may have made the other mentors less of a presence in ellen’s practice. kate. at the start of the study, kate was entering her first year as a new york city teaching fellow. she had studied international relations as an undergraduate student and had worked several jobs prior to entering the nyctf program. kate was placed in the degree program for high school math teachers (grades 7-12), however, she asked to be placed in the middle school mathematics program (grades 5-9) because she felt her mathematics background was not strong enough to warrant her teaching at the high school level. she had taken calculus i as an undergraduate and later took linear algebra on her own prior to beginning the teaching fellows initial summer program which, for her as with ellen, included the math immersion program. kate enjoyed the math immersion program noting that it was a good review of the mathematics that she had gone many years without using (1st interview, september 2006). kate became a mathematics teacher at a small middle school with only a few hundred students. at the time of the study she was one of two 7th grade math teachers at the school. the school was housed on one floor of a much larger building, the other floors of which were used by t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 17 a large, comprehensive high school. the student population in kate’s school came from the surrounding neighborhood and could be described as working to middle class. there were various ethnicities, religions and primary languages represented. the school differed from others in that it integrated school fieldtrips with a focus on math and science into the curriculum. each subject teacher created a project that addressed a topic in that subject area while incorporating the trip in some way. to support the teachers, the school administration scheduled common planning time. at the start of the study, the school used the nycdoe standardized curricula, impact mathematics (mcgraw-hill, glencoe companies) and connected math (pearson/prentice hall). impact mathematics is “a complete mathematics program developed by the education development center, inc. it aligns with the everyday mathematics elementary program and supports the integration of conceptual understanding and the teaching of basic skills” (new york city department of education, n.d.). connected math is a complete middle school level mathematics curriculum that “helps students and teachers develop understanding of important mathematical concepts, skills, procedures, and ways of thinking and reasoning, in number, geometry, measurement, algebra, probability and statistics” (the connected math project, n.d.). kate’s first year of teaching can be described as teacher centered, i.e. half the time devoted to teacher talk, lecture, and little student group work (goodlad, 1983). however, she was somewhat open to new ideas, leading her to introduce more group work and exploratory lessons in her classroom as time went on (observation, january 2007). kate had a math coach based at the school, a university mentor and a department of education mentor. the administration at her school consisted of the principal and one assistant principal. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 18 findings the findings address the specific formal and informal ways the teachers’ practices were supported as well as the teachers’ perceptions about the supports/influences upon their practice. the formal supports/influences that emerged from the data are the mentors/ coaches/ administration, curriculum, and school structure. the informal supports/influences that emerged from the data were peer collaboration and how the individual teachers were taught mathematics themselves. we now consider these supports/influences. mentor/coaches/administration both kate and ellen noted that their experiences with mentors/coaches/administration were at times positive. for example, the school administration at kate’s school insisted that teachers sit students at tables in groups. she explained that although she was initially opposed to the idea, she did follow the school policy. the seating thing really bothered me [...] i understand that it’s important to have kids sitting in groups, but i don’t think that many 12-year-olds can handle facing away from the front of the room and out the window and be able to turn and focus when they need to. and i don’t think that the need to sit in groups is more important than the need to help them focus. so i wanted to have the tables in kind of a u, in rows shaped like a u so that they could still turn and work in fours really easily but everyone was facing the front, and i was told i wasn’t allowed to do that” (2nd interview, summer 2007). the prescribed seating structure facilitated conversations between students about the material. with time, kate began to see the value of these math-focused interactions. another example of the influence of kate’s administration was observed midway through her first year of t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 19 teaching. a student was up at the board explaining some problems, taking the role of the teacher. others called him by his last name and kate consistently deferred to him when questions arose. kate noted, “that was the first time i sent a student to the board. i was observed a few weeks before and [the assistant principal] suggested i do that so that i can get to the back of the room while i'm teaching” (post-observation interview, december 2006). at ellen’s school the administration also believed in group-work and to support this approach to learning the school had tables for students to work at as opposed to individual desks (observation, september 2006). furthermore, the administration stressed the need for projectcentered student work to be displayed in the classroom (post-observation interview, february 2007). the math specialist at each school offered suggestions and advice on how to teach a topic or some other specific practice. ellen and kate followed this advice at times while continuing to make adjustments and seeking further support. kate expressed frustration at the role of the math coach in her school saying, i mean she’d say things like, ‘you really need to work on your questioning’ or ‘you need to plan out your assessments in the beginning of the unit.’ i mean what are you supposed to do with those kinds of suggestions? smile and nod, ‘oh, thank you. i wouldn’t have thought of that’ (2nd interview, summer 2007). despite this, the math coach did suggest strategies that kate could use to involve students in the lesson to a greater degree. one was to have students explain their answers at the board. kate noted that she was trying to use this strategy more often. “i’ve started having kids share their answers in different ways. the math coach suggested it” (post-observation interview, c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 20 march 2007). this approach was dramatically different from her earlier lessons and highlights the influence of the coach on her practice. despite recalling positive experiences with their administration/mentors/coaches, neither teacher felt as if they were receiving all that they could from these individuals. for example, kate had a university mentor with whom she met very infrequently. she described, “i don’t remember how many times we were required to meet [this year], i think it may have been like four or five or something.” she highlighted the inefficient nature of her work with this mentor as follows. so every couple of weeks she would come in at a really inconvenient time and we would sit down and she would ask me if i needed any help or advice and i would explain to her how well everything was going and how i didn’t really need any help at all in any way. and i was always really trying to be really nice and tell her how fantastic everything was and then she would leave (2nd interview, summer 2007). in general, kate’s concern with such individuals was the infrequent nature of their meetings. on the other hand, ellen found the help offered by the math specialist (the chair) at her school helpful but fleeting. after a lesson involving probability, ellen stated that she received some pointers from her math specialist stating: when i spoke to [her], i mentioned that we did not get into detail in the training session, and i was not sure how i taught the lessons last year. she showed me the point strategy using a tree diagram, but it was rushed because it was just a few minutes before 2nd period was starting (post-observation interview, january 2007). t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 21 ellen expressed concern about this passing support throughout her first year as well. though, other mentors where non-existent in ellen’s 2nd year of teaching, she occasionally referred back to them. for example, in discussing an activity she used in class, she stated, “my liaison from [the university] introduced a similar concept to me last year” (post-observation interview, march 2007). school structure: curriculum working in a school with strong involvement from the head of the mathematics department in relation to the required reform curriculum, ellen was exposed immediately to this reform curriculum and a specific way of teaching mathematics. before beginning in september, the chair of the mathematics department of ellen’s school required all new teachers to participate in a two-week intensive professional development on how to use the reform curriculum. furthermore, the teachers were supplied additional materials on how best to incorporate the curriculum into the math a and math b requirements of the state of new york. throughout her second year of teaching, ellen regularly referred to her notes/lesson plans from the professional development as well as her notes/lesson plans from her first year of teaching. she found the professional development for the reform curriculum to be helpful but still felt that she needed to spend time figuring out ways to supplement the curriculum to align it with the new york state requirements. ellen stated after a unit on sequences that she “wished the curriculum helped me understand this topic better, they didn’t do enough preparation last year” (post-observation interview, october 2006). some issues that arose while ellen worked with the reform curriculum were a need for more non-traditional approaches to teaching, a need for supplementation, and a need for more professional development. as a result, ellen was teaching her class in a non-traditional manner c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 22 with lots of group work and open-ended questioning. the idea that mathematics is problem based and integrated made it necessary for students to solve mathematics problems by pulling from a variety of different subtopics in mathematics. however, ellen taught in a new york city public high school where students were required to take the math a and math b regents exams. therefore, ellen spent time in her class on regents review, which followed a very traditional format using test preparation texts. ellen found the curriculum to be influential in her thinking and teaching about mathematics. i think the thing that affected me the most was the curriculum and what was expected in the curriculum. i know that [the reform curriculum] is demanding, not so demanding on the teachers, but demanding on the students so that is what helped me the most in teaching mathematics last year (1st interview, september 2006). she stated this in the pre-interview before her second year of teaching. in her second year, she began to adjust her lesson plans according to changes in the scheduling of her math classes. in her first year, ellen taught in a double period class but in her second year, she needed to teach the same material in a single period. because of the time constraints, many of her reflections referred to adjusting the curriculum, having the students become familiar with the curriculum, and not spending too much time on certain activities, the time constraints make it difficult to complete one entire assignment in the time allotted, but once the students are more familiar with the language of [the reform curriculum] they will be able to finish and present [in the] same period (reflection, september, 2006). t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 23 unlike ellen’s school, kate’s school used the prescribed city curriculum for middle schools, impact mathematics. the math coach at the school provided teachers with the mathematical topics to be covered and a sequence for doing so. “the math coach tells us what to do in what order and i assume she has an idea of how much we have to cover by when to get through everything in time for the test in march” (post-observation interview, september, 2006). how the topics were taught was left up to the individual teachers who created their own lessons. where ellen’s school had no common planning time during the school year, kate’s school supported collaboration among teachers by allotting time for it in teacher’s schedules. this structure allowed kate to work with the other 7th grade teacher regularly. more specifically, this time was helpful for the teachers in using both the standardized curriculum and incorporating the philosophy of the school into their teaching. as part of the school’s curriculum and focus on exploratory learning, students participated in numerous field trips. teachers were expected to create lessons, projects and activities that linked the trips with their subject area and the topics the students were studying at the time. kate noted that connecting the trips to mathematics can be more challenging than connecting them to other subjects and expressed a great deal of frustration in her second year regarding this aspect of her teaching. “they put a strain on teachers and are time consuming but also push them to use exploratory and discovery activities and to be a bit more creative with the material.” she adds that while she “had more prep periods than a lot of teachers do [i] always felt like i had so much to do every day because i was doing so much planning for offsite and regular stuff” (2nd interview, summer 2007). these above school structures that were driven by the curriculums of the schools encouraged the participants to seek out their colleagues for support. specifically, this support c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 24 helped to alleviate the perceived gaps in the curriculum. ellen regularly met with other mathematics teachers in her school to plan for the coming week, to supplement the curriculum with additional material, and to “lighten the load so that we are not both creating worksheets for the same lesson,” (post – observation interview, september 2006). kate felt a need for additional support and discussion due to the disconnect between content and pedagogy. she found this support in collaboration with a more experienced colleague at the school who taught the same grade. kate explains, “i think, mostly because of working with [the other 7th grade math teacher] i felt like very supported and like i was part of a team” (post-observation interview, june 2007). in both cases presented, the teachers benefited from meeting with other more senior teachers whether during common planning time or through professional development opportunities offered to them in order to best address teaching of the curriculum. thus collaborations between veteran teachers and newer teachers fostered by the school administration resulted in a support structure that enhanced new teachers’ pedagogy. peer collaboration in both kate and ellen’s schools, the administration incorporated common planning time into teachers’ schedules, although kate’s was several times a week during the school year while ellen’s was prior to the start of the school year. this feature of the teachers’ schedules facilitated kate and ellen’s work with their peers. at kate’s school common planning time was scheduled so that teachers who taught the same subject and grade levels could meet to work with one another. this structure allowed kate to work with her colleague, the other 7th grade teacher at the school, who we will refer to by the pseudonym kelly. the two were about equal in age t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 25 although kelly, also a nyctf, had taught for several years prior. the two were not only supportive colleagues but also became friends. kate valued the common time built into her schedule though she and kelly found that they needed more than just the two designated periods a week to collaborate noting “[we] would use our preps and stuff to do it, so pretty much every day we would work on planning” and additionally that “if [planning together] didn’t happen during the week then we would get together on the weekend and plan lessons” (2nd interview, summer 2007). together, kate and kelly supported one another by planning lessons together, sharing curriculum materials with one another and developing exams, quizzes and projects together. despite all of the formal influences, kate quickly points to kelly a source of invaluable support as well as the primary influence upon her teaching. [who most affected my development] as an urban math teacher? okay. [kelly]. i mean i just, i worked with her all the time and more than any other person, like relied on her to give me advice and just help in every way. i mean there wasn’t – i didn’t really rely on anybody else at my school in the same way, and certainly i wouldn’t expect the fellows program to help me deal with problems that i encounter on a day-to-day basis (2nd interview, summer 2007). that kelly was such a strong influence upon kate in her initial two years of teaching partly due to the fact that kelly was a consistent presence in kate’s work life, unlike many of the formal supports. additionally, kate valued that kelly understood the material and what it means to be a math teacher at this school; that is, they had a shared practice upon which to draw. kate also valued the non-evaluative nature of their work together and felt that they were each contributing to the interaction. “last year i was the beneficiary of like an unprecedented level of c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 26 support from a colleague, kelly. but i think i also like gave her a ton of help too, and she would certainly admit that, especially by the end of the year,” (kate, 2nd interview, summer 2007). in ellen’s case, the highly top-down school structure made it necessary for some of the teachers to meet regularly. ellen refers to the top-down structure of the school in several instances noting that the school’s administration only cared about improving attendance, the special academies, and “the few older teachers” (post-observation interview, january 2007). with the school being attentive to the areas just mentioned, the administration did not put an emphasis on the day to day planning for teaching and learning. the collaboration that ellen and her fellow teachers conducted was not a result of common time set up by the school as in kate’s case. instead, the teachers involved found time in the mornings to meet. last year we – those kind of, in the morning we would have many talks for living, if you want to call it that, just to see where everybody was and how we should teach this, although you know, you may have planned it yourself, you may want to give it to … or i always wanted to show somebody else to see if that how they would do it and if not, what would they do differently. (1st interview, september 2006). during her second year, ellen and two of her fellow teachers set aside time on sundays to plan for the week. that is, to “plan in the sense of pacing or how the topics will be presented in class” (post-observation interview, may 2007). this planning enabled the teachers to share resources, ask mathematical and pedagogical questions of each other and develop a common theme in teaching and evaluation, “the sheet is based on an exam that i put together with like three other teachers. so i think the sheet is gonna be good for them for tomorrow.” (postobservation interview, march 2007) t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 27 further information provided by the case studies continues to maintain the importance of collaboration with peers to the teacher’s practice in mathematics. with all of the formal supports provided to ellen, she jumped at the chance to change schools in her third year of teaching. this new school had the draw of structured collaboration with peers. kate, too, continued to express value in peer collaboration. prior to entering her second year she learned that kelly would be moved to another grade level. when asked, “what’s the biggest challenge you think you’ll face in your second year?” she quickly replied, “not working with [kelly]” (2nd interview, august 2007). although both kate and ellen have different school situations (middle or high, large or small), supports/influences, texts, and experiences; they both highlight in their reflections and interviews that they see working with their peers as most influential upon their teaching practices. this is consistent with prior research on teacher collaboration and mentorship. one of the most well known ideas expressed for decades about new teachers was that they would either “sink or swim.” the teachers who are able to swim, to continue teaching have undoubtedly used many means possible to do this. with respect to our case studies, both have found ways to swim by relying on partnerships built with their peers and facilitated by their school structures. these partnerships, we argue, are evidence of these teachers’ belief in continuous learning. that is, they actively seek out ways to learn more about their subject, their curriculum, and their teaching. ellen, along with the curriculum, the math specialist and collaboration with her colleagues, was continuously learning about teaching mathematics. when some topic was not clear to her in the curriculum, she would seek out help from others, “i had to ask several people in the department for assistance and what i found was that most of them could not explain clear c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 28 enough for me to understand and then i found the right teacher and i had an epiphany” (reflection, january 2007). sometimes, ellen would search for other resources to help her with the topic, as she stated at the beginning of the year that she found an old math textbook to help her. kate routinely used strategies in her classroom that she learned from other teachers, whether those in her school or those in her graduate courses. though she initially needed a push to do so, she observed the teaching of others and used what she learned to modify her own practice. as a result of reflecting upon her first year of teaching, kate explained that she looked forward to a new approach to teaching mathematics. “last year we kind of were like, ‘now we’re doing geometry. now we’re doing probability.’ and this [coming] year i’ve … actually like planned out the whole year to kind of talk about each of the topics … with like a focus on algebra and how like finding the unknown [in every problem] makes a difference” (2nd interview, summer 2007). thus, both kate and ellen have found ways to supplement their learning and become more effective educators in ways that continue their learning as teachers of mathematics. discussion these two case studies inform us about the influences and supports that teachers are both receiving and seeking out as well as the supports/influences that may be making a difference. we found specifically that even with multiple formal supports in place, these teachers actively sought out colleagues with whom to collaborate though this collaboration was, in kate’s case, facilitated by the schedule at her school. furthermore, we found that these teachers spoke positively about their work with colleagues leading us to believe that they greatly value and appreciate such work. that the teachers sought out and valued collaborations with their peers t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 29 more so than working with other individuals such as mentors, math specialists and administrators leads us to believe that support models should find ways to facilitate such collaborative work. that teachers value such work can be attributed, in part, to the fact that these collaborations are voluntarily sought out, focus on specific day to day teaching strategies and lack the power issues that may arise when one is working with a supervisor or mentor. this is consistent with prior research (johnson, 2004; kardos, 2004a; taylor, 2004). focusing on why the teachers felt they needed to supplement the formal supports provides educators and policy makers with information about how best to strengthen such formal supports. an example of this involves the frequency with which teachers met with their mentors as opposed to with their peers. peer collaborations were happening much more frequently allowing peers to be a consistent, daily presence in one’s work life. increasing the frequency and length of visits might strengthen mentor models. interactions focused on content and teachers’ immediate concerns were greatly valued by teachers. this again has implications for how professional development models can be conceived and organized so as to be well received by teachers and, therefore, more likely to be both valued and acted upon. the collaborations these teachers sought out and engaged in also support prior research on learning as a social, active process furthered by interactions with others (dewey, 1997; franke, 1998; lave and wenger, 2003; vygotsky, 1978). lave and wenger (2003) argue that learning occurs in social settings and propose a framework for understanding this learning based on communities of practice of which we are all a part. in such communities those with more experience are at the center of the practice being developed and those with less experience work their way, through social engagement towards the center. applying this to our own work, we notice that the teachers in this study actively sought out and established their own communities c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 30 of practice, learning in social situations with their peers. they worked collaboratively with other teachers learning from them in order to move towards the center with respect to teaching. a similar and congruous idea is put forth by vygotsky (1978) who speaks of scaffolding, a process where those with more experience serve to pull others up to their level of understanding. the research presented in this paper supports these theories of learning giving us yet another example of the creation of human knowledge through social interaction. the research presented here in addition to prior research (gellert, 2008; gonzalez, 2008) on learning through social interaction supports the need to foster collaborations between new teachers and their peers. doing so would support school-specific and consistent interactions, in keeping with best induction practices as advocated by kardos (2004b) and would seem a valuable way to support new teachers. furthermore, it seems that the teachers were most influenced by those supports within their school. our work, though it doesn’t speak to the effectiveness of school-specific supports per se, does support the idea that school-specific supports are valuable to teachers and should be considered as part of any support system for new teachers. additionally teachers who are supported both within and outside of their school tend to stay longer in the profession and better their teaching practices in ways that those who only receive outside supports/influences cannot (kardos, 2004a). although the nyctf mentorship model involves numerous individuals to assist the beginning teacher, these mostly come from outside of the individual’s school. there are, in some cases formal school-based support people such as math coaches. though there is no definitive work on the success of math coaches, from the larger study upon which we draw (foote, m., et. al, 2009; smith & guingne, 2009) these t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 31 seem to be a hit or miss situation. for example, kate mentioned the infrequent nature of her interaction with both mentors and coach if you came in every tuesday or if you came in every three days and said, ‘how is this going and how is this going?’ it’s fine, but if it’s that irregular i’m just going to lie to you and say everything’s fine, because you’re not going to be able to offer me anything that i don’t already get (2nd interview, summer 2007). at some schools the math coach is very involved in the teachers’ lives and a presence in their classrooms while in other schools the math coach may not even be licensed in mathematics. this indicates that though math coaches can be seen as school-based supports, they are not necessarily supports of the type advocated by the literature. one individual at the school offering support is far from the coordinated sustained effort that kardos (2004a) recommends. finally, one needs to consider the issue of local supports. there exists a need to infuse new ideas and strategies into schools so as to press teachers and others to reconsider their practices as part of active reflection. an over-reliance on school-based collaboration if not tempered with outside supports may lead to maintenance of the status quo. without some outside influences, patterns of inefficiency present in some schools may continue to persist. this is a particularly dangerous reality if what exists is not meeting the needs of students. while awareness of this concern is necessary, it may be remedied by the involvement of outside professional developers in addition to school-based supports that include peer collaboration. the new teacher project (2007), for example, suggested that mentors be trained extensively. in doing so, mentors are able to infuse outside information into the culture of the school as needed. most importantly, the benefits of mentoring that take the form of collaboration among teachers is c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 32 a valuable asset for in-service teachers, especially new teachers, and should be used to help them transition into the profession. this transition, as studies have shown, is likely to have positive impacts on retaining teachers in the profession (ingersoll and smith, 2004; nctaf, 2005). implications, limitations, and unanswered questions the work presented has implications for teacher development and support models, especially those aimed at supporting new teachers. examining the characteristics of peer collaboration provides us with some guidance as to the support models that the teachers value. this can then inform how such models are designed in the future. the characteristics of value described in the findings section may serve to justify changing mentoring and supports for inservice teaching to include peer collaboration perhaps through the use of communities of practice. the role of communities of practice for continuous learning is clear and has implications for teacher development and support models (gellert, 2008; gonzalez, 2008). furthermore, this work has implications for issues of educational equity as well. specifically, the nyc teaching fellows program was initiated as a way of meeting the need for teachers in high need schools. the students at high need schools are disproportionately taught by teachers who like those in this study, have a limited amount of educational training before becoming a teacher of record. it becomes imperative for support structures to be put in place so that these teachers and the students that they serve can be successful. given these implications it is important to make note of the limitations of this study. the two participants in this study, although part of a larger study, were observed using ethnographic methods to develop case studies. the generalizability of case study results is a limitation even in the context of specifics such as alternative certification, mathematics teaching, and the new york city public schools. furthermore, recognizing that the researchers did not set out to t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 33 compare and contrast the participants, similar patterns from the data developed regardless of setting and situation, in the face of comparisons and contrasts. as with any research study, our work presented has left us with many unanswered questions that may be considered for future work in this area. we note that teachers value collaborations with peers and suggest this be included in models of professional development and support prompting us to question how best to structure these collaborations. such questions include but are not limited to:  how do we best set up peer collaborations? should these be teacher-initiated?  how can structural realities of time and content be addressed in the collaborations?  who should pair peers and on what should these pairings be based? additionally, we noted the issues that arise when multiple providers of support have inconsistent messages that they pass onto the new teachers leading us to ask:  how do we coordinate support across multiple providers? finally, no strategy can be put forth without considering how it fits with the current realities in schools. that is:  how can peer collaboration be incorporated into current practices, if possible? do new ways of conceiving school and teacher practices need to be developed to support peer collaboration? the questions presented here are only a handful of those that our research has spurred and which may drive future work, including our own, in the field of teacher preparation and support. with respect to our work presented here, we feel ellen herself said it best when in a postobservation interview (march 2007) she remarked that, “colleagues are the most supportive.” c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 34 research about how we use this information to support new teachers in the future seems a valuable endeavor for educators and policy makers to pursue. t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 35 references american association of state colleges and universities. 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(1978). mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 38 wenger, e. (1998). communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. t e a c h e r c o l l bo r a t io n : im pl ic a t io n s 39 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word #904.docx 1 volume 15, number 1 may 04, 2012 issn 1099-839x invitation accepted: integrating invitational rhetoric in educational contexts sonja gedde colorado state university the transformative power of dialogue has the potential to serve as a healthful alternative to unproductive strategies for problem-solving in many communication contexts (ryan & natalle, 2001). sadly, educational contexts emerge as contexts in dire need of such communicative reconstruction, evidenced by the alarming increase in incidences of hostile caregiver/educator communication. offering a new paradigm for educators affected by hostile communication, this essay proposes the application of invitational rhetoric, a theory and practice developed in the field of communication studies, aimed at the civil “disarmament” of hostile communication, rooted in dialogue and openness. illumining how the tenets of invitational rhetoric -value, safety, and freedom – may be employed in potentially destructive caregiver-educator communicative exchanges, this essay provides relevant illustrations demonstrating how these tenets could diffuse hostile communication in educational contexts. the marriage of this theory from the field of communication studies with the field of education is a sensible and productive step toward assimilating another strategy that educators may use to better serve students. keywords: invitational rhetoric, dialogue, parent-teacher communication, aggressive communication, communication strategies, bullying, teacher victimization, feminist theory, case study the ability of educators and school personnel to communicate effectively with those involved in a student’s “circle of support” is critical to the welfare of students, the efficacy of the educational experience, and the morale of the educational context and climate. literacy professor patricia schmidt aptly notes that sentiments such as “we are all connected,” and “it takes a village to raise a child” (2005, p. xi) undergird the belief that the creation of a supportive educational context is a collaborative endeavor that involves students, parents, school administrators, community members, and even state and national policy-makers. federal policy such as that substantiated by the no child left behind act and programs like goals 2000 also encourage home and school collaboration, placing “great emphasis on increasing parental involvement in order to enhance student achievement” (thompson, 2008, p. 202; schmidt, 2005; de carvalho, 2001; keller, 2006; lewis, 2002; rogers, 2006). it is not surprising to note that research also suggests that schools must foster collaborative relationships with parents and communities, as these efforts will profoundly affect the welfare of students (heath, 1983; trueba, jacobs, & kirton, 1990; ladson billings, 1994, 1995; edwards, 2004; stafford, 1987). evidently then, educators’ communicative skills are critically important to foster not only effective instruction and classroom management strategies, but also in regard to the relational duties involved with the profession of teaching. despite this need for communicative effectiveness, many educators are not well prepared or trained for communicative interactions, in particular, for 2 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 those interactions that occur with parents/caregivers (dotger, 2009). often times, communicative exchanges with caregivers occur only sporadically and rarely in a proactive spirit, as many communications are predicated upon a reaction to a situation that may be concerning and/or negative (i.e. a grade concern or a disciplinary measure enacted). moreover, because the art and practice of teaching is often best developed “on the job,” it can be difficult to anticipate the varying collection of communicative incidences for which an educator must prepare. this lack of training becomes particularly troublesome over the past decade as educators have faced a substantial rise in the level of confrontations between caregivers, teachers, and school administrators and an increase in documented reports of aggressive caregiver behavior toward educators (jaksec, 2003, 2005). such moments often incite “crucial conversations,” or those in which stakes are high, opinions are varied, and emotions run strong; these communicative exchanges are a customary responsibility of the “communicative work” of educators, so it becomes imperative that educators have a burgeoning set of strategies for negotiating communication of this consequentiality (patterson, grenny, mcmillan, & switzler, 2002, p. 3). consequently, educators must recognize the need for strong communication skills are of critical importance and unprecedented urgency as incidents of aggressive caregiver communication are plausible and reoccurring regularities in public education. while educational literature is replete with many suggested models and templates for the constructive handling of aggressive communication in educational contexts, this study posits an additional alternative approach: asserting that the interdisciplinary approach of invitational rhetoric, which stems from a rhetorical/feminist perspective in the field of communication studies, may be a tool that can help educators and school personnel more effectively navigate complex communicative interactions with parents and caregivers. this approach, embodied through the communicated tenets of value, safety, and freedom, is predicated upon civility and understanding as the ultimate communicative goals (griffin & foss, 1995). though every communicative exchange is unique and no one tool is unequivocally successful, awareness of a variety of communication perspectives will only enhance educators’ effectiveness in mediating and diffusing complex situations and interactions. in the spirit of inquiry then, this essay will briefly outline current research regarding communication in caregiver/educator relationships, exposing the need for further study of confrontation dynamics in these relationships, and it will then systematically ally this research with the communicative paradigm known as invitational rhetoric (foss & griffin, 1995). after introducing this approach, its application in the field of education will be explored, illustrating how invitational rhetoric may be utilized as a tool for mediating challenging caregiver/educator interactions. these illustrations will be grounded in a discussion of the three most commonly cited tenets of invitational rhetoric: value, safety, and freedom -and examples will be provided to demonstrate the application of these te nets in potentially hostile communicative exchanges. no teacher left behind: impetuses for aggressive caregiver-educator communication to effectively mitigate confrontational communicative interactions is undoubtedly important in any relationship. miretzky (2004) argues that caregiver educator relationships are no different, reinforcing student achievement as the primary goal of these relationships, recognizing that the importance of talk between parents and educators is critical to the maintenance and sustainment of democratic communities that support school improvement. as risko and walker-dalhouse (2009) also demonstrate, the far-reaching effects of positive caregiver/educator communication are profound. when caregivers feel positive about their school involvement and relations with school personnel, their children’s interests, learning, and aspirations are typically increased while the morale and self -confidence of school personnel are augmented as well (fan & chen, 2001; henderson & mapp, 2002). thus, teachers’ professional communication skills are “important as they work with parents to promote the success of all children in the classroom” (dotgers, 2009, p. 93). despite these benefits of positive caregiver/educator communication, it is important to recognize that many societal and cultural dynamics have shifted which impact the nature of this communication. to illustrate, whereas contact between caregivers and educators used to happen spontaneously as educators were more regularly a part of a family’s community outside of the school (rotter & robinson, 1983), schools are now more centralized and computer-mediated communication has had to become firmly established within instructional contexts, thereby limiting face -to-face interactions between educators and caregivers (thompson, 2009). though computer-mediated communication does have advantages, it can be problematic from a communicative standpoint as cue restrictions cause difficulty in the interpretation of messages (walther, 2008), and research demonstrates that this type of communication is often focused primarily on negative topics such as grade complaints or behavior issues (thompson, 2008). changes in the roles educators play in communities and the channels through which educational communication occurs are only a few of the potential factors which contribute to the rise in hostile caregiver/educator communication. garrett’s (2009) study also reveals another important point of consideration: perception. simply, 3 invitation accepted: integrating invitational rhetoric in educational contexts caregivers’ and educators’ perceptions of what constitutes “valuable communication” have significantly changed, creating larger gaps between what each party finds pertinent, useful, and meaningful. additionally, perceptions regarding through which methods communication should occur are also variant, underscoring the need for increased dialogue and attention to the fostering of sensitivity in these complex communicative relationships. in the face of such challenges, savoy (2010) argues that just as in society, in the educational system, “our private and public discourse is becoming increasingly more hostile and rude; we are losing civility and respect for each other” (p. 4; see also banathy, 2003). warranting attention, this argument is supported on a consistent basis, as headlines assert the stories of caregiver/educator communication gone wrong; stories in which aggressive and sometimes violent interactions between caregivers and unassuming educators are cause for alarm. to corroborate, a nationwide poll of school violence conducted in canada reveals that the canadian teachers federation learned that 59 percent of principals across the country had witnessed at least one parent verbally abuse a teacher, and 23 percent had seen a parent physically assault or intimidate a teacher (2001, montreal gazette). the notion of “abuse,” “assault,” and “intimidation” cannot go unchecked. similarly, educators in england cite an increase in work-related stress, asking for new training in communication and mediation after incidences dealing with parents who are “unacceptably rude,” “increasingly aggressive and demanding,” and even “physically aggressive” have resulted in the need to call local police into school contexts (sharkey, 2008, p. 5). it is no wonder this training has been requested, as schools in london reported that over 140 parents had been arrested in the year 2001 alone “for assaulting teachers after their children had gotten into trouble” (lee, 2001, p. 12). sadly, incidences such as these are not limited to foreign ground. documented incidences of parental aggression toward educators in the united states are also numerous. a study reveals that philadelphia public schools reported 57 instances of parental assaults against teachers in just one six-month period of observation (may, johnson, chen, hutchinson, & ricketts, 2010). another study of school administrators in a florida county finds that 70% of respondents had been threatened by a parent through one of three primary types of threats: verbal threats accompanied by intimidation, non-contact threats accompanied by intimidation, and intimidation with physical contact (trump & moore, 2001). it is not surprising to recognize, then, that the strain of dealing with parents has been cited as one of the primary reasons new teachers elect to leave the profession (phillips, 2005). with these implications in mind, in a cultural moment where the demand for student success is ever increasing, the pressures for teacher efficacy are mounting, and confrontational communication can be cultivated and enacted through a multitude of channels, it becomes imperative to first understand the impetus from which this type of communication may stem. may, johnson, chen, hutchinson, and ricketts (2010) tackled this very question in an extensive study prepared for the journal of current issues in education, designed to unearth the causes of adversarial parent teacher relationships. this longitudinal, exploratory study revealed that, “most teachers are likely to experience somewhat regular, if primarily verbal, conflict with parents” (p. 23). coupling this conclusion with a more specific evaluation of other factors influencing parent teacher communication conflict, it is acknowledged that, “younger teachers were more likely to experience incidents of parental aggression or other problematic interactions than their older counterparts, as were teachers working in larger communities,” and: teachers with more advanced degrees were more likely to experience incidents of parental aggression or other problematic interactions than their counterparts without those advanced degrees [because] …teachers who return for additional graduate courses are more willing to experiment with innovative educational practices and theories that…may make parents that are unfamiliar with these strategies uncomfortable and thus more likely to confront these teachers. (p. 25 26) frustratingly, this information reveals that novice educators are most likely to become targets of hostile communication and that those educators who explore alternative and/or creative approaches to teaching and learning should be poised to anticipate opposition. certainly, we must utilize this information to provide a framework through which school personnel can begin to proactively anticipate potentially aggressive communicative exchanges between caregivers and educators and diffuse these situations before they become inappropriately inflammatory. jaksec (2003) also contributes to the body of extant research on aggressive caregiver communication behavior, claiming that several factors are generally recognized as main contributors to parental aggression. these factors include: financial stress, patterns of family violence, unstable family environments, previous negative school experiences, school personnel attitudes, a parent’s mental instability, or even a fear that he or she is losing control of his or her child. (p. 19) 4 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 unfortunately, as is clearly demonstrated, the myriad of reasons a caregiver may become hostile toward an educator create challenge when surmising the impetus for such behavior. however, jaksec (2003) and brandt (1998) illumine that paring down these generalized triggers in lieu of a more specific evaluation of the following few factors could prove fruitful in better understanding the dynamics involved in these types of exchanges; this includes addressing the lack familiarity some caregivers have with school personnel and/or school activities which postures a caregiver in a “stranger” identity when dealing with potentially emotionally charged issues, addressing the inaccurate perceptions caregivers may have of school personnel and the accompanying skepticism that often ensues, and addressing the lack of civility policies that should regulate and govern behavior and communication in academic settings. with these characteristics sensitively located at the forefront of an educator’s communicative barometer, it can be readily seen that the myriad of reasons caregivers may engage aggressive communication toward school personnel are vast and complex. thus, educators who have the disposition, abilities, and skills to sense, monitor, mediate, and proactively engage and empower diverse families and communities will be able to contribute most effectively to students’ academic and social development, fostering healthful communicative exchanges wherever possible. the ability to elucidate and craft a communicative relationship predicated upon trust, vision, credibility, service, and influence will mitigate those inevitable occasions when caregivers and educators disagree about curriculum, assignments, peer relationships, homework, and/or teaching approaches (kozik, 2005). it is clear, then, that a strategy predicated in open, civil, and equitable communication could be invaluable for resolving differences in educational contexts (katz, aidman, reese, & clark, 1996; willis, 1995). proposing new communicative paradigms: invitational rhetoric, an overview as demonstrated, many aggressive communication exchanges that occur between caregivers and educators stem from issues that relate to the exertion of power and/or the forcing of change. inevitably, much of the content of these exchanges is unproductive and often detrimental to all parties involved: caregivers, educators, school personnel, and most importantly, students. embedded in efforts to exert power or force change is the innate desire for control and domination, which, if left unchecked, may result in forms of violence – in its literal, discursive, and/or rhetorical sense(s) (foss & griffin, 1995). responding to this growing concern of the implicit conceptions of rhetoric and persuasion that are manifested in daily communication exchanges, feminist communication scholars recognized that a new approach to understanding the role of persuasion and rhetoric was long overdue. offering the concept of “invitational rhetoric” as an alternative communicative option, foss and griffin (1995) theorize that invitational rhetoric is an “invitation to understanding as a means to create a relationship rooted in equality, immanent value, and self determination” (p. 5). through this paradigm, communicators are invited to enter into one another’s world to see it as the other does (foss & griffin, 1995). this communication paradigm suspends judgment and denigration in lieu of openness, civility, respect, and validation of others’ opinions, experiences, and world views. because of the “nonhierarchical, nonjudgmental, non-adversarial framework established for the interaction,” understanding becomes the ultimate goal for the process of communication and product of communication exchanges, engendering appreciation, value, and a sense of equality (foss & griffin, 1995, p. 5). this form of rhetoric differs from attempts to win over an opponent or to advocate the correctness of any one particular position (bone, griffin, & scholz, 2008). rather, it is based in an earnest desire to exchange with one another, in the spirit of dialogue, utilizing thoughtful, civil language, through the creation of an environment where growth and change can occur naturally. as bone, griffin, and scholz (2008) argue, “to engage invitational rhetoric is to exchange ideas from positions of mutual respect and equality” (p. 437). gaining currency through the past decade, this form of rhetoric proves valuable in a variety of contexts and mediums ranging from public discussions and deliberations, to work-place communication, to the construction of visual artifacts that may evoke dialogue. its essence, however, must stem from individual communicators’ choice to abandon their tendencies toward hierarchy, defensiveness, and/or argument in lieu of the desire to listen, learn, and understand others’ perspectives. to further clarify, foss and foss (2012) offer the following eight “key assumptions” which characterize invitational rhetoric, helping to provide a framework for the ways moments of communicative difference can be transformed into occasions of resource: 1) understanding is the purpose of communication in invitational rhetoric; 2) participants in invitational rhetoric listen with openness; 3) in invitational rhetoric, speaker and audience are viewed as equals; 4) invitational rhetoric involves power-with instead of power-over; 5) participants change only when they choose 5 invitation accepted: integrating invitational rhetoric in educational contexts 6) to change in invitational rhetoric; 7) participants enter invitational rhetoric wiling to be changed; 8) invitational rhetoric creates a world of appreciation for differences; 9) invitational rhetoric is one of many options in a communicative “toolbox.” (p. 10) in the genuine spirit of learning and growth. with this, i invite all communicators to be immersed in a new communicative perspective through these illustrations, seeking to open doors for understanding and the enhancement of the relationships between and among those we serve. illustrations of invitational rhetoric: value, safety, and freedom this framework illumines the three most commonly cited tenets of invitational rhetoric: safety, value with anticipation and palpable excitement, a value, and freedom, which can be seen as external conditions that must be created by a communicator for the promotion of a successful invitational communication exchange (bone, griffin, & scholz, 2008). this framework helps to situate invitational rhetoric as a viable tool for the mediation of potentially conflicting communicative exchanges between caregivers and educators. clearly, proponents of invitational rhetoric would acknowledge that this is one potential communicative paradigm that should traverse disciplinary boundaries, as its institution in educational contexts may assuage many of the hostile communicative exchanges that strain the relationships between and among school personnel and caregivers. to this end, the three conditions of invitational rhetoric serve as an appropriate foundation for the exploration of several brief examples and illustrations whereby invitational rhetoric could be utilized in educational contexts in order to allay tensions between caregivers and educators. the illustrations serve as a modified form of holistic, multiple case analysis (yin, 2012). by employing this methodological framework, everyday educational phenomenon can be illumined, in hopes that consumers of this research may be able to generalize from these instances and create meaning that is applicable to their particular contexts and situati ons (yin, 2012). recognizing that sharing individualized accounts of educators who have used invitational rhetoric in their communicative encounters may inappropriately showcase or compromise the relational work that has been done to nurture these relationships, anecdotal examples will instead be provided to illustrate instances that may be “common” instigators of aggressive caregiver/educator communication. after the provision of a relevant anecdote, one of the three conditions of invitational rhetoric will be discussed while suggestions are provided for the integration and maintenance of invitational rhetoric as a suitable strategy for de-escalating aggressive communication in educational contexts. in these illustrations, the role, response, and responsibility of the educator is emphasized, as educators ultimately have little control over the behaviors of their communicative counterparts. more productively, educators should always strive to model healthful, positive communication teacher prepares her honor’s english students for an upcoming unit where they will be exposed to and immersed in various forms of holocaust literature. convinced that the typical apathy displayed by many students in regard to reading is partially the product of a lack of engaging curricular materials, she is eager to expose students to visceral first-person accounts and narratives of survivors from concentration camps, using these texts to anchor an engaging study of figurative language, point of view, and the genre of memoir. thankful that the school district for which she works not only supports, but requires the study of such literature, she was remiss to the notion that these curricular choices might be met with hesitation. as such, she is literally stunned to open her email inbox at the onset of the unit, only to be welcomed by an aggressive and accusatory message from a parent concerned about the “political agenda” of the unit of study. this parent, armed with her own interpretation of the learning goals for the unit as well as staunchly engrained political perspectives, demands an immediate meeting, and has spared no time in copying the email to school administrators, district literacy coordinators, and even the superintendent. without warning, the excitement of launching an authentic and engaging unit of study transforms into an elevated fear-filled journey into an already hostile communicative situation which has drawn the attention of many officials within the educational context. if exercised appropriately, educators who wish to operate from an invitational perspective will prioritize the condition of value that must be present within invitational exchanges. bone, griffin, and scholz (2008) argue that: value is the acknowledgement that audience members have intrinsic or immanent worth…and when value is present, rhetors recognize that the views of the other person or people, although different from one’s own, have inherent value; that is, rhetors communicate that they will step outside their own standpoint in order to understand another’s perspective. (p. 437) simply, this is what benhabib (1992) calls “the principle of universal moral respect” (p. 29) and what barrett (1991) describes as “respectfully affirming others” while at the same time “one affirms oneself” (p. 148; also 6 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 cited in foss & griffin, 1995). as illustrated, one prominent example where the condition of value may play a critical role regards opinions surrounding curricular programming, which are among the most frequently cited impetuses of confrontation between caregivers and school personnel. caregivers may resist a particular text being utilized in a classroom, a unit of study at large, a curricular requirement, or an assessment strategy. at times, these concerns are warranted as some educators have not thoughtfully engaged the parameters of appropriateness and/or purpose that should undergird every curricular choice. in other instances, even in light of the most thoughtful intention and the support of district and state policies and standards, educators can become the target of unwarranted and sometimes vicious communication regarding the curricular “happenings” of their classrooms. these attacks are often unleashed with very impassioned, assuming language and may represent a mobilized cohort of caregivers banned together in an effort against a particular teacher and/or school. this case illustrates a tenuous, but common situation. at the heart of the case are often unknowing students who are trapped between the preferences of their assertive caregivers and the expectations of a school’s curriculum. clarification and justification may not suffice to satisfy the caregiver, as no amount of rational explanation can combat the staunchly embedded mores and values that inform the caregiver’s opposition. this is precisely where the paradigm of invitational rhetoric and the condition of value may become particularly useful. in this sense, an educator faced with a caregiver who is resisting a particular curricular choice need not abandon his/her own perspectives regarding the value of a chosen curriculum, but should additionally place emphasis on understanding the resistance from a more visceral level, asking questions that are not steeped with the undertones of defensiveness, but rather enlightened with the spirit of inquiry. priority should be placed on affirming and valuing alternate opinions and perspectives, seeking to listen as much as seeking to be heard. foss and griffin (1995) assert that value is created when “rhetors approach audience members as unrepeatable individuals” and eschew “distancing and depersonalizing…attitudes” (p. 11, as cited in walker, 1989, pp. 22, 23). when communication is enacted in this way, communicators feel their identities are not “forced upon or chosen for them” and the technique of “absolute listening” (gendlin, 1978) can be employed, whereby communicators do not interrupt or insert anything of their own perspective as others tell of their experiences, ideas, preferences, and choices (foss & griffin, 1995). educators wishing to enact the condition of value in their invitational exchanges with potentially aggressive caregivers will model and prioritize listening and moral respect, allowing caregivers to express the deeply personal preferences that motivate their visceral reactions to aspects of the educational process, while looking for synonymous moments where values may, in fact, be aligned. sometimes, the simple act of reserving face time for a concerned caregiver and the provision of a genuine forum through which concerns may be openly expressed and honored is enough to diffuse a potentially aggressive situation. safety tired and worn from a long day at school, a group of literacy teachers gather together for their monthly collaborative meeting. nervous about the impending news he will report, the department chairperson tentatively reveals that the district for which they work has decided to institute additional standardized testing measures for all students in literacy-based classes. groaning with despair and panic, a lengthy and heated conversation ensues whereby the teachers question how they will incorporate time for yet another test and how they will defend the validity of instituting yet another assessment measure outside of curriculum. predicting the onslaught of student and parental disapproval in a district where state tests already consume over two weeks of instructional time, the teachers feel blindsided, undermined, and confused. the seemingly endless battery of required standardized tests is quickly becoming one of the most frequently contested issues in this community as it regards public education. adding additional days of required assessments will certainly push the pot to its boiling point, rendering defenseless teachers as targets for public ambush. a second condition embodied by the invitational process is that of safety. in their seminal work, foss and griffin (1995) argue that safety involves “the creation of a feeling of security and freedom from danger,” and communication contributes to a feeling of safet y when it “conveys…that ideas and feelings…will be received with respect and care” (p. 10). additionally, rhetoric that contributes to a feeling of safety also provides a means of coherency for communicators, such that they can be open to new perspectives and ideas, trusting that their communicative counterparts are working with and not against them (foss & griffin, 1995). it is clear to see how much of the hostile communication that occurs between caregivers and educators could stem from a lack perceived safety. in many instances, school personnel are unknown or known only superficially by caregivers, with quick meetings at back-to-school nights or parent-teacher conferences providing the only real introduction to one another. often, the communication between caregivers and educators occurs electronically, thereby reducing the personal nature of the relationship as well. this is coupled with the reality that a student may have as many as seven or eight different teachers in a given school day, and the roster of teachers may change each semester or 7 invitation accepted: integrating invitational rhetoric in educational contexts each school year, rendering families with the responsibility of placing trust in literally hundreds of educators over the course of a student’s career in k-12 settings. these relational factors culminate, contributing to the delicate structure that surrounds caregiver-teacher relationships. beyond this, several other factors exist in educational settings where communicative safety may be a concern. the swinging pendulum of educational policy renders many caregivers and educators with a sense of constant change. it can seem that each school year is accompanied with a set of new policies, standards, programs, best practices, assessments, and initiatives that are often mandated by local and state governing bodies. lack of control, and frequently, lack of information, can create a tenuous relationship between schools, school districts, and caregivers. inundation is never a means through which to gain compliance, yet the subversive nature of educational policy sneaks up on all those affected, causing panic, frustration, and angst for many. educators negotiate the anger and confusion of caregivers who do not understand the rationale for policies that have been implemented, and in some cases, as illustrated in the preceding anecdote, educators themselves have not been communicated with appropriately in order to be the liaison necessitated. educational policies may be as simple as the institution of a new summer reading program or an application process for gifted and talented programming, or as complex as the introduction of a new battery of mandated state standardized tests, as demonstrated above. regardless of the specific nature of the policy, when order is threatened and individuals do not feel they have a safe space to express voice, the reaction is often opposition. to an extent, educators can work both proactively and reactively to manage hostile communication that could be the result of a breach in safety. from a proactive perspective, relationship-building is paramount. the spirit of invitational rhetoric would propose that working to establish trust and familiarity with families will create a safe encasement through which communication can thrive. being an educator with credibility who has built ethos with other community members and demonstrated character will also assist in buffering potentially aggressive communication exchanges. beyond these proactive measures, as complex situations arise, invitational communicators will strive to acknowledge the potential fear or dis-ease that may permeate a crucial conversation, quelling the fear with an assurance that open communication will be maintained and all ideas will be respected and listened to. by affirming that fear or anxiety is natural and defining the parameters of the communication exchange so that all parties will have voice, individual communicators will feel less threatened and more open to the exchange of ideas and eventual reaching of understanding. freedom scanning the room, a history teacher notices the stealth movements of a student quickly averting his glance away from another’s test paper at a neighboring desk. after issuing a global verbal warning regarding integrity, the same suspicious behaviors ensue. repeatedly, the teacher observes a pattern indicating that the student is clearly “borrowing” answers from a cl assmate’s test, and this suspicion is confirmed when, upon seizing the documents in question, both students have identical answers and identical errors. saddened and frustrated by this incident, the teacher decides to conduct an individual conference with the student in question, but is met only with resistance, tears, and denial despite the concrete evidence provided. the student is dismissed, with indications that further consequences will be pursued by school administration, as per school policies on academic integrity. within a matter of hours, the teacher’s classroom telephone rings, and upon answering, he is greeted by an enraged parent demanding to know why her son is being accused of cheating and victimized in such an unjust manner. regardless of the evidenced presented, she is convinced that her son has been wronged and his reputation is stained, demanding immediate apology. a final tenet upon which invitational rhetoric is predicated is freedom, also known as self-determination. freedom, or the power to choose or decide, is a condition whose presence is a “prerequisite for the possibility of mutual understanding” (foss & griffin, 1995, p. 12). by removing restrictions and opening dialogue to all ideas, all participants are able to, in barrett’s (1991) words, “speak up, to speak out” (p. 148; also cited in foss & griffin, 1995, p. 12). freedom is further cultivated when communicators provide opportunities for others to develop and choose options, facilitating rich and complex dialogues that foster the co-creation of meaning. an invitational communicator who subscribes to the condition of freedom recognizes that it should not be a communicator’s responsibility or desire to force, mandate, or require the upholding of a particular ideology, belief, or choice. rather, an invitational communicator acknowledges that we are each the experts of our own lives and will freely follow the courses that seem most appropriate to us, based on our own motivations and information sources. releasing the responsibility to persuade and instead offering information for voluntary consumption, an invitational communicator gives others the space and choice to choose for themselves without coercion, force, fear, or pressure. this condition may feel contradictory to the nature of order that must prevail in an educational context. clearly, there are rules that need to be adhered to, and obviously, certain facets of behavior and student 8 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 productivity are non-negotiable. the condition of freedom does not insinuate that anything is universally acceptable, nor is invitational communication the appropriate form of communication for every communicative encounter. however, there are many communicative instances between caregivers and educators where the proverbial butting of heads could be easily avoided by utilizing principles of freedom and self-determination in an invitational manner. simply, as educators navigate aggressive communication with caregivers, relinquishing control and placing control back into the hands of the caregiver can be a surprisingly effective technique for diminishing hostility and working toward a productive outcome. for ex ample, if a caregiver is upset with a particular discipline technique exercised in a classroom, an educator may simply ask, in the spirit of inquiry, “do you have suggestions for discipline techniques that you have utilized in the home that i might employ?” if communicated in a genuine, civil manner, this simple question places freedom back into the hands of the caregiver, allowing s/he to demonstrate the right to contribute to the appropriate course of action. typically, many caregivers are not necessarily in disagreement about the offense committed by a student, but may be in disagreement about the consequence or manner in which the offense was handled. this could be due, in part, to caregivers’ desire to exercise right to freely choose how their children are raised, especially as it pertains to instances of misbehavior or right versus wrong. in a similar example as described previously, navigating the difficult discussion of students caught plagiarizing or cheating may be arduous as parents often experience a combination of shame, anger, and confusion regarding such incidences. even when all evidence corroborates student wrongdoing, some parents may resist this conversation or the consequences therein, even shifting blame back onto the educator. in this instance, an educator might again propose a series of questions that allows the caregiver to exercise the right to assist in creating the appropriate course of action for the guilty party. such questions might include: “given the evidence we have gathered, what might you suggest as an appropriate consequence?,” or “do you have ideas regarding the way we might address this?” in short, when freedom is exercised in invitational communication, the “principle of egalitarian reciprocity” can exist, which allows communicators the same “symmetrical rights to various speech acts” (benhabib, 1992, p. 29). either an acceptance or rejection of a perspective is a viable outcome, and regardless, the relationship remains intact and mutual respect is prioritized. at worst, both parties have gained insights into one another, developed new perspectives, and have established a positive, civil foundation for the process of continual advancement toward agreement if agreement is necessitated. toward an invitational future the transformative power of dialogue has the potential to serve as a rational alternative to increasingly violent and unproductive strategies for problem-solving in many communication contexts (ryan & natalle, 20 01). sadly, educational contexts do emerge as contexts that are in dire need of communicative “reconstruction.” as presented, the variance in student populations, the inconsistent nature of student home lives, the increasing demands placed on students and educators, the cultural tendencies to shift away from personal communication toward computer mediated communication, and the unique nature of the educational process all posit educational contexts as complex sites of inquiry that have the potential to cultivate both rich and meaningful communication exchanges, as well as unhealthy and destructive communicative exchanges. this essay has chosen to focus on the latter by offering a new paradigm for the consideration of those affected by aggressive or hostile caregiver-educator communication. after justifying the urgency for this evaluation and reviewing some of the possible impetuses for aggressive caregiver-educator communication, the essay proposed the introduction of the theory of invitational rhetoric, a theory developed by feminist scholars in the field of communication studies. though this theory is not, in and of itself, new, the marriage of this theory from the field of communication studies with the field of education is a sensible and productive step toward assimilating another strategy that educators may use to better serve students. illumining how the tenets of invitational rhetoric – value, safety, and freedom – may be embodied in potentially destructive caregiver-educator communicative exchanges, this essay provided relevant illustrations demonstrating how these tenets could diffuse hostile communication in regard to curriculum, parental lack of familiarity with school personnel, inconsistencies of educational policy, generalized angst regarding educational change, disagreement over discipline policies, and management of student academic integrity: all fodder for potentially charged caregiver-educator communication. certainly no one technique will be fool proof in mediating all types of aggressive communication, and at times, some communicative exchanges need to follow certain parameters that may not align with the spirit of invitational communication. this proposal is not intended to suggest that invitational communication is the appropriate form of communication for all aggressive caregiver-educator communicative exchanges. it merely proposes another viable tool from which educators can glean suggestion regarding ways to mitigate some of the 9 invitation accepted: integrating invitational rhetoric in educational contexts less desirable moments of the teaching and learning journey, and it does this by embodying some of the most revered tenets of education itself: dialogue, inquiry, civility, and understanding. as foss, griffin, and foss (1999) argue, “interaction with others produces change” (p. 125). it is my hope that interactions among caregivers, school personnel, and community members will foster positive change and growth for all, so that our students may see us as living examples of that which we allege to teach. references banathy, b. h. 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(2008). social information processing theory of computer-mediated communications: impression and relationship development online. in l.a. baxter & d. o. braithwaite (eds.), engaging theories in interpersonal communication: multiple perspectives (pp. 391 404). thousand oaks, ca: sage. willis, s. (1995). when parents object to classroom practice. education update 37(1), 1-8. yin, r. k. (2012). applications of case study research (3rd ed.). los angeles, ca: sage. 11 invitation accepted: integrating invitational rhetoric in educational contexts article citation gedde, s. (2012). invitation accepted: integrating invitational rhetoric in educational contexts. current issues in education, 15(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/904 author notes dr. sonja gedde, special assistant professor colorado state university 210 eddy building, fort collins, co 80523 sonja.gedde@colostate.edu dr. sonja gedde serves the communication studies and university honors program at colorado state university where she has taught courses in public communication, instructional communication, and pedagogy. she is also proud to serve concurrently in poudre school district in fort collins, co. dr. gedde wishes to extend special thanks to dr. cindy griffin, a mentor and friend whose theories of invitational communication have inspired much of her scholastic interest and daily living. manuscript received: 1/15/2012 revisions received: 4/18/2012 accepted: 4/22/2012 http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/904 mailto:sonja.gedde@colostate.edu 12 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 volume 15, number 1 may 04, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors angela hines elizabeth reyes recruitment editors angela hines copy editors/proofreaders carol masser lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson mary bankhead laura busby michelle crowley tulani garnett catherine gay section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca hyun jung kang monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser lauren preston stephanie quintero kelly rubel leslie salazar melisa tarango lauren williams kevin woo faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers volume 15, number 1 may 04, 2012 issn 1099-839x sonja gedde no teacher left behind: impetuses for aggressive caregiver-educator communication proposing new communicative paradigms: invitational rhetoric, an overview illustrations of invitational rhetoric: value, safety, and freedom value safety freedom toward an invitational future article citation author notes volume 15, number 1 may 04, 2012 issn 1099-839x executive editor melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt meg burke angela hines carol masser lucinda watson lisa lacy ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca lauren preston stephanie quintero kelly rubel dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 558-2782-2-le.docx 1 volume 14, number 2 may 18, 2011 issn 1099-839x educational faculty perceptions of the learning climate in a juvenile justice residential facility carolyn c. cox joseph d. visker ashley hartman truman state university the majority of educational faculty from a juvenile justice residential detention facility in rural northeast missouri who participated in a learning climate survey of their school seemed to agree that the environment for staff and students was generally physically safe and emotionally supportive; key factors for a positive learning climate. by describing perceptions of their school’s learning climate; facility educational faculty can identify strengths and improve upon weaknesses. enhancing a school’s physical and psychosocial surroundings leads to a healthier school environment for all. keywords: residential juvenile justice facility, learning climate, academics theoretical framework: school learning climate a healthy school learning climate, including the attitudes, feelings, and values of students and school personnel (marx, frelick-wooley, & northrop, 1998), provides everyone with a sound physical and psychosocial environment in which to work and learn. the school’s learning climate is multi-dimensional and includes the subjective school experiences of: relationships, sense of school community, commitment to school, and school safety. a positive learning climate has been linked to effective teaching and learning, therefore, leading to more healthful student behaviors, higher school achievement levels, better behavioral risk prevention, and improved student performance (tubbs & garner, 2008; national school climate center, 2010). the policies and practices of a healthful and safe learning climate affect all individuals and areas within schools. for school students and school personnel, learning climate reflects the quality of the overall school experience (national school climate center, 2010). in order to positively impact the socio-emotional health of students as well as their academic achievement, the school learning climate must provide a setting in which students, educational faculty, and school staff can feel that they will succeed and reach their optimal potential (tubbs & garner, 2008; marx et al., 1998). learning climate is one of the essential supports needed for school improvement (sebring, allensworth, byrk, easton, & luppescu, 2006). as part of state and district-wide initiatives, schools are now assessing school learning climate to measure support for learning as well as to enhance those climate factors that contribute to overall school and life success (cohen, pickeral, & mcclosky, 2009). it is now recommended that all schools conduct periodic learning climate assessments to supplement other forms of assessment, create learning climate standards, and direct resources to improving school learning climate (cohen, fege, & pickeral, 2009). after conducting climate assessments, leadership in the analysis of the data, planning for change, and monitoring progress should be the next steps taken to develop more positive climates (tubbs & garner, 2008). cu rre n t i ssu e s in ed u ca tio n v o l. 14 no . 2 2 school learning climate and the juvenile justice setting juvenile justice facilities are also social environments that are important in the development of a youth’s skills needed to navigate life outside of detention. the facility’s learning climate is an important factor in affecting positive social growth that may diminish recidivism (scott & steinberg, 2008). appropriate educational and mental health services are to be provided to youth under the jurisdiction of the juvenile justice system. many barriers to providing quality education to confined students as reported by those teaching and working in the juvenile detention setting are related to school learning climate, including: perceived lack of administrative support, lack of security services, inappropriate student conduct, and lack of faculty and student input into decision-making (houchins, puckett-patterson, crosby, shippen, & jolivette, 2009). learning climate is especially important in the educational setting for confined youth, such as those in a residential juvenile justice facility. usually administered by a regional juvenile or family court, youth who have been abused or neglected are assigned to these residential facilities and receive academic instruction as well as clinical and non-clinical interventions (brooks & histed, 2002). education programs in this setting add muchneeded structure to the lives of the confined students. a structured environment in addition to improved academic skills is related to the reduction of risky behaviors in these students after the confinement experience has ended (national center for juvenile justice, 2006). the effects of interventions to improve anti-social behaviors, emotional problems, alcohol use, and poor academic achievement have been linked to successful changes in the school learning climate (mcevoy, 2000) as modification of school learning climate may enhance overall student health and well-being (kasen, johnson, & cohen, 1990). recent system-wide juvenile justice reform initiatives are being targeted toward improvements in specific areas including using evidence-based approaches to decrease delinquent behaviors and reduce juvenile justice recidivism rates. for example, overcrowding creates not only safety issues but also issues surrounding access to educational and therapeutic services for youth in detention. for some youth, their substandard environmental and confinement conditions may border on abuse or neglect. facilities are encouraged to use model intervention programs supported by a research base, such as alternative placement programs for low-risk youth, to assist with successful behavior change (mendel, 2007; models for change, n.d.). improving school learning climate, therefore, is an evidence-based initiative that can address these reform issues. promoting a sustained, positive climate has been demonstrated to enhance educational outcomes and support a healthy, safe school environment (cohen et al., 2009). importance of a positive learning climate for educational faculty a supportive and safe learning climate for educational faculty has been demonstrated to improve their work performance (freiberg, 1998). learning climate can impact educational faculty behaviors that can then influence student achievement levels (tubbs & garner, 2008). successful and effective schools possess positive leaning climates that include safe environments, active leadership, collegiality, and appropriate student conduct (mcdill, rigsby, & meyers, 1969). school safety/discipline. school safety and discipline are key factors in providing a safe work environment for educational faculty. as student perception of positive learning climate decreases, their levels of behavior problems increase (wang, selman, dishion, & stormshak, 2010) leading to more difficult classroom management for faculty. the specific learning climate factors of structure and support in school discipline were most associated with improved school safety in traditional schools (gregory et al., 2009). school policies should prohibit discrimination, address the safety needs of educational faculty, and build faculty capacity and leadership skills to ensure such positive learning climates. supportive polices such as these increase discipline and safety, leading to more constructive learning climates (council for exceptional children, 2008). school leadership/collegiality. educational leadership and leader’s style are also important factors in creating a positive learning climate for educational faculty (kelley, 2005; shaw, 2009). administrators’ leadership behaviors were found to be correlated with teacher perceptions of learning climate (whitaker, 2009), and school leader behaviors and teacher opinions of learning climate also seem to be related to student achievement in traditional schools (nichols, 2007; kelley, 2005). it seems that shared leadership and professional community tend to improve some faculty instructional behaviors (seashore & wahlstrom, 2011), and the most effective schools appear to possess strong educational leadership leading to a positive learning climate (kelley, 2005). trust is built when administration is supportive and reasonable and when all faculty act with respect and cooperation. when educational faculty enjoy their colleagues and have supportive administration, they set appropriately high expectations for student achievement. (hoy, smith, & sweetland, 2003). student conduct/motivation. faculty ratings of learning climate are also associated with student behavior and adjustment (brand, feiner, seitsinger, burns, & bolton, 2008). high-quality traditional school learning climates are likely to mediate student relationships and behavioral problems (loukas, suzuki, & horton, 2006). for example, learning climate is associated with and predictive of student conduct, especially violent behaviors (cohen, mccabe, michelli, & pickeral, 2009). in schools with positive, supportive learning climates, students were more likely to educational faculty perceptions of the learning climate 3 seek help in the prevention of bullying and school violence (eliot, cornell, gregory, & fan, 2010). many school improvement programs focus on learning climate factors as faculty perception of positive climate is associated with lower levels of student disruptive behaviors and discipline problems (mitchell, bradshaw, & leaf, 2010). in schools where students perceived a learning climate in decline, their behavioral and psychological health were affected (way, reddy, & rhodes, 2007). teacher efficacy/professional development. in traditional schools, provision of professional development and learning communities for educational faculty can positively affect school learning climate (tubbs & garner, 2008). also, effective professional development programs that focus on strategies to improve relationships and interactions between faculty and students was perceived as potentially leading to a more positive school learning climate (price, 2008). learning climate was also viewed as predictive of faculty self-efficacy in traditional schools (tobin, muller, & turner, 2006). a more positive learning climate and high sense of self-efficacy seemed to predict lower stress levels of those adults staffing juvenile corrections facilities, too (wells, minor, angel, matz, & amato, 2008). in addition, most juvenile justice faculty in one study believed that they made a difference in their students, and that they possessed the educational background, teaching skills, and experience to impact student achievement. those with more years of experience seemed to report these higher levels of selfefficacy. (houchins, shippen, & cattret, 2004). purpose a positive learning and work climate for educational faculty appears crucial for academic success and faculty performance (search institute, 2008) in traditional school settings. positive learning and work climates would also be just as important in the success of educational and behavioral interventions of faculty teaching in juvenile justice residential facilities. learning climate assessments are recommended as evidence-based initiatives that can address juvenile justice reform issues, and a positive learning climate may also improve educational faculty effectiveness. therefore, the purpose of this study is to assess facility learning climate and support for learning in a residential juvenile justice facility from the perspective of the educational faculty. methods sample after irb approval of the study, all 22 juvenile center educational faculty from a residential detention facility in rural northeast missouri were asked by the researchers during one of the center’s faculty meetings in may 2009 to participate in the learning climate survey. all (100%) elected to participate and completed and returned a written informed consent document to the researchers at that time. the consent form described the purpose of the study, the possible benefits and harm that may results from participation, and that they could withdraw from the study at any time. the participants were educational faculty at a detention facility that serves a three-county area of northeast missouri. the participants, all state-certified teachers, taught core subject areas following the curriculum assigned to the youth in detention by their home school districts as well as counseled, facilitated group discussions, and mentored the youth during the school day. the center contains a secure detention and a secure residential treatment unit, and it also provides safe care and education services to adjudicated youth through both clinical and non-clinical interventions. services meet the needs of youth and family in crisis and include: emergency shelter, inpatient therapeutic treatment and psychiatric services, individual and family counseling, and transition support and supervision. in addition, youth who have alleged to have committed law violations are involved in educational, recreational, and social programs using counseling and correctional skills for behavior management. a chaplaincy and a character education program are also utilized when necessary (second judicial circuit juvenile division, 2009). the survey was administered june 2009 during the regularly-scheduled all-center faculty meeting. toward the end of the meeting, researchers reviewed consent and survey instructions with participants, secretarial staff distributed surveys, collected surveys, and placed surveys into a sealed envelope for the researchers to transport. instrument the survey tool “creating a great place to learn (cgpl): a survey of your school’s learning climate – staff survey” was used to assess juvenile center educational faculty perceptions of learning climate in three focus areas: relationships, organizational attributes, and personal development (available from search institute). the survey was based on the developmental assets framework created by the search institute (search institute, 2008). the survey used an asset-based foundation to assess faculty perceptions of their work climate. emphasizing the role of the 40 developmental assets, those positive, healthy experiences and influences that protect youth from risky behaviors and allow them to be resilient and thrive, this survey assessed the facility’s psycho-social environment experienced by the educational faculty. the instrument, developed over four years and tested with demographically diverse school faculty, includes both learning climate and developmental outcome measures. after analysis of the results, school improvements and reforms can then be implemented using “asset-based” strategies (search institute, 2006). the variables examined in the survey were aligned with the 40 developmental assets categories (search institute, 2008) and were viewed as critical factors in a positive, supportive learning climate. efficacy, the ability and confidence of the faculty to modify teaching techniques and be able to work together as an educational team, and collegiality, faculty learning from each other in a cu rre n t i ssu e s in ed u ca tio n v o l. 14 no . 2 4 collaborative way, leads to positive conditions that enhance learning. leadership and shared decision-making can help address school problems in a productive manner. such a collaborative culture increases the chances of success in school reform and school improvement programs. since educational faculty need to constantly improve their skills and knowledge, an environment that supports professional development and continuing education encourages faculty professionalism. safety, discipline, and appropriate student conduct are all important to support faculty authority and provide a safe work environment (search institute, 2006). the staff survey consisted of 86 questions in three sections (demographics, facility’s learning climate, and support for learning) that took about 25 minutes to complete. after completing the demographics section, respondents were asked to indicate how much they agreed or disagreed with the list of statements describing the facility’s learning climate and support for learning on a five-point scale: 1=strongly disagreed, 2=disagreed, 3=neither agreed nor disagreed/neutral, 4=agreed, or 5=strongly agreed. the use of such a five-point scale has been supported in the literature as there seems to be little improvement in reliability with more than 5 scale points (lissitz & green, 1975). most items were worded in a positive direction, however, four items in the facility’s learning climate section and two items in the support for learning section were worded in a negative direction. reverse directions attempt to prevent response sets in order to decrease response bias. sample items from this measure include: “this school provides a caring and supportive environment for me” (positive direction) and “instructional equipment is inadequate” (negative direction). the reading level of the instrument was approximately sixth grade. internal consistency for the cgpl averaged .60 or higher and 7 of 11 had alphas that were .70 or higher. the testretest reliability averaged .74 for the total asset categories and context areas (search institute, 2008), and samplespecific reliability was .892. procedure all juvenile center educational faculty in this cross-sectional study voluntarily completed all three parts of the survey instrument at their faculty meeting during the first week of june 2009. in order to maintain confidentiality, surveys were collected at the end of the meeting by a secretarial staff member and placed into a large clasp envelope, sealed, and returned to the researchers. analysis descriptive statistics (percentages and mean scores) were computed for the frequency that each of the statements applied to the respondents. based on pilot testing, final revision, and field testing over four years, a 5point likert scale was chosen by search institute to illustrate the proportion of respondents who indicated how much they agreed or disagreed with the list of statements describing the facility’s learning climate and support for learning. the responses were scored: 1=strongly disagreed, 2=disagreed, 3=neither agreed nor disagreed/neutral, 4=agreed, or 5=strongly agreed (search institute, 2006). the scores for each question were added and then divided by the number of scores to obtain the mean or balance point in the distribution. the following facility’s learning climate questions were reverse-scored when computing mean scores for all of the statements: “students do not care about learning”, “there is a lot of being mean among students”, “i don’t have as much enthusiasm as i used to”, and “most students do as little as they have to”. the following support for learning questions were reversescored when computing mean scores for all of the statements: “extracurricular programs are inadequate”, and “instructional equipment is inadequate”. categories were collapsed and recoded into either ‘strongly agree/agree’ or ‘neither strongly agree nor agree’ with ‘neutrals’ considered as ‘neither strongly agree nor agree’. the chi square statistic was then used to determine differences in the proportion of respondents who indicated how much they ‘agreed’ or ‘disagreed’ with the list of statements by demographic category; examining the relationship between the two variables. to determine if those who reported low scores in one of the statements with the lowest means also reported low scores in the others, and if those who reported high scores in one of the statements with the highest means also reported high scores in the others; a pearson correlation coefficient with a bonferonni correction was also computed. the pearson product-moment correlation coefficient evaluated the extent of the linear relationship between two or more variables since the quantitative variables were normally distributed and the scores for one case were independent from the scores for other cases. results demographics all respondents reported their race as white (23/23, 100%), almost all respondents reported they were non-administrative educational faculty (22/23, 96%), one noted they were administrative educational faculty (1/23, 4.3%) and most described themselves as female (17/23, 74%), under 40 years of age (14/23, 61%), working in this career role for less than five years (13/23, 57%), and working at this facility for less than five years (14/23, 61%). perceptions of facility’s learning climate: positive perceptions school safety/discipline. respondent perceptions of facility learning climate including relationships, organizational attributes, and personal development are illustrated in table 1. the majority of respondents reported ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that “they felt safe in the school building (21/23, 91%) and on school grounds” (22/23. 96%), “students were rarely bullied at this school” (18/23, 78%), “staff would stop bullying if they did see it” (19/23, 83%), and that “the school provided a caring and supportive 5 table 1 perceptions of learning climate (n= 23) safety/discipline question sd d n a sa nr n% n% n% n% n% n% feel safe in school building 0/0.0 1/4.3 1/4.3 10/43.5 11/47.8 0/0.0 feel safe on school grounds 0/0.0 0/0.0 1/4.3 13/56.5 9/39.1 0/0.0 staff stop it if they see student 0/0.0 1/4.3 1/4.3 11/47.8 8/34.8 2/8.7 being bullied rarely students get picked on or bullied 0/0.0 1/4.3 3/13.0 11/47.8 7/30.4 1/4.3 school provides caring and supportive environment 0/0.0 1/4.3 3/13.0 12/52.2 7/30.4 0/0.0 rules enforced fairly at school 0/0.0 0/0.0 2/8.7 17/73.9 3/13.0 1/4.3 admin. enforces discipline fairly 0/0.0 2/8.7 2/8.7 14/60.9 4/17.4 1/4.3 if students break a rule, they are disciplined 0/0.0 0/0.0 1/4.3 16/69.6 6/26.1 0/0.0 ______________________________________________________________________________ leadership/collegiality question sd d n a sa nr n% n% n% n% n% n% atmosphere of collegiality 0/0.0 1/4.3 7/30.4 8/34.8 7/30.4 0/0.0 staff care about students 0/0.0 0/0.0 2/8.7 12/52.2 9/39.1 0/0.0 staff work together to improve instruction 0/0.0 0/0.0 3/13.0 14/60.9 6/26.1 0/0.0 adm. treats collaborative work as priority 0/0.0 2/8.7 5/21.7 11/47.8 4/17.4 1/4.3 school staff take academics 0/0.0 2/8.7 1/4.3 16/69.6 4/17.4 0/0.0 seriously co-workers pleasure to work with 0/0.0 0/0.0 0/0.0 16/69.6 7/30.4 0/0.0 principal trusts judgment of staff 0/0.0 0/0.0 5/21.7 12/52.2 6/26.1 0/0.0 admin. and staff work to make school function 0/0.0 2/8.7 2/8.7 10/43.5 8/34.8 1/4.3 i feel accepted and respected as a colleague 0/0.0 0/0.0 2/8.7 17/73.9 3/13.0 1/4.3 cu rre n t i ssu e s in ed u ca tio n v o l. 14 no . 2 6 my work has positive effect on my life 0/0.0 0/0.0 3/13.0 11/47.8 8/34.8 1/4.3 my work gives me a feeling of accomplishment 0/0.0 1/4.3 1/4.3 14/60.9 6/26.1 1/4.3 this school inspires my best job performance 0/0.0 1/4.3 5/21.7 16/69.6 1/4.3 0/0.0 _________________________________________________________________________________ student conduct/motivation question sd d n a sa nr n% n% n% n% n% n% students treat each other with respect 0/0.0 4/17.4 5/21.7 13/56.5 0/0.0 1/4.3 students can work without being distracted 0/0.0 6/26.1 7/30.4 9/39.1 0/0.0 1/4.3 students are helpful and cooperative 0/0.0 3/13.0 5/23.7 13/56.5 1/4.3 1/4.3 most students try hard to get best grades 0/0.0 8/34.8 8/34.8 6/26.1 0/0.0 1/4.3 teachers are rarely interrupted by students 0/0.0 5/21.7 8/34.8 10/43.5 0/0.0 0/0.0 most students are eager to learn as much as they can 0/0.0 7/30.4 11/47.8 5/21.7 0/0.0 0/0.0 most students put forth good effort in school work 0/0.0 4/17.4 9/39.1 10/43.5 0/0.0 0/0.0 _________________________________________________________________________________ teacher efficacy/professional development question sd d n a sa nr n% n% n% n% n% n% staff help make decisions affecting school 0/0.0 2/8.7 9/39.1 9/39.1 3/13.0 0/0.0 students help set school policies 6/26.1 4/17.4 11/47.8 2/8.7 0/0.0 0/0.0 students asked their opinions before decisions made 1/4.3 7/30.4 13/56.5 1/4.3 0/0.0 1/4.3 students are free to make suggestions to admin. 0/0.0 1/4.3 9/39.1 10/43.5 3/13.0 0/0.0 most parents take an active part in child’s learning 3/13.0 9/39.1 9/39.1 2/8.7 0/0.0 0/0.0 most parents are a genuine partner in child’s learning 2/8.7 9/39.1 9/39.1 3/13.0 0/0.0 0/0.0 ___________________________________________________________________________________ 7 environment” (19/23, 83%). with regard to rules and discipline, the majority of respondents reported ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that “rules were enforced fairly” (20/23, 87%), “disciplinary procedures were fair” (20/23, 87%), and “if students broke a rule, they were disciplined” (22/23, 96%). school leadership/collegiality. the majority of respondents also reported ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that staff worked well together to improve instruction” (20/23, 87%), “staff took academics seriously” (20/23, 87%), and “co-workers were a pleasure to work with” (23/23, 100%). most (15/23, 65%) reported ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that “the administration treated collaborative work as a priority”, that “the principal trusted staff judgment” (18/23, 78%), and that “the administration and staff worked together to make the school function” (18/23, 78%). the majority of respondents reported ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that “staff really cared about the students” (21/23, 91%), “they felt accepted and respected as a colleague” (20/23, 87%), “their work had a positive effect on their lives” (19/23, 83%), “their work gave them a feeling of accomplishment” (20/23, 87%), and “they looked forward to work on most days” (23/23, 100%). most reported ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that “there was an atmosphere of collegiality at the school” (15/23, 65%), and most (16/23, 70%) reported ‘agree’ to the statement that “this school inspired their best job performance”. perceptions of facility learning climate: negative perceptions student conduct/motivation. only a little over half (13/23, 57%), however, reported ‘agree’ to the statement that “students treated each other with respect”, only about 40% (9/23) reported ‘agree’ to the statement that “students could work without being distracted”, and a little over 40% (10/23) reported ‘agree’ to the statement that “teachers were rarely interrupted by students”. female respondents were significantly more likely than male respondents to report ‘neither strongly agree nor agree’’ to the statements that “most students were helpful and cooperative with the staff” (x 2 =6.688, df=2, p<.05) and that “teachers were rarely interrupted by the students” (x 2 =5.247, df=2, p<.05). only 22% (5/23) reported ‘agree’ that “most students were eager to learn as much as they could”, only 26% (6/23) reported ‘agree’ that “most students tried hard to get the best grades”, and only 44% (10/23) reported ‘agree’ that “most students put forth good effort in school work”. female respondents were significantly (x 2 =6.330, df=2, p<.05) more likely than male respondents to report ‘strongly agree/agree’ that “most students were helpful and cooperative with the staff”. shared decision-making. about 40% (9/23) reported ‘agree’, and about 40% reported ‘neither agree nor disagree’, however, to the statement that “staff helped make decisions affecting the facility”. only 9% (2/23) reported ‘agree’ to the statement that “students helped set school priorities”, only 4% (1/23) reported ‘agree’ that “students were asked their opinions before key school decisions were made”, and a little less than half (10/23, 44%) reported ‘agree’ that “students were free to make suggestions to the administrators”. in addition, only 9% (2/23) and 13% (3/23), respectively, reported ‘agree’ that “most parents took an active part in their child’s learning” and that “most parents were genuine partners in their child’s learning”. facility learning climate: correlations among statements with the highest means correlation coefficients were computed among the statements with the highest mean scores in the learning climate section: “on most days, i looked forward to work” (m=4.43, sd=.507), followed by “there were adults at this school whom students can trust (m=4.43, sd=.590), “most of my co-workers were a pleasure to work with” (m=4.30, sd=.470), “staff really cared about students” (m=4.30, sd=.635), “i felt safe on the school grounds (m=4.35, sd=.573), and “i felt safe inside the school building” (m=4.35, sd=.775). using the bonferonni approach to control for type i error across the correlations, a p value of less than .05 was specified for significance. the results presented in table 2 indicate that five of the correlations were statistically significant. in general, those respondents reporting high scores for the statement that “staff really cared about students at this school” would also tend to report high scores for “felt safe in the school building”, “co-workers were a pleasure to work with”, and that “there were adults at the school that students could trust”. those who reported high scores for “felt safe in the school building” also tended to report high scores for “felt safe on school grounds”, and those who reported high scores for “co-workers were a pleasure to work with” also tended to report high scores for “ i look forward to my work on most days”. perceptions of support for learning: positive perceptions teacher efficacy. only those who identified themselves as full-time educational faculty were asked to indicate how much they agreed or disagreed with the next set of statements concerning support for learning. respondent perceptions are illustrated in table 3. the majority of respondents reported ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that they “believed they could make a difference in student achievement” (18/21, 86%), that “they made a positive difference in students’ lives” (16/21, 76%), and that “they could change their teaching approach” (16/21, 76%) or “change their teaching methods (16/21, 76%) for those not doing well in their class”. in addition, the majority reported ‘agree’ or ‘strongly agree’ that “staff played a key role in in-services” (16/21, 76%) and that “in-services meet staff needs” (15/21, 71%); as well as reported “adequate resources” (16/21, 76%) such as “adequate copying services” (17/21, 81%), “adequate computers” (17/21, 81%), and “adequate classroom supplies” (16/21, 76%). 8 table 2 correlations among the statements with the highest mean scores: learning climate (n=23) ________________________________________________________________________ staff care feel safe co-workers feel safe adults like work students building pleasure grounds kids trust most days ______________________________________________________________________________________ staff care students .42* .48* .32 .48* .28 feel safe building .07 .74* .05 .06 co-workers pleasure .09 -.007 .76** feel safe grounds -.06 .08 adults kids trust .09 like work most days . ______________________________________________________________________________________ *p<.05 **p<.01 educational faculty perceptions of the learning climate 9 table 3 perceptions of support for learning (n= 21) question sd d n a sa nr n% n% n% n% n% n% inadequate extracurricular programs at school 4/19.0 11/52.4 2/9.5 1/4.8 2/9.5 1/4.8 school or dept. library includes adequate 0/0.0 5/23.8 7/33.3 7/33.3 1/4.8 1/4.8 selection of books and periodicals i believe i can make a difference 0/0.0 0/0.0 2/9.5 12/57.1 6/28.6 1/4.8 staff play a key role in determining content 0/0.0 1/4.8 3/14.3 13/61.9 3/14.3 1/4.8 of in-service programs adequate copying equipment and services are 0/0.0 0/0.0 3/14.3 11/52.4 6/28.6 1/4.8 available to staff most of the in-service programs deal with issues 0/0.0 0/0.0 5/23.8 10/47.6 5/23.8 1/4.8 specific to the needs of school’s students/staff instructional equipment is not adequate for my 3/14.3 10/47.6 5/23.8 1/4.8 1/4.8 1/4.8 purposes staff encouraged to be innovative 0/0.0 2/9.5 5/23.8 10/47.6 3/14.3 1/4.8 counseling program is a strength 0/0.0 1/4.8 4/19.0 8/38.1 7/33.3 1/4.8 making a positive difference in the lives of 0/0.0 0/0.0 4/19.0 12/57.1 4/19.0 1/4.8 students adequate opportunities to work with faculty 1/4.8 0/0.0 6/28.6 9/42.9 4/19.0 1/4.8 members of other depts./grade levels resources are adequate for my purposes 0/0.0 1/4.8 3/14.3 13/61.9 3/14.3 1/4.8 staff development programs permit me to 0/0.0 1/4.8 7/33.3 7/33.3 5/23.8 1/4.8 acquire important knowledge and skills availability of computers is adequate 0/0.0 2/9.5 1/4.8 11/52.4 6/28.6 1/4.8 when a student has trouble learning, 0/0.0 0/0.0 4/19.0 13/61.9 3/14.3 1/4.8 i try a new strategy classroom supplies are adequate 0/0.0 0/0.0 4/19.0 14/66.7 2/9.5 1/4.8 in school, encouraged to experiment with 0/0.0 0/0.0 6/28.6 13/61.9 1/4.8 1/4.8 teaching methods if some students in class are not doing well, 0/0.0 0/0.0 4/19.0 12/57.1 4/19.0 1/4.8 i believe i should change teaching approach by trying a different teaching method, can 0/0.0 0/0.0 4/19.0 12/57.1 4/19.0 1/4.8 significantly affect a student’s achievement __________________________________________________________________________________________ cu rre n t i ssu e s in ed u ca tio n v o l. 14 no . 2 10 perceptions of support for learning: negative perceptions professional development. less than half, though, reported ‘agree’ to the statements that “staff were encouraged to be innovative” (10/21, 48%) and that “there were adequate opportunities for working with faculty from other departments/grades in the school” (9/21, 43%). onethird (7/21) of respondents reported ‘agree’ and one-third (7/21) reported ‘neither agree nor disagree’, however, that “in-services permitted them to acquire important skills”. support for learning: correlations among statements with the highest means correlation coefficients were computed among the statements with the highest means: “i believe i can make a difference in student achievement” (m=4.20, sd=.616), followed by “adequate copying services” (m=4.15, sd=.671), “the counseling program is strong” (m=4.05, sd=.887), “adequate availability of computers” (m=4.05, sd=.887), “if some students in my class are not doing well, i believe i should change my teaching approach” (m=4.00, sd=.649), and “by trying a different teaching method, i can significantly affect student achievement” (m=4.00, sd=.649). using the bonferonni approach to control for type i error across the correlations, a p value of less than .05 was specified for significance. the results presented in table 4 indicate that eight of the correlations were statistically significant. in general, those respondents reporting high scores for “believe i make a difference in student achievement” also tend to report high scores in “the counseling program is strong”, and “by changing my teaching methods, i can affect student achievement”. those who reported high scores in “adequate copying services” also tended to report high scores for “adequate in-services”. in addition, those who reported high scores for “the counseling program is strong” and “adequate computers” also tended to report high scores for “if some students in my class are not doing well, i believe i should change my teaching approach” and “by trying a different teaching method, i can significantly affect student achievement”. lastly, those who reported high scores in “if some students in my class are not doing well, i believe i should change my teaching approach” also tended to report high scores for “by trying a different teaching method, i can significantly affect student achievement”. correlation coefficients were also computed among the statements with the lowest means (table 5): “the instructional equipment was not adequate” (m=2.35, sd= .988), “extracurricular programs were inadequate to met student needs” (m=2.30, sd=1.174), “library selection is adequate” (m=3.20, sd=.894), “staff were encouraged to be innovative” (m=3.70, sd=.865), “adequate opportunities to work with other faculty” (m=3.75, sd=.967), and ‘i’m encouraged to experiment with my teaching methods” (m=3.75, sd=.550). those who reported low scores on “staff were encouraged to be innovative” also tended to report low scores on “adequate opportunities to work with faculty from other departments/grades”, and those who reported low scores on “adequate opportunities to work with faculty from other departments/grades” also tended to report low scores on “encouraged to experiment with my teaching methods”. table 4 correlations among the statements with the highest mean scores: support for learning (n=21) ________________________________________________________________________ make diff adq adq cns adq change change copy in-serv strong comp approach methods _____________________________________________________________________________________ make diff -.08 .26 .66** -.17 .40 .53* adq copy .65* .25 .25 .36 .12 adq in-service .33 .25 .34 .22 cns strong .07 .55* .55* adq computers .46* .55* change teaching approach .75* change teaching methods ____________________________________________________________________________________ *p<.05 educational faculty perceptions of the learning climate 11 table 5 correlations among the statements with the lowest mean scores: support for learning (n=21) ________________________________________________________________________ inadq adq inadq encourage work w/other experiment ex-cur library equip innovate diff depts. teach methods _____________________________________________________________________________________ inadq extra-curr -.01 .22 -.06 -.02 .04 adq library .39 .15 .06 .32 inadq instruct equip -.18 -.07 .17 encouraged innovative .54* .28 work w/others .47* experiment methods ______________________________________________________________________________________ *p<.05 discussion learning climate reflects the quality of the school experience (national school climate center, 2010). in this case, the climate reflected the overall work environment for the educational faculty in a juvenile justice setting. those working in the juvenile justice setting have viewed many school learning climate variables as barriers to quality education, especially poor administrative leadership, lack of safety and discipline, poor student conduct, and lack of shared decision-making (houchins et al., 2009). most respondents in this study, however, reported generally positive perceptions of safety and discipline (generally feel safe, perceive rules are fair, and view environment as supportive), leadership and collegiality (feel they work as teams, administration and faculty collaborate), and efficacy (feel confident in their teaching ability). on the other hand, most respondents reported negative perceptions of their professional development (in-service) opportunities, student conduct and motivation (disrespectful students, low effort from students), as well as shared decision-making (involvement in school-wide decisions). educational faculty perceptions related to a positive facility learning climate school safety/discipline. school safety and discipline were perceived to be associated with a positive school learning climate by the respondents. the majority of respondents from a detention facility in rural northeast missouri who participated in a learning climate survey seemed to agree that the learning climate for staff and students was generally physically safe and emotionally supportive, and that rules were adequately enforced. policies that are consistently enforced improve discipline and safety at a school (council for exceptional children, 2008). a caring, supportive school environment, therefore, was illustrated by the high mean scores reported school safety and discipline. school leadership/collegiality. school leadership and staff collegiality were also perceived to be associated with a positive school learning climate by the respondents. most respondents seemed to agree that relationships between faculty and administration were generally collegial. school leadership, teacher attitudes, and collegiality have all been associated in the literature with improved faculty work performance (search 2006) and student academic success (kelly, thornton, & daugherty, 2005). those respondents who reported high scores on school safety also reported high scores on staff collegiality as they may have felt safe enough to move beyond their content area to collaborate across disciplines with other faculty. those who perceived low levels of school leadership, however, also seemed to perceive low levels of collegiality. possibly, lack of strong safety and discipline policies or discipline policies not supported by school leadership would dissuade faculty from working as teaching teams. leadership and administrative-faculty collaboration are key factors in a sound physical and psycho-social environment that leads to a positive learning climate at a school (marx et al., 1998). cu rre n t i ssu e s in ed u ca tio n v o l. 14 no . 2 12 educational faculty perceptions related to barriers to a positive facility learning climate student conduct/motivation. poor student conduct and motivation were perceived as barriers to a positive school learning climate by the respondents, similar to attitudes of others working in the detention setting (houchins et al., 2009). there was less agreement that students were respectful of each other; and it seemed that disruptions and interruptions were perceived to affect the learning climate, especially by female respondents. many respondents also did not agree that students put much effort into their class work or really cared about learning. although academics are important, because students in this type of school setting are placed there because of family problems and other problems; academics may not really be their first priority. shared decision-making. most respondents did not perceive a level of involvement and partnership by students or their parents. this agrees with previous studies citing lack of shared decision-making as a barrier to quality education in this setting (houchins et al., 2009). the lowest mean scores were reported as student involvement in setting rules, student behavior when unsupervised, and parents as active partners. additionally, most did not agree that students were involved in school decisions that affected them nor were parents involved as partners in their child’s learning. a positive learning climate requires involvement and cooperation of all parties (marx et al., 1998), even students and their parents. although involvement in all aspects of the school by faculty, students, parents, and community members is optimal, both students and parents in this type of school setting may have other problems that need their primary attention. if it becomes possible, though; it is recommended that faculty afford the students some say in class rules to encourage more ‘ownership’ and bonding with the school. if some rules are perceived as ‘theirs’, students may use positive peer pressure on each other for improved behavior and adherence to rules when not supervised by adults. parents need to be brought into the established school partnership to become more involved in their child’s learning. faculty’s use of any and all means of communication, such as telephone, parent-teacher meetings, and electronic communication could lay the foundation for such a partnership. implications for educational faculty in the juvenile justice setting since supportive policies from the administration improve discipline and safety (council for exceptional children, 2008), strong school administrative leadership truly shapes the learning climate in the facility (kelly et al., 2005). administrators in the juvenile justice setting should create and consistently enforce administrative policies that minimize unsafe circumstances, interruptions, and distractions in order for faculty to work at their optimum level. a structured and disciplined environment leads to reductions in students’ risky behaviors (national center for juvenile justice, 2006) that may lead to improved classroom management by the faculty member. administrators in the juvenile justice setting should also support their faculty and encourage activities that promote collegiality between faculty members if they wish to increase faculty expectations for their students (hoy et al., 2003). those who perceive strong collegiality between faculty members seemed to exhibit higher confidence levels and higher job satisfaction levels (hoy & woolfolk, 1993), both linked to higher student achievement (taylor & tashakkori, 1995). on the other hand, since poor student behaviors and lack of parental involvement are job stressors for juvenile justice staff (houchins et al., 2004) as well as barriers to providing quality instruction to the students (houchins et al., 2009), faculty and administration need to continue to enforce policies fairly and find ways to involve parents as partners. a parents’ group or parent support group could possibly be formed to work more directly with each juvenile justice facility. educational faculty perceptions related to positive support for learning teacher efficacy. teacher efficacy was perceived to be associated with positive support for learning. the majority of respondents seemed to agree that their work was relevant, that they made a positive difference, and that they looked forward to coming to work on most days. the majority of respondents also seemed to agree that they knew that they could use and even modify their teaching strategies and methods to make a positive difference in student achievement and in their students’ lives. the highest mean scores were reported in staff perception of their teaching skills and adequate instructional resources. those who reported this high selfefficacy also tended to agree that they possessed enough instructional resources to meet student needs. those with high self-efficacy, however, may also have viewed any level of instructional resources as adequate as they believe they could successfully teach no matter the amount or type of resources available. the physical learning conditions, such as adequate educational supplies and services, enhance the learning climate (marx et al., 1998). educational faculty perceptions related to barriers to support for learning professional development. lack of professional development opportunities was perceived as a barrier to support for learning. some respondents did not seem to perceive adequate support for innovative teaching or to work across disciplines or departments. the lowest mean score was reported for opportunities to work with faculty from other grades/departments. since the teachers seemed confident in their teaching skills, reported good relationships with their colleagues, and seemed quite satisfied with the physical resources available; more administrative support could be given to cross-discipline work such as thematic units, team-teaching, or newer educational faculty perceptions of the learning climate 13 techniques that allow teachers to learn from each other. inservices can be focused on learning the skills to implement the latest strategies in this area. implications for educational faculty in the juvenile justice setting in this study and in previous research in the juvenile justice setting (houchins et al., 2004), teaching faculty reported high self-efficacy and high job satisfaction. a healthy school learning climate positively impacts teaching efficacy (hoy & woolfolk, 1993) and is also an important predictor of teacher job satisfaction (taylor & tashakkori, 1995). if a teacher perceives high job satisfaction and high self-efficacy, they feel more confident that they can impact student achievement (houchins et al., 2004). faculty, though, need access to professional development activities, instructional in-services, and skillbuilding conferences to increase confidence in using the most appropriate teaching strategies. learning and applying the latest innovations in such techniques as crossdisciplinary teaching will possibly improve teachers’ selfefficacy. professional development activities that focus on improving interactions and relationships between teachers and academic disciplines have been demonstrated to improve school learning climate (price, 2008 ). in addition, learning climate assessments have been recommended for traditional schools as a supplement to other types of assessments in order to improve the quality of education (cohen et al., 2009). since juvenile justice reform initiatives also call for evidence-based programs to address concerns (mendel, 2007; models for change, n.d.), a learning climate assessment based on the 40 developmental assets would allow for program interventions based on “asset-building” strategies that have demonstrated effectiveness (search institute 2006; search institute, 2008). once the assessments have been concluded, schools would plan and implement change strategies and then evaluate those interventions (tubbs & garner, 2008). innovative interventions based on the results a learning climate assessment should thrive in an environment where faculty members feel they can succeed and make a difference. although the current study did include all members of the educational faculty population of this school facility, the small number of respondents in a specific facility makes it difficult to generalize results to other juvenile justice residential facilities. this study suggests, though, that by describing perceptions of their school’s learning climate; school staff and administration can identify strengths and work to improve upon weaknesses. since it is recommended that staff and students work cooperatively to improve learning climate, an avenue for further research is to survey the students’ perceptions of the learning climate at the school; noting if their identified strengths and weaknesses were similar to the staff’s descriptions. all in all, enhancing the school’s physical and psychosocial surroundings leads to a healthier school environment for staff and students. references brand, s., felner, r., seitsinger, a., burns, a., & bolton, n. 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(2006).search institute’s creating a great place to learn survey: a survey of school climate technical manual. retrieved october 1, 2010 from: http://www.searchinstitute.org/system/files/school+climate-tech+manual.pdf seashore l., & wahlstrom, k. (2011). principals as cultural leaders. phi delta kappan, 92(5), 52-56. taylor, d., & tashakkori, a. (1995). decision participation and school climate as predictors of job satisfaction and teachers’ sense of efficacy. journal of experimental education, 63(3), 217230. way, n., reddy, r., & rhodes, j. (2007). students’ perceptions of school climate during the middle school years: associations with trajectories of psychological and behavioral adjustment. american journal of community psychology, 40(3/4), 194-213. a rtic le title go e s he re 15 article citation cox, c.c., visker, j.d., & hartman, a. (2011). educational faculty perceptions of the learning climate in a juvenile justice residential facility. current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/558 author notes carolyn c. cox, phd, mches truman state university 2108 pershing building, kirksville, mo 63501 ccox@truman.edu carolyn c. cox is a professor of health science at truman state university in kirksville, mo. she teaches courses in community and school health education. her research interests focus on community-based participatory research in the areas of school and worksite health promotion. joseph d. visker, phd, ches truman state university 2108 pershing building, kirksville, mo 63501 jvisker@truman.edu joseph d. visker is an assistant professor of health science at truman state university in kirksville, mo. he teaches courses in research methods and environmental health. his research interests are in human sexuality and youth sexual health. ashley hartman truman state university 2108 pershing building, kirksville, mo 63501 abh1764@truman.edu ashley hartman is an undergraduate student in health science at truman state university, and her research interests include school health, youth health, and health of special populations. cu rre n t i ssu e s in ed u ca tio n v o l. 14 no .2 16 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 2 may 18, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors krista adams melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss ayfer gokalp younsu kim seong hee kim angeles maldonado carol masser john michael tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template 1 volume 14, number 2 june 11, 2011 issn 1099-839x connecting to the khans: shaping national identity of the next generation through education in kazakhstan matthew stein foreign military studies office when the soviet union collapsed in 1991, kazakhs did not make up the majority of the population in their own titular state. since then, kazakhs have become the majority ethnic group and the government revised the education system to reflect this demographic change. education is an important tool for shaping national identity in a multiethnic state, especially one undergoing demographic shifts. this article is a snapshot of how the demographic change in kazakhstan has affected education and in turn how this is shaping national identity on young generations. this transformation is important to monitor and understand as kazakhstan continues to develop and become an important security partner and increasingly vital source of energy supplies for asia and europe. keywords: kazakhstan, national identity, education, multiethnic, curriculum the suffix „-stan‟ is used to form the name of several states in central and southern asia. it comes from the persian word „stān‟, meaning place or land (the macquarie dictionary, 2005). kazakhstan translates into „the land of kazakhs‟, although this carries with it a somewhat misleading meaning. out of all the post-soviet central asian states, kazakhstan is one of the most ethnically heterogeneous (szayna, 2003). at the time of the collapse of the soviet union, ethnic kazakhs did not make up a majority of the population in their own titular state. it is only during the last several years that kazakhs became the definite majority. over the last several years the government in kazakhstan passed laws and changed civic institutions that reflect this demographic change (blum, 2003). this has happened in the state‟s education system, specifically through the curriculum, the textbooks, and lessons in schools. basic compulsory education reaches a broad audience and the younger generations in kazakhstan do not have the same national identity that the previous generations did during the soviet union. this article is a snapshot at demographic change in kazakhstan, how it has affected education and in turn how this has shaped the national identity of young generations. this transformation is important to monitor and understand as kazakhstan continues to develop and become an important security partner and increasingly vital source of energy supplies for asia and europe. background history of kazakhs and kazakhstan kazakhs are turkic people who trace their roots from the descendants of turkic and turko-mongol groups. the first kazakh khanate was established in 1465-66 when two tribal leaders broke away from the uzbek khanate (another turkic group) and formed their own khanate. this khanate was divided into three groups called zhuz or a horde, namely the great, middle, and little hordes. the hordes and clan system survive to the present day, but unofficially. each of the hordes has numerous clans (esenova, 2002) and below that individual families. because of the people‟s nomadic lifestyle, the kazakh khanate was not a fixed state. the kazakhs did have, however, an identity that would later be challenged when the russian empire expanded into the region in the eighteenth century. the russian empire established a bureaucracy, including formal education, which did not follow the lines of the kazakh zhuz or clan systems (zharmukhamed, 2004). cu rren t i ssu es in ed u ca tio n vo l. 14 no . 2 2 this education system put russian-related subjects to the forefront and marginalized kazakhs. the kazakhs formed a short-lived independent government in 1917, but then were incorporated into the soviet union in 1920 (esenova, 2002). this was the last time that kazakhs had a real hand in shaping institutions that reflected what they thought about themselves. the soviet union‟s actions ensured that kazakh identity would be shaped by an outside entity for some time. the soviet government used its control over the education system to create a soviet identity system (ro‟i, 1984; esenova, 2002). they also remapped the borders and resettled other ethnicities that made kazakhs a minority in their own republic (zharmukhamed, 2004). the most recent and relevant changes began during the last years of the soviet union (in the mid-to-late 1980s). the removal of kazakh dinmukhamed konayev as first secretary of the kazakh communist party and appointment of russian gennady kolbin, a man who had never worked in the kazakh soviet socialist republic (ssr), led to protests and a riot in almaty in december of 1986, an event known as the zheltoksan incident. kazakh university students were angry that outsiders were interfering in kazakh affairs and while this incident was a grassroots movement, it resulted in concrete legal changes. in march of 1987, the kazakh communist party central committee passed a new law “on improving the study of the kazakh language.” this was the communist party‟s way of keeping peace after the events of the preceding year. this was the first of several laws on the status of the kazakh language and highlighted changes in attitude. the 1989 “law on languages” was important because the general public had a hand in its creation. prior to its passage there were many public meetings and debates held to discuss it (fierman, 1998). alongside these new laws there was a demographic shift in kazakhstan. ethnic kazakhs were a minority in the kazakh ssr for a number of years. during the period from 1979-1989, they became the largest ethnic group, going from 36% of the population, according to the 1979 soviet census, to 40.1% in the 1989 census. while this certainly is not a majority, it is significant when compared to the next largest ethnic group, ethnic russians were 40.8% of the population in 1979 and then dropped to 37.4% in 1989 (oka, 2006). most importantly, the number of ethnic kazakhs continued to grow, and in 1999, they made up 53.4% of the population. many russians left kazakhstan following the dissolution of the soviet union and kazakhs have had a higher birth rate than other ethnicities. according to the 2009 census they now make up 63% (stat.kz, 2009). now that kazakhs make up a more solid majority of the population in kazakhstan, it is logical that they hold key positions in the government. many positions within the government require the ability to speak kazakh and many aspects of life are now bureaucratically slanted in ways that favor kazakhs, including promotion preference for kazakhs (szayna, 2003). this does not mean that minority groups are completely ignored. russian remains an important „official‟ language in kazakhstan (zharmukhamed, 2004) and the prime minister, karim masimov, is an ethnic uyghur (rfe/rl, 2007). additionally, the government set up schools for some minorities. there are schools for russian, uyghur, and uzbek speakers, the latter two being synonymous with that ethnic group. this is not an example of government segregation in schools. in a russian school it is common to find students of all ethnicities. in kazakh, uyghur, or uzbek schools, it is typical to find only those ethnic groups there. parents have a choice on what language school their child attends; it is not a government directive according to administrators i interviewed at the altynsarin institute. using education as a tool in shaping national identity national identity according to smith (1991, p.9), “involves some sense of political community, however tenuous. a political community in turn implies at least some common institutions and a single code or rights and duties for all the members of the community. it also suggests a definite social space, a fairly well demarcated and bounded territory, with which the members identify and to which they feel they belong.” there are different civic institutions that can be used to shape national identity in a multiethnic state. one of the most important and far reaching is a state‟s education system. education is one of the first places where a young generation is socialized into a larger group, which is particularly important if they come from different ethnic backgrounds (perko, 2003), and this socialization happens at a time when identities are being developed (jo, 2004). education can shape the attitude of an entire generation (christou, 2006). providing education in a multiethnic state is not a new issue. some states have used centrally controlled education as a tool (abu-saad, 2008; mclean, 2007; segawa, 2007) in an effort to assimilate other ethnicities and at times, allow them elements of educational and cultural autonomy. this is also the same for kazakhstan. kazakhstan‟s government has almost total control over the education system and there is a multi-ethnic generation that has recently finished compulsory education or are currently students in their last few years of school. they are the first generation to be educated entirely in kazakhstan as an independent state and their national identity is highly influenced by the kazakh education system. education in kazakhstan the curriculum standards are an important tool the ministry of education of kazakhstan can use to shape national identity. it represents what the government of kazakhstan wants their younger generations to know and to think about certain subjects. the standards, gosudarstvennye obshcheobiazatel’nye standarty srednego obshchego obrazovaniia respubliki kazakhstan (government compulsory standards of secondary connecting to the khans: shaping national identity of the next generation through education in kazakhstan 3 education of the republic of kazakhstan, 2002) written at the altynsarin institute in almaty named after ibrahim altynsarin, an important historical figure in kazakh education. altynsarin founded the first national secular schools in kazakhstan and is considered a key figure in kazakh educational history (altynsarin.ru, 2009). the institute is used to train teachers who will work in primary and secondary schools and many of its professors and instructors contributed to the standards. other authors of the standards teach at universities and schools around kazakhstan. a distinguishing feature of these authors is that they are almost all ethnic kazakhs. the main purpose of kazakhstan‟s education system is, not unlike any other state, to educate its citizens to either continue education in an institute or university, or to enter the workforce. kazakhstan inherited an education system from the soviet union, which was strong in math and sciences. in an effort to diversify its economy from being too dependent on energy exports, kazakhstan restructured its education system to be on a level with developed states (daly, 2008). this system, specifically secondary education, includes 19 subjects that students study from the 5th through the 11th grade. the subjects include math and science courses, physical education, and several courses in the humanities. in order to gather data on the national identity of young generations currently studying in school, five subjects from the humanities were selected because they have the most potential of shaping identity. these subjects are: literature, history, fundamentals of social studies, language(s) (both native and foreign), and geography. these subjects are closest to the fundamental features of national identity that smith (1991, p. 14) stated: “an historical territory, or homeland (for the subject history); common myths and historical memories (history and literature); a common, mass public culture (languages and literature); common legal rights and duties for all members (fundamentals of social studies); and a common economy with territorial mobility for members (geography).” smith‟s fundamentals may not fit exactly with these five subjects, but are the best possible choices. each subject in the standards has goals and requirements on what information students need to know, some of which is based on their grade level. a subject like literature for example includes important writers and novels that students will study. the other subjects have their own appropriate requirements. each subject includes a section as a guide for teachers to check the knowledge of the students. the section states that “a minimum level of knowledge (the requirements) must be obtained” and that the student either “achieved” or “did not achieve” this level. literature there are two categories of literature in the curriculum, kazakh and russian literature. the goals and requirements sections state that students need to understand different types of written literature and important writers and their works for different periods in history. kazakh literature focuses mainly on writers from the nineteenth century, called the classic enlighteners, and the twentieth century. one of the main classic enlighteners is abay kunanbaev. among kazakhs, abay is considered to be the most important writer in their history. he was the first to write about what it means to be „kazakh‟. other notable writers include mukhtar auezov, who wrote a novel about abay‟s life, saken seifullin, and akhmet baitursynov. the latter two are writers who were executed in the stalin purges of intellectuals and enemies of the state in the 1930s. due to their label as an enemy, they were not thought of as significant writers during the soviet union. the requirements of russian literature focus on writers and works of the eighteenth through the twentieth century. the section on the eighteenth century is titled the „russian classical literature of the 18th century‟ and students are required to know about well known writers like pushkin, lermontov, gogol, tolstoy, dostoevsky, and chekov and their works. the sections on the twentieth century include gorky, akhmatova, pasternak and their writings. the literature sections of the standards are inclusive of the two major ethnicities in kazakhstan, kazakhs and russians. each section has a broad historical range of literature and well-known writers and students study both topics. although not listed in the standards, ugyhurs have the freedom to teach their own literature. schools have their own literature textbooks complete with notable writers from their own history. this demonstrates that kazakhstan is acknowledging its minority groups. history according to the goals and requirements of this section students need to know about history as it relates to people, the environment, and the community. it consists of world history and history of kazakhstan. the first topic covers ancient egyptians, the greek and roman empires, the middle-ages, and recent history. the history of kazakhstan also covers an extended period from ancient history through the soviet union to the present day. there are more specific requirements that go further into topics of kazakh history such as the khans of the fifteenth century, the war against russia over the colonization of kazakh lands, and even the development strategy of kazakhstan into the year 2030. this latter topic demonstrates how a connection has been made between the past and the not-too-distant future, where kazakhstan sees itself in the group of developed states of the world. lastly, this section mentions that there is a problem of bias in teaching history, both kazakh and world history. this bias is “euro-centric” and that this perspective needs to be “studied,” implying that it needs to be altered. the two courses, world and kazakhstan history, both cover extensive periods of history. world history cu rren t i ssu es in ed u ca tio n vo l. 14 no . 2 4 includes a wide range but the latter topic deals mainly with history relating to kazakhs and does not include other major ethnic groups. the euro-centric bias in this case could be interpreted as the russian/soviet, european, western, or a combination of all these perspectives. kazakhs believe that the teaching of their history during the soviet union was marginalized. this is, in a sense, their way of correcting that problem. unlike literature, no other ethnic group has its own history section. fundamentals of social studies this is a subject with a range of goals and requirements that deal with the role of citizens in kazakhstan in areas of political-economic, socio-cultural, and general development of the community. other requirements are separated into categories such as people, community, and the environment. these are meant to give the students an idea of what the community is and what their role is within it. the topic of community in this section includes themes of philosophy and great thinkers. several of these listed are known throughout the world such as confucius, plato, aristotle, and hobbes. there are however, other philosophers listed like korkit, a central asian-turkic poet from the ninth century, and al-farabi, an islamic-persian scientist and philosopher also from the ninth century. additionally, there is list of kazakh philosophers like the writer/poet abay as well as toli bey, kazibek bey, and aiteke bey, famous tribal leaders from kazakh history. the social studies section is an effort to include everyone in the community. it is meant to teach students their role in the community and to think about ways that they can be involved. however, teaching the philosophies of turkic, islamic, and kazakh origin means that only students of certain ethnic groups can see a connection between themselves and the material. there are russians, ukrainians and even koreans and germans still living in kazakhstan, each group with a considerable number of people. the requirements, specifically studying turkic or islamic philosophies, do not take this latter demographic group into consideration. languages the two most important languages in kazakhstan, kazakh and russian, are subjects that every student studies. in the case of uyghur or uzbek schools, their respective languages are also studied. within the standards are three subject sections on kazakh, russian, and foreign languages, the latter of which consists of english, arabic, french, german, and chinese. the chapter on kazakh language is written for non-native speakers of kazakh, namely for russian, uyghur, and uzbek schools. it is written in the goals that because kazakh is a state language it is necessary to communicate in it and to be introduced to the culture of it. this will help to prepare the student for later opportunities. in addition to this, the standards say that being able to speak and write the language is especially important, mentioning a few more times the importance of communication and connections to kazakh culture and history. the chapter on russian language is similar in scope to that of kazakh, only that the main goals are to use the language are more in depth. it states that knowing russian is important for intellectual, emotional, and moral development in studying. it also lists further uses for the language, such as further educational and career purposes, that far exceed expectations compared to requirements for kazakh. the chapter on foreign languages has a main goal of mastering basic skills in a non-native language. the goals state that this will happen by forming simple and communicative abilities in a foreign language for use in interactions with another culture in typical situations. each of the languages has its own goals and requirements, many of which are focused on grammar, phonetics, and lexical usage. these sections do include both of the major languages of kazakhstan, as well as foreign languages, but there is some inconsistency in the requirements. in addition to their native language, most ethnic kazakh students naturally have a high level of proficiency in russian. the high requirements for russian are for all students and come as no surprise; russian is still the lingua franca among all ethnicities and its inclusion in the standards is an important acknowledgement of other ethnicities. conversely, students of other ethnicities speak their native language (russian) but have low levels of proficiency in kazakh. the standards say that it is necessary to be able to communicate in kazakh, but do not mention any specific proficiency level. these requirements are also for non-native speakers of kazakh, meaning expectations for non-native kazakh speakers are vague. considering that knowledge of kazakh is required for government positions, most russian speakers should be able to move on to higher education and find jobs, but they will have problems finding work in the government. geography the main goals of geography are more scientific than the other subjects and as a result have somewhat less of an influence on identity. however, under the requirements of the subject are a number of different topics important to the study of geography. several of these do relate to the study of geopolitical issues like natural resources, environmental problems, and how regions of the world break down economically, historically, and culturally. this is the least direct subject when analyzing how it shapes identity. geopolitical topics are mentioned but do not go into any detail. a few of the topics are literally written as „the spreading of religion in the world‟ or „green revolution‟ without any further explanation. some deductions can be made from topics like these, but it is necessary to look at how these lessons are taught. connecting to the khans: shaping national identity of the next generation through education in kazakhstan 5 research methodology observations while the national curriculum includes important information, how students are taught this material and what they think about those particular topics is more significant. to determine this i visited four schools in the city of almaty to observe lessons in literature, history, fundamentals of social studies, languages, and geography. i also gave a questionnaire out to students in order to find out what they generally think about the five subjects, but this is explained in detail later in the article. i chose four schools in the city to gather information from, two russian, one kazakh, and one uyghur. these schools are named for the main language of instruction, not necessarily for students‟ ethnicity. for kazakh and uyghur schools, however, this does represent the main ethnicity of the student population. i made a preliminary visit to each school to get permission to observe lessons and distribute the questionnaires. the schools were selected based on a cross section of the major ethnic groups. one of the russian schools, #35, is a magnet school for foreign language instruction. at each of the schools i observed lessons in the five subject areas mentioned in grades 9-11. a typical lesson observation included following along with the textbook if an extra one was available, looking at various pictures and other learning aids in the room, and speaking with the teacher for a few minutes during a break. during some of the visits i also toured the school facilities including the libraries and in the case of two schools, small museums. school #12 this is a kazakh language school that i visited four times during the course of research. i observed eight lessons in all, and toured the library. unlike other schools i visited, this one held a morning assembly on two of the four visits. the assembly took place in the lobby, surrounded by various pictures of kazakh national symbols and the flag, and included the singing of the national anthem. there was also an assistant director on hand for both assemblies who strictly oversaw everything. many of the classes i attended used the government-issued textbooks for subjects like kazakh language and literature, russian language and literature, history, geography, and in some cases english. the majority of these textbooks were printed, depending on the subject, within the past five years. this is a fairly good indication that the material being taught does follow the national curriculum standards. one of the most noticeable things i observed took place during a history lesson. in the back of the history classroom was a large poster of a timeline of the history of kazakhstan. an interesting feature on the timeline shows that modern kazakhstan can be traced back to the foundation of the kazakh khanate in 1465-66. the timeline shows that despite subsequent governments or historical periods, such as the russian empire and the soviet union, the idea of a kazakh state never disappeared. the visit to the library was also an important factor in determining the overall tone of the school. there were a dozen shelves of books; the majority of them were in kazakh and only one shelf in russian. those that were in another language like english were a series of famous novels that only an advanced or fluent speaker would be able to read. the school has other influences outside of the ministry of education of kazakhstan. several english classes used a series of books printed by oxford university press, and one teacher pointed out to me that they only use the government issued books for english when preparing for exams. i also noticed that students were conversing with each other in a mix of russian and kazakh. school #28 this is a russian language school that i visited three times and observed six lessons, toured the school museum, and interviewed a teacher. this school had various national symbols of kazakhstan in the lobby and adorning the hallways, but did not have any kind of morning assembly during any of the visits. the student population was made up of a variety of ethnicities, but mainly russian, kazakh, and ukrainian, according to a senior teacher and administrator. the geography, and russian and kazakh language classes i observed used the government-issued textbooks, all printed in the last four to five years. what made the kazakh language lessons significant was the size, as each class had no more than eight students. after the lesson i spoke with the teacher about how well she thought students were learning kazakh. she said that these were 11th grade students who had studied kazakh for seven years but were still working with an intermediate level of the language. it is worth questioning whether or not standards have been set against them achieving high levels of proficiency in the language. i asked this to the teacher after class and she agreed that expectations for non-kazakhs to learn the language were generally low. she acknowledged that kazakh is becoming a more important language but that students in almaty do not have opportunities to practice it outside of class. she suggested that an educational center be set up so that students could have a place to use the language. in contrast to this was the russian language class i observed where 25 students were packed tightly into a room. they used the government-issued textbooks and the group quickly moved through a series of exercises. the russian literature class i observed was about maxim gorky, who is specified in the standards. when i spoke with the teacher after class i noticed that the lesson was taught from a textbook from the 1970s, as the teacher felt the quality of books from that time period was better. she said that the students still read the texts from current books, but she read aloud in class and asked some questions cu rren t i ssu es in ed u ca tio n vo l. 14 no . 2 6 from the older soviet version. she also mentioned, without me asking, that the students do not see much of a connection with the material that they read to their own lives. during one of my visits to this school i was surprised to learn that the school had a museum and i was able to take a quick tour of it. the museum is made up of one room with several exhibits about the history of the school and a few well-known people who graduated from there including olzhas suleimenov, an anti-nuclear weapons activist. one of these in particular was a young woman named menshuk, who was killed during the second world war and later awarded hero of the soviet union. one entire wall was dedicated to her, including a large painting of her in battle while the area in front of it had dirt and several things picked up from the place where she died. school #35 this is a russian language magnet school that i visited four times, observed 11 lessons, and toured the library. there was not an assembly before school but i noticed that there were the usual symbols and posters of kazakhstan adorning the walls of the lobby. there was also a small section on the wall about friday being the day to speak kazakh, with a poster encouraging „let‟s speak kazakh‟. most of the lessons i observed used the government-printed textbooks, including fundamentals of social studies, geography, history, and kazakh language. the english classes used a series from the oxford university press. the english teachers i spoke with said that the quality of this series was better and helped the students, but that like school #12 the government-printed books are used to prepare students for tests. the geography teacher mentioned that the textbooks lacked useful information. i went to an additional geography lesson where students were discussing current events, focusing mainly on food products that they had recently researched. the same teacher said that she wants students to use more outside sources like the media to supplement lessons. i visited the library of the school and found that it included a fairly-even mix of russian and kazakh books, with a small selection in english. the librarian showed me books from the soviet union still in use despite some that are falling apart. i was also able to watch a kazakh language and literature class during one of the visits. the students were discussing an excerpt from a story they had read, reading and repeating sections of it in kazakh. this was the only time they used the language, except for the teacher speaking to them in kazakh during the lesson, and even during the last 10-15 minutes of the lesson, the teacher reverted to speaking russian. school #153 this is a uyghur language school that i visited three times and observed 10 lessons, and toured the library and school museum. the school featured many of the same symbols and posters of kazakhstan that other schools had, except that everything in the school was written in uyghur. the school was named for rozybakiev, a uyghur who was involved in the bolshevik revolution in kazakhstan. during one of the days i observed lessons, i arrived to find a morning assembly where the students lined up outside the school and sang the national anthem. however, a few minutes after this it changed into an informal period of exercises with dance music and a lot of joking between teachers and students. i was not able to watch a variety of class levels in this school, but instead observed a 9th grade group of students during many of their lessons. this was the arrangement that the school had set up for observations, not a choice on my part. this also meant observing a few classes not in one of the five subjects, such as physics and algebra, but turned out to be valuable proof that all of the classes are taught in uyghur. for some of the classes, such as geography and english, the government-issued textbooks were used. all of these textbooks were written in uyghur. i noticed that these 9th grade students rarely spoke uyghur to each other, instead using russian. i noticed that the teachers pushed the students to speak uyghur in class but with mixed results. many of them could easily converse in it during classes, while a few had trouble and reverted back to speaking in russian even if it meant being scolded by the teacher. during one of the visits i was able to take a quick tour of the library, where i found the usual selection of russian and kazakh materials, but also a large quantity of books in uyghur. the students who accompanied me inside were quick to point out this collection. this group of students had also taken it upon themselves to show me a small room where the school museum is housed. it included traditional uyghur musical instruments, pictures of former teachers and students, a section dedicated for the first director of the school, and a section about rozybakiev with newspaper clippings about him from the time of the revolution. even as i left the library the students continued talking about their heritage, without any questions from me. a few of them talked about how they should have a country of their own. a student showed me photos on his cell phone of the map of a potential uyghur state, the unofficial flag with a blue background and a crescent moon and a star that uyghur people associate with, and others of uyghur clothing and culture. many of these aspirations are shared by uyghurs living across the border in the xinjiang region in china. observation summary the kazakh school, #12, has teachers, textbooks, lessons and a general attitude influencing its students in a way that reflects the national curriculum standards. some of these same characteristics can be found at schools, #28, #35, and #153. in all schools there are teachers who connecting to the khans: shaping national identity of the next generation through education in kazakhstan 7 decided not to use government-issued textbooks for some lessons, instead preferring older or outside materials. the library of a russian school (#35) also retained a large number of russian-language books as did school #153 for books in uyghur. the uyghur school is also noteworthy as it represents the recognition of another ethnic group. the conclusion of observations in schools is that while there is a major focus on kazakh attributes in school subjects, there are some other features that act as a balance to this. the overall material presented to students closely follows the curriculum set out by the government. it reflects the demographic change; most material puts kazakhs at the forefront, but it is also inclusive of other ethnic groups. questionnaires the questionnaire included five questions; one for each of the subjects observed. students were instructed to not write their name on the questionnaire; this was told to them before giving the questionnaire out and written on the top of the paper. the questions were broad and open in order to allow students to answer with their own opinion. the process was intended to be similar to an interview, but questionnaires were distributed in order to get the most honest answers possible. this was done out of a cultural and peer pressure consideration; individual answers and thought are not widely encouraged in this society. it should be stressed again that this is a snapshot of how education influences identity of young generations in kazakhstan. conducting research in kazakhstan can be a difficult endeavor. despite a significant effort to open up to the western world, a foreign presence in kazakhstan is still viewed with some suspicion. even though this meant that answers may not be easily coded, i felt general questions were more appropriate. specific questions about opinions and about ethnicity in particular might be viewed by locals as inflammatory and ultimately counterproductive for this study. it should also be pointed out that directly asking about national identity is problematic. in the kazakh language the term for national and ethnic can be used as one word, ūlt. therefore, it is difficult to use the term national identity or ethnic identity with a group of people who do not have similar terminology or viewpoint. questionnaires were translated into both russian and kazakh and while a uyghur version was not translated, the teachers at school #153 felt that their students could answer in russian. i did not give out surveys at school #35 due to having enough from another russian language source, school #28. overall there were 67 surveys from school #12, 93 surveys from school #28, and 18 surveys from school #153. i translated the survey answers with the assistance of language instructors in kazakhstan and at the university of kansas. the following section will include the question followed by the consensus from each of the three schools surveyed. question #1 what do you think are the most important works of literature (for example kazakh, russian, american literature, etc.)? who are the most important writers in literature? why do you think they are important? write as many examples of works and writers you feel is appropriate. school #12 – kazakh school. all students gave answers that were very similar with the topics listed under the standards. they wrote that abay kunanbaev and mukhtar auezov are the most important kazakh writers. less than 50% of the students wrote an answer for russian literature. a dozen students wrote that shakespeare is significant, and three students answered that j.r.r. tolkien was important. school #28 – russian school. around 90% of the students wrote that abay, auezov and pushkin, tolstoy, dostoevsky, and gogol are important for kazakh and russian literature respectively. a dozen wrote that shakespeare is notable and two students answered brazilian author paulo coelho. one other thing worth mentioning is that students from this school gave the most complete answers to this question. all wrote at least one example for kazakh, russian, and foreign literature. school #153 – uyghur school. 75% of the students from the uyghur school listed the well known kazakh and russian writers. half also identified mahmud al-kashgari, an 11th century turkic scholar and writer as important in literature. question #2 what do you think are the most important periods or significant events in history (for example world, kazakh, russian, eurasian history, etc.)? why do you think that they are important? write as many examples of periods or events you feel is appropriate. school #12 – kazakh school. there was a variety of answers but around 75% of students listed four incidents or specific periods of time. they were: the years 1465-66 when the kazakh khans created a khanate, the second world war (when it involved the soviet union) 1941-45, the zheltoksan incident, and when kazakhstan gained independence in 1991. three students who wrote that the zheltoksan protests were important also mentioned that the incident helped kazakhstan gain independence. school #28 – russian school. around 75% of the students listed two events as the most significant, the second world war and the break-up of the soviet union. less than 10 students put the zheltoksan incident as important and said that kazakhstan‟s independence resulted from it, and two students even put the creation of the kazakh khanate and referred to the khans as being „ours‟. school #153 – uyghur school. the students gave a variety of answers, but around 75% wrote that the second world war and kazakhstan‟s independence were the most significant. two wrote that the break-up of the soviet union and the economic problems of 2008 were also important events. cu rren t i ssu es in ed u ca tio n vo l. 14 no . 2 8 question #3 do you think it is important to be involved in your community (neighborhood, district, city, country, globally)? why or why not? who do you think plays an important role in your community? why? school #12 – kazakh school. around 65% of the students from the kazakh school said that it is important to be involved in the community and half of those also wrote that the current president nursultan nazarbayev plays an important role. seven students identified dinmukhamed konayev, the longtime first secretary of the kazakh communist party in the kazakh ssr, as a person who played an important role in the community. two students said that it is not important to be involved, and around one third did not answer the question. school #28 – russian school. the answer to these questions was split half yes and no, while a few students also left it blank. those that answered yes wrote that people in the community generally need to be involved but they did not identify any one individual. only four said that the president or government members are important. a dozen of those who answered no said that there is nothing in the community for them. school #153 – uyghur school. two thirds of the students felt that it was important to be „generally‟ involved in different areas of the community, while two specified that it is important only in almaty. no one identified a particular person as being important. question #4 what language(s) do you think are important to know in the world today? why do you think this? school #12 – kazakh school. around 90% of the students answered that knowing one‟s own native language is the most important, or that kazakh is the most important before listing other languages. they said that english is also important, for reasons of international and intercultural communication, and russian because students responded that it is still in wide use in kazakhstan. additionally important is chinese, as two dozen students feel that it is used in trade and international relations. school #28 – russian school. nearly 100% of the students answered that english is the most important language to know, even putting it before russian. these same students wrote that russian is important, but listed it at second. around 60% of students also said that chinese will become more important in the future, giving the reason that china will be a great power. school #153 – uyghur school. all of the students from this school also highlighted that english and russian are important languages, especially for communicating with others. 14 of them said that their own native uyghur was important and four added that kazakh is important to know because of the country that they live in. question #5 what countries that border kazakhstan do you think are important to its future? why do you think this? do you think there are any countries that do not border kazakhstan but are still important for its future? why? school #12 – kazakh school. russia and china were listed as the two most important countries that share a border with kazakhstan by around 80% of students. these students said that they are important for economic and political reasons, and general relations. the other countries that share a border, such as kyrgyzstan or uzbekistan, were only listed by several students. as for non-bordering states, the united states and turkey were said to have importance for reasons of trade and good relations. school #28 – russian school. 90% of the students answered that russia was the most important state for kazakhstan, followed by china. the reasons were similar to school #12, that they are important for economic and political relationships. three students also listed germany and japan as important countries that do not share a border, and said so because of economic and development ties. school #153 – uyghur school. half of the students from this school said that all five countries are important for kazakhstan and half of them gave no response. four answered that russia and china are important without giving reasons why, and two said that the u.s. is important and also did not answer why they thought that. questionnaire summary the survey results show that most of the students at school #12 think that kazakhs and topics related to kazakhstan, such as those in literature, history, language, etc., are more important than others. few students gave broad answers to questions when they had the option, instead choosing for example that only kazakh writers or that certain events in kazakh history are significant. they also wrote that knowing one‟s native language is the most important language to know in the world today. they gave similar answers as other schools for question five. overall, kazakh students responded with answers that indicate the education system has been effective in shaping their identity. the students from the schools #28 and #153 gave answers that at times proved the education system was also shaping their identity, but they gave additional answers that presented a somewhat different view of the subjects. many students, especially from school #28, gave answers that represented both kazakh and russian literature and acknowledged the importance of the kazakh language in addition to english and russian. one of the most noticeable groups of answers came with question #3, that half of the students from school #28 felt that community involvement is not important because they do not see anything in it for them. to summarize the effects of this on students of other ethnicities, their identity is being shaped by the education system. there are however, a few things connecting to the khans: shaping national identity of the next generation through education in kazakhstan 9 that act as a balance to this, most notably separate language schools. these separate schools allow other ethnicities some level of autonomy. this affects how the subjects are taught. there are other influences on students outside of school that shape their identity such as family, peers, and community institutions. education is just one area that influences the national identity of young generations. however, the survey results are as honest a look as possible into what these students think about the given subjects, and with open-ended questions given under the condition of anonymity, the answers can speak for themselves. the national curriculum is having an effect on the identity of the young generations, even if other influences are pushing them to think differently. assessment education can be used to shape national identity. given the demographic changes in kazakhstan and that kazakhs (as opposed to an outside power) have control of their education system; this identity is being shaped by education in kazakhstan. the national curriculum standards, observations, and student surveys indicate that kazakhs have asserted their views in their education system, particularly through the five previously-mentioned subjects. as this continues to be shaped, kazakhstan is developing economically through energy exports while becoming an increasingly-important global and regional security partner. as a member in the shanghai cooperation organization (sco) and the 2010 chair of the organization for security and co-operation in europe (osce), kazakhstan is involved with security issues in two important spheres in the world. kazakhstan‟s importance as an east-west bridge in eurasia will continue to grow. what this ultimately means for kazakhstan is that citizens in the next 10-15 years will have a somewhat different national identity than those currently in government and influential positions. the same identities behind those who protested at the zheltoksan incident are felt today in the education system and are in many ways are a continuation of that. kazakhs want to have their own state, free from outside rule. younger generations will very likely conduct themselves along similar lines. this change should be noticed by states or organizations that want to interact effectively with kazakhstan in the future. references -stan. in the macquarie dictionary. the macquarie dictionary searched through credo reference. retrieved on december 19, 2009 from http://www.credoreference.com.www2.lib.ku.edu: 2048/entry/macqdict/stan abu-saad, 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(2003). potential for ethnic conflict in the caspian region. in t.s. szayna & o. oliker (eds.), faultlines of conflict in central asia and the south caucasus, implications for the u.s. army, (pp. 145-183). santa monica, ca: rand corporation. zharmukhamed, zardykhan. (2004). russians in kazakhstan and demographic change: imperial legacy and the kazakh way of nation building. asian ethnicity, 5(1), 61-79. connecting to the khans: shaping national identity of the next generation through education in kazakhstan 11 article citation stein, m. (2011). connecting to the khans: shaping national identity of the next generation through education in kazakhstan. current issues in education, 14(2). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/ cieatasu/article/view/551 author notes matthew stein foreign military studies office 731 mcclellan ave. ft. leavenworth, ks 66027 matthew.stein2@us.army.mil matthew stein is a central asian research analyst at the foreign military studies office, at ft. leavenworth, kansas. he was a national security education program (nsep) boren fellow in kazakhstan from 2008-09. mailto:matthew.stein2@us.army.mil cu rren t i ssu es in ed u ca tio n vo l. 14 no . 2 12 volume 14, number 2 june 11, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors krista adams melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp anglea hines younsu kim lisa lacy angeles maldonado carol masser tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky alaya swann melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template 1 volume 2, number 6 november 1, 1999 issn 1099-839x web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth 1 jenifer l. wheeler todd m. miller henry m. halff mei technology corporation ruben fernandez sam houston high school, san antonio, texas lawrence a. halff bitmovers communications, inc. elizabeth g. gibson thomas n. meyer mei technology corporation this paper describes the development and evaluation of web places, a prototype web-based template system that allowed students at risk of academic failure to publish meaningful projects on the internet. the objective of this study was to assess the feasibility of the web places concept in the context of at-risk education. seven at-risk high school students used the prototype system to develop and publish a project on the internet. preand posttest data about the students' attitudes toward web places, learning, and technology were collected. the results indicated that web places was a useful tool for teaching and motivating the students. web places' potential for future development, evaluation, and application is discussed. the number of students at risk for educational failure is increasing, and often, schools are unable or unwilling to accommodate them (brown, 1986). however, at-risk students have the potential to succeed if their needs are recognized and addressed. at-risk children who are able to succeed despite their disadvantages can become adults with higher self-esteem and better qualifications for the workforce. unfortunately, the number of youth is decreasing in proportion to the remaining population, while the educational requirements for jobs at all skill levels are increasing (brown, 1986). these trends indicate that, to maintain our status as leaders in the global economy, we must ensure that a larger percentage of students gain higher levels of skills and knowledge. focusing on at-risk education may also help to reduce the magnitude of some social problems, as many of these problems are partially the result of inadequate education. the national coalition of advocates for children's 1988 report states that failing to properly educate children could result in increased government dependency and serious financial and social burdens for american taxpayers (wheelock, 1985). society can work to avoid costly future problems by investing in the development of today's children (ogden & germinario, 1988). this paper describes web places (http://www.web-places.com/), a system that was designed to contribute to the enhancement of at-risk education by providing at-risk students (and their teachers) with opportunities to participate in and publish educationally rich projects. for the purposes of this study, at-risk students were those who had less chance of http://www.web-places.com/ current issues in education vol. 2 no. 6 2 succeeding in school than average students do because of factors such as economic status, race, parent marital status, and family circumstances (these factors were provided to us by the department of education, who funded this project). user-friendly templates alleviated the technical burden of developing a web page and allowed students and teachers to concentrate instead on learning and producing instruction for others. at-risk education teachers of disadvantaged students tend to focus almost exclusively on basic skills using traditional instructional methods such as whole-group lecture, repetitive drill-and-practice, and simple remedial exercises (means, chelmer, & knapp, 1991; blumenfeld, soloway, marx, krajcik, guzdial, palincsar, 1991; knapp & turnbull, 1990). using these instructional methods exclusively is uninteresting to most students and results in reduced educational opportunities, which in turn leads to learned helplessness, decreased motivation, and decreased chances of success (means, et al, 1991). more importantly, at-risk students often are not given the opportunities to learn the advanced skills needed for problem-solving and critical thinking. all students, but especially at-risk students, must have opportunities to participate in interesting and challenging education that focuses on advanced skills as well as basic skills. education research indicates that project-based learning activities can help at-risk children learn and practice a variety of skills and improve their attitudes toward learning (means, 1994; duttweiler, 1992), inducing them to actively participate in their own learning. the most beneficial project-based learning activities include six characteristics: opportunities to explore domains of interest; active, interactive, and attractive instruction; project orientation; collaboration with peers; opportunities to act as learner as well as designer; and opportunities to practice and develop fluency for advanced skills (means, 1994; duttweiler, 1992). integrating technology with curricula can enhance at-risk education (means, et al, 1993; means & olson, 1994). for example, technology can help provide authentic learning environments, better opportunities for collaboration, and interesting, innovative learning environments. technology also allows students easier access to information and more efficient ways to organize and display information. students who have the opportunity to use technology are also becoming more prepared for the job market, as an increasing number of jobs are becoming technology-oriented. finally, students who use technology in school tend to improve their school performance and problem-solving abilities and increase their motivation in reading, writing, and mathematics (bialo & sivin, 1990; reed, 1996). all of these factors have the potential to contribute to an increased self-esteem in at-risk students. an increasing number of educational programs and schools are integrating technology with their curricula, especially to fulfill the objectives in the goals 2000: educate america act and president clinton's technology literacy challenge. two examples of such programs include the accelerated learning lab and sweetwater union high school's advanced curriculum through technology. web places web places is a web-based template system in which students, without needing special technical skills, are guided in producing and publishing their own projects on the web. this paper describes the development process of a prototype web places template and describes the results of its feasibility study. although template designs are used in many contexts of web page development, they are most often used to aid in the development of home pages rather than educational projects. the web places concept is unique because its templates provide explicit organization and structure for project content, allowing students to produce quality educational projects. therefore, students can not only publish web-based projects without special technical knowledge, but they can also learn advanced skills associated with their projects (e.g., problem solving or critical thinking). this system allows teachers to attend to more complex student issues, such as group dynamics or discussions about potential topics. in addition, the nature of the web places concept provides students with a learning environment that includes the six characteristics (listed above) of an effective project-based learning activity. web places' applications of these characteristics are described in more detail below. opportunities to explore. the web already provides the opportunity to browse diverse sources of information, participate in simulations, and view and contribute to online artistic creations. web places extends this opportunity by allowing users the ability to enter and organize information obtained off-line. students have the freedom to explore any domain and to create on-line environments that can be explored by others. active, interactive, and attractive instruction. the combination of the web's interactive nature and web places' student-directed nature allows at-risk learners to both view and create interesting, attractive instruction. project orientation. traditional approaches to at-risk instruction often do not provide the learner with a project orientation (a meaningful context for learning). as a result, at-risk students sometimes have difficulty understanding the applications of their learning activities. the project-based instructional approach used in web places is designed to help students form a project orientation. by allowing students to create original, interesting projects, web places has the potential to help students feel empowered and perhaps motivated because they understand the goal and importance of the learning activity. http://nis.accel.worc.k12.ma.us/ http://intergate.suhsd.k12.ca.us/actnow/overview.html http://intergate.suhsd.k12.ca.us/actnow/overview.html web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth 3 peer collaboration. collaborating with other students to produce a product promotes individual responsibility and facilitates shared expertise and specialization (scardamalia, berieter, mclean, swallow, & woodruff, 1989). collaboration and communication skills are crucial for success in all aspects of society, especially the workplace. in addition, collaborative learning allows students of varying abilities to learn from each other as they work together to produce a common goal. collaboration is an integral part of web places because students must work with others in the group to develop their project. learner as designer. learning is more meaningful when students function as producers as well as consumers of information (the cognition and technology group at vanderbilt, 1994). students who teach other students take an active role in learning and develop better academic and social skills. in web places projects, students not only learn about their chosen domain by conducting research, but they also teach about their domain by selecting and designing instructional materials. focus on advanced skills. embedding basic skills into real-world contexts that involve advanced learning activities can help students learn advanced skills as well as basic skills. the project-based learning environment offered by web places allows students to use and develop many different types and levels of skills, such as teamwork, research, writing, or organization. conceptual design of the web places template structure in our conceptual design, the heart of a web places installation is an intranet/internet server that hosts web places software and project data. the server may be a dedicated computer in the school, or it may run on an internet service provider's system. students and teachers interact with the server using standard internet clients running on desktop computers in the schools or at home. materials are entered into the project using a variety of portable equipment and facilities available in the school itself. the internet server also serves as the school's link to the internet, providing students with access to materials on the web, serving as a publication vehicle for projects, and linking the installation to a central web places community site, web places central. once the template is selected, it is configured for the project according to the number of students involved, the volume of material, time spans, and other pertinent data. as shown in figure 1, the configuration includes one or more interactive, web-based project manuals, an interactive web-based facilitators' guide, a repository for project materials, and a web-site for publication of the materials. all of these elements are resident on the installation's intranet/internet server. developing the project involves simply filling in the infrastructure with content. a dynamic, web-based project manual created at the beginning of the project guides students in this work. the project manual combines instructions on content development with interactive forms for entering that content. as materials are entered into the project's repository, a publication system creates a web site for the project. through a system of access restrictions, the site is first reviewed by the project team and then by teachers or administrators. when deemed ready for publication, the site is opened for general access, publicized through search engines and links to related sites, and included as a link in web places central. the conceptual design of a project template consists of the elements listed in table 1. figure 1: web places project template components http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#figure1 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#table1 current issues in education vol. 2 no. 6 4 table 1: elements of a web places template design element description general goals types of projects supported by the template (e.g., virtual art galleries) project development process steps to be taken in planning the project, collecting materials, editing, publication, and maintenance materials types of materials that make up the project content, their formats and the vehicles used to collect them implementation requirements hardware and software requirements, staffing, administrative procedures possible project configurations ways the project can be configured for different numbers of students, different time frames, etc. project manual structure structure of the intranet site used to guide project development and collect parameters instructor's guide structure structure of the intranet site used by teachers to oversee and support project development project web site structure structure of the web site used to publish project content materials repository structure structure of the database used for storage and retrieval of project content prototype design of the web places template structure a prototype version of the template was developed and implemented for the current study. (a partial version of the conceptual design shown in table 1 was implemented as the prototype. the implementation provided the core elements, the project manual, facilitators' guide, project web site, and materials repository in a single configuration. each of these elements was skeletal, with rough placeholders instead of finished text and graphics.) this implementation provided the project manual, facilitators' guide, project web site, and materials repository in a single configuration. bitmovers communications, inc. developed this template based on bitproject 2 , a system for developing web-based collaborative information-sharing environments. bitproject provides the capability to equip a web site with data forms of the sort needed for web places' templates. these forms allow users to enter items of a particular type, edit those items, and view the items added by others. access to bitproject's data is controlled by a system of groups and privileges that allow for the implementation of the concept illustrated in figure 1. thus, web places' prototype project web site gave the public viewing permission for all areas of the web site and permission to contribute to the discussion forums. the project manual gave students permission to contribute items to the site, edit or delete their own contributions, and view the contributions of others. the facilitators' guide gave teachers permission to edit material throughout the project. bitproject associated each participant with his or her privileges so that students and other participants were automatically given the permissions appropriate to their roles. the graphical design of the web site was developed in parallel with the prototype template. at the end of the project the two were integrated so that the project web site offered an attractive graphic design. the same design was presented in the template, allowing editors to see how their material would appear to viewers. research objective the main objective of this study was to determine the feasibility of implementing the web places concept in an at-risk educational setting. the following research questions were formulated to evaluate this objective. 1. to what extent does the web places concept attract and engage at-risk students? http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#table1 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#table1 http://www.bitmovers.com/ http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#endnote2 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#figure1 web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth 5 2. what kinds of materials and content do at-risk students develop for web places projects? 3. do the core web places elements (table 1) provide sufficient support for development of web places projects? 4. what critical issues arise in the course of web places implementation? 5. what are the effects of web places (in its prototype implementation) on individual students and the school as a whole? method participants. a local high school was used as a test site for the prototype development. the representative from the school selected four female and five male students, aged 15 to 17 years and of diverse ethnic backgrounds, to participate in the web places project. all nine students were considered at-risk for reasons such as economic status, race, parent marital status, and family circumstances. these characteristics were provided to us by the united states department of education. six of the nine students were participants in a technology magnet program hosted by the school. time constraints caused one student to withdraw from the project. another student was expelled from school and, therefore, could not continue with the project. thus, seven students participated throughout the entire project. procedure a pretest-posttest research design was used to evaluate the research questions outlined above. before introducing the students to the concept of web places, we administered a structured interview (developed in-house), a computer experience questionnaire, and the self-esteem index (brown & alexander, 1991) to each student privately. the structured interview was designed to collect information about each student's background information, perceptions about academic competence, and attitudes about school, learning, technology, and the web places project. the interviews took approximately 40 minutes each to complete. while the interviewers had a set of prepared questions, students were not discouraged from exploring other topics. as part of the structured interview, students were asked to complete a series of six questions (self-assessment of relevant academic skills, also designed in-house) designed to assess their perceptions of academic competence. specifically, students were asked to rate, on a 1-5 point likert scale with anchors, their confidence in problem solving, research, organization, planning, project work, and teamwork. the computer experience questionnaire was designed to collect information about the students' usage of computers. using a 1-5 point likert scale with anchors, students rated their frequency of computer use, confidence in computer abilities, and enjoyment derived from computer use. items representing these entities were composited to form pretest and posttest estimates of individual frequency of use, confidence, and enjoyment. the self-esteem index is a standardized measure of self-esteem normed against an 818 year-old referent population (brown & alexander, 1991). it consists of 80 items that provide a general measure of self-esteem and sub-indices quantifying familial acceptance (fa), academic competence (ac), peer popularity (pp), and personal security (ps). measures of internal consistency ranged from .80 to .93 on these indices. the general sei score is the best overall measure of a person's self-esteem. at the completion of the project, we also conducted a focus group to gain more information about the students' and the teacher's perception of the project. the focus group questions encompassed project concept development, template design and use, research, and general experiences with the project. two researchers conducted the focus group and five students attended. results and discussion the results obtained for each research question are described below. question 1: to what extent does the web places concept attract and engage at-risk students? the results of the focus group provided information about the students' perceptions and ideas about the web places project. the students' comments from each of the discussion's subdivisions are described below. project concept development the students chose to develop a project on the media's portrayal of issues that affect teenagers, including the treatment of gay students, teenage pregnancy and daycare, standardized tests, and school uniforms (this concept is discussed in more detail under question 2 below). the students had mixed feelings about the project selected. one student mentioned that the project concept was "boring at first" but more enjoyable later. all of the students stated that they enjoyed being a part of the concept development process; however, they indicated that they had too many choices and would have benefited from more guidance. they suggested that being presented with more structured topics of study in which to develop projects would have helped them in the concept development process. during this phase of the project, the teacher who organized the student group did not have time to give them a great deal of guidance. therefore, it may be beneficial in the future to integrate projects with classroom activities, where it would be part of the teacher's job to provide guidance. template design and use all of the students agreed that the templates were easy to use. although they could not suggest many ways to change the templates, one student suggested the developers capitalize on collaboration opportunities by providing the capability for site visitors to enter their own materials into the templates. another student mentioned http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#table1 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#question2 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#question2 current issues in education vol. 2 no. 6 6 that he would have liked a spell checker integrated with the templates. research the students stated that, at the beginning of the project, they felt somewhat uncomfortable with the interview and questionnaire process. however, once they became more familiar with the team members, they felt more at ease. although the students did not mind completing the computer experience questionnaire, they questioned the relevance of the sei and expressed discomfort at having to complete it. general project experience three themes emerged from this portion of the focus group. personal experience. several of the students indicated that working on the project helped them improve their research skills and learn about new topics. the project also gave them the opportunity to meet new people. the students felt that they learned the importance of time management. in addition, they enjoyed being exposed to an office environment, learned work-related skills, and learned new perspectives on their topics. teamwork. the students stated that, initially, they were apprehensive about working on the team because they did not know each other. once the project began, however, most of the students enjoyed working with the other team members and learned about the importance of teamwork. some students learned to be more patient with others and to be more open-minded. one student admitted that he might not have felt as motivated to work if he had not been a part of a team. ownership. all of the students had spoken to or shown the project to their peers, teachers, and parents. most of their peers expressed interest in working on similar projects. the students' teachers and parents were proud of the students' work and effort. question 2: what kinds of materials and content do at-risk students develop for web places projects? to promote feelings of ownership and empowerment in the students, we guided them in designing their own project concept. we provided the students with several project ideas and criteria for an acceptable project. the criteria were that the project should be fun and interesting for all team members; unique and creative; academically relevant; appropriate and consistent with their school's academic philosophy; useful to others in the school, the community, and beyond; interactive; practical; and replicable. over the course of three sessions, the students produced three possible project ideas: censorship, the effects of media on behavior and attitudes, and technology and art. by the third session, the students had decided to pursue a project on the effects of media on attitudes and behavior. the students were particularly concerned about the media's portrayal of their school and of social issues that affect american teenagers. with this concern in mind, the students chose to study how four issues are portrayed in the media. these issues included the treatment of gay students, teenage pregnancy and daycare, standardized tests, and school uniforms. each of these issues was of particular concern at the test school. for example, the school's daycare center for children of students is a source of considerable controversy in the community. the students' ideas for the site were considerably more in-depth and significant than those we envisioned. the nature of the chosen project required that the students collect a variety of multimedia materials reflecting two sides of the issue for each topic (a point and counterpoint). students collected stories from newspapers, magazines, and the internet, and also investigated the portrayals of each of the topics in the entertainment media. in addition, students developed analyses of and reactions to their findings. the final published project can be viewed at web places. question 3: do the core web places elements provide sufficient support for the development of web places projects? the partial implementation was functional and allowed materials to be entered through the project manual, reviewed via the facilitators' guide, and published via the project web site. table 2 summarizes the prototype implementation of each template element, and figure 3 illustrates the project web site. table 2: elements of prototype template design element description prototype implementation general goals types of projects supported by the template (e.g., virtual art galleries) the general goal of the template was to present points and counterpoints (using text and supporting media) on chosen issues. http://www.web-places.com/ http://www.web-places.com/ http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#figure3 web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth 7 project development process steps to be taken in planning the project, collecting materials, editing, publication, and maintenance (e.g., virtual art galleries) the project development process consisted of four steps. first, a set of four issues was identified. second, materials were gathered that make up the content of the site. third, the materials were entered into the student guide at the web site. fourth, the site was reviewed and published. the result of this process is available at web places. materials types of materials that make up the project content, their formats and the vehicles used to collect them the required materials consisted of several examples of the media's treatment of an issue (e.g., a newspaper article) to support the students' points and counterpoints, a student-generated reaction to or analysis to each example, and ancillary materials such as web links, student interviews, and video clips. implementation requirements hardware and software requirements, staffing, administrative procedures implementation requirements for the site development were minimal. text materials could be entered through any browser. graphics, video, and sound were digitized and added to the site by the site developers (bitmovers, inc.). possible project configurations ways the project can be configured for different numbers of students, different time frames, etc. the template could be configured for any number of issues and could accept contributions from any number of (authorized) contributors. project manual structure structure of the intranet site used to guide project development and collect parameters the project manual allowed students to add and edit content to the web site and is identical to the project web site, with the addition of a single form that students can use to edit and/or add topics. instructor's guide structure structure of the intranet site used by teachers to oversee project development the instructor's guide was identical to the project manual. however, an individual logging on as an instructor can edit any contribution, whereas a student can only edit her own contributions. project web site structure structure of the web site used to publish project content the project web site was the published version of the project. the structure of the project web site was hierarchical (see figure 2). a home page provided an overall introduction to the site. visitors could then choose a particular issue to investigate and, within that issue, browse any of its topics. each topic consisted of a point, counterpoint, and supporting links or media. a discussion forum on each issue was also available where visitors could voice their reactions. materials repository structure structure of the database used for storage and retrieval of project content the database was hierarchical in form and reflected the structure of the materials. http://www.web-places.com/ http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#figure2 current issues in education vol. 2 no. 6 8 figure 2: project web site structure the main forms in the site are shown in figures 3 and 4, which show the project web site and the project manual. figure 3: project web site http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#figure3 http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#figure4 web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth 9 figure 4: project manual question 4: what critical issues arise in the course of web places implementation? by examining the processes that the students used to deal with the project development process, we gained considerable insight into the issues that arise when working with at-risk students and the strengths and weaknesses of the initial design. although the students were given a preliminary task list to help them assemble folders with relevant research materials, the students did not completely understand the task and were not able to adequately prepare for the next meeting. therefore, we developed specific goals for the students' project and assigned specific tasks to each student. the students felt that they had a better understanding of their goals and began to conduct research and collect materials. students were given a task inventory form to help them stay organized. this form allowed the students to categorize their sources and describe the relevance of their research. time constraints and general confusion among the students prevented them from collecting an adequate amount of quality material. as a result, the group scheduled a supervised trip to the local public library where the students were introduced to the library's automated search facility and taught basic research skills. while this visit improved the quantity and quality of materials collected, students still had difficulty analyzing and abstracting raw materials into the larger framework of the project. however, project-related time constraints required that students begin data entry. the students spent two days entering materials into the template. on these occasions, we provided guidance on how to improve the quality of current issues in education vol. 2 no. 6 10 student input (e.g., how to structure paragraphs and provide evidence). under this direction, students were better able to produce quality work. lessons learned the issues described here have implications for the future design of web places. first, the students involved in this study were busy people. a serious problem in the implementation of web places, or in any program designed to enhance at-risk students' academic experiences, will be allowing time for these activities. the next version of web places will involve projects that can be incorporated into existing curricula, so that students can have scheduled time for their projects and receive more teacher guidance. second, the students had serious concerns about complex issues. participating in a project in which they could study those issues provided them with an orientation for their learning and allowed them to practice advanced skills, such as research and writing. similar projects that focus on more trivial issues may not be as attractive or beneficial for at-risk students. finally, at-risk students cannot be expected to come to projects with all of the research skills needed to complete them. the next version of web places will offer extensive support in the form of research guides for both students and teachers. it will also contain tools such as connections to appropriate search engines that make project research easier. question 5: what are the effects of web places (in its prototype implementation) on individual students and the school as a whole? qualitative data were collected from the structured interview and descriptive statistics were calculated for the remaining measures. due to the small group sample, calculating inferential statistics was deemed inappropriate. structured interview this section provides an aggregate summary of the interview results, separated by the instrument's subdivisions. background information before the beginning of the project, each student discussed a wide variety of interests and extracurricular activities, including church choirs, sports, the national honor society, computer activities, and school-sponsored expeditions. in addition, many of the students worked at part-time jobs or volunteered at organizations such as nursing homes or park maintenance facilities. because the students were already active in extracurricular and volunteer activities at the beginning of the project, little change in activity was observed between the pretest and posttest interview sessions. perceived academic competence and attitudes toward school in general, the seven students involved in web places enjoyed school and considered themselves competent, hard-working students. five of the seven students were members of the technology magnet school, a program they considered challenging and rewarding. favorite classes included visual media, english, math, and various computer classes. several students planned to attend college, and one student planned to join the air force. the students did not express a change in attitude or perceived academic competence between pretest and posttest interview sessions. attitudes toward technology all seven students were comfortable using computers before becoming involved with the web places project and regularly used them for schoolwork, games, and e-mail. the students agreed that computers make schoolwork easier, and some indicated that computers allow people equal access to information. the students stated that, although some of their teachers are timid about using computers, most are enthusiastic about them and use them in many aspects of teaching. in fact, the teacher who organized the student group was the coordinator of technology magnet school and had an enthusiastic attitude toward computers. the structured interviews did not reveal a change in attitude toward technology between pretest and posttest sessions. project expectations and perceived benefits the students got involved in the web places project mainly to learn about computers, the internet, and technology. in addition, the students wanted to do something that would help improve their school's image, which they perceived as negatively distorted. other reasons included receiving recognition, having fun, facing new challenges, meeting new people, and improving communication skills. the students perceived many benefits from working on web places. for example, they indicated that they learned to do research, work on a team, and manage their time. they also learned about the issues they chose to investigate and gained new perspectives about them. in addition, they learned the benefits of technology, met new people, got exposure to an office environment, and learned job-related skills. finally, the students felt that the project helped to educate people about their chosen issues and helped to improve their school's image. structured interview: self-assessment of relevant academic skills although the students reported project benefits during the interviews, the self-assessment of relevant academic skills demonstrated a slight reduction in confidence in problem-solving, research, organization, planning, project work, and teamwork skills over the course of the study (see table 3). two potential explanations seem plausible for this finding. first, at posttest, some of the students were busy studying for the state's standardized achievement test and final exams. many were involved in several extracurricular activities in addition to web places. it is possible that the students http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#table3 web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth 11 were simply overburdened at the time the questions were asked. it is also possible that the students had unrealistic perceptions about these skills. the web places experience required them to plan, research, synthesize, and organize content with other team members. perhaps the demands of this situation caused them to rethink their previous answers. table 3: self-assessment of relevant academic skills shaded areas reflect differences in pretest-posttest responses. designates a decrease in a respondent's confidence. designates an increase in a respondent's confidence. current issues in education vol. 2 no. 6 12 computer usage, confidence, and enjoyment as a result of the sample selection procedures employed in this study, the students scored high on the computer experiences indices at both pretest and posttest (participants were primarily from the technology magnet school). in general, there was a small, but consistent, decrease in computer use, confidence, and enjoyment. this decrease is not likely due to the introduction of web places. rather, it is most likely linked to changes within the school regarding computer use. school officials placed severe restrictions on all computer use, especially student e-mail and internet access, as a result of several student pranks in the school. reported usage of various forms of software declined from pretest to posttest. despite this decline in use, student ratings of the enjoyment of e-mail and the internet in general remained unchanged. it seems these findings are related to systemic changes and not to the introduction of web places. self-esteem index it was proposed that the introduction of web places would facilitate improved self-esteem by providing the students with a sense of ownership and purpose. because all of the students on the web places project were considered at risk, their self-esteem scores were expected to be low (see figure 5). this was generally not the case. the overall total self-esteem scores (percentiles) on the pretest ranged from 37 to 99; however, most students scored above the 50th percentile. in general, selfesteem scores increased from the pretest to the posttest. the overall total self-esteem scores (percentiles) on the posttest ranged from 58 to 99. overall scores on the academic competence (ac) and peer popularity (pp) subindices showed the largest increase from pretest to posttest. overall scores on personal security (ps) decreased. it is possible that working on web places helped increase the students' feelings of academic competence because they constructed a meaningful project and helped increase their feelings of peer popularity because they successfully collaborated with others in the group to produce a quality project. perhaps months of doing homework and extra projects, taking standardized tests and finals, and doing extracurricular activities caused stress and lowered their sense of physical and psychological well being. figure 5: average self-esteem scores by scale. http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html#figure5 web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth 13 conclusion web places integrated technology and education by encouraging students to use technology to publish a meaningful and educational project about the effects of the media on issues important to teenagers. in addition, web places provided students with the opportunity to collaborate with other students they may not have previously had the opportunity to contact. as students used web places and benefited from these advantages, they felt that they improved their advanced skills (such as research, writing, and teamwork) and self-esteem by participating in meaningful projects. the next phase of web places development will address the issues encountered during the prototype development. for example, future implementations will integrate a wizard, a search tool, an improved system for collaboration, and more flexible and sophisticated data entry and revision tools. in addition, future web places projects will be integrated with curricula and incorporated as class activities. students will still be able to choose their specific project, but their teachers will choose the domain in which they work. in addition to increasing the amount of guidance students receive, integrating the project with class activities may promote effective peer tutoring, as more heterogeneous groups can be formed. future work will also incorporate a more robust research plan, using a larger number of subjects, a control group, and more web places templates. the number of templates will continue to grow and be added to web places central, a main site serving the web places community. if successful, web places will become a nationwide, self-sustaining community dedicated to expanding the range of project-based educational activities. this study demonstrated that web places shows promise in fulfilling its short-term goal of providing an effective mechanism for improving the chances for at-risk youth to succeed in school. notes 1. this material is based on work supported by the u.s. department of education under contract number rw97076118. any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the department of education. 2. bitproject is based on frontier, a cross-platform scripting system. bitproject, in its next version will be xml compliant and therefore provide all benefits of next-generation web browsers. references bialo, e., & sivin, j. (1990). report on the effectiveness of microcomputers in schools. new york: interactive educational systems design. blumenfeld, p., soloway, e., marx, r., krajcik, j., guzdial, m, & palinscar, a. (1991). motivating project-based learning: sustaining the doing, supporting the learning.educational psychologist, 26, 369-398. brown, r. (1986). state responsibility for at-risk youth. metropolitan education, 2, 5-12. brown, l., & alexander, j. (1991). self-esteem index: examiner's manual. austin, tx: pro-ed, inc. cognition and technology group. (1994). multimedia environments for developing literacy in at-risk students. in technology in educational reform: the reality behind the promise. barbara means (ed.) san francisco, ca: jossey bass publishers. duttweiler, p. c. (1992). engaging at-risk students with technology. media and methods, 29(2), 6-8. knapp, m.s. & turnbull, b.j. (1990). better schooling for the children of poverty: alternatives to conventional wisdom: vol 1. summary. washington, dc: u.s. department of education, office of planning, budget, and evaluation. means, b. (1994). using technology to advance educational goals. in b means (ed.).technology in educational reform: the reality behind the promise. san francisco, ca: jossey bass publishers. means, b., blando, j., olson, k., middleton, t., morocco, c.c., remz, a.r., & zorfass, j. (1993, september). using technology to support educational reform. washington, dc: u.s. department of education, office of educational research and improvement. available online: http://www.ed.gov/pubs/edreformstudie s/techreforms/ means, b., chelmer, c., & knapp, m.s. (1991). teaching advanced skills to at-risk students: views from research and practice. san francisco: josseybass. means, b. & olson, k. (1994). tomorrow's schools: technology and reform in partnership. in b. means (ed.), technology in educational reform: the reality behind the promise. san francisco, ca: jossey bass publishers. ogden, e.h., & germinario, v. (1988). the at-risk student: answers for educators.lancaster, pa: technomic publishing company. reed, w. m. (1996). assessing the impact of computerbased writing instruction.journal of research on computing education, 28, 418-437. scardamalia, m, beriter, c., mclean, r.s., swallow, j., & woodruff, e. (1989). computer supported intentional learning environments. journal of educational computing research, 5(1), 51-68. wheelock, l. (ed.) (1985). barriers to excellence: our children at risk. boston: national coalition of advocates for students. http://www.ed.gov/pubs/edreformstudies/techreforms/ http://www.ed.gov/pubs/edreformstudies/techreforms/ current issues in education vol. 2 no. 6 14 1999 article citation wheeler, j. l., miller, t. m., halff, h. m., fernandez, r., halff, l. a., gibson, e. g., & meyer, t. n. (1999, november 1). web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth. current issues in education [on-line], 2(6). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number6/. author notes contact information: jenifer wheeler, mei technology, 8930 fourwinds drive, suite 450, san antonio, tx, 78239, (210) 655-8911. jenifer wheeler is an instructional designer and research scientist at mei technology. she has conducted instructional and interface design and evaluations for several projects involving training software and intelligent tutoring systems for both teenagers and adults. ms. wheeler received her m. s. in industrial/organizational psychology from st. mary's university. jenifer wheeler can be reached via e-mail atjenifer@meitx.com. todd miller is an instructional designer and research scientist at mei technology. for the past six years, he has worked on the fundamental skills training project, a multi-year air force effort to build and evaluate advanced training technologies and to transition these technologies to public education and industry. he has also participated in surveys of effective teaching behaviors for implementation in intelligent-computer assisted instructional systems (icai), and of distance learning providers and technologies. he has contributed to the design and development of two computer-based adventure games for training, one for technical training, and the other for teaching children about the psychophysiology of stress. mr. miller received his m. a. degree in industrial/organizational psychology from st. mary's university in san antonio, tx (1993). todd miller can be reached via e-mail at todd@meitx.com. henry m. halff is a senior scientist at mei technology corporation. he served as principal investigator for web places and for high level simulation with instructional design expertise (hiside), an air force sponsored project aimed at implementing knowledge-based generative computer-based training systems. hiside was an outgrowth of his recent success with another air force project, the advanced instructional design advisor (aida) which also addressed techniques for generative computer-based training. his other projects at mei technology have included a project on the design of a computer game to teach logistics and adventure games for science education. dr. halff received his ph.d. in psychology from the university of texas at austin in 1969 and completed an nimh post-doctoral fellowship the following year at the university of michigan's human performance center. henry m. halff can be reached via e-mail at henry@texas.net. ruben fernandez is the coordinator of the technology magnet school at sam houston high school. mr. fernandez served as the liaison between mei technology and his school during the web places project. ruben fernandez can be reached via email at rfernandez@saisd.net. lawrence halff is a software designer with experience in website development, web database and application development, multimedia software design, and multimedia research. he is currently a managing partner at bitmovers communications, inc, which focuses on developing customized internet communications solutions. mr. halff received his m.a. in education from the university of british columbia. lawrence halff can be reached via e-mail at halff@bitmovers.com. elizabeth gibson is a research psychologist at mei technology, where she provides research planning and support for various training systems projects. dr. gibson earned her ph.d. at the university of oregon. elizabeth gibson can be reached via e-mail at gibson@tri.sbc.com. thomas meyer is a research scientist at mei technology. for the past four years, he has worked on the fundamental skills training project, a multi-year air force effort to build and evaluate advanced training technologies and to transition these technologies to public education and industry. mr. meyer received his m.a. in industrial/organizational psychology from st. mary's university. thomas meyer can be reached via e-mail at nick@meitx.com. http://cie.asu.edu/volume2/number6/index.html mailto:jenifer@meitx.com mailto:todd@meitx.com mailto:henry@texas.net mailto:rfernandez@saisd.net mailto:halff@bitmovers.com mailto:gibson@tri.sbc.com mailto:nick@meitx.com web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth 15 note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation wheeler, j. l., miller, t. m., halff, h. m., fernandez, r., halff, l. a., gibson, e. g., & meyer, t. n. ( 2011). web places: project-based activities for at-risk youth. current issues in education, 2(6). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/830 http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 microsoft word 785-2966-3-le.docx 1 volume 14, number 3 august 26, 2011 issn 1099-839x the serious games of racial accounting in schools martha i. martinez university of oregon educational disparities are frequently framed in racial comparisons that are based on data generated by sorting and counting racial subgroups. our reliance on these data, and the sorting and counting mechanisms entailed therein, is fundamental to debates about racial inequalities. what is largely ignored in achievement gap discourse is how racial data collection procedures naturalize and legitimize what counts as race and what doesn’t. the contested racial status of latinos illustrates the tension within and political significance of government-sanctioned racial classificatory schemes. by situating race discourse within actual race data collection practices, particularly as they relate to latinos in the u.s. and other racial misfits, this study explores how technologies of truth re-create racial (arti)facts and how school staff interpret race and their roles in the data-keeping process, it also considers the implications of recent changes to racial accounting procedures in schools. keywords: race/ethnicity, racial measurement, latinos, multi-racial students, racial disparities in 2001, i registered my daughter for kindergarten. on the school registration form was a question regarding her ethnicity, with instructions that respondents select one of five options presented: american indian or alaskan native; asian or pacific islander; black; white; or hispanic. i asked the office assistant if i could check two boxes: having a latina1 mother and white father, i didn’t want my daughter to have to be identified as one at the expense of the other. i was instructed that i could only choose one. i checked off two boxes anyway. the next year, when the form was returned to me for updating, one box was checked: white. i didn’t protest the erasure of my racial/ethnic contribution to my child’s racial/ethnic identification. although i resented it, i nevertheless rationalized that, if forced to choose, i would classify my child as white instead of latina – because, in my formulation of racial/ethnic identities, she is more white than latina. she is far more privileged in many respects than many latinos in the u.s. – in fact, than i was as a child. although i understood the history and rationale behind the data collection effort, i nevertheless resented being boxed in, or in this case, boxed out. the paperwork seemed to represent more than bureaucratic record-keeping. to me it represented a definition of racial/ethnic identity; and, i identified my child as being equal parts latina and white. this incident wasn’t the only or primary reason for initiating a project on race data collection in schools, but it nevertheless captures a key question of interest: what officially and actually counts as race in school data and for whom? the question is particularly significant given what appear to be two competing contemporary trajectories in u.s. racial ideology and its manifestation in school policy. on the one hand, there is considerable criticism within theoretical and applied research, as well as in public policy arenas, regarding the validity and utility of existing racial categories. essentialized ethnic/racial categories have been destabilized in academic circles (allen, 1998a, 1998b, 1999; gimenez, 1998; hollinger, 1995; moya, 2000). findings from the human genome project dispute the contention that “separate classifiable subspecies (races) exist within modern humans” (u.s. department of energy, n.d.). and, race-based remedies to racial disparities have become increasingly criticized in legal circles as reverse c u r r e n t i s s u e s in e d u c a tio n v o l. 1 4 n o . 3 2 discrimination or anathema to a colorblind democracy. the u.s. supreme court’s decision in parents involved in community schools (pics) further restricting the use of race in student assignment policies showcases this “colorblind/reverse discrimination” reasoning. writing for the majority, chief justice roberts concluded: the school districts have not carried their heavy burden of showing that the interest they seek to achieve justifies the extreme means they have chosen--discriminating among individual students based on race by relying upon racial classifications in making school assignments (pics, 2007). anderson (2007) contends that the pics decision and contemporary legal arguments against the use of raceconscious education policies rely on a faulty theory of “color-blind constitutionalism,” i.e., that the intent of the reconstruction congress was to articulate one class of american citizenship without regard to racial classification and thus establish a constitutional goal of “racial neutrality” (p. 249). in contrast, he provides ample evidence that racial ideology and not color-blindness permeated the legal foundations upon which citizenship and equal rights continued to be defined and enforced. moreover, he finds this racial ideology was not limited to black-white race relations, but existed within the context of a multiracial landscape where concerns about american indians and asians were also predominant. thus, anderson (2007) concludes, “we may argue for or against the use of racial classifications to pursue issues of school desegregation and affirmative action, but we should not pretend that we are constrained by a color-blind constitution” (p. 256). at the same time that the construct and political utility of race is undergoing considerable challenge, our educational system has become increasingly invested in race data as it seeks to address persistent achievement gaps between white students and students of color. the no child left behind act of 2001 (nclb) relies heavily on racial data collection procedures, and these procedures have taken on greater significance given the consequences for schools that fail to report adequate yearly progress for racial (and other) subgroups on standardized tests. moreover, substantial demographic changes in the past two decades have led to heightened attention within the school system on the growing latino population, especially those for whom english is a second language. the data-keeping enterprise initiated with nclb creates a very real triple data monitoring of many latinos who are “subgrouped” in nclb accountability reports not just by race (or rather ethnicity, since they are not classified as a race), but potentially by limited english proficiency and socioeconomic disadvantage as well. the purpose of the study is to explore how racial “truths” in education are (re)created via one of the most mundane bureaucratic tasks in schools: race data collection procedures. the primary questions guiding my investigation are: (1) what counts as race (and what doesn’t) within actual race data collection practices in schools, particularly as these practices relate to “nonconforming” racial types; (2) how do school staff interpret the race categories and their data collection roles; and (3) what do existing practices imply for the recent changes to racial data collection and reporting in u.s. schools? i refer to the racial accounting practices in schools as “serious games” not to make light of them, but rather to highlight the practices as a series of negotiations between actors within a discursive web of meaning construction. in addition to the local players involved in the collection of these data (i.e., students, their families, and school staff), there are state and federal government representatives who regulate the collection process. the uses of these data vary and encompass other players in the game of racial accounting in schools. these players, such as policymakers, researchers and the general public, use these data to monitor and debate how our schools are serving a racially diverse student body. these are, as ortner (1996) suggests, “serious games” that are steeped in power and inequality, and that involve actors who play with “skill, intention, wit, and intelligence” (p. 12). ladson-billings (2004), for example, recounts the following story of an elementary school in a historically black neighborhood in san francisco that was ordered to desegregate and prohibited from having more than 47% of any one “designated” minority. when i asked the school principal about the school demographics, she responded, “do you want to know what it is on paper or what it is in reality?” i was surprised to learn that when african american parents saw that the school district was willing to improve the school once white children were coming in and their children were being sent out of the community, a large contingent of them reenrolled their children in the neighborhood school with the racial/ethnic designation “native american.” the principal told me, “i have the largest concentration of “native american” students in the city!” (p. 8). the example above and the pics case illustrate the high stakes of racial accounting practices in the context of school desegregation cases, and the ways in which students and families are active participants in the data collection and interpretative processes entailed therein. however, the collection of racial/ethnic data frequently occurs in schools where their use(s) may be unclear to students and their families, as is the case in this particular project. no desegregation order or voluntary integration plan governs student assignment policies in the schools involved in this study. yet, in these schools, as in all u.s. public schools, racial data are collected and interpreted by school staff and educational researchers to (a) make meaning of the educational experiences of students, and, in the wake of nclb, (b) hold schools accountable for meeting specific assessment outcomes for all racial/ethnic subgroups. while students and families are key players in t h e s e r io u s g a m e s o f r a c ia l a c c o u n tin g in s c h o o ls 3 this racial accounting game, this study focuses on the institutional apparatus of racial data keeping in schools, how school staff navigate this system and interpret their roles within it, and the implications of this game for critical consumers of the “racial (arti)facts” that emerge: educational policymakers, practitioners, and researchers. i use the term “racial (arti)facts” to reflect the contradictory characteristics of these data: they are labels and counts of social groups defined by characteristics and conditions that are real and imaginary, stable and unstable, present and past. the next section highlights the historical evolution of this game and some of the current challenges to keeping racial boxes intact. the creation and maintenance of a u.s. racial cosmology despite the significant impact nclb has had on school data, its passage did not initiate racial data collections in schools. nor did the racial and ethnic categories currently in use materialize in an institutional vacuum. the policies and practices related to race data collection in schools are embedded within the larger sociopolitical forces that have helped shape racial datakeeping across government institutions. the evolution of these classificatory schemes supports omi and winant’s (1994) contention that race is an “unstable and ‘decentered’ complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle” (p. 55). the contested racial status of latinos (or hispanics, as they are frequently referred to and categorized in u.s. demographic profiles) illustrates the tension within and political significance of government sanctioned racial classificatory schemes. according to u.s. racial classification systems, hispanics are not officially a race but instead an ethnic group (allen, 1999; hirschman, alba, & farley, 2000; logan, 2004; saenz, 2004; snipp, 2003). an anomaly of racial sorts, they are the only ethnic group officially classified and counted as such in the u.s. census and in federal and state school reports. although race is more often linked with human differences in phenotype and ethnicity is frequently defined in terms of a shared cultural heritage, there is much debate about the utility/validity of this distinction and much variability in the manner in which hispanics identify themselves racially (hirschman et al., 2000; logan, 2004; omi & winant, 1994; snipp, 2003; suro, 2006a, 2006b). in an effort to better count hispanics, the census 2000 reordered the ethnic and race questions, hoping to encourage more hispanics to identify their hispanic heritage in the ethnic question as well as their racial type in the race question that followed. however, hispanics continued to defy neat racial categorization, choosing instead the “some other race” category and writing in “latino”, “hispanic” or a similar term almost half the time (logan, 2004; saenz, 2004). and, hispanics aren’t the only ones wreaking havoc on u.s. census interpretability. in response to growing criticisms around the race categories used in the u.s. census, the 2000 census allowed individuals to check multiple boxes and over 6.8 million people did. although many of these individuals identified hispanic or latino as one of the “other races” they claimed, another significant multi-race respondent (approximately 1 million individuals) were those who identified as both american indian/alaskan native and white (tafoya, johnson, & hill, 2004). despite what might be construed as having a subordinate racial status, hispanics constitute one of the five racial/ethnic groups that are routinely counted by various government agencies, including the u.s. department of education. this is largely the result of the office of management and budget’s (omb) statistical policy directive no. 15 (snipp, 2003). omb directive 15, which became official federal policy in 1977, standardized and institutionalized racial data-keeping into five racial/ethnic data categories: (a) american indian and alaska natives, (b) asians and pacific islanders, (c) nonhispanic blacks, (d) non-hispanic whites, and (e) hispanics (hollinger, 1995; snipp, 2003). hollinger (1995) refers to these five categories as the ethno-racial pentagon. snipp (2003) suggests that this ethno-racial pentagon constitutes a racial cosmology that permeates u.s. society to this day. maintaining this racial cosmology, however, has its challenges, particularly when self-enumeration is the principal process by which racial data collection proceeds and when increasing diversity in the u.s. undermines the adequacy of existing racial boxes. contested definitions of race aren’t new; they in fact co-exist with dominant racial narratives to elaborate, refine and challenge racial realities. as omi and winant (1994) contend, race is not an essence or an illusion, but a social construct under constant political struggle that “continues to play a fundamental role in structuring and representing the social world” (p. 55). at times the omnipresent political struggle for racial “truths” destabilizes the racial order and new meanings seep into the broader public domain, staking claim on what officially counts as race, for whom, and for what purpose. changes to the racial order are only achieved “when there is significant ‘decay’ in the capacities of preexisting state programs and institutions to organize and enforce racial ideology” (omi & winant, 1994, p. 88). with the move from observer identification in the 1960 u.s. census to self-identification in order to better count native americans living in non-reservation settings (snipp, 2003), the racial ideology pandora’s box was irrevocably opened. skerry (2000) suggests that collecting and interpreting racial/ethnic data has become increasingly difficult because “race and ethnicity are coming to be understood less as social constructs denoting affiliation to one or more groups than as psychological choices denoting individual identity” (p.8). whether or not individuals respond to the categories based on social affiliation or personal identification with one or more social groups, census studies indicate that individuals respond to these questions differently at c u r r e n t i s s u e s in e d u c a tio n v o l. 1 4 n o . 3 4 different times, and increasingly choose either not to respond at all or to respond in ways that do not conform to the official racial classification scheme (hirschman et al., 2000; logan, 2004; skerry, 2000). the new racial/ethnic categories to be used by k12 schools and other government agencies beginning in 2010 represent the federal government’s most recent attempt to replace the ill-fitting previous racial lid with a new one. the title of the federal government’s 2008 guide for implementing the new categories – managing an identity crisis – suggests a paternalistic nation-state’s assessment of its racially conflicted citizenry. although the guide states that the changes were prompted in part to accommodate “parents [who] want the opportunity to more fully describe their children’s heritage” (p. 3), there is no open-ended response to the race/ethnicity question in the new format. to handle this identity crisis, the state’s response is a minor tweaking of the previous categories and the utilization of its bureaucratic machine to establish the new racial order. thus, the primary audience for the 2008 guide is not the public, but “data, information systems, and program staff” (national forum, p. v) who are charged with operationalizing the changes, and, in an ironic twist of racial data keeping fate, using observer identification when the racially conflicted citizenry refuses to comply with the new rules of the game. because this study was initiated prior to the implementation of the new federal guidelines, the racial accounting game that follows focuses on practices immediately prior to the new rules and discusses what these changes imply for the future. methods of inquiry i began the study using two guiding questions: (1) what counts as race within actual race data collection practices; and (2) how do school staff interpret the race categories and their data collection roles? a third question was added when the new federal guidelines on race and ethnicity data surfaced mid-way through the data collection phase: what do the recent changes to racial data collection and reporting in u.s. schools imply based on existing practices? drawing on smith’s concept of ruling relations (1990, 1999), i examined the discursive and multifaceted web of coordinated activities that “produce local events as readable in the texts of the ruling” (1999, p. 87). like foucault’s (2000) concept of governmentality, smith recognizes the salience of the scientific apparatuses used by the state to (re)create the knowledge and truths necessary for governance, while at the same time not reducing the state to a monolithic unity that directs all human action. to investigate microsocial phenomena and the power relations embedded within them, smith (1990) emphasizes focusing not only on textual representations of discourse but in “actual relations that are vested in texts” (p. 162). i also relied on ortner’s (1996) articulation of practice theory to help interpret the results of the study. her methodological approach rests upon “a model of practice that embodies agency but does not begin with, or pivot upon the agent” and instead highlights the “serious games” of social life where power differentials and inequalities manifest themselves in multiple ways (p. 12). to examine how the policies and procedures governing race data collection and reporting practices mediated actual race data collection practices within and across public schools in oregon, i relied on two data sources: archival documents and interviews. the principal archival data sources used were race data collection protocols and policy documents, as well as district and state reports referencing student demographics. these texts were supplemented with interviews of staff responsible for student data collection activities in oregon. archival documents and interviews were analyzed using an iterative approach to illuminate race data collection and reporting practices and how staff interpreted their roles within these processes. the investigative process began with an analysis of archival documents to decipher how official policies and procedures were supposed to guide the data collection and reporting process. interviews with staff helped to fill in the gaps that emerged from the analysis of the documents, and to gather evidence about how staff interpreted their roles and the race categories. observing actual incidents of families providing these data to the schools would have also been helpful. however, at this point in the project i was more interested in understanding the rules of racial data collection and how staff interpreted and enacted these rules. in addition to researcher, i was known by some of the study participants as a parent, a latina, a diversity advocate, and a relatively well educated community member. not all study participants were fully aware of my personal and professional background, but all were aware that their comments were being recorded and analyzed. this of course had an effect on what they told me and what they allowed me to see. as mauthner and doucet (2003) contend, i recognize that i have made “choices about how to interpret the voices [of study participants] and which transcript extracts to present as evidence” (p. 418). i have nevertheless tried as much as possible to critically reflect on what i was being told, what i saw, and how my lens distorted and clarified the data i collected and my analytical focus. additional details about the research setting, participants and procedures follow. setting the study was conducted in oregon, and involved staff from a medium-sized school district, two elementary schools within this district, the oregon department of education, and an education service district (esd). the schools, school district, esd, and state were selected largely on the basis of convenience, but also because of the relatively high numbers of latino families that the study schools and the esd’s migrant education program served. in 2007-08, the meadows2 school district served approximately 7200 students, of which 10% were hispanic/latino. of the total student population in oregon, t h e s e r io u s g a m e s o f r a c ia l a c c o u n tin g in s c h o o ls 5 ethnic minority students accounted for about 30% in 2007, with hispanic students representing over half the total ethnic minority population. although the state is not among the most diverse in the country, the white student population has steadily decreased while minority student enrollment, particularly hispanic enrollment, has increased – student demographic trends that are consistent with schools across the country (fry, 2006). from 1992-2007, the total actual growth rate of oregon public school students was approximately 10%, with white students decreasing by over 11% during this time and hispanic students growing by over 230% (oregon department of education, 2006-2007). the participating schools and the esd were also selected due to the relatively large hispanic populations that each served. the two elementary schools involved in the study, centennial and new river, were district english learner magnet schools for spanish-speaking students and served disproportionately larger numbers of hispanic students than the remaining six elementary schools. in the 2007-08 school year, centennial had about 380 students, over 36% of whom were hispanic. new river had about 440 students, just over 30% of whom were hispanic. the percentage of hispanic enrollment at the other elementary schools in the meadows school district ranged from about 2-6%. esds are intermediary administrative agencies that serve multiple school districts, providing administrative support and other supplementary educational services to support the activities of their respective districts. the esd included in the study was responsible for the migrant education program that operated in a geographic region adjacent to the school district. migrant education programs, including the program staffed by this particular esd, typically serve large numbers of hispanic students and their families, many of whom speak spanish as their primary language. participants selection of participants was based on a purposive sampling strategy (teddlie & yu, 2007). direct involvement in the collection of race and ethnicity data in oregon schools was the criterion used to recruit interview participants. i relied on personal connections at the schools and the department of education to direct me to appropriate staff. i did not provide any incentives for participation. a total of twelve individuals were interviewed, including three oregon department of education (ode) employees, two meadows school district employees, five elementary school employees, and two esd employees affiliated with the migrant education program that operates in several counties adjacent to the meadows school district. two participants were males, the rest females. at least half the participants were 50 years or older (one respondent didn’t return the background survey). when asked how they identified racially/ethnically, most (9 out of 12) identified themselves as caucasian or white. one identified as white hispanic. another identified as being half white and half mexican. race/ethnicity data is unavailable for the participant who did not return the background survey. procedures interview questions were emailed in advance to all participants, with the hope that these would guide later discussions. however, some participants (two ode employees and one district employee) chose to answer the questions exclusively via email. the rest of the participants (9) were interviewed in person, with some individuals providing additional information via email either before or after our conversations. interviews took place august 2007 – april 2009. in-person interviews occurred at the participants’ worksites, with two exceptions. both esd employees were interviewed at a local eating establishment. in-person interviews ranged in duration from about 20 minutes to an hour, and all but one of these interviews were digitally recorded. interviews were semi-structured and designed to elucidate the textual forms used to capture race data, how these forms were interpreted to families, how “nonconforming” race data were entered and reported in the system, and how staff interpreted their roles and the race categories. because i was also interested in how nclb might be influencing current race data collections, i specifically asked staff about whether nclb had had any effect on race data collection processes. i was aware that all students filled out a school registration card upon enrollment in the district and that this card requested racial/ethnic background information, so i used this as a principal investigatory tool in interviews. for migrant education staff, the comparable in-take form that we discussed in interviews was the certificate of eligibility. interviews with school, district, and state staff investigated race data collection processes articulated across these levels of school governance. however, the interviews with migrant education staff solely examined the data collection interface between migrant education staff and families, as interpreted by migrant education staff. despite the more limited investigation of race data collection processes within the migrant education program, the interviews were helpful in providing additional insight into the manner in which racial categories were explained to non-english speaking immigrants from latin america, which are the families typically served by migrant education programs in oregon. the following three sections summarize the results related to each of the research questions. the ruling relations of racial data monitoring there is an extensive paper trail governing race data collection procedures in schools. several texts stand out as those that actively shape what counts as race for students in the study’s schools. these are school registration forms, the computer technologies that transfer these data from school to district to state to federal offices, and the policy directives that govern race data collection c u r r e n t i s s u e s in e d u c a tio n v o l. 1 4 n o . 3 6 practices in schools. counting race in schools, however, isn’t solely accomplished by texts. official counts of students begin with students and their families – who are charged with voluntarily identifying their racial/ethnic affiliation in school registration forms, frequently by checking a box. this practice of self-identification is fundamental to racial accounting in schools, but it doesn’t always yield data that is easily translated into standardized racial/ethnic categories for all students. in the cases of racial misfits, i.e., those who check too many boxes or none at all, school staff must decide what and who counts racially within schools. their actions and the racial/ethnic self-designations of students and families in their schools, while not controlled by the racial discourse that permeates the school environment, are nevertheless constrained and guided by allowable standardized options from a complex racial accounting bureaucracy. this racial accounting bureaucracy could be conceived of as the ruling relations of race data collection practices in schools. the ruling relations governing racial/ethnic data collections in schools start with federal policies that dictate what must be counted as race, what must be counted as ethnicity, and how counting should happen. they trickle down to the school in an articulated, official discourse that illuminates some racial truths and obfuscates others. figure a illustrates the ruling relations of racial data collections in the oregon schools i investigated. as the figure shows, the textual forms that govern these practices aren’t just in paper form. computer-based data systems play a significant role in the standardization of racial types via the use of race data fields in computer programs that only permit acceptable data forms to be entered. two contested areas of racial truth construction within the context of these ruling relations emerged in the analysis of theinterviews and archival documents: the (non)existence of multi-racial students and hispanic racial/ethnic ambiguities. the (non)existence of multi-racial students in the 2007-08 school year, the year in which most of the interviews for the study took place, the meadows school district used the same five categories (i.e., the ethnoracial pentagon) established by omb directive 15 in 1977 to collect racial/ethnic information from families: (1) american indian or alaska native, (2) asian or pacific islander, (3) black, (4) white, and (5) hispanic. all categories on the form appeared under the heading “ethnic”, even though officially (per federal guidelines) hispanic is considered an ethnicity and the remaining four categories are defined as races. although the majority of other oregon districts of similar size or larger counted students who identified as multi-racial by 2007, the meadows district did not report these data until 2009. (for student enrollment counts by ethnic group, see table 2 for meadows school district and table 3 for all districts, including those with 1000 or more students.) prior to 2009, when families from new river and centennial checked multiple boxes these students were reported either as unknown, declined to report, or by one of the ethnic categories that were checked on the registration card (school staff determined which one). there was a good deal of discomfort that i was asking these questions about staff’s specific role in helping students and families officially identify their racial/ethnic identity, with all staff stressing that self-identification was the only method they relied on, as michele’s comments below highlight. michele was a front office assistant at centennial. how do we explain it? well, basically, it’s what do they think their first ethnicity is. you know, if, for instance, if a parent has a black child and they are white, what do you consider your child? we can’t make that decision what we think. it’s what the parent thinks that that child is. what do they honor? and, same with if we have a spanish family that they, um, who are white. what do you consider? i mean we put both. we put, you know, they say, “well, i would think my first one would be white, and secondary is spanish.” and, we put in… or hispanic… we put that in. it’s not something that we make that choice on. we let the parent choose what, what’s important to them. nevertheless, since the school’s computer program had limited racial data entry fields, michele revealed how staff were the final arbiters when families did not comply with the rules of the racial identification game. before the parent even leaves, i see this. and, i look at it. and, if they’ve marked two, i ask them what they, what they prefer, as first or second. um, if they don’t want to, they, they do not have to answer it. if they decline, that’s what it shows on the, in the system. that they declined. or if they inadvertently left it out, but they didn’t know, and we didn’t catch it or they just handed it in, then we put in that they declined it. because we can’t ask them to fill it out. multi-racial students (or multi-ethnic, which was the category used by the state for the collection and reporting of student race/ethnicity data3) within the meadows district were thus transformed into acceptable ethnic data-keeping categories via the technological apparatus of the district, which (prior to 2009) literally did not compute multi-racial bodies. despite the official nonexistence of multi-racial students in meadows’ schools, staff at new river and centennial staff nevertheless commented on the existence of these students in the years prior to 2009, as the following excerpt illustrates. it is from my interview with candice, a bilingual front office assistant at new river: like i said it’s mainly the mixed families that either decline or choose both boxes. so, we really don’t have a problem with hispanic families trying to choose one or the other ‘cuz it’s mainly just t h e s e r io u s g a m e s o f r a c ia l a c c o u n tin g in s c h o o ls 7 hispanic – they don’t have a mix. it’s always with the mixed families, that, that have kind of a concern about throwing that out. the excerpt also illustrates another contested truth in racial data-keeping: the creation of a pan-ethnic (but not officially racial) hispanic identity. figure 1. illustration of the ruling relations in race data collections in oregon k-12 schools. c u r r e n t i s s u e s in e d u c a tio n v o l. 1 4 n o . 3 8 hispanic racial/ethnic ambiguities a significant area of interest in my interviews with school staff was how racial categories were explained to recent immigrants who may be unfamiliar with u.s. customary and legal practices, including the collection of racial data, and who may not speak or read english. in addition to asking whether registration forms were translated into other languages, i asked what additional types of assistance staff provided to these families to help them understand the ethnic categories they were offered and to choose among the options. i also asked whether staff were provided any training about what the categories meant (e.g., how they were defined) in order to explain the categories to families who may have questions about the options offered or how they should identify their children. both the school staff and the migrant education staff indicated that the immigrant population they predominantly interacted with was spanish-speakers from latin america. spanish translations of registration forms were provided at both schools, and staff members who spoke spanish were available to assist families in both schools. the certificate of eligibility that migrant education recruiters used to enroll families was not translated into spanish, since the recruiter was the person responsible for completing the form. however, most migrant education recruiters in the state, including the individual who participated in the study, spoke spanish. the ethnic categories used by the migrant education recruiters were the same as those used in the meadows school registration forms, although the ethnic categories did not appear on the certificate of eligibility (coe) form. the codes for the six ethnic background categories (the omb ethno-racial pentagon plus an “other” category) were listed in the instruction manual for how to complete the coe. staff reported receiving no training on what the categories meant and few inquiries about the racial categories from spanish-speakers. they also reported that most spanish-speakers willingly complied with the request for ethnic identification, and most frequently selected hispanic from the available choices. the manner in which the categories were presented to spanish-speakers varied among the spanish-speaking staff charged with assisting families with this task. the spanish-speaking staff with whom i spoke were candice (who identified as half white and half mexican), jan (who identified as caucasian), and isabel (who identified as white hispanic). according to candice, spanish-speakers at new river were typically not provided assistance in interpreting the ethnic categories or how to fill this section out. this was left to family members to figure out on their own. jan, a migrant education recruiter indicated that in accordance with the training she’d received, she simply asked families which category they identify with and would read all six. isabel, on the other hand, indicated that she typically referred to the hispanic category first and sometimes referenced the white category too in her conversations with families around the school registration form. following is an excerpt from my interview with isabel where she explains how she approached this issue. isabel: i just ask them: do you think you feel the… the hispano part? and they say: yes. and, because they don’t speak english, um… you know, i… maybe i had have very few cases where the, the, white and hispanic were one thing. and, then i fill both. … mim: so when you talk with families maybe that don’t read the categories, do you read all the categories, or do you just say, “are you hispanic?” isabel: hmm. i guess i never had the case like that. they all kind of read [here she says “read” in the past tense, i.e., like red]. and, if they don’t read anything, maybe…. no, i don’t think i have read the whole thing. just these two. so i make assumptions, i guess. jan noted that she was surprised not to encounter more questions in her current job as a recruiter for the migrant education program given her previous years of experience helping latino immigrants complete immigration paperwork that also asked for racial/ethnic identification. in her previous experience, she found that the immigrants with whom she interacted often expressed confusion and/or were more likely to “take it on as an issue”, by either joking about the race/ethnic question or wanting to leave it blank. in contrast, when asked whether she encountered any confusion or resistance to the categories in her current work with the migrant education program she stated: i’ve only been there six months. i’ve probably done, i wonder how many i’ve done… 40 or 50 of the [certificate of eligibility] forms? 50…? and, yeah…. so i haven’t had that come up. even though i expect it would with all my experience filling out forms with immigration – that came up often, you know. people would be like, not knowing what, what they want to say. [she pauses briefly then continues.] i guess i’ve gotten some little joke comments, something like, “soy mexicano. i’m mexican.” a couple of those, but then they’ll just say, “mark hispanic.” staff interpretations of race and race data two major themes emerged from the interviews with staff that characterized how they interpreted the racial categories and their roles within the racial accounting system. the first theme, race is personal, encompasses a general staff sentiment that racial identification was a personal matter, and that staff should play no role in deciding how students and their families identified racially. this was evident in several of the quotes above. staff consistently minimized their role in the process, and indicated that the process was so routine that families did t h e s e r io u s g a m e s o f r a c ia l a c c o u n tin g in s c h o o ls 9 not ask questions about it and staff did not insert themselves into these decisions. if families chose not to answer these questions, staff indicated that they did not press the issue, as the following excerpt illustrates. candice: honestly, no one’s ever asked questions about that, that part of the registration card. i know some people will, will decline or say other or something like that and they won’t give that kind of information. mim: do you ever follow-up with families who don’t provide that information to see if they forgot to do it or do you just leave it at that? candice: honestly, i just leave it at that. although data collection procedures are technical and likely boring to most people, race is a sensitive topic and the results of the study suggest that race data collection is as well. there was a general discomfort evident in my conversations with staff regarding race data collection procedures. several participants were visibly relieved when i informed them that their identity would remain confidential. discomfort with my questions was particularly evident in my interviews with school and esd staff. this was likely because they were the individuals primarily responsible for gathering race data from families. while my questions about how racial/ethnic categories get explained to families, especially those that don’t speak english, could be and were shrugged off by district and ode staff with “you’ll have to ask school staff those questions,” school staff did not have the luxury of “passing the buck.” they were the individuals ultimately responsible for making sure families filled out their registration forms. families were expected (although not legally required) to check one of the five racial/ethnic boxes on these forms. if they had questions, didn’t fill out this section, or chose multiple boxes, it was the school staff that dealt with these issues. distancing themselves from the collection of these data appeared to be influenced by staff’s expressed belief that race was a personal matter not just for students and families but for them as well. a second theme that emerged concerned the utility of student race data for staff. staff weren’t sure how these data could or whether the data should inform their work. cindy, who worked in the district office, expressed concerns that collecting and analyzing race data ran counter to her belief that race or color shouldn’t matter, how do you be neutral and then focus on it at the same time. we’re being trained/coached and some of us just know not to treat people different. then i’m being involved in pulling apart data [into racial categories]. it’s hard to know how to balance that. i’ve grown up in this area, [she mentions a nearby rural community], which is obviously white. maybe there were one or two latino students in the school. i don’t have preconceived notions. i notice them, visually. but, others from more racially diverse neighborhoods seem to have more preconceived ideas about other racial or ethnic groups. marla, a front office staff person at centennial, also believed a student’s ethnicity (which she consistently called “ethnicicity”) wasn’t important, although language background was. to me it’s more important to know what language you’re speaking than it is to know what ethnicicity [sic] you are. it is. it really is, because … because of that melting pot that we’re all in right now. george, who worked for the state department of education, suggested that some school staff lack the statistical expertise to understand their student achievement data, and erroneously focus on racial achievement gaps when their problem lies elsewhere. he recounted the following example to illustrate his point. what they’re trying to improve by their [school improvement] plans should be backed up by, you know, statistics … not guesses…. an example was in [a mid-sized oregon city]. in [this city], you looked at their data and they said, “well we’ve got a problem with all, with the minority kids, ‘cuz their tests are down compared to the non-minority kids. and, folks that we had go [sic] there, looked at it, …and said, “no, you’re wrong…. what you do [have is] something happening at the 8th grade.. that’s [what is] wrong. because the [lower] test scores for minorities is [sic] across all the grades. all the grade levels are below non-minorities. so it’s consistent. but, here in the 8th grade, you’ve got this down drop of everybody…from what, sort of, the norm is. so, there is what your problem is. it’s in your 8th grade. interestingly, george’s comments implied that because the racial disparities in achievement were consistent, they were “normal,” not statistically meaningful, and did not merit focused attention by the school. implications for recent changes to the rules of the game there are myriad rules that govern racial and ethnic data collection practices in schools. racial and ethnic identity construction, at least in school records, occurs within the context of these ruling relations. in 2010, the rules of the game changed in significant ways. new federal rules governing racial/ethnic data collection in schools went into effect then, rules that were codified in 1997 but had been under review and in various stages of adoption by federal agencies since then (national forum on education statistics, 2008). i discuss what these changes imply based on existing racial accounting practices and staff roles, as well as the broader implications regarding the interpretation and use(s) of these data. changing categories and counts in 2010, “two or more races” became a required data entry and reporting category. the oregon department of education reports this category as “multi-ethnic.” as a c u r r e n t i s s u e s in e d u c a tio n v o l. 1 4 n o . 3 10 result of this change, the official racial/ethnic make-up of the meadows schools and many other schools in districts across the state changed – not because of a change in the bodies occupying the school seats, but because the bodies that were already there now had a new name. the oregon department of education’s website provides data on the ethnic breakdown of k-12 students by district for each academic year beginning with the 1997-98 school year. a multi-ethnic category was included in all years in the state’s tally of students but not all oregon schools appeared to have collected and/or reported these data until 2010. the first year that multi-ethnic students appeared in the state’s student enrollment counts was 200405, when 35% of the state’s school districts reported having at least one multi-ethnic student and 0.7% of the state’s total student population was reported as multi-ethnic. table 1 summarizes the percentages of oregon students by ethnicity for the state from 2001-2010. meadows school district did not report any multiethnic students until 2009-10, when 3.4% of the district’s students and 2.7% of the state’s total population were reported in this category. the following year the percentage of meadows’ (6%) and the state’s (4.2%) multi-ethnic students (6%) almost doubled. table 2 lists the percentages of students by ethnic group for meadows school district and centennial and new river schools from 2008-2010. it is hard to know exactly how many students within the meadows school district would have been identified as multi-ethnic prior to 2009 or whether the oneyear growth in multi-ethnic students was a reflection of new students in the schools or existing students that identified themselves differently and/or were reported by staff differently in the two years. these students were similarly rendered invisible in other district’s student enrollment counts until 2010, when all schools were required to comply with the new federal regulations governing racial/ethnic data collection. table 3 provides a snapshot of the state’s school districts reporting multi-ethnic students from 2004-2010. a second change relates to the hispanic category. in 2010, schools were required to use a two-question ethnic/racial identity format on school registration forms that first asks whether the student is hispanic, followed by a question requesting racial identification. this is the same format used in the u.s. census since 2000. since the manner in which hispanics are counted will remain the same as in previous years (i.e., hispanics by ethnicity, all others by race), the clear demarcation of hispanic as an ethnic identity and not a race won’t likely effect the hispanic counts in k-12 student enrollment. while the racial identity of students who identify as hispanic will not be counted, hispanic students will still be asked to identify racially by selecting one or more of the acceptable race options: american indian or alaska native; asian; black or african american; and native hawaiian or other pacific. because hispanics frequently interpret the hispanic/latino table 1 percentages of k-12 students by ethnic group in oregon: 2001 – 2010 year white black hispanic asian american indian multi ethnic unknown 2001/02 77.6 2.9 11.3 4.1 2.1 0 1.9 2002/03 76.3 3.0 12.2 4.1 2.2 0 2.3 2003/04 75.0 3.0 13.4 4.3 2.3 0 2.0 2004/05 72.5 3.2 13.9 4.4 2.2 0.7 3.2 2005/06 72.2 3.0 15.1 4.5 2.2 1.1 1.8 2006/07 70.4 3.0 16.1 4.6 2.1 1.9 2.0 2007/08 69.1 3.0 16.8 4.7 2.1 2.3 2.0 2008/09 68.4 2.9 17.2 4.7 2.0 2.9 1.8 2009/10 67.5 2.8 19.6 4.6 1.9 2.7 1.0 2010/11 66.3 2.6 20.5 3.9 1.9 4.2 0 note. american indian category also included alaska natives. asian category also included pacific islanders, even in 201011 despite the new federal guidelines requiring separately reporting native hawaiians/pacific islanders beginning that year. t h e s e r io u s g a m e s o f r a c ia l a c c o u n tin g in s c h o o ls 11 table 2 percentages of students by ethnic group in meadows district and study schools: 2008 – 2010 year white black hispanic asian american indian multi ethnic unknown meadows 2008/09 73.9 2.3 10.0 8.2 1.1 0.0 4.5 2009/10 73.7 1.7 12.0 7.8 0.9 3.4 0.6 2010/11 72.4 1.4 13.1 5.9 0.7 6.0 0.0 centennial 2008/09 52.1 3.2 36.6 5.6 0.0 0.0 2.4 2009/10 42.8 1.9 45.3 4.1 0.3 4.6 1.1 2010/11 40.1 1.1 49.6 1.9 0.8 6.1 0.0 new river 2008/09 60.8 3.1 28.4 5.2 1.6 0.0 0.9 2009/10 60.7 2.3 31.5 3.9 0.8 0.8 0.0 2010/11 55.3 1.5 37.0 0.9 0.6 4.3 0.0 note. data above reflect different grade levels by institution. for meadows, k-12 grades were included. centennial data included k-5 grades. new river data included k-8 grades for 2008-10, but only k-5 grades in 2010/11, as a result of the school’s grade configuration changing to k-5 that year. table 3 school districts reporting multi-ethnic students: 2004 – 2010 all >1000 students year count % count % 2004/05 69 35.0 40 44.9 2005/06 92 46.9 52 58.4 2006/07 107 54.6 56 62.9 2007/08 111 56.6 62 69.7 2008/09 124 63.6 70 78.7 2009/10 147 75.4 86 96.6 2010/11 172 88.2 87 97.8 note. from 2004-2010, there were 195-198 school districts in oregon. of these, 87-90 school districts enrolled at least 1000 students. prior to 2004, no districts reported any multi-ethnic students. c u r r e n t i s s u e s in e d u c a tio n v o l. 1 4 n o . 3 12 label as a race and not an ethnicity (logan, 2004; saenz, 2004; tafoya et al., 2004), it is unclear how hispanics will respond to the racial question. a third change that will impact racial/ethnic counts concerns a category that wasn’t explicitly requested in ethnic/race data collections but has nevertheless been allowed. this category is reported by various names: unknown, declined to report, or other. as of 2010, this category is no longer valid. from 2000-2009, when multiethnic students in oregon schools were either not counted at all or partially counted, unknowns averaged 2.0% of k12 students in the state. in 2010, 0% of students were reported in this category, and interestingly in one year the multi-ethnic percentage of k-12 students grew from 2.7% to 4.2% in the state, and from 3.4% to 6.0% in the meadows school district. whether the increase in multiethnic students is a result of (a) families in all school districts being able to self-identify multi-ethnically, (b) staff relying more heavily on multi-ethnic categorization for those who chose not to provide racial/ethnic information, or (c) a combination of both, is unknown. changing staff roles another change to the racial accounting rules is the requirement that school staff use observer identification when families choose not to answer the ethnicity and/or racial identity questions. officially, the policy about selfidentification of race/ethnicity has not changed: selfidentification continues to be optional. however, the new requirement that staff use observer identification when families do not provide this information means that all elementary and secondary students will be racially classified even if they wish not to be. the federal guidelines stress that self-identification continues to be the preferred method of securing racial/ethnic data for students, and that observer identification should be used “as a last resort” in accordance with the following procedures. if respondents do not provide information about their race or ethnicity, educational institutions and other recipients should ensure that respondents have refused to self-identify rather than simply overlooked the questions. if adequate opportunity has been provided for respondents to self-identify and respondents still do not answer the questions, observer identification should be used (final guidance, 2007, p. 59268). based on the staff interviews i conducted, observer identification was not a task for which staff were prepared or comfortable. before staff were aware of the new guidelines, i inquired whether they had received any training in racial data collection and how they should explain the categories to families. they consistently reported that they did not and when they were informed that observer identification would be required in the near future when families did not fill out this section, their eyes grew big. although observer identification is now required only as a last resort, it seemed clear that staff training about the categories, their use, and the data collection procedures was necessary and that the federal government’s response to this need was likely insufficient. the 2008 guide to implementing the changes devotes a chapter to training and communication, which includes a list of the staff training topics that should be covered, examples from districts that have already adopted the changes, and other tips such as: anticipating questions about race and ethnicity identification will help: • middle eastern students should be identified as “white,” not “asian.” • students from spain should be identified as hispanic and one or more of the racial categories (p. 16). • districts can provide some “real life” practice as school personnel analyze their current student population, develop scenarios of possible observer misidentification, and anticipate possible data entry errors (p. 18). this training may help staff better understand their data collection roles and responsibilities, but the training topics highlighted in the federal guide focus on the mechanics and legalities of racial data collection, not the history behind it or the evidence for and against their continued collection and uses. thus, there are much broader implications to the changes to race data collection that merit further policy attention than simply training school staff about the new rules of the racial accounting game. how should/will multi-racial students challenge our understanding of and responses to school segregation and achievement gap concerns? if latinos officially count in terms of ethnicity only and they frequently interpret latino as a racial identity, why is it necessary for latinos to have an officially sanctioned racial identity? because educational practitioners, researchers and policymakers regularly rely on race data to make meaning of the educational experiences of students and craft policies in response to the meanings we infer, we all need to grapple with these questions, understand the history and purposes of racial data collection, recognize the limitations of racial measurement, and continually seek better ways to ensure that no child is left behind. conclusion this study was designed to shed light on the serious games of racial accounting practices in schools by examining three questions: (1) what officially counts as race, (2) how staff interpret their data-keeping roles and race data, and (3) the implications of the recent changes to racial data collection and reporting. the findings regarding the first question focused on two contested areas of racial truth construction within the context of the previous rules of racial accounting practices: the (non)existence of multiracial students and hispanic racial/ethnic ambiguities. two major themes emerged in response to the second question. the first theme, race is personal, reflected staff’s expressed t h e s e r io u s g a m e s o f r a c ia l a c c o u n tin g in s c h o o ls 13 desire to distance themselves from the racial identification of students and their discomfort with the topic of race in general. the second theme highlighted the questionable utility of race data for staff. the findings related to the last question suggest that the recent changes in racial accounting practices would likely yield relatively small differences in the racial/ethnic counts of students, but important differences in the official recognition of multiracial identities and the requirement that all bodies have an official racial label. moreover, they highlight the need for greater understanding among school staff, researchers, and policymakers about the history, purposes and mechanics of racial data-keeping in schools. although individuals are actively involved in selecting their own identities and/or the identities of their children within schools, they do so within the context of the ruling relations of race data monitoring. legally, their active participation in the game is optional. however, for all intents and purposes, after 2010, their participation is mandatory – with all k-12 students officially classified and counted racially, whether they selected this identity or not. this change to racial data-keeping could be viewed as a more accurate reflection of racial realities – whether we choose to play or not, we live in a society in which “there has been a continuous tendency, arguably a necessity, to organize and signify domination along the lines of corporeality/‘phenotype’” (winant, 2004, p. ix). measuring race is not an exact science, it is a political science. thus, the significance of the distortion in racial facts built into the racial/ethnic counts of students lies not just in the actual numbers, but in whether ultimately the racial counts correspond closely enough with the racial realities that we seek to understand and racial injustices that we seek to redress. measuring these racial truths by racially sorting and counting people is always fraught with error, controversy, compromises, and, increasingly, resistance. in 2003 the american sociological association issued a statement in response to the growing skepticism of the validity and utility of race-based research. refusing to measure the impact of race, the asa contends, will simply preserve the status quo of racial inequality. nevertheless, the effectiveness of the racial classificatory scheme to measure truths, albeit partial-truths, in school data-keeping depends on a minimum level of agreement on which racialized bodies should count and how they should count. whether the new rules will better illuminate racial realities and lead to socially just policies or not depends on how all the players (the families, school staff, researchers and policymakers) regard the purpose and rules of the game, and whether they are in agreement with their purported goals. 1 the terms latino/a and hispanic are used interchangeably throughout the paper. 2 the 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(2011). the serious games of racial accounting in schools. current issues in education, 14(3). retrieved [date], from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/785 author notes martha i. martinez university of oregon 5267 university of oregon, eugene, or 97403 mim3210@hotmail.com martha i. martinez recently received her ph.d. in educational methodology, policy and leadership from the university of oregon. her research examines school policies and practices that impact the educational opportunities and outcomes of underserved populations. she wishes to thank the center on diversity and community at the university of oregon for the graduate summer research award that supported this research. c u r r e n t i s s u e s in e d u c a tio n v o l. 1 4 n o . 3 16 volume 14, number 3 august 26, 2011 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor lori ellingford assistant executive editors melinda hollis layout editor elizabeth reyes recruitment editor rory schmitt copy editor/proofreader lucinda watson section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke elizabeth frias ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca seong hee kim anglea hines younsu kim lisa lacy carol masser leslie salazar jennifer shea alaya swann technical editor james stockburger faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 897-3980-4-le (1).doc 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x the role of teacher education in introducing action research into the education system: a case study of an education college orly sela and miriam harel oranim academic college of education, israel the study presents a case of a teacher education college which took upon itself the role of providing teachers with an opportunity to study their work as part of their professional development studies in three different frameworks. the objective of the study was to examine the role of the college as promoting research carried out by practicing teachers regarding their own work, from the teachers’ point of view. in all three frameworks the teachers had to conduct a study of their own work, following which they were asked to write a reflective text regarding the research process. these texts were analyzed using the grounded theory approach, resulting in three major categories. in-depth examination of the categories led to insights related to the responsibility academia can and should take upon itself in assisting teachers in developing their abilities to combine practice and theory and evolve from knowledge consumers to knowledge creators. keywords: action research, teacher education, professional development, qualitative research, grounded theory over the past two decades, research done by teachers has taken quite a meaningful place in educational research (clarke & erickson, 2006). lately, more and more teachers have begun to take up research of their own work, thus contributing to the construction of a knowledge base in this domain and the improvement of their own work. action research has taken a central role in this area, and is perceived as empowering teachers and contributing to their status as professionals (mcniff & whitehead, 2002). however, practicing teachers still find research to be a complex and difficult task for many reasons. they are not taught how to do academic research, and their working conditions often do not allow them to spend the time, effort and money necessary to engage in it (reis-jorge, 2007). the present study describes the case of a teacher education college which took upon itself to act in this direction, with the outcomes specifying the action which needs to be taken by the colleges in order to improve the situation. literature review teachers’ research for the past 15 years or so the focus of educational research has been directed more and more towards research done by teachers examining their own work (clark & erickson, 2006). this trend originates in the understanding that teachers’ voices and the questions that concern them need to be heard in the context of research on teaching (cochran-smith & lytle, 1992). cochran-smith and lytle (1999) relate to this perception which has become prevalent over the past few years as a movement rather than a temporary fashion in education. within this movement they identify several central trends: more and more studies are carried out on topics of teacher education, professional development and educational change; theories regarding teachers’ research are developing within a conceptual framework; teachers’ studies are disseminated beyond local contexts; and some teachers’ studies affect different aspects of academic culture. some theoreticians claim that the central problem of educational research is its relatively minor influence on educational practice (shkedi, 2000; tamir, current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 1991). academic educational research does not usually stem from practice, and it is researchers rather than practitioners who determine its content. there is a gap between researchers and practitioners, as the latter often feel that educational research is irrelevant outside of academia and does not contribute to improvement of education in schools (hargreaves, 1996). in other words, practice and theory are perceived as two separate worlds (gomm & hammersley, 2002). zeichner (2007) also describes this gap, calling for the use of self-study (including action research, which he positions as a type of self-study) in bridging it. at the same time the perception of research and teaching as two inseparable domains is growing stronger, placing the teacher-as-researcher concept at the core of the teaching profession, positioning it as a powerful tool for understanding classroom reality. teacher-led research creates potent knowledge and is used to differentiate between teaching as a profession and teaching as a technical skill (clark & erickson, 2006; darlinghammond & baratz-snowden, 2005). the combination of these two domains – research and practice, is necessary both for academia and for classroom practice (alpert & kfir, 2003). teaching is perceived as a domain where practice and theory both feed and lean on each other (maaranen & krokfors, 2008; silberstein, 1998). according to this perception teachers at all levels and at all stages of professional development – pre-service teachers, practicing teachers and teacher educators, are expected to carry out research, defined in the literature as inquiry carried out in a manner that is “… systematic, public, voluntary, ethical and contextual” (mclean & mohr, 1999, p. 23). the idea is that teachers themselves can make a meaningful contribution to the creation of knowledge and not only to its implementation when created by others (delong, 2004). today we expect teachers to be more than merely a source of knowledge for their pupils; they must carry out systematic reflection and research which will guide their classroom practice (hahs-vaughn & yanowitz, 2009). much of the teacher education literature relates to pre-service teachers as researchers examining their own work. the assumption is that experience in implementing teaching strategies is not sufficient for the pre-service teacher to become familiar with the complex, vague and dilemma-filled character of the teaching profession. sim (2006) deals with the importance of constructing a ‘community of practice’ where pre-service teachers are afforded the opportunity to research and analyze the complex situations which contribute to effective teaching and learning. she feels that teacher education institutions should be committed to assisting pre-service teachers to develop as professionals who are able to engage in critical analysis and value the connection between theory and classroom practice. one of the purposes of teacher education is to develop in its graduates the confidence and the ability to research their work and contribute knowledge to the field of education. in addition, conducting research may help pre-service teachers deal with the previous perceptions which they have brought with them to the teacher education process (darlinghammond & baratz-snowden, 2005). this approach demands that teacher educators trust the pre-service teachers’ ability to accept more responsibility for their own learning (loughran, 2004). belanger (1992) feels that the contribution of research done by teachers is multidimensional: politically it is a powerful teacher empowerment tool, practically it places teachers in the best position for ascertaining what the most effective teaching methods are, and professionally it helps teachers grow as reflective practitioners controlling their own learning. hahs-vaughn and yanowitz (2009) summarize the findings of many studies regarding the extremely positive effects of teacher research on teachers, and english (2006) presents teachers’ research as a way in which we can get ‘inside information’ regarding the educational field, which she feels is sorely missing today. in addition, teachers’ studies are perceived as contributing to teachers’ professional development in a meaningful manner. kincheloe (2003) claims that only through engaging in complex critical research, will teachers rediscover their professional status and improve the quality of their classroom teaching. at the same time teachers are enlarging the scope of their professional development and can later on in their professional careers serve as educational leaders and researchers (diezmann, 2005). action research action research is described as a type of teacher research conducted by professionals in order to investigate a problem in their work (crockett, 2006; mcniff & whitehead, 2002; zeichner & noffke, 2001). this type of research was first discussed by kurt lewin in the 1940’s. lewin, who was a social psychologist, came up with the idea as a way through which different groups of people could resolve their disagreements in a nonviolent manner (zellermayer, 2001). later on action research was adopted by educational researchers, and has been flourishing in that domain ever since (huber & savage, 2009). the literature describes several ways of categorizing educational action research, but what they all have in common is the view of action research as based on deep reflection and divided into several stages creating a circle or a spiral through which the teachers-researchers examine their work and try to come up with ways of improving it (foreman-peck & murray, 2008; smith & sela, 2005). somekh and zeichner (2009) did a metaanalysis of 46 action research studies published between 2002 and 2008, dividing them into five types – (a) action research in times of political upheaval and transition, (b) the role of teacher education in introducing action research into the education system: a case study of an education college 3 action research as a state sponsored means of reforming schooling, (c) co-option of action research by western governments and school systems to control teachers, (d) action research as a university-led reform movement, and (e) action research as a locally sponsored systemic reform sustained over time. the fourth type, action research as a university-led reform movement, relates to cases where a higher education institution initiated an action research project within the local education system in order to improve it, sometimes (but not always) based on a socialpolitical background. this is done through professional development courses for teachers, school-university ties, or groups of teachers who study towards a graduate degree while continuing to teach. delong (2004) describes five aspects through which action research contributes to the education system: (a) benefit to the pupils, who are the main reason for conducting action research, (b) benefit to the teachers who gain confidence regarding their knowledge and ways of acting in their classes, (c) benefit to the school as an institution adopting the culture of inquiry where the knowledge, skills and values of pupils, teachers and parents are evaluated, (d) benefit to the education system which develops a commitment to ongoing change processes, and (e) benefit to teaching as a profession. the bodies of knowledge created through action research studies give teachers a voice, which previously had often been silenced, taken over by academia, by the educational establishment or by political leadership. foreman-peck and murray (2008) describe a wide-scoped action research project conducted in great britain which found the following benefits for teachers: (a) improvement of creativity in teaching, (b) more willingness to use professional judgment and a better ability to self-criticize, (c) development of a common professional language for all people conducting research, and (d) development of the ability to observe and analyze educational events. in addition, benefits were found for those teachers’ pupils, particularly in learning improvement, classroom participation, and transference of learning between classes. however, there were no clear findings regarding the influence of teachers’ action research on pupils’ achievements in standardized tests. elsewhere, action research was found to help teachers develop as reflective professionals, able to collect and analyze data (darlinghammond & baratz-snowden, 2005). it is also at present beginning to enter graduate degree programs in education (huber & savage, 2009). difficulties and dilemmas in addition to the contribution of teacher research to teaching and teachers’ professional development, the literature also describes the ensuing difficulties. the most basic difficulty has to do with the fact that teachers’ first and central responsibility is to their pupils’ achievements and not to research, therefore no resources (time and/or money) are allocated for this purpose (alpert, 2006). teachers continuously study their work in an intuitive manner; they ask themselves questions regarding their work, collect data regarding their pupils through tests, different projects, learning logs, etc., and come to conclusions based on the collected data. the difficulty lies in mobilizing them for systematic research processes (babkie & provost, 2004; goldberg-kaplan, alon, & boltzer, 2003). in order to conduct high level studies one needs to have high level research skills. teachers often lack the necessary skills to conduct academic research (diezmann, 2005; lunenberg & willemse, 2006). teacher educators also have little experience in conducting research in comparison with their teaching experience (unlike lecturers in other academic domains), which limits their ability to carry out studies of the teacher education process, and perhaps teach their students – the pre-service teachers – how to conduct research appropriately. this situation is beginning to change with the growth in numbers of teacher educators who recognize the value of self-study for the examination of their practice (heiman, 2004; loughran et al., 2004; zeichner, 2007). pre-service teachers acquire methodological knowledge during their teacher education process or while studying for a graduate degree. as members of a professional community one of the aims of teacher educators is to provide their students with research tools which would assist them in observing their work and as teachers researching their own practice. regarding teachers in graduate programs, they need the close academic support and guidance of teachers researching their own work. many of them perceive practice and research as two completely different domains. in order to bridge the gap between these two domains and support their insights regarding the research process they must be allowed to take small, measured steps supported by both academia and the education system (goldberg-kaplan, alon, & boltzer, 2003). another dilemma has to do with publicizing teachers’ studies. by its very nature research disseminates new knowledge and exposes itself to critical discussion. studies conducted by teachers usually remain private and are not exposed to others. this may be a serious limitation, as these studies do not benefit the wider community of academics and practitioners, only the researchers themselves (diezmann, 2005). one of the ways of encouraging the use of action research in the education system is through teacher education of all types, both pre-service and in-service (goldberg-kaplan, alon, & boltzer, 2003). the present study examines a case of a teacher education college which took this task upon itself through three groups of teachers – experienced teachers taking an in-service course, experienced teachers studying towards a graduate degree, and novice teachers in their first year of teaching, i.e. at the end of their pre-service teacher education. these three groups were assigned an action research project as a current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 major part of their academic assignments, and the study presented here examines the success of this project through a close reading of the teachers’ reflective writing. research question: what is the role of the teacher education college in embedding action research in the education system? the study in light of the fact that action research is perceived today as an important topic with the potential for advancing the education system (foreman-peck & murray, 2008; huber & savage, 2009; mcniff, 1998), the question remains – how can this be done in practice? one of the possible ways of achieving this aim is through teacher education colleges taking responsibility for this. this is a natural step in light of the role of these institutions as leaders in the field of education, and as the place where theory and practice are bridged (korthagen, 2001; sela, 2009). two teacher educators in a large teacher education college decided to take this role upon themselves, in recognition of the importance of action research for both teachers and the educational field, and comprehension of the significance of the college as a large body able to assist in initiating change and introducing it into the education system. both have long term experience in conducting action research themselves and guiding their students in doing so, and believe that it is a powerful tool in furthering the cause of continuing teacher education and teacher empowerment. research method the study makes use of qualitative methodology which describes and explains phenomena through the participants’ eyes (guba & lincoln, 1994; silverman, 2004), using the case study approach. case study is a research strategy focusing on a specific, defined case; that is – a study describing and interpreting a particular segment of a phenomenon which is identified, defined and examined. the case has borders defined by time, place and participants, allowing one to enter the participants’ world and study it in depth (stake, 1998; yin, 1994). the present case study examines an intervention program initiated by a teacher education college, during which students/teachers conducted action research projects in the schools they were working at, alone or in collaboration with colleagues. three courses using this strategy are discussed in the present study, each numbering 20-30 students: a. practicing teachers taking an in-service course and conducting action research as the main course requirement. b. teachers studying towards an m.ed. degree taking a qualitative research course which includes the option of conducting an action research study as the main course requirement. c. teachers in their first year of teaching, which is also their last year as pre-service students, conducting action research as the seminar paper requirement for their educational seminar course.1 as can be seen from the list, two of the courses are part of in-service teacher education (with one of them including graduate students), while the third spans both in-service and pre-service teacher education. thus, the three courses ‘cover’ the main stages of teaching as described by the life-long learning approach which advocates continuous learning by teachers throughout their careers (aspin & chapman, 2000; day, 1999). research population the present study included 30 teachers who studied in the three courses described above, 10 teachers in each course. the teachers were selected at random, with no preference regarding gender, ethnicity, age or attitude towards the research topic. generally speaking, the 30 research participants reflect the teacher population, i.e. a large majority of women and an ethnic division reflecting that of the entire country. while taking these courses they were all working as teachers in varied contexts schools and kindergartens of different types in the k-12 school system. data collection the present study makes use of document analysis as a data collection tool. the action research project each teacher conducted included a reflective writing component which encouraged the participants to engage in the three levels of reflection: technical, practical and critical (van manen, 1977), while also relating to the emotional aspect of their practice (korthagen & vasalos, 2005). the teachers were asked to reflect in writing regarding both the product and all stages of the process (choosing a topic, dealing with the literature, collecting data, analyzing it, coming to conclusions): e.g. what did i think, what did i find difficult, who/what helped me, what is now clearer to me about the research method, etc. the reflective writing texts were collected from 10 teachers in each course at random, i.e. 30 documents altogether. the documents were 1-3 pages long on average. data analysis the teachers’ reflective writing was analyzed using qualitative content analysis (strauss & corbin, 1990) at two coding levels – three stages of first level coding and a fourth stage of second level coding, in order to create grounded theory (charmaz, 2006; shkedi, 2005). grounded theory is a central method of data analysis and theory construction in qualitative research. it describes 1 unlike most western countries, in this context preservice students begin their formal (paid) teaching career in their last year of college. thus, they spend one full year being both students and teachers. the role of teacher education in introducing action research into the education system: a case study of an education college 5 phenomena and interprets reality from the participants’ point of view, thus was considered suitable for the present study. "grounded theory methods consist of systematic, yet flexible guidelines for collecting and analyzing qualitative data to construct theories `grounded` in the data themselves" (charmaz, 2006, p. 3). at first each researcher analyzed her own students’ writings, and at a later stage the texts and the researchers’ analysis of them were integrated into one whole data bank, which both researchers examined and re-examined, attempting to come up with insights regarding the research question. in the first stage (open coding) each text was read separately and the different analysis units (sentences, paragraphs) were named according to the topics present in the reflective writing texts. this stage provided the researchers with a general orientation regarding the texts’ content but also the relationships among them. the categories were collected from all the texts in parallel fashion, with the relationships and hierarchies among the categories and sub-categories exposed. this stage allowed the researchers to perceive a full picture of the data’s potential, leading to the third stage (selective/focused coding), where the three main categories were discovered. the fourth stage integrated the findings with the research literature, and an interpretive analysis was conducted to create grounded theory. this analysis assisted the researchers in suggesting ways through which a teacher education college can overcome the difficulties described and effectively introduce action research into the education system. research limitations as the data collected was taken from a random rather than a representative sample of the texts composed by the participants, it may not be indicative of all the issues teachers are concerned with when conducting research of their own work. the lack of triangulation may also be a potential problem in the present study, forcing the researchers to focus on the participants’ words only, without verification from additional sources. findings content analysis of the reflective writing texts produced three main categories: (a) motivation for choosing the research topic, (b) questions and difficulties, and (c) the study’s contribution. despite very rich findings, due to constraints of topic and space we report below only those findings which relate directly to the topic of the present article – the role of the teacher education college in promoting action research in schools. the original research objective was to examine the teachers’ point of view regarding their experiences of researching their own work. following the rich and varied data base the research texts produced, the researchers of the present study realized that one main theme within this data base was the issue of the place and role of academia in furthering the cause of teacher research. the research question was constructed during the data analysis process, as is characteristic of qualitative research which is nonlinear and often changes during the research process (givton, 2001; maykut & morehouse, 1994). the teachers’ reflective texts discussed two basic types of motivation for choosing the research topic, the wish to deal with practical issues in order to improve their work and the wish to deal with issues they find interesting and/or worrying, not necessarily related to their work. the first type of motivation was prominent with all three groups of teachers. most teachers from each group picked research topics from their daily educational practice, which worried or upset them. however, this was not an easy process. most often teachers only selected their research topics after much consideration and discussions with the lecturers. the support provided by the lecturers allowed them to come up with appropriate topics, which in turn helped them to use their professional and researchrelated abilities to the fullest. we had different opinions and could not agree amongst ourselves, and as a result finished the meeting with no decision. but we all agreed to meet dr. m. [course lecturer] to consult her on this issue. in a meeting held again at the library we consulted with her, and she led the way and was very helpful in choosing a research topic. (n – integration of a special needs child in a regular class) i felt very confused and maybe a little helpless, mostly because we were unable to define the research question. i was so relieved when we managed to reach a joint research question which each group member will research from her point of view. actually, it was the meeting with m [course lecturer] which helped us identify the problem, define it, describe it, and ask the research question. (m – interpersonal communication within the staff) most teachers began the research process with concerns, expressing feelings of insecurity and doubt regarding their ability to fulfill the task. in addition to difficulties related to their new roles as researchers, many teachers also found their roles as academics stressful, displaying pressure, panic and much difficulty when first encountering the academic literature. “the most difficult part was trying to find material, which was almost impossible, as my topic is quite esoteric. in the end i managed to find my way around this problem by doing observations and interviews” (a – integrating deaf students into a mainstream class). the teachers related in their reflective writing to the varied skills needed to write the literature review: separating main ideas from supporting details, focusing on the central theme, integrating materials, organizing the information, etc... “the due date came closer and i was still deep in doubt regarding integration of the material. stuck in the literature review. it was frightening. would i be able to cope?” (t – feedback sessions in guiding an current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 6 intern teacher). many teachers needed much assistance throughout the project, both academically and in the collection and analysis of data; and they were very pleased to receive this assistance from the course lecturers. … in a meeting with m [course lecturer] we decided on the stages of the study and the number of observations based on the research needs. m gave us her opinion regarding the observations we had already done… the action plan was constructed according to the research needs… m recommended we cut out the last two points on the first observation page and use them in the second observation stage… at last i felt the research was taking shape. (m – interpersonal communication within the staff) d, who researched her own personal narrative, emphasized her need for intensive guidance both within the group and personally, in her quest to acquire the skills necessary for data analysis, and the satisfaction she felt when receiving this support: …that’s why what we learned in the course matched my needs so perfectly. finally i was exposed to how data should be presented. i heard in class what others have done with their research materials, now i had to do something with mine. here the lecturer came to my aid, and in a personal meeting helped me to stop worrying about the materials. she demonstrated how i should work with interviews and observations, and i continued from there. many of the students reported different types of difficulties relating to acting as researchers within their own schools. for example, the teachers who studied their colleagues’ work rather than their own found it difficult to recruit colleagues who would agree to be observed and interviewed, due to fear of exposure. one of the difficulties i faced was that the sports teacher did not cooperate at the beginning of the interview, saying: ‘are you criticizing my work?’ he was closed-mouthed. but happily he agreed to cooperate once i explained that i was conducting research as part of my m.ed. studies, and that the work was for me only. (v – the place of school breaks) some teachers who needed their school’s support discovered to their surprise that it was not forthcoming. t, who studied an empowerment project of new immigrant youth, described the opposition he encountered: from the minute i decided to begin the exploratory process i encountered the project leader’s cool reaction. she claimed that the group is in a vulnerable place and she doesn’t feel this should be exacerbated by a foreign element whose presence might raise suspicions. the study only began when t managed to convince the leader that the study might become useful, having consulted the course lecturer as to the best way in which this can be done. luckily the project leader knew me from a time when we had worked together as counselors in the same school, thus i was able to convince her of the study’s importance and the fact that it will do no harm and might even do some good. throughout the process the teachers described the difficulty of integrating research with their professional commitments at school. “during the writing process we had ups and downs. we were tired and sometimes despaired – there was pressure to complete school tasks, personal tasks, and the action research tasks” (n – mainstreaming). the lecturers were always sensitive to these difficulties, allowing for delayed deadlines when necessary. while these difficulties, as well as many others not reported here, did hinder the participants’ research efforts, the data analysis also shows that teachers from all three groups were keenly aware of the great contribution the study made to them at both the personal and professional levels. clearly they had learned much, not only in the specific subject area they had researched but also regarding ways of working, relating to others and personal growth. i discovered that action research caused a fundamental change in my professional development process. i felt i had made a real change: i examined myself, understood what i had to change, and improved my feedback sessions with my colleagues. i felt relief and appreciation of the necessary change i had made. (p – giving feedback within a staff) for example, some of the teachers were happy to see that their research project directly contributed towards a solution, even if only a partial one, to a problem they had been suffering from for a while. in addition, the fact that other teachers may enjoy their research was perceived as extremely meaningful. this research project helped me achieve deep comprehension of a problem i had encountered professionally and did not have the tools to solve or even understand properly. i learned how to turn the idea of change into a more pleasant and less threatening experience… its importance is more than just as a course paper, but with the usefulness the study may bring to readers in general and teachers particularly regarding dealing with changes more effectively. allow other teachers to learn more about the process of accepting changes in methodology. (l – teachers’ perceptions regarding changes in teaching methodology) many teachers were favorably surprised by the relevance of the professional literature they had read during the research process, both for their study and for the role of teacher education in introducing action research into the education system: a case study of an education college 7 their work in the field. they discovered how important these reading were, and were very grateful to the lecturers for leading them in this direction. “i believe in what the literature says. sometimes i felt it was very irrational, but then surprisingly many things the literature offered were actually quite helpful” (r dealing with classroom management issues). an important issue mentioned was the support of the school establishment. the few teachers who asked for and received this felt it was very important, both practically and motivationally. the principal was a full partner and allotted resources for the research, and the educational counselor who was an integral part of the educational staff often gave her opinion regarding important issues which contributed to the action research process. without this cooperation it’s hard to conduct a study in school. without the cooperation of the leading elements in school you cannot teach, do research and make a difference. (l – mainstreaming in the arab sector) in one of the courses the teachers presented their studies to the group, sharing the knowledge they had gained during the process. these presentations, which were often accompanied by many fears and close guidance by the lecturer, brought about feelings of satisfaction, growth and pride. presenting my action research today makes me feel proud, as i am realizing my potential. i am actually doing this. it is not only my student who has developed as a self-directed learner, i did too, and maybe the audience as well! (n – student guidance) a, who studied english teachers’ perceptions of vocabulary teaching, related to the importance of publication and dissemination of the research findings. in my opinion, many teachers would be happy to discover which techniques are useful and efficient in teaching vocabulary. these findings can help me as an english teacher, and maybe others as well. if i can share my insights following the research… l, a teacher counselor, studied teachers’ perceptions regarding changes in teaching methods. she also felt that there is a need for dissemination of knowledge gained through her action research project. “…the importance of this study is not only as a course paper, but in its usefulness to readers in general who wish to know more about the process of accepting changes in the education system…” quite noticeably, in their reflective writing the teachers discussed the study they had conducted as ‘an appetizer’ for continued learning and researching in different frameworks. “the process i have undergone while conducting my research has shown me that in case further learning problems arise i can always research them and find remedies accordingly” (n improving students’ reading skills). discussion over the past two decades the professional literature has engaged in intensive discussion of teachers researching their own work, particularly emphasizing the contribution of this type of research to the teachers themselves, the educational field, and educational research in general. teachers researching their own work widen their knowledge of education and develop both personally and professionally (hans-vaughn & yanowitz, 2009; zeichner & klehr, 1999). the educational field benefits from the fact that teachers become more professional and their work is based on self-study and action research rather than on intuition alone (delong, 2004); and educational research benefits from the unique knowledge created by teacher-conducted research (clark & erickson, 2006), perceived today as necessary for the integration between academia and the educational field (mertler, 2006; mertler & charles, 2005; postholm, 2008). the present study describes a case in which a teacher education college took upon itself the role of encouraging the use of action research in the education system by intentional use of it as the main course assignment in three courses for practicing teachers at different stages of their professional careers. analysis of the reflective texts written by the participants while conducting action research and after the completion of the process shows that they gained much from the research process, but also encountered quite a few difficulties and problems. it is important to note at this point that the data analysis of the texts used for the present study can be read as leading in several different directions. we have chosen to follow it in the direction of discussing the role of the teacher education college as leader of the ‘teacher as researcher’ notion, through deliberate action in both preservice and in-service teacher education. choosing which theme to follow of all the themes emerging from the texts during the data analysis process is described by givton (2001) as a choice to be made during the research process rather than prior to it, as is the practice in quantitative research. according to the findings of the present study action research does, indeed, contribute to the teachers themselves, the educational field, and educational research in general. as can be seen in the findings section, the participants reported new insights they had come to as a result of doing action research, at both the personal and the professional level. for example, s, who researched improvement of interpersonal communication, says: “this intervention brought about only good things, mostly a tool for the planning of behavior modification, which benefitted teachers, pupils and parents. this tool was so successful that other teachers adopted it as well.” these findings match those described in the literature regarding the collaborative discourse taking place among the teachers who share amongst themselves insights and practical ideas regarding problems they face on a daily basis, but do not base this discourse on current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 8 theoretical knowledge (postholm, 2008). most teachers in the present study reported feelings of personal and professional satisfaction and success, as well as expressing hope that they will be given an opportunity to continue conducting research while engaging in educational practice. this is echoed in l’s words: “this research project helped me achieve deep comprehension of a problem i had encountered professionally…it may allow other teachers to learn more about the process of accepting changes in methodology…” these findings are also supported by the relevant literature (e.g. zeichner & klehr, 1999). another very important point emphasized by the participants was the enormous amount of help they received from the course lecturers, without which they could not have completed the action research project successfully. this is clearly echoed in several of the quotes presented in the findings section. however, despite the general agreement that teacher research has much to contribute to all concerned, it has not become prevalent in the educational field, and teachers who attempt to engage in it face serious difficulties. they are unskilled and untrained in conducting research; they are often faced with opposition to change and an unwillingness to admit the existence of problems; and the educational establishment does not allot sufficient resources (time and money) for this purpose, as it believes that teachers should teach rather than do research (alpert, 2006; ary et al., 2009). as m, who studied teacher feedback, said: the more i related to the writings [literature review], the more frustrated i became. this frustration was due to lack of time. i began to carry out the action research, and the teachers were under pressure to teach the material, meet standards, prepare for national exams, etc. thus, the conditions allowed me to carry out only a minimal plan. the present study describes an attempt to change this less than desirable situation by positioning the teacher education college in an active role of initiating and encouraging an educational change. as somekh and zeichner discuss in their article from 2009, university-led reform movement is a recognized ‘variation’ within the field of educational action research, and the action the teacher education college took, described in this article, positions it as part of this ‘variation’. higher education institutions turning in this direction see their role not only as teaching and conducting research, but also as having a social role and leading change in society in general and in the education system specifically. in order to realize its active role, the college used action research as the course assignment in several courses catering to teachers at different stages of their professional careers, with the hope of making action research part of the regular ‘tool box’ of all experienced teachers. in light of the study’s findings we feel this direction of positioning teacher education colleges as supporters of educational action research should be strengthened. teachers work in a demanding environment, within a complex, vague, dilemma-filled situation, in which they come up against practical problems, considerations and questions, and are expected to make decisions on a daily basis (calderhead, 1995). the regular in-service courses the system provides are perceived as keeping the teachers updated regarding news and innovations and providing practical ‘tips’ given by experts. in order for the teachers to integrate research into their work, a fundamental change needs to take place in their learning culture related to the character of the research process – a move towards a culture of systematic, structured, on-going, process-based learning, not necessarily a linear one (zeichner, 2007). the teachers who participated in the present study described coming up against many difficulties in their effort to integrate the study and all it entailed within the school environment, mainly due to the fact that it was so unusual within school culture. lack of support from peers and principals also hindered their progress as novice researchers. we feel conducting research should become part of the teachers’ learning culture, beginning with preservice teacher education and throughout their professional careers. this does not mean more courses need to be added. it is possible to use existing courses and designate action research studies as their main course evaluation projects. teachers who have acquired research skills and gained experience in conducting research during the teacher education process will bring their positive stance regarding the theoretical literature to their work, will be equipped with the necessary knowledge to conduct a study, and will have fewer fears, thus being in a better position to implement their research abilities. conducting a study will no longer be a college or university one-off episode, and they will be able to become a leading force in this regard in their schools, together with teachers who have graduate school experience, including doing research. the participants of the present study reported that having done research, they did, indeed, see themselves as leading additional studies in their schools. as n put it, “the process i have undergone while conducting my research has shown me that in case further learning problems arise i can always research them and find remedies accordingly.” this finding strengthens the claim that teachers who experience this are often interested in continuing to integrate research into their work in the future. postholm (2009), who led research processes in a norwegian school in his position as an academic in a similar manner to the present study, describes how the teachers in the school expressed a wish to continue conducting research after he had left. his conclusion was: "…teachers can the role of teacher education in introducing action research into the education system: a case study of an education college 9 develop a research stance, meaning a disposition to examine one`s practice critically and systematically" (postholm, 2009, p. 563). thus, teachers will become change agents in their own schools, bringing in the idea of action research and leading groups of teachers wishing to try out this ‘new’ idea. today, the most common model in using action research in organizations (both in business and in education) is that of external researchers from academia, called ‘outside agents’ (coghlan, 2004). these academics come to the field, guide the school staff in the research process, and lead the change as external researchers (dickson & green, 2001). in the present study we present an alternative model, one in which the active change agents in the schools are the teachers themselves, i.e. selected staff members act as ‘insider action researchers’ (coghlan & brannick, 2005, p. 61). they receive their training as researchers in academia and lead the research in the organization while being supervised themselves by academics. they become ‘practitioner-scholars’, influencing the construction of knowledge in the organization over time (sarah & haslet, 2007). our recommendation is that the emphasis in the school be gradually shifted from external experts to internal ones from amongst the school staff, which lieberman and pointer-mace (2009) call ‘accomplished teachers’ acting within professional learning communities. these are teachers who possess the ability to study practice seriously, comprehend its complexity and the meaning of exposing the product of their learning to others, and mobilize colleagues towards collaborative inquiry and learning activities. this is precisely the place of the teacher education college, whose role it is to assist the teachers in the field move from the role of practitioners who implement the knowledge they had learned from academics to that of practitioner-scholars who help bridge the gap between theory and practice, exactly as action research does, as its name clearly implies. the college can and should make teachers acquainted with research as it is reflected in action research which is considered ‘teacherfriendly’, guiding and supporting them stage by stage as they conduct their first study. at the end of the process, assuming it is as positive as it was for the participants of the present study, the college should not leave things as they are, but rather discuss with the teachers how they can pass on the knowledge they had gained regarding research to their colleagues in school, thus becoming change agents in the area of teacher research. in order for the knowledge constructed following the studies to be able to do more than remain between the four walls of the school, become exposed to critical discussion and benefit a wider community, different frameworks of meetings, conferences and study days need to be established, allowing an educational-research dialogue to take place, side by side with publication in hard copy and online journals which teachers are exposed to (zeichner, 2007). in addition to the professional benefit these studies will bring, each in its own domain, teachers will thus be exposed to their colleagues who have successfully conducted research, and gain the confidence necessary to also engage in the research process. the findings section above demonstrates that the participants in the present study clearly stated their wish to do so as well as their great satisfaction with the publicizing of the study, even if only within the academic course community. the teacher education college needs to lead this process of knowledge publication, as the teacher educators in the college are routinely engaged in academic publication (smith, 2005) and are skilled at it, while school teachers do not generally publish the knowledge they had accumulated. the recognition that this knowledge is worthy of publication and dissemination amongst the academic and professional community is one of the topics the college must promote, mostly through active practical action – setting up study days for teachers and academics together where both present their research, and initiating suitable publication outlets such as journals, collections of articles in book form, etc. this movement from the personal to the public is a necessary one, if we expect action research to be taken seriously by both the academic community and the political establishment (zeichner, 2007). while we feel very strongly about the premise presented in this article – that teacher education colleges should take an active role in changing the educational landscape through initiating and encouraging practicing teachers to conduct action research projects regarding their own work, we recognize that the evidence presented in the present study only partially supports this premise. we have shown earlier in the discussion section how the teachers’ words have led us in this direction, at times directly and at times in a roundabout manner. a follow-up study might investigate this issue from the college’s point of view, interviewing college staff in an attempt to understand their point of view in this matter. another possibility for a follow-up study would be to examine the school’s point of view, attempting to discover how principals and other school personnel view the possibility of making action research a meaningful part of the education system. conclusion inviting and encouraging teachers to conduct studies regarding their own work as part of their ongoing professional development is a topic which has become central in educational academic 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(2012). the role of teacher education in introducing action research into the education system: a case study of an education college. current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from: http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/897 author notes dr. orly sela oranim academic college of education, israel 9 nurit st., metulla, 10292, israel orlysela@oranim.ac.il a lecturer and teacher educator at an academic teacher education college. head of the practical final paper division of the med program and head of the promotion of excellence in teaching unit. received her phd from haifa university. research interests include action research, tefl and online teaching and learning. dr. miriam (miri) harel oranim academic college of education, israel 19 sold st., kiryat bialik, 2738, israel miriharel100@gmail.com a lecturer at the faculty of education and the med program, and a pedagogical advisor in an academic teacher education college. received a phd degree from the school of education at the hebrew university in jerusalem. research interests include teachers’ knowledge, teacher as researcher, professional ethics and novice teachers. manuscript received: 01/10/2012 revisions received: 04/03/2012 accepted: 6/05/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 14 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 813-4192-3-le.docx 1 volume 15, number 3 september 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x learning from myself: avatars and educational video games melissa lewis hobart saginaw valley state university this research explores which conditions for video game play are more effective in producing outcomes such as knowledge retained, involvement, behavioral intention, enjoyment, and self-efficacy. additionally, given that identification with a model increases positive learning results and given the history of avatar use showing that people tend to idealize themselves in avatar form, expectations are that an ideal-self avatar would yield the greatest learning outcomes, followed by real-self avatar (both conditions that offer extreme identification), and lastly the third-party avatar. self-efficacy was higher in the enactive condition. the ideal self condition resulted in the highest levels of involvement and enjoyment of game, learning, and avatar, indicating that the ideal-self avatar may have the stronger relationship with these variables. keywords: avatars, learning, educational video games, social cognitive theory, observational learning, enactive learning, self-efficacy the debate over how people learn best is constantly evolving. do we learn best by diving in headfirst, a trial-by-fire approach? or is it best to observe someone else first and then imitate that behavior? researchers have differing opinions, and so we are left with two very different theoretical approaches to learning. social cognitive theory (sct) places the greater emphasis on observational learning, or learning by watching a model produce a behavior before doing it oneself (bandura, 1977, 1989). other researchers purport that experiential learning, or learning by doing, results in stronger learning (kolb, 1984). much research has been done regarding learning outcomes under both theories, but application of these theories to video games (a relatively new educational development) is scarce. translating sct and experiential learning into the world of video games requires a look at how the two theories view models (or avatars, in video game terminology). according to sct, learning will be optimized if the learner closely identifies with the model, while experiential learning does not include a model. in educational gaming, an experiential approach would take a first-person perspective, casting the player in the role of the main character, while a social cognitive approach would require players to watch a character on the screen and then reproduce the behavior themselves. two questions arise when considering observational and experiential learning in the context of educational video games: is observational learning more effective than experiential learning when applied to video games? and if so, with what would we feel the most similarity: our actual self, our ideal self, or some third party character? this paper discusses an original experiment intended to provide preliminary answers to these questions. the experiment uses an electronic video game that manipulates both agency and similarity as the stimulus material. observational versus experiential learning every human being has at least some capacity for learning, but how that learning occurs can be explained in different ways. sct, developed by albert bandura (1986), explains learning and behavior as a current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 combination of behavioral, personal, and environmental interactions. observation, according to bandura, is the key to learning (lerner & steinberg, 2004). how well an individual learns depends on how carefully that person observes what some other person (the model) is doing (ferrari, 1996). visual demonstration is one of the most powerful ways to communicate behavioral and cognitive patterns (wesch, law, & hall, 2007). therefore, watching someone do something clarifies the expectations for the behavior to follow. observational learning can also be more efficient than enactive learning (adams, 1986; ferrari, 1996; lee & white, 1990; pollock & lee, 1992; weeks & anderson, 2000). learners make fewer mistakes when there is a model for observation first. as well, learners have an idea of what the outcome of their behavior will be if they have observed a model (bandura, 1986; ferrari, 1996). the effectiveness of modeling (in other words, observation) has been shown numerous times in research, especially with regard to children (bennett, farrington, & huesmann, 2005; farrington, 1998, 2001a, 2001b). observational learning is effective for learning mathematics (schunk & hanson, 1985, 1989a, 1989b; schunk, hanson, & cox, 1987), writing (graham & harris, 1994; graham, harris, & troia, 1998; schriver, 1992), speaking and listening (sonnenschein & whitehurst, 1983, 1984), and reading and writing (couzijn, 1999). similarity between the model and the individual, one of the aspects of observational learning, impacts learning outcomes (schunk, 1987). as the perceived similarity between the individual and the model increases, the influence that the model has on the subject’s behavior increases as well (bandura, 1986). in plainer terms, the more similarity there is between learner and model, the better the potential for learning. for instance, weak learners learn better when they have weak models on which to focus. better learners learn more by focusing on stronger models (braaksma, rijlaarsdam, & van den bergh, 2002). subjects that are high in similarity to the model with regard to background produce more modeled behavior (rosekrans, 1967; schunk, 1987). related to this, observational learning can also affect a number of other variables, including motivation to change, or to perform a behavior (wesch et al., 2007). it can also increase motivation, or involvement, with the activity (clark & ste-marie, 2007). additionally, observation can increase self-efficacy in observers (bandura, 1986, 1977; schunk & hanson, 1985, 1989a). watching others succeed can increase one’s own belief that he or she can succeed, which can in turn influence learning. whereas observational learning involves watching a model and then using that information to engage in a behavior, enactive learning refers to the process of attempting a behavior oneself using one’s own abilities and skills without prior observation of behavior. kolb (1984) developed the experiential learning cycle, composed of four stages. first is the concrete experience stage (where the individuals actively do something), then the reflective observation stage (the individual thinks about and reflects on what just happened), the abstract conceptualization stage, and finally, active experimentation. learning by doing is not a new idea. behaviorists like skinner (1953) explain that behavior is reinforced by consequences, known as shaping. experiential learning theory holds that learning is most effective when it is based on personal experience (spencer, 2003). this type of learning is often used effectively for subjects such as marketing (bobbitt, inks, kemp, & mayo, 2000; gremler, hoffman, keaveney, & wright, 2000; hoffman & bateson, 1997; lovelock & wright, 1999; wright, bitner, & zeithaml, 1994) and medicine (maudsley & strivens, 2000; stanton & grant, 1999). indeed, experiential learning may allow people to form adequate skills, but not optimal skills (bandura, 1986). but what happens when we can do both at once? video games allow players to have both observational learning (through observing the character they are controlling) as well as experiential learning. would the sheer presence of a model (the presence of an avatar) be enough to make a difference regarding learning? it is impossible to have a truly observational condition in a video game, as games need players, rules, and goals as indicated by smed and hakonen (2003). if player input is eliminated, it is no longer a game. however, just the appearance of a model might make a difference. lee et al. (2007) discuss the effect of a co-learner in an electronic environment, citing that many children's television programs such as sesame street and blue's clues present on-screen characters not only as instructors but as co-learners, learning the information along with the children while at the same time passing on the information, and serving as a model for the target behavior. in the case of video game avatars, the avatar becomes a co-learner of sorts. so taking the sct stance, it would be expected that the presence of a model (the colearner, or avatar) would lead to more learning. thus: h1: learning with a model present will lead to (a) more knowledge retained, (b) more enjoyment, and (c) more involvement with the topic than experiential learning (without the model). the role of self-efficacy in learning self-efficacy is defined specifically by bandura (1997) as the belief in one’s capability to engage in a particular course of action to achieve important attainments. bandura (1977) describes four sources of efficacy expectations: verbal persuasion, emotional arousal, vicarious experience, and performance accomplishments. the two more effective sources of self-efficacy are vicarious experience and progressive learning from myself: avatars and educational video games 3 mastery. vicarious experience explains how we learn by watching others (linked with observational learning). performance accomplishment, or progressive mastery of a task, is the best source of efficacy information, as it is individually tailored and tends to reduce future negative effects (linked with experiential learning). the opportunity to rehearse behavior is a strong predictor of self-efficacy (thomas, cahill, & santilli, 1997) resulting in learning gains (bandura, 1990). video games offer these hands-on chances for behavior rehearsal. additionally, self-efficacy can predict future behavior better than past performance (bandura, 1986; bennet, lyons, winters-stone, nail, & scherer, 2007; ludman et al., 2000; mackenzie & peragine, 2003). selfefficacy increases the likelihood that people will actually enact these behaviors (basen-engquist, 1994; fruin, pratt, & owen, 1992; rippetoe & rogers, 1987; rimal & real, 2003; turner, rimal, morrison, & kim, 2006). if experiential learning is the better source of self-efficacy in previous research, the same should be true for video games. h2: experiential learning will lead to higher levels of self-efficacy than learning with a model. consequently, if self-efficacy increases the likelihood of engaging in a behavior, it would also be logical to assume that an increase in self-efficacy due to learning type would extend to intention to engage in behavior. h3: experiential learning will result in greater intentions to perform safe online behavior than learning with a model. the case of avatars one of the major reasons why researchers posit that electronic games work can be explained using the entertainment education paradigm (eep), which links the enjoyment of being entertained with the learning and processing of education, and is defined as “the intentional placement of educational content in entertainment messages” (singhal & rogers, 2002). turning learning into a game can encourage less interested individuals to take an active part in learning, as well as give the already motivated a new and exciting way to study the material (amory, naicker, vincent, & adams, 1999; bosworth, 1994; egenfeldt-nielsen, 2007; egloff, 2004; kafai, 1994; lieberman, 2001; ritterfeld & weber, 2006; singhal, cody, rogers, & sabido, 2004; subrahmanyam & greenfield, 1994; thomas et al., 1997; walshe, lewis, kim, o’sullivan, & wiederhold, 2003; yoon & godwin, 2007). the skills learned in computer games may transfer to other areas, lending themselves to increases in overall technological literacy (gee, 2003; lieberman, 2006; prensky, 2005). one of the big attractions of video games is the ability to use avatars. avatars are “digital models driven by real-time humans” that may either look like or behave like the humans controlling them (bailenson, yee, merget, & schroeder, 2006, p. 359). avatars have been studied with regard to persuasive communication in the advertising realm (wood, solomon, & englis, 2005). consumers preferred idealized images of avatars to realistic ones, and if an individual disliked the avatar, that dislike extended to the product. we can relate this to the video game arena and hypothesize that if an individual likes the avatar, then that extends to the game content. the avatar may not even have to physically resemble the individual for adequate levels for identification to be reached (bailenson, blascovich, & guadagno, 2008). in other words, people might identify with an avatar that does not physically resemble them, just because they believe that avatar to be an extension of themselves. sct explains that people imitate characters they find attractive; they learn and reproduce the behavior of those to whom they are drawn. but what happens when the model is an electronic representation of one’s self in a game? sct has much to say about modeling, but the case of an avatar is a new horizon in sct research. avatars give individuals the opportunity to see themselves externally. research is scarce, but one study by fox and bailenson reported that, when participants viewed a virtual self running on a treadmill, a virtual other running, or a virtual self loitering, those who viewed virtual selves running exercised significantly more 24 hours later than those who viewed themselves loitering, and those that viewed some other individual running (2009). the use of self as a model in an electronic environment appears to motivate the individual more than the use of another as a model. the idea of reproducing the behavior shown in a video game is also part of the explanation for those that believe that violent video games cause increased aggression (sherry, 2001). players identify with the model and then “learn” that behavior; they transfer the aggression to real life. the potential exists for self-efficacy and involvement (and subsequently learning) to increase when an individual sees himself being successful. prior research has determined that a match between a celebrity and a consumer’s ideal self leads to a more positive response to persuasive messages (choi & rifon, in press). however, even when people are not aware of it, seeing themselves to a degree in another’s image increases positive response (bailenson, iyengar, yee, & collins, 2008). but which is the more effective self—ideal or real? part of the attraction of playing a game with a customizable avatar is that users can create idealized versions of themselves and act through those idealized versions in the video game. bessiere, seay, and kiesler (2007) found that people prefer to make idealized avatars. if the use of an idealized avatar increases enjoyment (as opposed to the use of a real-self avatar), then it might also increase attention paid to the game, including the information contained within the game (singhal & current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 rogers, 2002). perceived similarity increases message effectiveness (andsager, bemker, choi, & torwel, 2006), but there has been no research to date on whether or not the perceived similarity must be between the actual self and some external other. perhaps similarity between the ideal self and some external other is what makes the difference. as indicated earlier regarding sct, as the perceived similarity between the individual and the model increases, the greater the influence of the model on the subject (bandura, 1986). again, the more similarity there is between model and learner, the more learning there will be. thus, identification with a subject should lead to greater learning (bandura, 2001; weber, ritterfeld, & kostygina, 2006). research suggests that the most effective models should be similar but slightly better than the learner in intelligence, socioeconomic success, and competence (bandura, 1969), similar to the learner in social status (miller & dollard, 1941), and in possession of the power to reward (bandura, ross, & ross, 1963). this seems to point to the creation of an idealized version of oneself: similar in status but with more power and intelligence. it is possible that, for educational games regarding a topic about which the player is not very involved, if the player has a connection to the source (i.e. the game character), then the message (the educational portion of the game) may get through regardless of interest. given the propensity of individuals to choose avatars reflecting idealized versions of themselves and sct’s propositions that similarity increases attention and modeling behavior, it is likely that the ideal-self avatar, defined here as the self that one wants to be but currently is not, will have the greatest impact on the outcome variables, followed by the real-self avatar. and finally, a third-party avatar that is not the individual will have the smallest impact, as identification with that avatar will be lower. h4: the ideal-self avatar will be the most effective in terms of knowledge retained, involvement, enjoyment, and self-efficacy, followed by the realself avatar and the third-party avatar. method sample a sample of 314 subjects was obtained through two waves of random sampling of students attending a large midwestern university. of the total 314, 180 were female (57.3%), 124 were male (39.5%), and 10 did not indicate a response (3.2%). ages ranged between 18 years and 48 years, with the greatest percentage being 21 years old (23.6%) and a median age of 22 years. the stimulus instrument the current experiment uses an educational video game created specifically for this project that is based on the curriculum developed through the i-safety project. the i-safety project, in progress since 2005, has been funded by the national science foundation as well as microsoft (wirth, rifon, larose, & lewis, 2007). the purpose of the project, in part, was to develop a curriculum that will teach individuals of any age how to be safe online. the curriculum has been tested numerous times, using various subject populations, from teenagers through adults, and has been verified through experiments and data analysis to contain valuable, valid information that does indeed teach people how to protect themselves against online threats such as phishing attacks, spyware, identity theft, and more. research indicates a steady trend that adolescents lack knowledge about online safety. a comparative study of adolescent females in the united states and new zealand found that a significant percentage of girls were engaging in risky behavior online, including sharing personal information; results indicated a lack of education about safety online (berson & berson, 2005). the uk children go online project determined that only two in five adolescents said they could fix a problem with their computer; less than one in five reported that they can set up a filter on their computer or remove a virus (livingstone, bober, & helsper, 2005). four-fifths of those ages 10-17 are concerned about their privacy online, but most are also willing to yield sensitive information if sufficiently incented (turow & nir, 2000). in a sample of high school students over 60% failed to regularly look for privacy policies, 58% did not clear their browser history, 37.7% failed to check if online forms are secure and 50% did not set their browsers to reject cookies (quilliam, rifon, larose, & carlson, 2006). to carry out this research, it was necessary to use a computer game that would teach and educate users on testable subject matter that they were not likely to know and would allow for some kind of identification with the avatar. unfortunately, this type of game does not exist. games that allow customization of avatars are typically not educational video games, and educational video games are usually targeted toward younger children (grade-school age) or do not contain the necessary components of avatar inclusion. it was necessary, then, to create a game from scratch. because of the timeliness of the i-safety project and the prior testing of the effectiveness of the information contained in the curriculum, the game was based on this information. the game engine uses a simple combination of adobe flash interactions as well as actionscript 2, a programming language specifically for adobe flash cs4 professional, the program in which the entire video game was created (adobe, 2008). all portions of the game were designed and implemented by the author, allowing for complete control over the game and the information contained within, as well as the ability to track game players’ actions. the game, safetynet, begins by informing players that they have just been given a new job: a security guard for their family’s computer. learning from myself: avatars and educational video games 5 figure 1. accepting a non-invasive cookie in the video game with an avatar. figure 2. changing the pop-up blocker status in the video game without an avatar. however, before they officially earn their job title of online security expert and become qualified to protect the family computer from outside attacks, they must complete several levels of the game to earn their badge. the game environment is a 2d representation of the computer desktop. entering and exiting various portions of the computer, using a browser, accessing the internet, and other navigational activities are done by pointing and clicking the mouse in much the same way that a user would interact with his or her computer. each level of the game corresponds to a different “threat zone”. players begin with the more simple tasks and move on to more difficult tasks. external threats to safety in the form of spyware, phishing attacks, cookies, etc., are represented with avatars as well (the cookies actually appear as chocolate-chip cookies, for instance). in order to battle these threats, players must have knowledge of how to be safe online. when a decision is made and action taken in the game, a dialogue box or the game character will appear on the screen to explain either (a) why what the player did was the safe thing to do, or (b) why what the player did was the unsafe thing to do and, more importantly, what the appropriate course of action would be. thus, players might experience a set-back, but they are not left without the proper safety information. once players have successfully completed all three levels, they are awarded their security expert badge and have won the game. two current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 representative screenshots are shown in figure 1 and figure 2. the avatar manipulation while most games give players the opportunity to physically manipulate their avatar to make it look like what the player wants, the physical appearance of the avatar in this research remained constant. while this might seem counterintuitive, the major reason for not allowing physical customization of the avatar was to avoid confounding any results with the various customization options. for example, hairstyle might have been the defining physical characteristic that allowed one player to identify with an avatar, but eye color might have been the defining physical characteristic for another game player. however, there would be no way of knowing which piece was the key. in order to eliminate these confounds, all players playing with the avatar were given the same avatar. indeed, research even suggests that just believing the avatar is a representation of self can allow identification to take place between avatar and individual, even if the avatar doesn’t physically resemble the individual (bailenson et al., 2008). however, rather than allowing physical customization, players were shown a block of text prior to entering the game where they were asked to imagine that the avatar they were presented with (a two-dimensional figure with human body and limbs and the head of a dog) was one of three things: their ideal self, their real self, or a friend of theirs. (six different avatar heads were pretested to determine which was most effective.) an animal head was used to eliminate cultural biases as well as the potential for closer matching in appearance to some players and not to others that use of a human avatar would have meant. for instance, if six types of hairstyles were given as options, they may have matched certain players’ real or ideal hairstyle more closely than other players’, creating less of a match between what players wanted and what was available. only giving players one option for an avatar attempted to eliminate matching the avatar to some participants more closely than others. as well, textual priming has been used in numerous studies to great effect. typically, these priming activities involve giving participants tasks to groom them to respond in certain ways. as an example, one strain of research demonstrates that people can be primed to think of themselves as individuals (independent selves) or as group members (interdependent selves) (gardner, gabriel, & lee, 1999; kühnen & oyserman, 2002). thus, it is possible to prime people to think of themselves in different ways. however, priming research is usually concerned with doing this in a way that masks the true intent; participants don’t know how they’re being primed to think, but the text is enough to get them to think it. research by hess, henson, and statham (2004) deals with priming regarding aging and stereotypes, but also discusses explicit priming—priming where the individual is aware of the prime. guiding participants with words or tasks can cause them to respond in different ways according to aspects of their personality. in sum, the literature suggests first, that individuals may identify with an avatar that is physically different from them, and second, that it is possible to prime individuals to think of themselves in certain ways. therefore, this experiment utilized explicit priming, asking participants before they began the game to think of their real selves (who they are right now), their ideal selves (the kind of person they wish they could be), or a third party (a friend of theirs). then they were asked to attribute those characteristics to the avatar with which they would be presented and play the game. procedure subjects were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions. after entering their log-in name to the online application, participants were randomly sent to a webpage for one of the four conditions (ideal self, real self, friend, or the no-avatar enactive condition) that contained instructions regarding how the individual was to play the game. those in the enactive condition were not asked to imagine that they were playing as anyone but rather were presented with an avatar-free game. those in the observational condition were playing as a character and were instructed to either imagine that this character was their ideal self, their real self, or a friend of theirs. after completing the game, players were then asked to fill out an online questionnaire during which the dependent measures as well as the measures for similarity ratings were taken. measures variables to be measured were behavioral intentions, self-efficacy, knowledge retained, involvement, enjoyment of the game, enjoyment of learning, enjoyment of the avatar, general demographic variables, and measures of the character and the players’ real and ideal selves as well as the players’ friends in the third-party condition in order to obtain the similarity measure. similarity (whether to ideal, actual, or other) was measured using a distance analysis. the method for measuring this congruence is based on choi and rifon’s measure for estimating ideal congruence (in press) which was in turn based on other research using the absolute distance formula (ericksen, 1996; graeff, 1996; sirgy, 1985). the distance formula is as follows: n ∑ ⎢ aij iij ⎢ i = 1 aij = avatar image (i) of individual (j) iij = ideal self-image (i) of individual (j) knowledge retained was measured using ten objective questions based on the information contained in the game. two incorrect answers and one correct answer learning from myself: avatars and educational video games 7 were provided for options. self-efficacy was measured using items created based on bandura’s (2006) guide for constructing self-efficacy scales. subjects were asked to rate how much they agreed, on a 7-point likert-type scale (1 being “strongly disagree” and 7 being “strongly agree”) with statements such as “i am confident that i can recognize a phishing attack”. enjoyment was measured by asking participants to rate how much they enjoyed playing the game, learning the information, and playing with the avatar on a seven-point likert-type scale (1 being “not at all” and 7 being “a great deal”). involvement was operationalized and measured using a five-item semantic differential scale based on a scale developed by ohanian (1989). time on task was a simple measure of how long it took players to complete the game, measured using information recorded by the online survey application created for the i-safety project. intention to enact behaviors was based on questions previously created for a separate research project regarding the i-safety project asking participants to rate, on a 7-point scale from very unlikely to very likely, how likely it was that they would enact the behaviors learned in the game (larose & rifon, 2007). the character rating scale resulted in a cronbach’s alpha of .87 with a mean of 14.77 and a standard deviation of 11.44. the ideal-self scale had an alpha of .80, mean of 24.59, standard deviation of 8.59. the real-self scale had an alpha of .86, mean of 12.45 and standard deviation of 11.25. the friend scale yielded an alpha of .84 with a mean of 16.04 and a standard deviation of 10.82. self-efficacy yielded an alpha of .95 with a mean of 42.60 and a standard deviation of 8.01, behavioral intentions resulted in an alpha of .88 with a mean of 41.90 and standard deviation of 12.43, and the alpha for involvement was .85 with a mean of 10.11 and standard deviation of 4.62. alpha values greater than .8 typically indicate a high level of reliability. the ten knowledge questions resulted in a mean of 7.92, sd = 1.38, and a kuder-richardson formula 20 value of .50. a kr-20 value of greater than .9 indicates high homogeneity. results the textual manipulation (the prime) was successful in 184 cases (41 cases of the 80 in the ideal group, 41 of 77 in the real group, and 28 of 77 in the friend group, as well as the 74 cases in the enactive group which did not contain an avatar). success was determined by examining distance measures between standardized scores (calculated by subtracting the overall mean score from each individual’s score and dividing by the standard deviation) for ideal self and character, real self and character, and friend and character. if the standardized distance was smallest in the pair that was the assigned condition, the manipulation was deemed successful. a correlation of successful versus unsuccessful manipulations with the various dependent variables yielded no significant results, indicating that success of manipulation was not the cause for results found. a multivariate analysis of variance was conducted using the general linear model menu in spss with dependent variables of enjoyment of learning, enjoyment of game, behavioral intentions, total number of correct answers, and self-efficacy; involvement as a covariate (as involvement is likely to remain constant); and condition as the independent variable. although type of condition did not result in any significant findings (though involvement had a significant effect on all dependent variables except self-efficacy), a planned contrast between observational learning and enactive learning was still examined, as planned comparisons can offer more power than traditional manova followed by post hoc tests (kwon, 1996). results are reported in table 1. although it was hypothesized that knowledge, enjoyment, and involvement would be higher in the model-present condition, none of these reached significance. therefore, hypothesis 1 was not supported. hypothesis 2 indicated that self-efficacy would be higher for individuals in the enactive condition than for those in the model-present condition. the self-efficacy scale was not normally distributed and a transformation of log10 was made to the data. self-efficacy was found to be higher in the experiential condition than in the modelpresent condition. effect size for self-efficacy using cohen’s d was .24. hypothesis 2 was therefore supported. hypothesis 3 posited that individuals in the experiential learning condition would report greater intentions of performing safe online behaviors that they had learned in the video game than would those in the model-present condition. the multivariate analysis of variance did not result in a significant difference between groups on the behaviors. hypothesis 4 stated that the ideal-self avatar would be the most effective in terms of knowledge retained, involvement, enjoyment, and self-efficacy, followed by the real-self avatar and the third-party avatar. again, planned comparisons were used to detect specific group differences between ideal, real, and friend conditions. the planned contrasts did not show significant differences (though the means on enjoyment of learning, involvement, and behavioral intentions were all highest in the ideal condition). however, when the standardized distance measures between avatar and other (ideal self, real self, and friend) were used as continuous variables and correlated with the dependent variables in a post hoc analysis, significant correlations were found. correlations and steiger’s z values, based on the test designed by meng, rosenthal, and rubin (1992) for testing the significance of correlations between correlated variables, are reported below in table 2 between the conditions. examining all of these results, hypothesis 4 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 table 1 significance values for planned comparisons between enactive and avatar conditions dependent variable value of contrast t df significance (one-way) knowledge gained 1.49 2.72 302 1.00 self-efficacy .10 1.64 298 .05 involvement .51 1.35 298 .91 future behavior .59 1.06 300 .15 enjoyment of game .62 1.13 300 .86 enjoyment of learning .72 1.38 300 .92 table 2 correlations between distances and dependent variables ideal-avatar real-avatar friend-avatar ***steiger’s z value (idealreal) enjoyment of game **-.41 (p < .01) **-.33 (p < .01) **-.33 (p < .01) 1.39 enjoyment of learning **-.31 (p < .01) **-.24 (p < .01) **-.24 (p < .01) 1.11 enjoyment of avatar **-.34 (p < .01) *-.15 (p = .02) *-.15 (p = .02) 3.08 involvement **-.28 (p < .01) **-.20 (p < .01) **-.20 (p < .01) 1.28 knowledge retained .12 (p = .06) .10 (p = .14) .10 (p = .14) both correlations not significant self-efficacy (transformed) .13 (p = .64) *.03 (p = .64) *.03 (p = .06) one correlation not significant behavioral intentions **-.17 (p = .01) *-.16 (p = .02) *-.16 (p = .02) .29 *p is significant at the .05 level ** p is significant at the .01 level ***one-tailed z-critical is 1.28 for p < .10 and 1.65 for p < .05 learning from myself: avatars and educational video games 9 is therefore partially supported. discussion while several of the hypotheses were not supported (though the results are promising and merit further investigation), the results that were significant, in particular the results of hypothesis 4, could have important implications pertaining to education. specifically they give educators and game designers a preliminary picture of what could be important in designing video games intended to teach. hypothesis 1 showed that the simple presence of a model, or avatar, was not significant enough to create differences in knowledge gained, enjoyment, and involvement. thus, these outcomes were similar regardless of category. the same was true of behavioral intentions, and self-efficacy was higher in the no-avatar condition, so it may be tempting to say that the presence or absence of an avatar doesn’t matter, or even that we might be better off without an avatar. however, when hypothesis 4 was examined, the correlation analysis showed that enjoyment of the game, enjoyment of learning the material, enjoyment of the avatar, and involvement were all higher when players were playing as their ideal selves. there was not the expected differentiation between the real-self and the third-party conditions (the correlations between the realself scores and the friend scores with the dependent variables yielded the same values). but the ideal-self condition consistently indicated more enjoyment and greater involvement with the material, indicating that the ideal-self avatar may have the stronger relationship with these variables. even if game players using their idealself avatar do not experience more learning or higher levels of self-efficacy, the fact that they enjoy the experience more and are more involved suggests that they will return to the material (ritterfeld, weber, fernandes, & vorderer, 2004; vorderer & ritterfeld, 2003). the point is not that learning and self-efficacy are not of primary importance; indeed, they are. but if we can design a learning experience where there is more enjoyment of the learning process and more involvement with the material, then we may ultimately produce learners who are eager to return and learn more. making learning into a game makes the learning intrinsically motivating (lepper & cordova, 1992). according to deci and ryan (1985), intrinsic motivation means doing something for its own sake. conversely, extrinsic motivation means doing something to get some separate goal met. numerous studies have cited the positive effects of intrinsic motivation (ferrer-caja & weiss, 2000). if we can increase enjoyment and involvement with a video game through the simple act of asking learners to imagine the avatar as their ideal selves, then we have created intrinsic motivation by turning learning into something fun, enjoyable, and rewarding. lepper and cordova (1992) conducted several studies and found that intrinsic motivation “can include increased learning and retention of the material, greater generalization of that learning, heightened subsequent interest in the subject matter, enhanced confidence in the learner, and improvements in the actual process of learning” (p. 203). it may not be the ultimate goal to turn every learning experience into a game, nor should it, but knowing what could influence unmotivated learners may help educators reach that population with more success. in sum, this research has begun to paint a picture of what can be done to have a better educational experience with video games designed to teach. educators struggle to reach students who do not want to learn. if the avatar conditions result in a similar amount of learning across them, but greater enjoyment and involvement with the material in the ideal-self condition, this may be one way to entice unengaged students to learn. one way educators might approach this when using electronic games as teaching tools is to help students identify with the game character, regardless of personalization options. if the educator simply instructs learners to imagine that the game character is an ideal representation of themselves, as this research indicates, the suggestion is enough to create the connection between character and ideal self. enjoyment increases, encouraging reluctant learners to engage as well as encouraging them to continue with learning and return to the game. as well, involvement with the material increases, too, strengthening the connection between the learner and the material. in simpler terms, students will care more about the material and feel it is more important to them when they make this connection with the game character. from a technical perspective, game designers of educational video games may use this information to strengthen the connection between player and character. one method might be to ask game players to describe their ideal selves using their own words (including a name) and then plugging those specific words into dialogue throughout the game. being able to plug in the player’s name and attributes may make the connection stronger as players progress. a second, more complicated option is to allow players to personalize the physical appearance of the character. even an interface as simple as nintendo’s wii, which allows players to create versions of themselves, known as miis, to be used in various games, has options for gender, skin tone, height, weight, hair color and style, eye color and shape, nose shape, mouth color and shape, clothing color, and name. asking players to create a physically ideal version of themselves may strengthen the connection, because most research regarding similarity and identification has been done using physical similarity to make the connection (bandura, 1989, 2001; wood et al., 2005). the final technical option to be offered here is a combination of the two above suggestions coupled with current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 10 an advanced form of computer programming that can take the descriptive words and physical choices and create a very specific character that behaves according to the descriptive adjectives and looks like the physical creation. the stronger the connection between the player and the character in the form of the player’s ideal self, the more the learner will enjoy and, even more importantly, feel involved with the material. this research cannot indicate which of these possibilities is the strongest option for maximizing the connection between the character and the player, but it does give designers a starting point to optimize the learning experience in terms of enjoyment and engagement. limitations and future directions it is difficult for gamers to form an instant bond with a video game character; the connection between player and character strengthens as the player spends more time with the character (lewis, weber, & bowman, 2008). because participants only had one opportunity to play the relatively short video game, exploring results when individuals are allowed repeat exposure to the avatar in the game is needed. another study might employ two lengths of exposure, but still with the three types of avatar. individuals in the first set of conditions (ideal-self avatar, real-self avatar, other avatar) could be instructed to play the game only once while the second triad of conditions could be instructed to play for a certain length of time, to play through a certain number of times, or even to offer them a chance to play other games in between time with the educational game. this would allow comparisons between the connection with type of self (or third party) and avatar gained in a short time versus a longer time. as well, extended time would allow for a stronger connection to develop between the player and a neutral third party character. related to the above, use of a friend condition rather than a totally neutral third party may have negatively affected results. most individuals choose friends based on attraction to that which is similar to themselves (byrne, 1971), so any differences between one’s real self and the chosen friend would likely be minimal (as the data show) compared to potential differences if a third party unknown to the player prior to game play was used. however, the use of a friend was chosen to attempt to balance the limitation created by only having players play the game once, creating a situation that would be relatively equivalent across the three avatar conditions. because it takes time to form a connection with a game character, using a friend that the game player already has a connection with allowed players to more adequately have an impression of the character. rather than risking random answers for the similarity distance measure due to the player not having a strong connection to the character, participants were asked to think about a friend and rate the friend with the assumption that they would have a better grasp of the friend's personality. finally, research on modeling in sct suggests that for models to be the most effective, they should first be similar to the individual, but they should also be slightly improved versions of the individual. however, when models are too far above what is attainable by the individual, outcomes may suffer. although results of the correlation were consistent with hypothesized relationships for enjoyment and involvement, the relationships for knowledge and self-efficacy were not. this may have been caused by a lack of true similarity between avatar and player. similarity in social cognitive theory is usually physical similarity (bandura, 1989, 2001; wood et al., 2005). in line with similarity research, physical similarity may have yielded different results. future research should better explore the use of technology that allows for better quality avatars that are personalized for each respondent, potentially utilizing an exacting image of the individual to be placed within the game, such as using virtual reality. subjects in the idealself condition could then alter their images to look like what they would like to look like. but perhaps players do not need to be physically convinced about the similarity of their avatars to themselves. perhaps players need to be psychologically linked to their avatar in order to experience the greatest positive learning outcomes, and linked using their ideal selves. if self-efficacy was higher in the enactive (no avatar) condition, but enjoyment of the game, enjoyment of learning, enjoyment of the avatar, and involvement were correlated most strongly with distance in the idealself condition as compared to real-self and other, maybe this means that there is no need for an avatar at all, but for merely the suggestion of an avatar. suggesting to players that their ideal self is the main character in the game and simply providing textual cues to this end could potentially result in a combination of the positive effects from both conditions, and better encompass the reasons for creating educational video games in the first place. further exploration of this comparing ideal, real, and other manipulations using text only without an avatar is necessary to better understand the psychology behind avatar use. references adams, j. a. 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(2007). enhancing selfmanagement in children with sickle cell disease through playing a cd-rom educational game: a pilot study. pediatric nursing, 33(1), 60. learning from myself: avatars and educational video games 15 article citation hobart, m. l. (2012). learning from myself: avatars and educational video games. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/813 author notes melissa lewis hobart, ph.d. 325 brown hall, saginaw valley state university 7400 bay road, university center, michigan, 48710, mllewis@svsu.edu melissa lewis hobart is an assistant professor of communication at saginaw valley state university. she earned her ph.d. in media studies from michigan state university. an earlier version of this manuscript was presented at the 2009 consumer culture and the ethical treatment of children conference in east lansing, michigan. manuscript received: 9/14/2011 revisions received: 1/22/2012 accepted: 8/6/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 16 volume 15, number 1 september 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors evan fishman ayfer gokalp kathleen hill sultan kilinc younsu kim carol masser bonnie mazza leslie ramos salazar melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word empowering parents choice of schools.docx volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x empowering parents’ choice of schools: the rhetoric and reality of how hong kong kindergarten parents choose schools under the voucher scheme fung, kit-ho chanel the chinese university of hong kong and lam, chi-chung the hong kong institute of education citation fung, k. & lam, c. (2011). empowering parents’ choice of schools: the rhetoric and reality of how hong kong kindergarten parents choose schools under the voucher scheme. current issues in education, 14(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ abstract school choice gives parents greater power over their children’s education. but ever since the pre-primary education voucher scheme (pevs) was introduced in hong kong in 2007, school choice has become a hotly debated topic. the scheme was introduced to empower kindergarten parents in choosing a school for their children by offering them direct fee subsidies that, in return, could propel education quality forward. parents in the private kindergarten sector, however, have long enjoyed the privilege of choice, and they have been preoccupied with an intense interest in their children’s academic upbringing, even if it means compromising the holistic development of their children. this runs counter to the principles of a quality education. therefore, the urge to further promote parental kindergarten choice will likely allow parental academic interests to continue to prevail and hence invalidate the pevs’ promise to improve c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 2 education quality. the result is a unique dilemma between school choice for parents and the promise of education quality within hong kong’s unique private kindergarten sector. keywords: school choice, parental school choice, voucher scheme, kindergarten education, hong kong empowering parents’ choice of schools 3 about the author(s) author: fung, kit-ho chanel affiliation: the chinese university of hong kong address: rm. 308, ho tim building, department of curriculum and instruction, faculty of education, the chinese university of hong kong, shatin, new territories, hong kong email: kithofung@cuhk.edu.hk biographical information: assistant professor of the department of curriculum and instruction, faculty of education, the chinese university of hong kong author: lam, chi-chung affiliation: the hong kong institute of education address: department of curriculum and instruction, 10 lo ping road, tai po, new territories, hong kong email: lancc@ied.edu.hk biographical information: professor of the hong kong institute of education c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 4 empowering parents’ choice of schools: the rhetoric and reality of how hong kong kindergarten parents choose schools under the voucher scheme strengthening parental school choice is not a new idea; indeed, in the past three decades it has become a global trend in education management. gordon (2008) observed that giving more power to parents in choosing schools is “a powerful rallying cry for reform” (p. 177). on the academic side, studies of parental school choice have not been restricted to the philosophical rationale that supports parent rights in education; empirical research has also generated evidence that school choice increases parent satisfaction and student performance. in hong kong, this has become a hot issue ever since the launch of the pre-primary education voucher scheme (pevs) in 2007.1 the scheme aims to empower kindergarten parents to choose a school for their children by offering them direct fee subsidies, which in theory could exert pressure on schools to improve education quality. yet, kindergarten parents in hong kong have long had a choice of schools, because the kindergarten sector has always been privately run. so to what extent would increasing parental choice of kindergartens help propel education quality within the private kindergarten sector in hong kong? since little research has been done to address the question the new scheme raises, this study focuses on this question. through survey questionnaires and focus-group interviews with parents, the study (a) identifies the school choice preference of kindergarten parents, and (b) documents the concerns underpinning parental choice. in addition, the findings will facilitate discussion about the tension between empowering parents in school choice and the promise of the pevs to improve education quality in hong kong’s private kindergarten education sector.2 1 the pre-primary education voucher scheme introduced to the hong kong preprimary education sector in 2007/2008 aims to “increase investment, enhance quality.” parents of young children who attend kindergartens that have registered with the scheme are offered a direct fee subsidy, which then empowers them with the financial ability to choose a school. 2 kindergarten education in hong kong has never been recognized as part of the formal education system. prior to the pevs, government subsidy of kindergarten education was very limited. instead, kindergartens have been run by a large number of service providers with different backgrounds under the private education sector. in hong kong, kindergarten education is offered at three levels: kindergarten level 1 (k1) is for children aged 3–4, kindergarten level 2 (k2) is for those aged 4–5, and kindergarten level 3 (k3) is for those aged 5–6. most kindergartens run a half-day service, with some offering full-day classes. empowering parents’ choice of schools 5 school choice: how is it perceived? school choice is an issue that has attracted much attention in the education realm. the promises of school choice have been widely discussed in the literature and have been articulated from different perspectives. school choice under the parents’ purview: a philosophical justification parents are prominent stakeholders in the upbringing of their children. the philosophical justification for school choice says that parents should have exclusive authority over educational decisions. it argues that permitting parents a good deal of power and control over how their children are educated is the right of parents in a democratic society (reich, 2008). lubienski (2008) further made sense of the philosophical rationale of assigning parents the primary school decision role for a number of reasons: (a) parents know the strengths and weaknesses of their children best and will act in their children’s best interest, so it is right for them to exercise responsibility over their children’s education; (b) families are interested in reinforcing their values in their children, and so it is appropriate for a family to look for schools that serve the values they practice at home; (c) parents are proxy consumers for their children in school, and rolling back the decision about schooling within the parents’ purview will strengthen the institution of the family; and (d) parental choice is encouraged simply because it is the divine right of parents, who place the best interests of their children at the forefront of their concerns. in short, school choice empowers the voices of parents and protects the family’s desire to give their children the best education possible (cohen & farrar, 1995; wise & darling-hammond, 1995). at its roots, school choice is a manifestation of social trust. parents are trusted to make their own sensible educational choices among a variety of options, and families are drawn back into the education system (leone, 2003; paulu, 1995). empirical grounds for the benefit of expanding parental choice some empirical work has supported the argument that parents should be respected with the right to decide which school to send their children to. houston (2004) argued that expanding c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 6 parents’ right of school choice made them more inclined to invest themselves in their children’s education. because parents would be more involved, there would be more collaboration between home and school. at the same time, godwin, kemerer, and martinez (1998) and teske, fitzpatrick, and kaplan (2007) found that parents who had some say over the choice of schools reported higher levels of satisfaction with school performance in both how their children were educated and the effectiveness of school discipline. after being given more choice, fewer parents raised complaints about their schools (bracey, 2008; raty, kasanen, & laine, 2009). naismith (1994) found a link between this satisfaction and feelings of greater involvement and the feeling of pride of ownership; moe (2001) correlated parents’ satisfaction with having a greater degree of choice over the kind of education service they used. children’s academic achievement has also shown the positive effects of parental choice. studies have shown that school choice can benefit children in multiple ways. weinschrott and kilgore (1998) stated that “increasing parents’ choice over how and where their children are educated gives parents a sense of ownership and enthusiasm that contribute directly to improvements in students’ performance” (p. 307). raywid (1995) added that the concept of school choice recognizes that learners are individuals with unique talents and specialized needs, and choice gives parents the freedom to find a school that will design curricula to accommodate their needs. in the same way, when school choice can help with student diversity, it can also improve learning motivation and academic progress (perkins-gough, 2008). howell and peterson (2006) found that school-choice students, on average, demonstrated fewer disruptive behaviors, including fighting, property destruction, racial conflicts, truancy, and absenteeism. school choice for education quality: a market theory perspective school choice that empowers parents to decide which schools their children attend injects the education system with “a degree of consumer-driven, market-style competition” (feinberg & lubienski, 2008, p. 2). weidner and herrington (2006) argued that “market theory applied to educational settings postulates that parents are the best judge of which school their children empowering parents’ choice of schools 7 should attend and that parental choice among schools will lead to increased competition” (pp. 27-28). from an economic perspective, competition in a market economy creates incentives for schools to provide services and goods that fulfill the needs of the market, and so schools should improve their service and quality (kahlenberg, 2003). similarly, school choice forces schools to compete for student enrollment. if schools are to survive in a competitive education market and attract families, they will have to improve the quality of the education they offer in order to truly reflect parental wishes. in this way, schools become more accountable to parents (lips & feinberg, 2007). heid and leak (1995) listed the various ways in which school choice can improve schools: “bringing about needed structural changes, recognizing student diversity, fostering competition and accountability, improving educational outcomes, and increasing parental involvement in the educational process” (p. 390). freedom of choice for parents and market competition become a promise for better schools. and when school administrators are forced to be responsive to parent preferences, the locus of control shifts and changes in school governance are brought about. parental choice and market competition further reform the consumer-provider relationship between parents and schools, replacing it with a collaborative partnership (ball, 2007). parental preferences and school choice what factors do parents consider when choosing a school for their children? weidner and herrington’s (2006) study on the florida mckay choice program found that parents based their decisions on a school’s academic quality, teacher quality, special education, curriculum, and class size. weinschrott and kilgore (1998) found that most parents in the educational choice charitable trust choice program in indianapolis, indiana, took into account academic performance, financial aid, religious values, and school safety. a series of studies spanning the us, new zealand, chile, and great britain all found that the academic performance of a school was central to parent decisions (armor & peiser, 1997; fiske & ladd, 2000; gauri, 1998; gewirtz, ball, & bowe, 1995; glatter, woods, & bagley, 1997). c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 8 parents in asian countries have the same concerns, as found in a number of studies on early childhood education programs. a cross-cultural study carried out by zhou, ma, and aoyagi (2007) on parental expectations for early childhood education found that parents in china, japan, and korea held high expectations for their children’s academic achievement. among them, “chinese parents had the highest expectation of their children’s education” (p. 145). hewitt and maloney’s (2000) work on malaysian parents’ perceptions of preschool education revealed that parents saw preschool education as “a formal academic preparation” (p. 86) for their children, and their most preferred school activities were those that improved their children’s academic development. studies of hong kong’s early childhood education sector have found similar results. a large-scale study organized by opper (1994) on early childhood education and services in hong kong in the 1990s showed that parents “expect preschools, both kindergartens and day nurseries, to prepare children for primary schooling by learning precisely those skills that children will be learning at the primary one level” (p. 50). ebbeck (1995) found that hong kong parents had extreme visions of the purpose of early childhood education and expected their children to be assigned large amounts of homework each day, even at the very young age of three. parents in cheng, lau, fung, and benson’s (2009) study made it clear that they preferred schools where teachers used traditional academic drills and rote learning to ensure the academic readiness of their children for primary school. the findings of these studies across nations have a great deal in common: the predominant interest of parents in their children’s academic well-being. economists would likely argue that parents worldwide are primarily interested in high-performing schools because those schools are thought to be better able to “enhance the economic prospects for their children” (lubienski, 2008, p. 107). if this is how parents handle school choice at an individual level, to what extent do their overwhelming academic concerns serve to stimulate quality improvement in the education realm? while economists and market theorists have argued that empowering empowering parents’ choice of schools 9 parents is a vehicle for creating incentives for schools to improve performance and thus promise education quality, might there not be pitfalls that come with school choice, particularly when parents are focused mainly on developing their children’s intellect at the cost of other skills? the situation is even more complex in hong kong’s private kindergarten education sector, where the voice and choice of parents have always been highly respected and kindergartens have long marketized their services to fit with parents’ desires (fung, 2007; fung & lam, 2009). in such a case, what dilemma arises between expanding parental school choice and improving education quality, both of which are the initiative behind the pevs? the current study aims to answer this question. method this research, split into two consecutive phases, used (a) self-administered questionnaires first to capture an overview of the considerations embedded in parental choice in the first phase (between may and july, 2009), and (b) focus group interviews with parents to document their school choice preferences in the second phase (between july and october, 2009). this is a mixed approach, bringing together quantitative data in the first phase and qualitative data in the second. the qualitative interview data supplemented the quantitative questionnaire data and enhanced the overall richness of the field data gathered. collectively, both sets of data supported an empirical analysis of the characteristics of parental school choice after implementation of the voucher system in hong kong. parents as key informants parents of kindergarten children were the key informants in the study. they were selected by a three-step process of stratified quota sampling. first, government statistics were examined to identify and select 30 of the 758 kindergartens from all 18 districts of hong kong that had registered with the pevs (education bureau, 2008) in academic year 2008/2009. coverage of all districts ensured that families from the upper, medium, and lower social classes were included in the study. special care was also taken in the selection to ensure that no two schools chosen were c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 10 run by the same service provider. second, with participation consent obtained from the kindergartens, the present study was introduced to the parents of these schools, who were invited to fill out a parent questionnaire. it was hoped that 30 parents (10 from each of the three kindergarten grades, i.e., k1, k2, and k3) from each school would agree to take part in the questionnaire survey. this design ensured that the data would broadly represent the perceptions of parents from all three kindergarten levels. it was clear to all participating parents that their participation was voluntary. lastly, upon completion of the questionnaire survey, invitation was once again extended to the parents who had taken part to participate in focus group interviews. in the end, nine groups of parents from nine kindergartens expressed willingness and so were interviewed. the anonymity and confidentiality of the identity of individual parents were guaranteed. research instrument parent questionnaire: a quantitative tool to gather an initial impression of concerns in parental choice the parent questionnaire focused on parental considerations when choosing a school. the questionnaire listed 24 items, including education quality and ancillary school characteristics (table 1 shows details of the list). respondents were requested to tick the factors they considered in choosing a school. they were also asked to rate the importance of the factors by ranking them in order and completing a 4-point likert scale survey. the second section of the questionnaire covered respondent demographic data. empowering parents’ choice of schools 11 table 1 kinds of kindergarten (kg) school information education quality of schools ancillary school characteristics 1. academic content school missions and visions teaching methods and strategies 2. academic performance academic achievement of other children in the school primary school allocation for kg graduates 3. program-related data professional qualification of teaching staff choice of extracurricular activities program offerings (half-day/full-day) background of the kindergarten service provider members of the school board records of school board meetings and decisions school organization and the management team monthly salary range of principal and teaching staff school fee school financial information link with parents no. of teaching staff quality review: results and report kgs’ self-evaluation report no. of classes no. of students school facilities outdoor playground and facilities additional charges for extracurricular activities network with other kgs and primary schools of the 900 questionnaires distributed to the parents of the 30 participating kindergartens, 862 were returned. of these, 841 were found completed and regarded as effective questionnaires; the remaining 21 were incomplete with missing data and so were discarded, giving a satisfactory response rate of 93.4%. this high response rate reflected not only the interest of the participating parents in the study, but also their interest in issues relating to the practice of the pevs, being a milestone of the kindergarten sector. the parents who filled out the questionnaires had different educational backgrounds with different total monthly household incomes. table 2 lists details of the parents’ demographic particulars. table 2 demographic particulars of parents who filled out the questionnaires education background total monthly household income form 5 level matriculated level university degree or above less than hk $10,000 between hk$10,000 and hk$20,000 between hk$20,000 and hk$40,000 over hk $40,000 k1 parents 157 40 88 52 91 94 48 k2 parents 153 31 89 40 88 79 66 k3 parents 180 35 68 41 96 74 72 total 490 106 245 133 275 247 186 c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 12 each completed questionnaire was coded individually and grouped under one of the three kindergarten levels to form three data sets (k1, k2, and k3). to classify into various categories parental considerations when choosing a school, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted. after the major underlying factors were identified, a one-way anova was conducted to test for significant differences in these factors among parents from different kindergarten grades. in addition, to test whether education and income levels affected parental school choice, a correlation analysis was carried out to check for a relationship between these two variables. since both were ordinal variables, pearson’s correlation was selected to recognize the correlation. pasw (predictive analytics software) statistics 18 was adopted to perform the statistical analysis. focus group interviews: a qualitative means to invite parental sharing of choice preferences to complement the data derived from the questionnaires, focus group interviews with parents were conducted to gather more in-depth information and the views of parents on choosing a school. the interviews were designed to be natural, conversational, and semistructured with “grand tour questions” (goodwin & goodwin, 1996). the guide was refined and revised upon reflection on the pilot interviews conducted with another three groups of parents who had also filled out the parent questionnaires. all interview questions were openended and framed mainly around the criteria that parents had considered when deciding on a kindergarten for their children. the aim was to invite them to share their “deep” and internal perspectives (gorman & clayton, 2005). ceja (2006) remarked that “this data collection method allows the researcher to obtain data in the participants’ own words from which the researcher can then develop insight on how participants interpret a particular phenomenon” (p. 91). of the 81 parents from the nine schools who initially showed an interest in the focus group interviews, some could not attend the interview meetings for various personal reasons. ultimately, 49 parents, consisting of 46 mothers and 3 fathers, with 17 from k1 classes, 15 from k2 classes, empowering parents’ choice of schools 13 and 17 from k3 classes, were interviewed. the length of the interviews varied from 40 to 77 minutes. all interviews were conducted by the chief investigator at the kindergartens and were audiotaped with permission. the audio recordings were later transcribed. parent responses collected at the interviews were examined, coded with corbin and strauss’s (2008) “open coding” method, and categorized into groups by making reference to the nature of their responses. the systematic management of the qualitative interview data facilitated comparisons and contrasts across categories, the addition of new phenomena to the research areas, and the discard of materials falling outside the research focus. in the end, the interview findings were cross-analyzed with the statistical data to enrich the interpretation and articulation of findings. results factor structure of parental choice of a school from the 841 questionnaires filled out and returned, all responses of parents to the 24 items on school information were analyzed using factor analysis. the analysis sought to reveal groupings, if any, of the numerous concerns hidden within the parents’ choice of a school. the analysis extracted six factors from the parents’ responses, which explained 64.36 of all variance. these six factors included school hardware, school software, school background, school administration, school performance, and finance and charges (table 3). c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 14 table 3 factor loadings of the structure underpinning parental choice of a kindergarten (kg) school factor loadings items 1 school hardware 2 school software 3 school background 4 school administration 5 school performance 6 finance & charges no. of students 0.795 no. of classes 0.771 no. of teaching staff 0.690 outdoor playground and facilities 0.644 school facilities 0.612 choice of extracurricular activities 0.565 professional qualification of teaching staff 0.492 teaching methods and strategies 0.678 program offerings (half-day/full-day) 0.650 link with parents 0.611 quality review: results and report 0.507 school missions and visions 0.739 background of kindergarten service provider 0.674 school organization and management team 0.612 kgs’ self-evaluation report 0.452 records of school board meetings and decisions 0.850 members of the school board 0.710 monthly salary range of principal and teaching staff 0.614 primary school allocation for kg graduates 0.788 network with other kgs and primary schools 0.763 children’s academic achievement in the school 0.691 school fee 0.770 additional charges for extracurricular activities 0.589 school financial information 0.581 empowering parents’ choice of schools 15 group differences underpinning parental school choice upon derivation of the factor structure, a one-way anova was conducted to explore whether significant group differences prevailed among the k1, k2, and k3 parents. the anova analysis revealed significant group differences across all six factors; therefore, a posthoc tukey analysis was further applied to delineate these differences. they are reported as below. school hardware. the post-hoc tukey analysis on significant group differences for school hardware, f(2, 829) = 29.26, p < 0.01, revealed that whereas the k2 parents (m = 3.19) and the k3 parents (m = 3.16) considered school hardware similar in importance when choosing a kindergarten, their perceived level of importance was below that of the k1 parents (m = 3.48), although all means were higher than the midpoint of 2.5. school software. the post-hoc tukey analysis on significant group differences for school software, f(2, 832) = 9.92, p < 0.01, showed again that whereas the k2 (m = 3.36) and k3 (m = 3.32) parents perceived the importance of school software similarly, their perceived level of importance was lower than that of the k1 parents (m = 3.48), although the means were unanimously higher than the midpoint of 2.5. school background. similar post-hoc comparison results were found for the factor school background, f(2,826) = 9.09, p < 0.01. this showed that the k1 parents’ ratings (m = 3.20) were significantly higher than those of the k2 parents (m = 3.08) and the k3 parents (m = 3.07), with a midpoint at 2.5. finance and charges. the post-hoc tukey analysis on significant group differences for finance and charges, f(2,800) = 17.39, p < 0.01, once again disclosed a similar difference in group patterns as with school hardware, school software, and school background. that is, the k1 parents (m = 3.02) regarded finance and charges a piece of school information vital to their c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 16 school choice decision more than the k2 parents (m = 2.81) and the k3 parents (m = 2.72), with a midpoint at 2.5. worth noting, the k1 parents consistently rated the above four factors as higher in importance compared with the k2 and k3 parents, though the latter groups also recognized the importance of these four factors at a level higher than the midpoint. perhaps the findings suggest that the k1 parents, being new to a school, were relatively more eager than their k2 and k3 counterparts to familiarize themselves with the different aspects of a school when deciding on one. this information also possibly informed them as to whether they needed to choose a different school for their children for k2 and k3. school administration. the post-hoc tukey analysis unfolded a different pattern with respect to significant group differences for school administration, f(2, 775) = 8.51, p < 0.01. for this particular factor, both the k2 (m = 2.51) and the k3 (m = 2.45) parents rated it with a mean higher than that of the k1 parents (m = 2.29); the means calculated from the k1 and k3 questionnaire data, however, were below the midpoint 2.5, whereas that of the k2 data was just slightly above the midpoint. indeed, the overall mean (m = 2.41) of this factor was below the midpoint of 2.5. such results actually portrayed an interesting picture for this factor, suggesting that school administration was not a crucial element in determining school choice. school performance. the post-hoc tukey analysis exhibited yet another group difference pattern in the factor school performance, f(2,825) = 3.57, p < 0.05. both k1 (m = 3.32) and k2 (m = 3.23) parents shared similar views concerning the importance of this factor, the mean of which was higher than that of the k3 parents (m = 3.20). nevertheless, all means were still higher than the midpoint of 2.5. the relatively low rating for school performance derived from the k3 data can likely be explained by the point of time at which the k3 parents were asked to fill out the questionnaires. the questionnaires were distributed to the parents in the last month (june) of the 2009 academic year. this was also the time when all k3 children had been centrally assigned a primary school empowering parents’ choice of schools 17 place, to which the children would move on with their primary school education the following year. thus, it was understandable that when the k3 parents no longer needed to make further kindergarten choices for their children, a kindergarten’s performance might not be as relevant to their interests, although the observed mean (3.20) was still higher than the midpoint. parental interest shown in a wide spectrum of school information despite the significant group differences in how parents across the three kindergarten levels observed the importance of a factor with respect to their school choice, the statistical means derived from the parent questionnaires revealed that all parents rated all factors as central to their choice of a school, with most associated means higher than 2.5 (table 4). these sets of descriptive findings suggest that all parents took into consideration a wide spectrum of school features when choosing a school for their children. in other words, the parents were very serious about their children’s education and made their school choice cautiously. table 4 descriptive data of the six factors of all parents n m sd school k1 parents 282 3.48 0.44 hardware k2 parents 269 3.19 0.46 k3 parents total 279 830 3.16 3.28 0.45 0.47 school k1 parents 285 3.48 0.45 software k2 parents 270 3.36 0.46 k3 parents total 278 833 3.32 3.39 0.43 0.45 school k1 parents 279 3.20 0.44 background k2 parents 268 3.08 0.44 k3 parents total 280 827 3.07 3.12 0.43 0.44 school k1 parents 268 2.29 0.54 administration k2 parents 247 2.50 0.53 k3 parents total 261 776 2.45 2.41 0.48 0.52 school k1 parents 278 3.32 0.57 performance k2 parents 267 3.23 0.48 k3 parents total 281 826 3.20 3.25 0.46 0.51 finance and k1 parents 278 3.02 0.50 charges k2 parents 254 2.81 0.56 k3 parents total 269 801 2.72 2.85 0.46 0.52 * midpoint = 2.5 c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 18 prevalence of academic concerns in parental choices although parents were interested in a large number of school characteristics, crossexamining the descriptive data with the qualitative data gathered from the parent focus-group interviews uncovered a prevalence of academic concerns when choosing a school. of the six factors characterizing parental school choice, school software, with an overall mean of 3.39 (midpoint = 2.5), was rated the most important factor of all. making up this particular factor were four items on school information, namely, “teaching methods and strategies,” “program offerings (half-day/full-day),” “link with parents,” and “quality review: results and report.” table 5 lists the mean of each item; teaching methods and strategies had the highest mean calculated across all three groups of parents. in terms of the mean derived statistically from the questionnaire responses, the k1, k2, and k3 parents all weighted teaching methods and strategies as the most important item determining their school choice compared with the remaining 23 items on school information. table 5 means of the five school information items in the school software factor k1 k2 k3 m sd m sd m sd teaching methods and strategies 3.64 0.54 3.43 0.53 3.44 0.55 program offerings (half-day/full-day) 3.57 0.54 3.40 0.54 3.36 0.55 link with parents 3.41 0.59 3.38 0.58 3.28 0.55 quality review: results and report 3.30 0.64 3.21 0.62 3.19 0.62 * midpoint = 2.5 keen parental interest in the kinds of teaching methods and strategies used by schools was reflected in the parents’ sharing at the focus group interviews: empowering parents’ choice of schools 19 this kg [kindergarten] assigns lots of homework and delivers a curriculum that drills the children … i don’t mind drills … it can secure a smooth transition to primary school studies. (k1, ds-021-i/6/8)3 this school designs plenty of worksheets for children and assigns them chinese and english writing exercises every day … i have confidence that my daughter is going to benefit from its primary school-type learning and teaching. (k2, ch-010-i/1/29) this school delivers the hardest curriculum in the district … frequent dictations … it helps to prepare my child for future primary studies … and i find this a desirable school. (k1, ds-021-i/2/24) given the choice between didactic learning and child-centered, activity-based learning (advocated as the best professional practice to promote quality learning; curriculum development council, 2006), 28 of the 49 parents interviewed opted for didactic learning. of these 28 parents, 17 had children who were in the final year of kindergarten and would be moving up to primary school the following year. many of these parents stated in the interviews that they expected kindergartens to prepare their children for a smooth transition to primary school study by ensuring they were academically ready. this school equips children well for the demanding learning in primary schools … and the school is my first choice. (k1, sv-011-i/5/19) i do think that kgs should teach to the primary school curriculum … develop children’s readiness for primary school studies … primary level 1 holds high expectations of the children … if kgs can follow the primary school curriculum, the children would then be guaranteed a smooth transition to their primary school learning. (k2, tm-008-i/7/25) i find that what my daughter is learning at k3 can prepare her well for primary school studies … and so i find this kg a desirable school. (k3, ch-010-i/1/30) 3 (k1, ds-021-i/6/8) is an interview transcript entry code. it is made up of five parts. “k1” refers to a parent from a k1 class; “ds” represents the name of a kindergarten; “021” is the voice file of the interview; “i” stands for “interview data”; “6/8” indicates the page and entry number, respectively, of an interview transcript. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 20 this kindergarten stresses language learning heavily and training in both mandarin and english … a good foundation in language proficiency and usage is vital to my son’s future learning; in particular he is going to primary school level one next year … and so i made no school choice other than this one. (k3, wk-007-i/1/20) these interview transcripts implied that most parents thought that “the principal aim of kg education is to lay a solid foundation for the children for subsequent primary school learning” (k2, wk-018-i/4/4). with this personal perception in mind, parents did not limit their academic concerns to “teaching methods and strategies,” but extended them to “academic achievement of other children in the school” and “primary school allocation for kindergarten graduates,” which were enfolded in the factor school performance. this factor, with an overall mean of 3.25 (midpoint = 2.5), was another one perceived by parents as influential in their choice of a school, and parents with children in all three levels rated highly the items “academic achievement of other children in the school” and “primary school allocation for kindergarten graduates” (table 6): most of the graduates of this kindergarten are placed in a prestigious primary school … some are even assigned to the “gifted” class. (k1, sv-011-i/5/19) i find this kindergarten gets a satisfactory academic record in terms of both the intellectual readiness of its graduates and the kinds of primary schools where its graduates are placed … it secures for my daughter a smooth transition to the subsequent primary school studies, and so i have chosen it. (k2, ds-021-i/2/1) table 6 means of the items “academic achievement of other children in the school” and “primary school allocation for kindergarten graduates” k1 k2 k3 m sd m sd m sd academic achievement of other children in the school 3.27 0.70 3.19 0.58 3.19 0.56 primary school allocation for kindergarten 3.49 0.62 3.34 0.60 3.29 0.59 empowering parents’ choice of schools 21 graduates * midpoint = 2.5 parental academic interest did not stop after parents had decided on a school; instead their interest kept up throughout the course of their children’s kindergarten study. in another question asking parents, “which aspects of school information would you like to learn more about in the future through the schools’ dissemination of information?”, 63% of k1 parents, 62% of k2 parents, and 52% of k3 parents said they would continue to be interested in the kinds of teaching methods and strategies delivered in school (appendix 1). similarly high percentages of the k1 (64%) and k2 (61%) parents showed eagerness to learn about primary school allocation for kindergarten graduates when answering the same question, even though they were not equally interested in the “academic achievement of other children in the school” after deciding on a school. again, fewer k3 parents responded to this question with a curiosity toward the “primary school allocation for kindergarten graduates” of their children’s school in the future. as articulated earlier, when the k3 parents were asked to complete the questionnaires (june and july, 2010), their children had already been officially assigned a primary school placement. any further information regarding primary school allocation would not be of great interest to them because their children would shortly be leaving kindergarten. analyzing the questionnaire data alongside the interview transcripts made it obvious that a majority of kindergarten parents shared a common concern about the quality of teaching, in particular the academic content delivered by the schools and that related directly to their children’s academic learning. they were desperate to choose a kindergarten that practiced a “pre-” primary learning curriculum and that gave their children a primary school mode of teaching and learning. parents believed that preprimary learning would equip their children with the essential qualities for a smooth transition to primary education, and could further guarantee success in their children’s primary school learning. the overwhelming concern of parents over their children’s next stage of academic learning appeared to have inhibited their awareness of the c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 22 arguments against early academic instruction. they were also unable to recognize the undesirable effects of premature academic drilling. this view is in contrast with the government’s and most preprimary educators’ preference for student-centered education. for some time, both academics and the government have argued that young children should be encouraged to be “active constructivists” and that schools should provide them with a rich learning experience to enable them to experiment and explore. this approach encourages them to construct knowledge actively and go through progressive developmental stages at their own pace (chan & chan, 2003; curriculum development council, 2006; dupree, bertram, & pascal, 2001; vygotsky, 1978). pragmatic concerns in parental choice the questionnaires and interviews suggested that academics were not the only concern of parents. the data also revealed their pragmatic and nonacademic concerns, such as “the teaching team of the school is very caring” (k3, tm-008-i/4/18), “the school offers nutritious snacks freshly prepared by the school cook everyday” (k1, wk-020-i/2/2), “the school gets a regular cleaning routine” (k2, wk-019-i/1/10), and “the school is spacious, with an outdoor playground and a number of special rooms for activities” (k3, pl-002-i/1/23). among the myriad of pragmatic and nonacademic aspects that parents mentioned, the geographical proximity of a school, fullversus half-day program offerings, and religious affiliation were the most common ones named in the interviews. school location the influence of school location was exemplified by the parents’ intention in picking a neighborhood school for the sake of convenience. although school location was not an item given to parents to check in the questionnaires, 40 of the 49 parents interviewed referred to choosing kindergartens located “close to where i live” (k1, an-009-i/1/6); “on the ground floor of the building” (k2, an-009-i/1/6); “downstairs in my building” (k2, al-012-i/2/2); “within walking distance of the housing estate” (k3, pl-002-i/1/8); and “across the road” (k1, ch-010empowering parents’ choice of schools 23 i/2/15). other parents added that the proximity of a kindergarten “saves a child the trouble of traveling” (k2, ds-021-i/2/11); “accommodates the family routine of dropping off their children to school and picking them up after school, in particular for a working mother” (k2, wk-019i/1/28); and “facilitates a mother of three children to cope with the hectic schedule of caring” (k1, al-012-i/2/17). to parents, proximity meant convenience (hsieh & shen, 2000); they identified a school within their local, residential district. in a sense, parental choice of a kindergarten was geographically defined. full-day versus half-day programs another pragmatic ground influencing parent decisions was the choice between fulland half-day programs. most parents were highly interested in information on the kinds of program offerings available. the statistical means that parents gave to “program offerings (half-day/fullday)” showed that k1-k3 parents all considered this variable equally important, and their ratings were significantly higher than the midpoint of the scale (see table 5). indeed, this item was considered by the k2 and k3 parents as second only to the most important item, “teaching methods and strategies,” among the 24 school information items listed in the parent questionnaire. in addition to the survey, 29 parents explicitly stated in the interviews that they wanted full-day programs because “i have to work” (k1, wk-020-i/1/14), “it fits with my working schedule better” (k2, tm-008-i/3/8), and “i am a working mother” (k3, pl-002-i/1/8). traditionally, the family offers the first socialization setting for young children, and parents are their primary caregivers and educators. these functions, however, have been increasingly supplemented by other socialization agents as a result of the rapid increase in the number of families where both parents work (opper, 1992). more and more parents in hong kong have thus become consumers of kindergarten services as a way to compromise between their parental and work roles. this was a major reason these parents wanted full-day programs for their young children. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 24 religious affiliation in the interviews, 21 of the 37 parents whose children attended religious schools cited this affiliation as another important reason for their selection. they were inclined to pick a kindergarten because “of its religious background” (k1, pl-002-i/1/16) or “the protestant background of the school” (k2, tm-008-i/3/6). these parents were religiously observant, which was reflected also in their responses to the survey item labeled “background of the kindergarten service provider.” all ratings of this particular item were over 3.00, which was significantly higher than the midpoint (table 7). table 7 means of the items “background of the kindergarten service provider” k1 k2 k3 m sd m sd m sd background of the kindergarten service provider 3.10 0.59 3.11 0.55 3.03 0.52 * midpoint = 2.5 in short, parents explored and chose religious schools in order to select one that possessed a religious background compatible with the religious values of their family. goldring, hawlety, saffold, and smrekar (1997) noted that “when parents choose schools, their choices reflect value-based preferences” (p. 370). as lubienski (2008) added: “families have an interest in reproducing their values in the next generation” (p. 104). obviously, schools present young learners with a vital socialization setting outside the home and are one of the first and key microsystems that surround children (bronfenbrenner, moen, & garbarino, 1984). as such, parents who hold high aspirations for the development and upbringing of their young children make careful school choices for their youngsters on behalf of their family. they therefore choose schools that affirm their family values and beliefs (weidner & herrington, 2006). furthermore, these schools continue to nurture these family beliefs and values outside the home (wringe, 1994). prioritizing academic over pragmatic concerns empowering parents’ choice of schools 25 although parents expressed their concerns about the academic and nonacademic aspects of kindergarten education services in the questionnaire, a thorough scrutiny of the interview transcripts made it clear that, when academic desires conflicted with pragmatic desires, academic interests always ranked above all other considerations. although parents were prone to choose a kindergarten in their neighborhood, many maintained their focus on academic performance. as a strategy, parents first considered several of the kindergartens near their home, and among them preferred the one that delivered a curriculum that was heavily weighted academically: there are three kindergartens located on the ground floors of different buildings in our housing estate … but this school delivers the hardest curriculum in the district … frequent dictations … it helps to prepare my child for the future primary studies … and i find this a desirable school. (k1, ds-021-i/2/24) there is a kindergarten underneath the block where i live, but i did not put my daughter there … instead, i chose to enroll my daughter in this school and walk her to school every day for five minutes … because i find this kindergarten has a satisfactory academic record in terms of both the intellectual readiness of its graduates and the kinds of primary schools where its graduates are placed … it secures for my daughter a good preparation for her subsequent primary school studies, and so i have chosen it. (k2, sv-011-i/5/21) likewise, when parents opted for a full-day program, it was not merely because “the fullday program keeps my child at school for most of the day … it means more free time for me [the mother] … to make my life easier” (k1, sv-011-i/1/ 29). also, a full-day program “means engaging my son longer in formal learning” (k2, sv-011-i/2/13). a sense of academic concern was a vivid underpinning in parents’ preferences for full-day programs. one parent made this point clear: to select a kindergarten that offers a full-day program is indeed one of my concerns … but to enroll my child in a school that teaches to the primary school curriculum to secure him a c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 26 smooth transition to the subsequent primary school studies is even more important … and this school delivers a curriculum close to that of the primary school … so even though i have to bus my child to school every day, i still find this school my best choice. (k2, sv011-i/5/11) lastly, when parents chose a school for its religious background, it seemed at first glance to reflect their desire for a school with the family’s religious values. but a closer look into the parents’ hearts told another side of their intention. such a choice may not necessarily mean that the parents wanted their child exposed to a particular religious creed. one k3 mother, for example, shared her reasons for choosing a catholic school despite herself being protestant. i ultimately decided on this kindergarten because it is a catholic school … though i myself am protestant … studying in a catholic kindergarten makes it easier to get into a catholic primary school because they are administered by the same catholic school board … catholic schools are often academically better than other schools … if i can get my girl into a good catholic primary school … she probably has a higher chance of being placed in a good catholic secondary school in the future, and then getting into a good university afterwards. (k3, sv-011-i/4/5) this mother was willing to compromise her religious preference in order to obtain an academic start that would secure her child a smooth transition from kindergarten through to primary, secondary, and even university education. this example vividly illustrates the overwhelming concern for academic performance among parents of kindergarten-age children in hong kong. kindergarten parents seemed to combine their acute academic values with many other pragmatic and nonacademic values, but when the pragmatic concerns conflicted with academic interests, the latter almost always came first and determined their school choice. indeed, the overwhelming academic concern of parents found in this study echoes much of what previous empowering parents’ choice of schools 27 research has found (cheng, lau, fung, & benson, 2009; ebbeck, 1995; opper, 1994). it suggests once again that a long-standing, overwhelming academic concern is central for most parents. academic consideration as a shared and overriding concern in parental choice across different socioeconomic groups the academic concern of parents revealed in the study was found to be shared by parents from different socioeconomic backgrounds. a pearson’s correlation analysis on the demographic data collected in the questionnaires examined whether a relationship prevailed between parental education levels and income levels. the results showed that education levels were significantly related to income levels in a positive direction (r = 0.326, p < 0.01), suggesting that the more education the parents had obtained, the higher their income levels. to facilitate subsequent analysis, parents of each kindergarten level were categorized into four socioeconomic groups: high (group 1), medium high (group 2), medium low (group 3), and low (group 4). that is to say, all k1 parents were divided into these four socioeconomic groups, as were the k2 and the k3 parents. by the same token, parent responses to the questionnaires were reorganized and compiled into separate data sets according to the socioeconomic groupings. this facilitated analysis of any differences in school choice concerns among parents from different socioeconomic groups. the statistical means derived from the parent questionnaires on these reorganized data sets divulged that parents from all socioeconomic groups shared a concern over school education quality. whether quality was reflected in the academic content, the academic performance, or the program-related data of the kindergartens making up the construct of the parent questionnaire, parents across the four socioeconomic groups rated each item related to education quality with a mean higher than the midpoint 2.5 (tables 8, 9, and 10). these items were also the ones occupying most of the top positions when all 24 items of school information listed in the questionnaire were ranked by their means. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 28 the descriptive statistical data further showed that parents from the same kindergarten levels but of different socioeconomic backgrounds gave each education quality item a fairly similar rating. despite the observed range in the means, all ratings were over 3.0 on a 4-point likert scale, implying the importance of these items to the parents’ choice of school. among the diverse items of school information mirroring the education quality of schools, “teaching methods and strategies” was rated by parents from all socioeconomic groups with the highest mean of all, between 3.39 and 3.84. in a sense, whether the parents belonged to the high or the low socioeconomic group, they all were concerned with the pedagogical practices adopted by the kindergartens. these statistical analyses, together with the parent views documented in the interviews, made it explicit that academics was a shared concern among the kindergarten parents and was not restricted to a particular socioeconomic group. whether they were well-educated or not, whether they had a high income or not, parents in general bore a keen concern over the academic preparation and the intellectual development of their children. this specific concern then drove them to choose a kindergarten based upon the school’s academic performance, thinking that it could ensure their children’s academic readiness for the subsequent primary school studies and help them confront the competitive educational context in hong kong. table 8 means of all four socioeconomic groups of k1 parents rating items related to school education quality group 1 (high socioeconomic group) group 2 (medium-high socioeconomic group) group 3 (medium-low socioeconomic group) group 4 (low socioeconomic group) school education quality m sd m sd m sd m sd academic content school missions and visions teaching methods and strategies 3.34 3.59 0.57 0.56 3.33 3.84 0.63 0.44 3.45 3.80 0.54 0.40 3.54 3.78 0.50 0.42 academic performance children’s academic achievement primary school allocation for kg 3.30 3.52 0.69 0.60 3.44 3.53 0.61 0.61 3.34 3.48 0.68 0.62 3.42 3.63 0.62 0.53 empowering parents’ choice of schools 29 graduates program-related data professional qualification of teaching staff choice of extracurricular activities program offerings (half-day/fullday) 3.50 3.48 3.50 0.62 0.57 0.57 3.57 3.49 3.68 0.50 0.51 0.47 3.64 3.57 3.75 0.53 0.52 0.43 3.43 3.51 3.80 0.62 0.55 0.40 * midpoint = 2.5 c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 30 table 9 means of all four socioeconomic groups of k2 parents rating items related to school education quality group 1 (high socioeconomic group) group 2 (medium-high socioeconomic group) group 3 (medium-low socioeconomic group) group 4 (low socioeconomic group) school education quality m sd m sd m sd m sd academic content school missions and visions teaching methods and strategies 3.25 3.47 0.55 0.53 3.32 3.39 0.54 0.52 3.23 3.49 0.68 0.56 3.29 3.50 0.53 0.50 academic performance children’s academic achievement primary school allocation for kg graduates 3.21 3.33 0.59 0.62 3.16 3.29 0.54 0.63 3.20 3.45 0.61 0.53 3.22 3.40 0.56 0.59 program-related data professional qualification of teaching staff choice of extracurricular activities program offerings (half-day/full-day) 3.37 3.23 3.43 0.54 0.55 0.53 3.30 3.15 3.35 0.57 0.61 0.56 3.34 3.31 3.49 0.51 0.58 0.53 3.32 3.28 3.45 0.54 0.52 0.50 * midpoint = 2.5 table 10 means of all four socioeconomic groups of k3 parents rating items related to school education quality group 1 (high socioeconomic group) group 2 (medium-high socioeconomic group) group 3 (medium-low socioeconomic group) group 4 (low socioeconomic group) school education quality m sd m sd m sd m sd academic content school missions and visions teaching methods and strategies 3.13 3.40 0.56 0.56 3.18 3.41 0.49 0.56 3.32 3.54 0.63 0.53 3.42 3.63 0.53 0.49 academic performance children’s academic achievement primary school allocation for kg graduates 3.13 3.23 0.56 0.58 3.17 3.19 0.51 0.53 3.23 3.44 0.58 0.61 3.32 3.42 0.57 0.53 program-related data professional qualification of teaching staff choice of extracurricular activities program offerings (half-day/full-day) 3.22 3.17 3.33 0.62 0.54 0.56 3.15 3.08 3.32 0.62 0.55 0.56 3.41 3.23 3.44 0.60 0.52 0.50 3.30 3.19 3.57 0.50 0.51 0.50 * midpoint = 2.5 discussion “bounded rationality” in parental school choice as revealed in the data analysis, parents’ interest in the education of their children focused primarily on the academic status of the kindergarten, and particularly on how well the school prepared their children for primary school learning. this academic interest is justified by the influence of china’s confucian heritage culture. confucianism holds that effort and willpower are the essence of successful learning (lee, 1996). parents thus uphold a belief that equates hard work with academic success (lam, ho, & wong, 2002), and they expect their children to take learning seriously. and in the competitive and exam-dominated educational environment of hong kong, people generally see academic achievement as a road to future success and a ladder to a better life (chan, 2004; lam, 1999). so it is not surprising to find that parents are highly concerned about their children’s academic performance. parents make every effort to train their children to study diligently and do well in their schoolwork. and with this strong academic value, parents choose schools for their kindergarten-aged children by looking for programs that deliver instructional curriculum, that practice didactic teaching, and that adhere to rote learning. these are the pedagogical practices that parents in hong kong generally believe can equip their children with the intellectual readiness needed to succeed later in the formal education system (fung & lam, 2009). in market theory, parents are ambitious consumers of education services. they are assumed to be rational judges in choosing a school in the best interests of their children (goldring, hawlety, saffold, & smrekar, 1997). moreover, these rational choices should “increase their children’s likelihood of success” (willms & echols, 1993, p. 64). beyond a doubt, all parents in the study very much wanted to get the best education for their young children. yet the way they defined “best education” was restricted to their personal perceptions c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 32 of how to succeed in hong kong’s competitive academic environment. ultimately, school choice was determined by the parents’ very subjective definition of the best education. this makes the rationality of their school choice a “bounded rationality,” according to the framework of simon (1983) and march (1986). wells (1993) describes the concept of bounded rationality: the theory of bounded rationality acknowledges that the decision maker’s perception of the real world affects his or her decisions, whether it is an accurate perception or not. such constraints on the decision making process lead to … “satisfying” as opposed to maximizing … in other words, decision makers choose the satisfactory school given the amount of information they have on the available options and their perception of where they fit into the society, but it may not be the same school they would choose given more information or experience. (p. 32) in other words, parents are not irrational. they make rational choices for their children to secure for them a good academic start and a place on the fast track to success. but their rationality was based on their overriding concern for drilling their children to prepare for subsequent primary school studies. this sidetracked concerns for the holistic and balanced development of their children, as continually denounced in the quality assurance inspection (qai) annual reports4 (hong kong education commission, 2000/2001, 2001/2002, 2002/2003, 2003/2004, 2004/2005, 2005/2006, 2006/2007). if such is the case, what is likely to happen when the pevs further empowers parents to make school choices based on such a narrow academic focus? to what extent will the expansion of parental school choice actually improve education quality, an official intention of the pevs? the dilemma between school choice and the promise of education quality 4 the quality assurance inspection (qai) is conducted annually by the quality assurance division of the education bureau of hong kong. the annual qai focuses on four key domains: (a) management and organization, (b) learning and teaching, (c) support for children and school ethos, and (d) children’s development. e m po w e r in g pa r e n t s’ c h o ic e o f sc h o o l s 33 school choice and education quality are dominant topics in contemporary education reform. the concept of school choice as a means to improve education quality is “carried primarily through the language of vouchers” (tannenbaum, 1995, p. 12). the idea behind education vouchers is that when the key consumers of education (parents) decide where and how to educate their children, their desires will become the market demands. these demands are channeled through market forces, pushing schools to undertake “new educational ventures, which would presumably succeed only if they truly reflected the wishes of parents” (cohen & farrar, 1995, p. 43). the result is that schools become market-driven. under this theory, school choice guarantees education quality by strengthening market forces. this positive effect of school choice on education has been widely discussed (brighouse, 2008; feinberg & lubienski, 2008; heid & leak, 1995; kahlenberg, 2003; lips & feinberg, 2007; weidner & herrington, 2006). hong kong’s kindergarten sector, however, is quite peculiar. it has never been recognized as part of the formal education system or incorporated into the government subsidies for free education. rather, it has long been run as a kind of private education business by individual parties and nongovernmental organizations, such as churches. so the status of kindergartens as a private business has not changed with the introduction of the pevs. resembling instead the operation of businesses in the commercial sector that are driven by market forces, kindergarten services are run like private businesses that are inevitably marketoriented to ensure their survival. as the major consumers in this private education market, parents enjoy total freedom of school choice. they are free to buy whatever kind of education best fits their preferences. and kindergartens have always seen the power and control parents have as the dominant “invisible c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 34 hand.” parental school preferences may even have come to overshadow the authority of kindergartens in determining which learning and teaching strategies to use (fung, 2007). kindergarten curricula are thus often designed to meet parental expectations. although kindergartens are well aware that they should observe official government curriculum guides (curriculum development council, 2006; curriculum development institute, 1996), many opt to adjust their service mission to fit parental preferences. this way, many schools end up formulating their policies and culture to satisfy parents and so compromise their professional stance because of the intense competition in the private kindergarten market. in the power struggle between parents and kindergartens, parents always have the upper hand. if parents have been enjoying the privilege of school choice and kindergartens have been operating in line with parental preferences, any further expansion of parental school choice by the pevs will only magnify the one-sided power struggle between parents and kindergartens. the influence of parental preference will become more acute. parental choice dictates pedagogical practice and undermines the autonomy of kindergartens. this sort of parental influence on the pedagogical practice of kindergarten teachers was documented in an earlier study conducted by the authors in academic year 2006/2007 (fung & lam, 2009): “the pedagogical decision making of kindergarten teachers in hong kong: professional autonomy versus market orientation.”5 to secure enrollment for their programs, teachers in the study had 5 the study was a qualitative research, conducted in academic year 2006/2007, investigating what kindergarten teachers in hong kong did in class, how they planned their lessons, and what they considered in making pedagogical decisions. field observations and interviews were used. four kindergarten teachers with the pseudonames marlene, laura, nelson, and carmen were invited to be the teacher informants of the study. they were invited not only because they all had a basic professional qualification to work in kindergarten, but also because they came from schools that fell within the two major categorizations of kindergartens in hong kong. among them, both laura and marlene worked in religious, nonprofit kindergartens, whereas nelson and carmen were teachers in a private independent kindergarten. each teacher informant was observed three times. on average, each observation visit lasted over 2 hours, with some approaching 3 hours. the teacher informants were also interviewed before and after each observation, in addition to a round-up interview at the end of the data collection process. in total, each teacher informant was observed three times and interviewed seven times. e m po w e r in g pa r e n t s’ c h o ic e o f sc h o o l s 35 to compromise their own professional beliefs and values about how children should learn. in other words, the ability of parents to choose a school and their concerns about their children’s academic upbringing were intruding on the professional mission and vision of kindergartens, as well as the pedagogical practice of teachers. this kind of market-driven education service runs counter to the education style that the government advocates. it is in opposition to child-centered, play-based curricula that treat children as active learners, respect them as owners of their learning, foster their holistic development, and nurture their motivation for life-long learning. the influence of parents’ traditional education values could explain the criticisms documented in the qai annual reports since 2000/2001, which have criticized kindergartens for placing undue emphasis on intellectual matters, limiting the diversity of developmentally appropriate learning opportunities, and not allowing children to learn skills naturally. yet if the pevs further expands parental school choice, it will only make these problems worse, which in turn will undermine its promise to improve education quality. the above analysis of hong kong’s unique kindergarten sector makes it clear that the good intentions behind the pevs are not feasible in hong kong’s already market-driven kindergarten sector. any attempt to further empower parents in school choice increases the adverse parental influence on the pedagogical choice of schools. the current situation calls for attention, especially when many parents are unaware of the arguments against early academic instruction and premature academic drilling. many studies and local schools have noted the influence of parents on kindergarten education. but the urge to promote school choice through the pevs and to intensify the marketization of kindergarten education has probably overlooked the undesirable effects that parental influence can have on the professional quality of c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 36 kindergarten education services. and so there has emerged a unique dilemma between school choice and education quality within hong kong’s distinctive private kindergarten sector. conclusion in general, parents try to get the best education for their young children. therefore, it makes sense philosophically to argue that “permitting parents to select a school for their children is crucial” (reich, 2008, p. 21). family advocates have also argued that entrusting parents with school decisions is to respect the liberty, rights, and interests of parents in a democratic society (feinberg & lubienski, 2008). libertarians argue explicitly that giving parents control over school choice encourages them to play a proactive role in the education of their children (bell, 2008). it invites parents to communicate their desires and needs to the schools. in return, schools and families are more likely to collaborate smoothly. and parents become more satisfied with the education they have chosen for their children. furthermore, economic theory argues that, when school choice turns parents into education-service consumers, their choices become a powerful market force to push schools—in particular the schools not chosen—to improve their education to fit the needs and wants of parents. school choice thus benefits the different stakeholder parties in children’s education through the motivating force of parental control. when parental choice is central to school decisions, parental preference becomes crucial and cannot be neglected. care should be taken, however, when parents focus primarily on their children’s academic outcomes and the schools’ academic excellence without considering the holistic and balanced development of their children. 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(2007). parental expectation of early childhood education: comparison between china, japan, and korea. frontiers of education in china, 2(1), 140-147. c urrent issues in e ducation v ol. 14 n o. 1 46 appendix 1 ratings given by all parents to school attributes they would like to know more about in the future from the school which aspects of school information would you like to learn more about in the future through the schools’ dissemination of information? k1 parents k2 parents k3 parents yes no na* yes no na* yes no na* background of the kindergarten service provider 24% 75% 1% 38% 59% 3% 36% 61% 3% school mission and vision 41% 59% 0% 45% 53% 2% 41% 57% 2% members of the school board 6% 93% 1% 17% 81% 2% 15% 82% 3% records of school board meetings and decisions 13% 87% 0% 34% 64% 2% 29% 68% 3% school organization and the management team 31% 68% 1% 36% 62% 2% 29% 67% 4% monthly salary range of principal and teaching staff 9% 91% 0% 23% 74% 3% 17% 79% 4% school fee 29% 71% 0% 36% 62% 2% 27% 69% 4% school financial information 15% 85% 0% 34% 63% 3% 26% 71% 3% link with parents 56% 44% 0% 48% 49% 3% 37% 59% 4% no. of teaching staff 40% 59% 1% 38% 59% 3% 30% 66% 4% professional qualification of teaching staff 53% 47% 0% 60% 37% 3% 48% 49% 3% quality review: results and report 56% 43% 1% 73% 25% 2% 72% 25% 3% kgs’ self-evaluation report 45% 54% 1% 49% 48% 3% 46% 50% 4% no. of classes 41% 59% 0% 39% 59% 3% 28% 68% 4% school capacity 45% 55% 0% 44% 53% 3% 30% 66% 4% school facilities 66% 34% 0% 48% 50% 2% 38% 58% 4% outdoor playground and facilities 68% 32% 0% 48% 49% 3% 36% 60% 4% choices of extracurricular activities 58% 41% 1% 48% 49% 3% 40% 57% 3% additional charges for extracurricular activities 26% 74% 0% 33% 64% 3% 28% 69% 3% program offerings 58% 41% 1% 61% 37% 2% 42% 54% 4% teaching methods and strategies 63% 36% 1% 62% 36% 2% 52% 45% 3% academic achievement of other children in the school 42% 58% 0% 46% 51% 3% 33% 63% 4% primary school allocation for kindergarten graduates 64% 35% 1% 61% 36% 2% 47% 49% 4% network with other kindergartens and primary schools 41% 58% 1% 52% 45% 3% 35% 61% 4% * na = no answer. e m po w e r in g pa r e n t s’ c h o ic e o f sc h o o l s 47 current issues in education http://cie.asu.edu volume 14, number 1 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editors lori ellingford andrew darian assistant executive editor krista adams layout editor jennifer wojtulewicz copy editor lucinda watson faculty advisers gustavo e. fischman jeanne m. powers debby zambo section editors hillary andrelchik meg burke douglas deiss miriam emran tracy geiger sarah heaslip melinda hollis afzal hossain seong hee kim younsu kim alaya kuntz angeles maldonado carol masser john michael william mitchell elizabeth reyes lindsay richerson rory schmitt tapati sen jennifer shea kara sujansky melissa tarango andrew tesoro jill wendt microsoft word singleton-jackson, final proof copy johnny still can’t write, even if he goes to college: a study of writing proficiency in higher education graduate students jill a. singletonjackson department of psychology university of windsor d. barry lumsden ron newsom department of counseling and higher education university of north texas biographical information: jill singleton-jackson is an assistant professor in the department of psychology at the university of windsor in windsor, ontario, canada. she teaches psychology courses and is also the coordinator of the foundations of academic writing courses. her research interests include student writing and student entitlement. barry lumsden is retired from the department of counseling and higher education at the university of north texas. he is currently a senior research fellow at texas a&m university and editor-in-chief of the community college journal of research and practice, educational gerontology, and christian higher educator. he is a national faculty development leader on non-fiction scholarly writing and publishing. ron newsom serves as associate professor and assistant chair of the department of counseling and higher education at the university of north texas. correspondence should be addressed to: jill singleton-jackson university of windsor department of psychology 401 sunset avenue windsor, ontario canada n9b 3p4 phone: 519-253-3000, ext. 4706 email: jjackson@uwindsor.ca abstract this study explored the extent to which graduate students enrolled in higher education courses were proficient at writing. a total sample size of 97 graduate students from programs of higher education served as the sample. to assess writing proficiency the sat ii: writing test, part b was used. the graduate students in this sample did not score significantly higher on the sat ii: writing test, part b than the typical high school senior whose scores enter into the norm group. key words: higher education, writing, writing proficiency, graduate students, sat ii writing test johnny still can’t write, even if he goes to college: a study of writing proficiency in higher education graduate students language, both written and spoken, serves as a critical cornerstone for our culture. “the faculty of language stands at the center of our conception of mankind; speech makes us human and literacy makes us civilized” (olson, 1977, p. 257). however, writing can be a painful and anxiety producing task for many individuals. and while the final goal of any writing is the same communication this goal is not always reached. in an effort to explore the current nature of this phenomenon while adding a unique twist, this study focused specifically on writing proficiency among higher education graduate students. interestingly, a review of the literature, while rich with studies relative to undergraduate writing assessment, revealed a marked paucity of studies involving graduate student writing assessment. likewise, aside from the gre-written (gre-w), launched in 1999, instruments for assessing graduate student writing specifically are not national norm-based instruments, but are instead idiosyncratic to institutions and departments. graduate school is undeniably a writing intensive experience (hadjioannou, shelton, fu, & dhanarattigannon, 2007; wasley, 2008). so it is interesting that while not a population that is often studied with regard to writing proficiency, graduate students are required to write as experts. this paradox is further complicated by the fact that faculty often complain about the amount of time they spend editing and discussing graduate student writing. clearly there is a disconnect between the expectations and reality. part of the problem may be the result of an assumption. higher education operates based on the assumption that students entering graduate school should be more proficient writers than they were upon entering college for the first time. as summarized by mullen (2006), “like their younger counterparts, graduate students need to demonstrate high-level skills in reading comprehension, thinking and reading critically (as in knowing how to identify various rhetorical structures and to distinguish between what should be said explicitly and implicitly), and communicating with particular audiences for specific purposes. they also should know how to collaborate on writing; how to use technology; and how to write for specific genres, both professional and academic” (p. 30). meanwhile, it has been established historically and repeatedly that there are many issues surrounding undergraduate writing proficiency (flateby, 2005). for example, knudson, zitzer-comfort, quirk, and alexander (2008) have published an article indicating that when measured for proficiency in writing and reading in english, 46 percent of the first-year students at the california state university required remediation. just as the california state university has put in a place a program to increase reading and writing proficiency for their freshmen, many undergraduate institutions provide abundant opportunities for their undergraduates to acquire writing skills and then attempt to assess those skills as students exit the institution (devarics, 2006). it is logical to assume that with the recognition of undergraduate writing problems and the subsequent prevalence of opportunities for skill acquisition and repeated assessments of writing in the undergraduate curriculum (e.g., essay exams, research papers); students should be skilled in writing upon completion of an undergraduate degree. and while not everyone who obtains a bachelor’s degree is an appropriate candidate for graduate study, a bachelor’s degree is a minimum requirement for attending graduate school. as stated by mullen (2006), “[i]n graduate circles, academic writing is presumed to be a solitary activity for which students already are prepared” (p.30). to summarize, there seems to exist an assumption that graduate students are competent writers; they have completed a bachelor’s degree, and it is assumed they have learned to write competently during that undertaking. this assumption is exhibited by the fact that graduate study is writing-intensive, yet graduate programs do not offer or require specific courses in writing. instead, graduate students study their chosen field in-depth and are expected to write as scholars. but to what degree is this assumption correct? the purposes of this study were to explore this assumption by looking at graduate students’ writing proficiency as defined by their ability to 1) control the basic elements of written english (e.g., grammar, word choice, syntax, 2) recognize writing errors in usage and structure, and 3) use language with sensitivity to meaning. a fourth purpose was to determine if writing proficiency is correlated with selected demographic variables. graduate student writing proficiency and assessment in addition to understanding the cognitive processes and skill levels involved in producing written text, measuring proficiency is an important element of written communication that is of practical interest to faculty and administrators at institutions of higher education. writing proficiency is a term that can be hard to conceptualize and even harder to define because it is a "slippery term" that hides "an even more slippery concept" (white, 1994, p.150). proficiency may be thought of as skill, adequacy, sufficiency for a defined purpose, or capability. regardless of how proficiency is specifically defined, it is something that those who evaluate writing as part of their profession can readily identify and describe when asked to discuss it. and while it may not be easy to define, writing proficiency has long been on the minds of those who teach and study graduate students. in 1986, scardamalia and bereiter asserted that as expectations for scholars, including graduate students, rose so would expectations regarding competence in writing. this expectation of writing competence from over two decades ago still exists for graduate students today, and while we can assume that they certainly possess some degree of writing competence, what is that degree? the two most commonly used means of evaluating the writing ability of graduate school applicants are 1) the graduate record exam (gre) verbal score, and 2) committee evaluations of the personal statement. the gre verbal score is a marker of general language ability, but it is not a measure of performance or of applied writing skill for the applicant. while a language skill score might be expected to correlate to some degree with writing ability, it can be argued that the gre verbal score alone is not enough to ascertain the baseline writing proficiency levels of entering graduate students. sternberg and williams (1997), while not specifically studying graduate student writing, looked at the gre as a meaningful predictor of success in graduate training. they based their research on the fact that the use of gre scores as a criterion for admission is prevalent in graduate programs across numerous institutions. their research was grounded in sternberg's triarchic theory of human intelligence. the triarchic theory of human intelligence distinguishes among academic, creative, and practical abilities. it should, however, be noted that "these kinds of abilities are not wholly independent...but research indicates only a weak relationship among the three abilities" (sternberg & williams, 1997, p. 633). according to these researchers, performance on the gre will be most affected by analytical abilities while creative and practical abilities will not be as readily apparent from gre test scores. sternberg and williams (1997) hypothesized that the gre, while a good predictor of initial graduate grades, would not be a strong predictor of success among advanced graduate students. specifically, they predicted "that the gre would be, at best, very weakly predictive of more meaningful criteria of graduate program success: in particular...of dissertations" (sternberg & williams, 1997, p. 634). sternberg and williams did find that gre scores, while predictive of first-year graduate school grades, did not prove useful as predictors of a number of graduate school performance measures. notably they were not correlated with faculty ratings of dissertation quality. this is of particular relevance to the current research study due to the intensive writing component involved in producing a quality dissertation. while analytical abilities are important in writing, creative and practical abilities are also of relevance. the gre verbal scores, while relative to language, still rely heavily on analytical skills, not creative or practical skills (sternberg, 1996; sternberg, ferrari, clinkenbeard, & grigorenko, 1996). using this score as an indicator of graduate students' writing ability, especially the ability to produce writing as complex as the dissertation, is a misuse of the score and can lead to frustrated faculty and defeated students. and while studies that are more recent have furthered ideas about best practices for increasing chances of graduate student success, the dissertation remains a major obstacle (dipierro, 2007). the second form of attempting to evaluate graduate student writing proficiency, the personal statement (sometimes called statements of purpose or goals, or letters of intent), is a popular method of direct and indirect assessment of writing proficiency. many graduate programs require applicants to submit personal statements as part of their application materials. these statements, written as part of the applicants’ attempt to gain admission to a program of study, usually reflect the applicants' motivation for attending graduate school and outline the intended career goals of the applicants. while providing information about aspiring graduate students' personal qualities and disciplinary socialization, the personal statement is also often viewed as a valid indicator of writing ability (powers & fowles, 1997; powers, fowles, & willard, 1994; brown, 2004; samraj & monk, 2008). although personal statements are typically used as direct assessments or measurements of writing ability, defining personal statements as direct measures of writing ability is somewhat misleading. messick contends that measurement is direct only in a very limited sense: skills and knowledge are more correctly inferred from a product as opposed to being measured directly. writing ability is, therefore, inferred from applicants' personal statements more than it is measured by such means (as cited in powers, et. al., 1994). while it is "widely acknowledged that an instrument [such as a personal statement] is not valid in and of itself....it is the inferences about the meaning and use of test scores that are to be validated" (powers & fowles, 1997, p. 76). research studies two studies, one by powers et al. (1994) and the other by powers and fowles (1997) explored the use of the personal statement as both a criterion for admission to graduate school and as a valid indicator of graduate student writing ability. in 1992, the staff of the gre program conducted a nationwide study. graduate deans and faculty were surveyed in an effort to determine if there was interest in a gre writing test. while a number of the respondents were receptive to the idea of a test designed specifically to evaluate writing ability, a number of the respondents indicated that the information obtained from a writing test would be redundant with the information contained in the personal statement (i.e., personal statements serve as sufficient indicators of writing proficiency). many of the respondents to the gre survey indicated a belief that "personal statements were better indicators of writing skill than were standardized writing measures" (powers & fowles, 1997, p. 77). this echoed the earlier findings of anderson and ekstrom (1994). in a similar investigation, they found that writing samples from graduate departments in arts and humanities, on average, carried as much weight as gre verbal scores and undergraduate course of study. additionally, the writing samples were more heavily weighted than gre quantitative, analytical, and subject test scores, letters of recommendation, undergraduate institution quality, and personal interviews. one faculty respondent from an economics department made the following comment: "i cannot see what we would gain from another test score. the applications already contain a statement of purpose, which gives a direct writing sample" (powers & fowles, 1997, p. 77). to summarize the findings of the gre survey, "those who viewed a writing test as largely unnecessary valued the personal statement as a sufficient indicator of writing ability" (powers & fowles, 1997, p. 77). this could have been the end of this line of inquiry had the responses of some of those surveyed been considered definitive. however, there are a number of problems associated with equating the personal statement with a measure of writing ability. powers and fowles (1997) attempted to answer the following question: is a standardized measure of writing skill largely redundant with the personal statement (statement of purpose) for determining writing skills?" (p.79). they were interested in determining the relative merit of the two means of assessing writing skill: the personal statement and a standardized test. they hypothesized that, for a number of reasons, writing skill would be best reflected by a standardized writing measure as opposed to a personal statement. their hypothesis was based on the following: 1) a standardized writing measure would "better reflect writing skill than the personal statement"; 2) a standardized test "is based on topics that have survived careful pre-testing to ensure that they are accessible to most examinees and they elicit a sufficient range of response"; and 3) because it is administered under standardized conditions, a formal test "should reflect fewer sources of irrelevant variation than the personal statement" (powers & fowles, 1997, p. 79). powers and fowles (1997) recruited 475 gre general test examinees from among those who took the gre between january and may of 1994. the participants went to testing centers where, under standardized conditions, two-thirds of them wrote two expository essays. the study participants also provided several non-test indicators of writing proficiency, a recent sample of undergraduate writing, and a copy of their personal statement if they had submitted one as part of their application to graduate school. of special interest was a survey question posed to the participants asking them "to indicate how much help they had received in drafting and in editing and revising their statements" (powers & fowles, 1997, p. 80). college faculty who qualified as trained essay readers then evaluated the personal statements and the expository essays. the essays were independently scored by two readers, and a 6-point holistic score scale was used. the results of this study proved quite interesting. in response to the question regarding the amount of help they had received when constructing their personal statements, 59% of the participants revealed that they had received at least some help in editing and revising their statements. thirty-four percent indicated that they had received moderate or substantial help. thirty-six percent acknowledged receiving assistance when drafting their statements and 19% indicated that they had received moderate or substantial help. fifteen percent indicated that when drafting, editing, and revising their statements, they had received moderate or substantial help. thirty-eight percent of the participants stated that they had not received any help in writing their personal statements. the inter-reader correlation for the personal statements was .78, and the inter-reader correlations for the test essays ranged from .77 to .80 across the four different essay prompts. powers and fowles (1997) report that "the correlation between scores assigned to the test essays and those assigned to the personal statements was low, only .15. therefore, on the basis of our sample, the timed essay and the personal statement cannot be considered to provide interchangeable information" (p. 83). these findings underscore the idea that personal statements are not necessarily adequate in providing graduate school faculty with valid information about an applicant's writing ability, and it might be unsafe to assume that an effective personal statement is indicative of writing ability on par with faculty expectations regarding student writing. the researchers ultimately concluded that "although the personal statement may provide certain unique and important information about applicants...its validity as an indicator of writing skill...needs to be better established” (p.75). in a similar study conducted by powers et al. (1994), writing assessment was examined with the focus on the relationship between direct assessment and direct validation. in this study, sets of six student-produced essays (ranging in quality from poor to excellent) were sent out to be scored on a 6-point scale by graduate school personnel (department chairs, faculty, and deans) at 115 graduate institutions. powers, fowles and willard contacted 1,100 individuals; a total of 347 people responded to the survey with 231 of the respondents submitting satisfaction ratings for the sample essays. interestingly, when a sample of non-respondents was contacted for follow-up, the main difference between respondents and non-respondents was that non-respondents indicated a lower interest in a gre writing measure. the researchers concluded from this study that "some performance assessments, such as those involving direct measurement of writing skills, may enable validation that requires somewhat smaller inferential leaps than those needed for less direct measurements" (powers et al., 1994, p. 97). however, the authors were careful to explain that unless direct assessments are constructed and administered carefully, the inferential leap is actually more hazardous. namely, "limited content coverage, poor generalizability, difficulty in maintaining test security, and increased opportunity for bias due to subjective scoring all pose plausible threats to the validity of these assessments under some conditions (powers et al., 1994, p. 97; dunbar, koretz, & hoover, 1991). powers et al. also added an interesting aside in their discussion; they related that the faculty respondents expressed a distrust of the writing samples currently required by several of the graduate schools surveyed. the faculty members commented that it is impossible to know how much help an applicant has received in writing, revising, and editing personal statements or other writing samples not obtained in a secured testing environment. this concern would seem to be consistent with powers and fowles' subsequent 1997 study findings. other more recent studies explore aspects of graduate student writing outside the realm of the gre or the personal statement. kamler (2008) and cuthbert and spark (2008) both engaged in two studies that centered on the idea of graduate students needing to learn how to write for publication and the problems contained therein. kamler’s study starts with the premise that “writing for publication is an important activity for established academics and doctoral students alike” (2008, p. 283). green, hutchison, and sra (as cited in kamler, 2008) have concluded that publishing from the dissertation is a critical factor when predicting scholarly productivity. kamler’s paper concludes with her assertion that through publication graduate students become productive members of a discipline through, among other things, publication. similarly, cuthbert and spark (2008) look at graduate students writing for publication by exploring the results of a pilot program in australia that used writing groups in an attempt to help graduate students gain skills and find support needed for writing for academic publication. in another study of graduate student writing, lavelle and bushrow (2007) explore the writing processes and beliefs pertaining to graduate students as they attempt to learn and master the highly specialized task of high-level academic writing. these researchers make the point that graduate school demands that students produce higher quantities and quality of writing; however, “[a]cademic writing at the graduate level is a complex and often novel undertaking for the student. indeed, expectations as regards breadth and depth, and the diverse range of writing demands (article critiques, academic papers, grant writing), call for new insights and increased levels of skill” (lavelle & bushrow, p. 807). they then go on to describe an in-depth study of writing processes of graduate students and their attempt to develop psychometric model and measurement standards that would help explain and support graduate student writing. interestingly, these authors cite as one of the rationales for their study the fact that while it is a commonly known that graduate students need to write a lot and write well, as early as the 1970s discussions have ensued regarding the need to address graduate student writing by providing support and instruction, while still little has been done to actually assess what graduate students go through (process) when they write. to underscore both the longstanding nature or this issue and the concept of a need for increased understanding of graduate student writing, in her 1998 presentation to the annual meeting of the mid-south educational research association, debbie hahs presented findings from a survey of graduate students that asked them what they thought they needed to succeed and persist in graduate study. her survey results discovered many interesting things. most relevant to this study was the respondents indication that they would like to attend workshops to gain knowledge about various writing tasks common to graduate school (e.g. dissertation, cv, grant) (hahs, 1998). when given 11 sample workshops and asked which they would be most likely to attend, of the top five, three of them pertained to writing. the respondents in her study seemed to understand the need to master their field and then be able to communicate their expertise in writing to others in their field as well as to those not in their field. we can infer, as hahs has, that “students who are requesting information or services or resources have not satisfactorily received this information through current channels” (1998, p. 2). these studies by lavell and bushrow and hahs, as do the others previously discussed, speak to the assumption that graduate students by virtue of being in graduate school, are prepared to write at an acceptable level regardless of actual scrutiny of graduate student writing or of that assumption. there seems to exist, as summarized by newman (2004) a “vexed relationship” between undergraduate writing and how this first level of education relates to writing at levels of higher study (p. 31). these studies, while focusing on different aspects of graduate student writing, reflect the same basic premise that there are issues with graduate student writing that require exploration of process and proficiency that ranges from studying the personal statement to creating writing groups to supporting graduate student publication efforts. so while all the previously discussed studies approached the topic of graduate student writing from different angles and with different agendas, these studies do allow for a general conclusion. namely, graduate student writing assessment is a multi-faceted area of study; using the personal statement as an indicator of writing proficiency is erroneous; graduate students need to be competent writer; and graduate student writing merits further investigation. perhaps the most obvious message to be concluded for this brief review of research in the area is that it should not be taken for granted that being a graduate student equates with being a proficient writer. method participants an availability sample of graduate students enrolled in at least one course in higher education at public institutions of higher education in the united states participated in the study. a total sample size of 97 students was obtained. participants came from seven universities in the united states. demographic data were collected from the study participants. the majority of respondents were female (65.6%). participants were also asked to report the grade they earned on their most recent writing assignment. a few of the respondents (6.2%) appeared to be fairly new in their program (having fewer than 12 hours); the majority (68.0%) had accumulated 25 or more hours of graduate credit. table 1 contains descriptive statistics for the sample demographic variables. each participant received a cover letter to keep explaining the requirements of participation in the study. in this letter, the participants were informed of the right to withdraw from the study at any time. participants were also provided with a detailed set of directions for completing the instruments. in the case of the data being collected in a group setting, the administering professor was given data collection instructions to read to the group of participants. in lieu of signatures, participants’ returning the completed instruments served as an indication of their consent to participate. this recognition of completion and submission of the instruments as consent was used for both individual participants and those who participated in classroom settings. participants who participated in classroom settings did so on a voluntary basis and in no way was their participation linked to a grade in the course. the administering professor did not score or review the instruments; he or she mailed the completed instruments back to the primary researcher for analysis. data collection materials were coded with a threedigit number for the purpose of being able to collate the data, but participants could not be linked to the submitted data.1 1 this study was approved by the university of north texas institutional review board committee for the protection of human subjects. table 1 participant demographic variables first language percent english 91.75 other 8.25 age group less than 25 years 18.56 25 to 28 years 9.28 29 to 35 years 20.62 36 to 50 years 34.02 over 50 years 17.53 gender male 34.37 female 65.63 graduate hours completed less than 12 6.19 12 to 24 25.77 25 to 40 19.59 41 to 60 23.71 more than 60 11.34 all but dissertation (abd) 13.4 program masters in higher education 26.8 doctorate in higher education 54.64 masters in other field 3.09 doctorate in other field 15.46 doctoral degree sought ed. d. 50.7 ph. d. 49.3 note: for table 1, all percentages are based on n=97 except a) 1 person did not answer the gender question, b) 3 people did not identify their current program. furthermore, for type of doctorate in higher education, the percentages are based on n=71 (n=79 respondents indicated they were pursuing a doctorate in higher education, and of those, eight respondents did not indicate the type of doctorate). instruments to assess writing proficiency for the participants, the sat ii: writing test, part b was used. the sat ii: writing test, part b is a timed, 60-item multiple-choice test developed by educational testing service (ets). the purpose of the test is to “measure [test takers’] ability to…recognize faults in usage and structure, and to use language with sensitivity to meaning” (educational testing service, 1999-2000, p.7). the multiple-choice questions deal with such common writing problems as “being consistent, expressing ideas logically, being clear and precise, and following conventions” (educational testing service, 1999-2000, p.7). this instrument has demonstrated reliability (r. goodman, personal communication, august 22, 2000). although it might seem unconventional to use the sat ii, an instrument typically associated with high school level testing, the use of this instrument was warranted based on a number of reasons: • ets professionals who developed the test assert that “most students take the…sat ii tests…during their junior or senior year in high school, but there are no age or grade restrictions [italics added] (handbook for the sat program, 1999-2000, p.5). • the sat ii is typically taken by college-bound seniors and is used by many colleges for “admission, placement, and advising” purposes (handbook for the sat program, 19992000, p.7). • given the assumption being tested (i.e., after earning a bachelor’s degree, students who wish to pursue a graduate degree and are accepted to a graduate program of study are prepared to write at a level adequate for graduate level work), it is sensible to use a test typically given to college-bound seniors. in other words, graduate students should score significantly higher than the sat ii average if they did indeed obtain the writing skills assumed of a bachelor’s degree holder. • the sat ii is a normed instrument. a normed instrument was ideal for this study based on a number of reasons. namely, by using a normed instrument, the scores obtained were scaled relative to people who have previously taken the test. if a raw score is obtained (e.g., 40 correct), it is meaningless unless information is available about how other people scored on the same test; norms anchor a test. the sat ii served as an anchor, or point of comparison, for the scores obtained from the participants. this instrument has “been established as a common standard against which students performance can be compared. finally, to investigate students’ performance on the instrument, cursory observations about the instrument were made through the use of a pilot study of the instrument. to determine variation among responses to the 60 items on the test, the sat ii: writing test, part b was piloted with six graduate students in higher education at the university of north texas. the data were collected, and two of the students’ response sets were removed because they indicated that english was not their first language. only one of the four remaining students was able to complete the 60 items in the allotted time. interestingly, it was found that there was variance among two-thirds of the items on the instrument. this suggested that the instrument would yield useful information since there were individual differences in the responses of the pilot sample. if everyone had selected the same responses to the test items, this instrument would not yield useful information for the study. however, because variance was discovered and the instrument has been determined to be reliable by ets, it is safe to assume that this instrument provided useful and informative results. further, this should dispense with any concern about using an instrument typically associated with high school testing, since it is clear that even with a small pilot sample (n = 4) variation was present. procedure in the original attempt at data collection, a list of all public institutions of higher education in the united states that offer graduate degrees in higher education was obtained from the eric clearinghouse on higher education (www.eriche.org/resource/public.html). the institutions were sampled to ensure that both master’s and doctoral programs were represented. this resulted in a non-proportional stratified sample of institutions that offer graduate degrees in higher education (gall, borg, & gall, 1996). following the selection of the program pool, the researcher accessed program websites to obtain the names of contact persons. the identified contact person for each program in the sample was then contacted by phone or e-mail. the study was described, and a request was made that the contact person help recruit graduate students to participate in the study. after considerable effort, it was discovered that this was an ineffective means of recruiting study participants. twenty-five institutions were contacted and only two professors had agreed to help collect data from graduate students. it was then determined that multiple means of collecting data would be necessary. study participants subsequently were recruited in three ways: 1) by contacting higher education professors at various programs, 2) through higher education graduate student organizations, and 3) through a request for study participants posted on the association for the study of higher education (ashe) list serve. this resulted in a convenience sample of graduate students in higher education. professors of higher education courses were contacted and asked if they would be willing to recruit volunteers for the study from their classes. if they agreed, data collection materials were sent to the professor, the instrument was administered in a group setting by the professor, and the completed materials were returned to the researcher by the professor. seventy-three participants were obtained using this method of recruitment. individuals were also recruited to participate in the study. this was done in two ways: by obtaining permission to post a request for subjects on the ashe list serve, and by asking graduate student coordinators or graduate student organization officers to forward an e-mail request for participants to students enrolled in courses in higher education. students who received the posted messages and were interested in participating in the study contacted the researcher by e-mail, and arrangements were made to send a packet of data collection materials to the student. twenty-four participants were obtained using these methods of recruitment. in the case of an individual providing data, as opposed to the data being collected in a group setting, a statement of honesty was required in an attempt to ensure that all data collected were legitimate and provided under similar circumstances. each program or individual that participated in the study was offered a copy of the findings for the study. results the sat ii: writing test, part b participants in this study completed the sat ii: writing test, part b. the test was scored using the answer key provided by sat, and raw scores were converted to scaled scores according to the conversion table provided by sat, (sat ii: subject tests, 2000). the average multiple-choice scaled score from the sat writing test, part b was 59.30 (the range was 20 to 80), and the sample standard deviation was 10.27. the distribution had a very slight negative skew (-0.129), implying that the mean score was slightly lower than the median. based on published norms, the population mean is 59 and the population standard deviation is 10 (inside sat ii, 1999). this norm is based on “scores earned by 1998 college-bound seniors who took the sat ii: writing test at any time during high school” (inside sat ii, 1999, p.12). when a sample of data is obtained and the population mean and standard deviation are known, an appropriate test for a significant difference between the sample and population mean is the z-statistic for a single sample mean (howell, 2002). hence, this significance test was used to determine whether the sample mean was significantly higher than the population mean, after ascertaining that there were no univariate outliers, z-scores in excess of an absolute value of 2.5 (kirk, 1995). the sample mean was not significantly higher than the population mean (z=0.295, p<0.38). the graduate students in this sample did not score significantly higher on the sat ii: writing test, part b than the typical high school senior whose scores enter into the norm group. demographic variables and sat ii: writing test scores statistical tests were used to determine whether significant differences in sat ii: writing test scaled scores existed for selected demographic variables. this was done in an exploratory manner, with the goal of understanding whether significant differences existed based on these selected variables. there was no specific theoretical framework used to test formalized hypotheses. instead, these variables were selected based on a deductive review of the literature. the demographic variables we examined were undergraduate major, type of degree program in which participants were enrolled, gender, whether individuals participated individually or as part of a class , and type of doctorate degree (ed.d. or ph.d.). table 2 contains descriptive statistics related to the significant findings. a description of each test and findings follow, and the results of the statistical tests are summarized in table 3. table 2 descriptive statistics corresponding to significant effects for demographic variables independent variable n m sd gender female 63 60.86 9.90 male 33 56.15 10.53 participation method individual 24 65.22 9.34 class 73 57.46 9.91 degree type ed.d 36 56.75 9.02 ph.d. 35 63.26 10.65 note: for table 2, one person did not answer the gender question and the sample size for degree type is 71 because out of the 97 participants, 79 respondents indicated they were pursuing a doctorate in higher education and eight of those did not indicate the type of doctorate. we used parametric tests of group differences, namely between groups analyses of variance and independent samples t-tests depending upon the number of groups, to evaluate group differences. the assumptions of the techniques were met (e.g., kirk, 1995). specifically, the assumption of homogeneity of variance was evaluated and found to be tenable using the levene statistic (levene, 1960). data were screened for outliers by group, using a z-score of 2.5 as a cutoff (kirk, 1995). furthermore, we had no reason to suspect any violation of the assumption of independence of observations since each participant completed their own sat ii writing test and there was no common intervention designed to alter the writing test scores. while there was a mild departure from normality for the writing test score, namely the previously noted negative skewness, mild departures from normality are deemed acceptable, especially when the assumption of homogeneity of variance has not been violated (stevens, 2002). finally, we chose to evaluate all null hypotheses at an alpha level of .05 and did not correct for type 1 error since the analyses are considered exploratory and should be validated in a separate sample in future research. with respect to undergraduate degrees, the undergraduate majors of the 97 participants were coded into four broad categories. these categories were as follows: english (n=10), math/science (n=17) social science (n=48) education (n=16). there were six participants who indicated that they had majored in “business” as undergraduates. this group was too small to include in the analysis. an analysis of variance revealed there were no significant differences among the four groups (see table 3). participants were grouped into three categories in terms of their current program: those getting a master’s in higher education (n=26), those getting a doctorate in higher education (n=53) and those getting a doctorate in another field (n=15). there were only 3 participants who indicated that they were receiving a master’s degree in a program outside of higher education and these observations were eliminated from the analysis. analysis of variance revealed no significant differences among the three groups (see table 3). we did find significant differences in writing test scores for gender with females having a higher average score than males (see table 2). furthermore, those who participated on an individual basis had significantly higher test scores than those who completed the instruments as part of a class2. finally, participants who were pursuing an ed.d. had significantly lower scores than participants pursuing a ph.d. table 3 results of tests for differences in sat ii: writing test, part b scores by demographic variables independent variable test statistic results probability effect size undergraduate major f(3, 87) = 1.01 .392 0.000 academic program f(2, 91) = 1.95 .148 0.020 gender t(94) = 2.17 .033 0.048 participation (individual vs. class) t(95) = -3.32 .001 0.104 degree type (ed.d. vs. ph.d.) t(69) = -2.78 .007 0.101 note: effect sizes are ω2 (see e.g., kirk, 1995) for f values and cohen’s d for t values (cohen, 1988). discussion and implications for future research review of the research questions in an attempt to gain information regarding graduate student writing proficiency, two main questions guided this study. how do graduate students compare to high school seniors on a standardized, norm-based measurement of writing proficiency? is writing proficiency correlate with specific demographic variables? the series of analyses presented here helped to both answer these questions and to raise questions for future research. when reviewing the literature to form the basis for this study, it became clear that while there is great deal of interest in assessment of student writing, there is very little research available that addresses graduate student writing specifically. while educators agree that writing proficiency is an important skill for graduate students, there seems to be a discrepancy between expectation and reality (hahs, 1998; torrance, thomas, & robinson, 1999; mullen, 2006; lavelle & bushrow, 2007; & kamler, 2008). to wit, graduate students are expected to write like 2 in fact, those who completed the study individually did score significantly higher than the sat ii norm sample (z = 3.043, p < .05). see discussion section for more comments on this finding. experts, but graduate student writing quality elicits cries of despair and exasperation from faculty. this basic idea was the driving force behind this study. is the state of graduate student writing as depicted by disgruntled faculty a myth or of anecdotal nature, or is there indeed a real issue with regard to graduate student writing proficiency? writing proficiency to recap, the graduate students in this sample did not score significantly higher on the sat ii: writing test, part b than the typical college-bound, high school seniors whose scores constitute the norm. implications. this finding is interesting for several reasons, some clear, some more ambiguous. several assumptions predicated this study. for the purpose of clarity in this study, “better writers” is taken to mean more proficient, and regardless of personal definitions of the term “proficiency,” there is arguably an understanding that college students will be “better writers” when they graduate than they were prior to matriculation (north, 1996; abate-vaughn, 2007; & knudson et al., 2008). it follows that this would seem to be a reasonable expectation on the part of graduate faculty – reasonable, yet unmet. the outcomes of a study by the american association of colleges and universities (as cited in abbate-vaughn, 2007, p.52) “revealed that a dismal 11% of college seniors are able to write at the ‘proficient’ level while holding the belief that college was contributing to their skills in writing and other areas.” by requiring a bachelor’s degree as a prerequisite to admission to graduate study, it may be safe to conclude that graduate admissions committees are incorrectly assuming that an undergraduate degree has adequately prepared students for the rigors of graduate level writing since most graduate programs are writing intensive. the discovery that the graduate students sampled in this study did not in fact score significantly higher than college-bound high school seniors seems to justify faculty complaints that graduate students cannot write on a satisfactory level. presumably, graduate faculty expects their students to write better than high school seniors. if the sample population used in this study is representative of graduate students in higher education courses across the united states, then the conclusion reached is that after four years of undergraduate study, and possibly even after some graduate study in the case of those with master’s degrees, the graduate students sampled in this study were no more proficient writers than average college-bound high school seniors. this finding begs many questions. namely, are the skills required to produce writing proficiency not adequately addressed in the undergraduate curriculum? or is there simply not enough emphasis placed on writing proficiency as a prerequisite for admission to graduate school? does this lack of emphasis on screening lead to the admission of graduate students who are inadequately prepared to produce the level of writing expected in graduate school? also, is it possible that the faculty assumption that entering graduate students will be proficient writers is in error or unfair? is it possible that graduate faculty should expect to teach writing skills to their students? writing proficiency and demographics significance testing was done for writing proficiency scores and selected demographic variables. while overall this testing proved to be fairly unspectacular, it did unearth a few points of interest. undergraduate major was considered as one variable with a potential relationship to writing proficiency score. although a relatively small n for three of the four major categories limits the usefulness of this information, it was not surprising to find that the study participants who were english majors as undergraduates did, as a group, have the highest scores on the sat ii: writing test. however, it should be noted, that the english majors did not score significantly better than the other participants. two independent samples t-tests did prove to have significant results. first, females scored significantly higher than males on the writing test. this may exemplify the theory of gender’s role in language ability in general. females typically score higher than males on tests of verbal ability (cohen, swerdlik, & phillips, 1996). perhaps this verbal ability translates to writing proficiency. this might also be the result of studying students who were, for the most part, higher education graduate students. as a social science, higher education programs are typically writing intensive, and may attract and admit students from a social science background. females are more likely to be found in education and the social sciences than in other areas of study (pascarella & terenzini, 1991). forty-eight of the ninety-seven participants in this study were social science majors as undergraduates, and the participants were predominantly female (65%). a loosely drawn conclusion then might be, that more females are undergraduate social science majors, they get more practice writing as undergraduates, they seek writing intensive graduate programs because of a comfort level with writing, and this translates to an overall higher writing proficiency. secondly, it was discovered that the participants in this study who were pursuing a ph.d. scored significantly higher on the sat ii: writing test than those participants who were pursuing an ed.d. perhaps this is simply a function of the type of student who pursues the ph.d. versus the ed.d. this finding might indicate that the more applied degree, the ed.d., attracts students with less writing experience, interest, background, or skill. also, it is a possibility that ed.d programs have a different set of criteria for admission. for example, admission committees may look less upon writing proficiency as a significant factor in their decision to admit a student to graduate study in ed.d. programs. the most bothersome finding from this portion of the study involved a comparison of participants who completed the writing test on an individual basis versus those who completed the test as part of a class. the participants who did the test on an individual basis scored significantly higher than those who participated in a classroom setting and significantly higher than the sat ii normative sample. this is troublesome because of the nature of the writing test. the sat ii: writing test, part b, is a timed, 60-item, multiple-choice test. participants in the classroom setting were monitored for time (40 minutes) and use of reference materials (not allowed). however, individual participants were not monitored. instead, they were asked to sign a statement of honesty indicating that they would observe the conditions of the test. the most reasonable explanation for this significant difference is that individuals who agreed to participate in the study had a particular interest or propensity for writing and were therefore somehow more proficient writers than their cohorts who were recruited as a part of a group. additionally, based on these “possible” characteristics the sub-sample of 24 participants may not represent the typical graduate student. limitations convenience sample. aside from the possibility of a type ii error, there is the fact that a convenience sample was used. in some cases, this might result in the findings being questionable. however, for this study this would seem to be illogical in light of the sample population’s failure to score significantly better than the population mean on a test of writing proficiency. all the participants were volunteers. students who volunteered to complete the instruments on an individual basis comprised 24.7% of the sample. the remaining 75.3% of the sample population were recruited by graduate faculty and completed the instrument in a classroom setting. if it is assumed that the students who volunteered to participate in the study did so because of an affinity for writing, or because of a personal interest in the topic, then it would be more likely that a significant difference would have been found between the sample population and the norm population, with the sample population scoring significantly higher than the norm group. instrument limitations. a second issue regarding the validity of the findings centers on the use of the sat ii: writing test, part b as the means of measuring writing proficiency for the sample population. this instrument tests for three major components or subscales of english proficiency: grammar, usage, diction (choice of words), and idiom; correctness and effectiveness of expression (inclusive of grammar, word choice, sentence construction, and punctuation); and organization and development relative to clarity and coherence. a second assumption of this study, knowledge of the technical aspects of english grammar translates into proficient writing or production of quality text, ties into the use of this particular instrument. additionally, this assumption allows for the conclusion that the sample population, as reflected by mean score on the instrument, is no more adept at writing than college-bound high school students. however, if there is fault in this assumption, then there is fault in this conclusion. more simply put, when measuring the technical aspects of writing proficiency, is it safe to assume that the sat ii, writing test, part b measures writing proficiency or just technical proficiency? is there incongruence between technical knowledge of english grammar and usage and actual generation of quality text? a limitation of this study was that part a of the sat ii: writing test was not used. part a consists of an essay assignment. test takers have twenty minutes to write an essay on an assigned topic. two independent readers, who are experienced high school or college teachers, score these essays. test takers receive a composite score “calculated by combining the multiplechoice score with a weighted writing sample score” (inside sat ii: subject tests, 1999, p. 5). the logistics and the subjective nature of the scoring made the use of part a an impossibility for this study. however, this merits discussion. the following question arises: does technical knowledge of english grammar and usage necessarily translate to writing proficiency? in other words, is a multiple-choice test that measures technical skills (i.e., grammar, usage, diction (choice of words), and idiom; correctness and effectiveness of expression (inclusive of grammar, word choice, sentence construction, and punctuation); and organization and development relative to clarity and coherence) able to provide information about writing proficiency as it pertains to production of text when not combined with an essay test? it is hard to accept that graduate students are no more proficient at writing than college-bound seniors. having completed an undergraduate education, students assuredly gained practice at writing, and by virtue of experience must surely possess some competence as writers (biggs, et. al, 1999). however, perhaps they have not gained significant knowledge of the technical aspects of writing. if this is the case, then by administering part a, of the sat ii: writing test, a different picture of graduate student writing proficiency might emerge. generation of text is qualitatively a different task than proving knowledge of the technical aspects of writing on a multiple-choice test. to summarize, if both parts a and b of the sat ii: writing test had been used with the sample population, and a composite score obtained for the study participants, then perhaps the sample population would have scored significantly higher than the norm base for writing proficiency. interestingly, when asked what grade they had received on their most recent writing assignment, 88.5% of the study participants indicated that they had received an “a” (singletonjackson, lumsden, & newsom, 2009). this information lends itself to three conclusions: 1) there is some plausibility to the idea that technical knowledge does not affect or relate to writing proficiency with regard to producing text (e.g., research papers, writing assignments), 2) professors are complaining about student writing, but perpetuating the problem by not giving low marks for poorly written papers, or 3) the reported data does not give an accurate depiction of the respondents typical writing assignment grade. however, it should be noted that when the composite score for parts a and b of the sat ii: writing test is calculated, “the weighting makes the writing sample constitute only one-third of the combined score” (inside sat ii: subject tests, 1999, p. 5). while the sat documentation does not provide an explicit reason for this weighting, from examining validity coefficients – correlations between the sat ii: writing test and freshmen writing performance – it would seem to be due to the fact that the multiplechoice portion of the test is a more valid predictor of actual writing performance. therefore, it is in all likelihood, reasonable to assume that the sat ii: writing test, part b alone provides an accurate picture of a test taker’s overall writing ability, viz. technical knowledge and ability to generate text. implications for future research and practice this study has spurred a number of ideas for future research studies in the area of writing proficiency among graduate students. further, this study may prove to affect practice with regard to how writing is dealt with by graduate admissions committees, programs, and faculty with regard to preliminary assessments, curriculum, writing assignments, and thesis and dissertation supervision. an obvious idea for future research would be to replicate the study, but include graduate students from a wide variety of disciplines instead of exclusively studying students from higher education graduate courses. also, obtaining a larger n of either exclusively higher education students, or graduate students from all disciplines could prove to be extremely interesting. this study used the sat ii: writing test, part b to assess graduate student writing proficiency. there is also a part a to this instrument which requires essay writing. the addition of part a, an applied writing task, in future studies might yield a different picture of the writing proficiency of graduate students. a future study of this nature, regardless of choice of instrument(s), could be improved if the data collection environment was held consistent. it was discovered that the data were harder to collect than originally predicted. this gave rise to a change in procedure that necessitated data being collected from graduate students on an individual basis and in a classroom setting. a future study could plan for this contingency and include a plan to only collect data from proctored groups. while it did not affect the overreaching finding that the sample population did not score significantly higher on the sat ii: writing test, part b than the norm group, the fact that the participants who did the test on an individual basis scored significantly higher than those who participated in a classroom setting gives pause. it would be important to find out if this was a chance finding particular to this study, or if the testing environment gives rise to performance differences. we might trust the scores of those who completed the sat ii in a class setting more than the scores of individual test-takers as being more representative of higher education graduate students’ proficiency indicators. other variations might include a professor-focused study. graduate school professors could be tested for writing proficiency. additionally, it would be interesting to determine to what degree professors can actually articulate rules regarding grammar, usage, diction, idiom; correctness and effectiveness of expression; and organization and development relative to clarity and coherence. by doing this it might be possible to glean to what degree graduate faculty are prepared to actually teach writing skills to graduate students. it is one thing to grade for content, but an altogether different undertaking to teach writing as a part of a graduate course. a study along these lines could also include an attitudes survey that aims to discover graduate faculty attitudes toward teaching graduate students to write. a related idea could involve surveying professors about their opinions regarding the current quality of graduate student writing. following the collection of these data, a follow-up questionnaire could be sent to the same professors asking about the grades they are typically giving on writing assignments. the purpose of this would be to follow up on the idea of inconsistency existing between graduate student writing proficiency and the grades received on writing assignments. with regard to implication for future practice, there are several possibilities for changes to graduate education. graduate admissions committees may find it useful to more formally assess the writing proficiency of incoming graduate students, not necessarily as a tool to be used for denial of admission but to identify for students deficiencies in writing skills that need to be addressed with coursework or in conjunction with on-campus writing resources. also, as discussed in the introduction, expectations that graduate students should possess writing proficiency exist, thus this study may provide an impetus for programs to put in place more proactive measures to help students attain the needed writing skills required for graduate level study. required courses or mandatory workshops to address graduate student writing issues may be warranted should graduate programs feel that there are significant writing issues among their students. graduate students might also use this study as a basis for exploring mentor-type programs wherein more expert graduate student writers provide direction, resources, and support for fellow students requiring writing assistance. additionally, increased understanding of the reality of graduate student writing ability, based on assessments or other measures, could assist faculty as they guide students through theses and dissertations. the findings from this study indicated that the graduate students studied were no more proficient at writing than the typical college-bound, high school senior. the fact that these study participants all had at least a bachelor’s degree did not seem to result in them being better writers than students who had not yet matriculated. it could prove useful to follow this idea through graduate school to see to what degree if any a graduate education results in increased writing proficiency. a longitudinal study could be developed so that entering graduate students could be tested for writing proficiency. a follow-up study could then be done involving testing for writing proficiency at the end of the students’ course of study. this would allow for an evaluation of how much or if writing proficiency changes during the course of graduate study. conclusion this study began with the idea that graduate student writing was a topic worthy of assessment. the findings of this exploratory study seem to confirm that initial belief. stevenson (2006) echoes the importance of graduate student writing proficiency by asserting that there is no question that graduate students need to know how to write. we can conclude, however, that “[g]raduate students are novice researchers and writers who must be initiated into the culture of academic writing” (mullen, 2006, p.30). this study tells us that there is reason to believe that being a graduate student does not equate with writing proficiency adequate for graduate level study. in his preface to writing to learn, william zinsser indicates that he wrote this book “to try to ease two fears that american education seems to inflict on all of us in some form. one is the fear of writing” (the other being a fear of subjects that do not come easily or naturally) (zinsser, 1988, p. vii).while fear of writing may be pervasive, it does not have to be continuous. in an attempt to initiate graduate students into the writing community of scholars, we can proceed with dispassionate study of the process and product of writing. by doing so we can discover information to reduce the stress of writing for graduate students, who are our future creators of reports, articles, chapters, books, and various other written documents that can educate, advance, and inspire both scholars and the populace. to reiterate a previous point, graduate school is a writing-intensive experience, justifiably so. increasing understanding of writing as a critical skill for success in graduate school can reduce some of the fear that accompanies that intensity. as long as good writing remains a mystery that is accessible to only a chosen few, then fear of writing will persist. while academic standards and faculty expectations 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(1988). writing to learn. new york, ny: harper & row, publishers. microsoft word 956-3896-3-le.docx 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x exploring “the ripple in the pond”a correlational study of the relationships between demographic variables and the teacher change agent scale karrin lukacs shenandoah university as a result of the proliferation of standardized testing and academic standards, there are new expectations for teachers and the role(s) they play in improving student learning and achievement (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999; garet et al., 2001). however, little is known about teachers who initiate positive changes outside of their own classrooms and even less about what they “look like.” as such, this study was designed to determine whether there was a relationship between the demographic variables of age, gender, years of teaching experience, grade level taught, and primary teaching responsibility and scores on the teacher change agent scale (tcas), its subscales, and individual items. bivariate correlations and means comparison (anova) were used to analyze the responses of 652 teachers. results indicate that: a teacher’s age is negatively correlated with teacher change agency and membership in a professional community, grade level influences a teacher’s overall mean score, and teachers of all ages need support in working effectively with their colleagues. given that teachers are being charged with making schools “work” for all students, these findings represent a meaningful contribution to the teacher change agency research. keywords: teacher change agent, tcas, school improvement many believe that either school administrators or the government should make change “happen” in schools, but it is teachers themselves who are best situated to initiate school improvement efforts (i.e., elmore, 2004). still, the assumption that “the only job of teachers is to teach students and to consider the classroom, at best, as the legitimate extent of their influence” (urbanski & nickolaou, 1997, p.244) persists, and the overwhelming majority of current research remains fixed in the view that teachers can only serve one of two roles when it comes to school improvement – they can be either recipients of change initiatives (see richardson & placier, 2001) or implementers of reform efforts prescribed by administrators (e.g., buchanan, 2003). while the majority of the current literature focuses on the “teacher leader,” further analysis of this popular phrase reveals that, despite its proactive tone, its use typically underscores the role of the teacher as either a recipient or as an implementer of external mandates. in short, little is known about the teachers who possess the ability to initiate school reform efforts and even less about any demographic variables (i.e., age or gender) which they may have in common. this information would be particularly useful for teacher education programs; for example, knowing who among their students would (or would not) be a likely teacher change agent would allow faculty to provide each teacher candidate with access to the resources s/he needs in order to be successful. therefore, using the definition of “teacher change agent” as a classroom teacher who chooses to initiate actions in support of an improvement in teaching and/or student learning beyond his/her own classroom, the purpose of current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 this study was to determine whether any relationships exist between the demographic variables of gender, age, years of teaching experience, grade level taught, and primary job responsibility and teacher change agency. review of literature identifying a teacher change agent is a difficult task, which seems due largely to the fact that the meaning of teacher change agent is highly dependent on who is using it. for example, teacher change agents have been described alternatively as “transformer[s] of the present social order” (cobb, 2001, p.91), school stewards (lovingfoss, molloy, harris, & graham, 2001), and as positive deviants (fullan, 2002). these alternate descriptors do little to clarify the exact nature of the teacher change agent’s role in school reform, yet even when more clearly defined, discussions of the role(s) of teacher change agents in school reform result in lists of requisite teacher behaviors (cobb, 2001) or imply a gobetween status (buchanan, 2003; havelock 1995), in which the teacher is seen as the implementer, facilitator, sponsor, or coach charged with being the “champion” for a reform effort mandated from the top down. in addition, the majority of teacher change agent literature has examined how teachers work to effect change in their own curricular areas, individual classrooms, or specific teaching skills rather than on how they pursue wide scale change efforts (i.e., wasley, 1991), and no attention has been paid to trying to identify an archetypal teacher leader (or teacher change agent) in terms of age, gender, etc. more recently, discussion of teacher leaders sometimes includes reference to leading change efforts. for example, rossman, rallis, phlegar, and abeille (1995) include the task of being a “changemaker” in their discussion of the possible roles that teacher leaders fulfill in their schools. since both teacher leader and teacher change agent are often ill defined in the literature, it can be difficult to determine how they differ from one another, especially in terms of the role of each in school reform efforts. in essence, while there is little empirical support for such a claim, the assumption in the literature seems to be as chapman (2006) remarks: “teacher leaders are often change agents by default” (p.32). as a result of both the ambiguity surrounding the term “teacher change agent” and its overlap with the teacher as leader literature, very little is known about the teachers who possess the capability to make change “happen” in their schools. however, efforts have been made to detail the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed by teacher change agents in order to initiate school reform efforts; for example, lukacs and galluzzo (in press) discuss the need for teacher change agents to have working understanding of a school’s culture, advocacy skills, and the willingness to take risks, but these are abstract traits rather than concrete identifiers. just as teachers are encouraged to be aware of the cognizant of the shifting demographics of their schools (i.e., hodgkinson, 2001), there is a need for teacher educators to know more about the demographics of their own students and about the relationships that exist between these demographics and students’ willingness to initiate school reform efforts as well. in addition, such a profile would not only be helpful in clarifying the difference(s) between teacher leaders and teacher change agents, but it would also allow teacher education faculty to make available the resources needed by students to be successful in their efforts. thus, this study was designed to determine whether a strictly demographic profile for a “typical” teacher change agent could be developed. method despite calls for teachers be on “the front lines” of school reform (darling-hammond, 2003), little is known either about teachers’ capacity to initiate change efforts or whether there is a “typical” teacher change agent. this study was designed to determine whether or not there are any statistically significant relationships between teacher change agency and age, gender, grade level taught, and years of experience. participants participants (n = 652) in this study were practicing teachers in two school districts in the midatlantic region. the typical respondent was a 37-year-old female classroom-based middle school teacher with 13.3 years of experience. table 1 summarizes demographic information of the respondents. a more detailed discussion of how participants were contacted can be found in the following section. instrument designed to measure teachers’ willingness to be change agents, the teacher change agent scale (tcas; appendix) is a 15-item scale with likert-style response choices include four options ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. possible scores on the tcas range from 15 to 60. in a study detailing its initial development and validation (lukacs, 2009), the tcas was found to have an overall cronbach’s alpha coefficient of α = .82, and the scale’s construct validity was demonstrated by estimating the relationships between and among the items. the tcas consists of three independent subscales: content/pedagogical knowledge, professional community membership, and collaborative expertise. respectively, they measure teachers’ self-reported understanding of teaching techniques in general as well as the ones specific to the subject(s) they teach (items 4, 5, 7, and 11; α = .71) with a score range of 4 to 16; teachers’ self-reported membership in a community of like-minded others (items 1, 9, 10, 12, and 13; α = .73) with a score range of 5 to 20; and teachers’ self-reported collaborative skills such as influencing or motivating their colleagues (items 2, 3, 6, 8, 14, and 15; α = .72) with a score range of 6 to 24. exploring “the ripple in the pond”a correlational study of the relationships between demographic variables and the teacher change agent scale 3 table 1 demographic information of tcas respondents (n=652) n % gender female 534 81.9 male 118 18.1 age 20-29 138 21.2 30-39 164 25.2 40-49 138 21.2 50-59 176 27.0 60+ 36 5.5 years of experience 1-5 160 24.5 6-10 157 24.1 11-15 133 20.4 16-20 60 9.2 21-25 46 7.1 26-30 40 6.1 31-35 39 6.0 36-40 14 2.1 40+ 3 .5 grade level pre-k 213 32.7 k-5th 188 28.8 6th-8th 107 16.4 9th-12th 144 22.1 primary job responsibility classroom-based 283 43.4 resource (i.e., esol, reading) 147 22.5 “specials” (i.e., art, pe) 222 34.0 data collection two school districts in the mid-atlantic region were contacted about the distribution of the tcas. in one, permission was granted to send the invitation to participate directly to teachers themselves; in the other, principals were contacted and given the choice of whether or not to send the invitation to their building’s staff members. the online version of the tcas was available for a one month period, and one reminder email was sent two weeks after the original invitation. a total of 729 teachers responded to the tcas. data analysis since this study focused on teachers’ total tcas or subscale score as the dependent variable, cases with missing values were excluded (n = 77). the data were then analyzed using descriptive, correlational, and inferential statistics. the descriptive evaluation included the calculation of means and standard deviations in order to determine the variability of overall tcas score, scores on subscales, and demographic variables. using the recommendations outlined by hinkle, wiersma, and jurs (2003), a scatterplot was used to determine the general nature of the relationship between participants’ overall tcas scores and the demographic variables of gender, age, years of teaching experience, grade level taught, and primary job responsibility. anova tests were used to compare the means of the various groups that were established by selected demographic variables. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 results overall tcas scores as can be seen in table 2, there were no statistically significant correlations found between teachers’ total scores on the tcas and gender, primary teaching responsibility, grade level, or years of experience. a weak but statistically significant negative correlation was found between age and total score on the tcas (r = -.09, p = .03). anova tests were conducted to determine if there were significant differences in mean overall tcas score by demographic variable. results showed a significant difference [f(3,648) = 9.05, p = .00)] in overall tcas score by grade level after applying tukey’s honest significant difference (hsd) test. mean overall tcas score was found to differ significantly between both preschool (m = 48.20, sd = 5.18) and secondary (m = 48.13, sd = 4.98) teachers’ scores and the scores of elementary (m = 46.11, sd = 5.25) and middle school (m = 45.93, sd = 5.52) teacher with preschool and secondary teachers having a score nearly 20% higher than the scores of either elementary or middle school teachers. dtcas subscale scores as can be seen in table 3, there were no statistically significant correlations between scores on the subscales and gender, primary teaching responsibility, grade level, or years of experience. a weak but statistically significant negative correlation was found between age and professional community membership (r = -.12, p = .01). table 2 means, standard deviations, and correlations for total score on tcas and demographic variables m sd 1 2 3 4 5 6 __________________________________________________ 1. age 37.00 1.22 --.69** .04 .14** .05 -.09* 2. years of experience 13.33 9.84 --.05 .08* .06 -.03 3 grade level 2.28 1.14 --.07 .15** -.02 4. primary teaching 1.91 .88 --.28** -.06 responsibility 5. gender 1.18 .39 ---.02 6. total score 47.20 5.31 -- note: *correlation significant at p<.05 level (two-tailed). **correlation significant at p<.01 level (two-tailed). equal variances not assumed. exploring “the ripple in the pond”a correlational study of the relationships between demographic variables and the teacher change agent scale 5 table 3 means, standard deviations, and correlations for subscale scores and demographic variables m sd 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1. age 37.00 1.22 -- .69** .04 .14** .05 -.03 -.12** -.04 2. years of experience 13.33 9.84 -- .05 .08* .06 .00 -.04 -.01 3 grade level 2.28 1.14 -- .07 .15** -.06 .01 -.03 4. primary teaching 1.91 .88 -- .28** -.07 -.06 .00 responsibility 5. gender 1.18 .39 -- -.04 .02 -.02 6. content/pedagogical 13.04 1.94 -- .43** .73** knowledge 7. professional 15.86 2.19 -- .43* community membership 8. collaborative 18.08 2.63 -- expertise note: *correlation significant at p<.05 level (two-tailed). **correlation significant at p<.01 level (twotailed). equal variances not assumed. anova tests were conducted to see if there were significant differences between mean subscale scores and the demographic variables. results showed a significant difference [f(4,648) = 2.75, p =.00] in the mean score for professional community membership with respect to age. after applying tukey’s hsd test, post hoc adjustment, mean professional community membership score was found to differ significantly between 20-29 year olds (m = 16.3, sd = 2.19), 30-39 year olds (m = 15.96, sd = 2.05), 40-49 (m = 15.767=, sd = 2.13), 50-59 year olds (m = 15.52, sd = 2.27), and 60 and older (m = 15.69, sd = 2.44) teachers with the mean score of 20-29 year olds on the professional community membership subscale up to 20% higher than those of their counterparts. discussion this study was designed to determine whether there was a relationship between the demographic variables of gender, age, years of experience, primary job responsibility, and grade level taught and both teachers’ overall and subscale scores on the tcas. it was found that there were statistically significant relationships between age and overall tcas score, grade level and mean tcas score, and age and professional community membership. in addition, further data analysis suggests that there is at least one area in which all teachers need support in order to be successful in their efforts to change their schools. age and teacher change agency while the initial data analysis suggested that the younger the teacher, the more likely s/he is to be a teacher change agent, further examination of the scores for each age level item by item revealed additional insights. in particular, there appeared to be age-related “phases” of teacher change agency in which both the youngest and oldest teachers are more likely to initiate change efforts. although many studies have documented the phases through which a teacher’s career progresses, the majority of these have focused on teachers’ years of experience rather than their age (i.e., margolis, 2008). thus, this study’s finding that age matters while years of experience do not is a particularly puzzling one, especially when one considers that age and years of teaching experience were highly correlated with one another, but that the latter was not correlated in any way with overall tcas score. in a sense, it seems counterintuitive; it is simply easier to imagine a “bright-eyed, bushy-tailed” and idealistic young teacher than it is to envision an older one with the same level of eagerness to change his/her school. what, then, can explain this finding that age is more important than years of experience when it comes to teachers’ willingness to change their schools? current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 6 a likely explanation is that of what some have called the “life cycle” of teachers. for example, while teachers who are 20 to 29 might feel as though they have “everything to gain” and thus are willing to be teacher change agents as a byproduct of youthful enthusiasm, the older teachers’ life experiences might cause them to feel as though there is “nothing to lose” by attempting to make a change. indeed, this “fear of routine” (huberman, 1989, p. 352) might explain why older teachers are willing to become more incorporate “activism” into their careers. since teachers’ level of ambition and sense of investment can be much lower than those of younger or older teachers during this period (huberman, 1989), the “life cycle” of teaching also explains why teachers between the ages of 40 to 59 have the lowest overall tcas scores. in other words, teachers in this group may no longer feel as though they need to “prove” anything to their colleagues and as such are more accepting of the status quo than are their younger or older counterparts. in addition, since many 40to 59-year olds may also be raising their own families, it could be that demands on their time and energy are already too numerous, and thus initiating school change is a low priority in their lives. another possible explanation might be that of career switchers. while estimates of the average age of a career switcher can vary widely, alternative teacher education programs in the geographic area in which this study was conducted report that students range from their 50s to mid-70s (freedman & goggin, 2008). therefore, it is plausible that career switchers might account for the unexpected finding that teachers over 60 may be more likely to be teacher change agents than are teachers who are 30 to 59. whatever the reason, we should remain cognizant of one key point when it comes to a teacher’s age and his/her ability to be a teacher change agent – namely that no teacher should be “written off” simply due to his/her age. while we may dismiss younger teachers as being overeager, consider older ones as ready to be “put out to pasture,” or deem the ones in between as too complacent, it can be argued they all have something to offer in terms of school reform. however, if we hope to encourage teachers between the ages of 40 and 59 to “rise up and take charge of their professional landscape” (clandinin & connelly, 1995, p.163), we need to provide substantial support to help them become more motivated to do so. grade level and teacher change agency the finding that there is a statistically significant relationship between teachers’ overall score on the tcas and the grade level at which they teach and specifically that a teacher working at either the prekindergarten or secondary (9th-12th grades) level was more likely to have a higher score on the tcas than would one working at either the elementary (k-5th) or middle school (6th-8th) level is again a puzzling one. however, while at first it is hard to conceive that teachers of young children have much in common with those who teach young adults, one commonality may explain why they are both more likely to have positive views of teacher change agency in general. regardless of the grade level at which they teach, teachers often report that they chose their field because they wanted to “make a difference” (castro & bauml, 2009, p.115), and both preschool and high school teachers do this by stressing self-awareness, interpersonal skills, and creative problem-solving (i.e., stipek & byler, 1997; beland, 2007), albeit for different reasons. while preschool teachers emphasize these skills to help young children transition into the new world of school, high school teachers do so to help students transition out of it. since both preschool and high school teachers also consider being a role model an important aspect of their work (i.e., lara-cinisomo, fuligni, daugherty, howes, & karoly, 2009; mclaughlin & talbert, 2001), one explanation for their more positive outlook on teacher change agency could be that they have internalized the values they seek to instill in their students and as such, these values have “carried over” into their own professional lives. in other words, because these teachers are facilitators of change and uncertainty in their own classrooms, they tend to practice what they teach in the larger school context. age and professional community membership given that younger teachers depend upon their colleagues more than older teachers do (mccormick & barnett, 2008), the weak but statistically significant finding that age is related to professional community membership is perhaps unsurprising. yet while many advocate the importance of the professional community in teaching (i.e., seglem, 2009), this study’s weak but statistically significant finding suggests that teachers over 60 are less interested in being a part of a professional community than are those who are younger. in fact, on item 1, “i enjoy working collaboratively with other teachers,” teachers over 60 had the lowest mean score (m = 3.58, sd = .55). in other words, although these teachers report that they can help others with their teaching skills, it would seem that they don’t want to. one possible explanation for this finding might be that while teachers over 60 may feel capable of sharing their expertise, they may also feel that the particular school context in which they find themselves is not conducive in allowing them to do so. for example, since principals “hold the reins” (cranston, 2009, p.1) in terms of whether or not a professional learning community will be successful in a particular school, it is possible that the negative opinions with regard to professional community membership of teachers over 60 is due to the fact that they do not trust the principal’s leadership (cranston, 2009). exploring “the ripple in the pond”a correlational study of the relationships between demographic variables and the teacher change agent scale 7 it could also be that “the generation gap” (johnson & kardos, 2005) between older and younger teachers explains why older teachers are less likely to be active members of a professional community. as rinke (2009) notes: “teachers working next door to each other in today’s schools tend to come from different generations” (p.12), and generational differences result in conflicting views on the importance of working with others. for example, while younger teachers are “products” of teacher education programs which tend to emphasize working with colleagues (i.e., oakes, franke, quartz, & rogers, 2002), older teachers often choose to remain isolated from their peers (little, 1990). thus, it may be that these differences in worldview and life experience cause tension between younger and older colleagues, the latter of whom may withdraw from the professional community as a result. yet whether the negative correlation between age and score on the professional community membership subscale is related to lack of trust, “the generation gap,” or something else entirely, this finding suggests that we need to find new, more effective ways of ensuring that older teachers are able and willing to share their particular teacher change agent strengths (i.e., speaking out or risktaking) with younger teachers. however, this study’s findings also suggest that it is not only teachers over 60 who need assistance in working collaboratively. supporting all teachers although data analysis suggests that elementary and middle school teachers between the ages of 40 and 59 need substantial support in order to become teacher change agents, this study’s findings also suggest that all teachers need support in at least one area if they are to be successful in school reform efforts. as table 4 demonstrates, there were four teacher change agent scale (tcas) items for which all age groups had a mean score of less than three: “i know how to influence my colleagues” (item 6); “i [don’t] prefer to work alone” (item 9); “i am [not] reluctant to rely on others” (item 10); and “i know how to motivate my colleagues” (item 14). these four items clearly relate to working with others, but where items 6 and 14 suggest that teachers have doubts about themselves, items 9 and 10 suggest they have doubts about the people with whom they work. in short, while it is true that younger teachers may have fewer doubts than do their older counterparts when it comes to actively working with colleagues, the low means of these items’ responses indicate that all teachers feel as though they are unable to collaborate effectively within a professional community, which is cause for concern. school-wide change cannot take place without the cooperation of others, and so teachers must be part of a joint effort in order for the change to extend beyond their own classrooms (louis & marks, 1998; maeroff, 1993). in other words, if a change is to extend beyond one’s own classroom, the participation of others in implementing that change is essential. however, since collaboration often requires negotiation, compromise, and at times, the ability to persuade others, working with others is often not easy. as such, changes rarely happen in school without some form of “backstage activity” which is inherent in nearly every social context. in order for teacher change agents to accomplish their goals, they must have a sophisticated understanding of formal/informal power (blase & blase, 1997). put another way, a well-developed knowledge of the intentions, desires, and viewpoints of others and the ability to use this knowledge efficiently allows teachers to be successful in their pursuit of change. teacher change agents must have this micro-political expertise; if they do not, they will be unable to work actively and effectively with others in their quest for reform, and it is unlikely that their intended change(s) will ever be realized (miles, saxl, & lieberman, 1988). in short, since it is doubtful that teachers who work alone to affect changes beyond their classrooms will be successful in their efforts, we need to provide all teachers with tools/strategies which will help them to work more effectively with their colleagues. for example, courses focusing on negotiating skills, how to identify like-minded peers with whom they could work towards school change, or the “art” of persuasion would be particularly beneficial to any teacher. limitations as with any study of this type, it is important to remember that correlation does not equal causation. put simply, it would be inappropriate to think that just because a teacher is 52, s/he is unlikely to be a teacher change agent or that it is a foregone conclusion that a preschool teacher will be. also, while this study did not find any significant correlations between the demographic variables of gender, years of experience, or primary job responsibility and either overall tcas or subscale scores, further research with larger sample sizes might indicate otherwise. however, despite these limitations, this study does represent an important first step in making the identification of teacher change agents possible, which may prove useful to any stakeholder in the education community who wishes to see change “happen” in schools. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 8 table 4 means and standard deviations by item m (sd) item 1 3.67 (.53) item 2 3.32 (.74) item 3 3.03 (.70) item 4 3.55 (.52) item 5 3.45 (.52) item 6 2.79 (.59) item 7 3.24 (.72) item 8 3.16 (.69) item 9 2.81 (.71) item 10 2.57 (.73) item 11 3.02 (.70) item 12 3.49 (.58) item 13 3.32 (.75) item 14 2.74 (.58) item 15 3.04 (.61) references beland, k. 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(1991). teachers who lead: the rhetoric of reform and the realities of practice. new york: teachers college press. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 10 appendix teacher change agent scale directions: please indicate your level of agreement by circling one of the following choices for each statement: sa = strongly agree a = agree d = disagree sd = strongly disagree 1. i value working collaboratively with other teachers. sa a d sd 2. if i feel it is necessary, i will speak out and express my views to my colleagues. sa a d sd 3. i am known as a person who is not afraid to take risks. sa a d sd 4. i can adapt to the needs of my students when necessary. sa a d sd 5. i am able to assess/evaluate student understanding using a variety of techniques. sa a d sd 6. i know how to influence my colleagues. sa a d sd 7. i invest time in understanding my students’ learning styles and interests. sa a d sd 8. i can help other teachers with their teaching skills. sa a d sd 9. i prefer to work alone. sa a d sd 10. i am reluctant to rely on others. sa a d sd 11. i can’t get through to the most difficult (i.e., at-risk) students. sa a d sd 12. i believe that when teachers work together, they are able to influence practice in their schools. sa a d sd 13. i believe that in order for change to be successful, teachers must work together. sa a d sd 14. i know how to motivate my colleagues. sa a d sd 15. i am resistant to suggesting changes. sa a d sd exploring “the ripple in the pond”a correlational study of the relationships between demographic variables and the teacher change agent scale 11 article citation lukacs, k. (2012). exploring “the ripple in the pond”a correlational study of the relationships between demographic variables and the teacher change agent scale. current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/956 author notes karrin lukacs, phd shenandoah university 1460 university drive, winchester, va 22601 klukacs@su.edu karrin lukacs is an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at shenandoah university. her research interests include teacher change agency, how teaching and learning are portrayed in film, and mothers who return to school to become teachers. manuscript received: 3/13/2013 revisions received: 5/10/2012 accepted: 6/2/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 12 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template 1 volume 7, number 4 may 4, 2004 issn 1099-839x what do students expect to learn? the role of learner expectancies, beliefs, and attributions for success and failure in student motivation christine galbreath jernigan university of new south wales this study uses the foreign language classroom to examine students' beliefs about learning, perceptions of goal attainment, and motivation to continue language study. survey and interview results indicated students’ attributions for success and failure and their expectations for certain subjects’ learnability played a role in the relationship between goal attainment and volition. it appears that over-effaciousness negatively affected student motivation. for other students who felt they were "bad at languages," their negative beliefs increased their motivation to study. suggestions for how these results apply to other disciplines and interventions for increasing student motivation are offered. introduction "life is largely a matter of expectation." horace (65 bc-8 bc) over the past decade, second language acquisition researchers have added greatly to their understanding of motivation. their discoveries are often relevant to educational disciplines outside language learning, but are rarely mentioned in academic journals or texts for more general education. the present study looks specifically at language student expectation and motivation to see how student expectations relate to their motivation for continued language study. this paper examines several affective aspects of expectancy. these include students’ attributions for success and failure as well as students’ self-efficacy defined as "assurance of capabilities" (bandura, 1994). these aspects were chosen because they are under the learners' control and can therefore be changed through interventions (weinstein, 1994). the relationship between expectations and motivation is relevant for educators in disciplines other than language learning, particularly for instructors or researchers of mathematics. in studying language, much like studying math, students come to the class with preconceived notions of their abilities to succeed. just as students of math "tend to see themselves as either mathematically inclined or disinclined" (watson-acosta, 2003), language students tend to decide early in their studies whether or not they have the "special gift" of language learning ability (horwitz, 1989). a brief history of motivational theories is offered, followed by the study’s significance to current literature. theoretical framework value-expectancy theories most relevant to this study is the social-cognitive approach to motivation, a theory generally used by educational psychologists. it emphasizes the influence that students' beliefs and interpretations of their experiences have on cognitive processes (weiner, 1986 in pintrich et al, 1993). the decisions involved in goal setting are influenced by the degree to which individuals expect their goals will be met and by their beliefs about the importance of effort and abilities. described formulaically, the attraction to a certain subject or task equals the value the person places on it "times the apparent probability it will be attained" (klinger, 1977, p. 303). value levels affect both initial and continued motivation. learners’ reactions to difficulties faced throughout the goal attainment process are influenced by whether or not they feel what is gained from their efforts is worthwhile-meaning, is the effort put forth moving current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 2 them in the direction they want to go (helping them make a certain grade, giving them a sense of accomplishment, etc.) (noels, 1999). the importance a task holds for an individual relates to what goal theorists term "goal orientation." orientation involves the reasons affecting students' initial choice, the degree and direction of effort, and whether or not students persist in that activity (nam yung, 1996). individuals may be oriented towards learning goals (also called mastery goals) or performance goals (covington, 2000). students with learning goals demonstrate an incremental belief about ability, wherein ability level is perceived as changeable, not fixed. they acknowledge the possibility for growth and focus their attention on mastery instead of just trying to get by. those with performance goals, conversely, demonstrate an entity belief about ability, wherein ability is fixed and not affected by increased effort. they tend to avoid difficult tasks for fear of failure. learning orientations have been shown to affect motivation and student achievement. mastery goals have been shown to lead to more active engagement in learning than performance goals (pintrich, 2000). students who are less cognitively engaged employ fewer learning strategies and self-regulatory practices which in turn affect their achievement (covington, 2000). schommer (1990) sees a direct link between beliefs and achievement. her study found college students who perceived knowledge as "fixed" demonstrated less appropriate, overly-simplistic writing styles compared to students who saw learning as more incremental and multi-dimensional (schommer, 1990 in mori, 1997). this is perhaps because those self-regulating strategies that help students try multiple solutions to challenges are the same strategies used in the complex thought of writing tasks (diener & dweck, 1980). self-efficacy and attribution the connection between student beliefs and volition has received little attention in language learning motivation research. further investigation could aid instructors and program developers in determining how to best meet students’ needs. albert bandura’s work in aptitude beliefs is the cornerstone of self-efficacy research. he asserts that highly efficacious students see difficult tasks as challenges to be mastered, not threats to be avoided: "such an efficacious outlook fosters intrinsic interest and deep engrossment in activities" (bandura, 1994, p. 73). self-efficacious students employ more strategic planning towards accomplishing their goals (oxford, 1994). efficacy levels also affect the type of linguistic information they choose to pay attention to, which in turn affects proficiency (mori, 1997). student efficacy often comes from vicarious experiences (schunk, 1991). for example, students may assess their language learning ability based on ‘myths’ propagated by classmates or on advertisers' promises of quick success. many university students expect to be fluent after one or two years of study (horwitz, 1989). they become frustrated when they do not progress that quickly and often discontinue study of the language when their expectations go unmet (horwitz, 1989; altman, 1985). bandura (1994) argues that the resulting frustration lowers self-efficacy and makes students "slacken their efforts and give up quickly in the face of difficulties" (bandura, 1994, p. 8). this frustration is not unique to language study. the negative stereotype about women and math, for example, affects students’ efficacy. female students are so averse to reinforcing the stereotype that they become overly anxious in math courses, impairing their performance (oswald & harvey, 2003). their lowered self-efficacy makes them use fewer autonomous learning behaviors necessary for achievement (greene et al, 1999) and causes attrition in future math-related courses (oswald & harvey, 2003). clearly, however, not all students desist when faced with challenges. to explain this variability, researchers in educational psychology point to student attributions, defined as perceived causes for success or failure (schunk, 1991). "locus of control," a generalized control over outcomes, describes how individuals perceive success or failure as either independent of their own actions and thus "externally controlled" or dependent on the way they behave and thus "internally controlled" (rotter, 1966 in schunk, 1991). an attribution such as "motivation" or "effort" would most likely be considered "controllable," whereas "luck" or task difficulty would be considered uncontrollable (weiner et al., 1983 in schunk, 1991). whether students believe they have control over learning outcomes affects how much effort they expend in learning and how long they persist in their efforts (oxford, 1994). according to dolinger’s (2000) study of college students’ locus of control, students who feel they have internal control may be more successful learners because they are more perceptive of their environments: "internals more readily acquire and utilize information that is relevant to their goal situation" (dolinger, 2000, p. 1). other studies show that students with internal attributions of control demonstrate higher achievement because they are better at planning how to complete academic tasks (biggs, 1987 in hall, 2001). conversely, attributions of low ability negatively affect long-term success and student retention, as students desist in the face of lower self-esteem and a sense of helplessness (graham, 1990 in tse, 2000) in recent years, these causal attributions have been more frequently mentioned in interpreting results of foreign language studies (nam yung, 1996; wen, 1997). yet few foreign language researchers have included attributional theories in the design of their studies. the present study operationalizes the concept of attributions within the context of the foreign language classroom. significance and objectives this study will examine university students of portuguese, a population chosen for two reasons. what do students expect to learn? 3 portuguese is the world’s eighth most widely spoken language (family education network, 2003) and is considered a "critical language" for the federal government. survey figures, however, show portuguese language programs in u.s. universities are not keeping up with other language programs in terms of growth (national security education program, 2001; silva, 2000). students of portuguese were also chosen as participants for examining expectancies and attributions since changes in beliefs may be most needed for students of languages that are less commonly taught (lctls). overefficaciousness has been shown to be problematic for students of more commonly taught languages such as french and spanish (horwitz, 1989). it can be even more problematic for students of lesser commonly taught languages because they have generally had less exposure to the language before its introduction in the classroom. they therefore have less real world experience on which to base their assumptions. of the limited studies on lctl students, several found that students were not aware of the level of difficulty of the language; the ensuing over-efficaciousness proved a barrier to continued motivation (wen 1997, p. 236). in fact, two years of instruction, the amount required in most universities, leaves the lctl student at only the very beginning stages of the language (mcginnis, 1994). in the case of portuguese students, many already know a bit of spanish and therefore may hold unrealistically high expectations of reaching advanced levels of portuguese within a short amount of time. this study seeks to answer the following research questions to see how students’ expectations, attributions, and beliefs about learning affect their motivation and their decisions to continue or discontinue formal study of the language: 1. what are students’ expectations for goal attainment? 2. what are students’ attributions for success and failure in meeting their language learning goals? what are their beliefs about language learning? 3. what role, if any, might students' perceived goal attainment play in students’ motivation and their decision to continue studying the language? methodology and procedures a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods were employed to survey a large pool of participants while also obtaining more in-depth data from open-ended questions and interviews. if we consider qualitative and quantitative research as two ends of a continuum rather than two completely distinct methods, this study would fall closer to the qualitative end of the spectrum. the study is therefore more exploratory than confirmatory. it offers a new perspective on this student group, but avoids the causal "certainties" that purely quantitative data pursues. the various types of data in this exploration worked together. numerical survey data (appendices a and b) gave general background information on students and an overview of their goals, expectations and motivations. it also helped determine which students to interview (a full description of this decision process is found in the "participants" section of this work). the more qualitative open-ended survey items added details to responses to the more numerical survey questions. they also pointed out key informants to interview and helped guide interview questions. for example, several students mentioned an advisor who had told them how easy it was to learn portuguese. i therefore interviewed this advisor to find out more about her interaction with students. post-survey interviews asked students to elaborate on their survey responses and thus obtained a more in-depth picture of students’ beliefs and motivations. these measures were developed through a series of pilot studies. measurements and pilot studies several pilot studies at the university of texas at austin (u.t.), where the actual study would be performed, elicited information about students' motivations. this information helped formulate interview questions and modify previously used survey instruments to fit this specific population. in the first pilot study, the researcher observed 30 class hours at the university of texas to become familiar with the portuguese classroom setting. opening and closing interviews were performed to see how students would articulate concepts like goals and goal attainment. the next pilot used three portuguese classes as its subjects. students were given an open-ended questionnaire that asked them to brainstorm their reasons for taking portuguese and their goals for their class. they then circled their three most important reasons and goals. the reasons students gave were coded and used to modify the motivational survey "reasons for studying spanish" (ely, 1986), which after further pilot testing became the survey section "reasons for taking portuguese" (appendix a part ii). similarly, the goals students mentioned were used to modify a goals survey previously used with students of french and spanish (harlow & muyskens, 1994). at the close of the semester, students completed speiller’s (1988) questionnaire "factors influencing students to continue or discontinue language study" and were asked to comment on any confusing or non-applicable parts of the study. based on students’ comments, the survey was broken down into two separate surveys, one for continuers and one for discontinuers. the third pilot study administered the revised surveys to students in two other portuguese classes. results indicated the importance of students' expectations to their perceived goal attainment. though no specific hypotheses were made based solely on pilot data, some preliminary assumptions served as a skeleton for examining patterns, current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 4 testing the conditions of various relationships, and building theories. to gain richer data and ensure that students’ individual responses would be elicited, the open-ended questions were added to the surveys. to test this combination of open-ended and likert scale items, the modified surveys were piloted. the actual study would begin soon, so this version of the surveys was given to a group of spanish students at another texas university to avoid having students see the surveys in both the pilot and in the actual study. this pilot was helpful in ensuring that students would understand the survey’s breakdown of cultural items. cultural items were broken down into four elements, as recommended by the american council for the teaching of foreign languages. the council notes that the culture taught in the classroom is not just one entity. instead, it consists of both products distinct to different countries and cultural patterns as well as the actual understanding (perspectives) of those products and patterns of behavior. in the surveys, the breakdown was described as follows:  country's products (e.g. books, art, music, political systems, etc.);  cultural perspectives on those products (attitudes explaining why certain products exist and are valued);  cultural practices (how people use cultural products; patterns of behavior such as how people celebrate, dress, etc.); and  cultural perspectives on those practices (i.e. the attitudes and ideas that explain why people behave as they do) (national standards in foreign language, 1999). this breakdown is important to avoid problems faced in previous research on foreign language goals. a prime example is found in alalou’s (2001)'s questionnaire on students' perceived needs in foreign language courses. as alalou admits, since the term "culture" was not defined, results were difficult to interpret: although in this study, 'culture' is understood in its broad sense, referring to both high and popular culture,..we know very little about students' definition of 'culture' because students in this study were not asked to provide a specific definition of the term (alalou, 2001, p. 461). in concluding this description of measure development, it should be noted that before beginning the actual study, the researcher realized the limitations of using self-report measures. one could argue, for example, that students may say that in the next few weeks they plan to register for another portuguese class and continue their studies, when in fact they may not actually register for that class when the time comes. this study examines students’ motivations, however, as opposed to all the many factors that affect course registration (illness, finances, etc.). as such, self-report measures appear to reveal the data necessary to better understand what encourages students to want to learn more. participants participants in this study included 101 lowerdivision portuguese students at u.t. austin, their instructors, and four student advisors. the research was reviewed and passed by the university’s human subjects review board. before any surveys or interviews were completed, the subjects received a consent form discussing the purpose of the research, their anonymity as subjects, and that their participation/non-participation would not be discussed with their instructors or otherwise affect their standing in the department. information on individual student participants was gathered through the background questions completed by eighty-four studentsforty-three females and forty-one males. most students were undergraduates (71.3%) with most of those sophomores or seniors, 26.2% were graduate students, and two students had already graduated. nearly half were humanities majors with the remaining students studying sciences or registered as ‘undeclared.’ well over half of the students were caucasian (63.1%). a large percentage were hispanic (29.8%). other students described their ethnicity as asian-american, africanamerican, or "other." most spoke english as a first language though over half of all respondents had studied spanish formally for over two years. twenty percent spoke spanish as a first language. just over half were taking the portuguese to fulfill a requirement. data collection data sources included surveys and interviews with students, instructors and advisors. in the actual study, the first week of class, the researcher administered the first survey on students' backgrounds, initial motivations, goals, and expectations (see appendix a). the second survey, administered the antepenultimate week of class, examined students' perceived goal attainment and reasons for (dis)continuing formal study (appendix b). telephone interviews were conducted with the following student groups: seven of the eight students who dropped the class before the end of the semester; all six students who were auditing courses; and five ‘extra’ students whose survey responses merited further inquiry. in addition, thirty students taking the course for a grade were selected to do both opening and closing interviews (see appendices c and d). these thirty subjects were selected using a stratified purposeful sampling technique (mertens, 1997) based on students' goal values and expectations ratings. groups were formed by coding goal value and expectation sections from the first surveys (appendix a part iii c and d). using excel, students were divided into four groups: those with a tendency to have low-valued goals paired with low expectations, those with low-valued goals paired with high expectations, etc. participants were separated into level (beginner, intermediate, etc.). each what do students expect to learn? 5 class was separated into the four groups and participants names were then randomly chosen from each group. to follow up on students’ responses, the researcher interviewed four teachers and four administrators whom students mentioned as having influenced their decision to study the language. data was also collected at tulane university to compare their students’ motivations for taking portuguese with university of texas students. tulane was chosen because it is a small private university (12,000 students) compared to the university of texas, a large public institution (49,000 students). the purpose of tulane’s inclusion was not to show that results from the university of texas study are transferable to all other universities. instead, by comparing u.t.’s data to a different university, it was useful in giving thicker description of u.t.’s population and environment. this may aid readers in deciding the degree of transferability this study has to their own situations. survey and interview measures and selection procedures were identical to those used with the university of texas sample, except that the second survey was not administered to the tulane population. thirty-five participants from tulane took part in the study. judging from non-participant observation, course descriptions and syllabi, and instructors' and students' comments, u.t. and tulane’s first and second semester courses seemed fairly similar in content. one tulane course, a portuguese literature class with five students, was not offered to u.t. undergraduates, and was therefore not included in the results. data analysis survey data analysis used the statistical software spss and included frequencies, means, and standard deviations, and factor analysis of likert scale responses. these figures and the reliability for each scale are found in the results section of this work. qualitative analysis used the qualitative research program "qsr nud*ist" (qualitative solutions and research pty ltd.’s non-numerical unstructured data: indexing, searching, and theorizing). it is a code-based theorybuilding program useful in forming and describing categories, making connections between categories, constructing theories, and validating or rejecting theories about categorical relationships. its flexible searching features were helpful in working with large amounts of text and coding. its compatibility with spss helped link the quantitative and qualitative data. as the data were collected, i transcribed interviews and employed a grounded theory approach for analysis and for analysis of the qualitative survey responses. i used strauss and corbin's (1990) analysis method: a "systematic set of procedures to develop an inductively derived grounded theory about a phenomenon" (strauss & corbin, p. 24). grounded theory involves going into a research situation (in this case, a college classroom) and finding out what is taking place and how the people relate to that situation. the first stage of procedures involved the "opencoding" of interview data, defined as "breaking down, examining, comparing, conceptualizing, and categorizing data." (strauss and corbin, 1990, p. 61). all 60 transcripts from the thirty main interviewees, along with those from the seven "drop" and the five "extra" interviews, were read for emerging commonalties and patterns. i used a line-byline approach analyzing each sentence and separating data into categories relevant to students' motivation. categories were given descriptive names like "beliefs about learning culture," and the categories were described in memos. throughout the coding process, i reread category names, their descriptions, and their coded information to ensure new information fit the categories. often times these rereadings, coupled with the constant addition of new data, prompted the collapse of two similar categories into one. or the addition of new data prompted the expansion of one category into several, for a richer description of the phenomenon. for example, at first i had only one category for students’ beliefs. later, however, this category was expanded into two categories: one for "beliefs-aboutlanguage-learning" (with subcategories for beliefs about "natural ability," the importance of "early exposure", etc.) and one for "beliefs about learning culture" (with students’ comments about how culture was learned separately from the language, how teaching culture was laden with bias etc.). the split was made as it became obvious, in analyzing student responses, that patterns emerged differently under those two categories. the next step involved "axial coding" in which connections were formed among the categories found in open coding. a tree-like structure contained each category, with "motivation" as the root from which branches (categories) and limbs (sub-categories) emerged. the tree diagram was modified as i worked and reworked the connections among categories, confirming relationships with data from other sources such as teachers' and administrators' interview data or responses to open-ended survey items. there was a constant interplay between the interview data and responses to questionnaire items to validate and refine relationships among categories. the tree sketches were helpful when interpreting and confirming quantitative findings. for example, i was not surprised when, during factor analysis, a survey item about students’ desire to "translate portuguese" clustered with less practical items such as "enjoy myself" and "improve my accent." interview data had similarly shown that many students whose goals fell into a "hobby/fun" category also had more "practical goals" and wanted to put portuguese to work-related use. data analysis took place both during and after data collection, in line with creswell’s (1998) emphasis on a zigzag approach between data gathering and its analysis. it was essential that the analysis begin during data collection current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 6 because the patterns, commonalties and differences that emerged early in the collection process could then be examined in further detail in later interviews, follow-up emails or extra interviews. results research question 1: student expectations reasons for taking the class: initial motivation to give a better idea of students’ expectations for goal attainment, it is important to examine why students initially decided to take the class. the "reasons for studying portuguese" section consisted of thirty items, including an "other" item; each item was ranked in importance ranging from 0-3. rankings of the top 10 means for responses for the "reasons for studying portuguese" section appear in descending order in table 1 below. the scale was subjected to an internal consistency reliability analysis. very few students responded to the "other" item so it was not included in determining internal consistency. the cronbach alpha was .73 which is somewhat low, suggesting multidimensionality within the survey items. as such, some clusters of items may tend to vary together more than others, bound by an underlying commonality (spss, 1999). a factor analysis was performed (tables 2-7) to show the underlying factors that link certain survey items. factor analysis was chosen over principal components analysis since it is recommended in cases where items are correlated. in fact, items did appear to be correlated as shown by the .718 kaiser-meyer olkin measure sampling adequacy. maximum likelihood extraction method with a promax rotation was used as it is suggested for use in cases where items are correlated (rennie, 1997). there were nine eigenvalues greater than 1.0. i decided to set the number of factors at six rather than nine since, judging from the scree plots, there appeared to be a leveling off after six factors, indicating that six factors were sufficient to account for the variance. values lower than .3 were suppressed. it is questionable in a confirmatory factor analysis to include variables whose correlations with the other variables are below .4 in absolute value (hedderson, 1993, p. 174). however, since this was an exploratory factor analysis and since the two variables with loadings just under .4 appear to fit conceptually, i felt the information gained from including the two variables outweighed any reservations about relatively low values. six factors accounted for 45.4% of the total variance and the factor correlation matrix showed a low correlation of .28, indicating that the six factors, or clusters, were distinct. these groupings of items were helpful in interpreting survey responses because items clustering together could be considered part of the same underlying concept. for example, the first factor to emerge was labeled "cultural interests" since it housed items related to students' interests in the target countries' cultures, including their history and their importance among other countries in the world. table 2 illustrates the questionnaire items that form this cluster and the factor loadings. this cluster accounted for 17.81% of the total variance and the cronbach alpha for this factor was .87. the second cluster of items that emerged was labeled "career/academic advancement." the total variance explained by this cluster was 7.96% and the cronbach alpha for this factor was .73. the items and loadings for this cluster are listed in table below. though it may appear that the "portuguesespeaking friends" item is illogically grouped among more practical motivations, interviews with students revealed that this cluster is not purely pragmatic in nature. the following student quotes show how work and pleasure cannot be so easily divided. the future career wasn't at all important at first. i was just interested in being able to understand what my (brazilian) girlfriend was thinking. but the sounds, i always liked..the cultural items came up later. then after taking the language, i started moving in the company towards latin american and then became interested..in latin american and brazil. (the main reason i am taking portuguese is that) i wanted to learn another language and have covered the western hemisphere with english and spanish.i never considered the job part. the job part i didn’t think of until later when it was like, ‘if i keep doing this, i could put it on my resume.’ i'm a spanish speaker and i inherently love the (portuguese) language and there's a trilingual fascination because of business which grew out of my love for spanish and brazil. so it (my reason for studying portuguese)does have to do with love of other cultures and brazilian friends, so i love to sell brazil. the third cluster, "requirement motivation," had a cronbach alpha of .37 and accounted for 7.55% of the total variance. the "travel for pleasure" item loaded positively for "requirement motivation" while other variables loaded negatively. the sign difference indicates that as interest in "travel for pleasure" increased, interest in "requirement" and "scheduling" decreased and vice versa. the fourth cluster, "language as hobby," accounted for 4.99% of the total variance and its cronbach alpha was .71. its items were characterized by a love of language study due to ease, experience, and intrinsic interest. the fifth cluster, "fun," accounted for 3.98% of the total variance and its cronbach alpha was .73. items in this cluster described students' desire to enjoy learning portuguese due to its interesting sounds and to the fact that is less commonly taught than spanish or french. what do students expect to learn? 7 table 1: top 10 students' ranking for reasons for studying portuguese survey item: reasons for studying portuguese mean standard deviation 9. because i feel it may be helpful in my future career 2.27 .97 1. because i want to use portuguese when i travel for pleasure to a portuguese-speaking country 2.21 .88 27. because i thought it might be fun 1.92 .92 7. because i am interested in (a) portuguese-speaking country's(ies') cultural practicess (how people use cultural products; patterns of behavior like how people celebrate, dress, etc.) 1.90 .91 3. because i am interested in (a) portuguese-speaking country/countries' history 1.80 .98 8. because i am interested in (a) portuguese-speaking country's (ies') cultural perspectives on those practices (i.e. the attitudes and ideas that explain why people behave as they do) 1.76 .90 2. because i want to able to converse with portuguese-speakers in the u.s. 1.76 .90 5. because i am interested in (a) portuguese-speaking country's(ies') products (e.g. books, art, music, political systems, etc.) 1.75 1.07 6. because i am interested in (a) portuguese-speaking country's (ies') cultural perspectives on those products (attitudes explaining why certain products exist and are valued) 1.65 1.10 15. because it may make me a more competitive job candidate or graduate school candidate 1.64 1.23 table 2: factor loadings for the "cultural interests" cluster (for tables 2-9, see appendix a part ii for full survey items) cultural interests loading 6. perspectives on products 0.904 7. cultural practices 0.881 8. perspectives on practices 0.828 5. cultural products 0.723 3. history 0.549 19. study in subject involving portuguese 0.487 17. important language in the world 0.396 current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 8 table 3: factor loadings for the "career/academic advancement" cluster career/academic advancement loading 10. study or business abroad 0.697 9. future career 0.56 15. competitive job/grad school candidate 0.529 21. connection to major 0.503 11. portuguese-speaking friends 0.475 table 4: factor loadings for the "requirement motivation " cluster requirement motivation loading 12. requirement university -0.658 4. requirement major. minor scholarship -0.631 18. scheduling -0.472 1. travel for pleasure 0.457 26. dissatisfied with study of another language -0.347 table 5: factor loadings for the "language as hobby" cluster language as hobby loading 24. languages come easy 0.872 23. love languages 0.734 25. easier given my background in spanish 0.523 table 6: factor loadings for the "fun" cluster fun loading 27. fun 0.765 20. sounds of portuguese 0.64 22. something different 0.558 table 7: factor loadings for the "heritage" cluster heritage loading 17. communicate with relatives 0.751 13. heritage 0.614 what do students expect to learn? 9 the final cluster, "heritage," accounted for 3.08% of the total variance and its cronbach alpha was .62. (see table 6.) these results indicate that students were taking portuguese for a variety of reasons, in particular future career and travel-for-pleasure plans; cultural reasons were also frequently mentioned. (see table 7.) tulane university’s results for initial motivation in comparing tulane’s results of the reasons section of the survey, independent sample t-tests found that only eight of the twenty-nine reasons were significantly different, and all eight were related either to language requirements, language-as hobby-items, or cultural items. the table that follows compares the ranking of means of u.t. and tulane students' reasons for enrolling, with the statistically significant reasons highlighted for the university with the higher mean. the table shows that tulane students placed less emphasis on the language requirement than u.t. students. interviews with administrators at the university of texas and with professors at tulane suggested that u.t. students use portuguese to fulfill the language requirement more than tulane students. this is most likely due to larger u.t. enrollments which cause spanish classes to fill up early. students therefore turn to portuguese as a viable option for meeting their requirements. since tulane is a smaller, private university, it has fewer problems with students' demands exceeding course openings. u.t. also has a longer language requirement of 4 semesters where tulane’s is three. tulane students’ ranking of "easier given spanish background, "love languages, and "languages come easy" as higher than u.t. students may owe to differences in language backgrounds of the two populations. table 9’s background survey results show that with the exception of the "over 2 year" category, tulane students tended towards greater exposure to spanish language than u.t. students. the background section of the survey also showed that tulane students had spent more time in a wider variety of spanish-speaking countries than u.t. students. perhaps differences in experience with spanish, be it formal study or travel/work abroad, could account for the higher number of tulane students noting that portuguese and language in general come easily to them. survey responses showed a general tendency for a broader range of responses from the university of texas population. results from the independent sample t-tests of the "reasons for studying portuguese" section showed higher standard deviations for u.t. than for tulane responses. examination of boxplots of responses from both populations indicated that this range of response from u.t. was not caused by outliers. these results could indicate that tulane is a more homogeneous sample. it could be argued, therefore, that the university of texas sample, with its wider dispersion of responses, gives a broader cross section of the larger population of portuguese students. though the nature of this study as a whole is exploratory, these results are helpful for researchers interested in conducting more confirmatory type analyses and for readers deciding how this study’s results transfer to their own situations. they indicate that u.t.’s population gives evidence of being a somewhat representative sample, offering diversity of responses that may be found in other university settings. goals for the course on the goals section of the survey (appendix a part iii), students ranked each goal item from 0-3. the scale was subjected to an internal consistency reliability analysis. the cronbach alpha was found to be .85. rankings of the top 10 goals are listed below. to have a clearer picture of patterns emerging from students' responses, survey items underwent a factor analysis. i used a principal axis factoring extraction method with a direct oblimin rotation. this extraction and rotation are recommended in cases where the items are correlated. there were only three eigenvalues greater than 1.0. i decided to set the number of factors at four rather than three, however, since scree plots showed more of a leveling off after four factors than after three. values lower than .3 were suppressed. four factors accounted for 56.2% of the total variance. again, clusters were labeled according to the underlying factor they appeared to represent. each factors’ percentage of the total variance (ptv) is listed in each table along with its cronbach alpha. it was obvious from survey results that several students’ goals followed from their reasons for taking the course. the four skills of "speaking," "listening," "writing," and "reading" ranked as the most important goal categories. this fits logically with the highly ranked reasons for studying portuguese "future career" and "travel for pleasure." meeting goals within the four skills categories would facilitate work-related contact with native speakers and travel to portuguese-speaking countries. it makes sense that the goal category "enjoy myself" ranked highly given the high ranking of "fun" as a reason for taking portuguese. it is important to note, however, that in many cases, students’ reasons for taking portuguese were different from their goals. the most marked difference was that of culture, ranked as an important reason for taking the class, but not ranked as highly as an actual goal for the course. expectations and perceived goal attainment results from the second survey indicated students felt most of their objectives were met except those involving speaking and cultural goals. the rankings for the top 10 goals attained are found in table 15. using a scale from one to ten, students ranked the degree to which they felt their goals for the semester were met. current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 10 table 8: reasons and tulane reasons rankings (sd=standard deviation) u.t. rankings mean sd tulane mean sd future career 2.35 0.97 future career 2.57 0.65 travel for pleasure 2.2 0.87 travel for pleasure 2.43 0.61 cultural practices 1.91 0.91 cultural practices 2.29 0.79 fun 1.78 0.96 love languages 2.23 0.91 cultural products 1.78 1.07 perspectives on practices 2.23 0.88 competitive job/grad school candidate 1.76 1.2 competitive job/grad school candidate 2.2 1.08 perspectives on practices 1.76 0.98 easier given spanish background 2.17 0.92 perspectives on products 1.75 1.04 fun 2.06 0.87 history 1.75 1 cultural products 1.97 1.07 love languages 1.65 1.09 converse with speakers in u.s. 1.94 1.03 requirementmajor/minor/scholarship 1.62 1.45 perspectives on products 1.91 1.04 converse with speakers in u.s. 1.6 0.89 history 1.91 1.01 portuguese-speaking friends 1.56 1.08 sounds of portuguese 1.8 0.99 sounds of portuguese 1.55 1.09 portuguese-speaking friends 1.77 1.17 study or business abroad 1.49 1.3 connection to major 1.77 1.19 important language in the world 1.45 0.86 important language in the world 1.77 0.77 easier given spanish background 1.44 1.13 languages come easy 1.74 0.98 connection to major 1.42 1.32 study or business abroad 1.71 1.3 something different 1.22 1.03 study in subject involving portuguese 1.43 1.2 requirement-university 1.16 1.42 something different 1.11 1.02 languages come easy 1.05 1.03 requirement-major/minor/scholarship 0.97 1.18 study in subject involving portuguese 0.76 1.1 requirement-university 0.49 0.92 scheduling 0.42 0.88 faculty encouraged me 0.32 0.73 communicate with relatives 0.33 0.9 advisor encouraged me 0.26 0.79 classes less demanding 0.31 0.69 communicate with relatives 0.26 0.78 dissatisfied with study of another language 0.29 0.71 heritage 0.17 0.57 advisor encouraged me 0.25 0.75 scheduling 0.14 0.6 faculty encouraged me 0.22 0.71 classes less demanding 0.11 0.53 heritage 0.18 0.58 dissatisfied with study of another language 8.57e02 0.28 what do students expect to learn? 11 table 9: u.t. (in comparable classes to tulane participants) and tulane participants' formal study of spanish formal spanish study percentages of u.t. participants* percentages of tulane participants native spanish-speaker 25.90% 42.90% over 2 years 61.10% 48.50% 2 years or less 1. 8% 8.50% no previous study 11.10% 0% table 10: students’ top 10 goal value rankings goal category mean std. deviation 4. speaking 2.44 0.96 2. listening 2.24 1.04 1. writing 2.23 1.01 3. reading 2 1.2 13. enjoy myself 1.81 1.28 12. grade 1.71 1.34 5. cultural products 1.39 1.18 10. accent 1.25 1.26 11. translating 1.23 1.24 14. language requirement 1.19 1.41 table11: factor loadings for the "four skills" cluster four skills ptv 46.05% cronbach alpha .86 loading writing 0.778 listening 0.809 reading 0.374 speaking 0.929 current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 12 table 12: factor loadings for the "culture" cluster culture ptv 11.2% cronbach alpha .84 loading cultural products 0.605 perspectives on products 0.818 cultural practices 0.605 perspectives on practices 0.837 table 13: factor loadings for the "requirement" cluster requirement ptv 5.4% cronbach alpha . 52 loading grade 0.754 language requirement 0.45 table 14: factor loadings for the "linguistic hobby" cluster linguistic hobby ptv 3.5% cronbach alpha .73 loading compare portuguese -0.463 accent -0.619 translating -0.666 enjoy myself -0.534 table 15: rankings for students' perceived goal attainment item n minimum response maximum response mean standard deviation language requirement 26 4 10 9 1.62 grade 45 0 10 8.27 2.58 enjoy myself 50 2 10 7.72 2.42 compare portuguese 28 0 10 7.64 2.67 reading 52 0 10 7.08 2.33 listening 58 0 10 6.38 2.44 writing 58 0 10 6.17 2.44 translating 37 0 10 6.11 2.16 speaking 61 0 10 5.93 2.68 accent 38 0 10 5.89 2.71 what do students expect to learn? 13 ranking relatively low were goals of speaking (ranking 9 th ), accent (10 th ), and the four cultural items (ranking 11 th -14 th ). students interviewed were asked about these specific items. responses indicated that they either lowered their expectations as the semester progressed especially with respect to speaking goalsor they held low expectations for these goals from the outsetparticularly for meeting cultural objectives. these trends in expectations deserved further inquiry. speaking goals interview results showed that portuguese students, like students of more commonly taught languages, believed it is best to learn how to speak the language "naturally" in the target country rather than by taking classes (wenden, 1987). instructors of other disciplines may find that students hold similar beliefs about subjects such as art, music, social studies, etc. students may come to the class with preconceived notions that such topics lend themselves only to "learning in the real world" and thus may not see them as learnable in the classroom. one might assume that after actually spending time in class, students would come to see the classroom as a workshop for experiential learning. they would thereby increase their expectations for meeting goals they had previously thought were incompatible with the classroom setting. yet students in this study often times held even lower expectations for meeting speaking goals as the class progressed. this was due to not getting many opportunities to speak the language in class and not finding native speaker contacts to practice with outside of class. instructor interviews indicated teachers felt they were giving students the chance to practice and the opportunity to have a hand in their own learning. the activities teachers cited as practice, however, were often seen by students as rote, time-wasting exercises. for example, one teacher gave a biweekly answering machine assignment that he felt "motivated students to work on their own". however, several students described the activity as "silly," and one student said she felt "it wasn't really applying.. it was more like putting the words together from the vocabulary list". nearly half of the students interviewed felt that portuguese pronunciation itself and their speaking goals in general were more difficult than expected. surprisingly, many of these students spoke spanish. the following citations are only a few examples of comments that demonstrate how spanish slowed students’ learning. it's a little more difficult for spanish speakers because the accent is tough for spanish speakers to grasp. (researcher: that's interesting because you thought a spanish background would make it easier to learn portuguese.) right, the grammar, the reading is not hard but the actual speaking is difficult. it's more difficult than i expected. the spanish helped with sentence structure but the pronunciation is hard whereas in spanish, when you read it, every letter is the same as it is written. it's strange because it seems it should be easier than it is, but phonetically it is a challenge. it still amazes me the differences (in spanish and portuguese) and it's difficult. with non-native spanish speakers it's brand new but we (native spanish speakers) have a lot of problems. to us, it's not right. i have to say it over and over and unteach myself (the spanish way) to say it in portuguese. interestingly, students in this study mentioned that university advisorsinstead of helping them make more realistic expectations about learning to speak portuguese, had instead overstated the ease with which they would learn the language. one undergraduate advisor was interviewed because her name in particular was mentioned as having suggested portuguese as an "easier" alternative to spanish. in the interview, the advisor said that she recommended portuguese to students for "practical reasons," explaining that the structure of portuguese is very similar to spanish, that the vocabulary is 70-85% identical to spanish, and that portuguese grammar was "easier than spanish grammar". based on these comments alone, students may come to portuguese class with the idea that spanish will be more helpful than it actually is, and they may set goals that are not attainable within the time frame they expect. another reason behind some students’ difficulty in learning to speak was their anxiety. spanish-speaking students in particular mentioned anxiety as a stumbling block. students who acquired spanish at home felt that they did not have the language learning tools that other students had. their comments below were revealing: they (non-native spanish speakers) learn.. with like "predicate" yada, yada, yada and i learned it by.. hearing people and knowing that's the way you say it whereas in a language class, they teach you "this person," "that person," structurally, i guess so i learn it different..i don't know how to get into that. from my standpoint, i've never had to learn a new language.. so it's completely new to me..so it's actually more difficult than i expected. i find myself being very frustrated at times. current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 14 cultural goals interview responses on expectations for cultural goals revealed that many did not expect to learn culture in the classroom: i was going into the course understanding that if you're not in the society or with the group of people, you're not going to really learn much. you can only learn so much about cultural aspects before you go. you have to live there for awhile. importantly, students’ expectations of what is learnable in the classroom had obvious effects on the degree to which they valued certain goals: i'm interested in learning, but i haven't kicked in..my attitude's not in the mood to learn. it's hard because i have the mentality that in a classroom, it's more difficult to learn the language than in the country because that's how i always saw it. only one of the four portuguese teachers interviewed mentioned culture in his response to the question, "what are your goals for this portuguese class?" after discussing his goals of communication, he added, "also i like to teach a lot of culture and have them teach each other culture, so every friday we had cultural presentation". though the teacher's intent was to help students know more about brazilian culture, the "friday's only" nature of its inclusion only reinforced the idea that learning culture is not integral to learning the language. as one student said, learning culture is "extra" and as another noted, it can be learned "secondary to learning the language." when students who had listed low expectations for meeting cultural goals were asked about their low ratings, many said they felt classroom instruction on culture would be biased: with somebody teaching about cultural issues, they're going to filter it through their point of view so it's gonna be like a little biased on how they're presenting things. you really have to be in the society in order to really get a good perspective of the whole culture..it could be in some way biased by the beliefs of that one person. students mentioned native portuguese-speaking teachers as giving a "better cultural perspective" than nonnative speakers. as one student put it, "you pick up a lot from observing a culture, but you know a lot more when you participate in it". another student explained how it is more difficult for non-native speakers to teach about cultural perspectives since "you won't learn those things if you're not in direct contact with people of the actual culture". research question 2: student attributions learners attribute success or failure to effort, ability, luck or task difficulty (schunk, 1991). open-ended survey and interview responses as to why students did or did not achieve their goals revealed a combination of these attributions at work. the following categories emerged as reasons students felt they attained their goals: ‘self’ (including effort and attendance), ‘teacher,’ ‘class itself’ (the curriculum and the structure of the class), and ‘peers’ (enthusiasm and participation of classmates). students who met their objectives described themselves as self-motivated, felt they worked hard, and said they were constantly exposing themselves to the language. as to attributions for failure, two categories emerged: ‘class’ (not enough time in class to practice speaking/listening or to focus on culture or reading) and ‘self’ (lack of motivation and work, lack of attendance). over half of the attributions fell into the latter category with comments such as "i figured i would have more time, but it's turned out to be a really tough semester" or "i needed to put more time in it myself". interviewees often mentioned not being good at learning languages, but it was rarely blamed as the cause for not meeting their language goals. to further understand why it wasn’t considered a cause, twenty-nine of the thirty selected interviewees and four of the early drop students were asked, "are some people inherently good at learning languages?" four categories of students’ beliefs about language learning emerged, with some students falling in more than one category: ‘natural ability,’ ‘early exposure to the language’ (such as growing up with a parent who spoke a second language), ‘general exposure to other languages’ (learning a second language after childhood), and ‘motivation.’ twenty-two of the total thirty-three students asked this question in interviews felt that some learners were better due to natural ability. they made comments such as "the language side of the brain is where some are talented so it's inherent without a doubt", or "some people just naturally pick it up faster for no other reason-even if they study, some people can't pick it up as fast". only six students were in the ‘early exposure’ group. they felt that some learned languages better than others because they had exposure to a second language as a child. ten felt ‘motivation’ made some individuals better language learners than others because their mindset pushed them to succeed: "it's more of a psychological attitude.. all people can learn if they open their mind to it". and "it (natural ability) has a little to do with itit’s how open-minded you what do students expect to learn? 15 are about learning and how much you think it'll benefit you later on." if grouped along the lines drawn by goal theorists, ‘motivation’ and ‘general exposure’ attributions are incrementally oriented, in that students feel they have some control over their learning. the ‘natural ability’ and ‘early exposure’ attributions display an entity or ‘learning-isfixed’ view. particularly interesting, however, was the crossover of students who felt both natural ability and motivation were at work. two examples of mixed attributions responses are as follows: there may be a genetic predisposition to learning languages but also there's differences in motivation. i have a step brother who can be in any country and in two months pick up the language..it's a freak of nature, but for most people i know, the ability to learn the language is dependent on motivation and that's it..interest determines aptitude in that aspect. it appears these students have one set of beliefs about learning languages that is more entity-oriented- believing that some people are born with a language learning "gene". they have another set of beliefs they hold for general learning that is more incrementally oriented believing that success is still possible through hard work. their motivation-is-key beliefs about general learning may to some degree temper their ‘fixed aptitude’ beliefs about language learning. this would explain why many students whose beliefs fell into the ‘natural ability’ category still took the credit for their success and the blame for their failures. to explore this possibility, interviewees were asked "how do you see yourself as a language learner?" of the twenty-five students responding, sixteen felt they were "not good" or "average", two felt they were "somewhat good" but had to work very hard, while only seven felt they were good at learning languages. one student who felt he was "not good" at learning languages felt he had to "go through the motions, prodding ahead". interestingly, he added, "while others have an inherent ability, i’m highly motivated so i overcome my lack of ability". similarly, another student said he was "certainly not" good at languages, adding, "i'm inherently very interested, but not inherently talented. i have to workit doesn't come naturally". research question 3: goal attainment responses to survey items and to subsequent interview questions offered insight into whether or not students’ perceived goal attainment during the semester influenced their decision to continue or discontinue studying portuguese. one might assume that students would continue or discontinue taking courses based on decisions made before the present course. in fact, according to first and second survey background questions about students’ intentions for subsequent semesters, 42% of students changed their minds about continuing or discontinuing over the course of the semester. the ‘continuance/discontinuance’ section of the second survey asked students what factors affected their decisions to continue or discontinue taking portuguese (appendix c). forty-five students completed the ‘continuance section’ of the second survey while 19 students completed the ‘discontinuance section.’ the rank order of the top 10 reasons students offered for continuing portuguese are given in table 16 below. according to likert scale items on progress and goal attainment, nearly half of the continuing students were continuing because of their low level of progress and just over a third noted that "goals not being attained" influenced their decision to continue. interview follow-up questions concerning these counter-intuitive responses pointed out the importance of why students felt their goals were not met. students whose surveys were coded as "low perceived goal attainment" were asked directly how they felt about not meeting those specific goals. those who had decided to continue echoed comments like the following: "that (achieving objectives in portuguese) is just gonna take a lot of time and whether they're met or not won't mean i'm frustrated because i know they're gonna take awhile and i would need to work on it." this student did not let his lack of goal attainment influence him to discontinue. instead he was continuing because he credited that lack of success both to his own effort and to the difficulty of learning a language. another student’s response to the same questions was as follows: "you can't give up so easily. language is sometimes a question of practice. you have to keep trying." she attributed not meeting her speaking goal to not having sufficient time in a one-hour class to practice enough each day. her later comment, "yet, joshua (portuguese teacher) did a very good job," coupled with her assertion that language learning is a question of practice, showed that she attributed her lack of success to the very nature of learning a language. table 17 shows the rankings by descending means of the reasons students felt influenced their decisions to discontinue taking portuguese. the most mentioned reason, "graduating", leaves little room for intervention. the second reason"language learned better in portuguese-speaking country" deserves further attention, however, and will be examined further in the discussion section of this work. over half of the discontinuers noted the influence of this belief in their decision to discontinue. another interesting item in the second survey’s top reasons for discontinuing portuguese was "goals attained". as one student put it, "a little more (in the area of writing skills) wouldn't hurt, but i feel like i have adequate knowledge to do what i want to do right now". his rationale current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 16 table 16: top 10 reasons for continuing (for full survey items, see appendix b, part iii) continuance scale items n=45 mean standard deviation 1. travel for pleasure 2.4 0.99 14. future career 2 1.09 14. requirement-major/minor/scholarship 1.98 1.31 30. connection to major 1.82 1.32 29. sounds of portuguese 1.8 1.1 36. fun 1.78 1.13 22. important language in the world 1.76 0.98 3. history 1.71 1.04 26. satisfaction with class 1.71 1.08 7. cultural practices 1.71 1.01 table 17: top 10 reasons for discontinuing (for complete survey items, see appendix b, part iv) discontinuance scale items n=19 minimum maximum mean standard deviation 8. i'm graduating this semester 0 3 1.58 1.54 11.language learned better in portuguese-speaking country 0 3 1.16 1.26 2. fulfilled language requirement-major/minor/or scholarship 0 3 1.11 1.49 12. classload full 0 3 0.89 1.33 1. fulfilled language requirement-university 0 3 0.79 1.36 19. goals attained 0 3 0.58 1.02 7. level not fitting (too easy/difficult) 0 3 0.58 0.96 18. goals not attained 0 3 0.32 0.82 4. dissatisfied with teacher 0 2 0.26 0.65 15. other students at a different level 0 2 0.21 0.54 is indicative of a general trend among students whose goals were met "to the extent" they felt they needed, so they were not continuing their studies. some students who had already learned spanish as a second language-as opposed to those who acquired spanish from childhood-had the advantage of having already learned a language. they sometimes found that after one or two semesters, they could communicate enough to be understood and were satisfied with their level of proficiency. this reason for discontinuing may be shared by students of other disciplines (courses in computer skills or photography, for example) in which an introduction to the topic may be all what do students expect to learn? 17 students feel is necessary, since prior knowledge helps fill in the gaps. survey data indicated that a greater majority of students who decided to discontinue language study, however, were influenced by a more negative factor: not meeting their goals for reasons they felt were out of their control. for example, the survey reason "level not fitting" had half its respondents ticking the "level too high" option. the item, "other students at a different level" had all its respondents ticking the "other students at a higher level" option (see appendix b part iv numbers 7 and 15 for full survey items). the textbook appeared to be a major reason why these students were not able to bridge the gap between their knowledge and other students’ knowledge. one student berated the texts’ lack of "communicative activities" and "non user-friendly" nature, while another said she had to "fumble through the homework" with no helpful explanations. a particularly frustrated student called it "a rotten book", and several others said they had to have the teacher’s help to grasp text material. one teacher described the text as "horrible" and the other three teachers expressed similar disappointment. it simply did not allow for selfhelp. another external attribution for failure emerging from the data was the ‘dissatisfaction with the teacher,’ ranking as ninth out of twenty in importance in the surveys and mentioned at length in interviews. interviewees said the dissatisfaction stemmed from not seeing the relevance of the activities teachers chose. again, complaints about the friday culture reports were mentioned. one of several students who complained said he skipped fridays to avoid hearing other students’ "bad portuguese". another student hated that the teacher kept showing "cheesy telenovelas" that were too difficult to understand: "they're just annoying!" discussion and recommendations many students in this study appeared to have two types of beliefs: one for general learning in which they felt their actions affected outcomes and another belief for language learning, in which people either have or don’t have a natural ability to learn languages. some students demonstrated, however, a crossover of these beliefs. they felt that with hard work, lack of "natural ability" could be overcome. similarly, mori’s (1997) study with university students of japanese found that in some cases "knowledge beliefs in general were transferred into the domain of language learning" (mori, 1997, p. 14). however, general learning and language learning are "independent constructs, which indicates the existence of domain specific belief dimensions" (mori, 1997, p. 14). interestingly, students in this study who felt they did not have the language learning "gift" did not let that lower their motivation-quite the contrary. students were perhaps demonstrating a strategy that garcia (1995) describes as defensive pessimism, wherein students envision the worst case scenarionot attaining their goal of a higher grade for example, and use the anxiety the negative image evokes to fuel them to work harder. instead of feeling empowered by a higher sense of self-efficacy, many of these students "gain some degree of control over the riskiness of evaluative situations" by becoming "emotionally prepared in the event they do actually do poorly(garcia, 1995, p. 30). for students who attribute success not only to ability but also to motivation, this volitional strategy may buffer the blow of non-attainment of goals, diffusing frustrations that could have otherwise lead to decreased motivation. kuhl (1986) explains this phenomenon by saying that volition is metamotivational, meaning that it deals with students' "wanting to want" to reach a goal and thereby helps students focus their energy on attaining goals they feel are difficult to reach (kuhl, 1986 in corno, 1993, p. 16). these forces would not be necessary if goals were easy to attain (corno, 1993). yet, students with lower self-efficacy, in noting their "deficiency in language learning", make goal attainment a carrot that is difficult to reach, thereby rallying their motivational forces to attain the goal. as concerns student attributions for success and failure and continued motivation, over a third of continuing students said they decided to continue because they did not attain certain goals. they recognized their objectives were not accomplished because they failed to engage motivational strategies to get the work done. therefore, they did not blame the teacher or the course for not attaining their goals. these students continued to have high expectations for meeting their goals, noting that if they tried harder in future courses, they could reach them. concerning student motivation and the reasons students listed as affecting their decision to discontinue taking portuguese, many showed a decrease in their motivation to continue taking portuguese when they felt other students were at a higher level than they were. rosenthal and bandura (1978) would argue that these students are "gauging their own efficacy through knowledge of how other students are performing in the class" (rosenthal and bandura, 1978 in schunk, 1991, p. 123). classroom practices such as grading on a curve or playing highly competitive games overemphasize the varying levels of different students. teachers should instead "instill in students that they are still acquiring knowledge and skills" such that the gap in abilities at the outset of the class may level out throughout the course (rosenthal and bandura, 1978 in schunk, 1991, p. 123). teachers might consider, for example, implementing portfolio assessment to encourage students to see how far they have come. this will emphasize the "self-comparison of progress" rather than comparison with other students (bandura, 1993, p. 125). students also felt frustrated that the textbook did not enable them to "catch up" to other students because it did not help them learn on their own. self-efficacy specialists would argue that without this control providing current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 18 "a major cognitive mechanism to sustain motivation", students may feel helpless, become frustrated, and desist (bandura, 1994, p. 7). an obvious solution is for teachers and students to dialogue about in-class and homework materials to ensure any problems are solved early on. students should also be made aware of resources other than the textbook that would help them attain their goals. these might include language tutors or student mentors in higherlevel classes, online language resources, or supplementary texts. also beneficial are group study sessions before exams or quizzes. an in-class discussion of any such sessions should take place once students receive test results to determine if the session was helpful. such meta-analysis helps students connect their efforts to the outcomes as opposed to feeling predestined for success or failure. students also suffered a decrease in volition when their goals were not attained due to perceptions that class activitiesnamely cultural and speaking activitieswere "time-consuming and of little practical benefit", (verlie and rosenthal, 1981 in woloshin 1983, p. 356). such results fit with the literature on more commonly taught languages. one of students’ top complaints about language courses was the mismatch between their objectives and the activities chosen by the instructor (harlowe and muyskens, 1994). this "mismatch" involves three issues that have implications for educators, administrators, and teacher trainers. the first deals with teachers having difficulty knowing what students’ goals are. this study showed that students ranked culture as an important reason for taking the class, but did not rank it highly as an actual goal for the class. it is common practice, early in the semester, for teachers to ask students why they have decided to take a university course. it may be difficult, however, for this method of inquiry to determine students’ objectives; reasons for taking a class may help formulate objectives, but they cannot be considered the goals themselves. asking more specific questions about students’ short term goals similar to those asked in the goals section of surveys used in this workcould better determine student objectives. also important for curriculum planners was the interesting mix of responses for reasons why students were taking the course. in the "career advancement" factor analysis cluster of students’ reasons for taking portuguese, students demonstrated a blurred line between work and pleasure. if educators hand out note cards asking students for their majors and why they are taking the course, they may only receive the "socially acceptable" career-oriented responses (copa, 1991). course content may thus fail to target students’ hobby-like interests, losing valuable motivating aspects of the curriculum. the second issue deals with knowing how to tailor the class to meet the objectives of the students. this tendency to "miss the mark" with targeting the activity to the students is particularly difficult for new language teachers (copa, 1991). yet even experienced instructors may have trouble deciding on activitiesthe difficulty being that just because a certain task should help students meet their objective does not mean that it is an activity that will be well received by that student group. for example, harlow and muyskens' (1994) study of university students of intermediate french and spanish found students rated speaking as one of their top three goals in the foreign language class, yet rated two types of speaking activities (partner conversations and presentations to the class) at the bottom of their list of preferred activities. university students in tse’s (2000) study said that they wanted to focus on oral communication, yet they strongly disliked certain speaking activities such as having to speak in front of the class (tse, 2000, p. 80). oftentimes teacher training programs themselves are at fault for not preparing prospective teachers to meet these individual "quirks" among student populations. instead, teaching approaches and activities are presented as universally applicable and do not take into account the diversity of the classrooms teachers will enter (schleppegrell, 1997). teacher education courses should include hands-on training to help teachers learn how to adapt teaching methodologies and customize classroom activities. instead of having student teachers do an internship at only one location, for example, training might include a rotation system to expose future teachers to a variety of student groups. the third issue deals with not communicating to students how the activities of the classroom meet student objectives. previous research indicates that adult language learners often "do not connect the goal to the activities of the language classroom" (bassano, 1986, p. 17) and are frustrated by what they see as purposelessness activities. for example, students in this study ranked tasks like the answering machine activity or watching telenovelas as "silly" and "irrelevant", while the instructor perceived these tasks as quite beneficial. regardless of how well instructors think a task meets students’ goals, it is ultimately how students perceive the tasks that affects motivation. though most teacher training courses emphasize the importance of knowing what objectives a class period will try to meet, many fail to train teachers how to clearly show students the connection between activities and objectives. teachers must learn how to include "meta-discussions" on how certain tasks meet specific needs. research shows that underscoring this relationship is imperative. otherwise, students may highly value and feel very motivated toward certain goals, but the utility value may be low for certain tasks, resulting in less cognitive engagement (pintrich, 1993) and lower motivation. results of students’ beliefs and expectations for learning culture show how their perceptions of the teacher influenced their motivation to learn culture. this included not only their perceptions of the teachers’ expertise on the topic, but also how much they felt teachers emphasized culture in the classroom. many students held expectations that native speakers would be better teachers of culture what do students expect to learn? 19 because native teachers do not "filter" cultural aspects through their own perspectives. this view fits with previous research on teaching culture wherein students were concerned over the differences in "objectivity" of native and non-native teachers, demonstrating apprehension with having the culture filtered through a non-native teacher's perspective (jernigan & moore, 1997). as such, it appears that some students view learning culture as the teacher imparting information that is either accurate or inaccurate. perry (1968) found that students, as they first enter college, tend to see knowledge as absolute and handed down by some higher authority. as students learn more about a certain topic, they perceive that there are a variety of opinions and that learning is relative to context (perry, 1968 in mori, 1997). to help students make this leap in perspective, instructors must emphasize that cultural information, whether it be in print or from the lips of a native speaker, is loaded with the "biases" of the speaker and then perceived through the listener's cultural paradigm. students should discuss how to critically view culture and how to recognize the ubiquitous nature of the cultural "filter". from many students’ perspective, teachers did not make culture a focus in the classroom. when it was included, it was an adjunct "friday-culture day" activity, and not an integral part of the course. this only reinforced many students’ view that culture is not learnable in the classroom setting. both this study and previous work on learning culture (root, 2003; jernigan and moore, 1997) indicate that teaching culture in the language classroom is challenging. every educational discipline has its challenging aspects, and instructors must be aware that the "sin of omission" may be sending students unintended messages about certain concept’s learnabilty. in contrast with students’ low expectations for learning culture were their high expectations for learning to speak portuguese. results showed that several spanishspeaking students’ felt frustrated because they held higher expectations for their learning than they were able meet. educators must be aware that prior knowledge may actually confuse students and should take care not to push students into goals that are out of their reach. past researchers in other disciplines such as math have found that over-rating ones ability can lead to decreased effort (greene, 1999, p. 14). schunk (1991) notes that "challenging but attainable goals raise motivation and efficacy better than easy or hard goal (schunk, 1991, p. 120)". by helping students make realistic objectives, teachers are pre-empting future disappointment and lowered motivation. in this study, it was unfortunate to see that overeffaciousness was sometimes caused by student advisor’s misrepresentation of courses. it is ineffective advertising for administrators to represent a course as "easy" if it leads to student frustration and decreased motivation. communication between instructors and student advisors concerning class descriptions is essential if incoming students are to be presented with accurate information on which to base their expectations. students in this study who grew up bilingual from birth found themselves feeling anxious in class because they had never really learned, but had rather acquired, another language. instructors must be cognizant of the fact that though it may appear students have prior experience in a certain context, they may still feel anxious in thelearning situation. they may be even more anxious than other students, as they may feel expectations for their fast progress are higher. in a variety of disciplines, anxiety has been shown to interfere with processing of information, inhibiting performance (ashcraft & kirk, 2001). lowering anxiety in the foreign language classroom aids acquisition by allowing students to actually focus on language input (tse, 2000). implementing relaxation techniques or using group work have been suggested as ways to release tension and help students feel less alienated and more supported in the classroom (higbee & thomas, 1999). one final reason why students decided to discontinue formal study was that they felt languages are better learned in a portuguese speaking countrynot within the artificial confines of the classroom. one could argue that the classroom did not offer them a feeling of "real world" learning. similar research in other disciplines like math and statistics notes that students avoided or dreaded courses because they did not feel coursework was relevant to everyday life (gal & ginsburg, 1994). this points to the need for the classroom to be structured in such a way that students feel they are gaining experience applicable in the outside world. in the case of language courses, bringing in native speakers to the classroom and linking students to native speakers outside the classroom in coffee houses or online chat sessions could help students see their learning as experiential. this focus on relevance and authenticity is essential to motivation in all disciplines. teachers should continually brainstorm with their students, with other teachers, and with administrators over how to expand the four walls of the classroom. limitations the results of the study should be understood in light of several limitations. self-report measures should be interpreted with caution. in many cases, verbal reports for students' reasons for their motivational decisions were given after the actual decisions were made. students are having to rely on their memory to report their reasons. students may also be giving motivations they feel are logical instead of reporting their true motivations. in addition, goals and motivation are complex constructs that students may have trouble defining, much less describing in interviews or rating on surveys. just one example would be that students were asked about "short term goals for the semester", but separating short from long term goals is a complex task that will hold individual differences among students. current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 20 finally, the current study is limited in that its scope is only exploratory, not confirmatory. further research is needed to determine causal relationships among the complex phenomena of students’ expectations, attributions, and continuing motivation. future directions as concerns other recommendations for future research, this study encourages us to see how language students’ expectations compare to students of other disciplines. many of us know from our own experiences that it is not uncommon for a student to assume, "i flunked that test!" only to receive an "a". it would be particularly interesting to see if students of other disciplines use "defensive pessimism" to increase their volition and protect themselves from the threat of failure. this study opens the door for future research comparing language learning to the learning of mathtwo topics with tendencies for lower student motivation and higher student anxiety. language learning research has claimed that higher anxiety is due to student identity and self-expression being more closely tied to language than to other academic subjects: the importance of the disparity between the ‘true’ self as known to the language learner and the more limited self as can be presented at any given moment in the foreign language would seem to distinguish foreign language..probably no other field of study implicates selfconcept to the degree that language study does. (horwitz, 1986, p. 28). yet research in topics such as statistics and engineering that are gender stereotyped with respect to perceived ability has shown similar identity issues with students’ perceptions of self-concept and self-efficacy (clark, 1999; gal & ginsberg, 1994). women experiencing "stereotype threat" in math-related courses, for example, are said to "disidentify with math in order to protect the self" from fulfilling the stereotype of girls not being good at math (oswald, 2003, p. 139). opening a dialogue between these disciplines may increase possibilities for helpful interventions as regards student motivation. finally, the students of this study were asked to consider their goals for the current semester, but these may be inextricably linked to their future goals. distant goals such a career opportunities are often contingent upon completing certain courses but are not contingent on actual performance of the tasks in the course (greene et al, 1999). some evidence has been provided that a positive relationship exists between these future goals and students’ monitoring of their own learning, which may then affect performance (miller et al, 1996). future investigation is needed to determine specifically how future goals interact with short-range goals and how they affect students’ motivation and achievement in the classroom. notes 1 for the full background section of either survey or any other survey details, please contact the author at christinejernigan@yahoo.com references alalou, a. 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"the undergraduate curriculum: the best and the worst." modern language journal 67(iv): 356-364. http://positivepractices.com/ what do students expect to learn? 23 appendix a: first survey part i: background information 1 part ii: reasons for studying portuguese please rate the degree of importance to you of the following reasons for studying portuguese. circle your rating using the following scale. current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 24 part iii: your goals in this class a. what are your goals for this semester of portuguese? though you may also have long-range goals that differ from those you plan to accomplish in this class, please consider only your goals for the current semester. (space provided) b. the first column below contains categories of goals that some portuguese students have mentioned as important for them. if the goal category in column 1 is an important area you want to work on in your portuguese class this semester, write what specifically you hope to accomplish in that area on the blanks in column 2. you may write more than one specific goal if you like (see example). if the goal category in column 1 is not something that is your goal this semester, write "none" on the blank in column 2. what do students expect to learn? 25 current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 26 c. please look back over column 2 in part b. if you wrote more than one specific goal for a category, circle the one that is most important to you. an example is given at the bottom of this page. d. look back again to part b and rate your estimate of the importance for each specific goal you wrote. circle your rating in column 3 using the scale below (put "n" for "not important" if you put "none" in column 2). if you had more than one specific goal for a certain category, do your rating for the goal you circled. an example is given below. e. what would you estimate is the probability that during the course of this semester you will achieve your specific goals you rated as slight, moderately, or highlyimportant in part d? below are written only the goal categories ("writing," for example) but please answer based on the specific goals you listed for each category in column 2. if you listed more than one specific goal for a category, do your probability rating for the one you circled. circle the expected probability for each outcome. (please circle only one number per item.) what do students expect to learn? 27 appendix b: second survey part i: background information 1 part ii: goal attainment this semester a. goal attainment ratings below are handwritten the specific goals you listed on the first survey. (if you listed more than one goal per box, only your circled goal appears below). in column 4, please rate the degree to which you feel your specific goal in column 2 was attained this semester. 16. for goals you feel were attained, to what do you attribute the success? (space provided) 17. for goals you feel were not attained or were attained to a lesser degree, to what do you attribute that lack of success? (space provided) current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 28 b. goal modifications refer to columns 2 and 3 in part a above. in your first survey, you rated your specific goals for the semester as: what do students expect to learn? 29 c. continuing or discontinuing portuguese study 1. do you definitely plan to take another portuguese class (meaning a class where the language spoken is portuguese). please check yes or no. then check any applicable letter(s) below your response. 2. if you answered yes above, continue to part iii and respond as a "continuing student." if you answered no above, please skip to part iv and respond as a "discontinuing" student. current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 30 part iii: factors influencing continuance of portuguese study a. 1. what in particular do you feel has influenced your decision to continue taking portuguese? (space provided) b. please rate each factor as to the amount of influence it had on your decision tocontinue taking portuguese. what do students expect to learn? 31 appendix c: first interview questions (30 selected students) current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 32 1. i appreciated so much your responses on the survey about why you've decided to study portuguese but i'm also curious as to what you would say is the main reason(s) for taking portuguese? 2. on your survey you listed as goals for the portuguese class you're taking as ___ (list goals the student mentioned on survey). have you modified these goals in any way? (if yes) how have they changed? in what ways specifically have these goals changed? (if yes) what was the impetus for this change? 3. have your interests changed throughout the semester? (if yes) in what ways specifically? (if yes) what would you say are the reasons behind your increased interest in ___? a. thus far in the semester, do you feel your goals of ___ are being met? b. (for goals student said were met) to what do you attribute the success with meeting your goals of ___? c. (for goals not met) to what do you attribute the lack of success in meeting your goals of ___? 4. do you feel your goals of ___ are similar to or different from teacher's? 5. (if have previous portuguese and/or spanish experience-first survey background section numbers 11 and 12) you listed on your survey that you had previous portuguese experience in ___ (list class or country visited) and spanish experience in ___ (list class or country visited). i'm curious if you also have experience in other languages besides spanish or portuguese? (ask specifics for each: high school including number of years, university, travel/living abroad, native speaker exposure and their relation to the interviewee, other) 6. (if had previous language classesfirst survey background section numbers 11 and 12) a. in your past language classes, did you feel they met your expectations? b. do you have an overall positive or negative impression from your past language classes? 7. a. you said in your survey you're a _____ major (list their major from first survey background section number 11). when you were in the process of deciding your major, would you have considered majoring in portuguese? (if they're a portuguese major) what factors went into this decision? (if not) what would you say were the reasons for not considering being a portuguese major? (if considered, but decided to not major in portuguese) could you describe the process behind your decision? b. would you have considered majoring in another language? 8. a. do you feel some people are inherently good at language learning? what do students expect to learn? 33 b. where would you say you fit in with that? c. why would you say more students don't take portuguese? 9. how motivated do you feel at this point? i'll give you a five point scale to choose from: ___ not at all ___ not very ___ somewhat ___ very ___ extremely (if rating has changed since first survey, mention their previous rating and ask them how they might account for the increase or decrease, or if it's just coincidental.) 10. how do you feel about the class so far? a. has the class been what you expected... or more... or less... than what you expected? b. is there anything you would like to change about the class? 11. how would you rate your level of satisfaction at this point in the semester, on a five-point scale __very dissatisfied __dissatisfied __somewhat satisfied __ satisfied __ very satisfied 12. are you planning to take a portuguese class next semester? (if yes) which? when? 13. a. is portuguese about the level of difficulty you expected it to be? b. if it's more or less, what would you say you'd based your previous assumptions on? c. you'd said on the survey you thought you should study ___ hours and that you planned to study ___ hours (first survey background question numbers 22 and 23 1 ?). have you had to study about ___ hours as you thought? *questions 14-19 are for only for students with specific responses on their surveys. *14. on your survey you described portuguese as "different" a. could you explain how you felt it would be different? b. has it proved so far to indeed be something different? *15. (for students who have already taken a semester of portuguese) you listed the following reasons for taking portuguese this semester: _________________, ________________, ______________ . . . (list reasons student gave on the survey). would you say that the reasons you had for taking this semester are the same as those you had for taking portuguese your first semester--when you were just starting-or were some of your reasons different then? *16. you'd listed as a reason for taking portuguese that you were dissatisfied with another language course. in what way(s) did the other language course not meet your expectations? *17. you'd mentioned as a reason for taking portuguese that it might help with your future career. in what current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 34 ways specifically might portuguese be an advantage in your area? *18. a. your expectations for ___ were relatively high compared to your other expectations. to what do you attribute this higher response? (if there were several items, go through them separately.) b. your expectations for ___ were relatively low compared to your other expectations. to what do you attribute this lower response? (if there were several items, go through them separately.) *19. you'd listed as a reason for taking portuguese that you thought it might be fun. fun in what respect? (try to see if they meant the language, the culture, language classes in general, etc.) 20. is there anything else that i didn't ask, anything you would like to add or discuss in further detail? closing statements: thank you so much for you time and your thoughtful responses. if you have any questions, feel free to contact me...(give contact phone/email information.) what do students expect to learn? 35 appendix d: second interview questions (30 selected students) 1. motivation type some say there are basically 4 types of motivation when it comes to learning languages. i'd like to read the 4 types and then ask if you feel you fit into one or more of these groups or if your motivation does not fit in any of these groups. i'll repeat the names and main ideas of the 4 groups at the end so don't feel you have to remember the specific names. the first is called an... integrative motivation based on a personal interest in the people and culture of the country external (instrumental), meaning you're motivated by the practical value to learning the language or by financial advantages or with greater future opportunities like getting into grad school or securing a job. internal (intrinsic) motivation that comes from inside you--love of the language, the sounds, internal curiosity that is learning just for learning's sake resulting from success (resultative) motivation is a result of the success you're had in learning the language (after the student has had time to think, repeat "the first, integrative...meaning a love of the culture," the second, "external which is more practical," the third, "internal, a love of the language," and the fourth, a result of your success.) 2. goal modification a. i touched on this question in the first interview but more time has passed so i'll ask it again. would you say that since the beginning of the semester you have any new goals or interests? b. (if they’ve modified their goals) how would you account for the change in your goal/interest? 3. additional questions for specific students *3. (for apparent instrumental motivates) parrot student’s response from the first survey "reason's" section for the following items: career item number 9, study item 10, study a subject involving portuguese item 19, grad/job candidate item 15. then ask the following: a. this question is purposefully vague to avoid asking a more direct, leading-type question. when asked about your motivations for taking portuguese, you responded that you were interested in _________________ (cite the career they mentioned). yet if i went back one more step and asked why it is you are motivated to pursue this career in _________________, what would be your reason? b. (if response to question "a" is practical/instrumentally leaning, do a member check and continue to number 4. if a's response appears rather intrinsic, ask) would it safe to say then that though your motivations of _________________ (cite career again) for taking portuguese appear rather practical and external to yourself, that in fact you have a more intrinsic motivation for doing _________________(cite career)? *4. if student was a continuer and some goals were unmet (second survey continue section item a17), but student's attributions were not due to own effort, ask: a. your goals of _______ were not met to a very high degree this semester. how do you feel about that? current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 36 b. it has not made you decide to discontinue. why did this shortcoming not affect your decision to continue? c. do you feel the goals were realistic? d. some of your goals this semester went unmet. some argue that students of a lesser commonly taught language like portuguese are more frustrated if the class differs from what they expect because students of less commonly taught languages come in with specific things they want to accomplish. (pause because they may have a comment already.) others argue they are more flexible as far as not being frustrated if the class differs from what they expect. which, if either, would you say is a truer picture of you as a portuguese student? *5. if had any exposure to portuguese previously (first survey background section number 11), ask: you mentioned in your survey that you had had exposure to portuguese in ______. did this exposure help you have more realistic expectations or was it misleading as far as expectations? *6. if student is a discontinuer and gave as a reasons that portuguese is time-consuming (second survey discontinue section 9) or that their class load was too full (second survey discontinue section 12 ), ask: some argue that lack of time, be it due to course load or other reasons, is somehow indicative of a lack of interest. in your particular situation, how would your respond to this. *7. (if portuguese is not a requirement according to first survey item 17) will you have to stay in school any longer because you took portuguese? *8. for students who on the first survey or in the first interview described portuguese as "more difficult" than they had expected or said they had to study more than had thought (first survey 23/ second survey 5/ first interview number 13) you mentioned on your survey that portuguese was more difficult than you expected. so how, if at all, did you have to modify? in other words, did you change your study habits to meet the higher level of difficulty? (ask for specifics of those changes, if any). *9. if goals were modified (second survey second section) a. i noticed on your surveys that your goal(s) of _______________ increased as the semester went on. why would you say that is the case? prompt: what would you say was the source of these new interests or increased interest? b. if the following are true:  if student's goals were modified  if, in the first interview, the student gave a clear idea of what they felt the teacher's goals were  and if on the second survey goals section, the goals that increased in importance were those they felt the teacher emphasized, (look at first interview question number 4 and second survey second section -see if similar to teacher's), then ask: i noticed there was a similarity in the increased importance of your goal(s) of _______________. this goal is the same one you mentioned as a goal the teacher had for the class. how would you account for that-is it just a coincidence? what do students expect to learn? 37 4. representative do you consider yourself representative of your classmates? in other words are you similar to the other students or would you say you are different from them? current issues in education vol. 7 no. 4 38 2004 article citation jernigan, c. g. (2004, may 4). what do students expect to learn? the role of learner expectancies, beliefs, and attributions for success and failure in student motivation.current issues in education [on-line], 7(4). available:http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number4/ author notes christine galbreath jernigan, ph.d curriculum and instruction: foreign language education, holds research interests in student motivation and the affective factors that influence learning. she has taught critical thinking and research skills courses at the university of new south wales in sydney, australia. she has also taught elementary and secondary teacher education at the university of texas at austin. she is currently writing a guidebook for parents raising their children to speak their second language. she can be contacted at christinejernigan@yahoo.com by email or (603)963-6488 by fax. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation jernigan, c. g. (2011). what do students expect to learn? the role of learner expectancies, beliefs, and attributions for success and failure in student motivation. current issues in education, 7(4). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/824 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume7/number4/ christinejernigan@yahoo.com  http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 microsoft word 960-4464-3-le_final.docx 1 volume 15, number 3 december 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x multicultural school climate inventory sherry marx and deborah byrnes utah state university this paper presents the 22-item multicultural school climate inventory (msci), a scale developed to measure students’ perceptions of the multicultural climate of their school. survey questions were generated from a critical understanding of multicultural education, with attention to culturally and linguistically diverse school children. through examination of school climate and multicultural literature, a definition of multicultural school climate was generated. 1511 students at a secondary school (grades 8-9) took the survey over a three year period. grounded in literature, these questions were designed to address the needs of real students attending a specific secondary school. the msci proved to be such a helpful tool for examining and ultimately improving multicultural school climate from the perspective of diverse students that the authors share the instrument here, making it available to school faculty and scholars wishing to examine and thereafter improve multicultural school climate. reliability coefficients and validity measures are reported for the scale, as well as for four subscales that emerged (liking school, educator-student relationships, cultural relevancy, and school success). findings suggest that the scale and subscales have high internal consistency and knowngroup construct validity. keywords: multicultural school climate, diverse students, survey instrument in the united states, the growing ethnic and racial diversity of the population is mirrored in its schools where whites account for just 56% of enrolled students, african americans for 15%, and latinas/os for 21% (planty et al., 2009). the 2010 census reports that 12% of u.s. residents (40 million people) are foreign-born and 11% of the native born population have at least one foreign-born parent (walters & trevelyan, 2011). among the foreign-born population entering the country from 2005 to 2007, 52% were latin american or caribbean and 30% were from asian countries (walters & trevelyan, 2011). given these circumstances, students in the us are more linguistically diverse than ever before, with 21% of school children speaking a language other than english in their homes and nearly 20% of these children reporting difficulties speaking english (aud et al., 2011). nationwide, more than 11% of children receive english-language services in schools (keigher, 2009). these demographic trends have long been established and will continue diversifying the us population well into the future. however, despite this well-understood information, school districts across the united states are often reluctant to proactively address changes in school demographics. rather, it is typical that schools seek to maintain school culture that reflects the whiteness and the homogeneity of years gone by (evans, 2007; marx & larson, 2012; young & laible, 2000), or that perhaps never existed. in this manifestation of school climate, whiteness and english language dominate school culture, including curriculum; reading materials; expectations; décor; interactions with students, parents, and guardians; and understandings of what constitutes a current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 successful educational experience (e.g., banks & banks, 2012; chubbuck, 2004; leonardo, 2009; marx, 2006, 2008a; pollock, 2004). overall, latinas/os, english language learners, native americans, and african americans have higher dropout rates than their white peers, with latinas/os, the largest ethnic “minority” group, dropping out of school at the rate of 17.6% (aud et al., 2011). african american and american indian/alaska native also have high dropout rates of 9.3% and 13.3%, respectively (aud et al., 2011). all these numbers provide a stark comparison to the white dropout rate of 5.2% (aud et al., 2011). they imply that large proportions of students of color, including the growing populations of latinas/os and english language learners, are not experiencing academic success. students having poor schooling experiences are more likely to drop out of school and high dropout rates lead to communities with “high rates of unemployment, crime, ill health, and chronic despair” (balfanz & legters, 2004, p. 1). it is in everyone’s best interest when children are happy and successful in school. until now, a publically available, validated survey instrument built on a critically conceptualized understanding of multicultural school climate has not been available to education practitioners and scholars. in response to this absence and to our own need for such an instrument, we created the multicultural school climate inventory (msci), a 22-item survey instrument that can be used to measure key aspects of multicultural school climate in a given school from the perspectives of students. it is our hope that this survey instrument will help practitioners and scholars learn more about the schools they work with so they can help improve the educational experience they offer diverse students. while our own study participants were primarily latina/o and white, this instrument is based on critical multicultural education school climate issues that are relevant to all diverse students. literature review in seeking to understand and define multicultural school climate, we examined literature in school climate, multicultural education, and social theory, which we discuss below. school climate in their recent literature review of school climate, cohen, mccabe, michelli, and pickeral (2009) write that “there is not one universally agreed-upon definition of school climate” (p. 181). instead, many scholars define school climate loosely as “atmosphere, feelings, tone, setting, or milieu of the school” (p. 181, italics in original); more often, however, school climate is not defined at all. given the importance of this concept to our paper, we use cohen and colleagues’ definition of school climate as “the quality and character of school life” (p. 181). they explain that, “school climate is based on patterns of people’s experiences of school life and reflects norms, goals, values, interpersonal relationships, teaching and learning practices, and organizational structures” (p. 181); it also “recognizes the social, emotional, ethical, academic, and environmental dimensions of school life” (p. 201). the authors break school climate into four dimensions, “safety,” “teaching and learning,” “relationships,” and “environmentalstructural” (p. 184). although school climate is a quality of the entire school, they write that “school climate has a profound impact on individual experience (citing comer, 1980)” (cohen, mccabe, michelli, & pickeral, 2009). multicultural school climate we were able to find just three articles since 1990 that used the term “multicultural school climate” (diaz, 1992; lawrence, 2005; sass-lehrer, gerner de garcia, & rovins, 1997). the diaz (1992) and sasslehrer, gerner de garcia, and rovins (1997) papers are available on the eric database and are not peerreviewed. they are general reports that describe foundational multicultural educational ideas for teachers. the lawrence (2005) article focuses on teacher perceptions of school climate and its impact on antiracist teaching. however, none of these papers define the concept of multicultural school climate nor describe a way to examine it in schools. to better understand what a successful multicultural school climate means, we looked to the field of multicultural education. multicultural education multicultural education is a “broad concept” with multiple dimensions, but it is generally understood as acknowledging the impact of students’ race, gender, sexual-orientation, culture, social class, exceptionality – including the interactions of all these things – on their lives and their schooling experiences (see banks & banks, 2010, p. 20). given the linguistic diversity of american school children today, it is also important to recognize the influences of native language and english language ability (marx, 2006; kubota & lin, 2009; ovando, combs, & collier, 2006), as well as that of families, communities, and histories (gonzález et al., 1993; gonzález, moll, & amanti, 2005). in our conceptualization of multicultural education for the msci, we focus particularly on linguistically, culturally, and racially diverse school children, giving attention to critical multicultural education, a perspective that focuses on the “structural analysis of unequal power relationships, analyzing the role of institutionalized inequities” (sleeter, 2012, p. 572). it is widely acknowledged that diverse students and their families can experience systematic inequities in and outside of schooling that make their schooling experience less equitable and supportive than schooling experienced by their more mainstream classmates. systematic inequality is often veiled in the hidden curriculum and unwritten policies of the school, unspoken but nevertheless present (banks & banks, 2010; ricento & multicultural school climate inventory 3 hornberger, 1996). when constructing the msci, we gave attention to dimensions of multicultural education and social theory that acknowledge systematic inequality and address successful education for linguistically, culturally, and racially diverse school children. in particular, we looked to critical race theory (crt) and critical studies in whiteness, culturally responsive/relevant teaching, educator-student relationships, and the importance of a whole-school investment in multicultural education. each of these subjects will be discussed below. critical race theory and critical studies in whiteness these related social theories have been adopted by the field of education to understand and address systematic racial inequality in schooling (ladson-billings & tate, 1995). they understand racism as "a system of advantage based on race" (tatum, 2003, p. 11), rather than the opinions or actions of individuals acting outside the norms of society. crt recognizes racism as integrated into the norms of society, “endemic in american life, deeply ingrained legally, culturally, and even psychologically” (ladson-billings & tate, 1995, p. 52). critical studies in whiteness compliments crt by examining the unearned privileges of whites in society (kendall, 2006; lea & helfand, 2004; lee, 2005; leonardo, 2009; marx, 2006; pollock, 2004). together, crt and critical studies in whiteness allow scholars and educators to understand inequality in school as a systematic, historical phenomenon that is often times subtle, yet continues to marginalize diverse school children. crt and critical studies in whiteness are appropriate frameworks for studying american education because more than 87% of the teacher workforce and 84% of the principalship are white (national education association [nea], 2010; us department of education, 2007), while nearly half the study body population are children of color (planty et al., 2009). while recent numbers are not available, in 1996, 97% of the teacher population was estimated to be monolingual in english (darling-hammond & sclan, 1996). teachers and administrators in the us are also largely the products of predominantly white schools and white teacher and administrator education programs, as well as a predominantly white society that continually influences beliefs in what is appropriate and right, (e.g., kendall, 2006; ladson-billings & tate, 1995; leonardo, 2009; marx, 2006; ryan, 2003). resistance to recognizing, appreciating, and integrating the rich cultural and linguistic heritages diverse learners bring with them to the us school context can be linked to white cultural norms that position whiteness as raceless and, therefore, neutral (e.g., lipsitz, 2006; marx, 2006; rothenberg, 2011). white and english language norms are also linked to the strong beliefs many educators have in the importance of linguistic, cultural, and even racial assimilation (crawford, 2000; nieto, 2005; sleeter, 1992). students of color and linguistically diverse students are disadvantaged by the reproduction and maintenance of this culture in a school climate that continually places them outside the realm of what is normal. including crt and critical studies in whiteness in our understanding of multicultural education allows us to take a critical perspective on school climate with attention to equity in education. culturally responsive/relevant teaching educators who are aware of systematic inequalities can recognize them and pointedly address them through teaching and learning. the premise of culturally responsive or relevant teaching is that educators develop lessons and strategies that emerge from and are relevant to the lives and cultures of their students (e.g., gay, 2010; ladson-billings, 2009; sleeter, 2012). in the words of gay (2010), culturally relevant teaching “filters curriculum content and teaching strategies through [students’] cultural frames of reference to make the content more personally meaningful and easier to master” (p. 26). in this way, the whole education process, from curriculum to teaching strategies, becomes an equity pedagogy that “facilitate[s] the academic achievement of students from diverse racial, cultural, gender, and socialclass groups” (banks & banks, 2010, p. 22). for students who speak languages other than, or in addition to, english, a critical component of culturally relevant teaching is valuing the languages children bring with them to school (garza, 2009; gutiérrez et al., 2002; szpara & ahmad, 2007). rejection of a child’s native language can be interpreted by the child as a rejection of self, home, family, and support system (delpit, 2006). adding on to a child’s home culture and language, rather than seeking to replace them, is a fundamental component of successfully teaching diverse students (lambert, 1974, valenzuela, 1999). teaching in ways that are culturally and linguistically relevant to students can make schooling more interesting, more comprehensible, and ultimately more meaningful to diverse students (gay, 2010; krashen, 2003; leclair, doll, osborne, & jones, 2009; szpara & ahmad, 2007). by doing so, it can make schooling more successful. although the success of culturally relevant teaching is well documented in education literature, educators and teacher education students are often resistant to the concept, given its departure from teaching in ways that are white-centric or seemingly culturally neutral (marx & larson, 2012; sleeter, 2012). educator-student relationships for students of every linguistic, cultural, and racial group, positive relationships with the educators in their schools are critical to feeling welcome, safe, and a part of the school community. valenzuela (1999) has pointed out that, "relationships with teachers exert a tremendous impact on the kinds of schooling orientations current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 that develop in school... productive relations with teachers and among students make schooling worthwhile and manageable" (p. 30). getting to know students as holistic individuals and family members with rich cultural and familial influences on their lives enables educators to understand children in rich, multidimensional ways that positively contrast with the deficit, one-dimensional understanding of “struggling learner” that many educators hold about immigrant students, english language learners, latinas/os and other students of color (e.g., bishop & berryman, 2007; brown, 2006; garcia, 2001; garza, 2009; gonzález et al., 1993; gonzález, moll, & amanti, 2005; ladson-billings, 2009; marx, 2006; noddings, 2003, 2005; valencia, 1997). an important component of positive educatorstudent relationships is authentic caring, what noddings describes as an empathetic “feeling with” (2003, p. 30). according to noddings, this kind of caring goes beyond being concerned with students’ performances on academic tasks. valenzuela (1999) emphasizes that linguistically and culturally diverse learners often are alienated from schooling because they are not treated with authentic caring by the adults who work with them. similarly, garza (2009) notes that, “educators must develop meaningful, caring relationships with students to provide channels of understanding that establish respect for students” (p. 300). he explains that “for some latino students, respect involves validating their language and cultural identity” (p. 300). many of these scholars note that students who feel welcomed and cared for by the educators in their schools tend to like school and stay enrolled. authentic caring can be defined in many ways and has many nuances. in our study we focus on what we consider to be a critical component of authentic caring: students’ perceptions of being known and cared for as individuals, as well as their feelings that their language and culture are respected aspects of their identity. regardless of teachers’ or administrators’ intentions or practices, it is the students’ experience of those intentions and practices that contribute to a positive school climate. whole-school investment when examining multicultural school climate, it is fundamental to recognize “the school as a social system” with “norms, values, statuses, and goals like other social systems” (banks & banks, 2010, pp. 24-25). thus, a multicultural school climate can only be successful when the whole school, including its leaders, are invested in its fruition. successful leadership for multicultural education in schools is a topic that is not well studied (andersen & ottesen, 2011; ryan, 2003). however, studies by angelides, antoniouu, and charalambous (2010), gillborn (1995), magno and schiff (2010), marx and larson (2012), neische and keddie (2011), scheurich (1998), and zembylas and iasonos (2010), many of them international, show the powerful impact school leaders have when they turn their attention to improving school climate for diverse students. school leaders ensure that policies, curricula, and teacher training, among other important aspects of schooling, are consistent and represent the norms of the school. in this way, school leaders can ensure a whole school investment in diverse students. if they are not dedicated to the topic, they can ensure a whole school disinvestment in diverse students as well. a collective investment is key to pulling the varied dimensions of successful education for diverse school children together into “an empowering school culture and social structure” (banks & banks, 2010, p. 22). literature summary the dimensions of schooling described above are not exhaustive, but highlight important aspects of multicultural education for linguistically, culturally, and racially diverse school children that were considered when forming the msci. all these dimensions are clearly interrelated. educators with a strong understanding of the systematic social inequalities explained by crt and critical studies in whiteness are more likely to address this inequality by adopting curricula and teaching strategies that make use of students’ “cultural frames of reference” (gay, 2010, p. 26). these same educators are likely to develop positive, supportive relationships with their students that ensure students are cared for and feel safe in school. a whole-school investment in the successes of diverse students led by school leaders ensures supportive schooling is available to all diverse students in the school at all times, facilitated by all teachers and administrators. however, this description of a successful multicultural school climate is certainly ideal. in the “real world” of schools, it is the case that many schools and educators do not find this kind of empowering climate valuable or achievable. it is also common that individual teachers create supportive microclimates for diverse students that their larger school structures do not support. at the same time, schools may believe they are creating this environment but, in fact, are not meeting the needs of their diverse students (bondy, 2011; garcia, 2011; marx & larson, 2012). it is important to note that the msci was strongly influenced by these bodies of literature as it was developed. however, these were considered influential literatures, not predictive subscales. indeed, the qualities described above often overlap and some, like culturally relevant teaching, are more overt than others, such as creating an equitable school environment. not surprisingly, the subscales that emerged on the survey are related but somewhat different from the literatures we present in this section. multicultural school climate definition the diverse bodies of literature we present above allow us to construct a definition of multicultural school climate as: the quality and character of school life for diverse schoolchildren, including interpersonal multicultural school climate inventory 5 relationships, teaching and learning, and organizational cohesion that ensure equity, happiness, and success in schooling. this definition highlights the integrated dimensions of general school culture (cohen et al., 2009), the systematic nature of school climate and inequity (may & sleeter, 2010), and the goal of diverse school children succeeding in school through various, integrated aspects of schooling (banks & banks, 2010). it also highlights “diverse schoolchildren,” ensuring they do not get lost under the umbrella of “all” (kubota, 2004; marx, 2009; pollock, 2004). instrument likely because “multicultural school climate” has not been previously defined in education literature, we could find no example of an existing survey tool used to measure such an entity. substituting the term “diversity” for multicultural in our ebscohost database search yielded a few more results, but when applied to school climate, the only relevant result was the mention of the “school diversity inventory” in a brief “guide to new resources” in the journal multicultural perspectives (smith, echols, perkins, bryant, & howell, 2002, p. 51). the sdi was created by a professor at the university of maryland in 2000 and seems to be a substantial survey that measures both faculty/staff and student perceptions of several “domains” of diverse school climate, including “diversity policies and practices,” “openness to diversity,” “inclusion,” and “intergroup relations.” however, subsequent studies of the inventory are missing in the literature, likely because of the expense associated with administrating and scoring the instruments (see the sdi website for more information on the inventory and expenses: http://www.education.umd.edu/edcp/ schoolassess/order.html). in addition, to order materials, one must also complete and submit a “qualification form.” this inventory is clearly aimed at school districts, rather than scholars. given the difficulty in accessing this inventory, we did not consider it in the construction of our own msci. the paucity of existing and available surveys focused on multicultural school climate prompted us to create our own survey, not from existing materials, but from the literature we introduce above. this msci was originally designed to address the needs of real students attending a specific secondary school. it proved to be such a helpful tool for examining multicultural school climate from the perspective of diverse students that we share the instrument here to make it available to other educators and scholars wishing to examine and thereafter improve multicultural school climate. the msci begins with several demographic questions about age, grade, race/ethnicity, gender, and languages spoken in addition to english so analysis can be made on every given indicator or combination thereof. it contains 22 questions written in likert scale format ranging from 1 strongly disagree to 5 strongly agree. we also included the open-ended question: “do you think that being a member of your particular ethnic group (white, african american/black, latino/hispanic, etc.) affects your education here? how?” this question allows those administering the survey to gather a qualitative sense of student perceptions of their own ethnic/racial experience in school. the survey was printed on the front and back of a single piece of paper; it took approximately 15 minutes to complete. the survey is reproduced in table 1 below. setting and participants the msci was given to all students in a secondary school (grades 8-9) in a semi-rural area of the intermountain west (see marx, 2008; marx & larson, 2012). the school has a small but growing latina/o population (about 5.5%) and is otherwise predominantly white. the school setting is important given the growing numbers of latina/o, immigrant, and non-native english speaking students in traditionally white, english-only speaking areas of the united states. while most latinas/os still reside in the “traditional” immigration gateway states of california, florida, illinois, new jersey, new york, and texas, they also account for large and growing populations in arizona (30.2% of state population), colorado (20.1%), washington (25.9%), connecticut (12.1%) and utah (11.8%) (bump, lowell, & pettersen, 2005; pew hispanic center, 2008). the latina/o population in every state in the us has grown since the 1990s, with growth in the less traditional states most rapid (bump et al., 2005). as a result, smaller communities across the us are experiencing unprecedented growth of latina/o immigrants and school children (godziak & martin, 2005). many teachers and administrators in these communities are working with latina/o students, many of whom are english language learners (ells), for the first time in their careers. at the same time, schools and regions with longer experiences working with culturally and linguistically diverse students often have equally long histories of not meeting their students’ academic needs (balfanz & legters, 2004; evans, 2007). thus, while our site school may at first glance seem a nontraditional setting for conducting a multicultural school climate survey, it is actually quite timely and potentially applicable to numerous school districts across the us. the survey was given to all students in the school in spring 2005 and spring 2008. after consultation with the school principal and multicultural education colleagues, we decided to omit two questions that were repetitive and six open-ended questions that were vague and did not prompt useful responses on the 2005 instrument in the 2008 version. the one strong openended question, “do you think that being a member of your particular ethnic group (white, african american/black, latino/hispanic, etc.) affects your education here? how?” remained on the 2008 survey. thus, the survey we present in this paper is the final, current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 table 1 student survey the purpose of the survey is to learn more about how all the students in the school feel about their time at ______. this survey is anonymous and is designed to ask you to share your honest opinions. please do not put your name anywhere on the survey. all answers will remain confidential. please return it to your teacher when you are finished. thank you very much for taking the time to complete this survey. part 1 1. i am 12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 years old. 2. i am in 8th / 9th grade. (circle one) 3. i am male / female. (circle one) 4. my ethnic background is: white / african american or black / native american / latino or hispanic / polynesian / african / other (circle one) 5. i do / do not speak a language other than english. (circle one) 6. the language i speak besides english is spanish / navajo / russian / other:___________ (circle one) part ii for the questions below circle the number that best represents your thoughts about the questions asked. 1 = strongly agree 2 = agree 3= don’t have an opinion 4 = disagree 5 = strongly disagree 1. overall, i like attending _____. 1 2 3 4 5 2. i like my teachers. 1 2 3 4 5 3. i like the administrators (principals, etc.) at school. 1 2 3 4 5 4. i feel welcome at _______. 1 2 3 4 5 5. my family feels welcome at _______. 1 2 3 4 5 6. i feel well prepared for school. 1 2 3 4 5 7. i feel that i fit in well with students of other cultural and language backgrounds here at school. 1 2 3 4 5 8. i feel that i fit in well at school. 1 2 3 4 5 9. i think that an important part of succeeding in school is blending into american culture. 1 2 3 4 5 10. an important part of succeeding in school is speaking english. 1 2 3 4 5 11. i am confident that i am doing what it takes to 1 2 3 4 5 succeed in school. 12. my teachers seem prepared to help me succeed in school. 1 2 3 4 5 multicultural school climate inventory 7 13. my teachers seem to understand me and relate to me. 1 2 3 4 5 14. i feel that i can relate to my teachers. 1 2 3 4 5 15. i feel that my teachers can relate well to me. 1 2 3 4 5 16. my teachers include my home culture and 1 2 3 4 5 language in their classes. 17. i see people like me in school text books, pictures, 1 2 3 4 5 posters, and leadership positions around the school. 18. i feel that my teachers know my family well. 1 2 3 4 5 19. i feel that my teachers know me well. 1 2 3 4 5 20. my home culture and home language are valued by the school. 1 2 3 4 5 21. my teachers have had experiences similar to mine. 1 2 3 4 5 22. i know what i need to do to be successful in my classes at 1 2 3 4 5 _________. part iii 1. do you think that being a member of your particular ethnic group (white, african american/black, latino/hispanic, etc.) affects your education here? how? revised 2008 version. all statistical analysis below refers to the items the 2005 and 2008 survey share. surveys were distributed by teachers during their first-period class, with copies of the spanish version given to teachers to pass out at their discretion. given the two year nature of the school, different student bodies completed the survey over this four year period. 825 students responded in 2005 and 867 responded in 2008, for a total of 1,692 student respondents. given the predominantly white and latina/o makeup of the school, students from other ethnic groups combined accounted for less than one percent of students. due to their small numbers, they were not included in the analysis. similarly, students who marked more than one race/ethnicity on the survey were excluded, as were those who marked no race/ethnicity. 1,420 white and 91 latina/o survey responses were analyzed, for a total of 1511. results reliability an internal test of the 22-item survey scale yielded an alpha coefficient of .94 for the overall scale. while a high value for cronbach’s alpha indicates good internal consistency of the items in the scale, it does not mean that the scale is uni-dimensional. to better understand the different dimensions that contribute to a positive multicultural school climate, items were divided into four subscales. subscales the subscales were created by running two factor analyses, one with the latina/o students and one with the white students. the principal components analysis yielded different factors depending upon which group of students was used. this is not surprising given that students in these two groups have been shown to respond differently when responding to school climate questions (marx, 2008; marx & larson, 2012). although all survey items emerged out of our integrated literature framework, the ways students answered them showed us which questions they found inherently connected. in other words, students tended to respond similarly to these items, thus indicating the existence of a subscale within the overall survey. the authors decided to use the latina/o four factor solution as a starting place and then to adjust items based on theoretical concerns coupled with the placement making intuitive sense. the four subscales that emerged were liking school, educator-student relationships, cultural relevancy, and school success. alpha-reliability coefficients for the subscales indicated high internal consistency (see table 2). given that white students greatly outnumbered latina/o students in the sample, alpha-reliability coefficients were run separately for both groups to assure that the subscales were internally consistent for both latinas/os and whites. as shown in table 2, the subscales worked well for both groups with reliability coefficients ranging from .81 to current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 .92. the subscale intercorrelations are reported in table 3. the subscale score intercorrelations are not so high as to suggest multicollinearity, which indicates that the subscales tap different but related dimensions of school climate. means and standard deviations for the total scale and subscales are shown in table 4. table 2 multicultural climate school inventory items and subscales with alpha reliability coefficients subscales and items all students n=1504 latina/o n=91 white n=1413 q # subscale 1– liking school .86 .88 .84 1 overall, i like attending ___. 2 i like my teachers. 3 i like the administrators (principals, etc.) at school. 4 i feel welcome at ___. 5 my family feels welcome at ___. 7 i feel that i fit in well with students of other cultural and language backgrounds here at school. q# subscale 2 –educator-student relationships .91 .92 .91 12 my teachers seem prepared to help me succeed in school. 13 my teachers seem to understand me and relate to me. 14 i feel that i can relate to my teachers. 15 i feel that my teachers can relate well to me. q# subscale 3 – cultural relevancy .83 .87 .83 9 i think that an important part of succeeding in school is blending into american culture. 16 my teachers include my home culture and language in their classes. 17 i see people like me represented in the curriculum, the posters around the school, etc. 18 i feel that my teachers know my family well. 19 i feel that my teachers know me well. 20 my home culture and home language are valued by the school. 21 my teachers have had experiences similar to mine. q# subscale 4 – school success .81 .83 .81 6 i feel well prepared for school 8 i feel that i fit in well at school. 10 an important part of succeeding in school is speaking english. 11 i am confident that i am doing what it takes to succeed in school. 22 i know what i need to do to be successful in my classes at __. multicultural school climate inventory 9 table 3 multicultural school climate inventory subscale zero-order correlations multicultural school climate inventory subscale 2 3 4 1. liking school .694 .689 .719 2 educator-student relationships __ .739 .546 3. cultural relevancy __ .613 4. school success __ note. all coefficients are significant at p < .001. n=1504 table 4 msci scale and subscales scores for latina/o and white students total scale group n mean sd range latino/a 81 63.57 18.37 22-110 white 1265 56.14 15.19 22-110 total 1346 56.59 15.50 22-110 subscales liking school latino/a 90 16.69 5.81 6-30 white 1394 14.78 4.62 6-30 total 1484 14.90 4.72 6-30 educator-student relationships latino/a 89 11.89 4.25 4-20 white 1397 11.10 3.84 4-20 total 1486 11.15 3.87 4-20 cultural relevancy latino/a 87 22.64 6.13 7-35 white 1322 19.58 5.23 7-35 total 1409 19.76 5.33 7-35 school success latino/a 86 12.48 4.80 5-25 white 1358 10.79 3.92 5-25 total 1444 10.89 4.00 5-25 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 10 validity to support construct validity, the known-group method was utilized. this method involves analyzing responses from two groups whom would be expected to differ in responses on the variables being measured. the literature would suggest that, in a predominantly white school in a semi-rural area, white students would perceive the school climate differently and more positively than a small but growing latina/o population. a finding of such a difference provides additional support for the validity of the scale. one-way anovas were used to test for differences between latina/o and white students on the total scale and each of the subscales. perceptions of school climate differed significantly for the total scale (f [1,1344] = 17.71, p<.001) and on three of the four subscales (liking school, f [1, 1407] = 13.93, p<.001; cultural relevancy, f [1, 1407] = 27.61, p<.001; and school success, f [1, 1442] = 14.6, p<.001). differences approached significance on the fourth scale, educatorstudent relationships (f [1, 1484] = 3.46, p<=.06). spss or other statistical software will nicely account for unequal sample size in an anova if other assumptions regarding the homogeneity of variance and normality of distribution do not occur. in this data set, there were some abnormalities (regarding homogeneity of variance and normality of distribution) and there were unequal groups, thus an appropriate non-parametric alternative, the kruskal-wallis test, was also run in case the typical robustness of anova had been comprised. the kruskal-wallis test resulted in the same statistically significant findings with the exception that the liking school variable was significant at the .002 level instead of .001. for both tests, in all cases, differences were in the expected direction. as can be seen in table 4, latina/o students were less positive about their school climate than white students. limitations the msci has several limitations that those wishing to work with it must be aware. first, it must be remembered that the msci focuses particularly on linguistically, culturally, and racially diverse school children. other dimensions of multiculturalism, such as sexual orientation, economic status, etc., are not included on this instrument. second, the msci was tested in a two-year secondary school with a predominately white and small, but growing, latina/o student body in a semirural area of the intermountain west. although the msci was constructed using the tenets of critical multicultural education and associated multicultural and social theories, it was tested only with white and latina/o students. applicability of the msci for more diverse and/or different student bodies must be determined through additional testing of the instrument. third, the msci only focuses on student perspectives. it does not include surveys for parents and educators, important components of holistic school climate measurement (cohen et al., 2009). it is our hope that future scholars will use the msci as a basis on which to build these further dimensions of inquiry. fourth, we also recognize that a 22-item survey has inherent limitations due to its length. however, the short length offers convenience for educators and children who do not want to interrupt class time in order to take an extensive survey. our site school gave the survey during morning announcement time. quantitative results can be quickly assessed, while the open-ended qualitative question allows educators and scholars the opportunity to learn more about student feelings regarding their racial/ethnic experience in school. conclusion the msci we present in this paper is meant to enable school leaders, teachers, and scholars to assess existing school climate for evidence of multicultural practices and environments that are known to support the learning experiences of ethnically and linguistically diverse school children. examining student responses across ethnicity allows for a quick understanding of school climate aspects that may be working for some students, but not for others, and enables school leaders to focus on important areas of change. the msci can then be used to assess whether changes initiated by schools have an impact on student perspectives across ethnic groups. indeed, schools may be surprised to learn their school climate is not as conducive to the happiness and academic achievement of diverse students as they might hope or imagine. the msci in this situation becomes an important tool for gathering evidence of student perceptions. in our site school, for example, msci results were a catalyst for improving school culture for latina/o and ell students. changes in curriculum, teaching strategies, and overall attitude toward these students and their families brought about positive, measurable change in msci results three years later. over the same period of time, yearly standardized test scores showed that latina/o and ell students made remarkable gains in math, science, and language arts, approximately doubling their passing rates in three years. these increased gains in positive feelings about school and academic success offer more evidence for the integrated nature of school happiness and academic success. more on the msci project at our site school can be found in marx, 2008, and marx and larson, 2012. we suggest that the msci can help schools and scholars better understand the school climate experienced by diverse students in schools and also recognize areas of disparity among students. msci results can be a meaningful catalyst for change that improves multicultural school climate and positively impacts student happiness and success. the msci can then be used again – or at any time – to examine the effectiveness multicultural school climate inventory 11 of changes made. understanding and improving the happiness and academic success of all students in school should be an undertaking all of us, scholars and practitioners, prioritize. a tool as convenient as the msci makes the first step easy. the next step, creating meaningful change, is the real challenge. references andersen, f. c., & ottesen, e. 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(2011, november). the newly arrived foreign-born population of the united states: 2010. american community survey briefs. retrieved march 14, 2012 from http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acsbr1016.pdf young, m. d., & laible, j. (2000). white racism, antiracism, and school leadership preparation. journal of school leadership, 10, 374-415. zembylas, m., & iasonos, s. (2010). leadership styles and multicultural education approaches: an exploration of their relationship. international journal of leadership in education, 13(2), 163183. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 14 article citation marx, s. & byrnes, d. (2012). multicultural school climate inventory. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/960 author notes sherry marx, phd school of teacher education and leadership utah state university 2805 old main hill logan, utah 84321 usa sherry.marx@usu.edu sherry marx is an award winning researcher who specializes in examining whiteness and racism in school settings. she teaches classes in multicultural education, esl education, and qualitative research. deborah byrnes, phd school of teacher education and leadership utah state university 2805 old main hill logan, utah 84321 usa deborah.byrnes@usu.edu deborah byrnes has spent several decades studying how we can best develop teachers who are culturally aware and sensitive to the school experiences of all learners. she teaches classes in social studies education and action research. manuscript received: 6/29/2012 revisions received: 10/21/2012 accepted: 10/30/2012 multicultural school climate inventory 15 volume 15, number 3 december 5, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors evan fishman ayfer gokalp kathleen hill sultan kilinc younsu kim carol masser bonnie mazza leslie ramos salazar melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word #870 final layout.docx 1 volume 15, number 1 march 16, 2012 issn 1099-839x teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes accountability in florida’s title i elementary schools natasha a. vernaza barry university teachers are catalysts to the success of high-stakes accountability policies, yet noticeably absent from previous studies is an examination of teachers’ responses toward being held accountable for their students’ performance on state-mandated, high-stakes assessments in low socioeconomic status (ses) school settings. an on-line survey instrument was used to determine how third grade, title i classroom teachers in two southeastern florida school districts believed they were capable of being held accountable for their students’ knowledge of reading and mathematics standards assessed on the florida comprehensive assessment test. open-ended survey responses received from 61 respondents acknowledged the need for teacher accountability in terms of contingencies, students’ academic growth, and teachers’ instruction, but raised significant concerns regarding the fairness of high-stakes accountability policy and shared accountability for student achievement. keywords: accountability, florida comprehensive assessment test (fcat), highstakes, socioeconomic status (ses), title i nearly two decades after the birth of the standards-based reform movement, high-stakes testing and accountability remain issues of concern throughout our nation’s public schools. research continues to document teachers’ perceived pressures to demonstrate gains in student achievement on state-mandated, highstakes assessments (assaf, 2006; barksdale-ladd & thomas, 2000; bomer, 2005; moon, brighton, jarvis, & hall, 2007; pedulla et al., 2003). moreover, educators teaching in title i schools (i.e., schools receiving federal financial assistance due to the high enrollment of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds) face additional pressures of preparing “economically and educationally disadvantaged children” (jennings, 2000, p. 516) in becoming proficient with tested content. teaching in the dual context of a state that emphasizes high-stakes assessment, as well as a school whose demographic population may lack fundamental skills, potentially poses a significant concern for educators (booher-jennings, 2005; diamond & spillane, 2004). research has already established that children from low socioeconomic (ses) backgrounds generally enter school less ready to learn in comparison to their middle class peers (lee & burkam, 2002), and that ses plays a role in determining students’ academic achievement (baker & johnston, 2010; borg, plumlee, & stranahan, 2007; cunningham & sanzo, 2002). yet noticeably absent from previous studies is an examination of title i teachers’ responses toward being held accountable for their students’ performance on highstakes tests. this gap in the literature demands urgent attention since title i teachers possess firsthand experience with state accountability policy on a daily basis, and are held professionally responsible for the academic achievement of the disadvantaged students they are entrusted to educate. hence, the purpose of this study was to elicit classroom teachers’ perspectives regarding current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 2 the ways in which they believed they were capable of being held accountable for their students’ high-stakes test performance in florida’s title i elementary schools. by allowing title i teachers a voice as stakeholders accountable for their children’s education, the broader educational community can gain vital information regarding teachers’ daily occupational realities of highstakes policy implementation within low ses school settings. effects of state-mandated assessment a broad body of research conducted throughout the united states has consistently documented similarities in teachers’ perceptions of the effects of state-mandated assessment. such perceived effects have commonly included narrowing of the classroom curriculum and instruction, whereby teachers have devoted the majority of their instructional time to specific subject areas in which their students are tested. other effects have included changes in teachers’ instructional strategies aligned with test preparation, as well as a decrease in teacher morale and student motivation (barksdale-ladd & thomas, 2000; berry, turchi, johnson, hare, & owens, 2003; boardman & woodruff, 2004; jones & johnston, 2004; jones et al., 1999; parke, lane, & stone, 2006; pedulla et al., 2003; taylor, shepard, kinner, & rosenthal, 2003). one additional effect of state-mandated assessment relevant to the current study is teachers’ perceived feelings of test-related pressure to improve student achievement. teachers in multiple states have reported feelings of increased pressure from various individuals, ranging from district superintendents and principals to students’ parents. research has documented teachers’ feelings of test-related pressure regardless of the level of stakes associated with state-mandated tests (pedulla et al., 2003), as well as teachers’ feelings of constant stress and pressure to ensure students’ success on these exams (barksdale-ladd & thomas, 2000). in particular, teachers’ perceptions of test-related pressure are not uncommon in schools serving students from predominantly low ses backgrounds. a national study of elementary through high school educators showed that teachers working in schools with higher levels of poverty felt more pressure to raise students’ test scores (moon et al., 2007). moreover, interview data from teachers working in an impoverished urban texas neighborhood conveyed their perceptions of test-related pressure to increase students’ scores as one of the most significant effects of testing, whereby low-performing students were perceived as liabilities (booher-jennings, 2005). other studies have also documented teachers’ frustrations over being compared with educators of middle-class students when held accountable for their economically disadvantaged students’ test scores (wright, 2002), as well as teachers’ agreement that test-related pressures have led good educators to flee the teaching profession altogether (hoffman, assaf, & paris, 2001). such perceptions of test-related pressure in low ses communities seem to warrant justification. according to hertert and teague (2003), “poverty is the single best explanation research has found for why children differ in ways that affect school performance, both before they enter school and once they are enrolled” (p. 5). in fact, a positive relationship has been shown to exist between students’ ses and their performance on standardized tests (cunningham & sanzo, 2002). recent research has shown that low ses students attending title i schools were less likely to pass high-stakes tests than higher ses students attending non-title i schools (baker & johnston, 2010), and that ses was a key indicator of students’ success in attaining the minimum test scores necessary to meet graduation requirements (borg et al., 2007). teachers’ responses to accountability although previous research indicates that teachers seem to share similar perceptions of test-related pressure, several studies have established that teachers throughout the united states are not opposed to accountability. for instance, e-mail data from teachers in texas showed they were not against accountability, yet contended that classroom assessment served as a more valuable tool in informing their instruction rather than high-stakes tests (flores & clark, 2003). in another study, most educators surveyed in texas indicated that teachers should be held accountable for their teaching, yet did not believe their state’s high-stakes achievement test was an accurate measure of students’ learning (reese, gordon, & price, 2004). similarly, interview data from teachers in illinois indicated that although most agreed with being held accountable for their students’ knowledge of state standards, they also disagreed with the amount of emphasis placed on high-stakes testing (stitzlein, feinberg, greene, & miron, 2007). finally, almost all of the teachers interviewed in six other states recognized the importance of accountability, yet were in disagreement with the negative effects they perceived their state accountability systems had on curriculum and instruction (berry et al., 2003). teachers’ perceived feelings of test-related pressure do not appear to prevent them from favoring accountability in general, yet research simultaneously suggests that most teachers do not favor specific aspects of their state accountability systems. the critical question remains as to how teachers envision a favorable accountability system to which they are fully capable of being held professionally accountable for their students’ test performance. hence, this study attempted to ask title i teachers this question as a means of building the foundation for a new literature base on high-stakes accountability. in order to provide the context for the teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes accountability in florida’s title i elementary schools 3 present study, the following sections provide a brief overview of florida’s accountability system and outlines teachers’ responses to the policy documented thus far. high-stakes accountability in florida florida’s accountability policy, the a+ plan for education (section 1008.34, f.s.), was enacted by the state’s legislature under the leadership of then-governor jeb bush in 1999. labeled as “the nation’s most aggressive test-based accountability measure” (greene, winters, & forster, 2004, p. 1124), the plan called for increased accountability through school grades (ratings from “a” to “f”) based on elementary and secondary students’ performance on the state-mandated florida comprehensive assessment test (fcat) a criterionreferenced test that measures students’ learning performance on selected benchmarks from florida’s learning standards (i.e., sunshine state standards). [additional information regarding the fcat, as well as the revised fcat 2.0, is available at http://www.fldoe.org/.] in 2002, the school grading system was adjusted to incorporate an annual learning gains component so that school grades reflected student performance and learning gains equally. thereafter, florida’s public schools were assigned a letter grade based on: the percentage of students meeting high standards in reading, writing, and mathematics; the percentage of students making reading and mathematics learning gains; and the percentage of the lowest 25% of students who make reading learning gains (florida department of education, 2007). florida’s state board of education later added three more components to the school grading system: the percentage of students meeting high standards in science was measured, as well as the percentage of the lowest 25% of students making mathematics learning gains. in addition, high schools with at least 50% of 11thand 12th-grade students who retook the grade 10 fcat and met graduation requirements were eligible to receive additional school grade bonus points (florida department of education, 2007). in particular, third graders are unique from students in other elementary grades in florida since they must earn a level 2 or above (on a scale of one to five) on the reading portion of the fcat in order to be promoted. according to the florida department of education (2007), fcat scores are not adjusted for students’ ses: “schools are responsible for teaching all students, regardless of their socioeconomic status. all students are capable of making adequate learning progress, and all schools are held to equally challenging performance standards” (p. 20). data show that a combined total of 49% of all students eligible for free or reduced price lunch in two florida counties being surveyed in this study scored a level 1 on the fcat reading during the 20072008 school year (florida department of education, 2008). teachers’ responses to accountability in florida. sparse research has examined classroom teachers’ perspectives regarding florida’s accountability system. however, those studies that do exist convey similarities in teachers’ dissatisfaction. shortly after the plan’s implementation, survey and interview data from elementary through high school teachers and administrators throughout florida showed that the majority of the educators acknowledged feelings of intimidation by the fcat and school grading system, and disagreed with schools being rated based solely on students’ fcat scores (inman, 2001). thereafter, the national board on educational testing and public policy conducted a survey of elementary and secondary educators in 47 states in 2001 (pedulla et al., 2003), including 167 teachers from florida (abrams, 2004). the majority of florida’s teachers (80%) reported feelings of pressure from district superintendents to raise test scores. approximately 60% also indicated that the use of fcat scores to make promotion or retention decisions was inappropriate. similarly, focus group interview data derived between 2001 and 2003 from third and fourth grade teachers of english language learners and low ses students in an urban school district in florida also revealed their increasingly negative perceptions of accountability (shaver, cuevas, lee, & avalos, 2007). teachers complained about the misuse of students’ test scores to award school grades, and were even more concerned about the unfairness of retaining third grade students based on fcat reading scores. in addition, jones and egley’s (2004) on-line questionnaire of third through fifth grade teachers across florida in 2002 also documented teachers’ concerns regarding the unfairness of using test scores to compare students and judge teaching ability due to factors beyond the teacher’s control, such as students’ ses, cognitive abilities, emotional stability, cultural values and norms, as well as students’ parents and home life. other uncontrollable factors cited included students not being good test takers, or simply not performing well on the day of the test. included in the same theme were teachers’ perceptions regarding a lack of student and parent accountability. one additional theme that provided the impetus for the current study was jones and egley’s (2004) finding that although none of the teachers surveyed indicated they were opposed to accountability, more than 10% raised the concern that they did not favor the means by which they were being held accountable. since the survey did not elicit teachers’ views of a revised accountability system, the field of education has yet to understand teachers’ beliefs regarding their perceived ability to adhere to favorable state accountability measures. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 4 purpose of the study the purpose of this study was to investigate third grade reading and mathematics classroom teachers’ responses to high-stakes accountability policy in florida’s title i elementary schools. specifically, this study addressed the following research question: in what ways do third grade teachers believe they should be held accountable for their students’ knowledge of reading and mathematics sunshine state standards assessed on the fcat? methods participants participants were derived from the estimated population of approximately 720 third grade teachers in two school districts’ title i schools in southeastern florida. third grade teachers teaching in title i schools were labeled title i teachers for the purpose of this study. a total of 92 elementary schools having title i status and eligibility to participate in research studies for the 20082009 school year were identified from both school districts’ websites. charter schools were not included. once permissions to conduct research were received from both school districts’ research departments, access to participants was sought through school administrators. ninety-two principals in two school districts were mailed a packet containing a cover letter and a consent form. consent forms sought principals’ permission to allow their third grade reading and mathematics classroom teachers to participate in this study. follow-up packets were mailed two to three weeks later to principals who did not initially respond to the first mailing. of the 53 principals from both school districts who responded, 27 (51%) agreed to their teachers’ participation and returned the following written information to the researcher via u.s. mail: the name of a school contact person (not in a supervisory role); the contact person’s school e-mail address; the exact number of third grade reading and mathematics classroom teachers at the principals’ schools; and principals’ signatures as proof of permission. a total sample size of 184 teachers was attained. of the 184 teachers assumed to have been forwarded a survey via e-mail by their school’s designated contact person, 68 (37%) responded to this study’s survey. the majority of respondents (80%) were experienced teachers with five or more years of full-time teaching experience, while 20% were novice teachers with fewer than five years of teaching experience. most teachers (62%) indicated that the highest degree they obtained in education was a bachelor’s degree, whereas 38% held a graduate degree. most of the participants (86%) were employed in one of the two school districts surveyed. instrumentation a web-based survey instrument, entitled highstakes accountability in florida, was developed by the researcher. several survey items were adapted from two existing instruments (i.e., hamilton et al., 2007; parke et al., 2006). face and content validity were established by consulting with a panel of individuals who had expertise in developing surveys. each individual examined the survey items’ representativeness, clarity, and comprehensiveness. instrument revisions were made based upon their recommendations. the survey was then given to classroom teachers for the purpose of providing feedback to the researcher to ensure the instrument’s usability, whereby further revisions were made. an alpha coefficient value of .94 was obtained. overall, a combination of 44 openand closedended items elicited information about the following topics: demographic information; context and capability beliefs regarding professional development, instruction, and instructional resources; and perceptions regarding accountability. this article specifically discusses participants’ responses to one of the open-ended items that asked, “in your opinion, in what way(s) should third grade teachers be held accountable for their students’ knowledge of reading and mathematics sunshine state standards assessed on the fcat?” participants typed their responses into a text box provided within the on-line survey. overall, the survey required a maximum of 15 minutes to complete. procedure data collection occurred between october, 2008 and january, 2009. once consent forms were received by the researcher from principals allowing their teachers’ participation, cover letters inviting teachers to participate in this study were sent twice via school e-mail by the researcher to principals’ designated contact persons in 27 title i elementary schools in two southeastern florida school districts. the e-mail requested that the contact person forward the cover letter to all third grade reading and mathematics classroom teachers at their schools. cover letters indicated that the teachers’ participation may contribute to the field of education and literature focusing on the impact of high-stakes accountability policy. anonymity of teachers’ identity, internet protocol (ip) addresses, and survey data were assured. teachers who responded to the e-mail accessed the survey through an active link contained in the cover letter. all survey data were stored in an on-line database. data analyses sixty-eight web-based surveys were initially analyzed; however, two were discarded due to excessive missing data. frequency distributions were computed using the statistical package for the social sciences to obtain information regarding sample demographics. coding and a search for themes were used to analyze teachers’ open-ended responses. the coding process involved identifying and bracketing text that related to single concepts, and assigning codes that succinctly described the meaning of the text. codes were teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes accountability in florida’s title i elementary schools 5 examined for overlap; similar codes were regrouped and redundant codes were eliminated. three categories of codes were developed: teacher accountability (ta), other accountability (oa), and contingency-based accountability (cb). a codebook containing a list of 22 operational definitions corresponding with each code was developed. codes that occurred most often were grouped into broad themes that formed major concepts; similar themes were grouped and interrelated. interrater agreement was used to establish the dependability of teachers’ open-ended responses. one peer reviewer external to the study independently coded survey responses and searched for subsequent themes that emerged from the data. coding results and themes were then compared to the researcher’s to determine whether similar interpretations were made. this resulted in a 94% rate of agreement across all open-ended survey responses. results a total of 61 participants responded to this study’s open-ended survey item. preliminary analysis of teachers’ responses revealed that the majority of respondents acknowledged a general need for teacher accountability, a finding consistent with previous studies conducted throughout the united states (berry et al., 2003; flores & clark, 2003; reese et al., 2004; stitzlein et al., 2007). an examination of participants’ responses resulted in the identification of three themes: contingency-based accountability, accountability for student growth, and instructional accountability (see table 1). contingency-based accountability the most frequently recurring theme emerging from teachers’ open-ended responses was contingencybased accountability, whereby the majority of respondents indicated that teacher accountability for third grade students’ fcat reading and mathematics performance should be contingent or dependent upon the consideration of certain factors. such responses were usually signaled by words and phrases such as “if…, then,” “depending on,” “unless,” “only,” and “rather than.” in particular, three types of contingencies in need of consideration were noted: accountability for others; personal student factors beyond the teacher’s control; and students’ level of academic performance upon entering third grade. table 1 title i teachers’ proposed views of accountability in florida proposed views examples contingency-based accountability 1. accountability for others students, parents, previous teachers 2. factor beyond teachers’ control ability, home environment, behavior 3. students’ academic level mastery of second grade skills accountability for student growth 4. students’ knowledge of students gain one year’s worth of learning standards knowledge instructional accountability 5. implement instruction of the curriculum evidence of effective instruction current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 6 accountability for others. several respondents referred to accountability for others (in general) as a contingency upon which teacher accountability should be based. as noted by two respondents, “i don’t mind be [sic] held accountable, but i do mind being the only one accountable;” and “there are so many factors that contribute to learning that it would be unfair to hold one person accountable. it takes a village to raise a child.” other respondents identified specific individuals (in addition to third grade teachers) who should also be held accountable for students’ knowledge of florida’s reading and mathematics standards. for example, a few respondents referred to the need for student accountability in addition to teacher accountability, as noted in the following comment: “they [teachers] should be accountable for what they teach, but so should the students in the learning process.” accountability for previous teachers was also mentioned: “it is not just up to the third grade teacher – the previous teachers should also be held accountable because they must teach foundations upon which third grade teachers build knowledge.” also, a need for parent accountability was cited: “i think we should have to show a reasonable amount of growth per child per year. if you hold me accountable then the parents should also be held to the same accountability.” simultaneous accountability for multiple individuals was suggested: “i think it is a 50/25/25 teachers, students and parents should be held accountable for a child’s knowledge.” less than a handful of respondents shunned teacher accountability altogether: “third grade teachers should not be held accountable no [sic] shape or form.” personal student factors beyond the teacher’s control. consideration of student factors beyond the teacher’s control was the second most commonly cited contingency upon which respondents believed teacher accountability should be based. the majority of respondents referred to student ability (including capability, disabilities, and reading ability) as one such factor. corresponding statements included, “they [teachers] should be held accountable for the progress the students make, depending on the student’s [sic] capability;” “teachers should be held accountable to a certain degree. all students should be able to show gains in the academic areas, unless there is a severe disability;” “if the students are not reading at a third grade level due to their inability then the teacher should not be held accountable for the student recieving [sic] a 1 on the fcat.” several respondents also referred to uncontrollable factors or issues stemming from students’ home environments, including “reinforcement of [learning standards] from home,” “divorce, negligence,” and “social/home issue [sic].” other factors included students’ behavior; testing factors (“the child could have a bad day or could also be a nervous test taker”); and students’ backgrounds (“the population of the students should also be considered”). students’ level of academic performance upon entering third grade. the third type of contingency respondents believed teacher accountability should depend on was students’ level of academic performance upon entering third grade. related responses included, “students who are missing skills from second grade come into third with a disadvantage. i think teachers should be accountable for those who are ready to learn all third grade reading and math skills as tested on the fcat;” “if a student enters the third grade below level [sic] we should not be held responsible.” other respondents further elaborated: “many students arrive in 3rd grade unprepared for the course work. it is difficult to get all of the curriculum under their belts in 7 months and be 100% accountable for what they are able to do or not do;” “if i receive a student who arrives to me on a beginning 2nd grade reading level, it is hard to expect for my student to effectively pass the fcat which is at a level of an ending of the year for a third grade student.” these findings are similar to those previously obtained by booher-jennings (2005), whereby elementary teachers viewed below-level students as a “liability rather than an opportunity to promote individual growth” (p. 254). moreover, these responses appear to be consistent with the opinions of those who indicate that test scores themselves are not limited to reflecting students’ current learning experiences. as kohn (2000) states, “it seems difficult to justify holding a … teacher accountable for her students’ test scores when those scores reflect all that has happened to the children before they even arrived at her class” (p. 20). accountability for student growth a second theme emerging from participants’ responses was teacher accountability for students’ academic growth. several participants indicated that they should be held accountable for their students’ knowledge of florida’s reading and mathematics standards by demonstrating that their students gained a year’s worth of knowledge in a year’s length of time (as is consistent with the plan’s underlying premise). such responses were similar to the following: “we should be accountable to show one year of growth in students’ knowledge of reading and mathematics.” other participants discussed students’ academic growth in more general terms: “i think we should have to show a reasonable amount of growth per child per year;” “third grade teachers should be held accountable for overall growth.” one respondent indicated that growth should be determined by each student’s point of academic origin upon entering third grade [“we should be held accountable for moving our students. we should be expected to move our students a minimum of a year from where they came to us”], whereas another respondent indicated that the performance of the whole class should teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes accountability in florida’s title i elementary schools 7 be considered versus looking at each individual child [“third grade teachers should be held accountable to the fact that their class as a whole has made progress. we can not guarentee [sic] how each individual child does on one test”]. finally, one respondent suggested, “there should be a growth model,” but did not provide additional details. instructional accountability a final theme emerging from participants’ survey responses was their description of teacher accountability for third grade students’ performance on the fcat in relation to whether or how teachers implement instruction of florida’s learning standards. such comments included: “teachers should be held accountable for effectively teaching the … reading strategies, and math concepts;” “they should be held accountable to the degree that each standard was taught and assessed prior to the fact [sic];” “in my opinion if i’m teaching by what the sss [sunshine state standards] are based, then i’m 100% accountable for student learning.” a few respondents even suggested the need for documentation as proof that instruction of the standards occurred: “teachers should be held accountable by having all the necessary documents showing what they did with that particular student and how they helped them [sic] better prepare for the fcat;” “if the majority of students have scored on or above grade level on the test, that should be sufficient to prove the skills had been taught and learned.” comments derived from this theme, as well as the accountability for student growth theme, are somewhat consistent with the basic tenets that characterize state-level accountability systems: teachers are responsible for focusing their lesson design and instruction on state learning standards based on the conviction that every child can learn and no child should be left behind. thereafter, high-stakes achievement data then serves as evidence to determine if students have met high standards and made learning gains. all but two teachers had some perception of what they envisioned teacher accountability should look like in the state of florida. one respondent stated, “i haven’t seen a truly effective way for teachers to be accountable for student’s [sic] knowledge. student’s [sic] knowledge depends on many factors including a good teacher, parental involvement, behavior issues, language issues, developmental issues, etc.” another teacher commented, “i agree that we should have some form of accountability through standardized data, but not in the form we have right now.” discussion and conclusion whereas previous studies have shed light on teachers’ dissatisfaction regarding various aspects of florida’s accountability policy (inman, 2001; jones & egley, 2004; pedulla et al., 2003; shaver et al., 2007), the current study provided an alternative focus by addressing the one question that researchers had yet to ask: in what ways do title i teachers believe they are capable of being held accountable for their students’ academic achievement on state-mandated, high-stakes assessment? the three subsequent themes derived from the survey data (contingency-based accountability, accountability for student growth, instructional accountability) confirmed previous research indicating that teachers are not opposed to accountability (berry et al., 2003; flores & clark, 2003; jones & egley, 2004; reese et al., 2004; stitzlein et al., 2007). many of the teachers’ comments began with phrases such as “third grade teachers should be accountable…” and “we should be held accountable…,” and revealed that most participants had preliminary conceptions about how teachers should be held accountable for their students gaining at least one year’s worth of knowledge in one year’s length of time. despite evidence documenting the relationship between ses and students’ academic achievement (baker & johnston, 2010; borg et al., 2007; cunningham & sanzo, 2002), teachers in this study did not refer to ses as an uncontrollable factor that should be considered when held accountable for their students’ high-stakes test performance as has been noted in previous research (jones & egley, 2004; wright, 2002). instead, they referred to uncontrollable factors related to students’ backgrounds and home environments. these comments mirror those derived from elementary teachers surveyed in florida shortly after the implementation of the fcat (jones & egley, 2004), and appear to be aligned with the views conveyed in the national association of school psychologists’ (2003) position statement on the consequences of high-stakes assessments: administrators and teachers are rewarded or sanctioned based on student test performance, despite having little or no influence on some factors that significantly impact student achievement, such as student mobility and parent involvement….myriad factors can impact the performance of any one student at a single point in time, significantly reducing the reliability of test scores. (pp. 2, 4) however, two significant results emerged from this study’s survey data. first, participants raised a concern regarding the fairness of high-stakes accountability systems in that a true disadvantage exists with students who enter third grade lacking previous grade level skills. such a concern merits further attention since teachers who are responsible for educating such students would essentially have to help their students gain more than one year’s worth of knowledge in one year’s length of time in order to become proficient with tested learning standards. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 8 a second result emerging from the survey data was teachers’ concerns regarding a perceived lack of shared accountability for students’ knowledge of florida’s learning standards. participants’ responses indicated they were clearly in favor of shared responsibility (linn, 2003) rather than one-way accountability (berliner, 2006), and confirmed previous research documenting the pressures teachers experience when held accountable for their students’ academic achievement based on one high-stakes test score (barksdale-ladd & thomas, 2000; booherjennings, 2005; moon et al., 2007; pedulla et al., 2003). participants’ responses supported the notion that in order for accountability to truly contribute to the improvement of education, the focus on accountability must be shared across all groups including teachers, students, and parents, as well as administrators, policymakers, and educational researchers (linn, 2003). although this study contributes preliminary findings to a new literature base on accountability in title i schools, several limitations must be recognized. small sample size may be partially attributed to responses not received from 39 elementary principals in 2 school districts solicited by the researcher. in turn, teachers at those school sites were not provided an opportunity to have a voice in this study. moreover, lack of teacher representation can also be attributed to an unanticipated restriction on the number of title i elementary schools deemed eligible to participate in this study by one school district’s research department. specifically, 49% of that district’s title i schools were labeled as “restructuring schools” and prohibited from participating in research studies, thereby limiting the total number of potential participants from that school district. thereafter, a low rate of returns was achieved. nonetheless, this study raises new questions regarding high-stakes accountability in title i schools: are title i teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes accountability in other school districts different from those elicited from this study’s respondents? do title i teachers in other school districts consider students’ ses a factor that influences their ability to be held accountable for their students’ high-stakes test performance? do title i teachers in other school districts have concerns related to the fairness of accountability policy in addition to those raised in this study? gaining further understandings of title i teachers’ perspectives is urgently needed since teachers are catalysts to the success of any accountability system. although the findings of this study are not intended to be generalized to other schools serving low ses populations, this study demonstrates the value of conducting research in title i schools throughout the state of florida as well as the rest of the nation. researchers may seek to build upon the current findings since accountability in title i elementary schools has yet to be systematically studied. future survey research may benefit from using follow-up or focus-group interviews as a means of allowing teachers to clarify and elaborate on their written concerns. based on the current findings, policymakers are now equipped with preliminary data that can be used to examine the specific ways in which florida’s accountability policy holds teachers responsible for their third grade students’ reading and mathematics achievement on the fcat in title i schools. the three accountability-related themes that emerged from participants’ responses confirm that teachers have voices that must be recognized at the policy level (debard & kubow, 2002; shaver et al., 2007), and possess valuable insights that are worthy of further discussion. survey data emphasized the need for dialogue between policymakers and educators, and suggest that title i teachers should have a voice in improving accountability systems so that they can assume greater ownership of high-stakes assessment policies. references abrams, l. m. 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(2003). perceived effects of state-mandated testing programs on teaching and learning: findings from a national survey of teachers. chestnut hill, ma: national board on educational testing and public policy. retrieved from http://www.bc.edu/research/nbetpp/statements/n br1.pdf reese, m., gordon, s. p., & price, l. r. (2004) teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes testing. journal of school leadership, 14(5), 464-496. shaver, a., cuevas, p., lee, o., & avalos, m. (2007). teachers’ perceptions of policy influences on science instruction with culturally and current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 10 linguistically diverse elementary students. journal of research in science teaching, 44(5), 725-746. stitzlein, s. m., feinberg, w., greene, j., & miron, l. (2007). illinois project for democratic accountability. educational studies, 42(2), 139155. taylor, g., shepard, l., kinner, f., & rosenthal, j. (2003). a survey of teachers’ perspectives on high-stakes testing in colorado: what gets taught, what gets lost (rep. no. cse-tr-588). los angeles: university of california, center for the study of evaluation; national center for research on evaluation, standards, and student testing. wright, w. e. (2002). the effects of high stakes testing in an inner-city elementary school: the curriculum, the teachers, and the english language learners. current issues in education, 5(5). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes accountability in florida’s title i elementary schools 11 article citation vernaza, n. a. (2012). teachers’ perceptions of high-stakes accountability in florida’s title i elementary schools. current issues in education, 15(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/870 author notes natasha a. vernaza school district of palm beach county 3300 forest hill boulevard, west palm beach, fl natasha.vernaza@mail.barry.edu natasha a. vernaza is a recent graduate of barry university’s doctoral program in curriculum and instruction in miami shores, florida. she is currently a resource teacher for the school district of palm beach county. her primary research interests include high-stakes assessment, accountability policy, and self-study. manuscript received: 11/30/2011 revisions received: 3/1/2012 accepted: 3/4/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 12 volume 15, number 1 march 16, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors angela hines elizabeth reyes recruitment editors angela hines copy editors/proofreaders carol masser lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson mary bankhead laura busby michelle crowley tulani garnett catherine gay ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca hyun jung kang monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser lauren preston stephanie quintero kelly rubel leslie salazar melisa tarango lauren williams kevin woo faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 888-3923-3-le.docx 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x “frustrated” or “surprised?” an examination of the perspectives of spanish teacher candidates regarding the praxis ii subject-matter tests kelly moser mississippi state university researchers (sandarg & schomber, 2009; wilkerson, schomber, & sandarg, 2004) have urged the profession to develop a new subject-matter licensure test to reflect the best practices in the foreign language classroom. in october 2010, the praxis ii: world language test joined the praxis series. given that this standards-driven test differs significantly from its previous versions, the content knowledge and productive language skills tests, it is unknown how teacher candidates will respond to its unique challenges. this qualitative study examines the perspectives of five prospective foreign language teachers who took one of the versions of the praxis ii subject-matter test. the data revealed that two groups, surprised prevailers and frustrated forgoers, perceived the praxis ii differently. their test experiences may provide foreign language teacher educators with strategies to overcome test challenges and improve curricula. keywords: praxis test, licensure tests, foreign language, certification, standards, ncate, teacher education, assessment, qualitative research through the standards for foreign language learning in the 21st century (national standards in foreign language education project, 1999), (referred to herein as national standards), the foreign language profession identified what students should know and be able to do following a sequence of language instruction. consequently, similar standards for teachers were developed in order to assist students in reaching the goals, or the 5 cs (communication, cultures, connections, comparisons, and communities), of the national standards. one such effort includes the program standards for the preparation of foreign language teachers (actfl, 2002) (referred to herein as program standards), developed by the national council on the accreditation of teacher education (ncate) and the american council on the teaching of foreign languages (actfl), the specialized professional association for foreign languages. at the core of the program standards, which focus on the requirements of foreign language teacher education programs, are the national standards (actfl, 2002). therefore, teacher candidates who successfully complete a teacher education program according to the requirements of the program standards should be able to deliver standards-based instruction by: communicating in the target language, addressing the products, practices, and perspectives of target cultures, connecting to other disciplines, comparing the second language and culture to their own, and understanding the importance of lifelong learning and interacting with target language communities (abbott, m., personal communication, october 2011). regardless of this emphasis on standards-based curriculum design, cheatham (2004) argued that the structure of language courses has changed very little to current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 reflect this paradigm. other researchers (ricardo-osorio, 2008; welles, 1999; 2000) have also cited the resistance of post-secondary educators to use the national standards to modify curricula. departmental insularity plays a fundamental role in this dilemma (fraga-cañadas, 2010; pearson, fonseca-greber, & foell, 2006; schulz, 2000; tedick, 2009). according to tedick (2009), “the lack of thoughtful coordination between the two camps [colleges of education and foreign language departments] that are jointly responsible for preparing teachers is evident” (p. 265). regardless of this dilemma, given the reciprocal relationship between the teacher and student standards, the failure to use the student national standards at the post-secondary level has several implications for foreign language teacher education programs. one such challenge, which directly impacts at least 40 states that rely on the praxis series for teacher certification, involves licensure testing. the praxis series, one of the series of educational tests offered by the educational testing service (ets), consists of the praxis i, a test of basic reading, writing, and mathematics, and the praxis ii, tests that evaluate the pedagogical knowledge of teacher candidates as well as content-specific knowledge (ets, 2012). following the ratification of the program standards, ets and actfl began making significant changes to the praxis ii foreign language subject-matter licensure tests (glisan, 2001). this standards-based praxis ii: world language test (french #5174, german #5183, and spanish #5195) was added to the praxis series in october 2010. this new test was developed to replace previous foreign language praxis ii tests, the content knowledge test (french #0173, german #0181, spanish #0191) and the productive language skills test (french #0171, german #0182, spanish #0192), which did not reflect the best practices as identified by the standards (abbott, m., personal communication, october 2011). establishing a clear connection between the program standards and the world language test, mcclendon (2004) asserted, as post-secondary departments of education begin aligning their courses of study with the national council for accreditation of teacher education (ncate) standards and guidelines, the prospective foreign language teacher will be on track for successfully passing tests that may be required by the state as part of the licensure process and for performing successfully in the classroom as well. (2004, p. 2) thus, assisting teacher candidates in meeting the expectations of the world language test depends on the program’s familiarity with and inclusion of the student national standards and the actfl/ncate program standards. problem statement the effects of the world language test on teacher preparation and licensure are not yet known. the failure to modify curricula and use the profession’s standards at the post-secondary level may impose additional challenges to world language test-takers who are unaccustomed to standards-based instruction and assessment. although previous research (bowen, 2002; sandarg & schomber, 2009; wilkerson, schomber, & sandarg, 2004; zigo & moore, 2002) highlights faculty members’ perspectives of licensure tests, there are few studies (albers, 2002) that provide teacher candidates with a voice regarding their own test-taking challenges. additionally, given the novelty of the world language test, studies that delve into the perspectives of teacher candidates as they relate to this test, their performance, and the teacher preparation program are warranted. the world language test is a complete departure from both the content knowledge test and productive language skills test. whereas the content knowledge test, a paper-based multiple choice test divided into four sections (e.g., interpretive listening, interpretive reading, cultural knowledge, and structure of the language), often focuses on factoids devoid of meaningful contexts, the productive language skills test consists of two sections (e.g., presentational speaking and presentational writing) one of which requires the use of a tape recorder. according to wilkerson et al. (2004), these tests, which are very different in both content and format, fail to reflect the best practices of language teachers given their focus on discrete items, a lack of connection to the national standards, and failure to incorporate language production in meaningful contexts. the world language test addresses several of the concerns pinpointed by wilkerson et al. (2004) given its direct connection to the national standards and program standards in the introductory section of the test at a glance (ets, 2010). this computer-based test is divided into five main sections: (a) interpretive listening, (b) interpretive reading, (c) cultural knowledge, (d) interpersonal and presentational writing, and (e) presentational and interpersonal speaking. additionally, several questions that assess the knowledge of linguistics are embedded in various sections. for additional information regarding the test content and expectations, please see moser (2010; 2012). literature review faculty perspectives much of the research (bowen, 2002; sandarg & scomber, 2009; wilkerson et al., 2004; zigo & moore, 2002) on subject-matter licensure tests relies on the perspectives of faculty members who prior to their personal experience with the tests often relied on the anecdotal recollection of students. research highlights “frustrated” or “surprised?” an examination of the perspectives of spanish teacher candidates regarding the praxis ii subject-matter tests 3 the problematic nature of defining the knowledge and skills required of prospective teachers since faculty members failed to reach a consensus on identifying the subject-matter knowledge in their disciplines. a study by zigo and moore (2002), in which faculty from english collaborated to take and discuss the praxis ii, underscored this specific challenge. according to them, when those of us who are involved in english education, whether in colleges of education or colleges of liberal arts, compared our experiences taking the test and our perceptions of what content knowledge was being tested, we were unsettled by the range of disagreement among us concerning the appropriateness of the content being tested and the format of the questions themselves. (2002, p. 143) furthermore, zigo and moore argued that the praxis ii tests were based on “questions leaning toward theoretical stances that are inconsistent with the theories that undergird ncte’s current professional standards” (p. 141). similarly, bowen (2002) questioned the theoretical nature of the questions on the praxis ii and concluded that it would be difficult to ascertain whether teacher candidates were adequately prepared following a sequence of english coursework. she asserted that content area faculty are unsure of what prospective teachers need to pass licensure exams. according to bowen (2002), to be honest, we often do not think about [teacher preparation]; we assume that the courses and requirements that make a good english major also make a good secondary school english teacher. when our students fail the praxis exams—and too many do—we do not know what they need. (p. 128) as demonstrated in the studies by zigo and moore (2002) and bowen (2002), faculty are often unsure of how to prepare their prospective teachers for the expectations of the praxis ii. although fewer studies are related to the tests used for initial licensure in foreign languages, similar themes emerge. two such investigations include those of wilkerson et al., (2004) and sandarg and schomber (2009). both descriptive studies highlighted the challenges of the praxis ii: content knowledge test and productive language skills test. the authors described in detail both foreign language subject-matter tests and cited several obstacles for test-takers. for example, specific to the content knowledge test, wilkerson et al. (2004) identified three of the four sections as problematic: interpretive listening, structure of the language, and cultural perspectives. they highlighted that in order to respond to test questions in the interpretive listening section, test-takers are only allowed to hear a passage one time. wilkerson et al. (2004) argued that this finding differs significantly from classroom instruction which usually includes multiple attempts to interpret global meaning. the structure of the language section requires students to search for errors which the authors asserted is “a task inconsistent with current teaching practices, which encourage students to speak, errors and all, as they develop proficiency” (p. 34). additionally, wilkerson et al. (2004) defined the cultural perspectives component area as a game of trivial pursuit. they affirmed that “specialized vocabulary and lowfrequency idioms limit students’ ability to make inferences or educated guesses” (p. 34). wilkerson et al. (2004) also highlighted the problematic nature of the productive languages skills test given the testing conditions which appeared to be stressful and distracting for test-takers required to speak simultaneously in a crowded space. furthermore, they stressed, “the proficiency requirements of many of the tasks surpass what is reasonably expected of entry-level teachers, according to actfl recommendations” (p. 35). this finding makes it improbable that teacher candidates can be successful on a test based solely on their productive language skills unless faculty members know how to assist students in achieving high levels of proficiency. sandarg and schomber (2009) responded to this quandary by providing concrete suggestions to assist faculty in this endeavor. student perspectives although research that examines the praxis ii subject-matter tests is relatively scant, only one known study has relied on the perspectives of prospective teachers. from albers (2002), we obtain a glimpse into the teacher candidate’s perspective, specifically the testing issues that led her to claim that the “praxis ii nearly destroyed the qualities in them that we most value in teachers: confidence, knowledge of content, and a desire to work with students in a culturally responsive way” (p. 123). based on these test-takers’ experiences, all of whom were african american, albers underscored several areas of concern. first, teacher candidates were unaware of how to study for such a broad test. this finding corresponds to the research on teachers’ perceptions given their concerns regarding how to prepare their students. second, the candidates were academically prepared and were considered to be high achievers. thus, as affirmed by wilkerson et al. (2004) with regard to foreign language licensure tests, there appears to be a disconnect between coursework and the praxis ii test expectations. third, the author identified that the test produced both economical and emotional burdens for teacher candidates. for example, not only did prospective teachers suffer economically as a result of the cost of repeated attempts, but they also reported feeling embarrassed, incompetent, and unworthy following the outcome of the high-stakes testing experience. although bennett, mcwhorter, and kuykendall (2007) investigated the praxis i test, their qualitative study examined issues that may be present in subjectmatter licensure tests. the authors investigated how current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 concerns related to racial bias in standardized testing and ethnic and cultural identity affected the perspectives of 18 african american and latino praxis i test-takers. the data revealed three categories of test-takers: (a) nervous achievers, (b) passionate persisters, and (c) frustrated resisters. bennett et al. (2007) highlighted that the nervous achievers were good test-takers and were disciplined regarding the steps they needed to take to be successful at the praxis i. the passionate persisters did not prepare for their first praxis i attempts, but they studied for their repeated attempts. furthermore, this group expressed feeling anxious during the testing experience. the frustrated resisters resisted the strategies that the authors suggested to pass the praxis i. these testtakers were angry, frustrated, and criticized their teachers who they believed failed to provide them with the appropriate preparation. additionally, time constraints and inadequate lexical knowledge contributed to the testtakers’ failure to complete the praxis i tasks. based on previous research, it is clear that content faculty play a pivotal role in preparing teacher candidates for the challenges that they will face on subject-matter licensure tests. clearly, when faculty are unaware of the test expectations or the standards involved in developing such tests, it is likely that teacher candidates will have difficulty obtaining initial certification. purpose and gap given that the standards-driven praxis ii: world language test differs significantly from its previous versions, the content knowledge and productive language skills tests, it is unknown how teacher candidates will respond to its unique challenges. since research (cheatham, 2004; ricardo-osorio, 2008; welles, 1999; 2000) has underscored that post-secondary faculty often fail to use the profession’s student national standards or program standards in curricular development, one may assume that the outcomes of this new test may adversely affect foreign language teacher licensure resulting in the certification of fewer language educators even when the demand for these teachers is rather high. this study examines the perspectives of five prospective foreign language teachers, two of which were required to take the productive language skills test and the remaining three were required to take the world language test for licensure in mississippi. the study fills a gap in research in two fundamental ways. first, it addresses the perspectives of teacher candidates regarding mandatory licensure tests. current research regarding foreign language licensure tests has not used qualitative methodology to do so. second, it examines if and how the teacher candidates’ perspectives differ given their experiences with either the productive language skills test or the world language test. method setting and participants this study examined the perspectives of five teacher candidates who were all part of a larger qualitative dissertation study that included six teacher candidates and four faculty members at the same institution. the teacher candidates in this study were purposefully selected based on several criteria: (a) they were spanish language learners; (b) they were seeking licensure in the state of mississippi; and (c) they were undergraduate students. all teacher candidate participants were required to take a minimum of 40 credit hours in professional education courses and 32 credit hours in spanish. there were no program requirements specifically related to foreign language methodology, target language linguistics, or target culture. thus, it may be assumed that this university did not prepare teacher candidates according to the requirements of the actfl/ncate program standards. none of the teacher candidates was required to study abroad; however the university advertises at least one opportunity for all spanish students. additionally, the oral proficiency of table 1 teacher candidate information ______________________________________________________________________________ name praxis ii test attempts most recent test date most recent score gpa ______________________________________________________________________________ initial interview february 2010 alison pls 2 june 9, 2007 passed (177) 4.00 jackie pls 2 june 23, 2003 passed (168) 3.83 initial interview: february 2011 colleen wl 1 october, 19, 2010 not passed (144) 3.95 kelsey pls/wl 3 june 29, 2011 not passed (122) 3.58 rachel wl 1 february, 15, 2010 not passed (137) 3.50 pls denotes the productive language skills test (required score = 155) wl denotes the world language test (required score = 160) “frustrated” or “surprised?” an examination of the perspectives of spanish teacher candidates regarding the praxis ii subject-matter tests 5 teacher candidates was never assessed using the oral proficiency interview (opi), the only assessment used to gauge oral proficiency according to actfl. all teacher candidates were assigned pseudonyms. table 1 provides additional information about the five teacher candidates. data collection interview protocol. this qualitative study included interviews and the collection of relevant documents. interviews were semi-structured since the researcher relied on predetermined questions but was allowed the freedom to digress (berg, 2009). examples of research topics and questions included: when you think about the test, what stands out to you? what would you tell a friend about this test? if you were on a committee to redesign this test, what would you change or leave the same? follow-up interviews were used to delve deeper into the issues that emerged from initial interview sessions. additionally, these guided conversations assisted in examining the teacher candidates’ foreign language coursework and experiences (tell me about the tests that you took in your foreign language classes; tell me about your foreign language learning experience; how did you learn a foreign language best?). all participants were interviewed at least twice and were encouraged to provide additional information via email following interview sessions. interviews were approximately 50minutes in duration and were digitally recorded and transcribed by the researcher. documents. in addition to interview data, the researcher collected both public and private documents which included (a) the test at a glance (ets, 2010), (b) praxis ii score reports, and (c) academic transcripts. the test at a glance was used to prepare the researcher regarding the format of the test and to develop potential questions or topics that might be helpful during the interview. additionally, it should be noted that the researcher registered for and took the productive language skills test and content knowledge test years prior as a prospective spanish teacher and the world language test at the beginning this study. the academic transcripts and praxis ii score reports were collected to provide an additional source of data related to the testing experience and foreign language classroom experience. these documents also provided a way to verify that participants were accurately reporting their praxis ii results and spanish language success during interviews. furthermore, the score report allowed for comparisons to be made on a case-by-case basis with regard to test sections. data analysis data analysis was inductive and occurred simultaneously with data collection. merriam (2009) underscored that “without ongoing analysis, the data can be unfocused, repetitious, and overwhelming in the sheer volume of material that needs to be processed. data that have been analyzed while being collected are both parsimonious and illuminating” (p. 171). the data were analyzed by use of the constant comparison method (glaser & strauss, 1967). strauss and corbin (1990) asserted that this method relies on two analytic procedures that are basic to the coding process: making comparisons and asking questions. an initial list of codes was created based on the research. among others, these included test anxiety, misalignment between course expectations and the test, test preparation, test challenges, and program deficiencies. codes were then collapsed in some cases whereas others were expanded. for example, test anxiety became anxiety while listening and anxiety while speaking. validity and reliability merriam (2009) identified several ways in which a researcher can establish internal validity including triangulation. collecting relevant documents such as the praxis ii score report, the test at a glance, and academic transcripts provided an additional data source for triangulation purposes. the inclusion of faculty members in the larger dissertation study addresses triangulation as well. the incorporation of follow-up interviews assists in establishing validity as well. internal validity was further established through member checking procedures. according to merriam (2009), member checking “is to take your preliminary analysis back to some of the participants and ask whether your interpretation rings true” (p. 217). each participant was granted access to her transcribed interview. none of the teacher candidate participants chose to alter any comments. merriam (2009) also underscored the importance of reliability in qualitative research. given that human behavior is dynamic, qualitative researchers are not concerned with isolating human behavior to yield the same interpretations (merriam, 2009). as merriam explained, “the question then is not whether findings will be found again but whether the results are consistent with the data collected” (p. 221). in addition to the above strategies to ensure reliability, the researcher employed an audit trail. merriam (2009) described the audit trail as “a log as in what a ship might keep in detailing its journey” (p. 223). this log included a detailed description of how data was collected and how teacher candidate categories were formed. i also included reflections throughout the research process. external validity is concerned with generalizability or the extent to which the results can be applied to other situations. merriam (2009) asserted that “probably the most common understanding of generalizability in qualitative research is to think in terms of the reader or user of the study” (p. 226). in order to assist the reader or user, external validity was established by providing a detailed description of the context current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 6 including the participants and research site. findings the data revealed that two groups of teacher candidate test-takers emerged and experienced the praxis ii in divergent ways. the surprised prevailers, alison and jackie, took the productive language skills test twice before receiving passing scores whereas the frustrated forgoers never passed the world language test. this section will provide interview and document data that reveal how the surprised prevailers and frustrated forgoers perceived the praxis ii licensure tests including their preparation strategies, test challenges, and the subsequent consequences of the test. the following section will be divided into these three main sections and will provide qualitative data that identify how these teacher candidate groups differed. preparation surprised prevailers the surprised prevailers, alison and jackie, offered examples of their productive language skills test preparation that produced either successful or unsuccessful outcomes. before their initial praxis ii attempts, they emphasized that it was a situation of “not knowing what to expect” (jackie, interview 1, february 11, 2010) and “not knowing how to prepare” (alison, interview 1, february 10, 2010). although they recognized that their teachers were not aware of what the productive language skills test entailed, both alison and jackie were proactive in their preparation. following suggestions “to look it up online” (alison, interview 1, february 10, 2010), the surprised prevailers began initial preparation by mimicking the activities completed in class. alison stated, “i just tried to review myself on vocabulary and things like that” (alison, interview 1, february 10, 2010). echoing the same sentiments, jackie affirmed, “i think i just brushed up on some verb tenses and vocabulary and things like that” (jackie, interview 1, february 11, 2010). focusing primarily on grammar-based and vocabulary-related preparation did not benefit alison or jackie, however. both expressed surprise with the format of the productive language skills test. as emphasized in the study by albers (2002), their experience with the test produced emotional consequences since alison and jackie reported feeling useless following initial failure. additionally, it was difficult for these teacher candidates to understand why they were unsuccessful on the productive language skills test. like participants in the study by albers (2002), both teacher candidates were successful in their classes. according to their academic transcripts, neither had received a grade lower than an a in any spanish course, and alison had never obtained a b in her academic history. frustrated forgoers similar to the surprised prevailers, the frustrated forgoers, colleen, kelsey, and rachel, were surprised by the format of the world language test; however they blamed their language teachers for this lack of awareness. according to colleen, “my teachers didn’t know about the praxis [ii]” (interview 1, february 20, 2011). this is consistent with research (bowen, 2002; zigo & moore, 2002) that underscores faculty unfamiliarity regarding the expectations of licensure tests in their disciplines. like the surprised prevailers, the frustrated forgoers relied on grammar-based and vocabulary-related preparation for the world language test. kelsey reiterated, “i found a tutor, and we went through the subjunctive and everything. we did the book, chapter 12 through 16. we did six weeks of review material. it was a lot of grammar. i treated it just like a class” (interview 1, february 22, 2011). the world language test’s focus on using the language in authentic contexts frustrated colleen and rachel who expected a test measuring discrete grammatical knowledge. colleen indicated, i just thought it was going to be grammar. i thought this because i took a test in [one of my classes] and it was all about grammar. it gave you a score and that was how good your language was. then i saw on the website that it was about listening and other stuff and nothing about grammar. obviously grammar, but not testing straight your grammar knowledge, so i freaked out. (interview 1, february 20, 2011) rachel expressed feeling equally frustrated, “i thought i would be tested on what i know. this test just frustrated me” (interview 1, february 22, 2011). kelsey, on the other hand was not as surprised with the structure of the test, since she had experienced it previously. kelsey had been unsuccessful on her first two praxis ii attempts (first with the productive language skills test and then on the world language test). prior to her third attempt, kelsey still focused on grammar and vocabulary since her teachers were unaware of the praxis ii and did not tell her how to prepare differently. she explained, “when we got the scores the second week of november [from my second attempt], my momma and i, we scheduled an appointment with my adviser at the time to talk to her about it, and she didn’t know what to say. we were upset that she didn’t know what to say, what we should do” (interview 1, february 22, 2011). test challenges surprised prevailers alison and jackie were surprised and unprepared when they arrived to take the productive language skills test. by preparing solely through grammar-based and vocabulary review, these two teacher candidates were overcome by the test format and testing administration. in several instances, alison and jackie commented that the productive language skills test was “inaccurate” and “frustrated” or “surprised?” an examination of the perspectives of spanish teacher candidates regarding the praxis ii subject-matter tests 7 “did not test what [they] knew” based on the specific challenges that impeded their spanish production during tasks. jackie highlighted, it was intimidating because they’re [the proctor] staring at you, and you’re supposed to be sitting there and the tape recorder, i think it malfunctioned twice. it made me nervous, and i had to start over, and the fact that the test and the recorder, the recording, you could not stop it at all. so if you got messed up and you were flustered then, it was a timed thing. i wasn’t prepared for the time. i just couldn’t get it out fast enough. (interview 1, february 11, 2010) alison also expressed a similar frustration regarding temporal constraints. “it was just nervewracking. i’ve never been timed while speaking before” (email follow-up, march 14, 2010). the difficulty to overcome time constraints as well as other testing-related challenges adversely affected the anxiety level of both jackie and alison. alison indicated that her anxiety made it impossible to speak in spanish. when i first, when i first took the test, when i first sat down and i went through the first section of the test, i was completely, i just felt completely unprepared to the point that in some portions of it, i hardly said anything because i was so nervous. i was just surprised with the format of the entire test. (alison, interview 1, february 10, 2010) combined with the inappropriate preparation, these surprised prevailers possessed only a modicum level of communicative competence at best. alison described the praxis ii test: i was expected to, for six of the nine questions, you had to perform different tasks. what i mean by that is you had to basically speak into a tape recorder, um, in different situations that the booklet gave you. it was like a sequence of pictures and you had to say what was happening or something to that effect. but, you had to be specific. if you did not know the exact word, you couldn’t do it. (interview 1, february 10, 2010) alison’s debilitating testing anxiety made it difficult for her to employ communicative strategies to transcend her linguistic deficiencies and complete the speaking tasks. similarly, jackie was unable to ignore equipment malfunctions and time constraints to produce spanish through speaking and writing. following additional exposure via study abroad and coursework in the target language, these surprised prevailers opted for a second try at the praxis ii test which they ultimately described differently. although jackie was again afflicted by tape recorder malfunctions, this time her testing anxiety did not consume her. she explained, “the second time i took it, i did pass, but again, they had malfunctions with the cassette recorder which i thought was a really big problem” (interview 1, february 11, 2010). similarly, alison reacted differently to the praxis ii tasks when compared to her first experience. she remembered, i just wasn’t as silent. sure, i didn’t know all the words, but this time i was able to work around it and do other things. i guess, describe or whatever. i know now that they call that circumlocution. and, i used my time more efficiently. i knew what to expect so i knew that i would be timed, and i knew i needed to think of things to say and jot those down quickly before speaking. (email follow-up, march 14, 2010) the descriptions of the praxis ii tasks, especially alison’s comments, allude to an increased level of communicative competence. the ability of both surprised prevailers to overcome testing anxiety, time constraints, and other hurdles allowed them to pass the praxis ii. in fact, alison increased her praxis ii score by approximately 20 points when comparing her first and second attempts. she obtained a 177/200 (speaking: 57/72; writing: 38/48). jackie also performed much better by obtaining approximately 15 points higher on her second praxis ii attempt (168/200). frustrated forgoers colleen, kelsey, and rachel were all plagued by temporal constraints, as were the surprised prevailers, but they faced numerous other challenges on the world language test than did their productive language skills test-taking peers. of all the test sections, these frustrated forgoers expressed the most concern regarding the listening portion of the test. rachel recalled how the allotted time adversely affected her, ... it showed you a question for twenty seconds and then the question went away. then it showed you another question which i hated because some questions i finished in five seconds but others i didn’t even have time to read the whole question. if it is a multiple choice and the (a), (b), (c), and (d) are all lengthy and i’m having to translate in my head quickly and then go back and think of the listening [passage] and choose the right one, it takes more than a couple of seconds. (interview 1, february 21, 2011) their comments regarding this component area also revealed that the frustrated forgoers lacked experience hearing the target language outside of the classroom given that the speed of native discourse impeded their ability to comprehend. as rachel explained, “yes, it was native speakers, but they were speaking way faster than i’ve ever heard in a listening exam. i am not accustomed to that. it was way faster than anything i’ve ever experienced” (interview 1, february 21, 2011). colleen affirmed this same obstacle and affirmed, “well, i feel like when i hear spanish, like when i am talking to people, i can understand, but the audio it was just so fast. it was real native interviews, current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 8 supposedly, it was real interviews or actual things, and i had so much trouble with it” (interview 1, february 20, 2011). unlike previous versions, the world language test allowed test-takers to hear passages twice and included preview questions in between listening attempts. still, these changes did not appear to have a positive impact on the performance of the frustrated forgoers. in fact, their comments may allude to low levels of communicative competence. for example, rachel described the test section, you know, i feel like if they had just played it a second time without seeing the questions, i wouldn’t have understood much more. i would even take out the first listening without the questions. i’m sure there was a reason that they do that, but i didn’t even listen that time. it was just too much. i was overwhelmed because i had just ran out of my 20-seconds on the previous questions, and then we went right into another passage, and they started speaking again. i just used that time to regroup from one activity to the next. (interview 1, february 21, 2011) her score report reveals that rachel had difficulty with the listening section of the test as well as the other areas (137/200: listening 14/25; reading 13/24; cultural knowledge 7/11; writing 7/18; speaking 4/18). colleen also expressed difficulty with the listening section. she recalled, hearing the passage twice helped a little. i didn’t get much at all the first time. once i was able to see the questions and hear i a second time, i was able to understand better, but i think if i would have had a third time [to listen], i’m sure they don’t give you a third time for a reason, but i‘m sure i would have understood more. (interview 1, february 20, 2011) an analysis of the score reports confirms that although colleen may have understood more than rachel, she had challenges in the other component areas as well (144/200: listening 18/25; reading 15/24; cultural knowledge 7/11; writing 7/18; speaking 2/18). in fact, she was most successful during the listening portion of the test. in addition to the challenges in the listening section, the frustrated forgoers also expressed difficulty with vocabulary. although all three teacher candidates reported preparing for the praxis ii by studying grammar, their lack of linguistic competence may have impeded success on the few grammatical questions on the test. colleen asserted, well, i was thinking that hopefully these language questions would be easier. i’ll be able to get those, you know. some of them i did, but there was one question where i compared two words, and i didn’t even know either of the words so i couldn’t even answer the question. i had never heard or seen those words before. (interview 1, february 20, 2011) rachel also described an integrated writingspeaking task which she believed to be extremely difficult given the abstract nature of the vocabulary: the third task was awful for me. whatever that word that the article was about, you know, the main word. i didn’t know it. so for me, the whole point was lost. it was a really hard article for me to read, and i had a hard time responding. i feel like i wrote 120 words, but it didn’t make any sense. (interview 1, february 21, 2011) kelsey’s comments are especially noteworthy. although she considered herself to have mastered the grammatical structure of the language, following multiple praxis ii attempts, she learned that this knowledge was extremely limited. she remarked, “i think it was just rote memorization. it was just memorizing rules on study guides or tests” (interview 1, february 22, 2011). kelsey obtained the lowest scores in every component area when compared to all other teacher candidates (122/200: listening 11/25; reading 11/24; cultural knowledge 6/12; writing 4/18; speaking 3/18), 17 points lower than her productive language skills attempt and one point lower than her first world language test attempt. a final concern of the frustrated forgoers was their lack of cultural knowledge. rachel and kelsey expressed concern that these questions were included on such an important test, especially considering the treatment of culture in their classes. often, they were unaware of the answers and were forced to guess. rachel declared, i feel like i might have learned some of those [cultural things] at some point in time. i guess they kind of rang a bell, but it wasn’t like, ‘oh i really know about this person.’ i could have gotten it right based on recall, but i could not tell you about any of those people. i just guessed on those questions, really. it was like a 50/50. (interview 1, february 21, 2011) consequences of the test surprised prevailers after the receipt of their initial insufficient praxis ii scores, the surprised prevailers still believed that they could pass the productive language skills test. consequently, as reiterated by successful praxis i testtakers in the study by bennett et al. (2009), alison and jackie altered how they prepared for their initial praxis ii attempts. instead of relying on similar strategies which emphasized grammar and vocabulary in isolation, alison and jackie focused on practical language application. jackie asserted, “i practiced with a native speaker with different scenarios to be able to express something quickly because [time] was a major issue” (interview 1, “frustrated” or “surprised?” an examination of the perspectives of spanish teacher candidates regarding the praxis ii subject-matter tests 9 february 11, 2010). alison remembered another strategy, “one thing that i did the second time that helped me a lot was that i looked at either children’s books or coloring books that had really simple pictures and i tried to describe to myself basically what was going on in the pictures in spanish” (interview 1, february 10, 2010). in addition to practice with speaking scenarios and description, the surprised prevailers also recognized the influence of study abroad and additional coursework which led to higher levels of self-efficacy. for alison, her study abroad and the additional coursework were especially influential regarding her language acquisition and ultimate praxis ii success. i think what really helped me turn a corner in college was the study abroad experience just because it made me feel more comfortable. um, and my, actually, my listening skills improved the most from my study abroad experience. and my speaking abilities did as well. and then, the other thing were my, uh, upper level courses, the more specialized courses in spanish. one for example that helped me a lot was spanish phonetics. it focused really on how you pronounced the words and that, i think, helped me with my accent and even renewed my passion for it because it made me more confident about how i sounded when i spoke spanish. (alison, interview 1, february 10, 2010) like alison, jackie attributed her success to similar decisions. “i definitely learned a lot more in my upper level classes. my speaking skills improved, my writing skills improved. my reading skills, um [improved], drastically from before” (jackie, interview 2, february 17, 2010). she also underscored the influence of the study abroad experience. “and, i went to mexico. it was not required. i just did it on my own” (jackie, interview 1, february 11, 2010). frustrated forgoers unlike the surprised prevailers who believed that the expectations of the productive language skills test were within their reach, the frustrated forgoers considered the world language test to be “so far gone” (rachel, interview 1, february 21, 2011). in simple terms, the challenging nature of the world language test ultimately persuaded these teacher candidates to forego additional praxis ii attempts. rachel’s experience with the world language test made her come to the conclusion that, “. . . it wouldn’t be possible. i didn’t know how to do it or where to begin. that makes it not passable for me” (interview 2, may 5, 2011). failing the praxis ii assisted colleen, who was previously considering an alternate career path. she highlighted, “i wasn’t sure when i took the praxis [ii] if i wanted to be a teacher. after taking it, i knew that i didn’t want to. i was so discouraged” (interview 2, april 14, 2011). kelsey, who was unsuccessful on her first two praxis ii attempts, decided to pursue a summer study abroad opportunity prior to her third praxis ii attempt. following this experience, kelsey continued to disregard the role of practical, communicative preparation by focusing on isolated grammar knowledge. she elucidated, “well failing the test again made me want to study the grammar more” (email follow-up, june 23, 2011). since kelsey continued to focus on grammar prior to her third attempt, it is not surprising that she failed the world language test again (with a score of 122/200). it was at this point that kelsey abandoned additional praxis ii attempts and pursued alternate licensure in a different content area. discussion what can be learned from their experiences with the praxis ii? the data revealed that the surprised prevailers and frustrated forgoers shared common challenges regardless of the licensure test required of them. similar to the findings by albers (2002) regarding the praxis ii tests used for licensure in english, although all were high achievers according to their academic transcripts, all teacher candidates expressed difficulty with the tasks that they believed ran contrary to their spanish coursework. this raises several questions. why is there a dislocation between their coursework and the praxis ii? why do they not receive any preparation for the praxis ii? additionally, although the surprised prevailers ultimately passed the productive language skills test, all teacher candidates had difficulty with speaking tasks. ricardo-osorio (2008) predicted this dilemma given that few institutions assess the oral proficiency of foreign language students. furthermore, a study by fragacañadas (2010) underscored that teachers often feel less prepared in the areas of oral communication. since these teacher candidates were never assessed using the opi, it can only be assumed that they had not reached the advanced-low level, the minimal level of oral proficiency expected on both tests. additionally, the scores of colleen, kelsey, and rachel may imply that these frustrated forgoers are not even close to this goal. the frustrated forgoers were assessed with regard to listening, reading, and cultural knowledge, which were absent categories on the test required of the surprised prevailers. although they were challenged in each area, the frustrated forgoers reported the most difficulty with the listening tasks. this finding is confirmed by fraga-cañadas (2010) who argued that teachers reported feeling less competent with regard to their listening proficiency as well. why are foreign language teacher candidates not exposed to authentic discourse? why are the speed and topics of the listening passages so surprising to these test-takers? additionally, the frustrated forgoers recognized their lack of cultural knowledge which resulted in the use of multiple uneducated guesses. does this imply that culture, one of the 5 cs of the national current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 10 standards, is a lost component in their courses? or, is it limited to superficial factual knowledge that impedes their ability to examine the products, practices, and perspectives of target cultures? why do they not seek opportunities to expand cultural knowledge when they will be expected to teach it to future foreign language students? this proactive behavior is vital considering “that their agency and investment in the learning process is crucial for success. language learning is a long, complex process and much of language acquisition happens outside the confines of the classroom, therefore candidates must seize every opportunity available to them to enhance competencies” (veléz-rendón, 2006, p. 331). implications although the data is merely suggestive at this point and may present more questions than answers, it is clear that these teacher candidates expressed deep concern regarding the misalignment between their classroom experiences and the praxis ii expectations. furthermore, all teacher candidates in this study emphasized that due to faculty unfamiliarity with the praxis ii, they were left to their own devices. one rationale for these findings may be related to this program’s failure to adjust the curriculum according to the program standards. in fact, although these five teacher candidates took different versions of the praxis ii, one that was inconsistent with accepted teaching practices and a second newly designed standards-based test that was developed to ameliorate this issue, the structure of their teacher education program remained unchanged. clearly at this institution, as hypothesized by tedick (2009), departmental insularity is indeed evident. at the very least, this study reveals the likely consequences of insular faculty who fail to acknowledge certification demands and the role of standards in altering instructional practices. meeting the demands of the program standards is required of ncate accredited foreign language teacher education programs. programs must show evidence of meeting their six content standards: standard 1: language, linguistics, comparisons standard 2: cultures, literatures, crossdisciplinary concepts standard 3: language acquisition theories and instructional practices standard 4: integration of standards into curriculum and instruction standard 5: assessment of languages and cultures standard 6: professionalism standards 1 and 2 are the responsibility of the faculty in foreign languages (mcalpine & dhonau, 2007; pearson et al., 2006). when teacher candidates do not pass the world language test, it is unlikely that standards 1 and 2 have been met. according to abbott, the executive director of actfl, the program standards were designed for multiple purposes: (a) to assist students in reaching the goals set forth in the national standards, and (b) to provide language educators and curricula specialists with a template to evaluate the effectiveness of their own programs using candidate data and backward design (personal communication, october 2011). in simple terms, if teacher candidates are unsuccessful on licensure exams, which appears to be the case at this institution, what decisions are made to improve the curriculum based on this data? looking more closely at the program standards, the role of communication in delivering standards-based instruction is clear. they state, candidates are able to communicate successfully in the three modes of communication. . . . undergirding effective implementation of the standards for foreign language learning in the 21st century (1999) is the expectation that teachers will provide effective oral and written input in the classroom. (actfl, 2002, p. 4) consequently, the three modes of communication of the national standards are not only reiterated in the program standards but are directly assessed on the world language test. therefore, teacher candidates and faculty should not be surprised with the expectation that candidates must “comprehend and interpret oral messages including face-to-face and telephone conversation, news broadcasts, narratives and descriptions in various time frames, speech, and debates” (2002, p. 4). although the program standards stipulate that teacher candidates must be able to understand authentic oral and written texts, the comments by colleen, kelsey, and rachel provide evidence that they never heard the target language in these contexts. this has important implications for foreign language teacher education programs. specifically, in addition to focusing on oral communication at the advanced-low level, target language coursework must also incorporate tasks that improve the interpretive capabilities (e.g., listening and reading proficiency) of teacher candidates. courses must include texts, both written and aural, produced by native speakers so that students are accustomed to rapid, authentic discourse in addition to manipulating unknown target language vocabulary in familiar contexts. by doing so, all language learners will be cognizant of how to incorporate reading and listening strategies to overcome gaps in comprehension. regarding cultural knowledge, the program standards expect teacher candidates to understand the connections between the products and perspectives as well as the practices and perspectives of the target culture peoples. this requirement forces foreign language teacher candidates to explore the target culture beyond superficial, discrete facts in order to make pertinent connections to other disciplines and to make literary and cultural texts relevant to a diverse body of students. through cultures, connections, and comparisons, “frustrated” or “surprised?” an examination of the perspectives of spanish teacher candidates regarding the praxis ii subject-matter tests 11 prospective teachers can communicate with speakers of the target language community to promote empathy and create solutions to problems affecting the entire global society. although cultural knowledge is a fundamental component of both the program standards and national standards (as are communication, connections, comparisons, and communities), the frustrated forgoers expressed a lack of awareness in this area. although the data regarding the praxis ii: world language test is troubling at this institution, it is clear that successful programs using the program standards are adequately preparing teacher candidates for the testrelated challenges. for example, mcalpine and dhonau (2007) provided suggestions that led to their program’s success. ultimately, they urged all faculty members to become involved in ncate program reporting through training on the program standards and national standards. by following this example, foreign language faculty will have a better understanding of how to better prepare prospective language teachers in reaching the goals of the program standards and passing licensure tests like the world language test. additionally, although sandarg and schomber (2009) were referring to the previous versions of the praxis ii, their suggestions may still be useful to prepare both prospective teachers and current foreign language faculty for the world language test. finally, pearson et al. (2006) emphasized the role of courses that are tailored to meet the specific needs of foreign language teachers. thus, one course in foreign language methodology is not sufficient. candidates must be cognizant of how to translate the national standards into daily and unit lesson plans and develop assessments that monitor the progress of learners regarding the modes of communication. at the very least, since “the heart of language instruction is the ability to teach students to communicate” (actfl, 2002, p. 4), teacher candidates must know how to use the target language effectively. the outcomes of the world language test, or any praxis ii subject-matter assessment, should not be a surprise to faculty or teacher candidates. instead, concrete procedures and policies must be in place, such as the program standards, to assist teacher candidates during a course of language study in meeting the challenging goals set by the profession. by doing so, we are answering our call to fill our nation’s schools with qualified language educators. references albers, p. (2002). praxis ii and african american teacher candidates (or, is everything black bad?). english education, 34(2), 105-125. american council on the teaching of foreign languages (actfl). (2002). actfl program standards for the preparation of foreign language teachers. retrieved from http://www.actfl.org/files/public/actflncate standardsrevised713.pdf bennett, j., mcwhorter, l., & kuykendall, j. (2007). will i ever teach? latino and african american students’ perspectives of the praxis i. american educational research journal, 43(3), 531-575. berg, b. (2009). qualitative research methods for the social sciences (7th ed.). boston: allyn & bacon. bowen, b. (2002). teacher testing: advice for faculty in literature, rhetoric, and creative writing. english education, 34(2), 127-135. cheatham, r. (2004). using learner and teacher preparation standards to reform a language major. in c. m. cherry & l. bradley (eds.), dimension: proceedings of the southern conference on language teaching (p. 9-17). valdosta, ga: scolt publications. educational testing service (ets). (2010). test at a glance: world language test. retrieved from http://ets.org/s/praxis/pdf/5195.pdf educational testing service (ets). (2012). praxis series information. retrieved from http://www.ets.org/praxis/about fraga-cañadas, c. (2010). beyond the classroom: maintaining and improving teachers’ language proficiency. foreign language annals, 43(3), 395-431. glaser, b., & strauss, a. (1967). the discovery of grounded theory. chicago: aldine. glisan, e. (2001). reframing teacher education within the context of quality, standards, supply and demand. in r. z. lavine (ed.), beyond boundaries: changing contexts in language learning (p. 165-200). boston: mcgraw hill. mcalpine, d., & dhonau, s. (2007). creating a culture for the preparation of an actfl/ncate program review. foreign language annals, 40(2), 247-259. mcclendon, l. (2004). no child left behind in foreign language education. in c. m. cherry & l. bradley (eds.), dimension: proceedings of the southern conference on language teaching valdosta, ga: scolt publications. merriam, s. (2009). qualitative research: a guide to design and implementation. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. moser, k. (2012). does praxis make perfect? a personal journey through the praxis ii world language test. the clearing house, 85(4), 123-128. moser, k. (2010). the praxis ii for world language teachers: an overview. tflta journal, 2(1), 10-24. national standards in foreign language education project. (1996) standards for foreign language current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 12 learning in the 21st century. lawrence, ks: author. pearson, l., fonseca-greber, b., & foell, k. (2006). advanced proficiency for foreign language teacher candidates: what can we do to help them achieve this goal? foreign language annals, 9(3), 507-519. ricardo-osorio, j. (2008). a study of foreign language learning outcomes assessment in u.s. undergraduate education. foreign language annals, 41(4), 590-610. sandarg, j., & schomber, j. (2009). preparing students for the teacher licensure exam: it’s more than just the content. in c. wilkerson (ed.), dimension: proceedings of the southern conference on language teaching (p. 51-64). valdosta, ga: scolt publications. schulz, r. (2000). foreign language teacher development: mlj perspectives—19161999. modern language journal, 84 (4), 495-522. shrum, j., & fox, r. (2010). unifying our profession through standards: writing the actfl/ncate program report. in c. wilkerson (ed.), dimension: communication beyond the classroom (pp. 1-22). roswell, ga: scolt publications. strauss, a., & corbin, j. (1990). basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. newbury park, ca: sage publications. tedick, d. (2009). k-12 language teacher preparation: problems and possibilities. in h. byrnes (ed.) perspectives: modern language journal, 93(3), (p. 263-267). velez-rendón, g. (2006). from student to teacher: a successful transition. foreign language annals, 39(2), 320-333. welles, e. (1999). forum on standards for foreign language learning: part 1. adfl bulletin, 31(1), 70-87. welles, e. (2000). forum on standards for foreign language learning: part 2. adfl bulletin, 31(2), 59-79. wilkerson, c., schomber, j., & sandarg, j. (2004). assessing readiness of foreign language majors to take the praxis exam. in c. m. cherry & l. bradley (eds.), dimension: proceedings of the southern conference on language teaching (p. 29-41). valdosta, ga: scolt publications. zigo, d., & moore, m. (2002). accountability and teacher education: just like everyone else— teaching to the test? english education, 34(2), 137-155. “frustrated” or “surprised?” an examination of the perspectives of spanish teacher candidates regarding the praxis ii subject-matter tests 13 article citation mosser, k. (2012). “frustrated” or “surprised?” an examination of the perspectives of spanish teacher candidates regarding the praxis ii subject-matter tests. current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/888 author notes kelly moser, ph.d. department of curriculum, instruction, and special education mississippi state university 310 allen hall, po 9705 mississippi state, ms kmb479@msstate.edu kelly moser (ph.d., mississippi state university) is assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at mississippi state university. her research interests include foreign language teacher preparation, beliefs and practices of foreign language teachers, licensure examinations, and integrating technology in the foreign language classroom. manuscript received: 12/30/2011 revisions received: 6/12/2012 accepted: 6/15/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 14 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers cie template 1 volume 2, number 1 september 8, 1999 issn 1099-839x editorial — ejournals today: forerunners of the unrealized potential of the digital medium tirupalavanam g. ganesh tara a. jennings arizona state university current issues in education strives to be at the forefront of the electronic journal movement. in its second year of publication, the journal is inviting scholars to take advantage of the opportunities of this new medium. while seemingly simple, the idea of preserving this exchange of research is complex when considered from the notion of time. in a hundred years from now, will this communication be of any value? will it be necessary to preserve it for future generations? e-journals have made it possible to create a virtual space where scholars of diverse backgrounds can engage in a dialogue that transcends the limits of physical space. nevertheless, the preservation of scholarly works over time is a timeless challenge faced from the creation of early libraries to the digital libraries of today. the preservation of human communication beyond the evanescent sound of human voice and memory very likely encouraged the development of writing. writing in turn produced early "books" consisting of stone, clay tablets, papyrus or parchment. careful preservation of these early writings was the genesis of the library. the famous library of classical antiquity—the library at alexandria, founded in the early third century b.c.—was part of the mouseion, the greatest research center of its day. around the museum a great university grew, attracting renowned scholars including euclid, the mathematician; aristarchus of samothrace, the collator of homer's epic poems; and herophilus, the anatomist who performed scientific dissection of human bodies. the library, however, was gradually destroyed beginning with julius caesar's invasion of alexandria (edwards, 1969; johnson, 1976). today, with support from the united nations and other international agencies, the egyptian government plans to build a new library on or near the site of the original (swerdlow, 1999). the creation and destruction of libraries were not limited to egypt. in florence, the famous 15th century medici collection of art, manuscripts, and books was destroyed at the time of the conquest of the city by the french king charles viii. savonarola, a friar of the dominican order, helped overthrow the medicis and a mob sacked their palace (hibbert, 1975). in their heyday, the libraries of alexandria, the medici palace, and other venues provided a place for scholars of diverse backgrounds to meet and exchange ideas (brinton, 1925; canfora, 1989). since then, the function of public and private libraries evolved into their primary modern use of housing collections. today the sense of permanence traditionally associated with libraries has never seemed more threatened: the degeneration of paper over time and the destruction of libraries and museums through natural calamities or opposing political and religious forces attest to this. while the destruction of individual libraries is possible, the idea of a library once established has served an important communicative role throughout space and time. the advent of the internet and electronic media has begun to exert a drastic change in the role of libraries as archives of print-on-paper. now, at the seam of the millennia, we are envisioning the use of the internet via electronic journals and digital libraries as respectable, reliable places for scholarly exchange and archives. yet, the ease with which an e-journal can be destroyed—a few keystrokes—makes the medium tenuous. the longevity of magnetic or digital media is approximately fifteen years at best; it can be argued that digital archives are perhaps more ephemeral than print-on-paper. however, supported by a global network of librarians, multiple digital archives of ejournals can be created worldwide providing better and more equitable access to the collected wisdom of scholars. the construction of such a network of digital archives, now in its pre-infancy, is quite probable in the years to come. the internet makes e-journals an opportune global mode of communication for scholarly exchange in which national and international borders are erased. the appeal of e-journals is enhanced by the power of the electronic current issues in education vol. 2 no. 1 2 medium to open up possibilities hitherto impossible. the complex, dynamic, multidimensional world can be represented in rich visual experiences using this medium. moreover, a digital library does not have to exist in a particular point in space, such as alexandria. through digital archives, the libraries of classical antiquity and the great modern libraries of today can exist on one's desktop. the interactivity afforded by electronic media will help change the nature of scholarly communication. for instance, effective use of video and audio clips with text will alter the nature of the scholarly reports. the ability to make large data sets available at relatively low cost allows other scholars to conduct further analyses on the data. opportunities like these challenge scholars to prepare research reports that are not mere imitations of print-onpaper reports in electronic format. one important challenge of editing an on-line scholarly journal is facilitating this appropriate use of technology. what innovative things can be done with new technology? are we, in fact, making effective use of the medium? the unique capabilities of electronic reporting—such as providing hyperlinks, presenting a forum for discussion, increased interactivity, use of video, audio, and data sets— need to be considered. yet the challenge of preserving electronic scholarly communication for future generations exists. will the future present a network of digital archives of e-communication? there is hope that new applications will arise as the world of technology advances rapidly. we invite you to continue the dialogue by responding with your ideas and by submitting to current issues in education. references brinton, selwyn. (1925). the golden age of the medici. london: methuen & co. ltd. canfora, luciano. (1989, translated by martin ryle). the vanished library. london: hutchinson radius. edwards, edward. (1969, originally published: 1865). libraries and founders of libraries.new york, ny: burt franklin. hibbert, christopher. (1975). the house of medici: its rise and fall. new york, ny: william morrow & company, inc. johnson, elmer d. & harris, michael h. (1976). history of libraries in the western world. metuchen, nj: the scarecrow press, inc. swerdlow, joel l. (1999, august). tale of three cities. national geographic magazine, 196 (2), 34-61. editorial — ejournals today: forerunners of the unrealized potential of the digital medium 3 1999 article citation ganesh, t. g. & jennings, t. a. (1999, september 8). ejournals today: forerunners of the unrealized potential of the digital medium. current issues in education [on-line], 2(1). available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number1/. author notes tirupalavanam g. ganesh is a doctoral student in the interdisciplinary studies ph.d. program in the division of curriculum and instruction, college of education at arizona state university. he has consulted with arizona school districts on several demographic studies with the college's bureau of educational research and services. his academic preparation includes a b.e. (bachelor of engineering) in computer science and engineering from the university of mysore, india, and an m.c.s. (master of computer science) from arizona state university. his research interests include using technology in k-12 teaching for understanding, mathematics and science education, and scholarly communication of research. tirupalavanam may be reached at ganesh.tg@asu.edu. tara jennings is a doctoral student in the measurement, statistics and methodological studies program at arizona state university. she is currently working on projects related to data visualization, geographic information systems, and issues surrounding assessment of academic achievement. her research interests include classroom psychosocial environment, teacher and student expectations, and self-concept among school aged children. tara may be reached at tara.j@asu.edu. note from the 2011 executive editor, lori ellingford october 2, 2011. this article was first published at the original current issues in education website, located at http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html. in 2009, cie changed online platforms to deliver the journal at http://cie.asu.edu. the original cie website is now only used as an archival repository for published articles prior to volume 12. efforts to make the current cie website inclusive of past publications have necessitated the repurposing of this article into the published format you are viewing now. all content from the original publication has been preserved. no content edits occurred. spelling, grammar, and mechanical errors that may be found were present in the original publication. the cie logo and publisher information in use at the time of the article’s original publication is unaltered. please direct questions about this article’s repurposing to lori.ellingford@asu.edu. questions related to all other aspects of the journal may be addressed to cie@asu.edu. 2011 article citation ganesh, t. g. & jennings, t. a. (2011). ejournals today: forerunners of the unrealized potential of the digital medium. current issues in education, 2(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/825 http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume2/number1/ mailto:ganesh.tg@asu.edu mailto:tara.j@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/articles/index.html http://cie.asu.edu/ lori.ellingford@asu.edu cie@asu.edu http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/820 microsoft word 838_final.doc 1 volume 15, number 1 april 3, 2012 issn 1099-839x does education cause spiritual belief change? d. thomas markle university of new mexico currently, little is known about the influence classroom learning has on the spiritual beliefs of students. despite this fact, decisions on educational policy, parental home schooling, and even whether to bring legal actions against school districts, often rest on the assumption that education can induce spiritual belief change. to begin the process of filling the current gap in academic knowledge, this qualitative interview study centers on the personal accounts of educational and religious histories of sixteen participants. the interview data collected suggests that education has a limited role in beginning the process of spiritual belief change, but that education is often relied on once an episode of belief revision begins to occur. instead, major life events, such as the death of a family member, were often described as being the catalyst for spiritual belief change. the importance of emotion in both education and belief change is discussed. keywords: religion, spirituality, belief change, hot conceptual change, emotions, life events, education, qualitative a trend exists that as an individual comes to be more learned in an academic discipline, she becomes less likely to retain her religious beliefs (ecklund & scheitle, 2007; larson & witham, 1998; leuba, 1916; 1933). while researchers are cognizant of the correlation between degree of education and decline of religious beliefs, we still lack an explanation of how or why such a shift in belief might be occurring. current developmental and conceptual change theories provide conflicting results as to what exposure to new information can do to a system of beliefs (carey, 1988; piaget, 1971; pintrich, marx, & boyle, 1993). notwithstanding our unmistakable lack of understanding as to why such changes in belief might develop, legal actions amidst various families, religious organizations, and school systems in the united states have persisted over a variety issues stemming from assumptions that learning new knowledge can fundamentally and irrevocably augment an individual’s religious beliefs. yet, the fact remains there is no solid evidence to justify such an assertion. despite the above stated lack of information, one would be hard pressed to find a curriculum-based issue that sparks a more impassioned debate than that of the teaching evolution in public schools. parents and educators have deeply entrenched views regarding what is the appropriate material to be included in the science education curriculum. many high-profile scientific organizations have had to address the teaching evolution in public schools as a result of the high tensions that accompany the topic. one example, the national science teachers association, posted an open response to the public regarding their official position defending the teaching of evolution in schools, and has made available a wealth of resources for educators to aid in the teaching of evolution (national sciences teachers association, 2003). furthermore, numerous lawsuits have taken place, in both local and federal courts across the united states, attempting to change the degree to which either intelligent design or evolution is included in public school current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 2 curriculums. thus far, sixteen court cases involving a dispute related to evolution and education that have been adjudicated to completion by federal court rulings. ten of these cases have had a significant impact on the educational landscape of the country through the adjustment of curriculum; the first case was epperson v. arkansas, in 1968; and the most recent being kitzmiller et al. v. dover area school district et al., which occurred in 2005 (antolin & herbers, 2001; matsumura & mead, 2007; pager, 2006). research conducted with parents who have selected to either home school their children or send them to a private academy regularly cite an inconsistency between their religious faith and the educational policies of their local schools as one of the top reasons for removing their children from the public school system (yang & kayaardi, 2004). many parents who choose to home school for religious reasons do so assuming that allowing their children to be exposed to information that is inconsistent with the family’s religious traditions is inherently dangerous. if, anecdotally, so many individuals hold the opinion that there is a correlation between education and spiritual belief change, then how does current educational theory measure that point of view? the answer is decidedly mixed and largely dependent on which theory is applied to the question. for example, in just looking at the theory of constructivism a researcher would be conflicted on how to interpret the impact learning might have on religious beliefs. using traditional constructivism, in which individuals slowly build their understanding of the world, it would be possible for new information to challenge one’s spiritual beliefs (piaget, 1971). piaget asserted that when new and significant information fails to fit into pre-established constructs people begin to feel a natural level of discomfort with this realization, known as disequilibrium. they are then forced to either assimilate the new information into what we believe, or accommodate it by fundamentally changing their mental construct. while disequilibrium could be the beginnings of an explanation, neo-piagetians have since modified the initial theory of how individuals construct understanding of the world, from a single logical structure into a domain-specific theory (gelman & williams, 1998; wellman & gelman, 1992, 1998). in essence, this change implies that we construct separate and unique structures for different areas of thought. a consequence of this theory change would be that it potentially becomes more difficult for new knowledge to influence religious beliefs; in order for new information to be influential there would need to be a match between the domains of the incoming and established knowledge. survey data collected on the american public indicates congruence with the revised constructionist theory. national attitudes about the existence of god have remained comparatively stable over the past 80 years (harris poll, 2006). perhaps the most damaging evidence against the notion that education can change the spiritual beliefs of students is to consider that it was roughly 40 years ago that the supreme court ruled in favor of teaching evolution in the u.s. and rates of faith have failed to change. in fact, regardless of the curriculum used public schools across the u.s., the population who believe in god, are some of the highest of any industrialized nation in the world (harris poll, 2006). in light of a poverty of direct evidence, and contradicting forecasts from various theories of learning, we must call into question the assumption that formal education is a causal factor in modifying the spiritual beliefs of students. design the research design of the study is based on a qualitative methodology of one-on-one personal, semistructured interviews between the researcher and the participant (merton, lowenthal, & kendall, 1990). the goal of this design is to explore the stories of how an individual’s education history and spiritual beliefs have interacted throughout that individual’s life, using the method of in-depth personal interviews. for this study, the personal interviews were conducted with 18 participants who were selected through snowball and volunteer sampling attempting to establish a heterogeneous sample with regards to spiritual beliefs; however data was used from only 16. one of the participants failed to provide enough data during the interview for coding, and the second participant chose to end the interview before completion. in-depth interviews of roughly 35 to 75 minutes were conducted with each participant. during these conversations the participant was asked to reconstruct their educational experiences, their progression from early religious and spiritual beliefs to their current beliefs, and what impact they believe their learning had on any change in spiritual beliefs. each of the interviews had the audio dialogue digitally recorded as a means to secure data provided from the participant, in addition to detailed field notes taken by the researcher during the interview. participants the sample population for the interview study consisted of participants who were graduate students or faculty at the university of georgia. this population represented a wealth of lived experience within educational systems, both locally within georgia public schools, as well as other institutions around the united does education cause spiritual belief change? 3 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 1 summary of participants name gender age range education childhood beliefs current belief amber female late 20s ph.d. can. catholic christian amy female mid 20s ph.d. can. catholic / methodist spiritually christian ann female mid 20s ph.d. can. agnostic agnostic brian male late 20s ph.d. can. baptist agnostic derek male early 30s ph.d. jewish agnostic emily female late 20s ph.d. can. christian christian jonathan male late 50s ph.d. agnostic christian julie female late 20s ph.d. can. presbyterian spiritually christian jen female mid 30s ma. catholic zen buddhist mike male mid 30s ph.d. mormon pantheist molly female early 30s ba. catholic spiritually catholic robert male early 30s ph.d. can. jewish spiritually jewish sally female early 30s ba. jehovah’s witness spiritually jewish sean male mid 30s ph.d. agnostic christian thomas male late 20s ph.d. can. catholic catholic tim male mid 60s ph.d. christian presbyterian ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ states and abroad. participants (see appendix for descriptions) were recruited through fliers placed around campus on bulletin boards, recruitment e-mails, as well as word-of-mouth through the assistance of friends, colleagues, and faculty members asking individuals, whom they believed might be interested, if they would be willing to volunteer some of their time to discuss their religious, spiritual, and educational history. as a prerequisite to volunteering, individuals were asked to provide basic descriptive data such as age and gender, in addition to the spiritual beliefs they were raised with, and the spiritual beliefs they currently hold. while the procedure of purposeful selection was going to be used with the aim of preventing a homogeneous sample of individuals with the same spiritual beliefs, gender, or age, the individuals who volunteered to participate created a wide diversity in the sample prior to any intervention by the researcher. data collection and analysis each participant was digitally recorded, capturing the discussion during the interview. the resulting audio files were then saved and later converted, by hand, into a typed transcript. each transcript contained not only the words spoken during the interview, but also all audible verbal and non-verbal cues, such as laughter, sighing, and pauses, which could be used during the process of coding and interpretation. the interview data collected were explored using two distinct analytical approaches. the first was used to find themes and patterns within the data, so that they could be converted into basic descriptive codes; a technique that is a hybridization of elements from the grounded theory approach as proposed by strauss and corbin (1990), bogdan and taylor (1975), as well as transcript analysis suggested by pomerantz and fehr (1997). the focus of this analysis is to extract content from the data by inductively coding various elements into distinctive categories. as the analytical phase of the research project advanced, the developed categories were combined, discarded, or refined in order to distill recognizable patterns of meaning from the raw data. these finalized data categories were then viewed in light of the original research questions as a means of testing the proposed hypothesis and allowing a deeper understanding of phenomena. the selected hybrid analysis approach also allowed for the coding of outside material, such as important identities and relationships to the participant, which are typically excluded by more traditional conversation analysis techniques. the main benefit that this form of transcript analysis has over others is the specific attention paid to the references and terms used by the speaker, as well as the importance of the identities, roles, and relationships between the speaker and others expressed during the interview. the second analytical approach used to interpret the data is that of a thematic narrative analysis (riessman, 2008). in this method of analysis, the entirety of the story that is told by the participant is utilized as the foundation current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 4 for interpretation. the participant’s holistic account is used instead of fracturing the transcript into smaller units of data from which one would develop codes, general themes, and symbols. the whole story can either highlight a specific case study that serves as an exemplar to a particular event, or be used to develop overarching patterns of cause and effect, a story arc that can then be compared against other stories to determine if they follow a similar progression of events. results for the majority of the participants, it is clear that education has played a role in the development of their spiritual beliefs. however, what is surprising is the nature of influence education provided for these individuals has been one of a supporting role, rather than being a cause or catalyst for belief change. while most of the participants referenced their education during the interviews, it was mentioned as a follow up to another more significant catalyst, life events. in other words, the teaching of factual information in the classroom, for stories that were examined, failed to be sufficient for spiritual belief change in isolation of other more significant factors. instead, the stories suggest that life experiences are the primary cause for spiritual belief change. events that were described included the early death of a parent, the observation of immoral behavior by local church leadership, and being deeply moved by the actions of a close friend. these life experiences, much more so than factual knowledge, were cited as the source that made the first cracks in the foundation of previously established spiritual beliefs. these personal experiences, in a sense, sow the seeds of disequilibrium, causing a questioning of some or all of a spiritual doctrine. it is from that point onward education then has the ability to provide the support for belief modification or change. to provide a sense of the coded themes in context, a transcribed example for each is given below. each case uses a block quote to maintain the richness of data and the unedited fidelity of the participant’s voice. spiritual beliefs from childhood: my family both came from very strong religious backgrounds, and had seen themselves as being damaged by those backgrounds, so my parents deemphasized religion. they never practiced anything formally, never asked that i practice anything formally, and it really just didn’t impact my life at all. i grew up in, the city i grew up in was the home to a large televangelism ministry in the 70s and 80s, so it was definitely part of the culture of school i went to, was very evangelistically christian, the culture of the city i was living in was pretty evangelistically christian, so a lot of what i thought about religion through that process was negative or antagonistic. (sean, personal communication, february 6, 2009) life experience as catalyst: somewhere in there my mom died when i was about twelve, thirteen, this was something that initially caused me to start questioning things. and then through that time i just felt very guilty for feeling that way, very fearful that i might be punished for thinking this way, and it was a major relief to eventually accept jesus into my heart, to accept god into believing this, and fully like putting all of my beliefs into this, and to devote my life to this. and after that feeling wore off, that initial, sort of like, feeling wore off, and that my life hadn’t really changed all that much, and i still was very angry that this had happened, and it still made no sense to me, it was very much, just hard to make any real sense out of this, it just seemed that god was extremely, kinda flippant about things, and if there was really a plan, what was the purpose of like putting us here just to suffer and all this kind of stuff? these were just these very adolescent, kinda of angry, thoughts that festered and were never really answered by anybody that i went to, and i just ended up with a bad taste in my mouth when it came to religion. i went to a baptist school, college, for my freshman year and was really bothered by the hypocrisy that i saw there and the insulation, just the insular nature of the place, and i wanted to go to _______________________________________________________________________________________________ table 2 frequency of major thematic codes theme frequency spiritual beliefs established by family in childhood 16 / 16 life experience as catalyst for belief change 13 / 16 the use of education after life catalyst occurred 11 / 16 _______________________________________________________________________________________________ does education cause spiritual belief change? 5 another school and just kind of explore some other ideas. one of the things that really bothered me, was that nobody, like people would just scoff at anything that was bound in reason, or things like that. it was like blasphemy to discuss evolution that was something that was like a possibility, things like that. just extremely difficult things in my life, know you, tragedies to me, and then like learning about tragedies that happen to others, i suppose a lot of that happens in school as well, in history we learned about vietnam and just horrible things that men do to each other. and then learning about other cultures, and how different they are, and just learning that there are billions of people who believe in something that is completely different from what we believed in, and to truly consider that they might be damned for where they are born just seemed ridiculous to me… if i were born into a world where everything was absolutely perfect and my parents told me i was blessed by god, and everything just turned out great, and i was like the best person on the sports team, and totally rocked iq tests, and dominated standardized tests, and everything just wonderful happened all the time, i wouldn’t question my faith, i would be less likely to question my faith. but when, and now if i had been exposed to like, in that situation, all kinds of terrible things that happened to close people to me, and things like that. i mean there is always going be that, “why does this happen?” like you know the explanations aren’t always satisfactory, that we can’t know, and that there is a purpose behind this but it is too great for us to understand. like that kind of stuff just isn’t good enough for some people, and when you start to experience that you don’t get punished for thinking this way, you feel a little bit more comfortable doing it. (brian, personal communication, april 6, 2009) education after life event: but, you know, the way i disengaged from christianity there wasn’t really a point where school helped me do that, school did help me sort of give language to my insurrection, in that were these set of critiques that were available… it started with gender politics, you know, that is where this crack started to happen and starting to look at christianity as this patently male dominated thing, although that is changing somewhat, and you know, the history of that and how it has been used in terms of asserting power and all these sort of masculine qualities to world history. and so that sort of opened things up and then i read nietzsche and then got into this posthumanist, post-structural philosophy, continental philosophy, 20th century stuff. but my education into rhetorical theory really was a big part of that too, because that is what we study, we study how people make meaning, and were the buck stops, and how are narratives built, and how do people linguistically cobble together their universe, and that is very closely tied in with studies of religion, in fact some of the most notable rhetorical theorists write extensively about religion as a primary metaphor by which we can understand rhetoric, because, you know, almost any meaning making activity that we are involved, in it could be called a type of spirituality, our belief that barack obama will bring us salvation is not so different from the belief that christ will bring us salvation, there are a different set of key terms, but the narratives look remarkably similar, so my vocation studying rhetoric and meaning construction has been a vocation in understanding how religions are built, how they operate, how they multiply, and spread themselves, and how people come to ask the questions they do like, “why am i here?”, why they need to ask that question, and what narratives have been built that are ready made to answer that question. studying deeply how those things are constructed has really influenced my perspective on what spirituality and religion is. (mike, personal communication, february 14, 2009) out of the data that was collected, it can be argued that there are two central reasons that factual knowledge presented in educational settings, in the absence of any other factors, seem to fail in producing a strong drive for cognitive change in the area of spiritual belief. first, there is a wide array of diverse information easily accessible and available for the construction of arguments supporting or attacking any spiritual belief system. given the intellectual complexities of the world and availability of contradicting information with modern technologies, it seems that one particular fact may be either diminished in its capacity to influence a belief set as a whole, or can easily be dismissed, based on alternative information which supports an alternative set of beliefs. second, for the participants the methods by which spiritual beliefs were first encoded into memory were often experiential and personal in nature. therefore, these beliefs appear to be far more protracted and hardened against change than are other types of beliefs that have been based on purely current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 6 intellectual or theoretical ideals. researchers have previously noted how some beliefs are only susceptible to being changed by beliefs of the same type (edwards, 1990; murphy & mason, 2006). in such cases, the exposure to factual and logical information will do little to influence a belief that is founded in experience and emotion. none of this is to say that education fails to play a role in the process of spiritual belief change; rather it is in a secondary role than as a catalyst for conceptual change. the relationship between spiritual belief change and education can be expressed well using an analogy of how fire is created. a powerful life experience is what causes that initial spark leading to flame, and the amount of knowledge that one has gained through education serves as the fuel for the combustion. both elements need to occur in order for the reaction to happen; yet only one of them can act in a causal role. it would be possible for an individual to have plenty of fuel but never get a spark, just the same as it is possible for another person to have a spark but fail to have enough combustible material to generate a fire. a few of the participants openly questioned what spiritual beliefs they would hold today if they had received differing quality or quantity of education, or had experienced a different course of life events. discussion from the data collected in this study it can be argued that the participants interviewed asserted that life events rather than formal education were the primary cause for changes in spiritual belief throughout their lives. such findings contrast the popular assumption that it is education that directly changes the religious and or spiritual beliefs of students. while education was not reported to be the catalyst for spiritual belief change, it seems to have a secondary role in supporting the justification and rationale for modifying spiritual beliefs. an overview of education and spirituality the one clear constant throughout all of the interviews is that spirituality is a deeply personal issue. the participants’ beliefs have not been established through a general apathy of interest, or a premature foreclosure of identity; they have been thoroughly considered and evaluated as being an important element of personal life, one that requires reflection and careful selection. each of the participants had weighed factors in their life and came to, what they believe to be, a reasoned and defensible position regarding their own personal spirituality. the presumption, or even fear, that the teaching of a single fact, or a set of ideas, is sufficient to be able to fundamentally alter an individual’s spiritual beliefs appears to be unfounded. during the interviews no one expressed such a sudden or radical change in spiritual belief stemming from one idea, lesson, or subject learned in school. it is an understatement to assert that the world is a complex place; it is rich in a vast variety of religious heritages, scientific and empirical knowledge, and historical accounts of both good and ill committed by groups and individuals of all classes and culture. along with the understanding of the world being as complex as it is, comes the realization that a properly motivated individual is able to support any one of a menagerie of wildly diverse beliefs given such a large set of information. with the range of information readily available on the internet alone, it becomes extremely difficult to convince a critical mind of the validity or incongruence of a complex idea, especially one that is based on faith. it is possible to suggest that by limiting exposure to diverse ideas, it might be possible to control an individual’s belief system, in so much as that person would have no alternative prospective with which to view the world. however, the opposite case, open access to information, does not entail that alternative ideas are lead to belief change. for the participants who were interviewed by me, the exposure to novel ways of understanding the world failed to serve as a catalyst for spiritual belief change. instead, in story after story, it was a life event or emotional experience that functioned as the beginnings of spiritual change. a comparison to theories of belief change in listening to each participant tell of their intertwined history of educational and spiritual development, and then comparing those stories to the variety of theories researchers have asserted about how belief changes occur, it appears to me that while no theory is directly contradicted by the interview data, at least one, the notion of hot conceptual change introduced by pintrich, marx, and boyle (1993), is notably reinforced by the findings. hot conceptual change highlights the importance of, the sometimes overlooked, factors that play a part in the modifications of belief: situations, motivations, and emotions. in short, hot conceptual change suggests that these important aspects of psychology are the influences that may serve as confounding variables for otherwise logical thought processes. other theories of belief change discuss the topic in terms of how the addition of novel information to a belief set can cause a reevaluation of one’s knowledge, and may lead to an alteration in the structure of an entire concept or set of beliefs, (see carey, 1988; case & okamato, 1996; piaget 1971; thagard, 1992). while each of these theories is beneficial in attempting to understand how individuals may go about restructuring their beliefs about the world, the explanations they provide are founded on the epistemological assumption that logical systems are, first and foremost, influenced by factual information. a supposition that is true in symbolic logic proofs, but begins to unravel when dealing with the complex mental workings of people. these, and does education cause spiritual belief change? 7 similarly constructed theories, fail to account for the fact that emotions are an essential part of the conceptual systems of humans. as counter-intuitive as it might seem, many researchers may be over valuing the role of logical reasoning in cognition, and in doing so miss the fact that beliefs are often weighted with an emotional value. the emotional value of a piece of information, in many respects, appears to be as strong of a factor in belief change, if not stronger, than the logical value of that information. in speaking with participants, a theme that was repeatedly expressed was of having experienced a life event which had an emotional element associated with it, which then started a process of belief change. the importance of life events, for the participants, parallels the ideas of gardner (2006), and research of falsetti, resick, and davis (2003), who also suggested that traumatic life events were a primary cause for belief change. it is easy to understand how there would most likely be a high level of association between trauma and emotions, and in turn how such a situation may lead to conceptual change, if the emotions from the situation were to be coupled with specific facts or beliefs. an interesting implication of the results would be that the impact of new knowledge, or even the reprocessing of old knowledge, might be primarily influenced by the emotional state of the thinker, rather than the validity of information being provided. if this is the case we could expect to see the most dramatic upheaval of emotionally based beliefs occurring during, or directly after, high levels emotional duress. furthermore, such an implication would also entail that under the majority of circumstances, the factual information being presented in the education of students in public schools would fail to be sufficient for causing spiritual belief change, an assertion which is strongly supported by the personal histories of the participants. spirituality and school curriculum despite the long-standing contention over the legality of teaching of evolution, and other topics that drive controversy in public schools, there may be little room for maintaining such disputes that are founded on the claim that there is a nature opposition between spirituality and curriculum. while clearly further research expanded in scope and depth is needed to illuminate these issues further, if the themes found in these interviews were to continue to be expressed by a greater number of participants, then the arguments currently used to suggest that the teaching of specific ideas or theories, such as evolution, might challenge or damage spiritual beliefs of student would in fact be invalid and solely based on personal fears rather than psychological research. in essence, it might be possible to side step the entire debate over what sort of factual information should be taught to students in the sciences or other curriculums by understanding the mechanisms by which personal spiritual beliefs evolve. in coming to a basic understanding of the psychological processes that govern belief change, it may very well be the case that no single fact exists which is strong enough to derail a personal spiritual faith. therefore with continued exploration in this fruitful line of research, one might be able to argue that there should be no limits placed on the teaching of factually accurate information to students based on grounds of possibly infringing on their spiritual beliefs. conclusion the research question guiding this study was what influence does education have on students’ spiritual or religious beliefs? the answer suggested by this data set is that education appears to have a limited role in causing spiritual belief change. however, what an individual has learned over the course of their education can function in a supporting role by being used as justification for an alteration in belief. rather than education, foundational changes in spirituality were reported to result from life events and experiences. specifically, participants discussed life events that had a strong emotional component, such as the death of a loved one, as serving as a catalyst for deciding to alter their spiritual beliefs. the assumption that subjects such as biology, might be the most likely to cause a question of beliefs seems to be inaccurate. instead the participants described drawing support for their current spiritual beliefs from a wide assortment of disciplines including: english, psychology, sociology, history, research methods, and biology. do individuals who have similar spiritual beliefs also have similar historical profiles? from the limited sample size of this study, it should be tentatively stated that with academics, there is little connection between their personal histories, and the belief system which they have selected to be a part of, other than to say that it seems in some cases, life experiences have shifted individuals from one belief set to another. do different religious or spiritual belief systems respond differently to education? there simply is too little information with which to make even an educated judgment on this question, it is best left to others to decide an answer. the topic of how education influences the spiritual belief change of students needs to be continued and have expanded research into the future. it is a fruitful and unexplored area of educational psychology that has substantial implications for both students and educators, yet has very little known about it beyond the limited research study presented here. the study presented here has taken the personal interviews of sixteen participants and attempted to find thematic commonalities within their described narratives of educational history and the process of spiritual change that they have undergone. in exploring these personal histories, one major theme was repeatedly asserted; personal experiences lead to spiritual belief change rather than learned factual knowledge. while specific facts and ideas are often used to support a current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 8 transformation in spiritual beliefs, this application of learned knowledge is used after a life event has served as the catalyst of change. these findings seem to contradict the assumptions individuals have about the role novel information has in maintaining and revision of beliefs. moving forward, future researchers need to establish larger scale research projects, including greater and more diverse populations, including younger participants who are still in school, in an attempt to determine whether or not the introductory research conducted here has any merit to be generalized out into a larger and more diverse population. references abrams, l. m. 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(2004). who choose nonpublic schools for their children? educational studies, 30, 231-249. does education cause spiritual belief change? 9 appendix participant profiles amber, ph.d. candidate social sciences, currently in her late twenties: amber was raised in western africa and influenced strongly by her conservative catholic mother and grandmother. as a lone child she went to catholic church with her grandmother, and grew up being told that, “church was the way to go if you had problems.” amber went through difficult times as a kid that made her faith stronger by providing a place to find solace through reading the bible and learning that while current pain is only temporary, something better waited later. the only happiness she knew, for the longest time, was religion and it became extremely important for her while growing up. amber attended catholic school from an early age until she went to college. however, amber believes that nothing she learned in school ever challenged her faith. even learning about evolution failed to have any impact; she openly admits that she has never questioned her belief in creationism. she no longer practices catholicism. as amber grew in her understanding of spirituality she believes she became more open minded. she came to believe that accepting christ as a personal savior was the most important part of her faith, and that the role of church was that of a fellowship with others rather than a requirement of devotion. amy, ph.d. candidate social sciences, currently in her mid-twenties: amy was raised in the southern gulf states region of the united stated. growing up within a catholic household, amy went to church regularly as a family. even at a young age religion was a large part of her life, for both spiritual and social reasons. as time went on her parents divorced, and at around eleven years old amy switched to a methodist church because it was where her friends went to worship. by and large, where amy was raised, religious gatherings were seen as social events in additional to practices of faith. early in high school, amy began seeing value in the teachings she was listening to at her religious functions, and they became more important as a moral compass in her life. progressing through her teenage years and into adulthood, amy started to move away from a strictly religious interpretation of the world because of personal interactions with people she had experienced over the years. for her change in belief, amy points to people whom she cared about, and knew where good people, who according to organized christianity were condemned to hell. she refused to believe that a good god would send people to hell for things they were unable to control. from there she began to question her faith, and reinterpret and reanalyze what she had been taught, to come to her own understanding of what being a christian is. she currently identifies with being, spiritually, a christian with a set of core beliefs, but doesn’t follow the religious traditions of a particular branch. ann, ph.d. candidate social sciences, currently in her mid-twenties: ann was raised in canada within a family which did not emphasize religious devotion. her mother had a personal spirituality that emphasized living a life that doesn’t hurt yourself or others but she didn’t push her beliefs onto her children. her stepfather was nonreligious, and rarely even spoke on the topic. religion in general did not enter into their daily lives, and as a child ann placed little thought to issues of religion or spirituality. when she was in high school, ann’s stepfather unexpectedly died. this event caused ann to begin seeking a greater understanding of spirituality and brought up questions regarding the purpose and meaning of life. even with her greater interest into spirituality, ann currently has no affiliation with any religion and believes that focusing on personal morality is more important. brian, ph.d. candidate social sciences, currently in his late twenties: brian was raised in a military family, and because of that life style, grew up in a variety of locations within the united states and also internationally. he identifies himself as being disinterested in religion as a child, but that it began to strongly influence him during his teenage years once his family was posted in mississippi. at that time brian started going to a southern baptist church, adopting their beliefs and becoming a born again christian. during his mid-teens, brian’s mother died. while he wanted to question his faith for having lost his mother, brian felt great guilt in doing so and found relief in accepting that jesus had a plan for him. however, after a brief period of time of solace, brian’s doubts continued to nag him and he found little sense in the actions of god, which seemed flippant. brian went on to a baptist college but during his freshman year was bothered by both the hypocrisy and insulation at the school. he decided to leave at the end of the academic year. in continuing with his education elsewhere, brian began to resonate with the notion of the null hypothesis, and that a person should start from a position of disbelief, waiting for the evidence of existence to be provided. currently, brain is comfortably agnostic; he feels that it isn’t his role in the world to solve age-old issues of faith, nor is it even possible. derek, ph.d. sciences, currently in his early thirties: derek was raised in the northeastern united states within a moderately jewish household, with his parents only really emphasizing religion at major holidays. derek quickly lost interest in participating while enrolled in a hebrew school program. as he aged he found himself moving away from formal religion and more towards looking at nature as a form of spiritual current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 10 inspiration. derek sees many logical contradictions in the various religious doctrines. for him the beauty and elegance of the natural world is a kin to a personal religion. derek follows the notion that science is the closest humans can come to understanding a god, if there is one, rather than following, what he believes to be, works of mythology written by people thousands of years ago. derek continues to practice some of the major jewish rituals with his young son, to provide him with cultural, rather than religious, heritage. emily, ph.d. candidate social sciences, currently in her late twenties: emily was raised in a christian family, having bible readings as a family every morning and attending church regularly. the institution of religion was very important to her growing up, although she admits to having fears as a child of not being christian enough. emily went to a christian school until fifth grade and then was home schooled until going to a christian college. she chose to embrace christianity as a teenager but found that many people failed to act in accordance to the beliefs they professed, which lead to some personal confusion on the value of belief. she had a crisis of faith early in college due to a family event, which lead to her being agnostic for a period of time before coming back to a christian belief system that was significantly different than how she was raised. she asserts that in believing that god is in sovereign control of everything, education should be a priority of all believers, to learn more about god’s creations, and that people should not have problems with apparent contradictions in the world since it is all god’s design. jonathan, ph.d. education, currently in his late fifties: jonathan was raised in the midwestern united states, participating in church functions, but always believing that there was something more to life than what he had observed in the lives of those around him. his experiences with the church lead him to believe that religion was simply wish fulfillment for the old and was of little interest to him. coming from a family that didn’t particularly value intellectual pursuits, he joined the military in the late 1960s as a way to find meaning and purpose in life. while larger ideals such as duty and honor were appealing to jonathan, he soon found that the vast majority of people in the military were just as confused as he was about how to live their lives. during this time he began to question if there was anything that could provide meaning and purpose in his life. as he was about to be stationed in vietnam, another enlisted man began talking to jonathan about having a personal relationship with god through christ. others had tried to talk to him about their religious beliefs before, yet this individual stood in contrast, through his lived actions, to many of the others jonathan had known. he spoke with jonathan about how events in the bible were more than myths, such as the prophesying of the creation of israel, which caused jonathan to question what other historic truths might exist in the bible. after his conversion and time in the military, jonathan went on to college. during this period he didn’t have his faith challenged by education. as an example he asserts his belief in creationism was never confronted by science, due to his belief in the irreducible complexity argument. julie, ph.d. candidate social sciences, currently in her late twenties: julie was raised in the southern united states, and as a child she went to presbyterian church every sunday, and some wednesdays, with her family. religion was always a central part of her family’s life. julie became very involved in the church as an adolescent, wanting to change her lifestyle after her older sister had been sent to boarding school for delinquent behavior. she became highly involved in youth groups and was the youth board member for the session in the church (the governing body). after seeing the inner workings of the church, especially how decisions were made, such as which families were helped and which were turned away, julie was disgusted with the hypocrisy of the church leadership. after that time she stopped attending youth groups and had a decline in religious belief. in college julie stopped identifying herself as a person of strong conviction and lessened the amount of time she went to church. now julie mainly goes to church for the social interactions. her faith has become a spirituality in which she values nature, focusing less on following the edicts of a religion. for julie education has allowed her to be critical about life and to not blindly accept the things people tell her on faith but to question and analyze ideas. jen, m.a. social sciences, currently in her late twenties: jen was raised in the midwestern united states in a catholic household and was greatly influenced by catholic beliefs as she grew up. she began to take issue with catholicism around the time she went to college. her explorations into the history of the church lead her to recognize how the religious institution had, and continued to, view and treat women and homosexuals in negative ways. the more she learned about this often overlooked side of the church, the less she felt like it was a belief system which reflected her own personal values. in seeing a disconnection between her views of a moral life and that of other professing christians, jen slowly moved away from the beliefs of her catholic upbringing. early in college she met an individual who was a practicing buddhist. jen, looking for a concrete practice that joined a spiritual and moral life style, began the exercise of daily mediation. this daily practice provided jen with a sense of connection to the world, and a basis for her future spiritual development. currently, jen identified herself as being a zen buddhist, with the goals of mediating on life experiences and discussing moral issues with other buddhists. does education cause spiritual belief change? 11 mike, ph.d. liberal arts, currently in his early thirties: mike grew up in the midwestern united states, and spent the first 18 years of his life in a mormon family with strong religious beliefs, but then drastically moved away from those beliefs when he went away to college. mike felt deeply connected to his faith at a young age, but in gaining a sense of the world through life experiences, mormonism began to appear to him to be a largely regressive practice. mike sites the refusal of members of the mormon faith to ask even elementary philosophical questions about the world, as a troubling and disenchanting experience for him. he describes his change in belief as a slow defection from mormonism, throughout this process he has explored various religious traditions and found arguments which reflected his own beliefs in reading philosophy and comparative religion texts. mike cautiously identifies himself as a pantheist, believing that a connecting force exists in all things, but remains highly critical of religions. molly, b.a. english, currently in her early thirties: molly was raised in the northeastern united states within a catholic household. she attended a private catholic school for her early education through middle school and then switched to a public high school. molly enjoyed and resonated with her catholic education and upbringing. she believes she had a very positive childhood and experience within the church. however, as she became a teenager molly started to question doctrines of the church, specifically the role of women and issues central to women’s rights such as birth control. she became frustrated at how women had been portrayed in the eyes of the church. around this time molly began to separate her intellectual understanding of the catholic faith with her own personal spirituality and beliefs about morality. while she still occasionally prays and enjoys the rituals of the church, she also sees great hypocrisy in their decisions. molly no longer follows the catholic faith and believes that love and respect for others are the two most important elements of her personal spirituality. robert, ph.d. candidate social sciences, currently in his early thirties: robert was raised in the northeastern united states, in a reformed jewish household. religion was of little real importance to him growing up. his family was lax and rarely followed the practices and the rituals of the faith, only celebrating the main holidays at temple a few times a year. robert went to hebrew school as a young boy and into adulthood, begrudgingly, continuing his studies past his bar mitzvah at the behest of his parents. at the time he felt that judaism, as a religion, was of little importance in his life, while recognizing the significance of continuing the jewish traditions. robert now believes that there is a fundamental distinction to be made between religion and spirituality; he came to this understanding through experiencing life events and extensive time abroad in china and belize. robert believes that all religions, being made by man, are deeply flawed, but furthermore that individuals can have a personal spiritual relationship with god, or whatever, without the interference of religion. sally, b.a. education, currently in her early twenties: sally was raised as a jehovah’s witness. religion was strongly emphasized within her household as she was growing up and she remembers putting her full faith into the religion when she was a child because people she loved and trusted taught it to her. however, as she aged she began to question some of the things her family’s faith declared were immoral, especially the notion that individuals who were not part of their religious group were inherently bad. overtime she began to break away from her religious upbringing and established spirituality based on jewish traditions, which is the faith of her husband. sean, ph.d. education, currently in his mid-thirties: sean grew up southeastern united states with staunchly anti-religious parents, who had seen themselves as being damaged from their earlier experiences with religion, and so deemphasized the role of religion in the life of their children. while the culture of the city and school sean grew up with were evangelical christian, he maintained agnostic beliefs throughout his early life and through college but had a conversion experience when he began teaching at an inner city high school. he began teaching courses on african and world literature, which dealt with issues of spirituality and religion. the material he and his fellow faculty were teaching, caused them to view their role in the urban school as a part of their ministry and outreach to youth. all of these factors built up to an adult conversion in his early twenties. currently a professing christian, sean believes that there is a role for doubt in a strong faith, and a good deal of what god might ask a person to do is impossible, but the act of trying is essential. sean spoke to the point that only by becoming more educated can people find religious truth, and that a lot of good science and religion has been lost by people limiting what they learn. for sean, formal education helps to encourage and develop faith, and improves the interactions between those of faith and those who choose alternative beliefs. thomas, ph.d. candidate social sciences, currently in his late twenties: thomas was born into a roman catholic family. he had a mother who was very religious and accepted on faith whatever she was told by the church, without ever questioning those beliefs, and a father who was agnostic due to unfortunate events early on in his life. thomas was sent to catholic grade school for religious education and from an early age believed that the complexity of the world was a clear indication of god’s creation of everything. thomas, spurred on by academic conversations on religion in college, went through a twoyear period in which he strongly questioned his religious current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 12 faith and deeply explored other religious traditions. during this period he examined his core beliefs and found himself still aligned with the catholic tradition. thomas is a strong supporter of scientific discovery and research, but he admits he has never been able to question his fundamental belief that there was god who started the process. god for him is perfect and loves us, however the world is not designed to be perfect, and therefore we are here to choose whether or not we want to accept god. tim, ph.d. education, currently in his mid-sixties: from an early age tim went to sunday school as a child, where his initial religious beliefs were formed. he continued to follow those beliefs through high school, until doubts began to emerge as he recognized a disconnection between the teachings of the bible and scholastic subjects. specifically tim saw friction between the explanations of science and religion, two areas that were both of deep personal interest. even with his doubts, tim’s self identity was wrapped up in being a christian. he continued to struggle with his beliefs throughout college, determined to find a way to marry science and religion together. he admits to failing in this attempt to merge the two belief systems, sometimes being strong in his religious faith and at other times tossing them aside in favor of academics. tim claims that he had a personal religious experience that caused him to, “doubt his doubts,” and strongly reinforce his religious beliefs. while his faith waned into his 30s, his beliefs had rebounded with his religious experiences, and when his children were born he and his wife began attending church again regularly. since going back to church tim, has continued to be very active in his presbyterian community for the past 25 years. does education cause spiritual belief change? 13 article citation markle, t. d. (2012). does education cause spiritual belief change? current issues in education, 15(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/838 author notes d. thomas markle, ph.d. the university of new mexico 123 simpson hall, albuquerque, nm 87131 markle@unm.edu tom markle is a visiting assistant professor of educational psychology for the department of individual, family, and community education at the university of new mexico. he researches dynamic cognitive modeling, the effect of novel information on belief systems, and the influence of education on spirituality. manuscript received: 10/19/2011 revisions received: 3/27/2012 accepted: 3/29/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 14 volume 15, number 1 april 3, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors angela hines elizabeth reyes recruitment editors angela hines lisa lacy copy editors/proofreaders carol masser lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson mary bankhead laura busby michelle crowley tulani garnett catherine gay ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca hyun jung kang monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser lauren preston stephanie quintero kelly rubel leslie salazar melisa tarango lauren williams kevin woo faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 903-4064-3-le_2.docx 1 volume 15, number 3 august 21, 2012 issn 1099-839x the effects of dual enrollment credit on gender and race bart ganzert forsyth technical community college the researcher of this study examined dual enrollment and huskins bill course effects on academic success and graduation rates by gender and race. quantitative statistical measures including parametric and non-parametric means comparisons, including anova, t-test and chi-square tests, were used to analyze data from 15, 527 north carolina community college students. the researcher found that dual enrollment and huskins bill courses showed positive effects on gpa and graduation rates for non-white students and positive effects in graduation rate for female students enrolled in community college programs. keywords: dual enrollment, huskins bill, concurrent enrollment, college readiness, college success, race and retention, gender and retention, college success and race between 1994 and 2004, enrollment at postsecondary institutions in the united states grew at a rate of 17% from 1984-94 and 21% (national center for education statistics, 2007). this increase in student matriculation has generated questions as to whether students are prepared for postsecondary work, especially as today’s economic demands push workers towards postsecondary degrees and certifications. one concern is for non-white students, who, historically, have been less likely to attend postsecondary institutions and are currently less likely to graduate from them, and male students, who recently have fallen behind female students in postsecondary enrollment, attendance and performance (swanson, 2008). college-style courses, such as dual enrollment programs have all been said to show promise for these groups and have proliferated in hopes of improving college performance. some researchers (klein, 2007; morrison, 2005) agree and cite advantages these programs can provide such as a relief for student boredom and for “senioritis,” or allowing for more independence in student study regimen. existing research on these programs is qualitative or local in nature, leaving the opportunity for more quantitative inquiry on the subject and for studies that can be generalized to the national population of dual enrollment students. also, conclusions from the research show mixed results in program effectiveness and there are few quantitative studies that address the question (bailey & karp, 2003). two quantitative studies (eimers & mullen, 2003; spurling & gabriner, 2006) using inferential statistics and data from small samples indicate positive effects in retention by dual enrollment students. eimers and mullen, though, found no effect in first-year gpa for dual enrolled students. hoffman (2005) in an overview of several earlier studies found positive results for the programs, especially among non-white and low-income students. hoffman also notes that non-motivation in the high school environment particularly effects male students and can be more pronounced among low income students. findings from a large study in florida and new york city using an extensive database (karp, calcagno, hughes, jeong, & bailey, 2007) showed favorable returns for male students enrolled in dual enrollment courses. the findings also indicate that dual enrollment is positively associated with the likelihood that students will earn a high school diploma, initially enroll in a postsecondary institution, enroll full-time and persist in college to a second semester. participating students had significantly higher college gpas three years after high school graduation than did peers who did not participate current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 2 in dual enrollment programs (karp et al., 2007). researchers also tracked participating new york vocational students and found them more likely than their peers to pursue a bachelor’s degree, earn higher firstsemester gpas and progress toward a degree (karp et al., 2007). recommendations from two studies (morrison, 2008; reindl, 2006) suggest expanding access and offerings to dual-enrollment-type programs, a program type they say has shown success in various qualitative studies. morrison bases his conclusions on data from north iowa area community college, which has found success in student persistence and graduation in dual enrollment programs. reindl’s report looks at a broad range of programs that enhance college readiness. bailey and karp (2003) concluded that dual enrollment programs may offer an effective advantage for high school students bound for college, but their conclusions are based on qualitative measures. another quantitative study by swanson (2008) found dual enrollment effective in persistence to degree for females and high income students. the study used regression analysis and a large database of iowa students; however, the data were from the early 1990s. to address the discrepancies in existing literature, this study uses a causal-comparative research design to look at two types of north carolina dual enrollment programs: dual enrollment, and huskins bill dual enrollment. the study is designed to investigate if there is a causal link between each program and to assess the academic success of male students and non-white students who took these courses and later enrolled in a north carolina community college. the researcher of this study examined dual enrollment (also called concurrent enrollment, joint enrollment or dual credit) and huskins bill course effects of students in the north carolina community college system on academic success and graduation rates by gender and race. dual enrollment programs have recently gained educators’ attention as they have shown promise for improving student success at postsecondary institutions as state budget cuts have brought more scrutiny to them. students in these programs are typically rising high school juniors or seniors between 16 and 18 years old. most are collegebound students seeking college-level credits through state articulation agreements that allow equal transfer of community college credits in “core” courses to state universities, but students are not limited to these courses. huskins bill courses, a designation given by north carolina to one type of dual enrollment program, are similar to dual enrollment courses where instruction often takes place at a secondary facility, but can be administered to a cohort of high school students taking classes together at a college campus. the instructor for these courses can be a high school teacher qualified to teach a college-level course, or a regular instructor at the administering postsecondary institution (north carolina community college system, 2009). based on findings in earlier studies that show a positive effect in college readiness by taking a higher education class in high school (bailey & karp, 2003; conley, 2003; kim, 2006; spurling & gabriner, 2002), and using evidence that these courses have a positive on postsecondary success and retention for non-white and male students, dual enrollment and huskins bill courses should echo these positive outcomes. the specific research question addressed was: • is there a difference in first-year gpa and persistence to graduation that relates to race or gender for students who take dual enrollment or huskins bill courses in high school? data for the groups were taken from the north carolina community college system database. the database yielded information from all north carolina community college students. this is an improvement over earlier quantitative studies (eimers & mullen, 2003; kim, 2006; spurling & gabriner, 2002) that used data drawn from small or local datasets. research methods data were drawn from the north carolina community college system database that contained information on students enrolled since the summer session of 2002 through fall 2008 from all of the 58 community college programs in the state. the data consist of a cohort of 15,527 individuals who graduated from high school in the spring or summer of 2003 and subsequently enrolled in a north carolina community college in the fall of 2003. approximately 79% of the students had no dual enrollment or huskins bill experience, 7% had one or more dual enrollment courses, and 14% had one or more huskins courses. female students made up 58.6% of the dataset with male students representing 41.4%. non-white students made up 24.8% of the dataset with non-whites representing 3% of the dual enrollment sample and 10% of the huskins bill sample. students within this cohort were tracked to determine which had huskins bill or dual enrollment experience while in high school and how many courses they had taken. the students were tracked through 2008 to determine graduation and success rates. the sample contained only students who matriculated to a community college within a year after high school. the study looks at a group that is homogenous by student population (two-year college students) and by the program limitations of the community college. many students at the community college seek terminal vocational degrees, while those not in a career program take core academic courses that they transfer to four-year institutions to begin studies in their majors. choosing only community college students, the researcher provided a control for students who have similar backgrounds and career aspirations as opposed to the effects of dual enrollment credit on gender and race 3 a sample that contains students who matriculated to both community colleges and four-year institutions. the sample also features students who are similar in that students were all motivated to enroll in a community college within a year after high school, indicating a sense of purpose among the students. the gpa of each student at the end of the first year of college was also calculated from information in the database. the standard community college method of determining gpa was used. this method multiplies grade value on a four-point scale with course quality points and divides the factor by total quality points. student gpa was chosen as an indicator of overall student success because it is a primary indicator of academic success, and higher student gpa typically shows that a student is well adapted to the college environment and will most likely continue and complete the program in which he or she is enrolled. also, in the community college where successful students in some programs such as college transfer tend to transfer with high frequency, gpa offers an indication of success where graduation rate alone may not offer a complete picture. to perform the causal-comparative analysis, the dataset was broken down into three comparison groups. two of these groups, students who took at least one dual enrollment course while in high school, and students who took at least one huskins bill course while in high school, represented the treatment groups in the study. the remaining group included students who have taken neither a huskins bill nor dual enrollment course while in high school. where statistical significance was found using anova, a tukey test was used for post hoc testing to determine which mean samples were significant. for comparisons of nonparametric statistics, the chi-square test was used. all calculations were performed with spss 17.0 statistical software. it allowed comparison of huskins program outcomes (specifically gpa and graduation rate) with the outcomes of the dual enrollment program and it allowed comparison of the effects of both of these programs with non-huskins and non-dual students. furthermore, the design provides for a breakdown of important descriptive elements such as race and gender and the effect of these programs on both. discussion of findings female students had higher first-year gpas than male students in each of the groups (see table 1), which included dual enrollment (2.21 over 2.1), huskins bill (1.95 over 1.9), and students with experience in neither huskins bill nor dual enrollment (1.68 over 1.57). the test revealed a t-value of 2.06 for the comparison with an n of 1871 for the females and 1323 for males. the comparison was statistically significant at the .05 value, with a p-value of .039 (see table 2). in the comparison between male and female first-year gpa means between both dual enrollment and huskins bill students, females maintained a 2.05 average versus a 1.96 average for male students. females averaged statistically higher gpas in the groups; however, the difference in gain between male and female groups who took dual enrollment or huskins bill courses was not significant. table 1 dual enrollment and huskins bill first-year gpa by gender gender number mean gpa female (overall) 8572 1.76 female dual enrolled/huskins 1871 2.05 female non dual/huskins 6701 1.68 male (overall) 6955 1.64 male dual enrolled/huskins 1323 1.96 male non dual/huskins 5632 1.57 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 4 this finding duplicates findings in other studies (karp et al., 2007; o’brien & nelson, 2004) that suggest dual enrollment and huskins bill courses benefit nonwhite student college readiness. non-white students in the dataset averaged a first-year gpa of 1.14 for non-dual enrollment and nonhuskins students, while non-white dual enrollment students averaged a 1.54 first-year gpa and non-white huskins bill students averaged a 1.35 first-year gpa. graduation rates showed a similar pattern with non-dual enrollment and non-huskins bill non-white students graduating at a rate of 13.8% and dual enrollment and huskins bill students graduating at a rate of 17.2%. this difference is statistically significant at .04. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ table 2 independent samples test for male and female dual enrollment and huskins bill students by gpa levene's test for equality of variances t-test for equality of means f sig. t df sig. (2tailed) mean difference std. error difference 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper * .064 .801 2.060 3192 .039 .088 .043 .004 .171 ** 2.063 2861.183 .039 .088 .043 .004 .171 ____________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ table 3 anova: non-white gpa for dual enrollment, huskins bill and students with neither sum of squares df mean square f sig. between groups 30.086 2 15.043 12.357 .001 within groups 4674.477 3840 1.217 total 4704.563 3842 the effects of dual enrollment credit on gender and race 5 _______________________________________________________________________ table 4 homogenous subsets for anova of non-white dual enrollment, huskins bill and students with neither tukey hsda,,b group number subset for alpha = 0.05 1 2 non 3343 1.146 huskins 378 1.345 1.345 dual 122 1.541 sig. .090 .100 note. means for groups in homogeneous subsets are displayed. a. uses harmonic mean sample size = 269.267. b. the group sizes are unequal. the harmonic mean of the group sizes is used. type i error levels are not guaranteed. other studies have indicated positive effects on male gpa and retention based on earlier study findings (karp et al., 2007; swanson, 2008; hoffman, 2005). however, in this study there was no significant difference in the size of the effect for dual enrollment between males and females. dual enrollment and huskins bill courses had an equally positive effect on males and females. earlier studies (karp et al., 2007; kirst & venezia, 2007; klein, 2007) found that dual enrollment and huskins bill courses have shown a greater effect for male students. this study finds that female students receive an equal benefit in first-year gpa from the programs. in graduation rate females surpassed males among dual enrollment and huskins bill students as well. female dual enrollment and huskins bill students graduated at a rate of 33.1% and males graduated at a rate of 25.5%. the difference is statistically significant at .001. this finding is also significant because it contradicts previous studies (karp et al., 2007) that indicate a greater effect for male students, and it shows success in college continuation for female students in this group. continuation to graduation is significant here because it suggests that dual enrollment and huskins bill courses offer female students performance advantages in college programs that extend beyond first-year success. it should not be lost, however, that both males and females who took dual enrollment and huskins bill courses benefitted in first-year gpa and graduation rate over those who did not take these courses. these programs still showed positive results for each. dual enrollment and huskins bill non-white students showed higher first-year gpa means and higher graduation rates than non-dual enrollment and nonhuskins bill students (table 3 and 4). the anova showed a statistically significant difference between the dual, huskins bill and non-dual and non-huskins bill group means at the .001 level. to determine which group means were significantly different, a tukey post hoc test was performed. the test revealed that both dual and huskins bill non-white students showed a significant difference in mean first-year gpa from non-dual and non-huskins bill non-white students. implications the higher gpa and graduation rates for dual enrollment and huskins bill non-white students demonstrate a statistically significant advantage from the programs. though the increases in gpa and graduation rate for dual enrollment and huskins bill students appear small, they do indicate a significant step towards success at the postsecondary level. graduation rates at two-year colleges tend to be low for numerous reasons: students transfer regularly to four-year schools, students face economic pressure and must drop out of programs early, or, students may take a few courses not intending on completing an entire degree. in addition to these reasons, as two-year public colleges have open-door policies, students are less likely to be prepared for the rigor of college work. the increase in gpa and graduation rate shown here through dual enrollment programs is a step in aiding student continuation. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 6 findings are important because they identify a positive effect on academic success and continuation to graduation in a postsecondary setting for a demographic that made up 24.8% of the dataset. students with experience in either the dual enrollment or huskins bill courses showed a 5% higher rate of graduation and higher first-year gpas, a significant boost for this large at-risk demographic. this finding agrees with findings in other studies that show dual enrollment experience shows a heightened benefit for minority student populations (hoffman, 2005; karp et al., 2007). these results show promising outcomes in firstyear college success and in graduation rate for non-white students taking dual enrollment and huskins bill courses. it also shows positive retention effects for female students over male students. positive outcomes for non-white students taking dual enrollment and huskins bill type programs have also been duplicated in other studies (karp et al., 2007; o’brien & nelson, 2004). this pattern of success warrants more attention by state education leaders to promote and expand dual enrollment and huskins bill programs specifically for these students and thereby help launch them into a successful and productive adulthood. presently, dual enrollment programs are underutilized by non-white students (hoffman, 2005; o’brien & nelson, 2004). some ways this program can benefit these students are to put dual enrollment programs in schools with high populations of non-white students. state policymakers can work to establish more diverse partnerships with k-12 and community college administrations which will allow for creative programs involving dual enrollment and huskins bill type courses. these programs could focus on at-risk demographics within regions of the state or could target areas of workforce development that show promise for creating future employment or economic opportunity. offering a mandate and the funding for these programs could provide a jumpstart for the creativity and initiative that is needed to create and successfully establish these ventures. community colleges, in particular, face the challenge of educating students with a diverse array of abilities. dual enrollment programs are a vital resource for creating a successful bridge from secondary to postsecondary work for students. state cutbacks due to the recent recession have taken a toll on dual enrollment programs which are viewed by many casual budget reviewers as redundant programs. it is a mistake to eliminate these programs based on the assumption that high schools can cover the loss of the programs internally. when a program shows effectiveness in promoting higher student gpa and graduation rate, then it follows that the program should be instituted, supported, funded and promoted as a pathway to student success in all community college systems. limitations the study design was limited in that it did not allow an accounting for variables such as previous student academic success (in north carolina, dual enrollment and huskins bill students are required to have a set high school gpa before they can take a college course.) or for individual student motivation, which could work to selfselection students into the dual enrollment or huskins bill group. however, the dataset does compensate somewhat for motivation by featuring a cohort of students who matriculated to a community college within a year of graduation. another limitation is that the study looked only at north carolina community college students. the study does not take into consideration students with huskins bill or dual enrollment experience who matriculated to four-year colleges and universities. this is an important student segment and warrants specific attention if the effects of these programs are to be completely understood. more study in this area is necessary. this particular study offers solid evidence for dual enrollment and huskins bill course effectiveness for non-white students matriculating to community colleges, and it also shows positive effects for both male and female students in general. a principal step in being able to compete in the modern workforce is the ability of a large part of the workforce to succeed in postsecondary education (mccabe, 2000; morrison, 2008). however, a major impediment to this step is the gap between secondary and postsecondary skill requirements which, according to one author, has created a “dead zone” between high school and college (reindl, 2006). with more students matriculating to postsecondary institutions (conley, 2007), programs such as dual enrollment and huskins bill which show effectiveness in the creation of college-ready students are in greater need for maintaining a job pipeline for students into the future, and, thus, are important in maintaining the economic welfare of the country and its population. as high schools continue to grow programs that focus on college readiness, knowledge of the best methods of college preparation will be necessary to guide educators in implementing the best programs for students. dual enrollment and huskins bill courses are two such programs that provide high school students with rigorous courses and that show success in preparing these students for postsecondary work. for students moving on to twoyear colleges, these courses afford students a college learning environment for students to acquaint themselves with the pace and expectations of college work. findings eliminate one inconsistency as indicated by conley (2007), that high school course syllabi are undeveloped and unreliable. courses taken by high school students at a college will have syllabi that align with postsecondary the effects of dual enrollment credit on gender and race 7 learning goals, thereby better suiting them to continue a postsecondary regime effectively. administrators in secondary and in postsecondary institutions should look at evidence of the effectiveness of these programs to best gauge their place in improving student readiness. the task for the future will be to find the most effective ways these courses can be administered to students in order to reap the greatest gain from them, and to ensure that these courses are administered in consistent ways in order to preserve the reliability of the programs. in order to best do this, more studies should be undertaken to find how well these programs work with individual student variances, such as environment and individual learning styles and to gauge the best methods of effectiveness from course experience. until then, administrators should expand these types of programs in order to benefit all students, but in particular to benefit a growing diverse student body that must be prepared to succeed. references bailey, t., & karp, m. m. 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(2008). an analysis of the impact of high school dual enrollment course participation on post-secondary academic success, persistence and degree completion. paper presented at the meeting of the national association for gifted children, tampa, fl and the national alliance of concurrent enrollment partnerships, kansas city, mo. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 3 8 article citation ganzert, b. (2012). the effects of dual enrollment credit on gender and race. current issues in education, 15(3). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/903 author notes bart ganzert, ed.d. forsyth technical community college 2100 silas creek pkwy. winston-salem, nc 27103 bganzert@forsythtech.edu bart ganzert is an instructor at forsyth technical community college in north carolina. he received his bachelors and masters degrees at wake forest university and his doctorate of education at appalachian state university. dr. ganzert’s research interests include k-16 partnerships, early colleges and dual enrollment effectiveness. manuscript received: 01/20/2012 revisions received: 05/03/2012 accepted: 07/05/2012 the effects of dual enrollment credit on gender and race 9 volume 15, number 3 august 21, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 906_corrected_mh.docx 1 volume 15, number 1 april 9, 2012 issn 1099-839x teaching paraeducators to support the communication of individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication: a literature review sarah n. douglas pennsylvania state university individuals with complex communication needs (ccn) who rely on augmentative and alternative communication (aac) to communicate in school and community activities often have paraeducators1 as communication partners. for individuals who use aac, successful communication often depends upon their personal skills as well as the skills of their communication partners. because the skills of communication partners are critical, and can be taught, a review was conducted to identify the effect of teaching paraeducators to provide appropriate communication supports for individuals using aac using studies that included data for both paraeducators and individuals with ccn. studies were analyzed using the recommendations from the communication partner instruction model (kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005). findings from seven studies suggest that communication partner training to paraeducators can have positive outcomes for the communication behaviors of both paraeducators and individuals using aac. implications for practice and future research directions are addressed. keywords: augmentative and alternative communication, training, paraeducator, communication partner, communication effective communication is essential to inclusion in society and quality of life for individuals with disabilities (downing, 2005; sack & mclean, 1997). however, many individuals with disabilities, especially those with complex communication needs (ccn) including individuals with cerebral palsy, autism, and intellectual disabilities, find communication challenging (beukelman & mirenda, 2006). these individuals often experience difficulty understanding and producing speech (reichle, 1997). as a result, individuals with ccn may be excluded from many communication opportunities (sack & mclean, 1997). 1for the purpose of this article the term paraeducator refers to personnel who support individuals with disabilities in educational, vocational, and human service organizations. paraeducators carry out plans designed by teachers or human service professionals. in the literature paraeducators are also referred to as paraprofessionals, educational assistants, instructional assistants or aides, program staff, carers, etc. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 2 augmentative and alternative communication in order to assist communication interactions, many individuals with ccn are provided with augmentative and alternative communication (aac) including the use of gestures, signs, speech generating devices (sgd), or communication boards (beukelman & mirenda, 2006). however, the provision of an alternative means of communication does not guarantee a successful interaction (calculator & luchko, 1983; schepis & reid, 2003). communication involves two or more persons (reichle, 1997) and both the individual using aac, as well as the communication partner, need to adapt to the skills and needs of each other for the interaction to be successful (mirenda, iacono, & williams, 1990; schepis & reid, 2003). paraeducators to support inclusion in general education, as well as societal participation for individuals with disabilities, paraeducators often are hired as support personnel in the united states (downing, 2005; reid, 2004). human service organizations rely on paraeducators to assist individuals with disabilities in self-care, adaptive living, leisure skills, and communication (wood, luiselli, & harchik, 2007). similarly, educational organizations rely on paraeducators, who work under the supervision of teachers and other professionals (i.e. physical therapists, speech language pathologists), to implement instruction and assess the progress of the individuals they support (pickett, 1999). employment of paraeducators in educational settings has increased dramatically over the past 50 years (french & pickett, 1997). according to the national center for education statistics (2006), from 1995 to 2005, the number of paraeducators employed in the united states increased by 41%; during the same time period, the number of teachers employed in the united states increased by 21%. the roles of paraeducators in the united states have evolved over time as inclusive practices have expanded (french, 1996). traditionally paraeducators engaged in non-instructional roles (e.g., clerical, custodial tasks). however, today many paraeducators engage in delivering instruction (french & pickett, 1997; giangreco, edelman, broer, & doyle, 2001). these increased duties have resulted in paraeducators becoming frequent communication partners for individuals with ccn (beukelman & mirenda, 2006). communication partner strategies when communication partners make use of appropriate interaction strategies (e.g., providing opportunities for communication), they increase the likelihood of a successful interaction and support development of new skills by the individual with ccn (blackstone, 1986; sack & mclean, 1997). unfortunately, past research provides evidence that communication partners of individuals with ccn find it difficult to support communication and often engage in behaviors that reduce the likelihood of a successful interaction and limit development of new skills (mirenda et al., 1990; purcell, mcconkey, & morris, 2000). for example, communication partners may anticipate the needs of individuals with ccn, limit communication opportunities, and fail to recognize communication attempts (mirenda et al., 1990; sigafoos, 1999). in addition, communication partners may ask primarily closed questions such as “yes/no” questions (purcell et al., 2000) and may dominate communication interactions (light, collier, & parnes, 1985; kent-walsh, binger, & hasham, 2010). teaching communication partners (e.g., paraeducators) to utilize more appropriate interaction strategies can help individuals with ccn experience communication success in both current and future interactions (blackstone, 1986; kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005). strategy instruction is a set of instructional procedures used to assist learners as they acquire academic and social skills (ellis, deshler, lenz, schumaker, & clark, 1991). research has demonstrated the effectiveness of strategy instruction to help learners develop and generalize complex cognitive skills (ellis et al., 1991). for example, strategy instruction has been shown to be beneficial in assisting students as they acquire comprehension skills (gersten, fuchs, williams, & baker, 2001), writing skills (graham & perin, 2007), and language skills (chamot, 2005). strategy instruction has also been shown to be beneficial for adult learners (harrison, 2003). based on the strategy instruction model of ellis et al. (1991), which was built off of the strategy instruction research of deshler et al. (1981), a communication partner instruction model was suggested by kent-walsh and mcnaughton (2005) to provide instructional guidelines to aid learners acquire, generalize, and maintain targeted strategies for supporting communication. the communication partner instruction model (kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005) includes eight stages. the first stage of the model is a pretest and commitment to instructional program. this includes a measure of current communication for the individual with ccn, current communication techniques used by partners, and an analysis of how communication could be improved. the partner then commits to participate in the program and learn strategies to improve communication in targeted areas. in the second stage, instructors describe the communication strategy that will be used. this includes a method to help remember the steps involved in the strategy and a discussion about the impact strategy use can have for the partners, individuals with ccn, and their families. the third stage is a demonstration of the strategy with an explanation of each step. after pretest, strategy description, and strategy demonstration, participants begin to practice and implement the strategy. in the fourth stage, participants teaching paraeducators to support the communication of individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication: a literature review 3 engage in verbal practice of strategy steps. the fifth stage involves controlled practice and feedback of the strategy by the instructors with gradual fading of prompts. then in the sixth stage advanced practice and feedback are provided by the instructors. the seventh stage involves a post test measure to ensure mastery of the target strategies, and comparison with baseline measures of communicative participation of individuals with ccn and the communication interactions of the communication partner. in this stage, a long-term commitment is made to ensure continued strategy use. the eighth and final stage consists of strategy generalization to a variety of settings. communication partner research reviews past literature reviews in communication partner training have investigated communication partner training to human service staff (smidt, balandin, sigafoos, & reed, 2009) and to communication partners working with individuals with cerebral palsy (pennington, goldbart, & marshall, 2004). smidt et al. (2009) reviewed six studies where training was provided to staff working with individuals with intellectual disabilities. results of the review indicated that in five of the studies behavior changes were noted for staff. however, most studies did not measure communication outcomes for individuals with disabilities as part of the study. the review conducted by pennington et al. (2004) included four studies where communication partner training was provided to parents, teachers, and/or teaching assistants working with individuals with cerebral palsy. results of this review indicated behavior changes by communication partners in three studies, and no changes in the behavior of communication partners in one study. in addition, three studies provided measures of child changes in communication behaviors, while one provided no data related to the communication of children in the studies. the reviews by pennington et al. (2004) and smidt et al. (2009) help provide an initial understanding of how communication partner training might be conducted, and the importance of measuring outcomes for both individuals with disabilities as well as their communication partners. however, to date a review has not been conducted of studies where communication partner training was provided to paraeducators (including support staff) and outcomes for individuals using aac were also measured. given the use of paraeducators in many educational and human service settings (pickett, 1999; wood et al., 2007) and the call for adequate training of paraeducators (french & pickett, 1997), a review in this area is needed. in addition, communication is a complex, but necessary skill for individuals with ccn and may require strategic instruction for communication partners to ensure success (kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005). therefore, given the research basis of the communication partner instruction model (kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005) in strategy instruction, the model may be helpful as a standard by which the instructional components of studies might be compared. research questions a review of existing literature was conducted to look at training for paraeducators supporting individuals with ccn. the following five questions were addressed in the review: (a) what are the characteristics (e.g., demographics for paraeducators and individuals using aac, setting, study design) of studies where communication partner training is provided to paraeducators?; (b) what is the paraeducator communication training content and format?; (c) what instructional procedures typically are included in paraeducator training?; (d) what is the effect of communication training on paraeducator behavior (e.g., responding to communicative attempts)?; and (e) what is the effect of paraeducator communication training on the communication performance of individuals with ccn? method to answer the stated research questions, a search was conducted to identify studies in which paraeducators were trained to support the communication of individuals with ccn. inclusion criteria limited the review to studies that met the following five criteria: (a) printed in english; (b) described experimental research; (c) published in a peer reviewed journal; (d) targeted paraeducators or program staff supporting individuals using aac as participants for training; and (e) provided information about the aac system used by the individuals with ccn and data about communication of the individuals using aac. an electronic search of psycinfo, web of science, and jstor databases was conducted using the following keywords (paraprofessional or facilitator or partner or paraeducator or assistant or staff or career) and (augmentative and alternative communication or communication) and (training or education or collaboration). next, ancestral searches of articles meeting inclusion criteria were conducted. then author searches were conducted for authors (i.e. kent-walsh, light, mcnaughton, schlosser, sigafoos, soto, and wood) for whom multiple articles were found in previous searches focusing on training communication partners to support individuals using aac. lastly, hand searches were conducted in the following peer-reviewed journals: augmentative and alternative communication; research and practice for persons with severe disabilities (formerly jash); education and training in developmental disabilities; and language, speech, and hearing services in schools. journals were selected for a hand search when multiple articles were found in previous searches focusing on training communication partners to support individuals using aac within these journals. searches yielded seven studies that met all inclusion current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 4 criteria. results results of this literature review are presented in accordance with the stated research questions: (1) description of studies including demographics of paraeducators and individuals using aac, setting, study design, and data collection methods; (2) content and format of trainings in studies; (3) instructional procedures included in training sessions; (4) outcomes for paraeducators; and (5) communication outcomes for individuals using aac. description of research studies paraeducator demographics. the number of participants within studies ranged from 3 to 18. sixtythree individuals participated in the seven studies; 62 of these individuals were paraeducators (see table 1) and the remaining participant was a teacher participating in a study with paraeducators (duker & moonen, 1985). paraeducator and program staff education levels varied from high school or equivalent through graduate student level. paraeducator experience ranged from no experience to over 5 years of experience. participant roles included: instructional aides, personal attendants, group home staff, day program staff, volunteer staff, health attendants, and habilitation aides. individuals using aac. a total of 41 individuals using aac were included in the studies. age, disability, and type of aac used are presented in table 2. age for individuals using aac ranged from 4 to 26. the disabilities of the individuals using aac included autism, intellectual disability, cerebral palsy, multiple disability, and traumatic brain injury. type of aac system varied among individuals and included speech generating devices (sgd), picture symbols, sign, gestures, and/or objects. setting. studies were conducted in a number of settings including inclusive classrooms, self-contained classrooms, residential facilities, adult day programs, and community settings (see table 1). four studies (bingham, spooner, & browder, 2007; money, 1997; schlosser, walker, & sigafoos, 2006; seys, kersten, & duker, 1990) were conducted in a single setting. two studies provided data collected in two settings (binger, kent-walsh, ewing, & taylor, 2010; duker & moonen, 1985). one study (light, datillo, english, gutierrez, & hartz, 1992) was conducted in a variety of community settings. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 1 characteristics of paraeducator and program staff in studies study n setting education level ages experience binger, kent-walsh, ewing, & taylor (2010) 3 self-contained classroom & inclusive classroom college, graduate student --3-5 years bingham, spooner, & browder (2007) 3 self-contained classroom hs, ged 20, 23, 52 2 ½ 5 years duker & moonen (1985) 12a self-contained classroom & residential program --21-32 -- light, dattilo, english, gutierrez, & hartz (1992) 3 community settings undergraduate, graduate student 20, 29, 25 0 2 years money (1997) 18 adult day program ------ schlosser, walker, & sigafoos (2006) 7 residential program hs, college --1-5 years seys, kersten, & duker (1990) 17 residential program ------ note. dashes indicate information was not provided in the study. hs=high school diploma; ged=high school equivalency. a1 participant in this study was a teacher, the remaining 12 were paraeducators. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ teaching paraeducators to support the communication of individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication: a literature review 5 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 2 characteristics of individuals using aac in studies study n age(s) gender disability type of aac binger, kent-walsh, ewing, & taylor (2010) 3 4, 5, 6 2m, 1f id, cp sgd, gestures, sign, pecs bingham, spooner, & browder (2007) 3 8, 12, 16 2 f, 1 m id, multiple disability picture symbols, big mac duker & moonen (1985) 3 11, 13, 14 2 f, 1 m id sign light, dattilo, english, gutierrez, & hartz (1992) 2 18, 26 2 f tbi, cp/id sgd money (1997) 18 ------sign, picture symbol schlosser, walker, & sigafoos (2006) 3 7-10 3 m autism, id objects (reach or lead to objects) seys, kersten, & duker (1990) 9 9-26 7 f, 2 m id gestures note. dashes indicate information was not provided in the study. f=female; m=male; id=intellectual/ developmental disability; cp= cerebral palsy; sgd= speech generating device; pecs= picture exchange communication system. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ study design. two types of research designs were used among studies. six studies used a single subject multiple-baseline design (binger et al., 2010; bingham et al., 2007; duker & moonen, 1985; light et al., 1992; schlosser et al., 2006; seys et al., 1990). two of the multiple-baseline studies were replicated across groups (schlosser et al., 2006; seys et al., 1990), three were replicated across participants (binger et al., 2010; bingham et al, 2007; light et al., 1992), and one was replicated across settings (duker & moonen, 1985). one study (money, 1997) used an experimental group design. data collection. within studies, data were collected using direct observation or video analysis. direct observation for data collection occurred in three studies (bingham et al., 2007; duker & moonen, 1985; seys et al., 1990) and involved direct observation of communication interactions between paraeducators and individuals using aac (e.g., prompts, use of aac). reliability checks between observers also occurred in these three studies (bingham et al., 2007; duker & moonen, 1985; seys et al., 1990). data collection using video analysis took place in four studies and each of these studies also reported data on reliability checks with a mean of 80% to 100% reported in sessions (binger et al., 2010; light et al., 1992; money, 1997; schlosser et al., 2006). in three studies (binger et al., 2010; light et al., 1992; seys et al., 1990), reliability checks occurred over multiple observation sessions and occurred in 10% to 29% of all observation periods. paraeducator training training content. information regarding training content is provided in table 3. all but one study (binger et al., 2010) stated communication functions were covered in training. other training topics included information about aac systems, goal setting, creating opportunities to communicate (e.g., prompting, responding), and supporting participation. in four studies (binger et al, 2010; light et al., 1992; schlosser et al, 2006.; seys et al., 1990) authors provided trainings. three studies did not specify who conducted the training (bingham et al., 2007; duker & moonen, 1985; money, 1997). training format. information was often provided in studies regarding training duration and length (see table 4). training sessions varied from multiple 15minute sessions to a 1-day workshop. one study did not specify the number of training sessions (binger et al., 2010). in one study (binger et al., 2010) length of training sessions was not reported. the number of training sessions in other studies ranged from 1 to 20. duration of the training varied in studies from 1 day to 14 months. six studies (binger et al., 2010; bingham et al., 2007; duker & moonen, 1985; light et al., 1992; schlosser et al., 2006; seys et al., 1990) did not report training duration. instructional components of trainings. instructional components provided within the studies were analyzed and compared to the eight-stage communication partner instruction model (kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005; see table 5). all but one study (seys et al., 1990) included at least 5 of the 10 stages in the model. seys and colleagues implemented three stages of training (i.e. pretest, strategy description, and practice and current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 6 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 3 communication partner training training content study instructor comm. functions aac systems goal setting creating opportunity supporting participation binger, kent-walsh, ewing, & taylor (2010) first author x x x bingham, spooner, & browder (2007) --x x x duker & moonen (1985) --x x x light, dattilo, english, gutierrez, & hartz (1992) first author x x x x x money (1997) --x x x schlosser, walker, & sigafoos (2006) first/second author x x x seys, kersten, & duker (1990) first author x x x note. comm. = communication. x indicates content was included in training. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ feedback). one study (binger et al., 2010) utilized all stages of the model. the stages most often included in studies were: pretest, strategy description, strategy demonstration, controlled practice and feedback, advanced practice and feedback, and post test. all studies included pretest measures during training and provided a description of the strategy included in training. all but one study (seys et al., 1990) provided a demonstration of the targeted strategy and stated that participants were provided with controlled practice and feedback (e.g., modeling, role play). advanced practice and feedback was included in 5 of the 7 studies and posttest measures were provided in 4 of 7 studies (see table 5). several stages (e.g., commitment, verbal practice, and generalization) were often omitted in studies. the study by binger et al. (2010) was the only study to include commitment to instructional program, verbal practice, and commitment to long-term strategy use. three studies (binger et al., 2010; duker & moonen, 1985; light et al., 1992) reported data on the generalized use of communication strategies for paraeducators. outcomes for participants outcomes for paraeducators. behavioral changes (e.g., increase in prompting, increase in responses to requests, increased opportunities for aac use, decreased use of closed questions) for paraeducators were reported in all seven studies (see table 4). four studies reported that after training, paraeducators provided more opportunities for individuals using aac to communicate (binger et al., 2010; duker & moonen, 1985; light et al., 1992; schlosser et al., 2006). one study (bingham et al., 2007) indicated that after training paraeducators increased prompts to individuals using aac. in the study by money (1997) specific types of communication were measured. open ended questions and multi-utterances increased while closed questions and statements decreased for the combination group. the direct and teaching groups reported mixed results (see table 4). seys (1990) also reported mixed group results, but noted an increase in prompting by paraeducators after training in 2 of 3 groups. four studies (binger et al., 2010; bingham et al., 2007; light et al., 1992; seys et al., 1990) provided maintenance data for paraeducators. data were collected anywhere from 2 weeks after training up to 12 months after training. one study (seys et al., 1990) did not specify the length of time between training and collection of maintenance data. studies reported mixed outcomes in maintenance data. two studies (bingham et al., 2007; light et al., 1992) indicated behavior levels for paraeducators maintained, while one study (seys et al., 1990) stated behavior levels decreased when maintenance data were collected. one study (binger et al., 2010) noted mixed results for maintenance data with two paraeducators maintaining communication interaction skills and one decreasing. outcomes for individuals using aac. overall, changes in paraeducator behavior appear to be associated teaching paraeducators to support the communication of individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication: a literature review 7 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 4 summary of communication outcomes study training formata dependent variable for paraeducators results for paraeducators outcomes for individuals using aac binger, kent walsh, ewing, & taylor (2010) ---,---,--a) strategy: model, ask questions, prompt, respond a) increased use of strategy for all • increase in frequency of multisymbol messages for all bingham, spooner, & browder (2007) 4, 2 ¼ hours, -- a) prompts provided b) responses to requests a) increase for all b) increase for all • increase in aac use for all • decrease in problem behavior for all duker & moonen (1985) 2, 1 hour, --a) opportunities for comm. a) increase for all • increase in signing for all light, dattilo, english, gutierrez, & hartz (1992) 4, 1 hour, --a) conversational reciprocity a) increase for all • increase in comm. turns for all • slight increase in initiations for all money (1997) direct: 6, 1 hour, 4 months teaching: 5, 1 day, 2 months combination: 11, ½ day, 4 months a) open questions b) closed questions c) statements d) multiutterances a) increase for all b) decrease for direct/teaching increase for combination c) decrease for teaching/ combination increase for direct d) increase for all for combination group: • increase in yes/no, and responses, number of responses, use of additional modalities • decrease in number of nonresponses schlosser, walker, & sigafoos (2006) 1, 1 day, --a) opportunities provided for comm. a) increase for all • increase in requests for all seys, kersten, & duker (1990) 20, 15 min., - a) prompts a) increase in 2 groups, no change in one group • increase in prompted (7 of 9), spontaneous (8 of 9), and different gestures (all) note. dashes indicate information was not provided in the study. comm. = communication; anumber of sessions, average session length, total duration. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ with improved or increased communication for individuals with ccn. all studies (see table 4) reported increased and/or improved communication for individuals using aac. increased use of aac was found in five studies (bingham et al., 2007; duker & moonen, 1985; money, 1997; scholsser et al., 2006; seys et al, 1990). additionally one study (light et al., 1992) noted an increase in initiations by the individual using aac. light et al. (1992) also noted an increase in response complexity (e.g., multiword responses). binger et al. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 8 ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ table 5 inclusion of targeted instructional procedures [as listed in kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005] communication partner instruction stages study 1a 1b 2 3 4 5 6 7a 7b 8 binger, kent-walsh, ewing, & taylor (2010) i i i i i i i i i i bingham, spooner, & browder (2007) i --i i --i i i ---- duker & moonen (1985) i --i i --i ------i light, dattilo, english, gutierrez, & hartz (1992) i --i i --i i i --i money (1997) i --i i --i --i ---- schlosser, walker, & sigafoos (2006) i --i i --i i ------ seys, kersten, & duker (1990) i --i ------i ------ note. dashes indicate it was unclear if the stage was included in the study. 1a = pretest; 1b = commitment to instructional program; 2 = strategy description; 3 = strategy demonstration; 4 = verbal practice of strategy steps; 5 = controlled practice and feedback; 6 = advanced practice and feedback; 7a = post test; 7b = commitment to long-term strategy use; 8 = generalization of targeted strategy use; i = stage included ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ (2010) similarly noted an increase in multi-symbol messages. one study focused on replacing problem behaviors with communication behaviors (bingham et al., 2007). in this study, additional data were provided about problem behaviors (e.g., self-stimulation, aggression, selfinjury, disruption) for individuals using aac. after paraeducator training, a decrease was noted in problem behaviors as well as an increase in communication. in four studies (binger et al., 2010; bingham et al., 2007; light et al., 1992; seys et al., 1990), maintenance data were collected regarding communication for individuals using aac. aac use was maintained from 2 weeks up to 12 months after the end of the intervention in three studies (binger et al., 2010; bingham et al., 2007; light et al., 1992). seys et al. (1990) did not specify when maintenance data were collected. one study (bingham et al., 2007) noted participants maintained level of aac use after intervention. the remaining studies (binger et al., 2010; light et al., 1992; seys et al., 1990) noted mixed results during maintenance. for some participants levels remained steady, for others levels decreased, and for some levels increased after intervention. discussion results of this review add to past reviews in communication partner training and provides evidence of the importance of communication partner training for paraeducators supporting individuals who use aac. in all seven studies (see table 4) implementation of strategies by paraeducators affected communication. specifically, when paraeducators increased use of targeted strategies (e.g., prompting, responding to requests by individuals using aac), communication increased (bingham et al., 2007; duker & moonen, 1985; money, 1997; schlosser et al., 2006; seys et al., 1990) or improved (binger et al., 2010; light et al., 1992). two studies reported mixed results for paraeducators (money, 1997; seys et al., 1990), but still noted an increase in communication for most individuals using aac. from this review, there is initial support to indicate that training for paraeducators who support individuals using aac may be beneficial in changing paraeducator behavior and may affect communication by individuals with ccn. teaching paraeducators to support the communication of individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication: a literature review 9 paraeducator training training outcomes. all studies (see table 4) provided evidence that training increased use of communication strategies by paraeducators. however, two studies reported mixed results (money, 1997; seys et al., 1990) for paraeducators and individuals using aac. additionally, when strategies (e.g., prompting, responding to requests by individuals using aac) were implemented by paraeducators an increase (bingham et al., 2007; duker & moonen, 1985; money, 1997; schlosser et al., 2006) or improvement in aac use was shown (binger et al., 2010; light et al., 1992). this seems to confirm existing research that indicates proper implementation of treatment is associated with later positive outcomes (gresham, 1989). positive changes for individuals using aac were noted in all studies. the majority of individuals using aac demonstrated behavior change as a result of the changes implemented by paraeducators after training. however, a small number of participants in two studies (money, 1997; seys et al., 1990) did not demonstrate growth. this may be due to lack of implementation of the trained communication strategies by paraeducators. in both studies (money, 1997; seys et al., 1990) data were reported at the group level for paraeducators and did not connect the paraeducator data to the individuals they were assisting, so it is difficult to make this connection definitively. instructional strategies used in paraeducator training. the reviewed studies included many components from the communication partner instruction model (kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005) for aac training (see table 5). six of the stages were most often included in studies: pretest, strategy description, strategy demonstration, controlled practice and feedback, advanced practice and feedback, and post test. four components were most often omitted in studies: commitment to initial use, verbal practice, commitment to long-term use, and generalization. in the future, it may be beneficial to include these components. gersten et al. (1997) suggested that commitment assists acquisition of new skills by allowing individuals to recognize skills that are not fully developed or areas that need improvement and leads to continued use of trained strategies after instruction is over. therefore, commitment at both initial and final stages of training should be considered. in addition, reviews of effective educational practice suggest that verbal practice in the steps of a strategy assist learners acquire new skills and gain automaticity so they can focus on the strategy rather than trying to remember the steps (rosenshine & stevens, 1986). regarding generalization, ellis et al. (1987) emphasized the importance of this component when learning new skills, as many learners do not make use of new strategies in novel situations. by incorporating a generalization component, use of the strategy in a variety of settings is encouraged. although the majority of studies implemented six of the stages of training (i.e. pretest, strategy description, strategy demonstration, controlled practice and feedback, advanced practice and feedback, post test) from the communication partner instruction model (kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005), one study (seys et al., 1990) implemented only three stages (i.e. pretest, strategy description, advanced practice, and feedback). seys et al. (1990) also reported inconsistent rates of improvement for paraeducator groups after training. it should be noted that use of the communication partner instruction model (kent-walsh & mcnaughton, 2005) to evaluate current paraeducator communication training studies is not meant to imply there is only one way to provide or evaluate paraeducator training in communication partner skills. indeed other researchers (e.g., granlund) have recommended slightly different approaches (i.e. modeling of collaborative problem solving approaches) for training communication partners and evaluating training (kirkpatrick, 1996; see smidt et al., 2009). however, based on the results of this review, it appears components of strategy instruction exist within reviewed studies, which indicates that strategy instruction may be a promising approach for teaching communication partner skills. limitations several limitations were noted in this literature review. first, the review included only seven studies. although this is an important area of research, limited research exists. in addition, most of the studies reviewed were single subject designs. although single subject designs provide information about the effectiveness for an individual, this information cannot be generalized to other individuals without further replication or more rigorous research (johnston & pennypacker, 2009). given these limitations, additional research is required to strengthen the findings of this review and to confirm the impact of paraeducator training to support the communication of individuals who use aac. future research directions although the use of paraeducators to support individuals using aac has been demonstrated, this review suggests that limited research exists on the topic. as such, any research in the area of training and implementation of effective communication strategies by paraeducators supporting individuals who use aac should be encouraged. future research should continue to address how paraeducator training impacts individuals who use aac. replication of included studies could be conducted to determine if the findings from reviewed studies are generalizable to other settings, students, and paraeducators. in addition, new studies could be designed which address limitations of studies included here (e.g., current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 10 study design). future research in the area of paraeducator training to support the communication of individuals using aac could also be conducted to determine what instructional procedures are most essential in communication partner training to paraeducators. this could be done using the training model suggested by kent-walsh and mcnaughton (2005), or through investigation of communication partner training curriculums. considering only one study included all of the components from the communication partner instruction model, future research could also be conducted to analyze the essential components needed in training by looking at the variance in outcomes when some instructional components are not included. summary this review of training practices provides evidence that training for paraeducators to improve communication supports for individuals with ccn can be effective. educational settings and organizations supporting individuals with ccn typically must address a number of questions when planning communication training for paraeducators. organizations will likely consider the effectiveness, efficiency, and appropriateness of training for paraeducators and individuals who use aac. this review demonstrates that paraeducator communication training can be effective and appropriate to the needs of paraeducators and individuals with ccn. in addition, it should be noted that trainings in these studies often were efficient. training frequently was provided with just a few sessions (bingham et al., 2007; light et al., 1992), over short periods of time (schlosser et al., 2006) or using short training sessions (light et al.; seys et al., 1990). despite the brevity of training sessions, positive outcomes were demonstrated in studies. this indicates that trainings may not need to be lengthy, over long periods of time, or include more than a few sessions to produce change for the communication behavior of paraeducators and individuals with ccn. in addition, given the high turnover rate for paraeducators working with individuals using aac (dobson, upadhyaya, & stanley, 2002; giangreco et al., 2001), it is important for organizations to consider the need for ongoing training as new personnel are hired, or as personnel change placements to work with other individuals (calculator & luchko, 1983). furthermore given some of the concerns with maintaining skills, ongoing training may assist maintenance of communication outcomes. although research in this area is limited, this review provides support for use of paraeducator training to support the communication development of individuals with ccn. trainings that included strategy instruction components (e.g., pretest, strategy description, controlled practice and feedback) lead to the use of effective use of communication strategies by paraeducators (e.g., prompting, recognizing communicative attempts, responding to communicative attempts). when paraeducators used these techniques, benefits were also noted for individuals with ccn (e.g., increased aac activation, increased response complexity, increased initiations). given that support exists for paraeducator communication partner training, best practice would indicate that well designed training should be provided to paraeducators supporting individuals with ccn. references *indicates article included in review beukelman, d. r., & mirenda, p. 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(1986). teaching functions. in m. c. wittrock (ed.), the handbook of research on teaching. new york: macmillian. sack, s. h., & mclean, l. k. (1997). training communication partners: the new challenge for communication disorders professionals supporting persons with severe disabilities. focus on autism and other developmental disabilities, 12, 151-158. schepis, m. m., & reid, d. h. (2003). issues affecting staff enhancement of speechgenerating device use among people with severe cognitive disabilities. augmentative and alternative communication, 19, 59-65. *schlosser, r. w., walker, e., & sigafoos, j. (2006). increasing opportunities for requesting in children with developmental disabilities residing in group homes through pyramidal training. education and training in developmental disabilities, 41, 244-252. *seys, d., kersten, h., & duker, p. (1990). evaluating a ward staff program for increasing spontaneous and varied communicative gesturing with individuals who are mentally retarded. behavioral residential treatment, 5, 247-257. sigafoos, j. (1999). creating opportunities for augmentative and alternative communication: strategies for involving people with developmental disabilities. augmentative and alternative communication, 15, 183-190. smidt, a., balandin, s., sigafoos, j., & reed, v. a. (2009). the kirkpatrick model: a useful tool for evaluating training outcomes. journal of intellectual and developmental disability, 34, 266-274. wood, a. l., luiselli, j. k., & harchik, a. e. (2007). training instructional skills with paraprofessional service providers at community-based habilitation settings. behavior modification, 31, 847-855. teaching paraeducators to support the communication of individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication: a literature review 13 article citation douglas, s. n. (2012). teaching paraeducators to support the communication of individuals who use augmentative and alternative communication: a literature review. current issues in education, 15(1). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/906 author notes sarah n. douglas, phd pennsylvania state university department of educational psychology, counseling, and special education 329 cedar building, university park, pa 16802 snd135@psu.edu sarah n. douglas, phd is an assistant professor at penn state university in the department of educational psychology, counseling, and special education. her research interests include augmentative and alternative communication, education of students with severe disabilities, and training for paraeducators. manuscript received: 10/19/2011 revisions received: 3/27/2012 accepted: 3/29/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 1 14 volume 15, number 1 april 9, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors angela hines elizabeth reyes recruitment editors angela hines copy editors/proofreaders carol masser lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy section editors hillary andrelchik joy anderson mary bankhead laura busby michelle crowley tulani garnett catherine gay ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca hyun jung kang monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser lauren preston stephanie quintero kelly rubel leslie salazar melisa tarango lauren williams kevin woo faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers microsoft word 963-4078-3-le.docx 1 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x general education students’ changing perceptions of students with special needs ashley d. novak boulder valley school district frederick j. bartelheim university of northern colorado schools are becoming more inclusive and more students with special needs are accessing general education classrooms than ever. this action research study investigated general education students changing perceptions of students with special needs through the use of various interventions (e.g., classroom discussions, organized games, buddy reads, peer tutoring, etc.) over a four week period of time. this study was conducted in a second grade classroom setting. two questionnaires were designed and administered to collect data about the participants’ perceptions of students with special needs during the four weeks of the study. the questionnaire responses were analyzed to determine if a shift toward more positive perceptions of students with special needs occurred. results of the data analysis indicate that the general education students’ perceptions of students with special needs did improve, or evolve, as a result of the inventions employed in this study. keywords: peer perceptions, students with special needs, action research policy makers, educators, and parents have been working to improve education for children with special needs for many decades. as time has progressed, laws affecting children with special needs have become more defined about the type of education that is most beneficial for academic and social learning. with the most recent update to the individuals with disabilities education act (idea) in 2004 more students with special needs are accessing general education classrooms, rather than being solely restricted to self-contained classroom settings. this action research study examined general education students’ perceptions about students with special needs. specifically, this study investigated the effect of weekly interventions designed to change general education students’ perceptions of students with special needs, as well as educating general educations students about individuals with disabilities. data was collected by the administration of two questionnaires. the first questionnaire was open-ended which was verbally administered individually to each participant at the beginning and the end of the study. the second questionnaire was also administered at the beginning of the study, and then each week at the conclusion of each intervention for the duration of the study. results of the data analysis indicate that the general education students’ perceptions of students with special needs did improve, or evolve, as a result of the inventions employed in this study. review of the literature many classrooms include both general education students and students with special needs. teachers can play an important role in how general education students feel about and act towards special needs students because, current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 2 in part, children tend to learn behavior by observing the adults in their world (diamond & hong, 2010). children’s ideas about individuals with disabilities can be associated with emotional responses that influence their behavior. for example, innes and diamond (1999) investigated preschool children’s ideas about disabilities, and their interactions with their peers with disabilities, based on mothers’ comments about children with physical disabilities and down syndrome. the results of this study revealed, in part, that the preschool children’s observed social interactions were more positive with their peers with disabilities when mothers made fewer comments in regards to children with disabilities. bunch and valeo (2004) investigated upper elementary grades and middle school settings where relationships among general and special needs students were not specifically encouraged. in this study, the general education students reported fewer relationships with students with special needs and more negative views towards them. also, this study found that when teachers treat children with special needs differently from their classroom peers, general education students may receive a message that students with special needs are different from them and should be treated differently. merely placing students with special needs in general classroom settings is not enough to create social interaction amongst all students. putnam, markovchick, johnson, and johnson (1996) investigated the effects of cooperative learning on general education students’ acceptance of classmates with special needs. in this study, two classroom environment conditions (cooperative learning and competitive learning) were explored over an eight month period of time in grades five through eight. over the course of the study, general education students rated the desirability of working with their peers with disabilities within both classroom environments. results indicated that positive ratings occurred more frequently in the classrooms where cooperative learning conditions were present versus the classrooms where competitive learning conditions existed. as such, inclusive classroom settings where teachers do not encourage or foster positive interactions, students with special needs may endure teasing, prejudice, stereotyping, and even rejection (putnam et al., 1996). according to frostad and pijil (2007) teachers must take the responsibility to carefully structure interactions between students with and without special needs. their study explored the difficulties students with special needs can have in building relationships with their general education peers in inclusive education settings. the study’s results indicated that up to 25% of students with special needs were not socially included in general education peer groups due to the lack of age-group appropriate social skills. based on the study’s results, frostad and pijil (2007) suggest that structured socials skills instruction within the classroom can support the development of relationships between general education students and students with special needs. in the absence of such structured interactions, students with special needs may feel isolated from peer groups and experience difficulty in forming friendships (estell, jones, pearl, & van acker, 2009) which may adversely affect feelings of self-worth in adulthood (bagwell, newcomb, & bukowski, 1998). some studies conducted in preschool and elementary settings where young children have regular contact with special needs children typically have more positive attitudes toward individuals with special needs (innes & diamond, 1999; teigland, 2009). for example, kalyva and agaliotis’ (2009) study explored sixth grade general education children’s understanding of and attitudes towards children with physical disabilities in inclusive settings. the participants in this study were divided into two groups; children who had contact with children with physical disabilities, and children without such contact. both groups completed two questionnaires to measure their understanding of disabilities and attitudes toward the inclusion of children with disabilities. results indicated that the children with regular contact (versus limited or no contact) with peers with physical disabilities tended to understand that disabilities are not always easily identifiable, but were able to articulate what a disability or special need is, and demonstrate more empathetic behavior toward peers with disabilities. also, this group of children expressed more positive attitudes towards the inclusion of peers with disabilities when compared to the children without regular contact. according to bunch and valeo (2004), children who learn empathy and acceptance of children with special needs at an early age will be less likely to demonstrate abusive behavior, and in some instances advocate for individuals with special needs. as such, providing opportunities for socialization and friendships in early school settings may foster better peer relationships among general education and special needs students. innes and diamond (1999) suggest the use of targeted interventions, such as structured play and children’s literature, as means of positively impact young children’s perceptions of individuals with disabilities. read alouds and classroom discussions can also be effective for increasing young children’s acceptance of peers with special needs (martinez & carsepecken, 2006). in this study, the effect of weekly interventions designed to change general education students’ perceptions of special needs students, as well as educating general educations students about individuals with disabilities was investigated. research question this study investigated the following question: will general education students adopt a more positive general education students’ changing perceptions of students with special needs 3 perception of students with special needs as a result of a four week intervention? methods participants this study was conducted in a suburban public elementary school in a medium-sized school district in a western state. all of the participants, 12 males and 12 females, were in a second grade classroom setting that included three students with specific learning disabilities. procedure since the intent of this study was to change not only general education students’ perceptions of their peers with disabilities, but to identify activities that would engage both students with and without disabilities in a second grade classroom setting, an action research design was employed. action research provides research techniques that allow classroom teachers opportunities to improve upon the education environment in the classroom (reason & bradbury, 2008). the primary researcher of this study was also the classroom teacher in the second grade setting at the time of this study. this study took place over a four week period of time. at the beginning of the study, two questionnaires were administered to collect data about the participants’ perceptions of students with special needs. figure 1. pre and post verbally administered questionnaire. figure 2. weekly questionnaire. name__________________________ date___________________________ 1) what does it mean for a person to have special needs? 2) what do you think about people with special needs? 3) do you know anyone with special needs? what is his/her name? 4) what do you do when students with special needs pass you in the hall? 5) if you saw someone with special needs being teased, what would you do? name____________________________ date_______________ 1. do you think people with special needs can learn? yes no i’m not sure 2. do you think people with special needs should be treated the same as other students? yes no i’m not sure 3. would you be willing to work with students with special needs in our classroom? yes no i’m not sure 4. would you play with a child with special needs on the playground? yes no i’m not sure 5. would you invite a student with special needs to sit with you at lunch? yes no i’m not sure 6. if someone was teasing a student with special needs, would you help? yes no i’m not sure current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 4 the first questionnaire was open-ended and was verbally administered individually to each participant at the beginning and the end of the study (figure 1). to prevent participants from formulating responses based on others’ opinions, each participant met with the research assistant outside of the classroom setting during each administration of this questionnaire. the second questionnaire was also administered at the beginning of the study, and then each week at the conclusion of each intervention for the duration of the study (figure 2). the participants completed this questionnaire on their own. however, during each administration of this questionnaire, the questions were read aloud to all participants as a means of increasing the understanding of those who might not be able to read the questions on their own. privacy folders were used to keep participants from formulating responses based on other participants’ responses. throughout the four week period of this study, 30 minute targeted interventions were employed. during the first week, participants were read a book about varied disabilities as a catalyst for classroom discussion. also, the participants toured the school’s intensive learning center where some students with special needs receive additional support outside of the general education classroom. the intervention for week two included the participants and students with special needs playing organized games together. for example, one game required pairs of students (both general education and their peers with special needs) to hold hands and attempt to tag another pair within particular boundaries. this game allowed the students to have physical contact with each other and work together in their tagging efforts of others. during week three, organized games continued, as well as team building activities with both the participants and the students with special needs. for example, each participant was paired with a student with special needs for peer tutoring in reading or math. this team building activity allowed the participants an opportunity to bond with their peers with special needs. during week four, students with special needs came to the general education classroom setting to “buddy read” with the participants. the students with special needs brought their own books to read. both the participants and the students with special needs took turns reading to each other. this activity allowed the participants an opportunity to equally engage with their peers with special needs. limitations one limitation of this study was time. data was only collected over a four week period; this may have limited the effects of the interventions. also, the number of participants (n = 24) and the specific grade level in the study may limit the generalizability of the findings. the participants’ ability to fully understand the items on the questionnaires may have been a limitation. it is difficult to control and assess whether or not young participants are able to portray their perceptions through questionnaires. data analysis and results the pre and post verbally administered questionnaire responses were analyzed to determine the type of responses (positive, negative, ambiguous, or uncertain) given for the total participant group. as depicted in tables 1 and 2, each response on the questionnaire given at the end of the study indicates a shift toward more positive perceptions when compared to the initial questionnaire responses at the beginning of the study. as such, by the end of this study the participants generally were able to identify a special needs characteristic, spoke more positively about individuals with special needs, indicated that they now know someone with a special need, changed their hallway behavior towards students with special needs, and indicated that they would intervene if a student with special needs was being teased. as depicted in table 3, the participants’ perceptions of students with special needs evolved during the course of this study. in other words, the participants’ perceptions began to shift after the first week’s interventions and each subsequent week thereafter. item 1 and 6 on the weekly questionnaire demonstrated the most significant shift in the participants’ perceptions. as such, by the end of the week 1 and 2 interventions, all of the participants believed that students with special needs can learn and would intervene if they were being teased in some manner. although items 2, 3, and 4 demonstrate a general shift in the participants’ perceptions, a small percent of the participants were not sure if individuals with special needs should be treated the same (4.2%), or if they would work with peers with special needs in the classroom setting (16.7%), or would play with their peers with special needs (16.7%). item 5 indicates a moderate shift in the participants’ perception in regards to inviting a peer with special needs to sit with them at lunch, with 37.5% still not sure. an analysis of the data from both the verbally administered questionnaire and the weekly questionnaire did not yield significant differences based on the gender of the participants. discussion and implications discussion this study’s results are encouraging. planned, specific interventions greatly shifted the participants’ perceptions of their peers with special needs. general education students’ changing perceptions of students with special needs 5 table 1 verbally administered questionnaire results for the total participant group – beginning of study ________________________________________________________________________________ type of q1* q2* q3* q4* q5* response n % n % n % n % n % __________________________________________________________________ positive response 6 25.0 3 12.5 8 33.3 9 37.5 20 83.3 negative response 0 0 10 41.6 12 50.0 8 33.3 1 4.2 ambiguous response 0 0 1 4.2 1 4.2 1 4.2 1 4.2 uncertain response 18 75.0 10 41.6 3 12.5 6 25.0 2 8.3 _________________________________________________________________________________ *note: see figure 1 for questionnaire items. table 2 verbally administered questionnaire results for the total participant group – end of study ___________________________________________________________________________________ type of q1* q2* q3* q4* q5* response n % n % n % n % n % _____________________________________________________________________ positive response 22 91.0 15 62.5 23 95.0 23 95.0 24 100 negative response 0 0 4 17.0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ambiguous response 0 0 4 17.0 1 4.2 1 4.2 0 0 uncertain response 2 9.0 1 4.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 ____________________________________________________________________________________ *note: see figure 1 for questionnaire items. current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 6 table 3 results of the weekly questionnaire for the total participant group ________________________________________________________________________________ beginning of end of end of end of end of study week 1 week 2 week 3 week 4 n % n % n % n % n % __________________________________________________________________ q1*: yes 21 87.5 22 91.6 22 91.6 24 100 24 100 no 1 4.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 not sure 2 8.3 2 8.3 2 8.3 0 0 0 0 q2*: yes 20 83.3 21 87.5 21 87.5 22 91.6 23 95.8 no 1 4.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 not sure 3 12.5 3 12.5 3 12.5 2 8.3 1 4.2 q3*: yes 13 54.0 13 54.0 14 58.3 16 66.6 20 83.3 no 1 4.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 not sure 10 41.6 11 45.8 10 41.6 8 33.3 4 16.7 q4*: yes 9 37.5 14 58.3 14 58.3 15 62.5 20 83.3 no 1 4.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 not sure 14 58.3 10 41.6 10 41.6 9 37.5 4 16.7 q5*: yes 7 29.2 10 41.6 11 45.8 14 58.3 15 62.5 no 2 8.3 2 8.3 1 4.2 0 0 0 0 not sure 15 62.5 12 50.0 12 50.0 10 41.6 9 37.5 q6*: yes 23 95.8 24 100 24 100 24 100 24 100 no 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 not sure 1 4.2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 _________________________________________________________________________________ *note: see figure 2 for questionnaire items. in other words, this study showed evidence of change in general education students’ perceptions about students with special needs after a four-week intervention. for example, the participants were able to define or name characteristics of individuals with special needs and articulate what it means to have special needs. they also indicated that all students with special needs can learn, and indicated an improvement in their hallway behavior towards their peers with special needs by saying “hi” or waving. by the end of this study, all of the participants indicated they would intervene if a student with special needs was being teased in some manner. these findings support the results of similar studies at other grade levels, or school settings (bunch & valeo, 2004; frostad & pijil, 2007; kalyva & agaliotis, 2009). interventions employed in this study, such as playing organized games together and various team building activities, helped to facilitate acquaintances and friendships for some general education students and their peers with special needs. prior to this study, the participants did not spend much time getting to know their peers with special needs. however, the participants’ indicated weekly positive changes in their perceptions of students with special needs, with some reporting empathic general education students’ changing perceptions of students with special needs 7 feelings for their peers. upon completion of this study, many participants inquired as to when they would spend time with their “buddies” again. targeted interventions in this study required a minimum of 30 minutes of instructional time each week, suggesting an attainable goal for any classroom. however, effective collaboration between the special educator and the regular educator is important in the planning and implementation process of interventions. implications according to putman et al. (1996), general education students’ perceptions of students with disabilities can be fixed and rigid throughout the school year. they suggest that instructional methods where students can work together over an extended period of time can shift the perceptions of students with disabilities by their general education peers. the results of this study suggest that when teachers integrate targeted interventions within the classroom, general education students’ perceptions of students with disabilities can shift to more positive and accepting attitudes. without such positive shifts in attitudes or perceptions, students with disabilities may face major barriers to successful inclusion in general education classroom settings and/or schools. epstein (2007) states that teachers often use an intentional approach for teaching academics, but could also adopt an intentional approach to support peer social relationships between students with and without special needs. effective intentional strategies, such as the interventions employed in this study, would support more interactions among students with and without disabilities (hollingsworth, 2005). in part, the intent of inclusive classrooms and/or school settings is to develop or increase the positive perceptions of students with disabilities by their general education peers. the intention of this study was to not only change general education students’ perception of their peers with disability, but to also provide activities that would engage and benefit both students with and without special needs. with time for effective planning and collaboration between the general education teacher and the special education teacher, the interventions implemented in this study could be replicated in any school to provide general education students and students with disabilities the opportunity to make friendships and to become more empathetic towards each other. by taking an intentional approach to supporting peer relationships between general education students and students with disabilities, classrooms and/or school settings can support the intent of inclusion; stronger academic achievement, peer acceptance, and friendships. in the end, these goals are what inclusive classroom and/or school settings should be about. this study also suggests a number of opportunities for future work in this area. for example, follow-up studies could increase the duration of the interventions and/or implement additional interventions to more accurately assess the effects. others have suggested that children with special needs should have opportunities for interaction with their general education peers before third grade as a means of benefiting from inclusive classroom settings (innes & diamond, 1999; teigland, 2009). research at the first grade or preschool level could help determine if there is truly an optimal age to educate students about special needs and to form peer groups. additionally, other grade levels beyond the elementary setting could be explored with a larger sample size and/or a control group to determine the effect of various interventions on peer relationships between students with and without disabilities. references bagwell, c. l., newcomb, a. f., & bukowski, w. m. (1998). preadolescent friendship and peer rejection as predictors of adult adjustment. child development, 69, 140-153. bunch, g., & valeo, a. (2004). student attitudes toward peers with disabilities in inclusive and special education schools. disability & society, 19(1), 61-76. diamond, k. e., & hong, s. y. (2010). young children’s decisions to include peers with disabilities in play. journal of early intervention, 32(3), 163179. epstein, a. s. (2007). the intentional teacher: choosing the best strategies for children’s learning. washington, dc: national association for the education of young children. estell, d. b., jones, m. h., pearl, r., & van acker, r. (2009). best friendships of students with and without learning disabilities across late elementary school. exceptional children, 76(1), 110-124. frostad, p., & pijil, s. j. 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(2009). can contact affect greek children’s understanding and attitudes towards peers with physical disabilities? european journal of special needs education, 24(2), 213-220. martinez, r. s., & carspecken, p. (2006). effectiveness of a brief intervention on latino children’s social acceptance of peers with special needs. journal of applied school psychology, 23(1), 97-115. putnam, j., markovchick, k., johnson, d. w., & johnson, r. t. (1996). cooperative learning and peer acceptance of students with learning disabilities. the journal of social psychology, 136(6), 741752. reason, p., & bradbury, h. (eds.). (2008). the handbook of action research: participative inquiry and practice. 2nd ed. thousand oaks, ca: sage. teigland, c. (2009). what inclusive education means for overall student achievement. tash connections, 35(3), 12-13. general education students’ changing perceptions of students with special needs 9 article citation novak, a. d. & bartelheim, f. j. (2012). general education students’ changing perceptions of students with special needs. current issues in education, 15(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/963 author notes ashley d. novak eisenhower elementary school boulder valley school district boulder, colorado 80303 ashley.novak@bvsd.org ashley d. novak is currently a second grade teacher in the boulder valley school district in boulder, colorado. frederick j. bartelheim university of northern colorado mckee 216 greeley, colorado 80631 frederick.bartelheim@unco.edu frederick j. bartelheim is a professor of educational foundations and curriculum studies in the school of teacher education at the university of northern colorado in greeley, colorado. he is also the coordinator of the master of arts in teaching: curriculum studies program. manuscript received: 3/25/2012 revisions received: 5/24/2012 accepted: 8/02/2012 current issues in education vol. 15 no. 2 10 volume 15, number 2 august 15, 2012 issn 1099-839x authors hold the copyright to articles published in current issues in education. requests to reprint cie articles in other journals should be addressed to the author. reprints should credit cie as the original publisher and include the url of the cie publication. permission is hereby granted to copy any article, provided cie is credited and copies are not sold. editorial team executive editor melinda a. hollis rory o’neill schmitt assistant executive editor meg burke layout editors elizabeth reyes copy editors/proofreaders lucinda watson authentications editor lisa lacy hillary andrelchik joy anderson laura busby michelle crowley section editors ayfer gokalp david hernandez-saca monica keys younsu kim lisa lacy victoria lucero carol masser stephanie quintero melisa tarango faculty advisors dr. gustavo fischman dr. jeanne powers