Education & Pedagogy

To transform and revitalize education and to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to instruct and prepare all American students for the next century, teacher education and professional development have been designated as one of the National Education Goals (added to the original six in 1994). The goal suggests that practicing teachers are key to the transformation of schools. This digest identifies schools of education, teacher licensing, and teacher certification as areas integrally tied to enhanced teaching and therefore essential to professional development. Emphasis is placed on forging new relationships between schools and schools of education and focusing attention on professional development and the establishment of new regulatory policies for licensing and relicensing teachers. It is also pointed out that the term "teacher certification" has recently come to have the same meaning in education as it does in other professions--a designation of advanced practice in a specialized area, based on a voluntary system of application and assessment. The conclusion is that professional development must promote teachers' continuous learning, integrating new knowledge about teaching and learning within the social contexts in which teaching takes place. (LL)

This paper utilizes the concept of 'discriminate biopower' to explore how advancements in social and behavioral genomics might inform the racially exclusionary nature of one of the most inequitable and academically coveted environments in American public education: gifted education. In its birth, gifted education became a mechanism for regulating the politics of race and equity in the American education system. Underpinning gifted education's contested history is the conflation of Whiteness with exceptionalism and the proliferation of false genetic ideologies about biological differences between races. Genetics and education are re-intersecting today as social and behavioral genomics examine whether, how, and why genetic differences between individuals relate to differences in characteristics such as educational attainment or intelligence. This paper identifies three mechanisms through which social and behavioral genomics might be recruited for biopolitical governance strategies that maintain or exacerbate the racially exclusionary nature of gifted education: distractionism, determinism, and sociopolitical invisibility. Although these mechanisms are not predestined, researchers will need to employ proactive and socially responsible collaboration and communication to prevent genomics from normalizing racial exclusion in education.

Higher education participation has increased worldwide given policies devoted to widening participation for under-represented groups, including the use of alternative entry pathways to university. It is, however, unknown if students admitted via alternative pathways perform well academically. This study uses data for 81,874 students from 16 Australian universities to examine academic performance by entry pathway. Students admitted via alternative pathways generally have poorer academic scores in their first year and over their course than peers coming from secondary school, particularly those entering via vocational education. However, students from enabling programs perform better academically than secondary school entrants. Further, students from under-represented groups are outperformed academically by their more privileged counterparts, particularly Indigenous students and those from low SES and non-English speaking backgrounds. These findings reflect the need to review academic support for students from certain entry pathways and equity groups to enhance their academic success in higher education.

This study examined the associations between physical activity enjoyment and physical education enjoyment with segmented physical activity in children. Method: Using student-level data from the School Wellness Integration Targeting Child Health project (N = 1,986), the Youth Activity Profile (YAP) assessed physical activity before school, during physical education, recess, after school, and evening. Segmented YAP scores were regressed onto two enjoyment variables using a seemingly unrelated regression system. Results: Physical activity enjoyment and physical education enjoyment significantly associated with YAP scores during all segments, but physical education enjoyment showed stronger associations during physical education. Older students had higher physical activity before school and in the evening, and physical education enjoyment was more influential for females before school. Conclusion: This study supports tenets of the trans-contextual model of motivation. Improving both physical activity and physical education enjoyment may yield improvements in physical activity behaviors during physical education and all other day segments.

Technology education in early childhood education (ECE) has only recently been established internationally as a curriculum content area. The interdisciplinary character of technology education and its status as a field under development occasion a need to distinguish and define technology in the merging of disciplines. This literature review presents an overview of technology education in ECE in recent empirical studies. The literature review was carried out systematically, resulting in 23 studies that were scrutinised to present an overall picture regarding study design, findings and how technology is characterised. The analysis of the nature of technology in the reviewed studies builds on DiGironimo's (Int J Sci Education, 33(10):1337-1352. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2010.495400, 2011) conceptual framework, representing five distinct but merging dimensions of an ever-changing human technological creation process. In the synthesised findings, four subthemes derived from the studies' overall themes were identified: two focusing on preschool teachers and pre-service teachers, and two focusing on technology activities with children. The aligned outcomes are discussed concerning the conceptual dimensions of technology, along with possibilities, challenges and implications for the current field of research on technology education in ECE.

Over the past decade, there has been unprecedented regulation of initial teacher education (ITE). The objective of this study was to generate an in-depth understanding of the structural challenges faced by tertiary educators as they responded to a federal policy and a related state government policy in teacher education. The policies imposed on ITE reach through tertiary education providers and into school classrooms. To capture the three spaces of (1) policy makers, (2) tertiary education providers and (3) teacher education graduates, this study adopts a "socio-spatial approach" as both a conceptual organiser and an analytical stance. One specific case is detailed, namely one metropolitan university's establishment of a pathway enabling pre-service primary teachers to specialise in mathematics teaching. The study then follows two graduates into their first two years of teaching. The findings generated are potentially transferable to other contexts. We conclude that to reap the benefits of ITE policies, tertiary education providers and all employers of teachers need common expectations for their role in implementing these policies. Also, support for graduates needs to be sustained through liaising between tertiary education providers and employers.

The priority goals of the development of Czech higher education include ensuring the quality of its activities, improving the availability and relevance of flexible forms of education, and increasing efficiency in teaching and research. Several professional articles evaluated educational efficiency, but the proposed models did not include unemployed graduate students. The paper assesses education efficiency at public universities in the Czech Republic in 2020-2021 using an extended Data envelopment model with undesirable outputs, non-proportional and non-radial measures of distance from the efficient frontier. The influence of selected economic, social, regional and institutional factors on education efficiency is estimated by a panel regression model using the Feasible generalized least squares method. The results document the level and development of education efficiency and find insufficient reduction of unemployed graduates as a critical problem of inefficiency. More prominent universities achieve higher education efficiency. The main statistically significant factors influencing changes in education efficiency are population density, the unemployment rate, the location of the university in larger urban centres and the number of students per university employee.

The informatization of education is the key area of the current education reform. Physical exercise is not only a compulsory course in schools but also very important to people's health. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, online courses have begun to appear frequently. With the gradual increase of various online learning platforms, digital platforms emerge as the times require, which lays the foundation for the provision of physical education online. The digital platform can make online physical education teaching more complete and efficient and gradually form an independent and efficient system. However, the development of digital-physical education platforms has not made a big breakthrough. In response to the above problems, this paper will conduct data analysis and research on the role and development of digital platforms in physical education based on the Internet of Things (IoT) technology. The research results showed that the Random Forest (RF) algorithm can achieve 99% accuracy in gesture recognition when the number of features is 4. This provided new methods and aids for physical education on digital platforms.

This study uses administrative student data from Chile to explore the transitions of urban and rural students to higher education. We find that urban students are more likely to register to take university entrance exams than rural students. Among those who do take the exams, urban students perform significantly better. Even though both groups of students enroll in higher education in similar proportions, urban students are more likely to enroll in universities, whereas rural students are more likely to enroll in technical education. We also explore differences in major choices for students who enroll in higher education and find that rural students are more likely to enroll in fields related to health, education, and agriculture, while they are less likely to enroll in social sciences or the humanities. Finally, both groups are as likely to choose STEM fields when enrolling in higher education. Our findings suggest that although rural students have similar access to higher education as their urban counterparts, they face different challenges, especially related to standardized tests, which have an impact when choosing which type of higher education institution to enroll in.

Social-justice teacher education literature is widespread, but research highlighting the perspectives and insights from those who lead is far less common. This interview-based case-study of 20 deans from the Schools of Education across the United States addresses this gap and explores insights that pertain to the leadership and implementation of teacher education programs that advance social justice and teacher agency. Using conceptualisations of thin and strong equity, we identify, explain, and discuss three themes which emerged from the data. The first involves addressing barriers and access issues for prospective teacher candidates. The second includes programmatic actions taken by deans in attempts to further social justice goals and the third highlights an understanding that social justice work inevitably includes working to change systems and structures at the societal scale. We explore the extent to which these patterns reflect strong equity and provide ideas for deepening this work through the development and reframing of teacher agency.

Papua New Guinea confronts unique and complex challenges with national reform policies promoting the increase of children with a disability enrolling in mainstream schools. Despite these policies being introduced in the last two decades, the translation to practice has been slow. In order to equip teachers with the necessary skills, knowledge and dispositions to implement inclusive education in Papua New Guinea, there is a pressing need to identify and understand the challenges teacher-educators experience. Data collected as part of an Australian-funded Fellowship, from ten Papua New Guinea education leaders, elucidate the perceived challenges associated with teacher-training for inclusive education. Content analysis of the participants' reflections revealed insights into how and what pedagogical and curriculum transformations in teacher education training courses could improve inclusive education practices in Papua New Guinean schools. These findings enhance agency for the education leaders to promote positive change so that Papua New Guinea can further its implementation of inclusive education.

We overview several key issues of the past, present, and near future of special education for students with severe disabilities. We contextualize the Telos of special education by briefly remarking on its historical roots in the United States, then delve into several issues we believe are critical for advancing toward better outcomes for students with severe disabilities, including the increasingly alarming shortage of special education teachers and short-sighted responses to address it. We also discuss issues related to curricular decisions, and the apparent tension between access to general education (i.e. academic) curriculum and teaching other life altering repertoires for students with severe disabilities. Attention also is given to the evidence-based practices movement in special education, including the apparent rigidity of intervention protocols and slow advances toward clarifying for whom and under what conditions an intervention is effective. Our intention is to generate discussion about and interest in areas where consensus among stakeholders appears feasible such that policy and law can be influenced in ways that advance toward realizing the Telos of special education for students with severe disabilities.

Family-professional partnerships are essential for promoting positive outcomes for students with and without disabilities. However, the extent to which professional preparation standards address skills to cultivate family-professional partnerships is unclear. Without this knowledge, it is challenging to understand the preparation of education professionals in developing partnerships with families. The purpose of this study is to explore the relation between preparation standards and two factors of family-professional partnerships (i.e., enhancing connection and enhancing capacity) for general and special education teachers as well as other education professionals. The authors use expert review to identify and evaluate 159 professional preparation standards from 15 Specialized Professional Associations and the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium in relation to the two factors. Findings showed no significant differences among the standards in relation to enhancing connection among family-professional partnerships. Standards related exclusively to special education, younger students, or teachers (vs other education professionals) were significantly more likely to reflect enhancing capacity among family-professional partnerships. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

This article highlights the inequality in the Flemish education system, which disproportionately affects youngsters with low socioeconomic status. This inequality is attributed to the human capital approach characterising current educational policies, putting emphasis on educational outcomes. This results in education that homogenises and limits acceptable student behaviour and in which deviations from the norm are met with exclusionary and punitive approaches, consequently pushing vulnerable youngsters with a differing cultural capital out of education. Drawing on the capability approach, this article argues the importance of navigational agency in education, investigating the space students have to enter and exit education, resolving conflicts between education and other social practices, and reforming education by voicing their opinions. By analysing 66 Flemish secondary school policies, it is concluded that young people's navigational agency is limited in the current educational landscape. Furthermore, most school policies lack inner consistency, highlighting the fact that there is no coherent pedagogical vision within, which raises questions about how thought through these policies really are.

Purpose: To examine the consistency of findings between two studies examining the impact of sport education on Chinese physical education preservice teachers' content knowledge and performance of volleyball and basketball. Methods: One hundred and six preservice teachers' from a university in central China participated in six semester-long courses of basketball taught using either a Multi-Activity or Sport Education model of instruction. Pre- and postcourse measures of game performance were recorded for common content knowledge and specialized content knowledge. Results: After controlling for preintervention scores, statistically significant differences favoring Sport Education were found for common content knowledge as well as specialized content knowledge. Students in Sport Education had 62 times higher odds of reaching the specialized content knowledge benchmark depth for acceptable content development. Conclusion: These findings provide support for the idea that the accountability mechanisms specific to Sport Education, together with the tasks related to designing team training plans, serve to promote students' ability to design and sequence tasks based on their team's needs.