Education & Pedagogy

This study reports on the extent to which colleges of education in Swaziland prepare student teachers to be gender-sensitive in their practice as teachers. Gendering in contemporary teacher education, both primary and secondary was approached from the curricular and agency perspectives. Gender-related differences in the first teacher education curriculum were highly visible. These have persisted and are still visible in the current curricular structures though the wording may have changed over time. Other major findings included factors perceived by lecturers and teacher education management as necessary for implementation of a gender-sensitive curriculum in teacher education colleges, and these include the need for gender-related initiatives to address gender issues and the need to address gender hierarchies.

This study evaluates the multivariate hypothesized model that predicts the significance of, and relationships among, various self-perception factors for being a qualified teacher and their direct and mediated effects on self-learning activities among teacher education students. A total of 248 teacher education students enrolled at an education university in Taiwan completed a study questionnaire in August and September 2014. Structural equation modeling was used to model the relationships among the following four latent variables: perceived teacher roles, self-concept, self-efficacy, and self-learning. The resulting model had an adequate fit to self-perceptions influencing self-learning activities among teacher education students. Teacher education students' self-efficacy plays a crucial role in facilitating self-learning.

Parental participation is a crucial component of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. When developing students' Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), school-based teams must place a high priority on involving students' parents in a collaborative effort to develop their children's educational programs and determine their placements. In this article, we examine "Doug C. v. Hawaii Department of Education," a case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed the central role of parents in the IEP decision-making process. This column outlines the facts of this case and discusses implications of this decision for school district personnel and IEP team members.

In this article the author shares a critical reflection of his work as a teacher educator over the last five years teaching in both public and private universities in the U.S. Midwest. The author reflects on his work in a class called "Diversity in Education" over the course of two semesters as a way to trace the genealogy of a course that has emancipatory intent. The implications (tensions and contradictions) for this type of course in teacher education are discussed as are why critical pedagogical approaches and liberatory ways of thinking and knowing are fundamentally essential to and ethically necessary in teacher preparation. The author concludes by offering a pedagogy of resilience and radical hope that is fundamentally premised on the idea that intellectual work is meant to be liberationist, and the desire to connect teacher education to a larger political struggle.

The paper draws on the Wolf (2015) report ("Heading for the Precipice: Can Further and Higher Education Funding Policies Be Sustained?") and other quantitative data, specifically that derived from HEFCE's Participation of Local Area (POLAR) classifications. In addition it explores key literature and debates that associate higher education in further education (HE in FE) with the pursuit of social justice. This enables an interrogation of conceptualisations of vocationalism as well as a consideration of its articulation with class and gender. Whilst the paper is set within a particular and English socio-economic context, it addresses issues that have a much broader global significance. The paper argues that whilst HE in FE has limited traction in facilitating social mobility it does serve as a resource in the struggle for social justice.

This research analyzed linked high-quality state data from K-12, adult education, and postsecondary state datasets in order to better understand the association between student demographics and successful completion of a postsecondary program. Due to the relatively small sample size compared to the large number of features, we analyzed the data with Nearest Shrunken Centroid (PAM), a statistical method developed for cancer and genomic research. Our findings conclude that there are five features that are predictive of an adult education student's successful completion of a postsecondary program.

This article summarizes the process of conceptualizing the third mission of higher education institutions. First, the relevant changes in the socio-economical context of higher education are enumerated and institutional responses are described. Next, the main trends in defining the third mission are delineated, and the ways in which the various concepts differ are outlined. A conceptual framework for the third mission is presented, and consists of three dimensions: enterprising, innovative, and social/civic. Considering the three dimensions as the basis for efforts to evaluate higher education institutions, indicators based on contemporary research are then assigned to the framework. Finally, based on the example of Czech higher education, the national approach to the third mission and practical possibilities of data collection within the generated conceptual framework in the Czech higher education are estimated.

In the last decades, European higher education systems have been experiencing an unprecedented expansion, which created significant financial and political challenges. At the same time, we have seen a shift in attitudes towards public higher education that has promoted new ways of funding this sector. This context has led to major changes in the funding of public higher education, namely through the promotion of greater efficiency in the use of public resources and greater diversification of revenues of public higher education institutions. This article analyses funding reforms in Portuguese higher education and discusses their aims vis-à-vis the actual changes in funding sources and modes of funding. The analysis is based in the perceptions of several major stakeholders (collected through semi-structured interviews) about the effects of funding reforms.

Technology integration, an integral component of teaching and learning, has been widely investigated during the past several decades as teacher education programs have struggled to implement and model best teaching technology integration practices in the preparation of pre-service teachers. Initiatives led by educational organizations at the federal, state, and local levels have recognized these challenges and have, in response, allocated time, money, and effort to develop and incorporate methods to better prepare pre-service teachers to teach with technology. This report provides a brief glimpse at a number of these initiatives and reforms developed by the government, national professional organizations, accreditation agencies, and business collaborations that affect and strengthen the adoption of technology in teacher education programs.

This paper examines the expansive-restrictive continuum of apprenticeship learning in the context of different education and training systems. It compares the English state-funded apprenticeship programme for young people with the Finnish and the French programmes with a specific focus on access to learning through the programmes. These three countries represent three types of Western and Northern European education and training systems. The paper argues that there are country-specific meanings of apprenticeship that influence how access to learning along the expansive-restrictive continuum is typically characterised. These country-specific meanings of apprenticeship arise from their context in differing education and training systems. The paper concludes that the English conceptualisation of apprenticeship as training lends itself to more restrictive approaches to apprenticeship than the Finnish and the French programmes in terms of access to learning.

The fall of Communist regime in 1989 and the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993 significantly affected the educational system of today's Slovakia. As a sovereign state, Slovakia has ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities obliging its signatories to practise "inclusive education." This article explores the current educational policies of the Slovak Republic in light of this obligation. Using the official statistical data the article argues that the current state educational policies have not succeeded in meeting the objective of practising inclusive education, as the proportion of students educated in segregated special educational provisions has been consistently rising over the last decade. This article attempts to identify particular aspects of the current educational policies which might have contributed to this phenomenon.

Special education services have seen great improvement since the passage of the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) in 1975, but culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) families still face exceptional challenges when advocating for special education services for their children (Artiles & Harry, 2006; Palawat & May, 2011). Beyond language barriers, school culture and the special education system are often challenging to navigate, and cultural misunderstandings may lead to over-representation or the provision of services that fail to meet children's needs (Artiles & Harry, 2006; Palawat & May, 2011). This study investigates the case of one such family across several school districts and early intervention settings to identify areas of success and shortfalls, in order to contribute to research on critical needs for further improvements in special education relationships and services for CLD families.

Through the Liberal Education and America's Promise (LEAP) initiative, the Association of American Colleges and Universities seeks to engage employers with the value, goals, and best practices of a twenty-first-century liberal education; to publicize employers' support for liberal education; and to encourage employer-educator partnerships that provide applied learning experiences for undergraduate students. In 2012, the LEAP Presidents' Trust, a leadership group consisting of presidents from all sectors of higher education, initiated the LEAP Employer-Educator Compact, an effort to bring together college presidents and leading employers of college graduates in order to support the goals of the LEAP initiative. At a forum held in Washington, DC, on April 10, 2013, more than two hundred distinguished leaders in business, higher education, and the nonprofit sector came together to endorse the Employer-Educator Compact printed in this article.

The Natural Start Alliance is a new initiative of the North American Association for Environmental Education. Natural Start was created to support and expand early childhood environmental education (ECEE) by creating a network of organizations, educators, parents, and others who care about using environmental education to support young children's healthy development. Some of the Natural Start Alliance's specific activities include: promoting professional development opportunities; collecting and interpreting research; curating resources; promoting diversity and inclusion; upholding quality standards; advocating on behalf of children, families, and educators; and promoting ECEE to new audiences. At naturalstart.org, anyone can join the Alliance and receive the monthly newsletter, join in online conversations about current issues in ECEE, share resources with the Natural Start community, and network with other members.

Special education disproportionality for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students persists as a controversial and intractable problem in our educational systems. Response to intervention (RtI) and culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP), both independently and collectively are considered to offer promise for mitigating conditions of overrepresentation in special education programs. The purpose of this paper is to review the existing research to examine the effects of RtI on minority students and the combined effects of RtI and CRP on minority students. The reviews of these works are discussed to assess whether the Morgan et al. (2015) recommendation for the U.S. Department of Education to recall its efforts to reduce minority disproportionality is justified.