Elementary School Journal Research Articles

Exploring the embodied experiences of social relationships in physical education

ABSTRACT There is a need for new pedagogies in physical education that emphasise embodied learning experiences and meaningfulness [Ennis, C. D. (2017). Educating students for a lifetime of physical activity: Enhancing mindfulness, motivation, and meaning. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 88(3), 241–250; Kretchmar, R. S. (2008). The increasing utility of elementary school physical education: A mixed blessing and unique challenge. The Elementary School Journal, 108(3), 161–170; Lambert, K. (2020). Re-conceptualizing embodied pedagogies in physical education by creating pre-text vignettes to trigger pleasure ‘in’ movement. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 25(2), 154–173; Rintala, J. (2009). It's all about the –ing. Quest, 61(3), 278–288]. Social interaction is considered an integral feature of meaningful physical education [Beni, S., Fletcher, T., & Ní Chróinín, D. (2017). Meaningful experiences in physical education and youth sport: A review of the literature. Quest, 69(3), 291–312]. Previous research shows that various pedagogies of embodiment may contribute to enhancing positive social interaction [Azzarito, L., & Ennis, C. D. (2003). A sense of connection: Toward social constructivist physical education. Sport, Education and Society, 8(2), 179–197; Light, R. (2013). Positive Pedagogy for physical education and sport: Game Sense as an example. In R. Light, J. Quay, S. Harvey, & A. Mooney (Eds.), Contemporary developments in games teaching (pp. 29–42). Routledge]. This study explores pupils’ embodied experiences of social relationships in physical education. We aim to inform and further develop existing pedagogies of embodiment by expanding the knowledge about how intersubjectivity and sociality are experienced, and how these experiences affect the pupils’ movement exploration and enable them to value physical activity. By interpreting findings from a sensory ethnographic fieldwork in a tenth-grade class in Oslo, Norway, we show how pupils’ embodied experiences of social relationships revolve around establishing, confirming, maintaining, and questioning their sense of belonging to the social 'we'.

Examining Reading Difficulty and Reading Disability in Racially and Socioeconomically Diverse Student Populations

Previous articleNext article No AccessExamining Reading Difficulty and Reading Disability in Racially and Socioeconomically Diverse Student Populations Introduction to the Special IssueNicole Patton Terry, Astrid Pohl Zuckerman, and Peggy McCardleNicole Patton TerryFlorida State University and Florida Center for Reading Research Search for more articles by this author , Astrid Pohl ZuckermanOhio State University Search for more articles by this author , and Peggy McCardlePeggy McCardle Consulting, LLC Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Elementary School Journal Ahead of Print Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/723376 Views: 23Total views on this site HistoryPublished online February 22, 2023 © 2023 The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Front Matter

Next article FreeFront MatterPDF Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Elementary School Journal Volume 121, Number 4June 2021 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/715615 Views: 251 © 2021 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Front Matter

Next article FreeFront MatterPDF Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Elementary School Journal Volume 121, Number 2December 2020 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/712967 Views: 226 © 2020 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Front Matter

Next article FreeFront MatterPDF Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Elementary School Journal Volume 120, Number 4June 2020 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/710373 Views: 79 © 2020 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Using meaningful experiences as a vision for physical education teaching and teacher education practice

ABSTRACTBackground: Teachers’ visions are vivid and concrete images of ideal classroom practices. A vision for teaching is important to both practices in the classroom as well as teacher development across time. A useful tool to explore and analyse the role of vision in teacher practices is provided by [Hammerness, K. 2003. “Learning to Hope, or Hoping to Learn? The Role of Vision in the Early Professional Lives of Teachers.” Journal of Teacher Education 54 (1): 43–56], whose framework of vision consists of three dimensions: focus, range and distance.Purpose: The writing of [Kretchmar, R. S. 2000. “Moving and Being Moved: Implications for Practice.” Quest 52 (3): 260–272; 2008. “The Increasing Utility of Elementary School Physical Education: A Mixed Blessing and Unique Challenge.” The Elementary School Journal 108 (3): 161–170] provides the basis for a vision focused on meaningful experiences in physical education. The purpose of this paper is to describe the ways a vision based on meaningful experiences enabled two teachers and three teacher educators to name, describe, and enact their physical education teaching and teacher education practices.Methodology: Raw data from six separate self-studies of practice involving the five participants provided the starting point for this research. Data sources, including written reflections and critical friend responses as well as audio recordings of conversations with critical friends, were mined to identify examples where vision was represented. Further data were generated in a focus group where participants shared and analysed their experiences and discussed how meaningful physical education served as both an individual and collective vision for practice. A final written reflection allowed participants to articulate their current vision for meaningful physical education. A thematic analysis of all data sources supported the organisation of data into three distinct phases of development of practices with emphasis on the role of vision in each phase.Findings: Over time, there was an evolution in our understanding of both what meaningful physical education consisted of and how we might facilitate meaningful experiences for children. In particular, our visions became clearer and better aligned with our practices. We illustrate how we developed our practice in ways that allowed us to take ownership of this vision, and, in the process, changed who we were as teachers and teacher educators. Finally, we share how the process of exploring and analysing our individual visions allowed us to articulate a shared vision of meaningful physical education and explain how to go about implementing our collective vision in practice.Conclusion: We highlight the value of paying attention to the role of vision in promoting and supporting educators, individually and collectively, in developing and sustaining innovation in teaching and teacher education practice.

Mejora escolar, liderazgo y reforma sistémica: una retrospectiva (School improvement, leadership and systemic reform: a retrospective)

Mejora escolar, liderazgo y reforma sistémica: una retrospectiva (School improvement, leadership and systemic reform: a retrospective)

An Ode to Clarity in Communicating the Written Word on Research: A Synopsis of the IES “REL Program Writers Guide and Style Guide” (May 2015)

Previous articleNext article No AccessAn Ode to Clarity in Communicating the Written Word on Research: A Synopsis of the IES “REL Program Writers Guide and Style Guide” (May 2015)James M. Godbold and Edward J. Kame’enuiJames M. Godbold Search for more articles by this author and Edward J. Kame’enui Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Elementary School Journal Volume 117, Number 3March 2017 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/690232 Views: 194Total views on this site HistoryPublished online February 13, 2017 © 2017 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Teachers’ Mastery Goals: Using a Self-Report Survey to Study the Relations between Teaching Practices and Students’ Motivation for Science Learning

Employing achievement goal theory (Ames Journal of Educational psychology, 84(3), 261–271, 1992), we explored science teachers’ instruction and its relation to students’ motivation for science learning and school culture. Based on the TARGETS framework (Patrick et al. The Elementary School Journal, 102(1), 35–58, 2001) and using data from 95 teachers, we developed a self-report survey assessing science teachers’ usage of practices that emphasize mastery goals. We then used this survey and hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analyses to study the relations between 35 science teachers’ mastery goals in each of the TARGETS dimensions, the decline in their grade-level 5–8 students’ (N = 1.356) classroom and continuing motivation for science learning, and their schools’ mastery goal structure. The findings suggest that adolescents’ declining motivation for science learning results in part from a decreasing emphasis on mastery goals by schools and science teachers. Practices that relate to the nature of tasks and to student autonomy emerged as most strongly associated with adolescents’ motivation and its decline with age.

From the Editor in Chief

Next article No AccessFrom the Editor in Chief The Two Cultures of Educational Research?Russell GerstenRussell Gersten Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Elementary School Journal Volume 114, Number 2December 2013 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/673342 Views: 33Total views on this site Citations: 1Citations are reported from Crossref © 2013 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Eric M. Camburn, Ellen Goldring, James Sebastian, Henry May, Jason Huff An Examination of the Benefits, Limitations, and Challenges of Conducting Randomized Experiments With Principals, Educational Administration Quarterly 52, no.22 (Apr 2016): 187–220.https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X15617808

TEACHING THROUGH INTERACTIONS: Testing a Developmental Framework of Teacher Effectiveness in over 4,000 Classrooms.

Validating frameworks for understanding classroom processes that contribute to student learning and development is important to advance the scientific study of teaching. This article presents one such framework, Teaching through Interactions, which posits that teacher-student interactions are a central driver for student learning and organizes teacher-student interactions into three major domains. Results provide evidence that across 4,341 preschool to elementary classrooms (1) teacher-student classroom interactions comprise distinct emotional, organizational, and instructional domains; (2) the three-domain latent structure is a better fit to observational data than alternative one- and two-domain models of teacher-student classroom interactions; and (3) the three-domain structure is the best-fitting model across multiple data sets.

Social and Emotional Learning in Schools: From Programs to Strategies and commentaries

Social and Emotional Learning in Schools: From Programs to Strategies and commentaries

From the Editor in Chief

O N E of the least-noted pieces of legislation from the last Congress was the Plain Writing Act of 2010 (Public Law 111-274). The law resulted in a document, Federal Plain Language Guidelines (Plain Language Action and Information Network, 2011), that makes for interesting (dare I say provocative?) reading for those involved in academic writing and those considering submitting manuscripts to The Elementary School Journal. Although this law was intended to apply only to communications and reports from the federal government, it has serious implications for our field that go well beyond the language used in public documents and the lengthy technical reports that accompany major federal evaluations. I believe these guidelines could help many more professionals in the field understand what researchers have accomplished. Rather than address all the points made by the authors of the Guidelines, I will highlight a few and supplement them with material from a recent New York Times blog that included tips for writers (Hale, 2012). Though the federal documents and Constance Hale’s New York Times blog are written in radically different styles, they share a common purpose—the pursuit of clarity. Both aspire to guide authors in how to communicate the often-complex material we address in clear and comprehensible language. In other words, how can we write so that readers do not have to read and reread the same paragraph several times to comprehend the material? How can we write in a way that lets readers understand the purpose of the article and remember the salient findings? Obviously, writing skills develop over time and require a good deal more than adherence to a small set of writing tips and guidelines. Nonetheless, these guidelines can help. In this piece, I will describe a few. Others can be found in the sources. The emphasis will be on those that matter the most to me or that I have found the most helpful. 1. Excess verbiage: Hale notes, “Writing style begins with clarity: Find the right words, and decide what to leave out” (2012). Focus heavily on removal of excess verbiage; from the Guidelines: “Unnecessary words waste your audience’s time. . . . great . . . content is like a conversation. Omit information that

Contributors

Previous article No AccessContributorsPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Elementary School Journal Volume 112, Number 4June 2012 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/666504 Views: 4Total views on this site © 2012 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Reflections on EditingThe Elementary School Journalin an Era of Constant School Reform

This article reflects on my 28-year tenure editing The Elementary School Journal (ESJ). During my tenure as editor, the educational system was in constant reform, from a Nation at Risk to No Child Left Behind. Considerable evidence suggests that these various reforms, which consumed vast resources, were not successful in raising the achievement of American students on standardized tests. As we move to a new reform era (A Race to the Top), I offer several reasons to explain past failures. Finally I advocate for the conceptualization of reform as a series of small, incremental wins. I believe that reform efforts have failed because they do not respect the wisdom of practice, do not build upon previous research, and ask too much of teachers too quickly.

Schools as Complex Host Environments: Understanding Aspects of Schools that May Influence Clinical Practice and Research

Schools as Complex Host Environments: Understanding Aspects of Schools that May Influence Clinical Practice and Research

Contributors

Previous article No AccessContributorsPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Elementary School Journal Volume 111, Number 4June 2011 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/659112 Views: 8Total views on this site © 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Introduction: Growing Evidence to Support Coaching in Literacy and Mathematics

I N N O V A T I O N and change are at the heart of educational movements to reform and improve the education of all students. Students who struggle with literacy and mathematics face severe academic challenges early in life and possible economic inequity in adulthood. In this introduction, we situate the growing body of literature referred to as coaching— or sustained classroom-based support from a qualified and knowledgeable individual who models researchbased strategies and explores with teachers how to incorporate these practices using the teacher’s own students—within the need for viable means of professional development for classroom teachers that lead to improved schooling for children. We argue for the timeliness of an in-depth treatment of literacy and mathematics coaching and then present a summary of the articles that were chosen, through a blinded peer-review process, for inclusion in this special issue. In a country where academic achievement has the potential to change social equity, it is imperative that all students achieve academically. To that end, scholars have agreed for some time that the single best safeguard against school failure is highly qualified teachers (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Laczko-Kerr & Berliner, 2002), although historically, students in high-poverty, high-minority, and lowachieving schools have had the least access to skilled instructors (Olson, 2003). Research has demonstrated that one way to improve instructional practices is through the professional development of classroom teachers. Keeping in mind the spirit of improving classroom instruction for the students who most need improved practices, we embarked on developing this special issue of The Elementary School Journal.

Practices that support the transition to public preschool programs: Results from a National Survey

Abstract The number of children participating in public school preschool programs has steadily increased over the last two decades. While the use of specific practices to support the transition to kindergarten has received a great deal of attention, there are little data on the use of transition practices by public school preschool teachers to support children's entry into the public school preschool setting. This article presents findings from a national sample of 2434 public school preschool teachers on the use of 25 transition practices to support the transition of young children into public school preschool programs. The study represents a collaborative extension of the National Center for Early Development and Learning (NCEDL) Kindergarten Transition Survey [Pianta, R. C., Cox, M. J., Taylor, L., & Early, D. (1999). Kindergarten teachers’ practices related to the transition to school: Results of a national survey. Elementary School Journal, 100 (1), 71–86]. Public school preschool teachers reported using an average of 12.81 of the 25 transition practices included in the survey, with a total of 12 of the 25 transition practices reportedly in use by 70% or more of teachers responding to the survey. Findings from this study indicate that three variables – training on the use of specific transition practices, classroom composition, and school context – were related to the use of transition practices by public school preschool teachers.

Change in Publishing Schedule for The Elementary School Journal

Change in Publishing Schedule for The Elementary School Journal