Local School Community Research Articles

The Pastoral Needs of International Students in New Zealand Secondary Schools.

A study of some 400 international students reveals that they are, on average, modestly successful in coping with the challenges of settling into the local school and peer community. While they receive support from other overseas-born students, many teachers, and some local peers, their integration into the peer community remains thwarted by the perceived attitude of local peers. These findings form a background of current research evidence against which the potential of specific pastoral care provisions can be explored and developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of New Zealand Journal of Counselling is the property of New Zealand Association of Counsellors and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Music Teacher Education: Assessing a community outreach partnership

Partnerships between communities and universities are taking place largely in urban areas and are creating diverse contexts for music teaching and learning. This descriptive survey is conducted to enhance the development of future partnership projects through: (a) the identification of strategies for sustaining music education partnership programs for all young people; (b) improved cohesiveness among stated goals, objectives and outcomes; (c) documenting planning and implementation efforts to reach members of the local home school community; and (d) documenting the effort and creativity of elementary music education students as one means of improving community outreach programs.

‘Not greenies’ at school: Investigating the Discourses of Environmental Activism in Regional Australia

AbstractImplementing environmental activism at school can be socially risky business. This paper explores the narratives of three women who undertook award winning environmental projects in two regional Australian schools. Tara (student, age 15), Anne (student, age 15) and Andrea (principal, age 42) document the complex and courageous social negotiations they were forced to undertake in response to being negatively constituted as “a greenie” at school. Tara and Anne met resistance from their peers and family and Andrea fielded complaints from members of the local school community. This micro-qualtitative analysis shows that, despite the heartfelt rhetoric of environmental education, assuming an environmental identity at school can be problematic and difficult to enact. Environmental action is still not seen as a “cool” social practice in some adolescent peer groups. Nor is environmental action positioned as central to the “legitimate” practices of schooling in some communities. Successful projects rely on students and staff who are willing to actively, and persitently, negotiate social opposition to their achieving an ecological vision for school practice.

Preparing students for democratic citizenship: Codes of conduct in Victoria’s ‘Schools of the Future’

Recent Australian experience of decentralisation in education has many parallels with contemporary movements in a number of other western democratic nations. Within the State of Victoria, Australia, all schools have developed, at local community level, school charters which address the school’s goals, policies, priorities, curriculum, and standards. This article reports an analysis of one component of almost 300 schools’ charters; namely codes of conduct for student behaviour. The results indicate a need for schools to emphasise a closer connection between students’ rights and their responsibilities. Secondly, the many schools intending to implement an assertive or authoritarian approach to discipline are failing to balance their planned use of punishments with corresponding rewards and recognition. Thirdly, the political relevance of the style of discipline develop chosen by local school communities appears incompatible with an education likely to develop democratic citizens.

Integrated control of the filariasis vector with community participation in an urban area of Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil

A pilot study for the control of Bancroftian filariasis transmission was developed in two areas of Recife, Brazil, where microfilaraemic prevalence was 10% in 1991. Mass treatment with diethylcarbamazine (DEC) using low and spaced doses was employed in both areas. In one such instance, DEC therapy was associated with vector control using physical measures and periodic treatment of Culex breeding sites with the entomopathogen Bacillus sphaericus. The vector population density, reaching 60 - 120 Culex/room /night before the intervention, was drastically reduced to 4 - 16 Culex/room/night, and maintained at this level for more than two years. Actions to engage the local school community in the vector control process were implemented, and as a consequence several classroom and extracurricular activities were put into practice, culminating with the effective participation of a team of students called the "Vector Vigilantes", in the application of control measures against the vector. The enthusiastic involvement of schoolteachers and students pointed to schools as a place amenable to programs such as this.

Bounding the Case Within Its Context: A Constructivist Approach to Studying Detracking Reform

This article presents the story of our research team's efforts to conduct a multisite case study of 10 racially mixed schools engaged in effort to reduce ability grouping or tracking. Although the politics of education research and our own theoretical frame work told us that detracking reform is strongly influenced by the politics and norms in the local school community, we were not sure how to study a school-level change while examining the broader context of that change. We learned over the course of our study to build outward from the school site into the local community, and co-construct the boundaries of our cases with the help of our respondents. As a result, we discovered that the boundaries of each case and the differences in the shape and size of each case are as much a finding as they are a methodological consideration.

Forces affecting change in small rural schools

Selected curriculum changes were studied in two rural shcool‐community contexts. Both qualitative and quantitative data indicated that implementation was at a low level of use and that factors related to isolation were particularly powerful influences in the change process. A major implication of the study is demonstrated need for detailed curriculum implementation plans that account for local school community factors.

From Teacher to School Psychologist: A Programme of Counsellor Training

In Victoria Guidance Officers provide school psychology and guidance services to families and schools. Most are located throughout Victorian centres which service local school communities and these by and large provide a generalist service which is supplemented by the service of statewide specialists.New recruits are drawn from the teaching service and those teachers with the necessary combination of experience, qualifications and personal qualities are eligible to apply. There is usually a new intake each year and this number varies according to staff ceilings and vacancies. In 1983 the intake was 45 trainee Guidance Officers which was the largest number of teachers ever recruited. These trainees were allocated to local centres where they would undertake their supervised apprenticeship, which together with the compulsory central training, would make them eligible in two years to become registered Guidance Officers.

The Material Culture of Public School Classrooms: The Symbolic Integration of Local Schools and National Culture1

Yehudi Cohen (1970; 1971; 1975) has suggested that socialization and enculturation into national society and culture are symbolically reinforced by the integrative functions of customary public school classroom decoration and artifacts. This paper describes the material culture of classrooms within an elementary school in the rural midwestern United States. In support of Cohen's argument, it was found that classroom material culture symbolically represented national, rather than local community, sociocultural orientations and traditions. Cohen's thesis is expanded through (1) content analysis of grade-to-grade variation in classroom material culture and (2) by suggesting a hierarchy of local school integration, as represented in classroom material culture, with the national society and culture. It is concluded that classroom material culture reinforces the symbolic integration of heterogeneous local school communities into a national society and culture. Classroom material culture is an index of the relative degree of symbolic integration between local school communities and national society and culture.

The Influence of an In-Service Improvement Program upon Teacher Test Behavior and Classroom Program

One of the most challenging and persistent problems faced by educators is the development of means for the professional im provement of teachers within local school systems. Among these procedures which have been widely used are workshops, child study groups, cooperative curriculum study, and the use of uni versity consultants and resource people in various areas of the school program. This study is concerned with the evaluation of certain aspects of an in-service program which combined these procedures in working at the educational problems of a local school community. The project being investigated is the three-year cooperative staff study program in the La Grange, Illinois, Public Schools in collaboration with the University of Chicago. This program which came to be known as the La Grange Cooperative Study, was in itiated in the spring of 1946 and had run for approximately two years at the conclusion of this investigation. It was composed of a wide variety of experiences, among the most important of which were the activities of child-study groups and multiple activities centering about the social studies in the curriculum. It included university workshop experiences in the summer months, two fall planning conferences, work on textbook selection and an instruc tional materials survey, consultant service work in certain in structional areas, emphasis on unit-planning in the social stud ies, a survey of pupil-accounting procedures, a number of spec ial projects and reports, and various other cooperative activities involving the collaboration of the teaching staff, university con