Teachers Struggle Research Articles

Simplifying Central Place Theory Using GIS and GPS

A constant struggle for teachers at all levels is finding ways to successfully teach students complex theories and concepts. Student comprehension is often enhanced by applying these theories and concepts to real world situations. This project demonstrates central place theory by examining highway billboard signs along major Wisconsin highways. In addition, the concepts of range, threshold, and intervening opportunities are demonstrated. Using global positioning systems (GPS) and geographic information systems (GIS), data were collected on the location, distribution, and type of establishment advertised. Using statistical and spatial analysis this article suggests an alternative method for teaching undergraduate students urban theories through fieldwork, GIS, and GPS.

Students’ perceptions of career conversations with their teachers

Internationally, schools acknowledge their responsibility in guiding students not only in their academic growth, but also in their lifelong career development. In relation to this development, vocational schools in the Netherlands are implementing integral career guidance in which teachers receive a new task in guiding students in developing their own learning and career paths. A questionnaire was developed to investigate students’ perceptions of career guidance by teachers during career conversations, and data involving 28 teachers were collected from 579 students. The study identified four different teacher guidance profiles. Remarkable is that teachers spoke very little about career issues, and school issues were mostly on the agenda. The results indicate that teachers struggle with the transition towards becoming a career guide of students, and aspects influencing the transition into this new role need to be considered.

“But What Can I Do?”: Three Necessary Tensions in Teaching Teachers About Race

A core question of teacher education—“What can I do?”—plagues courses on race in particular ways. Teachers struggle for “concrete” applications of “theoretical” ideas about race, question the potential for “everyday” activity to dismantle inequality “structures,” and wrestle with the need for both professional and personal development on racial issues. In this article, we discuss how these three core tensions surfaced in one race-oriented teacher education course. We demonstrate that the teachers who seemed most invigorated and who expressed feelings of efficacy in serving students of color were those who pledged to continue ongoing inquiry into both sides of each tension. We propose that these three tensions require explicit attention in teacher professional development. Indeed, we suggest that to create inquisitive and efficacious teachers, teacher educators can encourage teachers to keep all three tensions in play for the duration of their careers.

What place the politics of compassion in education surrounding non‐citizen children?

In this response to the article by Madeleine Arnot, Halleli Pinson, and Mano Candappa the author explores three issues that are key to the current refugee and education regimes in Britain. She addresses the association between the British state and the children living within its dominion, the role of education in contemporary British statecraft and the core values of the education system insofar as it concerns asylum‐seeking and refugee children. Building on the authors’ discussion of the role of compassion in education around non‐citizens, the author problematises this concept and examines some of the political and popular perceptions that are brought to bear in relation to this topic. In particular, she highlights how the interests of the modern state are vested in children and how, in line with this, government attention to instilling public morality in school pupils has centred on a nationalist ideology which excludes forced migrants. She argues that in a context in which a persistent moral and instrumental case is made against asylum‐seekers and refugees, teachers struggle against the odds to achieve the successful integration of these children within British schools.

How Can Blogging Help Teachers Realize the Goals of Reform-based Science Instruction? A Study of Nine Classroom Blogs

Science teachers struggle with meeting curricular goals outlined by professional organizations within the constraints of traditional school. Engaging science learners as a community who collaboratively and creatively co-construct scientific understanding through inquiry requires teachers to adopt new tools as well as a different mindset about the kind of classroom culture they need to nurture. Classroom blogs (i.e., blogs that are managed by a teacher for his/her students to post their work and exchange ideas) have been purported in the literature as offering unique opportunities to achieve this goal, although with little empirical support thus far. To fill this gap, nine classroom blogs were selected through an extensive search, and systematically analyzed to determine how the teachers’ instructional designs and classrooms’ enactment were able to capitalize on the specific affordances blogging may offer to support reform-based learning goals. The shift in teacher mindset needed to realize blogging affordances occurred as teachers engaged with students in the process of ‘living’ the classroom blog.

In This Issue, Coda

CodaThis issue of the Journal, the last to be produced by the editorial staff in Austin, is remarkable only in the sense that each issue of this Journal is remarkable. In it teachers of chemistry share information, advice, and ideas that encompass a range as wide as chemistry itself. The Journal has always been a venue where the only important thread of commonalty was the goal of helping teachers--providing a "living textbook of chemistry", as it was dubbed by its founders. This textbook is different, however--it is written by its own readers and it has a new "edition" each month. This month's edition typifies the range of topics and issues found important by our readers (and authors): information about new ideas and research advances, new ways to look at and present the information we have, experiments and demonstrations to give students a first-hand exposure to chemistry, computer exercises to introduce those things that cannot be (or are too dangerous to be) presented first-hand, and ideas for better teaching techniques and classroom organization.With such a purview, it is no wonder that the articles in this issue range from the second law of thermodynamics (Frohlich, page 716) to building a Tesla coil from a car coil (Hall and Battino, page 817) and touch on such consequential topics as mimicking nature (Dennison and Harrowven, page 697) and the search for a silicon-based LED (Swisher, Richmond, and Sercel, page 738).New information about research is represented by part III of the series on electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (Hop and Bakhtiar, page A162). Senozan and Devore (page 767) look at data already long known about carbon monoxide poisoning and present a more subtle and complex explanation of the process than is usually seen in introductory texts. A really new way of looking at what we already know is the unique approach that Ginebreda (page 708) takes to waste recovery, applying the formalisms of thermodynamics to economic considerations.Giving students a first-hand exposure to chemical concepts is not always easy. The plasma state is certainly not readily available for classroom illustration; however, Schreckenbach and Rabending (page 782) have devised a simple experimental setup to demonstrate it. The results are shown on this month's cover.The laboratory is the subject of many articles in every issue of this Journal; teachers want their students to do more than repeat the same cookbook instructions, from which they learn little about the research experience. This concern is reflected in Black's description (page 776) of how her school introduced a scientific inquiry experiment into a large general chemistry class and in the laboratory curriculum based on everyday chemical processes, such as brewing and cheesemaking, that was designed by Roberts, Selco, and Wacks (page 779).Teachers struggle continually to present the complex and abstract concepts of chemistry to students in ways that enhance their learning. This struggle results in suggestions for better ways to organize courses and their content such as the Project REMODEL program described by Nakhleh, Lowrey, and Mitchell (page 758) and Ordman's (page 753) course in practical skills in the scientific literature for undergraduates.Taken together this small sample of articles from this issue represents the breadth and depth of the interests of chemistry teachers and the Journal's role in meeting those interests.

Poland: Teachers Struggle With Low Funds and Morale

Warsaw—Science education in Poland is still haunted by the ghosts of the old system, in which research was largely conducted in academy institutes while teaching was conducted in the universities. University courses also tend to be narrow and inflexible. Efforts to bridge this gap have been hampered by lack of funds in the past few years, although there have been exceptions, such as a new biology program at Gdansk and interdisciplinary programs at Warsaw University and Krakow's Jagiellonian University. Without more government support, however, one leading academic says education is likely to move backward.

A fresh look at writing

In an era when teachers struggle for quality time with their students, Donald Graves introduces a text that creates lifetime writers as well as responsible learners--a text that focuses on teaching that lasts. A Fresh Look at Writing is Graves's most comprehensive book yet. In it, he expands on many of his earlier approaches, examining portfolios, record keeping, methods for teaching conventions, spelling, and a rich range of genre including fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. He demonstrates how to bring writing into your own life and experience the joys of the craft along with the students. Actions, glossed objectives appearing throughout the book, provide new ways to understand yourself and reach your students. With them, Graves helps you profit from your own history as learner, listen to children more effectively, discover their potential, yet expect more from them. A Fresh Look at Writing is a true resource for professionals who want the latest ideas on the teaching of writing, as well as for preservice teachers about to step into the classroom for the first time. The accompanying Professional's Guide assists those who want to build a writing or language arts course around the text. It features a detailed, week-by-week description of fourteen sessions, including guidelines for background preparation in writing; reading and working with children; classroom demonstration; and journal reflection. In addition, the guide shows how A Fresh Look at Writing can be used as a supplement to reading courses, research studies, summer courses, and workshops. To learn more about Donald Graves, visit www.donaldgraves.org.

Building Communities of Learning among Prairie Teachers: A Dialogue between Michelle Collay, Hamline University and David Leo-Nyquist, South fork High School

Abstract The struggle for teachers to establish membership in a professional community is an old one. In earlier times, a country teacher was responsible for a roomful of children for nine months a year. She administered the entire program, taught academic, social, and health skills, fired the stove, repaired furniture, and served meals. Visited once a month or less by a circuit-riding county superintendent, she had an autonomy of practice current teachers may envy. But she also suffered isolation, had little interaction with colleagues, and was terminated upon marriage. Some things have changed in one-hundred years. Rural teachers now concentrate on curriculum rather than housekeeping, and teaching is a life-long career for many. Contemporary rural and urban teachers, however, remain isolated in single classrooms, and have gained little opportunity to build professional communities in schools. The isolation of the one-room school house haunts us still.