Showing papers in "American Journal of Education in 1987"

Education Reform Strategies: Will They Increase Teacher Commitment?

Abstract: Most current attempts at education reform have been subject to little evaluation and even less critical analysis, auguring poorly for prospects of improving either the intervention or the teacher work force itself. In the present paper, I argue for the necessity of such research and analysis. With data gathered from two reform efforts--minimum competency testing and career ladders--I illustrate ways in which policy intervention may affect teachers' academic success with students and their sense of teaching efficacy and commitment. I conclude with a brief discussion of the aims of policy research and specific policy recommendations.

Students' Interracial Friendships: Individual Characteristics, Structural Effects, and Racial Differences

Abstract: This paper examines the effects of individual-, dyadic-, group-, and classroom-level variables on cross-race friendship choices. It is argued that structural and organizational characteristics of a student's environment influence the likelihood of interracial friendliness. Hypotheses about the nature of these influences are tested with longitudinal data from 359 fourth- through seventh-grade students. The analysis shows that a student's environment does indeed create both constraints on and opportunities for interracial friendship formation. In addition, it reveals that there are sharp differences in how these constraints and opportunities affect both black and white students.

The Varieties of Pluralism.

Abstract: I argue that Dewey and the pragmatic thinkers were really ahead of their times Dewey is relevant today in helping us to gain some perspective on our extremely confused and chaotic cultural condition Furthermore, the dialectic of contemporary philosophy keeps leading us back to the point of departure for the pragmatic thinkers This is especially evident in the revival of the centrality of the concept of a democratic community I also seek to clarify what is most important about the pragmatic understanding of pluralism For, while there is a deep sensitivity to irreducible difference and the variety of experience, there is also a conviction that we are not prisoners locked into our own perspectives, frameworks, and paradigms We can always reach out, communicate, and share with what is other and different from ourselves

State Mandated Testing and Educational Reform: Context and Consequences

Abstract: In response to 20 years of educational growth, shifts in the locus of school control, and politicization of educational decision making, new forms and uses of standardized testing have arisen. In particular, policy-oriented tests that are mandated and controlled by agencies external to the local school have become widely used to certify student and teacher competence. It is the use of such certification tests that is at the root of most current debate and controversy regarding educational testing. This article describes the social trends that have spawned the new testing programs. It considers the characteristics and the educational consequences of the new state-mandated tests. A set of propositions to guide understanding of testing debate and controversy is provided.

Two-Year College to Four-Year College: The Likelihood of Transfer

Abstract: Lately, two-year colleges have been the fastest growing sector of higher education. One of their main assignments is to prepare academically oriented students to go on to four-year colleges. This paper reports the findings of an effort to assess the effect of institutional integration, background, academic processes, and psychosocial variables on the transfer probabilities of subsamples of two-year college students. Results indicate that sex, race/ethnicity, high school track, religion, and SES have strong and significant effects on transfer probabilities, and that significant others also exert strong and significant effects. In particular, holding a work-study job and living on campus largely increase the odds of transferring to a four-year college.

Social Background and Academic Determinants of Two-Year versus Four-Year College Attendance: Evidence from Two Cohorts a Decade Apart.

Abstract: The present paper examines determinants of access to two-year versus four-year colleges among college-going youth. Data from the NLS class of 1972 and the HSB class of 1980 senior high school cohorts are compared to evaluate changes in racial/ethnic, socioeconomic, and gender constraints on enrollment patterns. Academic resource measures (i. e., test performance, high school grades, and high school curriculum) also are examined in order to assess the patterning and magnitude of such disparities when academic qualifications are equivalent. There is little evidence of diminished opportunity to attend a four-year college when the experiences of 1980 high school graduates are compared with those from 1972. In general, social background had little bearing on attendance patterns, although Hispanic youth were noticeably less likely than either whites or blacks to attend four-year colleges. Low-SES youth were modestly disadvantaged at both periods, but blacks were somewhat more likely than whites to enroll in fou...

Apprenticeship as a Transition to Adulthood in West Germany

Abstract: One means of gaining an ecological perspective on adolescent development is to examine another country's institutions for youth. While the United States has no institution that effectively bridges school and work, half of West Germany's 16-18-year-olds are apprentices, learning a career in the workplace while attending school only one day a week. Apprenticeship enables youth who do not enroll in higher education to move directly into primary-labor-market careers at a time when their counterparts in the United States are leaving full-time schooling to begin a period of low-skill and low-paid work in the secondary labor market. Although West German apprenticeship cannot be transplanted to the United States, it has implications for our educational system and labor markets. First, it demonstrates that the marginal attachment of youth to employment results from constraints on opportunity rather than from youthful irresponsibility. Second, it suggests that the preparation of youth as skilled workers requires a ...

Literacy Instruction: Technology and Technique

Abstract: This analysis of the alleged literacy crisis examines the historical origins and current consequences of the development of a technology for literacy instruction. Reliance on technocratic skills-based approaches, the authors argue, has resulted, on the one hand, in a gradual deskilling of teachers and, on the other hand, the production in students of a literal, uncritical, and mechanical relation to reading, writing, and the interpretation of texts. The authors contend that given the limited range and scope of what is today written and read by the majority, the mass production of such lower-order literacy represents no crisis but indeed is well suited to the demands of contemporary labor and culture.

The Peril of Paternalism: The Imposition of Education on Cuba by the United States

Abstract: During the years immediately following the Spanish-American War, Cuba was governed by a U. S. military administration characterized by its establishment of institutions based on U. S. models. This administration worked energetically to build a viable and permanent infrastructure, improving roads and sanitation and eliminating inefficiencies in government bureaucracy. Yet its methods were often heavy-handed, and it foisted its own system of values on a subordinate population. North American culture was imposed, with the schools as the vehicle of "Americanization." This article describes that imposition and considers its long-term impact.

Changing Patterns in Black School Politics: Atlanta, 1872-1973

Abstract: This paper provides a comprehensive historical survey of black school politics in Atlanta between 1872 and 1973. It identifies four major periods in the century-long struggle by the city's black community to achieve improved educational opportunities for black children. These four periods were characterized by different goals and different strategies for change. Changes in strategies and goals from period to period were determined by changes in the political resources available to the black community. The campaign for school integration in the city represented only one phase in the continuing effort to provide better schools for black children.

Patterns of Extracurricular Participation from High School to College

Abstract: This investigation examined carry-over effects of high school size on extracurricular participation of 283 senior students at a large, multipurpose university. Results replicated previous findings in that students in smaller high schools showed greater extracurricular participation. However, extent of high school participation was a better predictor of college participation than was high school size. Students from smaller high schools were not more involved college participants. Overall, participation declined from high school to college, especially for females, with greater decline related to smaller school size. High participators participated more in college than low participators but showed greater decline. High participators from the smallest schools declined more than those from larger schools. Results suggest college participation is better explained by personal attributes predisposing students to participate and developmental tasks of late adolescence than it is by size of high school attended.

Equality, Prestige, and Controlled Mobility in the Academic Hierarchy

Abstract: Previous work suggests that the academic hierarchy promotes and reflects both meritocratic standards and persistent status divisions. Using a 1969 nationwide survey of graduate students, this study considers the relative and independent influence of students' social class, sex, race, undergraduate achievement, and rank of undergraduate institution attended on rank or prestige of graduate school they attend. Analysis of covariance results suggests that undergraduate rank and social class are the strongest predictors of prestige of institution attended. Attendance at highly ranked undergraduate institutions predicts location at both higher- and lower-ranked graduate schools. The academic hierarchy, however, does not universally reward social class groups for equal levels of merit. Undergraduate achievement and sex have weaker independent effects. While higher achievement usually predicts attendance at elite graduate schools, findings also show that women and men attend different- and similar-ranked institut...

Teaching Styles and Performance Values in Junior High School: The Impersonal, Nonpersonal, and Personal

Abstract: This paper examines three contrasting teaching styles in a middle-class junior high school Previous conceptions of teaching styles have tended to focus on the ways in which the teacher organizes the specifically academic tasks and goals of the classroom The school culture defines the transition from elementary to junior high school in terms of those capacities that enable individuals to reach high levels of performance Thus, teachers think of junior high school students as autonomous, responsible, and self-motivated persons Yet, in reality, junior high school students are still in the process of learning how to transform the meaning of previously childish needs and concerns into distinctly early-adolescent forms of behavior Confirmation of their emergent identity as an early adolescent depends, in part, on the appropriate recognition from the teacher Teachers are confronted with a conflict between the performance expectations of the school culture and the developmental needs of early adolescents to

Steering Groups, Leveling Effects, and Instructional Pace

Abstract: The purpose of this yearlong study of two mathematics teachers was to examine instructional pacing under two forms of instructional organization. The first teacher used a student-paced format where micro-computers were used to correct work assignments and administer mastery quizzes to students. The second teacher used a more typical teacher-paced format with the teacher making work assignments to students several times a week and allowing ample time for assignment completion and correction. Analysis of student work during the school year revealed considerably more assignments completed under the student-paced approach than under the teacher-paced approach. The difference in work completed is a plausible explanation for the achievement differences in favor of the student-paced format. In addition, a leveling effect occurred in the teacher-paced classes, with the high-ability students demonstrating no gain under teacher-paced conditions. The work and achievement data illustrate a number of important issues ...

Vygotsky and the Vygotskians.

Abstract: tion of Mind by James Wertsch, himself primarily interested in linguistics and semiotics, who edited the report of the 1980 conference run by the Center for Psychosocial Studies at Chicago, Culture, Communication, and Cognition: Vygotskian Perspectives (1985). The aim is to \"harness\" the integrated and social approach elaborated by Lev Vygotsky in postrevolutionary Russia to humanities and social sciences suffering from narrowness and inability to communicate in modern America. Accordingly, Wertsch deprecates the usual classification of Vygotsky as a developmental and educational psychologist, indeed as a psychologist at all. This, despite the fact that he is widely known as founder of the leading trend in current Soviet psychology, the Vygotsky-Luria-Leontiev school, which has been developing his work for half a century. But the proposition accords with a project to return to the original writings, in particular to relatively neglected semiotic aspects of an order now in the forefront of attention, although there is readiness to turn to Soviet psychology should this contribute to discussion of selected points. Such a project is in the cards because Vygotsky was a young man in a hurry. Intensely interested in current cultural innovations, a practicing teacher for six years with a special interest in mental backwardness, he gravitated toward psychological research after astounding a specialist conference with ideas that had never occurred to them. But he was

The High Costs and Doubtful Efficacy of Extended Teacher-Preparation Programs: An Invitation to More Basic Reforms

Abstract: This analysis argues that extended programs are likely to reduce the quality and quantity of teachers and that the likelihood that they will improve teacher performance is not great. It is shown that the costs of reducing the risks could be as high as $7 billion. Because the risks of extended programs seem great and the benefits uncertain, other strategies for improving teacher education should be explored more aggressively than they have been. Two such alternatives--the reform of undergraduate programs and postbaccalaureate internships--are examined. It is concluded that these two strategies would complement each other and, taken together, would almost certainly be more cost effective than extended programs in improving teacher quality and effectiveness.

Response to Richard Bernstein

Abstract: If I were to compress Dewey into a single sentence, it would be "Live like an art object striving to become a work of art." In unpacking his essence, I would have to locate, identify, and explain the existence, the functions, the interrelations, and the meanings of events and objects; the instrumental and the consummatory; evolution, experience, and communication; community and democracy; the historical necessities, no longer valid, of various dualisms; the relation of theory to practice; the centrality of education to our human being. Richard Bernstein's John Dewey Society Lecture, "The Varieties of Pluralism," under the same severe compression would emerge as "Keep the Faith. Phronesis realized is democratic pluralism. Act so as to connect." Unpacking Dewey is easier than unpacking Bernstein. All of Dewey is present before us, as it were. But the Bernstein lecture is the Bernstein lecture-a piece of writing given strength and also partially undone by the conditions of its final cause. It is writing of a certain length, constructed to be presented as a public event, intended to inform, to instruct, to caution and advise, and to give strength to any flagging spirits among us. And this it did, and does, demonstrating enviable knowledge and masterful control of the history of pragmatism and the rise and fall of the hegemony of analytic philosophy, presenting valuable insights respecting the development of "wild pluralism," and offering a timely reminder of how metaphysics informs social thought... and much more. But I find myself torn by "Varieties of Pluralism," both attracted and disturbed by it. I want something more, something more speculatively audacious (see again Dewey's call for speculative audacity with which Bernstein concludes his lecture, p. 523) than phronesis, yet I am not sure there is something more. Within the limits imposed by the lecture, there is not. I also find the lecture facing a large, ironic problem, one of Bernstein's own making. Although it is a public event,

In Pursuit of Whose Excellence

Abstract: Diversity versus national standardization. In "The High Costs and Doubtful Efficacy of Extended Teacher Education Programs: An Invitation to More Basic Reforms," a southern university dean from the "Volunteer State" critiques the efforts of northern reformers, led by a group named after former Harvard dean Henry Holmes, to make five years of preservice education compulsory for teacher certification throughout the country. Suggesting that there is no "one best way" to prepare teachers, or at least that we do not yet know of one, Willis Hawley calls for innovation and the evaluation of such experiments. Two alternatives, which he argues would be more cost-effective than extended preparation programs, are briefly outlined. Reformers' proposals are grounded in criticisms of undergraduate teacher education, not in evidence of extended programs' benefits, notes Hawley. It is ironic that the policies emanating from the most prestigious centers of research in the land are not research based. It is also an indictment of these institutions. As Hawley observes, "There is almost no research on the effectiveness of alternative ways to educate teachers.

Which Way to Millinocket

Abstract: As the classic comedy album Bert and I says in the punch line to the tale from which the title of this response was drawn, "Come to think of it, you cahn't git they-ah from hee-ah!" Indeed, you can't! Willis Hawley generally can be counted on to craft useful, analytically sound, and provocative expositions of policy issues confronting educators. "The High Costs and Doubtful Efficacy of Extended TeacherPreparation Programs: An Invitation to More Basic Reforms" does not measure up to the standard we have come to expect of him. Hawley asks the reader to think with him about the risks and inadequacies of extended teacher-preparation programs. Early on, he acknowledges the many different shapes and sizes of extended programs, but he then defines them as any strategy that requires students to take a minimum of five years of college-based course work before being allowed to teach at full salary. During the course of the paper, Hawley references extended programs more than 50 times, five-year programs more than 20 times, and fifth-year and postbaccalaureate teacherpreparation programs also more than 20 times. Anyone familiar with the discussions in teacher education about requisites to program improvement would quickly recognize the nonusefulness of a definition that blurs the crucial distinctions between, for example, a five-year program of teacher preparation (one that integrates teacher education and teacher preparation in a carefully sequenced and well-integrated program of five full years of study) and a fifth-year program (like the one that California has maintained with the dubious results that Hawley references). And, in truth, even Hawley admits as much by his throwaway admission that "extended programs that require undergraduate education courses could provide teachers with more pedagogical knowledge than do four-year programs that insist on a strong liberal arts curriculum and intensive study of the subjects or subject that the student will

A Commentary on Hawley.

Abstract: In his article "The High Costs and Doubtful Efficacy of Extended Teacher-Preparation Programs: An Invitation to More Basic Reforms," Willis D. Hawley contends that proposals to eliminate undergraduate teaching majors in favor of graduate programs of teacher preparation would not be cost effective. My major problem with Hawley's arguments is that they are driven entirely by cost considerations, at the expense of any discussions about value. Moreover, he fails to offer an alternative to the suggestion that undergraduate education-degree programs be abolished, one that would be less costly but equally or more beneficial to the status and effectiveness of the nation's teachers.