Beliefs, practices, and interactions of teachers in a Japanese high school English department

This study reveals the school culture and the teachers' professional development activities in a Japanese high school learning environment. Furthermore, it documents the relationships among the context, teachers' beliefs, practices, and interactions. Using multiple data sources including interviews, observations, and documents of teachers from an English department, this yearlong study revealed these English as a Foreign Language teachers lacked many teacher learning opportunities in their context. The study revealed that teacher collaboration only reinforced existing practices, eroding teachers' motivation to learn to teach in this specific context. The study provides evidence to teacher educators about inservice teachers and their learning environment and the significance of the relationships between the two entities. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Mentoring as a career guidance activity: Fostering non-traditional career exploration for girls

This paper reports on a short term mentoring project conducted in the Australian state of Queensland to foster non-traditional career exploration for girls in the communications/informa - tion technology industry. The aim of the study was to evaluate the possibilities of a short term mentoring program to foster girls’interest in a non-traditional industry. In addition it sought to exam - ine the viability of mentoring as a career guidance activity in schools. The findings indicate that mentoring could be a worthy addition to the repertoire of career guidance activities offered by schools and that it is a valuable process in promoting non-traditional career exploration for girls.

Parenting and adolescent self-regulation

This study examined the relationship between adolescents' academic and non-academic self-regulation (SR), authoritative parenting (as demonstrated by high levels of Involvement, Strictness, and Autonomy Granting), and parent self-efficacy in four areas. Participants were 214 Australian high school students and their parents. There was a moderate correlation (r = 0.63) between academic and non-academic SR. Adolescents and their parents differed significantly in their perceptions of parenting behaviours, with parents rating themselves higher than their children on Involvement, Autonomy Granting, and Strictness behaviours. A model of the relationships between the constructs was developed showing a strong path from parent self-efficacy to both academic and non-academic SR via high parental Involvement (as perceived by adolescents). Strict parenting and the granting by parents of psychological autonomy to their adolescent children did not appear to be important in the development of young people's self-regulatory behaviours. (C) 2004 The Association for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

How adolescents cope with bullying

Bullying is a stressful event for adolescents at school and was the fourth most common reason for calls to Kids Help Line in 2002. This study sought to examine coping styles used by students affected by bullying in Years 8 and 10 attending three Queensland high schools. Eighty-eight students completed the Bully Survey containing questions about bullying experiences and the way they coped in those situations. No year level differences were found in terms of the type of bullying experienced or the way in which students coped with these experiences. A significant interaction was found between duration of bullying and perceived control for the proportional use of disengagement coping (i.e., denial, avoidance and wishful thinking strategies). A significant simple main effect was found between perceived stressfulness and proportional use of involuntary engagement coping (i.e., rumination, intrusive thoughts, emotional arousal, physiological arousal and impulsive actions). Implications of these findings for schools are discussed.

Learning mathematics in a classroom community of inquiry

This article considers the question of what specific actions a teacher might take to create a culture of inquiry in a secondary school mathematics classroom. Sociocultural theories of learning provide the framework for examining teaching and learning practices in a single classroom over a two-year period. The notion of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is invoked as a fundamental framework for explaining learning as increasing participation in a community of practice characterized by mathematical inquiry. The analysis draws on classroom observation and interviews with students and the teacher to show how the teacher established norms and practices that emphasized mathematical sense-making and justification of ideas and arguments and to illustrate the learning practices that students developed in response to these expectations.

Stress associated with the transition from high school to university: The effect of social support and self-efficacy

The present study aimed to evaluate the role of social support and self-efficacy on the level of stress associated with the transition from high school to university. One hundred and eight-five university students who had completed high school in the previous year completed a three-part questionnaire designed to gather information on their levels of self-efficacy, social support, and stress associated with their transition. The results showed that self-efficacy was a significant predictor of stress associated with the transition to university in that higher levels of self-efficacy were associated with lower levels of stress while social support was a non-significant predictor of stress. [Author abstract]

Variation talk: Articulating meaning in statistics

Little is known about the way that teachers articulate notions of variation in their own words. The study reported here was conducted with 17 prospective secondary math and science teachers enrolled in a preservice teacher education course which engaged them in statistical inquiry of testing data. This qualitative study examines how these preservice teachers articulated notions of variation as they compared two distributions. Although the teachers made use of tandard statistical language, they also expressed rich views of variation through nonstandard terminology. This paper details the statistical language used by the rospective teachers, categorizing both standard and nonstandard expressions. Their nonstandard language revealed strong relationships between expressions of variation and expressions of distribution. Implications and the benefits of nonstandard language in statistics are outlined.