The rising number of students diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in schools, and the unique characteristics of these students, has led many educators and parents to question the types of programs and strategies that are most effective in supporting them to achieve within school climates and curriculum of the early 21st century. Moreover, educators and parents must sort through the plethora of information and reports of interventions and treatments claiming to treat or cure autism in order to determine what strategies will best support their children or students. A number of studies have focused on determining the evidence base of specific practices for students on the autism spectrum. However, only a few have investigated the applicability of these strategies in inclusive school environments or specifically employed strategies to address academic needs. This has created a research-to-practice gap for educators working with students on the autism spectrum in inclusive school settings. More promising are studies which have highlighted elements of effective practice in education programs. An analysis of this research reveals four principles of best practice for schools and educators working with students on the autism spectrum: provision of a supportive and structured learning environment for staff and students; consistent provision of child-centered and evidence-based curriculum and instruction; multidisciplinary engagement and collaboration; and meaningful communication and collaboration between families and schools. These principles provide a framework for teachers and parents to work alongside students on the autism spectrum to plan, implement and evaluate strategies that can be embedded and implemented in the class program and are effective in supporting the specific needs of individual students on the autism spectrum.
Article
Evidence-Based Practices for Teaching Learners on the Autism Spectrum
Amanda A. Webster
Article
Queer Pedagogy as an Impossible Profession
Renée DePalma
Queer pedagogy can be considered a kind of critical pedagogy, which questions the neutrality of knowledge and renders teaching a political act. Drawing upon queer studies, it remains strategically poised on a series of important contradictions between constructing and deconstructing, defining and undoing. In the very impossibility of resolving such issues it challenges the basic premise of the institution of schooling—instead of providing clear and definitive answers to questions, it keeps them open. Its productivity lies in unsettling oppressive certainties. Can we both understand that bodies, by their very nature, exceed their discursive construction, and at the same time recognize people’s own identifications and the very real social and historical repressions they have experienced and continue to experience as a result of these? Discourse analysis in the field of education provides the potential for questioning the limits of discourse and the knowledge it creates, while creating spaces for recognition and the production of alternative understandings. Instead of simply replacing older knowledge regimes with newer (and supposedly better) ones—a traditional didactic approach—we might critically analyze how knowledge has been constructed and how people’s lived experiences challenge these constructions, and then begin to imagine a queer pedagogy based on this analysis.
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Ethnography and the Study of Los Saberes Docentes (Teaching Knowledge) in Latin American Countries
Ruth Mercado and Epifanio Espinosa
A specific comparative framework that incorporates an interpretive process dedicated to developing a more complex understanding of teaching knowledge incorporates the specific local contexts in which studies on teaching knowledge are conducted. Research on teaching knowledge within the region grew and diversified from the 1980s and 1990s. There are two key thematic contributions of this body of research: the nature of teaching knowledge and pedagogical approaches to teaching specific curricular content focusing on early literacy. Points of comparison between the different contributions of studies addressing teaching knowledge can be found. Additionally, institutional and social inequalities are manifested in schools and education in Latin American countries. Teaching knowledge, which teachers produce in and adapt to different social spaces (in other words, through practice), is crucial for fostering the development and learning of the students who attend school under the challenging conditions of the schools in these countries.
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Motivation and Engagement in Learning
Rebecca J. Collie and Andrew J. Martin
Motivation and engagement are firmly implicated in students’ participation in class, educational aspirations, enjoyment of school, academic learning, and academic achievement. Motivation refers to an individual’s inclination, energy, direction, and drive with respect to learning and achievement. Engagement involves the thoughts, actions, and emotions that reflect this inclination, energy, and drive. There are numerous theories articulating the key elements of students’ motivation and engagement. These theories describe how and why motivation and engagement are important for educational outcomes in their own right, as well as how and why motivation and engagement are important means to other desirable educational outcomes. Given the vast array of different theories in the areas of motivation and engagement, researchers have made calls to integrate the body of knowledge that has amassed. The Motivation and Engagement Wheel is an example of a multidimensional framework that traverses salient motivation and engagement factors from major theory and research. These factors encompass positive motivation constructs (self-efficacy, valuing, and mastery orientation), positive engagement constructs (planning, task management, and persistence), negative motivation constructs (anxiety, uncertain control, and failure avoidance), and negative engagement constructs (self-handicapping and disengagement). A broad body of research provides support for the salience of the factors in the Wheel in relation to a range of other variables (e.g., background characteristics, cultural factors) and through a variety of research designs and approaches. Importantly, there are additional exciting directions in motivation and engagement research, such as real-time investigations, the use of biomarkers, the interface with teachers, and intervention research, that are relevant to optimizing students’ academic development through school—and beyond.
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Psychoeducation
Jacqueline A. Brown, Samantha Russell, Emily Hattouni, and Ashlyn Kincaid
Providing psychoeducation to teachers, families, and other school staff is pivotal to best support students within the school setting. Psychoeducation is generally known as the information and resources provided to school staff, families, and students by mental health professionals to better educate them about the student’s emotions, behaviors, and achievement. Within the school setting, the school (or educational) psychologist often takes on this role when working with students and their families. School/educational psychologists are typically the most knowledgeable about psychological practices, theories, and foundations, and also have expertise in special education services, learning barriers, behavioral and mental health interventions, academic learning, and family–school collaboration, along with consultation and assessment practices. Consequently, these professionals are in a good position to effectively provide psychoeducation to a wide range of individuals.
There are various methods of psychoeducation that can be used, such as disseminating resources and reading materials to teachers and families, meeting individually with families or teachers to provide detailed information about what the student is experiencing, and conducting psychoeducational groups with children and/or their caregivers on a variety of topics related to the child’s academic, behavior, or social-emotional well-being. When examining these methods, it is also important to understand how psychoeducation can be used for a wide range of educational practices that promote student well-being. These include using psychoeducation to increase academic achievement, for the prevention of problem behavior, to increase social-emotional well-being, promote educational practices, and provide professional development for school staff, and to inform educational policies. These psychoeducation practices have been widely used globally to better assist student functioning. Although psychoeducation is a widespread practice, there are still different views on how it should be delivered and questions that have arisen from the research.
Article
Leadership Effect in Social Justice
Kadir Beycioğlu
Social justice (SJ) is not a “newly discussed” issue. It has made a mark on the history of humanity. It was one of the most frequently discussed concerns of earlier religious and philosophical traditions for both their own context and other contexts around the world. Almost all disciplines, including philosophy, politics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and education, have been in search of a just world for people and have tried to find an answer to the question of what a socially just society is.
Social justice has been a debated issue on the agendas of educational researchers, too. Similar to other fields, research on social justice in education has been attempting to describe and analyze its meaning and nature in educational settings. Educational researchers have made significant efforts to provide a definition of social justice in schools and to open the black box of social justice delivered to schools. In education, social justice, in short, may be seen as a fact directly related to providing equal opportunities for everyone in schools regardless of race, ethnicity, culture, social class, wealth, gender, family structure, sexual orientation, disability, and so on. This urges school leaders to be aware of their central roles and responsibilities in terms of justice issues in their schools, and this makes it very clear that a just school depends on leaders believing in social justice. In other words, school leaders and their efforts to create a just school have explicit effects on justice issues in schools.
Article
Educational Leadership and Job Satisfaction
Raimonda Alonderiene and Margarita Pilkiene
Educational leadership, job satisfaction, and their relationship are revealed in contemporary research on the psychosocial phenomena of educational organizations. Historically, leadership and job attitudes, including job satisfaction, were studied in separate literatures, with different methodologies, and by different groups of researchers. Educational leadership is a broad stream of study, relating all the richness of leadership schools of thought within the context of education. However, the typology identified in this article helps in summarizing and analyzing educational leadership theories. Job satisfaction is a narrower construct, the focus being on the attitudinal nature of it. Teacher job satisfaction is defined as teachers’ affective reactions to their work or to their teaching role. Literature suggests that among the many antecedent factors of job satisfaction, leadership (in a variety of its lenses, such as trait, position, role, process, relationship, and lifestyle) is one of the strongest predictive factors, even more, educational leadership in general has a large positive effect on job satisfaction. Thus, exploration of the relationship between educational leadership and job satisfaction leads to a rich understanding of how teachers and other employees experience the effects of leadership and of how job satisfaction is enhanced, leading to organizational effectiveness in educational settings.
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Assessing the Impact of Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Policies
Russell B. Toomey and Zhenqiang Zhao
The United States prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education via federal law. Case law in the United States also applies the prohibition of sex discrimination to incidents that were motivated by a person’s sex or gender, including gender identity and expression. Enumerated nondiscrimination, school-based policies that include gender identity and expression are among the foundational policies advocated for by researchers and practitioners that aim to make schools safer for transgender and gender nonconforming students. These policies serve as a foundation for all other interventions or policies that may be implemented in a school to increase safety for transgender and gender nonconforming students. Further, enumerated nondiscrimination policies provide students with a clear understanding of their rights at school, and they provide school personnel with grounding to prevent and intervene in gender-based discrimination.
Research has found that transgender and gender nonconforming students experience high levels of stigma (e.g., manifested as discrimination, stigma-based bullying) in schools, and that these school-based experiences are associated with compromised educational outcomes in addition to disparities in behavioral, physical, and psychological health. Students in schools that have enumerated nondiscrimination policies report less bias stigma-based bullying attributed to gender identity and expression compared to students in schools with non-enumerated policies. Further, students are more likely to report that teachers intervene in stigma-based bullying attributed to gender identity and expression in schools that have enumerated nondiscrimination policies compared to those that do not. Finally, studies have found that nondiscrimination policies that include gender identity and expression attenuate the negative consequences of stigma for students.
Article
Critical Educational Psychology
Tim Corcoran
Critical educational psychology has developed in response to traditional psychological applications taking place in education. Common amongst this area of work are concerns with reductionist and pathological ways of understanding those involved in teaching and learning. Further alignments occur with the promotion of social justice, empowerment, and recognition of difference, particularly in relation to ableism, racism, and other forms of prejudice. Critical educational psychologists rely upon varieties of psychological theory to support their work including social constructionism, sociocultural theories, and psychoanalytics. The intimate connection between theory and practice is regularly made explicit in critical educational psychology. Depending on geographic location, more regularly outside of North America, the referents educational and school psychology can be interchanged. Areas of applied work in educational settings include assessment, counseling, and working collaboratively with professionals such as teachers and speech pathologists.
Critical educational psychologists examine the givenness of hegemonic psychological research and how this informs ways of knowing/being. Scientific methods are commonly targeted in this regard. Whether scientific accounts of people and the world should be dispelled outright provides grounds for ongoing debate. Even so, many critical educational psychologists are committed to working inclusively within and across different cultures and epistemologies. To this end, critical educational psychology is informed by explanations that are often marginalized from psychological discussion, such as critical race theory, contributions recognizing the global south, indigenous knowledges, as well as critical disability studies, posthuman theory, and new materialism. A central interest for critical educational psychology is championing difference differently. This is achieved through acknowledging the relationality of all things—human, nonhuman, material, and discursive—to affirm what is yet to be.
Article
LGBTQ+ Students in PK–12 Education
Benjamin A. Lebovitz, Erin K. Gill, Mollie T. McQuillan, and Suzanne E. Eckes
Shifts in the visibility and recognition of LGBTQ+ identity have been accompanied by an evolution in understanding how educational policies, curricula, and environments impact well-being, health, and academic success. Since 2015, landmark decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court recognizing same-sex marriage and expansively defining sex under employment law have been joined by a retrenchment in public opinion as well as federal and state policy. This paradox of both increasing LGBTQ+ visibility and resistance toward LGBTQ+ acceptance has centered LGBTQ+ youth in political debates, with a particular focus on issues related to transgender and nonbinary youth. Historically, the literature on LGBTQ+ students in schools has focused on discrimination and poor social relationships, such as bullying, harassment, and victimization. While situated in a deficit-based framing, students’ reports of negative school environments and their connection to poor academic and health outcomes provide the motivation for policymakers, educators, parents, and other educational stakeholders to invest in structural and social reform efforts. The law has played a prominent role in both the expansion and retrenchment of students’ civil rights in schools, and this has been true for LGBTQ+ students. LGBTQ+ students have experienced many favorable but fluctuating rulings in many courts, so school officials would be wise to keep apprised of the evolving decisions in their jurisdictions.
Educational stakeholders should familiarize themselves with the legal landscape, advocate for inclusive and protective state and local policies, ensure that local district practices protect LGBTQ+ students from discrimination and harassment in schools, leverage LGBTQ+-inclusive community organizations and resources, participate in trainings to improve inclusive school practices, and build LGBTQ+-inclusive facilities, teaching practices, and social supports for youth.
Article
Mentoring Epistemologies Beyond Western Modalities
Carol A. Mullen
Commitment to mentorship, while necessary to benefit mentoring parties, is insufficient to work with the complexities of contemporary educational settings, especially in pursuit of engagement and learning for all. Mentoring that makes a profound difference for all participants, worldwide, is oriented at the outset to call into question such organizational constraints as hegemony, hierarchy, and culture. Traditional versus alternative approaches to mentoring is a critical binary that can be differentiated in the abstract. However, context and culture are existing organizational realities for which mentoring forms, enactments, and activities (such as mentoring circles) either perpetuate the status quo or produce significant change. Thus, alternative mentoring approaches work within both the traditional view of mentoring and any alternative to it.
Article
Professional Socialization in Schools
Asiye Toker Gökçe
Socialization is a process through which someone learns to become a member of society. Individuals learn how to perform their social roles, internalizing the norms and values of the community via socialization. Professional socialization is a type of adult socialization. It is a process through which newcomers internalize the norms, attitudes, and values of a profession. They receive instructions, and they learn the knowledge and skills necessary to satisfy professional expectations they are supposed to meet. Thus, they can adjust to the new circumstances and new roles of the profession. Individuals gain a professional identification and feel a commitment to a professional role during the process. In some way, the interpretation of newcomers, the agents of the profession, and the organization produce this.
New teachers participate in the community of educators, and they learn how to be a member through the socialization process. They learn new skills, such as how to teach, and internalize new values, such as believing there will be cooperation among colleagues. They learn regulations and organizational contexts, while they develop a style of teaching. As a consequence, they construct a professional identity by internalizing values and norms of the profession and redefining it.This sometimes happens regardless of the school in their professional socialization process. Despite the many challenges inherent in the profession, new teachers are expected to be socialized while performing their duties. Thus, new teachers try to develop an identity and survive in the job through interaction and communication with other teachers. Some adjust easily, while others do not and leave the profession. Some use situational adjustments, while others prefer to strategically redefine the situation within the process. In addition to teachers, new school principals also need to be socialized in their roles in their first year. Becoming a school principal requires different procedures than teachers’ socialization. Nevertheless, models about the socialization of teachers and school principals explain professional socialization as happening through anticipatory, preservice, and in-service.
