This is the English language contents page for E&SD 14(1)
Nick Rushby
Editorial: Plus ca change; c’est la meme chose! 6
Retraction 10
Nigel Fancourt
Looked after children: embedding attachment awareness in schools 11
Shalini Dixit
Generating Self-reflection: Findings from self-development workshops in teacher training curriculum 20
Mourat Tchoshanov, M Cruz Quinones, Elena Ibragimova, Liliana Shakirova and Kadriya Shakirova
Multiple Cross-case Examination of Lower Secondary School Mathematics Teachers’ Topic-Specific Content Knowledge in the U.S. and Russia 31
Milausha V. Gabdulkhakova
The ratio of tolerance to uncertainty, motivation for success, worldview and anxiety among male and female students in higher educational institutions of Kazan 45
Inna I. Golovanova, Nadezhda V. Telegina, Olga I. Donetskaya
Preparation for future teacher professional activity using a system for assessing the formation of competences 57
Anatolii Kasprzha, Anna Kobtseva, Margarita Shishkina
Pedagogical leadership as а school management tool and an object of research 68
Inna V. Krotova, Anna I. Akhmetzyanova
The psychological model of the specialist-defectologist’s readiness for professional and acmeological development 80
Lyudmila А. Mosunova, Elena V. Diner, Julia V. Buldakova and Svetlana N. Russkich
The development of interest in philological knowledge in the socio-cultural environment of the region 95
I received a shock last month. Forty years ago I wrote a book called An Introduction
to Educational Computing, and now the publishers have written saying that they want to
republish it in its original form as part of a programme to revive some of their key titles.
Their reason is that they believe these titles “very much reflect the context of the times in
which they were published. For newer libraries, it represents a chance to build up where,
for various political or economic reasons, library holdings have been neglected in the past
50 years but budgets are still strong.”
Well, this was all very flattering but it was a surprise none the less! I have a copy on
my bookshelf but I had not opened it for many years. It was time to re-read it and see
whether it was as dated as I suspected it was.
The educational potential of many children in the state’s care, including those in institutional homes
and fostered or adopted children, is unfulfilled. One possible contributory factor to their lack of
success is that schools do not fully address their wider personal anxieties and insecurities. Attachment
theory has been adopted in several educational districts (‘local authorities’) in England, and
this study reports on an evaluative mixed-methods research study of such training; it also theorises
this as a broader question about how schools engage with research. There was rich evidence that the
programme had an impact on whole staff understanding of attachment theory. Teachers and staff
commented positively on the impact of the programme; impact on pupils’ outcomes was hard to
quantify, though qualitative findings suggested that well-being was improving. Senior leader commitment,
support and resource allocation were crucial to effectively embedding the training, and
various structural issues were illuminated. The implications for embedding attachment awareness
more widely are discussed, and for our understanding of research use by schools.
Teacher education and development practices across the globe today, insist on having reflective
practices at their core. Given that self-reflective process rests upon psychological education, it is
widely agreed that student-teachers should be provided opportunities for self-learning through reflection
and assimilation of new ideas. However, self-development being a subjective concept, there
is lack of established methods for training teachers for self-reflective practices leading to self-development.
One such method is the self-development workshops recently added to pre-service teachertraining
in India. The present paper analyses the effectiveness of the self-development workshops in
teacher education curriculum. Drawing data from self-development workshops, based on Rogerian
approach, as part of a teacher training course, the paper traces and documents the intra-personal
and interpersonal growth of its participants.
This interpretive cross-case study examined the U.S. and Russian teachers’ topic-specific knowledge
of lower secondary mathematics. In total, N=16 teachers (8 from the U.S., and 8 from Russia) were
selected for the study using non-probability purposive sampling technique. Teachers completed the
Teacher Content Knowledge Survey (TCKS) as part of the purposive selection. The survey consisted
of multiple-choice items measuring teachers’ content knowledge at the cognitive levels of knowing,
applying, and reasoning. Teachers were also interviewed on the topic of fraction division using questions
addressing their content and pedagogical content knowledge. In order to analyze the qualitative
data, we conducted meaning coding and linguistic analysis of teacher narratives as primary
methods of analysis.
The study revealed that there are explicit similarities and differences in teachers’ content knowledge
as well as its cognitive types. The results are reflected in meanings expressed and language used by
teachers while responding to topic-specific questions on the division of fractions. The results of the
study suggest that in the cross-national context teachers’ knowledge could vary depending on curricular
as well as socio-cultural priorities placed on teaching and learning of mathematics.
The study’s main findings contribute to the body of literature in the field of cross-national research
on teacher knowledge with a narrow focus on a topic-specific knowledge. It suggests close comparison
and learning about issues related to teacher knowledge in the U.S. and Russia with a potential
focus on re-examining practices in teacher preparation and professional development.
The article describes a study of tolerance of uncertainty as the most important mechanism for the
effective functioning of a person in everyday, educational and professional activities. It presents data
on the manifestation of tolerance/ intolerance of uncertainty, motivation for success, perception of
the world, and anxiety among male and female students of higher educational institutions of Kazan
together with the relationship between these psychological parameters. The study aims to identify
the severity and interrelationships between tolerance for these factors. The study found psychological
differences between male and female students in terms of anxiety, motivation to achieve success,
and conviction in the kindness of the World, and indicated that in the males and females there is a
prevailing intolerance of uncertainty. The sources of this intolerance are shown. It also showed the
interrelations of intolerance of uncertainty with the motivation to achieve success among males. In
contrast, in female subjects, the motivation to achieve success is directly related to the peculiarities
of the world perception. At the same time, anxiety among students of both groups studied remained
low. A slight excess in the level of anxiety among female students is accompanied by a decrease in
the level of self-worth. The results of this study can be used to develop a theoretical model of personal
prerequisites for self-regulation of educational activities, training programs, and psychological
counselling.
The system of teacher professional training is currently focused on changing approaches to the
organization of the practical component. A competence approach involves the evaluation of educational
outcomes from the perspective of competence development. The purpose of this article
is to determine the levels of competence formation among student teachers to identify the main
competence components of further professional development. The study involved the assessment
of 132 reports on master’s work following the results of pedagogical practice. The analysis enabled
the identification of the problem areas in competence formation. The article presents the system of
competency assessment developed by the authors during the undergraduates’ teaching practice. It
offers recommendations for improving the basic professional educational programs, for changes
both in the structure of the module itself and in the order of mastering the modules.
The article examines the questionnaire developed by F. Hallinger for assessing pedagogical leadership.
Numerous international studies show that the principal and his executive team determine the
educational strategy of the school, promote its continuous and sustainable development, and ensure
high educational results of students. The aim of the study was to justify the possibility of using this
diagnostic tool in the work of the principal. It present and discusses the results, their completeness,
and the convenience of using the instrument.
In this study the author proceeds from the assumptions that the professional competence of a specialist
who works with people with disabilities is based on psychological readiness as an integral
personal quality of professional assisting people’s professions that are directly related to the willingness
of a subject of professional activity to professional acmeological development. However
the specialist-defectologist must, firstly, have a psychological readiness to work in the absence of
ready-made algorithms to provide assistance; secondly, to be able to predict in conditions of a deficit
of information because of the high degree of differentiation in the psychophysical development of
persons with disabilities; thirdly, constantly accumulate observations and use the increased volume
of information with the aim of its optimal adaptation and development as the main criterion for the
effectiveness of the correctional-pedagogical process.
Thus, the defectologists, listeners of advanced training courses, were taken as an experimental group
of this empirical research as a group of specialists who decided to develop additional educational
space.
The study was conducted with psychodiagnostic tools: valid and reliable questionnaires, a computer
program for statistical processing of SPSS data. Interpretation of the data was carried out according
to their compliance with N (0.1) and a high level of reliability: p≤0.001*** and p≤0.01**.
As the result within the framework of the psychological model of readiness, the potential factors for
expanding the zone of professional competence of the defectologist were determined: “self-respect”,
“adaptability” and a system-forming indicator with high factor load (from the block of motivational
personal characteristics of psychological readiness) – “motivation to achieve success”.
Education is no longer a closed sphere and there is a need to use philological knowledge as a basic
value through cultural and educational projects. This must take into account the regional culture
of speech, rhetoric, literature, and history. This project developed the format of an Open University
within which the project “Russian environment” was implemented. This was based on activityoriented,
personality-oriented approaches to learning, the concept of imagination development, and
the theory of functional systems. It led to the concept of development of philological knowledge in
the region, which the authors see as a system of content, methodological and information technology
components that meet the needs and demands of the socio-cultural environment. The article
presents experimental data on the efficiency of the approach. Philological knowledge is thought to
be an instrument of national identity formation, fostering tolerance and respect for the values of
national culture.