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Summer 2005
| Volume 20 | Number 4
A Tribute to O. L. Davis Jr. and the Editorial Board
Imperial Delusions and Some Possible Consequences for the School Curriculum
O. L. Davis Jr.
A Place to Belong: Student Agency in the Social Capital of a Magnet High School
Elaine Clift Gore
Drawing on six years of historical research, this article presents a theoretical representation of the social mechanisms at work in the 30-year history of an ethnically diverse, public, magnet arts high school in an urban U.S. school district. Students' sense of belonging has been a significant factor in creation and maintenance of social capital in this school from its founding in 1971 through spring 2002. Merging the psychological concept of belonging with the sociological construct of social capital provides a functional understanding of social capital at work in a contemporary high school. Earlier scholarly work on both belonging and social capital in schools has failed to consider the possible agency of students as portrayed in this article. Students' sense of belonging emerges as a necessary addition to the theory of social capital in the evaluation of high schools' social functionality and a key to better student experiences in these institutions.
Balancing Feedback and Inquiry: How Novice Observers (Supervisors) Learn from Inquiry into Their Own Practice
Brent Kilbourn, Catherine Keating, Karen Murray and Irene Ross
Giving constructive feedback to a teacher is a complex process. This article addresses the difficulty of giving feedback by discussing three different cases, each of which illustrates a dimension of the complexity of learning the process. It argues that an attitude of inquiry increases the likelihood that a novice observer (supervisor) will become better at providing feedback. These cases illuminate why genuinely constructive feedback is difficult to learn and to practice.
The Struggle for the American Extracurriculum at Ithaca High School, 1890–1917
Sevan G. Terzian
Numerous scholars have observed that the comprehensive high school has never succeeded in socially unifying the entire student body. This article attempts to explain why this has been the case by tracing the origins and development of the extracurriculum at Ithaca High School from 1890 to 1917. It demonstrates that students struggled with administrators to control clubs, athletic teams, and secret societies. Students' active role in shaping the character of the high school frustrated administrators' attempts to engineer a coordinated extracurriculum that would facilitate social unity.
Ninth Grade Physics: A Necessity for High School Science Programs
John R. Wilt
The traditional order in which science courses are taught in U.S. high schools is biology, chemistry, physics. The physics course usually is regarded as very difficult because it requires both high-level mathematical skills and high-level thinking skills; it is taught in the final year of high school to provide time for students to develop the necessary background in advanced mathematics and higher-order thinking skills. Research over the last 10 years indicates that an understanding of physics does not require, in fact, high-level mathematical skills and that some difficulties with physics are the result of students' misconceptions acquired at some earlier time. When these difficulties are addressed properly, it is possible to teach physics successfully to high school freshmen, providing them with considerable benefit for later science courses, particularly chemistry and biology.
Copyright © 2004 by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
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