New Article: Shagrir, Teacher Educators in Israel and in the USA

Shagrir, Leah. “Factors Affecting the Professional Characteristics of Teacher Educators in Israel and in the USA: A Comparison of Two Models.” Compare 45.2 (2015): 206-25.

 

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2013.828395

 

Abstract

The objective of this research study was to identify the factors affecting the professional characteristics of teacher educators by comparing two models of teacher education. The research findings revealed four major focal points that have an impact on professional characteristics: the operational model adopted by the institution where teacher educators work; the breadth and depth of teacher educators’ research and scholarship and the degree to which such scholarship is required as part of the assessment criteria; the cooperation between the training institution and the practical field (i.e., the schools where the students do their practice teaching); and the informal relationships between teacher educators and their students. The novelty of the study resides in the fact that these points affect teacher educators’ professional characteristics and that focusing on these characteristics facilitates a comprehensive view of methods, tools and directions that may expedite the professional development of teacher educators.

New Article: Davidson and Meyers, Conceptualizing Israeli Journalists’ Occupational Trajectories

Davidson, Roei and Oren Meyers. “Toward a Typology of Journalism Careers: Conceptualizing Israeli Journalists’ Occupational Trajectories.” Communication, Culture & Critique (early view; online first).

 

URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cccr.12103/abstract

 

Abstract

Journalism studies scholarship tends to emphasize professionalism as an occupational ideal, while scholarship on the culture industries stresses the salience of insecure careers. We argue that an exhaustive typology of journalism careers is needed to capture the potential variability in the structure of journalistic labor. This typology distinguishes professional, bureaucratic, entrepreneurial, unwillingly entrepreneurial, and nonemployed careers, and is relevant to a broader set of occupations in the culture industries. We illustrate this typology through an analysis of the occupational life histories of 60 Israeli journalists. This allows us to explain the dual nature of professionalism in journalism as a rhetoric nested within particular institutional contexts and this occupational rhetoric’s splitting into “tribes of professionalism.”