What do professional learning policies say about purposes of teacher education?

Enhancing teacher learning is acknowledged globally as a key route to improving student outcomes, thereby contributing to nation states’ economic competitiveness. This globally accepted policy “hypernarrative” is driving reform of teacher education policy internationally. This article seeks to analyse some key features of contemporary teacher professional learning policies in terms of the underpinning purposes of education, in an attempt to make more explicit the purposes and potential implications of particular policy choices. The analysis draws on literature related to the fundamental purposes of school education, highlighting three broad, but distinct categories of “purpose”: the socialisation function; the development of human capital; and “subjectification” which focuses on individual creativity. While principally conceptual in nature, the article draws on the Scottish policy context in exemplifying the analysis, concluding that there is a tendency towards socialisation and human capital functions, at the expense of subjectification purposes.     

Information revolution: William Chambers, the publishing pioneer

With the arrival of steam power and new machinery in the 19th century, the production of printed media was transformed for the first time since the emergence of the printing press more than 300 years earlier. Yet until the 1850s, most publishers remained content with traditional methods, which enabled them to make profits from a small but affluent circle of readers. This article (part of the Science in the Industrial Revolution series) will show how William Chambers (1800-1883) was one of the first to make full use of the new technologies. He was driven by a determination to reach readers of all social classes, to produce a genuinely cheap instructive publication and to overcome the challenges of reaching a national market from his base in Edinburgh.     

The role of different school organizational models in the psychological adaptation of refugee adolescents

Given the high number of refugee children and adolescents around the globe, it is critical to determine conditions that foster their adaptation in the receiving country. This study investigated the psychological adaptation of recently arrived adolescent refugees in Germany. We focused on whether psychological adaptation reflects the organizational approach taken by the school that refugee adolescents initially attended. School is an important context for the development and acculturation of young refugees. As in other European countries, the schooling of refugee adolescents in Germany is organized in different models: separate instruction in newcomer classes, direct immersion in regular classes, and mixed approaches. To answer our research questions, we used self-reported data from 700 refugee adolescents (12-, 14-, and 17-year-olds) in a representative survey of refugees in Germany. As indicators of their psychological adaptation, we analyzed their sense of school belonging, their emotional and behavioral problems, and their life satisfaction. Comparing them to non-refugee peers, the refugee adolescents showed similar levels of psychological adaptation, and an even higher level in the case of school belonging. Multiple regression analyses provide limited support for the assumed advantage of the mixed school organizational model: While students who initially attended a mixed approach reported higher levels of school belonging than those in other models, no differences emerged on the other indicators. We discuss the implications of our findings for the schooling of newly arrived refugees.

     

Higher education professionals' perspectives on international student experiences of life and learning in Ireland: a qualitative study

Although numerous studies have explored international students' experiences, there is a dearth of research exploring the perspectives of professionals who have contact with international students. The present study addresses this gap in the literature by providing an analysis of higher educational professionals' (n=11) perspectives of international students' experiences and analysing the challenges which arise when working with international students. In this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with staff from a large Irish Higher Education Institution. Participants described a range of difficulties experienced by international students, including sociocultural and psychological difficulties, and outlined a number of challenges which exist when dealing with international students, most of which relate to cultural differences and lack of interest in internationalisation. The findings have important policy and practical implications for higher education service provision and point to the need to consider internationalisation as a process which can be enriching for international students, host students and staff members alike.     

General Communications

Joseph E. Dispenza's Advertising the American Worpan (Dayton, Ohio: Pflaum Publishing, 1975—price not know, paper)

Len Biegel and Aileen Lubin's Mediability : A Guide for Nonprofits (Taft Products, 1000 Vermont Ave., N.W., Washington D.C. 20005—price not given, paper)

Don Allen's The Electric Anthology: Probes into Vass Media and Popular Culture (Dayton, Ohio: Pflaum Publishing, 1975- 1:Tan- not known paper)

A Perspective on Information Resources: Annual Report 1974-75 (Program on Information Technologies and Public Policy, 200 Aiken Computation Laboratory, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 02138—$6.00, paper set of two booklets)

Patricia Files' A Guide to Educational Resources: 1975-76 (Box E, School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. 94305— $3.50, paper, with checks made payable to "Box E")     

Transmitters of Culture in the Stream of Stories: Two 'East-West' Storytellers

Navdeep is a six-year-old storyteller whose stories give insights into his *iwareness of ‘story’ in terms of his ‘East-West’ heritage and his language development. Using his story ‘The Witch and the Gang’, I have analysed his narrative competences. Salman Rushdie is another ‘East-West’ storyteller, and I have used Haroun and the Sea of Stories to place Navdeep's storying in both a cultural and a linguistic context.