Feeling Heard: Inclusive Education,Transformative Learning,and Productive Struggle

Developments in international inclusive education policy, including in prominent UN documents, often refer to the aim of a quality education for all. Yet, it remains unclear: What exactly is meant by quality education? And, under what conditions are quality educational experiences possible for all learners? In this essay, Diana Murdoch, Andrea English, Allison Hintz, and Kersti Tyson bring together research on inclusive education with philosophy of transformative learning, in particular John Dewey and phenomenology, to further the discussion on these two questions. The authors argue that teacher–learner relationships, of a particular kind, are necessary for fostering environments wherein all learners have access to quality educational experiences associated with productive struggle as an indispensable aspect of transformative learning processes. They define such relationships as “educational relationships that support students to feel heard.” In developing their argument, the authors first analyze the concept of productive struggle, an aspect of learning increasingly recognized in research and policy as an indicator of quality education. Second, they discuss three necessary, though not sufficient, conditions for the teacher to cultivate educational relationships that support students to feel heard. Third, they draw out connections between environments that support feeling heard and those that support productive struggle, and they discuss teachers' challenges and risk-taking in creating such environments. The authors close with a discussion of implications for international policy, practice, and research.     

Zina and the enigma of sex education for Indonesian Muslim youth

Sexuality and sex education cannot be divorced from the moral values of the societies within which we must negotiate our sexual identities and relationships. Rather than pandering to the moral panic that is too often associated with the provision of sex education in non‐secular societies where religion is more visibly active in shaping sexual ideals and norms, this article takes up the challenge of investigating a relationship that is often represented as being innately contradictory. It explores the Islamic notion of zina (illicit sex) in relation to the provision of comprehensive sex education for Muslim youth in contemporary Indonesia. The article initially establishes the demand for sex education among Indonesian youth from the overlapping perspectives of health, human rights and Islam. It then explores the notion of zina in detail and exposes how Islamic stipulations against premarital sex are not necessarily in conflict with the provision of sex education. The final section of the article refines the argument in favour of utilizing Islam as a framework for developing religiously appropriate sex education and describes a suitable approach and content for Islamic sex education curricula for Indonesian youth.     

School experiences of Children in Need: Learning and support

Children in Need (CIN) have received little attention in education circles. These are children who are usually living at home but where there are concerns over their health or development due to abuse or neglect, or they are disabled. Like Children in Care (CIC, who mostly live away), educational attainments for CIN are lower than for the general pupil population, with higher levels of special educational needs. This article draws on additional analysis from a recently completed, mixed methods study into this educational attainment gap for CIN and CIC. The overall research involved quantitative analysis from official statistics of a whole-birth cohort of children (n = 471,688) born in 2000/2001 and tracked through to their General Certificate of Secondary Education exams in 2017. This was complemented by semi-structured interviews with 18 CIN and 23 CIC, parents and associated professionals. This article focuses on interviews with CIN, their parents and professionals. Two main themes emerged from this further analysis of the qualitative data. One concerned children’s problems with learning. Children said that they often struggled with their schoolwork and received insufficient classroom support to help. The second theme was that pupils and parents reported more positive experiences of learning and support in Pupil Referral Units compared with secondary schools. The overall conclusion is that attention should rightly address the social, emotional and mental health difficulties of CIN, but this should be coupled with adequate support for classroom learning.     

Special education,inclusion and democracy

Initially, it is pointed out that adherents of a psycho‐medical perspective often suggest exclusive solutions to special educational dilemmas and that such theorizing has been heavily attacked in past decades. However, it is argued that opposition of the psycho‐medical understanding of special education runs the risk of blurring differences between researchers and practitioners who are more positive about inclusion. One aim of this paper is to disentangle different perspectives on special education and different notions of inclusion among those positive to the idea of inclusion. A second aim is to argue for the necessity of situating the discussion about inclusion and special education within a discussion about democracy and the role of social science within it. Such a discussion seems even more important, given the range of positions discerned in the first part of the paper. In the concluding section of the paper, a proposal is presented for how special education, democracy and inclusion could be related to one another and for the role of research within these relationships. An important argument advanced is that the issue of who is to decide is analytically prior to what is to be decided with regard to inclusive practices.     

Student–teacher closeness and conflict in students with and without special educational needs

Teachers play a key role in creating effective conditions for students to succeed in school. The quality of student–teacher relationships is consistently associated with social, emotional, behavioural and academic adjustment, and this is even more relevant for students with special educational needs (SEN), considering these students’ emotional, social and learning vulnerabilities. This study aimed to examine the associations between students’ externalising and internalising behaviour, social skills and academic performance, and teachers’ perceptions of conflict and closeness in their relationships with students with and without SEN. Data regarding 360 students in Year 3, Year 5 and Year 7 (169 students with SEN) were collected. Teachers (n = 74) reported on the student–teacher relationship and students’ social skills, behaviour problems and academic performance. Special education teachers (n = 38) provided information regarding the diagnosis and profile of functioning of students with SEN. Results showed that teachers’ reports of students’ social skills and externalising problems were the strongest predictors of closeness and conflict. Internalising problems and SEN status also predicted decreased closeness, despite smaller effects. Taken together, findings support the importance of professional development opportunities focusing on facilitating teachers’ relationships with students with perceived challenging behaviour.     

Home-Based Child Care Provider Education and Specialized Training: Associations With Caregiving Quality and Toddler Social-Emotional and Cognitive Outcomes

ABSTRACT

Research Findings: Although there has been considerable research on the associations between the qualifications of teachers in center-based settings and preschool-age children’s developmental outcomes, very little is known about the relationships between home provider qualifications and the developmental outcomes of toddlers who attend licensed family child care settings or unregulated family, friend, and neighbor care settings. Analyzing a sample of toddlers and their providers drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort, we found positive relationships between home-based quality and higher education degree (defined as an associate’s degree or at least a bachelor’s degree), field of major, and coursework in early childhood education or a related field. However, provider qualifications were unrelated to children’s cognitive outcomes and related to a limited number of social-emotional outcomes. Practice or Policy: Our results suggest that as states consider the spectrum of supports needed for strengthening home-based child care in ways that facilitate responsive and developmentally supportive caregiving, strategies should include opportunities for home-based care providers to pursue higher education. A more nuanced analysis of the content and comprehensiveness of providers’ formal education is needed to better understand relationships between toddlers’ social and cognitive development and providers’ formal education.     

Just like home: Review of Partnerships in Educational Development

Despite the dominance of instrumental, psychological approaches to educational theory and practice in North America, a different understanding of the value and dynamics of education is often articulated informally in cultural representations (e.g. fiction and feature films) and in personal recollections. This alternative understanding is one in which the personal characteristics of a teacher or professor, and the relation between student and teacher are often paramount. Through reference to existing research and to examples drawn from real‐life practice, this paper presents a broadly existential and explicitly relational way of understanding education, or, rather, pedagogy. It gives special emphasis to the way that such an understanding has been articulated in the text Vergessene Zusammenhänge: über Kultur und Erziehung [Forgotten Connections: On Culture and Education] by Klaus Mollenhauer. The paper describes how the insights of Mollenhauer and other writers regarding an existential and relational pedagogy were translated and adapted for a North American course in teacher education, and how such a course can serve as an important ingredient in nurturing undergraduate students who are becoming teachers.     

The Western Australian School Leadership Programme: towards a new paradigm for leadership development

The changes confronting the workplace, such as the process of decentralisation currently transforming the structure of school systems, have given rise to new relationships within organisations, particularly new models of leadership. These changes reflect a wider and more comprehensive set of forces shaping human social existence in the latter part of the twentieth century, often referred to as post‐modernism. It is argued that the post‐modern world requires a different kind of education for school leaders in terms of both the content and the manner in which it is delivered. This paper describes the design, structure and delivery of one such programme in the state of Western Australia—the School Leadership Programme. It is argued that features of this programme represent the shape of things to come in professional development for school personnel as the education sector responds to the move from modernity to post‐modemity.     

Talented athletes and academic achievements: a comparison over 14 years

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into the academic achievements of 200 talented athletes in 1992/1993 and 200 in 2006/2007, aged 14–16 years. When compared with the national average, the athletes in 2006/2007 attended pre‐university classes more often (χ² = 57.001, p<.05). Of the 2006/2007 athletes, a higher percentage participated in pre‐university programs compared with that of athletes in 1992/1993 (χ² (1, n = 400) = 32.003, p<.05), whereas the national averages showed stability (χ² = .325, p>.05). Investigating self‐regulation appears relevant, as talented athletes may have developed a high sense of self‐regulation in sports, which may enable them to optimally profit from their self‐regulatory skills in their academics.     

Pa’lante,siempre pa’lante: pedagogies of the home among Puerto Rican college educated families

Research focused on Latinas/os in higher education often examines patterns of failure, while neglecting factors that contribute to Latina/o generational familial success. This article focuses on intergenerational strategies taught within college-educated Puerto Rican households that assist in academic achievement and success in higher education. Delgado Bernal theorized pedagogies of the home to explain co-constructed cultural knowledge within Chicana/o households to challenge deficit perspectives. Through analysis of educational oral histories of four college-educated Puerto Rican families, pedagogies of the home are extended. The Puerto Rican college-educated children demonstrate sin pelos en la lengua (without mincing words), contradictions among college completers, and pa’lante siempre pa’lante (always moving forward) as strategies employed in navigating higher education. In rearticulating, pedagogies of the home for the Puerto Rican community, institutions of higher education can better respond to the various experiences of Latinas/os.     

Regional Differences in Higher Educational Choice?

This paper examines geographical differences in choice of field in higher education. Formerly, educational attainment differed considerably between rural areas and urban centres. Today these differences are pretty much offset. What kind of education students from different geographical areas pursue is however less well known. This article examines this question. It analyses data from public administrative registers on the entire Norwegian population born between 1955 and 1983. It finds that people who have grown up close to a university more often study at a university, whereas people who have grown up near a university college more often study at a university college. Corresponding differences are found in the choice of educational field.     

Inclusive education and students without special educational needs

Background:?In the debate on inclusive education, students without special educational needs (SEN) are an important topic. However, there is a lot unknown about differences between these typical students in inclusive and non-inclusive classes. For example, the neutral results that are often found in earlier research could be caused by positive effects for some students, and negative effects for others.

Purpose:?This study investigated whether there is a relation between inclusive education and the academic achievement and socio-emotional functioning of typical students, and, more importantly, whether inclusive education affects the achievement and socio-emotional functioning of more and less intelligent typical students differently. Furthermore, we investigated whether differences occur by type of SEN of the included students. Here, we made a distinction between students with behavioural, cognitive and other problems.

Sample:?A representative sample of 27,745 students without SEN in Dutch primary education from a large cohort study in the Netherlands was used.

Design and methods:?Language and arithmetic tests were used to assess academic achievement. For socio-emotional functioning, both teacher and student questionnaires were used. A non-verbal IQ test was used to assess student intelligence. Based on the number of students with diagnosed SEN, the students without SEN were divided into several groups: typical students with no, a few and more than a few students with (certain types of) SEN in their class. Multi-level regression analyses were used to compare these groups.

Results:?For academic achievement, no differences were found between students without SEN in inclusive and non-inclusive classes. In this, we found no differences between intelligent and less intelligent typical students. For socio-emotional functioning, some differences were found, but the practical importance of these differences is unclear, since the effect sizes were small. The functioning of typical students does not meaningfully differ by type of SEN of the included students.

Conclusions:?The findings of this study are interesting in the light of the ongoing inclusion debate. Arguments against inclusive education often concern an assumed adverse effect on typical students. As in this study, hardly any differences were found between typical students in inclusive and non-inclusive primary school classes, this research strengthens the scientific evidence in support of inclusive education.     

Educational trust: relational and structural perspectives on young people on the margins of the education system

Background: Across Europe and the Nordic countries, it is widely agreed that the high proportion of 15–30-year olds not in employment, education or training is a challenge, which needs to be tackled by focusing on education. The political and institutional focus is on individual training readiness, individual qualification processes, individual building of confidence in oneself and so forth, culminating in an overall individual perspective.

Purpose: The study argues for a shift in focus away from an individual perspective on young people on the margins of education and towards a relational perspective that takes the social environment and the education system into account.

Sample: Respondents were 20 young people aged 17–24 who were participating in a specific project in a provincial town in Denmark, the aim of which was to encourage the youths to re-enter education.

Design and methods: Qualitative data were collected through: (1) 40 semi-structured qualitative interviews with 11 young people on the margins of the education system, and (2) observations of 11 respondents’ participation in educational activity. The analysis was based on relational and social constructionist theories.

Findings: The analysis of data from this small-scale study provides evidence to suggest that a shift in the current focus on the individual young person on the margins of education is needed. The concept of ‘educational trust’ is introduced as a supplement to the individual concept of self-confidence in order to capture the socially constructed aspects of the young adult’s participation in education.

Conclusions: We identify three overall components of educational trust: (1) social security and recognition, (2) flexibility in structures and (3) progression in skills. The concept of educational trust, it is suggested, creates a shift in focus from the individual young person to the role and function of the education system in aiming to reach the target of more young people completing education.     

One of the gang? Peer relations among students with special educational needs in Irish mainstream primary schools

Internationally and in Ireland, the adoption of inclusive education frameworks have been broadly welcomed, particularly by parents of children with special educational needs (SEN). Mainstreaming these children is generally viewed as positive primarily because of the social factors associated with attending mainstream schools for children with SEN. Despite this commonly held view, there is increasing evidence to show that children with SEN have difficulties participating in mainstream environments. Using data from the Growing Up in Ireland study of 8,578 nine year olds, this paper examines whether peer relations differ among typically developing students and students with different types of SEN. We focus on the quantity and quality of peer relations using data on the child’s number of friends and, using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, the quality of relations with their peers. These measures are examined by controlling for a range of individual, home and school-level factors simultaneously in a regression model. Our findings show that, all else being equal, students with SEN, particularly those with emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD), are more likely to have fewer friends and experience negative peer relationships compared to their peers without any additional needs. Based on these findings, we argue that specific interventions may be needed to promote positive peer experiences for children with SEN in mainstream education.     

Moral education in Hong Kong: Confucian‐parental,Christian‐religious and liberal‐civic influences

A brief review of the social and educational context of Hong Kong shows that the publication of the General guidelines on moral education in schools in 1981, by the Hong Kong Education Department, marked a milestone in the development of moral education. The Guidelines explicitly asserted moral education as one function of schooling, whilst also formally recognizing the home and the community as two main influences. This paper narrates how three moral sources of influence – namely Confucian‐parental, Christian‐religious and liberal‐civic – have shaped the development of moral education in Hong Kong from 1973 to 2003. It then examines in more detail: parental influence at home – the Confucian moral source in Chinese family; schooling influenced by religious sources – taking Christian schools as an example; and the Independent Commission Against Corruption as an official agency for moral education – a liberal source calling for civic morality. In conclusion, the post‐colonial emergence of nationalistic influence in the recently constituted Chinese Special Administrative Region, advocating national identity as the new core value, is traced and the implications for future moral education in Hong Kong are considered.     

Exploring Educational Opportunities for Foreign National Prisoners in Europe

ABSTRACT

To gain insight into the educational opportunities for European foreign national prisoners, an online survey was distributed among educational providers and prison managers (N?=?108). The results demonstrate that courses for learning domestic languages are most frequently offered. Other educational courses mostly relate to primary education and psychosocial courses. Based on the online survey, four organizations are investigated in depth to gain more information about how they work. We conducted 12 semi-structured individual and one group interview with professionals and prisoners. The results of the hybrid thematic analysis showed that different models exist to organize education for FNPs. The findings make contribution to the development of European pilot projects that provide distance education to FNPs offered by their home country.     

Educational Investment Risk of the Urban Citizens: Empirical Evidence in China

The risk of individual citizen’s investment in education specifically refers to the benefit changeability of individual investment in education. Risks always go with uncertainty. By adopting the method of quantile regression estimation and taking the Chinese urban citizens as samples, the author makes a positivist study of the risk of Chinese urban citizens’ individual investment in education. The result indicates that the individual citizen’s investment in education often suffers obvious benefit changeability, i.e., the risk and benefit of investment in education shows a positive correlation. It is not realistic to reduce the inequality of salaries by means of investing more money for receiving higher-level education. Therefore, relevant policy makers should pay due attention to the establishment of the mechanism for sharing the risk of investment in education and the system of social insurance. Translated from Education Research, 2005:4     

Changing Perspectives: The Professional Relevance of Higher Education on the Way Towards the Highly-Educated Society

Higher education has been one of the major thematic areas of the European Journal of Education over the years, and the relationships between higher education the world of work have been one of the 10 major themes in this area. The multitude of related articles shows substantial changes of the situation and the related discourse. The employment and work situation of graduates underwent changes in the course of expansion, the respective political climate had its ups and downs, and the knowledge base on the impact of study conditions and provisions of graduate employment and work improved over time. This notwithstanding, we note a constant return to the persistent questions as to whether we have too few or too many graduates. In recent years, higher education has been increasingly exposed to greater instrumental expectations. The paradigms of ‘knowledge society’ and ‘knowledge economy’ reinforce a call for higher education to serve more directly the ‘employability’ of graduates. As views vary strikingly regarding issues such as specialisation vs. general competences, preparation for predictable tasks vs. preparing for an unexpected future, etc., higher education could keep a diversity of options in the best ways to ensure professional relevance.     

Private higher education: challenges for Australia and beyond

Among the chief characteristics of the post‐industrial society are ambiguity and paradox. In Australian higher education, as in other sectors of Australian Society, these have found expression in individualism, private initiative and entrepreneuship.

The ‘privatization’ of higher education now includes the imposition on enrolment charges, the re‐introduction of ‘full cost’ fees, especially for private overseas students, moves towards the deregulation of salaries and conditions of employment of academic staff and the establishment of new ‘self‐contained’ and ‘hybrid’ private higher education institutions.

In response to these developments, debate has tended to centre upon a number of mythologies which inter alia assert that private higher education is new to Australia, that it is foreign to the Western academic tradition and that such education avoids the employment of public funds. Moreover, it is claimed that while private higher education is ipso facto elitist, it will, through competition, result in a more effective and efficient public sector.

The above mythologies are examined in the light of past, present and proposed developments in Australian higher education, with particular note being taken of the establishment of the Bond University in Queensland.