Do honors students have more potential for excellence in their professional lives?

Universities in many countries increasingly value talent, and do so by developing special honors programs for their top students. The selection process for these programs often relies on the students’ prior achievements in school. Research has shown, however, that school grades do not sufficiently predict academic success. According to Renzulli’s (1986) three-ring model, student characteristics relating to intelligence, motivation and creativity are the most important predictors of excellent achievements in professional life. In this paper, we will investigate whether honors students differ from non-honors students in terms of these characteristics. By means of a questionnaire, more than 1,100 honors and non-honors students at Utrecht University were asked to assess themselves on six characteristics: intelligence, creative thinking, openness to experience, the desire to learn, persistence, and the drive to excel. The results showed that the honors students differed significantly from the non-honors students in terms of the combined variables as well as for the separate variables, with the exception of ‘persistence’. The strongest distinguishing factors between honors and non-honors students appeared to be the desire to learn, the drive to excel and creativity, whilst there was little difference in terms of intelligence and persistence. However, the profiles of these differences varied according to the study program. While Law and Humanities honors students differed from their non-honors peers in terms of their drive to excel, Physics honors students were primarily more eager to learn than their non-honors peers, while the LA&S honors students scored higher on creative thinking than non-honors students.     

What disengages doctoral students in the biological and environmental sciences from their doctoral studies?

This study explored the causes of student disengagement from their doctoral studies in the biological and environmental sciences. The data came from interviews of 40 doctoral students (male?=?15, female?=?25) and underwent qualitative analysis for content. Our results showed that doctoral studies provide multiple contexts for disengagement, such as the scholarly community and supervision, while doctoral students’ sense of distress, cynicism and inefficacy emerged as central components of disengagement. The study identified isolation, indifference, and lack of support and constructive feedback as sources of cynicism, while distress and inefficacy were more often related to failure or lack of progress in research. Our findings indicate that the source of disengagement can vary not only between individuals, but also between the academic activities at hand. Thus, while promoting an engaging doctoral experience, awareness of what typically triggers disengagement in the doctoral journey is vital.     

What do LGBTQ students say about their experience of university in the UK?

Little is known about the experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) university students in the UK. One of the main reasons for this seems to be that the monitoring of sexual orientation and gender identity is not routinely undertaken and is not consistent across all Higher Education establishments. This can mean that identifying LGBTQ students is not always easy, and one result of this is that LGBTQ students who have lesser rates of student satisfaction are not being targeted for improvement strategies, which are intended to increase satisfaction and increase student survey scores. One study that gives some new insight into the experiences of LGBTQ students in England was conducted in collaboration with the LGBT service provider METRO and The University of Greenwich. This article explores some of the main findings from that study and discusses the implications these may have for Higher Education and those establishments wishing to increase satisfaction and wider participation with sexual minority students.     

What is critical about critical pedagogy? Conflicting conceptions of criticism in the curriculum*

Abstract

In this paper, I explore the problems of cultivating a critical attitude in pedagogy given problems with accounts grounded in critical social theory, rational liberalism and pragmatic esthetic theory. I offer instead an alternative account of criticism for education in open, pluralistic, liberal, democratic societies called 'pedagogy of difference' that is grounded in the diversity liberalism of Isaiah Berlin and the dialogical philosophy of Martin Buber. In our current condition in which there is no agreement as to the proper criteria for assessing attitudes and actions, for a critical attitude to gain a foothold one must learn to evaluate proposed beliefs and behaviour-based standards within a particular tradition as well as those drawn from another viewpoint. To know oneself, one must engage others who are different. But to engage others in a meaningful way one must be immersed in a tradition to which one is heir or with which one chooses to affiliate.     

The case of high motivation and low achievement in science: what is the role of students’ epistemic beliefs?

The importance of motivation-related factors in shaping students’ academic achievement across a range of areas, including science, has been consistently acknowledged by the existing research literature. In an effort to improve students’ science achievement, many education systems put particular emphasis on the enhancement of intrinsic (i.e. enjoyment and interest) and instrumental motivation in the subject. However, based on the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data, many of the countries that managed to increase their motivation indices between 2006 and 2015 did not necessarily note a rise in science performance, with many still performing below the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average. Interestingly, although students’ motivation increased in some of these countries (e.g. Luxembourg, Iceland and Greece), their average performance in science decreased. Using the PISA 2015 data for Greece, this study examined the case of high motivation and low achievement in science by incorporating epistemic beliefs in the discussion. The multilevel analysis confirmed the importance of 15-year-old students’ motivation for learning science in predicting their science achievement and highlighted the positive predictive power of their epistemic beliefs. Policy and practice recommendations are provided based on the study findings, stressing the key role of students’ epistemic beliefs.     

What is the reality of ‘inclusion’ for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties in the primary classroom?

Abstract

Current education policy is oriented towards including children with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms. Hitherto they have been, on the whole, educated in special schools. Children with special educational needs include those who are physically disabled, those with learning difficulties and those with emotional and behavioural difficulties. It is the inclusion of this last group which is raising problems in mainstream classrooms. The article draws on psychoanalytic concepts in order to examine the reality of inclusion for three primary-age children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. Observational material is presented which shows the impact of inclusion policy on the children, their teachers and their learning support assistants. There is also discussion of the work of the behaviour support teacher, whose job is to reduce exclusions and help schools to become more inclusive.     

What are the affective and social outcomes for low-achieving students within an inclusive school in Hong Kong?

In response to several major curriculum reforms in Hong Kong since 2000, schools were required to initiate policies that catered for learner diversity. As well academic achievement, the reforms also emphasized the affective and social outcomes of the learning experience. A whole-school approach to learner diversity includes students with low academic achievement and mild disabilities, with schools being free to develop policies and practices inline with the needs of the students, teachers, and parents. Against the Chinese cultural context, where high academic achievement is highly valued, this study describes the affective and social outcomes of students in one Hong Kong primary school that streamed students according to achievement level. Four hundred and ten students across Primary 3–5 responded to four instruments measuring academic self-concept, alienation from school, teacher–students relationship, and social integration. The responses showed that, when studying the regular curriculum, students in the low-achievement group reported greater levels of alienation and lowest levels of social integration compared with students with the highest levels of achievement. On the other hand, low-achieving students who studied a differentiated curriculum reported affective and social outcomes more consistent with the responses from the high-achieving students. The results suggest that there is a mismatch between the aims and practice of the educational policy reflecting learner diversity and the cultural expectations of both parents and students.     

Exploring the characteristics of an optimal design of non-programming plugged learning for developing primary school students’ computational thinking in mathematics

Existing computational thinking (CT) research focuses on programming in K-12 education; however, there are challenges in introducing it into the formal disciplines. Therefore, we propose the introduction of non-programming plugged learning in mathematics to develop students’ CT. The research and teaching teams collaborated to develop an instructional design for primary school students. The participants were 112 third- and fourth-grade students (aged 9–10) who took part in three rounds of experiments. In this paper, we present an iterative problem-solving process in design-based implementation research, focusing on the implementation issues that lead to the design principles in the mathematics classroom. The computational tasks, environment, tools, and practices were iteratively improved over three rounds to incorporate CT effectively into mathematics. Results from the CT questionnaire demonstrated that the new program could significantly improve students’ CT abilities and compound thinking. The results of the post-test revealed that CT, including the sub-dimensions of decomposition, algorithmic thinking, and problem-solving improved threefold compared to the pre-test between the three rounds, indicating that strengthened CT design enhanced CT perceptions. Similarly, the students’ and teacher’ interviews confirmed their positive experiences with CT. Based on empirical research, we summarize design characteristics from computational tasks, computational environment and tools, and computational practices and propose design principles. We demonstrate the potential of non-programming plugged learning for developing primary school students’ CT in mathematics.

     

ICT use in mathematics lessons and the mathematics achievement of secondary school students by international comparison: Which role do school level factors play?

By means of an international comparison, the research presented in the article aims to identify supporting and hindering school level factors for the use of ICT in secondary school mathematics lessons. The relationship between ICT use and the performance of Grade 9 students in mathematics is examined and further integrated into a multi-level model including school level factors. Against the background of a theoretical allocation (1) the IT equipment of schools, (2) school leadership, (3) aspects of school goals and educational strategies as well as (4) teachers’ attitudes will be analyzed by means of a multi-level regression model as well as a multi-level path model including the mathematics achievement of students as measured in the context of PISA 2012. Representative school and student data from five countries, namely Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Singapore are taken into consideration, as the integration of ICT in teaching and learning is firmly emphasized in these countries (overall 24,579 students in 1263 schools). By modeling the complex structure, school characteristics are examined with respect to their effect on the use of ICT for mathematics teaching. Moreover, the relation between different factors and students’ mathematics achievement will be synchronously assessed in the different educational systems. The results show that characteristics at school level do play a major role in the integration of ICT into teaching and learning and turn out to be relevant across the educational systems. In addition to further in-depth country-specific findings, the results point to cross-national future challenges in the field of using technologies to enhance teaching and learning.     

The onion model: Myth or reality in the field of individual differences psychology?

To bring order in concepts related to individual learner differences, Curry (1983) designed the three-layered onion model. As this model provides an interesting way to distinguish related concepts – such as cognitive styles and approaches to studying – on the basis of their stability in learning situations, ample studies build further on this model. Given that only few studies have been conducted to empirically test the model, we conducted two studies to address this research gap. In the first study (N = 113), analyses do not show a clear causal path from three concepts belonging to different layers in relation to learning outcomes. In the second, longitudinal study (N = 162), no support is found for differences in stability between cognitive styles and approaches to studying. Our research does not provide solid evidence for the onion model, which warns to be cautious with applying the assumptions of theoretical models in educational practice without empirical support.     

Does it matter who your schoolmates are? An investigation of the association between school composition,school processes and mathematics achievement in the early years of primary education

Although many studies have focused on the importance of school composition for student achievement, there is still no consensus on whether school composition matters to student achievement, and, if so, why. Therefore, the present study investigates the association between school composition and mathematics achievement at the end of second grade in Flanders. International research points to the initial ability level, SES, ethnicity and sex composition of the school as potential variables in explaining differences in student achievement. Moreover, some researchers suggest that schools ‘react’ to their student body and for that reason we investigated the possible association between school composition and school processes. Data from the SiBO Project have been analyzed using multilevel regression and multilevel mediation analysis. The results showed no direct school composition effects with respect to prior achievement, SES, ethnicity and sex on math achievement. We found two small differential effects, indicating that mean school prior achievement seems to positively affect initially high achievers, and the proportion of minority students in school seems to negatively affect students speaking a non‐European language except for Turkish, Arabic or Berber at home. Furthermore, two small indirect effects were found which suggest that schools with a high mean prior achievement or a high mean SES keep in regular contact with their students' parents and this, in turn, appears to enhance students' math achievement. Overall, our results seem to indicate that school composition in the early years of primary education hardly matters.     

Unlocking the gates to the peasants: are policies of ‘fairness’ or ‘inclusion’ more important for equity in higher education?

Attempts to make higher education more equitable more readily succeed at the aggregate (sector) level than at the institutional, with students from disadvantaged groups being overrepresented in low-status institutions. It is suggested that this is because policies of ‘fairness’ (i.e. proportional representation) dominate the contemporary policy framework and are strongly resisted by elite universities. However, using the Australian higher education sector as an example, this paper argues that equity policy is actually a mix of ‘proportional fairness’ and ‘inclusion’ and elite institutions resist not because the policy is deficient but because it might actually work. An alternative approach to higher education equity policy is proposed; one which requires elite institutions to engage meaningfully with disadvantaged students but allows them to retain their status advantage.     

Evaluating the impact of the new National Award for SENCos: transforming landscapes or gardening in a gale?

This study, authored by Dominic Griffiths and Rachel Dubsky, both of Manchester Metropolitan University, considers the impact of the new National Award for Special Educational Needs Coordinators (NASENCo) in one English local authority. Data on the impacts upon both SENCos' personal professional development and upon their schools are drawn from semi‐structured interviews with six SENCOs, their headteachers and one colleague from each of their schools. Factors that appear to have enhanced or modified the impact of the training are identified. The article discussed, firstly, the emerging theme of SENCos' own perceptions of their role, and then the implications of the study's findings for future NASENCo course design.     

Where is the engineering I applied for? A longitudinal study of students' transition into higher education engineering,and their considerations of staying or leaving

This paper presents results from a qualitative longitudinal study of students' transition into higher education engineering. The study aims at comparing upper-secondary school students' expectations of engineering with their actual experiences when encountering the engineering programme. It explores how this encounter provides a platform for students to become integrated during first year. We find that students' expectations are poorly met by their first-year study programme. In their attempt to bridge the gap between their expectations and their experiences, the students apply three strategies: some endure the gap, some constantly try out different study strategies and some compromised their expectations and identities to become more aligned with the study programme. The findings show that even when students successfully manage to bridge the gap, their strategy may turn out to be counterproductive from a learning point of view. The implications of the study are discussed.     

What matters for students’ learning in the laboratory? Do not neglect the role of experimental equipment!

According to variation theory, it is essential to enable students to focus on the object of learning and discern its critical features, but the features that it is possible to discern often depend on the equipment used. Thus, in labs, the experimental technologies used may shape students’ experience of focal phenomena, in a human–mediating tools–world manner, by placing some aspects of reality in the foreground, others in the background, and visualizing certain aspects that would otherwise be invisible. However, this mediating role is often neglected, and instruments and devices are often seen as having little cognitive value. Hence, the role of experimental technologies in labs as tools for learning is examined here through a case study, in which three sets of students investigated the same physical relationships (Newtonian motion in an inclined plane), but using different measurement technologies. The results demonstrate that what it is possible for students to experience in a laboratory is heavily influenced by the chosen technology. Some technologies do not afford the discernment of features regarded as crucial for students to learn. Furthermore, analysis of video recordings shows that the three sets of students’ discourses differed, although they studied the “same physics”. Hence, the role of experimental technologies in students’ learning in labs should not be neglected, and their courses of action should be seen as material-discursive practice. Moreover, general conclusions about learning in labs should be drawn cautiously, specifying the conditions and technology used, and discussions about learning technologies should not be limited to the use of computers.     

What were the processes and outcomes of involving secondary school pupils transitioning from primary to secondary school in pre-arrival shared-reading? A case study

ABSTRACT

Coombe Boys’ School in New Malden worked with Kingston University to establish a ‘Big Read’, a scheme of pre-arrival shared-reading for boys transitioning from local primary schools into year 7 of the Coombe Boys’ secondary school. A novel was chosen for shared-reading, and all arriving pupils were given a copy at their Induction Day (at the end of the summer term). Copies were also made available to all staff. The book was the basis of group-based activities during the school’s Summer School (three weeks before of the start of the autumn term) and of cross-curricular individual and group-based activities during the early teaching weeks of the new school year. Outcomes were monitored using online surveys of pupils, staff and parents/guardians, and through face to face interviews with individuals from representative groups. Here outcomes are reported, both direct and indirect, comparisons made with similar schemes within higher education, and recommendations are made for how the scheme might be adapted for greater effectiveness in future.     

What is the influence of cultural capital on student reading achievement in Confucian as compared to non-Confucian heritage societies?

Abstract

The present study compared the contribution of familial cultural capital to the reading achievement of 116,508 15-year-old students who participated in PISA 2012 in six Confucian heritage cultures (CHCs) and nine non-CHCs with comparable educational and economic development. The different states of cultural capital examined comprised institutionalised (maternal, paternal education) and objectified (educational, cultural resources) indicators. Results showed that: (1) cultural capital levels were lower in CHCs (vis-à-vis non-CHCs); (2) cultural capital was generally positively related to student achievement in CHCs and non-CHCs; (3) the relationships between all cultural capital indicators, except educational resources, and achievement were weaker in CHCs than non-CHCs; and (4) objectified (vis-à-vis institutionalised) cultural capital was more strongly associated with achievement in CHCs. These results suggest that the stronger sociocultural emphasis on education in CHCs may have moderated cultural capital effects on student achievement and enabled more students to succeed academically.