School as ‘survival game’: representations of school in transition from preschool to primary school

In children's lives the start of school is a turning point: compulsory education is their first encounter with civil duties. This important step in the process of becoming individual citizens is permeated with strong emotions and ambivalent expectations. However, the representations of school are created, established and negotiated in educational experiences preceding the start of school. In this article I explore the ways in which school is constructed in a Finnish preschool context. I build on ethnographic data generated in two preschool classes. First, I focus on how school is constructed in the social practices of teaching and in the physical space of preschool. Second, I analyse how children construct themselves as future school children and citizens by taking up available discourses and cultural practices. I argue that in official preschool, an ethos of individual survival characterises representations of school. Psychological, social and physical challenges are emphasised. Although preschool teachers in interviews and informal discussions sometimes problematise the ways in which school operates, in their teaching school practices are represented as natural. However, children actively exhibit their agency by collectively reworking of discourses and cultural practices and by renegotiating their informal relationships.     

“They would make you feel stupid” - Ability grouping,Children’s friendships and psychosocial Wellbeing in Irish primary school

Increasing international attention on wellbeing places the onus on education systems to support children's positive psychosocial development. Despite broad and rich literature highlighting the limitations of implementing ability grouping as pedagogy and its impact on how children ‘do’ and ‘feel’ learning in school, this practice still persists in systems across the OECD. This Irish study draws on qualitative and sociometric data from 3 case study schools with 100 children. It explores how teachers cast an ‘invisible hand’ over children's peer networks, shaping friendships and patterns of inclusion/exclusion within the classroom. It builds on current literature in the field exploring how peer interaction is influenced by ability group assignment using network analysis. Findings also reveal the psychosocial impact of these dynamics, with children assigned to lower ability groups most impacted by lower social status, exclusion from peers and increased experience of bullying. These experiences evoked feelings of disengagement, anger and isolation.     

The interest of Bavarian primary school pupils in geographical topics and methods – selected results of an empirical survey

Interest is a central learning prerequisite for teaching. The article deals with a survey among 1600 primary school pupils in forms 2, 3 and 4 (ages 7–10) in the German federal state of Bavaria who were interviewed on their interest in geographical topics and working methods. They were given a questionnaire including 40 items to indicate their individual interest on a five-point Likert scale. The results show that the subscale ‘natural disaster' generates the highest interest, followed by ‘phenomena of geoscience' and ‘people and peoples'. The interest in all three subscales decreases with increasing age. Furthermore, several gender-specific differences occur. Among the working methods, experimenting, films and computers hold the first three places whilst again showing significant differences concerning age group as well as gender.     

Parental collaboration in relation to children’s school lives – advanced regulation or an opportunity for solidarity?

Abstract

Parental collaboration is both promoted for enhancing children’s performance and criticized for reproducing educational inequality. The issue of parental collaboration, thus, presents an opportunity to discuss theoretical differences in current debates about education, notably the educational consequences of social background and governmentality. The article emphasizes the conflictual nature of children’s school lives and analyzes the social interplay between the involved subjects, who are connected through their engagement in common matters and concerns. Our analysis challenges approaches inspired by Bourdieu that analyze the social reproduction of inequality in terms of discrepancies between parental style and the culture of the school. It also raises questions about the Foucauldian perspective which regards policies and practices of parental collaboration as means to govern parents. Through a discussion of these analyses, the article shows how different ways of conceptualizing parental collaboration offer different opportunities for organizing collaboration and dealing with the historical problems of the school.     

Leaving or staying in teaching: a ‘vignette’ of an experienced urban teacher ‘leaver’ of a London primary school

In the field of teacher attrition, there is a significant body of literature on why teachers leave high-needs urban schools and particularly why beginning teachers leave their schools and the profession. However, there is little research on the reasons why experienced teachers leave the teaching profession. This paper examines this subject by considering whether teachers experience an ‘identity crisis’ in their careers which prompts them to leave. Drawing on identity theory, data from a single case study of an experienced urban teacher are taken from a wider qualitative research study carried out in London, England. The case is made that decisions to leave or stay in a school are contingent on a number of personal, professional and situational factors related to the teacher’s identity. The article concludes that one way to understand why long-serving teachers leave the profession is to examine aspects of their teacher identity and explore how a crisis in professional identity can contribute towards teacher attrition. In the light of this alternative approach towards understanding attrition, at the very least, supportive structures can be put in place to encourage more teachers to stay and contribute to the success and well-being of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.     

Revisiting “The fertilization fairytale:” an analysis of gendered language used to describe fertilization in science textbooks from middle school to medical school

Emily Martin’s (Signs J Women Cult Soc 16(31):485–501, 1991) article, “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male–Female Roles,” was published in Signs over 20 years ago. In this groundbreaking article, she discusses how gender roles are often projected onto reproductive biology, leading to the portrayal of eggs as passive and sperm as active. We were interested in seeing if many of her findings are still relevant today. We analyzed science textbooks from the middle school to the medical school level to determine if fertilization in human reproduction is described in gender-biased language regarding the sentence structure, amount of information provided for female and male processes/parts, and neutrality in describing female and male processes/parts. Although there has been much improvement, there is still a long way to go. Sexist language in scientific textbooks is troubling because it negatively affects both female and male students and undermines teachers’ ability to teach in an accurate and gender-neutral way.     

“Straw bonnets” to superior schooling: The “failure” of the charity school movement in the context of nineteenth-century Ireland – a reappraisal

The spectacular growth and equally spectacular decline of the eighteenth-century charity school movement prompts this examination of the contribution made by the movement to nineteenth-century schooling – particularly superior or secondary schooling. Educational historians have argued that the movement was a failure. This paper argues that only in the case of one charity school-type – the charity day school – may failure be safely attributed to the charity school movement. The charity boarding schools, hospitals and asylums were far from being a failure. Indeed, in nineteenth-century Ireland, these schools, in response to social change, advanced from “straw bonnets” to superior schooling. Historians have also noted that the real difficulty surrounding the charity school is that of defining it. For Jones, it was an omnibus term that embraced all schools of a like nature. And indeed charity schools constitute a broad genre of schooling. In order to qualify the received assessment of the charity school movement in terms of “failure”, it has been found necessary to classify the charity school types within the broad genre they constitute. The paper assembles a number of charity school types and identifies the charity boarding school as that institution that successfully made the transition to superior status. The characteristics of the superiorisation process are outlined, as are the unique circumstances of nineteenth-century Ireland that facilitated, indeed required, it.     

Developing new “Professionals”: Service learning in marketing as an opportunity to innovate in higher education

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) promotes the use of student-centered participatory methodologies and the design of curricula focused on the acquisition of competences. The objective of this paper is to identify the categories of competence that contribute the most to achieving learning outcomes through the practice of Service Learning (SL) in the teaching of marketing. Using the categories described in the Tuning model, we design a model to analyze the relationships between perceived learning outcomes and competences. The main findings are: 1) there is no evidence of any relationship between perceived interpersonal and systemic competences and perceived learning outcomes, 2) there is a relationship between perceived instrumental competences and perceived learning outcomes and, 3) students do not perceive that achievement of learning outcomes is the cause of the grades they obtain. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications.     

Micro classes as a primary school–level mathematics education response to COVID-19 pandemic in China: students’ degree of approval and perception of digital equity

Educational Studies in Mathematics - The article introduces a mathematics education measure in response to the COVID-19 epidemic in China and explores students’ degree of approval...     

Caught between cultures: case study of an “out of school” ethnic minority student in Hong Kong

This paper reports a case study on Maneesha Rai, a Nepalese girl living in Hong Kong and an “out of school” student. Based on in-depth interviews, a case was constructed of her previous school days and current “out of school” days. These provided a vivid picture of her life and several themes were created using schema analysis that help explain the reasons for her “dropping out” of school after Form Five. It has been common to attribute school failure for ethnic minority students in Hong Kong to problems with Chinese language education. Yet Maneesha’s case study shows that her experience of failure in other subjects such as Mathematics and Science contributed to her lack of successful schooling. Maneesha’s school failure was more than simply a consequence of academic failure. Rather, there were many other interrelated factors such as peer and community factors, dropout history in the family, racism, differences in schooling culture found that contributed to her school failure. In addition, Maneesha, like many of her ethnic minority friends, enjoyed the freedom afforded her in Hong Kong, but it seemed such freedom also meant inadequate attention from her teachers.     

“Science of the singular”: an explanatory single case study of whole school guidance counselling in Ireland

This article will discuss the findings of a single explanatory case study on the model of whole school guidance counselling in the Irish secondary school system, which was carried out during a turbulent period of policy and practice changes in the delivery of guidance counselling services to students from 2012 onwards. Although the case study is positioned within a single voluntary school, the findings may be typical of similar secondary schools settings in Ireland and abroad. Particular focus is given to explicating the key findings of the case study through the specific themes of: concepts of whole school guidance counselling, the Irish integrated model of guidance counselling, stakeholder roles and responsibilities, and the effect of resource re-allocations by policy makers funding guidance school services.     

“Anti-hero”Feature of Black Humor in Postmodernism Literary Fiction:with“Yossarian”in Catch-22 as an Example

Yossarian is the hero in Catch-22 written by Joseph Heller in 1961,bearing the typical"anti-hero"feature of Black Humor in postmodernism literary fiction.This paper aims at giving some of the examples to make readers clearer of the Black Humor and more familiar with the"anti-hero"feature of Black Humor in postmodernism literary fiction.     

“I expect to be engaged as an equal”: collegiality expectations of full-time,non-tenure-track faculty members

Nationally, non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF) represent the new majority. Efforts to move the full-time NTTF role from expendable labor to sustainable professional position have led to improvements in policy and working conditions at many institutions. Still, the profession broadly has just begun to grapple with the implications of this shifting labor market on aspects of the profession traditionally reserved for tenure system faculty, such as collegiality. In this qualitative study we use Bess’s (High Educ Handb Theory Res 8:1–36, 1992) framework of structure, culture, and behavior to analyze the collegial expectations of 38 full-time, NTTF members. Participant accounts point to a desire for parity despite differentiation, and highlight the fundamental contradictions of a professional virtue that requires the independence of faculty for it to be fully expressed.     

Does equal access mean treat the same? From theory to practice in the classroom of English as an Additional Language learner in Ireland – towards a transformative agenda

While a substantial body of research exists on First- and Second-Language Acquisition (SLA), research on the language acquisition process that a language minority student goes through when they are acquiring a second language has been largely unexplored. Pedagogical practices that espouse language learning theories facilitate both the language development and integration of the language minority child into the classroom. This paper will look at various linguistic variables within the field of SLA which are of particular relevance to the language acquisition process of such students in an Irish context. By embedding these linguistic factors into pedagogical practices, educators can engage with a transformative framework which will not only aid their linguistic and cognitive development, but will also empower the students by developing their critical language skills and facilitate their ability to access the mainstream curriculum.     

“You have to do something beyond containing”: developing inclusive systems in a partnership of primary schools

Reducing fixed term exclusions (FTE) in primary schools is a difficult proposition. This research discusses how a partnership of primary schools developed more inclusive systems to support students previously given FTEs for disciplinary purposes. Longitudinal data from interviews and documentary sources trace the development of an approach amongst primary schools with previously high levels of FTE. The process of developing a model of transferred inclusion (TI) within the partnership led to schools changing practices around behaviour management, thus developing more inclusive systems. The paper elaborates on partnership work around the TI project that opened up discussion and questioning of practice around behaviour, leading to schools thinking about their systemic practice. The benefits of TI, therefore, were a prompt for development, rather than just an intervention to reduce exclusions. Changes in practice supported through the TI process lead to claims that substantive change would not have happened without the TI project.