All welcome! Everyone belongs!: Leadership from voices seldom heard

Two basic points are made in this article:

-We must make a choice whether we ‘isolate’ people from or ‘include’ people in our communities. Including people is the only viable option.

-The key to ‘including’ people is with the very people we most often label as ‘the problems’. These ‘problem people’ can help generate answers when we learn how to listen, and when we offer genuine learning opportunities and valid partnerships with those who have been ‘missed’ and discarded.

Examples from various Frontier College programs illustrate these points and elaborate the central philosophy of the College (Student Centred Individualized Learning — SCIL), which is based on the beliefs that:

-All are welcome

-All belong

-All can learn

-All have contributions to make

The programmes are focused on ‘literacy’, which is a great deal more than reading and writing — it is about what kind of society we want. Literacy is a tool for ‘inclusion’ in communities. It is hard work, and includes love and tears, grief and joy, families and friends. It is based on the Right to Learn, and builds dignity, self esteem and choices.     

Analysing novices analysing Prolog: what stories do novices tell themselves about Prolog?

Informal observations of Prolog learners showed that, despite being presented with correct information and models, students still tended to construct their own idiosyncratic explanations of events, and, characteristically, they defended these ‘stories’ fiercely when tutorial intervention was attempted. Although the stories were often so flawed that the student's future progress was potentially hampered, it was nevertheless true that learning could not have proceeded at all without them. It seems that if we are to understand the novice Prolog programmer, we need to know about these stories, their source, and what, if anything, they have in common from one learner to another. Pain and Bundy (1987) posed the question “What stories should we tell novice Prolog programmers?” in order to teach them Prolog. In our research, we ask: “What stories do novices Prolog programmers tell themselves?” in order to learn Prolog. Observational studies undertaken showed that students used tacit knowledge of human discourse processes both to interpret the language used to communicate with the computer and to interpret the behaviour of the machine. Students did not appreciate the fundamental differences between natural discourse (as takes place amongst humans) and formal discourse (as takes place between humans and machines), and confused elements of the discourse levels. This can be an effective initial learning strategy, but unless its limitations are recognised, programs are inevitably incomplete at some level. Examples from these studies are reported here with illustrative protocol fragments.     

Becoming Ryan: lines of flight from majoritarian understandings of masculinity through a high school reading and mentoring program. A story of possibility

Within literature relating to the broad field of boys’ education attention is regularly drawn to the significant difference between essentialist and anti-essentialist accounts of “the boy problem” and the limitations of gender-based educational reforms which rely upon deterministic notions of what boys are ‘really’ like and, by extension, what they ‘really’ need. While these deterministic interventions have been widely critiqued in academic literature they nevertheless continue to dominate school and media based discussions about how to best support alienated, disengaged and at risk boys. This raises questions about the extent to which anti-essentialist approaches can be made more accessible and meaningful to teachers in schools. It further suggests the value of developing detailed accounts of real world interventions that have had a demonstrably positive impact upon the boys involved without reinforcing essentialist notions of masculinity. Adopting an attitude of “educated hope” (Giroux, http://www.units.muohio.edu/eduleadership/anthology/OA/OA03001.html, 2003) and drawing upon the resources of (Deleuze and Guattari, A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1987), this paper examines one such case of anti-essentialist reform involving three Australian schools. It explores one particular boy’s experience of an intervention known as Boys with Books and argues that Ryan’s journey can be conceptualised as a line of flight away from traditional forms of masculinity: a journey in progress that has impacted positively upon his relationships with peers and teachers and changed his beliefs about his possible future options. The paper, therefore, illustrates the capacity for teachers and schools to display anti-essentialist understandings about masculinity while responding in practical and ‘do-able’ ways to the needs of at risk, alienated and underperforming boys in schools.     

The concept of teaching: a reappraisal

This paper examines the concept of ‘teaching’ in early education and childcare and argues that the activity of teaching, broadly defined, concerns all adults who work in this area and occurs in all phases of the educational system. Bronfenbrenner's (1979 Bronfenbrenner U 1979 The ecology of human development: experiments by nature and design (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press)  [Google Scholar]) ecological perspective on human development is applied to conceptualise teaching as (1) adults' attempts to extend children's current phenomenological perspectives of the world; and (2) as being based on adults' ability to capture children's momentum towards learning. The implications of current terms such as ‘practitioner’, and the ways in which ‘teaching’ in early childhood education has been conceptualised, are also discussed.     

The Philosophy of Science and Technology in China: Political and Ideological Influences

In China, the philosophy of science and technology (PST) is derived from “Dialectics of Nature” (DN), which is based on Engels’ unfinished book Dialektik der Natur. DN as a political ideology provides political guidance for scientists and engineers. Therefore, since 1981, “Introduction to Dialectics of Nature” (IDN) has been an obligatory course for master’s degree students who study natural science or technology. In 1987, DN was renamed PST by the Chinese government in order to communicate and do research. The IDN teachers constitute most of the scholars who research PST. Nowadays, in China, PST includes philosophy of nature, philosophy of science, philosophy of technology, sociology of science, sociology of technology, “science, technology and society,” history of science, history of technology, management of science, and management of technology due to having too many IDN teachers. In fact, it is neither a branch of philosophy, nor a subject. The number of the IDN teachers has been increasing since 1981, which makes PST a miscellaneous collection of many branches or subjects. Finally, PST is facing two new challenges: the reduction of IDN and academic corruption.     

Research,theory and practice in the USSR

On the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, it would be interesting forProspects readers to take stock of education in the Soviet Union. The idea is not so much to review progress in education since 1922 as to speak of the present situation, with its strong points and its unsolved problems, and to outline how you think education in the USSR should develop in the next two decades. It would also be desirable for emphasis to be placed mainly on qualitative aspects, since the quantitative problems (enrolment in schools, teachers, schoolbooks, premises, services of all kinds, etc.) have largely been solved. This approach is all the more necessary because little is known outside the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe about the state of not tell those interested in education in your country about the qualitative aspects of your system, about the ‘why’ and the ‘how’. Furthermore, the special concerns of the education system in the USSR in terms of recent developments would seem to be: the universal phenomenon of the ‘information explosion’; the universalization of secondary education, practically achieved at the end of the 1970s and the major ‘Guidelines for the Economic and Social Development of the USSR for 1981–85 and for the Period Ending 1990’ adopted in March 1981 by the Twenty-sixth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This is the larger context surrounding this interview, with the successive questions treating theoretical and practical problems, the linguistic situation in the USSR and, finally, educational research and the dissemination of its results outside your country.     

Critical Issues in Teaching a Multicultural Counseling Course

A Multicultural Counseling course (MCC) brings unique challenges and rewards to both instructors and students. Given its unique challenges, the process of teaching a MCC is as important as, or even more important than, the content. Drawing from extant literature and the authors’ experiences, this paper discusses such topics as what to teach, how to teach, classroom dynamics, instructors’ issues, and students’ issues to provide a concise, practical, and comprehensive framework for teaching such difficult but essential courses.     

Principals of audit: testing,data and ‘implicated advocacy’

Historically, school leaders have occupied a somewhat ambiguous position within networks of power. On the one hand, they appear to be celebrated as what Ball (2003 Ball, S., 2003. The teacher's soul and the terrors of performativity. Journal of education policy, 18 (2), 215–228.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) has termed the ‘new hero of educational reform'; on the other, they are often ‘held to account’ through those same performative processes and technologies. These have become compelling in schools and principals are ‘doubly bound’ through this. Adopting a Foucauldian notion of discursive production, this paper addresses the ways that the discursive ‘field’ of ‘principal’ (within larger regimes of truth such as schools, leadership, quality and efficiency) is produced. It explores how individual principals understand their roles and ethics within those practices of audit emerging in school governance, and how their self-regulation is constituted through NAPLAN – the National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy. A key effect of NAPLAN has been the rise of auditing practices that change how education is valued. Open-ended interviews with 13 primary and secondary school principals from Western Australia, South Australia and New South Wales asked how they perceived NAPLAN's impact on their work, their relationships within their school community and their ethical practice.     

Towards a model for the determinants of occupational stress among schoolteachers

The determinants of stress in teaching were investigated in a context which allowed many of the characteristics of an educational system to be incorporated in the design. Using a specially developed self-report instrument, 545 secondary schoolteachers in Malta reported the perceived levels of stressfulness of 35 items covering various aspects of the teacher’s work environment. One-third of the respondents rated being a teacher as either very stressful or extremely stressful. A principal components analysis of the data on the 35 sources of stress yielded a four-factor structure described in terms of ‘pupil misbehaviour’, ‘poor working conditions’, ‘poor staff relations’ and ‘time pressures’. Repeated measures ANOVA of the factor scores revealed a number of significant two-way and three-way interactions involving the demographic variables of sex, age, type of teaching post, type of school selectivity, type of single-sex school, size of school, and type of curriculum subject/s taught.     

Crafting an Occupational Identity: Learning the Precepts of Craftsmanship Through Apprenticeship

The term craftsmanship is associated with pre-industrial craft work with inferences to skilled artisanal manufacture of bespoke products. Apprenticeship learning is often perceived to be synonymous with learning craftsmanship. How then is the trait of craftsmanship through attainment of specific artisanal approaches conveyed and learnt through apprenticeship? This article presents and discusses processes imposed on and utilised by apprentices to attain precepts of artisanal approaches. The dispositional and skill elements of craftsmanship are proposed to be adopted through engagement with and development of craft and workplace specific approaches to contend with aspects of Pye’s (1968) conceptualisation of ‘workmanship of risk’ or the article’s proposed term of ‘artisanal approach of risk’.     

‘Empty signifiers’ and ‘dreamy ideals’: perceptions of the ‘international university’ among higher education students and staff at a British university

This paper reports on a mixed-methods case study investigating how higher education staff and students understand, experience and envision the ‘international university’. As it is becoming clear that international student mobility is not in itself a panacea for universities seeking to internationalise, ‘internationalisation at home’ and ‘global citizenship’ are increasingly permeating university policy documents and mission statements. However, little is known about how students and staff on the ground perceive and experience these concepts. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected at one British university through focus groups (N = 19) and through an online survey (n = 148). Findings revealed a conventional mobility-focused understanding of the international university among students and staff, and a great deal of cynicism as regards ‘internationalisation at home’ and ‘global citizenship’. We discuss implications for practice and a research agenda.     

Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Ideas About Scientific Practices

With the goal of producing scientifically literate citizens who are able to make informed decisions and reason critically when science intersects with their everyday lives, the National Research Council (NRC) has produced two recent documents that call for a new approach to K-12 science education that is based on scientific practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas. These documents will potentially influence future state standards and K-12 curricula. Teachers will need support in order to teach science using a practices based approach, particularly if they do not have strong science backgrounds, which is often the case with elementary teachers. This study investigates one cohort (n = 19) of preservice elementary teachers’ ideas about scientific practices, as developed in a one-semester elementary science teaching methods course. The course focused on eight particular scientific practices, as defined by the National Research Council’s A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas (2012). Participants’ written reflections, lesson plans and annotated teaching videos were analyzed in fine detail to better understand their ideas about what it means to engage in each of the practices. The findings suggest that preservice elementary teachers hold promising ideas about scientific practices (such as an emphasis on argumentation and communication between scientists, critical thinking, and answering and asking questions as the goal of science) as well as problematic ideas (including confusion over the purpose of modeling and the process of analysis, and conflating argumentation and explanation building). These results highlight the strengths and limitations of using the Framework (NRC 2012) as an instructional text and the difficulties of differentiating between preservice teachers’ content knowledge about doing the practices and their pedagogical knowledge about teaching the practices.     

Concepts of peace education: A view of western experience

Approaches to the theory and practice of peace education are as varied as the situations across the world in which it is undertaken. Against a framework established by the Peace Education Commission of IPRA, current trends in the conceptualization and experience of peace education (from a Western view-point) are considered and reveal (1) acceptance of ‘development’ with ‘justice’ and ‘human rights’ as integral to the concept of peace; (2) emphasis on the psychological as well as socio-political, economic and structural conditions that maintain present injustices and oppressions; (3) renewed efforts to try out innovative educational approaches to a variety of learning situations, from the pre-school to adult formal and non-formal settings; (4) new concern about the materials, content and techniques of learning; and (5) fresh examination of the inter-relationships between theory and practice, research and action. Analyzing a number of conceptual approaches to peace and disarmament education, the authors support a political, participatory strategy and set it in a historical context. Hence, its connection with development education and the significance and implications of a global perspective are demonstrated. The global perspective is seen as a growing-point for peace education today, providing the potential for political consciousness and action.     

From Hope & Glory to Waterloo Road: mediating discourses of ‘crises’ surrounding schools and schooling in British television drama, 1999–2011

Popular television drama is an important discursive site engaging the public with debates about schooling and professional identity. Between 1999 and 2011, external discourses of ‘crisis’ (of academic achievement or students’ mental and emotional health) were mediated as alternative discourses of ‘crisis, failure, and salvation’ in which a Standards agenda predominated, or that of the school as a ‘caring community’. Genre analysis reveals how ‘school’ dramas exploited distinctive narrative types to privilege a particular discourse. Adapting Schatz's (1981 Schatz, T. (1981). Hollywood genres. London: McGraw-Hill. [Google Scholar]) scheme of Hollywood genre types, these dramas are characterised by a narrative strategy of ‘restoration’ of the ‘failing’ secondary (high) school to its public function of raising achievement, or after 2007 of ‘integration’ more concerned with assimilating ‘troubled’ students into the school community. This shift in representation is consistent with, and contributes towards, the ‘rise of therapeutic education’ where the Head Teacher and teacher are portrayed more as counsellor than educator.     

Change in Teacher Education: interpreting and experiencing new professional roles

In this paper we consider the effect of moves by the British Government to make initial teacher education (ITE) in England and Wales more school‐based (Blake, 1993). To monitor the impact of this shift towards school‐based training we conducted a fine grain study of what was happening on the ground within the one‐year Secondary School‐Based Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) at the Chichester Institute of Higher Education (ChIHE). * *At the time the research was conducted, the Institute's name was the West Sussex Institute of Higher Education, hence interviewees refer to ‘WSIHE’ and ‘West Sussex’. View all notes Data were gathered from questionnaire surveys and interviews. Findings from our regional case study indicate that while school‐based ITE programmes may offer student teachers greater insight into school life, this should not be at the expense of developing students’ analytical and theoretical understanding of education and schooling promoted within higher education‐based work.     

La formation des ingénieurs et les sciences ‘molles’

SUMMARY

Depuis deux siècles, la formation des cadres supérieurs est basée soit sur le ‘paradigme comtien’ (ingéw;nieurs, primat de la mathématique), soit sur le ‘paradigme harvardien’ (managers, primal de I'èconomie). Qu';il s'agisse d'ecoles d'ingénieurs ou de business schools, les sciences ‘molles’ n'y sont que très peu enseignées. De plus en plus, cependant, les dirigeants d'entreprises rencontrent des problémes difficiles de nature psychologique ou sociologique. L'auteur propose de fonder la formation des ingénieurs à partir de l'épistémologie plutôt qu'à partir de la mathématique, l'épistémologie étant la discipline la plus appropriée pour l'initiation à la créativité et la seule réalisant la synthèse entre sciences “dures” et sciences ‘molles’.

For two centuries, the training of senior executives has been based either on the ‘Comtian paradigm’ (engineers at the leading edge of mathematics) or the ‘Harvard paradigm’ (managers at the leading edge of the economy). The ‘soft’ sciences are scarcely taught in engineering colleges or business schools. However, top managers are increasingly confronted with difficult problems of a psychological or sociological nature. The author suggests basing the training of engineers on epistemology rather than on mathematics, since epistemology is the most suitable discipline for stimulating creativity and the only one to achieve a synthesis of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ sciences.     

Using “Sesame Street” to facilitate children’s recognition of letters and numbers

How can adults who watch “Sesame Street” with children facilitate the children’s recognition of the letters and numbers presented on the show? In order to examine this question, each of 95 preschool children watched three specially edited versions of “Sesame Street” with an adult who either (a) asked the child questions and provided feedback, (b) only asked questions, (c) directed the child’s attention to the screen, or (d) simply watched the shows with the child. Those children in the Questions + Feedback condition and the Questions condition scored significantly higher on a delayed posttest than did children who just watched the shows with an adult. There were no other significant differences among the treatment conditions. Results indicate that adults can increase children’s recognition of letters and numbers presented on “Sesame Street” by asking the children to name the letters and numbers as they are presented. Other interpretations are also discussed.     

Comparative performance in discrimination learning tasks in two New World primates (Saimiri sciureus andCallicebus moloch)

Squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) and titi monkeys (Callicebus moloch) were tested in three two-choice visual discrimination experiments. Although, on average, squirrel monkeys performed more accurately than titis, the range of response accuracies in the two species overlapped considerably in all three experiments and changes in response accuracy over test sessions and across experiments were similar in the two species. Thus, the species shared several behavioral characteristics expected of New World primates in this setting. Squirrel monkeys’ performance appeared to be more affected than titis’ by task difficulty, and squirrel monkeys were individually less consistent than titis. These differences were associated with higher activity levels and briefer overt attentiveness to the repetitive task in squirrel monkeys and, conversely, with lower activity levels, slower working speeds, and sustained interest in the task in titis. The associated differences are discussed in relation to each species performance in other laboratory settings and the characteristic patterns of foraging and use of space in nature.