Effect of single‐sex education on progress in GCSE

Multilevel modelling was carried out on national value‐added data to study the effects of single‐sex education on the progress of pupils from 2002 Key Stage 3 to 2004 GCSE. The analysis suggests that pupils in a selective environment achieve higher progress in single‐sex schools; however, the advantage of single‐sex schooling seems to decrease with increasing pupils' prior attainment (for girls) or with increasing school ‘selectiveness’ (for boys). These phenomena might be a result of a ceiling effect, as pupils with high prior attainment at Key Stage 3 cannot improve as much as pupils with lower initial attainment. There was also strong evidence suggesting that pupils achieve higher progress in the independent sector compared to grammar education. On the other hand, in a non‐selective environment only pupils with lower prior attainment and those attending schools with a full range of abilities seem to benefit from single‐sex education.     

Teaching about Human Relationships Education for primary school student‐teachers using an interactive CD‐ROM

Human Relationships Education is a very important part of primary school student‐teacher education. All primary school children need sound guidance and enhanced knowledge about puberty, growing up successfully, and feeling competent and confident in themselves. An interactive multimedia CD‐ROM was designed and developed for some Australian university student‐teachers in the final fourth year of their Bachelor of Education (Primary School), and addresses the Human Relationships Education curriculum. This paper analyses some of the pedagogies used in this pastoral care learning as examples of a Constructivist approach to designing multimedia interactivities based on Anderson and Krathwohl's learning framework. Such an approach may be useful for other educational designers to improve student‐teacher involvement in their pastoral care learning, to provide pedagogical variation and to use interactive multimedia, thus enhancing learning outcomes for student‐teachers and, in turn, their primary school students.     

The pleasure imperative? Reflecting on sexual pleasure’s inclusion in sex education and sexual health

This article offers an empirically grounded contribution to scholarship exploring the ways in which pleasure is ‘put to work’ in sex and sexuality education. Such research has cautioned against framing pleasure as a normative requirement of sexual activity and hence reproducing a ‘pleasure imperative’. This paper draws on interviews with sexual health and education practitioners who engaged with Pleasure Project resources and training between 2007 and 2016. Findings suggest that practitioners tend to understand pleasure within critical frameworks that allow them to avoid normalising and (re)enforcing a pleasure imperative. Accounts also show negotiations with, and strategic deployments of, values surrounding sexual pleasure in society and culture. While some accounts suggest that a pleasure imperative does run the risk of being reproduced by practitioners, notably this is when discussing more ‘contentious’ sexual practices. Interviews also demonstrate that practitioners attempting to implement a pleasure agenda are faced with a range of challenges. While some positive, holistic, and inclusive practice has been afforded by a pleasure approach, we argue that the importance of a critical framework needs to be (re)emphasised. The paper concludes by highlighting areas for further empirical research.     

“The mind has to catch up on sex”: sexual norms and sex education in the Hull House

From its beginning in 1885, the Hull House was beacon for social progress and urban reform. Founders Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr recruited talented, passionate partners from diverse fields to address issues from street sanitation to education in Chicago’s immigrant communities. Among residents’ many projects, their involvement in the “social hygiene” movement for sex education and contraception is perhaps the least recognised, in part because the Hull House did not save materials directly related to these services. As a result, the professional activities of Hull House residents Drs Rachelle Yarros and Alice Hamilton reveal a productive relationship between the Hull House and the social hygiene movement. Part of their critical work was to dismantle the cultural association of contraceptives and sex education with “fallen women” and reframe these services as necessities for maternal health. The papers of their professional organisations chronicle their delicate efforts to challenge assumptions about reproductive healthcare while preserving Victorian ideals about sex as a private, procreative endeavour strictly between married, monogamous people. Rachelle Yarros was particularly active, producing a dearth of literature on sexual health, teaching classes on the subject, and overseeing the opening of Chicago’s first public birth control clinics. Each of these advancements, including the birth control clinic, was available on Hull House grounds. By capitalising on the financial and medical resources available to them as physicians and reformers, Yarros and Hamilton achieved significant gains in women’s healthcare and initiated a national conversation about sexual health as a human right.     

Religious education in the context of sub‐Saharan Africa: the Malawian example

The argument in this paper is that in spite of the acknowledgement of plurality, many countries in sub‐Saharan Africa seem reluctant to introduce multi‐faith approaches preferring to maintain Christian confessionalism in religious education. Even in those countries where new approaches are being tried, there is some unwillingness to make wholesale changes throughout the school system. In some instances this state of affairs is precipitated not by educational policy but by the socio‐religious situation, which mirrors Christian ideals. This is better illustrated in the Malawian context where largely due in part to the historical Christian influence and for the fact Christianity is the major religion in the country, multi‐faith religious education introduced in schools was opposed. As a compromise to a difficult situation, government resolved to offer both multi‐faith religious education and the historical Bible knowledge on the school curriculum. Results of a school survey seem to indicate that Bible knowledge as opposed to multi‐faith religious education is still a favoured syllabus in schools, possible reasons of which are suggested. The conclusion is that efforts should be made to interest those still wary about multi‐faith religious education considering the benefits it can bring in a world today where heterogeneity rather than homogeneity is the acceptable reality.     

The design and development of a multimedia case‐based environment on parental engagement

The purpose of this paper is to present the rationale and principles that guided the design and development of PARENTS, a multimedia case‐based environment. Following a development research approach, the tenets of constructivist learning, and the advantages of case‐based instruction, we developed a multimedia program in which we utilized and incorporated the findings of the longitudinal study Ecologies of Parental Engagement (EPE). EPE focused on parents in high‐poverty urban communities and the roles they play in elementary schools that are active in implementing reform‐based science education. The main purpose of the multimedia program PARENTS was to help preservice science teachers to explore and reflect on themes of parental engagement in high‐poverty urban school settings. In this paper, we present the design and conceptual framework behind the first prototype of PARENTS.

Conception et développement d'un environnement multimedia sur l'implication des parents fondé sur des études de cas

Le but de cet article est de présenter le raisonnement et les principes qui ont orienté la conception et le développement de PARENTS, qui est un environnement multimedia fondé sur des études de cas. En suivant une approche “recherche et développement”, les principes de l'apprentissage constructiviste et les points forts de l'enseignement basé sur les études de cas, nous avons mis au point un programme multimedia dans lequel nous avons utilisé et intégré les résultats d'une enquête longitudinale – Ecologies de l'Engagement Parental (EPE). EPE a porté sur les parents se trouvant dans des communautés urbaines très pauvres et sur le rôle qu'ils jouent dans des écoles élémentaires engagées dans la mise en ?uvre des réformes de l'enseignement des sciences. Le but principal du programme multimedia PARENTS était d'aider les enseignants de sciences en formation initiale à explorer et à réfléchir sur la thématique de l'engagement parental dans les écoles se trouvant dans des zones urbaines de grande pauvreté.

Entwurf und Entwicklung eines multimedia Fall‐ basierten Umfelds auf das elterliche Engagement

Dieser Beitrag soll die Gründe und Prinzipien aufzeigen, die zu Entwurf und Entwicklung von PARENTS, einer Multimedia‐Fall‐basierten Umgebung, geführt haben. Nach der Entwicklung eines Forschungs‐Ansatzes auf den Grundsätzen des konstruktivistischen Lernens, und dem Berücksichtigen der Vorteile fall‐basierter Anweisungen entwickelten wir ein Multimediaprogramm, in dem wir die Ergebnisse einer Langzeitstudie – Ecologies of Parental Engagement (EPE) – nutzten und einfügten. EPE ist auf Eltern in städtischen Gemeinden mit großer Armut ausgerichtet und auf ihre Rolle, die sie in Grundschulen mit reformbasiertem naturwissenschaftlichem Unterricht spielen können. Der Hauptzweck des Multimediaprogramms PARENTS war, in Ausbildung befindlichen Lehrern für Naturwissenschaften zu helfen, auf dem Gebiet des elterlichen Engagements in sehr armen städtischen Schulbereichen zu forschen und zu reflektieren.

Diseño y Desarrollo de un entorno multimedia basado en estudios de casos sobre el compromiso de los padres

El propósito del presente artículo es de presentar los fundamentos y principios que han orientado el diseño y desarrollo de PADRES, un entorno multimedia basado en estudios de casos. Siguiendo una metodología de investigación y desarrollo y también los principios del aprendizaje constructivista así como las ventajas de la instrucción basada en estudios de casos, hemos desarrollado un programa multimedia en el cual hemos utilizado y integrado los resultados de una encuesta longitudinal – Ecologías del Compromiso de los Padres (EPE). EPE trata de esos padres que viven en comunidades urbanas muy pobres y del papel que desempeñan en las escuelas primarias que se han comprometido a poner en práctica las reformas de la enseñanza de las ciencias. El objetivo principal del programa multimedia PADRES (PARENTS) era de ayudar a los futuros profesores de ciencias para explorar y reflexionar sobre la temática del compromiso paterno en las escuelas ubicadas en zonas urbanas extremamente pobres.     

Sexual consent in K–12 sex education: an analysis of current health education standards in the United States

In the USA, universities have recently developed policies and programmes on sexual consent education. But waiting until students enroll in higher education may be too late to begin this work. To examine the extent that K–12 health education standards promote sexual consent education, we conducted a pilot study and found that only two of eighteen states explicitly mentioned sexual consent in their health education standards. Using a small sample (n = 4 states), we then identified four themes as making implicit reference to sexual consent: communication skills, decision making, personal space and interpersonal relationships. Finally, in a robust sample (n = 18 states), we conducted a content analysis of published standards regarding these themes related to sexual consent. Our analysis suggests that sexual consent is likely not discussed in sex education at K–12 schools. We recommend the more explicit inclusion of sexual consent in health education curricula via the identified themes that already exist in most or all standards, emphasising the importance of teaching young people about the nuances of sexual consent and its communication before they become sexually active.     

Effectiveness of using learner‐centered principles on student retention in distance education courses in rural schools

This article examines the effectiveness of training facilitators in secondary schools to follow APA learner‐centered principles to support learners in distance education. The study was a cluster‐randomized control trial with 36 match pairs of schools and 246 students in the rural USA. The schools were selected at random and assigned at random to treatment condition. Instructors were blind to the treatment condition as were the local facilitators and schools. Data on length of time spent in the course and whether students completed the semester were analyzed. The results indicated that students in the intervention condition completed the first semester at a statistically higher rate than control students where facilitators did not have this training. The number of weeks students remained in the course was likewise statistically different with students in the intervention condition staying in the course more weeks holding instructor constant.     

Feeling good,learning better? Effectivity of an emotional design procedure in multimedia learning

Emotional designing describes the elicitation of positive affect during learning through specific design elements of the learning environment to enhance learning. This experimental study examined the effectivity of an emotional design procedure on learning performance. Moreover, the learner’s affective states before learning were taken into consideration as possible moderators. 145 university students learned for 20?min either in a multimedia positive affect inducing learning environment (n?=?85) or a neutral multimedia learning environment (n?=?60). The Affect was measured before, during, and after learning. Performance was tested afterwards. To control for possible confounding effects, achievement motivation, emotion regulation, and situational interest were measured. In contrast to earlier findings, no superiority effect of the emotional design procedure was found. Furthermore, the effectivity of the emotional design procedure was not moderated by student’s prior effective states. However, there was a main influence of student’s positive affect on transfer performance.     

‘It was as useful as a chocolate kettle’: sex education in the lives of same‐sex‐attracted young people in Australia

Sex education is a contested site in the school curriculum as communities grapple with who should teach young people about sex and how it should be taught. In this paper we ask whether same‐sex‐attracted young people are being exposed to appropriate and relevant sex education at school, and if they are not whether it is necessary that sex education be inclusive of sexual difference. In the second Australian survey of 1749 same‐sex‐attracted youth of 14–21 years old, we ask young people about sex education classes at school, how useful they were for them, their sources of information regarding gay and lesbian relationships and safe sex, sexual behaviours and incidence of sexually transmissible infections and pregnancy. We find from the data that most of these young people found sex education to be useless because it was not inclusive. In comparison with normative studies, these young people were, on average, sexually active earlier, had higher rates of diagnosed sexually transmissible infections and at least as high an incidence of pregnancy. We conclude from the data that there is a need for sex education in schools to be inclusive of the sexuality of all students, not just those who are attracted to the opposite sex.     

Toward an understanding of academic self‐concept in distance education

Abstract

Academic self‐concept has been demonstrated to influence student success in distance education. The purpose of this study was to examine the nature of academic self‐concept in distance education and to determine its enhancers and detractors. It was determined that this construct is dynamic and multi‐faceted: the process of both learning as an adult and learning at a distance, as well as the content studied, influences academic self‐concept. Implications for both practice and further research are discussed.     

Pedagogical renewal in sub‐Saharan Africa: the case of Uganda

There has been an unprecedented interest in reforming pedagogical practices in sub‐Saharan Africa in the past two decades. The reform efforts are often characterised by a move away from teacher‐centred instruction to child‐centred pedagogy (CCP). Uganda has been no exception to this trend as the new curriculum adopted the principles of CCP and efforts were made to popularise and institutionalise the reformed pedagogies in primary schools. Based on a fieldwork study in selected schools in Kampala, this article seeks to explore teachers’ views on CCP, their classroom practices, and the perceived challenges in implementing CCP. The article suggests that the implementation of CCP in Ugandan classrooms has not occurred in the ways intended by policy‐makers and offers some explanations for the discrepancy between policy and practice. It also raises questions with regard to the appropriateness of CCP as the most suitable pedagogy in African classrooms.     

Investigation of users’ preferences in interactive multimedia learning systems: a data mining approach

With advances in information and communication technology, interactive multimedia learning systems are widely used to support teaching and learning. However, as human factors vary across users, they may prefer the design of interactive multimedia learning systems differently. To have a deep understanding of the influences of human factors, we apply a data mining approach to the investigation of users’ preferences in using interactive multimedia learning systems. More specifically, a clustering technique named K-modes is used to group users’ preferences. The results indicate that users’ preferences could be divided into four groups where computer experience is a key human factor that influences their preferences. Implications for the development of interactive multimedia learning systems are also discussed.     

The contested design of children’s sexual education: queer growth and epistemic uncertainty

In this article, I contend that underneath the 2015 sex-ed debates in Ontario are deep-seated, psycho-socially entrenched problems related to thinking about childhood sexuality. I consider how the topic of sex-ed for children, over and above its actual curricular lessons, is marshaled to accomplish the work of the adult’s psycho-social needs. Methodologically, queer theory and psychoanalytic theories of childhood development are employed for their capacity to place sexuality at the origin of subjectivity. I develop a queer theory of childhood that can provide insight into the transferential attachments adults have to the paradigm of childhood innocence. I also argue that attention to how the figure of the child becomes known and contested through local and transnational exchange can help reveal the impact that sex-ed debates have on racialized and provincial imaginaries of belonging.     

Pedagogical Innovation in Canadian higher education: Professors’ perspectives on its effects on teaching and learning

To rise to the challenge of today’s university, professors make use of many types of pedagogical innovation. This paper examines professors’ perceptions of the impact arising from innovative teaching through a qualitative study based on semi-structured interviews conducted with assistant, associate and full professors of a Canadian university. Grounded theory analysis shows that pedagogical innovations support learning, professionalisation and graduation, and remote access to courses for students, and alters their behaviours and attitudes. Moreover, pedagogical innovations reinvent teaching practices and satisfy professors, while the associated academic institution can take pride in the achievement. Paradoxically, the outcomes of this study highlight the recognition granted to pedagogical innovators, in contrast to innovative teaching, which remains denigrated. This paper discusses the implications of the findings for educational practice and provides recommendations as well as avenues for further research.     

Leadership in education: the case of Vice‐Chancellors

This paper is based on the Franklin Lecture given at the Guild of Educators on 17 November 2005 at the Bakers’ Hall, London.     

Schools' fulfilment of sex and relationship education documentation: three school‐based case studies

This article presents a critical evaluation of school policies, programmes of work and practices in three state secondary schools in one district in one local authority in England. They are evaluated regarding Sex and Relationship Education (SRE) documentation, statutory and non‐statutory from 1900 to the most recent SRE guidance introduced in July 2000 by the Department for Education and Employment. The article concludes that historically and contemporarily SRE documentation has mainly been inadequate and that in the three case studies legislative requirements concerning SRE policy and practice are predominantly not met. This is particularly the case regarding the most recent SRE guidance. Young people's access to information was institutionally limited and partial. Within the three case studies there was a failure to equip children and young people with an appropriate knowledge and understanding of sexuality, which reflects their lives and the realities of a diverse society.     

Evaluation of a school‐based sex education programme delivered to Grade Nine students in Canada

The effectiveness of a multidimensional Canadian sex education programme was evaluated using 240 Grade Nine students. The intervention was offered by representatives from various community groups and involved instructional classes on anatomy/physiology of the reproductive system and sexually transmitted infections, a video and group discussion on healthy relationships, a form of ‘peer education’ and discussion on teen pregnancy and HIV/AIDS, as well as a parent workshop and newsletter on teen sexuality. Respondents in the intervention and control groups completed a self‐administered questionnaire at baseline and one month after the programme. Compared with the control group, students in the intervention group showed positive changes in the areas of knowledge, sex‐role attitudes, sexual interaction values, and the perception that birth control is important. These results suggest that a collaborative effort of outside professionals from various community organisations and involvement of ‘peer educators’ to provide sexual health education in Grade Nine high school classes may be a useful strategy.     

Collaborative learning in pre‐service teacher education: an exploratory study on related conceptions,self‐efficacy and implementation

In this study, the actual position of collaborative learning (CL) in teacher education is examined. One hundred and twenty teacher educators and 369 student teachers are surveyed on general educational beliefs, mental models and conceptions related to CL. The self‐efficacy and the implementation of CL are also taken under scrutiny. The results reveal that CL is highly valued as a teaching strategy for primary school children; however, student teachers do not prefer to collaborate themselves during their learning process. Student teachers’ self‐efficacy towards the use of CL is moderate. Collaborative learning is implemented once in a while in teacher education, and student teachers are not intensively trained in the pedagogical use of CL for their future classroom practice.