Teacher and student responses to interdisciplinary aspects of sustainability education: what do we really know?

That the value of interdisciplinarity in sustainability education is largely taken for granted reflects widely held views about the inherent complexity and uncertainty of sustainability issues and the need for holistic responses to them. Although there is an extensive literature on interdisciplinarity, there has been relatively little investigation of the ways in which teachers and learners deal with and respond to this central aspect of sustainability education. This paper presents data from two case studies of masters course in sustainability education, one in an English university and one in a Chinese university, and examines some of the contextual factors that support or limit their attempts to go beyond the bounded ways of thinking associated with more traditional academic disciplines. While some learners respond enthusiastically to interdisciplinarity, others experience forms of ‘cognitive dissonance’. Interdisciplinarity requires individual teachers to operate as members of teams and to find ways of promoting dialogue between different perspectives, discourses and methods of approaching problems. The key to interdisciplinarity is an open attitude, a willingness to learn and an ability to engage with different ways of thinking about issues we face in common.     

Education,health and care plans: What do we know so far?

The Children and Families Act, 2014 and the new Special Educational Needs and Disability SEND Code of Practice (DfE and DoH, 2014) has led to reforms in how children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities are supported in England. Now, five years on, research has begun to emerge exploring the implementation of the new statutory assessment process, the Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans and the outcomes of the process in England. This article seeks to review current research about the introduction of EHC needs assessment process and plans. It highlights three key themes: experiences of the process, reflections on the EHC plans and the outcomes of the process. Whilst parental involvement has improved, and there is some evidence of multiagency work, the views of children and young people continue to be marginalised, and EHC Plans are highly variable in quality, indicating that person-centred approaches are not yet fully implemented. This indicates a need for further research on how to effectively involve CYP with SEND in statutory processes and support.     

What sort of science education do we really need?

The research aims to explore the role of science for employees in science-based industries and for members of the public interacting with science in their everyday lives. Case studies were carried out in a small sample of industries, in community action groups and in personal decision making. The methodology, informed by a tentative model of science, included scrutiny of available relevant documentation and semi-structured interviews. The findings suggest that procedural understanding was essential in the higher levels of industry and in interacting effectively with everyday issues, while conceptual understanding was so specific that it was acquired in a need-to-know way. The implications for science education hinge on a substantial reduction in the conceptual content and the explicit teaching of the nature of evidence (procedural understanding). The authors suggest building on primary pupils' enthusiasm for investigative work at UK Key Stage 3 (11-14 years) and developing an issues-based curriculum at Key Stage 4 (14-16 years).     

What do the public know about anatomy? Anatomy education to the public and the implications

Public knowledge of the anatomical “self” is lacking and evidence points towards a growing need for anatomy education to the wider public. The public were offered the opportunity to learn human anatomy and complete an anatomical knowledge survey afterwards. Sixty‐three participants volunteered to attempt to place 20 anatomical structures on a blank human body template. Responses were scored independently and then collated. A mixed effects logistic model was used to examine any associations with participants’ as a random effect and all other factors as fixed effects. Results showed a statistically significant quadratic trend with age. Participants in health‐related employment scored significantly higher than those not in health‐related employment. There was a significant interaction between gender and organ type with males scoring higher than females in identifying muscles, but not in identifying internal organs. The current study demonstrates the general public's eagerness to learn anatomy despite their limited knowledge of the human body, and the need for widening participation. Furthermore, it raises an awareness of the anatomical literacy needs of the general public, especially in school children and young adults. Furthermore, it emphasizes the value of health literacy as a focus in undergraduate medical education. Anatomy literacy appears to be neglected, and this experience provides an example of a possible mode of public engagement in anatomy. Anat Sci Educ 11: 117–123. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.     

The impact of teachers’ unions on educational outcomes: What we know and what we need to learn

In this paper we consider more than three decades of research on teachers' unions in the United States. We focus on unions' role as potential rent-seekers in the K-12 educational landscape, and specifically how teachers' unions impact district and student outcomes. We review important methodological improvements in the identification of union impacts and the measurement of contract restrictiveness that characterize a number of recent studies. We generally find that the preponderance of empirical evidence suggests that teacher unionization and union strength are associated with increases in district expenditures and teacher salaries, particularly salaries for experienced teachers. The evidence for union-related differences in student outcomes is mixed, but suggestive of insignificant or modestly negative union effects. Taken together, these patterns are consistent with a rent-seeking hypothesis. We conclude by discussing other important union activities, most notably in the political arena, and by noting that recent changes in state laws pertaining to teachers and teacher unions may provide context for new directions in scholarship.     

School leadership models: what do we know?

The growth in the importance of school leadership has been accompanied by theory development, with new models emerging and established approaches being redefined and further developed. The purpose of this paper is to review current and recent writing on leadership models. The paper examines theoretical literature, to see how leadership is conceptualised, and empirical literature, to demonstrate whether and how the research evidence supports these concepts. The paper shows that leadership models are subject to fashion but often serve to reflect, and to inform, changes in school leadership practice.     

‘Reporting Trainee Competence: what,and how much do employers need to know?

ABSTRACT

Three major elements in the Australian national workplace reform agenda are the introduction of key/generic workplace competencies, national occupational employment standards and a competency‐based education‐training system that recognises prior learning and assures development of identified competencies, both generic and occupationally specific. Attempts to develop effective and efficient assessment schemes to determine participant competence are underway. A continuing major concern, however, is how best to report information to potential employers. While employers need sufficient relevant information to make informed hiring decisions there is the distinct danger of providing too much detailed information in a competency‐based education system that it is not able to be used in a timely and efficient fashion. This paper reviews the merits of selected reporting schemes being considered, and then presents questions for further research about employers' reactions to reporting of competency information.     

Environmental education program evaluation in the new millennium: what do we measure and what have we learned?

We conducted a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed research studies published between 1999 and 2010 that empirically evaluated the outcomes of environmental education (EE) programs for youth (ages 18 and younger) in an attempt to address the following objectives: (1) to seek reported empirical evidence for what works (or does not) in EE programming and (2) to uncover lessons regarding promising approaches for future EE initiatives and their evaluation. While the review generally supports consensus-based best practices, such as those published in the North American Association for Environmental Education’s Guidelines for Excellence, we also identified additional themes that may drive positive outcomes, including the provision of holistic experiences and the characteristics and delivery styles of environmental educators. Overall, the evidence in support of these themes contained in the 66 articles reviewed is mostly circumstantial. Few studies attempted to empirically isolate the characteristics of programs responsible for measured outcomes. We discuss general trends in research design and the associated implications for future research and EE programming.     

Mathematics teacher educator knowledge: What do we know and where to from here?

The knowledge that mathematics teacher educators need has attracted limited but increasing attention in recent years. The papers in this special issue build on emerging themes from that work and raise additional questions that contribute towards a future research agenda in the field. Several of the articles develop conceptualisations of teacher knowledge to apply to mathematics teacher educators, introducing new aspects and drawing attention to unique characteristics of mathematics teacher educators in the process. To some extent the questions these papers raise reflect similar questions in mathematics education more generally but for which the implications for mathematics teacher educators warrant attention. In this paper we review the articles in this special issue and use them as a springboard to examine contemporary developments in the field and posit ways forward for research on mathematics teacher educators’ knowledge.     

On the relationship between society and higher education: what path should we take?

Abstract

The current network society, with its primacy of information and communication technologies, is challenging the higher education model. The needs and expectations of today’s students differ from those of students in the past, and educational practices should adapt to modern times. But what changes will we see in the relationship between societal transformation and the higher education system? In this research paper, we set out a quantum-based approach in order to analyze this relationship and to advance the understanding about the role that distance education will play in the future. Under this perspective, we provide an illustration that allows for the representation and evaluation of future scenarios.     

What do set facilitators bring to the party? (And do we need them?)

This account of practice discusses the learning of a set that met for five years as part of undertaking a research degree. It focuses on questions relating to the role of the facilitator that emerge from the experience of an action learning set that was first helped by an external facilitator and that, after 18 months, became self-facilitating. Key to our success as a set was the openness to the emergent learning about the process; each difficulty we faced (as a set and individually) was taken as an opportunity for deepening our learning about set dynamics and facilitation. This article shares some of the highs and lows of our journey, illustrating how we learned to be an effective set that became self-facilitating.     

What is science in preschool and what do teachers have to know to empower children?

In this article we problematize the purpose of teaching science in preschool and the competences preschool teachers need in order to conduct science activities in the classroom. The empirical data were collected through an action research project with five preschool and primary school teachers (K-6). In the first section of this paper we use one situation, a floating–sinking experiment, as an illustration of how two different epistemological perspectives generate different foci on which kind of science teaching competences can be fruitful in preschool settings. In the first perspective, the central goal of science teaching is the development of the children’s conceptual understanding. With this perspective, we found that the science activities with children were unsuccessful, because their thoughts about concepts did not develop as expected, the situation even enhanced a “misconception” concerning density. Moreover, the teacher was unsuccessful in supporting the children’s conceptual learning. The second perspective uses a feminist approach that scrutinizes science, where we investigate if the floating–sinking activity contributes to a feeling of participation in a scientific context for the children and if so how the teacher promotes this inclusion. This second perspective showed that the children’s scientific proficiency benefited from the situation; they had a positive experience with density which was reinforced by the teacher. The children discovered that they had power over their own learning by using an experimental approach. On the basis of these findings, we conclude that there are competences other than subject matter knowledge that are also important when preschool teachers engage children in scientific activities. Through process-oriented work with the teacher group, we identified four concrete skills: paying attention to and using children’s previous experiences; capturing unexpected things that happen at the moment they occur; asking questions that challenge the children and that stimulate further investigation; creating a situated presence, that is, “remaining” in the situation and listening to the children and their explanations. We discuss possible ways to move preschool teachers away from their feelings of inadequacy and poor self-confidence in teaching science by reinforcing this kind of pedagogical content knowledge.     

Sustainable schools programmes: what influence on schools and how do we know?

This paper focuses on our experience of researching the influence of ResourceSmart Schools, a sustainable schools programme in Victoria, Australia. Drawing on ideas from programme theory and realist synthesis, we illustrate and reflect upon our approach to conceptualising, investigating and generating evidence about the programme’s impacts and influence in participating schools. This distinction is deliberate: it helps distinguish between efforts to understand the impacts that a programme has within schools (programme impact), and efforts to understand what it is about a programme that is influential in bringing about those impacts (programme influence). Drawing on evidence from our work in this project and the wider literature, we argue for a more nuanced discussion and more sophisticated investigations into the complexities of programme influence, rather than impacts only. Our conclusions suggest key areas of development for our own work, the provision of environmental and sustainability education, and their evaluation and research more broadly.     

What do citizens need to know? An analysis of knowledge in citizenship curricula in the UK and Ireland

Contemporary citizenship education tends to focus on the development of skills through real experiences, which has led to a relative neglect or simplification of knowledge and understanding. This article outlines a framework for analysing citizenship curricula drawing on Young’s notion of ‘powerful knowledge’ and ‘knowledge of the powerful’ and on Shulman’s account of subject knowledge, which includes substantive concepts and epistemic criteria. These ideas are used to analyse the citizenship curricula in the four nations of the UK and Ireland to assess the extent to which they provide an adequate account of knowledge and understanding of citizenship. The article concludes that it is important to reconsider the relationship between the genuinely educational aspects of citizenship education (where ‘powerful knowledge’ opens up new and diverse understandings) from the normative aims, which are more akin to a form of socialisation (where ‘knowledge of the powerful’ closes down certain possibilities).     

‘Sensible girls’ and ‘silly boys’: what do teachers need to know about gender?

Much to the consternation of many feminist researchers, teacher education programs have become largely silent about gender and the influence of gender discourses on teaching and learning. Stereotypical views of males and females can dominate teachers’ views of boys and girls, and they can be seen as essentially different—as binary opposites. This has implications for identity construction of children as they take up or resist the identity positions made available to them by the teacher. In this paper, the intersection of gender with culture/ethnicity is examined in the context of identity construction. Classroom-based data are considered in relation to a ‘sensible girls/silly boys’ binary, and the teacher’s positioning of a Chinese heritage boy and Korean heritage girl in a New Zealand primary classroom. We suggest that the teacher’s discursive practices based on unexamined assumptions, limited the identity positions available to the children in relation to gender and culture. We argue that teacher education has an important role to play in preparing teachers with a critical orientation towards dominant gender discourses, and an understanding of the intersection of gender with other discourses, such as culture and ethnicity.