Researcher vulnerability: implications for educational research and practice

This paper explores the concept of researcher vulnerability through a review of the extant research literature and each author’s feelings of vulnerability connected to their research with vulnerable populations while exploring both sensitive and seemingly innocuous, yet important, topics in education using qualitative methodology. Specifically, a reflection of our respective study of the academic and social transitions of student combat veterans, and the academic and gender socialization of adolescent African American males is presented as means of illustrating the phenomena of researcher vulnerability. Implications of vulnerability for research, practice, and theory are discussed.     

Educational research in educational practice [1]

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), notably through its Teaching and Learning Research Programme, has laid strong claims to the benefits of research which leads to an enhancement of research capability. What it has not done is to make explicit what those benefits might be or how they might be achieved. The authors, with three others [2], are the directors of the ESRC-funded project Transforming Learn ing Cultures in Further Education (FE) (the TLCFE project). Among the aims of that project is the development of a lasting capacity among practitioners for enquiry into FE practice. To achieve this, the project team will first have to formulate a clear understanding of what educational practice is and, second, a view of the place of research in the support of that practice. This paper briefly describes the TLCFE project and then addresses three specific issues. Firstly, it distinguishes notions of educational practice. Secondly, it examines opportunities afforded by different approaches to researching educational practice. Thirdly, it returns to the central question concerning relationships between educational research, educational practice and professional, as distinct from technical, development. The paper argues that educational interests are best served by research in rather than simply on educational practice. Research in practice, properly construed and accomplished, offers practitioners a means of developing understandings of their practices and it is such understandings which are central to processes of achievement, enhancement and change in educational practice.     

Ghosts of research past: institutional memory and its implications for educational research

Not all research projects progress according to plan. When a project culminates in a published piece that the research participants do not support, what are the effects and for how long do they endure? Using a retrospective case study, this article explores what memory can teach us about the long-term ramifications of research conducted in schools. Results suggest that for as long as 25 years after the publication of a controversial article, memory traces of the piece may survive at the research site, even if they have largely faded from view at the researchers' institution. The article argues that such memory stores expose much about institutional identities and practices, and that they contain important lessons for how we should approach, carry out, and conclude research in schools.     

Gender variance and educational psychology: implications for practice

The area of gender variance appears to be more visible in both the media and everyday life. Within educational psychology literature gender variance remains underrepresented. The positioning of educational psychologists working across the three levels of child and family, school or establishment and education authority/council, means that they are well placed to support knowledge, understanding and practice in this area. The literature highlights the importance of the terminology around gender variance, the differing representations of gender variance and the potential impact upon young people. Three practice examples demonstrate potential roles for educational psychologists and together with the literature highlight possible implications for educational psychology practice.     

教育创新呼唤科研支撑

素质教育思想的提出,本身就是创新的产物,其实施同样需要创新。但目前素质教育的实施仍“尚未取得突破性进展”。其中最为重要的原因是教育科研在事实上的不被重视和滞后,使教育创新缺少支撑。对于教育科研的地位和作用,许多学校往往讲来重要,做来次要,考来不要,由此而形成许多制约因素。分析起来,一是观念的滞后性;二是动机的功利性;三是实施的浮躁性;四是评价的片面性,影响了素质教育的实施,制约了教育创新。如何解决这些束缚,推动教育创新,重视和加强教育科研工作是一条十分有效的途径,至少要从以下几方面建立用教育科研支撑教育创新的思想。     

Toward an Ontology of Practices in Educational Administration: Theoretical implications for research and practice

Abstract

In this article, we argue for a study of educational administration centered on an ontology of practices. This is an initial proposal for thinking about and conceptualizing practices in educational administration. To do this, first, we explore how practices are constituted and how they configure the social realities of practitioners. Second, we explore what an ontology of practices has to offer for our understanding of organizations. Third, we examine how an ontology of practices might inform our understandings of leadership in educational organizations, and we conclude by exploring some implications of an ontology of practices for the study of educational administration.     

Educational quality and the crisis of educational research

This paper was designed not as a research product but as a speech to comparative education colleagues. It argues that there is a crisis of educational quality in many parts of the world, and that there is a parallel crisis in the quality of educational research and statistics. Compared to other major public responsibilities in health, agriculture, population and family planning, educational statistics are poor and often getting worse. Our international and national statistical institutions are impoverished, and we as a profession have been part of the problem. We have been so busy arguing over differing research paradigms that we have not paid sufficient attention to our common professional responsibilities and common professional goals. The paper suggests that we, as professionals interested in comparative education issues, begin to act together more on these common and important issues.

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Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel ist nicht als Forschungsprodukt sondern als Ansprache an Kollegen im Bereich der vergleichenden Bildung zu verstehen. Es wird argumentiert, daß die Qualität des Bildungsangebots in vielen Teilen der Welt in einer Krise steckt und parallel dazu eine Krise hinsichtlich der Qualität der Bildungsforschung und -statistik besteht. Verglichen mit anderen wichtigen öffentlichen Verantwortlichkeiten in den Bereichen Gesundheit, Agrikultur, Bevölkerung und Familienplanung sind die Statistiken im Bildungswesen oft dürftig mit sinkender Tendenz. Unsere internationalen und nationalen statistischen Einrichtungen sind verarmt, und wir sind als Berufszweig Teil des Problems. Wir haben so geschäftig über auseinanderdriftende Forschungsparadigmen diskutiert, daß wir unseren allgemeinen beruflichen Aufgaben und Zielen nicht nachgekommen sind. Dieser Artikel schlägt vor, daß wir, als an Themen der vergleichenden Erziehung interessierte Berufsgruppe, mehr in diesen allgemeinen und wichtigen Angelegenheiten zusammenarbeiten.

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Résumé Le présent article a été conçu moins comme le produit d'une recherche que comme un entretien avec les collègues de l'éducation comparée. L'auteur prétend qu'une crise de l'éducation sévit dans de nombreux pays du monde entier, et qu'on observe parallèlement une crise de la qualité de la recherche en éducation et des statistiques y afférentes. Comparées aux autres grands domaines de la fonction publique tels que la santé, l'agriculture, la population et le planning familial, les statistiques de l'éducation sont médiocres et vont souvent en empirant. Nos institutions internationales et nationales de statistique sont affaiblies, et nous avons une part de responsabilité dans ce problème en tant que membres de la profession. Nous avons été si occupés à discuter des différents paradigmes de recherche que nous n'avons pas prêté suffisamment attention à nos responsabilités et à nos buts professionnels communs. Cet article suggère que nous commencions, en tant que professionnels intéressés par les questions d'éducation comparée, à agir ensemble davantage sur ces problèmes communs et importants.

     

Cognitive Behaviour Therapies and their implications for applied educational psychology practice

This paper critically considers the growing interest in the use of Cognitive Behaviour Therapies to support children and young people presenting with a wide range of social‐emotional difficulties. This focus has emerged since the prevalence of such difficulties in children and young people has increased over the past four decades, and the application of such approaches is no longer seen as being the sole preserve of specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), counsellors or therapists. To develop a critical understanding of the principles and core components of Cognitive Behaviour Therapies, two prominent approaches are reviewed. These are Ellis’s Rational‐Emotive Behaviour Therapy (REBT), and Beck’s Cognitive Therapy (CT). The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the ways in which Educational Pychologists can directly and/or indirectly support the delivery of Cognitive Behaviour Therapies in their work.     

Working with users: some implications for educational research

In its emphasis in working with users of research throughout the processes of pedagogic research, the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) has reflected a current interest across disciplines in user engagement to enhance research. The scale of the TLRP and the range of research genres encompassed by it have meant that it has provided a useful site for considering in some detail what is meant by enhancing pedagogic research in this way. The authors draw on a TLRP‐funded seminar series which examined a variety of forms of user engagement, their purposes and their implications. The series attempted to understand the intertwined features of new education spaces where research and policy can meet; the negotiations with policy communities that occur there; and the implications for these negotiations and for research design in the production of pedagogic knowledge in partnership with practitioners. The lessons revealed included the following: user engagement strengthens the warrants of research with potential users in both practice and policy communities; it needs to be understood and sustained as an aspect of project management; and research mediation is a developing form of expertise. The authors conclude that TLRP has provided an unrivalled opportunity for the public to ‘speak back to science’ in pedagogic research, and enabled an emerging reciprocity where the public understand(s) how science works but equally science understands how its publics work.     

Child as method: implications for decolonising educational research

This paper advances an approach, ‘child as method’, as a resource for interrogating models of development in childhood and education. Kuan-Hsing Chen’s (2010) book Asia as method has generated interest across childhood and educational studies. Here ‘child as method’ is presented as a related intervention. Just as Asia as method (re)considers the status of the national and transnational, so ‘child as method’ helps explicate the ways ‘child’ and ‘development’ are linked across economic, sociocultural and individual trajectories. The example of translation is discussed in relation to sociocultural approaches and how together these might inform childhood and educational studies debates. The notion of ‘method’ at work (as framework, technique or narrative) is also clarified as informed by feminist and decolonisation approaches. It is argued that ‘child as method’ offers strategies for resisting abstraction and remaining attentive to forces and relations of (re)production at issue within adult–child and child-state-development relations.     

Too anxious to speak? The implications of current research into Selective Mutism for educational psychology practice

Selective Mutism is a low incidence disorder but has considerable impact on the school system when it occurs. Over the last decade several research articles have been published which have challenged the understanding of the aetiology of Selective Mutism. Current perceptions about the aetiology of Selective Mutism are considered in order to inform the practice of educational psychologists (EPs). Research suggests a multifactorial aetiology with evidence of co‐morbidity. Hypothesis led suggestions are made about assessment and intervention of Selective Mutism.     

The changing American college student: implications for educational policy and practice

New students entering higher education institutions in the United States have undergone dramatic changes during the past two decades. This paper summarizes some of the major trends observed in these surveys and discusses possible implications of the findings for educational policy and practice.Each fall since 1966 the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles has been conducting a national survey of new college freshmen. A typical survey involves 250,000 students and a nationally representative sample of 550 higher education institutions of all types. Between the late 1960s and the mid-1980s American college students became much more focussed on material goals and less concerned with altruism and social problems. These value changes were accompanied by dramatically increased student interest in business careers and a sharp decline of interest in school teaching, social work, nursing, the clergy, and other service careers. These changes are perhaps best illustrated in the contrasting trends in two values: being very well off financially, which doubled in popularity during the period of survey and developing a meaningful philosophy of life which was the top student value in the early 1970s but was endorsed by fewer than half as many students by the late 1980s.During just the past two or three years most of these trends seem to have ended or, in certain cases, shown signs of reversing direction. At the same time, there is growing evidence that students are increasingly oriented toward social activism. Protecting the environment appears to be the single greatest concern among American college students at the turn of the decade.Portions of this talk were given at the January 6, 1989 meeting of the Commission on the University of the 21st Century, Council of Higher Education, Richmond, Virginia: portions have also been adopted from an earlier article in Change magazine (Astin, A. W. Competition or Cooperation, September/October 1987).     

谈现代教育技术及其实践

编者按:谈到现代教育技术,许多人都将其狭隘地理解为是在教育、教学中应用现代各种媒体设备.其实,现代教育技术的含义非常广泛.本文结合教育现代化和教育技术概念对现代教育技术进行了阐述,对正确理解现代教育技术、发挥其促进职教改革和发展的作用很有帮助.