Social and Educational Disadvantage: Reconnecting Special Needs Education

Alan Dyson, Professor of Special Needs Education at the University of Newcastle on Tyne (in BJSE 's 'The New Professors' series) argues that special needs education has, at a time when there are concerns over falling standards in education generally, lost sight of the relationship between children's difficulties in school and wider patterns of socio-economic disadvantage and inequality, and suggests that special needs education in the late 1990s is incapable of addressing basic failings and inequities in our education system and within society as a whole.     

Social Disadvantage,Educational Attainment and Ethnicity: a comment

The relationships between educational attainment and social disadvantage for different ethnic groups, presented by Brewer & Haslum (1986), are reconsidered. Their assertion that indicators of social disadvantage are not associated with attainment for black children is shown to be based on a number of unsound statistical and methodological procedures. Data from a study of younger children in Inner London are presented which do show an association which is the same for both black and white children. But more data are needed for a more complete understanding of these associations.     

我国高中学生学业成就与家庭背景关系的实证研究

本文通过2003年对10个城市40所高中在校生的问卷调查,分析普通高中学生学业成就与家庭背景之间的关系。结果显示学生学业成就与父亲职业、文化程度和家庭经济收入均无显著性差异。     

Measuring and Monitoring Educational Achievement

Societies continue to have high expectations of education. There may be disappointment with the current achievements of education systems but commitments to change and reform bear testimony to an underlying faith that education has much to offer - to individuals and to societies as a whole.     

Parental Involvement and Educational Achievement

Parental involvement is seen as an important strategy for the advancement of the quality of education. The ultimate objective of this is to expand the social and cognitive capacities of pupils. In addition, special attention is paid to the children of low‐educated and ethnic minority parents. Various forms of both parental and school‐initiated involvement are examined. On the one hand, the connections between a number of characteristics of parents and schools such as the social and ethnic background of the parents and the composition of the school population will be examined. On the other hand, the connections between a number of outcome measures such as the language and mathematics skills of the pupils will be examined. Data will be drawn from the large‐scale Dutch PRIMA (primary education) cohort study, which contains information on more than 500 schools and 12,000 pupils in the last year of primary school and their parents. An important finding is that predominantly schools with numerous minority pupils appear to provide a considerable amount of extra effort with respect to parental involvement, but that a direct effect of such involvement cannot be demonstrated.     

Race,Categorisation and Educational Achievement

This paper is concerned with the ways in which terms and categories are deployed in analyses and discussions of differences in educational achievement between social groups whose identity is usually specified in terms of ‘race’ or ‘ethnicity’. The first part of the paper is didactic, and discusses problems with the use of ‘racial’ terms with respect to social, biological and legal discourse. The second part of the paper examines the consequences of categorisation for analyses of differences in educational achievement, with particular reference to a paper by Mackintosh & Mascie‐Taylor, on which the Swann Committee claims to have relied heavily.     

High Educational Expectations and Low Achievement: Stability of Educational Goals Across Adolescence

Abstract

Data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 were used to investigate variables that predicted stability of adolescents' postsecondary educational expectations from Grade 8 to 2 years after high school. The study included students who had early expectations for at least a bachelor's degree as well as 8th-grade reading or mathematics test scores that were below the median. All participants had high early expectations and comparatively low early achievement. Six years later, approximately 76% of the participants still had high expectations, whereas 24% of them no longer expected to earn a bachelor's degree. Results provide support for the addition of variables to the social cognitive model of educational achievement when predicting long-term educational expectations and attainment.     

The Concept of Educational Disadvantage and Some Implications for the Classroom Teacher

I should like to talk to you about a matter which was a great concern to Ruth Wong, as it is to me – the question of what ‘education’, in the brod sense, can or should do to alleviate the plight of the many millions of the world's children, who, for one reason or another, are unlikely to live full, healthy, productive and happy lives as their more fortunate fellows. ‘Disadvantage’ has been interpreted in many ways. Indeed, each of us has his or her own concept of what constitutes the term, just as each of us has personal ideas about ways of eliminating or minimizing its effects. What I have to say represents my own feelings and opinions. I hope you will forgive me if I begin with some general ideas, one or two of which may seem a little academic, but I think it is important to be clear as a great deal of damage has been done because of confusion of thinking.     

Improving Malay Educational Achievement in Singapore: Problems and Policies

This article traces the development since 1959 of various policies aimed at upgrading Malay educational achievement in order to close the socio-economic gap between the Malay and non-Malay communities in Singapore. It analyses the various economic and political factors that have shaped policy decisions. Several recurrent themes in official discourse on the Malays' educational problems are highlighted, along with the tensions inherent in these policies. The article concludes by discussing the extension of the strategies initiated in the 1980s to encompass the economically disadvantaged sections of the Indian and Chinese communities as well.     

教育扩展与教育不平等:中国的实证分析

在测算中国30个省份1996-2009年的人口平均受教育年限和教育基尼系数的基础上,运用面板单位根检验、面板协整检验以及DOLS等方法分析了教育扩展对教育不平等的影响.研究发现,在考察期内,中国人口的平均受教育年限稳步提高,教育基尼系数则呈现下降趋势.另外,无论在全国范围还是在东、中、西部地区,教育扩展和教育不平等之间存在长期稳定的负相关关系,教育扩展显著地改善了教育不平等状况.因此,提高人口的平均受教育年限是促进教育公平的重要途径.     

基于兴衰史视角研究分析教育哲学的利弊关系问题

文章对分析教育哲学的主要观点和兴衰史进行叙述和分析,并结合相关知识的学习归纳出分析教育哲学的功绩和弊端,并把利弊特点与其兴衰史相联系,得出其利弊关系特点。     

朱永新的学术研究成就与新教育实验

朱永新是我国改革开放新时期涌现的一位颇具影响的教育家,他通过20多年的不懈奋斗,开创了心理学史和教育思想史等学术领域研究的新路子,取得了令人瞩目的突破性成就。同时,在引领新教育实验方面,取得了显著进展。     

Student Achievement: A Factor in Classroom Dynamics?

This study examined differences in interaction patterns between teachers and high and low achieving and high and low expectation students. Records of verbal teacher‐student interactions, both public and private, were obtained through videotaping ten grade 3 and grade 6 classes during mathematics and language lessons. Teachers tended to interact most frequently with high achieving and high expectancy students, particularly at the grade 6 level, but consistently spent more time waiting for and interacting with low achieving and low expectation students.     

The Role of School Exclusion Processes in the Re-Production of Social and Educational Disadvantage

ABSTRACT

English education policy has increasingly focused on the need to intervene in an intergenerational cycle of poverty and low attainment. The accompanying policy discourse has tended to emphasise the impact of family background on educational outcomes. However, as the capacity of parents to secure positive educational outcomes for their children is closely linked to the quality of their own education, low attainment is rather more closely connected to what happens in schools than this focus suggests. Pupils from groups known to be at increased risk of low attainment are also known to be at increased risk of involvement in the disciplinary processes of schools. This paper draws on the findings of a small-scale qualitative study to highlight some of the limitations in the educational provision accessed by Secondary age pupils involved in school exclusion processes. The assumptions and tensions at practice level that underpinned this provision are also discussed. In the conclusion it is argued that a much stronger focus on the learning of these pupils could improve their attainment and contribute to a reduction in social and educational inequalities in the future.     

Educational leadership and the Capabilities Approach: evidence from Ghana

School leaders play a central role in affecting the educational development of the young people for whom they have responsibility. This is especially the case where school leaders are operating in challenging low-income environments. This paper argues that a focus on Sen’s notions of individual agency and freedom are a necessary but not a sufficient factor in the conversion of capabilities into functionings for these school leaders. This is done through using the Capabilities Approach as a lens through which to carry out a retrospective analysis and evaluation of the activities of a group of primary school headteachers in Ghana involved in a UK Government-funded project focused on education quality. The paper argues that headteachers with the capability of initiating change in the education process in their schools are unlikely to act in this way unless they feel that they have permission to do so. It is also important that headteachers feel that they are working within a context and an environment where acting in ways which aim to improve pupil learning is seen as central to their role. This kind of supportive context for school leaders (and for other educational practitioners) cannot be divorced from a policy environment which sanctions such activities, and, hence, it is argued that such a context is crucial to policy developments which seek to establish and sustain the core capabilities which are at the heart of Nussbaum’s essentialist approach. The paper also brings to the foreground the tensions that exist between the notion of individuals being free to make choices about what they have reason to value, on the one hand, and the implications that these choices have for the freedoms of other individuals with whom they are connected to make such choices. Finally, it is argued in the paper that the action research approach used in the Leadership & Management Project in Ghana, allied to a positive policy context, provides both the sensitivity to context and a practice-oriented focus which can enable school leaders to bring about the conversion of their individual capabilities into functionings.     

Educational inequality in Tasmania: evidence and explanations

In this article, we map the extent of educational inequality within Tasmania, and between Tasmania and the rest of Australia, using National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) and senior secondary attainment data. This analysis yields some surprising findings, showing the success of Tasmanian primary and high schools and that Tasmanian educational inequality is most strongly expressed at the senior secondary level. We conclude that using such publicly available data to identify differential achievement within and between jurisdictions would strengthen public policy and practitioner interventions aimed at achieving more equal educational outcomes for students in all schools. Our findings also have implications for research directions in this field, suggesting that by analysis of NAPLAN and My School data across individual schools and jurisdictions academic researchers could assist practitioners gain a deeper understanding of inequalities reproduced by the systems they are working within, while finding examples of schools and systems which show a greater level of success in ameliorating disadvantage.     

Consistency of Teaching Approach and Student Achievement: An Empirical Test

This article describes the results of a study into the relations between school, teacher, class, and student characteristics in Dutch elementary schools. Central to the study were the socio-ethnic background of the students, socio-ethnic class composition, language and math test results, teaching approach, and consistency of teaching approach within the school. The major question was whether student achievement levels vary according to the consistency of the teaching approach after controlling for socio-ethnic background at both the individual and class levels. The sample consisted of 7,410 grade 8 students and in total 1,714 teachers from 567 schools. The results of multilevel analyses showed consistency of teaching approach to be of no relevance to achievement levels. The most important factor appeared to be the socio-ethnic background of the students. Ethnic minority students perform less well than native Dutch working-class students, who in turn perform less well than the other students studied. In addition, students in classes with a relatively high number of so-called disadvantaged students perform less well independent of their individual socio-ethnic background.