School teacher parents and the retreat from public secondary schooling: A view from the Australian Census, 1976–2001

This article uses data from the Australian Censuses of 1976 and 2001 to measure the extent to which the children of school teachers participated in the middle class shift from public to non-government secondary schooling of the closing decades of the last century. It builds on recent work by Craig Campbell and Geoffrey Sherington on the history of the New South Wales Public comprehensive high school, as well as recent analyses of the relationships between the middle classes and public institutions by sociologists such as Michael Pusey (for Australia) and Stephen Ball (for the United Kingdom). School teachers are of particular interest for a number of reasons including their historically uneasy status relative to other professional occupations and their complex roles as both providers and consumers of school education. The article finds that while school teachers collectively moved their children out of government high schools in common with other middle class parents over the period, there were differences within the category according to parent’s gender and sector of employment.     

Parranda,pasiÓn y vida de Punta Alegre: Desde la cÁmara de Enrique de la Uz [Translation and Summary of Enrique de la Uz: FotografÍas by Reynaldo Gonzalez]

There is a paucity of research describing the needs and concerns that teachers of color present to multicultural teacher preparation. In this essay the author reviews the research on multicultural teacher preparation to uncover research practices that make teachers of color invisible. In this analysis, it is contended that this body of research has created a discontinuity between the principles of?multicultural education, multicultural teacher education, and current efforts to diversify the teaching force.     

Dropout from initial vocational training – A meta-synthesis of reasons from the apprentice's point of view

Internationally, vocational education and training (VET) faces some major challenges, one of them certainly constituting the number of premature terminations of contract. A large part of former research within this context has concentrated on the identification and analysis of dropout reasons from the apprentice’s point of view. Due to differing foci within previous studies, gaining a comprehensive overview of reasons for premature termination of contract has been impeded. Hence, it was the aim of this paper to summarize central cross-study and cross-sector findings within this context. Therefore, the present state of research was systematically reviewed and meta-synthesized: 70 studies were extracted, including 666 potential dropout variables that were aggregated based on 68 categories. As a result, a collection of empirically retrieved factors was developed and integrated within a framework model of premature termination of contract. Results indicate that former research has mainly focused on dropout drivers within the individual. Simultaneously, there has been far less focus on the learning environment in the workplaces. In addition, only for a small number of dropout categories are the findings consistent. Results of quantitative studies indicate that the dropout probability increases with a low training wage, a training occupation not representing the apprentice’s dream job, an apprentice’s low educational level, a poor performance level within training, a learning disability, increasing age and a migration background. Finally, studies find significant differences concerning the respective training occupation.     

Self‐knowledge and psychological knowledge: Teaching psychology from the cognitive point of view 1

The aims and methods of teaching psychology depend on one's conception of the field. The three principal contemporary approaches are behaviorism, dynamic psychology, and cognitive psychology. Of these three, only cognitive psychology provides a frame of reference in which knowledge can be seen as valuable in its own right, and psychological knowledge as important even for non‐professionals. The three orientations have different implications for the level at which psychology can usefully be taught. A successful course taught in a junior high school illustrates the feasibility of teaching about cognition at this level, where other approaches may have little to offer. The three orientations suggest emphasis on different methods of teaching. Classroom demonstration of perceptual and cognitive phenomena plays a special role in teaching about cognition. It enables the student to discover that what he is learning applies to him, and thus endows it with specific concreteness and personal relevance.     

“The verdict is in: A study of jury decision making factors,moment of personal decision,and jury deliberations—from the jurors' point of view”

The purpose of this study was to gain insight into jury decision waking factors, jury decision timing, and the jury decision making process by talking to actual trial jurors. Three criminal jury trials were observed, and seventeen of the jurors were interviewed after each trial's completion. The data indicate that jurors were influenced by the evidence, witnesses, lawyers, and defendant in the trials. In two trials, jurors made their decisions early; one trial produced later decisions. The jurors' reports also demonstrate that jurors considered evidence and discussed the key issues during deliberation.     

From the canciÓn de protesta to the nueva trova, 1965-85

A grounded theory was developed to describe the processes of self‐understanding of a group of Chinese women graduate students who were studying in the United States at the time of the research. A basic psychological process, reweaving a fragmented self, was identified from interviews with 20 Chinese women graduate students. Reweaving a fragmented self included three sub‐processes: weaving self, fragmenting self and reweaving self, as occurred across two chronological phases, being women students in their homeland and becoming international women students in a new land. Categories and codes explain and support each of the processes. The implications of this research are theoretical and practical. It contributes to the critical theories of women’s selves in a cultural context by exploring the ways in which these Chinese women graduate students negotiated critical cultural elements in their self‐understanding. It also contributes to American higher education by enhancing educators’ understanding of the diversity of these women students’ experiences, expectations and desires and providing them with information on these students’ self‐understanding.     

A departure from the past? Extension workers and participatory rural development: the case of Botswana

This article addresses the question of whether extension workers can change their attitudes and practices in order to promote participatory rural development by considering the case of Botswana. It discusses the emergent participatory extension paradigm which uses techniques such as participatory rural appraisal (PRA). It describes the new community‐based strategy for rural development in Botswana which includes the expectation that the extension services can be reorientated to facilitate increased community participation. Evidence is presented from research in 1995‐96 which evaluated a pilot project involving PRAs undertaken by extension workers in four districts. The project sought to find out systematically whether PRA could enhance the ability of the extension services to undertake participatory rural development. The findings suggest that extension workers can develop through training the attitudinal predisposition necessary for adopting a more participatory approach to extension practice. However, there are institutional and contextual constraints which present obstacles to implementing participatory rural development. It is therefore not certain that the proposal to expand the use of PRA on a national scale will lead to the anticipated reorientation of the extension services.     

Children’s reading difficulties,language, and reflections on the simple view of reading

Reading comprehension is a complex task which depends on a range of cognitive and linguistic processes. According to the Simple View of Reading, this complexity can be captured as the product of two sets of skills: decoding and linguistic comprehension. The Simple View explains variance in reading comprehension and provides a good framework to guide the classification of reading disorders. This paper discusses how weaknesses in either or both of components of the Simple View are implicated in children’s reading comprehension difficulties. It concludes with reflections on the strengths and limitations of the Simple View as a theoretical and practical framework to guide our understanding of reading comprehension and its development.     

National Self‐determination and International Dependence: the organisation and control of secondary school examinations in the small states of the Commonwealth

This paper contributes to the literatures on examinations, on self‐determination and dependence, and on small states. It draws particularly on materials for a Commonwealth Secretariat project on examination systems in small states. For the purposes of this paper, small states are defined as ones with populations below 3 million. The Commonwealth has 32 such states, scattered in different parts of the world.

Review of systems for external secondary school examinations shows three basic models. Some small states operate their own examination systems, some participate in regional bodies, and some make use of examinations set in other countries. The paper notes the advantages and disadvantages of each model, and the reasons for variations.     

Qualified to lead? A comparative,contextual and cultural view of educational policy borrowing

Abstract

Background: Around the globe, education policy borrowing remains pervasive and prevalent. The strategies, interventions and innovations of education systems that perform well, in international assessments, are enthusiastically borrowed and copied in the anticipation of similar educational performance and outcomes.

Purpose: This purpose of the article is to highlight some of the implications and consequences of policy borrowing by comparing the preparation and development programmes for school leaders in various education systems. The article explores the way in which the leadership programmes and models are being adopted and developed by different countries.

Sources of evidence: The article draws upon findings from a contemporary, comparative study of leadership preparation and development across seven different education systems (Seven System Leadership Study). This large-scale, mixed-methods, comparative research study is collecting quantitative and qualitative data about the nature and impact of leadership development and preparation programmes in seven different education systems.

Main argument: The findings from the study reinforce how leadership preparation and development programmes are increasingly becoming standardised as a result of education systems borrowing and adapting from each other. This article also argues that in the contemporary policy discourse, important cultural and contextual influences that significantly affect subsequent implementation and outcomes are increasingly being side-lined and ignored.

Conclusions: This article highlights some of the limitations and unintended consequences of educational policy borrowing. It concludes that adopting some of the design features of effective interventions rather than simply borrowing policies or strategies, in part or in their entirety from very different contexts, may be a more productive way forward.     

Who Benefits Most from a University Degree?: A Cross-National Comparison of Selection and Wage Returns in the US,UK, and Germany

Recent research on economic returns to higher education in the United States suggests that those with the highest wage returns to a college degree are least likely to obtain one. We extend the study of heterogeneous returns to tertiary education across multiple institutional contexts, investigating how the relationship between wage returns and the propensity to complete a degree varies by the level of expansion, differentiation, and cost of higher education. Drawing on panel data and matching techniques, we compare findings from the US with selection into degree completion in Germany and the UK. Contrary to previous studies, we find little evidence for population level heterogeneity in economic returns to higher education.     

“A Widespread Loss of Confidence:” TARP,Presidential Rhetoric,and the Crisis of Neoliberalism

This article analyzes the circulation of the term “confidence” as a prominent signifier for neoliberal logics, taking George W. Bush’s response to the economic crisis in Fall 2008 as a case study. It traces the public circulation of confidence in previous presidential administrations and notes that much like previous administrations, Bush’s response to the crisis was rooted in confidence. Bush identified a loss of confidence as the underlying cause of the economic crisis, and his focus on the need to restore lost confidence allowed him to violate his traditionally conservative principles in order to save the free market. Additionally, Bush’s reliance on the term in the context of the economic crisis articulated the nation-state to the national economy through neoliberalism as a prevailing economic logic.