Estimating the relation between health and education: What do we know and what do we need to know?

The empirical link between education and health is firmly established. Numerous studies document that higher levels of education are positively associated with longer life and better health throughout the lifespan.But measuring the causal links between education and health is a more challenging task. Aside from the typical econometric concerns about measurement error, functional form, and sampling properties, measuring the causal impact of education on health is confounded by the likely causal effect of health on education, and vice versa. Concerns about ‘missing’ variables that affect both the accumulation of human capital and the health capital - such as measures of individual discount rates - also make causality difficult to measure.Despite the difficulties, there has been a marked surge over the last decade in the number of empirical studies attempting to estimate the causal links between education and health. This survey reviews recent empirical evidence on the topic. Following the bifurcation in the literature, we split the survey into two pieces. First, we review the evidence of the effect of education on health. The vast majority of work in this area focuses on schooling up through college and its effect on adult health, including longevity. Second, we review the evidence of the effect of health on education, including health shocks in the womb and their effects on educational attainment. Rather than attempting a comprehensive review, our focus is to highlight relatively recent research.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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 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.     

Basic skills and workplace learning: what do we actually know about their benefits?

In this paper we review the literature on the impact of workplace basic skills training on individuals, as measured by their effects on wages and employment probability. In addition, we also examine studies on the returns to individuals of general training at the workplace. On the whole, the evidence suggests that better numeracy and literacy skills have a strong positive effect on individuals' earnings and employment stability, even when other relevant factors, such as qualifications levels, are taken into account. There is also good evidence to suggest that general training provided at the workplace has a positive impact on individuals' wages, particularly when this training is employer provided rather than off the job. However, the literature also suggests that improvement of basic skills levels in adults has very small or even no positive effects on wages and employment probability. We discuss the implications of these findings on the formation of government policy on basic skills provision. We also propose that there is a real need for more research in this area, not only in terms of longitudinal quantitative studies tracking the effects of basic skills programmes on firms and individuals but also in terms of detailed case studies focusing on specific training programmes and their impact at the level of the individual and firm.     

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.     

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.     

What they think, what they know, what they do: Rural secondary teachers’ motivational beliefs and strategies

This research examined how rural high school teachers’ beliefs and perceptions of themselves, their students and the challenge of motivation influence their strategic classroom and interpersonal motivating practice. Participants were 13 teachers in three rural, public high schools in two US states. Teachers’ beliefs about motivation generally, and their students’ motivation specifically, reflect a position favouring need and willingness to intervene for unmotivated students. However, their self-perceptions reflect a relatively weak efficacy to intervene successfully. Generally, teachers’ prevalent choice of strategies aligned with their perceptions of reasons that students were undermotivated. In contrast, some teachers’ narratives of actual efforts to motivate a specific student were inconsistent with their self-reported philosophies and style of motivation, and with their general statements of how they would motivate students who needed it. These findings suggest implications for design of teacher education and inservice teacher professional development.     

‘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.     

The social studies methods course: what do teacher candidates know and want to know about teaching social studies?

During the past decade, there has been more than an adequate amount of research addressing issues regarding social studies methods courses. However, the apparent void is that there is no clear understanding of what pedagogical content knowledge or understanding of pedagogical approaches teacher candidates bring with them to social studies methods courses or what they expect from their time in social studies methods courses. The purpose of this study is to determine the mentality of the typical social studies methods course student, as he or she enters a social studies methods course. Employing analytic induction (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007 Bogdan, R. C. and Biklen, S. K. 2007. Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theory and methods , (5th ed.), Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.  [Google Scholar]; Erikson, 1986 Erikson, F. 1986. “Qualitative methods in research on teaching”. In Handbook of research on teaching , (3rd ed.,, Edited by: Wittrock, M. C. 119–161. New York, NY: Macmillan.  [Google Scholar]; Patton, 2002 Patton, M. Q. 2002. Qualitative research & evaluation methods , (3rd ed.), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.  [Google Scholar]) and content analysis (Patton, 2002 Patton, M. Q. 2002. Qualitative research & evaluation methods , (3rd ed.), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.  [Google Scholar]) to analyze and interpret the data, 9 categories for what the students know and 8 for what the students wanted to know were constructed.     

Correction to: What do upper‑elementary and middle school teachers know about the processes of text comprehension?

Reading and Writing -     

‘Trust me,I do not know what I am talking about!’: The voice of the teacher beyond the oath and blasphemy

Educational theorists ranging from Ivan Illich to Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons have described institutionalized schooling as a modernized, secular church, full of rituals, sacraments, and various incantations. For them, the function of the teacher as priest and schooling as baptism is highly problematic, separating education from the common world. As such, the educational theology of the school needs to be suspended in order for educational life to take on new meaning beyond the sacraments of learning. To further this line of inquiry, we turn to the work of Giorgio Agamben on the oath and its originary function of guaranteeing the truthfulness of language (‘sacrament of language’). Insofar as the oath is also operable in learning (in the voice of the teacher), we argue that such operability can be suspended through a dialogic practice called ‘community of infancy’, thereby making possible new, profane forms of educational life beyond baptism.     

“Look,a [picture]!”: Visuality,race, and what we do not see

This article argues that understanding vision and visuality as associated but distinct terms has significant implications for the ways in which we engage with racial constructions of identity. Expanding the ways in which we visualize race beyond simply the visual offers us a more comprehensive approach to understanding the construction of and response to race in the twenty-first-century United States. This article moves from theoretical implications of non-visual visualizations like tactile visuality and audial visuality through photographs taken by blind photographers to ask how race and racial identity are implicated in conversations about both vision and visuality.