On the Un-becoming of Measurement in Education

Abstract

Education in democratic South Africa has been saddled with the extraordinary task of sanitising a once dehumanising and splintered education system into a singular narrative of social justice and creative, problem-solving individuals. This extraordinary effort has witnessed a pendulum swing from the openness of outcomes-based education, to a less flexible National Curriculum Statement, and recently, to what has been criticised as a too restrictive Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS). In its narrow focus on ‘assessment for learning’, CAPS appears to be trapped in a particular understanding of teaching and learning that can be understood only in terms of measurement, thereby discounting education as happening outside that which can be measured. In this article, I contend, firstly, that while education is not averse to measurement, it cannot be allowed to dominate the educative process. Instead, it is possible to reconcile measurement, as expressed through a ‘language of needs’ with a language of ‘coming into presence’, which recognises that learners enter the education arena with their own ideas of what is known and yet to be known. Secondly, I argue, that if a post-apartheid education system hopes to re-humanise its citizens and society, then this will only be possible through cultivating a curriculum, which is understood as a process of socially just encounters—one which is always in becoming, and therefore not necessarily measurable.     

Fighting Alternative Facts: Teaching Quantitative Reasoning with Social Issues

Abstract

Mathematics has a unique and powerful role to play in the teaching of social justice issues. There is substantial quantitative evidence for social injustice, but many citizens lack the quantitative skills to understand that evidence. A course in quantitative literacy is a unique opportunity to provide this quantitative understanding to a wide range of students in a general education context. Quantitative literacy skills provide citizens with the tools they need to critically analyze misinformation and make good decisions about civic issues.     

Collective Experimentation: Lessons from the Field

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to document smallholder experiences during a participatory experimental initiative and draw useful lessons for field practitioners. The main methods used to collect data were participant observation, in-depth interviews among 40 farmers, and analyses of notes taken during participatory monitoring and evaluation. These farmers were regular participants in four collective trials—designed by scientists, managed by smallholders—that were run for over five years in western Kenya. This paper shows that scientific trial designs enhanced ‘conviction’ among smallholders in new technologies that were being experimented. The study further reveals that (1) collective trials must last long enough for interactive learning to effectively occur, (2) farmers’ selected aspects of experiments and did not generally treat the whole trial as one concept, (3) field trials were forms of evidence of research or project activity, and (4) trials were seen as like ‘churches’ and multipurpose congregating sites, especially because these collective experiments had roots in local traditions.

The practical implication is that because interactive trials are social events, like other learning platforms, they must be appropriately situated within local contexts to enhance their relevance. This paper also shows that experiments are only a first step in learning, which needs to be supported by in-depth research and support for smallholder experiments. Collaborative experimentation is an effective tool for improving smallholder knowledge. Experimentation is a hands-on tool; it strengthens interactive learning, enhances understanding of a concept and improves ownership of the process or research among farmers. However, longer-term collective experiments develop a strong underlying human dimension. Understanding the social dynamics that influence the value of collective experimentation is critical for the process of scaling out.     

The only way is ethics: methodological considerations for a working-class academic

ABSTRACT

Ethnography as a methodological approach presents the fieldworker with many ethical crossroads throughout the research process. This is because of the unique position that ethnographers find themselves in, the environments that they research and the relationships which are formed. This paper presents four confessional vignettes from a broader ethnographic research project that illuminate the underside of fieldwork, and how the author dealt with a number of difficulties and dilemmas in the field as a working-class academic. Fieldwork was undertaken in a Welsh (UK) secondary school for one full academic year, and the paper argues that researcher identity must be remain fluid so that successful field relations are established and maintained. The paper concludes that researchers must think intersectionally about their endeavours and to also consider how one’s own social baggage might impact upon the research process.     

Sympathetic Activation in Response to Infant Cry: Distress or Promptness to Action?

SYNOPSIS

An increase in sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activity or reactivity in response to stimulation is usually interpreted as an index of heightened maladaptive distress. However, sympathetic activation also underlies promptness to action, so it is not clear whether the same relation could stand for parental responses to infant cry given that a ready and prompt parental response to infant cry favors more adaptive cognitive, social, and emotional development in the infant. Previous studies have not been consistent in the interpretation of sympathetic activation which occurs in response to infant cry. We discuss these two opposing proposed interpretations. A possible alternative interpretation may be that medium activation of the SNS is adaptive because it prepares the organism to act promptly, whereas too low or too high SNS activation is maladaptive because it underlies a lack of empathetic reaction or a highly distressed response.     

Training of specialists and the labour market in Russia

Abstract

In this paper the authors argue that the use of the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) in the implementation of the Bologna process presents coordination problems that do not allow for the full coherence of the results. As the process is quite complex, involving three different levels (European, national and local) and as the final actors in the implementation process higher education institutions (HEIs) have considerable degree of autonomy, assuming that the implementation of Bologna is a top‐down linear policy implementation process does not account for the developments taking place, which produce implementation difficulties at several different levels. Constraints resulting from economic concerns at European and national levels may be an obstacle for the Bologna's contribution to a social Europe.     

The Reflective Self

ABSTRACT

The following paper will apply a social constructionist paradigm to the concepts of the reflective self, creativity and intuition as valuable skills in social work practice education. The students' learning process and their integration of self-reflective, intuitive and creative knowledge and skills will be illustrated through excerpts from their final papers in an advanced social work practice course taught by this instructor. A qualitative analysis will focus on three main themes that emerged from these final papers: learning from the client, the use of intuition, and helplessness and omnipotence. The author's underlying thesis is that on-going self-examination, intuitive knowledge and a creative use of self are not only crucial skills in clinical practice in general but should continue to be emphasized in social work practice education.     

Critical incidents in pre-service EFL teachers’ identity construction process

ABSTRACT

Knowledge and human identity are socially constructed phenomena. Like other aspects of human identity, teacher identity is shaped through social influences. Some of the social influences that contribute to teacher identity development happen through critical incidents that teachers or teacher candidates experience. The current study, adopting a critical incident analysis perspective, attempts to ascertain the nature of the critical incidents that 49 pre-service teachers of EFL have experienced throughout their English learning process. It also tries to uncover the effects of these critical incidents on their English learning and teacher identity. The data for the research was collected using a Critical Incident Form developed by the researchers and focus group interviews. The findings indicated that pre-service ELT teachers’ early learning experiences included certain critical incidents. An inductive quantitative analysis of these incidents revealed that they can be categorized into three themes: people, context, and outcome. Exploring the nature of critical incidents and their role in the construction of English language teacher identity will hopefully be a benefit to teachers and teacher educators.     

Media education with the monetization of YouTube: the loss of truth as an exchange value / Educación mediática frente a la monetización en YouTube: la pérdida de la verdad como valor de cambio

Abstract

The digital age of post-truth is the ideal breeding ground for fake news and misinformation. In the world of social networks and the Internet in general, commercial interests hold primacy over the importance of the veracity of the information provided. In this study, we have carried out a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the messages published as comments on the most popular videos about Pokémon Go published in Spanish on YouTube. The main objective of the study is to analyse not only the content of the videos but, above all, users’ reactions to the misinformation provided. The results confirm the hypothesis that misinformation is promoted by the crisis of truth as a journalistic and social value, by economic interest and by the lack of suitable media education. We conclude by advocating the need to recover truth as a journalistic and social value in the digital context, and to accept that media literacy is an essential task to be assumed by all educational agents: schools, media and social groups.     

Teaching Social Work's Bio-Psycho-Social Assessment

Abstract

Teaching a process of case theory construction provides students with a systematic approach to make sense of clients and formulate accurate assessments. Through a theory of the case students can account for problematic factors, explain the client, draw from the relevant literature and successfully intervene. Case material illustrates the importance of students' incorporation of the biological, psychological and social in their case theory construction. These three domains not only provide the requisite social work breadth in assessment, but also build the foundation for a broad-based social work intervention that is germane to client problems.     

Vicarious versus Direct Experience: How the Media Affect Psychological Growth

Abstract

Information technologies such as television or computer games are often described as creating either a passive or an interactive experience. These polar alternatives can better be conceived of as direct experience on the one hand or vicarious experience on the other. Direct experience involves overt acts. Once an overt act is made, the physical world or the social world provides feedback about the consequences. Vicarious experience requires no overt response on the part of the person attending to the message.

It is the main thesis of this article that direct experience tends to be normative while vicarious experience permits individualistic psychological growth because vicarious experience is not under the control of cither social norms or the norms imposed by the realities of the physical world. If this is correct, a critical index of personality is the ratio of direct to vicarious experience. If the ratio is great, a person is likely to be adjusted to social norms. If the ratio is small, a person will probably be in conflict with social norms. Much of the recent history of the behaviour of young people can be interpreted using these principles. However, there are still many puzzling aspects in the changes in the behaviour patterns of young people over the last decade or so. The implications for instructional design using information technology will be discussed.     

Against methodocentrism in educational research

Abstract

This essay defines and critiques ‘methodocentrism’, the belief that predetermined research methods are the determining factor in the validity and importance of educational research. By examining research in science studies and posthumanism, the authors explain how this methodocentrism disenables research from taking account of problems and non-human actants that are presumed to be of no importance or value in existing social science research methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative. Building from a critique of these methods as profoundly anthropocentric, the authors examine three crucial problematics in which methodocentrism functions in educational research: the institutionalization of graduate training, a wide-spread privileging of the visual (part and parcel of empiricism), and the seeming necessity of ‘data’ in social scientific research methodologies. Ultimately, this article does not reject the necessity of particular studies having methods—rigorous, philosophically grounded approaches to problems in the world—but it argues that the belief that methods must be selected from existing options and assembled before approaching the ‘objects’ of study is not only a form of bad science, it is also deeply implicated in anthropocentric and colonialist politics. Instead, what research requires today is a thorough rethinking of the very distinction between subject and object and a renewed questioning of how agency functions in specific research settings.     

Case Studies

SUMMARY

Case studies are receiving renewed interest as an alternative to traditional research methods and reports. This interest is part of a more general trend involving the rejection of modern science and scientific methods in the social sciences and helping professions, and what is often a strident and ill-informed advocacy of qualitative research methods. Qualitative research in general and case studies in particular have a number of disadvantages and should not be substituted for quantitative research methods. Nevertheless, case studies probably can make a worthwhile contribution to the search for knowledge in education by helping to communicate the richness of human interactions, and by providing examples of how theories and philosophies can actually be applied in real situations.     

Assessing wellbeing at school entry using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire: professional perspectives

Emotional and behavioural disorders in early childhood are related to poorer academic attainment and school engagement, and difficulties already evident at the point of starting school can affect a child’s later social and academic development. Successful transfer from pre-school settings to primary education is helped by communication between pre-school staff and primary school teachers. Typically, in Scotland, pre-school establishments prepare individual profiles of children before they start school around the age of five years, highlighting their strengths and development needs, for transfer to primary schools. There is, however, no consistent approach to the identification of potential social, emotional and behavioural problems. In 2010, in one local authority area in Scotland, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) was introduced for children about to start school as a routine, structured, component of the transition process to help teachers plan support arrangements for classes and individual children. The SDQ assesses emotional, conduct, hyperactivity/ inattention and peer-relationship problems as well as pro-social behaviour. In order to be an effective means of communicating social and emotional functioning, the use of instruments such as the SDQ needs to be practicable. Finding out the views of pre-school education staff with experience of assessing children using the SDQ was, therefore, essential to establish its future utility.

Aim

The purpose of this study was to explore the views of pre-school education staff about assessing social and emotional wellbeing of children at school entry using the SDQ. The objectives were to examine the opinions of pre-school workers about completing the SDQ and to elicit their thoughts on the value of doing this and their perceptions of the usefulness of the information collected.

Method

Pre-school establishments were approached using a purposive sampling strategy in order to achieve a mix of local authority (n=14) and ‘partnership’ establishments (n=8) as well as different socio-economic areas. Semi-structured interviews (n=25) were conducted with pre-school head teachers (n=14) and child development officers (n=11) in order to explore the process of completing the SDQ along with perceptions of its value. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically.

Results

In general, staff in pre-school establishments viewed the use of the SDQ positively. It was seen as a chance to highlight the social and emotional development of children rather than just their academic or educational ability. Most felt that the SDQ had not identified anything they did not already know about a child. A minority, nevertheless, suggested that a previously unrecognised potential difficulty was brought to light, most commonly emotional problems. Completing the SDQ was felt to be relatively straightforward even though the staff felt under pressure from competing priorities. Concerns were, however, raised about the potential of labelling a child at an early stage of formal education.

Conclusion

The findings from this small scale study suggest that, from the point of view of pre-school education staff, it is feasible to assess children systematically for social and behavioural problems as part of the routine transition process at school entry.     

Review and Abstract

ABSTRACT

Case studies have pointed out that teachers’ disciplinary knowledge affects their pedagogy; however, the results are not consistent. There is a need for quantitative research to examine the relationship between teacher knowledge and practice, particularly in social studies where content-specific studies are mostly qualitative. The authors used history as an example and surveyed all public and private junior high school social studies teachers in Taiwan to examine if disciplinary backgrounds significantly affect teachers’ knowledge, conceptions about the discipline, and their teaching practices. Hierarchical linear modeling analyses show that disciplinary backgrounds significantly affect teachers’ subject matter knowledge and pedagogy. Evaluations of effect sizes suggest that academic backgrounds can serve as useful proxies for teacher recruitment. The results also indicate that nature-revealing courses affect teachers’ subject matter knowledge and pedagogy.     

What does evidence‐based practice in education mean?

Abstract

Teaching has suffered both as a profession in search of community respect, and as a force for improving the social capital of Australia because of its failure to adopt the results of empirical research as the major determinant of its practice. There are a number of reasons why this has occurred, among them a science‐aversive culture endemic among education policymakers and teacher education faculties. There are signs that change may be afoot. The National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy has pointed to, and urged us to follow, a direction similar to that taken recently in Great Britain and the USA towards evidence‐based practice. Acknowledging the importance of teacher education, the National Institute for Quality Teaching and School Leadership began a process for establishing national accreditation of pre‐service teacher education. Two problems do require attention. The generally low quality of much educational research in the past has made the process of evaluating the evidence difficult, particularly for those teachers who have not the training to discriminate sound from unsound research designs. Fortunately, there are a number of august bodies that have performed the sifting process to simplify judging the value of research on important educational issues.     

Practitioner Views on the Wider Benefits of Further Education

In this paper, the views of further education (FE) practitioners regarding the 'wider benefits' of FE are examined. The wider benefits are defined as encompassing both non-pecuniary private benefits (such as improved self-esteem, health and quality of life) and those impacting on society as a whole (such as community regeneration and cultural development). Through quantitative and qualitative analysis of questionnaires distributed to practitioners in 35 FE colleges in conjunction with the Learning and Skills Development Agency, the types of benefits arising from FE and the mechanisms involved in the production of those benefits are examined. Results indicate that esteem, self-efficacy and the development of social networks are important benefits of FE and that purposive social interaction is a major factor in producing social benefits. This is particularly the case in health and humanities subjects. The policy implications for FE are that a diverse, socially integrated and less administratively burdened sector is required if wider benefits are to be realised.     

Exceeding expectations: scaffolding agentic engagement through assessment as learning

Background: The active involvement of learners as critical, reflective and capable agents in the learning process is a core aim in contemporary education policy in Australia, and is regarded as a significant factor for academic success. However, within the relevant literature, the issue of positioning students as agents in the learning process has not been fully examined and needs further exploration.

Purpose: This study aims to explore ways in which aspects of self-regulated learning theory may be integrated with the concept of agentic engagement into classroom practice. Specifically, the study seeks to scaffold students’ self-assessment capabilities and self-efficacy by using a formative assessment-as-learning process. The research examines how scaffolded planning, as part of the forethought phase in the Assessment as Learning (AaL) process, influences self-regulation and student agency in the learning process.

Sample: 126 students from school years two, four and six (student age groups 7, 9 and 11 years), and 7 teachers at an independent (co-educational, non-religious) primary school in the Northern Territory, Australia, participated in the study.

Design and methods: Conducted as a one-setting, cross-sectional practitioner research study, the data sources included students’ planning templates, writing samples, interviews with students and teachers and email correspondence with teachers. The data were analysed for emerging themes and interpreted from a framework of social cognitive theory.

Findings: In this study, students were given the opportunity and support to exercise agentic engagement. Findings suggested that, in particular, students who were identified by their teachers as low-achieving and/or with poor motivation, were perceived by the teachers as exceededing expectations by demonstrating relatively greater motivation, persistence, effort and pride in their work than would be the case usually.

Conclusions: The findings from this formative AaL study suggest that AaL has the potential to help scaffold primary students’ development of assessment capabilities.     

Teachers' views of forgiveness for the resolution of conflicts between students in school

This study investigated teachers' views of forgiveness and institutional pardon for conflict resolution at schools. We asked, "Should teachers endorse student resolution of interpersonal conflicts at school by asking for forgiveness and forgiving?" "Considering that students' conflict led to behaviours that violated norms in the school, should schools pardon students' misconduct if students effectively used forgiveness for interpersonal conflict resolution?" Finally, "Is an internal and autonomous orientation for forgiveness related to social harmony or interpersonal ethics of care?" Fifty-three participants answered a background information questionnaire and two dilemmas. Findings showed that teachers endorse forgiveness as social expectation, a humanitarian, moral response to conflicts at conventional levels. Teachers do not endorse institutional pardon because they do not perceive forgiveness as being related to resolving social issues. Opposition to forgiveness and pardon was supported by authoritarian, discipli narian views of education.     

International large-scale assessments: what uses,what consequences?

Abstract

Background: International large-scale assessments (ILSAs) are a much-debated phenomenon in education. Increasingly, their outcomes attract considerable media attention and influence educational policies in many jurisdictions worldwide. The relevance, uses and consequences of these assessments are often the focus of research scrutiny. Whilst some argue that the assessment outcomes provide an effective basis for informed policy-making, critics claim that the use of international assessment data can result in a range of unintended consequences, such as the shaping and governing of school systems ‘by numbers’.

Purpose: This article explores and analyses the arguments about the uses and consequences of ILSAs. In particular, the discourse about the assessments’ consequential validity will be discussed and evaluated.

Sources of evidence: Literature relating to the uses and consequences of large-scale assessment was analysed, with a focus on research on the consequential aspects of validity.

Main argument: Much research suggests that ILSAs have unintended consequences that affect and influence educational policy. However, the influences on educational policy are complex and interwoven: for example, it is not clear-cut whether effects such as converging curricular are, necessarily, direct consequences of large-scale assessments. Further, it is suggested that a beneficial consequence of large-scale assessment is the infrastructure they provide for studies in the social sciences, although caution must be applied to causal claims, in particular because of the cross-sectional design of the assessments.

Conclusions: The considerable literature discussing the uses and consequences of large-scale assessments tends to point out potential negative aspects of the studies. However, it is also apparent that large-scale international assessments can be a valuable resource for studying global trends and evolving systems in education. Despite the extensive debates around large-scale assessment outcomes both in the media and in educational policy arenas, empirical educational research all too often appears underused in the discussion.