Inequality and School reform in Bahia,Brazil

This article compares public and community schools in Salvador, the state capital of Bahia, Brazil. Based on quantitative data analysis and qualitative research conducted on-site during three research trips in 2001, 2003 and 2005, the author finds that Brazil’s extreme inequality and the associated concentration of state power in a few hands stand in the way of an effective reform. In 1999, the state of Bahia started to reform its basic education cycle, but the author’s research shows that Bahian elites use access to basic education to defend their inherited privilege. The analysis of community schools further demonstrates that inequality also blocks effective community and parental involvement in school management, as schools tend to distance themselves from neighbourhoods portrayed as poor and black, and thus “dangerous”.     

The school in the state and the state in the school: the social re-production of education systems in a mobile modernity

Schools offer powerful scope for viewing and comprehending the wider society in which they are produced and replicated. The ways in which schools are structured, positioned, funded, managed, appreciated, critiqued, cared for and neglected, presents us with a means for seeing beyond the rhetoric of a nation state to the lived realities faced by its citizens. In this paper I want to link the development of Australian educational policies to shifts in socio-cultural thought and practice that reflect and reproduce a mobile modernity. I am interested in school funding policies as they relate to the private, or non-government education sector from the late colonial period to these so-called neo-liberal/late modern times. The interrogated scenes shift about amongst a complex of interrelated fields, from the urban to the rural, the public and the private, as well as the primary, secondary and tertiary layers of educational “offerings”. The periodization reveals a loosening of commitments to a secular, state-centred, welfare-focused modernity, towards a privatizing, individualizing “second modernity”. Drawing from a range of empirical studies of school choice I highlight the shifting ideas and practices of those involved in the re-production of both public and private schools either as professionals/workers in the system, or as “consumers” of the products available in education’s “quasi-markets”.     

Coping with school failure: Development of the school failure coping scale

The present study describes the development of a self-report measure of coping with school failure for children and adolescents. A list of 56 items had been collected in the sample of 142 subjects aged from 9 to 18 years. The items were administered to 500 elementary and high school students. Factor analysis of the data produced seven coping strategies: Anger, Accepting Responsibility, Comfort and Forgetting, Seeking Social Support, Parents, Inadequate Reactions, and Disengagement. Internal consistencies were in the .59 to .76 range. Significant age effects were found for Accepting Responsibility, Comfort and Forgetting, and Parents, indicating that elementary school children, compared to high school students, accept greater responsibility, try harder to forget and take comfort, and seek help more from their parents. Significant gender effects were found for Accepting Responsibility, Seeking Social Support, and Inadequate Reactions, indicating that girls accept greater responsibility, more often use social support, and have fewer inadequate reactions than boys. Overall pattern of results also suggests that high achievers use more positive coping strategies (mainly accepting responsibility) and less negative strategies (anger, inadequate reactions and disengagement) than low or average achievers.     

The costs of failure: Negative externalities in high school course repetition

Failure in US high school courses is common, but little is known about its effects. This paper investigates the extent to which course repeaters in high school mathematics courses exert negative externalities on their course-mates. Using individual and school-specific course fixed effects to control for ability and course selection, it shows that increasing the share of repeaters in a given course results in a moderate, significant increase in the probability of course failure for first-time course-takers. Results suggest that the negative effect is only evident when the share of repeaters reaches a threshold of five to ten percent of the total number of course-takers. The possibility that grading to a curve generates the effect cannot be ruled out, but is not fully supported in the data. Evidence is also presented that course repetition externalities may be distinct from low-ability peer effects.     

Measuring cognitive achievement gaps and inequalities: The case of Brazil

This paper introduces a new measure of educational inequalities based on cognitive achievement data, and uses it to examine achievement inequalities in mathematics between groups of students enrolled in basic education in Brazil. The groups of students are defined by their race, sex, socioeconomic status (SES), and region of residence. The Brazilian system of basic education currently produces poor results with respect to both quality and equity. The paper recommends that Brazil should work, concomitantly, to improve the achievement levels of its students and to close the cognitive gaps observed among different groups of students. Placing emphasis on just one of these goals is not an adequate public policy at this time. Proposals for carrying out these reforms can be classified as input or management strategies and are briefly discussed.     

Individual differences in feelings of difficulty: The case of school mathematics

Feelings of difficulty, or subjective estimation of task difficulty, are on-line metacognitive experiences, which arise as response to the difficulty of the tasks processed by the person. They are related to performance, but little is known about their nature and the factors that influence them. This study aimed to delimit the possible individual differences effects on feelings of difficulty experienced in relation to school mathematics. General and domain-specific cognitive ability, affect, gender and expertise were the individual differences factors studied. The subjects were 299 students of 7th, 8th, & 9th grade and they were tested with mathematical tasks of three levels of difficulty. Upon completion of each task subjects rated its difficulty on a 4-point scale, ranging from 1: not difficult at all to 4: very difficult. Testing was repeated one year later. Path analysis showed that feelings of difficulty form a system of their own, which is mainly influenced by performance and cognitive ability rather than affective factors. Only anxiety state had a direct effect on feelings of difficulty. Expertise did not differentiate feelings of difficulty in the 1st testing, but it did so in the second. Gender interacted with both personal and task characteristics, the girls being more atypical in their responses than boys. The educational implications of these results are discussed.     

Problem solving activity in the workplace and the school: The case of constructing solids

The purpose of the present study is to document, compare, and analyze the nature of spatial reasoning by practitioners (plumbers) in the workplace and students in the school setting while constructing solids, with given specifications, from plane surfaces. Data were collected from a plumbing workshop and five high school students while constructing a cylindrical container of capacity one-liter and height of 20 cm. The results confirm the power of activity theory and its methodology in explaining and identifying the structural differences between the two activities in the two different cultural settings. Students and plumber activity structures differed in the operational aspect (actions) and the means and concrete conditions (operations) under which such a goal is carried out. Activity theory has the potential to explain the differences between the two activities in terms of differences in the motive, social-cultural settings, the tools that were available and accessible which resulted in different actions, and the constraints (operations) under which the task was executed. Theoretical and pedagogical implications were identified. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

语用失误的起因与对策

中西方国家的人生活在不同的社会环境里,有着不同的文化传统,在风俗习惯、思维方式、价值观等方面都存在着很大的差异.所以,中国学生在学习和运用英语的过程中常常由于用词不当或不知道英语国家的文化背景而在交际中造成语用失误.解决和避免这些失误的方法就是加强语言学教学,培养学生运用语言的能力,既要注意语言本身的复杂性,也要注意文化的渗入,给学生创造充分运用语言的机会.     

The role of state school psychology organizations in the promotion of professional ethics

A survey was conducted to examine the role of state school psychology organizations in advocating for, and monitoring the ethical practice of, their members. Particular attention was directed to the existence and nature of codes of ethics and of due process procedures. The results revealed that 76% (28 of 37) of the responding organizations had adopted a code of ethics, while only 43% (16 of 37) had instituted due process procedures. The responsibility of professional school psychology organizations in serving as a resource to their members in the area of ethics is stressed. An educative approach to the promotion of ethical practice by professional organizations also is presented.     

Accountability,school reform,and equity: The troubling case of Sylvan school district

Most educational accountability systems draw upon relatively simplified indicators of student learning. Despite sufficient criticism and evidence of their misuse, test scores continue to be emphasized—even though they have a deadening effect on the very school district these accountability systems intend to primarily influence. This paper focuses on one of these low-performing school districts. The case study of Sylvan One reveals that the influence of state policy is especially circumscribed in a district like Sylvan's that is beset by such prevailing conditions as the politics of race, the culture of poverty, vacuums in communication and leadership, and the uncritical mass of human resources. Each of these conditions limits change and reform dramatically. Account-ability and reform must focus on a rigorous curriculum and well-understood standards—but only in the context of this community, replete with its problems ofrelationships, resources, andracism. These are the “three Rs” that are tantamount to creating and sustaining reform. And this approach is more about political development than anything else. Recommendations for moving beyond the traditional policymaking tools of mandates and inducements are suggested, recognizing that policy may at best promote equality, but not necessarily excellence and equity.