Reflections on policy and practice of inclusive education in pre‐primary schools in Cyprus

In July 1999 the House of Parliament in Cyprus passed the Education Act for Children with Special Needs, according to which all children have the right to be educated in their neighbouring regular school together with their age‐mates. An important component of this law is that it introduces, for the first time, inclusive education into pre‐primary education. A child can be considered as having special needs only when he/she has attained the age of 3 years or older. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the policy of inclusive education is implemented in pre‐primary schools in ­Cyprus, to investigate whether some children are still marginalized (after the implementation of the new law) and, if they are, to identify factors influencing marginalization or acting as a barrier to inclusion. We also briefly present the results from a study we conducted that supports the discussion of the issues raised in this paper.     

Teachers’ stages of concern for media literacy education and the integration of MLE in Chinese primary schools

Media literacy is an essential skill for living in the twenty-first century. School-based instruction is a critical part of media literacy education (MLE), while research on teachers’ concerns and integration of MLE is not sufficient. The objective of this study is to investigate teachers’ stages of concern (SoC), perceived need, school context, and teacher practices of the integration of MLE in primary schools. For this purpose, a survey was setup and 392 primary school teachers participated in this study. The results show that teachers’ concerns of integration of MLE were generally oriented at the level of self-concerns. In the meanwhile, the integration of MLE was significantly related to teachers’ concerns and perceived need for MLE. Based on the results of regression analysis, teachers’ integration of MLE was significantly influenced by their SoC for MLE, school professional development support, and leadership support.     

Inclusive physical education? A study of the management of national curriculum physical education and unplanned outcomes in England

One key aspect of the growing policy emphasis on educational inclusion in England has been the tendency for physical education (PE) to be used as an important vehicle of social policy targeted at promoting the inclusion of young disabled people and those with special educational needs in mainstream schools. Drawing on aspects of figurational sociology, the central objective of this study is to examine the extent to which PE teachers have been able to achieve the government’s inclusion policy goals articulated in the 2000 National Curriculum for Physical Education (NCPE) for England. The findings indicate that using the NCPE as a means to pursue the government’s educational inclusion policy goals has had unplanned outcomes that have the effect of undermining the extent to which the government is able to use inclusion to make a greater contribution to the promotion of young people’s experiences of PE. It is also argued that these outcomes that no‐one had planned or intended may, for some of the groups involved, be seen as undesirable consequences that emanate from teachers’ attempts to manage the contradictory pressures brought about by pursuing the priorities of government.     

A time of destiny for Norwegian mission schools in Zululand and Natal under the policy of Bantu Education (1948–1955)

ABSTRACT

When the purified National Party (NP) came to power in South Africa in 1948, they introduced educational policies based on the ideology of apartheid. At that time 7,183 pupils attended primary education in 110 Lutheran Norwegian mission schools in Zululand and Natal. When the State took over these schools after the passing of the Bantu Education Act of 1953, the number had increased to 10,415. Together with other Lutheran missions, the Norwegians participated in running a teacher training college and a High School. For over a century before this, educational work had been a fundamental instrument in assisting mission work. Against this background, the paper attempts to answer two questions: How did the Norwegian missionaries relate to the policy of Bantu Education? Was the experience of the Norwegians attempting to carry out their educational work under this racial segregation legislation similar to that of other mission organisations at the time?     

Whose quality? Social actors in the interface of transnational and national higher education policy

The article analyzes the construction of national reactions to a transnational higher education policy from the point of view of the representation of social actors in policy documents. The data are provided by the so-called Bologna Process, particularly the development of comparable quality assurance systems, and Finnish responses to those demands. Who is represented as active and who as passive, as European policies are discursively translated into national policies? How are those ‘quality actors’ represented in the policy documents directed at a transnational audience (i.e. the Bologna Process communiqués, as well as national reports on its advancement) as opposed to documents directed at a national, in this case Finnish, audience (i.e. national policy formation documents)? What kinds of policy fields emerge as a result of different representations of actors? This article takes the Bologna Process as an example of the ‘glocalisation’ of higher education policy.     

Internationalisation of higher education: the gap between national policy‐making and institutional needs

The article discusses the impact of the growing emphasis on internationalisation on higher education institutions. Based on case studies of 12 Scandinavian universities and colleges, it is shown how issues related to internationalisation trigger processes of trying to enhance the institutional capacity for strategic decision‐making and institutional integration through processes of formalisation, centralisation and professionalisation. Based on the institutional history and tradition, strategic ability and institutional characteristics, the outcomes of this process still show a considerably degree of variation in the motives and institutional adaptation to internationalisation. In the conclusion, it is argued that future policy‐making in the field of internationalisation should pay attention to the diverse needs of higher education, and develop policies that allow more flexibility and autonomy at the institutional level.     

Children’s friendships in diverse primary schools: teachers and the processes of policy enactment

Abstract

Drawing on data from a project exploring children's and adults’ friendships across social class and ethnic difference, this paper focuses on the enactment of national and institutional policy around children’s friendships as realized in three primary schools in diverse urban areas in London. Through a focus on the way in which social and emotional learning (SEL) and teachers’ understandings of children’s friendships seek to govern children’s friendship behaviours, we turn to Foucault’s work to explore how power shapes relations between policy frameworks and teachers’ practices, and between those who teach and those who are taught. We discuss the disciplinary potential of SEL and teachers’ ‘common sense’ understandings of children’s friendships, but conclude by noting possibilities for teachers to create spaces in which all children can safely explore the nature of friendships.     

Mexican Americans and the push for culturally relevant education: the bilingual education movement in Tucson, 1958–1969

This essay traces the bilingual education movement that began in Tucson through the efforts of local teachers, university faculty and educational leaders. It is argued that Mexican Americans and their allies played a crucial role in promoting the merits of bilingual education at the local, state and national levels. Their advocacy of Spanish-for-Spanish-speakers programmes as a culturally relevant means of improving educational outcomes for Mexican American students led to a push for bilingual education with the support of the National Education Association. The work that educators from Tucson accomplished focused national attention on the education of Mexican Americans and ultimately contributed to the passage of the Bilingual Education Act of 1968. This legislation sparked a national movement to expand bilingual education programmes throughout the Southwest and other parts of the nation.     

A history of the right: The battle for control of national curriculum history 1989–1994

Abstract

This paper explores the manner in which educational and political conservatives attempted to control the content and purposes of the history curriculum in English schools during the period 1987–1994. It focuses upon this particular coalition because, since the late 1970s, it has set the agenda for the debate and dominated the race to produce a history curriculum designed to help produce a particular kind of society. The paper argues that the New Right's claim to be engaging in an educational debate is spurious. Rather, its concern is primarily ideological and only educational in terms of its use of history education as a vehicle through which to disseminate a specific set of values and beliefs.     

American colonial education policy and Filipino labour migration to the US (1900–1935)

Public mass schooling was the major instrument used by the Americans in the performance of their mission to “civilize” Filipinos. Free primary education was implemented right after the islands’ annexation in 1899 and was a critical component (alongside armed force) of the programme for their “pacification”. For the elite, education formed a route into collaborative involvement in the management of the colonial state. By the second decade of colonization, Filipinos were managing the civil service, participating in elected institutions and installed as mayors and governors. Like that of the Spanish, American colonial governance was profoundly reliant on the collaboration of members of the haciendero class, and thus implicated in the maintenance of long-established social and political hierarchies. But what did the maintenance of that status quo imply for ordinary Filipinos, now increasingly educated and literate in the language of the colonial power? Specifically, to what extent did this combination of socio-economic stasis and educational progress contribute to spurring early labour migration? This article investigates how far labour migration was seen to be, or functioned as, a mechanism for maintaining social and political stability in the American colonial period. It examines how this phenomenon was related to the free and English-based mass education programme undertaken out of an urge to fulfil what Kipling – writing of the American colonial enterprise – termed “the White Man’s Burden”.     

Socialization content in schools and education for sustainable development – I. A study of teachers’ selective traditions

This article studies content issues by examining teachers’ communicated socialization content. The value-laden socialization content constitutes the educational context for the teaching of integrated subject matter and has not yet been thoroughly studied empirically in environmental education research. The implications of the results can be fruitful in discussions about how educational traditions evolve, as well as discussions about the relationships between environmental education (EE) and education for sustainable development (ESD). In this study, ten upper secondary teachers are interviewed and their expressed socialization content is examined. Various qualitative positions regarding five important educational aspects can be described in terms of three selective traditions. To strengthen the validity of the socialization content found in this study, the students of the same teachers were interviewed regarding their experiences of the socialization content of these teachers’ teaching. This is reported in a supplementary article (Sund and Wickman 2011; Sund 2008). Together these three studies (this article; Sund and Wickman 2011; Sund 2008) work to establish and test a method of discerning qualitative aspects in socialization content. Although the amount of data is limited, the ambition has been to triangulate socialization content qualitatively from three different sources: a literature study, teacher interviews, and student interviews.     

Educating ‘the new Norwegian we’: an examination of national and cosmopolitan education policy discourses in the context of extremism and Islamophobia

Across Europe there are growing concerns about Islamophobia and far-right and anti-democratic movements. Until Anders Behring Breivik’s July 2011 attacks in which 77 died, Norway’s vulnerability was not perceived as great as that of other jurisdictions. Breivik declared his abhorrence of multiculturalism but also drew the world’s attention to intolerance and xenophobia in Europe, increasingly directed towards Muslims. In response, Prime Minister Stoltenberg spoke widely of ‘the new Norwegian we’, cautioning against exclusionary discourses and underlining that minorities are an equal part of Norwegian society. This paper examines education policy in the context both of extreme right political activity and national and international debates about nationalism and cosmopolitanism, considering ways in which policy supports an inclusive notion of nationhood, and ways in which it promotes an exclusive model of national identity. Drawing on framing questions from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement’s 1995 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (1995). National case studies final guidelines. Amsterdam: IEA. [Google Scholar] civic education study, relating to national identity and social cohesion, it examines how programmes address social cohesion, human rights, cultural diversity, and conceptualise minorities. It assesses the effectiveness of cross-curricular approaches to contribute to justice and equality and challenge racism in a multicultural society, proposing an inclusive model of education for cosmopolitan citizenship, which incorporates diversity.