You've Read the Book, Now Make the Film: Moving Image Media, Print Literacy and Narrative

This paper outlines findings from a pilot project undertaken by the Centre for Research on Literacy and the Media, a joint initiative by the British Film Institute and King's College London, School of Education. The project involved a group of primary school pupils adapting a text from a print into a moving image medium, and then examined the impact of this translation on their print literacy. The results suggest that informed practical use of media can have benefits for the literacy development of Key Stage 2 pupils. A possible basis for the correlation is explored taking as its focus ‘narrative structure’.     

III: Torn between Action and Reflection: some dilemmas of ‘pedagogical support persons’ in the Environment and School Initiatives Project

ABSTRACT

In 1990, a group of Slovenian researchers and teachers from eight elementary schools joined the international project Environment and School Initiatives, co‐ordinated by OECD/CERI. This paper presents some dilemmas and insights resulting from the co‐operation of ‘pedagogical support persons’ with teachers during the project, using the action research paradigm which presupposes a partnership relation and mutual learning of all involved. The paper has two parts. The first part deals with the rationale of educational support and with some dilemmas encountered, such as: What is action in action research on environmental education? How to help teachers develop initiative and self‐confidence in doing action research? (avoiding the trap of giving recipes, but also another trap of giving “freedom” where teachers needed genuine help and direct feed‐back on what they were doing). The second part is a case study of one of the Slovenian projects, illustrating the problematic nature of the relationship between action and reflection, between making others understand the underlying complexity of environmental problems and developing one's own deep understanding. The process of maturing and developing genuine communication is illustrated by quotations and interpretations from the perspective of all “three circles’: the pupil's, the teacher's and the support person's. to condemn, but not so easy to understand. I may illustrate this from my experience, but first I shall proceed with my interview.     

Girls’ Groups as a Component of Anti‐sexist Practice—one primary school's experience

The gender project I have been involved in was a practical response to theoretical concerns regarding the impact of the hidden curriculum and sex stereotyping in primary schools. The aim of the project was primarily to improve the level of achievement of the girls. Equally important was a desire to broaden curriculum experience into non‐stereotypical areas for both boys and girls. Unlike similar projects, Preston School's single sex groups were monitored throughout their duration. Consequently there are substantially more data on the attitudes of teachers, girls and boys towards gender than are normally available for such projects. This article constitutes an attempt by one of the teachers involved to evaluate the efficacy of Preston School's initiative within a theoretical framework that explores the wider issues of gendered subjectivity, male sexism and female self‐depreciation.     

Putting literature at the heart of the literacy curriculum

This paper documents an initiative in Continuing Professional Development, conceived and carried out by London's Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE). The intention was to improve the teaching and learning of writing in Years 5 and 6 of the primary school (9–11‐year‐olds), through working with challenging literature. This teacher education project drew on CLPE's earlier research project, published as The Reader in the Writer ( Barrs and Cork, 2001 ). Classroom approaches developed through the initiative are described, and qualitative and quantitative changes in children's writing are discussed. Patterns of teaching in the classrooms that appear to have made a particular difference to the children's achievement are explored.     

The Soviet Teachers I Have Seen

After more than two months' visit and study in Soviet Russia, I deeply understand that in socialist countries the profession of people's teacher is one of the most respected professions. The secondary school students we met, especially girl students, were all willing to choose teaching as their profession. According to the headmaster of the First Normal [Teacher Training] School in Moscow, each year during the period of entrance examinations, he would personally conduct interviews with each of the applicants. In the conversation he would introduce the conditions of the school and ask the applicant's opinions. If he should discover that a student had not applied to the normal school on [his or hers] own initiative, or had no great interest in the education of young children, he would dissuade the applicants from taking the entrance examination. Nevertheless, each year applicants who take the entrance examinations to the normal school are very numerous even though these applicants all have the qualifications to apply to other schools. From this we can tell how much the young people of Soviet Russia love the teaching profession.     

Beyond the Backlash: Sex and the City and Three Feminist Struggles

Much scholarly debate surrounds the extent to which female situation comedies make feminist contributions, particularly in a postfeminist context. While Sex and the City (SATC) can be read as a postfeminist text, this essay aims to recover the show's feminist meanings. To that end, this essay situates SATC within three key feminist struggles—between the individual and the collective, feminism and femininity, and agency and victimization. As Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha face each of these struggles, they often embody complex feminist identities. Exploring these complexities will highlight SATC's participatory elements as they relate to the ongoing feminist project.     

Using Laptop Computers to Improve the Performance of Minority Students: A Pilot Project

A school system and a university joined forces to improve the science and mathematics environment for local minority students with a program that utilized computer technology. The initiative involved individual students from all of the high schools in the Winston–Salem/Forsyth County (North Carolina) School System. In this initiative, Wake Forest University operated a two-week Summer Science and Math Experience for minority students. During the two weeks, students worked intensively with computers and, at the end of the summer program, a laptop computer was loaned to each student for personal use during the of school year. Through interviews and questionnaires, students overwhelmingly endorsed their involvement in the computer-oriented project, both the summer and academic year phases. They especially liked having access to the Internet (provided by the project), being able to use e-mail and chat rooms, and utilizing the information retrieval potential. Parents and teachers surveyed also praised the project, feeling that their students learned more as a result of being involved in project activity.     

Impact of interdisciplinary learning on the development of engineering students’ skills

ABSTRACT

This paper intends to present an interdisciplinary project carried out in a School of Engineering, and to refer to its effects in the development of students’ skills. This project’s main goal was to present students with an intellectually demanding challenge which implied overcoming the disciplinary barriers thus integrating knowledge to solve the problems they were challenged with. After the project had been concluded, a study was carried out using a qualitative methodology by conducting two focus groups (n?=?16). The main goal of this procedure was to get a better perception of (1) how students understood the project; (2) what kind of skills students considered to have developed throughout the project, and (3) the importance they have attributed to this kind of project. The results demonstrate that students are aware of the relevance of the project not only for their education process but also for the development of their skills. The results of the study also reveal that the students involved in the project have been capable of identifying the specific skills that the project work had intended to address and develop.     

The ‘yes … but’ dilemma: implementing inclusive education in Emirati primary schools

The Ministry of Education (MOE) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) launched the ‘School for All’ inclusive education initiative in 2010. This article investigates the implementation of this initiative in three primary schools from stakeholders’ perspectives. Using a multiple case study approach, data were collected over a full school year from interviews, observations and documents. Findings revealed uneven progress in five areas: staff training and development, school structures, support services, assistive technology and community awareness. The study identified improved access to mainstream classrooms and growing awareness among stakeholders as emerging good practice. However, serious challenges remain regarding teacher training, exclusionary practices, the lack of specialised support services and misguided policies. This study contributes to the evidence‐based research on inclusion in the UAE with some emphasis on Islamic principles, cultural beliefs and the requirements of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability in promoting every child's right to an education.     

Education in and for the Belt and Road Initiative:

Abstract

This paper is an experiment in collective writing conducted in Autumn 2019 at the Faculty of Education at Beijing Normal University. The experiment involves 12 international masters' students reading the course based on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), their professor Michael Peters, visiting professor Petar Jandri?, and a mix of senior Chinese and Western scholars. To successfully complete the course, the students were required to produce a 3000-word paper of publishable quality. As part of this writing process we decided to engage in the experiment of collective writing where we aimed to produce a single paper consisting of the abstracts. This collective paper was developed in 7 steps. (1) Students submitted their 250-word abstracts. (2) Students were introduced into the methodology of collective writing, and 2 student-editors – Ogunniran Moses Oladele and Benjamin Green – volunteered to work on the paper. (3) Michael Peters wrote the introduction. (4) Abstracts were expanded to 500 words and integrated into a single document. (5) Petar Jandri? began to edit the paper and write a conclusion. (6) Students presented their abstracts in the class, where Michael Peters and Petar Jandri? provided direct feedback. (6) Revised abstracts were again integrated into a single document by student editors, and proofread / copy-edited in several exchanges with the instructors (7) The paper was subject to the process of open review, and the reviewer's comments were included in the paper. Resulting from months of collective work, the final paper provides a wide range of views ad perspectives to the question of education as a part of the BRI initiative.     

Supporting fathers to engage with their children's learning and education: An under‐developed aspect of the Parent Support Adviser pilot

The Parent Support Adviser (PSA) role, piloted in 2006–2008 in 20 local authorities (LAs) in England, offered preventative and early intervention support to families where there were concerns about children's school attendance or behaviour. Overall, this was a highly successful initiative in terms of supporting parental engagement with their children's schools. However, this article presents evidence drawn from 162 interviews (with PSAs, their line managers and coordinators in 12 case study LAs) showing that there was one key area in the PSA pilot that was less successful—the engagement of fathers. The article examines views about how to engage fathers and of the barriers explaining the overall absence of fathers from the PSA project. It highlights the dissonance between policy and practitioner guidance, on the one hand, and practice, on the other, with regard to the relative failure to engage fathers with this important initiative.     

The Tasks of the Class Teacher: Tradition and Renewal – An Evaluation of Development Projects Carried out in the Danish Folkeskole

This paper firstly outlines some of the problems children can experience as a result of transferring from primary to secondary school. It then goes on to describe an initiative by the West Midlands Quaker Peace Education Project, Blessed William Howard Roman Catholic School in Stafford and its feeder schools to coordinate a secondary school preparation project. This involved special training for all primary pupils about to enter the school and a group of sixth formers.     

Domestic abuse prevention education: listening to the views of young people

This paper reports on findings derived as part of a two-year project funded by the European Union's Daphne III scheme, involving collaboration between seven partner organisations across six European countries. The project involved an evaluation, using questionnaires and focus groups, of domestic abuse prevention education programmes delivered in schools in the UK, France and Spain. This paper presents the findings from the UK focus group discussions, conducted with young people aged 10–11 years, and 13–14 years to explore their opinions about the intervention delivered in their school. The focus groups revealed the following challenges for service providers in this area: young people can misunderstand issues related to domestic abuse, especially the role of power and control within relationships; there is a tension between educators giving young people free expression to share their opinions and challenging sexism and other prejudices; and boys can become disengaged with gender-based interventions. These issues point towards three key considerations when implementing a domestic abuse prevention education intervention: programme content (the what); the teaching methods used (the how); and whether teachers or external organisations should deliver the programme (the who).     

On personal and collective dimensions of agency in doctoral training: medicine and natural science programs

The purpose of the present study was to investigate knowledge-creating agency by examining doctoral students' accounts of their pursuits, using structured interviews. We examined all of the talk apparently related to agency of 13 doctoral students taking part in collective doctoral training in two, highly regarded Finnish research communities (natural science and medicine). The doctoral process involved the participants pursuing article-based theses based on collectively shared research problems and journal articles co-authored with the supervisor and other senior researchers. Based on the qualitative analysis of the interviews, three categories of agentic talk were identified, respectively, for three proposed types of knowledge-creating agency: personal, distributed, and ‘object-related’. Personal agency involved participants' reflection on their academic competence, self-efficacy, and personal strengths and weaknesses. Distributed agency played an important role in assisting these participants overcoming challenges; this includes sharing of expertise, receiving social support, and having a sense of collective efficacy. Object-related agency, in turn, represented integration of a doctoral student's efforts with those of her immediate research community while pursuing shared research objects (e.g., co-authored articles). Apart from issues of agency which, the authors propose, are raised in the interviews, the data provide content-rich accounts of the collective nature of doctoral experiences.     

What Can PISA Tell Us About Teacher Shortages?

The OECD's recent research initiative, Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers ( OECD 2002 ), has highlighted teacher supply and demand as an area of international concern. Using data collected in this area as part of a wider OECD initiative (the PISA 2000 study) an individual‐level analysis was conducted on the views on teacher recruitment and retention of 5416 headteachers, principals and administrators working in secondary schools in 25 countries. The findings showed considerable variation between countries in terms of perceptions of the impact of teacher shortages, inadequacy and turnover. Surprisingly, however, differences in the reports of headteachers working in the same countries were only rarely related to the size, location, or other characteristics of the schools in which they worked. Although there has been considerable previous research into headteachers’ views on this issue, much of this research has been, by necessity, small scale and restricted to a single nation. This article provides a much larger scale perspective and allows international comparisons to be made.     

Widening participation in nursing through progression agreements between a university and two further education colleges: a case study

The School of Nursing, part of the Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences within Kingston University/St George's, University of London, has undertaken a number of initiatives to address the widening participation agenda. The student life‐cycle underpins the framework for the university's widening participation strategy and activities. This article provides a case study of the development and implementation of one such initiative, a Progression Agreement project between the School of Nursing and two colleges of further education (FE). The FE colleges provide Access to Nursing/Access to Health and Social Care Professions courses and the university, in partnership with these colleges, has drawn up Progression Agreements to enable successful completers of these access courses to be admitted onto nursing programmes at the university. The article explores the policy issues and literature related to widening participation, how these influenced the development of Progression Agreements, the evaluation of these initiatives and how Progression Agreements have contributed to changes in admission processes for nursing programmes in the university.     

Lifting Stress from the Day: A Women's Well-Being Online Community Art Project

This article tells the story of a university community engagement project that began in the late spring of 2020 when the world went into lockdown. Increased concern over women's welfare and well-being was brought into question in relation to those who are vulnerable with complex needs and had suffered societal-induced hardships. In conjunction with an innovative women's community project, this study considered the value of art-based online support as a platform from which to offer a non-judgemental and mindful space with a focus on identity and empowerment. The study is based on weekly art drop-in online workshops for vulnerable women and considers the value of hybrid ‘spaces’ as a pedagogical and practical model of communicative support and collective care. Findings from this community-engaged project highlight the responses and shifts within subjectivities through situated art experiences. As art educators, it offers us an understanding of the potential for cumulative and affective artmaking to build communities of care as an inclusive and emancipatory learning tool.     

Multidisciplinary Approaches to Anti‐Racist Education: An Introduction to the Talacchanda Exhibition and Education Project

The Talacchanda project took place as an independent research/exhibition undertaking supported by the Glasgow School of Art. Over seventeen months an exploratory education programme was introduced at various levels of schools and higher education. The education programme sprang from a contemporary art exhibition and dance performance called Talaccahnda which was informed by ancient Indian thought on art and drama. The exhibition and performance took place in Glasgow's Tramway Project Room and Theatre in October 2002. It had been shown previously in the British Council Gallery in New Delhi in 2000, and later in 2001 at the artist run space ‘Out of the Blue’ in Edinburgh. Thanks to Scottish Arts Council Lottery funding, Talacchanda Glasgow was accompanied by an education programme, which offered workshops and events in schools, at the gallery, through community groups as well as at GSA and Reid Kerr College, Paisley. By demonstrating connections between apparently disparate activities, the project aimed to serve as a catalyst for fresh thinking on inter‐cultural and anti racist education, and to strengthen connections between the community groups and institutions involved.     

Building Bridges: Preparing Children for Secondary School

This paper firstly outlines some of the problems children can experience as a result of transferring from primary to secondary school. It then goes on to describe an initiative by the West Midlands Quaker Peace Education Project, Blessed William Howard Roman Catholic School in Stafford and its feeder schools to coordinate a secondary school preparation project. This involved special training for all primary pupils about to enter the school and a group of sixth formers.     

Hawthorne Elementary School: The University Perspective

This article reflects a faculty member's perspective of how Trinity University and Hawthome Elementary School planned and worked together to evolve into a successful partnership. Trinity's teacher education reform agenda focused on two goals: preparing future teachers for a full academic year in the real world of the elementary school and pursuing a teacher-selected school reform project. Both the Hawthorne culture and the inner-city professor's role as a teacher changed when we organized a shared vision and shared responsibility for teacher preparation and school reform.