School and Society,July 1, 1979, to June 30, 1980

The Elementary School [Folkeskole]

In the past year, the folkeskole has been better material for the media than any time in the past, and its circumstances, its tasks, its content, and its results have been commented upon and discussed in both the national and the local press. In the school year 1979-1980, there were 740,000 pupils enrolled in these schools, including kindergarten classes (Jyllandsposten 4/19). The number of children is decreasing as reported by central authorities from the Minister of Education, for example, in Politiken, 1/16, which at the same time reports that the development of the school has therefore become difficult to control, as many municipalities have reported, e.g., Frederikshavn Avis 3/13.     

透视俄罗斯考试制度改革

随着俄罗斯经济体制的改革,教育领域也全面实施改革。在考试制度上由全国统一考试取代了中学毕业考试和大学入学考试,2004年起在俄罗斯全国范围内实施。统一的大学入学考试无论是在规模上、题型结构上,还是在评分标准上、公平程度上都要优于原有的考试制度,并且朝着信息化、网络化方向迈进。     

Motor skills,attention and academic achievements. An intervention study in school years 1–3

The aim was to study effects of an extension of physical education and motor training on motor skills, attention and cognition during a period of three years. The study has two intervention groups (n = 152) that have physical activity and motor training one lesson every school day and one control group (n = 99) that has the school's ordinary physical education two lessons per week. The method is hypothetic‐deductive. The results confirm the hypothesis that children's motor skills improve with extended physical activity and motor training. The hypothesis that children's attention will improve cannot be confirmed. Although pupils in intervention groups have better attention in school year 2 than pupils in the control group, the differences do not remain in school year 3. The third hypothesis concerning academic achievements is confirmed by several results in Swedish and mathematics. The MUGI observation programme was found to be useful both as a screening and as a pedagogic instrument.     

试论"五年专"师范学校教师教育科研的方向

"五年专"师范教育是全国师范办学体制"二级化"的历史产物,由中师系列直接转化而来的"五年专"师范教育教师这一特殊群体的素质的提高问题,是值得引起大家所重视的.引导他们从加强学科研究、专题研究和合作研究等方向开展好科研工作,无疑是他们切实做好与高校教师接轨工作的首要任务.     

Employability credentials: A key to successful youth transition to work

Conclusion Employers place considerable emphasis on credentials. The assumption that a high school diploma can be used to screen for competencies is problematic. First, it leaves much of the translation of what a high school diploma means, in terms of skills, knowledge, and attitudes, with the employer. Second, it fails to differentiate among youth because the diploma does little more than signify that high school has been completed. Finally it places young people without diplomas (dropouts) at a great disadvantage.Although a high school diploma may demonstrate a certain level of maturity, motivation, perseverance, and some specific academic skills, it does not provide an adequate picture of the employability or marketable skills, knowledge, and competencies that an individual possesses. In order for youth to make successful transitions to work they need more than their high school diplomas. They need an employability credential that identifies and documents the array of their developmental experiences and translates these into component competencies—a credential that employers will respect and youth will value. A credential that is more than a document. One that represents a process that helps youth understand themselves and their marketability and provides them with a sense of self-worth and future direction.Ivan Charner is the Director of Research and Development at the National Institute for Work and Learning, Washington, D.C.     

Children's Personal Prerogative in Home and School Contexts

The present study examined young children's conceptions of personal prerogative in the contrasting contexts of home and school. The central question was whether young children have a stable conception of the personal which underlies their responses to regulations in varying contexts. Interviews concerning conceptions of the personal domain were conducted with 37 middle class first grade children. The children were aware of continuities and discontinuities in personal prerogative at home and school as highlighted by their understandings of conventions at school. They identified areas of prerogative at school, but were aware of the conventionalization of some personal issues. They considered school to be the more restrictive place. Despite some willingness to cede authority to teachers for many personal issues, the children reserved rightful decision locus for themselves. They were noncommittal as to whether prerogative should be narrowed at school. They attempted negotiations in both settings, despite less success at school. The children had a conception of personal prerogative which extended over both home and school contexts. Results have implications for classrooms responsive to children's development of autonomy. The study was limited largely to white middle class children, however it raises questions which could have implications for a much broader range of children. Further studies on prerogative in contrasting contexts considering class and ethnic differences may also yield implications for classroom practice which is child and culture sensitive.     

Periodical Articles Of School HistorIcal Interest

Danish educational periodicals from the period May 1977 to the new year 1978-79 contain many articles which in various ways are of value and interest for the school historical debate and research. In the first place there were many articles that were of a survey or overview nature, as for example the thick issue No. 2, 1978, of Uddannelse concerning the experiment with group study in Gladsaxe, about HF in No. 5, 1977, and the annual statistical surveys in No. 8, 1977, and No. 10, 1978. This is not historical material now, but in the course of a few years it will be able to be used in school historical reviews.     

Children's Personal Prerogative in Home and School Contexts

The present study examined young children's conceptions of personal prerogative in the contrasting contexts of home and school. The central question was whether young children have a stable conception of the personal which underlies their responses to regulations in varying contexts. Interviews concerning conceptions of the personal domain were conducted with 37 middle class first grade children. The children were aware of continuities and discontinuities in personal prerogative at home and school as highlighted by their understandings of conventions at school. They identified areas of prerogative at school, but were aware of the conventionalization of some personal issues. They considered school to be the more restrictive place. Despite some willingness to cede authority to teachers for many personal issues, the children reserved rightful decision locus for themselves. They were noncommittal as to whether prerogative should be narrowed at school. They attempted negotiations in both settings, despite less success at school. The children had a conception of personal prerogative which extended over both home and school contexts. Results have implications for classrooms responsive to children's development of autonomy. The study was limited largely to white middle class children, however it raises questions which could have implications for a much broader range of children. Further studies on prerogative in contrasting contexts considering class and ethnic differences may also yield implications for classroom practice which is child and culture sensitive.     

Segregation,integration, inclusion—the ideology and reality in Finland

In this paper, we try to examine the classical sociological points of special education, especially the organizational form of special education, social background of students and the minority status of students. The material of the study was collected mostly during 2003 from one large city in Finland. This city has more than a 100‐year‐long tradition of organizing special education, and it is also still organized very traditionally, that is mainly in special schools. The oldest functioning special education school was founded in 1901. This form of organization based on special schools is no longer typical in Finland. Over 1000 questionnaires were sent to special education school teachers, and students and their parents, as well as to special needs assistants. The percentage of returned responses was between 70% and 80%. Local material is practically the only way to get information of these critical points because of the Act on the Protection of Privacy and the administrative orientation of state statistics. The results show that boys are strongly over‐represented in special education. Over three out of four of the students in classroom‐based special education are boys. According to our comparison, the children from immigrant families account for less than one out of ten students in general education, but in classroom‐based special education they represent nearly 14%, and in part‐time special education as much as one‐quarter (25%). The form of education differs also in regard to the social class of the parents. The parents have been divided into upper, middle and lower social classes according to their occupation. The proportion of upper‐class parents of the student group in general education (42%) is doubled when compared to the parents of both special education groups. The majority of the parents of severe disabled students support the idea of special education schools, but the majority of the parents from the other special education groups are in favour of education in the nearest school.     

Crisis in the transition from school to work: The Cross-River-State (Nigeria) lesson

Summary The Cross River State of Nigeria is rich, open, and to some extent its virgin fields of industrialization, its agricultural lands, the petroleum industry and allied business have not only provided employment opportunities for its citizens, but have also helped to boost its economy.At the same time, varied educational institutions have been opened for the education of young people. In 1976, many school age children were enrolled in the primary school because the universal primary education scheme was formally launched throughout the country. Although education in the secondary school level depends on one's ability to pay rather than on one's ability to learn, more parents are today able to pay for their son's and daughters' education than it was the case twenty years ago.While the cost of educating young people in recent times has been increasing substantially, the bad fit of schooling at almost every level has become one of the explosive issues in both the state and the national levels (Abdulatif, 1977). Today there has been an increasing concern about the future implications of: (i) the universal primary education scheme on local communities, state, and national governments, (ii) young adults leaving secondary schools for the world of work with the type of orientation that they have in the secondary schools. This concern is aggravated as school intake is outpacing the growth and the opportunities in the small, capital intensive modern sector of the state's economy to absorb the bulk of the increased in the labour force. This concern is felt more because more students are completing secondary education each year and about 70 percent of those attending some kind of formal secondary institution terminate their education at that level and start looking for some jobs.This report is strictly based on an unpublished doctoral dissertation written by the author at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, 1977, the title, Secondary School Education and Employment in Nigeria-Implications for Career Guidance: A Study in the Cross River State. This study was conducted in the Cross River State of Nigeria which until February 4, 1976 bore the name South Eastern State.Ahmadu Bello University     

近代中国高等师范教育制度的沿革

从清末第一所师范学校建立到1922年《壬戌学制》颁布的20多年间,中国师范教育一直是独立建制,由 国家统一办理。《壬戌学制》颁布后,受美国模式的影响,高等师范教育制度发生了一系列变革,逐渐形成了颇具自己特色的高等师范教育培养体系。     

Diversifying Schools and Leveraging School Improvement: a Comparative Analysis of The English Radical,and Singapore Conservative,Specialist Schools' Policies

ABSTRACT

Within the context of fierce global economic competition, school diversification and specialist schools have been seen by governments as cornerstones of education policy to engineer school improvement in both England and Singapore for more than a decade. In both systems, the policy has manifested in different school types, school names and sometimes buildings – in England, specialist status schools, academies and most recently free schools; and in Singapore, specialist schools and niche schools. Diversification is promoted by each school emphasising distinctiveness in its curriculum – often with implications for its funding and degree of autonomy – which differentiate it from others. There is normally the intention to scale-up curricular innovations school-wide. The paper addresses three aims in respect to both countries: first, it profiles the evolution of specialist schools' policies in both states in relation to school improvement and secondly, social justice; thirdly, it undertakes a comparative policy analysis in order to draw conclusions as to how the relationship between central government and schools has re-configured in both countries – arguing that the policy in England is radical, that in Singapore, conservative.     

Academic performance,transfer, transition and friendship: listening to the student voice

Research and practice have tended to focus on the “entrance and exit” years in schools. Transfer (that is, the move from one stage of schooling and from one school to another) has received more attention than transition (that is, the move from one year to another within the same school). Transition emerges from interviews with students as a neglected but important experience, reflecting the difficulties some students have in sustaining their commitment to learning and in understanding continuities in learning. Similarly, the relationship between friendships and student progress is given attention at transfer but tends thereafter to have a low profile. Interviews with students suggest that there is much that we can usefully learn by listening to students talk about the link between friendship and academic performance.     

School consolidation vs. decentralization: Trends,issues, and questions

The author examines two opposing administrative/policy trends that have simultaneously influenced the size and shape of American school districts. First,consolidation of school districts has dramatically reduced the number of districts from 130,000 in 1930 to 15,500 in 1990. State officials have viewed this as cost-effective approach and a way of reducing overlapping services and expenses. Local school and community people have seen this trend as a means of undercutting their local identity and pride. Second,decentralization has usually taken place in an urban school setting and involves reducing the size of the school district by dividing it into smaller units. This trend reached its peak in 1980, when 91% of the school districts with 100,000 or more students (n=22) reported some form of decentralization. By the 1990s, both school trends had slowed down; nevertheless, 20 questions are delineated for school administrators and school board members to consider in the event they wish to consolidate or decentralize.     

Designing,evaluating, and reacting to a secondary science methods class

Most science educators spend much of their time planning and teaching science methods classes yet there is very little dialogue among science educators concerning what ought to be taught. This study involved a small sample. Readers should think of it as a model for conducting similar self-studies. The instructor of this course has been teaching it since 1966, and each year, he has revised 10–20% of it. These data show that some, but not all, of the revisions have resulted in improvement. This analysis illustrates how helpful the perceptions of methods students can be for initiating and continuing a dialogue among educators regarding the structure of methods courses. Although the question of “What ought to be taught?” has been clarified to a degree, it has and always will remain.     

Moving the goalposts: Education policy and 25 years of the Black/White achievement gap

Drawing on a secondary analysis of official statistics, this paper examines the changing scale of the inequality of achievement between White students and their Black British peers who identify their family heritage as Black Caribbean. We examine a 25‐year period from the introduction of the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), in 1988, to the 20th anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 2013. It is the first time that the Black/White gap has been analysed over such a long period. The paper reviews the changing place of the Black/White gap in education debates and notes that, despite periods when race equality has appeared to be high on the political agenda, it has never held a consistent place at the heart of policy. Our findings shed light on how the Black/White gap is directly affected, often in negative ways, by changes in education policy. Specifically, whenever the key benchmark for achievement has been redefined, it has had the effect of restoring historic levels of race inequity; in essence, policy interventions to ‘raise the bar’ by toughening the benchmark have actively widened gaps and served to maintain Black disadvantage. Throughout the entire 25‐year period, White students were always at least one and a half times more likely to attain the dominant benchmark than their Black peers. Our findings highlight the need for a sustained and explicit focus on race inequity in education policy. To date, the negative impacts of policy changes have been much more certain and predictable than occasional attempts to reduce race inequality.     

Assessment of practical work

In recent years, much attention has been focused on the need to develop effective and efficient strategies and procedures for the assessment of laboratory work. Increasingly, the emphasis has moved towards a skills-based approach. The paper addresses a number of philosophical issues concerning this orientation and argues that the skills-based approach is philosophically unsound (because it isn't based on a valid model of science), educationally worthless (because it trivializes learning) and pedagogically dangerous (because it encourages bad teaching). An alternative, more holistic approach to assessment, based on a more valid model of scientific practice, is proposed.     

江苏省教授级中学高级教师评审实践:价值、困惑与前瞻

江苏省教授级中学高级教师评审已经过去了一年多的时间,实践证明它创建了完善的中小学教师职称体系,为教师发展提供了明确的方向。反思评审实践的不足,完善我们的评审制度,为促进中小学教师发展具有着战略意义。     

A DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACH TO MATHEMATICS TESTING FOR UNIVERSITY ADMISSIONS AND COURSE PLACEMENT

Decisions on admissions to university and placement into university courses are usually based on the results of achievement (as in secondary school exams) and/or aptitude (in intelligence-type tests and SAT). This paper argues that in a situation where educational provision at secondary school level is highly unequal, a third approach to testing offers an alternative which is preferable both on grounds of theory of cognitive psychology and because it yields much better discrimination.The Alternative Admissions Research Project at University of Cape Town has developed a mathematics test according to the dynamic testing approach as advocated by Miller (1990) for admission of African students from grossly under-resourced schools, as well as for placing these and other students into a diversifying first year curriculum. This approach aims to assess the ability of a candidate to learn from authentic academic material within the test. This paper focuses on the reasons for the development of the mathematics test and the process by which the test questions were developed and piloted. The reliability of the test and correlations of this test with subsequent mathematical performance data are discussed.Following the encouraging data for the test as an admission mechanism, the value of the dynamic testing approach for furnishing additional information for placement into an increasingly varied curriculum at first year level was investigated. This enabled the piloting of more topics and more comprehensive validation of this type of testing. The paper concerns itself with the reliability and predictive value of each of the topics in this placement test for a range of core courses in various faculties and the extent to which these tests can identify potentially at risk students who should be placed onto an appropriate curriculum.     

Nice and kind,smart and funny: what children like and want to emulate in their teachers

In many western countries, government statements about the need to recruit more men to primary teaching are frequently supported by references to the importance of male teachers as role models for boys. The suggestion is that boys will both achieve better and behave better when taught by male teachers, because they will identify with them and want to emulate their behaviour. However, this has not been supported by research evidence. This paper draws on data from an ESRC‐funded project involving interviews with 307 7–8 year old children in England (half taught by male and half by female teachers). Focusing on gender, it analyses children’s responses about their relationships with their teachers and about figures that they would like to emulate (both in school and outside).