‘New Labour,Old School Tie’: What Is Education For?

The Labour Party has been in power for the past 13 years in the UK. What is its legacy in education? What have been the salient aspects of its policy interventions, and what impact have these policies had on the practice of English teachers? With its assumption of a straightforward correlation between education and economic development, New Labour’s education policy needs to be seen primarily as a failure of politics – an abandonment of any commitment to social justice in pursuit of a standards agenda that reduces teachers to a condition of mere compliance and education to a set of commodities.     

It’s a MATERIALS World!

In this article, we describe our experiences of conducting a series of workshops titled ‘It’s a MATERIALS world!’ to popularize Materials Science among school children in India. Some of the hands-on activities that can be performed with easily available ingredients/equipment in a classroom are described for the benefit of educators.     

‘It’s Her Body’. When Students’ Argumentation Shows Displacement of Content in a Science Classroom

This paper approaches learning as a response instead of the acquisition of something previously expected. More specifically, it describes a process of argumentation on socioscientific issues in a classroom situation in school science amongst 15-year-old students in Sweden. The analysis of an argumentation on abortion in a science classroom highlights how science content becomes relevant to students?? experiences, but also how the students?? unique voices shift focus and cause displacement of the science content. The analysis demonstrates some of the tensions and possible conflicts that may lead to the exclusion of different voices. This paper argues that focusing the research or education on questions that argumentation brings to light creates interesting educational opportunities to identify and incorporate the students?? experiences in the classroom. The results indicate, however, that students?? spontaneous acts lead to some difficulties in finding a point of contact with the rational discourse of science education.     

It’s Not the Book,It’s Not the Author,It’s the Award: The Lambda Literary Award and the Case for Strategic Essentialism

On September 16, 2009, the Lambda Literary Foundation (LLF) released a statement revising their eligibility guidelines for the Lambda Literary Award, the most prestigious citation offered for LGBT books and authors. This criteria, which demands that an author must self-identify as a member of the LGBT family of writers, has been met with considerable disapproval within the field of children’s and young adult literature, with critics decrying the decision as unfair and essentialist. By arguing for the deployment of strategic essentialism as a discourse of resistance and by working to complicate discussions of essentialism within the field of children’s and young adult literature, the author of this article confronts the condemnation levied at the Lambda Literary Foundation and makes the case for the necessity of establishing the “Lammys” as an “insider-only” citation.     

Foundations of Science Literacy: Efficacy of a Preschool Professional Development Program in Science on Classroom Instruction,Teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge,and Children’s Observations and Predictions

Young children are able to benefit from early science teaching but many preschool teachers have not had opportunities to deepen their own understanding of science or to develop their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in relation to specific science topics and concepts. This study presents the results of efficacy research on Foundations of Science Literacy (FSL), a comprehensive professional development program designed to support teachers’ knowledge of early childhood science; their PCK around 2 physical science topics (water, and balls and ramps); and their abilities to plan, facilitate, and assess young children’s learning during inquiry-based science explorations. Research Findings: In a randomized trial with 142 preschool teachers and 1,004 4-year-old children, FSL teachers demonstrated significantly higher quality science teaching in general and greater PCK in the 2 physical science topics than did teachers in comparison classrooms. Furthermore, children in FSL classrooms performed significantly better than children in comparison classrooms on tasks involving floating and sinking, and an instrumental variable analysis suggests that the quality of classroom science instruction mediated the relationship between teacher participation in FSL and student outcomes. Practice or Policy: Findings support the use of comprehensive early science professional development programs designed to bolster teacher knowledge and PCK.     

‘It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster’: special educational needs,emotional labour and emotion work

This article presents an analysis of data collected – by semi-structured interviews and focus groups – from staff working with children with special educational needs (SEN) in England. The analysis highlighted the role of strong emotions, and how participants (unsurprisingly) experienced these differently, largely according to their position in their careers. Teachers’ emotion work and emotional labour in their day-to-day roles were common and powerful themes within the respondents’ experiences. The article identifies the significance of the study for the particular emotional qualities needed to work with children with SEN. The impact of daily demands upon staff is demonstrated, and the article goes on to reflect on the limitations of research on emotions in education. It concludes by examining the emotional characteristics that appear to be essential for a career in SEN and notes the powerful affective demands on those who work in this area.     

Oh, It＇s a Dream!

人物：D——Dad H——Hamburger M——Mike 道具：角色头饰、几个盘子、几张汉堡图片 场景：Mike放学回到家,来到厨房……     

“It’s All Shiny and There’s No Pollution”: Barbapapa’s Ark,Environmental Influences

The environmental picture book Barbapapa’s Ark was published in 1974. I was keeping a parent-observer record of my two children at the time. The book had a strong influence on them from ages three to six, moving them to query pollution and hunting, in book and environment, and as adults, becoming committed activists for the environment. Young children are routinely underestimated. Learning about the environment and conservation can begin well before formal education.     

“It’s not them,it’s me”: competing discourses in one aspiring teacher’s talk

In this paper, we deploy M.M. Bakhtin’s notions about how language works to understand aspiring teachers’ struggles about the intersecting roles race, class, gender, language background, and sexual orientation play in students’ school lives and learning. Through life-history interviews and document analysis, we investigated the authoritative and internally persuasive discourses one aspiring teacher brought with her and took from a 15-week long course on a predominantly White Midwestern public university campus. Ideas she encountered in the course and its required tutoring component challenged her thinking about how various facets of people’s lives (such as those we list above) and the contexts in which they live, work and are schooled, affect how they are perceived, what they know, and can do.     

“It’s More Than a Class”: Leisure Education’s Influence on College Student Engagement

As universities and colleges continue to seek out ways to improve student engagement on their campuses, attention has been given to the role that on-campus leisure opportunities can play in developing this engagement. Yet, little research has analyzed the influence of leisure education on student engagement in the higher education setting. The purpose of this study was to explore how for-credit Leisure Skills classes at a mid-sized southeastern university may build engagement. The results indicate that leisure education provides a uniquely positioned environment for building students’ sense of engagement with their institution through an enhanced sense of community, enhanced sense of self, and active learning.     

‘It’s just semantics?’: investigating a school district’s decision to respect or value diversity

Value diversity and promote understanding—so read a heading in a school district’s strategic plan. The phrase was to initiate six months of controversial community debate that was eventually encapsulated into the single question: Should our schools respect or should they value diversity? This question polarized the community, ultimately shaping the final outcome of the debate. Such localized deliberations reflect and reconstruct societal discourses about diversity and democracy, ultimately influencing educational policy decisions and schooling practices. Understanding how participants navigate these discourses is crucial for formulating more inclusive educational policy and for transforming societal discourses about democracy and difference. In this essay, it is argued that two discursive practices limited the democratic potential of the Boulder, Colorado school district’s debate and undermined the transformation of dominant discourses about diversity. It is suggested that these two linguistic tools appear frequently in public deliberation and identify implications for developing educational policy around diversity and for retheorizing the relationship between difference and democracy.     

Bernard Stiegler’s Philosophy of Technology: Invention,decision, and education in times of digitization

Abstract

Bernard Stiegler’s concept of individuation suggests that the human being is co-constituted with technology. Technology precedes the individual in the respect that the latter is thrown in a technological world that always already contains externally inscribed memories—what he calls tertiary memories—that selectively form the individual and the collective space of the community. Revisiting Husserlian phenomenology, Stiegler renews the critique of culture industries asserting that imagination and differance have always been technologically mediated, and echoing the Heideggerian anxiety concerning thinking’s over-determination, Stiegler offers an intriguing analysis of the specificity of our age’s technologies while exploring the possibility for political responsibility and educational intervention.     

‘It’s a bit of a generalisation,but …’: participant perspectives on intercultural group assessment in higher education

This paper reports on domestic and international students’ perceptions of the influence of group diversity on communication, learning, task performance and assessment grades. The study’s methodology involved quantitative and qualitative analysis of surveys (N?=?312), focus group interviews of students (n?=?26) and individual staff interviews (N?=?7). More domestic (79%) than international (29%) students stated that they preferred working with students from a similar background. While a proportion of the sample of domestic students stated that intercultural group work raised their awareness of interaction styles in other cultures, others noted that the group experience was negatively affected by issues related to language proficiency and awareness of academic requirements. Qualitative analysis reveals that ‘othering’, a process by which members of an in group (Us) distance themselves from an outgroup (Them), was often used as a basis for these students avoiding intercultural group assessment. Finally, there was a clear pattern overall of higher achieving international and domestic students perceiving that their grades for group assignments were below what they would normally receive for individual assignments, and lower achieving students perceiving that their grades were higher for group assignments.     

‘It’s a bit taboo’: a qualitative study of Norwegian adolescents’ perceptions of mental healthcare services

The aim of this study is to investigate adolescents’ perspectives on mental healthcare services. Based on theoretical perspectives concerning barriers for help-seeking, individual interviews were carried out in order to obtain the adolescents’ perspectives on knowledge of services for mental health problems, potential barriers for help-seeking, and services to which they have access. The sample consisted of vocational students from an upper secondary school in the southwest of Norway (n = 8). None of the informants was currently in treatment for mental health problems. Interview data were transcribed and analysed with the assistance of NVivo Software. Qualitative content analysis indicated that the adolescents have limited knowledge of available resources, and, that stigma-related factors may prevent the adolescents from seeking help for mental health problems. Future directions for delivering mental health services for adolescents are given.     

Liénard’s Generalisation: A Direct Derivation

In this pedagogical article, we elucidate the direct derivation of total power emitted by an accelerating charged particle, known as Liénard’s generalisation, using differentiation under integral sign technique.     

Unit10 It’s a nice day，isn’t it

同学们，让我们大家一起来学习第十单元．它的语言目标是闲聊(make small talk)。语：法项目是学习反意疑问句。首先，我们先来了解这个单元的语法内容：反意疑问句。     

‘It’s a match,but is it a good fit?’: admissions tutors’ evaluation of personal statements for PhD study

This article investigates academics’ expectations and interpretations of the personal statement and its associated evaluation practice in the context of postgraduate school admissions. The analysis was based on semi-structured interviews with 10 experienced academics in doctoral applications evaluation at a US university. Data were thematically coded and analysed using the notion of discourse and power to identify a set of representations of ideas that academics draw on for the purpose of evaluating the personal statement. The findings suggest that academics’ evaluations have been rooted in their understanding of the nature of PhD study, the current situation in the programme, and the structure of the admissions process in a particular academic discourse community. The discourses of ‘match’ and ‘fit’ emerged as being important to the academics’ evaluation practice. This paper argues that the admissions discourses of ‘match’ and ‘fit’ have perplexed the evaluation process in that the ‘match’ appears to be associated with a more explicit and standardised list of requirements whereas the ‘fit’ emphasises more fluid and contingent programme priorities. There is a need for future research to determine the relevance and applicability of ‘match’ and ‘fit’ to further our understanding of the complexities of the admission process across contexts.