Who is missing from higher education?

This paper discusses the difficulties of establishing a clear count of UK higher education students in terms of the categories used for widening participation, such as occupational background or ethnicity. Using some of the best and most complete data available, such as the annual figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, the paper then establishes that there is little evidence of a simple consistent pattern of under‐representation within these categories, except perhaps for men and students of white ethnicity. However, once prior qualifications are taken into account there is no evidence that potential students are unfairly and disproportionately denied access to higher education in terms of occupation, ethnicity, sex or disability. This has important implications for what we mean by widening participation in higher education and how we might achieve it.     

Empowerment through sex education? Rethinking paradoxical policies

Youth empowerment is the main goal of sex education according to Dutch Government and NGO policies. Academics from different disciplines have argued, however, that the ideal of empowerment through education is problematic, because of the unequal power relations implicated in educational practices. Building on one-and-a-half years of online and offline ethnographic fieldwork among Dutch youth, this article argues that Dutch sex educational policies inhibit rather than encourage young people’s empowerment by allowing only a limited number of sexual knowledge building practices to thrive while making others nearly impossible. In order to facilitate young people’s empowerment, policies should aim to create space for young people to develop their own themes and priorities, to offer a multitude of perspectives, to set the pace and to use different strategies for sexual knowledge building, including learning by doing and online learning. This requires a cultural shift that involves both an openness to young people’s experimentation, and a change in existing power hierarchies based on age.     

Who is missing from higher education in New Zealand?

There is disagreement in the literature regarding the influence of social and cultural factors on the propensity for young people to undertake higher education. This study draws upon a national data set of over 45,000 young people to assesses their propensity to progress to bachelor level study, while controlling for their ethnic backgrounds, their socio‐economic status (as measured by the decile of the last secondary school they attended), their gender, and their school achievement. The results are discussed in light of recent policy developments designed to ensure that access to bachelor‐level study is not closed to under‐represented groups.     

Science education reform: What's wrong with the paradigm?

From previous and current efforts at science education reform, the author teases out a certain culture of reform, a set of assumptions about educational change that are no longer (if they ever were) appropriate to another task, namely managing change. With reference to a group of programs in undergraduate science instruction that work, she finds the research model, the preference for innovation, the dependence on short-term outside funding, and above all, the seeking after some universal curriculum or set of pedagogies that will solve the problem for all time, to be naive in terms of the reality and the politics of change. She would substitute what Gerald Holton in A Nation at Risk, Revisited calls cumulative improvement, and ends with some suggestions as to how such a model could be applied to the organization of college-level instruction in science.This is a portion of Chapter 1 of the bookPrograms That Work; The Implementation Challenge. Reprinted with permission by Research Corporation, Copyright 1991, all rights reserved.     

Programme guidelines. How effective are sex education programmes? Findings

Adolescent reproductive health program promotion in Asia and Oceania has been hindered by a lack of appreciation on the part of parents, educators, policy makers, and development planners of the benefits of sex education. Concerns persist that sex education encourages adolescent promiscuity. However, a World Health Organization review of 1050 studies on sex education failed to provide any support for this position. In fact, the research shows that sex education can actually help to delay first intercourse among teens who are not already sexually active and promotes consistent contraceptive use among those who are sexually active. A comprehensive literature review commissioned by the US Agency for International Development as well as a US Centers for Disease Control study corroborated this finding. Cross-national comparisons have indicated adolescent pregnancy rates are lower in countries with liberal policies in terms of sex education programs and the provision of adolescent sexual health services.     

‘Use Condoms for Safe Sex!’ Youth-led video making and sex education

Situated at the intersection between child-led visual methods and sex education, this paper focuses on the potential of youth-led video making to enable young people to develop guiding principles to inform their own sexual behaviour. It draws on findings from a video-making project carried out with a group of South African young people, which engaged them in identifying and tackling critical issues of HIV and AIDS. By analysing one of the youth-generated videos using critical visual analysis, we conclude that youth-led video making can be an effective tool to allow young people to talk about their interests and concerns and to develop guiding principles for their own sexual behaviour. This tool is especially relevant to young people whose needs are not being met by the current sexual health curriculum and can be a fun medium through which to engage participants in ensuring that sex education needs are met.     

A sex education programme for mothers in Iran: Does preschool children’s sex education influence mothers’ knowledge and attitudes?

Mothers have an important role to play in teaching their children about sexual issues and shaping children’s sexual knowledge, attitudes and behaviours. In many cases, however, mothers themselves need help and support. This study was conducted to examine the effects of a sex education programme on the knowledge and attitudes of the mothers of pre-school children. Eighty mothers of pre-school children were randomly divided into an experimental and a control group. The experimental group received an education and training programme delivered over two 2-h sessions. The control group received no such intervention. Researcher-constructed knowledge and attitude questionnaires were completed by both groups before and one month after the intervention. Findings showed no significant differences between the two groups in terms of knowledge and attitudes before the training. After the education and training intervention, however, there was a significant increase in the mean score for both knowledge and attitudes in the experimental group compared to the control group. Study findings suggest that the sex education programme for the mothers of pre-school children can improve their knowledge and attitudes.     

Evangelical Christian parents’ attitudes towards abstinence-based sex education: ‘I want my kids to have great sex!’

While an overwhelming majority of people in the USA support some form of school-based sexual education, the specific content and context for that instruction varies widely, making it difficult to assess support for particular types of programmes. This is particularly the case for evangelical Christians, about whom there is a lack of scholarly consensus concerning support for sexual education. This paper addresses this gap, and examines the assumption that evangelical Christians uniformly support abstinence-only sexual education, using qualitative analysis among a group of evangelical Christians in a medium-sized Texas city. Respondents were asked during interviews to identify the types of sex education-related content they support, and where and how they believe these messages should be taught. Respondents were also asked to identify their rationales for supporting (or opposing) certain elements of sexual education. Interviews revealed a group of evangelical Christian parents who verbalised their explicit opposition to abstinence-based sex education in schools, lamenting the sex-negative messages they believe to be associated with it. It additionally became apparent that these parents believe that their opposition to abstinence-based sexual education aligns with a silent majority of evangelical Christians.     

What's what?

What are most difficult ships to conquer? Answer: hardships.What's what?     

Does Russia need sex education? The views of stakeholders in three Russian regions

Objective To investigate the attitudes of the main stakeholders towards the introduction of sex education in schools in Russia.

Design Qualitative semi-structured interview study.

Setting Altai Krai, Volgograd Oblast, Moscow, Russian Federation.

Participants One hundred and fifty-three interviews with Intersectoral HIV/AIDS Committee members, government officials responsible for HIV policies and interventions, non-governmental organisation and private-sector representatives.

Main outcome measures Perception of and attitudes towards the introduction of sex education in schools.

Results Ninety-one per cent of stakeholders welcomed the introduction of sex education in schools and emphasised its importance for a child's personal development, public health, sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS control, and pregnancy planning. The majority of respondents suggested providing different information for each age and grade. Despite the claimed support of interviewed policy-makers and main HIV stakeholders, there has been no action to introduce sex education. The majority of respondents were of the view that wider positive support through propaganda about health, sex and healthy lifestyle should be gained prior to introducing sex education in schools by addressing the stigma surrounding sexual issues.

Conclusions There was little opposition to the introduction of sex education in Russian schools expressed in our survey, but there are uncertainties regarding curriculum quality, teaching methods and the starting grade of teaching about sex, and there is a need to cover local sensitivities in the territories. These concerns could and should be addressed during curriculum design, development and programme implementation by the federal and local authorities. Wider involvement of educational specialists, peer-adults, health workers, celebrities and religious representatives in discussion of the curriculum could help prevent opposition to its implementation.

Contribution to knowledge Discussion of sex-related topics has been taboo in Russia and there has been little research into opinions on issues related to sex education. The contribution of this research is in gaining theoretical in-depth understanding of the attitudes of the interviewed stakeholders in Russia about the introduction of sex education in schools.     

The condom works in all situations? Paradoxical messages in mainstream sex education in Sweden

The condom plays a vital part in safe sex, the ideal outcome of mainstream Swedish sex education. As researchers have pointed out, however, the condom is not a neutral object; rather, it plays a part in shaping, in different ways, both sexual practices and the idea of what sex is. This paper focuses on sex education television programmes produced in Sweden from 1998 to 2011, and particularly on the condom's role in maintaining a hierarchy of sexuality that favours heterosexuality and vaginal intercourse. The analysis shows that the condom is presented as self-evident, as always available, and as unique in the protection it provides against sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Through over-simplified messages, such as ‘the condom is appropriate on all occasions’, the coital imperative is sustained and practices that do not include a penis are excluded from concepts of ‘sex’. From a safer sex perspective, this approach leaves unanswered questions about protection during other sexual practices, in particular from STIs such as herpes, for which no prevention strategies are presented. From a wider perspective, the sole focus on condoms, with its specific emphasis on the penis and penetration, runs contrary to the inclusive agenda of contemporary Swedish sex education.     

What's Your Name?

教学背景:近年来,小学英语演讲活动在我区开展得十分普遍。我校为紧跟英语教改的步伐,除了从三年级开始教学牛津版教材外,还在二年级开展了“英语兴趣小组”活动。本课“W hat'syour nam e?”是本学期的第二课,也是二年级“英语兴趣小组”的学习内容之一。本课的教学是在学生掌     

What's in the 'co'? Tending the tensions in co-creative inquiry in social work education

Higher education is one of many fields of practice that have undergone a so-called ‘dialogic turn’ whereby processes of co-creation proliferate as a means of generating knowledge. According to dialogic ideals, co-creation harnesses the transformative potential of dialogue across difference and empowers participants as co-learners or co-researchers. But what does the ‘co’ of ‘co-creation’ entail in practice? The aim of the article is to explore the tensions in the ‘co’ of co-creation through critical, reflexive analysis of the enactment of one particular approach to co-creation, ‘Academic Co-Creative Inquiry’ (ACCI), in a social work course in a higher educational institution in Aotearoa New Zealand. Using the Integrated Framework for Analysing Dialogic Knowledge Production and Communication (IFADIA), the analysis identifies tensions arising in the interplay between top-down and bottom-up dynamics in a contested terrain of dialogic and neoliberal discourses. It is argued that ACCI’s and IFADIA’s reflexive sensitivity in relation to tensions offers some resistance to neoliberalism in higher education.     

Effect of single‐sex education on progress in GCSE

Multilevel modelling was carried out on national value‐added data to study the effects of single‐sex education on the progress of pupils from 2002 Key Stage 3 to 2004 GCSE. The analysis suggests that pupils in a selective environment achieve higher progress in single‐sex schools; however, the advantage of single‐sex schooling seems to decrease with increasing pupils' prior attainment (for girls) or with increasing school ‘selectiveness’ (for boys). These phenomena might be a result of a ceiling effect, as pupils with high prior attainment at Key Stage 3 cannot improve as much as pupils with lower initial attainment. There was also strong evidence suggesting that pupils achieve higher progress in the independent sector compared to grammar education. On the other hand, in a non‐selective environment only pupils with lower prior attainment and those attending schools with a full range of abilities seem to benefit from single‐sex education.     

Advice on life? Online fan forums as a space for peer-to-peer sex and relationships education

Previous research has pointed to the potential of entertainment media as a source of informal sex education for young people. New social media may offer additional potential in this respect. In this paper, we consider the pedagogical possibilities and limitations of online fan forums, via a case study of the forums of the controversial British teen drama series Skins. We analyse discussions of the realism of the series' representation of teenage life, and of specific issues (virginity, attractiveness and gay sexuality). We compare participants' discussions of their own experiences – in a section of the forum entitled ‘advice on life’ – with their discussions of the series and the characters. We find that the presentation of issues to do with sexuality sometimes challenges young people to engage in debate, and to move beyond established discourses. However, the value of the series in this respect depends crucially on its ‘openness’ – that is, its avoidance of fixed moral positions – and on its perceived plausibility and authenticity. The forum emerges as a new space for non-formal, peer-to-peer education that has limitations as well as new pedagogical possibilities.     

What's in a rating?

We examine the relationship between the formal ratings that principals give teachers and a variety of observable teacher characteristics, including proxies for productivity. Prior work has shown that principals can differentiate between more and less effective teachers, especially at the tails of the quality distribution, and that subjective evaluations of teachers are strongly correlated with subsequent student achievement. However, whereas prior work has relied on survey data, we consider formal ratings from a setting in which the stakes are reasonably high. We find that the ratings are correlated with an array of teacher qualities including experience for young teachers, education credentials, and teacher absenteeism. Our finding that principals reward qualities of teachers known to be related to student productivity provides reason to be optimistic about policies that would assign more weight to principal evaluations of teachers in career decisions and compensation.     

What's Wrong With Undermatching?

‘Undermatched’ is the name education researchers have given to the surprisingly large number of students who attend post‐secondary institutions which are less selective than their academic credentials would permit, or who simply fail to even apply for college when they are qualified to do so. At first, this might seem like an obviously bad trend, especially as rates of undermatching are much higher among students from low‐income backgrounds. This article argues, however, that individual cases of undermatching are sometimes morally acceptable when the choice is made autonomously. Some readers will have trouble calling this situation just, as it is one in which a disadvantaged person has decided on a course of action which will likely perpetuate this disadvantage. To address this, the article considers alternate ways in which we might distinguish between autonomous and non‐autonomous choices in undermatching cases. The article concludes with some indications about how this analysis should affect future theory and policy intended to protect against unjust undermatching.