Community colleges in the United States: are they a model for Britain?

The article examines US community colleges from a comparative public policy perspective and asks: are they a model for Britain? The introduction provides the context for this question, stating that, while systems of education and training are recognized as vital to a nation's economic and social development, there has been a long standing lack of confidence in the effectiveness of that in Britain, especially in the intermediate post-school sector. A brief section on comparative education and public policy, is followed by a series of questions and answers aimed at providing an answer to the central question, are US community colleges a model for Britain? There follows a comprehensive review of their history, ideology, patterns of development and effectiveness. The conclusion is that, despite criticisms and shortcomings, the ‘multiple mission’ of the community colleges and their service to millions of ordinary citizens, make them a useful guide for British further education colleges.     

Constructively aligning technologies with learning and assessment in a distance education master’s programme

This paper reports on an action research study investigating the use of online learning activities or “e-tivities” to enhance the learning and assessment experience of students on a distance master’s programme. The study suggests that to be successfully integrated in a programme, such activities need to be carefully aligned with learning outcomes and assessment practices, and their value needs to be clear both to students and staff. The paper describes how e-tivities were designed, adopting a constructive alignment approach, to introduce more flexible and innovative approaches to learning and assessment. The e-tivities used a range of technologies (e.g., voice-based discussion boards, podcasts, wikis and blogs) to carry out group-based reflective activities. The study provides some evidence that such e-tivities, particularly voice-based activities, can help provide earlier, more detailed formative assessment, stimulate a more collaborative approach to learning and motivate students to engage more broadly with course content.     

Teaching English at a distance in China’s Radio and Television Universities

English language teaching (ELT) has played an important role in the Chinese Radio and Television Universities (RTVU) network since its establishment in the late 1970s. Based on a literature review and reflection from an insider’s perspective, this paper gives a full account of the RTVU distance ELT model, examining how it supports autonomous language learning, how autonomy features in its English courses/programmes and how well the students respond to the model. It also discusses issues related to the improvement of the model, including student support, course production, curriculum design, course assessment, and staff development. It is argued that ELT in RTVUs should not be ignored in the international academic community although not much is known about it outside China, and that the RTVU model may be of practical relevance to other open and distance learning contexts.     

Inclusive education in the academy: pedagogical and political imperatives in a master’s course

Many universities offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses in inclusive education. There has been much research into the impact of these courses, but little is written about their design. This article focuses on a master’s course in inclusive education in a South African university. The course positions inclusive education as a critical education project and is designed around the four propositions presented by Slee in The Irregular School (2011. Milton Park: Routledge). Using Bernsteinian ideas about pedagogising knowledge, this article accounts for the pedagogical choices made in content selection and course design. The focal questions in the course are described, together with an indication of the range of additional texts that students read. Given that Slee asserts that inclusive education is a political project, and that Allan (2010. “The Inclusive Teacher Educator: Spaces for Civic Engagement.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 31 (4): 411–422) urges inclusive teacher educators to reorientate themselves towards civic duty, I argue that producing a pedagogic discourse of inclusive education is a political task that should result in both the teacher educator and the students being oriented towards a critique of existing exclusionary arrangements and an activism that leads to change.     

Memorizing a memory: Schwab’s the Practical in a German context

The paper outlines the reception of Schwab’s essay ‘The practical: A language for curriculum’ in German-speaking countries in the 1970s and 1980s. The story is a good demonstration of the ways in which different circumstances and phases of development determine transatlantic exchanges and the influence of concepts in the field of education, and especially of curriculum. The central ideas of Joseph J. Schwab’s concept of curriculum theory and curriculum-making were related to the traditions of general Didaktik in the German-speaking world. It would have been well suited for a reception. Nevertheless, the reception the essay received was at first not a story of success; on the contrary, we have to diagnose a historical neglect. Circumstances today are much better for rethinking Schwab’s analysis under the new conditions of standardizing and competence-oriented curriculum policies.     

A sociocultural theoretical approach to understanding mentor–mentee interactions during a Teaching English as a Second Language practicum at the master’s degree level

Drawing on the sociocultural theoretical (SCT) perspective, we offer a microgenetic analysis of mentor–mentee interactions in the context of pre-service teachers’ practicum in a Master’s program for Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL). Following two pairs of mentors and mentees, we analyze audio-recorded interactions and interviews and examine in depth how mediation occurs during mentoring and how such mediation assists the mentees in learning to become teachers. Our findings show that mentors’ mediation is dynamic and contingent upon the context in which mentoring occurs and that the quality and character of mentor–mentee interactions during goal-directed activities is a critical feature of promoting the mentees’ learning. Responsive mediation especially plays a key role in promoting the mentees’ cognitive development, and it is an essential component of effective mentoring. This calls for a more SCT-informed approach to conceptualizing mentoring and training mentors in practicums.     

Memory at Play: Examining Relations Between Episodic and Semantic Memory in a Children’s Museum

The relation between episodic and semantic memory was examined by testing how semantic knowledge influences children’s episodic memory for events and their locations. Five-, six-, and seven-year-olds (N = 87) engaged in events in a children’s museum designed as a town. Events were semantically congruent or incongruent with the spatial location (e.g., sorting mail at post office vs. grocery store). In addition to this experimental paradigm, a semantic interview assessed children’s semantic knowledge about real-world locations. Accuracy in the experimental paradigm showed that children’s semantic memory influenced memory for locations. Interviews revealed age-related improvements in children’s semantic knowledge. Regression analyses examined factors that best supported episodic memory. These results provide novel insights and highlight the utility of research in naturalistic settings.     

‘Changing the context’: Tackling discrimination at school and in society

In this paper we propose a social psychological framework for studying the role of schools in promoting positive intercultural relations. We draw on data from schools in England where addressing issues of cultural diversity is a key aim of educational practice. We focus specifically on the role of social context in educational activities that tackle discrimination. We consider the socio-political context, local community context, and immediate school context from a social representations theory perspective. Using data from interviews with staff and focus groups with students in schools from three very different localities, we show that the socio-political context may limit schools’ ability to promote positive intercultural relations but also that it is possible for schools to promote broader change from the bottom-up, acting as agents of change at a societal level, i.e. in terms of changing the local and broader societal contexts in which they are located.     

Children’s screen and problematic media use in the United States before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

This mixed methods study examined parent-reported child screen media use before and during the COVID-19 pandemic by examining 2019–2020 changes in parent perceptions of media, screen media use (SMU), and problematic media use (PMU) in children aged 2–13 years (N = 129; 64 boys, 64 girls, 1 nonbinary; 90.7% White, 4.6% Hispanic/Latino, 0.8% Black, 8.5% multiethnic; primarily middle-to-high income). Quantitative analyses showed a significant SMU and PMU increase (medium effect size). There was a steeper increase in PMU among school-age (older) children. Together, the qualitative and quantitative results suggest that the PMU and SMU increase were influenced by distal, proximal, and maintaining factors including the COVID-19 pandemic, distance learning, child behaviors, other children, parental mediation, and positive media reinforcement.     

Changing a discipline in universities and a subject in schools: British geography in the 1950s–1970s

Geography emerged as an academic discipline in British universities in response to demands for trained teachers of the subject in the country’s burgeoning secondary schools and their curricula formed a seamless transition from one to the other. In the 1960s a major shift in the nature of the academic discipline – often termed the ‘quantitative and theoretical revolutions’ – created a breach between the two, but there were demands from within the university sector for changes to the school subject so that a new seamless transition could be instated. This essay charts the nature of those changes and how they were brought about by the key actors, both individual and institutional. Having created that apparent unity, subsequent changes saw the two educational sectors drift apart, although recent developments have sought to reinstate stronger links.     

Children’s Perspectives on Their Everyday Lives in Child Care in Two Cultures: Denmark and the United States

The purpose of this study was to investigate young children’s perspectives related to their experiences in child care. Researchers used individual interviews and drawings in an early childhood program in Denmark and one in the United States as the basis for examining children’s perspectives on their everyday lives in child care. Observations documented the everyday cultural practices for the children in the two child care centers and provided a foundation for interpreting the interviews and the drawings. The information collected was analyzed to determine what aspects of child care young children like best and least, as well as their thoughts on the adults and peers in their center.     

Understanding families’ conceptions of school readiness in the United States: a qualitative metasynthesis

ABSTRACT

The call by policymakers, education stakeholders, and families for children to enter school ‘ready’ has led to numerous empirical studies that seek to identify how children and their families are or are not prepared for school. In the United States, this empirical work tends to identify particular children and their families ‘at-risk’ for school success and often seeks out ways to intervene so that such risks are addressed. Absent from this work is an understanding of how families conceptualise school readiness, and how those understandings influence their conceptions of whether or not their own children are ready for school. Such work could assist educators and other school personnel in supporting families and their children as they enter their programmes. This article examines this issue by presenting findings from a qualitative metasynthesis of studies that investigated how families conceptualised school readiness. Analysing, synthesising, and interpreting their conceptions of school readiness offers the chance to consider how early childhood stakeholders can be ready for families as they enter their programmes as well as support their efforts in readying their children for school.     

Adult education in a workplace context: recognising production workers’ responses and partnership challenges

Abstract

This article is about a larger regional Swedish partnership programme that was established to develop site-based education for production workers. A partnership is seen as composed of different practice architectures. The actors involved represented larger transnational as well as smaller manufacturing companies, employers, the metal workers’ trade union, educational organizations, university researchers and public labour market authorities. Adult education teachers were engaged to act as leading action researchers on company-specific projects. The partnership programme is used here to illustrate the problem of supporting recognition under shifting partnership circumstances. The aim is to analyse enabling and constraining conditions affecting the teachers’ efforts as well as new possibilities that appeared as the partnership evolved over time. The article illustrates how the development of site-based education within a partnership framework means to develop a new practice that is very sensitive to local circumstances. It also shows how local meetings between people both enable and constrain, but also may open up a space for mutual recognition. A normative argument is that local spaces for mutual recognition need to be supported in a respectful way. Recognition of the particularities of each site is vital for this to happen.     

A fatal review: Exploring how children’s deaths are reported in the United States

Child death reports are the leading data source used to orchestrate child fatality prevention policy. Therefore, the way in which child death is reported is crucial to how we sustain life. We sought to assess the systematic ways in which death is reported for children. Based on a qualitative analysis of medico-legal investigation reports collected from a medical examiner’s office and a coroner’s office, we examined several indicators of data completeness, quality, site organizational structure, and consistency. We found stark differences between the two sites, as well as issues regarding death diagnosis certainty, and a general lack in consistency in the reports’ content, as well as procedures performed post-mortem. We conclude that there are some flaws in our death reporting system for child populations, which have the potential to hinder reliability and accuracy of these death reports, as well as thwart their overall usefulness in prevention policies.     

China’s radio and TV universities: reflections on theory and practice of open and distance learning

Distance education and open learning are western innovations, representing the educational concepts, cultures and societies of western countries. The introduction of distance education and the adoption of open learning in China’s radio and TV universities are by no means an indication that they will and can be copied wholesale. Open and distance learning has to be developed in accordance with the specific political, social, cultural and economic environments in the Chinese context. Thus, it represents an ever‐changing and evolving process in which theory and practice interact with each other.     

Admission path,family structure and outcomes in Ghana’s public universities: evidence from KNUST students enrolled in the social sciences

At the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Ghana, first year enrolment increased by 1466.81% from 708 in 1961/1962 to 11,093 in 2011. In the 2013/2014 academic year, the total student population was 45,897. There are now five main admission paths, comprising regular, mature, fee paying, less endowed, and protocol/staff admissions. The number of dropouts and fails has risen steeply, for example, at the end of the 2013/2014 academic year, roughly 22.11% of the 1239 students were either withdrawn or repeated at the Faculty of Social Sciences due to non-performance. This paper examined the impact of the admission path and family structure on university students’ academic outcomes. A logistic model was applied to individual-level data obtained from 1000 students enrolled at the Faculty of Social Sciences in the university. The results indicated that the regular and mature admission paths have a positive impact on performance whilst the fee-paying admission path has a significant negative influence on academic performance. It was also found that the family structure (living with the father and mother and the mother only) has a significant positive influence on performance. The study recommended that lecturers should be motivated to conduct additional classes for academically weak students. Counselling units should also identify students who experienced disruption in home life and raise their aspirations.