Understanding how schools fail children

From time immemorial the efforts of educators to produce effective solutions to the problems plaguing instruction have been frustrated. This frustration emanates from the erroneous assumptions supporting their beliefs about schooling, learning and the essence of the questions seeking solutions. Early research efforts only compounded the problem by providing practitioners with the right answers to the wrong questions about effective schooling and learning. Gradually, the past errors of pedagogic empiricism are being corrected. We now realize that most learners, not merely the intellectual elite, can learn when instruction is properly sequenced and paced; that it is more important to examine what teachers do than to look at what they are; that schools have covert as well as overt curricula; and that many institutions besides schools teach important learnings. When scholastic and extra-scholastic instructional goals ar synchronous and harmonious, learning is optimal. When they are not, the resulting dissonance is destructive to the best efforts of schools to teach. The gap between what is known about effective instruction and current educational practices is cavernous. Proposed procedures for transforming theory into practice have largely been ignored. The transformation begins by enticing bright students into teacher preparation programmes which have been revitalized to make emerging knowledge about schooling and learning the focal point of instruction. To complete the instructional improvement cycle, schools must interface learners with carefully monitored delivery systems guaranteed to produce the desired learnings.     

Discourses on bad children and bad schools

First, discourse is discussed as concerning the subtler lineaments of knowledge production in notions about difference and difficulty. The unhelpful influences that these notions have had on the development of special education research and practice are discussed. The importance of the scholar-practitioner in undoing some of these understandings is further developed. Second, the point is stressed that politics and political questions are intertwined with empirical questions and that a discourse of objectivity propagates and fosters a belief that the supposed paraphernalia of science (measurement, experiment, prediction) can be employed without cost. Third, the point is made that the individual discourse is rooted in the theoretical context of special education--with unhelpful consequences for the way that difficulty continues to be construed as rooted in individuals, whether those individuals be children or schools.     

Hearing impaired children in primary schools in Finland

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to present basic data on hearing impaired pupils in primary schools in Finland in 1982‐83. The purpose of the survey was to provide an information base for the development of hearing services and teaching in primary schools. Earlier studies have mainly focused on the screening of moderate and severe cases of hearing impairment. The present study includes also cases of mild (20‐30 dB) hearing impairment, the criterion, however, being that hearing impairment in the better ear is > 20 dB in at least one of the three speech frequencies (500‐1000‐2000 hz).     

The educational performance of immigrant children at Czech schools

The integration of immigrant children into the education system is a process that is accompanied by serious debate, especially in advanced countries, which have large shares of immigrants and a long history of immigration. The poorer educational outcomes of foreign-born children are largely explained there through their socio-economically disadvantaged background compared to the native-born population. This article examines whether the observations for those countries also apply to the Czech Republic—a country with a relatively short immigration history and immigration flows from different source countries than those in Western Europe. Regression analyses conducted on PISA 2012 data focusing largely on the maths skills of 15-year-olds reveal that the performance of immigrant children in Czech schools roughly compares to that of their counterparts in Western Europe. While their PISA outcomes were lower than those of Czechs, this was because immigrant children have poorer conditions at home or in the classroom.     

农村耕地资源保护与政府责任

耕地资源是农村经济社会发展的基础，事关国家的粮食安全和社会的和谐发展。然而，在现代化和城市化进程中，耕地资源面临着不断流失的困境。其中，非法占用耕地是耕地资源流失的一个重要原因，而非法占用耕地又与政府责任的缺失有关。为了更好地保护耕地资源，政府必须树立科学发展观，提高对耕地保护的意识；构建清晰的耕地产权制度；改革土地管理体制和征地制度：加强立法，犯耕地保护纳入法治轨道。     

利用注册表进行系统维护

随着互联网技术的飞速发展及人民生活水平的提高,工作、学习或生活离不开网络,经常网上畅游,不可避免地要受到病毒的攻击,或不经意间注册表被恶意网站改得面目全非,本文介绍了如何利用注册表来进行系统的维护。     

The effects of bereavement on children in Hulberside secondary schools

John Holland, of the Humberside Special Needs Support Service, and Corinne Ludford, who teaches at the Bridlington School, North Humberside, cosider the effects of bereavement on children in schools and suggest ways of helping them. Evidence indicates that bereavement can impact heavily on the child resulting in vulnerability. The consequent problems were recognied in the recent Code of Practice on the Identification & Assessment of Special Educational Needs (1994) as potentially affecting the progress of children. Bereavement and associated problems are discussed in the context of the authors' small scale research in secondary schools in Humberside, and ways of helping the bereaved child in order to reduce special educational needs are suggested.     

Who chooses non‐public schools for their children?

Using the pooled 1998–2000 GSS data, this study examines what kinds of parents tend to select non‐public schools for their children, a question that is fundamental but lacks direct, adequate answers in the literature. The results of logistic regression analysis show that religion, socio‐economic status, age, nativity, number of children and region play significant roles in parental choice of religious schools, but race, gender, urban residence and family composition make no difference. Parental socio‐economic status is a key factor in determining their choice of non‐religious private schools. Currently, no significant differences in demographic, religious, socio‐economic and family‐structure characteristics can be detected with regard to which parents are more likely to home‐school their children. Implications of the findings are considered.     

Intergroup attitudes of European American children attending ethnically homogeneous schools

Intergroup attitudes were assessed in European American 1st-grade (M=6.99 years, SD=0.32) and 4th-grade (M=10.01 years, SD=0.36) children (N=138) attending ethnically homogeneous schools to test hypotheses about racial biases and interracial friendships. An Ambiguous Situations Task and an Intergroup Contact Assessment were administered to all participants. Unlike previous findings with European American children attending heterogeneous schools, children rated minority perpetrators more negatively than majority perpetrators, and friendship as less likely when a minority than a majority perpetrator was portrayed. These findings suggest that intergroup contact contributes to racial bias in children's interpretations of peer dyadic encounters and to judgments about interracial friendships.     

浅谈康定师专机房计算机软件系统维护

本文阐述了通过建设计算机机房软件系统,采用自制网络硬盘还原卡及机房管理软件实现大批量计算机网络克隆等有效措施,提高计算机软件系统的维护效率,减轻实验人员的工作强度提供良好的实验教学环境,提高机房软件系统管理和维护水平。     

关于维护新疆稳定的思考

要实现稳定与发展双赢的目标，务必使广大学员教职员工认识到，反对民族分裂和非法宗教活动，坚决维护祖国统一是国家最高利益和新疆各族人民的根本利益之所在。     

对中小学择校问题的再思考

对于中小学择校现象应当重新予以认识。择校是指人们对就读学校的选择,在当前具有合理性和必然性。目前择校主要有以分择校、以权择校和以钱择校等三种形式。合理的择校应当以学生的素质为依据,同时视学校的具体情况确定招收择校生的数量及收费标准。择校既具有积极的意义,也有一定的负面影响。解决择校问题要从政府、社会和学校等多方面着手。     

Making it work for their children: white middle-class parents and working-class schools

The white middle-class parents who chose to send their children to urban comprehensives largely rejected engaging in the usual competitiveness for educational success. Nevertheless the parents in our study still found themselves wittingly or otherwise captured by that same discourse. Their children are high achievers and are regarded as a valuable resource for their comprehensive schools generating high volume capital. However, in spite of this, the parents do not leave such success to chance. Drawing on an ESRC-funded research project (Educational Choices and the White Urban Middle-Classes RES-148-25-0023) we analyse how middle-class parental involvement is part of the age old process of social reproduction and the transmission of parents’ middle-class privilege to their children, almost regardless of their intentions. Not only are the parents interventionist in their children’s schooling, they draw on and dispose their own privileged capitals to prepare and position their children for educational success.