Face‐to‐face with children

This paper investigates the motivational power of children to change teachers' beliefs about teaching. Weekly and summary reflections written by 18 preservice teachers served as data sources. Preservice teachers were learning from the children what they expect their teachers to know, to do, and to be, and in consequence of the face‐to‐face encounters with children, teachers were likely to establish and change their beliefs about children and how to teach. Teacher educators may encourage this learning by asking preservice teachers, during and after their work in classrooms, to respond to the questions: ‘As I related to the children, what did they require from me?’, and ‘How did I respond to these demands?’. The work of Emmanuel Levinas on the relationship in the face‐to‐face encounter between people provided an interpretive framework for evaluating responses to these questions.     

The poverty trap of education: Education–poverty connections in Western China

Traditional studies of development and education focus either on the benefits of education for lifting the poor out of poverty, or on the vicious circle created when poor cannot afford education. This paper adds to the traditional view by also focusing on the poverty trap that is created for families that invest heavily in education without obtaining returns. It offers another perspective on the new education–poverty trap, with the burden of educational costs as cause of poverty and deprivation for low- and middle-income families. Data from a large-scale survey of the Western regions of China shows that the cost of higher education is far beyond low- and middle-income families’ affordability. Chinese households face a dilemma: borrowing money to educate a child or avoiding debt but foregoing education and mobility. While already acknowledged as a major social problem in China, the new poverty–education connection has so far received relatively little scholarly attention.     

Children with Mobile Phones in Australia

Mobile phone(手机) has become a problem for middle schools. Some middle schools in Australia have banned(禁止) students from carrying mobile phones during school hours.olenM obile phone use am ong children has becom e a problem for theschoolthis year.Several children have got m obile phones as Christm asgifts,and m ore students willwantthem.M ary Black,an official,said m obile phone use is a distraction(分心的事)to students during school hours and it also gives teachers som uch trouble in th…     

Music Partnerships— The Face of Music in Modern Education

The author argues for the importance of, and examines the challenges and successes of music education partnerships between performing arts organizations and schools.     

The cost and financing of the right to education in India: Can we fill the financing gap?

India's Parliament passed the Right to Education Act in 2009, which entitles all children 6-14 years old to at least eight years of schooling. This paper examines the cost of achieving this right to education, and asks whether India can fill the financing gap that must be filled if the right is to be realized. The paper notes the very considerable increase in central and state government allocation implied by the Act, and finds that there will be difficulties in finding the resources, given the large fiscal deficit occasioned by the global economic crisis. However, the paper goes on to suggest a series of measures that can be taken so that the right to schooling is no more denied or delayed.     

Exploring practicum: student teachers’ social capital relations in schools with high numbers of pupils living in poverty

The complexity of practicum in initial teacher education, in terms of the range of diverse social relations and differing school contexts, provides a challenge for teacher educators worldwide, aiming to guide and shape opportunities for student teachers learning to teach. This challenge is further compounded by societal problems linked to child poverty. Drawing from social capital theory, this paper explores the kinds of social relations that are currently associated with student teachers’ practicum experience in schools located in areas of social and economic deprivation or with significant proportions of pupils living in poverty. The paper brings to the surface types of social relations that are beneficial to mitigating the effects of poverty on educational outcomes. The case is made that practicum does not currently support the principles of social capital theory by enabling student teachers to develop an understanding of how to make connections, and develop the social relationships required to support positive educational outcomes for the children and young people in such contexts. Findings indicate that more effective ‘joint practice’ is required to better support student teachers’ professional learning.     

Promoting retention and successful completion on Masters courses in education: a study comparing e‐tuition using asynchronous conferencing software with face‐to‐face tuition

This paper considers the influence of e‐tuition using an asynchronous written conferencing package, FirstClass, upon retention and success rates for Masters‐level courses in a distance learning programme as compared with similar courses that were supported in a traditional manner using face‐to‐face tuition. The paper investigates the common assumption that the use of e‐tuition might negatively influence both retention and success rates by studying data gathered on UK Open University Masters courses in education. These data have allowed direct comparisons between e‐tutored and face‐to‐face tutored courses to be made. The effect of linking assessment to participation in activities using FirstClass is also considered in this study. This research has revealed that e‐tutoring using FirstClass appears to have no significant positive or negative influence on either retention or success on such courses.     

The making of the ‘precarious’: examining Indian immigrant IT workers in Canada and their transnational networks with body shops in India

Since the 1990s, temporary staffing agencies have been playing a key role in managing and supplying a ready pool of skilled workers to the global IT market. Yet, such agencies often regulate their workforce to maintain flexible, low-cost and accommodating workers. Due to continuing racial and gendered barriers, many immigrant Indian IT professionals living in Canada are increasingly depending on many such India-based staffing agencies (body shops) to get into IT employment globally. Such associations I argue are turning the workers into a self-regulated and precarious workforce subjected to severe regulations and flexible work patterns of the agencies.     

Online versus face‐to‐face learning: looking at modes of instruction in Master’s‐level courses

This study examined performance of Master’s‐level students in an online course in Cognition, Learning and Assessment and compared it with the performance of students in a face‐to‐face classroom setting of the same course (N = 70). Data were collected from six sections of the course over a two‐year period. The same professor taught all sections. Identical final exams plus two common assignments were used to determine whether there were differences in performance. An analysis of covariance, with graduate record exam scores as the covariate, was applied using each of the dependent variables. Students in the face‐to‐face class scored significantly higher on two out of the three measures.     

Restavèk children in context: Wellbeing compared to other Haitian children

In Haiti, large numbers of vulnerable children and the country's particular historical context has led to a unique phenomenon known as the “restavèk” system. An estimated 300,000 Haitian children are restavèks, living as unpaid domestic servants. Child-welfare advocates describe the restavèk system as modern slavery, but researchers and advocates lack information about restavèk children's circumstances, particularly vis-à-vis other children in Haiti. In a cross-sectional analysis of a nationally representative sample, we evaluated differences in well-being (school attendance, work responsibilities, physical abuse, and hunger) between restavèk children and: (a) all non-restavèk children; and (b) the poorest quintile of non-restavèk children. As compared to all Haitian children and the poorest Haitian children, restavèk children have statistically significantly lower school attendance rates and more labor responsibilities. However, restavèk children experience statistically significantly less physical abuse and less hunger than non-restavèk Haitian children. The restavèk system remains active in Haiti because poor families lack basic resources to support their children, and restavèk children are at risk for mistreatment due to their vulnerable social status. The surprising finding that restavèk children are better off in some respects than their non-restavèk peers highlights the desperate poverty in Haiti and suggests that structural changes for poverty reduction will be required before the restavèk system will end.     

An Experiment Comparing HBSE Graduate Social Work Classes: Face‐to‐Face and at a Distance

This article describes a quasi‐experimental comparison of two master's level social work classes delivering content on human behavior in the social environment. One class, delivered face‐to‐face, was largely synchronous. The other class, delivered using distance technologies, was more asynchronous than the first. The authors hypothesized that students would learn equally well in both classes, and did not reject that hypothesis. That was so even after accounting for strong explanation of achievement by grade point average adjusted for grade inflation. Though this study indicates that the distance education studied was apparently successful, the findings may not be highly generalizable, and the authors suggest that future studies need to look at achievement in various settings and curricular areas while carefully measuring and accounting for extraneous variables.     

The Role of Historical-Philosophical Controversies in Teaching Sciences: The Debate Between Biot and Ampère

This paper evaluates the viability of using controversies in teaching. An educational project has been elaborated in which some historical-philosophical clashes were introduced into the classical syllabus of physics. The historical-philosophical controversy dealt with here, took place between the French physicists Biot and Ampère in the 19th century and referred to distinct interpretations of the Oersted experiment. This controversy was inserted into the syllabus of the 12th grade of a Brazilian secondary school.     

“Facing Threats”: Understanding Communication Apprehensive Instructors' Face Loss and Face Restoration in the Classroom

Noting a lack of qualitative literature devoted to student–teacher interactions, and even less targeting instructor communication apprehension (CA), this study aimed to combine these areas. Interview data were gathered from college instructors who experience CA in the classroom in an effort to garner their unique dealings with face-threatening situations with students. Using the concept of facework as a guide, two main themes arose from data analysis: (a) Threatening Face, and (b) Facing Identity: Managing and Restoring Face. Implications for facework theory and CA conclude this study.     

From 5 million to 20 million a year: The challenge of scale,quality and relevance in India’s TVET

In the first decade of this century, India became one of the world’s fastest growing large economies, and began to face serious skill-related shortages of workers. Its TVET system has not responded adequately to the growth in demand for semi-skilled and skilled workers. This article describes six sets of reforms that India’s educational planners and policy-makers must put into place if these shortages are not to constrain India’s ability to benefit from the demographic dividend.     

Challenges to Stereotypes of International Students’ Prior Educational Experience: undergraduate education in India

The discourse concerning teaching and learning for international students in Australia has been dominated by a cultural‐deficit approach. Proponents of this perspective argue that many international students bring with them learning experiences which are inadequate in the Australian context. These experiences have favoured rote, reproductive, surface, teacher‐centred and dependent approaches to learning; which lack analytical and critical perspectives; and which have occurred in contexts dominated by examinations and substantially lacking in educational resources. More recently, other research has challenged these stereotypes of international students, particularly regarding students from Confucian‐heritage cultures. This paper examines these stereotypes in relation to international students from India, through the use of a review of the available literature on Indian higher education and the analysis of the undergraduate learning experiences of a group of postgraduate students studying at a large Australian metropolitan university. It concludes that while some aspects of the stereotype may apply to Indian undergraduate education, most aspects of the cultural‐deficit perspective are problematic in that context, and a more contextualised approach is of greater use in understanding and describing the diversity of undergraduate learning in India.     

The science of pedagogy in Soviet Estonia (1944–1991): resilience in the face of adversity

This article examines how education unfolded as a science in Estonia in the period 1944–1991, i.e. from the second Soviet occupation to the fall of the USSR. Historical analysis of the way prominent scholars and institutions succeeded in overcoming the adverse conditions of that period is conducted by viewing their respective contributions through two theoretical lenses: cultural trauma theory to explore the adversities they had to contend with, and resilience theory to explain how those challenges were overcome. Through these means an account is constructed of how individuals and institutions succeeded in preserving the national Estonian and inter-war European legacy of educational philosophy, in the process confronting and countering adverse socio-cultural-political conditions.