Attitudes to lying in children aged 8/9 and 11/12

Abstract

The paper considers the way in which white teachers and students make sense of ‘race’ in a multiracial college of further education. It argues that within white cultural forms there are two main ways of comprehending race, the ‘nationalistic’ and ‘liberal’. It suggests however that these two forms are interrelated and that paradoxically the nationalistic may feed in and support a white ‘liberalism’. It is argued that the liberal form's denial of structure serves to sustain a white racism. On a more positive note it is argued that teachers’ concerns with equal opportunities provide an important resource in the development of an anti‐racist education.     

Reading lessons: teacher–pupil interactions with text during three KS1 shared reading sessions

Changes in the teaching of reading during the past decade include a shift away from a previous emphasis on ‘one‐to‐one’ learning experiences to a focus upon more communal forms of learning which place the teacher center stage. With the teacher's role thus highlighted, teacher–pupil interaction in practice has come under the spotlight, with a number of studies raising concerns about the quality of teaching taking place and suggesting this is featuring more traditional patterns of ‘IRF’ exchanges between teachers and pupils, which are limiting to children's learning. This article reports on a small‐scale study into teacher–pupil interaction styles during three Key Stage 1 ‘shared reading’ sessions – an activity in which teacher and children work together on an enlarged, illustrated text, with the teacher explicitly modeling components of the reading process to children. The article considers the more tacit modelling taking place during these sessions and how particular linguistic patterning used by teachers frames reading as an educational and cultural activity in ways that position children differentially in relation to it. In particular, it considers how variation in the use of the IRF exchange can mediate different cultural meanings about what it is to engage with text as a reader.     

The treasure house of a nation? Literary heritage,curriculum and devolution in Scotland and England in the twenty-first century

In January 2012, Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond announced a radical measure that would see every Scottish school student study a Scottish text from a prescribed list. In 2010, Michael Gove announced that ‘Our literature is the best in the world’ and that every pupil should study particular authors. The ‘cultural heritage’ model of English is increasingly dismissed by teachers and students However, it is this ‘cultural heritage’ model which is preserved in the discourse of politicians. This paper explores the role that literary heritage texts play in the discourse of education policy in the context of devolution in twenty-first century Britain and considers the drivers and differences which can be seen in England and Scotland.     

Techniques for investigating the understanding of concepts in science

Starting from a theoretical model of concept development, three diagnostic techniques for investigating a pupil's understanding of selected concepts in science are described.

The first, and most basic technique involves the selection of specific ‘instances’ of each named concept from a 5 × 5 grid of numbered boxes. The second involves the gradual ‘homing‐in’ on the selected concept from a number of ‘clues’, presented one at a time. To start with, the ‘clues’ are not specific to one particular concept, but, as more ‘clues’ are provided, the selected concepts can be uniquely determined. The third, and most comprehensive technique involves the application of concepts to ‘problem solving’. Given a standard problem, the pupil selects, from a 3 × 4 grid of concept statements, those which are relevant to the given problem. The chosen statements are then arranged by the pupil in the order required to solve the given problem.     

‘Voice’ is not enough: conceptualising Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child

This article provides a children's rights critique of the concept of ‘pupil voice’. The analysis is founded on Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which gives children the right to have their views given due weight in all matters affecting them. Drawing on research conducted on behalf of the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People, the article assesses some of the barriers to the meaningful and effective implementation of the right within education. It is argued that the phrases which are commonly used as abbreviations for Article 12, such as ‘pupil voice’, have the potential to diminish its impact as they provide an imperfect summary of the full extent of the obligation. The article proposes a new model, which has four key elements, for conceptualising Article 12— Voice, Audience and Influence.     

Opening classroom interaction: the importance of feedback

Efforts to encourage ‘interactive practice’ in the National Literacy (NLS) and Numeracy (NNS) Strategies in the UK, have led to an emphasis on teacher questions. Recent research into classroom interactions, however, indicate that the pattern of interaction remains largely unchanged since the introduction of these strategies in terms of the type and amount of questions teachers are asking, and the opportunities for extended pupil participation. This article uses evidence gathered from a large‐scale research project examining classroom interactions during literacy and numeracy lessons, and the researchers' critical reflections upon this process, to examine conceptions of interactive pedagogy. It is argued that in order to ‘open’ classroom interaction, emphasis should be less on the questions teachers ask, and more on the manner with which teachers react to pupils' responses to questions. Episodes of classroom interaction from video recorded literacy and numeracy lessons taken as part of the study are used to support this argument. They present evidence of teacher behaviours in reaction to pupils' responses which succeed in facilitating a more interactive learning environment. The implication that such behaviour will contribute towards a model of effective interactive practice is also discussed.     

Negotiating the World: Some philosophical considerations on dealing with differential academic language proficiency in schools

Differential academic language proficiency is an issue of major educational concern, bearing on problems varying from pupil performance, to social prospects, and citizenship. In this paper we develop a conception of the language‐acquiring subject, and we discuss the consequences for understanding differential language proficiency in schools. Starting from Wittgenstein's meaning‐as‐use theory we show that learning a language requires an activity that relates the subject both to the community of language users, and to the things language is about. In opposition to Luntley, we contend that this does not mean that linguistic development involves linguistic adjustment to the world ‘as it is’. It is argued that, in as far as linguistic development involves a process of adjustment, this concerns conceptions about the world as it is presupposed to be—a ‘world’ that is subjected to doubt and revision time and again. With respect to dealing with differential academic language proficiency, this approach to linguistic development suggests bringing pupils into situations which require active participation in processes of ‘negotiating meaning’, including negotiating the prevailing presuppositions about what the world is like. This also puts novices in a different position—less assimilatory—recognising their co‐constructive potencies at a more fundamental level.     

Person Formulation in the Process of Schooling

Mainstream sociology of education has seemingly moved away from the micro‐world of schools and classrooms before we have fully understood them. This is an attempt to reassess some of the prevailing assumptions about the social processes in classrooms, particularly in early schooling. It emerges from an investigation into the formulation of pupils by teachers in primary schools using a four year longitudinal study of a cohort of pupils in two schools. It suggests that Becker's model of ‘ideal‐matching’ may not always be appropriate for understanding interpersonal processes in primary classrooms. Rather than the ‘ideal’ pupil it is apparently the ‘normal’ or ‘average’ pupil that is the significant yardstick in teacher‐pupil dealings.     

Discourse and Practice in the Art Curriculum and the Production of the Pupil as a Subject

The development of enquiry into language this century has implications for pedagogy. This development concerns the transition from viewing language as a transparent medium, identifying an external objective reality, to a view in which language constitutes reality as we understand it. The paper begins by outlining some contemporary theoretical developments concerning the ‘productive’ or material nature of discourse. The paper shows how particular curriculum practices in art can be viewed as discursive sites which perpetuate particular discourses in which the pupil as art practitioner is produced. By focusing upon drawing practices the paper shows that the notion of ‘ability’ does not refer to some absolute skill possessed by pupils, but to particular ideological interpretations through which ability is conferred. However, such interpretations do provide us with stable forms which allow us to act as if they were absolute. Such interpretational states reveal the circular structure of interpretational practices such as evaluation and assessment. The paper shows how the reflexive nature of hermeneutic analysis can be helpful in providing a suitable space for reflection when such interpretational states break down during the practice of teaching art. By analysing a series of pupil's drawings the paper discusses how our interpretational discourses identify the pupil's ability and constitute the pupil as a subject in the ait curriculum. The paper forms part of a larger body of work in which the author is exploring how different practices in the art curriculum constitute discursive fields within which pupils as subjects are produced.     

A conceptual framework for understanding children as agents in the transition from home to kindergarten

The transition from home to kindergarten, for most children, is the first and major ecological transition in their educational life. Kindergarten is the first educational setting in which children make sense about ‘school’ as a place to learn and about themselves as ‘pupils’. In this transition, children cross a cultural boundary from home to kindergarten and, in fact, they commute between the two cultural settings. In Vygotsky's view, children are active culture learners. How they cope with, and adapt to, the novel kindergarten is crucial to their ‘pupil career’ in their life‐long learning. Thus, this paper aims to provide early childhood education professionals with a framework to understand children as agents in the transition from home to kindergarten. This paper begins with a review of the concept of transition. It then presents a conceptual framework of the understanding of children as agents in the transition from home to kindergarten. Major elements of the conceptual framework are derived from sociocultural theory, and analyses of ‘rites of passage’ and ‘pupil career’. This highlights the relationships between layers of context, stages of transition, and adaptation outcomes.     

CSE and the 16+: Teachers' Views

During the interview ‘Mary’ – who had last year been a school pupil and this year is a first‐year undergraduate on the new degree in Education (with Teaching Certificate) – talked at some length, and with considerable feeling, about how her main frustration as a female pupil had been what she saw as her systematic disenfranchisement from influence over the content and process of the schools' curricula which she had pursued over the previous thirteen years. Although she felt that all pupils suffered this lack of influence she was convinced that girls suffered disproportionately. [Some time later in the interview], when talking about the ‘teaching practice’ she had recently completed, ‘Mary’ described how her ‘music and movement’ work had met with ‘loud and disruptive’ reaction from some of the boys in the mixed class of 7–8 year‐olds, even though the majority of the children had clearly enjoyed and been engaged by the scheme she had designed. Faced with this rejection, and experiencing some anxiety about how the teachers and her tutor would assess her potential as a future teacher if she was not seen to be exercising what they would count as ‘good control’ of the class, ‘Mary’ resolved her ‘problem’ by designing an alternative scheme which the few boys would not (and did not) reject. Although the girls had ‘subsequently shown less interest’, their quiet acquiescence to what she offered them reduced her anxiety about her assessment as a teacher. When she related her pupil experience to her teaching practice experience ‘Mary’ was dismayed to realise that she had ‘reproduced for others precisely that frustration which [she herself] had experienced as a pupil’.

Extract from author's notes when evaluating a new pre‐service degree course, June 1983.     

MacIntyre,rival traditions and education

This paper critically discusses MacIntyre's thesis that education is essentially a contested concept. In order to contextualise my discussion, I discuss both whether rival educational traditions of education found in MacIntyre's work – which I refer to as instrumental and non-instrumental justifications of education – can be rationally resolved using MacIntyre's framework, and whether a shared meaning of education is possible as a result. I conclude that MacIntyre's synthesis account is problematic because the whole notion that there are rationally negotiable ways in which to compromise or harmonise opposing justifications of education found in instrumental and non-instrumental forms of education is troubling – the reason being that these are cultural disagreements about human flourishing that are not neutral-free, and due to a lack of care distinguishing between the common uses of the term ‘education’, and its looser usages to mean something like school learning that embraces a range of aims and goals that are often incompatible. In this light, it is argued that the contestability card has been unnecessarily overemphasised, and brings to our attention the complex ways in which we interpret education and what it means to be educated.     

National Cultural Values and Their Role in Learning: A comparative ethnographic study of state primary schooling in England and France

This ethnographic study attempts to define English and French cultural and educational values in primary school. It is maintained that pupil attitudes to education are derived from pupils' sociocultural backgrounds and that pupil attitudes predispose pupils to learning. Pupils interpret both what and how they learn through the medium of the culture to which they belong. English and French educational values are identified through classroom observation, teacher discourse and pupil perceptions. The comparative approach allows the contrastive characteristics inherent in each country's culture to emerge. It is argued that pupil understanding of such educational values as authority, thought or 'la pensee', control over learning and educational goals and how to achieve them are related to national culture and that they have an effect on pupil motivation. The paper is both an example of and an exploration into how culture may affect learning. It suggests that cultural values are more significant for learning than pedagogical styles as it argues that underlying educational values give meaning to styles of pedagogy.     

Opportunities missed and/or thwarted? ‘Funds of knowledge’ meet the English national curriculum

North American curriculum theorists Gonzales and Moll and their colleagues have argued that working with children's ‘funds of knowledge’ allows teachers to build on what children already know in order to meet the mandated outcomes. The approach also has the potential to change the knowledges that are valued and which advantage some children over others. In this article we examine three instances in which children's ‘funds of knowledge’ leaked into English classrooms: these were not fully taken up. We suggest that these instances represent opportunities wasted, but that they offer some insight into the challenges of introducing a ‘funds of knowledge’ approach into the English ‘curriculum space’, as well as some of the possibilities. We suggest that while there are current initiatives which do work with children's peer and family knowledges, these are isolated and that coordinated debate is required about the potentials of such an approach in the English context.     

Why Cultural Studies is the End of Thinking

Abstract

This article begins from a consideration of this issue’s contention that ‘central to politicized academic projects … is a critique of the cultural power of institutions’ and in particular pedagogical institutions. It argues that is clear enough what the Editor is thinking of here: he names ‘cultural studies’ as his prime suspect and from here it is not too far a leap to imagine that the pedagogical institution at which his ‘politicized academic projects’ take aim is the university. The article concedes that this might all appear to be superficially true, and that much of what is argued in it will up hold this hypothesis. However, the article does not wish to rush too quickly towards an unproblematic equation of cultural studies, or the ‘politicized academic project’ of a critical study of culture with something like a pedagogy of the popular. Equally, it proposes, we must distinguish rigorously between ‘a pedagogy of the popular’, pedagogy able to treat the popular, popular pedagogy, and popular culture as such. In this respect it argues that we would not wish to foreclose the impertinent question of ‘what is cultural studies?’ too early in an understanding of what it might mean to offer an institutional critique that takes the form of pedagogy. Much will depend upon what we mean by these vaguest of terms ‘culture’, ‘education’, ‘power’ and ‘pedagogy’ itself, none of which is at all straightforward even though a certain normative discourse renders such terms the cornerstone of national policy debates through which billions of human and financial capital are routed. The stakes in fact could not be higher in a ‘critique of the cultural power of [pedagogical] institutions’. Therefore, it is crucial that we make the effort to understand, or at least begin to unpack, a conjunction such as the one Bowman offers here that amalgamates ‘politicized academic projects such as cultural studies and politicized work in cultural theory and philosophy’. It argues that we will not be able to progress to a wider schema until we have some leverage on this relation. And this is what this article seeks to provide.     

The Culture Project: diasporic negotiations of ethnicity,identity and culture among teachers,pupils and parents in Chinese language schools

Notions of culture, ethnicity and identity are highly political (and also personally meaningful) issues within diasporic communities. Complementary schools are particularly interesting sites in this respect, as they are often set up with an explicit cultural agenda of ‘preserving’ or ‘maintaining’ ‘traditional’ culture and language within diasporic communities. In this paper, we draw on qualitative data from an ESRC funded study conducted in six Chinese complementary schools to consider how pupils (n=60), parents (n=24) and teachers (n=21) in these schools construct and negotiate issues of culture and identity. We consider the ways in which the cultural agenda of the schools is constructed and experienced, teasing out the ways in which cultural discourses and pupil identities are deployed (and resisted, reworked) within the space of Chinese schools. Finally we consider the extent to which the schools are perceived by the young people to be ‘successful’ (or not) in their efforts to make pupils feel ‘more Chinese’.     

BEYOND EARLY IDENTIFICATION: DEVELOPING HEALTHY SELF‐CONCEPTS IN GIRLS WITH ADD

This article is written from the perspective of an American psychotherapist working with women with AD/HD. The article traces the effects of growing up with AD/HD on the development of self concept. It is argued that early identification, whilst necessary, is not sufficient to prevent common secondary psychological consequences. A cross cultural approach is advocated that teaches girls to be successful in the majority culture without conveying the message that they must conform to dominant cultural images in order to be ‘normal’. It is emphasized that methods for the treatment of primary AD/HD symptoms have to be evaluated for their effectiveness for the specific client, whilst the messages that accompany the method need to be examined separately for their positive or negative impact on the client's self concept.     

Mapping cultural diversity through children's voices: From confusion to clear understandings

This research examines children's conceptualisations of cultural diversity. In particular, this project examines the following two research questions: how do children define and understand the concept of cultural diversity; and what do they perceive as the implications of cultural diversity on their daily lives? To this end, interviews were carried out with 40 (immigrant and native) students, aged 11 to 12, at five primary schools in Cyprus, which presented high concentrations of immigrants. On the basis of our analysis of the data, the participant children appeared to perceive cultural diversity in terms of two contrasting perspectives. On the one hand, they viewed cultural diversity in terms of the cultural‐deficiency perspective. Such perceptions stemmed from the model of monoculturalism implying the need to assimilate the culturally ‘different’ in order to counteract the negative consequences of cultural diversity. On the other hand, the same children also perceived cultural diversity in terms of cultural celebration. To this end, some children drew upon the model of multiculturalism to define cultural diversity as a culture‐enriching and culture‐celebrating process, pointing to folkloristic activities including traditional music, dance and food. Nonetheless, few of the participant children—both Cypriot and immigrant—defined cultural diversity in terms of the model of interculturalism, pointing to the intercultural exchange that stems from ‘real’ friendship development between natives and immigrants, equality of rights and inclusion. As the participant children appeared to confuse the meanings and languages of cultural diversity, this paper concludes with suggestions on teacher practices to ‘crystallise’ children's views.