The Implications of School‐Leaver Unemployment for Careers Education in Schools

’In particular I would urge that the Irish school system of the future should give freedom—freedom to the individual school, freedom to the individual teacher, freedom as far as may be to the individual pupiV. (Padraig H. Pearse [1916] Irish patriot, poet and educationist.)     

The Self‐esteem of Pre‐service Physics Education Students

The self‐esteem as physics teachers of students taking pre‐service physics teacher education courses was investigated before and after the courses. It was found that students who dropped out from the courses had lower self‐esteem than either the students who satisfactorily completed them or similarly qualified students who did not take the courses. There was some evidence that learning pedagogical theory enhances self‐esteem if it takes place after practical teaching experience but has the opposite effect when taught first, in the absence of any practical teaching experience.     

The Feeling of Thinking in Professional Self‐study

Studying one's own professional work is no straightforward matter and adopting the reflective mode is not simply a cerebral activity. As we study our teaching, we are studying the images we hold of ourselves as teachers. Where these established self‐images are challenged, questioned and perhaps threatened in the learning process we may experience feelings of instability, anxiety, negativity, even depression. This is especially so if the ‘self we come to see in self‐study is not the “self we think we are, or the ‘self we would like to be. Thinking about our work In self‐evaluation can thus be a highly charged emotional experience, one from which we may be tempted to retreat, thus endangering further learning. If, on the other hand, we have the support of caring, sensitive and interested critical friends to help us through these potentially dangerous processes of self‐evaluation, we are more likely to remain open to further learning and professional development. The company we keep and the circumstances under which we enter into self‐study may have a significant effect, for better or worse, on our professional learning. These issues are illustrated by the experience of two award‐seeking teacher action researchers who used video in their classrooms to aid their self‐study. The paper argues for greater attention to be given to the nature of the learning climate in which self‐study, self‐evaluation and developmental self‐appraisal take place. If the learning climate is not ‘right’, self‐study may become self‐defeating.     

The Management of the Split‐site Primary School

Within the county of Lancashire there are a considerable number of split‐site primary schools. The difficulties associated with this form of organisation and the particular and general needs of the schools had neither been identified, nor discussed. While the research attempted to fulfil this task the report also made recommendations to the Authority and identified good practice which it is hoped will support the management of such schools.     

School Principals’ Self‐Efficacy and its Measurement in a Context of Restructuring

The self‐efficacy of the principal to cope with change can be an important mediator in accomplishing change and in reducing the stress levels of the principal. Moreover, the concept of self‐efficacy of school principals assumes added importance in a context of restructuring and school‐based management, with greater decision‐making responsibilities passing to the school community. A measurement scale is presented that is specific to the self‐efficacy of principals when coping with change in the context of restructuring. The psychometric properties of the scale are outlined, and its usefulness demonstrated with a series of regression equations between attributes of restructuring and principals’ self‐efficacy.     

The Self‐concept as a Moral Control

Abstract:

Groups of twenty children, aged between 6 years, 7 months and 11 years, 3 months, attending either a traditional Catholic school or a Freinet school were compared on judgments involving moral concepts. Subjects in the two groups were matched for age, IQ, sex, school grade, religious affiliation, fathers’ occupational level, number of siblings and birth order. Moral conflict stories differed in the presence or absence of authority figures and peers, and were set either in the home or the school. Children attending the Freinet school exhibited the more advanced moral judgments for all stories combined. Stories involving peers only elicited more mature judgments than those involving authority figures. Freinet schools encourage democratic group self‐discipline and provide many and varied role‐taking opportunities. The results suggest that such practices accelerate moral development.     

The Community School Curriculum 11‐16

This article addresses the responses of four mixed comprehensive schools to the apparent 'under-achievement' of boys. The issue is briefly placed in context, both nationally and locally through a consideration of the improvement trajectory in each school. Approaches are classified into one of (i) organisational (ii) individual (iii) pedagogical and (iv) socio-cultural, and the potential of each approach for raising the achievement levels of boys and girls is evaluated. A concluding discussion considers the extent to which these approaches might contribute to authentic school improvement.     

The circle of others: Self‐help groups for the bereaved

Because the intense needs of the bereaved are rarely met, this article explores self‐help groups as unique social structures filling that void. Understanding grief as a crisis and the role of communication in crisis resolution clarify why traditional coping techniques often fall short. When natural support systems and professional helpgivers fail to meet the needs of the bereaved, self‐help groups offer alternative support. Communication characteristics of bereavement groups are described. Evidence argues for the effectiveness of self‐help bereavement groups. Finally, directions for future communication research relevant to bereavement and self‐help groups are suggested.     

The Importance of Self‐Regulation in Young Children With Down Syndrome

Adulthood brings with it responsibilities for making choices and decisions about one's own life. Individuals with Down syndrome, their parents and communities, have begun to expect that at least some of these responsibilities will be met by the person with Down syndrome. This will require a range of skills in managing one's own behaviour and these skills will need to be acquired in childhood. The Down Syndrome Research Program has begun a number of investigations into two important aspects of self‐regulation‐the capacity to delay gratification and mastery motivation. This paper describes the importance of these skills and habits of behaviour to those with Down syndrome and discusses the research to date.     

The Idea of the Secondary School in Nineteenth‐century Europe

The title echoes the well‐known phrase ‘the idea of the university’, and European universities have always been seen as institutions with a strong international dimension, developing according to common patterns. In their case, it was the ‘Humboldtian’ model embodied in the University of Berlin founded in 1810 which prevailed. For secondary schools, the lycées of Napoleon and the German Gymnasien, both taking shape around 1800, share this role. The main features of the lycée/Gymnasium model can be summarized: they were public, secular institutions; they were part of an elite sector with little organic connection with popular education; they were oriented to preparing for higher education, with a predominantly classical curriculum, taught by specialist teachers trained in the universities; and they offered an eight or nine year course culminating in an examination (baccalauréat, Abitur) which came to define a completed secondary education.

Some of these features came from the common European heritage of humanist education, others were due to political and social developments in which all European countries shared — secularization, the growth of the middle class, the impact of the French revolution, etc. But there could be crucial national differences in the timing of such developments, and in the degree to which the values of old and new elites were fused together. One argument of this paper is that the new model long remained an ‘idea’ or conceptual framework rather than a reality, even in its French and German homelands, and that the uniform concept concealed many historical variations. And after around 1870, new moulding forces took over (industrialization, mass politics, nationalism), though these too gave a strong impulse to uniformity.

The new relationship between secondary schools and universities did not become definitive in many countries until quite late in the 19th century. The word ‘secondary’ could be used in different senses, and boundaries could shift. On the one hand, traditional universities had included forms of preparatory general education which the new model defined as secondary and pushed back into the schools. On the other, as in the Bavarian or Austrian Lyzeum, the Dutch ‘illustrious schools’, or the English Dissenting Academies, intermediate institutions had developed which straddled secondary and higher education. Assimilation to the new pattern usually accompanied adoption of the ‘Humboldtian’ university ideal, and took place mostly between 1848 and the 1870s, though sometimes as late as the 1890s. The acceptance of 18/19 as a ‘natural’ age of transition itself needs explaining, and is clearly connected with the history of adolescence

The existence of a network of secondary schools, often as part of state structures which included precise legal definitions of their function, could conceal huge variations in the real role of schools in their local context. Even in a highly centralized system like the French one, historians are discovering the significance of local initiative and adaptation to local needs. In Germany, recent research has shown quite strikingly that the Gymnasien of the early 19th century were both multi‐functional in their curricula, and diverse in their social recruitment. Educating the elite, and giving an intensive humanist education, were only part of the functions of such schools. Historical generalizations have tended to overlook both the mass of pupils who left them at an early stage, and the diversity of the school pattern itself (religious schools in France, modern schools in Germany, private schools in Britain, etc.). Religious, ethnic and linguistic divisions could overlay those of social class. We should also recall that secondary schooling was a market, in which state policy had to compromise with parental preferences and family strategies. Studies of secondary schooling within its urban social and cultural context are one of the most potentially fruitful lines of current research

In the later 19th century, the multi‐functional role of schools diminished as industrialisation both expanded and differentiated the demand for schooling, a process studied by Fritz Ringer and others. It is in this context, perhaps, that the creation of modern forms of secondary schooling for girls is best seen. Within a new variety of ‘tracks’, the humanist secondary school became a specialized and more privileged type, fiercely defended by academic conservatives. Yet there remained close parallels between the various European systems: developments followed much the same chronology, and models such as the German Realschule were closely studied; even Britain was conforming to ‘continental’ patterns by the 1900s. In the age of the nationstate, great‐power rivalry, mass politics, and universal literacy, the training of a homogeneous national elite, an ‘intellectual aristocracy’ to provide stable leadership, became a general preoccupation. Just as this was true of the major powers, so the formation of such an elite through education was crucial to the demands of ethnic minorities now seeking emancipation within the multi‐national empires, as well as linguistic ones within some unitary states. In recent years, theorists of nationalism have emphasized the importance of education for the emergence of the modern nation‐state, and conversely historians of education must see nationalism as a powerful shaping force. This represents one of the ways in which, as in other fields of historical scholarship, interest has swung from the social themes which dominated research in the 1960s and 1970s to cultural and political ones.