Home–school agreements: explaining the growth of ‘juridification’ and contractualism in schools

Since 1998 all maintained schools, academies and city technology colleges in England and Wales have been required to publish a home–school agreement. This documents the school’s responsibilities and the obligations of parents, and itemises the behaviour expected of pupils. Most of the parties sign it, from as young as four, although there is no legal obligation to do so. Interview evidence would suggest, however, that the agreement is not only asymmetrically constructed but can be read as part of a broader and worrying shift in cultural practice that augments law-based or ‘juridified’ forms of social management. It also suffers from deficits more commonly associated with contract theory insofar as it makes similar assumptions about human nature that misjudge and undervalue the qualities of moral obligation and trust. The paper argues that this creates problems for schools functionally dependent upon social integration through shared values and consensus formation.     

Who is the ideal teacher? Am I? Similarity and difference in perception of students of education regarding the qualities of a good teacher and of their own qualities as teachers

This research examines two images of teachers as seen by students of education: the ideal teacher and their own self‐image as teachers. The research compares the students’ perceptions of these two images using two sub‐groups of students of education: students at an academic teachers’ college who will be referred to as student teachers and beginning teachers, who, while teaching, are completing their academic degrees at teachers’ colleges or regional academic colleges. Data were collected from 89 students at the two colleges by means of a questionnaire that included open‐ended questions which were analyzed qualitatively. The findings of the research indicate that there are two major categories that comprise perceptions of the ideal teacher: first, personal qualities; and second, knowledge of the subject taught as well as didactic knowledge. Both groups of students similarly attributed great importance to the personal qualities of the ideal teacher, but there is a difference in their perception of the importance of knowledge: the beginning teachers attributed great importance to knowledge and perceived it as a quality similar in importance to personal characteristics, while the student teachers, who had not begun their teaching careers, attributed less importance to knowledge as a characteristic of the ideal teacher. A quality which was less prominent when profiling the ideal teacher is general education and wide perspectives. The teacher as a socializing agent, a person who promotes social goals, was not mentioned at all. Students maintained that, during their studies, they had improved their qualities as ‘empathetic and attentive’ teachers, ‘knowledgeable in teaching methods’, and in ‘leadership’. But they had hardly improved their knowledge of the subject they taught or their level of general knowledge. The discussion of knowledge and the desirable personal qualities of a teacher is relevant to the current debate regarding the relative merits of disciplinary education in contrast to pedagogical education in preparation for teaching as a profession. The clear preference for disciplinary education by policy makers in Israel and elsewhere in the field of teacher education is contradictory to the emphasis placed on the personal development of future teachers and their pedagogical education by the students of education who participated in this research.     

Moving primary physical education forward: start at the beginning

This paper presents selected findings from a questionnaire completed by 509 primary school teachers in Scotland. Drawing on policy enactment theory, the paper focusses on teachers’ personal experiences of physical education and perceptions of the importance of physical education in their schools. More than half (56%) reported that physical education was either ‘very important’ or ‘important’, while almost 40% perceived it to be of ‘limited’ or ‘very limited importance’. ‘Staff’, ‘time’ and ‘subject status’ were the main themes they drew on to explain their responses. Our findings highlight the diverse nature of the physical education professional cultures in Scottish primary schools. From this, we propose that future initiatives to support change in primary physical education should, as a starting point, acknowledge these diverse professional cultures and move beyond the simplistic one-size-fits-all change projects that have been shown to have limited impact on practice.     

小学教育专业教育实习存在的问题及对策

作为教师教育的重要组成部分,教育实习是教师教育实现人才培养目标不可缺少的教学实践环节,是学生将所学教育教学理论应用于实际教学情境,获得丰富的个人实践知识,加快对教学技能的掌握的重要途径。近年来,教育实习在国内外教师教育过程中得到了高度的重视,也有了较深层次的发展。但由于受各种因素的制约,实习环节及效果仍存在着一些问题。...     

TEACHING ‘OUT-OF-FIELD’ AS A BOUNDARY-CROSSING EVENT: FACTORS SHAPING TEACHER IDENTITY

Teaching ‘out-of-field’ occurs when teachers teach a subject for which they are not qualified. The issues around this increasingly common practice are not widely researched and are under-theorised. A qualitative pilot study using teacher interviews in 3 rural schools examined meanings, support mechanisms and teacher identities associated with out-of-field teaching. A thematic analysis isolated factors influencing whether teachers self-assessed their practice and identities as out-of-field. The ‘boundary between fields’ model was developed to emphasise support mechanisms, contextual factors and personal resources that influenced the nature of teachers’ negotiation of subject boundaries and its impact on professional identity. These findings provide insight for policy makers, school leaders and teacher educators into the conditions required for such teaching to be considered learning opportunities.     

How do different types of schools prepare students for life at Cambridge?

Twenty students from different educational backgrounds within the UK were interviewed to investigate how well they considered their secondary school education had prepared them for the educational and social demands of an ‘elite’ university and life within its most traditional colleges. The study asked them how they perceived students from different educational backgrounds and how they thought they were perceived. Entering a traditional Cambridge college was found to be easiest for students from prestigious ‘public schools’ within the private educational sector. State school students were more likely to experience anxiety, and those who adapted successfully were likely to have strong independent learning skills and a robust sense of self-efficacy. The study suggests that students coming from state schools to Cambridge are making a more difficult academic and social transition than students from private schools, for which they are given no special support.     

浅谈提高学历层次教育中的声乐教学

教育学院音乐专业提高学历层次教育的主体是在职中小学音乐教师 ,他们具有教师和学生的双重身份 ,而且自身条件和基础程度不一 ,其声乐教学方式有别于艺术院校和师院音乐系。应注意从学员特点出发开展教学工作 ,使教学卓有成效     

RESEARCH SECTION: Provision in further education colleges for 14‐ to 16‐year‐olds with social,emotional and behavioural difficulties

Previous research set out to identify and examine practice and provision for young people exhibiting behaviour problems who may have been placed in colleges of further education for a variety of reasons. In this paper, Natasha Macnab, John Visser and Harry Daniels explore some of the implications faced by college staff and examine some of the key themes that emerged from this previous study. The first of these themes concerns ‘college culture’, which is seen as being ‘adult orientated’ and therefore more likely to appeal to young people who are tired of school. Indeed, college staff suspect at times that schools are using the transition to college as an alternative to exclusion for some young people. This form of ‘managed transfer’ raises real issues in colleges, especially when some members of college staff do not yet appreciate the ‘appeal of teaching young people with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD)’, regarding them as ‘disaffected’ and ‘switched off’ from education. The authors of this article note the need for ‘skilled and committed adults’ to build relationships with these young people in order to promote their social inclusion. They argue that this work will require professional development for staff but will have real benefits for the young people concerned.     

The seduction of common sense: how the Right has framed the debate on America's schools

Abstract

Teachers in England have always been watched; only more recently have they been surveilled, with senior leaders, peers, students and stakeholders all collecting performance data. Yet surveillance in schools and colleges increasingly relies on watching the self, with teachers voluntarily participating in their own surveillance, making their practice visible for easy consumption by interested parties. This article builds on previous work on the surveillance of teachers to argue that this ‘conspicuous practice’ represents a convergence of surveillance and consumerism, with teachers being recreated as commodities and their own marketing agent, embodying the entrepreneurial self to maximise employability. Through social media such as Twitter and LinkedIn to exploiting open plan learning spaces, teachers engage in conspicuous practice for three main reasons: from fear, to avoid sanction; as a result of acculturation into commodified environments; as a means of routine resistance, employing the dramaturgical self for personal gain, to avoid work or re-appropriate professionalism.     

高校音乐专业钢琴教学的当下思考

部分设有艺术类专业的院校纷纷在原有的音乐教育专业(师范类)基础上举办"非师"音乐专业。由于师资和生源的质量与专业音乐院校存在较大差距,致使钢琴教学中出现诸多问题。曲目的选择、练琴的把握、谱面的阅读是影响钢琴教学质量提高的根本原因。     

青少年学生心理咨询的调查研究

运用自编问卷法、以大中学校的青少年学生为被试、调查了青少年学生的心理咨询现状。结果发现: (1)绝大多数教师和青少年学生都了解在学校内设有心理咨询机构,且认为设立心理咨询中心是必要的, 从理论上认为心理咨询是有作用的,但对于学生心理咨询的实际效果却不大了解;(2)对待本人的心理健康问题还持比较保守的态度,尚无积极的心理咨询意识,缺乏求助心理咨询的自觉性;(3)接受心理咨询的主要心理问题是“情绪压抑”或“情绪不稳定”,“学习压力”,“人际关系问题”和“孤僻”;(4)对于咨询人员的素质要求,既包括相应的专业水平,也包括较高的职业道德(如保密性强),以及有爱心、善解人意、态度和蔼等良好的个性品质。     

Excluded from school: getting a second chance at a ‘meaningful’ education

In this paper, we draw upon the experiences of a group of young people who have been excluded from mainstream schools in two Australian states to provide an account of the ways in which they have found their way to education in educational sites that are variously referred to as ‘flexible learning centres', ‘second chance schools' and ‘alternative schools'. Whilst often clashing with school authorities in their original schools, these young people described how, when given the opportunity, they were able to engage in more meaningful learning in environments that recognised and accommodated their personal circumstances, and avoided authoritarian rule. A question we address is: What kinds of educational experiences facilitate ‘meaningful learning’ for these students?     

A cross‐cultural comparison of teachers’ expressed beliefs about music education and their observed practices in classroom music teaching

Through interviews and observing day‐to‐day classroom practice, this study explores the beliefs of 10 music teachers in elementary schools in Vancouver and Hong Kong. The results demonstrate that the music teachers of the two localities hold similar cognitive beliefs about the essential elements of music education. However, they hold different beliefs about the value or impact of music education on the psychological or character development of students. Music teachers of Vancouver are found to be more student‐centred than their counterparts in Hong Kong, and this is reflected in both the curriculum and activities selected for classroom teaching. Though both groups of teachers place similar emphasis on western music, in Canada more classroom activities are based around the student’s personal enjoyment and expression. In Hong Kong, meanwhile, music education is viewed as a means of nurturing the student’s temperamental development. While students in Vancouver are allowed to express their personal musical preferences in classroom activities, in Hong Kong students are required to perform according to prescribed standard indicators of success. This is probably linked—albeit invisibly—to Chinese Confucian culture.     

The Crucible of Classroom Practice: Alchemy and Early Professional Learning in Secondary English Teaching

This paper explores the metaphor of the classroom as a ‘crucible’ for early professional learning where beginning teachers forge professional identities in complex, unpredictable, paradoxical, affectively and physically potent contexts of practice. It works into the dissonances and contradictions of the micro-narratives embedded in the accounts that three high-achieving early career English teacher graduates give of their early professional learning in schools. It traces the conflicts they experience in the gap between ‘economies of performance’ and ‘ecologies of practice’ within which they improvise new professional identities as teachers. Their effective ‘transmutations’ into teachers are contingent on a bewildering range of factors, many of them out of their control. As the medieval transmutation of lead into gold was analogous to personal transformation, purification and perfection, so new teachers aspire to ideals of practice that may be impossible to achieve. The paper moves beyond simplistic conceptualisations of theory–practice binaries in new teachers’ work and evaluates the impact of new pressures from globalised discourses of standardisation and professionalism that erase singularity, particularity and relationality. Rather, it posits professional learning as complex identity work that is variously constrained and enabled by local institutional factors and broader policy contexts that affect the capacity and desire of beginning teachers to introduce and sustain innovative pedagogies in their English classes.     

高校学生科研存在的问题与对策

经济高速增长需要大量的高素质人才，这是走向全球经济一体化向我国高校提出的不可回避的历史使命；鉴于社会转型期存在的问题，特别是涉及高校人才培养的两个关键环节——教学、科研——的问题亟待解决。     

Practise What you Preach: Counsellors’ Experience of Practising Buddhist Counselling in Thailand

This qualitative study considers Thai counsellors’ experience of practising Buddhist Counselling in Thailand, exploring how Buddhist philosophy is integrated into the counsellors’ personal lives and then brought into their therapeutic practice. The study involved a focus group and in-depth, semi-structured interviews with five practising Buddhist counsellors, with their accounts being analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Findings indicated that the participants considered their personal qualities as being key in generating therapeutic effectiveness within their Buddhist Counselling, and they believed that they fostered these personal qualities by internalising Buddhist ideas into their personal lives and by observing Buddhist practices. Implications for counselling practice, training, and research are discussed.     

Validation of the diagnostic tool for assessing Tertiary students’ readiness for online learning

Increasing numbers of educational institutions are adopting an online approach to teaching and learning; however, little regard has been given to the prerequisite personal and technical qualities required for academic achievement and satisfaction within this environment. In recognition of this, researchers have been exploring the design, development and testing of diagnostic tools to assess student readiness for online learning. This study builds on previous work by the authors to further validate their diagnostic tool for assessing Tertiary students’ readiness for online learning (TSROL) which has four subscales: ‘Technical skills’, ‘Computer self‐efficacy’, ‘Learner preferences’ and ‘Attitudes towards computers’. Factor and reliability analyses revealed that Technical skills and Computer self‐efficacy possessed good reliability and validity, and ‘Attitudes towards computers’ fair reliability and validity. However, ‘Learner preferences’ required revision as it possessed poor reliability and validity. Analysing the demographic data revealed that older students had lower Technical Skills and computer self‐efficacy than younger students. The TSROL can be improved by adopting a more multidimensional interpretation of the Learning preferences and Attitudes towards computers subscales.     

美国社区学院学生交流沟通能力培养引发的思考

交流沟通能力是从事职业活动所需的综合行为能力,是高职学生适应今后不断发展变化的工作任务而获得的跨专业、多功能和不受时间限制的一种基础能力。随着我国经济社会的飞速发展和经济全球化的到来,这种能力的培养对学生的未来发展显得十分重要。通过在美国社区学院的学习培训,借鉴美国社区学院在学生交流沟通能力方面的培养经验,结合我国高职院校的特点,应积极探索和实践加强学生交流沟通能力的培养。     

旅游管理本科生酒店实习存在的问题及对策研究——以贵州师范学院为例

专业实习是高校教学计划中的重要组成部分,是学生在校期间所必须经历的一个过程。对操作性很强的旅游管理专业来说,专业实习过程对巩固学生的专业素质有着更为直接的作用,这个过程若要顺利有效完成,学生、学校以及实习企业就必须要有良好配合。以贵州师范学院旅游管理本科学生酒店实习为例,针对近年学生在酒店实习过程中出现的问题,从学生、学校和实习企业三个方面分析原因并提出相应的解决措施,为旅游管理本科生今后的酒店实习工作开展提供借鉴。     

高职院校学生职业人的培养

本文分析了职业能力和高职学生职业能力现状;提出高职教育培养学生职业能力的有效途径和方法：高职学生从职业角色出发,实现角色认同,主动构建所选职业发展途径。因此,高职院校应从引导学生了解和认同职业角色、主动构建职业生涯发展途径方面来培养高职学生的就业核心竞争力。高职学生应努力提升自己的能力和素质,成为准职业人,树立为企业服务的职业观念,准备进入企业。