Showing Around the School

A:Hello,welcome to our school.B:Thank you.I am glad to come here.A:Let me show you around our school.B:Oh,that would be nice.A:This is our newly-built teaching build- ing.     

Parent–School Partnership Formation through the School Council in Korea

Official involvement of parents in school education has been very limited until recently within the highly centralized educational administration and school management system in Korea. But, the educational reform in 1995 has brought fundamental changes in educational administration and school management system of Korea. The main approach of the reform is decentralization, which tries to turn over the power of the central government in educational administration and school management to the hands of regional education offices and site schools. According to the reform, the school council was introduced to enforce autonomous and responsible school-based management through broad participation of various stakeholders of education. In this article, I examined the background, roles, and characteristics of the school council, focusing on the new pattern of parent–school participation formation. And based on the findings, I discussed the issues of parents participation and future prospects of the school council and suggested policy implications for better implementation of parent–school partnership through the school council.     

A Teacher of the Old School

My grandfather was a teacher. He was the headteacher of a school for boys between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. I know that he was a kind and gentle man at heart, because when I was young(and he was old), he gave me presents, and sat me on his knee, and told me stories. But I believe the boys at his school were afraid of him.     

School Admissions after the School Standards and Framework Act: Bringing the LEAs back in?

Historically, LEAs were responsible for the local planning and provision of schools. They 'mattered' because their organisational strategies and admissions policies contributed to the structure and equality of opportunities for families and children in their administrative areas. Some moved ahead with comprehensive schools earlier and faster than others, and some retained selection. Alongside admissions policies, these activites in turn shaped and reproduced the extent to which local schools were socially segregated. LEA capacity to shape the local school system was always constrained by the existence of the faith-based 'voluntary' schools sector and was further diminished, post-1988, by self-governing grant-maintained (GM) schools. The 1998 Schools Standards and Framework Act brought LEAs back into the admissions arena. In this paper we examine LEAs' admissions policies and the extent to which these regulate local patterns of socio-economic segregation between schools. In this study we draw on a sample of 74 LEAs to explore these issues. Our findings point to some interesting paradoxes, most notably the fact that the most commonly used criterion in the allocation of students to places, catchment areas, is likely to create and sustain socio-economically segregated patterns of secondary schooling because these are linked in complex ways to residential segregation. We also show that selective education is strongly associated with high levels of stratified schooling and that voluntary and specialist schools also contribute to local patterns of school segregation.     

My Plan for the New School Year

How time flies!A school year has nearly passed and a new school year is coming.What am I going to do in the new school year?Just as the old saying goes,“Well begun is half done”.So I’m going to make a planfor the new school year so that I can do better.As we all know,“No pains,no gains”.The harder you work,the better result you willget.I will try to be the best I can be.I know,for a middle school student like me,we stillcan not do much for our country now and the only thing we can do …     

Make the Most of Our School Days

It’sknowntoallthatlifeisshort.Wecanobtainmanyathingmorethanonce熏butthelosttimewecan'tgetback.Wehaveonlylimitedtimetolearnunlimitedknowledge.Schoollifeisstillshorter.Thisisthemostpreciousperiodofourlife熏whichbelongstoev鄄eryonebutonce.Ifweidleitaway熏we’llhavenobetterdaysforstudy.Therefore熏wemustspendtheschooldaystothebestadvantages.Onlyinthiswaycanwereceivemoraleducation熏improveourhealthandgetrichknowledge.Onethingshouldbeborninmind押“Alazyyouth熏alousyage.”Make the Most of Our Sch…     

‘Exploring the “Construction” strand in the Irish Primary School Visual Arts Curriculum through the Forest School approach’

Forest School is a concept, or intervention to traditional educational settings, backed up by research and built upon long-standing theories that children engage with nature naturally and that learning becomes more relevant to the student when they can relate it to real life scenarios. This research documents the implementation of the Irish Primary School Visual Arts Curriculum through Forest School, specifically, the ‘Construction’ Strand. The research was a qualitative inquiry that was supported by an action research methodology. It was conducted over six weekly sessions. Key findings show the development of a sense of responsibility, resilience, independence, happiness in a sense of achievement and an awakened awareness of the child’s own surroundings. The findings advocate the benefits of implementing this approach to enhance the Primary School Visual Arts Curriculum, as well as promoting happiness and contentment in the remainder of the day at school in other curricular subjects. .     

The School and the Reduction of Inequality∗

ABSTRACT

The need to develop reasoning skills in children through discussion is generally acknowledged by curriculum aims. There is, however, a lack of any definite teaching strategy to fulfil this need. Matthew Lipman's Philosophy for Children programme has had success in this area. As with other ‘collaborative enquiry‐based’ approaches to learning, it depends upon a teaching strategy which enhances children's self‐esteem. This seems a necessary ingredient for the development of rationality, critical awareness and autonomy in children. Inadequate teacher training is suggested as a major reason for the failure of ‘collaborative’ approaches greatly to influence educational practice. With a shift away from the ‘authority/knowledge‐based’ paradigm and the provision of effective teacher training, it is considered that our educational institutions could become more democratically organised, and we would move closer to realising the liberal ideal of developing human potential to the full.     

Complexities in the Judgement of School Effectiveness∗

ABSTRACT

This article examines the aims and goals of school effectiveness research and definitions of effectiveness. Five issues in school effectiveness research which are relevant to the development of better methods of judging and measuring relative effectiveness, drawing on evidence from studies in different countries and contexts, are reviewed. These are (1) size and significance of effects; (2) consistency across outcomes; (3) stability over time; (4) the long term effects of schools; and (5) differential effects for different student groups.

It is concluded that effectiveness is best regarded as a relative concept dependent upon time period and age groups studied, and the choice of educational outcomes and intake measures

     

Middle School Choices for Bilingual Latino/A Youth: When the Magnet School Represents “Status” and the Neighborhood School Represents “Solidarity”

Drawing on data collected during the second year of a longitudinal qualitative study that followed over 10 Latino/a bilingual students, this article foregrounds the experiences of participants during their sixth-grade year. The principle data sources included structured and unstructured interviews with teachers and students, school observations, and weekly small-group conversations in a courtyard outside of their classrooms. We focus on the experiences of Leila, Maricela, and Esperanza who were three of the sixth-grade girls actively recruited by their teachers to attend the district’s magnet school program for their upcoming seventh grade-year instead of their neighborhood middle school. We found that much of the reasoning behind their decision-making process centered around issues of status (e.g., how the magnet school offered better academic, economic, and professional opportunities for their future) and solidarity (e.g., attending the neighborhood school with their friends and siblings). In conclusion, we problematize the very nature of these so-called educational ‘choices’ for bilingual Latino/a youth.     

Framed School – Frame Factors,Frames and the Dynamics of Social Interaction in School

This paper aims to show how the Goffman frame perspective can be used in an analysis of school and education and how it can be combined, in such analysis, with the frame factor perspective. The latter emphasizes factors that are determined outside the teaching process, while the former stresses how actors organize their experiences and define shared situations. In this light, an analysis of framing of and in Swedish compulsory school, based on governing documents, is carried out. Since the frame factors are contradictory, different possibilities to frame school in the Goffmanian sense present themselves to the school actors. In spite of frame factors, school can be framed in different and inconstant ways, for example, as an institution, an organization, a movement, or a seminar. Such nuance shifts show different dynamics of social interaction in school and can be used to understand variations between and within schools.     

School Closure: What are the consequences for the local society?

School closures have been common in rural areas since the middle of the last century, when new and modern schools replaced small old‐fashioned schools with only one or two classrooms. Due mainly to the industrialisation of farming and hastened by the merging and globalisation of industry, the last 50 years have seen a migration of people from rural areas to large towns. This has caused closures of schools built in the 1950s and 1960s, which had been the pride of and a sign of development in local societies. These closures most often give rise to heated debate, the main cry of protest being that the closure of the school is a death‐blow to the local society. The present study is based on a qualitative analysis performed in 2003 of 30 Danish school closures in the period 1990–1999. The results show that school closure in itself does not have the devastating effects mentioned in the debate. The main problem for local societies is a lack of people and thus lack of human capital, and in remote areas and on small islands school closure is a sign of a community in the final phase of the death process, not a cause.     

Educational Capital in the Elementary School of the Mid‐Nineteenth Century

This essay discusses the life and work of Elise van Calcar (1822–1904), a writer and maternal feminist who introduced Froebel’s kindergarten in the Netherlands. Van Calcar also was the leader of a Christian branch of spiritualism. The focus is pointed at parallels between her reading of Froebel and of ‘messages’ from spirits in the ‘other world’ with whom she claimed to be in touch during spiritualist séances. Both Froebel’s Romantic pedagogy and spiritualism put emphasis on harmony and synthesis. Each of her projects was an attempt to transcend the dichotomy between the public and the private. Spiritual motherhood ruled the kindergarten and non-conformist religion, alternative medicine and Froebel training were practised at home. Both the kindergarten movement and spiritualism made her promote a ‘natural’ approach. Yet, she never stopped warning of the danger of leaving a child’s moral development to nature. Like a garden a child had to be worked upon.     

A School for all or a School for the Labour Market? Analyzing the Goal Formulation of the 1991 Swedish Upper Secondary Education reform

The 1991, Swedish upper secondary school reform presents internationally an unusual case of the far-reaching integration of academic and vocational programmes. It has often been claimed that late tracking, such as characterizes this reform, helps to reduce inequalities between different social classes. This article addresses the question of how the government motivated and argued for a unified upper secondary school. The article finds that, contrary to expectations, an economic goal was prominent in the policy documents, and that the reform in question (postponed tracking) was not motivated primarily from an equality perspective. The article also indicates that there is a potential conflict between these two goals that has not been dealt with politically.     

Advocating for the Rights of the Child Through Family–School Collaboration

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2014 as the premier international human rights treaty focused on childhood rights and protections. In this article, we briefly review the 41 substantive principles embodied in the 54 Articles of the Convention and stress the need for educators, and specifically school psychologists, to work in concert with families to promote these premises through effective collaborative partnerships. Finally, we review examples of how the themes and positive ideology of the Convention can be enhanced through family–school collaboration infused into schooling practices within a multitiered service delivery framework to meet the learning and development best interests of the child.     

Is the University on the Way to Becoming a Specialized School?

In his rector's address of October 15, 1874, Theodor Mommsen said to the students:

There is no formal law that prescribes for you how you must utilize your academic years; there is no intermediate examination to inquire into whether this use has taken place at all and, if so, in what way. No nation in the world places as much confidence in its youth as ours; and our academic youth has up to now justified that confidence. Go now your own way onward, even though this way may often lead into the thicket and you may well think that it is a wrong way; more often than we have dared to hope, it has been found that many ways can lead to the same, and the correct, goal. For every real man of unique qualities his own way is the best way for him; and that way is open to each of you. (1)     

Managing the Primary School as an Effective Learning Organization

IntroductionThe rapidly changing context of the world re-quires schools to continuously improve a conditionthat favours learning and manages effectively as alearning organization. Primary schools need to adapt totheir operational environment and continuously modifytheir behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights.The ability to learn appears to create the only perma-nent source of competitive advantage for organisationsin the future (Senge, 1992). The learning organisationhas been defined…