Teachers’ and researchers’ collaboration in analysing mathematics teaching: A context for professional reflection and development

The study reported here concerns 4 years of collaboration between secondary school teachers and academic researchers, constituting an emerging community of inquiry into mathematics teaching. In the article, the process of the forming of this community is discussed, focusing on the reflective activity developed by its members as well as the tensions and conflicts that emerged in the shaping of an inquiry identity by them. Furthermore, shifts in the mode of participation in the community and thus learning gains of all members are identified, with the teachers gradually developing an awareness of teaching practice in general, and the researchers becoming progressively acquainted with the reflexive relationship between inquiring into teaching practice and teachers’ professional development.     

Evidence-based practice in autism educational research: can we bridge the research and practice gap?

In order to develop deeper and better understandings of what constitutes effective educational practices, and to bridge the gap between research and practice, there is a need for a paradigm shift in autism educational research. The contribution of this paper is to examine the key methodological challenges that stand in the way of autism educational research impacting on practice. This research field is dominated by experimental research designs that evaluate the impact of ‘interventions’ that focus on developing the skills, knowledge, and understanding of pupils with autism. For educational research to have an impact on the lives of individuals with autism, their families, and the practitioners who work with them, movement towards a more balanced range of methodologies is needed. This needs to include methodologies that situate the knowledge base of practitioners on a par with the knowledge base of researchers, drawing on the evidence base from the classroom itself, and bringing in the perspectives and views of individuals with autism, their families, and the practitioners who work with them.     

Research-based knowledge: researchers’ contribution to evidence-based practice and policy making in career guidance

To present evidence for the outcomes of career guidance is increasingly seen as pivotal for a further professionalization of policy making and service provision. This paper puts an emphasis on researchers’ contribution to evidence-based practice and policy making in career guidance. We argue for a broader and more pluralistic research strategy to meet the complexity of possible questions needed to be asked to provide evidence in career guidance. The article puts a specific focus on the need for a stronger involvement of the voice of users.     

Tackling inequality? Teacher effects and the socioeconomic gap in educational achievement. Evidence from Chile

Although teacher quality is usually signalled to be the most relevant school-level factor impacting students’ learning, little is known about the relevance of teacher effects explaining educational inequality. By using a value-added model for a cohort of 10th graders, in this work we examine the socioeconomic gap in teacher effects across Chilean secondary schools, and its importance in explaining socioeconomic inequality in students’ achievement in math and language. We found an important proportion of highly effective teachers in low-socioeconomic-status (SES) schools, but also much bigger variation in teacher effects across those schools. Variability in teacher effects decreases when moving towards higher SES schools, where there is also a smaller proportion of low-performing teachers. All in all, teacher effects have a levelling impact for students in low-SES schools when compared to those in middle SES schools, but no significant impact when compared to students in high-SES schools.     

Investing in skills to overcome the crisis? Low-skilled workers in Italy: European strategies,policies and structural weaknesses

A skilled workforce is a prerequisite for productivity and a stepping stone for innovation. This is the reason why education and investment in skills have been made the foundations of Europe 2020, Europe’s strategy to overcome the economic crisis and boost growth. The propensity for developing skills is consistently present in European countries and concerns all educational levels. However, differences between countries are often considerable, in particular with regard to skills and educational attainment. There are countries, such as Italy, which have not been successful thus far at decreasing the number of low-skilled workers. This article aims to describe the situation of low-educated and low-skilled workers in Italy and the impact of the economic crisis on this particularly vulnerable group. The work is based on official data issued by national and international institutions, as well as on results from a narrative analysis of 15 biographical interviews with low-skilled adults in Italy conducted within a Cedefop project. Drawing on both types of sources, the article will offer a perspective on the relationship between structural constraints in regard to access to and participation in lifelong learning in Italy, specifically for low-skilled workers, and individual strategies adopted to cope with these constraints.     

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.     

Identifying and remediating dyslexia in the Reception year,a new possibility?

Research has shown that dyslexics have an inability to establish sound‐symbol correspondence, phonological awareness and alphabetic knowledge by the normal teaching methods used in schools. In new research with Reception year children, ages 4 and 5 years, it was found that 90 per cent on entry to 8 Reception classes had not established sound to symbol correspondence. Five months later, despite the normal daily teaching of reading and writing skills, one third of children had still not ‘cracked the alphabetic code’. Reports were sent to the teachers identifying each child's level of skill in handwriting and spelling with suggestions for specific interventions to promote the learning of sounds and their symbols. On entry into Year 2, in a 10 minute writing test, it was found that all the shildren had now developed sound‐symbol knowledge. At the end of Key Stage 1 the national SATs results showed that the disadvantaged groups in the project schools had raised their performance by 30 per cent in literacy above previous years and the already high perfoorming group had improved by 10 per cent. One dyslexic was identified in the Year 2 test by a need for word‐building teaching.     

One System or Four? Cross‐Border Applications and Entries to Full‐Time Undergraduate Courses in the UK Since Devolution

This paper uses Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) data on applications and entries to full‐time undergraduate courses to examine the changing flows of students across the boundaries of the four countries of the United Kingdom (UK), over a period (1996–2010) that embraces parliamentary devolution. It asks whether the emergence of more distinct administrative systems of higher education, following devolution, is reflected in more distinct social systems as reflected in reduced cross‐border flows of students. It reveals a declining tendency for UK applicants to apply to, and enter, higher education in another UK country. This trend is partly attributable to devolution and to consequent changes such as differential fees. However the detailed patterns vary widely across the countries of the UK, across categories of student and across types of institution and programme.     

“Troops to Teachers”: implications for the coalition government’s approach to education policy and pedagogical beliefs and practice

On taking power the coalition government embarked on what many commentators believe is a radical programme of public policy reform. Under Michael Gove, education policy has become totemic to those arguing that Britain’s classrooms are mired in academic mediocrity and behavioural failure. One policy response by the government has been to propose fast-tracking ex-armed services personnel into schools in England as teachers, especially in inner-city areas. This paper examines the educational and pedagogical merits of this proposal and the underlying beliefs that underpin it. Based on a critical evaluation of the literature, it argues that rather than representing a genuinely radical and innovative attempt to tackle educational underachievement, the Troops to Teachers initiative is deeply reactionary. One, based on discredited pedagogical philosophies which fail to address what the educational community believes a “good” education is, devalues teaching as a profession and ignores the socio-economic factors that primarily determine academic performance.     

Seekers after truth? Images of postgraduate research and researchers in the twenty-first century

Western cultural practices contribute to our understanding of the purpose of higher education and how we are to conduct ourselves in educational contexts. In this article, entitled ‘Seekers after truth?’, I analyse recent works of popular fiction which draw on and contribute to the idea that postgraduate research is a process of locating and amassing clues leading to the revelation or discovery of a truth. These novels re-inscribe the metaphor of the postgraduate researcher as detective or ‘seeker after truth’. This article considers the contradictory and productive meanings that arise from the trope of the researcher-detective. In addition, I argue that, although there are challenges in bringing the work of one field to bear on another, analyses of discourses which are not produced within higher educational contexts can nonetheless promote reflection on educational concepts. In this case, fiction enables us to consider ideas about what it is to do postgraduate research and to be a postgraduate researcher.     

Social Inclusion for South Australian schooling? Trying to reconcile the promise and the practice

This paper will trace the adoption of a policy of Social Inclusion in schools in one Australian state in terms of the way in which the policy direction, its discourses and adoption reflect a rhetoric of what Ball has labelled a ‘paradigm of convergence’. The analysis will show that the policy discourse, especially in its focus on school retention, appears to endorse the vision of a neo‐liberal entrepreneurial competitor as the educated product despite being initiated and implemented by a Labor state government within a rhetoric of community concern for social justice. The second part of the paper reports on the ways in which primary school leaders have responded to this policy which reflects some older educational discourses and is more in line with a prior version of a well‐run school and an inclusive society.     

Rolling out ‘good’, ‘best’ and ‘excellent’ practice. What next? Perfect practice?

The identification and dissemination of ‘good practice’ has for years been a central part of the Government's strategy for radical change of the education system. ‘Good practice’, however, is no longer good enough, nor is ‘best practice’. The requirement now for post‐compulsory education and training (from which all our examples are taken) is nothing less than ‘excellent practice for all’. This article critically examines these highly significant shifts in the rhetoric of policy, finds them wanting and argues that we need to face up to the complexities involved in deciding not only what is ‘excellent practice’ but also in working through all the stages which would be needed to transmit it throughout the sector. In particular, recent documents from the Quality Improvement Agency and the Learning and Skills Council on the pursuit of excellence are critically appraised. The views of those practitioners who are part of the authors' project in the Economic and Social Research Council's Teaching and Learning Research Programme are also explained in relation to ‘good practice’. The authors attempt to explain the frenetic activity of politicians and policy makers in this sector, and end by moving from critique to construction by considering what can be rescued from the inherently contestable notion of ‘good practice’, and, in doing so, draw heavily on the work of Robin Alexander.     

What Does Professional Rank Mean to Teachers? A Survey of the Multiple Impacts of Professional Rank on Urban and Rural Compulsory Education Teachers

Abstract

Professional rank is an important indicator of the professional capacity of compulsory education teachers. A rational professional rank evaluation system plays an important role in mobilizing the enthusiasm of teachers, improving the overall quality of teachers, and promoting the development of education. Based on stratified random sample data from compulsory education teachers in 23 counties and cities in 12 Chinese provinces, this study analyzes the multiple impacts of urban and rural compulsory education teacher professional rank on teacher salaries, development opportunities, and work duties. The authors found the following: (a) Urban-rural differences exist in the opportunity to access compulsory education teacher professional rank; rural school teachers are disadvantaged in accessing professional rank, especially senior rank; (b) Significant salary differences exist among teachers of different ranks, as well as significant urban-rural differences in the total monthly incomes and monthly salary among teachers of the same rank; (c) Teachers of different ranks have different opportunities to participate in training and undertake school duties. Within the same rank, rural teachers have fewer opportunities to participate in high-level training and have a higher proportion of school duties; (d) Significant differences exist among teachers of different ranks in terms of average classroom hours per week and important duties undertaken. There is a significant urban-rural difference in average weekly classroom hours and important duties among teachers of the same rank; weekly classroom hours are higher for rural teachers, while they have more opportunities to undertake important duties.