Teaching a Selection of Heaney’s Troubles Poetry to Upper Post-primary Pupils in Northern Ireland’s Divided Schools: Educational Contexts and Pedagogical Opportunities

Centred on a carefully chosen selection of Heaney’s Troubles poems, this paper explores pedagogical opportunities that the poems present in the context of upper post-primary classrooms in Northern Ireland’s divided schools. Five poems are evaluated in total. These are: ‘The Other Side’, ‘A Constable calls’, ‘The Toome Road’, ‘The Strand at Lough Beg’ and ‘An Ulster Twilight’. While these five poems represent only a small selection of Heaney’s Troubles poems, they nonetheless cover an interesting spectrum in terms of their politico-cultural perspectives. The analysis of the poems focuses on exploring how teachers could use the poems to enable pupils to examine their traditional identities and allegiances and perhaps re-evaluate them in the light of new insights provided by the poems. While suggestions for this pedagogical exploration is at the heart of the paper, the early section establishes some relevant theoretical and educational contexts and the concluding section situates the paper in the context of previous, related curricular initiatives with Northern Ireland. It is to be hoped, finally, that the curricular initiative proposed by the paper could contribute, if even in a small way, to the ongoing search for peace and reconciliation between Northern Ireland’s two main, and still divided, communities.     

Knowledge,skills, competence: European divergences in vocational education and training (VET)—the English,German and Dutch cases

Policy debates on employability, lifelong learning and competence‐based approaches suggest a convergence of VET approaches across European countries. Against the background of the creation of a European Qualifications Framework, this paper compares the VET systems of England, Germany and The Netherlands. The analysis reveals the distinct understandings and meanings of outwardly similar terms. These meanings are deeply rooted in the countries’ institutional structures and labour processes and still inform national debates and policies today. The paper identifies a major distinction between a ‘knowledge‐based’ VET model in Germany and The Netherlands and a ‘skills‐based’ model in England. There is a need to develop trans‐national categories that take into account the social construction of terms such as ‘skills’ and ‘qualifications’.     

Achieving Quality in Engineering Degrees in the UK

Developments in the design of first degrees in engineering in the UK are described. ‘Quality in education’ is interpreted as ‘defining worthwhile learning goals and enabling students to achieve them’. The implications of this definition for the education phase of the formation of chartered engineers and incorporated engineers are discussed. It is concluded that two kinds of degree are needed, one which emphasizes the development of ‘understanding’ while the other emphasizes ‘know-how’. Both degrees, of course, include relevant ‘knowledge’ and ‘transferable skills’. Once all these educational terms have been carefully defined, how teaching and assessment methods can be adapted to match these different learning goals and how integrative thinking can be developed for problem-solving purposes are explained.     

Conceptual Resources for Learning Science: Issues of transience and grain‐size in cognition and cognitive structure

Many studies into learners’ ideas in science have reported that aspects of learners’ thinking can be represented in terms of entities described in such terms as alternative conceptions or conceptual frameworks, which are considered to describe relatively stable aspects of conceptual knowledge that are represented in the learner’s memory and accessed in certain contexts. Other researchers have suggested that learners’ ideas elicited in research are often better understood as labile constructions formed in response to probes and generated from more elementary conceptual resources (e.g. phenomenological primitives or ‘p‐prims’). This ‘knowledge‐in‐pieces perspective’ (largely developed from studies of student thinking about physics topics), and the ‘alternative conceptions perspective’, suggests different pedagogic approaches. The present paper discusses issues raised by this area of work. Firstly, a model of cognition is considered within which the ‘knowledge‐in‐pieces’ and ‘alternative conceptions’ perspectives co‐exist. Secondly, this model is explored in terms of whether such a synthesis could offer fruitful insights by considering some candidate p‐prims from chemistry education. Finally, areas for developing testable predictions are outlined, to show how such a model can be a ‘refutable variant’ of a progressive research programme in learning science.     

Trekking back to mainstream for inclusive education,is it there?

This paper explores the ecosystemic management strategies for inclusive schools due to challenges faced by the schools in the mainstream school where learners from the specialised institutions are referred back to mainstream for inclusive education. Ecosystemic perspective on inclusive education, ecological theories and systems theories underpin this paper. The study was done through interviews, field notes and observations of 120 participants comprising the SMTs, educators and parents. The findings indicate that schools face great challenges in managing inclusive schools. A lot has been published on inclusive education, but none of them offers ecosystemic management strategies for the school management to follow. The article concludes by offering ecosystemic management strategies for successful implementation of inclusive education.     

Race,Categorisation and Educational Achievement

This paper is concerned with the ways in which terms and categories are deployed in analyses and discussions of differences in educational achievement between social groups whose identity is usually specified in terms of ‘race’ or ‘ethnicity’. The first part of the paper is didactic, and discusses problems with the use of ‘racial’ terms with respect to social, biological and legal discourse. The second part of the paper examines the consequences of categorisation for analyses of differences in educational achievement, with particular reference to a paper by Mackintosh & Mascie‐Taylor, on which the Swann Committee claims to have relied heavily.     

Strategies and Principles for the Creation of Software in CAI

In the context of CAI, the authors present examples of didactic software or‘teachware» developed in a school of engineering, accompanied by a discussion of pedagogical and systems considerations. The 'pedagogical environment' is described as the interface (Apple-Macintosh) used in the teachware in particular in relation to Bloom's six levels of learning. The ‘system approach’emphasises each step and the proper sequence that are necessary to arrive at empirically validated and relevant software. The importance of the new information technologies for both the pedagogue and ‘the media conceptualiser’ are underlined.     

The under‐representation of women in computing

In this article Greville Rumble, Planning Officer of the Open University, argues that the way in which the terms ‘open learning’ and ‘distance learning’ are used in practice is frequently misleading. Open learning has to do with access, structures, and the presence of dialogue and support systems. Many contiguous and distance education systems are open in their practices. In contrast, many so‐called ‘open learning systems’ are anything but open. This article examines the claims being made, and argues the need for greater clarity of thought and expression.     

The Development of the Ecosystemic Approach as a Humanistic Educational Psychology

This article is a response to the call for further discussion which was recently made in an important paper on the ecosystemic approach to emotional and behavioural difficulties in school (Cooper and Upton, 1990a). It is of a primarily theoretical nature and presents some further perspectives on the development of the ecosystemic approach. Specifically, it shows that ecosystemics has arisen from the need to develop a systems theory which does not contradict the tradition of a humanistic educational psychology.     

Implementing the Ecosystemic Approach to Changing Chronic Problem Behaviour in Schools

The present paper discusses a study of the ecosystemic approach to changing chronic problem behaviour in schools undertaken with a group of 33 primary and two secondary teachers. The impact of the ecosystemic techniques and the main theoretical issues are discussed. Three case examples are presented and conclusions are drawn on the potential of this new approach.     

Formal education and pastoralism in western India: inclusion,or adverse incorporation?

The education exclusion of pastoralists is increasingly recognised as a critical area for attention in progress towards Education For All. This article sets out two interlinked propositions as to what underlies barriers to education inclusion for pastoralists in India: a conflation of ‘education’ with schooling; and ambiguity over whether pastoralism is a relevant contemporary livelihood. Taking an adverse incorporation and social exclusion perspective on marginality, policy narratives of education inclusion are explored using its construct of ‘terms of inclusion’. Empirical evidence showing how pastoralism and formal education intersect demonstrates multi-faceted exclusions which simultaneously drive demand for schooling and impose highly adverse terms of incorporation for pastoralism in the globalising economy. Policy strategies currently undervalue ‘education’ as situated learning with a crucial role in pastoralist livelihood sustainability, recognition of which is essential to considering how such ‘education’ can interface with institutional arrangements and tackling the delegitimisation of pastoralism by hegemonic, place-based schooling.     

Comparing Adult Learning Systems: an emerging political economy

Adult learning systems have come to be dominated by the view that the essential role of adult learning is to generate the high levels of skills deemed necessary for competitiveness and growth in the globalised economy. This ‘education gospel’ is underpinned by human capital theory (HCT) and its contemporary conceptualisation in terms of the knowledge-based economy. Nevertheless, it remains the case that there are significant differences in the strategies of national governments towards adult learning and in patterns of engagement with the learning opportunities that are made available. This paper sets out to explore how this diversity in national systems of adult learning might be addressed analytically. Adult learning is embedded in characteristic regimes of economic and social institutions, which can be understood in terms of a systematic international political economy. In particular, adult learning systems are explored by reference to the models of capitalist organisation elaborated in the neo-institutionalist analysis of ‘varieties of capitalism’ (Hall and Soskice, 2001): the liberal market economy and the co-ordinated market economy. A major alternative is provided by Esping-Anderson's (1990; 1999) analysis of ‘welfare state regimes’. Moreover, Rubenson and Desjardins (2009) have used this theoretical framework as a means of analysing systematic variations between national adult learning systems. These analyses raise questions about the use of national states as the key unit of analysis. Significant divergences in institutional arrangements and access to opportunities for adult learning (by social group or locality, for example) may be obscured by this method of comparative analysis. Moreover, consideration of the micro-theoretical foundations of these approaches highlights the difficulties in moving beyond the economistic ‘rationality’ of HCT. The issue here is the extent to which norms of behaviour in relation to engaging in adult learning can be appropriately understood in terms of a relatively homogeneous, national social system, rather than in terms of a much more socially differentiated repertoire of norm-based orientations.     

‘Approaching the sacred’: directionality in the relation between curriculum and knowledge structure

Increasing pressure on all levels of educational provision, whether academic or overtly vocational, to be to ‘relevant’ and ‘useful’ prompts consideration of the relation between curriculum and pedagogy in terms of the internal structure of knowledge forms. Following Durkheim’s distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ orders of meaning and drawing on the work of Basil Bernstein, this paper questions pedagogic presuppositions that directionality from sensory experience to abstraction posits the everyday life of the student as the foundation for the acquisition of complex, systematic knowledge. Two empirical examples are discussed: one focuses on the internal structure of craft knowledge, while the other focuses on the internal structure of mathematics as school subject. They converge in the finding that transmission of knowledge structure, whether in material or symbolic form, requires the transformation of empirical objects into theoretical objects before a connecting point can be found between the world of everyday experience and specialised knowledge forms. This is what constitutes a ‘relevant’ curriculum.     

Governing schooling through ‘what works’: the OECD’s PISA for Schools

This paper explores Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Schools, a local variant of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD’s) influential PISA that not only assesses an individual school’s performance in reading, mathematics and science against international schooling systems, but also promotes 17 identical examples of ‘best practice’ from ‘world class’ schooling systems (e.g. Shanghai-China, Singapore). Informed by 33 semi-structured interviews with actors across the PISA for Schools policy cycle, and supplemented by the analysis of relevant documents, the paper provides an account of how these concrete examples of best practice are represented in the report received by participating schools. Drawing upon thinking around processes of commensuration and the notion of ‘governing by examples’, the paper argues that PISA for Schools discursively positions participating schools as somehow being commensurable with successful schooling systems, eliding any sense that certain cultural and historical factors – or ‘out of school’ factors – are inexorably linked to student performance. Beyond encouraging the problematic school-level borrowing of policies and practices from contextually distinct schooling systems, I argue that this positions the OECD as both the global expert on education policy and now, with PISA for Schools, the local expert on ‘what works’.     

The Concept of Cycles for Environmental Education

The concept of ‘cycles’ could be an integrative one for learning about environmental issues within several school subject areas. This concept is the subject of this study with the following question: what are the ideas secondary school students associate with the word ‘cycles’ before instruction? Students formulate their associations on the stimulus word ‘cycles’ in terms of the school subject areas ‘biology’ and ‘environment’ more than in terms of the subject areas geography or other sciences. In their formulations a restricted number of cycle ideas, relevant for the use of cycles as an integrative concept in environmental education, occurs. Possibilities for making use of the concept of cycles in lower and higher secondary environmental education are discussed.     

Metaphors and the psychometric paradigm

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the psychometric paradigm for understanding educational measurement and standard setting by considering the extent to which that understanding is based on metaphors. I argue that through the metaphors ‘more is up’ and ‘good is up’ we spatialise concepts that are not intrinsically spatial. Human abilities form a distinct conceptual category, with complex and varying rules for the correct usage of different ability terms. The fact that most abilities can be discussed in terms of both ‘possession’ and of ‘more or less’ invites reification, spatialisation, and hence the application of measurement metaphors. Insights into the measurement of abilities can be gained by careful consideration of how ability terms are used in normal discourse, especially of athletic abilities which are partly quantified in terms of attributes that are physically measureable. The fuzziness of natural language creates some of the problems in understanding standards in both psychometrics and physical measurement.     

‘The world must stop when I’m talking’: gender and power relations in primary teachers’ classroom talk

The present paper examines male and female teachers’ language practices in relation to ‘censuring’ talk in the primary classroom, in the context of the debate around boys’ ‘underachievement’ and the ‘feminisation’ of primary school culture. Through an analysis of classroom observations with 51 men and women teachers, it looks to see whether gender differences could be found in the ways individual men and women teachers communicated in terms of their ‘censuring’ comments of pupils’ work or behaviour. Secondly, the paper takes issue with the notion that teachers operate within a ‘feminised’ educational culture, by looking at the ways in which teachers’ classroom talk can be seen to be constrained by two contrasting discourses relating to the power relation between teacher and pupil: a ‘traditional’ disciplinarian discourse, and a more ‘progressive’ liberal discourse. Both discourses have complex gendered and class dimensions, challenging the conception of a ‘feminised’ primary school culture.     

Globalisation,knowledge economy and comparative education

This paper seeks to introduce this special issue by setting out what seem to be some of the major theoretical and methodological issues raised for comparative education by the increasing prominence of the discourses of the knowledge economy, which, it is argued, represent a particularly strong version of globalisation and its possible relationships to education systems, and hence an especially acute challenge to comparative education. It focuses on the possible implications of these changes for each of the three elements of ‘national education system’. In terms of the ‘national’ it discusses the nature and consequences of methodological nationalism, and emphasises the emerging pluri‐scalar nature of the governance of education. In terms of ‘education’, it argues that education is now being asked to do different things in different ways, rather than the same things in different ways. In terms of ‘system’, it is suggested that the constitution of education sectors may be in the process of changing, with a development of parallel sectors at different scales with different responsibilities. Overall, the article suggests that we may be witnessing the development of a new functional, scalar and sectoral (non zero sum) division of the labour of educational governance. Finally, it addresses the question ‘what is now to be compared’ and considers the consequences for both ‘explaining’ and ‘learning’ through comparative education.     

Philosophical debates on curriculum,inequalities and social justice

Abstract

The paper provides an historical but critical context for examining the relation of the pursuit of greater equality in schooling to the development of curriculum. This requires a brief account of what one means by the principle of equality, before showing the different ways in which there have been curriculum responses underpinned by philosophical understandings which need to be examined closely. These different ways are explained in terms of: ? ‘rational curriculum planning’ with its detailed definition of ‘aims, objectives, methods and evaluation’—and thereby a ‘science of teaching’;

? ‘forms of knowledge’ or ‘realms of meaning’ to enable all pupils to have a basic understanding of the physical, social, and moral worlds they inhabit;

? the pursuit of enquiry through which, for all learners, understanding is enlarged;

? provision of common curriculum experience as a basis for citizenship;

? taking diversity seriously; and

? equalisation of opportunities through a common system of national standards and assessments.

However, in the light of greater government involvement in the minutiae of curriculum reform, mainly through changes in qualifications and examinations, there is clearly a need to ask what sort of evidence is relevant to ‘what works’.