The subjectivities of ‘included’ students with disabilities in schools

The contextual precept of this paper is to re-theorise inclusive education beyond technical rational solutions to the ‘problem’ of disability. Drawing on Foucauldian and critical disability theories, I make the case for the analysis of inclusive schooling through the lens of students’ ‘included’ subjectivities – notwithstanding the presence of diagnosed special educational needs. I contend that there is a theoretical mismatch between humanist inclusive schooling and the posthumanist position of disability: an epistemic fissure that impedes inclusive development. Through analysis of the voices of students with disabilities from two different schooling contexts in Australia and Spain, I demonstrate how fragmented virtues of normalcy suffused their subjectivities. I conclude the paper with a discussion of the roles that DisHuman disability studies might play in recasting inclusive schooling by troubling normative discourse.     

Teachers’ views of the challenges of teaching grade 9 applied mathematics in Toronto schools

Mathematics teachers, mathematics department heads, curriculum leaders, and administrators from 11 schools in four school boards from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, participated in a project to improve the teaching and learning in grade 9 mathematics classrooms. In each of these schools, an implementation team was created, so that at least three teachers from every school could collaborate, in order to improve learning outcomes of their students. This article reports on the challenges identified by teachers when they taught grade 9 applied mathematics. Teachers’ views of challenges fell into five main layers: (a) teacher professional development and pedagogical skills, (b) student learning needs, (c) settlement issues and families’ social and economic background, (d) administrative difficulties and resources, and (e) curricular issues. These challenges were complex and interconnected, demanding special remedial efforts by the administration and teachers. By reflecting on the challenges and practices, these teachers made a long-term strategy to engage in professional development activities to better understand their students’ learning needs and to improve their achievement in provincial tests.     

Patriotism in British schools: teachers’ and students’ perspectives

Because there are good arguments both for and against loving one’s country, patriotism should be taught as a controversial issue in schools. But is this pedagogical approach practically viable in the British educational context? Here we report on a small‐scale survey of teachers and students in secondary schools and show that their perspectives and practices are highly compatible with our recommended approach.     

Teachers’ views of professional learning and collaboration in four urban Lebanese primary schools

This study to investigate how teachers develop their skills and knowledge to construct enthusiastic student learning and what part school principals play in that development was carried out in four primary schools serving disadvantaged communities in Beirut. In the absence of rich research in Lebanon on this topic, western literature was used to construct a conceptual framework on professional learning and teachers’ identities; collaborative cultures and learning communities; leadership, power and school cultures. Drawing on a social interactionist epistemology, in each case study school, the views of about 10 teachers and the school principal and some students were collected through semi-structured interviews. The qualitative data were analysed thematically. Emergent findings suggest that collaborative cultures, predicated on helping students to engage enthusiastically with learning, sponsored by assertive school principals led to teachers developing a strong sense of community and positive identities through professional development.     

The relationship between the level of bullying in primary schools and children’s views of their teachers’ attitudes to pupil behaviour

It is known that the incidence of bullying reported by primary school children varies greatly between schools. It has also been shown that schools in which staff express a greater level of concern with managing the problem generally experience lower levels of bullying. This study examines the children’s, rather than the teachers’, views about the level of care and attention which the teachers pay to issues relating to behaviour and the social organisation of their school. It is shown that the children’s views are a good indicator of the frequency of bullying that will be found in that school.     

The role of students’ emotions in formal feedback situations

A growing, but still relatively small body of research underscores the importance of attending to students’ experiences and emotions in higher education. One specific context in which emotions have a focal role is formal feedback situations. The aim of this paper is to provide a literature overview on the role of emotions, in sociology in general and learning in particular, and to draw on this literature in order to tentatively suggest how the role of students’ emotions can increasingly be accounted for in the context of feedback situations. The claim of the paper is that emotions should not be considered as hindering learning. Rather, it underlines the focal role of emotions in learning as being a natural part of it. The paper suggests that learning activities such as ‘feedback preparation activities’ and ‘feedback-on-the-feedback’ can be helpful in order to acknowledge students’ emotions in formal feedback situations.     

The role of engagement in immigrant students’ academic resilience

Academic resilience refers to academic success despite chronic socio-educational adversity. Given increases in immigration across the world in the past decade (including in Europe), there have been calls to identify factors (e.g., engagement) that can better support immigrant students’ academic resilience. With a sample of N = 17,241 immigrant students from 18 European countries, the present investigation employed multi-level probit regression to determine the extent to which cognitive, behavioral, and social-emotional engagement predict academic resilience status at both the student- and school-level. Findings revealed that cognitive engagement and behavioral engagement, at both the student- and school-level, are positively associated with academic resilience (yielding moderate and large effect sizes), while the findings regarding social-emotional engagement were more equivocal.     

The learning environment of natural history museums: Multiple ways to capture students’ views

This article describes an initial attempt to find out students’ perceptions of class visits to natural history museums, with regard to the museum’s role as a place for intellectual and social experience. The study followed up approximately 500 Grades 6–8 students who visited four museums of different sizes, locations and foci. Data sources included the Museum Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (M-CLES), which was adapted from Constructivist Learning Environment Survey, an open-ended question and semi-structured interviews with 50 students. The three instruments highlighted some differences in students’ perceptions of the visit. Opportunities for concrete experiences and cognitive and affective engagement were not covered by the M-CLES, while the nature of science was not discussed by the students in their responses to the open-ended item and the interviews. This suggests that each instrument has its advantages and limitations and, therefore, the three means for data collection enabled a complementary view. Based on our findings, we suggest further development of museum learning environment surveys to capture students’ perceptions.     

Challenges of engagement with health services in Sweden’s schools: listening to the views of school nurses and students with recurrent pain

This article reports on the views of school nurses (n = 25) and students with recurrent pain (n = 24) in Sweden with regard to school-based pedagogic practices. A number of common categories with implications for pedagogic practice were identified by analysing qualitative interviews with these groups, using the coding techniques of grounded theory. The results indicate that a failure to develop trust made it difficult for some students to initiate contact with a school nurse and that some students perceive the issue of recurrent pain being of relevance to all young people, deserving coverage in the curriculum. We thus conclude that it is important to integrate personal, social and health education in the ordinary spaces of teaching and learning in order to complement and bolster the conventionally organised school health services in Sweden. However, this might be difficult to achieve because many of the school nurses emphasised that health and education were commonly treated on parallel tracks in their schools, under the management of different authorities.     

The short- and long-term effects of secondary schools upon students’ academic success and development

This paper presents the results of a study investigating the short- and long-term effects of secondary schools upon student academic success and development. A questionnaire was administered to a randomly selected sample of 15% of Cypriot students who graduated in June 2004 and June 2005 from secondary schools. A good response rate (i.e., 66%) was obtained. For each criterion of measuring school effects, separate multilevel analysis was conducted. The results provide evidence for statistically significant school effects on students’ success at the university entrance exams and on their academic success and development. Suggestions for further research are provided, and policy implications are finally drawn.     

Colleague supervision – ‘ignored and undervalued’? The views of students and supervisors in a new university

Colleague supervision is increasingly used in UK modern (post-92) universities to support the progress of academic staff to doctoral qualifications. Denicolo (2004 Denicolo, P. 2004. Doctoral supervision of colleagues: Peeling off the veneer of satisfaction and competence. Studies in Higher Education, 29(6): 693–707. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) argues that it is a ‘role relationship that has been largely ignored or undervalued by administration’ (p. 693) and colleague students and supervisors ‘felt more vulnerable’ than other students/supervisors (p. 706). This small-scale research amongst students and staff in a colleague supervision relationship at a single UK modern university tests Denicolo’s (2004 Denicolo, P. 2004. Doctoral supervision of colleagues: Peeling off the veneer of satisfaction and competence. Studies in Higher Education, 29(6): 693–707. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) propositions and those of Deuchar (2008 Deuchar, R. 2008. Facilitator, director or critical friend? Contradiction and congruence in doctoral supervision. Teaching in Higher Education, 13(4): 489–500. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) on supervision styles. It found that students did not feel ‘vulnerable’ but considered there were significant benefits from colleague supervision. They, and some supervisors, were also very supportive of group supervision methods that, alongside conventional individual supervision, gave strong support to the progress of colleague students to timely completion of their doctoral studies. As many UK modern universities are attempting to build research capacity through doctoral research training, the use of group supervision alongside colleague supervisors may offer benefits in a time when supervisory capacity has been stretched.     

Teachers’ views on spirituality for adolescents in high schools across countries

Based on a study of 1689 high school teachers across 132 high schools in 12 countries, this paper discusses their views on spirituality for high school adolescents. In general, they favoured spirituality for adolescents and its inclusion in the curriculum. Specifically teachers from European countries, US, Canada and Australia attested the relational consciousness aspect of spirituality, which enabled adolescents to form and preserve meaningful social relationships and build their altruistic potential. Log regression analysis showed that spiritual assessment of adolescents was perceived as comprehending their spiritual starting point, specifically by those from European countries, US, Canada and Australia. Further, they perceived spirituality as an integral part of the moral science and value education curriculum, with the main curricular objective as cultivating adolescents’ spiritual sensibilities and mindfulness. The study provides the nuances of such as curriculum on spirituality in the high schools in terms of knowledge, skills and attitude components.     

The role of social capital in students’ perceptions of progress in higher education

This paper aims to analyse the effects of students’ social relationships at university on students’ success. Specifically, whether a student with heterogeneous relationships obtains better academic results than a student whose relationships are mostly with classmates. Further, the research examines whether students’ social relationships make up for their parents’ lack of human capital. A survey was answered by a sample of 867 students from universities in the metropolitan region of Barcelona. The findings suggest that the effects of social relationships are not always positive. The benefits of social networks at university interact with the type of degree studied, the student’s dedication to studies, and the student’s social class. Perceptions of progress for each category of students is different: It is more positive for those with frequent heterogeneous relations, who do not work or do so for a few hours, and for those who are enrolled in “hard” science courses.     

The preparation of pre-service student teachers’ competence to work in schools

Competence to work in schools is an important dimension of professional competence, although it is often a neglected dimension of teacher development. This article reports a qualitative study that examined student teachers’ learning experiences in initial teacher education (ITE) in relation to competence to work in schools. In-depth interviews were conducted with 12 student teachers on an undergraduate ITE programme in Hong Kong. The findings of the study show that competence to work in schools is characterised by student teachers’ deep contextualised learning. In addition, it offers a deeper understanding of this competence in the ITE context by identifying its three facets, namely understanding of the micro-political realities of schools, social capital building and social strategies. The study provides insights for ITE and schools to support student teachers’ development of their competence to work in schools, including the design of ITE curricula, ITE processes and co-curricular activities in undergraduate studies. Moreover, it suggests the importance of developing schools as growth-fostering and positive micro-political sites for ITE fieldwork and teacher induction.     

Transnationalism at the border: students’ experiences in border schools

To understand the development of educational research traditions, it is essential to scrutinize the internal dynamics of the theoretical and methodological developments within the community of scholars working in the area as well as the social needs that are served by such research. The adoption of qualitative approaches to the study of learning and instruction thus mirrors a complex pattern of changes in the role and use of education as a social resource in modern society. On the Scandinavian scene, the past decades have seen a rapid increase in interest in qualitative research and in philosophical positions such as hermeneutics and phenomenology that imply a qualitative approach to studying phenomena. It is argued that qualitative research is now well established, and that it is essential to further demonstrate its value to shed light on education as a social activity.     

The role of social-academic goals in Chinese students’ self-regulated learning

European Journal of Psychology of Education - The role of mastery and performance goals in self-regulated learning (SRL) has received much attention. However, in collectivist and Confucian-heritage...     

The analysis and reconciliation of students’ rebuttals in argumentation activities

The present study investigated the guidance provided by science teachers to resolve conflicts during socioscientific issue-based argumentation activities. A graphical representation (GR) was developed as a tool to code and analyze the dialogue interaction process. Through the GR and qualitative analysis, we identified three types of dialogue reconciling strategies. The first one consists of teacher management, in which the teacher temporarily maintains the right to speak when students get mired in an emotional rebuttal situation. The second strategy involves the use of qualifiers to identify the strengths and weaknesses of an opposing argument. The third strategy consists of providing students with guidance to keep both parties (i.e. the students taking, respectively, the affirmative and negative positions) on the same discussion topic and can be used to assist teachers with forming broad questions that prompt students to conduct deeper discussions. These reconciling strategies were beneficial in that they helped students to argue in a more reflective way.     

The effect of international accreditations on students’ revealed preferences: Evidence from French Business schools

This paper evaluates how three different international accreditations for business schools (AACSB, EQUIS and AMBA) affect student preferences, expressed via enrollment decisions. Focusing on the French context, we build a relative preference indicator to compare schools using data collected by the central clearinghouse that allocates students to schools. We observe that all three accreditations positively and significantly influence students, but that the impact of the AACSB accreditation is larger than the other two accreditations. Having an AACSB accreditation is equivalent to moving up four places in rankings by L’étudiant magazine, whereas the impact of having EQUIS or AMBA is similar to moving up two places. We also find a sizeable “triple crown” effect, meaning that the three accreditations tend to complement each other. Our results are robust to different ways of assessing potential self-selection into accreditation.     

The emergence of leadership in students’ group interaction in a school-based makerspace

This case study is an examination of the emergence of leadership in students’ group interaction in a school-based makerspace. The data comprised video records of 20 primary school students’ group work within this context, encompassing student-driven creative engagement in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) learning activities. Interaction analysis was applied to analyze the students’ leadership moves and to depict how students’ leadership was related to their collaboration. The analysis resulted in a typology of students’ leadership moves in a makerspace context, namely, coordination of joint work, exploring new ideas, seeking out resources,

and offering guidance and supporting others, adding to the existing literature on student leadership and collaboration in novel learning environments. The study also illustrates how the students’ leadership moves in group interactions can lead to dominating and/or shared leadership, with consequences for students’ collaboration. The study points to the importance of more research and development of pedagogical practices that support students’ symmetric participation and opportunities to lead collaborative work and to promote advanced collaboration in school-based makerspaces.