“Why Can't We Just Have Sex?”: An Analysis of Anonymous Questions About Sex Asked by Ninth Graders

During the high school years, most young people in the United States receive school-based sexuality education, but there is little research on what they want to know about sex and sexuality but may be afraid to ask. This study is a content analysis of anonymous questions about sex (N = 645) asked by ninth-grade students from the greater Los Angeles area. A sample of predominantly lower-income and Latino/a students submitted anonymous questions before participating in sexuality education. Results show that young people are eager to understand how to use birth control and prevent pregnancy, have misinformation about sex and sexuality, and are misinformed on many topics. Results are discussed in light of what educators and others can do to help young people develop a safe, healthy sex life.     

Desire for Increased Autonomy and Adolescents’ Perceptions of Peer Autonomy: “Everyone Else Can; Why Can’t I?”

Two studies examined adolescents' personal autonomy beliefs and their perceptions of peer autonomy. Study 1 sampled 527 adolescents (M = 15.40 years) and found that adolescents desired increased autonomy most over personal and multifaceted issues and least over moral and conventional issues. Younger adolescents and girls desired increased autonomy more than did older adolescents and boys, respectively. Overestimation of peer autonomy was moderate but stable. Finally, results indicated that adolescents who perceived their friends as having more autonomy than they did were more likely to desire increased autonomy over multifaceted and prudential issues. Study 2 sampled 170 early adolescents (M = 13.39 years) and used a longitudinal design to further support the conclusion that adolescents utilize peers as metrics to gauge the appropriate pacing of behavioral autonomy development.     

Learning from the Confucian heritage: so size doesn’t matter?

Students from Confucian heritage cultures (CHCs), such as China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan, consistently outperform Western students in many academic subjects, under conditions, such as large class teaching, that seem counter-indicated by Western research. These results have been used to justify increases in class size on the grounds that size is irrelevant to effective teaching. Such thinking is simplistic. Children in CHCs are socialized in ways that make them amenable to work in large classes, so that management problems are minimal and teachers can focus on meaningful learning using whole-class methods. An educational system forms a working whole, each component interacting with all other components. Isolating any one component (such as class size) and transplanting it into a different system shows a deep misunderstanding of how educational systems work.     

‘Why single me out?’ Peer mentoring,autism and inclusion in mainstream secondary schools

The past decade has seen an increase in the number of students with autism attending mainstream educational provision. Improving outcomes for this group is a complex issue given the deficit of evidence‐based practice. A new peer mentoring programme developed for students with autism in mainstream secondary schools was evaluated using a combination of quantitative and qualitative measures. Twelve students with autism and 36 students without autism participated in the programme across five schools in the south‐east of England. Students with autism were assessed using the Harter Self‐Esteem Questionnaire, Loneliness and Social Dissatisfaction Scale and the Anti‐Bullying Alliance survey. Semi‐structured interviews were conducted to record their views and experiences of the programme. Significant gains in self‐esteem, social satisfaction and a reduction in bullying were seen over the course of the programme. These findings have wider implications for the ways in which educational approaches, strategies and interventions are developed and delivered in schools.     

‘Career and Money Aside,What's the Point of University?’ A Comparison of Students’ Non‐economic Entry Motives in Three European Countries

This paper explores students’ non‐economic motives for attending university. Drawing on the results of a tri‐national survey involving online questionnaires and email interviews with education students at English, German and Portuguese universities, it compares and discusses the extent to which the participants are motivated by a number of extrinsic and intrinsic factors. In contrast to certain other studies, the findings reveal a strong consensus across all three settings in relation to certain motivational elements—strong intrinsic desires for self‐improvement and low motivations driven by social pressures or seeing university as a default option. More pronounced national differences emerge, however, regarding motives to contribute to society and the appeal of the social dimension of university life. The paper interprets the similarities and differences revealed and considers a number of conclusions.     

Why do long‐serving teachers stay in the teaching profession? Analysing the motivations of teachers with 10 or more years’ experience in England

This paper examines the reasons why long‐serving teachers remain in the teaching profession. Interest in teacher retention has grown in recent years, both in the UK and internationally, due to concerns over teacher shortage. However, most research on retention has focused on why teachers leave; this paper aims to fill the gap in our understanding of the positive reasons why long‐serving teachers stay in the profession, and how these reasons change over time. We define ‘long‐serving teachers’ as teachers who have taught for 10 years and more. We draw on a subset of data from an existing, broader study (Menzies et al., 2015 ) on why teachers enter and stay in the profession. In this paper, we draw on questionnaire findings from over 900 teachers with 0 to over 30 years’ teaching experience, and interviews with 14 long‐serving teachers, to understand why long‐serving teachers enter and, more importantly for our purposes, stay in teaching. We find that teachers’ motivational patterns are highly complex and influenced by school‐level and policy contexts. Nonetheless, two prominent retention factors are identified: teachers’ perceived professional mastery and altruistic reasons. Perceived professional mastery is particularly important due to its mutually reinforcing analytic relationships with other reasons. We find that teachers’ identification with intrinsic, altruistic and perceived professional mastery reasons become stronger with years of experience, but in some cases, paradoxically, so does their identification with extrinsic reasons. From our evidence, we suggest policy implications for enhancing the retention of long‐serving teachers.     

THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN ADOLESCENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF TEACHER‐STUDENT RELATIONSHIPS AND THEIR ACADEMIC SELF‐REGULATION: DOES LIKING A SPECIFIC TEACHER MATTER?

Although positive teacher‐student relationships are known to aid students’ academic self‐regulation, the emotional aspects of teacher liking are often neglected within research. The present study used a large sample of seventh‐ and eighth‐grade students (N = 1,088; M_Age =  13.7) in secondary schools in Germany to investigate whether the motivation students gain from specific well‐liked teachers (i.e., that students identify) can moderate the relation between their perception of teacher‐student relationships overall and academic self‐regulation (intrinsic motivation, identified, introjected, and external regulation). By means of latent moderated structural equations, students’ motivation based on liking one specific teacher was found to moderate the association between teacher‐student relationships and intrinsic motivation. The present study makes a contribution to the existing research on teacher‐student relationships and academic self‐regulation by investigating the role of students’ motivation related to the liking of a specific teacher. Results indicate that when early adolescent students can identify a well‐liked teacher, they tend to have higher levels of academic motivation. Hence, students’ motivation based on liking a single teacher compensates for generally low‐quality teacher‐student relationships and their respective impact on students’ intrinsic motivation.     

Out of Love for Any Thing? A Response to Vlieghe and Zamojski on Some Pedagogical Problems with an Object‐Oriented ‘Educational Love’

In this paper we consider some of the problems inherent in the attempt to define and circumscribe an exclusively ‘educational love’, as presented by Joris Vlieghe and Piotr Zamojski in a recent paper for this journal. In seeking to move beyond the confusing interpersonal relations involved in student‐centred discourses on teaching, the authors aim to articulate an ‘educational love’ that is more oriented towards subject matter than the student subject. In the process, the concept of love itself becomes increasingly abstract and open to interpretation. Further, the attempt to reconcile these elements in an uncomplicated ‘love for the object’, following the example of Alain Badiou's St Paul, constitutes an injustice to the other subjects—the students—involved in the teaching situation. We consider the ways in which such abstractions might sit with student teachers, to demonstrate how and why the intersubjective dimension—with some of the possible emotive messiness that is implied therein—must not fade from view, if we are to avoid conceiving of education as something that can be purified of individual interest, motivation and desire.     

Back to the future? A case study in changing curriculum and assessment: The story of the London Association for the Teaching of English’s Alternative ‘O’ Level English Language Paper

In the early 1950s, the London Association for the Teaching of English (L.A.T.E.) became increasingly concerned about the syllabuses and examination papers for GCE 'O' English Language and English Literature. Worried about the potentially adverse effects of the London Board's papers on children's learning, teachers' practice and curriculum design, L.A.T.E. worked with interested schools to draft, write and submit an alternative GCE syllabus and examination paper for 'O' Level English Language. This article is an account of that process, and its possible resonance for the subject community in the present day.     

Discussion of ‘are Statisticians Cold‐blooded Bosses? A New Perspective on the “Old” Concept of Statistical Population’ by Y. Lu and K. S. S. Henning

This articles argues in favour of a recently introduced approach to statistical inference which focuses on understanding the data generating process. A comprehensive example supports the discussion.     

Who studies STEM subjects at A level and degree in England? An investigation into the intersections between students’ family background,gender and ethnicity in determining choice

The relative lack of students studying post‐compulsory STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects is a key policy concern. A particular issue is the disparities in uptake by students’ family background, gender and ethnicity. It remains unclear whether the relationship between student characteristics and choice can be explained by academic disparities, and whether students’ background, gender and ethnicity interact in determining university subject choices, rather than simply having additive effects. I use data from more than 4000 students in England from ‘Next Steps’ (previously the LSYPE) and logistic regression methods to explore the interacting relationships between student characteristics and subject choice. There are four main findings of this study. Firstly, disparities by students’ ethnicity are shown to increase when controlling for prior attainment. Secondly, family background indicators are differentially related to uptake for male and female students, with parents’ social class and education larger predictors of choice than financial resources. Thirdly, gender, ethnicity and family background interact in determining choices. Particularly, as socio‐economic position increases, young women are more likely to choose STEM over other high‐return subjects. Finally, associations between student characteristics and subject choices, including interactions, largely persisted when accounting for A‐level choices. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.