Comenius,moral and pious education,and the why,when and how of school discipline

ABSTRACT

The present study provides an analysis of John Amos Comenius’s thoughts on moral and pious education, educational governance and school discipline as expressed in Didactica Magna. This is examined from the background of his view of education as a societal phenomenon, the purposes of different categories of knowledge for individual formation and the role of pedagogy in the upbringing of children. Theoretically, this paper expands on Michel Foucault’s ideas about governmentality and discipline, as well as on Henri Lefebvre’s spatial theories. The article argues that Comenius can be viewed as a significant contributor to the early modern shift towards new administrative techniques for school governance, transmitting the mode of disciplinary power into pedogogised and didactic forms. The article contributes to achieving more systematic knowledge for understanding the focused areas of schooling, the concept of discipline and the pedagogic premises of disciplinary practice in an early-modern European educational context.     

Combining the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of teaching sustainability: the case of the business school academics

Abstract

Faculty are key to bringing about ‘bottom-up’ change for sustainability education. Yet, research is still needed on the backgrounds and experiences of change agents in universities and the challenges they face. This study focuses on the marketing discipline, a field fraught with epistemological tensions in seeking to integrate sustainability, mainly revolving around profit maximisation and continuous consumption while living on a planet with finite resources. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with sustainability marketing academics in Australasia, Europe and North America. The contribution of this paper lies in the development of a sustainability educator typology linking why and how integration occurs. The sustainability ‘transformer’ wishes to engage in transformational learning, changing student mindsets, the ‘thinker’ wants to encourage critical thinking to bring about the discussion of worldviews, while the ‘actioner’ hopes ‘learning by doing’ (community projects) will provide an appreciation for sustainability. We discuss implications for those disciplines which struggle with philosophical tensions and colleague resistance to the integration of sustainability in the form of suggestions for professional development (i.e. creation of positive nature experiences) and pedagogical approaches (critical, transformative and community-service learning).     

Multi-method assessment of metacognitive skills in elementary school children: how you test is what you get

Third grade elementary school children solved tests on mathematical reasoning and numerical facility. Metacognitive skillfulness was assessed through think aloud protocols, prospective and retrospective child ratings, teacher questionnaires, calibration measures and EPA2000. In our dataset metacognition has a lot in common with intelligence, but planning measured with teacher ratings plays a role above and beyond IQ. Moreover, we found that skills are generally related, but that it is more appropriate to assess them separately. In addition, results show the value of an experienced teacher as actual measure of metacognitive planning skills. Our dataset suggests convergent validity for prospective and retrospective child ratings, but no significant relationship with the other metacognitive measures. Metacognitive skillfulness combined with intelligence accounts for between 52.9% and 76.5% of the mathematics performances. The choice of diagnostic instruments highly determines the predicted percentage. Consequences for the assessment of metacognitive skills are discussed.     

Variability in the natural number bias: Who,when, how,and why

When reasoning about rational numbers, people sometimes incorrectly apply principles or rules for natural numbers. Many factors affect whether participants display this natural number bias, including their age and experience, the affordances and constraints of the given task, and even the specific numbers in the given problem. In this paper, we argue that this variability can be conceptualized in terms of dynamic choices among problem-solving strategies. People's strategy choices vary as a function of their repertoire of available strategies and as a function of the specifics of the tasks, problems, and context. Further, we argue that the specific profiles of variability in strategy use that are observed in different participant groups can be conceptualized in terms of the strength and precision of the representations of numbers and operations that people in those groups possess. In our view, the natural number bias arises when people's representations of rational number magnitudes or rational number operations are not sufficiently strongly activated or sufficiently precise to guide performance on a specific task in a specific context. In these cases, participants' more highly activated or more precise representations for natural numbers may underlie and guide their performance. This account suggests that contexts and experiences (including instructional experiences) that help build, strengthen, and activate rational number representations should lead to improvements in performance.     

The neo-liberal education policies of epimeleia heautou: caring for the self in school markets

The paper argues that neo-liberal education policy has capitalized on a historical concern to care for the self, or the Greek epimeleia heautou. We discuss epimeleia heautou in relation to education policies that emphasize greater choice in curriculum offerings, and in relation to school choice policies more generally. Thus, a premise of our argument is that school choice policies accommodate a much greater range of selves to be cared for. The analysis examines the neo-liberal subject, homo ?conomicus, in relation to education policy that produces choices of the self and choices for its care. We conclude by discussing conceptions of the self in relation to two aporias of neo-liberal educational equality produced through ethnic-specific schools.     

Futurism,school psychology,and special education: 1984 is nearly here!

This article points out some potentially profitable future considerations for school psychology, general and special education practices on the basis of important features of the past and the present.     

‘The school,whose place is this’? The deep structures of the hidden curriculum in indigenous education in Bolivia

In this paper we examine state and indigenous education in Bolivia. Focusing on debates about the hidden curriculum, we conceptualize the school as a political space where tensions between the overlapping jurisdictional powers of the hispanicizing state and indigenous authorities are played out. Our analysis of these tensions highlights the contested way in which indigenous educational policy is negotiated in Bolivia and points to the importance of the deep structures of the hidden curriculum in constructing the school as a territorial authority and a site of struggle in indigenous communities. Using the communities of Raqaypampa, Cochabamba as a case study, we show how local struggles over indigenous education in the 1980s and 1990s became scaled up to influence national educational policy and donor intervention strategies in Bolivia.     

Management,leadership and the emotional order of the school

In management theory, attention to the emotions is increasing, mainly for economic reasons. Within the management of education, so‐called transformational leadership is becoming the new orthodoxy, and a central aspect of it is emotional intelligence. This can be interpreted sociologically, from both Durkheimian and Weberian perspectives. It is argued that transformational leadership is not about the transformation of the individual: it is mainly about the translation of corporate and government policy into practice. This is because emotional management and leadership is framed by—and is expected to accord with—the discourse of centralized target‐setting and the auditing of performance. Emotional management seems set to be a technical endeavour, born of modernity, set for standardization, to be rendered as objective and measurable, and made ready for audit.     

Predicting teacher commitment: The impact of school climate and social–emotional learning

The aim of this study was to investigate whether school climate and social–emotional learning impact teacher commitment. The sample included 664 public schoolteachers from British Columbia and Ontario in Canada. Participants completed an online questionnaire about teacher commitment, school climate, and social–emotional learning. Binary logistic regression analyses showed that positive school climates significantly predicted three forms of teacher commitment: greater general professional commitment, future professional commitment, and organizational commitment. Of the school climate variables, student relations and collaboration among staff predicted commitment. In addition, stronger beliefs and integration of social–emotional learning predicted two types of teacher commitment: greater general professional commitment and organizational commitment. Of the social–emotional learning variables, the support and promotion of a social–emotional learning culture across the school and comfort with and regular implementation of social–emotional learning in the classroom predicted greater teacher commitment. Implications for practice and research are discussed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Narrative understandings of a school policy: intersecting student,teacher, parent and administrator perspectives

In this article, we examine one school’s experience with policy, as a means of shedding light on the intersection of factors contributing to challenges of implementing policies to support the academic achievement and social adaptation of immigrant and minority students in their school context. We begin with the presentation of a ‘big fight’ between two students of different ethnic and racial backgrounds, and consider multiple perspectives of how the disagreement was addressed by teachers and administrators, to offer insight into how issues of race and policy might have been understood by members of the school community. We use a narrative inquiry approach to examine ways in which a policy designed to enhance student participation was interpreted by various members of this school community. This study reveals nuances of the intersection between culture and (hidden) curriculum as it relates to the implementation of policies aimed at creating and maintaining safe school communities.     

Self-regulation of motivation when learning online: the importance of who, why and how

Successful online students must learn and maintain motivation to learn. The Self-regulation of Motivation (SRM) model (Sansone and Thoman 2005) suggests two kinds of motivation are essential: Goals-defined (i.e., value and expectancy of learning), and experience-defined (i.e., whether interesting). The Regulating Motivation and Performance Online (RMAPO) project examines implications using online HTML lessons. Initial project results suggested that adding usefulness information (enhancing goals-defined motivation) predicted higher engagement levels (enhancing experience), which in turn predicted motivation (interest) and performance (HTML quiz) outcomes. The present paper examined whether individual interest in computers moderated these results. When provided the utility value information, students with higher (relative to lower) individual interest tended to display higher engagement levels, especially when usefulness was framed in terms of personal versus organizational applications. In contrast, higher engagement levels continued to positively predict outcomes regardless of individual interest. We discuss implications for designing optimal online learning environments.     

Primary school puberty/sexuality education: student-teachers' past learning,present professional education,and intention to teach these subjects

Primary school teachers are often tasked with puberty/sexuality education for students who are undergoing sexual maturation at ever-earlier ages. This study explores the changing trajectories of the pre-service learning and teaching of primary school puberty/sexuality education at an urban university, including student-teachers' childhood learning, professional pre-service studies, and technological educational future. Biographical narratives and a theoretically based conceptual and diagnostic framework are used to analyse the views of fourth-year Bachelor of Education student-teachers about their own primary school puberty/sexuality education, their present university professional education for teaching these subjects, and their intentionality to teach them to future Grade 6 school students. Results show that these student-teachers intend to replicate their own primary school learning experiences. Pre-service professional education appears to have failed to operationalise the contemporary learning and teaching of puberty/sexuality education that would allow a new generation of more effective knowledge and pedagogies to be implemented.     

The social,emotional and behavioural difficulties of primary school children with poor attendance records

Two complementary studies of poor and better attenders are presented. To measure emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD) different teacher-completed rating scales were employed, and to determine social difficulties, the studies used sociometry and some items from the scales. One study had a longitudinal design. It revealed that, after controlling for social class, gender and EBD in Year 2, poor attendance between Years 2 and 6 had the effect of significantly increasing EBD in Year 6. Both studies also had a cross-sectional design element which gave an indication of some of the poor attenders’ social difficulties and confirmed the longitudinal findings. The rating scales also provided measurements of “neurotic” and “antisocial” disorders. These suggested that a “neurotic” disorder may have played a bigger part than an “antisocial” disorder in the poor attenders’ EBD. The article ends with a list of recent references dealing with intervention issues.     

Making the connection: The role of social and academic school experiences in students' emotional engagement with school in post-secondary vocational education

This study examines the emotional engagement with school of a diverse sample of 909 students in post-secondary vocational education in the Netherlands. Using multilevel regression analysis, we assess the role of students' background characteristics and school experiences, and their interaction, in students' emotional engagement with school. At-risk students do not report lower levels of emotional engagement, except for students using (soft)drugs. While Dutch dropout prevention focuses on fostering a sense of belonging through enhancing teacher–student relationships, we do not find a significant role of perceived support from school staff in students' sense of belonging. A good relationship with classmates is more important to engage students in post-secondary vocational education. Perceiving an academic fit is most prominently related to the emotional engagement of vocational students, indicating that a sense of belonging should not only be defined in social, but also in academic terms.