Implementation of primary Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning small group work: a qualitative study

The aim of this study was to build an implementation process model for social–emotional interventions. Case studies were conducted at five primary schools in England nominated as ‘lead practise’ by their local authorities. Data collection comprised interviews with school staff, children and parents, observations of intervention sessions and other settings, and document analysis. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. In brief, the process model of Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning small group work indicates that successful implementation is dependent upon a range of factors, ranging from the skills and experience of the group facilitator to the availability of an appropriate physical space to conduct the sessions. Key aspects of the delivery of small group interventions included setting achievable targets for children, providing constant reinforcement of desirable behaviour, and providing opportunities for pupils to verbalise their emotional experiences. We discuss the implications of the model and make recommendations for future development in this area.     

'The centre cannot hold': complexity and difference in European Union policy towards a learning society

The notions of lifelong learning and a learning society have been an important policy driver in the European Union at both the Commission and national government levels for a number of years. Overall, these policies aim to promote the twin goals of competitiveness in international markets and social cohesion within the still-expanding borders of the Union itself. To date, however, the impact of this emphasis on lifelong learning has been relatively slight. This article argues that this is in part because the policy process in relation to the development of a learning society is based on a view of governance and power that is open to reasoned dispute, and is, therefore, bound to disappoint in relation to its espoused goals. It is suggested that, rather than implementation being the main ‘problem’ of policy, the policy context inevitably generates many recontextualizations and renegotiations of meanings according to the situations and the actors involved, thereby undermining the notion of ‘implementation’ as a technical-rational process. It is argued that the complex negotiations enacted at local level reveal and are fashioned by tensions between the membership resources available to actors. This emphasizes complexity, diversity, and difference in policy processes, bringing to the fore a communicative and distributed approach to policy rather than one that is technical and centralizing.     

Mathematics in Education and Industry

ABSTRACT

The view that education has a role to play in resolving the conflict in Northern Ireland is examined, first by looking at the notions of reconstructionism and cultural pluralism. The religiously segregated school systems are then examined, and the various attempts at intervention are described under the headings, ‘Curriculum change’, ‘Integration’, and ‘Inter‐school co‐operation’. Finally a new research and development project called Inter‐school links is described.     

Reassessing RCTs as the ‘gold standard’: synergy not separatism in evaluation designs

ABSTRACT

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are increasingly used to evaluate educational interventions in the UK. However, RCTs remain controversial for some elements of the research community. This paper argues that the widespread use of the term ‘gold standard’ to describe RCTs is problematic, as it implies that other research methods are inferior. The usefulness of RCTs can be greatly enhanced when used in conjunction with implementation-specific measures (e.g. observation tools, attitude/engagement surveys and interviews). The proposal is advanced through case studies of two evaluations. One relates to the development of science subject leader skills and expertise at primary school level and the other to co-operative learning of primary maths. Both evaluations randomised schools to the intervention or the business-as-usual control, and compared impact using subject knowledge tests. Integral to each study was a process evaluation which looked at evidence from classroom practice along with feedback from the teachers and pupils themselves. We contend that this enabled much more holistic and richly interpretative pieces of research. The paper concludes that privilege for particular paradigms should be set aside when designing effective evaluations of educational interventions, and that it is insufficient to ask ‘what works?’ without also asking ‘why?’, ‘where?’ and ‘how?’.     

Taxing times: an educational intervention to enhance moral reasoning in tax

This paper outlines the development and implementation of an online educational intervention designed to enhance moral reasoning in higher level tax students. Before decisions are made about how to behave ethically, cognitive moral reasoning takes place. The importance of education in developing morally sensitive individuals who use principled moral reasoning has been widely acknowledged. The literature contends that moral reasoning might be enhanced through certain forms of intervention studies. An online educational intervention designed to enhance moral reasoning in tax was developed and empirically tested for effectiveness through the use of a pre- and post-test and focus group feedback gathered from students. Students' contributions to ethical discussions were analysed to determine their perceptions of salient issues concerning ethics in tax. This paper will inform future educators and researchers designing effective ethics interventions.     

Confronting inclusive education in Africa since Salamanca

ABSTRACT

The move towards Inclusive Education in Africa since Salamanca (1994) has been slow, despite the reduction in enrolment gaps for vulnerable children due to universal primary education in many countries. This article centres on conceptions of Inclusive Education, which have rested primarily on increasing numbers of children with disabilities and special needs in mainstream schools. The article shares some of the key challenges across countries that have limited progress towards Inclusive Education and some achievements, including local thinking towards a broader view of inclusion within a social model and attention to barriers within contexts. It looks specifically at notions of ‘inclusion’ within the African context and the focus on access for the most marginalised which remain problematic in the face of struggling economies and variants of authoritarianism replacing colonial power. Ironically, links to colonial powers are maintained with a continued reliance on international aid and support to move policy agendas forward and to support local communities. The article looks at this tension in the development of policies and practices moving forward and the tension in relation to the African struggle for freedom and ‘ubuntu’, a shared collective humanness and social ethics against oppression to maintain group cohesion.     

Evaluating a screening and support system for early intervention in Wales

The concept of early screening and response to intervention has been recognised as key to success in literacy. In this article, an implementation model, which combined a published screening test with a free open access short‐term intervention, was piloted and evaluated over several years. Significant improvements in risk levels for literacy difficulties were identified following a series of 12‐week interventions for 1 hour weekly, split into three small group sessions. In phase 1a, 54% of 224 children were no longer ‘at risk’, and in Phase 1b, 51% of 151 children were no longer ‘at risk’, with evidence for transfer to reading over time. In phase 2a, the approach included whole class screening, (670 children, 25% risk at pre‐test reduced to ‘no‐risk’ in 17.4%). In Phase 2b, targeted support was provided for 306 children in reception, year 1 and year 2. After the intervention, 57% of these children were no longer ‘at‐risk’, with reception children making greatest progress. The model has successfully impacted on greater awareness of ALN and approaches to intervention in the teachers involved. Interviews with users indicated a high level of satisfaction and the approach has been recommended for wider application, following further research.     

Liminal spaces constructed by primary schools in predominantly white working-class areas in England

ABSTRACT

Despite successive policy interventions, students’ socio-economic status continues to strongly predict educational outcomes. Many schools aspire to ‘close’ this ‘gap’. This paper presents an ethnographic study of a group of Primary schools in predominantly white working-class areas in the Midlands of England. Generating ethnographic data through time-recurrent, multi-sited fieldwork including observation, informal conversations, semi-structured interviews, photography and documentary analysis, findings were constructed through critical dialogue between the group of six researchers. A concept of liminal spaces is used to analyse the schools’ work in seeking to move individuals, families, and communities beyond that which they previously knew, foregrounding norms, practices, and discourses constructed on the ‘inside’, and highlighting aspects in tension with the imagined ‘outside’. These schools’ conceptualisations of poverty are shown to be complex and multifaceted, and suggestions are made to employ liminality for articulating and critically exploring the spaces and transformations that schools seek to construct.     

Understanding reason in policy reform: engaging ‘problematic’ families

This paper seeks to examine current policy reforms that situate education as a means of addressing social inclusion. Borrowing from the work of Popkewitz and Lindblad, the paper takes the form of a cross‐disciplinary literature review that informs understanding of the relationship between educational governance and social inclusion/exclusion in policy research in Australia. To do so, the author examines the assumptions, omissions and contradictions in policy direction via two problematics – the engagement problematic and the early intervention and prevention problematic – to emphasise how policy discourse produces ways of thinking about inclusion/exclusion. The author argues that discourses of engagement and intervention and prevention reinscribe each other, acting as a palimpsest which produces notions of the ‘proper’ family and ‘proper’ participation. These notions of propriety ironically exclude particular types of individuals and families by situating them outside of possibilities for ‘success’ in social and systemic participation. Therefore, the author seeks to examine the ‘systems of reason’ that enable these discursively produced notions of propriety to become normalised.     

Interventions for resilience in educational settings: challenging policy discourses of risk and vulnerability

‘Resilience’ has become a popular goal in research, social policy, intervention design and implementation. Reinforced by its conceptual and political slipperiness, resilience has become a key construct in school-based, universal interventions that aim to develop it as part of social and emotional competence or emotional well-being. Drawing on a case study of a popular behavioural programme used widely in British and American primary schools, this paper uses a critical social understanding that combines bio-scientific and social constructionist ideas in order to evaluate key challenges for policy, research and practice framed around resilience. The paper argues that although critical social perspectives illuminate important contemporary manifestations of old problems with behavioural interventions, and challenge narrow, moralising definitions of ‘risk’ and ‘vulnerability’, they coalesce with behavioural perspectives in a search for better state-sponsored responses to the shared question of how to build resilience amongst ‘vulnerable’ groups and individuals. Instead, we argue that critical sociologists need to resist responses that offer more sophisticated behavioural interventions and generate new forms of governance and subjectivity.     

‘Critical friends’: exploring arm’s length actor relationships to local government in education

Abstract

Discussions charting the changing role of local government in education have often focused extensively on ‘concrete’ policy changes over time, but have provided less detail on the contribution to changing power relations of less tangible shifts. Drawing on Foucauldian notions of discourse and governmentality, in this paper, detailed rationalities of local third-sector and other ‘arm’s length’ actors in English education are explored, with a focus on their relationship to local authority (LA) school admissions teams. The paper aims to provide deeper understanding of tactical struggles for authority which happen within competitive local sociopolitical spaces. Data is utilised from a study of ‘Choice Advice’ (CA) in 10 LAs, within a background context where arm’s length agents deployed to deliver CA have been co-opted into central government marketisation regimes, but local state planning of schooling is arguably more equitable for vulnerable families than are logics advancing a marketisation of education. The research reveals: (1) discourses valourising ‘independence’ and ‘distance’ from local state ‘agendas’; (2) discourses separating the interests of ‘parents’ and ‘schools’, with LAs positioned as representing the latter; (3) dehumanising representations of LA officers as ‘faceless’, obstructive and requiring regulation from ‘critical friends’.     

The gendering of global citizenship: findings from a large-scale quantitative study on global citizenship education experiences

The growing literature on the gendering of citizenship and citizenship education highlights that western notions of ‘citizenship’ have often been framed in a way that implicitly excludes women. At the same time, insofar as feminist writers have addressed citizenship, they have tended to see it in largely local and national terms. While feminist literature has laid the groundwork for understanding how schools have shaped and structured a gendered citizenry, there is a lack of large-scale quantitative data which might allow us to explore the intersection between gender and global citizenship education. Drawing on a large-scale quantitative study on development education/global citizenship education in second-level schools, the data presented here suggest that emergent notions of global citizenship are being gendered in schools. The data suggest that girls’ schools are more likely than other types of schools to emphasise a sense of responsibility for, and an analysis of, global inequalities, while differences also emerge between boys’ schools and co-educational schools.     

Researching policy borrowing: Some methodological challenges in comparative education

This article considers some of the methodological challenges involved in investigating, within the traditions of comparative research in education, the complex issue of educational ‘policy borrowing’. It discusses notions of ‘borrowing’ and ‘influence’ and refers to a model previously proposed by the authors for the analysis of what are seen as four stages in the policy borrowing process which can be tested empirically. These are identified as cross‐national attraction, decision, implementation, and internalization/indigenization. The problems involved in researching each stage of this process are considered, in particular in relation to the authors’ previous work on the attractiveness to British observers of educational policy in Germany over a long historical period.     

Promises and Pitfalls of Adapting Utility Value Interventions for Online Math Courses

A growing body of research suggests that interventions promoting students’ utility value for a subject can improve their academic outcomes. However, numerous questions remain regarding how much to adapt prior intervention materials to promote utility value in new educational contexts and how implementation constraints of an educational context may impact the success of these interventions. In this study, using a design-based process we developed and tested three utility value interventions in a new educational context (online high school math). We found that one of the interventions increased utility value compared to control conditions, but we also encountered constraints on intervention implementation that limited the effectiveness of our intervention and the conclusions we could draw from this work. We use our experience as a case study to illustrate the costs and benefits of making certain implementation choices when partnering with practitioners to administer utility value interventions in new contexts.     

Using action research to investigate the use of digital information resources in further education

Within the Third Annual Cycle of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) User Behaviour Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, six small‐scale action research interventions were undertaken in further education (FE) institutions. The aims of these interventions were two‐fold: (i) to develop understanding of the facilitators and barriers to the use of digital information resources by students in FE; (ii) to test the value of the action research approach in facilitating change and developing transferable knowledge in this context. The objectives for each intervention were developed in collaboration with the FE college site staff and students. The process generally involved identification and elaboration of the problem situation, development of an intervention that might help to overcome some of the barriers to more effective use of electronic information services and evaluation of the outcomes of the intervention. Both practical–deliberative and participatory action research methods were used, with interviews and focus groups used to determine the problem and assess the effectiveness of interventions. Six interventions are reported. These included: a database implementation, the development of a subject guide, training sessions, a major change project and a web site. The main findings on the use of digital information resources in FE were: (i) interventions can make the students more aware of resources available, but the immediate impact may be low; (ii) FE students are often part‐time and work in subject/cohort groups in the FE college, therefore targeted initiatives which are aimed at ‘their’ group are likely to be most effective; (iii) incorporation of the use of specialized digital resources in assignments is constrained by student preference for books and/or the Internet, a lack of new products aimed at the FE student market and physical information technology (IT) problems or the perceived lack of IT support. The action research methodology offers benefits not available through survey‐based methodologies. The challenges that arise from the integration of learning from different action research projects need to be balanced against the benefits accruing from embedding learning and knowledge creation in innovation and using research to promote change, rather than simply to measure it.     

Parent‐implemented reading interventions within a response to intervention framework

This study tested the effects of parent‐implemented reading interventions on four elementary students’ reading fluency. Student participants had been receiving a Tier 2 reading intervention, but they were not responding favorably to the Tier 2 intervention. A consultant conducted brief experimental analyses of reading interventions and identified a Tier 3 intervention for each student. Then, the consultant trained the students’ mothers to implement the interventions at home. The interventions were tested via a multiple baseline design across students. During the intervention phase, the consultant monitored parents’ treatment integrity and assessed students’ oral reading fluency for novel, grade‐level progress monitoring passages. Visual analysis indicates that all four students demonstrated increases in oral reading fluency for instructional passages and novel progress monitoring passages after intervention implementation. In addition, single‐case design effect sizes indicate strong effects for instructional passages for all four students, moderate effects for novel progress monitoring passages for two students, and strong effects for novel progress monitoring passages for two students. Finally, parents implemented interventions with moderate to high integrity, and parents rated the interventions as acceptable. Results are discussed in terms of implications for research and practice as they relate to parent‐implemented interventions within a response to intervention framework.     

Reviewing evidence‐based practice for pupils with dyslexia and literacy difficulties

There is now a strong evidence base from theory and research providing a ‘template’ to inform practice at Wave 2, guiding the design and implementation of time‐limited effective early intervention programmes for pupils identified as ‘at risk’ of reading difficulties following initial literacy instruction (Rose, 2009). In contrast, there is currently an absence of evidence to guide the more fine‐grained selection and design of specific interventions (Wave 3) for those nonresponders to otherwise effective reading intervention. In this paper, we first outline our current understanding of the characteristics of effective early intervention programmes, and of the pupils who do not respond. Three theoretically motivated single‐case studies from developmental theory and processing models of skilled performance are then considered as a source of evidence providing useful insights into the type of assessment needed to inform the planning of highly individualised intervention programmes for pupils with severe and persisting literacy difficulties.     

A Situationist Lesson for Character Education: Re‐conceptualising the Inculcation of Virtues by Converting Local Virtues to More Global Ones

Inspired by the debate about character between situationism and virtue ethics, I argue that John Doris's idea, ‘local trait’, offers a fresh insight into contemporary character education. Its positive variant, ‘local virtue’, signals an inescapable relay station of the gradual development of virtue, and serves as a promising point of departure for advanced growth. The idea of converting local virtues to more global ones is accordingly proposed to represent an empirically more realistic way of conceiving how to approach the ethical ideal of global virtues. It helps to direct our gaze to the great intermediate developmental stages of virtue, which mark out a whole spectrum of virtues of varying degrees that fall short of full virtue. This new notion works together with the traditional Aristotelian account to provide a full account of how to effectively undertake the age‐old educational business of the inculcation of virtues.