Researching in school – creating a meaningful school/university alliance: a reflection

This paper reflects upon the experience of carrying out a piece of action research as a university academic, in partnership with a primary school. It considers roles and responsibilities, agendas, dynamics, ethical dilemmas and issues of voice. It contextualises the research within a field where educational research continues to be conceptualised as the ‘poor relation.’ In light of this, it explores the richness and value to be found in rejecting positivist tradition and re-imagining the research process as one of uniqueness and ‘dissensus’ whereby learning happens through collaborative shared-learning encounters. It concludes that research relationships such as these can illuminate new understandings in ways that are not only rich and enduring but often unforeseen.     

Every school a school of choice: school choice in Ireland as viewed through American eyes

‘Choice’ and ‘freedom’ as measured by the ability of parents to select their children's schools are deeply embedded in the national ethos of the United States of America. Wealthy American parents have always exercised school choice but minority and lowincome students are often trapped in failing schools. This paper is based on research conducted in a purposive sample of Irish primary schools into the nature of school choice. The authors examine five aspects of the Irish national primary school system that could provide models for American educators, whose vision often stops at the boundaries of the United States: education law, school choice for all, a national curriculum framework, the role of assessment, and the role of parents and educators in the creation of new schools. While arguably the five relate directly to school choice of different degrees, they collectively weave a web whereby school systems in the Republic of Ireland and the USA may productively be compared to the benefit of both.     

Language choice in a minority school

This article arises from fieldwork in a school of the German minority in South Jutland, Denmark. The minority exists as a result of frontier changes between Germany and Denmark, most recently in 1920. A referendum held in that year as a result of the Treaty of Versailles left a cultural and linguistic minority which, by today, has its own school system, politial party and cultural rights.The research was carried out using qualitative, ethnographic methods and the article focuses on one aspect, namely the issue of language use by bilingual pupils in one of the minority's schools. Pupils' choice of Danish or German in different situations within and outside schools was analyzed through the use of language diaries, informal interviews, and participant observation. The diary entries are analyzed and commented on in the light of interviews and observations. Pupils' awareness of their language use is not static but becomes dynamic as a consequence of being involved in research. The implications of this for educational policy are considered in the context of current developments in language education in British schools.

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Zusammenfassung Auf Grund eines im Anschluß an den Vertrag von Versailles abgehaltenen Volksentscheides aus dem Jahre 1920, entstand in Südjütland, Dänemark, eine Minderheit mit einer deutschen kulturellen und sprachlichen Tradition. Heute hat diese Minderheit ihr eigenes Schulsystem, ihre eigene politische Partie und ihre eigenen kulturellen Rechte.Gestützt auf die Primärehebungen in einer dieser Minderheitenschulen, konzentriert sich dieser Artikel auf die Frage nach dem Sprachgebrauch zweisprachiger Schüler. Ihre jeweilige Wahl zwischen Dänisch und Deutsch in verschiedenen Situationen, sowohl innerhalb als auch außerhalb der Schule, wurde an Hand von Sprachtagebüchern, informellen Befragungen und Beobachtungen der Teilnehmer analysiert. Daraus wird ersichtlich, daß das Bewußtsein der Schüler bei der Sprachwahl nicht statisch bleibt, sondern durch die Einbeziehung in die Untersuchungen dynamisch wird. Die Folgerung daraus für die Bildungspolitik werden im Zusammenhand mit derzeitigen Entwicklungen im Bereich der Spracherziehung an britischen Schulen berücksichtigt.

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Résumé Le référendum organisé en 1920 par suite du Traité de Versailles s'est prononcé en faveur d'une minorité de tradition linguistique et culturelle allemande dans le sud du Jutland au Danemark. Aujourd'hui, cette minorité a son propre système éducatif, son parti politique et ses droits culturels.Cet article provient d'une étude menée dans l'une des écoles de cette minorité et met l'accent sur le problème de la pratique linguistique des élèves bilingues. Le choix du danois ou de l'allemand dans différentes situations au sein de l'école comme à l'extérieur a été analysé à partir de journaux tenus sur la performance linguistique de ces élèves, d'interviews non formelles et en observant les participants. II est évident que la conscience de ces élèves de leur performance linguistique n'est pas statique mais qu'elle devient dynamique à la suite de leur implication dans la recherche. Les implications de ces travaux pour la politique éducative sont considérées dans le contexte des développements actuels de l'enseignement linguistique dispensé dans les écoles britanniques.

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This article is based on fieldwork carried out from March to September 1983 in South Jutland, Denmark, with financial support from the Danish Ministry of Education and the Nuffield Foundation, UK.     

The self-evaluating school — a case study of a special school

School self-evaluation allows staff to review the quality of their work in relation to local contexts. In this article, Peter Neil, senior lecturer in education, Alex McEwen, professor of education, and Karen Carlisle and Damian Knipe, both research assistants in the Graduate School of Education at Queen's University, Belfast, discuss a research project focusing on the process of self-evaluation carried out by staff at a special school in Northern Ireland. The project involved the participants in the completion of a research journal over a four-week period. The authors describe the ways in which the outcomes of the project were fed back to staff and the impact the project had on a range of issues, including teaching and learning and the school's professional development agenda.     

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Academisation,school collaboration and the primary school sector in England: a story of six school leaders

This paper presents data from a study of five English primary schools. It examines some of the challenges associated with school autonomy and collaboration for state primary schools amid the uncertainty and complexity of governance in the present English education context. The paper features the voices of six leaders gathered from interviews that explored their thoughts about the academies movement. It highlights their fears that academisation, and particularly the imperative to join a large academy chain, will undermine their autonomy as individual schools. Accepting of the inevitability of academisation and the forms of network governance this reform offers, it highlights the head teachers’ moves to ensure their autonomy in terms of determining the timing and type of conversion. In relation to these moves, the paper reiterates the significance within effective collaboratives of member schools experiencing a sense of ownership, a common purpose, shared responsibility for students and their learning and relations of trust. The paper considers some of the tensions arising in this space in relation to competition, collaboration and school vulnerability.     

Science in a school of social priority

The National Literacy Strategy Framework (DfEE, 1998) requires primary children to, ‘become increasingly conscious of the writer's intentions’ (p.7) and The National Curriculum for English (1999) states that children should, ‘use and adapt the features of a form of writing, drawing on their reading’ (p.28). Developing a process approach to writing, where children are supported as they draft and redraft texts, was the aim of a university funded school-partnership project between Sycamore Junior School, in the City of Nottingham, and Nottingham Trent University. The article describes how Years 3 and 4 children developed an understanding of narrative structure and became reflective writers, as they responded to each other's work, during writing workshops.