History as performance: pupil perspectives on history in the age of ‘pressure to perform’

The development a standard-based curriculum in History can be related to the school reforms where ‘performance’ are crucial principles. The aim is to analyse pupils’ perspectives on the relation between their views on historical knowledge and the national test in History and grading. When the pupils in this study – directly after taking a national test in History – were asked to reason about what historical knowledge is, another subject emerged: a collective memory subject. History as ‘performance’ emerges clearly in connection with the pupils’ discourse on grades and History, which has an emphasis on ‘working’, ‘writing’, and ‘doing homework’ to get a better grade in History. The disciplinary knowledge content specified in the curricula does not correspond to pupils’ experiences of what the central historical knowledge is in national tests and grading. It is apparent that disciplinary knowledge content is ‘under pressure’ in the age of performance.     

International education and meaningful contributions to society: Exploration of postgraduate international students’ perspectives studying in a Malaysian research university

International education is sought after by students primarily for career development. However, very little is known about other meaningful educational outcomes of students pursuing international education in a Malaysian university system. This paper investigates how international students perceive their meaningful contributions to society upon study completion in one research university in Malaysia. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in the university with 33 international students, mainly from Nigeria, Pakistan and China. Findings show that postgraduate international students not only want to contribute to their home society through research and teaching at higher education institutions but also to their host-country and third-country communities. The analysis illustrates the interplay between macro internationalisation of higher education policies and factors shaping the micro-level experiences of international students. This study contributes new insights into vital nuances of the international educational outcomes relating to meaningful contribution to society and community development.     

A conducive learning environment in international higher education: A systematic review of research on students’ perspectives

Higher education institutions (HEIs) strive to meet international students' needs and expectations regarding their learning environments. Current literature covers a wide range of needs, expectations, and HEIs' responses. However, there doesn't seem to be a consensus about the needs and expectations to be addressed. A coherent theoretical framework may help HEIs identify areas of need and provide additional resources and comprehensive services. We performed a systematic review to obtain an overview of international students' needs, expectations, and experiences regarding their learning environments as described in the literature. We categorized students' perspectives into dimensions. Subsequently, we investigated whether these dimensions related to the three key domains outlined in the theoretical framework and the coverage of these key domains by HEIs. Sixty-three studies were eligible for inclusion. We identified 18 dimensions of international students' needs, expectations, and experiences that could be mapped onto the framework. Based on these results, the content of the three domains could be summarized as goal direction, relationships, and supporting services. Thirteen studies covered one domain, 14 covered two domains, and 36 covered three domains. To provide optimal support, HEIs should cover all three domains. Our study may help to better understand and optimize learning environments for international students.     

‘We want to make it cool to be a choir girl’: an anthropological investigation of creativity in forming a choir identity

ABSTRACT

Members of the Danish MidWest Girls’ Choir and their conductor have the aim of creating unique expressive forms. As a consequence, the girls’ work has worked to develop new forms of singing and performance. The choir seeks to find an identity that distinguishes them from traditional church choirs and thereby recreate ‘choir girls’ as something other than ‘well behaved’ and ‘disciplined’, both in their learning processes and in forming their image as a performing choir not related to a church. This paper analyses the role of novelty as process and ‘product’ in an identity-creating process in the social community of singers. Creativity is in this article seen as the collective processes of becoming skilled and of demonstrating distinction from the established discipline of classic choir singing. The choir's identity-forming process is based on creating and being engaged in a different kind of rehearsal, performances and thereby the ‘respectable’ choir image generally.     

Estimate of students’ workload and the impact of the evaluation system on students’ dedication to studying a subject in first-year engineering courses

In order to adapt current subjects to the ECTS credits system, it is necessary to estimate how much time a student has to invest in learning a subject. The Polytechnic Engineering School of the University of the Basque Country has made an initial study to investigate this matter in several subjects. A weekly questionnaire design was used for all the students in the class, supplemented, when necessary, by an individual interview, with student collaboration. The results indicate that the study rhythm and the number of hours are strongly conditioned by the evaluation system.     

‘They might as well be Black’: the racialization of Sa’moan high school students

This article explores the processes of racialization imposed on Sa’moan youth through policy and practice in one urban, US school district and at one high school in particular. Specifically, I use the methodological practices of defamiliarization and counter‐storytelling to examine the contradictory practices of racialization and the simultaneously oppressive and transformative potentials these practices catalyze. The analysis of this process is framed by the Critical Race Theory concepts of colorblindness and Whiteness as property, which powerfully illustrate how this racialization both disrupts and reifies reigning local and national racial norms and hierarchies.     

So you want to be a teacher educator? The job advertisement as a construction of teacher education in Canada

This article contributes a Canadian perspective to a growing body of international research investigating teacher education, specifically as a category of academic work exemplified in employment advertisements. By investigating how Canadian employment advertisements in teacher education are constructed as mediating artefacts in the relationship between potential candidates and their goal of gaining an academic position, we attempt to identify contradictions inherent to systems of human activity, and surface institutional priorities regarding faculty hiring policies and the staffing practices within Canadian teacher education programs. Our study surfaces both similarities and differences with concurrent WoTE (Work of Teacher Education) investigations in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand regarding the teacher education as a form of academic labour, echoing their characterisation of the increasingly “precarious space” occupied by teacher education in post-secondary institutions.     

‘We’re as good as anybody else’: a comparative study of working-class university students’ experiences in England and Ireland

This article is based on a comparative study of working-class students’ experiences in English and Irish higher education. It highlights the lack of comparative studies on this topic based on qualitative research and why filling this gap is important in understanding access and widening participation. Drawing on biographical interviews with 139 people in a range of elite and non-elite institutions, the article discusses similarities as well as some differences between the data from the two countries in terms of class, identity and how working-class students view and value higher education. It maps out how the research relates to recent debates over social class and outlines the theoretical implications of these findings.     

‘Education is as important for me as water is to sustaining life’: perspectives on the higher education of women in Afghanistan

Progress in education in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban has been described as ‘fragile, limited in reach, depth and uncertainty of sustainability' [UNICEF. 2013 UNICEF. 2013. Annual Report – Afghanistan. United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund. http://www.unicef.org/about/annualreport/files/Afghanistan_COAR_2013.pdf. [Google Scholar]. Basic Education and Gender Equality: Afghanistan. United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund. http://www.unicef.org/afghanistan/education_2206.htm]. This is particularly true for Afghan women participating in higher education, within a culture that remains resistant to women's education. This article documents the views and attitudes of Afghan women who have sought to gain a higher education, within a context where only 5% of the Afghan population attends university, and less than 20% of university students are female [The World Bank. 2013. World Development Indicators: Poverty Headcount Ratio at National Poverty Lines. The World Bank Group. http://data.worldbank.org/country/afghanistan]. It is an attempt to listen to the voices of Afghan women to ascertain what they see as the best ways to improve their educational outcomes. Findings illustrate that while progress has been made in enabling a small percentage of women to pursue higher education, there are still significant and enduring obstacles for Afghan women seeking such a path.     

‘We’re not going to suffer like this in the mud’: educational aspirations,social mobility and independent child migration among populations living in poverty

This article examines the association between formal education, social mobility and independent child migration in Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh), Peru and Vietnam and draws on data from Young Lives, a longitudinal study of childhood poverty and schooling. It argues that among resource-poor populations, child migration sustains kin relations across generations and households and also facilitates children’s progression through the life-course, thus it is fundamental to social reproduction. It reasons that formal education has greatly amplified this trend. Schooling has acquired symbolic value as the prime means of escaping household poverty and realising ambitions for social mobility. As such, elevated educational aspirations combine with systems shortcomings to stimulate school selection, school transfer and school-related child migration. The article concludes by examining the implications for children, for social reproduction and for policy.     

‘I'm not going to be in Japan forever’: how Filipina immigrant youth in Japan construct the meaning of home

This article, based on an ethnographic study of five Filipino-born daughters of Filipina migrant workers in Japan, discusses how these young women construct understandings of home as they navigate the borderlands between the Philippines, Japan and the US. The study reveals the ways in which these young women negotiate the possibilities and constraints of their homeland in the Philippines, their new land of Japan and an imagined future home in the US. Their senses of safety, economic security, community and cultural/linguistic affirmation all affected how they understand these countries as potential and possible homes. The study reveals how these youth search for and build homes across multiple spaces and the struggles they encounter within that search.     

‘Push on through’: Children’s perspectives on the narratives of resilience in schools identified for intensive mental health promotion

Child mental health is a growing concern for policymakers across the global north. Schools have become a key site for mental health interventions, with new programmes aimed at promoting ‘resilience’, through which children may maintain or regain mental health during adversity. As one of the first studies to explore the early impact of intensive mental health promotion in schools from children’s perspectives, we adopt a governmentality approach to consider the logic and techniques of such programmes with a specific focus on England. An innovative visual methodology was used to focus on student perspectives of mental health interventions in school. Young peoples’ photo representations of mental health were collected and used to stimulate focus group discussions with 65 students aged 12–14, across seven schools. ‘Resilience’ was seen to be the key organising concept for mental health interventions in schools. The concept was viewed as narrowly focused on attitude towards—and performance in—school work, with individuals being encouraged to ‘push on through’ difficulties to achieve success. Young people were critical of this approach, suggesting several alternatives. These included increased access to independent mental health professionals, safe spaces within schools and mental health education that addressed the social and affective dimensions of mental health difficulties.     

Teacher‐college students’ opinions in Israel and on the West Bank of ‘what science‐education is supposed to be’

A three‐way comparison of teacher‐college entrants’ and graduating students’ views in Israel (both Jews and Arabs) and their counterparts on the West Bank was undertaken in order to diagnose subjects’ image of science and of science teaching. The questionnaire used permitted the gathering of subjects’ normative views as well as the application of these views in actual classroom science‐lesson planning. It was found that college entrants’ views of the Jewish subjects differed sharply from those of both Arab samples in all areas tested. While there was no difference between Israeli Arabs and their counterparts on the West Bank on matters concerning in‐school and in‐classroom affairs, the Israeli Arab subjects’ views about science and science‐teaching were midway between those of the Jewish subjects and the West Bank subjects. As to the graduating subjects’ normative opinions, no significant difference was found between Jewish and Arab Israeli subjects, with both these samples differing significantly from their West Bank counterparts. An identical situation for both the entrants and the graduating students pertained to actual lesson‐planning. The findings were interpreted to mean that:

• Arab science education in Israeli schools is at present in a transition period, tending to move away from traditional and towards ‘Western’ approaches.

• Three years of college education had been instrumental in eliminating the previously existing discrepancies between prospective science teachers in the Jewish and Arab sectors of Israel, and to widen the gulf between Israeli Arabs’ and West Bankers’ normative stances as to ‘what science teaching is supposed to be’.

     

Learning biology as ‘Increase ones’ knowledge and understanding’: studying Taiwanese high school students’ learning strategies in relation to their epistemic views and conceptions of learning in biology

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to examine high school students’ learning strategies in relation to their epistemic views and conceptions of learning in the discipline of biology through a structural equation modelling technique. A total of 247 high school students (168 males) participating in this study completed 3 questionnaires, the Epistemic Views of Biology (EVB), the Conceptions of Learning Biology (COLB), and the Strategies of Learning Biology (SLB). The results supported the hypothesised model proposed in this study, and a new factor of ‘Increase one’s Knowledge and Understanding,’ reflecting the feature of high school students’ biology learning, and serving an important role in biology learning, was identified in this study. In addition, students’ epistemic views were associated with their conceptions of learning, which consequently correlated to their learning strategies. More specifically, the EVB of ‘Uncertainty’ negatively related to lower COLB, which consequently positively related to Surface Strategies, whereas the EVB of ‘Justification’ was positively correlated to higher COLB as ‘Increase one’s Knowledge and Understanding,’ which in turn was correlated to Deep Strategies. According to the research findings, theoretical and practical suggestions for future research are provided.     

‘Our surgeons want this to be short and simple’: practices of in-hospital medication review as coordinated sociomaterial actions

ABSTRACT

Medication review, a systematic assessment of a patient’s medicines by a health care professional, is intended to prevent medication-related harms. A critical element of medication review concerns whether medication review is conducted in a coordinated way. This article draws from a case example of implementing medication review in two surgical wards of a Swedish regional hospital and aims to analyse how medication review is being accomplished with respect to the coordination of its actions. Using a practice-based ethnographic approach, we present several coordination mechanisms by illustrating how practices are connected to materials involved in medication review. Also, we show how common orientations, ends, and understandings expressed in different medication review practices contribute to the coordination of the practices. In conclusion, this article highlights the complexity of establishing and sustaining medication review as a coordinated practice in routine health care. By closely examining sociomaterial connections, this article sheds new light on the neglected issue of artefacts and arrangements in constituting and transforming a highly complex medication practice.     

‘I want people to believe in me,listen when I say something and remember me’ – how students wish to be treated

In Sweden the compulsory school curriculum prescribes that education should promote learning in different subjects while simultaneously assisting students to develop into citizens of good character. To achieve these goals students need to cultivate such character strengths as respect and responsibility, so that they can create positive relationships and live in a community. The development of these skills in a school setting could be called character education. Research shows that good character education promotes the moral development of students and also enhances their academic learning. Giving voice to students is the cornerstone of character education; if adults in schools listen carefully to students educational practice can be improved. This study was conducted in a secondary school in northern Sweden. The phenomenology of the life‐world and the principles of participatory and appreciative action research guided the research. The aim was to explore student voices as they described how they do and do not wish to be treated by others. The empirical data consisted of written responses to questions posed to students in Grades 7 and 8. The data analysis revealed four themes: striving for mutual understanding, being accepted for who you are, seeking honesty and truth and being acknowledged, recognized and encouraged. A comprehensive understanding of the themes suggests how practice may be improved in educational settings.     

What it means to be studying against the grain of neoliberalism in a community-based university programme in a ‘disadvantaged area’

Australia is indicative of a country that is deeply confused and conflicted around a policy discourse of inclusion that is sutured within an existential context heavily committed to the tenets of neoliberalism. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of higher education, in which the proportion of young people from backgrounds of ‘disadvantage’ has remained implacably stuck at around 15% for several decades. The research from which this paper comes is an innovative community-based university-provided programme for young people for whom university education was never a realistic possibility – because of family histories, interruption to their lives, of having undertaken forms of secondary education that prevented them from gaining university entrance qualification, or who had terminated their education before completing the secondary years of schooling. This paper explores the story of one young person in his first year in a university programme, as he struggled with obstacles and impediments of a higher education system and set of neoliberal policy discourses that remain deeply sceptical and antagonistic to his trajectory.     

The problem with international students' ‘experiences’ and the promise of their practices: Reanimating research about international students in higher education

The increasing number of people studying abroad has drawn significant scholarly attention to the experiences of international students. While these works have productively informed policy and practice regarding how international students may be better supported, they have not always considered the active ways international students contribute to higher education. This article suggests that adopting the notion of experience as a conceptual starting point is problematic because it only partially illuminates international students' agency and reproduces understandings of them as a vulnerable group. The more active notion of practice, by contrast, suggests a more agentive subject who is a pivotal actor in spaces of education. The main argument in this article is that the abiding focus on international students' experiences will be productively unsettled by orienting attention to their practices and theorising the notion of practice in more fluid and dynamic ways. After critically engaging with the existing literature, the article outlines four ways that a focus on international students' practices may reanimate debates. A focus on practice will: (1) show how international students actively contribute to spaces of higher education, including classrooms, campuses and other sites of sociality; (2) demand that researchers theorise agency in more expansive ways and consider the practices of a broader set of social groups; (3) encourage researchers to make use of a wider set of qualitative research methods; and (4) create a stronger political foundation from which to defend the interests of international students in a post-COVID-19 world.     

Medical educators’ metaphoric talk about their assessment relationships with students: ‘you don’t want to sort of be the one who sticks the knife in them’

Current perspectives in cognitive linguistics highlight the conceptual nature of cognition and how the conceptual metaphors we hold affect ways we think, talk and act. This study examines medical educators’ metaphoric talk to understand ways in which assessment relationships with students are conceptualised in order to understand why educators might ‘fail to fail’ underperformance in medical students. We conducted 10 focus groups with 70 educators at two UK medical schools. The audiotapes were transcribed and analysed using systematic metaphor analysis. The analysis revealed six over‐arching metaphors associated with the target domain of assessment relationships, i.e. assessment relationships as journey, war, sport, parentalism, machine and medicine. While medical educators conceptualised students’ academic failure in relatively innocuous ways (e.g. students’ failure to arrive at their destination; journey), they also conceptualised failure in harmful ways (e.g. students’ death; war). If medical educators hold the concept of assessment relationships as war, it is perhaps unsurprising that they are reluctant to fail students. We discuss these findings in light of existing literature and provide recommendations for designing training sessions through which assessors can address reluctance to fail underperformance. Such faculty development may aid assessors in identifying and using alternative metaphors to conceptualise the assessment relationship.     

‘We all know why we’re here’: Learning as a community of practice on Access to HE courses

This article examines the extent to which Access to Higher Education courses can be defined as communities of practice. Other studies have already revealed the importance of mutual engagement and supportive relationships between students and between students and tutors in facilitating learning. While previous studies carried out on Access to HE (AHE) courses in England and Wales have largely focused on single colleges, the study that this article draws on was carried out in three urban further education (FE) colleges using a linked case studies design and a social interactivist lens. It investigated mature students’ perspectives of their changing learning identities through their developing relationships with their tutors and with each other during their AHE courses. Qualitative data was collected from five to six self-selecting AHE students in each college using focus group interviews and from their tutors using individual interviews. The findings suggest that the AHE students in this study generally participated and interacted in a supportive and collaborative way, guided by their tutors, and how and why they did this. This mutual engagement around particular core values helped to construct communities of practice, although some students remained peripheral participants. Within these communities were considerable inequalities of power, largely sustained by the institutional structures and professional discourses within which the AHE courses were located.