Towards a rural sociological imagination: ethnography and schooling in mobile modernity

In 1959, C. Wright Mills coined the phrase ‘the sociological imagination’ to offer a critical assessment of a discipline he saw descending into a technical or abstract empiricist practice that he feared would ultimately deepen human alienation and oppression. Mills positioned the sociologist as a careful, critical scholar working in the space between biography and history. In this paper, I offer a meta-ethnographic analysis of several recent critical ethnographies in the rural sociology of education using my own experience as a rural education ethnographer to frame the analysis. I argue that critical ethnographic work is crucial to developing educational analysis that is attuned to the nuances of place and the kind of metrocentric analysis that effectively ‘traps’ rural places in larger structural educational reform narratives.     

Do OFSTED Inspections of Secondary Schools Make a Difference to GCSE Results?

The Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) aims to improve school performance through inspection. A government indicator of a secondary school's performance in England and Wales is the students' success in examinations. The examination results of over 3000 OFSTED inspected secondary schools offering students for General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) examination during the 1992 to 1997 inspection cycle were modelled statistically. For kinds of schools where achievement was already much higher or lower than the average (e.g. selective schools), inspection was associated with slight improvements in achievement. For county, local education authority maintained, comprehensive schools (the largest single group), inspection did not improve examination achievement. Some implications for school improvement are discussed.     

Sexual abuse: A sociological perspective

How have contemporary social changes affected the problem of child sexual abuse? The rapid rise of this problem to public attention in the United States is in part due to the mobilization around the problem by the women's movement and the child welfare movement there. But factors shown by research to be associated with the problem—social isolation and patriarchal authority—are so widespread as to suggest that this is a problem of international proportions, as well. The rising divorce rate in the U.S. and worldwide, would appear to put more children at risk at the same time that it has also made it easier for children and their mothers to escape from the most oppressive and intolerable family situations. The sexual revolution and the erosion of external controls on sexual behavior have also in all likelihood aggravated the problem, too. Sexual abuse needs to be seen as a problem distinct from physical child abuse—characterized by the preponderance of offenders who are males. This suggests searching for the sources of the problem in male sexual socialization rather than in problems of inadequate and disaffected parenting.     

Disaffected Pupils: reconstructing the sociological perspective

During the last 25 years, the study of disaffected pupils has been a central topic in the sociology of education. Yet despite its popularity in academic circles the impact of the sociological perspective on policy has been negligible; today the individualised, psychologically orientated approach stills holds sway in most parts of the educational profession. This paper suggests that part of this failure at least is attributable to theoretical inadequacies in the sociological research that has been carried out to date, much of which is based on a one‐dimensional notion of social structure and an over‐rationalistic view of individual psychology. Three key ‘educational structures’ are introduced (the production of ability, the production of values, the production of occupational identity) and a more appropriate model of human personality is outlined.     

社会学视角中的高等教育质量理论

为了理解高等教育质量,我们需要关注作为其前提的知识的作用。因为知识是大学学术工作的基础,它直接或间接地关系到高等教育文化的多样性。换句话说,知识形成了认知、诊断和处理高等教育质量问题的基础。本论文从知识的作用及知识重建的视角,分别就以下五个方面以日本为案例来研究质量保障的方法:知识的作用;知识社会和高等教育的关系;打造学习中心:日本文化和西方文化的冲突;多样化的知识:分裂、分化和冲突;探索新的大学模式。     

老师改变了男孩的人生

<正>史蒂夫已经12岁了,他的父母都是酒鬼,他就要彻底脱离自己的学校生活了。然而很明显,他能够阅读,但他总不及格。从一年级开始,一年一年过去了,他依然不及格。史蒂夫长得很健壮,看上去比12岁的孩子要大。但他一直都被人忽略,直到有一天怀特小姐的到来。怀特小姐总是笑容可掬,年轻,而且有一头迷人的红头发。她是史蒂夫喜欢的类型。这是他平生第一次,无法把眼睛从老师身上移开,然     

教师能带来的改变

史蒂夫已经12岁了，他的父母都是酒鬼，他就要彻底脱离自己的学校生活了。但从一年级开始他总不及格，一年一年过去了，他依然不及格。史蒂夫长得很健壮，看上去比12岁的孩子要大。但他一直被人忽略，直到有一天怀特小姐出现。     

老师改变了一个男孩的人生

1史蒂夫已经12岁了,他的父母都是酒鬼,他就要彻底脱离自己的学校生活了。然而很明显,他能够阅读,但他总不及格。从一年级开始,一年一年过去了,他依然不及格。史蒂夫长得很健壮,看上去比12岁的孩子要大。但他一直都被人忽略,直     

Supervisee Empowerment: Does Gender Make a Difference?

This study used a content analysis of audiotapes of clinical supervisory sessions to examine the effect of supervisee gender on the influence strategies used in the counseling clinical supervisory dyad.     

Schools That Make a Difference to Post-Compulsory Uptake of Physical Science Subjects: Some comparative case studies in England

This paper presents the findings of the qualitative component of a combined methods research study that explores a range of individual and school factors that influence the uptake of chemistry and physics in post-compulsory study in England. The first phase involves using the National Pupil Database to provide a sampling frame to identify four matched pairs of high-uptake and low-uptake schools by salient school factors. Case studies of these eight schools indicate that students employ selection strategies related to their career aspirations, their sense of identity and tactics, and their prior experience. The school factors influencing subject choice relate to school management, student support and guidance, and student empowerment. The most notable differences between students in high-uptake and low-uptake schools are that students in high-uptake schools appear to make a proactive choice in relation to career aspirations, rather than a reactive choice on the basis of past experience. Schools with a high uptake offer a diverse science curriculum in the final two years of compulsory study, set higher examination entry requirements for further study and, crucially, provide a range of opportunities for students to interact with the world of work and to gain knowledge and experience of science-related careers.     

Changing perceptions of schooling: A comparative perspective

This paper brings together some of the major trends in Educational Development in America and the United Kingdom. Changes proposed in these countries and Australia place emphasis on market forces as a way forward in educational reform. As Australia moves towards the notion of a National Curriculum it is important to note similar developments in both America and the U.K. in this regard and to be critically aware of the issues involved. Government influences — particularly in the UK. is noted. There are also moves in all three countries to change the teacher training programs. The question is whether the proposed change will indeed lead to greater freedom and flexibility within the Education system or whether they will lead to further control.     

Showing and telling: The Difference that makes a Difference

In this article I attempt to clarify an essential difference between the ways in which pictures and words convey meaning. Despite the fact that the distinction between showing and telling is widely understood and clearly marked in ordinary language, it is often ignored when writers and researchers provide accounts of how children’s picturebooks work. As a result, such accounts are often unrealistic, providing distorted images of picturebook text. I briefly examine one such attempt to differentiate and characterise various types of picturebook and then conclude by showing how Anthony Browne exploits the distinction between showing and telling to create the atmosphere of uncertainty and mystery in his classic book Gorilla.     

Black Studies Materials Do Make a Difference

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of relevant curriculum materials upon the self-concept, achievement, and school attendance of black students. Subjects for the study were black students enrolled in ten randomly selected inner-city schools in a large urban school system. Thirty-nine heterogeneously grouped classrooms were involved in the study-sixteen third grades and twenty-three sixth grades. A control group design was established. To measure the effects of relevant materials, three instruments were utilized: The How I Feel About Myself Inventory, The Metropolitan Reading Test, and The Attendance Form. There were positive statistically significant differences in the achievement and attendance of students in the experimental group. However, there were no statistically significant differences in the self-concept of students in the experimental and control groups as measured by The How I Feel About Myself Inventory.     

(Re)Producing Mathematics Educators: A sociological perspective

Whilst participation in higher education has increased dramatically over the last two decades, many universities are only now beginning to pay more attention to the learning experiences of first year students. It is important for universities to understand how first year students conceive of learning and knowing in order to promote effective approaches to learning. Even though an extensive body of research demonstrates that beliefs about learning and knowing influence student approaches to learning and learning outcomes, there has been no Australian research that has investigated this critical learner characteristic across first year university students. This paper reports on preliminary data from an ongoing longitudinal study designed to investigate first year students’ beliefs about knowing and learning (epistemological beliefs). Students from teacher education and creative industry faculties in two Australian universities completed the Epistemological Beliefs Survey (EBS) in the first week of their first semester of study. A series of one‐way ANOVA using key demographics as independent variables and the EBS factor scores as dependent variables showed that epistemological beliefs were related to the course of study, previous post‐school education experience, family experience at university, gender, and age. These data help us to understand students’ beliefs about learning and knowing with a view to informing effective learning in higher education.