Comparative School Marks of September and January Junior High-School Entrants

ABSTRACT

The author used an explanatory mixed methods research design. The first phase involved the collection of quantitative data to examine the nature of preservice teachers’ (N = 192) culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy beliefs. Follow-up face-to-face interviews were carried out with a subsample selected from Phase 1 participants. These interviews were used to identify the types of culturally responsive teaching self-efficacy-forming experiences that preservice teachers encountered during their teacher education program and the perceived influence that these experiences had on the development of their self-efficacy beliefs. The face-to-face interviews uncovered disparities among preservice teachers regarding the aspects of culturally responsive teaching that were discussed, modeled, and practiced. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.     

Late for School

Peter was late for school. Peter: It was so slippery. When I took one step ahead, I slipped back two. Teacher: Oh, yeah? Then how did you get here? Peter: I finally gave up, and started for home.     

学校生活教育的疏离与回归—儿童的生活重负与消解

文章试图勘探学校生活教育在实践中的偏离：理想生活的苛求，日常生活的偏爱，课外生活的迷恋、复杂生活的还原，学校道德生活的万能化等，及由此造成的儿童生活重负，并寄望于通过学校生活教育的回归，引导儿童生活重负的消解。     

School leadership and social justice: Evidence from Ghana and Tanzania

Headteachers working under conditions of severe hardship in Africa face tremendous challenges, often exacerbated by a sense of hopelessness and lack of agency to effect improvements within their school. This paper focuses on notions of leadership agency and ‘social justice’ within an African educational context, with a specific focus on the school level, and reports on a small-scale research project involving primary headteachers in Ghana and Tanzania engaging with action research in order to bring about changes which they feel will benefit the quality of pupil learning. The study presents some positive impacts generated by the headteachers’ actions and indicates ways in which these actions illustrate developments in areas of ‘social justice’ related to fairness, equity, recognition, and redistribution. The findings suggest that empowering headteachers through the use of action research can enable them to act creatively and positively to benefit the quality of education offered to the pupils within their schools.     

The local curriculum in Mozambique: the Santa Rita Community School in Xinavane

In 1983, Mozambique started reviewing the education system that it had inherited from the Portuguese colonial administration. One of the innovations introduced into basic education is the time allocated to the local curriculum (LC) within the national curriculum (NC). The LC enables the communities, including the poorest and those furthest removed from the school environment, to identify themselves with the importance of schooling and allow children to find meaning in what they learn with respect to their life in their community. The good practice described below has been introduced in a community school, where it has successfully brought together the LC and NC to become an individual and collective asset for the community in which it has been implemented. It is a successful example worth studying in detail.

Decision-making in African universities demands rigorous data: Evidence from graduation rates at Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique

Graduation rate is often used as indicator of efficiency and accountability of higher education institutions. However, its official and academic use entails pitfalls, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Based on evidence from Eduardo Mondlane University in Mozambique, this paper contributes to the academic and policy debate on graduation rates in SSA, by using logistic regression analysis to measure and explain this indicator. The paper’s findings are twofold: (i) graduation rates at UEM (and eventually in SSA) may be different from what their misleading measurement and usage may portray; (ii) graduation rates are particularly affected by the academic aspects of students and the institution. The paper claims that rigor is needed to produce data (e.g. graduation rates) on African universities to strategically inform decision-making.     

校园欺凌与学校归属感的相关效应:来自新教育实验的证据

减少校园欺凌行为、提升学生的学校归属感,是杜绝校园欺凌事件的主要着力点。通过对新教育实验学校与非新教育实验学校进行配对抽样,采用问卷调查的方法分析并比较校园欺凌、学校归属感的现状以及相关效应,研究发现,参与调查的学生遭受校园欺凌的频次较低,其学校归属感整体较强。校园欺凌与学校归属感存在显著的负相关,两者对学生的学习表现有显著的影响。新教育实验所创设的理想校园令学生更少地遭受校园欺凌,增强了学生的学校归属感,对学生学习表现的积极影响显著且稳定。确立与新教育实验精神相通的学校宗旨,借鉴新教育实验思想和实践,对学生的校园学习与生活有积极的影响。     

Late Entry into Primary School in Developing Societies: Findings from Cross-National Household Surveys

Late entry into primary school is a widespread phenomenon in developing countries. Students who enter school late are more likely to repeat grades, drop out and perform more poorly. Yet the phenomenon has received little scholarly attention, and there is a dearth of cross-national data. In this paper, we draw on data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS2), a cross-national household survey conducted in developing countries. We first estimate the percentage of students entering primary school late across 38 countries in order to identify the countries in which the issue of late entry is most common. Secondly, we describe the background characteristics of students who are more likely to enter school late. We then employ multinominal logistic regression equations to predict the probability of late entry. Our findings highlight the need for policies to reduce late entry for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.     

Psychiatric Leave Policies:

This commentary consists of thoughts stimulated by reading the interesting paper by Frances L. Hoffmann and Xavior Mastrianni on psychiatric leave policies. Because it cites some papers of mine, I tried to remember why I said what I said and did what I did in relation to the topic when I was directly involved, and what, if anything, I learned in the process.     

明末清初赣西北"棚民"问题研究

大约从明朝嘉靖年间始,生活于闽、粤、赣地区被称作“棚民”的客家人开始向赣西北湘鄂赣山地丘陵地带迁徒。其迁徒原因或为生计所迫,或为避倭寇及乱战,或为当地乡绅招徕。“棚民”落根于赣西北,基于与当地土著乡绅经济与文化的冲突,酿成比较严重的土客矛盾,甚至于激起“棚民起义”。“棚民”为赣西北山地经济的开发作出了巨大贡献。     

Losing All Interest in School: Social Participation as a Predictor of the Intention to Leave Upper Secondary School Early

Early school leaving in upper secondary education is a serious problem for both students and society. Several reviews have shown that there is no simple cause of early school leaving, but it seems to relate to demographic variables, social factors, academic achievement, and school factors. In this study, data from 2,045 students aged 16 from upper secondary schools in Norway were analyzed using a hierarchical regression model. Their intention to leave school was the dependent variable. Our analyses found that teacher support and loneliness in the school context were strong predictors of such intension. The effects of peer acceptance and friendship were minimal.     

Physical Activity and School Performance: Evidence from a Danish Randomised School-Intervention Study

It has been claimed that physical activity has a positive effect on not only health but also on school performance. Using data from a randomised school-intervention study, this paper investigates whether different interventions promoting physical activity affect school performance in primary school children. The results indicate that on average, the interventions have a very limited beneficial impact on the pupils’ performance. The effects are mostly insignificant, and in some cases even negative. These results are relevant when considering how general school resources and resources targeted towards physical activity in particular should be invested to improve school performance.     

School autonomy and educational inclusion of children with special needs: Evidence from England

In the past few decades, several countries have introduced reforms aimed at increasing school autonomy. We evaluate the effect of the introduction of autonomous academies in England on the educational trajectories of children with special educational needs. This has been done using longitudinal data on all schoolchildren in state schools in England, from the National Pupil Database. The results show that the effects of school autonomy on educational inclusion are not uniform and depend on schools’ previous performance and socio-economic composition. Schools that obtained autonomy under the control of an external sponsor (sponsored academies) were more likely to decrease the proportion of pupils with special needs and remove additional support for them. We do not observe these effects in the schools that voluntarily applied for the more autonomous status (converter academies).     

Intervening with Struggling Readers in Seventh Grade: Impact Evidence from Six School Districts

Abstract

This study uses a regression discontinuity design to evaluate the impact of seventh-grade interventions delivered by 25 schools on the reading and school engagement outcomes of struggling readers. Students in participating schools were assigned to intervention (n?=?1,495) or comparison (n?=?4,397) conditions, based on their state reading performance and reading fluency scores in sixth grade. On the state reading test, intervention impact favoring the treatment group approached, but did not reach, statistical significance (p?=?.056, g?=?.15). On a measure of reading fluency, there was a significant interaction between the cut points schools chose for condition assignment and intervention impact (p?=?.015). In schools that chose a lower cut point, intervention students outperformed comparison students, while in schools that chose a higher cut point, comparison students outperformed intervention students. On a student self-report measure of school engagement, no significant differences between the intervention and comparison groups were observed (p?=?.83, g?=?.02). Implications for rigorous evaluation of interventions implemented by districts and schools under naturalistic conditions are discussed.     

晚明书法转型与中国早期近代化

在近年的文史哲与艺术等学科的研究中，晚明时期被越来越清晰地描述成一个历史转型期。在书法史上，徐渭和黄道周为代表的书家的作品同样具有这种转型性特征。本文借鉴社会历史学的研究成果，勾勒了晚明时期中国社会早期近代化的特征并对应晚明书法的转型性特征，认为这股书法潮流与当时中国社会早期近代化的某些特征是相一致和互动的。     

School infrastructure spending and educational outcomes: Evidence from the 2012 earthquake in Northern Italy

We explore whether investment in school infrastructure affects students’ achievement. We use data on extra funding to state high schools after the 2012 Northern Italy earthquake and apply a quasi-experimental design and an instrumental variable strategy. We find that spending on school infrastructure increases standardized test scores in Mathematics and Italian language, and the effect is stronger for lower-achieving students and in Mathematics. These results provide evidence in favor of a positive impact of capital spending in improving the learning environment and performances of high school students.