TEACHING SCIENCE IN PUPIL REFERRAL UNITS

This article considers how the problems I experienced setting up the science in a Pupil Referral Unit (PRU), led to a study of the science provision offered by other PRUs. Using interviews and questionnaires, 26 teachers of science were asked about a number of issues that included; the number of students in the PRU, whether the teacher of science was a qualified science specialist, the methods of accrediting the student's work, the equipment and apparatus that they have available to use, the suitability of their accommodation and the contacts the staff had with other mainstream schools. Issues of isolation were raised by the teachers interviewed.     

From Design and Implementation to Impact of Quality Assurance: An Overview of Some Studies into what Impacts Improvement

Abstract

Access to university has improved following the massification of the Australian higher education sector which started in 1989, with the expansion being funded by a widening of the funding base. In the ten years from 1989, Australian universities enrolled an additional 231,000 students, including an extra 189,000 in undergraduate bachelor degrees. Specific equity policies have further attempted to increase opportunities for students previously excluded from higher education. This paper looks at changes in the composition of the student body, and in the patterns of university funding. Using aggregated national student data sets, some of the changes which have arisen from massification are identified, with particular consideration of designated equity groups.     

Parents' reflections on their children being excluded

Abstract

The human cost of exclusion is not confined to the student. Parents of excluded students feel they are judged as unworthy parents and are mere observers to a decision that has radical implications for their son's/daughter's future education. As partners in the educational enterprise of their child, they are often powerless in the exclusion process and are voiceless in the discourse that surrounds the decision to exclude as well as the decisions regarding future education options. The parents' experience of exclusion is a side of the exclusion story that is not often heard. This article describes how a group of parents experienced their son's/daughter's mainstream schooling and exclusion from a mainstream secondary school. The parents' story is passionate, painful and poignant. It highlights the need for the continued development of inclusive practices in mainstream schools.     

Access Courses and Students from Minority Ethnic Backgrounds

Abstract

This article describes a study of the uptake of places on ‘access’ to higher education courses in Scottish further education (FE) colleges by students from minority ethnic backgrounds. Colleges surveyed recruited access students from minority ethnic backgrounds in close approximation to the proportions attracted to FE in general, despite the commitment to prioritise under‐represented groups, including students from minority ethnic communities. The study found a general acceptance of the principle of positive action by colleges, but little evidence of strategies likely to prove effective. It is suggested that the government's agenda for widening participation in education can only be accomplished when the FE sector recognises ethnicity as an important issue.     

Progressivism Meets Jim Crow: Curriculum Revision and Development in Houston,Texas, 1924-1929∗

As was true for many school districts across the United States during the early decades of the twentieth century, Houston Independent School District sought modernization through a multimillion dollar building program and curricular reform. Houston's new course of study, heavily influenced by the theories of child-centered pedagogy, received widespread praise from curricular experts at the nation's top schools of education. In the 1920s, Houston was a segregated, southern city that, in many ways, shared the conservatism of the region. Nevertheless, Houston's superintendent, E.E. Oberholtzer, was able to overcome resistance from taxpayers and teachers to successfully implement his program. Corporate élites from the petroleum industry, among the biggest boosters of progressive educational reform in Houston, believed that a child-centered curriculum would develop the leadership skills and creative ability needed to train white-collar workers for the expanding economy. Those left behind, primarily students of color, were further disadvantaged in the changing job market. Jim Crow was an essential component to the success of the reform policies in Houston. As twenty-five per cent of the population, African-American students deserved twenty-five per cent of the district's revenues. Segregation allowed the district to use almost one hundred per cent of the money for curriculum reform on only seventy-five per cent of the population. Nevertheless, Houston manufacturers were dependent on unskilled black labor and were hit hard by the exodus of the Great Migration. Thus, corporate élites could not be too blatant in their discrimination against African-Americans. The pro-industry school board responded to the threats of migration and the demands of Houston's vociferous black press by building two new modern African-American high schools, refurbishing "Old Colored High School," and vastly improving the number and condition of elementary schools for black children. Yet, although these new schools did represent a vast improvement over black education before Oberholtzer's arrival in Houston, in the face of massive expenditures and dramatic improvements in white education, the material gains of black students lagged far behind the educational opportunities for white students. While the new, child-centered curriculum excluded black students (except for the heroic efforts of individual black educators), curriculum development excluded the vast majority of teachers. White teachers lost considerable power over pedagogical decisions in their own classrooms as they faced onerous, top-down directives. The district maintained control over teacher education by opening a junior college in 1927 to train white teachers according to the new pedagogy. Many white teachers resented the district's efforts to tie salary raises to increased educational qualifications, even for experienced teachers. In 1928 conflicts with the superintendent contributed to the growth of new memberships in the all-white Houston Teachers Association. In response, the school district passed a significant salary increase for white teachers that was funded partially by reducing the automatic annual increases in black teacher salaries. Intense job competition within African-American schools kept black teachers from protesting their discriminatory salaries and treatment. Ironically, many black teachers, excluded from training in child-centered pedagogy, welcomed additional educational opportunities. Black teachers themselves fought for the creation of Houston Junior College for Negroes, although the new college failed to receive adequate funding. Thus, the school administration modernized white schools by denying new educational opportunities to black students and teachers. While many scholars have criticized the supposed "advantages" of progressive education, in Houston, at least, progressivism operated as another form of unearned white privilege.     

Don't ask; don't tell: a flawed approach to technology standards in higher education

Abstract

This discussion explores challenges that college of education faculty members in the United States encountered when developing and implementing technology standards for students. The goal of this research project was to gain an understanding of faculty members' experience with technology, particularly in the context of implementing standards in response to the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education requirements for teacher education academic programs. Findings of this qualitative, naturalistic research project revealed a number of faculty concerns regarding technology in teaching and standards for students, including technology's impacts on communication and relationships in teaching, and anxiety around technology use. The discussion concludes with implications for practice and suggestions for further research     

Listening to excluded young people's experiences of e-safety and risk

This article reports on excluded young people's experiences with and management of e-safety and risk. It has importance in exploring these concerns given that excluded young people's voices are very often absent in education and technology research and yet they are potentially more at risk when using Information and Communication Technologies than middle-class young people for whom the risks may be lower. The findings are drawn from an analysis of the in-depth qualitative interviews carried out with 13 permanently and temporarily excluded young people between the ages of 12–15 in a Pupil Referral Unit in South East England. The accounts given by this group of young people suggest that the strategies they deploy to manage their safety online are underdeveloped and inadequate. This points in turn to a need for further interventions to foster and develop these young people's strategies to avoid online risk as part of more general initiatives to develop digital literacy.     

Early childhood literacy: Creating a better world

Abstract

Problem‐posing teaching using multicultural children's literature nourishes an integrated literacy curriculum that supports young children's meaningful learning. This method encourages integrated learning that is both developmentally and culturally meaningful through interacting with story, reading literature, and participating in related learning activities. The problem‐posing method was developed by Paulo Freire [Education for Critical Consciousness, Seabury, New York] and critical pedagogists. The method leads students of any age, experience or ability level to base new learning on personal experience in a way that encourages critical reflection. This method has not been widely used with younger learners, but lends itself well to integrated early childhood literacy development.

This article shows selected qualitative data samples from case studies of early childhood teacher education students as they experience the method in a literacy course and as they use the method with young children. A critical analysis of the students’ work draws out key points regarding literacy development in a rapidly changing world. The teacher education students’ work provides an arena for developing the theory further as they implement theoretically‐based pedagogy with young learners. Data reveal issues regarding critical literacies and postmodern approaches to early childhood education.     

Indian secondary students' understanding of different aspects of health

Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education (HBCSE) at Mumbai, India, undertook a three year Health Education Programme aimed at finding out students' understanding of different aspects of health and the manner in which they understand the spread of communicable diseases. The first part of this project is presented in this paper. The results indicate that students have a 'poor'/'unsatisfactory' understanding of several aspects- nutrition, social and genetic factors- which affect health. The work carried out on students from different socio-economic backgrounds highlights the poor performance of tribal students coming from remote areas. Considering the magnitude of health problems in India, suggestions regarding science education are put forward, including capitalizing on the 'good' understanding of health issues exhibited by female students.     

Inclusion,exclusion and children's rights

Abstract

This case study examines the experiences of a student who was excluded twice from a mainstream school while preparing for GCSE examinations. The authors are the student and his aunt. The exclusions were for an indefinite period and were triggered as a result of the school's inability to respond adequately to recurring epileptic seizures. The student, who has Asperger syndrome and a statement of special educational needs, had not broken any disciplinary code. Teachers' understanding of the label ‘special educational needs’ is questioned. The SEN and Disability Act 2001 has far-reaching implications for school ethos and culture. Schools' failure to anticipate the needs of students with disabilities or SEN may well lead to unlawful discrimination. Inclusive schools will need to recognize that in meeting students' individual needs the institution itself may need to change. Barriers to genuine parent partnership in education must be overcome, and children's participation rights, as confirmed in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, must be respected.     

Locked out: researching destinations and outcomes for pupils excluded from special schools and Pupil Referral Units

This article explores the methodological challenges encountered during a study of destinations and outcomes for pupils permanently excluded from Pupil Referral Units (PRUs) and special schools in England. It outlines the manner in which the key phrases and assumptions embedded within the specification, terms such as routes and trajectories, destinations and outcomes, framed the study – and to some extent the researchers. The article is located within a growing body of scholarly activity that has raised important questions about the epistemological bases of educational research, the representation of complex social realities and methodological issues relating to the identification and tracking of ‘hard to find’ young people. The authors conclude that their apparent inability to find the answers to some rather straightforward questions is in fact data rather than lack of data.     

School Principals’ Influence on Trust: Perspectives of Mothers of Children with Disabilities

ABSTRACT

The authors employed a qualitative research design to explore issues of trust in family–professional relationships. They specifically focused on the nature of trust between mothers of children with disabilities and school principals. Analysis of the mothers’ responses to face-to-face interview questions yielded two primary categories related to their perspectives regarding principals: (a) personal and professional principal attributes and (b) principal actions within the education system, with students, and with students’ families. Subcategories were developed that further delineated the relationships participants had with the principals of their children's educational programs. The authors address implications for school leadership and the establishment of trustworthy family-professional relationships, especially as they impact the lives of students and families in need of special education support.     

When students are failed: 'love' as an alternative education discourse?

This article explores how classist education practices are constituted through education systems and structures and through the habitus of key agents. This school and classroom ethnography focuses on the education practices and habitus of the head teacher of a girls' secondary school, who is also a key agent in the Maltese national education policy community. Though structured through the discourses and institutional practices of the highly selective national system, Ms Sicura's habitus is also a response to the challenges the present conjuncture poses to her. This includes the biographies of her low socio-economic status students and the complex needs they bring to school, as well as the increasingly contradictory demands placed by the decentralisation process of the selective education system. Overwhelmed by these and struggling to offer a valid school experience for her low-achieving students, Ms Sicura responds with a discourse of 'love'. However, this replaces a programme for educational progress. It reproduces the global and national classist education discourses, in which low socio-economic status students are contained by 'care', while middle-class students are offered quality education in competitive market.     

Secondary school students who drop out of school in rural Pakistan: The perspectives of fathers

ABSTRACT

Background: The problem of students dropping out of school is one of the barriers to improving educational outcomes in poor and developing countries.

Purpose: This small scale, in-depth study sought to explore the phenomenon of students who drop out from secondary education, through the perspectives of fathers of such students in a rural district of Pakistan.

Method: Primary data were collected through detailed, individual interviews with 14 fathers whose sons had dropped out from secondary education. The study adopted a framework involving push and pull factors to analyse qualitatively the processes and examine the reasons for dropping out that prevailed inside and outside school.

Findings: The analysis suggested that, from the perspectives of the fathers, family poverty, poor academic performance and issues relating to teachers’ engagement with teaching at school were main factors involved in a student dropping out of school.

Conclusions: The findings from this small scale, detailed analysis of data draw attention to the issues arising from a tension in mainstream teachers’ educational roles in and beyond the school. It further highlights the need for greater investment in secondary education, in order to help to reduce rates of student drop out in the remote rural areas of Pakistan.     

Sexual Harassment of College Students by Lecturers in Zimbabwe

Sexual harassment of female students by their lecturers has become a serious social problem in schools and institutions of higher education in Zimbabwe. The current study is an in-depth follow-up to Zindi's study (1994) and sought to investigate and establish whether or not inappropriate relationships between male lecturers and female students exist; whether female lecturers sexually harass male students; and whether there is a relationship between sexual harassment and students' performance in their studies. There may be a relationship between sexual harassment and the performance of female students in examinations. The results of a questionnaire completed by 83 students in one higher education institution in Zimbabwe revealed the widespread sexual harassment of female students by male lecturers and the different perceptions of such harassment held by male and female students. Possible implications of these findings to education are discussed and recommendations made.     

Further Towards An Analysis of PGCE Courses

Abstract

This article describes the author's experiences of tutoring on a College of Further Education BTEC course designed to enable qualified nurses to continue their professional education. In particular it focuses upon the relevance of an individual module on ‘Caring for Older People’ for enrolled nurses seeking conversion to registered nurse status. It discusses ways in which students who were keen to extend their knowledge and further their careers in nursing were poorly‐served by a system which stood to profit from their fees but which paid little attention to meeting their self‐defined most pressing needs.     

A Study of Pupil Failures and Subject Failures in Chicago

Abstract

This study investigated teachers' sense of efficacy and biases in their decisions to refer students to special education. Teachers (N = 240) read a case study about a student with academic difficulties and judged the appropriateness of the student's regular class placement and whether they would refer the student. Teachers were randomly assigned to one of six conditions, in which student socioeconomic status (SES) and etiology of the learning problem were varied. Findings revealed that teachers who perceive themselves as ineffectual consider regular education inappropriate for underachieving students from low-SES families; teachers who believe that they are effective do not differentiate students by SES. Further, teachers referred students whose learning problems had an unspecified etiology more than those whose problems were medically or environmentally based. Thus, teachers' referral decisions appear to be biased by variables unrelated to the specific academic difficulties of the student.     

African-American early childhood teachers' decisions to refer African-American students

Existing literature regarding European-American teachers' referrals of African-American students for special education programs is abundant. However, literature that explains African-American teachers' referrals of African-American students, in their own voices, is limited. This qualitative study examines the influences guiding African-American teachers' decisions to refer African-American students for special education programs. It uses, as a conceptual framework, several researchers' investigations of influences guiding teacher praxis. From these collective works, a conceptual model was developed as a ''teachers' decisions to refer'' perspective that served as a framework for examining influences that may have guided the participants' referral decisions. Findings revealed that African-American teachers have a collective teacher way of knowing and that socially constructed images of race and gender influenced their referral decisions. Additionally, participant interviews revealed that African-American teachers tended to refer based on the need to find assistance for students with special needs.     

Futures education for the gifted

Futures education is an important area for educators of the gifted who are interested in leadership potential for it develops those skills which students can use to meet the issues and challenges of today's and tomorrow's world.     

Ongoing inequality in a 'knowledge economy': Perceptions and actions

The concept of the 'knowledge economy' is increasingly used to underpin education policy in developed countries. In Australia, it has been applied to post-compulsory education policy, with efforts to increase retention in senior secondary education and reform of vocational education in the senior years. The article draws on two research projects with senior secondary schools. Many students (and their teachers and parents) perceived qualifications not so much as providing the knowledge considered necessary by government policy for the contemporary economy, but rather as a 'screen' used by employers to sort and select. Knowledge of opportunity structures and access to resources, while not only defined by social class, operated to create differential access to available choices in the educational market place. Despite ongoing inequality, the article argues that the hope many students expressed in relation to education can be fulfilled in practice.