The utilisation of a school self‐evaluation instrument

School quality care has become important in many Western countries. Expectations are high, but little is known about the nature and extent of the use of self‐evaluation instruments within schools. From this longitudinal study into the use of a Dutch school self‐evaluation instrument, it became clear that schools vary in the extent to which they are able to make use of self‐evaluation results. A minority of schools in this study were able to use the self‐evaluation results for developing measures at the school and classroom level to improve the quality of education. Potential causes for the findings and alternatives for promoting the utilisation of school self‐evaluation instruments are discussed.     

The high‐school science library

Student behavioral and emotional difficulties, often comorbid with each other and with learning difficulties and academic underachievement, have become an increasing concern to educational settings. This article first provides a conceptual framework for child assessment and highlights the role of behavior rating scales and personality inventories. This article reviews the role of behavior rating scales and personality inventories as a tool for screening students whose behavioral and emotional difficulties may affect their learning, their interpersonal relationships at school, and students who may pose significant management problems for teachers. The utility of specific uni- and multidimensional scales is reviewed relative to major behavioral and emotional difficulties shown by school students. Issues with using these tools are discussed. The Student Behavior Survey (SBS), a teacher-report scale, is described to illustrate the relative contributions of these scales.     

The evaluation of a school‐based chemistry method course

The My Class Inventory and two creativity measures ‐ one figural and one verbal ‐ were administered to a sample of 350 students selected from the Grade 6 population of elementary schools in the three Caribbean territories, namely Barbados, Grenada and St Vincent. Analyses pointed to Barbadian schools as having a more favourable classroom learning environment for creative production than the other two territories. The level of creativity demonstrated by Barbadian students was also significantly higher than that of their counterparts in Grenada and St Vincent.     

The robustness of pre‐school children’s tendency to count discrete physical objects

When pre‐school children count an array of objects containing one that is broken in half, most count the halves as two separate objects. Two studies explore this predisposition to count discrete physical objects (DPOs) and investigate its robustness in the face of various manipulations. In Experiment 1, 32 children aged three–four years counted arrays of intact and broken objects, comprising familiar objects known to be separable (e.g. a lolly and its stick) or non‐separable (e.g. a toothbrush). The meaning of presenting a broken object was made explicit as some children saw a ‘naughty Ted’ causing the breakage. The DPO bias was robust in the face of these familiarity and context manipulations. Experiment 2 tested whether the DPO bias could be overcome by teaching children a strategy for counting two parts as one whole and also considered whether children’s prior knowledge of cardinality was associated with the bias. Only eight children (33%) benefited from the strategy teaching. At a second post‐test two to three days later, half of these had reverted to their DPO bias. Cardinality knowledge was not associated with improvement. The robustness of the bias to count DPOs is discussed in terms of innate predispositions and abstracted representations.     

The English day TB schools 1910‐39

We did not take much part in the life of the university, and we suffered many restrictions. We were asked always to wear gloves in the town (and of course hats!); we must not ride a bicycle in the main streets, nor take a boat out on the river in the daytime unless accompanied by a chaperon who must be either a married woman or one of the college dons. ^{1 1}1 Quoted in Ann Phillips ed., A. Newnham Anthology (Cambridge, 1979), 38.      

Towards a More Authentic Science Curriculum: The contribution of out‐of‐school learning

In many developed countries of the world, pupil attitudes to school science decline progressively across the age range of secondary schooling while fewer students are choosing to study science at higher levels and as a career. Responses to these developments have included proposals to reform the curriculum, pedagogy, and the nature of pupil discussion in science lessons. We support such changes but argue that far greater use needs to be made of out‐of‐school sites in the teaching of science. Such usage will result in a school science education that is more valid and more motivating. We present an “evolutionary model” of science teaching that looks at where learning and teaching take place, and draws together thinking about the history of science and developments in the nature of learning over the past 100 years or so. Our contention is that laboratory‐based school science teaching needs to be complemented by out‐of‐school science learning that draws on the actual world (e.g., through fieldtrips), the presented world (e.g., in science centres, botanic gardens, zoos and science museums), and the virtual worlds that are increasingly available through information technologies.     

The decentralisation of the school system in post‐communist Romania

Following the fall of the Iron Curtain in December 1989, the Romanian system of education has started a deep process of reconstruction that asked for a comprehensive package of reforms among which decentralisation. Broadly the paper aims to make a contribution to the emerging knowledge base about the realities of restructuring of post‐communist education systems and the impact that governance through markets is having on public services. The paper focuses on presenting and discussing the attempts to decentralise pre‐higher education in Romania in considering the role of the state and governance in the provision of public services and the introduction of market mechanisms in education. The decentralisation of education has been proposed by the then Minister of Education Andrei Marga. Although decentralisation in pre‐higher education has been piloted for three academic years and the policy documents that introduced it have been permanently amended and updated, more than a decade later, this reform has not reached its aims mainly due to the various changes on the political scene. However, provided that no major amendments will be made to the Laws of National Education (2009), decentralisation in pre‐higher education will be a reality from 2010–11.     

《牛津小学英语》5A Unit 1 The first day of school

教学环境：今年五月，我参加了张家港市教学能手课堂教学能力考核。笔者在课前两个小时才知道课题，两小时内在无任何通讯设备、网络环境支持的条件下进行独立备课，并制作课件。     

Impediments to Partnership: A literature review of school‐university links

Partnership innovations between teacher educators on school and university sites have become ubiquitous. Calls for bridging the theory/practice gap have been answered with reappraisal and restructuring of programs. The literature on the rationale and implementation of a partnership approach has grown steadily since the early 1980s. Praise for measures that promote increased and meaningful interaction between the key players is now almost universal. Ironically, simultaneously, this documentation reveals the challenges as well as the promises of partnership. Clear impediments to the creation and nurturing of partnership have emerged. This paper takes as its principal focus an exploration of the literature that examines the range of barriers encountered by teachers of future teachers.