The problem of ‘the problem with educational research’

This paper takes up the question of the way in which ‘the problem with educational Research’ is represented. It takes as its point of departure two recent views on ‘the Problem’ — one expressed by an educational journalist and one presented by the Australian Council of Deans of Education. It locates these within a larger frame of international debate about educational research and its problems and considers how these arise out of particular dispositions towards educational research and, by extension towards, education itself.     

Rating students’ problem behaviour: the role of teachers’ individual characteristics

This study examined the role of teachers’ personal characteristics and mental health status on their frequency ratings of student problem behaviour. A sample of 121 primary school teachers were asked to rate the frequency of a student’s behavioural problems, and to self-report their personality traits, psychopathology symptoms and burnout. Overall, the results revealed that teachers’ ratings were significantly predicted by their psychopathology symptoms and to a lesser extent by their personality traits and burnout levels. Student and teacher demographic characteristics were also predictive of teacher ratings. Since teachers are among the primary informants of students’ mental health, the results of this study pose the need to take into consideration teachers’ individual characteristics, when their ratings are critically evaluated during a student’s referral process.     

Fostering children’s relationship with nature: exploring the potential of Forest School

Forest School offers children opportunities to explore the natural environment regularly over an extended period of time. It is based on six key principles, one of which states Forest School fosters a relationship with nature and develops long-term pro-environment attitudes through regular personal experiences in nature. We consider to what extent this aim is achieved by exploring the published evidence. We identify that a relationship with nature could be demonstrated under six themes although there is little robust evidence to support this. We suggest further research is carried out directly linked to this aim of Forest School.     

Children’s Narrating as a Way of Learning About Other People’s Beliefs in Interaction with Teachers

As a genre of talk, narratives represent important building blocks in children’s learning in many fields. The purpose of the study presented in this article is to examine how teachers can encourage children’s learning about people’s beliefs through narrating. Narratives play an important part in children’s learning to understand other people and how they will act according to what they believe, think or know. This study is based on video observations of six children, 3 and 4 years old, and their spontaneous personal narratives told to teachers over a period of 8 months. The narrative analysis revealed that in most of the narratives the teachers were passive listeners or were concerned about the structure of events. The teachers seldom asked questions about the children’s mental state or disagreed with the child in ways that revealed their different beliefs. Suggestions about implications of this study are that early childhood teacher education should focus on talking with children about what they may think or believe concerning narrated events, and also reveal what they think and believe themselves.     

What’s the problem with ‘policy alignment’? The complexities of national reform in Australia’s federal system

ABSTRACT

This article problematises contemporary debates in favour of ‘policy alignment’ by considering the complexities emerging from attempts to forge greater alignment of policies and processes across state schooling systems in the Australian federation. We begin by articulating our conceptual approach to policy alignment, after which we examine Australian and international debates relating to alignment in schooling policy. We then consider how policy actors are engaging with debates and challenges relating to alignment, drawing upon interviews with senior bureaucrats in Australian state education departments and agencies. Our findings suggest policy actors see misalignment as a problem but do not necessarily see alignment as the solution. This raises complex questions about the logic and value of pursuing alignment in federations.     

Student “burnout” as a mediator of the stress-outcome relationship

One hundred thirty-six graduate social work students participated in a questionnaire study designed to test the mediating influence of student burnout (strain) in the impact of student-specific stress on negative consequences. Consistent with the proposed stressstrain (burnout)outcome model, burnout was significantly related to each of three stress indicators and to two outcome measures (intention to quit school and physical and psychological symptoms). In five of six tests, thedirect stress-to-outcome relationship was small and nonsignificant, consistent with the crucial mediating role of burnout. Contrary to previous model tests involving parenting, work, and student stress, there was only very limited evidence for a buffering influence of social support. Implications were drawn for stress theory and for policy focusing on assessment of student burnout and benefits arising from its alleviation.     

A survey of the effect of leader’s social intelligence on employee’s perception of interpersonal justice: the mediating role of shared leadership

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a leader’s social intelligence (SI) on an employee’s perception of interpersonal justice by considering the mediating role of shared leadership. Conceptual model and research hypotheses have been developed by the Marlowe’ SI model (1986 Marlowe, H. A. (1986). Social intelligence: Evidence for multidimensionality and construct independence. Journal of Educational Psychology, 78, 52–58.10.1037/0022-0663.78.1.52[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and the theory of shared leadership and interpersonal justice theory. Research population was Ministry of Education and training employees in TEHRAN; 108 employees were selected for gathering the required data. Data were collected using a standard questionnaire. Reliability testing of questionnaire with Cronbach’s alpha was confirmed by .96 coefficient. For analyzing data and determining the relationships between variables of conceptual model, the covariance-based structural equation modelling with maximum likelihood method has been used. Results provide acceptable evidence of convergent and discriminant validities and internal consistency and item reliabilities of the measure of SI, interpersonal justice and shared leadership. The study contributed to our understanding of the linkage among pro-social attitude, social performance skills, empathetic ability, emotional expressiveness and confidence between shared leadership and interpersonal justice. Results of data analysis show that among SI dimensions, the ‘pro-social attitude’ by .383 coefficient has the highest effect on perceived interpersonal justice. Also among shared leadership dimensions, the ‘perceived shared purpose’ by .378 coefficient has the highest effect on the perceived interpersonal justice.     

Accidents of Birth: Rawls’s Original Position as the Mother’s Womb

This paper examines the history of welfare policy discourse in the United States since the publication of the “Moynihan Report” (1967) and traces its implications for contemporary education policy research. The central thesis is that an overemphasis on “parents” historically invites unwarranted assumptions about autonomy and responsibility, which obfuscates fundamental questions of justice. Children are consequently punished for their parents’ perceived indiscretions. To militate against this tendency the author employs recent feminist critiques of Rawls’s methodology in A Theory of Justice (1999) to reconceptualize the “Original Position” as a mother’s womb in an effort to redirect focus from parents to children. Through this revision, policy discourse can potentially be shifted to more nearly mirror the reasoning applied in Plyler v Doe (1982), which emphasizes finally that children cannot be punished for their parents’ indiscretions.     

Crossing ‘boundaries’ with the collective girl: a poetic intervention into sex education

Feminist poststructuralist approaches to research can authorize different ways of working with different types of texts in search of insight into the discursive constitution of subjects. In this paper I undertake a close reading of women's memories about early sexual experiences generated in a small collective biography workshop. The collective poetic text that emerges from the workshop is analysed in terms of recent feminist sociological research on girls' experiences of (hetero)sex and in terms of Foucault's work on power. Analysis reveals the discursive complexity and deep (and often dangerous) contradictions through which girls negotiate their shifting subjectivities as they become sexual. My readings of this text imply that school sex education programs might attend more closely to the ambiguities of agency and desire experienced by adolescent subjects of the curriculum. Finally, I suggest that reflexive readings of our own (sexed) subjectivities can be productive professional development strategies for teachers of sex education.     

When a problem is more than a teacher’s question

Not only are the problems teachers pose throughout their teaching of great importance but also the ways in which they use those problems make this a critical component of teaching. A problem-posing episode includes the problem setup, the statement of the problem, and the follow-up questions. Analysis of problem-posing episodes of precalculus instructors suggests that their mindset influences how they pose problems. In this paper, we describe the reflexive relationship between an instructor’s mindset and problem-posing episodes.     

China’s policy of Chinese as a foreign language and the use of overseas Confucius Institutes

China’s economic power is changing attitudes towards Mandarin Chinese worldwide. Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) consequently emerges as a subject for research as well as an educational market. This article investigates the modern evolution of CFL curriculum policy that has led to the current rapid growth of the Confucius Institute (CI) around the world, using media sources including government policy, Confucius Institutes themselves, newspaper reports from the Internet, and individual blogs posted by teachers of Chinese language, as well as university academics’ observations. It opens up a discussion of the implications of the development of China’s CFL policy, particularly through the Confucius Institutes, in diversifying the world’s lingua franca and sharing the market of education in the coming era. The analysis indicates that it is unlikely that Chinese will displace English as the world’s most widely used language in the foreseeable future, but the view that the Chinese language is an important element in the future unity of the world has been voiced.     

Children’s solving of ‘Tower of Hanoi’ tasks: dynamic testing with the help of a robot

Abstract

The present study investigated the usefulness of a pre-programmed, teleoperated, socially assistive peer robot in dynamic testing of complex problem solving utilising the Tower of Hanoi. The robot, in a ‘Wizard of Oz’ setting, provided instructions and prompts during dynamic testing to children when they had to solve 3?D Tower of Hanoi puzzles. Participants were 37?second grade 8-year-old children, of whom half received graduated prompts training between pre-test and post-test, delivered by the robot, and half did not. It was found that children’s progression in task accuracy varied considerably, depending on whether or not children were trained in solving Tower puzzles. Trained children showed greater progression in the number of Tower problems that they could solve accurately, made considerably fewer steps, although the Tower puzzles increased quickly in difficulty level. The mean completion time of trained children decreased at a slower rate than that of the untrained children, but both groups of children took considerably more time to think and plan ahead before they started the solving process. Only moderate relations with planning behaviour were found. In general, the study revealed that computerised dynamic testing with a robot as assistant has much potential in unveiling children’s potential for learning and their ways of tackling complex problems. The advantages and challenges of using a robot in educational assessment were discussed.     

The problem of the world＇s population

世界上最大的问题恐怕就是人口问题。如果不能及时控制人口增长的话,未来的地球上恐怕连站着的地方也不会有了。怎么办呢？办法是有的,请看看他们是怎么做的。想不想学呢？[编者按]     

God’s Love as a Theme through the Whole Old Testament

This paper makes studies on God’s love as a theme through the whole Old Testament. First the paper points out the impact of modern science and technology on people’s thoughts and opinions about religions, while laying emphasis on the concept\"God’s love\"and then the paper tracks the deep and great love through Old Testament, trying to demonstrate it in all directions.     

Children’s and Adults’ Views of Punishment as a Path to Redemption

The current work investigated the extent to which children (N=171 6- to 8-year-olds) and adults (N = 94) view punishment as redemptive. In Study 1, children—but not adults—reported that “mean” individuals became “nicer” after one severe form of punishment (incarceration). Moreover, adults expected “nice” individuals’ moral character to worsen following punishment; however, we did not find that children expected such a change. Study 2 extended these findings by showing that children view “mean” individuals as becoming “nicer” following both severe (incarceration) and relatively minor (time-out) punishments, suggesting that the pattern of results from Study 1 generalizes across punishment types. Together, these studies indicate that children—but not adults—may view punishment as a vehicle for redemption.     

Bourdieu’s collective enterprise of inculcation: the moral socialisation and ethical enculturation of medical students

This paper introduces the idea of enculturation to sociology as a compliment to socialisation in the context of Bourdieu’s ‘collective enterprise of inculcation’ and social theory. Enculturation is positioned as a concept that can be used to address formal education as a factor in social reproduction. Following a discussion of socialisation and enculturation and their interrelation, they are further examined in the context of medical education. In particular, I focus on the moral and ethical aspects of medical education and the social or professional reproduction of medical students. I differentiate between ‘medical morality’ or ‘ethos’ and ‘medical ethics’ or ‘eidos’, arguing that the reproduction of the former is predominantly a matter of socialisation whilst the reproduction of the latter is a primarily a function of enculturation. Nevertheless I make clear that any eidos is not independent of the ethos in which is exists and that, therefore, any medical ethics is dependent on the socio-cultural institution of medicine and its moral ethos. Utilising the concepts of eidos and enculturation in Bourdieuan social theory facilitates a focus on the neglected cognitive aspects of social life, including explicitly pedagogic activities, and provides for a degree of indeterminacy or ‘freedom’ in a theoretical perspective that has been criticised for its deterministic implications.