Quantifying Stress in Children

Today there is a greater awareness than hitherto of the existence and effects of pupil stress. There is also the recognition that the causes of pupil stress may be increasing in number and seriousness. However, recognition of this situation does not necessarily increase our understanding of it. In this paper, Ewen Rennie provides an example of the ways in which greater understanding might be achieved. A group of teachers were asked to rate the degree of stress engendered by a number of events. Though the results revealed significant differences from those of similar work undertaken in the past, their real value would be as a basis for comparison with the perceptions of parents and pupils.     

Attachment and the child in school. Part I

Abstract

Using the framework of Attachment Theory and related research and the research and experience of the author, a particular pattern of behaviour is described which can be identified in the classroom. This pattern, known as the Anxious Resistant/Ambivalent Attachment Pattern, is described from a teaching and learning perspective and is illustrated with examples from educational practice. Possible opportunities for intervention are discussed aimed at facilitating change in the pupil and enhancing emotional well being and educational opportunity. This article will be followed by another (Part II) describing other patterns of attachment which have been identified, with the aim of extending the teacher's understanding of the meaning of pupil behaviour and increasing the resilience potential in the learning situation.     

The school leader’s role in school-based development

ABSTRACT

Background: While the school leader’s role is undoubtedly instrumental in school effectiveness, the specific influence of formal leadership on pupil learning is indirect and can be difficult to determine. Research findings suggest that school leaders can influence school organisation and pupil learning by acting catalytically, thus unlocking their schools’ existing potential. In school-based development, school leaders and their staff undergo a workplace development process, using school resources to contribute to it.

Purpose: This article explores the concept of leadership in school-based development, focusing on leading teacher learning processes in relation to pupil learning. The research problem is formulated in the following question: How is the school leader’s role enacted and experienced when enhancing teachers’ learning in school-based development? The intent of the study was to further the understanding of leadership in school-based development.

Sources of information and method: A qualitative interview study was conducted with teachers and leaders from three lower secondary schools, roughly 2 years after the schools participated in a formal school-based development project which was initiated by the Norwegian education authority. To present the findings based on the collected data, narrative texts were constructed.

Findings: The findings draw attention to the importance of leaders’ participation in the teacher learning processes of school-based development. The study highlights the importance of leaders building trust in their schools: development processes must be collegium-rooted with common goals for the whole school. The interplay of culture, structure and content is found to be necessary for successful school-based development. Furthermore, school leaders need to balance internal and external accountability, moving school practices towards local goals, which are constructed within national overall aims.

Conclusions: The study suggests that leaders require an overview of developmental processes to manage to support and progress development; leadership needs to be distributed. Further research on leaders’ learning in relation to school-based development can generate knowledge that serves as a thinking tool, thereby informing leaders’ actions in support of school-based development.     

Improving Mathematics Instruction and Learning in the Junior High School: An Israeli Example

Abstract

A 4‐year project is described which was designed to improve mathematics instruction and achievements in two Israeli junior high schools. Project activities focused on the individual teachers, the mathematics staff, and the organization of instruction at the school level, under the assumption that more efficient teaching would lead to greater pupil learning.

Evaluation data gathered from classroom observation, questionnaires and tests indicated a general positive impact: many teachers improved their teaching strategies, more curricular material was being covered in class, a school‐wide program for mathematics instruction was established, teamwork among teachers was formalized, and pupil achievements improved.     

The silent voices: Pupil participation for gender equality and diversity

ABSTRACT

Background: The international body of research on student voice concludes that active pupil participation has multiple positive effects on the work environment and learning for pupils. In a large study on gender equality and diversity work in Swedish schools, it became evident that pupils wanted to be active participants. However, pupils considered that their wishes were, to a large extent, ignored. Therefore, it is important to try to understand this further by investigating pupils’ perceptions of their experiences.

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to explore how discourses of participation and power are practised, not practised, and materialised, by focusing in-depth on pupils’ representations of gender equality and diversity work within a small sample of Swedish schools.

Methodology: The study is based on data from 10 focus group interviews with 43 pupils from 4 different schools, 2 compulsory schools (pupil ages 6–15) and 2 upper secondary schools (pupil ages 16–18), in Sweden. The thematic analysis utilised a gender perspective anchored in a critical policy analysis approach.

Analysis and Findings: The analysis of focus group data identified three pupil representations of gender equality and diversity work: a onetime occurrence, longing for participation and the (un)fair teacher. These representations were derived from and intertwined with discourses on pupil participation and power. Three sub-discourses were found within the discourse on participation and power: normative barriers to participation, structural barriers to participation and openings in the barriers to participation. The first two sub-discourses support the maintenance of unequal power relations between adults and pupils, while the third challenges these power relations.

Conclusions: Our study suggests that no substantial levels of participation or power among the pupils were represented at the schools. Instead, the analysis visualises pupils as expressing powerlessness and disengagement. However, the discourse Openings in the barriers to participation, together with pupils’ democratic abilities, has the potential to enable change and the development of pupil participation in schools.     

Bullying and the Postgraduate Secondary School Trainee Teacher: An English case study

This paper reports the findings of a study which investigated primary BEd student teachers' scientific backgrounds, attitudes towards science and towards teaching science, their confidence to teach science, and their scientific knowledge and understanding. The findings are discussed in relation to what primary teachers need to know in order to be able to teach science, and to our developing understanding of how science is perceived, experienced and understood by learners. The paper concludes with a discussion of the effectiveness of a pilot course developed to address the issues raised by the study. It is 'learner centred' and focused on the development of knowledge and understanding rather than process, and on factors likely to promote pupil (and student) understanding. The outcomes of the pilot work raise further substantive issues.     

Cartoons as visual representations of the development of primary school children’s understanding of bullying behaviours

ABSTRACT

This study adopts a creative methodology to investigate how cartoons can serve as visual representations of primary school children’s understanding of bullying and compares how their understanding develops over time. The study was carried out in Northern Ireland where the Addressing Bullying in Schools (Northern Ireland) Act 2016 will require schools to follow a new statutory definition of bullying. To investigate the behaviours that children associate with bullying, a set of 16 original stick figure cartoons was devised. The cartoons were shown to a sample of Year 3 and Year 7 pupils from two different primary schools in Northern Ireland (N = 90). Pupils were asked to record which scenarios they considered to be bullying or not bullying. They were then invited to write their own definitions of bullying and to creatively illustrate them using stick figures. A total of eight gender-specific pupil focus groups were conducted across the two schools to explore the key elements which the pupils considered significant to their understanding of bullying. The study highlights the value of this creative participatory approach and found a wide range of behaviours which children associate with bullying but also considerable variation among pupils in terms of their understanding. Levels of understanding in Year 7 were more nuanced than those in Year 3, but there were no discernible differences by pupil gender. Conclusions are drawn in terms of the new legislation in Northern Ireland, but also in relation to the benefits of adopting a creative research methodology using cartoons as visual representations with children to explore complex pastoral issues.     

Cognitive and Affective Outcomes in School Effectiveness Research

ABSTRACT

School effectiveness research has traditionally focused on basic cognitive pupil outcomes such as language and mathematics achievement. In this article however we address a research question that goes beyond this limited scope by studying both cognitive and affective outcomes of education in combination with each other. By looking at cognitive and affective outcomes at two different levels, i.e. school and the individual pupil, it is possible to make assertions about the relationship between the two outcome types at these levels. The main question in this study with respect to school effectiveness research is: ‘Can schools be both cognitive and affective effective?’

To answer this question a sample of 7,000 pupils in 212 primary schools in the Netherlands was used, providing information about cognitive, affective and pupil background variables. Firstly the relationship between affective and cognitive outcomes at pupil level is shown, using a LISREL model to show how these variables interact. Secondly the relative positions of schools with respect to their effectiveness in the cognitive and affective outcomes are compared in order to show the degree of consistency in the effectiveness of both outcome domains. These correlations appear to be small, but positive.     

Stress in Teaching: a study of occupational stress and its determinants,job satisfaction and career commitment among primary schoolteachers

A questionnaire survey of 710 Maltese primary schoolteachers revealed that the level of teacher stress, job satisfaction and career commitment was constituted differently in some of the teacher demographic subgroups. A principal components analysis of the stress ratings of 20 items covering various aspects of the teacher's work environment yielded four factors described in terms of ‘pupil misbehaviour’, ‘time/ resource difficulties’, ‘professional recognition needs’ and ‘poor relationships’. Teacher sex and ability‐group taught interacted significantly with the stress factors. Results also showed that teachers who reported greater stress were less satisfied with their job and less committed to choose a teaching career were they to start life over again. Moreover, the association between the general measure of job stress and the stress due to each of the four stress factors was strongest for ‘pupil misbehaviour’ and ‘time/resource difficulties’. Of the four factors, ‘professional recognition needs’ had the strongest inverse relationship with job satisfaction and career commitment.     

A comparison of teacher referral and pupil self-referral measures relative to perceived school adjustment

This study investigated the relationship between teacher referral and pupil self-referral relative to perceived school adjustment of 417 4th grade pupils. Two major questions were focused upon: (a) To what extent do teachers and pupils agree relative to perceived learning and/or adjustment problems within the classroom? and (b) What are the relationships between teacher referral and pupil self-referral relative to sex of the child and type of problem indicated? The results suggest that a significant relationship exists between teacher referral and pupil self-referral (p <,001). Further, a disproportionate number of males in the sample were referred by their teachers as compared to female students (38% to 12%). However, relative to pupil self-referral, a much higher percentage of females (33%) “referred themselves.” It is suggested that greater consideration should be given by local school districts to including a pupil self-referral component within their overall screening mechanism for the identification of children in need of special education services. Further, school personnel should consider the possibility that their screening results may reflect teacher bias relative to “pupil sex stereotyping” in that males may be over-referred and famales under-referred.     

Guidance in Secondary Education: The Flemish Experience

This paper outlines the characteristics of peer mediation in schools and its potential, evident in the literature, for reducing pupil–pupil conflicts referred to teachers. Then, drawing on personal experience, research and a review of literature, the author argues that for peer mediation projects to be effective they need to be in synergy with the culture of the school, including its approach and vision to the management of conflict. Making this argument requires a means of modelling school culture, which will be outlined. Finally, the author argues that attention also needs to be given to how the service will be sustained.     

Classroom organisation and interactions of pupils with moderate learning difficulties in mainstream and special schools

Abstract

This paper reports a research study which used the technique of systematic classroom observation to describe pupil behaviour and pupil‐teacher and pupil‐pupil interaction in four classrooms in schools for children with moderate learning difficulties. The results are compared with those of a previously published study in mainstream junior‐age classrooms. The results show that a predominantly individualised mode of working with children prevails both in the mainstream and the special school classrooms and also that, despite the smaller class sizes, teachers in the special school classes are even less likely to use whole‐class approaches than those in the mainstream. Conversly they are more likely to use group work. Children in the special school classes receive considerably more individual attention from the teacher than those in the mainstream. Overall levels of pupil‐pupil interaction are similar but in special school classrooms this is less likely to involve more than two children at once.     

Development Planning for Pupil Achievement

When development planning was first introduced some 10 years ago it was regarded as a strategy to assist schools in managing change. Recent research evidence however suggests that schools that exhibit 'best practice' in development planning have transcended its use as a change management strategy and now see it as a means of enhancing pupil achievement. The key distinction between this and former approaches is that the current approach is rooted in classrooms. This shift in emphasis provides the focus for the paper. Research evidence from a variety of sources is used to explain the change of approach and, based on this, a rationale for development planning for pupil achievement is presented. Practical advice on how to implement such a strategy within the context of the DfEE's Target Setting initiative is then given. The paper concludes by describing the management arrangements most common in those schools that use development planning for enhancing pupil achievement.     

The Relationship Between Students’ Achievement and Early School Leaving in Rural Vietnam

Abstract

I am interested in understanding why resolving the key dilemma of redistribution and recognition of difference has proved to be so difficult. In this article I analyse the history of gender equity reform in relation to difference, with particular emphasis on Indigenous issues, applying recent theoretical understandings about equity and difference. The article documents how discourses of difference were framed and addressed in four major gender equity policy documents produced at the national level in Australia. In particular there is an emphasis on how the redistribution‐recognition dilemma is handled in the documents.     

A Method for Computing Accomplishment Quotients on the High-School and College Levels

Abstract

The study investigates relationships among pupil reading behaviors and teacher responses with a sample of 106 primary grade readers. With student background traits such as sex and prior reading achievement controlled, seven different reading behaviors and pupil responses accounted for significant increases in the prediction of teacher behaviors. Pupil reading behaviors had the greatest effect on teacher corrections and word pronunciations. Conversely, pupil background factors had the greatest association with the length of reading assigned and the numbers of grapho- phonemic and prereading cues teachers provided. In view of the findings, the authors suggest that future study of classroom interaction examine the notion that teacher expectations may be at least partially due to then- responses to specific aspects of pupil behavior.     

Adult Education Today and Tomorrow

Educational Management: an ethical critiqueAbstract

This paper argues that much of the management literature in education at the present time is fundamentally flawed and ethically unpalatable. Its current stress upon effectiveness deflects attention from the more central question of what normative ends education should be engaged in pursuing. Its concentration upon treating teachers as resources in a national economic plan reduces the art of teaching to a functional and uncritical application of hierarchical directives. In so doing, it suggests that educational practitioners and recipients are to be viewed in an essentially manipulative manner — the manager/headteacher of the staff, the teacher of the pupil. It is argued that not only is such an approach ethically unacceptable, but that it also has grave practical consequences for education as a whole.     

Understanding and enhancing pupils’ learning progress in schools in deprived communities

ABSTRACT

This paper draws on data from the ‘Raising Pupil Attainment in Key Stage 1 in Stoke-on-Trent’ research project. The particular focus is on how teachers, head teachers and teaching assistants (n?=?59) articulate pupils’ learning success in five highly achieving schools in deprived communities. Six key themes are highlighted which are identified by participants as influencing successful pupil learning and progress. These are analysed in relation to Biesta's theory on the parameters of ‘Good Education’ [Biesta, G. J. J. 2010. Good Education in an Age of Measurement. Boulder, CO: Paradigm] and within Bourdieu's understanding of ‘distinction’ [Bourdieu, P. 1998. Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action. Oxford: Polity Press]. The research reveals that issues related to socialisation and subjectivity are presented as critical and foundational for the more formal measures of success in pupil learning.     

Facilitating student well-being: relationships do matter

Background: Alongside academic and vocational goals, schools are increasingly being called upon to address student well-being. Existing evidence suggests that strong relationships and a sense of connectedness in school communities are important for fostering subjective well-being. However, identifying the specific nature of such relational dynamics, and accommodating the ‘personal’ within school cultures increasingly dominated by ‘performance’ narratives, remains a problematic task.

Purpose: This paper draws on Honneth’s recognition theory to offer fresh insight into how relationships act to facilitate and limit the experience of well-being at school. We suggest that such an approach holds considerable potential for developing teachers’ understanding of the tacit and explicit ways they and their students experience being cared for, respected and valued and the ways in which such actions impact on well-being.

Design and methods: The paper reports the qualitative findings from a large mixed-method study, involving students and staff across primary and secondary schools in three regions of Australia. The qualitative phase involved focus groups with 606 primary and secondary students and individual interviews with 89 teachers and principals.

Results: Across the focus groups and interviews, students and teachers placed substantial emphasis on the importance of relationships, while reporting differences in their views about which relationships support well-being. Alongside this, there were differences in the importance teachers and students placed on each of the three strands of Honneth’s recognition theory (translated for this study as being cared for, respected and valued) for influencing student well-being.

Conclusions: The findings affirm the critical role that relationships play in promoting well-being in the context of schools. Using recognition theory to analyse students’ and teachers’ views and experiences of well-being provides much greater insight into how these relationships are enacted – this being through the mutual experience of being cared for, respected and valued – within the context of schools.     

Making practical work work: using discussion to enhance pupils’ understanding of physics

Background: Practical work is widely seen as a necessary part of a good physics education, but convincing evidence that it impacts positively on pupils’ learning is scarce. Recent work suggests the use of talk and discussion might hold the key to making practical work more educationally productive.

Purpose: The research question that this study aims to answer is: Can the use of targeted discussion improve learning through practical work?

Sample: The study took place in a medium-sized (700-pupil, Years 7–13 (ages 11–18)) mixed-gender independent (fee-paying) day school in southern England. It is academically selective and public examination results are above the national average. The activities were carried out with three teaching groups (n = 73) with a fourth being used occasionally for comparison purposes (giving n = 97).

Design and methods: Pupils were given a number of practical tasks – some from the usual scheme of work, some devised for this project – and given specific time to discuss with a partner the various aspects of the practical such as predictions, devising methods, problem-solving, conclusions or explanations of phenomena. Questionnaires and booklets were used to gather pupil responses. Some audio recording and analysis of pupil-pupil discussion was also done.

Results: There was evidence from booklets pupils filled in during the practical that prescribing the use of discussion at various points in a practical task led to improved outcomes, particularly on the more cognitively challenging tasks. In particular, discussion was seen to turn incorrect responses into correct ones much more frequently than the reverse. In a later exam, pupils who had participated in the discussion activities performed better than a control group on questions which directly related to practical concepts, but performed similarly on the remaining exam questions.

Conclusion: Evidence gathered suggests a more nuanced pattern than that reflected in previous literature: that discussion during practical work can impact positively on pupils’ understanding of ideas related to practical work, but does not necessarily have a positive impact on their wider understanding.