Denying the sexual subject: schools' regulation of student sexuality

This article examines some of the discourses and practices through which schools produce and regulate student sexual identities. It suggests that schools' ‘official culture’ can be seen as a discursive strategy which identifies a preferred student subject that is ‘non‐sexual’. This preference is communicated through the contradictory nature of discourses and practices which constitute ‘official school culture’ around student sexuality. These discourses work to simultaneously acknowledge student sexuality and position young people as ‘childlike’. Through the tension created by these contradictory positionings, schools can be seen to undermine the kind of sexual agency that young people might access to support their sexual well‐being. It is concluded that schools' deployment of discourses around sexuality produces student sexual positionings that may in fact dilute sexuality education's ‘effectiveness’ (in terms of the production of sexually responsible citizens).     

RESEARCH SECTION: Examining the nature and perceived causes of indiscipline in Zimbabwean secondary schools

The problem of student indiscipline is an issue of concern for teachers and parents around the world. Teachers need to maintain student discipline and for them to do so it is important that they also understand the nature of discipline problems. This study, by Lawrence Kofi Ametepee, who is studying for a PhD in special education, Morgan Chitiyo, board certified behaviour analyst and Assistant Professor of Special Education, both at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, USA, and Susan Abu, who is currently a graduate student in the Department of Women's Studies at Texas Women's University, was designed to examine the nature and perceived causes of student indiscipline in Zimbabwean secondary schools. The authors anticipate that such an examination will promote teachers’, parents’ and policy makers’ understanding of student indiscipline, which will, in turn, enhance disciplinary policies and practices, making schools safer for all students and more effective in their role as educational and socialising agents.     

Comparing children's and student teachers’ ideas about science concepts

Children and teachers may not think in the same way about particular science concepts. Such parallel lines of thought can compound children's confusion and misunderstanding as they learn science at primary school. The situation could be more acute when student teachers are teaching science, because of their limited experience of considering children's ideas. This paper investigates children's and student teachers’ ideas about certain science concepts: ‘animal’, ‘flower’, ‘living’, ‘force’ and ‘energy’. The ideas and understandings of 96 children and 168 student teachers were explored. Results showed that the student teachers and children had similar ideas about ‘flower’ and ‘animal’, whereas they evidenced very different responses to ‘living’, ‘energy’ and ‘force’. Implications for classroom practice are considered.     

Teaching at Master's level: between a rock and a hard place

The considerable focus on capturing the ‘student experience’ has not been matched by investigations into the views and experiences of those teaching and managing programmes. This study aims to contribute to redressing the balance. An online survey of staff responsible for Postgraduate Taught (PGT) programmes in the UK elicited 382 responses from staff in 60 different institutions. Findings relating to perceptions of challenges their students face, students’ preparedness for Master's level study and the influence of institutional culture are reported. PGT students were seen as dealing with complexity and juggling multiple demands. A gap between PGT students’ readiness for study at this level, the QAA's vision of Master's study, and institutional assumptions about student support required was identified. For this gap to be closed, we suggest a review of institutional practices is required.     

The contribution of assessment experiences to student teachers' self-efficacy in competence-based education

Earlier research argues that educational programmes based on social cognitive theory are successful in improving students' self-efficacy. Focussing on some formative assessment characteristics, this qualitative research intends to study in-depth how student teachers' assessment experiences contribute to their self-efficacy. We interviewed 15 s year student teachers enrolled in a competence based teacher educational programme. Thematic content analysis results reveal that the assessment characteristics ‘authenticity’ and ‘feedback’ exert a positive influence on student teachers self-efficacy during all phases of the portfolio competence assessment. The results provide a fine-grained view of several types of self-efficacy information connected with these assessment phases.     

Revealing the Iceberg: Creative Writing,Process & Deliberate Practice

Historical attitudes to literary creativity often focus on it as a genetic or innate characteristic. Ericsson's notion of ‘deliberate practice’ and Simon & Chase's ‘ten‐year rule’, however, have shown the importance of sustained practice to achieve high‐level performance. The iceberg illusion of elite performance leaves observers marvelling at the end product without an appreciation of the hours of work beneath the surface. This case study considers how attitudes to student creative writing may be altered by emphasising creative process. Students engaged in creative writing which literalised the iceberg metaphor, placing greater focused on the ‘submerged’ planning, drafting and revision alongside the ‘visible’ end product. Utilising the extended mind hypothesis, student responses demonstrate the importance of planning to order and develop their ideas. The benefits of encouraging an approach to creativity that negates innatist explanations in favour of a growth mindset or deliberate practice approach are evidenced.     

The reflection on the blackboard: student teacher self‐evaluation

A common aim of teacher education is to encourage prospective teachers to analyze carefully their instructional performance. Yet, research on teacher cognition heretofore has concentrated primarily on experienced teachers’ planning and instructional thinking. We need more information on how student teachers think about and engage in the evaluation of their teaching performance. This study used data from initial structured interviews to elicit student teachers’ self‐evaluation concerns and examined the student teachers’ journals, a final written self‐evalution, and tapes from post‐teaching interviews to create a profile of each student teacher's responses about self‐evaluation. In this paper I analyze the student teachers’ pre‐conceptions about success, examine their processes of self‐evaluation, and explore a conception of “interactive self‐evaluation.” I offer suggestions about the conditions that may enable student teachers to enhance their analytical processes.     

An Experiment to Evaluate the Efficacy of Cognitive Tutor Geometry

Abstract

This randomized, controlled field trial estimated the causal impact of a technology-based geometry curriculum on students’ geometry achievement, as well as their attitudes toward mathematics and technology. The curriculum combines learner-centered classroom pedagogy with individualized, computer-based student instruction. Conducted over a 3-year period in eight high schools within an urban fringe district, the study found that students assigned to the treatment curriculum scored 19% of a standard deviation lower on the geometry posttest than their counterparts assigned to the district's standard curriculum, but found no statistically significant impact on students’ attitudes toward mathematics and technology. Researchers also collected observation and interview data on teachers’ instructional practices. These data suggest that many teachers had difficulty implementing the treatment curriculum's learner-centered pedagogy. In fact, observed levels of learner-centered practices were only modestly higher in treatment classes than in control classes. In both treatment and control classes, however, higher levels of learner-centered pedagogy were associated with higher student achievement in geometry.     

Becoming a history teacher: observations on the beliefs and growth of student teachers

This article reports on history student teachers’ development and their beliefs about teaching and good teachers. The data consist of several essays of 18 respondents written during their education, and interviews with five students. Most respondents had become interested in the subject very early, and independently of formal school education. Models adopted during early school years, however, did influence their attitudes towards teaching and teacher's role. Typically the student teachers’ concentration was self-centred or focused on their own classroom behaviour. They tended to overestimate lesson content and resorted to content expertise and minute lesson plans as a reaction to teaching problems.     

Using the PSSC Laboratory Course in the First Year of College

Summaries

English

In the physical sciences, laboratory instruction has always taken place alongside classroom instruction. Undergraduate physics education has been a mixture of theoretical and experimental instruction, where the theoretical part plays the dominant role. The freshman laboratory holds a prominent role because it is the place where the student acquires the skills and attitudes that will help him understand the advanced subjects.

The freshman laboratory is particularly important in countrieswhere the student's instruction in experimentation is practically non‐existent at the secondary‐school level. In these cases, where the freshman laboratory is the student's first exposure to experimental science, we are particularly concerned that together with learning the ‘right’ things the student should develop the ‘right’ attitudes; as the ‘right’ attitudes can encourage curiosity and motivation for lifelong learning.     

Counter narratives in ‘naughty’ students' accounts: challenges for the discourse of behaviour management

The paper is based on a research project that sought to understand schools' behaviour management strategies from the perspective of students who had the most experience of them. It focuses on the contrasting ways in which teacher and student subjectivities are framed and positioned within the discourse. It considers how student accounts were constructed within the framework of the project by engaging with Butler's ideas of how one gives an account of oneself in response to another's call. Also heeding Foucault's call to pay attention to the conditions of truth-telling, the paper looks at how student accounts can be read and put to use. Pupil accounts reveal other selves that encourage a re-thinking of the prior recognition of pupils as (primarily) ‘naughty’ pupils and pose the question of whether they exhibit an aesthetics of the self that maintains a critical relation to existing norms. By destabilising recognition, they expose the limits of the dominant discourse of behaviour management and encourage a deconstructive stance of ‘persistent critique’ towards it. Along the way, the paper also touches upon the methodological dilemmas in researching behaviour management.     

Westernization and social transformations in Chinese music education, 1895-1949

Editor's note: ’Dear Mum and Dad’ is rather different from the kind of academic article that the Journal usually publishes, in that it is an autobiographical account of one person's educational experiences. The paper tells the story of a young woman's three years as a student at Nottingham University through her letters to her parents written between 1952 and 1955. Memory and reflection engage with this contemporary source to produce both a vivid and humorous reconstruction of student life in the 1950s, and the identification of a set of serious issues concerning gender and higher education. Young middle‐class women at university were involved in learning financial independence, developing communal life in their halls of residence, investigating relationships with male students individually and collectively, and making subject and career choices. This subjective account reminds us that the parameters of the feminine norm were not cultural fixtures of the higher education institutions of the 1950s, to be passed on with the degree certificate. They were explored, contested and renegotiated by the women students themselves.     

Strategies and students: beginning teachers' early encounters with national policy

The 1‐year Postgraduate Certificate in Education Secondary English method course at the University of Sheffield's School of Education has, since 2001, asked its students to write an essay of around 4000 words on their initial understanding and experience of the National Strategies promoted by the United Kingdom's Department for Education and Skills. The essay expects a critical, reflective and analytical piece of writing that records the student teacher's developing views on the place, role and value of the National Strategies in the classroom. Using grounded theory and content analysis techniques, this small‐scale study of the 2005 cohort identifies common perceptions regarding the National Strategies among student teachers of English and seeks to categorise these to account for their developing identities as future English teachers. Drawing on Twiselton's identification of teacher types, Task Manager, Curriculum Deliverer and Concept/Skill Builder, and Shulman's classification of knowledges necessary for teaching, this article will argue that the National Strategies and their respective Frameworks, while successful in moving teachers on from the role of ‘Task Managers’, runs the risk of locking teachers into being ‘Curriculum Deliverers’, and not developing the pedagogical content knowledge necessary for teaching English expertly.     

Re-conceptualising graduate employability: the importance of pre-professional identity

Despite efforts to broaden the concept of graduate employability, there remains an overarching focus on developing industry-relevant employability skills. The skills-based approach is, however, too narrow and does not fully capture the complexity of graduate work-readiness. This paper argues for the redefining of graduate employability by embracing pre-professional identity (PPI) formation. PPI relates to an understanding of and connection with the skills, qualities, conduct, culture and ideology of a student's intended profession. The ‘communities of practice’ model is drawn upon to demonstrate how PPI can be developed during university years. Here, a student makes sense of his/her intended profession through multiple memberships and differing levels of engagement with various communities within higher education's ‘landscape of practice’. Example communities include professional associations, student societies, careers services and employers. Implications for stakeholders are discussed.     

Experience is Not The Whole Story: The Integral Role of the Situation in Dewey's Democracy and Education

The central objective of Dewey's Democracy and Education is to explain ‘what is needed to live a meaningful life and how can education contribute?’ While most acquainted with Dewey's educational philosophy know that ‘experience’ plays a central role, the role of ‘situations’ may be less familiar or understood. This essay explains why ‘situation’ is inseparable from ‘experience’ and deeply important to Democracy and Education’s educational methods and rationales. First, a prefatory section explores how experience is invoked and involved in pedagogical practice, especially experience insofar as it is (a) experimental, (b) direct, and (c) social‐moral in character. The second and main section on situations follows. After a brief introduction to Dewey's special philosophical use of ‘situation’, I examine how situations are implicated in (a) student interest and motivation; (b) ‘aims’ and ‘criteria’ in problem‐solving; and (c) moral education (habits, values, and judgements). What should become abundantly clear from these examinations is that there could be no such thing as meaningful education, as Dewey understood it, without educators’ conscious, intentional, and imaginative deployment of experience and situations.     

Productive engagements with student difference: Supporting equity through cultural recognition

In this paper, the focus is on how a group of Australian educators support student equity through cultural recognition. Young's theorising of justice is drawn on to illuminate the problematic impacts arising from the group's efforts to value students’ cultural difference associated, for example, with quantifying justice along distributive lines and with essentialising student difference as negation and lack within a frame of cultural imperialism. These theoretical tools draw attention to, and support a critical examination of, the social rules and relations within the school that create barriers to equity. Towards reconciling discrepancies relating to how student difference might best be supported, the paper endorses the prevailing imperative of centring students’ perspectives and experiences. Such centring remains crucial to educators recognising the partiality and interest within their attempts to ‘help’ marginalised students and disrupting the relations of teacher privilege and authority that reinscribe domination, control and exclusion.     

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.     

Seventh grade students' mental models of the greenhouse effect

This constructivist study investigates 225 student drawings and explanations from three different schools in the midwest in the US, to identify seventh grade students' mental models of the greenhouse effect. Five distinct mental models were derived from an inductive analysis of the content of the students' drawings and explanations: Model 1, a ‘greenhouse’ for growing plants; Model 2, greenhouse gases cause ozone depletion or formation, causing the Earth to warm; Model 3, greenhouse gases, but no heating mechanism, simply gases in the atmosphere; Model 4, greenhouse gases ‘trap’ the sun's rays, heating the Earth; and Model 5, the sun's rays are ‘bounced’ or reflected back and forth between the Earth's surface and greenhouse gases, heating the Earth. Science textbooks are critiqued in light of the students' mental models and curricular and instructional implications are explored.