Teachers,teaching and educational exclusion: Pupil Referral Units and pedagogic practice

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative research project carried out in a UK Pupil Referral Unit during the 2000/01 academic year. It describes and analyses the strategies adopted by a small group of Behaviour Support Service teachers in order to achieve their everyday occupational goals. It is argued that despite their commitment to the reintegration of excluded pupils into mainstream schools, the pedagogic practices adopted by these teachers served to contribute to an amplification, rather than a moderation, of pupil disaffection and misbehaviour. Teachers' perceptions and understandings about the nature and aims of lesson content varied whilst concerns and preoccupations about classroom control remained constant. Within the context of ongoing government debates in the UK surrounding ‘social exclusion’ and, more specifically, educational exclusion, these findings call for a widening of the research agenda in these areas to include more detailed investigations of occupational circumstance and practitioner needs within non‐traditional school settings.     

Confirmatory factor analysis of the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2

The aim of this study was to evaluate the factor structure ofthe Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2) using confirmatory factor analysis. Volunteer participants (n= 1213) completed the CSAI-2 approximately 1 h before competition and the data were analysed in two samples. The hypothesized model showed poor fit indices in both samples independently (Robust Comparative Fit Index: sample A=0.82, sample B =0.84) and simultaneously (Comparative FitIndex = 0.83), suggesting that the factor structure proposed by Martens et al. is flawed. Our findings suggest that a limitation of the Cognitive Anxiety scale derives from phrasing items around the word ‘concerned’ rather than ‘worried’. We suggest that being concerned about an impending performance does not necessarily mean that an athlete is experiencing negative thoughts, but that the athlete is acknowledging the importance and difficulty of the challenge and is attempting to mobilize resources to cope. The present results question the use of the CSAI-2 as a valid measure of competitive state anxiety.     

Environmental Ethics and Ontologies: Humanist or Posthumanist? The Case for Constrained Pluralism

This paper will evaluate a range of humanist and posthumanist ethical positions as useful bases for environmental education. It will conclude that a range of such positions can be seen as embracing respect for non-human nature. Therefore, environmental education can effectively embrace ethical pluralism to some extent. Embracing a degree of pluralism potentially makes it easier for teachers and students with a wide range of preconceptions to become more pro-environmental, while highly committed and exclusive approaches can prove divisive. However, some humanist and posthumanist positions are grounded in dismissive or reductive attitudes to non-human nature. In summary, there is no one suitable ethical basis for environmental education in the humanist and non-humanist traditions, but several. However, the key to the effectiveness of any of these is full acceptance that human and non-human flourishing are integrally related, and that non-human nature must therefore be both respected (that is, both admired and cared for), and not merely when this meets short-term instrumental human goals.     

Who's Afraid of Assessment? remarks on Winch and Gingell's reply

This paper defends my argument that criterion-referenced assessment should not be used to render an education system accountable to the state. Winch and Gingell's reply to my original paper understands me as denying the 'plasticity' of abilities. Considerable space is devoted to further discussion of this issue.'Plasticity' is not denied, but problems about the 'identity' of capacities, abilities, processes and rules are explored in some depth. Winch and Gingell defend certain kinds of pedagogy such as rote learning and 'teaching to the test'. I remind them that I was not actually discussing pedagogy in the original paper.     

The Construction of Masculinity within Boys’ Physical Education [1]

This case-study of a multiethnic, inner-city secondary school attempts to uncover the fundamental features of masculine construction within the lives of two groups of adolescent males. Placing these pupils at the centre of the research, an ethnographic analysis is presented whereby boys' physical education is located as a strategic site within the development of masculinity. Outlining the existence of various pupil masculinities within the school, the boys concerned provide evidence as to the way in which a selection of masculine forms may evolve according to differing internalised value structures, and how the academic ethos of the institution itself might influence the personal identity and hierarchical peer group position of certain individuals.