Using autobiographical queer life narratives of teachers to connect personal,political and pedagogical spaces

Autobiographical queer life narratives are communicative spaces where queer teachers take up personal issues of being, becoming, and belonging in contextual and relational analyses of their situated experiences. In this work w/e consider the challenges and risks involved in this research, which, when shared and probed in classroom spaces, is a dangerous exposition of the queer self. With these challenges and risks in mind, w/e examine how our narratives provide fugitive knowledge to inform a pedagogy of ‘resist-stance’ that recognizes, respects, and engages queer identity, difference, history and culture. W/e provide examples of this pedagogy, discussing teaching strategies currently being used to connect the personal, the political and the pedagogical in classroom spaces. W/e also speak of the difficulties of living out this pedagogy as transformative teaching to transgress queer erasure in hetero-normative educational practice.     

An Air of Sharing. A Format of Open Interviewing in a Joint Nordic Project

The five Nordic countries and their respective quality assurance agencies ¹ 1. EVA, FINHEEC, NOKUT, HSV, and the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Iceland. have convened annually for over a decade to exchange experiences and discuss issues concerning quality assurance in higher education. In recent years this has resulted in a regional network for the quality assurance agencies (NOQA). During this period, methodological issues have increasingly been emphasised within the network’s activities, and the current article presents and discusses a new format of open interviewing in a setting where the quality assurance work of four higher education institutions were analysed. The openness of the process was the key in providing an opportunity for the higher education institutions to learn from each other.     

Analysing conflicting approaches to dyslexia on a European project: moving to a more strategic,participatory, strength-based and integrated approach

This paper draws from our experiences of an EU Life Long Learning Programme Project: GATE Understanding Dyslexia Phenomena Between Pre-Primary And Primary (2009–2011) to discuss different conceptual positions concerning dyslexia. It compares medical notions of dyslexia with perspectives from childhood and disability studies to question the ways in which we encourage children, parents and professionals to understand dyslexia in educational settings. In so doing, it highlights a contrast between medical literature, social model perspectives and practical approaches among the contrasting work contexts of the partners of the GATE project. The paper indicates that the GATE partners found there was a lack of clarity concerning theory and policy on dyslexia across their countries. The paper compares different practices concerning dyslexia in Bulgaria, Spain, Italy, Turkey and Scotland and concludes there is a need to balance out impairment-specific approaches with those that are based on more political notions of inclusion, community and relationship-building.     

Developing a Mentoring Scheme in Primary Initial Teacher Education

Researchers have shown the benefits of mentoring in both personal and professional growth. It would seem that group mentoring would only enhance those benefits. This work represents a literature review of peer-reviewed articles and dissertations that contribute to the theory and research of group mentoring. This work reviews the articles that contributed to the development of group mentoring theory as well as relevant research. Four primary types of group mentoring emerge—peer group, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many. Despite over 20 years of research, significant gaps remain in the research methods, demographic focus, and fields of study. The review concludes with recommendations for future research.     

Complex Inequalities of Educational Opportunities. A Large-Scale Longitudinal Study on the Relation Between Gender,Social Class,Ethnicity and School Success

It is well documented that stratification in education precedes social stratification. Many authors hypothesise that the stratification patterns in education may be related to background characteristics of students in a more complex way than researched so far in this field. Therefore, in this article the interactive effects of social class, ethnicity and gender on various indicators for school success are analysed and discussed. A large-scale longitudinal database offered the possibility to establish the complex relations between the three student background variables and school careers, measured by educational attainment 6 years after entering secondary education and by technical or science related choices. Results show that school success is not always predicted by expected additive or multiplicative effects of the different background variables. For example the situation of girls from ethnic minorities is better than expected, while that of indigenous boys from low socio-economic backgrounds is worse when compared to similar boys from ethnic minorities. Inequalities arising from different choice patterns regarding technical and science subjects can only partly be deduced from differences present at the age of 12, whereas in terms of general educational attainment secondary schools even reduce arrears of ethnic minority female students as these can be observed at the age of 12.     

School policy on teaching and school learning environment: direct and indirect effects upon student outcome measures

School policy on teaching and the school learning environment (SLE) are the main school factors of the dynamic model of educational effectiveness (Creemers & Kyriakides, 2008 Kyriakides, L. and Tsangaridou, N. 2008. Towards the development of generic and differentiated models of educational effectiveness: A study on school and teacher effectiveness in physical education. British Educational Research Journal, 34: 807–838. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). A longitudinal study in which 50 primary schools, 108 classes, and 2369 students participated generated evidence supporting the validity of the dynamic model. This article reports the results of a re-analysis of the data of this study in order to search for direct and indirect effects of school factors included in the model. Using multilevel structural equation modelling techniques, indirect effects of school policy on teaching and SLE upon achievement in mathematics and Greek language are demonstrated. Implications of findings are drawn. Comparing the results of the multilevel direct and indirect effect model with those from using a multilevel regression model, we demonstrate the importance of choosing appropriate conceptual models and using relevant methodological approaches to understand the dynamic nature of educational effectiveness.     

Effectiveness of public and private sector agricultural extension: Implications for privatisation in Pakistan

Worldwide serious reservations are being expressed about the ability and competency of the public sector to deliver agricultural extension services, especially in developing countries such as Pakistan which is faced with serious financial difficulties. Consequently, the government is looking for alternative extension paradigms that are cost-effective and client-oriented. To this end the government of Pakistan is inclined towards privatizing the provision of agricultural extension services as a means to promote a second ‘Green Revolution’. This study was conducted among cotton farmers in the Punjab Province to examine the comparative effectiveness of public and private sector extension as perceived from the stakeholders. Data were collected from 52 contact farmers of both extension systems. A number of biases were identified in both systems; namely, a preference for farmers with better education and larger landholdings than their noncontact farmer counterparts. Overall, neither system appears to be working for the benefit of the wider farming community.