The historical dimension: a contribution to conversation about theory and methodology in comparative education

After sketching in the background for conversation generally about theoretical and methodological issues in comparative education and more specifically about its historical dimension, the author seeks to identify theories that, despite widespread eclecticism and even support for atheoretical standpoints, appear influential, together with characteristic forms of historical analysis. With these preliminaries as a basis, he analyses strategies for clarifying the historical dimension. This leads him to focus both on the units/levels of comparison and on three structures that can be used for this purpose: the familiar (narrative) forms of diachronic analysis, the more in‐depth approaches opened up by synchronic analysis, and hybrid forms. The article also recognizes and explores problems associated with the use of the historical dimension, emphasizing those related to sources, interpretation, and periodization, while illustrating these problems and their possible solutions with specific examples from Hong Kong and elsewhere in the world. The article concludes by reaffirming the importance of the historical dimension of comparative education.     

Fostering the Development of Reading Skill through Supplemental Instruction: Results for Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Students

This paper reports the effects of a two-year supplemental reading program for kindergarten through third grade students that focused on the development of decoding skills and reading fluency. Two hundred ninety-nine students were identified for participation and were randomly assigned to the supplemental instruction or to a no-treatment control group. Participants' reading ability was assessed in the fall, before the first year of the intervention, and again in the spring of years 1, 2, 3, and 4. At the end of the two-year intervention, students who received the supplemental instruction performed significantly better than their matched controls on measures of entry level reading skills (i.e., letter-word identification and word attack), oral reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The benefits of the instruction were still clear two years after instruction had ended with students in the supplemental-instruction condition still showing significantly greater growth on the measure of oral reading fluency. Hispanic students benefited from the supplemental reading instruction in English as much as or more than non-Hispanic students. Results support the value of supplemental instruction focused on the development of word recognition skills for helping students at risk for reading failure.     

Living with CATE: the case of reflective student teachers

This paper considers the effect of the introduction of market forces into teacher education both in terms of the loss of autonomy on the part of the providers, the teacher educators, and in terms of the growth of ownership by the consumers, the student teachers, of their learning. Specifically it identifies the paradigms of teacher education which are absent from the Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (CATE) criteria, such as enquiry‐oriented teacher education, but which are important for promoting professional self‐awareness amongst teachers. This paper describes and evaluates an exercise undertaken by student teachers on a postgraduate certificate in education (PGCE) course which both promotes self‐reflection and meets some of the criteria set by CATE. It concludes that it is possible to promote self‐reflective teaching within the confines of the CATE criteria so long as certain procedures are followed.     

Treating the Diploma Disease in Kenya: a modest counter‐proposal

In the 20 years which have elapsed since Ronald Dore's celebrated diagnosis, the ‘diploma disease’ has continued to take its toll. In many countries, pupils still prepare for major national examinations by ritualised learning, involving the rote memorisation of large quantities of poorly understood factual material. Dore proposed a radical cure: students should no longer be selected for scarce and highly valued opportunities in further education or employment on the basis of their scores in achievement‐based examinations. Instead other instruments—aptitude tests, school quotas, or even lotteries—should be used. The argument of this paper is that reform of examinations is a more viable alternative. It is not examinations per se that are the problem, but rather examinations of low quality. The most pervasive weakness of many national examinations is their propensity to focus on the testing of passive, inert knowledge: they require candidates to do no more than reproduce what they have remembered, in unchanged form. Good examinations, by contrast, test active ideas: they require candidates to think about what they know, and to restructure it in some way. Such examinations can be supportive, not subversive, of attempts to improve pedagogy. The fact that an education system employs achievement‐based examinations to allocate scarce opportunities does not mean that passive pedagogy and ritualised learning—the twin indicators of the diploma disease—are inevitable.     

Four-year follow-up study of language impaired children

Children identified as normal or as specifically language impaired (SLI) were given speech, language, and intelligence testing on a longitudinal basis. Fourteen normal and 29 SLI children between the ages of 4 1/2 and 8 years were tested at Time 1. They were retested three to four years later when they were 8 to 12 years old. The results indicated that both the normal and the SLI children continued to develop skills in receptive and expressive language and speech articulation across the 3- to 4-year period intervening between evaluations. Overall, however, the SLI children appeared to develop language skills at a slower than normal rate and 80% of them remained language impaired at Time 2. In addition, the majority of the SLI children manifested reading impairment at Time 2, while none of the normal children did so. The implications for the educational management of SLI children are discussed. Research supported by the March of Dimes, Grant #12-84. Presented at the 32nd Annual Conference of The Orton Dyslexia Society, Baltimore, Maryland, November 1982.     

CONFERENCE FEEDBACK : A NOTE ON NON‐RESPONDERS

This is a report of a small study of non‐response to an evaluation questionnaire. Evidence is provided in support of the view that non‐response is independent of the questions. Some practical advice is provided for conference evaluators.     

The interaction of conditioned taste aversions and schedule-induced polydipsia: Availability of alternative behaviors

Animals poisoned following exposure to saccharin subsequently avoided the schedule-induced consumption of saccharin. While this suppression was transient for subjects who had access only to the saccharin solution during the free-food presentations, recovery of schedule-induced saccharin consumption was significantly retarded for subjects who had concurrent access to saccharin and a running wheel. It has been suggested that the transient suppression of schedule-induced polydipsia by conditioned taste aversions results from the pellet-induced tendency to drink within the schedule-induced polydipsia procedure. That access to the running wheel reduces schedule-induced polydipsia in general and prolongs the suppression of schedule-induced polydipsia by taste aversions supports this view.