Overcoming mistrusted masculinity: contesting ethnic minority fathers’ involvement in home–school cooperation in Denmark

This ethnographic study investigates cooperation between homes and schools in a Danish context from the perspective of ‘ethnic minority fathers’. I analyse how experiences of an ‘implicit’ mistrust can make ethnic minority fathers reluctant to cooperate with child institutions such as schools. It is argued that this mistrust is related to a hegemonic negative image of these fathers as oppressive, aggressive, and/or absent and careless. To conceptualize this mistrust, I argue for the concept of ‘mistrusted masculinity’. The analysis directs attention to the rhythms of the fathers’ everyday lives, offering examples of how the absence of some ethnic minority fathers in home–school cooperation may be explained by long working hours and ‘constraining jobs’. The research found that a ‘new role of the father’ is evident in the behaviours and attitudes of both ‘native Danish fathers’ and ethnic minority fathers.     

A fragile autonomy in a performativity culture? Exploring positions in the recontextualising field in a Norwegian rural municipality

Internationally, the autonomy of schools and teachers is under pressure. In Norway, recent policies emphasise output control through national testing, combined with holding schools and teachers accountable for students’ results. Whereas recent research documents that the autonomy of schools and teachers is weakening in Oslo, there is little research on the rural parts of Norway. Recent political intentions aim to improve the results by establishing a better learning environment and classroom management. These intentions are related to the regulative discourse, ‘the rules of social order’, which is crucial to control as it dominates the instructional discourse. Two different projects were implemented in a rural municipality. Analysing their positions on three levels (author, actor and identity) this study finds considerable autonomy from the state in the pedagogic recontextualising field. However, this autonomy may be fragile as the teachers seem to have surrendered personal values. If teachers are disciplined, then the state may effectively reduce the potential discursive gap by reducing the autonomy of key agents in education. Investigating teachers’ rationalisations is imperative if we are to understand the relations between interests, ideology and class, and thereby the potential for autonomy in the recontextualising field in a performativity culture.     

Primary teachers’ experiences with weekly education outside the classroom during a year

The aim of the present study was through semi-structured interviews to explore udeskole teacher’s perceptions of motivational factors and challenges while teaching regularly outside the classroom on a weekly basis during a year. Six females and two male udeskole teachers participated and answered an interview guide containing five themes about their motivations, student relations, teaching experiences, challenges and recognition. Udeskole was perceived to have substantial potentials to improve both academic learning and life skills and ‘the common third’, i.e. teacher–pupil relations, was mentioned as a value added to the indoor teaching. Health and safety issues were not perceived as barriers.     

Educational practice,student experience,and the purpose of education—a critique of ‘Pedagogy in Practice’

The focus of the present paper is a critical discussion of the recently developed concept Pedagogy in Practice (PiP) with the intention of improving the concept for future research. PiP aims to understand ongoing educational practice from the students’ perspective by interviewing groups of students about their understanding of learning. By emphasising ‘pedagogy’ and ‘practice’ and drawing from a theoretical foundation that takes practice and action as key concepts, PiP is an appealing alternative to research in student voice, to which it is closely related. However, a critical analysis of PiP in relation to its stated theoretical sources (Bourdieu, Bernstein, Dewey) shows that the approach contradicts these sources in key areas. In PiP students’ understanding of learning is taken as basic for improving educational practice, however, PiP is developed without an explicit notion of what education is for. This paper introduces a specific formulation of the purpose and functions of education based on the work of Gert Biesta, and outlines how a revised version of PiP might contribute to future empirical research in education.     

Functional reading difficulties in Denmark

In this first Danish study of adult reading skills, 1124 adults between 18 and 67 years of age participated in an interview about reading habits and skills, and 445 were tested individually at home using six common texts. Great care was taken to ascertain that subjects were representative of the whole adult population and that the texts covered most types of everyday reading. Three percent of the participants were found to have severe functional reading difficulties and a further 9 percent to have moderate difficulties. Regression analyses found several unique predictors of reading difficulties: age (adults over 45 years reading more poorly than younger adults), limited basic education, no vocational training nor higher education, and a small amount of reading needed at work. The rate of poor readers was about four times higher among persons with low income than among others. Men and women read equally well although men tended to rate themselves lower as readers than women did. Methodological issues and some educational implications are discussed.     

Skills utilisation at work,the quality of the study programme and fields of study

This paper examines the factors that may have impact on the extent to which the knowledge and skills of master’s degree graduates in Norway are utilised at work, three years after graduation. The focus is on the impact of the quality of the study programme as well as the graduates’ fields of study, when also taking into account other factors influencing the utilisation of skills. The analysis indicates that the quality of the study programme has an independent effect on skills utilisation at work. The analysis also shows large differences in skills utilisation according to fields of study, even among graduates who are not formally overeducated for their job. Not formally overeducated graduates in humanities and social science utilise their knowledge and skills less frequently than other similar graduates. The findings involve challenges for higher education institutions and graduates, as well as employers, to find ways that the expertise of master's degree graduates could be better exploited.     

The reading efficiency model: an extension of the componential model of reading

The purpose of the present study was twofold: First, the authors investigated if an extended version of the component model of reading (CMR; Model 2), including decoding rate and oral vocabulary comprehension, accounted for more of the variance in reading comprehension than the commonly used measures of the cognitive factors in the CMR. Second, the authors investigated the fitness of a new model, titled the reading efficiency model (REM), which deviates from earlier models regarding how reading is defined. In the study, 780 Norwegian students from Grades 6 and 10 were recruited. Here, hierarchical regression analyses showed that the extended model did not account for more of the variance in reading comprehension than the traditional CMR model (Model 1). In the second part of the study the authors used structural equation modeling (SEM) to explore the REM. The results showed that the REM explained an overall larger amount of variance in reading ability, compared to Model 1 and Model 2. This result is probably the result of the new definition of reading applied in the REM. The authors believe their model will more fully reflects students' differentiated reading skills by including reading fluency in the definition of reading.     

Pennies from heaven? Using exogenous tax variation to identify effects of school resources on pupil achievement

Evidence on the effectiveness of school inputs remains inconclusive, partly due to the challenge of identification as families sort themselves into school districts and resources are potentially allocated to compensate (or reinforce) differences in pupil abilities. Using variation in school resources induced by the location of waterfalls in Norway, we examine the effect of school expenditures on pupil performance at age 16. Higher school expenditures, triggered by higher revenues from local taxes on hydropower plants, have a significantly positive effect on pupil performance. This positive IV estimate contrasts a zero effect based on least squares. A downward biased estimate using a standard cross section estimator is expected in a context of compensating resource allocation across educational units.     

Generation Psy: Student characteristics and academic achievement in a three-year problem-based learning bachelor program

This study investigated the simultaneous impact of demographic, personality, intelligence, and (prior) study performance factors on students' academic achievement in a three-year academic problem-based psychology program. Information regarding students' gender, age, nationality, pre-university education, high school grades, Big Five personality traits, intelligence (i.e., numerical, verbal, spatial), observed learning activities, and self-study time was collected among almost 1800 students enrolled in this psychology bachelor program at Erasmus University Rotterdam between 2003 and 2009. Academic achievement was measured by students' yearly number of acquired credit points, a course test, and a knowledge progress test. Multiple regression analyses showed that observed learning activities, first- and second-year performance, high school grades, conscientiousness, and verbal ability were most strongly and consistently related to academic achievement in the bachelor. Other student factors also contributed to academic achievement, but their influence was less prominent and mainly restricted to the first year. These results suggest that (prior) educational achievements and observable learning activities are most important for academic success in a problem-based learning bachelor program.     

The case for investing in secondary education in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): challenges and opportunities

Over the next two decades, sub-Saharan Africa will face substantial pressure to expand its secondary education system. This is driven by the current low development of secondary education compared to other world regions, continued rapid population growth, the increase in the enrolment and completion rates at the primary education level, and the upsurge in the demand for skills. This paper suggests that in order to help countries respond to these pressures, external partners should now increase their support for secondary education, in terms of academic as well as technical and vocational skills training. Given the attributes of the African economies and the continuing need for foundation skills, this paper argues that in the current situation, particularly the lower secondary level will have to be strengthened, in many cases through a longer basic education cycle for all. The necessary rapid expansion of secondary education will require substantial investments, and this paper discusses how aid allocation can be made more evidence-based and used in a more strategic way to make these investments more effective and sustainable. While aid will continue to have a role to play over the next decade especially in fragile states, in the long run it is African countries’ capacity to achieve sustained economic growth which will be the single most important factor determining their ability to meet the financing needs.