Child Care Subsidy and Program Quality Revisited

Research Findings: Previous research has documented conflicting results on the relationship between program quality and the percentage of children receiving subsidized child care (subsidy density) in early childhood centers. This research examined the relationship between subsidy density and the quality of infant and preschool classrooms in child care centers, taking into consideration teacher education and salary as well as other structural variables associated with quality. A multimethod evaluation was conducted with 110 child care centers utilizing an interview of center directors as well as classroom observations using standardized measures of quality and language/literacy in the classroom. Regression analyses indicate that subsidy density does not predict the quality of infant classrooms. However, subsidy density is a significant predictor of the quality of preschool classrooms. Teacher education is predictive of some quality indicators, but teacher salary is not. Practice or Policy: Practice and policy implications are discussed to promote the quality of child care centers that serve low- income children. Statewide initiatives should target centers with higher subsidy density for quality improvements. Local programs and state policy should provide teachers with opportunities to obtain additional education and then offer incentives to remain in their current early childhood settings.     

Conceptualising Curriculum Change

Recent developments in UK higher education are turning attention to the undergraduate curriculum. Drawing on Lyotard's concept of performativity, this paper explores broad patterns of curriculum change in five subject areas. The curriculum is understood as an educational project forming identities founded in three domains: knowledge, action and self. Curriculum models are proposed that identify these components and their relationships with each other. The evidence suggests that the weightings and levels of integration of these components vary between the sciences and technology subjects, the arts and humanities, and professional courses. Attempts to develop curriculum strategies should take account of the patterns of curriculum components as they vary between the subject areas.     

Navigating Community College Transfer in Science,Technical, Engineering,and Mathematics Fields

Given financial barriers facing community college students today, and workforce projections in science, technical, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, the costs of unnecessary delays while navigating transfer pathways are high. In this phenomenological study, we analyzed the delay experiences of 172 students (65% female) navigating community college transfer pathways in STEM fields in Massachusetts. When focusing on institutional delays, three central elements emerged: (a) informational setbacks from dissatisfactory advising, (b) imperfect program alignment with four-year institutions, and (c) college resource limitations. Students took unnecessary courses or could not get into courses in a timely manner, resulting in lost time, money, and credit. An accumulation of delays is particularly detrimental to STEM women and men, given the sequential nature of their programming. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.     

Evaluation Findings from High School Reform Efforts in Baltimore

The Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) is one of the first urban districts in the country to undertake large-scale high school reform, phasing in small learning communities by opening new high schools and transforming large, comprehensive high schools into small high schools. With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a dozen local foundations, and school reform developers and technical assistance providers, BCPSS opened 18 small high schools between 2002 and 2006. Using data from surveys, administrative records, and site visits, we examine the implementation and outcomes of these reform efforts. Although BCPSS high schools met many obstacles while implementing the reform, including continual leadership turnover and limited resources, students and staff in the small learning communities reported more positive social and academic environments than their counterparts in the district's comprehensive high schools. In addition, students in small, newly created high schools demonstrated positive academic outcomes (e.g., higher test scores, engagement) relative to students in the other schools in the district.     

Gender,toys and learning

In spite of continuing patterning of curriculum subject preference and choice by gender, there has been little recent attention to the argument developed in the 1970s that children play with different toys according to their gender, and that these provide girls and boys with (different) curriculum‐related skills. The article describes a small‐scale empirical study that asked parents of 3–5 year old children to identify their child’s favourite toys and viewing material, and analysed responses according to children’s gender. The most frequently identified toys and viewing materials were subjected to content and discourse analysis, with the intention of identifying both educative aspects of content, and the gender discourses reflected. The article explores conceptual issues around categorisations of ‘education’ within toys and entertainment resources, positing the notion of ‘didactic information’ to delineate between overtly educational content and other social discourses. Analysis reveals toy preferences to be highly gendered, with boys’ toys and resources concentrated on technology and action, and girls’ on care and stereotypically feminine interests. Didactic information, and aspects developing construction and literacy skills, were identified in the selected toys and resources for boys, and were lacking in those for girls. All the toys and resources could be read as implicated in ‘gendering’: the various gender discourses, and other discourses around aspects of social identity reflected in the toys and resources are identified and analysed. The analysis presented suggests the value of reinvigorated attention to children’s toys and entertainment resources in terms both of the education they afford, and their role in the production of social identities.     

Designing Blended Inquiry Learning in a Laboratory Context: A Study of Incorporating Hands-On and Virtual Laboratories

This article reports on the development of a methodology that integrates virtual and hands-on inquiry in a freshman introductory biology course. Using a two time × two order-condition design, an effective combination (blend) of the two environments was evaluated with 39 freshman biology participants. The quantitative results documented no significant effect of presentation order but demonstrated a significant effect of the combined learning experience. The qualitative results showed a strong preference by students for the virtual work preceding the hands-on laboratory. The study provides practitioners an effective alternative to traditional instructional practices by combining virtual and hands-on inquiry learning.

Lads,Lasses and (New) Labour: 14-16-year-old students' responses to the 'laddish behaviour and boys' underachievement' debate

The responses of secondary-school students to the claims of ex-Education Minister Stephen Byers concerning 'laddish behaviour' on the part of boys are examined. The data is drawn from an ESRC-funded study of 14-16-year-old students' constructions of gender, learning, and future educational and occupational pathways. The extent to which boys' classroom behaviour was constructed as 'laddish' by students is discussed, and the discourses pervading these constructions are analysed. It is reported that the majority of students supported Byers' argument that boys' 'laddish' behaviour is impeding their learning, and that girls and boys drew on different gender discourses to support their arguments.     

Rhodes Boyson: a Janus of education?

ABSTRACT

This article examines the career of the educationalist, Conservative politician and published writer on education and politics, Rhodes Boyson (1925–2012). As an educationalist, Boyson established Highbury Grove Boys’ Comprehensive School in Islington, North London: an inner-city school which was antithetical to the wave of progressivism in the 1960s and early 1970s. The article explores Boyson’s educational approach and vision in greater depth than has been the case in previous publications about him and attempts to place him beyond the limitations of a caricature and offer some redemption, seeing him as a paradox: he was welded to educational traditions but at the same time had a vision which can be seen as forward-thinking. This duality, and the sense of Rhodes Boyson as a paradox, makes the Janus metaphor apposite.