The Culture Project: diasporic negotiations of ethnicity,identity and culture among teachers,pupils and parents in Chinese language schools

Notions of culture, ethnicity and identity are highly political (and also personally meaningful) issues within diasporic communities. Complementary schools are particularly interesting sites in this respect, as they are often set up with an explicit cultural agenda of ‘preserving’ or ‘maintaining’ ‘traditional’ culture and language within diasporic communities. In this paper, we draw on qualitative data from an ESRC funded study conducted in six Chinese complementary schools to consider how pupils (n=60), parents (n=24) and teachers (n=21) in these schools construct and negotiate issues of culture and identity. We consider the ways in which the cultural agenda of the schools is constructed and experienced, teasing out the ways in which cultural discourses and pupil identities are deployed (and resisted, reworked) within the space of Chinese schools. Finally we consider the extent to which the schools are perceived by the young people to be ‘successful’ (or not) in their efforts to make pupils feel ‘more Chinese’.     

Emotional Competence and Early School Adjustment: A Study of Preschoolers at Risk

This short-term longitudinal study examined whether emotion regulation and emotion understanding made unique contributions towards at-risk preschoolers' classroom adaptation. To address this question, we assessed children's emotion regulation and their understanding of emotions in both self (self-awareness, emotion coping) and in others (emotion recognition, affective perspective taking, situation knowledge). Participants were 49 children (22 boys and 27 girls) who attended a Head Start program for low-income children. Seventy percent of this sample was Caucasian, with the remainder being of Latino, African American or biracial ethnicity. Emotion regulation at the start of the school year was associated with school adjustment at year's end, whereas early emotional lability/negativity predicted poorer outcomes. Children who made a smooth adjustment to preschool also were better able to take another person's affective perspective and to identify situations that would provoke different emotional responses. Emotion regulation and understanding made unique contributions towards school adjustment, even when controlling for potential confounds, including behavior problems and verbal abilities. Teachers appeared to influence children's emotional competence by serving an important regulatory function, especially for older preschoolers at-risk.     

Nurturing learning or encouraging dependency? Teacher constructions of students in lower attainment groups in English secondary schools

‘Ability’ or attainment grouping can introduce an additional label that influences teachers’ expectations of students in specific attainment groups. This paper is based on a survey of 597 teachers across 82 schools and 34 teacher interviews in 10 schools undertaken as part of a large-scale mixed-methods study in England. The paper focuses on English and mathematics teachers’ expectations of secondary school students in lower attainment groups, and explores how low-attaining students are constructed as learners who benefit from specific approaches to learning justified through discourses of nurturing and protection. The authors argue that the adoption of different pedagogical approaches for groups of low-attaining learners to nurture them may in some cases be fostering dependency on teachers and cap opportunities for more independent learning. Furthermore, more inclusive whole-school learning-culture approaches may better allow for students across the attainment range to become independent learners.     

Changes in students’ self-efficacy when learning a new topic in mathematics: a micro-longitudinal study

Educational Studies in Mathematics - Self-efficacy in mathematics is related to engagement, persistence, and academic performance. Prior research focused mostly on examining changes to...     

Professional education as a structural barrier to lifelong learning in the NHS

The concept of the learning society is analysed in relation to the healthcare sector and various occupations within it. It is maintained that although traditional boundaries have been blurred or eroded in the workplace in recent years, there remains strong opposition to this erosion on the part of many healthcare professions. This professional demarcation is particularly illustrated by the educational arrangements for various healthcare occupations, where it has prevented recognition of any overlap in the initial education and training of these groups. The resulting educational boundaries are argued to be incompatible with the concept of a learning society, as well as holding negative consequences for the provision of health care. Suggestions are made for a new approach to health care education.     

永随我心

许多次,我们并不确信一定能做成某事,纸面上的显示毫无意义,内在的感受才是真的心情。     

The achievement gap: The impact of between-class attainment grouping on pupil attainment and educational equity over time

Despite extensive research on attainment grouping, the impact of attainment grouping on pupil attainment remains poorly understood and contested. This paper presents evidence from a study conducted with 2944 12–13 year olds, from 76 schools in England, who were allocated to between-class attainment groups (‘setting’) in English and mathematics over the first 2 years of secondary schooling. After controlling for prior attainment, pupils in the top set performed significantly better than pupils in the middle and bottom sets in both English and mathematics. The findings indicate a widening gap in attainment, especially in the case of English. Findings, especially in the case of mathematics, provide more evidence of a relative benefit for pupils placed in top sets than a relative detriment for those in bottom sets.