Hearing Homer’s Scream Across Three Thousand Years

This article examines the challenges that faced two storytellers when developing an oral retelling of Homer’s Iliad for use with children aged 9–11. Drawing on evidence from two schools in a deprived area of London the discussion explores the extent to which the storytellers have been successful in creating a version of the story that is both faithful to the original in content and language, and accessible to the widest possible audience. Bob Lister is a lecturer in Education and Classics at the University of Cambridge, England. As Director of the Cambridge School Classics Project from 1996 to 2003, he was responsible for the development of a range of schoolbased resources on the ancient world, including War with Troy: The Story of Achilles. He has read Homer's Iliad and Odyssey with learners of all ages.     

Patterns and predictors of academic dishonesty in Romanian university students

Academic dishonesty in higher education is an increasingly visible problem throughout the world and in Romania in particular. A total of 1127 university students from six public Romanian universities were surveyed for their experiences and beliefs with 22 behaviors that might be considered academically dishonest. A five-factor solution to the frequencies of these behaviors was interpretable and accounted for more than half of the total variance. How acceptable students believed the behaviors were and how often students witnessed other students engage in these behaviors were consistent predictors of the frequency of the behaviors, with small to medium effect sizes. Demographic predictors of these behaviors, including gender, academic specialty, year in school, institution, grade average, and scholarship status, predicted very little variance in the behaviors. Implications and limitations of the study, as well as limitations of research in the field, are discussed.     

Responsiveness and Affective Processes in the Interactive Construction of Understanding in Mathematics

This paper reports on important learning processes emerging during adult mathematics classes that used a teaching approach compatible with a social constructivist theory of knowing. A cyclical teaching model encouraged much discussion about the mathematical problems presented to paired groups. Whole-class student-led sharing sessions allowed students to continue their interactive constitution of meaning and solutions.Comparisons of pre- and post-course scores on attitude and belief questionnaires indicated significant increases in positive attitudes and beliefs about mathematics and about themselves doing mathematics.The overall positive changes in scores on questionnaires are explained in terms of recurrent patterns in thinking inferred from data obtained by observation, interview, and reflective comments. Changes are explained in terms of the interactive effects of affective and heuristic processing during problem solving. Affective processes precipitated students' responsiveness, modifying the immediate learning context which, in turn, influenced the students' thinking, creating a snowballing effect on learning and affect. Changes were clearly facilitated by the interaction between students and by their shared understandings.     

Introduction

This paper conceptualises think tanks and edu-businesses in relation to education policy work in the Australian polity. It situates the enhanced influence of both in relation to the restructured state, which has lost some key capacities in relation to the generation of research and ideas for policy. This restructuring has been strongly influenced by the techniques of new public management, the auditing of education through national and international testing and new forms of network governance, which have opened up spaces for the increased influence of think tanks and edu-businesses across the policy cycle in education. We see here the workings of a ‘polycentric state’. The paper also considers changing concepts of ‘evidence’, ‘expertise’ and ‘influence’ in respect of the involvement of think tanks and edu-businesses in circulating policy ideas and affecting policy development in Australian education. This introduction to this special issue of The Australian Educational Researcher serves as a provocation to further research on this new policy scenario.     

Feeling Deprofessionalised: the social construction of emotions during an OFSTED inspection

In a qualitative study of a primary school, it was found that the technicist approach of an OFSTED inspection impacted against the holistic and humanistic values of the teachers, producing a high degree of trauma among them. This trauma was not a simple emotional response of the moment, nor was it a product of school failure or lack of leadership, for neither of these applied. It was, rather, socially and politically constructed. The teachers’ reactions have to be seen against the background of government reforms over the last decade. In this context, the particular emotions released suggest that the inspection examined here had a latent function of deprofessionalisation. Professional uncertainty was induced, with teachers experiencing confusion, anomie, anxiety and doubt about their competence. They also suffered an assault on their personal selves, closely associated among primary teachers with their professional roles. This took the form of mortification, dehumanisation, the loss of pedagogic values and of harmony and changed and weakened commitment. One of the ways for teachers to avoid such negative trauma is by shifting identity and status from professional to technician.     

Restructuring Teacher Education in Australia

Debate on teacher quality and quality in teaching and teacher education has been as vigorous in Australia as it has been in the UK and the USA. In Australia, however, reform in teacher education has been subsumed within a national metapolicy of corporate federalism which is an amalgam of beliefs or discourses including neo‐corporatism, economic rationalism, corporate managerialism and human capital. The paper analyses the most recent document on reform of teacher education in Australia (the Ebbeck Report) and shows how its policy formulation is influenced by the discourse of corporate federalism. It also shows how micro‐economic reform in this sector is related to reforms in other sectors of education.     

Special educational needs support and consultancy in European schools

ABSTRACT

This article outlines the current state of development of special needs support and consultancy in four European countries: Holland, the Czech Republic, England and Wales, and Germany. Models of consultancy particular to the individual countries are also described. An attempt is made by the authors to determine the key features which allow for a common development in special needs support and consultancy work. They suggest that this might provide the basis for further critical