Interpersonal Teacher Behaviour and Student Outcomes

In this study, the effectiveness of secondary education teachers' interpersonal behaviour is investigated by analysing data from 2 samples: a study on 45 Physics teachers and their 3rd-year classes and a study on 32 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers and their 3rd-year classes. Teacher interpersonal behaviour was studied by means of students' perceptions of this behaviour, collected with the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI). These perceptions include 2 important dimensions: Influence and Proximity. Results of multilevel analyses with various covariates indicated that Influence and Proximity were positively related to both cognitive and affective outcomes. Interpersonal behaviour explained up to more than half of the variance in student outcomes at the teacher-class level. The outcomes suggest that interpersonal behaviour as perceived by students may be an important variable for educational effectiveness researchers.     

Report on the ‘European exchange of experiences in school integration’: the intercultural comparison of the quality of life of children and youth with handicaps in Arhus (Denmark), Arezzo (Italy), Greenwich (London,UK) and Reutlingen (Germany)

ABSTRACT

This article describes some aspects of a multi‐disciplinary exchange and research programme involving communities in Denmark, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. The major focus of the programme has been on the integration of children with special educational needs into mainstream settings in schools and communities with a specific reference to decision making processes. The point at which extra resources are given by the state and its agencies to an individual in need provides the unifying intercultural point of departure. Local cultures, including legislative and social imperatives, and their implications for research activity are discussed. Common themes in the transition and transformation of the various forms of welfare state provision within the member countries are identified and analysed. The relationship between different forms and levels of service provision and the practice of integration are discussed.     

Education,education and indoctrination! Packaging politics and the three ‘Rs’

This paper explores how recent Labour governments have tried systematically to package educational and other social policies for media presentation and public consumption. This concern has resulted in the criticism that Labour is concerned with policy presentation above content: strong on policy spin but weak on policy delivery. The first section explores Labour’s attempts to set a favourable agenda in news media for its educational policies by implementing a rigorous news management strategy: the subsequent section analyses Labour’s unprecedented use of advertising to promote key areas of government policy. There is a particular focus on government advertising in the run up to the 2001 general election. The paper concludes that governments’ increasing reliance on advertising may cross the line which should separate the provision of public information from any attempt to persuade the public to support particular policy choices.     

Teachers and their Books

Too often there is far too large a gap between the sort of literature recommended by the English teacher and the normal reading tastes both of children and adults (W. Stewart, 1950).