Access to postsecondary education through sign language interpreting

Despite the importance of sign language interpreting for many deaf students, there is surprisingly little research concerning its effectiveness in the classroom. The limited research in this area is reviewed, and a new study is presented that included 23 interpreters, 105 deaf students, and 22 hearing students. Students saw two interpreted university-level lectures, each preceded by a test of prior content knowledge and followed by a post-lecture assessment of learning. A variety of demographic and qualitative data also were collected. Variables of primary interest included the effects of a match or mismatch between student interpreting preferences (interpreting vs. transliteration) and the actual mode of interpreting, student-interpreter familiarity, and interpreter experience. Results clarify previous contradictory findings concerning the importance of student interpreting preferences and extend earlier studies indicating that deaf students acquire less than hearing peers from interpreted college-level lectures. Issues relating to access and success in integrated academic settings are discussed as they relate to relations among student characteristics, interpreter characteristics, and educational settings.     

Re/assembling ‘innovative’ learning environments: Affective practice and its politics

Abstract

In this article, we argue that the interest being taken by governments in establishing innovative learning environments (ILEs) in schools relies on a conception of space as a largely neutral arena. In consequence, relations of space and power inherent in the infrastructural shift to ILEs tend to drop from view. Adopting an assemblage approach to investigating learning environments, and exploring ILEs as they are playing out in Australian schools, we strive to surface what drops from view. Taking ILEs to be sociomaterial assemblages, we work with empirical material and trace how they assemble and reassemble. The account is less concerned with what works in ILEs; rather, its focus is on their ‘workings’ as assemblages of relations and most particularly, affective relations. Thus, we explore two affective encounters involving school leaders, teachers and students showing the ways in which they position and are positioned within ILEs. The argument is made that the assemblage approach which is non-deterministic and relational affords new ways of understanding what ILEs are and how they work and who they work for. And, that attending to affective practice brings into view the micropolitics through which infrastructural shifts and infrastructural policy-making are made.     

Contesting forces: The political and economic context of curriculum development in New Zealand

In the 1980s and 1990s many countries felt the impact of new right economic ideology on their social policies: New Zealand was no exception. Education was seen as the key to improving economic competitiveness and to this end it was deemed necessary to upgrade the system. The reforms arising from the adoption of this position were to take two paths: administrative and curricular. This paper focuses on the curricular reforms and the development of two key national curriculum statements within their political and economic context. The curriculum for compulsory schooling became centrally controlled, subject-based, and achievement oriented. In contrast the early childhood document outlined a child-centred, thematic and experiential curriculum. This paper explores how such divergence arose out of the same socio-political context. The content of the documents is analysed using a theoretical model after Bernstein (1971).     

A tale of 804.573 horses: Arithmetic teaching in Victoria 1860–1914

Between 1860 and 1902, the arithmetic curriculum in government elementary schools in Victoria, Australia changed little. It was based on British models and valued highly computational skills, speed and accuracy. Teaching practice was dominated by the payment by results examination, and was mechanical, rules-based and often ineffective. By the end of the nineteenth century, dissatisfaction with both the principles and practice of this instrumental form of education was widespread; and the ideas of the New Education were incorporated into the courses of 1902 and 1911. However, teaching practice lagged behind the new aims, and continued to be largely mechanical, rules-based and abstract. The inspectors continued to demand the computational skills of the old courses, and the education and training of teachers did not keep pace with the new demands.     

Transmitting Faith in the Republic:Muslim Schooling in Modern Plural France

This article explores and analyzes private Muslim schooling in France using ethnographic research performed in 2013–2014 in Lille-, Lyon-, and Paris-based Muslim schools. The article discusses the course content and the interpretations of Islam that are taught, demonstrating how French republican values are fused together with Islam to promote a specific brand of French Muslim citizenship and identity. I argue that Muslim schools should be seen as part of the process of the normalization of Muslim-based civic engagement and that they represent a particular response to France's new plurality that reinterprets the boundaries of “French” and “Muslim.”     

Discourse forms in a classroom transitioning to student-centred scientific inquiry through co-teaching

Teacher–student discourse continues to be teacher-centred even though researchers and reform documents have recommended changes toward increased levels of student-centred discourse. In science education this situation is paralleled by effort to make scientific inquiry more student-centred. The purpose of this study was to investigate how discourse forms changed over time in a classroom where the regular teacher and his students were scaffolded in the transitioning to student-centred scientific inquiry. Video-recordings were collected at intervals over one academic year. Three prominent forms of discourse were identified: two teacher-authoritative forms and one more interactive, dialogic form. As the lessons increasingly turned into student-centred scientific inquiry, a shift to the dialogic discourse form was found. Co-teaching provided for (a) guidance towards an organisation of events in the classroom that included regular teacher–student dialogue (b) modelling of the more dialogic form of discourse.