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).     

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.”     

Teaching physics to prospective elementary teachers: Bridging gaps or widening chasms

The education of prospective Elementary and Early Childhood (E&EC) teachers to teach science has been an on-going challenge for science teacher educators. Accordingly, a course in physical science was planned and implemented especially for prospective E&EC teachers. The purpose of this study was to understand the nature of the enacted curriculum and about the forces which constrained its evolution. Miller, the teacher of the course, had no prior experience in teaching prospective E&EC teachers and many of his experiences as a university level teacher were based on his teaching of physics majors. These experiences shaped his approach to teaching the course as did his years as a basketball coach. Miller was an expert in physics and constructed his role as teaching students significant scientific truths. Miller saw the purpose of the course as being to educate the students in science, not to prepare them to teach science. He was unwilling to address the goals of students that were oriented strongly toward becoming better teachers. The beliefs of the teacher constrained the enacted curriculum to an extent that gaps between the needs of students and the enacted curriculum were wider at the end of the course than they were at the beginning. Armstrong College In my opinion I think I failed completely, but I am quite happy with what I am trying to do. I just don't think I executed it well. So I was pretty unhappy with the whole experience in terms of the results, but I was not unhappy with the experience in terms of whether it was worth doing. I think it is important in science to develop free-thinking and being able to come to conclusions. Science is being able to reflect on the human condition, and being able to think about things you don't know about. (Miller)     

论教育公平发展的财政政策创新——基于美国的政策分析

追求教育公平是基础教育发展的政策目标之一,财政政策是教育公平发展的核心政策。美国教育财政政策调整与变革中投射出理念与实践的创新,其早期教育财政诉讼强调平等,要么提高贫穷地区的教育经费,要么降低富裕地区的教育经费,或者二者兼施,随后诉讼逐步出现从公平到充足的转向,实践中,主要采用统计分析、经验观察、专业评估等模式,制定教育充足财政政策。充足财政政策是由教育结果引导的政策,基于教育标准对政策效果进行评价,同时也是教育公平发展新形势下的财政政策创新。     

中等职业教育区域均衡发展的成绩、问题和对策

我国中等职业教育的发展对促进教育公平、实现入学机会均等、缩小区域间人力资源存量差距等方面作出了很大的贡献。但中等职业教育的发展也在办学条件、师资力量、投入水平和校企合作条件等方面存在着比较明显的区域不均衡现象。区域职业教育的均衡发展依赖于资源要素的支撑,更依赖于职业教育校企合作条件的优化。鉴于当前我国校企合作条件正处于U型曲线开始回升的关键时期,中等职业教育发展需要实施分类指导、分区域推进;加大经费投入和保障力度,实施标准化建设;加强东、西部地区的对口支援;优化职业教育运行机制;实现体制机制创新。     

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.     

Preliminary norms and technical data for use of the Revised-Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale with kindergarten children

The Revised-Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (Reynolds & Richmond, 1978) was administered to 97 kindergarten children. Coefficient alpha reliabilities of .79 for males (N = 53), .85 for females (N = 44), and .82 for the total sample resulted. Contrary to findings with older children, no sex differences occurred in scoring on the anxiety scale. The kindergarten children generally scored higher on the anxiety scale than did older children. Lie scale scores were comparable to those of other primary grade children. Implications for use of the scale with young children are discussed.     

A comparison of regular program and vocational program junior high school students on affective dimensions

The hypothesis that young adolescents in vocational education programs would differ from young adolescents in a regular program along several affective dimensions was examined. The Today Form of the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List (MAACL) was administered twice during the school year to 111 students in a vocational program and to 50 students in regular classrooms. Dimensions of Anxiety, Depression, and Hostility were examined. Significant main effects for all three dimensions were noted for school program (regular vs. CVAE) and for grade (seventh vs. eighth). Students in the vocational program and those in seventh grade scored higher on Anxiety, Depression, and Hostility. These differences persisted across time, with the exception of Depression, for which there was a significant interaction between time (pretest vs. posttest) and school program (regular vs. CVAE), with regular students reporting increased depression at the second testing.     

MeSH and text-word search strategies: precision,recall, and their implications for library instruction

Objective:This study compared the recall and precision of MeSH-term versus text-word searching to better understand psychosocial MeSH terms and to provide guidance on whether to include both strategies in an information literacy session or how much time should be spent on teaching each search strategy.Methods:Using the relevant recall method, a total of 3,162 resources were considered and evaluated to form a gold standard set of 1,521 relevant resources. We compared resources discussing psychosocial aspects of children and adolescents living with type 1 diabetes using two search strategies: text-word strategy versus MeSH-term strategy. The frequency of MeSH terms, the MeSH hierarchy, and elements of each search strategy were also examined.Results:Using the 1,521 relevant articles, we found that the text-word search strategy had 54% recall, while the MeSH-term strategy had 75% recall. Also, the precision of the text-word strategy was 34.4%, while the precision of the MeSH-term strategy was 47.7%. Therefore, the MeSH-term search strategy yielded both greater recall and greater precision. The MeSH strategy was also more complicated in design and usage than the text-word strategy.Conclusions:This study demonstrates the effectiveness of text-word and MeSH search strategies on precision and recall. The combination of text-word and MeSH strategies is recommended to achieve the most comprehensive results. These results support the idea that MeSH or a similar controlled vocabulary should be taught to experienced and knowledgeable students and practitioners who require a myriad of resources for their literature searches.