Looking at Literacy in the 21st Century

Literacy instruction has shifted in recent years alongside acts of legislation. Areas of literacy education like adolescent literacy and RTI are now receiving increased attention, whereas phonemic awareness, phonics, and fluency receive considerably less attention than 10 years ago. Comparative discussions describe “very hot” and “cold” topics as they relate to philosophy/approach, level, content, materials, and assessment in 2001 versus 2010. Educators can utilize this content information to inform their instruction and direct attention to needed areas within their own schools.     

An international perspective on civic participation in Irish post-primary schools: results from ICCS

Ireland was one of the 38 countries/education systems that participated in the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) in 2009. This is the first international comparative study in this area in which Ireland has participated since 1971. The study measured the civic knowledge of 14-year-olds and their attitudes towards, and beliefs about, various civic and citizenship issues. The current paper focuses on indicators of students' and (to a lesser extent) parents' participation in school life. Although active participation in school is emphasised in, for example, the Education Act of 1998, little empirical work in Ireland has defined or examined actual levels of participation in post-primary schools, or students' views of their opportunities to participate, and ICCS provides information on these issues in an international comparative context. Findings indicate that despite a relatively strong civic knowledge base among students in Ireland, levels of participation compare less favourably with other countries. Results are discussed in the wider context of the Irish education system.     

Becoming an academic: the role of doctoral capital in the field of education

This paper draws on Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital and habitus to examine the learning and enculturation of alumni of a Canadian PhD programme in the discipline of Education. We introduce the concept of doctoral capital to help explain how and why some PhD graduates go on to secure faculty positions and others do not. Our research suggests that certain existing and acquired academic practices, attributes, dispositions and behaviours collectively form a type of doctoral capital that alumni can then use in the academic marketplace.     

The developmental nature of meta‐cognition and the relationship between knowledge and control over time

This study explored the development of meta‐cognitive knowledge and control, the relationship between the two constructs, the types of strategy knowledge Chinese students consider valuable and comparisons with US children's knowledge of strategies at the third‐grade level. One hundred and twenty students were randomly sampled from third‐, fifth‐ and seventh‐grade classes in China. Control was operationalised as comprehension monitoring and measured with CLOZE and Error Detection tasks, while awareness comprised declarative knowledge of strategies and was measured using an interview and a questionnaire. The findings indicated that knowledge of strategies and meta‐cognitive control develop over time, but knowledge develops at a faster rate in comparison. The evaluation of the relationships between the constructs suggested that the measurement format affected the students' accessibility of the declarative knowledge. The Chinese students demonstrated similarities in their knowledge of useful strategies, with previewing and activating background knowledge as the most valued strategies.     

Visual literacy: A failed metaphor?

Has the visual literacy construct led to useful research and defensible practice? The authors draw on psycholinguistics, pathology, and developmental, cognitive, and cross-cultural social psychology to argue that it has not. A reconceptualization of the inherent assumptions and implications is proposed.     

Who's counting? Legitimating measurement in the audit culture

What gives legitimacy to the numbers that constitute the measurement techniques of the audit culture? We argue that the audit culture's blind application of numbers to people as if there was no moral or ethical dimension to the calculation rests on a military discourse resident in mathematics. This argument is based on the genealogy presented in this paper, which uncovers a regime of measurement-by-number, sedimented as legitimate through an association with military power. We claim that this military measurement-by-number is a dubious technique of government on which the audit culture relies for its highly questionable authority.