Unlocking education through relationship building: Identity and agency in English educational institutions during Covid-19

This paper reports on a longitudinal study in the North of England with 13 educators in schools, colleges and universities during two lockdowns. The project was designed to ‘unlock’ education by providing spaces to co-create new ways of thinking about education in light of the Covid-19 pandemic. Focus groups were conducted with school and college teachers as well as university staff at the end of the first and second English lockdowns, in summer 2020 and spring 2021. An initial analysis identified issues with expectations and communication between educators and executive management as well as a lack of agency of educators, and how participants framed them as impacting on their identity as educators. Therefore, the framework of tactics of intersubjectivity was adopted to explore how educators discursively positioned themselves and others through constructions of similarity and difference, realness and power, and how their professional identities were affected by the experience of working through the pandemic and by those around them. Whilst educators took opportunities to authenticate their identity and reimagine education, their agency was undermined by top-down governing involving little successful communication, leading to denaturalising and illegitimising experiences for educators. Executive management were perceived as lacking engagement with staff and understanding of the implications of their decisions on them. The findings call for relationship building and recognition of educators' voice.     

Synchronized metronome training induces changes in the kinematic properties of the golf swing

The purpose of this study was to evaluate possible effects of synchronized metronome training (SMT) on movement dynamics during golf-swing performance, as captured by kinematic analysis. A one-group, between-test design was applied on 13 male golfers (27.5 ± 4.6 years old, 12.7 ± 4.9 handicap) who completed 12 sessions of SMT over a four-week period. Pre- and post-assessments of golf swings with three different clubs (4-iron, 7-iron, and pitching wedge) were performed using a three-dimensional motion capture system. Club velocity at three different swing phases (backswing, downswing, and follow-through) was measured and cross-correlation analysis of time-series signals were made on joint couplings (wrist–elbow–shoulder) of both arms, and between joints and the club, during the full golf swing. There were significantly higher cross-correlations between joint-couplings and concomitant changes of the associated phase-shift differences, as well as reduced phase-shift variability at post-test. No significant effect of SMT was found for the club velocities. We suggest that domain-general influences of SMT on the underlying brain-based motor control strategies lead to a more coordinated movement pattern of the golf-swing performance, which may explain previous observations of significantly improved golf-shot accuracy and decreased variability after SMT.     

Community response in disasters: an ecological learning framework

Natural disasters are frequently exacerbated by anthropogenic mechanisms and have social and political consequences for communities. The role of community learning in disasters is seen to be increasingly important. However, the ways in which such learning unfolds in a disaster can differ substantially from case to case. This article uses a comparative case study methodology to examine catastrophes and major disasters from five countries (Japan, New Zealand, the UK, the USA and Germany) to consider how community learning and adaptation occurs. An ecological model of learning is considered, where community learning is of small loop (adaptive, incremental, experimental) type or large loop (paradigm changing) type. Using this model, we consider that there are three types of community learning that occur in disasters (navigation, organization, reframing). The type of community learning that actually develops in a disaster depends upon a range of social factors such as stress and trauma, civic innovation and coercion.     

Lady Albemarle’s youth workers: contested professional identities in English youth work 1958–1985

This article examines tensions and developments in youth work following the Albemarle Report in 1960, which sought to revive the flagging youth service. It uses oral history interviews with former youth workers and club members in London and Liverpool, archival research looking at the documents of voluntary youth clubs and associations in London and Liverpool, and national policy documents to uncover ideas about the professional youth worker between 1958 and 1985. It examines three main areas of tension: between older and newer methods in youth work, between volunteers and those with a sense of themselves as professional workers, and the conflict between those in voluntary youth association management, allied professions (e.g. teaching and social work) and the youth worker. Ultimately it shows youth work was professionalising at this time but that its status remained unclear. This article aids our understanding of professionalisation, informal education, and youth in post-war Britain.     

Children''s Perceptions of Self and of Relationships with Others as a Function of Sociometric Status

We studied the relations among children's reports about their own competence, objective measures of their competence, and their views of important relationships with others as a function of sociometric status. 515 third- and fourth-grade children responded to questions about aspects of their personal competence and about their relationships with mothers, fathers, teachers, and best friends. Rejected children reported the least supportive relationships overall with their fathers of any status group; this was especially true of rejected-aggressive children. Neglected children reported the lowest perceived social competence with peers. The subjective reports of rejected but not neglected children overestimated their social competence as rated by peers. Relative to teacher reports, rejected-aggressive children also overestimated their behavioral competence. While highlighting heterogeneity among low-accepted groups, these results add to knowledge about the subjective experiences of children who are unpopular with peers.     

Teachers’ direct and indirect promotion of self-regulated learning in primary and secondary school mathematics classes – insights from video-based classroom observations and teacher interviews

Self-regulated learning has a positive effect on academic outcomes; however, little is known about whether and how teachers at various education levels promote it in their classes. Video-based classroom observations were conducted to assess primary and secondary school mathematics teachers’ direct and indirect promotion of self-regulated learning (SRL). Teachers’ implicit and explicit instruction of SRL strategies (direct promotion of SRL) and the learning environment they created (indirect promotion of SRL) were rated according to how conducive they were to self-regulation. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the secondary school teachers to gain insight into their subjective views on SRL. Although the teachers’ instructional practices could foster SRL, teachers spent little time explicitly teaching SRL strategies. Moreover, they taught mainly cognitive strategies and very few metacognitive strategies. These results were more pronounced at the primary level than at the secondary level. Primary school teachers provided learning environments conducive to self-regulation more often than secondary school teachers did. The interviews revealed that the teachers lacked knowledge about metacognition as an important component of SRL and were rather reluctant to promote it; however, most of them valued cognitive and motivational components of SRL. Primary and secondary school teachers need training to enhance their direct and indirect instruction of SRL. They could benefit in particular from learning about explicit instruction of SRL strategies and metacognition.     

Child Development And The Curriculum

Seventy-five years of research in the area of teacher effectiveness have failed to yield sound predictive information about teaching success. Several explanations are offered in this paper for observed discrepant and null findings. Commonly employed predictor variables may be unrelated to teacher effectiveness: consideration is given to the appropriate choice of predictor variables and concern expressed regarding the emphasis of research on the affective as opposed to the cognitive domain. Nevertheless, it is stressed that this explanation remains untested because of the following points: (1) The criterion variable may be unstable, invalid or inappropriate; in particular, it is argued that, while presage and process variables may be appropriately employed as predictors of teacher effectiveness, if tautologies are to be avoided, only product variables are valid as direct criteria for the assessment of effective teaching. (2) The influence of a particular variable may differ according to situation, for instance, according to grade level or subject matter taught. Arising from discussion of these points, some recommendations regarding future research are offered.     

COMMUNITY CO‐OPERATION IN BIBLE TEACHING

Even though classified as a new phenomenon, Islamic counseling is actually as old as the Islamic preaching activities among the people. It is because of counseling genuinely is an essential part from the religious activities as depict in a number of Islamic spiritual terminologies. For the context of Moslems society, the existence of institutionalize Islamic counseling occurred since the establishment of boarding schools. The increasing complexity of people's life is parallel with the increase of needs on the Islamic counseling.