Social Use of the School Library: the colonisation and regulation of educational space

The existing literature on school libraries has been dominated by a view of them as ‘learning laboratories’ which should allow students opportunities for reading and conducting research into small scale projects. From this perspective, resource issues and helping students become knowledgeable users of library facilities are the major problems facing school librarians. This study breaks from the traditional research by focusing on the social use of the school library. Data are used from two case‐studies of school libraries to analyse student colonisation and teacher regulation of library space, and the processes by which students come to associate or dissociate themselves from using the library during the school day. The paper concludes by arguing that social factors form, an integral part of the context in which school libraries stand or fall as arenas which facilitate student learning, and that the spatial dimensions of social interaction should become central to analyses of educational differentiation.     

Re-assembling knowledge production with(out) the university

ABSTRACT

As an introduction to the themed issue, this paper interrogates the idea of university unbundling through a critical reading of Ronald Coase’s theory of transaction costs. Coase, who was initially interested in the structure of firms, later applied his transaction cost theory more broadly to anything that might be defined as ‘welfare’. Not unlike other abstract economic theories, in the age of market discipline, Coase’s ideas have been widely employed to regulate the provision of public goods. Read through Coase, the main effect of the unbundling discourse has been to rationalise the university – to make it subject to a logic of efficiency as an end, and ultimately we suspect, to do damage to universities as important institutions for the cultivation of democratic values and socio-economic justice. After a brief summary of the other six papers included in the issue, the paper concludes with a discussion of the possibility of maintaining a public university in light of the neoliberal discourse of unbundling.     

Combining the best of two worlds: a conceptual proposal for evidence-informed school improvement

Abstract

Background: Data-based decision-making (DBDM) and research-informed teaching practice (RITP) are key to teacher and school improvement. Currently, however, DBDM and RITP represent two distinct approaches to developing evidence-informed practice (EIP) and do not correspond to the all-encompassing notion of EIP envisaged by many academics and commentators.

Purpose: DBDM and RITP are usually employed independently of each other. Each is associated with its own theoretical perspectives and research base, and each has its own pitfalls and strengths. Yet the approaches employed appear to be complementary, suggesting that there might be value in combining DBDM and RITP into one overarching process for achieving EIP. This paper presents the conceptual analysis and arguments for this proposal.

Sources of evidence: Drawing from literature and previous research in the fields of DBDM, RITP and EIP, we describe both DBDM and RITP, before comparing and contrasting the integral aspects of each.

Main argument: Our analysis leads us to suggest that not only is there overlap between these two approaches, but the strengths of each appear to mirror and compensate for the weaknesses of the other. As such, we argue that it is important that decisions in education are based on a combination of personal judgement, research evidence and local school data. This is because such a combination is likely to lead to equitable, effective and efficient decisions that are informed by values and preferences, grounded in context and steeped in practices that have been shown to be effective elsewhere.

Conclusions: We suggest that an effective strategy for EIP might be to achieve ‘the best of two worlds’ by integrating DBDM and RITP. In line with evidence-informed practices in medicine and management, this means EIP in education can finally be engaged in as a holistic approach to educational decision-making that critically appraises different forms of evidence before key improvement decisions are made. Our proposed approach, Evidence informed School and Teacher Improvement, is thus designed with the aim of enhancing the quality of educational provision by employing these evidence types as part of a systematic cycle of inquiry, focused on continuously improving the quality of learning in schools.     

A latent variable approach to the simple view of reading

The present study utilized a latent variable modeling approach to examine the Simple View of Reading in a sample of students from 3rd, 7th, and 10th grades (N = 215, 188, and 180, respectively). Latent interaction modeling and other latent variable models were employed to investigate (a) the functional form of the relationship between decoding and linguistic comprehension in third grade, (b) the contribution of these predictors as children progress through school, and (c) the contribution of passage fluency, working memory, and performance IQ to a model of reading for all grades. Results did not support the Simple View of Reading for students in grades 3, 7 and 10. Additionally, it was found that passage fluency significantly predicted reading comprehension after controlling for decoding and linguistic comprehension for students in grades 7 and 10. Likewise performance IQ was found to be a significant predictor of reading comprehension for students in third grade.