Implementing the Contract: the technical and vocational education initiative

Participating schools have a contractual responsibility to recruit a ‘balanced intake’ of students to TVEI courses. However, in many schools it is form teachers who have the eventual job of promoting TVEI to both sexes ‘across the ability range’.

What this recruitment structure does not allow for is that form teachers may be affected by a number of ‘sources of influence’, the effects of which do not coincide with this objective.

The aim of this paper is to build up a picture of the school as an ‘open ended’ interrelating totality, within which form teachers confront the demand for a ‘balanced intake’ alongside a number of other, potentially conflicting factors.     

Does maternal employment influence poor children’s social development?

Various initiatives over the past 40 years have aimed to strengthen children’s early learning and social development. One policy theory—manifest in recent welfare reforms—postulates that requiring single mothers to work more outside the home will advance children’s well-being. We first examine whether young children’s social development is related to maternal employment among 405 women who entered welfare-to-work programs in 1998. For girls, age 24–42 months, we found that their mother’s recent employment duration was significantly associated with a lower incidence of aggressive behavior and inattentiveness, measured by two scales from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL 2/3). Yet these relationships with employment were weaker than more robust associations observed for proximal child-rearing practices, including the frequency of reading with the child, enforcing a regular bedtime, the propensity to spank the child, as well as levels of maternal depression. We then assess whether broader measures of the mother’s economic security help to predict these proximal determinants of development. We observed that food security and indicators of job quality consistently predicted the proximal factors. Structural equation models (SEM) provided additional evidence that these broader indicators of economic security, but not recent employment per se, operated through parenting practices and maternal depression to influence girls’ and boys’ social development. These results are consistent with recent findings from random-assignment experiments, showing that employment gains rarely affect child outcomes unless mothers’ income and broader economic security also improve.     

Personalized learning in iSTART: Past modifications and future design

Abstract

Computer-based learning environments (CBLEs) provide unprecedented opportunities for personalized learning at scale. One such system, iSTART (Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking) is an adaptive, game-based tutoring system for reading comprehension. This paper describes how efforts to increase personalized learning have improved the system. It also provides results of a recent implementation of an adaptive logic that increases or decreases text difficulty based on students’ performance rather than presenting texts randomly. High school students who received adaptive text selection showed increased sense of learning. Adaptive text selection also resulted in greater pre-training to post-training comprehension test gains, especially for less-skilled readers. The findings demonstrate that system-driven, just-in-time support consistent with the goals of personalized learning benefit the efficacy of computer-based learning environments.     

Debt: the reality of student life

During the 1980s, a political consensus developed concerning the need to increase participation in higher education (Walker and Wright, 1990). How to finance this increase, however, was a matter of contention. While successive Conservative governments demonstrated a commitment to increasing the number of students, this aim was subordinate to their central concern of controlling public expenditure, which meant they were not prepared to meet the cost of expansion totally from the public purse. As a consequence, alternative ways of financing students were introduced which, as this paper will demonstrate, have led to a higher education system subsidized by student debt.     

Old Enemies？

本专栏由英国大使馆文化处供稿,旨在让读者从中学习地道英文,体悟英文百味。本期介绍了英国的四个组成部分——英格兰、苏格兰、威尔士和北爱尔兰之间的“恩怨”与“宿仇”。由于英格兰地域广,政治、经济实力强,不了解英国的人通常误把英格兰当英国。但是,在体育上,其他几个“兄弟”可是要扳回一城的……     

Action groups as a participative strategy for leading whole-school health promotion: Results on implementation from the INCLUSIVE trial in English secondary schools

Education policy increasingly promotes action groups as a key strategy for student and/or staff participation in school improvement and whole-school health promotion. Such groups can coordinate multi-component interventions, increase participation and engagement, and enable local adaptations, but few process evaluations have assessed this. We evaluated fidelity, feasibility and acceptability of action groups as part of a trial of a whole-school intervention to reduce bullying and aggression and promote health in English secondary schools, which reported multiple health and educational impacts. Action groups involved students and staff, supported by external facilitators, and drew on data on student needs. They aimed to: coordinate implementation of restorative practices and a social and emotional competencies curriculum; review policies and rules; and enact local decisions to modify school environments. Our process evaluation used interviews, focus groups, observations and questionnaires to assess action groups’ fidelity, role in coordination, role in local adaptation, support from external facilitators and data on student needs, and acceptability in engaging members. Fidelity was high in the first two years but lower in the third year when external facilitators withdrew. Student needs data were perceived as useful, but views on external facilitators were mixed. Groups successfully reviewed policies and rules, planned activities and coordinated restorative practices, but were less successful in implementing the curriculum. Success was facilitated by the involvement of school leaders. Members reported high satisfaction and empowerment. Action groups are a promising strategy for leading whole-school health promotion. Implementation is supported by external facilitation, local data and involvement of senior managers.     

The assessment of at-risk infants and toddlers with the Bayley Mental Scale and the Battelle Developmental Inventory: Beyond the data

The purpose of this study was to compare the usefulness of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID)-Mental Scales and the Battelle Developmental Inventory (BDI) in assessing the abilities of infants and toddlers from teen-parent families. The 34 children lived with their mothers, who ranged in age from 15 to 21. The results of the study indicate that these two developmental instruments cannot be used interchangeably and that one needs to look beyond the psychometric data in order to understand the results of infant and toddler assessment. The correlation between the BSID-Mental Development Index (MDI) and BDI Total score was −.03.