Tourette Syndrome: a Training Day for Teachers

Recent research indicates that Tourette syndrome is more prevalent than was once thought and that teachers in most mainstream schools are likely to encounter pupils displaying the characteristics of Tourette syndrome. Research also indicates that these characteristics, and the range of responses that may be appropriate, are not well understood by school staff. In this article, Dr Uttom Chowdhury, Consultant Child Psychiatrist at the CAMHS Academic Unit in Dunstable and Honorary Child Psychiatrist at the Neurodevelopmental Disorders Clinic at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, and Dr Deborah Christie, Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychological Services at University College London and Middlesex Hospitals, describe a training day for teachers facilitated by members of the Tic Disorders Clinic at Great Ormond Street Hospital. The day provided a mix of information–giving and discussion of current practice. Uttom Chowdhury and Deborah Christie relate the outcomes of the day to their own professional knowledge and experience and offer an interesting agenda for further developments.     

LISP (Energy) — Some preliminary findings

Conclusion In concluding this tentative account of our research we can note that the research questions about teachers' alternative frameworks and their interaction with the curriculum and with classroom learning by students appear to be extremely important questions for researchers in the area of energy teaching and learning and presumably in wider contexts. There are also implications for science teacher education, both preservice and inservice. It is clearly necessary to address the confusion in both teachers' and students' understandings of energy. We would like to thank Mary and Jack, their Principals, and classes for allowing us to observe their teaching and learning, SERU colleagues for their sustained support and in particular Mark Cosgrove for his editing of this paper's drafts.     

Rival Conceptions of Practice in Education and Teaching

Some initial reflections on the theoretical status of philosophy of education suggest that it seems appropriate to regard education and teaching as practices in some sense. Following a distinction between teaching as an institutional and professional role and teaching as a more basic form of moral association, however, some key aspects of this distinction are explored via a contrast between MacIntyrean notions of moral and social practice and more mainstream Aristotelian virtue-ethics concepts of moral character and agency. The paper proceeds to argue that, notwithstanding any and all pressure to regard teaching in institutional and professional contexts as a form of technical or managerial expertise directed to specific social ends, neither teaching nor the moral ends which it more widely serves seem reducible to practices in any such socially defined sense.