Bilingualism and phonological awareness: the case of bilingual (French–Occitan) children

The present study investigated the development of linguistic awareness in children exposed to the early learning of a second language in Grades 3–5 of primary school, i.e. between the ages of 8 and 10. The aim was to determine whether this bilingual experience enhanced the development of phonological awareness in beginning readers in a bilingual French-regional language school programme compared with a population of monolingual children receiving traditional education. More specifically, in light of research promoting the hypothesis of a “bilingual advantage”, we set out to determine exactly how long children need to be exposed to a second language before bilingualism starts to influence the development of their phonological awareness. Tasks designed to assess phonological awareness were administered to more than a hundred children. Results suggest that children who have undergone a bilingual school programme display a more highly developed phonological awareness than their monolingual peers from age 9 onwards, i.e. in Grade 4. These results are discussed in the light of ongoing research on bilingualism, bilingual education and threshold theory.     

Implementing the mandate: the limitations of benchmark tests

As mandated by No Child Left Behind, schools must find ways to improve test scores. How do benchmark tests fare as a means of informing teachers in order to raise achievement for low-income students? This study of English language arts instruction at a low-income high school investigates the administration’s use of standardized benchmark assessments over 3 years. The socioeconomic conditions for students where teachers were implementing this reform had deleterious effects. The study found that teachers had difficulty getting students up to grade level in an under-resourced program, especially with hundreds of skills represented in the standards. The teachers viewed the benchmark tests as an interruption to their classroom instruction and as an inadequate means of measuring their students’ progress. Ultimately, even the administration found the tests an inadequate assessment for their purposes.     

Child sexual abuse: Case handling through public social agencies in the Southeast of the USA

This paper reports data from a regionwide survey of child sexual abuse case handling in the Southeast. Public social agency workers do not generally provide nor view the provision of treatment services as being primarily their responsibility. While about 70% of the workers (N = 1,045) had performed initial intervention and diagnostic tasks, only 46.1% had performed treatment tasks. Ten percent of the workers felt initial intervention tasks were more appropriate to some other professional community resource; 16.3% made this judgment for diagnostic tasks. On the other hand, 55.1% delegated the responsibility for the provision of treatment services. More importantly, the workers' perception of task performance responsibility was not appreciably influenced by the notion of being provided adequate training to perform treatment services.     

Young people’s views on sexting education and support needs: findings and recommendations from a UK-based study

Young people’s sexting is an area of increasing concern amongst parents, educationalists and policy makers, yet little research has been conducted with young people themselves to explore their perspectives on the support they need to navigate relationships in the new digital media landscape. To address this absence, an inter-disciplinary team of researchers undertook a participatory study with students, aged 13 to 15, in a UK secondary school. This paper outlines key study findings, including young people’s views on sexting, their recommendations for improved education around sexting in schools, their preferred sources of support, and their perspectives on the way adults should respond to young people’s sexting. Findings indicate that sexting education needs to be developed within the context of wider relationship issues, such as gender, power dynamics and trust between peers, and improved communication between students and teachers or other responsible adults. Findings may be used to consider ways of designing and communicating messages around sexting to young people within and beyond educational settings.     

Reforming governance through policy instruments: how and to what extent standards,tests and accountability in education spread worldwide

ABSTRACT

In the last decades, most countries have adopted data-intensive policy instruments aimed at modernizing the governance of education systems, and strengthening their competitiveness. Instruments such as national large-scale assessments and test-based accountabilities have disseminated widely, to the point that they are being enacted in countries with very different administrative traditions and levels of economic development. Nonetheless, comparative research on the trajectories that governance instruments follow in different institutional and socio-economic contexts is still scarce. On the basis of a systematic literature review (n?=?158), this paper enquires into the scope and modalities of educational governance change that national large-scale assessments and test-based accountability instruments have triggered in a broad range of institutional settings. The paper shows that, internationally, educational governance reforms advance through path-dependent and contingent processes of policy instrumentation that are markedly conditioned by prevailing politico-administrative regimes. The paper also reflects on the additive and evolving nature of educational governance reforms.     

Learning Style Preferences of Armenian, African, Hispanic, Hmong, Korean, Mexican, and Anglo Students in American Secondary Schools

This is a study concerning the basic perceptual learning style preferences (auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and tactile) and preferences for group and individual learning of Armenian, African, Hispanic, Hmong, Korean, Mexican, and Anglo students in American secondary schools. The results of the study reveal significant ethnic group and sex differences in their learning style preferences, as well as students' achievement level differences. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Danny MacAskill and the visuality of the extreme

This article offers a visual analysis of online videos that feature innovative street trials cyclist Danny MacAskill. While MacAskill tends to be defined exclusively as an extreme athlete, this article instead considers his popular online videos as acts of poesies that make visible the theme of flourishing in the midst of uncertainty. Drawing on and contributing to extreme sports studies as well as recent social theory on precariousness, the article notes the understudied meaning making potential of extreme sports performances, which navigate the peril that characterizes contemporary existence through risk and play. I argue that MacAskill’s videos deserve greater attention because he provides a counterexample to the kinds of hypermasculine extreme sports performances that have historically been studied. Ultimately, the article considers how analysing MacAskill’s videos can begin to redirect critical understandings of the relationship between cultural production, gender performance and extreme sports.