Instructions for Authors

Instructions for Authors

Instructions for Authors     

Is Schooling a Risk? Gender,Power Relations,and School Culture in Uganda

This article relates a study of AIDS education in Uganda which used an ethnography of school culture to explore the contradictions in curriculum intervention. The school was found to be a site of an extensive set of gendered practices which constituted a risk in themselves in terms of sexual health. Four forms of control are examined in this article: hegemonic masculinity, gendered discipline patterns, sexual harassment and 'compulsory' heterosexuality. Male domination and power imbalances in the school encouraged attitudes and practices with regard to sexual relationships which negated the official messages of the AIDS curriculum.     

Changing Resource and Organizational Patterns: The Challenge of Resourcing Education in the 21st Century

This paper looks at the changing patterns ofresourcing (financing) education in thetwenty-first century. It identifies five trendsthat are altering the resourcing and provisionof education through their impact on theorganization of education systems. As aconsequence of these trends, it puts forwardthe view that the role of government ischanging from direct provider of education toone of regulator of the education industry.     

Instructions for Authors

Instructions for Authors

Instructions for Authors     

The Ethnic Composition of Nursery Classes and its Effect on Children's Adjustment to Nursery

Teachers’ perceptions of how children had adjusted to school were collected from two groups of classes; one group had a 100% British White population, the other was made up of 26% British White, 54% British Asian, 15% British Afro‐Caribbean and 5% from other groupings. Results showed that the children in the multi‐ethnic classes, the girls and morning attenders were rated by the teachers as having settled significantly better than the British White sample, the boys and afternoon attenders. Possible causes for these findings could lie in the school induction policies, the social makeup of the groups, the teacher subjectivity in completing the schedule or the mix of children from different backgrounds on the one hand compared to the more monoethnic makeup on the other.     

Security,Extremism and Education: Safeguarding or Surveillance?

This article analyses how education is positioned in the current concerns about security and extremism. This means firstly examining the different meanings of security (national, human and societal) and who provides security for whom. Initially, a central dilemma is acknowledged: that schooling appears to be simultaneously irrelevant to the huge global questions of security and yet central to the learning of alternative ways to conduct human relations. With regard to extremism, two aspects of importance in ideological compliance or challenge are firstly the attempted securitisation of education, and secondly the role of education in young people joining or supporting extremist movements. The UK’s ‘Prevent’ strategy is examined here. The issue of how to safeguard young people without securitising institutions suggests four key features: inclusivity, encounters with difference, networking and active citizenship. Critiquing sacred texts and the use of humour and satire also act to foster resilience. Educational approaches within transitional justice underline the importance of tackling violence in schools and promoting a human rights culture that promotes both human security and ultimately national security.     

Schooling Quasi-Markets: Reconciling Economic and Sociological Analyses

We provide an economic assessment of the operation of schooling quasi-markets, re-interpreting the findings of the mainly sociologically-based empirical research. We find that economic analysis is complementary to that of sociology, providing further explanations for the failure of greater competition to increase the diversity of provision and challenge traditional school hierarchies.     

Temperamental Emotionality Attributes as Antecedents of Children's Social Information Processing

This study examined temperament dimensions of emotion as precursors of children's social information processing (SIP) of stressful peer events. Two hundred and forty-three preschool children (M = 4.60 years) and their primary caregivers participated in two measurement occasions spaced 2 years apart. Observations of temperamental anger, fearful distress, positive affect, and effortful control were assessed in multiple laboratory tasks across two visits at Wave 1. SIP assessments from vignettes of peer challenges were repeated across two waves and included: eye tracking measures of attention to peer emotion displays, hostile attribution bias, hostile solutions, and subjective distress. Findings from structural equation models with inclusion of autoregressive controls indicated that effortful control, fear, and anger predicted subsequent changes in specific SIP dimensions.     

Quantifying the information needs of doctors in the UK using clinical librarians

Background and objectives: The main objective of this paper is to determine the frequency of doctors’ clinical information needs using Clinical Librarians as data collectors, focusing on the UK acute sector. Additionally, the frequency of questions followed‐up by Clinical Librarians was determined. The information needs of doctors have been investigated in other countries, particularly the USA, but not in the UK. Clinical Librarians have not been utilized as data collectors in any previous studies. Method: Clinical Librarians counted clinical questions posed by doctors in clinical settings. Results: The Clinical Librarians counted 286 questions from 655 doctors discussing 1210 patient cases. This represents approximately one question for every four patients. Conclusion: Clinical Librarians can collect data to identify the number of information needs doctors have, but this was more successful when the Clinical Librarian was experienced and an established part of the clinical team.     

Participation,financial support and the marginal student

This paper examines differences between the decision-making of marginal and nonmarginal students about participation in higher education (HE). We distinguish between two kinds of marginality: being ‘borderline’ on account of prior achievements in school and being ‘unsure’ after taking prior achievement into account. We identify a significant minority of students in their final year of schooling who are unsure about participation in higher education even though they have prior school achievements typical of entrants to HE. Being ‘unsure’ is found to be unrelated to socioeconomic background, but it is associated with significantly different attitudes towards the potential benefits and risks of participation, different levels of knowledge about financial support that is available and different approaches to information search about participation in HE.