ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES, ADDITIONAL FEE INCOME AND ACCESS AGREEMENTS: THEIR IMPACT ON WIDENING PARTICIPATION AND FAIR ACCESS

ABSTRACT:  This paper argues that the introduction of access agreements following the establishment of the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) has consolidated how English higher education institutions (HEIs) position themselves in the marketplace in relation to widening participation. However, the absence of a national bursary scheme has led to obfuscation rather than clarification from the perspective of the consumer. This paper analyses OFFA's 2008 monitoring report and a sample of twenty HEIs' original 2006 and revised or updated access agreements (2008) to draw conclusions about the impact of these agreements on notions of 'fair access' and widening participation. The authors conclude that, unsurprisingly in an increasingly market-driven system, institutions use access agreements primarily to promote enrolment to their own programmes rather than to promote system-wide objectives. As a consequence of this marketing focus, previous differences between pre-1992 and post-1992 institutions in relation to widening participation and fair access are perpetuated, leading to both confusion for consumers and an inequitable distribution of bursary and other support mechanisms for the poorest applicants to HE.     

How times change: Secondary teachers' job satisfaction and dissatisfaction in 1962 and 2007

In this article we explore the level of job satisfaction and the sources of job dissatisfaction for 210 secondary school teachers in southwest England and compare our results with the results from a similar study published in 1962. Using anonymous questionnaires, we asked 210 secondary teachers in southwest England (63% female) to rate their level of job satisfaction and to rate 16 sources of job dissatisfaction that we adapted from the 1962 study. Teachers in 2007 rated their job satisfaction significantly lower and ordered the sources of job dissatisfaction significantly differently than did teachers in 1962. Whereas teachers in 1962 were most concerned with external sources of job dissatisfaction (e.g. salary, condition of buildings and equipment and poor human relations), teachers in 2007 expressed the most concern about factors relating to teaching itself (e.g. time demands and pupils' behaviour). The changes in sources of dissatisfaction hold true for male and female teachers, with no difference in rankings according to years of teaching experience.     

Toleration, Children and Education

The paper explores challenges for the interpretation of the ideal toleration that arise in educational contexts involving children. It offers an account of how a respect-based conception of toleration can help to resolve controversies about the accommodation and response to diversity that arise in schools.     

A Better Way to Begin Again Together: the value of a comparative approach to teaching poetry in school

This paper suggests a particular value to treating the teaching of poetry in school comparatively. It argues that the justification for this claim derives from the ways in which peculiar symbiotic dependencies between poetry, languages, cultures and uniquely individual consciousness‐‐and between poetry, childhood learning and children's achievement of literacy‐‐can be represented in a teaching methodology. It refers to a unique teaching and research project, directed by the author at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London, which has developed principles and strategies for building a new pedagogy with children and in teacher education.     

The historical context of Newton's Third Law and the teaching of mechanics

Many studies have shown that Newton's Third Law of Motion is not easy for students to accept when they consider the interaction of two objects. A number of prominent science educators believe that it should not be taught to students before Year 11. This paper reports the results of a study of the historical origins of Newton's Third Law with a view to identifying the context from which it emerged in the 17th century and the conceptual changes which accompanied its emergence. Some of the possible implications of a study such as this for improving the teaching of introductory mechanics are discussed. Specializations: physics education, concept development, history and philosophy of science in science teaching.     

How student perceptions about online learning difficulty influenced their satisfaction during Canada's Covid-19 response

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed a significant challenge to higher education and forced academic institutions across the globe to abruptly shift to remote teaching. Because of the emergent transition, higher education institutions continuously face difficulties in creating satisfactory online learning experiences that adhere to the new norms. This study investigates the transition to online learning during Covid-19 to identify factors that influenced students' satisfaction with the online learning environment. Adopting a mixed-method design, we find that students' experience with online learning can be negatively affected by information overload, and perceived technical skill requirements, and describe qualitative evidence that suggest a lack of social interactions, class format, and ambiguous communication also affected perceived learning. This study suggests that to digitalize higher education successfully, institutions need to redesign students' learning experience systematically and re-evaluate traditional pedagogical approaches in the online context.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• University transitions to online learning during the Covid-19 pandemic were undertaken by faculty and students who had little online learning experience.
• The transition to online learning was often described as having a negative influence on students' learning experience and mental health.
• Varieties of cognitive load are known predictors of effective online learning experiences and satisfaction.

What this paper adds

• Information overload and perceptions of technical abilities are demonstrated to predict students' difficulty and satisfaction with online learning.
• Students express negative attitudes towards factors that influence information overload, technical factors, and asynchronous course formats.
• Communication quantity was not found to be a significant factor in predicting either perceived difficulty or negative attitudes.

Implications for practice and/or policy

• We identify ways that educators in higher education can improve their online offerings and implementations during future disruptions.
• We offer insights into student experience concerning online learning environments during an abrupt transition.
• We identify design factors that contribute to effective online delivery, educators in higher education can improve students' learning experiences during difficult periods and abrupt transitions to online learning.

     

The Genealogy of the School: an iconography of badges and mottoes

This paper reports on an investigation into central features of institutional schooling that, collectively, constitute the ‘symbolic architecture’ of education. In particular, this paper provides an analysis of the practices associated with school uniform, badges and mottoes, drawn from a sample of over 500 schools in the state of Queensland, Australia. The analysis reveals a large degree of uniformity in the meaning content of these school icons, derived from a common core of educational values established during the formative decades of universal school but resting on older heraldic principles. The authors contend that the propagation of these values within the iconic discourse of schooling constitute a significant ideological practice that focuses a pupil's consciousness towards social norms and further reifies the institutional character of education. These processes are not ‐straightforward but are often contested in instances where pupils recreate mottoes in ways which mock the values that are consecrated in the formal symbols of schooling.     

From Data Collectors to Data Producers: Shifting Students’ Relationship to Data

This paper contributes a theoretical framework informed by historical, philosophical and ethnographic studies of science practice to argue that data should be considered to be actively produced, rather than passively collected. We further argue that traditional school science laboratory investigations misconstrue the nature of data and overly constrain student agency in their production. We use our “Data Production” framework to analyze activity of and interviews with high school students who created data using sensors and software in a ninth-grade integrated science class. To understand the opportunities for students to develop act with and perceive agency in data production, we analyze in detail the case of one student as she came to use unfamiliar technologies to produce data for her own personally relevant purposes. We find that her purposes for producing data emerged as she worked, and that resistances to her purposes were opportunities to act with and perceive her own agency, and to see data in new ways. We discuss implications for designing science learning experiences in which students act as agents in producing and using data.