Barriers to resource sharing among higher education libraries a report to the Research Support Libraries Programme (RSLP)

This paper describes the user-focused approach to information skills at MMU Library. It covers the following cycle: identifying training needs at three levels (organisation, group and individual); developing a training strategy and materials; marketing information skills within MMU. Specifically, it describes how we went about discovering what our users wanted, creating and delivering what they needed, and how we ‘sold’ it back to them.     

U.S.-Produced Entertainment Media and Attitude Toward Americans

This study examines the relationship between Singaporean college students'attitude toward Americans and their exposure to U.S. exported entertainment media.

The 328 Singaporean college student participants expressed relatively neutral attitudes toward Americans and reported high consumption of U.S. entertainment media (movies, television shows, magazines, music). Exposure to American media was found to correlate positively with student attitudes toward Americans.

In contrast to some media critics' contention that exposure to U.S. media fosters negative attitudes among citizens of other countries, this study suggests that U.S. entertainment may influence attitude toward Americans in a positive direction.     

Developing Media Literacy in Public Libraries: Learning from Community Media Centers

The rise of digital media labs and spaces for content creation in public libraries has been documented in the scholarly literature. However, fewer studies have investigated the outcomes of media literacy initiatives in community media centers (CMCs) and how they might inform similar programs and services in public libraries. This article reports findings from a study that used qualitative research to investigate the current goals and activities of CMCs across the United States. The findings show that the educational, social, and community benefits of these programs could be useful for public libraries to consider in developing or augmenting their own media literacy initiatives.     

Understanding the science of environmental issues: development of a subject knowledge guide for primary teacher education

In the light of an increased concern for environmental education (especially in the context of sustainable development) in the UK, this study used questionnaire surveys to explore the understanding of 170 practising primary school teachers, 120 primary trainees and 88 secondary science trainees in four areas: biodiversity, the carbon cycle, ozone and global warming. A methodological innovation in this research was the prior identification of basic scientific explanations of each area for a primary teacher and the use of these as benchmarks for judging understanding. Knowledge of the component parts of these explanations was tested in the questionnaires. Hence the study was able to identify those underpinning science concepts which were well understood, and those which were not so well understood. The frequencies of several misconceptions, uncovered in earlier interviews and also included in the questionnaires, are also reported. It is suggested that both the basic explanations and the difficulties of understanding displayed by the teachers in some areas can usefully inform programmes of professional development for sustainable development and environmental education. An outline of a guide for teachers adopting this approach is provided.     

Early childhood arts curriculum: a cross-cultural study

Many countries, including Australia, China, the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, have included art subjects in their core curriculum. Using the theory of governmentality as a critical lens to investigate the intricate power–knowledge system in relation to curriculum, arts and pedagogy, this paper makes a comparative document analysis of two contemporary arts curricula for children aged 5–6 years—the Beijing Kindergarten Happiness and Development Curriculum in the arts learning area (upper class in kindergarten), and the Australian Curriculum: The Arts (Foundation level). Curriculum is best understood as a multi-faceted phenomenon and this paper draws from research which categorized curriculum into three phases: the intended (or planned) curriculum, the enacted (or implemented) curriculum and the experienced (the learner experience) curriculum. By focusing on the first phase: the intended curriculum, this paper compares the documents that comprise the planned curriculum from two very different contexts, and thus makes a contribution to cross-cultural understanding of early childhood arts curriculum in ways that may lead to social change.     

Methodological individualism,educational administration,and leadership

There are two major categories of explanation for organisational performance: structural and individual. With the shift away from systems-theoretic accounts that occurred in the 1980s, structural explanations have been replaced increasingly by the individualism of leadership and leader-centric explanations, especially when it comes to schools. In this paper, we argue that leader-centric accounts involve a commitment to methodological individualism and that there are four serious problems with this view. First, it is logically difficult to describe individual actions without recourse to structures. Second, methodological individualism fosters a centralised mindset inviting the attribution of leadership where none may exist. Third, evidence for distributed cognition compromises leader-centrism. And fourth, administrative tasks themselves are often highly structured. In response to these problems, we urge a more balanced approach to organisational functioning, one that involves both structures and individuals.     

Studying Headteachers' Professional Lives: Getting the life history

In order to obtain a better understanding of how headteachers frame their professional lives, a comparative project was set up with a life history approach. A series of open-ended interviews were conducted where headteachers talked about themselves, their work, background, experiences and career. The article focuses on the modes of inquiry used in the study and explores alternative approaches to analysis, especially of content and form. Several methodological issues are discussed, for instance the production of data as an interactive and collaborative process of creating meaning, the central role of the research relations, dialogical analysis and how to move from separate individual stories to an analysis of headteachers' lives across different countries. As the analysis has unfolded, new questions have been posed about the comparative aspect of the project. At the beginning, cross-national similarities and differences were relatively straightforward and were found in the content of interviews. Since then, explorations of the form and structure of the stories have raised more complex juxtapositions. More recently, new questions have begun to emerge, such as about the nature and meanings of 'professional confidence' and its relationship to external accountability in national contexts.     

Social Control,Social Policy and Adult Education

This paper contrasts a number of different cultures existing within Adult Education. It incorporates theoretical perspectives from Bourdieu and Williams with case‐study material obtained through observation, questionnaire and interview at a South London adult education centre in 1986/87. Bourgeois culture is seen as the exception rather than the rule in adult education. Adult education provides space for a number of alternative cultural formulations, but they operate within a predominantly middle‐class atmosphere. Equal opportunities and the social justice dimension of adult education represent a new cultural formulation, but without further developmental work cannot yet be regarded as significant interventions in a society deeply divided by gender, race and class. While the case‐study material is set in the UK of the 1980s, the theoretical perspectives are relevant to the persistence of inequality in many advanced industrial countries.