Transforming schools: illusion or reality?1

This paper explores the claim that appropriately trained heads can motivate teachers and students to achieve challenging targets and transform the prospects of future generations. Theory derived from the leadership literature is tested against the experience of three headteachers in the field. Case study evidence is used to examine how Hillside School was improved. Applying recommended styles, the heads won the commitment of their colleagues and built the capacity for further progress, despite adverse circumstances that included social disadvantage. Although the ‘turn around’ was achieved quickly, the interpersonal styles adopted by the heads were only part of a leadership repertoire that included beliefs, values, professional knowledge and micro-politics. Variations in the combination of context, leaders and followers seem to have been more significant than the common elements emphasized by the school improvement literature and national training programmes. OfSTED reported that the school's effectiveness was greatly enhanced. Test and examination results were more or less unchanged, however, confirming recent studies that have found little evidence of leadership impact on student outcomes. This supports the suggestion that intake mix may influence results more than the organizational characteristics shaped by heads. The paper concludes that while leadership training may improve school climate, a transformation in performance is unlikely.     

The development and preliminary assessment of a set of video‐taped informative speech models

Guidelines are specified in this article for developing video‐taped informative speech models. Faculty members rated selected video‐taped informative speeches on nine variables and two months later rated nine of the same speeches again. The faculty judges were reliable on their ratings for eight of the nine variables rated during the two sessions. Five of the nine speeches were identified as being representative of one of three significantly different levels of excellence.     

Constructive readings of interactive episodes: examining ethics in physical education from a social constructionist perspective

In this paper we illustrate how ways of thinking about ethics are tied up with sport and physical education practice and introduce an alternative approach that can help to develop ethical pedagogies. We begin by locating socio-moral education in physical education within historical and contemporary pedagogical scholarship. Our argument is that the work of today's physical educators is still shaped by claims that were made about school sport in the nineteenth century and that sport scholars have long had difficulties proving these claims empirically. Rather than search for data that can confirm or refute claims of moral learning, we examine how incidents related to moral behaviour occur during physical education lessons. To do this we draw on data from an ethnographic investigation of a school in North Western Switzerland. Specifically, we present three episodes of interaction in three different physical education lessons. To make sense of these episodes, we introduce a social constructionist perspective. The main assumptions of this perspective are: (1) meanings are created through dialogue and consensus and are context-relative; (2) interactions between people are joint accomplishments; and (3) contexts affect how people interact with one another. Equipped with a constructionist framework, we then inspect the interactive episodes more closely. We include brief discussions of how constructionist understandings might inform ethics pedagogies in the future, suggesting that practitioners should be cautious of universal understandings of ethics, consider pupils as members of communities that are held together by shared practices, provide space for pupils to position themselves differently during lessons and, finally, account for contextual factors when evaluating pupils’ actions.     

Variability and Sampling Inspection in the NOCSAE Standards for Football Helmets

Abstract

Because of increasing numbers of serious sports-related injuries at all levels of participation, the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE) was formed. Among their activities aimed at improving the safety of sports participation was the development of standards for impact resistance in both new and refinished football helmets. These standards include not only recommendations as to safe levels of resistance to impact but recommendations as to the number of helmets to be tested from each group of helmets undergoing a refinishing process.

In this study the various sources of variability in the testing procedure are examined. These sources include helmet-to-helmet variability, testing variability, and basic measurement error. A careful examination of this variability in the context of the NOCSAE-recommended testing procedures for recertifying helmets reveals an inadequacy in the NOCSAE standard, in that the probability of returning unsafe helmets to the playing field is unacceptably high.     

The importance of school culture in supporting student mental health in secondary schools. Insights from a qualitative study

Schools have the potential to provide a place of education and sanctuary for children and young people of all backgrounds. The rise in mental health problems in children and young people in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in relation to growing inequities, means that identifying ways in which schools can help respond to this growing mental health crisis demands urgent attention. This paper reports on case studies carried out in two London comprehensive schools, exploring how aspects of school culture impact (both positively and negatively) on student mental health. Methods comprised in-depth interviews with school staff and parents, focus groups with students and documentary analysis of relevant materials. Fieldwork was conducted during spring 2021 as schools were returning to face-to-face learning following national periods of lockdown. Our study shows how schools might attempt to drive positive mental health outcomes through aspects of school culture and uses a system framework to explore complexities around cause and effect in this area. Key findings include the considerable differences in school mental health provision, challenges in the identification of student mental health needs and the importance of recognising how the mental health of teachers must be considered alongside that of students. Overall, we highlight particular dilemmas of the post-lockdown era that our findings indicate for the education sector, and suggest there may be value in reframing the apparent conflict between ‘attainment gaps’ and personal development, moving towards an educational approach with greater complementarity of these aims.     

英国的教育资源状况

英国作为发达国家,其教育资源状况对于尚处在发展中国家的中国搞好当前的教育改革与发展无疑是具有借鉴作用的。在此对于本文作者Mi.Ray Baiken,翻译曹鹏,校对张丽华深表谢意。     

Sense about sex: media,sex advice,education and learning

The media are widely acknowledged as important in sex and relationship education, but they are usually associated with ‘bad’ effects on young people in contrast to the ‘good’ knowledge represented by more informational and educational formats. In this paper we look at sex advice giving in newspapers, magazines and television in the UK, in sex advice books and in online spaces for sexual learning. We examine some of the limitations of the information provided, consider the challenges for sex advice in the contemporary context, and outline some of the opportunities for academics, researchers, therapists, sex educators and activists to contribute productively to sex advice giving and sexual learning more generally.