The New School

This paper traces the changing status of the school as a counter culture in the anthropological and historical literature, in particular from the moment when compulsory mass schooling assumed the function of ideological state apparatus in the post‐revolutionary 19^th century West. It then focuses attention on what may be called the New School, which could be said to represent an evolved, postmodern embodiment of the social archetype of the school as interruption of the status quo. It emerged in the form of schools initially associated with Romanticism and with socialist libertarian or ‘anarchist’ impulses, and moved, if temporarily, into the educational mainstream in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries in the left sector of the Progressive Education movement, proliferated in the 1960s and 70s in various school reform movements, and is a constant presence today in the theory and practice of those schools that identify themselves as ‘democratic’. It is based on principles of adult–child dialogue and direct democratic practice. Examples that we have of the New School tend to be characterised by material and activity environments that value variety, emergence, choice, emotional safety, self‐initiation and self‐organisation; that are multi‐sensorial and polysymbolic; and that are organised on the principles associated with mastery learning, social learning theory and play theory—that is, moderate complexity and optimal cognitive arousal as exemplary conditions for learning.     

AONS II: Continuing the Trend Towards Preservation Software ‘Nirvana’

File format obsolescence is a major risk factor threatening the sustainability of and access to digital information. While the preservation community has become increasingly interested in tools for migration and transformation of file formats, the National Library of Australia is developing mechanisms specifically focused on monitoring and assessing the risks of file format obsolescence. This paper reports on the AONS II project, undertaken by the National Library of Australia (NLA) in conjunction with the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR). The project aimed to develop a software tool which allows users to automatically monitor the status of file formats in their repositories, make risk assessments based on a core set of obsolescence risk questions, and receive notifications when file format risks change or other related events occur. This paper calls for the preservation community to develop a co-operating file format obsolescence community which includes registries, software tool creators and end users to effectively curate digital content in order to maintain long-term access.     

A Comparison of Doctoral Graduates in Counselor Education and Counseling Psychology

In a nationwide study of graduates of doctoral programs in counselor education and counseling psychology, researchers found similarities between the two groups in educational and work history, current employment, professional activities, and future goals.     

Still a gendered technology? Issues in teaching information and communication technologies at the UK Open University

Over the last 5 years the Faculty of Technology of the UK Open University has redesigned most of its courses in the information and communication technologies. This paper reviews some of the issues, the changes made and what has been achieved. The combination of changes to content, pedagogy and marketing appears to have made the new generation of courses significantly more attractive to women--although it is difficult to disentangle the effects of the various changes.     

Rapid Reform and Unfinished Business: the development of education in independent Latvia 1991–2007

Education in Latvia has changed a great deal in the last 15 years. The development of an independent and democratic state system has creatively combined elements of foreign experience and influence with the enrichment and further development of features of the earlier Latvian system. This article outlines the main steps in this process of change and then goes on to argue that there is still much to be done: firstly, to consolidate and secure the developments to date, and secondly, to enable a successful functioning within the EU in a rapidly changing wider context.     

To Control or Not to Control: The question of whether experimental designs are appropriate for evaluating teaching innovations in higher education

It is becoming increasingly common for academics to engage in research into their own teaching, usually by introducing some form of innovation into one of their courses. When doing so, they are often inclined by disciplinary tradition, or urged by senior colleagues, to use experimental designs in order that any observed outcomes can be attributed to the innovation itself. This article points out the problems with experimental designs for naturalistic studies of innovative teaching in higher education. A genuine control is impossible. Practical difficulties in separating groups often result in contamination of designs. Educational issues are complex with many variables involved. Therefore, experimental designs with limited numbers of cells result in over-simplification because they deal with only a few of the relevant factors. Particular types of innovation are not precisely reproducible so generalisation can be misleading. As an alternative, triangulation across multi-method evaluations from several sources is recommended, with the aim of establishing evidence beyond reasonable doubt. Comparison and synthesis across related projects appears to be a promising way to derive recommendations for ways to formulate important aspects of innovations.     

The Home School Knowledge Exchange Project: linking home and school to improve children's literacy

The Government is urging teachers to engage more closely with families and is promoting the concept of the ‘extended’ school. This article reports on the literacy strand of the Home School Knowledge Exchange (HSKE) project, directed by Professor Martin Hughes at the University of Bristol. A selection of literacy activities developed during this project is discussed – activities that enabled teachers and parents to share their knowledge about children in order to enhance their learning. These included ‘school‐to‐home’ activities where the direction of knowledge was primarily from teachers to families and ‘home‐to‐school’ activities where families' knowledge of children impacted on school learning. Practical aspects of planning and conducting home–school knowledge exchange activities are discussed, and challenges are explored. The approaches presented in this article provide examples that could be considered and adapted by schools interested in extending their provision for families. This article draws on the recently published Improving Primary Literacy: Linking Home and School ( Feiler et al., 2007 ).     

Generic Cognitive Abilities in Higher Education: An international analysis of skills sought by stakeholders

The paper summarises, in a table, various stakeholder surveys and factor analyses which attempt to delineate 'generic'/'core'/'key' skills. There is very substantial agreement, amongst stakeholders and across countries, that communication skills are the most frequently mentioned generic ability. However, in respect of other skills, there seems to be more variation in skills requirements of employers across Europe than within the UK or within the USA. There is some evidence of similarities to the UK for Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Differences between countries in relative rankings of employers' skills requirements do not seem to relate consistently to organisational cultural features, and may have more to do with different uses of terminology and categorisation. The stakeholder surveys take transferability as unproblematic, but the philosophical discourses lead to no overall consensus about the transferability of skills. However, the philosophers ignore the empirical evidence.