How are Teachers Managing Performance Management?

This study reports the findings of a 2-year longitudinal study that examines the stance taken by a group of Western Australian teachers to the introduction of compulsory performance management in 1997. It shows that during the first year of implementation (1997), teachers responded to the new programme with significant levels of scepticism, mistrust and anxiety. By the second year (1998), despite continued reservations, the teachers found they could take charge of the process, maintain a sense of autonomy and control over their work, and capitalise on the limited opportunities for professional growth provided by annual appraisal cycles. A concluding theme emerging from the teachers' reported experiences and reflections is that management-inspired programmes of performance review have little impact on authentic teacher learning compared with active teacher participation in strong, accountable professional learning communities developed within and across schools.     

ISPCAN Child Abuse Screening Tools Retrospective version (ICAST-R): Delphi study and field testing in seven countries

ObjectivesTo gain consensus among an ethnically and linguistically diverse group of international child protection experts on the structure and content of a new survey tool for retrospective measurement of child abuse, and to determine the performance of the instrument through an international field trial with young adults.MethodsThe questionnaire was developed through focus group discussions with international experts, and then subjected to a Delphi study in two waves to determine the perceived importance and translatability of items. The resultant questionnaire was translated into six languages and field tested in seven countries with convenient samples of young adults aged 18–26 years (N = 842).ResultsChild maltreatment experts from 28 countries provided input to questionnaire development. Satisfactory agreement on draft item inclusion and exclusion and the translatability of items was gained. The tool includes 15 primary questions about potentially abusive physical, sexual and emotional events, with follow-up questions about perpetrator characteristics, frequency of acts and periods in childhood when the recalled abuse occurred. The field test revealed lifetime prevalence per item usually exceeded 10% (11/15 items; range 2.1–49.5%). Internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) was moderate to high for each of three item sub-sets (between .61 and .82) and the rates of missing data were low (less than 1.5% for 14 of 15 items). The great majority of respondents nominated either peer and/or adult perpetrators (between 82.3% and 98.2% depending upon the item), and among these, child/adolescent peers and non-family adults (including teachers for emotional and physical acts) were nominated often.ConclusionsThe ICAST-R is based on consensus from international experts, translates clearly and has satisfactory properties for adoption as a survey tool to estimate prevalence and describe perpetrators and other contextual aspects of child abuse.Practice implicationsThis tool can be utilized in a broad range of cultures and languages and may contribute to improved research practice. Although the core items are limited to just 15 acts of maltreatment, if these behaviorally specific questions are adopted as key indicators and incorporated into comprehensive local, national or regional surveys, eventually there should be greater comparability in survey estimates.     

The development and piloting of the ISPCAN Child Abuse Screening Tool—Parent version (ICAST-P)

ObjectiveChild maltreatment is a problem that has longer recognition in the northern hemisphere and in high-income countries. Recent work has highlighted the nearly universal nature of the problem in other countries but demonstrated the lack of comparability of studies because of the variations in definitions and measures used. The International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect has developed instrumentation that may be used with cross-cultural and cross-national benchmarking by local investigators.Design and samplingThe instrument design began with a team of expert in Brisbane in 2004. A large bank of questions were subjected to two rounds of Delphi review to develop the fielded version of the instrument. Convenience samples included approximately 120 parent respondents with children under the age of 18 in each of six countries (697 total).ResultsThis paper presents an instrument that measures parental behaviors directed at children and reports data from pilot work in 6 countries and 7 languages. Patterns of response revealed few missing values and distributions of responses that generally were similar in the six countries. Subscales performed well in terms of internal consistency with Cronbach's alpha in very good range (0.77–0.88) with the exception of the neglect and sex abuse subscales. Results varied by child age and gender in expected directions but with large variations among the samples. About 15% of children were shaken, 24% hit on the buttocks with an object, and 37% were spanked. Reports of choking and smothering were made by 2% of parents.ConclusionThese pilot data demonstrate that the instrument is well tolerated and captures variations in, and potentially harmful forms of child discipline.Practice implicationsThe ISPCAN Child Abuse Screening Tool – Parent Version (ICAST-P) has been developed as a survey instrument to be administered to parents for the assessment of child maltreatment in a multi-national and multi-cultural context. It was developed with broad input from international experts and subjected to Dephi review, translation, and pilot testing in six countries. The results of the Delphi study and pilot testing are presented. This study demonstrates that a single instrument can be used in a broad range of cultures and languages with low rates of missing data and moderate to high internal consistency.     

Recovering the Lost Métier of Philosophy of Education? Reflections on Educational Thought,Policy and Practice in the UK and Farther Afield

A Special Issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education in November 2012 explored key aspects of the relationship between philosophy of education and educational policy in the UK. The contributions were generally critical of policy developments in recent decades, highlighting important shortcomings and arguing for more philosophically coherent approaches to educational policy‐making. This article begins by focusing on what the contributions to the Special Issue—particularly two of them—have to say about the relationship between philosophy of education and educational policymaking. It then goes on to argue that this relationship can best be understood through an exploration of education as a practice in its own right (as distinct from a subordinate practice). Such an exploration seeks to shed light on the proper métier of philosophy of education. In the course of the exploration the kind of thinking predominant in recent international patterns in educational policy is contrasted with a different kind of thinking which has yielded rich gains in Finland. Important distinctions are drawn between the inherent and extrinsic benefits of educational practice and between the internal and external politics of practice. These contribute to the articulation of philosophy of education as a distinctive discipline of thought and action which is necessary to the work of practitioners and policymakers alike.     

The Cognitive Consequences of Collaborative Problem Solving With and Without Feedback

The goal of this research was to assess the impact of feedback, partner, and shared understanding in the course of problem solving. A sample of 180 6- to 9-year-olds was pretested to discover the children's "rule" for predicting the movement of a mathematical balance beam. For the treatment they either worked alone or with a partner who was equally, less, or more competent, with two-thirds receiving feedback from the materials. They subsequently participated in 2 individual posttests. The results revealed that children receiving feedback improved significantly more than those who did not, but that the presence of a partner was only beneficial when children received no feedback. Irrespective of feedback, those children whose partner exhibited higher-level reasoning were far more likely to benefit from collaboration than those whose partner did not, provided that the pair achieved shared understanding.     

Comparing the epistemological underpinnings of students' and scientists' reasoning about conclusions

This study examined the criteria that middle school students, nonscientist adults, technicians, and scientists used to rate the validity of conclusions drawn by hypothetical students from a set of evidence. The groups' criteria for evaluating conclusions were considered to be dimensions of their epistemological frameworks regarding how knowledge claims are justified, and as such are integral to their scientific reasoning. Quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that the responses of students and nonscientists differed from the responses of technicians and scientists, with the major difference being the groups' relative emphasis on criteria of empirical consistency or plausibility of the conclusions. We argue that the sources of the groups' differing epistemic criteria rest in their different spheres of cultural practice, and explore implications of this perspective for science teaching and learning. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 38: 663–687, 2001     

Empowering managers,assuring governors

Largely unknown to most of the world, Kyrgyzstan has a flourishing higher education (HE) sector, with more universities per head than other countries with similar populations. Kyrgyzstan is also a major regional importer of international students in Central Asia. This paper opens up this understudied country in three ways: first, through a brief analysis of the HE sector in Kyrgyzstan; second, by offering a personal view of life on the HE coalface through the findings of primary interviews with university managers in Kyrgyzstan, and third, by identifying five key contemporary challenges of working in Kyrgyz universities. The paper therefore contributes to the limited academic and practical study of HE in Central Asia by offering a new perspective on contemporary global challenges in HE administration and management. The key findings are relevant to organisations seeking to understand the context of working in the HE sector in Kyrgyzstan, and also to individuals and organisations wishing to deepen their comparative understanding of HE sectors around the world.     

告诉他应该往哪走

马格丽特·桑斯特是一位杰出的社会活动家.她在一个大城市的贫民窟工作期间亲身经历的一件事情,令她至今难以释怀.