Exploring an intervention’s impact on everyday school activities

The focus of this paper is on a group of pupils with reading and writing difficulties who have been participating in an intervention study using assistive technology. That intervention study contained supervised training sessions with reading and writing tasks using an iPad with special supportive applications. The current study is a qualitative investigation of whether there has been any transfer from the intervention, to the pupils’ everyday school activities. Interviews with pupils and their teachers and observations during classroom lectures have been used to collect data. The results show that the pupils were positive to the assistive technology (the applications on the iPads), they found the apps easy to learn how to use and they appreciated the benefits they could give. Even so, only a few of the pupils had found use for and continued to use the tools after the intervention period finished. Possible reasons are that when the novelty wore off, students reverted to their usual study habits and that older students with many teachers and different classrooms were less able to adapt to using the apps. To improve transfer, it is suggested to introduce assistive technology earlier to students, in the younger grades, before study habits have been formed and to inform teachers about the use of AT in the classroom, including what is available and how it can benefit students.     

The Human Rights Approach to Education in International Organisations

In this article, the work of three international governmental organisations (IGOs) dealing with human rights will be discussed, namely the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)¹ and the Council of Europe (CoE). In the first section, the main characteristics of the three IGOs in terms of similarities and differences will be elaborated. Then, their human rights approach to education will be described, dealing with the legal foundations. In the final section, the different strategies of implementation based on both their official mission statements and their present strategy papers will be evaluated under the heading ‘competition vs. cooperation’.     

Physics in upper secondary schools in Denmark

This article is the third in a series reporting on the changes in attitudes and interests‐‐mainly with respect to physics‐of several hundred students as they proceed through the Danish upper secondary school (Gymnasium). It concentrates on the results of the final investigation which took place shortly before the students leave the school.     

Television in the Service of the School in Austria

The greater part of psychoanalytical literature about television as a phenomenon of our century, stresses generally the impressive force of television. It affects the habits of man, determines the rhythm of his life and his attitude towards life. This being so, judgements are preconceived and so man's power of unbiased decision is weakened. Television has a personal intimate style of presentation and effects thus in the viewer a readiness of identification that outstrips by far that of the film experience.