The First Year at School: A Quantitative Investigation of the Attainment and Progress of Pupils∗

In England children must start school after their fifth birthday, but it is common for children to start when they are four in what is known as the Reception class. The Performance Indicators in Primary Schools (PIPS) project collected data on 1700 pupils’ early mathematics and pre/early reading levels at the start and end of their Reception year. The on‐entry assessment proved to be a good predictor of performance in reading and mathematics at the end of reception and the progress which each child made was estimated. This progress was found to vary considerably between schools and the variation was much greater than that typically found in school effectiveness studies. The data provided a unique opportunity to compare the progress of children who had, and had not, been to school. The Reception year was found to have had a major impact on the literacy and numeracy of children. Multi‐level models were employed for the analysis and from the models Effect Sizes were computed to assist in comparing the importance of variables in the study. This approach provides a mechanism for comparing the findings of school effectiveness studies with experimental studies and meta‐analyses.     

Educating Leaders in Developing Nations

The University of the Incarnate Word of San Antonio, Texas, is making an effort to enroll international students from China, Taiwan, and South America into its Organizational Leadership Doctoral Programme. In undertaking this task, the University is also assuming some responsibility for the future ethical behaviour of the leaders it trains and launches. But how should teachers go about developing the cultural and linguistic sensitivity that they will need to participate in the training of international students? The University polled its doctoral students to derive some ideas on this subject. The questions and the answers elicited are described.     

Developing a measure to understand young children’s Internet cognition and cyber-safety awareness: a pilot test

Abstract

Advancements in technology have increased preschool children’s access to the Internet. Very little research has been conducted to identify pre-school-aged children’s understandings of the Internet and ramifications of being ‘online’. Without an understanding of children’s thinking about the Internet, it is difficult to provide age- and pedagogically appropriate cyber-safety education. This study developed and pilot-tested an interview schedule that focuses on the Internet thinking and cyber-safety awareness of Australian children aged 4–5 years. The schedule is informed by sociocultural theory, cyber-safety education research and approaches for researching with young children. The schedule shows potential to elicit children’s understandings of the Internet and cyber-safety awareness. Adjustments are required to allow more contextualised responses from children.     

Participating in a Collaborative Action Learning Set (CAL): beginning the journey

Action learning is being increasingly utilised as a strategy to underpin practitioner focused development and research projects in healthcare generally and nursing in particular. Whilst facilitators of and participants in action learning have a variety of resource materials to guide their practice and participation, there continue to be few systematic and/or evaluative accounts of the experience of participating in action learning for potential action learning participants to draw upon. This paper attempts to address this agenda. The paper presents an interpretive evaluation of the experience of nurses participating in action learning as the learning strategy underpinning a 3-year emancipatory practice development/practitioner research programme. In particular, the paper focuses on the experience of ‘joining a learning set’. This focus has been adopted as the theory of action learning emphasises the principle of ‘voluntariness’, but yet action learning is increasingly being pre-prescribed as a component of development and research programmes. Such was the case with the programme reported on in this paper. The paper describes an approach used to evaluate learning that was adopted in this programme and in particular the initial evaluation stage that focuses on participants' feelings about joining an action learning set. The data collection and analysis processes are described and the key themes arising from the analysis (‘self-preservation’ versus ‘development of self’) discussed. It is concluded that working with principles of enlightenment is essential to successful action learning and the transformation of workplace cultures.