Learning Within and Beyond the Classroom: Compulsory School Students Voicing Their Positive Experiences of School

The aim of this study was to describe, reflect upon, and create a deeper understanding of aspects relevant for promoting a positive school environment from a student perspective. The data was analyzed by using an inductive phenomenological method and based on written responses from 200 Swedish students from grades 5–9. The results indicated that the students found aspects within, as well as beyond, the classroom relevant for a positive school environment. For instance, outings were considered relevant for building and maintaining friendships and for learning processes. Moreover, the students discussed formal and informal conditions and considered social as well as structural circumstances important for having a good time in school. The relation between learning and well-being was also emphasized by the students.     

Qualifications of the high school play producer

LINCOLN, DOUGLAS, AND SLAVERY: IN THE CRUCIBLE OF PUBLIC DEBATE. By David Zarefsky. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990; pp. xiv + 309. $34.95.

DEEDS DONE IN WORDS: PRESIDENTIAL RHETORIC AND THE GENRES OF GOVERNANCE. By Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990; pp. ix + 275. $27.50.

ANNA HOWARD SHAW: SUFFRAGE ORATOR AND SOCIAL REFORMER. By Wil A. Linkugel and Martha Solomon. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991; pp. xv + 238. $45.00.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT AND THE RHETORIC OF MILITANT DECENCY. By Robert V. Friedenberg. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990; pp. xviii + 209. $42.95.

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN: ORATOR OF SMALL‐TOWN AMERICA. By Donald K. Springen. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991; pp. x + 194. $42.95.

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL: A LIFE. By Frank Smith. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1990; pp. 417. $29.95.

ENACTING POLITICAL CULTURE: RHETORICAL TRANSFORMATIONS OF LIBERTY WEEKEND 1986. David E. Procter. New York: Praeger, 1990; pp. 144. $37.50.

THE RHETORIC OFTERRORISM AND COUNTERTERRORISM. By Richard W. Leeman. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991; pp. xii + 217. $42.95.

COLD WAR RHETORIC: STRATEGY, METAPHOR, AND IDEOLOGY. By Martin J. Medhurst, Robert L. Ivie, Philip Wander, and Robert L. Scott. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990; pp. xv + 224. $39.95.

RHETORICAL DIMENSIONS OF POPULAR CULTURE. By Barry Brummett. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1991; pp. xxiv + 248. $29.95.

TELEVISION AND WOMEN'S CULTURE: THE POLITICS OF THE POPULAR. Edited by Mary Ellen Brown. London: Sage, 1990; pp. 244. $45.00; paper $18.95.

COMMUNICATION AND THE CULTURE OF TECHNOLOGY. Edited by Martin J. Medhurst, Alberto Gonzalez, and Tarla Rai Peterson. Pullman, Washington: Washington State University Press, 1990; pp. xvi + 285. $30.00 paper, $45.00 cloth.

DEMOCRACY IN AN AGE OF CORPORATE COLONIZATION: DEVELOPMENTS IN COMMUNICATION AND THE POLITICS OF EVERYDAY LIFE. By Stanley A. Deetz. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1992; pp. xi + 399. $54.50; paper $17.95.

MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND COMMUNICATIVE ACTION. By Jürgen Habermas. Translated by Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Introduction by Thomas McCarthy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1990; xiii + 211. $19.95.

PREFACES TO THE DIAPHORA: RHETORICS, ALLEGORY, AND THE INTERPRETATION OF POSTMODERNITY. By Peter Carravetta. W. Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1991; pp. xx + 345. $29.50.

CONVERSATIONS ON COMMUNICATION ETHICS. Edited by Karen Joy Greenberg. Foreword by J. Vernon Jensen. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1991; pp. xii + 188. $32.50.     

Reciprocal Pathways Between American and Chinese Early Adolescents' Sense of Responsibility and Disclosure to Parents

This research examined the reciprocal pathways between youth's sense of responsibility to parents and disclosure to them during early adolescence in the United States and China. Four times over the seventh and eighth grades, 825 American and Chinese youth (M_age = 12.73 years) reported on their sense of responsibility to parents and disclosure of everyday activities to them. Autoregressive latent trajectory models revealed that the more youth felt responsible to parents, the more they subsequently disclosed to them in both the United States and China. The reverse was also true: The more youth disclosed to parents, the more responsible they felt to them over time. The strength of these reciprocal pathways increased as youth progressed through early adolescence.     

Implementation and student perceptions of e-assessment in a Chemical Engineering module

This paper describes work carried out at the Department of Chemical Engineering at UCL into the use of e-assessment in a second year module and, in particular, the student perceptions of this mode of assessment. Three quizzes were implemented in Moodle, the first two as formative assessment and the final quiz as summative assessment. The results were very encouraging and practically all students engaged with the process. An online survey was delivered to all students after the module, which showed that the students felt that e-assessment added value to their learning and they would like to see it implemented in other modules. The quizzes were intended to be mainly beneficial to the weaker students as it gave them an opportunity to go over key aspects of the material in their own time. Interestingly, the stronger students were even more in favour of e-learning than the weaker students, for whom the quizzes were originally designed.     

Effect of single‐sex education on progress in GCSE

Multilevel modelling was carried out on national value‐added data to study the effects of single‐sex education on the progress of pupils from 2002 Key Stage 3 to 2004 GCSE. The analysis suggests that pupils in a selective environment achieve higher progress in single‐sex schools; however, the advantage of single‐sex schooling seems to decrease with increasing pupils' prior attainment (for girls) or with increasing school ‘selectiveness’ (for boys). These phenomena might be a result of a ceiling effect, as pupils with high prior attainment at Key Stage 3 cannot improve as much as pupils with lower initial attainment. There was also strong evidence suggesting that pupils achieve higher progress in the independent sector compared to grammar education. On the other hand, in a non‐selective environment only pupils with lower prior attainment and those attending schools with a full range of abilities seem to benefit from single‐sex education.     

Translation and English in twentieth-century China

Twentieth century China saw unprecedented attempts at cultural change and rejuvenation through the transfer of foreign knowledge,and translation played a role in almost all aspects of this development. Except for a short period under the PRC,English was the dominant source language for this transfer. This paper gives a brief historical background to the causes for the emergence of translation as a key to national survival and cultural change.It then focuses on three of the most significant translation-re...     

Teacher talk: producing,resisting and challenging discourses about the science classroom

The aim of the project which forms the basis of this article was to make the science classroom more inclusive by challenging discriminatory practices. Science teachers from two secondary schools in Sweden agreed to be involved in an action research project over one year. Each teacher was to carry out a study concerning their own teaching and regular meetings were held for planning, evaluation and discussion. These meetings were analysed and suggest that science subjects are gendered and female science teachers face more resistance than their male peers, sometimes even being positioned as unprofessional. However, the science discourse is continually negotiable with the analysis showing challenge both to science as a male field and to the content that makes up science. Power relations other than gender are also visible and make patterns more complex. The analysis will offer a conceptual framework for understanding how gender in education is produced and reproduced in practice.     

Computer support for knowledge communication in science exhibitions: Novel perspectives from research on collaborative learning

In this article, the potentials of advanced technologies for learning in science exhibitions are outlined. For this purpose, we conceptualize science exhibitions as dynamic information space for knowledge building which includes three pathways of knowledge communication. This article centers on the second pathway, that is, knowledge communication among visitors. We argue that advanced technologies have specific potentials to support all forms of visitor-to-visitor knowledge communication and, furthermore, allow for new forms of knowledge communication among unacquainted visitors and beyond the actual museum visit. We discuss mechanisms of collaborative learning with regard to their relevance for visitor-to-visitor knowledge communication and present prototypical advanced media applications in science exhibitions that address these mechanisms. This article both contributes to our understanding of collaborative learning in science exhibitions and the support advanced technologies can provide for visitor-to-visitor knowledge communication in science exhibitions.     

Challenging the myths about madaris in Pakistan: A national household survey of enrolment and reasons for choosing religious schools

There is speculation about madaris in Pakistan as sources of terrorists and about levels and reasons for enrolment, but a dearth of empirical data. We studied madarsah enrolment among 53,960 representative households; 853 focus groups of parents discussed enrolment choices. In 2004, 2.6% of all children (3.8% of school-going children) aged 5–9 years attended a madarsah. Children from urban and less educated households were more likely to attend a madarsah, but there was no difference by sex of the child or household vulnerability. Parents chose madaris because they offered an Islamic education. Our findings challenge misconceptions about madaris in Pakistan.     

Learning for professional life: Student teachers' and graduated teachers' views of learning,responsibility and collaboration

The focus of this study is on how final-semester students and newly-graduated teachers experience the formal objectives of teacher education, with a particular view of the concepts of learning, responsibility and collaboration. The ways of experiencing these concepts varied from conceptions in which only one dimension is discerned from in the student teachers group to conceptions in which several dimensions of the phenomena are discerned in the graduate teachers group.