Schooling,Literacies and Biopolitics in the Global Age

This article examines how particular dynamics of globalization, including pressures to restructure economies for informational labor, shape and are shaped by processes of public schooling and the development of diverse literacies (understood here as the control of certain forms of life). More specifically, this article analyzes how, in an era of globalization and high-stakes “biopolitics”, both workplace and school-based literacies and the literacy sponsorship offered by employers and state-run schools change, compete, increase and decrease in value, and interact with differential power relations in society. Such analysis, it is argued, is a requisite part of the development of powerful literacies necessary both for securing productive, rewarding labor in global informational economies and for reshaping socio-economic orders in accordance with principles of justice and strong democracy.     

A Deliberate Practice Approach to Teaching Phylogenetic Analysis

One goal of postsecondary education is to assist students in developing expert-level understanding. Previous attempts to encourage expert-level understanding of phylogenetic analysis in college science classrooms have largely focused on isolated, or “one-shot,” in-class activities. Using a deliberate practice instructional approach, we designed a set of five assignments for a 300-level plant systematics course that incrementally introduces the concepts and skills used in phylogenetic analysis. In our assignments, students learned the process of constructing phylogenetic trees through a series of increasingly difficult tasks; thus, skill development served as a framework for building content knowledge. We present results from 5 yr of final exam scores, pre- and postconcept assessments, and student surveys to assess the impact of our new pedagogical materials on student performance related to constructing and interpreting phylogenetic trees. Students improved in their ability to interpret relationships within trees and improved in several aspects related to between-tree comparisons and tree construction skills. Student feedback indicated that most students believed our approach prepared them to engage in tree construction and gave them confidence in their abilities. Overall, our data confirm that instructional approaches implementing deliberate practice address student misconceptions, improve student experiences, and foster deeper understanding of difficult scientific concepts.     

Reappraising Athleticism?

Hickey has presented a powerful rebuttal of Kerrigan's refusal to accept a role for athleticism in the development of English elementary school sport, and has identified further self-contradictions and inconsistencies in this refusal. Much more importantly, however, he has presented compelling evidence of the influence of athleticism on educational thinking and policy-making in relation to this sector of schooling. In doing so, he indirectly points to the need to reappraise the impact of the ideology of athleticism on schooling and society in general. A case can be made that it was even more powerful and pervasive than has been previously argued.     

Anatomy of a Dead Heat: Visual Evidence at the 2012 US Olympic Trials

The adoption and use of visual technologies as decision aids in professional sport is increasing at a rapid rate, yet the study of such practice is virtually non-existent. Beyond the specific play or call in question, images used as decision aids in sport have immediate and far-reaching material and cultural impacts including athlete sponsorship packages, the professional reputation and expertise of athletes and officials, and lucrative contracts for imaging and technology companies. This paper borrows Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison's work on objectivity to examine one such case: the dead heat between Jeneba Tarmoh and Allyson Felix at the 2012 US Olympic Trials. The Tarmoh/Felix dead heat involved a complex assemblage of human and machine vision, and contains within it many of the issues involved in the use of sports decision aids. The paper argues that analyses of images used as decision aids in sport have much to offer academic and non-academic audiences interested in sport and visual culture.     

Economic independence for adolescents with special educational needs

Do young men and women diagnosed with special educational needs succeed in finding full‐time employment that provides sufficient income to live on? The analyses presented in this paper are based on interviews conducted between October 2001 and April 2002 of nearly 500 young people with various types of disabilities. The young people who were interviewed have been studied prospectively since they entered upper secondary school as special needs students six or seven years earlier. These adolescents are followed through a critical phase of life when they are trying to find their way in society as adult individuals. This process is gradual and involves making tentative steps in various arenas. A crucial topic is how these young men and women, between 23 and 25 years of age, succeed in gaining employment that allows them to become economically independent. This is a vulnerable process for most youth, but it is especially challenging for young people with functional difficulties who have experienced protracted and disjointed transitions throughout their educational trajectories.     

Le décrochage enseignant : état des connaissances

Teacher attrition: state of knowledge – At a time when a number of countries are concerned about teacher shortages, the question arises why so many teachers are leaving the profession. This review of the literature, based on the analysis of 69 scientific papers (containing either empirical data or rigorous theoretical analysis) specifically aims to provide answers to this question by identifying the factors involved in teacher attrition. The listed factors are divided into three categories (factors related to teaching tasks, to the teacher or to the social environment), and then examined in the conclusion.     

Explaining School Performance in Literature: some Strategies of Causal Analysis

Bulcock, J. W. & Finn, J. D., 1975. Explaining School Performance in Literature: Some Strategies of Causal Analyses. Scand. J. educ. Res. 19, 75‐110. This paper focuses on the cultural and personality resources of individuals and their school related skills as determinants of achievement in mother tongue literature. A path analytic approach is used to test a popular model of literature achievement which is applied to a subsample of Swedish 14‐year‐olds selected from the data bank archive of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, University of Stockholm. Because the sex of the student and the amount of effort expended on school work account for variance in levels of performance over‐and‐above the causally interrelated system factors, it is necessary to control for the possibility of their confounding influence. Accordingly, a ‘pooling’ procedure is used for adjusting the correlation matrix in order to account for the bias in the regression model which is attributable to these factors. The logic of this procedure is developed in the appendix.