Running into trouble: constructions of danger and risk in girls' access to outdoor space and physical activity

This paper considers girls' participation in running and other outdoor physical activities in their local areas in London, UK. The paper is concerned with the operation of risk discourses in and around this participation and looks at the way that such discourses impacted on girls' opportunities to take part in physical activities that required outdoor space. Drawing on data from longitudinal research into girls' participation in sport and physical activity, the findings suggested that girls, in particular, were subject to risk discourses around their participation in physical activities which constructed the girls as ‘weak’, and ‘vulnerable’. I look at the ways in which girls understood these messages and how they came to define certain spaces and activities as either ‘safe’ or ‘unsafe’. I look in particular at how girls were able to resist certain constructions of their embodied physical capacities and also at the ways in which this was constrained by specific incidences of sexual harassment.     

Culturally responsive computing: a theory revisited

Despite multiple efforts and considerable funding, historically marginalized groups (e.g., racial minorities and women) continue not to enter or persist in the most lucrative of fields – technology. Understanding the potency of culturally responsive teaching (CRT), some technology-enrichment programs modified CRP principles to establish a culturally responsive computing (CRC) experience for disenfranchised groups. We draw from our respective praxes developing two such initiatives and reconceptualize CRC as a heuristic. In this theoretical article, we offer a more nuanced vision of CRC considering intersectionality, innovations, and technosocial activism. Implications for the newly defined tenets consider programmatic, theoretical, and methodological concerns.     

Developing a comprehensive model of risk and protective factors that can predict spelling at age seven: findings from a community sample of Victorian children

The paper reports on a study designed to develop a risk model that can best predict single-word spelling in seven-year-old children when they were aged 4 and 5. Test measures, personal characteristics and environmental influences were all considered as variables from a community sample of 971 children. Strong concurrent correlations were found between single-word spelling and single-word reading while expressive language and, to a lesser extent, receptive language were less strongly correlated. Predictors of single-word spelling at ages 4 and 5 were dominated by child-related factors such as letter knowledge, a history of speech impairment and expressive language along with maternal word reading ability. Based on the strength of the predictive factors identified at both age 4 and 5, our results provide initial support for using a targeted model for screening pre-schoolers at risk of not mastering spelling in a timely manner.     

Neoliberalism,global poverty policy and early childhood education and care: a critique of local uptake in England

The global rise of a neoliberal ‘new politics of parenting’ discursively constructs parents in poverty as the reason for, and remedy to, child poverty. This allows for Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) to become a key policy lever by using human technologies to intervene in and regulate the lives of parents and children in poverty. The article explores the uptake of this policy locally through interviews with 30 ECEC practitioners in three locations across England. The interviews suggested that the neoliberal discursive formation of child poverty as a problem of the poor themselves had symbolic power and was a view shared by most of the interviewees. This appeared to restrict their thinking and action, shaping a limited engagement with parents in poverty. Delivering curricular requirements was seen to further delimit practitioners’ practices with children in poverty by reducing their poverty sensitivity. Although this is a small study, its findings may be of value in questioning neoliberal logics, and their implications are considered critically.     

Designing learning environments to promote competent lay engagement with science

An important goal of science education is promoting scientific literacy—the competence to interact with science as laypeople to solve problems and make decisions in their personal and community lives. This is made more challenging in an age of increasing science denialism. In this article, we discuss how to design learning environments for science education that can help students attain scientific literacy. We argue that science curricula should encompass lessons with two distinguishable foci. One focus engages students in understanding the reliability of science. The second focus engages students as laypeople interacting with science in the public sphere. We discuss these two curricular foci, presenting examples from our own work on designing and implementing instruction with the first focus.     

Getting in,getting on,going further: Exploring the role of employers in the degree apprentice to graduate transition

Transitions from education into work, or as part of career change and development, are increasingly central to policy debate and academic inquiry. However, the role that employers play in shaping transition is often overlooked. In this paper, we examine this issue through the experiences of a graduating cohort of ‘degree apprentices’. We present original analysis of new empirical data from what we believe to be the first substantive qualitative longitudinal research conducted with those experiencing this new vocational pathway in the English Apprenticeships system. Through analysis of repeat semi-structured interviews with 22 degree apprenticeship graduates (44 interviews in total), we provide early empirical insights into experiences of this new pathway and add to existing theoretical conceptualisations of transition within the educational literature and the employer's role within it. We show that the degree apprentice to graduate transition can be broken down into three key stages: ‘getting in’, ‘getting on’ and ‘going further’, and that employers—at both strategic and relational levels—shape experiences at each stage.