BOOK REVIEWS

The Great Thinkers . By Rupert Lodge.
Moral and Spritual Values in Education . By William Clayton Bower.
Great Books: Panacea or What? By Edward A. Fitzpatrick.     

Paired reading: a structured approach to raising attainment in literacy

Competency in reading is a key factor in literacy attainment. If pupils can read proficiently this allows them to access the curriculum in all subjects and helps them to become confident, successful, motivated learners. Paired reading has long been recognised as an effective approach for supporting reading in schools. It helps to build relationships and encourages self-esteem and motivation. By the pupil reading aloud, either independently or in tandem with their partner, they gain confidence and research suggests that fluency and accuracy improve. However, for pupils who have gaps in their phonological knowledge this approach has limited success as it relies almost exclusively on visual or auditory memory. This research looks at a more structured approach to paired reading that combines both the 'look-say' approach (whole word recognition) of the more traditional paired reading programmes with phonic teaching, to create a tool to improve reading.     

Decisions, Provisions and Disillusionment for Non-vocational Adult Learning (NVAL) Staff in South-Eastern Europe: a comparative appraisal of some policy developments with diminishing returns

Since 2000, the European Union has given greater attention to lifelong learning, as expressed in the Lisbon presidency conclusions and the general objectives of the Education and Training 2010 work programme. In September 2007, these policy proposals were further strengthened with the announcement of the ‘Action Plan on Adult Learning’ that sets out how Member States and other stakeholders could be supported to improve, implement and develop adult education and monitor its results. Because of the multitude of policy expectations, training and professional development for adult learning staff are still relatively uncommon in some parts of Europe, despite a societal demand, which also should be interpreted in the context of changing societal conditions and needs besides raising the quality of lifelong learning. This is largely echoed in South-East Europe where the situation of the training of adult learning staff is more on the downside than most policy-makers would have expected. In most South-East European countries, adult learning is expected to provide individual, cultural, and social improvement, to address illiteracy or earlier unsatisfactory access to initial education, and mostly to respond to labour market access problems. At the same time, adult learning staff have to face obstacles such as dependency on government or EU funding, changing political perspectives on and interest in adult education, policies prescribing an enclosed employment-oriented adult education market and occasionally a lack of national legislation or frameworks and structures covering their field. Along with these general findings, this article focuses on the comparison of current policies on training and professional development of adult learning staff in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Greece and Turkey, according to three vital topics:

• • Selection procedure and working conditions of adult learning staff (focusing on recruitment, professional expectations and employment situation).
• • Opportunities and obstacles for their professional development and evaluation (focusing on career paths and monitoring, assessing and evaluating issues).
• • Societal situation for the profession (focusing on attractiveness and social impact).

     

Frederick II: Tyrant or Benefactor of the Latin East?

Recent historians have suggested that the involvement of the western emperor, Frederick II, in the kingdom of Jerusalem during the 1220s was regarded with concern by the Latin Christian inhabitants of the Holy Land. However, this study seeks to review the evidence pertaining specifically to that decade and to suggest that our understanding of the Franks' image of the emperor at that time has been largely coloured by hostile assessments made by contemporaries after the crusade of 1228–1229. First, Philip of Novara's account of the emperor trying to leave Acre secretly, but being spotted and ldquo;pelted... with tripe and with bits of meat”, has created an enduring impression of Frankish animosity towards Frederick. This has been compounded by patriarch Gerold of Jerusalem's vitriolic condemnation of Frederick made after the conclusion of the Treaty of Jaffa in February 1229. The effect of these attacks has been to skew modern perceptions of Frederick's reception in the Holy Land in 1228. However, an examination of the evidence for relations between the Latin East and the western empire before Frederick's arrival in the Holy Land suggests that such a negative interpretation of the Franks' attitude towards Frederick needs to be dramatically revised. The traditional view of Frederick's marriage to the heiress of the kingdom of Jerusalem, Isabella, is that it was a western initiative foisted on the Latins in the East to encourage the emperor's fulfilment of his crusade vow and that the Frankish barons then had to endure imperial attempts to assert alien rights and privileges in their territories. In other words, he was deeply unwelcome. However, it is plain that a significant body of the Franks strenuously sought to encourage Frederick's active participation in the politics of the Latin East during the 1220s in the interests of the survival of the kingdom of Jerusalem. The Frankish leaders then established a unique relationship with the western emperor. Even during the fraught period of Frederick's stay in the Latin East, a number of the Syrian barons continued to recognise the emperor's authority and supported his rule in the kingdom.     

The European Engineer: a British civil engineering viewpoint

This paper confronts the problems of defining the European Engineer in terms of educational and practical training, focusing on civil engineering. The supply and demand requirements of engineering management and practice are analysed, comparisons are made with the position in the USA, and appendices give details of the educational process in a number of European countries.