Book Reviews

Abstract

The environment is the educational growth area for the coming millenium. Rescuing the planet and posterity from human excess requires new mechanisms for propagation of environmental understanding, ethic, and action into the community. Reported here is a novel venture, with a university or other tertiary institute acting as a center of propagation. An intensive 5-day Vacation School in Environmental Science for senior high school students from throughout New Zealand was held at Lincoln University on South Island and proved highly successful in stimulating wider environmental awareness in schools nationwide. The framework is described as an adoptable model.     

The Development of Memory and Processing Capacity

The assumption of some developmental theories that short-term memory is the workspace of higher cognitive processes, and consequently that span measures processing capacity, is claimed to be inconsistent with the working memory literature. 4 experiments, using children aged 5 to 12 years, contrast this theory with a model in which short-term memory and the processing space component of working memory are at least partly distinct. Experiments 1 and 2 varied processing load, holding duration constant. The processing load manipulation had little effect on recall of a short-term memory preload. Experiments 3 and 4 failed to support the prediction that the greater processing efficiency of older children would be associated with slower loss of information from short-term memory. Although counting and rehearsal rates increased with age, and correlated with span, they did not predict the rate of loss of memory preload due to intervening counting. The data suggest that effects obtained with short-term memory span do not provide clear indications of overall working memory development, because short-term memory span and the processing space component of working memory entail distinct systems.     

Special educational needs,disability and school accountability: an international perspective

Standards-based accountability approaches in education are increasingly being adopted in many industrialised countries. This tends to involve the scrutiny of student performance in national academic tests and then holding schools accountable for subsequent progress. International assessments such as Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) are not accountability measures in themselves, but are often utilised in a similar way and national policies are judged against performance in these tests. Drawing upon the examples of PISA and national assessments in the USA, this paper explores how students with special educational needs and disability (SEND) are included in, and served by, these assessment policies. The analysis suggests that while these approaches are inclusive in their intent (most obviously through efforts to include students with SEND in testing) they may poorly represent the progress of these students. It is argued that more equitable inclusion of students with SEND must find a balance between accountability measures which measure performance in traditional attainment-focused tests and other relevant assessments which are meaningful to the given student and/or SEND sub-group.     

Schematic pedagogy: supporting one child's learning at home and in a group

In this paper, we identify ways in which the learning of very young children can be supported by practitioners developing a schematic pedagogy which focuses on structures of children's thinking. First, we provide a critical overview of relevant literature on schemas and schematic approaches to pedagogy. We then outline an original study undertaken to identify and support the learning of seven young children. Taking one child, whom we call Annie, we illustrate how her attention to the fine detail of elements of her home and group environments as she played offered strong clues to her pedagogues about her persistent interests (schemas). We show how careful observation by practitioners can be used to understand and support future learning encounters through a schematic pedagogy, and we consider implications of such an approach for practice in toddlers’ early learning.     

Conscientious withdrawal from religious education in Scotland: anachronism or necessary right?

This paper considers the right of parental withdrawal from the statutory subject Religious Education (RE) in Scottish primary and secondary schools. The background, history and current legislative situation relating to this right are considered, as well as current discussions and debates about this issue. The intentions are to establish how often and for what reasons parents opt to withdraw their children, as well as to investigate how schools and local authorities respond to requests for withdrawal. This research is informed by a survey of primary and secondary schools within two local authorities in particular. It emerges that there are relatively few cases of withdrawal. A majority of participating schools argued for the abolition of this right.