“I am smart and I am not joking”: Aiming high in the middle years of schooling

In this paper, we draw on accounts from students to inform a Middle Schooling movement that has been variously described as “arrested”, “unfinished” and “exhausted”. We propose that if the Middle Schooling movement is to understand the changing worlds of students and develop new approaches in the middle years of schooling, then it is important to draw on the insights that individual students can provide by conducting research with “students-as-informants”. The early adolescent informants to this paper report high hopes for their futures (despite their lower socioeconomic surroundings), which reinforces the importance of supporting successful learner identities and highlights the role of schooling in the decline of adolescent student aspirations. However, their insights did not stop at the individual learner, with students also identifying cultural and structural constraints to reform. As such, we argue that students may be both an important resource for inquiry into individual school reform and for the Middle Schooling movement internationally.     

Oblique chest views as a routine part of skeletal surveys performed for possible physical abuse--is this practice worthwhile?

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the utility of oblique chest views in the diagnosis of rib fractures when used as a routine part of the skeletal survey performed for possible physical abuse. METHODS: Oblique chest views have been part of the routine skeletal survey protocol at Primary Children's Medical Center since October 2002. Dictated radiology reports since that time were reviewed, and all cases with rib fractures documented were chosen for study. For each chosen case two pediatric radiologists identified and recorded rib fractures using only the PA and lateral chest radiographs (standard two-view chest series) from the skeletal survey for each case. In a separate session they identified and recorded rib fractures using the PA, lateral, right oblique, and left oblique radiographs (four-view chest series) from the skeletal survey for each case. The results were compared. RESULTS: Twenty-two cases with rib fractures were identified. Interpretation of the four-view chest series was different than interpretation of the two-view chest series in 12 of the 22 cases (54%). Overall, the four-view chest series differed significantly in the number of rib fractures diagnosed compared with the two-view chest series (p=.02, Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank test) adding 19 rib fractures and excluding 6 rib fractures. CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that use of the four-view chest series adds information to that obtained from the two-view chest series and increases the accuracy of diagnosing rib fractures in cases of possible physical abuse. Addition of oblique chest views to the routine protocol for skeletal surveys performed for possible physical abuse is recommended.     

Buffer,coupling, and broker: Reflections on 60 years of the UGC

The main conclusion of this survey of the way in which the British University Grants Committee (UGC) has acted as an intermediary between government and universities is that the UGC secures the maximum degree of self-government possible at any given time. How great that “maximum” is depends essentially on the power and purposes of the two principals (government and universities) rather than on the limited powers of the go-between (the UGC). Whereas for the first 45 years of its existence the relations between the principals were such as to focus attention on the UGC as “buffer,” changes in those relations since 1963 have emphasised the fact that the UGC is also a “coupling” between state and higher education. The pressures of economic circumstance and government action have suppressed the “euphoria” that accompanied the expansionist fifties and sixties, but to kill the messenger would be inappropriate.     

Does science education need the history of science?

This essay argues that science education can gain from close engagement with the history of science both in the training of prospective vocational scientists and in educating the broader public about the nature of science. First it shows how historicizing science in the classroom can improve the pedagogical experience of science students and might even help them turn into more effective professional practitioners of science. Then it examines how historians of science can support the scientific education of the general public at a time when debates over "intelligent design" are raising major questions over the kind of science that ought to be available to children in their school curricula. It concludes by considering further work that might be undertaken to show how history of science could be of more general educational interest and utility, well beyond the closed academic domains in which historians of science typically operate.     

University-based initial teacher education: Institutional re-positioning and professional renewal

The emphasis on 'partnership' in initial teacher education is a matter not just of organisational structure but of professional practices and purposes. If universities are to remain key players in initial teacher education, they must support the occupational group that represents the sector's interests and values: university-based initial teacher educators. Currently, however, this occupational group is awkwardly positioned between competing sets of accountability demands and institutional requirements. This article argues that only by encouraging and sustaining the professional renewal of university-based initial teacher educators will the university earn itself a continuing place in the evolving story of initial teacher education. That renewal is dependent, in other words, not only on the institutional re-positioning of the university but also on its re-commitment to initial teacher education as a core activity; a re-commitment which, it is argued, must recognise professional learning as a major 'field' of study across professional domains.