Considerate,convivial and capacious? Finding a language to capture ethos in ‘creative’ schools

Concepts of school ‘ethos’ or ‘culture’ have been widely debated in education since the 1980s. This is partly as a consequence of marketisation, partly because ethos has been identified as a low-cost route to school improvement. Corporate, authoritarian, and most recently ‘military’ models of ethos have been widely promulgated in the UK. Another significant strand of educational thinking, however, has emphasised ethos for and as learning: how schools might prefigure alternative, more socially just, worlds. This article argues that accounting for such divergent notions of ethos demands greater attention to the intellectual resources mobilised in interpreting educational processes. We discuss schools that used their work with the English creative learning programme, Creative Partnerships, to develop what we describe as ‘considerate, convivial and capacious’ school ethos. We aim thereby to value their achievements, provide tools to contest dominant discourses around ethos, and advocate more critical, reflexive approaches to researching school cultures.     

Assessment for learning: a catalyst for student self-regulation

The development of students as lifelong, self-regulating learners is a valued outcome of higher education. To this end, the current project investigated how students in an undergraduate course experienced and responded to a teaching–learning environment where they were expected to take responsibility for their learning. The pedagogic environment of this course was grounded in strategies and activities associated with assessment for learning (AfL). As such, students were expected to participate in activities that provided them with opportunities to exercise control over their learning. Data gathering comprised individual semi-structured interviews and the collection of artefacts. Findings indicated goals helped students know where they were going; exemplars provided insights into what was expected and what constituted quality work; course activities elicited evidence of learning; dialogic interactions around these generated feedback about understandings and progress; the evaluation of exemplars developed evaluative knowledge, skill and expertise; peer review and feedback provided an authentic context for evaluation and monitoring of works-in-progress. It was concluded that, while each of the AfL strategies contributed to student self-regulation, the full impact of AfL as a catalyst for self-regulated learning was realised in the cumulative and recursive effect these strategies had on students’ thinking, actions and feelings.     

Government research evaluations and academic freedom: a UK and Australian comparison

Performance management systems have been an inevitable consequence of the development of government research evaluations (GREs) of university research, and have also inevitably affected the working life of academics. The aim of this paper is to track the development of GREs over the past 25 years, by critically evaluating their adoption in the UK and Australian higher education sector and their contribution to the commodification of academic labour, and to highlight the resultant tensions between GREs and academic freedom. The paper employs a literature-based analysis, relying on publicly available policy documents and academic studies over the period 1985–2010. GREs are a global phenomenon emanating from new public management reforms and while assessments of university research have been welcomed, they have attracted critique based on their design, the manner in which they have been applied, and the unintended consequences of their implementation on academic freedom in particular. Consistent with international research on the impact of GREs, Australian research assessments appear to be undoing the academic freedom that is central to successful research. Further empirical research on the impact of GREs on academics is urgently needed.     

‘White British girls on free school meals’: power,resistance and resilience at secondary school transition

This article explores the perspectives of 10 White British girls eligible for Free School Meals as they transfer from English primary to secondary schools. Having identified the discourses relevant to the girls at transition – good girl, girl power, hyper-femininity, authenticity, ‘challenges at home’, ‘friends as family’ and standards – the article uses Foucault to theorise these examples, reflecting on the complexity of associated power, resistance and resilience. The article continues by drawing on the multiplicity of resistance to these discourses to identify the girls’ developing intrinsic strengths, and argues that these should be used both a starting point and a structure for supporting them through discourse negotiation at secondary transition and beyond.     

Embedding resilience within the tertiary curriculum: a feasibility study

Mental health problems can significantly impact on the ability of university students to both meet their individual potential and contribute positively within society. This study evaluates the feasibility of embedding a strength‐focused resilience‐building seminar within a university curriculum. Participants were 247 students enrolled in an undergraduate psychology subject. The Staying on Track seminar, consisting of six building blocks for resilience, was delivered within a normal lecture period. Students completed post‐measures on satisfaction and usefulness, as well as follow‐up reflective journals entries noting changes made as a result of seminar participation. The seminar received high scores for satisfaction and 90% of students reported at least one of the six building blocks as being useful to them. Satisfaction also translated into self‐reported positive behaviour change for many students. Implications for the role of curriculum‐based resilience‐building programs within universities are discussed.     

Teaching Science Inquiry in Urban Contexts: The Role of Elementary Preservice Teachers’ Beliefs

This paper reports on a study of elementary preservice teachers’ inquiry-based practices, their efficacy beliefs, and the role beliefs had on two preservice teachers’ practices in urban classrooms. Results show inquiry-based practices can be cultivated through field-based experiences and preservice teachers’ efficacy beliefs, as it relates to practice in urban settings, are malleable. Specifically, personal efficacy beliefs about teaching science improved or were sustained for one cohort of preservice teachers. However, beliefs about students’ ability to learn science, that is outcome beliefs, were less stable. The results of two case studies show that science content knowledge was a factor in preservice teachers’ inquiry-based practices. However, why preservice teachers’ beliefs about student learning declined is less clear. More research is needed, along with follow-up data on teacher induction, to learn how preservice teachers’ beliefs impact urban students’ science education.     

Academic social bookmarking: An empirical analysis of Connotea users

Three groups of social bookmarking users, namely experienced users, users with moderate level of experience, and novice users, were investigated, in terms of their reported tagging behaviors, perceived usefulness of social bookmarking in information discovery and management, and perceived usefulness of the bookmarking features provided. Based on the empirical analysis of the Connotea users, who are primarily in academia, the study shows that experienced academic users generally prefer to use social bookmarking while moderately experienced and novice users still prefer to use the traditional bookmarking methods, such as creating and using bookmarks on a dedicated computer. Experienced academic users were also found to create more tags per bookmark comparing to the other two groups. Most novice academic users, however, only created one tag per bookmark, which just met Connotea's minimum requirement. Surprisingly different from the collaborative design nature of the social bookmarking systems, the study finds that our participants, particularly experienced academic users, prefer to create and use their own bookmarks rather than sharing bookmarks created by others. In fact, experienced users have significantly higher frequency (once every two weeks) of creating bookmarks than the other two groups (once a month or less). In addition, website design features and functions, such as automatic collection of bibliographic information, are regarded by all participants as helpful for information discovery. The in-depth examination and discussion of the opinions of Connotea users may be useful for further improvement of the design features and usage applications, particularly for academic social bookmarking websites. The results may also have potential implications to the future development of social bookmarking services in general.