Complexities and compromises: The new era at Parkview School

This paper deals with the managing of externally imposed curriculum change from the teacher's perspective in a UK state-maintained school. When I delivered this paper at the AERA conference in Boston in 1990, it appeared that the substance of the paper was recognized as being as relevant to American educators as to their British counterparts. British teachers are now being required to teach to national specifications. These were legislated in the Educational Reform Act of 1988, with national curriculum and national prescribed assessment tasks for pupils at the ages of seven, eleven, fourteen, and sixteen. At the age of sixteen, pupils take a national examination called the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). The GCSE was introduced in September 1986, and for the first time in the history of English examinations, teachers had to teach from syllabuses that adhered to nationally prescribed criteria in all the major subjects of the curriculum. They were also obliged to assess the subject in the way specified. With the passing of the Educational Reform Act of 1988, the GCSE became the nationally prescribed assessment for all sixteen-year-olds.The American educational context has, for a long time, had to deal with decisions being made about curriculum and assessment outside the school. Mary Futrell (1986) states: Between 1983 and 1985, state legislations enacted more than 700 statutes stipulating what should be taught, how it should be taught, and by whom it should be taught (p. 1). This is now the situation in Britain, and so it would appear that much can be gained from an exchange of ideas between the UK and the United States about the impact that externally imposed curriculum change has on the organizational structure of schooling. I could quite easily have begun my paper with a quote by Ernest Boyer (1985), President of the Carnegie Foundation. This quote could refer to British as well as American teachers: Teachers feel that they have more responsibilities and less authority, less recognition, less empowerment to do their work (p. 1).The Parkview School is situated in a town in the southwest of England that has a variety of manufacturing and service industries. The school copes with problems familiar to schools in larger urban conurbations. The town has a center that suffers from urban decay and that over recent years has been demolished and rebuilt. The pupil population is composed of the full range of academic ability, pupils' families being in the middle- to low-income bracket. There is evidence of poverty and deprivation among the pupil population, and the more wealthy members of the population send their children to private independent schools. As is true of the majority of state schools in Britain, the Parkview School is underresourced, and education takes place in old, poorly maintained buildings. All schools in Britain are funded in a similar way regardless of the geographic area in which they are located. The schools share common organizational structures, have teachers on a national pay scale, and suffer from poor administrative backup.The issues, concerns, stresses, and tensions described in this paper will, I am sure, be familiar to educators on both sides of the Atlantic.     

Choosing Technologies for Education

The aim of this paper is to help towards the development of national policies for the use of communication technology in education. It suggests that policy should be shaped by answering five questions: what technology is convenient for the learner; what are the national constraints on technology choice; what makes curricular sense; what are the costs; what works for small states?.     

A Longitudinal Investigation of African American and Hispanic Adolescents' Educational and Occupational Expectations and Corresponding Attainment in Adulthood

Adolescents' expectations about school and work may be key antecedents of adult attainment and this relationship may vary by specific racial, ethnic, and gender groups. This article examines how educational and occupational expectations change in adolescence and how expectations predict corresponding attainment in adulthood. Participants included African American and Hispanic females and males. Educational and occupational expectations were reported at ages 14, 16, and 18, and educational and occupational attainment at ages 20 and 26. Results indicated distinct developmental trajectories per racial or ethnic and gender group. Educational expectations were more nuanced for African American and Hispanic females than for their male counterparts; occupational expectations were more varied for Hispanic females than for other groups. Educational expectations positively predicted educational attainment for all participants, whereas occupational attainment was predicted just by educational expectations and for Hispanic females and males only.     

Agile development in a bureaucratic arena—A case study experience

The evolving nature of development approaches towards Agile development is viewed with some success. However, evidence suggests that not all development environments have evolved with the same alacrity, thus an organization's inherent culture may not match the development approach adopted effecting failure. This paper concerns an innovative, real-world Government IS project that is currently being implemented in the UK that reflects such a situation. The paper looks at the tension that transpired between the bureaucratic project arena and the Agile development approach. It examines stakeholders’ behaviour and attitudes borne from a bureaucratic and hierarchical society that were problematic for Agile development. It further explores the issues of conflict and trust that prevented key stakeholders from building and fostering a collaborative and co-operative collective with the Developers that had significant impact. The case study provides evidential insights into the phenomenon of stakeholder control over critical decision-making activities that prevailed over organizational driven strategies that has implications for practice.     

Sex in College Relationships: The Role Television Plays in Emerging Adults’ Sexual Expectations in Relationships

The purpose of this study was to determine whether emerging adults use relationship television to form their expectations for sexual interaction in romantic relationships. Considering emerging adulthood is a unique period of development providing opportunities to experiment with adult identities, and relationship television contains multiple consistent messages about gender roles in sexual relationships, we questioned whether emerging adults’ relationship television viewing may be related to their sexual expectations in relationships. Our findings indicated women's relationship television viewing was associated with expecting more sexual interaction in their relationship. Men's sexual expectations were moderated by perceived realism. Men who watched more relationship television, and perceived that television to be less realistic, reported expecting less frequent sexual interaction.     

Creating an information-rich learning environment to enhance design student learning: challenges and approaches

The use of technology with engineering design students is well established, with shared workspaces being particularly supportive of the collaborative design process. This paper reports on a study where a design knowledge framework involving three learning loops was used to analyse the effectiveness of shared workspaces and digital repositories in supporting design education. The issues discussed include the relationship between knowledge and information structures, the importance of integrating information literacy support, and the need for different systems within the learning environment to support formal and informal storage of resources. These issues are explored within the context of experiences of working in a multidisciplinary team with different approaches, research methodologies, and discourses.