Raising levels of school student engagement and retention in rural,regional and disadvantaged areas: is it a lost cause?

This paper reports on the views of key members of the educational community about student engagement and retention in rural, regional and disadvantaged areas of the Australian state of Tasmania. It provides insights into the attributed reasons for the longstanding low levels of student retention in Tasmania, and the possible ways to militate against the widely censured problem of students leaving school too soon. The paper draws from principles of Bronfenbrenner’s model of ecology to situate the 25 participants who formed the sample of the study in the exosystem of the environment of the young people whose educational attainment and retention in schools is the focus of this work. Data analysis generated three major themes: families and the socio-cultural environment; teachers and teaching; and the school system. The study’s findings play an important role in prompting us to question when, and if, the dire situation of student dropout in the state and in similar contexts worldwide will begin to be reversed. Implications of the work include the need to develop and sustain a strong policy environment in which high-quality education and schooling success are contextualised as key features to which members across the systems and sections of society can contribute.     

VizBib

A scan of recent popular, professional, and research publications, films, and other media of interest to visual communicators, artists, and scholars.     

Using evaluation in the development of open learning for YTS

In this article Lorna Unwin (School of Education, Open University), Hillary Read (Project Manager, Oxfordshire Programme for Training, Instruction and Supervision), and Ian Haffenden (Surrey University) describe the development of a national project seeking to create flexible open learning strategies in the two‐year Youth Training Schemes, incorporating evaluation at each stage. An account of the way in which participative workshops have been run with practitioners demonstrates how the user can act as evaluator and directly influence the outcomes of the project. In this way, a structured evaluation strategy is shown to play a crucial part in the development of open learning approaches linked to the needs expressed by the learners.     

The outsider's gaze: a learner‐centred approach to language‐teaching materials

The Outsider's Gaze is a set of three DVDs for Asian students of Spanish, French and German. The project is an attempt to employ constructivist principles to the development of language learning materials. For students in Hong Kong and China, European languages present problems of relevance and contextualisation: the textbooks and available videos are invariably produced from the point of view of the insider (native speaker) and it is difficult for Asian students to connect the learning experience with their own lives. This article explores the issues involved in creating effective and meaningful learner‐centered materials for language students and contrasts this approach to the more common insider's approach. The three sections of the project are described and analyzed in terms of constructivist criteria.L' » Outsider Gaze » : Une approche centrée sur l'étudiant par des documents d'enseignement des langues. L' »outsider gaze » est un ensemble des 3 DVD pour des étudiants asiatiques en espagnol, français et allemand. Ce projet est un essai pour appliquer les principes constructivites à l'élaboration de documents pour l'enseignement des langues. Pour les étudiants de Hong Kong et de la Chine les langues europénnes posent des problémes de pertinence et de contextualisation : des manuels et des vidéos disponibles sont toujours traduits du point de vue de celui qui est né dans le pays où la langue est parlée et il est difficile pour les étudiants asiatiques de connecter cette expérience d'enseignement avec leurs propres vies. L'article explore les problèmes infligés pour créer des documents efficaces et signifiants centrés sur les étudiants et cette approche est en contraste avec l'approche habituelle de celui qui est né dans le pays où la langue est parlée. Les 3 sections de ce projet sont décrites et analysées en termes de critères constructivistes.Der Blick des Außenseiters: ein anfängerzentrierter Ansatz zu Sprachlehrmaterialien. 'The Outsiders Gaze' ist ein Satz von drei DVDs für asiatische Studenten der Fächer Spanisch, Französisch und Deutsch. Das Projekt ist ein Versuch, konstruktivistische Prinzipien zur Entwicklung von Sprachlernmaterialien zu verwenden. Für Studenten in Hongkong und China bergen europäische Sprachen Probleme der Relevanz und des Kontextes: die Lehrbücher und die verfügbaren Videos werden unverändert immer vom Standpunkt des Insiders (de einheimischen Sprechers) produziert, und es ist für asiatische Studenten schwierig, die mediale Lernsituation mit ihrer eigenen Lebenserfahrung zu verbinden. Dieser Artikel erkundet die Probleme, die mit dem Erschaffen wirksamer und bedeutungsvoller Anfänger zentrierter Materialien für Sprachstudenten verbunden sind und stellt diesen Ansatz dem Ansatz des allgemeinen Insiders gegenüber. Die drei Abschnitte des Projekts werden beschrieben und in konstruktivistischen Kategorien analysiert.     

School‐based restructuring and curriculum change: teachers’ and students’ contrasting perspectives

Abstract

This article is set within the context of a school‐based change initiative, where we studied a number of teachers and students in order to understand the ways in which they understood and experienced the complexities of the change process, and to add their voices to the ongoing discussions around restructuring and school‐based change. We found that although there were some commonalties between how teachers and students experienced the changes being implemented, there were also some profound differences between the curriculum as planned by teachers and the curriculum as experienced by students. For the teachers, the themes of caring for students’ lives, recasting themselves as classroom practitioners and of working as collaborative colleagues were identified; for students, the themes were those of getting used to the place, and of re‐establishing their preferred way of working in this new setting. In our discussion and analysis of these themes we look at the implications for future school‐based change initiatives, and at some of the complexities and difficulties which present themselves as schools take on increased authority and responsibility for self‐management and for the creation of improved learning environments for students and teachers. We suggest that future change efforts should give more importance to the perspectives of teachers and students, and to the interactive and programmatic exchanges of teachers and students. We suggest also that changed school structures should originate in a focus on the improvement of teaching and learning, and on the facilitation of teachers’ and students’ collaborative efforts to create a curriculum for the classroom and a learning community which is both enabling and transformative for both.