Coping with school failure: Development of the school failure coping scale

The present study describes the development of a self-report measure of coping with school failure for children and adolescents. A list of 56 items had been collected in the sample of 142 subjects aged from 9 to 18 years. The items were administered to 500 elementary and high school students. Factor analysis of the data produced seven coping strategies: Anger, Accepting Responsibility, Comfort and Forgetting, Seeking Social Support, Parents, Inadequate Reactions, and Disengagement. Internal consistencies were in the .59 to .76 range. Significant age effects were found for Accepting Responsibility, Comfort and Forgetting, and Parents, indicating that elementary school children, compared to high school students, accept greater responsibility, try harder to forget and take comfort, and seek help more from their parents. Significant gender effects were found for Accepting Responsibility, Seeking Social Support, and Inadequate Reactions, indicating that girls accept greater responsibility, more often use social support, and have fewer inadequate reactions than boys. Overall pattern of results also suggests that high achievers use more positive coping strategies (mainly accepting responsibility) and less negative strategies (anger, inadequate reactions and disengagement) than low or average achievers.     

Postcolonial Literature and the Politics of Representation in School Programs

This article explores theoretical and pedagogical frameworks for re-evaluating literary curricula and reading practices in contemporary school classrooms. Data from a study of students' responses to reading international literature in a multi-ethnic urban Canadian high school and conversations with South African high school students on their reading preferences ground this discussion of how students and teachers can cross borders constructed within discourses of race, gender, and ethnicity. Drawing on postcolonial literary theory, critical theory, and reader response theories, the article considers the questions, concerns, and dilemmas that emerge when students begin to deconstruct misrepresentations of "others" in literary texts and acknowledge challenges to their perceptions of self.     

The Dog's Tale: Chinese,Hungarian and Swedish children's narrative conventions L'Histoire du Chien: Les conventions narratives chez les enfants Chinois,Hongrois et Suedois El Cuento del Perro: Convenciones en la forma de narrar de niños Chinos,Hungaros y Suecos

The purpose of this study was to explore children's (6-7 years) making up of their own stories in different cultures (China, Hungary and Sweden). Ninety-three children were asked individually to tell a story about a dog. They were supposed to invent the story themselves. Qualitative differences in children's life worlds, which could be related to their cultural backgrounds, stood out in the results. The characters used in the children's stories could be summarised in terms of family members, ordinary humans, unusual persons, harmless animals, dangerous creatures, and fantastic characters. The most characteristic events were: play and co-operation, conflicts and fights, death, and exchange of commodities. The Chinese children focused mainly on play and co-operation, while the Hungarian children focused on conflicts and the exchange of commodities. The Swedish children focused on play and death. The results are discussed in relation to traditions and practices of retelling and telling of stories and children's life worlds in different cultures. L'objectif de cet étude est d'explorer la forme dont les enfants (de 6-7 ans) construisent des histoires dans des cultures différentes. On a demandé à 93 enfants de raconter une histoire de leur propre invention sur un chien. Les différences existantes dans l'expérience de vie des enfants, susceptibles d'être mises en rapport avec leur milieu culturel, apparurent dans les résultats. Les personnages des histoires racontées entrent dans les catégories de membres de la famille, personnes ordinaires ou extraordinaires, animaux inoffensifs ou dangereux et personnages de fantaisie. Parmi les actions les plus characteristiques se comptent le jeu et la coopération, les conflicts et les disputes, la mort et l'échange d'objets. Les enfants chinois se sont concentrés sur le jeu et la coopération, les hongrois sur les conflicts et l'échange d'objets et les petis suédois sur le jeu et la mort. On discute les résultats de l'étude à la lumière des traditions, des pratiques narratives et de l'expérience de vie des enfants dans des cultures différentes. El objetivo de este estudio es explorar la forma en que niños (de 6 y 7 años) construyen sus propias historias en diferentes culturas (China, Hungría y Suecia). Se solicitó a 93 niños por separado que contaran una historia de su propia invención sobre un perro. Las diferencias existentes en la experiencia vital de estos niños, pasibles de ser relacionadas con sus respectivos medios culturales, se hicieron evidentes en los resultados. El tipo de personajes que aparecen en las historias entran en las siguientes categorías: miembros de la familia, seres humanos ordinarios o inusuales, animales inofensivos o peligrosos y personajes de fantasía. Entre las acciones más características se cuentan el juego y la cooperación, los conflictos y peleas, la muerte y el intercambio de objetos. Los niños chinos se centran en el juego y la cooperación, los húngaros en los conflictos y el intercambio de objetos y los niños suecos en el juego y la muerte. Los resultados del estudio se analizan en relación a las tradiciones y prácticas narrativas así como a la experiencia vital de los niños en diferentes las culturas.     

Integrating Student Assessment Practices: the significance of collaborative partnerships for curriculum and professional development in a university department

The purposes and practices of student assessment in all sectors of education are contested. So when the members of a university department decide to collaborate in order to integrate their assessment requirements, what they enter into is a program of personal and collective review that begins to unmask the moral and political dynamics of curriculum and professional development. This article describes such a collaborative project, its processes and its products, as well as the dynamics of collective review as they relate to facilitation, organisational change, and comfortable versus critical collaboration.     

Combating low completion rates in Nordic welfare states: policy design in Norway and Sweden

ABSTRACT

Low completion rate in upper secondary education is seen as a big problem in the Nordic countries. School failure has shown to dramatically increase the risks for unemployment and labour market exclusion with severe consequences for both society and the young person. This paper analyses national policy measures to combat low upper secondary education completion rates in Norway and Sweden, often regarded as representing a social democratic welfare model and a universalistic transition regime. The analysis demonstrates that although this issue has received extensive political attention, the two countries display somewhat different policy designs. The Norwegian approach is proactive and targeted while the Swedish policy is more general and directed towards reforming organisational structures in upper-secondary education. In sum, our analysis demonstrates that national governance structures shape and influence policy design in the context of an increasingly diversified Nordic social democratic welfare state regime.     

Using organisational theory in the promotion of evaluation — a case study

This paper discusses the use of organisational theory in a research and development project at the University of Queensland. It focuses on the introduction of a student evaluation of teaching scheme for feedback purpose and for use in annual appraisals, as well as for tenure and promotion decisions. It is a case study of planned change introduced into a traditional university within the framework of the literature on change, university systems and the academic profession. The paper demonstrates that organisational theory helps (a) to clarify the context and the conditions which facilitate introduction of change in a traditional university, and (b) to evaluate strategies to initiate and implement change. When the student evaluation of teaching system was developed and first promoted in Semester 2, 1982, 37 staff members had their teaching evaluated. Since then it has grown to a regular evaluation of teaching in over 300 class sessions, with 150–200 staff members participating each semester, and about 15,000 students returning questionnaires. This makes it a unique scheme in Australian universities.     

Coping with school failure and self-regulated learning

The aim of the study was to explore whether students can be classified in groups according to their coping strategies in dealing with school failure and to assess relationships between coping strategies and various components of self regulated learning. The sample consisted of 470 high school students (15 to 18 years old). The students responded to two self-report questionnaires: The School Failure Coping Scale and The Components of Self-Regulated Learning.     

Children’s Voices on Bullying in Kindergarten

Research suggests that bullying does occur in kindergarten. The extent of bullying in Norway and other Scandinavian countries is estimated to be about 12 %. The purpose of this study is to investigate children’s understanding and experiences of bullying. We use a qualitative approach and have conducted individual interviews and focus group interviews with a total of 31 children, 5 year-olds, in 4 different kindergartens. Additionally, observations were made of 4–5 year-olds in the same kindergartens, 142 children in total. The results show that the children describe bullying as doing or saying “something mean”. Exclusion from play is what all the children fear the most. This study shows that 1–2 children in each kindergarten are systematically excluded from play, and these children are overlooked by both other children and the adults in kindergarten.     

Untapped Potential: A Study of Academic Online Legal Research Guides

This article explores the current state of online legal research guides. It surveys guides from 197 ABA-accredited law school libraries and (1) identifies four major types of guides and (2) calculates the total number of academic-law-library-produced online legal research guides. The article also takes a closer look at the content and format of online legal research guides, with immigration-focused guides as an illustration. After analyzing the survey results, the article suggests some best practices for format regardless of the guide type. Ideally, an awareness of the breadth and depth of existing online legal research guides will result in less duplication of efforts among law librarians and more current, accurate, and functional online legal research guides.