Truly included? A literature study focusing on the social dimension of inclusion in education

Social participation of students with special educational needs (SEN) is a key issue in the inclusion debate. However, the meaning of concepts like social integration, social inclusion and social participation used in current literature is often unclear. Recently, these concepts were clarified based on preschool and primary school literature. The current study assesses the meaning of these concepts for secondary school samples and possible differences with preschool and primary school. A literature review on secondary school literature, including 19 articles, revealed large parallels, i.e. the three concepts can be used as synonyms and include the same key themes: relationships, interactions, perception of the pupil with SEN and acceptance by classmates. Although the subthemes within the key themes largely concurred, one subtheme (i.e. self-perception of social interaction) was added and three subthemes, mentioned in the scheme based on preschool and primary school, were not found.     

Schematising activities in early childhood education

The purpose of this study was to determine the importance of introducing schematising to children in early childhood and to determine whether schematising can be taught to children. This was done using a longitudinal, quantitative study with a quasi-experimental design (N = 133). In this study, the use of schematising was taught to an experimental group of children to determine if it is possible to realise significantly improved results in schematising tasks for an experimental group in comparison to a control group of children who were not taught schematising. Pupils in the experimental group demonstrated significantly better results on schematising, which cannot be explained by maturation. In our future research, we will investigate the mathematical performances of these experimental and control groups in the next grade of the primary school curriculum.     

Primary School Sex Education Programs: Views and experiences of teachers in four primary schools in Sydney,Australia

This small-scale study draws on qualitative data from four government primary schools in Sydney, Australia to investigate the sex education given to grade five and six primary school children by their teachers. This article explores the sexuality issues teachers find difficult to discuss, and reports the concerns teachers have when teaching sexuality education. The practices teachers adopt to encourage parent-teacher partnerships in sex education are also reported. School programs varied in the coverage that was given to contraception and sexually transmitted infections while no school program formally addressed sexual identity and orientation, issues that were brought up by the children through their questions. Teacher concerns included what parents might think about the program and how to manage the different levels of maturity, knowledge and comfort among the children in their class. The article concludes that teachers need to continue fostering their partnership with parents and that many teachers require more opportunities for training so that they can address with comfort the sexuality issues of concern to children and their parents.     

DEVELOPMENT, EVALUATION, AND VALIDATION OF A PAPER-AND-PENCIL TEST FOR MEASURING TWO COMPONENTS OF BIOLOGY TEACHERS’ PEDAGOGICAL CONTENT KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING THE “CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM”

One main focus of teacher education research concentrates on teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). It has been shown that teachers’ PCK correlates with teaching effectiveness as well as with students’ achievement gains. Teachers’ PCK should be analyzed as one of the main important components to evaluate professional development programs. On this account, it is necessary to develop standardized measures of biology teachers’ topic-specific PCK that are labor-efficient. This paper presents a study on the development, evaluation, and validation of a paper-and-pencil test to measure biology teachers’ declarative PCK on the topic of blood and the human cardiovascular system. The development of the test was based, among other considerations, on a review of research literature on PCK and an analysis of 50 videotaped biology lessons. The final test instrument was comprised of 15 items distributed across 2 scales. The findings of the main study—with 93 preservice and in-service biology teachers and 12 biologists—confirmed that this measure of biology teachers’ declarative PCK was reliable, objective, and valid. In-service biology teachers scored higher on the test than preservice teachers (effect size Cohen’s d, 0.65) on one hand and, also, than biologists (Cohen’s d, 1.00) on the other hand. Future versions of this test should explore enlarging the scales and measuring procedural aspects of PCK.     

Strategic Facilitation of Problem-Based Discussion for Teacher Professional Development

Engaging teachers in discussing and analyzing problems of practice has great potential for teacher professional development, yet little is known about how to facilitate such discussion. This study examined the strategies that experienced facilitators used to promote productive discussion among science teachers. Participants were 6 facilitators and 35 in-service teachers who participated in a professional development program that adopted a problem-based learning approach for teacher learning. Data analysis showed that experienced facilitators used a variety of strategies in their facilitation, including questioning, revoicing, making connections, clarifying, reframing, summarizing, role playing, meta-talk, and modeling. In particular, questioning and revoicing were the most important strategies in all sessions studied, accounting for about half of the facilitators' talk. Analysis further revealed both productive and disruptive characteristics of questioning and revoicing. In addition, analysis found that teachers were able to make progress in participating in the problem-based learning discourse in different ways. This study has implications for research on teacher professional development, problem-based learning, and learner-centered instruction.     

Modeling the Growth of Word-Decoding Skills: Evidence From Dutch

This study investigated the growth of word-decoding skills throughout the elementary school years for a representative sample of 2,819 Dutch children. Children's decoding abilities for (a) regular consonant-vowel-consonant words, (b) complex monosyllabic words with consonant clusters in prevocalic and postvocalic position, and (c) polysyllabic words were assessed on two occasions in each school year (Grades 1–6). The growth of word-decoding skills was found to be largely a matter of increased speed. Growth curve analyses showed a gradual curvilinear model to be superior to a step-model for all word-decoding skills. Furthermore, the three measures of word decoding define a common factor and show strong longitudinal stability. Some unique variance for the three word-decoding skills also emerged suggesting that the development of fully proficient word-decoding skills requires the learning of orthographic complexities.     

A New Disciplinarity: Communities of knowledge,learning and practice

The welcome new attention paid to subject teaching should have bridged the old divide between pedagogical and disciplinary research. But this paper argues that the focus on subject, rather than disciplinary communities is part of the commodification of higher education; that what is needed to re-energise both teachers and students is an inclusive new model of disciplinary education based on an engaged community's processes and practices. Each discipline, it is proposed, will model differently its practices, knowledge creation and dissemination, its writing, its community. The model may change received ideas about the focus and central concerns of the discipline, and in modelling disciplinary learning will change teaching and assessment. The model will be discipline specific and, as such, will resist generic and imposed 'skills and outcomes' frameworks. Evolving out of practice, rather than an external agenda, it should link disciplinary and pedagogical research so that they are mutually informing and transforming.     

Lessons learned and tables turned: ‘(in)security’ and media representations in the 2018 World Cup

ABSTRACT

This essay follows up on an article published in Soccer & Society prior to the 2018 World Cup in Russia. There it was argued that this edition of the World Cup served as particularly interesting for the academic field focussed on sport-mega events (SMEs) and ‘security’, because of its uniquely securitized climate. Written immediately after the 2018 World Cup, the present essay reflects upon the event’s ‘security’ and mega-event security more broadly. It revisits some ‘security-related’ episodes. Then, special attention will be given the media discourse vis-à-vis ‘hooliganism’. The essay argues that the media discourse took an unorthodox ‘turn’ with regard to English ‘hooligans’, who, compared to past events, were portrayed as being ‘in risk’ – rather than being the group generating ‘the risk’ of football-related violence and public disorder.     

Teacher–student negotiations during context-based chemistry reform: A case study

Teachers participating in curricular reforms, especially reforms based on constructivism, are expected to bring about change in their teaching approach. This is often a difficult, complex and intensive process, and demands a radical reculturing of the classroom. This is also the case for social constructivist reforms in chemistry education, which are based on a context-based approach. Educational change is a social and interactional process, and during this change teachers will engage in negotiations with their students about the reform. These teacher–student negotiations have a profound impact on the succeeding of the reform. This study explores the teacher–student interactions during the reform that shape and alter the context-based chemistry approach. We focused on two teachers, of whom it was found in an earlier study that one of them succeeded in implementing the reform, while the other one struggled. By following them for one school year, in which in-depth qualitative data was collected through various instruments, we developed insights about the teacher–student negotiations that influenced the educational reform. Three themes emerged from the data: “agency of learning,” “vulnerability,” and “care.” The differences that were found between the teachers regarding these themes help explain why and how the reform can become a success and why the reform often fails to change classroom practice.