Perceptions of leadership characteristics by gifted elementary students

This article presents questioning strategies that can be used by a teacher, parent, or museum guide when introducing gifted children to the art museum. The strategies utilize eight creative processes and seventeen content, process and product modifications, based on the differentiation models of Frank Williams and June Maker. A single work of art is used and examples of questions employing these differentiation techniques are given.     

Sex Education Materials in The Netherlands and in England and Wales: A comparison of content,use and teaching practice

Sex education in The Netherlands and in the UK [1] has attracted attention because of the huge differences between the teenage pregnancy rates. There are substantial similarities in the way in which sex education is structured in the two countries, and yet the approach to the subject is very different. We used documentary sources and interviews to explore the political debates; compared both science and PSE texts aimed at 14-15- year-olds; and carried out exploratory field work in three secondary schools in each country. While sex education is controversial in both countries, the British debate is adversarial and the Dutch strive to seek consensus, making use of professional sex educators in the process. The difference in approach is reflected in both the sex education materials and the approach taken in the classroom. We conclude that the Dutch are significantly more successful in addressing the problem of ignorance and of promoting a coherent sex education message.     

Home Away from Home: Acclimatization of Filipino Elderly from being Home to a Sense of being “At Home” in an Elderly Institution

This grounded study examined the process of acclimatization or the process of changing perspectives of a person so as to get used to or feel “at home” among a select group of Filipino elderly in a nursing care facility. As institutionalization of the elderly is not typical in the Philippine context, varied responses were analyzed to understand the factors and the course that an elderly person undergoes over a set period of time to achieve acclimatization. Twenty elderly (n = 20) residents were purposively recruited and subjected to an in-depth interview that chronicled their experiences on their previous and present lives and on the process by which they were able to adjust to a relatively new setting. Preliminarily, a robotfoto was devised to obtain demographic data including visitation frequencies and familial relationships, and this was followed by an in-depth interview. Through the constant comparison method, an interesting model called the Hourglass of Acclimatization emerged. This model yielded two distinct phases contributing to successful acclimatization. One is the Conversion phase, or imbibing the main notion of transforming one's perspectives of him or herself and his or her environment; there is also the Immersion phase, which describes how an elderly involves him or herself completely into the life he or she is supposed to live. This emerged model can contribute to the development of nursing interventions focusing on elderly experiences in the entire course of relocation to a new environment other than what they call “home.”     

Froebelian women: networking to promote professional status and educational change in the nineteenth century

Recent comments by Baroness Warnock have reignited controversy over the relative merits of policies designed to promote inclusion and address special educational needs. These debates, conducted mainly between practitioners and parents, do not encourage input from historians but can usefully contextualize earlier models of service delivery. This paper concentrates on the interwar period when provision for children, whom we would now understand to have a moderate to severe learning disability, was shaped by the requirements of the 1913 Mental Deficiency Act. Existing studies that have examined the implementation of this legislation have tended to concentrate on the management of long‐stay institutions. This has led to a focus on medical care and the social control of adolescents and adults. Education has featured in these accounts but often in a fairly limited way, with more emphasis on school failure leading to admission than the educational potential of either the mental deficiency institution or its inmates. This paper seeks to redress the balance by offering a brief survey of the way education served as a way in, through and out of one of the largest specialist institutions in the South West of England before 1948.     

The Counties of England: a nineteenth-century geographical game to amuse and instruct

This study examines a Victorian geographical card game entitled The Counties of England published by Jaques & Son. Advertised as highly instructive and educational, it was designed to teach children about the principal towns in each county, their products and notable buildings. The aims of the study were to discover whether the information printed on the cards accurately reflected the towns’ main features and if the number of cards allocated to each county was representative of its population size. The study found that many towns included in the first edition of the game were accurately represented, but later issues, despite some modification, carried somewhat outdated information. Counties with large populations were also generally allotted more cards. Several factors were identified as possibly influencing which towns were selected and how they were presented, including tourist appeal, the card designer’s interests and knowledge and the rules and conventions of the game.     

‘Take more time to actually listen’: students' reflections on participation and negotiation in school

Behaviour in schools is an emotive topic and one of enduring political interest and sensitivity. The media often portrays schools as violent and dangerous places and young people as ever more unruly. This paper explores findings from a recent large‐scale national study on behaviour and focuses on the data from primary and secondary school students within this study. The comments and suggestions offered by students move beyond a discussion of behaviour to focus on the broader questions of participation, engagement and meanings of active citizenship in school.     

A Comparative Exploration of Learning Pathways and Transition Systems in Denmark and Australia

In the area of education and training, different configurations of government with different institutional structures may produce similar or quite different educational and employment outcomes. Other factors come into play in assessing outcomes. For example, young people's transitions from education to work are shaped by a variety of structural and institutional relations in education and the labour market. We argue that analysis of developments in approaches to education and training benefits from including these perspectives. This article explores these differences and similarities in a comparative transnational context across two continents. The article suggests that it not useful, whether from a policy or scholarly perspective, to link education and employment without examining the role and type of the welfare state, including the role and type of capitalism within that state, and the relationship of the welfare state to transition systems. With these concerns as our focus, the article has two objectives. The first is to establish some links between comparative research on transition systems and the literatures on welfare state regimes and varieties of capitalism. The second is to draw out some of these links with two concrete and contrasting examples in a comparative manner, focussing on Denmark and Australia.     

Resampling with TinkerPlots

The constructivist data handling software TinkerPlots is used to carry out resampling in a manner that illustrates the stages of the process without the need for programming skills.