Revisiting Susan Isaacs – a modern educator for the twenty‐first century

Susan Sutherland Isaacs (1885–1948) was arguably the most influential child psychologist and educator of her British generation. Her work was studied by eminent contemporary academics, psychologists, philosophers and politicians. Her influence was international. She reached across the world to a generation of teacher educators who passed on her ideas to succeeding generations of primary teachers throughout the latter half of the twentieth century. She was a thoughtful and immensely erudite woman whose deep understanding of children’s thinking has been admired and discussed for nearly one hundred years. Her advice, under the pseudonym Ursula Wise, was much sought after by parents and nannies in the advice columns of the British magazine Nursery World. Susan Isaacs synthesised the work of earlier European and American educators into a particularly English package, suited to the practical bent of the English educator. Her work pre‐figures that of Piaget (whose early work she reviewed) and Vygotsky (whose work was translated from the Russian after her death). And always, at the heart of her work, lay the belief that deep observation was the key to understanding the complex and unique realities of individual children.     

Exploring the orientations of international students in Mexico: differences by region of origin

This study examined the dispositions, experiences, and expectations of international students in a developing country to understand the increasing phenomenon of reverse student flows and the role of the political economy in international student mobility. Students’ dispositions, experiences and expectations—referred here collectively as “orientations”—served as the guiding framework for this study. Data were drawn from survey responses from 279 international students at universities throughout Mexico and analyzed to explore the orientations among students from Europe, Latin America and North America. Findings showed significant differences among international students’ dispositions, experiences, and expectations by these geographical regions of origin. In a broader context, this research addressed the important role of developing countries as not only senders but also receivers of international students. This research also demonstrated the ways that the political economy shape the orientations of students studying abroad.     

Using Clicker 5 to Enhance Emergent Literacy in Young Learners

Best practices in emergent literacy instruction for young children acknowledge and facilitate the smooth progression between children’s early engagement with print materials and subsequent fuller literacy mastery. In so doing, model programs target five key emergent literacy skills. The rapid rise in the breadth and depth of educational technology, including computer software, is offering early childhood education professionals new and powerful tools in teaching early literacy. This paper offers a brief review of best practices in emergent literacy, notes the growth of technology in this instruction, and examines the potential contributions of one specific software program, Clicker 5, in helping diverse emergent literacy learners acquire and practice initial reading and writing skills.     

Science teachers accelerated programme model: a joint partnership in the Pacific region

The paper heralds a new pedagogical model known as the Science Teachers Accelerated Programme as a platform to upgrade the qualifications of secondary school science teachers throughout the Pacific region. Based on a tripartite partnership between a higher education provider, a regional government and a cohort of science teachers, the model offers an accelerated Bachelor’s degree programme to the cohort. Using this tripartite partnership model, a pilot of the Science Teachers Accelerated Programme is underway between the University of the South Pacific, the Government of Samoa and a cohort of science teachers in Samoa. The underpinning activities garnering social and academic integration are highlighted with analytics. The strengths, challenges and opportunities of the new, cohort-taught science model are presented with relevant diagnoses, interventions and adaptive works carried out in the first half of the delivery plan. While the Government of Samoa is considering the implementation of a second cycle, the University of the South Pacific is considering extending the model to other regional countries.     

‘Sitting on embers’: a phenomenological exploration of the embodied experiences of inclusion of newly arrived students in Sweden

What can we learn from and with the body in order to understand more about the (lived) experiences of newly arrived students in schools? This question has hitherto been given little attention in relation to the field of migration and education. Using the perspective of Ahmed's critical feminist phenomenology, this article aims to explore the embodied experiences of the different contexts that newly arrived students encounter in a rural monolingual school in Sweden. The empirical data are based on participant observation conducted in introductory and mainstream classrooms, as well as interviews undertaken with newly arrived students during a year of fieldwork. The findings of our study show how close attention to newly arrived students' embodied experiences can help to dispel prevailing myths surrounding inclusion, bringing to light thereby how the current lived conditions of inclusion in fact carry with them lines of exclusion.     

The entrepreneurial researcher: Re-formations of identity in the research marketplace

This article seeks to consider the nature and impact of managerialism on Higher Education with particular reference to research. Managerialism will be addressed here primarily as a transmission system of economic rationalism into the body politic of the university, by that it is meant that competitiveness is assumed to improve performance and only the financial calculation of benefit is recognised. This agenda is developed through consideration of the changing management of research work and draws on the wider literature on work and organisations to look at the impact of changing material conditions and social relations on the identity formation of researchers. In general, the article seeks to promote reflexivity both in the style of presentation and in the focus on research and managerialism in Higher Education. The salience of Barry Troyna's strictures about reflexivity (Troyna, 1994) is acknowledged but it is suggested that if we seek to understand how the values and cultures of the public sector are being transformed, in particular through the formation of new subjectivities, then our own experience as workers within higher education offers a valuable and useful resource. It is also possible that subjecting this process to self-critical scrutiny may alert us to its invidiousness and so assist in the retrieval and re-formation of alternative formations of research work. For some of us, including the author, this may extend into consideration of the effects of managerialism on our own identities as managers and on our own management practice.