Education and conflict: Essay review

This review essay looks at three recent publications in the emerging field of ‘education and conflict’ and explores an apparent gap between theory and practice in the field. Recent works by educationalists Lynn Davies, ‘Education and conflict: complexity and chaos’ (2004) and Tony Gallagher, ‘Education in divided societies (2004)’ are contrasted with the World Bank's 2005 ‘Reshaping the future: education and postconflict reconstruction’, and similarities between the publications are highlighted. Davies’ work uses complexity theory to illuminate the relationships between education and conflict and to establish an argument for ‘complex-adaptive schools’, which would use conflict positively to engage students in the creation of peaceful communities. Gallagher, using a number of well-developed case studies, examines the way education systems have been structured to respond to and operate in divided societies, concluding that classroom agency and flexibility are crucial. The calls, by Davies and Gallagher, for educational re-creation are explored in contrast to the World Bank's publication, which offers best practice lessons to support post-conflict educational reconstruction. The article probes these differences and points to areas where the practitioner-directed Bank publication and the more academic works do and do not intersect, attempting to indicate areas where bridges may be built.     

The Role of Mathematics Teachers' Content Knowledge in their Teaching: A Framework for Research applied to a Study of Student Teachers

The authors develop and explain a framework toguide research on the relationship betweenmathematics teachers' knowledge of content andtheir teaching. The framework istwo-dimensional. The dimensions are (a) theelements of teaching and (b) the processes ofteaching in which knowledge of content is ofconsequence. The interplay between the elementsof teaching and the processes of teaching isdiscussed theoretically, consideringconnections to existing literature about therole of teachers' subject matter knowledge.Three vignettes from the authors' work withpre-service secondary mathematics teachersinvestigate further the relationship betweencontent knowledge and effective mathematicsteaching. The vignettes also serve toillustrate the complexity of investigationsinto this relationship. Direction is offeredfor use of the framework in future research.     

Innovation and regional economic development: A matter of perspective?

This paper investigates the issue of innovation policy within a regional context. It is presented that the perspective one takes is important both in how one interprets the processes and relationships involved, but also in the way one identifies barriers and problems in policy formation and how one resolves them. The paper explores a number of contrasting perspectives in relation to innovation policy and the regions and seeks to highlight the implications of this both for policy, but also in the development of our conceptual understanding about innovation and geography.     

The Feasibility of Single-Item Measures for Organizational Justice

Researchers in a number of disciplines have examined the utility of single-item measures for both affective and cognitive constructs. While these authors have indicated that, under certain circumstances, the use of single-item measures is appropriate, there remains concern regarding the reliability and validity of single-item measures. This study attempts to address these concerns by comparing the reliability and validity of single-item and full-scale measures for three dimensions of organizational justice. There are an increasing number of studies in organizational behavior, as well as sport management, that have explored the importance of justice and its influence on various attitudes and behaviors. However, to date there have been no attempts to develop single-item measures for each of the dimensions of organizational justice. The development of single-item measures for organizational justice could provide researchers with practical and psychometric advantages compared with full-scale measures. Two separate methods were used to test the reliability of single-item measures while concurrent validity was measured with a global measure of job satisfaction. Single-item measures demonstrated comparable concurrent validity, and, with one exception, the reliability estimates were all above .70.     

Challenges and opportunities: using a science-based video game in secondary school settings

Simulations and games are not new artifacts to the study of science in secondary school settings (Hug, Kriajcik and Marx 2005), however teachers remain skeptical as to their value, use and appropriateness (Rice 2006). The difficulty is not only the design and development of effective play environments that produce measurable changes in knowledge and/or understanding, but also in their on-the-ground use (Jaipal and Figg 2010). This paper reports on the use of a science-focused video game in five very different secondary school settings in Ontario, Canada. A mixed-methods approach was used in the study, and included data gathered on general gameplay habits and technology use, as well as informal interviews with teachers and students who played the game. In total, 161 participants played a series of games focused on the ??life of a plant??, and were given both a pre and post quiz to determine if the game helped them retain and/or change what they knew about scientific processes like plant cell anatomy and photosynthesis. Participants showed statistically significant improvement on quizzes that were taken after playing the game for approximately one-hour sessions, despite difficulties in some cases both accessing and playing the game for the full hour. Our findings also reveal the ongoing challenges in making use of technology in a variety of school sessions, even when using a browser-based game, that demanded very little other than a reliable internet connection.     

The impact of tracking by attainment on pupil self-confidence over time: demonstrating the accumulative impact of self-fulfilling prophecy

Abstract

The impact of self-fulfilling prophecy in education, and of attainment grouping on pupil self-perception, remain topics of longstanding debate, with important consequences for social in/justice. Focusing on self-confidence, this article draws on survey responses from 9,059 12-13 year olds who were tracked by subject (‘setting’). They provided survey responses when placed in ‘ability’ sets at the start of their secondary schooling, and again late the following year; enabling analysis of impact over time. After controlling for prior attainment, the gap in general self-confidence between students in the top and bottom sets for mathematics is shown to widen over time, and high set students’ self-confidence in English had also grown significantly; although there was not further widening in the cases of self-confidence in mathematics or in general self-confidence between students in the top and bottom sets for English. Implications of these findings for interventions directed at addressing educational disadvantage are discussed.     

A virtual internship to prepare high school students for civic and political action

Educational technology research and development - We explored the impact of participating in a Virtual Internship (VI) computer-supported collaborative learning simulation, on high school...