Children's perspectives on building science models

This study describes the experiences of 10- and 11-year-old students with building science models during a unit on weather. With the teacher, we prepared and gathered materials for the students to use in the building of dynamic physical models demonstrating the key features of the weather concepts they were learning. An important aspect of the approach used in the construction of the models was that students were given a significant amount of time to build and explore their models. Students were interviewed following the completion of the unit and their comments suggest that they began to understand the value of the building activities. The enthusiasm for the activities demonstrated by the students also helped increased the meaning the construction held for them. This enthusiasm combined with an increased confidence helped create an environment where students were excited about science and were better able to display their understanding of concepts.     

‘We’re not going to suffer like this in the mud’: educational aspirations,social mobility and independent child migration among populations living in poverty

This article examines the association between formal education, social mobility and independent child migration in Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh), Peru and Vietnam and draws on data from Young Lives, a longitudinal study of childhood poverty and schooling. It argues that among resource-poor populations, child migration sustains kin relations across generations and households and also facilitates children’s progression through the life-course, thus it is fundamental to social reproduction. It reasons that formal education has greatly amplified this trend. Schooling has acquired symbolic value as the prime means of escaping household poverty and realising ambitions for social mobility. As such, elevated educational aspirations combine with systems shortcomings to stimulate school selection, school transfer and school-related child migration. The article concludes by examining the implications for children, for social reproduction and for policy.     

Conceptualising gender and violence in research: Insights from studies in schools and communities in Kenya,Ghana and Mozambique

Gender and violence are complex and contested concepts, understood in varying ways in research, policy and interventions in education. Often there has been an emphasis on acts of violence, with much less attention to the social conditions and gender relations behind these acts. This paper discusses the development of a conceptual framework that emphasises not just acts and individuals, but also transformation of gendered power relations and inequities, alongside a focus on addressing the identity conflicts and struggles of everyday life. The framework underpins research, advocacy and community interventions in a multi-partnered project on violence against girls led by ActionAid.     

Improving teaching and learning of basic maths and reading in Africa: Does teacher preparation count?

Teacher education has an important role in ensuring quality of learning especially for the poorest children. The article draws on a study of teacher preparation for the early primary grades in six African countries – Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda – in reading and mathematics. Initial teacher education had the strongest impact on newly qualified teachers but also induced misplaced confidence leading to standardised teacher-led approaches that failed to engage learners. Learning to read was divorced from meaning while mathematical activities were not linked to learning concepts. We suggest that teacher education is reconstructed as a study of classroom practice that places children's learning at its centre.     

Girls claiming education rights: Reflections on distribution,empowerment and gender justice in Northern Tanzania and Northern Nigeria

The article considers the analytical connection between two approaches to discussing girls’ schooling and gender justice. One trend considers injustice primarily as a question of inequalities in distribution and raises few questions about the nature of the gender norms associated with inequitable distribution. A second approach looks at issues of empowerment, the ways in which structural gendered inequalities in the political economy and socio-cultural formations constrain the capacity of girls inside and outside school to claim the rights promised by education, but tends to underplay issues of distribution. The article considers what the relationship between these two approaches to gender justice might be though a detailed discussion of baseline data collected in 2008 for the NGO led TEGINT (Transforming education for girls in Nigeria and Tanzania) project. Girls’ identification of the obstacles to claiming education rights and possible solutions are used as proxies for empowerment, while different features of distribution are examined with regard to gender parity in access and progression, governance and management, and teacher qualifications. Quantitative data based on responses to a survey allows for correlation between aspects of distribution and empowerment to be considered across different contexts. The strongest association between empowerment and distribution is found with regard to the levels of teachers’ qualifications, although there is not sufficient data to explain the reasons for this. The conclusion highlights the importance of contextual factors in understanding the relationships between distribution and empowerment evident from the data and the importance of designing future studies to look more closely at the dynamic two way relationship of distributional and empowerment aspects of gender justice in education.     

Launching the Virtual Academic Center: Issues and Challenges in Innovation

In October 2010, the University of Southern California School of Social Work entered the online education environment with the launch of the first national web-based MSW program. After an initial enrollment of 80 students, in just 3 years this state-of-the-art MSW, offered in a technology-advanced synchronous and asynchronous format, has generated an enrollment of 2,000 students residing in 38 states. The development and rapid growth of the Virtual Academic Center has not been without significant challenges, the most substantial of which has been the creation of a national field education program. This paper describes the MSW courses taught in the online environment, and pedagogical hurdles faced in order to maintain the educational quality that is the hallmark of the School's campus-based MSW program.     

Philosophy and Indigenous Cultural Transformation

The politics of difference emerges as the new desideratum for understanding the complex nature of oppression in education and the way in which multiple and contradictory subjectivities and identities are socially constructed at die intersections of race, gender, and class, among their configurations. (Peters, 1995, p. 55)