Building teacher capacity for implementing curricular coherence: mathematics teacher professional development tasks

Improving mathematics education in the United States has taken many forms. Our work has focused on two aspects: the content knowledge of teachers and a well-articulated coherent curriculum. Our aim was teacher “capacity building” that is enabling teachers to teach to coherent and significant mathematical curricular goals and describe the implementation in a large-scale project based at Michigan State University. We highlight the design, structure and use of mathematics teacher learning tasks that were intended to improve teachers’ capacity to teach to these goals and note how the teachers’ perceptions of the structure and sequencing of mathematics itself affect the ways they organize mathematics in their teaching and the ways they teach.     

Action learning in the BBC

This account tells the story of the development of an action learning culture in the BBC between 2002 and 2007. From its early beginnings as a sporadic, unsystematic intervention with a small number of leaders scattered throughout the organisation, action learning has now become embedded in our approach to the way we develop our leaders. In this paper we look at the organisational context in which we were developing action learning, the way it became an integral part of a systemic change intervention, the barriers we had to overcome on the way, how we built an internal resource capability and how action learning evolved. We evaluate the impact it has had on the organisation and on our practice, exploring lessons learned during this time and offering ideas for the way ahead.     

‘Women can’t referee’: exploring the experiences of female football officials within UK football culture

The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of female (association) football officials who officiate in amateur men’s and boys’ football matches in two UK counties (Warwickshire and Somerset). The research presents a view of men’s football from a position that has hitherto been overlooked in the social exploration of football culture. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork collected between September and December 2012, the findings provide insight into some women’s experiences of sexism and marginalization in predominantly male football contexts. Participant observations, formal semi-structured interviews and a range of informal conversations with four female match officials demonstrated a wide range of abuse that could generally be construed as sexist. The women used various strategies to overcome the hostile attitudes that often greeted their presence on the football pitch. Moreover, they continuously negotiated their identities as females and football officials in a space where men and masculinity are prevalent.     

Investigating the dynamics of formative assessment: relationships between teacher knowledge,assessment practice and learning

This exploratory study of elementary school science examines questions central to policy, practice and research on formative assessment: What is the quality of teachers’ content-pedagogical and assessment knowledge? What is the relationship between teacher knowledge and assessment practice? What is the relationship between teacher knowledge, assessment practice and student learning? Drawing on multiple measures, hierarchical linear modelling and path analysis, results suggest that despite weaknesses in teachers’ content-pedagogical and assessment knowledge, teachers’ formative assessment practices are positively related to student learning. Relationships between teachers’ knowledge and assessment practices are mixed. Findings underscore both the potential and challenge of bringing effective formative practice to fruition as well as the need for continued research.     

Ethnicity and education in China and Vietnam: discursive formations of inequality

This article aims to understand how ethnicity is discursively framed in national policies in China and Vietnam and argues that policy discourses affect how the ‘problem’ of ethnicity and educational inequalities is framed and how these inequalities can be addressed. The analysis shows how both Marxist and market-economy governing rationalities frame ethnic minority groups as lower status than the majority group and in need of either socially evolving to the communist ideal or assimilating into the global economic market, respectively. Using Fraser’s multi-dimensional approach to analyse discursive formations of inequality, we show how these policy discourses produce a non-ethnic economic citizen with socialist tendencies that negates cultural or social recognition and political representation. We conclude that researchers and policymakers need to consider how ethnicity is discursively framed to understand and address inequalities.     

Universities,dependency and the market: innovative lessons from Kenya

Higher education in developing nations is typically viewed from a dependency perspective – institutions are seen as merely recipients of Western knowledge, aid and reform efforts. Nevertheless, universities in both the centre and the periphery are dealing with tensions between protecting the public good and embracing neoliberal values based on a market approach to higher education. In the USA and Europe these competing interests are typically cast as mutually exclusive. Our study on the market approach to higher education in Kenya, however, suggests that public and private interests can be complementary, contributing to a re-envisioning of the traditional mission of higher education. This article seeks to examine more fully the nature of reform efforts at two universities in Kenya, to elucidate lessons for universities undergoing market-oriented reform in the West and to suggest a reciprocal relationship between institutions in Africa and Europe, upending the centre-periphery paradigm.     

Student perceptions of peer assessment: an interdisciplinary study

Peer assessment provides students with multiple benefits during their learning process. The aim of our study is to examine students’ perception of peer assessment. Questionnaires were administered before and after the peer-assessment process to 416 students studying 11 different subjects in four different fields taught at the University of Girona. Results suggest that students have a positive predisposition towards this methodology, both before and after its implementation. Students perceive it as a both motivating and recommended methodology that facilitates the acquisition of learning at different levels. As for its limitations, students highlight the responsibility that comes with it and a certain amount of distrust in fellow students’ abilities to peer-assess.