Text interpretation and educational design in Norwegian textbooks of religious education

Drawing on sociocultural perspectives on educational design, this article presents a qualitative study investigating how religious texts emerge as educational objects and mediating artefacts in Norwegian textbooks of religious and moral education. The article describes how the distribution of text references in textbooks influences the formation of religious traditions as objects. It also describes how religious texts are given various roles and how textbook assignments use various means to facilitate the interpretation of religious texts in a response to the demands posed by Norwegian syllabuses of religious and moral education.     

Toward Practical Procedures for Predicting and Promoting Success in Virtual School Students

Abstract

Two lines of research have emerged to study the causes and prevention of student failure in virtual (K–12) schools: studies of learner characteristics and studies of learning environment characteristics. To develop a useful model for predicting failure and promoting success in virtual school environments, a study was designed to measure the relation between a combination of student and environmental factors derived from previous research and successful course completion during one semester at a large (N =?4,100) virtual school. Study findings yielded a model that can discriminate between successful and unsuccessful online school students and is especially effective at identifying those likely to succeed.     

A causal framework for analysing alternative conceptions

A model for the analysis of subjects’ causal reasoning is proposed, drawing on de Kleer and Brown's ‘mechanistic mental models’. The purpose of the model is to provide a framework for understanding the possible causal structure of children's and adults’ spontaneous reasoning about the physical world. The model is used to analyse data on students’ understanding of aspects of forces and motion; to reanalyse a protocol of Driver's; and to compare and criticize the models of Andersson and of Rozier. We show how the model can provide a language for describing common‐sense causal thinking.     

Rhetorical imperialism and Sun‐Tzu's art of war: A response to combs’ rhetoric of parsimony

This essay discusses how Wesker conveys his central intuition about the limitations of language by employing verbal and visual games and rituals that function as narrative, analogue, symbol, and subtext in The Trilogy. These games take the form of playfulness to indicate emotional solidarity, of everyday rituals with archetypal or religious undertones, or of games about the acquisition of language itself.     

When prophecy fails

Inaccurate predictions about educational technology are discussed, and the tendency for them to go unchallenged. Their global generalizability is questionable when the expertise underlying them is restricted to local contexts or is unknown. The limitations of futuristic studies need to be stressed to prevent their conclusions from being applied out of context. Problems arise when studies inaccurately claiming to represent developing-world needs and conditions are used for educational planning in those nations. The article analyzes the predictions made by the annual Horizon Reports and the One Laptop Per Child project. It suggests that these projects are currently responding to criticism in a manner similar to that described in the classic study When Prophecy Fails.     

What does bullying really mean?

The first part of this short report looks at the problems of using the term ‘bullying’ across different cultures; and the difficulties in arriving at a definitive definition of what constitutes bullying among professional researchers and other adults. The second part looks at young children's perception of what bullying means to them, and draws on a small‐scale piece of recent research that formed part of an MA dissertation on the incidence of bullying in a junior school in Essex. The results suggested that pupils (and teachers) found the term ‘bullying’ rather ambiguous and difficult to define. Younger pupils were found to have a more extensive definition of the term, and a hypothesis was proposed that this might account for the higher levels of being bullied found in the lower school.     

'The Money's Good,The Fame's Good,The Girls are Good': The role of playground football in the construction of young boys' masculinity in a junior school

This paper looks at the influential part played by the game of football in the social construction of hegemonic masculine practices among a group of Year 6 boys in an English junior school, which is an area that remains under-researched. Football forms a large part of school life for many children (the majority of whom are boys) and is sated with masculinising associations: this paper argues that football acts as a model for the boys, and they use the game as a way of constructing, negotiating, and performing their masculinity. Football is seen as a key signifier of successful masculinity, and its practices are a major influence on hegemonic masculinities, which are performed and defended in relation to other masculinities and femininities that become subordinated and marginalised. Girls are excluded from the games, along with some of the boys in the subordinated group who become feminised by their lack of skill and competence, and are subjected to homophobic abuse, as the hegemonic group acts within the 'cultural imperative' of heterosexuality. The games of playground football are viewed as a series of ritualised and fantasised performances, and this paper proposes that the body plays an essential role in the formation of masculine identities, with competitive displays of skill and strength. The school policies and organisation of football are also considered, and the power struggles and tensions this causes, not only between pupils, but also between teachers and pupils, and between teacher and teacher.