Moving beyond: narratives of higher educational aspirations among descendants of immigrants in vocational training

Abstract

While the scholarly work on the second generation of immigrants has scrutinised both high educational achievers and marginalised groups, less attention has been paid to those in between and their aspirations. In this article, we draw on interviews with 35 adolescents pursuing vocational education in Norway. Our analysis takes as its point of departure a seemingly recurring paradox throughout the interviews. While all the interviewees are in their second year of vocational training, the majority express aspirations of moving beyond vocational occupations and attaining higher education. Building on the scholarship on class and moral worth, we argue that classificatory struggles about value represent an important but often overlooked context of integration. When the students position themselves as individuals who will move on to higher education, their aspirations can be understood as acts of self-constitution and moral boundary work.     

Teaching of Energy Issues: A Debate Proposal for a Global Reorientation

The growing awareness of serious difficulties in the learning of energy issues has produced a great deal of research, most of which is focused on specific conceptual aspects. In our opinion, the difficulties pointed out in the literature are interrelated and connected to other aspects (conceptual as well as procedural and axiological), which are not sufficiently taken into account in previous research. This paper aims to carry out a global analysis in order to avoid the more limited approaches that deal only with individual aspects. From this global analysis we have outlined 24 propositions that are put forward for debate to lay the foundations for a profound reorientation of the teaching of energy topics in upper high school courses, in order to facilitate a better scientific understanding of these topics, avoid many students’ misconceptions and enhance awareness of the current situation of planetary emergency. This paper has been conceived as a contribution to the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, established by the UN General Assembly for the period 2005–2014.     

Learning with and from: positioning school students as advisors in pre-service teacher education

This article reports on an innovative pedagogical approach within the Learning Partnerships program in which school students help to ‘teach the teachers’ within pre-service teacher education. Classes of school students join with classes of pre-service teachers to provide input on how teachers can enhance school students’ engagement and wellbeing. The article draws on data collected from 125 students (aged 13–16) and 120 pre-service teachers in these workshops. Findings generated from a mixed methods study combining pre-workshop focus groups (n = Students: 38, Teachers: 33) and post-workshop focus groups (n = Students: 69, Teachers: 15) and post-workshop surveys (n = Students: 96; Teachers: 101) demonstrated that the workshops were mutually beneficial for both students and pre-service teachers. Participants found that workshopping together enhanced their belief in the possibility of positive student–teacher relationships. The pre-service teachers reported greater confidence in communicating with young people about the issues that affect student engagement and wellbeing. The school students reported that they were more willing to use teachers as a source of help. Implications include the need for increased attention to a ‘third space’ for learning in teacher development which provides opportunity for learning with and from young people about how to foster their engagement and wellbeing.     

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.     

Language and Williams Syndrome: How Intact Is "Intact"?

It has been claimed that Williams syndrome (WS), a rare neurodevelopmental disorder, is characterized by serious cognitive deficits alongside intact language. The syndrome is often used as a prime example of the modularity of an innate faculty for morphosyntactic rules. We challenge this claim and hypothesize that morphosyntax, although surprisingly good given WS level of mental retardation, is by no means intact. We make an initial test of this hypothesis through an analysis of the receptive language of a group of English-speaking WS individuals on a standardized morphosyntactic test. We then present an experimental study of expressive language that examines grammatical gender assignment in French-speaking WS patients. Despite a Verbal Mental Age selected to be higher than the chronological age of the young control group, these people with WS continue even in adulthood to show clear-cut deficits in their production of an aspect of morphosyntax that normal children acquire effortlessly very early. The results of the 2 studies, one focusing on receptive language and the other on expressive language, challenge the notion that comprehension and use of morphosyntactic rules in WS individuals are intact. The within-domain dissociations regarding the use of grammatical gender assignment across several sentence elements and their difficulties in understanding embedded sentences—two quintessentially linguistic skills—suggest that we must rethink the notion of spared, modular, language capacities in Williams syndrome. We conclude that WS language follows a different path to normal acquisition and may turn out to be more like second language learning.     

Identity and inter religious understanding in Jewish schools in England

This article sets up a dialogue between auto-referential (looking to self) and allo-referential (looking to the other) approaches to religious difference and applies these to education for inter religious understanding in Jewish schools. It begins by arguing that the multiculturalism of the 1980s and 1990s set up a duality of self and other, with the responsibility for looking to ‘the other’ (allo-reference) resting largely on the majority community and the licence to look to self (auto-reference) being given to minority communities. Within the Jewish community, multiculturalism supported and legitimated the development of an inward-looking Jewish identity-based education. This was challenged in the 2000s however by the new outward-looking emphases of the community cohesion agenda, and so Jewish schools have had to negotiate a place for themselves between auto- and allo-reference. Brief case studies illustrate contrasting ways in which two schools have positioned themselves in relation to these two poles. In School A, the imperative towards ‘the other’ attempts an openness to ‘the other’ in ‘the other’s’ own terms, whereas in School B the same imperative towards ‘the other’ is framed within the auto-referential framework of being and doing Jewish.     

Learning to Live Together: The Japanese model of early years education

There is growing recognition worldwide of the link between preschool education and later learning. Countries in which formal schooling begins at age six (or seven) have been quicker to make this link than those countries where it begins at age five (or four), and to realise that the content and focus of early years education merits as much consideration as the level of provision. This paper argues that the Japanese model of early years education, in which the main focus is to prepare children for formal learning, is instrumental in enabling children to make comparatively fast progress once they begin elementary schooling. The understanding of group behaviour and the needs of other children that is developed in Japanese early years settings contributes to children's sharing of responsibility and their positive attitudes to learning observed in elementary school classrooms. In addition, the introduction to the routines of preschooling--anticipating those of elementary schooling--combined with free play and teacher-directed activities, help children to become more self-reliant and self-confident when they begin formal learning. Examples from recent direct observation of a number of preschool settings in Japan are provided to demonstrate that the foundation received there serves to bring children to a state of readiness for learning when they begin elementary schooling. Il y a une reconnaissance en croissance au niveau mondiale du lien entre l'e´ducation pre´scolaire et l'apprentissage poste´rieur. Les pays dans lesquels l'e´ducation formelle commence a ¤ six ans (ou sept ans) se sont rendus compte plus rapidement de cette connexion que les pays ou ¤ elle commence a ¤ cinq ans (ou quatre ans), et ils ont aussi aussi compris que le contenu et le focus de l'e´ducation me´ritent autant de conside´ration que le niveau de provision. Cet essai propose que le mode ¤ le japonais d'e´ducation de la petite enfance, dans lequel le focus principal est la preparation des enfants pour l'apprentissage formel, est instrumental pour rendre les enfants capable de faire un progre ¤ s comparativement vite une fois qu'ils commencent l'e´cole e´le´mentaire. La compre´hension du comportement de groupe et des besoins des autres enfants qui se de´veloppe dans les cadres japonais de la petit enfance contribue au partagement de responsabilite´ de la part des enfants et de leurs attitudes positives a ¤ l'apprentissage observe´es dans les salles de classe des e´coles e´le´mentaires. En plus, l'introduction aux routines pre´scolaires--en pre´voyant celles de l'e´cole e´le´mentaire--combine´es avec le jeu libre et les activite´s dirige´es par l'enseignant, aident les enfants a ¤ devenir plus autosuffisants et soi confiants quand ils commencent l'apprentissage formel. Des exemples re´centes d'observation directe de plusieurs cadres pre´scolaires au Japon sont fournis pour de´montrer que la base rec¸ue sert pour apporter des enfants a ¤ un e´tat d'empressement pour l'apprentissage quand ils commencent l'e´cole e´le´mentaire. Hay un creciente reconocimiento mundial de la coneccio´n entre la educacio´n preescolar y el aprendizaje posterior. Los pa L ´ses en los cuales la educacio´n formal comienza a los seis (o siete) an ¨ os han hecho esta coneccio´n ma´s rapidamente que los pa L ´ses donde e´sta comienza a los cinco (o cuatro) an ¨ os, y a darse cuenta que el contenido y el foco de la educacio´n de la primera infancia merecen tanta consideracio´n como el nivel de la provisio´n. Este ensayo argumenta que el modelo japone´s de la educacio´n de la primera infancia, en el cual el foco principal es preparar a los nin ¨ os para el aprendizaje formal, es instrumental en permitir a los nin ¨ os hacer un progreso relativamente ra´pido una vez que ellos comienzan la educacio´n primaria. El entendimiento del comportamiento de grupo y de las necesidades de los otros nin ¨ os que se desarrollan en los ambientes educacionales japoneses de la primera infancia contribuye al compartimiento de la responsabilidad de parte de los nin ¨ os y las actitudes positivas al aprendizaje observadas en las aulas de las escuelas primarias. Adema´s, la introduccio´n a las rutinas del preescolar--anticipando los de la escuela elemental--combinada con el juego libre y actividades dirigidas por el maestro, ayuda a los nin ¨ os a llegar a ser ma´s independientes y confiados en s L ´ mismos cuando comienzan el aprendizaje formal. Se proporcionan ejemplos de la observacio´n directa reciente de varios ambientes educacionales preescolares en el Japo´n que demuestran que la base recibida sirve para conducir a los nin ¨ os a un estado de prontitud para aprender cuando ellos comienzan la escuela primaria.     

Competencies in Geriatric Nursing: Empirical Evidence from a Computer-Based Large-Scale Assessment Calibration Study

Valid and reliable standardized assessment of nursing competencies is needed to monitor the quality of vocational education and training (VET) in nursing and evaluate learning outcomes for care work trainees with increasingly heterogeneous learning backgrounds. To date, however, the modeling of professional competencies has not yet evolved into procedures that would meet large-scale assessment (LSA) standards in VET. To empirically test a proposed structural model for client-directed nursing competence and to estimate psychometric properties of a newly developed video- and computer-based test (CBT) to inform subsequent LSA in nursing VET, 402 final-year nursing students from 24 German schools responded to a 77 item CBT. Multi-dimensional IRT modeling was employed to test the subdomain structure and estimate students’ competencies in geriatric nursing. The standardized CBT measures nursing students’ client-directed care competence with acceptable precision (WLE?=?0.76) and does so across the whole range of observed proficiency levels. Structural validity was supported by substantive contributions of test items from all proposed process-oriented subdomains, practice field scenarios, as well as items with and without reference to emotional demands. However, it was not possible to empirically separate the diagnostic, practical or communicative subdomains, probably reflecting parallel, recursive and hierarchical care processes in complex care situations. On average, students in our sample attained 45 % of the maximum test score so it is a demanding assessment of nursing competence. An extensively piloted, valid and reliable CBT is suggested to assess nursing students’ client-directed care competencies at the end of the third year of the VET program.     

Sexual consent in K–12 sex education: an analysis of current health education standards in the United States

In the USA, universities have recently developed policies and programmes on sexual consent education. But waiting until students enroll in higher education may be too late to begin this work. To examine the extent that K–12 health education standards promote sexual consent education, we conducted a pilot study and found that only two of eighteen states explicitly mentioned sexual consent in their health education standards. Using a small sample (n = 4 states), we then identified four themes as making implicit reference to sexual consent: communication skills, decision making, personal space and interpersonal relationships. Finally, in a robust sample (n = 18 states), we conducted a content analysis of published standards regarding these themes related to sexual consent. Our analysis suggests that sexual consent is likely not discussed in sex education at K–12 schools. We recommend the more explicit inclusion of sexual consent in health education curricula via the identified themes that already exist in most or all standards, emphasising the importance of teaching young people about the nuances of sexual consent and its communication before they become sexually active.     

Will it be possible to integrate young people in a society undergoing transformation?

Ph.D. Senior researcher at the Scientific Research Centre of the Institute of Youth (Moscow). Specialist in studies of youth policies and civil society. Author ofInternational experience of public support of the youth organizations (1995) andSituation and prospects of social voluntary action in Russia (1995).