Constructing Parental Involvement in an Education Action Zone: Whose need is it meeting?

This paper illustrates some of the tensions and contradictions in schools' attempts to develop parental and family involvement through a case study of parental involvement in an Education Action Zone. It focuses on how schools constructed parental involvement, the kinds of work they engaged in, the issues raised in managing and resourcing parental involvement projects, the perceived benefits of running the projects and the likelihood of the projects being sustainable. It is argued that the models of parental involvement that schools developed had important consequences for the role parents were allowed to play. Varying roles impose different kinds of demands on schools and parents and require different kinds of relationship between schools, parents and the local community. The more expansive the view of parental involvement, the greater the costs in running such projects and, hence, particularly in poor areas, the less chance of them being sustainable. Moreover, there were evident contradictions between the standards and inclusion dimensions of parental involvement projects. In particular, there was, and is, an evident tension for the schools around constructing parents as a resource for schools to tap into in the drive to raise standards and constructing the school as a resource for parents and the wider community to tap into in the drive to promote local regeneration and inclusion. This is being resolved in favour of the standards agenda.     

The Effects of Leaderless Encounter Group Experiences on Helping Skills Training

The effects of an audiotaped leaderless encounter group on training in basic helping skills were examined. Trainees undergoing the Danish and Hauer (1973) training program were assigned to a weekly encounter group or to a didactic lecture-discussion group. No changes in trainees' self-actualization, trait or state anxiety, or rated verbal helping behavior were found due to participation in the encounter group. Significant positive changes in verbal helping behavior were found for all trainees. The importance of evaluating training experiences for helpers-in-training is noted.     

Family Background,Individual and Environmental Influences,Aspirations and Young Adults' Educational Attainment: A follow-up study

In this follow-up study of an earlier investigation (Marjoribanks, 2002a), relationships were examined between adolescents' educational aspirations and young adults' educational attainment, after taking into account measures of family background, individual characteristics and proximal learning settings. Data were collected as part of a longitudinal survey of Australian youth (3772 females and 3476 males). The findings from the two analyses suggest that: (a) family background, individual characteristics and proximal learning settings combine to have large associations with adolescents' aspirations, and these aspirations have the largest relationship with young adults' eventual educational attainment; and (b) there are ethnic group differences in the linear and curvilinear nature of relationships involving measures of individual characteristics, adolescents' educational aspirations and young adults' educational attainment. An 'aspiration 2 attainment 2 background' model is proposed to examine the ongoing and different interactions between aspirations and academic outcomes for students from various family backgrounds.     

THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS ON THE PREDICTABILITY OF COLLEGE PERFORMANCE

Although numerous studies have examined the validity of scholastic aptitude measures as predictors of college performance for black and white students, few studies have investigated the validity of these predictors for different socioeconomic levels within a racially homogeneous population. To study the influence of socioeconomic status (SES) on the predictability of college performance, a sample of 1,631 white freshmen attending a large urban university was divided into homogeneous subgroups on each of three measures: (a) family income, (b) father's occupation, and (c) mother's education. Verbal and Quantitative Scholastic Aptitude Test scores and high school class rank were used to predict freshman grade-point average within each subgroup. For all three socioeconomic measures, lower cross-validated multiple correlations were associated with lower levels of SES. Possible explanations for these results are discussed and implications for research are presented.     

RMIT Publishing: neither fish nor fowl

In a time when university presses are struggling to survive and most require financial support from their parent institutions, RMIT Publishing – an electronic publisher from its inception in 1989 – has grown its annual sales from AU$2.8m in 2003 to an expected AU$6m in 2007. This 100% sales growth in five years has been achieved by RMIT Publishing's unique, context‐driven approach to electronic publishing. This approach has made RMIT Publishing the publisher of choice for Australian databases, aggregated scholarly content for the global market and now ‘born‐digital’ publications.     

Pragmatic Standards versus Saturated Phenomenon: Cultivating a Love of Learning

Phenomenologist Jean‐Luc Marion describes our capacity for awe as an ability to recognise that certain phenomena are saturated. More than we constitute them with our categorical frames or organising objectives, the phenomena constitute us; their excess and givenness overwhelms our ability to fully grasp them. It is through this experience of awe and wonder, Marion suggests, that we are drawn into loving something or someone. In tension with this experience is the attempt (omnipresent in educational contexts) to organise and demarcate phenomenon (or fields of study) into a tidy list of coherent standards. This reductive move, while pedagogically pragmatic, risks masking the ‘exuberant splendor’ of saturated phenomenon, obscuring what initially drew teachers into their respective disciplines. What moves teachers (and students) to love a discipline, Marion suggests, is not standards, which are often instrumentally selected, but an experience of saturated phenomenon. More than standards, a teacher's deep and often secret hope is that her students love or at least appreciate her love for her subject. A teacher's love for her discipline, and her hope to impart it to her students, should stand in tension with the standards movement.     

ITEM ANALYSIS FOR TEACHER-MADE MASTERY TESTS1

Various item selection techniques are compared on resultant criterionreferenced reliability and validity. Techniques compared include three nominal criterion-referenced methods, a traditional point biserial selection, teacher selection, and random selection. Eighteen volunteer junior and senior high school teachers supplied behavioral objectives and item pools ranging from 26 to 40 items. Each teacher obtained reponses from four classes. Pairs of tests of various length were developed by each item selection method. Estimates of test reliability and validity were obtained using responses independent of the test construction sample. Resultant reliability and validity estimates were compared across item selection techniques. Two of the criterion-referenced item selection methods resulted in consistently higher observed validity. However, the small magnitude of improvement over teacher or random selection raises a question as to whether the benefit warrants the necessary extra effort on the part of the classroom teacher.     

Teaching Phonological Awareness and Metacognitive Strategies to Children with Reading Difficulties: A comparison of two instructional methods

This paper describes an applied training study which investigated the differential effects of two instructional methods on the reading performance of primary school children with reading difficulties. Sixty five children aged 7-10 participated. Twenty five children were assigned to each of two experimental groups: direct instruction in phonological awareness and the alphabetic principle, or the same direct instruction in phonological awareness in conjunction with training in specific metalinguistic concepts and metacognitive strategies. Fifteen children were selected as controls. Reading performance from baseline was measured within a pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest experimental design. Data and results are presented on 60 children owing to attrition. Results showed that direct instruction in phonological awareness improved the reading performance of children with reading difficulties over time. However, direct instruction in phonological awareness in conjunction with explicit training in specific metalinguistic concepts and metacognitive strategies was more advantageous overall.