SOME THOUGHTS ON THE UNESCO POLICY PAPER FOR CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION 1

In this article, the author reacts to a reading of the 1995 UNESCO Policy Paper for Change and Development in Higher Education. He begins by expressing concern about the overuse of practical training, the trade in the teaching of foreign medical students, and the very poor provision of information in the form of journal articles, textbooks, and computer networks in many parts of the world. He casts these concerns against certain ideals: that teaching in universities should take place in an atmosphere of research but that the number of universities that train scientists should be limited even if all universities should include a science component. Since all science doctorates should be completed rapidly so that the resulting thesis is up‐to‐date, science students should be free from dependence on teaching assistantships. Funding for higher education should be diversified; so should the institutions involved in research; however, the proliferation of small units should be avoided. In some cases, a single national or regional science institute is a good thing.

     

Part and parcel of teaching? Secondary school staff's views on supporting student emotional health and well‐being

The need for schools to support children and young people's mental and emotional health is increasingly emphasised in policy initiatives, yet the role of teachers in this has been under explored. This paper reports findings from qualitative, semi‐structured interviews with 14 school staff at eight secondary schools in England, examining emotional health and well‐being (EHWB) activities in which they were involved. Three emergent themes are discussed: (1) a strongly held belief that teaching and EHWB are inevitably linked; (2) a perception that many colleagues outside the study sample are reluctant to engage in EHWB work; and (3) a concern that teachers’ own emotional health needs are neglected, leaving them unable or unwilling to consider those of pupils. The findings endorse whole‐school approaches to emotional health, with a focus on teachers’ training and support needs and clearer aims, including consideration of how such work fits with the broader goals of schools.     

Interactive Evaluation of the Ostensive Model Using a New Test Collection of Images with Multiple Relevance Assessments

The Ostensive Model proposes a manner of structuring the uncertainty associated with individual relevance judgements as sources of evidence in relevance feedback. It proposes temporal profiles of uncertainty, motivating the application of a particular class of discount function with respect to the age of the evidence. This paper presents an initial evaluation of the relative effectiveness of different uncertainty discount functions.A novel direct manipulation interface to a multimedia retrieval system embodying the Ostensive Model is outlined briefly. The paper describes the construction and characteristics of a new image test collection utilising multiple binary relevance assessments. The use of such multiple assessments and multiple interpretations of them are discussed. The evaluation environment is detailed in terms of the interface, test collection, and tasks set to users. Multiple interpretations of the results, and the statistical significance of comparisons are presented.The results obtained in the evaluation are consistent with the proposals of the Ostensive Model—reinforcing a particular evidence profile. The results give clear pointers to further, more specific, evaluations.     

Changing the Learning Environment to Enhance Explaining and Understanding in a Year 12 Chemistry Classroom

Internationally there is concern in relation to the traditional learning environments evident in many science classrooms and the levels of understanding of science developed by students in such environments. Further, students have generally been found to be poor in relation to thinking in terms of models or theories and in terms of evidence to support their theories. The majority of research on classroom environments has focused on characterising the learning environment in classrooms rather than monitoring changes to a class's or an individual's perceptions to their learning environments as a consequence of interventions. This study reports an attempt to change the learning environment in a classroom and documents changes in participants' perceptions of their learning environments and the corresponding changes in a teacher's and her students' perceptions of their reasoning and understanding that such changes facilitated. A community of learners in which students and teachers began to understand the processes and the value of reasoning in terms of theories and evidence was developed as a result of the involvement of the researchers with the teacher and her class of students. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.