Fostering Parental Support for Children's Mathematical Development: An Intervention with Head Start Families

The first national education goal, school readiness, recognizes a need for young children to be better prepared for entry into elementary school. Many low-income children exhibit a pattern of underachievement in school mathematics. Research has revealed a developmental gap between low-income preschool children and their middle-class peers with respect to the extent of their numerical knowledge. Research has also found that many low-income children do not receive a broad base of support for mathematical development at home or in preschool. In each of two studies, we conducted a bi-generation (parent and child) mathematics intervention with Head Start families. The intervention was designed to enhance parental support for pre-kindergarten children's mathematical development. It was found that low-income parents were willing and able to support this area of their children's development once they were provided with the training to do so. The support that parents provided to their children through the intervention was clearly effective in enhancing the development of children's informal mathematical knowledge. Intervention children developed more extensive mathematical knowledge than a comparison group of low-income children. Thus, an important step toward achieving the school readiness goal can be taken by fostering low- income parents' support for young children's mathematical development.     

Marketing to Their Needs: Utilizing Empathetic Marketing Techniques in Student Outreach

This article describes empathetic marketing, a new marketing approach that was created by Mark Ingwer and outlined in his 2012 book, Empathetic Marketing: How to Satisfy the 6 Core Emotional Needs of Your Customers. The authors discuss how this marketing theory can be used by academic librarians to transform their marketing endeavors by presenting library services and resources to students in a way that helps them meet core human emotional needs (control, self-expression, growth, recognition, belonging, and care). The authors also include examples of empathetic marketing from their libraries.     

Improving the Memory Sections of the Standardized Assessment of Concussion Using Item Analysis

The purpose of the study was to improve the immediate and delayed memory sections of the Standardized Assessment of Concussion (SAC) by identifying a list of more psychometrically sound items (words). A total of 200 participants with no history of concussion in the previous six months (aged 19.60 ± 2.20 years; N?=?93 men, N?=?107 women) volunteered to participate in this study. An observation research design was used. Participants were tested once with a verbal interview that took approximately five minutes to complete. Classic item analysis including three parts: (1) Item difficulty, (2) item discrimination, and (3) item determination was used to assess the psychometric properties of the new items on the alternative word list for the SAC test. Overall, 80.0% of the items in the immediate memory section were acceptable. In the delayed memory section, 90.0% of the items were acceptable. The mean total SAC scores were 17.96 ± 2.45 (of a possible 30). The majority of new items have acceptable psychometric properties that would improve the validity of baseline SAC score for the assessment of the effects from concussions.     

Citizenship education in France and Britain: evolving theories and practices

In the late 1990s both the British and the French governments gave new impetus to citizenship education. This article examines the theories and world views that underpin the formal syllabuses for citizenship education in England and France. It notes that whereas the English curriculum aspires to create a diverse society founded on multicultural citizenship, an insufficiently strongly agreed statement of values undermines the implementation of the project. The French syllabus, on the other hand, emphasizes a commitment to anti-racism, human rights and civil action against injustice. Its theoretical basis in the French Republic, committed to individual equality without distinction, denies any recognition to the existence of social groups based on culture or ethnicity. This blindness to difference also tends to undermine citizenship education as a social project intended to promote integration through schools. Whereas French citizenship education is intended to integrate individuals into a predetermined, existing republican framework, English citizenship education apparently aims to create a new society and a new national identity. The article concludes that such a project requires an explicit commitment to and promotion of human rights as the basis for a social consensus and citizenship.     

Violence in schools and representations of young people: a critique of government policies in France and England

This paper examines media discourses in France and in Britain relating to young people, violence and disaffection in schools, setting these within the framework of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which emphasises young people’s participation rights. It analyses policy initiatives developed since 1997 in each country to address concerns about young people, disaffection and violence, examining these in the light of research evidence. It considers how public policies are variously shaped by research findings and by media representations. In France, attempts to reduce violence in schools have been accompanied by recognition that schools structurally produce disaffection and violence. In England there has been a shift in policy discourses. In 1997 the primary emphasis was social inclusion, but greater weight has since been given to the need to combat crime. (Male) youth disaffection is linked to crime. Policies addressing standards and achievement have been prioritised over policies to combat social exclusion. In both countries researchers and the media give particular attention to urban communities where minority ethnic communities live. Individual schools are labelled as failing and large numbers of young people are excluded or marginalised. In both countries minority ethnic students are over‐represented among those formally excluded from mainstream education and in the least popular, most stigmatised, schools and classes. Violence and disadvantage are effectively institutionalised. Discourses in each country are racialised and disaffection is associated with minorities. Yet both countries offer universalist rather than targeted policy responses. Opportunities for student participation in school decision‐making are limited.     

Three dimensions of student-centred education: a framework for policy and practice

While the terms student-centred and learner-centred are used to describe a range of neo-liberal educational policies and practices around the world, the meaning is not clearly defined. This limits its utility as a concept in policy, research and practice. This article applies abductive reasoning to explore how student-centred education is theorised in academic literature and articulated within a sample of New Zealand school principals’ visions for their schools. The findings suggest that student-centred education can be synthesised into a conceptual framework that includes three overlapping dimensions; humanist, agentic and cognitive. The humanist dimension encompasses getting to know students as unique human beings, the agentic focuses on empowering students and the cognitive dimension considers each student’s learning progress. There was diverse understanding of what it meant to be student-centred by the principals with the humanist and agentic dimensions dominating. It is anticipated that educational outcomes for disadvantaged students would improve when the three dimensions are applied together. The proposed framework could be applied by policymakers, practitioners and researchers to enhance clarity of student-centred education policies and practices.     

Supporting the digitally able beginning teacher

This article reports on research which explored the experiences six digitally able beginning teachers during their first year in secondary schools. Using a complexity theoretical framework, the barriers and enablers that influenced the integration of digital technologies into teaching practice were examined. The findings indicate that context influences the ability of beginning teachers to apply their knowledge and experience of digital technologies to their teaching practice through: school policies and structures which encourage and allow access to digital technologies, encouraging beginning teachers to develop their sense of agency, and the support of a mentor with relevant pedagogical content expertise.     

Citizenship Education and National Identities in France and England: Inclusive or exclusive?

ABSTRACT This paper examines and compares recent citizenship education policy documents from France and England and explores the extent to which they encourage inclusive or exclusive concepts of national identity and citizenship. Current policies are being developed in a context of perceived disillusionment and political apathy amongst the young. Whilst citizenship education has traditionally aimed to prepare young people to take their place in adult society and a national community, today the notion of a single national identity is increasingly questioned. Using framing questions from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) survey of civic education, we examine programmes of study in each country to determine the extent to which they promote human rights as shared values, make positive references to cultural diversity, and conceptualise minorities. We consider the potential of citizenship education thus defined to contribute towards the development of justice and equality in society and challenge racism and xenophobia. We note the strengths and limitations of each approach to education for citizenship and suggest what each might gain from the other.