Stewardship and usefulness: Policy principles for information-based transparency

This paper is a conceptual and empirical exploration of the tensions inherent in the drive to increase openness and transparency in government by means of information access and dissemination. The idea that democratic governments should be open, accessible, and transparent to the governed is receiving renewed emphasis through the combination of government reform efforts and the emergence of advanced technology tools for information access. Although these initiatives are young, they already exhibit daunting complexity, with significant management, technology, and policy challenges. A variety of traditional and emerging information policy frameworks offer guidance, while diverse research perspectives highlight both challenges to and opportunities for promoting information-based transparency. Early experience with Data.gov, a central component of the U.S. Open Government Initiative, suggests that two fundamental information policy principles, stewardship and usefulness, can help guide and evaluate efforts to achieve information-based transparency.     

Students’ Perceptions of Priorities in Nurse Education: Research Findings and their Curriculum Implications

A credible assumption is that the success of any curriculum intended for adult students is a function of the match between the curriculum and the needs and aspirations of participating students. This assumption provided a basis for investigating the educational priorities of students undertaking nurse education programs in selected N.S.W. colleges of advanced education. The investigation involved a longitudinal study together with several comparative studies. The findings of the studies present a picture of groups of students who are ambivalent towards many of the objectives and priorities of their vocational programs. The origins of that ambivalence appear to reside both in a restricted view of the nurse's role and in anxieties and doubts which students have about their clinical experience and competence. The ambivalence experienced by the students appeared to be working to divert their attention, if not to alienate them altogether, from aspects of their programs and indeed from the vision of nursing which college curricula are intended to foster. Possible responses to the challenges presented by the findings of the studies are canvassed.     

Can the National Curriculum Help Reduce Working‐class Under‐ achievement?

This paper reviews some of the evidence which demonstrates under‐achievement in working‐class children together with important analyses and interpretations, and contemporary practical attempts to redress the problem. It is argued that practical innovations have not greatly influenced or improved the relationship between class and achievement. An attempt is made to discover to what extent the introduction of a National Curriculum as part of the Education Reform Act can be seen as a potential solution to the problem of working‐class under‐achievement. It is argued that the means of redressing working‐class under‐achievement in the National Curriculum must lie ultimately with individual teachers and their ability to present the National Curriculum in relevant forms to all children. In any mass education process there will be those for whom the given curriculum is removed from everyday experience. This does not invalidate the idea of “worthwhile’ knowledge but it means that we must be constantly questioning how we can transmit the curriculum while, as far as is possible, reducing the gap between everyday experience and classroom experience.     

Talk about texts at the computer: using ICT to develop children's oral and literate abilities

This article describes the outcomes of recent research on children's talk while engaged in joint literacy activities in primary school (Year 5). The research is based on a conception of talk as a tool for ‘thinking together’, with computer software being treated as a resource for organising and focusing children's involvement in collaborative activities. The results are used to discuss the value of classroom talk and computer‐based activities for promoting children's literacy development.     

The Organic Intellectual Educator

Contrasting images of teachers' lives and work, from compliance with bureaucratic controls, disaffection and lack of critical reflection, on the one hand, to innovation, commitment and reflexive critique, on the other, set the context for this article. Gramsci's classification of teachers as 'professional intellectuals' who transmit stable, even stagnant, knowledge, as distinct from other 'organic intellectuals' who evolve knowledge and engage critically with personal and social issues, is set within that context. Both distinctions were taken as an incitement to political action in the work which is then reported, where principles derived from Maslow's concept of the Taoistic teacher were instituted in an in-service course explicitly framed to encourage self-originating and self-determining approaches to intellectual growth. Extracts from projects by six teachers are used as evidence of the range, methods, depth and quality of personal engagements in educational experiences.     

Teacher education in further education 2000–2010: Subversion,avoidance and compliance

This article explores the impact of key teacher education policies created between 2000 and 2010 on further education teacher educators. Data was collected from a group of experienced teacher educators in the Midlands through a series of semi-structured interviews. This article argues that the reforms were driven by too great a concern for political ideology and established overly restrictive control mechanisms to ensure compliance. Although the need for standardisation was acknowledged, the use of competency-based standards was seen as detrimental to meaningful teacher education pedagogy. It was perceived that the policies were being implemented in a managerial manner that strove for compliance. However, where compliance was at odds with their own personal and democratic professional stance, the teacher educators used a range of strategies to subvert or avoid implementing policy in order to try to stay true to their philosophical values. Nevertheless, positive aspects did emanate from the teacher education reforms, which included a drive for professional status and a recognised level 5 qualification. These positive features now appear to have been abandoned following the Lingfield Report and a different ideological thrust to deregulate the sector.     

Linking rights,needs, and fairness in high-stakes assessments and examinations

This paper presents a novel explanation for the continued absence of a children’s rights strategy within high-stakes educational assessment with reference to the competing purposes of high-stakes assessments and group-based constructions of fairness in assessment. We provide an original critique of group-based perspectives on the validity of assessment accommodations which supports an individual perspective on fair educational assessment. From this, the (almost forgotten) concept of ‘student assessment needs’ is (re-)introduced as a central axiom, to be constructed through feedback from, and dialogue with, students about their experience of high-stakes assessments, giving primacy to their purpose as an attainment demonstration opportunity for the student. To promote a new movement towards student participation in educational assessment processes and reforms, we propose ‘rights respecting assessment’, complementary to UNICEF’s ‘Rights Respecting Schools’ initiative, in which regular system-wide student representation would contribute to the development of high-stakes examination systems. In recognition of this aspiration, this paper is co-authored with a recent school-leaving age examination candidate.