Participatory creativities: developing a research design for children’s pastoral encounters with the natural world

ABSTRACT

In this paper, the author discusses the interrelationship between creativity, children’s experiences of the natural world and pastoral education. Based on a research design developed whilst undertaking a professional doctorate in education (EdD), and grounded in a theoretical framework of children’s rights, the author explores the creative uncertainties of collaboratively researching children’s educational experiences with nature. The paper considers the ways in which the research design supports a pastoral care agenda, whilst encouraging the emergence of ‘creative artefacts’, alongside the extent to which the focus of the research, encounters with the natural world, might be deemed pastorally minded in its own right. The children who have participated in the research then draw the paper to a close, sharing what their involvement in the project has meant to them. Images and excerpts of children’s own creative reflections are offered as illustration of the powerful confluence of the Creative and the Pastoral.     

Re-conceptualizing partnerships across the teacher education continuum

This research, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council–Teaching and Learning Research Programme (ESRC–TLRP), explored student and beginning teachers' experiences of teacher education in Northern Ireland. Within a situation of teacher over-supply, many newly qualified teachers have little or no induction. This paper focuses on the views of key induction providers on the effectiveness of partnership arrangements. These stakeholders believed that an improved model of partnership was needed, particularly for induction, and a more collegial model could offer a positive reconceptualisation of early teaching experience enabling reciprocal professional learning.     

Embodiment,social praxis and environmental education: Some thoughts

The body has been neglected and devalued in Western philosophy. This neglect and devaluation of the body is rooted in dualistic reasoning that has its origin in Greek philosophical thought, and reinforced by philosophers of science during the scientific revolution of 17^th century Europe. Dualistic reasoning is in part the cause of current global environmental crises. Moreover, it underpins different approaches to environmental education. In this article I explore the nexus of embodiment and social praxis generally and more specifically in relation to the construct of race. Difference (including race difference) has been given scant attention in environmental education literature in South Africa and I attempt in this article to give it some attention so as to move it into the spaces of our dialogues and conversations.     

Unconscious and unnoticed professional practice within an outstanding school for children and young people with complex learning difficulties and disabilities

This article describes a three‐year project undertaken at Pear Tree School for children and young people with severe and multiple and profound learning difficulties. Lesley Sullivan, the school's head teacher, believed that much of the value within the work of this outstanding school went unidentified by existing approaches to planning, monitoring and evaluation. Richard Crombie, educational psychologist, was engaged to work on the project. Also involved were Kate Walker and Rebecca Warnock, deputy head teachers, as well as the whole staff, children and some parents. The project takes as its starting point that essential, but very often unnoticed and unconscious, professional practice is rooted in implicit processes learnt experientially. We set ourselves the task of finding meaningful frameworks for identifying and developing that practice. This meant close observation within and outside school coupled with feeding back to staff, and their subsequent engagement with and use of explanatory frameworks.     

Case Studies of School Improvement in East Africa: A New Addition to School Effectiveness Research

This article gives an account of how and why the term 'value added' has come to be used in an educational context, focusing on the early years of that usage in the UK. It discusses the fact that the term value added has developed, has been understood and defined in diverse and sometimes conflicting ways; and identifies what are called 'functional ambiguities' in the term; that is to say, ambiguities which cannot be altogether eliminated because they are necessary to how the term is made to function. Nonetheless, some criteria emerge in the course of the article for making evaluative judgements of what should and should not count as meaningful definitions of value added.     

Re-referral to child protective services: the influence of child, family, and case characteristics on risk status

INTRODUCTION: This study examines child, family, and case characteristics that impact rates of re-referral to Child Protective Services (CPS) using data on all closed CPS investigations for the state of Rhode Island between 2001 and 2004. METHOD: A longitudinal dataset of all referrals to CPS was created using state submissions to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS). After excluding children whose initial CPS investigation resulted in removal from the home, a Cox proportional hazards model was tested to examine factors impacting the likelihood of re-referral. RESULTS: Consistent with other research in this area, the initial 6-month period following case disposition is the period of greatest risk of re-referral. Approximately 13% of cases experienced a recurrent allegation during the first 6-month period; an additional 14% experienced a re-referral over the following 12-month period; 7% during the next 12-month period. Family poverty was the strongest predictor of re-referral, though a number of child and case characteristics were significantly related to recurrence. Cases that were substantiated at index were significantly less likely to result in a new allegation, though substantiated cases of physical abuse or those receiving post-investigation services were at higher risk. CONCLUSIONS: Children from families facing multiple stressors (e.g., low SES, parental substance abuse child disability) are at highest risk of re-referral to CPS and may benefit from the development of preventive services targeted immediately following case closings within CPS.     

About the Editor and Contributors

In the last decade ‘quality’ has assumed the status of one of the meta-discourses across many domains of public policy, including education. This paper focuses on the specific example of quality policy in Australian higher education of the 1990s, and in particular, on the micro level of quality policy practice as experienced by academic practitioners in 6 universities. As such, it forms a follow-up to an article published earlier in the Journal of Education Policy (Vidovich and Porter 1997) which examined macro (national) and intermediate (the Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education) levels of a quality policy cycle consisting of contexts of influence, policy text production and practice, as articulated by Ball and colleagues (Bowe, Ball and Gold 1992, Ball 1994). The findings of in-depth interviews with key university personnel provide evidence of the ‘messy’ realities of the policy process and considerable variation in quality policy practices at local sites, particularly in terms of the different historical contexts of universities which were categorized as ‘traditional’, ‘alternative’ and ‘former college’ types. However, despite such variation, the ‘bigger picture’ effect of the quality policy under investigation was to enhance Australian national Government control of higher education, albeit at a ‘distance’, characteristic of the culture of performativity increasingly pervading higher education across many OECD countries. A further effect was to increase inequalities, both between and within universities.