‘We can't make him fit into the system’: parental reflections on the reasons why home education is the only option for their child who has special educational needs

This small-scale study investigates the perspectives of parents whose children have special educational needs/disabilities and who have elected to withdraw their children from the state-maintained education system in England and educate them at home. The study draws on data gathered from seven parents and their perspectives of home education following a government-commissioned review of home education in 2009, subsequently known as the ‘Badman Report’. The former New Labour government commissioned this review to assess the merits of the system of supporting and monitoring home education in England. Findings identified a number of issues, including the lack of understanding by staff within school settings around the issues of special needs and particularly in the area of autistic spectrum disorders, the failure to engage in partnership with parents and the impact that the school environment had upon the children.     

Target-absent controls in blocking experiments with rats

In three between-groups blocking experiments with rats, two concurrent and one forward, several common control procedures were employed: Reinforced trials with the putative blocking stimulus were either omitted entirely (Kamin control), replaced by unsignaled reinforcements (Wagner control), or replaced by reinforced trials with a different stimulus (C1 control). In each experiment, parallel treatments with the target stimulus absent during training served to examine the possibility that differential responding in tests with the target stimulus might be traced solely to differential exposure to the nontarget stimuli. In Experiment 1, responding by a concurrent blocking group during the test was no different than responding by a Kamin control group, and responding by a Wagner control group was greater than that of either of the other groups—a pattern of results, mirrored in the performance of the target-absent groups, that could be attributed to the elevation of contextual excitation by unsignaled reinforcement. In Experiment 2, responding in the test by a concurrent blocking group was no different than that by a C1 control group. In Experiment 3, a finding of less responding by a forward blocking group than by a C1 control group when the target stimulus was present during training, but not when it was absent, provided plausible evidence of blocking.     

Nurturing learning or encouraging dependency? Teacher constructions of students in lower attainment groups in English secondary schools

‘Ability’ or attainment grouping can introduce an additional label that influences teachers’ expectations of students in specific attainment groups. This paper is based on a survey of 597 teachers across 82 schools and 34 teacher interviews in 10 schools undertaken as part of a large-scale mixed-methods study in England. The paper focuses on English and mathematics teachers’ expectations of secondary school students in lower attainment groups, and explores how low-attaining students are constructed as learners who benefit from specific approaches to learning justified through discourses of nurturing and protection. The authors argue that the adoption of different pedagogical approaches for groups of low-attaining learners to nurture them may in some cases be fostering dependency on teachers and cap opportunities for more independent learning. Furthermore, more inclusive whole-school learning-culture approaches may better allow for students across the attainment range to become independent learners.     

Characteristics of alumni donors and nondonors at a Research I,public university

This study was an investigation of selected attitudinal, demographic, involvement, and philanthropic characteristics of alumni donors and nondonors from a Research I, public university. A random sample of 500 alumni (250 donors and 250 nondonors) was selected from a population of 37,691. There were 371 (74%) usable surveys returned. A discriminant function analysis was used to predict group membership of donors versus nondonors, and high donors versus low donors. Using the classification step, 65 percent of the alumni were correctly classified as donors or nondonors, and 87 percent of the alumni high donors and low donors were correctly classified.     

Is a posthumanist <Emphasis Type="Italic">Bildung</Emphasis> possible? Reclaiming the promise of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Bildung</Emphasis> for contemporary higher education

My central argument in this article is that the notion of Bildung may offer conceptual sustenance to those who wish to develop educative practices to supplement or contest the prevalence and privileging of market and economic imperatives in higher education, which configure teaching and learning as an object available to measurement. I pursue this argument by making the case for an ethical posthuman Bildung which recognises the inseparability of knowing and being, the materiality of educative relations, and the need to install an ecology of ethical relations at the centre of educational practice in higher education. Such a re-conceptualisation situates Bildung not purely as an individual goal but as a process of ecologies and relationships. The article explores Bildung as a flexible concept, via three theoretical lenses, and notes that it has always been subject to continuing revision in response to changing social and educational contexts. In proposing the possibility of, and need for, a posthuman Bildung, the articles offer a critical review of the promise of Bildung and outline some of the radical ways that a posthuman Bildung might reinvigorate conceptualisations of contemporary higher education.     

The Diverse Risk Profiles of Persistently Absent Primary Students: Implications for Attendance Policies in Australia

ABSTRACT

The risk factors associated with absenteeism are well known. However, children's exposure to combinations of risks and how these relate to absence patterns remains unclear. Understanding variations in risk profiles among persistently non-attending children will inform the development of absence interventions. Using a longitudinal sample of Australian children (6–11 years), a latent class analysis of 19 risks identified four classes of risk exposure. Most children (56%) were exposed to minimal risk, 20% were exposed to parenting, child development, and mental health risks only, 15% were exposed to a greater extent to financial risks only, and 9% had a higher probability of exposure to all risks. Persistently non-attending children were eight times more likely to be in the high-risk group than regular attenders. However, one-third of persistent non-attenders were classified as low-risk. The heterogeneity of risk profiles is discussed in relation to policies using financial penalties to motivate improved attendance.     

心灵深处的音乐

Life...What is it?See it in the colors of autumn,A gentle snowfall in winter,A sudden shower in spring,The radiance of a summer day.Behold it in the laughterOf the young and the old.Know of it in a surge of hope,The blessings that are bountiful.What is li…