The Staff Conference: A Medium for Staff Development

Solihull's development of delegated budgets began in 1981. The experiences of schools and Centre led to the acceptance by Council in 1987 of a scheme for general implementation. The detailed scheme is included in an Appendix to the article, together with examples of vital financial management systems. In his article, the Director of Education explores the effects of delegation of the budget, and with it, the decision‐making process. The school heads’ role gains the natural extension of facility to implement management decisions, but what of the role of the Centre?     

De la ciudad aislada a la aldea global: El microordenador como catalizador del aprendizaje cooperativo y del intercambio cultural

Hace ya algunos años Cole y Scribner, con una investigación transcultural que se ha hecho clásica, establecían una distinción clave entre la lecto-escritura como código por una parte y los usos concretos que de ella se hace, por otra. Con el ordenador en la educación ha llegado también el momento de hablar quizá menos del aparato en sí y más de los usos psico-educativos que hacemos de él. En este artículo se analizan los usos del ordenador en la escuela y las implicaciones psicopedagógicas de esos usos, y se plantea también la materialización de la profecía McLuhiana de la aldea global y del aula sin muros. Por primera vez el aula puede cubrir todo el globo y conectar telemáticamente a niños de todas las culturas.     

The Integration of Environmental Education into Two Elementary Preservice Science Methods Courses: A Content-Based and a Method-Based Approach

To examine the notion of environmental education (EE) as context for integrating the elementary curricula, we engaged in a multi-case study analysis (Yin 2009) of two preservice elementary science methods courses that utilized an experiential reflective approach—case one (University A) through a science content focus (i.e., sustainability) and case two (University B) through a method focus (i.e., problem-based learning). We examined preservice teachers’ understandings of EE, their ideas to incorporate EE into their future teaching, and their conceptions of EE as a context for integration. Results indicate that both foci (content and method) were successful in building EE content, helping preservice teachers to envision EE in their future classrooms, and promoting EE as a context for integrating their instruction. Based on these results, we offer recommendations for the incorporation of EE as a context for integration into the elementary science methods course.     

Adaptation and evaluation of a learning analytics dashboard to improve academic support at three Latin American universities

Despite the success of academic advising dashboards in several higher educational institutions (HEI), these dashboards are still under-explored in Latin American HEI's. To close this gap, three different Latin American universities adapted an existing advising dashboard, originally deployed at the KU Leuven to their own context. In all three cases, the context was the main ruling factor to these adaptations. In this paper, we describe these adaptions using a framework that focuses on four different elements of the context: Objectives, Stakeholders, Key moment and Interactions. Evaluation of the adapted dashboards in the three different Latin American universities is conducted through pilots. This evaluation shows the value of the dashboard approach in different contexts in terms of satisfaction, usefulness and impact in academic decision-making and advising tasks. The main contribution of this paper is the systematic reporting of the adaptations to an academic advising dashboard and showing the value of an academic advising dashboard on academic decision-making and advising tasks.     

Gendered positionality among Irish male primary teachers: the staff room as a site of performative masculinity

The concept of masculinities has traditionally been defined in terms of crises associated with boys’ underachievement, the violence of homophobia, the under-representation of males in caring occupations, the rituals and discourses of laddism, and perceptions of disaffected and unrealised talent. Whereas the topic of masculinities has long been associated with warrants for distinctive and diverse male identities, it has a comparatively more recent history in the research on male Irish primary teachers as a particular social category. Two key findings are discussed in relation to performative masculinities – a form of strategic manoeuvring designed to exploit gender discourses, practices for control, power and privilege. First, the findings show the staffroom as a bellwether or highly developed locus for teacher socialisation through gendered discourses, events and actions. Second, the findings show nonsynchronous performative masculinities not only between male and female teachers but also with male colleagues. Therefore, it is argued that this frequently forgotten and neglected seam in the grand narrative of schools and schooling in Ireland needs to be more fully understood as a variable of quality, social justice and democratic practices across the full scope and sequence of the teacher continuum and as a prerequisite component in all teacher leadership programmes.