Dynamic Consultation: Towards process and challenge

This paper outlines the attempts of a group of educational psychologists to apply the theoretical principles underpinning dynamic assessment to the process of solution-focused consultation with teachers at the school-based stages of the Special Educational Needs Code of Practice. Process questions based on dynamic assessment are used within a semi-structured consultative framework in order to challenge thinking, to explore meanings, to mediate learning and to plan interventions. It is suggested that the principles of dynamic assessment lend themselves well to the consultation process, providing a model for effective and reflective practice for educational psychologists and teachers, and non-intrusive intervention with pupils.     

新的开始

She hung her head as she trudged through the hall, attempting to block out the ceaseless chants that followed her every step. They made faces, jeered her,and poked fun at her. Her hair and her clothes, her intelligence and her artistic nature-they were all abnormal.     

Powerful levers: Margaret Gatty,Juliana Horatia Ewing and Mary Louisa Molesworth

She has published stories and poems in small magazines, and a chapter of a novel in progress in the Critical Quarterly, Manchester University.     

‘Crafting the future’: pioneer lessons and concerns for today

A recent qualitative research study gathered the career reflections of the generation of distance education practitioners who developed more flexible higher education (via distance modes) in the second half of the twentieth century. Part of that study’s results focus on the lessons the practitioners learned about what constitutes effective distance education and the concerns they expressed about the future. These are reported here. The key lessons are grouped around patience, tolerance and listening, respectfulness, responsiveness, the qualities needed for innovation and institutional management, and use of technologies. Appropriate use, technical reliability, and critical mindsets emerged as key lessons for technology applications. Ten questions then help readers engage their own reflective thinking and investigate knowledge transfer possibilities.     

Creating feminised critical spaces and co-caring communities of practice outside patriarchal managerial landscapes

The experiences of five female lecturers working in higher education in the UK are explored as they engage in the search for a feminised critical space as a refuge from the masculinised culture of performativity in which they feel constrained and devalued. Email exchanges were used as a form of narrative enquiry that provided opportunity and space to negotiate identities and make meaning from experiences. The exchanges provided a critical space, characterised by trust, honesty and care for the self and for each other, that enabled a sharing of authentic voices and a reaffirming of identities that were made vulnerable through the exposing of the self as an emotional, politicised subject. Drawing on existing theoretical understandings of critical feminised spaces enabled us to create a pedagogical framework for work with students in further developing caring and co-caring communities of practice that are not alternative to, but are outside the performativity landscape of education.     

Measuring standards in primary English: The validity of PIRLS—a response to Mary Hilton

Hilton (2006) criticises the PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) tests and the survey conduct, raising questions about the validity of international surveys of reading. Her criticisms fall into four broad areas: cultural validity, methodological issues, construct validity and the survey in England. However, her criticisms are shown to be mistaken. Her claim of forced unidimensionality in the tests is not supported by statistical analyses and her claims of cultural strangeness are contradicted by the involvement of all the countries involved. She is concerned about linguistic diversity but this is actually reflected in the ways countries organise their surveys. Finally, Hilton suggests that the English sample was biased, but fails to recognise the stringent sampling requirements or the monitoring roles of external assessors and the sampling referee. A careful study of the evidence concerning PIRLS shows that it is actually a fair and robust measure of reading attainment in different countries.     

The odyssey: school to work transitions,serendipity and position in the field

Little work on the significance and implications of decision-making has been undertaken since that led by Hodkinson in the 1990s, and the experiences of young people on vocational programmes and their reasons for undertaking them remain under-theorised and poorly understood. Drawing on two narratives from a study exploring young people’s motivations for undertaking vocational programmes, this article explores the relationship between their positioning in fields and career decision-making. The article argues that social positioning is significant in its relationship to decision-making, to the way in which young people perceive and construct their careers and to the influence of serendipity on their transitions. Drawing on a range of international studies, the article explores the implications of these findings in terms of young people’s future engagement with the global labour market, giving consideration to (dissonant) perceptions of vocational education and training as contributing to economic growth whilst addressing issues of social exclusion and promoting social justice.     

A Campus Partnership to Foster Compliance with Funder Mandates

Data from federally funded research must now be made publicly accessible and discoverable. Researchers must adhere to guidelines established by federal agencies, and universities must be prepared to demonstrate compliance with the federal mandate. At Utah State University, the Office of Research and Graduate Studies and the Merrill-Cazier Library partnered to facilitate data sharing and create an audit trail demonstrating compliance with the terms of each researcher's award. This systematic approach uses existing resources such as the grant management system, the institutional repository (IR), and the Library online catalog. This paper describes our process and the first eight months of implementation.