School effectiveness: new managerialism,quality and the Japanization of education

School effectiveness is a microtechnology of change. It is a relay device, which transfers macro policy into everyday processes and priorities in schools. It is part of the growing apparatus of performance evaluation. Change is brought about by a focus on the school as a site-based system to be managed. There has been corporate restructuring in response to the changing political economy of education. There are now new work regimes and radical changes in organizational cultures. Education, like other public services, is now characterized by a range of structural realignments, new relationships between purchasers and providers and new coalitions between management and politics. In this article, we will argue that the school effectiveness movement is an example of new managerialism in education. It is part of an ideological and technological process to industrialize educational productivity. That is to say, the emphasis on standards and standardization is evocative of production regimes drawn from industry. There is a belief that education, like other public services can be managed to ensure optimal outputs and zero defects in the educational product.     

Book Reviews

The craft of scientific communication Joseph E. Harmon and Alan G. Gross Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 2010, 240pp. ISBN‐13: 978‐0‐2263‐166‐11 (hbk), 978‐0‐2263‐166‐28 (pbk), $20.00     

Deaf people communicating via SMS, TTY, relay service, fax, and computers in Australia

Despite the expansion of Deaf people's use of communication technology little is published about how they use electronic communication in their social and working lives and the implications for their concepts of identity and community. Australia is an ideal research base because the use of a range of technologies is widespread there. To gain access to a wide age range of people who identify as Deaf, members of the national organization, the Australian Association of the Deaf, were surveyed by mail. Results showed that Short Message Service (SMS), telephone typewriters (TTY), voice/TTY relay services, fax, and e-mail were used regularly. Deaf users are discerning of the purposes for which they use each method: SMS for social and personal interactions, TTY for longer communications and (via the relay service) with people and services without TTYs, fax for business and social contact, and computers for personal and business e-mails as well as Web browsing, accessing chat rooms, word processing, games, and study.     

Adult dyslexic readers do not demonstrate regularity effects in sentence processing: evidence from eye-movements

We report an eye-movement study that demonstrates differences in regularity effects between adult developmental dyslexic and control non-impaired readers, in contrast to findings from a large number of word recognition studies (see G. Brown, 1997). For low frequency words, controls showed an advantage for Regular items, in which grapheme-to-phoneme strategies could be employed, compared with Irregular Consistent and Inconsistent items, in which rime comparisons or whole word recognition strategies would be advantageous. We propose that in sentential contexts, dyslexic readers do not generate sufficient phonological cues in the parafovea in order to demonstrate the regularity effects typical of unimpaired readers (e.g., S. Sereno & K. Rayner, 2000). These findings suggest that phonological strategies are sensitive to task demands, and underline the impact of methodology on the conclusions that are drawn about dyslexic reading ability.

The effects of speech production and vocabulary training on different components of spoken language performance

A group of 21 hard-of-hearing and deaf children attending primary school were trained by their teachers on the production of selected consonants and on the meanings of selected words. Speech production, vocabulary knowledge, reading aloud, and speech perception measures were obtained before and after each type of training. The speech production training produced a small but significant improvement in the percentage of consonants correctly produced in words. The vocabulary training improved knowledge of word meanings substantially. Performance on speech perception and reading aloud were significantly improved by both types of training. These results were in accord with the predictions of a mathematical model put forward to describe the relationships between speech perception, speech production, and language measures in children (Paatsch, Blamey, Sarant, Martin, & Bow, 2004). These training data demonstrate that the relationships between the measures are causal. In other words, improvements in speech production and vocabulary performance produced by training will carry over into predictable improvements in speech perception and reading scores. Furthermore, the model will help educators identify the most effective methods of improving receptive and expressive spoken language for individual children who are deaf or hard of hearing.     

Challenges and possibilities of Holocaust education and critical citizenship: An ethnographic study of a fifth-grade bilingual class revisited

This classroom ethnography examines the engagement of fifth-grade children in a year-long study of rights, respect, and responsibility, which culminated in a focused study of tolerance and intolerance organized around literature regarding the Holocaust. A close examination of one teacher’s approach to teaching about the Holocaust, the study highlights the importance of long-term engagements, a layered curriculum that supports children in building understandings over time, and varied opportunities for making meaning together. This approach included empathy-building, a focus on rescue and resistance and the bystander response, building a knowledge base about the Holocaust, stories of individual experiences, and opportunities to make personal connections. Drawing on samples of student talk, writing, and art, the article illustrates how children built upon academic and social practices established from the first days of school to expand their repertoire of meanings, language, and actions of (in)tolerance, gaining more complex understandings of the social, political, and moral implications of the Holocaust. Students in this bilingual class also developed individual and social actions in speaking out against social injustice in their own communities. The author argues that this classroom experience supported students as critical citizens who conscientiously and compassionately participate in the day-to-day building of more equitable communities.