From learning to labour to learning for precarity

A demand on national economies in the 1970s was that they should begin to increase their labour market flexibility, which came to mean transferring risks and insecurity onto workers. Education was one way to prepare future workers for this new situation. The present article examines this preparation of learning for precarity some 40 years on. It is based on long-term ethnographic research in the Swedish upper-secondary school sector in particular kinds of educational programmes that have been devised and promoted as a means of integrating ‘lost pupils’ into either academic or vocational studies. The findings show this is not what is developing in practice in these programmes.     

Systems advocacy in the professional practice of early childhood teachers: from the antithetical to the ethical

Dominant constructions of professionalism in early childhood education can diminish early childhood teachers’ and educators’ undertaking of advocacy at the systems or political level. In this paper, we propose an ethically grounded construction of professionalism that provides space for professional practice to move beyond the classroom and into the political sphere. Findings from interviews with four early childhood teachers from Australia who undertake systems advocacy as part of their professional practice show that this work is driven by ethical influences that extend beyond the rule-based imperative, in ethical codes, that teachers should undertake systems advocacy. Findings highlight the value of considering systems advocacy as practice that emerges from an interplay of three theoretical foundations of ethics: deontology, utilitarianism and virtue ethics. Implications for teacher professionalism and the building of a teacher disposition that incorporates systems advocacy are considered.     

Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K–12 Education in the United States: Findings Related to Research and Evaluation

The Panel on Educational Technology was organized in April 1995 under the auspices of the President's Committee of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) to provide advice to the President on matters related to the application of information technologies to K–12 education in the United States. Its findings and recommendations were set forth in March 1997 in the Report to the President on the Use of Technology to Strengthen K–12 Education in the United States. This report was based on a review of the research literature and on written submissions and oral briefings from a number of academic and industrial researchers, practicing educators, software developers, governmental agencies, and professional and industry organizations involved in various ways with the application of technology to education. Its most important finding is that a large-scale program of rigorous, systematic research on education in general and educational technology in particular will ultimately prove necessary to ensure both the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of technology use within our nation's K–12 schools. Finding that less than 0.1 percent of our nation's expenditures for elementary and secondary education are currently invested to determine which educational techniques actually work, and to find ways to improve them—an extremely low level relative to comparable ratios within the private sector—the Panel recommended that this figure be increased over a period of several years to at least 0.5 percent, and sustained at that level on an ongoing basis. Further, because no one state, municipality, or private firm could hope to capture more than a small fraction of the benefits associated with a significant advance in our understanding of how best to educate K–12 students, the Panel concluded that such funding will have to be provided largely at the federal level in order to avoid a systematic underinvestment (attributable to a classical form of economic externality) relative to the level that would be optimal for the nation as a whole. This paper originally appeared as Section 8 of the report.     

Practice change in environmental education: lessons from professional development

Abstract

The field of environmental education (EE) strives to develop innovative practices to address emergent issues such as equity, climate change, and urbanization. Through facilitating workshops and ongoing networks for the exchange of ideas, professional development programs may foster innovation or practice change among environmental educators. This study investigates change in practice among environmental educators who participated in one of three online and face-to-face professional development programs. Drawing from practice theory, we measured elements of EE practice including goals, audiences, settings, activities, resources, and ideas. The results showed that across all three programs participants incorporated new resources and ideas into their practices whereas changes in other practice elements varied among programs. Participants in all three programs produced eBooks or ongoing networks that can be used as indicators of practice innovation. This study suggests that practice theory can be used to inform studies of professional development outcomes and examine EE practice, but that practice innovations may be more readily measured at the group rather than individual level.     

Cortisol levels of caregivers in child care centers as related to the quality of their caregiving

The present study examined whether stress in professional caregivers – as reflected in salivary cortisol levels – is related to the quality of their caregiving behavior. The 221 professional female caregivers in 64 child care centers were observed in three different situations and saliva samples were taken three times during the morning. Results showed that higher levels of cortisol, particularly at the beginning of the workday, predicted lower-quality caregiver behavior beyond the contribution of three other predictors, namely a higher self-reported physical workload, more children under age two in the care group, and lower caregiver age. Contrary to the expectation, higher cortisol levels did not mediate the relation between higher self-reported physical workload and more children under age two on the one hand and lower-quality caregiving behavior on the other.     

Effects of extracurricular activities and their quality on primary school-age students’ achievement in mathematics in Switzerland

In this study, we examined the development of mathematics achievement in children attending extracurricular activities intensively in comparison with the development in a control group of children attending only the obligatory hours of school instruction. In addition, we investigated the question of possible effects of intensity of attendance and quality of extracurricular activities on achievement in students attending extracurricular activities from the end of Grade 1 to the end of Grade 3. This was a longitudinal study of a sample of N = 295 students in the first years of school at 35 primary schools in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. The results show that attendance in extracurricular activities had a positive effect on the development of students’ achievement. Students who attended extracurricular activities intensively in Grade 1, students who attended high-quality extracurricular activities, and especially those who did both, had greater improvement.     

The Impact of Teachers and Their Science Teaching on Students’ ‘Science Interest’: A four-year study

There is a crisis in school science in Australia and this may be related to insufficient students developing an interest in science. This extended study looked at changes in 14 students’ interest in science as they moved through junior secondary school into Year 10. Although the majority of these students still had an interest in science in Year 10, it had fluctuated for most students from year to year. The presence or absence of simple, but effective, teaching practices, identified by these students, seems to suggest one way to retain or improve situational and, it would appear, in several cases, personal interest.     

Analysis of the Educational Potential of a Science Museum Learning Environment: Visitors’ experience with and understanding of an immersion exhibit

Research pertaining to science museum exhibit design tends to be articulated at a level of generality that makes it difficult to apply in practice. To address this issue, the present study used a design‐based research approach to understand the educational potential of a biology exhibit. The exhibit was considered an educational environment which embodied a certain body of biological knowledge (Biological Organisation) in a certain exhibit type (Museographic Organisation) with the intention of creating certain learning outcomes among visitors. The notion of praxeology was used to model intended and observed visitor outcomes, and the pattern of relationship between the two praxeologies was examined to pinpoint where and how divergences emerged. The implications of these divergences are discussed at the three levels of exhibit enactment, design, and conjecture, and theoretically based suggestions for a design iteration are given. The potential of the design‐based research approach for educational exhibit design is argued.     

SURVEYING ADULT EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA

One of the results of a lack of overall co‐ordination of adult education in Australia is a very incomplete record of activities. Attempting to use existing data for research can be a very frustrating business. The form of the material available varies from State to State, is incomplete and uneven in quality. The peripheral nature of adult education in relation to education as a whole often results in only brief mention in official reports or no comment at all. The voluntary area, due for the most part to the spontaneous and informal nature of many agencies, is particularly poorly recorded. This paper discusses some of the problems facing researchers and brings together existing studies which have attempted to survey arrangements for the organisation and administration of adult education on a national basis.     

Agricultural Extension Services and Market Regulation: Learning from a Comparison of Six EU Countries

Abstract

If farmers are to meet the new challenges facing agriculture (environment, rural development, etc.), appropriate knowledge has to be produced. But observations in six EU countries (France, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK) show that unexpected problems arise when technical support for agriculture is linked to market regulation, as recommended since the late 1980s. The source of these problems can be understood better by applying concepts from the service economy: i) The production of new knowledge requires strong interaction between service providers (technical support bodies) and beneficiaries (farmers). The weakening of non-market regulation procedures, which partly guaranteed these possibilities of interaction, makes the conception of an advisory service difficult. ii) As soon as consultancy becomes a paying service, some beneficiaries reduce technical interaction with their colleagues in order to benefit from a productive advantage, and the ‘multipliable’ nature of new knowledge is reduced. iii) An increasing number of farmers are excluded from the benefits of technical support even though they help to provide services that society expects from agriculture (management of the land, maintenance of activities in low-density areas). iv) The responsibility for combining contradictory requirements (competitiveness, environment, rural development) is most often put on the shoulders of individual farmers who are unequipped to deal with such complex issues. Observed trends attest to the fact that effects often run counter to the stated agricultural and rural development objectives of policies.