Bullying in 25 secondary schools: incidence,impact and intervention

This paper outlines an investigation of the incidence and impact of physical, verbal and property-violation bullying in 25 secondary schools within a partnership operating with Keele University. The investigation also considers the impact of antisocial behaviour on pupils and the effectiveness of intervention to secure improved behaviour patterns. Evidence shows that in any year 75 per cent of pupils are bullied but that severe and repeated bullying is likely to be perpetrated and suffered by about seven per cent of pupils. Four behaviour patterns can be identified: bullies, bullies who are also victims, victims and non-participants, and the link between behaviour and factors in developing self-esteem is explored. Successful intervention requires a change of attitude on the part of both pupils and the community, a willingness to report events, and an understanding of respect for personal space.     

School experiences of Children in Need: Learning and support

Children in Need (CIN) have received little attention in education circles. These are children who are usually living at home but where there are concerns over their health or development due to abuse or neglect, or they are disabled. Like Children in Care (CIC, who mostly live away), educational attainments for CIN are lower than for the general pupil population, with higher levels of special educational needs. This article draws on additional analysis from a recently completed, mixed methods study into this educational attainment gap for CIN and CIC. The overall research involved quantitative analysis from official statistics of a whole-birth cohort of children (n = 471,688) born in 2000/2001 and tracked through to their General Certificate of Secondary Education exams in 2017. This was complemented by semi-structured interviews with 18 CIN and 23 CIC, parents and associated professionals. This article focuses on interviews with CIN, their parents and professionals. Two main themes emerged from this further analysis of the qualitative data. One concerned children’s problems with learning. Children said that they often struggled with their schoolwork and received insufficient classroom support to help. The second theme was that pupils and parents reported more positive experiences of learning and support in Pupil Referral Units compared with secondary schools. The overall conclusion is that attention should rightly address the social, emotional and mental health difficulties of CIN, but this should be coupled with adequate support for classroom learning.     

Science and Literature: Towards a Conceptual Framework

Teachers of science and the history of science may wish to enliven and contextualise their subject matter by citing literary references to scientific ideas; similarly, teachers of literature may wish to examine the impact of science on their own field. Both groups of scholars may wish to examine how science and literature inform each other in their common social and cultural context. The question that arises is whether or not the relationship between science and literature has stable features that can give structure to such studies? There are various possibilities: the study of ‘science and literature’ could chart the impact of science on literature, or the impact of literature on science, or both; or look at how both science and literature have historically responded in similar or different ways to a common historical context. Amid this melee of options, the primary purpose of this paper is to sketch a conceptual framework to assist the science educator to explore the literary response to scientific ideas. For the sake of brevity, science will be taken to include the natural sciences (including the pseudo sciences of alchemy and astrology since they were once regarded as authentic) but not technology or medicine. Literature will be taken to mean fictive writing – poems, plays, novels – but will not include here science fiction. These exclusions are partly for reasons of space, but also because science fiction has its own literature of critical analysis within literary scholarship.     

曹丕以诗写赋论略

曹丕赋制式短小，篇幅上与诗接近。语言总体上看浅显晓畅、明白如话，与他诗歌的语言近似他的赋从取材上看也有与其诗歌相通之处，多写旅行游览、感离恋别、登览宴饮等。曹丕赋抒发的感情缅邈、细腻，与其诗歌抒情风格一致；曹丕赋中还常出现一些他在诗中惯用的物象。     

Tutorial Programs for Freshman Engineering Students

The purpose of this study was to examine the potential of a 1-year tutorial program to reduce the incidence of academic failure and attrition problems among freshman engineering students. A year-long program in English, mathematics, and physics plus general tutoring was provided for freshman engineering students (ninety-four fall, ninety-four winter, and ninety-three spring quarters) throughout the 1967-68 school year.

In eleven of the nineteen comparisons between tutored and non-tutored, the tutored group’s mean adjusted grade point average (GPA) was either significantly higher or approached significance. A higher percentage of tutored students were achieving at above a 2. 00 GPA after 1 year when compared with two separate non-tutored samples (51% - 43% - 22%). A lower percentage of tutored students withdrew during the first year when compared with two separate non-tutored samples (14% - 24% - 35%). The results support the use of a tutoring program at the freshman level as a means of reducing the number of academic and attrition problems.     

An attitudinal study of computer-assisted testing as a learning method

The study investigated the effects of exposure to computer-assisted testing (CAT) as an effective instructional method and its effects on attitudes toward computer-assisted instruction (CAI). Five computer quizzes consisting of 20 randomly drawn multiple-choice questions were individually administered on 10 teletype terminals. A feedback mechanism was incorporated in the CAT program and provided detailed explanations of questions. Results indicated that subjects exposed to CAT had significantly more favorable attitudes toward CAI than subjects not exposed to CAT. In addition, CAT was perceived by students to be an effective instructional method in aiding mastery of conceptual and factual material.     

What is meant by “rigour” in evidence-based educational policy and what’s so good about it?

ABSTRACT

Across the evidence-based policy and practice (EBPP) community, including education, randomised controlled trials (RCTS) rank as the most “rigorous” evidence for causal conclusions. This paper argues that that is misleading. Only narrow conclusions about study populations can be warranted with the kind of “rigour” that RCTs excel at. Educators need a great deal more information to predict if a programme will work for their pupils. It is unlikely that that information can be obtained with EBPP-style rigour. So, educators should not be overly optimistic about success with programmes that have been “rigorously” tested. I close with a plea to the EBPP community to take on the job of identifying and vetting the information educators need in practice.