Fostering effective and sustainable home–school relations with migrant worker parents: a new story to tell?

Current government policy, which calls for closer working relationships with families, together with the escalation of globalised communities places mounting pressure on teachers to take account of increasingly diverse family values, traditions and parenting styles. Considering the disproportionate number of minority ethnic children facing educational underachievement in the UK, one could argue practitioners take up this challenge. In view of increased European migration, this paper considers factors which remain the key to enabling migrant worker parents to establish and sustain effective links with their child’s school. After decades of research and government reports, how far we have come to ensuring that all families are enabled to become involved in their children’s schooling? The findings, which stem from a broader qualitative study, are largely presented through three collective vignettes which represent the voices, and different experiences, encountered by nine migrant worker parents. Factors identified as having significance to home–school relations include language barriers, issues associated with changing family structures, and community relations.     

The unexpected journey: renewing our commitment to students through educational action research

This article presents four cases of journeys of discovery and renewal, and the unexpected learning that results from exploring our practice with others. The authors are three classroom teachers – Steve, Stephanie and Bennyce – all of whom took part in a year-long action research sequence and the two professors – Helen and Mary – who co-taught these courses. Taking part in this process, whether as teachers or students, we gained new insights into important relationships that are too frequently taken for granted in busy teaching days, and discovered, in doing so, a renewed commitment to both our students and to the power of action research to bring about change     

Putting words in their mouths: The alignment of identities with system goals through the use of Individual Learning Plans

This article analyses the role of Individual Learning Plans (ILPs) in teachers' work in the Skills for Life sector. It shows how ILPs, originally a means of formative assessment, have become part of a system of performance indicators and function as a key mediating mechanism between local interactions and system goals. The article draws on theoretical perspectives from the new literacy studies and the sociology of science to reveal the pivotal role of texts in projects of social ordering. The methodology is a version of institutional ethnography, whereby an artefact (the ILP) is tracked as it circulates across the different sites of its production and use. Documentary and interview evidence are used. The article concludes that, in its current form, the ILP shapes teaching and learning relationships and aligns both tutor and student identities. Permissive guidance, combined with a core curriculum, the demands of audit and inspection, positions tutors uncomfortably as active mediators between student experience and the policy discourse.     

Knowledge-intensive consumer services. Understanding KICS in the innovative global health-care sector

This paper explores a case of knowledge-intensive consumer services (KICS). Services have become less neglected in the economics of technical change and innovation studies in general; nevertheless, the advance of this agenda has been uneven. A significant emphasis has been on knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS). Despite their direct impact on social needs and individual desires, innovation in consumer-oriented services continues to be relatively under-theorized and under-researched. This paper brings into focus the sources and patterns of innovation in those innovative services that target human satisfaction and well-being as a final goal. We show evidence from a little-explored health industry, oral care. We address Malo Clinic, a company specialized in the most complex patient situations and a rare instance of an internationalized firm in the health services business. On the basis of a 20-year thread of corporate history, we find that a wide array of qualitative (interviews, newspaper coverage, marketing material) and quantitative evidence (papers, patents, trademarks) illuminates some of the features that may characterize a particular class of dynamic activities tending to consumers’ needs, expectations and quality of life. We argue that these key characteristics may be on course to become more general as the learning economy spreads to fully embrace the realm of the service sphere. One conclusion is that both the technological and non-technological capabilities underpinning more types of innovation are increasingly becoming coupled in consumer-relevant services.     

Applying the Science of Learning to the Learning of Science: Newton’s Second Law of Motion

Science teaching and learning require knowledge about how learning takes place (cognition) and how learners interact with their surroundings (affective and sociocultural factors). The study reported on focussed on learning for understanding of Newton’s second law of motion from a cognitive perspective that takes social factors into account. A cognitive refinement instructional approach (CRIA) was used to organise and sequence learning activities, while students were engaged through inquiry and group work. Students’ real-life experiences were used as starting point of the learning sequence. The efficiency of the sequence was determined with the aid of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) and complemented with the students’ reflections on the sequence, showing their epistemological preferences. The results indicated that a CRIA aided in constructing more coherent scientific knowledge and enhanced understanding, while reducing misconceptions on the topic. In their reflections, the students acknowledged that experiential and experimental evidence, as well as guided formation of a scientific explanatory framework, are foundational for a deeper understanding of the challenging topic.