Every school a school of choice: school choice in Ireland as viewed through American eyes

‘Choice’ and ‘freedom’ as measured by the ability of parents to select their children's schools are deeply embedded in the national ethos of the United States of America. Wealthy American parents have always exercised school choice but minority and lowincome students are often trapped in failing schools. This paper is based on research conducted in a purposive sample of Irish primary schools into the nature of school choice. The authors examine five aspects of the Irish national primary school system that could provide models for American educators, whose vision often stops at the boundaries of the United States: education law, school choice for all, a national curriculum framework, the role of assessment, and the role of parents and educators in the creation of new schools. While arguably the five relate directly to school choice of different degrees, they collectively weave a web whereby school systems in the Republic of Ireland and the USA may productively be compared to the benefit of both.     

Listening to victims: Use of a Critical Incident Reporting System to enable adult victims of childhood sexual abuse to participate in a political reappraisal process in Germany

Recent revelations about the scope and severity of past child sexual abuse in German institutions set off a broad public debate on this issue, and led to the establishment of a politically appointed Round Table committee and an Independent Commissioner whose mandates were to reappraise the issue and develop recommendations for future policies. A media campaign was launched to publicize the establishment of a Critical Incident Reporting System (CIRS) whereby now-adult victims of past abuse could anonymously provide testimonials and let policy makers know what issues were important to them. Respondents could either call a hotline number or communicate by mail or email. The information collected was documented and analyzed by a research team, and the results of interim reports were included in the recommendations of the Independent Commissioner and the Round Table committee. Most of the respondents described severe and repeated occurrences of childhood sexual abuse. For many, priorities were improvements in therapy and counseling services, the abolishment of the statute of limitations on prosecuting offenders, and financial compensation. Based on the recommendations of the Round Table and the Independent Commissioner, two new laws were adopted as well as an action plan and some guidelines. In addition to rules for recompensation of victims in an institutional context a fund for victims of sexual abuse in intrafamilial context was established by the Federal Government. Another effect of this process was raising societal sensitivity to the problem of child sexual abuse. The use of a CIRS enabled those directly affected by childhood sexual abuse to have some input into a political process designed to address this issue. Such an approach could have applicability in other countries or in other domains of public health and other forms of societal conflict as well.     

Engaging difference: towards a pedagogy of interbeing

In this article, I discuss how by engaging difference teachers and students can go beyond the binary of “self” and “other” towards “interbeing”. I first discuss how postcolonial and feminist perspectives can inform multicultural discourse by rethinking self and other in terms of hybrid identities and cultures. Then, I draw on Thich Nhat Hanh's (1991) concepts of mindfulness, contemplation, and interbeing; bell hooks' (1994) concept of an engaged pedagogy; and my reflections on my own practice of teaching multicultural education courses. I argue that a self-reflexive pedagogy of interbeing is transformative, enabling both students and teachers to “see with the eyes of interbeing” (Hanh, 1991, p. 98) and heal from the wounds of oppression.     

Data Management Support for Faculty Facing New Funding Mandates: The Case of the U. S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture

Data management is a way for liaison librarians to support faculty research. American liaison librarians face new demands in data management due to expanding public access guidelines. This article gives advice for librarians new to data management, with the specific case of agriculture. For librarians supporting agriculture, the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture [USDA NIFA] data management plan [DMP] requirements are a challenge and an opportunity. Agricultural libraries can learn to support faculty in how to write a plan that addresses the NIFA DMP sections of expected data type, data format, data storage and preservation, data sharing and public access, roles and responsibilities, and monitoring and reporting. Particular challenges that arise for DMPs in agrisciences include the diversity of subjects, multiple metadata and taxonomic systems, and the heterogeneity of research and data. To deal with this, data consultations are particularly critical.     

Explaining the Significance of Participationist Approaches for Understanding Students' Knowledge Acquisition

This article aims to appraise insights from participationist approaches to learning for understanding students' knowledge acquisition. The first part explicates the concepts of positioning, recognition, and identity through presenting a common ground for participationists and discussing different views on (a) the relationship between learning the content domain and positioning, recognition, and identity negotiation; (b) dynamicity of situativity; (c) relation of moment-to-moment situativity to long-term interaction patterns; (d) awareness of positioning, recognition, and identity. This allows an appraisal in the article's second part of a claim inherent to participationist views: It is necessary to adopt a system's view on learning opportunities presented to students in class because of the way positioning, recognition, and identity negotiation influence students' engagement with curricular content. A fifth issue emerges concerning the nature of this influence. Theoretical considerations and empirical evidence combine to support the conclusion that the claim holds some, not all, of the time.     

Gender and culture: Reported problems,coping strategies and selected helpers of male and female adolescents in 17 countries

This is the second report of a multinational project undertaken in 1988 by the International Round Table for the Advancement of Counseling that sought, among other things, to compare and contrast the reported problems, coping strategies, and help-seeking behavior of 2129 male and 2307 female adolescents from a total of three different socioeconomic backgrounds in each of 16 countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan Kuwait, the Netherlands, the Philippines, China, Puerto Rico, Turkey, the US, and Venezuela) and from a "classless" background in Russia. The first report described the study and research methodology and cited preliminary findings that 1) problems and coping strategies tended to be universal and age-related; 2) impoverished subjects from Brazil, India, the Philippines, and Venezuela had more problems than any other adolescents; 3) problems were usually related to school, family, and identity rather than to sexuality; and 4) the most common coping strategy was individual problem-solving. This report compares male/female identification of up to three problems that cause worry, response to such problems, and help-seeking behavior. All adolescents cited problems in school, identity, and family. Males and females reported similar coping strategies and showed a strong dependence on individual coping strategies. Both males and females choose personal friends and family members as those most likely to help with problems. Males exhibited a higher percentage of problems related to school and a lower percentage of family problems. Russian adolescents reported more problems relating to altruism than any other group, especially males. These results imply that strong similarities exist for males and females, and the findings are worrisome in that problems related to sexuality were not cited. Counselors should expect the concerns of adolescents to be developmentally related and to overwhelm gender differences.     

Predicting the outcomes of physical events: two-year-olds fail to reveal knowledge of solidity and support

Two-year-olds' (N = 153) knowledge of solidity was tested in four search tasks adapted from infant looking-time experiments. In Experiment 1, 2-year-olds failed to search in the correct location for a falling ball after a hidden shelf that blocked its trajectory had been inserted in the apparatus. Experiment 2 extended this finding by showing that 2-year-olds failed to take into account the effects of either removing or inserting a shelf in their search for a toy dropped behind a screen. Experiment 3 examined sensitivity to the constraint provided by a solid barrier on horizontal motion. In all three experiments, 2-year-old children searched initially at the location where they saw the object during familiarization. Experiment 4, using multiple test trials but no familiarization to a pretest location, also showed that 2-year-olds failed to take the presence or absence of a barrier into account when planning where to search for a toy they had seen dropped behind a screen. In all of these studies, 2-year-olds showed no evidence of representing solidity and support constraints on the trajectories of falling objects. Experiments 1 and 3 also included 2 1/2-year-olds (N = 31), who succeeded on these search tasks. The implications of the poor performance of 2-year-olds, in the face of success by very young infants on looking-time measures of sensitivity to similar constraints on object motion, are discussed.     

The Enduring Quest for Equity in Education: Comparing Norway and Australia

It has been a key goal to achieve equity in education in Australia and Norway over the last 50 years. This article offers a historical case-oriented comparative analysis of the promotion of equity in education in these 2 countries. While equity in education is primarily understood as students’ learning outcomes in national and international tests, such as the OECD’s PISA studies, the analysis in this article is based on Espinoza’s distinction between equality and equity, which allows for a more complex understanding. The article investigates striking differences in how the governments in Australia and Norway have attempted to enhance equity through education, and discusses factors that may have impeded this process.