When does a nation-level analysis make sense? ESD and educational governance in Brazil,South Africa,and the USA

International policy analysis tends to simplify the nation state, portraying countries as coherent units that can be described by one statistic or placed into one category. As scholars from Brazil, South Africa, and the USA, we find the nation-centric research perspective particularly challenging. In each of our home countries, the effective influence of the national government on education is quite limited, particularly in fringe and emerging areas of education such as Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Climate Change Education (CCE). This essay explores how nation-level comparisons are and are not useful for international research on ESD and CCE. We consider several layers of decentralized governance, but ultimately come to the conclusion that ESD governance in our respective countries is polycentric rather than decentralized. We discuss the implications of this idea for cross-national policy research on ESD and CCE.     

The World of Music

Musical Instruments of the World: An Illustrated Encyclopedia (New York: Bantam Books, 1978—$9.95, paper)

Warren Craig's Sweet and Lowdown: America's Popular Song Writers (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1978—$25.00)

Norm N. Nite's Rock On: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock 'n Roll– The Modern Years, 1964-Present (New York: Crowell, 1978—$14.95)

Jerry Osborne and Bruce Hamilton's Popular and Rock Records 1948-1978 (Phoenix, Arix.: O'Sullivan Woodside & Co., 1978—$7.95, paper)

Kenny Rogers and Len Epand's Making it with Music: Kenny Rogers' Guide to the Music Business (New York: Harper & Row, 1978—$12.95)

Anthony Fawcett's California Rock/California Sound: The Music of Los Angeles and Southern California (Los Angeles: Reed Books, 1978—$19.95/9.95)

Rock Critics' Choice: The Top 200 Albums (New York: Quick Fox, 1978—$4.95, paper)

Alan Kinzler's Bob Dylan: The Illustrated Record (New York: Harmony Books/Crown, 1978—$15.00/8.95)

John Blair's The Illustrated Discography of Surf Music 1959-1965 (J. Bee Productions, P.O. Box 1584, Riverside, Calif. 92502—$4.00, paper)

Alan Lomax's Folk Song Style and Culture (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books (Rutgers), 1978—$6.95, paper)

Nat Hentoff's The Jazz Life (New York: DaCapo, 1978—$5.95, paper)

George Hoefer, Music on My Mind: The Memoirs of an American Pianist (New York: DaCapo, 1978—$6.95, paper)

Valerie Wilmer's As Serious as Your Life: The Story of the New Jazz (London: Allison & Busby, 1977—E6.50 or about $13.00)     

Developing the characteristic spirit of publicly managed schools in a more secular and pluralist Ireland

This discussion paper considers the identification and definition of the ‘characteristic spirit’ of publicly managed schools in the Republic of Ireland. Some international approaches to values in publicly funded schools are introduced along with relevant contextual aspects of Irish education including the cultural diversity and secularisation of modern Irish society. The Irish Education Act (1998) gives ultimate responsibility for school values and ‘characteristic spirit’ to the school ‘patron’, a role legally separate from that of school ownership and school management. The underlying values of privately managed faith-based schools are well established. However, the ‘characteristic spirit’ of publicly managed Education and Training Board schools remains largely undeveloped. Appropriate responses to this challenge are identified and discussed.     

Child abuse reporting: teachers' perceived deterrents

OBJECTIVE: There are three general objectives: First, to determine the number of reports of abuse made by teachers, their knowledge of child abuse laws and reporting procedures, and their perceived deterrents in reporting abuse; second, to determine if there were gender or ethnic differences in reporting; and third, to evaluate teachers responses to case vignettes. METHOD: A survey of 197 teachers was conducted. They were given a questionnaire that included demographic information, knowledge of child abuse laws and procedures, and two scenarios of legally reportable child abuse. RESULTS: Seventy-three percent of this sample reported that they had never made a report of child abuse, while those who had made reports made an average of one report. Only 11% of teachers reported that there were instances in which they believed abuse may have occurred, but failed to report. Additionally, these teachers felt that their pre- and post-service training did not adequately prepare them for abuse reporting. The most common reasons cited for not reporting abuse were fear of making an inaccurate report, feeling as though child protective services do not help families, and no apparent physical signs of abuse. There were no gender differences in reporting. The teachers' responses to the case vignettes were not consistent with their previous reports. CONCLUSIONS: In general, most teachers reported having never made a child abuse report. Although only a small percentage of teachers reported failing to report abuse, when presented with legally reportable case vignettes, many failed to report. The majority of teachers report receiving inadequate training in child abuse signs, symptoms, and reporting procedure. There is an obvious need for more education for teachers that addresses their perceived deterrents and aids them in feeling more confident in making reports of child abuse.     

Children’s voices in mini soccer: an exploration of critical incidents

Since being adopted by The English Football Association as the preferred format of football to be played by children aged 10 and under, mini soccer has evolved and expanded into a popular activity for children. Yet little is known about the experiences of those participating in the game. In addition, adult-organized activities such as mini soccer are increasingly seen by parents and adults as suitable pursuits for their children to participate in. Yet the perspective of the child participating in mini soccer, as with many other activities, is largely ignored in academic literature. This is especially true in the social sciences, where research has historically been done ‘on’ children, rather than ‘with’ children. In this study, we seek to address this imbalance by including children as active participants in the research process. In doing so, we devised a methodology based on audiovisual methods to create participatory conditions between children and researchers interested in investigating their experiences of mini soccer in England. Children were asked to identify aspects of their experience which they felt were noteworthy to create video recordings of critical incidents that directly involved them participating in mini soccer. These were used as a discussion tool in focus groups to explore how and why children felt the incidents were critical, and how their experience of them shaped their participation. The methodology employed helped capture children’s differentiated views of the same incidents, and highlighted the diversity of their experiences. It is recommended that similar audiovisual methodologies are employed to inform future policy and strategy development in grassroots football that includes children as participants.     

Academic work and performativity

Neoliberal reforms in higher education have resulted in corporate managerial practices in universities and a drive for efficiency and productivity in teaching and research. As a result, there has been an intensification of academic work, increased stress for academics and an emphasis on accountability and performativity in universities. This paper critically examines these developments in institutions and draws on evidence from universities across the sector and a detailed case study in one university to identify the impacts of these changes on academic work. Given its ubiquity and the link of academic productivity to institutional experience, the paper argues that assumptions underpinning academic performance management need to be rethought to recognise the fundamentally intrinsic motivational nature of academic work. The paper explores the effects of performance management on individual academics as a case study in one institution and proposes a re-design of academic performance management to improve productivity based on the evidence.     

Enacting culturally relevant pedagogy: asset mapping in urban classrooms

In an attempt to confront monolithic perceptions of achievement and an educational narrative that defines communities of Color by their supposed deficits, the current study presents asset mapping as an example of culturally relevant pedagogy in action. Asset mapping is a pedagogical tool for students to visually represent personalized stories of their cultural assets and participate in a community-based gallery walk to showcase their maps. Interviews and focus groups with third- and sixth-grade teachers and students from an urban public school revealed learning about self, learning about others, and building community as emergent themes after completing the project. We present these themes and discuss asset mapping as a possible model for strength-based pedagogy that centers the lived experiences of students, their families, and their shared stories in classroom curriculum.     

Towards a methodology to determine standard time allocations for academic work

An online survey of workload activities was circulated to academics across Australia seeking estimates for the time to undertake a range of academic-related tasks associated with teaching, research and service. This article summarises the most important findings from the teaching data of the 2059 respondents. This detail of workload data has not been reported before across the Australian university sector. The findings showing that most academics work more than 50 h per week are consistent with previous studies. Although the estimates of the individuals varied greatly, statistical inquiry indicated the median time required does not vary by experience and online teaching generally requires more preparation time than on-campus teaching. The paper proposes this methodology as a credible means to derive realistic time-based standards for other aspects of academic work and will assist university managers by providing an external benchmark upon which to develop local academic workload models.     

Studying and Constructing Concept Maps: a Meta-Analysis

A concept map is a node-link diagram in which each node represents a concept and each link identifies the relationship between the two concepts it connects. We investigated how using concept maps influences learning by synthesizing the results of 142 independent effect sizes (n = 11,814). A random-effects model meta-analysis revealed that learning with concept and knowledge maps produced a moderate, statistically significant effect (g = 0.58, p < 0.001). A moderator analysis revealed that creating concept maps (g = 0.72, p < 0.001) was associated with greater benefit relative to respective comparison conditions than studying concept maps (g = 0.43, p < 0.001). Additional moderator analyses indicated learning with concept maps was superior to other instructional comparison conditions, and was effective across science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and non-STEM knowledge domains. Further moderator analyses, as well as implications for theory and practice, are provided.