Legal Regulation and Professional Discretion in Schools

ABSTRACT

The paper aims to analyse how pupils’ equal educational opportunities are warranted. We focus on how regulations of adapted education and the right to special needs education provide school leaders’ and teachers’ room for discretionary decision-making, how it is interpreted and how discretionary power is justified. The paper draws on findings from an interdisciplinary study (education and law) on the transformation of legal standards into professional actions in schools. This paper employs interview data from three compulsory schools (grades 1–10), legal documents, and public reports, and the analysis is guided by a conceptual distinction between structural and epistemic aspects of discretion. Based on our findings, we question whether the discretionary space regarding special needs education gives too many opportunities for action and, hence, weakens pupils’ legal rights. Under the guise of a common school, there is a risk that pupils’ special needs are made invisible.     

Investigating agentive urban learning: an assembly of situated experiences for sustainable futures

ABSTRACT

In this article we explore the dynamic between the pedagogical and the urban, attending to ‘agentive urban learning’. By this we mean processes by which young people build agency in the urban context, in using the resources of the city to develop their own agency, and of developing agency to act within the city. By agency, we refer to the capacity to imagine and act to create individual and collective futures. Our interest is how young people develop such agentive urban learning themselves and how it might be enhanced pedagogically at school and university. Three case studies explore different facets—the first how young people themselves develop this agency in situated settings and the tools that they use to reflect upon the future; the second how digital tools might be used to enhance students’ understanding of the city as a site of change, in this instance, climate change; and the third how such agency might be developed collectively in partnership with other city dwellers. We conclude that a diversity of students’ engagement in urban contexts of learning offers ways from which to further investigate how identity, setting, and stakeholder relationships matter as part of potentially sustainable agentive learning futures.     

An emerging donor in education and development: A case study of China in Cameroon

This paper analyzes China's new approaches of education aid to Africa through a case study of Cameroon. China's cooperation has been characterized by different discourses and different historic relationships with recipient countries than those of traditional donors. Sino-African policies have gone through different stages, each connected to wider political and economic realities. Currently, a broadening of China's engagement with Africa can be noticed through increasing aid packages and the inclusion of African countries other than those that had traditionally been close to China. Cameroon has been one of the countries that have had a relatively extended cooperation with China. Four types of Chinese education aid to Africa are illustrated by this paper: (i) Confucius Institutes, which are providing language and culture-related training in host countries; (ii) longer term scholarships and short-term training for Africans in China; (iii) school construction; and (iv) stand-alone education projects. By analyzing how these three different types of aid are taking place in Cameroon, various and apparently contradictory strategies and discourses materialize.     

The Role of Diverse Institutions in Framing Adult Learning Systems

This article considers the role of diverse institutions in framing adult learning systems. The focus is on institutional characteristics and configurations in different countries and their potential impact on the extent of adult learning, as well as on inequalities in access to adult learning. Typologies of education and training systems as well as labour market and welfare systems are introduced in relation to specific particularities relevant to adult learning. An emphasis is placed on how institutions that are interwoven into several systems are relevant to adult learning. This is then considered and elaborated in the context of post-Socialist countries in order to highlight important nuances that are relevant to adult learning and skill formation systems.     

Reading multiple texts about climate change: The relationship between memory for sources and text comprehension

In many situations, readers are asked to learn from multiple documents. Many studies have found that evaluating the trustworthiness and usefulness of document sources is an important skill in such learning situations. There has been, however, no direct evidence that attending to source information helps readers learn from and interpret a document's content. In this study we examined whether students' awareness of sources predicts their comprehension of documents, controlling for prior knowledge, interest and perceived comprehensibility of the texts. Participants read multiple texts that provided different perspectives on the causes and solutions of climate change. Deep comprehension was measured using both within-text and across-text inference verification tests. Source awareness was measured using a test of memory for sources. We found that memory for sources predicted both types of deep comprehension. These results, in combination with source training studies, suggest that improving students' sourcing skills may benefit their learning of text content.     

Do Time in Child Care and Peer Group Exposure Predict Poor Socioemotional Adjustment in Norway?

Extensive exposure to nonparental child care during the first 4.5 years of life has been demonstrated in some American studies to negatively affect children's socioemotional functioning. Data from 935 preschool children who averaged 54.9 (SD = 3.0) months of age, from Trondheim, Norway were used to examine whether such negative effects, would emerge in Norway, a country with a different child‐care system. The children's externalizing problems and social competence were unrelated to their child‐care experience. More time spent in child care during the first 4.5 years of life and experiencing peer groups of < 16 or > 18 children predicted greater caregiver–child conflict. The effect sizes were small. The results are discussed in terms of cross‐national child‐care differences.     

Action Imitation at 1½ Years Is Better Than Pointing Gesture in Predicting Late Development of Language Production at 3 Years of Age

This study examined whether poor pointing gestures and imitative actions at 18 months of age uniquely predicted late language production at 36 months, beyond the role of poor language at 18 months of age. Data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study were utilized. Maternal reports of the children's nonverbal skills and language were gathered for 42,517 children aged 18 months and for 28,107 of the same children at 36 months. Panel analysis of latent variables revealed that imitative actions, language comprehension, and language production uniquely contributed to predicting late development of language production, while pointing gestures did not. It is suggested that the results can be explained by underlying symbolic representational skills at 18 months.     

School placement and classroom participation among children with disabilities in primary school in Norway: a longitudinal study

The purpose of this paper is to address changes in school placement and classroom participation with respect to children with disabilities of primary school age in Norway, as well as examining the factors which explain variation in school placement and classroom participation. School placement refers to whether children with disabilities attend regular school, while classroom participation refers to time spent in regular classrooms at regular schools. The analysis is based on longitudinal data drawn from surveys undertaken in 2003 and 2006, of parents of children with disabilities. Present findings suggest there are no major changes in school placement during primary school years, which is contrary to earlier findings. However, the amount of time children with disability are absent from regular classes does increase significantly as the children become older. Size of municipality population, type of disability and degree of impairment are the main factors which have an impact on school placement. In addition to these, the amount of special education also has an impact on classroom participation. There are small changes in mechanisms that lead children out of both regular schools and classrooms, during their primary school years. However, some of the identified factors strengthen in importance as the children become older. The apparent policy change for older children, from special school placement to an “out of class” practice, is discussed. It could be seen as regular schools’ adaptation to the tension between the prevailing ideology of inclusion and schools’ maintenance of existing practice.     

Prediction of learning and comprehension when adolescents read multiple texts: the roles of word-level processing, strategic approach, and reading motivation

Sixty-five Norwegian 10th graders used the software Read&Answer 2.0 (Vidal-Abarca et al., 2011) to read five different texts presenting conflicting views on the controversial scientific issue of sun exposure and health. Participants were administered a multiple-choice topic-knowledge measure before and after reading, a word recognition task, and a reading motivation inventory that included two dimensions: Science reading self-efficacy, focusing on readers’ beliefs about their capabilities to comprehend what they read in science, and science reading task value, focusing on readers’ beliefs about how important, useful, and interesting it is to comprehend science texts. In addition, strategic reading pattern was assessed in terms of the degree of non-linear reading behavior. Multiple regression analysis showed that word recognition skills strongly predicted learning from the texts, as assessed by participants’ increase in topic knowledge. However, when multiple-text comprehension indicated by performance on open-ended short-essay questions was the dependent variable, not only word recognition but also strategic reading pattern and science reading self-efficacy emerged as unique predictors when topic knowledge was controlled for. Science reading task value was not related to performance. This study provides new evidence that new literacy competencies needed in a knowledge society, such as synthesizing or integrating across multiple conflicting sources of information, still largely involve word-level, strategic, and motivational processes that may profitably be targeted through systematic instruction.