Preschool affects longer term literacy and numeracy: results from a general population longitudinal study in Northern Ireland

The Effective Pre-school Provision in Northern Ireland (EPPNI) project is a longitudinal study of child development from 3 to 11 years. It is one of the first large-scale UK projects to investigate the effects of different kinds of preschool provision, and to relate experience in preschool to child development. In EPPNI, 683 children were randomly selected from 80 preschools, and 151 children were recruited without preschool experience. Progress was then followed from age 3 to age 11. Preschool experience was related to age 11 performance in English and mathematics. High-quality preschools show consistent effects that are reflected not only in improved attainment in Key Stage 2 English and mathematics but also in improved progress in mathematics over primary school. Children who attended high-quality preschools were 2.4 times more likely in English, and 3.4 times more likely in mathematics, to attain Level 5 than children without preschool experience.     

Communities of practice in inclusive education

The data in this paper represent the experiences and perspectives of parents and teachers who worked as communities of practice, designing support plans for the inclusion of three students with intellectual disabilities in general education classrooms. Their reflections, obtained through interviews and questionnaires, show how they constructed relevant knowledge to support these children with special educational needs in their class. The findings show the potential benefits of partnerships and local knowledge in addressing the educational challenge of inclusion.     

What do Parents Mean when they Talk About ‘Discipline’ in Relation to their Children's Schools?

We interviewed 28 parents who had at least one child who had just finished compulsory schooling in the state sector. We asked them about their choice of school and their experience of compulsory schooling for their child. Discipline was a key element in their responses. We analysed the data to elucidate the different ways in which ‘discipline’ was of significance for these parents. We examined why they talked about discipline in this way. These included reference to employability, a concern for the ‘moral order’ and the maintenance of adult authority. We attempted to understand what was being said by seeing it as embedded in their way of life. Power relations between adult/child and resulting from social location were relevant to this understanding.     

'Well,I've Not Done Any Work Today. I Don't Know Why I Came to School'. Perceptions of Play in the Reception Class

The place of play in the education of young children has been the focus of much interest in the past. But the findings from this research project demonstrate that there remains a significant amount of confusion about the role that play has in young children's education. In particular we found that there is a clear distinction between the rhetoric and reality of play in the reception class. Further, there was evidence of real anguish for some early years workers who were failing to offer the play activities that they knew should be provided. These findings are particularly interesting at present, since the debate on the role of play has once again emerged as fundamental in the attempt to define a curriculum appropriate to the needs of the 3-6 year olds who, from the year 2000, will be required to work within the highly contentious Foundation Stage of the National Curriculum.     

Editorial

As the incoming editorial team we would like to introduce ourselves to our readers. We are looking forward to doing all we can to further the high standard of the journal and its relevance as an international forum for sharing research and scholarship on teaching, learning and curriculum, and the conditions and policy environment of higher education that impinge on academic work. In an effort to ensure that our processes are efficient and transparent, we have revised the Notes to Contributors, which you will find on the back page. Next year the journal goes to four issues which will together form a somewhat larger volume, but will mean that each issue is smaller. The intent is to publish more frequently so that relevance and currency is enhanced. For this reason we will need to put more stress on observing the general rule that papers are to be 5000–7000 words in length. We are also committed to a more rapid turnaround time for submitted papers and have been working to streamline our management systems with the help of our able administrator, Karen Sanecki.     

Career quandaries of activist environmental engineering graduates in Indonesia

Abstract

This article reports on a study that aimed to investigate how young Indonesians might become environmentalists, and what happens when they do. It uses a Bourdieusian framework to analyse interviews with six Indonesian environmental engineering students who took an active role in environmental conservation campaigns while studying at the prestigious University of Technology Bandung (ITB) in Indonesia. In 2014, they were pondering the challenge of negotiating an environmentally defensible career after graduation from their degree. Four years later, in 2018 follow-up contact, it was evident that while they still operated a moral responsibility of conservation and care for the natural world, not all of them had found the dream jobs they imagined as earnest undergraduates keen to protect the natural environment. Yet most had maintained their ‘ecological habitus’ even as they sought to make good on the institutionalised cultural capital invested in their undergraduate degree in environmental engineering. This article examines that journey.