Travellers' Tales: Reflections on the way to learner autonomy

Student opinion is an important source of information in any quality audit. This paper reports on the views of a small group of 11 part-time UK Open University students taking their first course with the university. The paper reports their views on their experience in the 'phoney' period between application and the start of their course, as well as their views on what the Level 1 (entry-level) courses demanded of them, and of the support they received; the demands on their time and the extent to which they learnt how to study is brought out. The paper then looks at the students' response to assessment-and the extent to which the assignments kept them going, with success as measured by good marks increasing their motivation. Finally, the paper reports on the students' feelings about their developing ability to study, and their awareness of their increasing confidence, fluency, and self-worth.     

Social justice and the reconstruction of teaching

In this paper we argue that conceptions of what constitutes the ‘effective teacher’ and what counts as career progression are being reshaped by the Teacher Training Agency. One initiative which is central to this is the National Professional Qualification framework. We argue that the framework neglects teachers’ responsibilities in relation to social justice and that the teaching profession is being increasingly differentiated in ways which may disadvantage particular groups of children and teachers. Issues of governance, representation and accountability in teacher education cannot be ignored and connect with wider debates in the public sector both in the UK and elsewhere.     

Improving the Human Condition: Leadership for Justice-Oriented Service-Learning

The Banneker History Project (BHP) reconstructed the history of the Benjamin Banneker School, which operated as a segregated school for African Americans from 1915 to 1951. It was a project in social justice education with community service as its base. Here, the authors provide an insider perspective of group dynamics among core leaders for the BHP. Building relationships, working for social justice, and confronting racism are key themes for the group. Leaders recall moments of discomfort, particularly related to issues of race and racism, and describe ways they worked through them. Based on their wisdom of practice, authors offer suggestions for those who might do similar work.     

Drama as an Experiential Technique in Learning How to Cope with Dying Patients and their Families

This paper discusses a teaching experiment in which participation and observation of a drama helped first year nursing students to consider ways of dealing with death and dying. Workshops included dramatised scenarios of critical incidents demonstrating different peoples' experiences of the death of a fictional patient in hospital. Two nurse teachers performed a two-part drama about the experiences of a patient just diagnosed with terminal cancer. Live performances were presented to large groups of students and followed by small group discussions. Drama as a teaching method was well received, and the combination of drama and group discussion was considered very effective by students, who requested more similar sessions. Drama appears highly satisfactory for achieving learning in the affective domain, and can be added to teaching methods for improving communication skills and coping strategies with nursing students who will be caring for the dying. However, further research is necessary.     

'Modernizing' the teacher

This paper is set in the context of the proposal by the UK government to introduce a ‘performance management’ policy as a basis on which to organize the management and remuneration of teachers in England. The performance management model envisaged is firmly embedded within managerialist ideology and sets the context for restructured levels of the teaching force and redesigned patterns of progression. ‘Professional standards’ form an essential element of the technology of performance management in specifying skills defined as valuable and supposedly amenable to measurement. No account of performance management would be adequate that did not clarify the value assumptions which underpin it, nor grapple with its implications for patterns of social justice and differentiation. The paper explores both of these dimensions. Furthermore, as has been discovered in other sectors and countries that have endeavoured to introduce such policies, some of the proposals have generated a storm of controversy and opposition. We shall illustrate the contours of this in relation to our recent research.     

Communication in a shared governance hospital: Managing emergent paradoxes

Shared Governance (SG) is a model of employee participation that is increasingly being implemented in hospitals. This paper examines communication processes that occur in SG by providing a case study of a Nursing Department at Western Hospital A review of literature related to SG in professional nursing provides a background for introducing a chronology of implementation in Western Hospital. Data was collected in long interviews conducted with 15 bedside/staff nurses. Nurse accounts revealed paradoxes that paralyze the SG process. Forms of paradox are discussed and examples of paradox are identified. Leaders must determine priorities in managing on‐site paradox and suggestions are offered for working within paradoxes to enhance organizational functioning.     

Governmental Conditions for the Economization of Uncertainty

The central place occupied by actuarial calculation in insurance is usually understood as resulting from the process of bringing the laws of large numbers to bear on archival data in terms of an ‘insurance imaginary’. However, little attention is paid to the political and broader governmental conditions upon which actuarialism rests. Analysis of fire insurance in Australia indicates that despite urgings from other branches of insurance, the industry did not go down this ‘scientific’ track until well into the twentieth century. Instead, it relied on detailed individual inspection by insurance agents and a process of ‘cumulative dangerousness’ – adding up the multiple hazards discovered in each case and using this as a guide to setting premiums. The result was slow, expensive and cumbersome. But the industry was forced to adopt this approach because the built environment in Australian cities was so underregulated that nothing could be taken for granted. Only when adequately designed and enforced government regulations began to appear after the mid-1920s could fire insurance adopt actuarial techniques for economising uncertainty.     

The Effects of One versus Two Years of Intensive Reading Intervention Implemented with Late Elementary Struggling Readers

We examined the effectiveness of a researcher‐provided reading intervention with 484 fourth graders with significant reading difficulties. Students were randomly assigned to one year of intervention, two years of intervention, or a business‐as‐usual comparison condition (BAU). Students assigned to two years of intervention demonstrated significantly greater gains in reading fluency compared to students who received one year of intervention and the BAU group. Students in both the one‐ and two‐year groups demonstrated similar and significantly larger gains in word reading in comparison to the BAU group. There were no statistically significant differences between the three groups on standardized measures of reading comprehension. We discuss these results in the context of research with late elementary and secondary students targeting reading comprehension.