The End of Expansion and the Consolidation of Differentiation in English Higher Education

Abstract

Following systems theory to distinguish between cultural and occupational information, this paper reviews the history of English higher education to show the predominance of cultural over occupational transmission in the messages communicated to its students. Despite its formal commitment to vocational purposes, recent expansion of further and higher continuing education (F&HCE) is suggested to have had more to do with cultural than occupational transmission. For a process of class recomposition potentiated by new technology has eroded traditional social divisions between manual and non‐manual labour. Together with mass un‐and under‐employment, this posed a legitimacy crisis for the state to which it responded with new forms of ‘selectivity’ (Offe, 1974) based upon educational credentials (Broadfoot, 1996). In conclusion however, it is suggested that with the consolidation of the new class formation this expansion of F&HCE has halted and will not be restarted by Dearing's 1997 contradictory attempt to do so.     

A Preliminary Evaluation of REACH: Training Early Childhood Teachers to Support Children’s Social and Emotional Development

This paper describes the development, implementation and preliminary evaluation of the Reaching Educators and Children (REACH) program, a training and coaching intervention designed to increase the capacity of early childhood teachers to support children’s social and emotional development. We evaluated REACH with 139 teachers of toddler and preschool classrooms. Teacher attendance and survey results suggest that teachers were highly satisfied with the training and materials. Data from classroom observation scales conducted pre- and post-REACH implementation suggest significant improvements in the sensitivity of teachers’ interactions with children in the classroom, and increased teacher use of targeted social and emotional supports (such as teaching children to resolve conflicts). Further, data from observations of children’s classroom behavior suggest increases in children’s prosocial behaviors and small but significant decreases in verbal aggression. These findings provide preliminary evidence that the REACH program may be effective in building teachers’ capacity to support social–emotional development of young children, and point to the need for additional research.     

Robots in the AI Classroom: What Smart Machines Can Teach Smart Students

The design and implementation of autonomous robots provides experience with engineering problems as well as with hard problems in artificial intelligence. Our aims in this article are fourfold: First, we describe how the use of robots complements traditional classroom lectures for the teaching of important concepts in a graduate‐level AI class. Second, we discuss the use of robots as a multimedia tool for capturing student interest and facilitating the self‐guided exploration of AI concepts. Third, we relate readings and robots in the curriculum and show how the robots aid understanding of philosophical issues in AI. Finally, we describe the robot kits and the organization of the class, present several completed projects by student teams, and report some of the feedback given by students who completed the course. We also analyze the successes and failures of the first two courses offered and describe the changes made for the recently completed second course.     

Interparental discord and child adjustment: prospective investigations of emotional security as an explanatory mechanism

Advancing the process-oriented study of links between interparental discord and child adjustment, 2 multimethod prospective tests of emotional security as an explanatory mechanism are reported. On the basis of community samples, with waves spaced 2 years apart, Study 1 (113 boys and 113 girls, ages 9-18) identified emotional security as a mediator in a 2-wave test, whereas Study 2 (105 boys and 127 girls, ages 5-7) indicated emotional security as an intervening mechanism in a 3-wave test. Relations between discord and emotional security increased as children moved into adolescence in Study 1. Emotional security was identified as an explanatory mechanism for both internalizing and externalizing problems in children.     

Professional knowledge affects action-related skills: The development of preservice physics teachers' explaining skills during a field experience

Professional knowledge is an important source of science teachers' actions in the classroom (e.g., personal professional content knowledge [pedagogical content knowledge, PCK] is the source of enacted PCK in the refined consensus model [RCM] for PCK). However, the evidence for this claim is ambiguous at best. This study applied a cross-lagged panel design to examine the relationship between professional knowledge and actions in one particular instructional situation: explaining physics. Pre- and post a field experience (one semester), 47 preservice physics teachers from four different universities were tested for their content knowledge (CK), PCK, pedagogical knowledge (PK), and action-related skills in explaining physics. The study showed that joint professional knowledge (the weighted sum of CK, PCK, and PK scores) at the beginning of the field experience impacted the development of explaining skills during the field experience (β = .38**). We interpret this as a particular relationship between professional knowledge and science teachers' action-related skills (enacted PCK): professional knowledge is necessary for the development of explaining skills. That is evidence that personal PCK affects enacted PCK. In addition, field experiences are often supposed to bridge the theory-practice gap by transforming professional knowledge into instructional practice. Our results suggest that for field experiences to be effective, preservice teachers should start with profound professional knowledge.     

A Difficult Challenge,the Integration of the Internet Into the Educational System

We propose in this article to try to clarify the problems of the integration into schools of the Internet in the light of experience accumulated over nearly 20 years at the heart of the French educational system, on the use of network technologies in schools, and on the rather unfortunate recurrent tendency to neglect the lessons of the past. In effect, if the Internet is a new technology, because of its multimedia characteristics, its international dimension, its methods of navigation and the large diversity of applications that it supports, it still has, from the point of view of its uses, a certain relationship with earlier telematic systems. Un défi difficile, l’intégration d’Internet dans le système éducatif. Nous nous proposons, dans ce texte, de tenter d'éclairer la problématique de l'intégration scolaire d'Internet À la lumière de l'expérience accumulée depuis près de vingt ans au sein du système éducatif franÇais, sur les usages scolaires des technologies de réseau tant nous semble, en la matière, dommageable la tendance récurrente À négliger les leÇons du passé.En effet, si Internet est, de par sa caractéristique multimédia, sa dimension internationale, ses modes de navigation et la grande diversité des applications qu'il supporte, une nouvelle technologie, il n'en possède pas moins, du point de vue de ses usages, une filiation certaine avec des systèmes télématiques antérieurs. In diesem Artikel versuchen wir die Integrationprobleme vom Internet ins Schulsystem zu erläutern. Wir beziehen uns dabei auf die gesammelten Erfahrungen der letzten 20 Jahre im französischen Bildungssystems, auf den Einsatz von Netzwerktechnologien in der Schule - wie wir ihn wahrnehmen - und auf die sich leider wiederholende Tendenz, unsere Erkenntnisse aus der Vergangenheit zu missachten. Wenn das Internet - durch seinen Multimediacharakter, seiner internationalen Dimension, seine Navigationmethoden, und die von ihr unterstützte Vielfalt von Applikationen - eine neue Technologie ist, so hat es doch zumindest vom Standpunkt seines heutigen Einsatzes, eine gewisse Beziehung zu früheren telematischen Systemen.     

The politics of rural school reform: Escuela Nueva in Colombia

This article explores the history and politics of rural school reform in Colombia, focusing on the Escuela Nueva programme. In particular, it assesses the motivations of the Colombian State in promoting a comprehensive reform of its rural schools. We argue that Colombia's unique political context was, in large part, responsible for its novel approach to school reform. As the political context shifted, however, so to did the State's posture to rural schooling. We track the Escuela Nueva programme through three phases (grassroots, formalized and decoupled) to demonstrate how social actors, their interests at a specific point in time, and the distribution of power among them, are crucial elements for understanding the motivation and outcomes of social policy making. In other words, this research portrays education reform as a dynamic process that is continuously shaped and reshaped as political actors and institutions compete for influence and scarce resources in a variable social arena.