Child development in developing countries: child rights and policy implications

The Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey was used to provide information on feeding practices, caregiving, discipline and violence, and the home environment for young children across 28 countries. The findings from the series of studies in this Special Section are the first of their kind because they provide information on the most proximal context for development of the youngest children in the majority world using one of the only data sets to study these contexts across countries. Using the framework of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, in particular the Rights to Survival, Development and Protection, findings are explained with implications for international and national-level social policies. Implications are also discussed, with respect to policy makers and the larger international community, who have the obligation to uphold these rights.     

Multilingual students’ use of translanguaging in science classrooms

ABSTRACT

This study describes multilingual students’ authentic use of their first and second languages in a translanguaging science classroom, from a sociocultural perspective. The study is ethnographic, and has followed some lessons each month in a translanguaging science classroom at a primary school for three years. The observed lessons were documented by four video cameras and four audio recorders, while field notes and different types of students’ texts and other teaching materials were also collected. In order investigate how language operates, and to realise the meaning semantically, we analysed the students’ use of both first and second language to tie paradigmatic relations, and how they move in linguistic loops between languages and discourses. The results illustrate the ways in which a translanguaging science classroom constitutes a resource in joint negotiations of the scientific content and its related language for multilingual students, and benefits the students’ ability to relate and contextualise the science content to prior experience. The creation of translanguaging science classrooms, in which students’ experiences and diverse cultural and linguistic resources interweave with school science, and in which multilingual students are enabled and encouraged to use all available language resources, has important implications for science education.     

Conditions for collaborative learning and constructive competition in school

Background:?Teacher-organised group work, in which pupils work together in groups or pairs, is one of many learning situations pupils may encounter at school. Research (Williams, P. and Sheridan, S., Collaboration as one aspect of quality: a perspective of collaboration and pedagogical quality in educational settings. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research 50, no. 1: 89–93, 2006) shows that even though pupils are aware of the benefits that working in groups can generate, they tend to avoid structured group work at school.

Purpose:?The aim of this study is to gain knowledge about necessary conditions for collaborative learning and constructive competition to develop among pupils at school. What conditions are necessary for collaboration and constructive competition to develop in learning situations among pupils at school?

Sample:?The study was carried out in Sweden and involved a total of 66 children, 6–18 years of age, and 25 teachers. Both sexes were equally represented among the pupils. The participating schools and teachers were selected by means of a stratified sample involving different geographical and socioeconomic areas and different educational programmes. Twelve children were selected from each of school grades 1, 5 and 9, whilst a total of 30 students were selected from five different upper secondary school programmes.

Design and methods:?To study the conditions under which constructive competition could develop in school, the methodology used involved individual interviews. The analysis was qualitative and focused on the phenomenon of constructive competition and situations in which pupils and teachers compete. The process of analysis was interplay between empirical data and interactionistic theory, an analytical process of abduction, which consists of interpreting data and devising a theory to explain them. The intentions were to highlight perspectives of constructive competition in a variety of ways. The analyses converge, as well as generating information and knowledge about how pupils and teachers understand constructive competition.

Conclusions:?Several factors emerged as important for collaboration and constructive competition to develop among pupils in school. These were categorised into three conditions: attitudes, organisation and the meaning of learning. Competition between pupils and teachers does occur in school but it is not often explicitly articulated. The ways in which competition develops, either in destructive or constructive directions, becomes more a question of chance or coincidence than as evolving out of a conscious choice. To compete constructively in a conscious manner requires knowledge of how to be able to control the situation in a positive manner, about the characteristics of this kind of competition and of how – that is to say under what kind of conditions – it will develop constructively between people in school contexts. Content and conditions are thus seen as inseparable in the development of constructive competition.     

Intertextual content analysis: an approach for analysing text-related discussions with regard to movability in reading and how text content is handled

Reading and discussing texts as a means for learning subject content are regular features within educational contexts. This paper presents an approach for intertextual content analysis (ICA) of such text-related discussions revealing what the participants make of the text. Thus, in contrast to many other approaches for analysing conversation that focus essentially on the interaction per se, ICA takes the text as its starting point. Drawing on the concept of text movability and systemic-functional cohesion analyses, the approach combines a reader’s perspective and a text perspective to show the participants’ reception of the text, and also what and how text content is brought into the conversation and how it is handled. In the paper, ICA is described with regard to its theoretical underpinnings, usage and utility. It is suggested that the approach provides educational researchers with an analytical tool that allows detailed ICAs of text-related classroom discussion. Findings may ultimately lead to pedagogical implications with a bearing on classroom practice.     

NASA-TLX for predictability and measurability of instructional design models: case study in design methods

Educational technology research and development - Innovation projects has established as an emerging field of research, a number of issues have emerged; among the others, measurability and...     

The continuity of learning in a translanguaging science classroom

Cultural Studies of Science Education - This article aims to explore and clarify how students’ use of first and second languages in a translanguaging science classroom (TSC) may affect the...     

The vocational turn of adult education in Denmark – an analysis of adult education policy from the late 1990s

ABSTRACT

Denmark has a strong and versatile tradition of adult education. Over a long historical period, adult education for public enlightenment and leisure, for continuing study and for vocational and professional competence have been developed, been made part of state policy and been used by citizens. But in recent years the public and political presence of Danish adult education has changed. While education policy issues generally abound in public and political debates, adult education is given much less attention than earlier. In this article, we trace the causes of this and conclude that it reflects a turn towards focusing on vocational types of adult education and a relocation of adult education policy to networks linking the state and the social partners. Drawing on theories of policy streams, policy networks and the competition state, we provide a historical analysis of Danish adult education reforms during the past two decades and document how the vocational turn has manifested itself.