Gospel Values and Catholic Education: Revitalizing the Faith Community in a Culture of “Whatever”

The Second Vatican Council introduced a new narrative for Catholic school. Rather than serving a primarily catechetical purpose, Catholic schools were to share in the Church's evangelizing mission by embodying an ideal learning community in a manner rooted in Gospel values. This paper argues that Gospel values are not exported from the Bible and applied to Catholic schools. Instead, they emerge in the experience of teaching-learning as a humanly liberating activity in relation to the human reality of God's Kingdom realized in Jesus of Nazareth and explores revitalizing Catholic education through Gospel values, without at the same time being sectarian.     

Students’ science attitudes,beliefs, and context: associations with science and chemistry aspirations

There is a widespread concern that relatively few students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, continue to study chemistry and other science subjects after compulsory education. Yet it remains unclear how different aspects of students’ background and home context, their own attitudes and beliefs, and their experiences of particular teaching approaches in school might limit or facilitate their studying aspirations; concurrently, less research has specifically focused on and surveyed disadvantaged students. In order to gain more insight, 4780 students were surveyed, covering those in Year 7 (age 11–12 years) and in Year 8 (age 12–13) from schools in England with high proportions of those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Predictive modelling highlighted that the students’ aspirations to study non-compulsory science in the future, and to study the particular subject of chemistry, were strongly associated with their extrinsic motivation towards science (their perceived utility of science, considered as a means to gain particular careers or skills), their intrinsic interest in science, and their engagement in extra-curricular activities. Additionally, their self-concept beliefs (their confidence in their own abilities in science), some teaching approaches, and encouragement from teachers and family alongside family science capital had smaller but still relevant associations.     

We reap what we sew: perpetuating biblical illiteracy in new English Religious Studies exams and the proof text binary question

ABSTRACT

This article draws on three sources of evidence that together indicate hermeneutical weaknesses in exam courses on Christianity in English Religious Education (RE). It scrutinises a single exam paper and an associated text book from a recent authorised course. It conceptually explores features of a new style of long Religious Studies (RS) exam question that is commonly set for the majority of students studying for a RS qualification at 15–16 years old. It combines these documentary sources with a focus group interview of teachers in the first year of teaching the new GCSE Religious Studies. The findings from the document analysis, conceptual analysis and focus group interview, together concur that there is a problem related to the use of fragmentary texts and the promotion of a particularly propositional conception of religion. These features are structured in by systemic elements. A small proportion of students follow text-based GCSE routes include a more detailed study of Biblical texts but the majority of 15–16-year-old students do not and so are exposed to this problem. These weaknesses could be ‘designed out’ of exams with smarter questions and mitigated against by curriculum content that specified the study of how texts are interpreted, as well as teacher expertise in the teaching and practise of hermeneutics.     

我是传奇(英文)

在一次可怕的疫病传遍世界后,人们变成了夜间活动的嗜血魔物(bloodthirsty,nocturnal creatures),只有罗伯特·奈维尔幸免于难,但同时也成为变种人的猎物。白天,他四处奔波,努力寻找可能的生存者并消灭被感染的吸血鬼们(stalking the infected monstrosities);夜晚,他蜷缩在家中祈祷黎明赶快到来(barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn)……这部恐怖小说(horror)的同名电影由威尔·史密斯主演,刚上映,就获得周票房冠军;同时,小说也获得了一致好评。下面这一段就是我们唯一的幸存者白天的活动情况。     

Strategies for success in education: Time management is more important for part-time than full-time community college students

This paper examines relationships between the Big Five personality factors, time management, and grade-point-average in 556 community colleges students. A path model controlling for vocabulary, gender, and demographic covariates demonstrated that time management mediates the relationship between conscientiousness and students' academic achievement at community college. Separate modeling for part-time (n = 147) and full-time students (n = 409) showed that this mediation was moderated by enrollment status. Thus, time management was a significant mediator for part-time students but not for full-time students. The greater importance of time management for part- versus full-time students suggests that noncognitive constructs such as time management may be more critical for non-traditional students. These findings gather fresh currency as ever increasing numbers of students are enrolling part-time in post-secondary education across the globe.     

Undergraduate orientations towards higher education in Germany and England: problematizing the notion of ‘student as customer’

There is a great deal of discussion in the academic literature around how the current conditions in higher education frame students as customers. Observers are of the view that rankings and marketing, an increased focus on student satisfaction, and particularly tuition fees, encourage an instrumental, passive attitude towards a university education. Given the volume of attention directed towards this topic, it is perhaps surprising that there is relatively little scholarship that examines it empirically. Some who have addressed it presumed a customer/consumer orientation in students and have been somewhat—but not entirely successful—in generating evidence to confirm those assumptions. It appears that the expectations of this instrumental, passive orientation are being realised in part, but that this is also mediated by other dispositions. What could be considered to be missing from the analysis thus far is an exploration of how students make university-related decisions (not simply what choices are based on) and how they understand the respective roles of the student and university. This study begins to fill that gap, exploring the orientations towards university of undergraduates in Germany and England, two countries where the diffusion of market conditions in higher education policies has been somewhat contrasting. Distinctions between the German and English students did emerge, but these were less based on those countries’ unequal engagement with tuition fees and rankings and more to do with other aspects of their university cultures and the world beyond their degrees. This suggests that how people approach their time as students is more complex than some of the literature assumes. Furthermore, at the very least, any consideration of this topic must include an analysis of how students themselves understand and experience their higher education and broader social contexts.     

Accountability and control in American schools*

Abstract

One of the most controversial and significant of contemporary education reforms has been the teacher accountability movement. From this perspective, low-quality teachers and teaching are a major factor behind inadequate school performance, and a lack of accountability and control in schools is a major factor behind the problem of low-quality teachers and teaching. In turn, to advocates of this reform movement, the solution is to centralize control of schools and hold teachers more accountable. Utilizing a sociology of organizations, occupations and work perspective, the objective of this article was to offer a critique of the teacher accountability perspective and movement. This article draws from, and summarizes, the results of a series of empirical research projects on the levels, distribution and effects of accountability and control in American schools. The argument of the article is that the teacher accountability perspective overlooks some of the most important sources and forms of organizational accountability and control that exist in schools and overlooks the ways schools themselves, and in particular the ways they are managed and organized, contribute to the teacher quality problem. As a result, teacher accountability reforms often do not succeed and can have a negative impact on teacher quality and school performance.     

The Relations of Regualation and Emotionality to Resiliency and Competent Social Functioning in Elementary School Children

The relations of regulation and emotionality to elementary school children's social functioning were examined. Teachers and peer reproted on children's social functioning; I parent and teacher rated children on various measures of regulation, resiliency, and emotionality; and a behavioural index of regulation was obtained. The effects of individual differences in attentional regulation on social status and socially appropriate behavior were mediated by resiliency, and dispositional negative emotionality moderated the positive relation between attentional control and resiliency (with this path being stronger for children high in negative emotinality). The effects of behavioural regulation were not mediated by resiliency; however, the relation of behavioral regulation to socilaly appropriate behaviour (but not social status) was moderated by negative emotionality, with effects being significant and higher for children high in negative emotionality.     

The development of a video database for language educational research projects

The analysis of classroom observation data is seen as increasingly important in research on the impact of high‐stakes language tests or new foreign‐language programmes on students, teachers and other stakeholders. Video‐recordings of language teaching and learning in classrooms impacted by such tests or programmes can provide revealing data, which, however, may be difficult to analyse in raw recorded form. The organisation of video‐recordings into an interactive database facilitates the retrieval and analysis of data in response to particular research questions. Informed by current research on the use of video in education, especially educational research, and by the relevant video database literature, this paper describes a video database developed by the University of Cambridge English for Speakers of Other Languages (Cambridge ESOL) Examinations operation, part of Cambridge Assessment, the new identity of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES). This paper describes three Cambridge ESOL impact studies for which the data were collected, and discusses the video‐recording equipment used, approaches adopted and decisions made. It then outlines the aims, principles and approaches involved in the development of the impact research video database, including software selection, main design features and envisaged future uses. A step‐by‐step account for the likely video database user is included, along with sample screenshots.