Reviewing the Family Unit as a Stakeholder in Talent Development: Is It Undervalued?

As elite youth sport becomes more organized and professionalized, the role of the family is increasingly acknowledged as being significant in the development of young talent. High-profile examples across a range of professional sports, both positive and negative, have drawn attention toward this important stakeholder. Accordingly, this review first examines the key issues in relation to family involvement in talent development in relation to what is perceived as good and bad practice on behalf of the family. Next the key theoretical underpinning is considered, Family Systems Theory, and how it may be integrated within elite youth sport. Finally, the article concludes with a summary of where the current literature leaves us and where we can progress from here. Two possible inputs are suggested that could benefit the effectiveness of family involvement: a focus on the family holistically and a second on the role different family members can play.     

‘I like the sound of that’ – an evaluation of providing audio feedback via the virtual learning environment for summative assessment

This study aims to ascertain student and staff attitudes to and perceptions of audio feedback made available via the virtual learning environment (VLE) for summative assessment. Consistent with action research and reflective practice, this study identifies best practice, highlighting issues in relation to implementation with the intention of redesigning activities in the light of the findings. It utilises four case studies where audio feedback was provided to students using the Wimba voice authoring tool within Blackboard Learn+ for various types of summative assessment. The intention was to identify how and in what context audio feedback via the VLE is effective and why. The research was undertaken via a combination of techniques, including a student survey and staff reflective logs. The findings indicate that students liked the convenience, effectiveness, flexibility and personalised nature of this feedback, but raised concerns with some aspects of the technology. This paper also makes practical recommendations for the use of the feedback mechanism, focusing on the most effective use of the digital medium, and highlights directions for future research.     

Educating child practitioners: a (re)turn to the university disciplines

This paper analyses a specific disjunctive policy space in Scotland involving the current key children's social and educational policy agenda, Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC), and a recent national report on teacher education, the ‘Donaldson Report’. In four main parts, the paper first introduces and applies in policy review and analysis a capitals frame to identify the policy–practice discontinuities currently inherent in the ‘GIRFEC-child practitioner education’ policy space, exemplified by the Donaldson Report. Then, the same capitals frame is applied to examine the capitals resources demanded in the particular ‘child–child practitioner education’ policy space previously delineated. Next, examples of policy disconnects amongst current child practice and practitioner education policy production and implementation, which warrant a concerted integrative cross-sector project to ensure coherent social and intellectual capital relations at all levels, are discussed. Finally, the paper calls for the governing professional registration bodies and universities involved in the education of child-sector practitioners to engage in the redesign of university programmes underpinned by principles of transdisciplinarity and transprofessionalism. The methodology is policy sociology and policy text analysis.     

Talking Together,Learning Together: The Story of English PGCE Student Teachers’ Adventures in Classics

This article reports on the first two phases of a project to promote the classics through English at Key Stage 3, a scion of the Cambridge Schools Classics Project. We discuss the primary importance of speaking and listening in the English classroom both for the individual and the collective, and reflect on the power and importance of using classic tales in English as a means of promoting good-quality oracy. We comment on the precarious position of both oracy and story in the 2014 national curriculum. We report on the impact of a project during which student teachers were introduced to classical oral storytelling and encouraged to use it in their teaching. Findings suggest that the student teachers recognised oracy and storytelling as fundamental to their developing pedagogy and that they saw the need to promote oracy.     

Do values drive the plan? Investigating the nature and role of organizational values in university strategic planning

Strategic planning is a common practice at higher education institutions. Furthermore, it is assumed that identifying organizational values is an essential part of the planning process. Values are often construed as foundational elements of strategic thinking that serve to ‘drive the plan’. However, there is little conceptual or applied evidence to support the effectiveness of coupling organizational values articulation with strategic planning processes. The author reports on a study that was designed to effectively conceptualize organizational values, and foster a deeper understanding of organizational values application in higher education administration. This research involved a textual analysis of strategic planning documents pertaining to organizational values from Canadian universities. Research results offer concrete ways to conceptualize and apply organizational values within university settings. The results serve as a foundation to explore small-group-focused approaches to both policy creation and evaluation pertaining to the articulation of organizational values in university administration.

     

Leveraging Play for Learning and Development: Incorporating Cultural-Evolutionary Insights into Early Educational Practices

There is a renewed scientific interest in the role of childhood in human evolution, pointing to the explorative phase of a human's life history that shapes how children learn and develop. This study presents a synthesis from evolutionary sciences that considers biases in childhood learning through activities in play, exploration, and social interactions. The study argues that childhood education based on this framework diverges from formal education. This framework explains why common misconceptions about childhood learning arise and how to resolve them. Finally, we propose how childhood education can be changed to take advantage of biological biases in learning.     

Participatory Action Research: issues in theory and practice

Action research is now common in educational and social practices of various kinds. The renaissance of this valuable approach to social enquiry has many virtues, but success is somewhat soured by cooption of some of the techniques occasionally used by action researchers for the technical improvement of practices, the Implicit values of which are poorly understood and timidly questioned. Naive cooption is accompanied by both traditional and new critique. Like most approaches to educational and social research, action research (or some people's impressions of it) has been subjected to critique by theorists of the so‐called post‐modern turn. These critiques have become prematurely Judgemental, and though drawing on what some see as powerful theoretical resources, are somewhat oblivious to the breadth and dynamism of action research theory and practice and dismissive of the achievements of action researchers who often work in contexts decidedly more risky than the academies which nurture and reward critique. Action research remains a diverse and thoroughly Justified and preferred mode of educational and social enquiry, continuing to address the concerns of both its practitioners and its critics.

     

Public understanding of science: from contents to processes

Public understanding of science is commonly seen in terms of lay persons' understanding of the contents of science. This article argues that it may be more salient to consider public understanding of the internal processes of science ‐ of the nature of scientific knowledge and of the sorts of information that science can reasonably be expected to provide. Drawing on the reported statements of non‐scientists in the media following the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident, the article argues that the view of scientific knowledge that many people appear to hold is not one that can help them interpret and cope successfully with sts issues. The role that formal science education plays in sustaining this unhelpful view of science is discussed and some implications for practice are considered.