Professional Cultures in Schools With High and Low Rates of Bullying

Most research on bullying in schools has focussed on characteristics of bullies or victims, and their families. Relatively little has investigated the school's contribution to pupil bullying. Information was obtained from teachers in 22 Norwegian primary schools on bullying and 3 aspects of professional culture. The school highest in bullying had significantly worse scores on all professional culture variables than the school lowest on bullying. The results are discussed with reference to the possibility that improvement in professional culture may contribute to less bullying and overall improvement in behaviour. In turn, these may be prerequisites for improvement in academic standards.     

The neuroscience of perceptual categorization in pigeons: A mechanistic hypothesis

We are surrounded by an endless variation of objects. The ability to categorize these objects represents a core cognitive competence of humans and possibly all vertebrates. Research on category learning in nonhuman animals started with the seminal studies of Richard Herrnstein on the category “human” in pigeons. Since then, we have learned that pigeons are able to categorize a large number of stimulus sets, ranging from Cubist paintings to English orthography. Strangely, this prolific field has largely neglected to also study the avian neurobiology of categorization. Here, we present a hypothesis that combines experimental results and theories from categorization research in pigeons with neurobiological insights on visual processing and dopamine-mediated learning in primates. We conclude that in both fields, similar conclusions on the mechanisms of perceptual categorization have been drawn, despite very little cross-reference or communication between these two areas to date. We hypothesize that perceptual categorization is a two-component process in which stimulus features are first rapidly extracted in a feed-forward process, thereby enabling a fast subdivision along multiple category borders. In primates this seems to happen in the inferotemporal cortex, while pigeons may primarily use a cluster of associative visual forebrain areas. The second process rests on dopaminergic error-prediction learning that enables prefrontal areas to connect top down the relevant visual category dimension to the appropriate action dimension.     

Management of Innovations from a Cultural-Individual Perspective

The history of education and schooling is characterised by not only the attainment of results but also ongoing critique of the existing situation in education and schooling. Developers and researchers are, as a result, constantly seeking new strategies and methods for the improved implementation of innovations in actual educational practice. The central question is which factors and which conditions facilitate the effects of innovations. In an attempt to answer this question, many educators will not so much be concerned with objective structural factors such as available funds, classmates, et cetera. They will be concerned, rather, with the questions of which socially constructed realities and which particular forms of involvement on the part of teachers, school administrators, and counsellors facilitate successful innovation. In our search for an answer to these questions, moreover, we will be guided by a cultural-individual perspective on innovation. Traditional innovative strategies – and, in particular, large scale strategies – seem not always suitable to deal with today's educational problems. Alternative scenario's for the management of innovations are considered.     

The construction of national identity through primary school history: the Irish case

Much recent sociological work on education makes reference to gender, sexual, ethnic, local and political ‘project’ identities, yet there remains a need to bring the nation, and the state, back in; to also question the way in which ‘national’ identities are constructed in a context of globalisation and localisation. Through an analysis of Irish primary history curriculum statements from 1971 and 1999, I identify some key features of the state’s response to identity construction in a globalised context. They include a focus on pupils becoming skilled in reflexively producing identity, and a focus on a ‘boundless’ globalised identity. These changes are not unproblematic.

You will know all too well that Ireland is a country at war with its past—or, at least, with conflicting versions of its several pasts. But we are each of us in a struggle with those … on a much more deeply personal level than we sometimes know. (The character ‘Sr. Mary Rose Kennedy’ in Joseph O’Connor’s novel Inishowen) (O’Connor, 2000 O’Connor, J. 2000. Inishowen, London: Secker & Warburg.  [Google Scholar], p. 42)     

Empire: An Analytical Category for Educational Research

In this article Roland Sintos Coloma argues for the relevance of empire as an analytical category in educational research. He points out the silence in mainstream studies of education on the subject of empire, the various interpretive approaches to deploying empire as an analytic, and the importance of indigeneity in research on empire and education. Coloma examines three award‐winning books, Lawrence Cremin's The Transformation of the School: Progressivism in American Education, 1876–1957, John Willinsky's Learning to Divide the World: Education at Empire's End, and David Wallace Adams's Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928, in order to delineate the heuristic spectrum of the use of empire in educational research. These texts are put in conversation with the interdisciplinary fields of American, postcolonial, race/ethnic, and indigenous studies where questions of empire have received considerable attention. Ultimately, mobilizing empire as an analytical category will enable researchers, policymakers, and educators to establish new connections and dispute long‐standing views about discursive, structural, and affective dynamics at local, national, and global levels.     

The burial of American archaeology

D.J. Preston, “Skeletons in Our Museums' Closets”Harper's, February 1989, 2.     

Une Experience Novatrice en Guinee-Bissau: Les Centres D'education Populaire Integree (CEPI)

Zusammenfassung Seit Erlangung der Unabhängigkeit bemüht sich Guinea-Bissau, ein neues Bildungssystem zu erarbeiten, das sich vorwiegend auf die während der Kampfperiode in den befreiten Zonen gewonnen Erfahrungen stützt. So wurde 1977 anläßlich der Verlängerung der Primärschulzeit um zwei Jahre (von 4 auf 6 Jahre) in der Tombali-Region im Land Balante ein Experiment mit integrierten Volksbildungszentren (CEPI) eingeführt. Der vorliegende Artikel ist ein Bericht über die dabei gemachten Erfahrungen. Er stellt die grundlegenden Prinzipien des CEPI heraus: Mitwirkung der Erwachsenen an der Ausarbeitung von Bildungsprogrammen; Abwechslung von Schulbesuch der Kinder (4 Tage) und Leben in der Gemeinschaft (die drei folgenden Tage); Verbindung von Bildung und Umwandlung. Erste Bewertungen haben gezeigt, welches Interesse die Landbevölkerung diesem neuen Bildungssystem entgegenbringt, das zur Zeit auf zwei andere Regionen des Landes ausgeweitet wird. Allerdings erwachsen dabei neue schwierige Probleme, vor allem das der Ausbildung von Lehrkräften, die imstande sind, das ursprüngliche, in der Experimentierungszone praktizierte pädagogische Konzept zu reproduzieren, ohne es in seiner Natur zu verändern, sowie das Problem der Artikulation des CEPI im Rahmen des übrigen Bildungssystems.

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Since Guinea-Bissau attained independence, it has endeavoured to define a new system of education inspired chiefly by the experience gained in the liberated zones during the period of armed struggle. Thus, when primary education was extended by two years (from 4 to 6 years), an experiment with Centres of Integrated Popular Education (CEPI) was launched in 1977 in the region of Tombali in the Balante area. The present article gives an account of this altogether novel experiment. It underlines the basic principles of the CEPI: to involve adults in the elaboration of educational programmes; to introduce an alternation of school (where the children spend four days) with the community (where they spend the three following days); to link education with transformation. First evaluations have shown the interest taken by farmers in this new education system, which has now been extended to other regions of the country. However, major problems continue to arise, especially that of preparing new educators capable of reproducing the original pedagogical approach followed in the experimental zone without distorting it, and the problem of articulation of the CEPI with the rest of the educational system.

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Résumé Depuis son accession à l'indépendance la Guinée-Bissau s'efforce de définir un nouveau système d'éducation s'inspirant notamment des expériences faites dans les zones libérées pendant la période de lutte armée. C'est ainsi qu'à l'occasion de la prolongation de la scolarité primaire de deux ans (6 années au lieu de 4) une expérience de Centres d'éducation populaire intégrée (CEPI) a été lancée à partir de 1977 dans la région de Tombali en pays Balante. C'est le compte-rendu de cette expérience tout à fait novatrice qui fait l'object de cet article, qui met en évidence des principes de base des CEPI: associer les adultes à la définition des programmes de formation, pratiquer une alternance entre l'école (où les enfants passent 4 jours) et la communauté (où ils passent les 3 jours suivants), lier la formation et la transformation. Les premières évaluations entreprises ont montré tout l'intérêt que portaient les paysans à ce nouveau système d'éducation et son extension est aujourd'hui en cours dans deux autres Régions du Pays. D'importants problèmes continuent cependant à se poser et en particulier celui de la formation des nouveaux éducateurs capables de reproduire sans la dénaturer la démarche pédagogique originale mise en oeuvre dans la zone expérimentale, et le problème de l'articulation des CEPI et du reste du système éducatif.

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Ce texte a pour base deux études réalisées pour l'Unesco:Les méthodes et techniques de la participation au développement (Division de l'Etude du Développement); etLes programmes nationaux de jeunesse axés sur l'emploi: Situations, problOmes et perspectives (Division de la Jeunesse).