Sixth form religion in Northern Ireland: the Protestant profile 1968–1998

The aim of the present study was to build on John Greer’s systematic set of studies concerned with teenage beliefs and values conducted among samples of sixth form students attending County and Protestant voluntary schools in Northern Ireland in 1968, 1978 and 1988. The present study replicated the earlier surveys for a further time in 1998. The results provide a unique snapshot of the persistence of religious affiliation, belief and practice across the latter part of the twentieth century in a nation which has continued to resist the secularisation process so eroding the place of religion in the neighbouring nations of England, Wales and Scotland.     

The professional practice of educational psychology

This paper discusses the potential for the field of educational psychology to move beyond psychology-applied-to-education to develop a unique professional practice component. We argue that many of the things educational psychologists are trained to do and have been doing for years fall within the service provider domain. Educational psychology is the only subfield of psychology to focus on the design of instructional systems, and many valuable psychological services derived from the knowledge base of instruction are worthy of professional recognition. We also discuss components of professional training for educational psychologists.     

Datafying the teaching ‘profession’: remaking the professional teacher in the image of data

This paper explores how data-driven practices and logics have come to reshape the possibilities by which the teaching profession, and teaching professionals, can be known and valued. Informed by the literature and theorising around educational performativity, the constitutive power of numbers, and affective responses to data, it shows how different US educators experienced, and came to embody, new forms of numbers-based accountability. Drawing on interviews with teachers, and school- and district-level leaders, as well as relevant school-based documents, it is argued that such data are now both effective (i.e. they change ‘what counts’ within the profession) and affective (i.e. they produce new expectations for teachers to profess data-responsive dispositions over actual educative practices). This prevalence and use of data have combined not only to change teaching into a ‘data profession’, but also to change teachers into ‘professors’ of data.     

Chinese teachers' attitudes toward teaching physical activity and fitness

In this study we examined Chinese physical educators' attitudes toward teaching physical activity and fitness. We then compared the Chinese teacher attitudes to their American counterparts. Participants were 330 Chinese elementary, middle and high school physical educators. The Teachers' Attitudes Toward Curriculum in Physical Education (TATCPE) instrument was used to gather data. One‐way repeated measures ANOVA and Bonferroni post hoc tests indicated that the Chinese teachers scored significantly higher on the self‐actualization and physical activity/fitness than the motor skill development and social development outcome goals. The MANOVA on motor skill development, physical activity/fitness, self‐actualization and social development outcome goals showed no significant differences for gender, teaching level, or years of teaching experience among the Chinese teachers. Teachers from both countries, however, considered all four domain areas to be important outcome goals. Despite cultural differences, Chinese and American teachers share key core attitudinal values about their respective programs.     

Effects of strategy training on reading comprehension in first and foreign language

In this article we report on the effects of an experimental programme to train reading strategies. Students had to work in pairs on the execution of reading tasks following a consciousness-raising method, consisting of an orientation phase in which they explore the reading tasks and select a reading strategy, a practice/application phase in which actual performance takes place and a verbalisation phase, in which the steps that lead to a correct solution must be formulated explicitly. The programme was directed to four reading strategies: looking for key fragments, paying attention to structure marking elements (hinge words), making up questions (questioning) and mapping the most important information from a text (semantic mapping). On the basis of this programme 15-year old Dutch students from the third year of regular secondary education (N=12) have been trained in applying these reading strategies when reading in their first language (Dutch). The results have been compared with those of a control group (N=119). We will show that the training programme has an effect on the mastery of the four strategic reading activities and leads to a substantial improvement of the reading comprehension in the first language (Dutch). Transfer effects to reading in a foreign language (English) could not be ascertained.     

Keyboarding as general education: post-school employment and earnings effects

This study reports on the post-school attainment effects of offering courses in typing and keyboarding as part of general education. The analysis was designed to develop models to analyse the effects of keyboarding on employment, earnings, further educational attainment and related distributional and cost-effectiveness issues. We assess these models empirically using national survey data from the federal government's High School and Beyond data set. Results indicate significant positive ramifications on all aspects cited above.     

An Interview with Fiona French

In this interview Fiona French discusses her work and career with David Lewis. She describes early influences and stresses her lifelong love of colour and pattern. Amongst other themes she considers the factual basis of most of her books and her lack of interest in fantasy; her preference for clear, simple prose; her constant shifts in style and approach and the increasing freedom of expression she has developed over a long career. David Lewis has been a primary school teacher, educational researcher and teacher trainer. He has written numerous articles on children's picturebooks and is the author of Reading Contemporary Picturebooks: Picturing Text. He is a member of the UK editorial board of Children's Literature in Education.     

Creative leadership? ‘It’s just the norm’

Creativity in teaching and leadership continues to be a topic of interest in education. This article focuses on comments made by a school’s leadership team as part of a larger study in which a mixed methods case study design involving the school’s leadership team and staff who taught Arts (either as specialist teachers or generalist classroom teachers) was used. The research took place in a 6-year-old Preparatory Year to Year 9 (P-9) school in a growth corridor in metropolitan Melbourne. Staff members in the school provided responses to a questionnaire, participated in focus group discussions and were invited to maintain journals during the course of the study. Comments made by members of the school’s leadership team are analysed in this article using perspectives of pedagogical leadership and relational power. The article finds that the school's leadership team models and encourages experimentation with new ideas across the school as the team promotes the development of collaborative professional learning approaches in their relatively young school. The article concludes that professional learning communities (PLCs) within the school will be well-placed to pursue the collaborative approaches modelled by the school’s leadership team to ensure that a school-wide focus on student learning continues.     

Correlates of spelling abilities in children with early speech sound disorders

The correlates of spelling impairment wereexamined in children with histories of earlyspeech sound disorders. The spelling errors of52 children with histories of speech sounddisorders were analyzed to predict theassociation between weaknesses in expressivelanguage skills in early childhood andschool-age spelling abilities. Resultsrevealed that children with preschool speechsound and language problems became poorerspellers at school age than did children withpreschool speech sound disorders only. However, even children with isolated speechsound disorders demonstrated a weakness inspelling skills relative to their reading andlanguage abilities and Weschler Performance IQ.Measures of phonological awareness were highlycorrelated with spelling skills, suggestingthat phonological processing abilities arerelated to the ability to spell phoneticallypredictable words. Analysis of spelling errorsbased on level of phonological awareness skillrevealed that children with preschool speechsound disorders utilize phonetic strategies inspelling phonetically predictable words. Familial aggregation of spelling disorderssuggests a possible genetic component that ismodified by gender.