Re‐engineering the Horizontally Challenged Pastoral System

The writers, as Section Manager and head of an inner‐city school under Special Measures, describe the school's approach to the re‐engineering of its pastoral system from a horizontal, year‐based system, to a semi‐vertical 'family' system. The article explores the reasons for the change, the planning process and the outcomes and suggests ways of implementing successful change over a short time‐frame.     

Japan’s English-medium instruction initiatives and the globalization of higher education

This article analyzes a recent initiative of Japan’s Ministry of Education, which aims to internationalize higher education in Japan. The large-investment project “Top Global University Project” (TGUP) has emerged to create globally oriented universities, to increase the role of foreign languages in higher education, and to foster global human resources. The TGUP identifies 37 universities: 13 as “top global universities” intended to compete in the top 100 university world rankings and 24 “global traction universities” intended to lead the internationalization of higher education in Japan. Despite the substantial funding behind this initiative, little research has been conducted to evaluate the potential impact of this policy on language planning in higher education in Japan. This paper addresses this gap in its exploration of the TGUP, including key changes from previous internationalization policies. It then presents an analysis of publicly available documents regarding the policy, collected from all 37 of the participant universities. Findings indicate a positive departure from older policy trends and the emergence of flexible, unique forms of English language education in Japan’s universities.     

Resettled Refugee Youths’ Stories of Migration,Schooling, and Future: Challenging Dominant Narratives About Refugees

In the United States and around the world, refugees are frequently portrayed as helpless victims, burdens of the host society, and potential criminals. Similarly, in schools even well-intentioned educators focus on what they lack, rather than the various stories, experiences, and perspectives they have to offer. To provide another perspective, we aim to find ways to empower resettled refugee youth and draw implications for education of former refugees and other marginalized students. Through interviews, we sought to understand the stories of ten former Burmese refugee adolescents with respect to their backgrounds, migration, and school experiences. Our analysis shows that they recognized their marginalized positionings in the United States that are attributable to their limited English proficiency, ethnicity and race, and former refugee status. They, however, authored narratives of themselves that contest such marginalizing narratives by providing diverse stories of refugees different from dominant ones and positioning themselves as valuable members of local communities and change agents for a more equitable society. These findings call for pedagogical approaches in which schools and communities provide space for stories that former refugee youths bring, value stories authored by them, and draw on their perspectives on inequity and social transformation.     

The bond between intelligences: Cultural,emotional, and social

Increasing interest in multiple forms of nonacademic intelligences in addition to the well‐established intelligent quotient (IQ) to explain individual success has triggered a need for clear establishment of the theoretical and empirical connection among these constructs. As such, this article explores the interrelationship that exists among three forms of nonacademic intelligences: cultural, emotional, and social. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.     

Tracking of physical activity in adolescence

The present analysis aimed to describe the degree of tracking of physical activity over an 8-year follow-up period among a cohort of 557 adolescents in western Norway (13 years of age at baseline). Frequency and time spent in leisure-time physical activity were assessed at ages 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19 and 21 years through self-report questionnaires. The cross-sectional results indicated that proportions of adolescents who were physically active declined from 13 to 19 years of age and increased slightly from 19 to 21 years of age. Longitudinally, various measures indicated a weak degree of tracking of physical activity (Pearson's r was .22 for boys and. 18 for girls across the 8-year period). The least active persons during early adolescence were those least likely to change during their teenage years. In sum, the findings indicated a weak tendency of tracking of physical activity through adolescence.