The role of special schools for children with profound and multiple learning difficulties: is segregation always best?

The education of young people with profound and multiple learning difficulties continues to raise challenges and controversies. In this article, Ben Simmons, an ESRC funded PhD student and research assistant, and Phil Bayliss, programme director for the masters degree in special education and disability, both based in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of Exeter, describe their research into provision for pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties in a special school in the south west of England. Their work, based in an interpretivist, qualitative approach, set out to illuminate issues relating to the inclusion of pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties. The findings presented here suggest that the school, in spite of its strong reputation, struggled significantly to provide appropriate learning experiences for pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties. Ben Simmons and Phil Bayliss discuss the need for improved staff development opportunities focused on enhancing current levels of knowledge and skills. They conclude by calling for a reappraisal of the established view that special schools necessarily provide the best learning environment for pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties.     

Governing software: networks,databases and algorithmic power in the digital governance of public education

This article examines the emergence of ‘digital governance’ in public education in England. Drawing on and combining concepts from software studies, policy and political studies, it identifies some specific approaches to digital governance facilitated by network-based communications and database-driven information processing software that are being discursively promoted in education by cross-sectoral intermediary organizations. Such intermediaries, including National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, Demos, the Innovation Unit, the Education Foundation and the Nominet Trust, are increasingly seeking to participate in new digitally mediated forms of educational governance. Through their promotion of network-based pedagogies and database-driven analytics software, these organizations are seeking to delegate educational decision-making to socio-algorithmic forms of power that have the capacity to predict, govern and activate learners' capacities and subjectivities.     

Who Owns the Unexpected? Insights from Antigone for Don Lamberton’s economic question

Dissent and assent contribute to new information and knowledge in that they foster ideas, avert errors and counter misplaced beliefs. Although intended to facilitate progress, innovation and creativity, dissent may be opposed by the closed mind and defensive mindset. Don Lamberton encountered a specific mindset in his own duties to scholarship in economics. Thus, the perspective of dissent is a fitting way to pay homage to his scholarship. However, this paper is also a lament. It gives an interpretation of Antigone from political philosophy which depicts Antigone rocking an ideological boat harboured by the polis. The silencing of Antigone’s voice results in unexpected losses in the oikos. This is the sort of tragedy threatening critical and innovative scholarship in the twenty-first century.     

狩猎、体育与相关社会问题研究——基于历史人类学视角的考察

通过历史资料分析、对比研究、逻辑分析等方法对狩猎、体育以及相关社会问题进行研究,研究认为:狩猎与体育的发展是相辅相成的;狩猎的过程和体育竞赛的过程是高度吻合的,体育竞赛可以视为一种抽象的狩猎活动,而升级、变异的狩猎和体育可能导致战争的发生;在当今社会,商务人士、沉迷于网络游戏的群体以及罪犯,都从事着象征性的狩猎活动,并引发了一系列社会问题。现代社会密集型的体育赛事有缓解人类狩猎欲望和社会冲突的功能,但却又为恐怖袭击和暴乱活动的制造者们提供了良好的"狩猎场所",文明社会如何解决人类的狩猎本能问题还需要进一步的探索。     

探索有效终身学习之指标:“学习能量”及其动态测评

“学习能量”有关学习的倾向、态度和价值观,是英国教育界近年来出现的讨论“学会学习”的一种新的话语.它包含了改变与学习、意义建构、探究意识、创造力、学习关系、战略意识和心理弹性七大维度.“有效终身学习指标”作为其动态测评工具,对教学和科研的意义重大.“学习能量”为切实改进教学法、进行课程变革、开展个性化学习以及发展终身学习型社会提供了有力的理论依据和实践框架.它最大的创新之处在于激发并解放了学习者终身学习的能动性,对进一步深化中国的教育改革有着重要的启示.     

博白地佬话词汇特点

事物的特点,因分析的角度不同而不同。方言的词汇特点也一样,从不同的角度可以分析出不同的特点。从词源和词的构成分析博白地佬话词汇,其特点主要有:保留了诸多的古语词;有一批与广东粤语共通的词汇;有一批与少数民族语言音近义同的词语;有许多生动形象的方言词;有丰富的带缀词;有丰富的连绵词。     

High school boys’ and girls’ writing conceptions and writing self-efficacy beliefs: what is their role in writing performance?

This study investigated the conceptions about writing and writing self-efficacy beliefs held by high school students in relation to the students’ gender as well as their associations with writing achievement. The results show that female students have more sophisticated writing conceptions than their male counterparts but no gender differences were found in writing self-efficacy beliefs. In addition, results reveal that writing self-efficacy beliefs and gender play an important role in predicting writing performance and that writing performance is moderated by students’ writing conceptions. Educational implications and further research are discussed.     

Cross-cultural Perspectives of Successful Aging: Young Turks and Europeans

Successful aging (SA) has been conceptualized in a number of ways. Despite increasing research into how laypersons define SA, few studies capturing lay perspectives of SA in younger cohorts and in non-English speaking countries have been undertaken. The current study examines cross-cultural perspectives of SA in young (aged 18–35), lay adults from a variety of continental European countries and Turkey. Participants were recruited via snowball sampling from social network sites and invited to participate in an online survey. Persons between 18–35 years from Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Netherlands, Romania, Switzerland, or Turkey were included. Respondents (total: 390; Belgian: 32; Estonian: 96; German: 76; Romanian: 47; Swiss: 39; Dutch: 30; Turkish: 70), were primarily women (56.4%) and students (66.2%), with an average age of 24.1 years (SD 3.7). Personal resources, social and active engagement all emerged as dominant themes across countries, but were articulated in subtly different ways in the participant countries. Positive perspectives, desirable attributes and satisfaction themes were intertwined within themes of acceptance and engagement. The current study provides a first step in the inclusion of geographic and cultural diversity into the SA literature. These results suggest that layperson conceptualizations of SA have broad-sweeping similarities, but further research is required to articulate the nuance of cultural influences on SA.     

Embedded creative workers and creative work in education

This article is concerned with the many connections between creative work and workers, and education work and industries. Employment in the education sector has long been recognised as a significant element in creative workers’ portfolio careers. Much has been written, for example, about the positive contribution of ‘artists in schools’ initiatives. Australian census analyses reveal that education is the most common industry sector into which creative workers are ‘embedded’, outside of the core creative industries. However, beyond case studies and some survey research into arts instruction and instructors, we know remarkably little about in which education roles and sectors creative workers are embedded, and the types of value that they add in those roles and sectors. This article reviews the extant literature on creative work and workers in education, and presents the findings of a survey of 916 graduates from creative undergraduate degrees in Australia. The findings suggest that education work is very common among creative graduates indeed, while there are a range of motivating factors for education work among creative graduates, on average they are satisfied with their careers, and that creative graduates add significant creative-cultural and creative-generic value add through their work.