Engineering Training and Careers for Women in Britain: an overview of the initiatives undertaken by the Engineering Industry Training Board

The Engineering Industry Training Board of the United Kingdom has been heavily involved in special projects to increase the number of women in engineering careers in manufacturing industry, both at technician and professional level. The scope of these initiatives is outlined and the research carried out into their implementation and outcome is reviewed. The projects have had considerable success in themselves, in bringing young women into engineering careers in increasing numbers and have also been influential in changing the climate of opinion concerning the appropriateneness of professional and technician engineering careers for women. Research has thrown a great deal of light on to the issues still to be solved, if women are to enter the engineering field of employment in satisfactory numbers. Recently, the issue of how to help older women engineers cope with the dual roles of career and family, has been addressed and especially how to reduce the impact on careers which can result from breaks in full-time work due to family commitments.     

Insight into Industry: one school's approach

Leadership provided by the headteacher is widely acknowledged to be a crucial variable in determining the effectiveness of schools. However, the majority of leadership studies consist of either surveys or interviews which the researcher has conducted with head teachers or case studies written by the head teachers which draw heavily upon their own experience, and as such are essentially 'autobiographical' in the perspective they provide on leadership in schools (Ribbins &; Sherratt, 1992). The objectives of this article are to: set out a new model of effective school leadership based on recently completed empirical research; demonstrate how the multi-perspective methodology adopted contributed to a critique of existing models of leadership and the development of a new grounded model and discuss the analytical issues raised by the multi-perspective methodology which involved all the stakeholders in a school community.     

RACISM AND HISTORICAL UNDERSTANDING: SOME USES OF BLACK HISTORY

Is the popularity of market-based educational reform among urban residents of color the epitaph of a progressive educational vision, or does it bespeak a struggle to reincarnate that vision within a postwelfare state? This article examines ethnographic work with African American voucher families in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Discursive overlaps and tensions among three sets of stakeholders—African American voucher families, the powerful social forces that fund voucher reform, and defenders of public schools and educational progressivism—suggest avenues for rearticulating voucher families to ultimately more democratic and effective educational reform movements.     

Teacher perspectives on integrating ICT into subject teaching: commitment,constraints, caution,and change

This paper examines how secondary teachers of the core subjects of English, mathematics, and science have begun to integrate information and communication technology (ICT) into mainstream classroom practice in English schools. It draws on an analysis of 18 focus‐group interviews with subject departments in these fields. Evident commitment to incorporating ICT was tempered by a cautious, critical approach, and by the influence of external constraints. Teacher accounts emphasized both the use of ICT to enhance and extend existing classroom practice, and change in terms of emerging forms of activity which complemented or modified practice. A gradual process of pedagogical evolution was apparent; teachers were developing and trialling new strategies specifically for mediating ICT‐supported learning. In particular, these overcame the potentially obstructive role of some forms of ICT by focusing pupils’ attention onto underlying learning objectives.     

There Must Be More to Life than This

Creativity is not art optional extra. It is the essence of life.     

THE APPLICATION OF A FACTORIAL DESIGN TO THE STUDY OF CULTURAL BIAS IN GENERAL CULTURE ITEMS ON THE NATIONAL TEACHER EXAMINATION1

This article describes a series of studies performed with the National Teacher Examinations which were designed to study the relationship between the cultural content of special sets of general culture test items and the performance of blacks and whites on these experimental items. Significant differences between the performance of blacks and whites were found in terms of black, modern, and traditional test items. A replication of the study with the same test items, and also with a different group of test items, is also described.     

Counselor Recall of Specific Details: Implications for Counseling and Counselor Training

This study examined two verbal process variables in counseling: (a) accuracy of counselor recall statements, and (b) relevance of counselor recall statements.