Education,religion, and deliberative democracy

This paper describes how a group of primary schools in Northern Ireland plan a differentiated curriculum, and the extent to which subject co-ordinators offer guidance to teacher colleagues in planning for English, mathematics and science. The views of headteachers, subject co-ordinators and teachers on the ways in which plans are translated into classroom practice for higher and lower attaining pupils in both classwork and homework were obtained. The curriculum support staff described how far they consider teachers are applying the principles of differentiation, including progression and continuity. The results showed that, although most teachers were said to understand the meaning of differentiation moderately well, help was needed in drawing up schemes of work and providing for the extremes of pupil attainment.     

Executing Democracy: Volume 1: Capital Punishment & The Making of America, 1683–1807

The Nature of Literature: Its Relation to Science, Language and Human Experience. By Thomas Clark Pollock. Princeton: the Princeton University Press, 1942; pp. 218 + xxvi. $3.00.

Roosevelt's Foreign Policy, 1933–1941: Franklin D. Roosevelt's Unedited Speeches and Messages. Compiled and collated by Douglas Lurton. New York: Wilfred Funk, Inc., 1942; pp. xv + 634. $3.75.

Voices of History: Great Speeches and Papers of the Year 1941. Edited by Franklin Watts with an introduction by Charles Beard. New York: Franklin Watts, Inc., 1942; pp. xix + 669. $3.50.

Playwrights Present. By H. H. Giles and Robert J. Cadigan. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1943; pp. xiii + 290. $1.60.

A Theory of Meaning Analyzed. General Semantics Monographs, Number III. Chicago: Institute of General Semantics, 1942; pp. xvi and 46. $1.50.

Speech Correction on the Contract Plan. By Ruth Manser. Rev. ed. New York: Prentice‐Hall, Inc., 1942; pp. xix + 381. $3.00.

Speech in a Democracy. By Herold T. Ross and Clarence C. Shoemaker. Boston: Expression Co., 1942; pp. 276. $2.50.     

Qualifications in professional development: a discussion with reference to conservators in the United Kingdom and Ireland

In the professions, qualifications are most widely associated with entry routes and qualifying to practise, although they are now playing an increasing role in the continuing development of experienced practitioners. The evolving profession of conservation (of historic and artistic works) provides a case study where many questions about training, qualifications and practising requirements are still open. Using this profession as a lens, questions can be posed about the kinds of entry routes and initial qualifications that are most relevant for would-be practitioners, what means are appropriate to approve practitioners as fully qualified, and how qualifications can play an effective role in continuing professional development.     

Outdoor learning: primary pupils' experiences and teachers' interaction in outdoor learning

This paper draws upon research undertaken for the Outdoor Pedagogies project and explores the processes of teaching and learning at one outdoor residential education centre with children and staff from ‘Oliver’ Primary School. Data were collected through ethnographic research and include participant observation, interviews with teachers and centre staff and group interviews with pupils. Whilst the interviewed children reflected positively on the experience, we highlight the importance of the teachers' interaction with the children in providing for democratic, shared positive learning through the presentation of an extreme or ‘critical’ incident. We raise the issue of professional development for school teachers working with primary school children in outdoor, residential situations.     

Towards a critical re-conceptualization of the purpose of higher education: the role of Ubuntu-Currere in re-imagining teaching and learning in South African higher education

ABSTRACT

The 2015–2016 South African higher education students’ movement proved historical for our country in bringing to our dinner tables: issues of higher education transformation and decolonisation; institutional culture(s); curriculum reform; the need to foreground and make inclusive assessment in education; the coloniality in our knowledge production, and more. Influenced by the emergence of the student movements and the critique they have brought to South African higher education, we bring to the fore the often silent critical reflections on the purposes of higher education in general, and in South Africa especially, as they relate to teaching and learning. We propose that the purposes of higher education in relation to teaching and learning ought to respond to (1) context, (2) democratic difference, and (3) cosmopolitan perspectives. We argue that discourses, phases and logics about South African higher education have tended to disregard and, at times, blur the context and differences as well as cosmopolitan perspectives. Using the notion of Ubuntu-Currere, we re-imagine how teaching and learning could respond to context, difference and cosmopolitanism with examples from the South African higher education experience.