Private Tutoring and Social Cohesion

Mastering the public school curriculum is so important to a child's occupational future that in many regions of the world “shadow” education outside of the public system has now become the norm. In one way, this is excellent news because private investment in human capital is a strong contributor to economic and social development. However, private demand is driving a separate and powerful private industry. According to the constitutional standards in many countries, education is supposed to be “free.” This suggests that, in some instances, shadow education might be unconstitutional. The United Nations Declaration on Human Rights also says that education should be free. This suggests that in some circumstances, shadow education may be contrary to the principles of human rights. The question addressed in this article is whether shadow education is wrong. This article summarizes the arguments in favor and against shadow education and ends with a series of recommendations to better manage what has become a worldwide dilemma.     

Validity of student self-reported ratings of learning

This study examined the relationship between individual student self-reported ratings of progress on relevant learning objectives and performance on exams administered during a college course. Across three sections of the same course taught by a single instructor, 188 students rated themselves at the end of the course on two objectives identified by the instructor as either essential or important. They also rated themselves on 10 other objectives the instructor identified as having minor or no importance. Self-ratings on course-relevant objectives correlated significantly and positively with four out of five exams and the course total, whereas ratings on irrelevant objectives did not. Students who rated their progress as either exceptional or substantial generally performed better on course examinations than those who rated their progress as moderate or less. These findings support the validity of student self-reported ratings of learning.     

Moving feedback forward: theory to practice

There is substantial research interest in tutor feedback and students’ perception and use of such feedback. This paper considers some of the major issues raised in relation to tutor feedback and student learning. We explore some of the current feedback drivers, most notably the need for feedback to move away from simply a monologue from a tutor to a student to a valuable tutor–student dialogue. In relation to moving feedback forward the notions of self regulation, dialogue and social learning are explored and then considered in relation to how such theory can translate into practice. The paper proposes a framework (GOALS) as a tool through which tutors can move theory into practice with the aim of improving student learning from feedback.     

Learning in the circumstances of practice

Learning in the circumstances of practice stands as the commonest and most enduring way occupational capacities have been learnt across human history, and, likely, are currently learnt. Yet, a comprehensive account of this means of learning remains absent, which limits the legitimacy of workplaces as sites of learning, the learning arising from them and understandings of how to organize, promote and evaluate that learning. When advancing this account, it is necessary to avoid being constrained by the discourse of schooling and orthodoxies of schooled societies, which can distort considerations of learning through practice on its own terms. When reviewed, anthropological and historical literature on learning occupational practices outside of educational provisions offers fresh suggestions including that such an account likely comprise elements of practice curriculum and pedagogies and personal epistemologies, albeit set within particular complexes of cultural, societal and situational factors. A key distinction arising from such a review is the emphasis on individuals’ active processes of learning and how these are enacted in the circumstances of practice, rather than on teaching or instruction. Such a distinction runs deep in this literature and has consequences for conceptions of understandings and efforts to promote and improve learning through practice.     

The role of the ‘technical fix’ in UK lifelong education policy

The integral place of information and communications technology (ICT) in UK lifelong education has been established by a series of technology-based initiatives introduced by the New Labour government since 1997. Initiatives such as the University for Industry, learndirect, People's Network and National Grid for Learning are being implemented as part of a coherent lifelong education policy-agenda fundamentally based upon the use of ICT. Yet, beneath the political enthusiasm for technology-based education, the role of ICT in lifelong learning remains largely unexamined and unproblematized, with many policy-makers and educationalists content to view technology as providing a ‘technical fix’ for many of education's problems. From this background, the present paper provides a critical perspective on the technological foundations of the UK government's lifelong education agenda. In particular, it examines the nature and form of the policies that have been introduced and then contrasts them with the rhetorical claims that are being made by government and other official actors. In this way the paper discusses how such policies continue to be shaped within a restrictive technocratic and determinist discourse of the ‘technical fix’, thus conforming to traditional narratives of society and technology. The paper then goes on to explore how such construction juxtaposes social and economic elements of the policy-drive and threatens, ultimately, to restrict the eventual educational effectiveness of these ‘new’ lifelong learning initiatives.     

What ever happened to …? ‘Personalised learning’ as a case of policy dissipation

While a great deal of attention has been given to evaluating how well policies are implemented, that is, how well they are realised in practice, less attention has been paid to understanding and documenting the ways in which schools actually deal with the multiple, and sometimes opaque and contradictory demands of different ‘types’ of policy. This paper addresses the question of how it is that some education policies ‘fail’ to translate into a continuing and effective set of practices in schools, and instead, are subjected to processes of dissipation and mutation. In this paper, we take as our case personalised learning (PL) launched in England in 2004. In understanding complex processes of enactment, the challenge is to understand how policies differ and analyse why some policies ‘work’ in ways that are unexpected – not as failures of implementation but as mutations. As a ‘case’ of policy dissipation, PL highlights the changing relationships between national and institutional imperatives, and the creative mutations to which some policies are subject within schools. It is not that they have no effects, but rather their effects are marginal or nuanced rather than immediate and obvious.     

Not quite so fast: effect of training at 90% sprint speed on maximal and repeated-sprint ability in soccer players

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of training at an intensity eliciting 90% of maximal sprinting speed on maximal and repeated-sprint performance in soccer. It was hypothesised that sprint training at 90% of maximal velocity would improve soccer-related sprinting. Twenty-two junior club-level male and female soccer players (age 17 ± 1 year, body mass 64 ± 8 kg, body height 174 ± 8 cm) completed an intervention study where the training group (TG) replaced one of their weekly soccer training sessions with a repeated-sprint training session performed at 90% of maximal sprint speed, while the control group (CG) completed regular soccer training according to their teams’ original training plans. Countermovement jump, 12 × 20-m repeated-sprint, VO_2max and the Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Level 1 test were performed prior to and after a 9-week intervention period. No significant between-group differences were observed for any of the performance indices and effect magnitudes were trivial or small. Before rejecting the hypothesis, we recommend that future studies should perform intervention programmes with either stronger stimulus or at other times during the season where total training load is reduced.     

Peer Tutoring: An Aid to Individual Instruction

In this article, the author describes a personal teaching experience that led her to incorporate improvisational drama into her English classroom. The author describes justifications for implementing drama into the classroom as well as the possible benefits gained by teachers and students. Also included are several improvisational dramatic activities and instructions for incorporating them into the English curriculum. Using drama helped to develop confidence, community, and content knowledge in the middle school classroom.     

The 'Conveyor Belt Effect': A re-assessment of the impact of National Targets for Lifelong Learning

Although the National Targets for Education and Training in England and Wales include indicators for lifelong learning, and the progress towards the targets set for these indicators has been lauded by politicians and other observers, much of this apparent progress is actually accounted for by changes in these same indicators at Foundation level. However, once the 'conveyor belt effect', of passing increasingly qualified 16-18 year-olds into the working-age population instead of less qualified 60 and 65 year-olds, is taken into account, then progress in qualifying those of working-age is much less. In fact, there is then very limited evidence that Lifelong Learning targets have had any impact at all. Certainly work-based training has not increased, and may even have declined over the last decade, while some socio-economic inequalities in adult participation in education and training have worsened. The paper examines this apparent weakness for the current approach and its implications for the measurement of progress, in the light of a research review carried out for the National Assembly of Wales. It therefore asks increasingly important questions about targets, such as what they are for, and whether those who set and monitor them are aware of their deficiencies and artificialities.