Privatisation,Decentralisation and Education in the United Kingdom: The Role of the State

Since the early 1950s, the axis centralisation–decentralisation, especially as thematised in the work of Isaac Kandel, has represented a major focus of comparative studies in education. Kandel argued that issues relating to the internal conduct of the classroom (interna) should, so far as possible, be decentralised, while issues relating to administration, school structure and organisation of the educational system (externa) might safely be centralised. After 1988, successive governments in the United Kingdom have undertaken reforms which have placed more central control on the curriculum and even methods of teaching (interna), while school finance and administration (externa) have been devolved to the school level. The present essay argues that a simplistic approach to centralisation and decentralisation is not likely to be fruitful. Instead, we should acknowledge the role of the State in creating a permissive framework for educational systems. Local action can then be seen as part of a policy accommodating or resisting the implications of that framework.     

Aidan Chambers’ <Emphasis Type="Italic">Breaktime</Emphasis>: Class Conflict and Anxiety in the Work of a Scholarship-Boy Writer

Aidan Chambers’ Breaktime (1978) is famous for its unique narrative style and sexual content. This focus has obscured another significant aspect of the novel: the role of social class in Breaktime and Chambers’ working-class background have rarely been explored. Chambers was an example of what Richard Hoggart calls “the scholarship boy,” a working-class boy educated in a grammar school in mid-twentieth-century Britain. In this article, Haru Takiuchi argues that Chambers’ scholarship-boy experiences are crucial for understanding Breaktime. For his analysis of the cultural and psychological aspects of class that concern representations of scholarship boys in British children’s literature of the 1960s and 1970s, he draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of class habitus, more focused studies of class in Britain and research into the experiences of scholarship boys. Using material from the author’s archive supplemented with interviews, Haru Takiuchi highlights Chambers’ unique representation of the scholarship boy and social class in the book.     

Evaluating and comparing Singaporean and Taiwanese eighth graders’ conceptions of science assessment

Background: Researchers have indicated that assessment practices and methods should support learners’ construction of meaningful understanding of knowledge. Understanding students’ conceptions of assessment will enable us to construct more realistic, valid and fair assessments. Learners’ conceptualization of assessment would be imperative to serve as an essential reference to evaluate their learning progress.

Purpose: This study evaluated and compared the Singaporean and Taiwanese middle school students’ conceptions of science assessment. Within-country gender comparisons were also explored.

Sample: 424 Taiwanese and 333 Singaporean eighth graders were invited for a cross-country comparison.

Design and methods: The participants completed a questionnaire named Conceptions of Science Assessment.

Results: The findings showed that the summative assessment dominates in the Taiwanese classrooms, while formative and summative assessment are usually perceived in Singaporean classrooms. The Singaporean students had a greater tendency than their Taiwanese counterparts to perceive the purpose of assessment as a way of reproducing knowledge, and the formative assessment as improving learning, problem-solving, and critical judgment. No gender differences were found among either the Singaporean or the Taiwanese students.

Conclusions: Educators in both countries should provide learners with more opportunities to experience process-oriented science assessment activities and de-emphasize the usage of examination-oriented practices to achieve the sophistication of conceptions.     

The development of elementary pre-service teachers’ professional noticing of students’ thinking through adapted Lesson Study

The purpose of the study was to investigate how Lesson Study influences pre-service teachers’ learning to professionally notice students’ mathematical thinking. The initial and last video-recorded discussions were analysed using a qualitative method. Findings suggest that Lesson Study can be useful means to improve pre-service teachers’ noticing expertise in reviewing and planning lessons. However, to maximise the effect of Lesson Study on developing pre-service teachers’ noticing expertise, several modifications need to be made to the Lesson Study protocol, which are discussed.     

The impact of media multitasking on learning

While multitasking is not a new concept, it has received increasing attention in recent years with the development of new media and technologies. Recent trends appear to suggest that multitasking is on the rise among the younger generation. The purpose of the study is to determine if students obtain more or less information in multitasking conditions. We examined the relationships of multitasking to attention, cognitive load and media with 130 college student participants. In this study, participants were given a timed (16 minutes) reading comprehension test in three conditions: Silence (only reading), Background multitasking (reading with a non-tested video shown simultaneously), and Test multitasking (reading with a tested video shown simultaneously) conditions. Our findings indicated that: (1) participants in the Background condition performed as well as those in the Silence condition, and (2) when participants were tested on their video comprehension, the group in the Test condition performed significantly better than the group in the Background condition. The results of this study suggest that cognitive load plays an important role in determining how much information is retained when students perform more than one task at a time.     

Institutional traditions in teachers’ manners of teaching

The aim of this article is to make a close case study of one teacher’s teaching in relation to established traditions within science education in Sweden. The teacher’s manner of teaching is analysed with the help of an epistemological move analysis. The moves made by the teacher are then compared in a context of educational philosophy and selective tradition. In the analyses the focus is to study the process of teaching and learning in action in institutionalised and socially shared practices. The empirical material consists of video recordings of four lessons with the same group of students and the same teacher. The students are all in Year 7 in a Swedish 9-year compulsory school. During these lessons the students work with a subject area called “Properties of materials”. The results show that the teacher makes a number of different moves with regard to how to proceed and come to a conclusion about what the substances are. Many of these moves are special in that they indicate that the students need to be able to handle the procedural level of school science. These moves do not deal directly with the knowledge production process, but with methodological aspects. The function of the moves turns the students’ attention from one source of knowledge to another. The moves are aimed at helping the students to help themselves, since it is through their own activity and their own thinking that learning takes place. This is characteristic in the teacher’s manner of teaching. When compared in a context of educational philosophy, this manner of teaching has similarities with progressentialism; a mixture of essentialism and progressivism. This educational philosophy is a central aspect of what is called the academic tradition—a selective tradition common in science education in Sweden between 1960 and 1990.     

Networks as Agents of Innovation: Teacher Networking in the Context of Vocational and Professional Higher Education Reforms

The effective implementation of educational reform is an issue that confronts both those that plan and sponsor those reforms and those that are affected by them. This article discusses networking processes in the context of reform in vocational and professional higher education. When exploring failures in educational change processes, issues associated with facilitating the adoption, adaptation and implementation of educational change have not been sufficiently addressed. Here, we use the concept of social innovation, which is relatively new in innovation research, to explain the mechanisms that facilitate educational reform, and emphasise the relationship between interaction and the perception of change. In this paper, we examine how networking among teachers is related to their perception of educational change and how the effective implementation of educational reforms can be influenced by such networking. By differentiating the various types of networks we explore the relationship between networking and educational change. The article is based on the findings of a quantitative survey of 228 Estonian teachers in vocational and professional higher educational schools administered in 2010.