Bystanders in Schools: What Do They Do and What Do They Think? Factors Influencing the Behaviour of English Students as Bystanders

This article reports on the English data from an international research project. Students' reports of being bullied are detailed but the main emphasis is on the role of the bystander, that is, what students did when they witnessed bullying in school and the reasons they gave for their actions. The study found that there were differences between students, in particular between primary and secondary phase students, and schools, in these areas. The responses are explored and the characteristics of those who intervened or did not. The implications for research and practice are debated.     

Faculty salary equity: Issues and options

How do you develop a salary equity analysis procedure that will help identify whether or not your institution has a reasonably equitable and legally defensible salary structure? This paper presents a multiphase approach to identify and correct salary inequities based on gender. The major steps are to (1) determine if a problem situation exists by using a conceptually sound, objective procedure that does a legal and effective job of explaining faculty salaries; (2) develop feasible adjustment strategies if inequities exist that solve or improve the situation; (3) implement the correction and establish a monitoring process that is consistent with the culture and values of the institution. Involving and educating key university personnel in the selection of models and strategies is critical to acceptance and validation of the process and to minimizing negative reaction internal or external to the campus. This paper is designed to be helpful to administrators and researchers who need to make informed choices about salary equity models and implementation strategies.     

Administrative service and research performance: A study of chemistry department heads

This study explores the effect of administrative service as department chair on the scholarly careers of academic chemists through an analysis of their publication and doctoral student productivity records over a two-decade period. A longitudinal experimental design is employed with a control group of academic chemists who have not served in an administrative capacity throughout the equivalent time period. The results of the study indicate no significant difference in the publication and doctoral student productivity levels of the experimental and control groups. These results suggest that universities have been successful in attracting and retaining the services of productive scholars as department heads and that such service does not diminish their long-term scholarly productivity.Presented at the 24th Annual Forum of the Association for Institutional Research, Fort Worth, Tex., May 1984.     

Theory-based Change and Change-based Theory: Going Deeper, Going Broader

This article examines the questions of sustaining and extending theory-based educational change reforms, which are designed by laboratories outside of schools and whose motivating theoretical base assumes change in elemental aspects of classroom practice. This article defines sustainability of theory-based reform as more than maintaining current implementation, rather as deepening reforms in ways that allow for flexible response to changes in student, curricular, and school contexts. It draws upon five years of research in schools and classrooms engaged in one of three theory-based reforms to discuss five essential factors affecting sustainability: resources, reformers' learning, knowledge of the first principles of the reform and the support of a community of practice, the principal, and the district. This article then turns to ``scaling up.' Rather than merely replicating structures, extending theory-based reform to new sites requires building compatibility between the normative base of the reform with that in the classrooms, schools and districts in which they are growing as well as the capacity of the classroom, school, and district to see it through. This article suggests three main factors that reform founders must focus upon to scale up their reforms – attention to site selection, a proactive stance toward district contexts, and planned transfer of authority. The article concludes that issues of invention, implementation, sustainability, and scale occur simultaneously when going deeper and broader with theory-based change.     

An evaluation of the impact of an inter‐agency intervention programme to promote social skills in primary school children

This paper describes a social skills programme run in one primary school designed to promote children's cooperative skills and anger management. The programme was staffed by Child and Adolescent Mental Health professionals with educational psychologist and school support. Eight children with severe emotional and behavioural problems participated and completed the 20‐week programme. Pre and post data were collected for the children, parents and teachers. Parents were supported by regular meetings and domiciliary visits from an assistant psychologist. Teaching staff met regularly with the team and had frequent supportive contact with the assistant psychologist. Two educational psychologists‐in‐training made an independent qualitative evaluation of the programme, interviewing the children, their parents and teachers, as well as members of the multi‐agency team. After attending the group, the children showed a significant reduction in their anxiety, parents reported a significant reduction in oppositional behaviour and teachers a significant reduction in attention‐deficit hyperactive difficulties type behaviour. All measures showed a significant or positive trend, although there was some disappointment in the level of parent participation in the school‐based parent meetings. Reasons for this are discussed and the case for multi‐agency social skills interventions is made, along with a broader discussion of the role of the educational psychologist.     

Values,Coherence and the School

This article offers a number of philosophical reflections on the task of making the educational values of the school coherent. The meaning of ‘coherence’ in this context is explored, and the requirements for its achievement are considered in relation to the inescapability and complexity of educational values, the process of planning in relation to educational values and a number of issues which require particular attention. It is concluded that a serious and informed debate on educational values is needed if schools are to be properly supported in their efforts to achieve coherence in relation to them.     

Beyond Dependency Theory: A postcolonial analysis of educating Papua New Guinean high school students in Australian schools

This paper explores the social and educational implications of the Secondary Schools Scholarship Project (SSSP) in which Australia gave over 1,000 adolescents from Papua New Guinea three-year scholarships to study in Australian high schools. Drawing from postcolonial theory, the paper uses concepts of ambivalence, hybridity, hegemony, contradiction, and national discourse to analyse an array of issues which would not be in the purview of dependency theory. These issues include not only the cultural “border-crossings” and tensions experienced by the Papua New Guinean scholarship winners during their Australian sojourn and return to Papua New Guinea, but also the complex ambiguities in the outcomes and implications of a foreign aid project for a decolonising country. The scholarship programme illustrates the politics of foreign aid in education, including the contradictions of receiving aid from a donor country which is garnering substantial benefits from the recipient country, and the complexity of the postcolonial challenge of utilising this aid in a way that meets national educational goals in a globalising world.     

Building Sípnuuk: A Digital Library,Archives, and Museum for Indigenous Peoples

ABSTRACT

The tribal codes and laws managing the traditional knowledge system of the Karuk people have been passed on to us by the ikxaréeyav, or Spirit People. Regulated through access restrictions and protocols, we have been able to preserve information about all aspects of Karuk life for thousands of years. Yet over the past 160 years, this system has remained unacknowledged by the legal frameworks of Euro-America. Since 2012, however, the Karuk Tribe has been developing the Sípnuuk Digital Library, Archives, and Museum, providing self-representative and culturally appropriate access to, control over, and preservation of Karuk cultural heritage.     

THE MEDIUM IS NOT THE MESSAGE: IMPROVING AUSTRALIAN EDUCATIONAL AID TO PAPUA NEW GUINEA STUDENTS

Australia, like many developed countries expends a proportion of its budget in assisting lesser developed countries (LDC) in educational enterprises. Such efforts may have muted results if Australian educators assume that overseas students eventually adapt to their teaching. This paper argues that institutions which accept overseas students into their courses are obliged professionally to cater for students’ learning problems particularly, if the language of instruction is not the mother tongue. Often these problems have their genesis in the LDC because students are educated in a language in which their teachers’ themselves lack facility. Moreover, in the Papua New Guinea context the learning problems with English are associated with a lack of equivalence between the concepts in the academic discourse and the students’ existing conceptual framework. Learning problems in English are more about concept acquisition than translation.