Performance Assessment and Cost Evaluation – A Case Study

This article reports on an empirical study of the management of curriculum and instruction in South African secondary schools. Drawing on data collected from 200 schools in 2007, a series of regression analyses tested the relationship between various dimensions of leadership and student achievement gains over time. Whilst the research confirms what we do know about school management in South Africa, and aligns with much of the international research base, the strong emphasis that emerges on school–community relations offers important insights for school management development.     

“It's That Easy”: Designing Assignments That Blend Old and New Literacies

This article recounts what happened when one of the authors, a pre-service teacher, introduced a digital multimodal composition project in her 9th-grade inclusion English classes to support junior high students as they read the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Rather than regard new literacies as competing with print literacy for attention, the authors argue that teachers serve students best when they design assignments that blend old and new literacies in ways that allow them to coexist and inform one another.     

Enacting policy: the capacity of school leaders to support early career teachers through policy work

Early career teachers often feel overwhelmed by the complex, intense and unpredictable nature of their work. Recently, policy initiatives have been introduced to provide new teachers with extra release-time from face-to-face classroom teaching duties to assist them in their transition to the workforce. This paper reports on a critical policy study that investigated the enactment of this policy initiative. A data set was created from a larger qualitative study which investigated early career teacher resilience. Drawing on a policy enactment theoretical ‘toolbox’, the findings indicate that school leaders can empower early career teachers to move beyond being ‘receivers’ of policy to assume a more active policy role. This paper argues that school leaders are very powerful in their capacity to enact policy to ensure strategic access to appropriate on-going learning opportunities to support early career teachers.     

Supporting families: a nurturing teacher education strategy in Nauru

There has been little recent documentation concerning Pacific family support for family members locally involved in university study in their Pacific home country and how such responses affect both parties. Some studies dealing with family support for student family members, including Pacific families residing in the USA, have been published. A New Zealand Ministry of Education report on Pasifika students’ educational success rates raised the need for effective family support contexts. Another study researched the family support negotiation patterns of mature-age part-time students in Australia, Hong Kong and Papua New Guinea. Only one University of the South Pacific research focused on Pacific family and community expectations of family members studying and residing with their families in their Pacific home countries. This Nauru-based study describes mixed support responses from Nauruan families towards their teacher education student family members and Nauru Department of Education student engagement and well-being development strategies.     

The Necessity of Studio Art as a Site and Source for Dissertation Research

The issue raised by the authors in this article question why studio art continues to be ignored as a site and source for research in art education. The necessity of the field to be able to participate within the research community in addressing cultural, social, educational and political concerns is acknowledged. It is argued, however, that the exclusive use of methods of inquiry that align with the conventions of social science research has been done at the expense of fully appreciating the capacity of artistic research undertaken in studio contexts. This tendency is especially prevalent in doctoral research in higher education. Three accounts of dissertation research are given that incorporate studio activity as a central agency of inquiry in conceptualising and theorising issues. Each highlights the capacity of art practice to reveal insights that are a consequence of what the researcher did in the studio setting as issues, ideas and interpretive stances emerged, and problems were re‐conceptualised. What is different in these accounts from more mainstream approaches to research is the readiness to accept that constructing new knowledge is a creative and critical process.     

Convergence crosscurrents: Analog in the digital and digital in the analog

Abstract

In this Perspective paper we propose a rethink on how we should approach digital and analog news. Although there are literatures that continue to focus on the many and varied characteristics of digital and analog news, we should not consider these as separate, opposing entities. In fact, the intertwining between the digital and the analog of news makes it difficult, if not impossible, to define separately what they are, even if this often is the practice in scholarly debate on news and journalism in new media. What we argue in this paper is that today, in opposition to binary definitions, it would be much more revealing, and also connected to actual media practices, to try to understand how much digital there is in the analog news and, vice versa, how much analog there is in digital news. This approach recognizes three dimensions in media platforms: digital, analog, and, between them, a cross-evolved, digitalized analog present in television, radio, and online newspapers. Recognizing these three dimensions enables us to explore more clearly the implications that the hybridization of digital and analog news has on the overall media system and on the state of news itself.     

The relationships between research and decision making in education: An empirical investigation

Chapter 5 of DETYA’s volume The Impact of Educational Research (Selby-Smith 2000) begins with an examination of the peculiarity of decision making in the VET sector, followed by an examination of the idiosyncratic consequences for the function of research in the sector. Having established the distinctiveness of VET in relation to these two key factors (decision making and research), the chapter then proceeds to explore the linkages between them. The study on which the chapter is founded identified a complex research culture, in which overt forms of impact are difficult to detect, yet where, it is concluded, research nonetheless plays its part. The research which is likely to impact most heavily is that which is conducted around the practical issues with which VET must deal, preferably with a heavy on-site component, and which is carried out by researchers who are prepared to engage most fruitfully with the VET culture, ideally with a long lead time and maximum follow-up to the actual research phase.Chapter 5 contributes to the overall Impact volume in a variety of ways. First, it offers an insight into the enigmatic nature of educational research in general, and especially as it relates to the VET sector. Second, it makes it clear that educational sectors like VET are likely to be affected by research only when its application to their practical needs is clear and it is carried out by people who are committed to working with their realities. Third, there are broader lessons to be taken from the chapter, especially for university researchers who are imputed by the chapter to be among the least likely to effect research that impacts on practical policy and decision making. While unrelated to the main body of The Impact of Educational Research project, Chapter 5 contributes to the overall work through exposing the real world of research impact in what is very likely the least understood of the educational sectors.     

Using visits to interactive science and technology centers,museums, aquaria,and zoos to promote learning in science

This article received the “Implications of Research for Educational Practice” award at the 1995 meeting of the Association for the Education of Teachers in Science. The award is made possible by Carolina Biological Supply. An adaptation of this article, entitled “Don’t Compare, Complement: Making Best Use of Science Centres and Museums,” was published in the 1995 Set: Research Information for Teachers, Number 1, Item 1, by the New Zealand and Australian Councils for Education Research.