The politics of PISA: The media,policy and public responses in Norway and England

Using the PISA 2015 releases in Norway and England, this article explores how PISA has been presented in the media and how the policy level has responded to the results. England will be used as an example for comparison. The article presents early media responses from the 20 most circulated daily newspapers in the two countries and discusses them in relation both to the national PISA reports in Norway and England, as well as the international report of the OECD. The media responses are further interpreted in light of previous research in both countries, with a particular focus upon Norway, where previous Ministers of Education have been interviewed about assessment policy and education reforms.     

Writing to learn: can reflection journals be used to promote self-reflection and learning?

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate whether there is evidence of reflection in student-written journals and to investigate whether students show improvements in their reflective skills through journal keeping. To that end, the reflection journals of 3460 first-year students enrolled in a polytechnic were studied by means of an automated coding procedure. Data used in the analyses were students' journals for an entire week, collected once at the beginning and again at the end of an academic year. Outcomes of the content analyses suggest that there is evidence of reflection in students' journals and that students reflected on three general categories related to their learning: critical review of past learning experiences, cognitive learning strategies and summaries of what was learnt. Furthermore, the findings also indicate that students show improvements in their reflective skills as they progressed through the academic year. The findings when taken together suggest that reflection journals can be used to promote self-reflection and learning amongst students.     

The missing link: The parental voice in Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs

Education and Information Technologies - This paper reports on the parental perspective on one school’s implementation of a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) Program to ensure students had access...     

The effects of the Healthy Steps for Young Children Program: results from observations of parenting and child development

The Healthy Steps for Young Children Program (HS) is designed to provide support for new parents through the pediatrician's office. We present findings of the effect of HS on the quality of mother–child interaction, security of attachment, and child behavior using observational data from two of the HS sites that utilized a randomized treatment design. Results indicated that mothers participating in Healthy Steps were more likely to interact sensitively and appropriately than mothers in the comparison group at the second assessment point (age 34–37 months) but not at the first assessment point (age 16–18 months). There were no differences in child outcomes at either time point when the cross-sectional data were analyzed. However, the results of the longitudinal analysis (which included families who participated in the home observations at both Time 1 and Time 2) indicated that Healthy Steps participation was associated with greater security of attachment and fewer child behavior problems.     

The analysis and treatment of child abuse by behavioural psychotherapy

The results from use of behaviour therapy with child abuse cases is very encouraging. Data has been presented to show the approach both economical and rewarding. Our experience suggests that selected social workers may be able to learn to use the approach with a relatively short period of training.