Rights,expertise and negotiations in care and education

More young children and their families have access to early years services than ever before in Britain. Within these settings practitioners and parents need to work closely together for the benefit of the child. Yet the relationships within the childcare and education triangle (child, parent, practitioner) are highly complex and sometimes fraught with tension. Drawing on theories of care, the paper offers a structure for decisions about childcare and how a combination of expectations from parents and practitioners regarding everyday care practice can either be the basis of a trusting relationship between the adults involved in this caring triangle or a breeding‐ground for tensions. The study is mainly based on qualitative research from a study combining qualitative and quantitative methods with family day care providers in the north‐east of England and the north‐east of Germany.     

Did the Recession Impact Student Success? Relationships of Finances,Staffing and Institutional Type on Retention

Economic recessions impact higher education institutions in complex ways. Several analyses have examined the influence of the 2007–2009 recession on tuition, enrollments, revenues, and expenditures, but the connection of these resource allocation patterns to a student success outcome—namely, retention—is limited. This study examined relationships among institutional expenditures, tuition, and staffing patterns on first-year retention rates at private and public institutions in 2007, 2009 and 2011: before, during, and after the economic recession. Private and public institutions increased tuition during this time period and increased expenditures. Expenditures most directly educating students (i.e. instruction) and institutional selectivity were positively associated with retention. However, public and private institutions differed in how they allocated their expenditures. That the findings correspond with past research investigating relationships between resource allocation and retention illustrate principles of the resource dependency theory (Pfeffer and Salancik 1978): institutions impacted by external economic changes, adjust revenues, staffing, and expenditures during economic changes.     

Examining the application of the lifelong learning principle to the literacy target in the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 4)

International Review of Education - Among the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the fourth one is about ensuring “inclusive and equitable quality education” and...     

The role of item- and category-specific information in the discrimination of people versus nonpeople images by pigeons

Herrnstein and Loveland (1964, pp. 549–551) successfully trained pigeons to discriminate pictures showing humans from pictures that did not. In the present study, a go/no-go procedure was employed to replicate and extend their findings, the primary focus of concern being to reevaluate the role of item- and category-specific information. The pigeons readily acquired the discrimination and were also able to generalize to novel instances of the two classes (Experiment 1). Classification of scrambled versions of the stimuli was based on small and local features, rather than on configural and global features (Experiment 2). The presentation of gray-scale stimuli indicated that color was important for classifying novel stimuli and recognizing familiar ones (Experiments 1 and 2). Finally, the control that could possibly be exerted by irrelevant background features was investigated by presenting the pigeons with images of persons contained in former person-absent pictures (Experiment 3). Classification was found to be controlled by both item- and category- specific features, but only in pigeons that were reinforced on person-present pictures was the latter type of information given precedence over the former.     

Hamburg’s Family Literacy project (FLY) in the context of international trends and recent evaluation findings

The authors of this article begin with an introduction to the holistic concept of family literacy and learning and its implementation in various international contexts, paying special attention to the key role played by the notions of lifelong learning and intergenerational learning. The international trends and experiences they outline inspired and underpinned the concept of a prize-winning Family Literacy project called FLY, which was piloted in 2004 in Hamburg, Germany. FLY aims to build bridges between preschools, schools and families by actively involving parents and other family members in children’s literacy education. Its three main pillars are: (1) parents’ participation in their children’s classes; (2) special sessions for parents (without their children); and (3) joint out-of-school activities for teachers, parents and children. These three pillars help families from migrant backgrounds, in particular, to develop a better understanding of German schools and to play a more active role in school life. To illustrate how the FLY concept is integrated into everyday school life, the authors showcase one participating Hamburg school before presenting their own recent study on the impact of FLY in a group of Hamburg primary schools with several years of FLY experience. The results of the evaluation clearly indicate that the project’s main objectives have been achieved: (1) parents of children in FLY schools feel more involved in their children’s learning and are offered more opportunities to take part in school activities; (2) the quality of teaching in these schools has improved, with instruction developing a more skills-based focus due to markedly better classroom management und a more supportive learning environment; and (3) children in FLY schools are more likely to have opportunities to accumulate experience in out-of-school contexts and to be exposed to environments that stimulate and enhance their literacy skills in a tangible way.     

Coping with boredom in school: An experience sampling perspective

The present study explored students’ use of boredom-related coping strategies at trait and state levels. Two trait-based dimensions of coping relevant to boredom were considered, namely approach - versus avoidance-oriented and cognitively - versus behaviorally-oriented coping strategies. The two dimensions were assessed in a self-report questionnaire administered to 537 grade 11 students (55.3% female, M_age = 17.15 years). Additionally, 79 of these participants completed state-based boredom-related coping measures over a 2-week period using an experience sampling method. Analyses of the trait measures suggested that two contrasting, broad approaches characterized participants’ strategies for coping with boredom, namely a cognitive-approach orientation and a behavioral-avoidance orientation. In both the trait- and state-based analyses, the cognitive-approach orientation was associated with lower levels of boredom. Implications for interventions promoting the use of cognitive-approach strategies for dealing with boredom in the classroom are discussed.     

Machineries for Making Publics: Inscribing and De-scribing Publics in Public Engagement

This paper investigates the dynamic and performative construction of publics in public engagement exercises. In this investigation, we, on the one hand, analyse how public engagement settings as political machineries frame particular kinds of roles and identities for the participating publics in relation to ‘the public at large’. On the other hand, we study how the participating citizens appropriate, resist and transform these roles and identities, and how they construct themselves and the participating group in relation to wider publics. The empirical basis of our argument is a discussion of four different kinds of participation events in Austria. Building on these observations we develop conclusions about the public up-take of public participation in technoscience and the role of public engagement in current techno-political cultures.