‘A Game of Two Halves’ — A Critique of Some Complicities: between hegemonic and counter‐hegemonic discourses concerning marketisation and education

In any society the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed according to a number of procedures whose role is to avert its powers and its dangers, to master the unpredictable event. (Foucault, 1981, p. 53 cited in Ball, 1990, p. 22)     

The virtual anatomy laboratory: usability testing to improve an online learning resource for anatomy education

An increasing number of instructors are seeking to provide students with online anatomy resources. Many researchers have attempted to identify associations between resource use and student learning but few studies discuss the importance of usability testing in resource design and modification. Usability testing provides information about ease of use and resource flexibility and indicates navigational issues that contribute to extraneous cognitive load for the user. An example of usability testing for modification of an online anatomy resource called the "Virtual Lab" is presented. Usability testing was used to determine whether increased content would impair navigation through the interface. Subjects with varying levels of experience with anatomy content were recruited to assess efficiency and effectiveness (defined by usability standards) of the original resource and of the redesigned resource. Comparisons between usability evaluation of the original "Virtual Lab" (OVL) and of the redesigned "Virtual Lab" (RVL) revealed that subjects were better able to successfully complete tasks using the RVL than they were with the OVL. Results also demonstrated that subjects did not take significantly more time to successfully complete tasks with the RVL. Additionally, usability testing revealed that subjects were able to successfully complete tasks using the RVL regardless of whether they possessed prior experience with anatomy content or not. Results of this study suggest that the modified resource is more effective for users. The example presented here underscores the need for usability testing prior to resource implementation and whenever significant changes are made to a resource interface.     

Crossing cultures: Analysing the experiences of NZ returnees from the EU (UK vs. non-UK)

While there is growing scholarly interest in returned and cyclical migration, and on young adult cultural or adventure seeking migration, there is still a lack of systematic empirical insights into how the experiences of being abroad, and after return, are mediated by exposure to different cultural environments. Addressing this conceptual and empirical gap, the paper analyses the experiences of New Zealand return migrants, or sojourners, who lived and worked in European countries (other than the UK) for more than one year and compares them with the experiences of NZ returnees from the UK. Drawing on 20 ‘non-UK’ and 22 ‘UK’ in-depth interviews, the paper revisits [Rhinesmith, 1975] and [Rhinesmith, 1986] typology of cross-cultural, or intercultural, adjustment (largely ignored in studies of return migration) to assess sojourners’ experiences throughout the migration cycle and serve as a useful tool for identifying and reporting psychological and socio-cultural elements in the returnees stories. The findings of sojourners’ possible identity shifts during intercultural transition are discussed with reference to the four-member paradigm of Cultural Identity Model (CIM) (Sussman, 2010) while addressing Sussman's (2002) argument that overseas adaptation and repatriation experiences are not directly associated. This paper demonstrates the need to understand first that the costs and benefits of circular migration or sojourning are country-specific, and that they do not ‘just happen’ at a particular moment or in one phase but are forged through a veritable rollercoaster of experiences of intercultural adjustment.     

A Comparative Demographic Study of Student Teachers from the North and South of Ireland

90.4% of the 1977 entrants to concurrent general Teacher Education courses in Ireland North and South responded to a demographic questionnaire. The results are analysed and the two regions contrasted with respect to personal, professional and geographical variables. These indicate that some interesting differences exist but that there are many overall similarities.     

Romantic Partner Selection and Socialization During Early Adolescence

This prospective study examined romantic partner selection and socialization among a sample of 78 young adolescents (6th–8th graders). Independent assessments of adolescent and romantic partner adjustment were collected before and after relationships initiated via peer nomination and self‐report. Prior to their relationship, adolescents and partners were significantly alike on popularity, physical attraction, and depressive symptoms. Controlling for initial similarity, partners’ popularity, depressive symptoms, relational aggression, and relational victimization significantly predicted changes in adolescents’ functioning in these areas over time. However, the magnitude and direction of change varied according to adolescents’ and partners’ prerelationship functioning. In general, adolescents who dated high‐functioning partners changed more than those who dated low‐functioning partners, and partner characteristics predicted greater change among low‐ versus high‐functioning adolescents. Results were consistent even when controlling for best friend characteristics. The current findings are among the first to demonstrate unique contributions of romantic partner characteristics to adolescents’ psychosocial functioning.     

Public Art: The Problems and Potential of Multiple Meanings

Public art is not just sculpture and mural painting: it can take the form of stained–glass windows, textile wall–hangings, mosaic pavements and works of art that are not even designed to be long–lasting or permanent. It is found in city squares, and secluded countryside; in National Health Service hospitals and the national headquarters of major companies. Public art can now be studied at any level from primary to postgraduate, and because art and its context are so closely related in these settings beyond the gallery, it affords a particularly rich object of analysis for all age groups. What has so far received relatively little attention is the way in which public art is read. An examination of works of art from France and America reveals that visual literacy cannot be seen in isolation, for how we read depends as much on what we bring to our reading as it does on the text or image we seek to understand.     

Training for content teachers of English Language Learners: using experiential learning to improve instruction*

Abstract

Experiential learning theory places experience at the center of learning. Kolb’s four-stage cycle of experiential learning suggests that effective learners must engage fully in each stage of the cycle – feeling, reflection, thinking, and action. This research assesses the alignment of Kolb’s experiential learning cycle with the week-long Summer Institute of Assisting, Collaborating, and Training ESL Secondary Content Teachers (ACT-ESL), the first stage of a professional development model designed to train content teachers of English Language Learners (ELLs). Qualitative and quantitative data analysis from pre- and post-surveys determined positive changes in participants’ understanding of key ELL concepts, knowledge, and understanding of instructional strategies and practices. Analysis indicated that the Summer Institute had a large effect (d > 2.00 for each scale), regardless of previous training in ELL instructional strategies. Findings show that the Summer Institute incorporated the cycle of learning and tenets of Kolb’s experiential learning theory and evidenced teacher learning.     

Horizontal Solidarities and Molten Capitalism: The subject,intersubjectivity, self and the other in late modernity

Friendship is a generative topic because it covers questions about the self and the social, so encompassing the political, public, personal and interpersonal negotiation of difference. Friends can embody the resistance as well as the enactment of 'fixing' positions as shown within recent ethnographic work on friendship as identity work (Hey, 1997 , 'The Company She Keeps' , Open University Press). Theorised as a practice about making up and breaking up--about coming to understandings and mis/understandings--friendship has been taken as a metaphor as well as a statement about the im/possibilities of citizenship (Hey, 2001, 'Dancing Round Hanbags', University of Lisbon). This collection of Discourse articles on re-theorising friendship is exceptionally timely as the authors contribute to debates about the regulation of childhood as well as new times social theory. They reveal friendship as the site of reflexivity and tradition and in so doing show it as one of the few social and interpersonal relations in which young children can exercise any form of social control. These accounts might then be said to provide a particularly useful reality check upon the competing versions of 'the private (subject)' found in contrasting accounts of late modernity. In this article I seek to set this work on relationship cultures against a brief discussion of the current provenance of the subject in recent social theory. In scanning high abstraction I argue for more modest explorations in the making of inter- and intra-subjectivity associated with feminist poststructuralist work on class, gender and social difference.     

Co-mentoring: The Iterative Process of Learning about Self and “Becoming” Leaders

Two pre-tenured faculty members at dissimilar institutions found themselves in similar positions – both were assigned to administrative positions that they did not seek. This self-study is an investigation of their processes of becoming leaders and how they aligned and/or conflicted with their espoused beliefs. A review of the literature that guided them is also included. Throughout the process, the two served as co-mentors for each other as they navigated the unfamiliar territory of educational leadership at the university level. Together, they strove to remain committed to shared ideals of democratic practice, transparency, and collaboration. As evidenced in the data, tensions existed as they learned and performed their new roles. Administrative duties and their enactment at times conflicted with their ideals of effective leadership. Electronic journals kept throughout the process were the main data source, which they then revisited to chart their own and each other’s learning and growth while leading. Looking back at their progression, they were able to identify four iterative phases in their development: forming, storming, norming, and performing. Discussions of each phase, with examples, are focal points of the study. The co-mentoring model is one that, while not typically or formally used, was shown to be effective for these two new leaders. Leading each other’s learning helped them align ideals of leading (in teaching and scholarship) with traditional ideas of administration (management tasks and leadership enactments). This study provides clear recommendations for new leaders and those who support them in becoming leaders.     

On the Receiving End: New Labour and the LEAs

This paper (written by a Chief Education Officer wholly in a personal capacity) argues that appraising New Labour's energetic programme of educational policies from an LEA perspective should utilise the values of pluralism, achievement and equality of opportunity. The Government's actions directly related to LEAs themselves meant that LEAs now operate under close direction, under licence and subject to rigorous and high stakes scrutiny. There is a consequential loss of pluralism. The attempts of the Government significantly to raise ‘standards of achievement’ are assessed, as are its claims to have re‐addressed issues of equality of opportunity