Conflict and contentment: Case study of the social mobility of working‐class students in Canada

This article offers a tentative exploration of how working‐class students' mobility is affected by the push to enter middle‐class careers and lifestyles, and the pull of their working‐class origins. Based on a nine‐year qualitative longitudinal study of working‐class students at a Canadian university, I will show that few study participants experienced mobility as an uncontested or linear trajectory. Two key storylines can be identified: (a) a story of adjustment, modification and contentment; and (b) a story of conflict, loss, and struggle. For most, educational mobility was tempered by revisions of occupational ambitions, by returns to their home communities and by lifestyle choices that do not fit simple narratives of status mobility. And yet, all expressed a growing sense of self‐confidence, appreciated their education as an experience of personal growth, and achieved on their own terms, in post‐graduate education and newly discovered careers.     

HIGHER EDUCATION STATISTICAL INDICATORS FROM FOUR EUROPEAN UNION COUNTRIES ‐ AN OVERVIEW

Statistical indicators can be developed into an appropriate instrument for comparing national education and higher education systems. The present survey, which covers the four European Union countries of Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, picks up certain of the topics included in the International Education Indicators (INES) project of OECD, and goes on to expand and to examine them in greater depth with special reference to higher education. Quantitative and other data show that the expansion of higher education is typical not only of the Federal Republic of Germany, but also of its western European neighbours. Regulations governing entry into higher education vary substantially among the four countries. Close coordination between school and higher education, rigorous selection procedures, along with intensive monitoring and supervision at the higher education institution explain not only the high success rate of British university students but also ‐ in conjunction with clearly defined curricula ‐ the relatively short period which British students spend there. The higher expenditure on supervision at British and Dutch higher education institutions is reflected in the burden on public finances. However, given the shorter period of study and the higher student success rate in the United Kingdom, one student completing higher education probably costs the British state less than one student completing higher education in Germany.

     

Goal Aspects of Teacher Education

Despite the central role of teachers in any education system, teacher education is frequently the weakest of the links in the process of educational reform.

In examining this problem, the author focuses on the question of the goal aspects of teacher education. Examples from the Federal Republic identify some of the constraints affecting goal achievement; these include legalistic, traditionalist and socio‐economic constraints. The more open the society, the more visible are these difficulties.

The article then examines in depth five separate goal aspects of teacher training: the economic (income), social (status), formal‐legal (position), professional (everyday activity) and socio‐educational (system); these factors interrelate one to the other.

Some desiderata for the development of teacher education are identified. These include a view of the teacher as reformer, recognition of the realities of teacher employment, and also a realisation that the ‘school of tomorrow’ poses a challenge to ‘the school of today’.     

Domain-specific knowledge and memory performance in children

Developmental studies assessing the impact of domain-specific knowledge on memory are discussed. In the first section of the review, different ways through which domain-specific knowledge relates to strategy use in memory tasks are briefly summarized. Empirical evidence indicating nonstrategic effects of the knowledge base are discussed next. In particular, findings based on the expert-novice paradigm are used to compare the knowledge structure and memory performance of experts and novices of different ages, and to explore how individual differences relate to the acquisition and use of domain-specific knowledge. The review shows that domain-specific knowledge permits children to process and remember domain-related information more efficiently, apply strategies more effectively, and integrate novel information more easily than domains for which they have less detailed knowledge. If the knowledge base is particularly rich, it exerts a greater influence than other sources of memory development (i.e., memory capacity, strategies, and metamemory) combined.     

Students embracing change towards more powerful learning environments in vocational education

Students’ educational engagement is both an important predictor of study success and a key preventive factor for dropout. Vocational tracks in secondary education show high dropout rates. There is strong evidence that the solution to educational disengagement lies in student‐centred, powerful learning environments (PLEs). This study investigates characteristics of PLEs from the perspective of students in vocational secondary education. Students’ perspectives on a learning environment are crucial for their satisfaction and learning engagement. Therefore, we investigated whether the perceived learning environment meets the requirements of PLEs, and to what extent it meets students’ preferences. Additionally, it was investigated whether students who perceive their learning environment as more powerful, are also more engaged for school. Survey data of 532 students showed that student perceptions of their current learning environment were largely discrepant from the characteristics of PLEs. Students strongly asked for more challenging learning pathways, in combination with adaptive learning support. Students who perceived the characteristics of PLEs as being present, reported higher satisfaction and stronger engagement than students who perceived their education to be a less powerful environment. There is a need to redesign curricula in vocational education in such a way that these more intensely implement characteristics of PLEs.