Using teacher stories to reveal quality educational practice: An Eastern Cape experience

The University of Fort Hare Distance Education Project set out to improve qualifications of primary teachers in rural and township schools in the Eastern Cape of the Republic of South Africa. At the culmination of an 11-year AUSAid collaboration between the University of Fort Hare and University of South Australia a research project to reveal quality educational practice was undertaken. Using oral histories as the methodology, teacher stories were gathered through a sequence of interviews and classroom observations. This collection of oral histories constitutes the basis for the paper. Its research focus has been the science and mathematics practices of eight teachers who typify the many hundreds who participated in the project. This paper explores the use of oral history as a methodology for documenting quality educational practice.     

The Perceptions of Success Inventory for Beginning Teachers: Measuring its psychometric properties

This study investigated the construction and evaluation of an instrument called the Perceptions of Success Inventory for Beginning Teachers (PSI-BT) intended to measure factors documented in research that contribute to beginning teachers’ perceptions of success. The PSI-BT was found to assess the following factors using exploratory factor analysis: (1) Administrative Support, (2) Classroom Climate, (3) Mentor Support, (4) Colleague and Instructional Resource Support, (5) Commitment, and (6) Assignment and Workload. Internal reliability, content validity, and concurrent validity were also measured in the validation process. Our findings suggest that the PSI-BT provides a reliable and valid instrument that can provide schools with valuable feedback to ensure the success of their beginning teachers.     

After this,nothing happened

PROSPECTS - The presence of COVID-19 means that the world will not return to a prior normal, but we cannot yet know into what future we will head. The world will have considerably changed from the...     

What works? Academic integrity and the research-policy relationship

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the intensifying pressures on critical research and academic integrity in a research policy context that has come to be increasingly dominated by an instrumentalist mind-set. Using sensitising resources drawn from Geoff Whitty’s critique of the ‘what works’ agenda, we reflect on the current conditions of academic labour and some of the key issues and dilemmas they pose for critical researchers in the sociology of education and beyond. In particular, we underline the trend for ‘what works’ agendas to become constitutive of academic identities and practices, including at micro-levels, such that the option of ‘standing outside’ them is shifting from being merely personally taxing to being institutionally disallowed. In addition to highlighting the dilemmas this creates for critical researchers and the threat this poses to expansive and democratic approaches to education, the paper emphasises the centrality of relationship-forming in understanding and underpinning academic integrity.     

Programmes and policies for foreign students and study abroad: the search for effective approaches in a new global setting

This paper provides an overview of the issues raised during a 1990 seminar on the effects of programmes and policies for foreign students and study abroad. The seminar was organised by the Hochschul-Informations-System in co-operation with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In particular, this paper addresses those concerns related to national policy and institutional responses in the light of changing patterns of foreign student flows and against the background of the new global economic and political setting.The views expressed are those of the authors and do not commit the organisations or governments concerned.     

A text to speech interface for Universal Digital Library

INTRODUCTION The objective of Universal Digital Library (UDL) is to capture all books in digital format (Universal Digital Library, 2005; Digital Library of India, 2005). Most of the digital information present in the digital world is accessible to a few who can read or under- stand a particular language. Language technologies can provide solutions in the form of natural interfaces so that digital content can reach the masses and fa- cilitate the exchange of information across differe…