Social pedagogy in schools: student teacher attitudes in England and Norway

This study explored the views of student teachers in England and Norway regarding the extent to which they felt the school should take the lead role (in comparison to the roles played by parents and other professional agencies) in addressing the needs of pupils identified by the school as experiencing a problem. A questionnaire comprising 30 problem areas was developed and distributed to student teachers at two universities in England and at two universities in Norway. A total of 542 student teachers participated in the study. The findings indicated that the ratings by student teachers in both countries of these problem areas fell broadly into four main groupings (in terms of the strength of feeling that the school should take the lead role): these concerned poor basic core attainment, disaffection, anti-social behaviour, and unhealthy lifestyles, respectively, except for one very important caveat: concerns regarding bullying received a high rating and were located in the first grouping. These findings are interpreted in the context of whether schools might be ready to adopt a social pedagogical approach to offering targeted support to pupils experiencing such problems and the implications this may have for inclusive education and initial teacher education.     

CLASSROOM CLIMATE IN AN ORTHODOX DAY SCHOOL: The Contribution of Emotional Intelligence,Demographics, and Classroom Context

I had completed a long list of wonderful ideas for the Synagogue School of the 21st Century, and was about to sit down and write my paper, when my eye glanced upon the Spring-Summer 1990 issue of Jewish Education. When I noticed the articles of Alvin Schiff and Rela Geffen Monson, I read through them before beginning to write: Lo and behold, everything I had written down and was already there — in Jewish Education under the title, “Toward the Year 2000.”     

The Digital Literacy Partnership Website: Promoting Interdisciplinary Scholarship Between Faculty,Students, and Librarians

ABSTRACT

In 2013, the Center for Digital Scholarship at Miami University was established and coincided with the redesign of the Children's Picture Book Database, which had a successful web presence for nearly 20 years. We developed the Digital Literacy Partnership (DLP) website project in order to upgrade the project to Omeka as a new digital management tool and to establish a second resource called the Health Literacy Database. Over time, the project grew to include three databases with the mission to promote the contributions of literacy, health, and technology on learning. In this case study, we describe the role of academic libraries in supporting faculty and student design projects; share the history and mission of the DLP project; and explain the digital team of faculty, librarians, and undergraduate students. We also outline the production of public health eBooks targeted to children and adults with low literacy skills; the social marketing decisions we made from web usage statistics; and the technical lessons learned throughout this collaborative digital project.     

University education,credentialism and social stratification among Palestinian Arabs in Israel

Few attention was devoted to the relative impact exerted by differential university access and credentialing patterns on the intrasocial stratification of subordinate groups. The paper investigates the issue among Palestinian Arabs in Israel, along religious, socioeconomic and gender lines, as well as in comparison to respective trends of the Jewish majority. Findings suggest that, while inequalities in access, retention and graduation rates at university level persist between Jews and Palestinian Arabs; for the latter, the combined effects of labor-market structure and regulative sectorial state policies, have determined considerably the relative impact of social group of origin on university enrollment, retention and graduation rates. The various implications of these findings are then discussed, urging further, and more elaborate, research into their socioeconomic and political consequences.     

Einf��hrung von Leistungspr?mien an ?sterreichischen Universit?ten �C eine rechtliche Analyse

Die Universit?ten stehen untereinander zunehmend in einem Wettbewerb. Nicht zuletzt aus diesem Grund sind Bestrebungen festzustellen, die eigenen Mitarbeiter zur Erbringung besonderer Leistungen zu animieren. Einen m?glichen Ansatzpunkt stellt in diesem Zusammenhang die Schaffung monet?rer Anreize durch leistungsbezogene Pr?mien dar. Auf Grund der heterogenen Mitarbeiterstruktur und der damit verbundenen Vielzahl an anzuwendenden dienstrechtlichen Vorschriften, stellt sich jedoch die Frage nach der Rechtsgrundlage für die Einführung derartiger Leistungspr?mien. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht daher die M?glichkeiten und Grenzen der Implementierung von leistungsbezogenen Entgelten an den ?sterreichischen Universit?ten.     

An integrated assessment of the effects of Title I on school behavior,resources, and student achievement

We examine the effects of Title I on school behavior, resources, and academic performance using a rich set of school finance and student-level achievement data from one large urban school district using a regression discontinuity design. We find that Title I eligibility raises Federal revenues of schools by about $460 per student. This is partially offset by decreases in revenues from state categorical aid grants, so that the net increase to schools is about $360 per student. We find no impact on overall school-level test scores, but also no impact among the subgroups of students most likely to be affected by Title I. A novel finding is that schools appear to respond to the incentives embedded in the Title I allocation process by manipulating the fraction of their students signed up for free lunch to secure more Federal funds.     

The reconstruction of Palestinian education: between history,policy politics andpolicy making

This paper reflects on the key actors in education policy making in Zimbabwe. It looks at the contextual complexities that characterized policy-making in this country to make sense of the contestations that the state had to confront and accommodate. The policy network approach is employed as an analytical framework to clarify how, in particular non-state actors, have had an impact (or not) on educational governance through influences on policy. Policy documents, research reports and the reactions of non-state actors to these aspects are examined to explore the impact of the latter on policy making. The significant roles of the various policy networks are also given attention to establish how they have affected the reconfiguration of the state. The argument developed is that in spite of the ostensibly strong state, education policy formulation has been a product of compromise between policy networks and the predilections of those in office. As a political and contested enterprise it had to accommodate both local and international concerns.     

Religiosity and Education: The Views of Greek Student Teachers on the Religious Education Course

The correlation of student teachers’ religiosity with their views on the religious education course that they are called on to teach in Greek public schools is the subject treated in the present survey. The five main features of religiosity, that is, (1) religious faith, (2) religious knowledge, (3) religious experience, (4) participation in a religious group or community, and (5) daily practice and conduct, were assessed for 1009 student teachers. With the help of data processing and cluster analysis, a causal relationship was found between their religiosity and their views on religious education.