Excluding Primary School Children – The Outcomes Six Years On

This article reports and discusses a study which followed up, through case records, 726 children excluded permanently, indefinitely or for fixed–term periods in 1993/4 in 10 LEAs. The outcomes at secondary level in 1998/9 were found to be moderately poor with the problems intensifying for half the sample. Forty six per cent had further primary school exclusions and 36 per cent received exclusions in their secondary education. Looked–after children and those with special educational needs fared worse and achieved less. Case studies showed the kinds of commitment and support that can work even with very difficult cases.     

Building bridges rather than walls: research into an experiential model of interfaith education in secondary schools

This paper examines research findings from an experiential model of interfaith education called the Building Bridges through Interfaith Dialogue in Schools Programme (BBP). The BBP has been operating continuously in Melbourne, Australia since 2004. In the research, participating students were interviewed and surveyed to assess the effect of this experiential interfaith education programme on their knowledge, attitudes, perspectives and behaviour toward those from different religious and cultural backgrounds to them. Some of the data from those interviews are included in this article. The findings identify that the programme promoted religious literacy, (including improved knowledge, understanding and appreciation for different religious and cultural traditions and their practices), dismantled prejudice from ignorance and overly generalised stereotypes of others, and promoted social inclusion and cohesion.     

The invisible impact of educational research

Although there are policy calls for educational research to discover ‘what works’ and thereby inform decision making directly, the research literature argues instead for research to have a ‘conceptual’ impact on practice. Empirical studies also suggest that, when teachers use research, their use is conceptual; research influences the content and the process of their thinking, changing attitudes and perceptions and making educational decision making more intelligent. This study investigates the ways in which educational research has achieved impact on practice from the perspective of the researchers. A sample of highly-rated impact case studies in the UK’s research assessment exercise (REF2014) were subject to content analysis, using qualitative coding techniques. Analysis shows that most research is ‘invisible’ to education practitioners because it is embedded in educational policies, technologies, and services. This ‘invisible use’ is unlikely to realise the conceptual benefits claimed for research utilisation. If educational research is to make educational decision making more intelligent at its point of use, it will be necessary to re-think current notions of quality in research impact.     

The 2001 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth Science presented to Rob Van der Voo

The Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, awarded the 2001 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Earth Science to Rob Van der Voo for his outstanding contributions to the field of paleomagnetism and his reconstruction of ancient continental positions that have lead to a better understanding of plate tectonic processes for the past billion years of Earth history.     

In search of query patterns: A case study of a university OPAC

A transaction log analysis of the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) OPAC was conducted to identify query and search failure patterns with the goal of identifying areas of improvement for the system. One semester’s worth of OPAC transaction logs were obtained and from these, 641,991 queries were extracted and used for this work. Issues investigated included query length, frequency and type of search options and Boolean operators used as well as their relationships with search failure. Among other findings, results indicate that a majority of the queries were simple, with short query lengths and a low usage of Boolean operators. Failure analysis revealed that on average, users had an almost equal chance of obtaining no records or at least one record to a submitted query. We propose enhancements and suggest future areas of work to improve the users’ search experience with the NTU OPAC.     

The development of the classroom social climate during the first months of the school year

In this study the mean stability of classroom social climates during the first months of the school year and the deviation of individual classrooms (N = 48) and students (N = 1208) from this general trend were investigated by taping students’ interpersonal perceptions of their teachers. Multilevel growth modeling was used to identify the average development of the classroom social climate and between classroom and student differences in terms of this development. While significant differences between classrooms and students were found, these differences were rather stable over time. Most classrooms showed a slightly u-shaped trajectory. In only very few classrooms the quality of the social climate had increased at the end of the research period as compared to the very first lesson. Differences in the development between classrooms were associated to the emotional distance between teacher and students during the first lesson of the school year.     

数字时代的长文

目前,篇幅较长的文章面临着严峻的挑战.怎样才能够持续吸引网络读者的注意力?因为网络读者更可能喜欢快速点击而不是一页一页地阅读.内容维护者的新群体说,正是移动设备和应用程序增强了长文的吸引力,并再次创造出能坐下来认真阅读的读者.