Countering and exceeding ‘capital’: a ‘funds of knowledge’ approach to re-imagining community

This article discusses how the ‘funds of knowledge’ approach (FoK) offers a socially just alternative to the logics of capital, by drawing on knowledge assets from students’ family and community lifeworlds to build engaging and rigorous learning, supporting school–community interactions that build capacities. We explain how we applied FoK in an action research project – Redesigning Pedagogies in the North (RPiN) – to design curriculum and pedagogy in schools of a high-poverty region. With reference to RPiN, we also observe how high-poverty regions, and their schools, appear to be undergoing complex unsettlements, as effects of globalisation, which raise problematic questions about who/what is ‘the local community’. We argue that this calls for new thinking, both sociological and ethical, which can refine the FoK approach to take fuller account of the diverse and complex spaces of social-historical life in new times. We conclude by considering a pedagogical approach through which learners in such regions can re-imagine hopeful forms of community.     

School Improvement Efforts: Qualitative and Quantitative Data from Four Naturally Occurring Experiments in Phases III and IV of the Louisiana School Effectiveness Study

Abstract

Phase III of the Louisiana School Effectiveness Study (LSES‐III) was designed to provide rich, qualitative and quantitative data on the characteristics of more and less effective schools. Data were gathered on eight matched outlier pairs of schools. Unbeknownst to the authors at the beginning of LSES‐III, four of the eight historically ineffective schools were engaged in school improvement efforts. None of these efforts was guided from the state or district. This serendipity provided an opportunity to observe improvement efforts which were of the “naturally occurring” ‐‐ as opposed to externally developed, mandated or otherwise offered ‐‐ variety. The four projects are described, complete with five year follow‐up data. The efforts are seen as falling along two dimensions: technical changes designed to raise achievement test scores; and efforts focused on a point along a continuum ranging from orderliness to excellence, and designed to raise students’ academic achievement. Comparisons are made to more formally planned school improvement efforts.     

Equity and marketisation: emerging policies and practices in Australian education

The conjunction of equity and market logics in contemporary education has created new and different conditions of possibility for equity, both as conceived in policy discourses and as a related set of educational practices. In this editorial introduction, we examine how equity is being drawn into new policy assemblages and how, in the context of marketisation, equity is evolving and being enacted in new ways across education sectors. Different conceptions of equity are considered, including the increasingly influential human capital perspective promoted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We argue that, separate from critiques of neoliberalism and its deleterious effects on equity in education, it is necessary to analyse carefully the increasing rationalisation of equity agendas in economic terms, the associated effects on education governance and policy-making, as well as on the work of educational institutions and educators. Providing an overview of the contributions to this Special Issue, we direct particular attention to the multiple, complex and often contradictory effects of the current education reform agenda in Australia, which has prioritised equity objectives and intensified performance measurement, comparison and accountability as means to drive educational improvement and reduce disadvantage.     

An Evaluation of a Residential PSE Course for an Academic A-Level Class

In England, the presence of an established church places its adherents within the social mainstream. Other religious groups have been tolerated though suffering social and educational disadvantages. With the passage of time through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, minority religious groups such as Irish Catholics have been assimilated into the host culture, and allowed to have their own schools.

However, it would appear that contemporary movements of people to the United Kingdom have retained loyalties not only to their own religion, but, in some instances to their own language, which they perceive as a vital element of their own culture and identity. Demands for schools, within the state-funded system, for minority religious groups have not lessened. As faith schools in England increase in number, their role in a multicultural society becomes increasingly problematic. Lessons about changing models of assimilation and identity can be learnt from a brief review of the historic Irish Catholic experience that, in turn, can illuminate the current experience of a Greek Orthodox school in south London.     

Referral and placement recommendations of teachers toward gifted handicapped children

Three male students between 10 and 13 years of age, who possessed WISC‐R Full Scale IQ's of greater than 120 and documented problems in decoding skills were assessed with respect to cognitive processing abilities (Cognitive Assessment System) and found to have marked deficits in successive coding. A process based remedial program, combining global training on tasks requiring successive processing with tasks involving the application of successive processing to decoding in reading, was implemented within approximately six weeks (15 hours) of training. The remedial program included guided practice and verbal mediation to assist students to internalize and generalize the cognitive strategies. Improvements following remediation were manifested uniquely for each of the students. The differences appeared to be related to the entry skill levels and preferred strategies of each student, as well as to the dimensions of attention and motivation. Results offer an extension of cognitive theory regarding the functioning of students, and may also provide an assessment option allowing earlier identification and remediation for such students.     

Ethnography’s capacity to contribute to the cumulation of theory: a response to Hammersley

My aim in this paper is to raise the question of educational authority in terms of a philosophical and historical understanding in the context of a democratic polity. In particular, I wish to advance the view that educational authority in England is not well-founded since it resides increasingly with the Secretary of State for Education. This fails to reflect the public nature of education and also local conditions. The lack of appropriate authority contributes to many problems, the most prominent of which are the contested nature of education and schools provision and the frustrating fact that policies at national level change so frequently. Drawing on the discussion in Amy Gutmann’s Democratic Education, it examines differing conceptions of educational authority and proposes a tentative solution, which draws on the experience of the School Boards movement in England, 1870–1902.     

High-School Teachers’ Attempts to Promote Self-Regulated Learning: “I may learn from you, yet how do I do it?”

This study examined how urban high-school students responded to increased academic expectations. The intervention included increased expectations for reading and writing, collaboration, and the completion of multi-day assignments. Twenty-four students (8 lower, 8 average, and 8 higher performers) from 4 classrooms were interviewed across a 9-week period to evaluate their reactions to the increased expectations. While students approached lessons with learning versus performance orientations, they were unsuccessful because they could not transfer classroom successes to their outside of school studying efforts. Their difficulties were related to a lack of strategies, a failure to manage distractions, or an inability to monitor studying behaviors. Discussion focuses on the difficulties among students based on performance levels and on the challenges of increasing academic expectations within a climate of high-stakes testing.     

Time of day and short-duration high-intensity exercise influences on coagulation and fibrinolysis

Exercise has been demonstrated to have considerable effects upon haemostasis, with activation dependent upon the duration and intensity of the exercise bout. In addition, markers of coagulation and fibrinolysis have been shown to possess circadian rhythms, peaking within the morning (0600–1200?h). Therefore, the time of day in which exercise is performed may influence the activation of the coagulation and fibrinolytic systems. This study aimed to examine coagulation and fibrinolytic responses to short-duration high-intensity exercise when completed at different times of the day. Fifteen male cyclists (VO_2max: 60.3?±?8.1?ml?kg^?1?min^?1) completed a 4-km cycling time trial (TT) on five separate occasions at 0830, 1130, 1430, 1730 and 2030. Venous blood samples were obtained pre- and immediately post-exercise, and analysed for tissue factor (TF), tissue factor pathway inhibitor (TFPI), thrombin–anti-thrombin complexes (TAT) and D-Dimer. Exercise significantly increased plasma concentrations of TF (p?p?p?p?p?=?.004) and TFPI (p?=?.031), with 0830 greater than 1730 (p .001), while 1730 was less than 2030?h (p?=?.008), respectively. There was no significant effect of time of day for TAT (p?=?.364) and D-Dimer (p?=?.228). Power output, TT time and heart rate were not significantly different between TTs (p?>?.05); however, percentage VO_2max was greater at 1730 when compared to 2030 (p?=?.04). Due to a time-of-day effect present within TF, peaking at 0830, caution should be applied when prescribing short-duration high-intensity exercise bout within the morning in populations predisposed to hypercoagulability.