Hesitantly into the arena: An account of trainee teachers' and sixth form students' preliminary attempts to enter into dialogue through email

Teacher training is increasingly accountable to central government. Trainees – the word itself is significant – are expected to demonstrate competence in a wide range of professional standards if they are to achieve qualified teacher status. Training partnership schools, understandably, impose their own conditions for entry into their 'communities of practice'. In these circumstances, trainees – and their trainers – have increasingly fewer opportunities for risk taking or for exploring new configurations of the teacher pupil relationship.
This paper describes an attempt to exploit the potential of email as a means of granting access to a 'pedagogical arena' in which trainees and students might attempt to negotiate their own ways of working together. It concludes by suggesting that both groups found this a challenging task and by noting that the trainers involved decided that, if the project were to run again, a certain amount of autonomy would need to be sacrificed to direction.     

Sources of bias in special needs provision in mainstream primary schools: evidence from two British cohort studies

This study examines inequality during late childhood in children's access to special needs help in mainstream primary schools using data from two British cohorts: the National Child Development Study (NCDS) and the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70). It explores the source of any biases in the provision of special help using measures of individual gender, attainment and psychosocial adjustment; family social class; school composition; and education regions. Pervasive gender bias was found both in the identification of children with special needs and in the provision of help to children with special needs. There were more children from manual homes receiving help in school than children from professional homes, but when reading, mathematics and psychosocial adjustment scores were taken into account, the gradient reversed, so that children from professional homes were more likely to be getting help. The influence of the school's composition showed the same reversal. Once test scores were considered, schools with a greater proportion of above average children were more likely to be able to provide help for those with special needs than schools with a greater proportion of children with problems. Regional variation suggests that areas in southeast England are better funded than average, while areas of deprivation are not provided with sufficient resources to meet their children's needs.     

The influence of environmental factors on rugby football injuries

The aim of this study was to establish the influence of weather and pitch conditions on the frequency and nature of rugby injuries. Observers at 26 senior rugby clubs in the Borders District of the Scottish Rugby Union reported all injuries to 1169 (96%) registered players at Saturday home and away matches during the 1993-94 season (August 1993 to April 1994). Weather and pitch conditions at 112 grounds were recorded on 605 occasions; 1268 Borders teams played at these grounds,with 344 injury episodes being sustained. Matches were played in dry weather for three-quarters of these occasions. There was a moderate association between weather and the state of the pitch (Spearman's rank correlation, r = -0.46, P ? 0.001), with heavier pitches occurring in wetter weather. Logistic regression revealed that there were significant month-of-season (P = 0.003), wind strength (P = 0.008) and temperature (P = 0.011) effects on the risk of injury. On four of five occasions when matches were played in a downpour of rain, at least one injury episode occurred. Our results show that the month of the season and the weather may influence the occurrence of rugby injuries, but that the state of the pitch does not. Further studies are required to investigate these factors in more detail.     

Proposed Guidelines for Operating Counselor Education and Supervision Training Clinics

The purpose of this article is to justify and present a set of guidelines for the effective and ethical administration of counselor education and supervision training clinics. Responding directly to a call for creating guidelines, the authors address core issues surrounding their development. Benefits for clear and accessible guidelines and risks associated with their absence are covered. Drawing upon existing contributions from the field and related professions, guidelines are proposed along with a plan for their approval and implementation in counselor education training clinics.     

High on emotion! perceived value: influencing decision-making processes at international student recruitment trade shows

Transnational education students are an increasingly important source of income for higher education institutes. Student recruitment trade shows as a marketing communication tool are being used by the majority of higher education institutes and despite multi-million-dollar investments, little is known about the impact they have on the decision-making processes of transnational education students and the student recruitment efforts of the exhibiting higher education institutes. This research project discusses how international student recruitment trade shows can positively influence the perceived value students obtain from visiting these trade shows. The findings of this qualitative study show the positive effect higher levels of social emotions have on students’ perceptions of international study options from pre-purchase to post-consumption and on the effectiveness of student recruitment trade shows.     

Teacher stories of collusion and transformation: a feminist pedagogical framework and meta‐language for cultural gender justice

This article examines data from two different studies concerning issues of social justice, gender and schooling and specifically the practices of secondary teachers, ‘Mr B’, a teacher from a school in Tasmania, Australia, and ‘Mr C’, a teacher from a school in Bedfordshire in the United Kingdom. Both teachers’ practices and relationships with students are analysed within a feminist interpretation of the Productive Pedagogies model of quality teaching and learning. The two different stories are presented as juxtapositions that serve to illuminate the capacities of pedagogy to, on the one hand, work in ways likely to re‐inscribe the discourses of entitlement and privilege that perpetuate cultural gender injustice, and on the other, transform these discourses towards more equitable and just networks of multiple and intersecting differences.     

Harassment Issues in Sport Organizations: Utilitarian,Justice, Kantian,and Existential Approaches to Moral Ontology

The Education Reform Act (ERA) 1988 represents the most significant piece of legislation to have entered the education system in postwar Britain. Although all its “effects” have yet to materialize, this paper argues that aspects of ERA legislation will have a very damaging impact upon both the level and quality of PE provision in some state schools. The tone of this paper is necessarily speculative; but the analysis, based on the authors' ongoing research in primary and secondary schools, will suggest that ERA may exacerbate social and educational divisions within the education system and make it very difficult for some teachers to provide a quality “PE for all.”