Teaching about Cuba: The concientization of a US teacher-researcher

In this paper the author offers a reflective perspective of her experiences while conducting research in Cuba in 1995 and 1996, and upon her return to the United States, teaching Cuban culture and history in a public school. In particular, she discusses the challenges surrounding her positioning, location, and accountability as author, researcher, teacher, and comparative educator. She explores the interaction of cultural identities faced as a researcher from the United States and the ideologically charged ironies that teaching Cuban history and culture evoke in an American middle school. Moreover, she chronicles her shifting perceptions of cultural identity and interfacing with the opposing responses between suspicion and acceptance in both countries. While negotiating between these two cultures, the repositioning on the continuum of critical pedagogy offers insight into the problems inherent in these situations.     

Recognising Prior Learning: Understanding the Relations Among Experience, Learning and Recognition from a Constructivist Perspective

This article discusses the relation between experience and learning in the context of recognition of prior learning (RPL) and from an experiential constructivist perspective. The study is based on a case of in-service training, based on RPL, in the care sector for elderly people. The data consist of interviews with actors in this process, which have been analysed with a qualitative interpretative approach. The results show how prior learning plays a central role in the training process, both on an individual and a collective level. The participants’ prior learning is taken as the starting point, particularly in learning conversations where prior learning is made visible and used, and where participants learn from each other. Further, new learning is taking place as a consequence of the recognition process, and the study particularly highlights how prior experiences could be the basis of new learning in a process of reflection and discussion.     

Zum Nutzen von Kooperationen für Volkshochschulen

Cooperation among organisations is a common practice in the area of continuing education. It is facilitated by education policy guidelines, initiatives and funding programs. However, it is still mostly unresolved, which specific advantages are realised by cooperation in the field of continuing education. The following article examines the effect of cooperation among adult education centres in increasing attendance in their continuing education courses. The examination is based on the statistics of adult education centres. The analysis is based on panel data, which help to identify causal connections between courses of cooperation and attendance. The results show that cooperation results in additional educational opportunities and thus increases the attendance numbers. In addition, cooperation among adult education centres holds the potential to attract previously unreached participants.     

Exposure to bullying,reactions and psychological adjustment of secondary school students

A sample of 575 secondary school students aged 11–15 years was administered a checklist on experiences of bullying, then divided into groups of victims, witnesses and not exposed, and by gender. Participants completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire on psychosocial adjustment. Victims and witnesses completed another questionnaire on the extent to which they would endorse retaliation/vengeance and avoidance towards the perpetrator. Girls reported being victimised significantly more than boys. Amongst victims, boys scored higher than girls on desire for retaliation/vengeance and on externalising behaviours; girls scored higher on internalising behaviour. Experience of bullying victimisation, rather than merely witnessing it or not being exposed to it, was associated with internalising behaviours for both boys and girls. These measures of psychosocial adjustment were associated with the desire for retaliation/vengeance. Implications are discussed of the links between gender, exposure to bullying, reactions and psychosocial adjustment of secondary school children.     

The Stanislavski system from New York to Hollywood

The Stanislavski system had a profound impact on the American stage and film, providing a disciplined approach to acting realism for the first time and offering a strong‐hold for contemporary acting talent in this country. Much has been written about the system, from its inception at the Moscow Art Theatre (M.A.T.) in 1897 to its impact on the European and American stage in mid‐twentieth century. However, no work has documented the transition of the system into the mainstream of the American film, where the legacy of Stanislavski is still very much alive. This paper is an attempt to close that gap and to trace the Stanislavski system from its arrival on the New York stage of the twenties to the Hollywood sound stage of the seventies.     

Möglichkeiten außerschulischer Hilfen in der Bearbeitung von Bildungsbenachteiligung: Potenziale und Grenzen ausgewählter Handlungsfelder der Jugendsozialarbeit

Even though social inequalities in education are often dealt with in out-of-school social work programs, this has been largely neglected by educational research in recent years. The present paper therefore presents the different fields of action in youth social work as means of compensatory education and discusses research findings regarding its use and effectiveness. The difficulty of measuring their effectiveness is not only due to a fragmented research field, but also reflects the fundamental contradiction between structural problems and their pedagogical treatment. The paper ends with a reflection on the importance of out-of-school programs to help adolescents with difficult course of lives.     

Creating effective teaching and learning environments: Building a positive behavioural support (PBS) model for UK special schools

The importance of reducing restraint and restrictive interventions in special schools has been recognised across the four nations of the UK. Government guidance for England and Wales, and recommendations produced by Restraint Reduction Scotland, both reference Positive behavioural support (PBS) as an evidence-based approach that can be used to proactively support pupils with, or at risk of, behaviours that challenge. The Department of Education of Northern Ireland recommends the development of behaviour support plans to support children with special education needs and disabilities. Special schools, however, also have a responsibility to set high expectations for every pupil, to provide access to the respective national curricula and to meet individual needs. School-wide positive behavioural support (SW-PBS), originated in the USA in the 1990s in response to a body of evidence that showed improved social and academic outcomes when behavioural interventions were implemented across whole school settings. It is increasingly being adopted in the UK. Drawing upon examples from schools in England and Wales with which the authors are familiar, this paper outlines the rationale for a special schools' model of SW-PBS and illustrates the ways in which this can be adjusted to meet the specific needs of each setting.

Key Points

• Reducing restraint and restrictive interventions in schools is a high priority across all four nations of the UK.
• Special schools also have a responsibility to provide children with special education needs and disabilities positive learning environments that maximise learning opportunities and meet individual needs.
• School-wide positive behaviour support (SW-PBS) provides a useful framework to help special schools meet these expectations.