Raising Reading Standards: What is the Headteacher's Role?

The role of the headteacher has been identificed as one of the key characteristics of schools which achieve high standards of reading. Eve Bearne here presents the findings of an evaluation which reveals ways in which headteachers influence reading standards, particularly through in-service provision. The evaluation's aim was to assess the effectiveness of in-service courses in raising standards of achievement in reading and to consider the implications for school provision and future in-service arrangements. One factor which emerged strongly was the importance of the headteacher's role in managing reading provision in the primary school. It appeared that where the headteacher had taken a proactive role, developments were likely to be more firmly and permanently established and staff more secure in extending their practice.     

Student voice in an age of ‘security’?

ABSTRACT

As student voice has become popularised as a school reform strategy, it has been critiqued as another instrumental strategy that schools may use to govern students’ speech, bodies and subjectivities. What necessitates further analysis is the relation between student voice and regulatory modes of governance entwined with geopolitical attention to security in and beyond disciplinary institutions. In this article, ethnographic accounts from students at a comprehensive coeducational public secondary school where student voice was adopted as a school reform strategy are read with and through a policy context concerned with security (in particular, the Australian Government’s Schools Security Programme and the Living Safe Together policy strategy), and Foucault’s problematisations of ‘security’ in lectures published in Security, Territory, Population. It is argued that student voice is entwined with contemporary security policies and practices; securing the material borders of the school is inextricable from limits placed on the discursive articulation of feeling in and beyond school gates.     

Creating Peace by Confronting Prejudice: Examining the Effects of a Multicultural Communication Skills Group Intervention

This study investigated the effects of a Multicultural Relationship Enhancement Workshop on American education majors' ability to confront prejudice in order to create more peaceful communities in school settings. Due to the diverse group membership, participants were provided an opportunity to practice communication skills in a multicultural context that emphasized a social justice perspective. A repeated measures design with random assignment of participants to experimental (n = 26) and wait-list control (n = 22) groups was employed. Participants were studied at three different points in time, in five-week intervals, with the experimental group participating in the workshop during the first five-week interval and the control group receiving the treatment during the second five-week interval. The repeated measures analysis of variance revealed significant time by treatment interaction effects between Times 1 and 2 on a measure of communication skills in multicultural situations. The intervention is discussed in the context of policies that promote cultures of peace.     

“Ahoy Me Hearties!” Captain Pugwash, Bits of Movable Paper, and the Bible: A Tribute to John Ryan

A short celebratory article about the life and career of the English children's book author/illustrator, John Ryan, most famous for creating the eponymous pirate Captain Pugwash. This article documents Ryan's early career at school and in the army, and his rise as a freelance cartoonist, working first for Eagle and Girl comics (and in the process creating Captain Pugwash, Harris Tweed, Sir Boldasbrass, and Lettice Leefe) and then developing his characters for books and television. There is also a brief discussion of Ryan's biblical retellings for children and the recent controversy surrounding the names of Pugwash's crew.     

Performance‐approach goals,task‐avoidant behaviour and conceptual knowledge as predictors of first graders’ school performance

The present paper aims to examine the relationship between first grade children’s performance‐approach goal orientation, task‐avoidant behaviours, conceptual knowledge and their achievement in maths and literacy. The sample consisted of 174 first grade children and their class teachers. Children’s self reports of their performance‐approach goals and avoidant behaviours as well as teacher‐reports of children’s avoidant behaviours were used. Our results indicate that performance‐approach goal orientation positively predicts children’s self‐reported task‐avoidant behaviours which in turn have a negative effect on children’s achievement outcomes. The negative effect of teacher‐rated avoidant behaviours on children’s achievement outcomes was even greater than the positive influence of children’s conceptual knowledge. These results suggest that the relationships between goal‐orientations, achievement behaviours and achievement outcomes start to form early in children’s school career (or even before that) and that children’s self‐report of their achievement goals and behaviours provide a valuable knowledge already in this early age.     

Governing indigenous recreation at a distance: a critical analysis of an after school active health intervention

Within the Canadian context, the physical activity levels of children and youth in the after school time period has become a source of public health concern. We argue that this concern is informed by broader public health crises, in particular the ‘global obesity epidemic’ and the closely related ‘global pandemic of physical inactivity', and that these so-called ‘crises’ operate as part of a discursive regime that serves to justify after school interventions aimed at increasing the physical activity practices of children and youth. Although the objectives of such interventions are seemingly well intentioned, we suggest that such interventions nonetheless harbor difficult to discern, but potentially pernicious consequences, for the communities in which they are implemented. We focus our attention on the place-specific effects of one Public Health Agency of Canada-funded after school physical activity intervention – After the School Bell Rings (ASBR) – that was implemented in the mostly Indigenous, northern community of Placid, Manitoba. Based on a critical analysis of the ASBR program itself, along with interviews and focus groups with children, parents and recreation providers (n?=?10) from the community of Placid, we contend that the ASBR serves to govern Indigenous recreation at a distance. We argue that when implemented in the place-specific context of Placid, the ASBR functions as part of a broader governmental assemblage composed of loosely connected discourses, institutions, socio-structural conditions and individuals that, when assembled, ultimately serve to govern geographically and culturally distinct communities. We conclude by suggesting that the objectives of broad-based health interventions, such as the goal of increasing after school physical activity levels, should not be universally implemented across diverse locales, but need to account for the diverse, place-specific priorities and needs of the communities into which they are implemented.