Maggie’s day: a small‐scale analysis of English education policy

Policy sociologists typically research at large scale. This paper presents an example of a policy analysis which illuminates how policy is embedded in single incidents, lives and places. The case in point concerns the policy fetish for ‘closing the gap and raising the bar’. This rhetoric is taken to mean improving the learning of all students, while at the same time producing a more equitable, quality education system. In the case in point, we mobilise an ethnographic fragment and the spatial theory of Henri Lefebvre in order to examine the ways in which the policy technology of transforming students into measurable data plays out in the life of one group of Year 10 girls in a struggling English comprehensive school. We argue that our analysis demonstrates that in this very particular case, the pedagogies intended to promote attainment actually accomplished the reverse. We suggest that, following this example, policy sociologists might gain from further research at the micro/vernacular levels of schooling.     

NASTY,BRUTISH AND LONG: ADVENTURES IN OLD AGE AND THE WORLD OF ELDERCARE By Ira Rosofsky

Nurses play a significant role in geriatric care. However, as the aging population and demand for geriatric nurses increase worldwide, shortages of nurses seem to arise. This creates the need to assess and address the motivation and attitudes of nurses toward geriatric care. The intent of this qualitative study is to surface the essence or the “lebenswelt” that describe the motivation and attitudes of a selected group of Filipino nurses toward geriatric care. A total of six registered nurses who had experienced taking care of elderly patients voluntarily participated as respondents of this study. A two-part instrument developed by the researchers was made to elicit necessary data and information. The first part comprised of the robotfoto intended to establish the baseline characteristics of nurses under study. The second part consisted of a semistructured individual in-depth interview using “aide memoire” to probe into the motivation and attitudes of the nurse respondents. Field texts were phenomenologically reduced via repertory grid. Two distinct and interesting themes, namely Geriatric Service Motivation Typology and the Yin-Yang of Geriatric Attitudes emerged. The first theme includes the Single Loop and Double Loop type of motivation The former involves a transactional and unidirectional process, while the latter constitutes a two-way relational and transformational process. The second theme consists of a harmonious combination of the two sides of the nurses' attitudes toward geriatric care. Through this study, the human side of nursing is seen and captured, thus increasing the awareness and knowledge of nurses, improving provision of optimum geriatric care, and inspiring nurses to pursue geriatric nursing with a yearning to serve the elderly with and from the heart.     

ASERA: brief histor(y/ies)

This collection of historical accounts provides diverse perspectives on the structure and culture of the community of researchers who participate in activities of the Australasian Science Education Research Association (ASERA). It describes the formation of the Association, and identifies major changes and challenges for the ever growing and internationalisation of its membership.

信息工程类国际生全英语教学与学习心理探究

基于过去六年的国际生教学与管理工作的观察与经验,针对国际化教学中所涉及的教学、师资和学生心理三个方面进行了若干探究。以计算机科学与技术专业的国际生为案例,结合作者在通信工程及计算机科学与技术专业的教学与管理实践,就课程安排、教师队伍配备、教学方式以及如何开展针对国际生的学习心理辅导工作分享一些经验并提出一些建议。     

Against Conformity: Raphael Samuel

This paper is about the work of the historian and committed intellectual Raphael Samuel, a central figure of the British New Left. It considers his political and intellectual activities over a 30‐year period, and sets them in their changing context. It seeks to argue that in many respects Samuel's work provides means for rethinking educational history and contemporary educational politics.     

A global reset of education

PROSPECTS - As the world looks to the future and ways to safely return to normal, in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have a unique opportunity to reset our priorities and redefine what this...     

Recovering reading using computer mastery programmes

Mastery learning has been shown to be an effective method of raising the level of performance of pupils on a wide range of tasks. This method has been applied to the teaching of reading and spelling with primary school children with learning difficulties, in the form of a series of computer programmes using the high quality digital sound which is available in the current generation of low-cost portable computers.
Unlike many programmes designed to teach or encourage reading skills, the programmes developed for this project provide instantaneous feedback, and identify and reward correct responses, with high criterion levels set for progression from one task to the next. They also provide complete records of pupil performance, allowing teachers to select teaching sequences appropriate for each individual pupil. Case studies of pupils are presented, showing the performance gains obtained with short but regular use of the programmes, over a 12 week period.     

Phonics self‐teaching materials for foundation literacy

The effect of irregular English orthography (spelling) on foundation literacy, and in particular on alphabetic decoding, is discussed within the context of the orthographic depth hypothesis. A method for circumventing the retarding effects of traditional English orthography, based on the support provided for Chinese pupils learning their character‐based system of writing, is described. Evidence for the beneficial effects of a regularised form of English to support conventional orthography is presented in the form of a case study and a small group experiment, both carried out in a primary school in the North of England.     

Reading and expressive aphasia: A case study

This study describes a case of developmental expressive aphasia where the acquisition of basic reading skills was associated with a parallel improvement in language functioning generally, suggesting a central nervous system interaction and structural transfer at the syntactic‐symbolic level. The study implies that in cases of expressive aphasia where there is some impairment of syntactic structuring, it may be possible to stimulate the formation of such an organisational capacity by direct teaching intervention through a reading programme that emphasises grammatical features of language. Furthermore, the observed outcomes of the reading program in this case can be explained in terms of Chomsky's theory of language acquisition and Luria's theory of the regulative function of speech on neural organisation. The study, therefore, has implications both for a more complete explanation of the nature of aphasic dysfunction and for the effective use of reading as a form of language therapy.