Telling tales of torture: repositioning young adults' views of asylum seekers

This paper explores the changing attitudes of a group of young adults towards asylum seekers in the UK. Based on the experience of sixth form students attending a workshop hosted by a former refugee from Pinochet's Chile, it argues for the importance of personal stories and their wider contexts and suggests that each is necessary to enable understanding of the other. The paper addresses the ways in which these students were enabled to confront and contest the populist anti‐asylum discourse prevalent in the UK. The deconstruction of socially constructed barriers that had filtered their perceptions of communities beyond their own immediate environment was central to their shift from initial hostility through sympathy to greater understanding. This is analyzed in terms of risk. The paper concludes by acknowledging the power of the dominant discourse on asylum seekers and by suggesting that time must be made for tolerance.     

Encounters with the Unexpected: From Holbein to Hirst (and Back Again)

Learning through art in the museum is a Masters’ level module established in 2006 through collaboration between the School of Education at Roehampton University, London and Interpretation and Education staff at Tate Britain and Tate Modern. On completion of the module, participants were asked to reflect on how the experience had altered their perspectives on the collection and their strategies for teaching and learning in art and design. The aim of this article is to explore some of the themes that emerged from these interviews and from other dialogue between tutors and students on the module, themes that are then discussed within the wider context of museum and gallery education. The article concludes by reflecting on broader notions of knowledge and understanding in the context of museum and gallery education. It is argued that the juxtapositions of historical, modern and contemporary art that have been a distinctive feature of Tate's curatorial strategy since 2000 have shed fresh light on older works in the collection and provide opportunities for art educators to reappraise the emphasis currently placed upon the interpretation of modern and contemporary work. It is suggested that developing knowledge and understanding of art is partly about embracing notions of ambiguity and mystery: that engaging with multiple and shifting interpretations of artworks should play a more central role in art education and that part of the process of engaging with art is the experience of not knowing and not understanding.     

The single European market and its implications for educational and vocational guidance services

The formation of the Single European Market is the culmination of a series of changes designed to form an economic community in Western Europe. It is designed to encourage the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital. The result is likely to be much higher levels of personal mobility, both educational and occupational. The main obstacles towards freedom of movement are non-recognition of qualifications and inadequate mastery of foreign languages. Various steps are being taken by the European Commission to overcome these obstacles and to promote mobility. These developments have major implications for educational and vocational guidance services. In particular, there is a need for extended information on educational and occupational opportunities across the European Community. There is also a need for improved support services for those who move across national boundaries. This is further likely to raise expectations for guidance services in countries where they are currently ill-developed. Initiatives to date in response to these challenges include European-level reports on the state of guidance services, action programmes designed to encourage innovation in guidance practice, and the establishment of a new European association for those involved in student guidance.University of Cambridge Careers Service     

The Japanese ‘lifetime employment system’ and its implications for careers guidance

The lifetime employment system in Japan offers employees a high degree of job security. The characteristics, foundations, extent and effects of the system are examined, as are some present strains upon it. The system's implications for education and for careers guidance in Japan are then explored. The structure of guidance services in schools, in employment offices, in universities and colleges, and for adults, are described, and are related both to the lifetime employment system and to other features of Japanese society.     

Comparison of Three Human Sexuality Teaching Methods Used in University Health Classes

Three teaching methods (lecture, independent study combined with small-group discussion, and audiovisual) were compared for knowledge gain and attitude change. The investigation involved 62 undergraduate university students enrolled in three personal health classes. A pretest, treatment application, and posttest format was employed. An adapted version of the Sex Knowledge and Attitude Questionnaire was used as the evaluation instrument in all testing sessions. The one-way analysis of covariance was applied to compare both knowledge and attitude results. Application of the Tukey test demonstrated that the lecture method of instruction was significantly more effective in producing sexuality-knowledge gain than was the audiovisual teaching approach. No further comparisons of knowledge gain and no comparison of attitude change yielded significant results.     

Cooperating in constructing knowledge: case studies from chemistry and citizenship

This paper looks at three case studies within the teaching and learning of chemistry. Each case considers the effectiveness of group learning activities in terms of the ways in which they enhance cooperative learning. Group tasks are generally undertaken in order to encourage learners to develop their understanding of particular issues, lthough one key disadvantage is that much of the process of the group work is lost as soon as the group disbands. The cases explored here aim to: (i) investigate the development of cooperative attitudes among students, looking for significant learning of scientific concepts, (ii) encourage the development of ethical attitudes, to motivate, and then (iii) empower the participants so that they can build upon the communal knowledge that is generated. In this way learners enhance their levels of partnership and cooperation with other members leading to a fuller and broader understanding of the collaboration required within the values of citizenship education. Using science to educate for citizenship is a growing concern across many countries of the world, in this case illustrated by work in Brazil and the UK.     

The Implications of School‐Leaver Unemployment for Careers Education in Schools

’In particular I would urge that the Irish school system of the future should give freedom—freedom to the individual school, freedom to the individual teacher, freedom as far as may be to the individual pupiV. (Padraig H. Pearse [1916] Irish patriot, poet and educationist.)     

Evaluating online CPD using educational criteria derived from the experiential learning cycle

A set of educational evaluation criteria for online continuing professional development (CPD) courses is developed using Kolb's (1984) experiential learning cycle theory. These criteria are used to evaluate five courses provided by online CPD websites. It was found that these online CPD courses neglect parts of the learning cycle. Suggestions for improvements in these areas are given.