Out of the ordinary: recapturing the liberal traditions of a university education through field courses

This article aims to stimulate debate about the nature of field courses in higher education. We use a colloquium format that allows each of us to reflect on the philosophy of field course teaching and our writing endeavours to establish a dialogue between the authors and leave the reader with a sense of curiosity. It starts with a position paper that sets out a particular viewpoint on field courses to which responses were invited. Two of the respondents were experienced field-course teachers in disciplines traditionally associated with this type of curriculum, the other a lecturer in a non-field-course-oriented discipline.     

A social skills group for children

Abstract

An NHS Trust set up groups to teach social skills to children and adolescents using a cognitive behavioural framework. One group of seven children (five boys and two girls) is described. Parents were invited to a parallel parents' group. Each group lasted for 90 minutes and ran weekly for 6 weeks. Extensive liaison with parents and teachers took place before, during and after the group. Analysis of pre- and postgroup questionnaires sent to parents and teachers indicated improved social functioning, outside the group, for most of the children. Parents valued the dialogue with professionals and often felt supported by them for the first time. Therapists' contact with teachers ensured full knowledge of children's behaviour and the transfer of skills to schools. Cognitive behavioural techniques with children under-going group work require intensive liaison to facilitate generalization of skills learnt.     

Creating Knowledge for Advocacy: The Discourse of Research at a Conservation Organization

In the field of conservation, the distinction between academic research and advocacy appears to be undergoing a shift as the number of PhD-level researchers at conservation advocacy organizations grows. Drawing on my case study of one researcher at a prominent conservation nongovernmental organization (NGO), I have shown how this shift is manifested in the communication of NGO research. My study includes a discourse analysis of this researcher's publications from the forums of both scholarship and advocacy including, as a representation of discourse in the latter forum, gray literature (reports, books, and other texts produced and distributed outside the channels of the academic and publishing industry). I have also drawn on my interviews with this researcher about her publications. My study highlights specific features typical of her rhetoric that result from her occupying a hybridized cultural and professional space where research and advocacy overlap.     

Concentrated Poverty and Urban School Reform: “The Choice is Yours” in Minneapolis

The subject of urban schools has received extensive scholarly and popular attention in recent years, and a wide variety of policies to address the problem of low educational achievement has been suggested. This article, based on an analysis of documents and reports, in-depth interviews, and a variety of secondary sources, examines the first several years of the implementation of a 2000 legal settlement between the Minneapolis Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the State of Minnesota regarding the Minneapolis schools. Influenced by the Sheff v. O'Neill (1996) case in Hartford, Connecticut, the Minneapolis NAACP's lawsuit challenged the State's oversight of the Minneapolis schools under the Minnesota Constitution. The settlement created two new programs intended to provide low-income Minneapolis students more options in selecting schools. This article focuses on the more wide-ranging of these two programs, which buses up to 2,000 low-income urban students annually to suburban Minneapolis schools at State expense. The creation of the suburban transfer program represents a legal and political victory for the NAACP and its supporters. Yet the transfer program highlights the many obstacles faced by low-income students and reinforces the necessity for a multi-dimensional approach to high-poverty urban schools.     

Intention to Commit Online Music Piracy and Its Antecedents: An Empirical Investigation

Online piracy of copyrighted digital music has become rampant as Internet bandwidth and digital compression technologies have advanced. The music industry has suffered significant financial losses and has responded with lawsuits, although online music piracy remains prevalent. This article developed a research model to study the determinants of individual intentions to commit online music piracy. The model was derived from the theories of planned behavior and deterrence. A survey questionnaire of 216 respondents was used to test the model. Consistent with the theory of planned behavior, the results showed that attitude toward online music piracy, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control are significant antecedent factors of intention to commit online music piracy. Concerning deterrence theory, the results suggest that the effect of perceived punishment severity on attitude was highly significant for females, and the effect of perceived certainty of punishment on attitude was not significant for males or females.     

Rethinking Critical Thinking: Indigenous students studying at university

Critical thinking is conceived in the theories as a skill that students consciously learn and practice while the teacher is positioned as the one who can teach students how to critique. However, one of the major insights gained through research conducted at a university in the Northern Territory is that students are already critiquing what they say and do in the classroom as they negotiate a position in relation to the lecturer as an authority. The research finds that critical thinking is not just a cognitive attribute, it is constituted through a practice that is always at work, albeit in hidden ways in the classroom. It is through this hidden practice of critique that indigenous students at this university speak and learn outside an assimilation to the power and knowledge of the non‐indigenous teacher.     

Engagement with news on Twitter: insights from Australia and Korea

ABSTRACT

This study examines the patterns of news engagement among news consumers with different political affiliation and cultural background. We use computational methods and data from Twitter in a cross-country comparison of engagement with six online news sources in Australia and South Korea. For our analysis, we used a subset of Twitter users who retweeted at least one political story during the period of collection, and for whom we were able to predict political affiliation using correspondence analysis and data on Twitter follower ties to politicians. We find that right-wing Australian retweeters are more intense in their news engagement, compared with their left-wing counterparts, whereas in South Korea it was the opposite. Australian right-wing political retweeters have more diverse information sources, while there was no difference in information diversity between the right and left in South Korea. We discuss how the political situation in South Korea at the time of data collection may have affected our analysis. We emphasise the methodological contributions of our research and its connection to on-going research into the behavioural foundations of ‘filter bubbles’.     

What does ‘inclusion’ mean for pupils on the autistic spectrum in mainstream secondary schools?

The last decade has seen a groundswell of developments in educational policy in the UK relating to inclusive education for students with special educational needs (SEN). However, whether government policy has been fully implemented in schools remains a concern. The experience of students with autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs) provides an excellent case in point. An increasing number of such students are now educated in mainstream schools, but the limited research in this area has indicated that their experience of school is often marked by bullying, social isolation and anxiety. In light of this, the aim of the current study was to examine the extent to which inclusive educational policy was actually reflected in the practices of four mainstream secondary schools. An exploratory case study approach was adopted, utilising interviews with pupils, teachers, other school staff (e.g., senior managers, learning support assistants) and parents, observations of lessons and other contexts (e.g., lunch time), and document analysis. Our findings highlighted a number of school practices which acted as facilitators or barriers to students’ learning and participation, some of which were generic to SEN provision, and some of which appeared to be specific to those on the autistic spectrum. A discussion of these is presented to enable further understanding of, and inform practice relating to, the inclusion process for students with ASDs.     

Intervention for children with language impairments: a model of evidence-based outcome research

Over the past 30 years successive governments in the UK have endeavoured to make the statutory framework suitable for children with special educational needs (SEN). More recently, efforts have been made to personalise children's learning, making educational experience more innovative and responsive to the diversity of needs in schools. A drive is emerging in health and education to develop and evaluate intervention strategies for children with language impairments (LIs), which is both methodologically challenging and rewarding. The current review demonstrates difficulties encountered with using evidence-based (evidence-related) outcome research involving children with LIs. Many studies have inherent methodological problems such as small sample sizes, ill-matched groups and designs that are difficult to replicate or compare. Such approaches are unlikely to yield significant results, or if they do, it is difficult to devise clear guidance regarding choice of intervention strategies. In the light of these difficulties, theoretical, methodological and practical issues are discussed herein and a model is proposed to assist in enabling interventions to be identified, evaluated in a robust manner, and the results shared with educators. We suggest that the use of a process-driven model ensures a more rigorous approach when undertaking large-scale systematic, evidence-based research into the effective approaches to teaching children not only with LIs but across the field of special needs education.