Autonomy and the Ethical Status of Comprehensive Education

On grounds of autonomy, is comprehensive education — an approach to education that attempts to facilitate the acceptance of certain beliefs and ways of life as being correct, and refuses to sympathetically expose students to contrary beliefs and ways of life — ethically suspect? Recently, Bryan R. Warnick has argued that it is. In this essay, Adam D. Bailey critically evaluates Warnick's argument, and contends that it is unsuccessful. In particular, he argues that Warnick's argument from necessity does not succeed. Bailey then addresses a potential response to his critique of Warnick's argument — that of developing an argument from facilitation rather than necessity — and argues that, contrary to the argument from necessity, the argument from facilitation does provide support for the claim that comprehensive education is ethically suspect. However, Bailey attempts to show that even granting the facilitation argument, it is plausible to hold that, on grounds of autonomy, comprehensive education need not be seen as ethically suspect.     

Reasons for student dropout in an online course in a rural K–12 setting

Rural schools in the USA use online courses to overcome problems such as attracting and retaining teachers, geographic isolation, low student enrollment, and financial constraints. This paper reports on the reasons that 39% of rural high school students who enrolled in an online Advanced Placement course subsequently dropped the course. Students who dropped the course were asked to provide an email statement detailing their reasons for doing so. On-site facilitators—local staff members situated in the small rural schools where students were enrolled—also provided reasons whenever one of their students dropped the course. Results indicate that the reasons given by students and on-site facilitators for dropping the course often agreed, and tended to fall within the following five categories: scheduling and time constraints, academic rigor and motivation, technology problems, problems with online medium and lack of teacher immediacy, and parental influences.     

Building world class universities in China: exploring faculty’s perceptions,interpretations of and struggles with global forces in higher education

Employing a glonacal (global, national and local) heuristic as a theoretical lens, and a qualitative analysis with interview data, this study highlights how Chinese faculty members interpret the definitions and implications of pursuing world class universities (WCUs) and struggle with the multiple dimensions of their academic lives across global, national and local dimensions. The findings indicate that faculty members believe that the quest to build WCUs in China has been narrowly defined by the government, which emphasises international/global dimensions, rather than national or local. Because of this, Chinese professors believe that there are growing gaps between administration and faculty. Yet they recognise significant advancement in hardware and facilities, especially in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This study confirms that faculty’s academic lives are intricately interlinked across the glonacal economy and that faculty continue to navigate their roles across all dimensions.     

Adult attachment, parent emotion, and observed parenting behavior: mediator and moderator models

In a middle-class sample of mothers of 2-year-olds, adult attachment classifications measured in the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) were related to maternal self-reported emotional well-being and observed parenting behavior, and the potential mediating and moderating roles of maternal emotion were tested. Mothers classified as dismissing on the AAI reported significantly lower levels of positive affectivity. Mothers classified as preoccupied reported significantly higher levels of negative affectivity and anxiety. Preoccupied mothers were observed to be significantly higher on angry/intrusive parenting, but this association was not mediated by attachment-related differences in maternal emotion. Maternal emotional well-being did, however, moderate the associations between adult attachment and parenting behavior: Dismissing attachment was significantly associated with lower warmth/responsiveness only among mothers with higher levels of depressive symptoms.     

Looking Beyond the Overall Scores of NAEP Assessments: Applications of Generalized Linear Mixed Modeling for Exploring Value-Added Item Difficulty Effects

The central idea of differential item functioning (DIF) is to examine differences between two groups at the item level while controlling for overall proficiency. This approach is useful for examining hypotheses at a finer-grain level than are permitted by a total test score. The methodology proposed in this paper is also aimed at estimating differences at the item rather than the overall score level, yet with the innovation where item-level differences for many groups simultaneously are the focus. This is a straightforward generalization of DIF as variance rather than one or several group differences; conceptually, this can be referred to as item difficulty variation (IDV). When instruction is of interest, and "groups" is a unit at which instruction is determined or delivered, then IDV signals value-added effects that can be influenced by either demographic or instructional variables.     

Built policy: school-building and architecture as policy instrument

ABSTRACT

School architecture is often taken for granted both in use (where it is naturalized) and in writing on education policy (tending to feature simply as policy setting.) Built policy instead points up the active and ongoing role of the material environment in shaping education. From financing and procurement to the design of individual classrooms, the paper works across architecture, sociology and policy studies to clarify the relationship between different dimensions of physical and social space and so provide a useful theoretical ground for future work. What is special about school-building and architecture that enables them to do policy? How are they used to do it? By whom? From city planners to students, a range of actors use different space-organizing resources to attempt the instantiation of (and challenges to) policy in built form. These processes are explored first theoretically, then empirically through a new Academy school in England. The paper deepens understanding of what policy is, emphasizing its intimate if taken for granted spatial characteristics, its ongoing-ness in built form and its travel by means of circulating images of buildings and spaces.     

Making a class act: as seen in one Year 8 English lesson

This article reports on active teaching and learning approaches taken by one English teacher and a secondary PGCE student‐teacher to bring about changes to the work culture in a Year 8 mixed‐ability class. It is written by the PGCE tutor, student‐teacher, class teacher and external examiner, following an observation of one lesson, in a series of lessons, given by the student‐teacher. This lesson is analysed through its motivating content, approach to critical reading, inherent creativity and active approaches to learning. It indicates how a challenging class has been changed by approaches that provide alternatives to currently advocated objectives‐driven and direct instructional approaches.     

Encouraging Prospective Teachers to Engage Friends and Family in Exploring Physical Phenomena

Involving people outside of a science course can foster learning for students enrolled in the course. Assignments involving friends and family provided such opportunities in an undergraduate physics course for prospective teachers. These assignments included reflecting upon prior experiences, interviewing friends and family members, engaging them in exploring physical phenomena, and teaching them with relevant websites. The six strands of science learning articulated in Learning Science in Informal Environments (National Research Council in Learning science in informal environments: People, places, and pursuits. National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2009) provided a framework for analyzing the prospective teachers’ responses. Through such assignments, the instructor created opportunities for the prospective teachers to use and build upon knowledge learned in class as well as to gain confidence and experience in facilitating the learning of others.