Development of School Attendance Difficulties: An Exploratory Study

This article discusses aspects of school attendance difficulties, focusing on why a minority of children decide to miss school. It is an exploratory study representing a developmental approach that aims to establish the immediate determinants of school absence to gain more understanding of the nature of attendance difficulties and eventually inform practitioner methods. Questionnaires, designed to measure attitudes, perceptions and parent–child interaction over school absence were administered to two hundred and nine 12–13 year olds attending a comprehensive school. Thirty-five individual interviews were carried out with good and poor attenders to clarify the questionnaire responses. It was concluded that school attendance difficulties develop like other defiant behaviour problems, with parental reaction playing a major role. Government policies encouraging the use of punitive measures with parents of poor attenders do not provide practitioners or pastoral staff with the sophisticated working methods necessary to help poor attending children achieve an education.     

Book Reviews

Serial Publications: Guidelines for Good Practice in Publishing Printed and Electronic Journals, 2nd edition, by Diane Brown, Elaine Stott and Anthony Watkinson Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers 2003, £27 (members), £30 (non‐members), 108 pp., paperback. ISBN 0‐907341‐22‐5. Available from http://www.alpsp.org/pub3.htm The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper prepared by Raym Crow, SPARC Senior Consultant Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, Washington DC. Release 1.0, 2002. Available at: www.arl.org/sparc The Case for Institutional Repositories: A SPARC Position Paper prepared by Raym Crow, SPARC Senior Consultant Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, Washington, DC. Release 1.0, 2002. Available at: www.arl.org/sparc Internet Law: Text and Materials by Chris Reed Butterworths Tolley, 2000, £24.95, paperback. ISBN 0406981418 Intellectual Property Law by Lionel Bently and Brad Sherman Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001, £32.99 (paperback), 1136 pp. ISBN 0‐19‐876343‐3 Clearing the Way: Copyright Clearance in UK Libraries by Elizabeth Gadd LISU Occasional Paper no. 31, Library & Information Statistics Unit (LISU), Department of Information Science, Loughborough University. ISBN 1 901786 51 X Electronic Journals and User Behaviour: Learning for the Future from the SuperJournal Project by David Pullinger and Christine Baldwin Deedot Press, 2002, £14.95. ISBN 0‐954‐2924‐0‐5 Electronic Ecology: A Case Study of Electronic Journals in Context by Karla L. Hahn Association of Research Libraries, 79 pp., 2001, $45. ISBN 0‐918006‐46‐1 The Transition from Paper: Where Are We Going and How Will We Get There edited by R. Stephen Berry and Anne Simon Moffat American Academy of Arts and Sciences, published online (2001): www.amacad.org/publications/trans.htm The Transition from Paper: Where Are We Going and How Will We Get There edited by R. Stephen Berry and Anne Simon Moffat American Academy of Arts and Sciences, published online (2001): www.amacad.org/publications/trans.htm E‐Serials, Publishers, Libraries, Users and Standards, 2nd edn, edited by Wayne Jones The Haworth Press Inc., 2003, 294 pp. paperback ISBN 0789012294     

Creating a learner-centered teaching environment using student choice in assignments

Learner-centered teaching (LCT) has been found to be a more effective pedagogy for online students, as traditional teaching methods do not work well in online courses. Professors in an upper-level technology management class revised their online introductory course to incorporate cafeteria-style grading. This LCT approach allowed students to select assignments they wanted to complete. More assignments were offered than needed to achieve an A grade. They included traditional projects such as research papers as well as more engaged activities such as demonstrating or mastering skills. To determine whether these changes promoted active learning, course data were obtained and analyzed. Students completed a range of assignments, showed mastery on a number of skills, and were overwhelmingly positive about having flexible options. Tellingly, 36% of students completed more assignments than were needed to earn the top grade.     

Immigrant girls as caregivers to younger siblings: a transnational feminist analysis

This article employs a transnational feminist lens to examine the experiences of racialised immigrant girls who provide care for their younger siblings. The article draws on findings from a participatory action research study in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada to examine the role that immigrant girls’ caregiving practices play in transnational families’ social, economic, and cultural survival. It argues that greater attention should be given to the diverse and complex contexts, consequences, costs, and contributions of immigrant girls’ caregiving labour.     

Issues in the development of children’s centres on nursery and primary school sites

This paper explores the development of children’s centres in England between 2004 and 2008, focusing on the newly created centres that have been located on primary and nursery school sites. Using both an analysis of policy documents and interview data from three urban local authorities, we examine the use of premises and the differing priorities of centre staff and school heads, particularly in relation to the balance of services between early years education, childcare and family support. We also explore governance issues, focusing especially on patterns of accountability. In so doing, we also examine the tensions that exist between children’s centres located on primary and on nursery school sites and the schools themselves.     

Teacher enthusiasm: Dimensionality and context specificity

Enthusiasm is considered an important characteristic of effective teachers. However, the conceptualization of the term in the research literature is inconsistent. Whereas most studies use the term “enthusiasm” to describe features of instruction, some have used it to describe a characteristic of teachers. This research seeks to clarify the concept of teacher enthusiasm, examining its dimensionality and context specificity. The study draws on three samples of teachers who were administered questionnaire measures of enthusiasm. In two samples (N = 205 and 332), it was possible to match teacher data with data on the students taught. In another sample (N = 113), additional measures of work-related wellbeing were implemented. Confirmatory multigroup factor analyses showed that two dimensions of teacher enthusiasm can be distinguished, namely enthusiasm for teaching and enthusiasm for the subject. These dimensions differed in their meaning and context specificity. Whereas teaching enthusiasm was systematically linked to occupational wellbeing and to classroom variables, subject enthusiasm related only moderately to other measures of occupational wellbeing and was independent of characteristics of the classes taught.