2008年的世界

2008年,世界会怎样?经济、军事、政治、环境等,无一不关系到整个世界的生存环境与发展.著名报纸<金融时报>近期推出了特别报道--2008年的世界,我们特意选取部分具有代表性的文章,其中对中国在未来世界的地位和作用也有所涉及,在此与大家一起分享.     

SCISTER act: delivering training in information skills for social-care professionals

PURPOSE: To develop and evaluate a programme of information skills training for social-care practitioners and health-care librarians. SETTING: Two one-day training courses run separately for 13 social-care practitioners and 10 health-care librarians in the Trent geographic region within Northern England. METHODOLOGY: Qualitative and quantitative feedback collected through questionnaires supplemented by participant observation. RESULTS: While generally feedback was favourable, the courses were overly ambitious. More training sessions of shorter duration would offer participants opportunities to practise and use the skills they have acquired. Social-care practitioners responded more positively to skills associated with appraising qualitative research than with randomised controlled trials. Librarians appreciated the opportunity to learn about unfamiliar social-care resources. Both practitioners and health-care librarians reported that they acquired skills to support evidence-based social care as a result of the training intervention. DISCUSSION/CONCLUSION: Involvement of a multi-disciplinary team and support from a social-care information provider maximized the impact of this experimental training intervention.     

Working through whiteness,race and (anti) racism in physical education teacher education

Background: The persistent gaps between a largely white profession and ethnically diverse school populations have brought renewed calls to support teachers' critical engagement with race. Programmes examining the effects of racism have had limited impact on practice, with student teachers responding with either denial, guilt or fear; they also contribute to a deficit view of racialised students in relation to an accepted white ‘norm’, and position white teachers ‘outside’ of race. Recent calls argue for a shift in focus towards an examination of the workings of the dominant culture through a critical engagement with whiteness, positioning white teachers within the processes of racialisation. Teacher educators' roles are central, and yet, while we routinely expect student teachers to reflect critically on issues of social justice, we have been less willing to engage in such work ourselves. This is particularly the case within physical education teacher education (PETE), an overwhelmingly white, embodied space, and where race and racism as professional issues are largely invisible.

Purpose: This paper examines the operation of whiteness within PETE through a critical reflection on the three co-authors' careers and experiences working for social justice. The research questions were twofold: How are race, (anti) racism and whiteness constructed through everyday experiences of families, schooling and teacher education? How can collective biography be used to excavate discourses of race, racism and whiteness as the first step towards challenging them? In beginning the process of reflecting on what it means for us ‘to do own work’ in relation to (anti) racism, we examine some of the tensions and challenges for teacher educators in PE attempting to work to dismantle whiteness.

Methodology: As co-authors, we engaged in collective biography work – a process in which we reflected upon, wrote about and shared our embodied experiences and memories about race, racism and whiteness as educators working for social justice. Using a critical whiteness lens, these narratives were examined for what they reveal about the collective practices and discourses about whiteness and (anti)racism within PETE.

Results: The narratives reveal the ways in which whiteness operates within PETE through processes of naturalisation, ex-denomination and universalisation. We have been educated, and now work within, teacher education contexts where professional discourse about race at best focuses on understanding the racialised ‘other’, and at worse is invisible. By drawing on a ‘racialised other’, deficit discourse in our pedagogy, and by ignoring race in own research on inequalities in PETE, we have failed to disrupt universalised discourses of ‘white-as-norm’, or addressed our own privileged racialised positioning. Reflecting critically on our biographies and careers has been the first step in recognising how whiteness works in order that we can begin to work to disrupt it.

Conclusion: The study highlights some of the challenges of addressing (anti)racism within PETE and argues that a focus on whiteness might offer a productive starting point. White teacher educators must critically examine their own role within these processes if they are to expect student teachers to engage seriously in doing the same.     

Navigating plurilingual learning: An inclusive education approach

Language experiences and linguistic knowledge of teenage migrants can be valuable resources for their continued language learning. Yet, home languages and existing plurilingual skills are often framed as obstacles to learning that tag young migrants as at risk of school failure in the context of monolingual education systems. This article draws on a comparative education study carried out in Aotearoa New Zealand and France in 2017–2019, observing young migrants' use of their languages in classroom learning. A total of 42 secondary students from a mix of asylum-seeker, refugee, and migrant backgrounds participated, originating from 22 different countries and speaking 24 different languages. All of the students were in their first year of schooling in New Zealand or France at the time of the study. Findings draw on observations of how students made use of their existing knowledge of languages to (1) access learning in the language-of-schooling, (2) learn interactively through their home languages, and (3) navigate unfamiliar styles of teaching and learning, thus engaging with the unknown and developing behaviours for successful learning. Patterns across the cohort show that young migrants are adept at drawing on their existing language resources in learning. This suggests a re-framing of success at school as not only outcomes, but also as defined by effective learning processes that young migrants put in place. As a result, this study suggests ways that teachers can work inclusively with young migrants through their languages, to support processes of learning that could lead to better educational outcomes.     

The development of a blended learning approach to delivering information skills training to large health related student audiences with limited staff resource

This feature considers the challenges that academic librarians are increasingly being faced with in the delivery of information skills training to large student numbers with limited time and staff resources. A case study is presented of how an academic liaison librarian used a blended learning approach and innovative teaching practice to successfully deliver information skills training to large student numbers within the Faculty of Health and Social Care at Hull University.     

Transition of students with autistic spectrum disorders from primary to post‐primary school: a framework for success

The purpose of this research was to investigate best practice in relation to the planning, process and strategies that support the transition of students with ASD from primary to post‐primary school. A questionnaire survey was sent to graduates of a postgraduate Certificate/Diploma in SEN (ASD) in Ireland who were working in primary and post‐primary schools. Findings included strong oral communication between schools, transition programmes in many post‐primary schools, a variety of generic and ASD specific strategies in both primary and post‐primary schools and a large number of personnel involved in the transition process. Analysis of findings and current literature enabled the researchers to propose a framework that the Department of Education and Skills, support agencies and schools may use to examine practice in order to enhance the transition programmes based on students' needs, the profile of the school and its community.     

An Australian perspective of a forest school: shaping a sense of place to support learning

There is growing discussion on the use of local outdoor environments to enhance a person’s sense of belonging. Sense of belonging and sense of place are components that can promote positive learning identities and attachments to community and, in turn, address issues of cycles of disadvantage. This article researched the impact of an interpretation of the forest school approach to learning in a primary school in regional Western Australia. Using a case-study approach, the research aimed to develop understandings of experiences with regard to self-esteem, sense of belonging and engagement and how these factors supported learning. Results indicated that strategies such as those suggested by the forest school approach can promote a sense of self, belonging and relational connections. These in turn can help to develop dimensions of place, identified as place attachment and place meaning. This has implications for future planning by providing greater depth in understanding the impact of the forest school approach to teaching and learning within the context of the single case primary school. It also raises questions as to how place-shaped identity nurtured in this approach to learning can be positively transferred back into the school and classroom setting.     

Training phonological awareness: a study to evaluate the effects of a program of metalinguistic games in kindergarten

A phonological awareness program was evaluated in a small-scale study using thirty eight children from three intact kindergarten classes at an American school on the outskirts of London. The average age of the children was five years four months. There was one experimental class and two control classes. The experimental class received a Danish training program of metalinguistic games and exercises. One control class used a kindergarten reading and writing program called Success in Kindergarten Reading and Writing which incorporates phonological awareness skills, but in an informal way. The other control class followed the normal kindergarten program. The results showed that the children in the experimental group and the Success in Kindergarten group had significantly greater gains in reading and spelling measures given at the end of the year. They also did better on six of the metalinguistic tests, with the experimental group showing significantly greater gains in all the tests of phoneme awareness than the other two groups. The implications of a formal versus informal phonological awareness training program are discussed.