Educating World Teachers for Cosmopolitan Classrooms and Schools

This essay responds to the question of what it might mean to educate “world teachers” for cosmopolitan classrooms and schools through an examination of an ethnographic play entitled Satellite Kids. The author begins with the idea that teachers need to develop or build up “intercultural capital”, that is, knowledge and dispositions that will help them in intercultural exchanges of teaching and learning. The author then explores what such knowledge and dispositions might entail through an analysis of Satellite Kids. The play's focus on issues of power, identity, and intercultural conflict within a Canadian cosmopolitan school makes an interesting case study for exploring what intercultural knowledge and dispositions might look and sound like, and how the educational project of building intercultural capital is different from the project of multicultural education that has been dominant in Western teacher education throughout 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.     

Multiple Perspectives on Family Relationships: A Latent Variables Model

Many scholars are skeptical of family member reports on their interpersonal relationships. Familial reports are assumed to be biased by social desirability as well as other factors. In this study, a latent variables modeling approach was employed to evaluate rater reliability and bias in mother, father, and child ratings of parent-child negativity. Results based on 78 clinical families demonstrate that family member ratings contain a significant "true score" component that correlates with observer ratings of parental behavior. The presence of systematic rater effects is also demonstrated. The latent variables approach, which provides statistical control for rater effects, is recommended for the analysis of this type of data.     

International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS): An analysis of international comparisons of adult literacy

The International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) raises a number of important issues that are inherent in all attempts to make comparisons of cognitive and behavioural attributes across countries. This article discusses both the statistical and interpretational problems. A detailed analysis of the survey instruments is carried out to demonstrate the cultural specificity involved. The data modelling techniques used in IALS are critiqued and alternative analyses performed. The article argues for extreme caution in interpreting results in the light of the weaknesses of the survey.     

Neuropsychological treatment of dyslexia in the classroom setting

The purpose of this study was to validate Bakker's (1990, 1992) clinical neuropsychological balance model of dyslexia when implemented in a traditional general education classroom environment. The sample included 45 middle school, right-handed boys and girls (mean age = 12.78) with L-type dyslexia (excessively fast readers who make substantive reading errors), P-type dyslexia (displaying accurate but slow and laborious reading), and M-type dyslexia (readers who commit a combination of L-type and P-type dyslexia errors). The experimental groups (L and P type dyslexia) were presented with hemisphere specific stimulation (HSS) and hemispheric alluding stimuli (HAS). HSS involves the presentation of words into the right visual field (RVF) or the left visual field (LVF) or through tactile exercises with the right or left hand. HAS is achieved by constructing semantically and phonetically challenging letters and words. The children with M-type dyslexia served as a control group and received traditional decoding and comprehension exercises. The readers were exposed to a specific treatment model for 16 weeks, depending on their reading accuracy and comprehension. Statistical analyses indicated that, although there were no significant changes in word recognition for the dyslexia subtypes, the readers with L-type, P-type, and M-type dyslexia exhibited significant improvement in reading accuracy and comprehension as assessed by results from pretest to posttest. These results suggest that Bakker's clinical neuropsychological intervention can be effectively applied to the general education setting as well.     

The evolution of school league tables in England 1992–2016: ‘Contextual value‐added’, ‘expected progress’ and ‘progress 8’

Since 1992, the UK Government has published so‐called ‘school league tables’ summarising the average General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) ‘attainment’ and ‘progress’ made by pupils in each state‐funded secondary school in England. While the headline measure of school attainment has remained the percentage of pupils achieving five or more good GCSEs, the headline measure of school progress has changed from ‘value‐added’ (2002–2005) to ‘contextual value‐added’ (2006–2010) to ‘expected progress’ (2011–2015) to ‘progress 8’ (2016–). This paper charts this evolution with a critical eye. First, we describe the headline measures of school progress. Second, we question the Government's justifications for scrapping contextual value‐added. Third, we argue that the current expected progress measure suffers from fundamental design flaws. Fourth, we examine the stability of school rankings across contextual value‐added and expected progress. Fifth, we discuss the extent to which progress 8 will address the weaknesses of expected progress. We conclude that all these progress measures and school league tables more generally should be viewed with far more scepticism and interpreted far more cautiously than they have often been to date.     

Beyond the DAP versus standards dilemma: Examining the unforgiving complexity of kindergarten teaching in the United States

This article presents findings from a qualitative study of two kindergarten teachers’ responses to the professional demands posed by recent shifts in national and state education policies in the United States. Although the literature has framed the practical challenges resulting from these changing expectations in terms of curricular/instructional tensions between developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) and academic standards, study participants indicated adapting to the changing climate of kindergarten, managing the expectations of their students’ parents, and responding to the demands of the first grade teachers at their school site were their most significant challenges. These findings suggest looking beyond our current framing of the situation to examine the full range of complexities and opportunities facing kindergarten teachers will lead to deeper understandings of the ways in which practitioners experience and respond to the new demands and changing expectations shaping their work.     

素质教育与高等学校德育课程改革与发展

素质教育并不是一个专门的教育学术语,但在我国却具有良好的纠正应试教育偏差的纠偏功能, 它要求高校德育课程按照教育本身的特点和功能进行设计与开发。长期以来,我国高校德育课程由于受传统学科课程观念的影响,形成了较为狭义的学科德育课程观念,即把德育课程仅仅理解为直接学科德育课程,较为重视直接学科德育课程建设,而忽视其他渠道德育课程建设,存在着德育课程主渠道与其他渠道之间的矛盾、德育课程稳定性与变化性的矛盾、德育课程结构和层次不清等问题。高校德育课程建设的基本思路是根据素质教育和教育改革和发展要求,树立一种大的德育课程观念,从直接学科德育课程、间接学科德育课程、活动德育课程、学校教育物质条件层面的隐性课程、组织制度层面的隐性课程、精神文化层面的隐性课程等多角度、全方位地进行德育课程综合性建设,更好地促进高校德育课程改革与发展。     

Effects of the New Public Management (NPM) and Austerity in European Public and Academic Libraries

The changing information landscape calls for a new leadership, new competences, and new approaches to library services. In today’s information age, information literate citizens must be able to assess the reliability of information, making information literacy instruction an important task for libraries. In this paper, five researchers present data from interviews they carried out with library leaders from Germany, Romania, Finland, UK, and Norway. The experiences of the library leaders were different, reflecting varying levels of economic austerity, and how closely each country adheres to New Public Management (NPM)-theory and practice. However, they also show how NPM and reduced budgets can lead to a greater and better cooperation.     

A Library and a Radio Show: The Story of a Successful Partnership at 10 Years and Counting

Your Health® Radio is a weekly one-hour radio show about consumer health produced by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Family Medicine. It provides practical, health-related news and information to listeners in an easy to understand style. Hosted by a family medicine physician faculty member and co-hosted by other health professionals, it airs on a local radio station. Since 2009, Health Sciences librarians have collaborated on the show, bringing their expertise in information discovery and organization, consumer health, and health literacy to this consumer health endeavor. In the process, the librarians and libraries have also benefitted.