Unpacking child-centredness: A history of meanings

This paper examines the historical development of the term 'child-centred' in the discourse of early schooling in America. The discussion begins with the founder of the kindergarten, Friedrich Froebel, and traces the development of the kindergarten in the US until the 1930s. We explore how underlying meanings of the term child-centredness have changed - which were lost and which survived by tracing the educational and philosophical currents of each historical context. The term balances on many layers of complex and sometimes contradictory meanings that have been forged over the years by competing interest groups, each appropriating the term and, adding to and taking away from the existing meaning, moulding it to their own purposes. In the process, some underlying meanings were lost, others were added. Meanings were changed and then shared within and sometimes across groups. The term has masked complex and contradictory underlying assumptions about children and their learning and development that should be addressed.     

Safety in numbers? Middle-class parents and social mix in London primary schools

Research into parents’ secondary-school choices suggests that many middle-class parents are keen to secure a middle-class peer group for their children. This article reports the findings of a small-scale, qualitative study into whether a similar phenomenon exists at primary-school level and, if so, why. In-depth interviews were conducted with 56 middle-class parents of pre-school children in inner London. Respondents often had contradictory impulses. Nearly all liked the idea of a socially mixed school but many associated the ‘wrong’ mix with various risks. Some of these perceived risks are familiar from previous studies. Others are less familiar, such as the fear among respondents that they themselves might not ‘fit in’ at their children’s school. The types of intake which respondents preferred fell into three overlapping categories: children from ‘pro-school’ families, children at a similar level of achievement to respondents’ own children and ‘people like us’. Respondents’ judgements about whether children and families fell into these categories were based in part on ideas about class, ethnicity and language. Respondents gravitated toward schools where most children were perceived to come from middle-class, white, English-speaking backgrounds. The article argues that attitudes towards children learning English as an additional language need to receive greater attention in future research.     

Personality,moral purpose,and the leadership of an education for sustainable development

This paper describes how two primary head teachers, nationally recognised as role models for the development of an education for sustainable development (ESD) in their schools, manage the implementation of this area. In doing so, it shows how they adopt two very different approaches to ESD and to their job generally, and suggests that whilst there are some commonalities between them, educational leadership needs to be seen as driven by a moral purpose, engaging and re-engaging with each situation, entering into a dialectic with others’ visions, leading to the re-conceptualisation of problems in different ways. This not only suggests a continued tension between such uniqueness and standardised approaches to headship, but raises questions about current policy imperatives for developing models of sustainable leadership.     

Challenging educational injustice: ‘Grassroots’ privatisation in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa

The phenomenon of low-cost private schools ‘mushrooming’ in poor areas of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, and elsewhere, is now well-documented. Findings from research by the author’s teams and others show that these schools are serving a majority (urban and peri-urban) or significant minority (rural) of the poor, including significant proportions of the poorest of the poor. Concerns are raised in the literature about their implications for social justice. In The Idea of Justice, Amartya Sen asks us to rethink ideas about justice; instead of the quest for a Rawlsian ‘transcendental institutionalism’, he argues for a comparative approach, grounded in the practicalities of human behaviour. Linking Sen’s ideas on justice with the grassroots privatisation leads to the tentative conclusion that those concerned with promoting social justice could agree to help improve access to, and quality in, the low-cost private school sector, rather than focus on the public education sector. Paradoxically, this could be true even for those whose ideal is an egalitarian public education system.     

A quiet revolution – International influence,domestic elites and the transformation of higher technical education in Ireland 1959–72

The upgrading of higher technical education which began in the 1960s marked the most influential intervention by the Irish government in the third-level sector since the establishment of the independent Irish state. A series of reforming initiatives extended educational opportunity and transformed the status of technical education at higher level. International pressures undoubtedly proved influential in stimulating policy change. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) encouraged far-reaching reforms through its critical evaluation of educational facilities for technical training in Ireland. But educational reform was not imposed by international agencies on a reluctant corps of national politicians and officials. International influences dovetailed with changing attitudes toward technical education within the Irish political and official elite. Leading politicians and public officials showed an increasing awareness that the previous neglect of technical education was untenable in an era of economic development and educational expansion. It was a timely combination of international scrutiny and domestic political re-appraisal, which triggered a radical restructuring and expansion of higher technical education in Ireland.     

ATTITUDES ABOUT AGING AND GENDER AMONG YOUNG,MIDDLE AGE,AND OLDER COLLEGE-BASED STUDENTS

Using an updated version of the Aging Semantic Differential, 534 younger, middle age, and older participants from a college community rated female and male targets categorized as ages 21–34 and 75–85. Participants also provided views about their own aging. Repeated measures of analysis of variance examined attitudinal differences by age and gender of targets, and by participant age and gender. Female targets were viewed more positively than males by most rater groups. Older targets were viewed more positively by older participants than by other age groups. Older participants had more positive views about their own aging than did participants of younger or middle ages.     

Certification and specialized competencies for teachers in gifted education programs

This article describes the value of Piaget's equilibration theory for understanding characteristics of the young gifted child. Key elements of equilibration theory are discussed. Differences in the equilibration patterns in gifted children are described and application of equilibration to other than cognitive systems is considered. The article concludes with some ideas for teachers and parents to help gifted young children search for equilibrium.     

According to Jim: The Flawed Normal Curve of Intelligence

This article proposes a critical thinking approach to cultural literacy for gifted students. The premise of the article is that all students profit from a curriculum rich in reasoning within and about diverse cultural points of view on historical and contemporary reality. The article posits that increasing racial, gender and socioeconomic intolerance can only be confronted with a curriculum that affords students the opportunity to enter em‐pathetically within cultural points of view often similar or disparate from their own. The author also attempts to call attention to issues of educational equity to assure that all students, gifted or potentially gifted, do not become tracked or placed in remedial learning programs owed solely to their cultural background, gender, ethnicity, or socioeconomic class.