The Research and Development in Organisations Approach and the Evaluation of a Mainstream Behaviour Support Initiative

This paper describes the evaluation of a local authority behaviour support initiative that involved the re-location of four behaviour support teachers from pupil referral units into three mainstream secondary schools to work with pupils at risk of exclusion. The evaluation was largely illuminative (Parlett, 1981) and focused on the effect of changing off-site behaviour support to in-school support. The research approach taken incorporated a Co-operative Inquiry strand (Heron, 1996) where researchers and behaviour support teachers worked together to design major aspects of the research process. This enabled research outcomes to inform educational practice, and gave a reflective, formative aspect to the study. The overall approach to the design of the study was informed by the Research and Development in Organisations (RADIO) model developed by Knight and Timmins (1995). The application of this approach in the context of the study is described along with a brief account of the findings. Finally, brief comment is made on the way in which the RADIO approach might contribute to educational psychologists' work at the local education authority and whole school levels.     

Developing a Research Agenda in Science Education

The Science Summit reinforced a question upon which many of us in science education are focused: How can we, the science education community of researchers, practitioners, and consumers, lead policy? We include a brief review of the No Child Left Behind Act and its implications for teachers, and elaborate about one ongoing and growing effort to answer the concerns about the paucity of research expressed at the Summit. We describe a unique and growing collaboration across professional science education and science organizations and societies that focuses on the development of a research agenda. The term ‘consilience’ refers to the “jumping together of knowledge” that leads to scientific advancements, progressive, creative, fluid scientific research and intellectual capacity to move a research community toward an enlightened research agenda. A coherent research agenda enables us to specify what we know, what we need to know, and how research can be employed for creating and implementing policy. The use of a dynamic organizer (such as Pasteur’s Quadrant) for a research matrix of topics provides a possible structure for organizing and cataloging research questions, designs, findings from past studies, needed areas for research, and policy implications. Through this unique collaboration, the science education community can better focus on needs and priorities and ensure that teachers, policy makers, scientists, and researchers in education at local through national levels have an important stake in research priorities and actions.     

Developing deep group reflection within a Critical Reflection Action Learning set

This account of practice describes how a manufacturing company in the North of England transformed their approach to problem-solving and action through the use of a Critical Reflection Action Learning (CRAL) methodology. The company, who had been in business for over 25 years, experienced problems due to a diminishing customer base and substantial changes in customers’ buying behaviour. The account presented here is based on a 12-session CRAL project I carried out as part of my Ph.D. Research at the University of Hull Business School [Shepherd, G. 2011. “An Inductive Exploration of Group Learning and Knowledge Generation through Group Reflection and Psychoanalysis.” PhD Thesis, University of Hull Business School]. This paper describes how the organisation changed the way in which they tackled complex, messy problems through the adoption of a CRAL technique using their own hand-drawn images as the focus for their individual, group and critical reflective efforts. As the action learning set improved their reflective practice, the group began to understand and untangle the complex links between the problems they were experiencing and the way in which the business environment had changed. The group completed the project with a more nuanced appreciation of the problems they experienced and developed their own unique problem-solving style, which mixed reflective questioning with emotional honesty.     

Sociology and Music Education: a response to Swanwick

This paper is a response to Professor Swanwick's critique of our sociological perspective on music education. A detailed presentation of the sociology of music thesis demonstrates that accusations of ‘social determinism’ and ‘referentialism’ are both misconceived. Moreover, Swanwick's position leads to difficulties in his approach to music aesthetics, where at times he makes assumptions concerning the work of theorists such as Meyer and Keil which these authors have themselves explicitly repudiated. We then relate certain observations which Swanwick makes concerning the processes of schooling to wider sociological theories of schooling that help make sense of the kinds of constraints Swanwick correctly identifies. Finally, we accept Swanwick's challenge to be more explicit concerning both our response to his charge of relativism and our practical recommendations for the reform of music teaching.     

The Effect of Collaborative Concept Mapping on Elementary Preservice Teachers' Anxiety,Efficacy, and Achievement in Physical Science

Journal of Science Teacher Education -     

Communication through comedy: a drama and theatre project with young people for whom English is a second language

This article explores an eight‐month community theatre project with young people for whom English is a second language. Working as a creative practitioner facilitating young people to explore their personal stories of transition to the UK, the dramatherapist discovered comedy to be an important and poignant vehicle for expression of the emotional and psychological material associated with transition. In this article the author explores her experience of working with a group of young people who came together from all over the world to share their experiences of transition through the use of comedic theatre techniques.     

The Accomplishment of Divergence

The situated development of South Asian communities in the UK has led to the growth of a number of schools in which ‘ethnic minority’ pupils form a majority. Such a situation throws into higher relief issues and concerns surrounding cultural transmission and encounter, and communicative competence.

This paper recounts some of the principal findings of research in which the teaching staff of a large 9‐13 middle school were interviewed individually regarding their perceptions of their South Asian pupils. The school has an almost wholly South Asian intake and is situated near the centre of a large northern city.

The teachers’ markedly deficit view of their charges is detailed and this is followed by an explanation of their constructions in microsociological terms. A model is presented which clarifies the processes by which close intercultural interaction seem to accomplish worlds as divergent.

The author teaches children with special educational needs at the school in which the study was undertaken.     

Curriculum-based measures of written expression for learning-disabled and nondisabled students

This study examined differences in written expression between a sample of learning-disabled and nondisabled middle school students, matched by grade and sex, using eight curriculum-based measures. All of the learning-disabled students had been identified as having written language deficits as part of their handicapping conditions. The nondisabled students showed superior written expression skills, especially on the production-independent measures. Implications of these results are discussed in relation to psycho educational assessment, the use of CBM for ongoing assessment of written expression, and future studies.     

Whose memories, whose archives? Independent community archives, autonomy and the mainstream

Over the last three or four decades in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, an enormous variety of grassroots projects and initiatives have sprung up dedicated to recording and preserving the memories and histories of different communities, often under-voiced and under-represented within the mainstream heritage. The impetus for such projects arose from a range of motivations but in general all were responding to the desire to document, record and preserve the identity and history of their own locality and community. Some custodians and creators of these collections remain suspicious of the mainstream archival profession and are determined to preserve their independence and autonomous voice by retaining direct ownership and physical custodianship of their collections, at least for the foreseeable future. In this context, seeking to ensure that these valuable materials are preserved and possibly made accessible presents a number of challenges and opportunities, including an encouragement to re-examine some aspects of traditional professional practice. By examining independent community archive activity in the UK, and in particular in London, and its implications for community interaction and identity within the multicultural context of contemporary British culture and society, this article seeks to contribute a different but relevant perspective to international debates about contemporary professional archival theory and practice.