Why is leading school improvement such a difficult process?

Leading meaningful school improvement and reform has proven to be a difficult process. This article looks at some of the interactive, contextual variables that lend to the complexity of this challenge. These include complexities inherent in schools, in change processes and in the leadership role itself.     

Imitation and Variation: Reflections on toddlers' strategies for learning

The process of learning for young children is primarily a question of learning in the present and being able to utilize that which is learned in totally new settings or situations in the future. In this article we will illustrate how learning is a question of developing an understanding of, or creating ways of experiencing, aspects or phenomena of the surrounding world. Imitation is an important ingress into learning for young children. Additionally, variation provides insight into the cognitive world of very young children. Both imitation and variation are interwoven in the strategies for learning used by children. Two observations and analyses are presented. In the first observation a toddler attempts to master a skill and in the second observation a group of children are playing on a slide.     

Influence of different attentional focus on EMG amplitude and contraction duration during the bench press at different speeds

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether using different focus affects electromyographic (EMG) amplitude and contraction duration during bench press performed at explosive and controlled speeds. Eighteen young male individuals were familiarized with the procedure and performed the one-maximum repetition (1RM) test in the first session. In the second session, participants performed the bench press exercise at 50% of the 1RM with 3 different attentional focuses (regular focus on moving the load vs contracting the pectoralis vs contracting the triceps) at 2 speed conditions (controlled vs maximal speed). During the controlled speed condition, focusing on using either the pectoralis or the triceps muscles increased pectoralis normalized EMG (nEMG) by 6% (95% CI 3–8%; p = 0.0001) and 4% nEMG (95% CI 1–7%; p = 0.0096), respectively, compared with the regular focus condition. Triceps activity was increased by 4% nEMG (95% CI 0–7%; p = 0.0308) at the controlled speed condition during the triceps focus. During the explosive speed condition, the use of different focuses had no effect. The different attentional focus resulted in comparable contraction duration for the measured muscles when the exercise was performed explosively. Using internal focus to increase EMG amplitude seems to function only during conditions of controlled speed.     

Embodying Teaching: A Body Pedagogic Study of a Teacher’s Movement Rhythm in the ‘Sloyd’ Classroom

The article draws on body pedagogics and considers that teaching and learning experiences and outcomes are directly related to the different characteristics of movement behaviour. In this article movement behaviour specifically centres on a sloyd (handicraft education) teacher’s walk through the classroom. The analysis illuminate the specific teaching use of the body as a spatial, temporal and situational movement rhythm in the classroom and how teachers and pupils tune into educational discourses by means of different body techniques. A wireless GoPro camera was attached to the teacher’s chest in order to gain detailed view of pupil–teacher–body–material–tool encounters and a specific visual perspective of the sloyd teacher’s walk. During a 2.5 years fieldwork, 25 wood–metal sloyd lessons were observed and recorded (circa 50 h of video). The study is informed by Dewey’s embodied theory of learning and focus the alternation between active and passive phases in the stream of experience. From such Deweyan perspective the rhythm of an activity for organising experience, is fundamental to the creation of intelligent moving habits. The results show the body pedagogic experiences, outcomes and means by highlighting the teacher’s (a) spatial path by describing mutual relationships between the material arrangement of the classroom, the teacher’s bodily movements and the pupils’ participation in the lesson, (b) temporal pace by his ‘flights and perchings’ through the lessons and how he moves from pupil to pupil and assignment to assignment, (c) specific pacts by describing body techniques and situated teacher–pupil encounters that terminate in an agreement about how to proceed.     

Aragonese Tiles in a Flemish Castle: A Chivalric Gift-Exchange Network in Fifteenth-Century Europe

Excavation of the mid-fifteenth-century castle of Pieter Bladelin, a high-ranking Burgundian official, in the village of Middelburg-in-Flanders, near Bruges (Belgium), has unearthed a remarkable series of blue and white painted and glazed floor tiles. Post-excavation archival and heraldic inquiries into the tiles has led to a deeper understanding of the role that gift exchange of luxury objects played within the diplomatic network of Alfonso V “the Magnanimous”, King of Aragon, and Philip “the Good”, Duke of Burgundy, in shaping a shared chivalric and crusading culture between Burgundy and Aragon. The study demonstrates the added value of the integration of archaeological and historical data in studying economic, political and cultural processes for the later medieval or early modern period.     

The roots and routes of environmental and sustainability education policy research – an introduction to a virtual special issue

This article introduces the themes of a virtual special issue (VSI) of Environmental Education Research (http://explore.tandfonline.com/content/ed/ceer-vsi) focused on policy research in environmental and sustainability education (ESE). The broad purpose behind preparing the VSI was to consider the challenges involved in linking particular concepts of environment and sustainability with key themes in educational policy, and how this remains a heavily contested practice. Examples drawn from two decades of studies published in the journal show how these might be illustrated, addressed, problematized and possibly transcended. The introduction traces how ESE researchers have dealt with key trends, complexities and issues in the policy-practice-research nexus both conceptually and empirically. It also illustrates how researchers within the field might reimagine and reinvigorate policy research on ESE, and how working with researchers from other fields who offer different perspectives, ideas and expertise might aid the cross-fertilisation of a complex terrain of ideas, policy and practice. In so doing, we hope the accompanying VSI inspires renewed interest into the (at times, fickle) relationship between ESE, and the dual worlds of possibility and tension that take place both within, and surrounding, their fields of policy and research.     

A quantitative assessment of an outsourced agricultural extension service in the Umzimkhulu District of KwaZulu-Natal,South Africa

Purpose: This study evaluates the impact of an outsourced extension service delivered by Lima Rural Development Foundation (Lima) in the Umzimkhulu district of South Africa. The evaluation is conducted at both the household and program levels.

Design/methodology/approach: Household impacts were estimated using two-stage regression with instrumental variables to account for selection bias. Gains in household income were extrapolated to estimate the net incremental benefit of the program and its financial return at district level. These analyses were underpinned by a rigorous sampling design.

Findings: The results show that the outsourced extension service made a significant and substantial contribution to household crop income and net income. In addition, clients perceived a range of socio-economic benefits such as better diets, improved product quality, and job creation. Analysis of the financial cost and benefit of the extension service at district level suggests an annual net incremental benefit of R5 million (US$0.4 million), and a 95% probability that returns to the service exceeded 20% in 2012/2013.

Practical implications: These results suggest that there is good reason for donors to continue funding effective extension services to small farmers in areas of high agricultural potential.

Theoretical implications: This is an empirical study. It uses well-established methods to measure the impact but introduces a local economy multiplier to capture some of the indirect effects of agricultural extension.

Originality/value: This research is valuable as very few studies worldwide have evaluated the impact of agricultural extension services at both the farm and program levels.     

Ambiguity – A tool or obstacle for joint productive dialogue activity in deaf and hearing students’ reasoning about ecology

The ambiguity of words and signs as a resource or obstacle in group discussions is studied. How deaf and hearing students aged 13–15 years elaborate on ecological concepts through dialogue is described. Group interviews were conducted with 14 hearing and 18 deaf students. Probes were used to initiate discussion about the different meanings of ecological concepts: producer, consumer, nutrients/nutriment, food-chain and cycles. The results show that the dialogues are less elaborated for deaf learners than for hearing learners. It is argued that dialogues between hearing students have a greater chance of becoming ‘joint productive activity’, since words in Swedish pave the way for shared meaning-making. To deaf learners, differences in connotation between the Swedish words and the signs used lead to uncertainty and unproductive lines of reasoning. One implication for instruction is that this bilingual communication needs to be taken into consideration to a much greater extent.