Determinants of private school participation: All about the money?

For those who grew up in Britain in the latter half of the twentieth century, there is known to be a strong association between social class or family income and attending a private school. However, increasing private school fees and promotion of school choice in the state sector have potential implications for the predictors of participation in private schooling in the twenty-first century. In this article, through analysis of rich, longitudinal data from a recent, representative birth cohort study, we provide new evidence on this issue. Given the high and rising fees required to send a child to private school, one might think that the decision is entirely connected with financial resources. However, while these remain an important factor, we argue that other determinants are also important. In particular, we highlight the importance of parental values and geographical proximity to high-quality state school alternatives: a one standard deviation increase in levels of parental traditional values is associated with a 2.5 percentage point higher probability of their child attending a private school, while each minute of additional travel time to the nearest state school judged ‘Outstanding’ by England’s schools inspectorate is associated with a 0.2 percentage point higher probability of attending a private school. We also examine the characteristics of those who ‘mix and match’ state and private schooling, noting their similarity to private school attendees in terms of their values but lower levels of financial resources.     

Economics and Education for Human Flourishing: Wendell Berry and the Oikonomic Alternative to Neoliberalism

Neoliberal ideologies and policies have transformed how we think about the economy, education, and the environment. Economics is presented as objective and quantifiable, best left to distant experts who develop algorithms regarding different monetary relations in our stead. This same kind of thinking—technical, numerical, decontextualized, and ostensibly objective—infiltrates how we think about education and the environment. For example, neoliberal education reform focuses on using test scores and markets as a way to measure and improve learning and teaching. Similarly, environmental issues are presented as problems to be solved through new technologies and market efficiency. In response, we critique neoliberalism using the philosophy of the agrarian poet and writer Wendell Berry who abhors how neoliberalism disconnects humans from one another and the traditions that sustain them in their communities. Rather than neoliberalism's rootless entrepreneurial individual—homo economicus—we suggest that freedom, instead, resides in one's ability to flourish in one's place in the world. Such flourishing cannot occur without reinvigorating the traditions, including Aristotle's oikonomics, that have allowed people to live sustainably in their social and ecological communities.     

Are we wasting our children's time by giving them more homework?

Following an identification strategy that allows us to largely eliminate unobserved student and teacher traits, we examine the effect of homework on math, science, English and history test scores for eighth grade students in the United States. Noting that failure to control for these effects yields selection biases on the estimated effect of homework, we find that math homework has a large and statistically meaningful effect on math test scores throughout our sample. However, additional homework in science, English and history are shown to have little to no impact on their respective test scores.     

Promoting and Providing Expert Guidance in Work-intensive Clinical Settings

This paper discusses how expert guidance can be best provided in work intensive clinical settings. The adequacy for supporting learning in the clinical practicum for health care disciplines is often complicated by the intensive work practices in healthcare settings. Often, clinicians’ work is so intense that the scope for providing close guidance for students is quite restricted. The case advanced here draws on a range of empirical work to propose how clinician-student interactions might be optimized through the provision of a clinical supervisor to assist clinicians develop collegial relationships and acquire skills in guided learning such as demonstrating and role-modeling. These roles can contribute in essential ways to the development of learning environments where clinicians have the opportunity to facilitate the learning of others as part of their workload, and without being burdened by the requirements of teaching and assessment processes. It differs from other approaches because although clinicians partner students and provide feedback to them, clinicians are not expected to formally assess or award a grade for student performance. Assessment and remedial action, when required, is undertaken by the role of a designated clinical supervisor qualified to perform such activities.     

South African Deaf education and the Deaf community

In a special section of the american Annals of the Deaf, Deaf education and the Deaf community in South Africa are discussed. The special section is organized into 7 segments: a historical overview to establish context, the educational context, educators and learners, postgraduate education and employment, perspectives of Deaf children and their parents, sport and the arts, and spiritual lives and mental health. Throughout the entire section, however, the central focus is on the overall foundation (or lack thereof) of education for Deaf learners in South Africa.     

Prenatal Antecedents of Newborn Neurological Maturation

Fetal neurobehavioral development was modeled longitudinally using data collected at weekly intervals from 24 to 38 weeks gestation in a sample of 112 healthy pregnancies. Predictive associations between 3 measures of fetal neurobehavioral functioning and their developmental trajectories to neurological maturation in the first weeks after birth were examined. Prenatal measures included fetal heart rate (FHR) variability, fetal movement, and coupling between fetal motor activity and heart rate patterning; neonatal outcomes include a standard neurologic examination ( n  =   97) and brainstem auditory evoked potential (BAEP; n  =   47). Optimality in newborn motor activity and reflexes was predicted by fetal motor activity, FHR variability, and somatic–cardiac coupling predicted BAEP parameters. Maternal pregnancy-specific psychological stress was associated with accelerated neurologic maturation.     

Librarians collaborating with nurses

Nurses have the potential to be one of the largest groups of users a medical library can serve. In recognition of this fact, librarians at St. John's Health System embarked on a journey to collaborate with nurses and increase this group's use of the medical library. In 2004, a nursing outreach plan was developed by librarians, with input from non-physician health care employees. The nursing outreach plan will be reviewed along with the barriers and successes encountered during implementation of the plan. Innovative strategies for reaching nursing personnel were accomplished by partnering with nurses to reach nurses.