Outreach by College Counselors: Increasing Student Attendance at Presentations

Psychoeducational outreach programming by college counselors can be an effective service to meet students' needs; however, getting students to attend outreach programs on a college campus can be challenging. The authors describe a model of an outreach series and the strategies implemented to increase student attendance at the presentations. Information collected from students through focus groups, a survey, and presentation evaluation forms revealed factors that seem to be important to increasing attendance.     

Welcome to the New Ambivalence: Reflections on the historical and current cultural antagonism between the working class male and higher education

This paper is an attempt to trace the history of working class male ambivalence towards both the structure and the processes of higher education. An analysis is attempted whereby the nature of working class masculinity as ambivalent regarding education is problematised and placed within a much larger social network for consideration. It is hypothesised here that as society changes from being production-led to information-led the nature of working class masculinity will have to change. Previously, working class masculinity had been inextricably linked to notions of hard, unpleasant work. This will have to change, and it is further hypothesised that at present we are witnessing the 'lag' as working class masculinity tries to catch up with the world of work, technology and the forces of Globalisation.     

Improving the effectiveness of feedback by use of assessed reflections and withholding of grades

We wished to improve levels of student engagement with feedback within the context of our postgraduate masters-level programme, and therefore evaluated the use of two interventions: assessed reflections on feedback and grade-withholding. In questionnaires students reported more engagement with feedback after the interventions, with 77% in favour of using reflections, though only 57% favoured grade-withholding, with feelings of frustration and anxiety about the grade cited as factors. Overall class grades improved over the two years in which reflections were used, with the greatest gains made by students generating the most insightful reflections. Additional gains in the second year of intervention may have been attributable to improved implementation or the introduction of grade-withholding, or a combination of both. Overall we demonstrated clear improvement in feedback utilisation and achievement associated with our interventions.     

How Useful are Computerised Screening Systems for Predicting Subsequent Learning Difficulties in Young Children? An Exploration of the Strengths and Weaknesses of the Cognitive Profiling System (CoPS 1)

The Cognitive Profiling System (CoPS 1) is a psychometric assessment/screening system presented in the form of computer games to children in their early school years in order to predict the probability of later learning difficulties of both a general and specific nature (Singleton, Horne, & Thomas, 1999 Singleton, C. H., Horne, J. and Thomas, K. 1999. Computerised baseline assessment of literacy. Journal of Research in Reading, 22(1): 67–80.  [Google Scholar]). Although some evidence is available as to the predictive validity of the resulting cognitive profile, as yet few independent studies have been carried out to investigate the system’s strengths and weaknesses.

The present study describes a small‐scale longitude investigation of how well scores on the CoPS 1 of 66 children in two urban primary schools in the west of England predicted their success or failure on the Key Stage 1 Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs) in literacy and mathematics. Significant correlations were found between the two measures, but these differed markedly from those found in previous research. In‐depth case studies were subsequently carried out on five children selected from this cohort at Year 4, when they were 9 years old. Despite providing some valuable information, the results raised questions about the predictive validity of CoPS 1 when applied to specific individual children. Caution is therefore urged in the application of such computerised techniques as ‘stand alone’ predictors of learning difficulties.     

Teaching About National Socialism and the Holocaust: Narrative Approaches to Holocaust Education

The article outlines a deficit in Holocaust education: The motives of the perpetrators and bystanders are often not dealt with. In order to explore these motives, interviews with former Nazis were conducted and evaluated in the Geschichte und Erinnerung (History and Memory) research project; two of the findings are presented here. Subsequently the question of how these findings can be applied in school teaching about National Socialism and the Holocaust is discussed. The author recommends teachers not to expose students to whole narrations of former Nazis, but to use brief excerpts from those narrations in order to develop an analysis of the Nazis’ motives. Ultimately, teaching about the topic of National Socialism and the Holocaust should be integrated with students’ own narrations, with their knowledge of the topic based on family stories, family secrets, and other sources.     

Environmental art as an innovative medium for environmental education in Biosphere Reserves

A key goal of Biosphere Reserves (BR) is to foster environmental education for sustainable development. In this study we systematically analyse two cases in which environmental art is used as a mechanism to engage communities in ‘building environmental understanding’, in Noosa BR in Australia and North Devon BR in the United Kingdom. Data were derived through document analyses, site visits, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews conducted with the audience, artists, and residents. The study concludes that environmental art can build understanding through (1) exchanging ideas and providing dialogue (2) building a sense of place (3) clarifying and enhancing the understanding of information and issues, and (4) generating concern. Consequently environmental art should be considered an innovative addition to the suite of environmental education tools used in other BRs and community organisations that aim to educate about the environment.     

Future teacher scholarship programs for science education: Rationale for teaching in perceived high need areas

Data from Oklahoma Future Teachers Scholarship (OFTS) recipients were collected covering awards over a seven-year period. Scholarships ($1000–$1500 per year) were awarded by the State Regents for Higher Education to attract and retain potential teachers into the teaching of science. The study focused on the reasons that these teachers (N=58) went into the teaching of science. From the survey, teachers went into (in ranked order) teaching because they wanted to teach specific subject matter, they were committed to social change, they liked to work with and be a positive force in the life of children (adolescents), etc. They did not go into teaching for money, because it was easy, because they drifted into it, or because it was not their first choice. The teachers who received scholarships like teaching science, like teaching and say they are likely to stay in the field. However, the OFTS recipients indicated they would have gone into teaching anyway, 82% were not enticed into either the field or the discipline of science by their scholarships. Those who would use scholarship(s) in the $1000–$1500 per year range, as a marketing strategy, to attract students to a discipline such as science should rethink the efficacy of this approach.     

Is SES really that important for educational outcomes in Australia? A review and some recent evidence

This paper demonstrates that the emphasis on students’ socioeconomic status (SES) in research and policy circles in Australia is unwarranted. The bivariate relationships between SES and educational outcomes are only moderate and the effects of SES are quite small when taking into account cognitive ability or prior achievement. These two influences have much stronger relationships with students’ outcomes than SES and their effects cannot be attributed to the influence of SES at earlier points of time. The theoretical explanations for socioeconomic inequalities in education (e.g. schools and cultural factors) are problematic and are not supported by empirical work. The much weaker than assumed effects of SES has implications for research and policy.