Reducing Prejudice Against Children with Disabilities in Inclusive Settings

Growing numbers of American children are being educated in inclusive settings. Legal mandates for inclusion cannot ensure that children will be accepted and treated equitably. Attitudinal barriers and discriminatory practices continue to prevent the full participation of students with disabilities in the United States. Understanding how children develop prejudice and the roles adults play in establishing equitable opportunities is critical to the inclusion of all minorities, including children with disabilities.     

Methods for analyzing multidimensional contingency tables

Many problems investigated by researchers in higher education involve simple frequency counts and their analysis. Not too infrequently, these frequency counts arise from the cross-classification of a sample of observations on a number of qualitative variables. In this case, the investigator is usually interested in examining the multiplicative interactions among the classification variables. When the number of classification variables exceeds two, however, the investigator is faced with rather severe problems in undertaking his analysis. All too often, the researcher is reduced to breaking up his multidimensional contingency table into smaller, typically two-way tables, and analyzing each separately. This article describes a unified approach, developed by L.A. Goodman, to the analysis of the p-way contingency table which enriches our understanding of the relationships existing among the classification variables. Two examples from research in higher education are used to demonstrate the usefulness of the method.     

A face in a sea of faces: exploring university students’ reasons for non-attendance to teaching sessions

In the past 20 years, the landscape of Higher Education in the United Kingdom has changed considerably. With the prospect of tuition fees spiralling above £9,000 per year, per student, it is important to explore the impact this has upon the student experience. In spite of the vast financial investment current students make towards their education, student attendance and engagement remain low. The present study therefore adopted a qualitative approach using focus groups to explore reasons for non-attendance at university teaching sessions. Four key themes emerged; these surrounded issues about a sense of belonging to university, views of the teaching (material taught and the personality and method of the tutor), perceptions of being a consumer and external pressures. This research suggests that universities should pay particular attention to the reasons why students do not attend and possibly change practice, providing more support where appropriate.     

Accounting for the gender gaps in student performance in reading and mathematics: evidence from 31 countries

In most countries, girls perform better than boys in reading but worse in mathematics. However, there is much variation between countries. Explanations for the gender gaps include the organisation of the school system, students' expectations and macro‐societal factors. The purpose of this paper is to account for gender differences in both reading and mathematics among 15‐year‐old students using data from the OECD's 2000 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) project. In most countries, school system factors are associated with the gender gap in reading but not in mathematics. Generally, gender differences in students' occupational expectations do not account for the gender gaps, although expectations contribute to the gender gaps in reading in New Zealand and the United States. Although several macro‐societal factors—the proportion of women in the workforce, societal inequality and public sector spending—are associated with the gender gap in reading, the correlations are only moderate, unstable and, importantly, are not associated with the gender gaps in mathematics. The much stronger association between the gender gaps in reading and mathematics across countries implies that they are both influenced by policy: the extent that countries have successfully implemented policies to promote the educational outcomes of girls and young women. In such countries the gender gap in mathematics is small or non‐existent but the gender gap in reading is relatively large. Policies shift both gender gaps in tandem.     

Promoting the development of a supportive learning environment through action research from the ‘middle out’

This paper reports on a case study of a supportive learning environment initiative (SLEI) for students on health and social care undergraduate programmes in one English university. It involved the development of small scale support projects that are firmly grounded in the outcomes of prior research as well as the ongoing experience of students and staff at the institution. The paper begins by identifying common themes which point towards principles and strategies for educational change though a brief review of three concepts that are central to the initiative: ‘action research’, the ‘learning environment’ and ‘change management’. The account of the SLEI focuses on some of the processes of change management that were deployed and the subsequent discussion draws on the theoretical review to reflect critically on possible lessons for the promotion and management of localised change in higher education.     

USING COMPRESSED SPEECH TO MEASURE SIMULTANEOUS PROCESSING IN PERSONS WITH AND WITHOUT VISUAL IMPAIRMENT

This study investigated the use of compressed speech as a modality for assessment of the simultaneous processing function for participants with visual impairment. A 24‐item compressed speech test was created using a sound editing program to randomly remove sound elements from aural stimuli, holding pitch constant, with the objective to emulate the effect of incomplete visual stimuli in gestalt closure tests assessing simultaneous processing. The participant sample included 26 college students with impaired vision and a comparison sample of 88 sighted college students. Participants completed the compressed speech on a computer, along with a general ability measure and standard scales of neuropsychological function. The compressed speech test had a statistically significant positive relationship with both of the scales associated with the simultaneous processing function. Results suggest that compressed speech may provide a viable alternative to assess the simultaneous processing function, equitable for use with persons with and without visual disability.     

Correlates of student stress in secondary education

Background

Educational differentiation, or the allocation of students to different types of school or different locations within schools, is a common feature of modern education systems. In most countries, student outcomes vary considerably, both by school and academic location within schools.

Purpose

The purpose is to ascertain the extent that between- and within-school differences in student performance can be attributed to students' socio-economic background and their home resources.

Sample

The samples are from the OECD's 2000 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study of 15-year-old students' performance in reading, mathematics and science. Data from 30 countries were analysed. The student samples ranged between 2500 (USA) and 30,000 (Canada) students. The samples are representative of the populations of 15-year-old school students in each country.

Design and methods

Multiple regression analysis was used to ascertain the extent to which between-school differences (measured by intra-class correlations) and within-school differences (measured by the effects of the composite variable ‘academic location’ which comprised grade and school programme) declined when taking into consideration students' socio-economic background and home environment.

Results

In most countries the intra-class correlations and the effects of academic location declined only marginally. This was especially the case in countries with large between-school differences such as the tracked systems of continental Europe.

Conclusions

Differences in student performance between and within schools cannot be accounted for by socio-economic background. The study lends some support to the official rational for tracking and other forms of educational differentiation, that the allocation of students to different school types and academic locations within schools is largely based on student ability.     

Peace,development, disarmament and human rights education: The dilemma between the status quo and curriculum overload

With the purpose of facilitating the promotion of peace, development, disarmament and human rights education in the context of intense competition for curriculum time, including from other new ‘educations’, some tentative definitions are offered. Clarification of the basic concepts and their implications leads to a discussion of the inter-relationships amongst them. Hence, a conceptual approach is suggested which is based on the Peace — Human Rights — Development dialectic, defended as crucial with regards to education which must go beyond the transmission of knowledge to the involvement of the participants in their own social reality so that they become subjects rather than objects of their own history. Models are developed to illustrate the pedagogical implications of the dialectical relations among the concepts, aimed at (1) enabling coverage of the topics and their inter-relationships in traditional courses, and (2) suggesting themes for specialized courses which would allow more in-depth analysis. Finally, practical issues with examples for secondary-and tertiary-level teaching are discussed. Rather than giving in to some utopian ideal, educators should realistically draw on the ideas currently being worked out in peace, development, disarmament and human rights education.