An Istanbul Odyssey: A Microcosm of High-Ability Issues

Severe socioeconomic inequality strongly suppresses and distorts the discovery of aspirations and the concomitant development of talents among the gifted. More comprehensive understanding of this suppression and distortion is available through a wide-ranging interdisciplinary search for research findings and theories that illuminate economic, ideological–political, historical, philosophical, and psychological contextual influences on bright young people. This theoretical synthesis draws from multiple disciplines to reveal some of these contextual influences and then provides some recommendations for ways in which educators and policymakers might attempt to counteract some of the most pernicious effects of growing inequality on the gifted.     

The Place of Literature in an Increasingly Virtual World

The reading of literature fulfils a vital role in any educated and civilised nation. The book is being transformed, as digitisation becomes an increasing reality, however, literature will continue to retain a key place as a critical social and cultural artefact. Story, in whatever form, will continue to provide experiences of joy, amusement, fear, hope, betrayal, curiosity, love, forgiveness and sadness. Literature can do so much more than simply moving and entertaining us. It can impart knowledge, stimulate the imagination and can teach us about language, our world and our relationship to it. It can help us to relate to and understand one another, and can act both as a mortar to build rich personal and textual histories, and a bridge between our lives and the lives of others. As well, literature can enrich our lives, helping us to encounter ‘other worlds’, languages and experiences that are not within our lived experience. Finally, literature can transform us as language users, learners and people and present us with a different view of the world and our place in it. But as digitisation and new forms of communication change, will how we read and how we access and share books with one another also change? Finally, how might we sustain libraries and other spaces that readers frequent as ‘real’ communities where lovers of books dwell?     

Winners and Losers' in the Development of Home-School Literacy Partnerships: An Analysis of Discourses of Power

In the past decade, family literacy has been the focus of considerable research. This work has suggested multiple understandings of involvement, and that many schools tend to work within a definition of parent involvement that does little more than seek to conform parents and their children to the literacy practices of schools. This paper reports research that has considered how parents take strategic action on their own and their children's behalf to increase their educational opportunities. It looks closely at the ways relationships between families and schools are constructed, and presents two ‘telling cases’ of families' responses to school literacy practices assigned for work at home. In doing so, it attempts to bring voices from Australia to the dialogue on ways of viewing parental involvement. It does this from a community centred perspective with the focus on the process of constructing shared meanings and understandings. The research examines the specific literacy practices that are honoured and dishonoured in the name of ‘parent involvement’. In doing so, the paper attempts to make visible the potential ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in the development of home-school literacy partnerships.     

Total quality management in higher education: Myths and realities

Summary This paper has addressed a number of issues inherent in the adoption of the principles of TQM by the HE sector. It has not set out to provide all the answers but has intended to stimulate discussion and to suggest possible approaches. Where applicable, it has used South Bank University’s experience as a case study. Issues have been addressed in terms of popular misconceptions in TQM along with suggested approaches thought to be more realistic. The conclusion is that TQM has much to offer HE but that it is not just a case of translating BS5750 from a product-based to a service-based system. Sensible application of TQM principles in HE in order to show a realistic improvement will take time, commitment and considerable investment by top management. In my view the starting point should be a better understanding of customer needs, which can then be addressed through a process of service quality improvement which permeates the organisational structure. The author draws attention to the fact that certain aspects of this paper have changed in the period since it was delivered (August 1994).     

Differentiation: teachers’ views of the usefulness of recommended strategies in helping the more able pupils in primary and secondary classrooms

Recent official publications have emphasised the need for differentiation to take place in classrooms in order to ensure that the needs of all pupils, including the more able, are met effectively. These publications list methods of differentiation which are ‘recommended’ for classroom use. This article researches the views of teachers about the value of these recommended methods of differentiation for able pupils in primary and secondary classrooms. It concludes that the teachers are more subtle in their use of the methods than the official publications allow for and it suggests that no single method can be applied without understanding the context in which it is used.     

Development and Validation of a Rubric for Diagnosing Students’ Experimental Design Knowledge and Difficulties

It is essential to teach students about experimental design, as this facilitates their deeper understanding of how most biological knowledge was generated and gives them tools to perform their own investigations. Despite the importance of this area, surprisingly little is known about what students actually learn from designing biological experiments. In this paper, we describe a rubric for experimental design (RED) that can be used to measure knowledge of and diagnose difficulties with experimental design. The development and validation of the RED was informed by a literature review and empirical analysis of undergraduate biology students’ responses to three published assessments. Five areas of difficulty with experimental design were identified: the variable properties of an experimental subject; the manipulated variables; measurement of outcomes; accounting for variability; and the scope of inference appropriate for experimental findings. Our findings revealed that some difficulties, documented some 50 yr ago, still exist among our undergraduate students, while others remain poorly investigated. The RED shows great promise for diagnosing students’ experimental design knowledge in lecture settings, laboratory courses, research internships, and course-based undergraduate research experiences. It also shows potential for guiding the development and selection of assessment and instructional activities that foster experimental design.     

Educational Vouchers under Test

The context of this research is one in which teachers are now expected to equip their pupils with the disposition and skills for life‐long learning. It is vital, therefore, that teachers themselves are learners, not only in developing their practice but also in modelling for pupils the process of continual learning. This paper is based on a series of post‐lesson interviews, conducted with 25 student teachers following a one‐year postgraduate course within two well‐established school‐based partnerships of initial teacher training. Its focus is on the approaches that the student teachers take to their own learning. Four interviews, conducted with each student teacher over the course of the year, explored their thinking in relation to planning, conducting and evaluating an observed lesson, and their reflections on the learning that informed, or resulted from, that lesson. The findings suggest that while the student teachers all learn from experience, the nature and extent of that learning varies considerably within a number of different dimensions. We argue that understanding the range of approaches that student teachers take to professional learning will leave teacher educators better equipped to help ensure that new entrants to the profession are both competent teachers and competent professional learners.     

Statutory assessment of the class? Supporting the additional needs of the learning context

The dialogue of this paper operates at two levels. First, it seeks to rethink the various perspectives on social justice evident in the academic literature, reviewing what is collectively known about it and where current thinking is taking and/or should be taking us. Second, it reports on research concerning the schooling of students with disabilities or, more accurately, research concerning the practices of teachers in relation to the inclusion of students with disabilities within ‘mainstream’ classrooms. These two discussions come together through their collaborative interest in recognizing social justice when they ‘see’ it; the data from the research are used to inform the theory it illustrates and the theory is used to explain teachers' practices. In this critical sense it is more than a dialogue, with its parts dialectically related. The paper's critique also extends to questioning whose interests are served (and whose are not) by various social justice perspectives and their applications to schooling. It concludes that ‘a critical theory of social justice must consider not only distributive patterns, but also the processes and relationships that produce and reproduce those patterns’ (Young 1990: 241).