Food leadership: Leadership and adult learning for global food systems transformation

International Review of Education -     

Does social labelling encourage child schooling and discourage child labour in Nepal?

This paper explores the determinants of child labour vis-à-vis child schooling. It further examines the influence of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which are engaged in social labelling, on the incidence of child labour and schooling trade-off. The empirical results show that the probability of child schooling increases as well as child labour decreases if a carpet firm has adopted a labelling scheme. It can also be shown that labelling NGOs have a significant positive influence on sending the ex-child labourers to school.     

The interplay between individual and collective knowledge: technologies for organisational learning and knowledge building

This article presents a framework model that defines knowledge building as a co-evolution of cognitive and social systems. Our model brings together Nonaka's knowledge-creating theory and Luhmann's systems theory. It is demonstrated how collaborative knowledge building may occur – in an ideal situation – within an organisation, when people interact with each other using shared digital artefacts. For this purpose, three different technologies are introduced as examples: social-tagging systems, pattern-based task-management systems, and wikis. These examples have been chosen to demonstrate that knowledge building can occur with respect to both declarative and procedural knowledge. The differences and similarities between these technologies, as far as their potential for organisational knowledge building is concerned, are discussed in the light of the framework model.     

Machineries for Making Publics: Inscribing and De-scribing Publics in Public Engagement

This paper investigates the dynamic and performative construction of publics in public engagement exercises. In this investigation, we, on the one hand, analyse how public engagement settings as political machineries frame particular kinds of roles and identities for the participating publics in relation to ‘the public at large’. On the other hand, we study how the participating citizens appropriate, resist and transform these roles and identities, and how they construct themselves and the participating group in relation to wider publics. The empirical basis of our argument is a discussion of four different kinds of participation events in Austria. Building on these observations we develop conclusions about the public up-take of public participation in technoscience and the role of public engagement in current techno-political cultures.     

Coping with boredom in school: An experience sampling perspective

The present study explored students’ use of boredom-related coping strategies at trait and state levels. Two trait-based dimensions of coping relevant to boredom were considered, namely approach - versus avoidance-oriented and cognitively - versus behaviorally-oriented coping strategies. The two dimensions were assessed in a self-report questionnaire administered to 537 grade 11 students (55.3% female, M_age = 17.15 years). Additionally, 79 of these participants completed state-based boredom-related coping measures over a 2-week period using an experience sampling method. Analyses of the trait measures suggested that two contrasting, broad approaches characterized participants’ strategies for coping with boredom, namely a cognitive-approach orientation and a behavioral-avoidance orientation. In both the trait- and state-based analyses, the cognitive-approach orientation was associated with lower levels of boredom. Implications for interventions promoting the use of cognitive-approach strategies for dealing with boredom in the classroom are discussed.     

Familie, Peers und Bildungsungleichheit. Qualitative Befunde zur interdependenten Bildungsbedeutsamkeit außerschulischer Bildungsorte

This article presents the results of a qualitative triangulation study which explored the development of educational inequality from the perspective of 13-year-olds, their parents and their friends. The article offers new empirical insights into the interaction of the family and peer settings and their importance for the educational biography of pupils aged about 13 and the development of educational inequality. First of all, the requirements for educational research into non-school settings are discussed. Then, the hitherto largely unconnected fields of research into educational biographies, families and peer settings are examined to ascertain how they could contribute to the goal of a qualitative triangulation study. This is followed by a presentation of the questions and the conceptual and empirical methods of our own study, before the results are presented in the form of a typology of the interrelationships. The article concludes with a discussion of the results against the background of the goals formulated at the beginning of the article and considerations about research into the social origins of habitus.     

Justice judgments concerning grading in school

This article investigates justice judgments concerning grading. In two studies with secondary students (N₁ = 350 academic-track students; N₂ = 225 intermediate [n = 81] and academic-track students [n = 144]) attending the 7th to the 12th grade level, participants were presented with vignettes describing three different grading systems: criterion-referenced grading, norm-referenced grading, and individual-referenced grading. The subjects graded and other situational characteristics were varied. In both studies, factor analyses consistently revealed that students’ justice judgments were contingent on the comparison standard applied, but independent of other situational characteristics. Criterion-referenced grading was rated as the most just practice, individual-referenced grading as almost just, and norm-referenced grading as almost unjust. The better the grades received the more the students evaluated criterion-referenced grading to be just. Students attending intermediate-track schools did not object to norm-referenced grading as strongly as their peers at academic-track schools did. Consequences for teachers’ grading practices are discussed.     

Rights,expertise and negotiations in care and education

More young children and their families have access to early years services than ever before in Britain. Within these settings practitioners and parents need to work closely together for the benefit of the child. Yet the relationships within the childcare and education triangle (child, parent, practitioner) are highly complex and sometimes fraught with tension. Drawing on theories of care, the paper offers a structure for decisions about childcare and how a combination of expectations from parents and practitioners regarding everyday care practice can either be the basis of a trusting relationship between the adults involved in this caring triangle or a breeding‐ground for tensions. The study is mainly based on qualitative research from a study combining qualitative and quantitative methods with family day care providers in the north‐east of England and the north‐east of Germany.     

Unterricht als Feld evidenzbasierter Bildungspraxis?

This paper sketches the debate on evidence-based educational practice focusing on teaching and instruction in schools. The authors review requirements that have to be fulfilled by educational research that aims to provide a basis for educational policy and practice. Specifically, they discuss the challenges that are associated with a notion of a sender-recipient relationship describing research and practice. Models for a stronger research-based connection with the field of educational practice are described. Subsequently, they show how the discourse on teaching and instruction that is prevalent in the educational sciences in Germany illuminates the inherent difficulties when teaching practice is expected to follow scientific evidence. The authors illustrate these two strands of the paper – communication between researchers and practitioners, and opinions about the constitution of ‘good’ teaching and instruction – by excerpts of interviews with researchers and teachers.