Access to postsecondary education through sign language interpreting

Despite the importance of sign language interpreting for many deaf students, there is surprisingly little research concerning its effectiveness in the classroom. The limited research in this area is reviewed, and a new study is presented that included 23 interpreters, 105 deaf students, and 22 hearing students. Students saw two interpreted university-level lectures, each preceded by a test of prior content knowledge and followed by a post-lecture assessment of learning. A variety of demographic and qualitative data also were collected. Variables of primary interest included the effects of a match or mismatch between student interpreting preferences (interpreting vs. transliteration) and the actual mode of interpreting, student-interpreter familiarity, and interpreter experience. Results clarify previous contradictory findings concerning the importance of student interpreting preferences and extend earlier studies indicating that deaf students acquire less than hearing peers from interpreted college-level lectures. Issues relating to access and success in integrated academic settings are discussed as they relate to relations among student characteristics, interpreter characteristics, and educational settings.     

Re/assembling ‘innovative’ learning environments: Affective practice and its politics

Abstract

In this article, we argue that the interest being taken by governments in establishing innovative learning environments (ILEs) in schools relies on a conception of space as a largely neutral arena. In consequence, relations of space and power inherent in the infrastructural shift to ILEs tend to drop from view. Adopting an assemblage approach to investigating learning environments, and exploring ILEs as they are playing out in Australian schools, we strive to surface what drops from view. Taking ILEs to be sociomaterial assemblages, we work with empirical material and trace how they assemble and reassemble. The account is less concerned with what works in ILEs; rather, its focus is on their ‘workings’ as assemblages of relations and most particularly, affective relations. Thus, we explore two affective encounters involving school leaders, teachers and students showing the ways in which they position and are positioned within ILEs. The argument is made that the assemblage approach which is non-deterministic and relational affords new ways of understanding what ILEs are and how they work and who they work for. And, that attending to affective practice brings into view the micropolitics through which infrastructural shifts and infrastructural policy-making are made.     

Attendance, schooling quality, and the demand for education of Mexican Americans, African Americans, and non-Hispanic whites

This study examines the influence of the opportunity costs of school attendance, educational quality attributes, and household socioeconomic status on the educational demand of Mexican Americans, African Americans, and non-Hispanic whites using the 1988–1990 surveys of the National Education Longitudinal Study. Implementing a utility-maximizing framework, educational demand assumes the form of schools' average daily attendance rates and student dropout decisions between the 8th and 10th grades. The basic results suggest that a school's attendance rate is sensitive to educational quality and student characteristics. Moreover, the demand for education measured by student attrition inversely relates to unexplained school attendance, and is positively affected by household socioeconomic status. Some policy recommendations based on the results are discussed.     

Contesting forces: The political and economic context of curriculum development in New Zealand

In the 1980s and 1990s many countries felt the impact of new right economic ideology on their social policies: New Zealand was no exception. Education was seen as the key to improving economic competitiveness and to this end it was deemed necessary to upgrade the system. The reforms arising from the adoption of this position were to take two paths: administrative and curricular. This paper focuses on the curricular reforms and the development of two key national curriculum statements within their political and economic context. The curriculum for compulsory schooling became centrally controlled, subject-based, and achievement oriented. In contrast the early childhood document outlined a child-centred, thematic and experiential curriculum. This paper explores how such divergence arose out of the same socio-political context. The content of the documents is analysed using a theoretical model after Bernstein (1971).     

Transmitting Faith in the Republic:Muslim Schooling in Modern Plural France

This article explores and analyzes private Muslim schooling in France using ethnographic research performed in 2013–2014 in Lille-, Lyon-, and Paris-based Muslim schools. The article discusses the course content and the interpretations of Islam that are taught, demonstrating how French republican values are fused together with Islam to promote a specific brand of French Muslim citizenship and identity. I argue that Muslim schools should be seen as part of the process of the normalization of Muslim-based civic engagement and that they represent a particular response to France's new plurality that reinterprets the boundaries of “French” and “Muslim.”