Young people and school General Certificate of Secondary Education attainment: looking for the ‘missing middle’

In Britain, educational qualifications gained at school continue to play an important and central role in young people’s educational and employment pathways. Recently there has been growing interest in documenting the lives of ‘ordinary’ young people. In this paper we analyse the Youth Cohort Study of England and Wales in order to better document the experiences of those with ‘middle’ levels of school General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) attainment. The overall pattern of school GCSE attainment is one of increasing levels of performance. GCSE attainment is still highly stratified. Girls performed better than boys, and there were some marked differences in attainment for pupils from the main minority ethnic groups. Most notably, parental socio-economic positions are the most important factor. The analyses fail to persuade us that there are clear boundaries that demark a ‘middle’ category of school GCSE attainment. We conclude that sociologists should study ‘ordinary’ young people; however, school GCSE attainment is best understood as a continuum, and measures such as the number of GCSEs or point scores are preferable.     

Changing policy,legislation and its effects on inclusive and special education: a perspective from Wales

This article, by Jean Ware of Bangor University School of Education, examines policy developments in education in Wales since devolution, and their implications for inclusive and special education. This is set in the context of the demographics of Wales, which, it is argued, have a significant influence on policy and on the nature of educational provision as a whole. The discussion initially focuses on issues related to the Welsh language. The article then discusses four policy initiatives (the Foundation Phase, the Literacy and Numeracy Framework, the Masters in Educational Practice and the proposed reform of initial teacher education and training), intended to respond to Wales's poor performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment, and their potential impact, as well as the White Paper on reforming the special educational needs system in Wales. It is too soon to discuss the impact of these special educational needs‐specific reforms, but the differences from the English special educational needs reforms highlight the inherent tensions in special educational needs systems. It is argued that the Tabberer Report's critique of the teacher education system in Wales, which emphasises the need for teacher education to be strongly connected to relevant research, provides an opportunity to improve the quality of education in Wales for all children; but that considerable investment, and a willingness to address the potential tensions between the different initiatives, is necessary to achieve such an outcome.     

英国《国家校长标准》:背景、内容与特征

导致英国《国家校长标准》产生的主要背景因素是英国校长培训中存在的问题和政府的教育改革主张。在内容上,最新的2004年版本阐述了六个关键领域。本文结合其背景及内容的分析,探讨了这一标准所具有的特征,以及对我国关于校长标准的研究与实施的启示。     

An analysis of the changing shape of initial teacher education and training in Wales since devolution

After a sustained period of relative calm, initial teacher education and training (ITET) in Wales has seen much change in recent times since devolution and all the indications are that this change agenda is likely to escalate in both the short and long term. In order to understand what has been happening in the ITET field in Wales, our paper sets out to achieve three things: first, it has contextualised the changing ITET, political, social and economic climate within Wales. Second, it has presented ITET data for Wales from the onset of devolution to the present time. Thereafter, these data have been compared and contrasted. Third, we have attempted to project our findings forward, albeit in an era which is increasingly difficult to predict given both the financial climate and “cuts” agenda. These latter aspects may result in the longer term, at best, to ITET in Wales becoming even further fragmented or reduced in numbers to, at worst, being decimated or changed forever from the more traditional scene which was apparent in both Wales and the rest of the UK since the Robbins Report aftermath in the late 1960s.     

Effect of sexual education on sexual health in Iran

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of a special sex education program in sexual health on Iranian newly‐wed couples. A sample of 64 couples referred to three health centers of Tehran Medicine University, a few months prior to their marriage, were divided into case and control groups. The case group received three lecture sessions given by the researcher. These lectures consisted of different aspects of sexuality such as reproductive and sexual health, the sexuality response cycle and sexual communication. The control group received only the lectures that are presented normally in the marriage preparation program, based on family planning and personal health. Six months after the program, we assessed the sexual satisfaction, healthy behaviors and sexual health of the two groups. The results indicate that the sexual health in the case group is significantly improved compared with the control group.     

英国中小学课程政策的影响因素分析

制约和影响英国中小学课程政策的因素十分复杂.然而,纵观英国课程改革和发展的历史进程,我们仍能发现,英国中小学的课程政策和各项改革措施无不受到英国实用主义的教育历史与文化传统、社会经济发展、主流政治意识形态、杰出政治家和教育家的关键作用以及其他欧盟国家和美国课程思想等因素的制约和影响.     

The development process for the optional teacher assessment materials for English for use in Wales at the end of Key Stage 2

This paper outlines the development process that took place for the production of assessment materials to be used by teachers in Wales now that statutory testing at the end of KS2 has been abolished. The aim was to provide teachers with a free, but rich, optional resource that would allow for assessment of pupils' abilities in a wide range of skills and competencies embedded in the English curriculum and demonstrate how teacher assessments could be used both summatively and formatively.     

Knowledge for what? Wales,militarisation and the endless promotion of the knowledge economy

The ‘knowledge economy’ has become the buzzword of development policy in the early twenty‐first century. Nations and regions around the world are all told that they must transform themselves into knowledge economies to survive and prosper. This article uses the example of Wales and its recent embrace of a massive military privatisation project in the name of the knowledge economy to illustrate how political and business elites use knowledge economy discourse to build legitimacy for their own development agendas and interests. The ideological work that knowledge economy discourse performs is based on its claim that knowledge should be seen primarily as a factor of production, along with land, labour and capital; its promotion of the need for networking, teamwork and partnership; its insistence that social and economic advancement be based on talent, education and skill; and most of all, its presumption that knowledge, education and learning are inherently and unquestionably goods in and of themselves.     

Girls’ participation in post‐16 mathematics: a view from pupils in Wales

A number of studies have highlighted that anxiety, confidence and enjoyment are influential factors on students’ participation in mathematics, and in particular girls’ participation. This paper, based upon data collected as part of a PhD thesis, examines the effect of these influences on pupil choices within different types of secondary schools in Wales and, rather interestingly, the findings show that such factors are significantly less marked in one category of school in Wales. Girls were more likely than boys to report feelings of anxiety and a lack of confidence in mathematics in all schools in Wales, apart from in Language Streamed schools. Furthermore, students in the Language Streamed schools were most likely to enjoy mathematics compared to pupils in other schools in Wales. Reasons for such findings are related to certain school practices. Smaller classes, retaining a teacher and teacher gender all appear to have positive benefits on girls’ and boys’ attitudes towards mathematics.     

Educology: The theory of educational practice

The relationship between psychology and education may be expressed in terms of two general models: the traditional hierarchical model, according to which psychology is the “parent” discipline; and a parallel model, in which the relationship between “pure” theory and its application is metaphoric rather than paradigmatic. The hierarchical model, however, does not hold even for such a “tight” area as behavior modification, let alone for educational practice in general.Educational practice, as a professional enterprise, should be guided by a consistent set of constructs taken from the practitioner's universe of discourse. The professionalization of education has been delayed because of attempts, mostly vain, to guide practice by applying constructs derived from other disciplines. Other disciplines, notably psychology, can be useful for education but in a metaphoric sense only. “Educology” is suggested as a convenient term for the set of constructs that should give coherence to educational decision-making.