Girls' and boys' reasoning on cultural and religious practices: a human rights education perspective

Human rights play a vital role in citizens' political, religious and cultural life (Wang 2002, 171). Due to the prominence of human rights in the everyday life of citizens, including those of South Africa, human rights education has been included in many school curricula. Human rights education aims to develop responsible citizens who inter alia foster an understanding of gender, ethnical, religious and cultural diversities. This, it is hoped will encourage and maintain peace, as outlined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Departing from a human rights position, a qualitative study commenced in 2009 to explore how girls and boys reason about the cultural and religious practices of girls in their communities and families. Narratives by girls and boys highlighted their views on girls' positioning in their specific communities. From the findings it became evident that the participants were aware of conforming to particular cultural and religious practices. However, some participants also challenged how they perceived these practices and the roles of girls in their communities. The article highlights the necessity of embarking on a gendered perspective towards human rights education.     

自述语篇中的学术身份建构

尝试以评价理论的态度系统为理论框架,通过定量和定性分析的方法,调查分析了自述语篇中态度资源的使用情况和分布特征。旨在说明作者如何通过态度资源体现人际互动取向和构建学术身份,以期为中国学生学习撰写自述文书以及英语写作教学提供有益借鉴。     

家庭功能的变迁与教育机会的发展——以社会性别理论为视角

随着现代社会经济的发展和科学技术的进步,人类社会的家庭及其社会功能发生了巨大改变,其中家庭社会实践活动的功能经历了重大变革,特别是家庭的教育功能在家庭与社会发展变革的联系和作用中发挥着重要功效,以不断满足人们生存和社会适应的各种需要以及适应和改变社会环境的需要。在家庭社会功能发展与变迁的过程中,人们依然在不断地追求美好的理想,即接受均等的教育,尽管人们对"教育机会均等"问题的认识和努力存在着一定的文化、传统、观念上的差异,但是追求和实现教育机会的均等仍是社会各级各类教育所要达到的教育目的之一。以女性主义的社会性别理论为依据来反思和分析传统家庭社会功能发展中所充斥着的男性中心思想和意识,可以重新审视家庭社会功能变迁对教育机会发展的影响,不断思考并解决家庭社会功能发展和教育机会发展的关系问题,努力促进社会教育机会平等发展。     

Higher Order Teacher Questioning of Boys and Girls in Elementary Mathematics Classrooms

Abstract

The interaction patterns of teachers and students in public and private urban schools was investigated specifically to explore higher order teacher questioning. On the basis of a review of the literature, the authors speculated that patterns of student response to higher order teacher questioning would differ by student gender. Higher order questioning encourages students to think critically, and, therefore, is powerful for learning. Lower order questioning, however, taps only the memorization of facts. The results from this study suggested no gender difference in students' responses to higher order questioning. The 16 teachers observed used predominately lower level questioning patterns in their classrooms.     

Interpreting biography in the History of Education: past and present

Epigraph

At the time I began work in university, I entered a world which was leisured, privileged and patriarchal, in the United Kingdom at least…. I came from a world in which only 3% of the population aspired to university. I belonged to a world in which, having got where I was through the eleven-plus and ‘A’ levels, there was almost a sense that society owed us a living. (Roy Lowe, 2002 ^{1 1}Roy Lowe, ‘Do We Still Need History of Education: Is it Central or Peripheral?’ History of Education 31, no. 6 (2002): 492–3. )

Women were not obviously on the outside when I attended my first conference – a day conference in 1976 at what was then the Birmingham Polytechnic, now University of Central England. Many women attended although in the first years few were keynote speakers. More importantly there was little about women in the history itself except in the meetings of the Women’s Education Study Group where Carol Dyhouse, June Purvis, Penny Summerfield and Gaby Weiner were all dominant. (Ruth Watts, 2005 ^{2 2}Ruth Watts, ‘Gendering the Story: Change in the History of Education’, History of Education 34, no. 3 (2005): 226. )

In 1967, aged 11, I moved on from my primary school in south London, and was selected to enter the local grammar school. I left most of my friends behind and began a daily routine of walking nervously through the council housing estates in my school uniform. By the time I left this school, seven years later, it had moved to one of the more prosperous suburbs of London to avoid being turned into a comprehensive. In the early twenty-first century, it is one of the leading academic secondary schools in the country, which it certainly was not in 1967. (Gary McCulloch, 2007 ^{3 3}Gary McCulloch, ‘Forty Years On: Presidential Address to the History of Education Society, London 4 November 2006’, History of Education 36, no. 1 (2007): 6. )     

Trainee Change through Teacher Training: A case study in training English language teachers in Spain

In the course of giving greater importance to trainees' previous knowledge about and experience of teaching and learning foreign languages, the role of teacher training courses as agents of change has recently been questioned. Through a research project reported in this article I tried to find out to what extent two teacher training courses I was recently involved in caused trainees to change their points of view in relation to some of the fundamental issues involved in teaching. Special attention was given to the sources of these modifications, particularly to the role that teaching practice plays in them.     

A Plan of Classifying Pupils

ABSTRACT

Critical ethnic and gender gaps exist in college retention and graduation rates. Early achievement motivation may play an important role in student persistence. A sample of undergraduates completed surveys tapping motivation at the beginning (n = 591) and end (n = 232) of their first semester in college. African American and Caucasian students were more academically self-efficacious than Asian American students. Self-efficacy increased over the semester and was higher for male than female students at both time points. African American and Asian American students were initially more extrinsically motivated than Caucasian students; however, by the end of the semester, all ethnic groups were similar on extrinsic motivation. Female students were more extrinsically motivated and mastery oriented than male students who were more performance oriented. Performance goal orientations were negatively associated with grade point average whereas mastery orientation, intrinsic, and extrinsic motivation were positively associated with academic performance. Implications for higher education are discussed.     

Book Reviews

Though there is a well-established body of research in the field of teacher professional development, it is characterised by a real dearth of any detailed historical analysis. This paper seeks to address this gap, by offering a new historical analysis of a case study of the evolution of organised teacher professional development in England and Wales during the twentieth century. Its approach is hoped to open up the wider debate and to contribute to a fuller understanding of the basis for those questions and dilemmas about teacher professional development that have long exercised teachers, professional educators and policy-makers – questions which turn on fundamental issues of priorities and purpose, funding, scale of teacher engagement, control and reach. The paper is in three main parts. Firstly, the scope of the case study is outlined with key stages in the evolution of teacher professional development in England and Wales identified. Secondly, four themes from the data which characterised this evolution are discussed. These include the restricted engagement of teachers relative to the whole teacher population; limited funding; the highly centralised control over provision for teacher professional development through Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (HMI); and a highly selective and restrictive access to provision by teachers. It is argued that these key characteristics helped to shape a particular culture and ideology of teacher professional development which was dependent on a select cadre of elite teachers for the dissemination and modelling of what was regarded as good practice, so as to improve their colleagues’ performance – the elite excelled while the majority needed to be saved from mediocrity. The particular ideology underlying this model is conceptualised as one of ‘excellence and salvation’. Finally, it is argued that the key issues identified in this story (the restricted engagement of teachers; limited funding; highly centralised control; and ideologies of excellence) raise important generic questions for the field of teacher professional development more widely as well as framing future historical analysis of teacher professional development.     

‘Trying to find the extra choices’: migrant parents and secondary school choice in Greater Manchester

This article, based on qualitative research in Greater Manchester, examines the experience of migrants in navigating the education system, and in particular in choosing secondary schools for their children. There has been extensive research on the process of choosing schools since the policy reforms of the 1980s, but none has examined how the process of choosing a secondary school is impacted by the material and affective impact of migration. The article argues that migrants’ experience is embedded in gendered, classed and racialised processes and that, despite the heterogeneity of the category, migrants often face particular barriers in negotiating the school system. Nonetheless it also explores the importance put on education by the migrants who were interviewed and the active labour they engage in to try and achieve the best results for their children.     

On the mismatch between multicultural education and its subjects in the field

This article draws attention to the growing evidence of a mismatch between sociological categorization and actors' worlds of meaning as expressed in the classroom. The mismatch is especially blatant in cases where students from disadvantaged groups are introduced to what educators and theorists presume to be the liberating discourse of multicultural education. Nurtured by recent developments in the sociology of culture, the article sheds light on this phenomenon by delving into the logic of the actors' own worlds of meaning while making a concerted effort to avoid directing prepackaged allegations of ‘false consciousness‘ at informants. The article delves into the mismatch by reviewing multicultural education sites in two national contexts, the United States and Israel. Its findings from a unique high school in Jerusalem invite researchers to explore new avenues for understanding cultural encounters at school in view of the growing multicultural reality.