The impact of the National Curriculum on twelve special schools in England

Abstract

The National Curriculum represents one of the most significant UK educational reforms of this century. However, it was planned and introduced with little reference to pupils with special needs, particularly those attending special schools or units. Alongside pragmatic responses to the implementation of the National Curriculum in special education, there has been a lively and continuing debate about its appropriateness, in principle, for pupils in special schools. This paper reports data derived from interviews with headteachers of twelve special schools (encompassing three distinct special needs groups). Continuities of view, notably an acceptance of the principle of a national curriculum for all pupils, are discussed. Divergent Views reflected an adherence to equality or individuality as underlying educational principles. The findings are placed in two contexts: first, the process of curriculum change, and second, the links between integration and curricular conformity as reflected in some European special education literature.     

Social reproduction and education policy

The last half-century of sociology of education is littered with the debris of functionalist theories about social reproduction, inequality and class. This article discusses 'progressive 'and 'conservative 'readings of arguments about social reproduction and explores the consequences for the sociology and the politics of education with reference to supposed 'influence ' and 'audience'. New Labour's embrace of the school effectiveness/improvement movement and the introduction of the Sure Start programme illustrate that while 'social reproduction' is still a concern for sociologists of education, policy-makers have more 'practical' concerns.     

走出高中英语教学的误区

通过对高中英语教学在指导思想、教学理念、教材处理等几方面存在误区的分析,倡导英语教师认真学习新课程理念、领悟新课标精神、研究教材和学生学习状况,使英语教学走入正轨。     

审视中职校课程设置:基于多元整合的理念

针对当前中职校课程设置中存在的"四类问题":课程体系构建缺乏"融合性"、课程目标定位出现"功利性"、课程实施走向"唯技性"、课程评价方式呈现"单向性",提出中职校课程多元整合理念,并探讨了克服当前中职校课程设置中存在问题的对策。     

Does STES‐Oriented Science Education Promote 10th‐Grade Students’ Decision‐Making Capability?

Today’s society is continuously coping with sustainability‐related complex issues in the Science‐Technology‐Environment‐Society (STES) interfaces. In those contexts, the need and relevance of the development of students’ higher‐order cognitive skills (HOCS) such as question‐asking, critical‐thinking, problem‐solving and decision‐making capabilities within science teaching have been argued by several science educators for decades. Three main objectives guided this study: (1) to establish “base lines” for HOCS capabilities of 10th grade students (n = 264) in the Israeli educational system; (2) to delineate within this population, two different groups with respect to their decision‐making capability, science‐oriented (n = 142) and non‐science (n = 122) students, Groups A and B, respectively; and (3) to assess the pre‐post development/change of students’ decision‐making capabilities via STES‐oriented HOCS‐promoting curricular modules entitled Science, Technology and Environment in Modern Society (STEMS). A specially developed and validated decision‐making questionnaire was used for obtaining a research‐based response to the guiding research questions. Our findings suggest that a long‐term persistent application of purposed decision‐making, promoting teaching strategies, is needed in order to succeed in affecting, positively, high‐school students’ decision‐making ability. The need for science teachers’ involvement in the development of their students’ HOCS capabilities is thus apparent.     

Putting school commercialism in context: a global history of Junior Achievement Worldwide

The literature on school commercialism, despite a number of successes in battling advertising and marketing in schools, has often seemed to only scratch the surface of corporatization of K‐12 education. While condemning corporations who seek to sell brand‐name products to kids in schools is a relatively straightforward matter, critiquing corporate efforts to promote ideologies, identities, values and agendas to children and youth is far more complicated and yet, essential. In this paper, we take the example of Junior Achievement Worldwide, one of the world’s oldest, largest, and fastest growing organizations promoting corporate interests in schools in the USA and beyond to illustrate the need to address school commercialism in a broad historical, curricular, and global context. We review the long history of Junior Achievement in the USA, its vast set of curriculum offerings in enterprise, financial literacy, economics, work readiness and life skills, and its dramatic expansion, since the late 1980s, to now reach more than eight million students every year in over 100 countries around the world.     

The male–female gap in post-baccalaureate school quality

Women are less likely than men to earn degrees from high quality post-baccalaureate programs, and this tendency has been growing over time. I show that, aside from the biomedical sciences, this cannot be explained by changes in the type of program where women tend to earn degrees. Instead, sorting by quality within degree program is the main contributor to the growing gap. Most of this sorting is due to the initial choice in which program type to apply to. No gender differences in selection with respect to ability or program quality arise as students progress through the admissions, enrollment or persistence choices.     

Child‐rearing and Parental ‘Intentions' in Postmodernity

This paper aims at revealing the various meanings of schools as more than built physical environments from a geographical‐phenomenological (or ‘geo‐phenomenological’) perspective. This paper consists of five sections: the first explicates the meaning of ‘geo‐phenomenology’; the second reveals the meaning of ‘environment’ and a dialectics of strangeness and intimacy through geo‐phenomenological analysis; the third examines the meanings of environment as ‘space’ and ‘place’ and the act of naming as the process of constructing meaning between humans and environment; the fourth section attempts to explore the meaning of conceiving school as a particular environment; and the final is the conclusion.     

如何有效开展小学语文课外活动

《语文新课程标准》明确指出：＂语文课外活动是语文学习的重要组成部分,是开阔学生视野、发展学生智力的重要保障。＂本文从制订活动方案、选择活动项目、做好具体实施、做好活动总结与反思等方面探究开展初中语文课外活动的有效策略。     

西藏中小学校长培训问题分析及对策研究

中小学校长在基础教育中起着重要作用,因此,对中小学校长的培训成为其中的一个重要环节。针对这一问题,本文作者根据自己长期的实践经验所积累的第一手材料,分析了当前西藏中小学校长培训存在的定位不明、缺乏长远规划、培训层次模糊、课程理念滞后等问题,并提出了详细的构建培训目标体系、课程体系、培训模式、保障措施等对策。