From Policy to Practice: Pupils' Responses to Widening Participation Initiatives

Recent widening participation policies have been subject to a number of criticisms; they focus on aspirations rather than differences in performance; they place less value on the aspirations of the ‘disadvantaged’ comparing them to a middle class norm; they subordinate what was a radical agenda to the demands of the economy and so constrain the available options to young people. Using data from young people who have taken part in Aimhigher initiatives in the South West of England and from teachers who have organised Aimhigher events, this paper will examine to what extent these features of policy are evidenced in the attitudes and aspirations of these pupils. It will argue that the data shows little evidence of pupils positioning themselves as inferior, that young people display instrumental attitudes to education, but that these attitudes relate to policy discourse and practice in complex ways.     

Developing identities in the workplace: students’ experiences of distance early childhood teacher education

In Aotearoa New Zealand, many early childhood teachers gain their teaching qualification via distance study while working in an early childhood centre. Early childhood teachers work in a team environment, and it is important to understand more about how distance students negotiate changes in their workplace practice as their professional knowledge develops. This article draws on a study that explores students’ experiences of distance teacher education as a process of changing participation in the workplace. Distance study supported increasingly confident participation as students saw more meaning in their daily work. The students’ identities and their workplace cultures and practices influenced what students paid attention to and the decisions they made when negotiating changes within their teams. Their experiences suggest that strengthening students’ relational agency at work is a useful focus for distance early childhood teacher education programmes.     

Learning to compose digitally: the effect of prior computer use and keyboard activity on NAEP writing

Writing is critical for college and career readiness, yet secondary students in America are not good writers (National Center for Education Statistics, 2012). Unfortunately, researchers know relatively little about secondary students’ writing skills, and even less about their digital writing. In this study, we explored prior computer use, keyboard activity during writing, and their relations to writing achievement using the 8th grade 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress writing assessment, the first national computer-based writing assessment for U.S. secondary students. We found that prior computer use predicted students’ writing skills directly (0.08) and indirectly (e.g., keypresses, 0.14) via keyboard activity during the test. We found differential effects for certain groups including current English learners and disadvantaged students. We also found a small positive interaction effect of prior use and keypresses on writing. That is, the benefits of prior computer use for school writing and the value of students’ additional keypresses on writing achievement were amplified when both were present.

     

Middle School Students’ Mechanistic Explanation About Trait Expression in Rice Plants During a Technology-Enhanced Science Inquiry Investigation

Journal of Science Education and Technology - We examined the sophistication of middle school students’ mechanistic explanations of genetics phenomena and how they interact with a...     

What Is Education For?

This paper is a speech given at King's College, University of London, where Dr Tate asks us to review current rationales for teaching and learning in schools. He outlines his own view which states that it is a liberal humanist project in the tradition of Arnold through to Gramsci which seeks to bring civilisation and values to the population. His paper surveys how this answer plays out in other countries as well as what this means for educationalists and education policy makers. He ends by asking the government to look at the big picture and the big idea which education is.     

Vocational Interests and Career Efficacy Expectations in Relation to Occupational Sex-Typing Beliefs for Eighth Grade Students

Following the recommendations of Lent, Brown and Hackett's Social Cognitive Career Theory (2000), we measured eighth grade boys' and girls' perception of the proportion of men and women employed in occupations and their level of interest and self-efficacy for those occupations. Results indicated that eighth grade boys and girls expressed stronger career interest in and higher self-efficacy for those occupations that they rated as employing more of their own gender. The study highlights how career practitioners can work with adolescents to widen their perceived range of occupational choices.     

Three-Level Models for Indirect Effects in School- and Class-Randomized Experiments in Education

Due to the clustered nature of field data, multi-level modeling has become commonly used to analyze data arising from educational field experiments. While recent methodological literature has focused on multi-level mediation analysis, relatively little attention has been devoted to mediation analysis when three levels (e.g., student, class, school) are present in a study setting. This article presents analysis models that can be used to test indirect effects in experimental designs having three levels where random assignment is at the third (school) or second (class) level and where the indirect effect may be random. In the presentation, simulated datasets are used to illustrate model specification and results interpretation for hypothetical three-level educational experiments involving mediation and moderation of treatment effects.