The Emotionally Affected University Student: support from the university community

The study measured the general attitudes towards disability of academics, administrative staff, and students in a small rural University. Respondents were also asked to comment on the nature of support that might be provided for a student with an emotional disability. There were some significant differences in level and nature of support for students with an emotional disability among academics, administrative staff, and students. These differences were related to the levels of comfort with, and sympathy felt towards, students with an emotional disability. However, overall the results suggest that university students with expressed emotional difficulties are liable to be relatively negatively regarded and are not liable to receive much concrete assistance for the difficulties they face. It is proposed that the data supports the notion that academics, of all the groups measured, are best placed to decide types of support for students with an emotional disability on a case by case basis.     

Children's attitudes toward their peers with Down Syndrome in schools in rural Ireland: an exploratory study

Increasingly, children with Down Syndrome are attending mainstream schools, but evidence suggests that these children are more prone to peer rejection and other problems when compared with their non‐disabled counterparts. However, relatively little is known about children's attitudes toward their peers with moderate to serious learning disabilities, including Down Syndrome. This study assessed the attitudes of non‐disabled primary school children (n = 118) in mainstream education toward their peers with Down Syndrome. A secondary aim was to assess whether exposure to audiovisual material promoting inclusion had any immediate effects on overall attitudes. A cross‐sectional, questionnaire‐based survey was administered in four rural‐based schools. The results showed that female participants over 10 were the most sociable. Overall attitudes toward inclusion were consistently and statistically significantly more negative than those toward sociability. Other factors, such as contact with peers with Down Syndrome, were not related to attitudes. Neither was there any change in overall attitudes following exposure to the promotional material. Further work is needed to identify factors underpinning the attitudes of non‐disabled children to their peers with Down Syndrome and how best to promote inclusion in mainstream schools.     

For Love of the Word: English Teaching,Affect and Writing1

Research in the UK, USA and Australia confirms that secondary English practising and pre‐service teachers are typically characterised as great readers. Indeed the subject position of English teacher entails a ‘love’ of reading (Peel, R., Patterson, A. & Gerlach (Eds), 2000 Peel, R. 2000. “Beliefs about ‘English’, in England,”. In Questions of English: Ethics, Aesthetics, Rhetoric and the Formation of the Subject in England, Australia and the United States, Edited by: Peel, R, Patterson, A and Gerlach. 116–188. London: Routledge/Falmer.  [Google Scholar]). However there is no corollary with writing. Few English teachers are simultaneously ‘writers’ in any sustained, pleasurable or publicly successful ways. This paper examines data gathered from pre‐service secondary English teachers and from experienced teachers who are also writers about their own writing practices and experiences and looks at the relationship between these issues of affect and pedagogy. Embodied and positive affects—characterised as ‘love’, ‘passion’ and ‘immersion’ in writing—are prominent features of the stories told by accomplished writers. Love of ‘the word’, including a love of reading, and a productive tension between form and freedom, are further threads in the discursive textures of their stories of coming to writing.     

Every Child Matters: the perceptions of a sample of initial teacher education trainees in England

We discuss an investigation into the understandings of trainee teachers about government policy, using, as an example, the UK government's ‘Every Child Matters’ (ECM). We discuss the research methods used to gather and analyse data from 197 initial teacher education trainees in three institutions in England drawn from six subject areas. The project focussed on trainees' reactions to the anticipated outcomes of ECM and their confidence to help implement the initiative in their roles as form tutors (home room teachers) and subject teachers. Trainees react positively to ECM but reveal uncertainty about its precise meaning and about the roles they would need to adopt as teachers. We suggest that it is problematic for governments to expect teacher education communities to assist with the implementation of policies that have been inadequately characterised. We make recommendations about the role of initial teacher education in the further development of ECM.     

Saving squawk? Animal and human entanglement at the edge of the lagoon

Emerging posthuman paradigms are beginning to influence approaches to educational research and pedagogy, including the ‘common worlds’ investigations of relations among children and wild animals in early childhood settings. This paper turns to child-animal encounters in a secondary school wetlands project to explore some of the implications of posthumanism for environmental education. It explores how singular encounters with wild animals – a swamp hen, a turtle and an eel – became pivot points for young people’ s affective and creative engagement with the site and emerging issues of environmental responsibility, sustainability and urban land and water management. Though initially the neighbourhood lagoon in the middle of a new housing development seemed to be a tenuous, degraded and domesticated wetland, the students and their teachers began an inquiry into the deep interconnectedness of the site with natural waterways, the animals that move through them, and themselves. Open-ended interdisciplinary inquiries enabled students to choose a range of modes of response including a rap song about the ‘rescue’ of a swamp hen, a picture book that documented the passage of eels from the Pacific to the urban wetland and a dance about a dead turtle.     

Neo‐liberal Subjectivities and the Limits of Social Change in University–Community Partnerships

In this paper the authors analyse a university–school partnership that went awry. It was designed to develop a new set of philosophical principles to inform work with violent student behaviour in schools. The project brought together a team of researchers from the university and school sector with a strong record of examining and improving the management of behaviour in classrooms. The authors sought volunteer school‐based educators to work with them as co‐researchers. Despite the team's strong school‐based research background, the mutual interest in developing a new approach to work with violence, and the strong collaborative base, they found themselves, as the initiating research team, unable to progress in the ways they had anticipated. This paper analyses the dynamics at work in that lack of progress. The analysis is put forward with the hope of enlivening discussion about what makes for successful collaborative projects between schools and universities.