Science education policy-making : eleven emerging issues

The Perth Declaration on Science and Technology Education of 2007 expresses strong concern about the state of science and technology education worldwide and calls on governments to respond to a number of suggestions for establishing the structural conditions for their improved practice. The quality of school education in science and technology has never before been of such critical importance to governments. There are three imperatives for its critical importance. The first relates to the traditional role of science in schooling, namely the identification, motivation and initial preparation of those students who will go on to further studies for careers in all those professional fi elds that directly involve science and technology. A suffi cient supply of these professionals is vital to the economy of all countries and to the health of their citizens. In the 21st century they are recognised everywhere as key players in ensuring that industrial and economic development occurs in a socially and environmentally sustainable way. In many countries this supply is now falling seriously short and urgently needs to be addressed. The second imperative is that sustainable technological development and many other possible societal applications of science require the support of scientifically and technologically informed citizens. Without the support and understanding of citizens, technological development can all too easily serve short term and sectional interests. The longer term progress of the whole society is overlooked, citizens will be confused about what should, and what should not be supported, and reactive and the environment will continue to be destroyed rather than sustained. Sustainable development, and the potential that science and technology increasingly offers, involves societies in ways that can often interact strongly, with traditional values, and hence, making decisions about them involve major moral decisions. All students need to be prepared through their science and technology education to be able to participate actively as persons and as responsible citizens in these essential and exciting possibilities. This goal is far from being generally achieved at present, but pathways to it are now more clearly understood. The third imperative derives from the changes that are resulting from the application of digital technologies that are the most rapid, the most widespread, and probably the most pervasive influence that science has ever had on human society. We all, wherever we live, are part of a global communication society. Information exchange and access to it that have been hitherto the realm of the few, are now literally in the hands of individuals. This is leading to profound changes in the World of Work and in what is known as the Knowledge Society. Schooling is now being challenged to contribute to the development in students of an active repertoire of generic and subject-based competencies. This contrasts very strongly with existing priorities, in subjects like the sciences that have seen the size of a student’s a store of established knowledge as the key measure of success. Science and technology education needs to be a key component in developing these competencies. When you add to these imperatives, the possibility that a more effective education in science and technology will enable more and more citizens to delight in, and feel a share in the great human enterprise we call Science, the case for new policy decisions is compellingly urgent. What follows are the recommendations (and some supplementary notes) for policy makers to consider about more operational aspects for improving science and technology education. They are listed under headings that point to the issues within each of these aspects. In the full document, a background is provided to each set of issues, including the commonly current state of science and technology education. Associated with each recommendation for consideration are the positive Prospects that could follow from such decision making, and the necessary Prerequisites, if such bold policy decisions are to fl ow, as intended, into practice in science and technology classrooms.

Internationalising Australian secondary education

This thesis presents the findings of a case study of international students who enrol in Australian secondary schools. Specifically, it focuses on the ways that staff in three schools and two international colleges position Eastern Asian international students through discourses of cultural difference. It draws together the Discourse Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis with the work of Basil Bernstein and Pierre Bourdieu. The study finds that groups of students are positioned positively or negatively depending on their relationship to the dominant discourses of the Australian school. Australian students, while rarely mentioned, were positioned positively. By contrast, the Eastern Asian international students were positioned negatively in relation to the privileged discourses of Australian schooling. These discourses reflected the cultural capital that was valued in the schools. In particular, the cultural capital of active and willing engagement in competitive sports and being rough, rugged and an ‘ocker’ were privileged at the schools. International students from Papua New Guinea, and a few Eastern Asian students who behaved as ockers, were positioned positively because they realised cultural capital that was valued at the schools. By contrast, the students who were unable to be positioned through these discourses, because they did not realise cultural capital that was valued, were not viewed favourably. As a result, the data showed that there was a hierarchy of positions at the schools that were constructed in staff accounts. The analysis of data suggests that only some students are positioned favourably in Australian schools. The students who were already able to construct privileged Australian school discourses were positioned positively. The data suggest that the majority of the Eastern Asian students were represented through negative discourses because they did not realise cultural capital that was valued at the schools. Findings of this study may assist schools to identify international students who may experience their Australian school education negatively. The findings may also contribute to assisting staff to better engage with international students.

Literacy education in a changing policy environment : introduction

Literacy has long been at the heart of discussions about improving the quality and equitable distribution of educational outcomes. The last decade, however, has seen a dramatic redirection of policy effort in this regard. The effects of this policy redirection are playing out now; it may be that new policy emphases may have consequences for how educators think about what matters in literacy, how they can, and should, make judgements about what matters, and how they can, and should, act on those judgements. This issue of the Journal focuses on the changing landscape of policy and practice in literacy education. Educators in many countries have encountered increasingly intensive government moves to centralise and standardise school education. In Australia national testing of literacy and numeracy began relatively recently. The results for individual schools have been publically reported since 2009. Following trialling in 2010 and 2011, most states and sectors are now beginning to implement new Australian curriculum in English, Mathematics, Science and History...

A question of agency : applying Sen’s theory of human capability to the concept of secondary school student career ‘choice’

In this paper, we seek to operationalize Amartya Sen's concept of human capability to guide a scholarly investigation of student career choice capability. We begin by outlining factors affecting youth labour markets in Australia; a prosperous country that is affected by a ‘two-speed’ national economy. We then examine recent government initiatives that have been designed to combat youth unemployment and cyclical disadvantage by enhancing the aspirations and career knowledge of secondary school students. We argue that these policy measures are based on four assumptions: first, that career choice capability is a problem of individual agency; second, that the dissemination of career information can empower students to act as ‘consumers’ in an unequal job market; third, that agency is simply a question of will; and finally, that school education and career advice – as a means to freedom in the space of career development – is of equal quality, distribution and value to an increasingly diverse range of upper secondary school students. The paper concludes by outlining a conceptual framework capable of informing an empirical research project that aims to test these assumptions by measuring and comparing differences between groups in the range of freedom to achieve and, therefore, to choose.

Who is the good high school student?

Schooling is one of the core experiences of most young people in the Western world. This study examines the ways that students inhabit subjectivities defined in their relationship to some normalised good student. The idea that schools exist to produce students who become good citizens is one of the basic tenets of modernist educational philosophies that dominate the contemporary education world. The school has become a political site where policy, curriculum orientations, expectations and philosophies of education contest for the ‘right’ way to school and be schooled. For many people, schools and schooling only make sense if they resonate with past experiences. The good student is framed within these aspects of cultural understanding. However, this commonsense attitude is based on a hegemonic understanding of the good, rather than the good student as a contingent multiplicity that is produced by an infinite set of discourses and experiences. In this book, author Greg Thompson argues that this understanding of subjectivities and power is crucial if schools are to meet the needs of a rapidly changing and challenging world. As a high school teacher for many years, Thompson often wondered how students responded to complex articulations on how to be a good student. How a student can be considered good is itself an articulation of powerful discourses that compete within the school. Rather than assuming a moral or ethical citizen, this study turns that logic on it on its head to ask students in what ways they can be good within the school. Visions of the good student deployed in various ways in schools act to produce various ways of knowing the self as certain types of subjects. Developing the postmodern theories of Foucault and Deleuze, this study argues that schools act to teach students to know themselves in certain idealised ways through which they are located, and locate themselves, in hierarchical rationales of the good student. Problematising the good student in high schools engages those institutional discourses with the philosophy, history and sociology of education. Asking students how they negotiate or perform their selves within schools challenges the narrow and limiting ways that the good is often understood. By pushing the ontological understandings of the self beyond the modernist philosophies that currently dominate schools and schooling, this study problematises the tendency to see students as fixed, measurable identities (beings) rather than dynamic, evolving performances (becomings). Who is the Good High School Student? is an important book for scholars conducting research on high school education, as well as student-teachers, teacher educators and practicing teachers alike.

Post-school needs of young people with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder

This study describes the post-school circumstances and service needs of older teenagers and adults with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder, living in Queensland, Australia. The respondents were 95 parents. Results indicated that the majority of the young people lived in the family home and were unemployed. Of those who worked, 56% had unskilled jobs. They were estimated to spend a significant proportion of their time engaged in solitary, technology-based activities, and comparatively little time in employment or socialising. Parents rated employment support as the greatest service priority for their sons and daughters, followed by specialised support to assist with completing post-school education and training, assistance to support the transition from high school to adulthood, and social skills training.

Transitions to K–12 Education Systems: Experiences from Five Case Countries

Currently more than 140 countries offer, or are in transition to, what has become the international norm for pre-tertiary education, namely a kindergarten through grade 12 (K–12) school education system—kindergarten because of the preponderance of research asserting the long-term learning and social benefits of school readiness programs; and 12 years of primary and secondary schooling due to the time needed to acquire the knowledge and skills sets necessary for 21st century university education, postsecondary training, or decent1 work. This desk study2 conveys the experiences of four countries and one province in preparing and implementing a transition to a K–12 school education system: Mongolia, Ontario (Canada), the Philippines, Poland, and Turkey. Looking at K–12 transition in countries and systems that vary as broadly as this set enables common threads to stand out and divergent options to be noted.

The Cuban school as a context for a proper development of the environmental perception

Environmental Psychology in Cuba is a new discipline that promotes a historical and cultural vision of mankind. Perception is one of the distinct processes that creates environmental consciousness. Depending on the perception of the environment, individuals interact with it, and vice versa. It means that a good perception of the significant elements of the environment also contributes to the formation of an environmental consciousness, in which perception is one of the main processes. In this transformation the school is one of the most important places for creating knowledge, skills, habits, and good attitudes towards the environment. As a result, the evaluation of the environmental perception development in students allows detecting weaknesses in the environmental education and proposing solutions based on specific problems. This study is based on different researches where the subjects were Cuban students from different educational levels and provides a first approach to the dynamic of the environmental perception development in these individuals. Recent researches have used some dimensions of the environment concept as development indicators: material, relational, intrapersonal, behavioural, cognitive, natural or ecological, and cultural. Generally speaking, different investigations show that school is the right context for environmental education.

Happiness and Well-Being of Young Carers: Extent, Nature and Correlates of Caring Among 10 and 11 Year Old School Children

Young carers often take on practical and/or emotional caring responsibilities that would normally be expected of an adult. For many of these children and young people, caring has been shown to have a detrimental effect on their lives. For example, caring at a young age appears to be associated with poor health and well-being, bullying and poorer educational outcomes. However, previous research has tended to be retrospective, carried out using small surveys of secondary school-aged children or to use qualitative methods with young people associated with caring projects. In contrast, little is known about the extent and nature of caring undertaken by younger children. This paper reports findings from a random sample survey of 10 and 11 year old children in the final year of their primary school education. 4,192 children completed the Kids’ Life and Times (KLT) online survey in 2011. Twelve percent of respondents to KLT said they helped look after someone in their household who was sick, elderly or disabled. Supporting previous qualitative research, this survey showed that children who were carers had poorer health and well-being, reported less happiness with their lives, were more likely to be bullied at school and had poorer educational aspirations and outcomes than their peers who were not carers. These findings suggest that teachers need to discuss the issue of caring with children in the classroom in a general and supportive way so that young carers feel able to confide in them and seek support if they need it.

Is there an educational penalty for being suspended from school?

Suspension from school is a commonly used, yet controversial, school disciplinary measure. This paper uses unique survey data to estimate the impact of suspension on the educational outcomes of those suspended. It finds that while suspension is strongly associated with educational outcomes, the relationship is unlikely to be causal, but rather likely stems from differences in the characteristics of those suspended compared to those not suspended. Moreover, there is no evidence that suspension is associated with larger educational penalties for young people from disadvantaged family backgrounds compared to those from more advantaged family backgrounds. These results hold regardless of whether self-reported suspension or mother-reported suspension is considered. The absence of a clear negative causal impact of suspension on educational outcomes suggests that suspension may continue to play a role in school discipline without harming the educational prospects of those sanctioned.

Language ideologies and Schooled Education in Rural Tanzania : The Case of Karagwe

In this article I argue that language policies for education have effects on pupils’ educational possibilities. With the case of Karagwe district in Tanzania I have found that the case of “Swahili only” in primary school education favours the small minority of the children that live in a context where Swahili is used. This leads to inequality in pupils’ chances in education and to a low level of achievement of academic content in schools. This also promote the developing and use of safety strategies among teachers and pupils that hide failure and prevent pupils’ learning.

Money and Education: How Economic Distribution Corresponds to Academic Success

Urban sprawl is a significant issue in the United States, one effect of which is the departure of the wealth from cities. This study examined the distribution of wealth in Erie County, New York, focused around Buffalo. The question is then raised, why do those with the money leave the city, and to where do they go? While this study does not attempt to explain all of the reasons, it does examine two significant issues: quality of public school education, and proximity to main highways with easy access to the city. Using ArcGIS, I was able to place the public high schools and their relative ranking over a distribution of per capita income. The results of this analysis show that the wealthiest areas are located within the best school districts. Moreover, the areas where the wealth accumulates are directly connected by major highways.

THE IMAGINARY ABOUT THE SCHOOL and THE POSSIBILITIES of AN EQUALITARIAN SCHOOL: A STUDY on THE BRAZILIAN STATE SCHOOLS

The main objective of the article is to reflect on the imaginary that the teachers of two public schools have of their students and the school they work in and the ideal of an inclusive and democratic school. In this article, we reflect on the image that the teachers of two public schools in the city of Rio Claro, São Paulo State, Brazil, have of their students and their school as an institution. We use the studies of imaginary sociology as a theoretic reference base. Castoriadis (1986); Taylor (2006); Legros et al (2007) and Baczo (1984) are the referenced authors of this article. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of The Association of Science, Education and Technology