Biological fieldwork provision in higher education

Fieldwork is regarded as an important component of many bioscience degree programmes. QAA benchmarks statements refer explicitly to the importance of fieldwork, although give no indication of amounts of field provision expected. Previous research has highlighted the importance of fieldwork to the learning of both subject-specific and transferable skills. However, it is unclear how the amount and type of fieldwork currently offered is being affected by the recent expansion in student numbers and current funding constraints. Here we review contemporary literature and report on the results of a questionnaire completed by bioscience tutors across 33 UK institutions. The results suggest, perhaps contrary to anecdotal evidence, that the amount of fieldwork being undertaken by students is not in decline and that on the whole, programmes contain reasonable amounts of fieldwork. The majority of programmes involved UK-based fieldwork, but a number of programmes also offered ‘exotic’ overseas fieldwork which was considered important in terms of student recruitment as well as exposing students to a diversity of field learning environments. Tutors were very clear about the benefits of fieldwork and the need to be proactive to maintain its provision.

'What with your grades?': Students motivation for and experience of vocational courses in further education

In this article we seek to explore the motivations for studying a vocational qualification of 40 students currently in further education. We consider student decision making, in terms of the support and guidance received, and examine the value these students place on their training, particularly with respect to their future employment. Drawing on qualitative data from 40 students we argue that a student’s sense of their educational identity is important in understanding their motivations for vocational training in the first instance as well as a lack of good careers information and guidance.

Beyond a constructivist curriculum : a critique of competing paradigms in music education

The distinction between learning to perform on an instrument or voice and learning music in a wider sense is one that is made in many countries, and is especially pertinent in England in the context of recent policy developments. This article argues that, whilst this distinction has come to represent curricula based on the opposing paradigms of behaviourist and constructivist approaches to learning, this opposition does not necessarily extend to the pedagogy through which the curricula are taught. A case study of the National Curriculum in England highlights the characteristics of a curriculum based on constructivist principles, along with the impact this has when taught in a behaviourist way. It is argued that conceiving the curriculum in terms of musical competencies and pedagogy in terms of musical understanding would provide a basis for greater continuity and higher quality in the music education experienced by young people.

RedGloo: Experiences of developing and using an emerging technology in higher education

Student life has change a lot since 2005 when the idea to create a Social Network Service (SNS) for students in the School of Systems Engineering at the University of Reading was conceived and went live in 2006, called RedGloo.

Participation in Higher Education: aspirations, attainment and social background

The recent report of the Milburn Review into Social Mobility highlights the under-representation of young people from lower socio-economic groups in higher education and encourages universities and others to act to remedy this situation as a contribution to greater social mobility. The paper uses data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England to examine the relationship between social background, attainment and university participation. The results show that differences in school-level attainment associated with social background are by far the most important explanation for social background differences in university attendance. However, there remains a small proportion of the participation gap that is not accounted for by attainment. It is also the case that early intentions for higher education participation are highly predictive of actual participation. The results suggest that although there may be some scope for universities to act to improve participation by people from less advantaged backgrounds, a much more important focus of action is on improving the school-level achievement of these students.

Diverging from the dominant discourse- some implications of conflicting subject understandings in the education of teachers

This paper addresses beginning teachers thinking about the nature and purposes of their subject and the impact of this on their practice. Individual qualitative interviews were undertaken with 11 history teachers at the beginning of their teaching careers. Data was analysed using writing as the method of analysis and revealed that teachers whose thinking was at odds with dominant discourses, for example in the form of a national curriculum, encountered difficulties embracing pedagogies and aspects of the curriculum that do not accord with their own deep-seated beliefs, demonstrating a need for the initial training and professional development of teachers to forefront consideration of subject understandings.

Diverging from the dominant discourse – some implications of conflicting subject understandings in the education of teachers

This paper addresses beginning teachers thinking about the nature and purposes of their subject and the impact of this on their practice. Individual qualitative interviews were undertaken with 11 history teachers at the beginning of their teaching careers. Data was analysed using writing as the method of analysis and revealed that teachers whose thinking was at odds with dominant discourses, for example in the form of a national curriculum, encountered difficulties embracing pedagogies and aspects of the curriculum that do not accord with their own deep-seated beliefs, demonstrating a need for the initial training and professional development of teachers to forefront consideration of subject understandings.

Writing in French in secondary schools in England and Germany: are the British really 'bad language learners’?

It is widely assumed that the British are poorer modern foreign language (MFL) learners than their fellow Europeans. Motivation has often been seen as the main cause of this perceived disparity in language learning success. However, there have also been suggestions that curricular and pedagogical factors may play a part. This article reports a research project investigating how German and English 14- to 16-year-old learners of French as a first foreign language compare to one another in their vocabulary knowledge and in the lexical diversity, accuracy and syntactic complexity of their writing. Students from comparable schools in Germany and England were set two writing tasks which were marked by three French native speakers using standardised criteria aligned to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEF). Receptive vocabulary size and lexical diversity were established by the X_lex test and a verb types measure respectively. Syntactic complexity and formal accuracy were respectively assessed using the mean length of T-units (MLTU) and words/error metrics. Students' and teachers' questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used to provide information and participants' views on classroom practices, while typical textbooks and feedback samples were analysed to establish differences in materials-related input and feedback in the two countries. The German groups were found to be superior in vocabulary size, and in the accuracy, lexical diversity and overall quality – but not the syntactic complexity – of their writing. The differences in performance outcomes are analysed and discussed with regard to variables related to the educational contexts (e.g. curriculum design and methodology).