Resilient responses to climate change: exploring organisational learning in networked development organisations

Drawing from the organisational learning and governance literature, this paper assesses four internationally networked governmental and non‐governmental organisations in the UK addressing climate change. We analyse how those concerned understand the climate change crisis, what mechanisms are put in place to address information flows, and what evidence there is of learning through sharing information between the organisational headquarters and their regional offices. The most striking finding is the evidence of learning that largely depends on ad‐hoc informal processes and shadow networks.

From the Reliable and Unselfish to the Versatile and Independent : - desired qualities in two Swedish curricula

The process in which girls and boys are constructed and construct themselves to pupils takes place in a context where conceptions of “the good pupil” are distinctly manifested in national school documents. In different types of texts concerning school and education, the image of the pupil that society wants to create emerges. Documents from early childhood education up to university level prioritise qualities such as independence, initiative, accountability and freedom to make ones own choices. Qualities or competencies that are preferred during a certain period change as time passes and society develops. The idea of the democratic subject is not the same today as it was 25 years ago. The purpose of this article is to emphasise and compare different desired qualities described in two Swedish national curricula, competencies that pupils in the compulsory school are supposed to develop. The discussion encompasses the political ideas of the pupil during a period of twenty-five years in light of changes in Western societies during the last decades.

Who Should do What to Whom? : Occupational Groups´Views on Special Needs

The overall aim of this thesis is to increase our knowledge of different occupational groups´ views on work with children in need of special support. This is explored in four separate studies. The first study investigates the views of occupational groups in preschools and schools in one municipality. A questionnaire was handed out to all personnel (N=1297) in the municipality in 2008 (72.5 % response rate). The second study explores the views of educational leaders (N=45) in the same municipality. Questionnaire # 2 was distributed in 2009. All the educational leaders responded to the questionnaire. The third study describes the views of different occupational groups concerning special educational needs coordinators´ (SENCOs) role and work. This was highlighted by comparing responses from questionnaire #1 and # 2. Responses concerning SENCOs´ work were also added using a third questionnaire. This questionnaire was handed out in 2006 to chief education officers (N=290) in all municipalities in Sweden. The response rate was 90.3%. Finally, the fourth study presents five head teachers´ descriptions of their work with special needs issues. Study four was a follow-up study of questionnaire # 2. These head teachers were selected because of their inclusive values and because they seemed to be effective according to certain criteria. They were interviewed in January 2012. The results reveal a number of interesting findings. For example, there are both similar and different views among the occupational groups concerning work with children in need of special support. A majority of the respondents in all groups state that children´s individual deficiencies is one common reason why children need special support in preschools/schools. Differences between the occupational groups become especially visible regarding their views of SENCOs‟ work. Critical pragmatism (Cherryholmes, 1988) is applied as a theoretical point of departure. Skrtic´s (1991) critical reading and analysis of special education relative to general education is specifically used to interpret and discuss the outcome of the studies. Additionally, Abbott´s (1988) reasoning concerning the “division of expert labor” is used to discuss the occupational groups´ replies concerning “who should do what to whom”. The findings in the studies are contextualized and theoretically interpreted in the separate articles. However in the first part of this thesis (in Swedish: Kappa), the theoretical interpretations of the empirical outcome are discussed in more detail and the results are further contextualized and synthesised. Inclusion and premises for inclusive education are also discussed in more depth in the first part of the present thesis.

What do we know about preventing drug-related harm through social developmental intervention with children and young people

This chapter examines the evidence for the effectiveness of interventions aiming to reduce drug-related harm by improving conditions for healthy develeopment in the earliest years through adolescence. Of the interventions beginning prior to birth, there is efficacy evidence that family home visitation is a feasible strategy for implementation with disadvataged families and can reduce risk factors for early developmental deficits and thereby improve childhood development outcomes. There is efficacy evidence for strategies such as parent education and school preparation through the pre-school age period. Some of the strongest evidence for efficacy in reducing developmental pathways to drug-related harm comes from interventions delivered through the early school years to improve educational environments. Of the interventions targeting the high school age period, school drug education has been the most commonly evaluated. The evidence suggests that short term reduction in both drug use and progression to frequent drug use may be achievable through this strategy, but the prospects for longer-term and population-level behaviour change is still unclear. In overview, a range of prevention strategies have been developed and evaluated. Most of the exisiting evidence is restricted to efficacy studies and there are future challenges to progress evaluation through to studies of effectiveness. In general, prevention programmes appear more successful where they maintain intervention activities over a number of years and incorporate more than one strategy. Much of the existing research has been based in North America and evaluates discrete programmes. Future research should test effects in other countries, in different social contexts and seek to better understand the interrelated effects of combining interventions within the community. Developmental prevention programmes target different age periods and social settings, hence communities have the challenge of coordinating a mixture of programmes that address the local conditions that adversely influence child and youth development. There are opportunities in this work to coordinate prevention activities using funding from different jurisdictions (e.g., crime prevention, health promotion, mental health, education, substance abuse prevention).

Schools, health literacy and public health: possibilities and challenges

Health literacy is a concept that can be widely embraced by schools. Schools throughout the world contribute to the achievement of public health goals in conjunction with their educational commitments. In this paper, the interface between a school's core business of education and public health goals is identified, and examples provided in the area of nutrition demonstrating how these links can operate at school level. The structure and function of the health promoting school is described and the author proposes that there is a very close connection between the health promoting school and the enabling factors necessary in achieving health literacy. Major findings in the literature that provide evidence of good practices in school health education and promotion initiatives are described. Also, those factors that make schools effective and which facilitate learning for students are identified. There is a substantial overlap between the successful components of a health promoting school and effective schools. This enables schools to potentially achieve all three levels of health literacy, including level 3—critical health literacy. However, there are three challenges that must be addressed to enable schools to achieve this level: the traditional structure and function of schools, teachers practices and skills, and time and resources. Strategies are proposed to address all three areas and to reduce the impediments to achieving the goals of health literacy and public health using the school as a setting.

Performativity, youth and injurious speech

Young people may become disengaged from schooling in the middle years for a multitude of reasons. We consider the story of one young woman from the state of New South Wales, in Australia, who left school early, and consider some of the factors that contributed to her decision to remove herself from compulsory education. This young woman encountered injurious speech relating to her race, gender, sexuality, size and ability. In undertaking this analysis, we draw on Foucaultian theorizing of the subject and on the related Butlerian notion of performativity. Performative acts that occur within and around schools have the power to injure, to alienate and to potentially exclude students from access to schooling. This article details how performative acts may operate as mechanisms of exclusion, obfuscating the social conventions and institutional structures that invest them with power. Our analysis of how performative acts function in school settings concludes with some suggestions of how teachers and students might think differently about the production of their own and others' existence.

Communautés, enjeaux environmenentaux et recherche en éducation relative à; l'environment

This article will draw upon two recent international community-based environmental projects to explore issues concerning the nature, status and role of research in environmental education. A number of features of community-based environment development projects in two different cultures will be described, illustrating the complexity and contextuality of the processes by which environmental issues are resolved. The implications for research that seeks to acknowledge and respect relationships within community contexts will also be considered.

Embodying a mine site : enacting cyborg curriculum

This paper focuses on the construction of my post-operatively scarred body as a mine site, my experiences with reconstructively normalizing its appearance as a cyborg, and the implications for my work as an environmental educator  interested in how the body of a theorist is presented within theoretical spaces. The paper is not a victim's story as such, but rather a response to the  hypothesis that illness is a call for stories, that the body needs a voice that disease and illness take away. It relates Donna Haraway's notions of the cyborg and other feminist poststructuralist work to both my living body and the body of my curriculum work in environmental education.

Community leaders' views of the purposes of science in the compulsory years of schooling

Accepting that scientific literacy is the primary purpose of science in the compulsory years of schooling leads to the question 'What does scientific literacy mean in a particular community?' This paper reports a study designed to provide some insight into that question. Data were gathered through interviews with a sample of community leaders, in the state of Victoria, Australia, about their views of the purposes of school science.

The data reveal that, although most of those interviewed had no formal post-school science education, their life experiences provided them with useful insights into the question raised. The wisdom of such people could make an important contribution during the initial stages of curriculum development in science.

As people successful in their own fields, the study participants were lifelong learners. Consequently, their responses suggest that a primary focus of school science must be to provide students with a framework that will enable them to continue learning beyond schooling. This is not just a matter of knowledge or skills, but of feeling comfortable with science.

The methods used provide a useful example of how views about education can be gathered from thoughtful, non-expert community members. In this instance, they allowed a reconceptualization of the purposes of school science. These community leaders argued for an education for 'science in life' rather than an education about science.

Teachers as bricoleurs : producing plausible readings of curriculum documents

This paper describes teachers as bricoleurs who are professionals engaging in rigorous theoretical work as they construct meaningful assemblages of classroom practice. The author uses examples of two teachers taking up critical literacy discourses in their teaching and conversations to explain the construction of the teacher as bricoleur. Drawing on work by Deleuze and Guattari, a rhizotextual analysis of data is undertaken to explain the connections between the disparate discourses used by the two teachers and the documents of the Queensland English Syllabus. This understanding of the professional work of teachers negates assumptions about teachers as atheoretical and blind followers of departmental policies and curriculum directives. The author concludes with a description of one method for giving teachers the time and reflexive space to theoretically engage with issues surrounding their professional practice.

Enhancing students' experience in music composition through music notation software

A project was undertaken in a Hong Kong primary school to investigate the role of music notation software in leaching music composition. The project was divided into three stages. During the first stage, appropriate hardware equipment and software applications were installed in the school music room, and four teaching plans were developed on the models and strategies derived from findings in the local and international literature. During the second stage, these teaching plans were implemented in Grade One, Grade Three, Grade Five and Grade Six classes of the school. During the third stage, the effectiveness of these teaching activities was evaluated by comparing the experiences from the second stage to the corresponding findings from similar projects undertaken in other Hong Kong primary schools, as well as to findings from the international literature. The results demonstrated that tile visual and audio stimulation created by computer"based technology can motivate students to successfully engage in music composition. Moreover, computer"based technology provides an opportunity for students to compose music in an atonal idiom. However, a large number of students were unable to demonstrate the concept of structural design in their musical products, and one of the findings from this investigation was that teachers need to be more purposeful in their teaching by directing students to employ the technique of repetition of interesting musical fragments or phrases in order to achieve a sense of unity in their pieces.

Preparing pre-service teachers for rural teaching: a new approach

In Australia, recruitment of high quality teachers is seen as critical for the future of rural education provision. A national inquiry into rural and remote education conducted in 2000 by HREOC supported this claim stating that there is a crisis for rural schools attracting new teachers and blamed teacher education for not doing enough to equip beginning teachers with the skills and knowledge needed for teaching in rural and remote Australia. Although state governments provide financial incentives for potential graduates to embark on a rural practicum placement, this incentive does not appear sufficient. There is an urgent need in teacher education to consider  alternative ways to generate interest in a rural teaching career. This paper describes a pre-service initiative between the metropolitan Burwood campus of Deakin University and a Victorian rural school community. The initiative was designed to enable a cohort of 45 city-based student teachers studying a particular unit to better understand rural issues, pedagogy and ultimately to foster interest in country teaching.

Participatory research in EE: some issues of epistemology and methodology

The conference theme of epistemology and methodology suggests an interest in epistemological issues in environmental education research. I have argued previously that for too long there seemed to be a blindness in environmental education research: that there was an unwarranted assumption that all research in environmental education was and should be conducted within an applied science conceptual framework that did not recognise nor problematise the epistemological assumptions of research. In this paper I intend to address the issue of epistemological coherence between the substantive subject matters of environmental education on the one hand and research, methodology on the other. The paper will draw upon two recent international environmental education projects to explore issues concerning the nature, status and role of research in environmental education. A number of features of community-based environment development projects in two different settings will be described, illustrating the complexity and contextuality of environmental issues as subject matters for environmental education. The implications for research that seeks to acknowledge and respect relationships within community contexts will be considered in relation to the following questions: Whose research agenda? The importance of project partnerships Participants' preconceptions about the nature of research. What is 'rigor' in participatory research in environmental education'?