Learning to 'understand backwards' in time: children's temporal cognition and the primary history curriculum

This study examines children’s temporal ways of knowing and it highlights the centrality of temporal cognition in the development of children’s historical understanding. It explores how young children conceptualise time and it examines the provision for temporal cognition at the levels of the intended, enacted and received history curriculum in the Irish primary school context. Positioning temporality as a prerequisite second-order concept, the study recognises the essential role of both first-order and additional second-order concepts in historical understanding. While the former can be defined as the basic, substantive content to be taught, the latter refers to a number of additional key concepts that are deemed fundamental to children's capacity to make meaningful sense of history. The study argues for due recognition to be given to temporality, in the belief that both sets of knowledge, the content and skills, are required to develop historical thinking (Lévesque, 2011). The study addresses a number of key research questions, using a mixed methods research design, comprising an analysis of history textbooks, a survey among final year student teachers about their teaching of history, and school-based interviews with primary school children: What opportunities are available for children to develop temporal ways of knowing? How do student teachers experience being apprenticed into the available culture for teaching history and understanding temporality at primary level? What insights do the cognitive-developmental and sociocultural perspectives on learning provide for understanding the dynamics of children’s temporal ways of knowing? The study argues that the skill of developing a deeper understanding of time is a key prerequisite in connecting with, and constructing, understandings and frameworks of the past. The study advances a view of temporality as complex, multi-faceted and developmental. The findings have a potential contribution to make in influencing policy and pedagogy in establishing an elaborated and well-defined curriculum framework for developing temporal cognition at both national and international levels.

Oxford primary history. Teacher's resource book.

Forma parte de una serie de textos dirigidos a alumnos del nivel key Stage 1, que ayuda al profesor a cumplir con los requisitos del National Currículo y que está formada, además, por libros de historia para los niños. Es un recurso importante para los docentes pues sugiere formas para ayudar a los niños a entender diferentes tipos de fuentes históricas.

How parental and school responses to choice policies reconfigure a rural education market in Victoria, Australia

Market principles now dominate the education and social policies of many Anglophone countries, including Australia, but articulate differentially within specific contexts. Existing historical legacies, local economic and social conditions, and geographical settings interact with federal and state funding and transport policies to shape the nature of regional education markets and the choices families make in a rural school market in Australia. Through two school case studies, this article explores the effects of policy shifts on parental choice and student movement within a regional Victorian community. Informed by policy sociology, the article views the policy as a dynamic, often ad hoc process with contradictory effects. It indicates how an ensemble of federal and state funding and conveyancing policies enable some schools to develop marketing practices that reconstruct the local education market to their advantage through the introduction of transport and flexi-boarding policies. It demonstrates that education markets are not confined to urban settings and that while choice is not a new phenomenon in this rural area, federal and state funding and transport policies have reconfigured local markets and intensified the market work undertaken by schools and parents with, in this instance, unequal effects on the provision of schooling in a rural region.

E-learning opportunities and challenges for legal education in rural Victoria

Access to justice extends beyond consideration of the systems and institutions of justice; it includes infrastructure such as transport, health, education and communications. Rural, regional and remote (‘RRR’) communities are more likely to face difficulties in accessing advice and accurate information on laws and processes available for resolution of disputes. Perhaps more fundamentally, they rarely have a voice in effecting reforms in laws and related policies. For several decades, community legal centres, legal aid, courts, and a range of other institutions have used community legal education programs to improve knowledge and access to law and justice systems, services and organisations. The recent Productivity Commission Inquiry into Access to Justice Arrangements notes that, ‘Better coordination and greater quality control in the development and delivery of these [community legal education, legal information] services would improve their value and reach.’ At the same time, research into the professional needs of RRR legal practitioners has found that many of these practitioners face considerable difficulties accessing good quality continuing professional development (‘CPD’) and informal networking/support opportunities.6 Current and emerging internet-based technologies open up opportunities for legal organisations to better meet the educational needs of both rural communities and legal practitioners. Though limitations still exist at multiple levels, relatively low-cost, media-rich, synchronous and tailored education programs can now be delivered effectively in many rural and remote areas. However, complex layers of decisions are required to critically assess, harness and optimise technologies to best suit the needs of users, and to utilise teaching and learning techniques that best match the technologies and participant needs. Getting these elements — needs, technology and learning technique — right, nevertheless offers extraordinary opportunities. Sound decisions and good practices should enable state-wide and specialist law and justice-related services interested in improving their engagement with RRR communities to dramatically improve the reach and quality of outcomes, not only for distant participants but the spectrum of stakeholders.

The standard dictionary of facts; history, language, literature, biography, geography, travel, art, government, politics, industry, invention, commerce, science, education, natural history, statistics and miscellany,

Mode of access: Internet.

Federal aid for education : a history of proposals which have received consideration by the Congress of the United States, 1789-1960 / c Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, Eighty-seventh Congress, first session. Prepared in the Legislative Reference Service, Library of Congress, by Helen A. Miller, assisted by Anne F. McGrath and Maryann D. Ellsworth.

At head of title: 87th Cong., 1st sess. Committee print.

The standard dictionary of facts; history, language, literature, biography, geography, travel, art, government, politics, industry, invention, commerce, science, education, natural history, statistics, miscellany; a practical handbook of ready reference based upon everyday needs,

Mode of access: Internet.

The standard dictionary of facts;, history, language, literature, biography, geography, travel, art, government, politics, industry, invention, commerce, science, education, natural history, statistics and miscellany; a practical handbook of ready reference based upon everyday needs,

Mode of access: Internet.

The Federal board for vocational education; its history, activities and organization,

Bibliography: p. 48-71.

Federal aid for education: a history of proposals which have received consideration by the Congress of the United States, 1789-1960.

At head of title: 87th Congress, 1st session, Committee print.