Implementing the 2014 SEND reforms in England: perspectives from SENCOs

This article is based on research conducted within two years of the 2014 SEND (special educational needs and disability) reforms being in force and reports on the experiences of five SENCOs (special educational needs coordinators) on implementing the reforms in London schools. The research was conducted primarily to inform professional practice and improve delivery of the principles underpinning the reforms. The research deployed an adapted version of SWOT analysis as a tool for seeking the views of SENCOs on the perceived benefits and challenges of the SEND reforms. The findings demonstrate that SENCOs broadly support the principles of the reforms. However, SENCOs find some of the procedures in the 2015 SEND Code of Practice as proving problematic. There still remains a significant focus on managing administrative processes, rather than bringing about a fundamental change to school culture and educational provision. The article concludes by making several recommendations on ways to reduce bureaucracy for SENCOs and increase their focus on classroom practice.     

Development and Use of the Approaches to Teaching Inventory

This paper describes how research into approaches to university teaching, from a relational perspective, has been used to develop an inventory to measure the key aspects of the variation in approaches to teaching. The Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI) is one of several that derive from the research perspective applied by Marton and colleagues in Europe (Marton, F., Hounsell, D., and Entwistle, N. (eds.) (1997). The Experience of Learning, 2nd edn., Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh) to student learning. A feature of these inventories is that they measure the response of a group to a particular context, rather than more general characteristics of individuals in that group. Studies using these inventories have consistently shown relations between students' approaches to learning and the quality of their learning outcome. The question of interest to many university teachers is whether there are relations between the way teachers approach their teaching and ways their students approach their learning. This question was answered in a study published in 1999 that used the ATI to show that teacher-focused approaches to teaching were associated with students' reproducing orientations. Subsequent research revealed that in subjects where teachers adopted more student-focused approaches to teaching, their students adopted a deeper approach to learning. Some recent research using the inventory is reviewed along with an analysis of the validity of the ATI. The current version of the inventory is reproduced in this paper.     

Economic stress, parenting, and child adjustment in Mexican American and European American families

To assess the impact of economic hardship on 111 European American and 167 Mexican American families and their 5th-grade (M age=11.4 years) children, a family stress model was evaluated. Structural equation analyses revealed that economic hardship was linked to indexes of economic pressure that were related to depressive symptoms for mothers and fathers of both ethnicities. Depressive symptoms were linked to marital problems and hostile parenting. Paternal hostile parenting was related to child adjustment problems for European Americans, whereas marital problems were linked to child adjustment problems for Mexican Americans. Maternal acculturation was associated with both higher marital problems and lower hostile parenting. The utility of the model for describing the effects of economic hardship in Mexican Americans is noted.     

The academic research-teaching nexus in eight advanced-industrialized countries

The purpose of this study is to examine the internationalcomplexities of the research-teaching nexus in higher educationalinstitutions. The Carnegie International Survey of the Academic Professionis employed to compare teaching and research activities in eight countries.These countries include the former West Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden, TheUnited States, Australia, Israel, Japan, and South Korea. Findings revealthat teaching and research are not mutually exclusive activities in thework/life of faculty. Research oriented faculty are more likely to viewtheir research commitments as being competitive with teaching. Research isfound to positively affect teaching, but attributes of teaching (e.g.,course load, student demand, etc.) negatively impact research. In addition,the paper finds academic orientation and the number of articles publishedduring the past three years to be the most important factors in determiningthe number of weekly hours spent on research and teaching activities.     

Perceptions and experiences of annual report preparers

Between 1986 and 1993, tertiary education institutions, [TEIs] in New Zealand have transformed their annual reports from being uninformative, untimely and unobtainable documents, to ones that are well-presented, comprehensive and readily available in a timely fashion (Coy, Tower & Dixon, 1994). This paper reports a study of the events and experiences according to report preparers in bringing about this change, including the incentives and difficulties that they have been facing.The study uses data collected from 48 staff involved in report preparation at 15 of the 37 TEIs that are in New Zealand. These data are qualitative, and are analysed from a realist perspective mixing causal analysis and interpretive understanding (Silverman 1985).The study suggests that the mandated changes to reporting are seen as one facet of several recent public sector reforms in New Zealand. Interviewees felt that the changes to reporting were driven externally by legislation, and internally by the stances taken by some chief executive officers and by the professional ardour of some accountants. Moreover, the Audit Office was seen as a prominent agent of change.The general reactions of preparers of reports to the reforms range from strong support to resentment and scepticism. A major concern voiced was the potential for data reported by TEIs to be used for political purposes. On the other hand, improved staff motivation was noted in many institutions as well as greater cost consciousness and awareness of student, needs. However, these positive attributes were probably derived from the reforms in general, and not just from the changes to reporting.     

An Exploratory Study of Situated Conceptions of Learning and Learning Environments

This paper describes a study designed to test whether situated conceptions of learning can be measured using questionnaires, and the relations between these aspects of students’ awareness, their awareness of other environmental variables, and their learning outcomes. A situated conception of learning is one that is evoked and adopted by students in response to their perceptions of their learning tasks in a particular context. It may reflect the aims they have for their studies, once they have started that study and experienced that study environment. The results from this small-scale, limited-context study showed that when students perceived the learning environment as being more supportive of learning, they were more likely to describe a situated conception of learning that was more closely aligned with those promoted by the University. They also had higher scores on the deep approach to learning scale, lower scores on the surface approach scale, and expected to leave university with a higher degree classification. These associations, which suggest that situated conceptions, like prior experience of learning, may be a crucial indicator of learning approach and outcomes of learning, are sufficiently large to warrant more rigorous investigations.