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Previous research shows that there is a correlation between attitudes and academic achievement. In this article, we analyze for the first time the impact of interactive groups (IG) and dialogic literary gatherings (DLG) on the attitudes that students show towards learning. A quantitative approach has been performed using attitude tests validated by previous research. The data suggest that in both cases, the participants show positive attitudes. The social context has an important influence on students' attitudes. The items with higher correlations include group work, mutual support, and distributed cognition. In the case of IGs, group work is much more appreciated, while in the case of DLGs, self-image and self-confidence are the two most clearly valued attitudes. The positive impact of IGs and DLGs on students' attitudes may have potential for teachers in transforming their practices and decision-making within the classroom.

Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic affected nursing students dramatically when the clinical sites and the onsite classrooms closed to physical participation. This necessitated a move to virtual classrooms and virtual clinical experiences. Some nursing schools adopted telenursing to comply with their Board of Registered Nursing direct patient care requirements. Students value the hands-on nursing in a direct care facility and clinical instructors must replicate this in a virtual setting. This article discusses telenursing and Teach-Back processes with student active engagement that facilitates learning and meets the direct care requirement. The purpose is to share best practice ideas for clinical instructors to educate when clinical settings are unavailable. Methods This innovation includes examples from five clinical instructors when in-person clinicals were not available due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They used virtual teaching and telenursing for nursing students which complied with clinical requirements of preconference, clinical experience, and post-conference. Telenursing combines case studies or shared documents, student collaboration, and includes a patient or patient actor via telehealth. Clinical instructors present a patient history or case study and allow students time for preparation. Socratic questioning helps students focus on determining the correct questions to ask. Telenursing call to the patient and teach-back questioning validated patient learning. Following the call, the instructor leads a post-conference debrief and students independently document the call. Conclusion Five clinical instructors follow the process of pre-brief, case presentation, and debrief while students develop critical thinking, strong communication skills, documentation requirements, and utilize the nursing process of assessment, diagnosis, outcome, plan, interventions, and evaluation. Students will have future opportunities to develop hands-on skills as they return to the clinical setting.

The work undertaken in the PRISMS project was designed from the outset to be a study of small schools in their own right, not a comparison of small schools and large schools. In small schools, however, the fluctuations in the numbers of pupils entering school, not only in September but at other times in the year, are such that the definitions used by Lee and HMI are not entirely satisfactory. The survey confirmed that small schools were considerably more likely than a random sample of schools to have vertically grouped classes. Approximately 90 per cent of the PRISMS teachers who responded had more than one year group in their class, compared with under half of the non-PRISMS teachers. Although it was not part of the main thrust of the PRISMS project, people were able to devote a limited amount of time and resources to collecting data in large schools which were directly comparable with data collected in the small schools.

Adolescents typically like school less after making age-graded school transitions. Stage-environment fit theory (Eccles & Midgley, 1989) attributes this to a mismatch between developmental needs and new school environments. Our in vivo study provides a basis for future quantitative designs by uncovering the most prevalent stage-environment interactions in adolescents’ descriptions about school. Across one school year, adolescents discussed their emotional and motivational engagement. Emotional engagement (i.e., liking) was mainly based on adolescents’ emotions interacting with their daily experiences of teachers, peers, and lessons. In comparison, motivational engagement (i.e., value) was attributed to distal interactions between the self-concept and school as a gateway to friendships and a career. Because unique stage-environment interactions occurred for each engagement type and adolescents felt simultaneously engaged and disengaged, we recommend finer grained analyses of measured engagement. Finally, we argue for discerning time periods of preparing for, encountering, and adapting to new environments in stage-environment fit models, in our proposed model of transition phase psychology.

This paper describes the results of a mixed model research that, as the first of its kind, aimed to determine the nature of, and underlying factors influencing, Croatian elementary pupils’ attitudes towards confessional Catholic religious education (RE). Analyses of the questionnaire responses of the eighth-grade pupils from the stratified sample of schools revealed generally positive attitudes towards confessional RE as well as homogeneity with respect to academic achievement and higher estimations of girls. Qualitative analyses offered more critical pupil perspectives on RE and its delivery. From the triangulation of the data, three separate elements emerged as the foundation of the attitudes towards RE. The first and primary influence is the exposure to religious sentiment and values from their families. Secondly, pupil attitudes are affected by their own personal development and a growing ability to critically observe the world around them. Finally, the methods through which RE is delivered and assessed also serve as a strong contributor to pupils’ attitudes. The voices of pupils demand an adoption of a more dialectical approach to teaching and learning, and lesser reliance on catechesis which could reflect positively on the attitudes of all pupils, and especially of those who are most critical of the subject.

Rural primary schools cater for very high proportions of the world’s children. They are the infrastructure in the quest for universal primary education yet are barely visible in mainstream education literature. This chapter provides a selection of views of life and conditions in small rural schools in North America, China, Eastern and Northern Europe and especially England, where Maurice Galton’s research on small primary schools has been conducted. Recurrent themes in the chapter include the role of rural schools in alleviating the effects of poverty, the need to challenge negative stereotypes of teachers and children in rural schools and the importance of (re-)establishing school–community relationships, creating a locally relevant, place-conscious curriculum, and of small schools working together to improve their sustainability. The conclusions look towards genuine partnerships between parents, school and community, interschool collaboration and research that focuses on teaching and learning as well as external relations and survival strategies.

Student teachers’ research is usually valued more for its contribution to their professional learning than for its contribution to the research topic itself. This paper reports on a research collaboration with eight student primary teachers in England, intended to build on a previously established project investigating young children’s epistemological beliefs. Analysis of the students’ written reports leads to an elaborated conceptual framework that draws attention to the need for a dialogue with all children about the interfaces experienced within, between and beyond each school context. The conclusions point to the distinctive research position held by student teachers in crossing boundaries between school and university contexts, and the particular relevance of the research topic for illuminating the out-of-school knowledge integral to children’s sense of self and learning.

Purpose This article describes an innovation representing a paradigm shift away from the traditional nursing skills fair passive method of learning toward a dynamic, immersive learning experience utilizing simulation. Background There are many hospitals that review yearly competencies through a skills fair methodology. There is no evidence to support that this method of education and training has any direct correlation to better nursing care at the bedside, enhanced patient outcomes, or retained knowledge or skills. DESCRIPTION OF THE INNOVATION/OUTCOME: We describe the process of successfully transitioning from traditional skills fairs to simulation-based skills fairs called CHILD (Collaborative Healthcare Immersive Learning Dynamic). Implications With this pioneering approach, institutions can reallocate funds and utilize simulation to more effectively provide education, training, and competency validation.

Cluster analysis has been applied to quantitative data in educational research over several decades and has been a feature of the Maurice Galton’s research in primary and secondary classrooms. It has offered potentially useful insights for teaching yet its implications for practice are rarely implemented. It has been subject also to negative criticism. Acknowledging cluster analysis to be an exploratory technique, this paper outlines different approaches to cluster analysis and reports examples of cluster analysis applied in a range of published studies. It goes on to pose five research questions about the process of achieving valid clusters which provide meaningful and practicable implications for teaching. These questions are addressed with reference to the analysis of a major quasi-experimental study of science pedagogy in Pakistan. The paper exposes both the perils of misapplied cluster analysis, and the practical value of pursuing a rigorous application process.

This Special Issue of CJE has been compiled in recognition of Professor Maurice Galton’s vast contribution to educational research. Its title, ‘Mirrors for research in classrooms’ refers to Maurice...

Theoretical and political perspectives on the nature of professionalism in teaching are abundant, but little is known about the views of teachers themselves. We asked primary and secondary school teachers in England what teacher professionalism means to them. We explored what teachers think about professionalism, on what dimensions their thinking varies, and how much it varies. We researched how successful the government had already been, and how successful it would be in the future, in changing teachers’ conceptions of professionalism. Two large-scale national surveys were conducted, with a longitudinal element. We found that teachers’ thinking about their professionalism may be construed as consisting of an inner core of strong, shared beliefs and commitments; an intermediate set of coherent but contested components of professionalism; and an outer layer of disparate elements which are generally highly disputed and which remain unintegrated into broader ways of thinking.

Collectively, the papers in this issue of the Cambridge Journal of Education describe threats to teachers’ authority, aims, expertise, advocacy of their profession, professionalism and practice. Th...

This article compares the academic performance and classroom behaviour of pupils when taught new concepts or engaged in problem solving in sessions organised either as cooperative group work or whole class, teacher directed instruction. Comparisons of attainment were made in classes of pupils aged 11 to 14 years (Key Stage 3) in English, mathematics and science. Pupils were also observed, mainly during the introductory phase of the topic under investigation, using a specially designed structured observation schedule. The attainment results suggest that a grouping approach is as effective, and in some cases more effective, than when whole class teaching is used. Classroom observation indicated that there were more sustained, higher cognitive level interactions when pupils worked in groups than during whole class discussions. It is argued in conclusion that the group work results could be improved still further if teachers gave more attention to training pupils to work in groups and if more time was given t...

The requirement that pupils should work in groups seems to have become a universal panacea among policy makers to solve the problems of globalization in the workplace. In what were once called the ...

This chapter responds to the research questions posed in the introductory chapter on the status and nature of educational research on rural schools and their community relationships. Drawing on the national reviews, we discuss the quality of the research focusing on its themes and questions, theoretical perspectives, and research design and methodology. The conclusions indicate substantial hiatuses, and call for greater use of the local voice, the life-world perspective, longitudinal and comparative studies, and multiple purposively sampled case studies. Internationally, while first-hand sources on the cultural contributions of rural schools exist, these must be accessed before documentary studies of central policies over-write such history. Finally, a new research agenda is formulated.

This paper reviews 25 years of research on small rural schools in England, in a period of unprecedented educational reform, and shift in government policy on small schools from persistent threat of closure through a period of a centrally funded ‘presumption against closure’ in the early 2000s. It notes a dearth of funded or peer-reviewed research since that time, but reports new research on the status of teachers in small rural schools who feel greater responsibility towards, and sense greater respect from people inside and outside schools than do their large urban school counterparts. A call for theory-led, well-designed, comparative and large-scale studies, the application of the new definition of rurality, and research which seeks pupil and community voices is expressed.

This introduction presents the case, and sets the scene, for five reviews of research on rural schools and their communities, arguing that educational research in this field is relatively rare, and decreasingly visible despite the significant population of the world's children who live in rural communities and attend rural schools. After considering various interpretations of ‘rural’, of the purpose and function of rural schooling, and of the relationship between school and community, we present three basic research questions with relevance for researchers of schools and communities, rural and urban, the world over, and raise more specific questions which are addressed in the reviews themselves and pursued in the closing chapter. Finally we introduce the research reviews and justify our selection of British and Nordic countries, where, despite geographical proximity, there are wide thematic and methodological disparities in rural schools’ research.

The attitudes and behaviour of 1040 pupils aged 12–14 years have been measured at the beginning and end of the school year with a battery of attitude, motivation and personality tests in an investigation of the differential effects of group work compared to whole‐class learning. A total of 44 secondary teachers of English, mathematics and science and their classes have been studied over a two‐year period. While subject attitudes and motivation scores fell significantly during the year, attitudes to group working held steady. Extraversion has been found to have a significant association with a positive approach to group work in English and mathematics. Cluster analysis has been used to identify four broad types of pupils who respond to group work in characteristically different manners. Two of the types show contrasting personality profiles, but display the least positive attitudes to school and classroom work. In 13 of 40 classes, these rather negative pupils made up at least half the class. There is evid...

Concerns about the recruitment and retention of teachers have prompted recent studies into the status of teaching in several different countries. This paper analyses the findings of a survey designed to investigate public perceptions of the teaching profession in the UK. It was undertaken as part of a broader DfES‐funded longitudinal project that has been using a mixed methodology to explore individual teachers’ perceptions of their status, and the status of teaching as viewed by education stakeholders and the general public. Whilst the survey confirmed many previous findings about the way in which teaching is viewed, it also produced some surprises. First, 50% of respondents deemed teaching to be an attractive career, a higher percentage than expected. Second, men, especially older men, were more likely than women to see teaching as an attractive career. Third, the survey found no obvious differences in the comparative status accorded to primary and secondary teachers. This is in sharp contrast to the vi...

Using survey and interview data from the Teacher Status Project, this paper explores early years teachers' sense of status and compares it with primary and secondary teachers' perceived status. If, as Hoyle has suggested, working with children is an intractable barrier to enhanced status in the eyes of the public, early years teachers are faced with the greatest challenge. At the same time, their closer links with parents and community affords them more opportunity to enhance the esteem in which they are held through the way that they do their work. The data seem to support this view, but it is argued that whilst curriculum guidance, and the recognition of the Foundation Stage have enhanced these teachers' sense of status in the public eye, the effects of the ten‐year strategy could undermine this progress unless an emphasis is placed on the teaching, pedagogical element of their specialist expertise.

We address the key aim of this special issue through a focus on teachers' self‐reflection, in particular the construction and integration of personal and professional identities, drawing on data from two studies. The first is a case study of a male nursery teacher (from a study by Warin) which examines how dissonance is experienced in identities concerning status and gender and how it is resolved through a synthesis of class teaching with fathering. The second harnesses survey data (from the Teacher Status Project) of ‘nearly qualified teachers’ about to embark on their professional lives, and of practising teachers, in which we focus on their reasons for becoming a teacher, exploring discontinuities between actual and desired teacher identities and the transformations that take place over time. The data from the two studies emphasize the importance of ‘technologies of the self’ in order to develop teacher self‐awareness. We support a shift in interpreting the meaning of reflective practice towards an emp...

This paper reports the methods and findings of the S tudy of Pr imary In teractive Teaching (SPRINT) project carried out in English primary schools, which set out to determine teachers' understanding and use of 'interactive teaching' as a characteristic of 'successful teaching' in the National Literacy Strategy (NLS). Thirty teachers of children aged five to 11 years became either 'focus' teachers or 'comparison' teachers and were videoed twice over a six to eight month period doing 'interactive teaching' during the daily Literacy Hour as part of the NLS. The focus teachers were videoed doing interactive teaching in a different curriculum area and they participated in a process of video stimulated reflective dialogue (VSRD) with a higher education based research partner. Semi-structured interviews, held with every teacher before and after the fieldwork period, were analyzed to show teachers’ changing conceptualizations of interactive teaching. In addition the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM) was used ...

Recent reviews of transfer have emphasised a need for schools to give greater emphasis to curriculum and pedagogic continuity. Evidence presented in this article suggests that schools have attempted to respond by shifting the focus of current activity in the desired direction. However, the attitudes of pupils have not improved as a result. It is suggested that these attitude dips can be accounted for in part by too rigid application of the Key Stage 2 and 3 teaching strategies and by the pressures of testing and inspection on the curriculum. As a result, classroom practice in Y6 is almost identical to that experienced by pupils in secondary school. We are producing a generation of students who do well academically but are being turned off learning.

This paper argues that the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) offers contradictory pedagogical advice to teachers on 'interactive teaching'. It reports research on teachers' perceptions of and responses to this advice and focuses particularly on NLS demands for teaching which is 'well paced with a sense of urgency'. Evidence from case studies and systematic observations of classroom interaction is used to show that whilst teachers vary in their sensitivity to the dilemmas posed by NLS demands, their classroom discourse in the Literacy Hour is quantitatively and qualitatively different from pre-NLS discourse. It is suggested that opportunities for critical reflection on practice are needed to help teachers articulate and resolve the dilemmas created by the imposition of prescribed programmes on personal educational principles.

Gendered identities can develop throughout the life-span in an undulating process spurred by significant physiological, cognitive, and social events. Two important developmental transitions occur in early adolescence: changing schools and puberty. This chapter reviews the development of gender identity and gender differences in school engagement, aspirations, and achievement during these multiple transitions. It synthesizes the findings of in-depth, longitudinal studies of school transition from the early 1970s to the 2000s. Most gender differences documented by this literature occur independently of school transition. These regard children’s friendships, dating, emotional health, attitudes to learning, and academic competencies. With school transition comes the tendency for girls to focus more on their physical and emotional selves, and a risk for boys to disengage from education. Gender differences in early adolescents’ attitudes toward subjects, learning, and career choice appear to have reduced since the 1970s as wider social stereotypes have changed. However, the majority of gender differences noted are conserved across time, suggesting a great deal of biological and social stability across 40 years.

This chapter examines the changes in teacher–pupil interaction which occurred when teachers from the state maintained sector, with classes containing around thirty children, were provided with the opportunity to teach classes of approximately half that size. This was achieved either by “buddying” each of these teachers with a partner from a private school or by employing an extra teacher to take half of the large class. The results of the observation of these lessons showed increases in the types of interaction which previous research has shown to be positively correlated with increased pupil achievement. These increases, however, were not statistically significant. The chapter, therefore, concludes that before future experimental studies are carried out, there is a need for training designed to maximize the use of these key teacher–pupil interactions in small class settings.

With the introduction of the National Curriculum primary teachers have come under increasing pressure from the Office for Standards in Education and other government agencies to change the ways they teach. However, the research evidence is equivocal as to the changes which have taken place at Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 over the last 5 years. This article argues that part of the problem stems from the way that characteristics of classroom organisation, such as whole‐class teaching, have been defined in various studies. From case studies of nine rural schools in which systematic observation and pupils’ diary records were collected, an attempt is made to chart the changes in classroom practice over a decade and to compare these findings with other recent studies.

This project evaluated the effect of collaboration via email links on the quality of 10–11 year old students’ science investigative skills in six primary rural schools. After a joint planning meeting, sixty children collected, identified and shared information via email about moths in their area, in order to produce a joint booklet. All email traffic was monitored throughout the project. Indepth structured observations and interviews were carried out at the schools. Children completed daily diaries. The children demonstrated a variety of science skills, particularly observation and recording. Their competence and confidence in using computers, handling email and in manipulating a data base developed during the project. The project identified a number of important issues relating to teacher inservice training requirements, the importance of a suitable progression of IT experiences throughout the school, development in cooperative groupwork for children, and software design.

This paper reports research conducted with Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) teachers in England, specifically to find out (i) whether the status of teaching influenced their decisions to join the profession, and (ii) their perceptions of their status within the profession. The data are drawn from the national Teacher Status Project conducted in England 2002-6 combined with previously unpublished data from a follow up study with Asian teachers in 2007. The conclusions, based on focus groups with 65 teachers (African Caribbean, Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi) in four regions of England, are that the teachers were not influenced by the status of teaching but joined the profession for intrinsic reasons, such as to improve children’s achievement, and to be role models for all children and for other teachers. Their self perceptions of their status within the profession are that it is low, as shown, for example, through the rejection of their culturally sensitive approaches to teaching, and their struggles to achieve leadership roles. The latter finding is repeatedly endorsed in studies of BME teachers and demands national monitoring of their career trajectories.

While redesigning nursing orientation, a gap in the transmission of information from general hospital to unit orientation was identified: Unit managers were unaware of the strengths and weaknesses identified in the nursing orientation of newly hired experienced nurses and, therefore, could not tailor the unit orientation to meet the specific needs of these orientees. The authors discuss the development and implementation of a nursing orientation report card, consisting of a 100-point score containing a summary of skills, knowledge, and Benner level measuring clinical performance and critical thinking, to facilitate better exchange of performance data.

Teachers are entrusted with the task of ensuring children’s intellectual growth and preparing each new generation to meet the challenge of the future. One might expect that such important work would enjoy high status and considerable respect and reward within any society, but as we shall see this is not always the case: while teachers in some countries enjoy high salaries and comfortable working conditions, elsewhere they may have to do two jobs in order to survive, or they may not have been paid for months. Fortunately, as Lortie (1975) pointed out, teachers tend to seek the ‘psychic’ rewards – the desire to give children a good start in life and the pleasure of seeing them learn – rather than material rewards for their work. Unfortunately, Hoyle (2001), noting the British Labour government’s determination to raise the image, morale and status of teachers [e.g., DfES (Department for Education and Skills), 1998] sees this vital relationship with children as ‘an intractable barrier’ to improved prestige for teachers. In this chapter we shall explore these matters further, beginning with definitions of status and prestige, moving on to consider the current status of teachers, the hypothetical determinants of teachers’ status, the impact of various policies and, finally, the consequences of the status of teaching for the profession.