/pdf/research-design-qualitative-quantitative-and-mixed-methods-1m92m1x5gg.pdf

Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches

PISA, Power and Policy: The Emergence of Global Educational Governance

Background: Since the late 1960s, research has demonstrated repeatedly that students in lower tracks achieve less as they develop an antischool culture to overcome the status deprivation resulting from being in a lower track. In quantitative large-scale research, this antischool culture is usually assessed using poor academic attitudes or study disengagement because antischool norms disengage students from the learning process. The extent to which students in different tracks feel embedded in their school communities—their sense of school belonging—has rarely been examined, although academic engagement and sense of belonging are related to each other and to achievement. Objective: This article examines students’ sense of belonging in secondary schools that offer different tracks, and the role played by the faculty’s trust in the students. Participants: The study is based on data from 3,475 students and 754 teachers in 28 technical/vocational schools and 3,376 students and 461 teachers in 22 academic schools in Flanders, the northern, Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Research Design: Use is made of (stepwise) multilevel analyses (HLM6). Results: The analyses show that students in technical/vocational schools have a significant lower sense of belonging than students in academic schools. This association disappears if we take into account faculty trust in students. The association between school type and perceived teacher support, a subdimension of the sense of belonging, is not mediated by faculty trust, but is due to the lower GPA of students in technical/vocational schools. Conclusions: The results indicate that teachers play a crucial role in the divergent nature of students’ social integration across different types of schools. In terms of strengthening students’ connectedness to a technical/vocational school environment, our results indicate that strengthening teachers’ level of trust in students could be crucial.

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/1054674/file/1094656.pdf

Students’ sense of belonging in technical/vocational schools versus academic schools: the mediating role of faculty trust in students

In the US, some urban African Americans and Hispanic families have higher rates of obesity and its complications than some urban Caucasian families. In the UK, families of South Asian origin, and in France, families of North African origin often have higher health risks, not just for obesity and metabolic disease, but for a range of health challenges. Clearly then, obesity is not a simple problem of willpower and portion control; it is a difficult disease of interacting social, environmental, behavioural, medical and genetic factors, and lacks a straightforward, effective treatment.

On the big society.

Handbook of Research on ePortfolios

Background: A number of countries have had school inspection for many years. The origins of these systems date back to the nineteenth century when mass public schooling was introduced, and education and other emerging public services were required to comply with centrally mandated rules and programmes. In contrast, many countries across the world have only introduced school inspection over recent decades as the perceived importance of educational quality as a driver of economic competitiveness has become influential in state policy. International bodies such as the OECD and, in particular, comparative evaluations of education systems such as PISA have led to a constant stream of interventions and reforms designed to deliver higher student performance outcomes. These factors have driven the growth of inspection. Purpose of Study: The purpose of this study is to provide an analysis of the factors that have led to the rapid rise of inspection as a school governance mechanism. It goes on to examine how developing conceptualisations of the ways in which inspection can be employed to achieve the range of outcomes with which it is tasked are leading to an evolving toolkit of inspection approaches and models. A number of these are examined in detail with a view not only to description but in terms of whether some of the demands that they place on schools are, in fact, realistic in practice. Sources of Evidence: This study used document analysis of policy documents and existing research to deconstruct factors relating to the changing face of school inspection since the late 1990’s. Main Argument: Formal processes of school inspection have become virtually universal. It is also argued that inspection, as it is now widely understood and practiced, has moved quite far from its historical roots and purposes. Inspection is now a complex component of wider modern concepts of public sector management and governance including quality, improvement, accountability, transparency and cost effectiveness. Conclusions: Historically inspection was largely about compliance with rules and to an extent to judge the work of individual teachers. Now, at least, in theory, it is as much concerned with creating a regulatory framework within which schools as organisations can enjoy greater autonomy while simultaneously being held responsible for student performance outcomes.

https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/622790

Exploring the Changing Face of School Inspections

Irish teachers, starting on a journey of data use for school self-evaluation

With an increasing emphasis on school self-evaluation as a mechanism for school improvement, many countries provide a range of supports to guide schools through the self-evaluation process. While m...

External specialist support for school self-evaluation: Testing a model of support in Irish post-primary schools:

Current approaches to the regulation of schools in most jurisdictions tend to combine elements of external inspection with systems of internal self-evaluation. An increasingly important aspect of t...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1365480219895167

Parent and Student Voice in Evaluation and Planning in Schools.

This paper posits that almost all inspectorates are now following, if to varying degrees, a similar overarching ideology and methodology for school accountability and improvement. The first part of the paper provides an analysis of recent changes to school inspection policies across Frontiers. Using Ireland as a case example, the next part of the paper provides an analysis of Irish school inspection policies and practices that appear to mirror other school inspection systems. To test these assumptions, the paper then provides an analysis of a key informant interview with the Chief Inspector of schools in Ireland. The evidence suggests that there is an increasingly convergent approach to school evaluation discernible across all inspection frontiers. Among the many aspects of this changing landscape is the rapid pace at which schools have accepted school inspection frameworks and the emergence of a genuinely co-professional as opposed to co-existent mode of evaluation between the inspectorate and schools.

/pdf/integrated-co-professional-evaluation-converging-approaches-5gnoblghjr.pdf

Shivaun O’Brien

Papers

Exploring the Changing Face of School Inspections

Irish teachers, starting on a journey of data use for school self-evaluation

External specialist support for school self-evaluation: Testing a model of support in Irish post-primary schools:

Parent and Student Voice in Evaluation and Planning in Schools.

Integrated Co-Professional Evaluation? Converging Approaches to School Evaluation Across Frontiers