Christopher Downey

Family SEALa HomeSchool Collaborative Programme Focusing on the Development of Children's Social and Emotional Skills

The Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) programme has been developed in England to enhance social and emotional competence and well-being in schools. As part of the SEAL programme, Family SEAL seeks to engage parents as partners in this process. Seven primary schools in Dorset, a local authority in the South of England, implemented Family SEAL in a pilot project during 20072008. Both class teachers and parents reported post-programme gains in childrens social and emotional competence, and significant gains were reported for those children who had previously been identified as a cause for concern in their social and emotional development. Parents gave limited qualitative evidence of the impact of Family SEAL in the home. The implications for Family SEAL as a means of improving emotional well-being are discussed.

Professional Attitudes to the Use of Data in England

English schools arguably have more sophisticated datasets at their disposal than any other jurisdiction in the world. These datasets gather the academic outcomes and a range of demographic data for all young people in England from age 4 to 16. They are used to provide schools with a wide range of school- and student-level measures related to academic attainment and value-added progress to inform school self-evaluation. This chapter discusses some of the ways these data are utilised in English secondary schools in order to inform school improvement. It presents findings from a nationwide survey of teachers on their self-reported use of, and attitudes toward, student- and school-level attainment and progress data. The purpose of the survey was to investigate the extent to which teachers in schools use these data; whether they are satisfied with their level of understanding of data; and the frequency of training they feel they require to both interpret and utilise it. The survey found that levels of data use in English secondary schools are high and that satisfaction with data use is linked to teachers’ level of responsibility, with Deputy and Assistant School Principals reporting the most extensive data use and greatest satisfaction with their level of data use. The frequency of training in data use appears to be positively linked to teachers’ self-reported level of understanding of data. The results suggest that teachers with no formal leadership roles require training on at least annual basis to significantly improve their understanding of data. Teachers strongly feel that data analysis and interpretation should be delegated to a greater extent throughout the staff in the school. There is also a perception that Heads of Department should take the leading role in data analysis and interpretation, more so than is the case in many schools where analysis and interpretation of data is often the province of more senior members of the school leadership team.

Planning a competence-based curriculum: the case of four secondary schools in England

Despite the belief that schools tend to be resistant to change, it is possible to find secondary schools in the UK which are investing in the design of an innovative curriculum for their Year 7 (11-year-old students). This article focuses on four of these schools and discusses some of the challenges they face in planning and implementing their competence-based curricula (CBC). Such curricula tend to be based on the rationale that they better prepare all students for the constant changes of human knowledge and understanding. They develop transferable skills rather than subject-specific content, which are considered necessary requirements for learners as future productive members of society in the twenty-first century. Advocates of CBC argue that such curricula are more inclusive and emancipatory than traditional curricula, although this view is contested. Employing Bernsteins concepts of framing and classification of the curriculum, this article describes the challenges and constraints encountered by four schools which have endeavoured to develop a competence-based curriculum.

Researching the competence-based curriculum: preface to a case study of four urban secondary schools

This introductory article accompanies three further articles forming a case study research project undertaken to describe the experience of four urban secondary schools implementing a competence-based curriculum for students in their first year of secondary education. The nature of such competence-based curricula is discussed in the context of secondary schools before providing an outline of the context of each of the case study schools. A democratic and emancipatory view of education provides the rationale for the development of transferable competencies, and this is considered with respect to the challenges of engaging in a cross-disciplinary approach to the curriculum. These challenges are viewed through the lens of Bernsteins concepts of strong and weak framing and horizontal and vertical discourses. Each of the accompanying articles takes up a different aspect of education, focusing on curriculum planning, teaching and learning, and leadership and management respectively. Further challenges with regard to changes in the English curriculum are briefly reflected upon. Finally an outline of the case study methodology which was employed in the study is provided.

Leading and managing the competence-based curriculum: conscripts, volunteers and champions at work within the departmentalised environment of the secondary school

This article presents a sub-set of findings from a research project describing the experience of four case study schools which have implemented a competence-based curriculum (CBC) for students in their first year of secondary education. Secondary schools are highly departmentalised environments with organisational structures based primarily around subject departments and this can present a considerable challenge to such a multidisciplinary curriculum initiative. School leaders and teachers involved in the implementation and development of a CBC speak in terms of championing and legitimising the curriculum to their subject specialist colleagues. Teachers recruited to the competence-based approach were sometimes described as a mix of volunteers and conscripts and overcoming any initial scepticism toward the approach required the position and status of the curriculum initiative to be established within the departmentalised organisational structure of the secondary school, and required continuing advocacy for the competence-based approach.

Mapping Changes in Support: A Longitudinal Analysis of Networks of Pre-Service Mathematics and Science Teachers.

Abstract In England teachers of secondary school mathematics and science are in short supply and it is important to understand how pre-service teachers develop and maintain networks of support during their training year and the impact these networks can have on their training outcomes. The purpose of this study is to examine how changes to the size and composition of these support networks during the training year are associated with programme outcomes. The paper draws on social network theory to examine the nature of the support networks that develop around each pre-service teacher, and examines how supportive ties were initiated, maintained, and broken over the course of the training year. A survey design was utilised to collect data at four time points across the 2014–2015 academic year from a total cohort of more than 75 pre-service teachers. At all four time points, participants were asked to nominate those peers and others to whom they had turned during the previous month for different aspects of support. Results showed that the size and composition of support networks changed over time with significant differences in the development of the networks between pre-service teachers on school-led and university-led programmes.

Automated generation of “good enough” transcripts as a first step to transcription of audio-recorded data

In the last decade, automated captioning services have appeared in mainstream technology use. Until now, the focus of these services have been on the technical aspects, supporting pupils with special educational needs and supporting teaching and learning of second language students. Only limited explorations have been attempted regarding its use for research purposes: transcription of audio recordings. This article presents a proof-of-concept exploration utilising three examples of automated transcription of audio recordings from different contexts; an interview, a public hearing and a classroom setting, and compares them against ‘manual’ transcription techniques in each case. It begins with an overview of literature on automated captioning and the use of voice recognition tools for the purposes of transcription. An account is provided of the specific processes and tools used for the generation of the automated captions followed by some basic processing of the captions to produce automated transcripts. Originality checking software was used to determine a percentage match between the automated transcript and a manual version as a basic measure of the potential usability of each of the automated transcripts. Some analysis of the more common and persistent mismatches observed between automated and manual transcripts is provided, revealing that the majority of mismatches would be easily identified and rectified in a review and edit of the automated transcript. Finally, some of the challenges and limitations of the approach are considered. These limitations notwithstanding, we conclude that this form of automated transcription provides ‘good enough’ transcription for first versions of transcripts. The time and cost advantages of this could be considerable, even for the production of summary or gisted transcripts.