Co-constructing bilingual learning: an equal exchange of strategies between complementary and mainstream teachers

Teachers in complementary schools are often assumed to be using outmoded teaching strategies and an authoritarian approach to discipline. However, it is rare for mainstream teachers to have visited these community-run after-school or weekend classes, which remain on the margins of educational provision. This paper argues that complementary teachers’ knowledge has been ‘doubly devalued’: firstly because of their location in the informal learning sector, and secondly because their work focuses on languages and cultures that are ignored or viewed negatively by the wider society. Our action research study with complementary teachers in East London challenges mainstream preconceptions in showing the creative range of teaching strategies devised to meet the needs of multi-level, mixed-age classes in under-resourced conditions. Uniquely, the research set up partnerships between these complementary teachers and local primary school teachers, in which they visited each other's settings and jointly planned topic-based lessons adapted to each context. Findings demonstrate that mainstream teachers had much to learn from their complementary colleagues about negotiating teacher–student relationships, the child as independent learner and as leader within a learning community, and the use of bilingual strategies. Partnership teaching created mutual respect for each other's expertise, crucial to the equal valuing of shared knowledge

Testing Linearity in Cointegrating Relations With an Application to Purchasing Power Parity

This article shows that when applied to nonstationary time series, the conventional Regression Error Spec-ification Test (RESET) leads to severe size distortion and its asymptotic distribution involves a mixture of noncentral χ2 distributions. Nonstationarity introduces bias terms in the limit distribution, and appropriate corrections for the bias are presented leading to a modified RESET test that has a central χ2 limit distri-bution. In simulations, this modified test is shown to have power not only against nonlinear cointegration but also against the absence of cointegration. In an empirical illustration, the linear purchasing power parity (PPP) specification is tested using five Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. KEY WORDS: Noncentral χ2 distribution; Nonlinear cointegration; RESET test; Specification test. 1

A simple test for PPP among traded goods

The so-called Harrod-Balassa-Samuelson model implies that relative prices of non-traded goods may be nonstationary and, hence, that PPP should preferably be tested on real exchange rates based on prices of traded goods only. A simple test for PPP among traded goods is proposed that can be applied to real exchange rates based on prices of all (that is, both traded and non-traded) goods. The study shows through simulations that the test is reliable for a sample size commonly considered in practice. Upon applying the test to bilateral real exchange rates based on the general CPI among a group of industrialized countries during the post Bretton Woods period, we find little evidence in favour of PPP among traded goods. This does not change when we use real exchange rates based on various components of the CPI.