A development study of auditory perception with special reference to right hemisphere functioning

The traditional view that the left and right hemisphere is responsible for attending to verbal and sensory material is explored in a developmental study which ranges in age from 4.5 years to 18 years. Experiments on boys and girls used verbal material of increasing difficulty ranging from a random collection, statistical approximations to English prose and normal selections of English prose. The sensory material was composed of edited versions of 4 Seashore tests of Musical appreciation. White noise was used as a competing signal. Assessment shows that there is a significant advantage for the left ear to attend to pitch sounds. This advantage is maintained throughout all age groups, and both sexes, and is irrespective of ear order and dominance. In contrast the Loudness test, discriminating decibel levels, shows a right ear advantage, irrespective of the ear order. However left handers show a left ear advantage. The reasons for this sensory test (Loudness) to behave as a verbal test are discussed. The significant factor determining the experimental results is found to be the "ear presented first". This means that when the tests are presented to the right ear first there is a right ear advantage; when the tests are presented to the left ear first there is a left ear advantage. This ear order is interpreted at the physiological and psychological level. Extreme attention is required for auditory asymmetry to operate and the competing signal of white noise used in the experiments may not simula te a dichotic situation which would produce the difference between ears effects.The hypothesis that there is increasing lateralisation of function with age is not supported. The experiments reported here highlight the complexity of defining auditory stimuli as material specific. It seems important to break up sound into its essential elements, irrespective of whether it is cued by the human voice or an instrument, before discussion can be made with respect to the hemispheric level at which it is perceived.<p

Principals of audit: Testing, data and ‘implicated advocacy’

Historically, school leaders have occupied a somewhat ambiguous position within networks of power. On the one hand, they appear to be celebrated as what Ball (2003) has termed the ‘new hero of educational reform’; on the other, they are often ‘held to account’ through those same performative processes and technologies. These have become compelling in schools and principals are ‘doubly bound’ through this. Adopting a Foucauldian notion of discursive production, this paper addresses the ways that the discursive ‘field’ of ‘principal’ (within larger regimes of truth such as schools, leadership, quality and efficiency) is produced. It explores how individual principals understand their roles and ethics within those practices of audit emerging in school governance, and how their self-regulation is constituted through NAPLAN – the National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy. A key effect of NAPLAN has been the rise of auditing practices that change how education is valued. Open-ended interviews with 13 primary and secondary school principals from Western Australia, South Australia and New South Wales asked how they perceived NAPLAN's impact on their work, their relationships within their school community and their ethical practice

Curriculum policy reform in an era of technical accountability: 'fixing' curriculum, teachers and students in English schools

Drawing on a Levinasian ethical perspective, the argument driving this paper is that the technical accountability movement currently dominating the educational system in England is less than adequate because it overlooks educators’ responsibility for ethical relations in responding to difference in respect of the other. Curriculum policy makes a significant contribution to the technical accountability culture through complicity in performativity, high-stakes testing and datafication, at the same time as constituting student and teacher subjectivities. I present two different conceptualizations of subjectivity and education, before engaging these in the analysis of data arising from an empirical study which investigated teachers’ and stakeholders’ experiences of curriculum policy reform in ‘disadvantaged’ English schools. The study’s findings demonstrate how a prescribed programme of technical curriculum regulation attempts to ‘fix’ or mend educational problems by ‘fixing’ or prescribing educational solutions. This not only denies ethical professional relations between students, teachers and parents, but also deflects responsibility for educational success from government to teachers and hastens the move from public to private educational provision. Complying with prescribed curriculum policy requirements shifts attention from broad philosophical and ethical questions about educational purpose as well as conferring a violence by assuming control over student and teacher subjectivities