Secondary education reform in Lesotho and Zimbabwe and the needs of rural girls: Pronouncements, policy and practice

Analysis of the educational needs of rural girls in Lesotho and Zimbabwe suggests a number of shortcomings in the current form of secondary education, and ways in which it might be modified so as to serve this sizeable group of students better. Several of the shortcomings, notably in relation to curricular irrelevance and excessive focus on examinations, have long been recognised, including by politicians. Yet political pronouncements are seldom translated into policy, and even where policy is formulated, reforms are seldom implemented in schools. This paper makes use of interviews with educational decision-makers in the two southern African countries and a range of documentary sources to explore why, despite the considerable differences between the two contexts, much needed educational reforms have been implemented in neither

Does teacher evaluation based on student performance predict motivation, well-being, and ill-being?

This study tests an explanatory model based on self-determination theory, which posits that pressure experienced by teachers when they are evaluated based on their students' academic performance will differentially predict teacher adaptive and maladaptive motivation, well-being, and ill-being. A total of 360 Spanish physical education teachers completed a multi-scale inventory. We found support for a structural equation model that showed that perceived pressure predicted teacher autonomous motivation negatively, predicted amotivation positively, and was unrelated to controlled motivation. In addition, autonomous motivation predicted vitality positively and exhaustion negatively, whereas controlled motivation and amotivation predicted vitality negatively and exhaustion positively. Amotivation significantly mediated the relation between pressure and vitality and between pressure and exhaustion. The results underline the potential negative impact of pressure felt by teachers due to this type of evaluation on teacher motivation and psychological health

Political peace - educational war: the role played by international organisations in negotiating peace in the Balkans and its consequences for education

The number of countries involved in conflict appears to be growing. Global awareness of these conflicts grows as the increasing use of weblogs and mobile phone videos, alongside traditional technologies, demonstrates the day-to-day effects of conflict on those caught up in it. International organisations are drawn into negotiating ‘peace settlements’ and into monitoring post-conflict developments due to this growing global awareness of conflict and due to the influences of globalisation, increasing economic interdependence and other factors. International organisations, including the World Bank and agencies of the United Nations, try to find common ground between opposing factions in conflict situations in order to broker peace. This is not an easy task and compromises often have to be made. Peace agreements and settlements also need to take account of how the parties will work together in the future, and therefore, these may include aspects of educational provision. This article describes the role played by international organisations in negotiating the peace agreement that brought about the end of the conflict in the countries of the former Yugoslavia in 1995. It goes on to illustrate the consequences for education of this peace agreement and suggests that, whilst international organisations may have brokered peace on the streets, the opposing factions are continuing their war in the terrain of continuing educational conflicts, due at least in part to structures for educational provision laid out in the Dayton Agreement. The article provides support for Bush & Saltarelli’s claim that education has two faces, and argues that in this case, unfortunately, the negative one predominates

Talking to learn in Timorese classrooms

In both multilingual and monolingual school settings, the manner in which teachers mediate classroom talk has a direct impact on the way that students are given access to curriculum content and the links established between thinking and learning. Classroom talk includes the ways in which teachers present content as well as the ways in which students interact with the subject matter that they are learning. However, in multilingual settings, the focus for educational language policy is commonly on which language rather than how to use the linguistic resources available in the classroom. This paper explores the case of Timor-Leste, a nation struggling to improve the poor learning outcomes for students within a multilingual setting, within a school system of poorly trained teachers and poorly resourced classrooms. It looks at oral language behaviours that teachers typically use in classrooms in order to suggest how teacher professional development priorities might be re-oriented around repertoires of classroom talk as a means of enhancing both curriculum content learning and language learning