School placement trends

Social work education In England has undergone major reform in the past five years but social work practice remains under review. Part of the reform has been the extension of the number of days in practice learning for social work students. Traditionally social work students have undertaken the practice element of their training in social work agencies. The expansion of days in placement has been accompanied by a diversification of practice settings. This article presents data from an evaluation of an initiative in London whereby social work students undertook placements in primary and secondary schools. The evaluation was informed by questionnaire surveys of five groups of respondents: students, their on-site and off-site practice supervisors, social work academics and other stakeholders of social work education in the area. Interviews with six participants explored some of the survey findings in greater depth. The evaluation findings draw attention to the need for careful preparation for placements in schools of students and of school based staff in the light of the possible continued demand for such placements.

ABSTRACTBackground and purpose: Acknowledging that it is critical that researchers design and implement studies that examine teaching as a complex phenomenon (Strom and Martin [2017]. Becoming-teacher: A Rhizomatic Look at First-year Teaching. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers), the objective of this study was to examine pre-service teachers’ (PSTs’) experience of teaching a specific content (i.e. Sport Education) in various school contexts (i.e. diverse PSTs, contexts, students, and the SE model). Using the rhizomatic (Deleuze and Guattari [1987]. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) concept of assemblage, this study was guided by the question, ‘How do PSTs negotiate their Sport Education physical education teacher education learning experience during school placement?’Research setting and participants: Grounded in post-qualitative methodology, this study involved twenty-one PSTs undertaking their school placement as part of a three-year physical education teacher education (PETE) programme in Norway. School placement was composed of two three-week periods in upper secondary school in which the PSTs taught SE to the same class each week. The PSTs participated in a university SE-PETE unit prior to school placement.Data collection and analysis: Three focus group interviews were conducted with three PST groups: (i) end of the SE-PETE unit and prior to school placement; (ii) between school placement blocks; and, (iii) end of school placement. Also, PST coursework was collected on completion of the PETE unit (completed in groups) and on completion of school placement (individual coursework). The nonlinear analysis process included data walking, rhizomatic mapping, situational analysis, and memo writing.Findings and discussion: This study highlighted how particular characteristics of various human and non-human elements (that is, the PSTs themselves, their contexts, their students, the features of SE) influenced and shaped PSTs’ teaching and learning. Recognizing that it is not possible to be true to the myriad of elements influencing each PST, we provide a detailed consideration of two selected PSTs and show how interactions between human and non-human elements created two different teaching practices and learning experiences. We discuss the concept of assemblage in relation to the findings and introduce the notion of ‘translating’. In ‘translating’, as highlighted by the PSTs in this study, PSTs make sense of their PETE learning within a specific setting and a set of circumstances.Conclusion: We contend that non-linear conceptual and methodologic frameworks, such as those featured in this study, can assist the PETE community to push beyond linear and simple ways of studying practice and instead encourage more complex conceptualizations of teaching and learning. Hence, we advocate for an ontological turn (Lather and St. Pierre [2013]. “Post-qualitative Research.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 26 (6): 629–633) in PETE research that focuses on the processes of teaching and learning rather than the outcomes alone.

The aim of this study is to discuss the experiences of prospective teachers during their school placements. For this aim, 41 prospective teachers taking School Experience II and Teaching Practice courses wrote and submitted a one‐ to two‐page reflection of their field‐based experiences at the end of the semester. Prospective teachers' written responses indicated that most of them experienced problems in their school placements. Student teachers in their second teaching placement said that they observed similar issues, repeated similar activities as they did in their first school placement. Student teachers enrolled in the last teaching practicum said that they did not feel like the teacher of the class and did not get enough chance to practice.

Over the past 6 years, the city of Baltimore has successfully implemented a school placement policy for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected children and children with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Both policy and specific procedures are based on nationally promulgated guidelines. School placement policy is part of an overall AIDS policy that includes education of students and staff and adoption of universal precautions to prevent transmission of communicable diseases in school. Implementation has been marked by excellent collaboration between the departments of health and education. Important policy components include expedited clinical investigation of each case, an interagency review panel, strict protection of confidentiality, a restricted setting for certain children, a school site visit for each placement, and continued monitoring of the school placement by school nurses. Many HIV-infected students need special educational services and/or school health services. The Baltimore City school placement process has avoided the exaggerated publicity endured by some communities, where media reporting has aggravated community fears and invaded the lives of families with HIV-infected children. Baltimore City has succeeded in ensuring access to education, protecting families' confidentiality, and providing special care for HIV-infected students. Local communities should emphasize national guidelines in designing school placement policies for HIV-infected children. School placement policies work best in the context of a comprehensive policy incorporating AIDS education and care.

Inclusive education policies stimulate children with special educational needs, including autism, to attend regular education. We aimed to explore change over time in school placement and transitions of autistic children since the introduction of an inclusive education policy in the Netherlands (2014) and to examine the role of individual child characteristics. This study used longitudinal data from 2013 to 2021 on autistic children (N=1463, aged 5-16 years). We expected an increase in regular school placements and transitions to regular schools. Surprisingly, the proportion of children with autism in regular schools slightly decreased. Special school placement was more likely for boys and autistic children with lower intelligence scores, co-occurring conditions or behavioral and peer relation problems. Younger autistic children and those with lower intelligence scores more often transferred from a regular to a special school. The opposite transition was more common in older autistic children and those with higher intelligence scores. The likelihood of special-to-regular transitions did not change, but regular-to-special transitions were more prevalent during the years just after the policy change than in later years. The inclusive policy had little impact on the school placement, and at most led to a delayed drop in referrals to special schools.

Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite: Fool! said my muse to me, look in thy heart, and write. (Sir Philip Sidney) This study emerged from working with a Year 7 boy in the author's first placement school on a PGCE course. There was a marked disparity between his oral contributions in class and the quality of his written work. Ugurcan's oral contributions were excellent, demonstrating a mastery of syntax and structure, impressive vocabulary, engagement with the text and awareness of audience. His written work, on the other hand, was weak in terms of quality and quantity, and he refused to revise and redraft work. This pattern resurfaced in my second placement school, an all‐boys independent college. The standard of many of the boys' written work was markedly below that of their oral work. They seemed to thrive on the immediacy of praise for oral contributions, and peers placed high value on these contributions. Contrary to the idea that boys dominate talk, they worked effectively through dialogue: they were receptive to their peers and were prepared to review ideas in the light of others' contributions. On the other hand, there seemed to be frustration in the process of composition, an annoyance that ideas needed to be framed and streamlined. Written tasks were met with resistance. Similarly, there was opposition to the concepts of revising and redrafting. In my second placement school, I became fascinated by the role of dialogue in the all‐male environment and surprised at the absence of the stereotype of boys as dominant and unreceptive talkers in the classroom. At the same time, I was worried by the discrepancy between boys' oral and written work, fluctuating between blaming my own lack of experience and finding ways to close the gap. Over the course of my second placement I recorded many conversations with boys who were eager to articulate their problems with the writing process. I also recorded classes on writing taken by fellow PGCE students and members of the English department. These transcriptions form the basis for my argument championing the value of dialogue in facilitating boys' writing.

In this chapter, I present two accounts that capture aspects of some boys’ experiences of being educated in single-sex schools in Canada. These accounts were offered to me by boys who participated in a research study that followed boys’ experiences of being educated in independent, single-sex schools. These accounts convey how some boys imagine, describe, and reflect on the significance of place in their experiences of being educated and schooled. During the conduct of the study, I paid particular attention to the significance of school places in boys’ experience of schooling, for I was curious to learn why some boys feel out of place in certain school places, while others do not. I was also interested in understanding how learning masculinities and negotiating subjectivities in school are place-based. And I was curious about the ways in which place can be monopolized as a potential partner in advancing certain values of the school and not others. Interested in how school places are perceived by students and how they are given form in the ways they are used, described, and represented, I was curious about how boys’ self-understanding was connected to how they see, articulate, use, and report their relationship to school places.

Curriculum contextualization: A comparative analysis of meanings expressed in Portuguese and English school evaluation

The purpose of this paper is to introduce everyday aesthetics in education. First, it presents everyday aesthetics as a subdiscipline within philosophical aesthetics, that revisits sensory perception as the backdrop of all experience, claims ordinary life is a proper venue for aesthetic inquiry, and problematizes the impact aesthetic preferences have on habitual decisions. Second, the paper argues that among the diverse matters students learn in school, they learn—explicitly or implicitly—what and how to perceive, as well as the pedagogical purposes of daily perception. School models the relationships that students will develop between what they perceive, what they think about it, and how they act accordingly. Next, the paper elaborates on the notions of “school aesthetic matrixes” and “space and place in school”. School aesthetic matrixes refer to perceptual patterns that allow characterizing relationships between daily perception and the pedagogical project of a school. They manifest through expressions such as prison school, home school, mall school, etc. Space and place in school allude to concomitant experiences, of corporeal basis, that allow describing how we inhabit the world. What distinguishes them is the approach each one gives to the senses and the body. The paper concludes by calling attention to the comprehension and role of perception in education, urging to mind the aesthetic-pedagogical character that students develop throughout 12 years of schooling. Ultimately, the key relationships we develop with ourselves, others, and the world, entail a basic perceptual dimension that can be educated to become more purposefully and integrally present in life.

Without smoke-free legislation in Wuhan, China, we investigated secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure at home, school, and public places for never-smoking school-going adolescents in 2019. A cross-sectional study was carried out within the Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS) framework. Weighted univariate, bivariate and multivariable analyses were conducted. The prevalence of SHS exposure among never-smoking adolescents at home, school and public places was 25.7%, 31.9% and 48.9%, respectively. Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that parents smoking, peers smoking and observing teachers smoking in school were all significantly related to a higher probability of SHS exposure at home, school, and public places. Never-smoking adolescents who had smoking parents had 14 times (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 14.00; 95% confidence interval [CI], 11.37–17.24) higher odds of SHS exposure at home; Never-smoking adolescents who observed teachers smoking in school had about 10 (aOR = 9.76; 95% CI = 7.13–13.36) and four times (aOR = 3.55; 95% CI = 2.77–4.55) higher odds of SHS exposure in school and public places, respectively. Adopting comprehensive smoke-free legislation in public places and smoke-free home rules and implementing and supervising smoke-free school policies may further reduce SHS exposure among adolescents.

This paper uses data from the National Child Development Study to study the long-term experiences of boys who display externalizing behavior problems. Analyses examine the transition from school to work by bringing together variables used in life-course analyses of the transition to adulthood (e.g., family background, individual ability, aspirations, school placements) with variables often employed in longitudinal studies of children with behavior problems (e.g., behavior problems, family difficulties, special educational services). A substantial amount of variance is accounted for by variables that are conventionally employed in life-course analyses. However, academic ability, parental aspirations, and private/grammar school placement have significantly smaller effects on some outcomes for boys who display externalizing behavior than for boys who do not display such behavior. The discussion emphasizes the importance of including both sets of factors when explaining the life-course experiences of boys who displayed externalizing behaviors.

ABSTRACTThis study explores the role of school and university partnership teams in the professional development of physical education (PE) pre-service teachers (PSTs) during their one year Postgraduate Certificate in Education course in England. The paper focuses on the key influences and processes that impacted on PST subject knowledge development. An interpretive methodology informed by constructivist grounded theory [Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. London: Sage.] was adopted. This research highlights that the process of knowledge development in physical education teacher education (PETE) is socially constructed and complex. Much of the PSTs’ development was influenced by various communities of practice, particularly their school placements’ PE departments, but also their university-based learning community. Of these, the legitimised practices within the PE departments were found to be especially important to PSTs’ development. University-based learning was credited by PSTs with enhancing their holistic understanding of the learning process, developing those aspects of critical pedagogy that were under-developed in schools. This study identifies the capability of school/university partnerships to facilitate enhanced knowledge development in PETE. Taking into consideration the evolving nature of PETE within a political context that is progressively moving towards an entirely school-based model, an evidence-based debate over the manner and nature of the subject knowledge to be developed is needed.

This study intends to analyse how students’ involvement in their assessment process contributes to their learning in a gymnastics acrobatic unit. It took place during the school placement of two physical education preservice teachers. Their classes had 43 students (23 girls and 20 boys) with ages between 15-17 years old. Students were challenged to build a choreography, according to the dossier delivered at the first class that contains objectives, contents, assessment criteria, and assessment forms. Data were collected from assessment forms, fulfilled by students at the end of each class and analysed by the preservice teachers before the next class; assessment of the choreography built by students and a written test. Students showed active involvement along all the process, taking advantage of their self-assessment to improve their performance. Sharing assessment criteria and learning objectives with the students contributed to improving their learning about acrobatic gymnastics.

Purpose: To investigate the adaptive competence of two physical education preservice teachers (PSTs) across two high school placements. Methods: Two PSTs each taught four 6-lesson frisbee units across two different high schools. Feedback on lesson plans prior to teaching, guided reflection-on-action, and repeated teaching was used to support adaptations to six core teaching practices. PSTs made three iterations of each lesson plan. Results: PSTs made 589 adaptations across the core teaching practices of management (28%), task presentation (16%), content development (16%), active supervision (16%), goals and assessment (7%), and rules and routines (3%). Between 16% and 30% of adaptations were made in the last iteration. The number of adaptations decreased from the first to the second school placement and from Lessons 1 to 6. Conclusion: Feedback on lesson plans, guided reflection-on-action, and repeated teaching aided PSTs’ development of adaptive competence during school placements.

ObjectiveChildren with Down syndrome (DS) have high rates of chronic health conditions (CHCs) which can affect special education needs and primary school placement (mainstream or special). We assessed timing and type of CHC by year-specific primary school placement (ages 5 to 11 years). ApproachWe followed two cohorts: first, a birth cohort of all children with DS born from 2003 to 2020 in England using hospital administrative data; second, a sub-cohort with linked hospital and education records who enrolled in state-funded primary schools in England at age 5 from 2009/10 to 2013/14. We calculated the cumulative incidence of CHCs and multimorbidity (defined as distinct CHCs affecting two or more body systems) from birth through age 11, accounting for variable follow-up and the competing risk of death. We assessed multimorbidity by school placement over time. ResultsThe birth cohort included 11,478 children with DS (prevalence: 0.11%). By age 5, 6.2% of children had died, 80.8% had at least one recorded CHC, and 53.4% had multiple CHCs. Corresponding figures by age 11 were 6.9%, 87.4% and 65.9%, respectively. 85% of children with DS alive at school entry linked to a school record. 72% were enrolled in mainstream primary school at age 5, decreasing to 62% by age 7, and 54% by age 11. ConclusionsMost children with DS have multiple hospital-recorded CHCs. Nearly three-quarters start mainstream primary school, but just over half remain by age 11. ImplicationsParents, clinicians, and educators will benefit from understanding relationships between multimorbidity and school placement.