In January 2015, a young woman was sexually assaulted while unconscious behind a dumpster on the campus of Stanford University. The victim was visiting campus to attend a fraternity party.
Last week, the perpetrator, Stanford swimmer Brock Turner, was sentenced to six months in jail and three years of probation. The lenient sentencing of the star athlete has provoked public outrage – on the Stanford campus and nationwide.
Scholars writing for The Conversation have been pointing to the enormous risks students face on campus. They have raised questions about whether universities are doing enough to protect students.
The most vulnerable time is the first two months of the freshman year. In fact, to symbolize the danger, the first few months of the fall freshman semester are now commonly called the sexual assault “red zone.”
A public awareness campaign regarding sexual assault on campus. Wolfram Burner, CC BY-NC
Sarah Cook, professor and associate dean at Georgia State University, wrote about President Obama’s efforts in 2014 at convening a White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault. She pointed out how the 2013 Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act (SaVE Act), which “requires colleges to report more crimes” in their annual Clery Act reports, could have led to the “upsurge” in campus investigations.
Scholars also pointed out how like most other problems, campus assault does not exist in isolation. Leah Daigle, associate professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology, Georgia State University, noted that it is, above all, the party culture on campuses that puts students at risk.
About 65 percent of college students consume alcohol and just under half engage in binge drinking. Her research looks at which students are most vulnerable.
Lack of information
Knowing that students are at risk, are universities and colleges doing enough?
Elizabeth Englander, professor of psychology at Bridgewater State University and director of the Massachusetts Aggression Reduction Center (MARC), observed,
Only one-third or fewer of the websites had any information that might be useful to a victim of sexual assault, such as a hotline number, the importance of preserving evidence or how to report sexual assault to police.
To make campuses safer, Georgia State’s Curcio emphasized that studies should be conducted that examine the locations where sexual assaults were more likely to occur.
And, as Englander said, schools need to make sure everyone has access to quality information. However,
only 15 percent of university websites offered any information about how to file an anonymous report.
In this political climate, academic and public libraries may be in danger. The existence of vast amounts of information – a lot of it free – on the Internet might suggest that the library has outlived its usefulness.
But has it? The numbers tell a very different story.
In spite of the findings of a survey in which Americans say they are using public libraries less, the usage numbers reported by libraries indicate the opposite.
U.S. public library usage statistics: 1993-2012. Chart created by Donald A. Barclay, using data from the National Center for Education Statistics, CC BY
Here’s what data on circulation (books and other items checked out to library users) and annual visits to public libraries reveal.
The number of books and other items borrowed from U.S. public libraries increased from 6.5 items per capita in 1993 to 8.0 items per capita in 2012 (up 23 percent). Over the same time span, the number of visits to U.S. public libraries rose 22.5 percent.
The one major public library usage measure that did decrease was the number of times library users asked questions of reference librarians, dropping 18 percent from 1993 to 2012.
The popularity of U.S. public libraries is, it seems, at least as strong as it was before the web became a household word (much less a household necessity).
Rise of the e-book
For academic libraries, the data are more mixed. Circulation of physical items (books, DVDs, etc.) in U.S. academic libraries has been on a steady decline throughout the web era, falling 29 percent from 1997 to 2011.
Total circulations (in 1000s) by U.S. degree-granting post-secondary institution libraries: 1997 through 2011. Chart created by Donald A. Barclay, using data from the National Center for Education Statistics., CC BY
More tellingly, over the same time span and among the same academic libraries, the annual number of circulations (of books, DVDs, etc.) per full-time student dropped from 20 circulations to 10 (down 50 percent).
Number of circulation transactions per full-time student in U.S. degree-granting post-secondary institution libraries: 1997 through 2011. Chart created by Donald A. Barclay, using data from the National Center for Education Statistics., CC BY
That fewer books are circulating is hardly a surprise given the vast amount of scholarly information (the bulk of it purchased with academic library budget dollars) that is now available to students via their electronic device of choice.
Electronic scholarly journals have driven their print-format predecessors to obsolescence, if not quite extinction, while e-books have become increasingly plentiful.
In 2012, U.S. academic libraries collectively held 252,599,161 e-books. This means that over the course of about a decade, U.S. academic libraries have acquired e-books equal to about one-fourth the total number of physical books, bound volumes of old journals, government documents and other paper materials acquired by those same libraries since 1638 – the year Harvard College established the first academic library in what is now the United States.
E-books are not only plentiful, they are popular with academic users (in spite of some shortcomings in usability). For example, data provided to the author show that when the University of California, San Diego made a collection of academic e-books available to students and faculty through the popular JSTOR interface, the usage numbers proved impressive.
In just under a year, UCSD students and faculty used 11,992 JSTOR e-books, racking up 59,120 views and 34,258 downloads. In response to user demand, the UCSD Library outright purchased over 3,100 of the titles offered via JSTOR, making those e-books a permanent part of the UCSD library collection.
Who needs the encyclopedia?
As with circulation numbers, reference questions asked of librarians in U.S. academic libraries have undergone a sharp decline – standing now at 56,000,000 per year, down 28.4 percent from 16 years ago. For the 60 largest U.S. academic libraries, the average number of reference transactions dropped from 6,056 per week in 1994 to 1,294 per week in 2012 (down 79 percent).
Average number of reference transactions per week for the 60 largest U.S. academic libraries: 1994-2012. Chart created by Donald A. Barclay, using data from the National Center for Education Statistics., CC BY
Today, students access information digitally. The Google app on their smartphones allows students to look up information they once would have found only in analog, library-owned reference sources. And as for that old reference warhorse, the printed encyclopedia – Britannica churned out its final set in 2010.
Further contributing to the decline of in-person reference service is the fact that students are increasingly able to consult with academic librarians via the Internet.
By 2012, 77 percent of U.S. academic libraries were offering reference services via email or web chat. Currently, over 400 academic libraries provide around-the-clock, chat-based reference service as members of OCLC’s 24/7 Reference Cooperative, a global library cooperative that provides shared technology services.
Given only the above numbers, the hasty conclusion would seem to be that everything is online and nobody uses academic libraries any more.
But not so fast.
Even while circulation and reference transaction numbers were tanking, the data show a steady increase in the number of people actually setting foot in academic libraries.
The cumulative weekly gate count for the 60 largest U.S. academic libraries increased nearly 39 percent from 2000 to 2012. Library gate count data for all U.S. institutions of higher education show a similar (38 percent) increase from 1998 to 2012.
Cumulative weekly gate count for the 60 largest U.S. academic libraries: 2000-2012. Chart created by Donald A. Barclay, using data from the National Center for Education Statistics., CC BY
So if students are not going to the academic library to access print collections or ask reference questions, why are they going at all?
The lure of the academic library
I believe that students are trekking to academic libraries because academic libraries have been actively reinventing themselves to meet the needs of today’s students.
Academic library square footage is increasingly being converted from space to house printed books to space for students to study, collaborate, learn and, yes, socialize.
Besides providing some of the last refuges of quiet in a noisy, distraction-filled world, academic libraries have taken such student-friendly steps as relaxing (or eliminating) longstanding prohibitions on food and drink, providing 24/7 study spaces and generally recreating themselves to be comfortable and friendly rather than cold and forbidding.
Examples of how forward-leaning academic libraries are attracting students include:
The Grand Valley State University Library’s Knowledge Market provides students with peer consultation services for research, writing, public speaking, graphic design, and analyzing quantitative data. Among a number of specialized spaces, the library offers rooms devoted to media preparation, digital collaboration, and presentation practice.
Library space is changing: three girls using a computer at San Jose library. San José Library, CC BY-SA
The libraries of North Carolina State University (NCSU) offer Makerspace areas where students get hands-on practice with electronics, 3D printing and scanning, cutting and milling, creating wearables, and connecting objects to the Internet of Things. In addition, NCSU students can visit campus libraries to make use of digital media labs, media production studios, music practice rooms, visualization spaces and presentation rooms, among other specialized spaces.
The Ohio State University Library Research Commons offers not only a Writing Center but also consultation services for copyright, data management plans, funding opportunities and human subjects research. Specialized spaces in the library include conference and project rooms, digital visualization and brainstorming rooms, and colloquia and classroom spaces.
For several generations, academic librarians were primarily preoccupied with the role of their library buildings as portals to information, print and later digital. In recent years, we have reawakened to the fact that libraries are fundamentally about people – how they learn, how they use information and how they participate in the life of a learning community. As a result, we are beginning to design libraries that seek to restore parts of the library’s historic role as an institution of learning, culture and intellectual community.
Any library, public or academic, able to live up to so important a role will never outlive its usefulness.
A professor shares her tuneful tips for helping ELLs learn what to expect from English.
Dr. Nancy Drescher is a professor at Minnesota State University in Mankato, and has taught both children and adult English language learners (ELLs) in the U.S. and abroad. In this interview, she offers best practices for teaching these students to read, understand structure, and gain background knowledge.
The Edvocate: You believe that simply teaching English vocabulary words and grammar is not the best way to go about teaching ELL students. If that’s not the best way, then what is?
Dr. Nancy Drescher: When it comes to teaching English to a non-native speaker, you first have to build context for the words in the learner’s mind. Rather than teaching a list of standalone words, it is more effective to teach vocabulary using collocations, idioms, and other common phrases. Being a good reader comes from knowing what to expect.
For instance, you would never ask someone for a jelly-and-peanut butter sandwich. It has all the right words, but a native speaker would never phase it that way. It would go against their expectations.
Since ELLs have no pre-built expectations for the language they’re learning, reading becomes a much longer process. They have to stop and process each word and its context individually instead of being able to view a text as a whole. Learning phrasing and how words fit within context helps ELLs build these expectations and facilitate their reading experience.
The Edvocate: So you’re saying this is necessary for reading, too, not just for speaking?
Dr. Drescher: Yes. Students coming from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds can have difficulty with reading because they are used to a different set of expectations, both in terms of how words go together and background experiences. Students who have grown up using standard English (that is the English expected in school) at home and who have experience similar to what teachers expect and naturally build on in their classrooms are at a distinct advantage when it comes to learning to read.
Building these expectations is a normal process of learning to read for any child, not just language learners. Adults often groan when their child asks to read the same book over and over again, but doing this is actually an important part of the process of building these language expectations. Hearing the same book over and over is comforting when children are in the midst of figuring out those expectations. Teachers then build on that initial experience with language structures, but when students come to school with different initial experiences (whether that is a completely different language or a non-standard variety) and their previously learned language doesn’t match that of the classroom and of books, it is much harder for teachers to make those connections and for students to make that transition.
One way teachers and students can make that transition a little easier is narrow reading. Narrow reading involves reading many books on one topic or in a series. The repetition builds expectations by way of building vocabulary and structures in context. This concept is applicable for language learners and for struggling readers in general. If a person reads 10 different books on a topic or in a series, each one will get progressively easier as students gain familiarity with the language and conceptual expectations related to that topic. Another way to build this language repetition is through music.
The Edvocate: Tell us a little more about how using music can help build these expectations you’re talking about.
Dr. Drescher: Educators have been using music in language teaching for years. Music can enhance a student’s ability to read, understand structure, and gain background knowledge. It also adds another learning style, which broadens the reach of the lesson being taught.
The Edvocate: How can music help enhance reading?
Dr. Drescher: Connecting music, language, and books makes language easier to remember. The repetitive nature of songs helps set linguistic expectations. An especially catchy song will remain in students’ heads long after the lesson has ended, enabling them to hold on to the information in an enjoyable format.
Music and songs can also make language learning enjoyable. This is especially helpful for younger children, but also true for adult learners. Songs don’t feel like a grammar drill. Music is something people do for fun, and every culture and group has its own songs. Music brings people together in a fun and engaging way.
The Edvocate: What sort of curriculum is necessary for teaching ELLs?
Dr. Drescher: A lot of times there isn’t a curriculum already in place for ELLs. The current push is to have inclusive classrooms, where ELL students and teachers integrate with mainstream classrooms. This makes it all the more important to find additional scaffolds and supports for students in these types of classrooms. These scaffolds will help everybody, but they are completely necessary for language learners.
The Edvocate: Are there any particular scaffolds you’d recommend?
Dr. Drescher: A few years ago, I started working with Cantata Learning. They create picture books and corresponding songs with educational content for pre-K–3 students. Cantata’s materials benefit language learners, but also mainstream students. Inspired by Cantata, I wrote a few connected lessons geared towards English language learners. The songs integrated well into lessons, and it was easy to find a song about a particular unit. That is the sort of thing I recommend. If we can bring in multiple ways for students to engage with the language we hope they will be able to use and the content we want them to learn without drilling and killing their love of books and learning, I think we will find the most success for all kids.
The Edvocate: What do you think is the key to teaching English language learners?
Dr. Drescher: You have to keep in mind, learning any language is challenging, but our culture sometimes treats these challenges differently depending on the language being learned. For instance, a child learning English as a second language is often seen as having a deficit when compared to other children. However, when a native English speaker is learning a second language, or is enrolled in a second language emersion school, this is often viewed as an impressive feat.
It’s important to remember that English language learners do have knowledge and experience in their own language and in the world. By learning English, they are taking on a second language in addition to the one they already know. They are used to a different set of expectations, and so ELL lessons need to meet learners where they are in order to build on what they already have.
“allocating the best teachers to the most challenging parts of a country; and providing teachers with the right mix of government incentives to remain in the profession and ensure all children are learning, regardless of their circumstances.”
It is clear we need good teachers, but just what makes for “teacher quality”? And can quality be systematically improved by public policy?
For 30 years I have been studying cultural expectations for what makes a good teacher, beginning with field work in a Tibetan refugee school and an ethnographic study of Japanese and American public schools conducted some years later. More recently, my colleague Alex Wiseman and I have been working on what researchers from around the world consider to be “teacher quality.”
The consensus is that teacher quality entails much more than just the way teachers deliver lessons in the classroom. Teacher quality is strongly affected by a teacher’s working conditions. Teachers working long hours, with low pay, in crowded schools cannot give each individual student the attention they need.
Simply raising the requirements for teacher certification, based on what has worked in some high-performing countries, is not effective. An effective policy requires changes at the level of teacher recruitment, teacher education and long-term support for professional development.
Quality is more than certification
Around the world, more than a dozen nations have recently engaged in efforts to rapidly reform their teacher education and certification systems. The United States, along with nations as diverse as France, India, Japan and Mexico, has sought to improve its educational system by reforming teacher certification or teacher education.
It is true that a teacher’s qualifications, experience, personality and instructional skills all play a role in contributing to “quality.” Teacher quality covers what teachers do outside the classroom: how responsive they are to parents and how much time they put into planning lessons or grading papers. Teaching certificates can make a difference toward ensuring teacher quality.
But that does not make for an effective policy. And here’s the problem: One, merely focusing on standards like certification is not enough. Two, the effect can vary by grade level or because of student background – so borrowing models from other countries is not the best strategy.
In the U.S., for example, a key part of the important legislation No Child Left Behind (NCLB)was to put a “qualified teacher” in every classroom. The law emphasized certification, a college degree and content specialization, but failed to identify teachers who knew how to implement reforms and who promoted critical thinking skills in their classrooms.
The law allows states to experiment with different types of teacher training academies and with measures of student progress other than just standardized tests.
Goal of American teachers different from Japanese
Moreover, teacher quality is context-dependent: What works in one country may not work in another, or even for another group of students.
Let’s take preschool or early elementary teachers as an example. At this age, many parents would look for teachers who are warm, caring and understand child development. But this, as we know, would change for high school students.
In high school, especially in college preparation courses, students and parents would expect teachers to focus on the lesson. The quality of their teaching would be judged by how well their students score on tests, not how well they are developing socially or emotionally.
Classroom goals vary: First grade English class in session in Japan. Colin Ryder, CC BY-NC-ND
Other than the age of the student, goals of the educational system would matter too. For example, American, Chinese and Japanese teachers take very different approaches to caring for small children and helping them learn basic academic skills. In their book, “Preschool in Three Cultures,” educational anthropologist Joe Tobin and others showed that Japanese preschool teachers are comfortable with classes of 20 students, and tend to tolerate noise and disorder that most American teachers would find uncomfortable.
By contrast, American teachers place great emphasis on one-on-one interactions between children and adults, especially in helping children learn to express their feelings. It is possible that a competent, “high-quality” teacher from Japan would likely feel incompetent and confused in a U.S. school, even if she was fluent in English.
Countries have their own challenges
That’s not all. National conditions impact teacher quality. In some nations, it is a struggle to retain good teachers and distribute them evenly.
For example, many low-income countries face challenges related to poverty, illness and labor shortages that create teacher shortages. Peter Wallet, a researcher at UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics, shows that in many countries, national governments struggle to find enough teachers to staff their schools. He writes:
“The impact of HIV and AIDS in Tanzania for example meant that in 2006 an estimated 45,000 additional teachers were needed to make up for those who had died or left work because of illness.”
The loss of so many teachers places many children at risk of having no access to quality teachers. This basic lack of qualified teachers has been identified by UNESCO as the major barrier to providing access to quality education for all the world’s children.
The fact is that teaching is complex work. Teachers must build trust, increase motivation, research new methods of teaching, engage parents or caregivers and be adept at the social engineering of the classroom so that learning is not disrupted.
Effective teacher policy has to have at least three levels: It must provide clear goals for teacher education and skill development, it must provide “support to local institutions for the education of teachers” and it must address national demands for high quality education.
And in order to develop teacher quality, nations need to do far more that “borrow” policies from high-scoring nations. Nations can learn from one another, but this requires a systematic exchange of information about sets of policies, not just identifying one promising approach.
The International Summit on the Teaching Profession, an annual event that began in New York in 2011, is one example of this kind of global exchange that brings together governments and teacher unions for a dialogue.
To be effective, reforms need to have the support and input of teachers themselves. And, national and global leaders need to create more ways for teachers to provide suggestions, or criticism, of proposed reforms.
Leaked cabinet papers seen by the BBC suggest that back when she was home secretary, Theresa May wanted schools to carry out immigration checks and withdraw school places offered to children of parents unlawfully in the UK.
The leaked documents show that the proposals were vehemently opposed by the then-education secretary Nicky Morgan, who wrote to then prime minister, David Cameron, to warn on the “practical and presentational” risks of such measures. Using rather anodyne jargon, Morgan’s letter questioned the “deprioritisation of illegal migrants” proposed by May.
May’s suggestion to “deprioritise” places for these children also implies that they had been in some way prioritised in the school admission system in the first place – which is simply not the case. The law guarantees the right to education for all children of “compulsory school age” irrespective of their lack of immigration status and of the circumstances that led to it. But our research shows that even though these legal provisions exist, access to them has become increasingly difficult for these children.
This is fuelled by contradictory and frequently changing rules and regulations, political announcements and cuts to public spending. Along with broader reforms in the provision of public and children’s services. And research also shows that children’s well-being is bearing the brunt of these aggressive enforcement measures, which are targeted at parents.
May’s department wanted schools to withdraw places for some children. Shutterstock
In the context of the Conservative Party’s overall immigration goal – to reduce net migration in the UK – excluding children’s access to schooling would actually have little impact on numbers. And our research shows this type of legislation could also end up targeting UK-born children.
Our study estimated that of the 120,000 undocumented migrant children living in the UK, a large majority are either born in the UK or migrated at an early age. UK-born children make up around half of the undocumented child population, and according to existing legislation are entitled to British citizenship after ten years of residence in the country. So legislation such as this would produce a generation of disenfranchised youth – who are non-deportable as they don’t have any connection with other countries and yet excluded from society.
Outposts of border control
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme about the leaked proposals, the head of Ofsted, Michael Wilshaw, said: “I’m amazed and shocked by it. Schools should not be used for border control.” Yet schools are increasingly being turned into outposts for immigration control and enforcement.
Social workers have a duty to report suspected violations of immigration rules to the Home Office. But fears of being reported to the Home Office makes children and parents wary of interacting with teachers and support workers in the school settings.
A social worker based in a school in West London described the situation as “dehumanising” as it put frontline workers who advise irregular migrants at risk of losing their jobs:
Because of the dehumanising system of the Home Office, people like us, social workers and teachers, are forced to, there is no other word, to treat people like animals really, like we can’t support them. I could lose my job if they find out that I’m supporting a young person.
Immigration watch
But the ideas in this leaked proposal are not particularly new. The recently discussed and then withdrawn proposal for ID checks on school pupils fell into the same category. It is was a model of intervention that has already been piloted in universities where – despite some occasional resistance – checks on visa attendance sheets and immigration inspections have become commonplace.
There is however another aspect of this story that deserves attention: the timing. The leak coincided with the publication of the latest Office of National Statics figures on net migration which showed that, under the watch of May, immigration to the UK hit record levels prior to the Brexit vote in June 2016.
The influx meant net migration remained at a near-record high of 335,000: more than three times the government’s target to reduce annual net migration to below 100,000 a year. The ONS figures are very bad news for May’s government as they question the PM’s ability to deliver on one of the main promises she has made since taking office – curbing immigration.
And not surprisingly, the newly appointed UKIP leader, Paul Nuttal, jumped on the opportunity to say that the figures “just go to show that you can’t trust the Tories to bring down immigration”, blaming the “abject failure” on the prime minister in particular.
UKIP’s newly elected leader Paul Nuttall. Reuters
The timing of a leak is rarely coincidental. Outrage by the liberal media at the idea of schools turning away undocumented children could actually serve as a badge of honour to the prime minister. It confirms her anti-immigration credentials to her core supporters.
So perhaps for them, another way of reading the BBC story is this: May was a lone voice in the discredited Cameron cabinet who was serious about cutting immigration. But she failed in getting net migration down because of people like Morgan, who, as the readers of the Daily Mail and The Sun would know well, is also a fervent Remainer.
Controlling immigration is a key pillar of May’s government, on which she is under huge pressure to deliver. Targeting children in school, or students at university offers an easy symbolic (and yet ultimately ineffective) point-scoring solutions. So it is likely we will see more of this in the weeks to come.
There are many benefits to knowing more than one language. For example, it has been shown that aging adults who speak more than one language have less likelihood of developing dementia.
Additionally, the bilingual brain becomes better at filtering out distractions, and learning multiple languages improves creativity. Evidence also shows that learning subsequent languages is easier than learning the first foreign language.
Unfortunately, not all American universities consider learning foreign languages a worthwhile investment.
Why is foreign language study important at the university level?
As an applied linguist, I study how learning multiple languages can have cognitive and emotional benefits. One of these benefits that’s not obvious is that language learning improves tolerance.
This happens in two important ways.
The first is that it opens people’s eyes to a way of doing things in a way that’s different from their own, which is called “cultural competence.”
The second is related to the comfort level of a person when dealing with unfamiliar situations, or “tolerance of ambiguity.”
Gaining cross-cultural understanding
Cultural competence is key to thriving in our increasingly globalized world. How specifically does language learning improve cultural competence? The answer can be illuminated by examining different types of intelligence.
Psychologist Robert Sternberg’sresearch on intelligence describes different types of intelligence and how they are related to adult language learning. What he refers to as “practical intelligence” is similar to social intelligence in that it helps individuals learn nonexplicit information from their environments, including meaningful gestures or other social cues.
Learning a foreign language reduces social anxiety. COD Newsroom, CC BY
Language learning inevitably involves learning about different cultures. Students pick up clues about the culture both in language classes and through meaningful immersion experiences.
Researchers Hanh Thi Nguyen and Guy Kellogg have shown that when students learn another language, they develop new ways of understanding culture through analyzing cultural stereotypes. They explain that “learning a second language involves the acquisition not only of linguistic forms but also ways of thinking and behaving.”
With the help of an instructor, students can critically think about stereotypes of different cultures related to food, appearance and conversation styles.
Dealing with the unknown
The second way that adult language learning increases tolerance is related to the comfort level of a person when dealing with “tolerance of ambiguity.”
Someone with a high tolerance of ambiguity finds unfamiliar situations exciting, rather than frightening. My research on motivation, anxiety and beliefs indicates that language learning improves people’s tolerance of ambiguity, especially when more than one foreign language is involved.
It’s not difficult to see why this may be so. Conversations in a foreign language will inevitably involve unknown words. It wouldn’t be a successful conversation if one of the speakers constantly stopped to say, “Hang on – I don’t know that word. Let me look it up in the dictionary.” Those with a high tolerance of ambiguity would feel comfortable maintaining the conversation despite the unfamiliar words involved.
Applied linguists Jean-Marc Dewaele and Li Wei also study tolerance of ambiguity and have indicated that those with experience learning more than one foreign language in an instructed setting have more tolerance of ambiguity.
What changes with this understanding
A high tolerance of ambiguity brings many advantages. It helps students become less anxious in social interactions and in subsequent language learning experiences. Not surprisingly, the more experience a person has with language learning, the more comfortable the person gets with this ambiguity.
And that’s not all.
Individuals with higher levels of tolerance of ambiguity have also been found to be more entrepreneurial (i.e., are more optimistic, innovative and don’t mind taking risks).
In the current climate, universities are frequently being judged by the salaries of their graduates. Taking it one step further, based on the relationship of tolerance of ambiguity and entrepreneurial intention, increased tolerance of ambiguity could lead to higher salaries for graduates, which in turn, I believe, could help increase funding for those universities that require foreign language study.
Those who have devoted their lives to theorizing about and the teaching of languages would say, “It’s not about the money.” But perhaps it is.
Language learning in higher ed
Most American universities have a minimal language requirement that often varies depending on the student’s major. However, students can typically opt out of the requirement by taking a placement test or providing some other proof of competency.
Why more universities should teach a foreign language. sarspri, CC BY-NC
In contrast to this trend, Princeton recently announced that all students, regardless of their competency when entering the university, would be required to study an additional language.
I’d argue that more universities should follow Princeton’s lead, as language study at the university level could lead to an increased tolerance of the different cultural norms represented in American society, which is desperately needed in the current political climate with the wave of hate crimes sweeping university campuses nationwide.
Knowledge of different languages is crucial to becoming global citizens. As former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan noted,
“Our country needs to create a future in which all Americans understand that by speaking more than one language, they are enabling our country to compete successfully and work collaboratively with partners across the globe.”
Considering the evidence that studying languages as adults increases tolerance in two important ways, the question shouldn’t be “Why should universities require foreign language study?” but rather “Why in the world wouldn’t they?”
Many South Africans were outraged by the recent announcement that for 2016, pupils in Grades 7 to 9 could progress to the next grade with only 20% in Mathematics.
The usual minimum has been 40%, provided that all other requirements for promotion are met. Pupils with less than 30% in Mathematics in grade 9 must take Mathematical Literacy (this involves what the Department of Basic Education calls “the use of elementary mathematical content” and is not the same as Mathematics) as a matric subject.
Public concern is understandable. South Africans should be deeply worried about the state of mathematics teaching and learning. The country was placed second from last for mathematics achievement in the latest Trends in International Maths and Science Study.
Research closer to home has shown that pupils, particularly from poorer and less well resourced schools, are under performing in mathematics relative to the curriculum outcomes. These learning deficits compound over time, which makes it increasingly difficult to address learning difficulties in mathematics in the higher grades.
All of this means that children and young people may be in Mathematics classes but are not learning. But the answer to this problem does not lie with making pupils repeat an entire grade because of poor mathematical performance. There’s extensive research evidence to suggest that grade repetition does more harm than good.
Repetition is not effective
Grade repetition is practised worldwide – despite there being very little evidence for its effectiveness. In fact, it can be argued that its consequences are mainly negative for repeating pupils. Grade repetition is a predictor of early school leaving, sometimes called “drop out”.
Pupils who repeat grades and move out of their age cohort become disaffected with school. They disengage from learning.
South Africa’s rates of grade repetition are high. Research by the Department of Basic Education shows that on average, 12% of all pupils from grades one to 12 repeat a year. The grades with the highest repetition rates are grade 9 (16.3%), grade 10 (24.2%) and grade 11 (21.0%).
And grade repetition is an equity issue. The Social Survey-CALS (2010) report found that black children are more likely to repeat grades than their white or Indian peers. This reflects the fracture lines that signal socioeconomic disadvantage in South Africa.
Repetition rates decrease as the education level of the household head increases. Poor access to infrastructural resources, like piped water and flush toilets, are associated with higher rates of grade repetition. Boys are more likely to repeat than girls. There’s also an uncertain link between pupil achievement and grade repetition, particularly for black learners in high schools.
So why does grade repetition persist?
Beliefs about the benefits of repetition
Schools and societies still believe in the value of making children repeat grades, despite evidence to the contrary.
A recent survey of 95 teachers in Johannesburg – which is currently under review for publication in a journal – showed how teachers believe the additional time spent in a repeated year allows pupils to “catch up” and be better prepared for the subsequent grade. This view is reflected in recent reportsthat teachers are against the new 20% concession which has stirred so much controversy. Their opposition is echoed by countless callers to talk shows, who all seem to assume that repeating subject content results in improved understanding.
But unless the reasons for a pupil’s misunderstanding of concepts are identified and addressed, any improvement is unlikely. Given that the deficits in mathematical understanding may stretch back to the foundation phase (Grades 1 – 3), it’s doubtful that merely repeating a grade in the senior phase is going to be sufficient for remediation.
And teachers may struggle to provide support to pupils repeating a grade. Research conducted in South Africa reveals that teachers lack confidence in their ability to teach pupils who experience learning difficulties. They would prefer to refer such pupils to learning support specialists and psychologists who are seen to have more expertise.
Many of the teachers we surveyed believe that grade repetition solves problems intrinsic to pupils. Immaturity is seen as one reason for learning difficulties and teachers expect that the repeated year compensates for this. Other teachers regard the threat of retention as a means to motivate pupils who are not sufficiently diligent or who are “slow” or “weak”. When learning difficulties are seen as being intrinsic to pupils, it is less likely that factors within the education system will be considered as the cause of barriers to learning.
Failing pupils is not the solution
Poor achievement in mathematics is not going to be solved by making pupils repeat their grade. Repetition effectively makes pupils and their families pay an additional – financial and emotional – cost for the system’s failure.
Repetition because of poor mathematics achievement during the senior phase compounds the bleak outlook for these pupils. They already have a minimal grasp of mathematics, which denies them access to Science, Technology, Engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects and careers. Then they’re also at risk of leaving school early and joining the ranks of the unemployed.
The Department of Basic Education’s 20% concession indicates that it knows grade repetition won’t achieve much. The public outcry should not be that these learners are being given a “free pass” and don’t deserve to be promoted. Instead, civil society needs to hold the government accountable for addressing the crisis in mathematics teaching and learning across all grades – and particularly in the crucial primary school years.
And the list of what teachers “should” or “could” be trained in is now very long. But while each call for training has a justified and reasonable argument behind it, we cannot escape the fact that initial teacher training cannot deliver fully trained, for every eventuality, teachers.
The general postgraduate route into teaching in the UK is 36 weeks long. Of those weeks, 24 are spent “on the job” in school – which leaves 12 weeks for all the rest. This isn’t a great deal of time when you consider those 12 weeks are when students will largely learn the skills required to actually be a teacher. This includes classroom management and lesson planning, along with how to deliver practical demonstrations and organise activities for pupils as well as subject knowledge for teaching.
Of course, there are also the fast track teacher training programmes like Teach First. Under these types of training programmes, high-flying graduates are placed in difficult schools with minimal initial training and ongoing support.
But the danger is that such an approach promotes a view that subject knowledge combined with altruism and social justice is all that is needed. And it is probably with this in mind, that Teach First has recently extended its training to a two-year postgraduate diploma model. Previously, their model included a one year Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) followed by a year studying educational leadership.
The 21st century teacher
The length of initial teacher training varies from country to country. In Finland and Portugal, for example, it is a master’s level programme taking about five years in total. While in Japan, teaching qualifications are graded, with the highest grades needed to teach in higher secondary schools – this also takes around five year’s of training.
As a teacher trainer, I also regularly get fresh demands that teachers must be trained far better in classroom management and behaviour management. Related issues are also highlighted as special cases requiring training for teachers. This includes dealing with time-wasting in classrooms – such as children using mobile phones. Or the more serious issues of how to deal with bullying, as well as knowing how to deal with racism.
Then there have been calls to train teachers in how to exploit computer technology and games. And to cap it all off, apparently teachers should also be trained how to teach left-handed children. All this, on top of the day job of actually teaching their subject, marking papers and setting homework.
Time for a rethink?
So although many of the above calls and demands may have good reason to be implemented, exactly how and when they are introduced needs a lot of further thought – because trying to cram it all into 36 weeks just won’t work.
Teachers can’t be all things to all people. Pexels.
Of course, teachers should be trained – it is just a case of figuring out what else “should” and “could” be included in this initial training. Although that said, for Michael Gove it wasn’t that obvious – he changed the law to allow untrained teachers to be hired in academies and free schools. Still, it could be worse. In the US, there were genuine calls for all teachers to carry guns, and to be trained to shoot in order to protect the children – some states already legally allow this to happen.
Perhaps in the UK, then, it is time we looked again at the demands of teacher training, and rethink how long it should take, along with what exactly initial training should cover. Because things can’t carry on as they are.
And by working out how we want future training to look, we can decide what “core initial teacher training” must involve – and at the same time work to ensure there is an entitlement for, and ongoing provision of, training for all qualified teachers.
The Independent Schools Council, a body representing 1,200 private schools, is offering to provide 10,000 annual free places to low-income pupils. As we prepare for an extended debate over the benefits of getting deprived children into private schools, we would do well to look back at the last government-backed attempt to do this: the long-gone Assisted Places Scheme.
The first education policy that Margaret Thatcher announced after she came to power in 1979, the scheme saw more than 75,000 pupils receive publicly-funded and means-tested assistance to attend some of the most selective and prestigious private schools in England and Wales over the course of 17 years.
The scheme was highly controversial, and when New Labour came to power in 1997 it was quickly abolished – and the arguments over its merits are now set to resume. They generally revolve around three main questions: whether it reached the right students, whether those students actually benefited from it, and whether it hurt nearby state-maintained schools.
Even with the benefit of hindsight, these are still complex questions. Here’s a brief outline of some evidence we can use to answer them.
#1: Did the scheme reach the right children?
One of the main criticisms of the scheme was that it didn’t reach the right pupils. While it was often framed as an attempt to “rescue” bright children from working class families and disadvantaged communities, the main criterion for eligibility, other than passing the school’s entrance examination, was financial need.
This meant the policy was significantly “colonised” by parents who might have been suffering short-term financial hardship (often because of divorce), but who were in many ways quite culturally and economically advantaged.
An early study of the scheme in 1989 found that fewer than 10% of those with an assisted place had fathers in manual jobs, whereas 50% had fathers in middle-class jobs. Almost all the employed mothers of assisted place pupils were also in middle-class jobs.
In general, it became clear that the majority of children who received assistance came from families with relatively strong educational inheritances, meaning the gap between what they’d have achieved without assisted places and what they managed with them was probably not as wide as imagined.
#2: Did pupils who received assisted places actually benefit?
There’s no straightforward answer to this one, but there’s little doubt that many individuals did benefit measurably from the scheme.
My colleagues and I have tracked the careers of a cohort of assisted place-holders over the last 30 years, and have found that for many of them, the scheme provided access to learning opportunities and experiences that they might not otherwise have had. In terms of qualifications, simple comparison of GCSE and A-level results revealed that our assisted place holders did better than our state-educated respondents, and better than might have been predicted on the basis of background socio-economic and educational inheritance variables.
But the academic achievement of those who held assisted places varies widely. The place-holders who saw the highest gains in qualifications were from middle-class backgrounds. The advantages for those from working-class backgrounds were less clear cut, and overall these pupils did worse than might be expected. This is largely because these pupils were disproportionately likely to have dropped out school before they were 18.
It seems these students found it difficult to thrive in the more socially exclusive environments of elite private schools. And while the degree results of assisted place-holders compare favourably with their state-educated counterparts, they were less likely to have completed their studies. Nearly one in ten dropped out of or failed their university courses.
In general, we concluded that if children from disadvantaged backgrounds stayed on at school and at university, they did well. However, the odds of these students “dropping out” were high.
#3: How did it affect neighbouring schools?
This is perhaps the most difficult question of all to answer. There is already considerable social segregation between many state-maintained schools, and it’s impossible to know what choices parents might have made had the Assisted Places Scheme not been available.
It might be argued that the impact was minimal, especially if the scheme benefited those who might have sent their children to private school anyway (as was often suggested – see question #1). The number of assisted places certainly wasn’t large enough to have any significant system-wide effect on admissions statistics. But the scheme’s ideological impact was perhaps more significant than the numbers of pupils involved. Simply by virtue of being in place, it sent a clear message that state-maintained non-selective schools are unable to meet the needs of the academically able.
Overall, then, the scheme’s history is a chequered one. Although individual schools and students did benefit, there’s plenty of evidence that this 30-year-long experiment was hardly an unqualified triumph. If the Independent Schools Council’s latest proposal is taken up and the government commits to once again helping poor and deprived pupils into private schools, the Assisted Places Scheme provides clear benchmarks for success.
Any new scheme must serve the people it’s actually meant to serve, and any schools that participate need to find ways of making students from disadvantaged backgrounds feel like they belong. And more than that, any such scheme has to be careful what message it’s sending about the state sector, where the overwhelming majority of eligible children will still spend their school years.
State and local lawmakers have put policies in place to address and prevent bullying. Many schools too have implemented interventions to improve school climate to reduce bullying behaviors.
Despite these efforts, in my research and experiences in schools as a counselor educator and school counselor, I have found bullying based on bias continues to be an issue in school settings.
“Bias-based” or “identity-based” bullying, defined as students being bullied specifically based on their race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, disability, religion, socioeconomic status or weight, is far more difficult to recognize or address when compared to traditional forms of bullying.
Teachers too may fail to notice and address such behaviors and, at times, may even be involved in them.
Response to bullying
Bias-based bullying incidents involve explicit and implicit forms of racism, sexism and other forms of prejudice or discrimination. They are not only harmful emotionally, socially and psychologically to students, but are also a violation of a student’s civil rights.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights urges schools to be vigilant in the identification and prevention of bias-based bullying and provides guidance on specific laws that prohibit bias based harassment such as Title IX, a federal law, that prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender or sexual orientation, Section 504 or Title II, which protects individuals with disabilities, and Title IV, which protects individuals from harassment based on religion, ethnicity or shared ancestry.
Despite this protection, however, bias-based bullying behaviors persist and can go unnoticed, or even be endorsed, by teachers in the field.
For example, a recent study investigated physical education teachers failing to respond to bullying behaviors against students being targeted due to their weight. Studies have also highlighted teachers failing to respond to students being bullied due to their sexual orientation.
Failure to recognize bias-based bullying behaviors can lead to tragic consequences.
Ryan Halligan, a 13-year-old student who committed suicide in October 7, 2003, was targeted primarily with homophobic slurs. A more recent case was that of Kennedy LeRoy, a teen who committed suicide in June 2015 after he was bullied partly due to having Asperger’s syndrome.
Bullying by teachers
Worse still, some students report being victimized not just by their peers but by their teachers as well.
In a study titled The Youth Voice Project published by my colleagues, Charisse Nixon and Stan Davis, students in special education testified that their teachers were more abusive toward them than toward their peers in general ed.
Although this information may seem surprising, teacher involvement in bullying students extends beyond special education settings to general and alternative education settings.
Although most schools are preparing educators and staff to recognize and respond to bullying, behaviors that are based on bias are often overlooked.
The results of a study I conducted indicated that educators may lack the knowledge of and skills to respond to bias-based bullying.
I investigated perceptions of undergraduate students in teacher education programs. I asked participants about their perceptions of their role when faced with a situation involving bias based bullying.
Most people consider themselves outsiders and do not respond to bullying. Denise Krebs
Approximately 50 percent of participants considered themselves to be outsiders or not involved in situations involving bias-based bullying. Additionally, participants believed that they lacked the knowledge and skills to respond to situations involving bullying and prejudice.
There was one encouraging finding, however. After participating in a full-day workshop that included bullying prevention and prejudice reduction, participants reported significant changes in attitude. Their knowledge and skills to respond to situations involving bullying and prejudice improved. And they also changed how they perceived their role – from considering themselves to be outsiders (57 percent pre-workshop, 20 percent post-workshop) to defenders of victims of bias based bullying (20 percent pre-workshop; 78 percent post-workshop).
Training teachers
So how can schools respond to bias-based bullying?
School administrators can include questions regarding bias-based bullying on their school environment, assessments and evaluations. This can help schools gain a better understanding of what forms of bias-based bullying are most common in their schools. Training teachers to recognize and respond to bias-based bullying could also improve the likelihood that they would intervene when they saw bullying.
These initiatives can be effective when implemented as a part of an intervention that includes the whole school, parents and the community.
