Urban Comprehensive School Research Articles

Information Technology and the Walls of the Mind: Developments in one Urban Comprehensive School

The working assumption adopted was that information technology (IT) effectively managed, would prove to be a means of enabling more students to access the power of information. Discusses a range of issues: resources, special projects, staff involvement and training. Three strategies have now been developed: response to expressed needs; playtime; and enlightened opportunism. IT qualifications are now being attained and the school is involved in pioneering work in virtual reality. Argues that, with appropriate resources, time and training, staff in schools can use IT to promote learning as a continuing and liberating process.

Managing Reform: Lessons from Urban High Schools

ABSTRACT American high schools present an extremely difficult, nearly intractable setting for serious educational reform efforts. Yet such efforts can succeed. This article reports results from a survey of 179 urban comprehensive high schools that were successfully implementing change programs based on effective schools principles. All schools encountered problems of implementation. Larger‐scale, instructionally‐oriented, and longer‐lasting programs induced more problems. Problems were only moderated, not eliminated, by good‐quality planning. Given the problem‐richness of change efforts, the major determinant of successful implementation was good problem‐coping. It was made more likely by the presence of consensus (shared vision), support of key stakeholders in and out of the school, planning quality, external assistance, and administrative time spent. Case studies showed that the presence of an empowered change management group aided all these critical factors. Schools with the most impact (defined as st...

The Pass Survey: school‐based preferences of 500 + adolescent consumers

Abstract Survey sheets requiring three responses, written in order of preference, to each of 10 items regarding various aspects of school, were administered to 595 secondary school students attending three rural and four urban comprehensive schools. Data were assembled from the highest preference responses only, and compiled into three levels of rank‐order for incentive preferences regarding good behaviour, incentive preferences regarding good work, preferences for teacher support of good behaviour, preferences for teacher support of good work, observed teacher qualities, projected teacher qualities, preferred changes to the school environment, and reasons for attending school. Results revealed that an almost universal level of support existed for the use of incentives linked directly to good social behaviour and or academic performance. Overall, social outcomes were preferred for good behaviour, and tangible outcomes were preferred for good schoolwork. However, age, sex, and ability effects provided some...

The Role of Principal as Leader: Analysis of Variation in Leadership of Urban High Schools

AbstractThe role of the principal as leader has been a subject of considerable debate and research in education. Many kinds of programs are designed to improve principals’ leadership capacity and skills. This study examines the leadership behavior and activities currently found among urban high school principals. Interviews were conducted with principals and teachers in a national sample of urban comprehensive high schools. Data were also collected on school size, student composition, and district centralization of decisions. The findings show that principals differ considerably in the degree of leadership they provide in six areas of potential school leadership. Very few were rated as strong leaders in all the areas, but in a minority of urban high schools, principals have taken the initiative to provide leadership in areas such as staff development, involving staff in planning, and improving instruction. The findings also show that district-level and principal leadership are positively related in some a...

The Practice of Pastoral Care in an Urban Comprehensive School

The Practice of Pastoral Care in an Urban Comprehensive School

The Initial Perceptions and Reactions of Staff on the Announcement of a Policy of Institutional Self-Evaluation

This paper seeks to examine the perceptions and reactions of senior colleagues within a large mixed urban comprehensive school to the innovation of a policy of institutional self-evaluation known as Departmental Review. The policy was innovated in September 1977 and continued to be pursued until late 1982. The research was conducted in the period 1980--2.

Gender Roles at Home and School

Abstract Parents of 116 first‐year pupils at an urban comprehensive school were studied by questionnaire and interview. They were asked about their educational and occupational aspirations for their children, their views on sexual equality and their children's out‐of‐school activities. Educational aspirations were found to be high, with little differentiation between the sexes. Parents were enthusiastic about their daughters studying physical science and neutral about craft subjects. Occupational aspirations were also high and although they tended to be sex‐stereotyped, parents were found to be generally supportive of non‐traditional choices. Class differences were few. Most parents were in favour of working mothers, equal pay and men helping with housework. However these egalitarian attitudes coexisted with more traditional assumptions about male breadwinners and a woman's main responsibility being to her children. Parents’ own domestic labour and that which they required of their children was strongly s...

An Experimental Evaluation of a Direct Instruction Programme (Corrective Reading) with Remedial Readers in a Comprehensive School

A Direct Instruction approach to remedial reading (Corrective Reading Programme) was evaluated in an urban Comprehensive school over two school years. First year remedial readers were randomly allocated to one experimental and two control groups. Groups were matched for sex. A similar procedure was followed in the second study carried out with the following group of first year remedial readers. In the first three months of the first study all groups were monitored while receiving the school's usual remedial reading programme. They made comparable gains during this baseline period. Covariance analysis indicated that in the first study the experimental group and control group I (a ‘novelty’ programme) made significantly greater gains, in accuracy and comprehension, than control group 2 (the usual remedial reading programme). Findings from the second study confirmed the suggestion that gains for the experimental group in the first study were partly due to ‘novelty’ effects. Both experimental groups developed...

The Secular Values of Adolescents

Abstract The study reported in this article was an investigation into the influence of parents, teachers, peers and other groups on the secular values of adolescents, who were differentiated on the basis of social class, particularly as they related to achievement and aspiration. Other influences such as type of school, church attendance and family size were also considered. Respondents were pupils drawn from the sixth forms of three mixed, urban comprehensive schools in working‐class areas of the Midlands. Two of the schools were under denominational control and one under the control of the LEA. It was hypothesised that the values of adolescents are more traditional than those they attribute to their peers and other teenagers and that value differences follow social class and religious divisions. The findings support neither a youth culture nor a class culture model of adolescent value orientation. Religious and social class factors appear to be more influential at the community rather than the individual level.

THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN INTROVERSION‐EXTRAVERSION, NEUROTICISM AND PERFORMANCE IN SCHOOL EXAMINATIONS

Summary. The Junior Maudsley Personality Inventory was given to samples of children from an urban comprehensive school (138) and a boys' public school (40). In addition, the General Anxiety Scale for children and a reminiscence test were administered in the comprehensive school. Both I.Q. measures and terminal examination results were taken from the school record cards. A teacher‐rating of Extraversion‐Introversion was obtained from the public school.The results indicated that Extraversion, neuroticism and I.Q. were statistically unrelated and that there was a positive correlation between stable Introversion and attainment in school examinations. High or even moderate neuroticism or general anxiety were not advantageously related to attainment and the Yerkes‐Dodson law was not detected. Reminiscence scores were negatively related to attainment which is in the predicted direction. An analysis of the mean I.Q. and Extraversion scores for promoted and demoted children showed that the former were significantly introvert whilst demoted children tended to be extravert. The public school sample showed some unusual personality trends and some teacher‐ratings at this school seemed reasonably sound.

A Study of Difficulty Levels of Selected Types of Fallacies in Reasoning and their Relationships to the Factors of Sex, Grade Level, Mental Age, and Scholastic Standing

EDUCATORS HAVE long been in general agreement concerning the desirability of teaching for improvement in the ability to reason critic ally and rigorously. Despite this agreement, however, it is obvious that much more can and should be done in this area of such importance in a democratic society. This study was designed in an effort to contribute further informa tion toward the achievement of the above named objectives. It involved (1) the construction of two forms of a new test, based on the ability to recognize printed statements of fallacies in reasoning, (2) the use of this test in a survey of 297 high-school students in grades ten, eleven, and twelve in an urban comprehensive high school, and (3) a demonstration of the teachability of the general content of the test. The Fallacy Recognition Test was constructed in two parallel forms, A and B, of fifty items each. These fifty items consisted of three simple warm-up items, eighteen distractor items, and twenty-nine scored items. The scored items were examples of fallacies in reason ing as selected from over one hundred books on logic, and edited with respect to reading level and content material to fit the high-school pop ulation surveyed. The two forms of the test were administered to two groups, a sur vey group of 297 high-school students in grades ten, eleven, and twelve, and also an experimental group of thirty-two high-school students, members of a class not involved in the survey. The survey group was tested at weekly intervals for three weeks, the first two weeks with Forms A and B, the third week with the Thur stone Primary Mental Abilities Test, Intermediate Form. The school records of these students were examined for scholastic honor point ra tios. The experimental group was also tested using Forms A and B, but was given one forty-minute class period of general instruction about reasoning problems between the two testing periods, the entire experi ment taking only three days.