4 research outputs found
Is self-assessment in religious education unique?
No full textThis paper addresses the question: is self-assessment in religious education unique? It first presents an overview of some challenges for assessment from subject differences, and then reviews the generic literature on self-assessment. It builds on earlier empirical research on self-assessment in religious education, carried out in an English state secondary school (Fancourt 2010); this was used to propose a variant of self-assessment which is tailored to the demands of religious education – reflexive self-assessment. Its implications for more general understandings of the relationship between subject pedagogy and self-assessment are discussed, especially the recognition of values not only in religious education but in other subjects too, reinforcing the need to develop subject-specific variants of self-assessment that reflect the breadth of learning outcomes
Self assessment in religious education
No full textThis research investigates the nature of pupil self-assessment in religious education. It considers the implications of theories of self-assessment as assessment for leaming for self-reflection in pedagogies of pluralistic religious education, and vice versa.
Assessment for learning: Research on assessment has claimed that selfassessment is essential in formative assessment, to combat the negative effects of summative assessment. Other recent research has considered the situated nature of classroom practice. How would these classroom factors affect selfassessment in RE?
Policy and pedagogy In religious education: The history of the current policy documents is analysed using policy scholarship, and the tension is revealed between measurable intellectual skills and a wider understanding of the place of religious education in developing tolerance and respect, both in the England and Wales, and internationally. Are policy and assessment properly aligned?
Practitioner research: Virtue theory is developed as a research paradigm for practitioner research for professional development. Rigour is established through a reflexive use of qualitative, largely ethnographic methods, especially group interviews. Analysis includes consideration of pupils' assessment careers.
Reflexive self-assessment: As a result of analyzing the data on assessment and religious education an original form of self-assessment is proposed. Reflexive self-assessment is a subject-specific model of self-assessment, linked to interpretive approaches. This harmonizes classroom self-assessment of both intellectual skills and intercultural values. The classroom conditions necessary to allow it to develop are examined. The implications of this for theories of self-assessment, learning autonomy and current policies of religious education are considered.
Finally, the research is reviewed, notably the implications for researching and teaching, and future developments. The quality of the research is defended, in terms of significance, originality and rigour
A field of practise or a mere house of detention? : the asylum and its integration, with special reference to the county asylums of Yorkshire, c.1844-1888
No full textThe nineteenth century witnessed a continuous growth in both the number of lunatic
asylums, and in the numbers of people held within them. For many, contemporaries,
and more recent commentators alike, the period was marked by the growing failure of
the asylum as a curative institution. The reasons cited for this failure have varied, and
at different times attention has focussed on a number of key themes. The purpose of
this thesis is to critically examine each of these themes and to assess the expectations
of those who built the asylum, those who worked in it, those who lived near it, and
perhaps most importantly of all, those who used it. As such, the six chapters examine
the asylum management and their motivations; the social separation of the insane
patient, and how this was affected by external factors; the asylum's relationship with
the various Poor Law authorities; the motivations that the families of the insane had
for committing, and not committing their kin; the treatment regimes within the
asylums, and how they differed between the sexes; and the central role that the
asylum attendants had in caring for the insane.
In each of these areas, perceptions of the asylums' supposed failure will be called into
question, and there will be a continuing consideration of its function as both a
custodial and a curative institution. Recent studies of extra-institutional care have
emphasised that treatment in the asylum remained just one option in the `mixed
economy of care'. Building on this, this thesis contests that the continued growth and
development of the asylum system could not rest on its custodial function alone.
Conversely, it shows that its ability to `cure' significant numbers of people continued
to be a significant factor throughout the period
The uses of silence : a twentieth-century preoccupation in the light of fictional examples, 1900-1950
No full textA striking feature of twentieth-century Western cultural history was a
preoccupation with silence. This thesis is a survey of the phenomenon across a
broad range of literary and theoretical discourses actively engaged in the period
in exploring and exploiting silence's expressive and philosophical potential. Its
focus, and unifying principle, is the dynamic resourcefulness of the motif-the
diversity of its uses and significations. The meaning of silence shifts according to
its context and the discourse deploying it. By analysing an array of novels and
theoretical formulations-by writers as diverse as James, Chopin, Conrad, H. D.,
Forster, Lawrence, Faulkner, and Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Blanchot, Hassan,
Macherey, Irigaray, Spivak, Derrida-the mobility of silence as a construct is
exposed.
Silence is identified in the fiction of the period 1900-1950, and its
implications are assessed in the light of the various ways in which its uses were
understood and interpreted by twentieth-century theorists. Theory provides a
heuristic device for the comprehension of the fiction selected for scrutiny whilst
further highlighting the extent of the past century's dedication to the motif.
Fiction and theory are regarded as two different manifestations of a fascination
with silence: fiction dramatizes a commitment to the motif which comes to be
formally registered in theoretical discourse as the century progresses.
After an introductory chapter outlining the expanse of the phenomenon to
be studied, the thesis is divided into two parts illustrating the discrete
implications attaching to the motif: 'Social Silences' and 'Ontological Silences'.
The project questions whether the multiplicity of silence's usage may work to
depotentiate its signifying power; in particular, whether its role in abstract
'ontological' formulations diminishes its force for emancipatory 'social'
discourses. In conclusion, by means of the synchronic organization of the thesis,
silence's import is shown to lie in its resourcefulness rather than in any intrinsic
characteristic it might be thought to possess
