100 key research questions for the post‐2015 development agenda

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) herald a new phase for international development. This article presents the results of a consultative exercise to collaboratively identify 100 research questions of critical importance for the post‐2015 international development agenda. The final shortlist is grouped into nine thematic areas and was selected by 21 representatives of international and non‐governmental organisations and consultancies, and 14 academics with diverse disciplinary expertise from an initial pool of 704 questions submitted by 110 organisations based in 34 countries. The shortlist includes questions addressing long‐standing problems, new challenges and broader issues related to development policies, practices and institutions. Collectively, these questions are relevant for future development‐related research priorities of governmental and non‐governmental organisations worldwide and could act as focal points for transdisciplinary research collaborations.     

A Law to Protect, a Law to Prevent: contextualising disability legislation in China

Disability-related legislation in the People's Republic of China has gone largely unrecognised in the North, with the exception of the Maternal and Infant Health Care Law. Failure to contextualise the law has resulted in a simplistic presentation of the Chinese government's response to disability and impairment. This paper takes a first step towards redressing that imbalance. Recent disability legislation is outlined. The emergence of eugenicstyle policies in China is then reconsidered, with reference to the history of Chinese eugenics, the national interests of the current Chinese government and the internationalisation of disability. The complexity of the Chinese government's response re-opens the debate on the place of prevention within a politics of disablement.     

Gender and work orientations in conditions of job insecurity

This paper explores women's and men's work orientations in conditions of job insecurity, arguing that it is time to move beyond essentalist conceptions of work orientations and central life interests in order to understand the significance of paid work in people's lives. Data from a qualitative study are presented which show that the significance of paid work and the priority given to home and work are affected by experiences of job insecurity, changing domestic circumstances and stage in the life cycle and that this is the case for both women and men. Conversely, the significance of paid work can affect how job insecurity is experienced and its impact on individuals and their families. The assumption that men's work orientations are homogeneous and that work is their central life interest is not supported by the findings presented here and it is argued that the significance of work in men's and women's lives is more variable than has hitherto been recognized. To capture this variability it is time to move away from the acrimony of the debate over women's work orientations and notions of a central life interest which underpin it.     

Methods Used with a High Ability Group

Teaching for social justice in a standards-driven social studies classroom can be challenging. However, the authors believe that there does not have to be a choice between meeting standards versus meeting the needs of students. Through semistructured interviews with four current social studies practitioners, the authors found similarities in the language the teachers used to describe the role of standards in their classrooms, teachers' perceptions of context as being important to the tension between teaching for social justice and teaching to standards, and the ways that perception impacted how they negotiated that tension. The authors offer social studies teachers an alternate conceptual frame for viewing social justice instruction in terms of methods rather than content.     

Preventing failure at school

This paper considers early educational interventions aimed at preventing school failure. It begins with a typology of prevention and intervention, then goes on to consider four specific examples of preventive interventions all aimed at avoiding or alleviating academic failure at school. (1) The High Scope pre-school programme for disadvantaged children aimed at providing a ‘better start at school'. (2) Reading Recovery, a targeted intervention aimed at getting children who show early reading difficulties ‘back on course'. (3) A Focused Literacy Programme for improving the reading of all children in disadvantaged neighbourhoods of the inner city. (4) ‘Parent involvement' programmes to improve the reading of all children in primary school through support for literacy at home. Each of the intervention strategies is described and criticised in terms of effectiveness, acceptability and generalisation. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.