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What is BeCaL | Why should I use BeCaL | How do I use BeCaL | Section-specific Help

What is BeCaL?

Purpose

BeCaL is the Belief, Culture and Learning Information Gateway. BeCaL provides a simplified means of finding selected quality resources that are relevant to the work of academics, practitioners and HE students who are interested in the issues of worldview, belief and values that inform educational theory, policy and practice.

The criteria for selection of the resources fall under two headings; scope and quality. The scope criteria for BeCaL resources (a definition of the field) may be found in the Bibliography Scope Policy and in the Database Scope Policy. The quality criteria for Becal resources may be found in the Bibliography Quality Selection Criteria and the Database Quality Selection Criteria.

Summary of the content of each section

There are four parts to BeCaL:

Library

The Library is a growing collection of citations of papers, books and journal articles which are considered relevant to our field by subject specialists. The majority of items include an abstract or review. Journal articles include a link to the publisher's journal home page where this is known. The Library is searchable by author, title, abstract.

Toolkit

The Toolkit is a collection of details of carefully selected resources for school teachers and leaders who are interested in Values Education. These resources are provided by specialist writers and publishers and by school leaders. Each resource item has a printable sample which is useable either in the classroom or for professional reflection.

Datapool

The Datapool contains details of carefully selected internet based resources (services and documents) which are regularly updated and added to by members of the project team, following the Datapool Scope Policy and Datapool Quality Selection Criteria. The Datapool is browseable and searchable by keyword and phrase.

Learning Centre

The Learning Centre relates to Education and Values. The process described here will help in developing your own whole school approach to values in education. It also introduces you to practical ways of promoting SMSC across the whole curriculum and implementing the citizenship curriculum.

Why should I use BeCaL?

There are many good reasons to use BeCaL, including

1. a simplified means of finding relevant Internet and text-based resources

2. all the resources are carefully selected by specialist academics and practitioners

3. the collections are continually updated

How do I use BeCaL?

Navigation

The BeCaL site is easy to navigate. The top bar is present on every page and allows you to rapidly go to the main page of each of the four sections. Selecting Home from this top bar will always take you back to the BeCaL home page. The bottom, text-based bar is also present on every page and provides a quick way to access the feedback and resource suggestion facilities. It also allows you to get back to this help page from anywhere in the site.

Section-specific Help

Library

The items in the Library have been provided by leading institutions, specialist individuals or selected publishers. Currently, only English language texts are included (with a very few exceptions).

The Library is organised by Author name, Text title, Date of Publication, Publisher and by Journal, Conference or Thesis as appropriate. In addition most items in the Library have an abstract or review.

A simple search by keyword such as 'school' or 'values' or 'power' can yield many results and more focussed searching can be achieved by 3 methods:

• using author and one or two keywords;
• combining the keywords with the 3 different 'operators':
  'AND', 'OR', 'AND NOT'
• restricting the author/keyword search to titles only;

Toolkit

The resources in the Toolkit are browse-able and search-able. To browse the resources first select one of the 3 methods of ordering: by Name; by Curriclum Subject; by Target user Age range (based on UK Key Stages) using the radio buttons. Then press the 'Browse' button. Alternatively, to search the resources, enter a keyword into the search box. Note that you can restrict the search to particular curriculum subjects or target user age ranges using the drop down boxes. Then press the 'Search' button.

The next page shows you a summary of the first 10 resources; the link 'Next Results' will show you the next 10 resources. Each resource summary shows the name of the resource which is a link to a detailed description of that resource.

Each resource is detailed, with a summary description, intended user type, contact details and samples. In a few cases the sample is actually the whole resource. The format of the sample does vary from one resource to another. Currently the formats utilised are:

Further resources are added to the Toolkit as they become available.

Datapool

This database of Internet based resources contains details of selected services and documents which fall within the Datapool Scope Policy. Each item in the database consists of information about the resource, including: title, description, keywords, type of resource and location (URL).

The Datapool is continually updated and added to. It should be remembered that web based services and documents are themselves periodically updated and it is often worthwhile revisiting periodically.

The database is browseable by category and searchable by keyword or phrase. Use of two or more keywords will yield more focussed results.

Learning Centre

The process we offer in the Learning Centre for Education and Values has seven steps. You can enter the process at any point, but many schools find it helpful to start with their vision and values. Click one of the coloured boxes, or the red arrow to begin. Each step contains:

1. a summary of the key ideas;

2. an interactive 'How To' section, which aims to help you engage with the ideas;

3. resources to download to help you in the process;

4. suggestions for further reflection.

To help you get the most out of the strategies and resources look out for links to a mind map, scratchpad, share resources tool and more at each step

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