The search for a model of effective inclusive practice through the Young Enterprise Scheme

Many practitioners are now grappling with the practical realities involved in collaborations between mainstream and special schools. Colin Gladstone is a teacher at Greenside, a special school in Hertfordshire. In this article he describes his experience of running a Young Enterprise Scheme project linking teenage students with severe learning difficulties with students from a mainstream secondary school. Colin Gladstone used a Best Practice Research Scholarship (BPRS) and his MEd studies to carry out sustained research into the processes and outcomes of this project named, by the students, 'The Green Team'. The project was clearly a success on many levels, promoting teamwork, collaboration and friendship between the students. It led to accreditation for some and enhanced personal autonomy for others. Colin Gladstone's conclusions will be relevant to practitioners wishing to expand the curriculum for students with and without learning difficulties; to policy makers who wish to promote more active links between mainstream and special schools; and to researchers who wish to engage students in enquiry processes.     

The effects of consequences on patterns of social interaction: a quasi-experimental approach to reinforcement in natural interaction

Research on social interaction has consistently documented the existence of mutual interdependencies between the behavior of 1 person and reactions to that behavior by others in the social environment. The concept of social reinforcement, although often used to explain acquisition and change in interaction patterns defined by such interdependencies, is difficult to apply to interaction observed in natural settings. On the basis of extended observation of the interaction of 2 mother-child dyads, the procedures needed to assess the effects of naturally occurring consequences on interactional patterns are detailed in this study. Reliable mother action-child reaction patterns were first identified, and the effect of maternal consequences for those patterns on the probability of their subsequent occurrence was assessed. Positive consequences were associated with increases, and negative consequences with decreases, in the probability of a child reacting to the next occurrence of the maternal action when compared to the base-rate probability of that action-reaction pattern. Thus consequences affect momentary shifts around the baseline probability of interactional patterns. Positive consequences were also associated with short-term increases, and negative consequences with short-term decreases, in the base-rate probability of interactional patterns.     

Nonnormative discounting: There is more to cue interaction effects than controlling for alternative causes

Several experiments on human causal reasoning have demonstrated “discounting”-that the presence of a strong alternative cause may decrease the perceived efficacy of a moderate target cause. Some, but not all, of these effects have been shown to be attributable to subjects’ use of conditional rather than unconditional contingencies (i.e., subjects control for alternative causes). We review experimental results that do not conform to the conditionalizing contingency account of causal judgment. In four experiments, we demonstrate that there is “nonnormative discounting” above what is accounted for by conditionalization, that discounting may depend on the nature of the question put to the subjects, and that discounting can be affected by motivation. We conclude that because nonnormative discounting occurs for summary presentations as well as trial-by-trial presentations of information and because nonnormative discounting depends on motivation, it is not a necessary result of cue competition during the contingency learning process.     

用于基因频率计算的常规方法和金榜方法

本文探讨基因频率的计算中常见的方法，并提出对于红绿色盲基因频率的计算，“常规方法”是在任何情况下都是能够成立的，而“金榜方法”只有在“遗传平衡”时才能够成立的认识。     

例析图形组织者在初中生物学教学中的运用

图形组织者是用图表来组织、阐述和表达知识的工具,是知识和思维过程的图形化表征。在初中生物学教学中运用图形组织者,有助于提高初中生物学教学的有效性。     

The effective primary school teacher: The search for a theory of pedagogy

Research on teaching-learning processes in classrooms has increased markedly over the last decade or more. Although the principle long-term aim of these studies has been the improvement of practice, they have been undertaken from different theoretical perspectives, utilizing differing assumptions, foci, and methods. The aim of this article is to analyse this theoretical development and assess the extent to which understandings and explanations of classroom processes and outcomes have been enhanced, and where future developments might lie.     

提高药物分析教学效果的实践与探索

本文围绕药物分析课程,在精选教学内容、灵活运用多种教学方法、优化实验教学等几个方面,探索提高药物分析教学效果的方法,旨在培养合格的药学专业人才。     

The calibration of student judgement through self-assessment: disruptive effects of assessment patterns

Can extended opportunities for self-assessment over time help students develop the capacity to make better judgements about their work? Using evidence gathered through students' voluntary self-assessment of their performance with respect to assessment tasks in two different disciplines at two Australian universities, the paper focuses on the effects of sequences of units of study and the use of different types of assessment task (written, oral, analysis, and project) in the development of student judgement. Convergence between student criteria-based gradings of their own performance in units of study and those allocated by tutors was analysed to explore the calibration of students' judgement over time. First, it seeks to replicate analyses from an earlier smaller-scale study to confirm that students' judgements can be calibrated through continuing opportunities for self-assessment and feedback. Second, it extends the analysis to coherently designed sequences of units of study and explores the effects of different types of assessment. It finds that disruptive patterns of assessment within a sequence of subjects can reduce convergence between student and tutor judgements.     

“The story means more to me now”: teaching thinking through Guided Reading

This article describes perspective and imagery thinking strategies taught during Guided Reading lessons. These strategies are designed to enhance comprehension by giving students techniques for manipulating meaning. Social and physical perspective thinking strategies allow students to identify and apply a variety of perspectives, while imagery thinking strategies allow students to re‐view meaning through the application of still, moving and melting images. Comment from teachers and students involved in a project designed to trial these strategies indicate they may be one way of raising standards in English.     

The how's and why's of biological change: How learners neglect physical mechanisms in their search for meaning

This study describes the trends in students' explanations of biological change in organisms. A total of 96 student volunteers (8 students from each of 2nd, 5th, 8th, and 12th grades from 3 localities) were interviewed individually and each student was presented a series of graphics depicting natural phenomena. Students' explanations to questions of how something occurred were assigned to one of three categories (responses addressing how something occurred, why something occurred, and 'I don't know'). While the number of responses in each category was roughly equivalent in prominence across grade levels, the majority of students were unable to offer a causal explanation of how a phenomena occurred. An unexpected phenomenon was the students' predilection to redirect the interview question so they could answer them. If asked a how question, as they were in every interview instance, 32% the students answered with a 'why' response. The way biology is taught, the structure of biology or/and how we learn it could shed some light into this phenomenon and has implications for science educators.     

谈课堂教学中提问时机的把握

在教学活动中教师适时点拨，善于发问，创设问题情境，能有效地鼓励学生求知、求同、求异和评价，激发学生探索、讨论的热情和欲望，从而使教师的“教”转变为“学生主动的学”，课堂教学也就不再是学生被动的接受过程，而是学生主动参与的探究过程。有关课堂提问的技巧，不少老师谈了自己成功的经验，下面仅以“细胞质遗传”为例，谈谈课堂教学中提问时机的把握。     

Reforming Science Education: Part I. The Search for a Philosophy of Science Education

The call for reforms in science education has been ongoing for a century, with new movements and approaches continuously reshaping the identity and values of the discipline. The HPS movement has an equally long history and taken part in the debates defining its purpose and revising curriculum. Its limited success, however, is due not only to competition with alternative visions and paradigms (e.g. STS, multi-culturalism, constructivism, traditionalism) which deadlock implementation, and which have led to conflicting meanings of scientific literacy, but the inability to rise above the debate. At issue is a fundamental problem plaguing science education at the school level, one it shares with education in general. It is my contention that it requires a guiding “metatheory” of education that can appropriately distance itself from the dual dependencies of metatheories in psychology and the demands of socialization—especially as articulated in most common conceptions of scientific literacy tied to citizenship. I offer as a suggestion Egan’s cultural-linguistic theory as a metatheory to help resolve the impasse. I hope to make reformers familiar with his important ideas in general and more specifically, to show how they can complement HPS rationales and reinforce the work of those researchers who have emphasized the value of narrative in learning science. This will be elaborated in Part II of a supplemental paper to the present one. As a prerequisite to presenting Egan’s metatheory I first raise the issue of the need for a conceptual shift back to philosophy of education within the discipline, and thereto, on developing and demarcating true educational theories (essentially neglected since Hirst). In the same vein it is suggested a new research field should be opened with the express purpose of developing a discipline-specific “philosophy of science education” (largely neglected since Dewey) which could in addition serve to reinforce science education’s growing sense of academic autonomy and independence from socio-economic demands.     

From conceptions of effective teachers to styles of teaching: Implications for higher education

The present study investigates the predictive power of conceptions of effective teachers for teaching styles. Ninety-three academic staff from two large comprehensive universities in the People's Republic of China responded to The Effective Teacher Inventory [Zhang, L.F. (2003). The effective teacher inventory. Unpublished test, The University of Hong Kong: Hong Kong.] and to the Thinking Styles in Teaching Inventory [Grigorenko, E.L., & Sternberg, R.J. (1993). Thinking styles in teaching inventory. Unpublished test, Yale University.]. Results suggested that teachers who considered being superior in research-related activities as a more important attribute of an effective university teacher reported that they taught more conservatively, whereas teachers who perceived teaching-related activities as being more critical functions of an effective teacher reported that they taught more creatively. Implications of this finding for university teachers and administrators are discussed.     

The identification of high-school dropouts identified as learning disabled: evaluating the utility of a discriminant analysis function.

This study examined the utility of a linear discriminant function to distinguish between students identified as learning disabled (LD) who had either been released from high school under codes suggestive of school dropout (n = 213) or graduation (n = 92). The discriminant function was comprised of six variables--student ethnicity, reading ability, family intactness, family socioeconomic status, school transfers, and school-initiated interruptions. The analysis determined that differences between the LD dropout sample and LD graduate sample were sufficient to allow for a discrimination between the groups. On the basis of group differences the discriminant function that was constructed correctly classified 83% of the school dropouts and 46% of the school graduates, for an overall 73% accuracy rate. Those factors contributing most to the function were the number of district-initiated interruptions, school transfers, and family intactness. Based on the findings, implications for school districts and future research are noted.