Double standards and first principles: framing teaching assistant support for pupils with special educational needs

Teaching assistants (TAs) are part of a growing international trend toward paraprofessionals working in public services. There has been controversy over TAs’ deployment and appropriate role when supporting the learning of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) in mainstream schools. Such debates have been transformed by findings from a large study of school support staff in the UK (the DISS project). The findings from this study show that TA support has a negative impact on pupils’ academic progress, especially pupils with SEN. The findings render the current system of support for SEN highly questionable: TAs have inadvertently become the primary educators of pupils with SEN. This paper sets out the likely explanations for the negative effects in terms of three ‘frames’ – deployment, practice and preparedness – and then uses these frames to identify specific implications for pupils with SEN. We offer suggestions on how to make the most productive use of TA support.     

Double standards: when an undergraduate dissertation becomes the object of two different assessment approaches

Within a transnational educational programme, students residing in the Czech Republic obtain baccalaureate degrees from an accredited American college. The college has a distinctive approach towards learning, co‐creation of knowledge and the use of mentors. Part of the degree assessment is an undergraduate dissertation, which serves as a capstone experience. The Czech partner instituted a policy whereby students could obtain a second local degree by, among other things, using the same dissertation. This study examines the situation confronting mentors from the American college. It considers assessment as an integral component of a constellation of educational assumptions and pedagogic values: a paradigm. It analyses the competing/conflicting, paradigms involved and discusses ways in which educational practice was reconsidered and changed to allow a single work product to be authentically and meaningfully assessed under both approaches.     

Plowden's concern for standards

The Action on Principled Pedagogy and Learning Evaluation (APPLE) project is a cross cultural study of teaching in primary/elementary schools in England and North Carolina. The study is focused on variance in teaching, how teaching differs from the best, or most effective, that it might be, and on the relationship between professional knowledge for teaching and teachers' roles and actions. The major products of this study were: (a) a set of 16 dimensions of teaching and a model for analysis of the degree to which each dimension is an asset or barrier to learning in any given instruction and (b) a new typology of teaching, based on variance from the best that could be rather than in comparison to others. In this article we describe, briefly, the APPLE project, present the dimensions and the new typology and discuss their implications for the professionalisation of teaching. In particular, the finding that even amongst the best teachers, the ability to articulate practice in a clear, technical language is rare, is, it is argued, a major barrier to the definition of teaching as a professional activity.     

Professional standards for survey research

This paper concludes that it is time for institutional research to address the issue of standards for the conduct of surveys. In reaching that conclusion, it argues that executing surveys is one of the most common activities of institutional research (IR) and one of the least served in IR literature; that as a craft, survey research is an orphan without a home in an academic discipline and therefore without a clear articulation of standards in its own right; and that as practiced in IR, survey research faces special technical problems and challenges not embraced in much of the general-survey research literature. Finally, it asks, but does not answer, how such a lofty goal as the pursuit of standards might be attained.     

Establishing and applying performance standards for curriculum-based examinations

This paper describes how a state education system in Australia introduced standards-referenced assessments into its large-scale, high-stakes, curriculum-based examinations in a way that enables comparison of performance across time even though the examinations are different each year. It describes the multi-stage modified Angoff standard-setting procedure used to establish cut-off scores on subject examinations, and how the results from this exercise were then used to develop standards packages. These packages illustrate the performances of students at the borders between the various bands.

The paper also shows how originally it was intended to use a Rasch measurement model to create the statistical feedback used in the standard-setting procedure. It also describes the modifications to the feedback that were necessary to meet the real-time constraints of this large-scale examination programme. It argues that consideration should now be given to using the Rasch model to provide this feedback instead of the current approach.     

二重极限的求法

二重极限在多元函数微积分学中有着举足轻重的作用,探讨其求法是进一步学习多元函数微积分有关概念和方法的基础,文中着重从八个方面通过典型实例分析研究归纳了二重极限方法.     

基于多媒体教学的教学评价指标

指出了多媒体教学在教育活动中的重要作用,总结了多媒体教学争议的原因。归纳了教学评价模式的奖惩性评价和发展性评价,提出了教学评价的各个环节。总结了多媒体教学的特点,重点评价了多媒体教学的误区,提出了多媒体教学评价体系指标的内容与权重。     

Settler grammars and the Australian professional standards for teachers

In 2011, the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership introduced new Professional Standards for Teachers, which require that graduate teachers possess knowledge and understanding of Indigenous students and cultures. The authors conducted interviews with 12 non-Indigenous teacher educators at one Australian university in order to understand how these Standards are interpreted and implemented. We adopt Calderon’s framework of settler grammars to interpret the dialectic of presence and absence that teacher educators in our study describe. Extending this frame to an analysis of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers, we find that settler grammars function to simultaneously erase Indigenous claims to sovereignty and epistemological equality, whilst promoting a representation of Indigenous people that asserts the primacy of the settler colonial state.     

双宾语与双主语之探究

本文将语法界出现的关于双宾语、双主语结构等有争议的一些问题提出来 ,进行深入的研究、剖析 ,列举了学术界的观点 ,同时也阐述了作者对这两种语法现象的看法     

美国中等职业教育教师专业标准及其启示

界定了美国中等生涯与技术教育（CTE）教师专业标准的内涵,介绍了美国初级、优秀中等CTE教师专业标准的结构、内容特征和开发及运用实践方式,提出了其对我国中职教师标准建设的启示：形成多层次的中职教师专业标准体系;科学制定中职教师专业标准框架;切实保障专业发展的科学评价质量。