The experiences of pupils with SEN and their parents at the stage of pre-transition from primary to post-primary school

The experiences of pupils with Special Educational Needs (SEN) and their parents at pre-transition from primary to post-primary school have received little attention in the literature. The current study investigated these experiences using a mixed methods approach within the Irish educational system. Thirty-two pupils with SEN and 42 parents of pupils with SEN participated in focus groups, and also completed a questionnaire which qualitatively complemented the parental focus groups. Emergent themes for pupils included: things I will miss; fitting in and performing as well as others; laying the groundwork: getting to know new people; and experiencing and talking about ‘going to the new school’. Emergent themes for parents included: losing ground?; information is critical: ‘I’m not asking for the moon, but a bit more information’; I’d like help but I don’t want to make trouble for my child; and challenge and support. Critical issues emerging from the data concerning pre-transition experiences for both pupils and parents are discussed.     

"新媒体时代"小学生最喜欢阅读哪类课外书——小学生课外阅读调查研究之六

尽管从本调查结果中只能看到小学生课外阅读的某些不足,如喜欢读科普知识、儿童小说、儿童诗、古典诗歌等的比例还低于甚或远远低于喜欢读明星趣事、魔幻小说、作文辅导、鬼故事和武侠小说等的比例,但是,如果联系一下当前小学生何以会有这样的阅读"需求"以及社会"供给"状况来看,则可以说今日之小学生的课外阅读还是存在着不小的问题.倘若想让孩子们真正地热爱上读书并多读值得一读的书,那么,我们的社会就必须在很多很多的事上先做好.     

Retelling herstory: to be a female Bedouin teacher differently

The aim of this article is to contribute to the discussion on education in Palestinian/Bedouin society in the Negev in Israel and it proposes the narrative of female trainee teachers as the basis of an analysis of the changing status of Bedouin women and their community. The academic discourse on teaching in Bedouin society ignores the potential existence of an alternative discussion outside the dichotomous area of ‘traditional and modern’ and/or ‘Jewish and Bedouin’. Bedouin society in the Negev constitutes a particularly interesting case for a meaningful study of the perception of teaching, chiefly because education has already become a significant practice in the life of a community that seeks integration into Israeli society. The teaching profession gives Bedouin women from the Negev a relatively new opportunity to integrate into education and employment and by so doing they reconstruct a new educational discourse.

Il’il: When we were little, we used to laugh about me—hmm—a teacher. Me with pupils, and I’d teach them, like the teacher who used to teach us, with a little board, and I write for them and they are my pupils, as it were, and I give them tests and all sorts. And I love the profession very, very much because I love the pupils…

Nura: I loved learning but this isn’t the profession that I want to study—to be a teacher … You can help someone in this profession. I see myself going in that direction … First of all, you have to give, to impart something to the children in front of you, who have come to learn. You have to give to these children, to be conscientious. You don’t just come. You haven’t chosen the profession because you wanted to, but you have to cope with it.     

Words You Want to Learn

An approach to teaching spelling similar in some ways to the Breakthrough to Literacy scheme for teaching reading – where children choose for themselves the words they want to learn – is being developed by David Moseley, reader in applied psychology, School of Education, Newcastle University. The classroom study described here suggests that the principles underlying the precision spelling course and related computer programs, which have been used successfully with pupils who have specific spelling difficulties, could be usefully adapted to help pupils with mild and moderate learning difficulties.     

Using a Diagnostic Test of Pupils’ Alternative Conceptions to Plan a Teaching Strategy on Electric Circuits

This paper describes a project on electricity education, aiming at the construction of a teaching strategy which takes into account pupils’ alternative conceptions on electric circuits. With this project we want to provide teachers with feasible diagnostic tools and teaching materials in order to promote conceptual change among pupils. The research findings indicate the effectiveness of a teaching strategy in one of the higher forms of secondary education in which an explicit confrontation takes place between the pupils’ own alternative conceptions and some physics concepts in the domain of electricity.     

The Durability of Conceptual Change in Learning the Concept of Weight in the Case of a Pulley in Balance

This study concerns the question of how teachers can help pupils to perceive the concept of weight (gravitation). Fifth and ninth graders were asked in a paper-and-pencil test to compare the weight of two objects suspended in a pulley-in-balance half a year after the learning intervention consisting of three successive pulley-in-balance demonstrations. The understanding, that some of the fifth graders seemed to have formed from the weight concept after the teacher-independent learning intervention, had almost totally vanished in the delayed study. In the demonstrations the pulley served as an efficient prosthetic device for thinking, helping pupils to pay attention to the behaviour of the whole system instead of looking only at the separate objects. In the ninth grade about 45% of the pupils achieved general understanding about the pulley in balance by transferring the scientific explanation from the pulley demonstrations to the paper-and-pen test. A learning-with-conflict model is proposed based on pupil's alternative explanations about a discrepant event. These explanations are then challenged with a conflicting event. When pupils see and understand how the concept works in different contexts it is possible for the pupils to reach a context independent conceptual change.     

Reading and Responding: A Rose-coloured Experience

The writer argues that a fresh look at some aspects of reader-response theories could have a revitalising effect on classroom practices. If we want pupils to respond to texts, we should make more use of what happens while they read, helping them to become self-conscious readers. The writer exemplifies some reader-response strategies through his own responses to a short story by AS. Byatt. Implications and suggestions for classroom activities are suggested.     

Motivation to Learn and Teach English in Slovenia

This study was conducted in Slovenia, and explored the views of a sample of 226 pupils (aged 14‐15 years) regarding their motivation to learn English and the views of a sample of 95 student teachers regarding their motivation to become a teacher of English. The data consisted of two questionnaires. The first questionnaire asked the pupils to rate the importance of each of 15 reasons for wanting to learn English. The most frequent reasons given by pupils were ‘Because English is an international language’, ‘Because English helps me with advanced study’ and ‘Because English will help me with my future career’. The second questionnaire asked the student teachers to rate the importance of each of 20 reasons in influencing their decision to become a teacher of English. The most frequent reasons given by the student teachers were ‘I enjoy the subject I will teach’, ‘English is important to me’ and ‘I want to help children succeed’. The findings are further explored in terms of the relative importance of the different types of motivation involved.     

阅读在小学生品德养成过程中的运用

阅读是人类学习前人优秀文化的一种最有效最迅速的方法。阅读广泛地运用在各门学科的教学上,但阅读作为小学生品德养成的一种方法,还没有普遍开展开来,因此需要教育人士在观念上进行改变和接受。目前,对于阅读成为小学生品德养成的方法要取得良好成效,主要是阅读内容的把握和阅读方法的适当。分级阅读标准目前来说在我国虽然尚未达成标准共识。由于我国开展分级阅读的进程比国外晚20多年,但就阅读研究所推荐书目,以及中国儿童分级阅读研讨会研讨的标准具有很强的代表性。对于阅读方法方面,主要是分级阅读、分享阅读、亲子阅读以及响应国家的“全民阅读计划”的号召,学校、社会、家庭积极开展各种阅读活动。阅读作为品德养成的方法,虽然在理论上有科学的理论依据,在实践中有教育家的大力实践并取得惊人成效,但开展起来还是遇到各种问题。面对这些问题我们都必须通过紧扣阅读内容和阅读的有效方式来解决,并且还要在应试教育的大环境下找到与阅读相适应的平衡点。当然,阅读作为一种小学生品德养成的方法,它也只是众多品德养成方法中的一种,不能将其与其他方式硬性割裂,它们是统一和交融的,在品德养成过程中,可以采用其中的几种综合一起使用。     

PSYCHOANALYTIC PSYCHOTHERAPY WITH CHILDREN WITH EBD

For the purposes of this paper, I am defining children with EBD as those who, for reasons of emotional disturbance, cannot make use of their educational opportunities and are difficult to manage. Children with EBD usually have parallel difficulties within their families and communities and much of what I want to say here is based on the experience of working with children and young people who are at the end of the line in more than one area of their lives. Prior to training as a Child Psychotherapist, I worked as a teacher in a variety of mainstream schools and special education settings. The points I want to make and the issues I want to raise, arise out of that experience and have a bearing on the way I now think about working psychotherapeutically with this same client group.     

Social position of special needs pupils in the classroom: a comparison between German special schools for pupils with learning difficulties and integrated primary school classes

The rejection of pupils with behaviour problems is a serious problem for inclusive education schools. Sometimes parents prefer special schools because they do not want their children to become outsiders in integration classes. Are they right? The study presented here surveys children with behaviour problems in integrated primary school classes and in special education schools. The main focus is the extent to which behaviour problems influence social relations within the classes. The findings indicate that German pupils with behaviour problems are not well liked. The comparison of special education classes and integrated primary school classes also shows, however, that this is not solely a feature of integrated classes. Pupils with behaviour problems are disliked in both systems, and to a comparable degree. This means that there may be some good arguments for special schools. But both systems—special schools and integrated school classes—have outsiders. Especially parents of pupils with learning difficulties and behaviour problems should know that there is no difference here between special education classes and integrative primary school classes.     

Deaf pupils' reasoning about scientific phenomena: school science as a framework for understanding or as fragments of factual knowledge

Many studies have been conducted on hearing pupils' understanding of science. Findings from these studies have been used as grounds for planning instruction in school science. This article reports findings from an interview study of how deaf pupils in compulsory school reason about phenomena in a science context. The results reveal that there is variation in the extent to which pupils use scientific principles for reasoning about science phenomena. For some pupils, school science seems to have little to offer as a framework for reasoning. The results also generate questions about the need in school instruction of deaf and hard-of-hearing pupils to consider the specific teaching and learning situations in a deaf environment.     

Associations between Secondary School Pupils' Definitions of Bullying,Attitudes towards Bullying,and Tendencies to Engage in Bullying: Age and sex differences

A self-report questionnaire about involvement in different types of bullying, what behaviours were regarded as bullying, and attitudes towards bullying, bullies and victims was completed by pupils in Year 7 (aged 11/12) through to Year 10 (aged 14/15) ( n = 170). Overall, direct verbal assault was the most commonly reported, and stealing the least frequently reported, type of bullying. For six specific types of bullying investigated, and for a composite measure of all types of bullying, significantly fewer Year 9 pupils than pupils in the other three years reported that they had behaved in these ways in the previous week. No significant sex differences emerged on these measures. These findings suggest that general patterns in bullying activities as a function of age and sex obtained in previous studies do not always hold. Although most pupils indicated that they thought that six out of eight types of behaviour viewed as bullying by researchers should be regarded as bullying, a substantial minority did not. The present study also extended bullying research by examining associations between pupils' definitions and attitudes towards bullying and their reports of bullying others. For one specific type of bullying, 'Forcing people to do things that they don't want to do', significantly fewer pupils who reported that they had behaved in this way than who reported that they had not done so included it in their definition of bullying. A consistent pattern of significant negative correlations of moderate size between attitudes and self-reported involvement in specific types of bullying were obtained. The implications of these findings for those concerned with tackling bullying in schools were discussed.     

Writing Revision: Evidence for Learning

ABSTRACT

This paper identifies evidence that significant procedural learning can emerge from process approaches to teaching writing, including from the transition of pupils’ writing from draft to revision. It shows how writing schemes that use an underlying process framework to structure learning, give pupils ownership of their own writing and exploit the resources of classes as learning communities can enable pupils to learn how to write more effectively, and in some cases to discover what they want to say through the process of composition. The paper draws on this and other work to set out a number of implications for teaching and classroom practice.     

The Role of the Teacher in a Resource-based System

Mlle Bireaud began with the observation that the relationship between school and society remained essentially the same whether the system remained traditional or became partially or largely resource-based. She then noted some of the more obvious changes in classroom procedure brought about in any changeover to a resource-based system. In the first place, thanks to modern methods of cataloguing and information retrieval, pupils were enabled to take at least partial responsibility for their own development. In the second, pupils were no longer restricted to a class-group —they were t o some extent free to move around the premises, t o work individually or in groups with constantly changing memberships. Thirdly, and not least important, pupils spent less and less time in listening t o ‘lessons’ delivered by the teachers and were more inclined to take the initiative in finding out what they needed to know for themselves.     

Resistant to the message: are pupils unreceptive to teachers’ anti-bullying initiatives and if so why?

Despite three decades of research and development of anti-bullying intervention, this form of systematic aggression continues to be common in schools. The present study investigated if a contributing factor might be that some pupils are unreceptive to teachers’ anti-bullying lessons. It invited 8–11?-year-old junior school pupils (N?=?227) to indicate if this was the case, and if so, to give their reasons. Many did indicate being unreceptive (81.9%). The most common reason was “It is not for me because I don’t bully anyone” (81.9%), followed by “I know enough about bullying already” (22.9%), “It is boring or I have heard it all before” (19.4%) and “Teachers have to do it but they are not really interested in stopping bullying” (14.5%). Some significant age differences emerged. Results are discussed in terms of implications for anti-bullying work in schools.     

The Assessment of GCSE Art: Criterion‐Referencing and Cognitive Abilities

In this paper Cognitive Abilities Test scores are compared directly with moderated GCSE scores awarded to the same group of pupils. For ease of interpretation the comparisons are presented in a graphical form. Whilst some provisional and tentative conclusions are drawn about the reliability of GCSE art, questions are raised about the general validity of criterion‐referenced assessment in this area.     

A Comprehensive Approach to Handling Sensitive Issues in Schools,with Special Reference to Loss and Grief

The School Watch initiative is centred in South Wales and involves police liaison officers, primary schools and their pupils. In each interested school, the scheme is explained and the pupils then decide if they want to take part. A pupils' committee is elected which is given support and guidance by the liaison officer. A key element of the scheme is the involvement of the pupils themselves and the way the pupils' committee plays a major part in the choice and running of activities. The scheme benefits pupils both in terms of their personal and social development and in their attitudes to the police. The paper ends with a number of examples of the type of work that schools have undertaken within this scheme.     

Electromagnetic Induction Rediscovered Using Original Texts

Some of Faraday's diary-entries from 1831 have been used frequently as starting point to introduce the phenomenon of electromagnetic induction. This has been done on various levels of knowledge and to pupils of different ages during the last 5 years. I try to let my pupils witness, how Faraday made his discovery, but to show as well, that we cannot infer from his notes, how he arrived at his ideas proper. Reading the original notes (in English), my pupils were expected to take out of it, what Faraday did at his lab, what apparatus he used and what his observations were. Why he did what he did was point of discussion later on. Just here, I expected, that my pupils learn a lot about the properties of electricity, of taking conclusions from experiment, of scientific methodology etc. In addition, we repeated some of Faradays experiments with modern quipment, realizing always to common surprise that the effects observed are extremely faint ones. Depending on knowledge, age and motivation of the group, Lenz's Law was rediscovered in succession. Here I myself try to find out, why Faradays initial mistake as for the direction of the induced current is likely to be overlooked even by the informed modern reader (myself included!). This may become part of a story, why this mistake of Faraday has found serious attention by historians of science only very recently. My approach was connected with group work with English courses, with the reading of more papers by Faraday and two times even with a visit of the Royal Institution at London. In any case, I always tried to put my pupils into the state of knowledge Faraday had at the time of his discovery before this unit, to make the process of discovery as correct as possible. For this claim is somewhat artificial at first glance, it may be an interesting point of discussion.