Impressions of disadvantage: I — school versus university study orchestration and consequences for academic support

This study investigates the study orchestrations of engineering students who enter three universities from disadvantaged school backgrounds and are admitted to academic support programmes. The first part of this study examines the characteristics of the entry group as a whole and, on the basis of an analysis of the self-reported study orchestrations of the individuals involved, it is concluded that a significant subgroup of individuals enter university with manifestations of undesirable study behaviour that has serious consequences for academic support.The second part of this study examines the relationship between school study orchestration (as manifested on entry to university), subsequent study orchestration at two stages during the first year of study, and final outcome as evidenced in the end of year examination result. It is concluded that study orchestration is a relatively stable phenomenon for most individuals in the transition from school to university and that its early recognition can be a potential indicator of subsequent academic achievement depending on the nature of the assessment procedures employed in academic support programmes. The third part of this study investigates sources of variation in two subgroups of individuals whose study orchestrations change during the course of their first year. It is concluded that statistically significant, but different, sources of variation are associated with subgroups of individuals whose study orchestrations are either improving or deteriorating.The overall conclusions of this study are seen to be far reaching in terms of informing the selection procedures and the educational practice of academic support programmes as well as of undergraduate education in general.     

Abbreviations

This paper uses Bourdieu's concept of field to analyse findings from an ethnographic study of Entry to Employment (E2E) programmes in England. Entry to Employment is a work-based learning programme which aims to re-engage young people with ‘barriers to learning’ inhibiting access to further education, training or employment. The paper examines field positions associated with E2E, such as learner and tutor, distinguishing between the taking of positions by individual agents and the construction of these positions by dominant institutions. The paper argues that official constructions are based on a discourse which positions E2E learners as a deficit category alongside young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) and separates E2E programmes from those in mainstream educational provision. In consequence, although learners are supported and make individual progress, E2E contributes to the exclusion that Bourdieu identifies as the chief means of social reproduction in the education system.     

解析外语教师发展

外语教师发展是外语教师研究中的一个重要概念,笔者从“教师培训”和“教师教育”相对应的概念中,提出“外语教师发展”概念。其涵义包括两个方面:一是以教师自主发展为目的而进行的教师培养;二是外语教师在教学实践中的自主发展。在此基础上,笔者针对外语教师发展的内在动力和发展机制,着重强调了自主发展意识和自主发展能力,并提出“反思型”师资培养模式和“反思性教学”的自我发展机制。     

Learning and Study Strategies among First-Year Students at a South African University: A Mixed Methods Study

South African higher education is plagued by low academic success rates. Academic development and support units can play an important role in addressing low academic success rates by assisting students in developing appropriate learning and study strategies. Limited information is available on students’ learning and study strategy profiles and their needs regarding intervention programmes. This article reports on a mixed methods study that investigated learning and study strategies among a sample of first-year students enrolled at a South African university. Quantitative data, collected using the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI) from a sample of first-year students, pointed to an urgent need for learning and study strategy intervention programmes to be provided. The qualitative data offered a more in-depth understanding of participants’ needs regarding learning and study strategy intervention programmes. Implications for practice and avenues for further research are discussed.     

Rules, roles and tools: Activity theory and the comparative study of e-learning

Activity theory (AT) is a powerful tool for investigating 'artefacts in use', ie, the ways technologies interrelate with their local context. AT reveals the interfaces between e-learning at the macro- (strategy, policy, 'campus-wide' solutions) and the micro-organisational levels (everyday working practice, iterative change, individual adaptation). In AT, contexts are conceived of as activity systems in which human, technological and organisational elements are interrelated and largely inseparable. Both the subjects of the activity system (internal) and the wider community (external) mediate their activities through tools, rules and roles. This paper shows how a course management system (CMS) exerts an influence over all three of these mediators, though the exact nature of this influence depends on the particular configuration of each activity system. This is illustrated with reference to two case study programmes, both of which used Moodle as their CMS, but which had activity systems structured in quite different ways; the programmes also had different relationships with their external organisational environment.     

University teacher preparation programmes as a quality enhancement mechanism: evaluating impact beyond individual teachers’ practice

Conceptually, practically and rhetorically teaching is at the core of quality in higher education. University teaching preparation programmes (TPPs) are regularly advocated to foster enhancement of teaching but there remains limited evidence to demonstrate their effectiveness or impact as a quality improvement mechanism. Support for such programmes is largely a matter of faith amongst their advocates. This paper presents an analysis of the impact of one initial TPP to add to the body of evidence on the efficacy of such programmes. The results reinforce other research indicating that such programmes do have beneficial effects on individual academics. The benefits extend to work groups and have value to the institution. However, the transfer of learning by academics to practice takes time and is mediated by many factors. Nevertheless, where institutional and local departmental cultures value teaching, TPPs provide a useful strategy for quality enhancement in higher education.     

Study orchestration and learning outcome: evidence of association over time among disadvantaged students

This study explores, for the first time, the study orchestrations of (mostly Black) engineering students who enter an academic support programme in their first year at university at an educational disadvantage by virtue of their exposure to an inferior, racially determined school education.The empirical manifestation, and the stability over time, of their study orchestrations is described, and the association between their study orchestrations and learning outcome is investigated.It is concluded that the manifestation of individual study orchestrations of these particular educationally disadvantaged engineering students, as well as the association between their study orchestrations and their learning outcomes, is essentially similar to that of other students; academic success is associated with theoretically desirable study orchestrations - particularly when these are manifested early on in the programme since they remain essentially stable over time. Where changes do occur over time they are generally of a theoretically desirable nature and, to a lesser extent, where theoretically undesirable changes occur they appear to be associated with a decline in academic achievement.The implications of these conclusions for academic support programmes and for future research are discussed in so far as they impinge on admissions procedures, the identification of potentially at risk students early on in the academic year and explicit provisions of intervention mechanisms to assist such students.     

Individual study orchestrations and their association with learning outcome

In this study a synthesis of research into student learning at the individual level is used to derive a general categorisation rule that can be applied to individual study orchestrations. The term orchestration is introduced in this study to indicate that the association of constructs that represent approaches to studying at an individual level is a context-specific response and is affected by the qualitative level of perception of the individual towards certain key elements of learning context. In the first part of this study the association between context-dependent study orchestrations and learning outcome, and between deep perceptions of learning context and learning outcome, is established. In the second part of this study the general categorisation rule is empirically validated by means of an unfolding analysis that sets out to illuminate the variability of individual study orchestrations as well as the group study orchestrations of academic achievers and failures.It is concluded that learning outcome is associated with categorisations of individual study orchestrations/contextual perceptions. Furthermore, based on an unfolding analysis of academic achievers and failures, it is concluded that academic success is associated with a well defined meaning orchestration coupled with a holistic perception of learning context, while academic failure is associated with the disintegration of such an orchestration/perception.     

Teacher capabilities in a multicultural educational environment: an analysis of the impact of a professional development project

With more programmes being taught through English in non-Anglophone contexts, higher education lecturers are faced with new challenges. This article briefly presents a professional development initiative carried out at departmental level as an intervention for all English Medium Instruction lecturers. In order to assess the effect of such an intervention, a mix of different data sets are used, moving from self-assessment by participants to observations of individual teaching practices in the classrooms. It is shown how corroboration of surveys and observation reports in an explicit feedback template can be used to evidence the value of the intervention in context.     

Basic skills and workplace learning: what do we actually know about their benefits?

In this paper we review the literature on the impact of workplace basic skills training on individuals, as measured by their effects on wages and employment probability. In addition, we also examine studies on the returns to individuals of general training at the workplace. On the whole, the evidence suggests that better numeracy and literacy skills have a strong positive effect on individuals' earnings and employment stability, even when other relevant factors, such as qualifications levels, are taken into account. There is also good evidence to suggest that general training provided at the workplace has a positive impact on individuals' wages, particularly when this training is employer provided rather than off the job. However, the literature also suggests that improvement of basic skills levels in adults has very small or even no positive effects on wages and employment probability. We discuss the implications of these findings on the formation of government policy on basic skills provision. We also propose that there is a real need for more research in this area, not only in terms of longitudinal quantitative studies tracking the effects of basic skills programmes on firms and individuals but also in terms of detailed case studies focusing on specific training programmes and their impact at the level of the individual and firm.     

Multidimensional Factor-Analysis-Based Procedures for Assessing Scalability in Personality Measurement

Most personality tests are made up of Likert-type items and analyzed by means of factor analysis (FA). In this type of application, the fit of the model at the level of individual respondents is almost never assessed. This article proposes procedures for assessing individual fit (scalability). The procedures are intended for the analysis of multitrait personality questionnaires, and based on the multiple FA model. A general assessment procedure is described, and 2 multidimensional scalability indexes that use the chi-square and normal distribution are proposed. These indexes are derived both as residual measures and as likelihood-based person-fit measures, and their relations with some item-response, theory-based measures is discussed. The indexes are proposed mainly as first-step exploratory devices, and procedures for obtaining further information about the possible causes of misfit are also discussed. The behavior of the indexes is assessed in simulation studies, and the general procedure is illustrated by means of an empirical example.     

Changes in parent-child interaction in response to intervention

Parent-child interactions during the early years form the basis of many types of skill acquisitions, including fine motor and communication skills. Early intervention programmes aimed at promoting the attainments of children with disabilities or learning delays often suggest ways in which parents can interact with their children. The present study examined whether such intervention changes the nature of the parent-child interaction, using two groups of typically developing infants. The mothers of these two groups of prelinguistic children aged 10–12 months and 17–18 months were recorded talking to their infants when playing with a toy and then when asked to encourage their child to play in a particular way. Analyses of the affective and perceptual salience of the pitch of the mothers’ voices indicated that with the younger infants, but not the older infants, both the affective quality and the dynamic range of the mothers’ voices was reduced in the second condition. It is argued that this reduction enables the younger infants to concentrate on the task but restricts access to the linguistic content of what is said. The implications of these findings for intervention programmes are discussed.     

Inequality in language achievement growth? An investigation into the impact of pupil socio‐ethnic background and school socio‐ethnic composition

This paper investigates how pupils' growth trajectories in three language domains (reading fluency, spelling, and reading comprehension) are related to their own socioeconomic and ethnic background and to the socioeconomic and ethnic composition of their primary school. Using multilevel piecewise growth curve analysis, the growth trajectories of approximately 5000 pupils from 170 primary schools were estimated. The results indicate that a pupil's socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds have the largest impact on achievement and growth in reading comprehension and the smallest impact on reading fluency. Furthermore, school ethnic composition—but not socioeconomic composition—was related to pupils' achievement in all three language domains at the first measurement occasion, though none of the types of school composition was related to growth. The research findings therefore imply that to combat the deficits in language proficiency often found in ethnic minority pupils, priority should be given to investments in individual intervention programmes over policy plans to desegregate schools. Moreover, our study identifies the specific points in time during primary school at which intervention programmes are needed the most.     

Strategies for the Assessment of Competence

Abstract

The paper examines three different strategies for the assessment of competence. The strategies are different because they base their Judgements about competence on different forms and amounts of evidence and they adopt different procedures for obtaining this evidence. Each strategy is illustrated by means of an analysis of an assessment programme in operation. The programmes are drawn from an investigation of competency‐based training programmes in TAFE colleges, industry and various training institutions carried out in Australia and Great Britain during 1992. The analysis brings out the strengths and weaknesses of each strategy as well as the particular problems and difficulties associated with the assessment of competence and the procedures that must be followed to ensure that principles of sound assessment are adhered to.     

The Importance of Marking Criteria in the Use of Peer Assessment

This paper reports a study which implemented and evaluated a method of peer assessment, as a formative and summative assessment procedure. Pairs of first‐year undergraduate biology students were asked to complete a poster assignment on a specific aspect of nerve physiology. This paper contains details of a method which allows student peer and tutor marking of work against the individual marking criteria to be evaluated. The results show that a comparison between the tutor and the student peer mark may be misleading as a guide to the validity of peer assessment. The importance of considering the individual sections of the marking criteria is illustrated. It was found that when the individual criteria were analysed the number of students marking the same as the tutor ranged from 31% to 62%. It also became clear that specific areas of the marking criteria were prone to over and under‐marking. Analysis of student feedback forms showed that students not only liked carrying out peer assessment, but felt the benefits in terms of developing facets of their learning process and heightening their awareness of their work. These results are discussed in the light of other studies.     

Web服务组合规范WS-CDL的类型化形式化模型

为了形式化地推理和验证web服务编排规范WS-CDL所描述的web服务组合,提出了一个WS-CDL规范的类型化形式化模型——typed abstract WS-CDL.在typed abstract WS-CDL中,定义了类型和会话的语法、类型判定规则和操作语义;web服务间的协作由会话来描述;利用会话的操作语义能对web服务编排的执行进行推理;利用类型判定规则能检查web服务间交换信息类型一致性并捕获由于类型不一致导致的运行时错误.特别地提出了类型假设集的外延和类型假设集相容性的概念,并定义了类型假设集的合并算法以消除类型假设冲突.在该模型基础上,还定义了从choreography到orchestration的类型化映射规则,通过这组规则,可以从一个给定的web服务choreography得到orchestration桩代码及其类型假设集,因而web服务组合能在choreography和orchestration层被验证.提出的模型被证明具有类型安全性,并且通过一个案例分析说明了所提出的模型是有助于对web服务组合进行推理和验证的.     

The Process,Pitfalls and Benefits of Implementing a Reciprocal Teaching Intervention to Improve the Reading Comprehension of a Group of Year 6 Pupils

The comprehension skills of junior-age children are not familiar territory for many educational psychologists. While many of the profession are associated with interventions to improve children's word-attack skills, whether reading or spelling, interventions to improve comprehension skills are little written about. This paper describes the Reciprocal Teaching Method (Palincsar, 1982; Palincsar & Brown, 1984) that has been positively evaluated as a means of developing children's comprehension skills. Its theoretical underpinnings are described and critiqued. The literature on comprehension skills training methods is surveyed and Reciprocal Teaching is critiqued against other research. The author describes her use of this intervention within the framework of the Literacy Hour to promote the use of strategies that allow children to enhance their inferential understanding at the text level, at the sentence level and at the individual word level. The approach also promotes children's independence by allowing them to follow the teacher's example and gradually adopt the teacher's role and style of questioning. Literature on consultation is also drawn on to describe the process of putting this intervention into place. The implications for the educational psychologist as an agent of change or consultant are discussed, as well as the implications for future research. This paper attempts to help the practitioner wishing to implement an intervention using the Reciprocal Teaching method to consider the processes, the potential pitfalls and the benefits of such an intervention.     

Becoming an Online Distance Learner: What can be learned from students’ experiences of induction to distance programmes?

This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study that investigated the experiences of distance learners beginning online Master of Education programmes. The research explored students’ induction (referred to as “orientation” in some contexts) to the programmes, and three key areas are given consideration in this paper. First, the opportunities and constraints provided by the technology in terms of introducing students to their online studies and the online environment are discussed. Second, some human elements are examined; namely, students’ needs, students’ relationships with fellow students, and the role of tutors. Third, there is a discussion on the development of online learning communities; their role and importance, and how students might be effectively integrated into them. Some implications for online teaching and learning are outlined and recommendations for online induction are provided. The paper concludes that a fundamental understanding of both students’ needs and their initial encounters with online distance education are important to ensure effective support is provided when students commence their studies.     

Orchestrating Complex Educational Change: Local Reorganisation of Schools in England

This paper considers how complex educationalchange may be managed through the `metatask' oforchestration, narrowly distributed amongsenior formal leaders within and betweendifferent administrative levels of large publiceducation systems. Orchestration impliessteering the change process by organising andmaintaining oversight of an intricate array ofcoordinated tasks. It is the over-arching`complex change management theme' of ahierarchically ordered typology derivedinductively from a national study ofdistrict-wide initiatives to close or mergeschools so as to reduce spare student capacityand improve the quality of educationalprovision. The paper explores patterns revealedby this research relating to orchestration. Theresearch design and methods are outlined. Therelationship is clarified between the conceptsof orchestration, leadership and management. Ananalytical model is built-up for analysingcomplex educational change along threedimensions: change management themes, headed byorchestration; characteristics of thecomplexity of the change with managementimplications; and stages of the change process.The constituents of each dimension in turn aredescribed, briefly illustrated throughreference to reorganisation, and linked withorchestration. Characteristics of complexitydictated the response of orchestration and thesubordinate complex change management themesacross the different stages of the changeprocess. The analytical model is offered as aconceptual framework for future research thatwould test its wider applicability and as apractical planning tool. The importance isunderlined of developing generic yetcontext-sensitive practical guidance thatreflects the degree of complexity faced byorchestrators charged with managingcontemporary educational change.