What are they?

四个好朋友各有不同的工作,究竟谁是教师?谁是医生?谁是农民?谁是司机?你能根据这篇短文做出判断吗?     

Mature-age students-how are they different?

Mature-age students have formed a significant proportion of preservice students in primary teacher education over recent years. Academic staff have reported a difference between mature-age students and school-leavers, particularly in motivation and achievement. This report examines part of a study which explored mature-age students' views about aspects of teaching science and technology, compared to the views of students who came to university straight from school. It examines, in particular, students' personal feelings of adequacy in teaching science and technology in primary schools. Specialisations: primary teacher education, teaching strategies in science.     

Primary exclusions: are they rising?

Reducing the number of pupils excluded from school has formed part of the Government's strategy for school improvement in recent years. The study reported here was conducted within an inner-city LEA. In their article, Sue Pavey, research in special education, and John Visser, senior fellow lecturer in special education, both of whom work in the School of Education at the University of Birmingham, question the veracity of collected data on exclusions relating to the primary sector. Furthermore, they suggest that findings from their study indicate that exclusions are considered ineffective for the pupils concerned and are seen as a last resort by primary headteachers. More effective strategies for meeting the pupils' needs, argue Sue Pavey and John Visser, lie within enhanced, in-school support services and multi-agency approaches. The authors conclude that statistics on exclusion do not give a representative picture of real levels of exclusion in the LEA. This situation adversely affects strategic planning and the distribution of resources. In concluding their article, Sue Pavey and John Visser propose that resources should be spent on developing alternative strategies to exclusion and methods of identifying children at risk of disaffection.     

Children with dyslexia are slow writers because they pause more often and not because they are slow at handwriting execution

It is commonly assumed that children with dyslexia are slower at handwriting than other children. However, evidence of slow handwriting in children with dyslexia is very mixed. Thirty-one children with dyslexia, aged 9 years, were compared to both age-matched children and younger spelling-ability matched children. Participants completed an alphabet-writing task and a composition task on the surface of a digital writing tablet. Children with dyslexia wrote the same amount of letters per minute in the alphabet task but wrote fewer words per minute when composing their texts than children of the same age. Crucially, no differences were found between children with dyslexia and their same age peers for speed of handwriting execution, measured by the tablet, when writing the alphabet or composing their texts. However, children with dyslexia were found to pause within their compositions as often as the spelling ability matched group. Thus handwriting execution is not impaired in children with dyslexia. The slow writing that is typical of children with dyslexia is due to pausing more often when composing and is related to spelling ability. This may reflect processing problems in response to high cognitive load through having to contend with spelling and composing concurrently.     

Spelling and grammar checkers: are they intrusive?

Spelling and grammar checkers help to make surface errors more apparent; do they influence the way in which people revise the content of their writing? We investigated whether the presence of checkers distracts students from making content revisions. Twenty‐five freshmen, 20 English majors and 20 graduate students revised two essays on a computer, one with the spelling and grammar checkers, and the other with a dictionary. These essays were unfamiliar to the students and rigged with content and surface errors. The checkers helped the participants to revise text for surface features but did not affect the students’ other revisions. Our findings suggest that checkers are helpful yet do not inhibit students’ ability to make content revisions.     

Key Ideas: What are they and how can they help us understand how people view proof?

This paper examines the views of proof held by university level mathematics students and teachers. A framework is developed for characterizing people's views of proof, based on a distinction between public and private aspects of proof and the key ideas which link these two domains. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Meeting players where they are: Digital games and learning ecologies

This paper explores the relationship between digital games and learning along the continuum from formal to informal learning. Games are an increasingly important component of our learning ecologies but their potential can prove difficult to fully harness due to the downsides of gaming in informal contexts and to the limitations games can present when adopted in formal learning contexts. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the strengths and weaknesses of games for learning, and to gather stakeholder recommendations for the main actors in the field. The adopted research approach is qualitative and participatory, involving players, teachers, parents, researchers and developers. Data from 25 interviews and 11 focus groups yielded insights into the educational, psychological and ethical aspects of play. Results suggest that gameplay influences individuals in a very personal manner, and that its effects cover a wide range of skills, extending to identity development. Hence, to harness this potential, all actors in the ecology need strong awareness of both the affordances and the risks of games, and deep respect for individuals’ LEs. The study has implications for a wide range of actors, including educators, players, researchers, parents, game developers and policymakers.