Third and fourth grade teacher’s classroom practices in writing: a national survey

A random sample of teachers in grades 3 and 4 (N = 157) from across the United States were surveyed about their use of evidence-based writing practices, preparation to teach writing, and beliefs about writing. Teachers’ beliefs included their efficacy to teach writing, their orientations to teach writing, their attitude about teaching writing, and their attitudes about their own writing. The teachers’ responses raised some concerns about the quality of writing instruction third- and fourth-grade students receive, as teachers reported spending only 15 min a day teaching writing and students spend only 25 min a day at school writing. While teachers indicated they used a variety of evidence based writing practices in their classroom, a majority of these were applied infrequently. Further, three out of every four teachers reported that their college teacher preparation programs provided no or minimal instruction on how to teach writing. They further rated their preparation to teach writing lower than their preparation to teach reading, math, science, or social studies. On a more positive note, a majority of teachers asked students to write multiple paragraph texts relatively frequently (4 times a month or more often) and complete at least one narrative, informative, and persuasive writing assignment monthly. Teachers were also generally positive about teaching writing, their efficacy to teach writing, and their beliefs about their own writing. Finally, efficacy to teach writing and philosophical orientations to teaching writing each made a unique contribution to predicting teachers’ use of evidence based practices, whereas teacher preparation did the same for reported time spent teaching writing and reported time students wrote at school and home.     

A policy sociology reflection on school reform in England: from the ‘Third Way’ to the ‘Big Society’

This article presents a policy sociology reflection on Bernard Barker's book, The Pendulum Swings: Transforming School Reform. The book represents Barker's attempt to intervene in education policy during the lead-up to the 2010 UK general election and is framed by what he imagined might be possible under a new Conservative government. Barker draws inspiration from the Red Tory communitarian position articulated by Phillip Blond. In hindsight, we are less sanguine about these possibilities in the context of the Coalition government and its ongoing response to the ongoing financial crises. Indeed, what has emerged is a rearticulated neo-liberalism in the guise of ‘Big Society’ rhetoric. We agree with Barker's critical deconstruction of the five illusions underpinning New Labour schooling policy, but argue for a broader agenda of redistribution, both in social policy and with respect to schools. Policy needs to recognise and support teachers and good pedagogies, and we also see a pressing need to rethink richer forms of educational accountability. All of this must be located within a politics that pursues a new social imaginary. Nonetheless, we commend Barker's contribution towards post neo-liberal thinking in respect of school policy, specifically in England, but with relevance to other locations and systems.     

Film choices for screening literacy: the ‘Pygmalion template’ in the curriculum as contact zone

This study discusses the representation of (the) literacy (myth) in popular movies and a teaching and research project on cinematic literacy narratives. It attempts to reveal the existence of a powerful ‘Pygmalion template’ in contemporary movie culture. Focusing on a discourse or culture clash ‘Pygmalion movies’ simultaneously contribute to the discursive construction and deconstruction of the literacy myth. Because of their polysemic character, these films offer fertile grounds for inquiring into the problematic nature of literacy acquisition and discourse or culture clashes. Inviting pre‐service teachers to reflect on these issues, the authors created a curriculum as contact zone in which films are used as a primary source of knowledge and insight together with students’ movie analyses and interpretations, personal narratives, and theoretical readings. This exploratory study of on‐line discussion groups revealed the students’ contradictory and competing movie readings. Organizing the curriculum as a contact zone deepened the students’ and one’s own understanding of literacy as an ideological site of struggle in (movie) culture.     

Assessment literacy and student learning: the case for explicitly developing students ‘assessment literacy’

In this paper, we report on a study to quantify the impact on student learning and on student assessment literacy of a brief assessment literacy intervention. We first define ‘assessment literacy’ then report on the development and validation of an assessment literacy measurement instrument. Using a pseudo-experimental design, we quantified the impact of an assessment literacy-building intervention on students’ assessment literacy levels and on their subsequent performance on an assessment task. The intervention involved students in the experimental condition analysing, discussing and applying an assessment rubric to actual examples of student work that exemplified extremes of standards of performance on the task (e.g. poor, excellent). Results showed that such a procedure could be expected to impact positively on assessment literacy levels and on student performance (on a similar or related task). Regression analyses indicated that the greatest predictor of enhanced student marks (on the assessment task that was the subject of the experiment), was the development of their ability to judge standards of performance on student work created in response to a similar task. The intervention took just 50 minutes indicating a good educational return on the pedagogical investment.     

Assessing preschoolers’ emergent literacy skills in English and Spanish with the Get Ready to Read! screening tool

This study investigated the ability of the English and Spanish versions of the Get Ready to Read! Screener (E-GRTR and S-GRTR) administered at the beginning of the preschool year to predict the oral language and phonological and print processing skills of Spanish-speaking English-language learners (ELLs) and English-only speaking children (EO) at the end of the year. The results revealed that the E-GRTR predicted the EO and ELL children’s English emergent literacy skills and the ELL children’s Spanish emergent literacy skills, and the S-GRTR predicted the ELL children’s English and Spanish emergent literacy skills. For both groups, the E-GRTR and the S-GRTR were better at predicting children’s print knowledge in English and Spanish compared to the other emergent literacy measures. The findings suggest that both screeners can be used effectively to assess preschool children’s emergent literacy skills.     

Missionary girl power: saving the ‘Third World’ one girl at a time

Deborah Ellis’s The Breadwinner is a popular young adult novel about Muslim girls. In this paper, we offer an analysis of the representation of Muslim girls and women in the book as well as responses from undergraduate students enrolled in a children’s literature course to these constructions. Building on the work of postcolonial feminism (specifically the concept of paternalistic care) and critical pedagogy (the role of popular cultural texts as education), we argue that The Breadwinner, and similar historical fictions aimed at youth, wittingly or unwittingly focus on the real and/or imagined plight of ‘other’ girls/women. These representations build upon a care ethic central to the project and history of schooling in the West that in turn results in the stabilisation of colonial relations of domination between white women/girls and colonised women/girls.     

‘Being in the World’: The event of learning

This paper employs an eclectic mix of paradigms in order to discuss constituting characteristics of young children's learning experiences. Drawing upon a phenomenological perspective it examines learning as a form of ‘Being’ and as the result of learners’ engagement with the world in their own, unique, intentional manners. The learners’ intentions towards their world are expressed in everyday activity and participation. A social constructivist perspective is thus employed to present learning as situated in meaningful socio‐cultural contexts of the everyday, lived world and as a form of participation in those settings. These characteristics of learning are brought together into a holistic, synthesised model, a Gestalt of learning. The proposed synthesis has relevance for and is applicable to educational contexts as a means of making sense of children's learning experiences and of promoting and facilitating them.     

Assessing self-assessment: can age and prior literacy attainment predict the accuracy of children’s self-assessments in literacy?

Self-assessment practices have been advocated in recent Irish educational documents due to their potential to enhance school children’s learning and self-regulatory skills. However, the literature has highlighted how some children struggle to make accurate self-assessments of their academic work, which diminishes such positive effects (Keane and Griffin 2015; Nicol 2009). Using Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development (1970) as a theoretical framework, the present study sought to investigate whether children’s academic self-assessments became more accurate in line with increased age and higher prior literacy attainment. Following training in the use of self-assessment writing rubrics, 85 school children from second class, fifth class and Transition Year wrote an English essay and later self-assessed their work using rubrics devised by Andrade, Du, and Wang (2008). Results indicated that overall, children’s self-assessment scores held a weak relationship with their actual performance scores (r?=?.24). However, findings illustrated that children’s self-assessments became significantly more accurate in line with increased developmental stages. Strong correlations also emerged between higher prior literacy attainment and children’s accuracy in self-assessments, amongst second class (r?=??.45) and fifth class (r?=??.73) children only. The findings suggest that Irish school children, in particular, primary school children with low literacy attainment, display difficulty making accurate self-assessments of their academic work in literacy. Stemming from the research, implications for practice and future research directions are outlined.     

Education,digital literacy and democracy: the case of Britain’s proposed ‘exit’ from the European Union (Brexit)

Asia Pacific Education Review - There has been a long tradition of demonstrating formal education’s direct relationship with many dimensions of development, including increased productivity,...     

Why critical literacy should turn to ‘the affective turn’: making a case for critical affective literacy

The central argument of this essay is that critical literacy with a rationalistic bent may not enable us to cope with ethical dilemmas in our responsiveness to human sufferings. I argue that critical literacy education would benefit from turning to the recent scholarship on affect/emotion studies. I draw upon the works of Sara Ahmed – one of the leading contributors to critical affect studies – to shed light on what is called a regulatory power that creates a schism in our responsiveness to violence and suffering. The key contribution of this essay is to present an actionable framework of what I describe as critical affective literacy. To delineate this framework, I present four pedagogical principles, along with examples of instructional activities.     

Seeing the ‘new’ in light of the ‘old’: evolving interpretations of a new national English curriculum

This 2‐year longitudinal study explores the process by which three populations of practitioners (mentors, co‐ordinators, and teachers) interpreted a national curriculum involving a change in policies for teaching English as a foreign language. The analysis revealed that the process of managing the changes brought about by the new curriculum yielded ‘dialogues of practice’ between ‘old’ and ‘new’. These dialogues engaged mentors, co‐ordinators, and teachers alike in mediating between new understandings and old ones. It addresses the ways in which they made sense of the terminology of the new curriculum in light of the old curriculum, negotiated between new pedagogical content knowledge and ingrained conceptions of subject‐matter teaching, adapted old understandings of testing to new conceptions of performance‐assessment processes, and mediated between their need to preserve a sense of professional competence while feeling destabilized as ‘novices’ as they confronted innovative curricular practices. Participants' strategic need to ‘survive’ the changes resulted in the development of networks to support professional exchange and assist teachers in managing their way through the uncertainty of curricular change.     

Decentring the ‘places’ of citizens in national curriculum: the Australian history curriculum

There is debate internationally about the production of curriculum texts and the epistemologies underpinning the knowledge legitimated in national curricula. National History curricula in particular are a source of contention bounded by calls for coherent and unifying national narratives that are inclusive and reflect the complexity of the discipline and historical consciousness of the nation to which they are bound. This paper uses critical spatial theory to highlight the ‘spaces’ and ‘places’ of the Australian Curriculum History (years 7–10) which organise and disorganise representations of identities in and out of the centre of the national narrative. Interrogating the impact of these representations within purported inclusive and cohesive national narratives draws attention to the notions of belonging presented to Australian citizens. We argue that resistance to normative national narratives and colonial legacies presented with place-based identities can reinhabit the curriculum. This reinhabiting and decentring seeks to engage History students with alternative perspectives and articulations to the national narrative, and foster meaningful connections to place and citizenship. Finally, critical place-based education approaches invite an embodied local/global citizen through local and marginalised knowledges.     

Learning a ‘new language’ – the objective approach to early literacy in English

Published research shows that English speakers gain literacy skills up to the 7‐year level more effectively when taught using a language experience approach rather than a word reading approach (reading common words plus phonic reading). It is suggested that this is because of the almost unique nature of English phonology, that is the strengthening of unstressed syllables when converted to stressed syllables, for example, uhn indipendn’t witnis becomes the systematically distorted form of English, with four changes of vowel, that is reflected in the written form. This means that to read English, speakers must learn a ‘new language’. The research evidence is considered and the implications for teaching are suggested.     

Web quest: porting ‘Quest for Independence’ to the World Wide Web

The Internet holds promise as a globally interconnected information system, even though its interaction capability is limited. Yet for education, interaction is critical. Can the Internet support high quality learning interactions? We ported an existing interactive instructional program to the world wide web (WWW) to demonstrate the potential of the Internet for interactive education. In this paper we explore the potential technology solutions, implement our solution and indicate the results, both positive and negative. © 1998 IFIP, published by Chapman &; Hall Ltd     

Educational ideologies and national development needs: the ’African University‘ in Namibia

Although a new institution, the University of Namibia is facing the same problems of curriculum, funding, and access which hinder academic effectiveness elsewhere. Research on the future prospects for the university was facilitated by the senior authors prior involvement in the effort to construct a modern Namibia in the post-colonial period. Such involvement included several advisory assignments relating to the emerging university. This shared experience provided unusual access for in-depth and confidential interviews with national and university decision-makers. Based on these discussions and previous research, the authors outline a process for facilitating the government and academic leadership so crucial to evolving a responsive university. They discern that success for higher education in the Namibian context will require merging the roles of the University and the Polytechnic and transcending imported models to develop an institution responsive to Namibian needs.     

Engaging in the ‘course efficiency’ discussion: national drivers and local responses

Abstract

This article presents a method to evaluate undergraduate and postgraduate course teaching efficiency systematically, alongside measuring effectiveness of curriculum content and delivery. We argue that efficiency is aligned to cost and revenue while effectiveness is a quality-related construct. These potentially antagonistic elements – cost, revenue and quality – must be kept in balance if courses are to be attractive to students (high quality) and financially viable. Curriculum data collection and analysis spanned micro (unit), meso (course) and macro (faculty) level. Revenue data consisted of annual teaching student enrolment numbers by unit of study, aggregated to course level. Cost data included academic and administrative staff costs, and student professional experience placement expenditure. A teaching revenue to cost of delivery ratio metric and course quality score metric were developed to enable comparisons of units and course performance. Over time, these metrics, when utilised together, could be used to determine the impact of quality improvement interventions on teaching cost and revenue and vice versa. We argue that this approach supports strategic planning and actions to improve both efficiency and effectiveness of units and courses, without negatively affecting quality.