How Can Teaching Aids Improve the Quality of Mathematics Education

The interplay among and connections between objects (structured or unstructured), images, language and symbols that lead to mathematical reasoning and the stating of mathematical propositions of very wide generality is well worth closer study. I believe that the subtle distinction between the way mathematical ideas are constructed from objects and the particular characteristics of the objects is often not clear in many teachers' minds. In the plenary, with the help of colleagues, using practical examples and situations, I would like to explore the distinction between the mathematical ideas that are being discussed in classrooms and the objects that are used in helping with abstractions. The use of interactive technology in the creation of mathematical meanings will form an important part of my colleagues' contributions.     

Students with Self-identified Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (si-SEND): Flourishing or Languishing!

Students’ wellbeing is an essential component of their ability to function well, not only at school but also in all life domains. Many studies have investigated student wellbeing. However, empirical studies about the wellbeing of students with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) are scarce. Furthermore, many studies have adopted a deficit view of wellbeing and mental [ill]-health. This study adopted a more positive perspective. We administered a questionnaire assessing social-emotional and psychological wellbeing, global self-concept, resilience, bullying, mental ill-health and school satisfaction to 1930 students, aged 13–15 years, who were attending seven mainstream schools in South Australia. Of those students, 172 self-identified as having SEND. Results showed significant differences, with students who self-identified with SEND not faring as well as other students on all measures. In particular, just over one third (39.9%) of students who self-identified as having SEND reported that they were flourishing, compared with just over half (57.6%) of the students who did not indicate that they had special needs. The findings indicate that more attention needs to be given to designing and implementing supports to improve the wellbeing and school satisfaction of students who self-identify as having SEND.     

Social play as joint action: A framework to study the evolution of shared intentionality as an interactional achievement

Social play has a complex, cooperative nature that requires substantial coordination. This has led researchers to use social games to study cognitive abilities like shared intentionality, the skill and motivation to share goals and intentions with others during joint action. We expand this proposal by considering play as a joint action and examining how shared intentionality is achieved during human joint action. We describe how humans get into, conduct, and get out of joint actions together in an orderly way, thereby constructing the state of “togetherness” characteristic of shared intentionality. These processes play out as three main phases, the opening (where participants are ratified and joint commitments are established), the main body (where progress, ongoing commitments, and possible role reversals are coordinated), and the closing (where the intention to terminate the action is coordinated and where participants take leave of each other). We use this process in humans as a framework for examining how various animal species get into, maintain, and get out of play bouts. This comparative approach constitutes an alternative measure of those species’ possession of shared intentionality. Using this framework, we review the play literature on human children and different social species of mammals and birds in search of behavioral markers of shared intentionality in the coordination of play bouts. We discuss how our approach could shed light on the evolution of the special human motivation to cooperate and share psychological states with others.     

Broadening out and opening up technology assessment: Approaches to enhance international development,co-ordination and democratisation

Technology assessment (TA) has a strong history of helping to identify priorities and improve environmental sustainability, cost-effectiveness and wider benefits in the technology policies and innovation strategies of nation-states. At international levels, TA has the potential to enhance the roles of science, technology and innovation towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals, effectively implementing the UN Framework on Climate Change and fostering general global transitions to ‘green economies’. However, when effectively recommending single ostensibly ‘best’ technologies or strategies, TA practices can serve unjustifiably to ‘close down’ debate, failing adequately to address technical uncertainties and social ambiguities, reducing scope for democratic accountability and co-ordination across scales and contexts. This paper investigates ways in which contrasting processes ‘broadening out’ and ‘opening up’ TA can enhance both rigour and democratic accountability in technology policy, as well as facilitating social relevance and international cooperation. These methods allow TA to illuminate options, uncertainties and ambiguities and so inform wider political debates about how the contending questions, values and knowledges of different social interests often favour contrasting innovation pathways. In this way TA can foster both technical robustness and social legitimacy in subsequent policy-making. Drawing on three empirical case studies (at local, national and international levels), the paper discusses detailed cases and methods, where recent TA exercises have contributed to this ‘broadening out’ and ‘opening up’. It ends by exploring wider implications and challenges for national and international technology assessment processes that focus on global sustainable development challenges.     

University students’ perceptions of summative assessment: The role of context

We report on a mixed-method study that compared students’ perceptions of summative assessment across two distinct disciplines – education and mathematics, at two research-intensive institutions in the UK. The disciplines chosen represent opposing positions in Biglan’s classification of academic disciplines, as well as having very different assessment practices. Results suggest that these education students prefer to be assessed by methods they perceive to discriminate on the basis of academic abilities. Moreover, they perceive the traditional closed-book examination as inadequate to assess the capabilities which are key to being successful in their subject, which fits some but not all of the general findings in the literature. However, comparing these results with those of an identical study with mathematics students, we find that the perceptions of summative assessment are very different. We account for that difference by suggesting that students’ epistemic beliefs play a role in shaping these perceptions and conclude that, in designing summative assessment in higher education, generalised and centralised forces for change need to be tempered by contextual and disciplinary factors.     

Gender,reputation and regret: the ontological politics of Australian drug education

This study explores the role of gender in the constitution youth alcohol and other drug consumption in Australian drug education curriculum. Drawn from an analysis of contemporary classroom drug education documents, it is argued that current drug education reproduces unethical and harmful accounts of femininity and masculinity. These enactments of gender primarily arise in three ways. First, drug education currently positions young women's consumption practices as intrinsically more problematic than those of young men. Second, drug education works to position young women's consumption practices as a problem of spoiled reputation and regret. Third, drug education works to responsibilise young women for potential danger and harm they experience while intoxicated without any consideration of the illegal actions of young men. Working with Annemarie Mol's notion of ontological politics, this article argues that Australian drug education enacts gendered realities of youth consumption that work to reproduce, rather than reduce, a range of social harms, ‘drug-related’ or otherwise.     

Age and gender differences in kinematics of powerful instep kicks in soccer

Soccer kicking training should be adjusted to the characteristics of the athletes. Therefore, examination of differences in kicking kinematics of females and pubertal players relative to males is worthwhile. The purpose of the study was to compare kicking kinematics and segmental sequence parameters between male, female, and pubertal players. Ten adult male, ten adult female, and ten male pubertal players participated in the study. Participants performed five consecutive kicking trials of a stationary ball, as powerful as they could. Analysis of variance showed significantly higher ball velocity, higher joint linear velocities for the knee and the hip, and higher angular velocities of the knee and the ankle for males compared to female and pubertal players (p < 0.05). Similarly, the peak joint velocity was achieved significantly closer to ball impact in males compared to other groups (p < 0.05). Males also showed a more plantarflexed ankle immediately before ball impact (p < 0.05). Females and pubertal players may benefit from skill training aiming to increase ankle plantarflexion and hip flexion prior to ball impact, and to adjust thigh and shank motion, such that the shank–foot segment travels through a higher range of motion and with a greater velocity.     

The Emergence of Football in Nineteenth-Century England: The Historiographic Debate

The work details the history of football that became established in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the view that social and economic changes resulted in football disappearing from the general community, only surviving in the various public schools, who played a codified game. It was these games that were transplanted to the general population, becoming the sports of rugby and soccer. This remained the established history of football until almost the twenty-first century, whence it was replaced by an increased acknowledgement that during the nineteenth century football did not die out. In fact, popularly played football during this period was conducted under strict rules. It is maintained that rugby and soccer were produced in the nineteenth century by a fusion of influences from both the public schools and wider communities.     

E‐learning: you don't always get what you hope for

Despite substantial growth in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) throughout western societies, there is much evidence of technology‐led innovations within Higher Education (HE) failing to achieve the anticipated transformations in learning and teaching. This paper reviews evidence from research and evaluation studies relating not only to e‐learning, but also to wider HE practices. It argues that the use of ICT does not, in itself, result in improved educational outcomes and ways of working. It considers contextual factors that are of greater significance in determining how and why e‐learning is used in HE. Students' engagement with e‐learning relates to their expectations and conceptions of learning and to assessment demands. Academics need to re‐assess their own beliefs and practices concerning teaching and assessment and their impact on the experience of learners. Both teachers and learners need to understand why e‐learning activities are to be undertaken and the rewards expected to be derived.     

Protestant ethic endorsement,personality, and general intelligence

To learn if Protestant ethic endorsement predicted intelligence controlling for the big five personality factors, 364 college students from England and the United States completed a 65-item multifaceted work ethic endorsement measure, the 50-item Wonderlic Personnel Test, and a 60-item measure of the big five personality factors. A hierarchical multiple regression revealed that, after controlling for respondent's sex and the big five, work ethic facets accounted for 5.6% of the variability in Wonderlic scores. However, the direction of the relationship between PWE facets and Wonderlic scores depended on the PWE facet in question. Furthermore, the facets accounted for more variability than did a composite work ethic score. The discussion focuses on the multidimensional nature of PWE endorsement and future research with this construct.