Setting or mixed ability? Teachers’ views of the organisation of pupils for learning

This paper examines how staff in schools formulate decisions about pupil organisation. A small sample of primary and secondary schools from across Scotland was involved in the study.
In 1996 Her Majesty's Inspectors published a report entitled Achievement for All (SOEID, 1996) which, it was envisaged, would form the basis of school evaluations into the effectiveness of classroom organisation. This report, and in particular the six principles on which it suggested effective organisational arrangements should rest, formed the organising framework for the study.
The study had three main aims:

• 1. 

  to ascertain the extent to which the principles outlined in the HMI report had been used by school staff when making decisions about which form of organisation to use

       

Seeing is believing: using videopapers to transform teachers' professional knowledge and practice

Gaps, barriers, boundaries and walls are words often used to describe the separation between educational research and practice. They account for the differences that are said to exist between the ‘two cultures’; the members of which appear to occupy different worlds, have different mindsets and express themselves in different discourses. The purpose of this paper is to suggest ways of overcoming this divide by presenting a new genre of publication, videopaper, that integrates and synchronizes different forms of representation, such as text, video and images, in one cohesive document. We argue that this has the potential to end the elision in the educational community which sees researchers as knowledge generators and teachers as knowledge translators. We contend that videopaper has a range of affordances that may help the professional and academic communities to find new ways of seeing, creating and using educational research.     

Physiological responses and perceptions of exertion in a step aerobics session.

The aims of this study were to establish the cardiovascular and metabolic demands of a university step aerobics session entitled 'Uni-Step' performed at three step heights, and to evaluate the use of heart rate and ratings of perceived exertion for the estimation of exercise intensity during this mode. Ten female participants in step aerobics (mean VO2max = 47.7, s = 6.8 ml.kg-1.min-1) performed a 40-min Uni-Step routine on steps of height 6, 8 and 10 inches (15.2, 20.3 and 25.4 cm). Oxygen uptake, heart rate and ratings of perceived exertion were recorded throughout each test. Maximum oxygen uptake (VO2max) and maximum heart rate were measured using a continuous treadmill protocol. The mean intensities were 45.6%, 51.6% and 56.2% VO2max for the 6-, 8- and 10-inch steps respectively. The mean percent heart rate reserves were 57.2%, 63.6% and 70.1% at these three heights respectively. Correlations indicated a weak relationship between %VO2max and ratings of perceived exertion for the 6- and 8-inch steps (r = 0.61 and 0.66 respectively) but a stronger one for the 10-inch step (r = 0.79). Uni-Step performed on the two highest steps was of a sufficient relative intensity to improve or maintain the cardiovascular fitness of participants in this study. The lowest step may be useful for participants of lower fitness. Heart rate overestimated the metabolic cost of Uni-Step at all three step heights and therefore caution is advised if used to predict intensity. Low correlations between %VO2max and ratings of perceived exertion at the two lower step heights indicate that ratings of perceived exertion may have limited utility in prescribing training intensity.     

Mathematical Modelling: the Interaction of Culture and Practice

Using a sociocultural approach we analyse the results of a Mexican/British project which investigated the ways in which mathematics is used in the practice of school science and the role of spreadsheets as a mathematical modelling tool. After discussing the different school cultures experienced by two groups of pre-university 16–18 year old students we analyse how these different cultures influenced their practice of mathematics, as well as their work with mathematical spreadsheet modelling activities. There were clear differences between the two groups of students in their preference for external representations, in their understanding of the kind of answers they were expected to produce and in the way they conceived the role of mathematics in the practice of science. Although students preferences for a particular representation were not significantly modified by the use of a spreadsheet as a modelling resource, at the end of the study the students recognised the value of using a more diverse set of representations. The results obtained suggest the possibility of enhancing students' capability to shift between a wider range of representations, including graphical, algebraic and numeric ones, using a modelling approach embedded in a computer environment such as a spreadsheet. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.