The role of research education coordinators in building research cultures in doctoral education

The development of cultures of support has become important in programmes for the preparation of research students. The paper draws on in-depth interviews with 21 research education coordinators from Australian and UK institutions to identify the strategies that they use to build research cultures and integrate research students into them. Students’ research cultures are not always linked to departmental research cultures more generally. Local contexts and conditions and staff (including supervisors’) attitudes are found to be critical in how research education coordinators respond and what is considered possible in order to ensure that research students are involved in research cultures.     

Changing teaching styles

Eleven tutor counsellors in the British Open University were interviewed to ascertain how they responded to the idea of using a facilitative teaching style in their tutorials. Their responses have been analysed by a systems model of the tutorial process which indicates the extent to which they possessed a coherent framework, appropriate for teaching in a distance education teaching system. The interviews revealed factors which have echoes in student learning research and which, taken together, offer a tentative explanation of why some tutor counsellors were more amenable to changing their teaching styles than others. This has implications for staff development, not only in distance education systems but for teaching in general.     

‘Power to empower’: conceptions of teaching and learning in a pedagogical co-design partnership

ABSTRACT

This study is an autoethnographic reflection on power and expertise in an evolving student/staff partnership. The partnership was initiated as pedagogical co-design in the development and implementation of a peer-assisted learning programme. Through a process of critical reflection that linked our partnership experience with themes from relevant literature, we (the staff and student authors) became co-researchers of our practice. The evolution of the partnership provided a unique perspective from which to compare our experiences of power and expertise across both contexts. We characterised our pedagogical co-design partnership as a shift from the more traditional ‘power over’ model of delivery towards ‘power to empower’ where both student and staff partners had agency and voice. Key to this important transition was a shared philosophy of student-centred teaching. As the partnership transformed from co-teaching to co-researching we needed to re-negotiate power dynamics; while our different pathways had converged on a common view of student-centred learning, our research expertise remained disparate. We were able to negotiate this challenge by drawing on our existing relationship based on respect, reciprocity and responsibility, reinforcing views of partnership that value equality of opportunity and a focus on learning and process, rather than equality of contributions and outcomes.     

Conversations Around Young Children’s Drawing: The Impact of the Beliefs of Significant Others at Home and School

Children learn to make meanings in communities of practice through interaction with more experienced others. Young children’s strategies for and attitudes to learning are determined by the sociocultural contexts in which they practise those strategies, including learning how to draw within the distinct cultures of home and school. Evidence of meaning making — 2 and 3D representations involving drawing, modelling and play with objects — was collected over one month periods in the Autumns of 98, 99 and 00 from seven young children in home and as they settled into new pre–school and school settings in the North of England. The evidence of the seven children’s meaning making, recorded by photographs and scrap books of their representations, was used as a stimulus in dialogues to elicit parents’ and practitioners’ beliefs about the value and significance of different modes meaning making, including drawing in the contexts of home and school. Their conversations were recorded and transcribed for analysis. Evidence from the perspectives of parents, practitioners and the children was triangulated with evidence of contextual features for learning around the children’s drawings. Episodes from analysis of the data sets will be used to illustrate how the children were inducted into the conventions of ‘school’ drawing whilst often retaining a distinct personal drawing agenda at home. Implications will be drawn for the status and function of drawing in the education of young children in formal and informal learning contexts.     

The Practicum in Teacher Training: A preliminary and qualitative assessment of the improved National Institute of Education-School Partnership Model in Singapore

In light of the recognition of the limitations that training institutes and teacher educators have in providing sound practical experience to trainee teachers, the National Institute of Education (NIE) in 1999 embarked on an improved Partnership Model with schools playing a greater role in this cooperation. This model was implemented with the Post Graduate Diploma in Education programme. This paper describes the rationale and context within which the new model was proposed and implemented. It also provides a qualitative and preliminary assessment of the extent to which the objectives of the new model have or are being met, what problems were encountered and how these were resolved, through feedback obtained from principals, School Coordinating Mentors, the NIE Supervision Coordinators and trainee teachers.     

In Infants' Hands: Identification of Preverbal Infants at Risk for Primary Language Delay

Early identification of primary language delay is crucial to implement effective prevention programs. Available screening instruments are based on parents' reports and have only insufficient predictive validity. This study employed observational measures of preverbal infants' gestural communication to test its predictive validity for identifying later language delays. Pointing behavior of fifty‐nine 12‐month‐old infants was analyzed and related to their language skills 1 year later. Results confirm predictive validity of preverbal communication for language skills with the hand shape of pointing being superior compared to the underlying motives for pointing (imperative vs. declarative). Twelve‐month‐olds who pointed only with their open hand but never with their index finger were at risk for primary language delay at 2 years of age.     

Socioeconomic Disadvantage, Proximal Environmental Experiences, and Socioemotional and Academic Adjustment in Early Adolescence: Investigation of a Mediated Effects Model

This study investigated interrelations among conditions of household socioeconomic disadvantage, proximal environmental experiences, and adaptational outcomes in a sample of 398 middle grade, early adolescents from a predominantly poor, rural area. Findings indicated that levels of disadvantage were related to both socioemotional and academic adjustment, with those from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds faring most poorly. Specifically, youth from homes in which adults were employed in low-income, unskilled occupations were found to have lower levels of school performance and achievement compared to those from homes in which adults were employed in higher paying semi-skilled or skilled/professional occupations. Further, youth from families in which neither parent had graduated from high school exhibited significantly worse socioemotional and academic adjustment than did those whose parents had higher educational levels. Youth who lived in relatively disadvantaged homes also reported more negative experiences of proximal environmental conditions relating to family and school contexts and greater exposure to stressful life events. Most notably, findings provided support for employing an ecological-mediational perspective to understand patterns of linkage between socioeconomic disadvantage and levels of adjustment. Support for this viewpoint included the finding that proximal environmental experiences were significant predictors of adolescent adjustment, independent of shared variance with conditions of household disadvantage, whereas conditions of disadvantage in several instances were no longer related significantly to indices of adjustment once their association with proximal environmental conditions was taken into account. The discussion considers implications for the targeting and scope of ecologically oriented approaches to preventive intervention.     

Learning from peers: Beyond the rhetoric of positive results

This paper extends previous efforts to provide clarity to the field of cooperative learning. Various theoretical approaches to learning from peers are described, and the implications of these approaches for key instructional choices by teachers are delineated. The primary perspectives of interest in this paper were social-behavioral approaches and cognitive approaches. Potential sources of problems are identified, and suggestions for averting such problems are provided. The role of the teacher within the cooperative classroom is also discussed.     

Reliability and validity of the Learning Styles Questionnaire

The reliability and predictive validity of a short form of Honey and Mumford's Learning Styles Questionnaire were examined. Students' learning preferences were measured by self-report ratings on their degree of likings for 19 teaching and learning activities commonly used in higher and professional education. Subjects were 381 second-year undergraduates enrolled in accountancy, engineering and communication programmes at the Hong Kong Polytechnic. The alpha coefficients for the four learning styles scales were quite low, ranging from 0.311 for the Pragmatist scale to 0.421 for the Reflector scale. Factor analysis of the items did not reveal any coherent factor structure congruent with the underlying constructs. However, significant though weak correlations were found between the learning styles scores and the learning preferences of the students as hypothesised.