Time past: impacts of ICT on the pedagogic discourse in the Interactive project

The ‘pedagogic discourse’ can describe the power relations and fields of influence within schools. This article extends the approach to include ICT-mediated learning in schools by considering evidence from the InterActive project, undertaken by the University of Bristol, England, in 2000–04. The article also considers how the pedagogic discourse can complement post-Vygotskian sociocultural models of learning. ICT is presented as a ‘recontextualising field’ that exerts influence by weakening the classification and framing of the discourse. Successful uses of ICT tend to favour ‘invisible’ pedagogies: collaborative modes of active working with shared competences, in lessons containing elements of ‘discovery’. Tensions can arise if the dominant discourse is a ‘visible’ pedagogy that favours individual performance, with the teacher as the voice of authority and controller of the discourse. These tensions can lead to ICT being marginalised or discredited by teachers or lead to new modalities of pedagogy.     

Teachers’ perceptions of bullying among youth

A series of 48 vignettes of bullying was constructed by crossing (a) four kinds of social contact (physical aggression, verbal aggression, relational aggression, and non-aggression) with (b) male and female bullies, (c) male and female and victims, and (d) reaction of the victim (aggressive, passive, and no reaction). Teachers rated vignettes for seriousness. Physical aggression was perceived as more serious than any other kind of bullying, and vignettes that depicted female bullies and male victims were perceived as least serious across all kinds of bullying. Results are discussed in terms of applied implications for teachers in school settings and directions for future research.     

Conversations in the wildwood: narrators,readers and the rise of the ecological self

New nature writing has been gaining popularity in the English-speaking world. Using participant observation of a book group, this article finds that reading such ecological writing can facilitate reader shifts in perceptions and the valuing of non-human organisms and the more-than-human world. Shifts are enabled when readers experience reading as an imagined conversation with knowledgeable, friendly author/narrators. Readers construct representations of author/narrators using textual and extra-textual information. Evaluative, narrative and aesthetic feelings, alongside inferences about author/narrators’ abilities to provide accurate natural history information, evoke intellectual pleasure in readers which can transform difficult emotions. By modelling a self that values nature and brings together science and poetic language, author/narrators of ecological writing offer an alternative vision of the self that challenges problematic dualisms in society. Such a sense of self was adopted and developed upon within book group discussions, highlighting the importance of aesthetic, emotional and relational contexts for using ecological literature in environmental education.     

A critical analysis of the role of wait time in classroom interactions and the effects on student and teacher interactional behaviours

Extending the pauses between teachers’ and students’ turns (wait time) has been recommended as a way of improving classroom learning. Drawing on the Conversation Analysis literature on classroom interactions alongside extracts of classroom interactions, the relationship between these pauses and the interactional behaviour of teachers and students is examined. Extended wait time is built in to classroom interactions because of the IRF (Initiation–Response–Feedback/Follow-up) framework that dominates these interactions. Extending wait time can lead to a variety of changes in the norms of classroom interaction. The structures of interactions in formal classrooms are used to explain the previous findings relating to the extension of wait time. It is also shown that different uses of extended wait time lead to different interactional norms and maintaining extended wait times may not be desirable. Consequently, the article argues for a more nuanced understanding of wait time, desired student behaviours and the interaction of the two.     

The ABC of ELT... TBL ——In this Issue,Jane and Dave Willis look at Task-Based Learning

TBL, also known as TBLT (task-based learning and teaching) and, in the USA, as TBL (task-based instruction) is an approach which uses communication tasks as the central focus for language teaching and learning. Basically the term task in TBL, refers to a meaning -focused activity. There are a number of definitions in the literature, but they can be characterized also follows: the learner s principle focus is on exchanging and understanding meanings, rather than on practice of pre-specified forms or patterns there is some kind of communicative purpose or goal set for the task, so learners know what they are expected to achieve by the end tasks can involve any or all four skills, e. g. a     

Professional currency among midcareer college faculty: Family and work factors

This study examined work and family factors that differentiate midcareer faculty members who were current from less current faculty with regard to the disciplinary knowledge base. The sample included 97 faculty (69 males, 28 females; 72 English, 25 Engineering) and their spouses. Cluster analyses of the work and family variables identified faculty subgroups within discipline. ANCOVAs showed a significant relationship between the clustered work-family profiles and levels of currency.Family differences: Current faculty and spouses reported spending more time on family-related responsibilities and experiencing greater stress from combined work-family responsibilities. Current Engineering faculty reported less flexibility in reallocating family responsibilities.Work differences: Faculty reported a greater commitment to their careers and to professional development: They reported higher scores on the Inner Work Standards scale; current English faculty read more professional journals and spent more time on research; current Engineering faculty spent more time on research and had more publications.     

Relational learning in pigeons: The role of perceptual processes in between-key recognition of complex stimuli

In Experiment 1, we used six procedures in a series of unsuccessful attempts to obtain relational learning using trial-unique pictorial stimuli in pigeons. The Experiment began by testing conventional (three-key) matching-to-sample (MTS) and nonmatching-to-sample (NMTS); in subsequent stages of the experiment we progressively incorporated features of techniques that do obtain relational learning in a single-key apparatus. In Experiment 2, we found that acquisition of NMTS using pictorial stimuli proceeded no more rapidly than acquisition of a conditional discrimination. Experiment 3 showed that acquisition of NMTS was more rapid than acquisition of MTS when plain colored stimuli were used, but not when pictorial stimuli were used. These three experiments suggest that pigeons do not recognize pictorial stimuli shown on different keys. In Experiment 4, between-key recognition was obtained with familiar but not with novel pictorial stimuli. It is argued that perceptual learning facilitates the detection of the between-key identity of complex stimuli, and that perceptual processes may underlie the difficulty in demonstrating relational learning in pigeons.     

Impact of a full‐time integrated program on the achievement of nonhandicapped and mildly handicapped children

Abstract

We compared achievement gains of mildly handicapped and nonhandicapped third graders in a full‐time integrated program, Team Approach to Mastery (TAM), with gains of similar students in regular classrooms and resource‐room programs. Comparisons of residualized gain scores on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills showed that nonhandicapped students made substantially greater gains in full‐time integrated TAM classrooms than both mildly handicapped students in the same classrooms and nonhandicapped students in regular classrooms. Although mildly handicapped students in integrated TAM classrooms tended to experience greater gains than students in resource rooms, differences were significant only in math. Overall, results indicated the effectiveness of the TAM model, particularly when achievement gains of nonhandicapped and mildly handicapped students are contrasted with those reported in a more popular, and complex, integrated classroom model.