Meeting the challenge of educational disadvantage: a case-study

The author, a primary school headteacher and poet, offers some personal and practical advice for developing the use and joy in poetry within the classroom. He selects, as a form of case study, ideas and examples from his own school and from his work in other LEAs. The article also provides an extremely useful list of resources for teachers which will enable them to support their teaching of poetry and language skills.     

Relations of Power,Speed, Flexibility,and Certain Anthropometric Measures of Junior High School Girls

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the differences among 7th, 8th, and 9th grade girls in power, speed, and flexibility and to determine the relation between power and flexibility, speed and flexibility, and speed and certain anthropometric measures. The subjects were enrolled in ungraded physical education classes. Seventh grade girls were faster than 8th grade girls in the 50-yard dash. Ninth grade girls broad jumped farther than 7th and 8th grade girls. No significant relations were found in the other items studied.     

Community Forum: Research Libraries in the Digital Age

ABSTRACT

This dialogue provides a summary and assessment of issues discussed relating to research libraries and research universities in a digital environment.     

Topics and Features of Academic Medical Library Tutorials

ABSTRACT

In a 2007 study, librarians at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Library examined freely available online tutorials on academic medical library Web sites. The team identified tutorial topics, determined common design features, and assessed elements of active learning in library-created tutorials; the team also generated a list of third-party tutorials to which medical libraries link. This article updates the earlier study, describing changes and trends in tutorial content and design on medical libraries' Web sites; the project team plans to continue to track trends in tutorial development by repeating this study annually.     

Pedagogy of Science Teaching Tests: Formative assessments of science teaching orientations

A critical aspect of teacher education is gaining pedagogical content knowledge of how to teach science for conceptual understanding. Given the time limitations of college methods courses, it is difficult to touch on more than a fraction of the science topics potentially taught across grades K-8, particularly in the context of relevant pedagogies. This research and development work centers on constructing a formative assessment resource to help expose pre-service teachers to a greater number of science topics within teaching episodes using various modes of instruction. To this end, 100 problem-based, science pedagogy assessment items were developed via expert group discussions and pilot testing. Each item contains a classroom vignette followed by response choices carefully crafted to include four basic pedagogies (didactic direct, active direct, guided inquiry, and open inquiry). The brief but numerous items allow a substantial increase in the number of science topics that pre-service students may consider. The intention is that students and teachers will be able to share and discuss particular responses to individual items, or else record their responses to collections of items and thereby create a snapshot profile of their teaching orientations. Subsets of items were piloted with students in pre-service science methods courses, and the quantitative results of student responses were spread sufficiently to suggest that the items can be effective for their intended purpose.     

Building on Learner Contributions: A Web-Supported Pedagogic Strategy

Since 1997, the authors have been involved with the increasingly widespread use of a Web-based course-management system called TeleTOP not only in their own university but also in other universities and training settings. The implementation of TeleTOP was accompanied with an emphasis on a pedagogy that was new to almost all of the instructors involved: that of shifting the focus in a course from the presentation of content to the facilitation of learners making contributions to the course TeleTOP environment, contributions that serve as subsequent learning resources for others in the same course and can be re-used as resources in other versions of the courses and other settings. This article describes the theoretical basis for the approach, illustrates how the pedagogy works in practice and gives some of the results. Construire à partir des apports des apprenants: une stratégie pédagogique par Internet. Depuis 1997, nous avons été impliqués, de plus en plus, dans l'utilisation d'un système de cours appelé TeleTOP, non seulement dans notre université mais aussi dans d'autres établissements de formation. Nous avons implanté TeleTOP grâce à une pédagogie nouvelle aux yeux de la plupart des enseignants: celle consistant à passer de la simple présentation du cours à la possibilité pour l'étudiant de participer à l'élaboration même du cours TeleTOP. Ces contributions ont pu être utiles à d'autres étudiants mais ont aussi pu servir à l'élaboration d'autres versions de cours. Dans cet article, nous décrivons les bases théoriques de notre approche, nous montrons comment cette pédagogie fonctionne dans la pratique, et donnons quelques résultats. Das Einbauen von Anfängerbeiträgen: Eine Web-basierte pädagogische Strategie. Seit 1997 sind wir mit der zunehmend verbreiteten Verwendung eines Web-basierten Kursmanagementsystems, genannt: TeleTOP, befasst , nicht nur in unserer eigenen Universität, sondern auch an anderen Universitäten und Ausbildungsstätten. Wir haben die Einführung von TeleTOP schwerpunktmäßig mit einer Pädagogik begleitet, die fast allen betroffenen Ausbildern neu war: nämlich, dass im Laufe eines Lehrgangs der Fokus von der Darstellung des Inhalts zur Möglichkeit, über Eigenbeiträge der Lerner selbst Kursmaterial zu TeleTOP hinzuzufügen, das anschließend für andere Kursteilnehmer oder auch für andere Kurse als Lernressource wieder genutzt werden kann, gerichtet wird. In diesem Artikel beschreiben wir die theoretische Basis für unseren Ansatz, erläutern, wie die Pädagogik in der Praxis funktioniert, und teilen einige unserer Ergebnisse mit.