Exploring teachers' perceptions of children's imaginative writing at home

This study explores an area of writing that has been largely neglected – children’s imaginative writing at home. In an educational climate dominated by the standards agenda and top‐down directive discourses, this study draws inspiration from children who are creating opportunities for writing themselves and are developing agency through their writing at home. The positive approach to reading advocated in Margaret Clark’s (1976) seminal work on ‘young fluent readers’ has been very influential. Rather than reporting what children are unable to do, Clark explored the early experiences and home setting of competent pre‐school readers, posing the question: what can they teach us? Taking this lead, one of the premises of this study is that we should similarly seek to understand the experiences of young competent writers so that we can learn more about children who choose to write of their own volition outside of school. This paper presents the findings of the preliminary phase of an ongoing doctoral study. Drawing on questionnaire data, it specifically focuses upon Year 5 and 6 teachers’ views of children’s imaginative home writing, exploring problems of identification and teachers’ perceptions of their pupils as imaginative writers at home.     

An Acceptance and Mindfulness‐Based Approach to Social Phobia: A Case Study

Over the past few years, there has been a proliferation of theoretical discussions and empirical research on the use of acceptance and mindfulness‐based therapies to treat anxiety disorders. Because these treatment approaches are in their infancy, many clinicians may still be uncertain about how to apply such treatments in their work with clients. This case study demonstrates the successful use of an acceptance‐based approach for the treatment of social anxiety disorder in a student in a college counseling center.     

Needs of elementary and middle school teachers developing online courses for a virtual school

Eight teams of elementary and middle school teachers developed pilot online courses for the North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS) in the USA. A qualitative case study with focus groups and a follow‐up survey helped to identify common needs of these non‐traditional course designers during course development efforts. Findings suggest virtual schools can better support non‐traditional course designers by providing leadership components such as technical expertise, regular feedback, and clear expectations, including an understanding of the target students. Findings further suggest designers need a range of bite‐sized professional development on replicating model courses, using course management systems, assessing learners online, designing with copyright and safety issues in mind, integrating Web tools, and developing course documentation for deployment. The article concludes with a discussion of support structures that may aid instructors tasked with online course development.     

Media Production

Thomas D. Burrows and Donald N. Wood's Television Production: Disciplines and Techniques (Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown, 1978---$11.95, paper)

Robert Edmonds' Scriptwriting for the Audio-Visual Media (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1978---$8.95, paper)

Charles Bensinger's The Home Video Handbook (Video-Info Publications, P.O. Box 1507, Santa Barbara, Calif. 93102---$8.95, paper)

Ben Brady's The Keys to Writing for Television and Film (Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall-Hunt, l978---price not given, paper)     

Reference Works

UNION LIST OF FILM PERIODICALS: HOLDINGS OF SELECTED AMERICAN COLLECTIONS, by Anna Brady (compiler and editor), Richard Wall (assistant editor), and Carolyn Newitt Weiner (computer editor), (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1984—$35.00)

THE CIRCULATING FILM LIBRARY CATALOG, (Publication and Sales, The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10019—$12.95 to the general public and $9.71 to members)

THE D.W. GRIFFITH PAPERS, (available on 36 microfilm reels, with printed guide and index from University Publications of America, 44 North Market Street, Frederick, Maryland 21701—$2,300.00)

THE NORTH DAKOTA QUARTERLY of Summer 1983 (but issued in the summer of 1984)

THE ANNUAL INDEX TO MOTION PICTURE CREDITS, edited by Byerly Woodward (Los Angeles: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1984 —$80.00)

WHAT A BUNCH OF CHARACTERS! AN ENTERTAINING GUIDE TO WHO PLAYED WHAT IN THE MOVIES by Tom Scott Cadden (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1984 — $9.95 paper)     

Indigenous Australian Education and Globalisation

This article focuses on the impact of colonisation and its associated impact on Indigenous teaching and learning. Western European institutions have dominated Indigenous ways of knowing and in Australia this has led to barriers which restrict the participation of Aboriginal people in education systems. Globally Indigenous people are attempting to bring into the introduced educational systems culturally appropriate teaching and learning practices so that a more holistic approach to education can become the norm rather than the exception. The relationship between Indigenous knowledge and western European concepts of knowledge and knowing need to placed in a framework of mutual interaction so that not only do Indigenous people benefit, but so do non-Indigenous educators and students.     

Roles of a teacher and researcher during in situ professional development around the implementation of mathematical modeling tasks

Partnership with teachers for professional development has been considered beneficial because of the potential of collaborative work in the teacher’s own classroom to be relevant to practice. From this perspective, both teachers and researchers can draw on their own expertise and work as authentic partners. In this study, we address the need for such collaboration and focus on how a teacher and a researcher performed their roles when collaboratively implementing mathematical modeling tasks within a context of in situ professional development. Using multi-tier design-based research, as a framework, a researcher worked in a teacher’s classroom to implement a series of research-based mathematical modeling activities. A broad corpus of data from this interaction was analyzed, including audio recordings of interviews with the teacher, video recordings of three mathematical modeling lessons, researcher field notes and journal reflections, instructional materials, and students’ written work using the principles for designing activities for teachers. The emerging roles and relationships between the teacher and the researcher were documented, as (1) the researcher implemented the professional development, (2) the teacher shared her concerns, (3) the researcher responded to the teacher’s challenges, and (3) the teacher reflected on student development. As a case study of collaboration, the participants’ roles and strategies to overcome challenges and achieve shared objectives can benefit teachers and researchers who plan to collaboratively implement modeling in the classroom. The study supports the value and viability of this form of in situ professional development, indicating that significant changes in teachers’ thinking about their students’ mathematical model development can occur in relatively short periods of time.     

Anonymous versus public student feedback systems: metacognition and achievement with graduate learners

Educational technology research and development - The aim of this repeated measures study was to examine an anonymous student feedback system (delivered using clickers) versus a public student...     

Using Peers as Trainers to Increase an Autistic Child's Social Interactions

This report presents a data‐based intervention designed t o increase the social interactions between an autistic boy and his nondisabled peers. A “loose training” prompting tactic was used to teach the child to initiate to the peers. After several training sessions the autistic child increased his spontaneous interactions (a) with the training peers in non‐training, generalizationsessions and (b) with non‐training peersin the generalization sessions. The results show promise for the discovery and implementation of generalization tactics that promote the social integration of disabled and nondisabled children.     

Developing inclusive teachers from an inclusive curricular perspective

This article defines inclusive education in light of the Education for All agenda. It then describes key considerations for developing inclusive teachers from the perspective of an inclusive curriculum which seeks to address the needs of all learners. It concludes by outlining several key policy discussion areas which must be addressed if inclusive educational reforms are to be sustained.