An educative intervention: assisting in the self-assessment of archival practice in 12 community service organisations

There is a need for systemic improvement in the management of care records in Australia. This has been highlighted by government inquiries, media coverage and research literature relating to the significance of records for those who experience out-of-home care. The Who Am I? project – an interdisciplinary collaboration between historians, social workers and archivists – sought to address this concern and support positive change in 12 participating community service organisations (CSOs) in Victoria. To provide a framework for practice improvement, research archivists on the Who Am I? team designed the Self-Assessment Tool for Archives. Based on an action research methodology and influenced by the Records Continuum, this was an ‘educative intervention’ for the CSOs, as well as the participating archivists.     

Developing Students’ Futures Thinking in Science Education

Futures thinking involves a structured exploration into how society and its physical and cultural environment could be shaped in the future. In science education, an exploration of socio-scientific issues offers significant scope for including such futures thinking. Arguments for doing so include increasing student engagement, developing students?? values discourse, fostering students?? analytical and critical thinking skills, and empowering individuals and communities to envisage, value, and work towards alternative futures. This paper develops a conceptual framework to support teachers?? planning and students?? futures thinking in the context of socio-scientific issues. The key components of the framework include understanding the current situation, analysing relevant trends, identifying drivers, exploring possible and probable futures, and selecting preferable futures. Each component is explored at a personal, local, national, and global level. The framework was implemented and evaluated in three classrooms across Years 4?C12 (8 to 16-year olds) and findings suggest it has the potential to support teachers in designing engaging science programmes in which futures thinking skills can be developed.     

Do you like dogs or writing? Identity performance in childen's digital message exchange

Over a number of years we have been investigating ways in which e‐communication can contribute to children's writing development and how new technology re‐frames our understandings of writing in the classroom (Merchant, 2003; Burnett et al, 2004; Burnett et al, 2005; Merchant, 2005). Here we analyse the digital writing of pupils from two linked primary school classes (Year 3–5) in the North of England. Part of the project involved the pupils in communicating about themselves and their interests to email partners of the same age. In this article, we track children's identity performance in informal message exchange and show how this contributed to a final knowledge product. We explore how work that had its origins in representing children's lives and identities reflected their position in wider cultural worlds. This perspective causes us to question whether there are there sufficient opportunities for pupils to explore and express ‘who they are’ in the current content‐driven curriculum where public genres are central and personal voice is peripheral.     

The nature of reading difficulties among inmates in juvenile institutions

Dyslexia is assumed to be frequent amonginmates in prisons and in juvenileinstitutions. However, it remains unclearwhether the literacy difficulties observed arereally dyslexic in nature. Seventy inmates injuvenile institutions were studied. In additionto literacy skills, the assessment includedphonological skills, school attendance,cultural background, and self-esteem. Dyslexiain the sense of decoding problems related tophonological deficiencies was observed in 11%of the cases. Most of the inmates withliteracy difficulties had a background, frominfancy and onwards, characterized by severesocial and emotional problems, interfering withpositive experience of literacy and theliterate culture. However, these sub-optimalexperiences of the literate culture do notimply dyslexia. From this perspective, it isunlikely that dyslexia is a determining factorof delinquent behavior.     

A Model of Effective Fieldwork Supervision for Trainee Educational Psychologists

This study seeks to provide current survey data from qualified psychologists about effective supervision, in view of increased fieldwork supervision demands, due to restructured initial professional training. A model of effective fieldwork supervision emerges in which a well‐managed and communicative partnership between trainee psychologist and supervisor is formed, in the context of the psychological service, its partners and clients. The authors anticipate that this may support the supervision needs of qualified colleagues, and speculate upon what additional provisions might be relevant in Years 2 and 3 when trainee psychologists will have a dual role as university students and practitioners within services.     

The performance of Asian S&T journals in international citation indicators

This research explores the performance of Asian S&T journals based on the outcomes of various citation indicators. Indexed by Journal Citation Reports – Science Citation Index Expanded (JCR‐SCIE), journals published in China, Japan, India, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan between the years 2008 and 2012 are collected and analysed using bibliometrics and statistics methods. Results showed that the mean impact factor (IF) value of the journals from all countries was less than 1.3 throughout the period. Only journals from China and Japan had a mean IF or 5‐year IF (5Y‐IF) value exceeding 1. The self‐cited rate of the journals from South Korea remained the highest among selected countries but showed a declining trend every year. The self‐cited rates among journals from all the six Asian countries did not considerably affect the journals’ IF values. The results revealed that the IF‐based ranking factor (IF‐RF) of Chinese and Japanese journals in various subject fields constantly improved from 2008 to 2012, but this improvement trend was not observed in journals from the other four countries. Overall, the journals from Japan and China demonstrated stronger impacts than those from the other countries.