Culturally responsive peacebuilding pedagogy: a case study of Fambul Tok Peace Clubs in conflict-affected Sierre Leone

Recent research on the peace-promoting agency of teachers in conflict-affected contexts has critiqued the dominance of a menu of curriculum initiatives circulated within aid organizations which ignore or dismiss indigenous cultural resources available within local communities. On the other hand, the turn to local culture in peacebuilding interventions has also been critiqued for idealizing the local. This paper presents a case study of the work of Fambul Tok Peace Clubs in conflict-affected Sierra Leone which aim to support teachers in drawing on local practices, rituals and symbols. Using an interpretative approach, alert to the meanings teachers ascribe to their pedagogical practices, it finds that teachers respond to local culture in multiple, sometimes contradictory ways. These range from celebration of indigenous practices as resources for conflict resolution that resonate with their pupils and communities to critique of their oppressive gender norms and inability to address structural drivers of conflict.     

Developmental Changes in Achievement Evaluation: Motivational Implications of Self-Other Differences

In order to explore the development of self-evaluative biases, children at 3 age levels (5–6, 7–8, 9–10) evaluated themselves or another child when given social or temporal comparison feedback. Evaluative biases were indicated by higher evaluations for the self than another, especially after failure. Children at different ages were not differentially responsive to temporal vs. social comparison information. However, evaluative bias in response to the type of evaluation differed by age; there was greater bias for general ability evaluations by older children and greater bias for specific performance evaluations by younger children. Alternative explanations for these self-other differences were minimized, as differences in visual orientation were held constant and differences in knowledge of effort were controlled statistically. Other aspects of the design as well as sex differences support a motivational interpretation of these biases. How these biases are manifested is related to children's level of understanding and concerns at different ages.     

Assessing the unassessable: making learning visible in undergraduates’ experiences of scientific research

We suggest that academics involved in the provision of research experiences to undergraduate science students may benefit by reconceptualising these experiences as work-based learning. In particular, drawing on the widespread use of reflective practice in work-based learning allows for a more effective focus on process-related learning. We describe an empirical study involving the implementation of reflective blogs in which science students responded to prompt questions designed to focus their attention on how their project was progressing, the process of research and their own learning. The blogs reveal examples of students engaging in independent thinking, creative thinking and developing a sense of themselves as scientists, all qualities valued by supervisors. They also show how these combine as ‘wicked competences’ that allow students to address the complex problems and uncertainties of research. We identify characteristic patterns of reflection that indicate the exercise of such competences and suggest that these could be used as explicit evidence by academics making judgements for assessment purposes.     

Diversity in deafness: Assessing students who are deaf or hard of hearing

The purpose of this article is to support members of a student's multidisciplinary team to identify complex factors involved in providing valid classroom-based assessment data, including issues surrounding technology-based assessment for students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH). The diversity of this population creates unique challenges in creating guidelines for assessment. An overview of the diversity of DHH students is used to provide a framework for examining current assessment practices, including both effective and ineffective practices. Cognitive and linguistic learning differences and diverse language learning experiences in the population are discussed as they relate to assessment protocols. Paralleling technology-based learning experiences with comparable technology-based assessment experiences is also presented. Recommendations for planning for accessible and meaningful assessment include the use of innovative technologies to align instruction and assessment.     

Managing What We Can Measure: Quantifying the Susceptibility of Automated Scoring Systems to Gaming Behavior

As methods for automated scoring of constructed‐response items become more widely adopted in state assessments, and are used in more consequential operational configurations, it is critical that their susceptibility to gaming behavior be investigated and managed. This article provides a review of research relevant to how construct‐irrelevant response behavior may affect automated constructed‐response scoring, and aims to address a gap in that literature: the need to assess the degree of risk before operational launch. A general framework is proposed for evaluating susceptibility to gaming, and an initial empirical demonstration is presented using the open‐source short‐answer scoring engines from the Automated Student Assessment Prize (ASAP) Challenge.