Making 'Good Citizens': The social and political attitudes of PGCE students

This article arises from a research project examining the understanding of 'citizenship' amongst trainee teachers in UK primary and secondary schools. The study covers attitudes to a broad range of social, political and moral issues and examines how these affect the students' perception of the socio-political dimension of their future professional role. Tracking a group of students through their postgraduate training year highlights the relationship between the individual's political world-view and their response to the school experience. One of the key findings is the high degree of political disengagement and cynicism about the operation of democracy in the UK; this is particularly strong amongst the youngest students, those coming to adulthood during the 1990s. Although the majority of students are positively inclined to fostering 'good citizenship values' in schools, there was much confusion over what it means to be 'a good citizen'. The concept of 'citizenship' was felt to be tainted with negative imagery, although a sense of 'being part of a community' was thought to be vital for social cohesion. In addition to this, a small minority of students displayed social attitudes and values incompatible with a pluralist, tolerant society. The teacher education experience did not appear to have given students a clear picture of what to teach or how to teach it, and both the pressures of the National Curriculum and the changing climate of schooling, favouring a more 'traditionalist' approach, may result in a greater unwillingness to tackle challenging issues.     

Schools for Muslims

Muslim schools are a relatively new phenomenon in British education. This article surveys the situation of such schools in Britain today with particular reference to the city of Birmingham. In the second part, it examines some of the issues thrown up by such school for the State, Schools and Religion debate.     

Regional and Local Differences in Admission Arrangements for Schools

This paper describes the results of an analysis of the secondary school admissions arrangements, current and past, published by 40 Local Education Authorities in England and Wales. Arrangements are separated here into application procedures and school allocation criteria, and explored through an examination of specific examples of each type. The potential impacts of these arrangements for school admissions and for the changing social composition of schools are discussed. Perhaps the most significant finding is the scale of variation, even between apparently similar regions, in the nature of the admissions process, given that all procedures are presented as being in accordance with national legislation. Because the local implementation of national policy gives authorities this leeway in interpretation, many areas have not changed their procedures much, either in response to the Education Reform Act 1988, or the subsequent School Standards and Framework Act 1998.     

Is DNA Alive? A Study of Conceptual Change Through Targeted Instruction

We are involved in a project to incorporate innovative assessments within a reform-based large-lecture biochemistry course for nonmajors. We not only assessed misconceptions but purposefully changed instruction throughout the semester to confront student ideas. Our research questions targeted student conceptions of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) along with understanding in what ways classroom discussions/activities influence student conceptions. Data sources included pre-/post-assessments, semi-structured interviews, and student work on exams/assessments. We found that students held misconceptions about the chemical nature of DNA, with 63 % of students claiming that DNA is alive prior to instruction. The chemical nature of DNA is an important fundamental concept in science fields. We confronted this misconception throughout the semester collecting data from several instructional interventions. Case studies of individual students revealed how various instructional strategies/assessments allowed students to construct and demonstrate the scientifically accepted understanding of the chemical nature of DNA. However, the post-assessment exposed that 40 % of students still held misconceptions about DNA, indicating the persistent nature of this misconception. Implications for teaching and learning are discussed.     

Chris Dede's response

Abstract

The Division of Criminal Justice at the Florida Gulf Coast University (FGCU) offers an entire criminal justice degree program via distance learning, principally through computer‐based Internet courses. During the Spring 1998 semester, an Internet tutorial was provided during the first week of classes to students in all Internet courses in the program. Its purpose was to familiarize students with basic computer skills and Internet usage. This article focuses on the use of the Internet tutorial in Web‐based courses, including an explanation of the tutorial, a discussion of its benefits for students and faculty, and implications for future computer‐based Internet courses.     

Programming Pluralism: Using Learning Analytics to Detect Patterns in the Learning of Computer Programming

New high-frequency, automated data collection and analysis algorithms could offer new insights into complex learning processes, especially for tasks in which students have opportunities to generate unique open-ended artifacts such as computer programs. These approaches should be particularly useful because the need for scalable project-based and student-centered learning is growing considerably. In this article, we present studies focused on how students learn computer programming, based on data drawn from 154,000 code snapshots of computer programs under development by approximately 370 students enrolled in an introductory undergraduate programming course. We use methods from machine learning to discover patterns in the data and try to predict final exam grades. We begin with a set of exploratory experiments that use fully automated techniques to investigate how much students change their programming behavior throughout all assignments in the course. The results show that students’ change in programming patterns is only weakly predictive of course performance. We subsequently hone in on 1 single assignment, trying to map students’ learning process and trajectories and automatically identify productive and unproductive (sink) states within these trajectories. Results show that our process-based metric has better predictive power for final exams than the midterm grades. We conclude with recommendations about the use of such methods for assessment, real-time feedback, and course improvement.     

Academic performance and self-regulatory skills in elite youth soccer players

Abstract

Although elite athletes have been reported to be high academic achievers, many elite soccer players struggle with a stereotype of being low academic achievers. The purpose of this study was to compare the academic level (pre-university or pre-vocational) and self-regulatory skills (planning, self-monitoring, evaluation, reflection, effort, and self-efficacy) of elite youth soccer players aged 12–16 years (n = 128) with those of 164 age-matched controls (typical students). The results demonstrate that the elite youth soccer players are more often enrolled in the pre-university academic system, which means that they are high academic achievers, compared with the typical student. The elite players also report an increased use of self-regulatory skills, in particular self-monitoring, evaluation, reflection, and effort. In addition, control students in the pre-university system had more highly developed self-regulatory skills than those in the pre-vocational system, whereas no difference was observed within the soccer population. This suggests that the relatively stronger self-regulatory skills reported by the elite youth soccer players may be essential for performance at the highest levels of sport competition and in academia.     

Multidimensional performance characteristics and standard of performance in talented youth field hockey players: A longitudinal study

Abstract

To identify performance characteristics that could help predict future elite field hockey players, we measured the anthropometric, physiological, technical, tactical, and psychological characteristics of 30 elite and 35 sub-elite youth players at the end of three consecutive seasons. The mean age of the players at the end of the first season was 14.2 years (s = 1.1). Repeated-measures analyses of covariance, with standard of performance and measurement occasion as factors and age as a covariate, showed that the elite players fared better than the sub-elite players on technical and tactical variables. Female elite youth players also scored better on interval endurance capacity, motivation, and confidence. Future elite players appear to have excellent tactical skills by the age of 14. They also have good specific technical skills and develop these together with interval endurance capacity better than sub-elite youth players in the subsequent 2 years. To verify our conclusions, we will be tracking these players into adulthood.     

Effects of Different Combinations of Intensity Categories on Self-Reported Exercise

Abstract

Self-reports of exercise are used extensively in behavioral, social psychological, and epidemiological research (Ainsworth, Montoye, & Leon, 1994; Caspersen, 1997). Schwarz (1999) noted that many characteristics strongly influence self-reports of behavior, including question wording, format, and context. Of particular interest in the present study is the possible effect of providing different combinations of intensity categories (i.e., light/mild, moderate, and vigorous/strenuous) on self-reported exercise. A review of the exercise measurement literature indicates that researcher-developed and published questionnaires have varied in the number of exercise intensity categories they present to respondents. For example, researcher-developed questionnaires have often used only one category of exercise intensity, such as moderate (e.g., Miller, Trost, & Brown, 2002; Wallace, Buckworth, Kirby, & Sherman, 2000) or vigorous (e.g., Owen, Sedgwick, & Davies, 1988; Washburn, Goldfield, Smith, & McKinlay, 1990). Conversely, published questionnaires have typically used multiple intensity categories, such as moderate and vigorous/strenuous (e.g., Blair et al., 1985; Heath, Pate, & Pratt, 1993) or light/mild, moderate, and vigorous/strenuous (e.g., Baecke, Burema, & Frijters 1982; Godin & Shephard, 1985; Myers, Bader, Madhavan, & Froelicher, 2001). It is unknown, however, if providing different combinations of exercise intensity categories has any effect on the amount of exercise reported in a given intensity category or in total.