Strategies to enhance learning and teaching in a research-extensive university

Challenges confronting those who seek to bring about change within large organizations include the need to engage with the values and beliefs held by those involved. In universities with academic cultures that have traditionally lauded and rewarded disciplinary research, attempts to enhance the status and effectiveness of teaching and learning practices must take account of the ongoing power of the research culture. In Australia and elsewhere, prestigious research-extensive 1 universities are now seriously committed to improving the educational experience of student learners from their first year on campus. The focus on teaching and learning is buttressed by another aspect of cultural change - one which values the scholarship of teaching alongside traditional disciplinary research. To the need to re-emphasize teaching, and the need to value that teaching as a scholarly, research-based activity is added a third dimension of change - a focus on the student rather than the teacher. This paper will utilize Fullan's (1991) model for educational change in outlining strategies for change within a large research-extensive university in Australia. While it is too early to ascertain whether those strategies have effectively enhanced student learning, indications are that the strategies have had an impact on the beliefs, behaviour and teaching practice of academic staff. It is suggested that the culture of a university can and will shift given the right conditions for institutional change.     

Infants Prefer Infant‐Directed Song Over Speech

In their everyday communication, parents do not only speak but also sing with their infants. However, it remains unclear whether infants' can discriminate speech from song or prefer one over the other. The present study examined the ability of 6‐ to 10‐month‐old infants (N = 66) from English‐speaking households in London, Ontario, Canada to discriminate between auditory stimuli of native Russian‐speaking and native English‐speaking mothers speaking or singing to their infants. Infants listened significantly longer to the sung stimuli compared to the spoken stimuli. This is the first study to demonstrate that, even in the absence of other multimodal cues, infant listeners are able to discriminate between sung and spoken stimuli, and furthermore, prefer to listen to sung stimuli over spoken stimuli.     

Social and Emotional Functioning of Children with Learning Disabilities: Does Special Education Placement Make a Difference?

Children with learning disabilities in four types of special education settings were compared in terms of social acceptance, number of friends, quality of relationship with best friends, self‐concept, loneliness, depression, social skills, and problem behaviors. Two of the placements (In‐Class Support and Resource Room) were for children with mild to moderate learning disabilities and involved between 30 and 90 minutes of special education per school day. The other two placements (Inclusion Class and Self‐Contained Special Education Class) were designated for children with severe learning disabilities and involved at least a half‐day of special education. Children in the more inclusive placements had more positive social and emotional functioning. Children receiving In‐Class Support were more accepted by peers, had higher self‐perceptions of mathematics competence, and fewer problem behaviors than children receiving Resource Room Support. Children in Inclusion Classes had more satisfying relationships with their best school friends, were less lonely, and had fewer problem behaviors than children in Self‐Contained Special Education Classes.     

Reconsidering the role of the primary special educational needs co-ordinator: policy, practice and future priorities

This article considers the impact of recent policy designed to define the roles and responsibilities of special educational needs co-ordinators (SENCos). The international drive towards the inclusion of children with special educational needs within the mainstream has led many schools to reconsider their structures and practices. In the UK, the SENCo role lies at the heart of these structures and the Government has sought to define this role both within a revised Code of Practice for special educational needs and in a set of national standards. In this article, Christine Szwed, Director of Studies for Initial Teacher Education at the University of Birmingham, reports the findings of a survey examining the context of SENCo role management within a group of primary schools. The findings indicate that the role cannot be generalisd and that SENCos are operating in increasingly complex contexts within very different management structures. Christine Szwed argues that, to be effective, SENCos must be enabled to work at a whole-school level and that the co-ordination of special needs is a development issue for the whole staff.     

Exploring anomalies in Indigenous student engagement: findings from a national Australian survey of undergraduates

Increases in participation by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in higher education across Australia continue to be promising. However, it is also known that Indigenous students' attrition, retention and completion rates remain areas of concern. In this paper, we report our findings from an analysis of Indigenous student responses to the 2009 Australasian Survey of Student Engagement. Overall, Indigenous Australian students express positive responses in relation to engagement, but are more likely than non-Indigenous students to be planning to depart. We explore this somewhat unexpected anomaly, whilst also suggesting that much more needs to be known about our Indigenous students, including, for example, whom they may interact with at university; where they turn for support; and why they may decide to leave. Our findings strongly indicate that better national and institutional data are needed to address the current gaps in knowledge relating to Indigenous student populations in Australia and around the world.? In this paper, the term ‘Indigenous’ refers to Australian students who are of self-declared Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander background, while ‘non-Indigenous’ refers to all other Australians.     

Estimating Variance Components from Sparse Data Matrices in Large-Scale Educational Assessments

In generalizability theory studies in large-scale testing contexts, sometimes a facet is very sparsely crossed with the object of measurement. For example, when assessments are scored by human raters, it may not be practical to have every rater score all students. Sometimes the scoring is systematically designed such that the raters are consistently grouped throughout the scoring, so that the data can be analyzed as raters nested within teams. Other times, rater pairs are randomly assigned for each student, such that each rater is paired with many other raters at different times. One possibility for this scenario is to treat the data as if raters were nested within students. Because the raters are not truly independent across all students, the resulting variance components could be somewhat biased. This study illustrates how the bias will tend to be small in large-scale studies.     

Historical Inquiry in an Informal Fan Community: Online Source Usage and the TV Show The Tudors

This article examines an informal online community dedicated to The Tudors, a historical television show, and the ways in which its members engaged with a variety of sources in their discussions of the drama’s real-life past. Data were collected over a 5-month period. The analysis included the types of sources used in conversation; members’ purpose for invoking and reaction to sources; as well as topic, participation, and response patterns in the discussion forum. The community is a space in which popular culture and the discipline of history meet. Members come together because of a fictional depiction of the past, yet a desire to corroborate, clarify, contextualize, or uncover what really happened leads users to participate in detective-like inquiry work and the learning of new topics they had not previously considered. Members also challenge and critique one another’s positions and the sources other members invoke in multiple ways, including by using more formal disciplinary heuristics in this informal setting. Key differences emerge in members’ purpose for invoking sources, with popular media used more frequently for illustrating a point or asking a question and nonfiction works most invoked to support and argue historical claims.