Informed learning design: teaching and learning through engagement with information

ABSTRACT

While higher education teachers are able to use information in sophisticated ways to learn and communicate within their disciplines, they may not be accustomed to teaching their students to use information creatively and reflectively to support their work in a course. This article introduces informed learning design, a curriculum design model by which teachers specifically enable students to learn course content through intentional engagement with information. Drawing from informed learning pedagogy and the variation theory of learning, the design model outlines an instructional pattern for enabling student awareness of critical aspects and features of the object being studied related to both information use and course content.     

Revisioning professionalism from the periphery

Abstract

The issue of who should be included and recognised as professionals in the early childhood education and care (ECEC) service system is both contested and pressing in the current policy climate. At stake is a high-quality early childhood care and education service system that is both responsive and appropriate to the constituency it serves. A review of the history of ECEC professionalism reveals complex entanglements and debates regarding professional belonging. Services that deliver education and care to children and families living in high poverty contexts are often excluded from ECEC professionalism debates. Drawing on notions of rationality, emotionality and criticality presented in recent accounts of ECEC professionalism, we use data collected from interviews with service providers delivering services to children and families living in high poverty contexts in Australia to develop an account of criticality that is pertinent to current funding and policy contexts. We argue that these service providers’ perspectives about their own professionalism have much to offer broader debates.     

Improving the compositions of students with learning disabilities using a strategy involving product and process goal setting.

This study was conducted to determine if a planning and writing strategy would improve the essay writing of students with learning disabilities. Four participants were taught a strategy designed to facilitate the setting of product and process goals, generation and organization of notes, continued planning during writing, and evaluation of goal attainment. Training effects were investigated using a multiple probe design across subjects. Strategy instruction had a positive effect on students' essay writing performance and knowledge of the writing process, and effects were maintained over time.     

The urban and the natural in education reform: the development of Hamburg Schullandheime (rural school hostels) in the 1920s

ABSTRACT

The desire to be close to nature and live in tune with it grew as industrialisation, urbanisation and the impact of technology became increasingly ubiquitous at the turn of the twentieth century. Throughout Europe, model schools were established in rural environments. These private reform schools could not solve the problems of public urban schools. Founded on the initiative of teachers and parents, the Schullandheim (rural school hostel) emerged as a new form bringing urban education and schooling close to nature after the First World War in Germany. Even if related pedagogic activities developed at that time in other countries there is no evidence for comparable institutions. Besides tracing the development of Schullandheime, the article shows how the school hostel idea was embedded in the contemporary educational discussion about the influence large cities had on youth and explores the educational and cultural differences within the school hostel movement through the use of visual material.     

The Effect of Relationship on Children's Distributive Justice Reasoning

Kindergarten, third-grade, and sixth-grade children were told 2 stories about a group of children who made artwork that was subsequently sold at a craft fair. The characters in one story were described as friends, while the characters in the other story were described as strangers (relationship condition). 1 character in each story was presented as the oldest in the group, 1 as the most productive, and 1 as the poorest. Children were asked to allocate 9 dollars to the 3 characters under each relationship condition, provide rationales for those allocations, and rate the fairness of 4 different patterns of allocation. Older children allocated more money to needy friends than to needy strangers and more to productive strangers than to productive friends. Kindergartners' allocations and fairness ratings did not vary with relationship. Rationales for allocation judgements suggested that equality was the most salient principle for decisions at all ages, but the older children provided rationales based on benevolence more often than younger children when characters were presented as friends.     

The social functions of evaluation in Argentine and Finnish higher education

This article examines the traditional assumption that higher education evaluation systems follow a similar global format. Comparative study examines institutional evaluation and assessment processes in two nation‐states that are geographically and economically remote but which, historically, share a common civic perspective. The main research question of the study is: What are the similarities and differences in the social functions of evaluation and assessment between these two countries, the models of evaluation of which originate from the same “homogeneous model of institutional evaluation”? The study demonstrates that Finnish and Argentine models of evaluation are nationally and contextually bound by general ideas rather than being applications of a global model.     

Factors in life science textbooks that may deter girls' interest in science

In order to examine factors that may deter girls' interest in science, five seventh-grade life science textbooks were analyzed for sexism in language, images, and curricular content, and for features of activities that have been found to be useful for motivating girls. Although overt sexism was not apparent, subtle forms of sexism in the selection of language, images, and curricular content were found. Activities had some features useful to girls, but other features were seldom included. Teachers may wish to use differences that were found among texts as one basis for text selection.