RULES, TECHNIQUE, AND PRACTICAL KNOWLEDGE: A WITTGENSTEINIAN EXPLORATION OF VOCATIONAL LEARNING

A bstract .  In this essay, Christopher Winch explores the relevance of Ludwig Wittgenstein's account of rule-following to vocational education with particular reference to the often-made claim that any account of an activity in terms of rule-following implies rigidity and inflexibility. He argues that most rule-following is only successful when it involves a degree of flexibility. For instance, most technical work that involves rule-following requires flexibility and situational awareness for success. Technical education that fails to take account of the need to apply rules in a way that accounts for a wide variety of situations is likely to be unsuccessful. Winch offers an account of professional judgment based on Stephen Toulmin's theory of argumentation and discusses progression from novice to expert in terms of Toulmin's analysis. He also considers the relation between vocational education and other practices in the context of the wider civic implications of occupational practice.     

Extending research on the interspersal procedure to perceptions of continuous reading assignments: Applied and theoretical implications of a failure to replicate

Researchers have shown that students' perceptions of mathematics assignments could be improved by interspersing additional briefer, easier problems (e.g., Logan and Skinner, 1998). The current study was designed to extend this research to reading tasks. Seventh‐grade students read out loud both a control passage and a similar experimental passage that contained additional interspersed brief (i.e., 16 words), easy (i.e., first‐grade reading level) paragraphs. Students then selected the passage that would require the least effort to read and the least time to read. Students also indicated the passage they liked most (preference) and the passage that they would like to read again (choice). Significantly more students selected the control passage as requiring less time to read, but no differences were found for preference, choice, or effort selections. The results failed to confirm earlier research on the interspersal procedure, thus our findings have applied and theoretical implications regarding causal variables that may account for the effectiveness of the interspersal procedure. Specifically, the current study suggests that the interspersal procedure may improve assignment perception only when the procedure increases discrete task‐completion rates. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Differential effectiveness of alternative middle-school science sequences for students of different ethnicities

Learning Environments Research - For a sample of 367 middle-school students in the USA, learning environment criteria were used to evaluate two alternative science curriculum sequences...     

An Emotion-Based Prevention Program for Head Start Children

Empirical research shows that poor emotional competence is an early risk factor for the development of psychopathology. Numerous school-based prevention programs have been developed with the goal of decreasing behavior problems. Several of these programs include a discrete emotions component, but none of them are solely or primarily guided by emotion theory for their design and implementation. The prevention program described in this paper, the emotions course (EC), is a theoretically-coherent program based on differential emotions theory and is designed to be implemented by teachers in Head Start classrooms. Children participating in a pilot implementation of EC showed larger increases in emotion knowledge and less growth in negative emotion expression than their peers in control classrooms. These findings provide initial support for EC. Future implementations of the program need increased monitoring of implementation fidelity as well as additional methods to assess the success of the program.     

The erasure of reinstated fear

Three experiments investigated the reinstatement of fear to a previously conditioned and extinguished CS as a result of separate presentation of the original US. That reinstatement was found to be sharply attenuated by nonreinforcement of a second fear elicitor between presentations of the US and testing of the CS. This “erasure” of reinstatement depended upon the fear-eliciting power of the intervening stimulus and, under some circumstances, was essentially complete. Moreover, erasure reduced not only the response to the CS but also the extinction it underwent as a result of subsequent nonreinforcement. It is argued that neither the conditioning of background stimuli nor stimulus generalization among explicit CSs provides an adequate account of these reinstatement and erasure results. Rather, they are interpreted in terms of the construction and destruction of a nonassociative representation of the US during conditioning, extinction, reinstatement, and erasure. In that context, some inferences can be made about the rules governing these nonassociative changes and the ways in which they interact with modifications in associations.     

Fascinating technology: computer games as an issue for religious education

Computer games as an important part of youth culture can, from a certain perspective, be highly relevant for religious education. I will review the role of computer games, and then give a brief overview, suggesting a specific phenomenological approach for research on computer games and religious education. After presenting one example of such research I will explore the potential religious dimensions of computer games and raise the question of the possible consequences for religious education.     

Assessing Teacher Appraisals and Stress in the Classroom: Review of the Classroom Appraisal of Resources and Demands

Stress research increasingly emphasizes the role of appraisal in determining which events are perceived as stressful. The Classroom Appraisal of Resources and Demands (CARD) was developed to measure teachers’ appraisals of their classroom demands and resources in order to assess their risk for experiencing occupational stress. The present purposes are to review the literature identifying appraisals as a key determinant of stress, to describe the development of the CARD, and to provide meta-analytic results from 18 studies comparing CARD scores to the following variables: teacher’s job satisfaction and occupational commitment, burnout symptoms, stress prevention resources, and challenging student demands. Results suggest moderate effects for associations between the CARD and these constructs, and implications for educational policy aimed at reducing turnover and increasing teacher and student welfare are discussed.     

Committed for life? Variations in teachers’ work, lives and effectiveness

This paper is based upon a unique mixed methods 4-year research project which focused upon the variations in teachers’ work, lives, and effectiveness of 300 elementary and secondary school teachers in a range of 100 schools across seven regions of England. Its findings challenge linear conceptions of teacher development and expertise and provide new understandings of the effects of personal, school and broader policy contexts upon professional life phase trajectories and teachers’ emotional identities. It finds connections between these and teachers’ commitment, resilience, and effectiveness. This paper discusses these in relation to the school standards and teacher retention agendas.