Macbeth: a poetry workshop on stage at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

Keith Park, advisory teacher for Sense in the London Boroughs of Greenwich and Lewisham, has written a series of articles focused on the relationship between communication and access to literature for pupils with learning difficulties. In this article, he turns his attention to poetry. He explores the notion that all of us, to some extent, respond to great works of literature affectively. He describes his use of works by T. S. Eliot, James Joyce and Shakespeare in interactive and experiential sessions with pupils with severe and profound and multiple learning difficulties. In closing this article, Keith Park provides a case study in assessment by evaluating the responses of one student and showing how the Shakespeare workshop enabled her to become an active learner.     

The Dance of Dialogue: Thinking and Feeling in Education

James Park, the director of Antidote, criticizes those who believe that the most important task of education is to develop cognitive abilities, without any particular regard for emotional development. He argues that such an approach leaves individuals ill equipped to engage with the challenges that life throws in their path. He feels that, in spite of the recognition in the new National Curriculum Guidance of the significance of emotional processes on learning, government policy as a whole does not always appear to acknowledge this. In his view, 'feeling and thinking, are engaged in a continuous dance. Individuals who can gracefully glide between the two modes bring energy to the task of learning and thinking'. He goes on to outline the key competencies that individuals require to achieve this, and suggests that these are most effectively achieved through dialogue 'talking together in ways that allow individuals to understand the thoughts, feelings and values of each other'. The paper concludes with an explanation of the work and aims of Antidote.     

Survival analysis for Hispanic ELL students’ access to postsecondary schools: discrete model or Cox regression?

Survival analysis is an advanced statistical method to investigate the occurrence and the timing of an important event such as school access, dropout, and graduation in a longitudinal framework. The aim of our study is to provide practical guidelines for empirical researchers in choosing an appropriate survival analysis model. For this goal, this study chose two major survival analytical models of a discrete-time hazard model and a Cox regression model and compared analytical outcomes considering time metrics, as well as sample sizes and censoring proportions. In the analytical model, the combined specifications of varying factors using two models were adopted to analyse the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002. We chose the college access of Hispanic English Language Learners to understand the importance of adopting a proper survival model to examine the educational outcome in the educational context. Importantly, we considered the hazard probability for the target event in the model specification which is a fundamental yet often neglected component of survival analysis. We recommended discrete models for the cases with a smaller number of time points, larger time metrics, larger sample size, and smaller proportions of censored observations.     

Tools for Reflection: Video-Based Reflection Within a Preservice Community of Practice

Current reform in science education calls for teachers to understand student thinking within a lesson to effectively address students’ needs (NRC in A framework for K-12 science education: practices, crosscutting concepts, and core ideas. National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 2012; NRC in Guide to implementing the Next Generation Science Standards. The National Academies Press, Washington, DC, 2015). This study investigates how to scaffold preservice teachers with learning to attend to students’ thinking for the purpose of guiding curricular decisions. The study focuses on one team teaching a science unit during their early field experience. We sought to understand how participants’ thoughts and abilities changed through participation in a moderated community of practice using video of their own teaching as a reflective tool. We examined how these changes affected both their classroom practice and their decision-making for future lessons. Evidence shows growth in participants’ ability to identify opportunities to elicit, assess, and use students’ thinking to guide instructional decisions. Implications for use of the approach used in this study to begin developing novice teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge for teaching science are discussed.     

How Is Intuitive Thinking Shared and Elaborated During Small-Group Problem-Solving Activities on Thermal Phenomena?

Research in Science Education - In the process of problem solving, intuitive thinking leads to findings that go beyond gaps and plays a decisive role in problem solving. Considering that problems...     

Exploring the nature of associations between educators’ knowledge and their emergent literacy classroom practices

Reading and Writing - Educators’ content knowledge is considered a key determinant of classroom practices and thus children’s learning. In this study, we examine the nature of...     

Improved antioxidative and cytotoxic activities of chamomile (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Matricaria chamomilla</Emphasis>) florets fermented by <Emphasis Type="Italic">Lactobacillus plantarum</Emphasis> KCCM 11613P

Antioxidative and cytotoxic effects of chamomile (Matricaria chamomilla) fermented by Lactobacillus plantarum were investigated to improve their biofunctional activities. Total polyphenol (TP) content was measured by the Folin-Denis method, and the antioxidant activities were assessed by the 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) method and β-carotene bleaching method. AGS, HeLa, LoVo, MCF-7, and MRC-5 (normal) cells were used to examine the cytotoxic effects by 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium (MTT) assay. The TP content of fermented chamomile reduced from 21.75 to 18.76 mg gallic acid equivalent (mg GAE)/g, but the DPPH radical capturing activity of fermented chamomile was found to be 11.1% higher than that of nonfermented chamomile after 72 h of fermentation. Following the β-carotene bleaching, the antioxidative effect decreased because of a reduction in pH during fermentation. Additionally, chamomile fermented for 72 h showed a cytotoxic effect of about 95% against cancer cells at 12.7 mg solid/ml of broth, but MRC-5 cells were significantly less sensitive against fermented chamomile samples. These results suggest that the fermentation of chamomile could be applied to develop natural antioxidative and anticancer products.     

Some uneasy inquiries into ID expert systems

Alternative approaches to developing software automating instructional development are described in this article. Information management and expert system approaches are compared. General assumptions underlying the development of all authoring tools, including conventional authoring systems, and additional assumptions underlying the development of expert ID tools are identified. Questions are raised concerning the viability of ID automation tools. It is argued that conventional authoring systems may not be as inadequate or inferior as ID expert system developers have claimed, and that of two approaches to ID automation, tools emphasizing information management are probably most useful. Information management tools, however, still may be inappropriate in some contexts.