The Effects of Class Size on Classroom Processes: 'It's a Bit Like a Treadmill – Working Hard and Getting Nowhere Fast!'

Despite current moves in the UK to limit class sizes for young children in school, there is still a disturbing lack of research evidence on the effect of class size differences on pupils' educational progress and experience. Past research has concentrated on the effects on outcomes such as pupils' school attainments in basic areas. Much less is known about classroom processes that might mediate any such effects, though such knowledge is more useful for practice and policy. Drawing on a current programme of research at the Institute of Education, University of London, this paper identifies five processes likely to be connected to class size: within class grouping practices, the nature and quality of teaching, pupil attention in class, pupil adjustment to school and effects on teachers' morale, stress and enthusiasm. Relevent research is reviewed, and in line with this research the paper concentrates on the primary school years.     

Turning to case studies as a mechanism for learning in action learning

Case studies are a useful means of capturing and sharing experiential knowledge by allowing researchers to explore the social, organisational and political contexts of a specific case. Although accounts of action learning are often reported using a case study approach, it is not common to see individual case studies being used as a learning practice within action learning sets. Drawing on a network action learning (NAL) project, this paper explores how the process of coaching, articulating, authoring, sharing and editing case studies provided a vehicle for learning and research within a NAL set. The intended contribution of this paper to the theory of action learning is to extend the range of learning practices to include the case study within the NAL set. It discusses how case studies act as boundary objects, which are artefacts that can be used to cross boundaries between groups in order to facilitate learning that might not otherwise occur.     

Sensitivity to auditory and visual stimuli during early reading development

An investigation was conducted into the visual and auditory temporal processing profiles of two groups of 4‐ to 6‐year‐old children: pre‐alphabetic children, who showed no alphabetic ability (failing to read any non‐words in a test), and those who demonstrated some alphabetic ability. This alphabetic group showed higher scores in reading and spelling attainment than the pre‐alphabetic group. They were also faster than the pre‐alphabetic group in reacting to the onset and offset of auditory and visual stimuli. However, when age was used as a covariate, only reaction times (RTs) to the offsets of visual stimuli were found to be faster in the alphabetic than the pre‐alphabetic group. This suggests that responses to the offset of visual stimuli are becoming more rapid during the same developmental period when alphabetic ability is beginning to be acquired. Within the alphabetic group, after accounting for age, visual and auditory onset RTs were strongly correlated, whereas within the pre‐alphabetic group there were high correlations between visual and auditory offset RTs. It is therefore suggested that a strong association between RTs to visual and auditory onsets may be beneficial during early alphabetic acquisition, when phoneme–grapheme associations are established. Multiple regression analyses showed visual offset RT as the only variable to account for a significant amount of variance in spelling attainment after age was taken into account, which may relate to Frith's (1985) contention that spelling is important in driving early alphabetic ability.     

Study of Extended Opportunity Programs and Services in California Community Colleges

Abstract

A two-phase study of Extended Opportunity Programs and Services (EOPS) in California Community Colleges, involving comprehensive questionnaire surveys in 93 EOPS-funded colleges and site visits at 12 colleges, reveals that EOPS has proven successful in providing assistance to many who would not otherwise have been able to attend college. However, existing resources are not sufficient to meet the financial needs of many students in the colleges and many more potential students in the communities. The survey concludes that the colleges are successfully balancing the competing demands of financial assistance, to enable students to attend school, and services and assistance, to help students once they get to school.     

Gaining ‘Raw Insider Knowledge’: The Benefits and Challenges of International Study Tours for Creative Industries Students

International short‐term study tours are a fast‐growing format for outbound education and provide exciting experiential learning opportunities for students in the creative industries disciplines. This success has encouraged researchers to seek a comprehensive view of the various concrete experiences that contribute to student learning during study tours. To that end, this article presents evidence from a qualitative online post‐tour questionnaire administered with students studying various art and design disciplines who participated in short‐term international study tours at a large Australian university in 2015. Using Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory as a framework, data collected explored student perceptions of which concrete experiences on a study tour are most impactful and which may actually hinder learning. Findings revealed: experiencing key industry venues are the most significant aspects of a study tour, rather than networking or personal growth; poor itinerary planning and travel issues are the least liked aspects of a tour, yet are often the most easily addressed with better tour management and planning; and students were positively impacted by unexpected gains in knowledge about their creative industries discipline. This study, therefore, provides unique insights into which concrete experiences may be most impactful as part of the experiential learning cycle within an international study tour for creative industries students.     

Emotional Feeding and Emotional Eating: Reciprocal Processes and the Influence of Negative Affectivity

Emotional eating, that is, eating more in response to negative mood, is often seen in children. But the origins of emotional eating remain unclear. In a representative community sample of Norwegian 4‐year‐olds followed up at ages 6, 8, and 10 years (analysis sample: n = 801), one potential developmental pathway was examined: a reciprocal relation between parental emotional feeding and child emotional eating. The results revealed that higher levels of emotional feeding predicted higher levels of emotional eating and vice versa, adjusting for body mass index and initial levels of feeding and eating. Higher levels of temperamental negative affectivity (at age 4) increased the risk for future emotional eating and feeding.     

The internship component of a teacher education program: Opportunities for learning

Abstract

Many preservice teacher education programs in recent years have increased the amount of time student teachers spend in field placements by adding an “internship “ component. An internship is typically longer than a practice teaching session and is designed as a bridge between being a student teacher and having full teaching responsibilities. This study explored the effect of an internship that had three key features: the interns were free to choose the nature of their field experience, no formal evaluation was involved, and the interns were attached to the school (or other institution) as a whole rather than a particular staff member. Under these conditions, the interns could (a) go more deeply into a specific teaching area; (b) gain greater knowledge of school culture; (c) become more familiar with school‐wide programs and activities; and (d) learn more about their distinctive interests and abilities as teachers.     

English in action: school based teacher development in Bangladesh

In the Least Economically Developed Countries (LEDCs), School Based Teacher Development (SBTD) is sometimes advocated as a potential mechanism for improving the classroom practices experienced by millions of children in a complete school system, as quickly as possible. Robust evidence is required for approaches to be implemented with some confidence by Government development agencies, such as the UK Department for International Development (DFID). SBTD has a long history stemming from ideas of school-based curriculum development, which underlay the ideas on teacher-as-researcher, and is typically advocated in the developed world based on a view of the teacher as a professional. How might such notions play out, and to what effect, in LEDC contexts? This article examines the issues at stake in introducing SBTD in LEDCs, by examining: the nature of the evidence for various forms of teacher development, the nature of SBTD in particular and the evidence for its effectiveness. The latter issues will be illustrated through examination of English in Action (EIA, www.eiabd.com), a large-scale SBTD programme for primary and secondary English language (EL) teachers serving government schools across Bangladesh.     

Supporting family conversations and children's STEM learning in a children's museum

This study tested the effectiveness of a facilitated educational program in a museum for promoting family conversations and children's learning about STEM. A sample of 130 families (71 European-American; 33 African-American; and 26 Hispanic-American) with children M age = 6.42 years were observed in a building construction exhibit. Prior to building, families were randomly assigned to conditions that varied in terms of the instructions about a key engineering principle and elaborative question-asking they received. Conversation instruction resulted in adults’ asking double the number of Wh-questions compared to families who did not receive the instruction. The building instruction was important in promoting increases in adults’ STEM-related talk during the building activity, as well as in the children's STEM talk when prompted for information about what they had learned. The effects of the instructions did not vary by families’ ethnic background. Implications for facilitating family conversations and children's learning related to STEM are discussed.