‘I've adopted a tiger’: enhancing teaching and learning with infants through an active and integrated approach

In Scotland, A Curriculum for Excellence [Curriculum Review Group. 2004. A curriculum for excellence. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2004/11/20178/45862 (accessed January 6, 2010).] is being implemented in every school from August 2010. This gives teachers greater responsibility, flexibility and professional autonomy when planning and delivering the curriculum. A Curriculum for Excellence is the major priority in every school’s Improvement Plan, and schools should be adopting teaching, learning and assessment strategies that support the four capacities of A Curriculum for Excellence (successful learners, confident individuals, responsible citizens, effective communicators). The Curriculum for Excellence describes experiences and outcomes for children's learning in ways that will support a more active and integrated approach to teaching and learning within the curriculum. This article reports on one infant teacher’s attempt to plan and implement a programme of study for the social studies topic ‘The Zoo’, adopting an active and integrated approach to teaching and learning for her Primary 2 class (children aged 5–6 years). Dealing with children of 5–6 years requires a varied methodological approach. The approaches involved questionnaires to parents, observations of pupil involvement in lessons and focus group interviews with pupils. There was a strict ethical approach taken, which involved both parental and pupil consent as well as allowing pupils to opt out at any time.     

Current and predicted staffing patterns in post‐primary schools: the perception and experience of school principals

Evidence suggests that teacher shortages in Western Society, largely attributable to social and economic change, are threatening the future of school education in many developed economies. Questions concerning the subject areas affected and the impact teacher shortages have on schools and on pupil learning are topics of mounting speculation. In contrast to the increasing body of research undertaken to explore these issues in other parts of the UK, much less is known about staffing patterns in post‐primary schools in Northern Ireland. This paper seeks to inform the debate and to present findings from the perceptions and experiences of 136 post‐primary school principals. Results suggest that most principals have experienced recruitment difficulties in a range of subjects; those most frequently cited include the sciences, particularly physics, mathematics, technology and design, home economics and ICT. Principals believe that staff shortages not only have a negative impact on teaching and learning but are also set to increase. This paper discusses these findings and argues the need for intervention and a change in government policy to break this self‐perpetuating cycle.     

Comparing children's and student teachers’ ideas about science concepts

Children and teachers may not think in the same way about particular science concepts. Such parallel lines of thought can compound children's confusion and misunderstanding as they learn science at primary school. The situation could be more acute when student teachers are teaching science, because of their limited experience of considering children's ideas. This paper investigates children's and student teachers’ ideas about certain science concepts: ‘animal’, ‘flower’, ‘living’, ‘force’ and ‘energy’. The ideas and understandings of 96 children and 168 student teachers were explored. Results showed that the student teachers and children had similar ideas about ‘flower’ and ‘animal’, whereas they evidenced very different responses to ‘living’, ‘energy’ and ‘force’. Implications for classroom practice are considered.     

The role of the university tutor in school-based work in primary schools in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland

There has been much international debate on the role of the university tutor in the supervision of student teachers during school-based work. This study focuses upon the Irish context, where there has been little research. It involves a comparative study of the views and attitudes of university staff, student teachers and class teachers from the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland. Data collection methods comprised questionnaires to university tutors, class teachers and students (n = 150), focus groups and one-to-one interviews. This project reveals a reservoir of goodwill between tutors, teachers and students, along with a willingness to engage in dialogue and collaboration. Importantly, this study concludes that it is the university tutor who should have the lead role in collaborative models of school-based work partnership, with significant consultation and input from the class teacher and consultation with the student in the evaluation process.     

Chinese and Australian Year 3 Children's Conceptual Understanding of Science: A multiple comparative case study

Children have formal science instruction from kindergarten in Australia and from Year 3 in China. The purpose of this research was to explore the impact that different approaches to primary science curricula in China and Australia have on children's conceptual understanding of science. Participants were Year 3 children from three schools of high, medium and low socio-economic status in Hunan Province, central south China (n?=?135) and three schools of similar socio-economic status in Western Australia (n?=?120). The students' understanding was assessed by a science quiz, developed from past Trends in Mathematics and Science Study science released items for primary children. In-depth interviews were carried out to further explore children's conceptual understanding of living things, the Earth and floating and sinking. The results revealed that Year 3 children from schools of similar socio-economic status in the two countries had similar conceptual understandings of life science, earth science and physical science. Further, in both countries, the higher the socio-economic status of the school, the better the students performed on the science quiz and in interviews. Some idiosyncratic strengths and weaknesses were observed, for example, Chinese Year 3 children showed relative strength in classification of living things, and Australian Year 3 children demonstrated better understanding of floating and sinking, but children in both countries were weak in applying and reasoning with complex concepts in the domain of earth science. The results raise questions about the value of providing a science curriculum in early childhood if it does not make any difference to students' conceptual understanding of science.     

Path integration in cockroach larvae,Blattella germanica (L.) (insect: Dictyoptera): Direction and distance estimation

The question of how an insect finds its way between foraging areas and its shelter has been investigated in cockroaches,Blattella germanica. Our aim was to demonstrate that they integrate the characteristics of their outward trip to estimate direction and distance, which enable them to return to their shelter, relying on path integration mechanisms using kinesthetic cues. The return path pattern was characterized by a nearly linear oriented-to-the-goal trajectory, an arrest, and a systematic search at a much slower speed. The arrest position indicated that the insect’s home vector was back to zero and that it was the estimated shelter position. If the shelter failed to be at the arrest position, cockroaches started a nonrandom systematic search directed mainly around the arrest. They looped back and forth around the arrest position and increased the size of their loops with time. The pattern of this search seems to be an ubiquitous trait in insects.     

Dynamic Geometry Environments as a Source of Rich Learning Contexts for the Complex Activity of Proving

Is proof activity in danger with the use of dynamic geometry systems(DGS)? The papers of this special issue report about various teachingsequences based on the use of such DGS and analyse the possible roles ofDGS in both the teaching and learning of proof. This paper is a reaction tothese four papers. Starting from them, it attempts to develop a globaldiscussion about the roles of DGS, by addressing four points: the variety ofpossible contexts for proof in a DGS, the dual nature of proof (cognitiveand social) as reflected in the `milieu' constructed around the use of aDGS, from observing to proving, and the overcoming of the oppositionbetween doing and proving.This revised version was published online in September 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Accessing public health information: a preliminary comparison of CABI's global health database and medline

Background: Access to a comprehensive public health index or database has been identified as problematic for health professionals. Public health literature contains many varied sources including reports, journal articles, and grey literature. Traditional biomedical databases such as medline often do not meet the needs of public health workers and researchers. Aim/Methods: The aim of the study was to examine the unique content of the global health database, by comparing it to the medline database. Pre‐determined terms were used as baseline comparators where controlled vocabulary definitions in each database were sufficiently matched. Retrieved results were stored and compared using EndNote libraries. Results: Results obtained from the terms used in the comparison study protocol suggest that the global health database holds a high proportion of unique records in comparison to medline . The largest overlap of duplicates from the global health database perspective came from the coccidiomycosis results set which contained 70.5% of references retrieved from both databases. Analyzing the results from a medline perspective, the subject with the largest overlap was dengue, with a 43% overlap. Conclusion: The results of this study show that the global health database is complimentary to medline in the subject areas of public health and global health.     

Supervision for Preparation and Practice of School Counselors: Pathways to Excellence

In this article, the importance of clinical supervision for school counselors is examined in terms of prior literature and the school counseling context. Standards relative to supervision are presented, followed by an overview of each article in the special section of the Counselor Education and Supervision journal (Vol. 45, No. 4, June 2006).