National qualifications in Scotland: A lightning rod for public concern about equity during the pandemic

Scotland, traditionally, has high levels of confidence in teachers. Fairness and justice are key concepts in policy and practice in Scottish education. For more than 100 years, the high-stakes assessment system in Scotland, with the Scottish Higher qualification at its heart, has been crucial to that sense of opportunity and justice. However, in 2019–2020, public confidence in high-stakes assessment in Scotland, as in other United Kingdom countries, was dented. In Scotland, the Covid-19 pandemic meant that schools were closed, teachers provided online learning opportunities for pupils working at home and, for the first time in 130 years, it was not possible to run national examinations. To ensure that learners were not further disadvantaged, alternative approaches to gathering evidence for qualifications were instigated. However, these results were challenged as socially unjust and the results that had been nationally moderated were replaced by results based on locally moderated teachers' professional judgement. As Scotland looks to qualifications beyond Covid-19, trust must be re-built. This article reports on a participative research project that sought to understand public perceptions of standards and fairness across a range of key communities following this experience. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative data, we analyse factors which affected trust in National Qualifications under the pandemic. The evidence suggests that when considering what matters for qualifications to be trusted, technocratic solutions are likely to be rejected by stakeholders. Understanding and responding to what led to the mistrust of qualifications in Scotland will be crucial to inform its future qualifications system.     

THE STUDENT AS A PERSON

This article is a plea that university teachers and administrators never forget that students are also people whose intellectual development is strongly linked to their personal development. Students grow through learning, something which in order to be successful a teacher must understand. Certain disfunctionalities and their remedies are described. Upon completion of his undergraduate studies, a student should have gained a great deal of personal autonomy and be sure of his identity. The role of the university as a place in which knowledge is pursued for its own sake should be cherished for its value as a means of student personal and psychological development.     

Story problems in the deaf education classroom: frequency and mode of presentation

Over the past decade, curricular reform in mathematics education has emphasized the use of problem solving at all levels of instruction for all students, but adaptations for students with unique needs have not been specified. This study investigated the nature of problem solving in deaf education, focusing in particular on the use of story problems in the primary-level curriculum. Approximately 90% of the K-3 teachers from five schools for the deaf were asked with what frequency and in which communication mode they presented story problems to their students. Most teachers reported presenting story problems 1-3 times per week, and presentation method tended to reflect school communication philosophy. We found trends in story problem presentation in accordance with the mathematics grade level taught. We discuss implications for curricular reform and teacher education.     

An Evaluation of a Children's Safety Training Programme

This paper reports an experimental evaluation of a children's safety training programme,Kidscape, which aims to increase primary school children's ability to deal with four types of potentially unsafe situation: being bullied, being approached by a stranger, being subject to inappropriate intimacy from a known adult and to pressure from such adults to keep such intimacy secret. Assessments of children's safety awareness were carried out in three schools which used the programme, and in three matched control schools which did not, with children at two age levels, 6 years and 10 years. These assessments of children's awareness were made on three occasions: before, immediately after and 2‐3 months after the training programme for the experimental sample (60 children) and on corresponding occasions for the control sample (60 children). The results revealed a significant improvement in the safety awareness of the experimental (trained) group after training and also a significant difference between the groups, in favour of the trained group. However, an improved performance of the control (untrained) group suggests that factors other than the Kidscape programme itself may influence these differences. Age differences in children's wariness of the four safety situations are also discussed.     

Beginning the cycle of equitable teaching: The pivotal role of cooperating teachers

Cooperating teachers are prominent people in influencing the next generation of teachers because they interact daily with student teachers. This paper discusses the impact of gender-sensitive cooperating teachers on student teachers' teaching strategies, questioning patterns and interactions during their teaching practicum. Student teachers working with these gender-sensitive cooperating teachers were more equitable in their questioning patterns and more likely to ask students (of both genders) higher-order questions than their peers. Concord High School Caesar Rodney High School Glasgow High School Middletown High School Hanby Middle School     

Civic Science for Public Use: Mind in the Making and Vroom

Mind in the Making and Vroom are partner initiatives that exemplify a unique “civic science” approach to “bringing developmental science into the world.” Mind in the Making offers families and professionals working with children 0–8 access to developmental research, by engaging them in an active process of professional development and community outreach. Vroom is an outreach and communication initiative that brings “brain building basics” to communities, inviting parents to participate in the science of early learning through partnerships with trusted entities. These initiatives use collaborative, iterative processes in disseminating findings and implications of child development research. Preliminary evidence shows early promise of these initiatives to help promote engaged learning and life skills based on executive function in adults and children.     

Co-operative learning for students with difficulties in learning: a description of models and guidelines for implementation

As part of a larger study regarding the inclusion of children with disabilities in mainstream classroom settings, Ellen Murphy, of the D Clin Psych programme at NUI Galway, with Ian Grey and Rita Honan, from Trinity College, Dublin, reviewed existing literature on co-operative learning in the classroom. In this article, they identify four models of co-operative learning and specify the various components characteristic of each model. They review recent studies on co-operative learning with the aim of determining effectiveness. These studies generally indicate that co-operative learning appears to be more effective when assessed on measures of social engagement rather than academic performance. Finally, Ellen Murphy, Ian Grey and Rita Honan present their account of the factors that contribute to the successful implementation of co-operative learning for students with difficulties in learning.     

Dilemmas of Prescriptive Practices and Perceived Alignment in Program Implementation

This paper studies the early implementation of a school improvement effort in two high schools. We examine what explains variation in the teacher adoption of program practices. Our findings highlight the tension between encouraging immediate adoption of program practices and the longer term goals of schoolwide culture change. We find that highly structured practices and those that are already aligned with teachers' extant beliefs and classroom practices can be implemented with little preexisting capacity. These conditions could also lead to more consistent and quicker initial adoption. However, this type of implementation might not encourage sufficient understanding of program goals and may inhibit the diffusion of practices into the school culture. Findings highlight dilemmas associated with program practices when the goal is to bring educational reforms to scale.