Local plagiarisms

Plagiarism and collusion are significant issues for most lecturers whatever their discipline, and to universities and the higher education sector. Universities respond to these issues by developing institutional definitions of plagiarism, which are intended to apply to all instances of plagiarism and collusion. This article first suggests that plagiarism and collusion are related instances of the desirable phenomenon of intertextuality, but which are defined as transgressive, that is, intertextuality that crosses a boundary defining relationships that are inappropriate in a specific context. The article then goes on to show, through interviews with lecturers in a variety of disciplines, that lecturers’ interpretations of inappropriate or transgressive intertextuality vary for reasons including the expectations and practices of the discipline. The article suggests that transgressive intertextuality needs to be defined according to the disciplinary expectations and that a single institutional definition may be inadequate to defining varying disciplinary perspectives.     

The motivation to study: an analysis of undergraduate engineering students at a Caribbean university

The link between motivation and success is well documented; however, there is still room to problematise motivation in regards to the individual and contextual levels. This study looks at motivation in relation to students studying undergraduate engineering courses at a Caribbean university and seeks to discover the factors that motivate them to study and the factors that keep them motivated. An online questionnaire was constructed using 19 Likert-type questions and 5 questions that allowed for open-ended qualitative responses. The findings reveal that participants tended to be motivated by the increased possibility of desired future careers and tended to stay motivated by a combination of goal-orientation and family support. It is recommended that departments, faculties and institutions deliberate on shared and contextually constructed understandings of why students choose to enrol in particular university courses.     

The Unseen Digital Divide: Urban,Suburban, and Rural Teacher Use and Perceptions of Web-Based Classroom Technologies

This quantitative study investigated the differences in perceptions and attitudes toward technology integration of K-12 public school teachers in rural, suburban, and urban environments. The purpose was to examine the relationship between frequency of use and perception of effectiveness of web-based learning tools based upon the type of school setting. A survey of 2,200 school teachers in a Mid-Atlantic state revealed significant differences of usage and perceived effectiveness among respondents. The research found teachers from urban schools trailed rural and suburban schools in usage and perception. Suburban schools indicated the highest perceptions of technology effectiveness, followed by their rural peers. Current teachers, administrators, and teacher educators may benefit from this insight to identify the most effective technologies, as well as work focus on improved use of technology, particularly in the urban classroom.     

On the importance of special didactics in teacher education

Vreede, E. de. “On the importance of special didactics in teacher education,” Revue ATEE Journal 1980 (3) 109‐117.

Teaching is occasioning learning to the extent that the motives used in this occasioning are derived from the learning content. On the basis of this definition a distinction is made between general and special didactics. The article is a plea for a careful distinction between the two, which would be beneficial to both disciplines and particularly for special didactics. For various reasons, some of which are discussed, this distinction is scarcely implemented in teacher education, much to the disadvantage of future teachers and their students.     

Associations between academic and motor performance in a heterogeneous sample of children with learning disabilities

A heterogeneous sample of 137 school-aged children with learning disabilities (IQ > 80) attending special needs schools was examined on the Movement Assessment Battery for Children (MABC). The results show that compared to the available norm scores, 52.6% of the children tested performed below the 15th percentile on manual dexterity, 40.9% on ball skills, and 33.7% on balance skills. Furthermore, after controlling for IQ, significant small to moderate partial correlations were found between spelling and mathematics and the MABC total score, as well as small to moderate correlations between mathematics and balance, between reading and ball skills, and between spelling and manual dexterity. The present findings are compared with previously reported results obtained in more homogenous groups, and based on the resultant relationships between academic performance and motor development, recommendations for future motor intervention studies are made.     

Colorado longitudinal twin study of reading disability

The primary objectives of the present study are to introduce the Colorado Longitudinal Twin Study of Reading Disability, the first longitudinal twin study in which subjects have been specifically selected for having a history of reading difficulties, and to present some initial assessments of the stability of reading performance and cognitive abilities in this sample. Preliminary examination of the test scores of 124 twins with a history of reading difficulties and 154 twins with no history of reading difficulties indicates that over the 5- to 6-year interval between assessments, cognitive and reading performance are highly stable. As a group, those subjects with a history of reading difficulties had substantial deficits relative to control subjects on all measures at initial assessment, and significant deficits remained at follow-up. The stability noted for all cognitive and achievement measures was highest for a composite measure of reading, whose average stability correlation across groups was 0.80. Results of preliminary behavior genetic analyses for this measure indicated that shared genetic influences accounted for 86% and 49% of the phenotypic correlations between the two assessments for twin pairs with and without reading difficulties, respectively. In addition, genetic correlations reached unity for both groups, suggesting that the same genetic influences are manifested at both time points.