Mapping Variation in Children’s Mathematical Reasoning: The Case of ‘What Else Belongs?’

Explaining appears to dominate primary teachers’ understanding of mathematical reasoning when it is not confused with problem solving. Drawing on previous literature of mathematical reasoning, we generate a view of the critical aspects of reasoning that may assist primary teachers when designing and enacting tasks to elicit and develop mathematical reasoning. The task used in this study of children’s reasoning is a number commonality problem. We analysed written and verbal samples of reasoning gathered from children in grades 3 and 4 from three primary schools in Australia and one elementary school in Canada to map the variation in their reasoning. We found that comparing and contrasting was a critical aspect of forming conjectures when generalising in this context, an action not specified in frameworks for generalising in early algebra. The variance in children’s reasoning elicited through this task also illuminated the difference between explaining and justifying.     

Developing and Enacting Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Voices of New Teachers of Color

ABSTRACT

A group of preservice and first year teachers share their experiences as new teachers of Color entering the profession in urban public schools. Specifically, these novice teachers discuss the transition from an urban education teacher preparation program into the classroom and their successes and challenges enacting culturally relevant pedagogy. Findings showcase understanding self, community, and collaboration among critical pedagogues and navigating theory and practice as emergent themes. These new teachers speak to the journey of becoming the teachers they want to become and the challenges they encounter in public K-12 schools. Implications are presented to highlight the power and passion of these new teachers and how we, as critical scholars, must learn from them and work with them as we seek to disrupt the dominant, middle class, white discourse in teacher education programs and educational research.     

Failure to review STAT clinical laboratory requests and its economical impact

Background

Failure to follow-up laboratory test results has been described as one of the major processes contributing to unsafe patient care. Currently, most of the laboratories do not know with certainty not only their rate of missed (or unreviewed) requests but the economical cost and impact that this issue implies. The aim of our study was to measure that rate and calculate the resulting costs.

Material and methods

In January 2015, we checked in our Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) for every emergency request from 1^st July 2011 to 30^th June 2014, if they had been reviewed by any allowed user or not. 319,064 requests were ordered during that period of time. Results were expressed as “ordered requests”, “missed requests” and its percentage. Additionally, total cost of missed requests was calculated in euros (€). “Non-productive days” were theorised (as the days producing requests that were not reviewed) based on these results.

Results

7924 requests (2.5%) were never reviewed by clinicians. This represented a total cost of 203,039 € and 27 “non-productive” days in three years. Significant differences between inpatients, outpatients and emergency department as well as different emergencies units were found after application of statistical analysis.

Conclusions

In terms of resources, never reviewed or missed requests appear to be a not negligible problem for the clinical laboratory management. Electronic result delivery, with electronic endorsement to indicate follow-up of requests along with better systems of electronic requesting should be investigated as a way of improving patient outcomes and save unnecessary expenses.Key words: quality indicators, health care, extra-analytical phase, total quality management, clinical laboratory information systems     

Role of environmental interaction in interdisciplinary thinking: from knowledge resources perspectives

This article examined the role of environmental interaction in interdisciplinary thinking and the use of different knowledge resource types. The case study was conducted with two classes (N?=?40) of 8th-grade students, ages 13 to 14. The outdoor trail aimed to help students synthesize history, geography, and science knowledge. Two groups’ discourse from each class was audio-­recorded and transcribed for content analysis. We coded the discourse to examine: (i) the use of different knowledge resource types (i.e., contextual resource, new conceptual resource, prior knowledge resource); (ii) the relationship among these knowledge resource types; and (iii) evidences of interdisciplinary thinking. Findings showed that contextual resources enhanced students’ capacity to develop new conceptual resources and to activate prior knowledge resources. Further, about 80% of students’ discourse demonstrated interdisciplinary connections of two subjects.     

Mathematics education in a time of crisis—a viral pandemic

Educational Studies in Mathematics -     

Can the Emotion Recognition Ability of Deaf Children be Enhanced? A Pilot Study

We evaluated the effectiveness of an 11-lesson psychoeducational program designed to enhance the ability of deaf children to understand the emotional experience of themselves and other people. The "Funny Faces Program" was provided to 14 children, aged 9 to 13, with moderate to profound hearing impairments. All children were enrolled in an "oral" education program at a school for the deaf. Alternate forms of the Emotion Recognition Scales (Dyck, Ferguson, & Shochet, 2001) were administered at pretest and posttest. Results indicate significant increases in emotion vocabulary and emotion comprehension but not in the speed or accuracy of emotion recognition (ER), from pretest to posttest. At posttest, children whose hearing loss was moderate to severe did not differ from hearing children in ER abilities but children with profound hearing loss continued to show substantial ability deficits.     

Evaluation of the teaching guide as an instrument for adaptation to the new European credit system： Case analysis

This paper presents the evaluation of the teaching guide application for the subject of management control in the Business Management and Administration Degree. The evaluation began with the analysis of a questionnaire which aimed to collect the perceptions of learners who have studied this subject in two groups （morning and afternoon） during the first semester of the current academic year. The intention of this analysis was to obtain information that would meet two objectives： to continue upgrading the teaching-learning process and to revise and improve all the components in the teaching guide. There is an analysis of the degree of difficulty involved in the activities proposed and the degree to which specific objectives for different competencies have been attained. Likewise, we have carried out a global assessment of the different methodologies applied in the teaching-learning process, and an assessment of the evaluation system as well as of other aspects that could have hindered reaching the objectives stated in the guide. Furthermore, the relevance of this questionnaire has been vindicated for obtaining the information necessary to adjust the learner＇s workload to the European credit.     

Reparative readings: re-claiming black feminised bodies as sites of somatic pleasures and possibilities

Black girls and women in the west reside at the nexus of racism and sexism, pinned down by a vitriolic hate for the black feminised body that is wedded to legacies of slavery. Dominant discourses configure these bodies as animalistic and other (than human), thus informing a range of (educational) policies, practices, and programmes. These narratives shape teachers’ curricular and pedagogical practices in ways that potentially objectify and wound black girls. In this paper, we use Andrea Lee’s Sarah Phillips [Lee, Andrea. 1984. Sarah Phillips. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press] and Danzy Senna’s Caucasia [Senna, Danzy. 1999. Caucasia. New York: Riverhead] to trouble said dominant discourses by engaging in ‘reparative readings’ [Sedgwick, Eve. 2003. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham: Duke University Press Books] of the texts’ black female protagonists. We re-read these main characters' bodies as sites of pleasure and possibility, not singularly or solely harm. In doing so, we show how curriculum theorising can be mobilised for repair, and can function to humanise othered and marginalised bodies.     

Leadership styles predict career readiness in early college high‐school students

This study examined leadership style as a predictor of career readiness among a sample of (N = 281) students from two early college high schools from the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. Participants included 165 females and 116 males ranging from 14 to 19 years of age and 96.8% identified as Hispanic. Participants provided demographic information and reported their own leadership style using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ 5x) as well as their career readiness using the Employability Skills Inventory (ESI). Additionally, pre‐existing district Texas Success Initiative (TSI) data was used to identify college readiness in Reading, Writing, and Math. The results indicated that college readiness, dual enrollment, year in school and gender predicted some of the dimensions of career readiness, but leadership style emerged as a significant predictor of all eight dimensions of career readiness.