Sailing the Digital Seas: Charting a New Course with CONTENTdm

With the transition of government publications from print to digital over the last decade, the State Library of North Carolina saw the need to implement a content management system for the state’s digital publications. The State Library formed a Digital Information Management Program (DIMP) in 2006 to address the challenge of managing their digital collections. The library chose to utilize OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC)’s CONTENTdm software to manage their digital materials and associated metadata. The presentation described below outlined the processes and challenges in managing their collections with this software.     

‘Lessons Learned’ from introducing universal strategies designed to support the motor and functional skills of Reception and Year 1 children in a sample of primary schools in South East England

This article describes an evaluation of universal resources designed to support motor development in Reception and Year 1 children. Four schools (Year R–Year 6) in the South East of England, three with high numbers of disadvantaged children participated. Senior leadership influenced take up of the initiative. Health and well-being practitioners and occupational therapy students contributed to ‘roll out’ of the resources with support provided by the authors over 12 weeks. Interview and focus group data from participating staff were gathered alongside examples of schoolwork from pupils. School staff needed access to support when incorporating universal strategies. The initiative contributed to schools working towards Healthy Schools targets. At the end of 12 weeks, improvements in children's sitting position, handwriting and lunchtime skills were noted, warranting further exploration of this approach to address the needs of children with poor motor skills at school entry.     

Rethinking literacy: communication,representation and text

In this article I want to consider shifts in the use of the word ‘literacy’ and the implications for classroom work with texts, particularly the implications of the rapid and radical emergence of new relationships between different modes of representation and communication ( Kress, 2003; Raney, 1996; Unsworth, 2001 ). My concern is to argue that any approach to classroom literacy needs not only to recognise the new forms of text which children meet every day but to give multimodal texts a firm place in the curriculum. Further, if the text experience of young learners about these new combinations of modes of representation are to be realised in the classroom, then we need a framework for describing those texts. An approach which takes account of the rhetoric of design may be a way forward.     

Cultivating Fertile Grounds: Enhancing and Extending the Scientific Base of Social and Emotional Learning: A Commentary on “The Scientific Base Linking Social and Emotional Learning to School Success,” a chapter by Joseph E. Zins,Michelle R. Bloodworth,Roger P. Weissberg,and Herbert J. Walberg

Joseph Zins was a forerunner in empirically demonstrating the interrelationship of SEL interventions and school success. This commentary highlights his perspectives on the accumulating body of evidence for the academic gains that have been associated with various SEL interventions and aims to show how new research methodologies can further extend the scientific support as well as enhance the cultural responsiveness of SEL interventions. A partnership approach to research is advocated for addressing three important research directions: defining and measuring social and emotional competencies, co-constructing intervention programs, and achieving system-level program integration.     

“Who are your Friends?” Complexities in Multicultural Education

In this paper, I explore the experiences of fourth and fifth grade students engaged in Beyond Today, an urban after school program, that aimed to enact a social reconstructionist multicultural curriculum. The program gathered White, Black, and Latino/a youth to explore issues of discrimination and social justice and develop leadership towards social change. This paper focuses on the complex nature of students’ responses to a multicultural curriculum that foregrounded conversations about race and inequity. Students were seen to build ties of friendship across racial lines and develop activist skills of social critique. On other occasions, they maintained borders, distancing themselves from students of different races. After an overall review of the students’ varied reactions to the Beyond Today curriculum, I highlight specific vignettes that show how these tensions can simultaneously emerge within particular incidents. This research can be of use to teachers and teacher educators when envisioning and planning for student responses to multicultural curriculum.     

The mis/uses of ‘voice’ in (post)qualitative research with children and young people: Histories,politics and ethics

Abstract

This article extends recent attempts to think (post)qualitative research together with decolonial, postcolonial and other critiques – as a frictional, fraught encounter. I review how the concept of voice has been used in past and present research with children and young people: from research speaking about children and young people, dialogical speaking with the ‘agentic’ young person, poststructural refusals of ‘raw voices’ speaking for themselves, and (post)qualitative onto-epistemological experiments with utterances spoken in research assemblages. Reading one of my research practices – the mis/use of cloth puppets with high school students – through recent critiques of (post)qualitative work, two particular concerns materialize: accounting for relations between past and present research, and accounting for what comes to matter during and after research encounters.