An individualised curriculum to teach numeracy skills to children with autism: programme description and pilot data

Teaching mathematics to children with autism is an area with limited research evidence. In this study we developed a teaching manual based on Maths Recovery, a numeracy programme designed for typically developing children. Six children with autism participated in the study and received daily numeracy teaching over a 20‐week period. Our aims were to explore whether Maths Recovery can be used as a numeracy curriculum for children with autism and to evaluate the progress the children make after a period of intensive teaching. Using a pre‐test post‐test design we found that the adapted Maths Recovery numeracy curriculum was successfully incorporated within each child's individualised teaching programme, and that all six children improved their mathematical ability over the course of the intervention. Our data show promising results and support the rationale for larger evaluation studies.     

Fostering conceptual change and critical reasoning about HIV and AIDS

One of the challenges of science education is for students to develop scientific knowledge that is personally meaningful and applicable to real‐life issues. This article describes a middle‐school science intervention fostering adolescents' critical reasoning in the context of HIV by strengthening their conceptual understanding of HIV biology. The intervention included two components: critical reasoning activities that fostered knowledge integration and application to real‐world problem solving, and science writing activities that promoted argument building. Two seventh‐grade classes participated in the study. One class participated in the critical reasoning and writing activities (CR&W); the other class participated in critical reasoning activities only (CR group). Results demonstrate significant pre‐ and posttest improvements on measures of students' HIV knowledge, HIV understanding, and critical reasoning about realistic scenarios in the context of HIV, with the improvements being greater in the CR&W group. The discussion focuses on the role of conceptual knowledge in health reasoning, the role of science writing in fostering knowledge integration, and the benefits of a “thinking curriculum” approach to integrated health and science education. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 844–863, 2007     

Socialization Values and Practices of Indian Immigrant Parents: Correlates of Modernity and Acculturation

Mothers and fathers from 100 first-generation, Gujarati, Indian immigrant families were interviewed about their socialization values and practices. Adolescents provided data about their parents' behavior as well. 3 predictors of parental attitudes and behavior were examined: modernity, acculturation, and time in the United States. The effects of the predictors varied as a function of parent and child gender. Whereas modernity and acculturation predicted socialization values for fathers of girls, only time in the United States predicted the socialization values of mothers. Parental modernity, acculturation, and time in the United States predicted the use of induction and psychological control, but differently as a function of parent and child gender. Implications for understanding the selective nature of acculturation are considered.     

Cognitive Skills Acquisition and Computer Based Intelligent Tutoring Tools

Cognitive skills are concerned with analysis, interpretation and decision making required for performing procedural tasks. Since much of this process runs inside a human mind, the development of cognitive skill may largely rely on self-explanation as a mechanism for forming better procedures by clustering elementary operations and pushing them to the subconscious level. The paper describes possible categorisation of learning resources to match the different phases of skill acquisition. It discusses an implementation of a cognitive apprenticeship-based learning environment ‘Byzantium’ and an independent feedback on its use in real classroom. Its generic design philosophy is described, together with a commentary that places Byzantium in the tradition of Gordon Pask's adaptive teaching machines and conversational tutorial systems.     

Promoting a culture of scholarship among educational developers: exploring institutional opportunities

Educational developers tend to be located in centres and units of teaching and learning outside the academic mainstream. They have little opportunity to engage in scholarship. Through an overview of the literature on educational development and educational professional roles and responsibilities, the author suggests that promoting a culture of scholarship among educational developers will contribute significantly towards their pedagogical professional development. It will enhance the quality of professional consultation between educational developers and academic staff in the faculties. The discussion concludes with suggestions for implementing innovative strategies to promote a culture of scholarship within the higher education academic mainstream.     

The Recruitment of New Teachers from Minority Ethnic Groups

This article reports on part of a larger, ongoing two-year investigation supported by the Teacher Training Agency into the recruitment of new teachers from minority ethnic backgrounds via Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) courses in England. The authors focus here on interviews with admissions tutors, course directors and other senior staff at teacher training institutions. The interviews revealed differences between institutions in the measures taken to attract minority ethnic students. The research indicates a need for much clearer guidelines for admissions tutors on the issues surrounding the question of 'positive action' on the recruitment of new teachers from minority ethnic groups.     

Gender inequality in the primary classroom: will interactive whiteboards help?

This paper sets out to investigate (i) gender differences in whole class classroom interaction with a sample of teachers who were not using interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in their lessons; and (ii) the short‐term and longer term impact of IWB use upon gender differences in classroom interaction. The study focused upon teacher–student interaction at Key Stage 2 in the teaching of literacy and numeracy in English primary schools. As part of the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies, IWBs have been made widely available as a pedagogic tool for promoting interactive whole class teaching. In order to investigate their impact, the project looked specifically at the interactive styles used by a national sample of primary teachers. Using a computerized observation schedule, 144 lessons were observed over a two‐year period. The findings concur with other research which has found that boys dominate classroom interaction in terms of the frequency of certain discourse moves. The average length of each move did not vary significantly between boys and girls. Frequency dominance was disproportionately stronger in classes with a high percentage of boys in class, and was also stronger in lessons where whiteboards were used. Understanding how interaction varies in the classroom, and how new technology might affect this interaction, has important implications for teachers, researchers and future research priorities.     

“Because uni is totally different than what you do at TAFE”: protective strategies and provisions for diploma students traversing their first professional experience placement at university

Students who enrol in a Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood Education) at the Institute of Early Childhood, Macquarie University, with a Diploma in Children’s Services attained from a Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institution or a Registered Training Organisation (RTO) often experience challenges in their first professional experience unit. Utilising a phenomenological approach to understand the students’ previous knowledge and experiences as they navigated through their first professional experience unit, this qualitative study identified factors including institutional structures and course content as challenging to the diploma student. To ensure diploma students can successfully transition to and participate in their first professional experience unit at university, all stakeholders including the university, the academics teaching the students, and the students themselves need to commit to a multilevel support programme. Key findings from this study support the previous research on this student cohort.     

To succeed or not to succeed: A critical review of issues in learned helplessness

A critical analysis of theoretical and methodological issues in learned helplessness is presented. Researchers have tended to focus upon learned helplessness as a behavioral trait independent of contextual conditions. Learned helplessness has been studied exclusively in achievement settings using achievement tasks, perceived as maladaptive behavior requiring some intervention strategy or retraining program. It has not been studied as an adaptive response to situational demands. It is the purpose of this paper to analyze the theoretical backgrounds and methodological limitations of much of the research in learned helplessness and to suggest new directions and implications for education.     

Microfluidic separation of live and dead yeast cells using reservoir-based dielectrophoresis

Separating live and dead cells is critical to the diagnosis of early stage diseases and to the efficacy test of drug screening, etc. This work demonstrates a novel microfluidic approach to dielectrophoretic separation of yeast cells by viability. It exploits the cell dielectrophoresis that is induced by the inherent electric field gradient at the reservoir-microchannel junction to selectively trap dead yeast cells and continuously separate them from live ones right inside the reservoir. This approach is therefore termed reservoir-based dielectrophoresis (rDEP). It has unique advantages as compared to existing dielectrophoretic approaches such as the occupation of zero channel space and the elimination of any mechanical or electrical parts inside microchannels. Such an rDEP cell sorter can be readily integrated with other components into lab-on-a-chip devices for applications to biomedical diagnostics and therapeutics.