Implicit measures of beliefs about sport ability in swimming and basketball

Sport ability may be seen as relatively stable, genetically determined and not easily modified by practice, or as increasable with training, work and effort. Using the Implicit Association Test (IAT), the purpose of the present study is to examine whether the practice of a particular sport (swimming or basketball) can influence automatic beliefs about sport ability in these two sports. The IAT scores evidence that swimmers and basketball players automatically and implicitly associate their own sport with training rather than genetics, whereas non-sportspersons have no significant automatic association. This result is strengthened when perceived competence and intrinsic motivation in swimming or basketball are high.     

The Automation Game: technological retention activities and perceptions on changes to tutors’ roles and identity

This paper demonstrates the importance of considering lived experiences of adjunct teaching staff during the introduction of automated student messaging services in a UK Business School. With cost-orientated moves to expanding online provision through emergent technologies and the growth of alternative HE strategies, traditional group-orientated student and tutor interactions are developing into a continuum. Automated messages aim to increase retention, and standardise the student experience in terms of academic qualification communications. These messages, however, have necessarily required tutors unlearning previous pedagogical support routines, thus changing academic roles and in consequence impacting academic identity processes. The investigation adds to emerging literature by examining the impact on a group of adjunct faculty staff during change introduction. Study into these changes to academic routines has value, as much existing retention literature privileges the institutional or student experience, and much of learning/unlearning literature is in a non-educational setting.     

L'harmonisation des actions de formation initiale et continue entre pays de la Communauté: principes théoriques et réalisation pratique

Schemes aiming to promote free movement for teachers and other schemes stressing the European dimension of school teaching should be distinguished. The latter affect most teachers. Difficulties arise from the need of harmonising the different educational systems, vis‐à‐vis the shortage of time allotted to the training of teachers. Increasing familiarity with foreign languages should not hide other pedagogical, administrative or financial difficulties. Harmonisation can be promoted, for instance, by: (1) a pattern of training encouraging trainees to produce their own instruments; (2) positive relationship between initial training and INSET, at the same geographical scale, on a module‐based pattern; (3) training based on mutually shared educational projects. Two cases are analysed, showing the relationship between European dimension and teachers’ exchange.     

Analyzing Mathematical Tasks: A Catalyst for Change?

In this study we investigate a strategy for engaging high school mathematics teachers in an initial examination of their teaching in a way that is non-threatening and at the same time effectively supports the development of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge [Shulman (1986). Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14]. Based on the work undertaken by the QUASAR project with middle school mathematics teachers, we engaged a group of seven high school mathematics teachers in learning about the Levels of Cognitive Demand, a set of criteria that can be used to examine mathematical tasks critically. Using qualitative methods of data collection and analysis, we sought to understand how focusing the teachers on critically examining mathematical tasks influenced their thinking about the nature of mathematical tasks as well as their choice of tasks to use in their classrooms. Our research indicates that the teachers showed growth in the ways that they consider tasks, and that some of the teachers changed their patterns of task choice. Further, this study provides a new research instrument for measuring teachers’ growth in pedagogical content knowledge. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, April 2002.     

Teaching Colour: designing and evaluation of a sequence

The paper describes a teaching sequence about colour given to students in Applied Arts. The conceptual content is chosen to integrate scientific, technical and perceptual aspects of colour. The teaching strategy aims at increasing the availability of conceptual tools in the analysis of the technical applications of colour in art. The results of an inquiry into students’ previous ideas were taken into account when designing a teaching process which includes experimental activities. During the sequence, observation has suggested ways of readjusting instructional activities and qualitative data helped to build a quantitative tool of evaluation of the sequence. The implications of this study on classroom practice and science teacher education are discussed.     

Chance and talent development

The role of chance in talent development appears in the gifted education literature and also in lay discussions of high ability. Nevertheless, chance as a factor in talent development is frequently misunderstood. This analysis scrutinizes some common beliefs and scholarly perspectives on the effects of chance in the development of high ability, and reveals some shortcomings of these conceptions. In addition various research initiatives are proposed that can redress the current lack of empirical evidence to support or refute particular actions and theories of chance. These initiatives should include the development of a taxonomy of chance events and of quantitative measures of the impact of chance on talent development processes. Overall, such work should generate more accurate conceptions of this fascinating causal factor.     

Principled Improvement in Science: Forces and proportional relations in early secondary-school teaching

In response to continuing concerns about student attainment and participation in science and mathematics, the epiSTEMe project took a novel approach to pedagogy in these two disciplines. Using principles identified as effective in the research literature (and combining these in a fashion not previously attempted), the project developed topic modules for early secondary-school teaching in the UK, arranged for their implementation in classrooms, and evaluated the results. This paper reports the development, implementation, and evaluation of one of the epiSTEMe science modules. Entitled Forces and Proportional Relations, the module covers standard curricular material in the domain of forces, while paying particular attention to the proportional nature of many key constructs. It was developed in collaboration with a small group of teachers; implemented subsequently in 16 classrooms, in all cases involving students from the first year of secondary school; and evaluated through comparison with first-year students in 13 control classrooms who were studying the topic using established methods. Evaluation addressed topic mastery and opinions about the topic and the manner in which it was taught. While further research is required before definite conclusions are warranted, results relating to topic mastery provide grounds for optimism about the epiSTEMe approach. Furthermore, student opinions about the module were positive.     

Connecting Marginal Rice Farmers to Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems in Vietnam Uplands

Abstract

In Vietnam, agricultural extension has contributed to rural development and poverty alleviation over the past two decades of agricultural decollectivization, but it was not very effective in reducing disparities within farmer communities. The study examined how better interactions of extension services with other agencies and information sources may help marginal farmers in catching up with the general improvement of living conditions in a mountainous area in northern Vietnam. It combined three complementary viewpoints on this issue: that of the agricultural extension staff, that of farmers and that of development experts with a long working experience in the mountains of Vietnam. The analysis of existing structures and functions of the extension system revealed a number of obstacles to the participation of marginal farmers in extension programmes and helped to identify relevant domains of intervention.     

Achieving clarity: principle to practice. The difference reflection makes in implementing a policy for information technology in a primary school

Abstract

This article considers two pivotal issues in school development: first, the epistemological foundations by which a curriculum area is generally held to be constructed, and how this knowledge base can be accepted or reconstructed by individual interpretation. Secondly, the paradigm, and therefore the methodology, by which change agents represent their understanding of curriculum areas to those participants of curriculum change. The article has an unusual structure, as it is written in two separate sections. The first section relates in a simple narrative style the actions the author undertook in her role as a coordinator for information technology, seeking change in classroom practice within a large primary school (ages 5–11 years) in a London suburb. It is told retrospectively, for the author then undertook a period of study and reflection which led her to reconsider both her understanding and the method by which she introduced change. Hence, the second section, written at the end of this period of reflection, enters the realm of ‘paradigm shift’ in that it examines the author's past rationale, her actions and the consequent results within her new epistemological and ontological understanding. Essentially, she deconstructs her actions and reconstructs them as ‘what-should-have-happened!‘ The implicit tenet is that her actions did not lead to the change she sought because she did not have clarity in understanding or direction, hence the article's title: ‘Achieving Clarity … The Difference Reflection Makes …’. The axiom of her revised understanding is that enduring and profound change cannot occur without the change agent having this clarity of understanding, which can achieve consistency between principle and practice with both rigour and credibility. At least, that's the first step, for innovation is never that simple; it's a long process.