The Nonreciprocating Robot: Effects on Verbal Discourse, Social Play, and Social Referencing at Two Years of Age

2-year-old children interacted with a robot in a large playroom while their mother sat quietly in the corner. Identical vocalizations from the robot had very different effects on 3 dimensions of the children's behavior when the vocalizations were embedded in reciprocating and nonreciprocating social structures. The reciprocating robot produced (1) more topic-maintaining verbal dialogue, (2) less physical and more linguistically mediated social play, and (3) gender-specific effects on the children's tendency to visually reference their mother during the play session. The data are discussed with reference to the frequently encountered assumption that reciprocal social structures have an impact on children's behavior when the quantity and other qualitative dimensions of social stimulation are held constant, and with reference to the children's attributions about the robot as a social partner.     

Too much freedom and autonomy in the enactment of assessment? Assessment in physical education in Ireland

This paper sets out to outline current discussions in Ireland around teachers being responsible for assessing their own students’ work, and the subsequent impact such a perspective is having (or not) on the delivery and assessment of physical education in Ireland. Our intention is to contribute to assessment considerations, while acknowledging the nuances of the Irish education context, and the positioning of physical education within such nuances. This discussion is particularly timely given the very recent endorsement for the introduction of the new Leaving Certificate Physical Education as a full optional subject. We begin by discussing more specifically assessment in Irish primary and post-primary schools, drawing attention to the limited Irish assessment-related research being conducted in both contexts. We then explore assessment developments related to Irish primary physical education and post-primary physical education and compare the extent to which such developments are limited in comparison to international assessment interests and practices in physical education. We conclude with suggestions related to studying (pre-service) teachers’ and students’ exposure to assessment in order to understand how we could alter the balance of assessment purposes and uses in Irish schools.     

Elementary school teachers’ preferences for school‐based interventions for students with emotional and behavioral problems

Teachers’ adoption and implementation of evidence‐based programs is often limited. Program characteristics may be important facilitators or barriers of use, yet little is known about which attributes influence teacher decisions. Using a discrete choice experiment with a sample of general education elementary teachers (N = 230), we examined (a) preference for attributes of school‐based interventions, (b) relative preference for three intervention packages with experimentally manipulated characteristics, and (c) teacher characteristics related to the above preference profiles. Intervention outcomes were the most important characteristics in teachers’ intervention decisions. Most teachers’ responses suggested preference for a social and emotional learning program (57.9%) or school‐based consultation for behavioral interventions (35.8%); a small group of teachers preferred a general support intervention (5.8%). Teachers preferring the general support intervention reported greater mental health symptoms, lower mental health literacy and lower confidence in program effectiveness than peers preferring other interventions. Implications for intervention development and future directions are discussed.     

“I Didn't Do Nothin'”: The Discursive Construction of School Suspension

This article examines the issue of school suspension by looking at the sociocultural factors that influence a teacher's decision to remove a student from the classroom. The authors use ethnographic and discourse analytic approaches to study how disciplinary moments are constructed by teachers and students in an urban high school in the Midwest. The analysis of classroom observations, videotaped lessons, and interviews from a longitudinal study at this multiethnic high school shows that suspensions frequently occur in the absence of any physical violence or blatant verbal abuse. Rather, suspensions are often preceded by a complex series of nonviolent events when one disruptive act among many is singled out for action by the teacher. This study has implications for current debates about zero-tolerance policies that disproportionately affect students of color for their misbehavior in school. Our analysis suggests that removing a student from class is a highly contextualized decision based on subtle race and gender relations that cannot be adequately addressed in school discipline policies.     

Seekers after truth? Images of postgraduate research and researchers in the twenty-first century

Western cultural practices contribute to our understanding of the purpose of higher education and how we are to conduct ourselves in educational contexts. In this article, entitled ‘Seekers after truth?’, I analyse recent works of popular fiction which draw on and contribute to the idea that postgraduate research is a process of locating and amassing clues leading to the revelation or discovery of a truth. These novels re-inscribe the metaphor of the postgraduate researcher as detective or ‘seeker after truth’. This article considers the contradictory and productive meanings that arise from the trope of the researcher-detective. In addition, I argue that, although there are challenges in bringing the work of one field to bear on another, analyses of discourses which are not produced within higher educational contexts can nonetheless promote reflection on educational concepts. In this case, fiction enables us to consider ideas about what it is to do postgraduate research and to be a postgraduate researcher.     

An exploratory study investigating the viability of a communication and feedback intervention for school children at risk of exclusion: analysis of staff perspectives

Every day nearly 900 children will be excluded from UK schools for disruptive behaviour and almost one-third of this population has a diagnosed mental health disorder. Exclusion from school is the endpoint of most schools’ sanction-based behaviour management policies. This exploratory study investigated staff opinions for using a communication and feedback intervention for children at risk of exclusion from school. Workshops to demonstrate the model were facilitated for staff participants followed by group interviews. The interview data were analysed using Template Analysis. Staff considered the intervention as viable both for themselves and for children at risk of exclusion. The analysis highlighted two broad categories: Communication Skills Training; weighing the potential, and Adapting to the Population. Sub-categories encompassed a range of factors related to the viability of the model and potential outcomes for both staff groups and young people. Due to ethical considerations, children were not recruited at this exploratory stage, but further investigation is warranted with child participants to ascertain their views. Psychologists working within schools are in a good position to utilise the model for both staff training and interventions.     

Undergraduates’ text messaging language and literacy skills

Research investigating whether people’s literacy skill is being affected by the use of text messaging language has produced largely positive results for children, but mixed results for adults. We asked 150 undergraduate university students in Western Canada and 86 in South Eastern Australia to supply naturalistic text messages and to complete nonword reading and spelling tasks. The Australian students also completed two further real word and nonword reading tasks, a spoonerisms task, a questionnaire regarding their reading history, and a nonverbal reasoning task. We found few significant correlations between literacy scores and both use of textisms (such as u for you) and measures of texting experience. Specifically, textism use was negatively correlated with spelling for the Canadian students, and with scores for timed nonword reading, spoonerisms, and Adult Reading History for the Australian students. Length of phone ownership was negatively correlated with spelling (Canadians), but positively correlated with Word Attack scores (Australians), whereas daily message sending volumes were negatively correlated with Word Attack scores (Australians). Australian students who thought that using textisms was more appropriate had poorer nonword reading and reported having had more difficulty learning to read, than those who found it less appropriate. We conclude that there is inconsistent evidence for negative relationships between adults’ use of textisms and their literacy skills, and that these associations may be influenced by attitudes towards the appropriateness of textism use. A model of the potential relationship between adults’ textism use and literacy skills is presented.     

Evaluating College Teaching

Subtle forms of prejudice called microaggressions occur in college classrooms, but the effective methods of managing such prejudice are not clear. This study explored teachers’ (N = 222) and students’ (N = 166) perceptions of vignettes describing classroom microaggressions and the effectiveness of various teacher responses to the microaggressions. Teachers of courses focused on diversity perceived microaggressions more negatively and were more likely to respond to the microaggressions than teachers of nondiversity courses. Students believed that teacher responses to microaggressions were effective and ignoring microaggressions was ineffective. The results suggest that teachers should in some way respond to classroom microaggressions. They also suggest that diversity awareness may be a factor in the ability of teachers to recognize subtle prejudice in the classroom.