The influence of ICT on the interactivity of teaching

There has been much concern with the ideas of interactive and dialogic teaching during recent years in the UK, ideas which have emerged from international comparisons. This paper concerns a research project in Wales which sought to explore how the interactive features of information and communication technology (ICT) support interactivity in teaching. The project found that much use of ICT by good teachers was at a relatively superficial level of interaction, yet when teachers used a deeper, more dialogic, level of interactivity in teaching, they achieved improvements in learning whether they used ICT or not. The potential of ICT to support more dialogic teaching was not being fully exploited. The paper reports the findings of the classroom observation dimension of the project, and examines the implications for pedagogical practices and the development/dissemination of ICT resources which can support more dialogic interactivity.     

Contextually Based Professional Development

In this article, the authors detail a study of a three-year professional development project designed to increase in-service teachers’ classroom technology integration. Participants engaged in learning activities that modeled technology integration from a contextually based perspective that included technology, and pedagogical and content knowledge. Although participants reported having very limited technology skills before professional development began, after two years they reported a significant increase in using technology skills. In addition, participants reported increased comfort and confidence in using technology to the level where they changed their teaching practice to integrate technology. Indeed, between years two and three, participants reported a significant increase in technology use for learning by their students.     

Visual spatial representation in mathematical problem solving by deaf and hearing students

This research examined the use of visual-spatial representation by deaf and hearing students while solving mathematical problems. The connection between spatial skills and success in mathematics performance has long been established in the literature. This study examined the distinction between visual-spatial "schematic" representations that encode the spatial relations described in a problem versus visual-spatial "pictorial" representations that encode only the visual appearance of the objects described in a problem. A total of 305 hearing (n = 156) and deaf (n = 149) participants from middle school, high school, and college participated in this study. At all educational levels, the hearing students performed significantly better in solving the mathematical problems compared to their deaf peers. Although the deaf baccalaureate students exhibited the highest performance of all the deaf participants, they only performed as well as the hearing middle school students who were the lowest scoring hearing group. Deaf students remained flat in their performance on the mathematical problem-solving task from middle school through the college associate degree level. The analysis of the students' problem representations showed that the hearing participants utilized visual-spatial schematic representation to a greater extent than did the deaf participants. However, the use of visual-spatial schematic representations was a stronger positive predictor of mathematical problem-solving performance for the deaf students. When deaf students' problem representation focused simply on the visual-spatial pictorial or iconic aspects of the mathematical problems, there was a negative predictive relationship with their problem-solving performance. On two measures of visual-spatial abilities, the hearing students in high school and college performed significantly better than their deaf peers.     

Parental experience of child protection intervention: a qualitative study

OBJECTIVE: To explore the ways in which parents experience and negotiate child protection intervention. METHOD: A qualitative grounded theory approach was used. In-depth qualitative interviews explored the experiences of 18 parents who had received child protection services. Grounded theory methods were used to build a model representing the ways these parents perceived and reacted to intervention. RESULTS: The ways parents perceive workers using power was shown to be the primary influence shaping parents' views of intervention and their reactions to it. Two perceptions of power emerged: parents perceived power being used over them as a form of control or power with them as a form of support. Three ways of responding to intervention emerged: parents fought workers by openly opposing them, "played the game" by feigning co-operation, or worked with them in collaborative relationships. Parents experiencing power being used over them tended to fight or play the game while parents experiencing power being used with them tended to work with intervention. No evidence was found linking case type (non-voluntary or voluntary cases) to whether parents perceived power being used by workers over them or with them. CONCLUSIONS: Findings highlight the importance of practitioners and policy makers being aware of the impact power has on worker-parent interaction. Doubts are raised about the viability of policies separating policing and helping in child protection through differential response systems.     

Racial self-categorization in adolescence: multiracial development and social pathways

Research on multiracial individuals is often cross-sectional, obscuring the fluid nature of multiracial self-categorization across time. Pathways of racial self-identification are developed from a nationally representative sample of adolescents aged 14-18, measured again 5 years later. A significant proportion of multiracial adolescents change racial self-identification across time. Youth who ever report being multiracial are 4 times as likely to switch self-identification as to report consistent multiracial identities. Across this time, more multiracial adolescents either add a racial category (diversify) or subtract one (consolidate) than maintain consistent multiracial self-categorization. Exploratory multinomial analyses show few differences between these pathways on select psychological and social characteristics. Results lend quantitative support to qualitative studies indicating the fluidity of racial self-categorization.