The Internet: an aid to student research or a source of frustration?

The Internet is a powerful resource for research providing limitless access to information. This article considers an application in the undergraduate Bachelor of Education in Design and Technology course (B. Ed. [Hons] D&T ).

This four year course prepares students for the teaching of Design and Technology in secondary schools, focusing on the development of skills in design and problem solving. A project based approach is used within the course to encourage individual research activity and promote a student centred learning experience. As well as books and video resources, the students have access to the Internet through a network of Windows NT workstations. The potential for exploration via the Internet has been readily exploited by students and this article reviews the use made of this facility by students and their impressions of its value

Providing Internet access posed many technical and managerial challenges, some of which are considered in the article. The experience gained in its use has provided some interesting insights into other issues surrounding Internet access.

Student response to the Internet as a tool, experience of searches and some of their concerns about their experience in accessing Internet along with the perceived benefits are discussed in the article     

Inclusive education: a critical perspective

The Gulliford Lecture 2002 was given by Professor Geoff Lindsay, Director of the Centre for Educational Development, Appraisal and Research (CEDAR) at the University of Warwick. Professor Lindsay's lecture, on which this paper is based, addressed a number of key topics, including the development of inclusion and inclusive practices; models of special educational needs and disability; and the values that underpin our thinking about these matters. Basing his argument on the research evidence, Professor Lindsay provides a searching critique of prevailing notions about inclusion and of current approaches to research. His conclusions will be of interest to everyone concerned with the education of children and young people with special educational needs.     

Response to the discipline review of teacher education in mathematics and science

This paper relates to a study commissioned by the Department of Employment, Education and Training to evaluate the impact of the Discipline Review of Teacher Education in Mathematics and Science. The major datagathering strategies employed in that study have been to visit every higher education institution in Australia involved in teacher education to interview relevant staff and to seek information by mail from other bodies to whom recommendations of the Review were addressed. This paper reports a supplementary activity, the analysis of citations of the Report of the Discipline Review in the journal of the Australasian Science Education Research Association,Research in Science Education. This research reveals that there has been relatively little critical analysis of the Review, somewhat surprising in the light of its significance for science teacher education. Further the citations in the journal suggest that the Review Report has struck a responsive chord with those involved in the science education of primary school teachers. Its impact on secondary teacher education would appear to be less significant. This difference is explored in the context of professional education. Specializations: science education, teacher education. Specializations: international education, educational measurement, science education.     

Talk about texts: reading as a social event

Drawing on anthropological evidence that interactions with texts are often mediated through oral language practices and Vygotsky's ideas about the primacy of social dialogue for individual intellectual development, the authors argue that children's informal talk about both electronic and printed texts throws new light on the reading process as a whole. They analyse children's talk about a school library book, a piece of graffiti, a television programme and a film to show how readings are shaped by the social organization and personal relationships of the readers, whether in curriculum activities, friendship groups or at home in the family. Readings are constructed, contested and negotiated through talk at the point where texts are first calculated and reshaped again when they are jointly recalled. Talk also helps to construct the text's legitimate audience and the reader's position within it.     

Using Social Networking in the Library

This case study will describe how the Stony Brook University Libraries instruction program partnered with another student support service (student computing office) to nurture a relationship with the Educational Opportunities Program (EOP) over several years to provide their students with the library research and computer skills needed to succeed in college. EOP is a state-funded program aimed at economically disadvantaged students whose high school education has not fully prepared them for college success.     

Play It,Learn It,Make It Last: Developing an Online Game to Create Self-Sufficient Library Information Users

ABSTRACT

Library orientation at an academic health sciences library consisted of a five-minute overview within new student orientation. Past experience indicated this brief presentation was insufficient for students to learn about library resources. In 2014, an effort was made to supplement orientation by developing an online game aimed at enabling students to become self-sufficient through hands-on learning. A gaming model was chosen with expectations that competition and rewards would motivate students. Although the pilots suffered from low participation rates, the experience merits further research into the potential of a broader model of online library instruction in the health sciences environment.     

Knowledge,education and research: Making common cause across communities of practice

This article considers how knowledge, education and research interact as the institutional structures that support them change. Many efforts at large‐scale education reform depend upon the proposition that what counts as useful knowledge can be easily defined, without reference to the specific contexts in which that knowledge will be set to work. Yet ?useful knowledge’ as it appears to policymakers does not always translate into ?useful knowledge’ from the perspective of practitioners. Distance and context matter. Based on studies of the development of literacy policy in England under successive governments, the paper assesses the dislocations and divisions of labour that characterise the contemporary knowledge landscape and asks how the research community can continue to act for the common good in an increasingly crowded and contested education field.     

The Three Educational Ideologies of the British Labour Party, 1997-2001

The dominant academic conclusion about Labour's education policy since 1997 has been that it is mainly a continuation of Thatcherism. This is inadequate. There are three strands of Labour practice in education: a renovated version of social liberalism, a form of weak developmentalism, and a type of new social democracy that is in the mainstream of European thinking on the left. One significant source of ideological diversity in government is now the devolved responsibilities for educational policy that are held by the Scottish Parliament and (to a more limited extent) by the National Assembly for Wales.