Transitioning in elementary school: parent advocacy and teacher allyship

This paper examines how parent advocacy and teacher allyship played an important role in supporting six-year-old Violet Addley’s (a pseudonym) gender transition in elementary school. We first met the Addley family in the spring of 2015 when we interviewed them for a research study on the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) families in Ontario schools. The goals of the study are to interview LGBTQ families about issues that come up at school, document how families have worked with schools to create safer and more respectful classrooms for their children, and share the families’ interviews with teachers and principals so they can begin to think about the ways they can best work with LGBTQ parents and their children. Our paper also discusses what a group of teachers learned about parent advocacy and teacher allyship from their engagement with the Addley family interviews.     

Testing the usability of a portable DVD player and tailored photo instructions with older adult veterans

DVD-delivered behavioral skills training may help disseminate efficacious treatments to older adults independent of internet access. The present study examined the usability of a portable DVD player alongside iterative revisions of accompanying instructions to be used by older adults in a DVD-delivered behavioral skills treatment study. The sample comprised 20 older adults with a mean age of 69.5 years (SD = 7.3). Behavior observations revealed that three of five steps to play the DVD were completed by more than 90% of participants. Quantitative ratings revealed that 75% could play the DVD easily. Qualitative content analysis further elucidated the usability of the player and the clarity of the instructions. Findings suggest user-centered design of instructional support in DVD-delivered treatments for older adults may be critical to minimizing user error and frustration and increase user experience.     

The Shaping of the Curriculum

Abstract

Curriculum design might appear to be a project for a pure educational theory. An example of such a theory is Paul Hirst's deduction of distinct forms of knowledge’ upon which rests his advocacy of the liberal curriculum’. Hirst's theory, though immune to many of the attacks that have been directed at it, fails to consider how (if at all) the structure of knowledge maps on to the structure of our mental (learning) faculties. The partitioning of the manifold of knowledge may correspond not at all to the optimum curricular partitioning of the teaching manifold. Further, as a curriculum proposal, Hirst's account needs to be underwritten by an account of the purpose of education. Accounts of the latter sort normally invoke considerations of a political nature. Such considerations, together with the influence of other forces, tend to pull curricula in directions which many educationalists regard as undesirable. Can pure educational theory reassert itself as the controlling force behind curriculum planning? I argue that there is little prospect of its so doing.     

Applying the Collective Causal Mapping Methodology to Operations Management Curriculum Development*

Although the field of operations management has come a long way since its beginnings in scientific management, the field still appears somewhat amorphous and unstructured to many. Introductory operations management textbooks usually include a number of largely disjointed topics, which leave many students (and their instructors) without a coherent framework for understanding the field. As a result, the importance and sequencing of topics varies widely between courses and instructors, even within the same university. This article applies the newly developed Collective Causal Mapping Methodology to create a causal map for the entire field of operations management. The causal map is built on expert opinions collected from over 250 academics and practitioners representing many areas of expertise, schools, organizations, and countries. This collective causal map is then used to create a new framework for understanding and teaching operations management. This framework can aid instructors in determining which topics should be taught in an operations management course, how these topics might be grouped and sequenced, and the important interrelationships among the topics that should be stressed to students.     

The relationship between design reflectivity and conceptions of informed design among high school students

ABSTRACT

Although reflection is a key behaviour of expert designers, it is often a challenging task for new designers. In addition, research on the reflectivity of student designers is limited. The purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to identify the levels of reflectivity while designing, and (2) to study the relationship between reflectivity and conceptions of informed design. We collected data from high school students engaged in an engineering design project. We developed a coding protocol to score levels of reflectivity in student reflections at three levels (low, medium, and high), and used the conceptions of design test to assess changes in student understanding of design activities. Using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests, we determined if students tended to select more ‘key’ design activities and fewer ‘distractors’ within each reflection group. We also performed McNemar’s tests to determine which specific design activities were important within each reflection group after the design project. The results show moderately reflective students had higher gains in understanding of informed design activities compared to those with high or low reflectivity. Results also indicate that different design activities became important for students within each of the three reflective groups. Implications from this research indicate that groups of students experience changing conceptions of design in different ways. An understanding of what students deem important while designing would better allow teachers to encourage behaviours that are like those of informed designers.     

International comparisons of student attainment: some issues arising from the PISA study

This paper raises some methodological concerns about the conduct, analysis and interpretation of results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study. While in many respects PISA represents an advance on previous attempts at international comparative assessment studies, it retains certain problematic aspects. The article comments on the restricted nature of the data modelling and analysis, and the resulting interpretations. It points to certain features of the results that raise questions about the adequacy of the data and it stresses the failure to introduce a longitudinal component. The paper makes suggestions for ways in which such studies can be improved.