Wearable Technologies for Anxious Adolescents

Abstract

Nearly one in three adolescents in our country experience stress or anxiety to the extent that it negatively effects their ability to cope with daily life demands. However, educators are not well prepared to support students who have anxiety-related issues. One approach for supporting adolescents with anxiety-related issues involves the use of wearable technologies. These devices support self-regulation by providing real-time physiological marker information. Wearers can then become more mindful of their stress at that moment and implement positive stress or anxiety-reducing interventions. This article provides an overview of wearable technologies and related research and describes steps that support adolescents who have wearables for addressing their anxiety.     

Teaching about sustainability through inquiry-based science in Irish primary classrooms: the impact of a professional development programme on teacher self-efficacy,competence and pedagogy

Abstract

Research suggests that innovative and engaging professional development is instrumental in supporting teachers in developing their competence and confidence in teaching sustainability. An international initiative was developed to explore whether a competencies-oriented Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) professional development model was transferable across three different international contexts (Ireland, Germany and Mexico). This paper reports on the adaptation of this model within the Irish context, through the development of an innovative professional development programme for primary teachers. Through a mixed-methods approach which gathered data via pre- and post-programme surveys, teachers’ reflective journals and post-programme group interviews, the paper explores Irish primary school teachers’ experiences of, and attitudes towards, teaching sustainability through science education after participation in a professional development programme. The findings suggest that this programme, structured around the existing evidence for effective professional development in science education and ESD, positively influences teachers’ self-efficacy, supports teachers’ critical engagement with sustainability competencies and promotes the development of transformative pedagogies for sustainability through Inquiry-Based Science Education.     

Tertiary Educators’ Perceptions of and Attitudes Toward Emerging Educational Technologies

A small initial study aimed to find out what values, perceptions and attitudes educators from a sample tertiary faculty (the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia) have towards a group of new and emerging educational technologies. A questionnaire was formulated which was administered as a written survey or telephone interview. The study found that the respondents are most familiar with and have useful knowledge about CD‐ROM technology, and most are also familiar with video‐conferencing. These technologies are seen as the most potentially useful. Lack of knowledge, display/delivery equipment, and the time‐consuming nature of making such educational material are the major barriers which hinder their use of them. The study recommends further inquiry into the barriers that prevent the integration of such technologies into tertiary learning.     

A Research Preparatory Program for First-Year College Students: Student Selection and Preparation Lead to Persistence in Research

Undergraduate research experiences may increase persistence in STEM majors. We describe a research program that targets first-year students selected for their curiosity and attitudes towards science. We explain the implementation of the program over 3 years and present evaluation data using a group of matched controls. Participants and controls pursued STEM degrees at equivalent rates, but participants were significantly more involved in research. Initial laboratory interest and mentor pairing may have played a role in this finding. Female participants, particularly those with male laboratory mentors, engaged in more research than men.     

Countering post-truths through ecopedagogical literacies: Teaching to critically read ‘development’ and ‘sustainable development’

Abstract

A key aspect of teaching ‘development’ is understanding the conundrums and tensions between balance and imbalance with constructs of global (all humans, all societies, all populations) and planetary (all of Earth, including humans) spheres. This article deconstructs some key tenets of populist post-truth frameworks (termed as post-truthism in this article) as affecting how development and sustainability is taught within ecopedagogies and argues for structural grounding of ecopedagogical literacy within pedagogies as increasingly imperative. Rooted in critical theories and popular education movements in Latin America, through reinvention of Freirean Pedagogy, the literacy’s root word ecopedagogy is transformative teaching in which educators dialectically problem-pose the politics of socio-environmental connections through local, global, and planetary lenses. Without deepened and widened readings of development and sustainability viewed within both global and planetary spheres, in conjunction with development’s effects upon local societies and ecological systems, developmental actions are unsustainable and defies the definition of development. Discussed will be the ecopedagogical tenets, including emergent ecopedagogical literacies, of critical socio-historical analysis, local and diverse epistemologies, deconstruction of pedagogies on the environment, and problem-posing one’s and others’ livelihood to counter post-truthism.     

The politics of teaching time in disciplinary and control societies

Abstract

This article argues that education reform agendas which use policy levers, standardised testing and new regulatory authorities to steer teachers’ work at a distance are creating a new temporal politics. Evidence from interviews with teachers and principals in Australian schools suggests that these reforms are impacting on individual experiences of the rhythms of their day-to-day work. First, there is a disquieting perception of an acceleration of their working life. Second, and related, many teachers and principals spoke of feeling ‘out of time’, or out of rhythm, with the new expectations of their work. Using Deleuze’s control societies, we posit that this arrhythmia exemplifies the experience of the classroom being ‘opened up’ for the purposes of comparison. This breakdown of the enclosed classroom is affected through the datafication of teaching.     

‘They Came to Sneer,and Remained to Cheer’: Interpreting the 1934–35 England Women’s Cricket Tour to Australia and New Zealand

Abstract

This paper focuses generally on the history of women’s cricket during the earlier twentieth century, primarily on the 1934–35 England women’s cricket tour of Australia and New Zealand, and more so on the New Zealand dimension. The tour occurred at a critical time for women’s team sport in both countries in that from the 1920s consistent local and then national competitions brought continuity to previously fragmented activities. Hence the tour provides a useful barometer for a wide range of attitudes to sporting participation by women and reveals contrasts between Britain and Australasia. At the same time, there are specific attitudes to the playing of cricket by women that need to be explored. Here there are some obvious differences between accounts in dedicated women’s cricket sources and the specialist women’s press, both of which sought to encourage the game on its own terms, and those in sources with a broader scope and male-dominated editorship which were more inclined to trivialize and disparage women’s cricket and to judge it against the men’s game.