Girls' Entry into Higher Secondary Sciences

Numerous reports since the 1970s showed that there was a great concern about the lack of female students entering the sciences in Australia. Despite these concerns, there still appears to be a reluctance on the part of females to enter the sciences. This article draws on research conducted with Year 10 students within the Perth metropolitan area and examines the effects of encouragement as perceived by these female students. A qualitative methodological approach was utilised, where perceptions were compiled from individual in-depth interviews, open-ended questionnaires, and through participatory observation in the classrooms. This study has been reported from a feminist position which locates gender as central and which posits that human subjects are positioned and position themselves in a multiplicity of ways through the discourses to which they have access. This study showed that encouragement played a major part in the way female students actively positioned themselves in the science classroom as high achievers. These students also spoke out against fitting into the feminine 'mould' of being quiet and hard-working. The way they positioned themselves was influential in these female students' choice to continue with sciences into the higher secondary level and ultimately into further education and possibly a career.     

An anthropometric analysis of elite Australian track cyclists

An anthropometric analysis was conducted on 35 elite male Australian track cyclists having a mean age of 22.6 years and who had been competing on average for 9 years. The relationship of anthropometric parameters to both bicycle saddle height and cycling performance was also investigated. Subjects were allocated, for purposes of comparison, to an endurance or sprint group on the basis of their competitive event. The group members in total were ectomorphic mesomorphs of height 178 +/- 4.8 cm and weight 72.5 +/- 6.6 kg on average. Percentage of saddle height to lower limb length averaged 99 +/- 1.6%, and significant correlations existed between strength and both body mass (r = 0.57) and thigh girth (r = 0.55). No significant correlation was seen between any anthropometric parameter and performance in an individual event. Cyclists in the spint group were heavier (76.2 +/- 7.4 vs. 70.0 +/- 4.7 kg, P less than 0.01) and stronger (258 +/- 44.4 vs. 216 +/- 30.5 Nm, P less than 0.01), and had larger chest (98.2 +/- 6.2 vs. 92.4 +/- 2.9 cm, P less than 0.01), arm (33.0 +/- 2.2 vs. 30.7 +/- 1.6 cm, P less than 0.01), thigh (57.5 +/- 3.4 vs. 54.3 +/- 2.5 cm, P less than 0.01) and calf girths (37.8 +/- 1.7 vs. 36.2 +/- 1.9 cm, P less than 0.05) than cyclists in the endurance group. They were also more mesomorphic (5.3 +/- 0.7 vs. 4.7 +/- 0.8, P less than 0.05) and less ectomorphic (2.3 +/- 0.9 vs. 2.9 +/- 0.6, P less than 0.05) than the endurance cyclists.     

Departmentalized,Self-Contained,or Somewhere in Between: Understanding Elementary Grade-Level Organizational Decision-Making

Recent trends indicate a move away from self-contained classrooms and toward content-focused departmentalization in elementary schools. This study takes a snapshot of the existing organizational structures used in elementary schools in one district and explores administrators’ beliefs and practices regarding this phenomenon. Our findings suggest administrators base their decisions to organize grade levels on various factors, including their own experiences, contextual dynamics, and personal perceptions of outcomes for students and teachers.     

Decoding the phonics screening check

The statutory ‘phonics screening check’ was introduced in 2012 and reflects the current emphasis in England on teaching early reading through systematic synthetic phonics. The check is intended to assess children's phonic abilities and their knowledge of 85 grapheme–phoneme correspondences (GPCs) through decoding 20 real words and 20 pseudo words. Since the national rollout, little attention has been devoted to the content of the checks. The current paper, therefore, reviews the first three years of the check between 2012 and 2014 to examine how the 85 specified GPCs have been assessed and whether children are only using decoding skills to read the words. The analysis found that out of the 85 GPCs considered testable by the check, just 15 GPCs accounted for 67% of all GPC occurrences, with 27 of the 85 specified GPCs (31.8%) not appearing at all. Where a grapheme represented more than one phoneme, the most frequently occurring pronunciation was assessed in 72.2% of cases, with vocabulary knowledge being required to determine the correct pronunciation within real words where multiple pronunciations were possible. The GPCs assessed, therefore, do not reflect the full range of GPCs that it is expected will be taught within a systematic synthetic phonics approach. Furthermore, children's ability to decode real words is dependent on their vocabulary knowledge, not just their phonic skills. These results question the purpose and validity of the phonics screening check and the role of synthetic phonics for teaching early reading.     

Supporting Learners' Agentic Engagement With Feedback: A Systematic Review and a Taxonomy of Recipience Processes

Much has been written in the educational psychology literature about effective feedback and how to deliver it. However, it is equally important to understand how learners actively receive, engage with, and implement feedback. This article reports a systematic review of the research evidence pertaining to this issue. Through an analysis of 195 outputs published between 1985 and early 2014, we identified various factors that have been proposed to influence the likelihood of feedback being used. Furthermore, we identified diverse interventions with the common aim of supporting and promoting learners' agentic engagement with feedback processes. We outline the various components used in these interventions, and the reports of their successes and limitations. Moreover we propose a novel taxonomy of four recipience processes targeted by these interventions. This review and taxonomy provide a theoretical basis for conceptualizing learners' responsibility within feedback dialogues and for guiding the strategic design and evaluation of interventions.     

Considerate,convivial and capacious? Finding a language to capture ethos in ‘creative’ schools

Concepts of school ‘ethos’ or ‘culture’ have been widely debated in education since the 1980s. This is partly as a consequence of marketisation, partly because ethos has been identified as a low-cost route to school improvement. Corporate, authoritarian, and most recently ‘military’ models of ethos have been widely promulgated in the UK. Another significant strand of educational thinking, however, has emphasised ethos for and as learning: how schools might prefigure alternative, more socially just, worlds. This article argues that accounting for such divergent notions of ethos demands greater attention to the intellectual resources mobilised in interpreting educational processes. We discuss schools that used their work with the English creative learning programme, Creative Partnerships, to develop what we describe as ‘considerate, convivial and capacious’ school ethos. We aim thereby to value their achievements, provide tools to contest dominant discourses around ethos, and advocate more critical, reflexive approaches to researching school cultures.