Integrating Video Documentary Into the Classroom: A Community Assessment Assignment

Community assessment is a strategy commonly taught to social work students to identify a community’s strengths and challenges. This article describes the value of using video documentary as part of a community assessment assignment. We identify the advantages of using video documentary in the assessment process and the reporting of findings. We discuss the preproduction, production, and postproduction steps necessary to produce a video documentary and illustrate how such assignments can be incorporated into a social work course. We conclude by identifying the educational benefits accrued to students.     

Partnership as an Intervention Strategy in Self-Managing Schools

The alternatives of taking over failing schools or handing over resources for them to develop their own improvement strategies are recognized as ineffective in achieving improvement. When deciding how best to intervene in 26 self-managing schools, the Ministry of Education in New Zealand attempted to avoid the negative consequences of these alternatives by developing a partnership with the schools and their communities. This article documents both the difficulties experienced in the first intervention phase, dominated by concerns about respecting the schools’ autonomy, and the successes of the second phase, when the Ministry was more explicit about the school improvement tasks.     

Passive visitors or independent explorers: Responses of pupils with severe learning difficulties at an Interactive Science Centre

In previous work with mainstream students in a small Interactive Science Centre it was shown that curiosity, followed by identification of cause and effect, were essential for moving on from playing to intentional investigation and so to learning. Here we report studies of students with severe learning difficulties and show that they could, under appropriate conditions, display impressive concentration and curiosity, and often appeared to achieve valuable learning. The paper concludes by describing some of the dilemmas that may arise in developing these kinds of activities for special education.     

The Effect of Increasing Conceptual Challenge in Primary Science Lessons on Pupils' Achievement and Engagement

This paper reports research into the effect on 11‐year‐old pupils of introducing more cognitively challenging, practical, and interactive science lessons. Our hypothesis was that such lessons would increase the children's enthusiasm for science and their engagement with the scientific process, thereby improving educational performance. Schools in England are under pressure to raise achievement, as measured by the results of national tests. This has an impact on teaching, where revision of subject knowledge often dominates and can be particularly detrimental to more able pupils. The research was a controlled trial which took place in thirty‐two English primary schools as part of a project “Conceptual Challenge in Primary Science”. Teachers from 16 intervention schools participated in continuing professional development (CPD) and developed science lessons that had more practical work, more discussion, more thinking and less (but more focused) writing. The proportion of pupils achieving the highest level (level 5) in the national science tests at age 11 was compared in the matched‐school pairs before and after the intervention. Focus group interviews were also held with a group of pupils in each intervention school. There was a 10% (95% Confidence Interval 2–17%) increase in the proportion of children achieving the top score in the intervention schools. The pupils and teachers reported greater engagement and motivation. These findings suggest that moving from rote revision to cognitively challenging, interactive science could help improve science education. They merit replication in other international settings to test their generalisability.     

Good Practice in Science Teaching: What Research has to Say (2nd edn)

The scientific competencies advocated by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) focus on the abilities needed in students' adult lives. This study investigated how such scientific competencies could be improved by using online argumentation. One hundred and thirty-eight 8th grade high school students took part in the study, with 69 in the experimental group and 69 in the control group. A quasi-experimental design was adopted and qualitative and quantitative analyses were used. An online argumentation system served as an aid for argumentation instruction and activities among experimental group students during the experiment. The results showed that using online argumentation could improve the students' scores for the PISA scientific competencies. The experimental group students outperformed their counterparts in terms of overall mean scores for the scientific competencies. On the one hand, the individual competencies of ‘using scientific evidence’ and ‘identifying scientific issues’ of the experimental group were higher than those of the control group. On the other hand, the experimental group students did not outperform their counterparts in terms of competency in ‘explaining phenomena scientifically’. Using an online environment to complement argumentation instruction and organizing argumentation activities focused on related topics may be a potential direction to consider for improving students’ PISA scientific competencies.     

An exploration of primary school teachers' understanding of art and the place of art in the primary school curriculum

Some research within developmental psychology shows a slow period of development in children's expressive drawings during the primary school years. Developmental researchers suggest that ‘educational factors’ could contribute to this dip in development but have not explored these factors. This study explores links between educational policy – in terms of the English National Curriculum – and the development of expression in child art. A Foucauldian style analysis of interviews is presented which investigates how ten primary school teachers working in two Staffordshire schools approach art. A specific concern is to explore how different understandings of art and teaching practices are shaped and managed by the curriculum. This allows links between the demands of the curriculum and the observed dip in expressive drawing development to be investigated.     

International student security: a view from Beijing

Security is an integral component of the relationships that shape the lives of students hosted by foreign countries. International student security became a source of contention between nations in 2008 when China's Government charged that Australia was failing to adequately provide for the safety of Chinese students. We discuss Beck's theorisation of the ‘risk society’ and Clements' notion of balancing risk with opportunity. We draw on interviews undertaken in Beijing to highlight the importance of student security and the need for hosts to accord attention to the views of parents as well as students. Our findings reveal that parents play a major role in the study‐location decision, tend to accord security greater weight than do students when location is being debated within the family, utilise a range of strategies to keep students secure and believe host governments and institutions have primary responsibility for student well‐being.     

English secondary students’ thinking about the status of scientific theories: consistent,comprehensive, coherent and extensively evidenced explanations of aspects of the natural world – or just ‘an idea someone has’

Teaching about the nature of science (NOS) is seen as a priority for science education in many national contexts. The present paper focuses on one central issue in learning about NOS: understanding the nature and status of scientific theories. A key challenge in teaching about NOS is to persuade students that scientific knowledge is generally robust and reliable, yet also in principle always open to challenge and modification. Theories play a central role, as they are a form of conjectural knowledge that over time may be abandoned, replaced, modified, yet sometimes become well established as current best scientific understanding. The present paper reports on findings from interviews with 13–14 year olds in England where target knowledge presents theories as ‘consistent, comprehensive, coherent and extensively evidenced explanations of aspects of the natural world’. Student thinking reflected a two-tier typology of scientific knowledge in which largely unsupported imaginative ideas (‘theories’) became transformed into fairly definitive knowledge (such as laws) through relatively straightforward testing. These results are considered in relation to research into intellectual development which indicates that effective teaching in this area requires careful scaffolding of student learning, but has potential to contribute to supporting intellectual development across the curriculum.     

Creating case studies of practice through Appreciative Inquiry

Taking a positive view is a fruitful way to prompt educators to reflect on and to develop their practice. Teachers, teacher educators and children bring a wide range of ideas that provide a powerful basis for developing understanding of the complexities of classroom practice. Using appreciate inquiry the authors show how they developed their understanding of professional development as they worked with groups of teachers who investigated their science teaching practice with young children and produced case studies of practice. The authors also show how the roles and ideas of themselves as university tutors were challenged and emerged to suit the range of contexts involved. Their view of Continuing Professional Development was influenced by the lived experiences of the teachers and themselves. They worked to systematise learning through identifying commonalities of experience and reflection along four dimensions: creating spaces for growth; working with emergent purposes; action research as rhizomatic growth; and collaborative and collective action. The rich variety of outcomes shows the value of creating space for growth for children and for adults. The energy and enthusiasm liberated motivated the participants to explore their worlds in ways that were difficult to predict at the start of the project.     

Early years curriculum: funds of knowledge as a conceptual framework for children’s interests

Children’s interests are frequently cited as a source of early‐years curricula. Yet, research has rarely considered the nature of these interests beyond the play‐based environment of early‐childhood education. This paper reports findings from a qualitative, interpretivist study in two early childhood settings in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Using participant observation, interviews, and documentation, the study examined children’s interests and teachers’ engagement with these in curriculum interactions. Evidence suggested children’s interests were stimulated by their ‘intent participation’ in family and community experiences and encapsulated in the notion of ‘funds of knowledge’. The concept of funds of knowledge provides a coherent analytic framework for teachers to recognize children’s interests and extend teachers’ curriculum planning focus beyond that of a child‐centred play‐based learning environment.