Examining the Tasks of Teaching When Using Students' Mathematical Thinking

Recent research suggests that the examination of students' work may lead to changes in teaching practice that are more effective in terms of students' mathematical learning. However, the link between the examination of students' work and the teachers' actions in the classroom is largely unexamined, particularly at the secondary level. In this paper, I present the results of a study in which teachers had extensive opportunities to examine the development of students' conceptual models of exponential growth in the context of their own classrooms. I describe two related aspects of the practice of one teacher: (a) how she listened to students' alternative solution strategies and (b) how she responded to these strategies in her practice. The results of the analysis suggest that as the teacher listened to her students, she developed a sophisticated schema for understanding the diversity of student thinking. The actions of the teacher supported extensive student engagement with the task and led the students to revise and refine their own mathematical thinking. This latter action reflects a significant shift in classroom practice from the role of the teacher as evaluator of student ideas to the role of students as self-evaluators of their emerging ideas.     

Nonword reading and other reading-related skills in Down syndrome

The performance of children and young adults with Down syndrome (DS) on reading subskills and nonword reading was investigated. The performance of the participants with DS (N = 42) was compared to that of typically developing (N = 36) peers matched on fluid intelligence abilities. The study accounted for the different depths in orthography presented by the two languages. The independent samples t-test, Mann–Whitney U-test, ANCOVA and correlation analysis were used to analyse the data. This study identified that the participants with DS had several strengths, such as nonword reading, visual discrimination (VD) and phonological awareness. Verbal short-term memory, visual perceptual processing skills other than VD and rhyming skills were identified as weaker in DS compared with the control group. Results call for educators to expose readers with DS to a phonological approach to reading while accommodating difficulties in VSTM.     

Online Lexical Competition During Spoken Word Recognition and Word Learning in Children and Adults

Lexical competition that occurs as speech unfolds is a hallmark of adult oral language comprehension crucial to rapid incremental speech processing. This study used pause detection to examine whether lexical competition operates similarly at 7–8 years and tested variables that influence “online” lexical activity in adults. Children (n = 20) and adults (n = 17) were slower to detect pauses in familiar words with later uniqueness points. Faster latencies were obtained for words with late uniqueness points in constraining compared with neutral sentences; no such effect was observed for early unique words. Following exposure to novel competitors (“biscal”), children (n = 18) and adults (n = 18) showed competition for existing words with early uniqueness points (“biscuit”) after 24 hr. Thus, online lexical competition effects are remarkably similar across development.     

School Closure: What are the consequences for the local society?

School closures have been common in rural areas since the middle of the last century, when new and modern schools replaced small old‐fashioned schools with only one or two classrooms. Due mainly to the industrialisation of farming and hastened by the merging and globalisation of industry, the last 50 years have seen a migration of people from rural areas to large towns. This has caused closures of schools built in the 1950s and 1960s, which had been the pride of and a sign of development in local societies. These closures most often give rise to heated debate, the main cry of protest being that the closure of the school is a death‐blow to the local society. The present study is based on a qualitative analysis performed in 2003 of 30 Danish school closures in the period 1990–1999. The results show that school closure in itself does not have the devastating effects mentioned in the debate. The main problem for local societies is a lack of people and thus lack of human capital, and in remote areas and on small islands school closure is a sign of a community in the final phase of the death process, not a cause.     

Seeding Writing Project principles and practices in a school community: a case study

This article reports on a small-scale case study involving all English teachers of junior classes in a rural high school in New Zealand. The Head of English had been involved in Writing Project professional learning, designed in accordance with principles and practices that can be found in a number of countries, especially the United States. The researcher was alerted to the Head’s instigation of a school-wide writing competition and the implementation across all classes of a poetry writing unit, and set out to explore the extent to which Writing Project practices had been ‘seeded’ in this context through the actions of the Head of English. All teachers were interviewed and the data thematically analysed using a social constructionist lens. Results showed that while some direct influence occurred, ‘seeding’ was actually a diffused phenomenon and likely to be facilitated by five factors: management structure, dissemination processes, leadership style, staff relationships and teacher disposition.     

The importance of internal conversations and reflexivity for work-based students in higher education: valuing contextual continuity and ‘giving something back’

This paper utilises the theories of Archer to explore the impact of student ‘internal conversations’ upon the development of reflexive approaches employed by work-based students (WBS). The study informing this paper draws on the voices of a range of WBS on a Foundation Degree in Educational Support within a new university. A range of reflexivities are identified within the strategies students employ to ‘make their ways’ through the often unfamiliar and sometimes alienating contexts of higher education (HE). Whilst routinisation can be viewed as in decline people are not equally placed to be liberated or to liberate themselves from structurally determined biographies. Importantly for this paper, liberation is not strongly identified by participants as a site of what they ‘care most about’. It is argued in the conclusion to this paper that students have an ‘empirical tendency’ to employ the reflexivity that enables them to remain knowledgeably embedded to their social context, to move on but not necessarily ‘out’ of their social circumstances; so the autonomous reflexivity of Archer’s study is less relevant to many of these students.     

Modelling practice – Academic development for flexible learning

Modelling is a powerful learning tool in any professional discipline. This paper describes how a group of academic developers attempted to model practice as an underlying strategy for introducing academic staff to the possibilities and problems of student centred flexible learning. Practice was modelled through a flexibly delivered Graduate Certificate in Higher Education available to staff of the university. Modelling practice was manifest in a number of ways including staff development, new course design and implementation and the development of purpose designed software for teaching. The process was also explicitly designed to act as a team building and staff development exercise for the staff of the academic development unit.     

Field dependence-independence as a factor in the academic and career evolution of women majors in the broad-gauge discipline of home economics

The relationships between the field-dependence-independence level (GEFT score) of university home economics majors and their area of concentration, academic ability and performance, and career choices were investigated. The sample was 143 undergraduate and 53 graduate women university students. A significant difference in GEFT was found when students were grouped according to the five areas of concentration or by the analytical-interpersonal nature of their chosen career positions. Significant correlations were found between GEFT and all ACT scores, undergraduate and graduate GPA, and graduate student career commitment. There was no significant relationship for GEFT with any GRE score, undergraduate career commitment, or ease of career choice. Little evidence of a differential effect of GEFT on achievement in analytical or social content courses was found.