Metalinguistic Awareness,Reading and Spelling: Roots and Branches of Literacy

Studies on the role of metalinguistic awareness in emerging literacy have established that metalinguistic abilities at phonological, syntactic, print and pragmatic levels are linked to later attainments in literacy. Few have examined the interplay among these skills and developing reading and spelling. Using time-reversed path analyses, this study explores the possibility that metalinguistic awareness registers stronger direct effects on literacy than early pre-conventional reading and invented spelling skills. Sixty children aged 54 months (initially) were given measures of metalinguistic abilities, pre-conventional reading and invented spelling on three occasions. This allowed the exploration of reciprocal relationships between pre-conventional reading, invented spelling and metalinguistic abilities. On the fourth occasion, standardised tests of reading and spelling were administered. Results from time-reversed path analysis show that pre-conventional reading and invented spelling influenced each other across development and had stronger direct effects on subsequent literacy than did aspects of metalinguistic awareness. Pre-literate metalinguistic abilities were shown to affect pre-conventional reading and invented spelling skills and combine with these to influence further growth in literacy. The study’s results have implications for current models of literacy development.     

“Science is dead. We have killed it,you and I”—How attacking the presuppositional structures of our scientific age can doom the interrogation of nature

This paper is an attempt to characterize what 20 years of teaching history and philosophy of science to science teachers have suggested to me. The most important thing which I have found is that almost all of my students have the samestandard picture of science. Karl Pearson'sThe Grammar of Science gives the main outlines of this picture. This view emphasizes the centrality of method over particular results and the purely empirical nature of observation and of generalization derived from empirical induction. My paper shows that in giving modern history and philosophy of science to a generation of students, I have sown the seeds of scepticism and disbelief in a fashion parallel to that in which the introduction of science as a sceptical methodvis-à-vis theology undermined the belief in God. Thus I suggest that a danger we may be as yet unaware of is that science as an enterprise can be undermined and so lost, unless we guard against a too facile scepticism—a scepticism quite different from a healthy wait and see or a show me the colour of your argument.     

Departmental Planning: Use of the Directional Matrix

Directional Matrices have been used in businesses to assist the identification of an organisation's strengths and weaknesses. This approach also has application to the activities of departments within institutions of higher education. In particular it was applied to the Graduate School of Environmental Science at Monash University to assist the planning of the School's operations. Data from a sample of the School's staff and members of its Board of Studies indicated that most of the twelve activities identified were important and were performing relatively well. Although differences in the data from the two groups occurred, results obtained from the Matrix were not substantially influenced by this variation. Observations of the responses to the Matrix help to show how future application could be improved.     

Developing an Instrument to Examine Preservice Teachers’ Pedagogical Development

National and international reform documents have forged blueprints for advancing science education. Coursework for preservice teachers needs to correspond to these documents by providing learning experiences that develop preservice teachers’ capabilities to plan and implement reform measures. Using a pretest–posttest design, responses from 59 2nd-year preservice teachers from the same university were compared after involvement in an elementary science pedagogy coursework. The survey, which was linked to the course outcomes (constructs) and multiple indicators, measured the preservice teachers’ perceptions of their development towards becoming elementary science teachers. A pretest–posttest survey linked to course outcomes can be employed to assess perceived pedagogical development of preservice teachers, which can inform further teaching practices for implementing science education reform agendas.     

Driving change from ‘the middle’: middle leading for site based educational development

ABSTRACT

Educational researchers have invested much in isolating the specific ‘drivers’ that influence school change and teacher professional development. In this vein, this article draws attention to necessarily situated understandings of practice development through research into the nature of ‘middle leading’ for site based education development in one primary school district in regional Australia. Drawing on practice theory, the analysis reveals how developing and sustaining change in schools is contingent on middle leaders’ insider knowledge, shared responsibility and capacity to sustain and ‘drive’ teachers’ learning. The article argues more situated understandings of middle leading practices are essential for sustainable educational reform.     

Unintended knowledge learnt in primary science practical lessons

This study explored the different kinds of unintended learning in primary school practical science lessons. In this study, unintended learning has been defined as student learning that was found to occur that was not included in the teachers learning objectives for that specific lesson. A total of 22 lessons, taught by five teachers in Korean primary schools with 10- to 12-year-old students, were audio-and video recorded. Pre-lesson interviews with the teachers were conducted to ascertain their intended learning objectives. Students were asked to write short memos after the lesson about what they learnt. Post-lesson interviews with students and teachers were undertaken. What emerged was that there were three types of knowledge that students learnt unintentionally: factual knowledge gained by phenomenon-based reasoning, conceptual knowledge gained by relation- or model-based reasoning, and procedural knowledge acquired by practice. Most unintended learning found in this study fell into the factual knowledge and only a few cases of conceptual knowledge were found. Cases of both explicit procedural knowledge and implicit procedural knowledge were found. This study is significant in that it suggests how unintended learning in practical work can be facilitated as an educative opportunity for meaningful learning by exploring what and how students learnt.     

My Journey With Annemarie Roeper: Lessons Learned Along the Way

For over 70 years Annemarie Roeper was able to breathe new life into many aspects of giftedness and gifted education. Capturing the magic of such a charismatic and visionary leader is a challenge. However, stories and storytelling provide a pathway into the narrative of Annemarie’s life as it evolved from young adulthood to elderhood. This article provides the lessons learned during a long-standing friendship and insights into her multidimensional personality.     

Learning through culture: seeking “critical case studies of possibilities” in the history of education

Abstract

In Radical Education and the Common School (2011), Michael Field and Peter Moss argue for a radical alternative to the failed and dysfunctional contemporary discourse about education and the school with its focus on markets, competition, instrumentality, standardisation, and managerialism. They argue that it is necessary, if we are to progress “social alternatives” in education, to construct micro-histories of schools that have developed as “real utopias” through radically revising their practice. They call these micro-histories “critical case studies of possibilities”. In To Hell with Culture (1963), the art educator and anarchist Herbert Read returned to a theme he had been exploring since the early 1930s – the purpose of education. For him, “education” implied many things, but he saw modern practice as “socially disintegrating”. Instead, Read offered an alternative to the dominant discourse about education under capitalism in the 1960s which would create “that collective consciousness which is the spiritual energy of a people and the only source of its art and culture”. To what extent was Read’s conception of education an ideal, a dream unfulfilled? Following Fielding and Moss this paper will seek to trace “critical case studies of possibilities” drawn from the past which reflect the fundamental connection identified by Read between school learning, “collective consciousness”, art, and culture.     

Science at the Crossroads? The Decline of Science in Australian Higher Education

The Australian Government has stressed the important role universities play in producing knowledge workers to service the needs of the technology-driven new economy. The massification of Australian higher education from 1989 rapidly increased the stock of university-educated people in all disciplines. Although university science enrolments also grew, analysis reveals both that the growth rate has been considerably less than the sector average, and that there has been a serious decline in the number of students being trained in the enabling sciences: chemistry, mathematics and physics. Recent Government policies are unlikely to reverse this critical decline.     

The Secondary School Prospectus and the Challenge of Special Educational Needs

There is an analysis of a sample of secondary school prospectuses with a focus upon special educational needs [SEN]. The background context is the Parent's Charter which promises information and choice, and the official governmental regulations for the content of the prospectus. The general analysis examines the prospectus in terms of its methodological status, quality of production, school policies, rules, uniform, extra‐curricular activities, examination results and staff qualifications. The SEN section first addresses the absence of school policy statements and explores the depiction of approaches, the nature of the SEN pupil, the pupil with physical disabilities, a textual analysis of schools’ SEN terminology and strategies for SEN.