The Credentials of Brain‐Based Learning

This paper discusses the current fashion for brain‐based learning, in which value‐laden claims about learning are grounded in neurophysiology. It argues that brain science cannot have the ‘authority’ about learning that some seek to give it. It goes on to discuss whether the claim that brain science is relevant to learning involves a category mistake. The heart of the paper tries to show how the contribution of brain science to our grasp of the nature of learning is limited in principle. Finally the paper explores the potential of brain science to illuminate specific learning disabilities.     

Geometry of screw compressor rotors and their tools

This paper presents a method of general geometrical definitions of screw machine rotors and their manufacturing tools. It describes the details of lobe shape specification, and focuses on a new lobe profile, which yields a larger cross-sectional area and shorter sealing lines resulting in higher delivery rates for the same tip speed. A well proven mathematical model was used to determine the optimum profile, compressor housing size, and compressor ports to achieve the superior compressors.     

Funding,reputation and targets: the discursive logics of high-stakes testing

This paper provides insights into teacher and school-based administrators’ responses to policy demands for improved outcomes on high-stakes, standardised literacy and numeracy tests in Australia. Specifically, the research reveals the effects of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), and associated policies, in the state of Queensland. Drawing suggestively across Michel Foucault’s notions of disciplinary power and subjectivity, and Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of social fields, the research utilises interviews with teachers and school-based administrators to reveal how high-stakes, standardised testing practices served to discursively constitute performative teacher subjectivities around issues of funding, teacher and school reputation and target-setting within what is described as the ‘field of schooling practices’. The paper argues that the contestation evident within this field is also reflective and constitutive of more educative schooling discourses and practices, even as performative logics dominate.     

‘I’m just a numbers person’: the complexity,nature and effects of the quantification of education

This paper draws upon the sociology of numbers, particularly work by Theodore Porter, to reveal the multifarious ways in which numbers actively constitute practices in schools. Drawing upon a case study of one low-performing school in a low-performing region in the state of Queensland, Australia, and theorising into the sociology of numbers, the research explores the complex ways in which numbers came to constitute and dominate the practices in this school site under a broader national, state and regional policy context demanding rapid improvements in various forms of standardised tests and associated practices. Specifically, the research reveals a strong and simultaneous focus by teachers upon a variety of numeric data collected at national, regional and local levels, and intricate relations between these data; multiple visualisation, triangulation and comparison approaches towards such data in virtual and physical formats; and the enumerative nominalisation of both students and their reading attainment in relation to specific, concretised levels of achievement and various types of scale scores. The research cautions against the sheer volume of such enumerative practices, which, while productive of teachers’ understandings of student capacity against standardised measures of achievement, may also lead to a more reductive view of education, dominated by concerns about achievement in standardised tests (and associated practices) alone.     

Estimation of a Nonlinear Intervention Phase Trajectory for Multiple-Baseline Design Data

A multilevel logistic model for estimating a nonlinear trajectory in a multiple-baseline design is introduced. The model is applied to data from a real multiple-baseline design study to demonstrate interpretation of relevant parameters. A simple change-in-levels (ΔLevels) model and a model involving a quadratic function (Quadratic) for the nonlinear intervention phase data were also estimated. In addition, a simulation study was conducted to assess Markov chain Monte Carlo estimation of the logistic model and compare its trajectory recovery with use of the ΔLevels and Quadratic models. While most of the logistic model's parameter values were recovered well, trajectory recovery was very reasonable using the simpler Quadratic model. Results are discussed along with recommendations for practitioners and directions for future research.     

Education as a ‘risky business’: Theorising student and teacher learning in complex times

This paper employs sociological literature on risk and the commodification of education to explain current schooling practices in a context of increased concerns about students’ behaviour and results on standardised tests of achievement. Drawing upon teacher and student learning practices in three school sites in south-east Queensland, Australia, the article reveals how specific tests, packages and programmes have been employed as technologies of governance to minimise the risk of adverse student behaviour, maximise student outcomes on standardised tests, and provide teachers with discrete learning experiences construed as improving such outcomes. The sum total of these foci is the construction of education as an increasingly ‘risky business’ which employs a myriad of products and tests to manage perceived and actual risks. The paper also reveals how these products and processes constitute student misbehaviour and inadequate teacher and student learning as ‘risk objects’ requiring constant intervention, but which also inhibit inclusion in schooling settings, and challenge teachers’ professionalism.     

Suprasegmental Phonology Development and Reading Acquisition: A Longitudinal Study

Previous studies implicate suprasegmental phonology in reading acquisition. However, little is known about how suprasegmental sensitivity develops or how it contributes to reading. Here, 130 Spanish primary-school children participated in this 2-year longitudinal study. Nonlinguistic rhythm, lexical-stress sensitivity and metrical-stress sensitivity, along with phonological awareness, vocabulary, nonverbal intelligence, and reading aloud, were assessed on five occasions. Results suggest that prosody abilities have different developmental trajectories and that prosody explains unique variance in reading beyond that explained by other factors. There was some evidence that the contribution of each prosody skill occurred at different phases in reading development. Nonlinguistic rhythm, lexical-stress sensitivity, and metrical-stress sensitivity assessed at the end of kindergarten, the start of Grade 1, and the end of Grade 1, respectively, predicted reading performance 6 months later. Nevertheless, sample size and reliability temper the conclusions that can be made. The implications of prosody skills for literacy development are discussed.     

Social gaze in preterm infants may act as an early indicator of atypical lateralization

Visual field biases have been identified as markers of atypical lateralization in children with developmental conditions, but this is the first investigation to consider early lateralized gaze behaviors for social stimuli in preterm infants. Eye-tracking methods with 51 preterm (33 male, 92.1% White) and 61 term-born (31 male, 90.1% White) infants aged 8–10 months from Edinburgh, UK, captured the development of visual field biases, comparing gaze behavior to social and non-social stimuli on the left versus right of the screen. Preterm infants showed a significantly reduced interest to social stimuli on the left versus right compared to term children (d = .58). Preterm children exhibit early differential orienting preferences that may be an early indicator of atypical lateralized function.