Who is teaching your child? The issue of unqualified subject specialists in Northern Ireland

There is a growing concern throughout the UK and beyond about the lack of suitably qualified post‐primary teachers in some subject areas, particularly mathematics, design and technology and the sciences. This paper reports on a survey of teacher qualifications in Northern Ireland which indicates that a significant percentage of teachers are unqualified in the areas of mathematics, physics, ICT, history and Irish, and that Key Stage 3 teachers tend to be less well‐qualified than those at Key Stage 4 or post‐16. Unqualified teachers are less likely to be found in the grammar sector than the non‐grammar sector.     

Student and school SES,gender, strategy use,and achievement

A multilevel mediated regression model was fit to Programme for International Student Assessment achievement, strategy use, gender, and family‐ and school‐level socioeconomic status (SES). Two metacognitive strategies (i.e., understanding and summarizing) and one learning strategy (i.e., control strategies) were found to relate significantly and positively to achievement. These strategies were used more by females and students attending higher SES schools. In contrast, males and students attending lower SES schools tended to use a greater number of learning strategies that did not relate to achievement, including memorization and elaboration. In addition, the strategies that did not relate to achievement were used more frequently by students from higher SES families. The findings suggest that schools, as opposed to families, may be the primary vehicle for developing effective strategy use practices for students and thus, targeted interventions may be particularly useful for male students attending low SES schools.     

Effects of personal and professional factors on teachers’ attitudes towards inclusion in preschool

Attitudes towards inclusive education have a crucial place in the effective implementation of inclusion practices. The aim of this study was to explore teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education in preschool education in Portugal and to identify teachers’ personal and professional variables that influence these attitudes. The data were collected from a sample composed of 68 preschool teachers working in mainstream schools located in urban and rural areas. The results indicated overall positive attitudes towards inclusion. Having previous personal contact with a person with special educational needs predicted more positive affective attitudes, whereas having previous experience teaching classes that included students with and without special educational needs predicted less positive behavioural intentions. From these results, we infer an emergent need for continuous training and for the promotion of positive attitudes among preschool teachers to achieve the successful implementation of inclusion at this educational level.     

Would the Real Lakatos Please Stand Up

Although Imre Lakatos described the work published in his book Proofs and Refutations as a study of mathematical methodology, work which has been responded to and criticized by philosophers and historians of mathematics more on its own terms, a significant body of writing in the 30 years since its appearance has used it as a pertinent cognate text appropriable for school mathematics education. In this paper, we contrast the responses these two fields have generated, with an emphasis on that of mathematics education. Doing so offers a potentially salutary case study of how challenging and fraught it can be at times to undertake work at the nexus of history and philosophy on the one hand, while at the same time seeking to explore its possible relevance and significance for education. As our title suggests, we are concerned about the proliferating Lakatos personas that seem to exist, including a growing range of self-styled reform or progressive educational practices which get attributed to him.     

Humanizing and conducive to learning: an adolescent students’ perspective on the central attributes of positive relationships with teachers

The aim of this qualitative study was to identify central attributes of positive relationships with teachers from the adolescent students’ perspectives that could help delineate the meaning of student–teacher connectedness while exploring to what extent its main attributes were similar or different in England and Spain. As part of the EU-funded project “Well-being among European youth: The contribution of student-teacher relationships in the secondary-school population”, we conducted focus groups in England and Spain with 42 students aged 11 to 18 years. Using a bottom-up approach for thematic analysis, we identified two main attributes that were linked to positive relationships with teachers as seen by our participating students from England and Spain: humanizing relationships, in which the students are acknowledged and respected as individuals and feel understood and supported by their teachers; and relationships conducive to learning, encompassing aspects such as a perception of a genuine commitment with their learning on the part of the teachers, a positive classroom management, and teachers motivating students. This study contributes to the conceptualization of student–teacher connectedness and provides useful insights for teachers and educational professionals. In addition, the study findings pointed to the importance of power and authority dynamics in student–teacher relationships that foster or undermine connectedness, and they revealed some cross-cultural differences in the role of emotions in the class, two important aspects which deserve further attention in future research.

     

Mental health services for people who are deaf

The issue of mental health services available to adults and children in the United States who are deaf is addressed. Included is a historical perspective on the changes in these services over the last 50 years. Within this scope, the current status of services is described in some detail. Psychological research on children who are deaf is reviewed, and current issues faced by school psychology and psychologists who evaluate deaf children in school settings are examined. The disturbing current trend toward the criminalization of people with mental illness, which affects both hearing and deaf adults with psychiatric diagnoses, is covered. Suggestions are made for improving mental health services for children and adults who are deaf.     

Developmental dyslexics show deficits in the processing of temporal auditory information in German vowel length discrimination

The present study investigated auditory temporal processing in developmental dyslexia by using a vowel length discrimination task. Both temporal and phonological processing were studied in a single experiment. Seven German vowel pairs differing in vowel height were used. The vowels of each pair differed only with respect to vowel length (e.g., /a/ vs. /a:/). In German, vowel length is characterized by temporal and spectral information. Three types of differences between long versus short vowels were varied: In the phonological condition, pairs of natural vowels were used, differing in their temporal as well as in their spectral content. In two temporal conditions, in contrast, a natural vowel was always combined with a manipulated one to keep spectral content of long and short vowels identical. Thus, the only distinguishing feature between the two vowels was temporal in nature. Vowels were embedded into monosyllabic pseudo-words and presented successively in a speeded same–different task. Twenty dyslexics and twenty age-matched controls participated in the experiment. In both groups, discrimination accuracy decreased with increasing vowel height in the two temporal conditions. This result is consistent with former findings on the relevance of temporal information for vowel length identification in German and extends this topic to cover discrimination demands. In the phonological condition, groups did not differ in discrimination accuracy. In both temporal conditions, however, dyslexics performed worse than controls. These results suggest that developmental dyslexia is associated with impairments in processing basic acoustic parameters of the speech signal, in particular, with a deficit in temporal processing.     

Students’ beliefs and experiences of interdisciplinary learning

This study explored senior secondary students’ beliefs and experiences of learning an interdisciplinary curriculum, Liberal Studies, in Hong Kong. Through the analysis of focus-group interviews with 168 students, most of the students were found to enjoy or at least not resist interdisciplinary learning, and preferred to study real-world contemporary issues. More than half of the students, however, expressed their relative lack of confidence in interdisciplinary learning because of the difficulties they encountered in Independent Enquiry Studies and the public examination. The students were also found to have undertaken examination-oriented activities when the public examination approached. The study sheds light on the realization of interdisciplinary learning in secondary education in contexts where teacher-centred pedagogy and an accountability agenda remain influential.     

Predicting Language Development in Children At Risk: The Effects of Quality and Frequency of Caregiver Reading

Reading to children has been advocated as a way to enhance language and literacy skills (A. G. Bus, M. H. van IJzendoorn, & A. D. Pellegrini, 1995). However, little is known about reading with children under age 3 (K. L. Fletcher & E. Reese, 2005), particularly in at-risk samples (A. van Kleeck, 2003). In the current study of 87 primary caregivers and their 24-month-old children enrolled in an early intervention program, we tested a theoretical model of the relations among 24-month-old children's language, caregivers' reported frequency of reading with children, and caregivers' reading strategies on children's language and attention using path models. Path models indicated that caregivers' use of expansions and questions with their 24-month-old children during reading was related to children's expressive language at 30 months. Caregivers' use of labeling, expansions, and questions was related to 24-month-old children's attention during reading. Although children's language skills at 24 months were associated with the reported frequency of caregiver reading in the home, only caregivers' use of questions had a relationship with frequency of reading. Reading practices that promote language development and engagement during reading observed in this at- risk sample have implications for reading intervention efforts with young children.