Rolling: A new technique for the practical teaching in computer science university degree

In this paper we describe a new methodology for practical teaching in the Computer Science University Degree. The methodology is based on the Rolling technique. This technique consists in assign, in a rotary process, tasks, activities and responsibilities to students along an established calendar with the aim of developing a software product. Practical teaching is supported by a student-teacher contract that describes the goal, rules, plan with stages and activities, responsibilities and even the assessment method. Students are organized in groups and teams, emulating a company organization. They develop all the activities of the software engineering process in order to obtain a commercial product (the goal). In this process, students take different responsibilities over the software verification and validation, activities and tasks, and over groups and teams leadership. Along the teaching process, comprehensive information about the working team, time invested, deliverables in each stage, and work/students assessment is gathered. The methodology has been tested for 4 years at the University of Córdoba and the results, described in this paper, have shown an improvement in the students learning as well as in the acquisition of attitudes and skills mandatory for their professional development.     

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.     

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.     

Gap Analysis by Subject Area of the University of Houston Main Campus Library Collection

This article outlines preliminary results of a complete gap analysis of the collections at the University of Houston Libraries. Methodology for a large-scale collection analysis project is explored here, including necessary collaborators for successful and accurate data collection. As well, the preliminary results of phase one of the project, studying usage by subject area and comparing to available interlibrary loan data, are outlined. Limitations and future directions for the project are also discussed.     

Haunted Trauma Narratives of Inclusion,Race, and Disability in a School Community

By typical definitions in the special education world, inclusion would not be recognizable as it exists at Memorial Elementary. Memorial is responding to a widely documented trend in public schools: over-representation of students of color, particularly Black and Brown students, in high-incidence special education categories, including emotional and behavioral disabilities (EBD). I conceptualize EBD as unacknowledged suppression of hauntings from transgenerational trauma—legacies of institutional racism, poverty, and attempts at dehumanization. My primary hypothesis is that Memorial’s practice and ethic of unconditional belonging has been a transformation afforded by being haunted. I argue that haunted trauma narratives affirm and reconstruct the personhood of students of color with ghosts of trauma. Through narrativizing, students of color and educators rebuild inclusion from difference-as-allowed toward Martin Luther King Jr.’s (2001) “beloved community” (p. 458). That is, Memorial has redesigned school structures, educators’ beliefs and practices, interactions with children and their families, and other aspects of everyday systems to be organized around the intersections of race, trauma, identity, and community. Though dreaming is undeniably difficult, Memorial also illustrates the transformative power of affective forces from ghosts that demand hope, justice, and healing.     

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.     

Measuring Mathematical Competences of Engineering Students at the Beginning of Their Studies

This article reports about our efforts to determine engineering students' competence in mathematics. Our research is embedded in a larger project, KoM@ING–Modeling and developing competence: Integrated IRT based and qualitative studies with a focus on mathematics and its usage in engineering studies, within the program Modeling and Measuring Competencies in Higher Education (KoKoHS). KoKoHS provides the umbrella organization of several research projects addressing the modeling and measuring of competences at the college level. KoM@ING aims to model the role of engineering students' mathematical competences for their studies from both a quantitative and a qualitative perspective.

Here, we report the development of a large-scale instrument assessing engineering freshmen's competence in mathematics by applying Rasch analysis to determine measures for item difficulties and student abilities. Several analyses were performed to provide insights into the measures' reliability and validity. In particular, to examine cognitive validity, we scrutinized students' think-aloud protocols when solving the items to investigate their problem solving abilities as a proxy for item difficulty. Overall, we found first evidence that our instrument is suitable to assess engineering freshmen's competence in mathematics. This instrument may be helpful to conduct further research and to inform those concerned with college organization and policy.     

Effective use of assistive technology in inclusive classroom: views of teachers on resources and challenges in a developing economy

This study explores challenges confronting teachers in using assistive technologies (ATs) in inclusive schools. Data was retrieved from ten teachers in the Western Region of Ghana. Thematic analysis, with the aid of NVivo 12, revealed that teachers think ATs are costly and difficult to maintain. Alongside poor resources, the combined effect of lack of patience and unwilling attitude of teachers at deploying best suited ATs, poses the biggest challenge to effective AT usage. We recommended increased emphasis on best suited ATs that are cheap and easy to maintain. Regular training, oriented towards enhancing teachers' skills and attitude is vital.     

Physical activity levels,game performance and friendship goals using two different pedagogical models: Sport Education and Direct Instruction

Background: Advances in technology have changed children’s lifestyle so much that the majority of them do not meet the recommended 60 min of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day. Compulsory Physical Education has been highlighted as an ideal context to achieve the suggested physical activity (PA) goals, since it could be the only place where some students become truly physically active. In those classes, the teacher selects a pedagogical approach and this selection could be vital to meet the advised PA levels.

Purpose: The goal was to assess the effects of two instructional approaches, Sport Education Model (SEM) and Direct Instruction (DI) in Primary Education students’ physical activity intensity levels, game performance, and friendship goals.

Method: A total of 88 students with an average age of 11.16?±?0.63 years, enrolled in two year-5 (from 10 to11 years) and two year-6 (from 11 to 12 years) Physical Education classes of the same school agreed to participate. The number of participants in the SEM was 47 and in DI was 41. The schools’ administration distributed one class of each grade to the experimental group, which experienced SEM, and to the non-equivalent group, which experienced DI. The content selected for both study groups was the same: Handball. Both study groups experienced a 15-session learning unit (45 min per class, three sessions per week). The goal was to conduct the experiment in a non-manipulated (intact) educational context. It followed a pre-test, post-test, experimental, non-equivalent group design. Participants wore Actigraph GT3X accelerometers in order to monitor physical activity levels, answered questionnaires to assess friendship goals, and their game performance was assessed using the Game Performance Assessment instrument (GPAI).

Results: Results showed that students who experienced the SEM had significantly higher light and moderate physical activity levels, friendship-approach and friendship-avoidance goals, while the ones who experienced DI had significantly higher sedentary physical activity levels. The GPAI scores showed significant gains in students’ game performance in both study groups, but these were larger in the SEM one.

Conclusions: The SEM could be considered more effective than DI to improve Primary Education students’ PA levels, game performance and friendship goals.