Factors associated with one-year retention in a community college

This study sought to evaluate preenrollment variables as predictors of one-year retention of first-time students in a community college. The purpose was to use information that is typically available when a student begins his or her college program and determine if this information can help identify students who are more likely to drop out within their first year. Based on a logistic regression model to select predictors of retention, the lower the high school GPA, the greater the chance the student will drop out. Over and above this, additional risk is associated with the age range 20–24, attending part-time, and being an ethnic minority other than Asian. When all or some of these are operating, it may be necessary to enhance these students' chances with special programs or services.     

Inference making ability and its relation to comprehension failure in young children

Young children's reading comprehension skill is associated with their ability to draw inferences (Oakhill 1982, 1984). An experiment was conducted to investigate the direction of this relation and to explore possible sources of inferential failure. Three groups of children participated: Same-age skilled and less skilled comprehenders, and a comprehension-age match group. The pattern of performance indicated that the ability to make inferences was not a by-product of good reading comprehension, rather that good inference skills are a plausible cause of good reading comprehension ability. Failure to make inferences could not be attributed to lack of relevant general knowledge. Instead, the pattern of errors indicated that differences in reading strategy were the most likely source of these group differences.     

Tracking New Directions in the Evaluation of Postgraduate Supervision

This article focuses on the evaluation of thesis supervision and highlights the vast range of problem areas presently documented as significant areas of concern for both graduate students and their supervisors. Additionally, the authors report on a study completed in 1995, which surveyed all Australian universities about current evaluative practices in postgraduate supervision. The conclusion of this study was that the conduct of such evaluations appears to be minimal and is primarily designed to obtain an indicator of the general health of a university's postgraduate supervision rather than to foster improved supervisory practices. As part of the same study, the authors conducted University faculty-based student and supervisor focus groups. Key issues emerging from these focus groups were: (1) the importance of relational aspects of supervision as the student communicates over the long term with one or more supervisors; (2) the importance of systematic feedback, monitoring, and evaluation to the supervisory process; and (3) the lack of strategies to facilitate this evaluative feedback process. On the basis of these findings, the authors designed evaluative strategies to facilitate regular ongoing feedback between students and supervisors.     

Insights into inclusive education through a small Finnish case study of an inclusive school context

This study seeks to present data and discussion arising from a case study of a school in Finland renowned for its practice in the inclusion of learners with additional support requirements due to cognitive and physical disabilities. It aims to establish how the school staff understand their practice with inclusion through day-to-day professional experiences. The process of reflexive dialogue has enabled authors to reconceptualise our understanding of inclusive education through gaining deep contextual insight. The case study emerges as an inspiring effort to reduce exclusion and isolation through skilful manipulation of physical, institutional and communicative contexts, from which we may draw valuable lessons. The case study demonstrated high levels of personal motivation in teachers and assistants, used as a force for participation in inclusive education – bottom-up, via dialogue, consultation, voluntary involvement and transformation by exposure. This democratic approach was evident in and supported through leadership and management, teaching and learning, and the involvement of the wider community.     

University teacher approaches to design and teaching and concepts of learning technologies

This study investigates the experience of teaching of 19 teachers who are teaching on university courses involving face-to-face and on-line learning. The teachers are asked about how they think about learning technologies and how they approach the design and teaching of their courses across these two contexts. Results show that there are qualitatively different ways of thinking about learning technologies that relate logically and positively to qualitatively different ways of designing and teaching using learning technologies. The results have implications for teachers and those interested in maximising the likelihood of learning for university students when teachers teach with learning technologies.     

Routes into English teaching: beginning teachers' reflections on college‐based and school‐based Initial Teacher Education programmes

This article compares student and trainee teachers' experiences of three different routes into secondary English teaching: the standard one‐year PGCE; the newer ‘flexible’ PGCE; and the employment‐based Graduate Teacher Programme. As part of a two‐year study involving over 80 beginning teachers the authors invite students and trainees to reflect on the perceived advantages and disadvantages of their chosen route. This article focuses on a small number of interviews with individuals from the sample as they near completion of their training. It sets the findings of the study in the wider political context of New Labour's agenda for school reform and the future development of Initial Teacher Education.     

Teachers’ journeys towards critical use of ICT

Teachers have a central role in developing new learning models in schools. This paper describes a study that explored teachers’ confidence and competence in using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) as they participated in an ICT development project conducted by an Australian education system in 12 primary schools. The project aimed to develop ICT integrated teaching practices by providing in‐class equipment and teacher professional development in ICT use, curriculum development and teaching strategies. The study used qualitative data from teacher records of Professional Development and Action Learning to identify three of four stages proposed to describe teachers’ ICT learning. Teachers moved from gaining basic ICT skills, to conducting ICT‐focused lessons and eventually appropriate ICT integration. Teachers who progressed to the third stage were able to exploit additional learning opportunities and begin to make fundamental changes to their pedagogy, but needed more time to reach the final stage of challenging existing pedagogical structures.     

The Design of Writing: Unfolding systems of meaning

This article explores the findings of a small research study that asked writers to describe a meaningful, personal incident using first narrative and then poetic forms. The poetry raised many anxieties about writing, including the revelations of subjectivity and the risks in sharing such work with a group. To understand some of the complexities of these responses, the researchers thought of writing as an ecology with interdependent systems influencing the writing. Rereading the research texts, they traced some of those systems that affect students' writing and understanding of poetry.     

Exergames ‘as a teacher’ of movement education: exploring knowing in moving when playing dance games in physical education

Background: A fundamental dimension of school physical education (PE) is arguably movement and movement activities. However, there is a lack of discussion in the context of PE regarding what can be called the capability to move in terms of coordinative abilities, body consciousness and educing bodily senses.

Purpose: This article explores and articulates what there is to know, from the mover's perspective, when knowing how to move in specific ways when playing exergames (dance games). Taking different ways of moving as expressing different ways of knowing as a point of departure, the following questions are the focus of this article: (i) How do students move when imitating movements in a dance game, and what different ways of knowing the movements can be described in the student group? (ii) What aspects of the movements are discerned simultaneously through the different ways of knowing the movements? (iii) What aspects seem critical for the students to discern and experience in order to know the movements in as complex a way as possible?

Design and analysis: The theoretical point of departure concerns an epistemological perspective on the capability to move as knowing how with no distinction between physical and mental skills, and also knowing as experiencing aspects of something to know. The data in this study comprise video recordings of students playing Nintendo Wii dance games in PE lessons in a compulsory school (for children aged between 7 and 16 years) in a small Swedish town. There were three PE lessons with four different stations, of which one was Nintendo Wii dance games (Just Dance 1 and 2). In total, the videoed material covers three 60-minute PE lessons, recorded during the autumn of 2012 and in which just over twenty students participated. In the study, we have used video observation as a data collection method. Jordan and Henderson maintain that video observation removes the gap between ‘what people say they do and what they, in fact, do’ (51). To conduct a systematic and thorough analysis of how the students experienced the avatar's movements, we looked for moments where all the students and the avatar could be simultaneously observed. Two video sequences were chosen, showing four students imitating two distinct and defined movements which constituted the basis for a phenomenographic analysis.

Conclusion: The result of the phenomenographic analysis shows different ways of knowing the movements as well as what aspects are discerned and experienced simultaneously by the students. In other words, these aspects also describe knowing in terms of discerning, discriminating and differentiating aspects of ways of moving. By examining a certain exergame's role ‘as a teacher,' we have emphasized the capability to move, from the mover's perspective, as an intrinsic educational goal of PE while highlighting the need for systematically planning movement education.