Linguistic Invention and Semantic Warrant Production: Elementary Teachers’ Interpretation of Graphs

In this qualitative study of mathematical discourse between elementary teachers, we examined linguistic invention and semantic warrant production as participants made successive attempts to communicate mathematical ideas. Linguistic invention is a creative practice of describing mathematics in terms of personal experience. We introduce semantic warrant production, which emerged as part of our analysis of substantial arguments produced by teachers learning mathematics. Participants engaged in linguistic invention and semantic warrant production to convince themselves and others of the validity of their mathematical inferences about a graph of rate of change versus time. Personal experiences that are taken-as-shared in a learning community can support accurate mathematical inference if connections between conventional language, common experiences, and mathematical representations are made explicit by learners.     

How school staff understand the relationship between problem behaviours and language difficulties

This exploratory study adopted a mixed methods methodology, a critical realist ontological stance and a constructionist epistemological position to consider how special educational needs coordinators and pastoral managers in mainstream high schools understand the relationship between problem behaviours and language development. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight participants, and 20 participants completed a Q sort. The interview data were analysed using thematic analysis and in Q methodology an inverted factor analysis with a qualitative interpretation of the resultant factors was used. Triangulation was adopted as the method for the final integration of the data. Three meta-themes were identified indicating that, despite a range of recent initiatives, school staff continue to have a limited understanding of the relationship between problem behaviours and language difficulties. Previous experience and existing practice were drawn upon in considering causal relationships and interventions. Implications for educational psychology practice at casework, systems and commissioning levels are addressed.     

The Positive Transitions Model for Sport Retirement

Positive Transitions for Student Athletes is a program designed to address the psychosocial and career‐related issues surrounding the inevitable sport retirement transition faced by the majority of collegiate athletes. A rationale for the development of sport retirement programs is provided, as is the Positive Transitions program and outcome data.     

The Handbook for the Inspection of Schools: a critique

Since it was established in 1992, the Office for Standards in Education has published two versions of the Handbook for the Inspection of Schools and a third version of the summary Framework for Inspection. The second version of the Handbook represents a major attempt to tighten OFSTED's control over the newly established privatised system of inspection. This paper sets the Handbook within the context of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector's duties and powers, examines the main developments in the various sections and analyses the key features of qualitative observation and quantitative evaluation. It is argued that the range and complexity of what is mandated raise serious concerns about the feasibility, validity and reliability of the inspection process, which puts the credibility of OFSTED reports at risk. This has arisen from a perception of the need for an unassailable database and an attempt at an unattainable degree of bureaucratic control     

Professors’ Expectations of Students’ Ability to Think

Recent evaluations of the state of higher education have suggested that students must not only learn subject matter content but must be able to think with it. Professors in tertiary education expect that their students will come equipped to handle certain kinds of information and certain kinds of learning tasks. To describe their expectations, faculty use phrases such as the ability to think logically, or to do independent work, or to use abstract terms. But to what extent do they suppose that their students will be able to think? In a study of some learning tasks in the university, professors from three universities and six different disciplines, representatives of the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities, pure and applied, were interviewed. Faculty expectations of students’ ability to think logically, independently, and abstractly were analysed to show consistencies and differences across disciplines.     

Simultaneous and successive contrast with delay of reward

In Experiment I, rats showed no evidence of a successive negative contrast effect (NCE) when shifted from immediate reward to a 15-sec delay of reward. Experiment II provided a direct comparison of NCE in both successive and simultaneous paradigms. As in Experiment I, there was no evidence of a successive NCE, but a reliable simultaneous NCE was observed. These results add support for the view that simultaneous and successive NCEs are not due to a single, common process.     

Precarity,food and accompaniment in community and youth work

Based on an ethnographic study of community-based learning and youth work in Greater Manchester, between 2013 and 2014, the use of food both as a response to precarity and a means of precaritisation is explored. The term ‘retrophilanthropy’ is used to analyse the paradoxical existence of social relations in community-based projects which feed whilst creating social abjection and divisions between the deserving and undeserving (in the practice of food charity of Foodbanks). This is contrasted with more ambivalent relationships encoded in food through youth work, termed contract and reward; enterprise and creativity; personalist orientations; and proto-universalist. It is argued that some aspects of these offer a prospect of more democratic forms of socio-cultural accompaniment and even a glimpse of the possibility of a more equal relationship to food.     

COMPASS-AIM: A University/P–12 Partnership Innovation for Continuous Improvement

COMPASS-AIM is a set of processes and tools used by participants in a research–practice partnership (RPP) to improve organizational capacities and individual and team competencies for organizational learning and improvement. The “COMPASS” team includes teams of teachers and school leaders who work with a university researcher and expert professional developers. Improvement teams begin by COMParing practices in their own setting to those in higher performing schools identified through research. The next few phases involve Assessing priorities based on those comparisons, Selecting levers (i.e., drivers) to improve a priority area, and Setting a SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-bound) goal or goals designed to address the priority area. Once a “COMPASS” team establishes a goal or goals, the process has it take AIM at Action planning, Implementation, and Monitoring progress through periodic “check the pulse” meetings. Throughout these phases, participants use self-assessment tools, case studies, and a variety of other research reports to inform their work. This research utilization-focused approach bridges research and practice, while accommodating for variability in desired outcomes, affordances, and constraints for change in different school and district contexts.     

The Importance of Storytime in Primary Schools

Storytime is an aspect of the primary curriculum which is rather under threat, especially in junior classes, as the curriculum becomes squeezed by all the demands which are made upon it. Janet Evans puts forward a convincing case for the retention and use of regular story time sessions.