Ghosts as rhetorical devices in children's fiction

The relationship of past and present and the linking of characters through time and place are themes that underlie the work of many writers for children. This article considers the use of the Ghost as a literary device to allow the exploration of what is, what has been, and what might have been, particularly in the 1973 Carnegie Medal Winner,The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, by Penelope Lively.Judith Armstrong was brought up in Lancashire. She has travelled widely, and taught young children in England and Ethiopia. She is currently working on themes associated with the supernatural in children's books.     

Teacher Perceptions of a Physical Education Statewide Assessment Program

Abstract

A statewide program assessment was established to make positive change in physical education school programs in South Carolina. Reform efforts depend both on balancing accountability for change and teacher support for change (Odden &Anderson, 1986). The purpose of the study was to determine teacher perceptions of the South Carolina Physical Education Assessment Program and its effects across six related themes including: changes in teaching and learning, changes in curriculum and instruction, teacher awareness of the assessment program, teacher support for the program, work place conditions, and the advocacy role of the program. It was also the purpose of this study to determine if the survey responses were in any way related to teacher and school variables. The overall results of the study indicated positive change and support for the assessment program, supporting the viability of the standards, assessment, and accountability reform effort to positively impact physical education programs.     

Engaging student teachers in meaningful reflective practice

This paper examines the use of peer-videoing in the classroom as a tool to promote reflective practice among student teachers. Twenty pre-service teachers from a variety of subject disciplines participating in a Post-Graduate Diploma in Education programme in an Irish university participated in the study. The practice of encouraging student teachers working in the same school to participate in structured video analysis avoids the impact of external observers whose role is largely evaluative and endorses a collaborative model that promotes dialogue and shared learning. This practice promotes a culture of observation and critical dialogue in a profession which has traditionally been characterised by isolation, while at the same time fostering and validating the voice and experience of the student teacher. Locating the discussion within the framework of the theoretical literature on reflective practice, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to the international debate over best practice in supporting, encouraging and scaffolding reflective practice. It comments on the implications of reflective dialogue for the modernisation of teacher education and offers guidelines on how best to scaffold and promote reflectivity.     

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.     

Social Interactions in Preschool Classrooms and the Development of Young Children's Conceptions of the Personal

Two studies examined preschool teacher and child interactions regarding personal, moral, and social-conventional issues in the classroom and the development of personal concepts in young children. In Study 1, 20 preschool classrooms, 10 with 3-year-olds and 10 with 4-year-olds, were observed to assess children's and teachers' interactions regarding personal, moral, social-conventional, and mixed events. Teachers used more direct messages regarding moral and social-conventional events than personal and mixed events. Teachers offered children choices, but they rarely negotiated personal events with children. Children responded with personal choice assertions when adults offered them choices, but adults did not differ in the frequency that they negated or affirmed children's assertions of personal choice. In Study 2, 120 preschool children, nearly evenly divided between males and females at 3, 4, and 5 years of age, were interviewed regarding their conceptions of personal events in the classroom and home. With age, children judged that they should retain control over personal decisions in both contexts. In both judgments and social interactions, teachers and children identified a personal domain in which children can and should make choices about how to structure their activities and assert their independence in the classroom.     

Dutch Dyslexia in Adulthood: Core Features and Variety

This study aimed to explore how alphabetic readers learn to read Chinese. First-year Chinese beginning learners who are skilled English readers were tested for their sensitivity to the visual-orthographic structures of Chinese characters. The study also explored the effect of the frequency of the characters in their curriculum on performance of a lexical decision and naming task. The students' linguistic knowledge about the characters was also tested. Results showed that the beginning learners were sensitive to the structural complexity of characters, they accepted simple characters more quickly and more accurately than compound characters, and they responded faster and more accurately to high-frequency than to low-frequency characters. Sensitivity to the structural composition of the character was also revealed: The learners rejected noncharacters containing illegal radical forms faster and more accurately than those containing legal radical forms in illegal positions, which in turn were rejected faster and more accurately than those containing legal radical forms in legal positions. A significant frequency effect was also found in the naming task, though the effect of structural complexity was not significant. These results suggest that perceptual learning plays an important role in early nonalphabetic learning by alphabetic readers. Both cross-writing system differences and second-language status may have an impact on such learning.     

Comparison of Preschoolers' Narratives,the Classroom Book Environment,and Teacher Attitudes Toward Literacy Practices in Korea and the United States

This study investigated Korean and U.S. preschoolers’ personal and fictional narratives, their classroom book environments, and their teachers’ attitudes about reading aloud. The participants were 70 Korean and American 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in 2 university lab preschools and their 4 teachers. The structures and content of the preschoolers’ personal and fictional narratives were analyzed. The teachers’ attitudes and practices about their language and literacy curriculum, including books provided in the classroom and selected for reading aloud, were examined for associations with preschoolers’ narrative productions. Research Findings: The content of preschoolers’ personal narratives and the structural levels of their fictional narratives differed between the 2 Korean and 2 U.S. classrooms. The classroom book environments in the Korean and U.S. classrooms also differed, with more fictional books displayed in the 2 U.S. classrooms than in the 2 Korean classrooms. The 2 Korean and 2 U.S. preschool teachers also held different attitudes about the use of fiction and nonfiction for read-aloud story sessions, and U.S. teachers allocated more time in their school day for reading aloud than did Korean teachers. Practice or Policy: U.S. preschoolers may profit from a greater balance between fiction and nonfiction books in the classroom. Korean children might benefit from more exposure to fiction and fantasy along with more practice in creating fictional narratives.     

Reconsidering assessment: From checklist to dialectic

When composition teachers evaluate student essays, how well-aligned is their grading practice with what those teachers profess is important about writing? How do instructors discover this alignment? This article describes the consequences of inadvertent misalignment by analyzing a document typically found in many writing programs—an instructor's essay evaluation checklist. A critique of this common assessment instrument reveals that, in trying to promote evaluative consistency, the checklist privileges product over process, the authority of academic discourse over the autonomy of students' own voices, and an analytic predisposition to student writing as opposed to an instructor's reader-response. In so doing, the checklist undercuts the kind of composition pedagogy instructors claim to espouse in their classroom practice. Perhaps these conflicts cannot be overcome, but, in response to this precarious predicament, this essay poses this question: Can assessment find its direction and vitality by acknowledging such conflicts? A dual heuristic, of sorts, is proposed for locating assessment techniques that directly address the conflicts inherent in the checklist. This heuristic seeks out in assessment what the checklist clearly lacks: dialogic and dialectic dimensions. Defining which assessment methods best fulfill this heuristic—and in so doing more honestly align pedagogy with evaluation—is the purpose of the concluding remarks in this essay.