‘Social Skills’: Following a Travelling Concept from American Academic Discourse to Contemporary Danish Welfare Institutions

The article traces the origin and development of the concept of social skills in first and foremost American academic discourse. As soon as the concept of social skills was coined, the concern for people lacking such skills started and has been on the increase ever since (now sharing public attention with related concepts such as self-control, emotional intelligence and empathy). After the analysis of the academic history of the concept follows an examination of the implementation of a range of assessment instruments and training programmes related to social skills (and lack hereof) in contemporary Danish welfare institutions (more specifically, day nurseries and schools, employment and penal services). The analysis forwarded in the article thus demonstrates how an intellectual idea may develop and travel - and on its journey connect to pre-existing cultural logics and societal concerns. The idea of social skills has through its development been made uncontroversial – everybody wants to be skilful. The concept does, however, convey an individualistic view on social life and imposes a reflexivity over own performance on the participants. Further, its normative character contributes to a problematization of those who are perceived to lack these skills.     

Early stages in building hybrid activity between school and work: the case of PénArt

This formative intervention documents the emergence of a hybrid activity aiming at student engagement and academic achievement. In this context-bound study, early stages of this activity consisted in establishing PénArt meant to enable high school students with difficulties to start up their own business at school. It involved reaching agreements between a high school and a youth centre so that high school students engage in the production and selling of their branded t-shirt. At the frontiers of their respective activity system, students, youth workers, special education teachers and members of the school board took actions to cross boundaries and redefine their interrelations. Cultural historical activity theory was fruitful to document the development of a new object-oriented activity. Tensions and contradictions revelaled to be the key moments in the emergence of the hybrid activity. Expansive learning led us to understand that, in a conflicting situation, a collective’s agentive actions create an expansive form of learning and leads to a successful entrepreneurship experience. Change laboratory capacity to foster change for cooperative education in Quebec was successful. The students enrolled in a regional entrepreneurship contest and won it. That was a significant event for students with low self-esteem linked with their performance at school.     

Design-Based Research Within the Constraints of Practice: AlgebraByExample

Superintendents from districts in the Minority Student Achievement Network (MSAN) challenged the Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP) to identify an approach to narrowing the minority student achievement gap in Algebra 1 without isolating minority students for intervention. SERP partnered with 8 MSAN districts and researchers from 3 universities to design and rigorously test AlgebraByExample, a set of 42 Algebra 1 assignments with interleaved worked examples that target common misconceptions and errors. In a year-long random-assignment study, students who received AlgebraByExample assignments had an average 7 percentage point boost on a posttest containing released items from state assessments, and students in the bottom half of the performance distribution where minority students are disproportionately concentrated had an average 10 percentage point boost on a researcher-designed assessment of conceptual understanding. AlgebraByExample is easily incorporated into any existing curriculum, and naturally serves as a launch point for mathematically rich discussion.     

Promoting Positive Social Development in Family Childcare Settings

The quality of experiences in childcare has significant, lasting impact on children&s social development. With the growing number of young children being served in family childcare settings, it is imperative that the care provides a quality environment that nurtures children&s social development. Empirically supported interventions that specifically target family childcare, however, are lacking. The development and evaluation of a video-based program aimed at training family childcare providers in setting up their childcare environment to promote social development in young children is described. Forty-two family childcare providers were randomly assigned to an intervention group and a wait-list control group. A majority of the participants felt they learned some to very much new, practical information and said they found the interactive discussions particularly helpful. This study illustrates the feasibility of doing training and evaluation research in family childcare settings.     

Developing and sustaining a sense of place: The role of social information

This exploration of the role of information in helping people to develop and sustain feelings of belonging, or a sense of place, is based on a study that investigated the reasons for the high population turnover in the Northern Territory of Australia. The Northern Territory along with Darwin, its capital, has a number of unusual characteristics including geographical isolation. A key component of the theoretical framework for the research focuses on social information, which has similarities to the more commonly termed everyday life information. The specific concern is with the kind of information that helps people connect to a community and is clearly linked with social networking. The sample for the major empirical component for the article was recruited at Darwin's Mindil Beach Market. In telephone phone interviews with those who had agreed to participate, participants discussed how they learned about Darwin and the Northern Territory, and their views of Darwin as a place to live. Interpersonal contacts, including at the Market and at special events, were most often mentioned in relation to information, confirming literature findings on the importance of family and friends as an information source. Other sources were newspapers and physical markers around the City of Darwin. The conclusion is that the processes of social networking, which work well for some residents, could be enhanced through the use of information grounds, a concept widely discussed in the library and information science literature. Obvious information grounds in Darwin, where the usual processes could be enhanced by the distribution of information by formal information providers, include Mindil Beach Market and the special events for which Darwin is renowned.     

How to foster student�Cstudent learning of science? The student, the teacher and the subject matter

In this response to Konstantinos Alexakos, Jayson K. Jones, and Victor H. Rodriguez’s study, I discuss ways attending to student membership in groups can both inform research on equity and diversity in science education and improve the teaching of science to all students. My comments are organized into three sections: how underrepresented students’ experiences in science classrooms are shaped by their peers; how science teachers can help students listen to and learn from one another; and how the subject matter can invite or discourage student participation in science. More specifically, I underscore the need for teachers and students to listen to one another to promote student learning of science. I also highlight the importance of science education researchers and science teachers viewing students both as individuals and as members of multiple groups; women of color, for example, should be understood as similar to and different from each other, from European American women and from ethnic minorities in general.     

A ‘powerful,creative history’: the reticence of women architects to donate their professional records to archival repositories

The article reports the findings from research investigating the impact of international standards for records management. This is a significant issue for the recordkeeping community given the significant resourcing devoted to the development of international standards. Previous attempts to measure impact have met with little success, so this research approached the problem area from a new angle, namely the indirect influence of standards on practice via their use in education and training. Data was collected from a global survey of educators and trainers. Findings demonstrate that the standards are being used extensively at undergraduate and postgraduate level as well as in vocational training. However, a number of barriers to use are identified. The research provides a strong foundation for further investigation of impact and use of the international standards.     

Explicit Vocabulary Instruction in Kindergarten: Case Studies of Students With and Without Language Disorders

Research demonstrates that children can make more significant gains through explicit instruction of vocabulary than implicit instruction (Blachowicz and Fisher in Teaching vocabulary in all classrooms, Allyn & Bacon, Boston, MA, 2010; Dalton and Grisham in Read Teach 64(5):306–317, 2011). Effective explicit instruction often includes high quality conversations with teachers and peers (Towson et al. in J Early Interv 38(4):230–246, 2016; Wasik in Read Teach 63(8):621–633, 2010). Data for this study were collected from a larger study designed to explore students’ use of vocabulary words following explicit instruction with the words during an interactive read-aloud. A deeper microanalysis of student discussion, scaffolded by adults, was conducted. The transcribed student discussions, recorded during peer talk, were analyzed using NVivo 10 (QSR International in NVivo (version 10). NVivo qualitative data analysis software, QSR International, Doncaster, VIC, 2012) software. These case studies describe the vocabulary development of two children with diagnosed speech and language disorders and one child without a speech and language impairment.