Teachers as agents of change in curricular reform: the position of dance revisited

This paper reports findings from a recent large-scale survey of Physical Education (PE) teachers’ perceptions of teaching dance and compares them to results of a study completed 10 years previously [MacLean, J. (2007). A longitudinal study to ascertain the factors that impact on the confidence of undergraduate physical education student teachers to teach dance in Scottish schools. European Physical Education Review, 13(1), 99–116]. The current position of dance is examined in light of the introduction of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) in 2010, a national initiative in Scottish schools that provides a unified flexible curricular framework for children aged 3–18. Dance remains part of the PE curriculum but also for the first time in Scotland occupies an additional position within the Expressive Arts (EA). Teachers are positioned as agents of change tasked with greater autonomy, flexibility and responsibility in curriculum design. The inclusion of dance in both PE and EA provides potential for teachers to design curricula that excludes dance from the PE curriculum or alternatively use the opportunity to increase dance provision. Currently, little is known about the impact CfE has on the provision and position of dance or the factors that impinge on teachers’ decisions regarding the inclusion of dance in the curriculum. To further such understanding, 85 secondary school PE teachers responded to a questionnaire concerning dance opportunities within the current school context. In addition, the original participants from MacLean (2007) research were re-interviewed to identify and explore the factors that enable teachers to achieve agency when teaching dance. The results indicated that collaborative planning, united goals and collective action had enabled teachers to significantly increase dance provision in schools. Teacher attention had shifted from concerns about individual capacity to a focus on the level of social, cultural and material support in providing valuable educational experiences in dance for all pupils.     

The Relationship Between IQ,Homework, Aspirations and Academic Achievement for Chinese,Vietnamese and Anglo-Celtic Australian School Children

Flynn (1991) proposed that students from Asian cultural backgrounds typically achieve at higher levels than non-Asian students with the same IQs. This study investigated relationships between IQ, study time, educational and occupational aspirations, and academic achievement among Australian school children ( n = 160) from Chinese, Vietnamese and Anglo-Celtic backgrounds. Mathematics grades for Chinese and Vietnamese Australian children were higher. They spent more time studying and were more likely to desire an occupation requiring tertiary qualifications than Anglo-Celtic Australian peers. Consistent with Flynn's hypothesis, students from Asian backgrounds obtained higher mathematics grades than their Anglo-Celtic Australian peers with the same IQ. However, study and occupational aspirations formed only part of a more complex socio-cultural package that contributed to group achievement differences. Parents' support for studying and aspirations may interact with these factors to produce high achievement.     

Effects of induced orthographic and semantic knowledge on subsequent learning: a test of the partial knowledge hypothesis

Word learning can build the high-quality word representations that support skilled reading and language comprehension. According to the partial knowledge hypothesis, words that are partially known, also known as “frontier words” (Durso & Shore, 1991), may be good targets for instruction precisely because they are already familiar. However, studies investigating this question have produced mixed findings, and individual differences in baseline knowledge have complicated results both within and across studies. We present two studies that took a different approach, controlling both familiarity and the nature of the familiarizing episode. We controlled familiarity with novel words through pre-exposure (“pre-familiarization”) in isolation, to induce form-based familiarity, or in sentences that provided few clues to meaning, to induce partial semantic knowledge. The number of pre-exposures varied (0, 1, or 4). After the pre-familiarization phase, we presented the words in several highly informative sentences to support meaning acquisition. Participants included both adults and typically developing children, ages 9–12. Participants’ self-rated familiarity with target words, and their knowledge of the words’ meanings and orthography were each measured at baseline, immediately after learning, and 1 week later. Orthographic and semantic word learning showed contrasting effects of pre-familiarization. For orthographic learning, it was the number, rather than the type, of pre-familiarizations that mattered most. By contrast, the number of pre-familiarizations had little impact on word semantic learning; further, pre-familiarization in low-constraint sentences did not consistently boost subsequent learning. These findings suggest that familiarity with a word prior to instruction does not necessarily improve word-learning outcomes, and they highlight the importance of repeated exposures to high quality contexts for robust word learning.     

校长的群体特征、选拔与培训——基于中美的比较研究

根据中美中小学校长的问卷数据和访谈资料,作者对中美中小学校长的群体特征作了比较分析,包括年龄、性别、种族、受教育水平、进入或被选入教育管理层的动因和方式,以及对教育管理职业的敬业精神等,文章进而分析和比较中美中小学校长的职前与在职培训,从时间、主题、内容,以及侧重面上检验其异同,探讨存在的问题,并提出改革了建议.     

Where Infants Go: Real-Time Dynamics of Locomotor Exploration in Crawling and Walking Infants

Where do infants go? A longstanding assumption is that infants primarily crawl or walk to reach destinations viewed while stationary. However, many bouts of spontaneous locomotion do not end at new people, places, or things. Study 1 showed that half of 10- and 13-month-old crawlers’ (N = 29) bouts end at destinations—more than previously found with walkers. Study 2 confirmed that, although infants do not commonly go to destinations, 12-month-old crawlers go to proportionally more destinations than age-matched walkers (N = 16). Head-mounted eye tracking revealed that crawlers and walkers mostly take steps in place while fixating something within reach. When infants do go to a destination, they take straight, short paths to a target fixated while stationary.     

Academic Expectations of Australian Students from Aboriginal,Asian and Anglo Backgrounds: Perspectives of Teachers,Trainee-teachers and Students

There are ethnic group differences in academic achievement among Australian students, with Aboriginal students performing substantially below and Asian students above their peers. One factor that may contribute to these effects is societal stereotypes of Australian Asian and Aboriginal students, which may bias teachers’ evaluations and influence student outcomes. A questionnaire assessing academic expectancies for hypothetical students from different ethnic groups was administered to 55 experienced teachers and 144 training teachers. A measure of self-expectancies and group expectancies was administered to 516 school students. The findings revealed that Asian students were expected to perform better in mathematics and expend greater effort than Aboriginal and Anglo-Australian students. In turn, there were higher expectancies for mathematics performance for Anglo-Australian students compared with Aboriginal students. We discuss the potential implications of these stereotypes for students’ school achievement, particularly the risk that negative implicit stereotypes might result in these students being directed to special education.