The influence of teachers on the development of political radicals: a case study of members of the Scottish Socialist Party

While there is a wealth of literature on radical adult ‘popular’ education for change, most of it looks forward and speculates on the educational processes best able to help ‘the oppressed’, ‘excluded’ or ‘disadvantaged’ become critically‐aware ‘subjects’ of social change. Within a critical education framework, recent research looked in the opposite direction, identified adult activists already critically‐aware and worked backwards through their life histories to find the educational experiences seen as most influential in their development. Examining questionnaire responses, this article analyses how members of the Scottish Socialist Party perceived the influence exercised by their teachers, from primary to tertiary education, in the development of their beliefs and identity as activists. Comparisons are made with research in ‘active citizenship’. The research suggests there is more potential for radical education within the formal sector than is often believed and teachers contribute to this process in sometimes contradictory ways. The findings feed into debates in the UK and other countries, particularly in Latin America, about where popular educators should direct their energies, within state structures or outside, in social movements.     

Assessing college-level learning difficulties and "at riskness" for learning disabilities and ADHD: development and validation of the learning difficulties assessment

This article describes the development and validation of the Learning Difficulties Assessment (LDA), a normed and web-based survey that assesses perceived difficulties with reading, writing, spelling, mathematics, listening, concentration, memory, organizational skills, sense of control, and anxiety in college students. The LDA is designed to (a) map individual learning strengths and weaknesses, (b) provide users with a comparative sense of their academic skills, (c) integrate research in user-interface design to assist those with reading and learning challenges, and (d) identify individuals who may be at risk for learning disabilities and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and who should thus be further assessed. Data from a large-scale 5-year study describing the instrument's validity as a screening tool for learning disabilities and ADHD are presented. This article also describes unique characteristics of the LDA including its user-interface design, normative characteristics, and use as a no-cost screening tool for identifying college students at risk for learning disorders and ADHD.     

The Errors of Our Ways

Errors don't exist in our data, but they serve a vital function. Reality is complicated, but our models need to be simple in order to be manageable. We assume that attributes are invariant over some conditions of observation, and once we do that we need some way of accounting for the variability in observed scores over these conditions of observation. We relegate this inconvenient variability to errors of measurement. The seriousness of errors of measurement depends on the intended interpretations and uses of the scores and the context in which they are used. Errors are too large if they interfere with the intended interpretations and uses, and otherwise are acceptable. The errors of measurement have to be small compared to the tolerance for error, and errors that are too large have to be controlled in some way. We have several ways of doing this. We can redefine the attribute of interest, we can standardize the assessments and leave the attribute alone, and/or we can sample the relevant performance domain more thoroughly. It is particularly important to control the larger sources of error. If a source of error (systematic or random) is small compared to the dominant sources of error for a testing procedure, it can generally be ignored.     

Decreasing Heavy Drinking in First‐Year Students: Evaluation of a Web‐Based Personalized Feedback Program Administered During Orientation

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a web‐based personalized normative feedback program, electronic Check‐Up to Go (e‐CHUG), in decreasing heavy drinking among 1st‐year university students. Results indicated high‐risk students receiving the e‐CHUG program during 1st‐year orientation activities reported significantly greater reductions in heavy drinking and alcohol‐related consequences than did students in an assessment‐only control group at a 3‐month follow‐up. Recommendations for integrating e‐CHUG into orientation activities are discussed.     

Intermingling of identities: a Black student in a middle-school science class

Cultural Studies of Science Education - We explored ways in which racial, academic, and science identities intermingle in contested classroom and school spaces where students’ personal...     

Drama activities as ideational resources for primary‐grade children in urban science classrooms

In this study we explored how dramatic enactments of scientific phenomena and concepts mediate children's learning of scientific meanings along material, social, and representational dimensions. These drama activities were part of two integrated science‐literacy units, Matter and Forest, which we developed and implemented in six urban primary‐school (grades 1st–3rd) classrooms. We examine and discuss the possibilities and challenges that arise as children and teachers engaged in scientific knowing through such experiences. We use Halliday's (1978. Language as social semiotic: The social interpretation of language and meaning. Baltimore, MD: University Park Press) three metafunctions of communicative activity—ideational, interpersonal, and textual—to map out the place of the multimodal drama genre in elementary urban school science classrooms of young children. As the children talked, moved, gestured, and positioned themselves in space, they constructed and shared meanings with their peers and their teachers as they enacted their roles. Through their bodies they negotiated ambiguity and re‐articulated understandings, thus marking this embodied meaning making as a powerful way to engage with science. Furthermore, children's whole bodies became central, explicit tools used to accomplish the goal of representing this imaginary scientific world, as their teachers helped them differentiate it from the real world of the model they were enacting. Their bodies operated on multiple mediated levels: as material objects that moved through space, as social objects that negotiated classroom relationships and rules, and as metaphorical entities that stood for water molecules in different states of matter or for plants, animals, or non‐living entities in a forest food web. Children simultaneously negotiated meanings across all of these levels, and in doing so, acted out improvisational drama as they thought and talked science. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47: 302–325, 2010