'Playing the Game called Writing': Children's Views and Voices

Teachers' perceptions of their changing practice in the context of the National Literacy Strategy have been well documented in recent years. However, few studies have collected pupils' views or voices. As part of a collaborative research and development project into the teaching and learning of writing, 390 primary pupils' views were collected. A marked difference in attitude to writing and self‐esteem as writers was found between Key Stages 1 and 2, as well as a degree of indifference and disengagement from in‐school writing for some KS2 writers. A strong desire for choice and greater autonomy as writers was expressed and a preference for narrative emerged. This part of the research project ‘We're Writers' has underlined the importance of listening to pupils’ views about literacy, in order to create a more open dialogue about language and learning, and to negotiate the content of the curriculum in response to their perspectives.     

Volunteers in the classroom: Guidelines for orientation

Fortunate child care directors have many volunteers in their centers. Parents, grandparents, student interns, and other community volunteers may work occasionally or regularly in the child care center. Directors should be prepared to host these volunteers by planning in advance for their orientation. This will make the director's task easier and the volunteers' work more meaningful to them and more useful to the children and staff. At the University of Tennessee's Child Development Laboratories we regularly host volunteers with little or no prior experience in child care. Volunteers from the Foster Grandparents Program, from other departments in the university, parents of the children enrolled in the program, as well as our own majors in the beginning stages of their field work, are frequent participants who require orientation and guidelines for working with young children in group care. Because it is not unusual for some volunteers to leave after a semester, training and orientation for new volunteers occurs regularly throughout the year. The information below is offered to directors to promote meaningful involvement of volunteers in their center.Jan Allen is Associate Professor in the Department of Child and Family Studies. Kathy Carlson is a Master Teacher in the Child Development Laboratories. They work together at The University of Tennessee in Knoxville, TN. The authors wish to thank Dr. Carol Catron and Anne Miller Farmer for helpful comments.     

Elementary students’ metacognitive processes and post-performance calibration on mathematical problem-solving tasks

Calibration, or the correspondence between perceived performance and actual performance, is linked to students’ metacognitive and self-regulatory skills. Making students more aware of the quality of their performance is important in elementary school settings, and more so when math problems are involved. However, many students seem to be poorly calibrated, with a tendency towards over-confidence. The present study analyzes the relationship between post-performance calibration accuracy and the metacognitive process shown by 524 fifth- and sixth-grade students while solving two math problems. After calculating a calibration index and establishing the stability of students’ judgments and actual performance, differences in the metacognitive process exhibited by students with different calibration accuracy (Accurate vs. Inaccurate groups) were analyzed. The emergence of different calibration patterns and differences in the metacognitive process as a function of mathematics achievement and grade level were also examined. Results indicated that: (a) students in the overall sample were little calibrated and over-confident, showing high stability in their judgments and actual performance across problems; (b) inaccurate students reported using information representation sub-processes (drawing/summarizing) less frequently, but writing and reviewing (and also correcting mistakes) more frequently than their accurate peers; and (c) differences in calibration patterns and the metacognitive process were found when achievement level was considered, whereas grade level did not generate any important effect. These findings suggest the usefulness of process-based measures to examine the metacognitive processes involved in making post-performance judgments, considering achievement and its possible mediating role in this relationship.     

US and Turkish preschoolers’ observational knowledge of astronomy

The purpose of this cross-cultural study was to describe and compare US and Turkish children's observational knowledge of the day and night cycle and to identify similarities predicted by framework theory. Fifty-six (27 US and 29 Turkish) young children (ages 48–60 months) participated in the study. Semi-structured interviews were individually conducted, digitally recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using the constant comparative method. The results demonstrate that preschoolers from the two cultures are able to make comparable informal observations of the sky, and their observational knowledge includes many similarities, with one exception, as predicted by framework theory. US children were more likely to perform better than the Turkish children on the question about the time of observation for the moon. Although science concepts and skills are better represented in US early childhood education programs than the Turkish program, the results suggest that this advantage did not translate into performance differences between US and Turkish children.     

Influence of problem-based learning games on effective computer programming learning in higher education

Educational technology research and development - Gaming is a part of today’s society, especially for younger generations. Therefore, game-based approaches are unsurprisingly used for...     

Work or Play in the Kindergarten?

All over the world there is searching discussion about how much structure is appropriate for children between the ages of 3 and 6. Many teachers still turn to the books of Susan Isaacs (1930, 1933) which give an exciting vision of how children's minds grow during play. Isaacs also describes the role of the nurturing adult who explores the world with children but never dominates or imposes her own view. Several decades later came the work of Marianne Parry (1975) whose contribution includes the distinction between two levels of play; ‘that which educates’, and ‘that which fills time’.     

EDUCATION FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE: PROVOCATIONS AND CHALLENGES

A bstract .  In this essay review of three recent edited books (Greg Dimitriadis and Dennis Carlson's Promises to Keep: Cultural Studies, Democratic Education, and Public Life; Nadine Dolby and Greg Dimitriadis's Learning to Labor in New Times; and Francisco Ibáñez-Carrasco and Erica Meiner's Disruptive Readings on Making Curriculum Public ), Kathy Hytten reflects on the relation among education, democracy, and social justice. She argues that in our current climate, progressive educators need a more powerful and compelling educational discourse that foregrounds issues of social justice. The three books under review in this essay provide a number of resources for this discourse. Hytten explores these contributions in relation to the theories that animate education for social justice, in particular, critical pedagogy, globalization theory, and cultural studies. In the end, she revisits the vision and promise of education for social justice, considering what these edited collections offer, reflecting on their gaps and weaknesses, and providing some direction for what kind of work we still need to make social justice a reality.     

Cognitive,Motivational, and Volitional Dimensions of Learning: An Empirical Test of a Hypothetical Model

The principal aim of this research is to contrast empirically a hypothetical model developed on the basis of the fundamental assumptions of current self-regulated learning models. In line with evaluation criteria of model fit, a high rate of congruence between the hypothesized theoretical model and the empirical data was observed. Analysis of the effects between the variables of the model revealed the following relevant aspects: students' predisposition to feel responsible for the results of their academic behavior (internal attribution) is related to positive self-image (academic self-concept), both being important conditions for development of learning-oriented motivation (learning goals). All of this involves selection and use of learning strategies for deep information processing (deep learning strategies), which leads students to assume responsibility with high levels of persistence, perseverance, and tenacity so as to achieve goals defined by the motivational orientation. This persistence and effort to achieve the proposed goals has in turn a positive and significant effect on academic achievement.     

Functional Assessment to Predict Capacity for Work in a Population of School‐leavers with Disabilities

This study reports on an assessment system for school‐leavers with disabilities to identify their capacity for work and the type of transition‐to‐work programme best suited to each person. Participants were 1,556 high school students in four cohorts who left school between 1999 and 2002. Each school‐leaver was assessed by rehabilitation counsellors for functional ability and capacity for work. In a supplementary study, the 2002 cohort was assessed by special transition teachers using a short screening tool. The results demonstrate that there is a predictable hierarchy of functional acquisition among school‐leavers with disabilities and that the single best predictor of future capacity for work and need for transition‐to‐work programmes among this group of young people is the capacity to manage activities of daily living. The results also demonstrate that a short screen used by teachers, together with a behavioural assessment, is sufficient to stream school‐leavers with a disability into a range of transition‐to‐work programmes.