Providing English Language Support through Collegial Mentoring: How do we measure its impact?

As staff developmental initiatives become increasingly common in educational institutions, the evaluation of such programmes may need careful consideration. This paper describes a staff developmental initiative in which a one-on-one mentoring service was offered as part of a funded staff development project entitled 'Effective English Communication for Teaching and Research' (EECTR). EECTR provides language support to all academic staff in a Hong Kong university. The mentoring sessions typically require a discussion of the nature of academic writing. For evaluation purposes, feedback was collected through various questionnaires which indicated that the EECTR mentoring had been a fairly successful programme. However, these traditional measures could not tell the stakeholders the impact of the mentoring process on individual clients. Thus two additional measures were taken. First, three in-depth case studies were undertaken to ascertain how individuals saw the impact of mentoring. Additionally, interviews with clients were also conducted over a two-year period. With support from the data, this paper demonstrates how multiple measures of evaluation provided an opportunity to see the dynamic interaction between general perceptions of impact and individual learning within a programme.     

'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.     

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.     

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.     

Innovation in Publishing: This is not an Oxymoron!

While many pundits claim that publishers are not innovative, this paper cites dozens of recent examples of innovation in the publishing industry. The main models reviewed are: innovative projects/partnerships, investment, accelerators/incubators, public/private partnership, and grass-roots programs. Case studies are presented from HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Penguin Random House, and many others, based on research and the author’s own experience. By following the lead of these innovative accomplishments, publishers can foster innovation at their own companies.     

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’.     

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.