GCSE Art and Design: An Arena for Orthodoxy or Creative Endeavour?

This article explores the potential correlation between key aspects of the creative process and the requirements of GCSE Art and Design Specifications as determined and defined by stated assessment objectives. It considers approaches that might be employed to more effectively establish a link between pupils’ creative endeavours and their necessary evidencing of attainment in respect of these objectives. In order to illustrate and amplify this enquiry reference is made to specific examples of candidates' work that was selected by the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) to exemplify and disseminate GCSE Art and Design standards for teachers in 2006. It concludes with a set of implications for consideration.     

Attitudes of pre-service mature age women students towards teaching primary science: An interview study

During the first semester of their teacher education degree mature age women improved significantly in their attitude towards teaching primary science compared to other sub-groups. The reasons for this difference were explored by interviewing several of the mature age women. An interpretation of these interviews and possible implications for pre-service science education are reported. Specializations: primary science and environmental teacher education.     

Components of phonological awareness

The factorial structure underlying different types of tasks within the domain of phonological awareness was examined in two studies. Large sample sizes allowed for sensitive differentiation of constructs. In the first study, 128 preschool children without any experience of formal reading instruction were tested with a battery of tasks intended to tap various aspects of phonological awareness: rhyme recognition, syllable counting, initial-phoneme matching, initial-phoneme deletion, phoneme blending, and phoneme counting. Three basic components were extracted in a principal component analysis: a phoneme factor, a syllable factor and a rhyme factor. Cross-tabulations indicated considerable dissociation between performance on phoneme, syllable, and rhyme tasks. The structural relationships were replicated on a much larger sample (n=1509) in the second study. Subjects in this study were one year older and were attending grade 1 thus providing an opportunity to test their reading achievement. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated that the phonemic factor was by far the most potent predictor. However, the rhyming factor made an independent (although small) contribution to explaining the reading variance. Among the phonemic tasks, phoneme identification proved to be the most powerful predictor.     

Accuracy in direct behavior rating is minimally impacted by completion latency

Direct behavior ratings (DBRs) have been proposed as an efficient method to assess student behavior in the classroom due to their relative ease of administration compared to alternative methods like systematic direct observation. DBRs are considered low‐inference assessments of behavior because they are designed to be completed immediately following a specified observation period of student behavior; however, in practice it is common for teachers and other respondents to delay completion of a DBR until they are reminded to do so. It is unclear what effect, if any, this latency between observation and DBR completion has on rater accuracy. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the effect of completion latency on accuracy in an analogue setting. Two‐hundred forty‐one undergraduate students (83.8% female) with a mean age of 21 participated across eight groups and were asked to complete an electronic DBR immediately after watching a video of student behavior or after a predetermined delay of 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 4 hours, or 6 hours. A one‐way analysis of variance revealed that there was no statistically significant relationship between completion latency and DBR accuracy, F(7, 233) = .959, p = .46, η² = .028.     

Knowledge,beliefs and pedagogy: how the nature of science should inform the aims of science education (and not just when teaching evolution)

Lisa Borgerding’s work highlights how students can understand evolution without necessarily committing to it, and how learners may come to see it as one available way of thinking amongst others. This is presented as something that should be considered a successful outcome when teaching about material that many students may find incompatible with their personal worldviews. These findings derive from work exploring a cause célèbre of the science education community—the teaching of natural selection in cultural contexts where learners feel they have strong reasons for rejecting evolutionary ideas. Accepting that students may understand but not commit to scientific ideas that are (from some cultural perspectives) controversial may easily be considered as a form of compromise position when teaching canonical science prescribed in curriculum but resisted by learners. Yet if we take scholarship on the nature of science seriously, and wish to reflect the nature of scientific knowledge in science teaching, then the aim of science education should always be to facilitate understanding of, yet to avoid belief in, the ideas taught in science lessons. The philosophy of science suggests that scientific knowledge needs to be understood as theoretical in nature, as conjectural and provisional; and the history of science warns of the risks of strongly committing to any particular conceptualisation as a final account of some feature of nature. Research into student thinking and learning in science suggests that learning science is often a matter of coming to understand a new viable way of thinking about a topic to complement established ways of thinking. Science teaching should then seek to have students appreciate scientific ideas as viable ways of making sense of the currently available empirical evidence, but should not be about persuading students of the truth of any particular scientific account.     

The role of school psychology in preventing depression

To advance the role of school psychologists in mental health prevention and wellness activities, in this article we describe (a) a social ecological theory for guiding school‐based prevention research, (b) the role of schools in the development and prevention of depression, (c) a continuum of school‐based support for meeting the needs of children who are currently depressed for preventing future internalizing distress for all children, and (d) social and political factors that must be considered if lasting change is to occur. We conclude with specific considerations for school psychologists. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 41: 763–775, 2004.     

The documentation of distance education: a personal view

Following a brief account of the work of the Open University International Documentation Centre on Distance Learning, different forms of documentation in distance education: books, materials produced in connection with distance teaching programmes, journals and journal articles, and report literature, are identified and described. The central focus of the article is a critique of the treatment of the literature of distance education by two ERIC international bibliographical services. Proposals are made to survey existing bibliographical provision worldwide.     

Perceptions and experiences of K-12 educational leaders in response to the 27 April 2011 tornadoes

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to capture first-hand accounts of K-12 educational leaders whose school districts were directly affected by the deadly 27 April 2011 tornadoes in rural Alabama, USA. This study was framed by the literature base of leadership; specifically crisis leadership and resilience theory. Findings are organised under the headings of crisis management, crisis leadership characteristics, post-crisis support and crisis preparation. In this study, educational leaders demonstrated resilience in the face of adversity and took decisive steps to rebuild not only their schools but also their communities as well. Additionally, leaders expressed the importance of sharing their stories with others so that the lessons they learned in response to the tornadoes would not soon be forgotten. The study concludes with reflections about crisis planning and implications for future research as well as a call to action to improve crisis management in K-12 educational settings.