Liminality,disruption, and change: A prismatic look at pandemic education

PROSPECTS - Using prismatic inquiry, a team of researchers documented a variety of personal experiences that spanned elementary through higher education, with the goal of determining what helped...     

“UNIFIED”: Bridging the Researcher–Practitioner Divide in Mind,Brain, and Education

Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) science is by definition transdisciplinary. However, the communication and collaboration between constituent disciplines needed for true transdisciplinarity remains relatively rare. Consequently, many of the potential benefits of MBE science remain unrealized for parties on all sides of the discipline. The present commentary first conducts an analysis of the current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of transdisciplinary partnerships in MBE. A new, free, and international web platform (“UNIFIED”) is then proposed to broker relationships between researchers and teachers within schools. This website would allow users to form collaborations based on a system of tags indexing their research interests as well as practicalities such as their location. Such a website appears well placed to realize many of the opportunities, and mitigate the threats and weaknesses, of transdisciplinary MBE research. The article concludes with an appeal to interested researchers and schools to contribute to the development of the project.     

Reading against all odds: a pilot study of two deaf students with dyslexia

Learning to read and write is a challenge for most deaf children due to their limited experiences with, and access to, spoken language. In the case of deaf students who have difficulty processing visual print, literacy becomes an even greater challenge. The study piloted an intervention procedure that incorporated the principles of automaticity, repetition, functional vocabulary, and a positive teacher-student relationship as recommended in programs for struggling readers and adapted them to the needs of two deaf high school students with dyslexia in an American Sign Language-English bilingual program. The findings reveal gains in reading ability on the formal measures, though not more than would be expected over a 6-month period simply due to development. The real improvements were noted in the students' attitudes toward literacy, improved social interaction, and increased self-confidence.     

Impact of intervening learning on resurgence in humans with Autism Spectrum Disorders

In the present study, we investigated the degree to which responding would resurge in children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) following an intervening training period comprising different schedules of reinforcement. Twenty-four children of the ages 7–15, with a diagnosis of an ASD, were taught a play a sequence on a variable ratio- (VR) 3 schedule of reinforcement, during a 30-min session. The play sequence was then extinguished before the participants were taught a second play sequence, using a VR-4 schedule for 30 min, a VR-4 schedule for 60 min, or a VR-2 schedule for 30 min. A 5-min extinction session was then conducted to determine the impact that the intervening schedules had on the resurgence of the original behavior. The original sequence resurged to a greater extent for Group VR-4 30 min than it did for the other two groups. The results provide evidence that the length of time between initial training and testing is not a prime determinant of the level of resurgence, but that the amount of conditioning may play a stronger role: The greater the number of reinforcers received, the smaller the resurgence effect.     

Evaluation research in distance education

Although research supports the use of telecommunications in distance education, the more important question 'how best to use telecommunications in a given situation' has largely eluded researchers. This is due to the failure to link questions generated by the problems of practice with the theoretical constructs contributing to the understanding of the phenomena of distance education. The debate has occurred on two levels, the first relating to research design issues and the second to the conceptualisation of researchable questions. The authors address both levels from the vantage point of third generation telecommunications technologies. They offer a model for linking research and evaluation in distance education.     

Evaluating writing instruction through an investigation of students’ experiences of learning through writing

Learning through writing is a way of learning not only the appropriate written expression of disciplinary knowledge, but also the knowledge itself through reflection and revision. This study investigates the quality of a writing experience provided to university students in a first-year biology subject. The writing instruction methodology used is Genre-based literacy pedagogy, designed to help both with learning disciplinary knowledge and its appropriate written presentation. Evaluative research methodologies from Student Learning Research are used and include the use of three closed-ended questionnaires and an open-ended questionnaire. The results of the research suggest ways of improving the writing instruction by better understanding the previous writing experiences of the students, improving the instructional materials, clarifying goals of the writing tasks at key stages in the writing process, and helping students to improve their approach to the writing experience.in final form: 23 August 2004     

Rhetorically Structured Content: Developing a Collaborative Single-Sourcing Curriculum

Structured writing is a method for developing categories of information that can be single sourced, or reused, for various contexts. Creating distinct structures—such as concepts, procedures, and examples—prepares content for the application of XML markup elements that describe each category. A content management system identifies these structural elements, which facilitates reuse and repurposing. Students seeking positions in organizations that single source information must become proficient in structured writing and in writing collaboratively.     

Book review

Dancing with the Devil: Information Technology and the New Competition in Higher Education. Richard N. Katz and Associates. (EDUCAUSE, sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, 1999, 152 pp., $16.95).     

Epistemic beliefs and beliefs about teaching practices for moral learning in the early years of school: relationships and complexities

While investment in young children is recognised as important for the development of moral values for a cohesive society, little is known about early years teaching practices that promote learning of moral values. This paper reports on observations and interviews with 11 Australian teachers, focusing on their epistemic beliefs and beliefs about teaching practices for moral education with children aged 5–8 years. The analysis revealed three main patterns of thinking about moral education: following others, reflecting on points of view, and informing reflection for action. These patterns suggest a relationship between epistemic beliefs and beliefs about teaching practices for moral learning which have implications for teacher professional development concerning experiences in moral education.