An evaluation of the written texts of children with SLI: the contributions of oral language, reading and phonological short-term memory

In this study, we performed a fine grained analysis of writing by children with a specific language impairment (SLI) and examined the contribution of oral language, phonological short-term memory (STM), nonverbal ability, and word reading to three writing constructs (productivity, complexity and accuracy). Forty-six children with SLI were compared with 42 children matched for chronological age, receptive vocabulary (N = 46) and reading decoding (N = 46) on a measure of narrative writing. The SLI group performed worse on all measures compared to children of a similar chronological age. The SLI group produced a greater proportion of orthographic spelling errors than children with similar receptive vocabularies, but were comparable to children matched for reading decoding. The children with SLI showed specific difficulties in the omission of whole words (e.g. auxiliary verbs and subject nouns) and omissions of grammatical morphology (e.g. past tense—ed) reflecting the difficulties shown in their oral language. Receptive grammar made a significant contribution to writing complexity and accuracy. Phonological fluency contributed to writing productivity, such as the production of diverse vocabulary, ideas and content and writing fluency. Phonological STM and word reading explained additional variance in writing accuracy over and above the SLI group’s oral language skills.     

INCREASING TEACHER TREATMENT INTEGRITY THROUGH PERFORMANCE FEEDBACK PROVIDED BY SCHOOL PERSONNEL

When implementing behavioral interventions in educational settings, some implementers need support to maintain high levels of treatment integrity. Performance feedback has a large body of research supporting it as a strategy for improving teachers’ implementation of classroom interventions. However, in most prior studies, performance feedback has been delivered by a researcher, not by a school staff member, which limits generalizability of results to applied settings. In this study, school personnel (i.e., internal consultants) assessed teachers’ treatment integrity when implementing a classwide behavioral intervention and, when low, provided performance feedback. Further, researchers assessed internal consultants’ treatment integrity and provided performance feedback as needed. Results indicate that internal consultants are able to assess and briefly increase teachers’ treatment integrity with performance feedback, although some teachers needed more support than did others. Likewise, internal consultants’ treatment integrity was fairly high initially, but required consistent performance feedback to increase treatment integrity levels toward the end of the study. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

‘I'm just there to ease the burden’: the parent support adviser role in English schools and the question of emotional labour

In 2005, the Department for Education and Skills announced a £40 million investment in a new school support worker role, the parent support adviser (PSA), for 20 English local authorities. A pilot project ran from 2006–2008 and resulted in the establishment of 717 PSAs in 1167 schools. The national evaluation of the project forms the evidential basis of this paper, with interviews conducted with 69 PSAs, 85 PSA line managers and 105 parents and a database recording casework with nearly 21,000 parents. This paper focuses on the nature of the PSA role as the first centrally funded parent support role in English schools. The theoretical framework provided by the concept of ‘emotional labour’ and the development of the concept represented by the 4Ps typology provides the conceptual structure. This paper argues that although the characteristics of the PSA role appear to place it within the category of work requiring emotional labour, PSAs and parents regard that aspect of the role in a positive light. For the PSAs there was little evidence that emotional labour necessary for the role of PSA led to dissonance between role and worker or alienation from the product of PSA labour.     

A Review and Meta-Analysis Examining the Relationship of Music Content with Sex,Race, Priming,and Attitudes

This meta-analysis (k = 35, N = 11,629) examines the effect that listening to music, particularly popular music, has on consumers. Results demonstrate that listening to music generates an effect on listeners consistent with the content of the music (average r = .210, k = 35, N = 11,629). This effect was similar when considering survey research (r = .227) or experimental research (r = .265). The tenets of excitation transfer theory received some support, particularly when considering the effects of music as a priming material (r = .399), demonstrating the impact of music as a means of establishing mood, and ultimately the subsequent reactions of individuals. One conclusion is that efforts toward media literacy or education may prove far more productive than media content restrictions when attempting to curb potential undesirable media effects. Additional implications for policy and theory are discussed.     

Making the case for a material-dialogic approach to science education

ABSTRACT

Science is concerned with understanding the world. As such, engaging with the materiality of that world is integral to both empirical experimentation and theorising within science. However, it has been recognised for some time that the way scientists learn about the world and the way that young people learn about science cannot be simply equated. This difference has been pronounced in recent decades by the dominance of constructivist and social-constructivist theories of learning, which focus on the development of concepts in the minds of people. Whilst these theories have yielded insight into the complexity of learning, the role of the material remains undertheorised, not only within practical science inquiry, but also in relation to the broader materiality of classrooms. Through a detailed critical literature review, this paper demonstrates the need for a stronger theoretical frame through which to understand the role of the material in the learning and pedagogy of science. Building upon the gaps and possibilities that this review reveals, we outline a new material-dialogic theory via a synthesis of Barad’s Agential Realism and Bakhtinian dialogic theory. The significance of this paper lies in offering a theoretical basis for more effective practice.     

The Three Educational Ideologies of the British Labour Party, 1997-2001

The dominant academic conclusion about Labour's education policy since 1997 has been that it is mainly a continuation of Thatcherism. This is inadequate. There are three strands of Labour practice in education: a renovated version of social liberalism, a form of weak developmentalism, and a type of new social democracy that is in the mainstream of European thinking on the left. One significant source of ideological diversity in government is now the devolved responsibilities for educational policy that are held by the Scottish Parliament and (to a more limited extent) by the National Assembly for Wales.     

Controversy and Challenge: British Funding Increases Nationally,But Not to National Museums

The United Kingdom's economic backdrop, according to Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, has never looked better. Massive amounts of new funding are being invested in the National Health Service, Education and Social Services—tens of billions of pounds. Investment in the U.K.'s 10‐year Science and Innovation strategy has risen to over £3 billion per annum. Investment in Arts Council Funding will have increased 69 percent in the eight years since 1997, to over £410 million per annum by 2005–2006. And attendance at national museums and galleries has increased over 60 percent since admission charges were ended in 2001–2002. But in the field of science and technology there is a scattering of less‐well‐known data. More than 30 departments of chemistry and physics have closed at universities around Britain in the last few years. The take‐up rate of students entering science and mathematics, and subjects leading to technological, engineering, and medical degrees, among certain socio‐economic groups, has been falling dramatically. Even wealthy industries such as the oil and gas sector cannot attract young people—especially young women—to engineering, despite the fact that engineers with less than a decade of experience earn an average of U.S. $75,000 a year, and when fully experienced, an average of U.S. $127,000 a year. Overall, it seems that the ability of the public to interrogate issues driven by changes in science and technology, and their level of trust, are effectively decreasing.