What is literacy for students with severe learning difficulties? Exploring conventional and inclusive literacy

This paper arises from research into inclusive literacy for pupils with severe learning difficulties who do not learn to read and write conventionally. The ultimate aim of the study was to seek out examples of good practice in teaching and learning literacy that includes students with severe learning difficulties and disseminate them as widely as possible. Thirty-five schools were visited and observations made in 122 lessons. Sixty-one teachers were interviewed and their paperwork examined. Ten focus groups and five 'expert witnesses' were consulted, alongside desk-based research designed to locate 'good practice'. Teachers used a mixture of conventional (e.g., texts) and non-conventional (e.g., pictures, film and oral) media, although more observations were made of conventional literacy teaching (e.g., phonic work) than of non-conventional (e.g., filmmaking). Results from the research suggest that few students with severe learning difficulties are likely to learn to read and write conventionally (i.e., read for pleasure, work and study) and teachers may be relying too much on teaching traditional literacy to them. It may be useful to explore teaching and learning around alternative media such as still and moving images, live theatre and storytelling, digital technology and the arts. Although some teachers are making good use of these media, the potential of these media for providing inclusive literacy experiences could be further developed.     

The Wiley handbook of adult literacy

International Review of Education -     

Revisiting print exposure: exploring differential links to vocabulary,comprehension and reading rate

Undergraduates (N=171) completed a revised version of the Author Recognition Test ( Stanovich & West, 1989 ). The resulting print exposure scores were divided into two dimensions: personal reading experience (primary print knowledge – PPK) and secondary print knowledge (SPK). Both PPK and SPK were correlated with print exposure, but not with each other. PPK correlated more strongly with reading‐related variables (vocabulary, comprehension and reading rate) than did SPK. Of particular importance, PPK accounted for variance in all three criterion variables after the effects of SPK had been factored out. Thus, these data support the notion that it is the act of reading over and above memory for reading‐related information that furthers the development of linguistic skill.     

Middle Grade Teachers’ Learning through Students’ Engagement with Modeling Tasks*

We report on how two middle-grade teachers supported their students’ mathematical reasoning within the context of a novel modeling task in data analysis. We examine how the task features supported the development of teachers’ knowledge as their students engaged with the task. Analyses of the teachers’ practices suggest that the task features enabled teachers: (a) to develop new understandings of the mathematical content and the ways in which student ideas develop and are represented; (b) to adopt new roles in their interactions with the students, including a focus on listening and observing, and on asking questions for understanding and clarification; and (c) to engage in forms of interpretative listening that shifted the role of evaluation from the teacher to the student. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. 9722235 and by the Australian Research Council (ARC).     

Beyond Average: Contemporary statistical techniques for analysing student evaluations of teaching

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) have been used to evaluate higher education teaching performance for decades. Reporting SET results often involves the extraction of an average for some set of course metrics, which facilitates the comparison of teaching teams across different organisational units. Here, we draw attention to ongoing problems with the naive application of this approach. Firstly, a specific average value may arise from data that demonstrates very different patterns of student satisfaction. Furthermore, the use of distance measures (e.g. an average) for ordinal data can be contested, and finally, issues of multiplicity increasingly plague approaches using hypothesis testing. It is time to advance the methodology of the field. We demonstrate how multinomial distributions and hierarchical Bayesian methods can be used to contextualise the SET scores of a course to different organisational units and student cohorts, and then show how this approach can be used to extract sensible information about how a distribution is changing.     

Charismatic cops,patriarchs and a few good women: leadership,club culture and young peoples' drinking

The paper reports on key findings of a research project that examined the roles that community-based sporting clubs in the Australian state of Victoria play in shaping young people's understandings and uses of alcohol. Our research imagined clubs as community hubs that are located in complex networks that impact on the ways that clubs understand their locations in communities, and which have unpredictable influences and consequences on club histories, culture and orientations to issues such as young people and alcohol use. The paper focuses on understanding the key roles played by club leaders in facilitating change and transformation in these contexts, particularly in terms of alcohol-related practices and the potential impact of these on young people's uses and understanding of alcohol. We situate these findings in a framework that draws on the literature of complexity science and complex adaptive systems (CAS) to suggest that these practices and changes need to be understood in ways that allow for complexity, uncertainty, emergent behaviours and adaptive change.     

The Development of Fifth-Grade Children's Problem-Posing Abilities

This one-year study involved designing and implementing a problem-posing program for fifth-grade children. A framework developed for the study encompassed three main components: (a) children's recognition and utilisation of problem structures, (b) their perceptions of, and preferences for, different problem types, and (c) their development of diverse mathematical thinking. One of the aims of the study was to investigate the extent to which children's number sense and novel problem-solving skills govern their problem-posing abilities in routine and nonroutine situations. To this end, children who displayed different patterns of achievement in these two domains were selected to participate in the 10-week activity program. Problem-posing interviews with each child were conducted prior to, and after the program, with the progress of individual children tracked during the course of the program. Overall, the children who participated in the program appeared to show substantial developments in each of the program components, in contrast to those who did not participate.     

Young children's combinatoric strategies

Children aged between 4 years 6 months and 9 years 10 months were individually administered a series of novel tasks involving the formation of different combinations of two items, selected from discrete sets of items. An analysis of the children's performance revealed a series of six, increasingly sophisticated, solution strategies ranging from a random selection of items through to a systematic pattern in item choice (cf. Piaget and Inhelder's, 1975, combinatoric operations). A significant number of children independently adopted more efficient solution procedures as they progressed on the tasks, with many displaying an algorithmic procedure reflecting the odometer strategy (holding one item constant while systematically varying each of the other items). Given that children as young as 7 years demonstrated this systematic strategy, it would appear that, within the appropriate learning environment, young children can discover a procedure for forming n x n combinations prior to the stage of formal operations postulated by Piaget and Inhelder. The findings support the inclusion of the combinatorial domain as a topic of investigation in the elementary school curriculum.     

Negotiating Sexuality Education with Young People: Ethical Pitfalls and Provocations

This paper focuses on a nested project within a three-year participatory research project, funded by the Australian Research Council. The project was undertaken in secondary schools across Victoria and South Australia and engaged over 100 students as coresearchers (ages 15–19) in understanding, critiquing, and transforming sexuality education (SE). Data was produced through visual arts and participatory methods and supported by ethnographic techniques (participant observations, focus groups, and guided conversations). In this paper we attempt to expose some of the ethical, methodological and pedagogical processes required when foregrounding young people’s voices in SE. More specifically, to problematize the microethical moments that warrant not only the attention but response of educators and researchers who are open to transforming SE with young people.