Bridging two worlds: special education and curriculum policy

From interviews with seven blind New Zealand adults about their school experiences, this paper discusses how blindness has been constructed by some New Zealand mainstream principals and teachers. The experiences of these participants were not that of inclusion, despite being in ‘the mainstream’. The participants described how principals and teachers were both welcoming and unwelcoming. Inclusive principals and teachers were described as friendly, challenging, helpful and positive. They believed their blind students were like their other students. Principals and teachers who were remembered as excluding blind students were described as unfair, inflexible, unprepared and absent. They believed their blind students were different and did not find a social place for them.     

Ask an anatomist: Identifying global trends,topics and themes of academic anatomists using twitter

Social media (SoMe) is increasingly used in higher education (HE) to access knowledge and enable global communication. The SoMe platform Twitter^® is particularly beneficial in these contexts because it is readily accessible, easily searchable (via hashtags) and global. Given these advantages, the twitter platform @AskAnatomist was created to foster a global weekly tweet chat, where students and academics can ask and address anatomy‐related questions. The aim of this study was to identify themes arising in the early stages of the @AskAnatomy Twitter community to gain insights into current needs/key areas for academic anatomists, students, and other followers. A qualitative analysis of tweets including the hashtag #AnatQ, (the associated @AskAnatomist hashtag), was undertaken to achieve this aim. Thematic analysis revealed three core themes arising in the formative stages of the @AskAnatomist Twitter site: (1) anatomical education modalities, (2) specific anatomy content, and (3) research motivations. These themes reveal controversies within the field of anatomical sciences, areas for potential education resource improvement and research, as well as the humor of anatomists. Though the original intent of the @AskAnatomist site was to engage the general public in anatomy content and knowledge, tweet analysis suggests that academic anatomists were the primary active “tweeters”. Interestingly, this analysis reveals that the @AskAnatomist site progressed into a web‐based community of practice (CoP), suggesting an additional benefit of SoMe communities in the field of anatomy. Anat Sci Educ 11: 270–281. © 2017 American Association of Anatomists.     

An exploration of school communication approaches for newly arrived EAL students: applying three dimensions of organisational communication theory

This article explores the modes of school communication associated with language and cultural diversity, demonstrating how organisational communication theory can be applied to the analysis of schools’ communication responses to the presence of pupils who have English as an additional language (EAL). The article highlights three analytical dimensions: the external factors influencing school communication systems; communication models reflected in school structures; and the content of communication between stakeholders. An exploratory study of a primary and a secondary school in the East of England, involving 32 semi-structured interviews with school managers, teachers, EAL staff, parents and newly arrived Eastern European students, reveals the interactional and transactional models of communication in the primary school, while the secondary school frequently used a linear approach. Communication in both schools showed a lack of information on EAL students and their parents, hindering a sustained outreach and empowering partnership, and possibly placing these students at a disadvantage.     

Frustrated academic writers

This paper aims to start a conversation about a common yet under-examined emotion experienced by academic writers worldwide: frustration. What is frustration, exactly? What are its causes and effects, its symptoms and its cures? Is frustration an impediment to writing or a motivational impetus? Can academic writers vanquish frustration, or must we merely learn to live with it? Mirroring rather than mastering the complexities of this multifaceted emotion, we have structured our inquiry as a multiple-entry maze where frustration unfolds beyond each threshold as uncharted terrain: a place of neurological explanations, playful etymological twists and metaphorical metamorphoses. The paper re-enacts our own collaborative journey through the maze, meditating on and modelling some of the frustration-easing strategies that we developed along the way.     

Incorporating a Modified Problem‐Based Learning Exercise in a Traditional Lecture and Lab‐Based Dairy Products Course

Abstract: A modified problem‐based learning (PBL) exercise was implemented in a food science Dairy Products course, which had previously been taught in the traditional lecture and laboratory format only. The first 10 wk of the course consisted of weekly lectures and laboratory exercises. During the remaining 3 wk, students were presented with a case study that described milk quality problems that could be encountered by the dairy industry. Each week, students received a set of case disclosures containing relevant information that assisted in solving the case. Students were asked to present their findings at the end of the course in the form of a written “consultant's report.” In addition, students were given a survey asking for feedback on the PBL exercise, and the usefulness of having the lectures and labs prior to the PBL experience. Eighty percent of the students found that lectures and labs provided them with sufficient background knowledge to understand and solve the PBL case, 70% found that the PBL reinforced course material covered during lecture and labs, 50% responded that PBL helped them develop new ways of reasoning about the subject matter and 65% reported that PBL taught them to think critically. Of the total students surveyed, 56% would prefer to participate in similar types of PBL exercises in the future. Incorporating PBL into traditionally taught food science courses can have a positive influence on the learning process.     

Test Anxiety and Physiological Arousal: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Educational Psychology Review - Test anxiety is a widespread and mostly detrimental emotion in learning and achievement settings. Thus, it is a construct of high interest for researchers and its...     

Portraits of PBL: Course objectives and students' study strategies in computer engineering,psychology and physiotherapy

The central theme of the investigation concerns therole of course objectives in relation to students'study strategies in problem-based learning (PBL). Theresults comprise data from three different PBLprogrammes at Linköpings Universitet; a Bachelor'sprogramme in physiotherapy, a Master's programme inpsychology, and a Master's programme in ComputerEngineering, respectively. In all three programmes,the faculty provides course objectives with theintention that these should function as a supportivestructure and guide for the students' independentstudies. The results show that the objectives wereused differently in the different programmes; as anintegrated tool in the learning process, as anadministrative schedule or as aretroactive checklist, respectively. Thestudents' use of the course objectives in the learningprocess varied according to how the objectives wereformulated and conceived. The relationship between theformat of objectives provided by the faculty and howstudents deal with them in the learning process couldalso denote fragments of the different educationalcultures within the three programmes and how themeaning of problem-based learning is interpreted.