The effects of skill diversity on commenting and revisions

The use of peer assessment to evaluate students’ writing is one recommended method that makes writing assignments possible in large content classes (i.e., more than 75 students). However, many instructors and students worry about whether students of all ability levels are capable of helping their peers. We examine how ability pairing (e.g., high-ability student with high-ability student versus high-ability student with low-ability student) changes key characteristics of feedback to determine which pairings are likely to benefit students most. A web-based reciprocal peer-review system was used to facilitate the peer review of students’ writing of two papers. Over 1,100 comments given to writers from their peers were coded for several relevant categories: type of feedback, type of criticism, focus of problem, focus of solution, and implementation. Overall, creating peer-review groups such that students receive feedback from someone of a dissimilar ability appeared to be most beneficial. High-ability writers received similar kinds of feedback from high-ability versus low-ability peers. By contrast, the low-ability writers received more comments that identified problems focusing on substance issues from high-ability reviewers. In addition, the low-ability writers implemented a higher percentage of the comments from the high-ability reviewers.     

Showing the Strategy where to go: possibilities for creative approaches to Key Stage 3 literacy teaching in initial teacher education

This paper arises from a research project undertaken with six PGCE student teachers of English, based on observation and discussion of English lessons based on the National Strategy's Framework for Teaching English. I draw also on the student teachers' reflections and written commentaries. The central thrust of the research was to enquire whether and how classroom practice could demonstrate an imaginative, meaning‐orientated form of English teaching which included the Framework: how exactly learning opportunities might arise in lively, engaging and effective ways.     

Public domain or private data? Developing an ethical approach to social media research in an inter-disciplinary project

This paper discusses the ethical issues faced in undertaking research about the role of learning in the subjective experience of chronic illness, where data were taken from social media. Drawing on psychology and education, this paper discusses the ways in which authors from these disciplines are laying the groundwork for legitimate online research by actively debating the public versus private nature of online spaces. The paper explains how this debate informed the development of an ethical approach to research. Relevant ethical guidelines and previous research are used to support the argument that individuals’ informed consent is not necessary in online contexts where data exist within the public domain, and where risk of harm to users is low. This paper provides an insight into one educational researcher's journey through the process of doing ethical social media research, and suggests ways forward for others embarking upon that same journey.     

Gender Relations and Schooling in the New Century: Conflicts and challenges

This paper highlights the challenges that schools in the future may face in relation to egalitarianism (in relation to gender, ethnicity and social class). It argues that new forms of egalitarian politics are likely to emerge, first, around differentiations within rather than between subordinated and powerful groups and, second, around the individualisation of learning processes and flexible educational careers. New gender concerns will challenge the concepts of educational excellence, the masculinisation of science, and schools' responses to disengagement. Traditional gender identities are changing and schools may have to respond to the gap between the educational success of young women and the discrimination they face on the labour market, and the disadvantages associated with a celebration of masculinity. The processes of individualisation and globalisation suggest that educationists and feminists have to engage with male and female experiences that could be even more different and unequal.