Delivering reading intervention to the poorest children: The case of Liberia and EGRA-Plus,a primary grade reading assessment and intervention

As governments, donors and implementation organisations re-focus Education for All Goals in terms of quality of education, increasing concerns have been raised over low literacy levels in developing countries. This paper provides key learning from the application of an early reading intervention applied in post-conflict Liberia, which included a robust assessment tool (Early Grade Reading Assessment) to measure the impact of the programme on students’ reading levels. A rationale for the design and methodology applied by the two implementing organisations (Research Triangle Institute (RTI) and Concern Worldwide) is provided, situated within the Liberian education context. The paper demonstrates the positive impact on programme quality, contextual relevancy and scale-up that a diagnostic baseline assessment has when linked to a tailored literacy intervention. Lessons learnt are presented to guide the identification of best practice in early literacy interventions at national-level and internationally.     

Teaching science through online,peer discussions: SpeakEasy in the Knowledge Integration Environment

In 1995, cooperative learning tutorials were introduced into large first year physics classes at the University of Sydney. This paper describes the effect of these cooperative learning tutorials, called Workshop Tutorials, on student learning from both a quantitative and qualitative point of view. It was found that students attending more than half the total number of tutorials scored significantly better over the year than those attending less than half. Student reaction was almost wholly positive, with particular mention made of the voluntary nature of the tutorials as well as the use of practical, 'hands on' demonstrations within the tutorials.     

The places of pedagogy: or,what we can do with culture through intersubjective experiences

Beginning by highlighting considerations of the intersections among social and ecological issues and the recent diversification of critical pedagogy, this paper suggests means by which approaches such as Gruenewald’s (2003 Gruenewald, D.A. 2003. The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place. Educational Researcher, 32(4): 3–12. [Crossref] [Google Scholar]) “critical pedagogy of place” can be expanded to accommodate a broader range of possible places of pedagogy. The paper is centrally concerned with what happens when we consider socio‐ecological learning, not as occuring via cognitive critique or embodied place‐based experience, but rather as taking place in between the thought and the sensed via a range of intersubjective experiences. It suggests that these intersubjective locations that comprise the “where” of the learning of the student can be particular physical places, but can also be in and of experiences of friendship, art, literature, irony, cultural difference, community. By expanding our possible repertoire of “pedagogical arts,” or the range of intersubjective places and spaces of pedagogy engaged, we are able to conceptualise and practise education in ways that enable a deeper connection to place but also opportunities for other modes and outcomes of student learning. In particular, the paper outlines the possibilities for learning and cultural formation enabled by spaces of collective youth engagement.     

Giving feedback: Development of scales for the mum effect,discomfort giving feedback,and feedback medium preference

Research in organizational behavior and human resources promotes the view that it is critical for managers to provide accurate feedback to employees, yet little research addresses rater tendencies (i.e., the mum effect) and attitudes that influence how performance feedback is given. Because technology has changed the nature of communication in organizations (e.g., feedback given by e‐mail), there is a need to determine how a feedback giver's preference for the delivery medium might influence the message. In this article, we develop three scales measuring the mum effect, discomfort with giving feedback, and feedback medium preference to determine feedback givers' tendencies, which may be used to improve feedback delivery. We then used these scales in a feedback situation. Findings are reported and practical implications discussed.     

Dynamic object recognition in pigeons and humans

We investigated the role of dynamic information in human and pigeon object recognition. Both species were trained to discriminate between two objects that each had a characteristic motion, so that either cue could be used to perform the task successfully. The objects were either easy or difficult to decompose into parts. At test, the learned objects could appear in their learned motions, the reverse of the learned motions, or an entirely new motion, or a new object could appear in one of the learned motions. For humans, any change in the learned motion produced a decrement in performance for both the decomposable and the nondecomposable objects, but participants did not respond differentially to new objects that appeared in the learned motions. Pigeons showed the same pattern of responding as did humans for the decomposable objects, except that pigeons responded differentially to new objects in the learned motions. For the nondecomposable objects, pigeons used motion cues exclusively. We suggest that for some types of objects, dynamic information may be weighted differently by pigeons and humans.