Writing expository essays from social studies texts: a self-regulated strategy development study

Reading and Writing - This study examined the effectiveness of Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD) to improve students’ ability to write expository essays after reading social studies...     

Beginning Literacy in Two Languages

This article is based on the Third Ruth Wong Memorial Lecture delivered at the National University of Singapore, 14 March 1986.     

An Interactive Approach for Developing Interprofessional Collaboration: Preparing School Counselors

School counselors are expected to be prepared to work cooperatively with school administrators, teachers, special education teachers, and other school personnel so that they can better serve students. Currently, the various professionals in schools, including school counselors, are trained separately and have few opportunities to learn about each other's roles, responsibilities, and perspectives. The authors discuss an interactive CD‐ROM that is designed to prepare school counselors and other school professionals (e.g., teachers, school administrators) to solve problems collaboratively.     

Conceptual change in natural resource management students’ ecological literacy*

Conceptual change in undergraduate capstone courses provides unique opportunities to examine how students draw from multiple courses and experiences to resolve conceptual confusion. We examined how senior-level natural resource management students revised their conceptions of ‘ecosystem’ throughout their capstone course. The concept of ecosystem is complicated by a lack of shared meaning across disciplines. Our grounded theory study analyzed student coursework and pre/post interviews. It was informed by socio-cultural and conceptual change theories and used an ecological literacy metric to examine how students’ conceptualizations of the relationships between natural, ecosystem, human, and human artifact influenced their conceptions of ecosystems. Students who did not describe ecosystems as natural struggled less with integrating human society into ecosystems than their peers that did. We conclude that it is important to explicitly create shared meaning of key conceptions at the start of a capstone course to facilitate shared meaning-making and desired conceptual change during the course.     

Outdoor recreation in exergames: a new step in the detachment from nature?

A new teaching aid—exergames—is increasing in popularity in schools and is regarded as an interesting, varied and effective way of improving students’ fitness. These exercise television games often contain references to physical activities carried out in different outdoor landscapes. The purpose of this article is to examine the views of landscape and nature offered by the games and the consequences this may have for students’ relationships with nature and future environmental commitment. The methodological approach used is companion meaning analysis: the meaning of nature that follows when playing the games. The results show a controlled landscape that is perfectly arranged for the activity (functional specialisation). It is an obvious anthropocentric base and commands an instrumental value where nature is valuable because it satisfies our felt preferences (demand value). Exergames can thus be seen as a further step in an ongoing detachment process from the physical landscape (indoorisation).     

Social Inequalities in French Secondary Schools: from figures to theories

In spite of the unified type of junior secondary school (the ‘college') implemented in France since 1975, significant social inequalities of school careers can be observed today. A specific longitudinal study sheds some light on the variety of mechanisms which generate these social inequalities. Difference in academic progress is one mechanism, but parents’ strategies are also important. Finally, another aspect of social inequality arises from the school attended, some schools being more selective at the streaming points, these ‘school effects’ being related to the social characteristics of the pupils of the catchment area. All these facts and figures have some relevance with regard to different sociological theories about social inequalities in school careers. They also bring into question the educational policies implemented in France over the last 15 years.     

Seeing is believing: the role of videoconferencing in distance learning

The potential of videoconferencing to enrich distance learning needs to be widely recognised as well as the technology embedded in curriculum delivery and in distance learning programmes. The argument is supported by reference to a wide range of case studies from the author's experiences over a period of six years as International Officer with the Western Education and Library Board in Northern Ireland, and to exemplars of good practice from other sources in different parts of the world. As videoconferencing becomes more widely available in schools and in public libraries, it is important that there is a new awareness of its vast potential in order to ensure that this technology is fully exploited for the benefit of learning communities.     

Women in the academic profession: Evolution or stagnation?

This article focuses on women in the academic profession and reports a study of the social origins of Greek university staff and their career pattern. Data show that women have made few gains as university professors over the past twenty years. The gains recorded in Greece are the result of democratization of the university. As women enter the academy, particularly on teaching staffs, they tend to be older and from more middle-class professional backgrounds than are their male peers. The author notes that the entry of women as academics occurs at a time when universities are experiencing a decline in real and symbolic power.