Diaries of lifelong learners: Information seeking behaviors of older adults in peer-learning study groups at an academic institution

Although not much has been written about older adults' use of academic libraries, they experience challenges navigating these considerable physical and online library spaces. Members of a university lifelong learning community were recruited for a 10-week diary study. They were asked to record their real-time information seeking behaviors related to their study groups, and the challenges they faced looking for or using information. They were also asked to rate their enjoyment to determine whether the joy of engaging in community learning extends to the information seeking process. Findings from sixteen diarists show that they sought information primarily on a specific topic, person, or book. They used a variety of resources but found books and periodicals most useful. They struggled with trust, technology, time management, library anxiety, information overload and dissemination. With increased understanding, librarians can be better equipped to reach older adults that are doing scholarly research and contribute to their success.     

“It’s not them,it’s me”: competing discourses in one aspiring teacher’s talk

In this paper, we deploy M.M. Bakhtin’s notions about how language works to understand aspiring teachers’ struggles about the intersecting roles race, class, gender, language background, and sexual orientation play in students’ school lives and learning. Through life-history interviews and document analysis, we investigated the authoritative and internally persuasive discourses one aspiring teacher brought with her and took from a 15-week long course on a predominantly White Midwestern public university campus. Ideas she encountered in the course and its required tutoring component challenged her thinking about how various facets of people’s lives (such as those we list above) and the contexts in which they live, work and are schooled, affect how they are perceived, what they know, and can do.     

Elisabeth Bing Is a Treasure: Personal Reflections on a Life in Birth

Celebrating Elisabeth Bing’s 100th birthday is an honor and a joy. Elisabeth’s life is an inspiration to all who continue her mission of birth and women’s advocacy. Dr. Mary Jo Podgurski strives to capture the indomitable spirit of the founder of American Society for Psychoprophylaxis in Obstetrics (ASPO)/Lamaze (now Lamaze International) through a personal reflection. Elisabeth Bing lived with valor. She is a role model to women everywhere, the mother of childbirth education, and a woman of great courage and wisdom. Thank you, Elisabeth, for the huge gift of your life.     

Using video analysis to support prospective K-8 teachers’ noticing of students’ multiple mathematical knowledge bases

As part of a larger research project aimed at transforming preK-8 mathematics teacher preparation, the purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which prospective teachers notice children’s competencies related to children’s mathematical thinking, and children’s community, cultural, and linguistic funds of knowledge or what we refer to as children’s multiple mathematical knowledge bases. Teachers’ noticing supports students’ learning in deep and meaningful ways. Researchers designed and enacted a video analysis activity with prospective teachers in their mathematics methods course. The activity served as a decomposition of practice in order to support prospective teachers in engaging in an approximation of the practice of noticing. Our findings showed that prospective teachers evidenced noticing of mathematics teaching and learning as early as the mathematics methods course. We also found that the prompts and structure of the activity supported prospective teachers by increasing their depth of noticing and their foci in noticing, moving from attending primarily to teacher moves (and merely describing what they saw) to becoming aware of significant interactions (and interpreting effects of these interactions on learning). Implications for teacher educators interested in designing and enacting activities to support noticing are discussed.     

Short sprint or an endurance test: the perceived impact of the National Award for Special Educational Needs Coordination

This paper evaluates the perceived impact of the National Award (NA) for Special Educational Needs (SEN) Coordination in English mainstream schools. The Award was introduced in 2009 and has been mandatory for all new Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCos) since its inception. The framework used for the evaluation is based on the learning outcomes of the NA, which were formulated by the Training and Development Agency and focus on areas related to the pedagogical, managerial and leadership aspects of the SENCo role. Findings suggest that the NA has impacted most significantly on participants’ pedagogy and strategies for removing barriers to learning. Participants’ preparedness for training at post-graduate level is also investigated and consideration is given towards further training and study beyond the completion of the NA. Additionally, the paper investigates areas that are perceived as challenges (e.g. lack of time and leadership status) to the successful implementation of their coordination role and any impact the NA has had in this respect.     

Latino High School Students’ Perceptions of Caring: Keys to Success

This mixed methods investigation specifically examined Latino high school adolescents’ perceptions of teacher behaviors that demonstrate caring. A chi-square test was conducted to analyze the frequency of responses, and focus group interviews were conducted to expand on the results. The data indicated that although Latino male students were as likely to perceive the same behaviors Latina female students perceived as important or very important, a higher percentage of female students rated the same items as important. This investigation situates Latino high school adolescents’ voices as a pivotal agent to inform about the critical nature of caring for all students.     

Orchestrating semiotic resources in explicit strategy instruction

Research and pedagogical information provided to teachers on implementing explicit strategy instruction has primarily focused on teachers’ speech, with limited attention to other modes of communication, such as gesture and artefacts. This interpretive case study investigates two teachers’ use of different semiotic resources when introducing second-grade readers to specific reading strategies. We analysed two teachers’ use of speech, gesture and artefacts in their introductory explanation of the declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge necessary to be strategic readers. The importance of this article lies in reconciling the narrow focus on what teachers say during explicit strategy instruction with the repertoire of semiotic resources that the teachers actually use to enact multimodal communication during their explanation of the strategy.     

低碳发展方案编制指南(第四部分)——实现低碳增长的政策和行动之建筑行业的行动

实现低碳增长的政策和行动将对每个行业的政策和行动、政策表述、衡量标准、温室气体减排潜力以及政策和行动的成本效益进行介绍。本节介绍建筑行业的行动。建筑行业基于目标的政策有三类:新建建筑、改造现有建筑的能源和/或碳排放目标、范围广泛的自愿或协商的协议。