Computational support for teachers’ design thinking: its feasibility and acceptability to practitioners and institutions

A significant area of learning design research has been the development of software applications that guide teachers’ thinking as they plan, construct and revise learning events for their students. In this paper, we review conceptualisations of, and approaches to, the activity of pedagogic design and highlight the implications for the provision of computational support for this activity. We then outline different ways in which that support has been implemented in three digital tools: Phoebe, the LAMS Activity Planner and the Learning Designer. We consider the challenges to, and implications of, deploying these tools from the perspectives of three groups of stakeholders: developers, teachers and institutions. Our findings suggest that, while such tools are acceptable in principle, they face a number of technological and socio-cultural challenges to their acceptability from teachers’ perspectives and to their deployment within institutional strategies for teaching and learning in a digital age.     

Classification of learning outcomes: evidence from the computer games literature

Following up on an earlier issue of The Curriculum Journal (Vol. 16, No. 1), this article focuses on learning outcomes in the context of video games. Learning outcomes are viewed from two theoretical frameworks: Kirkpatrick's levels of evaluation and the CRESST model of learning. These are used to analyse the outcomes claimed in journal articles that report empirical work, indicating the usefulness of the frameworks, and the necessity to consider the role of affective learning. The article ends with some comments on the relationship of instructional design to effective games and learning outcomes.     

New Public Management in an age of austerity: knowledge and experience in further education

This article originates in a piece of educational research into the experiences of further education (FE) student teachers in the West Midlands region of England. This cohort of students experienced significant upheaval in their college workplaces and placements during the 2010/2011 academic year. Pressures on FE funding were exacerbated by a Comprehensive Spending Review by the coalition government in late 2010 – prompted by the on-going global economic crisis. Some of the repercussions of these funding cuts for staff and students in the sector are discussed in this article, as perceived by this cohort of student teachers working in a range of FE providers across the West Midlands. Many of these repercussions can broadly be seen as an extension of existing managerialist practices, as the justification for an increasing squeeze on local resource allocation continues to be a wider appeal to global market ‘realities’. But we theorise that new public management (NPM) plays an important role in a reductive kind of knowledge production for policy-makers which fuels and legitimises on-going policy intervention, and we see this as an important shaping force in the emerging professional identity of these new teachers.     

Factor Analysis of High School Variables and Success in University Subjects for the First Semester in the University

A stress management program was evaluated in sixth-grade classes of an urban public and a suburban parochial school. Sample 1, from the urban public school, and Sample 2, from the suburban parochial school, received pre- and posttests. Sample 3, from the suburban parochial school, was divided into pretest-only and posttest-only groups. Six self-esteem and 1 each stress and social-skills children's self-ratings and 1 each teachers' ratings of children's overall stress management and stress measures were used. All 10 measures showed improvement in the Samples 1 and 2 independently. Findings in Sample 2 replicated the positive effects in Sample 1. In both sixth-grade classes, children's stress level (self- and teachers' ratings), children's social skills and self-esteem self-ratings, and teachers' ratings of children's stress management skills improved significantly. Sample 3 posttest-only group scores did not differ significantly from the posttest scores of Sample 1 and 2 children. Rival hypotheses (e.g., history, maturation, testing) appeared implausible. Results support using skills-oriented stress management programs in regular grade school classes.     

Editorials

An Essay on Elocution. By Samuel Kirkham. New York 1833. Elements of Beading and Oratory. By Henry Mandeville, D. D. New York 1849.     

GIRLFRIEND THEOLOGY: GOD‐TALK ACROSS RELIGIOUS BORDERS

Abstract

Girlfriend Theology is a method of religious education by which women who have found power, voice, and authority might nurture resilience in adolescent girls within faith communities. This essay relates one portion of a larger project involving ethnographic research with fifteen females. These females gathered in small groups and followed a four‐part method that began with one person telling a story from her life. This paper shares one of these ninety‐minute story sessions in which a religiously diverse group engages in God‐talk. From four such Girlfriend Theology sessions arose seven theological assertions—statements about God, humanity, and communities of faith—that sometimes affirmed and sometimes challenged traditional interpretations. These assertions reflect emancipatory theological motifs when analyzed through the lens of womanist, mujerista, and Asian‐feminist theology. This essay draws connections between the story session reported and two of the seven theological assertions of Girlfriend Theology.

What would it mean for a girl—against the stories read, chanted, or murmured to her—to choose to tell the truth of her life aloud to another person at the very point at when she is invited into the larger cultural story of womanhood—that is, at . . . adolescence?

—Lyn Mikel Brown, Telling a Girl's Life     

The Communication Anxiety Regulation Scale: Development and Initial Validation

A series of studies present the development and validation of the Communication Anxiety Regulation Scale (CARS), a self-report measure designed to assess the use of emotion regulation strategies to manage acute communication anxiety—in contrast to measures of general emotion regulation tendencies. Study 1 delineates the item derivation and selection process that yielded the final 12 CARS items. Results of an exploratory factor analysis supported the existence of four distinct subscales, each representing one of four anxiety regulation strategies (suppression, reappraisal, avoidance, and venting). Study 2 confirmed this factor structure and also examined correlations of the CARS with existing measures in an attempt to establish concurrent validity. Finally, Study 3 presents results of an item-sort task demonstrating the scale’s face validity and items’ substantive validity. Overall, findings provide preliminary support for the utility of the CARS as measure of communication anxiety regulation to be used by communication and psychology researchers.