‘Reading’ pictures: what do they reveal? Young children's reading of visual texts

What does the ‘reading’ of pictures reveal compared with the reading of print? The researcher examines aspects of visual literacy through the responses of young children to two picture storybooks. The findings emphasise how images can evoke different levels of response. The study confirms that we need to reconsider the nature of reading and reading education in an environment where words and print are no longer the dominant medium. Examples of responses are shown from children who are native speakers of English, as well as from children for whom English is a second language.     

Parents’ beliefs about young children’s play and nature experiences in Danish and US contexts

Two studies were conducted in the US and Denmark to examine parents’ beliefs about the importance of play and nature experiences for early childhood development. Thirty parents in the US and 19 parents in Denmark completed semi-structured interviews with quantitative and qualitative elements. Although families in both contexts highly valued outdoor and nature experiences, parents in the Danish context provided a stronger rationale for taking children outdoors regardless of environmental conditions and affording them opportunities to explore freely and take risks. Parents in the US focused mainly on individual developmental benefits of play, whereas parents in Denmark also acknowledged the importance of spending time in nature for society and the environment. The findings provide evidence that sociocultural values and expectations influence parental beliefs and practices regarding outdoor and nature play, and have implications for young children’s play opportunities within and across cultural contexts.     

WHAT COUNTS AS TEACHING?

AID — the acronym stands for Assessment for Instructional Development — is a behaviourally referenced class questionnaire developed by the author from a data base drawn from 12 institutions of HE (Polytechnics and Universities). It is intended to help the user locate

• objectives in their own progress towards which his students report they lack confidence

• teaching behaviours that seem to bear on these objectives

• changes of teaching strategy that may therefore help the students

AID is focussed on the individual class and subject discipline — it is not suitable for ‘accountability’ uses.

The paper describes the rationale for choosing a behaviourally referenced system (focussed on what teachers and students do or feel, and how often) rather than a ‘satisfaction scale’ (focussed on ‘do my students like me?'), and the way AID was developed from earlier, mainly North American behaviourally referenced systems, such as IDEA. Crucial changes in research methodology are explained and justified. The characteristics and capabilities of the developed system are then outlined, and how to use it is explained. Finally, illustrations are given of three typical uses of the system — a comparison of three elements in a part‐time course for use by the course team in a course review, and two analyses of particular teaching programmes for individual lecturers.     

Psychosocial factors impacting STEM career selection

Attention on P-20 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education has increased tremendously in recent years. Many efforts are underway to promote STEM major and career selection across the nation; specifically, in engineering and computer science. The authors' purpose was to examine an underlying profile combinations of latent traits that influence student STEM career selection while designing serious educational games (SEGs). The authors combine a number of quantitative analysis methods in an effort to develop a rich understanding of how a profile combination of traits interact with one another to effect selection of STEM careers and majors. Study participants were 585 students enrolled in a full-time traditional high school. The addition of SEG design experiences into the student profile increases the probability of STEM career selection by 5.1 times.     

Professional Models of School Absence Associated with Home Responsibilities

It has been estimated that 10% of all school absence is due to children undertaking duties associated with their homes. Despite this, the phenomenon remains under‐researched. In this study, qualitative interviews with three groups of professionals concerned with absence due to home responsibilities (teachers, education welfare officers and educational therapists) are reported. The discourses of these professionals were analysed in terms of their perspectives on prevalence, models and solutions to absence due to home responsibilities. Teachers saw a solution in educating parents concerning the value of schooling. Education welfare officers saw a need to address the wider problems faced by some families. The therapists identified underlying psychodynamic issues which need to be resolved. It is hypothesised that this disagreement has led to a failure to create a ‘master discourse’ on this phenomenon and how it might be resolved, and consequently it has not been constructed as a ‘social problem’.     

Undergraduate Research Mentoring: Obstacles and Opportunities

Researchers and policy-makers in higher education increasingly espouse the view that undergraduate students should have the opportunity to learn about scholarship and research in the context of faculty-mentored research experiences. There is mounting consensus that mentored undergraduate research should be standard pedagogical practice in all undergraduate disciplines. Although high-impact, mentored undergraduate research, scholarship, and creative work (URSCW) requires significant resources, with faculty time and energy foremost among them. This article addresses the current gap between aspiration and effective execution of well-mentored URSCW, including the most prevalent obstacles (e.g. institutional, departmental, individual) to undergraduate mentoring. This article is written for academic leaders and institutional officers. It concludes with several specific recommendations for increasing the frequency of mentored URSCW experiences for undergraduates.     

An analysis of the use of autobiographical narrative for teachers’ intercultural learning

The currency of intercultural education has risen worldwide in response to increased diversity within societies resulting from migration and global flows of populations. As intercultural education becomes a core responsibility of schooling, critical, detailed analysis of pedagogies for teachers’ own intercultural learning is largely absent in education research, in contrast to attention to developing students’ intercultural capabilities and theoretical and policy analyses. In beginning to address this limitation, this article offers a critical, reflexive analysis of our use and the efficacy of using autobiographical narrative for teachers’ intercultural learning. Framing theories include interculturality, autobiographical narratives for teachers’ professional learning, reflexivity, and the effects of silence and silencing in relation to diversity and intercultural relations in schools. Three instances of teacher autobiographical narrative elicited as part of a large-scale, longitudinal study of intercultural education in Australian schools are deconstructed to elucidate their explicit and hidden meanings and effects. The analysis reveals that while autobiographical narrative has productive potential as a strategy for stimulating teacher reflexivity about cultural identities and intercultural relations, it also contains hidden dangers and traps that caution against viewing it as a pedagogical cure-all in the development of teachers’ intercultural knowledge and skills.