Accuracy and Precision

Within the framework of a two-hour interactive lecture, we explore the related ideas of accuracy and precision in calculation. The aim is to show that numerical data must be understood as numbers in a context.     

Exploring The Island: Mapping the Shifting Sands in the Landscape of English Classroom Culture and Pedagogy

I begin with an account of my own observation of an English lesson taught by one of my student teachers using a teaching resource, The Island, that I used myself as a new teacher more than 20 years ago and of my own responses on finding it transformed by two decades of change in educational policy and practice. It has become almost a given in academic articles on English teaching, to refer, in a sentence or two, to the reduction of the English curriculum, the narrowing of pedagogy and the loss of teacher agency due to the dominance of a high stakes assessment regime. The policy changes that have given rise to this change have been clearly analysed elsewhere, but part of my purpose here is just to look again at how it might be experienced by a particular pupil in a particular class. I am interested in analysing some of the features of The Island’s incarnation then and now, from three different angles: as it is inscribed in the project book, as I remember teaching it and as I observed it recently in a London classroom. I draw on theories of literacy and of the teaching of writing in particular in trying to account for some of the differences but beyond that, I argue that it is essential to link such theories to wider political debates about culture and to reflect back from this to the purposes of the English curriculum and culture of the English classroom.     

Barriers and facilitators to health behaviour change and economic activity among slum-dwelling adolescent girls and young women in Nairobi,Kenya: the role of social,health and economic assets

Adolescent girls and young women in urban slum areas in developing countries face a myriad of challenges regarding education, sexual health, livelihoods and gender-based violence. One way of understanding how these challenges interact with each other is through the Asset Building Framework, which posits that girls need a combination of social, health and economic assets in order to make a healthy transition from childhood to adulthood. This study sought to examine barriers and facilitators to health behaviour change and economic activity for girls within the context of this framework. It involved a combination of focus group discussions and in-depth interviews with 128 young women who were in the age range of 18–25 years, living in various slums in Nairobi, Kenya. We found that economic assets reduce young women's dependence on others (especially parents and relationships with men) so that they are able to make positive changes in health behaviour. Social networks, self-esteem and financial literacy all played important roles in positively positioning girls to make the transition to economic activity safely and successfully. We suggest that programmes that seek to improve girls’ and young women's health behaviour or economic activity include elements of asset building within all three categories of assets.     

Asian Pacific Americans and Critical Race Theory: An Examination of School Racial Climate

We attempt to answer where the social justice is in service-learning by probing what it is, how it looks in the process of being institutionalized at a Jesuit university, and why it is important. We develop themes about institutionalizing service-learning from a social justice perspective. Our themes were developed through an analysis of service-learning research focused on institutionalization and social justice, and a case study of a Jesuit university attempting to institutionalize it, including five faculty action research service-learning projects. From these themes, we share lessons that we learned from this experience.     

A High Impact Practice that Works: Connecting Mentors From the Professional Community to Teacher Education Students

A high impact mentoring program at a community college connected professionals from the special education and early intervention fields with small groups of teacher education students. Two federal grants from U.S. Department of Education funded tuition scholarships and mentoring for 76 Special Education students and 78 Early Childhood Education/Early Intervention students in associate degree programs. The mentor programs consisted of individual monitoring by project staff, consistent contact with a mentor from the professional community and with other students in mentor groups, and structured monthly dinner meetings. Students who participated in the mentoring programs showed increased persistence and higher grade point average when compared with the general population of similar majors. Within each grant-funded population, students who showed low participation in the mentor programming presented lower retention rates and lower GPA than grant-funded students who took full advantage of the mentoring program.     

Morphological Awareness and Chinese Children's Literacy Development: An Intervention Study

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between morphological awareness and Chinese children's literacy development. Of the 169 children from elementary schools in Beijing, China, who participated in the study, about half received enhanced instruction on the morphology of characters and words in the first and second grade. At the beginning of second grade and at the beginning of third grade, children were tested on morphological awareness, reading, and writing. The results showed that morphological instruction substantially improved children's performance on the morphological awareness and literacy measures. The best-fitting structural equation models suggested a unidirectional causal relation in early second grade and a reciprocal relation in early third grade between morphological awareness and children's literacy development.     

Children's Evaluations of Gender-Stereotypic Household Activities in the Family Context

Research Findings: The goal of this study was to analyze children's (N = 120) evaluations about parental decisions regarding gender-stereotypic household family activities. Children at 5, 8, and 10 years of age were individually interviewed. Contrary to prevailing findings, the majority of children used stereotypic expectations and social-conventional justifications to explain parental exclusion decisions; this pattern was more pronounced for male-stereotypic than female-stereotypic activities. Overall, children's social judgments revealed age-related increases in making stereotypic choices. Boys were more likely than girls to condone stereotypic expectations regarding father–son activities than mother–daughter activities. Practice or Policy: The results are discussed in terms of (a) social–cognitive reasoning about family decision making in the home and (b) gender-stereotypic expectations between parents and children in the home context.