Turning Minds On and Faucets Off: Water Conservation Education in Jordanian Schools

Abstract

An evaluation was conducted to measure the impact of a curriculum implementation through the Jordan Water Conservation Education Project funded by USAID. This study examined the effect of recommending water conservation at the household level and the impact of using interactive teaching methods to promote conservation behaviors among students and their families. The evaluation used a postintervention design with random selection of participants. Comparisons were made among 671 students (424 experimental, 247 control) belonging to high school eco-clubs in central Jordan. Most students were girls in rural settings. The experimental group consisted of students whose teachers implemented an interactive curriculum and promoted household water-conservation behaviors. Teachers of students in the control group did not participate in the curriculum implementation, but those students were exposed to lectures about biodiversity issues. The results indicate that students who were exposed to the new curriculum demonstrated a higher level of knowledge about water conservation and performed recommended behaviors more often than students in the control group.     

A comparative study on student perceptions of their learning outcomes in undergraduate science degree programmes with differing curriculum models

ABSTRACT

This study investigated students’ perceptions of their graduate learning outcomes including content knowledge, communication, writing, teamwork, quantitative skills, and ethical thinking in two Australian universities. One university has a traditional discipline-orientated curriculum and the other, an interdisciplinary curriculum in the entry semester of first year. The Science Students Skills Inventory asked students (n?=?613) in first and final years to rate their perceptions of the importance of developing graduate learning outcomes within the programme; how much they improved their graduate learning outcomes throughout their undergraduate science programme; how much they saw learning outcomes included in the programme; and how confident they were about their learning outcomes. A framework of progressive curriculum development was adopted to interpret results. Students in the discipline-oriented degree programme reported higher perceptions of scientific content knowledge and ethical thinking while students from the interdisciplinary curriculum indicated higher perceptions of oral communication and teamwork. Implications for curriculum development include ensuring progressive development from first to third years, a need for enhanced focus on scientific ethics, and career opportunities from first year onwards.     

Early intervention: parental involvement,child agency and participation in creative play

Early intervention activities for very young disabled children are frequently linked to developmental targets and goals. A key challenge for parents and practitioners involved in early intervention programmes is to encourage their child to play and develop creatively through enjoyable, everyday childhood experiences. This paper reports on a small-scale ethnographic study involving two young children identified with Down syndrome participating in early intervention programmes and whether and how their creative process was supported through their play and activities with parents and professionals. The ‘in-the-picture’ method used within this ethnographic study was developed from a listening to children paradigm. This article provides examples of the ways in which early intervention that recognises child agency can support children’s play and self-directing ‘little c’ of creativity.     

Virtual history: a socially networked pedagogy of enlightenment

Background:?Twenty-first-century undergraduates often find eighteenth-century culture difficult to access and, influenced by popular assumptions about the period in current media theory, characterise the century as individualist, underestimating the cultural significance of social networking in literary and political history.

Purpose:?This study set out to teach the history of social networking as culturally significant in the production of literary texts during the eighteenth century as well as to demonstrate the intellectual and compositional potential of today's social networking technologies. A virtual reconstruction of eighteenth-century London in Second Life and a semester project requiring the student recreation of 3D social spaces like coffee houses and gardens tested the uses of social networking tools to teach research methods and build disciplinary knowledge.

Sources of evidence:?Evidence of student learning outcomes is provided by three undergraduate courses in eighteenth-century culture, with 68 students total, that participated in Second Life re-enactment assignments on Island 18 during the autumn of 2008 and spring of 2009. The results of the student projects as well as student-completed evaluations and self-reflective essays about their experiences using virtual reality to learn history are consulted. Theoretical evidence by scholars of new media, eighteenth-century history and education provides a background for the study's impetus and goals.

Main argument:?Virtual reality provides an opportunity for educators of eighteenth-century culture to teach students, through the reflective and critical use of the social networking tools Second Life makes available, the significance of social networking in the history of ideas of that period. We dismantle the generalisations of scholars working outside of the period who characterise the eighteenth century as a solely individualist era, during which singular genius defined the enlightenment and propose a more culturally viable model of social collaboration, supported by communication technologies not so different from twenty-first-century instant messaging, blogging, twittering and emailing.

Conclusions:?Contrary to the recent findings of humanities educators who claim that digital social networking tools are distracting undergraduates from more valuable academic writing, we find that a task-oriented semester project requiring the construction of 3D historical social spaces teaches investigative research skills, deterritorialises disciplinary knowledge and promotes revision as an ongoing process.     

Science,technology and society in transition year: A pilot study

This is the first report on the findings of a survey carried out on 578 students entering computing courses at seven institutes of technology in Ireland in 2001. The progress of this cohort of students is charted through the four years of their course using questionnaires and interviews. It is envisioned that the study will highlight the different relationships and patterns of association between these students’ progression at college and their entry characteristics. The findings presented in this article are from a section of the questionnaire administered to students in year one of their studies. It was designed to explore students’ experiences of computing prior to their entry to college. The students’ exposure to computing and their enjoyment of computing at second level was documented. Relationships between students’ experiences of computing at second level and their success/failure to progress in their course in third level are investigated.     

Cyber-bullying: the situation in Ireland

This paper reports on the first major survey of cyber-bullying undertaken in Ireland. While preliminary results have been published they were based on a smaller and incomplete sample of 12–16 year olds living in Ireland. The preliminary results addressed the incidence level of cyber-bullying and that of the different subcategories of cyber-bullying (text message bullying, the sending of pictures and video clips via mobile telephones, threatening calls, emails, instant messages and abuse via social networking sites and chat rooms). However, they omitted to provide a comprehensive picture of the views held by the participants to cyber-bullying. Thus the aim of the present paper is to report more thoroughly on the thoughts and feelings that students have to cyber-bullying and the ways in which they cope when subjected to cyber-bullying. The objective is to gain an understanding of cyber-bullying from the perspective of students in order that effective strategies can be developed to prevent and counter cyber-bullying. Across the sample (n = 3004), 13.9% reported that they had been cyber-bullied within the last couple of months and 8.6% confessed to cyber-bullying others. While 29.8% were bullied both offline and online and 24.4% bullied others online and offline, the fact that one in five students were found to be involved either as a cyber-bully, cyber-victim or both reflects that cyber-bullying is a cause of great concern to students, parents and teachers due to the emotional and behavioural problems experienced by them as a result of cyber-bullying, and one that requires urgent action. The views the students hold on cyber-bullying and their implications for prevention and intervention are discussed.     

Reflective and Reflexive Practice in Initial Teacher Education: a critical case study

Abstract

This article outlines approaches that are being adopted to encourage students training to be teachers on a Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) course to reflect upon their teaching. It takes the form of a special case designed to nurture good practice in Teacher Education. Applications for those working in higher education are discussed. A distinction has been made between reflection and reflexivity (Ashmore, 1989; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). It was found that engaging students in reflexivity can have benefits in terms of classroom effectiveness and reflective writing can play an enhancing role in this process. It was found that many students were judged to have exhibited reflexivity in their teaching and in their written work. Ways in which the emphasis on reflective practice has led to the development of classroom skills were identified.     

Teaching the ‘invisible’ disabled students in the classroom: disclosure,inclusion and the social model of disability

Drawing on the insights of critical disability studies, this article addresses anxieties frequently articulated by academic staff around the implementation of the United Kingdom's Disability Discrimination Act: how to accommodate the needs of students with ‘hidden’ impairments. Following the social model of disability, it argues that universities should avoid the use of medical labels in identifying the learning needs of disabled students, and should make efforts to institute as part of everyday practice a diversity of inclusive teaching strategies. Finally it discusses an induction activity which sought to encourage students to disclose additional learning needs to university staff while opening up a discussion around difference, diversity with the student cohort as a whole.