Will the Introduction of Teaching Standards in Professional Values and Practice Put the Heart Back into Primary Teacher Education?

In the light of the introduction of teaching standards in professional values and practice in September 2002, this study compares two sets of data from B.Ed. and PGCE primary courses, in order to examine the existing opportunities for values education within teacher education in one institution. The findings highlight a qualitative difference in the process of personal and professional development experienced by the two groups of students. Implications of the findings for university training partnerships, university tutors and professional studies programmes are then considered. The conclusion reached is that the introduction of teaching standards in professional values and practice may be the next landmark in the process vs. competence debate about teacher education, and may provide the opportunity to put human development back into the heart of teacher education.     

Quadriceps EMG muscle activation during accurate soccer instep kicking

Six competitive soccer players were recruited to examine EMG activation in three quadriceps muscles during a kicking accuracy task. Participants performed three maximum instep place kicks of a stationary ball, 11 m perpendicular from the centre of the goal line towards targets (0.75 m(2)) in the four corners of the goal. Surface EMG of the vastus lateralis, vastus medialis, and rectus femoris of the kicking leg was normalized and averaged across all participants to compare between muscles, targets, and the phase of the kick. Although no significant difference were observed between muscles or kick phases, kicks to the right targets produced significantly greater muscle activity than those towards the left targets (P < 0.01). In addition, kicks towards the top right target demonstrated significantly greater muscle activity than towards the top and bottom left (P < 0.01). Under accurate soccer shooting conditions, kicks aimed to the top right corner of the goal demonstrated a higher level of quadriceps muscle activation than those towards the other corners.     

Prior knowledge moderates instructional effects on conceptual understanding of statistics

This study investigated the effects of different teaching and learning methods for statistics for 2 levels of prior knowledge on cognitive load, propositional knowledge, and conceptual understanding. Teaching methods were whether or not to provide students with propositional information, and learning strategies were self-explaining the learning material and explaining in pairs. The results indicate that prior knowledge facilitates propositional knowledge development and leads to differential effects of teaching and learning methods on conceptual understanding: Only low prior knowledge students profit from additional information in the learning task and/or explaining in pairs. An implication of these findings is that low prior knowledge students should be guided into the subject matter by means of working in pairs on learning tasks that comprise additional information. Once students have developed more knowledge of the subject matter, they should be stimulated to work individually on learning tasks that do not comprise additional information.     

Exploring the context of strengths – a new approach to strength-based assessment

Since the 1990s many strength-based assessments (for example, inventories, checklists, interview schedules) have been developed for use with children and young people, but these have offered a limited appraisal of the contexts in which strengths are present. In this study a new form of contextualised strength-based assessment was used within the routine practice of an educational psychologist. A multiple case study explored how this approach worked with eight children and young people referred to a local authority educational psychology team, ranging in age from 6.9 to 19.2 years. Qualitative data were analysed holistically using a story-board method. In all cases, participants identified situations or contexts which they associated with the presence of specific strengths. In some cases they highlighted aspects of a situation which might be hypothesised to have pedagogical value. There is discussion of the tensions that can arise in using this approach in schools when a more negative view of a pupil has already emerged. Nevertheless, the introduction of fresh information, about the type of contexts which suited specific children and young people, was helpful in providing ideas and recommendations which may have otherwise been missed.