Finding Diego: A Bilingual Student Integrates School,Language, and Identity

This article presents a mixed-methods case study of Diego, a bilingual teen who completed public school in Florida. During adolescence, Diego negotiated multiple identities: successful student, Mexican American, bilingual, and typical U.S. teenager. Diego provided interviews and bilingual (English/Spanish) writing (narrative/expository) in 2008 (at age 12, Grade 6) and in 2012 (at age 16, Grade 10). A qualitative analysis of his interviews and a quantitative linguistic analysis of his writing reveal central elements of Diego’s language development as related to academic English and identity. Educational implications for working with bilingual adolescents are discussed.     

What’s in a word? Practices associated with ‘feedforward’ in higher education

Abstract

The term ‘feedforward’ is increasingly employed in higher education, and this paper focuses on the way in which it fits into contemporary debates about feedback and its impact on practitioners. Semi-structured interviews were used to investigate the practices academics associate with feedforward and the ways in which their intentions and understandings varied. The term resulted in practices being framed as a process and prompted academics to consider the points in the future when students were expected to deploy information and improve. Three future horizons were identified: the ‘within-module’ future horizon dominated, while the challenges of ‘beyond-module’ and ‘beyond-programme’ horizons became apparent. Written comments, guidance, formative assessment and design practices were associated with feedforward, comprising both transmission and student-focused approaches. It is concluded that the modular system restricts longer-term future horizons and sustainable practices, and more must be done to address the divide between theoretical and practitioners’ perspectives.     

Two worlds,one site: leading practices and transitions to school

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an account of a cross-sectorial study investigating whether shared understandings of practices might enhance continuity during transitions to school. Applying an ontological lens to cross-sectorial leading practices, the paper sheds light on the contextualised realities of transitions to school as a site specific lived experience. The paper begins with an overview of the ways transitions to school practices are understood, including emerging perspectives of transitions as continuity practices. Then, cross-sectorial concepts of leadership and leading are presented to highlight fundamental differences in the ways these practices are enacted across the sectors. The paper presents empirical evidence of the ways leading practices can work to establish shared understandings of transitions to school practices and policies. Given ‘little research has been done on the direct effects of leadership on transitions’ (OECD. [2017]. Starting Strong V: Transitions from Early Childhood Education and Care to Primary School. Paris: OECD Publications, 95) the paper contributes to emerging discourses that construct transitions to school as continuities.     

The story of Samantha: the teaching performances and inauthenticities of an early career human geography lecturer

ABSTRACT

This paper offers an autoethnographic account of my first academic year as a Human Geography lecturer at a ‘new’ public university in the North West of England. This research is timely and much needed, since teaching at universities in England has recently come under increasing scrutiny. The Teaching Excellence Framework is a new scheme, which aims to recognise and reward excellence in teaching, learning, and outcomes, and helps to inform student choice. This paper is theoretically framed by drawing on notions of theatrical performance, and performativity. This paper offers insight into the coping strategies, in respect of teaching, that I deployed as a new university lecturer. Findings are discussed around the themes of: performing teaching identities, and inauthenticity. With regard to performing teaching identities, this paper discusses the need for identity to be multiple and shifting, and how, as a young female, I undertook identity work, in order to perform competence. I also bring to the fore feelings of inauthenticity; that is, how I did not feel as if I was a genuine academic, and how I fabricated / falsified aspects of my academic identity in order to ‘fit in’ with the expectations of both students and staff. As the voice of a new lecturer in her first year of teaching, this paper makes a useful contribution to the scholarship on early career academics and teaching development. This paper concludes with recommendations for change in practice-based settings, in order to assist new lecturers to settle into the job role, and enhance and enrich teaching practice.     

Teacher Scaffolding: An Exploration of Exemplary Practice

While computers have increasingly been used in classroom over the last twenty years, their application has often been mundane; being merely used to reinforce existing educational practices rather than as a catalyst for educational innovation. An effective way to bring about change may be to identify instances of best practice and then study associated strategies that may be useful for teachers trying to use computers in new and meaningful ways. This study investigates strategies used by a teacher deemed to be exemplary at using computers and associated technology in her classroom. It involved observing and recording teaching sessions conducted by the teacher. This paper discusses the learning task, the children's progression through the task and the teaching strategies used. In particular, it looks for instances of teacher scaffolding as a strategy for supporting children working with computers.     

Primary Telesoftware

The Telesoftware and Education Project, which was set up in 1980 by the BBC, the IBA and Brighton Polytechnic, demonstrated the feasibility of using broadcast transmissions to distribute computer programs as teletext pages, to be downloaded (i.e. recorded) onto a microcomputer in school. The success of the project led to the setting up of a Telesoftware and Primary Education Project, to distribute software to the area of education in which programming expertise is least often available. Telesoftware is not only a means of distributing stand‐alone software but can also be coupled with schools’ broadcasts and can read relevant information from any page of teletext, providing an educational television ‘package’. The project provides a link between schools and programmers and functions as a pre‐ and post‐broadcast evaluation team. The initial feedback from schools has been very positive and it is hoped that the broadcasting of high quality, relevant telesoftware will be a useful TV service in the future.     

Predicting students' epistemological orientation from demographic,ability, and learning style variables

Although college students' epistemological orientation largely determines how they approach, interpret, and learn in higher educational contexts, little is known about the student characteristics which reliably predict the orientation. Thus, the aim of this study was to determine the relative potency of different student characteristics potentially salient to differentiating epistemological view. The student variables evaluated were demographic (major and sex), verbal ability, and learning style (four scales from the Inventory of Learning Processes). Results of correlational and multiple regression analyses reveal that only students verbal skill accounted for a significant percent of the variance in epistemological orientation. The results are discussed in terms of the meaning of the orientation, its relevance to practitioners, and implications for further investigation.     

Unsettling equity frames in Australian universities to embrace people seeking asylum

ABSTRACT

Transnational migration, especially the growth of forced migration is unsettling the literature on widening access to university education. Equity definitions and understandings that frame social inclusion have presumed stable domestic populations within nations and targeted redressing historic internal social inequalities. Refugees and people seeking asylum have high aspirations to access to university education to gain recognition or update qualifications. University access for refugees and people seeking asylum is hampered by restricted funding entitlements that privilege citizens and admissions criteria that position them in the international student market and favour language and cultural requirements that reflect the dominant national culture. A qualitative narrative-based case-study of the admissions practices in one university in Australia explored the opportunities and blockages experienced by those seeking access and the dilemmas recognised by the admissions’ gatekeepers. Employing organisational theory and Scott’s three pillars of a neo-institutional framework, the regulative, the normative and the cultural-cognitive pillars, the article argues that homogenised institutional policies and practices to assess applications construct norms of access and equity, which create new exclusions for forced migrants. In revealing how some gatekeepers sought to ‘workaround’ these practices of exclusion, the article provides hope that informal learning within organisations can lead to organisational change.     

Technology as Play

The role of play in young children's learning has always been considered to be of primary importance. Thus, early childhood programs have been characterized by curricula that provide plenty of opportunity for young children to play and interact with materials, ideas, and people. As we approach the new millennium, the impact of the new information technologies on play and as play, for young children need to be conceptualized and discussed. This article begins that discussion. The view that there are opportunities for young children to play in technological environments as well as with traditional materials and contexts is presented.     

Expressive Vocabulary Predicts Nonverbal Executive Function: A 2-year Longitudinal Study of Deaf and Hearing Children

Numerous studies suggest an association between language and executive function (EF), but evidence of a developmental relationship remains inconclusive. Data were collected from 75 deaf/hard-of-hearing (DHH) children and 82 hearing age-matched controls. Children were 6–11 years old at first time of testing and completed a battery of nonverbal EF tasks and a test of expressive vocabulary. These tasks were completed again 2 years later. Both groups improved their scores on all tasks over this period. DHH children performed significantly less well than hearing peers on some EF tasks and the vocabulary test at both time points. Cross-lagged panel models showed that vocabulary at Time 1 predicted change in EF scores for both DHH and hearing children but not the reverse.