Service Provision for Disturbed Children

Service provision for children classified as emotionally disturbed, behaviourally disordered or maladjusted involves a variety of service agencies including health, education and welfare. Recently a collaborative approach to service delivery, which recognises the multi‐disciplinary nature of the problem area and the necessity to avoid wastage of resources through duplication has been adopted. To determine priorities for service delivery the present study involved a multi‐disciplinary sample of experienced professionals working in the area of emotional disturbance. Using the Delphi technique, goals for service delivery in terms of system, instructional, adjustment and social objectives were assembled, clarified, rated in terms of their importance, and rank‐ordered to more clearly determine priorities. Results indicate that a collaborative multi‐disciplinary approach to service provision for disturbed children is feasible and that, despite diverse theoretical and professional backgrounds, competent workers in the field are able to arrive at substantial consensus in setting objectives.     

The CourseMarker CBA System: Improvements over Ceilidh

This document reports on the results of re-designing and re-implementing the Ceilidh courseware system. It highlights the limitations identified in the thirteen years of Ceilidh's use at the University of Nottingham. It also illustrates how most of these limitations have been resolved by re-designing Ceilidh's architecture and improving various aspects of the marking and administrating processes. The new system, entitled CourseMarker, offers enhanced functionality by adding useful features that have long been needed by Ceilidh's community. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the changes and a brief report on the experience of CourseMarker's use over the last three years. Finally, recent developments and future directions are discussed.     

Learner-generated drawing as a strategy for learning from content area text

Learner-generated drawing is a strategy that can improve learning from expository text. In this paper, a model of drawing construction is proposed and the experimental design tests hypotheses derived from this model. Fourth and sixth grade participants used drawing under three experimental conditions with two conditions including varying degrees of support. On a problem solving posttest, both supported drawing groups scored higher than the non-drawing Control group. Although the grade by condition interaction was not significant, there was a strong trend in this direction. When sixth grade participants were considered independently, participants in the most supported drawing condition also obtained higher problem solving scores than those who drew without support. There were no significant condition effects for fourth grade nor were there any significant effects on a multiple-choice recognition posttest. Results were consistent with hypotheses and are discussed in light of the proposed theoretical framework.     

Developing Portfolios to Evaluate Teacher Performance in Early Childhood Education

One goal of the teacher's professional portfolio is to describe the full range of abilities and document effective teaching over an extended period of time. In this article we discuss the procedure that teachers can use in developing their own portfolio assessment to help generate data for making decisions about teaching performance. The development of a teacher portfolio requires planning, time, organization and cooperation from students, colleagues, parents and supervisors. The format of the portfolio may vary from individual to individual and be based upon personal preference. Organizations and contents of the teacher portfolio are suggested. Questions and associated lists of teaching artifacts are discussed based on the authors' experiences as early childhood classroom teachers and university professors. The answers to these questions will guide the selection of activity-generated products to best represent the essence of the teacher performance.     

'The visual helps me understand the complicated things': pupil views of teaching and learning with interactive whiteboards

This study is one element of a government‐sponsored evaluation into the introduction of interactive whiteboards (IWBs) to Years 5 and 6 in English primary schools. This element of the research aimed to gather information regarding pupil views of IWBs and the impact these tools can have on teaching and learning. To extend current literature, the method targeted pupils’ views of how IWBs can impact on metacognition: thinking about learning. Using a template that has been developed by the Centre for Learning and Teaching at Newcastle University, pupils were encouraged to talk about learning in different contexts: this methodology and its rationale are described. The results show that overall comments from the pupils are positive, with the resulting themes encompassing how the IWB can facilitate and initiate learning and impact on preferred approaches to learning. The pupils describe how different elements of software and hardware can motivate, aid concentration, and keep their attention. On the negative side, pupils candidly describe their frustration when there are technical difficulties, their desire to use the board themselves and their perceptions of teacher and pupil effects. As IWBs are becoming more and more prevalent in schools, we discuss implications and make re‐commendations for teachers and manufacturers.     

Enhancing self-efficacy for computer technologies through the use of positive classroom experiences

The effects of experience on attitudes toward computers and judgments of confidence, or self-efficacy, for specific computer technologies were investigated. Thirty-two students in a computer applications in physical education course participated in the study. The Computer Technologies Survey was used as a pretest and posttest measure to assess students' attitudes toward computers and perceived self-efficacy for electronic mail (e-mail) and word processing. Treatment conditions required the students to communicate with the instructor via e-mail, a word-processed note, or handwritten note. These conditions manipulated experience with e-mail and word processing while keeping instructor-student interaction constant. Students' judgments of computer capability significantly increased from pretest to posttest across all treatments. A direct relationship between time-on-task and levels of confidence was not found which suggests that quality rather than quantity of computer experience may be most critical.     

The violence of peace and the role of education: insights from Sierra Leone

Research on peacebuilding has mushroomed over the last decade and there is a growing interest in the role of education in supporting peacebuilding processes. This paper engages with these debates, UN peacebuilding activities and the location of education initiatives therein, through a case study of Sierra Leone. In the first part, we explore the complex and multi-dimensional nature of violence in post-conflict Sierra Leone. In the second, we critically address the role of education in the conflict and post-conflict period, highlighting education’s centrality as a catalyst to conflict, and then reflect on the failure of the post-conflict reconstruction process to adequately transform the education system into one that could support a process of sustainable peacebuilding. Finally, we conclude by exploring the ways that greater investment and focus, both financial and human, in the education sector might, in the long term, better contribute to a sustainable and socially just peace.     

Reexamining the Verbal Environments of Children From Different Socioeconomic Backgrounds

Amid growing controversy about the oft-cited “30-million-word gap,” this investigation uses language data from five American communities across the socioeconomic spectrum to test, for the first time, Hart and Risley's (1995) claim that poor children hear 30 million fewer words than their middle-class counterparts during the early years of life. The five studies combined ethnographic fieldwork with longitudinal home observations of 42 children (18–48 months) interacting with family members in everyday life contexts. Results do not support Hart and Risley's claim, reveal substantial variation in vocabulary environments within each socioeconomic stratum, and suggest that definitions of verbal environments that exclude multiple caregivers and bystander talk disproportionately underestimate the number of words to which low-income children are exposed.     

Transforming teacher education: Visions and strategies

The five projects highlighted in this special issue represent a range of approaches to transforming teacher preparation programs. In this article, I describe how these programs are scaffolding teachers’ change efforts through the use of three powerful approaches: collaboration, modeling, and reflection. Similarities and differences among the five projects are described and suggestions are made for future research.     

Women’s Involvement in Educational Psychology Journals from 1976 to 2004

Previously, Robinson, McKay, Katayama, and Fan (1998) examined women’s involvement in six educational psychology journals (American Educational Research Journal, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Educational Psychologist, Educational Psychology Review, Journal of Experimental Education, and Journal of Educational Psychology) from 1976 to 1996 and found that although women made gains as authors and editorial board members, they remained underrepresented as editors. In this Reflections on the Field article, we compare the Robinson et al. data with our more recent data. We found that from 1996 to 2004, the percentage of women members in education and psychology organizations has risen. Meanwhile, the percentage of women authors has remained stable; the percentage of women editorial board members has risen slightly; and the percentage of women editors has risen dramatically. We also found that the percentage of women authors and editorial board members lags slightly behind what would be expected based on organizational membership percentages for women. On the other hand, there are now more female editors than would be expected.