Computers and school reform

Part of the vision of school reform is to reconstruct schools as learning communities in which students and teachers pursue topics of interest. Computers can provide powerful tools for students in learning communities where inquiry, data gathering, interpretation, thinking, and judgment take place. Changing beliefs in educational goals and great support for teachers will be necessary if we are to realize the potential of computers in restructured classrooms. The greatest possibilities exist in new Professional Development Schools, where university faculty join school teachers in joint efforts to restructure learning environments. New evaluation procedures are also needed if competencies associated with information retrieval and use are to be assessed.     

Men accessing education: Masculinities, class and choice

This paper draws on an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded research project on men (aged 18–54) participating in pre-university access and foundation programs in four London further and higher education colleges. Men’s educational choices and decisions are analysed and discussed within current policy debates about widening participation and lifelong learning. These choices are placed within a framework which focuses on masculinity in terms of classed and racialised identifications. For working class and ethnic minority students choices tend to be constrained by mix of material, institutional and emotional forces. For middle class ethnic minority students these factors are only partially alleviated.     

Hidden Treasure on the Road to Xanadu: What Connecting Library Service Usage Data to Unique Student IDs Can Reveal

Library data in the form of holdings, expenditures, and transactions continues to be collected. Recently emphasis is being placed on connecting library usage data to student success indicators for purposes of indicating impact. This article describes how one library involved in a large-scale, student success assessment project analyzed usage data linked to unique student IDs prior to connecting data to student academic information. Results revealed a trove of useful information that led to a more robust understanding of how students interacted with library services over the course of a year and are discussed in relation to process improvement.     

Cross-Institutional Collaboration: (Co)Constructing Knowledge About Teaching and Learning in the Middle-Level Classroom

Utilizing technology to connect three geographically separate institutions within the same state and drawing on Bhabba, and Zeichner’s notions of third space, four teacher educators developed an opportunity for the middle-level teacher candidates from each university to simultaneously observe a live classroom teaching event virtually while participating in a backchannel conversation about the lesson. Upon completion of the live teaching event, candidates engaged in a debriefing session with the classroom teacher. This promising practice allowed candidates to discuss a lesson from multiple perspectives, broadening their views of teaching and learning at the middle level and enabling middle-level teacher educators an opportunity to scaffold (co)construction of knowledge about young adolescents and effective classroom practices.     

For free: continuity and change by team teaching

Team teaching is advocated in education to offer students multiple explanations to complex concepts and to improve teacher development. However, team teaching is typically associated with high staff cost due to the increased amount of teachers involved. The authors argue that team teaching can be conducted in a cheap way by including novice teaching assistants in the lectures and train them ‘on the job’. Additionally, novice assistants cause reflection on action and prevent a mechanization of the course. The authors use Brookfield’s four lenses to reflect on the application of team teaching in a Swedish undergraduate course on software modeling over three years, involving 3 teachers and collecting evaluation data from close to 400 students. The reflection shows that team teaching can be used as a cost-effective way to introduce novice teachers to a course, while at the same time receiving benefits from their participation in lectures and course development.     

Whose confession? Which tradition?

For over 30 years official disapproval of confessional approaches to religious education in community (formerly county) schools has been the norm. However such forms of religious education persist. Some arguments put forward in favour of non- confessional religious education are now shown to be weak. Confessional religious education is now thought (generally) to be appropriate in church schools. These facts raise the possibility of a return to confessional religious education in non-church schools. Non-confessionalism is founded on a contradiction: that education can proceed without ‘confessing’ anything and is therefore inherently unstable. In fact many different types of ‘confessions’ operate in religious education. Yet pressure continues to be put on Christian teachers to dismantle their confessional approach. This is unfair and an attempt is made to show that such teachers have much to offer the future of religious education in a society which contains many religions.     

Mastery Motivation in Toddlers with Developmental Disabilities

Prior research on school-age children with mental retardation indicates that they are less motivated on tasks than mental-age-matched peers. In this study, mastery motivation on two tasks was compared for 1- and 2-year-old children with motor impairment ( n = 25), developmental delay ( n = 25), and typical development ( n = 25), matched for mental age. The groups did not differ significantly on any measure of mastery motivation. The relative contribution of premature birth, a history of seizure disorders, severity of cognitive delay, and maternal didactic interaction in predicting mastery motivation was examined for toddlers with developmental delay or motor impairment. Maternal didactic interaction added a significant proportion of variance above and beyond other variables in predicting several aspects of mastery motivation in toddlers with developmental disabilities.