Lawbreaking Jokers: Tricksters Using Outlaw Discourse

In an attempt to enrich Sloop and Ono's (1997 Sloop , J. M. , &; Ono , K. A. ( 1997 ). Out-law discourse: The critical politics of material judgment . Philosophy and Rhetoric , 30 , 50 – 69 .[Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) theory of outlaw discourse, this article draws from the more extensive literature on the trickster to demonstrate how the two concepts have a shared heritage. First, the nature of outlaw discourse is reviewed, and then the myth of the trickster is discussed. Following these overviews, the similarities and differences between the two are explained by providing three brief examples of trickster-influenced outlaw discourse that demonstrate the potential for a trickster perspective to enrich the study of certain kinds of outlaw discourse.     

Ecologically Valid Assessments of Attention and Learning Engagement in Media Multitaskers

This paper provides a synthesis of core literature of media multitasking, attention, and learning engagement. The focus, however, is on the ecologically valid assessments examining the depth-biased or breadth-biased attention and learning engagement in the media multitasking environments. We propose novel approaches to assess media multitasking including electroencephalography and virtual reality. We conclude with suggestions for some technology-enhanced and cross-disciplinary research methods for improving studies in this area.     

Learning conversations: teacher researchers evaluating dialogic strategies in early years settings

Learning conversations, dialogic interactions with adults, are important opportunities for children to develop their thinking as well as their speech and language skills. This area of teachers' practice is informed by a well-established body of research evidence and professional guidance literature. The design and facilitation of this practitioner research project was framed by a metaphor for teachers' professional learning as ‘interplay’ between the vertical domain of public, published, knowledge and the horizontal domain of the teachers' practical wisdom. The teacher researchers used a framework based on the published literature to analyse video clips of their conversations with children in early years workplace settings. The study highlights the power of video analysis as a prompt for professional learning within a practitioner research framework. The use of conversation strategies by these teachers involves a balancing act between competing agendas within their workplace setting. In addition to mediating the strategies proposed by the research evidence base to suit their own early years workplace settings, in part by emphasising speech and language development, the teacher researchers identified a useful strategy, based on transportable identity, of ‘stepping out’ of being a teacher, for example by positioning themselves as a playmate or family member.     

Mary Monroe Atwater: A transformative force in science education

This article highlights the transformative contributions of Mary Monroe Atwater to the field of science education. Influenced by worldviews shaped by a segregated macro-society and the privileges of a micro-society, Mary stood against oppression in the early years of her academic career by desegregating academic settings and being the first and only African American in varied arenas for many years. As an aspiring academic, Mary challenged dominant paradigms and as an activist academic, she changed the landscape of science education. She broadened the knowledge base through scholarship and praxis and diversified the science education community through personal and professional efforts that were pioneering in nature.

The early academic progress of children with special educational needs

Children with special educational needs (SEN) are known to experience lower average educational attainment than other children during their school years. But we have less insight into how far their poorer educational outcomes stem from their original starting points or from failure to progress during school. The extent to which early identification with SEN delivers support that enables children who are struggling academically to make appropriate progress is subject to debate. This is complicated by the fact that children with SEN are more likely to be growing up in disadvantaged families and face greater levels of behavioural and peer problems, factors which themselves impact attainment and progress through school. In this paper, we evaluate the academic progress of children with SEN in England, drawing on a large‐scale nationally representative longitudinal UK study, the Millennium Cohort Study, linked to administrative records of pupil attainment. Controlling for key child, family and environmental factors, and using the SEN categories employed at the time of data collection, we first establish that children identified with SEN in 2008, when they were age 7, had been assessed with lower academic competence when they started school. We evaluate their progress between ages 5–7 and 7–11. We found that children identified with SEN at age 7 tended to be those who had made less progress between ages 5 and 7 than their comparable peers. However, children with SEN continued to make less progress than their similarly able peers between ages 7 and 11. Implications are discussed.     

Voluntary organizations and the contribution to social justice in schools: learning from a case study

Partnerships are seen as vital to the functioning of many social institutions and the contribution that the private and voluntary not‐for‐profit sector organizations can make to the provision of statutory services is particularly valued. The Church of England Children’s Society Genesis project worked for nearly 5 years in one urban, secondary school with a remit to promote inclusion. Despite much recorded good work, Genesis was not continued after its contract ended. The school had a series of head teachers and was in special measures for part of the period, but key problems centred around the extent of the project’s contribution to the school’s core business and the absence of a positive management of the multi‐professional project by the school. The evaluation examines ways of proceeding which are of relevance to more complex projects. The paper also reviews the place of voluntary and non‐profit making organizations in meeting current challenges to collaborative, multi‐agency working and proposes a more robust, directive, and managerialist approach to make the most efficient and effective use of the resources and expertise of voluntary and statutory agencies (Inter‐agency Czar and Stalinist environment!). Genesis has gone on to work more successfully in six further schools having absorbed the messages of the evaluation of this first enterprise.