Supporting Students' Ability to Reason about Data

The purpose of this paper is to describe the role of an instructional sequence and two accompanying computer-based tools in supporting students' developing understandings of statistical data analysis. In doing so, we also take account of the role of the data creation process in supporting students' ability to engage in genuine data analysis. Data is taken from two classroom teaching experiments conducted with middle-grades students (ages twelve and thirteen) in the fall semester of 1998 and 1999. Through analysis of two classroom episodes we document 1) the emergence of the sociomathematical norm of what counts as a mathematical argument in the context of data analysis, and 2) the importance of the data creation process in grounding the students' activity in the context of a problem or question under investigation. These claims are grounded in students' ways of reasoning about data as they made arguments in the course of their analyses.This revised version was published online in October 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Reframing leadership as a participative pedagogy: the working theories of early years professionals

Traditional notions of leadership are at odds with the pedagogy and ethos of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), prompting increasing international concern to develop new understandings which are better suited and create greater leadership capacity. The introduction of the Early Years Professional (EYP) in England, as a leader of practice without association with an organisational position, gave impetus to the idea of pedagogic leadership. This paper draws on two qualitative studies to examine the working theories of EYPs in leading practice to discover how they interpret and apply their professional purpose. An interpretive approach was adopted to develop patterns of meaning from practitioner stories which show an emerging notion of leadership founded on ‘passionate care’ to improve the education and well-being of young children. Such leadership can be exercised regardless of positional role as it does not operate through authority but from moral purpose and it seeks to release agency for change with others by building trusting relationships. This provides scope to reconceptualise leadership in ECEC as a participative pedagogy which could generate greater leadership capital if embedded into professional development.     

Silent Films and Strange Stories: Theory of Mind,Gender, and Social Experiences in Middle Childhood

In this study of two hundred and thirty 8‐ to 13‐year‐olds, a new “Silent Films” task is introduced, designed to address the dearth of research on theory of mind in older children by providing a film‐based analogue of F. G. E. Happé's (1994) Strange Stories task. Confirmatory factor analysis showed that all items from both tasks loaded onto a single theory‐of‐mind latent factor. With effects of verbal ability and family affluence controlled, theory‐of‐mind latent factor scores increased significantly with age, indicating that mentalizing skills continue to develop through middle childhood. Girls outperformed boys on the theory‐of‐mind latent factor, and the correlates of individual differences in theory of mind were gender specific: Low scores were related to loneliness in girls and to peer rejection in boys.     

The Alert Program for self-management of behaviour in second level schools: results of phase 1 of a pilot study

This article reports on Phase 1 of a pilot programme on self-management of behaviour with challenging class groups of students as part of the evidence-informed practice of the National Behaviour Support Service. The Alert Program is a structured active learning programme using an engine analogy. The person’s engine runs on high, low or just right for the task in hand. The focus of this first phase of the pilot was on the appropriateness of module content, teaching approaches, resource materials and classroom management strategies. Eighty-five first year students (aged 12–13 years) and four teachers in four second level partner schools in areas of social disadvantage were involved. Trial 1 offered five class sessions and Trial 2 offered eight. Phase 1 was occupational therapist led with class teacher support. Perceptions from teachers and students were gathered by questionnaires. Teachers reported that the content and class management strategies were appropriate. Students gained an understanding of their behaviour and identified self-management strategies for use in the class. They recommended that all teachers working with the class group should be familiar with the language and techniques of the programme to reinforce learning. Feedback from 85% (72) of students confirmed that the learning tasks were considered by the majority to be enjoyable and relevant. The group of students perceived to be the most challenging gave the most positive scores, and 100% of these indicated their intention to use their new self-management strategies in class. The positive results led to Phase 2 of the pilot in which teachers took the lead role with occupational therapist support in a national pilot in 16 schools in areas of social disadvantage.     

A follow-up assessment of a second-grade problem-centered mathematics project

Five second-grade classes in two schools participated in a project that was generally compatible with a constructivist theory of knowing. At the end of the school year, the students in these classes and their peers in six non-project classes in the same schools were assigned to ten textbook-based third-grade classes on the basis of reading scores. The two groups of students were compared at the end of the third-grade year on a standardized achievement test and on instruments designed to assess their conceptual development in arithmetic, their personal goals in mathematics, and their beliefs about reasons for success in mathematics. The levels of computation performance on familiar textbook tasks were comparable, but former project students had attained more advanced levels of conceptual understanding. In addition, they held stronger beliefs about the importance of working hard and being interested in mathematics, and about understanding and collaborating. Further, they attributed less importance to conforming to the solution methods of others.