The motivations of mentors: promoting relationships,supporting pupils,engaging with communities

Mentoring as a means of supporting young people perceived as having difficulties or being at risk of disaffection has become an important feature of pastoral support approaches in and around schools in recent years. The provision of support that is based upon a highly personalised relationship and founded upon principles of unconditional positive regard has been a feature of many schools and has been endorsed at government and local authority levels. Drawing upon two recently conducted research projects, this paper considers the motivations of mentors, the definition and development of the mentoring role and the ways in which it is being developed in respect of young people. The authors suggest that a certain ambiguity and fluidity of definition of the role of the mentor may be a strength rather than a weakness when developing supportive pastoral systems. The paper considers the motivations of mentors and how these may impact upon the success of mentoring schemes.     

Explaining the mathematical creativity of a young boy: an interdisciplinary venture between mathematics education and psychoanalysis

Curriculum documents for mathematics emphasise the importance of promoting depth of knowledge rather than shallow coverage of the curriculum. In this paper, we report on a study that explored the analysis of junior secondary mathematics textbooks to assess their potential to assist in teaching and learning aimed at building and applying deep mathematical knowledge. The method of analysis involved the establishment of a set of specific curriculum goals and associated indicators, based on research into the teaching and learning of a particular field within the mathematics curriculum, namely proportion and proportional reasoning. Topic selection was due to its pervasive nature throughout the school mathematics curriculum at this level. As a result of this study, it was found that the five textbook series examined provided limited support for the development of multiplicative structures required for proportional reasoning, and hence would not serve well the development of deep learning of mathematics. The study demonstrated a method that could be applied to the analysis of junior secondary mathematics in many parts of the world.     

Numeracy encounters in a book bag: Meeting the NCTM standards

Four first grades engaged in diverse numeracy encounters using children’s literature bags. This home-school project involved child and family in interactive math learning.     

Modifying the distribution of attention in infants

In three experiments, the distribution and malleability of infant visual attention were studied in 5-month-olds (N = 72) while they inspected large geometric designs. In Experiment 1, we established that infants maintained their distribution of attention from a pretest to a familiarization phase. We also replicated and extended our previous findings that infants who examined targets with briefer, more numerous looks and shifts-short lookers-had novelty scores above chance, whereas long lookers demonstrated chance responding. In Experiment 2, different portions of the display were successively illuminated with red light. This manipulation induced long lookers to scan like short lookers during familiarization; they then showed novelty scores well above chance. A third experiment ruled out the simple presence of a red light as the source of this effect. In sum, then, these results suggest that the distribution of attention is malleable, and that a broader distribution of attention, as reflected in briefer and more numerous looks and shifts, can improve processing.     

Peer perceptions of students receiving pull-out services in elementary school: A multi-age study

This study examined the peer nominations of 213 children in Kindergarten (90), 3rd grade (58), and 5th grade (65) to examine their perceptions of peers who received pull-out services for unique needs. Using Coie, Dodge, and Coppotelli’s[1982. “Dimensions and Types of Social Status: A Cross-age Perspective.” Developmental Psychology 18 (4): 557–570] protocol for assessing sociometric status in children, the results revealed that peer perceptions of most liked (ML) and least liked (LL) in the classroom were associated with pull-out status, with those students who did not receive pull-out services receiving more nominations as ML than their peers who did leave the classroom for pull-out services. Social impact scores for children who received pull-out services were not significantly different from those of children who did not receive pull-out services, but significant differences were revealed for social preference scores. Implications and avenues for future research are discussed.     

Differential rates of visual information processing in full-term and preterm infants

This study investigated the effect of increasing familiarization time on the visual recognition memory of 6- and 12-month-old full-term and preterm infants. Infants were given trials in which they viewed a shape for either 10-, 15-, 20-, or 30-sec familiarization and were then tested for visual recognition memory using the paired comparison technique. While the older infants showed evidence of recognition memory after less familiarization time than the younger ones, at both ages preterms required considerably longer familiarization than full-terms. The pattern of performance replicates our earlier finding of developmental lags in the visual information processing of 6-month-old preterms and extends these findings to 12-month-olds. These results suggest that there are persistent differences between preterm and full-term infants throughout at least the first year of life in this very fundamental aspect of cognition.     

Exploring the relationship between supplementary schools and ‘cohesive communities’

The number of supplementary schools in England serving minority communities continues to grow. They are popular with the parents of such communities because they often feel their children are disadvantaged in mainstream schools and not afforded the opportunities or the learning environment that is conducive to their children achieving their full potential. Simultaneously, over the past 10 years or so there has been an increasing political focus on local communities and issues of cohesion; both of which were high priorities for the last government. Schools were viewed as key to helping the government deliver these political agendas. The current coalition government also foregrounds the role and responsibilities of communities as part of its ‘Big Society’ concept. This paper explores the positioning of supplementary schools in relation to notions of ‘cohesive communities’. It draws on findings from a study commissioned by the Department for Children, Schools and Families on supplementary schools, which aimed to establish their level and type of provision, impact, and to a lesser degree, their role in the community and the cohesion agenda.