Work, skills development for employability and education for sustainable development

This article focuses on the radical changes taking place in skills development for work and life, and their implications for the content of education and schooling. It examines skills development for employability and workforce education, with particular reference to technical and vocational education and training (TVET). In turn, it is argued that the impact of these issues upon the world of work will be reflected in those education reform initiatives that will become necessary to keep pace with such institutionalized change. This was a keynote presentation by Rupert Maclean at the APERA Conference and draws heavily on the chapter by Victor Ordonez and Rupert Maclean ‘Seeking a New Education Paradigm for Teaching and Learning to Meet the Changing Needs of Education for All and skills Development for Work and Life‘ in the book ‘Learning and Teaching for the Twenty-first Century: Festschrift for Professor Phillip Hughes’, Rupert Maclean (Editor), Springer Academic Publishers (forthcoming). The authors thank UNESCO-UNVOC consultant Professor David Wilson for his valuable inputs to this paper and to the keynote presentation.     

Using Peer Feedback to Improve Students’ Scientific Inquiry

This article examines a 7th grade teacher’s pedagogical practices to support her students to provide peer feedback to one another using technology during scientific inquiry. This research is part of a larger study in which teachers in California and Washington and their classes engaged in inquiry projects using a Web-based system called Web of Inquiry. Videotapes of classroom lessons and artifacts such as student work were collected as part of the corpus of data. In the case examined, Ms. E supports her students to collectively define “meaningful feedback,” thereby improving the quality of feedback that was provided in the future. This is especially timely, given the attention in Next Generation Science Standards to cross-cutting concepts and practices that require students discuss and debate ideas with each other in order to improve their understanding and their written inquiry reports (NGSS, 2013).     

Talk about texts at the computer: using ICT to develop children's oral and literate abilities

This article describes the outcomes of recent research on children's talk while engaged in joint literacy activities in primary school (Year 5). The research is based on a conception of talk as a tool for ‘thinking together’, with computer software being treated as a resource for organising and focusing children's involvement in collaborative activities. The results are used to discuss the value of classroom talk and computer‐based activities for promoting children's literacy development.     

Explicit reasoning, creativity and co-construction in primary school children's collaborative activities

This paper describes research that explored the question of whether or not it is possible to characterise and teach a single type of educationally productive talk. We analysed and compared the quality of children's interactional strategies when jointly working on a reasoning task and a psycholinguistic task. The latter involved writing an integrated summary of three related texts. Sixth grade primary school children (11–12 years old) solved these two tasks as pre- and post-tests before and after training in the use of ‘Exploratory Talk’ (ET) to think together and argue as well as in strategies for producing summaries. After training, children improved substantially in the use of ET when solving the reasoning but not the psycholinguistic task. However, using ethnography of communication methods to analyse the talk further around the latter task revealed that both the number and quality of communicative events and acts increased importantly. These changes were accompanied by a significant improvement in the quality of the summaries produced. These findings suggest that the requirement for explicit reasoning in the definition and analysis of ET may be task dependent. To account for the common features of the educationally productive talk in the two settings, we propose the more inclusive concept of co-constructive talk to characterise the inter-subjective orientation, social ground rules and communicative actions that support effective collaboration, co-ordination and creativity.     

Self-Evaluations and Intergroup Attitudes in Children Aged Three to Nine

The effects of individual and group performance on children's evaluations of themselves and in- and out-group were examined. 128 girls and boys aged 3, 5, 7, and 9 years were randomly assigned to alleged "fast" or "slow" teams and asked to make various self, interpersonal, and intergroup evaluations. These showed strong developmental changes. Intergroup comparisons were made as early as 3 years, and this age group was sensitive to the relative standing of their team. However, the 5-year-old children showed markedly high self-evaluations, very strong in group bias in their evaluations of the 2 teams, and a high level of group cohesion irrespective of their own team's alleged performance. Gender differences were observed in self-evaluations after team assignment (boys responding more than girls to their team's alleged performance). The implications of these findings for recent work based on cognitive-developmental and social identity theories are discussed.     

Communication breakdown: how conflict can promote responsible leadership in students

This study of an outdoor-based leadership course for teenagers shows how open-ended, difficult group tasks can enable participants to develop ‘dispositions for learning’, which promote ‘responsible leadership’. The latter is defined as responding ethically and uniquely to encounters with difference. Uses of educational psychology often circumscribe ‘challenge’ to avoid risk and promote predictability; a riskier, wilder conception is proposed instead through a ‘pedagogy of challenge’. It is shown that course participants reflected on their most difficult moments, most of which ended in failure and dispute, as their most powerful and memorable learning experiences. Implications for schools and classrooms are considered.     

Evaluation of the appropriate time period between sampling and analyzing for automated urinalysis

Introduction

Preanalytical specifications for urinalysis must be strictly adhered to avoid false interpretations. Aim of the present study is to examine whether the preanalytical factor ‘time point of analysis’ significantly influences stability of urine samples for urine particle and dipstick analysis.

Materials and methods

In 321 pathological spontaneous urine samples, urine dipstick (Urisys™2400, Combur-10-Test™strips, Roche Diagnostics, Mannheim, Germany) and particle analysis (UF-1000 i™, Sysmex, Norderstedt, Germany) were performed within 90 min, 120 min and 240 min after urine collection.

Results

For urine particle analysis, a significant increase in conductivity (120 vs. 90 min: P < 0.001, 240 vs. 90 min: P < 0.001) and a significant decrease in WBC (120 vs. 90 min P < 0.001, 240 vs. 90 min P < 0.001), RBC (120 vs. 90 min P < 0.001, 240 vs. 90 min P < 0.001), casts (120 vs. 90 min P < 0.001, 240 vs. 90 min P < 0.001) and epithelial cells (120 vs. 90 min P = 0.610, 240 vs. 90 min P = 0.041) were found. There were no significant changes for bacteria. Regarding urine dipstick analysis, misclassification rates between measurements were significant for pH (120 vs. 90 min P < 0.001, 240 vs. 90 min P < 0.001), leukocytes (120 vs. 90 min P < 0.001, 240 vs. 90 min P < 0.001), nitrite (120 vs. 90 min P < 0.001, 240 vs. 90 min P < 0.001), protein (120 vs. 90 min P < 0.001, 240 vs. 90 min P<0.001), ketone (120 vs. 90 min P < 0.001, 240 vs. 90 min P < 0.001), blood (120 vs. 90 min P < 0.001, 240 vs. 90 min P < 0.001), specific gravity (120 vs. 90 min P < 0.001, 240 vs. 90 min P < 0.001) and urobilinogen (120 vs. 90 min, P = 0.031). Misclassification rates were not significant for glucose and bilirubin.

Conclusion

Most parameters critically depend on the time window between sampling and analysis. Our study stresses the importance of adherence to early time points in urinalysis (within 90 min).Key words: urinalysis, automation, analytical sample preparation methods, flow cytometry, specimen handling     

Towards a dialogic theory of how children learn to think

This paper develops a dialogic theory of thinking and of learning to think that has implications for education. The theory is offered as a contrast to theories that are based on both Piaget and Vygotsky. The paper proceeds by unpacking and interweaving three key concepts: dialogue, thinking and learning in order to argue that learning to think can be understood as a shift in self-identification towards becoming dialogue. This theory is then applied to the context of primary classrooms through the analysis of three short episodes of interaction. These analyses offer evidence that a dialogic theory of learning to think can offer new and valuable insights into classroom interaction with the potential to inform pedagogy.