Teacher professional development through collaborative action research: impact on foreign English-language teaching and learning

In 2011 we, a group of English-as-a-foreign-language teachers at a secondary school in Argentina, decided to investigate our teaching practices through collaborative action research so as to improve our students’ learning opportunities and thus revitalise English-language teaching in our context. We implemented and evaluated the integration of content and language learning in our classrooms through the development of our own materials. The experience revealed a growth in professional development and how our motivation and autonomy influenced our students’ motivation and language development. In our attempt to disseminate our experience as a group, this report particularly focuses on the evaluation facets of our collaborative action research project so as to encourage other teachers and teacher-researchers to adopt collaborative action research to improve their own practices.     

Changing the English Classroom: When Large-scale ‘Common’ Testing Meets Secondary Curriculum and Instruction in the United States

This article explores the intersection of new, large-scale standards-based testing, teacher accountability policy, and secondary curriculum and instruction in the United States. Two federally funded consortia – the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Readiness of College and Careers – prove focal to this paper, as these two organisations are creating new tests that will assess 42–49% of the K–12 student population in the United States in 2014–2015. Because greater teacher accountability for student performance will be given for these tests, there is more reason to pay attention to what these tests measure and what they do not. Our analysis suggests that these new tests will hold secondary English teachers accountable for literacy and disciplinary knowledge outside the field of English and thus raise important questions about what English teachers should, can and will do, especially when their jobs are on the line.     

Symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and home learning environment (HLE): findings from a longitudinal study

The concept of “Home Learning Environment” (HLE) covers activities in a family providing intellectual stimulation for a child, such as reading to him or her or visiting libraries. Numerous studies have shown an association between HLE and children's cognitive development. In this longitudinal study, we focus on HLE as a predictor for children's behavioral development, namely, for later symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), controlling for relevant aspects like socioeconomic status (SES), or television viewing behavior. We analyzed the development of ADHD symptoms from kindergarten to the end of grade 2 and possible associations with HLE, SES, and television exposure, using a German community sample (N?=?924). Results indicated that ADHD symptoms were negatively and significantly correlated to HLE for all five measurement points as well as to SES (except T4) and to television exposure for T1 to T4. Observing later development, only early HLE but not SES or television exposure served as a significant predictor for ADHD symptoms at school, when age, sex, and ADHD symptoms in kindergarten were controlled for. A structural equation model showed that HLE acted as a mediator between SES and later ADHD symptoms. Our results highlight the importance of the concept of home learning environment also for children's behavioral development. As a consequence, parents should be supported in offering their children a more favorable learning environment.     

Inflammation and haemostasis

Inflammation and haemostasis are interrelated pathophysiologic processes that considerably affect each other. In this bidirectional relationship, inflammation leads to activation of the haemostatic system that in turn also considerably influences inflammatory activity. Such, the haemostatic system acts in concert with the inflammatory cascade creating an inflammation-haemostasis cycle in which each activated process promotes the other and the two systems function in a positive feedback loop. The extensive crosstalk between immune and haemostatic systems occurs at level of all components of the haemostatic system including vascular endothelial cells, platelets, plasma coagulation cascade, physiologic anticoagulants and fibrinolytic activity. During inflammatory response, inflammatory mediators, in particular proinflammatory cytokines, play a central role in the effects on haemostatic system by triggering its disturbance in a number of mechanisms including endothelial cell dysfunction, increased platelet reactivity, activation of the plasma coagulation cascade, impaired function of physiologic anticoagulants and suppressed fibrinolytic activity. The two examples of pathophysiologic processes in which the tight interdependent relationship between inflammation and haemostasis considerably contribute to the pathogenesis and/or progression of disease are systemic inflammatory response to infection or sepsis and acute arterial thrombosis as a consequence of ruptured atherosclerotic plaque. Close links between inflammation and haemostasis help explain the prothrombotic tendency in these two clinical conditions in which inflammation shifts the haemostatic activity towards procoagulant state by the ability of proinflammatory mediators to activate coagulation system and to inhibit anticoagulant and fibrinolytic activities. This review summarizes the current knowledge of the complex interactions in the bidirectional relationship between inflammation and haemostasis.     

Students’ views of assessment in project-led engineering education: findings from a case study in Portugal

According to the demands of the Bologna process, new educational methods and strategies are needed in order to enhance student-centred learning. Project work is one of those approaches. This paper aims to evaluate the impact of project-led education (PLE) on students’ learning processes and outcomes, within the context of a first-year engineering programme. It explores students’ perceptions about assessment procedures and processes. Data collection was based on individual surveys at the end and the beginning of each PLE edition and through focus groups, after a period of six months. Findings are presented according to emerging themes from the data analysis, focusing mainly on students’ perspectives of learning and assessment, the role of formative and summative assessments in PLE and their impact on learning. Implications for improving assessment practices are discussed.     

A Theory of Media Power and a Theory of Media Use: Different Stories,Questions, and Ways of Thinking

In this article, I compare the assumptions, concepts, and propositions of media system dependency (MSD) theory and uses and gratifications (U&G) theory at the microlevel of analysis. The epistemological origins of these theories are situated within the differing social and personal contexts that affected their development. Those MSD assumptions that serve as background to this comparison are specified, and major hypotheses concerning the social ecology of microeffects processes are discussed, particularly as they pertain to public opinion concerns. Following this elaboration of MSD theory, basic differences between MSD and U&G conceptions of the audience, interpersonal networks, the media system, and the nature of media power are addressed. I conclude with a brief comment on the implications of the Internet for theorizing micro media effects.     

Managing Discovery and Linking Services

There is a growing trend toward a consolidation of services for electronic resources management, A–Z journal listings, full text link resolving, and discovery services under a single service provider. In many cases, the adoption of a discovery service from a provider that is not the same as the libraries’ existing link resolver service means managing multiple knowledgebases. In this session, three librarians gave an overview of their experiences and strategies for maintaining separate link resolving and discovery services in lieu of adopting a full suite of services from a single service provider. Each speaker presented a case study on the advantages and challenges of managing their chosen discovery service: EBSCO Discovery Service, Ex Libris’ Primo and ProQuest’s Summon, in conjunction with the CUFTS/GODOT open source knowledgebase and link resolver service.     

Role of extracurricular activities in the promotion of cross-race contact by white students from high school to college

A series of school extracurricular activities and types of personal, informal interactions were developed to reflect the various types of interracial contact situations defined by Gordon Allport inThe Nature of Prejudice. These were used to determine whether cross-race contact through participation in extracurricular activities in high school could be used to predict cross-race contact at the university. Canonical correlations indicted that, for whites, frequency of cross-race contact while in high school is a predictor of frequent cross-race contact at the university. Additionally, those who gain experience in cross-racial situations through participation in Supportive Norm or Cooperative Interdependent activities in high school are likely to engage in Equal Status forms of contact at the University.This article is based on a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, 1982.