Metaphors we’re colonised by? The case of data-driven educational technologies in Brazil

ABSTRACT

This article discusses issues concerning the spread of data-driven educational technologies in Brazil. Here, as elsewhere, educational technology continues to be promoted optimistically as the bearer of a panacea for historically-rooted social problems. Whilst some of these technologies have indeed contributed to important widening-participation programmes in the last two decades, widespread advocacy of technological ‘solutionism’, reflected in gradually stronger policy demands for efficiencies to be improved through ‘innovation’, has supported a relentless marketisation of the country’s educational systems. As transnational corporations position themselves to take control of key areas of these systems, threatening to restructure the whole sector, data-driven educational technologies provide the latest example in a series of ‘new’ ideas offered in an ever-expanding market. Based on the notion of ‘conceptual metaphors’, which encapsulate specific ways of perceiving, thinking and relating with the world, this article examines key metaphors underpinning discourses surrounding data-driven educational technologies in Brazil. In particular, the article analyses ways in which these specific metaphors may be promoting perspectives that ignore difference and obscure broader questions concerning education, thus contributing to the reproduction of previously existing problems and supporting new forms of colonisation.     

A review of social interventions for students with learning disabilities

Twenty-two studies are reviewed that report the effects of social skills training and intervention with 572 children identified as learning disabled between 5 and 19 years of age. These studies are reviewed to examine characteristics and components of intervention effectiveness. Age and sex of subjects, grade grouping, group size, intervention duration, intervention procedures, subject selection, and type of interventional model are examined to find patterns that reflect intervention success. Several intervention characteristics and components are associated with social intervention effectiveness: selecting subjects who had social skills difficulties or low peer acceptance, using cognitive-behavioral intervention procedures, providing individual or small group instruction, and applying long-term intervention and training. Discussion focuses on difficulties in comparing studies to determine intervention effectiveness through the examination of outcome measures, a call for revisions in future reporting of social interventions in the literature, and those intervention factors that relate to increases in peer acceptance.     

Counselor Educators' Experiences Preparing Preservice School Counselors: A Phenomenological Study

The authors conducted a phenomenological study to explore the experiences of 32 school counselor educators preparing preservice school counselors. Analysis of data from 3 focus groups revealed 3 themes: breadth versus depth, balancing specialties and professor partiality, and preparation versus practice. These results highlight the need for collaboration across counseling specialties at the preservice level.     

Genetic influences in different aspects of language development: the etiology of language skills in 4.5-year-old twins

The genetic and environmental etiologies of diverse aspects of language ability and disability, including articulation, phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and verbal memory, were investigated in a U.K. sample of 787 pairs of 4.5-year-old same-sex and opposite-sex twins. Moderate genetic influence was found for all aspects of language in the normal range. A similar pattern was found at the low end of the distribution with the exception of two receptive measures. Environmental influence was mainly due to nonshared factors, unique to the individual, with little influence from shared environment for most measures. Genetic and environmental influences on language ability and disability are quantitatively and qualitatively similar for males and females.     

The distinction between perceiving and memorizing in the presence of category cues.

The study proposed and tested 2 hypotheses to account for the claim by Appel, Cooper, Knight, McCarrell, Yussen, and Flavell (1972) that "memorizing and perceiving are functionally undifferentiated for the young child" by presenting preschool, second-, and fifth-grade children a "memory" and a "look" problem under several treatments in which semantic category cues were present. Surprisingly, preschoolers showed functional differentiation even in the absence of semantic cues--a finding interpreted as evidence for a functional differentiation in the young child's deployment of attention. Second and fifth graders also exhibited functional differentiation in the absence of semantic cues, and there were age changes in the facilitating effects of input and retrieval cues on children's memory.     

Photoresists for microlithography

Photoresist technology, which is used for micro-patterning exploits changes in properties of polymeric materials, such as their solubility or volatility, upon photo-irradiation. This process has greatly benefitted from the knowledge base of organic chemistry and photo-induced organic transformations. The role of chemistry in the development of photoresists is described in this article.     

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.     

A large-scale test of the relationship between procrastination and performance using learning analytics

Abstract

Many studies have found a relationship between students’ self-reported procrastination and their grades. Few studies have used learning analytic data as a behavioural measure of procrastination in order to predict performance, and there is no systematic research on how this relationship may differ across assessments or disciplines. In this study we analyse nine years’ worth of institutional electronic submission records, a total of 73,608 assignment submissions, to examine the relationship between submission time and grades across assignments, students, courses, and disciplines in higher education. A significant negative relationship was found overall, with students who submitted closer to the deadline obtaining lower grades, however the size of the relationship was negligible, accounting for less than 1% of the variance in grades. The relationship varied significantly depending on student, assignment, course and discipline.