Additional support needs reforms and social justice in Scotland

New additional support‐needs legislation in Scotland sought to recognise the way in which poverty, as well as individual impairment, contribute to the creation of children's difficulties in learning. As well as identifying a wider range of needs, the legislation sought to provide parents, irrespective of social background, with more powerful means of challenging local authority decisions on resource allocation, with the aim of delivering a fairer system. This paper uses Scottish Government statistics and family case studies drawn from an ESRC‐funded project (RES‐062‐23‐0803) to examine the links between social deprivation, the identification of additional support needs and parents' ability to use the new dispute resolution mechanisms. There is a strong association between the identification of additional support needs and social deprivation and this is particularly marked in relation to non‐normative difficulties, such as social, emotional and behavioural difficulties, compared with normative difficulties such as blindness and deafness. Statutory educational plans, which provide greater rights to additional resources and formal dispute resolution mechanisms, are disproportionately distributed to parents in more advantaged neighbourhoods. Parents from middle‐class backgrounds appear to be able to use their social and cultural capital more effectively to challenge local authority decisions. The paper concludes that some funding for additional support needs should be allocated on the basis of social deprivation, but there continues to be a need for the assessment and resourcing of individual needs, since poverty has material consequences for individual children, whose difficulties may be overlooked if an entirely systemic approach is adopted. There is a need for greater investment in advocacy service to enable parents from poorer backgrounds to exercise their rights.     

Motivation,Intelligence, and Creative Behavior in Elementary School Children of Low-Creative Ability

Subjects were three groups of sixth-grade students relatively low in creative ability. It was predicted that a set of training sessions which included both instructions to respond creatively and verbal reinforcement for creative responding would be more effective in increasing creative responses than either simple practice or instructions to respond creatively without accompanying reinforcement. It was also predicted that more-intelligent subjects would benefit more than less-intelligent subjects from the experimental treatment which included reinforcement. Results confirmed the first hypothesis whether creative responding was operationalized in terms of number of responses, number of unique responses, or percentage of unique responses. The second hypothesis was not supported, but the main effect of intelligence was significant both for the number of unique responses and the percentage of unique responses, though not for the total number of responses.     

What Is Motor Development? The Lessons of History

Recently the definition of motor development seems to have engendered a debate among a number of scholars in the field. We suggest that the controversy stems from confusion about whether motor development is a product or a process. When motor development is defined as change over time in motor behavior, the focus is on motor performance (i.e., product), whereas when motor development is defined as a process, the emphasis is on the underlying mechanisms of change. Clearly, the proper definition of motor development includes both the product and process of change. Through an historical overview of the field, we trace the origins of this definitional confusion and its impact on the study of motor development. The paper concludes with our position as to the future directions for motor development research.     

Hypothetico-deduction and educational research

This paper suggests that the classic account of hypothetico-deduction in educational research needs to be replaced by a more adequate model which distinguishes between the logical structure of hypothetico-deduction and its methodological application. A reconceptualization of hypothetico-deduction entails exploration of the logical relationship between three levels of explanation: observation sentences, observation categoricals and theory formulations. Taken together, these provide a framework to accommodate all inquiry. An educational example is considered to demonstrate how this reformulated account of hypothetico-deduction applies to educational research.     

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Most research into religious education has concentrated upon older children, but this paper reports findings obtained from the teachers of junior (seven to II years old) school children. From the content of religious education lessons and the overall religious sub‐cultures of classroom and school, conclusions are drawn about the religious socialization process of the child. A distinction is made between the child's own religious quest for meaning and the Christian culture which is generally accepted in Britain and taught in school. The child's religion is divided into the cognitive and the emotive while the socialization process is treated as cognitive, explicit and implicit. The general conclusion reached is that religious education lessons do not respond to the child's own cognitive level and are thus likely to confuse, whereas the religious life of classroom and school leads to an emotive affinity with Christianity. Thus ambivalence towards the Christian religion is produced in the child.     

The first cut is the deepest: reflections on the state of animal dissection in biology education

School science discourse is analysed through professional research literature, curriculum materials, professional development materials, and popular and mass culture science materials, including the world-wide-web. The crucial role of fun is used as a node through which to understand how school science practice is intimately connected with theories of motivation so that school science practice can be interpreted as a technology of power. Web pages and television programmes are analysed as extreme cases of the application of this discourse, revealing an overarching representation of science curriculum. Alternative directions for classroom practice are suggested.     

Editor's Statement

A model of text comprehension is outlined and its implications for some educational problems are explored. The model distinguishes between the local, phrase‐by‐phrase processing of a text, and global, gist‐producing macroprocesses. Inferences based upon world knowledge play a crucial role in the model. A preliminary experimental test of the model is discussed that involves recall and readability predictions. Readability is considered not as an immutable property of a text, but as the result of a reader‐text interaction; the same text may be difficult for some but easy for other readers. The model discussed may have some value not only because of the specific predictions that it makes, but also because it may promote a more sophisticated understanding of comprehension processes and problems in reading.     

‘Great chorus of protest’: a case study of conflict over the 1909 Eaton's readers

This article examines the controversy that ensued when the Education Department of the province of Ontario, Canada, granted the tender to publish elementary school readers to the T. Eaton Company, a department store, in 1909. This decision eliminated an important source of income for retail booksellers, who could not compete with the consumer appeal of a department store, or with its option of mail‐order service. Over the next decade, the booksellers fought vociferously, using a variety of strategies, in an effort to mitigate the effects of this decision on their profits. The booksellers' struggle was part of a larger campaign on the part of retailers to oppose mail‐order provision of consumer goods in Canada. This historical case study contributes to our understanding of the effects of political influences and commercial pressures on the provision of textbooks, which are central to instruction in a publicly funded school system.     

Efficacy of Skinfold Training Clinics: A Comparison between Clinic Trained and Experienced Testers

Abstract

In an attempt to differentiate more adequately between the terms motor ability and athletic participation in their relationship to some measurable aspects of personality, a group of 167 Pomona College junior and senior male students were classified both as to level of motor ability and participation in athletics and were administered the CPI. Utilizing a total test response derived from the sum of ranks of median scores, low and middle motor ability groups ranked higher in the main effects and within the nonathlete and intramural participation groups, but athletic participation did not appear to have any effect upon the measures studied. The pattern of results suggested an expectation hypothesis wherein higher ratings in the personality inventory might be achieved by groups of subjects who participated at a level which would be “expected” in relation to their motor ability.     

Formative Assessment: Assessment Is for Self-regulated Learning

The article draws from 199 sources on assessment, learning, and motivation to present a detailed decomposition of the values, theories, and goals of formative assessment. This article will discuss the extent to which formative feedback actualizes and reinforces self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies among students. Theoreticians agree that SRL is predictive of improved academic outcomes and motivation because students acquire the adaptive and autonomous learning characteristics required for an enhanced engagement with the learning process and subsequent successful performance. The theory of formative assessment is found to be a unifying theory of instruction, which guides practice and improves the learning process by developing SRL strategies among learners. In a postmodern era characterized by rapid technical and scientific advance and obsolescence, there is a growing emphasis on the acquisition of learning strategies which people may rely on across the entire span of their life. Research consistently finds that the self-regulation of cognitive and affective states supports the drive for lifelong learning by: enhancing the motivational disposition to learn, enriching reasoning, refining meta-cognitive skills, and improving performance outcomes. The specific purposes of the article are to provide practitioners, administrators and policy-makers with: (a) an account of the very extensive conceptual territory that is the ‘theory of formative assessment’ and (b) how the goals of formative feedback operate to reveal recondite learning processes, thereby reinforcing SRL strategies which support learning, improve outcomes and actualize the drive for lifelong learning.