Promoting assessment efficacy through an integrated system for online clinical assessment of practical skills

This paper presents evaluation outcomes from an externally funded research project involving the online clinical assessment of practical skills (eCAPS) using web-based video technologies within a university medical programme. eCAPS was implemented to trial this web-based approach for promoting the efficacy of practical skills assessment in knee joint examinations for a pre-clinical cohort of second year medical students. eCAPS involves a progressive organisation of online video experiences and task expectations for formative and summative assessments of selected competencies. Data are presented from semi-structured interviews with the medical students (N?=?40). eCAPS successfully supported students’ skill development in knee joint examinations on fellow students and allowed remote assessment of candidates’ performances by clinicians experienced in musculoskeletal examinations. An ‘indicative standard’ paradigm, involving formative assessment of one randomly selected performance from the submission of all students’ responses within a small group, offered an efficient and efficacious avenue for providing consolidated feedback to students and promoted desirable learning behaviours. Overall, there was evidence of reciprocal learning benefits to the ‘blending’ of an online learning and assessment approach with an existing face-to-face environment. The medical students were able to successfully engage online with high quality and consistent practical skill-based materials in a flexible, independent and individual manner.     

Construction of difference and diversity within policy and practice in England

Policy and practice responses to diversity and difference in pupil populations continue to challenge education systems around the world. This paper considers how teachers’ understandings of diversity and difference and their pedagogical responses at the local level are influenced by, and can be reconciled with, policy at the general level with its impulse for categorisation, normalcy and ‘ableness’. Two frameworks around orientations to diversity and types of pedagogic need are combined in order to examine this tension and develop possible responses. This is illustrated through the example of special educational needs as a type of difference. The paper argues that for critical, ethical and socially just pedagogies, policy needs to support teachers in acknowledging and troubling difference at the classroom level.     

Language and Memory Development in Children with Down Syndrome at Mainstream Schools and Special Schools: A comparison

Increasingly, children with Down syndrome are receiving their education in mainstream schools but little research has investigated whether these placements may influence language and memory development. The present study compared 22 children with Down syndrome in mainstream school placements matched for chronological age with 22 children attending special schools in a different LEA where mainstream placements were rare. The children were assessed to obtain measures of the following language and memory abilities: receptive vocabulary; grammar comprehension; sentence repetition; digit span; face recognition; and memory for hand movements. Children in mainstream placements achieved significantly higher scores for vocabulary, grammar and digit span measures, but not for non-language based memory measures. More importantly, even after controlling for age and receptive vocabulary, grammar understanding and digit spans were significantly greater for the mainstream children.     

Averting a Recruitment Crisis in Educational Psychology Services: An investigation of psychology undergraduate perspectives on the profession

This paper describes a survey of psychology undergraduates' perceptions of educational psychology, and the factors most likely to motivate or deter them from joining the profession. Results suggest that interest in educational psychology as a career option is at its lowest level for thirty years or more. The paper presents evidence that the current recruitment crisis within the profession needs to be addressed at a number of levels, including: the promotion within first degree programmes of improved understanding of educational psychology as a discipline and a profession, and of the links between basic research and its applicability to educational psychology in practice; the further development of the role which educational psychologists (EPs) fulfil, and the accurate dissemination of information about the profession; stream-lining and rationalising post-graduate training routes for psychology graduates, in order to offer a more accessible career route, and maximising its direct relevance in supporting the acquisition of core professional skills; and attenting to pay and conditions within the profession, so that it competes on more equal terms with other career destinations considered by undergraduates.     

Legislation, education reform and social transformation: the People's Republic of China's experience

With special reference to the People's Republic of China (PRC), this paper examines relationships between law, education reform and social transformation that have been under-researched. The argument is that, despite national leaders' high expectations, the use of law to effect or consolidate educational reform in the PRC is affected by both legal and extra-legal factors such as politics, economics, and social norms and cultures. The paper first establishes a framework within which the PRC is analyzed. Secondly, the paper looks into the policy context in which the PRC adopts the strategy of using law to govern the nation and education, and examines the contrasting scenarios between promotion of governance of education with the law, and public defiance of education laws in the PRC. Thirdly, the paper analyzes the deep-seated problems behind the scenario in the wider social and political contexts that shape education and law, and examines the role of law in governance and social change.     

Annual Index Volume 8

The objective of this paper is to report the development and use of an observation checklist to identify typically developing children with behavioural manifestations associated with inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity. This measure is termed the Scope Classroom Observation Checklist (SCOC). The SCOC was developed, assessed for reliability using an independent observer and teacher ratings, and administered to a sample of 157 mainstream schoolchildren. The SCOC revealed a normal distribution of scores on the checklist, and the top and bottom quartiles of this distribution were found, as would be expected, to differ significantly on SCOC score. The SCOC had good inter‐observer reliability and a high rate of concordance with teacher ratings of attentional difficulties. The SCOC has emerged as a reliable measure that could prove to be a useful tool in a battery of screening measures to identify mainstream schoolchildren with difficulties characterised by inattention and hyperactivity‐impulsivity.     

The Dead Hand of the Exam: The impact of the NEAB anthology on poetry teaching at GCSE

This paper considers the impact of the NEAB GCSE anthology on the poetry teaching of a small sample group of practitioners in a range of 11-18 schools in one LEA over a two-year period. While some teachers in the sample embraced the opportunities they believe the anthology offered them, others appeared more resistant, perceiving the anthology as reductive and an imposition on their established poetry teaching practices. The process of adjustment, which occurred as teachers began to make the poetry element of the GCSE syllabus their own, is illustrated, with the implications of these findings for classroom practice.     

西方概念工具与中国传统文化资源--谈近代中国启蒙学者对民主思想的认识

中国自近代以来开始了对民主的追求,梁启超、严复等启蒙思想家向中国引入了西方的民主思想,他们提出的民权、自由、开设议院的思想具有重大的进步意义。但由于当时中国处于民族危机的关键时刻及中西政治文化上存在的巨大差异,他们无法摆脱中国传统文化资源的束缚,只能将西方的民主作为概念工具,通过与中国传统文化资源的结合,形成独特的民主思想。     

现代视野下的哲学变革

马克思主义哲学产生至今，世界形势发生了巨大的变化，哲学、科学、学艺术、价值观念、生活方式、政治格局、交往形态等等，无不日新月异。马克思主义哲学面临着空前的挑战与考验。但它以实践思维方式把握世界所引起的哲学变革，能够随时代的发展而不断前进，是任何形色各异的现代西方哲学所不能超越的．它仍是引领现时代的哲学。