“The Coat Traps All Your Body Heat”: Heterogeneity as Fundamental to Learning

This article explores heterogeneity as fundamental to learning. Inspired by Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia, a design team consisting of an experienced classroom teacher and 2 researchers investigated how a class of 3rd and 4th graders came to understand disciplinary points of view on heat, heat transfer, and the particulate nature of matter. Through a series of planned and unplanned encounters, official versions of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and the particulate view of matter were juxtaposed with varied domains of experience of heat transfer and phase change in water. We analyze the children's discourse to examine how they populated these phenomena with meaning and what they learned in the process. We conclude by describing key principles and a conundrum that emerged from this research.     

Assessment of Early Developing Phonological Awareness Skills: A Comparison of the Preschool Individual Growth and Development Indicators and the Phonological Awareness and Literacy Screening–PreK

Research Findings: Assessing the development of early literacy skills is necessary in order to identify children with delays, provide appropriate intervention, and monitor progress. The purpose of the current study was to compare the data obtained from 2 curriculum-based assessments of phonological awareness skills in a sample of low-income, urban preschoolers. Participants included 227 children from Head Start and other community-based preschool classrooms located in a midwestern city. The Preschool Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDIs) and the Phonological Awareness and Literacy Screening–PreK (PALS-PreK) were administered in the fall and spring of the year. Results suggested that the PALS-PreK was more advantageous than the IGDIs in terms of providing meaningful data for this group of children. The IGDIs appeared to be more appropriate for developmentally advanced preschoolers in this population. Practice or Policy: There remains a critical need for assessments of emergent literacy that are appropriate for diverse groups of preschool children and can feasibly be used for monitoring development.     

Classroom behaviour management content in Australian undergraduate primary teaching programmes

The ability to differentiate classroom behaviour management (CBM) strategies is an important skill for novice teachers in increasingly diverse classrooms. Worldwide, little is known about the curriculum content offered to pre-service teachers in the area of CBM. This article reports the findings from the first nationwide survey of Australian primary pre-service teacher educators coordinating units and programmes with CBM content. Twenty-five Australian tertiary institutions with primary programmes participated, providing information on 102 of the 118 units with CBM content. Stand-alone units were offered in 68% of programmes and embedded in 96% of programmes. Unit coordinators included a mean of 8.3 approaches/models per unit. They commonly included applied behaviour analysis, decisive discipline, positive behaviour intervention and support, and choice theory/reality therapy, among the 36 approaches/models listed. More than half (57.9%) of the stand-alone units and only 20% of embedded units were coordinated by an academic with a stated CBM research interests. Units coordinated by an academic with CBM research interests contained more hours/model and included research-based models more often than those without CBM research interests, although they still included non-research-based models.     

Voices of reform from the classroom: teachers’ approaches to change

Abstract

This paper reports on case studies of three teachers managing an education reform focussed on assessment, during a busy period of curriculum change in an Australia state Participants attended multiple professional development opportunities including a number of state-wide, systemically-facilitated assessment workshops. The most significant finding to emerge, as narratives of change unfolded over a nine- month period, was the diversity of teachers’ approaches to change. All three were insightful about practices that required change and could identify personal and professional attributes that would assist their management of change. All teachers attended the same systemic workshops and all had access to the Education Department’s published literature about assessment. Yet they organised and implemented change in very different ways. Each teacher’s approach was based on personal assumptions about learners and learning, the reform they agreed to implement, and their preferred approaches to incorporating new assessment practices into their existing repertories. Approach taken was a major determinant of experience of change and thus is an aspect of change management important to inservice-providers, teachers and school leaders. The paper concludes with an overview of a PD package designed with the findings of this research project in mind.     

Making a Difference: Using peers to assess individual students' contributions to a group project

Overcoming the potential dilemma of awarding the same grade to a group of students for group work assignments, regardless of the contribution made by each group member, is a problem facing teachers who ask their students to work collaboratively together on assessed group tasks. In this paper, we report on the procedures to factor in the contributions of individual group members engaged in an integrated group project using peer assessment procedures. Our findings demonstrate that the method we used resulted in a substantially wider spread of marks being given to individual students. Almost every student was awarded a numerical score which was higher or lower than a simple group project mark would have been. When these numerical scores were converted into the final letter grades, approximately one-third of the students received a grade for the group project that was different from the grade that they would have received if the same grade had been awarded to all group members. Based on these preliminary findings we conclude that peer assessment can be usefully and meaningfully employed to factor individual contributions into the grades awarded to students engaged in collaborative group work.     

The relationship between inertial measurement unit-derived ‘force signatures’ and ground reaction forces during cricket pace bowling

Abstract

This study assessed the reliability and validity of segment measured accelerations in comparison to front foot contact (FFC) ground reaction force (GRF) during the delivery stride for cricket pace bowlers. Eleven recreational bowlers completed a 30-delivery bowling spell. Trunk- and tibia-mounted inertial measurement units (IMUs) were used to measure accelerations, converted to force, for comparisons to force plate GRF discrete measures. These measures included peak force, impulse and the continuous force–time curve in the vertical and braking (horizontal) planes. Reliability and validity was determined by intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC), coefficient of variation (CV), Bland–Altman plots, paired sample t-tests, Pearson’s correlation and one-dimensional (1D) statistical parametrical mapping (SPM). All ICC (0.90–0.98) and CV (4.23–7.41%) were acceptable, except for tibia-mounted IMU braking peak force (CV = 12.44%) and impulse (CV = 18.17%) and trunk vertical impulse (CV = 17.93%). Bland–Altman plots revealed wide limits of agreement between discrete IMU force signatures and force plate GRF. The 1D SPM outlined numerous significant (p < 0.01) differences between trunk- and tibia-located IMU-derived measures and force plate GRF traces in vertical and braking (horizontal) planes. The trunk- and tibia-mounted IMUs appeared to not represent the GRF experienced during pace bowling FFC when compared to a gold-standard force plate.     

Universal access to preschool education: approaches to integrating preschool with school in rural and remote communities

In 2012, the government of South Australia responded to Federal agreements aimed at universal access to preschool education for children in the year before starting formal schooling by introducing a trial designed to ‘integrate’ preschool children into first year of school programmes in rural and remote areas of the state. This paper reports on the evaluation of this trial, exploring the ways in which integration was interpreted and implemented in eight rural and/or remote sites, the perceived value of collaboration in planning integrated provision and the ways in which two new curriculum documents – one for the prior-to-school years and the other for compulsory school – influenced the delivery of integrated preschool–school programmes. Results identify several types of integration, highlight some of the challenges of collaboration in integrating preschool with school and share the caution of educators about the push down of school curriculum into preschool contexts.     

Student veterans in the academic library

Enrollment increases in the number of veterans returning from service in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars offer an opportunity for academic librarians to craft outreach programs that address their unique needs as they transition from military to academic life. Library information and research services can be highlighted and integrated into the support services for student veterans already in place at most academic institutions. This article provides a case study of the design and development of services and facilities to support student veterans, and it describes the evolution of library outreach to student veterans through direct campus collaborations.     

Using Music to Support the Literacy Development of Young English Language Learners

Integrating experiences with music in the early childhood classroom supports English language learners’ literacy development (Peregoy and Boyle, Reading, writing, and learning in ESL. Pearson, Boston, 2008; Saricoban and Metin, Songs, verse and games for teaching grammar. Internet TESL J, 2000). This article describes the benefits of incorporating musical experiences into daily instruction and provides practical activities for classroom implementation, e.g., reading, writing, and singing songs for language skill development, reading fluency, and writing progress. Despite a teacher’s level of aesthetic appreciation and musical training, the value of fostering creativity and enhancing literacy instruction through music is vital in today’s diverse early childhood classrooms. Music can transform classrooms into positive learning environments where children thrive academically, socially, and emotionally. Providing children with structured and open-ended musical activities, creating an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect, and sharing the joy of creativity with each other all are foundational to bases for the growth and development of the early childhood learner.