Teacher views on the effects of the change from coursework to controlled assessment in GCSEs

When General Certificates of Secondary Education (GCSEs) were introduced in the late 1980s, coursework was included as a requirement in many subjects. Coursework was intended to help best represent students' attainments, but concerns about various issues (e.g., tasks becoming formulaic, authenticity of student work, workload) led to a review and ultimately to its replacement with “controlled assessments”. This research investigated the effects of this change. A questionnaire was completed by 346 teachers across 6 subjects. Most teachers felt the risks of plagiarism are similar or have reduced. Two thirds of teachers reported that the introduction of controlled assessment has affected the way they teach, and around 60% feel it has affected the nature of the knowledge and skills learnt by students. There are reportedly practical challenges relating to timetabling, student absence, and increased administration. However, over 70% of teachers consider it “important” or “very important” to have some form of internal assessment in their subject.     

Developing Instructional Consultants: From Novice to Competent to Expert

The development of instructional consultants requires both an understanding of the essential elements of instructional consultation (IC) and a conceptual model for development of skills. IC is a collaborative stage-based process that focuses on academic and behavioral concerns from an ecological perspective. It also emphasizes the importance of language and working relationships in the consultation process. In the first level of development, novice consultants develop awareness and conceptual understanding, as well as limited skills. Competency is achieved through application of skills in school settings with supervision that focuses, with the assistance of audiotaping the consultation sessions, on language and relationship issues as well as content. Advanced skills and proficiency emerge during extended opportunity for practice, supervision and research among those individuals who become interested in developing expertise in this domain of practice. Most training programs provide limited opportunities for competency and expertise to be developed past the novice level. It is essential to enhance educational opportunities and options if consultation practice is to achieve its full potential.     

Using Typical Infant Development to Inform Music Therapy with Children with Disabilities

This article illustrates some ways in which observations of typically-developing infants can inform music therapy and other work with children with disabilities. The research project that is described examines typical infant development with special attention to musical relatedness and communication. Videotapes of sessions centering on musical play with typically-developing infants and of music therapy sessions of children with multiple severe disabilities are examined in light of developmental issues, conceptual frameworks, and relationships between typical development and developmental issues of children with disabilities. Greenspan’s model of psychosocial development is used as a basis for analyzing observations. This research was conducted over a period of several years. Portions of what is reported here were presented at the European Music Therapy Congress, Naples, Italy (Wheeler and Stultz 2001) and the 10th World Congress of Music Therapy, Oxford, UK (Wheeler and Stultz 2002). Thanks to Elizabeth Rightmyer for very helpful feedback on the article.     

Differences in College Access and Choice Among Racial/Ethnic Groups: Identifying Continuing Barriers

This study focuses on the college application behaviors of students from various racial/ethnic groups in order to understand differences in access and college choice. Student characteristics, predispositions, academic abilities, and income levels were taken into account in our analyses. We analyzed data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) and the Beginning Postsecondary Student Longitudinal Study (BPS) and found significant group differences in preparation behaviors, college application behavior (number of colleges to which students applied), and attendance at their first choice of institution. The results of this study call attention to the need for campuses to evaluate the potential effects of policy decisions that may impact student choice for different populations of students.     

Interthinking: Young Children Using Language to Think Collectively During Interactive Read-alouds

Mercer, N. (1995) coined the term interthinking to link the cognitive and social functions of group talk. Essentially, interthinking means using talk to think collectively, to engage with others’ ideas through oral language. In this article I share four excerpts from small group interactive read-aloud sessions that were conducted with Grade 1 children, and examine the nature of the interthinking that occurred during these discussions of picture books with Radical Change characteristics (Dresang, E. 1999). I examine the types of discourse that occurred during these read-aloud sessions and some of the techniques I used to guide the children in their construction of knowledge of these contemporary picture books.     

The Process of Fostering Consultee Development During Instructional Consultation

This investigation examines how the process of instructional consultation (IC) supports consultees' problem-solving and fosters change in how the consultees understand pertinent work problems. The setting was a mid-Atlantic elementary school's Instructional Consultation Team, and the participants were 13 case manager consultants and 5 teacher consultees. A micro-ethnographic research approach was used and 4 primary sources of data collected: interviews, direct observations, consultation documents, and IC training documents. Analysis of the data uncovered 4 general themes related to the participants' problem-solving and evolving understanding of the work issues. In the discussion, the question of how IC is a constructive process that promotes consultees' development is considered.     

Characteristics of SAT Quantitative Items Showing Improvement After Coaching Among Black Students From Low-Income Families: An Exploratory Study

The present exploratory investigation is an extension of a 1985 study that evaluated a Scholastic Aptitude Test preparation program involving black urban students. The present study was conducted to determine if there are identifiable characteristics of quantitative items associated with a susceptibility to coaching. Items showing p-value improvements of. 10 after coaching were compared with items not showing such improvements; comparisons were made in terms of the content, type. format, level of cognitive requirement, and position of the items. Items showing improvement were found across content areas, formats, and type. Findings are discussed in relation to the usefulness and improvement of well-designed supplemental instructional programs that have the potential to affect criterion performance in mathematics     

Exploring the Metafictive in Elementary Students' Writing

Although some researchers have examined students' literary understandings of and responses to books with metafictive characteristics, few have explored how elementary students incorporate metafictive devices into their writing. In this article I analyse the stories and books created by a class of Grade 5 students and discuss the metafictive devices evident in their work. In addition to considering how the literature students read and how the classroom interpretive community influenced the students' stories/books, I discuss some broader issues about the significance of students reading and writing metafictive texts.     

Effectiveness of Spanish intervention for first-grade English language learners at risk for reading difficulties

The effectiveness of an explicit, systematic reading intervention for first-grade students whose home language was Spanish and who were at risk for reading difficulties was examined. Participants were 69 students in 20 classrooms in 7 schools from 3 districts who initially did not pass the screening in Spanish and were randomly assigned within schools to a treatment or comparison group; after 7 months, 64 students remained in the study. The intervention matched the language of instruction of their core reading program (Spanish). Treatment groups of 3 to 5 students met daily for 50 min and were provided systematic and explicit instruction in oral language and reading by trained bilingual intervention teachers. Comparison students received the school's standard intervention for struggling readers. Observations during core reading instruction provided information about the reading instruction and language use of the teachers. There were no differences between the treatment and comparison groups in either Spanish or English on any measures at pretest, but there were significant posttest differences in favor of the treatment group for the following outcomes in Spanish: Letter-Sound Identification (d = 0.72), Phonological Awareness composite (d = 0.73), Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery-Revised Oral Language composite (d = 0.35), Word Attack (d = 0.85), Passage Comprehension (d = 0.55), and two measures of reading fluency (d = 0.58-0.75).