Preservice teachers’ expressed awarenesses: emerging threads of retro-spection of learning and pro-spection of teaching

In this paper, we report an enquiry into elementary preservice teachers’ learning, as they engage in doing mathematics for themselves. As a group of researchers working in elementary Initial Teacher Education in English universities, we co-planned and taught sessions on growing pattern generalisation. Following the sessions, interviews of fifteen preservice teachers at two universities focused on their expressed awareness of their approach to the mathematical activity. Preservice teachers’ prospective planning and post-teaching evaluations of similar activities in their classrooms were also examined. We draw on aspects of enactivism and the notion of reflective “spection” in the context of teacher learning, tracing threads between preservice teachers’ retro-spection of learning and pro-spection of teaching. Our analysis indicates that increasing sensitivity to their own embodied processes of generalisation offers opportunities for novice teachers to respond deliberately, rather than to react impulsively, to different pedagogical possibilities. The paper contributes a new dimension to the discussion about the focus of novice elementary school teachers’ retrospective reflection by examining how deliberate retrospective analysis of doing mathematics, and not only of teaching actions, can develop awarenesses that underlie the growth of expertise in mathematics teaching. We argue that engaging preservice teachers in mathematics to support deliberate retrospective analysis of their mathematics learning and prospective consideration of the implications for teaching can enable more critical pedagogical choices.

     

Just One More Episode: Predictors of Procrastination with Television and Implications for Sleep Quality

Sleep experts have raised concern over the effects of electronic media use on sleep. To date, few studies have looked beyond the effects of duration and frequency of media exposure or examined the underlying mechanisms of this association. As procrastinatory media use has been related to lower well-being, we used data from two survey studies (N₁ = 821, N₂ = 584) to investigate (a) predictors of procrastinatory TV viewing and (b) the link between procrastinatory TV viewing and sleep quality. Findings from both studies indicate that those with a stronger viewing habit, higher TV involvement, and an eveningness preference reported more procrastinatory TV viewing. Procrastinatory TV viewing was related to subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep efficiency, and daytime dysfunction. This association was fully mediated by perceived stress. As sleep is key for the replenishment of self-control, procrastinators may be setting themselves up to fail at self-regulating, a situation exacerbated by the omnipresence of media in today’s society.     

Characteristics impacting on session rating of perceived exertion training load in Australian footballers

The relationship between external training load and session rating of perceived exertion (s-RPE) training load and the impact that playing experience, playing position and 2-km time-trial performance had on s-RPE training load were explored. From 39 Australian Football players, 6.9 ± 4.6 training sessions were analysed, resulting in 270 samples. Microtechnology devices provided external training load (distance, average speed, high-speed running distance, player load (PL) and player load_slow (PL_slow)). The external training load measures had moderate to very large associations (r, 95% CI) with s-RPE training load, average speed (0.45, 0.35–0.54), high-speed running distance (0.51, 0.42–0.59), PL_slow (0.80, 0.75–0.84), PL (0.86, 0.83–0.89) and distance (0.88, 0.85–0.90). Differences were described using effect sizes (d ±95% CL). When controlling for external training load, the 4- to 5-year players had higher s-RPE training load than the 0- to 1- (0.44 ± 0.33) and 2- to 3-year players (0.51 ± 0.30), ruckmen had moderately higher s-RPE training load than midfielders (0.82 ± 0.58), and there was a 0.2% increase in s-RPE training load per 1 s increase in time-trial (95% CI: 0.07–0.34). Experience, position and time-trial performance impacted the relationship between external training load and s-RPE training load. This suggests that a given external training load may result in different internal responses between athletes, potentially leaving individuals at risk of overtraining or failing to elicit positive adaptation. It is therefore vital that coaches and trainers give consideration to these mediators of s-RPE training load.     

Meaningful reading gains by adult literacy learners

To obtain a fuller picture of the efficacy of reading instruction programs for adult literacy learners, gains by individual students were examined in a sample (n = 148) in which weak to moderate gains at the group level had been obtained in response to tutoring interventions that focused on strengthening basic decoding and fluency skills of low literate adults (Sabatini, Shore, Holtzman, & Scarborough, 2011). Learners were randomly assigned to receive one of three tutoring programs for an average of 44 h of instruction. We used within-individual gains replicated over tests (WIGROT) as the method for identifying gainers, who were defined as students whose reading levels increased from pretest to posttest by a half year or more on at least two of four measured aspects of reading proficiency. The 46 % of the sample who met the criterion had higher pretest scores than non-gainers on measures of reading (d = .42, p < .01) and phonological awareness (d = .47, p < .01), and included fewer adults with a history of special education (43 vs. 61 %, phi = .19, p < .05), regardless of which instructional condition had been received. The findings suggest that basic skills instruction can lead to a meaningful degree of benefit for many adult learners who persist in reading programs for several months. Supplementing group level results with analyses of individual growth, such as WIGROT, appears to be useful in evaluating the efficacy of literacy interventions.     

Comparison of the Viewing Habits and Preferences of Young Offenders and Representative Schoolchildren

In the light of the introduction of teaching standards in professional values and practice in September 2002, this study compares two sets of data from B.Ed. and PGCE primary courses, in order to examine the existing opportunities for values education within teacher education in one institution. The findings highlight a qualitative difference in the process of personal and professional development experienced by the two groups of students. Implications of the findings for university training partnerships, university tutors and professional studies programmes are then considered. The conclusion reached is that the introduction of teaching standards in professional values and practice may be the next landmark in the process vs. competence debate about teacher education, and may provide the opportunity to put human development back into the heart of teacher education.     

Constructing an Entrepreneurial Architecture: An Emergent Framework for Studying the Contemporary University Beyond the Entrepreneurial Turn

Universities are engines of the knowledge-based economy, both as sites of knowledge production and exploitation. Over the past two decades a “Third Mission” for universities has been articulated, alongside teaching and research; and this third mission is understood as commercial engagement. While growing literatures on the entrepreneurial university and university entrepreneurship have emerged, they are broadly conceptualized and overly fragmented. In this article we advance the concept of entrepreneurial architecture as an analytical framework to understand the organizational dynamics of the contemporary university and fuse two dominant discourses on the entrepreneurial evolution of higher education. We offer a pragmatic approach for institutions to respond to the challenges of the Third Mission.     

Coping with writing apprehension

Students with high writing apprehension (WA) were exposed or not exposed to visualization (a procedure designed to encourage positive thinking). Those exposed to visualization reported enjoying writing more than those who were not trained to visualize, both immediately and over time. The paper ends with a discussion of these and other results.