Some difficulties in informal assessment in mathematics

In this theoretical paper the informal assessment practices of two experienced teachers are used as cases for generating questions about future developments in formative assessment practice. Both teachers maintain a consistent formative assessment focus on the development of their students as enquirers, and one of them supplements this with explicit self‐assessment activities. However, there are subject‐specific gaps in the ways in which they assess and describe their students and these are not addressed in widely promulgated advice about formative assessment. Questions are raised about how teachers might be supported to develop their assessment of subject‐specific behaviour.     

Science identity development: how multimodal composition mediates student role-taking as scientist in a media-rich learning environment

Educational technology research and development - Science identity has been widely discussed in recent years; however, research on its development in multimodal composing environments, especially...     

Learning to apply numbers to nature

Working within the framework of a Wittgensteinian view of number, I exp the learning of English speaking and Yoruba speaking children as they work towards mean ful use of number names. I find that English speaking children and Yoruba speaking child appropriate different types of concepts in their development towards number use. The conc differ because the types of material objects that English speakers and Yoruba speakers tal differ. It seems that monolingual Yoruba speaking village children might be slower in apprc ating concepts associated with number use in Yoruba than their bilingual compatriots monolingual English speaking children, and that the bilingual children's learning is enhance their bilingualism.     

Pedagogy before Technology: Re-thinking the Relationship between ICT and Teaching

This paper addresses a conundrum: despite the ubiquity of technology in the business world, no clear role has emerged in education. After many years of national policies and investment in Information Technologies in the UK and elsewhere, technology is still an imposed and novel 'outsider' in the pedagogy of schools. This paper charts a series of experiences and failures in the UK, and highlights the unresolved dichotomy of purpose about why Information and Communication Technology (ICT) should be used in education. Understanding the problematic of using Information Technologies demands a consideration of some more fundamental educational issues. ICT is often perceived as a catalyst for change, change in teaching style, change in learning approaches, and change in access to information. Yet the rhetoric for change has been too associated with the symbolic function of technology in society, which sits uncomfortably with teachers' professional judgements. So educational computing, it would appear, has yet to find its own voice. This paper explores this notion.     

First Principles of Attitudinal Change: a Review of Principles,Methods and Strategies

Knowing how to effectively design attitudinal change instruction for various learning settings is essential for instructional designers. However, the research on instructional design for attitudinal change instruction has been relatively dispersed and lacks cohesion, despite its increasing importance. The purposes of this paper are to 1) reignite the scholarly conversation on designing attitudinal change instruction, and 2) provide directions for future research. Using Merrill’s first principles of instruction as a guide and framework, we review the existing research to identify and discuss the principles for designing attitudinal change instruction.     

Preschool Children's Symbolic Representation of Objects through Gestures

To investigate the symbolic quality of preschoolers' gestural representations in the absence of real objects, 48 children (16 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds) performed 2 tasks. In the first task, they were asked to pretend to use 8 common objects (e.g., "pretend to brush your teeth with a toothbrush"). There was an age-related progression in the symbolic quality of gestural representations. 3- and 4-year-olds used mostly body part gestures (e.g., using an extended finger as the toothbrush), whereas 5-year-olds used imaginary object gestures (e.g., pretending to hold an imaginary toothbrush). To determine if children's symbolic skill is sufficiently flexible to allow them to use gestures other than those spontaneously produced in the first task, in the second task children were asked to imitate, for each object, a gesture modeled by an experimenter. The modeled gesture was different from the one the child performed on the first task (e.g., if the child used a body part gesture to represent a particular object, the experimenter modeled an imaginary object gesture for that object). Ability to imitate modeled gestures was positively related to age but was also influenced by the symbolic mode of gesture. 3-year-olds could not imitate imaginary object gestures as well as body part gestures, suggesting that young preschoolers have difficulty performing symbolic acts that exceed their symbolic level even when the acts are modeled. Results from both tasks provide strong evidence for a developmental progression from concrete body part to more abstract imaginary object gestural representations during the preschool years.     

Use of anatomical dolls by Boston-area professionals.

Anatomical dolls are a widely used but controversial tool for interviewing child victims of sexual abuse. The present research examines how a representative sample of professionals who evaluate children actually use the dolls. Contrary to past reports, the results revealed that 96.6% of professionals who use the dolls had received training in anatomical doll use, 77.8% followed some standard protocol for interviewing, and 97.3% had at least 1 year of experience with anatomical dolls. The results also revealed that the majority of professionals did not engage in the "leading" behaviors of presenting unclothed dolls to children or undressing the dolls for the child, again contrary to past reports. The present research indicates that the professionals in this sample are more experienced and better trained than is typically thought.