A framework for designing interactive multimedia to scaffold young children's understanding of historical chronology

Young children's understanding of thehistorical past is often characterised by alack of temporal differentiation and a sense oftotal discontinuity with the present. Researchhas suggested that this situation may be causedin part by their formation of inappropriaterepresentations when solving problems ofchronology. To help children construct moreappropriate external representations forparticular tasks and reason more effectivelywith them about chronological concepts, weinvestigated the role that interactivemultimedia might play in scaffoldingteacher-led activities in the classroom. Inthis paper we report on our conceptual designand pedagogical approach to developingeffective dynamic, interactive representationsand activities at the computer interface, aimedat bridging the conceptual gap between concreteexperience and abstract concepts. Evaluationsof the software built using this frameworkshowed that the program was well received bychildren and teachers alike, and that it wasable to facilitate children's understanding of,and ability to reason about, chronology.     

Jamming market rhetoric in Wisconsin's 2011 labor protests

Taking the case of the 2011 protests at the Wisconsin state capitol, this essay theorizes a model of political culture jamming. When 100,000 people swarmed downtown Madison, I argue, they jammed both Governor Scott Walker's market-based rhetoric and organized labor's typical response to such attacks. This case study, then, extends culture jamming as a way of understanding resistance to the marketization of realms that extend beyond the vaguely cultural. It demonstrates that when expanded to include embodied, political action, culture jamming offers a particularly useful lens through which activists may challenge rhetorics that promote ever-expanding markets.     

Teaching the Nature of Science from a Philosophical Perspective

This paper draws attention to basic philosophical perspectives which are of theoretical and methodological interest for science education, general education and curriculum research. It focuses on potential contributions philosophy class can offer if philosophy education opens up for science and for a collaboration of teachers in the context of post-compulsory education. A central educational goal is to connect basic philosophical skills with any curricular intellectual practice. This implies the possibility of crossing disciplinary boundaries. Hence, the present paper questions the disciplinary rigidity of education and aims at bridging the artificial gap between teaching philosophy and teaching science in order to enrich the individual school subjects involved. Towards this end, this article sketches out a conceptual framework for the issue of interdisciplinarity with regard to philosophy and science in upper secondary school. This framework takes into account aspects of the nature of science (NOS), history and philosophy of science (HPS) and the critical thinking approach which have significant implications for teaching. It aims to facilitate a basic understanding of the significant positive impact philosophy could have on improving scientific literacy as well as decision-making in general. I set forth methods of cross-curricular teaching which can promote innovation in education as interdisciplinarity already does in research since there is growing appreciation of collaboration and partnership between philosophy and science.

     

The effect of pictures on the reading processes of less able readers: a miscue analysis approach

The impact of illustrations on the reading performance of children with reading difficulties has been examined. Nineteen children from the first year of three comprehensive schools each read illustrated and unillustrated fictional passages at three levels of difficulty. The reading performance was assessed using miscue analysis, Goodman and Burke (1972) and a two-way analysis of variance was applied to analyse the results. Reading performance was assessed in the area of: total errors, time taken to read the passages, comprehension, grammatical relationships and errors excluding omissions and insertions. The results suggested that, in the majority of these aspects of the reading process, there was a statistically significant interaction between illustration and difficulty levels. At the lower level of difficulty, reading performance in the illustrated conditions was superior to that in the unillustrated conditions. At the higher level of difficulty the reverse trend was apparent.     

Liminal spaces constructed by primary schools in predominantly white working-class areas in England

ABSTRACT

Despite successive policy interventions, students’ socio-economic status continues to strongly predict educational outcomes. Many schools aspire to ‘close’ this ‘gap’. This paper presents an ethnographic study of a group of Primary schools in predominantly white working-class areas in the Midlands of England. Generating ethnographic data through time-recurrent, multi-sited fieldwork including observation, informal conversations, semi-structured interviews, photography and documentary analysis, findings were constructed through critical dialogue between the group of six researchers. A concept of liminal spaces is used to analyse the schools’ work in seeking to move individuals, families, and communities beyond that which they previously knew, foregrounding norms, practices, and discourses constructed on the ‘inside’, and highlighting aspects in tension with the imagined ‘outside’. These schools’ conceptualisations of poverty are shown to be complex and multifaceted, and suggestions are made to employ liminality for articulating and critically exploring the spaces and transformations that schools seek to construct.     

Differential effects of home and preschool learning environments on early language development

The present study is based on longitudinal data from a German early childhood education and care (ECEC) governmental initiative assessing children's grammatical and vocabulary development between 2;6 and 4;0 years (N = 1,331), quality of the home learning environment and quality of the preschool setting. Results showed that the quality of the home learning environment predicted development in grammatical skills, but not in receptive vocabulary at age 4, while the effects of preschool process quality showed similar relative impacts on both language outcomes. Further analyses revealed effects of accumulated advantages of preschool quality for children from medium‐ and high‐quality home learning environments in their vocabulary development. The results are compared with previous findings from the German ECEC context and discussed with respect to implications for policy efforts to improve ECEC quality and ways in which both learning environments act together on children's development.     

Sci-Tec: Evaluating a non-deficit model of in-service

The Sci-Tec project was based on an interactive, non-deficit model of in-service in which the fundamental principle was to value the expertise of all participants, and to encourage them to share that expertise with others. As part of the unfolding of the project, the participants also identified various areas of need as they arose, and these too became elements of the in-service agenda. The model has proved to be robust when applied in a wide range of schools, and with teachers who originally expressed widely varying degrees of confidence and interest in teaching primary science and technology. Specializations: primary science in-service education, curriculum leadership Specializations: in-service and pre-service primary science and technology