The impact of stress in self‐ and peer assessment

While a large amount of interest has been shown in the use of peer and self‐assessment, few studies have considered the effect of stress on the students involved. None have considered whether the resultant stress itself might account for any noticeable improvements in student performance. The research presented in this paper addresses this question. An experimental design measured the effects of type of assessment and gender on student stress levels and performance. Results suggest that females are more stressed by self‐assessment than males and that being subjected to self‐ and peer assessment, while more stressful, leads to improved student performance in summative tasks.     

Subject knowledge for primary teaching: the influence of the personal dimension on beginning primary teachers’ conceptualisations and interpretations

This paper argues that professional discourse relating to subject knowledge for primary teaching is less than coherent in the context of initial teacher training (ITT). This study explored the ways in which the term subject knowledge was conceptualised and interpreted by beginning primary teachers. The research was conducted across two ITT partnerships with final-year undergraduate trainees. Data were collected via questionnaires, semi-structured interviews and participatory visual methods. The findings indicated that conceptualisations of subject knowledge were highly individualised and dependent on personal factors, rather than reflecting a shared understanding of a critically distinct concept.     

The Effects of Conjoint Behavioral Consultation in Early Childhood Settings

Conjoint behavioral consultation (CBC) is an ecological model of service delivery that brings together parents and educators to collaboratively address shared concerns for a child. This study provides exploratory data investigating the effects of CBC on home and school concerns for 48 children aged 6 and younger. Single-subject methods were used to evaluate the effects of CBC on individual children. Effect sizes across cases yielded large median effect sizes (0.97 at home and 1.06 at school). Results of paired sample t tests suggested significant improvements in parents' perceptions of communication with their child's teacher and in the overall parent-teacher relationship. In addition, parents and teachers reported high levels of acceptability of CBC and satisfaction with the consultant. Implications and limitations of the study and future research needs are presented.     

Who Am I? The Social Construction of Ethnic Identity and Self-Perceptions in Latino Preservice Teachers

The Urban Review - Because of the changes in the demographics, it is important for Latino teachers to relate to the educational and psychological needs of language minority children who are...     

Ethics in classroom assessment practices: Issues and attitudes

Student evaluations should “be ethical, fair, useful, feasible, and accurate” [JCSEE (2003). The student evaluation standards. Arlen Gullickson, Chair. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin]. This study focuses on defining ethical behavior and examining educators’ ethical judgments in relation to assessment. It describes the results from a web-based survey of educators in which they read a brief scenario and indicated whether the student evaluation practice in the depiction was ethical or unethical. Results showed strong agreement among the educators on fewer than half of the scenarios presented in this study. These findings suggest that assessment is currently an educational realm without professional consensus.     

The transition from primary to secondary school: Teachers’ perspectives

The transition from primary school to secondary school has long been recognised as one of the most challenging times in a young adolescent students’ education, particularly in regard to their academic achievement. Research evidence from the last 30 years has identified a consistent pattern in students’ academic achievement across transition, suggesting that student achievement stalls or even declines in the first year of secondary school. The focus of this research was to identify teachers’ perceptions of the best practices to prepare students for a successful transition to secondary school. The findings were based on 12 one-on-one interviews with primary (Year 6) and secondary (Year 7) teachers. Teachers’ responses were analysed qualitatively through a process of thematic analysis. Findings from the research identified three key methods which primary and secondary school teachers believed were essential for facilitating successful transition experiences for students: curriculum continuity and awareness, communication between primary and secondary schools, and adequate teacher support.     

Community learnings through residential composting in apartment buildings

Communities need to engage in initiatives that tackle environmental sustainability issues. However, the lessons communities learn from these initiatives may go far beyond the initial local project. This article presents findings from an empirical study investigating the experiences of 38 residents who began participating in on-site composting in their apartment buildings. It was found that resident learnings extended beyond composting. Free-choice learning outcomes varied by the composting method and educational approach. For some residents, participation resulted in a greater awareness of food waste produced. For others, their involvement in on-site composting inspired a greater sense of community, a deepened connection with nature, and a desire to grow green spaces and create positive global change toward sustainability.     

Encouraging the development of higher-level study skills using an experiential learning framework

Teachers have only recently considered how study skills support in higher education (HE) can be delivered in a way that encourages experiential learning. This paper aims to substantiate, or otherwise, the idea that a carefully developed initiative can encourage the experiential learning of study skills. In addition, it considers whether such an approach might also allow student access to some of the higher-level study skills required for successful university study. Focus group data were used to evaluate a module delivered to sports students at a post-1992 university in the UK. This data suggested that the module facilitated learning in each stage of Kolb's experiential learning cycle. Moreover, there was evidence that the module encouraged students to undertake an ‘epistemological shift’ in which they moved from seeing knowledge as a set of uncontested facts to seeing it as something that they are expected to question and contribute to themselves.     

Transnational audience reception as a theater of struggle: young Filipino women's reception of Korean television dramas

This study examines the ‘theater of struggle’ in young Filipino women's reception of Korean television dramas in view of the American cultural imperialism that is deeply entrenched in the Philippine society. Mainly anchored on Gramsci's concept of hegemony and Stuart Hall's encoding-decoding theory, the researcher conducted a reception analysis through a textual analysis of selected Korean television comedy-dramas and focus group discussions with young Filipino women in different colleges. The young Filipino women expressed cultural affinity with the culture, storylines, values, and environment in Korean and other Asian television dramas that have invaded the Philippines in the twenty-first century. ‘Negotiation, resistance, and struggle’, in Hall's sense, against both the liberalism in American dramas and the pre-modern themes in local dramas were manifested in the young women's discourses. Consequently, American cultural imperialism in the Philippines was undermined, challenged, and to some extent subverted. The study also looked into the young women's dominant, negotiated, and oppositional readings of the dominant capitalist patriarchal values and ideologies that were embedded in selected Korean dramas. While there were young female participants who subscribed to global capitalist values showing their cooptation within Western cultural hegemonic domains, the young women largely articulated negotiated readings of capitalist values and oppositional readings with regard to the dominant ideology of capitalist patriarchy. In reading the selected Korean dramas reflexively, the young women identified social pathologies of poverty, class inequality, and capitalist patriarchal values and constructed emancipatory discourses with regard to these.