The importance of reflection in improving science teaching and learning

The purpose of this three-year naturalistic case study was to see whether collaborative reflection could enhance teaching and learning of science by generating desirable cognitive, metacognitive, and affective outcomes. Reflection was both individual and in groups, and involved reflection on practice in the classroom and phenomenological reflection on the nature of science teaching and learning. The study had two components. The preservice component involved 13 student teachers and teacher educators. The in-service component involved 14 novice and experienced science teachers and 350 of their students. The authors worked with both groups to devise ways of changing classroom attitudes and behaviors of teachers and students. The voluminous data collected include records of many interviews, questionnaires, and written evaluations. Findings from the study illuminate aspects of the nature of science teaching and learning, processes by which individuals improve the quality of their practice, and methods for exploring teaching and learning mechanisms and facilitating change. Central to these findings is the importance of each of the two types of reflection for fostering personal and professional development. For both teachers and students, both types of reflection acted to improve their knowledge, awareness, and control of themselves and their classroom practice.     

Vocational education and training and the therapeutic turn

The concept of ‘therapeutic education’ is being increasingly used in contemporary education policy studies to identify learning initiatives which are dominated by objectives linked to personal and social skills, emotional intelligence and building self‐esteem. Contemporary educational goals connected with such strategies have been criticised for encouraging a ‘victim culture’ which marginalises learners and replaces the pursuit of knowledge and understanding with the development of personal values relevant to a life of social, cultural and economic risk and uncertainty. In relation to vocational education and training (VET) and post‐school policy trends in particular, Hayes has argued that preparation for work has abandoned vocational/occupational knowledge and skills in favour of providing learners with personal skills for emotional labour in low‐level service jobs. This paper interrogates such analyses and questions whether the therapeutic role of VET really is incompatible with the traditional objectives of developing knowledge, understanding and values in work environments. Links are made between new emphases on work‐based learning and the ‘caring’ conceptions of learning in post‐school education. It is concluded that—although therapy should not dominate VET—an attention to the important values dimension of learning in the field does involve a therapeutic dimension of some kind.     

Bridging courses by distance education for overseas‐trained professionals migrating to Australia: Practical and viability issues

This article discusses the issues concerned with using distance education to help provide bridging courses for overseas‐trained professionals migrating to Australia. Often such courses are specialised, have small enrolments and are required on demand by the recently arrived migrant. Therefore, there are significant practical and viability problems to be expected for the providers of such courses. The article draws on work from a 1997 study of the potential and viability of distance education bridging courses for overseas‐trained professionals migrating to Australia. The study was commissioned and funded by the National Office of Overseas Skills Recognition, of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, under its Evaluations and Investigations Program. A discussion is provided of the particular problems encountered in the provision of on‐campus courses for students whose locations, schedules and circumstances are quite diverse. However, whilst distance education provision might seem a reasonable solution to such problems, for some professions there are particular practical matters concerning such provision. A key issue addressed is conceptualising the viability of developing and providing such courses through distance education, and how this may help distance educators view the viability of other small ‘boutique’ courses in distance education.     

Email Reducing Stress for Student Teachers

This paper reports on one aspect of a study which investigated the use of email between student teachers and university lecturers during the final practicum experience in a four year Bachelor of Education pre-service primary teaching course. The paper explores how the nature of electronic communication, together with the students' perceptions of university supervision and their place in the school setting, affected the level of stress experienced by the student teachers in their placements. Student teacher stress has been reported in the literature as one factor which impedes student teacher learning during the practicum (Zeichner, 1980). We argue that ICT has the potential to maximise student teachers' learning outcomes in the practicum by giving them more control over the learning process, reducing their stress, and enabling them to manage their practicum experience more effectively.     

Observing collaborative problem‐solving processes and outcomes

This study examined the problem of assessing group process in a collaborative problem‐solving situation. Students in seven collaborative groups worked on a two‐part math and logic problem—first individually, then in groups, and finally, individually again. Groups engaging in behaviors that facilitated collaboration obtained higher group and individual accuracy scores on a challenging problem set. High‐achieving students were influential in group problem‐solving outcomes. Group scores did not reflect the individual achievement of low‐achieving students. Examining collaborative group process and outcomes offers a new direction in functional and contextualized assessment for school psychologists. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Phonemic awareness development in 2.5- and 3.5-year-old children: an examination of emergent,receptive, knowledge and skills

The National Institutes of Health has deemed illiteracy a national health crisis based on reading proficiency rates among American children. In 2002, the National Early Literacy Panel identified six pre-reading skills that are most crucial precursors to reading mastery and predict future reading outcomes. Of those skills, phonological awareness, and in particular phonemic awareness, is the strongest independent predictor of early reading outcomes. However, limited research has addressed the development of these component skills due in part to the fact that many of the measures used to assess sub-skills such as phonemic awareness are oral production measures that cannot easily be administered with children under the age of five, and are not designed to detect implicit or emerging knowledge. To address this limitation, we developed and administered two receptive measures of phonemic awareness to 2.5- and 3.5-year-old children. We found evidence for the emergence of this component skill earlier in ontogeny than is currently acknowledged in the literature. Overall, children performed at above chance rates on measures of receptive phonemic awareness at the level of the individual phoneme as early as 2.5-years-old. Results are discussed in terms of the need for a paradigm shift in prevailing models of how phonological awareness develops, as well as the potential to identify children at-risk for reading failure at an earlier point in ontogeny than is currently feasible.     

Reported maltreatment in children with multiple disabilities

This study examined a population of children with multiple disabilities to investigate whether functional, developmental, or perinatal factors could differentiate children reported and substantiated as maltreated from those not so reported. Data were collected from medical records of a cohort of 500 children evaluated between 1973 and 1984 at the Kennedy Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. Maltreatment reporting was documented through the State of Maryland Abuse Registry and the counties of residence of all study children. Results indicated that the profiles of demographic and family characteristics associated with child maltreatment reporting in this population are consistent with the literature, but child functional and developmental characteristics were not confirmed as risk factors for substantiated maltreatment reports. Indeed, contrary to investigator expectations, the more severely disabled children, in terms of functioning, appeared at less risk of maltreatment than did disabled children functioning at more age-appropriate levels.