Reductionism versus emergentism: A framework for understanding conceptions of giftedness

In this article, I propose that various conceptions and theoretical models of giftedness can be understood along a continuum from the most reductionist to the most emergentist. Along with this continuum, I specify four levels of analysis based on the human functional hierarchy: the biological, operational (computational), intentional, and activity levels. I illustrate how reductionist and emergentist approaches provide contrasting views of intelligence and giftedness, with the former seeking basic elements and lower level explanations and the latter stressing complexity and higher level organization. I suggest that clearly articulating levels of analysis and principles for efforts of the reductionist or emergentist nature will enhance conceptual clarity and methodological rigor. Whether giftedness is understood in the reductionist or emergentist frameworks has many practical and policy implications for gifted education.     

Head start teaching center: Evaluation of a new approach to head start staff development

Head Start Teaching Centers are a national demonstration project designed to provide participatory training in all Head Start component areas within the context of an exemplary Head Start program. Each Teaching Center employs an independent evaluation to study this alternative approach to Head Start staff development. This paper presents the results of the outcome evaluation for the first year of the New England Head Start Teaching Center. The New England Head Start Teaching Center was designed to provide intensive training during a 3 or 5 day period of residence at the Teaching Center. This paper briefly describes the national Head Start Teaching Center model, the implementation of this model in the New England region, the outcome evaluation plan, and the results from the first year of training. The analyses of year one data indicated that training provided by the New England Head Start Teaching Center produced significant gains. As compared to similar Head Start employees who did not participate in training, both trainees and their supervisors reported significant gains in trainees' knowledge, skills, and expertise after participating in the New England Head Start Teaching Center training.     

Risk factors in the sexual victimization of children

In response to an anonymous questionnaire survey, 19% of the women and 9% of the men in a population of 796 normal college students said they had been sexually victimized in the course of childhood. The majority of these children were victimized by men within their intimate social network, not strangers. Most children did not tell anyone about the experience.Certain groups of children were at higher risk of victimization than others. More girls from lower-income groups were victimized; also those from socially isolated backgrounds. Girls from stepfather families were five times more vulnerable than the others. If a girl had ever lived without her mother, or if her mother had substantially less education than her father, or if her mother was particularly punitive about sexual matters, a girl was at higher risk for sexual abuse.These risk factors could be combined into a checklist which illustrates their cumulative effect. Over 50% of girls with four or more risk factors suffered a victimization. However, care must be taken not to see in this high vulnerability cause for blaming the victims for their own victimization.     

Gender Effects in School Subject Preferences: a research note

Rankings of liking for nine curriculum subjects were obtained from 93 middle school pupils aged 11‐13 years, who also completed the Children's Sex Role Inventory. Statistically significant gender differences in the rankings of English and humanities were found, which were both preferred by girls, and for physical education (PE) and science, which were preferred by boys. Some statistically significant associations between subject rankings and sex typing measures also emerged. Higher rankings of music and humanities were associated with higher Femininity scores, while higher rankings for PE were associated with lower Femininity scores. The only significant association with Masculinity was for English, where higher rankings were associated with lower Masculinity. No significant associations with Masculinity or Femininity were found for science, a traditionally male‐stereotyped curriculum area. Associations found between the rankings of the different subjects indicated a tendency for pupils to prefer either more academic or more practical subjects, but there was no indication from the limited data available on their performance that this could be related to their academic ability. The implications of these preliminary findings for future investigations are discussed.     

College selectivity and young adult health behaviors

Large literatures have shown important links between the quantity of completed education and health outcomes on one hand and the quality or selectivity of schooling on a host of adult outcomes, such as wages, on the other hand. However, little research attempts to produce evidence of the link between school quality and health. The paper presents the first evidence in the literature on the potential short and intermediate term effects of attending a selective college on health behaviors during and following college attendance. Using a variety of empirical methods, this paper shows strong evidence that college selectivity reduces tobacco and marijuana use but has small and possibly positive effects on binge drinking. The effects on weight behaviors are suggestive of reduced weight, potentially through diet, but not exercise change.     

RESEARCH SECTION: Out of sight,out of mind? Transition for young people with learning difficulties in out‐of‐area residential special schools and colleges

Young people with learning difficulties who go to residential special schools and colleges are highly vulnerable, often living a long way from home. Transition towards adulthood – from school to college, or college and beyond – requires careful planning and support for both young people and their families. Despite national policy and guidance in this area, this article suggests that young people with learning difficulties in out-of-area placements are being failed in terms of transition education and face huge uncertainty and very limited choices. David Abbott and Pauline Heslop, both Senior Research Fellows at the Norah Fry Research Centre based at the University of Bristol, set out, in partnership with the Home Farm Trust, to examine transitions for young people with learning difficulties who attend out-of-county residential special schools and colleges. Drawing on empirical research with 15 young people, their families, and the professionals that support them, they outline in this article the main barriers to effective transition planning. They suggest that a lot more focus on planning and commitment to good outcomes is required to ensure that this group of young people have similar life chances to their non-disabled peers.     

An Australian perspective on school leadership preparation and development: credentials or self-management?

This paper provides a review of school leadership preparation and development in Australia through considering the requirements for becoming a principal, how leadership preparation and development occurs, and consideration of recent developments to provide an Australian standard for school leaders. Australian educators have relied mostly on a self-identification and self-managed system in which individuals decide that they want to pursue leadership opportunities and then seek out the support and experiences to help them. Support is available and provided through system, university, and service organization programmes, and the support of colleagues and senior leaders in schools. Whilst there is an extensive range of support provided by systems, universities and service organizations, there is little evidence of their impact on schools. At the school level there needs to be far greater support in identifying and developing leaders. Developments in creating a national leadership standard might lead to some type of credentialing programme that could allow individuals to benchmark their development, and ensure that preparation and support programmes are of the highest quality. An alternative view is to reinforce greater individual responsibility for leadership development and career progress, encourage schools and systems to focus less on individual leadership and more on collective leadership, and consider more innovative ways of providing leadership development.     

Threats to student evaluative judgement and their management

ABSTRACT

Students’ capacity for making evaluative judgements of their own work is widely acknowledged as central to their learning within programmes as well as being vital to their subsequent professional practice. In higher education literature, the act of evaluative judgement is usually portrayed as a process of deliberative, analytical reasoning requiring student agency and objectivity, typically scaffolded by points of reference such as explicit criteria, rubrics or exemplars. This article challenges this common portrayal of judgement by drawing attention to research from outside higher education on the role of unconscious factors in judgement and decision-making. Drawing from the field of heuristics and bias studies, the article outlines six unconscious factors that have the potential to distort students’ analytical judgement of their work. A recent challenge to the heuristics and bias approach that radically repositions the place of reasoning in judgement is also considered. Since these unconscious factors have received scant attention in higher education literature, the purpose of this article is to draw attention to them, to identify the challenges they pose to current understandings of evaluative judgement, and to outline their implications for enhancing assessment practice.     

Investigating Students’ Learning Through Co-designing with Technology

Involving students in the co-design of educational curricula and practices can benefit both students and teachers. Students who participate in co-design may show better learning or increased agency or engagement. In the present study, we investigated what kind of science knowledge or practices can be learned by student co-designers while engaging in co-design practices and how that learning happens with six high school students. We created a model to guide the analysis of students’ learning with technology in co-designing processes. The results revealed that students learned engineering design process even if no explicit instruction on engineering learning was given. Also, our analysis suggested that co-designing with technology enabled learning of the engineering design process and potentially furthered learning of science because it promoted knowledge integration. The results have implications for understanding and enhancing engineering design and science learning through co-designing with technology.