Child Care Quality and Children's Engagement

The goal of this study was to understand the relationship between child care quality and children's engagement behavior. Seventy-eight toddlers from 17 child care centers were individually observed to determine the percentage of time they spent in sophisticated, unsophisticated, or differentiated engagement, or focused attention. The percentage of group engagement in classroom activities was recorded as well. Program quality ratings consisted of measures of the classroom environments, including the teachers. All the contextual quality measures but 1 were associated with unsophisticated engagement. Only global classroom quality was related to sophisticated engagement. The percentage of toddlers engaged in activities was associated with other program quality measures but not with observations of individual child engagement conducted at different times.     

Inviting Conversations? Dialogic difficulties in the corporate university

The paper experiments with, and reflects on, the limited possibilities for collaboration and communication across disparate groups within the university setting. The authors respond to the strong imperative to bring management, academics and support staff together, and so move beyond the entrenched positions and interests that those groups often display. They highlight the implications that this may have for collaborative academic publication. The text of the paper works as a research exercise in which each author's contribution constitutes data as well as providing reflections upon their own distinct identity and its consequences for communication in universities. The authors argue that attempts to enact ‘better communication’ is in many senses a failed project, but that it is this very fact which makes the experiment instructive. They conclude that calls to collaboration must acknowledge the fact that such relationships will always be relations of power, and are therefore not easily negotiated or understood.     

Using technology supported learning to develop active learning in higher education： A case study

John Dewey believed that the education should educate individuals ＂not as passive recipients of educational content, but as active makers of meaning, capable of exercising independent judgement and of democratic collaboration＂ （Gregory, 2001, p. 399）. With this philosophical viewpoint, the author strongly believes that teachers should engage students in becoming actively involved and responsible for their own learning. One way in which to get students involved in their own learning is by using technology supported learning. This method is important in relation to the diverse student population now enrolling in universities. This case study was carried out to assess the implementation of technology supported learning within a first year module. Three online tasks were made available for students within this course. A questionnaire was used to solicit information on the online task. The findings suggested that there are many benefits that can be derived from the effective utilization of technology within higher education.     

Towards Advocacy: post‐positivist directions for progressive teacher educators

This paper seeks to draw attention to the extent to which liberatory pedagogical intentions can function as part of a technology of surveillance unless, as socially critical educators, we actively work against our own tendency to totalising educational discourse. It notes a number of folkloric traditions in pre‐service teacher education that derive from discursive practices which position students either as inevitably acting out a well‐documented scenario or as ‘victims’ of the dominant technocratic model of teacher education. This paper suggests a way forward for teacher educators through the application of post‐positivist theorising to what has come to be understood as ‘proven’ by past and current educational research. This process is exemplified in the discussion by the application of post‐structuralist deconstructive techniques to avant garde educational text in order to bring forward for scrutiny the binary oppositions in our own ‘transformative’ educational discourse. The implications of ‘advocacy’ research are discussed and a plea made for pedagogy that intervenes in socially critical practices by making problematic our own ‘versions’ of student teacher needs.     

Teacher and school outcomes of the Physical Education and Physical Literacy (PEPL) approach: a pragmatic cluster randomised controlled trial of a multicomponent intervention to improve physical literacy in primary schools

ABSTRACT

Background: Physical education (PE) can be considered the centrepiece of school physical literacy (PL) programs, but ineffective lessons or an absence of PE across the public primary school system has raised concern. This study aimed to evaluate the implementation, acceptability and impact of teacher delivery of PE as part of a multicomponent Physical Education Physical Literacy (PEPL) approach, designed to improve classroom teachers’ provision of PE and PL opportunities within a cluster of suburban primary schools.

Method: Within a pragmatic randomised cluster-based trial with mixed methods, a PEPL coach was appointed to seven schools for one school year, with another seven schools continuing their usual practice as the control group. The coach’s role was to support and professionally develop classroom teachers to teach PE and to create opportunities that develop PL inside and outside the school environment. Focusing on Grade 5 teachers, the implementation, acceptability and teacher impact were assessed using direct observations of PE teaching style, a daily log kept by the coach and interviews with principals and teachers.

Results: The PEPL coach visited each school on average once a week for the 33 available weeks of the school year. There were several positive effects for teachers and schools. With no classroom teacher initially taking PE or classroom physical activity breaks, all seven teachers regularly introduced a PE lesson and activity breaks into their weekly schedule. PE class instructional time increased (intervention; +4.8 vs. control; ?3.5 min/lesson; β?=?1.69; SE?=?0.76; p?=?.05), with lessons of greater duration (intervention; +8.6 vs. control +1.9 min/lesson; β?=?1.14, SE?=?0.58, p?=?.05) and moderate and vigorous physical activity increased 5.7 min in intervention classes (p?<?.05). The PEPL coach introduced regular physical activities before and after school and linked the schools with a national sports coaching scheme. Interviews indicated that the PEPL approach was both valued and well-accepted by staff, that classroom teacher confidence to teach PE increased and that principals perceived a shift toward a school ‘culture’ of physical activity.

Conclusions: Well-received by classroom teachers and principals, the PEPL approach resulted in classroom teachers introducing both PE and activity breaks into their weekly teaching program and schools were linked to external sport coaching programs. These effects suggest that the PEPL approach enhanced opportunities for the development of physical literacy in this suburban primary school setting.

Trial registration: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry identifier: ACTRN12615000066583.     

Admitting Impediments: or things to do with bodies in the classroom

This paper indicates how new theorising of the body can be brought to bear on pedagogical work as an erotic field. I make a case that the body of the teacher needs to be remembered in writing about teaching and learning, because it produces desire in pedagogical events, for good as well as ill. I show the ways in which recent work on corporeality counters mainstream educational writing about students and teachers. I then comment on some brief accounts of the experience of learning, using some of these concepts as a framework for my analysis.