Portfolios, Accountability, and an Interpretive Approach to Validity

How can the results of classroom-based portfolio assessment be communicated outside the classroom? How might a portfolio-based assessment system be designed and implemented? How can we evaluate the merits of portfolio-based assessments?     

Special and mainstream school collaboration for the promotion of inclusion

The Green Paper Excellence for All Children ( DfEE, 1997 ) set out an agenda for the future of special needs provision which was further endorsed by Meeting Special Educational Needs: A Programme for Action ( DfEE, 1998 ). Amongst the recommendations made within these documents was a reappraisal of the role of special schools to support increased opportunities for inclusion. This paper reports on research conducted in one English local education authority (LEA) to examine an approach to develop greater links between a special school and a number of mainstream schools, with the intention of enabling pupils with complex needs to be supported in mainstream classrooms. The research focused upon the procedures which had been developed to support pupils through a period of transition from segregated to mainstream education, and considered those conditions which had been created in order that inclusion might succeed.     

Adaptive emotion regulation,academic performance and internalising problems in Flemish children with special educational needs: a pilot study

School readiness of children with special educational needs (SEN) is still understudied. The present study examined how the presumed bidirectional relationship between impaired academic performance (AP) and internalising problems (IP) could be favourably influenced. In this regard, it was assumed that children’s adaptive emotion regulation plays a crucial role, as it was shown to be independently related to improved AP and fewer IP. However, to gain stronger evidence for this assumption, it should be further clarified whether adaptive emotion regulation, AP and IP are also jointly associated and, if so, how this is reflected in children with SEN. To explore these issues, two different models were tested in a cross-sectional pilot including 61 Flemish elementary school children with SEN (39 boys and 22 girls, mean age = 10.0 years old). Teachers reported on adaptive emotion regulation, AP and IP. The results indicated that AP partially mediated the relationship between adaptive emotion regulation and IP (Model 1), while IP fully mediated the relationship between adaptive emotion regulation and AP (Model 2). Practical implications, strengths and limitations were discussed.     

Can students within higher education learn to be resilient and,educationally speaking,does it matter?

This paper presents a critical appraisal of resilience and its associated concepts within the context of higher education. It addresses wide‐ranging definitions of resilience, encompassing endurance and adaptability, and seeks to understand how these definitions impact on the learning experiences of students. As theoretical and empirical work on resilience has burgeoned in terms of adolescent experiences of education, the rise of interest has not been matched by that in studies of adult learning, particularly within university settings. This is despite the growing importance of retention studies, which have clear and important links to how well students manage their learning ability in adversity. Realization of the potential embodied in this concept to alter for the better, together with ways of conceptualizing learning and teaching, however, will remain constrained unless teachers within higher education pay attention to the resilience narratives that individual students present, and how teaching strategies can affect their learning trajectories. The paper examines some factors that impact on students’ learning within higher education, and theorizes how teaching and assessment may be adapted to promote resilience in all its forms.     

Identification and placement for deaf students with multiple disabilities: choosing the path less followed

Students with a hearing loss often have an additional disability. Although the number of deaf students with multiple disabilities is growing, research on this population has significantly decreased over the past quarter-century. The article reviews the literature on identification and placement of deaf students with multiple disabilities, specifically deaf students with one of the following disabilities: autism, emotional/behavior disorders, attention deficit disorders, or mental retardation. Degree of incidence is also reported, and is compared with statistics from the annual report of the Gallaudet Research Institute (2005). Included in the review are suggestions for future research and implications for professionals in the field of deafness.     

Effects of preschoolers’ storybook exposure and literacy environments on lower level and higher level language skills

Reading and Writing - The development of preschoolers’ language skills is influenced by literacy environments and individual differences in storybook exposure. Extant research is limited as...     

Democratising Teacher Education Research in India

This paper argues for the need to adopt a more participatory and research-based approach to teacher development in India. Drawing on the experiences of a participatory teacher educator development project in three States, we discuss processes of developing a democratically orientated qualitative research team to work with teachers and teacher educators, highlighting the interplay between their education and socialisation and the demands of the methodology. In the second part of the paper, aspects of developing collaborative action research projects with teacher educators in the context of District Institutes of Education and Training are discussed. Both these approaches require the development of autonomy and critical reflexivity, and although there are tensions in this process, these emerge as vital components of developing a more democratic approach to teacher education.     

Dialogue's Impact on the Quality of Relationships

This paper presents the findings of an action research that examines teachers' perception of the quality of dialogue and how it impacts on the quality of relationships in a primary school in Singapore. The paper explores how school leaders can facilitate dialogue and also discusses the issues and factors that affect teachers' perception of dialogue. Analysis of the data obtained through a questionnaire and face-to-face interviews shows that the more favourable the perception of dialogue amongst teachers, the more favourable is their perception of the quality of relationships in the school. The implication for school leaders is that by developing a higher quality of dialogue, a better school climate is fostered. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Children writing funny stories: some reflections on the impact of collaborative talk

This article describes work undertaken with a class of Scottish Primary Six children (aged 10) that encouraged them to write humorous stories. It reflects on the impact of different teaching approaches, in particular exploring how teacher‐led input combined with opportunities for peer talk might serve to influence children's writing. The aims were first, to investigate whether, through ‘mini lessons’, children's story schemas could be expanded to include ideas about incongruity, and second, to discover how independent talking in pairs might encourage children to take up and reformulate ideas given in the initial teacher‐led input. During the sessions following the ‘mini lessons’, many opportunities for paired talk were offered. These were found to lead to a reinterpretation of ideas of incongruity, and to affect the selection and devising of voices for characters. The children's talk often gave evidence of a marked ability to describe humour and act it out orally, but analysis of the written stories reveals difficulties in writing down comic events. This has implications for the role of the teacher in finding ways to intervene sensitively to introduce new strategies.