Promoting the development of preschool children’s emergent literacy skills: a randomized evaluation of a literacy-focused curriculum and two professional development models

To date, there have been few causally interpretable evaluations of the impacts of preschool curricula on the skills of children at-risk for academic difficulties, and even fewer studies have demonstrated statistically significant or educationally meaningful effects. In this cluster-randomized study, we evaluated the impacts of a literacy-focused preschool curriculum and two types of professional development on the emergent literacy skills of preschool children at-risk for educational difficulties. Forty-eight preschools were randomly assigned to a business-as-usual control, a literacy-focused curriculum with workshop-only professional development, or a literacy-focused curriculum with workshop plus in-class mentoring professional development conditions. An ethnically diverse group of 739 preschool children was assessed on language and literacy outcomes. Results revealed significant and moderate effects for the curriculum and small, mostly nonsignificant, effects of professional development across child outcomes and classroom measures.     

Productive friction: How conflict in student teaching creates opportunities for learning at the boundary

Student teaching is contested ground for teacher candidates’ learning. Struggling to implement practises when expectations of university and schools are inconsistent, they experience conflicts between these two worlds. In this article, we conceptualise student teaching as a space where conflicts can be generative for candidates’ learning. We use the idea of productive friction—dissonance experienced by teacher candidates when two or more social worlds conflict that leads to more sophisticated practise—to consider student teaching as a potential boundary space that benefits from diverse perspectives. Drawing on ethnographic data, we contrast the cases of four candidates’ productive and unproductive friction during student teaching. Furthermore, we discuss the qualities of student teaching that can promote productive friction for learning.     

The Development of Scientific Thinking in Elementary School: A Comprehensive Inventory

The development of scientific thinking was assessed in 1,581 second, third, and fourth graders (8‐, 9‐, 10‐year‐olds) based on a conceptual model that posits developmental progression from naïve to more advanced conceptions. Using a 66‐item scale, five components of scientific thinking were addressed, including experimental design, data interpretation, and understanding the nature of science. Unidimensional and multidimensional item response theory analyses supported the instrument's reliability and validity and suggested that the multiple components of scientific thinking form a unitary construct, independent of verbal or reasoning skills. A partial credit model gave evidence for a hierarchical developmental progression. Across each grade transition, advanced conceptions increased while naïve conceptions decreased. Independent effects of intelligence, schooling, and parental education on scientific thinking are discussed.     

Educational attainment in South Africa: a view from the census 1865–2011

Population censuses record considerable volumes of personal information, which when aggregated and tabulated provide significant insights into national societies. South African censuses have recorded levels of educational attainment since their inception in the mid-nineteenth century, initially measuring literacy and later the level of education completed. The statistics demonstrate deep long-term inequalities within South African society and the changing emphases placed upon them by governments of widely varying viewpoints. Temporal changes have been of constant concern, with the comparison of the results of one census with another to assess the effectiveness of government programmes. However, it has been the differences based on race or population group that have attracted most attention and remain the most contentious in the post-apartheid era. The census collects comprehensive statistical information independent of other sources and so provides a highly valuable and reliable record for a wide variety of investigations.     

Heidegger’s Reinscription of Paideia in the Context of Online Learning

Abstract

One of the questions that Heidegger presents in his paper, ‘Plato’s Doctrine on Truth’, is the distortion as he sees it of paideia—that is the loss of the essential elements in education. This loss is characterised according to Heidegger, by a misconception of Plato’s concept of teaching and learning. By undertaking an historical examination, Heidegger provides a means to rectify this loss. With reference to past, present and future philosophical perspectives of teaching and learning as particular spaces, an attempt is made in this paper to examine Heidegger’s reading of paideia within the context of online learning. This, for many contemporary writers on education, is an encounter with new literacies, new knowledge and the adoption of an online environment that challenges the hegemonic order of the institution as the purveyors of knowledge. Teachers within this new environment are, however still constituted as experts and their knowledge is seen as ultimately inviolate. Heidegger in his re-interpretation of Plato sees the teacher as leading the students to where they might make themselves intelligible within the space of their being. This alignment forms an acceptance and a challenge to the metaphysical concepts of uniformity of being and place that limits the potential of knowledge as something that is fixed and complete. The experience of the social web or Web 2.0 has seen a shift in learning premised upon dialogue, exchange and constantly shifting horizons. Within this context, the teacher is recast as a craftsman, creating learning opportunity within dialogic exchange. The heightened sense of involvement that is revealed in this context lays the ground for a future visioning of education where emergence is seen as essential, unlike a re-working of authorisation to learn that inhibits student and teacher alike in new attempts at revitalising education.     

Fuzzy books and sideways looks: discourses of schooling on Australian television advertisements

Media constructions of schooling provide suggestions about what should be expected of the school experience. Studies on discourses of schooling have examined how the school is framed in media discourses, but few have examined how it is formed mundanely and repeatedly in advertisements promoting products that are not directly educational. This paper examines how the school is constructed in a range of television advertisements that sell products that are not directly educational such as cereal and broadband Internet, focusing on how schools come to be framed negatively in advertising narratives. The television advertisements often use the technique of governmentality, whereby they attempt to direct the conduct of viewers by suggesting that self-improvement is achievable through personal enterprise. These advertisements position parents as agentive consumers of education, whose consumption habits are central to their children's scholarly success within problematic educational spaces.     

Critical Analysis of Primary Literature in a Master’s-Level Class: Effects on Self-Efficacy and Science-Process Skills

The ability to think analytically and creatively is crucial for success in the modern workforce, particularly for graduate students, who often aim to become physicians or researchers. Analysis of the primary literature provides an excellent opportunity to practice these skills. We describe a course that includes a structured analysis of four research papers from diverse fields of biology and group exercises in proposing experiments that would follow up on these papers. To facilitate a critical approach to primary literature, we included a paper with questionable data interpretation and two papers investigating the same biological question yet reaching opposite conclusions. We report a significant increase in students’ self-efficacy in analyzing data from research papers, evaluating authors’ conclusions, and designing experiments. Using our science-process skills test, we observe a statistically significant increase in students’ ability to propose an experiment that matches the goal of investigation. We also detect gains in interpretation of controls and quantitative analysis of data. No statistically significant changes were observed in questions that tested the skills of interpretation, inference, and evaluation.