Leadership and The Effective School

The article examines the origins and purposes of assessment for learning (AfL) within the National Curriculum Assessment context in England. As a part of the Primary Strategy, AfL became part of the government's drive to improve standards through measuring school outcomes. The authors describe their investigation into teachers' understandings of AfL, how AfL has influenced teaching, learning and assessment in the intervening six years and whether it has established a presence as part of teaching pedagogy.     

What’s it all about? Making sense of Australian university learning and teaching plans

Universities put considerable resources into developing learning and teaching plans. In this paper, we examine the purpose of these plans in the context of legislative requirements, public accountability and the quality agenda. We analyse a sample of Australian university learning and teaching plans using a framework we have developed based on theory and research on strategic planning and core themes in learning and teaching. Analysis reveals considerable variation in plans’ form and format, planning characteristics and learning and teaching themes addressed and omissions of key characteristics and themes. We consider the ability of such plans to meet the needs of internal and external readers, we discuss implications for their capacity to direct and motivate changes aimed at improving learning and teaching and we challenge the higher education sector to determine more clearly the role of learning and teaching plans.     

Comparison of kinematics in skilled and unskilled arms of the same recreational baseball players

Abstract

We examined mechanisms of coordination that enable skilled recreational baseball players to make fast overarm throws with their skilled arm and which are absent or rudimentary in their unskilled arm. Arm segment angular kinematics in three dimensions at 1000 Hz were recorded with the search-coil technique from the arms of eight individuals who on one occasion threw with their skilled right arm and on another with their unskilled left arm. Compared with their unskilled arm, the skilled arm had: a larger angular deceleration of the upper arm in space in the forward horizontal direction; a larger shoulder internal rotation velocity at ball release (unskilled arms had a negative velocity); a period of elbow extension deceleration before ball release; and an increase in wrist velocity with an increase in ball speed. It is suggested that some of these differences in arm kinematics occur because of differences between the skilled and unskilled arms in their ability to control interaction torques (the passive torque at one joint due to motion at adjacent joints). It is proposed that one reason unskilled individuals cannot throw fast is that, unlike their skilled counterparts, they have not developed the coordination mechanisms to effectively exploit interaction torques.     

How New Caledonian crows solve novel foraging problems and what it means for cumulative culture

New Caledonian crows make and use tools, and tool types vary over geographic landscapes. Social learning may explain the variation in tool design, but it is unknown to what degree social learning accounts for the maintenance of these designs. Indeed, little is known about the mechanisms these crows use to obtain information from others, despite the question’s importance in understanding whether tool behavior is transmitted via social, genetic, or environmental means. For social transmission to account for tool-type variation, copying must utilize a mechanism that is action specific (e.g., pushing left vs. right) as well as context specific (e.g., pushing a particular object vs. any object). To determine whether crows can copy a demonstrator’s actions as well as the contexts in which they occur, we conducted a diffusion experiment using a novel foraging task. We used a nontool task to eliminate any confounds introduced by individual differences in their prior tool experience. Two groups had demonstrators (trained in isolation on different options of a four-option task, including a two-action option) and one group did not. We found that crows socially learn about context: After observers see a demonstrator interact with the task, they are more likely to interact with the same parts of the task. In contrast, observers did not copy the demonstrator’s specific actions. Our results suggest it is unlikely that observing tool-making behavior transmits tool types. We suggest it is possible that tool types are transmitted when crows copy the physical form of the tools they encounter.     

Tough acts to follow: the challenges to science teachers presented by biotechnological progress

The public controversies associated with biotechnological progress (genetic modification, cloning, and so forth) increasingly impact upon biology teaching in school; teachers find themselves engaged in discussions with pupils on value‐laden issues deriving from the social and ethical implications of the ‘new science’. The research described in this paper focused upon the thinking of a sample of 41 biology teachers as they endeavoured to implement the first year of the new Scottish Advanced Higher Biology course and to face the challenges associated with these controversies. Following questionnaire returns, the investigation employed semistructured, in‐depth interviews with 10 teachers and, separately, with their 61 pupils (17–18 years of age) and was part of a medium‐term to long‐term evaluation of a university summer school that had endeavoured to update these teachers on recent biotechnological advances. While teachers were found to be fairly positively disposed to handling discussion of such contentious matters, they were none‐too‐clear as to its precise merits and functions; many lack confidence in handling discussion. The research indicates that much needs to be tackled by way of professional development for science teachers now engaged in dimensions new to science teaching.