Teaching of Mandarin in an English Comprehensive School: A case study

A group of English children in a rural comprehensive are learning Mandarin, taught by a Chinese teacher. This article describes the background to this development and follows three cohorts of students, giving the pupils' views about learning Chinese and why they chose it. As a psychologist who has interests in education and who is also a part-time student of Chinese, the author welcomed the chance to share the pupils' experience. In the final cohort, sensation-seeking tendencies and intellectual achievement responsibility were investigated as personality traits which may influence a child's choice of foreign language study.     

Curriculum bias and reading achievement test performance

The overlap of words specifically taught in reading textbooks with the contents of standardized reading achievement tests may be a source of bias that is frequently overlooked in psychoeducational assessments. This study compares the standardized achievement test performance of 62 second graders receiving instruction in two different reading curricula (Open Court and Houghton-Mifflin) to determine whether either curriculum generates different quantitative estimates of reading achievement. Reading subtest scores derived from the Kaufman Test of Educational Achievement-Brief Form (K-TEA), the Wide Range Achievement Test-Revised (WRAT-R), and the Reading Recognition and Reading Comprehension subtests from the Peabody Individual Achievement Test (PIAT) were examined. Grade level equivalents and scaled scores from the California Achievement Test (CAT) were also examined. Three Curriculum × Test repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted using grade level scores (2×7), standard scores (2×4), and CAT scaled scores (2 × 5) as dependent measures. A significant Curriculum × Test interaction was identified, suggesting differences among tests in estimates of reading ability as a function of the reading program.     

Designing STEAM Education: Fostering Relationality through Design‐Led Disruption

A significant contention underpinning the commentary around STEM / STEAM is the evidence of discipline hierarchies, and inherent binary perspectives and/or biases that lend themselves to privileging one or more disciplines over another in an interdisciplinary education context. The current focus on increasing engagement with STEM in Australian schools provides opportunities to explore how the creative and liberal arts, and arts‐based approaches to teaching and learning are being adopted to significantly enhance teaching and learning outcomes in and for STEM education. This article examines how design for a STEAM education programme evolves and is adopted in an Australian context. Tasmania represents one of the most vibrant creative communities in Australia. At the same time it has one of the lowest levels of educational attainment. Entrenched teaching habits and disciplinary hierarchies often create significant barriers to the implementation of STEAM despite genuine goodwill and enthusiasm for STEAM among teachers and within schools. This article argues that, despite the contrasting dynamics extant in the Tasmanian educational context, it is here that some of the nation’s most curious and exciting examples of STEAM teaching and learning have emerged. It offers an example of an innovative learning project and proposes the means by which these disciplinary strands have been effectively entwined.     

How multi-levels of individual and team learning interact in a public healthcare organisation: a conceptual framework

The aim of this paper is to review the relevant literature on organisational learning and offer a preliminary conceptual framework as a basis to explore how the multi-levels of individual learning and team learning interact in a public healthcare organisation. The organisational learning literature highlights a need for further understanding of how the multi-levels of organisational learning interact and a broadly accepted theory of organisational learning has not yet emerged. Organisational learning is a multi-level concept and while there has been some multi-level research, more is required to understand the mechanisms that facilitate the flow of learning between the levels. This paper explores multi-level learning, using action learning as a basis through which we consider how individual learning and team learning interact. The preliminary conceptual framework seeks to contribute to our understanding of the interaction between the individual and team levels of learning and the processes and conditions that facilitate or hinder the flow of learning. As this framework provides a means of exploring individual learning in a team setting it has the potential to develop understanding as to how to enhance the effectiveness of learning interactions in the healthcare sector and other sectors. In turn this exploration could lead to enhanced understanding of the mechanisms involved in the flow of learning.     

A Comprehensive Approach to Handling Sensitive Issues in Schools,with Special Reference to Loss and Grief

The School Watch initiative is centred in South Wales and involves police liaison officers, primary schools and their pupils. In each interested school, the scheme is explained and the pupils then decide if they want to take part. A pupils' committee is elected which is given support and guidance by the liaison officer. A key element of the scheme is the involvement of the pupils themselves and the way the pupils' committee plays a major part in the choice and running of activities. The scheme benefits pupils both in terms of their personal and social development and in their attitudes to the police. The paper ends with a number of examples of the type of work that schools have undertaken within this scheme.     

Identifying dyslexia in multilingual students: can phonological awareness be assessed in the majority language?

A study of 97 students from two schools in Göteborg, Sweden, examined reading proficiency and phonological skill using a comprehensive battery of group measures in the classroom. The sample comprised 38 monolingual native‐Swedish speakers, and 59 multilingual students for whom Swedish is an additional language. Students were administered tests of non‐verbal intelligence, vocabulary, reading comprehension, word recognition and non‐vocal phonological tasks. Two sub‐groups of 26 monolingual and 26 multilingual students, matched on non‐verbal intelligence, also participated in oral word and nonword reading tasks. No significant differences were found between language groups on the separate phonological subtests or the composite phonological score after controlling for non‐verbal intelligence in hierarchical regression analyses. The language groups were equally represented at the 20th percentile on both composite phonology and word reading measures. The composite phonological score was equally powerful for both language groups in predicting word recognition. The results of the present study suggest that, given sufficient exposure to the majority language, it is possible to assess a range of phonological skills among speakers of minority languages using the same battery of tasks as for native speakers.