Student perceptions of personalised learning: development and validation of a questionnaire with regional secondary students

This project sought to evaluate regional students’ perceptions of their readiness to learn, assessment processes, engagement, extent to which their learning is personalised and to relate these to academic efficacy, academic achievement, and student well-being. It also examined teachers’ perceptions of students’ readiness to learn, the assessment process, engagement, and the extent to which students’ learning is personalised. The sample involved students in years 7–10 from six Victorian secondary schools. An instrument Personalised Learning Environment Questionnaire (PLQ) was developed to measure students’ perceptions of the factors effecting the implementation of Personalised Learning Plans (PLPs). It employed the latest scales to assess a range of PLP indicator variables, with all scales modified for use in an Australian context, and the total number of items kept to a minimum. Only scales more sensitive to PLPs were used to minimise the length of the instrument. There were three outcome variables: academic efficacy, academic achievement, and student well-being. The PLPs were assessed through scales that assess several contributing, distinct dimensions: selfdirected learning readiness, personal achievement, goal orientation, learning environment, personalised teaching and learning initiatives, curriculum entitlement and choice, and perceptions of assessment for learning. The trail PLQ was administered to 220 students, resulting in a 19 scale questionnaire with three or four items per scale. This paper reveals good data to model fit for the majority of items and each scale had good reliability. The paper describes the analytic techniques and results, how the instrument was refined and identifies common and uncommon student perceptions based on a post hoc analysis. The main study consisted of 2,407 students from four schools in the Bendigo Education Plan. They responded to this refined 19 scale version of the PLQ that was developed from the trial PLQ. All scales had satisfactory internal consistency reliability.     

Boys as writers: perspectives on the learning and teaching of writing in three primary schools

Boys' attitude to writing is widely perceived as an issue in English primary and secondary schools. Prior research has identified a link between negative attitudes to writing and lower achievement and raised the issue of the stereotyping of boys as underachievers in literacy. The study reported here suggests that if we are to understand the problems associated with the underachievement of boys, we should take into account boys' perspectives on their experiences as literacy learners. In this study, boys aged 8–11 drawn from three London schools in the UK, were interviewed in small groups annually over 3 years of their primary schooling. The boys' teachers were also interviewed separately. These interviews generated insights into the teachers' views of the boys and the boys' views of themselves as literacy learners, especially as writers. The data indicated the boys were highly sensitive to the social situation in the classroom. The boys responded best to their literacy learning when their teachers treated them as individuals, valued their ideas and incorporated strategies for developing learner agency into their daily classroom practice. This article concludes that a teaching approach that includes consulting children about what helps or hinders their learning and a fresh teacher focus on gender issues would increase gender awareness.     

Cognitive Stimulation as a Mechanism Linking Socioeconomic Status With Executive Function: A Longitudinal Investigation

Executive functions (EF), including working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility, vary as a function of socioeconomic status (SES), with children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds having poorer performance than their higher SES peers. Using observational methods, we investigated cognitive stimulation in the home as a mechanism linking SES with EF. In a sample of 101 children aged 60–75 months, cognitive stimulation fully mediated SES-related differences in EF. Critically, cognitive stimulation was positively associated with the development of inhibition and cognitive flexibility across an 18-month follow-up period. Furthermore, EF at T1 explained SES-related differences in academic achievement at T2. Early cognitive stimulation—a modifiable factor—may be a desirable target for interventions designed to ameliorate SES-related differences in cognitive development and academic achievement.     

Developing cognitive‐social‐emotional competencies to enhance academic learning

This preliminary study examined intervention effects of a universal prevention program offered by classroom teachers to public elementary school students. The Unique Minds School Program (M.B. Stern, 1999) is a teacher‐led program designed to promote cognitive‐social‐emotional (CSE) skills, including student self‐efficacy, problem solving, social‐emotional competence, and a positive classroom climate, with the dual goal of preventing youth behavioral problems and promoting academic learning. During 2 consecutive school years, 119 students and their teachers were assessed in the fall and spring of Grade 4 and again in the spring of Grade 5. As compared to students in the comparison school, students in the intervention showed gains in student self‐efficacy, problem solving, social‐emotional competencies, and math grades. Incremental gains within CSE domains were found after 1 and 2 years of intervention. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Psychol Schs 42: 405–417, 2005.     

Positioning adult educators in discourses of professional development

This article explores the discursive work done by different notions of professional development in adult education. In particular we outline the ways in which the discourses of technical expertise, competence and reflective practice are deployed to mobilise professional practices and identities in particular ways and position certain practices and dispositions as specifically professional. We suggest that these discourses help to shape the negotiations between economies of performance and ecologies of practice within which professionals operate. We argue that much of this work is implicit in the pedagogies and curriculum of programmes for adult educators and that there is a need for detailed empirical research on the pedagogies of professional development and practice in adult education. With moves in Europe to develop professional standards for adult educators we suggest that studying the rhetoric of professional development provides an opportunity to open some existing diverse practices to new forms of scrutiny.     

Organizational Dysfunction: A Conflict of Trust and Control

The objective of our article is to examine organizational dysfunction as a consequence of misfit between organizational controls and levels of workforce trust within nations. By examining three elements of trust, we suggest that trust varies among national workforces. This relationship provides a basis for a theoretical framework which posits that a negative relationship between trust and control can produce organizational dysfunctions when there is a misfit between organizational control and societal trust. We propose that financial accounting practices serve as an important indicator of inherent societal trust which should fit controls implemented at the managerial accounting level. The paper concludes with a discussion of contributions and implications for future research.     

Adapting an anti-bullying programme for UK special schools

Bullying is a public health priority but to date, there is a lack of evidence-based anti-bullying programmes or interventions designed for use in special schools. KiVa is a successful anti-bullying programme for mainstream schools currently used in 23 countries. This brief paper outlines the co-development and adaptation of two KiVa lessons into KiVa-SEND lessons and their implementation in two special schools in the UK. One school supports pupils with a primary need of Autism, the other supports pupils with severe and complex learning disabilities. Engagement with the lessons was high from both pupils and staff; the content was perceived as acceptable by staff, complementing the curriculum and perceived as suitable for their pupils. Minor adjustments need to be made to ensure all pupils can comprehend and access the concepts. Further development of the KiVa-SEND programme and testing its potential effectiveness to reduce bullying and associated negative outcomes in special schools is now warranted.

Key Points

• There is a lack of evidence-based anti-bullying programmes for use in special schools. This paper details the piloting of an adaptation of KiVa (a successful, evidence-based anti-bullying programme for mainstream schools) for use in special schools.
• The adaption (KiVa-SEND) was a co-design between a couple of special school teachers, and educational and psychological researchers to ensure the materials and approach were in line with school requirements and teaching practices.
• The KiVa-SEND lesson engagement was excellent from the 12 staff and 62 learners involved and the materials were deemed acceptable via direct feedback and researcher observations. Suggestions were provided on how to make the materials even more suitable for diverse learning needs.
• KiVa-SEND has the potential to be embedded within the special school curriculum and then be tested for its effectiveness at reducing bullying and associated negative outcomes of bullying amongst the special school population.