A Model for Staff Development in Information Technology within Initial Teacher Training Institutions

ABSTRACT

This paper reflects on the uptake of information technology (IT) as a delivery strategy in the learning and teaching processes and suggests that it is no longer satisfactory from the pupils' perspective to leave this to informal staff development strategies. The ability to use IT appropriately and effectively in the classroom must be thoroughly embedded in the pedagogy of teacher training institutions. For this to happen, these institutions need to adopt interventionist strategies for staff development so that learning through IT is a process that all student teachers experience, evaluate and learn to manage in the classroom situation. This paper examines a project for staff development in IT in a particular college and, following on the project's success, offers it as a possible model for successful staff development in IT.     

New Wine,New Wineskins

Academic libraries face an uncertain future. Rather than attempting to develop libraries based on an unknowable future, the author argues it is preferable to address student learning needs with a set of information and learning instructional services established on teaching and learning principles and activities. Evolving from and replacing the present academic library, this new organization, the information and learning center, is staffed by a new academic professional, the information and learning specialist, who addresses the student's need to gather and manage information, read, and write as an integrated set of experiences directed by the curriculum and teachers’ pedagogies.     

Organizational rhetoric in the prospectuses of elite private schools: unpacking strategies of persuasion

The way in which private schools use rhetoric in their communications offers important insights into how these organizational sites persuade audiences and leverage marketplace advantage in the context of contemporary educational platforms. Through systemic analysis of rhetorical strategies employed in 65 ‘elite’ school prospectuses in Australia, this paper contributes to understandings of the ways schools’ communications draw on broader cultural politics in order to shape meanings and interactions among organizational actors. We identify six strategies consistently used by schools to this end: identification, juxtapositioning, bolstering or self-promotion, partial reporting, self-expansion, and reframing or reversal. We argue that, in the context of marketization and privatization discourses in twenty-first-century western education, these strategies attempt to subvert potentially threatening discourses, in the process actively reproducing broader economic and social privilege and inequalities.     

Watching,creating and achieving: Creative technologies as a conduit for learning in the early years

This paper describes the use of robotics in an Early Years classroom as a tool to aid the development of technological skills in a creative environment rich with literacy and numeracy opportunities. The pilot project illustrates how a three‐phase process can result in the development of: (1) emergent literacy and numeracy, (2) digital access for disadvantaged Early Years learners and (3) basic engineering concepts. The pilot study was conducted with a class of 16 students aged between 5 years and 6 months to 7 years, over a 6‐week period. During this period, the students were introduced to and engaged in the creation of robots and simple machines via the use of a commercial robotics package. The pilot was designed around three distinct phases: modelling, exploring and evaluating. These phases provided scaffolding for the students to engage with the technology and for the class teacher to develop her own skills. The use of this particular robotics package is unique to Australia, unique to Early Years, and links hands‐on, fine‐motor development with 21st century learning. The researchers and authors of this paper are currently based at the Australian Catholic University and are involved with projects involving creative, digital technologies, children in the early years of formal schooling, emerging literacy and numeracy for diverse Early Years learners and the development of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects.     

Comparing School Systems to Explain Enduring Birth Date Effects

Birth date effects refer to an association between children's academic performance and their age within the school year. Early differences show disadvantage for the youngest in the year group. Birth date effects of the same kind which show up at the senior levels of school have been reported in the UK. The phenomenon has been attributed to biology or individual psychology. Neither can explain why in some countries the youngest continue to be disadvantaged but in other countries they perform best. Population estimates from the IEA Third International Mathematics and Science Study and a comparison of school entry and selective promotion in the UK and New Zealand suggest that the explanation lies in the characteristics of the samples from which average scores are obtained and the extent to which they represent a full range of ability.     

The borrowers: library records as unobtrusive measures of children's reading preferences

This paper explores whether analysis of school library borrowing records can reveal any insights into the reading habits of junior age children. Data in the form of computerised library‐borrowing records were collected from a cohort of 90 Year 6 (age 10–11 years) children over the full course of the academic year. Two‐thirds of the cohort were boys. The paper will consider what light these data can throw on children's reading preferences as they evolve over time in specific social settings. The data stem from a project that combined both qualitative and quantitative research methods in innovative ways.     

Learning from programmed instruction: Examining implications for modern instructional technology

This article reports a theoretical examination of several parallels between contemporary instructional technology (as manifest in one of its most current manifestations, online learning) and one of its direct predecessors, programmed instruction. We place particular focus on the unterlying assumptions of the two movements. Our analysis suggests that four assumptions that contributed to the historical demise of programmed instruction—(a) ontological determinisms, (b) materialism (c) social efficiency, and (d) technological determinism—also underlie contemporary instructional technology theory and practice and threaten its long-term viability as an educational resource. Based on this examination, we offer several recommendations for practicing instructional technologists and make a call for innovative assumptions and make a call for innovative assumptions and theories not widely visible in the field of instructional technology.     

Promise and feasibility of teaching expository text structure: a primary grade pilot study

Research to guide text structure interventions for the primary grades is very limited, yet as early as in kindergarten, many state standards increasingly emphasize exposure to challenging expository texts. The purpose of the present study was to provide preliminary evidence of the feasibility and promise (or the effects) of three brief text structure interventions for kindergarten, first, and second graders who had average to low-average comprehension and relatively weak vocabulary skills. A total of 172 students participated (with 52, 62, and 58 in kindergarten, first and second grades, respectively). Students were randomly assigned within classrooms to one of three conditions: sequencing, compare and contrast, or cause and effect. Interventionists provided the interventions for four weeks to small groups of students. The findings demonstrated significant growth for all conditions on the taught text structure items of a researcher-made measure; significant growth was also reported on standardized measures of comprehension and oral language measures in the compare and contrast and cause and effect conditions, but not for sequencing.     

Towards a view of originary theory in instructional design

Educational technology research and development - In this paper we offer a call for the development and utilization of originary theory in instructional design. Originary theory, which is generated...