Using learning sets to support UK delivery of off-shore learning in Africa

This account of practice focuses on the delivery of Action Learning Sets in Swaziland and Malawi as part of a UK university's remote Master's degree teaching programme. It draws upon the experience of an Academic delivering the programme and the efforts made to refine the approach to action learning given time, understanding and resource challenges. The outcome of limited research on the benefits of Action Learning Sets is shared within this context.     

Predicting SNAP Participation in Older Adults: Do Age Categorizations Matter?

Prior, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) research reveals limited age cohort analyses that may not accurately reflect nuanced age differences in SNAP participation. The purpose of this study was to add depth to older age analysis and SNAP participation via four models of age categorizations. This secondary data analysis used a sample of 10,116 older adults from the 2010 Health and Retirement Study (HRS). Controlling for demographic, socioeconomic, and physical factors, logistic regression tested four age categorization models: Third-Age and Fourth-Age groupings; young-old, middle-old, and oldest old groupings; generic decade cohorts; and continuous age. Hypotheses for each model predicted older age as negative to SNAP participation. Significant predictors of SNAP participation included female gender; non-White, non-Hispanic, and Hispanic ethnicities; lower household income; inadequate food budget; and difficulty in self-dressing. Odds ratios confirmed age as a negative factor to SNAP participation. Addition of age categorizations into each model yielded nominal effect size change. Yet, addition of age into the models changed the relationship between control variables and SNAP receipt: gender and Hispanic ethnicity. While age categorizations offered marginal effect predicting SNAP participation, difficulty dressing most strongly predicted increased participation across all models. This finding is relevant, as standard SNAP participation models for younger individuals rely heavily on socioeconomic indicators. Results suggest future research modeling SNAP participation in older individuals that emphasizes physical/medical issues.     

New Directions in Social Skills Assessment and Intervention for Elementary and Middle School Students

Social skills are important to the successful social and academic functioning of all students and play a significant role in avoiding or preventing negative responses from others. Social skills also are important aspects of effective schools. In this article, we emphasize the assessment and intervention of the academic side of social skills. That is, we examine the role that social skills play in facilitating individuals' learning and creation of a school environment where others can feel supported and motivated to learn. As a basis for this examination, we first review several key studies documenting interrelations among social skills and academic competence. Next, we briefly review current assessment practices focusing on rating scale methods for documenting students' social skills and perceptions of social support. Finally, we introduce an instructional approach called the Responsive Classroom (Charney, 1992) that has been shown to advance the development of elementary and middle school students' social skills and academic achievement, and result in supportive school environments for learners and teachers. We conclude with recommendations for researchers and practitioners to continue to consider the strong interrelations among social skills, academic functioning, and social support when working with all students in elementary and middle schools.     

Assessing students’ understanding about levers: better test instruments are not enough

This study was designed to investigate variations in students’ responses to lever problems across multiple assessment contexts and formats. Prior to and at the end of a four‐month science unit on simple machines, grade 6/7 students prepared semantic maps, wrote responses to application questions, discussed their written answers, and modelled solutions to practical problems using physical materials. We present data from pre‐ and post‐instruction interviews to show that students’ responses varied in kind and extent across assessment contexts and formats. Such variations in performance are consistent with situated cognition theories which assert that competence is heterogeneous across situations and is a function of interactions between individuals and the contexts in which they perform. Based on these findings, implications are drawn regarding more productive means of assessing students’ understanding in classrooms.     

Exploring perceived support of postgraduate medical science research students

There is still much to learn about the support required by postgraduate research students, across academic disciplines, to facilitate successful completion of a research degree. The primary aim of this study was to explore postgraduate medical science research students’ perceptions of academic and mentoring support at different stages during their degree programme. A second aim was to explore the feasibility and acceptability of peer mentoring as a strategy to enhance student support in this population. A mixed method study design was used. Students first completed an online questionnaire, which was then supplemented with focus group discussion to explore emergent findings in greater depth. The main results indicated that the nature and quality of academic supervision support have a significant influence on research student training and development. ‘Functional’ and ‘relationship development’ concepts of supervisory styles were highlighted as important aspects to perceived support in this research population. The main facilitators to enhance academic support were effective communication, project planning and timely feedback. There was a high degree of acceptability for a peer mentoring programme as a complementary approach to enhance student support. Peer mentoring psychosocial functions such as friendship, counselling and career guidance were considered potentially beneficial to enhancing student support. Students also discussed peer coaching as central to their learning and research skill development. This work is a useful starting point to explore perceptions of research student support in the target population. Further work is required to develop strategies to enhance student support in academic practice.     

Name writing and letter knowledge in preschoolers: Incongruities in skills and the usefulness of name writing as a developmental indicator

In this study, 114 preschoolers (M age = 53 months) completed a battery of literacy assessments to explore the interplay between name writing and letter knowledge in early literacy learners. Name writing was significantly related to children's letter knowledge, and the relationships were moderate to high. However, many children exhibited an incongruity in name writing and name-specific letter-recognition skills (i.e., they could write their names but not recognize the letters in their names, or recognize the letters in their names but not write them). When these two groups were contrasted statistically, the children with superior name-specific letter recognition (but poorer name writing scores) had significantly higher letter knowledge scores than the children with superior name writing scores (but poor name-specific letter-recognition scores). Writing one's name, in itself, did not appear to correspond to a literacy advantage. Thus, with regard to the recommendation that name writing be used as a literacy assessment tool in preschool, the results from this study suggest that name writing should be used as a measure of mechanical skill only and should not be used as a means to assess children's conceptual knowledge (of letter names, letter sounds, or the alphabetic principle).     

STUDENT INTEREST IN TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE (SITS) SURVEY: DEVELOPMENT,VALIDATION, AND USE OF A NEW INSTRUMENT

This study presents the systematic development, validation, and use of a new instrument for measuring student interest in science and technology. The Student Interest in Technology and Science (SITS) survey is composed of 5 sub-sections assessing the following dimensions: interest in learning science, using technology to learn science, science careers, technology careers, and attitudes toward biotechnology. Our development process included review of existing instrumentation, pilot testing, and expert panel review. The resulting instrument was administered before and after implementation of a biotechnology intervention which used a computer-based game to engage learners in the use of biotechnology to address a societal issue. We employed item response theory (IRT) to explore instrument validity and precision. Results of the psychometric analyses suggest that the SITS survey has a well-defined structure and meets IRT assumptions. Difficulty and discrimination parameters as well as reliability analyses indicate that SITS items provide useful measures of student interest. Finally, we use the SITS to explore the extent to which the intervention used in this study supports changes in student interest and association between students’ interest and related content knowledge. Implications for the future use of this instrument are discussed.     

Instructional redesign: Developing learning communities in academia

Traditionally, learning is provided in a unidirectional manner from instructor to learner. This practice can be limiting to all individuals involved in the learning process. To develop quality instructional materials, the learning team can participate in instructional design and development (ID) as partners. This article discusses a proposed learning community to be created during the process of course redesign. Human performance technology and ID professionals who use learning community practices can improve their designs by including all relevant stakeholders.