A Conceptual Framework for Assessment Literacy: Opportunities for Physical Education Teacher Education

ABSTRACT

Although more nuanced understandings of assessment have been proposed in the physical education literature, assessment practices remain relatively underdeveloped, and when used, tend to focus on traditional, summative evaluations of learning. However, physical education teacher education programs can be used as an intervention to help pre-service teachers develop assessment knowledge and skill. Toward this end, the purpose of this article is to propose an evidence-based framework for helping pre-service teachers develop assessment literacy that is rooted in occupational socialization theory. The framework provides a four-phase approach to integrating assessment into teacher education, and includes suggestions for how physical education teacher educators can progressively help build pre-service teachers’ assessment knowledge in line with the focus given to instruction and planning. These suggestions acknowledge the technical and sociocultural aspects of learning to use assessment. Implications are discussed along with the need to help graduating pre-service teachers transfer lessons learned into the workplace.     

THE BLURRING OF CHILDHOOD AND THE MEDIA

Time is not lost, I deem, in bewailing and mourning our fate when answering tears stand ready in the listener's eye.

Prometheus Bound ^{1 1} Lynch's 1970 work, Christ and Prometheus: A New Image of the Secular, explores in three “acts” two pivotal questions that run throughout most of his works: “What is the place of the secular in a totally religious world?” and “What is the place of the sacred in an overwhelmingly secular world?” (p. 15). On page 49 he refers particularly to Images of Hope with these words: “In an earlier book, on hope, I tried to sketch a path of approximation to innocence for the mentally ill. There it was a matter of taking away from the sick the burden of finding a one, nonexistent right way in all situations, an inscrutable way of the will of God, that would come from outside our own wishes and would condition all of these wishes. There is no greater torment than this kind of endless, external search for innocence. We must restore the primacy of man as a wishing being who, as long as he is within reality, creates the right thing by the absolute unconditionality of his own wishing. This wish does not have to go out of itself.” Ironically, he wanted Christ and Prometheus entitled “In Search of Innocence” (p. 36). Presumably, the editors prevailed.

     

Patterns of out-of-home placement decision-making in child welfare

Out-of-home placement decision-making in child welfare is founded on the best interest of the child in the least restrictive setting. After a child is removed from home, however, little is known about the mechanism of placement decision-making. This study aims to systematically examine the patterns of out-of-home placement decisions made in a state's child welfare system by comparing two models of placement decision-making: a multidisciplinary team decision-making model and a clinically based decision support algorithm. Based on records of 7816 placement decisions representing 6096 children over a 4-year period, hierarchical log-linear modeling characterized concordance or agreement, and discordance or disagreement when comparing the two models and accounting for age-appropriate placement options. Children aged below 16 had an overall concordance rate of 55.7%, most apparent in the least restrictive (20.4%) and the most restrictive placement (18.4%). Older youth showed greater discordant distributions (62.9%). Log-linear analysis confirmed the overall robustness of concordance (odd ratios [ORs] range: 2.9–442.0), though discordance was most evident from small deviations from the decision support algorithm, such as one-level under-placement in group home (OR = 5.3) and one-level over-placement in residential treatment center (OR = 4.8). Concordance should be further explored using child-level clinical and placement stability outcomes. Discordance might be explained by dynamic factors such as availability of placements, caregiver preferences, or policy changes and could be justified by positive child-level outcomes. Empirical placement decision-making is critical to a child's journey in child welfare and should be continuously improved to effect positive child welfare outcomes.     

Critiquing the school community: a qualitative study of children's conceptualizations of their school 1

Schools are traditionally seen as responsible for the educational outcomes of our children. However, schools also play an important role in the development of aspects such as self‐efficacy, participation, competence and self‐determination. As schools are often run as societies rather than communities, they offer little opportunity for these attributes (self‐efficacy, participation, competence and self‐determination) to develop. Forty‐six children aged from nine to 12 years were interviewed to ascertain their conceptualizations of the school community. The children define their school in terms of people, places for activities and interaction, a place for safety, cooperation, influence and functionality. The responses closely align to the adult conceptualizations of sense of community as purported by McMillan and Chavis (1986 McMillan, D.W. and Chavis, D.M. 1986. Sense of community: a definition and theory. Journal of Community Psychology, 14: 6–23. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Implications of this research suggest that children can and should have an integral role in designing a curriculum and systems relevant to the school context if we are at all concerned with their psychological wellness.     

Modern languages and special educational needs: a review of research

The Education Reform (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 requires that all pupils of secondary school age should have equal access to a broad and balanced curriculum. The inclusion of language studies within the statutory framework of the Northern Ireland curriculum has led to a significant expansion in the teaching of modern languages to pupils with special educational needs. Many teachers are now faced with the task of teaching pupils who hitherto would have been excluded from the language department and some teachers in special schools now have to teach a language with which they themselves are unfamiliar. This paper is the first stage of a research and development project funded by the Northern Ireland Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (NICCEA); it examines some research evidence relating to the challenge of teaching languages to pupils with special educational needs.