生死相拥5000年

[1](路透社)意大利瓦尔达罗电——意大利将不会分离它石器时代的“情侣”。[2]科学家说他们决定把这对相拥5000年之久的情侣遗体整体移动并保存,作为献给全国的情人节礼物,在他们永远拥抱的姿势中,他们的胳膊仍然相互缠绕在一起。     

The role of special schools for children with profound and multiple learning difficulties: is segregation always best?

The education of young people with profound and multiple learning difficulties continues to raise challenges and controversies. In this article, Ben Simmons, an ESRC funded PhD student and research assistant, and Phil Bayliss, programme director for the masters degree in special education and disability, both based in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of Exeter, describe their research into provision for pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties in a special school in the south west of England. Their work, based in an interpretivist, qualitative approach, set out to illuminate issues relating to the inclusion of pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties. The findings presented here suggest that the school, in spite of its strong reputation, struggled significantly to provide appropriate learning experiences for pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties. Ben Simmons and Phil Bayliss discuss the need for improved staff development opportunities focused on enhancing current levels of knowledge and skills. They conclude by calling for a reappraisal of the established view that special schools necessarily provide the best learning environment for pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties.     

College Student Access: How Articulation Agreements Support Rural Students

Students from rural areas face additional burdens, such as affordability, academic preparation, and lack of college-going resources that make seeking, enrolling, and attending college more difficult. Community colleges offer hope to achieve a college degree for many rural students, and well-developed articulation agreements can be one way of improving access for these students.     

Self-efficacy and vicarious learning in doctoral studies at a distance

Even though there are increasing numbers of PhD students in the distance mode, our current understanding of PhD candidature at a distance is limited and incomplete. On the one end of the spectrum are accounts of unhappy and isolated doctoral students who are separated from communities of practice. At the same time, literature offers accounts of PhD students at a distance who view themselves as agential and autonomous and are happy not to get sidetracked by others. In this reflection we ask what distinguishes the conventional PhD student from one who is studying at a distance, and invite more research on self-efficacy and vicarious learning of PhD students at a distance.     

A Schooling in English

John Dixon's Growth Through English was a seminal text in the development of NATE and a major influence on a whole generation of teachers. In his new book A Schooling in English² , to be published later this year, he traces some of the historical developments which led up to that point, a series of ideological and institutional struggles that are still continuing. We are pleased to publish here a brief synopsis, written for the UEA Language and Literacy Convention in April, together with a review of the book itself.     

On-demand publishing in the Humanities: project

This article describes the ‘On-Demand Publishing in the Humanities’ project, funded by JISC as part of the eLib programme, at Liverpool John Moores University. The principal aims of the project were to develop a ‘cheap and cheerful’ model for networking electronic texts, to develop a model agreement for the networking of copyright texts for use with publishers, and to shed light on the problems and benefits of on-demand publishing for all the stakeholders involved. The article sets out the project methods, describes the extent to which the aims of the project have been fulfilled, analyses the reactions of end-users to the materials, and attempts an assessment of the current viability of on-demand publishing as a means of supplying copyright texts to students.     

Assessment for learning: a catalyst for student self-regulation

The development of students as lifelong, self-regulating learners is a valued outcome of higher education. To this end, the current project investigated how students in an undergraduate course experienced and responded to a teaching–learning environment where they were expected to take responsibility for their learning. The pedagogic environment of this course was grounded in strategies and activities associated with assessment for learning (AfL). As such, students were expected to participate in activities that provided them with opportunities to exercise control over their learning. Data gathering comprised individual semi-structured interviews and the collection of artefacts. Findings indicated goals helped students know where they were going; exemplars provided insights into what was expected and what constituted quality work; course activities elicited evidence of learning; dialogic interactions around these generated feedback about understandings and progress; the evaluation of exemplars developed evaluative knowledge, skill and expertise; peer review and feedback provided an authentic context for evaluation and monitoring of works-in-progress. It was concluded that, while each of the AfL strategies contributed to student self-regulation, the full impact of AfL as a catalyst for self-regulated learning was realised in the cumulative and recursive effect these strategies had on students’ thinking, actions and feelings.     

Virtual action learning: a pilot in building leadership capacity

This account of practice encompasses a pilot virtual action learning programme with a small group of learners. This was an 18-month extension to the one-week Leadership Open Programme that the participants had previously completed at the Business School. It includes insights from an evaluation study completed in early 2016. It considers in particular the following issues: the structuring of a virtual event; the significance of maintaining continuity of learning; the need for commonality of reference points about leadership in order to enhance it; the selection of problems by participants; whether leadership development itself is a ‘wicked problem’ and the role and skills required of the tutor to add value to the learning experience. Amongst other benefits, the participants found the chance to build relationships broke down the loneliness of leadership and greatly enhanced their learning. These issues will be explored further in a review planned for early 2017.