Individualizing instruction through pacing procedures

Conclusion The ideal outcome of individualized instruction is both effective and efficient instruction. Confining ourselves to a consideration of fixed-paced instruction which is offered because the medium requiredhappens to be fixed-paced in character, how can such instruction be both effective and efficient? When slow, it tends to be effective but inefficient. Unless it can be demonstrated that slow students can be sped up, inefficiency may be the price that must be paid to make effectiveness possible for them. The trade-off is no different than that which is currently necessary in selfpaced instruction. The research described in this paper was performed under a grant (No. 7-48-0000-159) to the Metropolitan Pittsburgh educational television station, WQED, from the Office of Education, U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, under Title VII of the National Defense Education Act of 1958. The research was performed under the direction of George L. Gropper, principal investigator.     

Emergence of morphographical markers in written French: what children following a special education programme say about plurals

Research conducted with average apprentice writers demonstrated that the main difficulty they are facing in the acquisition of written French is the acquisition of the morphology of the writing system, hence studies with slow writers show that morphological traces are late to emerge and often fail to meet the grammatical demands of French. This exploratory research conducted with slow mono- and multilingual learners attempts to identify the qualitative aspects of the emergence of morphological traces, which in the written French system are most often mute. The linguistic concept of the plural was therefore chosen not simply to observe the appearance of plural grammatical markers in productions, but also in order to stimulate apprentice writers to give so-called ‘metagraphical explanations’ in other words, they were asked to explain verbally their own written productions. We observed the written productions and the metagraphical explanations of the participants irrespective of whether these were standard or non-standard written productions. The results show that the verbal explanations, rather than being related to the grammatical case of plural, for the participants frequently refer to their concrete knowledge of number. The fact that these slow learners possess general cognitive abilities which are substantially more developed than their linguistic abilities suggests that the processes used to acquire the linguistic notion of plural in French are based on structures established by analogy, taking their roots in a cognitive notion of number which seems common to all apprentice writers.     

Towards a Taxonomy of Mentoring

Initial Teacher Education in England and Wales is currently undergoing substantial change. In particular, the government has insisted on increased time for school‐based work, on the development of training partnerships between schools and higher education providers, including the transfer of training funds from universities to schools, and on a competence model of assessment. This article focuses on one of the new partnership training courses. Using two of the areas of competence, Subject Knowledge and Subject Application, it explores the reality of partnership from the perspectives of students, school mentors and university tutors as they work through the first year of the new course. Finally, the writers present a series of questions for all those involved as the basis for developing such courses and for ensuring the quality of teacher education.     

REPORT OF COMMISSION ON GRADED WORSHIP∗

Participation in the arts is a form of practical reason and as such has the potential to form and transform the faith of individuals. The findings from Katherine M. Douglass's 2011 study on the role of the arts in the faith lives of young adults provides examples of the transformative potential of the arts as they foster expression, connection, and opening.     

Continuing Education: a Challenge and a Commitment∗

A variety of important life consequences for literacy are widely assumed in the contemporary discourse on adult literacy with little, if any empirical research to support them. As a result, they have been variously labelled as ‘myths’ (Coombs 1985), ‘doubtful promises’ (Hinzen 1983), proclamations of ‘faith’ (Winchester 1990) and ‘claims in search of reality’ (Wagner 1992). Part of the problem here is that the effects of literacy are often identified without first defining what literacy is. Naturally, if literacy is ambiguously or broadly defined, virtually any consequence can be attributed to it. Thus, the first task of any researcher, educator or policymaker involved with issues of adult literacy is to make his or her definitions of literacy and the scope of each definition's applicationsexplicit. Within the field of adult literacy education, Lytle and Wolfe (1989) provide a useful conceptual categorization for literacy in terms of four metaphors: literacy as skills, tasks, practices and critical reflection. This paper extends Lytle and Wolfe's framework to identify what consequences are attributed to literacy within each of the four metaphors, focusing on adults in the developing world.     

Exploring students’ strategies in area conservation geometrical tasks

The aim of this study is to investigate the strategies employed by advanced high school and university students working on six tasks concerning comparison and conservation of area. Special care has been taken in the test design so that the problems could be dealt with using a variety of solution methods. Written responses and in-depth interviews with 21 12th graders and university students of mathematics provided the empirical data. The results show that the majority of the participants either did not prefer or had difficulties employing adequately formal reasoning. Visualization factors seem to exert considerable influence. Moreover, many students confuse congruence with area equivalence.     

Stephen H. Emmens and the transmutation of silver into gold

Even in the latter part of the 19th century belief in the possibility of transmuting base metals into gold was not entirely dead. The circumstantial claims of S. H. Emmens—a colourful scientific entrepreneur—for his so-called Argentaurum process initially so impressed Sir William Crookes that he offered to go to America to investigate them at first hand.