Child sexual abuse and bulimic symptomatology: relevance of specific abuse variables

OBJECTIVE: This study examined specific aspects of child sexual abuse in relation to symptom severity among hospitalized patients diagnosed with bulimia nervosa. METHOD: Participants were 45 hospitalized bulimic women who reported a history of child sexual abuse. Structured interviews were conducted in order to obtain detailed information regarding specific features of the abusive event(s). Participants also completed instruments that measured depression and eating pathology. RESULTS: There were no significant differences in severity of depression or eating disturbance among women reporting differing abusive experiences including intrafamilial versus extrafamilial abuse, abuse with or without the use of physical force, one versus multiple incidents, early abuse versus abuse occurring after age 14, contact versus noncontact abuse, disclosed versus undisclosed, and combined physical/sexual abuse versus sexual abuse alone. CONCLUSION: The specific characteristics of child sexual abuse are not related to the level of symptomatology for hospitalized bulimic patients. This study suggests that differences in the nature of the abuse may not be as important as the fact that the abuse occurred in the first place.     

Curriculum stasis: the disconnect between music and technology in the Australian curriculum

Technology is a dominant mediating factor impacting on current human behaviour and social change, which both acts on and is acted upon by other phenomena. This changing social landscape, along with new expectations and requirements, drives our educational priorities and curriculum agenda. There is no denying the prevalence of technology found in the statements and guidelines of the national Australian Curriculum. Further, the National Review of School Music Education identified the importance of technology in school music education in 2005. The curriculum guidelines illustrate an understanding of technology in Music and the Arts that is both vague and limiting. In 2015 we are at a point of curriculum stasis, an equilibrium that highlights a disconnect between music, technology and Australian music education. This article investigates current secondary school Years 7–10 (ages 11–15 years) Music and Arts curriculum statements concerning the use of technology and compares this to the general capability information and computer technology (ICT) curricula. There is wide recognition that digital technology is essential in teaching and learning, but this is not reflected in contemporary Australian Arts and Music curricula.     

The one-in-ten: quantitative Critical Race Theory and the education of the ‘new (white) oppressed’

ABSTRACT

This paper challenges the notion that quantitative data – as a numeric truth – exist independent of a nation’s political and racial landscape. Utilising large-scale national attainment data, the analysis challenges the belief that ‘White working class’ children in England, especially boys, are ‘the new oppressed’ – as a former equality adviser has publicly claimed. The analysis applies Quantitative Critical Race Theory, or ‘QuantCrit’, an emerging quantitative sub-field of Critical Race Theory in education. The paper argues that far from being ‘oppressed’, White boys continue to enjoy achievement advantages over numerous minoritised groups; especially their peers of Black Caribbean ethnic origin. Additionally, the analysis uniquely exposes racialised trends of ‘equivalency’ in core subject qualifications, whereby minority ethnic children are over-represented in certain lower-status qualifications that are counted as equivalent in education statistics but not in the real world labour market. The analysis concludes that knowing misrepresentations of quantitative data are at the heart of an institutional process through which race and racism are produced, legitimised and perpetuated in education.     

Angle and rotation: Effects of different types of feedback on the quality of response

The study compares the levels of response to angle/rotation problems presented on screen with a Logo microworld with the levels of response to similar problems presented on paper. Pairs of children aged from 9 to 11 who had little or no experience of Logo completed the problems in about 40 minutes. Pairs of children completed the problems over a period of eight weeks. The responses, classified using the SOLO taxonomy (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes), suggested that the effect of the immediate feedback of the screen turtle heading was to inhibit moves to a higher level of response compared to those levels of response reached when responding to paper tests.     

The long-term preservation of identifiable personal data: a comparative archival perspective on privacy regulatory models in the European Union,Australia, Canada and the United States

This article analyses the extent to which archival exemptions for historical, scientific and statistical research in privacy legislation support preservation in selected European Union countries, and comparable aspects of Australian, American and Canadian law within a legal, ethical and digital archival perspective. The authors recommend that the further processing of personal data under data protection law be given a wider scope of interpretation for archival preservation purposes in both the public and private sector, coupled with the use of researcher and archival codes in relation to access to personal data. They also recommend early appraisal and integration of privacy with freedom of information and archival regimes.

Using digital technology to enhance formative assessment in mathematics classrooms

In this paper, which is based on research from the EU-funded project Improving Progress through Formative Assessment in Science and Mathematics Education, we explore how iPads are used within formative assessment processes by six mathematics teachers and their classes in two secondary comprehensive schools in the Midlands of England. A design research approach is first used to develop and trial six lessons in which iPads are used in different ways within formative assessment processes. Through lesson observations, video analysis and teacher interviews we then examine how iPad technology contributes to these processes, the functions it performs and the distribution of activity between the main actors (teacher, technology and student). An analytic approach is developed which captures the interactions in visual representations, showing how the technology is often used as a form of communication but also performs more active functions which affect the role taken by the teacher in formative processes. The study offers insight into ways in which iPad technology contributes to effective student learning through formative assessment and introduces an analytic approach that may be useful for further studies.     

DNA microarray wet lab simulation brings genomics into the high school curriculum

We have developed a wet lab DNA microarray simulation as part of a complete DNA microarray module for high school students. The wet lab simulation has been field tested with high school students in Illinois and Maryland as well as in workshops with high school teachers from across the nation. Instead of using DNA, our simulation is based on pH indicators, which offer many ideal teaching characteristics. The simulation requires no specialized equipment, is very inexpensive, is very reliable, and takes very little preparation time. Student and teacher assessment data indicate the simulation is popular with both groups, and students show significant learning gains. We include many resources with this publication, including all prelab introductory materials (e.g., a paper microarray activity), the student handouts, teachers notes, and pre- and postassessment tools. We did not test the simulation on other student populations, but based on teacher feedback, the simulation also may fit well in community college and in introductory and nonmajors' college biology curricula.     

Embodied learning and school-based physical culture: implications for professionalism and practice in physical education

We write as critical theorists, who consider that in terms of scoping out robust conceptual elaborations which are suitable for contemporary schooling, that physical education has ground to make up connecting theory with practice and practice with theory. We advocate that aspects of existentialism and phenomenology can provide a theoretically sound basis on which to argue that embodied learning should be the foundational cornerstone of physical education programmes. To avoid embodied learning becoming overly learner centric and insular, we advance Merleau-Pontian informed ideas on how learning could flourish when an individual and embodied focus merges with a school-wide physical culture agenda which is underpinned by social and moral theorizing. In developing our focus on merging embodied learning and physical culture, we draw upon MacIntyrean views on the goods which are internal to practice and extend thinking on how these goods could merge with the diverse aims and intentions informing the culture and ethos in schools. In pursuing these ambitions, we outline the constructive activist-based benefits of teachers working within subsidiarity-based school communities where pedagogical decisions are made at a level consistent with realizing whole schools aims. This is in spite of our acknowledgement that the lack of career-long professional learning adds to the difficulty of achieving these aims. In conclusion we argue that if physical education is to become a pivotal component of realizing a diverse range of whole school aims there is a need for greater professional engagement with pedagogical approaches that attempt to derive greater meaning from learners movement experiences and which help learners to understand better both their own identity and the ethos of the school context and environment they share with others.