Making News Today: a tool for adoption of ethics principles using technology‐supported television journalism

There are movements internationally towards curricula that incorporate values and citizenship education. In Australia, this movement has been illustrated with the adoption of a national curriculum in values education. This has arisen from the perceived need for citizens to hold values around the rights and responsibilities of functioning within a democracy. The Making News Today programme has been designed to develop a range of literacies enabling learners, for example, to read the media beyond the interests of the elite. The programme incorporates a journalistic process for television news production for middle school students using laptop and handheld video technologies, with embedded ethics and values education. The article reports on an analysis of the implementation of this programme with middle school students in Australia with reference to student adoption of ethical stances in the journalistic process and the implications for the use of this project in developing ethics, values and citizenship as part of the curriculum process.     

A simple ratio adjustment for baseline recording in natural settings

The usefulness of a baseline record is often compromised by extraneous events in the natural environment that artificially intervene to prevent the performance of a specific target behavior. To attenuate this problem, a simple ratio adjustment procedure was suggested that compares the observed response frequency with a maximum possible frequency for each observation period. This ratio is then transformed into a response percentage with a more general predictive value for the behavior modification practitioner.     

Evolution and validation of a personal form of an instrument for assessing science laboratory classroom environments

The research reported in this article makes two distinctive contributions to the field of classroom environment research. First, because existing instruments are unsuitable for science laboratory classes, the Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI) was developed and validated. Second, a new Personal form of the SLEI (involving a student's perceptions of his or her own role within the class) was developed and validated in conjunction with the conventional Class form (involving a student's perceptions of the class as a whole), and its usefulness was investigated. The instrument was cross-nationally fieldtested with 5,447 students in 269 senior high school and university classes in six countries, and cross-validated with 1,594 senior high school students in 92 classes in Australia. Each SLEI scale exhibited satisfactory internal consistency reliability, discriminant validity, and factorial validity, and differentiated between the perceptions of students in different classes. A variety of applications with the new instrument furnished evidence about its usefulness and revealed that science laboratory classes are dominated by closed-ended activities; mean scores obtained on the Class form were consistently somewhat more favorable than on the corresponding Personal form; females generally held more favorable perceptions than males, but these differences were somewhat larger for the Personal form than the Class form; associations existed between attitudinal outcomes and laboratory environment dimensions; and the Class and Personal forms of the SLEI each accounted for unique variance in student outcomes which was independent of that accounted for by the other form.     

The Interface Between the Curriculum and the Code

Barry Carpenter, Director of the Centre for the Study of Special Education, Westminster College, Oxford, highlights the need for a school's curriculum to reflect the requirements of The Code of Practice.     

Preparing future educational leaders to write for Scholarly Publication

One objective of graduate-level education is the socialization of students into the professional roles they will eventually assume. The ability to engage successfully in scholarly writing and publishing are important competencies for graduate students, particularly at the doctoral level, to acquire. An experimental course, Basics of Scholarly Publishing, is described along with the results of a survey of 52 students who have completed the course. The proportion of those successfully breaking into scholarly print was 86.5% and increasing. Additional benefits of the course are discussed and an appeal is made for universities elsewhere to begin offering similar learning experiences for their students at the graduate level.     

Early-Morning Behaviour in School

Several children whom I know arrive at school in an emotionally distressed state and tend to disrupt classroom activities. Presumably something has gone wrong at home. What can be done to ease this problem?