‘The rules above the bed’: academic language and learning as hospitality

ABSTRACT

In times of widening participation, Australian universities trade on notions of diversity, framing themselves as hospitable places of access and inclusion. In this space, Academic Language and Learning (ALL) practitioners may be seen as extending the welcome of the university through practices aimed at addressing students’ diverse needs. These include identifying students ‘at-risk’ of failure and attrition, conducting one-to-one appointments, and embedding academic literacies by team-teaching within disciplines. In this paper, we reflect on these practices through the lens of Derrida’s notion of hospitality, drawing on key themes such as the constitutive power relationships of hospitality, the aporia between conditional and unconditional hospitality, and hospitality as an ethics of difference and openness to the ‘arrival of the new’. For each of the explored practices, we problematise the institutionalised framing of ALL practitioners as hosts in benevolent universities providing an unreserved welcome to the student ‘foreigner’. We examine the practice of identifying students-at-risk and question a conditional hospitality that risks closing the door on the unforeseeable that students may bring. Our reflection on the managerially devalued one-to-one appointments highlights hospitality as ethics, with each appointment presenting a crisis of choice in responsibly welcoming student difference. Team-teaching exposes the ambiguity of the ALL practitioner ‘being at-home’ in embedded contexts while presenting the possibility for disrupting established roles and practices. Engaging with Derrida’s hospitality thus allows us to uncover power dynamics shaping the role of ALL practitioners and offers the possibility of ethical responsiveness to student difference and a radical opening to the new.     

Rethinking strategy instruction: direct reading strategy instruction versus computer‐based guided practice

There are many established reading strategy training programmes, which explicitly teach strategic and meta‐cognitive knowledge to improve reading comprehension. Although instruction in strategy knowledge leads to improvements in meta‐cognitive skills, the effects do not always transfer to reading comprehension. Therefore, to investigate preconditions for knowledge transfer, two different strategy training programmes were implemented in nine classes of Grade 6 students (N = 148) over the course of one school year. One programme involved teacher‐directed instruction of declarative meta‐cognitive knowledge (Reading Detectives; Rühl & Souvignier, 2006). The other aimed at improving executive meta‐cognition by guided practice: students worked with a computer program based on latent semantic analysis (LSA) (conText) and received immediate feedback on written summaries. Although both groups improved their strategy knowledge to the same extent, the conText group showed a greater improvement in reading comprehension. These fndings suggest that guided practice, which is characterised by intensive practice and individualised corrective feedback, is superior to explicitly teaching strategy knowledge.     

Competition and the adjustment of gifted children: A matter of motivation

Although there are several reasons to predict that intellectually gifted children have different attitudes toward, experiences with, and opportunities for competition, the research literature on this topic is extremely limited. In this article, we review the literature and discuss an important distinction between task‐oriented competitive behavior, which is motivated by a desire to improve performance, and other‐referenced competitive behavior, which is motivated primarily by a desire to outdo an opponent. The implications of these competitive styles with regard to the academic achievement and social adjustment of gifted youngsters is explored and some suggestions for educators and parents are provided.     

Teachers' and Administrators' Use of Evidence of Student Learning to Take Action: Conclusions Drawn from a Special Issue on Formative Assessment

In common-item equating the anchor block is generally built to represent a miniature form of the total test in terms of content and statistical specifications. The statistical properties frequently reflect equal mean and spread of item difficulty. Sinharay and Holland (2007) suggested that the requirement for equal spread of difficulty may be too restrictive. They suggested that an anchor test with representative content coverage and equal mean item difficulty but a smaller spread of item difficulty (miditest) may provide the same or better results for equating while decreasing the pressure to find very hard and very easy items to include in the anchor. Analyses to date have concentrated on the results of equating the scores from one form to another with findings that are supportive of the Sinharay and Holland concept (Sinharay &; Holland, 2006a, 2006b, 2007; Liu, Sinharay, Holland, Feigenbaum, &; Curley, 2009). These studies do not address longer chains of equating. It is important to monitor the possibility of scale drift over forms. The current research begins to address this issue.     

Computer Technology-Integrated Projects Should not Supplant Craft Projects in Science Education

The current emphasis on computer technology integration and narrowing of the curriculum has displaced arts and crafts. However, the hands-on, concrete nature of craft work in science modeling enables students to understand difficult concepts and to be engaged and motivated while learning spatial, logical, and sequential thinking skills. Analogy use is also helpful in understanding unfamiliar, complex science concepts. This study of 28 academically advanced elementary to middle-school students examined student work and perceptions during a science unit focused on four fossil organisms: crinoid, brachiopod, horn coral and trilobite. The study compared: (1) analogy-focused instruction to independent Internet research and (2) computer technology-rich products to crafts-based products. Findings indicate student products were more creative after analogy-based instruction and when made using technology. However, students expressed a strong desire to engage in additional craft work after making craft products and enjoyed making crafts more after analogy-focused instruction. Additionally, more science content was found in the craft products than the technology-rich products. Students expressed a particular liking for two of the fossil organisms because they had been modeled with crafts. The authors recommend that room should be retained for crafts in the science curriculum to model science concepts.     

Making a world of difference: Collaboration.Excellence for intercultural teams

Cultural awareness training that emphasizes communication delivers only a partial solution to the challenges that intercultural work teams face. Improving collaboration requires a strong foundation of performance management before a work team can determine how they will cooperate to perform to excellence. Against the backdrop of the authors' experiences, the program Collaboration.Excellence offers a three‐phase approach that performance improvement professionals can take to build effective intercultural work teams.     

GENIUS BODYBUILDER – a tool for the avaLUTION of EVOtars

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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GENIUS BODYBUILDER – a tool for the avaLUTION of EVOtars