Genre and activism: Schools, social movements, and genres as discourse conduits

This article examines the literacy practices of three school-based student activist groups: a Gay-Straight Alliance, a high school chapter of Amnesty International, and a human rights club unaffiliated with Amnesty. Specifically, this article investigates how members of the different groups advanced their projects by repurposing school genres such as hallway bulletin boards and office memos. By articulating movement messages in school genres, it is argued, activists tightened their schools’ connections to social movements and circulated movement discourses through school space. After findings on each group are presented, the concept “genre as discourse conduit” is induced from the data and is used to reevaluate the nuances and implications of students’ efforts to articulate movement discourses in school genres. Equipped with this new concept, researchers may better analyze activist groups’ efforts to perform movement work in schools.     

The impact of dynamic assessment: an exploration of the views of children,parents and teachers

A qualitative research project was carried out to explore the views of children with special educational needs, their parents and teachers about one aspect of educational psychology practice: the dynamic assessment of cognitive skills. The research was carried out in a highly diverse and inclusive borough in East London, by Nicola Lawrence from Hounslow Educational Psychology Service, and Sharon Cahill from the University of East London. The views of nine children were sought through semi‐structured interviews regarding the process of dynamic assessment, supported with tools and techniques to facilitate discussion. The views of eight parents and seven teachers were also sought, through semi‐structured interviews and focus groups, regarding the psychological reports produced from dynamic assessment. Of the original findings acquired through thematic analysis of the data, those pertaining to the perceived impact of dynamic assessment of cognitive skills are reported. Dynamic assessment was reported to impact positively upon the child's emotional well‐being, self‐perceptions, approach to learning and social relationships, both directly, and through the subsequent intervention of parents and educators. Dynamic assessment, as well as providing instructionally useful information for parents and teachers, encouraged them to move beyond locating the problem within the child, to reconceptualising their special educational needs in context. As a result, parents and teachers became more positive and optimistic about the child, the current situation and the child's future. Dynamic assessment impacted upon the child's holistic needs, parenting and the development of inclusive practice in the classroom. It is concluded that from the perspective of service users, dynamic assessment forms a worthwhile and valuable part of educational psychology practice.     

English and the Knowledge Economy: A Critical Analysis

This article focuses on knowledge economy discourse and considers the appeal of this discourse to English educators. Knowledge economy discourse is defined as a mode of thought and expression that assumes a broad-based economy driven by innovation will soon emerge in the USA. This discourse, it is argued, offers English teachers solutions to some of the problems they face in an age of testing and economic turmoil. Specifically, the discourse offers ways of imagining and justifying lessons that reject standardisation in favour of innovation and inquiry. Because the economy anticipated in the discourse is unlikely to arrive, however, teachers might abandon knowledge economy discourse in favour of discourses that offer more practical and more effective ways of addressing socio-economic contradictions.     

Paper-based colorimetric enzyme linked immunosorbent assay fabricated by laser induced forward transfer

We report the Laser Induced Forward Transfer (LIFT) of antibodies from a liquid donor film onto paper receivers for application as point-of-care diagnostic sensors. To minimise the loss of functionality of the active biomolecules during transfer, a dynamic release layer was employed to shield the biomaterial from direct exposure to the pulsed laser source. Cellulose paper was chosen as the ideal receiver because of its inherent bio-compatibility, liquid transport properties, wide availability and low cost, all of which make it an efficient and suitable platform for point-of-care diagnostic sensors. Both enzyme-tagged and untagged IgG antibodies were LIFT-printed and their functionality was confirmed via a colorimetric enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Localisation of the printed antibodies was exhibited, which can allow the creation of complex 2-d patterns such as QR codes or letters for use in a final working device. Finally, a calibration curve was determined that related the intensity of the colour obtained to the concentration of active antibodies to enable quantitative assessment of the device performance. The motivation for this work was to implement a laser-based procedure for manufacturing low-cost, point-of-care diagnostic devices on paper.     

‘Speaking’ deficit into (or out of) existence: how language constrains classroom teachers’ knowledge about instructing diverse learners

This article explores the talk among novice teachers who participated in an inquiry project designed to rethink the instruction for their struggling students by drawing upon competence rather than deficiencies. A critical discourse analysis (CDA) based on theories of systemic functional linguistics and CDA provided tools to explore how their use of language afforded or constrained their efforts to better serve diverse learners in their urban elementary classrooms. The analysis indicates the power of normative and deficit discourses that continue to predominate within educational culture. It reflects on this analysis and discusses potential benefits of centralising language awareness and a social/critical lens to ongoing professional development.     

The effect of plot explicit,educational explicit,and implicit inference information and coviewing on children's internal and external cognitive processing

Parental coviewing – the act of being present when a child is watching television – can influence the child’s cognitive processing and emotional reactions. This study investigated the role coviewing has on the child’s cognitive processing – which is evidenced by the phasic psychophysiological orienting response to three types of information: plot explicit, educational explicit, and implicit inference. An experiment was conducted that measured the heart rate of children (N?=?88; mean age?=?9.12 years) while watching messages either with or without a parent present in the room. It was predicted, and found, that coviewing leads to greater resource allocation to encoding the message – as indicated by phasic cardiac deceleration, and that information that required internal processing, such as plot explicit or implicit inferential content, leads to greater resources allocated to internal processing – as indicated by phasic cardiac acceleration. Implications for parental mediation strategies and educational television programming are given.     

Choosing schools: explorations in post-primary school choice in an urban Irish working class community

This paper examines post-primary school choice processes in the urban Irish working-class community of Portown. Here, there is an awareness of hegemonic neoliberal ideals and how school choice becomes a significantly classed space characterised by market ideologies and structural inequality. This critical ethnography explored the world through participant observation, semi-structured interviews over a 3-year period. The data examined here are drawn specifically from investigations into school choice processes. It deploys identity theories as thinking tools to examine the classed nature of engagement with school choice markets. The findings delineate three distinct groups of choosers in this school community: passive transitioners, active choosers and second-schoolers. The findings of the study reveal the entwined and co-constructed nature of identity and social class as well as examining the role played by school choices and differential access to economic, cultural and social resources in these processes.     

Building secure attachments for primary school children: a mixed methods study

Despite the wide implications of attachment theory there remains a lack of research exploring interventions which encapsulate the principles of an attachment-based framework in the school context. The aim of this research was to address this gap by implementing an intervention for a group of five primary-aged pupils with identified insecure attachment styles, and a key adult figure in the school context. The 10 week intervention consisted of weekly sessions based in a mainstream primary school. The research adopted a mixed methodology, with a predominant qualitative focus. The perceptions of children in relation to attachment concepts were explored both before and following the intervention. The findings revealed positive changes in the children’s behaviours and experiences, in that the children’s Internal Working Models were positively shifted, and impacted on their social and emotional behaviours.     

Microstencils to generate defined,multi-species patterns of bacteria

Microbial communities are complex heterogeneous systems that are influenced by physical and chemical interactions with their environment, host, and community members. Techniques that facilitate the quantitative evaluation of how microscale organization influences the morphogenesis of multispecies communities could provide valuable insights into the dynamic behavior and organization of natural communities, the design of synthetic environments for multispecies culture, and the engineering of artificial consortia. In this work, we demonstrate a method for patterning microbes into simple arrangements that allow the quantitative measurement of growth dynamics as a function of their proximity to one another. The method combines parylene-based liftoff techniques with microfluidic delivery to simultaneously pattern multiple bacterial species with high viability using low-cost, customizable methods. Quantitative measurements of bacterial growth for two competing isolates demonstrate that spatial coordination can play a critical role in multispecies growth and structure.