Responsibilities,tensions and ways forward: parents’ perspectives on children’s sexuality education

Abstract

Children’s sexuality education continues to be plagued with tensions and controversies. In consequence, children’s access to sexuality education is severely compromised, especially in terms of the time dedicated to this topic, the content addressed, how it is taught and by whom. Based on a study of 342 Australian parents of primary school aged children we explore: (i) parents’ perceptions of the relevance and importance of sexuality education to their primary school aged children and the discourses that inform their perspectives; (ii) parents’ views on who should be responsible for the sexuality education of young children; (iii) whether there are certain aspects of sexuality education considered more appropriate for the family to address with children; and (iv) what the implications of these findings are for sexuality education policy and practice in Australian primary schooling. Despite the controversial nature of the topic, the majority of parents in this study believed sexuality education was relevant and important to primary school children and that it should be a collaborative approach between families and schools. However, some parents/carers acknowledged that while that they believed that some topics should only be addressed at home they also indicated that this often does not happen.     

The Relationship Among Wellness,Psychological Distress,and Social Desirability of Entering Master's‐Level Counselor Trainees

Two‐hundred and four entering master's‐level counseling students from 9 programs in 5 states participated in a study testing the only counseling‐based wellness assessment measure, the Five Factor Wellness Evaluation of Lifestyle (J. E. Myers, R. M. Luecht, & T. J. Sweeney, 2004), for its relationship to 2 other constructs: psychological distress and social desirability. There was a statistically significant negative relationship between level of wellness and psychological distress; the relationship between level of wellness and social desirability was found to have no statistical significance; and there was a statistically significant negative relationship between level of social desirability and psychological distress. Implications for counselor education and clinical significance are included.     

Impact of Structured Movement Time on Preschoolers’ Physical Activity Engagement

Preschool-aged children are not meeting national physical activity recommendations. This study compares preschoolers’ physical activity engagement during two different physical activity opportunities: outdoor free play or a structured movement session. Eighty-seven children served as participants: 40 children participated in outdoor free play and another 47 children participated in a planned movement session. Children in the movement program replaced their outdoor free play with a structured movement session on 2 days each week. All movement opportunities were 30-min in duration. Physical activity was objectively measured using accelerometers. Results show that, compared to children on the playground, children in the movement program engaged in less sedentary behaviors and more light, moderate, vigorous and moderate to vigorous physical activity. In total, children in the movement program engaged in 15.5 min of healthier physical activity behaviors as compared with children in the outdoor free play. Structured movement time appears to afford children an opportunity to engage in more physical activity than outdoor time alone. Findings support that preschool centers should provide children with a daily structured movement time that includes formalized instruction in addition to regularly scheduled outdoor free play.     

Enhancing participation in primary school and class councils through visual communication

In the context of citizenship education, many UK primary schools have recently set up school councils. Previous research has overlooked the importance of exploring communicative practices specific to school councils and the implications for children's participation. This paper draws on an action‐orientated research project with teachers in three Norfolk primary schools, which began with ethnographic observation of school and class council meetings. By developing alternative visual strategies for facilitating communication in meetings (based on a methodology known as PRA), teachers were able to encourage involvement by more children and enable them to have a greater voice in decision‐making. We argue that the common focus on adult procedures in school councils puts the emphasis on teaching children about their future role as citizens and can limit children's ownership of decision‐making processes. The alternative is to create contexts in which children have a sense of the democratic purposes of their school council in the here and now, by providing children with means (such as the visual strategies) that are consistent with those purposes and prioritizing action as an end.     

PERSONALISED LEARNING: AMBIGUITIES IN THEORY AND PRACTICE

Abstract:  This paper traces the origins of the concept of personalisation in public sector services, and applies it to school education. The original conceptualisation stressed the need for 'deep' rather than shallow, personalisation, if radical transformation of services were to be achieved. It is argued that as the concept has been disseminated and implemented through policy documents, notably the 2005 White Paper, it has lost its original emphasis on deep personalisation. The focus in this article is particularly upon gifted and talented students whose education provides the best case example of how the theory of personalisation might work in practice. Two examples of the lessons in a sixth form college are used to illustrate the character of personalised pedagogy in practice. The implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Anticipatory Reaching by Infants and Adults: The Effect of Object Features and Apertures in Opaque and Transparent Screens

Perception of the manner in which objects may be grasped was examined in a series of experiments with adults and 10-month-old infants; visuomotor adjustment in hand orientation before making contact with objects served as the index throughout. In the first experiment, infants modified their hand orientation to match more closely the long axis of an object. They did so even though the target object could have been grasped by either end with hands oriented orthogonally to the long axis of the object. In two subsequent experiments involving reaching through narrow apertures to grasp the target, anticipatory adjustments in hand posture were evident for adults but not for infants. However, anticipatory adjustments by infants, sometimes appropriate and sometimes inappropriate, were made when the object was of such a size that it could neither be grasped nor retrieved through the aperture. In the final experiment, infants directed their hands first toward a handle, the only graspable part of an object, and oriented their hands so as to be nearly parallel with it prior to contact. This was the only orientation in which a grasp was possible. It was concluded that infants at 10 months respond more appropriately to object properties than to surface apertures that place limitations on how an object may be grasped.     

Peer and Cross-Age Tutoring in Math:Outcomes and Their Design Implications

This review of the literature on peer and cross-age tutoring emphasizes programs in mathematics and suggests that such programs have positive academic outcomes for African American and otherminority students as well as for White students who participate as tutors, as tutees, or both. Such programs also appear to have a positive impact on a variety of attitudinal and socioemotional outcomes, such as students' attitudes towards school, their self-concepts, and their sense of academic efficacy. This review also explores whether specific features of the tutoring programs (e.g., tutor training and amount of tutoring) or characteristics of the students (e.g., academic level prior to tutoring and gender composition of tutor-tutee pairs) affect various outcomes. Role theory is used as a theoretical framework to explain some intriguing and surprising findings (e.g., why tutors show academic gains even when they do not receive additional subject matter instruction, whylonger and/or more substantial tutoring programs may not foster greater immediate academic gains than shorter programs, and why mixed-sex pairs do not consistently reap benefits equal to those of same-sex pairs). Finally, implications of the review for the development of peer and cross-age tutoring programs are discussed.     

Student Constructions of Fit: Narratives About Incongruence at a Faith-Based University

Decades of student persistence and retention literature has brought to light factors of social, academic, and religious fit that influence a student's decision to remain at or depart from an institution. At Christian institutions, increasing student pluralism raises the likelihood that students will not fit religiously. This qualitative study of 21 first-time, full-time students contributes to the existing literature by exploring how students who already feel they do not fit for religious reasons work at constructing a sense of fit at a Christian research university. Many participants coped with religious discontinuity by redefining specifically Christian practices and teachings in terms that were personally palatable: as either general moral lessons that would help them to be a better person or as cultural insights that would benefit them social and professionally in the future. In many cases, university staff were instrumental. Finally, participants worked to construct an acceptable level of fit, or fit threshold, through various combinations of social fit, academic fit, and religious fit, often compensating for one with others. As Christian institutions increasingly invite students from diverse religious backgrounds into their campus community, understanding ways that these students attempt to adapt to religious incongruence will be paramount.     

Quantitative analysis of approaches to group marking

Abstract

Group work, where students work on projects to overcome challenges together, has numerous advantages, including learning of important transferable skills, better learning experience and increased motivation. However, in many academic systems the advantages of group projects clash with the need to assign individualised marks to students. A number of different schemes have been proposed to individualise group project marks, these include marking of individual reflexive accounts of the group work and peer assessment. Here, we explore a number of these schemes in computational experiments with an artificial student population. Our analysis highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each scheme and particularly reveals the power of a new scheme proposed here that we call pseudoinverse marking.

Abbreviations

SOPP: Self organised peer assessment; RA: Reflexive accounts; MRA: Mark-adjusted reflexive accounts; NPA: Normalised peer assessment; PR: Peer ranking; PiM: Pseudoinverse marking