The Methodology of the 'Views and Visions Project' of Land Use-UK: Practices,issues, decisions and experiences

The Land Use-UK Project was conducted with the support of teachers and students in schools throughout the UK. At the time they acted as surveyors of the landscape and, as well as mapping the land use, students recorded their perceptions of what they had seen together with their views for the future. Referred to now as the 'Views and Visions Project', these collective opinions from mostly whole class groups of students provide a database of 1287 responses. Along with the richness of discovery and meaning which the readings of these narratives of landscape experience provide, there have been many decisions to be made regarding the appropriate style and strategies needed for development of the data and interpretation and analysis of the research. This paper provides a reflection on the methodological decisions taken from the personal perspective of the authors as well as some critical comment on the limitations and possibilities of this essentially qualitative research approach.     

Transforming support for students with disabilities in UK Higher Education

Intended UK government changes to the Disabled Students’ Allowance will have a significant impact on the support that UK universities provide for students with disabilities. In this article we examine the types of transformation that may be needed to support for university students with disabilities, from a socio‐technical perspective. The research reported in this article involved a year‐long case study in a UK university. The potential changes required to support for students with disabilities within the university studied, to cater for the proposed UK government changes to the Disabled Students’ Allowance, include: providing non‐medical helpers through external agencies; developing a dyslexia screening process; providing enhanced library services, including access to printers and scanners and assistance with assistive software; providing laptops with assistive software; making assistive software available in a limited form in computing laboratories; and more co‐ordinated special examination provision.     

Effects of training peer tutors in content knowledge versus tutoring skills on giving feedback to help tutees’ complex tasks

This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of training tutors in content knowledge of a particular domain versus training them in tutoring skills of pedagogical knowledge when tutoring on a complex tutee task. Forty-seven tutor–tutee pairs of fourth-year secondary school students were created and assigned to one of the two treatments. Twenty-two tutors received training in content knowledge and the other twenty-five tutors in tutoring skills. Tutors formulated written feedback immediately after the training. Tutees first interpreted the tutor feedback and then used it to revise their research questions. The results showed that tutors trained in tutoring skills formulated more effective feedback than tutors trained in content knowledge. In addition, tutees helped by tutoring-skills tutors found the feedback more motivating than those helped by content-knowledge tutors. However, no differences were found in tutee performance on revision. The findings are discussed in terms of the set-up of this study and implications for improving the effectiveness of peer tutoring.     

Neural Correlates of Self and Its Interaction With Memory in Healthy Adolescents

Adolescence is marked by the development of personal identity and is associated with structural and functional changes in brain regions associated with Self processing. Yet, little is known about the neural correlates of self‐reference processing and self‐reference effect in adolescents. This functional magnetic resonance imaging study consists of a self‐reference paradigm followed by a recognition test proposed to 30 healthy adolescents aged 13–18 years old. Results showed that the rostral anterior cingulate cortex is specifically involved in self‐reference processing and that this specialization develops gradually from 13 to 18 years old. The self‐reference effect is associated with increased brain activation changes during encoding, suggesting that the beneficial effect of Self on memory may occur at encoding of self‐referential information, rather than at retrieval.     

An Evaluation of Two Hands-On Lab Styles for Plant Biodiversity in Undergraduate Biology

We compared learning cycle and expository formats for teaching about plant biodiversity in an inquiry-oriented university biology lab class (n = 465). Both formats had preparatory lab activities, a hands-on lab, and a postlab with reflection and argumentation. Learning was assessed with a lab report, a practical quiz in lab, and a multiple-choice exam in the concurrent lecture. Attitudes toward biology and treatments were also assessed. We used linear mixed-effect models to determine impacts of lab style on lower-order cognition (LO) and higher-order cognition (HO) based on Bloom''s taxonomy. Relative to the expository treatment, the learning cycle treatment had a positive effect on HO and a negative effect on LO included in lab reports; a positive effect on transfer of LO from the lab report to the quiz; negative impacts on LO quiz performance and on attitudes toward the lab; and a higher degree of perceived difficulty. The learning cycle treatment had no influence on transfer of HO from lab report to quiz or exam; quiz performance on HO questions; exam performance on LO and HO questions; and attitudes toward biology as a science. The importance of LO as a foundation for HO relative to these lab styles is addressed.