Valued and performed or not? Teachers’ ratings of transition activities for young children with learning disability

Stakeholder collaboration has been identified as a facilitator for positive transition outcomes for all children, and especially for children in need of special support. However, the type and extent of stakeholder collaboration have shown to be related to teachers’ view of their transition practises. Thus, this study set out to examine the transition activities reported by 253 teachers in Compulsory School for Students with Learning Disabilities in Sweden. The purpose was to study the type of transition activities performed and how important teachers regarded these activities to be. The results show that overall teachers are engaged in transition activities that can be described as mainly traditional, as they do not differ from transition activities carried out in other educational settings. The results also show that untraditional transition activities, such as home visits and joint parent meetings with preschools, are viewed as important, but rarely executed. The results are discussed from an ecological systems perspective, emphasising the interconnectedness of individuals and their environment. Focus is given to individualised transition processes and developmentally appropriate transition activities for young children with learning disability.     

Maintaining Inequality Despite Expansion: Evidence of the Link between Parents' Education and Qualitative Differences in Educational Attainment

The restructuring of the Australian labour market decreased demand for low‐skilled workers and increased demand for highly skilled workers and professionals further strengthening the relationship between educational and occupational attainment. To satisfy the demand for highly educated workers, the government reorganised the higher education sector increasing the number of universities and trebling the number of places for domestic undergraduate students. Analysing data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, this paper examines the association between parents' education and the likelihood of graduating from university for six birth cohorts of Australians. Overall, the findings suggest that although the expansion of the higher education sector in Australia provided alternative pathways into university, differences in educational attainment, on both quantitative and qualitative dimensions, persist.     

The identification and assessment of dyslexiaClass teachers' perceptions of the usefulness of the dyslexia screening test for seven to eight year-old pupils

Many teachers are concerned about the problems of identifying and assessing dyslexia in their own schools, but lack time during the school day to assess the accuracy of new tests. In the last ten years dyslexia has moved from being a hidden disability to one that is acknowledged in academic, intellectual and professional fields, through advances in genetics and psychological research. Non-recognition can lead to severe problems for a pupil in school and in later life, as well as for teachers, in particular, attempting to devise learning programmes and for schools, in general, facing litigation for not addressing a particular child's specific needs.     

QuickSmart: a basic academic skills intervention for middle school students with learning difficulties

QuickSmart is a basic academic skills intervention designed for persistently low-achieving students in the middle years of schooling that aims to improve the automaticity of basic skills to improve higher-order processes, such as problem solving and comprehension, as measured on standardized tests. The QuickSmart instructional program consists of three structured, teacher- or teacher aide-directed, 30-minute, small-group lessons each week for approximately 26 weeks. In this study, 42 middle school students experiencing learning difficulties (LD) completed the QuickSmart reading program, and a further 42 students with LD took part in the QuickSmart mathematics program. To investigate the effects of the intervention, comparisons were made between the reading and mathematics progress of the intervention group and a group of 10 high-achieving and 10 average-achieving peers. The results indicated that although the standardized reading comprehension and mathematics scores of QuickSmart students remained below those of comparison students, they improved significantly from pretest to posttest. In contrast, the standardized scores of comparison students were not significantly different from pretest to posttest. On measures of response speed and accuracy gathered using the Cognitive Aptitude Assessment System (CAAS), QuickSmart students were able to narrow the gap between their performance and that of their high- and average-achieving peers. Implications are drawn regarding the importance of interventions that emphasize the automaticity of basic academic skills for students with learning difficulties.     

Golfers do not respond to changes in shaft mass properties in a mechanically predictable way

A common belief in the golf community is that a lighter shaft allows the golfer to swing the club faster. From a mechanical point of view, reducing the mass of the shaft would result in a faster swing. However, a golfer is not a purely mechanical system, and so it is simplistic to assume that identical loads will be applied when swinging different clubs. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that golfers behave similar to a mechanical model when swinging clubs of varying mass. A torque driven model estimated the effects caused by the addition of 22?g to the shaft. Twelve golfers hit balls with a standard driver as well as a driver fitted with the same 22?g increase in mass. Club kinematics were collected with a high-speed motion capture system. The model predicted a 1.7?% lower club head speed for the club with additional mass. One subject showed a similar reduction (1.4?%), but one subject showed an increase in club head speed by 3.0?%. Ten subjects did not show any significant differences. These results suggest that golfers do not respond to changes in club mass in a mechanically predictable way.     

Governing education through data: Scotland,England and the European education policy space

This paper draws on interview data from national policy makers in England, Scotland and the European Commission to illustrate differences in the referencing of ‘Europe’ in education policy‐making in England and Scotland in order to highlight the emergent complexity of post‐devolution policy‐making in education through a focus on relations and interactions with Europe, as expressed in the negotiation and development of performance data systems. We suggest that policy‐makers in England reference global influences, rather than Europe, while policy‐makers in Scotland reference Europe in order to project a new positioning of Scotland in closer alignment with Europe. Europeanisation in education thus produces differing policy responses from closely aligned, indeed, in the case of England and Scotland, contiguous policy spaces. Thus the paper seeks to contribute to the literature on ‘travelling’ education policy and its ‘local’ mediation and to connect the development of devolution and the changing policy space of education in Europe.     

A crisis of professional identity: How primary teachers are coming to terms with changing views of literacy

As definitions of literacy become reconceptualised, so too do constructions of the primary teacher's identity. This study analyses the discourses that emerged from interviews with a group of Australian primary teachers who talked about their reactions to teaching media. Teachers who embraced this area of learning had a more futures-oriented view of their identity. However, there were still teachers who retained a more traditionalist perception of their role, including some who viewed teaching media as an unnecessary burden. These contrasting perspectives suggest that a crisis in identity will remain unless the boundaries that separate conventional literacies from new literacies can be challenged.     

Incorrigible Offenders

As a contribution to the historiography of female criminality, this article charts the discursive contours of media representations of female habitual criminals. The discussion is based on analysis of the ways in which the late Victorian and Edwardian newspaper press in New Zealand reported cases of female criminals through the gendered and classed trope of ‘the adventuress’. The specific focus is on how concepts of class were implicated in the ways in which competing representations of female fraudsters, swindlers and thieves were portrayed in syndicated international articles and local news media. It is argued that representations of adventuresses sensationalised as headline-making anomalies in the news media need to be understood within the context of changing constructions of the thief. Newspaper reporting of their ‘exploits’ operated as implicit cautionary moral tales that reinforced normative constructions of feminine respectability.