“We’ve been wastin’ a whole million watchin’ her doin’ her shoes” situated practice within a pedagogy of multiliteracies

Communication in society today is characterised by rapidly changing and emergent forms of meaning-making in a context of increased cultural and linguistic diversity. The need to teach these new literacy practices referred to as multiliteracies, is now embedded within systemic policies in Australia. This research paper is a response to these imperatives, releasing key findings of a critical ethnographic study concerning interactions between pedagogy and access to multiliteracies among culturally and linguistically diverse learners. A salient finding was that situated practice was enacted as an isolated stage rather than occurring concurrently with overt instruction. This had significant connections to some learners’ inability to access new, multimodal, and digitally-mediated designs of meaning. More importantly, culturally and linguistically non-students who were not of the dominant culture were least served by the separation of overt instruction and situated practice. The article concludes with the recommendation that multimodal meaning-making requires an instructional model that involves both practice and instruction.     

A study of an adapted social–emotional learning: Small group curriculum in a school setting

Clinicians and training programs strive to implement evidence‐based practices and manualized treatments with fidelity. However, the constraints of a local setting may limit the extent to which this is possible. In the current study, an adapted model of an evidence‐based social–emotional learning small group curriculum, the Incredible Years Children’s Small Group Training Series (Webster‐Stratton, 2004), was implemented and evaluated in an elementary school setting. Results of the study demonstrated statistically significant decreases in problem behaviors and intensity of problem behaviors, as rated by teachers. Teachers also reported improvement in classroom behavior, emotion regulation, problem‐solving, and friendship skills, as well as a high overall level of satisfaction with the intervention itself. Discussion of the results includes a review of the strengths and limitations associated with outcome research in a naturalistic setting, suggestions to consider when adapting evidence‐based programs, and recommendations for future research.     

Augmented Reality in Design Education: Landscape Architecture Studies as AR Experience

The rapid and ongoing development of digital technologies continues to create new opportunities for education. Over the last decade this has enabled the establishment of blended learning approaches and online education. More recently, Augmented Reality (AR) has emerged as a unique technology that can transform learning experiences across diverse disciplines. This article outlines the development of an AR prototype, Master of Time, which was created to educate first year students and non‐designers on the foundational principles of landscape architecture. This study examines the learning potential and benefits of AR technology with a focus on creating new practices in digital storytelling across situated experiences. In outlining project outcomes, the authors propose a series of critical design principles, strategies and methodologies for educators to apply when developing AR learning experiences across disciplines. Included within this is a framework for transdisciplinary and co‐design collaboration, which is essential for educators working in the forefront of learning technologies.     

Time-Indexed Effect Size for Educational Research and Evaluation: Reinterpreting Program Effects and Achievement Gaps in K–12 Reading and Math

Through a synthesis of test publisher norms and national longitudinal data sets, this study provides new national norms of academic growth in K–12 reading and math to help reinterpret conventional effect sizes in time units. We propose d?, a time-indexed–effect-size metric to estimate how long it would take for an “untreated” control group to reach the treatment group outcome in terms familiar to educators—years/months of schooling. It serves as a supplement to conventional effect-size metrics, such as Cohen's d, by taking into account different amounts of time needed for learning at different ages or grade levels. Through applications to Project STAR small class effects and NAEP racial achievement gaps, we demonstrate how to interpret and use d?. It is expected to provide a more developmentally appropriate context for interpreting the size of an effect, a step toward bridging the gap between educational research and practice.     

Children's temperament and behavior problems predict their employed mothers' work functioning

Numerous studies have been conducted on the impact of dual-earner parents' employment on their children, yet the reverse process-the impact of children and their behavior on the work functioning of their parents-has been ignored. This study investigated spillover from the mother role to the work role in a sample of more than 300 families. At 4 months, 12 months, 3.5 years, and 4.5 years of age, child's difficult temperament was significantly associated with mother's work outcomes, including work role quality and rewards from combining work and family. The evidence was consistent with a structural model in which maternal sense of parenting competence and maternal depressed affect mediated these effects.     

Issues in boys' education: a question of teacher threshold knowledges?

This paper exploresthe effects of specific teacher threshold knowledges about boys and gender on the implementation of a so‐called ‘boy friendly’ curriculum at one junior secondary high school in Australia. Through semi‐structured interviews with selected staff at the school, it examines the normalizing assumptionsand ‘truth claims’ about boys, as gendered subjects, which drive the pedagogical impetus for such a curriculum initiative. This research raises crucial questions about the need for the formulation of both school and governmental policy grounded in sound research‐based knowledge about the social construction of gender and its impact on the lives of both boys and girls and their experiences of schooling. This is crucial, we argue, in light of the recent parliamentary report on boys' education in Australia which rejects gender theorizing and given the failure of key staff in the research school to interrogate thebinary ways in which masculinity and femininity are socially constructed and institutionalized in schools through a particular ‘gender regime’. While some good things are happening in the research school, the failure to acknowledge the social construction of gender means that ultimately the school's programs cannot be successful.